Watch Hayao Miyazaki Animate the Final Shot of His Final Feature Film, The Wind Rises

in Animation, Film | June 19th, 2015

Hayao Miyaza­k­i’s The Wind Ris­es came out in 2013 to a great deal of acclaim and attention—as, I sup­pose, do all the movies his Stu­dio Ghi­b­li puts out, so painstak­ing­ly have they built up their rep­u­ta­tion for medi­um-tran­scend­ing depth, artistry, crafts­man­ship, and atten­tion to detail. But that fic­tion­al­ized bio­graph­i­cal sto­ry of Japan­ese World War II air­plane design­er Jiro Horikos­ki received even more notice than most due not just to the con­tro­ver­sial nature of its mate­r­i­al, but to its place as Miyaza­k­i’s sup­posed swan song, the last fea­ture film he would ever direct.

Then again, Hayao Miyaza­ki has spo­ken of many pos­si­ble retire­ments over the years, and no longer ani­mat­ing fea­ture films hard­ly means the end of his all-con­sum­ing impulse to cre­ate, which dri­ves him to con­tin­ue work­ing on Toky­o’s Ghi­b­li Muse­um and draw­ing the art for com­ic books, among oth­er projects. Cer­tain Miyaza­ki asso­ciates have pub­licly told us not to be sur­prised if the mas­ter one day emerges from this par­tic­u­lar “retire­ment,” but since the man him­self seems quite seri­ous about putting full-length pic­tures behind him, we can assume for now that the clip above shows him at work on the last bit of film ani­ma­tion in his career: The Wind Ris­es’ final shot.

The footage comes from last year’s The King­dom of Dreams and Mad­ness, a doc­u­men­tary on a moment in the life of Stu­dio Ghibli—and pos­si­bly one of the last moments in the life of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, giv­en their announce­ment of a “brief pause” pro­duc­tion as a result of Miyaza­k­i’s retire­ment. On the sub­ject of the stu­dio’s future Miyaza­ki speaks blunt­ly in the doc­u­men­tary: “The future is clear: it’s going to fall apart. I can already see it. What’s the use wor­ry­ing? It’s inevitable.” But all things do, a fact which the finest works of Japan­ese art—Miyazaki’s films included—have always accept­ed. But they also take notice of what small things we can appre­ci­ate along the way to dis­so­lu­tion, as does Miyaza­ki him­self: “Isn’t ani­ma­tion fas­ci­nat­ing?” he asks, seem­ing­ly to him­self, as he walks away from the draw­ing board.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hayao Miyazaki’s Mag­i­cal Ani­mat­ed Music Video for the Japan­ese Pop Song, “On Your Mark”

Watch Sher­lock Hound: Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­mat­ed, Steam­punk Take on Sher­lock Holmes

How to Make Instant Ramen Com­pli­ments of Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion Direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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See Flannery O’Connor’s Story “The Displaced Person” Adapted to a Film Starring a Young Samuel L. Jackson (1977)

in Film, Literature, Television | June 19th, 2015

There are strong peo­ple qui­et­ly will­ing to do “what needs to be done” for the pub­lic good, and then there are those who enjoy insin­u­at­ing that they are that sort of per­son, usu­al­ly as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for their self-serv­ing, fre­quent­ly racist or xeno­pho­bic actions. When the lat­ter reach­es for the Bible as back up, look out!

No one ever had more fun with this mon­strous type than the writer Flan­nery O’Connor, a devout Catholic with a knack for wrap­ping her char­ac­ters’ foul pur­pos­es in the “stink­ing mad shad­ow of Jesus.”

In her longest sto­ry “The Dis­placed Per­son,” the boor­ish, Bible-thump­ing Mrs. Short­ley is not the only bad­die. The refined Mrs. McIn­tyre, wid­owed mis­tress of the dairy oper­a­tion that employs the Short­leys and a cou­ple of African-Amer­i­can farmhands, is just as quick to indict those with whom she imag­ines her­self at cross-pur­pos­es.

Trans­fer them to the small screen, and every actress over 40 would be clam­or­ing for the chance to sink her teeth into one or the oth­er.

