Miracle Mushrooms Power the Slums of Mumbai

in Film, Sci Fi | July 27th, 2012

If you want to see rough-and-ready exper­i­ments in res­i­den­tial archi­tec­ture and neigh­bor­hood con­struc­tion, look no fur­ther than the world’s largest slums. Every day, strait­ened con­di­tions and high den­si­ty force the mil­lions upon mil­lions who live in them to impro­vise cre­ative solu­tions to the chal­lenges of urban sur­vival using what­ev­er mate­ri­als and pow­er — both terms broad­ly defined — hap­pen to lay at hand. In his short New Mum­bai, film­mak­er Tobias Rev­ell turns his lens toward India, host to some of the most vast and com­plex slums around, and dis­cov­ers a high­ly uncon­ven­tion­al mate­r­i­al, a sort of organ­ic infra­struc­ture, in use in the knocked-togeth­er neigh­bor­hoods of Dhar­avi: giant mush­rooms.

Actu­al­ly, Rev­ell doesn’t dis­cov­er the mush­rooms; he invents them, telling a sci­ence-fic­tion sto­ry, if not a ter­ri­bly far-fetched one, in the plain­spo­ken, street-lev­el style of a devel­op­ing-world doc­u­men­tary. He even comes up with a semi-plau­si­ble expla­na­tion for how each of these mir­a­cle mush­rooms gen­er­ates enough pow­er to run an entire build­ing: bio­log­i­cal sam­ples leak from Ams­ter­dam into the Mum­bai gang­land, and a few shad­owy types strug­gle to engi­neer them into a new kind of nar­cot­ic. When that doesn’t work, Dharavi’s sci­ence-savvy res­i­dents — refugees from a reli­gious war — get to work on adapt­ing them to a vari­ety of life-improv­ing uses. Rev­ell, no stranger to spec­u­la­tive projects that tap into mod­ern cur­rents of thought, has tak­en the zeitgeist’s notions of a new part­ner­ship between the city and nature, but run them to an intrigu­ing extreme. And you can’t deny how cool those mush­rooms look sprout­ing from the rooftops.

via @cinnamon_carter

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

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Great Cities at Night: Views from the International Space Station

in Astronomy | July 26th, 2012

Dur­ing his time on the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion (ISS), astro­naut Don Pet­tit endeared him­self to me in two ways. First, he invent­ed a handy-dandy “zero‑g cof­fee cup” that lets you drink cof­fee in space with­out using a straw — some­thing we’ll all hope­ful­ly use one day. Next, between 2002 and 2008, he took some strik­ing images of great cities and their lights shin­ing at night. The open­ing min­utes explain how the shots were actu­al­ly tak­en. Then, at the 1:45 mark, the tour begins. Zurich, Milan, Madrid, Athens, Lon­don, Cairo (includ­ing the Pyra­mids), Jerusalem, Mec­ca, Tokyo, Sao Paulo, San Fran­cis­co, Las Vegas (the bright­est spot on earth) — they’re all includ­ed on the tour.

Pet­tit nar­rates the entire video. And, along the way, he takes care to under­score an inter­est­ing point — each cul­ture cre­ates its cities in its own way, using dif­fer­ent­ly geo­graph­ic lay­outs and tech­nolo­gies. Those dif­fer­ences we can see on the ground from one per­spec­tive, and from out­er space from yet anoth­er van­tage point.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains What Hap­pens If You Fall into a Black Hole

The Auro­ra Bore­alis Viewed from Orbit (and What Cre­ates Those North­ern Lights?)

What a Hur­ri­cane Looks Like From Out­er Space

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The Science of the Olympic Flame; Ancient Style Meets Modern Technology

in History, Science, Video - Science | July 26th, 2012

For all the recent scan­dal and the trau­ma of past Games, the Olympics remain a pageant of grandeur and glo­ry, and there is no greater sym­bol of its ideals than the Olympic Flame. The video above, from the Ontario Sci­ence Cen­tre, explains the evolv­ing tech­nol­o­gy that keeps the flame burn­ing from its light­ing to the clos­ing cer­e­monies. It’s a pret­ty cool sto­ry, set to a bom­bas­tic sound­track wor­thy of its sub­ject and car­ried by an ani­mat­ed run­ner who just peeled him­self off of an ancient Athen­ian vase.

