Mick Jagger Acts in The Nightingale, a Televised Play from 1983

in K-12, Literature, Music, Television | September 22nd, 2015

Pity the man who has every­thing. Sat­is­fac­tion is but fleet­ing.

One won­ders if rock god Mick Jag­ger might know a thing or two about the con­di­tion. He does­n’t seem to know all that much about act­ing, as evi­denced by his turn in The Nightin­gale episode of Shel­ley Duvall’s Faerie Tale The­atre series.

No mat­ter. His art­less­ness is part of the charm. As the spoiled emper­or of Cathay, he makes no effort to alter his Mock­ney accent. He also keeps his famous strut under wraps, weight­ed down by his roy­al robes (and top knot!).

The 1983 episode cleaves close­ly to the Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­sen orig­i­nal that inspired it. To sum­ma­rize the plot:

The emper­or demands an audi­ence with a nightin­gale, after hear­ing tell of its song, but the toad­ies who com­prise his court are too rar­i­fied to locate one in the for­est.

A low­ly kitchen maid (Bar­bara Her­shey, on the brink of star­dom) is the only one with the know how to deliv­er.

But the emper­or is fick­le — it isn’t long before his head is turned by a jew­el encrust­ed, mechan­ics facsimile…a com­mon enough rock n’ roll pit­fall.

A large part of Faerie Tale The­ater’s mag­ic was the jux­ta­po­si­tion of high wattage stars and extreme­ly low pro­duc­tion bud­gets. There’s an ele­ment of stu­dent film to the pro­ceed­ings. The video­tape on which it was shot flat­tens rather than flat­ters. This is not a crit­i­cism. It makes me awful­ly fond of the big shots who agreed to par­tic­i­pate.

In addi­tion to Jag­ger and Her­shey, look for Angel­i­ca Hus­ton, Edward James Olmos, and Jagger’s then girl­friend, Jer­ry Hall, in small­er roles. There’s also Bud Cort of Harold and Maude, flap­ping around the sparse­ly dec­o­rat­ed for­est like a vis­i­tor from an entire­ly dif­fer­ent sto­ry, nay, plan­et.

A curi­ous enter­prise indeed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Fry Reads Oscar Wilde’s Children’s Sto­ry “The Hap­py Prince”

Mr. Rogers Intro­duces Kids to Exper­i­men­tal Elec­tron­ic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nel­son (1968)

Andy Warhol’s 85 Polaroid Por­traits: Mick Jag­ger, Yoko Ono, O.J. Simp­son & Many Oth­ers (1970–1987)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day will be appear­ing at the Brook­lyn Book Fes­ti­val in New York City this week­end.. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

An Animated Margaret Atwood Explains How Stories Change with Technology

in Animation, Literature, Technology | September 21st, 2015

From the Future Of Sto­ry­Telling video series comes an ani­ma­tion fea­tur­ing Mar­garet Atwood med­i­tat­ing on how tech­nol­o­gy shapes the way we tell sto­ries. Just like the Guten­berg Press did almost 600 years ago, the recent advent of dig­i­tal plat­forms (the inter­net, ebooks, etc.) has cre­at­ed new ways for us to tell, dis­trib­ute and share sto­ries. And Atwood has­n’t been afraid to explore it all, writ­ing sto­ries on Wattpad and Twit­ter. Atwood will appear at The Future of Sto­ry­telling Sum­mit on Octo­ber 7 and 8.

via Matthias Rasch­er

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Dia­grams the Shape of All Sto­ries in a Master’s The­sis Reject­ed by U. Chica­go

Writ­ing Tips by Hen­ry Miller, Elmore Leonard, Mar­garet Atwood, Neil Gaiman & George Orwell

18-Year-Old James Joyce Writes a Fan Letter to His Hero Henrik Ibsen (1901)

in Literature | September 20th, 2015

When it comes to the­o­ries of artis­tic lin­eage, few have been as influ­en­tial as Harold Bloom’s The Anx­i­ety of Influ­ence, in which the august lit­er­ary crit­ic argues, “Poet­ic Influence—when it involves two strong, authen­tic poets—always pro­ceeds by a mis­read­ing of the pri­or poet, an act of cre­ative cor­rec­tion that is actu­al­ly and nec­es­sar­i­ly a mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion.” This kind of misreading—what Bloom calls “mis­pri­sion”—often takes place between two artists sep­a­rat­ed by vast gulfs of time and space: the influ­ence of Dante on T.S. Eliot, for exam­ple, or of Shake­speare on Her­man Melville.