In 1977, PBS hired play­wright Hor­ton Foote to adapt “The Dis­placed Per­son” for “The Amer­i­can Short Sto­ry,” and the roles of Short­ley and McIn­tyre went to Shirley Stol­er and Irene Worth, both excel­lent.

(See above…it’s always so much more amus­ing to play one of the vil­lains than the hard­work­ing, uncom­plain­ing, tit­u­lar char­ac­ter, here a Pol­ish refugee from WWII.)

The audio qual­i­ty is not the great­est, but stick with it to see Samuel L. Jack­son, not quite 30, as the younger of the two farmhands.

O’Connor buffs will be inter­est­ed to know that Andalu­sia, the writer’s own Geor­gia farm, served as the loca­tion for this hour-long project. (No need to rent a pea­cock!)

Despite the state­ly pro­duc­tion val­ues that were de rigeur for qual­i­ty view­ing of the peri­od, the sto­ry retains the unmis­tak­able tang of O’Connor—it’s a bit­ter, com­ic brew.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent

Flan­nery O’Connor Reads ‘Some Aspects of the Grotesque in South­ern Fic­tion’ (c. 1960)

Rare 1959 Audio: Flan­nery O’Connor Reads ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’

Flan­nery O’Connor’s Satir­i­cal Car­toons: 1942–1945

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Meta Star Wars: All Six Films in One

in Film, Random | June 19th, 2015

We’ve shown our fair share of Star Wars mashups and fan films over the years. I cite for exam­ple:

The lat­est and maybe not great­est fan rework­ing of Star Wars (now avail­able on YouTube) lets you watch all six Star Wars films online. At once. With one film lay­ered upon the oth­er.

Is there some cul­tur­al val­ue to this lay­er­ing of films? Maybe only inso­far as it gives the keen observ­er the chance to find some meta trends run­ning through the films. One YouTu­ber com­ment­ed, “The real­ly inter­est­ing part is that they’re sim­i­lar­ly paced. If you skip around you’ll almost always find all talk­ing scenes lined up and all action scenes lined up. Just shows how for­mu­la­ic movies are (or at least how for­mu­la­ic George Lucas is).”

Feel free to drop your own obser­va­tions in the com­ments sec­tion below. And, by the way, the per­son who cre­at­ed this mashup has also made avail­able a full gallery of HD still frames on imgur here.

via Twit­ter

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and  share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

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The Soviet Union Creates a List of 38 Dangerous Rock Bands: Kiss, Pink Floyd, Talking Heads, Village People & More (1985)

in Music, Politics | June 18th, 2015

VillagePeople1978

Image via Mario Cas­ciano

Music is dan­ger­ous and pow­er­ful, and can be, with­out intend­ing to, a polit­i­cal weapon. All author­i­tar­i­an regimes have under­stood this, includ­ing repres­sive ele­ments in the U.S. through­out the Cold War. I remem­ber hav­ing books hand­ed to me before the Berlin Wall came down, by fam­i­ly friends fear­ful of the evils of pop­u­lar music—especially punk rock and met­al, but also pret­ty much every­thing else. The descrip­tions in these para­noid tracts of the bands I knew and loved sound­ed so ludi­crous and hyper­bol­ic that I couldn’t help sus­pect each was in fact a work of satire. They were at the very least anachro­nis­tic, yet ide­al, types of Poe’s Law.

Such may be your reac­tion to a list pub­lished in 1985 by the Kom­so­mol, the Sovi­et youth orga­ni­za­tion formed as the All-Union Lenin­ist Young Com­mu­nist League in 1918. (Find it below.) Con­sist­ing of thir­ty-eight punk, rock, met­al, dis­co, and New Wave bands, the list is not at all unlike the mate­ri­als print­ed around the same time by cer­tain youth orga­ni­za­tions I came into con­tact with.

