Oliver Sacks’ Final Interview: A First Look

in Biology, Life, Neuroscience | August 22nd, 2016

It’s been near­ly a year since the poet lau­re­ate of med­i­cine, author and neu­rol­o­gist Oliv­er Sacks, took his final bow as a sen­tient being on this beau­ti­ful plan­et, suc­cumb­ing, at 82, to metas­tases of ocu­lar melanoma which spread to his liv­er.

The New York­er marks the occa­sion by pub­lish­ing Sacks’ fel­low neu­rol­o­gist and author Dr. Orrin Devin­sky’s rec­ol­lec­tion of their long­stand­ing friend­ship. Devin­sky paints a vivid pic­ture of an excep­tion­al­ly com­pas­sion­ate man, who felt a kin­ship not only with starfish, jel­ly­fish, and octopi, but also humans in both finan­cial and emo­tion­al need.

The piece becomes even more pow­er­ful in light of Sacks’ final inter­view, above, part of film­mak­er Ric Burns’ upcom­ing doc­u­men­tary, Oliv­er Sacks: His Own Life.

Sacks pep­pers his remarks with aston­ish­ing bio­log­i­cal tid­bits, a com­pul­sion that delight­ed his friend Devin­sky on their fre­quent ear­ly morn­ing bike rides along New York City’s west side.

(Palatal myoclonus—or rhyth­mic pulsing—in the palate, eardrum and strap mus­cles are ves­ti­gial evi­dence that humans once had gills!)

(The dandelion’s name evolved from dent de lion, French for lion’s tooth, a struc­ture the spikes on its ser­rat­ed leaves could be said to resem­ble. Also, cer­tain dan­de­lion species repro­duce asex­u­al­ly, and Sacks had no fear about eat­ing an unwashed spec­i­men he plucked from the ques­tion­ably san­i­tary grounds of River­side Park!)

The mus­ings that war­rant the melan­choly piano and strings accom­pa­ny­ing Burns’ excerpt are of a more per­son­al nature. Sacks’ was total­ly immersed in his cho­sen sub­ject. His moth­er was a com­par­a­tive anatomist and sur­geon, and his boy­ish inter­est in the hard sci­ences is what led him to biol­o­gy. A life­time of sci­en­tif­ic obser­va­tion and clin­i­cal inter­ac­tion only add to the poet­ry of his thoughts on death:

My gen­er­a­tion is on the way out, and each death I have felt as an abrup­tion, a tear­ing away of part of myself. There will be nobody like us when we are gone, but then there is nobody like any­body ever. When peo­ple die they can­not be replaced. They leave holes that can­not be filled. It is the fate, the genet­ic and neur­al fate of every human being to be a unique indi­vid­ual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death. Even so, I am shocked and sad­dened at the sen­tence of death, and I can­not pre­tend I am with­out fear. But my pre­dom­i­nant feel­ing is one of grat­i­tude. I have loved and been loved. I have been giv­en much and I have giv­en some­thing in return. I have read and trav­eled and thought and writ­ten. I have had an inter­course with the world, the spe­cial inter­course of writ­ers and read­ers. Above all, I have been a sen­tient being, a think­ing ani­mal on this beau­ti­ful plan­et, and this in itself has been an enor­mous priv­i­lege and adven­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Oliv­er Sacks Explains the Biol­o­gy of Hal­lu­ci­na­tions: “We See with the Eyes, But with the Brain as Well”

A Fas­ci­nat­ing Case Study by Oliv­er Sacks Inspires a Short Ani­mat­ed Film, The Lost Mariner

Oliv­er Sacks’ Last Tweet Shows Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Mov­ing­ly Flash­mobbed in Spain

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her lat­est com­ic con­trasts the birth of her sec­ond child with the uncen­sored gore of Game of Thrones. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Free: Hear Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Read by Hans Conried (1958)

in Audio Books, Literature | August 21st, 2016

treasure island

Briefly not­ed: Over on Spo­ti­fy you can stream a clas­sic audio book of Robert Louis Steven­son’s Trea­sure Island (iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats – Read Online). Record­ed in 1958 by char­ac­ter actor Hans Con­ried, this clas­sic pirate’s tale runs 5 hours, 20 minutes–which is short­er than oth­er record­ings avail­able on the mar­ket, sug­gest­ing that it’s abridged. But nonethe­less it’s worth the lis­ten. Con­ried’s read­ing (which can also be pur­chased online) will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free. Steven­son’s text itself appears in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks. If you need Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, down­load it here.