When we come to a study of James Joyce (1882–1941), how­ev­er, we find the ground­break­ing mod­ernist cor­re­spond­ing direct­ly with one of his fore­most lit­er­ary heroes, Nor­we­gian play­wright Hen­rik Ibsen (1828–1906), whom Maria Popo­va calls Joyce’s “spir­i­tu­al and men­tal ances­tor.” As Bloom points out, Joyce described Ibsen’s work as being “of uni­ver­sal import.” He  extolled and defend­ed Ibsen’s then-con­tro­ver­sial work in his stu­dent days, both in a 1900 lec­ture he deliv­ered at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege, Dublin, and in an essay he pub­lished that same year in the Lon­don jour­nal Fort­night­ly Review. (See the young Joyce above in 1902, at 20 years of age.)

Joyce’s arti­cle, “Ibsen’s New Dra­ma,” focused on the play­wright’s lat­est, When We Dead Awak­en, and was warm­ly received by Ibsen him­self, who—through his Eng­lish trans­la­tor William Archer—described the essay as “velvil­lig,” or “benev­o­lent.” Archer con­veyed Ibsen’s sen­ti­ments in a let­ter soon after the essay’s pub­li­ca­tion, and there­after, Joyce’s essay—writes the James Joyce Cen­tre—was “no longer just a review but a review that Ibsen had read and praised.”

Thus began a three-year cor­re­spon­dence between Joyce and Archer, and a friend­ly relationship—at some remove—between Joyce and Ibsen. In 1901, on the play­wright’s 73rd birth­day, Joyce wrote a let­ter to Ibsen direct­ly. He men­tions the cir­cum­stances of the review and express­es much youth­ful admi­ra­tion, self-con­fi­dence, and grat­i­tude for Ibsen’s response. The young Joyce laments that his “imma­ture and hasty arti­cle” came to Ibsen’s atten­tion first, “rather than some­thing bet­ter,” and boasts, “I have claimed for you your right­ful place in the his­to­ry of dra­ma.”

Read the let­ter in full below, in all its exu­ber­ant ego­tism. Accord­ing to James Joyce A to Z: The Essen­tial Ref­er­ence to the Life and Work, as he matured, the nov­el­ist “drew upon Ibsen less for cre­ative encour­age­ment than for psy­cho­log­i­cal inspi­ra­tion. In Joyce’s mind, Ibsen remained the mod­el of the artist who defies con­ven­tion­al cre­ative approach­es and who remains true to the demands of an indi­vid­ual aes­thet­ic.” Whether Joyce “mis­read” and “cre­ative­ly cor­rect­ed” Ibsen is a ques­tion I leave for oth­ers. You can read many more “fan let­ters” writ­ten by oth­er famous authors to their lit­er­ary heroes—including George R.R. Mar­tin to Stan Lee, Charles Dick­ens to George Eliot, and Ray Brad­bury to Robert Heinlein—at Fla­vor­wire.

Hon­oured Sir,

I write to you to give you greet­ing on your sev­en­ty-third birth­day and to join my voice to those of your well-wish­ers in all lands. You may remem­ber that short­ly after the pub­li­ca­tion of your lat­est play ‘When We Dead Awak­en’, an appre­ci­a­tion of it appeared in one of the Eng­lish reviews — The Fort­night­ly Review — over my name. I know that you have seen it because some short time after­wards Mr. William Archer wrote to me and told me that in a let­ter he had from you some days before, you had writ­ten, ‘I have read or rather spelled out a review in the Fort­night­ly Review by Mr. James Joyce which is very benev­o­lent and for which I should great­ly like to thank the author if only I had suf­fi­cient knowl­edge of the lan­guage.’ (My own knowl­edge of your lan­guage is not, as you see, great but I trust you will be able to deci­pher my mean­ing.) I can hard­ly tell you how moved I was by your mes­sage. I am a young, a very young man, and per­haps the telling of such tricks of the nerves will make you smile. But I am sure if you go back along your own life to the time when you were an under­grad­u­ate at the Uni­ver­si­ty as I am, and if you think what it would have meant to you to have earned a word from one who held so high a place in your esteem as you hold in mine, you will under­stand my feel­ing. One thing only I regret, name­ly, that an imma­ture and hasty arti­cle should have met your eye, rather than some­thing bet­ter and wor­thi­er of your praise. There may not have been any will­ful stu­pid­i­ty in it, but tru­ly I can say no more. It may annoy you to have your work at the mer­cy of striplings but I am sure you would pre­fer even hot­head­ed­ness to nerve­less and ‘cul­tured’ para­dox­es.