Intro­duced in the 1928 Sum­mer Olympics in Ams­ter­dam, the flame revives a sym­bol from antiq­ui­ty, com­mem­o­rat­ing Prometheus’s audac­i­ty and remind­ing war­ring city states to put aside hos­til­i­ties for as long as it burned. In the mod­ern Olympics, between the light­ing and the open­ing cer­e­monies, the flame, in its styl­ized torch, makes a pil­grim­age to the host city via relay, a prac­tice that began with the 1936 games in Berlin. This year’s relay start­ed on May 19th in Land’s End in Corn­wall and ends this Fri­day, the 27th at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny in Lon­don. The torch will have trav­eled through 1,000 places in the UK, cov­ered a total of 8,000 miles (and pass­ing through 8,000 hands), mov­ing over land, air, and water, with­out once hav­ing to be relit.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! We’ll thank you for it.

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Has Science Refuted Religion? Sean Carroll and Michael Shermer vs. Dinesh D’Souza and Ian Hutchinson

in Religion, Science | July 26th, 2012

Just yes­ter­day, I sat across from a fel­low wear­ing a t‑shirt embla­zoned with the image of a gun-wield­ing Jesus blow­ing away Charles Dar­win above the words “EVOLVE THIS!” At first I assumed he wore it to emphat­i­cal­ly sig­nal his belief that reli­gion, specif­i­cal­ly Chris­tian­i­ty, refutes sci­ence, specif­i­cal­ly bio­log­i­cal evo­lu­tion. Then, remem­ber­ing that Jesus prob­a­bly would­n’t have used a hand­gun even had they been avail­able in his day, I took the shirt as a mock­ery of the blunter vari­eties of cre­ation­ist rhetoric. Look­ing it up lat­er, I found out that the shirt comes from the movie Paul, so the wear­er prob­a­bly meant noth­ing more than to express his appre­ci­a­tion for what I under­stand to be one of 2011’s most under­rat­ed come­dies. Yet the ques­tion lingers: has sci­ence refut­ed reli­gion, or is it the oth­er way around? The inter­net age pro­vides us access to a vir­tu­al­ly unlim­it­ed num­ber of these debates, although you’ll often search in vain for match­es of cogent, well-artic­u­lat­ed argu­ments. Just take a look at the sci­ence-reli­gion squab­bles cur­rent­ly roil­ing in YouTube com­ment sec­tions. Keep out of the com­ments, then, and stick to the videos, such as the debate above. In two hours com­pris­ing short seg­ments of argu­ment, rebut­tal, cross-exam­i­na­tion, and audi­ence ques­tions, the pro­gram pits Skep­tic mag­a­zine pub­lish­er Michael Sher­mer and Cal­tech cos­mol­o­gist Sean Car­roll against MIT physi­cist Ian Hutchin­son and King’s Col­lege pres­i­dent Dinesh D’Souza. In an unusu­al­ly order­ly, well-dis­ci­plined debate of this type, all four weigh in on one cen­tral propo­si­tion: “Has sci­ence refut­ed reli­gion?” Car­roll says that sci­ence, a “real­i­ty check” on human bias­es, offers the only expla­na­tions that work. Hutchin­son blames not sci­ence but some­thing he calls “sci­en­tism,” a belief in the absolute suprema­cy of sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge, for a vari­ety of social and intel­lec­tu­al ills. Sher­mer describes reli­gious belief as an evo­lu­tion­ar­i­ly deter­mined char­ac­ter­is­tic of human beings, and an increas­ing­ly use­less one at that. D’Souza upbraids sci­ence for fail­ing not only to find answers to ques­tions about human pur­pose and life’s mean­ing, but for throw­ing up its hands when pre­sent­ed them. All this offers a good bit of human dra­ma as well, but in good fun; when I inter­viewed Sher­mer, a habitué of such debates, he men­tioned often enjoy­ing tak­ing his osten­si­bly sworn intel­lec­tu­al ene­mies to beers and piz­za after­ward. Relat­ed Con­tent: Richard Dawkins & John Lennox Debate Sci­ence & Athe­ism Does God Exist? Christo­pher Hitchens Debates Chris­t­ian Philoso­pher William Lane Craig Ani­mat­ed: Stephen Fry & Ann Wid­de­combe Debate the Catholic Church Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Martin Scorsese Appears in New Apple Ad with Siri, Plays on His Chilling Cameo in Taxi Driver

