William Blake’s 102 Illustrations of The Divine Comedy Collected in a Beautiful Book from Taschen

in Art, Books, Literature | September 10th, 2021

In his book on the Tarot, Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky describes the Her­mit card as rep­re­sent­ing mid-life, a “pos­i­tive cri­sis,” a mid­dle point in time; “between life and death, in a con­tin­u­al cri­sis, I hold up my lit lamp — my con­scious­ness,” says the Her­mit, while con­fronting the unknown. The fig­ure recalls the image of Dante in the open­ing lines of the Divine Com­e­dy. In Mandelbaum’s trans­la­tion at Columbi­a’s Dig­i­tal Dante, we see evi­dent sim­i­lar­i­ties:

When I had jour­neyed half of our life’s way,
I found myself with­in a shad­owed for­est,
for I had lost the path that does not stray.

Ah, it is hard to speak of what it was,
that sav­age for­est, dense and dif­fi­cult,
which even in recall renews my fear:

so bitter—death is hard­ly more severe!

This is not to say the lit­er­ary Dante and occult Her­meti­cism are his­tor­i­cal­ly relat­ed; only they emerged from the same matrix, a medieval Catholic Europe steeped in mys­te­ri­ous sym­bols. The Her­mit is a por­tent, mes­sen­ger, and guide, an aspect rep­re­sent­ed by the poet Vir­gil, whom William Blake — in 102 water­col­or illus­tra­tions made between 1824 and 1827 — dressed in blue to rep­re­sent spir­it, while Dante wears his usu­al red — the col­or, in Blake’s sys­tem, of expe­ri­ence.

Blake did not read the Divine Com­e­dy as a medieval Catholic believ­er but as a vision­ary 18th and 19th cen­tu­ry Eng­lish artist and poet who invent­ed his own reli­gion. He “taught him­self Ital­ian in order to be able to read the orig­i­nal” and had a “ com­plex rela­tion­ship” with the text, writes Dante schol­ar Sil­via De San­tis.

His inter­pre­ta­tion drew from a “wide­spread ‘selec­tive use’” of the poet,” dat­ing from 16th cen­tu­ry Eng­lish Protes­tant read­ings which saw Dante’s satir­i­cal skew­er­ing of cor­rupt indi­vid­u­als as indict­ments of the insti­tu­tions they rep­re­sent — the church and state for which Blake had no love.

Approach­ing the project at the end of his life, not the mid­dle, Blake drew pri­mar­i­ly on themes that Dante schol­ar Robin Kil­patrick describes as a “search­ing analy­sis of all of the polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic fac­tors that had destroyed Flo­rence .… Hell is a diag­no­sis of what, in so many ways, can prove to be divi­sive in human nature. Sin, for Dante, is not trans­gres­sion of an ordi­nary kind … against some law… it’s a trans­gres­sion against love.”

Blake died before he could fin­ish the series, com­mis­sioned by his friend John Lin­nell in 1824. He had intend­ed to engrave all 102 illus­tra­tions, con­ceived, he wrote, “dur­ing a fort­night’s ill­ness in bed.” You can see all of his stun­ning water­col­ors online here and find them lov­ing­ly repro­duced in a new book pub­lished by Taschen with essays by Blake and Dante experts, help­ing con­tex­tu­al­ize two poets who found a com­mon lan­guage across a span of 500 years. The book, orig­i­nal­ly priced at $150, now sells for $40. A beau­ti­ful XL edi­tion sells at a high­er price.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rarely-Seen Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy Are Now Free Online, Cour­tesy of the Uffizi Gallery

A Dig­i­tal Archive of the Ear­li­est Illus­trat­ed Edi­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy (1487–1568)

Explore Divine Com­e­dy Dig­i­tal, a New Dig­i­tal Data­base That Col­lects Sev­en Cen­turies of Art Inspired by Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy

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

The First Air Raid Happened When Austria Dropped Bombs on Venice from Pilotless Hot-Air Balloons (1849)

in History | September 7th, 2021

We sur­round the phrase “ahead of its time” with a mys­ti­cal aura. But just because an idea shows up ear­li­er than we expect does not mean it was ever a good idea for human progress. Take, for exam­ple, the idea to rain incen­di­ary devices on the heads of civil­ian pop­u­la­tions in wartime. Recent iter­a­tions of this tech­nol­o­gy — unmanned drones sur­gi­cal­ly bomb­ing wed­dings and funer­als — may be an improve­ment over Hiroshi­ma or napalm-hap­py heli­copter pilots like Apoc­a­lypse Now’s Bill Kil­go­re. But drones have not, there­by, ren­dered the nuclear option or trig­ger-hap­py death from above obso­lete, or made mass civil­ian casu­al­ties less trag­ic and unnec­es­sary, com­par­isons of raw num­bers aside.

Drone bomb­ing is one of those ideas that showed up ahead of its time — at the very first use of aer­i­al bomb­ing of any kind. Unmanned Aer­i­al Vehi­cles (UAVs) were launched in the ser­vice of a mil­i­tary oper­a­tion 30 years before Edi­son har­nessed elec­tric­i­ty for home use.

In 1849, remote pilot­ing was hard­ly pos­si­ble. But it was pos­si­ble to launch a fleet of hot air bal­loons loaded with explo­sives from a ship and send them in the gen­er­al direc­tion of a tar­get. That’s what the Aus­tri­an army did — twice — over Venice, in a cam­paign to recap­ture the city when its cit­i­zens rebelled against impe­r­i­al rule and built their own repub­lic. Luck­i­ly for Venice, the first use of naval air pow­er was also the least effec­tive.

