A Digital Archive of Soviet Children’s Books Goes Online: Browse the Artistic, Ideological Collection (1917–1953)

in Books, History, K-12 | July 5th, 2017

At both a geo­graph­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal dis­tance, the Sovi­et Union does­n’t look like much of a place for kids. If you grew up dur­ing the Cold War in, say, the Unit­ed States, you might well have the impres­sion (of which The Simp­sons’ “Work­er and Par­a­site” remains the defin­ing crys­tal­liza­tion) of a gray, harsh­ly util­i­tar­i­an land behind the Iron Cur­tain con­cerned with noth­ing more whim­si­cal than bread lines and pro­duc­tion quo­tas. But if you grew up in the Sovi­et Union, at least at one of the right times and in one of the right places, you might feel a now much-dis­cussed nos­tal­gia, not for the eco­nom­ic dif­fi­cul­ties of your Sovi­et child­hood, but for the sen­si­bil­i­ties of the van­ished soci­ety you grew up in. An online inter­ac­tive data­base called Play­ing Sovi­et: The Visu­al Lan­guages of Ear­ly Sovi­et Children’s Books, 1917–1953 pro­vides a kid’s-eye view into the ear­ly decades of that soci­ety.

A project of the Cot­sen Col­lec­tion at Princeton’s Fire­stone Library, the archive con­tains a vari­ety of ful­ly dig­i­tized chil­dren’s books that show one venue in which, amid these years of “Russia’s accel­er­at­ed vio­lent polit­i­cal, social and cul­tur­al evo­lu­tion,” in the words of the data­base’s front page, cer­tain kinds of graph­ic art could flour­ish. “The illus­tra­tion and look of Sovi­et children’s books was of tan­ta­mount impor­tance as a vehi­cle for prac­ti­cal and con­crete infor­ma­tion in the new Sovi­et regime.”

This ambi­tious effort, dri­ven by “direc­tives for a new kind of children’s lit­er­a­ture” to be “found­ed on the assump­tion that the ‘lan­guage of images’ was imme­di­ate­ly com­pre­hen­si­ble to the mass read­er, far more so than the typed word,” brought in a great many artists and design­ers such as Alexan­der Deine­ka, El Lis­sitzky, and Vladimir Lebe­dev, task­ing them all with cre­at­ing “imag­i­na­tive mod­els for Sovi­et youth in the new lan­guages of Sovi­et mod­ernism.”

Men­tal Floss’ Shau­na­cy Fer­ro notes how many of the books “were designed to indoc­tri­nate chil­dren into the world of the ‘right’ way to think about Sovi­et cul­ture and his­to­ry,” point­ing to a vol­ume called How the Rev­o­lu­tion Was Vic­to­ri­ous, which meant “to ensure the cor­rect inter­pre­ta­tion of the anti-gov­ern­men­tal coup among the young gen­er­a­tion of new Sovi­et read­er­ship.” Some of the oth­er read­ing mate­r­i­al that result­ed, like 1930’s indus­tri­al­ly focused What Are We Build­ing? or the slight­ly ear­li­er How Sen­ka Ezhik Made a Knife, wears its instruc­tion­al val­ue on its sleeve (or rather, its cov­er). Oth­ers, like 1925’s The Lit­tle Octo­brist Ras­cal or that same year’s Chi­na-set A Cup of Tea, offer high­er dos­es of play­ful­ness mixed in with the ide­ol­o­gy.

Play­ing Sovi­et also includes the work of Vladimir Mayakovsky, whose Whom Should I Be?, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive book from the “gold­en age” of Sovi­et Chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture, we fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture ear­li­er this year. Rus­sia Beyond the Head­lines’ Alexan­dra Gueza high­lights Mayakovsky’s  What is Good and What is Bad? (“in which he explains that walk­ing in the rain and thun­der­storms is bad, clean­ing your teeth is good, fight­ing with the boys is bad, while study­ing is good”) and Octo­ber 1917–1918: Heroes and Vic­tims of the Rev­o­lu­tion, whose “good guys” include “a work­er, a Red Army sol­dier, a sailor, a seam­stress” and whose “bad guys” include “a fac­to­ry own­er, a landown­er, a rich farmer, a priest, a mer­chant.” Good­night Moon it cer­tain­ly isn’t, but then, how many Amer­i­can chil­dren’s books had to attempt a fun­da­men­tal rein­ven­tion of soci­ety?

