Wonderfully Offbeat Assignments That Artist John Baldessari Gave to His Art Students (1970)

in Art, Education | July 21st, 2016

baldessari assignment

In 1970, when con­cep­tu­al artist John Baldessari was teach­ing stu­dio art at the exper­i­men­tal CalArts cam­pus near Valen­cia, CA, the assign­ments he hand­ed out to his class were art in them­selves. Humor­ous, con­found­ing, some­times very spe­cif­ic but often like zen koans, the assign­ments must have come as a shock, espe­cial­ly to those stu­dents with a more tra­di­tion­al sense of what con­sti­tutes art.

They prob­a­bly didn’t know that Baldessari was ques­tion­ing art itself and in the mid­dle of a cri­sis. That year he had tak­en all his pre­vi­ous paint­ed work from 1953 — 1966 and cre­mat­ed it at a San Diego mor­tu­ary. He turned from paint­ing to pho­tog­ra­phy. And he expect­ed his stu­dents to rethink every­thing they thought they knew.

baldessari assignment 2

Look­ing back at his class assign­ments, which you can see here, here, and here, it’s like see­ing the seeds of ideas that were to be turned into whole careers by the likes of Cindy Sher­man, Wayne White, Komar & Melamid, and oth­ers.

Here’s a selec­tion of favorites:

  1. One per­son copies or makes up ran­dom cap­tions. Anoth­er per­son takes pho­tos. Match pho­tos to cap­tions.
  2. Defen­es­trate objects. Pho­to them in mid-air.
  3. Pho­to­graph backs of things, under­neaths of things, extreme fore­short­en­ings, unchar­ac­ter­is­tic views. Or trace them.
  4. Repaired or patched art. Recy­cled. Find some­thing bro­ken and dis­card­ed. Per­haps in a thrift store. Mend it.
  5. Imi­tate Baldessari in actions and speech.
  6. Pun­ish­ment: Write “I will not make any more art” / “I will not make any more bor­ing art” / “I will make good art” (or some­thing sim­i­lar) 1000 times on wall. (Appar­ent­ly, Baldessari pun­ished him­self.)

Some of these assign­ments are inten­tion­al­ly sil­ly. Some could pro­duce good work. But all are meant to wake the artist up to the pos­si­bil­i­ties of the form.

via Austin Kleon/CCA Wat­tis Insti­tute for Con­tem­po­rary Art

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Baldessari’s “I Will Not Make Any More Bor­ing Art”: A 1971 Con­cep­tu­al Art Piece/DIY Art Course

A Brief His­to­ry of John Baldessari, Nar­rat­ed by Tom Waits

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

Metrop­o­lis II: Chris Burden’s Amaz­ing, Fre­net­ic Mini-City

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based 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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Can You Solve These Animated Brain Teasers from TED-Ed?

in Animation, Education, Games, K-12, Math | July 8th, 2016

Zom­bies, alien over­lords, sharks, a mad dictator…math is a dan­ger­ous propo­si­tion in the hands of TED Ed script writer Alex Gendler.

The recre­ation­al math­e­mat­ics puz­zles he retro­fits for TED’s edu­ca­tion­al ini­tia­tive have been around for hun­dreds, even thou­sands of years. In the past, sto­ry­lines tend­ed to rely on bias­es 21st-cen­tu­ry puz­zle solvers would find objec­tion­able. As math­e­mati­cian David Singmas­ter told Sci­ence News:

One must be a lit­tle care­ful with some of these prob­lems, as past cul­tures were often bla­tant­ly sex­ist or racist. But such prob­lems also show what the cul­ture was like.… The riv­er cross­ing prob­lem of the jeal­ous hus­bands is quite sex­ist and trans­forms into mas­ters and ser­vants, which is clas­sist, then into mis­sion­ar­ies and can­ni­bals, which is racist. With such prob­lems, you can offend every­body!

Gendler’s updates, ani­mat­ed by Artrake stu­dio, derive their nar­ra­tive urgency from the sort of crowd pleas­ing sci fi predica­ments that fuel sum­mer block­busters.

And for­tu­nate­ly for those of us whose brains are per­ma­nent­ly stuck in beach mode, he nev­er fails to explain how the char­ac­ters pre­vail, out­wit­ting or out­run­ning the afore­men­tioned zom­bies, aliens, sharks, and mad dic­ta­tor.

