Why the University System, as We Know It, Won’t Last .… and What’s Coming Next

in Education | May 14th, 2012

It’s easy to sell books and oth­er com­modi­ties on the web. It’s not easy to deliv­er a qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion. But two con­verg­ing trends point toward a future when we will see the tra­di­tion­al uni­ver­si­ty give way to an online alter­na­tive — some­thing I was­n’t will­ing to bank on two years ago. First, Sil­i­con Val­ley is final­ly focus­ing on e‑learning. Udac­i­ty, Cours­era, Kahn Acad­e­my, EdX — they’re all look­ing to lift e‑learning out of a long peri­od of stag­na­tion. And, sec­ond, times are tough, and the tra­di­tion­al uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem does­n’t care enough about man­ag­ing costs, while wrong­ly assum­ing that it has a cap­tive audi­ence.

This week­end, The New York Times took a good look at the financ­ing of a col­lege edu­ca­tion and high­light­ed a few stag­ger­ing data points.

• The U.S. has racked up more than $1 tril­lion in stu­dent loans.
• Today 94 per­cent of stu­dents earn­ing a bachelor’s degree take out loans — up from 45 per­cent in 1993.
• It’s esti­mat­ed that the “aver­age debt [per stu­dent] in 2011 was $23,300, with 10 per­cent owing more than $54,000 and 3 per­cent more than $100,000.”
• “Pay­ments are being made on just 38 per­cent of the bal­ance of fed­er­al stu­dent loans, down from 46 per­cent five years ago.”
• Final­ly, state fund­ing of edu­ca­tion is going down, and tuition is going up, which means that the fig­ures above will just get worse.

You don’t need me to spell things out. Pay­ing for a col­lege edu­ca­tion is get­ting unsus­tain­able, so much so that many expect a cri­sis in the col­lege loan mar­ket in the com­ing years. And then you con­sid­er this. Many uni­ver­si­ties seem indif­fer­ent to the dif­fi­cul­ties stu­dents face, if they’re not inten­tion­al­ly exac­er­bat­ing the prob­lem. At one point in the Times arti­cle, E. Gor­don Gee, the pres­i­dent of Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty, goes on record say­ing, “I read­i­ly admit it … I didn’t think a lot about costs. I do not think we have giv­en sig­nif­i­cant thought to the impact of col­lege costs on fam­i­lies.” Now lis­ten to the lat­est episode of Plan­et Mon­ey, The Real Price of Col­lege (audio), which under­scores a more galling fact — many col­leges think that they gain a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage if they have a high stick­er price. For many schools, low­er tuition is a sign of weak­ness, not strength.

Uni­ver­si­ties can behave this way because they think they have a cap­tive audi­ence. Because col­lege grads still earn con­sid­er­ably more than high school grads, col­leges assume that stu­dents will keep enrolling. But what will hap­pen when cash-strapped stu­dents are pre­sent­ed with a viable alter­na­tive? It may take 10 to 20 years, but I would­n’t be sur­prised if a new breed of school emerges, schools that throw away the four year mod­el (and the human­i­ties too) and offer stu­dents a very tar­get­ed online edu­ca­tion in “prac­ti­cal” fields — from account­ing to cod­ing to nurs­ing to law and busi­ness — at a dra­mat­i­cal­ly low­er cost. Here, the edu­ca­tion cycle gets short­ened to per­haps two years, and then stu­dents get cre­den­tialed (maybe by a trust­ed third-par­ty provider) and go to work, only to return lat­er in their careers to take more cours­es in spe­cial­ized areas. This mod­el will require the right tech­nol­o­gy plat­form (some­thing that will get worked out fair­ly soon) and a change in the expec­ta­tions of employ­ers and soci­ety more broad­ly (some­thing that will take time to devel­op, but less time than com­pla­cent col­leges think).

