Google Digitizes and Puts Online a Vast Archive of Latino Artworks and Artifacts

in Art, History | February 22nd, 2018

You can’t under­stand human cul­ture in the 21st cen­tu­ry with­out under­stand­ing Amer­i­can cul­ture, and as any­one who’s spent time in most any major U.S. city knows, you cer­tain­ly can’t under­stand Amer­i­can cul­ture with­out under­stand­ing Lati­no cul­ture. I write this while trav­el­ing in Los Ange­les, a city that makes that point with par­tic­u­lar­ly impres­sive force, but just a few moments with an overview of Lati­no art will under­score the vital­i­ty it has pro­vid­ed Amer­i­ca, and thus the world. You could do lit­tle bet­ter for such an overview than the Google Cul­tur­al Insti­tute’s brand new Lati­no Cul­tures in the U.S. project, a siz­able free dig­i­tal archive of Lati­no art and arti­facts of Lati­no his­to­ry.

Forbes’ Veron­i­ca Vil­lafañe quotes Google and Youtube Head of His­pan­ic Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Jesús Gar­cía as describ­ing the archive as “a labor of love for many Googlers and part­ner insti­tu­tions. It was a project that was more than a year in the mak­ing and took a small army to help dig­i­tize the 2,500 new art­works and curate 69 new exhibits.”

As a whole it offers “over 4,300 archives and art­works — includ­ing Diego Rivera murals — relat­ed to the Lati­no expe­ri­ence in the U.S., mul­ti­me­dia exhibits in Eng­lish and Span­ish and vir­tu­al tours of his­toric sites, as well as pro­files of key Lati­no fig­ures, such as Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huer­ta and Supreme Court Jus­tice Sonia Sotomay­or.”

Google Head of Lati­no Com­mu­ni­ty Engage­ment Lau­ra Mar­quez notes that it also allows you to “vis­it some of the most vibrant neigh­bor­hoods in the U.S. — the homes to and cen­ters of Lati­no cul­ture— by way of his­toric pho­tographs or unmiss­able loca­tions on Google Street View, all from your phone.” You’ll also find “ultra-high res­o­lu­tion images of icon­ic Lati­no murals, such as Diego Rivera’s Detroit Indus­try from the Detroit Insti­tute of Arts.” Using the for­mi­da­ble explorato­ry plat­form of Google Earth, the project has also cre­at­ed a whole Lati­no Murals in the U.S. sec­tion, from River­a’s work in Detroit to José Clemente Oroz­co’s Prometheus in Cal­i­for­nia to the Mia­mi Arti­sans’ Free­dom Tow­er mur­al at Mia­mi Dade Col­lege.

You can also browse the Lati­no Cul­tures in the U.S. Project’s offer­ings by form, includ­ing dance, film, music, and style. And though the designs of Oscar de la Renta, the songs of Glo­ria Este­fan, the paint­ings of Frank Romero (and, of course, lowrid­ers) have drawn the inter­est of many a non-Lati­no toward Lati­no cul­ture, what has done quite so much out­reach as the food? Google’s project even cov­ers that ter­ri­to­ry with con­tent like an edi­to­r­i­al fea­ture on “Fast Food, Tor­tillas, and the Art of Accept­ing Your­self” by Javier Cabral, a food crit­ic based, and well known, in — where else? — Los Ange­les.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bat­tle for LA’s Murals

Charles & Ray Eames’ Short Film on the Mex­i­can Day of the Dead (1957)

Google Puts Online 10,000 Works of Street Art from Across the Globe

Google Lets You Take a 360-Degree Panoram­ic Tour of Street Art in Cities Across the World

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include 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.

What the Map of the United States Would Look Like If All 50 States Had Equal Populations

in History, Politics | February 22nd, 2018

In the U.S., recent elec­toral events with which we’re all quite famil­iar have prompt­ed one par­tic­u­lar rad­i­cal re-eval­u­a­tion of the polit­i­cal sys­tem, among many oth­ers: we find every­one from high-pro­file Con­sti­tu­tion­al schol­ars to anony­mous com­menters engaged in debates about the neces­si­ty, or demo­c­ra­t­ic legit­i­ma­cy, of the Elec­toral Col­lege. While the debate may not be new, it has reached an urgent inten­si­ty, and hap­pens to occur at a time when every­thing seems up for grabs. When Neil Free­man pro­posed redraw­ing state bor­ders on his pre­scient­ly-named design site Fake is the New Real back in 2012, he cre­at­ed the map above (view it in a larg­er for­mat here) to even­ly dis­trib­ute the country’s pop­u­la­tion. He did so with the dis­claimer, “this is an art project, not a seri­ous pro­pos­al.”

The idea might get a more seri­ous recep­tion these days. Nonethe­less, the iner­tia of tra­di­tion has­n’t less­ened any. Not only is it total­ly unlike­ly that states would ever be redrawn and renamed, but the Elec­toral Col­lege is also a found­ing insti­tu­tion, emerg­ing at the first Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion when James Madi­son first pro­posed it in 1787. Since then, PBS’s Kamala Kelkar wrote on Novem­ber 6th, 2016, “the Elec­toral Col­lege sys­tem has cost four can­di­dates the race after they received the pop­u­lar vote.” Two days lat­er that num­ber went up to five.

