The Elements of Drawing: A Free Course from Oxford

in | April 21st, 2019

In The Ele­ments of Draw­ing, Stephen Far­thing R.A. presents eight prac­ti­cal draw­ing class­es using John Ruskin’s teach­ing col­lec­tions to explain the basic prin­ci­ples of draw­ing.

1. Intro­duc­tion to the Ele­ments of Draw­ing

2. The Tip of the Pen­cil

3. The Edge of the Pen­cil

4. Toned Paper

5. Mak­ing a Live­li­er Draw­ing

6. Mea­sured Draw­ing

7. With Colour

8. Field Notes

9. Cre­ativ­i­ty

You can watch the lec­tures in the course above. Or find the lec­tures on iTunes or Oxford’s web­site.

The Ele­ments of Draw­ing has been added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Journalistic Ethics: A Free Online Course from UCLA

in | April 20th, 2019

Taught by Jim New­ton, edi­tor-at-large of the Los Ange­les Times, this UCLA course–Journalistic Ethics–offers an inten­sive exam­i­na­tion of eth­i­cal and pol­i­cy issues aris­ing from inter­ac­tion of media insti­tu­tions (print, film, broad­cast­ing, and new tech­nolo­gies) and soci­etal insti­tu­tions (Con­gress, fed­er­al agen­cies, courts, Pres­i­den­cy, schools, church­es, polit­i­cal action groups, adver­tis­ers, and audi­ences). The 14 lec­tures can all be streamed above, or here.

Jour­nal­is­tic Ethics has been added to our col­lec­tion, 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!

Experience the Majesty of Notre Dame by Getting a Free Download of the Video Game Assassin’s Creed Unity (Free for a Limited Time)

in Games, History | April 20th, 2019

FYI: In the wake of the great Notre Dame fire, the French video game com­pa­ny Ubisoft has decid­ed to make its pop­u­lar video game Assas­s­in’s Creed Uni­ty free through April 25th, allow­ing gamers to “expe­ri­ence the majesty and beau­ty of the cathe­dral.” The goth­ic cathe­dral fig­ures cen­tral­ly in the game. Start your down­load (avail­able only for PC users) here. Once you down­load the game, you’ll own it for­ev­er in your Uplay games library.

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!

via Laugh­ing Squid

Climate Change Gets Strikingly Visualized by a Scottish Art Installation

in Art, Science | April 20th, 2019

What does it accom­plish to talk about cli­mate change? Even those who talk about cli­mate change pro­fes­sion­al­ly might find it hard to say. If you real­ly want to make a point about ris­ing sea lev­els — not to men­tion all the oth­er changes pre­dict­ed to afflict a warm­ing Earth — you might do bet­ter to show, not tell. That rea­son­ing seems to have moti­vat­ed art projects like the giant hands reach­ing out from the waters of Venice pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, and it looks even clear­er in the more recent case of Lines (57° 59 ́N, 7° 16 ́W), an instal­la­tion now on dis­play on a Scot­tish island.

All images cour­tesy of Timo Aho and Pekka Niit­tyvir­ta

“At high tide, three syn­chro­nized lines of light acti­vate in the Out­er Hebrides off the west coast of Scot­land,” writes Design­boom’s Zach Andrews, and in the dark, “wrap around two struc­tures and along the base of a moun­tain land­scape.

Every­thing below these lines of light will one day be under­wa­ter.” Cre­at­ed by Finnish artists Pekka Niit­tyvir­ta and Timo Aho for Taigh Chearsab­hagh Muse­um & Arts Cen­tre, Lines (57° 59 ́N, 7° 16 ́W) offers a stark reminder of the future human­i­ty faces if cli­mate change goes on as pro­ject­ed.

But why put up an instal­la­tion of such appar­ent urgency in such a thin­ly pop­u­lat­ed, out-of-the-way place? “Low lying arch­i­pel­a­gos like this one are espe­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble to the cat­a­stroph­ic effects of cli­mate change,” Andrews writes, adding that the Taigh Chearsab­hagh Muse­um & Arts Cen­tre itself “can­not even afford to devel­op on its exist­ing site any­more due to the pre­dict­ed rise of storm surge sea.” But though the effects of ris­ing sea lev­els may be felt first on islands like these, few pre­dic­tions have those effects stop­ping there; worst-case sce­nar­ios won’t spare our major metrop­o­lis­es, and cer­tain­ly not the coastal ones.