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read Vladimir Mayakovsky’s Children’s Book Whom Should I Be?: A Clas­sic from the “Gold­en Age” in Sovi­et Children’s Lit­er­a­ture

Sovi­et-Era Illus­tra­tions Of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hob­bit (1976)

Enter an Archive of 6,000 His­tor­i­cal Children’s Books, All Dig­i­tized and Free to Read Online

Hayao Miyaza­ki Picks His 50 Favorite Children’s Books

The First Children’s Pic­ture Book, 1658’s Orbis Sen­su­al­i­um Pic­tus

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, 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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An Animated Introduction to Economist John Maynard Keynes

in Economics | July 5th, 2017

If you know any­thing about mod­ern eco­nom­ic the­o­ry, you’ve learned the names Mil­ton Fried­man and John May­nard Keynes—gen­er­al­ly pit­ted against each oth­er as rep­re­sent­ing the divide down the cen­ter in West­ern polit­i­cal econ­o­my. While more rad­i­cal thinkers like F.A. Hayek and, of course, Marx and Engels, hold sway over a sig­nif­i­cant part of the pop­u­la­tion, when it comes to the entrenched two-par­ty sys­tem in the U.S. and so-called mod­er­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can politi­cians, we can hand­i­ly refer to Fried­man and Keynes, respec­tive­ly, as advo­cat­ing on the one hand very lit­tle gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion into free mar­ket affairs and, on the oth­er, a sig­nif­i­cant, very vis­i­ble, guid­ing hand.

Keynes “believed that gov­ern­ments have it in their pow­er,” says Alain de Bot­ton in his School of Life ani­mat­ed intro­duc­tion above, “to solve some of the great­est ills of cap­i­tal­ism.” Reject­ing both com­mu­nism and “the utter wis­dom of the unfet­tered free mar­ket,” Keynes sought to chart a mid­dle way, the­o­riz­ing cap­i­tal­ist economies planned through “judi­cious injec­tions” of mon­ey and “wise reg­u­la­tions” to “smooth out the peaks and troughs to which all economies seem fate­ful­ly prone.” Keynes him­self was not prone to many finan­cial ups and downs. Born in 1883 in Cam­bridge to a “well-to-do aca­d­e­m­ic fam­i­ly,” writes the BBC, his “father was an econ­o­mist and a philoso­pher” and his moth­er “became the town’s first female may­or.” He “amassed a con­sid­er­able per­son­al for­tune from the finan­cial mar­kets” between the wars and became a “board mem­ber of a num­ber of com­pa­nies.”

At the height of the eco­nom­ic cri­sis in 1930, Keynes pub­lished an essay titled “Eco­nom­ic Pos­si­bil­i­ties for Our Grand­chil­dren,” in which he “out­lined his belief that most eco­nom­ic prob­lems could be over­come, and give way to an age where the chief chal­lenge for human beings would be how to occu­py their leisure time in con­di­tions of mass pros­per­i­ty.” His utopi­an out­look may have been part­ly con­di­tioned by his posi­tion as “part of the British estab­lish­ment.” But Keynes was a nuanced, cre­ative thinker, a mem­ber of the Blooms­bury group—Vir­ginia Woolf was one of his clos­est friends—who “rec­og­nized that good eco­nom­ics was as fun­da­men­tal to well-being as good paint­ing or lit­er­a­ture, and in a deep sense not fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent in its search for the well­springs of ful­fill­ment, and its atten­tion to human error and blind­ness.”

Like Woolf, Keynes tend­ed to view human well-being through a nar­row class prism, with some of the ugly prej­u­dices such a view entails. Yet his the­o­ry began by con­sid­er­ing the needs of huge num­bers of unem­ployed in Britain and the U.S. who should not have to live in pre­car­i­ty and pover­ty, he rea­soned, until the mar­ket got around to cor­rect­ing itself, if it hap­pened to do so in their life­times. The inter­ven­tion­ist the­o­ries Keynes elab­o­rat­ed in his Gen­er­al The­o­ry of Employ­ment, Inter­est and Mon­ey, his great work of 1936, led to his cre­ation in 1944 of the IMF and the World Bank, two of the most con­tro­ver­sial glob­al insti­tu­tions of the past half-cen­tu­ry for what many see as their dis­as­trous, coer­cive med­dling in the eco­nom­ic affairs of poor­er nations.

While deficit spend­ing may be a de fac­to prac­tice of every gov­ern­ment admin­is­tra­tion, it is the the­o­ry of John May­nard Keynes that most attach­es it philo­soph­i­cal­ly to the cen­ter-left. And while it may be that more Key­ne­sian stim­u­lus spend­ing, with gov­ern­ment as the “pri­ma­ry shop­per in the land,” as Peter Coy argued in 2014, is just what a sag­ging, stag­nant world econ­o­my needs, the per­pet­u­al chal­lenge, as de Bot­ton points out, is the ques­tion of just “who should pay for the loans” gov­ern­ments issue, or the ser­vices it funds to buoy the cit­i­zen­ry. Few peo­ple, no mat­ter how wealthy, seem to want to shoul­der the bur­den, how­ev­er light it may be for some, even if Keynes’ “mul­ti­pli­er effect” can be shown to raise all boats once it takes hold.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every­day Eco­nom­ics: A New Course by Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion Uni­ver­si­ty Where Stu­dents Cre­ate the Syl­labus

