Evolver: A Darwinist Reimagination of The Beatles’ 1966 album

in Music, Science | July 2nd, 2012

The Evolver T‑Shirt, it’s the per­fect gift for the sci­ence believin’ Bea­t­les fan.  It’s obvi­ous­ly a play on The Bea­t­les’ great 1966 album Revolver. And, over at Boing­Bo­ing, Mark Frauen­felder asked read­ers to rethink the titles of var­i­ous songs on the album — to imag­ine them in evo­lu­tion­ary terms. Here are some of the cre­ative sug­ges­tions:

Tax­man = Macaques, Man

And Your Bird Can Sing = And Your Chimp Can Swing

I’m Only Sleep­ing = I’m Only Simi­an

Doc­tor Robert = Doc­tor Fos­sey

I Want to Tell You = I Want to Groom You

Tomor­row Nev­er Knows = Too Many Bono­bos

Per­son­al­ly, I think “Tomor­row Nev­er Knows” could stay just as it is. Does­n’t it already cap­ture the Dar­win­ian spir­it in its own way?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­tage Lit­er­ary T‑Shirts

Darwin’s Per­son­al Library Goes Dig­i­tal: 330 Books Online

Dar­win: A 1993 Film by Peter Green­away

Science Behind the Bike: Four Videos from the Open University on the Eve of the Tour de France

in Physics, Science, Technology | June 29th, 2012

Right in time for the Tour de France (which gets under­way tomor­row) the Open Uni­ver­si­ty has released a new video series called Sci­ence Behind the Bike. Dur­ing the past two decades, sci­ence has tak­en cycling to new places — some­times good, some­times bad. The intro­duc­tion of per­for­mance enhanc­ing drugs near­ly dam­aged the sport beyond repair, and it cer­tain­ly destroyed the careers and rep­u­ta­tions of many lead­ing cyclists. But all along, some­where out­side the pub­lic glare, many well-inten­tioned sci­en­tif­ic minds have toiled away, try­ing to find legit­i­mate ways to advance the sport. Phys­i­ol­o­gists, physi­cists, engi­neers, soft­ware design­ers, techies from For­mu­la 1 rac­ing — they’ve all brought a new per­spec­tive to cycling.

In the video above, Sci­ence Behind the Bike looks at how sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy have influ­enced the mak­ing and break­ing of the pres­ti­gious World Hour Record first estab­lished in 1893. Then, below, Forces breaks down the physics of cycling; Phys­i­ol­o­gy explains, well, the phys­i­ol­o­gy that boosts per­for­mance; and Tech­nol­o­gy digs deep­er into the high-tech hard­ware that cyclists push along. If you’re a fan of the sport, you’ll undoubt­ed­ly appre­ci­ate appear­ances by Chris Board­man, Francesco Moser, Graeme Obree and Rebec­ca Romero.

Forces

Phys­i­ol­o­gy

Tech­nol­o­gy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Brus­sels Express: The Per­ils of Cycling in Europe’s Most Con­gest­ed City

David Byrne: From Talk­ing Heads Front­man to Lead­ing Urban Cyclist

The Physics of the Bike

Two Vintage Films by Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel: Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or

in Film | June 29th, 2012

While study­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Madrid in the late 1910s, a young Luis Buñuel befriend­ed an even younger Sal­vador Dalí. The first fruit of their asso­ci­a­tion, a short film called Un Chien Andalou, appeared a decade lat­er, in 1929, and quick­ly achieved the inter­na­tion­al renown it still has today. Sev­er­al ele­ments had to fall into place to bring this cin­e­mat­ic dream — or cin­e­mat­ic night­mare, or, most accu­rate­ly, some­thing neb­u­lous­ly in-between — into real­i­ty. First, Buñuel gained expe­ri­ence in the medi­um by assis­tant-direct­ing on major silent-era Euro­pean films like Mauprat, La chute de la mai­son Ush­er, and La Sirène des Tropiques. Then, Buñuel dreamt of the simul­ta­ne­ous image of a cloud slic­ing through the moon and a razor slic­ing through an eye. Then, Dalí dreamt of a human hand cov­ered in ants. With those two visu­als in place, they pro­ceed­ed to col­lab­o­rate on the rest of the film, work­ing under the prin­ci­ple that “no idea or image that might lend itself to a ratio­nal expla­na­tion of any kind would be accept­ed.”

