Rapping About Science: Watch High School Senior Jabari Johnson Talk Physics with Poetic Lyrics

in Music, Science | July 6th, 2013

Christo­pher Emdin, an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor at Teach­ers Col­lege, Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, loves to rap. And he loves using rap to teach kids all about sci­ence. That’s why he helped put togeth­er B.A.T.T.L.E.S., a New York City-wide com­pe­ti­tion that chal­lenges stu­dents to put sci­en­tif­ic con­cepts into lyri­cal raps. The kids were up to the task and rapped about every­thing from “rock sci­ence, nat­ur­al selec­tion and genet­ics to how mate­ri­als freeze or melt.” And the win­ner — Jabari John­son, a senior from Urban Assem­bly School for the Per­form­ing Arts in Harlem — was named on June 21, after the final com­pe­ti­tion took place on the Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus. John­son will now have a chance to make a pro­fes­sion­al record­ing of his song about Kinet­ic Ener­gy and post it on the Rap Genius web­site.

via Colum­bia

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Great­ness of Charles Dar­win Explained with Rap Music

The Large Hadron Col­lid­er Rap, Yo

The Hayek vs. Keynes Rap

What Do Most Philosophers Believe? A Wide-Ranging Survey Project Gives Us Some Idea

in Philosophy | June 26th, 2013

What do most philoso­phers believe? The ques­tion may only inter­est oth­er philosophers—and when it comes to such eso­teric con­cerns as the “ana­lyt­ic syn­thet­ic dis­tinc­tion,” this is prob­a­bly true. But when it comes to the big issues that have giv­en every thought­ful per­son at least one sleep­less night, or the ques­tions reg­u­lar­ly explored by spec­u­la­tive fic­tions like Star Trek or zom­bie movies, the rest of us might sit up and take notice.

Two con­tem­po­rary philoso­phers, David Chalmers and David Bour­get, decid­ed to find out where their col­leagues stood on 30 dif­fer­ent philo­soph­i­cal issues by con­struct­ing a rig­or­ous sur­vey that end­ed up account­ing for the views of over 3,000 pro­fes­sors, grad­u­ate stu­dents, and inde­pen­dent thinkers. Most of the respon­dents were affil­i­at­ed with pres­ti­gious phi­los­o­phy depart­ments in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world, though sev­er­al con­ti­nen­tal Euro­pean depart­ments are also rep­re­sent­ed.

Some semi-famous names come up in a perusal of the list of pub­lic respon­dents, like A.C. Grayling and Mas­si­mo Pigli­uc­ci. For the most part, how­ev­er, the sur­vey group rep­re­sents the rank-and-file, toil­ing away as teach­ers, thinkers, writ­ers, and researchers at col­leges across the West­ern world. You sur­vey geeks out there can dig deeply into Chalmers and Bourget’s detailed account­ing of their method­ol­o­gy here. But for a quick and dirty sum­ma­ry, let’s take a cou­ple of gen­er­al cat­e­gories and look at the results.

Meta­physics:

The issues that fall under this head­ing broad­ly involve ques­tions about what exists, and why and how it does. Here’s a break­down of some of the big­gies:

• God: athe­ism 72.8%; the­ism 14.6%; oth­er 12.6%

Grant­ed, this is an over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion. Pop­u­lar notions of these cat­e­gories don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly cor­re­spond to more sub­tle dis­tinc­tions among philoso­phers, who may be strong or weak athe­ists (or the­ists), or hold some ver­sion of deism, agnos­ti­cism, or none of the above.

•  Free will: com­pat­i­bil­ism 59.1%; lib­er­tar­i­an­ism 13.7%; no free will 12.2%; oth­er 14.9%

Com­pat­i­bil­ism, the major­i­ty view here, is the the­o­ry that we can choose our actions to some degree, and to some degree they are deter­mined by pri­or events. Lib­er­tar­i­an­ism (relat­ed to, but not syn­ony­mous with, the polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy) claims that all of our actions are freely cho­sen.

