Einstein’s Big Idea: E=mc²

in Physics, Television | July 17th, 2012

E=mc²: We’ve all heard of it. But what does it mean?

Ein­stein’s Big Idea, a film from the PBS Nova series, attempts to shed a lit­tle light on Albert Ein­stein’s equa­tion by break­ing it down into its com­po­nent parts and telling a sto­ry behind the devel­op­ment of each one. Nar­rat­ed by actor John Lith­gow, the film is based on David Bodanis’s 2000 best­seller E=mc²: A Biog­ra­phy of the World’s Most Famous Equa­tion. It pre­miered in 2005, the 100th anniver­sary of Ein­stein’s Annus Mirabilis–the “mirac­u­lous year” when the 26-year-old patent clerk pub­lished five papers with­in a six-month peri­od that would rev­o­lu­tion­ize 20th cen­tu­ry physics. Among those five were Ein­stein’s paper out­lin­ing what lat­er became known as the Spe­cial The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty, and a short fol­low-up paper deriv­ing his for­mu­la for the equiv­a­lence of mass and ener­gy, which he first stat­ed as m=E/c².

Does Ein­stein’s Big Idea actu­al­ly explain the equa­tion? Alas, no. Not even close. Appar­ent­ly, the film­mak­ers’ “big idea” was that they might be able to evoke empa­thy among young view­ers and stim­u­late inter­est in sci­ence by por­tray­ing Ein­stein as a rebel­lious young man with a healthy sex dri­ve. The movie fea­tures dra­mat­ic depic­tions of events, not only in Ein­stein’s ear­ly life, but in the lives of sev­er­al oth­er impor­tant fig­ures in the his­to­ry of sci­ence:  the 19th cen­tu­ry Eng­lish­man Michael Fara­day, whose exten­sive exper­i­ments and intu­itive the­o­ries in elec­tric­i­ty and mag­net­ism led direct­ly to James Clerk Maxwell’s for­mal dis­cov­ery that light was an elec­tro­mag­net­ic wave;  the 18th cen­tu­ry French chemist Antoine Lavoisi­er, whose dis­cov­ery of the con­ser­va­tion of mass had to be re-for­mu­lat­ed as the con­ser­va­tion of mass-ener­gy in the wake of Ein­stein’s Rel­a­tiv­i­ty The­o­ry; the 18th cen­tu­ry French trans­la­tor of Isaac New­ton, Emi­lie du Châtelet, who used the empir­i­cal find­ings of Willem Gravesande to change New­ton’s for­mu­la for ener­gy from E=mv to the one favored by Got­tfried Wil­helm Leib­niz, E=mv²; and the Aus­tri­an-born physi­cist Lise Meit­ner, whose ground­break­ing research into nuclear fis­sion in the 1930s helped con­firm the accu­ra­cy of Ein­stein’s equa­tion. Togeth­er, the scenes depict the his­to­ry of sci­ence as a roman­tic strug­gle of extra­or­di­nary indi­vid­u­als against the resis­tance of less­er minds.

To learn more about Rel­a­tiv­i­ty and E=mc², here are some free online resources:

“On the Elec­tro­dy­nam­ics of Mov­ing Bod­ies”, Ein­stein’s famous paper from the June 30, 1905 edi­tion of Annalen der Physik, out­lin­ing the Spe­cial The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty. Avail­able as HTML or PDF.

“Does the Iner­tia of a Body Depend on Its Ener­gy Con­tent?”, Ein­stein’s three-page fol­low-up to the paper above, deriv­ing his famous equa­tion from the prin­ci­ples laid out in the ear­li­er work. It was pub­lished in Annalen der Physik on Sep­tem­ber 27, 1905 and is avail­able online as a PDF.

Rel­a­tiv­i­ty: The Spe­cial and Gen­er­al The­o­ry, Ein­stein’s clas­sic guide for the lay read­er, writ­ten in 1916 and avail­able free in var­i­ous for­mats at Project Guten­berg.