The mech­a­nisms of state repres­sion in the Sovi­et Union on the eve of per­e­stroi­ka  over­matched com­par­a­tive­ly mild attempts at music cen­sor­ship made by the U.S. gov­ern­ment, but the pro­pa­gan­da mech­a­nisms were sim­i­lar. As in the alarmed pam­phlets and books hand­ed to me in church­es and sum­mer camps, the Kom­so­mol list describes each band in obtuse and absurd terms, each one a cat­e­go­ry of the “type of pro­pa­gan­da” on offer.

Black Sab­bath, a legit­i­mate­ly scary—and polit­i­cal­ly astute—band gets pegged along with Iron Maid­en for “vio­lence” and “reli­gious obscu­ran­tism.” (Nazareth is sim­i­lar­ly guilty of “vio­lence” and “reli­gious mys­ti­cism.”) A great many artists are charged with only “vio­lence” or with “sex,” which in some cas­es was kind of their whole méti­er. A hand­ful of punk bands—the Sex Pis­tols, the Clash, the Stranglers—are cit­ed for vio­lence, and also sim­ply charged with “punk,” a crime giv­en as the Ramones’ only offense. There are a few odd­ly spe­cif­ic charges: Pink Floyd is guilty of a “dis­tor­tion of Sovi­et for­eign pol­i­cy (‘Sovi­et aggres­sion in Afghanistan’)” and Talk­ing Heads endorse the “myth of the Sovi­et mil­i­tary threat.” A cou­ple hilar­i­ous­ly incon­gru­ous tags offer LOLs: Yazoo and Depeche Mode, two of the gen­tlest bands of the peri­od, get called out for “punk, vio­lence.” Kiss and the Vil­lage Peo­ple (above), two of the sil­li­est bands on the list, are said to prop­a­gate, “neo­fas­cism” and “vio­lence.”

  1. Sex Pis­tols: punk, vio­lence
  2. B‑52s: punk, vio­lence
  3. Mad­ness: punk, vio­lence
  4. Clash: punk, vio­lence
  5. Stran­glers: punk, vio­lence
  6. Kiss: neo­fas­cism, punk, vio­lence
  7. Cro­cus: vio­lence, cult of strong per­son­al­i­ty
  8. Styx: vio­lence, van­dal­ism
  9. Iron Maid­en: vio­lence, reli­gious obscu­ri­tanism
  10. Judas Priest: anti­com­mu­nism, racism
  11. AC/DC: neo­fas­cism, vio­lence
  12. Sparks: neo­fas­cism, racism
  13. Black Sab­bath: vio­lence, reli­gious obscu­ri­tanism
  14. Alice Coop­er: vio­lence, van­dal­ism
  15. Nazareth: vio­lence, reli­gious mys­ti­cism
  16. Scor­pi­ons: vio­lence
  17. Gengis Khan: anti­com­mu­nism, nation­al­ism
  18. UFO: vio­lence
  19. Pink Floyd (1983): dis­tor­tion of Sovi­et for­eign pol­i­cy (“Sovi­et agres­sion in Afghanistan”)***
  20. Talk­ing Heads: myth of the Sovi­et mil­i­tary threat
  21. Per­ron: eroti­cism
  22. Bohan­non: eroti­cism
  23. Orig­i­nals: sex
  24. Don­na Sum­mer: eroti­cism
  25. Tina Turn­er: sex
  26. Junior Eng­lish: sex
  27. Canned Heat: homo­sex­u­al­i­ty
  28. Munich Machine: eroti­cism
  29. Ramones: punk
  30. Van Halen: anti-sovi­et pro­pa­gan­da
  31. Julio Igle­sias: neo­fas­cism
  32. Yazoo: punk, vio­lence
  33. Depeche Mode: punk, vio­lence
  34. Vil­lage Peo­ple: vio­lence
  35. Ten CC: neo­fas­cism
  36. Stooges: vio­lence
  37. Boys: punk, vio­lence
  38. Blondie: punk, vio­lence