You can get a sense of what Lines (57° 59 ́N, 7° 16 ́W) looks like in action from the pho­tographs on Niit­tyvir­ta’s site a well as the time-lapse video at the top, which shows the lines of light acti­vat­ing when their sen­sors detect high tide, then only those lines of light remain­ing by the time the sun has gone com­plete­ly down. To expe­ri­ence the full impact of the instal­la­tion, how­ev­er, requires see­ing it in per­son in the con­text for which it was cre­at­ed. So if you’ve been putting off that trip to the Out­er Hebrides, now might be the time to final­ly take it — not just because of Niit­tyvir­ta and Aho’s work, but because in a few years, it may not be quite the same place.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ani­ma­tions Show the Melt­ing Arc­tic Sea Ice, and What the Earth Would Look Like When All of the Ice Melts

Huge Hands Rise Out of Venice’s Waters to Sup­port the City Threat­ened by Cli­mate Change: A Poignant New Sculp­ture

Music for a String Quar­tet Made from Glob­al Warm­ing Data: Hear “Plan­e­tary Bands, Warm­ing World”

A Song of Our Warm­ing Plan­et: Cel­list Turns 130 Years of Cli­mate Change Data into Music

A Map Shows What Hap­pens When Our World Gets Four Degrees Warmer: The Col­orado Riv­er Dries Up, Antarc­ti­ca Urban­izes, Poly­ne­sia Van­ish­es

A Cen­tu­ry of Glob­al Warm­ing Visu­al­ized in a 35 Sec­ond Video

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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.

Billy Collins Teaches Poetry in a New Online Course

in Online Courses, Poetry | April 19th, 2019

In its lat­est release, Mas­ter­class has launched a new course, “Bil­ly Collins Teach­es Read­ing and Writ­ing Poet­ry,” which they describe in the trail­er above and the text below. You can sign up here. The cost is $90. Or pay $180 and get an annu­al pass to their entire cat­a­logue of cours­es cov­er­ing a wide range of sub­jects–every­thing from film­mak­ing (Wern­er Her­zog, David Lynch, Mar­tin Scors­ese), to act­ing (Helen Mir­ren) and cre­ative writ­ing (Mar­garet Atwood), to tak­ing pho­tographs (Annie Lei­bovitz) and writ­ing plays (David Mamet). Each course is taught by an emi­nent fig­ure in their field.

Known for his wit, humor, and pro­found insight, Bil­ly is one of the best-sell­ing and most beloved con­tem­po­rary poets in the Unit­ed States. He reg­u­lar­ly sells out poet­ry read­ings, fre­quent­ly charms lis­ten­ers on NPR’s A Prairie Home Com­pan­ion, and his work has appeared in antholo­gies, text­books, and peri­od­i­cals around the world.

Called “America’s Favorite Poet” by the Wall Street Jour­nal, Bil­ly served two terms as U.S. Poet Lau­re­ate and is also a for­mer New York State Poet Lau­re­ate. He’s been hon­ored with the Mark Twain Prize for Humor in Poet­ry and a num­ber of pres­ti­gious fel­low­ships. He’s taught at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, Sarah Lawrence, and Lehman Col­lege, and he’s also a dis­tin­guished pro­fes­sor at the City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York. Now he’s teach­ing his first-ever Mas­ter­Class.

In his Mas­ter­Class on Read­ing and Writ­ing Poet­ry, Bil­ly teach­es you the build­ing blocks of poems and their unique pow­er to con­nect read­er and writer. From sub­ject and form to rhyme and meter, learn to appre­ci­ate the plea­sures of a well-turned poem. Dis­cov­er Billy’s phi­los­o­phy on the craft of poet­ry and learn how he cre­ates a poet’s per­sona, incor­po­rates humor, and lets imag­i­na­tion lead the way. By break­ing down his own approach to com­pos­ing poet­ry and enjoy­ing the work of oth­ers, Bil­ly invites stu­dents to explore the gifts poet­ry has to offer.