The ABC of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty, Bertrand Rus­sel­l’s very acces­si­ble 1925 book, avail­able in an abridged audio edi­tion through links in our Feb. 18 post.

Cours­es on Ein­stein can be found in the Physics sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 500 Free Online Cours­es. And don’t miss Ein­stein for the Mass­es, a lec­ture giv­en by Rama­mur­ti Shankar, Pro­fes­sor of Physics & Applied Physics at Yale.

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Before Mad Men: Familiar and Forgotten Ads from 1950s to 1980s Now Online

in Business, History, Media, Television | July 12th, 2012

Before com­ing up with the slo­gan “Utz Are Bet­ter Than Nuts!” for the real-world Utz pota­to chip com­pa­ny on Mad Men, Don Drap­er and his crew had to study the com­pe­ti­tion, like this ad for Beech Nut or this one with Andy Grif­fith for Gen­er­al Foods.

Today we’re sat­u­rat­ed with ads, more than the ad men that inspired Draper’s char­ac­ter could have ever imag­ined. They’re everywhere—on the dark inte­ri­ors of tun­nels as we speed along in light rail trains, in the games we let our kids play on smart phones—and they reveal a lot to us about our­selves.

Duke University’s John W. Hart­man Cen­ter for Sales, Adver­tis­ing & Mar­ket­ing His­to­ry put togeth­er Adviews, a col­lec­tion that brings togeth­er thou­sands of his­toric com­mer­cials from the 1950s to 1980s. Col­lect­ed or cre­at­ed by the D’Arcy Masius Ben­ton & Bowles adver­tis­ing agency, the dig­i­tal col­lec­tion is avail­able online and on iTune­sU as a free archive. It’s also found at the Inter­net Archive, where ads can be down­loaded as MP4 videos.

Watch Ster­ling Cooper’s (fic­tion­al) ad for Utz pota­to chips and then com­pare it to this goofy com­mer­cial for Dad­dy Crisp chips above.

Vis­it the amaz­ing world of con­ve­nience foods that made house­wives cheer and mir­a­cle fibers that made clean-up a snap.

We may have grown more savvy and sus­pi­cious of prod­ucts that promise bet­ter health and effi­cien­cy, but if any­thing we’re more fas­ci­nat­ed by adver­tis­ing than ever. Since launch­ing the archive in 2009, the com­mer­cials have logged 2.5 mil­lion down­loads.

And for y’all who miss Andy Grif­fith, there’s a wealth of great stuff.

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Tom Waits and David Letterman: An American Television Tradition

in Music, Television | July 11th, 2012

Whether or not you lis­ten to his music, you have to appre­ci­ate the fact that a singer like Tom Waits has enjoyed decades of fame. When I first heard a song of his — “Inno­cent When You Dream” over the end cred­its of Wayne Wang’s Smoke — I assumed the voice I was hear­ing could­n’t pos­si­bly have come from a human being. Or if it did, maybe it came from a human being imi­tat­ing the man­ner of some sort of crag­gy, immor­tal mon­ster, processed through sev­er­al dis­tor­tion box­es. But no, I was hear­ing the sound of purest Waits, one of the few per­form­ers who deliv­ers an entire per­son­al­i­ty — whether his own or one he’s invent­ed — when deliv­er­ing a sin­gle line. You’ll find evi­dence of his cap­ti­va­tion fac­tor above, in a per­for­mance of “Choco­late Jesus,” a song inspired by lit­er­al­ly that, on Late Show with David Let­ter­man. Per­haps you won’t feel it, but you can’t argue with its view count on YouTube — 5.3 mil­lion and ris­ing.

