George Orwell Got a B- at Harvard, When Michael Crichton Submitted an Orwell Essay as His Own

in Literature | January 24th, 2014

Images via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In his 2002 mem­oir, Trav­els, Michael Crich­ton took his read­ers back sev­er­al decades, to the ear­ly 1960s when, as a Har­vard stu­dent, he tried an inter­est­ing lit­tle exper­i­ment in his Eng­lish class. He recalled:

I had gone to col­lege plan­ning to become a writer, but ear­ly on a sci­en­tif­ic ten­den­cy appeared. In the Eng­lish depart­ment at Har­vard, my writ­ing style was severe­ly crit­i­cized and I was receiv­ing grades of C or C+ on my papers. At eigh­teen, I was vain about my writ­ing and felt it was Har­vard, and not I, that was in error, so I decid­ed to make an exper­i­ment. The next assign­ment was a paper on Gul­liv­er’s Trav­els, and I remem­bered an essay by George Orwell that might fit. With some hes­i­ta­tion, I retyped Orwell’s essay and sub­mit­ted it as my own. I hes­i­tat­ed because if I were caught for pla­gia­rism I would be expelled; but I was pret­ty sure that my instruc­tor was not only wrong about writ­ing styles, but poor­ly read as well. In any case, George Orwell got a B- at Har­vard, which con­vinced me that the Eng­lish depart­ment was too dif­fi­cult for me.

I decid­ed to study anthro­pol­o­gy instead. But I doubt­ed my desire to con­tin­ue as a grad­u­ate stu­dent in anthro­pol­o­gy, so I began tak­ing premed cours­es, just in case.

Most like­ly Crich­ton sub­mit­ted Orwell’s essay 1946 essay, “Pol­i­tics vs. Lit­er­a­ture: An Exam­i­na­tion of Gul­liv­er’s Trav­els.”  He even­tu­al­ly went to Har­vard Med­ical School but kept writ­ing on the side. Per­haps get­ting a grade just a shade below Orwell’s B- gave Crich­ton some bizarre con­fir­ma­tion that he could one day make it as a writer.

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Look­ing for free, pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read audio books from Audible.com, includ­ing works by Crich­ton and Orwell? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

via Red­dit

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Orwell’s Five Great­est Essays (as Select­ed by Pulitzer-Prize Win­ning Colum­nist Michael Hiltzik)

T.S. Eliot, as Faber & Faber Edi­tor, Rejects George Orwell’s “Trot­skyite” Nov­el Ani­mal Farm (1944)

George Orwell Explains in a Reveal­ing 1944 Let­ter Why He’d Write 1984

George Orwell’s Har­row­ing Race to Fin­ish 1984 Before His Death

The Problem with Facebook: “It’s Keeping Things From You”

in Media, Web/Tech | January 21st, 2014

You liked our Face­book page. Now you’re expect­ing to see our mate­r­i­al in your Face­book news feed. It’s not an unrea­son­able expec­ta­tion. But it’s also very unlike­ly to hap­pen. As Derek Muller, the cura­tor of sci­ence video blog Ver­i­ta­si­um, explains very artic­u­late­ly in the video above, “The prob­lem with Face­book is that it’s keep­ing things from you. You don’t see most of what’s post­ed by your friends or the pages you fol­low.” And that’s part­ly because, Muller goes on to explain, Face­book is over­whelmed by con­tent, and busy try­ing to find ways to mon­e­tize its news­feed. Fol­low­ing a change to an algo­rithm in Decem­ber, the prob­lem has only got­ten worse. (We have 245,000 fol­low­ers, and maybe 7,000 — or 2% — see a post on aver­age in Jan­u­ary, as com­pared to 30,000 in Novem­ber.) If you care about how you use Face­book — either to con­nect with friends, or gath­er infor­ma­tion — the video is well worth watch­ing. It clear­ly lets you know that Face­book is con­trol­ling your social media expe­ri­ence, when it should be you.

Note: If you want to make sure you receive all of our posts, get our dai­ly email or sign up for our RSS feed. Face­book does­n’t con­trol those … yet.

You can read more about this issue at Slate.

Paintings by Caravaggio, Vermeer, & Other Great Masters Come to Life in a New Animated Video

in Art | January 16th, 2014

With his short video “Beau­ty,” the Ital­ian direc­tor Rino Ste­fano Tagli­afier­ro takes “a series of well select­ed images from the tra­di­tion of pic­to­r­i­al beau­ty” and uses the “fire of dig­i­tal inven­tion” to ani­mate sen­ti­ments lost on immo­bile can­vass­es. In the video above, you will see works by Car­avag­gio, Ver­meer, Rubens and oth­ers put into dig­i­tal motion. A com­plete list of the paint­ings includ­ed in the video can be found here. Plus there’s a tum­blr with ani­mat­ed GIFs of the paint­ings.  Find more infor­ma­tion, includ­ing a man­i­festo for the video (in Ital­ian), on Tagli­afier­ro’s web site. An Eng­lish trans­la­tion of the man­i­festo appears below the jump.

via Digg

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch an Ani­mat­ed Ver­sion of Rid­ley Scott’s Blade Run­ner Made of 12,597 Water­col­or Paint­ings

Michelangelo’s Hand­writ­ten 16th-Cen­tu­ry Gro­cery List

Take a 3D Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca and Oth­er Art-Adorned Vat­i­can Spaces

Free: The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art and the Guggen­heim Offer 474 Free Art Books Online

(more…)

View the Passport Photos of F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf & Other Cultural Icons

in Travel | January 16th, 2014

Click images to enlarge.

If you’ve had the for­tune of trav­el­ling for leisure, you know that there are three types of memen­toes that unfail­ing­ly elic­it pangs of nos­tal­gia. The first are pho­tographs. The sec­ond are the run­ning com­men­taries we write down in jour­nals and blogs, doc­u­ment­ing the var­i­ous impres­sions, thoughts, and minu­ti­ae we expe­ri­ence. The third are pass­ports. When brim­ming with exit stamps and tat­tered visas, pass­ports are the mark of a world­ly trav­eller: a grimy, well-worn sign to fel­low hos­tel guests that you’re want­ed com­pa­ny when the time comes to com­pare sto­ries.

Today, we bring you sev­er­al pass­port scans from a num­ber of the 20^th century’s best-known cul­tur­al fig­ures. Above, you can see a trav­el doc­u­ment belong­ing to Vir­ginia Woolf, who received a 1923 stamp from the For­eign Office. Below we have John Lennon’s entry card into the U.S., which the Bea­t­le received after a bat­tle for per­ma­nent res­i­den­cy that last­ed for sev­er­al years.

Then Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Depart­ment of Defense-issued ID card, under the name of Nor­ma Jean DiMag­gio. Fur­ther down are the pass­port pho­tos of writ­ers James Joyce and F. Scott Fitzger­ald, accom­pa­nied by their respec­tive fam­i­lies, who were trav­el­ling under the same doc­u­ments. Last­ly, we present to you the most impres­sive­ly dec­o­rat­ed pass­port pages of all, belong­ing to Ella Fitzger­ald:

John Lennon

Mar­i­lyn

James Joyce and Fam­i­ly

The Fitzger­alds

Ella Fitzger­ald

For more icon­ic pass­port pho­tos, head to Vintage.es or The Untrav­elled Paths blog.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Footage of Scott and Zel­da Fitzger­ald From the 1920s

Ella Fitzger­ald Sings ‘Sum­mer­time’ by George Gersh­win, Berlin 1968

James Joyce Plays the Gui­tar, 1915

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

In 1968, Artist Imagines What John, Paul, George & Ringo Will Look Like When They’re 64

in Art, Music | January 15th, 2014

When I get old­er los­ing my hair,
Many years from now,
Will you still be send­ing me a valen­tine
Birth­day greet­ings bot­tle of wine?

Paul McCart­ney’s wist­ful song “When I’m Six­ty-Four” was released on the Bea­t­les’ 1967 album Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band. The next year, an artist named Michael Leonard tried to imag­ine what the young musi­cians might look like four decades lat­er — on their 64th birth­days. We nev­er got a chance to fig­ure out whether he sized up Lennon and Har­ri­son cor­rect­ly. But we know that Paul, even at 71 today, nev­er got jow­ly. And Ringo nev­er went the suit route. You can see for your­self when the two per­form at the Gram­mys on Jan­u­ary 26.

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Relat­ed con­tent 

Flash­mob Per­forms The Bea­t­les’ ‘Here Comes the Sun’ in Madrid Unem­ploy­ment Office

Eric Clapton’s Iso­lat­ed Gui­tar Track From the Clas­sic Bea­t­les Song, ‘While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps’ (1968)

The Bea­t­les: Unplugged Col­lects Acoustic Demos of White Album Songs (1968)

Jerry Seinfeld and Louis CK in Small Cars and Big Yachts, Getting Coffee

in Comedy | January 13th, 2014

Sea­son 3 of Come­di­ans in Cars Get­ting Cof­fee kicks off with Jer­ry Sein­feld and his pal Louis CK pil­ing into a very small 1959 Fiat Jol­ly and tak­ing a leisure­ly (death) ride through New York City. Even­tu­al­ly, they escape the city and wind up at an unex­pect­ed place — aboard CK’s yacht. There, they share a cap­puc­ci­no, nav­i­gate var­i­ous nau­ti­cal dan­gers, crack their sig­na­ture jokes, and kib­itz the day away. Not a bad way to pass some time. If you’d like to see Jer­ry and Louis togeth­er in anoth­er con­text, see our pre­vi­ous post: Sein­feld, Louis C.K., Chris Rock, and Ricky Ger­vais Dis­sect the Craft of Com­e­dy (NSFW).

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sur­re­al Short Films of Louis C.K., 1993–1999

How the Great George Car­lin Showed Louis CK the Way to Suc­cess (NSFW)

David Lynch Teach­es Louis C.K. How to Host The David Let­ter­man Show

Watch a Super Cut of Wes Anderson’s Signature Slo-Mo Shots

in Film | January 12th, 2014

When you watch a director’s work for a while, you get to know his/her sig­na­ture tricks — the themes and cam­era work that appear again and again. A cou­ple years ago, we fea­tured a video called Wes Ander­son // FROM ABOVE, a mon­tage cap­tur­ing Anderson’s pen­chant for the aer­i­al shot, a move that con­tributes to the light­ness, play­ful­ness and quirk­i­ness of his films. Now comes a super cut of Ander­son­’s slo-mo shots, com­piled by Ale­jan­dro Prul­lan­sky, set to The Shins’ song, “New Slang.” If you’re look­ing for a good overview of Wes Ander­son­’s fil­mog­ra­phy, we’d encour­age you to watch this series: 7 Video Essays on Wes Anderson’s Films: Rush­more, The Roy­al Tenen­baums & More.

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send cul­tur­al curiosi­ties your way, every day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wes Anderson’s First Short Film: The Black-and-White, Jazz-Scored Bot­tle Rock­et (1992)

Watch Wes Anderson’s Charm­ing New Short Film, Castel­lo Cav­al­can­ti, Star­ring Jason Schwartz­man

Has Wes Ander­son Sold Out? Can He Sell Out? Crit­ics Take Up the Debate

100 Years of Rock in Less Than a Minute: From Gospel to Grunge

in History, Music | January 8th, 2014

Click the image above and you’ll enter an interactive/moving graph­ic that gives you a fair­ly nice geneal­o­gy of rock n roll and the many forms of music it lat­er spawned. The graph­ic starts you with the blues, appalachi­an folk, and blue­grass. Even­tu­al­ly you hit the 1950s and the advent of rock. Then you keep trav­el­ing through time, reach­ing the hard rock, glam rock and punk of the 70s; the pow­er met­al and emerg­ing grunge of the 80s; the post met­al and neo folk of the 90s; and beyond. At any point, you can click the pause but­ton, click on the name of a par­tic­u­lar musi­cal genre (eg Gotha­bil­ly), and hear a sam­ple of the music. When you’re done, you might want to check out some of the relat­ed items below:

A His­to­ry of Rock ‘n’ Roll in 100 Riffs

The Evo­lu­tion of the Rock Gui­tar Solo: 28 Solos, Span­ning 50 Years, Played in 6 Fun Min­utes

The His­to­ry of Music Told in Sev­en Rapid­ly Illus­trat­ed Min­utes

The Sto­ry of the Gui­tar: The Com­plete Three-Part Doc­u­men­tary

via Digg

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send cul­tur­al curiosi­ties your way, every day.

Barry White’s Philosophy of Music and Making Love, Animated

in Animation, Music | January 8th, 2014

Blank on Blank returns with an ani­mat­ed inter­view with Bar­ry White, the singer-song­writer who rose to promi­nence dur­ing the 1970s, record­ing songs that put us all in a lov­ing mood. With hits like “Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love Baby,” “You’re the First, the Last, My Every­thing,” and “Love Theme” (record­ed by his 40-piece orches­tral group The Love Unlim­it­ed Orches­tra), White reached right into our bed­room and tried to nur­ture the best parts of human­i­ty and sub­due the worst. As he says in the ani­mat­ed inter­view above, “When a man is mak­ing love, the last thing he thinks about is war!” (Yes, it’s a gen­dered com­ment, but, let’s face it, it’s almost always men that screw up the world.) Oth­er artists and authors fea­tured in the Blank on Blank ani­mat­ed series include Kurt Cobain, Grace Kel­ley, Janis Joplin, Ray Charles, The Beast­ie Boys, David Fos­ter Wal­lace, Jim Mor­ri­son & Dave Brubeck.

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send cul­tur­al curiosi­ties your way, every day.

Benjamin Bratton Explains “What’s Wrong with TED Talks?” and Why They’re a “Recipe for Civilizational Disaster”

in Science, TED Talks | January 7th, 2014

TED Talks — they give your “dis­cov­ery-seek­ing brain a lit­tle hit of dopamine;” make you “feel part of a curi­ous, engaged, enlight­ened, and tech-savvy tribe;” almost giv­ing you the sen­sa­tion that you’re attend­ing a “new Har­vard.” That was the hype around TED Talks a few years ago. Since then, the buzz around TED has mer­ci­ful­ly died down, and the orga­ni­za­tion has gone on, stag­ing its con­fer­ences around the globe. It’s been a while since we’ve fea­tured a TED Talk whose ideas seem worth spread­ing. But today we have one for you. Intrigu­ing­ly, it’s called “What’s Wrong with TED Talks?” It was pre­sent­ed by Ben­jamin Brat­ton, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Visu­al Arts at UCSD, at none oth­er than TEDxSanDiego 2013. Brat­ton makes his case (above) in 11 min­utes — well with­in the 18 allot­ted min­utes — by argu­ing that TED does­n’t just help pop­u­lar­ize ideas. Instead, it changes and cheap­ens the agen­da for sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy and tech­nol­o­gy in Amer­i­ca. He begins to frame the prob­lem by telling a sto­ry:

I was at a pre­sen­ta­tion that a friend, an astro­physi­cist, gave to a poten­tial donor. I thought the pre­sen­ta­tion was lucid and com­pelling.… After the talk the spon­sor said to him, “you know what, I’m gonna pass because I just don’t feel inspired …you should be more like Mal­colm Glad­well.”

Think about it: an actu­al sci­en­tist who pro­duces actu­al knowl­edge should be more like a jour­nal­ist who recy­cles fake insights! This is beyond pop­u­lar­iza­tion. This is tak­ing some­thing with val­ue and sub­stance and cor­ing it out so that it can be swal­lowed with­out chew­ing. This is not the solu­tion to our most fright­en­ing prob­lems – rather this is one of our most fright­en­ing prob­lems.

Brat­ton then con­cludes, “astro­physics run on the mod­el of Amer­i­can Idol is a recipe for civ­i­liza­tion­al dis­as­ter.” If “our best and bright­est waste their time – and the audi­ence’s time – danc­ing like infomer­cial hosts,” the cost will be too high, and our most dif­fi­cult prob­lems won’t get solved.

In watch­ing Brat­ton’s talk, I found myself agree­ing with many things. Sure, TED Talks are often “a com­bi­na­tion of epiphany and per­son­al tes­ti­mo­ny … through which the speak­er shares a per­son­al jour­ney of insight and real­iza­tion, its tri­umphs and tribu­la­tions.” Yes, the talks offer view­ers a pre­dictably “vic­ar­i­ous insight, a fleet­ing moment of won­der, an inkling that maybe it’s all going to work out after all.” Maybe TED Talks some­times pro­vide noth­ing more than “mid­dle­brow megachurch info­tain­ment.” But is TED real­ly chang­ing the agen­da for sci­en­tists, tech­nol­o­gists and philoso­phers? Are schol­ars actu­al­ly choos­ing their intel­lec­tu­al projects based on any­thing hav­ing to do with TED (or TED-inspired ways of think­ing)? Is some­one at the NIH dol­ing out mon­ey based on whether a project will even­tu­al­ly yield 15 good min­utes of diver­sion and enter­tain­ment? Short of empir­i­cal evi­dence that actu­al­ly applies to TED (the anec­dote above does­n’t), it feels like Brat­ton is giv­ing TED way too much cred­it. Maybe TED mat­ters on YouTube. But let’s get real, its pull large­ly starts and ends there. You can read a com­plete tran­script of Brat­ton’s talk here.

via The Guardian

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