What shall I say more? I have sound­ed your name defi­ant­ly through a col­lege where it was either unknown or known faint­ly and dark­ly. I have claimed for you your right­ful place in the his­to­ry of the dra­ma. I have shown what, as it seemed to me, was your high­est excel­lence — your lofty imper­son­al pow­er. Your minor claims — your satire, your tech­nique and orches­tral har­mo­ny — these, too, I advanced. Do not think me a hero-wor­ship­per. I am not so. And when I spoke of you, in debat­ing-soci­eties, and so forth, I enforced atten­tion by no futile rant­i­ng.

But we always keep the dear­est things to our­selves. I did not tell them what bound me clos­est to you. I did not say how what I could dis­cern dim­ly of your life was my pride to see, how your bat­tles inspired me — not the obvi­ous mate­r­i­al bat­tles but those that were fought and won behind your fore­head — how your will­ful res­o­lu­tion to wrest the secret from life gave me heart, and how in your absolute indif­fer­ence to pub­lic canons of art, friends and shib­bo­leths you walked in the light of inward hero­ism. And this is what I write to you of now.

Your work on earth draws to a close and you are near the silence. It is grow­ing dark for you. Many write of such things, but they do not know. You have only opened the way — though you have gone as far as you could upon it — to the end of ‘John Gabriel Bork­man’ and its spir­i­tu­al truth — for your last play stands, I take it, apart. But I am sure that high­er and holi­er enlight­en­ment lies — onward.

As one of the young gen­er­a­tion for whom you have spo­ken I give you greet­ing — not humbly, because I am obscure and you in the glare, not sad­ly because you are an old man and I a young man, not pre­sump­tu­ous­ly, nor sen­ti­men­tal­ly — but joy­ful­ly, with hope and with love, I give you greet­ing.

Faith­ful­ly yours,

James A. Joyce

via Fla­vor­wire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Joyce Reads From Ulysses and Finnegans Wake In His Only Two Record­ings (1924/1929)

James Joyce’s “Dirty Let­ters” to His Wife (1909)

The Very First Reviews of James Joyce’s Ulysses: “A Work of High Genius” (1922)

Vir­ginia Woolf Writes About Joyce’s Ulysses, “Nev­er Did Any Book So Bore Me,” and Quits at Page 200

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Watch Online The Passion of Joan of Arc by Carl Theodor Dreyer (1928)

in | September 18th, 2015

Sit back and enjoy The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc, a 1928 silent film based on the his­tor­i­cal record of the tri­al of Joan of Arc. Direct­ed by Carl Theodor Drey­er and star­ring Renée Jeanne Fal­conet­ti, the film is con­sid­ered a land­mark of cin­e­ma. In fact, in the BFI’s poll of 846 crit­ics, it was vot­ed the 8th best film of all time.

Find more clas­sic films in our meta col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

The Solar System Drawn Amazingly to Scale Across 7 Miles of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert

in Astronomy | September 18th, 2015

Wylie Over­street and Alex Gorosh set out to cre­ate some­thing you’ve nev­er seen before — our solar sys­tem drawn to actu­al scale. For­get what you’ve seen in books, or on web sites. To depict things accu­rate­ly, you need a big­ger sur­face. A real­ly large can­vas. Like a sev­en-mile expanse in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert (which oth­er­wise hosts The Burn­ing Man Fes­ti­val). It’s on this dry lakebed that Over­street and Gorosh built “the first scale mod­el of the solar sys­tem with com­plete plan­e­tary orbits” and it’s a sight to behold. Cre­ative, indus­tri­ous, and hum­bling. Enjoy.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Astron­o­my Cours­es

Mag­ni­fy­ing the Uni­verse: Move From Atoms to Galax­ies in HD

Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawk­ing & Arthur C. Clarke Dis­cuss God, the Uni­verse, and Every­thing Else

Lawrence Krauss Explains How You Get ‘A Uni­verse From Noth­ing’

Thomas Dolby Potty Trains His Cat, and There’s Video Proof

in Life, Music | September 17th, 2015

One of our favorite curiosi­ties is the The Charles Min­gus CAT-alogue for Toi­let Train­ing Your Cat–a pam­phlet writ­ten by the mer­cu­r­ial jazz musi­cian that offers step-by-step advice on how to get your cat to use the loo. The one thing Min­gus did­n’t pro­vide is video proof that it could actu­al­ly be done.

