Buddy Holly at Age 12: His First Recording

in Music | June 27th, 2011

If you’re look­ing for­ward to this week’s release of the Bud­dy Hol­ly cov­er album Rave On (and you should be, if only for John Doe’s awe­some take on Peg­gy Sue Got Mar­ried), then you’ll def­i­nite­ly get a kick out of the croon­er’s first ever known record­ing. The song is from 1949, and the sound qual­i­ty isn’t great, but no amount of sta­t­ic can block out the kid’s famil­iar war­ble. His voice may not have changed yet, but he’s already Bud­dy Hol­ly.

We have added this Bud­dy Hol­ly clip to our col­lec­tion of 250 Cul­tur­al Icons. There you’ll find great writ­ers, daz­zling film­mak­ers and musi­cians, bril­liant philoso­phers and sci­en­tists pre­sent­ed in video and audio.

via Fla­vor­wire

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

The Long Lost Video Game of Paris Review Editor George Plimpton?

in Literature, Random | June 8th, 2011

At first we thought it was either an Onion sto­ry or a joke: Mul­ti-tal­ent­ed author, actor, sports enthu­si­ast and Paris Review edi­tor George Plimp­ton (1927–2003) also achieved con­sid­er­able suc­cess in anoth­er medi­um: video games.

The Mil­lions points us to George Plimp­ton’s video “Fal­con­ry,” the game Plimp­ton helped devel­op for Cole­co­V­i­sion in the ear­ly 80’s. You can play it here, but first be sure to catch up on the back­sto­ry (click “Back­sto­ry” but­ton below the “Play” but­ton), which may or may not involve high stakes dou­ble-cross­es, hard­core sleuthings, and the child­hood obses­sions of fre­quent Dai­ly Show guest John Hodg­man. Max­i­mum Fun has also post­ed an old com­mer­cial for the game, which we’ve repost­ed above. (Our apolo­gies for the poor qual­i­ty. It was appar­ent­ly ripped from an old VHS tape).

If it turns out that we’ve been punked, it was worth it, if only for the joys of typ­ing the words “Plimp­ton,” “Fal­con­ry” and “Cole­co­V­i­sion” all in one sen­tence. The game isn’t bad either.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Paris Review Inter­views Now Online

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

George Carlin’s “Modern Man” Rap

in Comedy | May 21st, 2011

Forty years after George Car­lin first stopped by The Tonight Show (1966), he made one of his last appear­ances, deliv­er­ing a rap/poem that’s clas­sic Car­lin, a hyp­not­ic riff on mod­ern life and soci­ety. The lyrics appear right below.

I’m a mod­ern man,
A man for the mil­len­ni­um,
Dig­i­tal and smoke free.
A diver­si­fied mul­ti­cul­tur­al post­mod­ern decon­struc­tion­ist,
Polit­i­cal­ly anatom­i­cal­ly and eco­log­i­cal­ly incor­rect.
I’ve been uplinked and down­loaded.
I’ve been inputted and out­sourced.
I know the upside of down­siz­ing.
I know the down­side of upgrad­ing.
I’m a high tech lowlife.
A cut­ting edge state-of-the-art bicoastal mul­ti­tasker,
And I can give you a giga­byte in a nanosec­ond. (The rest after the jump…)
(more…)

Kepler, Galileo & Nostradamus in Color, on Google

in Books, e-books, Google | May 19th, 2011

To date, Google Books has scanned 50,000 books from the 16th and 17th cen­turies. And by work­ing with great Euro­pean libraries (Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Library and the Nation­al Libraries of Flo­rence and Rome, to name a few), the Moun­tain View-based com­pa­ny expects to index hun­dreds of thou­sands of pre-1800 titles in the com­ing years.

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, most his­tor­i­cal texts have been scanned in black & white. But these new­fan­gled scans are being made in col­or, giv­ing read­ers any­where the chance to read old­er books “as they actu­al­ly appear” and to appre­ci­ate the “great flow­er­ing of exper­i­men­ta­tion in typog­ra­phy that took place in the 16th and 17th cen­turies.”

Some of the foun­da­tion­al texts now avail­able in col­or include Nos­tradamus’ Prog­nos­ti­ca­tion nou­velle et pre­dic­tion por­ten­teuse (1554), Johannes Kepler’s Epit­o­me Astrono­mi­ae Coper­ni­canae from 1635, and Galileo’s Sys­tema cos­micum from 1641. All texts can be viewed online, or down­loaded as a PDF (although the PDF’s lack col­or)…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google “Art Project” Brings Great Paint­ings & Muse­ums to You

Google Lit Trips

Google to Pro­vide Vir­tu­al Tours of 19 World Her­itage Sites

via Inside Google Books

How TV Ruined Your Life

in Television | May 18th, 2011

The world is in sham­bles. Civ­i­liza­tion is in free fall. And it’s all because of that ubiq­ui­tous elec­tron­ic box spew­ing Snoo­ki and Ozzy and The Don­ald into the homes of inno­cent peo­ple, pol­lut­ing their minds and cor­rupt­ing their souls. Or any­way, that’s what British come­di­an Char­lie Brook­er thinks.

Brook­er is in a posi­tion to know. He makes his liv­ing off the offend­ing medi­um, writ­ing and appear­ing on such caus­tic pro­grams as Char­lie Brooker’s Screen­wipe, his hilar­i­ous and mer­ci­less bit­ing of the hand that feeds. Ear­li­er this year BBC Two pre­sent­ed its fol­low-up to Screen­wipe, a six-part series titled How TV Ruined Your Life. The result is one part social satire, two parts rav­ing luna­cy, as the mis­an­throp­ic Brooker—remote con­trol clenched furi­ous­ly in hand—takes us on a man­ic chan­nel-surf­ing tour of the deprav­i­ty.

In the win­dow above we fea­ture Episode 3: “Aspi­ra­tion.” The oth­er five install­ments can be accessed through the links below. Warn­ing: How TV Ruined Your Life con­tains harsh lan­guage that would not be safe for work. (But then, if you’re watch­ing half-hour com­e­dy shows at the office you’re prob­a­bly skat­ing on thin ice any­way.)

Episode 1: “Fear”
Episode 2: “The Life­cy­cle”
Episode 4: “Love”
Episode 5: “Progress”
Episode 6: “Knowl­edge”

Way of Life: Rare Footage of the Hiroshima Aftermath, 1946

in Film, History, Life, Video - Politics/Society | May 3rd, 2011

The recent 9.0‑magnitude Tōhoku earth­quake and tsuna­mi, and sub­se­quent Fukushi­ma nuclear acci­dents were among the most dev­as­tat­ing envi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ters in record­ed his­to­ry. The imme­di­ate con­se­quences are fright­en­ing, but their full, long-term impact remains an unset­tling mys­tery.

This, of course, isn’t the first time Japan has faced a nuclear emer­gency. After the World War II atom­ic bomb­ings of Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki, the U.S. gov­ern­ment record­ed the raw after­math of Hiroshi­ma in can­did, grim detail (while Hol­ly­wood was busy lam­poon­ing Amer­i­ca’s nuclear obses­sion). Filmed in the spring of 1946 by the Depart­ment of Defense, Way of Life doc­u­ments how the peo­ple of Hiroshi­ma adapt­ed to life after the atom­ic bomb. Though the archival footage lacks sound, its imagery — mov­ing, heart­break­ing, deeply human — speaks vol­umes about the del­i­cate dual­i­ty of despair and resilience.

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of cross-dis­ci­pli­nary inter­est­ing­ness. She writes for Wired UK, The Atlantic and Desig­nOb­serv­er, and spends a great deal of time on Twit­ter.