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­­sion­al­­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

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Read the Original 32-Page Program for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927)

in Film, Sci Fi | August 19th, 2016

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One of the very first fea­ture-length sci-fi films ever made, Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis took a dar­ing visu­al approach for its time, incor­po­rat­ing Bauhaus and Futur­ist influ­ences in thrilling­ly designed sets and cos­tumes. Lang’s visu­al lan­guage res­onat­ed strong­ly in lat­er decades. The film’s rather stun­ning alchem­i­cal-elec­tric trans­fer­ence of a woman’s phys­i­cal traits onto the body of a destruc­tive android—the so-called Maschi­nen­men­sch—for exam­ple, began a very long trend of female robots in film and tele­vi­sion, most of them as dan­ger­ous and inscrutable as Lang’s. And yet, for all its many imi­ta­tors, Metrop­o­lis con­tin­ues to deliv­er sur­pris­es. Here, we bring you a new find: a 32-page pro­gram dis­trib­uted at the film’s 1927 pre­mier in Lon­don and recent­ly re-dis­cov­ered.

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In addi­tion to under­writ­ing almost one hun­dred years of sci­ence fic­tion film and tele­vi­sion tropes, Metrop­o­lis has had a very long life in oth­er ways: Inspir­ing an all-star sound­track pro­duced by Gior­gio Moroder in 1984,with Fred­die Mer­cury, Lover­boy, and Adam Ant, and a Kraftwerk album. In 2001, a recon­struct­ed ver­sion received a screen­ing at the Berlin Film Fes­ti­val, and UNESCO’s Mem­o­ry of the World Reg­is­ter added it to their ros­ter. 2002 saw the release of an excep­tion­al Metrop­o­lis-inspired ani­me with the same title. And in 2010 an almost ful­ly restored print of the long-incom­plete film—recut from footage found in Argenti­na in 2008—appeared, adding a lit­tle more sophis­ti­ca­tion and coher­ence to the sim­plis­tic sto­ry line.

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Even at the film’s ini­tial recep­tion, with­out any miss­ing footage, crit­ics did not warm to its sto­ry. For all its intense visu­al futur­ism, it has always seemed like a very quaint, naïve tale, struck through with earnest reli­gios­i­ty and inex­plic­a­ble archaisms. Con­tem­po­rary review­ers found its nar­ra­tive of gen­er­a­tional and class con­flict uncon­vinc­ing. H.G. Wells—“something of an author­i­ty on sci­ence fiction”—pronounced it “the sil­li­est film” full of “every pos­si­ble fool­ish­ness, cliché, plat­i­tude, and mud­dle­ment about mechan­i­cal progress and progress in gen­er­al served up with a sauce of sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty that is all its own.” Few were kinder when it came to the sto­ry, and despite its overt reli­gious themes, many saw it as Com­mu­nist pro­pa­gan­da.

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Viewed after sub­se­quent events in 20th cen­tu­ry Ger­many, many of the film’s scenes appear “dis­turbing­ly pre­scient,” writes the Unaf­fil­i­at­ed Crit­ic, such as the vision of a huge indus­tri­al machine as Moloch, in which “bald, under­fed humans are led in chains to a fur­nace.” Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou—who wrote the nov­el, then screenplay—were of course com­ment­ing on indus­tri­al­iza­tion, labor con­di­tions, and pover­ty in Weimar Ger­many. Metrop­o­lis’s “clear mes­sage of clas­sism,” as io9 writes, comes through most clear­ly in its arrest­ing imagery, like that hor­ri­fy­ing, mon­strous fur­nace and the “loom­ing sym­bol of wealth in the Tow­er of Babel.”

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The visu­al effects and spec­tac­u­lar set pieces have worked their mag­ic on almost every­one (Wells exclud­ed) who has seen Metrop­o­lis. And they remain, for all its silli­ness, the pri­ma­ry rea­son for the movie’s cul­tur­al preva­lence. Wired calls it “prob­a­bly the most influ­en­tial sci-fi movie in his­to­ry,” remark­ing that “a sin­gle movie poster from the orig­i­nal release sold for $690,000 sev­en years ago, and is expect­ed to fetch even more at an auc­tion lat­er this year.”

