Jazz on a Summer’s Day

in Film, Music | November 15th, 2011

In 1958, jaz­z’s place in Amer­i­can cul­ture was chang­ing. It was climb­ing out of the smokey night­clubs and into the sun­ny embrace of the bour­geoisie. A younger force, rock and roll, was start­ing to push it aside. That sense of tran­si­tion is pre­served in Jazz on a Sum­mer’s Day, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Bert Stern’s film of the 1958 New­port Jazz Fes­ti­val.

Kei­th Richards has called Stern’s movie “a para­ble on film of the changeover of pow­er between jazz and rock and roll.” In his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Life, Richards describes his youth­ful pil­grim­age with Mick Jag­ger to see Chuck Berry’s per­for­mance in Jazz on a Sum­mer’s Day:

The film had Jim­my Giuf­fre, Louis Arm­strong, Thelo­nious Monk, but Mick and I went to see the man. That black coat. He was brought on stage–a very bold move by someone–with Jo Jones on drums, a jazz great. Jo Jones was, among oth­ers, Count Basie’s drum­mer. I think it was Chuck­’s proud­est moment, when he got up there. It’s not a par­tic­u­lar­ly good ver­sion of “Sweet Lit­tle Six­teen,” but it was the atti­tude of the cats behind him, sol­id against the way he looked and the way he was mov­ing. They were laugh­ing at him. They were try­ing to fuck him up. Jo Jones was rais­ing his drum­stick after every few beats and grin­ning as if he were in play school. Chuck knew he was work­ing against the odds. And he was­n’t real­ly doing very well, when you lis­ten to it, but he car­ried it. He had a band behind him that want­ed to toss him, but he still car­ried the day. Jo Jones blew it, right there. Instead of a knife in the back, he could have giv­en him the shit. But Chuck forced his way through.

Lat­er gen­er­a­tions of jazz lovers have been per­plexed by the film, not because of Chuck Berry, but because of the film­mak­er’s focus on every­thing but the jazz. At one point Thelo­nious Monk is soul­ful­ly play­ing “Blue Monk” when the film sud­den­ly cuts to the Amer­i­ca’s Cup sail­boat race and the jar­ring voice of a radio announc­er describ­ing the scene. Ouch.

Just as painful, in ret­ro­spect, are the omis­sions. The film­mak­er took a pass on per­for­mances at the fes­ti­val that year by Duke Elling­ton, Dave Brubeck, Lester Young, Son­ny Rollins and the Miles Davis Sex­tet. “Yes,” writes Alan Kurtz at Jazz.com about the Davis sex­tet, “the last unit fea­tur­ing Can­non­ball Adder­ley, John Coltrane and Bill Evans was the same super­group as would eight months lat­er record Kind of Blue and of which no motion pic­ture or video footage now exists.” Ouch again.

But Jazz on a Sum­mer’s Day is still a won­der­ful film. Stern was one of the great­est adver­tis­ing and fash­ion pho­tog­ra­phers of his gen­er­a­tion. He was a 28-year-old still pho­tog­ra­ph­er when he went to New­port and basi­cal­ly invent­ed the music per­for­mance film genre. While Stern’s com­mer­cial work tends to be care­ful­ly con­trolled, Jazz on a Sum­mer’s Day exhibits the pho­tog­ra­pher’s con­sid­er­able gift for observ­ing peo­ple in their nat­ur­al set­ting. There are many doc­u­ments of the way peo­ple looked in the late 1950s, but few are this vivid. Or this visu­al­ly elo­quent.

Create iPhone/iPad Apps in iOS 5 with Free Stanford Course

in Apple, iPad, iPhone, Stanford | November 15th, 2011

Back in 2009, Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty start­ed record­ing lec­tures giv­en in its iPhone Appli­ca­tion Devel­op­ment course and then plac­ing them on iTunes, mak­ing them free for any­one to view. The course hit a mil­lion down­loads in a mat­ter of weeks, and now, two years lat­er, here’s where we stand. The course remains the most pop­u­lar item on Stan­ford’s iTune­sU site, hav­ing clocked in 10 mil­lion down­loads. And the school has released a new ver­sion of the course that focus­es on iOS 5, the lat­est ver­sion of the iPhone/iPad oper­at­ing sys­tem. You can down­load the course on iTunes (in HD video or stan­dard-def­i­n­i­tion video) and start cre­at­ing apps on your own.

The iPhone Appli­ca­tion Devel­op­ment course is now list­ed in the Com­put­er Sci­ence sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es. There you will find 40+ free cours­es that will teach you to code.…

via Stan­ford News

How Many U.S. Marines Could Bring Down the Roman Empire?

in History | November 15th, 2011

It all start­ed as a thought exper­i­ment on Reddit.com when a user posed the ques­tion: “Could I destroy the entire Roman Empire dur­ing the reign of Augus­tus if I trav­eled back in time with a mod­ern U.S. Marine infantry bat­tal­ion or MEU?”

