Why Making Accurate World Maps Is Mathematically Impossible

in History, Maps | December 5th, 2016

Jorge Luis Borges once wrote of an empire where­in “the Art of Car­tog­ra­phy attained such Per­fec­tion that the map of a sin­gle Province occu­pied the entire­ty of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entire­ty of a Province.” Still unsat­is­fied, “the Car­tog­ra­phers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coin­cid­ed point for point with it.” But pos­ter­i­ty, when they lost their ances­tors’ obses­sion for car­tog­ra­phy, judged “that vast Map was Use­less, and not with­out some Piti­less­ness was it, that they deliv­ered it up to the Inclemen­cies of Sun and Win­ters.” With that enor­mous map, in all its sin­gu­lar accu­ra­cy, cast out, small­er, imper­fect ones pre­sum­ably won the day again.

With that well-known sto­ry “On Exac­ti­tude in Sci­ence,” Borges illus­trat­ed the idea that all maps are wrong by imag­in­ing the pre­pos­ter­ous­ness of a tru­ly cor­rect one. The Vox video “Why All World Maps Are Wrong” cov­ers some of the same ter­ri­to­ry, as it were, first illus­trat­ing that idea by slit­ting open an inflat­able globe and try­ing, futile­ly, to get the result­ing plas­tic mess to lie flat.

“That right there is the eter­nal dilem­ma of map­mak­ers,” says the host in voiceover as the strug­gle con­tin­ues onscreen. “The sur­face of a sphere can­not be rep­re­sent­ed as a plane with­out some form of dis­tor­tion.” As a result, all of human­i­ty’s paper maps of the world–which in the task of turn­ing the sur­face of a sphere into a flat plane need to use a tech­nique called “projection”–distort geo­graph­i­cal real­i­ty by def­i­n­i­tion.

The Mer­ca­tor pro­jec­tion has, since its inven­tion by six­teenth-cen­tu­ry Flem­ish car­tog­ra­ph­er Ger­ar­dus Mer­ca­tor, pro­duced the most wide­ly-seen world maps. (If you grew up in Amer­i­ca, you almost cer­tain­ly spent a lot of time star­ing at Mer­ca­tor maps in the class­room.) But we hard­ly live under the lim­i­ta­tions of his day, nor those of the 1940s when Borges imag­ined his land-sized map. In our 21st cen­tu­ry, the satel­lite-based Glob­al Posi­tion­ing Sys­tem has “wiped out the need for paper maps as a means of nav­i­gat­ing both the sea and the sky,” but even so, “most web map­ping tools, like Google Maps, use the Mer­ca­tor” due to its “abil­i­ty to pre­serve shape and angles,” which “makes close-up views of cities more accu­rate.”

On the scale of a City, in more Bor­ge­sian words — and prob­a­bly on the scale of a Province and even the Empire — Mer­ca­tor pro­jec­tion still works just fine. “But the fact remains that there’s no right pro­jec­tion. Car­tog­ra­phers and math­e­mati­cians have cre­at­ed a huge library of avail­able pro­jec­tions, each with a new per­spec­tive on the plan­et, and each use­ful for a dif­fer­ent task.” You can com­pare and con­trast a few of them for your­self here, or take a clos­er look of some of the Mer­ca­tor pro­jec­tion’s size dis­tor­tions (mak­ing Green­land, for exam­ple, look as big as the whole of Africa) here. These chal­lenges and oth­ers have kept the Dis­ci­plines of Geog­ra­phy, unlike in Borges’ world, busy even today.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Car­tog­ra­phy, the “Most Ambi­tious Overview of Map Mak­ing Ever,” Now Free Online

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

Browse & Down­load 1,198 Free High Res­o­lu­tion Maps of U.S. Nation­al Parks

Down­load 67,000 His­toric Maps (in High Res­o­lu­tion) from the Won­der­ful David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

Free: Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Lets You Down­load Thou­sands of Maps from the Unit­ed States Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey

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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A Whiskey-Fueled Lin-Manuel Miranda Reimagines Hamilton as a Girl on Drunk History

in Comedy, History, Television, Theatre | December 2nd, 2016

Back in July of 1804, when Vice Pres­i­dent Aaron Burr fired a fatal round into the abdomen of for­mer Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury Alexan­der Hamil­ton, I won­der which sce­nario would have seemed more implau­si­ble: that these polit­i­cal rivals would one day be res­ur­rect­ed in the form of a black guy and a Nuy­or­i­can, or as two young women in reveal­ing­ly snug breech­es, above.

Time moves on. These days, your aver­age Hamil­ton-obsessed pre-teen may have trou­ble accept­ing that there was a time—Jan­u­ary 2015, to be exact—when most Amer­i­cans could­n’t say what the guy on the ten dol­lar bill was famous for.

I con­fess, until quite recent­ly, I was far more con­fi­dent in Arrest­ed Devel­op­ment’s fic­tion­al Bluth fam­i­ly’s exploits than any involv­ing Hamil­ton and Burr. This explains, in part, why I’m so drawn to the cast­ing instincts of Derek Waters’, cre­ator of Drunk His­to­ry. 

The most recent episode fea­tures Alia Shawkat, one of my favorite Arrest­ed Devel­op­ment play­ers as a sar­don­ic, pot­ty mouthed Hamil­ton.