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We now have anoth­er arti­fact from the movie’s pre­miere, this 32-page pro­gram, appro­pri­ate­ly called “Metrop­o­lis” Mag­a­zine, that offers a rich feast for audi­ences, and text at times more inter­est­ing than the film’s script. (You can view the pro­gram in full here.) One imag­ines had they pos­sessed back­lit smart phones, those ear­ly movie­go­ers might have found them­selves strug­gling not to browse their pro­grams while the film screened. But, of course, Metrop­o­lis’s visu­al excess­es would hold their atten­tion as they still do ours. Its scenes of a futur­is­tic city have always enthralled view­ers, film­mak­ers, and (most) crit­ics, such that Roger Ebert could write of “vast futur­is­tic cities” as a sta­ple of some of the best sci­ence fic­tion in his review of the 21st-cen­tu­ry ani­mat­ed Metrop­o­lis—“visions… goofy and yet at the same time exhil­a­rat­ing.”

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The pro­gram real­ly is an aston­ish­ing doc­u­ment, a trea­sure for fans of the film and for schol­ars. Full of pro­duc­tion stills, behind-the-scenes arti­cles and pho­tos, tech­ni­cal minu­ti­ae, short columns by the actors, a bio of Thea von Har­bau, the “authoress,” excerpts from her nov­el and screen­play placed side-by-side, and a short arti­cle by her. There’s a page called “Fig­ures that Speak” that tal­lies the pro­duc­tion costs and cast and crew num­bers (includ­ing very crude draw­ings and num­bers of “Negroes” and “Chi­nese”). Lang him­self weighs in, lacon­i­cal­ly, with a breezy intro­duc­tion fol­lowed by a clas­sic silent-era line: “if I can­not suc­ceed in find­ing expres­sion on the pic­ture, I cer­tain­ly can­not find it in speech.” Film his­to­ry agrees, Lang found his expres­sion “on the pic­ture.”

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“Only three sur­viv­ing copies of this pro­gram are known to exist,” writes Wired, and one of them, from which these pages come, has gone on sale at the Peter Har­ring­ton rare book shop for 2,750 pounds ($4,244)—which seems rather low, giv­en what an orig­i­nal Metrop­o­lis poster went for. But mar­kets are fick­le, and what­ev­er its cur­rent or future price, ”Metrop­o­lis” Mag­a­zine is invalu­able to cineast­es. See all 32 pages of the pro­gram at Peter Harrington’s web­site.

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via Wired

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Metrop­o­lis: Watch a Restored Ver­sion of Fritz Lang’s Mas­ter­piece (1927)

Fritz Lang Tells the Riv­et­ing Sto­ry of the Day He Met Joseph Goebbels and Then High-Tailed It Out of Ger­many

Metrop­o­lis II: Dis­cov­er the Amaz­ing, Fritz Lang-Inspired Kinet­ic Sculp­ture by Chris Bur­den

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Hear Arthur C. Clarke Read 2001: A Space Odyssey: A Vintage 1976 Vinyl Recording

in Audio Books, Sci Fi | August 19th, 2016

When we hear the open­ing of Also Sprach Zarathus­tra, we instinc­tive­ly steel our­selves for enor­mous leaps through space and time. We have since 1968, when Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 2001: A Space Odyssey made Richard Strauss’ 1896 piece its theme music. (Kubrick, as we post­ed in 2014, did com­mis­sion an orig­i­nal score, only to reject it as “com­plete­ly inad­e­quate for the film.”) If you saw and loved it dur­ing its orig­i­nal the­atri­cal run, long before the advent of home video, you had only a lim­it­ed set of ways to re-live it at will. The obvi­ous choice includ­ed buy­ing a copy of the sound­track or Arthur C. Clarke’s epony­mous nov­el (or, for the kids, to go eat at Howard John­son’s), but in 1976, you could also buy a record that gave you a bit of both at once.

On this now out-of-print record, Clarke reads the final chap­ters of 2001 with the accom­pa­ni­ment of that most rec­og­niz­able piece from the film score, all pack­aged in a sleeve fea­tur­ing an image of Keir Dul­lea as Mis­sion Com­man­der David Bow­man on one of the film’s immac­u­late­ly craft­ed space-sta­tion sets. You can hear side one at the top, and side two below.

