The Genius of Harry Beck’s 1933 London Tube Map–and How It Revolutionized Subway Map Design Everywhere

in Design, History, Life, Maps, Travel | April 9th, 2018

The sub­way is a mar­vel of engi­neer­ing, and so is the mod­ern sub­way map.

For the first 25 years of its exis­tence, Lon­don Under­ground rid­ers relied on a map that reflect­ed the actu­al dis­tance between sta­tions, as well as rivers, parks, and oth­er above­ground phe­nom­e­na.

As design­er Michael Bierut observes in the video at the top, the rad­i­cal­ly revised approach it final­ly adopt­ed in 1933 proved so intu­itive and easy to use, it remains the uni­ver­sal tem­plate for mod­ern sub­way maps.

The brain­child of Har­ry Beck, a young drafts­man in the Lon­don Under­ground Sig­nals Office, the new map is more accu­rate­ly a dia­gram that pri­or­i­tized rid­ers’ needs.

He did away with all above­ground ref­er­ences save the Thames, and replot­ted the sta­tions at equidis­tant points along col­or-cod­ed straight lines.

This innovation—for which he was paid about $8—helped rid­ers to glean at a glance where to make the sub­ter­ranean con­nec­tions that would allow them to trav­el from point A to point B.

The for­mer senior cura­tor of Lon­don Trans­port Muse­um, Anna Ren­ton, said in an inter­view with The Verge that Beck’s design may have helped per­suade city dwellers to make the leap to sub­urbs ser­viced by the Under­ground “by mak­ing them look clos­er to the cen­ter, and show­ing how easy it was to com­mute.”

It’s not Beck’s fault if ser­vice falls short of his map’s effi­cient ide­al, par­tic­u­lar­ly on nights and week­ends, when track work and ser­vice advi­sories abound, ren­der­ing such com­mutes a night­mare.

The appeal of sub­way map-themed sou­venirs is also a tes­ta­ment to the visu­al appeal of Beck’s orig­i­nal design, espe­cial­ly giv­en that such pur­chas­es are not lim­it­ed to tourists.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ani­mat­ed GIFs Show How Sub­way Maps of Berlin, New York, Tokyo & Lon­don Com­pare to the Real Geog­ra­phy of Those Great Cities

A Won­der­ful Archive of His­toric Tran­sit Maps: Expres­sive Art Meets Pre­cise Graph­ic Design

The Roman Roads of Britain Visu­al­ized as a Sub­way Map

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, April 23 for the third install­ment of her lit­er­ary-themed vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

A Vending Machine Now Distributes Free Short Stories at Francis Ford Coppola’s Café Zoetrope

in Life, Literature, Technology, Travel | April 6th, 2018

I loved the idea of a vend­ing machine, a dis­pens­ing machine that doesn’t dis­pense pota­to chips or beer or cof­fee for mon­ey but gives you art. I espe­cial­ly liked the fact that you didn’t put mon­ey in. — Film­mak­er Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la

Thus­ly did film­mak­er Cop­po­la arrange for a free Short Edi­tion sto­ry vend­ing machine to be installed in Café Zoetrope, his San Fran­cis­co restau­rant.

The French-built machine is the per­fect com­pan­ion for soli­tary din­ers, freely dis­pens­ing tales on skin­ny, eco-friend­ly paper with the push of a but­ton. Read­ers have a choice over the type of story—romantic, fun­ny, scary—and the amount of time they’re will­ing to devote to it.

After which, they can per­haps begin the task of adapt­ing it into a fea­ture-length film script. Part of Coppola’s attrac­tion to the form is that short sto­ries, like movies, are intend­ed to be con­sumed in a sin­gle sit­ting.

Short Edi­tion, the Greno­ble-based start-up, has been fol­low­ing up on the public’s embrace of the Café Zoetrope machine by send­ing even more short sto­ry kiosks state­side.

Colum­bus Pub­lic Health just unveiled one near the children’s area at its immu­niza­tion clin­ic, pro­vid­ing Ohio kids and par­ents from most­ly dis­ad­van­taged back­grounds with access to free lit­er­a­ture while they wait.

Philadelphia’s Free Library won a grant to install four sto­ry dis­pensers, with more slat­ed for loca­tions in South Car­oli­na and Kansas.

Part of the allure lays in receiv­ing a tan­gi­ble object. You can recy­cle your sto­ry into a book­mark, leave it for some­one else to find, or—in Coppola’s words—save it for an “artis­tic lift” while “wait­ing for a bus, or mar­riage license, or lunch.”

