Slavoj Zizek Takes the Stage at Occupy Wall Street

in Current Affairs, Philosophy, Politics | October 11th, 2011

When Slove­ni­a’s hip Marxist/Lacanian crit­i­cal the­o­rist takes cen­ter stage at a Wall Street protest, it’s news for a cul­ture site. No doubt. How can we not observe a rare moment of prax­is? But, what it all means for the Occu­py Wall Street move­ment, we’ll let you wres­tle with that. Part 2 appears here. H/T Bib­liok­lept.

Relat­ed Stuff: It looks like the 2005 doc­u­men­tary Zizek! has found its way on YouTube, and if you want to under­stand the essence of Occu­py Wall Street, it’s worth lis­ten­ing to this recent episode of Plan­et Mon­ey. They do a good job of demys­ti­fy­ing things…

How the King James Bible Forever Changed English: 400th Anniversary Celebrated with Fun Videos

in English Language, History, Religion | October 10th, 2011

This year marks the 400th anniver­sary of the King James Bible, a trans­la­tion that influ­enced the devel­op­ment of the Eng­lish lan­guage as much as it did the Chris­t­ian faith. Right along­side many oth­er anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tions tak­ing place this year, Glen Scriven­er, a min­is­ter in the Church of Eng­land, has start­ed a blog about the lin­guis­tic impact of the text, focus­ing on 365 phras­es that have passed in com­mon par­lance. A lot of this gets art­ful­ly dis­tilled by Scriven­er’s short video, The King’s Eng­lish — 100 phras­es in 3 Min­utes (above).

Scriven­er’s work is nice­ly com­ple­ment­ed by a wit­ty ani­mat­ed video tak­en from The His­to­ry of Eng­lish in 10 Min­utes, a sequence cre­at­ed by The Open Uni­ver­si­ty ear­li­er this year.

H/T Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google Puts the Dead Sea Scrolls Online

Intro­duc­tion to the New and Old Tes­ta­ments

The Nobel Prize: Saul Perlmutter & the Accelerating Expansion of the Universe

in Astronomy, Physics, Science | October 10th, 2011

When two teams of sci­en­tists announced in 1998 that the expan­sion of the Uni­verse was not slow­ing down due to grav­i­ty but was in fact accel­er­at­ing, the world­wide sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty was shocked. The dis­cov­ery turned many of the pre­vail­ing assump­tions about the uni­verse upside down. Look­ing back, per­haps the only thing that was­n’t a sur­prise was that the Nobel Prize Com­mit­tee should take notice.

Last Tues­day the Swedish Acad­e­my of Sci­ences announced that the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics would go to three Amer­i­can-born sci­en­tists from two rival teams: physi­cist Saul Per­mut­ter, head of the Super­no­va Cos­mol­o­gy Project at Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley, would receive half of the prize, while Bri­an P. Schmidt, head of the High‑z Super­no­va Search Team and an astronomer at the Research School of Astron­o­my and Astro­physics at the Aus­tralian Nation­al Uni­ver­si­ty, West­on Creek, would share the oth­er half with a col­league who wrote the orig­i­nal paper announc­ing the team’s find­ings in 1998, astronomer Adam G. Riess of Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty and the Space Tele­scope Sci­ence Insti­tute.

Despite pop­u­lar belief, the two teams did not “dis­cov­er” dark ener­gy. As Perl­mut­ter points out in the short film above, “Peo­ple are using the term ‘dark ener­gy’ basi­cal­ly as a place hold­er to describe any expla­na­tion for why it is that we seem to be see­ing the uni­verse’s expan­sion get­ting faster and faster.” What is actu­al­ly known is that the uni­verse has been expand­ing for as far back as we can observe, and about 7 bil­lion years ago–roughly half the esti­mat­ed age of the universe–the expan­sion began to accel­er­ate.

“Why is it speed­ing up?” Perl­mut­ter asked dur­ing a press con­fer­ence on the morn­ing his Nobel Prize was announced. “It could be that most of the uni­verse is dom­i­nat­ed by a dark ener­gy that per­vades all of space and is caus­ing this accel­er­a­tion. It could be, per­haps even more sur­pris­ing, that Ein­stein’s The­o­ry of Gen­er­al Rel­a­tiv­i­ty needs a lit­tle bit of a tweak, per­haps act­ing slight­ly dif­fer­ent­ly on these very large scales of the uni­verse. But at this moment I would say that the ques­tion is wide open.”