The new sys­tem won’t be bet­ter than the cur­rent one in many respects. It won’t offer a round­ed edu­ca­tion. The teach­ing will be less per­son­al. Long-last­ing social bonds won’t be made as eas­i­ly. (You’ll need to pay the big bucks at a tra­di­tion­al school for that. No, they won’t all go away.) And the teach­ing jobs cre­at­ed by these uni­ver­si­ties won’t be ter­ri­bly ful­fill­ing or lucra­tive. But the new sys­tem will offer a more focused and afford­able edu­ca­tion to stu­dents on a mass scale. And when stu­dents grad­u­ate most­ly debt free, they won’t com­plain. Nor will they be forced to forego col­lege alto­geth­er, as some would now advo­cate. There’s per­haps some­thing inevitable about this shift. But the insou­ciance of admin­is­tra­tors and fac­ul­ty inhab­it­ing the cur­rent sys­tem won’t do any­thing to delay it. Stick around, and you’ll prob­a­bly see that I’m right. And if you think my look into the crys­tal ball is wrong, let me know.

In the mean­time, we give you anoth­er take on how to solve our world’s edu­ca­tion­al prob­lems — Father Gui­do Sar­duc­ci’s Five Minute Uni­ver­si­ty:

For oodles of free cours­es, don’t for­get to vis­it our col­lec­tion of 450 Free Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Neil deGrasse Tyson & Richard Dawkins Ponder the Big Enchilada Questions of Science

in Physics, Science, Video - Science | May 14th, 2012

When­ev­er you bring togeth­er Neil deGrasse Tyson and Richard Dawkins — one the pub­lic face of astro­physics, the oth­er the pub­lic face of biol­o­gy — you’re pret­ty much guar­an­teed a good crowd and a spir­it­ed con­ver­sa­tion. And that’s what stu­dents got in Sep­tem­ber 2010, when the sci­en­tists shared the stage at Howard Uni­ver­si­ty and con­sid­ered some big enchi­la­da ques­tions. For exam­ple: Why did our mind — from an evo­lu­tion­ary point of view — lead us to abstract math­e­mat­ics, which dri­ves the major dis­cov­er­ies in physics? What are the chances that we’ll dis­cov­er intel­li­gent life in the uni­verse, and, if they dis­cov­er us (rather than the oth­er way around), could we, as a civ­i­liza­tion, be in big trou­ble? Is nat­ur­al selec­tion oper­a­tive through­out the uni­verse and would aliens look any­thing like us? And why is The Blob a much bet­ter alien than ET? In short, they’re con­sid­er­ing just the kinds of mind-bend­ing ques­tions that col­lege stu­dents love to enter­tain — and hope­ful­ly you do to. Their con­ver­sa­tion runs about 50 min­utes and a Q&A fol­lows.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

Some­thing from Noth­ing? Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss Dis­cuss Cos­mol­o­gy, Ori­gins of Life & Reli­gion Before a Packed Crowd

Grow­ing Up in the Uni­verse: Richard Dawkins Presents Cap­ti­vat­ing Sci­ence Lec­tures for Kids (1991)

125 Great Sci­ence Videos: From Astron­o­my to Physics & Psy­chol­o­gy

30 Free Physics Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties (More Free Cours­es here)

The Broken Tower, James Franco’s Docudrama On “Difficult” Poet Hart Crane: A Preview

in Film, Poetry | May 2nd, 2012

Above, you’ll find a short trail­er for The Bro­ken Tow­er, a film about Hart Crane: can­dy-for­tune scion, hard-drink­ing sex­u­al adven­tur­er, nar­row­ly appre­ci­at­ed poet, and sui­cide vic­tim at 32. The motion pic­ture indus­try loves to dra­ma­tize this sort of lit­er­ary life, although it tends to choose lit­er­ary fig­ures whose lega­cies have, in the full­ness of time, accrued them a rea­son­able pop­u­lar­i­ty. But Crane, though often seen as a more opti­mistic coun­ter­part in mod­ernism to T.S. Eliot, lacks almost all of Eliot’s name recog­ni­tion out­side schol­ar­ly cir­cles. Part of this has to do with his noto­ri­ous­ly “dif­fi­cult” ver­bal style, which has made him near­ly syn­ony­mous with a cer­tain strain of poet­ic com­plex­i­ty. Allen Gross­man once gave a lec­ture at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go called “On Com­mu­nica­tive Dif­fi­cul­ty in Gen­er­al and ‘Dif­fi­cult’ Poet­ry in Par­tic­u­lar: The Exam­ple of Hart Crane’s ‘The Bro­ken Tow­er.’ ” (The title name-checks the posthu­mous­ly pub­lished bio­graph­i­cal poem from which the new pic­ture takes its name.) Even Ten­nessee Williams, a known fan of Crane’s work, said he could “hard­ly under­stand a sin­gle line” of it — adding that, of course, “the indi­vid­ual lines aren’t sup­posed to be intel­li­gi­ble.”

