The Weird World of Vintage Sports

in Film, History | February 15th, 2012

British Pathé has released an inter­est­ing col­lec­tion of vin­tage news­reel clips high­light­ing ear­ly exper­i­ments in hybrid sports. Some of the feats are dar­ing, oth­ers mere­ly sil­ly. All are fun to watch.

News­reels of this type were an impor­tant part of the movie-going expe­ri­ence in the first half of the 20th cen­tu­ry, often fea­tur­ing cov­er­age of news, enter­tain­ment, cul­ture and sports. Some reels were pack­aged into reg­u­lar­ly appear­ing “cin­emagazines” like Pathé Pic­to­r­i­al, a mov­ing-pic­ture ana­logue of the illus­trat­ed mag­a­zines of the day.

The reel above, shot in Bavaria in 1955, expos­es the “Most Dan­ger­ous Sport in the World.” Motor ski­ing, also known as “motor­ized ski­jor­ing,” involves ski­iers being pulled at high speeds over ice and snow by cars or motor­cy­cles. You can scroll down to watch a few more of our favorites, or access the whole col­lec­tion on YouTube, at the British Pathé Sport­ing His­to­ry chan­nel.

Cycle Skat­ing, Paris, 1923:

Ten­nis on Ice, Amer­i­ca, 1931:

Sum­mer Ski­ing on the Boule­vards, Paris, 1930:

Blimp Water Ski­ing, 1932:

Enroll in MIT’s First Free Certificate Course Today

in Education, MIT | February 14th, 2012

Note: You can now find through the fol­low­ing link a com­plete list of Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es (MOOCs), many offer­ing cer­tifi­cates.

In the wan­ing days of 2011, MIT announced MITx, a new e‑learning ini­tia­tive that will offer cer­tifi­cates (find a list of Free Online Cer­tifi­cate Cours­es here) to stu­dents demon­strat­ing mas­tery of free MIT cours­es. The uni­ver­si­ty set a spring launch date for MITx, and they have now opened for enroll­ment the very first course. Taught by Anant Agar­w­al, Cir­cuits and Elec­tron­ics is an online adap­tion of MIT’s first under­grad­u­ate ana­log design course. Accord­ing the MITx web site, this pro­to­type course will run — free of charge — for stu­dents world­wide from March 5, 2012 through June 8, 2012. And stu­dents will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to demon­strate their mas­tery of the mate­r­i­al and earn a cer­tifi­cate from MITx. You can get more infor­ma­tion on the course, or sim­ply enroll in Cir­cuits and Elec­tron­ics, today. Just click here.

Many oth­er engi­neer­ing and com­put­er sci­ence cours­es can be found in our col­lec­tion of 400 Free Cours­es Online.

UPDATE:  MIT pro­fes­sor David Pritchard and his edu­ca­tion research group, RELATE are offer­ing an online MIT-lev­el course in Intro­duc­to­ry New­ton­ian Mechan­ics. The course is free and does not require a text­book.  Enroll­ment has just opened (it starts with an option­al pre­req­ui­sites test), and the course runs from March 1 — May 14, 2012.  Indi­vid­u­als who com­plete the course will receive a let­ter of com­ple­tion. This MIT course is unre­lat­ed to the MITx project men­tioned right above.

via Wired Cam­pus

Watch Breaking the Code, About the Life & Times of Alan Turing (1996)

in Current Affairs, Film, Math, Politics | February 10th, 2012

Updat­ed on Decem­ber 24, 2013: Yes­ter­day the British gov­ern­ment brought a sad chap­ter to a close when it final­ly issued a posthu­mous par­don to Alan Tur­ing, who was con­vict­ed in 1952 of break­ing laws that crim­i­nal­ized homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. The post you see below was orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten in Feb­ru­ary, 2012, when the ques­tion of Tur­ing being par­doned was still up for debate. The film fea­tured above is still very much worth your while.

