Albert Camus’ Lessons Learned from Playing Goalie: “What I Know Most Surely about Morality and Obligations, I Owe to Football”

in Philosophy, Sports | November 7th, 2014

Albert Camus, born 101 years ago today, once said, “After many years in which the world has afford­ed me many expe­ri­ences, what I know most sure­ly in the long run about moral­i­ty and oblig­a­tions, I owe to foot­ball.”

He was refer­ring to his col­lege days when he played goalie for the Rac­ing Uni­ver­si­taire Alge­rios (RUA) junior team. Camus was a decent play­er, though not the great play­er that leg­end lat­er made him out to be. For Jim White, author of A Mat­ter of Life and Death: A His­to­ry of Foot­ball in 100 Quo­ta­tions, soc­cer per­haps taught Camus a few things about self­less­ness, coop­er­a­tion, brav­ery and resilience. That’s a sun­ny way of look­ing at things. But per­haps The Tele­graph gets at the deep­er, dark­er life lessons Camus took away from soc­cer:

[T]here is some­thing appro­pri­ate about a philoso­pher like Camus sta­tion­ing him­self between the sticks [that is, in goal]. It is a lone­ly call­ing, an indi­vid­ual iso­lat­ed with­in a team eth­ic, one who plays to dif­fer­ent con­straints. If his team scores, the keep­er knows it is noth­ing to do with him. If the oppo­si­tion score, how­ev­er, it is all his fault. Stand­ing sen­tinel in goal, Camus had plen­ty of time to reflect on the absur­dist nature of his posi­tion.

And per­haps the absur­dist nature of life itself…

Camus — who appears in the pic­ture above, wear­ing the dark col­or jer­sey in the front row — con­tract­ed tuber­cu­lo­sis when he was only 18 years old. His lungs too dam­aged to con­tin­ue play­ing sports, the young man turned to phi­los­o­phy. When Camus moved from Alge­ria to France, he learned that phi­los­o­phy was a rough and tum­ble game too — some­thing his soc­cer days pre­pared him for. He once quipped, “I learned … that a ball nev­er arrives from the direc­tion you expect­ed it. That helped me in lat­er life, espe­cial­ly in main­land France, where nobody plays straight.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jorge Luis Borges: “Soc­cer is Pop­u­lar Because Stu­pid­i­ty is Pop­u­lar”

Video: The Day Bob Mar­ley Played a Big Soc­cer Match in Brazil, 1980

Albert Camus Writes a Friend­ly Let­ter to Jean-Paul Sartre Before Their Per­son­al and Philo­soph­i­cal Rift

Albert Camus Wins the Nobel Prize & Sends a Let­ter of Grat­i­tude to His Ele­men­tary School Teacher (1957)

Edward Snowden Explains Why He Blew the Whistle on the NSA in Video Interview with Lawrence Lessig

in Current Affairs, Law | October 27th, 2014

Most like­ly every­thing you know about Edward Snow­den’s unmask­ing of gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance pro­grams has come through an indi­rect source — mean­ing, you haven’t had the chance to learn about Snow­den’s moti­va­tions, thought process­es, goals, etc. from Snow­den him­self. Here’s a chance to change that.

In the video inter­view record­ed on Octo­ber 20th at Har­vard Law School, Lawrence Lessig spent an hour talk­ing with Snow­den on a Google Hang­out. Lessig, a law pro­fes­sor with dual inter­ests in keep­ing infor­ma­tion open and lim­it­ing gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion, was a nat­ur­al choice to con­duct the inter­view. How­ev­er, I would­n’t say that he gives Snow­den a soft inter­view. He asks some good ques­tions, which gives Snow­den the chance to spell out his think­ing — to explain the prob­lem he observed while work­ing in the NSA and how he went about address­ing it.

One thing that comes across is that Snow­den has thought things through. Snow­den might not have the cre­den­tials of the Har­vard Law stu­dents in the audi­ence — he got a GED and took a few com­mu­ni­ty col­lege cours­es, after all — but you get the sense that he could teach a pret­ty good Intro­duc­tion to Amer­i­can Gov­ern­ment course, if not a thought-pro­vok­ing sem­i­nar on con­sti­tu­tion­al law. Regard­less of what posi­tion you take on Snow­den, it’s worth watch­ing this inter­view before you declare final judge­ment.

via Boing­Bo­ing

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Lynda Barry, Cartoonist Turned Professor, Gives Her Old Fashioned Take on the Future of Education

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, Creativity, Education | October 21st, 2014

With col­lege tuitions bal­loon­ing to the point of implo­sion, and free edu­ca­tion­al con­tent pro­lif­er­at­ing online, the future of edu­ca­tion is a scorch­ing hot top­ic.