Still, whether one deems it nec­es­sary, super­flu­ous, or deeply per­ni­cious, it’s hard­ly con­tro­ver­sial to note that this elect­ing body comes from an era so unlike our own as to be unrec­og­niz­able. A time when, as some founders argued, writes Akhil Reed Amar at Time, “ordi­nary Amer­i­cans across a vast con­ti­nent [lacked] suf­fi­cient infor­ma­tion to choose direct­ly and intel­li­gent­ly among lead­ing pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates.” This might still be the case for var­i­ous rea­sons. But putting aside man­u­fac­tured fil­ter bub­bles and vast dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns, most Amer­i­cans now have instant access, if they want it, to more infor­ma­tion than they know what to do with.

When we look at the pri­ma­ry sources, we find the actu­al rea­son for the Elec­toral Col­lege: slav­ery. Madi­son, notes Kelkar, “now known as the ‘Father of the Con­sti­tu­tion,’” was a slave­hold­ing Vir­gin­ian who wor­ried vocal­ly that North­ern states would have a decid­ed advan­tage, since upwards of 40% of the pop­u­la­tion in South­ern states con­sist­ed of enslaved peo­ple, who, of course, would not be cast­ing votes. Madison’s propo­si­tion includ­ed the infa­mous and dehu­man­iz­ing “three-fifths com­pro­mise,” which his­to­ri­an Paul Finkel­man argues enabled Thomas Jef­fer­son to win over John Adams in 1800.

Despite this his­to­ry, most peo­ple are taught that the sys­tem arose sole­ly to “bal­ance the inter­ests,” Amar writes, “of high-pop­u­la­tion and low-pop­u­la­tion states.” This sounds like a polit­i­cal­ly neu­tral inten­tion. But Free­man doesn’t ques­tion the legit­i­ma­cy of the Elec­toral Col­lege, call­ing it “a time-hon­ored, log­i­cal sys­tem” that he thinks should be pre­served. And yet, he writes, “it’s obvi­ous that reforms are need­ed.”

“The fun­da­men­tal prob­lem of the elec­toral col­lege,” Free­man writes, “is that the states of the Unit­ed States are too dis­parate in size and influ­ence. The largest state is 66 times as pop­u­lous as the small­est and has 18 times as many elec­toral votes. This increas­es the chance for Elec­toral Col­lege results that don’t match the pop­u­lar vote.” This is hard­ly the only issue. But is Freeman’s pro­pos­al a more sta­ble solu­tion to major flaws in U.S. nation­al elec­tions than sim­ply scrap­ping the Elec­toral Col­lege alto­geth­er? He makes the fol­low­ing argu­ment, in a series of bul­let-point­ed advan­tages. His map:

• Pre­serves the his­toric struc­ture and func­tion of the Elec­toral Col­lege.
• Ends the over-rep­re­sen­ta­tion of small states and under-rep­re­sen­ta­tion of large states in pres­i­den­tial vot­ing and in the US Sen­ate by elim­i­nat­ing small and large states.
• Polit­i­cal bound­aries more close­ly fol­low eco­nom­ic pat­terns, since many states are more cen­tered on one or two metro areas.
• Ends vary­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the House. Cur­rent­ly, the pop­u­la­tion of House dis­tricts ranges from 528,000 to 924,000. After this reform, every House seat would rep­re­sent dis­tricts of the same size. (Since the cur­rent size of the House isn’t divis­i­ble by 50, the num­bers of seats should be increased to 450 or 500.)
• States could be redis­trict­ed after each cen­sus — just like House seats are dis­trib­uted now.

Free­man based the map–featuring new states like “Mesabi,” “Ogal­lala,” “Big Thick­et,” “Chi­nati,” and “King”–on data from the 2010 Cen­sus, which, inci­den­tal­ly, actu­al­ly did change the dis­tri­b­u­tion of elec­tors in 2012. The Cen­sus “records a pop­u­la­tion of 308,745,538 for the Unit­ed States,” he notes, “which this map divides into 50 states, each with a pop­u­la­tion of about 6,175,000.”

He does seem to down­play the dis­ad­van­tages, list­ing only two con­cerns about dupli­cat­ed coun­ty names and a “shift in state laws and pro­ce­dures.” Free­man doesn’t men­tion the high like­li­hood of civ­il war or wide­spread social unrest if such a mas­sive redis­tri­b­u­tion of the country’s state pop­u­la­tions were ever attempt­ed. Giv­en the exam­ples of pitched legal bat­tle fought dai­ly over con­gres­sion­al redis­trict­ing of ger­ry­man­dered states, it’s also prob­a­ble noth­ing like this plan would ever make it through the courts. Con­sid­ered as an “art project” or thought exper­i­ment in civics, how­ev­er, who knows? It just might work….