(No wor­ries if you’re deter­mined to find the solu­tion on your own. Gendler gives plen­ty of fair warn­ing before each reveal.)

Put your brain in gear, pull the skull-embossed lever, and remem­ber, team­work — and induc­tive log­ic — car­ry the day!

The pris­on­er hat rid­dle, above, hinges on a hier­ar­chy of beliefs and the alien overlord’s will­ing­ness to give its nine cap­tives a few min­utes to come up with a game plan.

Go deep­er into this age old puz­zle by view­ing the full les­son.

Gendler’s spin on the green-eyed log­ic puz­zle, above, con­tains two brain teasers, one for the hive mind, and one for an indi­vid­ual act­ing alone, with a strat­e­gy culled from philoso­pher David Lewis’ Com­mon Knowl­edge play­book. Here’s the full les­son.

Rar­ing for more? You’ll find a playlist of TED-Ed puz­zles by Gendler and oth­ers here. The full les­son for the bridge prob­lem at the top of the post is here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Math Cours­es 

200 Free Text­books: A Meta Col­lec­tion 

Dan­ger­ous Knowl­edge: 4 Bril­liant Math­e­mati­cians & Their Drift to Insan­i­ty

Ayun Hal­l­i­day, author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine, will be lead­ing a free col­lab­o­ra­tive zine work­shop  at the Glue­stick Fest in Indi­anapo­lis Sat­ur­day, July 9. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Carl Sagan Presents a Mini-Course on Earth, Mars & What’s Beyond Our Solar System: For Kids and Adults (1977)

in Education, K-12, Science | June 16th, 2016

Despite the inten­sive focus on STEM (as opposed to STEAM—a debate for anoth­er day), Amer­i­cans still find them­selves falling far behind in sci­ence edu­ca­tion. Accord­ing to the Nation­al Math and Sci­ence Ini­tia­tive, U.S. stu­dents placed 20th in sci­ence in a recent rank­ing of 34 coun­tries. “The way the U.S. teach­es sci­ence,” argues Pop­u­lar Sci­ence, “sim­ply doesn’t work…. Since sci­en­tists don’t just stand around mem­o­riz­ing stuff, stu­dents shouldn’t either.” The approach isn’t only counter to the sci­en­tif­ic method; it’s tedious and doesn’t engage that most impor­tant of intel­lec­tu­al fac­ul­ties: curios­i­ty.

The prob­lems are beyond ped­a­gogy, as we know from polls that show upwards of 42% of Amer­i­cans sub­scrib­ing to lit­er­al­ist inter­pre­ta­tions of their reli­gious texts, and active­ly reject­ing sci­en­tif­ic think­ing. These cul­tur­al road­blocks were very famil­iar to Carl Sagan, who spent a good part of his career attempt­ing to coax the pub­lic out of its belief in a “demon-haunt­ed world.” As a sci­ence edu­ca­tor, Sagan not only knew how to draw out the child­like awe in grown-ups, but also how to engage the nat­ur­al curios­i­ty of chil­dren, who—as every par­ent knows—long to know the why of every­thing.

“As a child,” Sagan said of his for­ma­tive years, “it was my immense good for­tune to have par­ents and a few good teach­ers who encour­aged my curios­i­ty.” Now, whether or not kids have such par­ents or teach­ers, thanks to the inter­net, they have Carl Sagan, and specif­i­cal­ly, they have Sagan’s Roy­al Insti­tu­tion Christ­mas Lec­tures, six talks he deliv­ered in 1977 to eager, curi­ous kids. Sagan taught on his usu­al top­ic: Plan­ets, begin­ning with “The Earth as a Plan­et,” at the top of the post. As he men­tions in his intro­duc­tion, his lec­ture almost falls on the 150th anniver­sary of the first Christ­mas Lec­ture, a dis­tin­guished sci­en­tif­ic tra­di­tion begun in 1825 by Michael Fara­day at Britain’s Roy­al Insti­tu­tion.

Sagan’s first talk “explores the diver­si­ty of life on our own plan­et,” writes the Roy­al Insti­tu­tion, “and the build­ing blocks behind it.” Then, he moves on to “ques­tion­ing whether the same organ­ic chem­istry is occur­ring on plan­ets in the out­er solar sys­tem” in his sec­ond lec­ture, above. In the fol­low­ing three talks, below, Sagan takes us to Mars, a plan­et he helped explore with­out ever leav­ing the ground with his the­o­ries in the late 60s about the nature of the planet’s surface—theories lat­er con­firmed sev­er­al years lat­er by the Viking Project. Sagan’s talks below—“The His­to­ry of Mars,” “Mars Before Viking,” and “Mars After Viking”—share the lat­est research with his young audi­ence. With mod­els of the plan­et and the Viking space­craft, Sagan demon­strates in detail how NASA obtained its data.

