Brazil Gives Out Books That Double as Subway Tickets, Promoting Literacy & Mass Transit at Once

in Books, Design, Life, Travel | January 6th, 2016

One of the things I miss about liv­ing in a city with a sub­way sys­tem is the myr­i­ad thought­ful design ele­ments that go into man­ag­ing a per­pet­u­al flow of tourists and com­muters. New York’s sub­way map presents us with an icon­ic tan­gle of inter­lock­ing trib­u­taries resem­bling dia­grams of a cir­cu­la­to­ry sys­tem. The NYC system’s inge­nious­ly sim­ple graph­ic pre­sen­ta­tion of let­tered and num­bered trains, encir­cled in their cor­re­spond­ing col­ors, can be read by most any­one with a rudi­men­ta­ry grasp on the Eng­lish alphabet—from a new lan­guage learn­er to a small child. The Wash­ing­ton, DC sub­way sys­tem, though a much more pro­sa­ic affair over­all, whisks rid­ers through impres­sive­ly cav­ernous, cat­a­comb-like sta­tions, with bru­tal­ist tile and con­crete hon­ey­combs that seem to go on for­ev­er. The squig­gly lines of its col­or-cod­ed map like­wise promise ease of use and leg­i­bil­i­ty.

Ticket-Books_LPM-1-957x644

And then there are the hours of read­ing time grant­ed by a sub­way com­mute, a leisure I’ve relin­quished now that I rely on car and bike. So you can imag­ine my envi­ous delight in learn­ing about Brazil’s Tick­et Books, which are exact­ly what they sound like—books that work as sub­way tick­ets, designed with the min­i­mal­ist care that major tran­sit sys­tems do so well. And what’s more, they’re free: “To cel­e­brate World Book Day last April 23rd,” writes “future-for­ward online resource” PSFK, “[Brazil­lian pub­lish­er] L&PM gave away 10,000 books for free at sub­way sta­tions across São Paulo. Each book came with ten free trips.” Rid­ers could then recharge them and use the books again or pass them on to oth­ers to encour­age more read­ing, an impor­tant pub­lic ser­vice giv­en that Brazil­ians only read two books per year on aver­age.

Ticket-Books_LPM-3-968x516

With sub­way map-inspired cov­ers designed by firm Agên­cia Africa, the books include The Great Gats­by, The Art of War, Ham­let, Mur­der Alley by Agatha Christie, Hun­dred Love Son­nets by Pablo Neru­da, and more (includ­ing com­ic col­lec­tions from Charles Schulz and Garfield’s Jim Davis). Watch an explain­er video at the top of the post and see some love­ly images of the book cov­ers above. The cam­paign won three tro­phies at the Cannes Lions Fes­ti­val in the cat­e­gories “Pro­mo,” “Out­door,” and “Design,” and has proved so pop­u­lar that pub­lish­er L&PM has expand­ed the project to oth­er Brazil­ian cities, giv­ing me yet more rea­son to vis­it Brazil. And if Tick­et Books makes its way to a sub­way-enabled city near me, I may con­sid­er mov­ing.

via PSFK

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Design­er Mas­si­mo Vignel­li Revis­its and Defends His Icon­ic 1972 New York City Sub­way Map

Com­muters Can Down­load Free eBooks of Russ­ian Clas­sics While Rid­ing the Moscow Metro

55 Cov­ers of Vin­tage Phi­los­o­phy, Psy­chol­o­gy & Sci­ence Books Come to Life in a Short Ani­ma­tion

Artist Ani­mates Famous Book Cov­ers in an Ele­gant, Under­stat­ed Way

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

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An Artful, Animated Tribute to The Wire, Created by a Fan of the Critically-Acclaimed TV Series

in Animation, Television | January 6th, 2016

From direc­tor, design­er, and ani­ma­tor Elliot Lim comes an ani­mat­ed trib­ute to his “favorite show of all time,” HBO’s The Wire – a sen­ti­ment that he shares with Pres. Oba­ma, count­less crit­ics, and many casu­al TV view­ers. As much as the episodes them­selves, fans fond­ly remem­ber The Wire’s open­ing cred­its, which func­tioned, Andrew Dig­nan once wrote, as short films that “dis­till each sea­son’s themes, goals, and motifs.” The open­ing cred­its are what get the ani­mat­ed treat­ment in Lim’s video. Whether his video dis­tills a par­tic­u­lar set of themes, goals and motifs, I’m not yet sure. I’ll need to watch it a few more times and report back soon.