A Short Course in Behav­ioral Eco­nom­ics

Free Online Eco­nom­ics Cours­es 

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

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When a Cat Co-Authored a Paper in a Leading Physics Journal (1975)

in Physics, Random | July 5th, 2017

Back in 1975, Jack H. Het­her­ing­ton, a physics pro­fes­sor at Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty, wrote a research paper on low–temperature physics for the respect­ed sci­en­tif­ic jour­nal Phys­i­cal Review Let­ters. Before send­ing it off, Het­her­ing­ton asked a col­league to review the paper, just to make sure it cov­ered the right bases. What hap­pened next Het­her­ing­ton explained in the 1982 book, More Ran­dom Walks in Sci­ence:

Before I sub­mit­ted [the arti­cle], I asked a col­league to read it over and he said, ‘It’s a fine paper, but they’ll send it right back.’ He explained that that is because of the Edi­tor’s rule that the word “we” should not be used in a paper with only a sin­gle author. Chang­ing the paper to the imper­son­al seemed too dif­fi­cult now, and it was all writ­ten and typed; there­fore, after an evening’s thought, I sim­ply asked the sec­re­tary to change the title page to include the name of the fam­i­ly cat, a Siamese called Chester, sired one sum­mer by Willard (one of the few unfixed male Siamese cats in Aspen, Col­orado). I added the ini­tials F D in front of the name to stand for Felix Domes­ti­cus and thus cre­at­ed F D C Willard.

The edi­tors even­tu­al­ly accept­ed the paper, “Two‑, Three‑, and Four-Atom Exchange Effects in bcc 3 He.” And the ruse last­ed until, remem­bers Het­her­ing­ton, “a vis­i­tor [came to the uni­ver­si­ty and] asked to talk to me, and since I was unavail­able asked to talk with Willard. Every­one laughed and soon the cat was out of the bag.” (Pun sure­ly intend­ed.) Appar­ent­ly only the jour­nal edi­tors did­n’t find humor in the joke.

Above, you can see F.D.C. Willard’s sig­na­ture (a paw print) on the front page of the arti­cle. The web­site, Today­I­Found­Out, has much more on this enchant­i­ng lit­tle sto­ry.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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 Short­est-Known Paper Pub­lished in a Seri­ous Math Jour­nal: Two Suc­cinct Sen­tences 

The Famous Schrodinger’s Cat Thought Exper­i­ment Gets Brought to Life in an Off-Kil­ter Ani­ma­tion

Insane­ly Cute Cat Com­mer­cials from Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, Hayao Miyazaki’s Leg­endary Ani­ma­tion Shop

Nick Cave Nar­rates an Ani­mat­ed Film about the Cat Piano, the Twist­ed 18th Cen­tu­ry Musi­cal Instru­ment Designed to Treat Men­tal Ill­ness

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John Wayne Recites and Explains the Pledge of Allegiance (1972)

in Politics | July 4th, 2017

Back in 1972, John Wayne record­ed a spo­ken word album called Amer­i­ca, Why I Love Her, described as “a series of heart­felt, patri­ot­ic speech­es over a bed of stir­ring music.” You can stream the entire album below (or over on Spo­ti­fy). Above, we’re fea­tur­ing the 8th track on the release, Wayne’s recita­tion and exe­ge­sis of the Pledge of Alle­giance. Some will find it corny, oth­ers rous­ing. Per­son­al­ly, I’m not a fan of syrupy nation­al­ism. But I’ll give Wayne’s inter­pre­ta­tion this–his take rec­og­nizes Amer­i­ca as a place of inclu­sive­ness and open­ness, giv­ing every­one equal access to its oppor­tu­ni­ties and insti­tu­tions. Com­pare it with the nation­al­ist rhetoric you hear today, and, you might find your­self long­ing for John Wayne’s sun­nier Amer­i­ca.

“I pledge alle­giance to the flag”

What do those words mean to you? To me they say, “Thank
you, Amer­i­ca, for your strength, your courage and your
freedom…which has been a bea­con to the world for two
hun­dred years.”

“Of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca”

Whose bright stars are fifty states…each bear­ing its
own stamp of indi­vid­u­al­i­ty. People…two hun­dred
mil­lion strong…people who have come to her from all
cor­ners of the earth.

“And to the repub­lic for which it stands”

A land of laws…with an inge­nious sys­tem of checks and
bal­ances that allows no man to become a tyrant…and
lets no group prevail…if their pow­er is not tem­pered
with a real con­cern for the governed…A land where the
right of dis­sent and of free speech is jeal­ous­ly
guarded…where the bal­lot box is the sword…and the
peo­ple its wield­er.

“One nation under God”

A land where free­dom of wor­ship is a cor­ner­stone of her
being…A land graced with tem­ples and church­es,
syn­a­gogues and altars that rise in pro­fu­sion to embrace
all the reli­gions of the world.

“Indi­vis­i­ble”

A land forged by the hot steel of raw courage…and
formed forever…by the awful cru­cible of civ­il war.