This week the British gov­ern­ment final­ly par­doned Alan Tur­ing. One of the great­est math­e­mati­cians of the 20th cen­tu­ry, Tur­ing laid the foun­da­tions for com­put­er sci­ence and played a key role in break­ing the Nazi Enig­ma code dur­ing World War II. In 1952 he was con­vict­ed of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. He killed him­self two years lat­er, after being chem­i­cal­ly cas­trat­ed by the gov­ern­ment.

On Mon­day, Jus­tice Min­is­ter Tom McNal­ly told the House of Lords that the gov­ern­ment of Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron stood by the deci­sion of ear­li­er gov­ern­ments to deny a par­don, not­ing that the pre­vi­ous prime min­is­ter, Gor­don Brown, had already issued an “unequiv­o­cal posthu­mous apol­o­gy” to Tur­ing. McNal­ly was quot­ed  in the Guardian:

A posthu­mous par­don was not con­sid­ered appro­pri­ate as Alan Tur­ing was prop­er­ly con­vict­ed of what at the time was a crim­i­nal offense. He would have known that his offense was against the law and that he would be pros­e­cut­ed. It is trag­ic that Alan Tur­ing was con­vict­ed of an offense which now seems both cru­el and absurd–particularly poignant giv­en his out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion to the war effort. How­ev­er, the law at the time required a pros­e­cu­tion and, as such, long-stand­ing pol­i­cy has been to accept that such con­vic­tions took place and, rather than try­ing to alter the his­tor­i­cal con­text and to put right what can­not be put right, ensure instead that we nev­er again return to those times.

The deci­sion came as a dis­ap­point­ment to thou­sands of peo­ple around the world who had peti­tioned for a for­mal par­don dur­ing the cen­te­nary year of Tur­ing’s birth. The Guardian also quot­ed an email sent by Amer­i­can math­e­mati­cian Den­nis Hejhal to a British col­league:

i see that the House of Lords reject­ed the par­don Feb 6 on what are for­mal grounds.

if law is X on date D, and you know­ing­ly break law X on date D, then you can­not be par­doned (no mat­ter how wrong or flawed law X is).

the real rea­son is OBVIOUS. they do not want thou­sands of old men say­ing par­don us too.

Efforts to obtain a par­don for Tur­ing are con­tin­u­ing. British cit­i­zens and UK res­i­dents can still sign the peti­tion.

To learn more about Tur­ing’s life, you can watch the 1996 BBC film Break­ing the Code (above, in its entire­ty), fea­tur­ing Derek Jaco­bi as Tur­ing and Nobel Prize-win­ning play­wright Harold Pin­ter as the mys­te­ri­ous “Man from the Min­istry.” Direct­ed by Her­bert Wise, the film is based on a 1986 play by Hugh White­more, which in turn was based on Andrew Hodge’s 1983 book Alan Tur­ing: The Enig­ma.

Break­ing the Code moves back and forth between two time frames and two very dif­fer­ent codes: one mil­i­tary, the oth­er social. The film runs 91 min­utes, and has been added to our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

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

in Television, Video - Arts & Culture | February 6th, 2012

John Lurie is a musi­cian, actor and artist. He’s also a hor­ri­ble fish­er­man.

As sax­o­phon­ist and leader of the punk-jazz group the Lounge Lizards, Lurie emerged as a cult fig­ure in New York’s down­town arts scene in the 1980s, and the deal was cement­ed with his surly, straight-faced per­for­mances in Jim Jar­musch’s Stranger Than Par­adise and Down by Law. As writer Tad Friend put it in a 2010 New York­er arti­cle, “Between Four­teenth Street and Canal–the known uni­verse, basically–he was the man.”

In 1991 Lurie ven­tured out­side that uni­verse, into the mid­dle-Amer­i­can realm of the TV fish­ing show. With back­ing from Japan­ese investors, he assem­bled a film crew and invit­ed some famous friends–Jarmusch, Tom Waits, Willem Dafoe, Den­nis Hop­per and Matt Dillon–on a series of improb­a­ble fish­ing trips. Fish­ing with John, as the series is called, builds on the dead­pan, jour­ney-to-nowhere sen­si­bil­i­ty of Stranger than Par­adise: noth­ing much hap­pens.

