Watch ‘Jammin’ the Blues,’ One of the Most Stylish Jazz Films Ever Made (1944)

in Film, Music | October 21st, 2011

In recent days we’ve brought you doc­u­men­tary films explor­ing the birth­place of the blues and the genius of Theo­nious Monk. Today, we fea­ture one of the most styl­ish jazz films ever made: Jam­min’ the Blues, direct­ed by Life mag­a­zine pho­tog­ra­ph­er Gjon Mili in 1944.

Born in Alba­nia and trained as an engi­neer, Mili worked close­ly with the famed MIT researcher and inven­tor Harold Edger­ton to devel­op stop-action strobe pho­tog­ra­phy. At Life, Mili used his tech­ni­cal wiz­ardry to cre­ate a dis­tinc­tive aes­thet­ic style. High in con­trast and razor-sharp, Mil­i’s pic­tures often reveal ath­letes, dancers and oth­er per­form­ers at moments of peak action. He some­times used a rapid series of flash­es to trace the evo­lu­tion of a motion or ges­ture. His most famous images fea­ture bright­ly rim-lit sub­jects against a back­ground of pure black.

In 1944, Warn­er Broth­ers com­mis­sioned Mili to bring his trade­mark style to the movies. Jam­min’ the Blues looks as though it jumped right from the pages of Life. As the film fades in, we see only a pair of con­cen­tric cir­cles, a pure abstrac­tion. The cam­era pulls back to reveal the great tenor sax­o­phon­ist Lester Young in his pork pie hat. Young is soon joined by a group of top musi­cians, includ­ing Red Cal­len­der, Sweets Edi­son, Mar­lowe Mor­ris, Sid­ney Catlett, Bar­ney Kessel, Marie Bryant and Joe Jones. A spir­it­ed “jam ses­sion” is on.

Despite the impro­vi­sa­tion­al nature of the sub­ject, Jam­min’ the Blues was painstak­ing­ly con­struct­ed from many shots, with the per­form­ers mov­ing in synch to a pre-record­ed sound­track. The cin­e­matog­ra­phy is by Robert Burks, who went on to be the direc­tor of pho­tog­ra­phy on many of Alfred Hitch­cock­’s films, includ­ing North by North­west and Ver­ti­go.

Jam­min’ the Blues runs an exhil­a­rat­ing 10 min­utes, and has been added to our archive of Free Movies.

20 Christian Academics Speaking About God

in Religion | October 21st, 2011

This sum­mer, Jonathan Parara­jas­ing­ham cre­at­ed 50 Renowned Aca­d­e­mics Speak­ing About God and then Anoth­er 50 Renowned Aca­d­e­mics Speak­ing About God. If you’re count­ing, that makes 100. Right along­side these twin videos came 20 Chris­t­ian Aca­d­e­mics Speak­ing About God, a mon­tage fea­tur­ing some respect­ed fig­ures (save Dinesh D’Souza) try­ing to square reli­gious beliefs with their sci­en­tif­ic work.

You could per­haps add Karl W. Giber­son and Ran­dall J. Stephens to this list, two pro­fes­sors who teach at a Chris­t­ian lib­er­al arts col­lege in Boston. Ear­li­er this week, Giber­son and Stephens pub­lished The Anoint­ed: Evan­gel­i­cal Truth in a Sec­u­lar Age and an accom­pa­ny­ing op-ed in The New York Times called The Evan­gel­i­cal Rejec­tion of Rea­son. And it all points to a ten­sion with­in Amer­i­ca’s reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty — the one side that is “intel­lec­tu­al­ly engaged, hum­ble and for­ward-look­ing” (like some of the folks shown above) and the oth­er side that is “lit­er­al­is­tic, over­con­fi­dent and reac­tionary” and often hos­tile to basic sci­ence. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the authors argue, this back­ward-look­ing view has become the main­stream with­in evan­gel­i­cal cir­cles, and it does a strug­gling nation no favors.

Yes­ter­day, Giber­son appeared on NPR’s Talk of the Nation. You can lis­ten to the inter­view here, or read the tran­script here.