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sal Khan & the Mup­pets’ Grover Explain the Elec­toral Col­lege

Why Socrates Hat­ed Democ­ra­cies: An Ani­mat­ed Case for Why Self-Gov­ern­ment Requires Wis­dom & Edu­ca­tion

The “True Size” Maps Shows You the Real Size of Every Coun­try (and Will Change Your Men­tal Pic­ture of the World)

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

Ditching the Lecture Hall for the Recording Studio: One Historian Is Using the Power of Podcasting to Inspire a Whole New Audience

in History, Podcasts | February 20th, 2018

His­to­ry is dying at U.S. col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties.  Enroll­ment in under­grad­u­ate his­to­ry cours­es is way down since 2010, and the num­ber of his­to­ry degrees award­ed annu­al­ly has like­wise been falling faster and faster.  The most recent data show a 9% nation­wide drop in his­to­ry degrees award­ed in 2014 com­pared to 2013, with an even sharp­er 13% decline at the nation’s top uni­ver­si­ties, includ­ing Yale, Har­vard, and Stan­ford. (1,2,3,4)  So, is his­to­ry just get­ting old?

On the con­trary.  At least out­side of acad­e­mia, his­to­ry has nev­er been more pop­u­lar.  Cul­tur­al icons includ­ing Barack Oba­ma and Bill Gates have cit­ed his­to­ry books such as Yuval Noah Harar­i’s Sapi­ens: A Brief His­to­ry of Mankind and Steven Pinker’s Enlight­en­ment Now: The Case for Rea­son, Sci­ence, Human­ism and Progress as among their favorite books of all time.  The His­to­ry Chan­nel has enjoyed a resur­gence in view­er­ship since 2013, and judg­ing by the recep­tion of more epic pro­duc­tions, from Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-win­ning movie Lin­coln in 2012 to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s smash hit musi­cal Hamil­ton in 2015, it’s clear that pub­lic hunger for his­to­ry is only grow­ing.  What, then, accounts for lack­lus­ter lec­ture hall atten­dance?

“Part of the prob­lem is that much of aca­d­e­m­ic his­to­ry has become too eso­teric,” says pod­cast­er Brad Har­ris, who holds a PhD from Stan­ford in the his­to­ry of sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy.  “Course con­tent has been shift­ing away from big ideas like the rise of mod­ern sci­ence and democ­ra­cy to nar­row­er stud­ies of things like the pol­i­tics of emo­tion and cul­tur­al con­struc­tions, which many stu­dents find less rel­e­vant to their inter­ests.”  More­over, Har­ris con­tends that col­lege his­to­ry cours­es have nev­er been more cyn­i­cal.  “Too many pro­fes­sors dwell on what human­i­ty has done wrong–who we’ve oppressed, what we’ve destroyed–and not enough on what human­i­ty has done right–who we’ve lib­er­at­ed, what we’ve invent­ed.  Where’s the inspi­ra­tion?  It’s no won­der peo­ple are ditch­ing his­to­ry lec­tures.”  And now, so has Brad Har­ris.

Since leav­ing acad­e­mia in 2015, Har­ris has been work­ing full-time to offer an attrac­tive alter­na­tive for peo­ple who want to learn his­to­ry, pro­vid­ing con­tent that is as infor­ma­tive as a col­lege lec­ture but as enter­tain­ing as a cin­e­mat­ic pro­duc­tion: a pod­cast called How It Began: A His­to­ry of the Mod­ern World.  Avail­able every­where pod­casts are found, and also from his web­site, howitbegan.com, How It Began inter­prets a broad array of the most impor­tant sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal, and cul­tur­al advance­ments in his­to­ry, from dog domes­ti­ca­tion to the Sci­en­tif­ic Rev­o­lu­tion.  Here is an excerpt from the show’s intro­duc­to­ry episode:

In each episode, we will fly through the cen­turies to fol­low the seeds of an inno­va­tion or dis­cov­ery as it blos­soms into one of the many fruits of moder­ni­ty.  Far from a cat­a­log of dead men and dates, How It Began offers a cin­e­mat­ic-like immer­sion into the sto­ries behind some of our species’ great­est achieve­ments.  The over­all theme?  Cel­e­bra­tion!  We are for­tu­nate to be descend­ed from men and women who dared to dream big and even die for the cause of progress.  Their work is unfin­ished, and some parts of moder­ni­ty are even worse than before.  But most are bet­ter, much bet­ter.  And we have more tools than ever to fix what’s still bro­ken.  

Brad Har­ris hopes his show’s focus on mod­ern progress will cap­ti­vate peo­ple who crave more inspir­ing explo­rations of his­to­ry, and judg­ing by How It Began’s recep­tion so far, he seems well on his way to achiev­ing exact­ly that.  

Episodes are between 30 and 60 min­utes long and released every month or so.  The pod­cast explores a wide range of top­ics, from the rise of mod­ern surgery and com­put­ers to the devel­op­ment of the Eng­lish lan­guage and the the­o­ry of evo­lu­tion.  “Wolves to Dogs: The Ori­gin of our Alliance” was one of the most pop­u­lar episodes of Sea­son One.   In a more recent episode, Har­ris reveals the sur­pris­ing cor­re­la­tions between the spread of cof­fee con­sump­tion and the estab­lish­ment of mod­ern insti­tu­tions:

This is a guest post by Mor­gan Stew­art, an edu­ca­tion­al con­sul­tant and founder of With­in Reach Edu­ca­tion­al Con­sul­tants.