For more on The Wire and the Art of the Cred­it Sequence watch this 2012 video essay.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma Chats with David Simon About Drugs, The Wire & Omar

The Wire as Great Vic­to­ri­an Nov­el

Charles Min­gus’ Instruc­tions For Toi­let Train­ing Your Cat, Read by The Wire’s Reg E. Cathey

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Michio Kaku & Noam Chomsky School Moon Landing and 9/11 Conspiracy Theorists

in Current Affairs, History, Psychology | January 5th, 2016

Who real­ly killed John F. Kennedy? Did Amer­i­ca real­ly land on the moon? What real­ly brought down the Twin Tow­ers? Few mod­ern phe­nom­e­na pos­sess the sheer fas­ci­na­tion quo­tient of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. If you believe in them, you’ll of course dig into them obses­sive­ly, and if you don’t believe in them, you sure­ly feel a great curios­i­ty about why oth­er peo­ple do. Sci­ence writer and Skep­tic mag­a­zine Edi­tor in Chief Michael Sher­mer falls, need­less to say, into the sec­ond group; so far into it that exam­in­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and those who sub­scribe to them has become one of his best-known pro­fes­sion­al pur­suits since at least 1997, the year of his straight­for­ward­ly titled book Why Peo­ple Believe Weird Things.

On the 50th anniver­sary of JFK’s assas­si­na­tion, Sher­mer wrote an arti­cle in the Los Ange­les Times about the rea­sons that event has drawn so many avid con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists over the past half-decade. First: their cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance result­ing from the two seem­ing­ly incom­pat­i­ble ideas, that of JFK “as one of the most pow­er­ful peo­ple on Earth” and JFK “killed by Lee Har­vey Oswald, a lone los­er, a nobody.” Sec­ond: their par­tic­i­pa­tion in a mono­log­i­cal belief sys­tem, “a uni­tary, closed-off world­view in which beliefs come togeth­er in a mutu­al­ly sup­port­ive net­work.” Third: their con­fir­ma­tion bias, or “the ten­den­cy to look for and find con­firm­ing evi­dence for what you already believe” — the umbrel­la man, the grassy knoll — “and to ignore dis­con­firm­ing evi­dence.”

These fac­tors all come into play with the oth­er major Amer­i­can con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries as well. In the pod­cast clip at the top of the post, you can hear physi­cist Michio Kaku try­ing to set straight a moon land­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist. They argue that man has nev­er set foot on the moon, but that the gov­ern­ment instead hood­winked us into believ­ing it with an elab­o­rate audio­vi­su­al pro­duc­tion (direct­ed, some the­o­rists insist, by none oth­er than Stan­ley Kubrick, who sup­pos­ed­ly “con­fessed” in fake inter­view footage that recent­ly made the inter­net rounds). Should you require fur­ther argu­ment to the con­trary, have a look at S.G. Collins’ Moon Hoax Not just above.

No high­er-pro­file set of con­spir­a­cy-the­o­ry move­ment has come out of recent his­to­ry than the 9/11 Truthers, who may dif­fer on the details, but who all gath­er under the umbrel­la of believ­ing that the events of that day hap­pened not because of the actions of a con­spir­a­cy of for­eign ter­ror­ists, but because of a con­spir­a­cy with­in the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment itself. In the Q&A footage above (orig­i­nal­ly uploaded, in fact, by a believ­er), one such the­o­rist stands up and asks lin­guist and activist Noam Chom­sky to join in on the move­ment, point­ing to a cov­er-up of the man­ner in which 7 World Trade Cen­ter col­lapsed — a big “smok­ing gun” of the larg­er con­spir­a­cy, in their eyes.

This prompts Chom­sky to offer an expla­na­tion of how sci­en­tists and engi­neers actu­al­ly go look­ing for the truth. Have they elim­i­nat­ed entire­ly their cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance, mono­log­i­cal belief sys­tems, and con­fir­ma­tion bias­es? No human could ever do that per­fect­ly — indeed, to be human is to be sub­ject to all these dis­tort­ing con­di­tions and more — but the larg­er enter­prise of sci­ence, at its best, frees us lit­tle by lit­tle from those very shack­les. What a shame to vol­un­tar­i­ly clap one­self back into them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Michio Kaku Schools a Moon Land­ing-Con­spir­a­cy Believ­er on His Sci­ence Fan­tas­tic Pod­cast

Stan­ley Kubrick Faked the Apol­lo 11 Moon Land­ing in 1969, Or So the Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry Goes

Noam Chom­sky Schools 9/11 Truther; Explains the Sci­ence of Mak­ing Cred­i­ble Claims

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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An Animated Carol Dweck on Why Parents Who Tell Their Kids How Smart They Are Aren’t Doing Them Any Favors

in Animation, Education, Psychology | January 5th, 2016

After a long hia­tus, the RSA (The Roy­al Soci­ety for the Encour­age­ment of Arts, Man­u­fac­tures and Com­merce) has returned with anoth­er one of the white­board ani­mat­ed-lec­tures they pio­neered five years ago.