The 11-minute doc­u­men­tary above, pro­duced in 2008 by KQED in San Fran­cis­co, gives a good overview of how Perl­mut­ter and his rivals mea­sured the red-shift and bright­ness of light from Type 1a super­novae to plot the uni­verse’s rate of expan­sion across bil­lions of years. For an in-depth his­to­ry of the project, you can read this three-part arti­cle from the Berke­ley Lab. Or, if you only have a minute (1:39 to be exact) you can watch this “Minute Physics” episode nar­rat­ed by Cal­tech physi­cist Sean Car­roll.

To bone up on physics, don’t miss this col­lec­tion of 25 Free Physics Cours­es, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion of 400+ Free Online Cours­es.

Noam Chomsky & Michel Foucault Debate Human Nature & Power (1971)

in Philosophy | October 7th, 2011

Once again, we’re head­ing back to 1971. Yes­ter­day we had Dick Cavet­t’s 1971 inter­view with George Har­ri­son. Today, it’s the clash of two intel­lec­tu­al titans, Noam Chom­sky and Michel Fou­cault. In ’71, at the height of the Viet­nam War, the Amer­i­can lin­guist and French historian/social the­o­rist appeared on Dutch TV to debate a fun­da­men­tal ques­tion: Is there such a thing as innate human nature? Or are we shaped by expe­ri­ences and the pow­er of cul­tur­al and social insti­tu­tions around us?

40 years lat­er, you can find the clas­sic debate on YouTube. If you need sub­ti­tles, make sure you turn on the cap­tions func­tion at the bot­tom of the video.

A full tran­script of the debate can be read online, or you can pur­chase a copy in book for­mat. Final­ly, a recent BBC pro­gram revis­its  and ana­lyzes the Chom­sky-Fou­cault encounter. H/T Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Cours­es in Phi­los­o­phy

Jacques Lacan Speaks; Zizek Pro­vides Free Cliffs Notes

Down­load Free Cours­es from Famous Philoso­phers: From Bertrand Rus­sell to Michel Fou­cault

Noam Chom­sky vs. William F. Buck­ley, 1969

Ali G and Noam Chom­sky Talk Lin­guis­tics

Stream It: Title Track of David Lynch’s Upcoming Solo Album

in Film, Music | October 5th, 2011

David Lynch has been busy late­ly, cre­at­ing every­thing except the fea­ture films that made him famous. Ear­li­er this year, he “direct­ed” Duran Duran’s con­cert in LA and col­lab­o­rat­ed with Inter­pol to cre­ate an ani­mat­ed sequence for the 2011 Coachel­la Fes­ti­val. Then came his puz­zling video response to the Wash­ing­ton Debt Deal, a creepy com­mer­cial for his new line of cof­fee prod­ucts, a new night­club opened in Paris, and now this: a haunt­ing elec­tron­ic album called Crazy Clown Time that brings his strange aes­thet­ic to a whole new medi­um. The album is due out on Novem­ber 8th, and above you can lis­ten to the title track for free.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Haruki Murakami: New Short Story. New Book. And Perhaps Nobel Prize?

in Literature | October 5th, 2011

It’s a good time to be a fan of Haru­ki Muraka­mi. Last month, his short sto­ry, “Town of Cats,” was pub­lished in The New York­er. Lat­er in Octo­ber, his new book 1Q84 hits the stands in the US. (Watch the book trail­er above.) And, right now, the British book­mak­er Lad­brokes is giv­ing Muraka­mi 7‑to‑1 odds of win­ning the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture, to be named tomor­row morn­ing. They’re strong odds. But the Syr­i­an poet Ado­nis (read three poems here) is the actu­al favorite right now with 4‑to‑1 odds. Stay tuned. We’ll know more soon …