• Metaphi­los­o­phy: nat­u­ral­ism 49.8%; non-nat­u­ral­ism 25.9%; oth­er 24.3%

Nat­u­ral­ism, accord­ing to the Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary, is “the idea or belief that only nat­ur­al (as opposed to super­nat­ur­al or spir­i­tu­al) laws and forces oper­ate in the world,” or “the belief that noth­ing exists beyond the nat­ur­al world.” Note that meta­phys­i­cal nat­u­ral­ism needs to be dis­tin­guished from method­olog­i­cal nat­u­ral­ism, which near­ly all schol­ars and sci­en­tists embrace.

• Abstract objects: Pla­ton­ism 39.3%; nom­i­nal­ism 37.7%; oth­er 23.0%

This dis­tinc­tion gets at whether abstrac­tions like geom­e­try or the laws of log­ic exist in some immutable form “out there” in the uni­verse (as Pla­ton­ic ideas) or whether they are “nom­i­nal,” no more than con­ve­nient for­mu­las we cre­ate and apply to our obser­va­tions. It’s a debate at least as old as the ancient Greeks.

Per­son­al Iden­ti­ty:

In this gen­er­al cat­e­go­ry, we deal with ques­tions about what it means to be a per­son and how we can exist as seem­ing­ly coher­ent indi­vid­u­als over time in a world in con­stant flux. Let’s take two fun exam­ples that deal with these quan­daries, shall we?

• Tele­trans­porter: sur­vival 36.2%; death 31.1%; oth­er 32.7%

Here, we’re deal­ing with a thought exper­i­ment pro­posed by Derek Parfit (one of the par­tic­i­pants in the sur­vey) that pret­ty much takes the Star Trek trans­porter tech­nol­o­gy (or the hor­ror ver­sion in The Fly) and asks whether the trans­port­ed individual—completely dis­in­te­grat­ed and recon­sti­tut­ed some­where else—is the same per­son as the orig­i­nal. In oth­er words, can a “per­son” sur­vive this process or does the indi­vid­ual die and a new one take its place? The ques­tion hinges on ideas about a “soul” or “spir­it” that exists apart from the mate­r­i­al body and asks whether or not we are noth­ing more than very spe­cif­ic arrange­ments of mat­ter and ener­gy.

• Zom­bies: con­ceiv­able but not meta­phys­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble 35.6%; meta­phys­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble 23.3%; incon­ceiv­able 16.0%; oth­er 25.1%

Zom­bies are every­where. Try to escape them! You can’t. Their preva­lence in pop­u­lar cul­ture is mir­rored in the phi­los­o­phy world, where zom­bies have long served as metaphors for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a pure (and rav­en­ous) bod­i­ly exis­tence, devoid of con­scious self-aware­ness. The prospect may be as fright­en­ing as the zom­bies of the Walk­ing Dead, but is it a real pos­si­bil­i­ty? A sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of philoso­phers seem to think so.

As I said, these are just a few of the issues Chalmers and Bourget’s sur­vey queries. Physi­cist Sean Car­roll has a quick sum­ma­ry of all of the results on his blog, and Chalmers and Bour­get have made all of their data and analy­sis very trans­par­ent and freely avail­able at their Philpa­pers site. David Chalmers, who spe­cial­izes in phi­los­o­phy of mind and looks like one of Spinal Tap’s doomed drum­mers, spills the beans on his ideas of con­scious­ness in the video at the top.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Do Physi­cists Believe in God?

50 Famous Aca­d­e­mics & Sci­en­tists Talk About God

Daniel Den­nett and Cor­nel West Decode the Phi­los­o­phy of The Matrix in 2004 Film

Down­load 90 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

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

Japanese Animation Director Hayao Miyazaki Shows Us How to Make Instant Ramen

in Animation, Film, Food & Drink | June 16th, 2013

Writer-Direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki is renowned for the gor­geous­ness of his fea­ture length ani­ma­tions, and sto­ry­lines that com­bine indige­nous Japan­ese ele­ments with super­nat­ur­al whim­sy. In a world of Dis­ney princess­es, let us give thanks for fam­i­ly enter­tain­ment in which an eccen­tric cas­tle roams the coun­try­side on chick­en legs, a stink spir­it wreaks hav­oc in a bath­house, and a fur-lined cat bus trans­ports pas­sen­gers at top speed.