The orig­i­nal set of videos, you might recall, fea­tured Slavoj Zizek on the Sur­pris­ing Eth­i­cal Impli­ca­tions of Char­i­ta­ble Giv­ing; Bar­bara Ehren­re­ich (author of Nick­el and Dimed) on The Per­ils of Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy; Daniel Pink on The Sur­pris­ing Truth About What Moti­vates Us, and Stan­ford psy­chol­o­gist Philip Zim­bar­do on The Secret Pow­ers of Time.

The ani­mat­ed reboot (above) brings to life the thoughts of anoth­er Stan­ford psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor, Car­ol S. Dweck. The author of Mind­set: The New Psy­chol­o­gy of Suc­cess (a book that appeared on Bill Gates’s Best of 2015 list), Dweck has looked close­ly at how our beliefs/mindsets strong­ly influ­ence the paths we take in life. And, in this clip, she talks about how well-mean­ing par­ents, despite their best inten­tions, might be cre­at­ing the wrong mind­sets in their kids, paving the way for prob­lems down the road. You can watch the com­plete, unan­i­mat­ed lec­ture here.

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:

Good Cap­i­tal­ist Kar­ma: Zizek Ani­mat­ed

Daniel Pink: The Sur­pris­ing Truth about What Moti­vates Us

Good Cap­i­tal­ist Kar­ma: Zizek Ani­mat­ed

The Secret Pow­ers of Time

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy & Neu­ro­science Cours­es

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An Animated Neil deGrasse Tyson Gives an Eloquent Defense of Science in 272 Words, the Same Length as The Gettysburg Address

in Education, Science | January 5th, 2016

Astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson, the most promi­nent pub­lic defend­er of sci­ence edu­ca­tion and fund­ing, fre­quent­ly comes in for some good-natured rib­bing for his genial pedantry, ascen­sion to Carl Sagan’s unof­fi­cial spokesman­ship, and down­grad­ing of the beloved Plu­to from plan­et sta­tus. But he takes it all in stride. As anoth­er sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tor, Phil Plate the “Bad Astronomer,” has writ­ten, “The man is bril­liant, charm­ing, a pil­lar of sci­ence edu­ca­tion, and a glut­ton for pun­ish­ment. But I think he secret­ly rev­els in it.” If you fol­low Tyson’s Twit­ter account and watch him engage with cranks, or if you’ve seen him in any of the hun­dreds of pub­lic debates and pan­els he attends, it seems he more than rev­els in it; he’s total­ly in his ele­ment, so to speak, pub­licly mod­el­ing the mix of con­fi­dence, humil­i­ty, and curios­i­ty that dri­ves sci­ence for­ward.

In the video above, Tyson dares to try and fill the shoes of anoth­er great communicator—and no, I don’t mean Ronald Rea­gan, but the pres­i­dent whose most famous speech Charles Sum­n­er called “a mon­u­men­tal act.” And though Abra­ham Lin­coln was not near­ly as com­fort­able in front of an audi­ence as Tyson is, Lin­col­n’s Get­tys­burg Address set the bar for how to get a point across with the max­i­mum amount of elo­quence and min­i­mum of redun­dan­cy and ram­bling. Can Tyson deliv­er the goods like Lin­coln did with only 272 words to work with? Is the attempt to “reply” to the “Get­tys­burg Address” an act of hubris or the ulti­mate trib­ute? Decide for your­self as you lis­ten to Tyson’s April, 2015 accep­tance speech at the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ence for the Pub­lic Wel­fare Medal, the Acad­e­my’s “most pres­ti­gious award.”

Tyson’s speech has been enhanced with a dra­mat­ic ani­ma­tion and sound effects for a tech­no­log­i­cal impact Lin­coln nev­er could have achieved, though by most accounts he did­n’t need it. Not a solemn occa­sion like Get­tys­burg, the awards cer­e­mo­ny nonethe­less called for at least a lit­tle pomp, as well as some his­to­ry. Tyson points out that “dur­ing the bloody year of his Get­tys­burg Address, Pres­i­dent Lin­coln char­tered the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences.” For more of that sto­ry, see the short video above, where you’ll learn, among oth­er things, that Lin­coln was the first and only Amer­i­can pres­i­dent to hold a patent on a sci­en­tif­ic inven­tion.

via Bill Gates

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Pon­ders the Big Ques­tion “Does the Uni­verse Have a Pur­pose” in a Sim­ple Ani­ma­tion

Free: Down­load Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Short Course, The Inex­plic­a­ble Uni­verse, in Audio or Video For­mat

Neil deGrasse Tyson Puts Bill Gates’ Wealth into Fun­ny Per­spec­tive

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

 

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Aretha Franklin Takes Over for an Ailing Luciano Pavarotti & Sings Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma” at the Grammys (1998)

in Music, Opera, Television | January 4th, 2016

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: When the star is unable to per­form, a tal­ent­ed under­dog is plucked from the cho­rus and thrown into the spot­light with just min­utes to pre­pare.

