Miniatur Wunderland: The World’s Largest Model Railroad

in Video - Arts & Culture | December 6th, 2011

The con­struc­tion began in the year 2000, and over the years, Miniatur Wun­der­land, locat­ed in Ham­burg, Ger­many, has staked its claim as the largest mod­el rail­way in the world. Watch as you take a ride across the sev­en sec­tions: Harz, the fic­ti­tious city of Knuffin­gen, the Alps and Aus­tria, Ham­burg, Amer­i­ca, Scan­di­navia, and Switzer­land.

As the video attests, it took more than 500,000 work­ing hours to cre­ate this mas­sive minia­ture world. The most recent addi­tion is the Knuffin­gen air­port, locat­ed on 150 square meters, and boast­ing 40 air­planes that can taxi, take off, and land.

Miniatur Wun­der­land is con­stant­ly evolv­ing: the final phase of the project is slat­ed to be com­plet­ed in 2020, by which time the mod­el area will grow to near­ly 25,000 square feet. No won­der Miniatur Wun­der­land is Ham­burg’s most pop­u­lar attrac­tion.

via Giz­mo­do

Eugene Buchko is a blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er liv­ing in Atlanta, GA. He main­tains a pho­to­blog, Eru­dite Expres­sions, and writes about what he reads on his read­ing blog.

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Crowded House: How the World’s Population Grew to 7 Billion People

in Current Affairs, History, Video - Politics/Society | December 6th, 2011

This fall, the world’s pop­u­la­tion reached sev­en bil­lion. A sober­ing thought. How did we get to this point? Pro­duc­er Adam Cole and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Mag­gie Star­bard of Nation­al Pub­lic Radio have put the world’s accel­er­at­ing pop­u­la­tion growth in per­spec­tive in a two-and-a-half minute video, above.

In those two and a half min­utes, 638 babies will be born world­wide, accord­ing to sta­tis­tics from the Unit­ed States Cen­sus Bureau, and 265 peo­ple will die. That’s a net gain of 373 peo­ple, just while you watch the film. The biggest growth, accord­ing to NPR,  is hap­pen­ing in sub-Saha­ran Africa, where access to fam­i­ly plan­ning is low and infant mor­tal­i­ty rates are high.

It may seem counter-intu­itive that pop­u­la­tion growth rates are high where infant sur­vival rates are low, but as Swedish glob­al health expert Hans Rosling put it dur­ing a recent TED talk, “Only by child sur­vival can we con­trol pop­u­la­tion growth.” Because pop­u­la­tion growth and infant mor­tal­i­ty rates are both cor­re­lat­ed to pover­ty rates, he argues, elim­i­nat­ing pover­ty is the key to achiev­ing a sus­tain­able world pop­u­la­tion. You can learn more in our Novem­ber 1 fea­ture,  â€śHans Rosling Uses IKEA Props to Explain World of 7 Bil­lion Peo­ple.”

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Conformity Isn’t a Recipe for Excellence: Wisdom from George Carlin & Steve Jobs (NSFW)

in Comedy, Life, Psychology | December 6th, 2011

Dur­ing the 1960s, George Car­lin had some­thing of an epiphany. Con­front­ed by the coun­ter­cul­ture, the young come­di­an real­ized that he was­n’t stay­ing true to him­self — that he was try­ing to be Dan­ny Kaye, a very main­stream star, when he was real­ly an out­law and a rebel at heart. (Watch him on The Tonight Show in 1966). Even­tu­al­ly, Car­lin learned “not to give a shit,” to break with mil­que­toast con­ven­tions that restrained oth­er come­di­ans, and that’s when his com­ic genius bloomed. Note that some of Car­lin’s com­ments here are … not sur­pris­ing­ly … not safe for work.

Steve Jobs, anoth­er child of the coun­ter­cul­ture, did­n’t learn Car­lin’s les­son over time. As Wal­ter Isaac­son makes clear in his new biog­ra­phy, Jobs under­stood from the begin­ning that excel­lence is rarely achieved by walk­ing down the path of con­for­mi­ty. In a 1995 inter­view, Jobs boiled down his basic approach to life. The mas­ter­mind behind the leg­endary Think Dif­fer­ent tele­vi­sion cam­paign (watch the ver­sion nar­rat­ed by Jobs him­self) said:

When you grow up, you tend to get told the world is the way it is, and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice fam­i­ly, have fun, save a lit­tle mon­ey.

That’s a very lim­it­ed life. Life can be much broad­er once you dis­cov­er one sim­ple fact: Every­thing around you that you call life was made up by peo­ple that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influ­ence it, you can build your own things that oth­er peo­ple can use. Once you learn that, you’ll nev­er be the same again.

