Cultuur en Educatie – Buitenland

Back when we last featured the New York Public Library’s digital collections in 2016, they contained about 160,000 high-resolution images from various historical periods. This seemed like a fairly vast archive at the time, but in the years since, that number has grown to more than 860,000. If it was difficult... Read more »

There was a time when we imagined that most ancient sculpture never had any color except for that of the stone from which it was hewed. Doubt fell upon that notion as long ago as the eighteenth century, when archaeological digging in Pompeii and Herculaneum brought up statues whose color... Read more »

Cognitive scientist Tomer Ullman, head of Harvard’s Computation, Cognition, and Development lab, may have inadvertently blundered into an untapped vein of LEGO Icon inspiration when his interest in AI led him to stage recreations of famous psych experiments. If you think Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night LEGO playset is a... Read more »

The iPod shuffle recently enjoyed a bit of a comeback on TikTok. Can the Mikiphone be far behind? The invention of siblings Miklós and Étienne Vadász, the world’s first pocket record player caused a stir when it was introduced a century ago, nabbing first prize at an international music exhibition... Read more »

Here’s a holiday season deal worth mentioning. For Cyber Monday, The Great Courses (formerly The Teaching Company) is offering every course for $40-$60. The sale runs until midnight on Monday (11/27/2023). If you’re not familiar with it, the Great Courses provides a very nice service. They travel across the U.S.,... Read more »

Observers have expressed a variety of reactions to the organizational drama unfolding even now at OpenAI, the non-profit behind the enormously popular ChatGPT. Some have already written speculative laments in case of OpenAI’s total dissolution, mourning the great strides in artificial intelligence that would thus be forsaken. It’s safe to... Read more »

Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon turned 50 earlier this year, which perhaps makes it seem easy to dismiss as an artifact of a bygone era. It belongs to a period in popular music history when musicians and bands were approaching their albums with ever-greater aesthetic and intellectual... Read more »

Dance was as much a baked-in part of Prince’s allure, as his suggestive lyrics and mastery of multiple instruments. The public got its first taste of his affinity for the form at a John Hay elementary school talent show to which he contributed a tap routine, and again at a... Read more »

Alice’s Restaurant. It’s now a Thanksgiving classic, and something of a tradition around here. Recorded in 1967, the 18+ minute counterculture song recounts Arlo Guthrie’s real encounter with the law, starting on Thanksgiving Day 1965. As the long song unfolds, we hear all about how a hippie-bating police officer, by the name of William... Read more »

FYI: Masterclass is getting an early jump on Black Friday, running a “Buy One, Gift One Free” deal. Here’s the gist: Masterclass’s annual plans are typically available at $120 a year for the Individual plan, which provides access to MasterClass classes on one device, $180 a year for the Duo... Read more »

Above, we have the menu for an 1899 Thanksgiving dinner at the Plaza Hotel in New York. If you were a turkey, you had it relatively easy. But the ducks? Not so much. On the menu, you’ll find Mallard duck and Ruddy duck. But also Red-head duck, Long Island duckling,... Read more »

When it comes to maps, your first hit is always free. For you, maybe it was a Mercator projection of the world hung on the wall of an elementary-school classroom; maybe it was a road atlas in the glove box of your parents’ car. For Neil Sunderland, the earliest cartographic... Read more »

“Modern architecture died in St Louis, Missouri on July 15, 1972, at 3:32pm (or thereabouts).” This oft-quoted pronouncement by cultural and architectural theorist Charles Jencks refers to the demolition of the Wendell O. Pruitt Homes and William Igoe Apartments. The fate of that short-lived public housing complex, better and more... Read more »

A quick heads up on a deal: From now until December 2, you can get the first month of Coursera Plus for just $1. (It normally costs $59 per month.) With a Coursera Plus plan, you will have unlimited access to 6,000 courses from top universities and companies. This includes... Read more »