That’s where anoth­er musi­cian steps in. Above, we have video of Thomas Dol­by’s cat, “Mozart,” in action. Dol­by, best known for his 1982 hit “She Blind­ed Me with Sci­ence,” is a teacher at heart. The son of an Oxford and Cam­bridge don, he’s now the Pro­fes­sor of the Arts at Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty. And, on his Youtube chan­nel, he explains how he pulled off the seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble:

This is my cat Mozart, a Cor­nish Rex, pee­ing on the toi­let. Many believed this was not pos­si­ble, but it’s 100% real. When he was a kit­ten we tried to teach him to use the toi­let, using a DVD. We thought it was a no go. But then aged about 3 he sud­den­ly start­ed to do it. Now some­times when I get up in the night to pee Mo nips in ahead of me and I have to wait till he’s done. Next we need to teach him to flush! ~TD

If any­one is famil­iar with the DVD he’s ref­er­enc­ing, please iden­ti­fy it in the com­ments below.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and share our posts with your friends. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Thomas Dol­by Explains How a Syn­the­siz­er Works on a Jim Hen­son Kids Show (1989)

Charles Min­gus’ Instruc­tions For Toi­let Train­ing Your Cat, Read by The Wire’s Reg E. Cathey

Insane­ly Cute Cat Com­mer­cials from Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, Hayao Miyazaki’s Leg­endary Ani­ma­tion Shop

48 Animated Videos Explain the History of Ideas: From Aristotle to Sartre

in Animation, Philosophy | September 16th, 2015

This year we’ve been fea­tur­ing short ani­mat­ed videos from BBC Radio 4, all cov­er­ing the big ques­tions: How did every­thing begin? What makes us human? What is love? How can I know any­thing at all? They’ve all come script­ed by philoso­pher Nigel War­bur­ton (he of Phi­los­o­phy Bites pod­cast fame) and nar­rat­ed by a host of nota­bles from both sides of the pond like Stephen Fry, Gillian Ander­son, Aidan Turn­er, and Har­ry Shear­er. They’ve illus­trat­ed the philo­soph­i­cal con­cepts at hand not just with elab­o­rate and joke-filled draw­ings that come to life before your eyes, but with direct ref­er­ence to the ideas of his­to­ry’s best-known thinkers: Aris­to­tle, Descartes, Hume, Wittgen­stein, de Beau­voir, Sartre, Freud, Chom­sky — the list goes on.

Now you can expe­ri­ence all of them in the one big playlist embed­ded just above, which pro­vides a grand his­to­ry of ideas with a suc­ces­sion of bite-size videos. The intel­lec­tu­al jour­ney begins with Dio­ti­ma’s con­cept of desire as a form of beau­ty and ends, 47 one- to two-minute celebri­ty-nar­rat­ed and philo­soph­i­cal­ly scin­til­lat­ing pro­duc­tions lat­er, with Karl Pop­per’s con­cept of fal­si­fi­ca­tion, under which an idea only attains the des­ig­na­tion sci­en­tif­ic if it could, in prin­ci­ple, be proven false.

Once you’ve gone through all these videos, despite how much they them­selves will have taught you, you’ll sure­ly want to go even deep­er into all these big ideas. In the ser­vice of that goal, why not have a look through some of the oth­er philo­soph­i­cal resources we’ve fea­tured, includ­ing our archive of Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, our col­lec­tion of Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks, pod­casts like Oxford’s phi­los­o­phy lec­tures and The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps, Bryan Magee’s tele­vi­sion inter­views with philoso­phers, and of course, phi­los­o­phy explained with donuts.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Can I Know Any­thing at All? BBC Ani­ma­tions Fea­ture the Phi­los­o­phy of Wittgen­stein, Hume, Pop­per & More