The His­to­ry of Mars

Mars Before Viking


Mars After Viking”>Mars After Viking

In his final Roy­al Insti­tu­tion Christ­mas Lec­ture, below, “Plan­e­tary Sys­tems Beyond the Sun,” Sagan ven­tures far beyond the reach of NASA’s instru­ments (at the time) to spec­u­late on what might lie beyond the Solar Sys­tem. But first, he ori­ents us—again using mod­els and space photography—by explain­ing what a solar sys­tem is, and why oth­er sys­tems like­ly resem­ble ours. In his own sci­en­tif­ic career, Sagan was instru­men­tal in pro­mot­ing the SETI Institute—which now has a cen­ter named after him. He believed unflag­ging­ly in the pos­si­bil­i­ty of extrater­res­tri­al life, which he hypoth­e­sized based on many of the obser­va­tions he shares below.

When Sagan deliv­ered these lec­tures, the Roy­al Insti­tu­tion points out, “NASA had only just begun its Voy­ager pro­gram to the fur­thest plan­ets in our solar sys­tem and no extra-solar plan­ets were known to exist. Now, over three decades lat­er, astronomers are look­ing at plan­ets that lie beyond our solar sys­tem to ask the very same ques­tion we pon­dered over Mars: is there life out there?” As you may have heard, NASA’s Kepler mis­sion has dis­cov­ered a “hab­it­able zone” of plan­ets in anoth­er solar sys­tem with two suns—a find sure to pique the curios­i­ty of kids of all ages, and one that would have excit­ed Sagan to no end.

See Sagan’s Christ­mas lec­tures with bet­ter video and audio qual­i­ty at the Roy­al Institution’s web­site, and please—whether you’re a par­ent, teacher, old­er sib­ling, etc.—share these with the kids in your life.

These lec­tures will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan Presents His “Baloney Detec­tion Kit”: 8 Tools for Skep­ti­cal Think­ing

Carl Sagan Explains Evo­lu­tion in an Eight-Minute Ani­ma­tion

Carl Sagan Issues a Chill­ing Warn­ing to Amer­i­ca in His Final Inter­view (1996)

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Explore Harvard’s Iconic Spaces with 360° Interactive Videos

in Education, Harvard, Life, Technology, Travel, Web/Tech | June 15th, 2016

For me, noth­ing cap­tures those occa­sion­al feel­ings of post-grad­u­ate yearn­ing like “I Wish I Could Go Back to Col­lege,” a N‑quite-SFW track from the Broad­way musi­cal, Avenue Q.

With all due respect, it feels like the five mem­bers of Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty’s just-grad­u­at­ed Class of 2016 shar­ing their rec­ol­lec­tions in the inter­ac­tive 360° video project, Har­vard Stu­dents Say Farewell, left a few cru­cial details out. (Note: Youtube 360 videos only work in Chrome, Fire­fox, Inter­net Explor­er, or Opera browsers.)

It’s com­plete­ly safe for prospec­tive par­ents, not a keg or con­dom wrap­per in sight. (The project is host­ed on Harvard’s offi­cial Youtube chan­nel.)

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, Har­vard appears to have been the par­tic­i­pants’ uni­ver­sal first choice of col­lege. Hasty Pud­ding per­former, Joshuah Camp­bell, above, a self-described “Black kid from the coun­try,” con­fides that it was the only place he applied to.

He may have arrived won­der­ing how he would fit in, but four years lat­er, his grub­by dorm room is one of the “icon­ic” Har­vard loca­tions view­ers can explore dig­i­tal­ly as he briefly reflects upon his expe­ri­ence.

That’s about as down and dirty as this series gets. The human sub­jects seem to have been select­ed with an eye toward diver­si­ty and humil­i­ty, rather than the clenched Boston Brah­min jaw that once defined the insti­tu­tion.

Mean­while, the libraries, quads, and the­aters through which this new breed of Har­vard men and women wan­der attest to the place’s ongo­ing exclu­siv­i­ty.