If all this strikes you as an uncon­scionable inter­min­gling of book and movie, remem­ber that Kubrick­’s 2001 does­n’t straight­for­ward­ly adapt Clarke’s 2001. Both of those inde­pen­dent but com­ple­men­tary works grew from the seed of “The Sen­tinel,” Clarke’s 1948 short sto­ry about a daz­zling and mys­ti­fy­ing arti­fact left behind by an ancient alien civ­i­liza­tion. Kubrick had orig­i­nal­ly tapped Clarke to write a whole new screen­play, but that col­lab­o­ra­tion ulti­mate­ly turned into two par­al­lel projects, with the nov­el­ist writ­ing to his own sen­si­bil­i­ty and the film­mak­er cer­tain­ly direct­ing to his. Some Clarke fans pre­fer the nov­el and some Kubrick fans pre­fer the film, but those who admire the virtues of both 2001s will appre­ci­ate the exis­tence of this record, in its own way an impres­sive arti­fact of a dis­tant era.

You can’t buy this album new these days, but used copies can still be pur­chased online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Clas­si­cal Music in Stan­ley Kubrick’s Films: Lis­ten to a Free, 4 Hour Playlist

James Cameron Revis­its the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

1966 Film Explores the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (and Our High-Tech Future)

Watch Steven Soderbergh’s Re-Edit­ed Ver­sion of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey Free Online

Howard Johnson’s Presents a Children’s Menu Fea­tur­ing Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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What Ancient Latin Sounded Like, And How We Know It

in History, Language Lessons | August 19th, 2016

Latin is a lan­guage

As dead as dead can be; 

It killed the Romans long ago, 

And now it’s killing me.

That famed dit­ty isn’t like­ly to res­onate with many mod­ern school chil­dren, but inter­est in ancient Rome remains fair­ly robust. 

We’ve come to accept that those state­ly ruins were once cov­ered in graf­fi­ti.

We can recre­ate their meals from hors d’oevures (Boiled Eggs with Pine Nut Sauce) to dessert (Pear Pati­na).

Ther­mae Romae, a pop­u­lar Japan­ese man­ga-cum-fea­ture-film, took us inside Emper­or Hadri­an’s bath­house.

But what did the Romans sound like?

Kirk Dou­glas’ Spar­ta­cus? Or Lau­rence Olivier’s Cras­sus?

The recent series Rome upheld the tra­di­tion of British accents.

Ani­ma­tor Josh Rud­der of NativLang did a fair amount of dig­ging in ser­vice of find­ing out What Latin Sound­ed Like, above.

(And he seems to have done so with­out the help of Derek Jarman’s NSFW Sebas­tiane, the only fea­ture film to be filmed entire­ly in ser­mo vul­garis or vul­gar Latin.)

Instead, he draws from ancient rhetori­cian Quin­til­ian and Virgil’s’ poet­ic meter. Scroll back­ward through the romance lan­guages, and you’ll see Ger­man­ic tribes trad­ing with and fight­ing ancient Roman troops.

The result is not so much a recon­struc­tive pro­nun­ci­a­tion guide as a lin­guis­tic detec­tive sto­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,600-Year-Old Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­script of the Aeneid Dig­i­tized & Put Online by The Vat­i­can

Learn Latin, Old Eng­lish, San­skrit, Clas­si­cal Greek & Oth­er Ancient Lan­guages in 10 Lessons

Rome Reborn: Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 C.E.

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her lat­est com­ic con­trasts the birth of her sec­ond child with the uncen­sored gore of Game of Thrones. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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The Neuroscience & Psychology of Procrastination, and How to Overcome It

in Neuroscience, Productivity, Psychology | August 18th, 2016

Pro­cras­ti­na­tion is a skill, an art, a slight-of-hand tech­nique. I’m pro­cras­ti­nat­ing right now, but you’d nev­er know it. How many tabs do I have open in my mul­ti­ple brows­er win­dows? Pick a num­ber, any num­ber. How many tasks have I put off today? How many dreams have I deferred? I’ll nev­er tell. The unskilled pro­cras­ti­na­tors stick out, they’re easy to spot. They talk a lot about what they’re not doing. They run around in cir­cles of bewil­der­ment like the trou­bled hero of Dr. Seuss’s Hunch­es in Bunch­es. The skilled prac­ti­tion­er makes it look easy.