“With lib­er­ty”

Where man in pur­suit of an hon­est life will not be
denied his chance…where her cit­i­zens move freely
with­in her vast bor­ders with­out hin­drance or fear…A
land brim­ming with opportunity…where free­dom of
choice is the guide for all.

“And jus­tice”

The courts of our land are open to all. Its wheels of
jus­tice grind for all causes…all peo­ple. They look to
every avenue for justice…every con­cern of the
law…and they tem­per their rea­son­ing with mer­cy…

“For all!”

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

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Hear Chris Cornell’s Masterful Vocals in the Isolated Track for Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun”

in Music | July 4th, 2017

Since Soundgar­den and Audioslave front­man Chris Cornell’s recent, trag­ic sui­cide, trib­ute after trib­ute has affirmed his sta­tus as a tow­er­ing icon of 90s grunge and a pow­er­ful pres­ence in con­tem­po­rary music ever since his first band emerged from Seat­tle with their sludgy met­al riffs and oper­at­ic cho­rus­es. Sure, all of the mem­bers of Soundgar­den deserve cred­it for that band’s thun­der­ing awe­some­ness. But as for Cornell’s con­tin­ued suc­cess and renown long after most 90s stal­warts had burned out or fad­ed away—well, you already know the answer: it’s that voice, an instru­ment over which, as Luke O’Neil writes at Esquire, the singer had “com­plete mas­tery.” Though it defined a spe­cif­ic time and place, Cornell’s voice also “tran­scend­ed gen­er­a­tions.”

The singer’s near four-octave range “made his live per­for­mances an incred­i­ble sight to watch” and his record­ings a stir­ring expe­ri­ence to lis­ten to, whether they show­cased his own mate­r­i­al or his unique tal­ent for cov­er­ing songs across a spec­trum of styles and gen­res. “The impos­ing archi­tec­ture” of Cornell’s voice, writes Pitch­fork in a ret­ro­spec­tive of some of his finest record­ed moments, “was part and par­cel to his lega­cy, but it would be noth­ing if he didn’t also know how to bril­liant­ly arrange it.”

Hit­ting every note on the beat, “build­ing ten­sion until the exact moment it unlocks.” Hear that dynam­ic con­trol above, stripped bare of instru­men­ta­tion, in the reverb-drenched, iso­lat­ed vocal tracks for Supe­run­k­nown’s “Black Hole Sun,” a song—with its dis­turb­ing video—that widened Soundgarden’s already con­sid­er­able fan­base when it debuted in 1994.

For con­trast, and to get a sense of just how rhyth­mi­cal­ly attuned Cor­nell was, lis­ten to the stu­dio release before and/or after the stripped ver­sion at the top to hear how the vocal gives the song its spine, bear­ing the meter, melody, and mood. L.A. Times crit­ic Mikael Wood describes Cornell’s voice as a “brawny yet soul­ful wail, ground­ed in sor­row but always reach­ing upward for a way out of the muck.” I can hard­ly think of a bet­ter way to char­ac­ter­ize such a unique­ly mov­ing singer, one who, for many of us, remained a bench­mark for rock vocals—in var­i­ous bands and solo projects—for a sol­id thir­ty years.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Soundgarden’s Chris Cor­nell Sings Haunt­ing Acoustic Cov­ers of Prince’s “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U,” Michael Jackson’s “Bil­lie Jean” & Bob Marley’s “Redemp­tion Song”

7‑Foot Tall Clown with a Gold­en Voice Sings Chris Cornell’s “When I’m Down:” A Trib­ute Filled with Raw Emo­tion

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

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Christopher Lee Reads Four Classic Horror Stories by Edgar Allan Poe (1979)

in Audio Books, Literature | July 4th, 2017

Christo­pher Lee, whose near­ly 70-year act­ing career spanned most of the 20th cen­tu­ry and near­ly all of the 21st cen­tu­ry so far, saw numer­ous tech­no­log­i­cal, cin­e­mat­ic, and cul­tur­al trends come and go but remained an insti­tu­tion all the while. He first grew famous, as his many fans know, in the vivid, campy Ham­mer Hor­ror films of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s like The Curse of Franken­stein, Cor­ri­dor of Blood, and Drac­u­la. His star­ring role in that last gave him his sig­na­ture onscreen per­sona — he would go on to play the blood-suck­ing Count a total of ten times — but though he spe­cial­ized in dark, vil­lain­ous roles, his under­stand­ing of their essence meant his hun­dreds of per­for­mances tran­scend­ed their eras, and often their mate­r­i­al as well.

Lee knew, in oth­er words, what it meant to be fright­en­ing, omi­nous, or sim­ply unset­tling in a rich and intrigu­ing way, and that knowl­edge can hard­ly have come with­out an appre­ci­a­tion for the endur­ing work of Edgar Allan Poe.

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured sev­er­al of Lee’s read­ings of the 19th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can mas­ter of the macabre, includ­ing Poe’s most famous works like “The Raven” and “The Fall of the House of Ush­er,” but only ded­i­cat­ed col­lec­tors will have run across the long out-of-print release we sub­mit for your enjoy­ment today: Christo­pher Lee Reads Edgar Allan Poe Tales of Hor­ror, orig­i­nal­ly released in 1979, on cas­sette only, by the dis­count label Music for Plea­sure, Ltd.