Sree­ja Kala­pu­rakkel, above, a mem­ber of the Har­vard South Asian Dance Com­pa­ny, knew what she was get­ting into, as a stu­dent at a respect­ed Boston sec­ondary school. Short­ly after grad­u­a­tion, she sung Har­vard’s prais­es some­what more frankly on her Face­book page:

Each day of my time at Har­vard was filled with every­thing that makes life beau­ti­ful: dark­ness, strug­gle, despair, lone­li­ness, friend­ship, hope, per­se­ver­ance, light. Every expe­ri­ence, every les­son, every friend trans­formed me into some­one more human and gave me some­thing new to fight for.

Har­vard, like every oth­er col­lege in the land, has relaxed its pol­i­cy on end­ing a sen­tence in a prepo­si­tion.

Ana-Maria Con­stan­tin arrived sight unseen from her native Roma­nia to pull us out onto the deck of the Smith­son­ian Astro­phys­i­cal Obser­va­to­ry.

On to the lock­er room! Hock­ey cap­tain Kyle Criscuo­lo joins the Detroit Red Wings, reflect­ing that Har­vard stu­dent ath­letes enjoy no spe­cial treat­ment. In future, the uni­ver­si­ty may want to require them to lis­ten to Will Stephen’s lec­ture, “How to Sound Smart in a TED Talk.” Criscuo­lo sounds sin­cere, but also stiff, as if read­ing from a sheet of paper, or the dig­i­tal equiv­a­lent there­of.

(There­of is an adverb, by the way. Not a prepo­si­tion. I checked.)

Har­vard Art Muse­ums Stu­dent Board mem­ber Rachel Thomp­son paints her­self so meek­ly, I’m tempt­ed to check with her fresh­man year room­mate. Was she real­ly so filled with self doubt? I’ve always assumed Har­vard accep­tance let­ters would puff the recip­i­ent up. Good lord, imag­ine the effect the rejec­tion let­ters must have!

Use a mouse to explore the immer­sive envi­ron­ment on your com­put­er, or the YouTube app to nav­i­gate on a mobile device. Use a vir­tu­al real­i­ty head­set and the Har­vard Crim­son staff’s vocab­u­lary list to enhance the expe­ri­ence even more.

The com­plete playlist is here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­vard Presents Free Cours­es with the Open Learn­ing Ini­tia­tive

NPR Launch­es Data­base of Best Com­mence­ment Speech­es Ever

The Har­vard Clas­sics: Down­load All 51 Vol­umes as Free eBooks

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Atlantic Slave Trade Visualized in Two Minutes: 10 Million Lives, 20,000 Voyages, Over 315 Years

in Animation, Education, History, Online Courses | June 14th, 2016

Not since the six­ties and sev­en­ties, with the black pow­er move­ment, flow­er­ing of Afro­cen­tric schol­ar­ship, and debut of Alex Haley’s Roots, nov­el and mini-series, has there been so much pop­u­lar inter­est in the his­to­ry of slav­ery. We have seen Roots remade; award-win­ning books like Edward Baptist’s The Half Has Nev­er Been Told climb best­seller lists; and The Freedman’s Bureau Project’s dig­i­ti­za­tion of 1.5 mil­lion slav­ery-era doc­u­ments gives cit­i­zen-schol­ars the tools to research the his­to­ry on their own.

In addi­tion to these devel­op­ments, Slate mag­a­zine has designed a mul­ti­part, mul­ti­me­dia course, “The His­to­ry of Amer­i­can Slav­ery,” as part of its online edu­ca­tion­al ini­tia­tive, “Slate Acad­e­my.” Host­ed by Slate’s Jamelle Bouie and Rebec­ca Onion and fea­tur­ing guest his­to­ri­ans like Bap­tist, Hen­ry Louis Gates, Jr., Annette Gor­don-Reed, Eric Fon­er and more, this thor­ough sur­vey con­sists of a nine-part pod­cast, with copi­ous sup­ple­men­tary essays, book excerpts, and oth­er resources draw­ing on pri­ma­ry doc­u­ments and arti­facts. One sup­ple­ment, the ani­ma­tion above, shows us the “The Atlantic Slave Trade in Two Min­utes.”