It’s a crowd pleas­ing plot, one that occa­sion­al­ly plays out in real life, as it did at the 1998 Gram­my Awards, above.

The twist was that the under­dog role went to the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, pinch-hit­ting for her friend, oper­at­ic super­star, Luciano Pavarot­ti, benched by a sore throat at the zero hour.

Giv­en the nature of the event, the Radio City Music Hall audi­ence prob­a­bly wouldn’t have mind­ed had the planned pro­gram­ming been scrapped in favor of “Respect,” “Nat­ur­al Woman,” or any num­ber of tunes Franklin can crush with­out bat­ting an eye­lash.

Instead, she stuck with “Nes­sun Dor­ma,” the famous final act open­er from Gia­co­mo Puccini’s Tur­nadot. Nev­er mind that it was Pavarotti’s sig­na­ture aria, that the man had pop­u­lar­ized it to such a degree that your aver­age foot­ball hooli­gan could iden­ti­fy his voice from a record­ing. Over a bil­lion view­ers tuned in to catch it on 1994’s Three Tenors spe­cial on TV, then rushed out to buy the sub­se­quent live album, a rare crossover hit.

Franklin wasn’t total­ly green in the Puc­ci­ni depart­ment. As mas­ter of cer­e­monies Sting informed the crowd, she’d per­formed the song two nights ear­li­er at a fundrais­er for Musi­Cares. Still, a fair amount of chutz­pah was nec­es­sary.

Nat­u­ral­ly, a hand­ful of opera purists refused to fall under the spell, even when Franklin hit that cel­e­brat­ed high B, but they seem to com­prise a minor­i­ty.

Pavarot­ti, whom Sting pre­sent­ed with a liv­ing Leg­end Gram­my imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing Franklin’s per­for­mance, died in 2007.

As for that oth­er Gram­my leg­end, Franklin reprised “Nes­sun Dor­ma” for Pope Fran­cis in Philadel­phia last fall, again putting her per­son­al stamp on it by switch­ing from Ital­ian to Eng­lish mid­way through.

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:

Pavarot­ti Sings with Lou Reed, Sting, James Brown and Oth­er Friends

Duel­ing Divas: Aretha Franklin and Dionne War­wick Sing Two Clas­sic Ver­sions of ‘I Say a Lit­tle Prayer’

The Queen of Soul Con­quers Europe: Aretha Franklin in Ams­ter­dam, 1968

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

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Hear Alec Guinness (The Legend Behind Obi-Wan Kenobi) Read T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets & The Waste Land

in Poetry | January 4th, 2016

Those who only know T.S. Eliot from such ear­ly poems as “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and The Waste Land may be sur­prised to encounter what many crit­ics con­sid­er his great­est work, the Four Quar­tets. The Eliot of the ear­li­er, bet­ter-known poems alter­nates between mock­ing dis­sec­tion and trag­ic lamen­ta­tion for the sup­posed cul­tur­al decay of the West; in The Waste Land espe­cial­ly, Eliot draws upon his con­sid­er­able eru­di­tion to col­lapse cen­turies of poet­ic and reli­gious text into shards of mod­ernist inge­nu­ity and sharp frag­ments of despair­ing irony. The Four Quar­tets, on the oth­er hand—first pub­lished in 1943, though writ­ten sep­a­rate­ly over a peri­od of six years—-attempts to uni­fy tra­di­tions, in ways both more earnest and more oblique than read­ers of Eliot had seen before.

The cen­tral theme tying togeth­er the four poems—“Burnt Nor­ton,” “East Cok­er,” “The Dry Sal­vages,” and “Lit­tle Gidding”—is time: as eter­ni­ty, as empti­ness, as a waste­land of words and ges­tures with­out mean­ing or pur­pose. “If all time is eter­nal­ly present / All time is unre­deemable,” the poet argues in “Burnt Nor­ton,” and he goes on to illus­trate ideas drawn from St. Augus­tine, the Chris­t­ian mys­tics, and the Upan­ishads. Although, as George Orwell wrote in a review, the poems “appear on the sur­face to be about… cer­tain local­i­ties in Eng­land and Amer­i­ca with which Mr. Eliot has ances­tral con­nex­ions,” they also serve as a philo­soph­i­cal apolo­gia for his deep­en­ing Anglo-Catholi­cism. Orwell, how­ev­er, doubt­ed Eliot’s reli­gious sin­cer­i­ty; “there is faith” in the poems, he wrote, “but not much hope, and cer­tain­ly no enthu­si­asm.”