Richard Feynman on Beauty

in Physics, Science | October 5th, 2011

After dis­miss­ing the pop­u­lar notion that sci­en­tists are unable to tru­ly appre­ci­ate beau­ty in nature, physi­cist Richard Feyn­man (1918 — 1988) explains what a sci­en­tist real­ly is and does. Here are some of the most mem­o­rable lines from this beau­ti­ful mix of Feyn­man quotes and (most­ly) BBC and NASA footage:

• Peo­ple say to me, Are you look­ing for the ulti­mate laws of physics? — No, I’m not. I’m just look­ing to find out more about the world.
• When we’re going to inves­ti­gate [nature], we should­n’t pre­de­cide what it is we’re try­ing to do, except to find out more about it.
• I can live with doubt and uncer­tain­ty and not know­ing. I think it’s much more inter­est­ing to live not know­ing than to have answers that might be wrong. (…) I don’t feel fright­ened by not know­ing things, by being lost in the mys­te­ri­ous uni­verse with­out hav­ing any pur­pose.
• When you doubt and ask, it gets a lit­tle hard­er to believe.

Beau­ty is the first video in The Feyn­man Series, along with Hon­ours and Curios­i­ty. The sequence is a com­pan­ion to The Sagan Series, which pays trib­ute to the late Carl Sagan. H/T Kot­tke

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Richard Feynman’s Physics Lec­tures Online

The Plea­sure of Find­ing Things Out

The Last Jour­ney Of A Genius: Richard Feyn­man Dreams of Tan­nu Tuva

Martin Scorsese: Why I Made The George Harrison Documentary

in Film, Music | October 5th, 2011

Just a quick reminder, Mar­tin Scors­ese’s two-part doc­u­men­tary on George Har­ri­son airs tonight and tomor­row night on HBO. After mak­ing films about Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones, the leg­endary film­mak­er now turns some­what unex­pect­ed­ly to the silent Bea­t­le, and you have to won­der why. Why George? So Scors­ese recalls when things orig­i­nal­ly clicked, the first moment when he real­ized the “pic­ture had to be made.”

Kickstarter: the Future of Self-Publishing?

in Audio Books, Books, Media | October 4th, 2011

We all know where books come from: a human and a muse meet, fall in love, and two months to twen­ty years lat­er, a book is born. Then, as with oth­er vari­eties of babies, the sleep­less nights start as a writer search­es for a home for the book, col­lect­ing rejec­tions like badges of hon­or, tes­ta­ments to deter­mi­na­tion.

Well, that was the old-fash­ioned way. We’ve all heard how the inter­net has lev­eled the play­ing field, allow­ing any­body to pub­lish work and find an audi­ence. How­ev­er, this eas­i­er path to pub­li­ca­tion hasn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly solved an even old­er writer’s conun­drum: How to pay for it.

That is, how to make enough mon­ey to sus­tain your­self as you write (day jobs aside). And so writ­ers must become even wil­i­er. Though you may make mon­ey from the sale of a book, how do you fund your­self before the book?

Seth Har­wood, the author of three books, is at the front of the move­ment to find alter­nate and cre­ative ways of not only reach­ing audi­ences, but pur­su­ing the writ­ing life. Since grad­u­at­ing from the Iowa Writ­ers Work­shop in 2002, Har­wood has built up a loy­al fan base—his “Palms Mamas and Palms Dad­dies” (named for one of his pro­tag­o­nists, Jack Palms)—through social media and free pod­cast­ing. Har­wood is sus­tain­ing a writ­ing life along a path that is like­ly to be more and more com­mon for writ­ers.

After offer­ing his first nov­el, Jack Wakes Up, as a free audio­book, Har­wood pub­lished it in paper­back with Break­neck Books in 2008. The Ama­zon sales, pushed by Palms Mamas and Palms Dad­dies, land­ed the book in #1 in Crime/Mystery and #45 over­all, bring­ing the atten­tion of Ran­dom House, who re-pub­lished the book one year lat­er.