So where are we head­ing?

Cours­era and Khan Acad­e­my?  Video game-based cur­ric­u­la? Expe­ri­ence-dri­ven microlearn­ing?

Or school build­ings that moon­light as can­dy?

So sug­gest­ed one of the younger par­tic­i­pants in a work­shop led by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wisconsin’s Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Cre­ativ­i­ty, car­toon­ist and author Lyn­da Bar­ry (aka Pro­fes­sor Long-Title).

Barry’s mes­sian­ic embrace of the arts has proved pop­u­lar with stu­dents of all ages. When the university’s Coun­ter­fac­tu­al Draw­ing Board Project invit­ed fac­ul­ty, staff, and oth­ers to con­sid­er what the “appear­ance, pur­pose, atmos­phere and com­mu­ni­ty of the cam­pus” would be like in 100 years time, Bar­ry delib­er­ate­ly widened the pool to include chil­dren.

Yes, their inno­va­tions tend­ed toward vol­cano schools that erupt at dis­missal, but pre­sum­ably some of those same chil­dren will be in the van­guard when it’s time for ini­tia­tives that seem unimag­in­able now to be imple­ment­ed. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and all that.

Or as one gim­let-eyed youth put it, in a hun­dred years “the teach­ers will all be dead.”

No won­der few adult par­tic­i­pants can see past a but­ton-dri­ven, her­met­i­cal­ly sealed, dig­i­tal future where­in every stu­dent has a chip implant­ed in his or her head.

Bar­ry, no stranger to depres­sion, man­ages to laugh such gloomy fore­casts off, despite what they por­tend for the tac­tile, hand­made ephemera she reveres. A sense of humor—and humanity—is at the core of every edu­ca­tion­al reform she prac­tices.

Rather than rip each other’s writ­ing to shreds dur­ing in-class cri­tiques, her stu­dents call each oth­er by out­landish pseu­do­nyms and draw med­i­ta­tive spi­rals as each oth­ers’ work is read aloud. Every read­er is assured of a hearty “good!” from the teacher. She wants them to keep going, you see.

Sure­ly there are insti­tu­tions where this approach might not fly, but why poo-poo it? Isn’t fuel­ing the cre­ative spir­it a prac­ti­cal invest­ment in the future?

“It’s there in every­body,” Bar­ry believes. “You have to give peo­ple an expe­ri­ence of it, a repeat­ed expe­ri­ence of it that they gen­er­ate them­selves.”

Maybe some­day, some kid who hasn’t had the love of learn­ing squelched out of him or her will apply all that cre­ativ­i­ty toward cur­ing can­cer. That’d be great, huh? At worst, that care­ful­ly tend­ed spark can give solace in the dark days ahead. As fans of Barry’s work well know, art exists to car­ry us through times of “sor­row and grief and trou­ble.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry Reveals the Best Way to Mem­o­rize Poet­ry

Join Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry for a Uni­ver­si­ty-Lev­el Course on Doo­dling and Neu­ro­science

IAI Academy Now Offers Free Courses: From “The Meaning of Life” to “A Brief Guide to Everything”

in Online Courses | October 17th, 2014

This month, The Insti­tute of Art and Ideas (IAI), an orga­ni­za­tion com­mit­ted to fos­ter­ing “a pro­gres­sive and vibrant intel­lec­tu­al cul­ture in the UK,” launched IAI Acad­e­my — a new online edu­ca­tion­al plat­form that fea­tures cours­es in phi­los­o­phy, sci­ence and pol­i­tics. The ini­tial line­up includes 12 cours­es cov­er­ing every­thing from the­o­ret­i­cal physics, the mean­ing of life, the future of fem­i­nism, the often vexed rela­tion­ship between sci­ence and reli­gion, and more.