Is Charles Bukowski a Self-Help Guru? Hear Five of His Brutally Honest, Yet Oddly Inspiring, Poems and Decide for Yourself

in Literature, Writing | February 19th, 2018

I don’t know if he’s been replaced as a major influ­ence on young, rest­less (and almost exclu­sive­ly male) aspir­ing writ­ers, but once upon a time—if you weren’t into the roman­tic wan­der­lust of Ker­ouac but still con­sid­ered your­self a fringe character—it might be to the hard-boiled shit-talk­ing of wise old man Charles Bukows­ki that you turned. Upon first learn­ing this, and being a busy col­lege stu­dent, I decid­ed to take a crash course and checked out a doc­u­men­tary.

I did not find myself charmed all at once. But one can fall in love with an author’s per­sona yet loathe them on the page. Bukowski’s crude­ness and bad humor on film could not hide the deep wells of sad­ness in which he seemed to swim, as if—like some ancient cyn­ic philosopher—he knew some­thing pro­found and ter­ri­ble and spared us the telling of it by pos­ing as a drunk­en, half-mad street-cor­ner racon­teur. I had to go and read him.

In his idiom—that of an elo­quent street­wise barfly—Bukowski can be every bit as pas­sion­ate and pro­found as his hero Dos­to­evsky. His unfor­get­table mix­ing of com­ic seed­i­ness and casu­al abuse with a deeply trag­ic mourn­ing over the human con­di­tion, while not to everyone’s taste, make his decades-long strug­gle out of penury and obscu­ri­ty a feat wor­thy of the telling in his semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal prose and poet­ry.

But does it make him a role mod­el? For any­one but cer­tain young, most­ly male, aspir­ing writ­ers maybe spend­ing more time drink­ing than writ­ing, that is?

A fair num­ber of peo­ple seem to think so, and I leave it to you to decide, first by lis­ten­ing to the Bukows­ki poems read here, post­ed on YouTube with heavy, inspi­ra­tional back­ground music. Some are giv­en new titles to sound more like self-help seminars—such as “Rein­vent Your Life” at the top (orig­i­nal­ly “No Lead­ers, Please”). The video read­ing called “Go all the way,” sec­ond from top, changes the title of “Roll the Dice,” a clas­sic pic­ture of Bukowski’s uncom­pro­mis­ing com­mit­ment to “going all the way,” even if it means “freez­ing on a park bench” and “los­ing girl­friends, wives, rel­a­tives, jobs and maybe your mind.”

Solid­ly mid­dle-class par­ents might approve of the first poem’s sen­ti­ments, which could be wedged into a suit­ably vague, yet bold-sound­ing com­mence­ment speech or a job recruiter’s pep talk. But “Roll the Dice” sim­ply goes too far. “It could mean jail, it could mean deri­sion, mock­ery, iso­la­tion”? This won’t do at all. Hear anoth­er read­ing of “Roll the Dice” by inspi­ra­tional rock star Bono fur­ther up, just after the more Bukows­ki-like Tom Waits reads “The Laugh­ing Heart,” fre­quent­ly ref­er­enced for its inten­si­ty of feel­ing. Like Thomas Hardy or Leonard Cohen, the bard of the barstools could look life straight in the eye, see all of its bleak­ness and vio­lence, and still man­age at times to catch a divine glim­mer.

And for the many aspi­rants to whom Bukows­ki has appealed, we have, fur­ther up, “So, You Want to Be a Writer?” Before you hear, or read, this poem, be advised: these are not warm words of encour­age­ment or help­ful life-coach­ing in verse. It is the kind of raw talk no respectable writ­ing teacher will give you, and maybe they’re right not to, who’s to say? Except a man who went all the way, froze on park bench­es, went to jail, lost girl­friends, wives, rel­a­tives, jobs and maybe his mind? Read an excerpt of Bukowski’s writ­ing advice below, and just above, hear the author him­self read “Friend­ly Advice to a Lot of Young Men,” which urges them to do vir­tu­al­ly any­thing they like, “But don’t write poet­ry.”

don’t be like so many writ­ers,
don’t be like so many thou­sands of
peo­ple who call them­selves writ­ers,
don’t be dull and bor­ing and
pre­ten­tious, don’t be con­sumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned them­selves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rock­et,
unless being still would
dri­ve you to mad­ness or
sui­cide or mur­der,
don’t do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burn­ing your gut,
don’t do it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­ry Dean Stan­ton (RIP) Reads Poems by Charles Bukows­ki

Charles Bukows­ki Reads His Poem “The Secret of My Endurance” 

Inspi­ra­tion from Charles Bukows­ki: You Might Be Old, Your Life May Be “Crap­py,” But You Can Still Make Good Art

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

Tim Minchin Presents “9 Rules to Live By” in a Funny and Wise Commencement Speech (2013)

in Graduation Speech, Life | February 19th, 2018

Tim Minchin isn’t much of a role mod­el in the hair brush­ing depart­ment, but in every oth­er way the pro­lif­ic comedian/actor/writer/musician/director inspires.

