The BBC Creates Step-by-Step Instructions for Knitting the Iconic Dr. Who Scarf: A Document from the Early 1980s

in Fashion, Television | December 5th, 2024

When Jon Per­twee rein­car­nat­ed into Tom Bak­er in 1974, the Fourth Doc­tor of the pop­u­lar sci-fi show Doc­tor Who ditched the fop­pish look of vel­vet jack­ets and frilly shirts, and went for the “Roman­tic adven­tur­er” style, with flop­py felt hat, long over­coats and, most icon­i­cal­ly, his mul­ti­col­ored scarf.

Fan leg­end has it that cos­tume design­er James Ache­son picked up a load of mul­ti-col­or wool and asked knit­ter Bego­nia Pope to cre­ate a scarf, and Pope, per­haps mis­hear­ing, used *all* the wool, result­ing in a scarf that ran 12 feet long. The mis­take was per­fect, and sud­den­ly many UK grand­moth­ers were being asked by their grand­chil­dren to recre­ate their hero’s look.

The above memo isn’t dat­ed, but comes from some­time in the ear­ly ‘80s when the BBC sent detailed instruc­tions to a fan’s moth­er on mak­ing the scarf. (Click here, then click again, to view the doc­u­ment in a larg­er for­mat.) The col­ors include camel, rust, bronze, mus­tard, grey, green and pur­ple and should be knit­ted with size four nee­dles (that’s #9 US size). The requests must have come reg­u­lar­ly, because a sim­i­lar memo is reprint­ed from many years lat­er to anoth­er fan’s fam­i­ly.

The orig­i­nal scarf only last­ed a few episodes, then was altered, replaced, and sub­tly changed as the show went on. There were stunt scarves for stand-ins.

Come Sea­son 18, cos­tume design­er June Hud­son rethought the entire cos­tume and stream­lined the col­ors to three: rust, wine, and pur­ple, to match the Doctor’s more swash­buck­ling look. It also became the longest scarf of the series, some 20 feet.

The fol­low­ing year, the Doc­tor rein­car­nat­ed again into a crick­et-jumper and striped trouser-wear­ing young blonde man. The Scarf Years were over.

For a very in-depth look at the scarves, includ­ing Pan­tone col­or ref­er­ences and wool brands, there is noth­ing bet­ter than DoctorWhoScarf.com. So, get knit­ting, Who-vians!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Doc­tor Who First Start­ed as a Fam­i­ly Edu­ca­tion­al TV Pro­gram (1963)

The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry of How Delia Der­byshire Cre­at­ed the Orig­i­nal Doc­tor Who Theme

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Beautiful 19th Century Maps of Dante’s Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, Paradise & More

in Art, Books, Literature, Religion | December 3rd, 2024

Even the least reli­gious among us speak, at least on occa­sion, of the cir­cles of hell. When we do so, we may or may not be think­ing of where the con­cept orig­i­nat­ed: Dan­te’s Div­ina Com­me­dia, or Divine Com­e­dy. We each imag­ine the cir­cles in our own way — usu­al­ly fill­ing them with sin­ners and pun­ish­ments inspired by our own dis­tastes — but some of Dan­te’s ear­li­er read­ers did so with a seri­ous­ness and pre­ci­sion that may now seem extreme. “The first cos­mo­g­ra­ph­er of Dante’s uni­verse was the Flo­ren­tine poly­math Anto­nio Manet­ti,” writes the Pub­lic Domain Review’s Hunter Dukes, who “con­clud­ed that hell was 3246 miles wide and 408 miles deep.” A young Galileo sug­gest­ed that “the Inferno’s vault­ed ceil­ing was sup­port­ed by the same phys­i­cal prin­ci­ples as Brunelleschi’s dome.”

In 1855, the aris­to­crat sculp­tor-politi­cian-Dante schol­ar Michelan­ge­lo Cae­tani pub­lished his own pre­cise artis­tic ren­der­ings of not just the Infer­no, but also the Pur­ga­to­rio and Par­adiso, in La mate­ria del­la Div­ina com­me­dia di Dante Alighieri dichiara­ta in VI tav­ole, or The Divine Com­e­dy of Dante Alighieri Described in Six Plates.

“The first plate offers an overview of Dante’s cos­mog­ra­phy, lead­ing from the low­est cir­cle of the Infer­no up through the nine heav­en­ly spheres to Empyre­an, the high­est lev­el of Par­adise and the dwelling place of God,” writes Dukes. “The Infer­no is visu­al­ized with a cut­away style,” its cir­cles “like geo­log­i­cal lay­ers”; ter­raced like a wed­ding cake, “Pur­ga­to­ry is ren­dered at eye lev­el, from the per­spec­tive of some lucky soul sail­ing by this island-moun­tain.”

In Par­adise, “the Infer­no and Pur­ga­to­ry are now small blips on the page, worlds left behind, encir­cled by Mer­cury, Venus, Sat­urn, and the oth­er heav­en­ly spheres.” At the very top is “the can­di­da rosa, an amphithe­ater struc­ture reserved for the souls of heav­en” where “Dante leaves behind Beat­rice, his true love and guide, to come face-to-face with God and the Trin­i­ty.” You can exam­ine these and oth­er illus­tra­tions at the Pub­lic Domain Review or Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty Library’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tions, which adds that they come from “a sec­ond ver­sion of this work pro­duced by Cae­tani using the then-nov­el tech­nol­o­gy of chro­molith­o­g­ra­phy” in 1872, “pro­duced in a some­what small­er for­mat by the monks at Monte Cassi­no” — a crew who could sure­ly be trust­ed to believe in the job.

via the Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed con­tent:

Visu­al­iz­ing Dante’s Hell: See Maps & Draw­ings of Dante’s Infer­no from the Renais­sance Through Today

An Illus­trat­ed and Inter­ac­tive Dante’s Infer­no: Explore a New Dig­i­tal Com­pan­ion to the Great 14th-Cen­tu­ry Epic Poem

Rarely Seen Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy Are Now Free Online, Cour­tesy of the Uffizi Gallery

A Dig­i­tal Archive of the Ear­li­est Illus­trat­ed Edi­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy (1487–1568)

Explore Divine Com­e­dy Dig­i­tal, a New Dig­i­tal Data­base That Col­lects Sev­en Cen­turies of Art Inspired by Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy

Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy: A Free Course from Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Creative Process: A Look Inside the Books & Techniques That Allowed His Art to Flow

in Art | November 29th, 2024

The sto­ry of Jean-Michel Basquiat has its unfor­tu­nate aspects: not just his pre­ma­ture death, but also the aggres­sive mar­ket­ing of his work and per­sona in the years lead­ing up to it. He became a vogue artist of the eight­ies in part because he could be tak­en as an unfil­tered voice of the street, craft­ing his out­sider-artis­tic visions on pure, untu­tored impulse. But despite gen­uine­ly hav­ing come from a poor, trou­bled back­ground — and lived accord­ing to what seems to have been a strong anti-aca­d­e­m­ic incli­na­tion — Basquiat’s pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment was much more seri­ous and delib­er­ate than many of his buy­ers could have imag­ined.

“At the begin­ning of his career, Basquiat went out and bought two books,” says the nar­ra­tor of the Make Art Not Con­tent video above, “two books that would inform all of his work.” One was Hen­ry Drey­fuss’ Sym­bol Source­book: An Author­i­ta­tive Guide to Inter­na­tion­al Graph­ic Sym­bols, which “would end up pro­vid­ing source mate­r­i­al for almost all of the 1,500 draw­ings and 600 paint­ings that he left behind.”

The oth­er was Robert Far­ris Thomp­son’s Flash of the Spir­it: Afro-Amer­i­can Art & Phi­los­o­phy, which gave him a “guid­ing ide­ol­o­gy” to get him past the inevitable artis­tic road­blocks: he could always return to “the under-rep­re­sen­ta­tion of black art in the estab­lished art world,” and “when you have a mes­sage, art comes out of you eas­i­ly.”

But Basquiat also had the advan­tage of being able to work very quick­ly indeed, which is what brought him to the atten­tion of Andy Warhol: “When one of the most pro­lif­ic artists of all time is jeal­ous of your speed, you know you’re doing some­thing right.” Think­ing too much inter­rupts your flow, but if you cre­ate as fast as you can, thoughts won’t have a chance to intrude. And remem­ber, “most of the flow that you will have while mak­ing art will come from all the things you are doing when you are not mak­ing art.” Sad­ly, Basquiat died before the age of the inter­net — but if he had­n’t, you can bet he’d be spend­ing his down­time absorb­ing some­thing more inter­est­ing than social media.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Paint­ings of Jean-Michel Basquiat: A Video Essay

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Chaot­ic Bril­liance of Jean-Michel Basquiat: From Home­less Graf­fi­ti Artist to Inter­na­tion­al­ly Renowned Painter

What Makes Basquiat’s Unti­tled Great Art: One Paint­ing Says Every­thing Basquiat Want­ed to Say About Amer­i­ca, Art & Being Black in Both Worlds

The Sto­ry of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Rise in the 1980s Art World Gets Told in a New Graph­ic Nov­el

The Odd Cou­ple: Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, 1986

Take a Close Look at Basquiat’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Art in a New 500-Page, 14-Pound, Large For­mat Book by Taschen

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

14 Self-Portraits by Pablo Picasso Show the Evolution of His Style: See Self-Portraits Moving from Ages 15 to 90

in Art | November 25th, 2024

15 years old (1896)

It’s pos­si­ble to look at Pablo Picas­so’s many for­mal exper­i­ments and peri­od­ic shifts of style as a kind of self-por­trai­ture, an exer­cise in shift­ing con­scious­ness and try­ing on of new aes­thet­ic iden­ti­ties. The Span­ish mod­ernist made a career of sweep­ing dra­mat­ic ges­tures, announce­ments to the world that he was going to be a dif­fer­ent kind of artist now, and every­one had bet­ter catch up. Even in his most abstract peri­ods, his work radi­at­ed with an emo­tion­al ener­gy as out­sized as the man him­self.

18 years old (1900)

Picasso’s ani­mus and vital­i­ty even per­me­ate his least invit­ing paint­ing, Les Demoi­selles d’Avignon, a broth­el scene with five geo­met­ri­cal women, two with African and Iber­ian masks; “a paint­ing of nudes in which there is scarce­ly a curve to be seen,” writes The Guardian’s Jonathan Jones, “elbows sharp as knives, hips and waists geo­met­ri­cal sil­hou­ettes, tri­an­gle breasts.” The 1907 self-por­trait of Picas­so at age 25 (below) comes from this peri­od, when the artist began his rad­i­cal Cubist break with every­thing that had gone before.

20 years old (1901)

An old­er ver­sion Les Demoi­selles d’Avignon con­tained a male fig­ure, “a stand-in for the painter him­self.” Even when he did not appear, at least not in a final ver­sion, in his own work, Picas­so saw him­self there: his moods, his height­ened per­cep­tions of real­i­ty as he imag­ined it.

The somber Blue Peri­od paint­ings, with their mood­i­ness and “themes of pover­ty, lone­li­ness, and despair,” cor­re­spond with his mourn­ing over the sui­cide of a friend, Cata­lan artist Car­los Casage­mas. The Picas­so in the 1901 por­trait fur­ther up looks gaunt, bro­ken, decades old­er than his 20 years. In the 1917 draw­ing fur­ther down, how­ev­er, the artist at 35 looks out at us with a haughty, smooth-cheeked youth­ful gaze.

24 years old (1906)

Dur­ing this time, as World War I end­ed, he had begun to design sets for Diaghilev’s famed Bal­lets Russ­es, where he met his wife, bal­le­ri­na Olga Khokhlo­va, and moved in com­fort­able cir­cles, though he was him­self des­per­ate for mon­ey. Each por­trait deliv­ers us a dif­fer­ent Picas­so, as he sheds one mask and puts on anoth­er. Trac­ing his cre­ative evo­lu­tion through his por­trai­ture means nev­er mov­ing in a straight line. But we do see his demeanor soft­en and round pro­gres­sive­ly over time in his por­traits. He seems to grow younger as he ages.

25 years old (1907)

The severe youth of 15, fur­ther up, brood­ing, world-weary, and already an accom­plished draughts­man and painter; the grim­ly seri­ous roman­tic at 18, above—these Picas­sos give way to the wide-eyed matu­ri­ty of the artist at 56 in 1938, at 83, 89, and 90, in 1972, the year before his death. That year he pro­duced an intrigu­ing series of eclec­tic self-por­traits unlike any­thing he had done before. See these and many oth­ers through­out his life below.

35 years old (1917)

56 years old (1938)

83 years old (1965)

85 years old (1966)

89 years old (1971)

90 years old (June 28, 1972)

90 years old (June 30, 1972)

90 years old (July 2, 1972)

90 years old (July 3, 1972)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Thou­sands of Pablo Picasso’s Works Now Avail­able in a New Dig­i­tal Archive

Pablo Picasso’s Mas­ter­ful Child­hood Paint­ings: Pre­co­cious Works Paint­ed Between the Ages of 8 and 15

What Makes Picasso’s Guer­ni­ca a Great Paint­ing?: Explore the Anti-Fas­cist Mur­al That Became a World­wide Anti-War Sym­bol

15-Year-Old Picas­so Paints His First Mas­ter­piece, “The First Com­mu­nion”

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

How the Ancient Romans Traveled Without Maps

in History, Maps, Travel | November 22nd, 2024

In an age when many of us could hard­ly make our way to an unfa­mil­iar gro­cery store with­out rely­ing on a GPS nav­i­ga­tion sys­tem, we might well won­der how the Romans could estab­lish and sus­tain their mighty empire with­out so much as a prop­er map. That’s the ques­tion addressed by the His­to­ria Mil­i­tum video above, “How Did Ancient Peo­ple Trav­el With­out Maps?” Or more to the point, how did they trav­el with­out scaled maps — that is, ones “in which the map’s dis­tances were pro­por­tion­al to their actu­al size in the real world,” like almost all those we con­sult on our screens today?

The sur­viv­ing maps from the ancient Roman world tend not to take great pains adher­ing to true geog­ra­phy. Yet as the Roman Empire expand­ed, lay­ing roads across three con­ti­nents, more and more Romans engaged in long-dis­tance trav­el, and for the most part seem to have arrived at their intend­ed des­ti­na­tions.

To do so, they used not maps per se but “itin­er­aries,” which tex­tu­al­ly list­ed towns and cities along the way and the dis­tance between them. By the fourth cen­tu­ry, “all main Roman roads along with 225 stop­ping sta­tions were com­piled in a doc­u­ment called the Itin­er­ar­i­um Antoni­ni, the Itin­er­ary of Emper­or Anto­nius Pius.”

This high­ly prac­ti­cal doc­u­ment includes most­ly roads that “passed through large cities, which pro­vid­ed bet­ter facil­i­ties for hous­ing, shop­ping, bathing, and oth­er trav­el­er needs.” With this infor­ma­tion, “a trav­el­er could copy the spe­cif­ic dis­tances and sta­tions they need­ed to reach their des­ti­na­tion.” Still today, some sev­en­teen cen­turies lat­er, “most peo­ple would­n’t use a paper scaled map for trav­el, but would instead break their jour­ney down into a list of sub­way sta­tions, bus stops, and inter­sec­tions.” And if you were to attempt to dri­ve across Europe, mak­ing a mod­ern-day Roman Empire road trip, you’d almost cer­tain­ly rely on the dis­tances and points of inter­est pro­vid­ed by the syn­the­sized voice read­ing aloud from the vast Itin­er­ar­i­um Antoni­ni of the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Map Show­ing How the Ancient Romans Envi­sioned the World in 40 AD

The Largest Ear­ly Map of the World Gets Assem­bled for the First Time: See the Huge, Detailed & Fan­tas­ti­cal World Map from 1587

Ancient Maps that Changed the World: See World Maps from Ancient Greece, Baby­lon, Rome, and the Islam­ic World

Down­load 131,000 His­toric Maps from the Huge David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Google Creates a Career Certificate That Prepares Students for Cybersecurity Jobs in 6 Months

in Google, Technology | November 21st, 2024

In 2023, Google launched sev­er­al online cer­tifi­cate pro­grams designed to help stu­dents land an entry-lev­el job, with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly hav­ing a col­lege degree. This includes a cer­tifi­cate pro­gram focused on Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, a field that stands poised to grow as com­pa­nies become more dig­i­tal and face mount­ing cyber­at­tacks.

Offered on Cours­er­a’s edu­ca­tion­al plat­form, the new Google Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate fea­tures eight online cours­es, which will col­lec­tive­ly help stu­dents learn how to:

• Under­stand the impor­tance of cyber­se­cu­ri­ty prac­tices and their impact for orga­ni­za­tions.
• Iden­ti­fy com­mon risks, threats, and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, as well as tech­niques to mit­i­gate them.
• Pro­tect net­works, devices, peo­ple, and data from unau­tho­rized access and cyber­at­tacks using Secu­ri­ty Infor­ma­tion and Event Man­age­ment (SIEM) tools.
• Gain hands-on expe­ri­ence with Python, Lin­ux, and SQL.

The Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate also now includes six new videos that explain how to use AI in cyber­se­cu­ri­ty. The videos cov­er every­thing from using arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to help iden­ti­fy bugs and sys­tem vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, to refin­ing code and pri­or­i­tiz­ing alerts with AI.

Stu­dents can take indi­vid­ual cours­es in these pro­fes­sion­al cer­tifi­cate pro­grams for free. (Above, you can watch a video from the first course in the cyber­se­cu­ri­ty cer­tifi­cate pro­gram, enti­tled “Foun­da­tions of Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty.”) How­ev­er, if you would like to receive a cer­tifi­cate, Cours­era will charge $49 per month (after an ini­tial 7‑day free tri­al peri­od). That means that the Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate, designed to be com­plet­ed in 6 months, will cost rough­ly $300 in total.

Once stu­dents com­plete the cyber­se­cu­ri­ty cer­tifi­cate, they can add the cre­den­tial to their LinkedIn pro­file, resume, or CV. As a perk, stu­dents in the U.S. can also con­nect with 150+ employ­ers (e.g., Amer­i­can Express, Col­gate-Pal­mo­live, T‑Mobile, Wal­mart, and Google) who have pledged to con­sid­er cer­tifi­cate hold­ers for open posi­tions. Accord­ing to Cours­era, this cer­tifi­cate can pre­pare stu­dents to become an entry-lev­el “cyber­se­cu­ri­ty ana­lyst and SOC (secu­ri­ty oper­a­tions cen­ter) ana­lyst.”

You can start a 7‑day free tri­al of the Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate here. Alter­na­tive­ly, if you sign up for Cours­era Plus, whose price has been reduced by 40% until Decem­ber 2, 2024, you can enroll in the cyber­se­cu­ri­ty cer­tifi­cate pro­gram at no charge. Find out more here.

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es and pro­grams, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

Discover the CIA’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual: A Timeless Guide to Subverting Any Organization with “Purposeful Stupidity” (1944)

in History, Politics | November 20th, 2024

I’ve always admired peo­ple who can suc­cess­ful­ly nav­i­gate what I refer to as “Kafka’s Cas­tle,” a term of dread for the many gov­ern­ment and cor­po­rate agen­cies that have an inor­di­nate amount of pow­er over our per­ma­nent records, and that seem as inscrutable and chill­ing­ly absurd as the labyrinth the char­ac­ter K nav­i­gates in Kafka’s last alle­gor­i­cal nov­el. Even if you haven’t read The Cas­tle, if you work for such an entity—or like all of us have reg­u­lar deal­ings with the IRS, the health­care and bank­ing sys­tem, etc.—you’re well aware of the dev­il­ish incom­pe­tence that mas­quer­ades as due dili­gence and ties us all in knots. Why do mul­ti-mil­lion and bil­lion dol­lar agen­cies seem unable, or unwill­ing, to accom­plish the sim­plest of tasks? Why do so many of us spend our lives in the real-life bureau­crat­ic night­mares sat­i­rized in The Office and Office Space?

One answer comes via Lau­rence J. Peter’s 1969 satire The Peter Prin­ci­ple—which offers the the­o­ry that man­agers and exec­u­tives get pro­mot­ed to the lev­el of their incompetence—then, David Brent-like, go on to ruin their respec­tive depart­ments. The Har­vard Busi­ness Review summed up dis­turb­ing recent research con­firm­ing and sup­ple­ment­ing Peter’s insights into the nar­cis­sism, over­con­fi­dence, or actu­al sociopa­thy of many a gov­ern­ment and busi­ness leader. But in addi­tion to human fail­ings, there’s anoth­er pos­si­ble rea­son for bureau­crat­ic dis­or­der; the con­spir­a­cy-mind­ed among us may be for­giv­en for assum­ing that in many cas­es, insti­tu­tion­al incom­pe­tence is the result of delib­er­ate sab­o­tage from both above and below. The ridicu­lous inner work­ings of most orga­ni­za­tions cer­tain­ly make a lot more sense when viewed in the light of one set of instruc­tions for “pur­pose­ful stu­pid­i­ty,” name­ly the once top-secret Sim­ple Sab­o­tage Field Man­u­al, writ­ten in 1944 by the CIA’s pre­cur­sor, the Office of Strate­gic Ser­vices (OSS).

Now declas­si­fied and freely avail­able on the CIA web­site, the man­u­al that the agency describes as “sur­pris­ing­ly rel­e­vant” was once dis­trib­uted to OSS offi­cers abroad to assist them in train­ing “cit­i­zen-sabo­teurs” in occu­pied coun­tries like Nor­way and France. Such peo­ple, writes Rebec­ca Onion at Slate, “might already be sab­o­tag­ing mate­ri­als, machin­ery, or oper­a­tions of their own ini­tia­tive,” but may have lacked the devi­ous tal­ent for sow­ing chaos that only an intel­li­gence agency can prop­er­ly mas­ter. Gen­uine lazi­ness, arro­gance, and mind­less­ness may sure­ly be endem­ic. But the Field Man­u­al asserts that “pur­pose­ful stu­pid­i­ty is con­trary to human nature” and requires a par­tic­u­lar set of skills. The cit­i­zen-sabo­teur “fre­quent­ly needs pres­sure, stim­u­la­tion or assur­ance, and infor­ma­tion and sug­ges­tions regard­ing fea­si­ble meth­ods of sim­ple sab­o­tage.”

You can read the full doc­u­ment here. Or find an easy-to-read ver­sion on Project Guten­berg here. To get a sense of just how “timeless”—according to the CIA itself—such instruc­tions remain, see the abridged list below, cour­tesy of Busi­ness Insid­er. You will laugh rue­ful­ly, then maybe shud­der a lit­tle as you rec­og­nize how much your own work­place, and many oth­ers, resem­ble the kind of dys­func­tion­al mess the OSS metic­u­lous­ly planned dur­ing World War II.

Orga­ni­za­tions and Con­fer­ences

• Insist on doing every­thing through “chan­nels.” Nev­er per­mit short-cuts to be tak­en in order to expe­dite deci­sions.
• Make “speech­es.” Talk as fre­quent­ly as pos­si­ble and at great length. Illus­trate your “points” by long anec­dotes and accounts of per­son­al expe­ri­ences.
• When pos­si­ble, refer all mat­ters to com­mit­tees, for “fur­ther study and con­sid­er­a­tion.” Attempt to make the com­mit­tee as large as pos­si­ble — nev­er less than five.
• Bring up irrel­e­vant issues as fre­quent­ly as pos­si­ble.
• Hag­gle over pre­cise word­ings of com­mu­ni­ca­tions, min­utes, res­o­lu­tions.
• Refer back to mat­ters decid­ed upon at the last meet­ing and attempt to re-open the ques­tion of the advis­abil­i­ty of that deci­sion.
• Advo­cate “cau­tion.” Be “rea­son­able” and urge your fel­low-con­fer­ees to be “rea­son­able” and avoid haste which might result in embar­rass­ments or dif­fi­cul­ties lat­er on.

Man­agers

• In mak­ing work assign­ments, always sign out the unim­por­tant jobs first. See that impor­tant jobs are assigned to inef­fi­cient work­ers.
• Insist on per­fect work in rel­a­tive­ly unim­por­tant prod­ucts; send back for refin­ish­ing those which have the least flaw.
• To low­er morale and with it, pro­duc­tion, be pleas­ant to inef­fi­cient work­ers; give them unde­served pro­mo­tions.
• Hold con­fer­ences when there is more crit­i­cal work to be done.
• Mul­ti­ply the pro­ce­dures and clear­ances involved in issu­ing instruc­tions, pay checks, and so on. See that three peo­ple have to approve every­thing where one would do.

Employ­ees

• Work slow­ly
• Work slow­ly.
• Con­trive as many inter­rup­tions to your work as you can.
• Do your work poor­ly and blame it on bad tools, machin­ery, or equip­ment. Com­plain that these things are pre­vent­ing you from doing your job right.
• Nev­er pass on your skill and expe­ri­ence to a new or less skill­ful work­er.

Note: This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in Decem­ber 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The CIA’s Style Man­u­al & Writer’s Guide: 185 Pages of Tips for Writ­ing Like a Spook

How the CIA Fund­ed & Sup­port­ed Lit­er­ary Mag­a­zines World­wide While Wag­ing Cul­tur­al War Against Com­mu­nism

The C.I.A.’s “Bes­tiary of Intel­li­gence Writ­ing” Sat­i­rizes Spook Jar­gon with Mau­rice Sendak-Style Draw­ings

How the CIA Secret­ly Used Jack­son Pol­lock & Oth­er Abstract Expres­sion­ists to Fight the Cold War

When the CIA Stud­ied Psy­chic Tech­niques to Alter Human Con­scious­ness & Unlock Time Trav­el: Dis­cov­er “The Gate­way Process”

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

Explore the World’s First 3D Replica of St. Peter’s Basilica, Made with AI

in Architecture, History, Technology | November 20th, 2024

In the trail­er below for the world’s first 3D repli­ca of St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca, Yves Ubel­mann speaks of using “AI for Good,” which isn’t just an ide­al, but also the name of a lab at Microsoft. Microsoft and Ubel­man’s dig­i­tal-preser­va­tion com­pa­ny Iconem were two of the par­tic­i­pants in that ambi­tious project, along with the Vat­i­can itself. Pope Fran­cis, writes AP’s Nicole Win­field, “has called for the eth­i­cal use of AI and used his annu­al World Mes­sage of Peace this year to urge an inter­na­tion­al treaty to reg­u­late it, argu­ing that tech­nol­o­gy lack­ing human val­ues of com­pas­sion, mer­cy, moral­i­ty and for­give­ness were too great.”

What bet­ter show of good faith in the tech­nol­o­gy than to allow AI to be used to bring the cen­ter of the faith Pope Fran­cis rep­re­sents to the world? In the near­ly 400 years since its com­ple­tion, of course, the world has always come to the cur­rent St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca, and will con­tin­ue to do so.

The 3D-repli­ca project “has been launched ahead of the Vatican’s 2025 Jubilee, a holy year in which more than 30 mil­lion pil­grims are expect­ed to pass through the basilica’s Holy Door, on top of the 50,000 who vis­it on a nor­mal day,” Win­field writes. But no mat­ter where in the world you hap­pen to be, you can vir­tu­al­ly enter St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca right now, and spend as long as you like, admir­ing the basil­i­ca itself, the cupo­la, Bernini’s St. Peter’s Bal­dachin, and Michelan­gelo’s Pietà, among oth­er fea­tures.

How­ev­er impor­tant (and atten­tion-draw­ing) arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence was as a tool in the cre­ation of this ultra-pre­cise “dig­i­tal twin” of St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca, the four-week process of cap­tur­ing every detail of the real struc­ture that could be cap­tured also neces­si­tat­ed the use of drones, lasers, and cam­eras tak­ing more than 400,000 dig­i­tal pho­tos. The “AI for Good Lab con­tributed advanced tools that refined the dig­i­tal twin with mil­lime­ter-lev­el accu­ra­cy, and used AI to help detect and map struc­tur­al vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties like cracks and miss­ing mosa­ic tiles,” says Microsoft­’s site. “The Vat­i­can over­saw the col­lab­o­ra­tion, ensur­ing the preser­va­tion of the Basil­i­ca as a cul­tur­al, spir­i­tu­al, and his­tor­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant site for years to come.”

It makes a cer­tain sense to apply the high­est tech­nol­o­gy of our time for the ben­e­fit of a build­ing known as the great­est archi­tec­tur­al mar­vel of its time. But in order to bet­ter appre­ci­ate the kind of knowl­edge that will be revealed by the 22 petabytes of infor­ma­tion that went into the dig­i­tal mod­el (which offers its own guid­ed tour) we’d do well to immerse our­selves first in what was already known about St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca. For a brief intro­duc­tion to the con­cep­tion and evo­lu­tion of this grand church as it stands today, we could do much worse than archi­tec­ture-and-his­to­ry YouTu­ber Manuel Bravo’s video “St Peter’s Basil­i­ca Explained.” If you watch it, don’t be sur­prised if you find your­self tempt­ed to engage in pro­longed explo­ration of the mod­el — or indeed, to book a vis­it to the real thing. Enter the dig­i­tal St. Peter’s here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

High-Res­o­lu­tion Walk­ing Tours of Italy’s Most His­toric Places: The Colos­se­um, Pom­peii, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca & More

3D Scans of 7,500 Famous Sculp­tures, Stat­ues & Art­works: Down­load & 3D Print Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

The Vat­i­can Library Goes Online and Dig­i­tizes Tens of Thou­sands of Man­u­scripts, Books, Coins, and More

Rome Reborn: A New 3D Vir­tu­al Mod­el Lets You Fly Over the Great Mon­u­ments of Ancient Rome

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Bertrand Russell’s Ten Commandments for Living Virtuously (1930)

in Education, Life, Philosophy | November 18th, 2024

Image by J. F. Horra­bin, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Bertrand Rus­sell may have lived his long life con­cerned with big top­ics in log­ic, math­e­mat­ics, pol­i­tics, and soci­ety, but that did­n’t keep him from think­ing seri­ous­ly about how to han­dle his own day-to-day rela­tion­ships. That hard­ly means he han­dled every such rela­tion­ship with per­fect aplomb: take note of his three divorces, the first of which was for­mal­ized in 1921, the year he mar­ried his lover Dora Black. Pos­sessed of sim­i­lar bohemi­an-reformer ideals — and, before long, two chil­dren — the cou­ple found­ed the exper­i­men­tal Bea­con Hill School in 1927, intent on encour­ag­ing their young pupils’ devel­op­ment as not just thinkers-in-train­ing but full human beings.

A few years lat­er, Rus­sell pub­lished his per­son­al “ten com­mand­ments” in a cul­ture mag­a­zine called Every­man, and you can read it in full in this 1978 issue of the Rus­sell Soci­ety News. (Go to page 5.)

“Every­body, I sup­pose, has his own list of virtues that he tries to prac­tice, and, when he fails to prac­tice them, he feels shame quite inde­pen­dent­ly of the opin­ion of oth­ers, so far at any rate as con­scious thought is con­cerned,” he writes by way of intro­duc­tion. “I have tried to put the virtues that I should wish to pos­sess into the form of a deca­logue,” which is as fol­lows:

1. Do not lie to your­self.
2. Do not lie to oth­er peo­ple unless they are exer­cis­ing tyran­ny.
3. When you think it is your duty to inflict pain, scru­ti­nize your rea­sons close­ly.
4. When you desire pow­er, exam­ine your­self close­ly as to why you deserve it.
5. When you have pow­er, use it to build up peo­ple, not to con­strict them.
6. Do not attempt to live with­out van­i­ty, since this is impos­si­ble, but choose the right audi­ence from which to seek admi­ra­tion.
7. Do not think of your­self as a whol­ly self-con­tained unit.
8. Be reli­able.
9. Be just.
10. Be good-natured.

In the full text, Rus­sell elab­o­rates on the think­ing behind each of these virtues.  “When you wish to believe some the­o­log­i­cal or polit­i­cal doc­trine which will increase your income, you will, if you are not very care­ful, give much more weight to the argu­ments in favor than to those against”: hence the impor­tance of not lying to your­self. When it comes to lying to oth­ers, not only should gov­ern­ments tell the truth to their sub­jects, “par­ents should tell the truth to their chil­dren, how­ev­er incon­ve­nient this may seem.” And fam­i­lies as in states, “those who are intel­li­gent but weak can­not be expect­ed to forego the use of their intel­li­gence in their con­flicts with those who are stu­pid but strong.”

Rus­sel­l’s fifth com­mand­ment also applies to rela­tion­ships between the old and the young, since “those who deal with the young inevitably have pow­er, and it is easy to exer­cise this pow­er in ways pleas­ing to the edu­ca­tor rather than use­ful to the child.” And by his eighth com­mand­ment, he means “to sug­gest a whole set of hum­drum but nec­es­sary virtues, such as punc­tu­al­i­ty, keep­ing promis­es, adher­ing to plans involv­ing oth­er peo­ple, refrain­ing from treach­ery even in its mildest forms.” Alas, “mod­ern edu­ca­tion, in less­en­ing the empha­sis on dis­ci­pline, has, I think, failed to pro­duce reli­able human beings where social oblig­a­tions are con­cerned.”

This “pre­scrip­tive empha­sis — notably the stress placed on the mer­its of some hum­ble virtues — may have been influ­enced then by his prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence of pro­gres­sive edu­ca­tion,” writes The Col­lect­ed Papers of Bertrand Rus­sell edi­tor Andrew Bone. But Rus­sell still revised his deca­logue long after he left the Bea­con Hill School in 1932, with world events of the sub­se­quent decades inspir­ing him to use it in the ser­vice of what he regard­ed as a lib­er­al world­view. One ver­sion broad­cast on the BBC in 1951 includes such com­mand­ments as “Do not feel absolute­ly cer­tain of any­thing,” “Find more plea­sure in intel­li­gent dis­sent than pas­sive agree­ment,” and “Do not use pow­er to sup­press opin­ions you think per­ni­cious, for if you do the opin­ions will sup­press you” — all of which more of the last few gen­er­a­tions of stu­dents could have done well to inter­nal­ize.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Bertrand Russell’s 10 Com­mand­ments for Liv­ing in a Healthy Democ­ra­cy

Bertrand Rus­sell: Author­i­ty and the Indi­vid­ual (1948)

Free: 356 Issues of Galaxy, the Groundbreaking 1950s Science Fiction Magazine

in Magazines, Sci Fi | November 13th, 2024

Along with Astound­ing Sci­ence Fic­tion and The Mag­a­zine of Fan­ta­sy and Sci­ence Fic­tion, Galaxy Mag­a­zine was one of the most impor­tant sci­ence fic­tion digests in 1950s Amer­i­ca. Ray Brad­bury wrote for it–including an ear­ly ver­sion of his mas­ter­piece Fahren­heit 451–as did Robert A. Hein­lein, Isaac Asi­mov, Fred­erik Pohl, Theodore Stur­geon, Cord­wain­er Smith, Jack Vance, and numer­ous oth­ers.

Now a fair­ly decent col­lec­tion of issues (356 in total) is avail­able for your perusal at archive.org for absolute­ly free. It’s not com­plete yet, but it’s close.

When Galaxy appeared in Octo­ber 1950, it promised a kind of sci­ence fic­tion dif­fer­ent from the space operas of pre­vi­ous decades. As an “annu­al report” writ­ten by pub­lish­er H.L. Gold pro­claimed,

…oth­er pub­lish­ers thought the idea of offer­ing mature sci­ence fic­tion in an attrac­tive, adult for­mat was down­right fun­ny. They knew what sold–shapely female endo­morphs with bronze bras, embat­tled male meso­morphs clad in mus­cle, and fright­ful alien mon­sters in search of a human soul.

And while Astound­ing Sci­ence Fic­tion was focused on technology–suited for an Amer­i­ca that had fun­da­men­tal­ly changed since WWII–H.L. Gold’s Galaxy focused on ideas, humor, satire, psy­chol­o­gy and soci­ol­o­gy. It also had one of the best pay rates in the indus­try, and offered some of its writ­ers exclu­sive con­tracts. And the writ­ers respond­ed in kind and fol­lowed their own obsessions–although Gold often pitched ideas.

(Iron­i­cal­ly, though immersed in sto­ries of inner and out­er space, Gold was an acute ago­ra­phobe, and stayed in his apart­ment, com­mu­ni­cat­ing by phone.)

After a wob­bly start graph­ics-wise, Gold hired Ed Emsh­willer in 1951 to paint cov­ers, whose often humor­ous style (e.g. this Christ­mas issue below) suit­ed the humor inside the issue.

Con­fi­dent in their sta­ble of writ­ers, Galaxy pro­duced the won­der­ful birth­day cov­er at the top, fea­tur­ing car­i­ca­tures of every­body from Brad­bury to Asi­mov. There’s also a guide to see who’s who.

A series of editors–including Fred­erik Pohl–took over from Gold after a car acci­dent in 1961, and by 1977–eight years after Pohl’s departure–the mag­a­zine was on its decline. There were more iter­a­tions, reprints, antholo­gies, and online ver­sions, but the essen­tial run is here. And those first ten years changed Amer­i­can sci­ence fic­tion for­ev­er, paving the way for exper­i­men­tal writ­ers like Philip K. Dick and William Gib­son.

You could start with the Ray Brad­bury sto­ry (“The Fire­man”) we told you about, or Robert A. Heinlein’s “The Pup­pet.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Enter a Huge Archive of Amaz­ing Sto­ries, the World’s First Sci­ence Fic­tion Mag­a­zine, Launched in 1926

The Ency­clo­pe­dia of Sci­ence Fic­tion: 17,500 Entries on All Things Sci-Fi Are Now Free Online

Isaac Asimov’s Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy: Hear the 1973 Radio Drama­ti­za­tion

Sci-Fi Radio: Hear Radio Dra­mas of Sci-Fi Sto­ries by Ray Brad­bury, Philip K. Dick, Ursu­la K. LeGuin & More (1989)

X Minus One: Hear Clas­sic Sci-Fi Radio Sto­ries from Asi­mov, Hein­lein, Brad­bury & Dick

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.