Magician Marco Tempest Dazzles a TED Audience with “The Electric Rise and Fall of Nikola Tesla”

in Technology, Video - Science | June 22nd, 2012

Mar­ry­ing form and con­tent, Swiss magi­cian Mar­co Tem­pest uses the rel­a­tive­ly new tech­nol­o­gy of pro­jec­tion map­ping to illu­mi­nate sev­er­al vignettes of Niko­la Tes­la, the Ser­bian inven­tor of alter­nat­ing cur­rent, the hydro­elec­tric dam, and hun­dreds of oth­er nec­es­sary, fan­tas­tic, and some­times trag­i­cal­ly unre­al­ized tech­nolo­gies. Over the course of the 20th cen­tu­ry, Tes­la was over­shad­owed by his one­time employ­er, Thomas Edi­son, who is giv­en cred­it for Tesla’s most famous ideas. Edi­son has emerged from his­to­ry as less a sci­en­tist than a ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist, arch-mar­keter, and pop­u­lar­iz­er of oth­er, smarter people’s ideas (those of film­mak­ing team the Lumiere Broth­ers, for exam­ple), while Tesla’s rep­u­ta­tion as a mys­tic genius has only grown since his death in rel­a­tive obscu­ri­ty and absolute pover­ty in 1943.

Tes­la has occu­pied a promi­nent place in pop­u­lar cul­ture for over two decades now: There was David Bowie’s per­for­mance as the inven­tor in 2006’s The Pres­tige, a 2001 biog­ra­phy sim­ply enti­tled Wiz­ard, and, of course, the suc­cess of very earnest 90s hair met­al band Tes­la. Fore­cast­ing the Tes­la revival, Orches­tral Maneu­vers in the Dark record­ed their song “Tes­la Girls” in 1984. A new Tes­la lega­cy to watch is the pio­neer­ing high-end elec­tric car com­pa­ny Tes­la Motors, found­ed by Pay­Pal bil­lion­aire Elon Musk. Whether or not Tes­la Motors’ expen­sive new ful­ly-elec­tric sedan lives up to its promise, Niko­la Tesla’s name lives as an exem­plar of ambi­tion, futur­ism, per­sis­tence, sci­en­tif­ic won­der, and as Mar­co Tem­pest demon­strates above, the impor­tance of enthu­si­as­tic show­man­ship.

J. David Jones is cur­rent­ly a doc­tor­al stu­dent in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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John Maynard Keynes Explains Cure to High Unemployment in His Own Voice (1939)

in Economics, History | June 21st, 2012

When some­one ques­tions the effec­tive­ness of Key­ne­sian eco­nom­ics, the obvi­ous reply is: Remem­ber World War II?

The British econ­o­mist John May­nard Keynes argued that there is a role for gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion when aggre­gate demand for goods and ser­vices drops, as it did dur­ing the Great Depres­sion. With­out increased pub­lic spend­ing to make up for decreased pri­vate spend­ing, he said, an econ­o­my will slide into a vicious cir­cle of low demand and low out­put, ensur­ing a pro­longed peri­od of high unem­ploy­ment. Gov­ern­ment thrift at such times will only deep­en the prob­lem. “The boom, not the slump,” said Keynes, “is the right time for aus­ter­i­ty.”

In 1939 dark clouds of war were gath­er­ing over Europe, but Keynes saw a sil­ver lin­ing: an oppor­tu­ni­ty to prove his the­o­ry cor­rect. He believed that the mas­sive gov­ern­ment-fund­ed war mobi­liza­tion would final­ly give suf­fi­cient stim­u­lus to end the Great Depres­sion. On May 23 of that year Keynes gave his famous BBC radio address, “Will Re-arma­ment Cure Unem­ploy­ment?” He said, in part:

It is not an exag­ger­a­tion to say that the end of abnor­mal unem­ploy­ment is in sight. And it isn’t only the unem­ployed who will feel the dif­fer­ence. A great num­ber besides will be tak­ing home bet­ter mon­ey each week. And with the demand for effi­cient labor out­run­ning the sup­ply, how much more com­fort­able and secure every­one will feel in his job. The Grand Exper­i­ment has begun. If it works–if expen­di­ture on arma­ments real­ly does cure unemployment–I pre­dict that we shall nev­er go back all the way to the old state of affairs. Good may come out of evil. We may learn a trick or two, which will come in use­ful when the day of peace comes.