Visu­al­iz­ing 315 years—“from the trade’s begin­ning in the 16th cen­tu­ry to its con­clu­sion in the 19th”—the ani­ma­tion dis­plays slave ships as increas­ing num­bers of black dots zip­ping across the Atlantic to the Amer­i­c­as from the African coasts. The dots “also cor­re­spond to the size of each voy­age. The larg­er the dot, the more enslaved peo­ple on board.” The Youtube video above pro­vides only a par­tial rep­re­sen­ta­tion of this impres­sive graph­ic. The full ani­ma­tion at Slate allows users to pause, click on indi­vid­ual dots, and get detailed infor­ma­tion, when avail­able, about the name of the ship, num­ber of enslaved peo­ple trans­port­ed, and points of ori­gin and entry in the New World.

In all, we see ani­mat­ed “more than 20,000 voy­ages cat­a­logued in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Data­base.” And though we typ­i­cal­ly, with typ­i­cal U.S. solip­sism, think of Amer­i­can slav­ery as a most­ly North Amer­i­can phe­nom­e­non, the truth is quite the con­trary:

Of the more than 10 mil­lion enslaved Africans to even­tu­al­ly reach the West­ern Hemi­sphere, just 388,747—less than 4 per­cent of the total—came to North Amer­i­ca. This was dwarfed by the 1.3 mil­lion brought to Span­ish Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, the 4 mil­lion brought to British, French, Dutch, and Dan­ish hold­ings in the Caribbean, and the 4.8 mil­lion brought to Brazil.

Ear­ly slave expe­di­tions were con­duct­ed by the Span­ish and Por­tuguese. “In the 1700s,” writes Bouie, “Span­ish trans­port dimin­ish­es and is replaced (and exceed­ed) by British, French, Dutch, and—by the end of the century—American activ­i­ty. This hun­dred years—from approx­i­mate­ly 1725 to 1825—is also the high-water mark of the slave trade, as Euro­peans send more than 7.2 mil­lion peo­ple to forced labor, dis­ease and death in the New World.” Sur­pris­ing­ly, Por­tu­gal remained one of the lead­ing nations among enslavers for most of the slave-trade’s his­to­ry.

The ani­ma­tion and short explana­to­ry essay by Bouie show us the stag­ger­ing his­tor­i­cal scope of the immense­ly prof­itable and pro­found­ly inhu­mane enter­prise that shaped not only the Unit­ed States, but also—in many ways more so—Central and South Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean. There is no his­to­ry of the Amer­i­c­as, and no growth of many of the colonies into wealthy, world-his­tor­i­cal nations, with­out slav­ery, nor can the wealth of Europe be in any way divorced from the prof­its of the slave trade and slave indus­try. Bouie and Onion explain in the short video above why they decid­ed to pro­duce the course.

For a sense of how his­to­ri­ans’ and the public’s under­stand­ing of slav­ery have changed over many decades—for all kinds of ide­o­log­i­cal reasons—read this excerpt from Baptist’s ground­break­ing book. As he says in an inter­view with Salon, most his­to­ries and recre­ations of the peri­od of enslave­ment attempt to hide the facts: “The resis­tance to reck­on­ing with the role of slav­ery in the tra­jec­to­ry that makes the U.S. the most pow­er­ful nation on earth, that’s real; that’s very, very deep…. What­ev­er we say about the role of the U.S. in glob­al his­to­ry, it’s absolute­ly clear to me that slav­ery is essen­tial to the rise of U.S. pow­er.” Slate’s series goes a long way toward telling us the true his­to­ry of slav­ery, from the mouths of writ­ers and schol­ars who engage with it dai­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1.5 Mil­lion Slav­ery Era Doc­u­ments Will Be Dig­i­tized, Help­ing African Amer­i­cans to Learn About Their Lost Ances­tors

The “Slave Bible” Removed Key Bib­li­cal Pas­sages In Order to Legit­imize Slav­ery & Dis­cour­age a Slave Rebel­lion (1807)

Mas­sive New Data­base Will Final­ly Allow Us to Iden­ti­fy Enslaved Peo­ples and Their Descen­dants in the Amer­i­c­as

Crowd­sourced Data­base Will Locate the Bur­ial Sites of For­got­ten US Slaves

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 12 ) |

The Battle to Finish a PhD: World War I Soldier Completes His Dissertation in the Trenches (1916)

in Education, History, Life | June 1st, 2016

phd in trenches

Con­nie Ruzich, a WWI poet­ry blog­ger, recent­ly high­light­ed on Twit­ter a his­toric news­pa­per clip­ping that will put the tra­vails of acad­eme into per­spec­tive. Get­ting a Ph.D. is always hard. But hard is rel­a­tive.

