How to Shop Online & Check Your E‑Mail on the Go: A 1980s British TV Show Demonstrates

in History, Technology, Television | May 18th, 2021

“Links between com­put­ers and tele­vi­sion sets are, it is always threat­ened, about to her­ald in an age of unbe­liev­able con­ve­nience,” announces tele­vi­sion pre­sen­ter Tony Bastable in the 1984 clip above, “where all the socia­bil­i­ty of going down to your cor­ner shop to order the week’s gro­ceries will be replaced with an order over the air­waves.” Do tell. Live though we increas­ing­ly do with inter­net-con­nect­ed “smart TVs,” the only unfa­mil­iar-sound­ing part of that pre­dic­tion is its ref­er­ence to tele­vi­sion sets. But back then, most every home com­put­er used them as dis­plays, and when also plugged into the tele­phone line they grant­ed users the pre­vi­ous­ly unthink­able abil­i­ty to make instant finan­cial trans­ac­tions at any hour of the day or night, with­out leav­ing the house.

Mun­dane though it sounds now that many of us both do all our work and get all our enter­tain­ment online, pay­ing bills was a draw for ear­ly adopters, who could come from unlike­ly places: Not­ting­ham, for instance, the Not­ting­ham Build­ing Soci­ety being one of the first finan­cial insti­tu­tions in the world to offer online bank­ing to its mem­bers.

Clos­er to Thames Head­quar­ters, North Lon­don cou­ple Pat and Julian Green appear in the clip above to demon­strate how to use some­thing called “e‑mail.” But first they must hook up their modem and con­nect to Pres­tel (a nation­al online net­work that in the Unit­ed King­dom played some­thing like the role Mini­tel did in France), an “extreme­ly sim­ple” process that will look ago­niz­ing­ly com­pli­cat­ed to any­one who grew up in the age of wi-fi.

I myself grew up using the TRS-80 Mod­el 100, an ear­ly lap­top inher­it­ed from my technophile grand­fa­ther. Bastable whips out the very same com­put­er in the seg­ment above, shot dur­ing Data­base’s trip to Japan. “The big advan­tage of a piece of equip­ment like this is to be able to cou­ple it up back to my home base over the tele­phone line using one of these,” he says from his seat on a train, hold­ing up the acoustic cou­pler designed to con­nect the Mod­el 100 direct­ly to a stan­dard hand­set, in this case the pay phone in the front of the car­riage. Alas, Bastable finds that “none of us have got enough change to make the call to Eng­land,” forc­ing him to check his mes­sages from his hotel room instead. Would that I could send him a vision of my effort­less expe­ri­ence con­nect­ing to wi-fi onboard a train cross­ing South Korea just yes­ter­day. The future, to coin a phrase, is now.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How to Send an E‑mail: A 1984 British Tele­vi­sion Broad­cast Explains This “Sim­ple” Process

How France Invent­ed a Pop­u­lar, Prof­itable Inter­net of Its Own in the 80s: The Rise and Fall of Mini­tel

From the Annals of Opti­mism: The News­pa­per Indus­try in 1981 Imag­ines its Dig­i­tal Future

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

One Man’s Quest to Build the Best Stereo System in the World

in Music, Technology | May 18th, 2021

To make Fitz­car­ral­do, a movie about a rub­ber baron who drags a steamship over a hill in the Peru­vian jun­gle, Wern­er Her­zog famous­ly arranged the actu­al drag­ging of an actu­al steamship over an actu­al hill in the actu­al Peru­vian jun­gle. This endeav­or ran into all the com­pli­ca­tions you’d expect and then some. But the rea­son­able ques­tion of whether it would­n’t be wis­er to cut his loss­es and head back to civ­i­liza­tion prompt­ed Her­zog to make an artis­ti­cal­ly defin­ing state­ment: “If I aban­don this project, I would be a man with­out dreams and I don’t want to live like that. I live my life or I end my life, with this project.”