When the day of peace did come, the Great Depres­sion was over and Eng­land and Amer­i­ca were embarked on a long peri­od of ris­ing eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty. In these times of reces­sion and gov­ern­ment aus­ter­i­ty, it may be good to remem­ber some­thing else Keynes said in his radio address: “If we can cure unem­ploy­ment for the wast­ed pur­pos­es of arma­ments, we can cure it for the pro­duc­tive pur­pos­es of peace.”

You can find Keynes’ clas­sic work, The Gen­er­al The­o­ry of Employ­ment, Inter­est and Mon­ey, in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Hayek vs. Keynes Rap

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Hollywood, Epic Documentary Chronicles the Early History of Cinema

in Film | June 21st, 2012

Most peo­ple who saw Mar­tin Scorsese’s Hugo will recall its brief drama­ti­za­tion of a screen­ing of the Lumiere Broth­ers’ 1896 silent film  L’Ar­rivée d’un Train en Gare de la Cio­tat (pop­u­lar­ly known as Arrival of a Train at the Sta­tion). This short film doc­u­ments, quite sim­ply, a train arriv­ing at a sta­tion, but it sup­pos­ed­ly both thrilled and ter­ri­fied its first audi­ences, so much that they scram­bled from their seats as the loco­mo­tive bar­reled toward the cam­era, as though it might trans­gress the screen and plow into the the­ater. It’s hard to imag­ine a film hav­ing that much pow­er to phys­i­cal­ly shock an audi­ence out of its seats today, even with the cur­rent glut of 3‑D spec­ta­cles on IMAX screens, the beau­ti­ful Hugo includ­ed.

The medi­um may have lost its nov­el­ty, but its his­to­ry con­tin­ues to fas­ci­nate. Scors­ese’s love-let­ter to silent film won sev­er­al Acad­e­my Awards this year in tech­ni­cal cat­e­gories, and the cov­et­ed best pic­ture Oscar went to The Artist, the first silent film to win that award since 1927’s Wings, star­ring Clara Bow. (Wings actu­al­ly received the Best Pic­ture equivalent—Best Production—in 1929). 1927 is also the year the “talkies” came to town; Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer put silent film effec­tive­ly out of busi­ness. Hol­ly­wood: A Cel­e­bra­tion of the Amer­i­can Silent Film, a 13-part doc­u­men­tary series released in 1980, begins its first episode, “The Pio­neers” (above), with sev­er­al aged silent film­mak­ers’ reac­tions to Jol­son’s film, reac­tions which are almost uni­form­ly neg­a­tive, as one might expect giv­en their pro­fes­sion­al com­mit­ment to a medi­um that trans­formed overnight and left most of them behind.

How­ev­er, the stars and direc­tors inter­viewed in the film don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly seem bit­ter over the loss of silent film. Instead, they dis­play a wist­ful rev­er­ence for the “inter­na­tion­al lan­guage” that film was before it learned to speak—in dozens of dif­fer­ent lan­guages. Nar­rat­ed by the inim­itable James Mason, Hol­ly­wood revis­its the grandeur of the silent film era and dis­abus­es view­ers of the stereo­typ­i­cal idea that all silent films were “jerky and flick­er­ing and a lit­tle absurd, mov­ing at the wrong speed with a tin­kling piano.” Instead, each episode of the doc­u­men­tary walks us through a series of incred­i­bly dra­mat­ic movies with elab­o­rate (often out­landish) sets and cos­tum­ing, and actors skilled in the “high art of pan­tomime.” It’s a riv­et­ing jour­ney, and an era well worth revis­it­ing what­ev­er one thought of this year’s Oscars.

The full doc­u­men­tary series is avail­able here. And don’t miss our col­lec­tion of Silent films avail­able online … for free.