A café patron described the cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance of watch­ing her cousin read the sto­ry the Zoetrope machine picked out for her:

The scene seemed archa­ic: a woman frozen in con­cen­tra­tion, in the mid­dle of a buzzing crowd, read­ing from a line of print instead of scrolling through Insta­gram, as one might nor­mal­ly do while sit­ting solo at a bar. 

“When peo­ple ask [if] we have wifi for the kids,” Café Zoetrope’s gen­er­al man­ag­er told Lit­er­ary Hub, “We point to the machine and say, ‘No, but you have a story—you can read.’”

Those with­out access to a Short Edi­tion sto­ry vend­ing machine can get a feel for the expe­ri­ence dig­i­tal­ly on the company’s web­site.

Scroll down to the dice icon, spec­i­fy your pre­ferred tone and a read­ing time between 1 and 5 min­utes.

Or throw cau­tion to the wind by hit­ting the search but­ton sans spec­i­fi­ca­tion, as I did to become the 3232nd read­er of “Drowned,” a one-minute true crime sto­ry by Cléa Bar­reyre, trans­lat­ed from the French by Wendy Cross.

French speak­ers can also sub­mit their writ­ing. The vend­ing machines’ sto­ries are drawn from Short Edition’s online com­mu­ni­ty, a trove of some 100,000 short sto­ries by near­ly 10,000 authors. Reg­is­ter­ing for a free account will allow you to read sto­ries, after which you can tog­gle over to the French site to post your con­tent through the orange author space por­tal at the top right of the page. The FAQ and Google Trans­late should come in handy here. The edi­tors are cur­rent­ly review­ing sub­mis­sions of comics, poems, and micro fic­tion for the Sum­mer Grand Prix du Court, though again—only in French, for now. 

Short Edi­tion hopes to start con­sid­er­ing oth­er lan­guages for vend­ing machine con­tent inclu­sion soon, begin­ning with Eng­lish. For now, all sto­ries being dis­pensed have been trans­lat­ed from the orig­i­nal French by British lit­er­ary pro­fes­sion­als.

Bon courage!

via Lit­er­ary Hub

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 19 Short Sto­ries From Nobel Prize-Win­ning Writer Alice Munro Free Online

Napoleon’s Kin­dle: See the Minia­tur­ized Trav­el­ing Library He Took on Mil­i­tary Cam­paigns

Dis­cov­er the Jacobean Trav­el­ing Library: The 17th Cen­tu­ry Pre­cur­sor to the Kin­dle

Behold the “Book Wheel”: The Renais­sance Inven­tion Cre­at­ed to Make Books Portable & Help Schol­ars Study (1588)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, April 23 for the third install­ment of her lit­er­ary-themed vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Colorful Wood Block Prints from the Chinese Revolution of 1911: A Gallery of Artistic Propaganda Posters

in Art, History | April 6th, 2018

When you think Chi­nese Rev­o­lu­tion, sure­ly you think of Mao Zedong and the People’s Repub­lic com­ing to pow­er in 1949, a his­to­ry that over­shad­ows an ear­li­er seis­mic event that over­threw the last impe­r­i­al dynasty and brought the short-lived Repub­lic of Chi­na into being. If your sense of this his­to­ry is some­what vague, you’re not alone—even those who know the events and the prin­ci­ple actors well are hes­i­tant to ascribe any defin­i­tive inter­pre­ta­tions to the 1911, or Xin­hai, Rev­o­lu­tion. “Sig­nif­i­cant thinkers and activists have… remained hes­i­tant in their final judg­ment on it,” writes Oxford University’s Rana Mit­ter: “Its mean­ing con­tin­ues to be high­ly con­test­ed… sep­a­rat­ed from any one path of his­tor­i­cal inter­pre­ta­tion.”

There is a gen­er­al con­sen­sus, at least, among his­to­ri­ans of the peri­od and con­tem­po­rary chron­i­clers alike that the Xin­hai Rev­o­lu­tion was fore­most a strug­gle to mod­ern­ize the coun­try and get free of colo­nial­ist encroach­ments on Chi­nese self-deter­mi­na­tion. As in Rus­sia around the same time, the con­cept of polit­i­cal mod­ern­iza­tion had many dif­fer­ent mean­ings to the com­pet­ing fac­tions seek­ing to sup­plant the mori­bund impe­r­i­al sys­tem.