No wor­ries that Drunk His­to­ry, which bills itself as a “liquored-up nar­ra­tion of our nation’s his­to­ry,” is the lat­est in a long line of John­ny-Come-Latelys, eager­ly bel­ly­ing up to the Hamil­ton trough.

Before Shawkat imbued him with her trade­mark edge, Drunk History’s Hamil­ton exud­ed the befud­dled sweet­ness of Shawkat’s besot­ted Arrest­ed Devel­op­ment cousin, Michael Cera, who orig­i­nat­ed the part in a video that gave rise to the series, below.

That one’s far slop­pi­er, and not just in terms of pro­duc­tion val­ues. The inau­gur­al nar­ra­tor, Mark Gagliar­di, was ren­dered a good deal more than three sheets to the wind by the bot­tle of scotch he downed on a sag­ging brown velour couch.

Amer­i­ca would not want to see its cur­rent sweet­heart, Hamilton’s play­wright and orig­i­nal lead­ing man, Lin-Manuel Miran­da in such a con­di­tion.

Where­as Gagliar­di seemed dan­ger­ous­ly close to need­ing the buck­et Waters thought­ful­ly posi­tioned near­by, a whiskey-fuelled Miran­da seems mere­ly the tini­est bit buzzed, sit­ting cross legged in his parent’s liv­ing room, flesh­ing out Hamilton’s sto­ry with bits he didn’t man­age to cram into his Pulitzer Prize-win­ning musi­cal, such as a bewigged Tony Hale (aka Buster Bluth) as James Mon­roe.

On the oth­er hand, he does describe the Reynolds Pam­phlet as “Dick 101” (and failed to recall Face­Tim­ing var­i­ous friends post-record­ing) so…

You’ll need a Com­e­dy Cen­tral sub­scrip­tion to view the com­plete episode online, but Shawkat’s ear­li­er Drunk His­to­ry turn as Grover Cleveland’s “It Girl” wife, Frances, is free for all, here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Alexan­der Hamil­ton” Per­formed with Amer­i­can Sign Lan­guage

Alexan­der Hamil­ton: Hip-Hop Hero at the White House Poet­ry Evening

Watch a Wit­ty, Grit­ty, Hard­boiled Retelling of the Famous Aaron Burr-Alexan­der Hamil­ton Duel

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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An Animated Introduction to George Orwell

in History, Literature | November 28th, 2016

When his short and (by his own account) often mis­er­able life came to an end in 1950, could the Eng­lish polit­i­cal writer Eric Arthur Blair have known that he would not just become a house­hold name, but remain one well over half a cen­tu­ry lat­er? Giv­en his adop­tion of the mem­o­rable nom de plume George Orwell, we might say he had an inkling of his lit­er­ary lega­cy’s poten­tial. Still, he claimed to choose it for no grander rea­son than that it sound­ed like “a good round Eng­lish name,” and would have loathed the pre­tense he sensed in the use of the phrase “nom de plume,” or, for that mat­ter, any oth­er of con­spic­u­ous­ly for­eign prove­nance.

The atti­tudes that shaped the author of Ani­mal Farm and 1984 come out in this ani­mat­ed intro­duc­tion to Orwell’s life and work, new­ly pub­lished by Alain de Bot­ton’s School of Life. In explain­ing the moti­va­tions of this “most famous Eng­lish lan­guage writer of the 20th cen­tu­ry,” de Bot­ton quotes from the essay “Why I Write,” where­in Orwell, with char­ac­ter­is­tic clar­i­ty, lays out his mis­sion “to make polit­i­cal writ­ing into an art. My start­ing point is always a feel­ing of par­ti­san­ship, a sense of injus­tice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to pro­duce a work of art.’ I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw atten­tion, and my ini­tial con­cern is to get a hear­ing.”

Orwell hat­ed his fel­low intel­lec­tu­als, whom he accused of “a range of sins: a lack of patri­o­tism, resent­ment of mon­ey and phys­i­cal vig­or, con­cealed sex­u­al frus­tra­tion, pre­ten­sion, and dis­hon­esty.” He loved “the ordi­nary per­son” and the lives led by those “not espe­cial­ly blessed by mate­r­i­al goods, peo­ple who work in ordi­nary jobs, who don’t have much of an edu­ca­tion, who won’t achieve great­ness, and who nev­er­the­less love, care for oth­ers, work, have fun, raise chil­dren, and have large thoughts about the deep­est ques­tions in ways Orwell thought espe­cial­ly admirable.” Though raised mid­dle-class and edu­cat­ed at Eton, Orwell eschewed uni­ver­si­ty and believed that “the aver­age pub in a coal-min­ing vil­lage con­tained more intel­li­gence and wis­dom than the British Cab­i­net or the high table of an Oxbridge col­lege.”