What is Love? BBC Phi­los­o­phy Ani­ma­tions Fea­ture Sartre, Freud, Aristo­phanes, Dawkins & More

What is the Self? Watch Phi­los­o­phy Ani­ma­tions Nar­rat­ed by Stephen Fry on Sartre, Descartes & More

How Did Every­thing Begin?: Ani­ma­tions on the Ori­gins of the Uni­verse Nar­rat­ed by X‑Files Star Gillian Ander­son

What Makes Us Human?: Chom­sky, Locke & Marx Intro­duced by New Ani­mat­ed Videos from the BBC

How to Live a Good Life? Watch Phi­los­o­phy Ani­ma­tions Nar­rat­ed by Stephen Fry on Aris­to­tle, Ayn Rand, Max Weber & More

How Can I Know Right From Wrong? Watch Phi­los­o­phy Ani­ma­tions on Ethics Nar­rat­ed by Har­ry Shear­er

Phi­los­o­phy Bites: Pod­cast­ing Ideas From Pla­to to Sin­gu­lar­i­ty Since 2007

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Behold the Largest Atlas in the World: The Six-Foot Tall Klencke Atlas from 1660

in Books, Maps | September 11th, 2015

Last week, we fea­tured the free dig­i­tal edi­tion of the The His­to­ry of Car­tog­ra­phy. Or what’s been called “the most ambi­tious overview of map mak­ing ever under­tak­en.” The three-vol­ume series con­tains illus­tra­tions of count­less maps, pro­duced over hun­dreds of years. And it, of course, ref­er­ences this fine spec­i­men: A gift giv­en to Eng­land’s Charles II in 1660, The Klencke Atlas fea­tured state-of-the-art maps of the con­ti­nents and var­i­ous Euro­pean states. It was also notable for its size. Stand­ing six feet tall and six feet wide (when opened), the vol­ume remains 355 years lat­er the largest atlas in the world. Learn more about it with the BBC clip below.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Car­tog­ra­phy, the “Most Ambi­tious Overview of Map Mak­ing Ever,” Now Free Online

A Won­der­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Map of the Moon from 1679: Can You Spot the Secret Moon Maid­en?

Galileo’s Moon Draw­ings, the First Real­is­tic Depic­tions of the Moon in His­to­ry (1609–1610)

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

The Drawings & Paintings of Richard Feynman: Art Expresses a Dramatic “Feeling of Awe”

in Art, Physics, Science | September 10th, 2015

I first encoun­tered bon­go-play­ing physi­cist Richard Feyn­man in a col­lege com­po­si­tion class geared toward sci­ence majors. I was not, mind you, a sci­ence major, but a dis­or­ga­nized sopho­more who reg­is­tered late and grabbed the last avail­able seat in a required writ­ing course. Skep­ti­cal, I thumbed through the read­ing in the col­lege book­store. As I browsed Sure­ly You’re Jok­ing, Mr. Feyn­man!—the first of many pop­u­lar mem­oirs released by the affa­ble con­trar­i­an scientist—the human­ist in me perked up. Here was a guy who knew how to write; a the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist who spoke the lan­guage of every­day peo­ple.

Feyn­man cul­ti­vat­ed his pop­ulist per­sona to appeal to those who might be oth­er­wise turned off by abstract, abstruse sci­en­tif­ic con­cepts. Like Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson, his name has come to stand for the best exam­ples of pop­u­lar sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tion. It is often through one of Feynman’s acces­si­ble, non-spe­cial­ist books or pre­sen­ta­tions that peo­ple learn of his work with the Man­hat­tan project, his con­tri­bu­tions to quan­tum mechan­ics, and his Nobel Prize. But Feynman’s extracur­ric­u­lar pursuits—from safe-crack­ing to drum­ming to exper­i­ment­ing with LSD—were also gen­uine expres­sions of his idio­syn­crat­ic char­ac­ter, as was anoth­er of his pas­sions for which he is not very well known: art.