The list cir­cu­lat­ed for “the pur­pose of inten­si­fy­ing con­trol over the activ­i­ties of dis­cote­ques.” It comes to us from Alex­ei Yurchak’s Every­thing Was For­ev­er, Until It Was No More: The Last Sovi­et Gen­er­a­tion, which cites it as an exam­ple, writes one read­er, of “the con­tra­dic­to­ry nature of Sovi­et life, where as cit­i­zens par­tic­i­pat­ed in the rit­u­al­ized, pro for­ma ide­o­log­i­cal dis­course, this very dis­course allowed them to carve out what they called ‘nor­mal mean­ing­ful life’ that went beyond the state’s ide­ol­o­gy.” A large part of that “nor­mal” life involved cir­cu­lat­ing bootlegs of ide­o­log­i­cal­ly sus­pect music on impro­vised mate­ri­als like dis­card­ed and stolen X‑Rays. The Kom­so­mol even­tu­al­ly wised up. As Yur­chak doc­u­ments in his book, they co-opt­ed local ama­teur rock bands and pro­mot­ed their own events as a counter-attack on the influ­ence of bour­geois cul­ture. You can prob­a­bly guess how much suc­cess they had with this strat­e­gy.

See the full list of thir­ty-eight bands and their “type of pro­pa­gan­da” above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sovi­et Hip­sters Boot­legged West­ern Pop Music on Dis­card­ed X‑Rays: Hear Orig­i­nal Audio Sam­ples

Bruce Spring­steen Plays East Berlin in 1988: I’m Not Here For Any Gov­ern­ment. I’ve Come to Play Rock

Yakov Smirnoff Remem­bers “The Sovi­et Depart­ment of Jokes” & Oth­er Sta­ples of Com­mu­nist Com­e­dy

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

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Umberto Eco’s Advice to Aspiring Writers

in Life, Writing | June 18th, 2015

Umber­to Eco, now 83 years old, has some advice to pass along to the young.

In March, the Ital­ian semi­oti­cian, philoso­pher, lit­er­ary crit­ic, and nov­el­ist — and, of course, author of Fou­cault’s Pen­du­lum — pub­lished How to Write a The­sis. It’s a wit­ty, irrev­er­ent and prac­ti­cal guide for the stu­dent labor­ing over a the­sis or dis­ser­ta­tion. Josh Jones has more on that here.

Now, in a new­ly-released video from The Louisiana Chan­nel (a media out­let based in Den­mark), Eco turns his atten­tion toward aspir­ing writ­ers. And his wise coun­sel comes down to this: Keep your ego in check, make sure your ambi­tions are real­is­tic, put in the time and the hard work, and don’t shoot for the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture straight out of the gate. That, Eco says, kills every lit­er­ary career. He’ll also tell you that writ­ing is “10% inspi­ra­tion and 90% per­spi­ra­tion.” They’re tru­isms — you dis­cov­er when you’re an octo­ge­nar­i­an — that turn out to be true.

Find more tips for aspir­ing writ­ers below.

Dan Col­man is the founder/editor of Open Cul­ture. Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and  share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ernest Hem­ing­way Cre­ates a Read­ing List for a Young Writer, 1934

Ray Brad­bury Gives 12 Pieces of Writ­ing Advice to Young Authors (2001)

Toni Mor­ri­son Dis­pens­es Writ­ing Wis­dom in 1993 Paris Review Inter­view

John Steinbeck’s Six Tips for the Aspir­ing Writer and His Nobel Prize Speech

Stephen King Cre­ates a List of 96 Books for Aspir­ing Writ­ers to Read

Kurt Von­negut Gives Advice to Aspir­ing Writ­ers in a 1991 TV Inter­view

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Free: Read 9 Travel Books Online by Monty Python’s Michael Palin

in Television, Travel | June 18th, 2015


Image cour­tesy of Chipps
Most of us come to Michael Palin through his work as a com­ic actor (in the role of dead par­rot sales­man or oth­er­wise), but at this point almost as many know him sec­ond as a found­ing mem­ber of Mon­ty Python, and first as an affa­ble glo­be­trot­ter. That part of his career began in 1988, when he host­ed the Earth-cir­cum­nav­i­gat­ing BBC trav­el series Around the World in 80 Days. (See an episode here.) Its suc­cess has led him, over the sub­se­quent 27 years, onto fur­ther (and far­ther-flung) tele­vised jour­neys: from the North Pole to the South, around the Pacif­ic Rim, in the adven­tur­ous foot­steps of Ernest Hem­ing­way, across the Sahara, up the Himalayas, across the “new” cen­tral and east­ern Europe, around the world again, and most recent­ly through Brazil.