Then the Red­dit user offered a more pre­cise sce­nario:

Let’s say we go back in time with a Marine Expe­di­tionary Unit (MEU) … could we destroy all 30 of Augus­tus’ legions?

We’d be up against near­ly 330,000 men since each legion was com­prised of 11,000 men. These men are typ­i­cal­ly equipped with limb and tor­so armor made of met­al, and for weapon­ry they car­ry swords, spears, bows and oth­er stab­bing imple­ments. We’d also encounter siege weapons like cat­a­pults and crude incen­di­ary weapons.

We’d be made up of about 2000 mem­bers, of which about half would be par­tic­i­pat­ing in ground attack oper­a­tions. We can use our mech­a­nized vehi­cles (60 Humvees, 16 armored vehi­cles, etc), but we can­not use our attack air sup­port, only our trans­port air­craft.

We also have medics with us, mod­ern med­ical equip­ment and drugs, and engi­neers, but we no longer have a mag­i­cal time-trav­el­ing sup­ply line (we did have but the timelords frowned upon it, sad­ly!) that pro­vides us with all the ammu­ni­tion, equip­ment and sus­te­nance we need to sur­vive. We’ll have to suc­ceed with the stuff we brought with us.

So, will we be vic­to­ri­ous?

The ques­tion touched off a fren­zy of dis­cus­sion. One user, James Erwin, wrote a short sto­ry, Rome Sweet Rome, imag­in­ing how the bat­tles might play out, and Warn­er Bros. came along and bought the movie rights to the sto­ry.

And now pro­fes­sion­al his­to­ri­ans are weigh­ing in. Inter­viewed in Pop­u­lar Mechan­ics, his­to­ri­an Adri­an Goldswor­thy, an expert on the Roman army, offered these thoughts:

Obvi­ous­ly, there is a mas­sive dif­fer­ence in fire­pow­er. Not only would Roman armor be use­less against a rifle round—let alone a grenade launch­er or a .50 cal­iber machine gun—it would prob­a­bly dis­tort the bullet’s shape and make the wound worse.

But here comes the dif­fi­cul­ty:

In the short term and in the open, mod­ern infantry could mas­sacre any ancient sol­diers at lit­tle risk to them­selves. But you could not sup­port mod­ern infantry. So all of these weapons and vehi­cles could make a brief, dra­mat­ic, and even dev­as­tat­ing appear­ance, but would very quick­ly become use­less. Prob­a­bly in a mat­ter of days.… Marines are the best war­riors ever trained. But they can’t fight an end­less wave of sol­diers. No one can.

You can find the rest of Goldswor­thy’s thoughts here, and sev­er­al good Roman his­to­ry cours­es in our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.

via Andrew Sul­li­van

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The Story of Broke: An Animated Look at US Federal Spending and Values

in Current Affairs, Economics, Politics | November 14th, 2011

Back in 2008, Annie Leonard pro­duced The Sto­ry of Stuff (see below), a 20-minute ani­mat­ed film that explores the way our con­sumerist habits take a toll on the envi­ron­ment and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. The video racked up mil­lions of views on YouTube, and now Leonard returns with the sec­ond video in a longer series. It’s called the The Sto­ry of Broke (see above) and it takes a short­er, ani­mat­ed look at U.S. gov­ern­ment spend­ing — at how we pri­or­i­tize our spend­ing, and what it says about our core nation­al val­ues.

We have a lot of mon­ey float­ing around. The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment col­lect­ed $2.16 tril­lion in tax rev­enue in FY 2010 (and we bor­rowed yet anoth­er $1.3 tril­lion more). Mean­while, rough­ly $705 bil­lion went to defense spend­ing, which is sev­en times (or $589 bil­lion) more than the next biggest defense spender, Chi­na. It turns out that oper­at­ing a bloat­ed empire with troops deployed across 150 coun­tries is a cost­ly nation­al pri­or­i­ty. Then, as Leonard points out, we also unthink­ing­ly fun­nel a lot of mon­ey, in the form of sub­si­dies and give­aways, to dinosaur indus­tries. And then we’re told that noth­ing is left over for Social Secu­ri­ty ($707 bil­lion), Medicare/Medicaid ($732 bil­lion), and edu­ca­tion. But we should­n’t take those claims at face val­ue. Where we spend mon­ey is a choice. It’s ide­al­ly our choice, but all too often it’s real­ly a mat­ter of what’s val­ued by our lead­ers and their finan­cial back­ers.…

A Brief, Wondrous Tour of Earth (From Outer Space)

in Astronomy, Video - Science | November 13th, 2011

We have seen sev­er­al time-lapse views of Earth from the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion, but this may well be the best. Record­ed from August to Octo­ber, 2011, this HD footage has been smoothed, retimed, denoised, deflick­ered, cut, etc, and then cou­pled with music by Jan Jelinek. It gives you a pret­ty splen­did view of the auro­ra bore­alis from orbit (how often have you seen that?), and if you’re won­der­ing just what pro­duces those north­ern lights, you can watch a nice expla­na­tion here (scroll down to the sec­ond video). This video is housed in our col­lec­tion of Great Sci­ence Videos.

