George Orwell’s Life & Literature Presented in a 3‑Hour Radio Documentary: Features Interviews with Those Who Knew Orwell Best

in History, Literature, Politics, Radio | December 20th, 2016

via Wikimedia Commons

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Say you find your­self in a one-par­ty state that promis­es to dis­man­tle every civ­il insti­tu­tion you believe in and tram­ple every eth­i­cal prin­ci­ple you hold dear. You may feel a lit­tle despon­dent. While a “this too shall pass” atti­tude may help you gain per­spec­tive, the prob­lem isn’t sim­ply that you’re on the los­ing side of a polit­i­cal con­test. As George Orwell wrote in 1984, total author­i­tar­i­an con­trol means that “Who con­trols the past con­trols the future. Who con­trols the present con­trols the past.” The epis­temic base­line you took for grant­ed may become increas­ing­ly, fright­en­ing­ly elu­sive as the rul­ing par­ty reshapes all of real­i­ty to its designs.

With more vivid clar­i­ty than per­haps any­one since, Orwell char­ac­ter­ized the mech­a­nisms by which total­i­tar­i­an­ism takes hold. His 1948 nov­el has not only giv­en us a near-uni­ver­sal set of terms to describe the phe­nom­e­non, but it also gives us a met­ric: when our soci­ety begins to resem­ble Orwell’s dystopia in per­va­sive and alarm­ing ways, we should know with­out ques­tion things have gone bad­ly wrong. Whether we can do much about it is anoth­er ques­tion, but we should remem­ber that Orwell him­self was not sim­ply an arm­chair observ­er of Fas­cism, Sovi­et total­i­tar­i­an­ism, or oppres­sive Eng­lish colo­nial rule. He fought Franco’s forces in Spain dur­ing the Span­ish Civ­il War and as a jour­nal­ist wrote crit­i­cal arti­cles and essays expos­ing hypocrisies and abus­es of law and lan­guage. The impact of his work on lat­er gen­er­a­tions speaks for itself.

In the CBC radio doc­u­men­tary The Orwell Tapes, in three parts here, we have a com­pre­hen­sive intro­duc­tion to Orwell’s work, thought, and life. It opens with alarm­ing sound­bites from light­ning rods (and vil­lains or heroes, depend­ing on who you ask) Julian Assange and Edward Snow­den. But it doesn’t stray into the clichéd ter­ri­to­ry of over­heat­ed con­spir­a­cy those names often inspire. Instead we’re large­ly treat­ed through­out each episode to first­hand accounts of the sub­ject from those who knew him well.

“CBC is the only media orga­ni­za­tion in the world,” says host Paul Kennedy, “with a com­pre­hen­sive archive of record­ings fea­tur­ing peo­ple who knew Orwell, from his ear­li­est days, to his final moments. 75 peo­ple, 50 hours of record­ings.” Edit­ed snip­pets of these audio record­ings make up the bulk of The Orwell Tapes, hence the title, mak­ing the pro­gram oral his­to­ry rather than sen­sa­tion­al­ism. The inter­vie­wees include friends, for­mer girl­friends, com­rades-in-arms, and crit­i­cal oppo­nents. Each episode’s page on the CBC site fea­tures a list of names and rela­tions to Orwell at the bot­tom.

But of course, accu­sa­tions of sen­sa­tion­al­ism always fol­low those who warn of Orwellian trends and ten­den­cies. Like many of our con­tem­po­raries, Orwell was a con­tra­dic­to­ry fig­ure. He served as a colo­nial police­man in Bur­ma even as he grew dis­gust­ed with Empire; he con­sid­ered him­self a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ist, but he nev­er looked away from the author­i­tar­i­an hor­rors of state com­mu­nism; and he has been held up as a pil­lar of resis­tance to state sur­veil­lance and con­trol, even as he also stands accused of “nam­ing names.” But the over­all impres­sion we get from Orwell’s friends and col­leagues is that he was ful­ly committed—to writ­ing, to polit­i­cal engage­ment, to telling the truth as he saw it.