IAI Acad­e­my offers its cours­es for free. But, like oth­er course providers, they charge a nom­i­nal fee (right now about $25) if you would like a Ver­i­fied Cer­tifi­cate when you’ve suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed a course. Here’s the ini­tial line­up:

For more ever­green cours­es that you can down­load and enjoy when­ev­er you want, don’t miss our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

For MOOCs being pro­vid­ed in real-time, see our list of MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

Down­load 100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Professor Michael Stipe: R.E.M.‘s Frontman Now Teaching Art Classes at NYU

in Art, Music | October 16th, 2014

Admir­ers of Michael Stipe will know that he before he became a famous rock star with R.E.M., he was an art stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia. He may have skipped the degree, but he nev­er stopped mak­ing things, includ­ing the pho­tog­ra­phy and design of the band’s album cov­ers, the light­ing and stage design of their live shows, and sev­er­al of their videos. Now a rock star emer­i­tus, Stipe makes things full time in an offi­cial capac­i­ty as the vis­it­ing artist and schol­ar in res­i­dence at the NYU Stein­hardt Depart­ment of Art. He has recent­ly curat­ed an “evolv­ing exhi­bi­tion project” called NEW SIGHTS, NEW NOISE, writes Eric Alper, “pro­duced col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with Jonathan Berg­er” and includ­ing “con­tri­bu­tions from spe­cial guests Dou­glas Cou­p­land, Jef­fer­son Hack, Peach­es,” and oth­ers.

Appear­ing at NYU’s 80 WSE Gallery, the exhi­bi­tion also includes work from Stipe’s stu­dents. That’s right, Michael Stipe is a “shiny hap­py” col­lege pro­fes­sor, as this pun-hap­py Spin arti­cle tells us, and the show comes from his class assign­ments: “Each week, Stipe and a dif­fer­ent spe­cial guest will give the class’ 18 stu­dents a prompt, and they’ll respond with ‘100 images and gifs, both found and made, all of which will be uploaded to a pri­vate class web­site.’” It’s all cen­tered around themes Stipe has pur­sued for some time, as you can see from his Tum­blr. He describes the project on R.E.M.’s web­site as refer­ring to “the glut and onslaught of infor­ma­tion made avail­able by the inter­net, often with­out con­text or author­ship; the dis­pro­por­tion­ate and impul­sive reac­tions that it pro­vokes, and the reck­less cyn­i­cism of a 24 hour news cycle.” Read much more about the project at Alper’s blog, and see much more of Stipe’s work—with sculp­ture, paint­ing, and film—at the Creator’s Project video above from 2011.

pho­to by David Shankbone.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why R.E.M.’s 1991 Out of Time May Be the “Most Polit­i­cal­ly Impor­tant Album” Ever

Two Very Ear­ly Con­cert Films of R.E.M., Live in ‘81 and ‘82

R.E.M Plays “Radio Free Europe” on Their Nation­al Tele­vi­sion Debut on The David Let­ter­man Show (1983)

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

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

in History, Online Courses | October 14th, 2014

Last month, The New York Times Mag­a­zine pub­lished a long piece called “So Bill Gates Has This Idea for a His­to­ry Class …”, which begins with these very words:

In 2008, short­ly after Bill Gates stepped down from his exec­u­tive role at Microsoft, he often awoke in his 66,000-square-foot home on the east­ern bank of Lake Wash­ing­ton and walked down­stairs to his pri­vate gym in a bag­gy T‑shirt, shorts, sneak­ers and black socks yanked up to the mid­calf. Then, dur­ing an hour on the tread­mill, Gates, a self-described nerd, would pass the time by watch­ing DVDs from the Teach­ing Company’s “Great Cours­es” series. On some morn­ings, he would learn about geol­o­gy or mete­o­rol­o­gy; on oth­ers, it would be oceanog­ra­phy or U.S. his­to­ry.

As Gates was work­ing his way through the series, he stum­bled upon a set of DVDs titled “Big His­to­ry” — an unusu­al col­lege course taught by a jovial, ges­tic­u­lat­ing pro­fes­sor from Aus­tralia named David Chris­t­ian. Unlike the pre­vi­ous DVDs, “Big His­to­ry” did not con­fine itself to any par­tic­u­lar top­ic, or even to a sin­gle aca­d­e­m­ic dis­ci­pline. Instead, it put for­ward a syn­the­sis of his­to­ry, biol­o­gy, chem­istry, astron­o­my and oth­er dis­parate fields, which Chris­t­ian wove togeth­er into noth­ing less than a uni­fy­ing nar­ra­tive of life on earth.