“Some hoped for a con­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work, i.e., par­lia­men­tary monar­chy,” notes Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas pro­fes­sor Anna M. Cien­ciala, “while oth­ers worked for a demo­c­ra­t­ic repub­lic. Most want­ed the abo­li­tion of the feu­dal-Con­fu­cian sys­tem; all want­ed the abo­li­tion of for­eign priv­i­lege and the uni­fi­ca­tion of their vast coun­try.”

This last hope would be dashed. The strongest fac­tion suc­ceed­ed in gain­ing sup­port from wealthy Chi­nese liv­ing abroad, who fund­ed the efforts of rev­o­lu­tion­ary leader Sun Yat-sen, a med­ical doc­tor raised in Hawaii who began in the late 19th cen­tu­ry “to devote him­self to polit­i­cal work for the over­throw of the Qing Dynasty” in order to “cre­ate a strong, uni­fied, mod­ern, Chi­nese repub­lic” with a social­ist econ­o­my. Despite sup­port from the mil­i­tary, the Repub­lic estab­lished in 1912 “proved a mis­er­able fail­ure,” Cien­ciala argues, and the coun­try frag­ment­ed under the rule of var­i­ous war­lords, then suf­fered through sev­er­al more upheavals and an attempt­ed Qing restora­tion in the ensu­ing decades while the Com­mu­nists con­sol­i­dat­ed pow­er.

Look­ing back at the events at the time, his­to­ri­an Peter Zarrow has attempt­ed to trace “the moment when the Wuchang Upris­ing became the ‘rev­o­lu­tion’… that is when gen­er­al opin­ion began to regard it as a move­ment that could over­throw the Qing and estab­lish a new gov­ern­ment.” Opin­ions were large­ly shaped, he writes, by Shang­hai news­pa­pers cov­er­ing what Bri­tan­ni­ca Blog calls “a hasti­ly and local­ly orga­nized mutiny” that first began in one of the three areas that make up the city of Wuhan. In cre­at­ing the nar­ra­tive of events, news agen­cies “imme­di­ate­ly print­ed illus­trat­ed sheets for a Chi­nese pub­lic avid for the lat­est news.” So writes the Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty Dig­i­tal Library, who house a col­lec­tion of 30 such prints, like­ly “based on upon artists’ imag­i­na­tion.”

News agency reports of the Wuchang Upris­ing and sub­se­quent bat­tles in cities across Chi­na “gen­er­al­ly sup­port the Rev­o­lu­tion as a mod­ern­iz­ing par­ty, and hence some demo­niza­tion of the ene­my occurs in the prints, as was usu­al for pro­pa­gan­da prints of that and ear­li­er peri­ods.” What is notable is the degree to which broad themes of “moder­ni­ty” and “nation” show up, cre­at­ing a tri­umphant sense of uni­ty that seems to have been exag­ger­at­ed.

But this is the way pro­pa­gan­da works, in 1911 and today—“manufacturing con­sent,” to take Noam Chomsky’s phrase. It’s fas­ci­nat­ing to see it work in images that seem so quaint to us today, but which, at the time, pushed for­ward a rev­o­lu­tion­ary break with over two thou­sand years of dynas­tic rule.

See many more of these images at Princeton’s Dig­i­tal Library.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

14,000 Free Images from the French Rev­o­lu­tion Now Avail­able Online

Chi­na: Tra­di­tions and Trans­for­ma­tions (A Free Har­vard Course) 

The World’s Old­est Mul­ti­col­or Book, a 1633 Chi­nese Cal­lig­ra­phy & Paint­ing Man­u­al, Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online

Down­load 2,500 Beau­ti­ful Wood­block Prints and Draw­ings by Japan­ese Mas­ters (1600–1915)

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

Gustave Flaubert Tells His Mother Why Serious Writers Shouldn’t Bother with Day Jobs (1850)

in Letters, Life, Writing | April 6th, 2018

We are what we do — or in oth­er words, we are what we choose to spend our time doing. By this log­ic, a “musi­cian” who spends one quar­ter of his time with his instru­ments and three quar­ters with Excel, though he counts as no less a human being for it, should by rights call him­self a mak­er of spread­sheets rather than a mak­er of music. This view may sound stark, but it has its adher­ents, some of them suc­cess­ful and respect­ed artists. We can rest assured that no less a cre­ator than Gus­tave Flaubert, for instance, would sure­ly have accept­ed it, if we take seri­ous­ly the words of a let­ter he wrote to his moth­er in Feb­ru­ary of 1850.