Span­ning two tapes, this record­ing includes not only “The Fall of the House of Ush­er” but “The Black Cat,” “The Pit and the Pen­du­lum,” and “The Cask of Amon­til­la­do,” all of which demon­strate not just Lee’s abil­i­ty to con­jure up a spooky atmos­phere with his voice alone, but his per­fect suit­abil­i­ty to the kind of lan­guage Poe used to tell his sto­ries, always high­ly man­nered even while hint­ing at the unspeak­able depths below. The ques­tion of what makes Poe’s writ­ing so of its time yet so time­less may nev­er be ful­ly answered, but then, nor, prob­a­bly, will the ques­tion of what makes Lee’s ele­gant per­for­mances stand out from even the most schlocky or dat­ed pro­duc­tions. What­ev­er the rea­sons, the union of the two always guar­an­tees cap­ti­vat­ing lis­ten­ing, even from a sim­ple 1970s bar­gain-bin pack­age like this one. You can find old cas­settes of Christo­pher Lee Reads Edgar Allan Poe Tales of Hor­ror float­ing around on Ama­zon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Christo­pher Lee Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” and From “The Fall of the House of Ush­er”

Christo­pher Lee Reads Five Hor­ror Clas­sics: Drac­u­la, Franken­stein, The Phan­tom of the Opera & More

Hor­ror Leg­end Christo­pher Lee Reads Bram Stoker’s Drac­u­la

Hor­ror Leg­end Christo­pher Lee Presents a Heavy Met­al Ver­sion of The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy

Christo­pher Lee Nar­rates a Beau­ti­ful Ani­ma­tion of Tim Burton’s Poem, Night­mare Before Christ­mas

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, 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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Dog Crashes a Performance of the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, in the Ancient City of Ephesus: The “Cutest Moment in Classical Music”

in Random | July 3rd, 2017

A quick one for all dog lovers out there. Last week, while per­form­ing Mendelssohn’s ‘Ital­ian’ Sym­pho­ny No.4 in the ancient city of Eph­esus, mem­bers of the Vien­na Cham­ber Orches­tra noticed some­thing strange out of the cor­ner of their eyes: a dog wan­der­ing on stage, mid per­for­mance, and tak­ing a seat, right at the feet of the first vio­lin­ist. The short clip above comes from Turk­ish pianist Fazil Say, who called it the “Cutest moment in clas­si­cal music.” Hard not to agree.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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 Bohr-Ein­stein Debates, Reen­act­ed With Dog Pup­pets 

Kurt Von­negut Reveals “Why My Dog Is Not a Human­ist” in His Human­ist of the Year Award Speech (1992)

Nick Cave Nar­rates an Ani­mat­ed Film about the Cat Piano, the Twist­ed 18th Cen­tu­ry Musi­cal Instru­ment Designed to Treat Men­tal Ill­ness

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The Music from Jack Kerouac’s Classic Beat Novel On the Road: Stream Tracks by Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon & Other Jazz Legends

in Literature, Music | July 3rd, 2017

When read­ers talk about the “music” of On the Road, they usu­al­ly mean the dis­tinc­tive qual­i­ties of its prose, all typed out by Jack Ker­ouac, so lit­er­ary leg­end has it, on a three-week writ­ing ben­der in April of 1951. “Time being of the essence in the puri­ty of speech, sketch­ing lan­guage is undis­turbed flow from the mind of per­son­al secret idea-words, blow­ing (as per jazz musi­cian) on sub­ject of image,” he wrote, spon­ta­neous­ly, in his “Essen­tials of Spon­ta­neous Prose.” He also insist­ed on “no peri­ods sep­a­rat­ing sen­tence-struc­tures already arbi­trar­i­ly rid­dled by false colons and timid usu­al­ly need­less com­mas-but the vig­or­ous space dash sep­a­rat­ing rhetor­i­cal breath­ing (as jazz musi­cian draw­ing breath between out­blown phras­es).”

But actu­al music, and espe­cial­ly jazz music, also forms an inte­gral part of the back­ground — or rather, an inte­gral part of the ever-shift­ing back­grounds — of the sto­ry of Sal Par­adise and Dean Mori­ar­ty’s auto­mo­tive criscross­ing of Amer­i­ca. “Ker­ouac often made it clear that the sound of jazz in the 1940s had a lot to do with the kind of tone, inten­si­ty and unpremed­i­tat­ed dri­ve he was try­ing to cap­ture in the rhythms of his book,” writes the Guardian’s John Ford­ham. “In Los Ange­les, Ker­ouac describes ‘the wild hum­ming night of Cen­tral Avenue — the night of Ham­p’s (that’s swing-band leader Lionel Hamp­ton’s) ‘Cen­tral Avenue Break­down’ — howled and boomed … they were singing in the halls, singing from their win­dows, just hell and be damned and look out.’ ”

