Digital Easter Eggs

Being Easter this weekend I thought to open the recommended online media for this week/s with something related. In this video Dr Morton Stith (who seems to have participated in the exchanges between the Eastern and Western traditions that occurred in the aftermath of World War Two) speaks in this video about the Gnostic Gospels, which "erase the rational processes" according to Dr. Stith. Sounds like poetry to me.


Bob Dylan | Songs
Dozens of Bob Dylan songs streamed online from the amphetamine bard's website.


The Mike Wallace Interview
The Mike Wallace Interview ran from 1957 to 1960, but the Ransom Center collection includes interviews from only 1957 and 1958. In the early 1960s, Mr. Wallace donated to the Ransom Center kinescopes of these programs and related materials, including his prepared questions, research material, and correspondence. There are 65 interviews in the Ransom Center's collection. Five are on audio tape, and the others are kinescopes, 16mm recordings of the television programs made by filming the picture from a video monitor. These 16mm films were transferred to video and, along with the audio tapes, were digitized. The interviews were then transcribed and were both embedded in the video files in the form of subtitles and included on the website as text files.


Approaching Plato: A Guide to the Early and Middle Dialogues (PDF 300 Pages) by Mark Anderson and Ginger Osborn. (2009)
We have designed the material included on this site to be of use to students and professors of every level. The outlines are useful in a number of ways. Those who read a dialogue for the first time (or for the first few times) often find it difficult to follow the course of Plato‟s arguments, which can be dense, allusive, concealed, and often long and interwoven with other material. The outlines assist comprehension by highlighting the dialogues‟ main themes, their order of presentation, and their interconnections. The section-divisions within each outline indicate which parts of a dialogue must be read as one—read, that is, in one sitting—and thus where one may take a break from reading without breaking the thread of an argument. Students and professors alike can also use the outlines as brief reminders of the main themes and arguments of dialogues with which they are already well acquainted.

JONATHAN WARD - EXCAVATED SHELLAC : INTERNATIONAL 78 SELECTIONS (03.02.09)
Alberto Ruiz y su Lira Incaica – Paceñita (Bolivia)
Temiuv Damirov - Jeirany (Azerbaijan)
Osman Pehlivan - Anadolu Kasik Havasi (Turkey)
José Gonzalez, “El Presi” - A Xuago el de Sama (Asturias, Spain)
Les Freres Sciallour - La Gavotte de Pont-Aven (Brittany, France)
Cheikh Magari Sliman - Ya Guelba Ya Talef (Algeria)
Parush Parushev - Mlad Stoian (Bulgaria)
Coimbatore Thayi - Sankarabharanam Slokam (India)
Etam and Timah - Dondang Sayang Budi (Malaysia)
Armandinho - Divagando (Portugal)
Bia Te Mongbandi Ya Ngidi - Ilongo Ganga (Congo)
Stonik and Kiprono - Sindenyun (Kenya)
Stratos Payoumtzis and Giorgos Mitsakis - To Organaki (Greece)
Som Jiin - Lom Phad Chaaj Khao (Siam/Thailand)
Tefanake, Reia, and Moratai - Ute (Tahiti)
Steva Nikolic - Arnautka (Serbia)
Lidya Mendoza - Olvidarte Jamas (Mexico)
Philip Tanner - The Gower Wassail Song (Wales, United Kingdom)

Spider-Man TV Series from 1967
anfare is in order, webheads, as the legendary and pleasantly nostalgic "Spider-Man" animated series from 1967 makes its Marvel.com debut! Starting today, kids of all ages can stream episodes of the show right here on Marvel.com, with "new" episodes going up every Thursday!
First airing on the ABC television network in 1967, the series revolves around the scientific-minded teenager Peter Parker who, after being bitten by a radioactive spider, develops amazing strength and spider-like powers. He decides to become a crime-fighting, costumed super hero; all the while dealing with his personal problems and the insecurities resulting from being a teenager. Each episode features two parts so you get twice as many web-slinging adventures in each video!
Episode 1 features "The Power of Dr. Octopus" (Dr. Octopus kidnaps Spider-Man in order to hold the city ransom.) and "Sub-Zero for Spidey" (Spider-Man battles ice creatures to save his city from freezing.).