The first gen­er­a­tion of Amer­i­can chil­dren to have grown up on Miyaz­ki films — My Neigh­bor Totoro was released in the States in 1993 — has entered their col­lege years. A por­tion of them will have eager­ly sought out his lat­est offer­ing, a semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal tale direct­ed by his son, Goro. Some will have felt them­selves too mature for such fare. Being col­lege stu­dents, both groups are like­ly to be hork­ing down a fair amount of cheap pack­aged ramen noo­dles.

As evi­denced above, Miyaza­ki has some pret­ty spe­cif­ic ideas on what to do with those. Prepar­ing a late night work­place din­ner for his Spir­it­ed Away team, the great direc­tor rivals Good Fel­las’ sliced gar­lic maven Paul Sorvi­no for culi­nary sang-froid. Stuff­ing ten blocks of the stuff into a sin­gle pot might get an ordi­nary mor­tal vot­ed off of Top Chef, but aside from that Miyaza­k­i’s staff meal is an excel­lent, instant tuto­r­i­al for those inter­est­ed in soup­ing up low bud­get, col­le­giate cui­sine.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cook­pad, the Largest Recipe Site in Japan, Launch­es New Site in Eng­lish

Kafka’s Night­mare Tale, ‘A Coun­try Doc­tor,’ Told in Award-Win­ning Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion

Japan­ese Car­toons from the 1920s and 30s Reveal the Styl­is­tic Roots of Ani­me

The New York Times Makes 17,000 Tasty Recipes Avail­able Online: Japan­ese, Ital­ian, Thai & Much More

Watch Sher­lock Hound: Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­mat­ed, Steam­punk Take on Sher­lock Holmes

French Stu­dent Sets Inter­net on Fire with Ani­ma­tion Inspired by Moe­bius, Syd Mead & Hayao Miyaza­ki

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s favorite moment is when Totoro and the chil­dren make the cam­phor tree grow. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Real Women Talk About Their Careers in Science

in Biology, Education, Science | June 14th, 2013

A year ago the Euro­pean Union launched a cam­paign to attract more young women into the sci­en­tif­ic pro­fes­sions. In Europe, women lag behind men in sci­ence and engi­neer­ing, mak­ing up only a third of sci­ence researchers. But the video the EU made was laugh­able.

You may recall. It was called, Sci­ence: It’s a Girl Thing! and fea­tured three young fash­ion­istas parad­ing around in high heels while a male sci­en­tist peers quizzi­cal­ly at them over his micro­scope.

Along comes sci­ence jour­nal­ist Ker­stin Hop­pen­haus to set the record straight. Hoppenhaus’s new series for the Ger­man sci­ence site SciLogs is called Sig­nif­i­cant Details: Con­ver­sa­tions with Women in Sci­ence. The inter­views are fresh, infor­ma­tive, and acces­si­ble.

It’s inspir­ing to see such a range of women explain their research and walk us through their process for doing it.

A recent inter­view fea­tured Dr. Kris­ten Pan­fil­io (above), an Amer­i­can biol­o­gist on fac­ul­ty at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cologne. Panfilio’s work focus­es on insect extraem­bry­on­ic devel­op­ment, which means she stud­ies how insect tis­sues devel­op into the bug’s ulti­mate shape by com­par­ing the process in two insects: the milk­weed bug and the red flour bee­tle.

Each con­ver­sa­tion begins with a “sig­nif­i­cant detail” of the woman’s work. With the wry humor and pre­ci­sion of a true sci­en­tist, Pan­fil­io demon­strates how she pre­pares her favorite tool, a glass stick, by soft­en­ing the end with a cig­a­rette lighter.

Panfilio’s spe­cif­ic field is evo­lu­tion­ary devel­op­men­tal genet­ics. Along with her lab assis­tants she stud­ies how embry­on­ic cells know what role they should play in form­ing a spe­cif­ic organ­ism shape. How does a bone cell know it’s a bone cell?

The inter­view is about as much like Sci­ence: It’s a Girl Thing! as Meryl Streep is like Lind­say Lohan. This is a real per­son talk­ing about how she has built her career (she want­ed to be an artist when she was a teenag­er and stud­ied ancient Chi­nese his­to­ry at a small lib­er­al arts col­lege) and explain­ing her high­ly spe­cial­ized work.

