Remembering George Whitman, Owner of Famed Bookstore, Shakespeare & Company

in Books, Film | December 15th, 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67LaM95pBMM&feature=share&list=PL5E409DFE410A41C6

In 2005, the Sun­dance Chan­nel aired Por­trait of a Book­store as an Old Man, a 52 minute doc­u­men­tary that pays homage to George Whit­man, the Amer­i­can founder of the most famous inde­pen­dent book­store in Paris, Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny. Whit­man died yes­ter­day, at age 98, in his apart­ment above the store.

Sylvia Beach first opened a book­shop named Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny in 1918, and it soon became a home for artists of the “Lost Gen­er­a­tion” (Hem­ing­way, Pound, Fitzger­ald, Stein, etc.). It also famous­ly pub­lished James Joyce’s Ulysses in 1922. The shop even­tu­al­ly closed dur­ing the Nazi occu­pa­tion of Paris. Yet a good decade lat­er, George Whit­man came along and estab­lished anoth­er Eng­lish-lan­guage book­store on the Left Bank and even­tu­al­ly rechris­tened it Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny. Whit­man’s shop gave sanc­tu­ary to Beat writ­ers – Allen Gins­berg, William S. Bur­roughs and the rest. And it’s this incar­na­tion of the fabled book­store that the doc­u­men­tary takes as its sub­ject. Give the doc­u­men­tary some time, and be sure to watch the last five min­utes – unless you already know how to cut your hair with fire. It will give you a lit­tle feel for Whit­man and his well-known eccen­tric­i­ties. RIP.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His First Nov­el, Junky

Spike Jonze Presents a Stop Motion Film Set at Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny

Jack Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road (1959)

Free Audio Books and Free eBooks

Spike Jonze’s Imaginative TV Ads

in Film, Television | December 13th, 2011

Spike Jonze has made a name for him­self as a wild­ly inven­tive direc­tor of music videos and fea­ture films, like Being John Malkovich and Adap­ta­tion. He has also cre­at­ed some of the most dis­tinc­tive tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials of the past decade. Today we bring you a few of his great­est hits.

In late 2002 Jonze cre­at­ed a stir with his IKEA com­mer­cial, “Lamp” (above). The 60-sec­ond spot went on to win the Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions Inter­na­tion­al Adver­tis­ing Fes­ti­val. Boards mag­a­zine list­ed “Lamp” as one of the top 10 com­mer­cials of the decade, writ­ing:

Spike Jonze’s incred­i­bly human direct­ing touch cre­at­ed a believ­able ten­der­ness between a woman and her new Ikea light­ing, elic­it­ing pure empa­thy for a lone­ly, dis­card­ed object, left to suf­fer curb­side in the rain, and then shat­tered it all with one bril­liant stroke of cast­ing that abrupt­ly and brusque­ly brought us all back to real­i­ty.

Jonze’s star­tling Gap com­mer­cial, “Dust,” (above) became a YouTube sen­sa­tion imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing its release in 2005, but the com­pa­ny pulled the 90-sec­ond ad after test­ing it in only a few cities. Per­haps the spec­ta­cle of a cor­po­rate brand exu­ber­ant­ly doing vio­lence to its image was a bit too much for the boys in the board­room. The deci­sion to shelve the ad made the com­pa­ny look even less hip than before. As Seth Steven­son wrote in Slate, “I just can’t under­stand spend­ing all that mon­ey on a big-name direc­tor, and a big-bud­get shoot, and then frit­ter­ing the results away on such a lim­it­ed pur­pose. Did Gap not see the pos­si­bil­i­ties? Were they too scared to go for broke?”

Anoth­er ground-break­ing Jonze com­mer­cial from 2005, “Hel­lo Tomor­row,” (above) was made to intro­duce a self-adjust­ing, “intel­li­gent” sneak­er from Adi­das. The spot uses spe­cial effects to cre­ate the impres­sion of a lucid dream. The music was cre­at­ed by Jonze’s broth­er, Sam “Squeak E. Clean” Spiegel (Jonze’s birth name is Adam Spiegel) and sung by his girl­friend at the time, Karen O of the band Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The ad received many awards, includ­ing two Gold Lions at Cannes. The sneak­er was dropped by Adi­das in 2006, but the com­mer­cial lives on.