Cap­ti­vat­ed by Dr. Chris­tian’s abil­i­ty to con­nect big and com­plex ideas, Gates thought to him­self, “God, every­body should watch this thing!” And, soon enough, the phil­an­thropist con­tact­ed the pro­fes­sor and sug­gest­ed mak­ing “Big His­to­ry” avail­able as a course in high schools across the US (with Bill foot­ing the bill.)

In 2011 the Big His­to­ry Project, a course with a sig­nif­i­cant dig­i­tal com­po­nent, was pilot­ed in five high schools. Now, a few years lat­er, it’s being made freely avail­able, says the Times, “to more than 15,000 stu­dents in some 1,200 schools, from the Brook­lyn School for Col­lab­o­ra­tive Stud­ies in New York to Green­hills School in Ann Arbor, Mich., to Gates’s alma mater, Lake­side Upper School in Seat­tle. And if all goes well, the Big His­to­ry Project will be intro­duced in hun­dreds of more class­rooms by next year and hun­dreds, if not thou­sands, more the year after that, scal­ing along toward the vision Gates first expe­ri­enced on that tread­mill.”

Why do I tell you this? Part­ly because the Big His­to­ry Project is open to you as well. On the Big His­to­ry web­site, you will find a pub­lic course, offer­ing a four-to-six hour tour of Big His­to­ry. It’s an abbre­vi­at­ed intro­duc­tion to 13.8 bil­lion years of his­to­ry. I could think of less effi­cient ways to spend an after­noon.

After you’re done, if you want to fill in a few gaps, don’t miss our col­lec­tion: 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties. It cov­ers his­to­ry, biol­o­gy, physics and all of the rest.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of the World in 46 Lec­tures From Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty

Free Down­load of The His­to­ry Man­i­festo: His­to­ri­ans New Call for Big-Pic­ture Think­ing

Down­load 78 Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es: From Ancient Greece to The Mod­ern World

The 430 Books in Marilyn Monroe’s Library: How Many Have You Read?

in Education, Film, Literature, Poetry | October 6th, 2014

If you’re a read­er and user of social media, you’ve like­ly test­ed your life­time read­ing list against the BBC Book Quiz.

Or per­haps you’ve allowed your worth as a read­er to be deter­mined by the num­ber of Pulitzer Prize win­ners you’ve made it through.

The Nation­al Endow­ment for the Arts’ Big Read, any­one?

The 142 Books that Every Stu­dent of Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture Should Read?

The 50 Best Dystopi­an Nov­els?

Being young is no excuse! Not when the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion pub­lish­es an annu­al list of Out­stand­ing Books for the Col­lege Bound and Life­long Learn­ers.

So… how’d you do? Or should I say how’d you do in com­par­i­son to Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe? The online Mon­roe fan club Ever­last­ing Star used pho­tographs, inter­views, and a Christie’s auc­tion cat­a­logue to come up with a list of more than 400 books in her pos­ses­sion.

Did she read them all? I don’t know. Have you read every sin­gle title on your shelves? (There’s a Japan­ese word for those books. It’s Tsun­doku.)

Fem­i­nist biog­ra­ph­er Oline Eaton has a great rant on her Find­ing Jack­ie blog about the phrase “Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe read­ing,” and the 5,610,000 search engine results it yields when typed into Google:

There is, with­in Monroe’s image, a deeply root­ed assump­tion that she was an idiot, a vul­ner­a­ble and kind and lov­ing and ter­ri­bly sweet idiot, but an idiot nonethe­less. That is the assump­tion in which ‘Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe read­ing’ is entan­gled.

The pow­er of the phrase Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe read­ing’ lies in its appli­ca­tion to Mon­roe and in our assump­tion that she wouldn’t know how.

Would that every­one search­ing that phrase did so in the belief that her pas­sion for the print­ed word rivaled their own. Imag­ine legions of geeks lov­ing her for her brain, bypass­ing Sam Shaw’s icon­ic sub­way grate pho­to in favor of home print­ed pin ups depict­ing her with book in hand.

Com­mem­o­ra­tive postage stamps are nice, but per­haps a more fit­ting trib­ute would be an ALA poster. Like Eaton, when I look at that image of Mar­i­lyn hunched over James Joyce’s Ulysses (or kick­ing back read­ing Walt Whit­man’s Leaves of Grass), I don’t see some­one try­ing to pass her­self off as some­thing she’s not. I see a high school dropout caught in the act of edu­cat­ing her­self. If I saw it taped to a library shelf embla­zoned with the word “READ,” I might just sum­mon the resolve to take a stab at Ulysses myself. (I know how it ends, but that’s about it.)