Ken Fritz is a man with dreams, and the doc­u­men­tary above con­cerns one he pur­sued for near­ly 30 years: that of build­ing “the best stereo sys­tem in the world.” He set about real­iz­ing this dream in suc­cess­ful mid­dle age, the time of life when the thoughts of no few men, he acknowl­edges, turn to audio­phil­ia. But in Fritz’s case, the dri­ve that made him a busi­ness suc­cess in the first place fixed his sights per­ma­nent­ly on some­thing more than a hi-fi fit for a man cave. Indeed, it entailed build­ing some­thing down­right cav­ernous, a ver­i­ta­ble con­cert hall of an addi­tion to his house scaled to accom­mo­date cus­tom-made speak­er tow­ers and designed for the opti­mal dis­per­sion of sound with a min­i­mum of inter­fer­ence.

Much of Fritz’s sys­tem is cus­tom-made, most elab­o­rate­ly notably its three-armed, 1,500-pound “Franken­stein turntable.” How much did it cost asks his son Scott? “I’ve seen turnta­bles that sell for $100,00, $120,000, and they’re nowhere near as com­pli­cat­ed and as involved as this,” he says. (Fritz now esti­mates that he has spent north of $1 mil­lion on his rig.) But to the true audio­phile, every invest­ment is worth it, whether of mon­ey, time, or effort. For “once it’s built, if you don’t like it, if does­n’t work, you’re stuck with it. You just lie to your­self: ‘It sounds good.’ ” Fritz’s music room stands as a tes­ta­ment to his deter­mi­na­tion not to lie to him­self — as well as to his love of music and will to give that love a con­crete form.

“I just can­not go day after day with­out accom­plish­ing some­thing,” Fritz says. “They say that when you’re retired, you should­n’t have to do any­thing. I don’t buy that at all. For­tu­nate­ly, all my goals have been ful­filled. I’ve built every­thing I’ve want­ed to build.” This includes all his music room’s shelves and cab­i­nets, each per­fect­ly pro­por­tioned to the com­po­nent it con­tains. And though a diag­no­sis of amy­otroph­ic lat­er­al scle­ro­sis has brought Fritz’s wood­work­ing days to an end, it has­n’t put him off the notion that “if the mind does­n’t keep the body going, and the body does­n’t ful­fill the thoughts that a man has, he becomes sense­less. He might as well just pack it up.” Few of us will ever know the kind of sat­is­fac­tion he must feel lis­ten­ing to Swan Lake, his favorite work of clas­si­cal music, on the sound sys­tem that could fair­ly be called his life’s work. But many of us will won­der: how must “Dea­con Blues” sound on it?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch “Hi-Fi-Fo-Fum,” a Short Satir­i­cal Film About the Inven­tion of the Audio­phile (1959)

An 82-Year-Old Japan­ese Audio­phile Search­es for the Best Sound by Installing His Own Elec­tric Util­i­ty Pole in His Yard

Jimi Hendrix’s Home Audio Sys­tem & Record Col­lec­tion Gets Recre­at­ed in His Lon­don Flat

How the Grate­ful Dead’s “Wall of Sound” – a Mon­ster, 600-Speak­er Sound Sys­tem – Changed Rock Con­certs & Live Music For­ev­er

How Steely Dan Wrote “Dea­con Blues,” the Song Audio­philes Use to Test High-End Stere­os

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Introduction to Philosophy: A Free Online Course from the University of Edinburgh

in Online Courses, Philosophy | May 17th, 2021

Cre­at­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Edin­burgh, the online course Intro­duc­tion to Phi­los­o­phy intro­duces stu­dents to “some of the main areas of research in con­tem­po­rary phi­los­o­phy. In each mod­ule, a dif­fer­ent philoso­pher will talk [stu­dents] through some of the most impor­tant ques­tions and issues in their area of exper­tise.” The course begins by ask­ing “what phi­los­o­phy is – what are its char­ac­ter­is­tic aims and meth­ods, and how does it dif­fer from oth­er sub­jects?” Then the online course (offered on the Cours­era plat­form) pro­vides an overview of sev­er­al dif­fer­ent areas of phi­los­o­phy, includ­ing: Epis­te­mol­o­gy, Phi­los­o­phy of Sci­ence, Phi­los­o­phy of Mind, Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy, Moral Phi­los­o­phy, and Meta­physics.

