The Last Surviving Witness of the Lincoln Assassination Appears on a Game Show (1956)

in History, Television | August 4th, 2011

Let’s rewind the video­tape to 1956, to Samuel James Sey­mour’s appear­ance on the CBS tele­vi­sion show, “I’ve Got a Secret.” At 96 years of age, Sey­mour was the last sur­viv­ing per­son present at Ford’s The­ater the night Abra­ham Lin­coln was assas­si­nat­ed by John Wilkes Booth (April 14, 1865).

Only five years old at the time, Mr. Sey­mour trav­eled with his father to Wash­ing­ton D.C. on a busi­ness trip, where they attend­ed a per­for­mance of Our Amer­i­can Cousin. The young­ster caught a quick glimpse of the pres­i­dent, the play began, and the rest … as they say … is his­to­ry.

A quick foot­note: Samuel Sey­mour died two months after his TV appear­ance. His longevi­ty had some­thing to do, I’d think, with declin­ing those Win­stons over the years.

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The Adoration of the Mona Lisa Begins with Theft

in Art | August 4th, 2011

Every year, five mil­lion vis­i­tors stream into the Lou­vre in Paris, mak­ing it the most vis­it­ed muse­um in the world. And, more than any oth­er paint­ing, vis­i­tors head to see Leonar­do da Vin­ci’s Mona Lisa, paint­ed cir­ca 1503 — 1519.

It’s tempt­ing to attribute the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the Mona Lisa to the endur­ing genius of da Vin­ci. But, as NPR’s All Things Con­sid­ered recounts, there was a time when the paint­ing hard­ly attract­ed pub­lic atten­tion, and what turned the paint­ing into an object of pub­lic ado­ra­tion was some­thing baser than genius itself: brazen theft. Click here and NPR will tell you the sto­ry of the great Mona Lisa heist that went down on August 21, 1911, almost 100 years ago…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel

Google “Art Project” Brings Great Paint­ings & Muse­ums to You

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

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David Lynch’s Video Response to Washington Debt Deal

in Current Affairs, Film, Politics | August 3rd, 2011

No one is hap­py with Wash­ing­ton D.C. this week, and that includes film­mak­er David Lynch, who gives you his com­men­tary in sounds and images, not words. The sym­bol­ism? Amer­i­ca is in a dark posi­tion and mov­ing back­wards? The deficit deal is flat out garbage?

H/T @opedr


Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch and Inter­pol Team Up on Short Film

David Lynch’s Organ­ic Cof­fee (Bar­bie Head Not Includ­ed)

David Lynch on his Favorite Movies and Film­mak­ers

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Hear Voices from the 19th Century: Tennyson, Gladstone & Tchaikovsky

in History, Media, Technology | August 3rd, 2011


Head over to Sound­Cloud, and you’ll find 10 audio files that span three cen­turies. It’s a fair­ly ran­dom col­lec­tion, we’ll admit. But two record­ings from the 19th cen­tu­ry imme­di­ate­ly stand out.

First we have Alfred Lord Ten­nyson (1809 – 1892), Poet Lau­re­ate of the Unit­ed King­dom dur­ing Queen Vic­to­ri­a’s reign, read­ing “The Charge of the Light Brigade” on the wax cylin­der in 1890.

And then we get to hear echoes of the voice of William Glad­stone, the four-time Prime Min­is­ter of Great Britain (1809 — 1898). Here, Glad­stone’s voice was record­ed by Thomas Edis­on’s phono­graph cylin­der (1888), the same device that lets us lis­ten to Tchaikovsky (The Nut­crack­er, the 1812 Over­ture, etc.) chat­ting with his friends. Some have doubt­ed the authen­tic­i­ty of the Glad­stone record­ing, but it still remains gen­er­al­ly accept­ed.

For more on record­ings from the 19th cen­tu­ry, we’d rec­om­mend spend­ing some time with a five-part BBC series called Gramo­phones & Grooves. It takes you into the ear­ly record­ing indus­try and lets you hear count­less oth­er voic­es.