Not con­tent to set a high water­mark for trav­el tele­vi­sion, Palin has also writ­ten a com­pan­ion book for each series, lav­ish­ly col­lect­ing maps, pic­tures, and his own trav­el diaries. Those last reveal a more nuanced side of “the nicest chap in Britain,” whose famous­ly easy­go­ing, def­er­en­tial, and unsur­pris­ing­ly good-humored per­sona place him so well to deal with the world’s stag­ger­ing vari­ety of peo­ple, places, and incon­ve­niences. “I can sum­mon up noth­ing but res­ig­na­tion at the thought of cook­ing with the locals all morn­ing, then hav­ing to lis­ten to music and songs I don’t under­stand for the rest of the after­noon,” he writes after wak­ing up on yet anoth­er island, in an entry excerpt­ed in last year’s Trav­el­ling to Work, the lat­est pub­lished vol­ume of his life’s diaries. “And, worst of all, hav­ing to look as if I’m enjoy­ing it.”

But these books also reveal that most of the time, Palin real­ly is enjoy­ing it. His insa­tiable curios­i­ty (not to men­tion his inex­orable pro­duc­tion sched­ule) dri­ves him con­tin­u­ous­ly ahead, a curios­i­ty in which you, too can share now that he’s made all these books free to read online at palinstravels.co.uk. Click on the links/titles below, and then look for the prompts that say “Dis­cov­er the Series Here” and, below that, “Start Read­ing the Book.”

And if you make a free account at the site, it will even allow you to you keep vir­tu­al “book­marks” in as many of the books as you like, guar­an­tee­ing that you won’t get lost amidst this wealth of trav­el con­tent. But if you choose to fol­low Pal­in’s exam­ple and actu­al­ly get out there into every cor­ner of the world, well, no such anti-lost­ness guar­an­tees exist — but as every fan of Pal­in’s Trav­els knows, those very com­pli­ca­tions make it worth­while. As least you won’t have a five-man crew trail­ing behind.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Trains and the Brits Who Love Them: Mon­ty Python’s Michael Palin on Great Rail­way Jour­neys

Michael Palin’s Tour of the Best Loved Mon­ty Python Sketch Loca­tions

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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

in Art | June 18th, 2015

Recent­ly deceased artist Chris Bur­den had a long his­to­ry of work­ing with auto­mo­biles in his art. In his ear­ly days he cru­ci­fied him­self to the top of a VW Bee­tle (a piece called Trans Fixed). He set about design­ing and build­ing a 100 mph and 100 mpg auto­mo­bile based on intu­ition called the B‑Car. In Big Wheel he used a motor­cy­cle to power…a big wheel. And in Porsche with Mete­orite he sus­pend­ed the two objects above the muse­um floor on each end of a gigan­tic scale.

metropolis ii

But his mas­sive kinet­ic sculp­ture Metrop­o­lis II is some­thing else: a child’s fever dream of a Hot Wheels-scale city, with 1,100 cars dri­ving end­less­ly on 18 road­ways, with two ramps that are 12 feet high and three con­vey­or sys­tems that feed the cars back into the loop. The met­al and the elec­tric­i­ty need­ed to run the sculp­ture means that the thing is not just a sight to behold, but it’s stag­ger­ing­ly loud.

The title of the kinet­ic sculp­ture gives away its ref­er­ence, that of Fritz Lang’s 1927 Metrop­o­lis (watch it online) and its imag­i­nary city scapes of ele­vat­ed free­ways and train tracks and peo­ple movers and planes that fly in between:

Burden’s work has its own struc­tures too, some of which are made from build­ing blocks, Lego, and Lin­coln Logs, turned into hous­es and sky­scrap­ers. Don’t expect sen­si­ble urban plan­ning in this city: seen from above, Metrop­o­lis II is a chaos of roads, and closed sys­tems from which there is no escape.