She also touch­es on one of the most won­der­ful things about sci­en­tif­ic research: Some of the most excit­ing moments are when the results don’t align at all with expec­ta­tions.

Best of all, it’s just one of the won­der­ful inter­views in Hoppenhaus’s series.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

MAKERS Tells the Sto­ry of 50 Years of Progress for Women in the U.S.

No Women Need Apply: A Dis­heart­en­ing 1938 Rejec­tion Let­ter from Dis­ney Ani­ma­tion

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Fol­low her on Twit­ter @mskaterix and vis­it her web­site to learn more.

Making Radiolab: A Soup-to-Nuts Recipe for a Great Radio Show/Podcast

in Podcasts, Radio | June 10th, 2013

Now that vir­tu­al­ly every­one in the West­ern Hemi­sphere has the means to make and dis­sem­i­nate a pod­cast, are there any tips to guar­an­tee suc­cess?

Jad Abum­rad, a host of the enor­mous­ly pop­u­lar, curios­i­ty-based pod­cast, Radi­o­lab, strives for every show to sound like “two guys talk­ing in a sur­re­al­is­tic mul­ti-dimen­sion­al space.” His degree in music com­po­si­tion at Ober­lin Col­lege is an asset in achiev­ing this goal, as is his easy rap­port with cohost Robert Krul­wich.

Radi­o­lab’s appeal is such that direc­tor David Fine sin­gled it out for his Amer­i­can Hip­ster project, a year long inves­ti­ga­tion into the tastes of a cer­tain seg­ment of the pop­u­lace. The result­ing video above sketch­es out the cre­ation process, from the first impulse to inter­view an inter­est­ing per­son to the fin­ished episode.

It’s not sur­pris­ing that Radi­o­lab’s brass has seized on Fine’s effort as a fundrais­ing tool. His depic­tion of their behind-the-scenes labors is insis­tent­ly upbeat, com­plete with a mon­tage of laugh­ing pro­duc­ers, writ­ers and stars. As hard to as it is to believe this tells the whole sto­ry of what it’s like to bar­rel toward a col­lec­tive cre­ative dead­line, it’s also hard to begrudge them their sun­ny depic­tion when Abum­rad him­self vol­un­teers that the cre­ation of a nat­ur­al-sound­ing pod­cast  is a far-from-nat­ur­al thing.

Per­haps the biggest take­away for aspir­ing pod­cast mavens is that qual­i­ty wins out. Radi­o­lab is right­ly renowned for its excel­lent pro­duc­tion val­ues, a lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al­ism that has paved the way for a live show fea­tur­ing such lumi­nar­ies as come­di­an Demetri Mar­tin and Pilobo­lus Dance The­ater. If you’re not famil­iar Radi­o­lab, then we sug­gest you catch an episode, “Mem­o­ry and For­get­ting,” below. More episodes can be found on Sound­Cloud.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The New Yorker’s Fic­tion Pod­cast: Where Great Writ­ers Read Sto­ries by Great Writ­ers

Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk Radio Show Pod­cast Tack­les the His­to­ry of Video Games

The Pod­cast His­to­ry of Our World Will Take You From Cre­ation Myths to (Even­tu­al­ly) the Present Day

Ayun Hal­l­i­day owes Radi­o­lab a depth of grat­i­tude for the cheer with which her hus­band does the dish­es.

via Coudal

Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Visualized in a Computer Animation

in Animation, Music | May 29th, 2013

Even those of us who only took half a music appre­ci­a­tion course in col­lege know about the impact of Igor Stravin­sky’s The Rite of Spring, the orches­tral bal­let that near­ly caused a brawl at its debut. Ah, but how times have changed in the exact­ly one hun­dred years since that May evening at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. Now no music, no mat­ter how rad­i­cal­ly it breaks from tra­di­tion, caus­es any­thing like a riot; at worst, lis­ten­ers shuf­fle out ear­ly, and that’s mak­ing the debat­able assump­tion that such a piece would draw an audi­ence in the first place. Today’s musi­cophiles like what they like, often to the point of obses­sion, and sim­ply ignore what they don’t. The past cen­tu­ry, of course, has proven Stravin­sky’s com­po­si­tion­al instincts ahead of their time, now that we all know the name of the The Rite of Spring, and the com­plex work itself has attract­ed plen­ty of obses­sive musi­cophiles of its own.