But that’s the point. As a review­er for the Los Ange­les Times said, Fish­ing with John is “like Wait­ing for Godot on water.” The plea­sure is in observ­ing peo­ple so utter­ly out of their ele­ment. It’s like watch­ing Mar­lin Perkins or Curt Gowdy wan­der into a SoHo per­for­mance art hap­pen­ing.

In the episode above, Tom Waits does­n’t believe his ears when a Jamaican fish­ing guide tells him what time to get up in the morn­ing: “Five o’clock?” Waits report­ed­ly did­n’t speak to Lurie for two years after­ward. “I dun­no why I ever let you talk me into this,” he grum­bles. “It’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

In addi­tion to the Waits episode, you can watch the Jim Jar­musch seg­ment online or own the entire series (six episodes, 147 min­utes) on the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion DVD, which includes com­men­tary by Lurie. And to learn about what Lurie has been up to since the series was made–his strug­gle with the neu­ro­log­i­cal effects of Lyme dis­ease, his hid­ing out from an alleged stalk­er, his new focus on painting–be sure to read Lar­son Sut­ton’s 2011 inter­view with Lurie at Jambands.com. H/T Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jim Jar­musch: The Art of the Music in His Films

Tom Waits Reads Charles Bukows­ki

Tom Waits Makes Com­ic Appear­ance on Fer­n­wood Tonight (1977)

Three Passions of Bertrand Russell (and a Collection of Free Texts)

in Literature, Math, Philosophy | January 31st, 2012

“Three pas­sions, sim­ple but over­whelm­ing­ly strong, have gov­erned my life,” wrote Bertrand Rus­sell in the pro­logue to his auto­bi­og­ra­phy: “the long­ing for love, the search for knowl­edge, and unbear­able pity for the suf­fer­ing of mankind.”

This five minute video, a pre­view of a three-part series pro­duced in 2005 for Ontario pub­lic tele­vi­sion called “The Three Pas­sions of Bertrand Rus­sell,” fea­tures a record­ing of Rus­sell read­ing pas­sages from the pro­logue, enti­tled “What I Have Lived For.” You can read the orig­i­nal text at the Bertrand Rus­sell Soci­ety, an excel­lent online resource, that also makes avail­able free books by Rus­sell, includ­ing:

• An Essay on the Foun­da­tions of Geom­e­try (1897)
• The Prin­ci­ples of Math­e­mat­ics (1903)
• Our Knowl­edge of the Exter­nal World (1914)
• Intro­duc­tion to Math­e­mat­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy (1919)
• Mys­ti­cism and Log­ic and Oth­er Essays (1919)
• The Analy­sis of Mind (1921)
• The Con­quest of Hap­pi­ness (1930)

You can also down­load the first edi­tion of Rus­sel­l’s land­mark 1910–13 col­lab­o­ra­tion with Alfred North White­head, Prin­cip­ia Math­e­mat­i­ca, as well as many of Rus­sel­l’s essays, includ­ing:

• “A Free Man’s Wor­ship” (1903)
• “On Denot­ing” (1905)
• “The Ele­ments of Ethics” (1910)
• “The Ethics of War” (1915)
• “On Propo­si­tions” (1919)
• “The­o­ry of Knowl­edge” (1926)
• “Why I am Not a Chris­t­ian” (1927)

To explore the full list of avail­able resources, and to learn how you can sup­port the soci­ety’s activ­i­ties, vis­it the Bertrand Rus­sell Soci­ety web­site.

Also don’t miss some great Rus­sell mate­r­i­al in our own archives, includ­ing all six of his 1948 BBC Rei­th Lec­tures, a clip from a Cana­di­an tele­vi­sion inter­view fea­tur­ing his views on God, and his elo­quent 1959 mes­sage to the future.