He’s unabashed­ly enthu­si­as­tic about sci­ence, a life­long learn­er who’s a strong believ­er in the pow­er of exer­cise, trav­el, and thank you notes….

He uses his star­dom and tal­ent for pen­ning con­tro­ver­sial lyrics to raise aware­ness and mon­ey for such caus­es as the UK’s Nation­al Autis­tic Soci­ety and a local char­i­ty formed to send adults who, as chil­dren, were sex­u­al­ly abused by Catholic cler­gy, to Rome.

His cre­ative out­put is prodi­gious.

And he’s one hel­lu­va com­mence­ment speak­er.

In 2013, his alma mater, the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­ern Aus­tralia, award­ed him an Hon­orary Degree of Doc­tor of Let­ters and invit­ed him to address the grad­u­at­ing class.

The speak­er insist­ed up front that an “inflat­ed sense of self impor­tance” born of address­ing large crowds was the only thing that posi­tioned him to give such an address, then went on to share a fun­ny 9‑point guide to life that stressed the impor­tance of grat­i­tude, edu­ca­tion, intel­lec­tu­al rig­or, and kind­ness toward oth­ers.

If you haven’t the time to watch the entire 12-minute speech, above, be sure to cir­cle back lat­er. His advice is hilar­i­ous, heart­warm­ing, and mem­o­rable.

In extrap­o­lat­ing the essence of each of his nine “life lessons” below, we dis­cov­ered many bonus lessons con­tained there­in (one of which we include below.)

Tim Minchin’s 9 Rules To Live By

1. You don’t have to have a dream. Be micro-ambi­tious and see what hap­pens as you pur­sue short-term goals…
2. Rather than chas­ing hap­pi­ness for your­self, keep busy and aim to make some­one else hap­py.
3. Remem­ber that we are lucky to be here, and that most of us — espe­cial­ly those of us with a col­lege edu­ca­tion, or those active­ly seek­ing to edu­cate them­selves to a sim­i­lar degree—will achieve a lev­el of wealth that “most humans through­out his­to­ry could not have dreamed of.”
4. Exer­cise. Among oth­er things, it helps com­bat depres­sion. 
5. Iden­ti­fy your bias­es, prej­u­dices, and priv­i­leges and do not exempt your own beliefs and opin­ions from intel­lec­tu­al rig­or.
6. Be a teacher!  Swell the ranks of this noble pro­fes­sion.
7. Define your­self by what you love, rather than what you despise, and lav­ish praise on the peo­ple and things that move you.
8. Respect those with less pow­er than your­self, and be wary of those who do not. 
9. Don’t be in a rush to suc­ceed. It might come at a cost. 

BONUS.  Uphold the notion that art and sci­ence are not an either/or choice, but rather com­pli­ment each oth­er. “If you need proof—Twain, Dou­glas Adams, Von­negut, McE­wan, Sagan and Shake­speare, Dick­ens for a start. …The arts and sci­ences need to work togeth­er to improve how knowl­edge is com­mu­ni­cat­ed. “

Read the full tran­script of Minchin’s com­mence­ment speech here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

NPR Launch­es Data­base of Best Com­mence­ment Speech­es Ever

David Lynch Gives Uncon­ven­tion­al Advice to Grad­u­ates in an Unusu­al Com­mence­ment Address

Jon Stewart’s William & Mary Com­mence­ment Address: The Entire World is an Elec­tive

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

The Science of Well-Being: Take a Free Online Version of Yale University’s Most Popular Course

in Online Courses, Psychology | February 15th, 2018

Don’t lis­ten to peo­ple who tell you they’ve found the one true path to hap­pi­ness — but do lis­ten to peo­ple who seem seri­ous­ly in search of it. One such per­son, Yale psy­chol­o­gy and cog­ni­tive sci­ence pro­fes­sor Lau­rie San­tos, teach­es a whole course on the sub­ject: Psych 157, also known as “Psy­chol­o­gy and the Good Life.” And even though col­lege stu­dents are liv­ing the best time of their lives — or so the cul­ture keeps insist­ing to them — enough of them desire its insights to make it the most pop­u­lar class at the uni­ver­si­ty, with more than 1,180 stu­dents cur­rent­ly enrolled.

“The course focus­es both on pos­i­tive psy­chol­o­gy — the char­ac­ter­is­tics that allow humans to flour­ish, accord­ing to Dr. San­tos — and behav­ioral change, or how to live by those lessons in real life,” writes The New York Times’ David Shimer. “Stu­dents must take quizzes, com­plete a midterm exam and, as their final assess­ment, con­duct what Dr. San­tos calls a ‘Hack Yo’Self Project,’ a per­son­al self-improve­ment project.” The body of knowl­edge under­ly­ing it all is hard­ly obvi­ous: “Sci­en­tists didn’t real­ize this in the same way 10 or so years ago, that our intu­itions about what will make us hap­py, like win­ning the lot­tery and get­ting a good grade — are total­ly wrong,” the arti­cle quotes San­tos as say­ing.