The bal­loons “car­ried 33 pounds of explo­sives,” writes Monash Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Rus­sell Naughton, “set with a half-hour time fuse, and troops scur­ried around with them to launch them into the prop­er wind cur­rents.” The idea for the bom­bard­ment came from an Aus­tri­an artillery lieu­tenant named Franz von Uchatius and was ini­tial­ly car­ried out on July 12, 1849. This attempt “failed because the wind was not in Austria’s favor,” writes Weapons and War­fare, quot­ing from a con­tem­po­rary account in Time mag­a­zine:

The bal­loons appeared to rise to about 4,500 ft. Then they explod­ed in midair or fell into the water, or, blown by a sud­den south­east wind, sped over the city and dropped on the besiegers. Vene­tians, aban­don­ing their homes, crowd­ed into the streets and squares to enjoy the strange spec­ta­cle. … When a cloud of smoke appeared in the air to make an explo­sion, all clapped and shout­ed. Applause was great­est when the bal­loons blew over the Aus­tri­an forces and explod­ed, and in such cas­es the Vene­tians added cries of ‘Bra­vo!’ and ‘Good appetite!’

More spec­ta­cle than threat, the bal­loon bombs might have been aban­doned as a failed exper­i­ment, but the Aus­tri­ans were per­sis­tent; they had besieged the city, deter­mined to sub­due it. Anoth­er attack on August 22 seems to have also done more dam­age to the Aus­tri­ans than their tar­gets. Although the bal­loons could not be pilot­ed, the det­o­na­tion of their charges was con­trolled, Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can wrote that year, “by elec­tro mag­net­ism by means of a long iso­lat­ed cop­per wire with a large gal­van­ic bat­tery placed on the shore. The bomb falls per­pen­dic­u­lar­ly, and explodes on reach­ing the ground” … the­o­ret­i­cal­ly.

It is not clear from the sources how many bombs were launched. Num­bers range from 2 to 200. In any case, the bomb­ing would have lit­tle effect on end­ing the siege, which went on for five more months after­ward, and they received lit­tle notice in the press. They did, how­ev­er, have the effect after their sec­ond appear­ance of pro­duc­ing “extreme ter­ror,” the British Morn­ing Chron­i­cle report­ed, doc­u­ment­ing the first appear­ance of “shock and awe.” And ter­ror was “clear­ly what was intend­ed,” Brett Hol­man writes at Airmind­ed, rather than a strate­gic offen­sive. “The bombs used were filled with shrap­nel, which isn’t much use for any­thing but killing and maim­ing peo­ple. So there were few qualms on the part of the Aus­tri­ans about tar­get­ing and killing civil­ians.” They were sim­ply killed more effi­cient­ly with con­ven­tion­al artillery and star­va­tion.

The exam­ple of the Aus­tri­ans was not fol­lowed by oth­er armies, who weren’t eager to have explo­sive bal­loons blow back on their own lines. The idea of bomb­ing cities from the air, writes Hol­man, “had to be invent­ed all over again. Which it was, of course, and Venice’s next air raid was on 24 May 1915.”

Just last year, the entire city shut down — “even planes were barred from fly­ing to and from Venice’s Mar­co Polo Air­port,” DW report­ed — as author­i­ties led an effort to “remove and defuse a World War II-era bomb” on what local media dubbed “Bom­ba Day.”

via Mari­na Ama­r­al

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch Venice’s New $7 Bil­lion Flood Defense Sys­tem in Action

How Venice Works: 124 Islands, 183 Canals & 438 Bridges

A Drone’s Eye View of the Ruins of Pom­peii

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

Hear Charlie Watts Inimitable Isolated Drum Tracks on “Gimme Shelter,” “Beast of Burden,” and “Honky Tonk”

in Music | September 6th, 2021

When I was a kid in New Jer­sey, if you were look­ing for work, there’d be ads for musi­cians. In the mid-60s and 70s, they would invari­ably say: “Want­ed: Char­lie Watts type drum­mer” — Max Wein­berg

Since Char­lie Watts passed away last month, trib­ute upon trib­ute has poured in to cel­e­brate his style, his aus­tere sim­plic­i­ty, his role as the calm, steady eye of the Rolling Stones’ roil­ing storm. “Drum­ming is often ugly,” Aman­da Petru­sich wrote at The New York­er, “but Watts looked so beau­ti­ful when he played … His pos­ture alone sug­gest­ed a preter­nat­ur­al ele­gance … there is always poet­ry in restraint.”

This is the way Watts’ play­ing looks to non-musi­cians, and most Rolling Stones fans are not musi­cians, and do not lis­ten to rock drum­ming alone. “It’s pos­si­ble to find Watts’s iso­lat­ed drum tracks online,” Petru­sich writes, “If you’re into that sort of thing. They’re not always per­fect in the tech­ni­cal sense, but they are deeply per­fect in oth­er, less quan­tifi­able ways.” Watts him­self described his drum­ming as non-tech­ni­cal and decried his lack of train­ing. It was all about the band, he said repeat­ed­ly.

But ask oth­er drum­mers to quan­ti­fy Watts’ per­fec­tion and they’ll do so hap­pi­ly. Watts taught him­self to play by lis­ten­ing to his favorite jazz drum­mers, writes Max Wein­berg, “among them the great Eng­lish jazz drum­mer Phil Sea­men, and Dave Tough, an Amer­i­can drum­mer who even looked like Char­lie: a fas­tid­i­ous dress­er, appar­ent­ly with the most incred­i­ble groove and sound.” Wein­berg, who incor­po­rat­ed Watts’ influ­ence on Spring­steen songs like “Born to Run,” elab­o­rates fur­ther.