But no mat­ter how much Face­book time you get in before lunch and still man­age to ace those per­for­mance reviews, you’re real­ly only cheat­ing your­self, am I right? You want­ed to fin­ish that novel/symphony/improv class/physics the­o­rem. But some­thing stopped you. Some­thing in your brain per­haps. That’s where these things usu­al­ly hap­pen. When Stu­art Lang­field asked a neu­ro­sci­en­tist about the neu­ro­science of pro­cras­ti­na­tion, he got the fol­low­ing answer: “Peo­ple think that you can turn on an MRI and see where something’s hap­pen­ing in the brain, but the truth is that’s not so. This stuff is vast­ly more com­pli­cat­ed, so we have the­o­ries.”

There are the­o­ries aplen­ty that tell us, says Lang­field, “what’s prob­a­bly hap­pen­ing” in the brain. Lang­field explains his own: the prim­i­tive, plea­sure-seek­ing, pain-avoid­ing lim­bic sys­tem acts too quick­ly for our more delib­er­a­tive, ratio­nal pre­frontal cor­tex to catch up, ren­der­ing us stu­pe­fied by dis­trac­tions. Piers Steel, Dis­tin­guished Research Chair at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­gary and a pro­cras­ti­na­tion expert, shares this view. You can see him explain it in the short video below. The evo­lu­tion­ary “design flaw,” says Lang­field, might make the sit­u­a­tion seem hope­less, were it not for “neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty,” a fan­cy buzz­word that means we have the abil­i­ty to change our brains.

Langfield’s pur­pose in his short video is not only to under­stand the biol­o­gy of pro­cras­ti­na­tion, but to over­come it. He asks psy­chol­o­gist Tim Pychyl, whose answers we see and hear as an incom­pre­hen­si­ble jum­ble of ideas. But then Pychyl reduces the com­pli­cat­ed the­o­ries to a sim­ple solu­tion. You guessed it, mind­ful­ness meditation—to “down­reg­u­late the lim­bic sys­tem.” Real­ly, that’s it? Just med­i­tate? It is a proven way to reduce anx­i­ety and improve con­cen­tra­tion.

But Pychyl and his research team at Car­leton Uni­ver­si­ty have a few more very prac­ti­cal sug­ges­tions, based on exper­i­men­tal data gath­ered by Steel and oth­ers. The Wall Street Jour­nal offers this con­densed list of tips:

Break a long-term project down into spe­cif­ic sub-goals. State the exact start time and how long (not just “tomor­row”) you plan to work on the task.

Just get start­ed. It isn’t nec­es­sary to write a long list of tasks, or each inter­me­di­ate step.

Remind your­self that fin­ish­ing the task now helps you in the future. Putting off the task won’t make it more enjoy­able.

Imple­ment “micro­costs,” or mini-delays, that require you to make a small effort to pro­cras­ti­nate, such as hav­ing to log on to a sep­a­rate com­put­er account for games.

Reward your­self not only for com­plet­ing the entire project but also the sub-goals.

A Stock­holm Uni­ver­si­ty study test­ed these strate­gies, assign­ing a group of 150 self-report­ed “high pro­cras­ti­na­tors” sev­er­al of the self-help instruc­tions over 10 weeks, and employ­ing a reward sys­tem and vary­ing lev­els of guid­ance. “The results,” WSJ reports, “showed that after inter­ven­tion with both guid­ed and unguid­ed self-help, peo­ple improved their pro­cras­ti­na­tion, though the guid­ed ther­a­py seemed to show greater ben­e­fit.”

Oth­er times, adding self-help tasks to get us to the tasks we’re putting off doesn’t work so well. We can all take com­fort in the fact that pro­cras­ti­na­tion has a long his­to­ry, dat­ing back to ancient Egypt, Rome, and 18th cen­tu­ry Eng­land. The wis­dom of the ages could not defeat it, or as Samuel John­son wrote, “even they who most steadi­ly with­stand it find it, if not the most vio­lent, the most per­ti­na­cious of their pas­sions, always renew­ing its attacks, and, though often van­quished, nev­er destroyed.”

But there are peo­ple who pro­cras­ti­nate, beset by its per­ti­nac­i­ty, and then there are chron­ic pro­cras­ti­na­tors. “If you’re an occa­sion­al pro­cras­ti­na­tor, says Pychyl, “quit think­ing about your feel­ings and get to the next task.” Suck it up, in oth­er words, and walk it off—maybe after a short course of self-help. For all the con­flict­ing neu­ro­sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ry, “there is a qui­et sci­ence behind pro­cras­ti­na­tion,” writes Big Think, and “accord­ing to recent stud­ies, pro­cras­ti­na­tion is a learned habit.” Most research agrees it’s one we can unlearn through med­i­ta­tion and/or patient retrain­ing of our­selves.