Some have gone as far as to turn the music into imagery. In 1913, we had no more tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced way to visu­al­ize a piece of music than through dance, such as The Rite of Spring’s bal­let. In 2013, the art of com­put­er graph­ics great­ly expands the quest for an ever more per­fect way to rep­re­sent music not just to the ear, but to the eye. Com­pos­er, pianist and soft­ware engi­neer Stephen Mali­nows­ki has long led the way with the var­i­ous iter­a­tions of his Music Ani­ma­tion Machine. At the top of the post, you can see a visu­al­iza­tion of The Rite of Spring’s first part, “The Ado­ra­tion of the Earth.” Just above appears its sec­ond part, “The Exalt­ed Sac­ri­fice.” “I was not aware of the kind of har­mon­ic things Stravin­sky has going on,” Mali­nows­ki told NPR, explain­ing what he learned about the piece in the process. “It’s incred­i­ble — Stravin­sky con­tin­u­al­ly torques you, star­tles you, and frus­trates your antic­i­pa­tions.” Imag­ine how it would have blown those ear­ly-twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Parisian minds to see this at the debut.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

Visu­al­iz­ing Bach: Alexan­der Chen’s Impos­si­ble Harp

Stephen Hawking’s Uni­verse: A Visu­al­iza­tion of His Lec­tures with Stars & Sound

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

Allen Ginsberg’s “Celestial Homework”: A Reading List for His Class “Literary History of the Beats”

in Education, Poetry | May 20th, 2013

Click for larg­er image

“Argh, you’re all ama­teurs in a pro­fes­sion­al uni­verse!” roared Allen Gins­berg to a young class of aspir­ing poets in 1977 at the Jack Ker­ouac School of Dis­em­bod­ied Poet­ics. Their offense? Most of the stu­dents had failed to reg­is­ter for med­i­ta­tion instruc­tion. The sto­ry comes to us from Steve Sil­ber­man, who was then a 19-year-old stu­dent in that class­room and a recip­i­ent of Ginsberg’s genius that sum­mer.

Only three years ear­li­er, in 1974, Gins­berg and poet Anne Wald­man launched the Jack Ker­ouac School at Naropa Insti­tute (now Naropa Uni­ver­si­ty), in Boul­der, Col­orado. The Institute—founded by Tibetan teacher Chö­gyam Trung­pa Rin­poche—was mod­eled on ancient Bud­dhist learn­ing cen­ters in India and described by Wald­man and poet Andrew Schelling as “part monastery, part col­lege, part con­ven­tion hall or alchemist’s lab.”

Gins­berg taught at Naropa until his death in 1997. The class in which he had his out­burst was called “Lit­er­ary His­to­ry of the Beats,” at the start of which he hand­ed his stu­dents a list called “Celes­tial Home­work” (first page above, sec­ond and third pages here and here). Sil­ber­man describes the list thus (quot­ing from Gins­berg’s descrip­tion):

This “celes­tial home­work” is the read­ing list that Gins­berg hand­ed out on the first day of his course as “sug­ges­tions for a quick check-out & taste of antient scriven­ers whose works were reflect­ed in Beat lit­er­ary style as well as spe­cif­ic beat pages to dig into.”

It’s a par­tic­u­lar­ly Gins­berg-ian list, with a healthy mix of gen­res and peri­ods, most of it poetry—by Ginsberg’s fel­low beats, to be sure, but also by Melville, Dick­in­son, Yeats, Mil­ton, Shel­ley, and sev­er­al more. Sad­ly, it’s too late to sit at Gins­berg’s feet, but one can still find guid­ance from his “Celes­tial Home­work,” and you can even lis­ten to audio record­ings from the class online too.