In releas­ing The Orwell Tapes this month, the CBC gives us five rea­sons why Orwell “is still very much with us today.” Some of these—modern sur­veil­lance, the cor­rup­tions of pow­er (and the pow­er of corruption)—will be famil­iar, as will num­ber 3, a vari­a­tion on what we’ve come to call “empa­thy” for one’s oppo­nent. The 4th rea­son, CBC notes, is the renewed rel­e­vance of social­ism as a viable alter­na­tive to cap­i­tal­ist pre­da­tion. And final­ly, we have the con­tin­ued dan­ger of speak­ing truth to pow­er, and to those who serve it reli­gious­ly, uncrit­i­cal­ly, and often vio­lent­ly. As Orwell wrote in the pref­ace to Ani­mal Farm, “If lib­er­ty means any­thing at all, it means the right to tell peo­ple what they don’t want to hear.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hux­ley to Orwell: My Hell­ish Vision of the Future is Bet­ter Than Yours (1949)

George Orwell Tries to Iden­ti­fy Who Is Real­ly a “Fas­cist” and Define the Mean­ing of This “Much-Abused Word” (1944)

George Orwell’s Six Rules for Writ­ing Clear and Tight Prose

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

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M.C. Escher Cover Art for Great Books by Italo Calvino, George Orwell & Jorge Luis Borges

in Art, Books | December 20th, 2016

The writer David Auer­bach once post­ed a fas­ci­nat­ing inquest on left-brained lit­er­a­ture, an exam­i­na­tion of what he calls “a par­al­lel track of lit­er­a­ture that is pop­u­lar specif­i­cal­ly among engi­neers,” exclud­ing genre fic­tion (sci­ence- or oth­er­wise), with an eye toward “which nov­els of some noto­ri­ety and good PR hap­pen to attract mem­bers of the engi­neer­ing pro­fes­sions.” Favored author names turn out to include Richard Pow­ers, Umber­to Eco, Haru­ki Muraka­mi, William Gib­son, Ita­lo Calvi­no, and Jorge Luis Borges.

More of these lit­er­ar­i­ly inclined left-brain­ers exist than one might imag­ine. From the pub­lish­er’s point of view, what cov­er art could best attract them? Books tar­get­ed toward that demo­graph­ic could do far worse than to use the work of M.C. Esch­er, who spent his career with one foot in art and the oth­er in math­e­mat­ics.

In the hith­er­to unseen (and even unimag­ined) worlds pic­tured in his wood­cuts, lith­o­graphs, and mez­zot­ints, he made use of math­e­mat­i­cal con­cepts from tes­sel­la­tion to reflec­tion to infin­i­ty in ways at once impos­si­ble and some­how plau­si­ble, all of them still intel­lec­tu­al­ly and aes­thet­i­cal­ly com­pelling today.

The non-nov­el­ist Dou­glas Hof­s­tadter appears in Auer­bach’s inquest since his best-known work, Gödel, Esch­er, Bach: an Eter­nal Gold­en Braid, “which part­ly uses fic­tion­al forms, is too great not to list.” Not only does Escher’s name appear in Hof­s­tadter’s book title, his art informs its cen­tral con­cepts. “Hof­s­tadter wove a net­work of con­nec­tions link­ing the math­e­mat­ics of Gödel, the art of Esch­er, and the music of Bach,” writes Allene M. Park­er in the paper “Draw­ing Borges: a Two-Part Inven­tion on the Labyrinths of Jorge Luis Borges and M.C. Esch­er.” In Gödel, Esch­er, Bach he describes their com­mon denom­i­na­tor as a “strange loop,” a phe­nom­e­non that “occurs when­ev­er, by move­ment upwards (or down­wards) through the lev­els of some hier­ar­chi­cal sys­tem, we unex­pect­ed­ly find our­selves right back where we start­ed.”

Park­er iden­ti­fies 1948’s “Draw­ing Hands” as a “par­tic­u­lar­ly strik­ing and famil­iar exam­ple” of a strange loop in Escher’s work. We can inter­pret that image by rec­og­niz­ing that “it is Esch­er, the artist, who is draw­ing both hands and who stands out­side this par­tic­u­lar puz­zle.” Or we can “adopt a Zen-inspired solu­tion and let mys­tery be mys­tery by choos­ing to embrace a uni­ty which con­tains oppo­si­tions,” such as one described by the open­ing of Borges’ poem “Labyrinths”:

There’ll nev­er be a door. You’re inside

and the keep encom­pass­es the world

and has nei­ther obverse nor reverse

nor cir­cling in secret cen­ter.

The Esch­er-Borges con­nec­tions go deep­er beyond, and as you can see in John Coulthart’s orig­i­nal post, the selec­tion of Esch­er-cov­ered books extends far­ther.