In this online poet­ry class, you’ll learn about:
• Using humor as a seri­ous strat­e­gy
• The fun­da­men­tal ele­ments of poet­ry
• Billy’s writ­ing process
• Turn­ing a poem
• Explor­ing sub­jects
• Rhyme and meter
• Sound plea­sures
• Find­ing your voice
• Using form to engage read­ers
• The visu­al dis­tinc­tions of poet­ry

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ani­ma­tion of Bil­ly Collins’ Poet­ry: Every­day Moments in Motion

Stream Bil­ly Collins’ Album, The Best Cig­a­rette, Free Online

Bill Mur­ray Reads the Poet­ry of Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, Wal­lace Stevens, Emi­ly Dick­in­son, Bil­ly Collins, Lorine Niedeck­er, Lucille Clifton & More

Street Art for Book Lovers: Dutch Artists Paint Massive Bookcase Mural on the Side of a Building

in Architecture, Art, Books, Travel | April 19th, 2019

Book­cas­es are a great ice break­er for those who love to read.

What relief those shelves offer ill-at ease par­ty­go­ers… even when you don’t know a soul in the room, there’s always a chance you’ll bond with a fel­low guest over one of your hosts’ titles.

Occu­py your­self with a good browse whilst wait­ing for some­one to take the bait.

Now, with the aid of Dutch street artists Jan Is De Man and Deef Feed, some res­i­dents of Utrecht have turned their book­cas­es into street art, spark­ing con­ver­sa­tion in their cul­tur­al­ly diverse neigh­bor­hood.

De Man, whose close friends occu­py the ground floor of a build­ing on the cor­ner of Mimosas­traat and Ams­ter­dam, had ini­tial­ly planned to ren­der a giant smi­ley face on an exte­ri­or wall as a pub­lic morale boost­er, but the shape of the three-sto­ry struc­ture sug­gest­ed some­thing a bit more lit­er­ary.

The trompe-l’oeil Boekenkast (or book­case) took a week to cre­ate, and fea­tures titles in eight dif­fer­ent lan­guages.

Look close­ly and you’ll notice both artists’ names (and a smi­ley face) lurk­ing among the spines.

Design mags may make an impres­sion by order­ing books accord­ing to size and col­or, but this com­mu­nal 2‑D boekenkast looks to belong to an avid and omniv­o­rous read­er.

Some Eng­lish titles that caught our eye:

Sapi­ens

The Sub­tle Art of Not Giv­ing a F*ck

Kei­th Richards’ auto­bi­og­ra­phy Life

The Curi­ous Inci­dent of the Dog in the Night­time 

Pride and Prej­u­dice

The Lit­tle Prince

The World Accord­ing to Garp

Jumper

And a classy-look­ing hard­bound Play­boy col­lec­tion that may or may not exist in real life.

(Read­ers, can you spot the oth­er fakes?)

Boekenkast is the lat­est of a num­ber of glob­al book­shelf murals tempt­ing lit­er­ary pil­grims to take a self­ie on the way to the local indie book­shop.

via Bored Pan­da

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Japan­ese Artist Cre­ates Book­shelf Dio­ra­mas That Mag­i­cal­ly Trans­port You Into Tokyo’s Back Alleys

157 Ani­mat­ed Min­i­mal­ist Mid-Cen­tu­ry Book Cov­ers

David Bowie Songs Reimag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers: Space Odd­i­ty, Heroes, Life on Mars & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City this May for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The Mueller Report Is #1, #2 and #3 on the Amazon Bestseller List: You Can Get It Free Online

in Books, Current Affairs | April 19th, 2019

Peruse the Ama­zon best­selling book list and you’ll find that the long-await­ed Mueller Report is not just the #1 best­seller. It’s also the #2 best­seller and the #3 best­seller. Col­lu­sion and obstruction–it’s the stuff that makes for good book sales, it appears.

You can pre-order the Mueller Report in book, ebook and even audio book for­mats via the links above. But if you want to down­load the report for free, and start read­ing it asap, sim­ply head to the Wash­ing­ton Post and New York Times. Or go straight to the source at the Jus­tice Depart­ment web site. Politi­co has a search­able PDF ver­sion here.

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!