There was a tri­al run of the sculp­ture called Metrop­o­lis I, a small­er ver­sion that was soon sold to a Japan­ese col­lec­tor and tak­en out of the pub­lic view.

For the sequel, Bur­den went big­ger, enlist­ing eight peo­ple full time for five and a half years to build the piece. Said the artist:

“We want­ed to expand it and make it tru­ly over­whelm­ing — the noise and lev­el of activ­i­ty are both mes­mer­iz­ing and anx­i­ety pro­vok­ing.”

But instead of a night­mare com­men­tary, Bur­den want­ed the piece to be utopi­an. The cars are mov­ing at 240 mph, accord­ing to scale, and there’s no grid­lock. He was look­ing ahead to a future of dri­ver­less cars, as he shared a hatred like many Ange­lenos of end­less traf­fic jams.

The 30 foot wide sculp­ture was bought for an undis­closed sum by bil­lion­aire busi­ness­man Nicholas Berggre­un, who also sits on LACMA’s board. He’s loaned it to the muse­um until 2022 and it is cur­rent­ly now sit­u­at­ed in a spe­cial wing where vis­i­tors can see it both at ground lev­el and from above. It takes one assis­tant to keep it free of hic­cups and it only runs for a few hours at a time, and only on week­ends.

How­ev­er, LACMA’s entry­way is also home to a Bur­den piece one can see 24/7, the icon­ic Urban Light.

via Coudal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Chris Bur­den Get Shot for the Sake of Art (1971)

LA Coun­ty Muse­um Makes 20,000 Artis­tic Images Avail­able for Free Down­load

Chris Bur­den (R.I.P.) Turns Late-Night TV Com­mer­cials Into Con­cep­tu­al Art

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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A Proportional Visualization of the World’s Most Popular Languages

in Language Lessons | June 17th, 2015

languages-of-the-world-big

Click to view in a big, high-res for­mat
Last week we high­light­ed for you a beau­ti­ful Tree of Lan­guages info­graph­ic, cre­at­ed by Min­na Sund­berg using data from ethnologue.com. This week, we present anoth­er visu­al­iza­tion of world lan­guages, this one pro­duced by Alber­to Lucas Lopéz, on behalf of the South Chi­na Morn­ing Post. And, once again, the under­ly­ing data comes from ethnologue.com, a research project that cat­a­logues all of the world’s known liv­ing lan­guages.

Today’s graph­ic — click here to view it in a large for­mat — takes the world’s 23 most pop­u­lar lan­guages, and then gives you a visu­al sense of how many peo­ple actu­al­ly speak those lan­guages over­all, and where geo­graph­i­cal­ly those lan­guages are spo­ken. The more a lan­guage is spo­ken, the more space it gets in the visu­al.

When you view the orig­i­nal graph­ic, you’ll note that Chi­nese speak­ers out­num­ber Eng­lish speak­ers by a fac­tor of four. And yet Eng­lish is spo­ken in 110 coun­tries, as com­pared to 33 for Chi­nese. And the num­ber of peo­ple learn­ing Eng­lish world­wide dwarfs the num­ber learn­ing Man­darin.

As you look through Lopéz’s visu­al, you’ll want to keep one thing in mind: Although the 23 lan­guages visu­al­ized above are col­lec­tive­ly spo­ken by 4.1 bil­lion peo­ple, there are at least anoth­er 6700 known lan­guages alive in the world today. Some­one has to cook up a pro­por­tion­al visu­al­iza­tion of those. Any tak­ers?

Speak­ing of learn­ing pop­u­lar lan­guages, don’t miss our col­lec­tion: Learn 48 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More.

via Men­tal Floss

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and  share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Tree of Lan­guages Illus­trat­ed in a Big, Beau­ti­ful Info­graph­ic

The His­to­ry of the Eng­lish Lan­guage in Ten Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

Noam Chom­sky Talks About How Kids Acquire Lan­guage & Ideas in an Ani­mat­ed Video by Michel Gondry

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