See below, dear read­ers. Apolo­gies that we’re not set up to keep track of your score for you, but please let us know in the com­ments sec­tion if you’d hearti­ly sec­ond any of Mar­i­lyn’s titles, par­tic­u­lar­ly those that are less­er known or have fad­ed from the pub­lic view.

Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Read­ing Chal­lenge

(Thanks to Book Tryst for com­pil­ing Ever­last­ing Star’s find­ings)

1) Let’s Make Love by Matthew Andrews (nov­el­iza­tion of the movie)

2) How To Trav­el Incog­ni­to by Lud­wig Bemel­mans

3) To The One I Love Best by Lud­wig Bemel­mans

4) Thurber Coun­try by James Thurber

5) The Fall by Albert Camus

6) Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe by George Car­pozi

7) Camille by Alexan­der Dumas

8) Invis­i­ble Man by Ralph Elli­son

9) The Boston Cook­ing-School Cook Book by Fan­nie Mer­ritt-Farmer

10) The Great Gats­by by F Scott Fitzger­ald

11) From Rus­sia With Love by Ian Flem­ing

12) The Art Of Lov­ing by Erich Fromm

13) The Prophet by Kahlil Gilbran

14) Ulysses by James Joyce

15) Stoned Like A Stat­ue: A Com­plete Sur­vey Of Drink­ing Clich­es, Prim­i­tive, Clas­si­cal & Mod­ern by Howard Kan­del & Don Safran, with an intro by Dean Mar­tin (a man who knew how to drink!)

16) The Last Temp­ta­tion Of Christ by Nikos Kazantza­kis

17) On The Road by Jack Ker­ouac

18) Select­ed Poems by DH Lawrence

19 and 20) Sons And Lovers by DH Lawrence (2 edi­tions)

21) The Portable DH Lawrence (more…)

Peter Thiel’s Stanford Course on Startups: Read the Lecture Notes Free Online

in Business, Entrepreneurship, Stanford | October 2nd, 2014

Peter Thiel has many claims to fame in Sil­i­con Val­ley. He co-found­ed Pay­Pal in 1998, before sell­ing it to eBay for $1.5 bil­lion in 2002. He lat­er launched var­i­ous hedge funds, and made ear­ly invest­ments in Face­book. He’s an unabashed lib­er­tar­i­an, a pro­po­nent of Seast­eading and Sin­gu­lar­i­ty, a crit­ic of the Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem, and the cre­ator of the annu­al Thiel Fel­low­ship, which pays promis­ing col­lege-age stu­dents to “stop out” of school for two years and launch busi­ness ven­tures instead.

Final­ly, Thiel is also now the best­selling author of Zero to One: Notes on Star­tups, or How to Build the Future. Pub­lished in mid-Sep­tem­ber, the book received a pret­ty rave review in The Atlantic, where Derek John­son calls it “a lucid trea­tise on cap­i­tal­ism and entre­pre­neur­ship” and per­haps “the best busi­ness book I’ve read.”

The book itself is actu­al­ly a dis­til­la­tion of thoughts Thiel pre­sent­ed in a course he taught at Stan­ford in 2012. And it just so hap­pens that the notes from that course — CS138 Star­tups — are freely avail­able online. They come cour­tesy of Blake Mas­ters, a stu­dent in Thiel’s class, who lat­er helped the entre­pre­neur write Zero to One.

Below, you can find the lec­ture notes for 19 class­es, which, when orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished on Mas­ters’ site, became pret­ty pop­u­lar in the tech com­mu­ni­ty.  Links to these lec­tures will be per­ma­nent­ly housed in our col­lec­tions of Free Online Busi­ness Cours­es and Free Online Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es. Oth­er Stan­ford cours­es on entre­pre­neur­ship can be found here: Start Your Start­up with Free Stan­ford Cours­es and Lec­tures.

Lec­tures Notes: CS138 Star­tups

Class 1: The Chal­lenge of the Future

Class 2: Par­ty Like it’s 1999?

Class 3: Val­ue Sys­tems

Class 4: The Last Mover Advan­tage

Class 5: The Mechan­ics of Mafia

Class 6: Thiel’s Law

Class 7: Fol­low The Mon­ey

Class 8: The Pitch

Class 9: If You Build It, Will They Come?