9 Science-Fiction Authors Predict the Future: How Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov, William Gibson, Philip K. Dick & More Imagined the World Ahead

in History, Sci Fi | April 18th, 2019

Pressed to give a four-word def­i­n­i­tion of sci­ence fic­tion, one could do worse than “sto­ries about the future.” That stark sim­pli­fi­ca­tion does the com­plex and var­ied genre a dis­ser­vice, as the defend­ers of sci­ence fic­tion against its crit­ics won’t hes­i­tate to claim. And those crit­ics are many, includ­ing most recent­ly the writer Ian McE­wan, despite the fact that his new nov­el Machines Like Me is about the intro­duc­tion of intel­li­gent androids into human soci­ety. Sci-fi fans have tak­en him to task for dis­tanc­ing his lat­est book from a genre he sees as insuf­fi­cient­ly con­cerned with the “human dilem­mas” imag­ined tech­nolo­gies might cause, but he has a point: set in an alter­nate 1982, Machines Like Me isn’t about the future but the past.

Then again, per­haps McE­wan’s nov­el is about the future, and the androids sim­ply haven’t yet arrived on our own time­line — or per­haps, like most endur­ing works of sci­ence fic­tion, it’s ulti­mate­ly about the present moment. The writ­ers in the sci-fi pan­theon all com­bine a height­ened aware­ness of the con­cerns of their own eras with a cer­tain gen­uine pre­science about things to come.

Writ­ing in the ear­ly 1860s, Jules Verne imag­ined a sub­ur­ban­ized 20th cen­tu­ry with gas-pow­ered cars, elec­tron­ic sur­veil­lance, fax machines and a pop­u­la­tion at once both high­ly edu­cat­ed and crude­ly enter­tained. Verne also includ­ed a sim­ple com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tem that can’t help but remind us of the inter­net we use today — a sys­tem whose promise and per­il Neu­ro­mancer author William Gib­son described on tele­vi­sion more than 130 years lat­er.

In the list below we’ve round­ed up Verne and Gib­son’s pre­dic­tions about the future of tech­nol­o­gy and human­i­ty along with those of sev­en oth­er sci­ence-fic­tion lumi­nar­ies. Despite com­ing from dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tions and pos­sess­ing dif­fer­ent sen­si­bil­i­ties, these writ­ers share not just a con­cern with the future but the abil­i­ty to express that con­cern in a way that still inter­ests us, the denizens of that future. Or rather, some­thing like that future: when we hear Aldous Hux­ley pre­dict in 1950 that “dur­ing the next fifty years mankind will face three great prob­lems: the prob­lem of avoid­ing war; the prob­lem of feed­ing and cloth­ing a pop­u­la­tion of two and a quar­ter bil­lions which, by 2000 A.D., will have grown to upward of three bil­lions, and the prob­lem of sup­ply­ing these bil­lions with­out ruin­ing the planet’s irre­place­able resources,” we can agree with the gen­er­al pic­ture even if he low­balled glob­al pop­u­la­tion growth by half.

In 1964, Arthur C. Clarke pre­dict­ed not just the inter­net but 3D print­ers and trained mon­key ser­vants. In 1977, the more dystopi­an-mind­ed J.G. Bal­lard came up with some­thing that sounds an awful lot like mod­ern social media. Philip K. Dick­’s time­line of the years 1983 through 2012 includes Sovi­et satel­lite weapons, the dis­place­ment of oil as an ener­gy source by hydro­gen, and colonies both lunar and Mar­t­ian. Envi­sion­ing the world of 2063, Robert Hein­lein includ­ed inter­plan­e­tary trav­el, the com­plete cur­ing of can­cer, tooth decay, and the com­mon cold, and a per­ma­nent end to hous­ing short­ages. Even Mark Twain, despite not nor­mal­ly being regard­ed as a sci-fi writer, imag­ined a “ ‘lim­it­less-dis­tance’ tele­phone” sys­tem intro­duced and “the dai­ly doings of the globe made vis­i­ble to every­body, and audi­bly dis­cuss­able too, by wit­ness­es sep­a­rat­ed by any num­ber of leagues.”