Aside from count­less non­fic­tion pub­li­ca­tions, the Dutch math­e­mat­i­cal mas­ter’s work has graced sci­ence-fic­tion and fan­ta­sy mag­a­zines, one edi­tion of Flat­land, a col­lec­tion of “Forteana, weird fic­tion, occultism and his­tor­i­cal spec­u­la­tion,” Clive Bark­er’s The Damna­tion Game, and George Orwell’s 1984, a nov­el more wide­ly read than ever by the left- and right-brained alike. But no mat­ter which hemi­sphere we favor, Esch­er — like Orwell, Borges, and Calvi­no — shows us how to see real­i­ty in more inter­est­ing ways.

via John Coulthart

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch M.C. Esch­er Make His Final Artis­tic Cre­ation in the 1971 Doc­u­men­tary Adven­tures in Per­cep­tion

Meta­mor­phose: 1999 Doc­u­men­tary Reveals the Life and Work of Artist M.C. Esch­er

Inspi­ra­tions: A Short Film Cel­e­brat­ing the Math­e­mat­i­cal Art of M.C. Esch­er

The Cov­er of George Orwell’s 1984 Becomes Less Cen­sored with Wear and Tear

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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75 Years of CIA Maps Now Declassified & Made Available Online

in Design, History, Maps | December 20th, 2016

russian-front-review

Satel­lite-con­nect­ed devices do all the hard work of nav­i­ga­tion for us: plan jour­neys, plot dis­tances, tell us where we are and where we’re going. The age of the high­ly skilled car­tog­ra­ph­er may be com­ing to an end. But in the past few hun­dred years—since Euro­pean states began carv­ing the world between them—the win­ners of colo­nial con­tests, World War bat­tles, and Cold War skir­mish­es were often those who had the best maps. In addi­tion to their indis­pens­able role in sea­far­ing and bat­tle strat­e­gy, “good maps,” writes Dan­ny Lewis at Smith­son­ian, have been “an inte­gral part of the trade­craft of espi­onage.”

The CIA will tell you as much… or they will now, at least, since they’ve declas­si­fied decades of once-secret maps from the days when they “relied on geo­g­ra­phers and car­tog­ra­phers for plan­ning and exe­cut­ing oper­a­tions around the world” rather than on “dig­i­tal map­ping tech­nolo­gies and satel­lite images.”

Now cel­e­brat­ing its 75th anniver­sary, the CIA’s Car­tog­ra­phy Cen­ter boasts of “a long, proud his­to­ry of ser­vice to the Intel­li­gence Com­mu­ni­ty,” at the Agency’s friend­ly web­site; “Since 1941, the Car­tog­ra­phy Cen­ter maps have told the sto­ries of post-WWII recon­struc­tion, the Suez cri­sis, the Cuban Mis­sile cri­sis, the Falk­lands War, and many oth­er impor­tant events in his­to­ry.”

ussr-gross-national-product

What­ev­er noble or nefar­i­ous roles the Agency may have played in these and hun­dreds of oth­er events, we can now see–thanks to this new online gallery at Flickr–what pres­i­dents, Direc­tors, and field agents saw when they planned their actions, begin­ning with the country’s first “non-depart­men­tal intel­li­gence orga­ni­za­tion,” the COI (Office of the Coor­di­na­tor of Infor­ma­tion). Once the U.S. entered WWII, it became the Office of Strate­gic Ser­vices (OSS). The Car­tog­ra­phy Center’s first chief, Arthur Robin­son, was only 26 and a grad­u­ate stu­dent in geog­ra­phy when COI direc­tor William Dono­van recruit­ed him to lead the orga­ni­za­tion. The office rapid­ly expand­ed dur­ing the war, and by 1943, “geo­g­ra­phers and car­tog­ra­phers amassed what would be the largest col­lec­tion of maps in the world.”

cuban-missiles-1962

In the ear­ly for­ties, “map lay­ers were draft­ed by hand using pen and ink on translu­cent acetate sheets mount­ed on large Strath­more boards.” These drafts were typ­i­cal­ly four times larg­er than the print­ed maps them­selves, one of which you can see at the top of the post, “The Russ­ian Front in Review.” In the fifties, “improved effi­cien­cy in map com­pi­la­tion and con­struc­tion” pro­duced visu­al­ly strik­ing doc­u­ments like that fur­ther up from 1955, “USSR: Region­al Dis­tri­b­u­tion of Gross Nation­al Prod­uct.” Not a map, but what we would call an info­graph­ic, this image shows how the Car­tog­ra­phy Cen­ter per­formed ser­vices far in excess of the usu­al map app—visualizing threats to the U.S. from Cuban sur­face-to-air mis­sile sites in 1962 (above) and threats to the African ele­phant pop­u­la­tion from poach­ers in 2013 (below). Fur­ther down, you can see a 2003 map of Bagh­dad, with the omi­nous­ly non-threat­en­ing note print­ed at the top and right, “This map is NOT to be used for TARGETING.”