Academic Earth
Video lectures from the world's top scholars. Academic Earth is an organization founded with the goal of giving everyone on earth access to a world-class education.
As more and more high quality educational content becomes available online for free, we ask ourselves, what are the real barriers to achieving a world class education? At Academic Earth, we are working to identify these barriers and find innovative ways to use technology to increase the ease of learning.
We are building a user-friendly educational ecosystem that will give internet users around the world the ability to easily find, interact with, and learn from full video courses and lectures from the world’s leading scholars. Our goal is to bring the best content together in one place and create an environment in which that content is remarkably easy to use and where user contributions make existing content increasingly valuable.

Jane From Occupied Europe: Colorsound
Jane From Occupied Europe was a British band out of Salisbury. They took their name from the Swell Map’s second album and played a drone-base mix of 70s psychedelica and 90s alternative. I only recently heard of them and it is a shame they did not appear on my radar while they were still in existence for the band had an exceptional sound and deserved a wider audience.
An associate of the musicians has placed all of their releases, with permission of the artists, on this same-titled tribute blog. There is a good amount of music here and I recommend to check it all out but the main event is JFOE’s full length album Coloursound. It is a fully realized effort with a consistent sound. Mid East drones, haunting vocals and psychedelic guitars all create a musical feast. You can hear influences from Echo and The Bunnymen, Nick Cave, The Pixies, The Smiths, and others from the 80s and 90s scene. There are no weak songs but I especially like “Drift 13″ and “Mourning Glass” and recommend them as typical tracks by this band. You can find other EPs, Demos, and 12″ singles offered on this site but this full album should be your first and best introduction to this unjustly ignored band.


A Journey Around My Skull Photostream
A Journey Around My Skull is a wonderful blog that specializes in obscure and avant garde literary works that features heavy elements of the visual. As the blog states: "Unhealthy book fetishism from a reader, collector, and amateur historian of forgotten literature." This is the Flickr site for the blog. Beautiful.


STEAL THIS BOOK By Abbie Hoffman (1971)
The book includes advice on such topics as growing marijuana, starting a pirate radio station, living in a commune, stealing food, shoplifting, stealing credit cards, preparing a legal defense, making pipe bombs, and obtaining a free buffalo from the U.S. Department of the Interior. It discusses various tactics of fighting as well as giving a detailed list of affordable and easy ways to find weapons and armor that can be used in the event of a confrontation with law enforcement. The book advocates rebelling against authority in all forms, governmental and corporate.
The book's reflexive title is a classic example of Yippie culture jamming. It is very hard to find in libraries for that same reason.

As the book ages, the specific information it contains has become largely obsolete, but the book captures the yippie zeitgeist.

On the success of the book, Hoffman was quoted as saying, "It's embarrassing when you try to overthrow the government and you wind up on the Best Seller's List." Hoffman would not respond to accusations that he had plagiarized the book, as published in a detailed article in Rolling Stone magazine (No. 92, 10 September 1971), entitled "How Abbie Hoffman Won My Heart and Stole Steal This Book."
As of 2006, the composition of a Wiki-based version of this work for a new generation was started. The project has been named Steal This Wiki. An alpha version of the final product was compiled and released on July 4, 2007.


YouTube - LibraryOfCongress's Channel
Timeless treasures and contemporary presentations from the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. As the world's preeminent reservoir of knowledge, we are the steward of millions of recordings dating from the earliest Edison films to the present. In addition, we sponsor events, lectures and concerts that are free and open to the public. More about the Library: http://www.loc.gov/about

David Bixby: Ode to Quetzalcoatl (1972)
Quetzalcoatl (Classical Nahuatl: Quetzalcōhuātl pronounced [ke.ʦal.ˈkoː.waːtɬ]) is a benevolent and mythical deity, creator of humanity in the Toltec tradition, predating the Mexica (Aztecs) god. The name is a combination of quetzal, a brightly colored Mesoamerican bird, and coatl, meaning serpent. He is woven into a mythical prince Topiltzin of Tula, who left that kingdom to found Chichen Itza, according to legend.
Due to their cyclical view of time and the tendency of leaders to revise histories to support their rule, many events and attributes attributed to Quetzalcoatl are exceedingly difficult to separate from the political leaders that took this name on themselves. Quetzalcoatl is often referred to as The Feathered Serpent and was inseparable from the planet Venus. He was also the patron god of the Aztec priesthood, of learning and knowledge. Today Quetzalcoatl is arguably the best known deity. However, Quetzalcoatl was one of several important gods in the Aztec pantheon along with the gods Tlaloc, Tezcatlipoca and Huitzilopochtli.

David Bixby makes a psychedelic folk record that is rare and dear.