What It Feels Like to Fly Over Planet Earth

in Astronomy, Video - Science | September 19th, 2011

Here’s what a lit­tle time and cre­ativ­i­ty brings. James Drake, a pro­fes­sor of Physics at U. Mary­land, down­loaded 600 images from The Gate­way to Astro­naut Pho­tog­ra­phy of Earth, stitched them into a mar­velous 60 sec­ond time-lapse film, then post­ed it on his Tum­blr blog, Infin­i­ty Imag­ined, along with this descrip­tion of what the view­er sees:

A time-lapse tak­en from the front of the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion as it orbits our plan­et at night. This movie begins over the Pacif­ic Ocean and con­tin­ues over North and South Amer­i­ca before enter­ing day­light near Antarc­ti­ca. Vis­i­ble cities, coun­tries and land­marks include (in order) Van­cou­ver Island, Vic­to­ria, Van­cou­ver, Seat­tle, Port­land, San Fran­cis­co, Los Ange­les. Phoenix. Mul­ti­ple cities in Texas, New Mex­i­co and Mex­i­co. Mex­i­co City, the Gulf of Mex­i­co, the Yucatan Penin­su­la, Light­ning in the Pacif­ic Ocean, Guatemala, Pana­ma, Colum­bia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and the Ama­zon. Also vis­i­ble is the Earth­’s ionos­phere (thin yel­low line) and the stars of our galaxy.

It’s a won­der­ful long-dis­tance view of our great plan­et. But it’s not the only one out there. Some of our oth­er favorites include:

  • Tour­ing the Earth from Space (in HD) – Video — Give NASA 7 min­utes, and they’ll show you the Earth’s most impres­sive land­scapes (includ­ing a giant hur­ri­cane) as seen from space.
  • Earth­rise in HD – Video — In Novem­ber 2007, Japan’s Kaguya space­craft orbit­ed the moon and cap­tured the first HD footage of an “earth­rise” and “earth­set.” Stun­ning to see.
  • A Day on Earth (as Seen From Space) – Video – Astro­naut Don Pet­tit trained his cam­era on plan­et Earth, took a pho­to once every 15 sec­onds, and then cre­at­ed a bril­liant time-lapse film. Very sim­i­lar to what you see above.

All of these videos appear in our col­lec­tion 125 Great Sci­ence Videos: From Astron­o­my to Physics & Psy­chol­o­gy.

via @brainpicker

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The Austin City Limits Music Festival & Miles Davis Streaming Online

in Music | September 17th, 2011

A quick heads up. This week­end you can watch The Austin City Lim­its Music Fes­ti­val stream­ing on YouTube. The 2011 line­up fea­tures Ste­vie Won­der, Arcade Fire, Cold­play, Kanye West, and Ali­son Krauss, among many oth­ers. Get the full list here.

Also for a lim­it­ed time, NPR is stream­ing Miles Davis, Live In Europe 1967: The Boot­leg Series Vol. 1. Davis is backed by Her­bie Han­cock, Wayne Short­er, Ron Carter and Tony Williams. What more can a jazz fan ask for?

Fol­low us on Twit­ter and Face­book, and we’ll keep point­ing you to free cul­tur­al good­ies dai­ly…

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Google Brings The Johnny Cash Project to Chrome

in Animation, Google, Music | September 16th, 2011

This week marked the eight anniver­sary of John­ny Cash’s death. Google did­n’t give John­ny a doo­dle, unlike Fred­die Mer­cury ear­li­er this month. How­ev­er the Googlers did cre­ate a spe­cial theme for their Chrome brows­er based on The John­ny Cash Project. And they announced it on Mon­day Night Foot­ball ear­li­er this week. (Watch the com­mer­cial above.)

As you may recall, The John­ny Cash Project was launched as a glob­al art ini­tia­tive to hon­or the lega­cy of the influ­en­tial singer.  The project asked fans to use a cus­tom draw­ing tool to cre­ate per­son­al por­traits of John­ny. Then, the images were inte­grat­ed into a music video set to “Ain’t No Grave,” the first track on the album released posthu­mous­ly in Feb­ru­ary, 2010. The clip right above brings you inside the mak­ing of the crowd­sourced video. The end result can be viewed right here.