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A Stunning, Chance Encounter With Nature

in Random | November 13th, 2011

Sophie Wind­sor Clive and Lib­er­ty Smith were canoe­ing some­where in Ire­land when they had a chance encounter with one of nature’s great­est and most fleet­ing phe­nom­e­na — a mur­mu­ra­tion of star­lings. The spec­ta­cle is a mag­i­cal case of math­e­mat­i­cal chaos in action. And, it’s all dri­ven by the quest for sur­vival. The Tele­graph has more.…

via Dot Earth

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Peter Gabriel and His Big Orchestra Play Live at the Ed Sullivan Theater

in Music | November 12th, 2011

On Wednes­day night, Peter Gabriel brought his 46-piece orches­tra to the Ed Sul­li­van The­ater in New York City and treat­ed the audi­ence to a 65-minute con­cert fea­tur­ing orches­tral ver­sions of some clas­sic Gabriel songs: Red Rain, Sols­bury Hill, Biko, Intrud­er, Mer­cy Street, Wall­flower, San Jac­in­to, Rhythm of The Heat, Sig­nal to Noise — they were all on the setlist, though not in that par­tic­u­lar order. The con­cert, pre­sent­ed as part of the Live on Let­ter­man web­cast series, fea­tures songs and musi­cians appear­ing on Gabriel’s lat­est LP, New Blood.…

via Stere­ogum

Christopher Hitchens: No Deathbed Conversion for Me, Thanks, But it was Good of You to Ask

in Religion | November 12th, 2011

Athe­ist Christo­pher Hitchens was asked ear­li­er this year how his strug­gle with can­cer has affect­ed his views on the ques­tion of an after­life. “I would say it frac­tion­al­ly increas­es my con­tempt for the false con­so­la­tion ele­ment of reli­gion and my dis­like for the dic­ta­to­r­i­al and total­i­tar­i­an part of it,” he respond­ed. “It’s con­sid­ered per­fect­ly nor­mal in this soci­ety to approach dying peo­ple who you don’t know but who are unbe­liev­ers and say, ‘Now are you gonna change your mind?’ That is con­sid­ered almost a polite ques­tion.”

Hitchens spoke (see above) dur­ing a debate on the ques­tion, “Is there an after­life,” with Sam Har­ris and Rab­bis David Wolpe and Bradley Shav­it Art­son at the Amer­i­can Jew­ish Uni­ver­si­ty in Los Ange­les on Feb­ru­ary 15. (You can watch the entire event here.) Hitchens’ views on the sub­ject have remained con­sis­tent over the years. “It’s a reli­gious fal­si­fi­ca­tion that peo­ple like myself scream for a priest at the end,” Hitchens said before he was diag­nosed with stage four esophageal can­cer in the sum­mer of 2010. “Most of us go to our end with dig­ni­ty.”

Hitchens writes mem­o­rably of one such fig­ure in his 2006 book, Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man: A Biog­ra­phy:

Paine’s clos­ing years, piti­ful as they were, con­tained one clos­ing tri­umph. He might have become a scare­crow-like fig­ure. He might have been forced to sub­sist on the char­i­ty of friends. He might have been denied the right to vote by a bul­ly­ing offi­cial, when pre­sent­ing him­self at the polling sta­tion, on the grounds that the author of Com­mon Sense was not a true Amer­i­can. But as the buz­zards began to cir­cle, he ral­lied one more time. It was wide­ly believed by the devout of those days that unbe­liev­ers would scream for a priest when their own death-beds loomed. Why this was thought to be valu­able pro­pa­gan­da it is impos­si­ble to say. Sure­ly the sob­bing of a human crea­ture in extrem­is is tes­ti­mo­ny not worth hav­ing, as well as tes­ti­mo­ny extract­ed by the most con­temptible means? Boswell had been to vis­it David Hume under these con­di­tions, because he had been reluc­tant to believe that the sto­icism of the old philoso­pher would hold up, and as a result we have one excel­lent account of the refusal of the intel­li­gence to yield to such moral black­mail. Our oth­er account comes from those who attend­ed Paine. Dying in ulcer­at­ed agony, he was imposed upon by two Pres­by­ter­ian min­is­ters who pushed past his house­keep­er and urged him to avoid damna­tion by accept­ing Jesus Christ. ‘Let me have none of your Popish stuff,’ Paine respond­ed. ‘Get away with you, good morn­ing, good morn­ing.’ The same demand was made of him as his eyes were clos­ing. ‘Do you wish to believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God?’ He answered quite dis­tinct­ly: ‘I have no wish to believe on that sub­ject.’ Thus he expired with his rea­son, and his rights, both still staunch­ly defend­ed until the very last.

