Time-Lapse Film of the Space Shuttle Endeavor’s Final Journey Through the Narrow Streets of Los Angeles

in Astronomy, Current Affairs, Science | October 18th, 2012

Res­i­dents of Los Ange­les had a once-in-a-life­time oppor­tu­ni­ty last week to see the Space Shut­tle Endeav­or crawl through the streets of their city. It was a sur­re­al sight. Some folks could even look out their liv­ing-room win­dow and see a mas­sive space ship rolling by.

The recent­ly decom­mis­sioned shut­tle arrived in Los Ange­les on Sep­tem­ber 20, pig­gy­backed on top of a Boe­ing 747. Last thurs­day it embarked on an ardu­ous 12-mile jour­ney to its new home at the Cal­i­for­nia Sci­ence Cen­ter, where it will go on pub­lic dis­play begin­ning Octo­ber 30. It took three days to make the trip from the air­port to Expo­si­tion Park as the 85-ton orbiter, with a wingspan of 78 feet, was guid­ed though a num­ber of extreme­ly tight spots atop a com­put­er-con­trolled trans­porter oper­at­ed by NASA. The shut­tle arrived at the sci­ence cen­ter with­out a scratch on Sun­day. The whole oper­a­tion cost about $10 mil­lion.

In the Short Film Gisbert: Paradisola a Man Goes on Holiday, Digs a Cave, Turns it into Life

in Life | October 18th, 2012

Ours is a cul­ture dri­ven by, and to, extremes, and by ours I mean West­ern Demo­c­ra­t­ic Cap­i­tal­ism broadly—Euro-America, one might say. But much of the world also resem­bles this mod­el. Extremes of wealth and pover­ty. Extreme amounts of work and extreme amounts of unem­ploy­ment. Even the word most asso­ci­at­ed with the cri­sis of mar­kets con­jures an extrem­ism of an ear­li­er, medieval age: Aus­ter­i­ties. To get away from it all, we take vaca­tions (more often these days stay­ca­tions). Vaca­tions from our lives. Or as the Euro­peans call it, hol­i­day. And who hasn’t once asked them­selves, why isn’t life the hol­i­day? And the painful “aus­ter­i­ties” tem­po­rary incon­ve­niences? I sup­pose it’s a naïve ques­tion, or just a thought exper­i­ment. Every­one seems to have some sophis­ti­cat­ed answer or oth­er. But every­one still feels the need to escape the exhaus­tion.

Gis­bert, the man in the short film above, felt such a need. So 42 years ago he trav­eled to the town of Fil­icu­di in the Aeo­lian Islands, Sici­ly. He dug a cave into the hill­side with his bare hands, rein­forced it with cement and lime, and he’s been liv­ing there ever since in what he calls, in his coinage, Par­adis­o­la, or, most­ly just Par­adis­e­land.  Gis­bert is a stu­dent of his­to­ry, phi­los­o­phy, physics… he’s no Rousseauean noble sav­age, igno­rant of the ways of mod­ern man. Maybe Thore­au in his Walden, but even Thore­au was an anx­ious char­ac­ter, always eager to explain him­self. No, Gis­bert has sim­ply found peace where he is, and he offers no elab­o­rate jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for it. In his own words: “When you start a career, you have to respect every­thing, because you are respon­si­ble. So I thought I could enjoy a vaca­tion, to do what­ev­er I like. And I keep doing so.” Is he “irre­spon­si­ble” for choos­ing a life of what­ev­er he likes over a career? This is one ques­tion film com­pa­ny We Cross the Line asks us to pon­der. Gis­bert: Par­adis­o­la makes no judg­ments and offers no answers. It sim­ply shows us the life of a man who made his own choic­es and lives with them con­tent­ed­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Man Who Quit Mon­ey — and Lived to Tell About It

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.

Clouds Over Cuba: Interactive Documentary Revisits the Cuban Missile Crisis on Its 50th Anniversary

in History | October 18th, 2012

50 years ago, the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis put the US and the USSR on a seem­ing­ly cat­a­stroph­ic col­li­sion course. As the cri­sis played out, both sides feared the worst — that the long-sim­mer­ing Cold War might sud­den­ly turn hot, nuclear hot. Mer­ci­ful­ly, after 13 days, cool­er heads pre­vailed.

Now, on the 50th anniver­sary of the cri­sis, the John F. Kennedy Pres­i­den­tial Library & Muse­um has released an inter­ac­tive doc­u­men­tary called Clouds Over Cuba. Nar­rat­ed by actor Matthew Modine, the film vivid­ly explains the events before, dur­ing and after the his­toric cri­sis. As the sto­ry unfolds, the doc­u­men­tary prompts view­ers to access an impres­sive amount of his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments (pho­tos, doc­u­ments, audio record­ings, etc.) that add real tex­ture to the sto­ry. Clouds Over Cuba is edu­ca­tion­al. It’s impres­sive­ly put togeth­er. You can watch the trail­er above, or start watch­ing the com­plete film right here.

via Kot­tke & Kirstin But­ler

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The Strange Tale of Rodriguez: Detroit Musician Becomes a Star in South Africa … Without Knowing It

in Film, Music | October 17th, 2012

Rock and pop musi­cians, as we all remem­ber from the end of This is Spinal Tap, some­times find fame in the least expect­ed coun­tries. Tufnel, St. Hub­bins, and Smalls found them­selves embraced in Japan, a coun­try that has since become the go-to cliché for the final rest­ing place of fan enthu­si­asm for Amer­i­can and Eng­lish has-beens and nev­er-weres. But what to say about a per­former who becomes famous specif­i­cal­ly in South Africa? It hap­pened to the singer-song­writer Rodriguez, the Detroit-bred son of Amer­i­can immi­grants whose 1970 and 1971 albums Cold Fact and Com­ing from Real­i­ty pro­vid­ed the sound­tracks for thou­sands upon thou­sands of South African ado­les­cences. His poet­ic protest songs seemed to hit home with a gen­er­a­tion fed up with apartheid soci­ety, and you can only imag­ine what a loss they must have felt upon hear­ing that their bard of choice had fatal­ly set him­self aflame onstage.

Both the South African pop­u­lar­i­ty and the rumors of self-immo­la­tion came as a sur­prise to the man him­self, who had remained liv­ing in Detroit as a stu­dent and demo­li­tion labor­er since the sev­en­ties. He’s since enjoyed occa­sion­al bursts of redis­cov­ery, like the one that sent him on his first South African tour in 1998, but only now, at age sev­en­ty, has he attained the kind of recog­ni­tion that his ded­i­cat­ed lis­ten­ers would insist he deserved long ago. This owes to the efforts of the young Swedish film­mak­er Malik Bend­jel­loul, whose iPhone-shot doc­u­men­tary Search­ing for Sug­ar Man opened the 2012 Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val with Rodriguez’s sto­ry. You can watch its trail­er at the top of this post, and a recent 60 Min­utes seg­ment fea­tur­ing Bend­jel­loul and Rodriguez him­self just above. YouTube also hosts many Rodriguez per­for­mances, includ­ing this ren­di­tion of his sig­na­ture song “Sug­ar Man” per­formed at the Triple Door in Seat­tle.

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

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

in Literature, Random, Technology | October 17th, 2012

It has been said that “the true voice of [Hunter S.] Thomp­son is revealed to be that of Amer­i­can moral­ist … one who often makes him­self ugly to expose the ugli­ness he sees around him.” That ugli­ness served its lit­er­ary and jour­nal­is­tic pur­pose, no doubt. As for the pur­pose it served in his pri­vate life, in the realm of get­ting nit­ty-grit­ty, mun­dane things done, that’s a whole oth­er ques­tion. Not much is known about this clip oth­er than it fea­tures a NSFW voice­mail that the gonzo jour­nal­ist left for his local AV guy in Woody Creek, Col­orado. The poor man.…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thomp­son Remem­bers Jim­my Carter’s Cap­ti­vat­ing Bob Dylan Speech (1974)

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

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son (NSFW)

Glenn Gould Explains the Genius of Johann Sebastian Bach (1962)

in Music, Television | October 16th, 2012

The Cana­di­an pianist Glenn Gould was one of the most bril­liant and idio­syn­crat­ic inter­preters of the music of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach. In this 1962 spe­cial for the Cana­di­an Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion, Gould reveals the same bril­liance and idio­syn­crasy in his under­stand­ing of Bach’s place in his­to­ry.

Bach, says Gould, was not so much ahead of his time as out­side it. “For Bach, you see, was music’s great­est non-con­formist, and one of the supreme exam­ples of that inde­pen­dence of the artis­tic con­science that stands quite out­side the col­lec­tive his­tor­i­cal process.”

“Glenn Gould on Bach,” was first broad­cast in Cana­da on April 8, 1962, two years before Gould’s retire­ment from per­form­ing and only two days fol­low­ing his con­tro­ver­sial Carnegie Hall con­cert with the New York Phil­har­mon­ic, in which Gould’s inter­pre­ta­tion of the Bra­hams D‑minor piano con­cer­to was so eccen­tric that Leonard Bern­stein felt com­pelled to make a dis­claimer to the audi­ence. The cen­ter­piece of the Bach broad­cast is a per­for­mance of the Can­ta­ta BWV 54 fea­tur­ing the Amer­i­can coun­tertenor Rus­sell Ober­lin. “Glenn Gould on Bach” is a fas­ci­nat­ing and enter­tain­ing half hour–essential view­ing for lovers of Baroque and Clas­si­cal music.

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!

Free Bach Music:

The Open Gold­berg Vari­a­tions: J.S. Bach’s Mas­ter­piece Free to Down­load

A Big Bach Down­load: The Com­plete Organ Works for Free

Amazing Fact: Spaghetti and Ukulele Strings Actually Grow on Trees

in Comedy, Television | October 16th, 2012

Back in 1957, on April Fools Day, the British tele­vi­sion pro­gram Panora­ma report­ed on “a bumper spaghet­ti har­vest” in south­ern Switzer­land. The boun­ti­ful crop could be attrib­uted to the mild pre­ced­ing win­ter and the dis­ap­pear­ance of the nasty spaghet­ti wee­vil. After the broad­cast, hun­dreds of peo­ple called the BBC, want­i­ng to know how they could grow their own spaghet­ti trees. The BBC replied, “Place a sprig of spaghet­ti in a tin of toma­to sauce and hope for the best.”

If spaghet­ti can grow on trees, then why can’t ukulele strings do the same? In North­ern Italy, they’ve appar­ent­ly been grow­ing uke strings on “string wil­lows” since at least the 16th cen­tu­ry. It all comes down to find­ing the right bal­ance between sun and rain. That’s what ensures that the strings are nei­ther too soft nor too brit­tle, pro­duc­ing the fine tone that lets Jake Shimabukuro play his uke ever so beau­ti­ful­ly.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Short Film Jamel Rockt Shows How German Musicians Respond to Neo-Nazi Occupation of Small Town

in Current Affairs, Music, Politics | October 16th, 2012

Amid the many dis­turb­ing reports of ris­ing fas­cist groups in Europe comes one par­tic­u­lar­ly egre­gious sto­ry of the small town of Jamel in the east Ger­man region of Meck­len­berg. Accord­ing to The Inde­pen­dent, in the tiny vil­lage of some 40 peo­ple, sev­en of the ten hous­es are owned by mem­bers of Germany’s far right Nation­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty (NPD), mak­ing the vil­lage “almost a pure neo-Nazi strong­hold,” where oth­er res­i­dents and neigh­bors of the town are fright­ened into silence. Der Spiegel writes that the NPD, “which glo­ri­fies the Third Reich,”

has been in the state par­lia­ment since 2006 and neo-Nazi crimes are part of dai­ly life. In recent months, a series of attacks against politi­cians from all the demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ties has shak­en the state. Some­times hard­ly a week goes by with­out an attack on anoth­er elec­toral dis­trict office, with paint bombs, right-wing graf­fi­ti and bro­ken win­dows.

Despite their dom­i­nance in minis­cule Jamel, how­ev­er, the NPD does not go unop­posed. Two res­i­dents, Horst and Bir­git Lohmey­er, have decid­ed to fight back with the most potent weapon they could find: music. The Lohmey­ers, who migrat­ed to Jamel from Ham­burg, seek­ing a rur­al retreat, have instead found them­selves orga­niz­ing a music fes­ti­val in their back­yard to counter the neo-Nazi pres­ence. The short film above, Jamel Rockt, doc­u­ments how the Lohmey­ers were gal­va­nized into action after their town was occu­pied by NPD. The film is full of cap­ti­vat­ing per­for­mances and inter­views.