James Fran­co not only stars in The Bro­ken Tow­er, but wrote, direct­ed, and pro­duced the film as well. Per­haps I need hard­ly men­tion that, since Fran­co makes no effort (and the media even less) to con­ceal his lit­er­ary-aca­d­e­m­ic inter­ests and pen­chant for fol­low­ing sev­er­al artis­tic pur­suits at all times. The Bro­ken Tow­er began as his NYU mas­ter’s the­sis, went on to play at the Los Ange­les Film Fes­ti­val, and has very recent­ly entered lim­it­ed the­atri­cal release. The clip above, tak­en from the Q&A at the pic­ture’s Boston Col­lege pre­miere, fea­tures both Fran­co and Paul Mar­i­ani, author of The Bro­ken Tow­er: The Life of Hart Crane, the biog­ra­phy that gal­va­nized Fran­co’s fas­ci­na­tion with Crane as he read it on the set of 2002’s Son­ny. After hear­ing both men describe how the grim yet opti­mistic, resis­tant yet com­pelling word­scape of Hart Crane drew them in, don’t be sur­prised if you feel the impulse to do some research of your own.

(See also: Hart Crane’s poems on Poemhunter.com.)

Relat­ed con­tent:

James Fran­co Reads Short Sto­ry in Bed for The Paris Review

The Book Trail­er as Self-Par­o­dy: Stars Gary Shteyn­gart with James Fran­co Cameo

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

John Cage Unbound: A New Digital Archive Presented by The New York Public Library

in Music | April 18th, 2012

John Cage enthu­si­asts have sure­ly rejoiced at the New York Pub­lic Library’s open­ing of John Cage Unbound: A Liv­ing Archive, which offers vis­i­tors a chance to expe­ri­ence how the unique­ly inno­v­a­tive com­poser’s life and work con­tin­ue to affect the per­for­mance of music today. But if you don’t hap­pen to live in New York, no need to book a trip; you can browse the archive online when­ev­er and from wher­ev­er you please. One won­ders what Cage, who died the year before the debut of the World Wide Web as we know it, would have made of all the artis­tic inven­tion, son­ic and oth­er­wise, that the inter­net has enabled. I like to think he’d gaze with great fas­ci­na­tion at this site’s con­tin­u­al­ly updat­ed col­lec­tion of not only vin­tage John Cage footage — him play­ing ampli­fied cac­ti and plant mate­ri­als with a feath­er with Take­hisa Kosu­gi, him speak­ing in 1978 — but recent mate­r­i­al as well, such as Paul Schuet­te’s inter­pre­ta­tion of the piece “Water Walk,” and The Anta Project per­form­ing Cage’s famous “4’33”,” the piece that involves no play­ing, at the U.S.-Mexico bor­der.

Bridg­ing the gap between the old and the new, the video above col­lects per­son­al impres­sions of John Cage from those who par­tic­i­pat­ed in his 1970 per­for­mance at Carlisle, Penn­syl­va­ni­a’s Dick­in­son Col­lege. “Intense, obser­vant, focused,” says the col­lege’s Pres­i­dent William Dur­den. “Not nec­es­sar­i­ly a per­son who took up space, but a per­son who real­ly… chis­eled space.” Think­ing about the nature of the con­cert, Joe Sobel, a musi­cian who built an instru­ment out of junked car horns espe­cial­ly for it, remem­bers that “if you approached it in a dour, seri­ous way, you weren’t going to be able to make any sense of it. In order to enjoy it, you had to be open and will­ing to get the joke.” He could say the same about every­thing John Cage ever did. Hear­ing these reflec­tions and then, lat­er in the video, see­ing a group of Dick­in­son stu­dents grap­ple with putting on Cage’s “Radio Music” — a piece played not with tra­di­tion­al instru­ments, but lit­er­al radios — even view­ers who aren’t yet John Cage enthu­si­asts may find them­selves intrigued. Spend­ing an evening at John Cage Unbound will get them up to speed on the com­poser’s endur­ing rel­e­vance; pair it with a read­ing of Cage’s famous book/manifesto Silence, and you’ll nev­er think about music in quite the same way again.