Yet much of the appeal of the Four Quar­tets to those of a mys­ti­cal bent comes from the poems’ enact­ing of a med­i­ta­tive faith, how­ev­er ten­u­ous, held amidst tumults of mean­ing­less activ­i­ty and a chill­ing sense of cul­tur­al ener­va­tion. (One preg­nant phrase from “Burnt Nor­ton” inspired the title of a book on Zen and Chris­t­ian mys­ti­cism.) Eliot’s con­ser­vatism may pre­vent him from imag­in­ing any sort of world­ly human progress, but gen­er­a­tions of read­ers have seen in the Four Quar­tets the pro­found­est med­i­ta­tion on a spir­i­tu­al jour­ney, and it is per­haps in those late poems, writ­ten in the poet’s mid­dle age, that Eliot comes clos­est to his per­son­al lit­er­ary hero, Dante, who entered the dark wood in the Can­to I of The Infer­no while “halfway along life’s path.”

In a pre­vi­ous post on the Four Quar­tets, we fea­tured Eliot him­self read­ing the poems, and Mike Springer offered some help­ful con­text on their set­tings. Above, we have the rare treat of a read­ing by Sir Alec Guin­ness. Record­ed in 1971—six years before Guin­ness donned Obi-Wan Kenobi’s robes—we hear in his read­ing the grav­i­tas that made his Star Wars Jedi guru seem so wise and weary (though appar­ent­ly he did not rel­ish that role). As an added bonus, below, hear an audio pro­duc­tion of The Waste Land with clips of read­ings by Guin­ness, Ted Hugh­es, Fiona Shaw, Eliot him­self, and more.

It’s inter­est­ing to hear these audio ren­di­tions of the late and ear­ly poems side-by-side: Four Quar­tets held togeth­er by the sin­gu­lar sooth­ing voice of Guin­ness, The Waste Land split apart into the mul­ti­ple voic­es of its var­i­ous char­ac­ters. (Eliot orig­i­nal­ly titled the poem “He Do the Police in Dif­fer­ent Voic­es.”) Click here to hear Eliot him­self read The Waste Land, his high mod­ernist mas­ter­work of despair and epic ennui.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

T.S. Eliot Reads His Mod­ernist Mas­ter­pieces “The Waste Land” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Read the Entire Com­ic Book Adap­ta­tion of T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Lis­ten to T.S. Eliot Recite His Late Mas­ter­piece, the Four Quar­tets

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

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See The Empire Strikes Back as a Silent Film — Precisely How George Lucas Imagined the Star Wars Films

in Film, Sci Fi | January 4th, 2016

The rush to rank the lat­est Star Wars movie The Force Awak­ens against its pre­de­ces­sors has got the series’  legions of fans look­ing back with even more scruti­ny than usu­al at those six chap­ters of this appar­ent­ly nev­er-end­ing cin­e­mat­ic space opera. While Star Wars fans have been known to argue amongst them­selves, quite a few of them do agree on cer­tain broad­er points of assess­ment: about as many of them call 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back as the best of the bunch as call 1999’s The Phan­tom Men­ace the worst. (The worst Star Wars movie, the worst movie, the worst thing — take your pick.)

Much time and ener­gy has gone into the dis­cus­sion of what makes The Phan­tom Men­ace so bad, but what makes The Empire Strikes Back so good? We can get some insight into the mat­ter from the video above, which con­verts the much-ref­er­enced, oft-par­o­died duel between Luke Sky­walk­er and Darth Vad­er, com­plete with the big reveal of parent­age and ensu­ing wail, into a scratchy, twitchy, title card-punc­tu­at­ed, piano-scored (but still faith­ful to John Williams’ com­po­si­tion) arti­fact from some­time around 1920. I’ve heard it said that the best songs, how­ev­er heav­i­ly pro­duced in their best-known ren­di­tion, work just as well by their very nature when played on noth­ing but a gui­tar or piano. The Empire Strikes Back, by the same token, works as a silent film.

