The Tyranny of The New Yorker (And More Culture Around the Web)

in Life, Literature, Media | March 20th, 2012

I feel your pain, broth­er, I feel your pain.…

Now a semi seri­ous ques­tion: How long until some­one buys the url newyorkertyranny.com? We’ll keep an eye on it.

More Cul­ture Around the Web (all pre­vi­ous­ly aired on our Twit­ter Stream):

Here’s Your Brain on Fic­tion

Steven Spiel­berg Talks About the Influ­ence of Stan­ley Kubrick.

Cel­e­brate Nation­al Nov­el Edit­ing Month with Kurt Von­negut Sto­ry Grids

New York Times Series on the Art & Craft of Writ­ing Begins with Jhumpa Lahiri

A Boom Time for Edu­ca­tion Start-Ups. Sil­i­con Val­ley Final­ly Think­ing About Edu­ca­tion

Bob Dylan Released His Debut Album 50 Years Ago. Record­ed in 6 hours for $402.

The Life of Rumi in Rare Islam­ic Man­u­script Paint­ings from the 1590s

Paul McCart­ney Gives Bass Lessons

Why Fin­ish Books?

Andy Warhol Get­ting His 15 Min­utes in Asia

Albert Einstein Archive Now Online, Bringing 80,000+ Documents to the Web

in Physics, Science | March 20th, 2012

It’s not hard to jump online and learn about Albert Ein­stein’s intel­lec­tu­al con­tri­bu­tions. Thanks to Yale, you can get a 60 minute primer on Ein­stein’s the­o­ret­i­cal work. It’s called Ein­stein for the Mass­es. Or you can embark upon a longer, 10-lec­ture explo­ration of Ein­stein’s ground­break­ing ideas (iTunes – YouTube) with Leonard Susskind, a Stan­ford pro­fes­sor known for his own ground­break­ing work on String The­o­ry.

And then there’s this: Start­ing this week, the Hebrew Uni­ver­si­ty of Jerusalem is bring­ing online an exten­sive archive of papers and let­ters belong­ing to the great human­ist and sci­en­tist. The col­lec­tion cur­rent­ly fea­tures 2,000 doc­u­ments and will even­tu­al­ly sur­pass 80,000. And it all gives a round­ed view of Ein­stein’s life and work. The doc­u­ments shed light on his per­son­al rela­tion­ship with his moth­er, wife and many mis­tress­es; his views on the Arab-Israeli con­flict; and his work on physics itself. A quick way to sam­ple the archive is to enter this gallery, where, among oth­er things, you’ll find Ein­stein’s man­u­script intro­duc­ing his famous equa­tion, e=mc2.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sir Isaac Newton’s Papers & Anno­tat­ed Prin­cip­ia Go Dig­i­tal

Roy­al Soci­ety Opens Online Archive; Puts 60,000 Papers Online

Free Physics Cours­es: 28 Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties

Bono Reads Two Poems by Charles Bukowski, “Laureate of American Lowlife”

in Music, Poetry | March 19th, 2012

Eons ago, we brought you Tom Waits read­ing Charles Bukowski’s poem “The Laugh­ing Heart” in his ever so dis­tinc­tive grav­el­ly voice. Today, we’re head­ing to the oth­er end of the rock audio spec­trum. We’re bring­ing you Bono — short, of course, for the Latin “Bonovox,” or “Good Voice” — read­ing two poems by Bukows­ki, the poet once called the “lau­re­ate of Amer­i­can lowlife” by Pico Iyer. That’s because Bukows­ki made the ordi­nary lives of poor Amer­i­cans and their many tra­vails the sub­ject of his poet­ry.

First up comes “Roll the Dice,” a poem from the col­lec­tion, What Mat­ters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (1999). Next, “The Crunch,” pub­lished in Love is a Dog From Hell (1977). Both Bono read­ings orig­i­nal­ly appeared in the 2003 Bukows­ki doc­u­men­tary Born Into This. You can find the film list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online (in the Doc­u­men­tary sec­tion), and also more Bukows­ki read­ings in our big list of Free Audio Books.

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!