Case in point…

100 years ago, Pierre Mau­rice Mas­son, a young schol­ar, found him­self fight­ing in north-east­ern France. Draft­ed in 1914, Mas­son rose through the mil­i­tary ranks, mov­ing from sergeant, to sub-lieu­tenant, to lieu­tenant. Mean­while, in the dis­com­fort of the trench­es, he con­tin­ued work­ing on his doc­tor­al thesis–a long dis­ser­ta­tion on the reli­gious train­ing of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. By the spring of 1916, he had com­plet­ed the text, cor­rect­ed the proofs, and draft­ed an intro­duc­tion (of course, that comes last). Final­ly, he announced to friends, “The mon­ster is ready!” And he sought a leave of absence to return to the Sor­bonne to receive his doc­tor­ate.

Alas, that did­n’t hap­pen. The news­pa­per clip above tells the rest of the poignant sto­ry.

You can read Mas­son’s posthu­mous­ly pub­lished the­sis, La for­ma­tion religieuse de Rousseau, free online.

via Ted Gioia/Con­nie Ruzich

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Illus­trat­ed Guide to a Ph.D.

Read John Nash’s Super Short PhD The­sis with 26 Pages & 2 Cita­tions: The Beau­ty of Invent­ing a Field

Ser­i­al Entre­pre­neur Damon Horowitz Says “Quit Your Tech Job and Get a Ph.D. in the Human­i­ties”

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Mad Magazine’s Al Jaffee & Other Cartoonists Create Animations to End Distracted Driving

in Animation, Comics/Cartoons, Education, Life | May 23rd, 2016


Mod­el Ts were the aver­age American’s car of choice in 1921, when car­toon­ist Al Jaf­fee was born.

The father of MAD Mag­a­zine’s fold-ins was but sev­en when the T’s suc­ces­sor, the Mod­el A, was intro­duced.

It would be a long time before such inno­va­tions as seat belts, baby seats, and airbags were intro­duced. These safe­ty mea­sures do a fine job of min­i­miz­ing human dam­age in motor vehi­cle acci­dents, but they can’t pre­vent the col­li­sions them­selves.

To rem­e­dy this, Ford, the com­pa­ny respon­si­ble for the Mod­el T and hun­dreds of motor vehi­cles since, recent­ly enlist­ed Jaf­fee and his fel­low car­toon­ists, MK Brown and Bill Plymp­ton, to edu­cate the pub­lic on the dan­gers of dis­tract­ed dri­ving. Turns out this pre­ventable scourge rivals intox­i­ca­tion and haz­ardous road con­di­tions as a lead­ing cause of acci­dents.

Jaffee’s take, ani­mat­ed by J.J. Sedel­maier, above, will nev­er be mis­tak­en for film­mak­er Wern­er Her­zog’s har­row­ing anti-tex­ting doc­u­men­tary PSA, From One Sec­ond to the Next, or even Jaffee’s own anti-drunk dri­ving fold-in from MAD’s March 1975 issue.

Instead, he offers a gen­tle, child-friend­ly metaphor in which an uncaged bird becomes a hav­oc-wreak­ing dis­trac­tion. (For­tu­nate­ly, everyone’s wear­ing his seat­belt, and the lit­tle boy is rid­ing in back, in com­pli­ance with CDC rec­om­men­da­tions.)


Nation­al Lam­poon alum, Brown, tip­toes clos­er to the true caus­es of dis­trac­tion, with the alien-themed seg­ment, above, also ani­mat­ed by Sedel­maier. If it seems like­li­er that the alien’s earth­ling wife might do her hen­peck­ing via text rather than actu­al call these days—well, some­times dra­mat­ic lib­er­ties are war­rant­ed to get the mes­sage across.


Unsur­pris­ing­ly, Plympton’s self-ani­mat­ed con­tri­bu­tion is the most graph­ic, a direct descen­dent of his fab­u­lous­ly grotesque car­toon primers 25 Ways To Quit Smok­ing and How To Kiss. Moral? Assum­ing you want to keep your teeth in your head, the veg­etable mat­ter wedged in between can wait ’til you reach your des­ti­na­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wern­er Herzog’s Eye-Open­ing New Film Reveals the Dan­gers of Tex­ting While Dri­ving

Al Jaf­fee, the Longest Work­ing Car­toon­ist in His­to­ry, Shows How He Invent­ed the Icon­ic “Folds-Ins” for Mad Mag­a­zine

Read­ing While Dri­ving, Seri­ous­ly?