The Discipline of D.E.: Gus Van Sant Adapts a Story by William S. Burroughs

in Film, Literature | April 19th, 2011

Fans of film­mak­er Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunt­ing, My Own Pri­vate Ida­ho, Milk) will love this 1982 short film – The Dis­ci­pline of D.E. – based on a sto­ry by William S. Bur­roughs. And fans of Bur­roughs him­self will par­tic­u­lar­ly love its theme: The “D.E.” in the title stands for “Doing Easy,” a qua­si-Bud­dhist notion best explained by the short­’s koan-like clos­ing ques­tion, “How fast can you take your time, kid?”

But it is to fans of Bur­roughs’ brief per­for­mance in the 1989 Van Sant clas­sic Drug­store Cow­boy that we ded­i­cate this post. Play­ing the kind, ruined dope-fiend Father Mur­phy — i.e. him­self — Bur­roughs per­fect­ly embod­ied both the allure of his junky aes­thet­ic and its under­ly­ing despair. In the six years between The Dis­ci­pline of D.E. and Drug­store Cow­boy, Van Sant seemed to have trad­ed his youth­ful infat­u­a­tion with a cult hero for the mourn­ful appre­ci­a­tion of a wise but bro­ken man. We high­ly rec­om­mend view­ing both films togeth­er.

Final­ly, in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online, you will also find Bur­roughs the Movie (a doc­u­men­tary by Howard Bruck­n­er) and The Junky’s Christ­mas, a short clay­ma­tion film writ­ten by William S. Bur­roughs and pro­duced by Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

Every Step You Take, They’ll Be Tracking You

in Media, Technology | April 12th, 2011

Malte Spitz, a mem­ber of the Green Par­ty in Ger­many, sued Deutsche Telekom and forced the com­pa­ny to hand over six months of record­ed cell phone data. The results were fair­ly eye open­ing.

Dur­ing a five month peri­od, DT tracked Spitz’s loca­tion and phone usage 35,000 times. If that sounds like a lot, you’re right. And it looks even worse when you visu­al­ize the data. Zeit Online took this geolo­ca­tion data and com­bined it with pub­licly-avail­able infor­ma­tion relat­ing to Spitz’s polit­i­cal life (e.g., his Twit­ter feeds and blog entries) and pro­duced a screen­cast that doc­u­ments two days in the life of the Green Par­ty politi­cian. The YouTube video above traces his steps. But the visu­als on the Zeit site let you track Spitz’s move­ments around Ger­many with fin­er pre­ci­sion. The moral of the sto­ry: Every step you take, your tel­co is like­ly track­ing you, whether you give con­sent or not. The New York Times has more on the sto­ry…

Kinetic Strandbeests on the Beach: Alchemy of Art & Engineering

in Art | March 30th, 2011

Since 1990, Dutch artist Theo Jansen has giv­en life to Strand­beests. They’re made of noth­ing more than a mass of yel­low plas­tic tubes. But these kinet­ic sculp­tures feed off of the wind. They roam the beach­es on their own. And they evolve. Soon enough, Jansen says, you will see Strand­beests liv­ing in herds, and who knows what the alche­my of art and engi­neer­ing will bring next.

This clip comes from a BBC pro­duc­tion, Nature Knows Best, that aired late last year. You can also catch Jansen intro­duc­ing his self-pro­pelling beach ani­mals at TED.

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NASA Captures Giant Solar Storm

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | March 2nd, 2011

Last Thurs­day, the sun deliv­ered the goods, unleash­ing a beau­ti­ful solar flare. The erup­tions last­ed some­where around 90 min­utes, and the plas­ma flares were all cap­tured in high def by NASA’s Solar Dynam­ics Obser­va­to­ry, a project ded­i­cat­ed to study­ing the sun and its impact on space weath­er. This footage comes soon after anoth­er ground­break­ing NASA video – the First 360 Degree View of the Sun.

via Pop­u­lar Sci­ence