An evoca­tive pas­sage, to be sure, and one drawn from just one of many jazz-infused sec­tions of the nov­el. After enough of them, though, read­ers will want to hear some of this music, with its pow­er to bring the cops “swarm­ing from the near­est precinct,” for them­selves. The 25-track Youtube playlist at the top of the post comes packed with selec­tions drawn straight from the text, such as Miles Davis and the Char­lie Park­er Septet’s “Ornithol­o­gy,” which Ker­ouac uses to estab­lish the peri­od of bop in which the nov­el opens, and Dex­ter Gor­don and Wardell Gray’s The Hunt, so invig­o­rat­ing a live record­ing that Neal and Sal put it on the turntable in two sep­a­rate chap­ters. The playlist even includes Red Nor­vo’s Con­go Blues, the record that a girl at one point breaks over Dean’s head — and at Sal’s sug­ges­tion, no less — a mem­o­rable moment that shows that, how­ev­er much Ker­ouac loved and drew inspi­ra­tion from jazz, he cer­tain­ly did­n’t feel the need to keep rev­er­ent about it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jack Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road (1959)

Jack Kerouac’s Hand-Drawn Map of the Hitch­hik­ing Trip Nar­rat­ed in On the Road

Jack Ker­ouac Lists 9 Essen­tials for Writ­ing Spon­ta­neous Prose

Hear All Three of Jack Kerouac’s Spo­ken-World Albums: A Sub­lime Union of Beat Lit­er­a­ture and 1950s Jazz

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, 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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An Animated Introduction to the Life & Work of Marie Curie, the First Female Nobel Laureate

in Animation, Physics, Science | July 3rd, 2017

Look­ing for an intro­duc­tion or rein­tro­duc­tion to the life and work of sci­en­tist Marie Curie?

You could have a peek at her orig­i­nal man­u­scripts, after first sign­ing a waiv­er and garb­ing your­self in pro­tec­tive gear, so as to avoid the radioac­tiv­i­ty per­me­at­ing her pos­ses­sions…

Or you could turn to song. Army of Lovers, the Crypts!, and the Dee­dle Dee­dle Dees have all writ­ten songs in cel­e­bra­tion of this bril­liant woman, the first female Nobel Lau­re­ate and only per­son in his­to­ry to have been award­ed Nobel prizes in two dif­fer­ent sci­ences.

(Her lead-lined cof­fin, for­bid­den stud­ies, and romance with fel­low physi­cist and hus­band Pierre are the stuff from which gold­en lyrics are spun…)

Or you could watch the TED-Ed ani­ma­tion above, writ­ten and nar­rat­ed by Dr. Shohi­ni Ghose, Physics Pro­fes­sor and Direc­tor of Wil­frid Lau­ri­er University’s Cen­tre for Women in Sci­ence.

Ghose coun­ter­bal­ances the tan­ta­liz­ing bio­graph­i­cal tid­bits of the world’s most famous female sci­en­tist with her actu­al con­tri­bu­tions to the fields of oncol­o­gy, tech­nol­o­gy, med­i­cine, and nuclear physics.

Ghose’s full TED-Ed les­son includes a review quiz and fur­ther resources.

To get an even more in-depth intro­duc­tion to the Curies, lis­ten to the episode of In Our Time, below.

And do remem­ber to put down the sparklers and pota­to sal­ad for a moment in silent recog­ni­tion that this July 4th marks the 83rd anniver­sary of Mme. Curie’s death from aplas­tic ane­mia, the result of pro­longed expo­sure to radi­a­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Marie Curie’s Research Papers Are Still Radioac­tive 100+ Years Lat­er

Marie Curie Attend­ed a Secret, Under­ground “Fly­ing Uni­ver­si­ty” When Women Were Banned from Pol­ish Uni­ver­si­ties

Free Online Physics Cours­es

Real Women Talk About Their Careers in Sci­ence

The Con­tri­bu­tions of Women Philoso­phers Recov­ered by the New Project Vox Web­site

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

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209 Beatles Songs in 209 Days: Memphis Musician Covers The Beatles’ Songbook

in Music | July 3rd, 2017

There’s a dan­ger for musi­cians in cov­er­ing well-known songs from famous artists. The obvi­ous prob­lem: one can fail to meet the chal­lenge and deliv­er a sub­stan­dard per­for­mance of a beloved clas­sic, almost a crim­i­nal act in the esti­ma­tion of die-hard fans. But it’s too tempt­ing not to try. Musi­cians, like writ­ers and oth­er artists, learn best by mim­ic­k­ing the greats, then take what they’ve learned and devel­op their own style. Some of the best cov­ers of pop­u­lar songs are those that trans­pose them into a dif­fer­ent key, style, tem­po, or anoth­er genre entire­ly. “Make it your own!” as they say. Still a risky move… espe­cial­ly when it comes to the Bea­t­les.