(more…)

As the World Burns

in Video - Science | October 21st, 2011

NASA has released a series of new satel­lite data visu­al­iza­tions that “show tens of mil­lions of fires detect­ed world­wide from space” between July 2002 and July 2011. The visu­al­iza­tions were pro­duced by the MOD­er­ate Res­o­lu­tion Imag­ing Spec­tro­ra­diome­ter, or MODIS, instru­ments onboard NASA’s Ter­ra and Aqua satel­lites. And they help sci­en­tists under­stand how fires affect our envi­ron­ment on local, region­al and glob­al scales — one of the many unex­pect­ed things that come out of NASA space mis­sions. h/t holykaw

Fol­low us on Face­book and Twit­ter and we’ll keep point­ing you to free cul­tur­al good­ies dai­ly…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What It Feels Like to Fly Over Plan­et Earth

Earth­rise in HD

Tour­ing the Earth from Space (in HD)

125 Great Sci­ence Videos: From Astron­o­my to Physics & Psy­chol­o­gy

Legendary Folklorist Alan Lomax: ‘The Land Where the Blues Began’

in Music | October 20th, 2011

In 1933, 18-year-old Alan Lomax took a break from col­lege to trav­el into the Amer­i­can South with his father, John Avery Lomax, on a quest to dis­cov­er and record tra­di­tion­al folk songs for the Library of Con­gress. It was the begin­ning of a jour­ney that would last the rest of his life.

With his father, and lat­er on his own, Lomax trav­eled the back roads of Appalachia and the Mis­sis­sip­pi Delta, from reli­gious revival meet­ings to prison chain gangs, in pur­suit of South­ern folk music in all its forms. Along the way he dis­cov­ered and record­ed such sin­gu­lar artists as Mis­sis­sip­pi Fred McDow­ell, Vera Hall and Lead Belly. Lat­er, Lomax would widen his field of research to focus on Euro­pean folk music, but in 1978 he went back to the Mis­sis­sip­pi Delta with a cam­era crew to doc­u­ment a cul­ture that was rapid­ly dis­ap­pear­ing.

The result, The Land Where the Blues Began (watch it online here), is a fas­ci­nat­ing look at tra­di­tion­al coun­try blues in its native envi­ron­ment. Filmed in lev­ee camps, church­es, juke joints and on front porch­es across Mis­sis­sip­pi, the doc­u­men­tary draws atten­tion to musi­cians unknown out­side the Delta. The Land Where the Blues Began is a must-see for blues fans, and is now part of our col­lec­tion of Free Movies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Leg­end of Blues­man Robert John­son Ani­mat­ed

The Rolling Stones Jam With Their Idol, Mud­dy Waters

Mud­dy Waters on the Blues and Gospel Train

Robot Sets Rubik’s Cube World Record: 5.35 Seconds

in Video - Science | October 20th, 2011

Cob­bling togeth­er some LEGOs and a smart­phone run­ning a cus­tom Android app, Mike Dob­son and David Gil­day built CubeStormer II, a lean, mean Rubik’s Cube-solv­ing machine. Crack­ing a Rubik’s Cube in 5.35 sec­onds, Cubestormer II made mince­meat out of Ruby, the pre­vi­ous robot record hold­er — 10.18 sec­onds. And it even edged out the exist­ing world record, 5.66 sec­onds, set by Feliks Zemdegs ear­li­er this year. Watch him go below.

To see Cubestormer II in action, you can vis­it ARM Tech­Con 2011, to be held in San­ta Clara, Cal­i­for­nia on Octo­ber 26 and 27. H/T Sci­ence Dump.

Iceland in the Midnight Sun

in Film | October 19th, 2011

For 17 days this past June, time­lapse cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Joe Capra trav­eled across Ice­land, cap­tur­ing its nat­ur­al beau­ty dur­ing the months when the sun nev­er sets and nev­er ris­es. Mak­ing Mid­night Sun was no easy feat. Capra worked at it around the clock, tak­ing 38,000 images and trav­el­ing 2900 miles. Our rec­om­men­da­tion? Watch the film on Vimeo, in HD and with a full screen.

