Filmmaker Errol Morris Gives Us “11 Excellent Reasons Not to Vote?”

in Current Affairs, Politics | November 1st, 2012

All through­out this inter­minably long pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cycle, which has been going on since at least 2010, I’ve had a laser-like focus on polit­i­cal news. You might even call it a death grip. Because I’m a pol­i­tics junkie. It’s a dis­ease, I know, I rec­og­nize I need help, and I’ll get it—after Novem­ber 6th. As a pol­i­tics junkie, I am sub­ject to a cer­tain severe irri­ta­tion: pro­found exas­per­a­tion with those myth­i­cal beasts called “unde­cid­ed vot­ers,” who are even more galling than third par­ty vot­ers are to hyper-par­ti­sans. “What?” I shout at the radio, when one of these cryp­to-zoo­log­i­cal crea­tures calls in. “You dream­ers, you obliv­i­ous block­head­ed dream­ers!” I shout, and oth­er things. Yes, in my mania, I’ve shout­ed these things at the radio, because how can peo­ple not have made up their minds months ago, been glued to inter­net news and opin­ion for hours, pored over minis­cule pol­i­cy details, destroyed their eye­sight, col­lapsed their spine under the weight of civic duty? How, indeed. But per­haps (and every pol­i­tics junkie fears this pos­si­bil­i­ty), the unde­cid­ed vot­ers aren’t idiots—perhaps they’re thought­ful, kind, trust­ing, tru­ly… dare I say it, inde­pen­dent….

Now with all of our weird vit­ri­ol direct­ed at the “unde­cid­eds,” preter­nat­u­ral­ly myopic junkies lose sight of a bloc with the pow­er to bend, break, or shat­ter the scales altogether—non-voters. In a nation that has expend­ed tril­lions of dol­lars, thou­sands of lives, and quite a lot of inter­na­tion­al good will to give oth­ers the right to vote in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, we make a pret­ty poor show­ing at the polls every four years, with rough­ly half of us declin­ing to exer­cise our fun­da­men­tal right to vote for our lead­ers. Think about that: half. Fifty per­cent of Amer­i­cans: when women only won the right in 1920 and after amend­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion. When African Amer­i­cans fought for a hun­dred years and only ful­ly won the right in 1965 with the Vot­ing Rights Act. These are significant–if sig­nif­i­cant­ly belated—achievements, and, to be sure, they’re the rea­son so many peo­ple trea­sure their vote as a pre­cious token of polit­i­cal auton­o­my. But non-vot­ers are an invis­i­ble enig­ma: no one talks much about the appalling­ly low turnout in this coun­try, except to men­tion it in pass­ing. So doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Errol Mor­ris (The Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War), provo­ca­teur and social crit­ic, decid­ed to dis­cuss the issue with over 50 peo­ple under the age of 40. The result is the short film above, teas­ing­ly titled “11 Rea­sons Not to Vote?”

What Mor­ris found con­founds the faithful—the junkies scowl­ing into their micro­fiche read­ers. Non-vot­ers, and the unde­cid­ed, can take a larg­er view; as Mor­ris points out in his accom­pa­ny­ing New York Times essay, non-vot­ers not only com­ment on the fact that no major par­ty can­di­date has dis­cussed issues so many peo­ple care about—poverty, cli­mate change, the drug war, the dys­func­tion­al prison system—but non-vot­ers real­ize that if no one’s talk­ing, noth­ing will be done. Some of them may be cyn­i­cal, but many more may just­ly say they’re real­ists. Per­haps it’s us, the vot­ers, who are dream­ers.

The 11 rea­sons Mor­ris gives, with tongue lodged in cheek, are as fol­lows (with my explana­to­ry gloss­es in paren­the­ses):

1. You can’t depend on demigods (Hint: politi­cians aren’t demigods, even when they seem so)
2. Like jazz, apa­thy is an Amer­i­can art form (slack, an appro­pri­ate response to polit­i­cal fun­da­men­tal­ism?)
3. Flori­da (deba­cle, year 2000)
4. The Elec­toral Col­lege (does any­one under­stand this thing?)
5. Missed entre­pre­neur­ial oppor­tu­ni­ties (one vote, one price)
6. Poten­tial extra­di­tion (absen­tee bal­lot if under ren­di­tion?)
7. Awk­ward fam­i­ly din­ners (vot­ing out of spite for fam­i­ly mem­bers)
8. Traf­fic (acci­dents on the way to polls can­celed out by dat­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties at the polls)
9. Forced analo­gies (warn­ing: involves foot­ball)
10. Overzeal­ous advo­cates (car­rots and sticks)
11. Mas­culin­i­ty is under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed (The Man: stick it to him)