african-elephant-range

These maps and many more can be found at the CIA Car­tog­ra­phy Flickr account, which has a cat­e­go­ry for each decade since the 1940s. Each map is down­load­able in low to high res­o­lu­tion scans. In addi­tion, one cat­e­go­ry, “Car­tog­ra­phy Tools,” fea­tures high-qual­i­ty pho­tog­ra­phy of vin­tage draughtsman’s instru­ments, all of them, like the Ger­man-made ink pens fur­ther down, sym­bols of the painstak­ing hand­i­craft map­mak­ing once required. While we can prob­a­bly draw any num­ber of polit­i­cal lessons or his­tor­i­cal the­ses from a deep analy­sis of this deep state archive, what it seems to ask of us first and fore­most is that we con­sid­er car­tog­ra­phy as not only a use­ful dis­ci­pline but as a fine art.

baghdad-2003

As the Car­tog­ra­phy Center’s first direc­tor put it, “a map should be aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing, thought-pro­vok­ing, and com­mu­nica­tive.” Giv­en these stan­dards we might see how cur­rent tech­nol­o­gy, for all its tremen­dous ease of use and unde­ni­able util­i­ty, might improve by look­ing to maps of the past. Vis­it the CIA’s flickr gallery here.

drawing-instruments

via Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

19th Cen­tu­ry Maps Visu­al­ize Measles in Amer­i­ca Before the Mir­a­cle of Vac­cines

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

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Learn Python: A Free Online Course from Google

in Google, Online Courses, Technology | December 19th, 2016

Google has cre­at­ed a free Python class designed for “peo­ple with a lit­tle bit of pro­gram­ming expe­ri­ence who want to learn Python.” A for­tu­nate thing since Python is a com­put­er lan­guage that’s now strong­ly in demand. (By the way, did you know that Python takes its name from Mon­ty Python? A true sto­ry.)

Accord­ing to Google’s course descrip­tion:

The class includes “writ­ten mate­ri­als, lec­ture videos, and lots of code exer­cis­es to prac­tice Python cod­ing. These mate­ri­als are used with­in Google to intro­duce Python to peo­ple who have just a lit­tle pro­gram­ming expe­ri­ence. The first exer­cis­es work on basic Python con­cepts like strings and lists, build­ing up to the lat­er exer­cis­es which are full pro­grams deal­ing with text files, process­es, and http con­nec­tions. The class is geared for peo­ple who have a lit­tle bit of pro­gram­ming expe­ri­ence in some lan­guage, enough to know what a “vari­able” or “if state­ment” is. Beyond that, you do not need to be an expert pro­gram­mer to use this mate­r­i­al.

This mate­r­i­al was cre­at­ed by Nick Par­lante work­ing in the engE­DU group at Google. Google’s Python class will be added to our list of Free Online Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es, a sub­set of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

For any­one inter­est­ed in an intro­duc­to­ry pro­gram­ming course that uses Python, see: Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­er Sci­ence and Pro­gram­ming: A Free Course from MIT.

Oth­er out­fits offer­ing free instruc­tion in Python include Udac­i­ty, Codecad­e­my, and Cours­era.

If you’re look­ing for a gen­er­al­ly well-reviewed text­book, con­sid­er Learn­ing Python, 5th edi­tion (from O’Reil­ly Media.

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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Acclaimed Japanese Jazz Pianist Yōsuke Yamashita Plays a Burning Piano on the Beach

in Jazz, Music | December 19th, 2016

Unlike­ly as it might seem, the Japan­ese jazz scene has for decades and decades pro­duced some of the finest play­ers in the world, from tra­di­tion­al­ists to exper­i­men­tal­ists and every­thing in-between. One might say the same about oth­er jazz-inclined coun­tries (those of north­ern Europe, for instance, hav­ing devel­oped par­tic­u­lar­ly robust scenes), but those coun­tries have to do with­out enliven­ment by “only in Japan” moments like the one we have above: jazz pianist Yōsuke Yamashita, acclaimed on both sides of the Pacif­ic, play­ing piano on the beach — a piano on fire on the beach, to be pre­cise.

This was­n’t even the first time he’d done it. In 1973, famed graph­ic design­er Kiyoshi Awazu asked Yamashita to appear in his short film burn­ing piano, play­ing the tit­u­lar instru­ment. Watch­ing it again 35 years lat­er, Yamashita wrote, “See­ing myself engaged in that extra­or­di­nary per­for­mance, I felt this wave of emo­tion that was like, ‘What was that?’