One might want to call such an intel­lec­tu­al a poseur or even a sort of fetishist, but Orwell backed up his pro­nounce­ments about the supe­ri­or­i­ty of the work­ing class with his years spent liv­ing and work­ing in it, and, with books like Down and Out in Paris and Lon­don and The Road to Wigan Pier, writ­ing about it. He praised news­pa­per comics, coun­try walks, danc­ing, Charles Dick­ens, and straight­for­ward lan­guage, all of which informed the attacks on ide­ol­o­gy and author­i­tar­i­an­ism that would keep his writ­ing mean­ing­ful for future gen­er­a­tions. The hol­i­day sea­son now upon us makes anoth­er work of Orwell’s espe­cial­ly rel­e­vant: his Christ­mas pud­ding recipe, one blow in his less­er-known strug­gle to, as the Lon­don-based de Bot­ton puts it, write “brave­ly in defense of Eng­lish cook­ing” — a project which would, by itself, qual­i­fy him as a cham­pi­on of the under­dog.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Orwell’s Five Great­est Essays (as Select­ed by Pulitzer-Prize Win­ning Colum­nist Michael Hiltzik)

George Orwell Explains in a Reveal­ing 1944 Let­ter Why He’d Write 1984

For 95 Min­utes, the BBC Brings George Orwell to Life

George Orwell’s Final Warn­ing: Don’t Let This Night­mare Sit­u­a­tion Hap­pen. It Depends on You! 

What “Orwellian” Real­ly Means: An Ani­mat­ed Les­son About the Use & Abuse of the Term

Try George Orwell’s Recipe for Christ­mas Pud­ding, from His Essay “British Cook­ery” (1945)

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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Watch Georges Méliès’ The Dreyfus Affair, the Controversial Film Censored by the French Government for 50 Years (1899)

in Film, History, Politics | November 28th, 2016

His­to­ry resounds with events so momen­tous they can be con­jured with a sin­gle word: Water­loo, Water­gate, Tianan­men, Brex­it.…

In the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, one sim­ple phrase, J’Ac­cuse!—the title of an open let­ter pub­lished by nov­el­ist Emile Zola—stood for a seri­ous injus­tice that inflamed the polit­i­cal pas­sions of artists, jour­nal­ists, and the pub­lic for decades after­ward, and pre­saged some of the 20th century’s most incred­i­ble state crimes.

Zola wrote in defense of French artillery cap­tain Alfred Drey­fus, who was accused, court-mar­shalled, and sen­tenced to life impris­on­ment on Devil’s Island for sup­pos­ed­ly giv­ing mil­i­tary secrets to the Ger­mans. It was the tri­al of the cen­tu­ry, writes Adam Gop­nik at The New York­er, and after­ward, Drey­fus, “a young Jew­ish artillery offi­cer and fam­i­ly man.… was pub­licly degrad­ed before a gawk­ing crowd.”

His insignia medals were stripped from him, his sword was bro­ken over the knee of the degrad­er, and he was marched around the grounds in his ruined uni­form to be jeered and spat at, while piteous­ly declar­ing his inno­cence and his love of France above cries of “Jew” and “Judas!”

Two years lat­er, com­pelling evi­dence came to light that showed anoth­er offi­cer, Fer­di­nand Ester­hazy, had com­mit­ted the trea­so­nous offence. But the evi­dence was buried, and the offi­cer who found it trans­ferred to North Africa and lat­er impris­oned. The Drey­fus Affair marked a major turn in Euro­pean civ­il soci­ety, “the moment where [Guy de] Maupassant’s world of ambi­tion and plea­sure met Kafka’s world of inex­plic­a­ble bureau­crat­ic suf­fer­ing.” After a per­func­to­ry two-day tri­al, Ester­hazy was unan­i­mous­ly acquit­ted by a mil­i­tary court, and Drey­fus con­vict­ed of addi­tion­al charges based on fal­si­fied doc­u­ments.

Five years after Drey­fus’ con­vic­tion, his sup­port­ers, the “Drey­fusards,” includ­ing Zola, Hen­ri Poin­care, and Georges Clemenceau, forced the gov­ern­ment to retry the case. Drey­fus was ulti­mate­ly par­doned, and lat­er ful­ly exon­er­at­ed and rein­stat­ed in the French army. He went on to serve with dis­tinc­tion in World War I.

dreyfus-disciples

Drey­fus’ accusers’ have most­ly sunk into obscu­ri­ty. His sup­port­ers— some car­i­ca­tured above as “the twelve apos­tles of Dreyfus”—included some of the most illus­tri­ous men of arts and let­ters in France. They can count among their num­ber the great French direc­tor and cin­e­mat­ic vision­ary Georges Méliès. Dur­ing the heat­ed year of 1899, “Méliès made a series of eleven one-minute non-fic­tion films about the Drey­fus Affair as it was still unfold­ing,” writes Eliz­abth Ezra,” por­tray­ing sym­pa­thet­i­cal­ly Drey­fus’ arrest,” impris­on­ment, and retri­al. You can watch Méliès’ com­plete Drey­fus film at the top of the post.

It may be dif­fi­cult to appre­ci­ate the dar­ing of Méliès’ project from our his­tor­i­cal dis­tance, and in the some­what alien idiom of silent film. “For today’s view­ers,” writes Ezra, “it is not always easy to dis­cern the sym­pa­thet­ic ele­ments of the films, but the abun­dance of huffy ges­tur­ing and self-right­eous facial expres­sions on the part of Drey­fus make of him a dig­ni­fied hero who refus­es to be degrad­ed by the accu­sa­tions made against him.” (In this respect, Méliès antic­i­pat­ed anoth­er silent film about anoth­er unjust tri­al in France, Carl Dreyer’s The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc.)