in Business, Film, Television | July 25th, 2012

In 1976, Mar­tin Scors­ese made a chill­ing cameo appear­ance in his thriller, Taxi Dri­ver. Per­haps you remem­ber the scene: Play­ing a beard­ed, name­less char­ac­ter, Scors­ese enters a cab, boss­es the dri­ver around for a while, then pro­ceeds to explain, in an uncom­fort­ably mat­ter of fact way, how he plans to kill his wife. It’ll make your hair stand on end. In a new com­mer­cial for Apple, Scors­ese plays a bossy back-seat rid­er again. But this time, there’s no killing involved, just shilling. It’s an ad for Apple’s iPhone, and it’s the lat­est in a new series of ads fea­tur­ing celebs like Zooey Deschan­nel, Samuel Jack­son and John Malkovich.

Of course, the par­al­lel between the Siri ad and the 1976 film was spot­ted by Roger Ebert. All props to him.

P.S.: In case you think we’re see­ing a par­al­lel that does­n’t actu­al­ly exist, it’s worth not­ing that both cabs have the same num­ber. Great spot by @sinyc.

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Rare 1933 Film: The Great Storyteller Rudyard Kipling on Truth in Writing

in Books, Literature | July 25th, 2012

“We who use words enjoy a pecu­liar priv­i­lege over our fel­lows,” says Rud­yard Kipling in this rare filmed speech. “We can­not tell a lie. How­ev­er much we may wish to do so, we only of edu­cat­ed men and women can­not tell a lie–in our work­ing hours. The more sub­tly we attempt it, the more cer­tain­ly do we betray some aspect of truth con­cern­ing the life of our age.”

The speech was giv­en on July 12, 1933 at Clar­idge’s Hotel in Lon­don, dur­ing a lun­cheon of the Roy­al Soci­ety of Lit­er­a­ture for vis­it­ing mem­bers of the Cana­di­an Authors’ Asso­ci­a­tion. Kipling was 67 years old at the time. The text of the speech (which you can open and read in a new win­dow) was pub­lished in a posthu­mous edi­tion of A Book of Words.

Rud­yard Kipling was one of the most cel­e­brat­ed Eng­lish writ­ers of the late Vic­to­ri­an era. Hen­ry James once said, “Kipling strikes me per­son­al­ly as the most com­plete man of genius (as dis­tinct from fine intel­li­gence) that I have ever known.” In 1907 he was award­ed the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture. As a pro­lif­ic author of short sto­ries, poet­ry, and nov­els, Kipling was the fore­most chron­i­cler of the British colo­nial expe­ri­ence.

But as the British Empire fad­ed in the 20th cen­tu­ry, so too did Kipling’s lit­er­ary stand­ing. His works for chil­dren, includ­ing The Jun­gle Book and Just So Sto­ries (see below), are still wide­ly enjoyed, but much of his oth­er writing–even the clas­sic nov­el Kim–is viewed with ambiva­lence. The lit­er­ary genius praised by James is often over­shad­owed by our con­tem­po­rary views on the cru­el­ty and exploita­tion of colo­nial­ism.

“Mer­ci­ful­ly,” says Kipling lat­er in his speech to the Cana­di­an authors, “it is not per­mit­ted to any one to fore­see his or her lit­er­ary elec­tion or repro­ba­tion, any more than it was per­mit­ted to our ances­tors to fore­see the just stature of their con­tem­po­raries…”

You can down­load Kipling’s works by vis­it­ing our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks col­lec­tions.

h/t @Rachel_RK

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Sally Ride Warns Against Global Warming; Wonders If Technology Can Save Us From Ourselves

in Astronomy, Video - Science | July 25th, 2012

As every­one sure­ly knows by now, Sal­ly Ride died this past Mon­day at age 61 from pan­cre­at­ic can­cer. An astro­naut, physics pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, and bene­fac­tor of young stu­dents, Ride ded­i­cat­ed her life to sci­ence edu­ca­tion. In the video above, from NASA’s Jet Propul­sion Lab­o­ra­to­ry, she describes how the shut­tle pro­gram she was so much a part of helped pro­vide evi­dence for what sci­en­tists now describe as cli­mate change.