Waits has made some­thing of a tra­di­tion of vis­it­ing Let­ter­man’s show, or maybe Let­ter­man has made a tra­di­tion of invit­ing him. Music jour­nal­ists often slap the word “reclu­sive” in front of his name, but Waits does make his media appear­ances, the best of which he makes on Let­ter­man’s show. You’ll find many such seg­ments on Youtube, includ­ing ones from 1983, 1986, 1987, 1988, 2002, 2004, and this year. In 1986, Let­ter­man intro­duced Waits as “prob­a­bly the only guest we’ve had on this pro­gram who was born in the back of a taxi,” which I assume still holds true. Just above, we’ve embed­ded his 1983 Christ­mas­time sit-down, which Waits’ fans seem to regard with spe­cial fond­ness, and in which Let­ter­man first learns this choice fact. Beyond that, Waits sings two songs and dis­cuss­es his var­i­ous unortho­dox res­i­dences (motel, trail­er, car), the use of brake drums as per­cus­sive drums on his then-lat­est album, and how he inter­vened when a school­boy was sus­pend­ed for bring­ing one of Waits’ records to show-and-tell. In Waits, we have the prime liv­ing exem­plar of a cer­tain par­tic­u­lar­ly Amer­i­can style of per­form­ing and song­writ­ing, and in Let­ter­man, we have the prime liv­ing exem­plar of a cer­tain par­tic­u­lar­ly Amer­i­can style of simul­ta­ne­ous­ly sil­ly and self-aware humor. What luck for the coun­try that these two can get togeth­er as often as they do.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Tom Waits Fish­ing with John Lurie: ‘Like Wait­ing for Godot on Water’

A Brief His­to­ry of John Baldessari, Nar­rat­ed by Tom Waits

Tom Waits Reads Charles Bukows­ki

Tom Waits Makes Com­ic Appear­ance on Fer­n­wood Tonight (1977)

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

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Johnny Cash: Singer, Outlaw, and, Briefly, Television Host

in Music, Television | July 6th, 2012

John­ny Cash needs no intro­duc­tion. But unless you hap­pened to be watch­ing ABC between June 1969 and March 1971, The John­ny Cash Show might. Cash added one more chap­ter to his leg­en­dar­i­ly sto­ried career by host­ing 58 episodes of the musi­cal vari­ety show from the Ryman Audi­to­ri­um in Nashville, then the home of the Grand Ole Opry. You might expect from such a set­up noth­ing but coun­try music, and Cash and his pro­duc­ers did indeed make a point of intro­duc­ing the gen­re’s stars to all of Amer­i­ca as well as high­light­ing its skilled but low-pro­file per­form­ers who would­n’t oth­er­wise have received nation­al expo­sure. But many John­ny Cash Show broad­casts reached well beyond Cash’s own pre­sump­tive base, mak­ing non-coun­try lumi­nar­ies acces­si­ble to coun­try lis­ten­ers as much as the oth­er way around. Above you’ll find a pop­u­lar video of Joni Mitchell singing “Both Sides, Now” on the pro­gram; Bob Dylan and Neil Young also made appear­ances rep­re­sent­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of singer-song­writ­ers.

But Cash also rou­tine­ly shared the stage with his elders, most notably Louis Arm­strong in a broad­cast that fea­tured Arm­strong singing “Crys­tal Chan­de­liers” and “Ram­blin’ Rose” and both of them per­form­ing “Blue Yodel #9.” He also joined in when he brought on Pete Seeger, which demon­strates an impres­sive col­lab­o­ra­tive range. I did­n’t expect to see poet Shel Sil­ver­stein turn up on the show, but then I’d for­got­ten that he wrote “A Boy Named Sue,” one of Cash’s best-known songs, not to men­tion the less­er-known “25 Min­utes to Go,” which each of them record­ed indi­vid­u­al­ly on their own albums. Alas, despite its sur­pris­ing cul­tur­al reach, The John­ny Cash Show could­n’t sur­vive the caprice of net­works eager to cap­ture a younger demo­graph­ic; it got the axe, along­side the likes of Green Acres, The Bev­er­ly Hill­bil­lies, and Hee-Haw in the so-called “rur­al purge” of the ear­ly sev­en­ties.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The 1969 Bob Dylan-John­ny Cash Ses­sions: Twelve Rare Record­ings

John­ny Cash Remem­bered with 1,000+ Draw­ings

Den­nis Hop­per Reads Rud­yard Kipling on John­ny Cash Show

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

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Allen Ginsberg Reads a Poem He Wrote on LSD to William F. Buckley

in Poetry, Television | July 5th, 2012

On Sep­tem­ber 3, 1968, William F. Buck­ley invit­ed poet Allen Gins­berg onto his TV pro­gram, “Fir­ing Line.” It was an odd encounter. “We’re here to talk about the avant-garde,” Buck­ley says grandil­o­quent­ly. “I should like to begin by ask­ing Mr. Gins­berg whether he con­sid­ers that the hip­pies are an inti­ma­tion of the new order.”