One way Watts com­mand­ed a room, he says, was as a pro­po­nent “of a style of rock drum­ming pop­u­lar­ized by the late, great Al Jack­son, the famous Stax drum­mer, where you delib­er­ate­ly play behind the direct back­beat. The way you do that — which is a lit­tle tech­ni­cal — is not by focus­ing on the two and the four beat, but the one and the three. Anoth­er exam­ple is James Brown’s music, which is heav­i­ly focused on land­ing on the one. It takes a long time to be able to do that.” He devel­oped the skill as a blues and jazz drum­mer even before Mick and Kei­th seduced him to the Stones.

Anoth­er drum celebri­ty admir­er, Stew­art Copeland, writes about Watts’ unique dynam­ics. As a rock drum­mer trained on jazz, he “went for groove, and derived pow­er from relax­ation. Most rock drum­mers are try­ing to kill some­thing; they’re chop­ping wood. Jazz drum­mers instead tend to be very loose to get that jazz feel, and he had that qual­i­ty.” While Mick strut­ted and dripped across the stage, Char­lie “hard­ly broke a sweat.” From this, Copeland learned that “you can actu­al­ly get a bet­ter sound out of your drums, and a bet­ter groove, if you relax.”

In the clas­sic drum tracks here, lis­ten for some of Watts’ dis­tinc­tive, sub­tle moves, and read more about his tech­nique in Copeland and Weinberg’s rem­i­nisces here. It’s fair to say that every rock drum­mer who came after Char­lie Watts learned some­thing from Char­lie Watts, whether they knew it or not. But while “you can ana­lyze Char­lie Watts,” Copeland writes, “that still won’t get you to his feel and his dis­tinct per­son­al­i­ty. It’s an X‑factor, it’s a charis­ma, it’s an unde­fin­able gift of God.” Petru­sich con­cludes her trib­ute with a sim­i­lar expres­sion of non-tech­ni­cal awe: “Watch­ing Watts play is still one of the best ways I know to check in with the rid­dle and thrill of art — to wit­ness some­thing mirac­u­lous but not to under­stand it.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Say­ing Good­bye to Char­lie Watts (RIP), the Engine of the Rolling Stones for Half a Cen­tu­ry

A Char­lie Watts-Cen­tric View of the Rolling Stones: Watch Mar­tin Scorsese’s Footage of Char­lie & the Band Per­form­ing “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “All Down the Line”

Rolling Stones Drum­mer Char­lie Watts Writes a Children’s Book Cel­e­brat­ing Char­lie Park­er (1964)

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

The Brilliant 19th-Century Astronomical Drawings of Étienne Léopold Trouvelot

in Astronomy, Science | September 2nd, 2021

The first pho­to of the moon was tak­en in 1850 by Louis Daguerre, from whom the daguer­rotype gets its name. We have no idea what that first image looked like as it was lost in a stu­dio fire. But the need to cat­a­log the heav­ens with mod­ern tools had start­ed, and was both fas­ci­nat­ing as it was lack­ing. Into this evo­lu­tion of sci­ence and art stepped Éti­enne Léopold Trou­velot, the French immi­grant, liv­ing in the States, an ama­teur sci­en­tist and an illus­tra­tor. He would dis­miss pho­tog­ra­phy of the heav­ens as “so blurred and indis­tinct that no details of any great val­ue can be secured.” And by illus­trat­ing instead by he saw through tele­scopes, he secured a place in art *and* sci­ence his­to­ry.

Trou­velot might have thought his sci­en­tif­ic papers would be his lega­cy. He wrote fifty in his life­time. Instead it is his rough­ly 7,000 illus­tra­tions of plan­ets, comets, and oth­er phe­nom­e­na that still please us to this day. The New York Pub­lic Library has put 15 of his best up on their site, and over at this page, you can com­pare what Trou­velot saw—-the great astronomer Emma Con­verse called Trou­velot the “prince of observers”—-to pho­tos from NASA’s archive.

Even if his Mars is a bit fan­ci­ful, look­ing translu­cent like a fish egg, his under­stand­ing of the plan­et echoes in the fol­low­ing cen­tu­ry of sci-fi para­noia. Some­thing strange must be there, he sug­gests.

Har­vard hired him to sketch at their college’s obser­va­to­ry, and he used pas­tels to bring the plan­ets to life. Engrav­ing or ink would not have worked as well as these soft shapes and deter­mined lines. His ren­der­ing of the moon sur­face is accu­rate but also fan­ci­ful, like whipped cream. And his sun spots might not be accu­rate, but they repli­cat­ed the god-like forces at work on its tumul­tuous sur­face. His Sat­urn is the most real­is­tic of them all. Even the NASA image doesn’t look too dif­fer­ent to Trouvelot’s art.