Bonus: Don’t miss this new Cam­bridge Ideas film, Mem­o­ries of Old Awake, that looks at how Ice­land’s cen­turies old sagas are deeply inter­twined with the every­day lives of peo­ple who live there.

via Coudal.com

Under a Brooding Sky: The Photography of Don McCullin

in Art | October 19th, 2011

As a chron­i­cler of war, Don McCullin is a leg­end. Hen­ri Carti­er-Bres­son once com­pared him to Goya, and John Le Car­ré wrote, “He was a com­mu­ni­ca­tor of the world’s worst ago­nies, a pil­grim to the front line of human suf­fer­ing, return­ing with his kit-bag of hor­rors to appal the com­fort­able, the wil­ful­ly blind and the unknow­ing.” As a pho­to­jour­nal­ist for The Observ­er and the Sun­day Times Mag­a­zine, McCullin cov­ered all the major con­flicts of the 1960s and 1970s, and many of the minor ones: Viet­nam, Cam­bo­dia, North­ern Ire­land, Lebanon, Cyprus, Biafra, the Six-Day War, the Yom Kip­pur War. But McCullin has always hat­ed the term “war pho­tog­ra­ph­er” for what he calls its mer­ce­nary ring. In recent years the pho­tog­ra­ph­er has turned his lens on more peace­ful sub­jects, like the Eng­lish land­scape. Yet even in pas­toral set­tings, McCullin’s work retains a sense of men­ace. The very light seems to brood, as one col­league put it. “My favorite time to pho­to­graph land­scape is evening,” McCullin said in a 1987 inter­view. “I can’t avoid want­i­ng every­thing to go dark, dark, dark.”

A major exhib­it of McCullin’s work is on dis­play at the Impe­r­i­al War Muse­um in Lon­don through April 15, while a small­er exhib­it of his non-war pho­tographs (see above) is on dis­play at the Tate Britain through March 4.

Fun with Quantum Levitation

in Physics, Video - Science | October 19th, 2011

Pre­pare to have your mind blown.

You may have seen lev­i­ta­tion tricks per­formed by magi­cians, but rest assured that they can’t beat this: quan­tum lev­i­ta­tion. The video above was cap­tured at the 2011 ASTC con­fer­ence, a gath­er­ing of sci­en­tists in Bal­ti­more, Mary­land, with the pur­pose of demon­strat­ing “how sci­ence cen­ters and muse­ums are putting new ideas to prac­ti­cal use to serve their com­mu­ni­ties.” The School of Physics and Astron­o­my at Tel-Aviv Uni­ver­si­ty has put togeth­er this physics exper­i­ment show­cas­ing quan­tum super­con­duc­tors locked in a mag­net­ic field.

While the video fails to explain the sci­ence of what is hap­pen­ing here, the com­ple­men­tary web­site is help­ful. The white round disk (essen­tial­ly a sap­phire wafer coat­ed with a thin lay­er of yttri­um bar­i­um cop­per oxide) is cooled to below neg­a­tive 185 degrees C. At that tem­per­a­ture (dubbed the crit­i­cal tem­per­a­ture), the mate­r­i­al becomes super­con­duc­tive, mean­ing that it has zero elec­tri­cal resis­tance. From the web­site:

Super­con­duc­tiv­i­ty and mag­net­ic field do not like each oth­er. When pos­si­ble, the super­con­duc­tor will expel all the mag­net­ic field from inside. This is the Meiss­ner effect. In our case, since the super­con­duc­tor is extreme­ly thin, the mag­net­ic field DOES pen­e­trate. How­ev­er, it does that in dis­crete quan­ti­ties (this is quan­tum physics after all! ) called flux tubes.

Inside each mag­net­ic flux tube super­con­duc­tiv­i­ty is local­ly destroyed. The super­con­duc­tor will try to keep the mag­net­ic tubes pinned in weak areas (e.g. grain bound­aries). Any spa­tial move­ment of the super­con­duc­tor will cause the flux tubes to move. In order to pre­vent that, the super­con­duc­tor remains “trapped” in midair.

And in case you’re won­der­ing: are there prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions for quan­tum lev­i­ta­tion? The answer, of course, is yes!

Find free physics cours­es in our big col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties — 400 great cours­es and grow­ing.