So what, accord­ing to the up-to-date research of San­tos and oth­ers, does make us hap­py? Now, you don’t need to go Yale to find out: you can sim­ply take “The Sci­ence of Well-Being,” the new online ver­sion of San­tos’ course, on Cours­era. “The first half of the course reveals mis­con­cep­tions we have about hap­pi­ness and the annoy­ing fea­tures of the mind that lead us to think the way we do,” says its descrip­tion. “The sec­ond half of the course focus­es on activ­i­ties that have been proven to increase hap­pi­ness along with strate­gies to build bet­ter habits.”

Now open for enroll­ment, “The Sci­ence of Well-Being” can be tak­en any time, and its num­ber of stu­dents cer­tain­ly won’t be lim­it­ed by the capac­i­ty of Woolsey Hall. If you’d like to get a sense of the learn­ing expe­ri­ence on offer, have a look at the course’s trail­er above, in which San­tos explains the ori­gin and devel­op­ment of the course, which began in her own home and now, with a poten­tial­ly world­wide audi­ence, uses not just the lat­est sci­ence but a spe­cial­ly devel­oped app to help its stu­dents devel­op the ele­ments of their own good life. Will you fin­ish the course per­fect­ly hap­py? She does­n’t promise that, but nobody ever lost their way to hap­pi­ness by know­ing a bit about it.

Enroll in “The Sci­ence of Well-Being” here. And if there’s any con­fu­sion, select the “Audit” option to take the course for free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy & Neu­ro­science Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Albert Camus Explains Why Hap­pi­ness Is Like Com­mit­ting a Crime—”You Should Nev­er Admit to it” (1959)

What Are the Keys to Hap­pi­ness? Lessons from a 75-Year-Long Har­vard Study

A Guide to Hap­pi­ness: Alain de Bot­ton Shows How Six Great Philoso­phers Can Change Your Life

The Keys to Hap­pi­ness: The Emerg­ing Sci­ence and the Upcom­ing MOOC by Raj Raghu­nathan

Har­vard Course on Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy: Watch 30 Lec­tures from the University’s Extreme­ly Pop­u­lar Course

Albert Einstein’s Ele­gant The­o­ry of Hap­pi­ness: It Just Sold for $1.6 Mil­lion at Auc­tion, But You Can Use It for Free

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include 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.

The 25 Principles for Adult Behavior: John Perry Barlow (R.I.P.) Creates a List of Wise Rules to Live By

in Life, Music, Technology | February 9th, 2018

Image by the Euro­pean Grad­u­ate School, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

The most suc­cess­ful out­laws live by a code, and in many ways John Per­ry Bar­low, founder of the Elec­tron­ic Free­dom Foun­da­tion, Wyoming ranch­er, and erst­while song­writer for the Grate­ful Dead—who died on Wednes­day at the age of 70—was an arche­typ­al Amer­i­can out­law all of his life. He might have worn a white hat, so to speak, but he had no use for the gov­ern­ment telling him what to do. And his charis­mat­ic defense of unfet­tered inter­net lib­er­ty inspired a new gen­er­a­tion of hack­ers and activists, includ­ing a 12-year-old Aaron Swartz, who saw Bar­low speak at his mid­dle school and left the class­room changed.

Few peo­ple get to leave as last­ing a lega­cy as Bar­low, even had he not pio­neered ear­ly cyber­cul­ture, pen­ning the “Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence of the Inter­net,” a techo-utopi­an doc­u­ment that con­tin­ues to influ­ence pro­po­nents of open access and free infor­ma­tion. He intro­duced the Grate­ful Dead to Dr. Tim­o­thy Leary, under whose guid­ance Bar­low began exper­i­ment­ing with LSD in col­lege. His cre­ative and per­son­al rela­tion­ship with the Dead’s Bob Weir stretch­es back to their high school days in Col­orado, and he became an unof­fi­cial mem­ber of the band and its “junior lyri­cist,” as he put it (after Robert Hunter).

“John had a way of tak­ing life’s most dif­fi­cult things and fram­ing them as chal­lenges, there­fore adven­tures,” wrote Weir in a suc­cinct­ly poignant Twit­ter eulo­gy for his friend. We might think of Bar­low’s code, which he laid out in a list he called the “25 Prin­ci­ples of Adult Behav­ior,” as a series of instruc­tions for turn­ing life’s dif­fi­cul­ties into chal­lenges, an adven­tur­ous refram­ing of what it means to grow up. For Bar­low, that meant defy­ing author­i­ty when it imposed arbi­trary bar­ri­ers and pro­pri­etary rules on the once-wild-open spaces of the inter­net.

But being a grown-up also meant accept­ing full respon­si­bil­i­ty for one’s behav­ior, life’s pur­pose, and the eth­i­cal treat­ment of one­self and oth­ers. See his list below, notable not so much for its orig­i­nal­i­ty but for its plain­spo­ken reminder of the sim­ple, shared wis­dom that gets drowned in the assaultive noise of mod­ern life. Such uncom­pli­cat­ed ide­al­ism was at the cen­ter of Perry’s life and work.