Sir Isaac Newton’s Papers & Annotated Principia Go Digital

in Physics, Science | December 13th, 2011

Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty has had many famous grad­u­ates, but per­haps none is more famous than Isaac New­ton (class of 1665). This week, Cam­bridge con­tin­ues to hon­or New­ton by open­ing a dig­i­tal archive of New­ton’s per­son­al papers, which includes an anno­tat­ed copy of the Prin­cip­ia, the land­mark work where the physi­cist devel­oped his laws of motion and grav­i­ty. The ini­tial archive fea­tures 4,000 pages of scanned mate­ri­als (rough­ly 20% of the com­plete New­ton archive), and even­tu­al­ly Cam­bridge will add mate­r­i­al from Charles Dar­win, anoth­er famous alum, and oth­er sci­en­tif­ic fig­ures.

In Octo­ber, The Roy­al Soci­ety opened its his­tor­i­cal archives to the pub­lic, bring­ing 60,000 peer-reviewed papers to the web, includ­ing Isaac Newton’s first pub­lished research paper. You can dive into this par­al­lel dig­i­tal archive here.

Bonus: If you’re look­ing to bone up on Physics, you can find many free physics cours­es in our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es. Leonard Susskind’s class on Clas­si­cal Mechan­ics may be of par­tic­u­lar inter­est here.

via The Guardian / ht @eugenephoto

Jazz for Cows

in Music | December 9th, 2011

The French love their jazz. The peo­ple love it. Their cows love it no less.

Here we have The New Hot 5, a New Orleans-style band, bring­ing their act to the pas­tures of Autrans, France, and treat­ing the audi­ence to an Amer­i­can clas­sic, “When the Saints Go March­ing In.” You can learn more about The New Hot 5 at jazzforcows.com.

Speak­ing of France, we have added French lessons by Carnegie Mel­lon and the BBC added to our col­lec­tion of Free Lan­guage Lessons.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mari­achi Band Ser­e­nades Bel­u­ga Whale at Mys­tic Aquar­i­um

John Coltrane Plays Only Live Per­for­mance of A Love Supreme

Vin­tage Djan­go

The Dark Knight: Anatomy of a Flawed Action Scene

in Film | December 8th, 2011

There are many ways to make a movie, says film crit­ic Jim Emer­son, and many ways to make a mess.

The truck chase scene from Christo­pher Nolan’s 2008 film The Dark Knight is frankly a mess, as Emer­son demon­strates in a fas­ci­nat­ing video essay (above) pro­duced as the first in a three-part series on the lan­guage of action sequences for the Indiewire blog Press Play. “We notice laps­es in visu­al log­ic whether our brains reg­is­ter them con­scious­ly or not,” writes Emer­son. “I found this scene utter­ly baf­fling the first time I saw it, and every sub­se­quent time. At last, I now know exact­ly why.”

After study­ing the sequence shot by shot he real­ized that Nolan had vio­lat­ed fun­da­men­tal rules of film gram­mar. You can fol­low along as Emer­son, a Seat­tle-based crit­ic who writes the Scan­ners film blog for the Chica­go Sun-Times, sorts out the con­fu­sion. (There is an accom­pa­ny­ing anno­tat­ed tran­script on Scan­ners.) And be sure to watch Emer­son­’s fol­low-up essays (below) which offer shot-by-shot analy­ses of action scenes that are clear­ly intel­li­gi­ble.

In Part II of his series (above), Emer­son breaks down the high­way chase scene from Phillip Noyce’s 2010 film, Salt. The sequence is easy to fol­low because Noyce is care­ful to estab­lish the spa­tial rela­tion­ships between the var­i­ous ele­ments, both with­in the frame and between shots. Writes Emer­son:

There are cer­tain direc­tors I think of as “one-thing-at-a-time” film­mak­ers. That is, they seem to be inca­pable of com­pos­ing shots that have more than one piece of infor­ma­tion in them at a time. This makes for a very flat, rather plod­ding style. You see what the cam­era is point­ed at in each shot, but you get very lit­tle sense of per­spec­tive when it comes to relat­ing it to oth­er ele­ments in the scene. Noyce’s tech­nique is much more flu­id, organ­ic and sophis­ti­cat­ed. He keeps things from one shot vis­i­ble in the next, even when shift­ing perspective–whether it’s only a few feet or clear across sev­er­al lanes of traf­fic.