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Al Jazeera: The Top 1% in America

in Business, Current Affairs, Economics | August 3rd, 2011

Al Jazeera forced many West­erns view­ers to take their report­ing seri­ous­ly dur­ing the Egypt­ian upris­ing this spring, and now the Qatar-based news net­work has released a time­ly reportage (Aug. 2) on the fault lines in Amer­i­ca — on the gap between rich and poor that only grew wider this week. Alex­is de Toc­queville they’re not. There’s no sub­tle soci­ol­o­gy here. But, at the same time, I sus­pect that this for­eign per­spec­tive on the U.S. won’t appear unfa­mil­iar to many Amer­i­cans. The pro­gram runs 24 min­utes, and oth­er shows in the Fault Lines series can be viewed on YouTube here. H/T @courosa

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Richard Feynman: The Likelihood of Flying Saucers

in Physics, Video - Science | August 2nd, 2011

Richard Feyn­man was a once in a gen­er­a­tion intel­lec­tu­al. He had no short­age of brains. (In 1965, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on quan­tum elec­tro­dy­nam­ics.) He had charis­ma. (Wit­ness this out­take from his 1964 Cor­nell physics lec­tures avail­able here.) He knew how to make sci­ence and aca­d­e­m­ic thought avail­able, even enter­tain­ing, to a broad­er pub­lic. (We’ve high­light­ed two pub­lic TV pro­grams host­ed by Feyn­man here and here.) And he knew how to have fun. The clip above brings it all togeth­er. Hope you enjoy, and don’t miss our col­lec­tion of Great Sci­ence Videos, or many free physics cours­es in our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.

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Download The Edupunks’ Guide to a DIY Credential (Free eBook)

in e-books, Education | August 2nd, 2011

It’s hot off the dig­i­tal press. Anya Kamenetz, a senior writer at Fast Com­pa­ny Mag­a­zine and author of DIY U: Edupunks, Edupre­neurs, and the Com­ing Trans­for­ma­tion of High­er Edu­ca­tion, has teamed up with the Gates Foun­da­tion to release a free ebook, The Edupunks’ Guide to a DIY Cre­den­tial.

The new ebook offers a “com­pre­hen­sive guide to learn­ing online and chart­ing a per­son­al­ized path to an afford­able cre­den­tial,” and it comes com­plete with some handy-sound­ing tuto­ri­als: how to write a per­son­al learn­ing plan, how to teach your­self online, how to build your per­son­al learn­ing net­work, 7 ways to get col­lege cred­it with­out tak­ing a col­lege course, etc.

The book also smart­ly fea­tures a long list of open edu­ca­tion­al resources, where the author was nice enough to give us a small men­tion.

You can read The Edupunks’ Guide to a DIY Cre­den­tial on Scribd, or alter­na­tive­ly you can down­load it in mul­ti­ple for­mats (PDF, Kin­dle, ePub, RTF, etc.) at the bot­tom of this page.

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Animated: Stephen Fry & Ann Widdecombe Debate the Catholic Church

in Animation, Current Affairs, Religion | August 2nd, 2011

Intel­li­gence Squared (iTunes – Feed – Web Site) brings Oxford-style debat­ing to Amer­i­ca. Each debate fea­tures one motion, one mod­er­a­tor, and three pan­elists argu­ing for a motion, and three argu­ing against. Should Air­ports Use Racial and Reli­gious Pro­fil­ing? Is Islam A Reli­gion Of Peace? Is The Two-Par­ty Sys­tem Mak­ing the U.S. Ungovern­able? These are some of the recent top­ics that have been tack­led.

Now, tak­ing a page out of the RSA play­book, Intel­li­gence Squared has pro­duced a short ani­mat­ed video that gives artis­tic life to a debate held in Octo­ber 2009. The motion — “The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world” — was sup­port­ed by Ann Noreen Wid­de­combe, a for­mer British Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty politi­cian turned nov­el­ist. And tak­ing the con­trary posi­tion was pop­u­lar British actor and writer Stephen Fry.

You can watch the ani­mat­ed ver­sion above, and the full debate (which also fea­tured Christo­pher Hitchens) here. More iq2 videos can be found at their Youtube Chan­nel, which oth­er­wise appears in our col­lec­tion of Intel­li­gent YouTube Chan­nels. H/T @joabaldwin

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Fry on Phi­los­o­phy and Unbe­lief

Stephen Fry: What I Wish I Had Known When I Was 18

Stephen Fry Gets Ani­mat­ed about Lan­guage

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