“Ah,” says Gins­berg, “why don’t I read a poem?”

Buck­ley smiles uncom­fort­ably as Gins­berg reach­es into his bag and pulls out a poem called “Wales Vis­i­ta­tion,” writ­ten under the influ­ence of LSD dur­ing a vis­it the pre­vi­ous year to the ancient ruins of Tin­tern Abbey, on the Riv­er Wye in South­east Wales. It was the same place that inspired William Wordsworth to write his “Lines Com­posed a Few Miles above Tin­tern Abbey” in 1798 and Alfred, Lord Ten­nyson to write “Tears, Idle Tears” in 1847. Buck­ley set­tles back in his chair as Gins­berg reads three of nine stan­zas from “Wales Vis­i­ta­tion,” begin­ning with the first:

White fog lift­ing & falling on moun­tain-brow
Trees mov­ing in rivers of wind
The clouds arise
as on a wave, gigan­tic eddy lift­ing mist
above teem­ing ferns exquis­ite­ly swayed
along a green crag
glimpsed thru mul­lioned glass in val­ley raine–

To fol­low along with the oth­er two stan­zas recit­ed by Gins­berg and to read the rest of the poem, you can open this page in a new win­dow. Also don’t miss Gins­berg read­ing his sig­na­ture Beat poem, “Howl”. It’s a rol­lick­ing 26 minute affair, and you can always find it in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William F. Buck­ley Meets (Pos­si­bly Drunk) Jack Ker­ouac, Tries to Make Sense of Hip­pies, 1968

Ken Kesey’s First LSD Trip Ani­mat­ed

William F. Buck­ley Flogged Him­self to Get Through Atlas Shrugged

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Jon Stewart’s William & Mary Commencement Address: The Entire World is an Elective

in Comedy, Graduation Speech, Life, Television | July 4th, 2012

In 1984, Jon Stew­art grad­u­at­ed from The Col­lege of William & Mary. In 1999, he began host­ing Com­e­dy Cen­tral’s news pro­gram The Dai­ly Show. In 2004, he returned to his alma mater, immea­sur­ably more influ­en­tial than he’d left it, to give its com­mence­ment address. Despite a dat­ed crack or two — this was the hey­day of George W. Bush, the Pres­i­dent who arguably gave Stew­art’s Dai­ly Show per­sona both its foil and rai­son d’être — the speech’s core remains sound. You, Stew­art tells the massed grad­u­ates, have the pow­er to become the next “great­est gen­er­a­tion,” though the chance appears espe­cial­ly clear and present because of how the last gen­er­a­tion “broke” the world. “It just kind of  got away from us,” he half-jokes, his grin com­pressed by seri­ous­ness. That admis­sion fol­lows a stream of self-dep­re­ca­tion hit­ting every­thing from his ten­den­cy toward pro­fan­i­ty to his unusu­al­ly large head as an under­grad­u­ate to how his pres­ence onstage deval­ues William & Mary’s very rep­u­ta­tion.