This all, if you believe Star Wars cre­ator George Lucas, comes down to music. “Star Wars films are basi­cal­ly silent movies,” he says in the inter­view clip just above. “The music has a very large role in car­ry­ing the sto­ry, more than it would in a nor­mal movie. In most movies, the sto­ry is car­ried by the dia­logue — in Star Wars films, the music car­ries the sto­ry.” Every install­ment in the series, from the most beloved to the most exe­crat­ed, has to hop from world to world quick­ly while advanc­ing the sto­ry, and Lucas sees the music as the “con­nec­tive tis­sue” that makes it work: “With­out that music there to smooth it out and take you from point A to point B in an ele­gant way, it becomes very jerky and con­fused, and the sto­ry does­n’t work very well — the film does­n’t work very well.” Does the the­o­ry hold for the also Williams-scored The Force Awak­ens? Let the debate begin.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

16 Great Star Wars Fan Films, Doc­u­men­taries & Video Essays to Get You Ready for Star Wars: The Force Awak­ens

Hard­ware Wars: The Moth­er of All Star Wars Fan Films (and the Most Prof­itable Short Film Ever Made)

Fans Recon­struct Authen­tic Ver­sion of Star Wars, As It Was Shown in The­aters in 1977

Star Wars Uncut: The Epic Fan Film

The Empire Strikes Back Uncut: A New Fan-Made, Shot-for-Shot Remake of the 1980 Sci-Fi Clas­sic

The Exis­ten­tial Star Wars: Sartre Meets Darth Vad­er

Watch a New Star Wars Ani­ma­tion, Drawn in a Clas­sic 80s Japan­ese Ani­me Style

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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Bill Gates, Book Critic, Names His Top 5 Books of 2015

in Books | January 4th, 2016

When you think Bill Gates, you think Microsoft co-founder and big-time phil­an­thropist. Now you can add to the list, book crit­ic. This week­end, The New York Times pro­filed Bill Gates’ pen­chant for review­ing books on his blog, Gates Notes, and how (much like Oprah) when Gates gives a book a thumbs up, it moves copies. Many copies.

Above, you can watch a Gates-nar­rat­ed video high­light­ing his five favorite books of 2015. It includes: 1.) Thing Explain­er: Com­pli­cat­ed Stuff in Sim­ple Words by Ran­dall Munroe, which “explains var­i­ous subjects—from how smart­phones work to what the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion says—using only the 1,000 most com­mon words in the Eng­lish lan­guage and blue­print-style dia­grams”; 2) Mind­set: The New Psy­chol­o­gy of Suc­cess by Car­ol S. Dweck, a best­selling book that uses “clever research stud­ies and engag­ing writ­ing” to illu­mi­nate “how our beliefs about our capa­bil­i­ties exert tremen­dous influ­ence on how we learn and which paths we take in life”; and 3) Sus­tain­able Mate­ri­als With Both Eyes Open, a book writ­ten by Cam­bridge researchers that explores the ques­tion, “How much can we reduce car­bon emis­sions that come from mak­ing and using stuff?”. Oth­er books on Gates’ short list includes David Brooks’ The Road to Char­ac­ter and Being Nixon: A Man Divid­ed, by Evan Thomas.

You can find a num­ber of Gates’ book reviews in the Books sec­tion of his site.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Six Books (and One Blog) Bill Gates Wants You to Read This Sum­mer

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

View Bill Gates’ Mobile Library: The Books & Cours­es That Help Him Change The World

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The Science of Willpower: 15 Tips for Making Your New Year’s Resolutions Last from Dr. Kelly McGonigal

in Life, Psychology | January 3rd, 2016

At the stroke of mid­night on Jan­u­ary 1, mil­lions of New Year’s res­o­lu­tions went into effect, with the most com­mon ones being lose weight, get fit, quit drink­ing and smok­ing, save mon­ey, and learn some­thing new (we can help you there). Unfor­tu­nate­ly, 33% of these res­o­lu­tions will be aban­doned by Jan­u­ary’s end. And more than 80% will even­tu­al­ly fall by the way­side. Mak­ing res­o­lu­tions stick is tricky busi­ness. But it’s pos­si­ble, and Stan­ford psy­chol­o­gist Kel­ly McGo­ni­gal has a few sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-proven sug­ges­tions for you.

For years, McGo­ni­gal has taught a very pop­u­lar course called The Sci­ence of Willpow­er in Stan­ford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram, where she intro­duces stu­dents to the idea that willpow­er is not an innate trait. (You can sign up for an online ver­sion of her course which starts on Jan­u­ary 25. Get details here.) Rather it’s a “com­plex mind-body response that can be com­pro­mised by stress, sleep depri­va­tion and nutri­tion and that can be strength­ened through cer­tain prac­tices.” For those of you who don’t live in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area, you can also find McGo­ni­gal’s ideas pre­sent­ed in a recent book, The Willpow­er Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Mat­ters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It. Below, we have high­light­ed 15 of Dr. McGo­ni­gal’s strate­gies for increas­ing your willpow­er reserves and mak­ing your New Year’s res­o­lu­tions endure.