Relat­ed con­tent:

John Cage Per­forms Water Walk on “I’ve Got a Secret” (1960)

The Con­tro­ver­sial Sounds of Silence: John Cage’s 4’33″ Per­formed by the BBC Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall

J.D. Salinger, Out for a Stroll: Reclusive Author of The Catcher in the Rye Caught on Film

in Literature | April 16th, 2012

As a pho­to­graph­ic doc­u­ment, this footage is only slight­ly less aston­ish­ing than the famed 1967 Pat­ter­son-Gim­lin film of a “Big­foot” traips­ing across a for­est clear­ing in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia.

In this case the elu­sive crea­ture is none oth­er than J.D. Salinger. The footage appears to have been shot quite a few years before the writer’s death, at 91, in Jan­u­ary of 2010. The cap­tion on YouTube sim­ply says, “J.D. Salinger out for a stroll in Cor­nish, New Hamp­shire.” Salinger had lived a qui­et life in Cor­nish since 1953, two years after the pub­li­ca­tion of The Catch­er in the Rye. But as one com­men­ta­tor on YouTube wry­ly points out, the footage was prob­a­bly shot in anoth­er town just across the Con­necti­cut Riv­er from Cor­nish:

If you real­ly want me to tell you about it, this is like­ly Wind­sor, VT, judg­ing by all the pho­ny peo­ple and the park­ing meters and all. JD went there dai­ly for his mail and a bite to eat at the din­er. He was a mad­man that way. I know it’s corny and all, but that’s god­dam Wind­sor, across the riv­er from Cor­nish.

It’s true, Cor­nish has very few peo­ple and no park­ing meters. By all accounts Salinger lived a fair­ly nor­mal life there. If you trav­el up that way you’re like­ly to meet peo­ple who remem­ber see­ing him out and about before his health declined. After he died, a trick­le of anec­dotes start­ed to emerge. Their mun­dane­ness some­how makes them all the more fas­ci­nat­ing. For exam­ple, Yan­kee mag­a­zine pub­lished a sto­ry, “J.D. Salinger’s Last Sup­per,” about the writer’s fondness–right up to the very end–for the Sat­ur­day-night roast beef din­ners at the Con­gre­ga­tion­al Church in Hart­land, Ver­mont. “Typ­i­cal­ly, he’d arrive an hour and a half ahead of the first seating–often to be first in line,” reports Jim Collins. “He’d sit qui­et­ly, writ­ing in a spi­ral-bound note­book. Most peo­ple around him were unaware of who he was; the vol­un­teers work­ing the sup­per treat­ed him like any oth­er guest and pro­tect­ed his pri­va­cy.” Spi­ral-bound note­book, eh? Hmm.

Anoth­er anec­dote is from writer Nicholas Carr, who tells a sto­ry on his blog about a sur­prise encounter he had with Salinger when he was an under­grad­u­ate stu­dent at Dart­mouth Col­lege, which is locat­ed in Hanover, just up the val­ley from Cor­nish. Carr was work­ing behind the cir­cu­la­tion desk at the col­lege library one sum­mer when “a tall, slen­der, slight­ly stooped man” walked in. He remem­bers his boss whis­per­ing, “That’s J.D. Salinger”:

Holy crap, I thought. I just saw J.D. Salinger.

About ten min­utes lat­er Salinger sud­den­ly reap­peared at the desk, hold­ing a dol­lar bill. I went over to him, and he said he need­ed change for the Xerox machine. I took his dol­lar and gave him four quar­ters.

That’s my claim to fame: I gave J.D. Salinger change for a buck.

Pho­to­copies, eh? What was that old guy up to?

Martin Scorsese’s Very First Films: Three Imaginative Short Works

in Film | April 12th, 2012

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Last week we fea­tured the first three films of Stan­ley Kubrick. Today we focus on the first three by Mar­tin Scors­ese. Although the two men were about the same age when they ven­tured into film­mak­ing, and faced sim­i­lar con­straints, their ear­li­est films are strik­ing­ly dif­fer­ent.