As much as the hits impress, they tend to be out­num­bered in even sci­ence fic­tion’s great­est minds by the miss­es. But as you’ll find while read­ing through the pre­dic­tions of these nine writ­ers, what sep­a­rates sci­ence fic­tion’s great­est minds from the rest is the abil­i­ty to come up with not just inter­est­ing hits but inter­est­ing miss­es as well. Con­sid­er­ing why they got right what they got right and why they got wrong what they got wrong tells us some­thing about the work­ings of their imag­i­na­tions, but also about the eras they did their imag­in­ing in — and how their times led to our own, the future to which so many of them ded­i­cat­ed so much thought.

• Jules Verne 
• Mark Twain
• Aldous Hux­ley
• Arthur C. Clarke
• Robert Hein­lein
• J.G. Bal­lard
• William Gib­son
• Philip K. Dick
• Isaac Asi­mov (1964)
• Isaac Asi­mov (1983)

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:

Read Hun­dreds of Free Sci-Fi Sto­ries from Asi­mov, Love­craft, Brad­bury, Dick, Clarke & More

Free Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sics on the Web: Hux­ley, Orwell, Asi­mov, Gaiman & Beyond

The Ency­clo­pe­dia of Sci­ence Fic­tion: 17,500 Entries on All Things Sci-Fi Are Now Free Online

Isaac Asi­mov Recalls the Gold­en Age of Sci­ence Fic­tion (1937–1950)

The Art of Sci-Fi Book Cov­ers: From the Fan­tas­ti­cal 1920s to the Psy­che­del­ic 1960s & Beyond

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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.

150 Renowned Secular Academics & 20 Christian Thinkers Talking About the Existence of God

in Philosophy, Religion | April 18th, 2019

Of the many books released over the past cou­ple decades about the exis­tence or nonex­is­tence of God (and there were a lot) one of the best comes from philoso­pher and nov­el­ist Rebec­ca Gold­stein. Her 2010 36 Argu­ments for the Exis­tence of God is not, how­ev­er, a work of pop­u­lar the­ol­o­gy or anti-the­ol­o­gy; it is fic­tion, a satire of acad­e­mia, the pub­lish­ing world, the Judaism she left behind, and the bub­ble of hype that once inflat­ed around so-called “new athe­ism.”

In a book with­in the book, Goldstein’s hero, Cass Seltzer strikes it big with his own pop­u­lar knock­down of reli­gion, The Vari­eties of Reli­gious Illu­sion, which ends with 36 refu­ta­tions of argu­ments for God in the appen­dix, which itself pro­vides the appen­dix for Goldstein’s book. If this sounds com­pli­cat­ed, there’s no rea­son it shouldn’t be. Con­ver­sa­tions about God, for hun­dreds of years the biggest top­ic in West­ern phi­los­o­phy, should not be reduced to syl­lo­gisms and stereo­types.

Yet over­sim­pli­fy­ing the big ques­tions is what many pop athe­ist books do, Gold­stein sug­gests. Seltzer’s book arrives when there is “a glut of god­less­ness” in book­stores. Such books “were sell­ing well,” writes Gold­stein, “some­times edg­ing out cook­books and mem­oirs writ­ten by house­hold pets to rise to the top of the best-sell­er list.” The two deep thinkers and reli­gious crit­ics Seltzer self-con­scious­ly draws on in his title make his project seem all the more iron­i­cal­ly triv­ial:

First had come the book, which he had enti­tled The Vari­eties of Reli­gious Illu­sion, a nod to both William James’s The Vari­eties of Reli­gious Expe­ri­ence and to Sig­mund Freud’s The Future of An Illu­sion. The book had brought Cass an inde­cent amount of atten­tion. Time Mag­a­zine, in a cov­er sto­ry on the so-called new athe­ists, had end­ed by dub­bing him “the athe­ist with a soul.” 

By embed­ding argu­ments for the exis­tence of God in each of the books 36 chap­ters, Gold­stein implies “the joke—or sort of joke,” as Janet Maslin writes at The New York Times, “is that Cass’s conun­drum-filled life illus­trates and affirms thoughts of the divine even as his appen­dix repu­di­ates them.” Dwelling per­sis­tent­ly on an idea grants it the very valid­i­ty one argues it should not have, per­haps.