The Lohmeyer’s mode of protest resem­bles any oth­er small-town out­door rock fes­ti­val, but its sig­nif­i­cance is thrown into high relief by the threat posed by their fas­cist neigh­bors. Kay Sond­gen, of the band Youth Red Cross, sums up the feel­ings of the par­tic­i­pants quite well, say­ing, “if you don’t fly the flag and just look away, then fear gains the upper hand. And lat­er peo­ple will say, ‘It wasn’t my fault. Noth­ing to do with me.’ You have to fly the flag! If every­one does that then extrem­ism, in what­ev­er form, sim­ply can’t gain the upper hand.” Sondgen’s phrase “fly­ing the flag” could mean any num­ber of things. For the rock­ers and fans of the Jamel fes­ti­val, it means coun­ter­ing extrem­ism with art, and refus­ing to be intim­i­dat­ed in a place “where right-wing extrem­ists can do vir­tu­al­ly what­ev­er they want.”

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.

The Making of The Empire Strikes Back Showcased on Long-Lost Dutch TV Documentary

in Film | October 16th, 2012

Note: The film switch­es to Eng­lish about 45 sec­onds in.

Ear­li­er this month, we fea­tured the launch of The Empire Strikes Back Uncut, a fan-dri­ven attempt to re-cre­ate the most beloved Star Wars movie of them all. But for an insight into the cre­ation of the orig­i­nal film, have a look at the Dutch tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary above, The Mak­ing of The Empire Strikes Back (part one, part two). The broad­cast focus­es on the painstak­ing cre­ation of the film’s spe­cial effects, most of which still hold up 32 years after audi­ences first glimpsed them. We see the mod­els, the mat­te paint­ings, and even the pha­lanx of per­form­ers and tech­ni­cians need­ed to exe­cute the Nor­way-shot bat­tle on the ice plan­et Hoth. It took $18 mil­lion, so pro­duc­er Gary Kurtz tells us, to pull all of this off. Sure­ly that seemed an extrav­a­gant, no-expense-spared fig­ure in 1980, but today, in light of the prof­its, ded­i­cat­ed fan­base, and place in the zeit­geist, it sounds like a bar­gain.

Alas, The Mak­ing of the Empire Strikes Back exists on the inter­net only in an incom­plete form, but the sto­ry behind its redis­cov­ery turns out to be inter­est­ing enough to com­pen­sate. Star Wars fan site mintinbox.net offers a detailed four-part arti­cle on this, “one of the most lost doc­u­men­taries about The Empire Strikes Back.” Though direct­ed by famed French “grand-reporter-cam­era­man” Michel Par­bot, it fell into obscu­ri­ty soon after its ini­tial broad­cast. But read­ing of the sub­se­quent search for a dis­trib­utable copy, we real­ize that we under­es­ti­mate the com­pletist ardor of the Star Wars fan­dom at our per­il. A fas­ci­nat­ing read indeed, but per­haps, like the MetaFil­ter com­menter who could only exclaim “I HAVE SEEN A MAN IN A WAMPA SUIT,” you pre­fer sim­pler plea­sures.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hun­dreds of Fans Col­lec­tive­ly Remade Star Wars; Now They Remake The Empire Strikes Back

Star Wars as Silent Film

Mark Hamil­l’s Star Wars Screen Test (Fea­tur­ing Har­ri­son Ford)

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

The Origin of Quantum Mechanics Explained in Four Animated Minutes

in Physics | October 16th, 2012

Minute Physics promis­es to bring you “cool physics and oth­er sweet sci­ence — all in a minute!” In this case, they went a lit­tle longer and pro­duced an ani­mat­ed video that gives you “The Ori­gin of Quan­tum Mechan­ics” in four min­utes. But cut them a lit­tle slack, it’s a big sub­ject.

Minute Physics pro­vides the draw­ings, and the voice nar­rat­ing the clip belongs to Neil Tur­ok, one of the world’s lead­ing physi­cists and the Direc­tor of Canada’s Perime­ter Insti­tute for The­o­ret­i­cal Physics. He has also pre­vi­ous­ly taught at Prince­ton and Cam­bridge. A sec­ond video fea­tur­ing Tur­ok — “Real World Telekine­sis”  — appears right below:

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Michio Kaku Explains the Physics Behind Absolute­ly Every­thing

Free: Richard Feynman’s Physics Lec­tures from Cor­nell (1964)

An Intro­duc­tion to Cos­mol­o­gy by Sean Car­roll