Has Wes Anderson Sold Out? Can He Sell Out? Critics Take Up the Debate

in Business, Film, Television | March 19th, 2012

Ear­li­er this month, we post­ed a pair of Wes Ander­son-direct­ed tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials adver­tis­ing the Hyundai Azera. While I under­stood that, at one time, a known auteur using his cin­e­mat­ic pow­ers to pitch sen­si­ble sedans would have raised hack­les, I did­n’t real­ize that it could still spark a live­ly debate today. See­ing as Open Cul­ture has already fea­tured com­mer­cials by the likes of David Lynch, Fred­eri­co Felli­ni, Ing­mar Bergman, and Jean-Luc Godard — and I could­n’t resist link­ing to Errol Mor­ris’ when dis­cussing El Wingador — I assumed any issues sur­round­ing this sort of busi­ness had already been set­tled. On Twit­ter, the New York­er’s Richard Brody, author of a hefty tome on Godard, seemed to cor­rob­o­rate this con­clu­sion: “Bergman made com­mer­cials, so did Godard; the more dis­tinc­tive the artist, the less the artist need wor­ry about it.” “Also,” the Chica­go Sun-Times’ Jim Emer­son tweet­ed, “the, con­cept of “sell­out” no longer exists.”

From all the ensu­ing back-and-forth between crit­ics and cinephiles emerged Brody’s New York­er blog post, “Wes Ander­son: Clas­sics and Com­mer­cials.” Point­ing out that “so many great paint­ings were made for popes and kings and patrons, and great build­ings spon­sored by tycoons and cor­po­ra­tions,” Brody finds that “the bet­ter and stronger and more dis­tinc­tive the artist, the more like­ly it is that any­thing he or she does will bear the artist’s mark and embody the artist’s essence. Those who are most endan­gered by the mak­ing of com­mer­cials (of what­ev­er sort in what­ev­er medi­um) are those whose abil­i­ties are more frag­ile, more pre­car­i­ous, more incip­i­ent, less devel­oped.” But a dis­sent­ing voice appears in the com­ment sec­tion: “The rea­son that Godard and Ander­son can make com­mer­cials that feel more like short films is not so much because their tal­ents are more devel­oped; it’s because their rep­u­ta­tion is more secure. [ … ] It would be bet­ter to regard these com­mer­cials as short films financed by a com­pa­ny’s patron­age (with a few strings attached) than as com­mer­cials prop­er.”

An even more force­ful objec­tion comes from Chris Michael in the Guardian: “Is it worth remain­ing scep­ti­cal about art made in the direct ser­vice of a sales pitch? I think it is. Does it cheap­en your tal­ent to con­sis­tent­ly sell its actu­al goals to the high­est bid­der? I think it does. When the goal or per­sua­sive intent does not ‘res­onate with audi­ence in mean­ing­ful way’, but rather ’employ style to con­flate love for artist with love for prod­uct’, there’s a gen­uine, full-frontal, non-imag­i­nary assault on the integri­ty of the art’s mean­ing. Bet­ter to ask: What mean­ing? What art? Tak­ing it fur­ther, can a car ad ever be art?” When Slate’s For­rest Wick­man entered the fray, he hauled a Dar­ren Aronof­sky-direct­ed Kohl’s spot in with him to demon­strate that “that there is such a thing as sell­ing out,” com­par­ing it unfa­vor­ably with Ander­son­’s ads as “noth­ing more than a sec­ond-rate ripoff, a cheap copy of ads and music videos past.”

Michael remains unim­pressed: “Aronof­sky real­ly sold out least: by not pros­ti­tut­ing his style and deliv­ery, by not wrap­ping any­thing of him­self around a dull car or depart­ment store, by just doing the job for the mon­ey like a pro­fes­sion­al. That, I can respect.” Respond­ing, Brody holds fast in defense of Ander­son­’s ads, one of which he calls “a feat of aston­ish­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal com­plex­i­ty. “These lit­tle films, which hap­pen to be com­mer­cials for a car,” he writes, “share not only the style but also the con­tent, the theme, and the emo­tion­al and per­son­al con­cerns, of Anderson’s fea­ture films. Yes, they’re short. Yes, there’s a dif­fer­ence between what can be devel­oped in two hours and what can be devel­oped in thir­ty seconds—it’s the dif­fer­ence between a poem and a nov­el, between a song and an opera.” Has Wes Ander­son sold out? Is sell­ing out still be pos­si­ble? As in every­thing, dear read­er, the task of weigh­ing the evi­dence and mak­ing the deci­sion falls ulti­mate­ly to you.