This does seem to be an effect of cer­tain hard-nosed athe­ist writ­ing, as Niet­zsche rec­og­nized very well. “I am afraid we are not rid of God,” he once lament­ed, “because we still have faith in gram­mar.” Reli­gious ideas are embed­ded in the struc­ture of the lan­guage; lan­guage itself seems to have meta­phys­i­cal prop­er­ties. It is like ecto­plasm, slip­pery, opaque, made of metaphors both liv­ing and dead. It both enables and thwarts all attempts at cer­tain­ty.

Goldstein’s cre­ative approach to the God debate stands out for its ambiva­lence and humor. (See her dis­cuss faith, fic­tion, and rea­son with her part­ner, Har­vard psy­chol­o­gist Steven Pinker, in the video at the top of the post.) In the com­pi­la­tions here, Gold­stein and 149 more renowned aca­d­e­mics offer their agnos­tic or athe­ist thoughts on God. Some are less nuanced, some lean more heav­i­ly on sta­tis­tics, physics, and math; many come from the the­o­ret­i­cal sci­ences and from ana­lyt­ic and moral phi­los­o­phy. Some are sym­pa­thet­ic to reli­gion, some are con­temp­tu­ous. A wide breadth of intel­lec­tu­al per­spec­tives is rep­re­sent­ed here.

Yet oth­er than Gold­stein and a hand­ful of oth­er promi­nent women, the selec­tions skew almost entire­ly male (rather like the char­ac­ters in most reli­gious scrip­tures), and skew almost entire­ly white Euro­pean and North Amer­i­can. We can do what we like with this infor­ma­tion. It should not prej­u­dice us against the finest thinkers in the com­pi­la­tion, which includes sev­er­al Nobel Prize win­ning sci­en­tists, famous philoso­phers, Richard Feyn­man, Oliv­er Sacks, and Noam Chom­sky, as well as a few fig­ures who have recent­ly become infa­mous for alleged sex­u­al harass­ment, racism, and far worse.

But we might wish the less engag­ing con­trib­u­tors to this dis­cus­sion had giv­en way to a greater diver­si­ty of per­spec­tives, not only from oth­er cul­tures, but from the arts and human­i­ties. On the oth­er side of the coin, we have a small­er list of 20 Chris­t­ian aca­d­e­mics address­ing the ques­tion of God, below. These include respect­ed sci­en­tists like Fran­cis Collins and John Polk­ing­horne and many well-regard­ed (and some not so) Chris­t­ian philoso­phers. The line­up is entire­ly male, and also includes an apol­o­gist accused of fak­ing his aca­d­e­m­ic cre­den­tials and an apol­o­gist turned right-wing pro­pa­gan­dist who was con­vict­ed and jailed for fraud. At the very least, these details might call into ques­tion their intel­lec­tu­al hon­esty.

Here again, maybe some of these selec­tions should have been bet­ter vet­ted in favor of the many women in phi­los­o­phy, the­ol­o­gy, sci­ence, etc. But there are voic­es worth hear­ing here, from pro­fess­ing intel­lec­tu­als who can keep the ques­tions open even while in a state of belief, a skill even rar­er in the world than in this col­lec­tion of Chris­t­ian sci­en­tists, schol­ars, and apol­o­gists.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Athe­ism: A Rough His­to­ry of Dis­be­lief, with Jonathan Miller

Does God Exist? Christo­pher Hitchens Debates Chris­t­ian Philoso­pher William Lane Craig

In His Lat­est Film, Slavoj Žižek Claims “The Only Way to Be an Athe­ist is Through Chris­tian­i­ty”

Athe­ist Ira Glass Believes Chris­tians Get the Short End of the Media Stick

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

How Digital Scans of Notre Dame Can Help Architects Rebuild the Burned Cathedral

in Architecture, Technology | April 17th, 2019

“Every­one help­less­ly watch­ing some­thing beau­ti­ful burn is 2019 in a nut­shell,” wrote TV crit­ic Ryan McGee on Twit­ter the day a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of Notre Dame burned to the ground. He might have includ­ed 2018 in his metaphor, when Brazil’s Nation­al Muse­um was total­ly destroyed by fire. Before the Parisian mon­u­ment caught flame, peo­ple watched help­less­ly as his­toric black church­es burned in the U.S., and while the muse­um and cathe­dral fire were not the direct result of evil intent, in all of these events we wit­nessed the loss of sanc­tu­ar­ies, a word with both a reli­gious mean­ing and a sec­u­lar one, as colum­nist Jarvis DeBer­ry points out.