In one sense, I had per­formed as an ‘object’ in a Kiyoshi Awazu art­work. In anoth­er, how­ev­er, I had per­haps expe­ri­enced a form of artis­tic expres­sion that no one before me had ever expe­ri­enced before, as the result of a sit­u­a­tion that could only have hap­pened at that time. ‘What was that?’ There was only one way I could recon­firm this for myself—by doing it one more time.”

The oppor­tu­ni­ty arose at the behest of Kanaza­wa’s 21st Cen­tu­ry Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art, who staged Burn­ing Piano 2008. You can read the even­t’s pro­gram as a PDF, which con­tains Yamashita’s reflec­tions lead­ing up to the event. It also con­tains remarks from an Awazu Design Room rep­re­sen­ta­tive who wit­nessed the orig­i­nal burn­ing piano shoot, a local piano deal­er (who assures us that long after the piano “began to appear in Japan­ese homes in the era of high-lev­el eco­nom­ic growth,” some “must be destroyed amid reluc­tant feel­ings”), and the may­or of Shi­ka Town, on whose Masuhogau­ra Beach Yamashita donned his sil­ver pro­tec­tive suit and played a funer­al requiem on the flam­ing instru­ment until it could pro­duce not a sound more.

“I did not think I was risk­ing my life,” Yamashita lat­er said, “but I was almost suf­fo­cat­ing from the smoke that was con­tin­u­ous­ly get­ting into my eyes and nose. I had decid­ed to keep on play­ing until the piano stopped mak­ing sounds, so though I did not mean it, but it end­ed up hav­ing a life-or-death bat­tle between the piano and myself.” Ded­i­cat­ed jazz play­ers know what it means to suf­fer for their art, as do all the par­tic­i­pants in the age-old inten­sive Japan­ese con­cep­tion of mas­tery, but who would have guessed that those cul­tures would inter­sect so… com­bustibly?

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

CERN’s Cos­mic Piano and Jazz Pianist Jam Togeth­er at The Mon­treux Jazz Fes­ti­val

Hear the Exper­i­men­tal Piano Jazz Album by Come­di­an H. Jon Ben­jamin — Who Can’t Play Piano

Park­ing Garage Door Does Impres­sion of Miles Davis’ Jazz Album, Bitch­es Brew

Hunter S. Thomp­son Sets His Christ­mas Tree on Fire, Near­ly Burns His House Down (1990)

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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Giant Dinosaurs Travel Down the Hudson River: See What Awestruck New Yorkers Witnessed in 1963

in Biology, History, Science, Travel | December 19th, 2016

Amaz­ing things hap­pen every day in New York City—some spon­ta­neous, some whose exe­cu­tion is care­ful­ly planned over weeks and months.

Equal­ly amaz­ing is the total igno­rance with which one can go about one’s busi­ness at just a few blocks remove … be it the Coney Island Mer­maid Parade, Egg Rolls and Egg Creams, or the Three Kings Day Parade, some folks only have eyes for brunch.

But it would have been dif­fi­cult for any­one to over­look sev­en ani­ma­tron­ic dinosaurs, trav­el­ing by barge on Octo­ber 15, 1963, bound for the Sin­clair Oil Cor­po­ra­tion’s “Dinoland” exhib­it at the 1964 World’s Fair.

In a stunt wor­thy of Bar­num, the syn­thet­ic beasts trekked 150 miles from the exhibit’s design­er, Jonas Stu­dios, to the World’s Fair site in Flush­ing, Queens, hailed by fire­boats and an enthu­si­as­tic throng. The spon­sor­ing cor­po­ra­tion, whose high­ly rec­og­niz­able logo was a bron­tosaurus, had fur­nished the pub­lic with a timetable of esti­mat­ed arrivals along the route.

dinopress

For good mea­sure, every fam­i­ly to vis­it the exhib­it with­in the first year was offered a coupon for a free gal­lon of gaso­line.

Installed in what the mar­velous­ly evoca­tive Jam Handy short below termed a “prime loca­tion sur­round­ed by titans of Amer­i­can indus­try,” the dinosaurs attract­ed over 10 mil­lion “car-own­ing, trav­el­ing” fans. (That’s a lot of fos­sil fuel.)

On the way out, vis­i­tors were encour­aged to avail them­selves of the Mold-A-Rama machine, which pumped out minia­ture plas­tic dinosaur sou­venirs at 25¢ a pop.

After the fair closed, the dinosaurs went on tour, put in an appear­ance in the Macy’s Thanks­giv­ing Day Parade, and even­tu­al­ly set­tled into zoos and nat­ur­al his­to­ry muse­ums around the coun­try.