Look­ing out­side main­stream avenues, Har­wood secured fund­ing for pub­li­ca­tion of his next ven­ture, Young Junius, with Tyrus Books by pre­selling signed copies through Paypal—before the books exist­ed in phys­i­cal form. And now he is one of the ear­ly adopters of using Kick­starter to pay for the ges­ta­tion and birth of not one book—but five pre­vi­ous­ly-writ­ten works in the next six months–as he puts it, “rais­ing the fixed costs of bring­ing these books to the mar­ket­place.” His Kick­starter cam­paign based around This Is Life, the sequel to Jack Wakes Up was—impressively—fully fund­ed with­in 25 hours—and with a few days still left to go, it has exceed­ed the orig­i­nal goal by over $2000.

What can a writer offer besides an auto­graphed copy of the to-be-writ­ten book, or a men­tion in the acknowl­edge­ments? For Harwood’s project, the pledges range from a dol­lar to $999, with thank-yous span­ning from the afore­men­tioned to—at the $999 end—an orig­i­nal novel­la writ­ten accord­ing to the donor’s wish­es and pub­lished as a one-off hard­cov­er.

As more and more writ­ers become cyn­i­cal about the main­stream pub­lish­ing indus­try, and the lim­its it places on writ­ers, and as the inter­net breaks down bar­ri­ers between writ­ers and read­ers, alter­nate paths of draw­ing audi­ences to the writing/publishing process may become more and more pop­u­lar. In none oth­er than the New York Times Book Review, Neal Pol­lack recent­ly declared his inten­tion to self-pub­lish his next book using Kick­starter to gen­er­ate his fixed costs and “an advance,” and last week best­seller Paulo Coel­ho dis­cussed his deci­sion to offer his nov­els for free online. (You can find free ebooks by Coel­ho here.)

Indeed, now more than ever, it seems essen­tial for authors to meet read­ers at least half-way. Har­wood con­sid­ers him­self an “author-pre­neur,” devel­op­ing new busi­ness mod­els as he pub­lish­es his books. As he sees it, inno­va­tion comes much more eas­i­ly to an author act­ing alone, than to a large pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny or big cor­po­ra­tion. He aims for the new mod­els as he sees them devel­op­ing, know­ing he’s got to go out and find read­ers him­self. As Coel­ho declares, “The ivory tow­er does not exist any­more.”

This post was con­tributed by Shaw­na Yang Ryan. Her nov­el Water Ghosts was a final­ist for the 2010 Asian Amer­i­can Lit­er­ary Award. In 2012, she will be the Dis­tin­guished Writer in Res­i­dence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hawai’i at Manoa.

The Mechanical Monsters: Seminal Superman Animated Film from 1941

in Film, Sci Fi, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society, YouTube | October 4th, 2011

In 1941, direc­tor Dave Fleis­ch­er and Para­mount Pic­tures ani­ma­tors Steve Muf­fati and George Ger­manet­ti pro­duced Super­man: The Mechan­i­cal Mon­sters — a big-bud­get ani­mat­ed adap­ta­tion of the pop­u­lar Super­man comics of that peri­od, in which a mad sci­en­tist unleash­es robots to rob banks and loot muse­ums, and Super­man, nat­u­ral­ly, saves the day. It was one of sev­en­teen films that raised the bar for the­atri­cal shorts and are even con­sid­ered by some to have giv­en rise to the entire Ani­me genre.

More than a mere treat of vin­tage ani­ma­tion, the film cap­tures the era’s char­ac­ter­is­tic ambiva­lence in rec­on­cil­ing the need for progress with the fear of tech­nol­o­gy in a cul­ture on the brink of incred­i­ble tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion. It was the dawn of the tech­no-para­noia that per­sist­ed through the 1970s, famous­ly cap­tured in the TV series Future Shock nar­rat­ed by Orson Welles, and even through today. Take for exam­ple books like Nicholas Car­r’s The Shal­lows and Sher­ry Turkle’s Alone Togeth­er: Why We Expect More from Tech­nol­o­gy and Less from Each Oth­er.

Super­man: The Mechan­i­cal Mon­sters is avail­able for down­load on The Inter­net Archive, and Toon­a­mi Dig­i­tal Arse­nal has the com­plete series of all sev­en­teen films. Find more vin­tage ani­ma­tion in Open Cul­ture’s col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of cross-dis­ci­pli­nary inter­est­ing­ness. She writes for Wired UK, The Atlantic and Desig­nOb­serv­er, and spends a great deal of time on Twit­ter.