These images also help reha­bil­i­tate Trouvelot’s oth­er legacy—-the dread­ed Gyp­sy Moth. Before his stint as ama­teur sci­en­tist, he was also an ama­teur ento­mol­o­gist, and while research­ing silk­worms and silk pro­duc­tion, acci­den­tal­ly let Euro­pean gyp­sy moths into North Amer­i­ca, where they wreaked hav­oc on the forests of North Amer­i­ca. Saturn’s rings may look the same back then as they do now, but so does the dam­age of the gyp­sy moth, which accord­ing to Wikipedia is up to $868 mil­lion in dam­ages per year.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A 9th Cen­tu­ry Man­u­script Teach­es Astron­o­my by Mak­ing Sub­lime Pic­tures Out of Words

Joce­lyn Bell Bur­nell Changed Astron­o­my For­ev­er; Her Ph.D. Advi­sor Won the Nobel Prize for It

A 16th-Cen­tu­ry Astron­o­my Book Fea­tured “Ana­log Com­put­ers” to Cal­cu­late the Shape of the Moon, the Posi­tion of the Sun, and More

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

Philosophy vs. Improv: A New Podcast from The Partially Examined Life and Chicago Improv Studio

in Comedy, Philosophy, Podcasts | August 24th, 2021

The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast has been shar­ing read­ing-group dis­cus­sions on clas­sic phi­los­o­phy texts for well over a decade, with over 40 mil­lion down­loads to date.

How­ev­er, inter­ac­tive con­ver­sa­tions about texts you prob­a­bly haven’t read can be dif­fi­cult to fol­low no mat­ter how much we try to make them acces­si­ble, and a decade of his­to­ry means that many names that might be dropped that those new­ly check­ing in may or may not be famil­iar with.

I’m one of the hosts of that pod­cast, and while I’m very hap­py with the for­mat and thrilled to have reached so many peo­ple with it, I also appre­ci­ate the dynam­ic of a one-on-one tutor­ing inter­change, and I stand firm­ly behind one of the orig­i­nal rules of The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life: No name-drop­ping.

As we read more com­pli­cat­ed texts, our inter­est becomes fig­ur­ing out what the philoso­pher meant, and only sec­on­dar­i­ly whether that mean­ing actu­al­ly relates to some­thing in peo­ple’s actu­al lives. Yes, we are crit­i­cal (some say too crit­i­cal) of the sub­ject-mat­ter, but we’re also big fans; we could bask in the lit­er­ary glow of Hegel or Pla­to or Simone de Beau­voir or Han­nah Arendt all day, and have often done so.

My newest pod­cast, Phi­los­o­phy vs. Improv, is rec­i­p­ro­cal tutor­ing real­ized as com­e­dy (or at least per­for­mance art?). As some­one who stud­ied phi­los­o­phy for many years in school and has then been host­ing The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life for so long, I’m in a good posi­tion to come up with par­tic­u­lar philo­soph­i­cal points worth teach­ing to a new learn­er.

My Phi­los­o­phy vs. Improv co-host is Bill Arnett, founder of the Chica­go Improv Stu­dio, author of The Com­plete Impro­vis­er, and the for­mer train­ing direc­tor at Chicago’s famed iO The­ater. He has appeared repeat­ed­ly on the Hel­lo From the Mag­ic Tav­ern improv com­e­dy pod­cast as a char­ac­ter named Meta­more who leads the show’s hosts (who are all fan­ta­sy char­ac­ters a la Tolkein or Nar­nia) in a table-top role-play­ing game called Offices and Boss­es. This and oth­er shows ignit­ed in me an urge to learn the fun­da­men­tals of improv com­e­dy, and so each Phi­los­o­phy vs. Improv episode, Bill comes up with some trick of the trade to try to teach me.

There are two rules of engage­ment: First, we can’t just state up front what the les­son is. We can ask each oth­er ques­tions, go through exer­cis­es, and oth­er­wise dis­cuss the mate­r­i­al, but the les­son should emerge nat­u­ral­ly. Sec­ond, we don’t take turns in try­ing to teach each oth­er. As he’s mak­ing me act out scenes, I’m try­ing to set up those scenes or have my char­ac­ter react in such a way to exem­pli­fy my philo­soph­i­cal point. As we’re dis­cussing phi­los­o­phy, Bill is relat­ing it to com­pa­ra­ble points about improv. Of course, we’re both inter­est­ed in learn­ing as well as teach­ing, so the “vs.” in the show’s title is not so much com­pe­ti­tion between us as between which les­son ends up more near­ly pro­duc­ing its intend­ed effect in the oth­er per­son.

It is sur­pris­ing how smooth­ly these duel­ing lessons often fit togeth­er, as lessens about ethics in par­tic­u­lar, about the art of liv­ing, are very much rel­e­vant to the impro­vi­sa­tion­al skills of being present, pre­sent­ing your­self, dis­cov­er­ing the real­i­ty of a sit­u­a­tion, and explor­ing truths of char­ac­ter. Fic­tion is often a very effec­tive vehi­cle for address­ing phi­los­o­phy, whether the char­ac­ters them­selves are talk­ing philo­soph­i­cal­ly (even if they’re ani­mals, cave men, or oth­er­wise in a non-typ­i­cal sit­u­a­tion for dis­cus­sion), or per­haps we’re embody­ing some polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion or thought exper­i­ment that we’re sub­ject­ing to philo­soph­i­cal analy­sis.

Like­wise, back to the days of Pla­to, a dose of irony in dis­cussing phi­los­o­phy can be use­ful, and this for­mat allows us to not just be our­selves on a pod­cast dis­cussing phi­los­o­phy, but at any point to launch into some com­e­dy bit, and in this way show the absur­di­ty of views we’re argu­ing against or just play with the ideas in a man­ner that I think enhances men­tal flex­i­bil­i­ty, which is essen­tial both for impro­vi­sa­tion and for philo­soph­i­cal cre­ativ­i­ty.

Lis­ten to the lat­est episode (#7), enti­tled “Mer­i­toc­ra­cy Now!”

Start lis­ten­ing with Phi­los­o­phy vs. Improv episode 1.

For more infor­ma­tion, see philosophyimprov.com.