Ride entered the space pro­gram in 1978 and made her first space flight in 1983 and her sec­ond in 1984, becom­ing the first woman to do a space­walk. As the Smithsonian’s trib­ute to Sal­ly Ride points out, what made her flight dif­fer­ent from that of the first Sovi­et woman in orbit twen­ty years ear­li­er is that she was the first in “a steady queue of women going to work in space.” She did not take the hon­or of being a “first” light­ly: after her retire­ment from NASA in 1987, she found­ed her own com­pa­ny, Sal­ly Ride Sci­ence, to moti­vate young peo­ple, espe­cial­ly young girls, to pur­sue careers in math, sci­ence, and tech­nol­o­gy.

In the video, Ride’s qui­et opti­mism shines through her dis­cus­sion of a phe­nom­e­non that can seem dire. While she faults our tech­nol­o­gy for caus­ing glob­al cli­mate shifts, she was opti­mistic that sim­i­lar appli­ca­tions of tech­nol­o­gy can help us, as she puts it above, “solve the prob­lem we cre­at­ed for our­selves.”

NASA’s web­site has a detailed trib­ute to Sal­ly Ride, includ­ing a short video in which she dis­cuss­es both of her shut­tle mis­sions.

For more infor­ma­tion about the sci­ence of cli­mate change, see this exten­sive free course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go.

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John Cleese Explains the Brain

in Comedy, Television | July 25th, 2012

We all know John Cleese can be fun­ny, but watch his dis­cus­sion of the human brain above and wit­ness how adroit­ly he can rise to the occa­sion when it comes to a seri­ous sub­ject. The clip comes from a video pod­cast in which he starred from 2006 to 2009, and which dealt with the big top­ics: sci­ence, God, the monar­chy, and air­line ser­vice, to name but four. (He fol­lowed it up with the Head­cast.) Here, Cleese dons a lab coat to solemn­ly explain, in an eru­dite and high­ly tech­ni­cal man­ner, the work­ings of our gray mat­ter. I mean, I assume that’s what he’s explain­ing; being untrained in neu­ro­science, I sup­pose there’s a chance I can’t tell whether he might sim­ply be engag­ing in that rich British satir­i­cal tra­di­tion of appear­ing to say a great deal of the utmost impor­tance while actu­al­ly say­ing noth­ing at all, in lan­guage bare­ly even rec­og­niz­able as made up of words.

You can see Cleese in a dif­fer­ent mode in anoth­er van­ish­ing­ly short-form video, the new DirecTV com­mer­cial. Speak­ing with blunt sim­plic­i­ty, he pitch­es the satel­lite tele­vi­sion provider’s ser­vice pack­age in the char­ac­ter of a wealthy Eng­lish­man engaged in a vari­ety of increas­ing­ly absurd wealthy-Eng­lish­man activ­i­ties: sit­ting fire­side in a volu­mi­nous smok­ing jack­et, receiv­ing a mas­sage on the hood of his Bent­ley, prac­tic­ing indoor archery, din­ing upon a lob­ster the size of the table. As an exam­i­na­tion of the aris­toc­ra­cy, Grand Illu­sion it ain’t; it does, how­ev­er, shed some light on Cleese’s dis­tinc­tive comedic skills. In both of these videos, Cleese uses a seri­ous demeanor to his advan­tage, but his decades of expe­ri­ence allow him to use dif­fer­ent nuances of seri­ous­ness appro­pri­ate to each per­for­ma­tive occa­sion. He has his fun­ni­est moments when he assumes the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the per­fect­ly humor­less, hav­ing mas­tered and long resided in that lim­i­nal state between laugh­ter and stul­ti­fi­ca­tion, irony and straight­for­ward­ness, that the most respect­ed British come­di­ans have made their own.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese Plays the Dev­il, Makes a Spe­cial Appeal for Hell, 1966

John Cleese on the Ori­gin of Cre­ativ­i­ty

John Cleese, Mon­ty Python Icon, on How to Be Cre­ative

Mon­ty Python’s Away From it All: A Twist­ed Trav­el­ogue with John Cleese

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

 

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