Feyn­man took up the pur­suit at the age of 44, and con­tin­ued to draw and paint for the rest of his life, sign­ing his work “Ofey.” Many of his draw­ings dis­play the awk­ward, off-kil­ter per­spec­tive of the begin­ner, and a great many oth­ers look very accom­plished indeed. In an intro­duc­to­ry essay to a pub­lished col­lec­tion of his art­work, Feyn­man describes what moti­vat­ed him to take up this par­tic­u­lar avo­ca­tion:

I want­ed very much to learn to draw, for a rea­son that I kept to myself: I want­ed to con­vey an emo­tion I have about the beau­ty of the world. It’s dif­fi­cult to describe because it’s an emo­tion. It’s anal­o­gous to the feel­ing one has in reli­gion that has to do with a god that con­trols every­thing in the uni­verse: there’s a gen­er­al­i­ty aspect that you feel when you think about how things that appear so dif­fer­ent and behave so dif­fer­ent­ly are all run ‘behind the scenes’ by the same orga­ni­za­tion, the same phys­i­cal laws. It’s an appre­ci­a­tion of the math­e­mat­i­cal beau­ty of nature, of how she works inside; a real­iza­tion that the phe­nom­e­na we see result from the com­plex­i­ty of the inner work­ings between atoms; a feel­ing of how dra­mat­ic and won­der­ful it is. It’s  — of sci­en­tif­ic awe — which I felt could be com­mu­ni­cat­ed through a draw­ing to some­one who had also had that emo­tion. I could remind him, for a moment, of this feel­ing about the glo­ries of the uni­verse.

As you can see above, he took his work seri­ous­ly. Most of his draw­ings con­sist of por­traits and nudes, with the occa­sion­al land­scape or still life. You can see more exten­sive gal­leries of Feynman’s art at Amus­ing­Plan­et, Muse­um Syn­di­cate and Brain Pick­ings.

Feynman’s preoccupation—and full immersion—in the rela­tion­ship between the arts and sci­ences marks him as a Renais­sance man in per­haps the purest def­i­n­i­tion of the term: his approach close­ly resem­bles that of Leonar­do da Vin­ci, a like­ness that comes to the fore in the work below, which is either a col­lec­tion of sketch­es doo­dled over with for­mu­lae, or a col­lec­tion of for­mu­lae cov­ered with doo­dles. Either way, it’s a per­fect rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the vision­ary mind of Feyn­man and his regard for ordi­nary lan­guage, peo­ple, and objects—and for “sci­en­tif­ic awe.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Physics Cours­es

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Now Com­plete­ly Online

Richard Feynman’s Let­ter to His Depart­ed Wife: “You, Dead, Are So Much Bet­ter Than Any­one Else Alive” (1946)

Learn How Richard Feyn­man Cracked the Safes with Atom­ic Secrets at Los Alam­os

‘The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law’: Richard Feynman’s Leg­endary Course Pre­sent­ed at Cor­nell, 1964

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Stream Jim Rockford’s Answering Machine Messages: All Six Seasons

in Television | September 8th, 2015

The Rock­ford Files hit the air­waves in Sep­tem­ber 1974, and until the show end­ed in 1980, each episode began in the same way. Dur­ing the title sequence, you’d hear a phone ring, and then an answer­ing machine would start to play, “This is Jim Rock­ford. At the tone, leave your name and mes­sage. I’ll get back to you.” With each new episode, a caller would leave a dif­fer­ent mes­sage after the beep:

“It’s Nor­ma at the mar­ket. It bounced. You want me to tear it up, send it back, or put it with the oth­ers?”

“It’s Lau­rie at the trail­er park. A space opened up. Do you want me to save it or are the cops going to let you stay where you are?”

“It’s Audra. Remem­ber last sum­mer at Pat’s? I’ve got a twelve hour lay­over before I go to Chica­go. How about it?”

“This is the mes­sage phone com­pa­ny. I see you’re using our unit, now how about pay­ing for it?”

“I staked out that guy only it did­n’t work out like you said. Please call me. Room 234. Coun­ty Hos­pi­tal.”

“Hey Rock­ford, very fun­ny. I ain’t laugh­ing. You’re gonna get yours.”

The short mes­sages told you pret­ty much every­thing you need­ed to know about Jim Rock­ford. He’s a pri­vate detec­tive liv­ing pay­check to pay­check. He cuts cor­ners and bends rules when he needs to. He has friends among women, and ene­mies among men.  He’s a quin­tes­sen­tial pri­vate dick.

In total, 122 dif­fer­ent answer­ing machine mes­sages were left dur­ing the run of the series. (Appar­ent­ly, many fea­tured the voic­es of 1970s celebri­ties and pub­lic fig­ures.) You can play Sea­son 1 above, and the remain­ing sea­sons below.