How­ev­er if you’re of the chron­ic sub­set, say Pychyl, “you might need ther­a­py to bet­ter under­stand your emo­tions and how you’re cop­ing with them through avoid­ance.” Psy­chol­o­gist Joseph Fer­rari at DePaul Uni­ver­si­ty agrees. Cit­ing a fig­ure of “20 per­cent of U.S. men and women” who “make pro­cras­ti­na­tion their way of life,” he adds, “it is the per­son who does that habit­u­al­ly, always with plau­si­ble ‘excus­es’ that has issues to address.” Only you can deter­mine whether your trou­ble relates to bad habits or deep­er psy­cho­log­i­cal issues.

What­ev­er the caus­es, what might moti­vate us to med­i­tate or seek ther­a­py are the effects. Chron­ic pro­cras­ti­na­tion is “not a time man­age­ment issue,” says Fer­rari, “it is a mal­adap­tive lifestyle.” Habit­u­al pro­cras­ti­na­tors, the WSJ writes, “have high­er rates of depres­sion and anx­i­ety and poor­er well-being.” We may think, writes Eric Jaffe at the Asso­ci­a­tion for Psy­cho­log­i­cal Science’s jour­nal, of pro­cras­ti­na­tion as “an innocu­ous habit at worst, and maybe even a help­ful one at best,” a strat­e­gy Stan­ford phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor John Per­ry argued for in The Art of Pro­cras­ti­na­tion. Instead, Jaffe says, in a sober­ing sum­ma­ry of Pychyl’s research, “pro­cras­ti­na­tion is real­ly a self-inflict­ed wound that grad­u­al­ly chips away at the most valu­able resource in the world: time.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy & Neu­ro­science Cours­es

Dai­ly Med­i­ta­tion Boosts & Revi­tal­izes the Brain and Reduces Stress, Har­vard Study Finds

Miran­da July Teach­es You How to Avoid Pro­cras­ti­na­tion

The Art of Struc­tured Pro­cras­ti­na­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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What Do Movies Say When They Say Nothing at All: A Video Essay

in Film | August 18th, 2016

Some­times less is more. Some­times silence says more than words or sound itself. John Cage knew it. Dit­to our finest film­mak­ers. That’s the take­away from When Words Fail in Movies–a new video essay that stitch­es togeth­er 15 scenes from icon­ic films by Hitch­cock, Kubrick, Felli­ni and oth­ers. Cre­at­ed by David Verdeure at Film­scalpel, the clip lets us med­i­tate on “the mean­ing­ful use of silence” in the sound-film era. Fan­dor has pulled togeth­er a list of scenes used in the mon­tage. Find them below:

The Matrix, dir. Lana Wachows­ki and Lil­ly Wachows­ki. Sil­ver Pic­tures, USA, 1999. 136 mins.
The God­fa­ther: Part III, dir. Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la. Zoetrope Stu­dios, USA, 1990. 162 mins.
Mon Oncle, dir. Jacques Tati. Spec­ta films et al., France, 1958. 117 mins.
2001: A Space Odyssey, dir. Stan­ley Kubrick. Stan­ley Kubrick Pro­duc­tions, UK / USA, 1968. 149 mins.
Lost in Trans­la­tion, dir. Sofia Cop­po­la. Amer­i­can Zoetrope et al., USA, 2003. 101 mins.
On the Water­front, dir., Elia Kazan. Hori­zon Pic­tures et al., USA, 1954. 108 mins.
The Grad­u­ate, dir. Mike Nichols. Lawrence Tur­man, USA, 1967. 106 mins.
The Lone­li­ness of the Long Dis­tance Run­ner, dir. Tony Richard­son. Wood­fall Film Pro­duc­tions, UK, 1962. 104 mins.
North by North­west, dir. Alfred Hitch­cock. Metro-Gold­wyn-May­er, USA, 1959. 136 mins.
In the Mood for Love, dir. Wong Kar-Wai. Block 2 Pic­tures et al., Hong Kong / Chi­na, 2000. 158 mins.
The Mar­t­ian, dir. Rid­ley Scott. Scott Free Pro­duc­tions et al., USA, 2015. 144 mins.
The Dis­creet Charm of the Bour­geoisie, dir. Luis Buñuel. Green­wich Film Pro­duc­tions, France, 1972. 102 mins.
The Con­ver­sa­tion, dir. Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la. Amer­i­can Zoetrope et al., USA, 1974. 113 mins.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, dir. David Lynch. Twin Peaks Pro­duc­tions et al., USA, 1992. 135 mins.
La Dolce Vita, dir. Fed­eri­co Felli­ni. Ria­ma Film et al., Italy, 1960. 180 mins.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cage Per­forms His Avant-Garde Piano Piece 4’33” … in 1’22” (Har­vard Square, 1973)