Whether or not you find the world bro­ken, or whether or not you believe that a gen­er­a­tion could break or fix it, Stew­art still packs a num­ber of worth­while obser­va­tions about the place into fif­teen min­utes. He per­haps deliv­ers his most valu­able words to these excit­ed, anx­ious school-leavers when he con­trasts the world to the aca­d­e­m­ic envi­ron­ment they’ve just left: “There is no core cur­ricu­lum. The entire place is an elec­tive.” Stew­art com­mu­ni­cates, as many com­mence­ment speak­ers try to but few do so clear­ly, that you can’t plan your way direct­ly to suc­cess in life, what­ev­er “suc­cess” might mean to you. He cer­tain­ly did­n’t. “If you had been to William and Mary while I was here and found out that I would be the com­mence­ment speak­er 20 years lat­er, you would be some­what sur­prised,” he admits. “And prob­a­bly some­what angry.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Conan O’Brien Kills It at Dart­mouth Grad­u­a­tion

Jon Stew­art: Teach­ers Have it Too Good (Wink)

‘This Is Water’: Com­plete Audio of David Fos­ter Wallace’s Keny­on Grad­u­a­tion Speech (2005)

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

 

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Andy Griffith (1926–2012) Gives a Lesson on the American Revolution

in History, Television | July 4th, 2012

As we roll into the 4th of July hol­i­day, let’s take a nos­tal­gic look back at Andy Grif­fith as he tells the sto­ry of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion on his clas­sic 1960s TV pro­gram, “The Andy Grif­fith Show.” Grif­fith died Tues­day at the age of 86. In the eight years “The Andy Grif­fith Show” was broadcast–from 1960 to 1968–Griffith was a humane and ratio­nal pres­ence in Amer­i­can homes. His char­ac­ter, Sher­iff Andy Tay­lor, was sur­round­ed by eccentrics yet always man­aged to keep things in per­spec­tive, embody­ing what the show’s pro­duc­er, Aaron Ruben, once described as “this Lin­col­nesque char­ac­ter.” It’s a fit­ting phrase, and a good way to remem­ber Grif­fith as we enjoy the hol­i­day.

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Andy Warhol and Salvador Dalí in Classic 1968 Braniff Commercials: ‘When You Got It, Flaunt It!’

in Art, Business, Television | July 3rd, 2012


One of the scari­est things about air trav­el is the seat­ing assign­ment. You nev­er know who you’ll end up next to. This clas­sic 1968 adver­tis­ing cam­paign from Bran­iff Inter­na­tion­al Air­ways lets you imag­ine what it would be like to find your­self elbow-to-elbow with Andy Warhol and Sal­vador Dalí.

In the com­mer­cial above, Warhol tries to explain the inher­ent beau­ty of Cam­bel­l’s Soup cans to heavy­weight box­er Son­ny Lis­ton. Below, Dalí and major league base­ball pitch­er Whitey Ford com­pare notes on the knuck­le­ball ver­sus the screw­ball. The com­mer­cials were part of Bran­if­f’s ambi­tious “End of the Plain Plane” rebrand­ing cam­paign, which com­plete­ly revamped the com­pa­ny’s stodgy image. Adver­tis­ing exec­u­tive Mary Wells Lawrence hired archi­tect and tex­tile design­er Alexan­der Girard to redesign every­thing from air­plane fuse­lages to ash trays. Ital­ian fash­ion design­er Emilio Puc­ci cre­at­ed flam­boy­ant uni­forms for the stew­ardess­es, or “Bran­iff girls.” And in 1968 Lawrence brought in art direc­tor George Lois to over­see the “When You Got It, Flaunt It!” adver­tis­ing cam­paign for print and tele­vi­sion.

Lois lat­er said he came up with the slo­gan before the celebri­ties were cast. In addi­tion to the Warhol/Liston and Dalí/Ford pair­ings, the cam­paign includ­ed ads with anoth­er odd cou­ple: pulp writer Mick­ey Spillane and poet Mar­i­anne Moore. In an inter­view with the New York Dai­ly News ear­li­er this year, Lois remem­bered that Warhol had trou­ble with his lines. “Andy had to say, ‘When you got it, flaunt it.’ But I end­ed up hav­ing to dub his voice. Lat­er, after I sent him a copy of all the com­mer­cials, he told me that he said the line bet­ter than any­body.” The ads were a prod­uct of Lois’s gut-instinct approach to adver­tis­ing. “Those ads,” he said in anoth­er inter­view, “would have total­ly bombed in ad tests. As things turned out, it tripled their busi­ness.”

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