We could dis­cuss Un Chien Andalou’s ratio­nal­ly inex­plic­a­ble images, but would­n’t that defeat the pur­pose? The moon, the eye, the hand, the ants, the cyclist in the nun’s habit — these non­sen­si­cal but endur­ing images must be seen, and you can do that free on YouTube. But at six­teen min­utes, the movie will only whet your aes­thet­ic appetite for Buñuel and Dalí’s par­tic­u­lar fla­vor of flam­boy­ant­ly non­sen­si­cal, grim­ly satir­i­cal imagery. Luck­i­ly, you can fol­low it up with 1930’s L’Age d’Or, which began as anoth­er Buñuel-Dalí joint ven­ture until the two sud­den­ly went their sep­a­rate ways after writ­ing the script. Buñuel took over, craft­ing a wry­ly sav­age five-part cri­tique of the Roman Catholic Church. Buñuel and Dalí had pre­pared them­selves for shock-induced phys­i­cal vio­lence at the pre­miere of Un Chien Andalou, only to find that the crowd had hearti­ly approved. But L’Age d’Or drew enough fire for both pic­tures and then some, get­ting banned in France and even­tu­al­ly with­drawn from dis­tri­b­u­tion until re-emerg­ing in 1979. Now you can watch it when­ev­er you like on the inter­net, sug­gest­ing that the con­tro­ver­sy has evap­o­rat­ed — yet the images remain as sur­re­al a way as any to begin your week­end. A restored ver­sion of the film can be viewed here.

You will find these sur­re­al films list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Seashell and the Cler­gy­man: The World’s First Sur­re­al­ist Film

A Tour Inside Sal­vador Dalí’s Labyrinthine Span­ish Home

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

Jason Silva Preaches the Gospel of “Radical Openness” in Espresso-Fueled Video (at TEDGlobal 2012)

in TED Talks | June 28th, 2012

The TED­G­lob­al 2012 con­fer­ence kicked off this week in Edin­burgh, Scot­land, with “Rad­i­cal Open­ness” being its main theme. How do we learn from one anoth­er and relate to one anoth­er in an inter­con­nect­ed world? And how do ideas spread, as TED would say, in our glob­al com­mu­ni­ty? Those are the basic ques­tions at hand.

Some­times called a “per­for­mance philoso­pher,” the film­mak­er Jason Sil­va offered up anoth­er one of his “philo­soph­i­cal shots of espres­so,” cre­at­ing a video that preach­es the gospel of Rad­i­cal Open­ness. Thinkers like Richard Dawkins, Matt Rid­ley, Steven John­son, Kevin Kel­ly, and Ray Kurzweil pro­vide the inspi­ra­tion.

For the priv­i­lege of con­tem­plat­ing the con­cept of Rad­i­cal Open­ness, audi­ence mem­bers paid $6,000 a pop. The rest of us will get to watch the talks on video in due time.

via The TED Blog

Jean-Luc Godard Takes Cannes’ Rejection of Breathless in Stride in 1960 Interview

in Film | June 28th, 2012

It will sur­prise no one famil­iar with Jean-Luc Godard and his mas­ter­piece Breath­less (À bout de souf­fle) that the film and its direc­tor were invit­ed to the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val in 1960, months after the movie’s release. Maybe more sur­pris­ing is that Breath­less was­n’t actu­al­ly screened at the fes­ti­val at all, but at a the­ater near­by on the Rue d’Antibes, and it did not win any awards. (The Palme d’Or that year went to Fed­eri­co Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. In the inter­view above, Godard—looking both poised and a lit­tle annoyed—fields ques­tions from a slight­ly obnox­ious reporter about the exclu­sion of Breath­less and his rep­u­ta­tion as a trou­ble­mak­er.

Despite the Cannes slight, there was no lack of acco­lades for the film and its direc­tor that year. Breath­less won the 1960 Prix Jean Vigo, and Godard was named Best Direc­tor at the Berlin Film Fes­ti­val. Devel­oped from a true-crime sketch by Godard­’s fel­low New Wave direc­tor François Truf­faut, Breath­less rev­o­lu­tion­ized French film in the 60s, giv­ing rise to French New Wave cin­e­ma. And it sparked sim­i­lar “new waves” inter­na­tion­al­ly, direct­ly inspir­ing the grit­ty 70s films by Amer­i­can upstarts Bri­an de Pal­ma, Mar­tin Scors­ese, and Den­nis Hop­per. The film’s lead, Jean-Paul Bel­mon­do, would go on to mega-star­dom in French cin­e­ma, and he received Cannes’ high­est hon­or for his per­for­mance in Breath­less more than 50 years after the film’s release. Sad­ly, Breathless’s female lead Jean Seberg com­mit­ted sui­cide in 1979. In a short inter­view below, also from 1960, she dis­cuss­es her roles in Otto Preminger’s Saint Joan and Godard’s Breath­less.

The mer­cu­r­ial Godard—who, now in his eight­ies, provoca­tive­ly declares that “film is over”—was ini­tial­ly inspired by rad­i­cal Marx­ist pol­i­tics, and he con­sid­ered his work an avant-garde reac­tion against the mori­bund “Tra­di­tion of Qual­i­ty” in French film­mak­ing. Breath­less was made on a low bud­get and shot entire­ly with an Éclair Came­flex hand-held cam­era to approx­i­mate a doc­u­men­tary style—commonplace today in film and tele­vi­sion, but in 1960, it made a unique aes­thet­ic state­ment.

Bruce Springsteen Singin’ in the Rain in Italy, and How He Creates Powerful Imaginary Worlds

in Music, Psychology | June 27th, 2012

David Brooks, the sage New York Times op-ed writer, begins yes­ter­day’s thought piece, The Pow­er of the Par­tic­u­lar, with these lines:

They say you’ve nev­er real­ly seen a Bruce Spring­steen con­cert until you’ve seen one in Europe, so some friends and I threw finan­cial san­i­ty to the winds and went to fol­low him around Spain and France. In Madrid, for exam­ple, we were reward­ed with a show that last­ed 3 hours and 48 min­utes, pos­si­bly the longest Spring­steen con­cert on record and one of the best. But what real­ly fas­ci­nat­ed me were the crowds.…

Here were audi­ences in the mid­dle of the Iber­ian Penin­su­la singing word for word about High­way 9 or Greasy Lake or some oth­er exot­ic locale on the Jer­sey Shore. They held up signs request­ing songs from the deep­est and most dis­tinct­ly Amer­i­can recess­es of Springsteen’s reper­toire.

The odd­est moment came mid­con­cert when I looked across the foot­ball sta­di­um and saw 56,000 enrap­tured Spaniards, pump­ing their fists in the air in fer­vent uni­son and bel­low­ing at the top of their lungs, “I was born in the U.S.A.! I was born in the U.S.A.!” Did it occur to them at that moment that, in fact, they were not born in the U.S.A.?

Brooks goes on to explain this phe­nom­e­non by intro­duc­ing the psy­cho­log­i­cal con­cept of “para­cosms,” which describes the cre­ation of pow­er­ful fan­ta­sy worlds. And he sug­gests that only the most dis­tinc­tive artists, the ones who come from a tru­ly par­tic­u­lar place, can cre­ate this spe­cial con­nec­tion with fans.  Spring­steen does just that. But part of his appeal is some­times his tran­scen­dence — his abil­i­ty to tran­scend his own music and embrace the uni­ver­sal spir­it of rock ‘n roll. Case in point: The Boss singing The Bea­t­les clas­sic “Twist and Shout” in Flo­rence ear­li­er this month. It’s rain­ing, rain­ing hard, but did any­one notice?