Sil­ber­man has done us all the great ser­vice of com­pil­ing as many free online ver­sions of Ginsberg’s rec­om­mend­ed texts as he could. You’ll find them all here, with author bios linked to each pho­to. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, some of the links have gone dead, but with a lit­tle bit of search­ing, you can work your way through most of Ginsberg’s list. Sil­ber­man reports anoth­er Gins­berg epi­gram from his 1977 class: “Poet­ry is the real­iza­tion of the mag­nif­i­cence of the actu­al.” The works on the “Celes­tial Home­work,” Sil­ber­man com­ments, “are gates to that mag­nif­i­cence.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Allen Gins­berg Reads His Famous­ly Cen­sored Beat Poem, Howl

Allen Gins­berg Record­ings Brought to the Dig­i­tal Age. Lis­ten to Eight Full Tracks for Free

W.H. Auden’s 1941 Lit­er­a­ture Syl­labus Asks Stu­dents to Read 32 Great Works, Cov­er­ing 6000 Pages

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

Download 100 Free Online Philosophy Courses & Start Living the Examined Life

in Online Courses, Philosophy | May 19th, 2013

The Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion of our big Free Online Cours­es col­lec­tion just went through anoth­er update, and it now fea­tures 100 cours­es. Enough to give you a soup-to-nuts intro­duc­tion to a time­less dis­ci­pline. You can start with one of sev­er­al intro­duc­to­ry cours­es.

• Phi­los­o­phy for Begin­ners – iTunes – Web Video – Mar­i­anne Tal­bot, Oxford
  
• Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing for Begin­ners - iTunes Video – iTunes Audio – Web Video – Oxford
• A Romp through Ethics for Com­plete Begin­ners - iTunes Video–Web Video – Oxford
• Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy – YouTube – iTunes – Web Video — Steven B. Smith, Yale
• The Art of Liv­ing — Web Video – Stan­ford
• The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps - Mul­ti­ple For­mats– Peter Adam­son, King’s Col­lege Lon­don

Then, once you’ve found your foot­ing, you can head off in some amaz­ing direc­tions. As we men­tioned many moons ago, you can access cours­es and lec­tures by mod­ern day leg­ends – Michel Fou­cault, Bertrand Rus­sell, John Sear­le, Wal­ter Kauf­mann, Leo Strauss, Hubert Drey­fus and Michael Sandel. Then you can sit back and let them intro­duce you to the think­ing of Aris­to­tle, Socrates, Pla­to, Hobbes, Hegel, Hei­deg­ger, Kierkegaard, Kant, Niet­zsche, Sartre and the rest of the gang. The cours­es list­ed here are gen­er­al­ly avail­able via YouTube, iTunes, or the web.

Explore our col­lec­tion of 950 Free Cours­es to find top­ics in many oth­er dis­ci­plines — His­to­ry, Lit­er­a­ture, Physics, Com­put­er Sci­ence and beyond. As we like to say, it’s the most valu­able sin­gle page on the web.

Find us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and we’ll make it easy to share intel­li­gent media with your friends! 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Michel Fou­cault: Free Lec­tures on Truth, Dis­course & The Self

Pho­tog­ra­phy of Lud­wig Wittgen­stein Released by Archives at Cam­bridge

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Lec­tures Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

How Famous Writers — From J.K. Rowling to William Faulkner — Visually Outlined Their Novels

in Literature | May 17th, 2013

Click for a larg­er ver­sion

Every great novel—or at least every fin­ished novel—needs a plan. I remem­ber well a James Joyce course I took in col­lege, taught by a bel­liger­ent Irish­man who began the first class meet­ing by slam­ming his decades-old copy of Ulysses on the table, send­ing clouds of dust and Post-It notes around his ears and shout­ing, “This is my Bible!” He pro­ceed­ed over the next few months to unrav­el the dark mys­ter­ies of Joyce’s design, with chart after chart of flo­ral sym­bol­o­gy, musi­cal motifs, Dante allu­sions, myth­ic and Catholic rewrit­ings, and Dublin city maps. Need­less to say I was intim­i­dat­ed.