Mark Lin­sen­may­er is the host of four pod­casts: Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast, Naked­ly Exam­ined Music, The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life, and Phi­los­o­phy vs. Improv.

Become a Project Manager Without a College Degree with Google’s Project Management Certificate

in Google, Online Courses, Technology | August 23rd, 2021

As we first men­tioned last year, Google has launched a series of Career Cer­tifi­cate pro­grams that allow stu­dents to gain exper­tise in a field, ide­al­ly enough to start work­ing with­out a 4‑year col­lege degree. This ini­tia­tive now includes a Cer­tifi­cate in Project Man­age­ment, which con­sists of six cours­es.

• Foun­da­tions of Project Man­age­ment
• Project Ini­ti­a­tion: Start­ing a Suc­cess­ful Project
• Project Plan­ning: Putting It All Togeth­er
• Project Exe­cu­tion: Run­ning the Project
• Agile Project Man­age­ment
• Cap­stone: Apply­ing Project Man­age­ment in the Real World

Above, a Pro­gram Man­ag­er talks about “her path from drop­ping out of high school and earn­ing a GED, join­ing the mil­i­tary, and work­ing as a coder, to learn­ing about pro­gram man­age­ment and switch­ing into that career track.” An intro­duc­tion to the Project Man­age­ment cer­tifi­cate appears below.

The Project Man­age­ment pro­gram takes about six months to com­plete, and should cost about $250 in total. Stu­dents get charged $39 per month until they com­plete the pro­gram.

You can explore the Project Man­age­ment cer­tifi­cate here. And find oth­er Google career cer­tifi­cates in oth­er fields–e.g. UX Design and Data Ana­lyt­ics–over on this page. All Google career cours­es are host­ed on the Cours­era plat­form.

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es and pro­grams, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Google Intro­duces 6‑Month Career Cer­tifi­cates, Threat­en­ing to Dis­rupt High­er Edu­ca­tion with “the Equiv­a­lent of a Four-Year Degree”

Google & Cours­era Launch Career Cer­tifi­cates That Pre­pare Stu­dents for Jobs in 6 Months: Data Ana­lyt­ics, Project Man­age­ment and UX Design

Google’s UX Design Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate: 7 Cours­es Will Help Pre­pare Stu­dents for an Entry-Lev­el Job in 6 Months

How Doctor Who First Started as a Family Educational TV Program (1963)

in Education, Sci Fi, Television | August 19th, 2021

Those who grew up with the BBC sci-fi series Doc­tor Who watched from “behind the sofa,” a pop­u­lar phrase asso­ci­at­ed with the show for the rub­bery, bug-eyed mon­sters it held in store each week for loy­al view­ers. Although it may be hard for those who didn’t expe­ri­ence it in their for­ma­tive years to under­stand, Doc­tor Who has fre­quent­ly been vot­ed the scari­est TV show of all time, over gris­li­er, big-bud­get series like The Walk­ing Dead, and has done so with­out los­ing its sense of humor, a tes­ta­ment to the con­ceit of “regen­er­a­tion” keep­ing things fresh by updat­ing the Doc­tor and his com­pan­ions every few years.

Space mon­sters, Daleks, Cyber­men, and a revolv­ing cast, how­ev­er, were not part of Doc­tor Who’s orig­i­nal remit. The show began as an edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram on the BBC, and this explains many of its inte­gral parts, which have remained through­out its first run from 1963 to 1989 and its revival from 2005 to the present. These ele­ments include the TARDIS, com­pan­ions of var­i­ous ages, the Coal Hill School, and the Doc­tor him­self, a Time Lord from the plan­et Gal­lifrey with inter­stel­lar tech­nol­o­gy and a dodgy mem­o­ry.

We find the core premise in the show’s pilot episode and orig­i­nal 4‑part series, An Unearth­ly Child, which intro­duced William Hart­nell as the Doc­tor, Car­ole Ann Ford as his grand­daugh­ter, Susan Fore­man (orig­i­nal­ly named Bar­bara, or “Bid­dy”), and Jaque­line Hill and William Rus­sell as school teach­ers Bar­bara Wright and Ian Chester­ton. BBC dra­ma head Syd­ney New­man had tasked writ­ers with cre­at­ing a fam­i­ly edu­ca­tion­al show to meet the network’s pub­lic ser­vice man­date, and came up with the idea of a sci­ence fic­tion show as a way to have char­ac­ters vis­it his­tor­i­cal peri­ods and talk about sci­ence in an enter­tain­ing way.

“Doc­tor Who’s ear­ly his­tor­i­cal sto­ries empha­size edu­ca­tion by down­play­ing the programme’s fan­ta­sy with min­i­mal sci­ence-fic­tion ele­ments,” writes Tom Stew­ard at Dele­tion. The idea of a time machine big­ger on the inside than the out­side came from New­man. Writer Antho­ny Coburn turned it into a police box after a note from New­man ask­ing for a “tan­gi­ble” sym­bol. New­man “instruct­ed writ­ers to ‘get across the basis of teach­ing of edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ence.’ ” When they came back with a sto­ry about Daleks, he balked: “No bug-eyed mon­sters,” he wrote, no alien bad­dies, no actors in rub­ber suits. This was to be a seri­ous show about seri­ous edu­ca­tion­al sub­jects. Script changes and tech­ni­cal chal­lenges meant months of set­back and delays.