Thomas Edison’s Silent Film of the “Fartiste” Who Delight­ed Crowds at Le Moulin Rouge (1900)

101 Free Silent Films: The Great Clas­sics

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When Steve Buscemi Was a Firefighter — and Took It Up Again After 9/11

in Film, History | August 18th, 2016

Steve Buscemi’s roles in movies like In the Soup, The Big Lebows­ki, and Ghost World have asso­ci­at­ed him for life with a cer­tain kind of char­ac­ter: awk­ward, inef­fec­tu­al, and even slight­ly creepy, but nev­er­the­less strange­ly endear­ing. But types and the actors who play them can, and usu­al­ly do, diverge, and that goes espe­cial­ly for Busce­mi. He may have made his name por­tray­ing a host of los­er-ish men, but his skill at bring­ing them and oth­er char­ac­ters to dis­tinc­tive life have kept him a high­ly suc­cess­ful per­former for decades now. And what did he do before that? Why, he fought fires — and he did­n’t hes­i­tate to do it again after becom­ing famous.

steve-buscemi-fdny

Uni­lad’s Alex Watt quotes a post on the Broth­er­hood of Fire Face­book page which reveals how the Board­walk Empire star entered his oth­er pro­fes­sion: “In 1976 Steve Busce­mi took the FDNY civ­il ser­vice test when he was just 18 years old,” became a fire­fight­er a few years lat­er, and for four years “served on one of FDNY’s busiest, Engine Co. 55.” He returned to that very same engine after Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, “and for sev­er­al days fol­low­ing Broth­er Steve worked 12-hour shifts along­side oth­er fire­fight­ers dig­ging and sift­ing through the rub­ble from the World Trade Cen­ter look­ing for sur­vivors.”

Though he avoid­ed pub­li­ciz­ing his brief return to fire­fight­ing at the time, Busce­mi has spo­ken open­ly about it since, as he does in the CBS Sun­day Morn­ing clip at the top of the post. Many who hear the sto­ry of a high-pro­file actor putting his life on hold and rush­ing right into a dis­as­ter site might rush right to the urban leg­end site Snopes, which does­n’t just ver­i­fy it, but also col­lects some of Buscemi’s own words about his fire­fight­ing days. He start­ed, he recalls, when he “was liv­ing in Man­hat­tan, work­ing as a fur­ni­ture mover dur­ing the day, doing stand-up com­e­dy at night and look­ing for a change. I liked the job — the guys I worked with and the nature of the work. I think I would have been hap­py doing it if I had­n’t had a greater pas­sion for act­ing.”

Buscemi’s fire­fight­ing expe­ri­ence and abil­i­ty to appear onscreen come togeth­er in A Good Job: Sto­ries of the FDNY, the doc­u­men­tary just above. Co-pro­duced by Busce­mi him­self, the film goes “behind the scenes” of the New York City Fire Depart­ment, show­ing just what it takes to put out the blazes of Amer­i­ca’s most demand­ing city. (You can see Busce­mi talk­ing about his expe­ri­ence dur­ing 9/11 around the 43 minute mark.) The “good job” of the title, one retired fire­fight­er explains, means “a real­ly tough fire.” And no mat­ter what kind of “job,” Busce­mi says, “they’re all fright­en­ing. Any time you go into a burn­ing build­ing, there’s the poten­tial for dis­as­ter. I nev­er had any real close calls, though there’s no such thing as a rou­tine fire.” No doubt he keeps him­self men­tal­ly pre­pared for anoth­er — just in case.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steve Buscemi’s Top 10 Film Picks (from The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion)

Quentin Taran­ti­no & Steve Busce­mi Rehearse Scenes for Reser­voir Dogs in 1991 (NSFW)

William S. Bur­roughs’ Home Movies, Fea­tur­ing Pat­ti Smith, Allen Gins­berg, Steve Busce­mi & Cats

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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