There are indeed many phe­nom­e­nal Bea­t­les cov­ers—such as Bad Brains’ live take on “Day Trip­per” (for me anyway)—that rival the orig­i­nals. Some oth­ers… not so much. But when a Bea­t­les cov­er is real­ly good, and I mean real­ly, real­ly good… it’s usu­al­ly a pro who pulls it off. So hats off to David Brook­ings, an able non-famous musi­cian and Bea­t­les super­fan who set him­self the gar­gan­tu­an task of cov­er­ing 209 Bea­t­les songs in 209 days. Are all his cov­er ver­sions gems?

No, but the bar is set so high that it’s an impos­si­ble expec­ta­tion, espe­cial­ly giv­en the con­straints. Brook­ings isn’t re-invent­ing the pop genius wheel. He’s hav­ing fun with Bea­t­les’ songs, accom­pa­nied by an acoustic gui­tar, a key­board, a friend—singing Yoko’s parts in the sil­ly “The Con­tin­u­ing Sto­ry of Bun­ga­low Bill,” above—or his wife Shel­by, as in “Please Please Me,” below.…

With their home video pro­duc­tion val­ues, Brook­ings’ cov­ers don’t rise far above the wealth of oth­er such efforts that flood YouTube, many of which are high­ly admirable in their own way. But what sets his project apart—beyond its ambi­tious scope—is his occa­sion­al­ly tren­chant com­men­tary and an inter­est­ing per­son­al back­sto­ry. Brook­ings under­took his Bea­t­les cov­ers project in 2010 as a trib­ute not only to the Bea­t­les, but also, per­haps, to Steve Jobs, founder of that com­pa­ny named after the band’s own label (and like­ly tax shel­ter). Brook­ings says the whole thing may have been just a stunt just to show that “some idiot record­ed all 209 songs in 209 days.” But it’s sure­ly more than a coin­ci­dence that the year ear­li­er, while work­ing as a tour guide at Mem­phis’ leg­endary Sun Stu­dios, he made such an impres­sion on Jobs that the Apple founder invit­ed him to Cuper­ti­no to help build Apple’s iTunes library of blues and ear­ly rock and roll.

A dream gig for any musi­cian and stu­dent of musi­cal his­to­ry, and enough of an inspi­ra­tion to take on the entire cat­a­log of the most famous band in the world. What’s more, Brook­ings hap­pened to be recov­er­ing from liv­er-trans­plant surgery when he met Jobs at Sun and scored the job. See Brook­ings and his adorable daugh­ter McKin­ley sing “Nor­we­gian Wood,” above and “She Said She Said” below, and check out all of his cov­ers, as well as orig­i­nal songs and per­for­mances with his band, on his YouTube chan­nel. Find Bea­t­les cov­ers 1–110 here. And songs 111–209 here.

h/t Mark at Par­tial­lyEx­am­inedLife

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear 100 Amaz­ing Cov­er Ver­sions of Bea­t­les Songs

The 15 Worst Cov­ers of Bea­t­les Songs: William Shat­ner, Bill Cos­by, Tiny Tim, Sean Con­nery & Your Excel­lent Picks

Jimi Hen­drix Plays “Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band” for The Bea­t­les, Just Three Days After the Album’s Release (1967)

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

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How Ada Lovelace, Daughter of Lord Byron, Wrote the First Computer Program in 1842–a Century Before the First Computer

in Computer Science, History, Science, Technology | June 30th, 2017

I’ve nev­er quite under­stood why the phrase “revi­sion­ist his­to­ry” became pure­ly pejo­ra­tive. Of course, it has its Orwellian dark side, but all knowl­edge has to be revised peri­od­i­cal­ly, as we acquire new infor­ma­tion and, ide­al­ly, dis­card old prej­u­dices and nar­row frames of ref­er­ence. A fail­ure to do so seems fun­da­men­tal­ly regres­sive, not only in polit­i­cal terms, but also in terms of how we val­ue accu­rate, inter­est­ing, and engaged schol­ar­ship. Such research has recent­ly brought us fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ries about pre­vi­ous­ly mar­gin­al­ized peo­ple who made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery, such as NASA’s “human com­put­ers,” por­trayed in the book Hid­den Fig­ures, then dra­ma­tized in the film of the same name.

Like­wise, the many women who worked at Bletch­ley Park dur­ing World War II—helping to deci­pher encryp­tions like the Nazi Enig­ma Code (out of near­ly 10,000 code­break­ers, about 75% were women)—have recent­ly been get­ting their his­tor­i­cal due, thanks to “revi­sion­ist” researchers. And, as we not­ed in a recent post, we might not know much, if any­thing, about film star Hedy Lamarr’s sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to wire­less, GPS, and Blue­tooth tech­nol­o­gy were it not for the work of his­to­ri­ans like Richard Rhodes. These few exam­ples, among many, show us a fuller, more accu­rate, and more inter­est­ing view of the his­to­ry of sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, and they inspire women and girls who want to enter the field, yet have grown up with few role mod­els to encour­age them.