Michel Foucault: Free Lectures on Truth, Discourse & The Self (UC Berkeley, 1980–1983)

in Philosophy | January 23rd, 2012

Image by Nemo­main, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Michel Fou­cault (1926–1984) was an enor­mous­ly influ­en­tial French philoso­pher who wrote, among oth­er things, his­tor­i­cal analy­ses of psy­chi­a­try, med­i­cine, the prison sys­tem, and the func­tion of sex­u­al­i­ty in social orga­ni­za­tions. He spent some time dur­ing the last years of his life at UC Berke­ley, deliv­er­ing sev­er­al lec­tures in Eng­lish. And hap­pi­ly they were record­ed for pos­ter­i­ty:

• Four Lec­tures on Truth and Sub­jec­tiv­i­ty (1980)
• Six Lec­tures on Dis­course and Truth (1983)
• Three Lec­tures on “The Cul­ture of the Self” (1983)

These last lec­tures are also avail­able on YouTube (in audio for­mat).

One of Fou­cault’s more con­tro­ver­sial and mem­o­rable books was Dis­ci­pline and Pun­ish (1977), which traced the tran­si­tion from the 18th cen­tu­ry use of pub­lic tor­ture and exe­cu­tion to–less than 50 years later–the preva­lence of much more sub­tle uses of pow­er, with a focus on incar­cer­a­tion, reha­bil­i­ta­tion, pre­ven­tion, and sur­veil­lance.

Here he is in 1983 com­ment­ing on that book (thanks for the link to Seth Paskin). The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast recent­ly dis­cussed the book with Katharine McIn­tyre, doc­tor­al can­di­date at Colum­bia. Fou­cault’s image of the panop­ti­con well cap­tures mod­ern pri­va­cy con­cerns in the elec­tron­ic age.

Final­ly, we leave you with a School­house Rock-style pre­sen­ta­tion of Fou­cault’s book The His­to­ry of Sex­u­al­i­ty, Vol­ume 1 and some vin­tage video of Fou­cault’s 1971 debate with Noam Chom­sky. Fou­cault’s lec­tures have been added to our list of Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, part of our big col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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!

Mark Lin­sen­may­er runs the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life phi­los­o­phy pod­cast and blog. He also per­forms with the Madi­son, WI band New Peo­ple.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jacques Lacan, Aca­d­e­m­ic Rock Star, Gives a Pub­lic Lec­ture, 1972

Lovers and Philoso­phers — Jean-Paul Sartre & Simone de Beau­voir Togeth­er in 1967

Phi­los­o­phy with a South­ern Drawl: Rick Rod­er­ick Teach­es Der­ri­da, Fou­cault, Sartre and Oth­ers

100 Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es (Part of Our List of 875 Free Cours­es Online)

How Film Was Made in 1958: A Kodak Nostalgia Moment

in History, Photography | January 18th, 2012

Before pix­els there were sil­ver halide crys­tals, and before mem­o­ry cards, film. Lit­tle yel­low box­es clut­tered the lives of pho­tog­ra­phers every­where, and the East­man Kodak Com­pa­ny was vir­tu­al­ly syn­ony­mous with pho­tog­ra­phy.

Things have real­ly changed. With the recent news that Kodak is tee­ter­ing on the brink of Chap­ter 11 bank­rupt­cy, many are feel­ing nos­tal­gia for those lit­tle yel­low box­es and the rolls of sil­ver gelatin film inside. To indulge this nostalgia–and per­haps learn some­thing new about an old technology–we offer a fas­ci­nat­ing 1958 doc­u­men­tary from Kodak enti­tled How Film is Made.

The doc­u­men­tary is in Dutch, but mem­bers of the Ana­log Pho­tog­ra­phy Users Group launched a project to cre­ate Eng­lish sub­ti­tles. You can read more about the project on Dutch mem­ber Mar­co Boeringa’s web­site. And you can watch the 18-minute film start­ing above and con­clud­ing below.

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.

Fellini’s Fantastic TV Commercials

in Film, Television | January 10th, 2012

Last month we brought you some lit­tle-known soap com­mer­cials by Ing­mar Bergman. Today we present a series of lyri­cal tele­vi­sion adver­tise­ments made by the great Ital­ian film­mak­er Fed­eri­co Felli­ni dur­ing the final decade of his life.

In 1984, when he was 64 years old, Felli­ni agreed to make a minia­ture film fea­tur­ing Cam­pari, the famous Ital­ian apéri­tif. The result, Oh, che bel pae­sag­gio! (“Oh, what a beau­ti­ful land­scape!”), shown above, fea­tures a man and a woman seat­ed across from one anoth­er on a long-dis­tance train.

The man (played by Vic­tor Polet­ti) smiles, but the woman (Sil­via Dion­i­sio) averts her eyes, star­ing sul­len­ly out the win­dow and pick­ing up a remote con­trol to switch the scenery. She grows increas­ing­ly exas­per­at­ed as a sequence of desert and medieval land­scapes pass by. Still smil­ing, the man takes the remote con­trol, clicks it, and the beau­ti­ful Cam­po di Mira­coli (“Field of Mir­a­cles”) of Pisa appears in the win­dow, embell­ished by a tow­er­ing bot­tle of Cam­pari.

“In just one minute,” writes Tul­lio Kezich in Fed­eri­co Felli­ni: His Life and Work, “Felli­ni gives us a chap­ter of the sto­ry of the bat­tle between men and women, and makes ref­er­ence to the neu­ro­sis of TV, insin­u­ates that we’re dis­parag­ing the mirac­u­lous gifts of nature and his­to­ry, and offers the hope that there might be a screen that will bring the joy back. The lit­tle tale is as quick as a train and has a remark­ably light touch.”

Also in 1984, Felli­ni made a com­mer­cial titled Alta Soci­eta (“High Soci­ety”) for Bar­il­la riga­toni pas­ta (above). As with the Cam­pari com­mer­cial, Felli­ni wrote the script him­self and col­lab­o­rat­ed with cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Ennio Guarnieri and musi­cal direc­tor Nico­la Pio­vani. The cou­ple in the restau­rant were played by Gre­ta Vaian and Mau­r­izio Mau­ri. The Bar­il­la spot is per­haps the least inspired of Fellini’s com­mer­cials. Bet­ter things were yet to come.

In 1991 Felli­ni made a series of three com­mer­cials for the Bank of Rome called Che Brutte Not­ti or “The Bad Nights.” “These com­mer­cials, aired the fol­low­ing year,” writes Peter Bon­danel­la in The Films of Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, “are par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing, since they find their inspi­ra­tion in var­i­ous dreams Felli­ni had sketched out in his dream note­books dur­ing his career.”

In the episode above, titled “The Pic­nic Lunch Dream,” the clas­sic damsel-in-dis­tress sce­nario is turned upside down when a man (played by Pao­lo Vil­lag­gio) finds him­self trapped on the rail­road tracks with a train bear­ing down on him while the beau­ti­ful woman he was din­ing with (Anna Falchi) climbs out of reach and taunts him. But it’s all a dream, which the man tells to his psy­cho­an­a­lyst (Fer­nan­do Rey). The ana­lyst inter­prets the dream and assures the man that his nights will be rest­ful if he puts his mon­ey in the Ban­co di Roma.

The oth­er com­mer­cials, which are cur­rent­ly not avail­able online, are called “The Tun­nel Dream” and “The Dream of the Lion in the Cel­lar.” (You can watch Rober­to Di Vito’s short, untrans­lat­ed film of Felli­ni and his crew work­ing on the project here.)

The bank com­mer­cials were the last films Felli­ni ever made. He died a year after they aired, at age 73. In Kezich’s view, the deeply per­son­al and imag­i­na­tive ads amount to Fellini’s last tes­ta­ment, a brief but won­drous return to form. “In Fed­eri­co’s life,” he writes, “these three com­mer­cial spots are a kind of Indi­an sum­mer, the gold­en autumn of a patri­arch of cin­e­ma who, for a moment, holds again the reins of cre­ation.”