Eugene Buchko is a blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er liv­ing in Atlanta, GA. He main­tains a pho­to­blog, Eru­dite Expres­sions, and writes about what he reads on his read­ing blog.

H/T Engad­get

Philip Roth Predicts the Death of the Novel; Paul Auster Counters

in Books, Literature | October 18th, 2011

Nov­els — they’re in inevitable decline. They can’t com­pete with the movie screen, the TV screen and now the com­put­er screen. Give things 25 years, and there will be just a small cult of read­ers left. That’s the pre­dic­tion of Amer­i­can author, Philip Roth, who has 27 nov­els to his cred­it. And appar­ent­ly, Roth is per­son­al­ly has­ten­ing the process. Ear­li­er this year, he told a reporter for the Finan­cial Times: “I’ve stopped read­ing fic­tion. I don’t read it at all. I read oth­er things: his­to­ry, biog­ra­phy. I don’t have the same inter­est in fic­tion that I once did.” When asked why, he quipped: “I don’t know. I wised up … ”

For Paul Auster, anoth­er pro­duc­tive nov­el­ist, the reports of the nov­el­’s death are great­ly exag­ger­at­ed. Humans hunger for sto­ries. They always will. And, the nov­el, it knows how to adapt and sur­vive. Will it sur­vive with the help of tech­nol­o­gy? Auster might not be the best per­son to ask. He owns nei­ther a com­put­er nor a mobile phone. Lucky man.

Bonus: You can lis­ten to Paul Auster read The Red Note­book, a col­lec­tion of short sto­ries pub­lished in 2002, right here. (He starts read­ing at around the 8:30 mark.) We have it list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Irv­ing: The Road Ahead for Aspir­ing Nov­el­ists

Hail! Hail! Chuck Berry, the Father of Rock & Roll, Is 85

in Music | October 18th, 2011

“If you had to give rock and roll anoth­er name,” John Lennon once said, “you might call it ‘Chuck Berry.’ ” The man known as the father of rock and roll turns 85 today and he’s still going strong. To cel­e­brate, we bring you this pow­er­ful 1958 per­for­mance of “John­ny B. Goode.”

Berry was born Octo­ber 18, 1926 in St. Louis, Mis­souri. He devel­oped a love of music ear­ly, and made his debut play­ing a blues song in a high school tal­ent show. While still in high school, Berry was sen­tenced to juve­nile prison for armed rob­bery. After get­ting out, he joined pianist John­nie John­son’s trio. It did­n’t take long before John­son was the side­man and Berry was the band­leader. His big break came in 1955, when he made a road trip to Chica­go and sought out his hero, Mud­dy Waters. Waters sug­gest­ed he go see Leonard Chess at Chess Records. Berry returned to Chica­go with a demo tape that includ­ed an up-tem­po adap­ta­tion of a tra­di­tion­al coun­try song called “Ida Red.” Chess liked it, but said it need­ed a new name. Berry record­ed it as “May­bel­lene.” The song went to num­ber one on the Bill­board rhythm and blues chart. Over the next few years Berry vir­tu­al­ly invent­ed the Rock and Roll form, with songs like “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Rock and Roll Music,” “John­ny B.Goode,” and “No Par­tic­u­lar Place to Go.”

“He was the king of rock and roll,” Jer­ry Lee Lewis said in the biopic Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll. “My mama said, ‘You and Elvis are pret­ty good, but you’re no Chuck Berry.’ ” When Kei­th Richards induct­ed Berry into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, he joked that he had stolen every lick Berry ever played. “The beau­ti­ful thing about Chuck Berry’s play­ing,” Richards wrote in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Life, “was it had such an effort­less swing. None of this sweat­ing and grind­ing away and gri­mac­ing, just pure, effort­less swing, like a lion.”

For one more look at the lion in action–this time play­ing “Roll Over Beethoven”–here’s anoth­er clip from the 1958 tele­vi­sion broad­cast:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bud­dy Hol­ly at Age 12: His First Record­ing

Hunter S. Thomp­son Inter­views Kei­th Richards

The Rolling Stones Jam With Their Idol, Mud­dy Waters

Mud­dy Waters on the Blues and Gospel Train