I come away from Morris’s exer­cise sub­dued, not cured, but per­haps ready to wean myself away enough to look at why we make elec­tions mat­ter so much, when they seem to do so lit­tle for so many. That said, how­ev­er, I’m still going to vote. The com­ment that struck me more than any oth­er was this: “If you don’t vote, you can­cel your own vote.” Mor­ris replies, “that’d be stu­pid.” And it would be, I think, damn it all.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

Troma Entertainment, the Maker of Acclaimed B‑Movies, Puts 150 Free Films on YouTube

in Film | November 1st, 2012

It all began in 1974. That’s when Tro­ma Enter­tain­ment began pump­ing out schlocky, low-bud­get B‑films that some­how gar­ner the respect of seri­ous cineast­es. As you may know, Tro­ma’s films often fea­ture sex, gore, and graph­ic vio­lence. They also seem cus­tom made for the low-def, pell-mell world of YouTube. Which brings me to my point: Tro­ma has put over 150 movies from its back cat­a­logue on a new YouTube chan­nel, giv­ing users every­where free access to their dis­tinc­tive low­brow films.

The col­lec­tion includes Can­ni­bal! The Musi­cal, the first fea­ture film cre­at­ed by South Park cre­ators Trey Park­er and Matt Stone. But let’s not over­look these hon­or­able men­tions: The Bat­tle of Love’s Return where Oliv­er Stone made his act­ing debut; Night­beast, which fea­tures music writ­ten by JJ Abrams; and Tromeo and Juli­et, the well-reviewed 1996 film that lured in view­ers by promis­ing “Body Pierc­ing, Kinky Sex, Dis­mem­ber­ment, The Things That Made Shake­speare Great!”

The Tro­ma cat­a­logue also offers some clas­sic films, includ­ing the 1932 film White Zom­bie with Bela Lugosi and No Sub­sti­tute For Vic­to­ry!, a pro­pa­gan­dis­tic pro-Viet­nam War doc­u­men­tary host­ed by John Wayne. Select films from the Tro­ma YouTube col­lec­tion will find their way onto our list of 500 Free Movies Online.

Thanks go to Car­los S. for flag­ging these for us.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

21 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

John Wayne: 25 Free West­ern Films on the Web

Tarkovsky Films Now Free Online

Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers Break Down Star Wars as an Epic, Universal Myth

in Film, Television | November 1st, 2012

Some of Star Wars’ detrac­tors call the series schlocky, blunt, pre­dictable, and implau­si­ble even by fan­ta­sy’s stan­dards. A defend­er might respond that they’re look­ing at it all wrong: to appre­ci­ate Star Wars, you need to watch it as an epic myth. George Lucas him­self, who has more or less mount­ed this argu­ment in response to charges of unsub­tle­ty, rarely seems far from drop­ping the phrase “the pow­er of myth.” That, sure­ly not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, is also the title of a 1988 Bill Moy­ers tele­vi­sion series on mythol­o­gist Joseph Camp­bell and his ideas about myth through time and across human cul­tures. Moy­ers and Camp­bell actu­al­ly con­duct­ed their first five episodes’ worth of con­ver­sa­tions at Lucas’ Sky­walk­er Ranch. Just as Lucas did his read­ing of Camp­bell, Camp­bell did his read­ing of Star Wars: in the brief clip from The Pow­er of Myth above, the schol­ar express­es his enthu­si­asm for the films’ use of mytho­log­i­cal ele­ments drawn from across the world. (Find the com­plete Pow­er of Myth series on DVD here.)

If you want to know about myth, Camp­bell remains the go-to guy. You can hear more from him on the Joseph Camp­bell Foun­da­tion’s YouTube chan­nel, which fea­tures clips of Camp­bell on the mythol­o­gy of the trick­ster, on myth as mir­ror for the ego, and, of course, on cir­cum­ci­sion. Though obvi­ous­ly not as exten­sive as the afore­men­tioned in-depth six-hour sit-down between Camp­bell and Moy­ers, they’ll still give you a sense of why Camp­bel­l’s obser­va­tions about the eter­nal rel­e­vance of the strongest myths have them­selves stayed so rel­e­vant a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry after his pass­ing. Applic­a­ble essay ques­tion: to what extent can we put the rel­a­tive lack of enthu­si­asm for the new­er Star Wars pre­quels down to George Lucas not hav­ing cracked his copy of The Hero With a Thou­sand Faces in a while?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Star Wars as Silent Film

The Exis­ten­tial Star Wars: Sartre Meets Darth Vad­er

Star Wars is a Remix

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

Hunter S. Thompson Interviews Keith Richards, and Very Little Makes Sense (1993)

in Music | November 1st, 2012

Let’s rewind the video­tape to 1993. Gonzo jour­nal­ist Hunter S. Thomp­son final­ly gets to inter­view Rolling Stones gui­tarist Kei­th Richards. The con­ver­sa­tion is utter­ly and pre­dictably incom­pre­hen­si­ble. But it’s amus­ing nonethe­less.

Deci­pher­able con­ver­sa­tion top­ics include: if J. Edgar Hoover returned to this world, what form might he take? (A worm? a fart? a weasel?) What was Kei­th doing on Christ­mas Eve in 1962, 1966, and 1969? And what exact­ly went down at the infa­mous Alta­mont con­cert in Decem­ber 1969?

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son

Hunter S. Thomp­son Calls Tech Sup­port, Unleash­es a Tirade Full of Fear and Loathing (NSFW)

Kei­th Richards Inter­viewed at The New York Pub­lic Library

Hunter S. Thomp­son Gets Con­front­ed by The Hell’s Angels

Archive of Handwritten Recipes (1600 — 1960) Will Teach You How to Stew a Calf’s Head and More

in Books, History | October 31st, 2012

If you’ve ever tried to fol­low a recipe from your grandmother’s col­lec­tion, squint­ing at her spi­dery writ­ing on a stained 3x5 card, you might be a can­di­date for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa Libraries’ lat­est DIY His­to­ry project.

The University’s spe­cial col­lec­tions man­ages the Sza­th­mary Culi­nary Man­u­s­cipts and Cook­books, a hand­writ­ten col­lec­tion of Amer­i­can and Euro­pean recipes from the 1600s to the 1960s.

Help­ful food­ies, his­to­ry buffs and hand­writ­ing sleuths are invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in UI’s crowd­sourc­ing his­to­ry project by tran­scrib­ing dig­i­tized images of recipes.

It’s not the first time the uni­ver­si­ty has out­sourced a por­tion of its archival hand­work. Last year the Civ­il War Diaries and Let­ters Tran­scrip­tion Project was pow­ered by vol­un­teers, who tran­scribed more than 15,000 pages of mate­r­i­al. All you need to do is select a page from with­in the col­lec­tion and get start­ed. So far more than 17,000 pages have been tran­scribed and vol­un­teers chat and post ques­tions on a dis­cus­sion forum.

An exam­ple of the his­tor­i­cal nuggets uncov­ered while tran­scrib­ing: a pos­net is an 18^th cen­tu­ry term for a small met­al pot, a spi­der is a skil­let, and to scearce is to sift. Of course no cook­book his­to­ri­an has com­plet­ed their task until they have actu­al­ly tried the recipes them­selves. This could be inter­est­ing for the lucky tran­scriber of a recipe from Abi­gail Welling­ton Townsend’s cook­book, cir­ca 1840:

To stew a calf­shead, let the calf­shead be split and open and cleaned put it in the stew pan with water to cov­er it stew it quite ten­der take it and cut it to pieces put them on again in the stew pan with the water it was first boiled in  put with it six large onions half a pint of claret a lit­tle catch up a lit­tle mace & pep­per & salt to your taste when it is stewed ten­der thick­en the gravy with yolks of six eggs boiled hard & braid in a lit­tle of the gravy put in six yolks of eggs boiled hard & fry’d forced meat.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Find more of her work at  and thenifty.blogspot.com.

Mountain Biker Joy Rides on a $13,000 Carbon Road Bike

in Sports | October 31st, 2012

Pro­fes­sion­al cycling has cer­tain­ly seen bet­ter days. Last week, the Inter­na­tion­al Cycling Union for­mal­ly stripped Lance Arm­strong of his sev­en Tour de France titles. This came after Arm­strong refused to con­test an evi­dence-filled case pre­pared by the U.S. Anti-Dop­ing Agency, and after Arm­strong’s for­mer team­mates start­ed con­fess­ing to dop­ing one by one. (On that note, Tyler Hamil­ton, once a domes­tique for Lance, gave a rather reveal­ing radio inter­view this week, along with Daniel Coyle. Togeth­er they co-wrote a new book, The Secret Race: Inside the Hid­den World of the Tour de France: Dop­ing, Cov­er-ups, and Win­ning at All Costs.) Any­way, this is all a long way of say­ing that cycling fans could use some­thing to smile about. And maybe this fits the bill: Above, we have Mar­tyn Ash­ton, a well-known moun­tain bik­er, tak­ing a $13,000 Pinarel­lo Dog­ma 2 out for a very casu­al rad­i­cal spin. Enjoy.

Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi Square Off in a Monstrous Game of Chess (1934)

in Film, Games | October 31st, 2012

Long before the release of the cult film Drac­u­la vs. Franken­stein (Rot­ten Toma­toes calls the 1971 movie “a slap­dash epic of bad film­mak­ing”), the orig­i­nal stars of Drac­u­la and Franken­stein met face to face–for a game of chess.

The scene is from an ear­ly 1934 episode of Colum­bia Pic­tures’ Screen Snap­shots, a series of short films fea­tur­ing the off-screen lives of Hol­ly­wood stars. Carl Laemm­le at Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures had recent­ly come up with the idea of cast­ing Boris Karloff, who played the mon­ster in the 1931 film Franken­stein, and Bela Lugosi, star of the same year’s Drac­u­la, togeth­er in one movie. The Black Cat, based very loose­ly on the short sto­ry by Edgar Allan Poe, pre­miered in May of 1934 with Karloff and Lugosi at the top of the bill.

The appear­ance by Karloff and Lugosi on Screen Snap­shots #11 was essen­tial­ly a covert pro­mo­tion for The Black Cat, but because Colum­bia and Uni­ver­sal were rivals the film isn’t men­tioned. Instead, the two hor­ror stars talk about the “Film Stars Frol­ic,” a fundrais­ing event for the Screen Actors Guild that coin­cid­ed with the open­ing of Gilmore Sta­di­um in Los Angeles–and, as it hap­pened, with the pre­miere of The Black Cat. The Screen Snap­shots vignette begins with an atmos­phere of men­ace as the two men frown at one anoth­er.

“Are you ready for the test, Drac­u­la?” says Karloff.

“I’m ready, Franken­stein,” says Lugosi.

“Then–let us begin.”

At which point the two men break out laugh­ing as the cam­era pulls back to reveal a chess board. For some rea­son Drac­u­la has the white pieces.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Bela Lugosi Dis­cuss­es his Drug Habit as He Leaves the Hos­pi­tal in 1955

The Known Universe: The Hayden Planetarium’s Tour of the Cosmos Gets a Hans Zimmer Soundtrack

in Astronomy, Music, Video - Science | October 30th, 2012

The Ger­man com­pos­er Hans Zim­mer has made a name for him­self (and earned a star on the Hol­ly­wood Walk of Fame) by cre­at­ing orig­i­nal scores for films. You’ve heard his music, even if you haven’t heard of him. The Lion King, The Dark Knight and Incep­tion are a few of the films he scored.

If you’ve seen Incep­tion then the music behind this video will sound famil­iar. Zim­mer’s music plays behind a small video with vast sub­ject mat­ter: The Known Uni­verse, a six minute tour of, that’s right, the entire known uni­verse. Put togeth­er in 2009 by the Hay­den Plan­e­tar­i­um in NYC, the video orig­i­nal­ly had a more New Agey, orches­tral score. Zimmer’s track is beau­ti­ful and thank­ful­ly some­body decid­ed to lay it down behind the Plan­e­tar­i­um’s video. The results are amaz­ing, a slick­er ver­sion of Charles and Ray Eames’ famous film Pow­ers of Ten, but with a more dis­tant start­ing and end­ing point.

Where Pow­ers of Ten start­ed its tour out at a bird’s eye lev­el above Earth, The Known Uni­verse begins above the planet’s high­est point, above the Himalayan Moun­tains, and quick­ly pans out to show the Moon’s orbit, the orbits of the oth­er plan­ets in our solar sys­tem, and beyond.

Real­ly beyond—all the way into the after­glow of the Big Bang. And even though it’s a sim­u­la­tion, it’s an accu­rate one.

The Known Uni­verse was made using the Dig­i­tal Uni­verse Atlas, a four-dimen­sion­al map of the uni­verse main­tained and updat­ed by astro­physi­cists at the Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry.

Slip into your head­phones and enjoy Zimmer’s music. The piece is called “Time (We Plants are Hap­py Plants Remix)” and it’s a tune­ful, upbeat sound­track that’s out of our galaxy.

Are you watch­ing, Carl Sagan?

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Find more of her work at .

Watch James Burke’s TV Series Connections, and Discover the Unexpected History of Innovation

in History, Science, Technology, Television | October 30th, 2012

Even if we did­n’t grow up as sci­ence fans, all of us caught at least the occa­sion­al tele­vi­sion show on sci­ence his­to­ry. Some came expert­ly pro­duced. Oth­ers packed the infor­ma­tion to a very high den­si­ty (by TV’s stan­dards, at least). Oth­ers cracked jokes to keep our wits engaged. Oth­ers got us intrigued enough about a par­tic­u­lar dis­cov­ery to per­form our own fur­ther research at the library or on the inter­net. But those of us who came of age dur­ing a run of one of James Burke’s Con­nec­tionsseries got all of that at once, exe­cut­ed on a high­er plane, and with quite dif­fer­ent philo­soph­i­cal premis­es. Design­ing each of his pro­grams to exam­ine a dif­fer­ent nexus between sev­er­al ele­ments of sci­ence, nature, and  engi­neer­ing, Burke premis­es these nar­ra­tives on the insep­a­ra­bil­i­ty of human inge­nu­ity, his­tor­i­cal coin­ci­dence, and sheer acci­dent. How, for instance, did we end up in a world of film pro­jec­tors (cur­rent­ly being dis­placed by dig­i­tal pro­jec­tors though they may be)? For the answer, Burke argues, you’ve got to start with medieval cas­tle for­ti­fi­ca­tions. Then you work your way through can­nons, map­ping, lime­light, bil­liard-ball ivory, gun­cot­ton, the zooprax­is­cope, Morse code, and the phono­graph. These tech­no­log­i­cal threads all con­verge to give us the cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence we enjoy today — or enjoyed in 1978, any­way.

If you enjoyed that episode of Con­nec­tions back then, know that you can now relive it on a Youtube chan­nel ded­i­cat­ed to Burke and his shows. If you nev­er watched any in the first place, you can now catch up on not just the ten episodes of the orig­i­nal Con­nec­tions, but 1994’s twice-as-long Con­nec­tions², and the final series, 1997’s Con­nec­tions³. I rec­om­mend begin­ning at the begin­ning, with Con­nec­tions’ first episode, “The Trig­ger Effect,” embed­ded above. It gets you into the mind­set of Burke’s “alter­na­tive view of change” by break­ing down and illus­trat­ing the very con­cept of human reliance on com­plex­ly con­nect­ed net­works. The pro­gram’s clear and fast-mov­ing but no-stone-unturned method­ol­o­gy of expla­na­tion takes you through the New York Black­out of 1965, ancient Egypt­ian agri­cul­ture, and the oil fields of Kuwait. Reach the end of the third series, and you wind up learn­ing just how much the Eif­fel Tow­er has to do with the Elgin Mar­bles, Ben­jamin Franklin, Lon­don Bridge, and the ZIP code. Burke empha­sizes that none of the his­tor­i­cal agents involved in all these scat­tered small inno­va­tions that enabled the big ones — the ones with such effects on our mod­ern lives — could have planned for things to go the way they did. His sto­ries thus grant us more than a bit of humil­i­ty about pre­dict­ing the inno­va­tions of the future, built as they will be atop the kind of com­plex­i­ty that not even Con­nec­tions ever described.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Exquis­ite Paper Craft Ani­ma­tions Tell the Sto­ries of Words

The Sci­ence of the Olympic Flame; Ancient Style Meets Mod­ern Tech­nol­o­gy

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

50 Free Online Certificate Courses Starting Soon (Including Intro to Philosophy)

in Online Courses, Philosophy | October 30th, 2012

A quick heads up: Sev­er­al weeks back, we rolled out a handy list of Free Cours­es Grant­i­ng Cer­tifi­cates from Great Uni­ver­si­ties. We start­ed with 60 cours­es, and we’ve now added anoth­er 50. They all start in the near future (between Novem­ber and Jan­u­ary), and they most­ly come from the two biggest providers of Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es — Cours­era and Udac­i­ty (which just land­ed $15 mil­lion in fund­ing last week).

Above we’re fea­tur­ing a clip pro­mot­ing a course called Intro­duc­tion to Phi­los­o­phy. It comes cour­tesy of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Edin­burgh, an insti­tu­tion first found­ed in 1583, that hopes to teach a time­less dis­ci­pline in a new way. So far, Cours­era and Udac­i­ty have only offered cours­es in sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy  — in dis­ci­plines that yield rather quan­tifi­able answers. Now it’s time to see how they can han­dle sub­jects where the ques­tions and answers are more sub­tle. The free course begins on Jan­u­ary 28, and any stu­dent who suc­cess­ful­ly com­pletes the inter­ac­tive course will receive “a cer­tifi­cate signed by the instruc­tors.” Sign up here, and find a com­plete list of online cer­tifi­cate cours­es here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Big List of 530 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties (New Addi­tions)

55 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

A Big List of 375 Free eBooks for Your iPad, Kin­dle, Nook and Oth­er Devices