Is Anything Real?

in Film, Life | January 11th, 2010

Wel­come to the new world of dig­i­tal film­mak­ing. Give this one a minute to get going.

Thanks Nats and Gary for send­ing this one along. Have a great link to share with us? (I know you do!) Write us at mail at open­cul­ture dot com.

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How is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?

in Life, Science, Technology | January 11th, 2010

Every year, The Edge.org pos­es a thought-pro­vok­ing ques­tion to 150+ engag­ing thinkers, and the answers nev­er dis­ap­point. This year, they throw out the ques­tion: How is the Inter­net Chang­ing the Way You Think? In this col­lec­tion, you will find answers by George Dyson, Clay Shirky, Tim O’Reil­ly, Maris­sa May­er, Richard Dawkins and many more. Below, I’ve includ­ed an excerpt from Nas­sim Taleb (author of The Black Swan), who has a less san­guine out­look on how the inter­net is chang­ing our world. He writes:

I used to think that the prob­lem of infor­ma­tion is that it turns homo sapi­ensinto fools — we gain dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly in con­fi­dence, par­tic­u­lar­ly in domains where infor­ma­tion is wrapped in a high degree of noise (say, epi­demi­ol­o­gy, genet­ics, eco­nom­ics, etc.). So we end up think­ing that we know more than we do, which, in eco­nom­ic life, caus­es fool­ish risk tak­ing. When I start­ed trad­ing, I went on a news diet and I saw things with more clar­i­ty. I also saw how peo­ple built too many the­o­ries based on ster­ile news, the fooled by ran­dom­ness effect. But things are a lot worse. Now I think that, in addi­tion, the sup­ply and spread of infor­ma­tion turns the world into Extrem­is­tan (a world I describe as one in which ran­dom vari­ables are dom­i­nat­ed by extremes, with Black Swans play­ing a large role in them). The Inter­net, by spread­ing infor­ma­tion, caus­es an increase in inter­de­pen­dence, the exac­er­ba­tion of fads (best­sellers like Har­ry Pot­ter and runs on the banks become plan­e­tary). Such world is more “com­plex”, more moody, much less pre­dictable.

So con­sid­er the explo­sive sit­u­a­tion: more infor­ma­tion (par­tic­u­lar­ly thanks to the Inter­net) caus­es more con­fi­dence and illu­sions of knowl­edge while degrad­ing pre­dictabil­i­ty.

You can find Tale­b’s full answer here, and the entire col­lec­tion of thoughts here. If you want to tell us how the inter­net has changed the world for you, please add your thoughts to the com­ments sec­tion below.

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Experiments in Publishing: Kindle Rush Results

in Amazon Kindle, Books, Business, e-books | January 11th, 2010

Click here to lis­ten to this post as audio. (Right-click to down­load.)

As some of you already know, back on Decem­ber 27th, I released a sam­ple of my first short sto­ry col­lec­tion A Long Way from Dis­ney on Amazon’s Kin­dle store and used social media strate­gies to mar­ket it. I did this for var­i­ous rea­sons, but main­ly because, as I’ve said here on OC before, I believe authors need to take on the role of sci­en­tists and exper­i­ment with what’s pos­si­ble in today’s pub­lish­ing world. (If you’re inter­est­ed in how I pub­li­cized this, see my recent posts at AuthorBootCamp.com.)

From a sci­en­tif­ic point of view, the exper­i­ment was a great suc­cess. I learned a great deal, which I’ll dis­cuss below. I sold a lot of books (at $.99 each)–around 350 in the first week–and I got my name and sto­ries in front of a lot of new peo­ple. I also heard from a num­ber of them who read the book right away and real­ly loved it! For you authors out there, I hope you can relate: Get­ting pos­i­tive feed­back on your work from total strangers is about the best feed­back there is.

[For those of you keep­ing score at home, those sales put $260 into Amazon’s pock­et and $140 into mine. Not too shab­by, I think, but also not the split an author might hope for.]

Okay, with­out any fur­ther delay: Here are the Results (what I’ve learned) from Exper­i­ment 1:

1)   Timing can be essen­tial. I posi­tioned myself to hit the Kin­dle store just after Xmas, think­ing that with many new­ly gift­ed Kin­dles out there, a lot more Kin­dle ebooks would be sell­ing and that I could cash in on this rush. I was cor­rect in this pre­dic­tion (Ama­zon sold more ebooks than paper copies over Christ­mas), but what I didn’t pre­dict was how much hard­er this made it to reach the Top 100 Kin­dle best­seller list, a goal I had set for myself. I want­ed to hit the Top 100 because it would give the book addi­tion­al expo­sure and stim­u­late more buy­ing from new­bie Kin­dle own­ers look­ing for quick, cheap con­tent. (more…)

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Modern Physics: A Free 6‑Course Introduction by Stanford’s Leonard Susskind

in Physics, Science | January 9th, 2010

For the past two years, Stan­ford has been rolling out a series of cours­es (col­lec­tive­ly called Mod­ern Physics: The The­o­ret­i­cal Min­i­mum) that gives you a base­line knowl­edge for think­ing intel­li­gent­ly about mod­ern physics. The sequence, which moves from Isaac New­ton, to Albert Einstein’s work on the gen­er­al and spe­cial the­o­ries of rel­a­tiv­i­ty, to black holes and string the­o­ry, comes out of Stanford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram. And the cours­es are all taught by Leonard Susskind, an impor­tant physi­cist who has engaged in a long run­ning “Black Hole War” with Stephen Hawk­ing. The final course, Sta­tis­ti­cal Mechan­ics, has now been post­ed on YouTube. The rest of the cours­es can be accessed imme­di­ate­ly below. (The cours­es also appear in our list of Free Online Physics Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.) Six cours­es. Rough­ly 120 hours of con­tent. A com­pre­hen­sive tour of mod­ern physics. All in video. All free. Beat that.