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

Neil deGrasse Tyson: ‘How Much Would You Pay for the Universe?’

in Astronomy, Science | March 19th, 2012

“Nobody’s dream­ing about tomor­row any­more,” says astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson in this com­pelling lit­tle video on the decline of the Amer­i­can space pro­gram. “After we stopped going to the moon, it all end­ed. We stopped dream­ing.” The video was put togeth­er by Evan Schurr with mate­r­i­al from var­i­ous sources. In it, Tyson asks us to imag­ine the pos­si­bil­i­ties for tomor­row if NASA’s bud­get were increased to just one pen­ny for every tax dol­lar. It’s a point he raised ear­li­er this month before a U.S. Sen­ate com­mit­tee (read the full tes­ti­mo­ny here), when he said:

The 2008 bank bailout of $750 bil­lion was greater than all the mon­ey NASA had received in its half-cen­tu­ry his­to­ry; two years’ U.S. mil­i­tary spend­ing exceeds it as well. Right now, NASA’s annu­al bud­get is half a pen­ny on your tax dol­lar. For twice that–a pen­ny on a dollar–we can trans­form the coun­try from a sullen, dispir­it­ed nation, weary of eco­nom­ic strug­gle, to one where it has reclaimed its 20th cen­tu­ry birthright to dream of tomor­row.

via The Dai­ly Beast

Charles Bukowski Reads His Poem “The Secret of My Endurance”

in | March 18th, 2012

–From Dan­gling In The Tourne­for­tia (1982)

I still get let­ters in the mail, most­ly from cracked-up
men in tiny rooms with fac­to­ry jobs or no jobs who are
liv­ing with whores or no woman at all, no hope, just
booze and mad­ness.

Most of their let­ters are on lined paper
writ­ten with an unsharp­ened pen­cil
or in ink
in tiny hand­writ­ing that slants to the
left

and the paper is often torn
usu­al­ly halfway up the mid­dle
and they say they like my stuff,
I’ve writ­ten from where it’s at, and
they rec­og­nize that. tru­ly, I’ve giv­en them a sec­ond
chance, some recog­ni­tion of where they’re at.

it’s true, I was there, worse off than most
of them.
but I won­der if they real­ize where their let­ters
arrive?
well, they are dropped into a box
behind a six-foot hedge with a long dri­ve­way lead­ing
to a two car garage, rose gar­den, fruit trees,
ani­mals, a beau­ti­ful woman, mort­gage about half
paid after a year, a new car,
fire­place and a green rug two-inch­es thick
with a young boy to write my stuff now,
I keep him in a ten-foot cage with a
type­writer, feed him whiskey and raw whores,
belt him pret­ty good three or four times
a week.
I’m 59 years old now and the crit­ics say
my stuff is get­ting bet­ter than ever.

Bruce Springsteen’s Personal Journey Through Rock ‘n’ Roll (Slightly NSFW But Simply Great)

in Music | March 18th, 2012

We know that Bruce Spring­steen can put on an amaz­ing show. We saw him do that last week­end at the Apol­lo The­ater in Harlem. (Watch it here.) Now, you’ll dis­cov­er that the Boss can give a damn fine speech too. Pre­sent­ing the keynote address at SXSW yes­ter­day, Spring­steen took his audi­ence on a per­son­al jour­ney through rock ’n’ roll, remem­ber­ing the bands that gave birth to the musi­cal form and that pro­vid­ed inspi­ra­tion for a young musi­cian grow­ing up in New Jer­sey. Elvis, The Bea­t­les, Bob Dylan, The Ani­mals, and James Brown get their due. As does Woody Guthrie. The talk, which fea­tures Spring­steen play­ing some gui­tar along the way, runs 51 min­utes. And it has a few NSFW words sprin­kled in, though they don’t feel gra­tu­itous, at least not to me. Sit back and enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les’ Rooftop Con­cert: The Last Gig (1969)

Neil Young Busk­ing in Glas­gow, 1976: The Sto­ry Behind the Footage

Jim­my Page Tells the Sto­ry of “Kash­mir”

Autonomous Flying Robots Play the Theme From the James Bond Movies

in Music, Science, Technology, TED Talks | March 16th, 2012

Yes­ter­day we fea­tured a video of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alaba­ma” being played on a pair of Tes­la coils. Today we keep the music going with some­thing per­haps even more amaz­ing: a swarm of autonomous fly­ing robots play­ing the theme from the James Bond movies.