H/T @brainpicker

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The Complete History of the World (and Human Creativity) in 100 Objects

in History, Podcasts | June 21st, 2012

While we’re catch­ing up with his­tor­i­cal pod­casts, note that BBC Radio 4’s The His­to­ry of the World in 100 Objects (iTunes – RSS Feed – Web Site) has wrapped up and cov­ered all 100 objects. And not, mind you, just any old objects: these objects come straight from the col­lec­tion of the British Muse­um, and thus almost cer­tain­ly reveal the sto­ry of mankind more effec­tive­ly than most. For that has con­sti­tut­ed the pro­gram’s project since its incep­tion: to tell, for just under fif­teen min­utes at a stretch, one chap­ter of human his­to­ry as the trained eye can read it in an object like an ear­ly writ­ing tablet, a Chi­nese bronze bell, or an Egypt­ian clay mod­el of cat­tle. Don’t let the seem­ing plain­ness of these arti­facts fool you; the show approach­es them with all the most advanced audio pro­duc­tion tech­niques. And after you’ve lis­tened, you’ll real­ize that, looked at from a suit­ably his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive, there’s not a plain object in this bunch.

Since A His­to­ry of the World in 100 Objects has fin­ished its jour­ney to the present day, the new lis­ten­er has no oblig­a­tion to begin in the ancient world and work their way for­ward. You might well pre­fer to begin at the end, as it were, and draw insights from one of our every­day objects like a cred­it card (albeit, in this broad­cast, one that con­forms to Shar­i’a law), or a slight­ly futur­is­tic object now enter­ing our every­day lives like a solar-pow­ered lamp. From there, you can delve deep­er and deep­er into our cul­ture and tech­nol­o­gy’s past: the nifty lamp gives way to the cred­it card which gives way to a David Hock­ney paint­ing, which gives way to the HMS Bea­gle’s chronome­ter to the mechan­i­cal galleon and a Kore­an roof tile until you’re back at the Mum­my of Horned­jitef. If you get back that far and still find your­self long­ing for more from host Neil Mac­Gre­gor, be aware that he’s got a new, 20-part his­tor­i­cal series going called Shake­speare’s Rest­less World. The range of source mate­r­i­al may have nar­rowed, but the depth remains.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Rome in 179 Pod­casts

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps – Peter Adamson’s Pod­cast Still Going Strong

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Bill Murray’s Baseball Hall of Fame Speech (and Hideous Sports Coat)

in Comedy, Film, Random | June 21st, 2012

Charleston, South Car­oli­na is a long way from Coop­er­stown, NY. About 622 miles, to be pre­cise. And it’s in Charleston that Bill Mur­ray, the actor, was induct­ed into the South Atlantic League Hall of Fame on Tues­day. Why bestow such an hon­or on the star of Ghost­busters, Stripes, and var­i­ous Wes Ander­son films? Because, rather qui­et­ly, Mur­ray has owned parts of many minor league base­ball teams, includ­ing, these days, the Charleston River­Dogs, a class A affil­i­ate of the New York Yan­kees. So, with the Yan­kees’ Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Bri­an Cash­man in atten­dance, Mur­ray gave his Hall of Fame Induc­tion Speech, know­ing­ly sport­ing a hideous shirt and jack­et. The open­ing min­utes will speak to any­one who remem­bers, as a kid, enter­ing a base­ball sta­di­um for the first time and see­ing that vast field of green.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fact Check­ing Bill Mur­ray: A Short, Com­ic Film from Sun­dance 2008

Bill Mur­ray Intro­duces Wes Anderson’s Moon­rise King­dom (And Plays FDR In Decem­ber)

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Kurt Vonnegut’s Eight Tips on How to Write a Good Short Story

in Books, Literature, Writing | June 20th, 2012

When it came to giv­ing advice to writ­ers, Kurt Von­negut was nev­er dull. He once tried to warn peo­ple away from using semi­colons by char­ac­ter­iz­ing them as “trans­ves­tite her­maph­ro­dites rep­re­sent­ing absolute­ly noth­ing.” In this brief video, Von­negut offers eight tips on how to write a short sto­ry:

  1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wast­ed.
  2. Give the read­er at least one char­ac­ter he or she can root for.
  3. Every char­ac­ter should want some­thing, even if it is only a glass of water.
  4. Every sen­tence must do one of two things–reveal char­ac­ter or advance the action.
  5. Start as close to the end as pos­si­ble.
  6. Be a sadist. No mat­ter how sweet and inno­cent your lead­ing char­ac­ters, make awful things hap­pen to them–in order that the read­er may see what they are made of.
  7. Write to please just one per­son. If you open a win­dow and make love to the world, so to speak, your sto­ry will get pneu­mo­nia.
  8. Give your read­ers as much infor­ma­tion as pos­si­ble as soon as pos­si­ble. To heck with sus­pense. Read­ers should have such com­plete under­stand­ing of what is going on, where and why, that they could fin­ish the sto­ry them­selves, should cock­roach­es eat the last few pages.

Von­negut put down his advice in the intro­duc­tion to his 1999 col­lec­tion of mag­a­zine sto­ries, Bagom­bo Snuff Box. But for every rule (well, almost every rule) there is an excep­tion. “The great­est Amer­i­can short sto­ry writer of my gen­er­a­tion was Flan­nery O’Con­nor,” writes Von­negut. “She broke prac­ti­cal­ly every one of my rules but the first. Great writ­ers tend to do that.”

via Brain­Pick­ings

Relat­ed con­tent:

Writ­ing Tips by Hen­ry Miller, Elmore Leonard, Mar­garet Atwood, Neil Gaiman & George Orwell

Kurt Von­negut: ‘How to Get a Job Like Mine’ (2002)

Kurt Von­negut Reads from Slaugh­ter­house-Five

A cou­ple sto­ries by Von­negut in our col­lec­tions of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books

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Microsoft Rolls Out Its New Tablet in Fine Apple Style

in Apple, iPad, Technology | June 20th, 2012

This week, Microsoft rolled out its new tablet, sim­ply called Sur­face, which gives you anoth­er way to enjoy our cours­es, movies, ebooks, audio books and the rest. In many ways, Sur­face resem­bles the iPad in its look and feel. And when it came to unveil­ing the tablet, Microsoft­’s execs could­n’t think out­side the box cre­at­ed by Steve Jobs. A video made by Read­WriteWeb makes that rather painful­ly yet amus­ing­ly clear.…

Don’t for­get to fol­low us on Twit­ter, Face­book and now Google+

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Historic Barn Etchings Tell Tale of Hard-Working Children

in History | June 20th, 2012

Since Cana­di­an Con­fed­er­a­tion, it was the pol­i­cy of the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment to pro­vide edu­ca­tion to Abo­rig­i­nal peo­ples through a sys­tem of church-run Res­i­den­tial Schools. The idea was that by sep­a­rat­ing the chil­dren at an ear­ly age from their par­ents’ influ­ence, they might be more eas­i­ly assim­i­lat­ed into white Cana­di­an soci­ety, includ­ing the Chris­t­ian reli­gion. (A very sim­i­lar fate befell Aus­tralian Abo­rig­i­nal chil­dren after 1931.) The Methodist and Pres­by­ter­ian church­es, and the Unit­ed Church of Cana­da, explic­it­ly sup­port­ed the goals of assim­i­la­tion and Chris­tian­iza­tion.

Mount Elgin Indus­tri­al School, oper­at­ing near Lon­don, Ontario between 1851 and 1946, was one such insti­tu­tion. Apart from attend­ing school itself, the native chil­dren had to work day and night at a near­by barn. Recent­ly, schol­ars dis­cov­ered words and draw­ings all over the barn walls left behind by some of the 1,200 chil­dren forced to work there. Described as the “Dead Sea Scrolls” of this dark chap­ter in Cana­di­an his­to­ry, the words tell a mov­ing tale of chil­dren iso­lat­ed from friends and fam­i­lies, work­ing very hard under less than ide­al cir­cum­stances.

On June 20 2012, a mon­u­ment to the sur­vivors of Cana­di­an res­i­den­tial schools will be unveiled on the site of Mount Elgin Res­i­den­tial School.

Here are some his­tor­i­cal pho­tos of Mount Elgin Res­i­den­tial School.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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