Mod­ern Physics: The The­o­ret­i­cal Min­i­mum

  • Clas­si­cal Mechan­ics — YouTube
  • Quan­tum Mechan­ics — YouTube
  • Spe­cial Rel­a­tiv­i­ty — YouTube
  • Ein­stein’s Gen­er­al The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty — YouTube
  • Cos­mol­o­gy — YouTube
  • Sta­tis­ti­cal Mechan­ics — YouTube

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Is Now Com­plete­ly Online

What Made Richard Feyn­man One of the Most Admired Edu­ca­tors in the World

‘The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law’: Richard Feynman’s Leg­endary Course Pre­sent­ed at Cor­nell, 1964

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The Kurosawa Digital Archive

in Film | January 7th, 2010

Our col­lec­tion of Free Online Movies is the gift that keeps on giv­ing. It led us unex­pect­ed­ly to dis­cov­er the wealth of World War II pro­pa­gan­da films made by some of Amer­i­ca’s great­est direc­tors. It also turned up (among oth­er things) the Kuro­sawa Dig­i­tal Archive. Opened last year by Kyoto’s Ryukoku Uni­ver­si­ty, the archive hon­ors Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, Japan’s cel­e­brat­ed film­mak­er who brought us The Sev­en Samu­rai, Rashomon, Ikiru, etc. and won an Oscar for Life­time Achieve­ment in 1989. What will you find here? A good 20,000 items. Screen­plays, man­u­scripts, pho­tos, sketch­es, news­pa­per clip­pings, notes, etc. You won’t find a larg­er Kuro­sawa col­lec­tion on the web. The one down­side is that you’ll need to read Japan­ese to take full advan­tage of the archive. But even if you have no Japan­ese under your belt, you can still surf the site, click on ran­dom links, and expe­ri­ence a good deal of what the archive offers.

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The Best of Books, 2009–2010

in Books, Literature | January 7th, 2010

This almost slipped by me. As 2009 drew to a close, The New York Times post­ed two annu­al lists. First, its list of 100 Notable Books and then its 10 Best Books of 2009. 5 Fic­tion. 5 Non­fic­tion. It’s a pret­ty good dis­til­la­tion of the bet­ter works pub­lished last year. But enough about ’09. What’s com­ing in 2010? The Mil­lions has pre­viewed the most antic­i­pat­ed books (all fic­tion) set for pub­li­ca­tion this year.

Look­ing for more good reads? Check out the col­lec­tion of Life Chang­ing Books assem­bled by our read­ers.

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Yellow Sticky Notes

in Film | January 7th, 2010

Ani­mat­ed and direct­ed by Jeff Chi­ba Stearns. The short film is the win­ner of the Prix du Pub­lic at Cler­mont-Fer­rand.

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How to Live to Be 100 and Beyond: 9 Diet & Lifestyle Tips

in Health, Life, Science | January 6th, 2010

A lit­tle pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment… Dan Buet­tner, a writer for Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, has stud­ied the world’s longest-lived peo­ples. Most of his find­ings are summed up in his book, The Blue Zones: Lessons for Liv­ing Longer From the Peo­ple Who’ve Lived the Longest. And here, in this Ted Talk, he boils things down even fur­ther, giv­ing you 9 com­mon diet and lifestyle habits found among the world’s old­est pop­u­la­tions. They’ve been use­ful­ly sum­ma­rized by Pre­sen­ta­tionZen as fol­lows:

Move Nat­u­ral­ly
(1) You don’t need a for­mal, rig­or­ous exer­cise plan. We’re talk­ing here a change in lifestyle that is fun­da­men­tal­ly active. We’re designed to move. We’ve not meant to dri­ve 100 meters in a car to pick up chips at the local store. Walk, do yard work, what­ev­er. Do exercises/activities that you enjoy.

Have Right Out­look
(2) Slow down. When you’re con­stant­ly in a hur­ry and stressed out, this has a neg­a­tive impact on your health. Lim­it­ing neg­a­tive stress is one of the health­i­est things you can do for your­self.
(3) Have a clear pur­pose. The Japan­ese call it “iki­gai” 生き甲斐 (lit: life + val­ue, be worth while). You must have a pas­sion, a call­ing, a pur­pose. There’s got to be a rea­son to get out of bed every day.

Eat Wise­ly
(4) Drink a lit­tle (wine) every­day.
(5) Eat main­ly plant-based foods. Small amounts of meat and fish are OK.
(6) Hara Hachi Bu: Eat until 80% full. Do not eat eat until you’re stuffed. (I’ve talked about this many time before in the con­text of pre­sen­ta­tion.)

Be Con­nect­ed with oth­ers
(7) Put fam­i­ly, loved ones first.
(8) Belong to a com­mu­ni­ty. Many in his study belonged to faith-based com­mu­ni­ties.
(9) Belong to the right tribe. That is, hang out with peo­ple with healthy habits, phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al ones.

Takes these tips to heart, and please share them with friends…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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