Though he’d com­plet­ed sev­er­al books at the time, the then 28-year-old Flaubert had yet to make it as a man of let­ters. He did, how­ev­er, do a fair bit of trav­el­ing at that time in his life, com­pos­ing this par­tic­u­lar piece of cor­re­spon­dence dur­ing a sojourn in the Mid­dle East. It seems that even halfway across the world, he could­n’t escape his moth­er’s entreaties to find prop­er employ­ment, if only “un petite place” that would grant him slight­ly more social respectabil­i­ty and finan­cial sta­bil­i­ty. Final­ly fed up, he clar­i­fied his posi­tion on the mat­ter of day jobs once and for all:

Now I come to some­thing that you seem to enjoy revert­ing to and that I utter­ly fail to under­stand. You are nev­er at a loss of things to tor­ment your­self about. What is the sense of this: that I must have a job — “a small job,” you say. First of all, what job? I defy you to find me one, to spec­i­fy in what field, or what it would be like. Frankly, and with­out delud­ing your­self, is there a sin­gle one that I am capa­ble of fill­ing? You add: “One that would­n’t take up much of your time and would­n’t pre­vent you from doing oth­er things.” There’s the delu­sion! That’s what Bouil­het told him­self when he took up med­i­cine, what I told myself when I began law, which near­ly brought about my death from sup­pressed rage. When one does some­thing, one must do it whol­ly and well. Those bas­tard exis­tences where you sell suet all day and write poet­ry at night are made for mediocre minds — like those hors­es equal­ly good for sad­dle and car­riage — the worst kind, that can nei­ther jump a ditch nor pull a plow.

In short, it seems to me that one takes a job for mon­ey, for hon­ors, or as an escape from idle­ness. Now you’ll grant me, dar­ling, (1) that I keep busy enough not to have to go out look­ing for some­thing to do; and (2) if it’s a ques­tion of hon­ors, my van­i­ty is such that I’m inca­pable of feel­ing myself hon­ored by any­thing: a posi­tion, how­ev­er high it might be (and that isn’t the kind you speak of) will nev­er give me the sat­is­fac­tion that I derive from my self-respect when I have accom­plished some­thing well in my own way; and final­ly, if it’s for mon­ey, any jobs or job that I could have would bring in too lit­tle to make much dif­fer­ence to my income. Weigh all these con­sid­er­a­tions: don’t knock your head against a hol­low idea. Is there any posi­tion in which I’d be clos­er to you, more yours? And isn’t not to be bored one of the prin­ci­pal goals of life?

The let­ter may well have con­vinced her: accord­ing to a foot­note includ­ed in The Let­ters of Gus­tave Flaubert: 1830–1857, “there seem to have been no fur­ther sug­ges­tions” that he secure a steady pay­check. Could Flaubert’s moth­er have had an inkling that her son would become, well, Flaubert? At that point he had­n’t even begun writ­ing Madame Bovary, a project that would begin upon his return to France. Its inspi­ra­tion came in part from the ear­ly ver­sion of The Temp­ta­tion of Saint Antho­ny he’d com­plet­ed before embark­ing on his trav­els, which his friends Maxime Du Camp and Louis Bouil­het (the reluc­tant med­ical stu­dent men­tioned in the let­ter) sug­gest­ed he toss in the fire, telling him to write about the stuff of every­day life instead.

Not all of us, of course, can work the same way Flaubert did, with his days spent in revi­sion of each page and his obses­sive life­long hunt for le mot juste: not for noth­ing do we call him “the mar­tyr of style.” But what­ev­er we cre­ate and how­ev­er we cre­ate it, we ignore the words Flaubert wrote to his moth­er at our per­il. The earn­ing of mon­ey has its place, but the idea that any old day job can be eas­i­ly held down with­out dam­age to our real life’s work shades all too eas­i­ly into self-delu­sion. We must remem­ber that “when one does some­thing, one must do it whol­ly and well,” a sen­ti­ment made infi­nite­ly more pow­er­ful by the fact that Flaubert did­n’t just artic­u­late it, he lived it — and now occu­pies one of the high­est places in the pan­theon of the nov­el as a result.

h/t Tom H.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 4,500 Unpub­lished Pages of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary

How Sein­feld, the Sit­com Famous­ly “About Noth­ing,” Is Like Gus­tave Flaubert’s Nov­els About Noth­ing

Charles Bukows­ki Rails Against 9‑to‑5 Jobs in a Bru­tal­ly Hon­est Let­ter (1986)

William Faulkn­er Resigns From His Post Office Job With a Spec­tac­u­lar Let­ter (1924)

Bri­an Eno’s Advice for Those Who Want to Do Their Best Cre­ative Work: Don’t Get a Job

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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.