Kubrick and Scors­ese had both grown up in New York City and gone to high school in the Bronx, but their cir­cum­stances were worlds apart. Kubrick failed to get into col­lege after high school because of bad grades but, as he put it, “backed into a fan­tas­ti­cal­ly good job at the age of sev­en­teen” work­ing as a staff pho­tog­ra­ph­er for Look mag­a­zine. Scors­ese went to col­lege and stud­ied the his­to­ry and aes­thet­ics of cin­e­ma. When Kubrick decid­ed to try his hand at motion pic­tures he was dri­ven by a sense of eco­nom­ic urgency. His strat­e­gy was to get a foothold in the mar­ket­place by beat­ing the news­reel indus­try at its own game. Scors­ese, on the oth­er hand, was shel­tered from eco­nom­ic wor­ries. He was moved instead by the vivac­i­ty and inven­tive­ness of French New Wave cin­e­ma, among oth­er influ­ences, and want­ed to assert him­self as the next great auteur.

As a severe­ly asth­mat­ic child, Scors­ese went to the movies often. When high school grad­u­a­tion was approach­ing he thought about becom­ing a priest, and briefly con­sid­ered study­ing lit­er­a­ture. But then some­thing caught his eye: a cat­a­log for the New York Uni­ver­si­ty film school. He went to an NYU ori­en­ta­tion ses­sion, where the var­i­ous depart­ment heads took turns describ­ing their pro­grams to a room filled with prospec­tive stu­dents. When the head of the Depart­ment of Tele­vi­sion, Motion Pic­tures and Radio stood up–a man named Haig Manoogian–the young Scors­ese was instant­ly impressed. “He had such ener­gy, such pas­sion,” Scors­ese tells Richard Schick­el in Con­ver­sa­tions with Scors­ese. “I said to myself, That’s where I want to be, with this per­son.”

Manoogian took the art of film very seri­ous­ly. When Scors­ese was a fresh­man in 1960 he attend­ed Manoogian’s once-a-week class on the his­to­ry of film. Each ses­sion includ­ed a lec­ture and the screen­ing of a film. In Con­ver­sa­tions with Scors­ese the film­mak­er remem­bers Manoogian’s ruth­less­ness in deal­ing with stu­dents who attend­ed only to watch movies. “He’d say, okay, you don’t come back, you don’t come back,” says Scors­ese, “ ‘because some of you must think because we’re show­ing movies, it’s fun. Get out.’ ”

As Scors­ese moved through the pro­gram, he grad­u­al­ly began learn­ing a few basic skills in the mechan­ics of mak­ing a movie. By junior year, each stu­dent was expect­ed to col­lab­o­rate in the mak­ing of a short film. So in 1963 Scors­ese took Manoogian’s sum­mer work­shop, where he found that not every stu­dent got to direct. “He’d say, Okay, you’re direc­tor, you’re grip, you’re cam­era, what­ev­er,” Scors­ese tells Schick­el. “So there were a lot of peo­ple who were very unhap­py.” He quick­ly fig­ured out that Manoogian was assign­ing the role of direc­tor to stu­dents who had their own screen­play. “What I did was write a script and get it to him as soon as pos­si­ble, and he okayed it, so I was giv­en a crew, and they all knew that they had to do what I want­ed.”

Scors­ese and his crew took one of the school’s old 16mm Bell & How­ell Fil­mo cam­eras and shot a one-reel com­e­dy in a week. He would lat­er describe the film as “nine min­utes of visu­al non­sense.”  What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?, as it is called, (see above) adopts the sur­re­al com­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty Scors­ese admired in the work of Mel Brooks and Ernie Kovaks, along with nar­ra­tive tech­nique he picked up watch­ing French New Wave films, par­tic­u­lar­ly those of François Truf­faut. As he tells Schick­el:

My lit­tle film had all the tricks and fun of just putting pic­tures togeth­er in slow motion and fast motion and stills, and inter­cut­ting with mattes the way Truf­faut would do in Jules and Jim. It had no depth at all, but it was a lot of fun. And it won me a schol­ar­ship, so my father was able to use it for the tuition for the next year. And then that led me to doing anoth­er short film in my junior year, the sec­ond semes­ter, and that became It’s Not Just You, Mur­ray!