Read the Dinoland guide­book here. A sam­ple:

Sin­clair uses the Dinosaur “Bron­tosaurus” as a sym­bol to dra­ma­tize the age and qual­i­ty of the crude oils from which Sin­clair Petro­le­um Prod­ucts are made — crudes which were mel­low­ing in the earth mil­lions of years ago when Dinosaurs lived.

via @Pickover

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ger­tie the Dinosaur: The Moth­er of all Car­toon Char­ac­ters (1914)

Watch Lost World (1925), the Grand­dad­dy of Giant Mon­ster Movies Like The Lost World: Juras­sic Park

Watch a Time­lapse Video Show­ing the Cre­ation of New York City’s Sky­line: 1500 to Present

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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Introduction to Psychology: A Free Course from Yale University

in Online Courses, Psychology | December 18th, 2016

Taught by Yale pro­fes­sor Paul Bloom, this course presents an Intro­duc­tion to Psy­chol­o­gy and tries to explain what makes us tick:

What do your dreams mean? Do men and women dif­fer in the nature and inten­si­ty of their sex­u­al desires? Can apes learn sign lan­guage? Why can’t we tick­le our­selves? This course tries to answer these ques­tions and many oth­ers, pro­vid­ing a com­pre­hen­sive overview of the sci­en­tif­ic study of thought and behav­ior. It explores top­ics such as per­cep­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, learn­ing, mem­o­ry, deci­sion-mak­ing, reli­gion, per­sua­sion, love, lust, hunger, art, fic­tion, and dreams. We will look at how these aspects of the mind devel­op in chil­dren, how they dif­fer across peo­ple, how they are wired-up in the brain, and how they break down due to ill­ness and injury.

You can watch the 20 lec­tures from the course above, or find them on YouTube and iTunes. To get more infor­ma­tion on the course, includ­ing the syl­labus, vis­it this Yale web­site.

The main texts used in this course include:

Intro­duc­tion to Psy­chol­o­gy will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties. There you can find a spe­cial­ized list of Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy and Neu­ro­science Cours­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Crash Course on Psy­chol­o­gy: A 30-Part Video Series from Hank Green

The Neu­ro­science & Psy­chol­o­gy of Pro­cras­ti­na­tion, and How to Over­come It

How To Think Like a Psy­chol­o­gist: A Free Online Course from Stan­ford

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Neil Gaiman Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”: One Master of Dramatic Storytelling Reads Another

in Literature, Poetry | December 16th, 2016

Which liv­ing writer stands as the heir to Edgar Allan Poe? A sil­ly ques­tion, admit­ted­ly: now, more than 160 years after his death, Poe’s influ­ence has spread so far and wide through­out lit­er­a­ture that no one writer’s work could pos­si­bly count as his defin­i­tive con­tin­u­a­tion. The most pop­u­lar and pow­er­ful mod­ern sto­ry­tellers owe more than a thing or two to Poe — or rather, have built upon Poe’s achieve­ments — with­out even know­ing it, espe­cial­ly if they hail from a dif­fer­ent part of the world and work a dif­fer­ent part of the cul­tur­al map than did 19th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca’s pio­neer of new and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly intense genre lit­er­a­ture.

Take, for instance, Neil Gaiman. “Every year, World­builders holds a giant auc­tion-char­i­ty-dona­tion thing, giv­ing peo­ple cool things and rais­ing an awful lot of mon­ey for a fan­tas­tic cause,” he says in the video above, which came out just this hol­i­day sea­son. “And every year, I seem to be read­ing a poem or book cho­sen by the peo­ple who pay mon­ey to World­builders.

This year, for rea­sons known only to them­selves, they have decid­ed I need to read Edgar Allan Poe’s ghast­ly, grue­some, dark, and famous poem ‘The Raven.’ So I’ve lit a num­ber of can­dles, fired up the fire, found a copy of the Oxford Book of Nar­ra­tive Verse, and I’m going to read it to you in a com­fort­able chair by the fire, as befits a poem told in the days of yore.”

Though many of his fans come to know him through his nov­els like Amer­i­can Gods and Star­dust, Gaiman’s writ­ing career has also includ­ed work in poet­ry, com­ic books, radio dra­ma, and movies, all of it using his sig­na­ture mix of fan­tas­ti­cal inven­tion, res­o­nant emo­tion, and pol­ished, wit­ty word­craft. When poten­tial col­lab­o­ra­tors on projects in these fields and oth­ers want to work with him, they want to tap not just his uncom­mon sto­ry­telling skill, regard­less of the medi­um in which he tells his sto­ries, but his abil­i­ty to sat­is­fy both wide audi­ences and crit­ics with those sto­ries.