We can add to the pan­theon of great women in sci­ence the name Ada Byron, Count­ess of Lovelace, the daugh­ter of Roman­tic poet Lord Byron. Lovelace has been renowned, as Hank Green tells us in the video at the top of the post, for writ­ing the first com­put­er pro­gram, “despite liv­ing a cen­tu­ry before the inven­tion of the mod­ern com­put­er.” This pic­ture of Lovelace has been a con­tro­ver­sial one. “His­to­ri­ans dis­agree,” writes prodi­gious math­e­mati­cian Stephen Wol­fram. “To some she is a great hero in the his­to­ry of com­put­ing; to oth­ers an over­es­ti­mat­ed minor fig­ure.”

Wol­fram spent some time with “many orig­i­nal doc­u­ments” to untan­gle the mys­tery. “I feel like I’ve final­ly got­ten to know Ada Lovelace,” he writes, “and got­ten a grasp on her sto­ry. In some ways it’s an ennobling and inspir­ing sto­ry; in some ways it’s frus­trat­ing and trag­ic.” Edu­cat­ed in math and music by her moth­er, Anne Isabelle Mil­banke, Lovelace became acquaint­ed with math­e­mat­ics pro­fes­sor Charles Bab­bage, the inven­tor of a cal­cu­lat­ing machine called the Dif­fer­ence Engine, “a 2‑foot-high hand-cranked con­trap­tion with 2000 brass parts.” Bab­bage encour­aged her to pur­sue her inter­ests in math­e­mat­ics, and she did so through­out her life.

Wide­ly acknowl­edged as one of the fore­fa­thers of com­put­ing, Bab­bage even­tu­al­ly cor­re­spond­ed with Lovelace on the cre­ation of anoth­er machine, the Ana­lyt­i­cal Engine, which “sup­port­ed a whole list of pos­si­ble kinds of oper­a­tions, that could in effect be done in arbi­trar­i­ly pro­grammed sequence.” When, in 1842, Ital­ian math­e­mati­cian Louis Mene­brea pub­lished a paper in French on the Ana­lyt­i­cal Engine, “Bab­bage enlist­ed Ada as trans­la­tor,” notes the San Diego Super­com­put­er Cen­ter’s Women in Sci­ence project. “Dur­ing a nine-month peri­od in 1842–43, she worked fever­ish­ly on the arti­cle and a set of Notes she append­ed to it. These are the source of her endur­ing fame.” (You can read her trans­la­tion and notes here.)

In the course of his research, Wol­fram pored over Bab­bage and Lovelace’s cor­re­spon­dence about the trans­la­tion, which reads “a lot like emails about a project might today, apart from being in Vic­to­ri­an Eng­lish.” Although she built on Bab­bage and Menebrea’s work, “She was clear­ly in charge” of suc­cess­ful­ly extrap­o­lat­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties of the Ana­lyt­i­cal Engine, but she felt “she was first and fore­most explain­ing Babbage’s work, so want­ed to check things with him.” Her addi­tions to the work were very well-received—Michael Fara­day called her “the ris­ing star of Science”—and when her notes were pub­lished, Bab­bage wrote, “you should have writ­ten an orig­i­nal paper.”

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, as a woman, “she couldn’t get access to the Roy­al Society’s library in Lon­don,” and her ambi­tions were derailed by a severe health cri­sis. Lovelace died of can­cer at the age of 37, and for some time, her work sank into semi-obscu­ri­ty. Though some his­to­ri­ans have  seen her as sim­ply an expos­i­tor of Babbage’s work, Wol­fram con­cludes that it was Ada who had the idea of “what the Ana­lyt­i­cal Engine should be capa­ble of.” Her notes sug­gest­ed pos­si­bil­i­ties Bab­bage had nev­er dreamed. As the Women in Sci­ence project puts it, “She right­ly saw [the Ana­lyt­i­cal Engine] as what we would call a gen­er­al-pur­pose com­put­er. It was suit­ed for ‘devel­op­ping [sic] and tab­u­lat­ing any func­tion what­ev­er… the engine [is] the mate­r­i­al expres­sion of any indef­i­nite func­tion of any degree of gen­er­al­i­ty and com­plex­i­ty.’ Her Notes antic­i­pate future devel­op­ments, includ­ing com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed music.”

In a recent episode of the BBC’s In Our Time, above, you can hear host Melvyn Bragg dis­cuss Lovelace’s impor­tance with his­to­ri­ans and schol­ars Patri­cia Fara, Doron Swade, and John Fue­gi. And be sure to read Wolfram’s bio­graph­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal account of Lovelace here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How 1940s Film Star Hedy Lamarr Helped Invent the Tech­nol­o­gy Behind Wi-Fi & Blue­tooth Dur­ing WWII

The Con­tri­bu­tions of Women Philoso­phers Recov­ered by the New Project Vox Web­site

Real Women Talk About Their Careers in Sci­ence

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

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