It’s Not Just You, Mur­ray! part one:

It’s Not Just You, Mur­ray! part two:

It’s Not Just You, Mur­ray! (above), com­plet­ed in 1964, is a much more ambi­tious film. It tells the sto­ry of a pair of Ital­ian-Amer­i­can gansters. “The two char­ac­ters, Mur­ray and Joe,” Scors­ese tells Michael Hen­ry Wil­son in Scors­ese on Scors­ese, “are close friends, but the sort who are con­stant­ly steal­ing from each oth­er, pinch­ing their whisky and their girls. They live the way I myself was liv­ing with my buddies–relationships that con­tain as much hate as love.”

Scors­ese chose not to present Mur­ray as a gang­ster at the begin­ning of the film, because he want­ed to make a wider state­ment about Amer­i­can life. “I grew up in Lit­tle Italy,” he tells Wil­son, “I’ve seen cor­rup­tion up close, I’ve seen it oper­at­ing every day. After that you can’t take the Estab­lish­ment seri­ous­ly. It’s all a fraud.” The two-reel film is like a pre­lim­i­nary sketch for some of Scors­ese’s most famous lat­er films. When Schick­el tells Scors­ese he had nev­er seen It’s Not Just You, Mur­ray!, he is sur­prised by the film­mak­er’s descrip­tion. “It was basi­cal­ly Good­fel­las,” Scors­ese says. “Huh,” says Schick­el?

It’s Good­fel­las. I did it in 1964. Mur­ray was a big epic, as much as I could man­age, of two guys who were friends in the under­world, from my old neigh­bor­hood. but I did it with very New Wave tech­niques. It was also a cross with The Roar­ing Twen­ties, an attempt at that sort of scale which led even­tu­al­ly to Mean Streets, which led ulti­mate­ly to Good­fel­las, and to Casi­no and Gangs of New York–the scale of it, the exces­sive nature of it. I mean, in Mur­ray there’s just a hint of it. We did­n’t have the mon­ey.

The Big Shave:

After Scors­ese received his bach­e­lor’s degree from NYU in 1964, he began work on his first fea­ture film, Who’s That Knock­ing at My Door? It took him over two years to make, and in 1967 he still had­n’t found a dis­trib­u­tor. At that time he received a grant from the Ciné­math­èque de Bel­gique to make a short film. The result was the third film by Scors­ese to be released, and his first in col­or: The Big Shave (above). “In a bath­room that may rep­re­sent the Amer­i­can Psy­che haunt­ed by the Viet­nam war,” writes Wil­son in a syn­op­sis of the film, “the dai­ly rit­u­al of shav­ing turns into a scene of hor­ror.”

As Scors­ese tells Mary Pat Kel­ly in Mar­tin Scors­ese: The First Decade, “It grew out of my feel­ings about Viet­nam. But in real­i­ty some­thing else was going on inside of me, I think, which real­ly had noth­ing to do with the war.” Scors­ese was expe­ri­enc­ing a num­ber of pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al set­backs, and was deeply depressed at the time. “After sep­a­rat­ing from my wife,” he tells Wil­son, “I was camp­ing out in emp­ty, creepy apart­ments.” He con­tin­ues:

When I wrote the script, I was very seri­ous, but while we were shoot­ing it we nev­er stopped laugh­ing. Watch­ing the rush­es, we were dou­bled up. It was only after­wards that I tried to ratio­nal­ize what I had done. I almost con­vinced myself that it was a film against the Viet­nam war, that this guy who shaves so metic­u­lous­ly and ends up cut­ting his throat rep­re­sent­ed the aver­age Amer­i­can of his day. It was because of these polit­i­cal impli­ca­tions that I used Bun­ny Beri­g­an’s orig­i­nal 1939 ver­sion of “I Can’t Get Start­ed” for the sound­track. I even want­ed to end with archival images of Viet­nam, but I did­n’t need them. The Big Shave was real­ly a fan­ta­sy, a strict­ly per­son­al vision of death.