But not every author requires the god-like fore­sight of Joyce. Wit­ness, for instance, J.K. Rowling’s spread­sheet for Har­ry Pot­ter and the Order of the Phoenix (top), hand-drawn on lined note­book paper. Fine, Rowling’s no Joyce, but no one can say her method didn’t yield impres­sive results. For a more canon­i­cal­ly lit­er­ary exam­ple, see William Faulkner’s plan for A Fable (above). Faulkn­er famous­ly out­lined his fic­tion on the walls of his Rowan Oaks study, in-between bot­tles of bour­bon.

Fla­vor­wire has com­piled a num­ber of author out­lines, from Joseph Heller’s dense, intri­cate grid design for Catch-22 to Jen­nifer Egan’s sto­ry­boards for “Black Box” and Nor­man Mail­er’s medieval man­u­script of a plan for Har­lot’s Ghost. Each out­line betrays a lit­tle of the author’s mind at work.

via Fla­vor­wire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Six Post­cards From Famous Writ­ers: Hem­ing­way, Kaf­ka, Ker­ouac & More

Writ­ers’ Hous­es Gives You a Vir­tu­al Tour of Famous Authors’ Homes

Pho­tos of Famous Writ­ers (and Rock­ers) with their Dogs

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

Keith Richards Waxes Philosophical, Plays Live with His Idol, the Great Muddy Waters

in Music | May 16th, 2013

Cadil­lac Records—a 2008 biopic about the rise and fall of Chicago’s Chess Records—won acclaim for bravu­ra per­for­mances, gar­nered Bey­once a White House per­for­mance and threats of vio­lence from Etta James, and took it on the chin for its deeply mud­dled his­to­ry. But nobody goes to the movies for a his­to­ry les­son, right? What stuck with me was its drama­ti­za­tion of that moment (okay, decade) when R&B and “race records” got rebrand­ed by Alan Freed as “Rock n’ Roll” and crossed over the col­or line. Hun­dreds of bands hijacked Chuck Berry’s licks (as he saw it), and then Jag­ger crashed the par­ty with his Mud­dy Waters impres­sion while his band took their name from one of his blues songs.

The Stones may not have been the first British band to make Amer­i­can elec­tric blues their own, but they were arguably the most pop­u­lar. In an excerpt (below) from a longer inter­view from 1973, Kei­th Richards namechecks both Waters and Berry, as well as usu­al sus­pects Lit­tle Richard, Bo Did­dley, Jim­my Reed, Slim Har­po, and the much ear­li­er Robert John­son and Blind Lemon Jef­fer­son. The host push­es Kei­th on his roots influ­ences and the part of black music in the Stones’ sound, ask­ing if their lack of sen­ti­men­tal­ism came from the blues. Kei­th replies,“I don’t get sen­ti­men­tal about things because… it doesn’t lead to clar­i­ty of thought.” And when I think clar­i­ty, I think Kei­th Richards. But seri­ous­ly, it’s a gem of an inter­view.

Asked about how black musi­cians react­ed to his blues appro­pri­a­tion, Richards gets philo­soph­i­cal: “Prob­a­bly as many dif­fer­ent reac­tions from them as any­body else.” We know how Chuck Berry felt—robbed—but Kei­th tells us Waters took it in stride, “grate­ful” for the intro­duc­tion to the white col­lege cir­cuit which put more bread in his pock­et. Maybe so, but Waters’ crossover before white audi­ences pre­dat­ed the Stones. Before the British invaded—two years before the Stones formed—Muddy hit England’s shores in 1958 (one year after Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe brought her elec­tric blues across the pond). While the usu­al belief that Waters’ blues shocked the Brits may be a mis­con­cep­tion, he won a new audi­ence on the folk cir­cuit, return­ing to Eng­land in ‘64. After lay­ing low for a while, Waters saw a career revival late in life, per­form­ing into his final years with The Stones, Eric Clap­ton, John­ny Win­ters, and his own band. In the video above, see a full per­for­mance of Waters with the Stones from 1981, two years before Waters’ death from heart fail­ure. He’s 66 at this gig, three years younger than Richards is now.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Chuck Berry Takes Kei­th Richards to School, Shows Him How to Rock (1987)

Revis­it The Life & Music of Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe: ‘The God­moth­er of Rock and Roll’

Mud­dy Waters and Friends on the Blues and Gospel Train, 1964

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness