A View From the Room Where Melville Wrote Moby Dick (Plus a Free Celebrity Reading of the Novel)

in Audio Books, Books, Literature | April 11th, 2013

It’s in Pitts­field, Mass­a­chu­setts, right in the midst of the Berk­shires. Need­less to say, not a drop of water in sight.

Now that I’ve got your atten­tion, let me give you an update on The Moby Dick Big Read project. Since we high­light­ed the project last fall, all 135 chap­ters of the great Amer­i­can nov­el have been read by celebri­ties like Til­da Swin­ton, Stephen Fry, Mary Oliv­er, and Simon Cal­low. And now the com­plete set of audio record­ings are online and ready for free down­load. Get them here:  iTunes, Sound­cloud, RSS Feed, or the Big Read web site itself.

We start you off with Tilda’s read­ing of Chap­ter 1 right below.

Pho­to above comes to us via @stevesilberman

Artist Shepard Fairey Curates His Favorite YouTube Videos

in Art, Music | April 10th, 2013

In a video for MOCA, the “defin­ing muse­um of con­tem­po­rary art” in Los Ange­les, Shep­ard Fairey, the graph­ic design­er and illus­tra­tor best known for the Oba­ma Hope poster of 2008, spent a few min­utes rap­ping about the YouTube videos that have inspired him, both per­son­al­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly. He starts with one we’ve fea­tured here before  — Saul Bass’ Pitch for the Redesign of Ma Bel­l’s Logo. Read all about that fas­ci­nat­ing 1969 project here.

Next up comes the 1981 music video for Blondie’s “Rap­ture” — momen­tous because it was the first rap video ever aired on MTV and because it fea­tures an appear­ance by graf­fi­ti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, who stepped in for Grand­mas­ter Flash when he inex­plic­a­bly went MIA.

Now let’s roll George Clin­ton’s video for “Atom­ic Dog” (1982), an inspi­ra­tion to Fairey because it lay­ers 1980s-video game imagery on top of prison scenes, cre­at­ing a “tem­plate for what a lot of gang­ster rap­pers would embrace lat­er.” Call it the ur-gangs­ta rap video.

Final­ly, Shep­ard refers to videos by The Sex Pis­tols, the Eng­lish punk band formed in 1975. But when it comes to select­ing a par­tic­u­lar clip, he leaves us hang­ing. So, giv­en that curat­ing YouTube videos is our every­day gig, hope you don’t mind if we lay some “God Save the Queen” on you. Enjoy.

via Boing Boing

Humans of New York: Street Photography as a Celebration of Life

in Life, Photography | April 8th, 2013

These days any yahoo with a cell phone and access to the Inter­net fan­cies him or her­self a Hen­ri Carti­er-Bres­son, Ruth Orkin or Helen Levitt, but true street pho­tog­ra­phy involves more than just being in the right place at the right time. Bran­don Stan­ton, the self-taught cre­ator of the wild­ly pop­u­lar Humans of New York blog, has the ded­i­ca­tion as well as the eye and the tech­ni­cal mas­tery. His curios­i­ty and com­pas­sion are abun­dant, but what real­ly sets his work apart is its 21st cen­tu­ry imme­di­a­cy.

Dai­ly, Stan­ton wan­ders the streets of New York, approach­es strangers and asks if he can take some pic­tures. A few hours lat­er, those pho­tos light up Face­book, with cap­tions drawn from the brief col­lab­o­ra­tion between sub­ject and pho­tog­ra­ph­er. In short order, each post gar­ners hun­dreds of likes and com­ments. Nasty feed­back is a rar­i­ty. Stan­ton’s fans seem con­tent to fol­low his lead, find­ing much to cel­e­brate in straight­for­ward pos­es of par­ents with chil­dren, fes­tive­ly attired seniors, and proud odd­balls.

Cer­tain inter­ac­tions beg longer nar­ra­tives, which Stan­ton relates in the “Sto­ries” sec­tion of his web­site. These pieces offer char­ac­ter insights, and often doc­u­ment how the pho­to­graph came to be.

His gift for empa­thy is best exem­pli­fied in his por­trait of Black Wolf, The Drag­on­mas­ter. I’ve run into this dude every­where from the Coney Island Mer­maid Parade to Cen­tral Park, but con­fess that I found his visu­al pre­sen­ta­tion off putting. Unlike me, Stan­ton looked until he found some­thing uni­ver­sal in the delib­er­ate freak­ish­ness.

…we all need to feel impor­tant. Not New York impor­tant, nec­es­sar­i­ly, but impor­tant. We all need to know that there’s a place in this world that only we can fill. Some peo­ple need big­ger places than oth­ers, but every­one needs a place—a hole in the uni­verse that only they can fill. This need is so deep and food-like and so human that we will do any­thing to fill it. We’ll go crazy to feel impor­tant. A pro­tec­tive, evo­lu­tion­ary sort of crazy. When the body has no food, it will break down mus­cle to feed itself. When the ego has no food, it will break down the mind to feed itself. If we have no place in this world, we’ll with­draw from this world, and inhab­it one where we have a place.

Stan­ton’s lens pro­vides the import, yield­ing images so arrest­ing, they stop us in our tracks. Appre­ci­ate his col­lec­tion of extra­or­di­nary humans, then chal­lenge your­self to notice such spec­i­mens in the wild on a dai­ly basis.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Find­ing Vivian Maier: New Doc­u­men­tary Reveals the Vision of Obscure Chica­go Street Pho­tog­ra­ph­er

Watch as Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Steve McCur­ry Shoots the Very Last Roll of Kodachrome

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Jazz Pho­tog­ra­phy and The Film He Almost Made About Jazz Under Nazi Rule

Ayun Hal­l­i­day hopes every Glam­our Don’t will some­day find her­self a Human of New York. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

MOOC Interrupted: Top 10 Reasons Our Readers Didn’t Finish a Massive Open Online Course

in MOOCs | April 5th, 2013

On Tues­day, we gave you a Visu­al­iza­tion of the Big Prob­lem for MOOCs, which comes down to this: low com­ple­tion rates. To be clear, the com­ple­tion rates aren’t so much a prob­lem for you; they’re more a prob­lem for the MOOC providers and their busi­ness mod­els. But let’s not get bogged down in that. We end­ed our post by ask­ing you to share your own expe­ri­ence with MOOCs — par­tic­u­lar­ly, to tell us why you start­ed and stopped a MOOC. We got close to 50 thought­ful respons­es. And below we’ve sum­ma­rized the 10 most com­mon­ly-cit­ed rea­sons. Here they are:

1.) Takes Too Much Time: Some­times you enroll in a MOOC, only to dis­cov­er that it takes way too much time. “Just didn’t have time to do all the work.” “As a full-time work­ing adult, I found it exceed­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to watch hours upon hours of video lec­tures.” That’s a refrain we heard again and again.

2.) Assumes Too Much Knowl­edge: Oth­er times you enroll in a MOOC, only to find that it requires too much base knowl­edge, like a knowl­edge of advanced math­e­mat­ics. That makes the course an instant non-starter. So you opt out. Sim­ple as that.

3.) Too Basic, Not Real­ly at the Lev­el of Stan­ford, Oxford and MIT: On the flip side, some say that their MOOCs weren’t real­ly oper­at­ing on a seri­ous uni­ver­si­ty lev­el. The course­work was too easy, the work­load and assign­ments weren’t high enough. A lit­er­a­ture course felt more like a glo­ri­fied book club. In short, the cours­es weren’t the real uni­ver­si­ty deal.

4.) Lec­ture Fatigue: MOOCs often rely on for­mal video lec­tures, which, for many of you, is an“obsolete and inef­fi­cient for­mat.” And they’re just some­times bor­ing. MOOCs would be bet­ter served if they relied more heav­i­ly on inter­ac­tive forms of ped­a­gogy. Val put it well when she said, “We should not try to bring a brick and mor­tar lec­ture to your liv­ing room. Use the resources avail­able and make the learn­ing engag­ing with short­er seg­ments.… The goal should be to teach and teach bet­ter. If one of these online uni­ver­si­ties can fig­ure that out, then the mon­ey will fol­low.”

5.) Poor Course Design: You signed up for a MOOC and did­n’t know how to get going. One stu­dent relat­ed his expe­ri­ence: “From day one I had no idea what I was sup­posed to do. There were instruc­tions all over the place. Groups to join with phan­tom mem­bers that nev­er com­ment­ed or inter­act­ed, and a syl­labus that was being revised as the course went through it’s first week.”

6.) Clunky Community/Communication Tools: This has been the Achilles’ heel of online learn­ing for years, and so far the MOOCs haven’t quite fig­ured it out. It’s not unusu­al to hear this kind of com­ment from stu­dents: “I find that the dis­cus­sion forums aren’t very use­ful or engag­ing. They are not a very good sub­sti­tute for active in-class dis­cus­sion.”

7.) Bad Peer Review & Trolls: Because MOOCs are so big, you often don’t get feed­back from the pro­fes­sor. Instead you get it from algo­rithms and peers. And some­times the peers can be less than con­struc­tive. One read­er writes: “I chose to stop doing the peer response sec­tion of the class due to some stu­dents being treat­ed rude­ly [by oth­er stu­dents]; in fact, the entire peer response sec­tion of the class is done in a way I would NEVER have asked of stu­dents in a class­room.… [T]here is no involve­ment of the pro­fes­sor or TA’s in mon­i­tor­ing the TORRENT of com­plaints about peer reviews.”

8.) Sur­prised by Hid­den Costs: Some­times you dis­cov­er that free MOOCs aren’t exact­ly free. They have hid­den costs. Brooke dropped her MOOC when she real­ized that the read­ings were from the pro­fes­sor’s expen­sive text­book.

9.) You’re Just Shop­ping Around: You shop for cours­es, which involves reg­is­ter­ing for many cours­es, keep­ing some, and drop­ping oth­ers. That inflates the low com­ple­tion rate, but it gives you free­dom. As one read­er said, “I am very, very hap­py about being able to be so picky.”

10.) You’re There to Learn, Not for the Cre­den­tial at the End: Some­times you do every­thing (watch the videos, do the read­ings, etc.) but take the final exam. In a cer­tain way, you’re audit­ing, which suits many of you just fine. It’s pre­cise­ly what you want to do. But that, too, makes the low com­ple­tion rates look worse than they maybe are.

Thanks to every­one who took the time to par­tic­i­pate. We real­ly appre­ci­ate it! And if you’re look­ing for a new MOOC, don’t miss our list, 300 Free MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties (Many Offer­ing Cer­tifi­cates).

Rock and Roll Heart, 1998 Documentary Retraces the Remarkable Career of Lou Reed

in Music | April 1st, 2013

From the album that launched a mil­lion bands to pos­si­bly the worst rap song of all time—from per­fect, career-reviv­ing col­lab­o­ra­tions to abysmal career-killing ones—Lou Reed’s rock and roll run has seen its share of highs and rock-bot­tom lows. Reed war­rants com­par­i­son with Neil Young for his longevi­ty, hit-and-miss pro­lif­ic out­put, and gad­fly abil­i­ty to flit from project to project, sound to sound, while still sound­ing dis­tinc­tive­ly him­self. And like Young, there are too many phas­es, too many albums, great and ter­ri­ble, to real­ly do the life’s work jus­tice in any one ret­ro­spec­tive.

But the 1998 doc­u­men­tary above, from the PBS Amer­i­can Master’s series, makes an admirable attempt. Called Rock and Roll Heart after Reed’s 1976 album and sin­gle of the same name, the film lets Reed tell much of his own sto­ry: his teenage years as a devo­tee of 50s rock and doo wop, his col­lege-days asso­ci­a­tion with poet Del­more Schwartz, episodes in his life that very much came to define his art, which mar­ries a fine­ly-tuned lit­er­ary sen­si­bil­i­ty to the sim­plic­i­ty and tune­ful­ness of clas­sic rock and roll. Reed’s warped, lyri­cal takes on streetlife psy­chodra­ma and his love for drone notes and feed­back, how­ev­er, took rock song­writ­ing places it had nev­er been before. At the open­ing of the film, Reed deliv­ers an epi­gram­mat­ic gem about him­self: “I dis­liked groups, dis­liked author­i­ty. Uh… I was made for rock and roll.”

Reed’s dis­like of groups trans­lates through­out his career into a rep­u­ta­tion for dif­fi­cul­ty that sent col­lab­o­ra­tors run­ning from him, either because he fired them (as he most famous­ly did to the bril­liant John Cale) or because they’d had enough of his ego­tism. Nonethe­less, many of those same people—Cale included—came back to work with Reed again. Cale shows up above, telling sto­ries of the gen­e­sis of The Vel­vet Underground—of him and Reed play­ing “Wait­ing for the Man” and “Hero­in” on a Harlem street­corner on vio­la and acoustic gui­tar. Oth­er con­fr­eres of Reed’s genius also appear in inter­views: Velvet’s drum­mer Mau­reen Tuck­er, David Bowie, Pat­ti Smith, Jim Car­roll, Philip Glass, and of course the man Reed cred­its most for his suc­cess, Andy Warhol, in archival footage from 1966.