In Part III (above), Emer­son revis­its clas­sic chase scenes from three films: Don Siegel’s The Line­up (1958), Peter Yates’s Bul­litt (1968) and William Fried­kin’s The French Con­nec­tion (1971). In each case the direc­tor takes you on a chaot­ic, bumpy ride–but nev­er los­es you.

The Seven Wonders of the Microbe World

in Video - Science | December 7th, 2011

This video has been removed at the request of open uni­ver­si­ty.

After pro­duc­ing 60 Sec­ond Adven­tures in Thought and The His­to­ry of Eng­lish, the Open Uni­ver­si­ty returns with a new video series, Sev­en Won­ders of the Microbe World.

Microbes have giv­en us some dev­as­tat­ing dis­eases, every­thing from the Black Death to cholera, syphilis, typhoid and the occa­sion­al yeast infec­tion. But our micro­bial friends have also done us some good. With­out microbes, we would­n’t have wine and beer (some­thing the Ancient Egyp­tians start­ed pro­duc­ing some 6,000 years ago), nor much oxy­gen and fix­at­ed nitro­gen, all essen­tial for plant, ani­mal and human life. And don’t for­get antibi­otics, fine cheeses and the rest.

You can watch the Sev­en Won­ders of the Microbe World in sev­en install­ments on YouTube (see list below) or via iTunes. Or, sim­ply sit back and watch the 25 minute con­sol­i­dat­ed video (above) that brings it all togeth­er for you.

1. The His­to­ry of Beer
2. The Black Death
3. Food Preser­va­tion
4. Nitro­gen Fix­a­tion
5. Antibi­otics
6. Genet­ic Engi­neer­ing
7. Life on Mars

Conformity Isn’t a Recipe for Excellence: Wisdom from George Carlin & Steve Jobs (NSFW)

in Comedy, Life, Psychology | December 6th, 2011

Dur­ing the 1960s, George Car­lin had some­thing of an epiphany. Con­front­ed by the coun­ter­cul­ture, the young come­di­an real­ized that he was­n’t stay­ing true to him­self — that he was try­ing to be Dan­ny Kaye, a very main­stream star, when he was real­ly an out­law and a rebel at heart. (Watch him on The Tonight Show in 1966). Even­tu­al­ly, Car­lin learned “not to give a shit,” to break with mil­que­toast con­ven­tions that restrained oth­er come­di­ans, and that’s when his com­ic genius bloomed. Note that some of Car­lin’s com­ments here are … not sur­pris­ing­ly … not safe for work.

Steve Jobs, anoth­er child of the coun­ter­cul­ture, did­n’t learn Car­lin’s les­son over time. As Wal­ter Isaac­son makes clear in his new biog­ra­phy, Jobs under­stood from the begin­ning that excel­lence is rarely achieved by walk­ing down the path of con­for­mi­ty. In a 1995 inter­view, Jobs boiled down his basic approach to life. The mas­ter­mind behind the leg­endary Think Dif­fer­ent tele­vi­sion cam­paign (watch the ver­sion nar­rat­ed by Jobs him­self) said:

When you grow up, you tend to get told the world is the way it is, and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice fam­i­ly, have fun, save a lit­tle mon­ey.

That’s a very lim­it­ed life. Life can be much broad­er once you dis­cov­er one sim­ple fact: Every­thing around you that you call life was made up by peo­ple that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influ­ence it, you can build your own things that oth­er peo­ple can use. Once you learn that, you’ll nev­er be the same again.

