Take a quick trip back in time, to 1890. Here you can listen to Pyotr Tchaikovsky (The Nutcracker, the 1812 Overture, etc.) and other eminent musicians having some fun, recording their voices on a then new-fangled technology, the phonograph cylinder, invented by Thomas Edison in 1870. To get a transcript of what the friends had to say, you can read the transcript after the jump. Thanks Maggie for this tip. (via BoingBoing)

A. Rubinstein: What a wonderful thing [the phonograph].
J. Block: Finally.
E. Lawrowskaja: A disgusting…how he dares slyly to name me.
W. Safonov : (Sings a scale incorrectly).
P. Tchaikovsky: This trill could be better.
E. Lawrowskaja: (sings).
P. Tchaikovsky: Block is good, but Edison is even better.
E. Lawrowskaja: (sings) A-o, a-o.
W. Safonow: (In German) Peter Jurgenson in Moskau.
P. Tchaikovsky: Who just spoke?

The pattern always repeats itself. Civilizations rise and fall. Then new ones take their place. But, something else may be about to happen. There might be an impending collapse of our entire global civilization. Not one major civilization, but the entire global civilization, gone. Or, so that’s how Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich sees it. Ehrlich, who has been called “one of the most influential ecologists of our age,” sees one thing staving off disaster. A big shift in culture first and foremost. A cultural evolution. Watch above.

Thanks Denise for the tip.

via USA Today

For the past couple of months, A Glorious Dawn, a mashup melding Stephen Hawking’s voice with scenes from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, has been making its way around the blogosphere. Now, on the eve of what would have been Sagan’s 75th birthday (he died in 1996), A Glorious Dawn has been officially released as a single by Third Man Records, the label created by White Stripes singer Jack White. We have posted the video above. You can also download the song in mp3 and other formats here, or buy it as a special 7 inch single (pre-order here).

via Huffington Post and Telegraph.co.uk

Internet Archive – Feature Films: When you’re looking for free movies online, the Internet Archive should be your first stop. It features large collections of comedies, film noir and sci-fi/horror flix. You will also find some foreign films here, along with important classic films, including Elia Kazan’s Panic in the Streets, John Huston’s Beat the Devil, Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street, Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday, Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin and The Kid with Charlie Chaplin. You can access the Archive’s full movie library here.

Babelgum Films: Babelgum’s goal is to act as an international ‘glue’, bringing a huge range of professional and semi-professional films to a global audience – like a modern-day Tower of Babel. They’re also making an effort to get their content to smartphones. They have an iPhone app now and apps for other phones on the horizon. Get more detail on the mobile apps here.

FMO: FreeMoviesOnline features a large selection of public domain films. Here, you’ll find films featuring John Wayne (Paradise Canyon, Humphrey Bogart (Beat the Devil), Cary Grant (The Amazing Quest of Ernest Bliss), Fred Astaire (Royal Wedding), Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, and many others.

Fancast: This site features a long list of free movies. Some notable films include Laurence Olivier and Kirk Douglas in Spartacus, Johnny Depp in Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in Charade, Gary Cooper in The Pride of the Yankees, Robert DeNiro in Ronin, and Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. Unfortunately, I think this site restricts films to an American audience. But please let me know if I am wrong about that.

Google Video: For some time now, major classics have appeared on Google Video. Take for example: the 1922 German silent film Nosferatu, The Phantom of the Opera (1925), Sergei Eisenstein’s 1918 film Alexander Nevsky, Howard Hughes’ The Outlaw (1943), Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950), Night of the Living Dead (1968), 1984 (based on the Orwell novel) and three films by the great Frank Capra — It Happened One Night (with Clark Gable), It’s a Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (both with Jimmy Stewart).

Indie Movies Online: Just as it sounds. A good place to watch full-fledged indie films on the web.  Right now, you can find Peter Greenaway’s film, Rembrandt’s J’accuse and The Future We Will Create – Inside the World of TED. The site seems to be available in the US, UK, Canada and Australia, but perhaps also beyond.

For many more free films, please visit 30 Places to Watch Free Movies Online

When I traveled to East Berlin in 1988, my first time as a youngster, I read reports of a split between the hardline East German regime and the opening Soviet government. But nobody really paid much attention to that news. Less than a year later, the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall would be gone, all of it. Above, you can watch footage that shows how East Germans experienced that moment, and here, courtesy of @courosa, you can find a series of vivid historical images that commemorate the events that took place 20 years ago.

Excellent find by Stephen Grant… You can now experience the battle lines of World War I in Second Life, thanks to The First World War Poetry Digital Archive and the Learning Technologies Group at Oxford University. WWI shocked the Western world with its landscape-changing warfare and high tech carnage. Remembrances of “The Great War” live on in some remarkable poetry and literature. And now Second Life too. Find more information on this project here.

Last year, Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Stanford, gave what was supposed to be his last talk on the modern copyright regime that once benefited creativity but now stifles it and brings big bucks to corporations. But, at EDUCAUSE last week, he came back as the keynote speaker and returned to these still-burning issues once again. Lessig has posted his artfully presented talk online, and you can now watch it above.

PS Once you start the video, it will take a little while for you to see anything.

Courtesy of Simon Critchley, who teaches philosophy at The New School for Social Research…

Jonathan Lethem, the writer behind Motherless Brooklyn (one of my faves) and Fortress of Solitude, has a new book out, Chronic City. Above, he talks about the surreal quality of his work, the future of digital books, and the personal guidelines that determine what he writes, and won’t write. Within this last point, you will find a good lesson for all of us. Find your unique talent, dedicate yourself to it, avoid the work commonly done by others, and you can achieve something notable and worthwhile.