You can find the Scors­ese films men­tioned above in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

The Birth and Decline of a Book: Two Videos for Bibliophiles

in Books | April 5th, 2012

If you’ve ever spent any time with old books, or stepped into the right used book­store, you’ve encoun­tered that dis­tinc­tive smell. Pro­duced by Abe’s Books, and draw­ing on research from chemists at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege, Lon­don, this video looks at the sci­ence behind the aro­ma of used books — at what hap­pens when chem­i­cals and organ­ic mat­ter con­front heat, light, mois­ture and time.

When you’re done watch­ing the video, you might want to spend time with a sec­ond clip that deals with anoth­er part of the life­cy­cle of the book — the birth of a book. Shot by Glen Mil­ner at Smith-Set­tle Print­ers in Leeds, Eng­land, this short film lets you watch first­hand a book — Suzanne St Albans’ Man­go and Mimosa — being made with old school print­ing meth­ods. Enjoy.

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!

Ray Bradbury Gives 12 Pieces of Writing Advice to Young Authors (2001)

in Books, Writing | April 4th, 2012

Like fel­low genre icon Stephen King, Ray Brad­bury has reached far beyond his estab­lished audi­ence by offer­ing writ­ing advice to any­one who puts pen to paper. (Or keys to key­board; “Use what­ev­er works,” he often says.) In this 2001 keynote address at Point Loma Nazarene Uni­ver­si­ty’s Writer’s Sym­po­sium By the Sea, Brad­bury tells sto­ries from his writ­ing life, all of which offer lessons on how to hone the craft. Most of these have to do with the day-in, day-out prac­tices that make up what he calls “writ­ing hygiene.” Watch this enter­tain­ing­ly digres­sive talk and you might pull out an entire­ly dif­fer­ent set of points, but here, in list form, is how I inter­pret Brad­bury’s pro­gram:

• Don’t start out writ­ing nov­els. They take too long. Begin your writ­ing life instead by crank­ing out “a hell of a lot of short sto­ries,” as many as one per week. Take a year to do it; he claims that it sim­ply isn’t pos­si­ble to write 52 bad short sto­ries in a row. He wait­ed until the age of 30 to write his first nov­el, Fahren­heit 451. “Worth wait­ing for, huh?”

• You may love ’em, but you can’t be ’em. Bear that in mind when you inevitably attempt, con­scious­ly or uncon­scious­ly, to imi­tate your favorite writ­ers, just as he imi­tat­ed H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Arthur Conan Doyle, and L. Frank Baum.

• Exam­ine “qual­i­ty” short sto­ries. He sug­gests Roald Dahl, Guy de Mau­pas­sant, and the less­er-known Nigel Kneale and John Col­lier. Any­thing in the New York­er today does­n’t make his cut, since he finds that their sto­ries have “no metaphor.”

• Stuff your head. To accu­mu­late the intel­lec­tu­al build­ing blocks of these metaphors, he sug­gests a course of bed­time read­ing: one short sto­ry, one poem (but Pope, Shake­speare, and Frost, not mod­ern “crap”), and one essay. These essays should come from a diver­si­ty of fields, includ­ing archae­ol­o­gy, zool­o­gy, biol­o­gy, phi­los­o­phy, pol­i­tics, and lit­er­a­ture. “At the end of a thou­sand nights,” so he sums it up, “Jesus God, you’ll be full of stuff!”

• Get rid of friends who don’t believe in you. Do they make fun of your writer­ly ambi­tions? He sug­gests call­ing them up to “fire them” with­out delay.

• Live in the library. Don’t live in your “god­damn com­put­ers.” He may not have gone to col­lege, but his insa­tiable read­ing habits allowed him to “grad­u­ate from the library” at age 28.

• Fall in love with movies. Prefer­ably old ones.

• Write with joy. In his mind, “writ­ing is not a seri­ous busi­ness.” If a sto­ry starts to feel like work, scrap it and start one that does­n’t. “I want you to envy me my joy,” he tells his audi­ence.

• Don’t plan on mak­ing mon­ey. He and his wife, who “took a vow of pover­ty” to mar­ry him, hit 37 before they could afford a car (and he still nev­er got around to pick­ing up a license).

• List ten things you love, and ten things you hate. Then write about the for­mer, and “kill” the lat­er — also by writ­ing about them. Do the same with your fears.