UPDATE: In 2025, Cours­era removed the abil­i­ty to take/audit cours­es for free. We have removed links to the Cours­era plat­form on this page. And, instead we have added the video from the phi­los­o­phy course. They appear in the YouTube playlist above. You can also find more free phi­los­o­phy cours­es in the relat­eds sec­tion below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy in 81 Video Lec­tures: A Free Course That Explores Phi­los­o­phy from Ancient Greece to Mod­ern Times

Oxford’s Free Course Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing For Begin­ners Teach­es You to Think Like a Philoso­pher

Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Online Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty 

Michael Sandel’s Free Course on Jus­tice, the Most Pop­u­lar Course at Har­vard, Is Now Online

Wildlife Is Now Thriving Again in Chernobyl–Even If Humans Won’t for Another 24,000 Years

in Life, Nature | May 17th, 2021

In Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 sci-fi film Stalk­er, a mys­te­ri­ous arti­fact ren­ders a land­scape called the Zone inhos­pitable for humans. As crit­ics have often point­ed out, a trag­ic irony may have killed the direc­tor and some of the crew a few years lat­er. Shoot­ing for months on end in a dis­used refin­ery in Esto­nia exposed them to high lev­els of tox­ic chem­i­cals. Tarkovsky died of can­cer in 1986, just a few months after the dis­as­ter at Cher­nobyl. “It is sure­ly part of Stalk­er’s mys­tique,” Mark Le Fanu writes for Cri­te­ri­on, “that in some strange way, Tarkovsky’s explo­rations … were to ‘proph­esy’ the destruc­tion… of the nuclear pow­er plant.”

Tarkovsky did not see the future. He adapt­ed a dystopi­an sto­ry writ­ten by broth­ers Arkady and Boris Stru­gatsky. “Cer­tain­ly,” writes Le Fanu, “there were many things in the Sovi­et Union at that time to be dystopi­an about.” But the film inspired a video game, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shad­ow of Cher­nobyl, which in turn inspired tourists to start “flock­ing to Cher­nobyl,” writes Katie Met­ti­er in The Wash­ing­ton Post: “fans of the video game… want­ed to see first­hand the nuclear waste­land they’d vis­it­ed in vir­tu­al real­i­ty.”

Ukraine may have suc­ceed­ed, thanks to these asso­ci­a­tions, in rebrand­ing Cher­nobyl for the so-called “dark tourism” set, but the area will not become hab­it­able again for some 24,000 years. Hab­it­able, that is, for humans. “Flo­ra and fau­na have bounced back” in Cher­nobyl, writes Ellen Gutoskey at Men­tal Floss, “and from what researchers can see, they appear to be thriv­ing.” They include “hun­dreds of plant and ani­mal species in the zone,” says Nick Beres­ford, a researcher at the UK Cen­tre for Ecol­o­gy and Hydrol­o­gy. “Includ­ing more than 60 [rare] species.”

Among the many ani­mals to return to the area are “Eureasian lynx, brown bear, black storks, and Euro­pean bison,” as well as elk, deer, boars, and wolves. Near­by crops are still show­ing high lev­els of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. Accord­ing to the lat­est research, noth­ing that grows there should be eat­en by humans. And as one might expect, “muta­tions are more com­mon in Chernobyl’s plants and ani­mals than in those from oth­er regions,” Gutosky notes. But the harm caused by radi­a­tion pales by com­par­i­son with that posed by a con­stant human pres­ence.

Among the many species mak­ing their home in Cher­nobyl are the endan­gered Przewalski’s hors­es who num­bered around 30 when they were “released into the Cher­nobyl Exclu­sion Zone and left to their own devices…. Now it’s esti­mat­ed that at least 150 Przewalski’s hors­es roam the region.” The hor­rif­ic, human-caused acci­dent of Cher­nobyl has had the effect of clear­ing space for nature again. The area has become an unin­tend­ed exper­i­ment in what jour­nal­ist George Mon­biot calls “rewil­d­ing,” which he defines as “[tak­ing] down the fences, block­ing up the drainage ditch­es, enabling wildlife to spread.”

In order for the plan­et to “rewild,” to recov­er its bio­di­ver­si­ty and rebuild its ecosys­tems, humans need to step away, stop see­ing our­selves “as the guardians or the stew­ards of the plan­et,” says Mon­biot, “where­as I think it does best when we have as lit­tle influ­ence as we can get away with.” Tourists may come and go, but there may be no humans set­tling and build­ing  in Cher­nobyl for a few thou­sand years. For the species cur­rent­ly thriv­ing there, that’s appar­ent­ly for the best.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Scenes from HBO’s Cher­nobyl v. Real Footage Shot in 1986: A Side-By-Side Com­par­i­son

The Ruins of Cher­nobyl Cap­tured in Three Haunt­ing, Drone-Shot Videos

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast #4 – HBO’s “Cher­nobyl”: Why Do We Enjoy Watch­ing Suf­fer­ing?

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

Watch Accurate Recreations of Medieval Italian Longsword Fighting Techniques, All Based on a Manuscript from 1404

in Books, History | May 17th, 2021

Giv­en recent events, the prospect of hun­dreds of young men meet­ing on Face­book, then trav­el­ing from around the coun­try to a cen­tral U.S. loca­tion might sound like rea­son­able cause for alarm. Yet a recent con­ven­tion fit­ting that descrip­tion had noth­ing to do with polit­i­cal vio­lence but, rather, a cel­e­bra­tion and appre­ci­a­tion of the name “Josh” (full dis­clo­sure: this writer did not attend). The gath­er­ing of the Josh­es this past April in Nebras­ka could not have been more peace­ful, includ­ing its fin­ish­ing bat­tle royale, con­duct­ed with pool noo­dles. (Win­ner: adorable 4‑year-old Josh Vin­son, Jr., or “Lit­tle Josh,” from Lin­coln, NE).

The Josh­es had no con­cern for prop­er pool-noo­dle-wield­ing tech­nique, if there is such a thing. But groups of peo­ple who gath­er around the coun­try to stage medieval-style bat­tles in live-action role play­ing (LARP) games with weapons both real and fake might ben­e­fit from point­ers.

So, too, might those who chore­o­graph sword fights on stage and screen. Where can seri­ous his­tor­i­cal re-cre­ators learn how to wield a real blade in his­tor­i­cal­ly accu­rate com­bat? One resource can be found at Wik­te­nauer, a wiki devot­ed to col­lect­ing “all of the pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary source lit­er­a­ture that makes up the text of his­tor­i­cal Euro­pean Mar­tial arts (HEMA) research.”

The Fior di Battaglia (“Flower of Bat­tle”) — an Ital­ian fenc­ing man­u­al by Fiore de’i Liberi dat­ing from cir­ca 1404 — offers rich­ly- and copi­ous­ly-illus­trat­ed demon­stra­tions of medieval Ital­ian longsword fight­ing tech­niques. In the orig­i­nal man­u­script, seen here and at The Get­ty, “the illus­tra­tions are inked sketch­es with gold leaf­ing on the crowns and garters,” notes the Wik­te­nauer entry. They dom­i­nate the text, which “takes the form of descrip­tive para­graphs set in poor Ital­ian verse, which are nev­er­the­less fair­ly clear and infor­ma­tive.” So clear, indeed, the brood­ing young men of Akademia Szer­mierzy — a Pol­ish group that recre­ates medieval sword-fight­ing tech­niques — can more than con­vinc­ing­ly mim­ic the moves in the video at the top.

Once they get going, after some req­ui­site pre-fight riga­ma­role, it’s impres­sive stuff, maybe already famil­iar to mod­ern fencers and cer­tain mem­bers of the Soci­ety for Cre­ative Anachro­nism, the LARP-ing orga­ni­za­tion of ama­teurs recre­at­ing every­thing from the Mid­dle Ages and the Renais­sance. But for those who think all live-action role-play­ing is the equiv­a­lent of the Bat­tle of the Josh­es (or off-brand Nazis run­ning through the streets in home­made armor), the sheer bal­let of his­tor­i­cal sword-fight­ing may come as a sur­prise — and maybe inspire a few more peo­ple to pull on the dou­blet and hose. See more medieval sword-fight­ing recre­ations from Akademia Szer­mierzy here, and the full text of the Fior di Battaglia here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Renais­sance Knives Had Music Engraved on the Blades; Now Hear the Songs Per­formed by Mod­ern Singers

A Hyp­not­ic Look at How Japan­ese Samu­rai Swords Are Made

The Last Duel Took Place in France in 1967, and It’s Caught on Film

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

The Ancient Greeks: A Free Online Course from Wesleyan University

in | May 17th, 2021

This course offers a “sur­vey of ancient Greek his­to­ry from the Bronze Age to the death of Socrates in 399 BCE. Along with study­ing the most impor­tant events and per­son­al­i­ties, [the course] will con­sid­er broad­er issues such as polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al val­ues and meth­ods of his­tor­i­cal inter­pre­ta­tion.” The course cov­ers Pre­his­to­ry to Homer, The Archa­ic Age (ca. 800–500 BCE), Two City-States: Spar­ta and Athens, Democ­ra­cy, The Per­sian Wars and much more.

You can take The Ancient Greeks for free by select­ing the audit option upon enrolling. If you want to take the course for a cer­tifi­cate, you will need to pay a fee.

The Ancient Greeks will be added to our list, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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:

Learn Ancient Greek in 64 Free Lessons: A Free Online Course from Bran­deis & Har­vard

Intro­duc­tion to Ancient Greek His­to­ry: A Free Online Course from Yale

Explore Ancient Athens 3D, a Dig­i­tal Recon­struc­tion of the Greek City-State at the Height of Its Influ­ence

The Cicadas Return After 17 Years: Stunning Footage of the Brood X Cicadas

in Biology, Environment, Nature, Science | May 17th, 2021

Sing, fly, mate, die.

The peri­od­i­cal cicadas in Brood X are emerg­ing from under­ground, where they have spent the last 17 years as nymphs. They are mak­ing the final climb of their lives, intent on escap­ing their cara­paces in order to make more cicadas. And as always they are doing it en masse.

Once free, they must quick­ly get the hang of their brand new wings, and make for the trees, where the males will sing (some say scream) in a bid for females with whom to mate.

The preg­nant females drill cav­i­ties into nar­row branch­es to receive their eggs.

By the time the lar­va emerge, some six weeks lat­er, their moth­ers and fathers are long dead.

Instinct pro­pels these babies to drop to the ground and bur­row in, thus begin­ning anoth­er 17 year cycle, a process Samuel Orr, a time lapse pho­tog­ra­ph­er and film­mak­er spe­cial­iz­ing in nature doc­u­men­tary, doc­u­ments in macro close up in Return of the Cicadas, above.

His adven­tures with Brood X date to their last emer­gence in 2004, when he was a stu­dent at Indi­ana Uni­ver­si­ty, work­ing in a lab with a pro­fes­sor whose area of exper­tise was cicadas.

While wait­ing around for Brood X’s next appear­ance, he trav­eled around the coun­try and as far as Aus­tralia, gath­er­ing over 200 hours of footage of oth­er peri­od­i­cal cicadas for an hour long, Kick­starter-fund­ed film that aired on PBS in 2012.

Brood X has a way of ensur­ing that we humans will also observe a 17 year cycle, at least those of us who live in the states the Great East­ern Brood calls home.

Some cel­e­brate with com­mem­o­ra­tive merch. This year, that means face masks as well as an ever bur­geon­ing assort­ment of t‑shirts, mugs, and oth­er para­pher­na­lia.

Also new this year, Cica­da Safari, ento­mol­o­gist Dr. Gene Kritsky’s smart­phone app for cit­i­zen sci­en­tists eager to help map the 2021 emer­gence with pho­tos and loca­tion.

There are some among us who com­plain about the males’ lusty cho­rus, which can rival garbage dis­pos­als, lawn mow­ers, and jack­ham­mers in terms of deci­bels.

Those con­cerned with the planet’s health can use the data from this and past emer­gences to dis­cuss the impact of cli­mate change and defor­esta­tion. Brood X is list­ed as “Near Threat­ened” on the Inter­na­tion­al Union for Con­ser­va­tion of Nature’s Red List.

Some of us are moved to write poet­ry and songs, though we don’t always get the species right — wit­ness Ogden Nash’s Locust-Lovers, Atten­tion! (1936) and Bob Dylan’s Day of the Locusts (1970).

Inevitably, there will be arti­cles about eat­ing them. It’s true that they’re a hyper­local source of sus­tain­able pro­tein, albeit one that’s rarely on the menu. (The Ononda­ga Nation cel­e­brates — and cer­e­mo­ni­al­ly sam­ples — Brood VII every 17 years, cred­it­ing the insects with sav­ing their ances­tors from star­va­tion after the Con­ti­nen­tal Army destroyed their vil­lages and food sources in 1779.)

Human nature is such that we can’t help but reflect on the twists and turns our lives have tak­en over the last 17 years.

A woman in Mary­land planned a cica­da themed wed­ding to coin­cide with Brood X’s 1987 emer­gence, hav­ing been born two emer­gences before, and grad­u­at­ed from Bryn Mawr dur­ing the 1970 emer­gence, as 50 miles away, Bob Dylan was hav­ing his fate­ful encounter on the cam­pus of Prince­ton.

Most of us will find that our mile­stones have been a bit more acci­den­tal in nature.

Brood X’s emer­gence also serves as a lens through which to view 17 years in the life of our coun­try. The Onion took this to the edge sev­er­al years ago with an arti­cle from the point of view of Brood II, but it’ll be hard to top the 17-year chunk of recent his­to­ry Brood X and the humans who have been liv­ing atop them since 2004 will have to digest.

Speak­ing of his­to­ry, Brood X Mania has been around much longer than any of us have been alive, and prob­a­bly pre­dates a Philadel­phia pastor’s descrip­tion of the 1715 emer­gence in his jour­nal (though we’ll give him FIRST!!! since no ear­li­er accounts have sur­faced).

Pri­or to the Inter­net, ento­mol­o­gist Charles L. Marlatt’s The Peri­od­i­cal Cica­da: An Account of Cica­da Sep­ten­dec­im, Its Nat­ur­al Ene­mies and the Means of Pre­vent­ing Its Injury (1907) was the go to source for all things cica­da relat­ed, and it remains a fas­ci­nat­ing read.

In addi­tion to lots of nit­ty grit­ty on the insects’ anato­my, habits, diet, and habi­tat, he quotes lib­er­al­ly from oth­er cica­da experts, from both his own era and before. The anec­do­tal evi­dence sug­gests our obses­sion is far from new.

These days, any­one armed with a smart­phone can make a record­ing of Brood X’s cacoph­o­ny, but back then, experts in the field were tasked with try­ing to cap­ture it in print.

Pro­fes­sor Charles Valen­tine Riley com­pared the sound ear­ly in the sea­son, when the first males were emerg­ing to the “whistling of a train pass­ing through a short tun­nel” and also, “the croak­ing of cer­tain frogs.” (For those need­ing help with pro­nun­ci­a­tion, he ren­dered it pho­net­i­cal­ly as “Pha-r-r-r-aoh.”)

Pro­fes­sor Asa Fitch’s described high sea­son in New York state, when a max­i­mum of males sing simul­ta­ne­ous­ly:

tsh-e-e-E-E-E-E-e-ou, uttered con­tin­u­ous­ly and pro­longed to a quar­ter or half minute in length, the mid­dle note deaf­en­ing­ly shrill, loud and pierc­ing to the ear

Mar­latt him­self wor­ried, pre­ma­ture­ly but not with­out rea­son, that the march of civ­i­liza­tion would bring about extinc­tion by over-clear­ing the dense­ly wood­ed areas that are essen­tial to the cicadas’ repro­duc­tive rit­u­als while offer­ing a bit of pro­tec­tion from preda­tors.

Dr. Samuel P. Hil­dreth of Mari­et­ta, Ohio not­ed in 1830 that “hogs eat them in pref­er­ence to any oth­er food” and that birds were such fans “that very few birds were seen around our gar­dens dur­ing their con­tin­u­ance and our cher­ries, etc, remained unmo­lest­ed.”

Dr. Leland Oss­ian Howard was erro­neous­ly cred­it­ed with con­duct­ing “the first exper­i­ments of cica­da as an arti­cle of human food” in ear­ly sum­mer 1885. Mar­latt repro­duces the account of an eye­wit­ness who seemed to fan­cy them­selves a bit of a restau­rant crit­ic:

With the aid of the Doctor’s cook, he had pre­pared a plain stew, a milk stew, and a broil. The Cicadae were col­lect­ed just as they emerged from pupae and were thrown into cold water, in which they remained overnight. They were cooked the next morn­ing, and served at break­fast time. They impart­ed a dis­tinct and not unpleas­ant fla­vor to the stew, but they were not at all palat­able them­selves, as they were reduced to noth­ing but bits of flab­by skin. The broil lacked sub­stance. The most palat­able method of cook­ing is to fry in bat­ter, when they remind one of shrimps. They will nev­er prove a del­i­ca­cy.

We leave you with the thoughts of Dr Gideon B. Smith of Bal­ti­more, whose attempt to cap­ture a mer­cu­r­ial month turns bit­ter­sweet, and all too relat­able:

The music or song pro­duced by the myr­i­ads of these insects in a warm day from about the 25th of May to the mid­dle of June is won­der­ful. It is not deaf­en­ing, as many describe it; even at its height it does not inter­rupt con­ver­sa­tion. It seems like an atmos­phere of wild, monot­o­nous sound, in which all oth­er sounds float with per­fect dis­tinct­ness. After a day or two this music becomes tire­some and dole­ful, and to many very dis­agree­able. To me, it was oth­er­wise, and when I heard the last note on the 25th of June the melan­choly reflec­tion occurred. Shall I live to hear it yet again?

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Sounds of the For­est: A Free Audio Archive Gath­ers the Sounds of Forests from All Over the World

Tune Into Tree.fm: An Online Radio Sta­tion That Streams the Sooth­ing Sounds of Forests from Around the World

How Sounds Are Faked For Nature Doc­u­men­taries: Meet the Artists Who Cre­ate the Sounds of Fish, Spi­ders, Orang­utans, Mush­rooms & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Wel­come back, Brood X Over­lords! Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

European Paintings: From Leonardo to Rembrandt to Goya–A Free Online Course from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M)

in | May 16th, 2021

From the Uni­ver­si­dad Car­los III de Madrid (UC3M) comes Euro­pean Paint­ings: From Leonar­do to Rem­brandt to Goya, which the uni­ver­si­ty describes as fol­lows:

The goal of this course is to help stu­dents become famil­iar with the lead­ing Euro­pean painters and paint­ings from approx­i­mate­ly 1400 to 1800, and with the issues that found expres­sion in the art of paint­ing. Includ­ed in this broad time­frame are artists of the impor­tance of Leonar­do da Vin­ci, Car­avag­gio, Velázquez, Rem­brandt, Ver­meer or Goya. Painters dur­ing this peri­od were con­cerned with ideas such as the pur­suit of beau­ty, the plea­sures and pains asso­ci­at­ed with love, the demon­stra­tion of pow­er and sta­tus, or the rela­tion­ship of men and women to the divin­i­ty and to nature. In paint­ings from the peri­od cov­ered in this course we find traces of the emer­gence of the mod­ern mind set, and infor­ma­tion on issues such as the respec­tive roles of women and men in the world. The class­es will focus on images of paint­ings by the artists list­ed in the course syl­labus. The dis­cus­sions that will take place in the “course forum” will allow us to touch upon a broad­er range of issues.

You can take Euro­pean Paint­ings: From Leonar­do to Rem­brandt to Goya for free by select­ing the audit option upon enroll­ment. If you want to take the course for a cer­tifi­cate, you will need to pay a fee.

Euro­pean Paint­ings: From Leonar­do to Rem­brandt to Goya will be added to our list, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Course: An Intro­duc­tion to the Art of the Ital­ian Renais­sance

14 Paris Muse­ums Put 300,000 Works of Art Online: Down­load Clas­sics by Mon­et, Cézanne & More

The Art of Europe’s For­got­ten Avant-Garde Artists Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online

Startup School: Take YCombinator’s Free Online Course for Current & Aspiring Entrepreneurs

in Business, Online Courses | May 16th, 2021

If you’re work­ing on a start­up, take note. YCombi­na­tor–a well-known Sil­i­con Val­ley accelerator–has cre­at­ed Start­up School, a free online pro­gram for entre­pre­neurs. The school has a track for cur­rent start­up founders, and anoth­er one for aspiring/eventual founders. In each case, the school strives to offer the best lessons and advice on how to start a start­up, while build­ing “a com­mu­ni­ty of entre­pre­neurs who can encour­age, teach and sup­port one anoth­er.” Start­up School is com­plete­ly free. You just need a device with access to the inter­net. View the cur­ricu­lum here. (Top­ics include every­thing from “How to Get Start Up Ideas” and “How to Pitch a Start­up,” to “How to Find the Right Co-Founder” and “How to Split Equi­ty.”) And sign up here.

This course will be added to our list, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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 to Start a Start-Up: A Free Online Course from Y Com­bi­na­tor Taught at Stan­ford

150 Free Online Busi­ness Cours­es

Entre­pre­neur­ship Through the Lens of Ven­ture Cap­i­tal: A Free Online Course from Stan­ford

What Is Contemporary Art?: An Online Course from The Museum of Modern Art

in | May 16th, 2021

What is con­tem­po­rary art? In this course from the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, you’ll explore this ques­tion through more than 70 works of art made from 1980 to the present, with a focus on art of the last decade. You’ll hear direct­ly from artists, archi­tects, and design­ers from around the globe about their cre­ative process­es, mate­ri­als, and inspi­ra­tion.

3D print­ed glass and sculp­tures made of fiber. Dance per­formed in the fac­to­ry and the muse­um. Hack­ing into tele­vi­sion and video games. Por­traits made with paint or arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Inti­mate explo­rations of the body and col­lec­tive actions. In this course, you’ll learn about art­works in both tra­di­tion­al and sur­pris­ing medi­ums, all drawn from the col­lec­tion of The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art. Each week stu­dents will look at con­tem­po­rary art from a dif­fer­ent theme: Media from Tele­vi­sion to the Inter­net, Ter­ri­to­ries & Tran­sit, Mate­ri­als & Mak­ing, Agency, and Pow­er.

You can take What Is Con­tem­po­rary Art? for free by select­ing the audit option upon enroll­ment. If you want to take the course for a cer­tifi­cate, you will need to pay a fee.

What Is Con­tem­po­rary Art? will be added to our list, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

For a com­plete list of online cours­es, please vis­it our com­plete col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

For a list of online cer­tifi­cate pro­grams, vis­it 200 Online Cer­tifi­cate & Micro­cre­den­tial Pro­grams from Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties & Com­pa­nies, which fea­tures pro­grams from our part­ners Cours­era, Udac­i­ty, Future­Learn and edX.

And if you’re inter­est­ed in Online Mini-Mas­ters and Mas­ter’s Degrees pro­grams from uni­ver­si­ties, see our col­lec­tion: Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.