  1. Will pow­er is like a mus­cle. The more you work on devel­op­ing it, the more you can incor­po­rate it into your life. It helps, McGo­ni­gal says in this pod­cast, to start with small feats of willpow­er before try­ing to tack­le more dif­fi­cult feats. Ide­al­ly, find the small­est change that’s con­sis­tent with your larg­er goal, and start there.
  2. Choose a goal or res­o­lu­tion that you real­ly want, not a goal that some­one else desires for you, or a goal that you think you should want. Choose a pos­i­tive goal that tru­ly comes from with­in and that con­tributes to some­thing impor­tant in life.
  3. Willpow­er is con­ta­gious. Find a willpow­er role mod­el — some­one who has accom­plished what you want to do. Also try to sur­round your­self with fam­i­ly mem­bers, friends or groups who can sup­port you. Change is often not made alone.
  4. Know that peo­ple have more willpow­er when they wake up, and then willpow­er steadi­ly declines through­out the day as peo­ple fatigue. So try to accom­plish what you need to — for exam­ple, exer­cise — ear­li­er in the day. Then watch out for the evenings, when bad habits can return.
  5. Under­stand that stress and willpow­er are incom­pat­i­ble. Any time we’re under stress it’s hard­er to find our willpow­er. Accord­ing to McGo­ni­gal, “the fight-or-flight response floods the body with ener­gy to act instinc­tive­ly and steals it from the areas of the brain need­ed for wise deci­sion-mak­ing. Stress also encour­ages you to focus on imme­di­ate, short-term goals and out­comes, but self-con­trol requires keep­ing the big pic­ture in mind.” The upshot? “Learn­ing how to bet­ter man­age your stress is one of the most impor­tant things you can do to improve your willpow­er.” When you get stressed out, go for a walk. Even a five minute walk out­side can reduce your stress lev­els, boost your mood, and help you replen­ish your willpow­er reserves.
  6. Sleep depri­va­tion (less than six hours a night) makes it so that the pre­frontal cor­tex los­es con­trol over the regions of the brain that cre­ate crav­ings. Sci­ence shows that get­ting just one more hour of sleep each night (eight hours is ide­al) helps recov­er­ing drug addicts avoid a relapse. So it can cer­tain­ly help you resist a dough­nut or a cig­a­rette.
  7. Also remem­ber that nutri­tion plays a key role. “Eat­ing a more plant-based, less-processed diet makes ener­gy more avail­able to the brain and can improve every aspect of willpow­er from over­com­ing pro­cras­ti­na­tion to stick­ing to a New Year’s res­o­lu­tion,” McGo­ni­gal says.
  8. Don’t think it will be dif­fer­ent tomor­row. McGo­ni­gal notes that we have a ten­den­cy to think that we will have more willpow­er, ener­gy, time, and moti­va­tion tomor­row. The prob­lem is that “if we think we have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make a dif­fer­ent choice tomor­row, we almost always ‘give in’ to temp­ta­tion or habit today.”
  9. Acknowl­edge and under­stand your crav­ings rather than deny­ing them. That will take you fur­ther in the end. The video above has more on that.
  10. Imag­ine the things that could get in the way of achiev­ing your goal. Under­stand the ten­den­cies you have that could lead you to break your res­o­lu­tion. Don’t be over­ly opti­mistic and assume the road will be easy.
  11. Know your lim­its, and plan for them. Says McGo­ni­gal, “Peo­ple who think they have the most self-con­trol are the most like­ly to fail at their res­o­lu­tions; they put them­selves in tempt­ing sit­u­a­tions, don’t get help, give up at set­backs. You need to know how you fail; how you are tempt­ed; how you pro­cras­ti­nate.”
  12. Pay atten­tion to small choic­es that add up. “One study found that the aver­age per­son thinks they make 14 food choic­es a day; they actu­al­ly make over 200. When you aren’t aware that you’re mak­ing a choice, you’ll almost always default to habit/temptation.” It’s impor­tant to fig­ure out when you have oppor­tu­ni­ties to make a choice con­sis­tent with your goals.
  13. Be spe­cif­ic but flex­i­ble. It’s good to know your goal and how you’ll get there. But, she cau­tions, “you should leave room to revise these steps if they turn out to be unsus­tain­able or don’t lead to the ben­e­fits you expect­ed.”
  14. Give your­self small, healthy rewards along the way. Research shows that the mind responds well to it. (If you’re try­ing to quite smok­ing, the reward should­n’t be a cig­a­rette, by the way.)
  15. Final­ly, if you expe­ri­ence a set­back, don’t be hard on your­self. Although it seems counter-intu­itive, stud­ies show that peo­ple who expe­ri­ence shame/guilt are much more like­ly to break their res­o­lu­tions than ones who cut them­selves some slack. In a nut­shell, you should “Give up guilt.”