Thanks Judy for send­ing this our way. Got a good tip? Ping us any time.

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Duck and Cover: The 1950s Film That Taught Millions of Schoolchildren How to Survive a Nuclear Bomb

in Film, History | September 16th, 2011

After the Sovi­et Union test­ed its first atom­ic bomb in August, 1949, Amer­i­can anx­i­ety lev­els ran high­er. The fear of nuclear war was in the air. And a young gen­er­a­tion of Amer­i­cans soon got its intro­duc­tion to Duck and Cov­er, the lit­tle tech­nique that would save lives if the U.S. ever endured a Hiroshi­ma-style bomb­ing. Or so it was believed.

In 1951, the US gov­ern­ment, work­ing with Archer Pro­duc­tions and stu­dents from Queens, NY, pro­duced a short instruc­tion­al film giv­en the no-frills title Duck and Cov­er. Shown to mil­lions of chil­dren nation­wide over many years, the film became a cen­ter­piece of the gov­ern­men­t’s emer­gency pre­pared­ness pro­gram. Since then, the film has been entered into the Nation­al Film Reg­istry (2004) and has inspired var­i­ous par­o­dies, includ­ing this recent goof from the “Aus­tralian Board of Civ­il Defence.” Hope you get some­thing from this nos­tal­gia-induc­ing piece of film.…

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

63 Haunt­ing Videos of U.S. Nuclear Tests Now Declas­si­fied and Put Online

Kurt Von­negut Gives a Ser­mon on the Fool­ish­ness of Nuclear Arms: It’s Time­ly Again (Cathe­dral of St. John the Divine, 1982)

Haunt­ing Unedit­ed Footage of the Bomb­ing of Nagasa­ki (1945)

53 Years of Nuclear Test­ing in 14 Min­utes: A Time Lapse Film by Japan­ese Artist Isao Hashimo­to

How a Clean, Tidy Home Can Help You Sur­vive the Atom­ic Bomb: A Cold War Film from 1954

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Jack Nicholson Puts His Star Power Behind “Green” Cars, 1978

in Film, Science, Technology | September 16th, 2011

Long before any­one start­ed talk­ing about “green” or “sus­tain­abil­i­ty,” Jack Nichol­son put his mon­ey and star pow­er behind a new alter­na­tive ener­gy — solar-pow­ered hydro­gen. The year was 1978, and solar hydro­gen, a lim­it­less resource, promised to low­er ener­gy costs and pol­lu­tion lev­els, all at once. Fast for­ward 30+ years, and we know one thing: hydro­gen Chevys nev­er saw the light of day … until 2007.

This clip has been added to our col­lec­tion of 275 Cul­tur­al Icons, where you’ll find great artists and thinkers speak­ing in their own words, most­ly on video. The col­lec­tion includes footage of Tol­stoy and Twain and, of course, more con­tem­po­rary fig­ures.

Get more cul­tur­al nuggets dai­ly by fol­low­ing us on Face­book and Twit­ter.

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Richard Dawkins Introduces His New Illustrated Book, The Magic of Reality

in Books, K-12, Science | September 16th, 2011

We told you about the book ear­li­er this year, and now it’s just about here. Set for release on Octo­ber 4th, The Mag­ic of Real­i­ty will be unlike any book writ­ten by Richard Dawkins before. It is illus­trat­ed for starters, and large­ly geared toward young and old read­ers alike. Per­fect, he says, for any­one 12 and up. When it comes to the struc­ture and gist of the book, Dawkins does a pret­ty good job of explain­ing things. So let’s let the video roll…

Note: If you’re will­ing to tweet about the book, you can view the first 24 pages of The Mag­ic of Real­i­ty here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Richard Dawkins on the Awe of Life & Sci­ence

Richard Dawkins Plays the Piano: “Earth His­to­ry in C Major”

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The Sounds That Made Pop

in Music | September 15th, 2011

Ear­li­er this sum­mer, the good folks at The Word assem­bled 40 Nois­es That Built Pop, a col­lec­tion of dis­tinc­tive pop music sounds that have “caused your ears to prick up, or your eye­brows to raise.” Some were orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed in quite cal­cu­lat­ed ways. Oth­ers were hap­py acci­dents. Either way, the­ses sounds are now part of the pop tra­di­tion. We have high­light­ed four sounds that speak to us. But you should real­ly dive into and enjoy The Word’s col­lec­tion that was clear­ly put togeth­er with lov­ing care.