It was dif­fi­cult for some crit­ics to take the result­ing four episode arc par­tic­u­lar­ly seri­ous­ly. The first episode showed Bar­bara and Ian dis­cov­er­ing the TARDIS in a Lon­don junk­yard. Then they are all trans­port­ed to the pre­his­toric past, where they observe (and escape) a pow­er strug­gle among pre­his­toric cave peo­ple. (Guardian crit­ic Mary Crozi­er lament­ed that the “wigs and fur­ry pelts and clubs were all ludi­crous.”) The show’s debut was also inaus­pi­cious: Novem­ber 23, 1963, the day after John F. Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion. The BBC reran the first episode the next week and picked up anoth­er 2 mil­lion view­ers.

Still, it had become clear after the first series that in order to sur­vive, Doc­tor Who would have “to give the pub­lic what they want­ed,” Stew­ard writes, “rather than what was good for them.” Thus, the Daleks debuted in the sec­ond sea­son, and by the mid-60s, his­tor­i­cal sto­ries were replaced with “fan­tasies in his­tor­i­cal cos­tume fea­tur­ing anachro­nis­tic vil­lains or mon­sters.” The show became a week­ly crea­ture fea­ture and intro­duced ter­ri­fy­ing vil­lains like Davros, the Daleks’ cre­ator, a cross between a Strangelove-like Nazi sci­en­tist and Star Wars’ clone-hap­py Emper­or Pal­pa­tine (Davros came first).

The cos­tumes may look sil­ly in hind­sight, but as child­hood Who fan Char­lie Jane Anders writes at io9, “those of us who are adults now did­n’t have huge screen HD tele­vi­sions when we were kids.” (And those of us who remem­ber it, remem­ber being ter­ri­fied by equal­ly goofy cos­tum­ing in The Land of the Lost.) Look past the low-bud­get effects and Doc­tor Who becomes pure hor­ror, explor­ing very dark ter­ri­to­ry with only a son­ic screw­driv­er, a few friends, and a quirky sense of humor — or 13 quirky sens­es of humor, includ­ing Jodie Whit­tak­er’s as the cur­rent Doc­tor and first woman to fill the role.

As you can see from the clips of the first episode above, Doc­tor Who estab­lished its weird air of exis­ten­tial dread from the start with Delia Der­byshire’s oth­er­world­ly theme and some avant-garde cam­era effects in lieu of big­ger-bud­get spec­ta­cles. The show did not retain much from its edu­ca­tion­al begin­nings aside from the key char­ac­ters and the look and feel of the TARDIS. It was “seen to have failed as ped­a­gogy,” writes Stew­ard, but as a body of sci­ence fic­tion lore that con­tin­ues to stay rel­e­vant, it has all sorts of lessons to teach about courage, com­pan­ion­ship, and the val­ue of the right tool for the right job.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

30 Hours of Doc­tor Who Audio Dra­mas Now Free to Stream Online

The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry of How Delia Der­byshire Cre­at­ed the Orig­i­nal Doc­tor Who Theme

A Detailed, Track-by-Track Analy­sis of the Doc­tor Who Theme Music

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

Watch Venice’s New $7 Billion Flood Defense System in Action

in Architecture, Nature, Technology | August 11th, 2021

There are cap­i­tals unlike­ly to be much afflict­ed by ris­ing sea lev­els — Indi­anapo­lis, say, or La Paz — but Venice looks set for a much more dire fate. Still, there is hope for the Float­ing City, a hope held out by large-scale engi­neer­ing projects like the one pro­filed in the Tomor­row’s Build video above. Called MOSE (an acronym stand­ing for MOd­u­lo Sper­i­men­tale Elet­tromec­ca­ni­co), the sys­tem con­sists of “78 gates, each 20 meters wide, that rise up out of the water when flood­ing is immi­nent.” This sounds like just the tick­et for a city that, “built in the mid­dle of a lagoon,” has “been sus­cep­ti­ble to a nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­non known as acqua alta, or ‘high water,’ since its found­ing in the fifth cen­tu­ry.”

MOSE is now “final­ly up and run­ning, eigh­teen years after con­struc­tion began” — and a decade after its orig­i­nal com­ple­tion dead­line. This was too late, unfor­tu­nate­ly, to spare Venice from the 2019 flood that ranked as its worst in 50 years, leav­ing 80 per­cent of the city under­wa­ter.

“The good news is, it passed the first major test,” suc­cess­ful­ly pro­tect­ing the city in Octo­ber of last year “from a 1.3‑meter high tide, and it’s per­formed mul­ti­ple times since. But this does­n’t mean that flood­ing’s been stopped entire­ly. In Decem­ber, it was unable to pre­vent an unex­pect­ed­ly high tide from sweep­ing in and drench­ing the city once again.” Tech­ni­cal­ly, that inci­dent was­n’t MOSE’s fault: “Weath­er fore­cast­ers under­es­ti­mat­ed how high the water would get, so author­i­ties kind of did­n’t think to switch it on.”

This speaks to the dif­fi­cul­ty of not just design­ing and installing a com­plex mechan­i­cal defense mech­a­nism, but also of get­ting it to work in con­cert with the oth­er sys­tems already per­form­ing func­tions of their own (and at var­i­ous lev­els of reli­a­bil­i­ty). At a cost of over €6 bil­lion (or $7 bil­lion), MOSE has become “far more expen­sive than first pre­dict­ed,” and thus faces that much high­er a bur­den of self-jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, espe­cial­ly giv­en the cloud of “cor­rup­tion, envi­ron­men­tal oppo­si­tion, and ques­tions about its long-term effec­tive­ness” hang­ing over it. Seen in action, MOSE remains an unques­tion­ably impres­sive work of engi­neer­ing, but its asso­ci­at­ed headaches have sure­ly con­vert­ed some to the posi­tion on Venice once advanced by no less a schol­ar and lover of that sto­ried city than Jan Mor­ris: “Let her sink.”