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky. Her plan for avoid­ing acci­dents is to refrain from dri­ving when­ev­er pos­si­ble. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Learning How to Learn: The Most Popular MOOC of All Time

in Education, Neuroscience, Online Courses | May 23rd, 2016

When MOOCs (Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es) first start­ed mak­ing head­lines in 2012, we read sto­ries about thou­sands of peo­ple enrolling in cours­es on Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence and Com­put­er Sci­ence. Since then, the MOOC providers have dou­bled down on pro­mot­ing tech­ni­cal and util­i­tar­i­an courses–courses that will get stu­dents jobs, and even­tu­al­ly make the MOOC providers mon­ey. Peruse this list of the 50 most pop­u­lar MOOCs of all time, and you’ll seen plen­ty of mar­ket-ori­ent­ed cours­es top­ping the list–e.g., #4) Intro­duc­tion to Finance #3) R Pro­gram­ming, and #2) Machine Learn­ing. But what’s the most pop­u­lar course? Some­thing not entire­ly career-focused. Some­thing not imme­di­ate­ly mon­e­ti­z­able. Some­thing that can ben­e­fit us all. Ladies and gen­tle­men, the #1 course, Learn­ing How to Learn: Pow­er­ful men­tal tools to help you mas­ter tough sub­jects.

Cre­at­ed by Bar­bara Oak­ley (Uni­ver­si­ty of Oak­land) and Ter­ry Sejnows­ki (the Salk Insti­tute), Learn­ing How to Learn uses neu­ro­science to fine-tune our abil­i­ty to learn. And the course is being offered again, start­ing today, through Cours­era. You can enroll here (the course is free) and read what ground the course will cov­er below.

This course gives you easy access to the invalu­able learn­ing tech­niques used by experts in art, music, lit­er­a­ture, math, sci­ence, sports, and many oth­er dis­ci­plines. We’ll learn about the how the brain uses two very dif­fer­ent learn­ing modes and how it encap­su­lates (“chunks”) infor­ma­tion. We’ll also cov­er illu­sions of learn­ing, mem­o­ry tech­niques, deal­ing with pro­cras­ti­na­tion, and best prac­tices shown by research to be most effec­tive in help­ing you mas­ter tough sub­jects. Using these approach­es, no mat­ter what your skill lev­els in top­ics you would like to mas­ter, you can change your think­ing and change your life. If you’re already an expert, this peep under the men­tal hood will give you ideas for: tur­bocharg­ing suc­cess­ful learn­ing, includ­ing counter-intu­itive test-tak­ing tips and insights that will help you make the best use of your time on home­work and prob­lem sets. If you’re strug­gling, you’ll see a struc­tured trea­sure trove of prac­ti­cal tech­niques that walk you through what you need to do to get on track. If you’ve ever want­ed to become bet­ter at any­thing, this course will help serve as your guide.

This course gives you easy access to the invalu­able learn­ing tech­niques used by experts in art, music, lit­er­a­ture, math, sci­ence, sports, and many oth­er dis­ci­plines. We’ll learn about the how the brain uses two very dif­fer­ent learn­ing modes and how it encap­su­lates (“chunks”) infor­ma­tion. We’ll also cov­er illu­sions of learn­ing, mem­o­ry tech­niques, deal­ing with pro­cras­ti­na­tion, and best prac­tices shown by research to be most effec­tive in help­ing you mas­ter tough sub­jects. Using these approach­es, no mat­ter what your skill lev­els in top­ics you would like to mas­ter, you can change your think­ing and change your life. If you’re already an expert, this peep under the men­tal hood will give you ideas for: tur­bocharg­ing suc­cess­ful learn­ing, includ­ing counter-intu­itive test-tak­ing tips and insights that will help you make the best use of your time on home­work and prob­lem sets. If you’re strug­gling, you’ll see a struc­tured trea­sure trove of prac­ti­cal tech­niques that walk you through what you need to do to get on track. If you’ve ever want­ed to become bet­ter at any­thing, this course will help serve as your guide.

To find reviews of Learn­ing How to Learn, vis­it Class Cen­tral. To keep tabs on new MOOCs, see our list of MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast