Gore Vidal (1925–2012) Feuds with Norman Mailer & William F. Buckley

in Books, Literature | July 31st, 2012

Gore Vidal wrote 25 nov­els and var­i­ous mem­oirs, essays, plays, tele­vi­sion dra­mas and screen­plays. He invest­ed him­self in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics and ran for office twice, los­ing both times. He tend­ed open­ly toward homo­sex­u­al­i­ty long before the coun­try warmed up to the idea. And he nev­er backed down from a good argu­ment. Gore Vidal died Tues­day from com­pli­ca­tions of pneu­mo­nia at his home in Los Ange­les.

Dur­ing the 1960s and 70s, Vidal feud­ed pub­licly with lit­er­ary and polit­i­cal foes alike. Some­times it made for good TV. Oth­er times it made for bad TV. It did­n’t real­ly mat­ter. He was ready to go. Above, we have Gore Vidal’s ver­bal brawl with the mer­cu­r­ial (and seem­ing­ly sauced) nov­el­ist Nor­man Mail­er. It hap­pened on The Dick Cavett Show in Decem­ber, 1971, and only the show’s host (and the bewil­dered Janet Flan­ner) emerge from the dust­up look­ing okay. Slate has more on this mem­o­rable episode here.

The next clip brings us back to an ABC tele­vi­sion pro­gram aired dur­ing the 1968 Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­ven­tion in Chica­go. Suf­fice it to say, emo­tions were run­ning high. In the months lead­ing up to the Con­ven­tion, Mar­tin Luther King Jr. and RFK were both assas­si­nat­ed. Riots fol­lowed. Mean­while, the Viet­nam War splin­tered the nation in two. The Chica­go police tried to shut down demon­stra­tions by anti-war pro­tes­tors, and even­tu­al­ly the two sides clashed in the parks and streets. Amidst all of this, Buck­ley and Vidal, both polit­i­cal ana­lysts for ABC News, start­ed dis­cussing the pro­tes­tors and their rights to free speech, when things came to a head. Vidal called Buck­ley a “pro-cryp­to-Nazi.” Buck­ley called Vidal a “queer” and threat­ened to “sock [him] in the god­damn face.” The threat was not eas­i­ly for­got­ten. It became the fod­der for jokes when Buck­ley inter­viewed Noam Chom­sky the next year.

The Benefits of Being Awestruck

in Psychology, Science, Video - Science | July 31st, 2012

In Decem­ber 1972, astro­nauts aboard the Apol­lo 17 space­craft snapped a pho­to­graph of our Earth from an alti­tude of 45,000 kilo­me­tres. The pho­to­graph, known as “The Big Blue Mar­ble,” let every­one see their plan­et ful­ly illu­mi­nat­ed for the first time. The pic­ture, show­ing the Earth look­ing iso­lat­ed and vul­ner­a­ble, left every­one awestruck. And “The Big Blue Mar­ble” became the most wide­ly-dis­trib­uted image of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Now, less than a half cen­tu­ry lat­er, pic­tures of our plan­et bare­ly move us. And we hard­ly bat an eye­lash at videos giv­ing us remark­able views from the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion.

We’re los­ing our sense of awe at our own per­il, how­ev­er. The title of a new Stan­ford study tells you all you need to know: Awe Expands People’s Per­cep­tion of Time, Alters Deci­sion Mak­ing, and Enhances Well-Being. Appar­ent­ly, watch­ing awe-inspir­ing vidoes makes you less impa­tient, more will­ing to vol­un­teer time to help oth­ers, more like­ly to pre­fer expe­ri­ences over mate­r­i­al prod­ucts, more present in the here and now, and hap­pi­er over­all. (More on that here.) All of this pro­vides film­mak­er Jason Sil­va the mate­r­i­al for yet anoth­er one of his “philo­soph­i­cal shots of espres­so,” The Bio­log­i­cal Advan­tage of Being Awestruck. It’s the first video above.

Find more awe in our col­lec­tion of Great Sci­ence Videos.

Who’s Afraid of Ai Weiwei: A Short Documentary

in Art, Current Affairs, Film | July 30th, 2012

The work of dis­si­dent Chi­nese artist Ai Wei­wei is mon­u­men­tal, as is the man’s fear­less and out­spo­ken per­son­al­i­ty. Recent­ly, while stand­ing under the cir­cu­lar dis­play of mas­sive bronze ani­mal heads in Ai’s Cir­cle of Animals/Zodiac Heads at Wash­ing­ton, DC’s Hir­sh­horn Muse­um, I found myself wish­ing I could meet him. The next best thing, I guess, is to see can­did footage of his life and work, which is what you find in Who’s Afraid of Ai Wei­wei, the short doc­u­men­tary (above) from PBS’s Front­line.

Begun in 2008 by 24-year-old film­mak­er Ali­son Klay­man, Who’s Afraid of Ai Wei­wei cap­tures the artist imme­di­ate­ly before his prin­ci­pled and cost­ly stand against the Bei­jing Olympics (which he helped to design) and the oppres­sive police state he claimed it rep­re­sent­ed. Klay­man fol­lowed Ai for two years and shot 200 hours of footage, some of which became the short film above. The rest has been edit­ed and released as a fea­ture-length film called Ai Wei­wei: Nev­er Sor­ry, which has picked up prizes at Sun­dance, the Berlin Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, and the Human Rights Watch Film Fes­ti­val.

Ai is unique among his con­tem­po­raries in the art world for his will­ing­ness to con­front social issues not only through visu­al media but also through media com­men­tary. As Klay­man puts it, “Wei­wei the artist had become as provoca­tive with his key­board, typ­ing out a dai­ly dia­tribe against local cor­rup­tion and gov­ern­ment abus­es” on his blog. Ai claims his polit­i­cal involve­ment is “very per­son­al.” “If you don’t speak out,” he says above, “if you don’t clear your mind, then who are you?” He has writ­ten edi­to­ri­als for Eng­lish-lan­guage pub­li­ca­tions on why he with­drew his sup­port from the Bei­jing Games and what he thought of last Friday’s open­ing cer­e­mo­ny in Lon­don (he liked it). And, of course, he’s become a bit of a star on Twit­ter, using it to relent­less­ly cri­tique China’s deep eco­nom­ic divides and sup­pres­sion of free speech.

But for all his noto­ri­ety as an activist and his well-known inter­net per­sona, Ai’s sculp­ture and pho­tog­ra­phy speaks for itself. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, due to his arrest and impris­on­ment by Chi­nese author­i­ties in 2011, he was unable to attend the open­ing of Cir­cle of Animals/Zodiac Heads in LA, and he is still under con­stant sur­veil­lance and not per­mit­ted to leave the coun­try. But, true to form, none of these set­backs have kept him from speak­ing out, about his pol­i­tics and his art. In the short video below, he dis­cuss­es the sig­nif­i­cance of Zodi­ac Heads, his most recent mon­u­men­tal vision.

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.

Leni Riefenstahl Captures Jesse Owens Dashing Nazi Dreams at the 1936 Olympics

in History | July 27th, 2012

Jesse Owens, the son of a share­crop­per and grand­son of slaves, went to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and upset Hitler’s visions of Aryan suprema­cy. He did it not once, but four times, win­ning gold medals in the 100-meter dash, 200-meter dash, the long jump and the 4 x 100 meter relay. The first race was cap­tured by the Ger­man filmmaker/propagandist Leni Riefen­stahl in her famous film doc­u­ment­ing the 1936 Games, Olympia. It’s all queued up above and ready to go.

Now the cru­el foot­note to this sto­ry: after his four vic­to­ries, Owens returned to the U.S. and imme­di­ate­ly con­front­ed the cold racist atti­tudes of his coun­try­men. There was no pause, no reprieve, even for an Olympic gold medal­ist. Lat­er, he recalled:

When I came back to my native coun­try, after all the sto­ries about Hitler, I could­n’t ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I could­n’t live where I want­ed. I was­n’t invit­ed to shake hands with Hitler, but I was­n’t invit­ed to the White House to shake hands with the Pres­i­dent, either.

New York City did hold a tick­er-tape parade in his hon­or. But when he attend­ed a recep­tion at the Wal­dorf-Asto­ria, he was forced to ride the freight ele­va­tor. And he did­n’t make it to the White House until Eisen­how­er named him an “Ambas­sador of Sports” in 1955. FDR and Tru­man nev­er both­ered to extend an invi­ta­tion to the Olympic hero. Stephen elab­o­rates on all of this below:

Celebrate Harry Potter’s Birthday with Song. Daniel Radcliffe Sings Tom Lehrer’s Tune, The Elements.

in Comedy, Film, Music, Science | July 27th, 2012

Some child actors are unen­dear­ing, snarky types (think Sele­na Gomez or a young Dako­ta Fan­ning). Oth­ers, you root for because even if they’re cloy­ing they seem real (Haley Joel Osment comes to mind).

Daniel Rad­cliffe, who was most cer­tain­ly a child when he was cast as Har­ry Pot­ter at 11, may fall more into the sec­ond camp. He’s as hap­less and earnest as Har­ry, and it turns out that he’s endear­ing­ly nerdier in real life than Har­ry him­self could ever be.

Rad­cliffe, who cel­e­brat­ed his 23^rd birth­day this week, sealed his fate as a bit of an anorak when he appeared on the BBC’s Gra­ham Nor­ton Show and ner­vous­ly sang Tom Lehrer’s song The Ele­ments.

Maybe Radcliffe’s best sub­ject at Hog­warts would have been potions. On tele­vi­sion he admits to being a lit­tle ner­vous before launch­ing into the homage to Lehrer, explain­ing that he’d stayed up all night try­ing to mem­o­rize the song. One of Lehrer’s clas­sics, it actu­al­ly sets the peri­od­ic table of ele­ments to music. In the best ver­sions, Lehrer accom­pa­nies him­self on piano while recit­ing all of the chem­i­cal ele­ments known at the time of writ­ing (1959) to the tune of a Gilbert and Sul­li­van melody.

Har­ry Potter’s birth­day is next week (July 31), the same day author J.K. Rowl­ing cel­e­brates hers. Per­haps Pot­ter fans could cook up a birth­day cel­e­bra­tion for Pot­ter involv­ing a song about lawren­ci­um, which was added to the peri­od­ic table two years after Lehrer wrote his song. As he clev­er­ly not­ed him­self at the end of the tune,

These are the only ones of which the news has come to Ha’­vard,

And there may be many oth­ers, but they haven’t been dis­cav­ard

Good stuff. Wor­thy of the boy who sur­vived.

Kate Rix is an Oak­land-based free­lance writer. See more of her work at .

Conan O’Brien Writes Chicago Blues Songs With School Kids

in Comedy, Music, Television | July 27th, 2012

Here’s a lit­tle some­thing to end your week with a smile: Conan O’Brien impro­vis­ing the blues with a group of first graders. The seg­ment was taped in Chicago–home of the elec­tric blues–during the Conan show’s one-week stand there last month. O’Brien and his band­leader, Jim­my Vivi­no, brought their gui­tars to the Frances Xavier Warde ele­men­tary school on the city’s Near West Side to inves­ti­gate what a group of six- and sev­en-year-olds might be blue about. The result is the sad, sad, “No Choco­late Blues.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Conan O’Brien Does Standup @ Google

Conan O’Brien Kills It at Dart­mouth Grad­u­a­tion

Alexander Hamilton: Hip-Hop Hero at the White House Poetry Evening

in History, Poetry | July 27th, 2012

Recent­ly we brought you the sto­ry of the Alexan­der Hamil­ton-Aaron Burr duel, as told in a drunk­en stu­por by Mark Gagliar­di and star­ring Zom­bieland’s Michael Cera as Hamil­ton. Now we have anoth­er unusu­al nar­ra­tor of the life of Amer­i­ca’s first Trea­sury Sec­re­tary. Lin-Manuel Miran­da, Tony award-win­ning writer and star of the Broad­way musi­cal In the Heights, com­posed “The Hamil­ton Mix­tape,” a song detail­ing the found­ing father’s rise from hum­ble begin­nings as (in the words of John Adams) “the bas­tard brat of a Scot­tish ped­dler,” to the upper ech­e­lons of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion­ary gov­ern­ment. Born on the Caribbean island of Nevis, Hamilton’s sto­ry is as boot­strap as they come, and Miran­da took his ver­sion all the way to the top. In the video above, he per­forms “The Hamil­ton Mix­tape” for Barack and Michelle Oba­ma at the White House Evening of Poet­ry, Music, and the Spo­ken Word, held on May 12, 2009.

To learn more about Alexan­der Hamil­ton, vis­it AllThingHamilton.com.

And check out Miran­da’s lyrics below the jump. (more…)

Miracle Mushrooms Power the Slums of Mumbai

in Film, Sci Fi | July 27th, 2012

If you want to see rough-and-ready exper­i­ments in res­i­den­tial archi­tec­ture and neigh­bor­hood con­struc­tion, look no fur­ther than the world’s largest slums. Every day, strait­ened con­di­tions and high den­si­ty force the mil­lions upon mil­lions who live in them to impro­vise cre­ative solu­tions to the chal­lenges of urban sur­vival using what­ev­er mate­ri­als and pow­er — both terms broad­ly defined — hap­pen to lay at hand. In his short New Mum­bai, film­mak­er Tobias Rev­ell turns his lens toward India, host to some of the most vast and com­plex slums around, and dis­cov­ers a high­ly uncon­ven­tion­al mate­r­i­al, a sort of organ­ic infra­struc­ture, in use in the knocked-togeth­er neigh­bor­hoods of Dhar­avi: giant mush­rooms.

Actu­al­ly, Rev­ell doesn’t dis­cov­er the mush­rooms; he invents them, telling a sci­ence-fic­tion sto­ry, if not a ter­ri­bly far-fetched one, in the plain­spo­ken, street-lev­el style of a devel­op­ing-world doc­u­men­tary. He even comes up with a semi-plau­si­ble expla­na­tion for how each of these mir­a­cle mush­rooms gen­er­ates enough pow­er to run an entire build­ing: bio­log­i­cal sam­ples leak from Ams­ter­dam into the Mum­bai gang­land, and a few shad­owy types strug­gle to engi­neer them into a new kind of nar­cot­ic. When that doesn’t work, Dharavi’s sci­ence-savvy res­i­dents — refugees from a reli­gious war — get to work on adapt­ing them to a vari­ety of life-improv­ing uses. Rev­ell, no stranger to spec­u­la­tive projects that tap into mod­ern cur­rents of thought, has tak­en the zeitgeist’s notions of a new part­ner­ship between the city and nature, but run them to an intrigu­ing extreme. And you can’t deny how cool those mush­rooms look sprout­ing from the rooftops.

via @cinnamon_carter

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

Has Science Refuted Religion? Sean Carroll and Michael Shermer vs. Dinesh D’Souza and Ian Hutchinson