1. Be patient. No mat­ter what.
2. Don’t bad­mouth: Assign respon­si­bil­i­ty, not blame. Say noth­ing of anoth­er you wouldn’t say to him.
3. Nev­er assume the motives of oth­ers are, to them, less noble than yours are to you.
4. Expand your sense of the pos­si­ble.
5. Don’t trou­ble your­self with mat­ters you tru­ly can­not change.
6. Expect no more of any­one than you can deliv­er your­self.
7. Tol­er­ate ambi­gu­i­ty.
8. Laugh at your­self fre­quent­ly.
9. Con­cern your­self with what is right rather than who is right.
10. Nev­er for­get that, no mat­ter how cer­tain, you might be wrong.
11. Give up blood sports.
12. Remem­ber that your life belongs to oth­ers as well. Don’t risk it friv­o­lous­ly.
13. Nev­er lie to any­one for any rea­son. (Lies of omis­sion are some­times exempt.)
14. Learn the needs of those around you and respect them.
15. Avoid the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness. Seek to define your mis­sion and pur­sue that.
16. Reduce your use of the first per­son­al pro­noun.
17. Praise at least as often as you dis­par­age.
18. Admit your errors freely and soon.
19. Become less sus­pi­cious of joy.
20. Under­stand humil­i­ty.
21. Remem­ber that love for­gives every­thing.
22. Fos­ter dig­ni­ty.
23. Live mem­o­rably.
24. Love your­self.
25. Endure.

Bar­low the “cow­boy, poet, roman­tic, fam­i­ly man, philoso­pher, and ulti­mate­ly, the bard of the dig­i­tal revolution”—as Stephen Levy describes him at Wired—“became a great explain­er” of the pos­si­bil­i­ties inher­ent in new media. He watched the inter­net become a far dark­er place than it had ever been in the 90s, a place where gov­ern­ments con­duct cyber­wars and impose cen­sor­ship and bar­ri­ers to access; where bad actors of all kinds manip­u­late, threat­en, and intim­i­date.

But Bar­low stood by his vision, of “a world that all may enter with­out priv­i­lege or prej­u­dice accord­ed by race, eco­nom­ic pow­er, mil­i­tary force, or sta­tion of birth… a world where any­one, any­where may express his or her beliefs, no mat­ter how sin­gu­lar, with­out fear of being coerced into silence or con­for­mi­ty.”

This may sound naïve, yet as Cindy Cohn writes in EFF’s obit­u­ary for its founder, Bar­low “knew that new tech­nol­o­gy could cre­ate and empow­er evil as much as it could cre­ate and empow­er good. He made a con­scious deci­sion to move toward the lat­ter.” His 25-point code urges us to do the same.

via Kot­tke/Hack­er News

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ale­jan­dro Jodorowsky’s 82 Com­mand­ments For Liv­ing

Lou Reed and Lau­rie Anderson’s Three Rules for Liv­ing Well: A Short and Suc­cinct Life Phi­los­o­phy

Mil­ton Glaser’s 10 Rules for Life & Work: The Cel­e­brat­ed Design­er Dis­pens­es Wis­dom Gained Over His Long Life & Career

The Hobo Eth­i­cal Code of 1889: 15 Rules for Liv­ing a Self-Reliant, Hon­est & Com­pas­sion­ate Life

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

Download 150 Free Coloring Books from Great Libraries, Museums & Cultural Institutions: The British Library, Smithsonian, Carnegie Hall & More

in Art, Coloring Books, Libraries, Museums | February 6th, 2018

A news alert for fans of col­or­ing books.

You can now take part in the 2018 edi­tion of #Col­or­Our­Col­lec­tions–a cam­paign where muse­ums, libraries and oth­er cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions make avail­able free col­or­ing books, let­ting you col­or art­work from their col­lec­tions and then share it on Twit­ter and oth­er social media plat­forms. When shar­ing, use the hash­tag #Col­or­Our­Col­lec­tions.

Below you can find a col­lec­tion of 20 free col­or­ing books, which you can down­load, print, and col­or until you can col­or no more. Also find a com­plete list of 150 col­or­ing books over at this site main­tained by The New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine Library.

To see the free col­or­ing books offered up in 2016, click here. And 2017, here.