via 3 Quarks Dai­ly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steve Mar­tin Writes Song for Hymn-Deprived Athe­ists

Christo­pher Hitchens Revis­es the Ten Com­mand­ments

The Van Doos in Afghanistan (Free Until Monday)

in Current Affairs, Film | November 12th, 2011

A quick fyi: To mark Remem­brance Day, the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da (NFB) has made Claude Guilmain’s doc­u­men­tary The Van Doos in Afghanistan avail­able online for a lim­it­ed time. You can watch it free until Mon­day. The NFB writes:

In this doc­u­men­tary, we hear direct­ly from fran­coph­o­ne sol­diers serv­ing in the Roy­al 22e Rég­i­ment (known in Eng­lish as “Van Doos”) who were filmed in the field in March 2011, dur­ing their deploy­ment to Afghanistan. They speak sim­ply and direct­ly about their work, whether on patrol or per­form­ing their duties at the base. The film’s images and inter­views bring home the com­plex­i­ty of the issues on the ground and shed light on the lit­tle-under­stood expe­ri­ences of the men and women who served in Afghanistan.

You’ll find oth­er free films by the NFB in our big col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online. It now has north of 435 films on the list.

It’s the Tax Code, Stupid: Niall Ferguson Solves Our Economic Mess

in Animation, Economics | November 10th, 2011

Don’t blame the lamestream media for this one. When it comes to our pro­tract­ed eco­nom­ic stag­na­tion, there is ulti­mate­ly one place to point the fin­ger: It’s those pesky main­stream econ­o­mists.

That’s the con­clu­sion of Niall Fer­gu­son, his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Har­vard and author of The Ascent of Mon­ey: A Finan­cial His­to­ry of the World. Fer­gu­son makes his point in the first install­ment of a new ani­mat­ed series of “Op-Vids” from The Dai­ly Beast. “What is an Op-Vid,” writes The Dai­ly Beast on Vimeo? “Opin­ion, with­out the pun­dits yelling. Hand­made ani­ma­tion, with­out the car­i­ca­tures. Essays with­out the text. Com­plex top­ics, with­out the bor­ing.” With­out the bor­ing what? Com­plex­i­ty?

Fer­gu­son makes some curi­ous claims. He admits that stim­u­lus spend­ing has worked up to a point: It helped avoid anoth­er Great Depres­sion. But it didn’t cre­ate a sus­tained recov­ery. Why? Because there wasn’t enough of it? No. Because it leaks. In a glob­al econ­o­my, Fer­gu­son argues, you would need chaos the­o­ry to under­stand where the stim­u­lus actu­al­ly ends up. Even more curi­ous­ly, Fer­gu­son argues that ris­ing income inequal­i­ty in Amer­i­ca “lim­its the effec­tive­ness of Key­ne­sian poli­cies, because they need aver­age house­holds to boost their spend­ing.” (So you can for­get about hir­ing teach­ers, fire­fight­ers or con­struc­tion work­ers; that wouldn’t help “aver­age” house­holds spend more.)

Hav­ing thus defeat­ed Key­ne­sian­ism, Fer­gu­son moves on to offer a solu­tion: Sim­pli­fy the tax code. Nev­er mind the short­fall in aggre­gate demand for goods and ser­vices. Nev­er mind that corporations–sitting on $2 tril­lion in unin­vest­ed cash reserves–have main­tained near-record prof­its despite the short­fall by cut­ting pro­duc­tion and lay­ing off work­ers. Sim­pli­fy the tax code, says Fer­gu­son, and Amer­i­can com­pa­nies will hire more Amer­i­can work­ers. Prob­lem solved.

As a foot­note, it’s worth point­ing out that in ear­ly 2009 Fer­gu­son was involved in a very pub­lic debate with Prince­ton econ­o­mist Paul Krug­man over the effec­tive­ness of fis­cal expan­sion. Fer­gu­son argued that gov­ern­ment bor­row­ing would dam­age the econ­o­my by dri­ving up inter­est rates. Near­ly three years lat­er, inter­est rates have remained very low. Look­ing back on the debate, Krug­man said of Fer­gu­son, “He does­n’t under­stand Macro­eco­nom­ics 101.”