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Venice Works: 124 Islands, 183 Canals & 438 Bridges

Huge Hands Rise Out of Venice’s Waters to Sup­port the City Threat­ened by Cli­mate Change: A Poignant New Sculp­ture

The Venice Time Machine: 1,000 Years of Venice’s His­to­ry Gets Dig­i­tal­ly Pre­served with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence and Big Data

Watch City Out of Time, a Short Trib­ute to Venice, Nar­rat­ed by William Shat­ner in 1959

Venice in a Day: From Day­break to Sun­set in Time­lapse

Venice is Way Under Water…

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Take an Intellectual Odyssey with a Free MIT Course on Douglas Hofstadter’s Pulitzer Prize-Winning Book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

in Computer Science, Creativity, Math, MIT, Music, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Psychology | August 2nd, 2021

In 1979, math­e­mati­cian Kurt Gödel, artist M.C. Esch­er, and com­pos­er J.S. Bach walked into a book title, and you may well know the rest. Dou­glas R. Hof­s­tadter won a Pulitzer Prize for Gödel, Esch­er, Bach: an Eter­nal Gold­en Braid, his first book, thence­forth (and hence­forth) known as GEB. The extra­or­di­nary work is not a trea­tise on math­e­mat­ics, art, or music, but an essay on cog­ni­tion through an explo­ration of all three — and of for­mal sys­tems, recur­sion, self-ref­er­ence, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, etc. Its pub­lish­er set­tled on the pithy descrip­tion, “a metaphor­i­cal fugue on minds and machines in the spir­it of Lewis Car­roll.”

GEB attempt­ed to reveal the mind at work; the minds of extra­or­di­nary indi­vid­u­als, for sure, but also all human minds, which behave in sim­i­lar­ly unfath­omable ways. One might also describe the book as oper­at­ing in the spir­it — and the prac­tice — of Her­man Hesse’s Glass Bead Game, a nov­el Hesse wrote in response to the data-dri­ven machi­na­tions of fas­cism and their threat to an intel­lec­tu­al tra­di­tion he held par­tic­u­lar­ly dear. An alter­nate title (and key phrase in the book) Mag­is­ter Ludi, puns on both “game” and “school,” and alludes to the impor­tance of play and free asso­ci­a­tion in the life of the mind.

Hesse’s eso­teric game, writes his biog­ra­ph­er Ralph Freed­man, con­sists of “con­tem­pla­tion, the secrets of the Chi­nese I Ching and West­ern math­e­mat­ics and music” and seems sim­i­lar enough to Hof­s­tadter’s approach and that of the instruc­tors of MIT’s open course, Gödel, Esch­er, Bach: A Men­tal Space Odyssey. Offered through the High School Stud­ies Pro­gram as a non-cred­it enrich­ment course, it promis­es “an intel­lec­tu­al vaca­tion” through “Zen Bud­dhism, Log­ic, Meta­math­e­mat­ics, Com­put­er Sci­ence, Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence, Recur­sion, Com­plex Sys­tems, Con­scious­ness, Music and Art.”

Stu­dents will not study direct­ly the work of Gödel, Esch­er, and Bach but rather “find their spir­its aboard our men­tal ship,” the course descrip­tion notes, through con­tem­pla­tions of canons, fugues, strange loops, and tan­gled hier­ar­chies. How do mean­ing and form arise in sys­tems like math and music? What is the rela­tion­ship of fig­ure to ground in art? “Can recur­sion explain cre­ativ­i­ty,” as one of the course notes asks. Hof­s­tadter him­self has pur­sued the ques­tion beyond the entrench­ment of AI research in big data and brute force machine learn­ing. For all his daunt­ing eru­di­tion and chal­leng­ing syn­the­ses, we must remem­ber that he is play­ing a high­ly intel­lec­tu­al game, one that repli­cates his own expe­ri­ence of think­ing.

Hof­s­tadter sug­gests that before we can under­stand intel­li­gence, we must first under­stand cre­ativ­i­ty. It may reveal its secrets in com­par­a­tive analy­ses of the high­est forms of intel­lec­tu­al play, where we see the clever for­mal rules that gov­ern the mind’s oper­a­tions; the blind alleys that explain its fail­ures and lim­i­ta­tions; and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of ever actu­al­ly repro­duc­ing work­ings in a machine. Watch the lec­tures above, grab a copy of Hofstadter’s book, and find course notes, read­ings, and oth­er resources for the fas­ci­nat­ing course Gödel, Esch­er, Bach: A Men­tal Space Odyssey archived here. The course will be added to our list, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How a Bach Canon Works. Bril­liant.

Math­e­mat­ics Made Vis­i­ble: The Extra­or­di­nary Math­e­mat­i­cal Art of M.C. Esch­er

The Mir­ror­ing Mind: An Espres­so-Fueled Inter­pre­ta­tion of Dou­glas Hofstadter’s Ground­break­ing Ideas

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

757 Episodes of the Classic TV Game Show What’s My Line?: Watch Eleanor Roosevelt, Louis Armstrong, Salvador Dali & More

in Games, Music, Politics, Science, Television | July 30th, 2021

What would the host and pan­elists of the clas­sic prime­time tele­vi­sion game show What’s My Line? have made of The Masked Singer, a more recent offer­ing in which pan­elists attempt to iden­ti­fy celebri­ty con­tes­tants who are con­cealed by elab­o­rate head-to-toe cos­tumes and elec­tron­i­cal­ly altered voiceovers.