Like­wise, we may find it hard to under­stand the sig­nif­i­cant social import of “Méliès’ only known expres­sion of polit­i­cal com­mit­ment.” But to under­stand the Drey­fus Affair, we must under­stand, as the Nation­al Library of Israel points out, that “France was already a divid­ed coun­try and the case act­ed as a casus bel­li.… ‘The Jew from Alsace’ encap­su­lat­ed all that the nation­al­ist right loathed, and there­fore became the sym­bol of the nation’s pro­found divi­sion.” Land­ing in the mid­dle of this polit­i­cal firestorm, Méliès’ Drey­fus series “pro­voked par­ti­san fist­fights,” writes Ezra.

Not only did the Drey­fus case intro­duce into the pub­lic eye a vicious anti-Semit­ic show-tri­al, but it also served as a test case for cen­sor­ship and media sen­sa­tion­al­ism. Méliès’ film, says author Susan Daitch in the On the Media episode above, was the first docu­d­ra­ma, the “first recre­ation based on pho­tographs and illus­tra­tions in week­ly news­pa­pers in France at the time.” And it proved so con­tro­ver­sial that it was banned, along with all oth­er Drey­fus films, for fifty years, and only shown again in France in 1974.

The film, says Daitch—who has writ­ten a nov­el based on the Drey­fus Affair—emerged with­in a par­ti­san mass media war of the kind we’re far too famil­iar with today. “Both sides,” Daitch tells us, “used and altered the media,” and Drey­fus was both suc­cess­ful­ly rail­road­ed into prison and suc­cess­ful­ly retried and exon­er­at­ed part­ly on the strength of his sup­port­ers’ and accusers’ pro­pa­gan­da cam­paigns.

The Drey­fus Affair will be added to our list of Free Silent Films, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

The film is con­sid­ered to be in the pub­lic domain in the Unit­ed States and comes to us via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Hor­ror Film, George Méliès’ The Haunt­ed Cas­tle (1896)

Watch After the Ball, the 1897 “Adult” Film by Pio­neer­ing Direc­tor Georges Méliès (Almost NSFW)

Carl Dreyer’s The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc (1928) Gets an Epic, Instru­men­tal Sound­track from the Indie Band Joan of Arc

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

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British Advertisers Predict in 1935 What the World Will Look Like in 2500: Wireless TV, Atomic Cars & More

in Business, History, Sci Fi | November 28th, 2016

greys-1

Back before the pub­lic came to terms with the grim causal rela­tion­ship between cig­a­rettes and can­cer, smok­ing was a jol­ly affair, whose plea­sures extend­ed well beyond the phys­i­cal act.

Smok­ing was socia­ble. Yes, there were cer­tain sit­u­a­tions in which three on a match could spell doom, but a far greater like­li­hood that light­ing an attrac­tive stranger’s cof­fin nail might kin­dle con­ver­sa­tion, and more.

If you were at a loss for words, you might break the ice with the trad­ing cards man­u­fac­tur­ers slipped inside cig­a­rette packs, such as these mid-30s beau­ties that came inside packs of Greys, a now-defunct British cig­a­rette brand, and favorite of WWI vets.

The sub­ject is unusu­al. Sports, cin­e­ma stars, and mil­i­tary scenes were com­mon themes of the time. The “Greys Antic­i­pa­tions” series took cre­ative lib­er­ties, by imag­in­ing a (can­cer-free) year 2500, in which Lon­don­ers would be privy to such inno­va­tions as solar-light­ing, mov­ing side­walks, and wire­less tele­vi­sion…

Great Scott! Were they psy­chic!?

Hope­ful­ly not.

Hope­ful­ly, we’ve still got 484 years to find out…

picadilly-2500

“Pica­dil­ly, Lon­don, A.D. 2500: Roofed-in under non-con­duc­tive mica glass . . mov­ing path­ways . . rub­ber road­ways avenued into 50, 100, 150 and 200 miles per hour . . sus­pend­ed mono rail­ways . . motors dri­ven by atom­ic ener­gy . . pho­net­ic spelling . . wire­less tele­vi­sion . . light­ed by cap­tured solar rays . . excur­sions to Mars.”

I’m fine with excur­sions to Mars and mono­rails but atom­ic ener­gy is as prob­lem­at­ic as the health claims once put for­ward by cig­a­rette ads.

greys-2500-5

“At the Cus­toms House on the Roof of Lon­don, A.D. 2500: The rail­way train has fol­lowed the ichthyosaurus into extinc­tion. Mighty aer­i­al lin­ers trans­port pas­sen­gers in their thou­sands, with great car­goes of mer­chan­dise from con­ti­nent to con­ti­nent. Mankind, liv­ing amidst such tremen­dous achieve­ments, thinks, plans, and acts with cor­re­spond­ing big­ness.”

Hmm…I was kind of root­ing for train trav­el to make a come­back…

greys-2500-3

“The Plea­sure City, Lon­don, A.D. 2500: Plea­sure-seek­ing has been raised to a fine art … muti­tudes when the short day’s work is done find a sat­is­fy­ing means of relax­ation in smok­ing “GREYS” Cig­a­rettes and lis­ten­ing to the mam­moth mechan­i­cal orches­tra … char­ac­ter­is­tic of the music of the peri­od … music so com­plex that it can be ren­dered only by won­der­ous mech­a­nism.”

This does sound rather fun, depend­ing on who’s doing the pro­gram­ming… per­haps we should just stick with head­phones and a busker on every cor­ner.

greys-2500-4

A Hive of Indus­try, A.D. 2500: Lit­er­al­ly a “hive” in that it is a city unto itself … radi­at­ing from the mam­moth super-fac­to­ry are work­ers’ dwellings and asso­ci­at­ed insti­tutes … archi­tec­ture gov­erned by the pre­vail­ing mate­r­i­al — con­crete … no smoke (oth­er than from tobac­co!) … no house­hold cook­ing . . meals deliv­ered by pneu­mat­ic tube from cen­tral cook­house.