The love/hate pair­ing of The Vel­vets and Nico gets an air­ing, and there’s loads of film of Lou per­form­ing, but at 73 min­utes, Rock and Roll Heart feels a lit­tle thin, and its tone is almost entire­ly cel­e­bra­to­ry, elid­ing the musi­cal low points (like the stab at rap) and end­ing with Reed’s for­ays into the­ater with Time Rock­er. But these are for­giv­able flaws. There’s no way to cov­er all the ground Reed’s bro­ken (he’s released an album rough­ly every year since 1972). And at 71 (if he can recov­er from that Metal­li­ca mash-up), he’s still at it—as he says in an inter­view above, until he dies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear New­ly-Released Mate­r­i­al from the Lost Acetate Ver­sion of The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico (1966)

Philip Glass & Lou Reed at Occu­py Lin­coln Cen­ter: An Art­ful View

Andy Warhol Quits Paint­ing, Man­ages The Vel­vet Under­ground (1965)

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

Creative Commons Announces “School of Open” with Courses to Focus on Digital Openness

in Education, Law, Online Courses, Wikipedia | March 15th, 2013

Just in time to cel­e­brate Open Edu­ca­tion Week, here comes a new ini­tia­tive, the School of Open, a learn­ing envi­ron­ment focused on increas­ing our under­stand­ing of “open­ness” and the ben­e­fits it brings to cre­ativ­i­ty and edu­ca­tion in the dig­i­tal age.

Devel­oped by the col­lab­o­ra­tive edu­ca­tion plat­form Peer to Peer Uni­ver­si­ty (P2PU) with orga­ni­za­tion­al sup­port from Cre­ative Com­mons, the School of Open aims to spread under­stand­ing of the pow­er of this brave new world through free online class­es.

We hear about it all the time: Uni­ver­sal access to research, edu­ca­tion and culture—all good things, with­out a doubt—made pos­si­ble by things like open source soft­ware, open edu­ca­tion­al resources and the like.

But what are these var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties and what do they mean? How can we all learn more and get involved?

School of Open has rolled the con­ver­sa­tion back to square one so that under­stand­ing the basics is easy. Through a list of new cours­es cre­at­ed by users and experts, peo­ple can learn more about what “open­ness” means and how to apply it. There are stand-alone cours­es on copy­right, writ­ing for Wikipedia, the col­lab­o­ra­tive envi­ron­ment of open sci­ence, and the process behind mak­ing open video.

These free cours­es start March 18 (sign up by click­ing the “start course” but­ton by Sun­day, March 17):

• Copy­right 4 Edu­ca­tors (US)
• Copy­right 4 Edu­ca­tors (AUS)
• Cre­ative Com­mons for K‑12 Edu­ca­tors
• Writ­ing Wikipedia Arti­cles: The Basics and Beyond

These free cours­es are open for you to take at any time:

• Get a CC license. Put it on your web­site
• Open Sci­ence: An Intro­duc­tion
• Open data for GLAMs
• Intro to Open­ness in Edu­ca­tion
• A Look at Open Video
• Con­tribut­ing to Wiki­me­dia Com­mons
• Open Detec­tive

The approach at P2PU encour­ages peo­ple to work togeth­er, assess one another’s work, and pro­vide con­struc­tive feed­back. It’s a great place to learn how to design your own course, because the design process is bro­ken down step-by-step, and course con­tent is vet­ted by users and P2PU staff. The tuto­r­i­al shows you how the process works.

P2PU is also a place to learn more about what is open con­tent and what is not. Par­tic­i­pants in the ongo­ing course Open Detec­tive learn to iden­ti­fy open source media and then demon­strate mas­tery by mak­ing some­thing of their own using only open con­tent. What if you’re real­ly, real­ly proud of the resource you cre­ate in Open Detec­tive? Take it to the next lev­el and get a Cre­ative Com­mons license to make your work avail­able with­out giv­ing up full copy­right. You guessed it, there’s a course for that too.

Open Edu­ca­tion Week is in full swing (through Mon­day the 18^th). There’s a full sched­ule of webi­na­rs to check out, includ­ing dis­cus­sions about the impli­ca­tions of open access for polit­i­cal struc­tures like the World Bank, and the impact of open, glob­al teach­ing in Syr­ia.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Total Noob to Learn­ing Online? P2PU’s Peer-to-Peer Cours­es Hold Your Hand

700 Free Online Cours­es

A Meta List of MOOCs

What Entered the Pub­lic Domain in 2013? Zip, Nada, Zilch!

