Alain de Botton: The Glass of Life is Half Empty

in Philosophy | March 11th, 2011

Here are a few basic truths: life is essen­tial­ly mean­ing­less; your hard work won’t dic­tate where your life goes; you will be struck down by death; and your loved ones and your achieve­ments will whith­er and turn to dust. A grim way to look at things per­haps. But a long line of philoso­phers, start­ing with the Sto­ics, have seen wis­dom in tak­ing a dim view. As Alain de Bot­ton points out, a pes­simistic out­look reduces our expec­ta­tions, our envy, our dis­ap­point­ment, and it cre­ates room for emo­tion­al upside and health­i­er life deci­sions. The talk (which fea­tures a sing-along to Elton John at the 29 minute mark) runs 38 wis­dom-filled min­utes, and it’s pre­sent­ed online by The School of Life, a Lon­don-based insti­tu­tion co-found­ed by de Bot­ton in 2008. A big thanks to Miguel for send­ing this our way…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Phi­los­o­phy: A Guide to Hap­pi­ness (also by Alain de Bot­ton)

The Smithsonian Wildlife Photo Archive

in Life, Science | March 10th, 2011

The Smith­son­ian Insti­tu­tion has launched Smith­son­ian WILD, a new web site that lets you search through its col­lec­tion of over 202,000 images culled from sev­en ongo­ing wildlife stud­ies. Researchers in remote loca­tions across the globe have set up “cam­era traps” – auto­mat­ed cam­eras trig­gered by motion sen­sors – and left them to record what­ev­er wildlife pass­es by. The result­ing images, be they of giant pan­das in Chi­na, bark­ing deer in Thai­land, or roughed grouse on the Appalachi­an Trail, aren’t near­ly as pret­ty or clear as those we’ve grown accus­tomed to see­ing in nature mag­a­zines and HD prime­time spe­cials. But their raw­ness is part of their appeal: Click­ing through these gal­leries imparts a sense of real-time excite­ment, as if we too have been crouched in the jun­gle for hours, wait­ing to catch a glimpse of some­thing wild.

via Boing­bo­ing

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Vari­ety, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

Mark Twain Lives (in Animation)

in Art, Literature, Video - Arts & Culture | March 10th, 2011

Tak­ing a page from the RSA play­book, the New York Pub­lic Library has uploaded to its YouTube Chan­nel a series of illus­trat­ed talks. John Waters, Jay‑Z, Wern­er Her­zog – they’re all there. And so too is Mark Twain “read­ing” from his own work – work that was first pub­lished in 2009 with­in a vol­ume called Who is Mark Twain?. Flash Rosen­berg pro­vides the art (see her work on Vimeo); John Lith­gow does the voice.…

The Dancer on the Staten Island Ferry

in Music | March 9th, 2011

In case you missed it, this New York Times Sun­day Mag­a­zine sto­ry offers a great exam­ple of How We Live/­Dance/­Film/­Self-Finance these days.

What we have here is a sev­en minute col­lab­o­ra­tion between direc­tor Jacob Krup­nick and clas­si­cal­ly-trained bal­let refugee Anne Marsen. Shot gueril­la-style on the Stat­en Island Fer­ry, the video fea­tures Marsen’s gid­dy pas­tiche of hip hop, bal­let, mod­ern and jazz dance. The sound­track is also a pas­tiche of sorts, an excerpt from mashup DJ Girl Talk’s new album, “All Day.”

Grup­nick post­ed the clip above as a teas­er on the crowd­fund­ing site Kick­starter in Jan­u­ary, hop­ing to raise enough mon­ey to make it into a full-length dance film. He met his fundrais­ing goal with­in 6 days, and the team starts shoot­ing in April.

A note: It takes about two min­utes for the action to real­ly kick in, and if you’re lis­ten­ing to it from an office, be sure to turn the vol­ume down first.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Vari­ety, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

Mr. Rogers Goes to Washington

in Current Affairs, Television | March 9th, 2011

We take you back to anoth­er era when fund­ing for pub­lic broad­cast­ing was in doubt – to 1969, when Richard Nixon planned to cut PBS’ fund­ing from $20 mil­lion to $10 mil­lion. Here Fred Rogers, the gen­tle cre­ator of Mis­ter Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood, gets six short min­utes before Sen­a­tor John Pas­tore, the chair­man of the Sub­com­mit­tee on Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and makes his pitch for pub­licly-fund­ed edu­ca­tion­al tele­vi­sion. In those 360 sec­onds, Rogers gets the gruff sen­a­tor to do a com­plete 180 – to end up say­ing “It looks like you just earned the 20 mil­lion dol­lars.” And, indeed, it turned out just that way. Those were the days…

via @webacion

James Bond in Drag For International Women’s Day

in Current Affairs, Film | March 8th, 2011

We Are Equals pro­duced this 2‑minute video for the 100th anniver­sary of Inter­na­tion­al Wom­en’s Day. Daniel Craig and the great Dame Judi Dench reprise their roles from the last two James Bond films — with a twist. We’d say more, but the video speaks for itself. Enjoy!

Georgia O’Keeffe at 92

in Art | March 8th, 2011

Sun­day marked 25 years since the death of Geor­gia O’Keeffe, one of Amer­i­ca’s fore­most artists. The anniver­sary of her death coin­cides with the begin­ning of Women’s His­to­ry Month. So we fig­ured why not offer a lit­tle piece on her.

Born in 1887 in Sun Prairie, Wis­con­sin, O’Keeffe grew up know­ing she want­ed to be an artist. Though she received train­ing in aca­d­e­m­ic art and won prizes for still life paint­ings, she left paint­ing for a while to teach. But when a friend sent her exper­i­ments in char­coal to Alfred Stieglitz in New York (the two lat­er mar­ried), he offered her her own show in his pop­u­lar and avant garde Stu­dio 291. This all hap­pened in 1916, and she would not stop paint­ing until her death in 1986, when she was 98 years old.

Known for her large scale and bold paint­ings of flow­ers and cityscapes, O’Ke­effe found a per­ma­nent home in New Mex­i­co where she paint­ed the shapes of the desert from bones to adobe church­es. She main­tained a unique and inde­pen­dent spir­it, as illus­trat­ed in this clip from a biog­ra­phy filmed when she was 92 years old. (See above.) The cura­tor of the Geor­gia O’Keeffe Muse­um in San­ta Fe sums up O’Keeffe’s last­ing influ­ence, stat­ing “in 1970, when the Whit­ney Muse­um of Amer­i­can Art opened a ret­ro­spec­tive exhi­bi­tion of her work, she became the hero­ine of the fem­i­nist move­ment, thus posi­tion­ing her in the lime­light, which she had first enjoyed in the 1920s.  Whether or not artists work­ing since then have liked or dis­liked her work, they acknowl­edge the fact that she estab­lished a place for women in an are­na from which women had tra­di­tion­al­ly been exclud­ed”…

For a quick intro­duc­tion to O’Ke­ef­fe’s work, watch Smarthis­to­ry’s video intro to the 1929 paint­ing, “The Lawrence Tree.” It gets that name because it was paint­ed on D.H. Lawrence’s ranch.

Free Movies by Category

in Film | March 7th, 2011

Just a quick note: We took our Free Movie col­lec­tion and neat­ly placed the films into cat­e­gories this week­end, mak­ing the big col­lec­tion a lit­tle eas­i­er to nav­i­gate. If you’re look­ing for free movies, we have 340 films list­ed in the fol­low­ing cat­e­gories.

• Com­e­dy & Dra­ma
• Film Noir, Hor­ror, Thriller & Hitch­cock
• West­erns & John Wayne
• Silent Films
• Doc­u­men­taries, and
• Ani­ma­tion

Find the full col­lec­tion here. Enjoy…

Michael Moore Tells Wisconsin Teachers “America Isn’t Broke”

in Current Affairs, Education, Film | March 6th, 2011

Jon Stew­art put it nice­ly. Now film­mak­er Michael Moore takes the gloves off. Vis­it­ing Madi­son, Wis­con­sin this Sat­ur­day, he told the crowd “Amer­i­ca isn’t broke.” Rather, the mon­ey that used to run the coun­try sim­ply got siphoned out of the sys­tem and put into unpro­duc­tive Wall Street accounts. Strong words, but if you con­sid­er that most US cor­po­ra­tions pay no US tax­es, that bil­lion­aire hedge fund man­agers pay far low­er tax­es than the rest of you, that we’re pre­serv­ing the unsus­tain­able Bush tax breaks that over­whelm­ing­ly ben­e­fit the extreme­ly wealthy, then you start to think about our nation­al deficits and Wis­con­sin’s bat­tles with teach­ers in a dif­fer­ent light.

Make no mis­take about it. The deficits are a real prob­lem. And any tru­ly exces­sive perks for pub­lic work­ers should be cut. But the mid­dle class should­n’t bear the sole brunt of the nation­al sac­ri­fice. And, so far, that’s all we see. Main Street took the hit in 2008 while Wall Street walked. And that’s what’s hap­pen­ing again…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jon Stew­art: The Teach­ers Have it Too Good (Wink)

Jon Stewart: Teachers Have it Too Good (Wink)

in Comedy, Current Affairs, Economics | March 4th, 2011

Jon Stew­art had to do it. He had to con­nect the dots. We’re going after the pub­lic ser­vants try­ing to do some good. But how about the non-con­tribut­ing bankers who kept their per­son­al gravy train rolling at tax­pay­er expense? Or the hedge fund man­agers who pay dra­mat­i­cal­ly low­er tax­es than almost any­one read­ing this site? 15%?? And let’s not for­get that some of our our largest cor­po­ra­tions – includ­ing GE and Exxon — have recent­ly paid no US income tax? Ulti­mate­ly, this all gets down to who funds your next elec­tion. Banks and cor­po­ra­tions do. Kids and pub­lic ser­vants don’t. David Brooks makes that point rather well. I’m all for sac­ri­fice, but let’s make it fair and shared. Or is that idea too “social­ist” (or what we quaint­ly used to call “demo­c­ra­t­ic”)?

Relat­ed Note:

Michael Moore Tells Wis­con­sin Teach­ers “Amer­i­ca is NOT Broke”