Um…I strong­ly sug­gest revis­it­ing Ter­ry Gilliam’s 1985 film, Brazil,  before sign­ing off on the whole pneu­mat­ic tube thing.

Dar­ran Ander­son, author of  Imag­i­nary Cities, took a clos­er look at one of the cards in the above talk about imag­i­nary Lon­don. I share his opin­ion that “phonet­ic spelling… is the best thing that they envis­aged of the future.”

He also notes that the card is about 20 years ahead of its time in pro­mot­ing a mid-50s‑style vision of the future, but that it failed to pre­dict the demise of Greys Cig­a­rettes, by promi­nent­ly adver­tis­ing them on the side of a sus­pend­ed mono­rail.

Hubris!

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In 1900, Ladies’ Home Jour­nal Pub­lish­es 28 Pre­dic­tions for the Year 2000

Niko­la Tesla’s Pre­dic­tions for the 21st Cen­tu­ry: The Rise of Smart Phones & Wire­less, The Demise of Cof­fee, The Rule of Eugen­ics (1926/35)

Cig­a­rette Com­mer­cials from David Lynch, the Coen Broth­ers and Jean Luc Godard

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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How to Know if Your Country Is Heading Toward Despotism: An Educational Film from 1946

in History, Politics, Yale | November 23rd, 2016

Nobody likes a despot — even despots know it. But actu­al­ly iden­ti­fy­ing despo­tism can pose a cer­tain dif­fi­cul­ty — which despots also know, and they’d sure­ly like to keep it that way. Hence Ency­clo­pe­dia Bri­tan­ni­ca’s Despo­tism, a ten-minute Erpi Class­room Film on how a coun­try slides into that epony­mous state. It uses the exam­ple of Nazi Ger­many (which might strike us today as the most obvi­ous one but back in 1946 must have felt almost too fresh), but gen­er­al­izes the con­cept by look­ing back into more dis­tant his­to­ry, as far as Louis XIV’s immor­tal remark, “L’é­tat, c’est moi.”

“You can rough­ly locate any com­mu­ni­ty in the world some­where along a scale run­ning all the way from democ­ra­cy to despo­tism,” says Despo­tism’s stan­dard-issue man­nered nar­ra­tor before turn­ing it over to a stan­dard-issue sack-suit­ed and Bryl­creemed expert. And how can we know where our own soci­ety places on that scale? “Well, for one,” says the expert, “avoid the com­fort­able idea that the mere form of gov­ern­ment can of itself safe­guard a nation against despo­tism.” The film intro­duces a series of sub-scales usable to gauge a com­mu­ni­ty’s despot­ic poten­tial: the respect scale, the pow­er scale, the eco­nom­ic dis­tri­b­u­tion scale, and the infor­ma­tion scale.

The respect scale mea­sures “how many cit­i­zens get an even break,” and on the despot­ic end, “com­mon cour­tesy is with­held from large groups of peo­ple on account of their polit­i­cal atti­tudes; if peo­ple are rude to oth­ers because they think their wealth and posi­tion gives them that right, or because they don’t like a man’s race or his reli­gion.” The pow­er scale  “gauges the cit­i­zen’s share in mak­ing the com­mu­ni­ty’s deci­sions. Com­mu­ni­ties which con­cen­trate deci­sion mak­ing in a few hands rate low on a pow­er scale and are mov­ing towards despo­tism,” and even “today democ­ra­cy can ebb away in com­mu­ni­ties whose cit­i­zens allow pow­er to become con­cen­trat­ed in the hands of boss­es.”

The eco­nom­ic dis­tri­b­u­tion scale turns into a warn­ing sign when a soci­ety’s “eco­nom­ic dis­tri­b­u­tion becomes slant­ed, its mid­dle income groups grow small­er and despo­tism stands a bet­ter chance to gain a foothold.” If “the con­cen­tra­tion of land own­er­ship in the hands of a very small num­ber of peo­ple” and “con­trol of jobs and busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties is in a few hands, despo­tism stands a good chance.” So it also does in a soci­ety which rates low on the infor­ma­tion scale, where “the press, radio, and oth­er chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion are con­trolled by only a few peo­ple and when cit­i­zens have to accept what they are told,” a process that ren­ders its cit­i­zens ulti­mate­ly unable to eval­u­ate claims and ideas for them­selves.