• Just type any old thing that comes into your head. He rec­om­mends “word asso­ci­a­tion” to break down any cre­ative block­ages, since “you don’t know what’s in you until you test it.”

• Remem­ber, with writ­ing, what you’re look­ing for is just one per­son to come up and tell you, “I love you for what you do.” Or, fail­ing that, you’re look­ing for some­one to come up and tell you, “You’re not nuts like peo­ple say.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Ray Brad­bury: Lit­er­a­ture is the Safe­ty Valve of Civ­i­liza­tion

The Shape of A Sto­ry: Writ­ing Tips from Kurt Von­negut

John Steinbeck’s Six Tips for the Aspir­ing Writer and His Nobel Prize Speech

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Bayeux Tapestry Animated

in Animation, History | March 29th, 2012

We had to do it. We had to bring back a won­der­ful lit­tle ani­ma­tion of The Bayeux Tapes­try — you know, the famous embroi­dery that offers a pic­to­r­i­al inter­pre­ta­tion of the Nor­man Con­quest of Eng­land (1066) and the events lead­ing up to this piv­otal moment in medieval his­to­ry. Cur­rent­ly resid­ing in France, the tapes­try mea­sures 20 inch­es by 230 feet, and you can now see an ani­mat­ed ver­sion of the sto­ry it nar­rates. The clip above starts rough­ly halfway through the his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tive, with the appear­ance of Hal­ley’s Comet, and it con­cludes with the Bat­tle of Hast­ings in 1066. The video cre­at­ed by David New­ton began as a stu­dent project at Gold­smiths Col­lege.

P.S. Don’t miss the many cours­es in the His­to­ry sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es. They’re all from top flight uni­ver­si­ties.

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The Animation of Billy Collins’ Poetry: Everyday Moments in Motion

in Animation, Poetry, TED Talks | March 26th, 2012

The first time I saw Bil­ly Collins speak, he appeared at my col­lege con­vo­ca­tion, toward the end of his years as Unit­ed States Poet Lau­re­ate. Now, the sec­ond time I’ve seen Bil­ly Collins speak, he appears giv­ing this TEDTalk, “Every­day Moments, Caught in Time,” in which he makes fun of his own ten­den­cy to men­tion his years as Unit­ed States Poet Lau­re­ate. But he most­ly uses his fif­teen min­utes onstage in Long Beach in front of TED’s swoop­ing cam­eras to talk about how the Sun­dance Chan­nel ani­mat­ed five of his poems. A boost­er of poet­ry “off the shelf” and into pub­lic places — sub­ways, bill­boards, cere­al box­es — he fig­ured that even such an “unnat­ur­al and unnec­es­sary” merg­er could fur­ther the cause of elud­ing humanity’s “anti-poet­ry deflec­tor shields that were installed in high school.”

Collins also notes that the idea for the project stirred the embers of his “car­toon junkie” child­hood, when Bugs Bun­ny was his muse. Styl­is­ti­cal­ly, how­ev­er, the pro­duc­ers at the Sun­dance Chan­nel kept quite far indeed from the Mer­rie Melodies. These ani­mat­ed poems opt instead for an aes­thet­ic that takes pieces of visu­al real­i­ty and repur­pos­es them in ways we don’t expect: look at the real arm slith­er­ing across the pages in the first poem, the tan­gi­ble-look­ing dolls and doll envi­ron­ments of the sec­ond poem, or the drift­ing pho­to­graph­ic cutouts of the third. Not to get too grand about it, but isn’t this what poet­ry itself is sup­posed to do? Don’t the words them­selves also cut out frag­ments of actu­al exis­tence and posi­tion them, recon­tex­tu­al­ize them, and move them around in ways that sur­prise us? The sub­stance of these shorts — foun­tain pens, fig­urines, car keys, paper boats, match­sticks, mice — may seem like the last word in mun­dan­i­ty, but per­ceived through the dif­fer­ent­ly “real” lens­es of Collins’ poet­ry and this unusu­al ani­ma­tion, they inspire curios­i­ty again.

Relat­ed con­tent:

3 Year Old Recites Poem, “Litany” By Bil­ly Collins

Bill Mur­ray Reads Poet­ry At Con­struc­tion Site

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.