One expects such shenani­gans might have struck them as a bit uncouth.

Host John Charles Daly was will­ing to keep the ball up in the air by answer­ing the panel’s ini­tial ques­tions for a Mys­tery Guest with a wide­ly rec­og­niz­able voice, but it’s hard to imag­ine any­one stuff­ing for­mer First Lady Eleanor Roo­sev­elt into the full body steam­punk bee suit the (SPOILER) Empress of Soul wore on The Masked Singer’s first sea­son.

Mrs. Roosevelt’s Oct 18, 1953 appear­ance is a delight, espe­cial­ly her pan­tomimed dis­gust at the 17:29 mark, above, when blind­fold­ed pan­elist Arlene Fran­cis asks if she’s asso­ci­at­ed with pol­i­tics, and Daly jumps in to reply yes on her behalf.

Lat­er on, you get a sense of what play­ing a jol­ly par­lor game with Mrs. Roo­sevelt would have been like. She’s not above fudg­ing her answers a bit, and very near­ly wrig­gles with antic­i­pa­tion as anoth­er pan­elist, jour­nal­ist Dorothy Kil­gallen, begins to home in on the truth.

While the ros­ter of Mys­tery Guests over the show’s orig­i­nal 17-year broad­cast is impres­sive — Cab Cal­loway, Judy Gar­land, and Edward R. Mur­row to name a few — every episode also boast­ed two or three civil­ians hop­ing to stump the sophis­ti­cat­ed pan­el with their pro­fes­sion.

Mrs. Roo­sevelt was pre­ced­ed by a bath­tub sales­man and a fel­low involved in the man­u­fac­ture of Blood­hound Chew­ing Tobac­co, after which there was just enough time for a woman who wrote tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials.

Non-celebri­ty guests stood to earn up to $50 (over $500 today) by pro­long­ing the rev­e­la­tion of their pro­fes­sions, as com­pared to the Mys­tery Guests who received an appear­ance fee of ten times that, win or lose. (Pre­sum­ably, Mrs. Roo­sevelt was one of those to donate her hon­o­rar­i­um.)

The reg­u­lar pan­elists were paid “scan­dalous amounts of mon­ey” as per pub­lish­er Ben­nett Cerf, whose “rep­u­ta­tion as a nim­ble-wit­ted gen­tle­man-about-town was rein­forced by his tenure on What’s My Line?”, accord­ing to Colum­bia University’s Oral His­to­ry Research Office.

The unscript­ed urbane ban­ter kept view­ers tun­ing in. Broad­way actor Fran­cis recalled: “I got so much plea­sure out of ‘What’s My Line?’ There were no rehearsals. You’d just sit there and be your­self and do the best you could.”

Pan­elist Steve Allen is cred­it­ed with spon­ta­neous­ly alight­ing on a bread­box as a unit of com­par­a­tive mea­sure­ment while ques­tion­ing a man­hole cov­er sales­man in an episode that fea­tured June Hav­oc, leg­end of stage and screen as the Mys­tery Guest (at at 23:57, below).

“Want to show us your bread­box, Steve?” one of the female pan­elists fires back off-cam­era.

The phrase “is it big­ger than a bread­box” went on to become a run­ning joke, fur­ther con­tribut­ing to the illu­sion that view­ers had been invit­ed to a fash­ion­able cock­tail par­ty where glam­orous New York scene­mak­ers dressed up to play 21 Pro­fes­sion­al Ques­tions with ordi­nary mor­tals and a celebri­ty guest.

Jazz great Louis Arm­strong appeared on the show twice, in 1954 and then again in 1964, when he employed a suc­cess­ful tech­nique of light mono­syl­lab­ic respons­es to trick the same pan­elists who had iden­ti­fied him quick­ly on his ini­tial out­ing.

“Are you relat­ed to any­body that has any­thing to do with What’s My Line?” Cerf asks, caus­ing Arm­strong, host Daly, and the stu­dio audi­ence to dis­solve with laugh­ter.

“What hap­pened?” Arlene Fran­cis cries from under her pearl-trimmed mask, not want­i­ng to miss the joke.

Tele­vi­sion — and Amer­i­ca itself — was a long way off from acknowl­edg­ing the exis­tence of inter­ra­cial fam­i­lies.

“It’s not Van Clyburn, is it?” Fran­cis ven­tures a cou­ple of min­utes lat­er.…

Expect the usu­al gen­der-based assump­tions of the peri­od, but also appear­ances by Mary G. Ross, a Chero­kee aero­space engi­neer, and physi­cist Helen P. Mann, a data ana­lyst at Cape Canaver­al.

If you find the con­vivial atmos­phere of this sem­i­nal Good­son-Tod­man game show absorb­ing, there are 757 episodes avail­able for view­ing on What’s My Line?’s YouTube chan­nel.

Allow us to kick things off on a Sur­re­al Note with Mys­tery Guest Sal­vador Dali, after which you can browse chrono­log­i­cal playlists as you see fit:

1950–54

1955–57

1958–60

1961 ‑63

1964–65

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Sal­vador Dalí Gets Sur­re­al with 1950s Amer­i­ca: Watch His Appear­ances on What’s My Line? (1952) and The Mike Wal­lace Inter­view (1958)

How Amer­i­can Band­stand Changed Amer­i­can Cul­ture: Revis­it Scenes from the Icon­ic Music Show

How Dick Cavett Brought Sophis­ti­ca­tion to Late Night Talk Shows: Watch 270 Clas­sic Inter­views Online

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