The U.S. Ranks 29th in Science Education?

in Science | December 9th, 2010

Lance Lund, a pro­fes­sor at Anoka-Ram­sey Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege, pre­pared this pro­mo­tion­al video for cable TV. It nev­er aired.

via @courosa

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Abbey Road: Then and Now

in Music | December 9th, 2010

This was too good to pass up. This week’s cel­e­bra­tion of John Lennon’s life unearthed a price­less pic­ture of The Bea­t­les prepar­ing to take their icon­ic walk across Abbey Road. One detail worth point­ing out: Sir Paul has yet to kick off his shoes.

Although tak­en back in 1969, tourists still flock to the same cross­walk today, hop­ing to snap a quick imi­ta­tive pho­to before a car races by. You can watch the some­times hair-rais­ing action on this great live web­cam pro­vid­ed by Abbey Road Stu­dios. There’s obvi­ous­ly more to see dur­ing day­light hours in the UK. Thanks to Kot­tke for flag­ging this…

Bea­t­les Box Sale: Just a heads up. We noticed that Amazon.com has deeply dis­count­ed the remas­tered Bea­t­les Box Sets. The Stereo Box Set now goes for $126.32 for 14 discs, and the Mono Box Set runs $129.99 for 12 discs. Respec­tive­ly, that’s 51% and 57% off list price, and it’s right in time for the hol­i­day sea­son…

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Where Horror Film Began: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

in Film | December 9th, 2010

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In ear­ly 1920, Robert Wiene pre­miered in Berlin his silent film The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari. Ever since, crit­ics have lav­ished praise upon Cali­gari, call­ing it a mod­el of Ger­man expres­sion­ist film, the great­est hor­ror film of ear­ly cin­e­ma, and an impor­tant influ­ence on direc­tors lat­er work­ing in the film noir tra­di­tion. And, what’s more (spoil­er alert), Wiene’s film intro­duced the ‘twist end­ing’ to cin­e­ma. Today, you can watch this ground­break­ing film in its entire­ty above, down­load it from the Inter­net Archive, or find it per­ma­nent­ly list­ed in our ever-grow­ing col­lec­tion of Free Movies. Thanks to Melis­sa for the good find…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Franken­stein Hits the Sil­ver Screen (1910)

How The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari Invent­ed Psy­cho­log­i­cal Hor­ror Film & Brought Expres­sion­ism to the Screen (1920)

From Cali­gari to Hitler: A Look at How Cin­e­ma Laid the Foun­da­tion for Tyran­ny in Weimar Ger­many

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Philosophy with John Searle: Three Free Courses

in Philosophy, UC Berkeley | December 8th, 2010

You can’t dab­ble in the world of phi­los­o­phy very long with­out encoun­ter­ing John Sear­le. One of Amer­i­ca’s most respect­ed philoso­phers, Sear­le did impor­tant work on “speech act” the­o­ry dur­ing the 1960s, then lat­er turned to con­scious­ness and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, out of which came his famous “Chi­nese room” thought exper­i­ment. Sear­le has taught phi­los­o­phy at UC-Berke­ley since 1959, and, until recent­ly, his cours­es were only avail­able to matric­u­lat­ed stu­dents. But this fall semes­ter, the good folks at Berke­ley record­ed three cours­es taught by Sear­le, and made them avail­able online. We have added them to the Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es. Or, you can sim­ply access the cours­es below, using your com­put­er or your smart phone.

  • Phi­los­o­phy of Lan­guage — iTunes — John Sear­le, UC Berke­ley
  • Phi­los­o­phy of Mind - iTunes — John Sear­le, UC Berke­ley
  • Phi­los­o­phy of Soci­ety — iTunes — John Sear­le, UC Berke­ley

Note: All of these cours­es can also be accessed on YouTube (in audio for­mat) using this big playlist.

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Howard Cosell Breaks the News: John Lennon is Dead (1980)

in History, Media, Music | December 8th, 2010

On Decem­ber 8, 1980, the New Eng­land Patri­ots-Mia­mi Dol­phins game was wind­ing down, the end of anoth­er Mon­day Night Foot­ball game. Then, Howard Cosell, Amer­i­ca’s leg­endary sports­cast­er, broke the news to unsus­pect­ing view­ers: “An unspeak­able tragedy con­firmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, out­side of his apart­ment build­ing on the West Side of New York City, the most famous, per­haps, of all of The Bea­t­les, shot twice in the back, rushed to Roo­sevelt Hos­pi­tal, dead on arrival.” Soon enough, more for­mal news reports fol­lowed on the BBC and ABC’s Night­line, and you can still hear what New York­ers heard on the radio the night the music died. Howard Cosell inter­viewed John Lennon on Mon­day Night Foot­ball back in 1974. Revis­it the short con­ver­sa­tion right here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Lennon Sings Bud­dy Hol­ly

John Lennon (and Yoko Ono) on the Dick Cavett Show

I Met the Wal­rus: An Ani­mat­ed Short Film with John Lennon

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Thought of You: The Film & Behind the Scenes

in Art, Film | December 7th, 2010

Ryan Wood­ward has worked on the art direc­tion of many big name Hol­ly­wood films – Iron­man 2, Spi­der­man 2 & 3, The Iron Giant, the list goes on. But he had an idea for a short ani­mat­ed film, a love sto­ry expressed through dance, and it led to a fruit­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion with dance chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Kori Waka­mat­su. This short, behind-the-scenes film doc­u­ments their artis­tic col­lab­o­ra­tion, reveal­ing every­thing that went into mak­ing Thought of You, the 2D ani­mat­ed film fea­tured above.

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Saul Bellow Reads from Humboldt’s Gift (1988)

in Literature | December 7th, 2010

The 92nd Street Y, a cul­tur­al pil­lar of New York City, has released from its audio archive anoth­er lit­tle gem – Saul Bel­low read­ing from his 1975 nov­el Hum­boldt’s Gift, which won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Fic­tion and con­tributed to Bel­low’s Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture.

Bel­low’s read­ing (access it via iTunes, RSS, or the mp3 play­er below) runs 11 min­utes, and it sits nice­ly along­side two oth­er 92nd Street Y record­ings – Tru­man Capote read­ing from Break­fast at Tiffany’s (1963) and William Car­los Williams read­ing select­ed poems in 1954. We fea­tured both items in our pop­u­lar post, 45 Great Cul­tur­al Icons Revis­it­ed.

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Aurora Borealis over Norway in HD

in Art, Science | December 6th, 2010

Tor Even Mathisen shot these three min­utes of time­lapse beau­ty with a Canon EOS 5D mark II. Equal­ly beau­ti­ful is this still-frame shot. Many thanks to @Eugenephoto for send­ing this our way…

Bea­t­les Box Sale: Just a heads up. We noticed that Amazon.com has deeply dis­count­ed the remas­tered Bea­t­les Box Sets. The Stereo Box Set now goes for $126.32 for 14 discs, and the Mono Box Set runs $129.99 for 12 discs. Respec­tive­ly, that’s 51% and 57% off list price, and it’s right in time for the hol­i­day sea­son…

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.