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.

Watch Terry Gilliam’s Animated Short, The Christmas Card (1968)

in Animation, Art, Comedy | December 24th, 2011

In 1968, Ter­ry Gilliam was a young Amer­i­can car­toon­ist liv­ing in Lon­don. He was hav­ing trou­ble mak­ing a liv­ing from mag­a­zine work, so his friend John Cleese sug­gest­ed he get in touch with Humphrey Bar­clay, who was pro­duc­ing a slight­ly sub­ver­sive tele­vi­sion show for chil­dren called Do Not Adjust Your Set.

Sub­ti­tled “The Fair­ly Point­less Show,” it fea­tured a group of pre­vi­ous­ly unknown actors includ­ing Eric Idle, Michael Palin and Ter­ry Jones, and attract­ed a cult fol­low­ing among adults. Bar­clay looked at Gilliam’s port­fo­lio and decid­ed he would fit right in.

For one ear­ly assign­ment, Gilliam was asked to pre­pare some­thing for a spe­cial show to be broad­cast on Christ­mas day, 1968, called Do Not Adjust Your Stock­ing. Look­ing for inspi­ra­tion, he decid­ed to vis­it the Tate Gallery. In The Pythons Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of the Pythons, Gilliam remem­bered the project and how it fig­ured into his emerg­ing artis­tic style:

I went down to the Tate and they’ve got a huge col­lec­tion of Vic­to­ri­an Christ­mas cards so I went through the col­lec­tion and pho­to­copied things and start­ed mov­ing them around. So the style just devel­oped out of that rather than any plan­ning being involved. I nev­er analysed the stuff, I just did it the quick­est, eas­i­est way. And I could use images I real­ly loved.

The result (above) is a hilar­i­ous free-asso­ci­a­tion­al send-up of tra­di­tion­al Christ­mas card motifs. In addi­tion to being aired on the show, The Christ­mas Card was incor­po­rat­ed into Gilliam’s short debut film from 1968, Sto­ry­time, which is part of our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

For an update of Gilliam’s twist­ed take on Christmas–a dark­er rework­ing of his Malev­o­lent San­ta theme in The Christ­mas Card–look below for a draw­ing Gilliam post­ed a few days ago on his Face­book page. And as the man says, you bet­ter watch out!

via Bleed­ing Cool

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ter­ry Gilliam: The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)

Ter­ry Gilliam (Mon­ty Python) Shows You How to Make Your Own Cutout Ani­ma­tion

Ice Cube & Charles Eames Revel in L.A. Architecture

in Architecture, Music | December 13th, 2011

Here’s a lit­tle known fact about the rap­per and actor Ice Cube. Dur­ing his younger days, before he became a star, Mr. Cube stud­ied archi­tec­tur­al draft­ing at the Phoenix Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy in Ari­zona, where he gained an appre­ci­a­tion for the way archi­tects, like rap­pers, can take exist­ing mate­ri­als and work them into entire­ly new cre­ations. Yes, archi­tects can do mashups, too. And per­haps no one did them bet­ter than the hus­band-and-wife design duo, Charles and Ray Eames, who built the Eames House, a land­mark of mod­ern archi­tec­ture, in 1949.

In a video pro­mot­ing a col­lab­o­ra­tive exhib­it, “Pacif­ic Stan­dard Time: Art in L.A. 1945–1980,” Ice Cube dri­ves the streets of L.A. and explains his admi­ra­tion for the Eames House and oth­er Los Ange­les land­marks. Mean­while below, you’ll find some vin­tage footage that cap­tures Charles Eames (1907–1978), dri­ving around the city, giv­ing his own analy­sis of the hodge-podge archi­tec­tur­al styles that define Los Ange­les.

via The New York Times and Curios­i­ty Counts