• Brook­lyn Col­lec­tion at Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library
• Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Library Col­or­ing Book
• Carnegie Hall Archives Col­or­ing Book
• Digi­ta Vat­i­cana
• Escuela Supe­ri­or de Artes de Yucatán Col­or­ing Book
• Euro­peana Col­or­ing Book
• Har­vard Cen­ter for the His­to­ry of Med­i­cine
• Lane Med­ical Library – Med­ical His­to­ry Cen­ter, Stan­ford Med­i­cine Col­or­ing Book
• New­ber­ry Library Col­or­ing Book
• New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine
• North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty Dis­tinc­tive Col­lec­tions Col­or­ing Book
• Queens’ Col­lege Library, Cam­bridge Col­or­ing Book
• The Bodleian Libraries Col­or­ing Book (Oxford)
• The British Library
• The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library
• The New York Botan­i­cal Gar­den
• The Smith­son­ian
• The Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas
• Thomas Edi­son Nation­al His­tor­i­cal Park Col­or­ing Book
• Uni­ver­si­ty of Strath­clyde Archives and Spe­cial Col­lec­tions Col­or­ing Book

The image up top comes from The British Library.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Adult Col­or­ing Book: See the Sub­ver­sive Exec­u­tive Col­or­ing Book From 1961

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

Read Mar­tin Luther King and The Mont­gomery Sto­ry: The Influ­en­tial 1957 Civ­il Rights Com­ic Book

Dr. Seuss Draws Anti-Japan­ese Car­toons Dur­ing WWII, Then Atones with Hor­ton Hears a Who!

How the Fences & Railings Adorning London’s Buildings Doubled (by Design) as Civilian Stretchers in World War II

in Design, History, Life, Travel | January 26th, 2018

Lon­don is a par­tic­u­lar­ly rich des­ti­na­tion for vis­i­tors with an inter­est in World War II:

Win­ston Churchill’s under­ground War Rooms…

The Roy­al Air Force Muse­um…

Blitz-spe­cif­ic walk­ing tours…

…and the scab­by steel fences/railings sur­round­ing a num­ber of South Lon­don hous­ing estates?

These mesh-and-pipe bar­ri­ers look utter­ly unre­mark­able until one hears their ori­gin story—as emer­gency stretch­ers for bear­ing away civil­ian casu­al­ties from the rub­ble of Luft­waffe raids.

The no-frills design was intend­ed less for patient com­fort than easy clean up. Kinks in the long stretch­er poles kept the injured off the ground, and allowed for easy pick up by vol­un­teers from the Civ­il Defence Ser­vice.

Some 600,000 of these stretch­ers were pro­duced in prepa­ra­tion for air­borne attacks. The Blitz killed over 28,000 Lon­don civil­ians. The num­ber of wound­ed was near­ly as high. The man­u­fac­ture of child-sized stretch­ers speaks to the cit­i­zens’ aware­ness that the human price would be ghast­ly indeed.

”I am almost glad we have been bombed,” Queen Eliz­a­beth “the Queen Mum” told a friend after Buck­ing­ham Palace was strafed in 1940. ”Now I feel I can look the East End in the face.”

Born of com­mu­ni­ty spir­it, it’s fit­ting that the stretch­ers con­tin­ue to serve the com­mu­ni­ty, replac­ing more orna­men­tal fences that had been uproot­ed for scrap met­al as part of the war effort.

Few neigh­bor­hood res­i­dents, let alone tourists, seem aware of the fences’ his­to­ry, as evi­denced in the video above.

Per­haps the recent­ly formed Stretch­er Rail­ing Soci­ety—for the pro­mo­tion, pro­tec­tion and preser­va­tion of Lon­don’s Air Raid Pro­tec­tion Stretch­er Railings—will change that, or at the very least, put up some plaques.

See pho­tos of the stretch­ers in action, then fol­low the Stretch­er Rail­ing Society’s map to their present loca­tions.

via Twist­ed Sifter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

31 Rolls of Film Tak­en by a World War II Sol­dier Get Dis­cov­ered & Devel­oped Before Your Eyes

The Stag­ger­ing Human Cost of World War II Visu­al­ized in a Cre­ative, New Ani­mat­ed Doc­u­men­tary

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

Carl Sagan’s “The Pale Blue Dot” Animated

in Astronomy, Life | January 24th, 2018

Back in 1990, Voy­ager 1 snapped a pho­to of plan­et Earth from a record dis­tance – 3.7 bil­lion miles away. And there we saw it, our home, Plan­et Earth, a small blue dot almost swal­lowed by the vast­ness of space. This image inspired the title of Carl Sagan’s 1994 book, The Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, which cap­ti­vat­ed mil­lions of read­ers then, and still many more now.

A quar­ter cen­tu­ry lat­er, The Pale Blue Dot con­tin­ues to give cre­ative inspi­ra­tion to many, includ­ing film­mak­ers who have pro­duced ani­ma­tions that sync with Sagan’s nar­ra­tion of a famous pas­sage from his book. The lat­est ani­ma­tion comes from a class of stu­dents at the Rin­gling Col­lege of Art and Design, locat­ed in Sara­so­ta, Flori­da. Give it a watch. It will help you put every­thing in per­spec­tive.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Won­der, Thrill & Mean­ing of See­ing Earth from Space. Astro­nauts Reflect on The Big Blue Mar­ble

Carl Sagan Presents a Mini-Course on Earth, Mars & What’s Beyond Our Solar Sys­tem: For Kids and Adults (1977)

Carl Sagan Presents His “Baloney Detec­tion Kit”: 8 Tools for Skep­ti­cal Think­ing

Carl Sagan Explains Evo­lu­tion in an Eight-Minute Ani­ma­tion

Carl Sagan Issues a Chill­ing Warn­ing to Amer­i­ca in His Final Inter­view (1996)