Class 10: After Web 2.0

Class 11: Secrets

Class 12: War and Peace

Class 13: You Are Not A Lot­tery Tick­et

Class 14: See­ing Green

Class 15: Back to the Future

Class 16: Decod­ing Our­selves

Class 17: Deep Thought

Class 18: Founder as Vic­tim, Founder as God

Class 19: Stag­na­tion or Sin­gu­lar­i­ty?

For a huge col­lec­tion of free cours­es, please see our large and ever-expand­ing col­lec­tion: 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Read 14 Great Banned & Censored Novels Free Online: For Banned Books Week 2014

in Books, Politics | September 23rd, 2014

We well know of the most famous cas­es of banned books: James Joyce’s Ulysses, Hen­ry Miller’s Trop­ic of Can­cer, Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. In fact, a full 46 of Mod­ern Library’s “100 Best Nov­els” have been sup­pressed or chal­lenged in some way. The Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion main­tains a page that details the charges against each one. Harp­er Lee’s To Kill a Mock­ing­bird saw a chal­lenge in the Ver­non Verona Sher­ill, New York school dis­trict in 1980 as a “filthy, trashy nov­el” and in 1996, Lin­dale, Texas banned it from the advanced place­ment Eng­lish read­ing list because it “con­flict­ed with the val­ues of the com­mu­ni­ty.” Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath has a lengthy rap sheet, includ­ing total ban­ning in Ire­land (1953), Mor­ris, Man­i­to­ba (1982), and all high school class­es in Kanawha, Iowa (1980). The list of cen­sored undis­put­ed classics—every one of which sure­ly has its own piece of giant store art in Barnes & Nobles nationwide—goes on.

In many ways this is typ­i­cal. “The banned books lists you’ll find in many libraries and book­stores,” writes John Mark Ockerbloom at Everybody’s Libraries, “doesn’t [sic] focus much on the polit­i­cal samiz­dat, secu­ri­ty exposés, or por­tray­als of Mohammed that are the objects of forcible sup­pres­sion today. Instead, they’re often full of clas­sics and pop­u­lar titles sold wide­ly in book­stores and online—or dom­i­nat­ed by books writ­ten for young read­ers, or assigned for school read­ing.” Are these lists—and the banned books cel­e­bra­tions that occa­sion them—just “shame­less pro­pa­gan­da” as con­ser­v­a­tive Thomas Sow­ell alleges? “Is it wrong to call these books banned?” asks Ockerbloom in his essay “Why Banned Books Week Mat­ters.” Of course he answers in the neg­a­tive; “not if you take read­ers seri­ous­ly. An unread book, after all, has as lit­tle impact as an unpub­lished book.” Books that don’t pass muster with admin­is­tra­tors, school boards, library asso­ci­a­tions, and leg­is­la­tors of all kinds, argues Ockerbloom, can be as inac­ces­si­ble to young read­ers as those that get destroyed or ful­ly sup­pressed in parts of the world with­out legal pro­vi­sions for free speech.

This sit­u­a­tion is in great part reme­di­at­ed by the free avail­abil­i­ty of texts on the inter­net, whether those cur­rent­ly under a ban or those that—even if they line the shelves in brick and mor­tar stores and Ama­zon warehouses—still meet with fre­quent chal­lenges from com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions eager to con­trol what their cit­i­zens read. Today, in hon­or of this year’s Banned Books Week, we bring you free online texts of 14 banned books that appear on the Mod­ern Library’s top 100 nov­els list. Next to each title, see some of the rea­sons these books were chal­lenged, banned, or, in many cas­es, burned.

• The Great Gats­by, by F. Scott Fitzger­ald (Read Online)

This sta­ple of high school Eng­lish class­es every­where seems to most­ly get a pass. It did, how­ev­er, see a 1987 chal­lenge at the Bap­tist Col­lege in Charleston, SC for “lan­guage and sex­u­al ref­er­ences.”

• Ulysses, by James Joyce (Read Online)

Seized and burned by postal offi­cials in New York when it arrived state­side in 1922, Joyce’s mas­ter­work gen­er­al­ly goes unread these days because of its leg­endary dif­fi­cul­ty, but for ten years, until Judge John Woolsey’s deci­sion in its favor in 1932, the nov­el was only avail­able in the U.S. as a boot­leg. Ulysses was also burned—and banned—in Ire­land, Cana­da, and Eng­land.

