Speaking broken English to your high school friends over Skype? Spending precious moments trying to remember pertinent information like the names of your parents? Can you whistle the local ice cream person’s ice cream truck tune, but can’t remember the words to your national anthem?
If you’re like me and who knows how many other sorry people, you may find yourself at a point in time where your brain needs a bit of fitness. Or a war. Something to stimulate it. Anything to stimulate it. Such a fine moment came to me when the only English language television channel I had available for months was the Outdoor Channel from the U.S.. I realized, there was a whole lot of deer shooting going on, but for the countless deer murders I witnessed, I never learned how to identify the different breeds, or even shoot them. In short, it was a lot of guys going “WWWHHHHHOOOOOOAAAAAAAAA!” over and over again and talking about how much they love hunting and fishing. The thought crossed my mind to play a little game. I’d close my eyes and turn on the tv to try to guess if someone was hunting or fishing by the sound of their “WWWHHHHHOOOOOOAAAAAAAAA!”s. Then I realized, no, that’s just wrong.
Luckily I found Open Culture, a website that markets itself as “The best free cultural & educational media on the web”. As far as I know, it is. What you’ll find….free courses, audio books, movies (good, good movies), textbooks, language lessons, science videos, film noir, life changing books, Hitchcock flicks….the list goes on. Open Culture is such an amazing resource and it’s an incredibly intuitive site. There is just so much available. Aside from a directory on the homepage, you’ll also see a blog with media updates up to multiple times daily. Included at the time of this writing…Physicist Lawrence Krauss, Damon Horowitz on Philosophy in Prison: Weighty Conversations about Right and Wrong, and Jazz for Cows. Yeah that’s right. Check it.
Leave a Reply