Poe, too, knew how to do this, and indeed described “The Raven” in a mag­a­zine essay as a work delib­er­ate­ly com­posed to “suit at once the pop­u­lar and the crit­i­cal taste,” and since its first pub­li­ca­tion in 1845, the poem has only grown bet­ter-known and more beloved. Here, in Neil Gaiman’s ten-minute read­ing, we can see and hear one mas­ter of high-impact sto­ry­telling acknowl­edg­ing anoth­er over all those 171 years.

Gaiman’s read­ing will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Christo­pher Walken’s Won­der­ful Read­ing of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (on the Anniver­sary of Poe’s Death)

The Great Stan Lee Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”

James Earl Jones Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”

Lou Reed Rewrites Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” See Read­ings by Reed and Willem Dafoe

John Astin, From The Addams Fam­i­ly, Recites “The Raven” as Edgar Allan Poe

The Simp­sons Present Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” and Teach­ers Now Use It to Teach Kids the Joys of Lit­er­a­ture

Hear the 14-Hour “Essen­tial Edgar Allan Poe” Playlist: “The Raven,” “The Tell-Tale Heart” & Much More

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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Slavoj Žižek Answers the Question “Should We Teach Children to Believe in Santa Claus?”

in Life, Philosophy | December 16th, 2016

Local par­ent tells oth­er local par­ent how to raise their chil­dren: this sce­nario has pro­voked many a neigh­bor­hood list­serv flame­war, and maybe a street brawl or three. Unkempt and inflam­ma­to­ry philoso­pher Slavoj Žižek telling par­ents how to raise their chil­dren? Well… maybe a few hun­dred eye­rolls.

I exag­ger­ate. Žižek only address­es one small aspect of parenting—a benign, cul­tur­al­ly spe­cif­ic one at that, which ranks far beneath, say, health and edu­ca­tion and falls in line with whether one should pre­tend to be a noc­tur­nal crea­ture who lives on children’s teeth, or to see a giant rab­bit in the spring.

We’re talk­ing about San­ta Claus, and to lie or not to lie to your kids is the ques­tion posed to Žižek by stu­dents at SUNY Brock­port in the low-qual­i­ty video above. If you can adjust to the audio/video, you’ll hear the cul­tur­al the­o­rist give an inter­est­ing answer. I can’t vouch for its con­so­nance with child psy­chol­o­gy, but as a par­ent, I can say my tiny demo­graph­ic con­firms the insight.

Though he’s near­ly inaudi­ble at first, we even­tu­al­ly hear Žižek say­ing, “No… they will absolute­ly take it as this cyn­i­cal [rea­son?] of ‘let’s pre­tend that it’s real,’ no mat­ter how much you insist that you mean it lit­er­al­ly.” For those who might ago­nize over the ques­tion, it may be most kids aren’t near­ly as gullible as we imag­ine, just good sports who don’t want to let us down.

This would not be a Žižek answer if it did not veer into claims far more ambi­tious, or grandiose, than the ques­tion seems to war­rant. Sens­ing per­haps he’s on shaky ground with the whole par­ent­ing advice thing, he quick­ly moves on to the sub­ject of “what does it mean, real­ly, to believe?” Belief, says Žižek—in the sense of indi­vid­ual, inward assent to meta­phys­i­cal propositions—is a mod­ern inven­tion.

In attempt­ing to make Saint Nicholas believ­able to chil­dren, we’ve para­dox­i­cal­ly turned him into a car­toon char­ac­ter (and in the U.S. and else­where ban­ished his lov­able demon side­kick, Kram­pus). Kids see right through it, says Žižek in anoth­er inter­view above. And so, “You have a belief which is nobody’s belief! Nobody believes in the first per­son.”