in Religion, Science | July 26th, 2012

Just yes­ter­day, I sat across from a fel­low wear­ing a t‑shirt embla­zoned with the image of a gun-wield­ing Jesus blow­ing away Charles Dar­win above the words “EVOLVE THIS!” At first I assumed he wore it to emphat­i­cal­ly sig­nal his belief that reli­gion, specif­i­cal­ly Chris­tian­i­ty, refutes sci­ence, specif­i­cal­ly bio­log­i­cal evo­lu­tion. Then, remem­ber­ing that Jesus prob­a­bly would­n’t have used a hand­gun even had they been avail­able in his day, I took the shirt as a mock­ery of the blunter vari­eties of cre­ation­ist rhetoric. Look­ing it up lat­er, I found out that the shirt comes from the movie Paul, so the wear­er prob­a­bly meant noth­ing more than to express his appre­ci­a­tion for what I under­stand to be one of 2011’s most under­rat­ed come­dies. Yet the ques­tion lingers: has sci­ence refut­ed reli­gion, or is it the oth­er way around? The inter­net age pro­vides us access to a vir­tu­al­ly unlim­it­ed num­ber of these debates, although you’ll often search in vain for match­es of cogent, well-artic­u­lat­ed argu­ments. Just take a look at the sci­ence-reli­gion squab­bles cur­rent­ly roil­ing in YouTube com­ment sec­tions. Keep out of the com­ments, then, and stick to the videos, such as the debate above. In two hours com­pris­ing short seg­ments of argu­ment, rebut­tal, cross-exam­i­na­tion, and audi­ence ques­tions, the pro­gram pits Skep­tic mag­a­zine pub­lish­er Michael Sher­mer and Cal­tech cos­mol­o­gist Sean Car­roll against MIT physi­cist Ian Hutchin­son and King’s Col­lege pres­i­dent Dinesh D’Souza. In an unusu­al­ly order­ly, well-dis­ci­plined debate of this type, all four weigh in on one cen­tral propo­si­tion: “Has sci­ence refut­ed reli­gion?” Car­roll says that sci­ence, a “real­i­ty check” on human bias­es, offers the only expla­na­tions that work. Hutchin­son blames not sci­ence but some­thing he calls “sci­en­tism,” a belief in the absolute suprema­cy of sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge, for a vari­ety of social and intel­lec­tu­al ills. Sher­mer describes reli­gious belief as an evo­lu­tion­ar­i­ly deter­mined char­ac­ter­is­tic of human beings, and an increas­ing­ly use­less one at that. D’Souza upbraids sci­ence for fail­ing not only to find answers to ques­tions about human pur­pose and life’s mean­ing, but for throw­ing up its hands when pre­sent­ed them. All this offers a good bit of human dra­ma as well, but in good fun; when I inter­viewed Sher­mer, a habitué of such debates, he men­tioned often enjoy­ing tak­ing his osten­si­bly sworn intel­lec­tu­al ene­mies to beers and piz­za after­ward. Relat­ed Con­tent: Richard Dawkins & John Lennox Debate Sci­ence & Athe­ism Does God Exist? Christo­pher Hitchens Debates Chris­t­ian Philoso­pher William Lane Craig Ani­mat­ed: Stephen Fry & Ann Wid­de­combe Debate the Catholic Church Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Rare 1933 Film: The Great Storyteller Rudyard Kipling on Truth in Writing

in Books, Literature | July 25th, 2012

“We who use words enjoy a pecu­liar priv­i­lege over our fel­lows,” says Rud­yard Kipling in this rare filmed speech. “We can­not tell a lie. How­ev­er much we may wish to do so, we only of edu­cat­ed men and women can­not tell a lie–in our work­ing hours. The more sub­tly we attempt it, the more cer­tain­ly do we betray some aspect of truth con­cern­ing the life of our age.”

The speech was giv­en on July 12, 1933 at Clar­idge’s Hotel in Lon­don, dur­ing a lun­cheon of the Roy­al Soci­ety of Lit­er­a­ture for vis­it­ing mem­bers of the Cana­di­an Authors’ Asso­ci­a­tion. Kipling was 67 years old at the time. The text of the speech (which you can open and read in a new win­dow) was pub­lished in a posthu­mous edi­tion of A Book of Words.

Rud­yard Kipling was one of the most cel­e­brat­ed Eng­lish writ­ers of the late Vic­to­ri­an era. Hen­ry James once said, “Kipling strikes me per­son­al­ly as the most com­plete man of genius (as dis­tinct from fine intel­li­gence) that I have ever known.” In 1907 he was award­ed the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture. As a pro­lif­ic author of short sto­ries, poet­ry, and nov­els, Kipling was the fore­most chron­i­cler of the British colo­nial expe­ri­ence.

But as the British Empire fad­ed in the 20th cen­tu­ry, so too did Kipling’s lit­er­ary stand­ing. His works for chil­dren, includ­ing The Jun­gle Book and Just So Sto­ries (see below), are still wide­ly enjoyed, but much of his oth­er writing–even the clas­sic nov­el Kim–is viewed with ambiva­lence. The lit­er­ary genius praised by James is often over­shad­owed by our con­tem­po­rary views on the cru­el­ty and exploita­tion of colo­nial­ism.

“Mer­ci­ful­ly,” says Kipling lat­er in his speech to the Cana­di­an authors, “it is not per­mit­ted to any one to fore­see his or her lit­er­ary elec­tion or repro­ba­tion, any more than it was per­mit­ted to our ances­tors to fore­see the just stature of their con­tem­po­raries…”

You can down­load Kipling’s works by vis­it­ing our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks col­lec­tions.

h/t @Rachel_RK