Noam Chom­sky Spells Out the Pur­pose of Edu­ca­tion

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Vis­it her web­site at .

Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling

in Animation, Film, Literature, Writing | March 11th, 2013

Every­one from Kurt Von­negut to Ernest Hem­ing­way has shared his ideas on craft­ing sol­id nar­ra­tive writ­ing. One of the most recent sages to join the canon is Emma Coates, Pixar’s for­mer sto­ry artist. Her list of the 22 Rules of Good Sto­ry­telling gleaned on the job has been gain­ing Inter­net trac­tion since it was pub­lished last June.

Twen­ty two? That’s twen­ty more than Tol­stoy. I know some peo­ple enjoy a lot of direc­tion, but those of us who rel­ish bush­whack­ing start to chafe when the road is that heav­i­ly sign­post­ed.

By all means, sam­ple Coates’ Pixar 22 (see them all below). Apply any and all that work for you, though don’t get your hopes up if your ulti­mate goal is to sell a sto­ry to Dream­works or Dis­ney. They’ve got for­mu­las of their own.

As for myself, I am repur­pos­ing #4 — the only rule that does­n’t con­tain an implied order or some deriv­a­tive of “you” — as an extreme­ly jol­ly par­lor game.

Here it is in its orig­i­nal form:

Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until final­ly ___.

While it’s entire­ly pos­si­ble to fill in those blanks with the fruits of your own imag­i­na­tion, it’s a true joy to sub­ject one’s most cher­ished lit­er­ary, cin­e­mat­ic, and dra­mat­ic works to this retroac­tive Mad Lib. (It works pret­ty well with estab­lished reli­gions too, but I’m not here to tread on the faith­ful’s toes.)

Warn­ing: there are some major spoil­ers below. Now that that’s out of the way, let the guess­ing begin!

Once upon a time there was a poor fam­i­ly in Okla­homa. Every day, they tried to make it work on their hard­scrab­ble farm. One day their last speck of top soil blew away. Because of that, they decid­ed to seek a bet­ter life in Cal­i­for­nia. Because of that, every able bod­ied young male left the fam­i­ly. Until final­ly their old­est daugh­ter ends up breast­feed­ing a starv­ing stranger.

How about this?

Once upon a time there was a poor young sol­dier. Every day, he dreamed of ris­ing above his sta­tion. One day he met a beau­ti­ful rich girl named Daisy. Because of that, he bought a man­sion where he threw enor­mous par­ties. Because of that, he hooked back up with Daisy. Until final­ly, he gets shot to death in his pool.

There’s no deny­ing that it fits this one like a glove:

Once upon a time there was a kid. Every day, he played with his cow­boy doll. One day he got a space­man doll. Because of that, his inter­est in the cow­boy took a seri­ous nose­dive. Because of that, the cow­boy and the space­man each swore vengeance upon the oth­er’s house. Until final­ly there’s a blood­bath from which no one emerges unscathed.

I could keep go on for­ev­er, but I don’t want to come off as a toy hog. Instead, I invite you to share your filled out Num­ber Fours in the com­ments section…or tell us which of the oth­er twen­ty-one seem most suit­ed to its intend­ed pur­pose.

Pixar’s 22 Rules for Sto­ry­telling

#1: You admire a char­ac­ter for try­ing more than for their suc­cess­es.

#2: You got­ta keep in mind what’s inter­est­ing to you as an audi­ence, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be v. dif­fer­ent.

#3: Try­ing for theme is impor­tant, but you won’t see what the sto­ry is actu­al­ly about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.

#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until final­ly ___.

#5: Sim­pli­fy. Focus. Com­bine char­ac­ters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re los­ing valu­able stuff but it sets you free.

#6: What is your char­ac­ter good at, com­fort­able with? Throw the polar oppo­site at them. Chal­lenge them. How do they deal?

#7: Come up with your end­ing before you fig­ure out your mid­dle. Seri­ous­ly. End­ings are hard, get yours work­ing up front.

#8: Fin­ish your sto­ry, let go even if it’s not per­fect. In an ide­al world you have both, but move on. Do bet­ter next time.

#9: When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T hap­pen next. Lots of times the mate­r­i­al to get you unstuck will show up.

#10: Pull apart the sto­ries you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to rec­og­nize it before you can use it.

#11: Putting it on paper lets you start fix­ing it. If it stays in your head, a per­fect idea, you’ll nev­er share it with any­one.

#12: Dis­count the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvi­ous out of the way. Sur­prise your­self.

#13: Give your char­ac­ters opin­ions. Passive/malleable might seem lik­able to you as you write, but it’s poi­son to the audi­ence.

#14: Why must you tell THIS sto­ry? What’s the belief burn­ing with­in you that your sto­ry feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.

#15: If you were your char­ac­ter, in this sit­u­a­tion, how would you feel? Hon­esty lends cred­i­bil­i­ty to unbe­liev­able sit­u­a­tions.

#16: What are the stakes? Give us rea­son to root for the char­ac­ter. What hap­pens if they don’t suc­ceed? Stack the odds against.

#17: No work is ever wast­ed. If it’s not work­ing, let go and move on — it’ll come back around to be use­ful lat­er.

#18: You have to know your­self: the dif­fer­ence between doing your best & fuss­ing. Sto­ry is test­ing, not refin­ing.

#19: Coin­ci­dences to get char­ac­ters into trou­ble are great; coin­ci­dences to get them out of it are cheat­ing.

#20: Exer­cise: take the build­ing blocks of a movie you dis­like. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?

#21: You got­ta iden­ti­fy with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?

#22: What’s the essence of your sto­ry? Most eco­nom­i­cal telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

via Boing­Bo­ing

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day was not raised to ques­tion author­i­ty.

The Physics Professor, the Glamour Model, and a Whole Suitcase Full of Trouble

in Physics, Random | March 9th, 2013

From the annals of Why Smart Peo­ple Do Dumb Things: The New York Times has a long piece on Paul Framp­ton, a the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na-Chapel Hill, who meets a Czech mod­el online, then, rather gullibly, trav­els to South Amer­i­ca to get to know her in per­son. Instead of find­ing love in La Paz, Framp­ton winds up in a dilap­i­dat­ed Buenos Aires prison. It’s a bizarre tale, a sto­ry of hubris, naivete, lust, and decep­tion all rolled into one. Grab a cof­fee, set aside some time, and have a read.

Find us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and we’ll deliv­er our posts right to your vir­tu­al doorstep. Or sign up for our Dai­ly Email!

Physical Attraction: Marriage Proposal Comes in the Form of a Physics Paper

in Life, Physics | February 26th, 2013

On red­dit, a user wrote yes­ter­day, “My boyfriend of 7 years and I are both physi­cists. Here’s how he pro­posed to me.” Yes, the mar­riage pro­pos­al is a physics paper of sorts, called “Two Body Inter­ac­tions: A Lon­gi­tu­di­nal Study,” that con­cludes:

The sum­ma­ry of the find­ings of the study are pre­sent­ed in Fig­ure 1 and that that the project hap­pi­ness is upward with high con­fi­dence. Tak­ing these results into account, the author pro­pos­es to Christie the indef­i­nite con­tin­u­a­tion of the study. The sub­jects response to their pro­pos­al should be indi­cat­ed below [by check­ing the “Yes” or “No” box].

Bren­dan McMoni­gal and Christie Nelan (pic­tured here) met at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Syd­ney sev­en years ago. They will tie the knot this com­ing May, and we hope you’ll wish them the best.…

via Boing­Bo­ing and @stevesilberman

Édith Piaf’s Moving Performance of ‘La Vie en Rose’ on French TV, 1954

in Music | February 25th, 2013

Édith Piaf’s life was any­thing but rosy. Born in a Parisian slum, she was aban­doned by her moth­er and lived for awhile in a broth­el run by her grand­moth­er. As a teenag­er she sang on the streets for mon­ey. She was addict­ed to alco­hol and drugs for much of her life, and her lat­er years were marred by chron­ic pain. Through it all, Piaf man­aged to hold onto a basi­cal­ly opti­mistic view of life. She sang with a lyri­cal aban­don that seemed to tran­scend the pain and sor­row of liv­ing.

On April 3, 1954 Piaf was the guest of hon­or on the French TV show La Joie de Vivre. She was 38 years old but looked much old­er. She had recent­ly under­gone a gru­el­ing series of “aver­sion ther­a­py” treat­ments for alco­holism, and was by that time in the habit of tak­ing mor­phine before going onstage. Cor­ti­sone treat­ments for arthri­tis made the usu­al­ly wire-thin singer look puffy. But when Piaf launch­es into her sig­na­ture song, “La Vie en Rose” (see above), all of that is left behind.

Nine years after this per­for­mance, when Piaf died, her friend Jean Cocteau said of her: “Like all those who live on courage, she did­n’t think about death–she defied it. Only her voice remains, that splen­did voice like black vel­vet.”

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