The oppo­site of despo­tism, so Despo­tism pro­pos­es, is democ­ra­cy, a type of gov­ern­ment explained in the pre­vi­ous year’s Erpi Class­room Film of that name. Ger­many, a repub­lic where once “an aggres­sive despo­tism took root and flour­ished under Adolf Hitler,” now per­forms admirably on the respect, pow­er, eco­nom­ic dis­tri­b­u­tion, and infor­ma­tion scales — not per­fect­ly, of course, but no coun­try can ever com­plete­ly escape the threat of despo­tism. Much about the econ­o­my and the nature of infor­ma­tion may have changed over the past 70 years, but noth­ing about respect and pow­er have. Whichev­er soci­ety we live in, and wher­ev­er on the spec­trum between democ­ra­cy and despo­tism it now stands, we’ll do well to keep an eye on the scales. Both films were made by Ency­clo­pe­dia Bri­tan­ni­ca, in con­junc­tion with Yale Uni­ver­si­ty’s then promi­nent polit­i­cal sci­en­tist Harold Lass­well.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Spot a Com­mu­nist Using Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism: A 1955 Man­u­al from the U.S. Mil­i­tary

Rare 1940 Audio: Thomas Mann Explains the Nazis’ Ulte­ri­or Motive for Spread­ing Anti-Semi­tism

Don­ald Duck’s Bad Nazi Dream and Four Oth­er Dis­ney Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons from World War II

George Orwell’s Final Warn­ing: Don’t Let This Night­mare Sit­u­a­tion Hap­pen. It Depends on You!

Umber­to Eco Makes a List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

Slavoj Žižek Calls Polit­i­cal Cor­rect­ness a Form of “Mod­ern Total­i­tar­i­an­ism”

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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The New York Times’ First Profile of Hitler: His Anti-Semitism Is Not as “Genuine or Violent” as It Sounds (1922)

in History | November 16th, 2016

new-popular-idol

I’ve heard it again and again. The now Pres­i­dent-elect made vicious and belit­tling attacks on African-Amer­i­cans, Mus­lims, immi­grants, women, the dis­abled, etc. dur­ing the cam­paign sea­son (and for sev­er­al decades before), but he didn’t mean it. And I have many ques­tions. For exam­ple, why should any­one assume—given the his­to­ry of coun­try after coun­try after country—that a bul­ly­ing nativist auto­crat doesn’t mean what he says?

We know celebri­ty breeds triv­i­al­iza­tion. But we also know well that in some of the most famous—but by no means only—cases of dem­a­gogues who rose to pow­er with hate speech, the rhetoric quick­ly turned to many years of incom­pre­hen­si­ble, yet cal­cu­lat­ed, bru­tal­i­ty. At least in the U.S., hard­ly any­one believed that the melo­dra­mat­ic vit­ri­ol Hitler and Mus­soli­ni spat at scape­goats of all kinds, espe­cial­ly Jews, should be tak­en very seri­ous­ly.

In 1922—at the dawn of Hitler’s bud­ding nation­al­ist move­ment—The New York Times pub­lished its first pro­file, and explained his dem­a­goguery away. The arti­cle, titled “New Pop­u­lar Idol Ris­es in Bavaria,” begins with sev­er­al alarm­ing sub­head­ings: “Hitler cred­it­ed with extra­or­di­nary pow­ers of sway­ing crowds to his will,” “forms gray-shirt­ed army… They obey orders implic­it­ly,” “Leader a reac­tionary,” “Anti-Red and Anti-Semit­ic.” It then goes on to under­mine these charges.

Accord­ing to “sev­er­al reli­able, well-informed [unnamed] sources,” we’re told, “Hitler’s anti-Semi­tism was not so gen­uine or vio­lent as it sound­ed,” though “the Hitler move­ment is not of a mere local or pic­turesque inter­est.”

He was mere­ly using anti-Semit­ic pro­pa­gan­da as a bait to catch mass­es of fol­low­ers and keep them aroused, enthu­si­as­tic and in line for the time when his orga­ni­za­tion is per­fect­ed and suf­fi­cient­ly pow­er­ful to be employed effec­tive­ly for polit­i­cal pur­pos­es.

What pur­pos­es? The paper quotes one admir­ing “sophis­ti­cat­ed politi­cian” as say­ing, “You can’t expect the mass­es to under­stand or appre­ci­ate your fin­er real aims. You must feed the mass­es with crud­er morsels and ideas like anti-Semi­tism. It would be polit­i­cal­ly all wrong to tell them the truth about where you real­ly are lead­ing them.” Where might this be? The shad­owy source did not say. We cyn­i­cal­ly expect all politi­cians to lie, to feed us “crud­er morsels.” But assum­ing that racism, big­otry, and scapegoating—whether sin­cere or not—will go down so eas­i­ly with so many peo­ple con­sti­tutes a very dark view of “the mass­es.”

nytimeshitler-2

Ten years lat­er, after Hitler was released from prison for trea­son and had begun his can­di­da­cy for pres­i­dent, many, even more com­pli­men­ta­ry, arti­cles would follow—as Rafael Med­off doc­u­ments in The Dai­ly Beast—all the way up to Time magazine’s nam­ing him “Man of the Year” for 1938.  “Why did many main­stream Amer­i­can news­pa­pers por­tray the Hitler regime pos­i­tive­ly,” asks Med­off, “espe­cial­ly in its ear­ly months? How could they pub­lish warm human-inter­est sto­ries about a bru­tal dic­ta­tor? Why did they excuse or ratio­nal­ize Nazi anti-Semi­tism? These are ques­tions that should haunt the con­science of U.S. jour­nal­ism to this day.”

One reporter in a 1933 Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor dis­patch from Ger­many informed his read­ers that “the train arrived punctually”—indulging a trope about fas­cists mak­ing the “trains run on time” that has aston­ish­ing­ly come back in cir­cu­la­tion via for­mer Cincin­nati may­or Ken Black­well. “Traf­fic was well reg­u­lat­ed.” The cor­re­spon­dent found “not the slight­est sign of any­thing unusu­al afoot.” The word we often hear for what hap­pened dur­ing the 30s is “nor­mal­iza­tion,” a process by which the most har­row­ing por­tents were blend­ed into the land­scape, ren­dered signs of noth­ing “unusu­al afoot.”