To put all of these tips into a big­ger frame­work, you can get a copy of Kel­ly McGo­ni­gal’s book, The Willpow­er Instinct: How Self-Con­trol Works, Why It Mat­ters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It. Or you can get The WillPow­er Instinct, as a free audio book, if you care to try out Audible.com’s free tri­al pro­gram.

If you live in the SF Bay Area, you can take Kel­ly’s The Sci­ence of Willpow­er course that begins on Jan­u­ary 25. Any­one can enroll.

Final­ly you might also want to peruse How to Think Like a Psy­chol­o­gist (iTunes Video), a free online course led by Kel­ly McGo­ni­gal. It appears in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Note: This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in Jan­u­ary 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pow­er of Empa­thy: A Quick Ani­mat­ed Les­son That Can Make You a Bet­ter Per­son

Carl Gus­tav Jung Explains His Ground­break­ing The­o­ries About Psy­chol­o­gy in Rare Inter­view (1957)

Jacques Lacan’s Con­fronta­tion with a Young Rebel: Clas­sic Moment, 1972

New Ani­ma­tion Explains Sher­ry Turkle’s The­o­ries on Why Social Media Makes Us Lone­ly

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es (Part of our list of 800 Free Online Cours­es)

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Mark Twain Knocks New Year’s Resolutions: They’re a “Harmless Annual Institution, Of No Particular Use to Anybody”

in Life, Literature | January 1st, 2016

Twain

Now that anoth­er New Year’s Day has come around, we must once again ask our­selves: do we believe in New Year’s res­o­lu­tions, or don’t we? As with most insti­tu­tions, Mark Twain, that most quot­ed of all Amer­i­can humorists, both believed and did­n’t believe in them. Or maybe we could say that his lack of belief tran­scend­ed run-of-the-mill cyn­i­cism to become a kind of devout faith in human fol­ly itself.

Here we have a few words on the sub­ject from the man him­self, first pub­lished in the Jan­u­ary 1, 1863 edi­tion of the Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Enter­prise, the Vir­ginia City, Neva­da news­pa­per where the young Twain worked for a time:

Now is the accept­ed time to make your reg­u­lar annu­al good res­o­lu­tions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usu­al. Yes­ter­day, every­body smoked his last cig­ar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath. To-day, we are a pious and exem­plary com­mu­ni­ty. Thir­ty days from now, we shall have cast our ref­or­ma­tion to the winds and gone to cut­ting our ancient short com­ings con­sid­er­ably short­er than ever. We shall also reflect pleas­ant­ly upon how we did the same old thing last year about this time. How­ev­er, go in, com­mu­ni­ty. New Year’s is a harm­less annu­al insti­tu­tion, of no par­tic­u­lar use to any­body save as a scape­goat for promis­cu­ous drunks, and friend­ly calls, and hum­bug res­o­lu­tions, and we wish you to enjoy it with a loose­ness suit­ed to the great­ness of the occa­sion.

Twain made a career of skew­er­ing the count­less pieties of Amer­i­can life, and the cul­ture’s per­haps overzeal­ous spir­it of self-improve­ment pro­vid­ed him a vast and nev­er ful­ly deflat­able tar­get. His assess­ment feels as true today, and makes us laugh just as much today, as it must have 153 years ago. So keep enjoy­ing the friend­li­ness, fes­tiv­i­ty, and human com­e­dy of the New Year’s hol­i­day as Twain would have. If you do make a res­o­lu­tion, keep it to a man­age­able lev­el of moral­i­ty. And don’t for­get to revis­it the oth­er per­spec­tives on New Year’s we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured from such oth­er cul­tur­al lumi­nar­ies as Neil Gaiman, Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sci­ence of Willpow­er: 15 Tips for Mak­ing Your New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions Last from Dr. Kel­ly McGo­ni­gal

A New Year’s Wish from Neil Gaiman

The Top 10 New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions Read by Bob Dylan

Woody Guthrie’s Doo­dle-Filled List of 33 New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions From 1943 in Life, Music| Jan­u­ary 1st, 2014

Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Go-Get­ter List of New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions (1955)

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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