You can find more pearls of wis­dom from Jobs over at Brain­Pick­ings, and we’ll leave you below with more cul­tur­al fig­ures med­i­tat­ing on life:

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

Paulo Coel­ho: Suc­cess Nev­er Hap­pens With­out Tak­ing Risks

One of the Biggest Risks is Being Too Cau­tious…

Bono Tells Grad­u­ates “Pick a Fight, Get in It” (2004)

Conan O’Brien: Through Dis­ap­point­ment You Can Gain Clar­i­ty

J.K. Rowl­ing Tells Har­vard Grad­u­ates What They Need to Know

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This is Your Brain on Sex and Religion: Experiments in Neuroscience

in Psychology, Science | December 6th, 2011

If you attend­ed the recent Soci­ety for Neu­ro­science con­fer­ence, you had the chance to see some unprece­dent­ed 3D imag­ing of the brain — images that showed the exact order in which wom­en’s brain regions (80 in total) are acti­vat­ed in the sequence lead­ing to an orgasm. For Bar­ry Komis­aruk (pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­o­gy at Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty), this imag­ing isn’t gra­tu­itous. The whole point is to demys­ti­fy how the brain expe­ri­ences plea­sure, some­thing that could even­tu­al­ly inform our under­stand­ing of addic­tion and depres­sion. Komis­aruk said:

It’s a beau­ti­ful sys­tem in which to study the brain’s con­nec­tiv­i­ty. We expect that this movie [above], a dynam­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the grad­ual buildup of brain activ­i­ty to a cli­max, fol­lowed by res­o­lu­tion, will facil­i­tate our under­stand­ing of patho­log­i­cal con­di­tions such as anor­gas­mia by empha­siz­ing where in the brain the sequen­tial process breaks down.

Mean­while, back at the neu­ro­science ranch, researchers are also using imag­ing tech­nol­o­gy to observe the human brain in anoth­er state, the state where peo­ple expe­ri­ence mys­ti­cal awak­en­ings dur­ing prayer and med­i­ta­tion or oth­er spir­i­tu­al epipha­nies. Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can took a fair­ly deep look at this cut­ting-edge field sev­er­al years ago (read the full piece here), and now NPR has pro­duced a mul­ti­me­dia glimpse into the evolv­ing sci­ence of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. The pre­sen­ta­tion (click here or the image above) com­bines audio, video, arti­cles, book excerpts, etc. and delves into the fun­da­men­tal ques­tion: Is God a delu­sion cre­at­ed by brain chem­istry, or is brain chem­istry a nec­es­sary con­duit for peo­ple to reach God?

If you want to learn more about the brain and neu­ro­science, don’t miss the cours­es list­ed in the Psychology/Neuroscience sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.

Time and The Guardian have more on the first sto­ry above here and here.

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Malcolm McLaren: The Quest for Authentic Creativity

in Art, Creativity, Current Affairs | December 5th, 2011

In ear­ly Octo­ber of 2009, Mal­colm McLaren was near­ing death but did­n’t know it yet. He showed up at the 2009 Hand­held Learn­ing con­fer­ence feel­ing fatigued, but man­aged to deliv­er a provoca­tive and heart­felt speech titled, “Nev­er Mind the Bol­locks, Here’s the Txt Pis­tols,” in which he reflects on his life grow­ing up in post-World War II Eng­land and express­es dis­may over the rise of what he called “karaoke cul­ture.”

“All pop­u­lar cul­ture today,” said McLaren, “goes to great lengths to pro­mote the idea that it’s cool to be stu­pid.” He cham­pi­oned instead the “messy process of cre­ativ­i­ty” in which strug­gle, fail­ure and the acqui­si­tion of skill and knowl­edge are val­ued above instant fame. You can watch the com­plete speech above. A few days after it was giv­en, McLaren went into the hos­pi­tal and learned that he had can­cer. He died six months lat­er, on April 8, 2010. The next day Hand­held Learn­ing founder Gra­ham Brown-Mar­tin  wrote:

The talk from Mal­colm at the Hand­held Learn­ing Con­fer­ence 2009 will, I believe, stand the test of time. The speech does­n’t elab­o­rate about the peri­od of the Sex Pis­tols, New York Dolls, Vivi­enne West­wood, his impact on design, fash­ion and music cul­ture and many oth­er impor­tant achieve­ments of Mal­colm’s life that will be report­ed in obit­u­ar­ies over the com­ing days. Instead and in keep­ing with the theme of the con­fer­ence, Mal­colm dis­cuss­es in his inim­itable style–his life, learn­ing, authen­tic­i­ty vs karaoke cul­ture and what we gain from the expe­ri­ence of fail­ure. Iron­i­cal­ly, fail­ure was some­thing Mal­colm nev­er achieved. The talk was any­thing but ordi­nary, it polarised our audi­ence and instant­ly trend­ed glob­al­ly on Twit­ter but what else would you expect?

via TED/Best of the Web

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Meetin’ WA: Jean-Luc Godard Meets Woody Allen in a 26 Minute Film

in Film | December 3rd, 2011

The great French New Wave direc­tor, Jean-Luc Godard, turns 81 years old today. And Woody Allen, the leg­endary comedic film­mak­er, turned 76 just two days ago. So what could be more per­fect than to serve up Godard­’s 1986 short film Meetin’ WA? What you get is Godard, one of the dri­ving forces behind La Nou­velle Vague, in con­ver­sa­tion with Woody Allen. Godard­’s trade­mark approach to film­mak­ing, the expect­ed dose of Woody Allen neu­roses — they’re all there, packed into 26 min­utes.

For great films (clas­sics, indies, noir, west­erns, etc.) don’t miss our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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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Stephen Colbert Talks Science with Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson

in Astronomy, Comedy, Physics, Video - Science | December 3rd, 2011

With a fast-mov­ing mix­ture of com­e­dy and seri­ous­ness, an inter­view on The Col­bert Report is some­thing of an impro­vi­sa­tion­al fly­ing trapeze act. “Stephen Col­bert is an amaz­ing­ly good inter­view­er,” writes physi­cist Sean Car­roll, “man­ag­ing to mix top­i­cal jokes and his usu­al schtick with some real­ly good ques­tions, and more than a bit of real back­ground knowl­edge.”

Beneath the humor there is a sense that Col­bert under­stands and respects sci­ence. The sad thing, writes Car­roll, “is that more peo­ple are exposed to real sci­en­tists doing cut­ting-edge research by watch­ing Com­e­dy Cen­tral than by watch­ing, shall we say, cer­tain chan­nels you might have thought more appro­pri­ate venues for such con­ver­sa­tions.” But the expo­sure is all too brief. An inter­view on The Col­bert Report typ­i­cal­ly lasts only a few min­utes.

So it was inter­est­ing when Col­bert stepped away from his comedic char­ac­ter for a more in-depth con­ver­sa­tion with one of his fre­quent guests, astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson. The inter­view took place last year at Mont­clair Kim­ber­ley Acad­e­my in Mont­clair, New Jer­sey. Ear­li­er this week Tyson uploaded the video to the web­site of the Hay­den Plan­e­tar­i­um, where he is direc­tor, but the serv­er was over­whelmed by the result­ing surge in traf­fic. So some­one placed the ver­sion above on YouTube. It’s an inter­est­ing, and wit­ty, one-hour-and-19-minute con­ver­sa­tion. For more of Tyson with Col­bert, you can watch his appear­ances on The Col­bert Report at the Hay­den Plan­e­tar­i­um site.

via Kot­tke

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Philip Glass, Lou Reed Speak At Occupy Lincoln Center

in Current Affairs, Music | December 2nd, 2011

Last night, two Amer­i­can icons lent sup­port to the Occu­py Wall Street move­ment, speak­ing at a protest held out­side of Lin­coln Cen­ter in New York City.  After a per­for­mance of Satya­gra­ha at the Met, Philip Glass spoke to demon­stra­tors. Accord­ing to Alex Ross, the music crit­ic for the New York­er, Glass recit­ed the clos­ing lines of Satya­gra­ha (see around 3:00 minute mark in the video above), which come from the Bha­gavad Gita:

When right­eous­ness with­ers away and evil rules the land, we come into being, age after age, and take vis­i­ble shape, and move, a man among men, for the pro­tec­tion of good, thrust­ing back evil and set­ting virtue on her seat again.

He repeat­ed the say­ing sev­er­al times, and the “human micro­phone” ampli­fied the mes­sage for him.

Lou Reed was also in atten­dance and helped some­one crawl over a police bar­ri­cade at one point, then said: “I was born in Brook­lyn, and I’ve nev­er been more ashamed than to see the bar­ri­cades tonight. The police are our army. I want to be friends with them. And I wan­na occu­py Wall Street. I sup­port it.” A not-so-clear audio clip appears below:

via Gothamist and The Rest is Noise

More Occu­py Videos:

Noam Chom­sky at Occu­py Boston

Slavoj Zizek Takes the Stage at Occu­py Wall Street

Joseph Stiglitz and Lawrence Lessig at Occu­py Wall Street

David Cros­by & Gra­ham Nash at Occu­py Wall Street; Echoes of Wood­stock

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