Sanc­tu­ar­ies are places where peo­ple, price­less arti­facts, and knowl­edge should be “safe and pro­tect­ed,” sup­pos­ed­ly insti­tu­tion­al bul­warks against dis­or­der and vio­lence. They are both havens and potent symbols—and they are also phys­i­cal spaces that can be rebuilt, if not replaced.

And 21st-cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy has made their rebuild­ing a far more col­lab­o­ra­tive and more pre­cise affair. The recon­struc­tion of church­es in Louisiana can be fund­ed through social media. The con­tents of the Nation­al Muse­um of Brazil can be rec­ol­lect­ed, vir­tu­al­ly at least, through crowd­sourc­ing and dig­i­tal archives.

And the rav­aged wood frame, roof, and spire of Notre Dame can be rebuilt, though nev­er replaced, not only with mil­lions in fund­ing from Apple and fashion’s biggest hous­es, but with an exact 3D dig­i­tal scan of the cathe­dral made in 2015 by Vas­sar art his­to­ri­an Andrew Tal­lon, who passed away last year from brain can­cer. In the video at the top, see Tal­lon, then a pro­fes­sor at Vas­sar, describe his process, one dri­ven by a life­long pas­sion for Goth­ic archi­tec­ture, and espe­cial­ly for Notre Dame. A “for­mer com­pos­er, would-be monk, and self-described gear­head,” wrote Nation­al Geo­graph­ic in a 2015 pro­file of his work, Tal­lon brought a unique sen­si­bil­i­ty to the project.

His fas­ci­na­tion with the spaces of Goth­ic cathe­drals began with an inves­ti­ga­tion into their acoustic prop­er­ties. He devel­oped the idea of using laser scan­ners to cre­ate a dig­i­tal repli­ca of Notre Dame after study­ing at Colum­bia under art his­to­ri­an Stephen Mur­ray, who tried and failed in 2001 to make a laser scan of a cathe­dral north of Paris. Four­teen years lat­er, the tech­nol­o­gy final­ly caught up with the idea, which Tal­lon also improved on by attempt­ing to recon­struct not only the struc­ture, but also the meth­ods the builders used to build it yet did not record in writ­ing.

By exam­in­ing how the cathe­dral moved when its foun­da­tions shift­ed or how it heat­ed up or cooled down, Tal­lon could reveal “its orig­i­nal design and the choic­es that the mas­ter builder had to make when con­struc­tion did­n’t go as planned.” He took scans from “more than 50 loca­tions around the cathedral—collecting more than one bil­lion points of data.” All of the scans were knit togeth­er “to make them man­age­able and beau­ti­ful.” They are accu­rate to the mil­lime­ter, and as Wired reports, “archi­tects now hope that Tallon’s scans may pro­vide a map for keep­ing on track what­ev­er rebuild­ing will have to take place.”

To learn even more about Tallon’s metic­u­lous process than he reveals in the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic video at the top, read his paper “Divin­ing Pro­por­tions in the Infor­ma­tion Age” in the open access jour­nal Archi­tec­tur­al His­to­ries. We may not typ­i­cal­ly think of the dig­i­tal world as much of a sanc­tu­ary, and maybe for good rea­son, but Tallon’s mas­ter­work poignant­ly shows the impor­tance of using its tools to record, doc­u­ment, and, if nec­es­sary, recon­struct the real-life spaces that meet our def­i­n­i­tions of the term.

via the MIT Tech­nol­o­gy Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Notre Dame Cap­tured in an Ear­ly Pho­to­graph, 1838

A Vir­tu­al Time-Lapse Recre­ation of the Build­ing of Notre Dame (1160)

Wikipedia Leads Effort to Cre­ate a Dig­i­tal Archive of 20 Mil­lion Arti­facts Lost in the Brazil­ian Muse­um Fire

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Brazil’s Nation­al Muse­um & Its Arti­facts: Google Dig­i­tized the Museum’s Col­lec­tion Before the Fate­ful Fire

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