Check them out here.

via Life­hack­er

Below, we’ve listed some links that will hopefully pique your interest. Some were sent in by readers. Many thanks for them (and feel free to send good stuff our way. Contact us here.)

* How Google Earth Unearths Ancient Cities: Yes, Google is rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing even archae­ol­o­gy.

* Nor­man Mail­er Archive Opens: It took the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas two years to orga­nize 1,000 box­es of let­ters and unpub­lished man­u­scripts writ­ten by Nor­man Mail­er. And it’s now ready, just a short two months after the author’s death. Among oth­er things, the archive hous­es cor­re­spon­dence that shows a warmer side of a writer often known for his surli­ness.

* 2007 Dar­win Awards Announced: Here’s a lit­tle dark humor. The Dar­win Awards, which “com­mem­o­rate those who improve our gene pool by remov­ing them­selves from it,” has released its awards for 2007. You can find some of the “hon­or­able men­tions” here.

* Islam, the West and the Bhut­to Lega­cy: Fol­low­ing the assas­si­na­tion of Benazir Bhut­to, FORA.tv has assem­bled a video chan­nel “built around three pub­lic talks she gave in the year before her recent return to Pak­istan. Fif­teen pro­grams relat­ing to Pak­istan, Islam and approach­es to extrem­ism are now there, more will be added.”

* Clas­sic Film Clips: Over on YouTube, one of our read­ers has assem­bled a video col­lec­tion that fea­tures seg­ments from many clas­sic films — Dr. Strangelove, Metrop­o­lis, etc. It nice­ly com­ple­ments our own col­lec­tion, to which you might want to sub­scribe.

* Lost Star Wars Intro: Here’s the lost intro that mer­ci­ful­ly nev­er made it into the final film.

* Print Pub­lic Domain Books on Paper: This inter­me­di­ary ser­vice makes it easy to print paper copies of free pub­lic domain books found on the inter­net. The books are free; the print­ing is not. But it nets out well over­all. Via Red­Fer­ret

*  Best Online Doc­u­men­taries: Title is fair­ly self-explana­to­ry.

*  Sir Edmund Hillary: A Life in Pic­tures — From Nation­al Geo­graph­ic.

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I was won­der­ing how I’d even­tu­al­ly work sports into Open Cul­ture, and I’ve final­ly done it.

Let’s set the scene. It’s 1974. In Zaire. Muham­mad Ali takes on George Fore­man in the clas­sic “Rum­ble in the Jun­gle.” Nor­man Mail­er, the great writer and box­ing enthu­si­ast (who recent­ly left us), nar­rates how the fight went down. This is an out­take from the great doc­u­men­tary When We Were Kings. (We added the video clip to our YouTube Playlist, to which you can sub­scribe.)

The Atlantic Month­ly has been around a long time. Since 1857 to be exact. And, over the many years, it has pub­lished works by leg­endary authors. Quite nice­ly, The Atlantic web site makes avail­able some of these clas­sic writ­ings for free (although if you’re a sub­scriber you’ll get access to much more). Here are a few that we uncov­ered:

• The Aure­lian — Vladimir Nabokov (1941)
• A True Sto­ry, Repeat­ed Word for Word As I Heard It — Mark Twain (1874)
• The Facts Con­cern­ing the Recent Car­ni­val of Crime in Con­necti­cut — Mark Twain (1876)
• Some Ram­bling Notes of an Idle Excur­sion — Mark Twain (1877)
• A Tele­phon­ic Con­ver­sa­tion — Mark Twain (1880)
• The Dis­turber of the Traf­fic — Rud­yard Kipling (1891)

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Here it is in Eng­lish. His Christ­mas wish is charm­ing.

Rumor is that Mah­moud is busy set­ting up a Face­book page. Stay tuned for it, and be sure to give him a nice lit­tle poke.

Full Sto­ry here.

Cour­tesy of The New York Times.

Know of any pod­casts or videos that we should fea­ture on Open Cul­ture? Email us your tips.

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Here’s a quick fyi: I’m mak­ing a small guest appear­ance on FORA.tv this week.

In case you’re not famil­iar with it, FORA.tv hosts a large and con­stant­ly grow­ing col­lec­tion of videos that fea­ture impor­tant thinkers grap­pling with con­tem­po­rary cul­tur­al, social and polit­i­cal ques­tions. Or, put sim­ply, it’s YouTube made intel­li­gent. As you’ll see, their mis­sion is rather sim­i­lar to our own. So I was pleased when they asked me to be “a guest” for the week and high­light some of my favorite videos from their video trove. Here is what I select­ed:

• The 20th Cen­tu­ry on Tri­al: Nor­man Mail­er
• Ein­stein: His Life and Uni­verse
• Fran­cis Fukuya­ma: The End Of His­to­ry Revis­it­ed
• Jim­my Wales on Wikipedia

Seg­ments of FORA’s talks are also avail­able by audio and video pod­cast. (Get more info here.) Also, on a relat­ed note, Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty spear­heads a some­what sim­i­lar video ser­vice, except that it is more specif­i­cal­ly ded­i­cat­ed to pub­lic affairs. It’s called UChan­nel. (Have a look here.) Final­ly, if you like what FORA and UChan­nel have to offer, you may also want to spend some time with our Ideas & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion. Our full pod­cast library is here.

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