The nor­mal­iza­tion of Nazism in Ger­many involved a tremen­dous pro­pa­gan­da effort, much of it aimed at chil­dren. In the U.S., the press seemed more than will­ing to turn an eth­no-nation­al­ist move­ment with frightening—and plain­ly stated—objectives into an ordi­nary, ratio­nal state actor. Anti-Semi­tism was described as legit­i­mate polit­i­cal resent­ment or rea­son­able anger at Ger­man Jews’ “com­mer­cial clan­nish­ness.” Some­how the vic­tims of Nazism had to be respon­si­ble for their own mur­der and per­se­cu­tion. “There must be some rea­son,” wrote The Chris­t­ian Cen­tu­ry in an April, 1933 edi­to­r­i­al, “oth­er than race or creed—just what is that rea­son?” Few peo­ple, it seems, could or would allow them­selves to imag­ine that the new Ger­man Führer actu­al­ly meant what he said.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

How Did Hitler Rise to Pow­er? : New TED-ED Ani­ma­tion Pro­vides a Case Study in How Fas­cists Get Demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly Elect­ed

George Orwell Reviews Mein Kampf: “He Envis­ages a Hor­ri­ble Brain­less Empire” (1940)

Gand­hi Writes Let­ters to Hitler: “We Have Found in Non-Vio­lence a Force Which Can Match the Most Vio­lent Forces in the World” (1939/40)

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

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Thomas Edison’s Hugely Ambitious “To-Do” List from 1888

in History, Technology | November 16th, 2016

edison_todolist

Even beyond devel­op­ing the phono­graph, the motion pic­ture cam­era, light bulb, and the creepy talk­ing doll, Thomas Edi­son got a lot done in life. With his even greater knack for enter­prise than for inven­tion, he might, had he lived in the 21st cen­tu­ry, trad­ed on his rep­u­ta­tion for pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and indus­try by sell­ing us his per­son­al “life hacks.” Alas, those in search of Edis­on­ian tips and tricks for liv­ing must infer them from all the mate­ri­als he left behind after a life that stretched from the mid-19th cen­tu­ry to near­ly the mid-20th, such as this exten­sive to-do list from Jan­u­ary 3, 1888.

“Through­out his life, Thomas Edi­son kept ‘idea books’ filled with to-do lists, sketch­es and oth­er notes on cur­rent and future projects,” says the site of PBS’ Amer­i­can Expe­ri­ence. Just over a month after open­ing his new lab in West Orange, New Jer­sey, “Edi­son cre­at­ed a five-page list of ‘Things doing and to be done.’

That year alone, Edi­son would exe­cute 45 patents, pri­mar­i­ly con­cerned with the phono­graph and cylin­der records. Alexan­der Gra­ham Bell and his asso­ciates had begun to make improve­ments on Edison’s decade-old phono­graph, which pushed Edi­son into action. Despite this com­pe­ti­tion, Edis­on’s ‘To Do’ list shows that the phono­graph wasn’t the only thing on the inventor’s mind.”

These five pages of things to acquire or cre­ate (see the full list below) include not just the “New Stan­dard Phono­graph” but an “Improved Mag­net­ic Bridge for prac­ti­cal work,” “Unin­flam­ma­ble Insu­lat­ing Mate­r­i­al,” a “Box bal­anc­ing Sys­tem,” “Arti­fi­cial Moth­er Pearl,” “But­ter direct from Milk,” “Arti­fi­cial Ivory,” “Marine Teleg­ra­phy,” and a “Long dis­tance stan­dard Tele­phone Trans­mit­ter which employs devices of record­ing phono­graph.” While not all the ideas that inspired, or were inspired by, the items on this long list came to fruition, Edi­son clear­ly saw val­ue in get­ting them all out of his head and on paper. One won­ders what the man who declared that “genius is one per­cent inspi­ra­tion, nine­ty-nine per­cent per­spi­ra­tion” would make of the count­less orga­ni­za­tion and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty tools now on the mar­ket. Nobody ever per­spired because of using an app, after all — but plen­ty have per­spired devel­op­ing them.

Things doing and to be done:

Cot­ton Pick­er
New Stan­dard Phono­graph
Hand turn­ing phono­graph
New Slow speed cheap Dynamo
New Expan­sion Pyro­mag­net­ic Dynamo
Deaf Appa­ra­tus
Elec­tri­cal Piano
Long dis­tance stan­dard Tele­phone Trans­mit­ter which employs devices of record­ing phonogh
Tele­phone Coil of Fe [iron] by tt in Parafine or oth­er insu­la­tor
Plati­na Point Trans using new phono Recorder devices
Gred Bat­tery for Tele­phones
“ “ “ “ Long Dis­tance
“ “ “ — Phono­plex
“ “ “ Jump Tele­graph
“ “ “ Volt­meter
Improved Mag­net­ic Bridge for prac­ti­cal work
Moto­graph Mir­ror
“ Relay
“ Tele­phone prac­ti­cal
Arti­fi­cial Cable
Phone motor to work on 100 volt ckts
Dupli­cat­ing Phono Cylin­ders
Deposit in vac­uo on lace, gold + sil­ver also on cot­ton molten chem­i­cal com­pound of lus­trous sur­faces to imi­tate silk— also reg plat­ing sys­tem
Vac­u­ous Ore milling Large Machine
Mag­net­ic Sep­a­ra­tor Large
Lock­ing mate­r­i­al for Iron sand
Arti­fi­cial Silk
Arti­fi­cial fil­i­ments [sic]
New [illeg.]
Unin­flam­ma­ble Insu­lat­ing Mate­r­i­al
Good wax for phono­graph
Phono­graph­ic Clock
Large Phono­graph for Nov­els, etc.
Pig Iron Expmts with Elec­tric­i­ty + Mag­net­ism
Mal­leabliz­ing Cast now in Vac­uo
Draw­ing fine wire
Joy phono­graph for Dolls
Cable Moto­graph
Very Loud Moto­graph tele­phone with 1/3 siz phonogh motor.
Mag­ne­to tele­phone with actu­al con­tact end mag­net com­pres­sion of an adjustable rub­ber press as in new phones
Snow Com­pres­sor
Glass plate water ore repeator
Tinned faced [illeg.] for Stove Cast­ings
Refin­ing Cop­per Elec­tri­cal­ly
Quad neu­tral relay
Cheap low induct Cop Insu­lat­ing mate­r­i­al for Lead Cable peo­ple
Con­stant moved for non­foundry
200 volt 20 cp lamp
Cheap [illeg.] Indi­ca­tor
Record­ing Valt Indi­ca­tor
Box bal­anc­ing Sys­tem
Alter­nat­ing Machine + Trans­former
Sifua Sur­face Switch­es
Vul­can­iz­ing [illeg.] African Rub­ber adulle­ment
Plat­inum wire [illeg.] cut­ting Machine
Sil­ver wire wood cut­ting sys­tem
Sil­ver­ing or Cop­per­ing bathing cloth in Vac for dura­bil­i­ty
S Mater attend own with new devices for c speed
Expan­sion mir­ror plat… wire in vac­uo
Pho­toghy
Pho­toghy by camp­ing heat after cen­tral points
Boron fil.
Hg [mer­cury] out of Lamp
Phonaplex Repeater
Squirt­ing glass sheet tube etc. Nick­el [illeg.]
Arti­fi­cial Moth­er Pearl
Red Lead pen­cils equal to graphite
India Ink
Trac­ing Cloth
Ink for blind
Fluffy Incan­des­cent Burn­er for gas
Regen­er­a­tive Kerosene Burn­er
Cen­tral­ized arc in arc Lamp
Cai–[illeg.] Tes­la arc lamp test
Strength­en­ing alter­nat­ing cli by sternt Dynamo
ERR Cont [illeg.] reduc­ers
Elec­tro­plat­ing Machines for Sch­enec­tady
Con­denser Trans­former
Sqr ft difrac­tion grat­ings in sil­ver by 5000 [illeg.] tool spe­cial [illeg.] lathe for orna­men­tal pur­pos­es
Pho­to Scant–[illeg.]
Cheap plan pro­duce Mimeo­graph sur­faces
Min­ers bat­tery + lamp
Sort­ing Coal from Slate Machine
But­ter direct from Milk
Burn­ing asphalt Can­dles by high chim­ney
Mag­nets RR sig­nals
Soft­en [illeg.] of books trans­fer to Cop plate + plate to [illeg.] matrix
Tele­phone Repeater
Sub­sti­tute for Hard rub­ber
Arti­fi­cial Ivory
Soft­en Veg­etable Ivory to press in sheets
Var­i­ous bat­ter­ies on [illeg.] Type
Revolv­ing Ther­mo
Caller Indi­ca­tor for Jump Telegh
Marine Teleg­ra­phy
Long dis­tance speak­ing tube filled H20 2 dia pres­sure
Lend plate bat­tery for mod­i­fy­ing attend­ing Cur­rent
Two revolv­ing bands in bat­tery Lead faced press in liq­uid close togeth­er + out into sep­a­rate cham­bers to [illeg.]reduce by gas the oth­er
Siren phonogh
Perm mag like an elec­tro­mag of [illeg.] hand steel high pol­ish sep­a­rate­ly mag­ne­tized + forced togeth­er pow­er­ful­ly[illeg.]
Tele­phone work­ing more [illeg.]
Eartubes formed cres­cent [illeg.] wire
Long strip 50 cp car­bon under stress [illeg.] for
Cheap Volt­meter
Chalk Bat­tery
Dynamo or motor long tube in long mag­net­ic field top + bot­tom con­tacts forc­ing water through gen­er­a­tor cur­rent by – pas­sage.
[Illeg.]
Ther­mo bat­tery slick Cop­per oxi­dized then plat­ed over sur­face oxide nailed to make good con­tact [illeg.]
Disk Phonogh

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In 1911, Thomas Edi­son Pre­dicts What the World Will Look Like in 2011: Smart Phones, No Pover­ty, Libraries That Fit in One Book

A Brief, Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Thomas Edi­son (and Niko­la Tes­la)

Thomas Edi­son & His Trusty Kine­to­scope Cre­ate the First Movie Filmed In The US (c. 1889)

Hear Thomas Edison’s Creepy Talk­ing Dolls: An Inven­tion That Scared Kids & Flopped on the Mar­ket

Take the 146-Ques­tion Knowl­edge Test Thomas Edi­son Gave to Prospec­tive Employ­ees (1921)

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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