The robots were devel­oped at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­ni­a’s Gen­er­al Robot­ics, Automa­tion, Sens­ing and Per­cep­tion (GRASP) lab by grad­u­ate stu­dents Daniel Mellinger and Alex Kushleyev, founders of KMel Robot­ics, under the super­vi­sion of Pro­fes­sor Vijay Kumar. The researchers are work­ing to devel­op agile, autonomous fly­ing robots that can mim­ic the swarm­ing behav­iors of birds, fish and insects. In the video above, which was cre­at­ed spe­cial­ly for Kumar’s Feb­ru­ary 29 TED talk, a swarm of nine quadro­tor heli­copters play musi­cal instru­ments. An arti­cle on the UPenn web­site explains:

In this demon­stra­tion, the “stage” is in a room fit­ted with infrared lights and cam­eras. The nano quads all have reflec­tors on their struts, which allows the cam­era sys­tem to plot their exact posi­tion and relay that infor­ma­tion wire­less­ly to each unit.

Lab mem­bers can then assign each unit a series of way­points in three-dimen­sion­al space that must be reached at an exact time. In this case, those times and places trans­late into notes on a key­board or a strum of a gui­tar. Fig­ur­ing out how to get from way­point to way­point most effi­cient­ly and with­out dis­turb­ing their neigh­bors is up to the robots.

The robots are remark­ably agile, and may some­day be use­ful for a wide vari­ety of appli­ca­tions. To learn more, watch Kumar’s 17-minute TED talk, below, which includes sev­er­al aston­ish­ing video demon­stra­tions of the robots in action.

via Cos­mic Vari­ance

“Sweet Home Alabama” Played on Tesla Coils (and More Culture Around the Web)

in Music, Random | March 15th, 2012

You can cre­ate music with Tes­la coils if you know how to mod­u­late their “break rate” with MIDI data and a con­trol unit. Case in point. Here we have two sol­id state musi­cal Tes­la coils, using a com­bined 24KW of pow­er, to play a ver­sion of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s 1974 clas­sic “Sweet Home Alaba­ma” (lis­ten to the orig­i­nal here). Also enjoy elec­tri­fied ver­sions of House of The Ris­ing Sun and Duel­ing Ban­jos. via @webacion

More Cul­ture from our Twit­ter Stream:

Jack Ker­ouac’s Only Full-Length Play Will Pre­miere, 55 years After It Was Writ­ten

First MITx Course Attracts 90,000 Stu­dents, Prov­ing the Pop­u­lar­i­ty of Online Learn­ing. Find more Free Cours­es here.

Kurt Von­negut: The Bomb­ing of Dres­den and the Cre­ation of Slaugh­ter­house Five

The Lady Anatomist: The Wax Sculp­tures of 18th-Cen­tu­ry Artist-Sci­en­tist Anna Moran­di Man­zoli­ni

The Ili­ad Visu­al­ized. We Helped Inspire the Project Says the Cre­ator!

Paul Ther­oux Reads The Gospel Accord­ing to Mark by Jorge Luis Borges. Added to our Free Audio Books.

“Mr. Gold­man and Mr. Sachs” Record­ed by @theharryshearer in 2009

Cool Old Sci-Fi Sto­ries for Free on Ama­zon. Tip from @Frauenfelder

Jack Ker­ouac Writes a Let­ter to Mar­lon Bran­do

Sci­en­tists Use Thore­au’s Unpub­lished Jour­nals to Track Cli­mate Change

Clas­sic Sci­ence Fic­tion Movies – in Pic­tures

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

Keith Haring’s Eclectic Journal Entries Go Online

in Art | March 15th, 2012

Tomor­row marks the open­ing of Kei­th Har­ing: 1978–1982, the first “large-scale exhi­bi­tion to explore the ear­ly career of one of the best-known Amer­i­can artists of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry.” The exhi­bi­tion, appear­ing at The Brook­lyn Muse­um until July 8, traces the devel­op­ment of Haring’s visu­al vocab­u­lary by show­cas­ing “155 works on paper, numer­ous exper­i­men­tal videos, and over 150 archival objects, includ­ing rarely seen sketch­books, jour­nals, exhi­bi­tion fly­ers, posters, sub­way draw­ings, and doc­u­men­tary pho­tographs.” And, of course, the exhi­bi­tion is accom­pa­nied by a Tum­blr that will host online pages tak­en from Har­ing’s per­son­al jour­nals. The Tum­blr will post one new entry per day (like the one above), through­out the dura­tion of the exhi­bi­tion. You can keep tabs on the entries right here. H/T Metafil­ter