The Pow­er Chord from The Kinks: You Real­ly Got Me (1964)
“It’s the essen­tial build­ing block of rock; the root and the fifth of the chord played at sub­stan­tial vol­ume on gui­tar and dis­tort­ed to taste. It’s also the musi­cal equiv­a­lent of the pok­er face; with just the two notes, it’s nei­ther a sun­ny-sound­ing major chord nor a gloomy minor… With­out the pow­er chord entire gen­res of met­al sim­ply would­n’t exist.”

Vinyl Scratch from Her­bie Han­cock: Rock­it (1983)
“Any DJ cue­ing up a record through one ear of a pair of head­phones will have heard the sound of scratch­ing, but it was­n’t until the ear­ly days of hip hop that it was incor­po­rat­ed into musi­cal per­for­mance… Grand­mas­ter Flash, Afri­ka Bam­baataa and Kool Herc became the pio­neers of “turntab­lism”, while Grand Mix­er DXT’s work on Rock­it pro­pelled the sound into the main­stream and trans­formed the DJ into an unlike­ly front­man.”

Hand­clap from Kool & The Gang: Ladies Night (1979)
“As a per­cus­sive sound, [the hand­clap has] been used by every­one from fla­men­co dancers to Steve Reich, but it was in the mid-1970s when it found its true call­ing. Lay­ered on top of the snare drum to empha­sise the sec­ond and fourth beats of the bar, its for­mi­da­ble “crack” can be heard through­out dis­co and funk, and has since been employed by any­one wish­ing to hint at a par­ty atmos­phere…”

Gui­tar Feed­back from Gang Of Four: Anthrax (1981)
“A clas­sic case of rock music tak­ing an unde­sir­able noise and mould­ing it to suit its own pur­pos­es. The rea­son for feed­back is sim­ple: the gui­tar pick­up “hears” itself being blast­ed out of a speak­er cab­i­net, process­es the sound and pass­es it to the speak­er: noise piled upon noise. As rock music became less polite, more lib­er­ties were tak­en with feed­back; while there’s an unin­ten­tion­al burst at the front end of I Feel Fine by The Bea­t­les, the out­ro to The Who’s My Gen­er­a­tion uses the sound more cre­ative­ly.”

H/T Metafil­ter

And, on a total­ly unre­lat­ed note: Sun Ra and The Blues Project do Bat­man & Robin songs. Cour­tesy of the WFMU Blog Way­back Machine.

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Inside the Renaissance of Iranian Cinema

in Current Affairs, Film | September 14th, 2011

Iran had a rich tra­di­tion of film­mak­ing before the Rev­o­lu­tion of 1979, when the fun­da­men­tal­ists burned cin­e­mas and shut down pro­duc­tions. But, by the late 80s, the cler­ics warmed up to cin­e­ma again and a film­mak­ing renais­sance got under­way. Then, in 1997, the whole world took notice when Abbas Kiarosta­mi won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val for Taste of Cher­ry. Nowa­days, Iran­ian films show up reg­u­lar­ly at film fes­ti­vals world­wide.

Get­ting inside the vibrant Iran­ian film scene has­n’t been ter­ri­bly easy, espe­cial­ly for Amer­i­cans. Blame that on pol­i­tics. But last year, the folks behind the Vice Guide to Film trav­eled to Tehran and put togeth­er a reportage on Iran­ian cin­e­ma past and present. It runs 23 min­utes and over­turns a few stereo­types along the way. Def­i­nite­ly worth a watch.

Note: Accord­ing to our Twit­ter friends, the film should be view­able around the world. We only encoun­tered one excep­tion — Cana­da. So we offer our apolo­gies in advance to Cana­di­an view­ers. You can find us on Twit­ter here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

North Korea’s Cin­e­ma of Dreams

420 Free Movies Online

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.