Why, then, not just admit we’re all pre­tend­ing, and say “we’re enjoy­ing a sto­ry togeth­er”? We do it every night with chil­dren, this one just involves food, lights, fam­i­ly, gifts, sweaters, uncom­fort­able trav­el and maybe reli­gious cer­e­monies of your tra­di­tion. You can often hear Žižek opine on those kinds of beliefs as well. My only com­ment on the mat­ter is to say, sin­cere­ly, Hap­py Hol­i­days.

via Crit­i­cal The­o­ry

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In His Lat­est Film, Slavoj Žižek Claims “The Only Way to Be an Athe­ist is Through Chris­tian­i­ty”

Slavoj Žižek: What Ful­fils You Cre­ative­ly Isn’t What Makes You Hap­py

Hermeneu­tics of Toi­lets by Slavoj Žižek: An Ani­ma­tion About Find­ing Ide­ol­o­gy in Unlike­ly Places

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

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Watch Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Characters Enter the Real World

in Animation, Film, Life | December 16th, 2016

Beau­ti­ful back­grounds are a sta­ple of direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki’s ani­mat­ed fea­tures. Whether depict­ing a whim­si­cal Euro­pean vil­lage, a mas­sive tra­di­tion­al bath­house com­plex pop­u­lat­ed by ghosts, or a rainy bus stop in sub­ur­ban Tokyo, they come to the fore in the qui­et moments for which this direc­tor is also deserved­ly cel­e­brat­ed.

Giv­en the rev­er­ence this old-fash­ioned artistry has inspired, it was par­tic­u­lar­ly auda­cious of Kore­an film­mak­er Kojer to sep­a­rate some of Miyazaki’s best known char­ac­ters from their hand-paint­ed habi­tats, via a painstak­ing Roto­scop­ing pro­ce­dure.

Their lib­er­a­tion was short lived, giv­en that Kojer’s inter­est lay in trans­pos­ing them onto live action approx­i­ma­tions of the Stu­dio Ghi­b­li orig­i­nals.

Shot pri­mar­i­ly in South Korea, the new set­tings, above, are uncan­ny dop­pel­gängers, fol­low­ing some vig­or­ous Pho­to­shop­ping. One won­ders if Kojer expe­ri­enced any regret, sev­er­al hun­dred hours into this masochis­tic assign­ment. So many challenges—from shad­ows to light­ing to cloudy skies in need of alter­ing, frame by painstak­ing frame. The obsta­cles posed by semi-trans­par­ent char­ac­ters such as Spir­it­ed Away’s No Face sound pos­i­tive­ly unearth­ly.

Clear­ly a labor of love from an artist whose most high pro­file work seems to be a web­series star­ring his own hand. His quest took him to Provence Vil­lage in Paju, South Korea and Seoul’s Olympic Park. He rode the #4 line sub­way to the end of the line and the #2 to Seok­chon Lake where the Amer­i­can art col­lec­tive FriendswithYou’s Super Moon project float­ed ear­li­er this year.

The result—some of it some shot out a car win­dow and cor­rect­ed in Adobe’s Warp Stabilizer—is set to the tune of “One Sum­mer’s Day” from Spir­it­ed Away.

Love­ly.

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Build Your Own Minia­ture Sets from Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Films: My Neigh­bor Totoro, Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice & More

Soft­ware Used by Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­ma­tion Stu­dio Becomes Open Source & Free to Down­load

The Simp­sons Pay Won­der­ful Trib­ute to the Ani­me of Hayao Miyaza­ki

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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Bill Gates Lists His Favorite Books of 2016

in Books | December 16th, 2016

Bill Gates has appar­ent­ly been a big read­er all along, even dur­ing his Microsoft days. On his site, Gates Notes, he writes, “I’ve been read­ing about a book a week on aver­age since I was a kid. Even when my sched­ule is out of con­trol, I carve out a lot of time for read­ing.” And peri­od­i­cal­ly he pub­lish­es a list of his favorite reads.

He con­tin­ues: “If you’re look­ing for a book to enjoy over the hol­i­days, here are some of my favorites from this year. They cov­er an eclec­tic mix of topics—from ten­nis to ten­nis shoes, genomics to great lead­er­ship. They’re all very well writ­ten, and they all dropped me down a rab­bit hole of unex­pect­ed insights and plea­sures.”

The list includes String The­o­ry by David Fos­ter Wal­lace; The Gene: An Inti­mate His­to­ry by Sid­dhartha Mukher­jee; The Myth of the Strong Leader: Polit­i­cal Lead­er­ship in the Mod­ern Age by Archie Brown; The Grid by Gretchen Bakke, and Shoe Dog by Phil Knight.

Head to Gates Notes to find out what par­tic­u­lar­ly made each book near and dear to his heart.

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:

29 Lists of Rec­om­mend­ed Books Cre­at­ed by Well-Known Authors, Artists & Thinkers: Jorge Luis Borges, Pat­ti Smith, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, David Bowie & More

Take Big His­to­ry: A Free Short Course on 13.8 Bil­lion Years of His­to­ry, Fund­ed by Bill Gates

‘The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law’: Richard Feynman’s Leg­endary Course Pre­sent­ed at Cor­nell, 1964

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