• 1984, by George Orwell (Read Online)

Orwell’s total­i­tar­i­an night­mare often seems like one of the very few things lib­er­als and con­ser­v­a­tives can agree on—no one wants to live in the future he imag­ines. Nonethe­less, the nov­el was chal­lenged in Jack­son Coun­ty, Flori­da in 1981 for its sup­pos­ed­ly “pro-com­mu­nist” mes­sage, in addi­tion to its “explic­it sex­u­al mat­ter.”

• Ani­mal Farm, by George Orwell (Read Online)

Again the tar­get of right-wing ire, Orwell’s work was chal­lenged in Wis­con­sin in 1963 by the John Birch Soci­ety, who object­ed to the words “mass­es will revolt.” A 1968 New Sur­vey found that the nov­el reg­u­lar­ly appeared on school lists of “prob­lem books.” The rea­son most often cit­ed: “Orwell was a com­mu­nist.”

• Slaugh­ter­house Five, by Kurt Von­negut (Audio)

Vonnegut’s clas­sic has been chal­lenged by par­ents and school boards since 1973, when it was burned in Drake, North Dako­ta. Most recent­ly, it’s been removed from a sopho­more read­ing list at the Coven­try, RI high school in 2000; chal­lenged by an orga­ni­za­tion called LOVE (Liv­ing­stone Orga­ni­za­tion for Val­ues in Edu­ca­tion) in How­ell, MI in 2007; and chal­lenged, but retained, along with eight oth­er books, in Arling­ton Heights, IL in 2006. In that case, a school board mem­ber, “elect­ed amid promis­es to bring her Chris­t­ian beliefs into all board deci­sion-mak­ing, raised the con­tro­ver­sy based on excerpts from the books she’d found on the inter­net.” Hear Von­negut him­self read the nov­el here.

• The Call of the Wild, by Jack Lon­don (Read Online)

London’s most pop­u­lar nov­el hasn’t seen any offi­cial sup­pres­sion in the U.S., but it was banned in Italy and Yugoslavia in 1929. The book was burned in Nazi bon­fires in 1933; some­thing of a his­tor­i­cal irony giv­en London’s own racist pol­i­tics.

• The Jun­gle, by Upton Sin­clair (Read Online)

The Nazis also burned Sinclair’s nov­el because of the author’s social­ist views. In 1959, East Ger­many banned the book as “inim­i­cal to com­mu­nism.”

• Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by D.H. Lawrence (Read Online)

Lawrence court­ed con­tro­ver­sy every­where. Chat­ter­ly was banned by U.S. cus­toms in 1929 and has since been banned in Ire­land (1932), Poland (1932), Aus­tralia (1959), Japan (1959), India (1959), Cana­da (1960) and, most recent­ly, Chi­na in 1987 because it “will cor­rupt the minds of young peo­ple and is also against the Chi­nese tra­di­tion.”

• In Cold Blood, by Tru­man Capote (Read First Sec­tion Online)

This true crime clas­sic was banned, then rein­stat­ed, at Savan­nah, Georgia’s Wind­sor For­est High School in 2000 after a par­ent “com­plained about sex, vio­lence, and pro­fan­i­ty.”

• Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence (Read Online)

Lawrence endured a great deal of per­se­cu­tion in his life­time for his work, which was wide­ly con­sid­ered porno­graph­ic. Thir­ty years after his death, in 1961, a group in Okla­homa City call­ing itself Moth­ers Unite for Decen­cy “hired a trail­er, dubbed it ‘smut­mo­bile,’ and dis­played books deemed objec­tion­able,” includ­ing Sons and Lovers.

• Naked Lunch, by William S. Bur­roughs (Audio)

If any­one belongs on a list of obscene authors, it’s Bur­roughs, which is only one rea­son of the many rea­sons he deserves to be read. In 1965, the Boston Supe­ri­or Court banned Bur­roughs’ nov­el. The State Supreme Court reversed that deci­sion the fol­low­ing year. Lis­ten to Bur­roughs read the nov­el here.

• Women in Love, by D.H. Lawrence (Read Online)

Poor Lawrence could not catch a break. In one of many such acts against his work, the sen­si­tive writer’s fifth nov­el was declared obscene in 1922 by the rather unimag­i­na­tive­ly named New York Soci­ety for the Sup­pres­sion of Vice.