You can find more pearls of wis­dom from Jobs over at Brain­Pick­ings, and we’ll leave you below with more cul­tur­al fig­ures med­i­tat­ing on life:

Stephen Fry: What I Wish I Had Known When I Was 18

Paulo Coel­ho: Suc­cess Nev­er Hap­pens With­out Tak­ing Risks

One of the Biggest Risks is Being Too Cau­tious…

Bono Tells Grad­u­ates “Pick a Fight, Get in It” (2004)

Conan O’Brien: Through Dis­ap­point­ment You Can Gain Clar­i­ty

J.K. Rowl­ing Tells Har­vard Grad­u­ates What They Need to Know

Stephen Colbert Talks Science with Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson

in Astronomy, Comedy, Physics, Video - Science | December 3rd, 2011

With a fast-mov­ing mix­ture of com­e­dy and seri­ous­ness, an inter­view on The Col­bert Report is some­thing of an impro­vi­sa­tion­al fly­ing trapeze act. “Stephen Col­bert is an amaz­ing­ly good inter­view­er,” writes physi­cist Sean Car­roll, “man­ag­ing to mix top­i­cal jokes and his usu­al schtick with some real­ly good ques­tions, and more than a bit of real back­ground knowl­edge.”

Beneath the humor there is a sense that Col­bert under­stands and respects sci­ence. The sad thing, writes Car­roll, “is that more peo­ple are exposed to real sci­en­tists doing cut­ting-edge research by watch­ing Com­e­dy Cen­tral than by watch­ing, shall we say, cer­tain chan­nels you might have thought more appro­pri­ate venues for such con­ver­sa­tions.” But the expo­sure is all too brief. An inter­view on The Col­bert Report typ­i­cal­ly lasts only a few min­utes.

So it was inter­est­ing when Col­bert stepped away from his comedic char­ac­ter for a more in-depth con­ver­sa­tion with one of his fre­quent guests, astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson. The inter­view took place last year at Mont­clair Kim­ber­ley Acad­e­my in Mont­clair, New Jer­sey. Ear­li­er this week Tyson uploaded the video to the web­site of the Hay­den Plan­e­tar­i­um, where he is direc­tor, but the serv­er was over­whelmed by the result­ing surge in traf­fic. So some­one placed the ver­sion above on YouTube. It’s an inter­est­ing, and wit­ty, one-hour-and-19-minute con­ver­sa­tion. For more of Tyson with Col­bert, you can watch his appear­ances on The Col­bert Report at the Hay­den Plan­e­tar­i­um site.

via Kot­tke

Post-Apocalyptic Cover Art Created in Amazing Time-Lapse Film

in Animation, Art | December 1st, 2011

Dei Gaztelu­men­di is a young Span­ish artist. He was com­mis­sioned recent­ly to cre­ate a cov­er illus­tra­tion for the com­ic book mag­a­zine Xabiroi, and decid­ed to make a time-lapse video of the process. The result is a fas­ci­nat­ing look at how the artist begins with a rough sketch on paper and then builds lay­er upon lay­er of detail using the Adobe Cre­ative Suite soft­ware. Thir­ty hours of work are com­pressed into 11 min­utes. “A lot of emo­tion went into this paint­ing,” Gaztelu­men­di said on his blog, “since I made it as a gift to one of my bud­dies, who trag­i­cal­ly lost a leg in a motor­bike acci­dent about a year ago.” Gaztelu­men­di was born in San Sebas­t­ian, Basque Coun­try, Spain in 1987, and began illus­trat­ing chil­dren’s books as a teenag­er. He stud­ied ani­ma­tion at Sheri­dan Col­lege in Ontario, Cana­da, where his the­sis film was a whim­si­cal tale called Earlth & Moonch. Since grad­u­at­ing with high hon­ors last year, Gaztelu­men­di has been work­ing as a com­mer­cial illus­tra­tor, spe­cial­iz­ing in crea­ture and char­ac­ter art. You can see more of his work at Deisign.com.

All Together Now: Every Beatles Song Played at Once

in Music | December 1st, 2011

The idea is sim­ple, real­ly. Take every Bea­t­les tune, all 226 of them, and play them togeth­er, sequenc­ing them so that they end at the exact same moment. And here’s what you get. The Bea­t­les as you’ve nev­er heard them before … and may nev­er want to hear them again.

h/t kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les’ Rooftop Con­cert: The Last Gig

Jim­my Page Tells the Sto­ry of Kash­mir

The Bea­t­les Com­plete on Ukulele