Thanks to Wired writer Steve Sil­ber­man for flag­ging that clip for us.…

Dick Cavett’s Epic Woodstock Festival Show (August, 1969)

in Music, Television | June 27th, 2012

Even if you nev­er tuned in back then, you need only watch a few famous clips of Dick Cavett in action to under­stand why he earned the rep­u­ta­tion of run­ning the first major Amer­i­can talk show that qual­i­fied as “cool,” “smart,” or “hip.” His oper­a­tion show­cased some of the most impor­tant ele­ments of late-six­ties and sev­en­ties Amer­i­ca, those that the oth­er talk shows tend­ed to ignore, mis­rep­re­sent, or sim­ply mis­un­der­stand. Cavett him­self embod­ied a sen­si­bil­i­ty, nei­ther strict­ly friv­o­lous nor strict­ly high-toned, that allowed him the widest pos­si­ble cul­tur­al range. “The idea that one man could be both play­ful and seri­ous was nev­er deemed to be quite nat­ur­al on Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion, and Cavett was regard­ed as some­thing of a freak even at the time,” wrote crit­ic and Cavett guest Clive James. “Even­tu­al­ly he paid the penal­ty for being sui gener­is in a medi­um that likes its cat­e­gories to be clear­ly marked.” For an idea of what that posi­tion enabled, just watch Cavet­t’s musi­cal guests: he had Frank Zap­pa, he had John Lennon, he had Janis Joplin for her final inter­view.

And then we have the “Wood­stock episode.” Aired on August 16, 1969, the day after the fes­ti­val, but taped mere hours after the last notes rang out in Bethel, it brought Cavett togeth­er with Jef­fer­son Air­plane, David Cros­by, Stephen Stills, and Joni Mitchell. (Jimi Hen­drix, though sched­uled to show up, played long at the fes­ti­val and wound up too “zonked” to appear on tele­vi­sion.) Specif­i­cal­ly, it brought them togeth­er on a strik­ing­ly elab­o­rate, aggres­sive­ly col­or­ful one-off set that seat­ed host and guests on a cir­cle of what look like Nau­gahyde marsh­mal­lows. What­ev­er the aes­thet­ic trans­gres­sions of this broad­cast’s design, they lead to more than one mem­o­rable moment in talk-show his­to­ry, as when Cavett tears off in frus­tra­tion the tacky scarf his staff insist­ed he tie on for the occa­sion. Pull up the Wood­stock episode on YouTube for the per­for­mances — Mitchel­l’s “Chelsea Morn­ing” and Jef­fer­son Air­plane’s “Some­body to Love” fea­tur­ing Cros­by, to name two — but stay for the con­ver­sa­tion, espe­cial­ly the part when Cavett responds to Grace Slick call­ing him “Jim” one time too many: “You’ve got to learn my name, Miss Joplin!”

Relat­ed con­tent:

George Har­ri­son in the Spot­light: The Dick Cavett Show (1971)

John Lennon and Yoko Ono on the Dick Cavett Show

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

Johnny Depp Recites ‘Chorus 113’ from Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues

in Poetry, Television | June 27th, 2012

In 1995 John­ny Depp made a cameo appear­ance on an improb­a­ble TV mini-series called The Unit­ed States of Poet­ry. The series was broad­cast on PBS and fea­tured high­ly styl­ized vignettes spot­light­ing a range of poets–Joseph Brod­sky, Derek Wal­cott, Czes­law Milosz and Allen Gins­berg to name but a few–along with some famous names bet­ter known for their work in oth­er fields–Lou Reed,  Leonard Cohen, Jim­my Carter–in six fast-mov­ing episodes, each tied to a theme. Depp appeared in “Show Five: The Word” to read from a poem by one of his own idols, Jack Ker­ouac.

In the scene above, Depp reads a selec­tion from Ker­ouac’s 1959 book of impro­vi­sa­tion­al verse, Mex­i­co City Blues: 242 Cho­rus­es. “I want to be con­sid­ered a jazz poet,” Ker­ouac writes in the intro­duc­tion to the book, “blow­ing a long blues in an after­noon jam ses­sion on Sun­day. I take 242 cho­rus­es; my ideas vary and some­times roll from cho­rus to cho­rus or from halfway through a cho­rus to halfway into the next.” Here’s the cho­rus Depp reads from:

Cho­rus 113

Got up and dressed up
         and went out & got laid
Then died and got buried
         in a cof­fin in the grave,
Man–
         Yet every­thing is per­fect,
Because it is emp­ty,
Because it is per­fect
         with empti­ness,
Because it’s not even hap­pen­ing.

Every­thing
Is Igno­rant of its own empti­ness–
Anger
Does­n’t like to be remind­ed of fits–

You start with the Teach­ing
         Inscrutable of the Dia­mond
And end with it, your goal
         is your start­ing­place,
No race has run, no walk
         of prophet­ic toe­nails
Across Ara­bies of hot
         meaning–you just
         numbly don’t get there

For more on John­ny Dep­p’s lit­er­ary inter­ests and Jack Ker­ouac’s lit­er­ary great­ness you can explore the Open Cul­ture archives, begin­ning with:

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son

Jack Ker­ouac reads from On the Road (1959)

Bob Dylan Classic, “Forever Young,” Animated for Children

in Books, Literature, Music | June 26th, 2012

Bob Dylan record­ed “For­ev­er Young” on his 1974 album Plan­et Waves. It’s a clas­sic “pater­nal love song,” a song inspired by his then four year-old son Jakob, who lat­er became the front­man of The Wall­flow­ers. Count­less musi­cians have since cov­ered this Dylan stan­dard — from Joan Baez and John­ny Cash to Rod Stew­art, The Pre­tenders, Eddie Ved­der and even Norah Jones, who sang a poignant ver­sion at Steve Jobs’ memo­r­i­al ser­vice last year.

The lyrics of “For­ev­er Young” lend them­selves per­fect­ly to a chil­dren’s book:

May you grow up to be right­eous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the lights sur­round­ing you
May you always be coura­geous
Stand upright and be strong
May you stay for­ev­er young
For­ev­er young, for­ev­er young
May you stay for­ev­er young

And so, in 2008, Dylan teamed up with Paul Rogers to pub­lish the illus­trat­ed ver­sion of For­ev­er Young. The lyrics are the only text; and the illus­tra­tions (high­light­ed in the video above) pro­vide the real nar­ra­tive, show­ing a young­ster com­ing of age in the folk scene of 1960s Green­wich Vil­lage. The book (avail­able in paper and dig­i­tal for­mats) is a plea­sure to read to kids. But it’s even bet­ter when they read it to you…

“Science: It’s a Girl Thing!” OMG, Seriously?! The Botched Video by the EU

in Current Affairs, Life, Science, Video - Science | June 26th, 2012

Even more than in the U.S., women in Europe lag behind men in the sci­ence and engi­neer­ing pro­fes­sions, account­ing for bare­ly a third of sci­ence researchers. Under­stand­ably con­cerned about the gen­der gap, Euro­pean Union offi­cials launched a cam­paign tar­get­ing girls between the ages of 13 and 17. Their mes­sage: Sci­ence is cool. Girls can do it and make a dif­fer­ence in the world.

So far, so good. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the result­ing video “Sci­ence: It’s a Girl Thing” is about as on point as a Spice Girls video.

The first clue is the lip­stick i in Sci­ence. Three vamps are sil­hou­et­ted Charlie’s Angels-style as dance music puls­es away. A young man in glass­es gazes over his micro­scope in curios­i­ty as each girl toss­es her curls or shows her per­fect foot in a high heel.

Sci­ence? Yay! Let’s shop!

One hot babe does indeed take some time to write for­mu­las willy-nil­ly on some plex­i­glass while oth­ers gig­gle between shots of beakers, rouge and explod­ing eye shad­ow.

When my 13 year old daugh­ter watched the video, she thought it was an ad for a cos­met­ics com­pa­ny.

The Euro­pean Research, Inno­va­tion and Sci­ence Com­mis­sion­er Maire Geoghe­gan-Quinn defends the video as a way to “show girls and women that sci­ence does not just mean old men in white coats.” No, it means a young man in a white coat who seems to won­der what the three ditzy dames are doing in his lab. The video has gen­er­at­ed so much crit­i­cism that the E.U. has pulled it off the Sci­ence: It’s a Girl Thing web­site and replaced it with an inter­view with a young Pol­ish woman work­ing on her PhD in virol­o­gy.

This video is much bet­ter. But what’s with the sil­ly cut­aways to frozen yogurt?

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