• An Amer­i­can Tragedy, by Theodore Dreis­er (Read Online)

Amer­i­can literature’s fore­most mas­ter of melo­dra­ma, Dreiser’s nov­el was banned in Boston in 1927 and burned by the Nazi bon­fires because it “deals with low love affairs.”

You can learn much more about the many books that have been banned, sup­pressed, or cen­sored at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pennsylvania’s “Banned Books Online” page, and learn more about the many events and resources avail­able for Banned Books Week at the Amer­i­can Library Association’s web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

74 Free Banned Books (for Banned Books Week)

Allen Gins­berg Reads His Famous­ly Cen­sored Beat Poem, Howl (1959)

North Car­oli­na Coun­ty Cel­e­brates Banned Book Week By Ban­ning Ralph Ellison’s Invis­i­ble Man … Then Revers­ing It

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

Let’s Learn Japanese: Two Classic Video Series to Get You Started in the Language

in Language Lessons | September 22nd, 2014

Say the name “Yan-san” to any­one who’s stud­ied Japan­ese in the last thir­ty years, and you’ll prob­a­bly get a reac­tion of delight­ed recog­ni­tion. It means that, inside or out­side the class­room, they stud­ied with Let’s Learn Japan­ese, a series of edu­ca­tion­al videos pro­duced by the Japan Foun­da­tion. The first “sea­son,” if you like, came out in 1984, the time of an enor­mous Asian eco­nom­ic bub­ble that made the world’s future look Japan­ese, send­ing the lan­guage straight to the top of every inter­na­tion­al busi­ness-mind­ed stu­den­t’s to-do-list. (Sound famil­iar, cur­rent strug­glers with Man­darin?) Its hero, a young man of delib­er­ate­ly ambigu­ous nation­al­i­ty named Yan — the Japan­ese all address him with the every­day hon­orif­ic -san — turns up in Japan for a few years of life in Tokyo and works at an archi­tec­ture firm, helped along by his host fam­i­ly the Katos, his eager­ly team-play­ing co-work­ers (one of whom intro­duces him­self, in Eng­lish, with the phase, “We are friends — okay?”), and a vari­ety of help­ful cit­i­zens and pro­fes­sion­als all across the Land of the Ris­ing Sun.

This may sound like dull stuff — the stuff of run-of-the-mill lan­guage-learn­ing videos — but Let’s Learn Japan­ese raised the bar for this sort of thing, in terms of not just pro­duc­tion val­ue and teach­ing effec­tive­ness but sheer rewatch­a­bil­i­ty. In addi­tion to Yan-san’s life among the Japan­ese peo­ple, Let’s Learn Japan­ese also offers instruc­tion­al seg­ments led by Mary Althaus, still a pro­fes­sor at Toky­o’s Tsu­da Col­lege, and imag­i­na­tive illus­tra­tive skits per­formed by the inde­fati­ga­ble trio of Mine, Kai­hō, and Sug­i­hara. In the more advanced Sea­son 2, released over a decade lat­er in 1995, they’ve become the eeri­ly sim­i­lar Kodama, Andō, and Koy­ana­gi, and Yan-san has become a grad­u­ate stu­dent with girl­friend trou­bles. Hav­ing watched all 52 episodes sev­er­al times through, I can vouch for both its enter­tain­ment val­ue and its effec­tive­ness. (It also spurred me to start vol­un­teer­ing at the Japan Foun­da­tion, Los Ange­les.) So can the for­eign­ers who give a hero’s wel­come to star Nick Muhrin (who, last I heard, still lives in Japan) when they run into him. I know I’ve learned enough to buy Yan-san a drink.

You can find more use­ful Japan­ese-learn­ing mate­ri­als to sup­ple­ment all this in our archive of free lan­guage lessons. It includes resources rang­ing from the For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute’s dig­i­tized text­books and tapes to pod­casts like the life abroad-ori­ent­ed Japanesepod101 [iTunes Free — Feed] and the ani­me-geared Japan­cast [iTunes Free — Feed]. 皆さんがんばって！

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn 48 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More

Learn Japan­ese Free

“Tsun­doku,” the Japan­ese Word for the New Books That Pile Up on Our Shelves, Should Enter the Eng­lish Lan­guage

Woody Allen Lives the “Deli­cious Life” in Ear­ly-80s Japan­ese Com­mer­cials

Wim Wen­ders Vis­its, Mar­vels at a Japan­ese Fake Food Work­shop

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.