How to Use the Rotary Dial Phone: A Primer from 1927

in Technology | April 5th, 2018

Most every piece of tech­nol­o­gy, no mat­ter how sim­ple, comes with a user man­u­al of some sort. Even the seem­ing­ly straight­for­ward rotary dial phone.

Although Alexan­der Gra­ham Bell patent­ed the first tele­phone in 1876, the first rotary dial phones did­n’t make their way into Amer­i­can homes until 1919. Then came the oblig­a­tory tuto­r­i­al. Cre­at­ed by AT&T in 1927 and orig­i­nal­ly shown in the­atres in Fres­no, Cal­i­for­nia, the silent film above breaks down the process of dial­ing a call–from using a phone direc­to­ry and find­ing a num­ber, to pick­ing up the receiv­er and lis­ten­ing for that steady hum­ming sound called the “dial tone,” to turn­ing and releas­ing the rotary dial mul­ti­ple times, and so on. This primer would car­ry Amer­i­cans through 1963 when the first push-but­ton phones start­ed to pop up. That advent of the push-but­ton phone also came with a video, of course.

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 the Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Voice of Alexan­der Gra­ham Bell for the First Time in a Cen­tu­ry

How Vinyl Records Are Made: A Primer from 1956

Herbie Hancock Explains the Big Lesson He Learned From Miles Davis: Every Mistake in Music, as in Life, Is an Opportunity

in Music | April 5th, 2018

One thing they don’t teach you in par­ent­ing school is how to guide a young child into mak­ing few­er mis­takes in her home­work, while also com­mu­ni­cat­ing to her that mis­takes are not “bad” but often “good” in that they can be con­duits for cre­ative think­ing and intu­itive path­ways to progress. This les­son presents even more prob­lems if your child has per­fec­tion­ist ten­den­cies. (If you have sound ped­a­gog­i­cal meth­ods, I’m all ears.)

The prob­lem isn’t just that adults con­stant­ly tele­graph bina­ry “yes/no,” “good/bad” mes­sages to every­one and every­thing around them, but that most adults are deeply uncom­fort­able with ambi­gu­i­ty, and thus deeply afraid of mis­takes, as a result of imbib­ing so many bina­ry mes­sages them­selves. Impro­vi­sa­tion fright­ens trained and untrained musi­cians alike, for exam­ple, for this very rea­son. Who wants to screw up pub­licly and look like… well, a screw up?

We think that doing some­thing well, and even “per­fect­ly,” will win us the pat on the head/gold star/good report card we have been taught to crave all our lives. Sure­ly there are excel­lent rea­sons to strive for excel­lence. But accord­ing to one who should know—the most excel­lent Miles Davis—excellence by nature obvi­ates the idea of mis­takes. How’s that, you ask? Let us attend to one of Davis’ for­mer side­men, Her­bie Han­cock, who tells one of his favorite sto­ries about the man above.

Loose impro­vi­sa­tion is inte­gral to jazz, but we all know Miles Davis as a very exact­ing char­ac­ter. He could be mean, demand­ing, abra­sive, cranky, hyper­crit­i­cal, and we might con­clude, giv­en these per­son­al qual­i­ties, and the con­sis­tent excel­lence of his play­ing, that he was a per­fec­tion­ist who couldn’t tol­er­ate screw ups. Han­cock gives us a very dif­fer­ent impres­sion, telling the tale of a “hot night” in Stuttgart, when the music was “tight, it was pow­er­ful, it was inno­v­a­tive, and fun.”

Mak­ing what any­one would rea­son­ably call a mis­take in the mid­dle of one of Davis’ solos—hitting a notice­ably wrong chord—Hancock react­ed as most of us would, with dis­may. “Miles paused for a sec­ond,” he says, “and then he played some notes that made my chord right… Miles was able to turn some­thing that was wrong into some­thing that was right.” Still, Han­cock was so upset, he couldn’t play for about a minute, par­a­lyzed by his own ideas about “right” and “wrong” notes.

What I real­ize now is that Miles didn’t hear it as a mis­take. He heard it as some­thing that hap­pened. As an event. And so that was part of the real­i­ty of what was hap­pen­ing at that moment. And he dealt with it…. Since he didn’t hear it as a mis­take, he thought it was his respon­si­bil­i­ty to find some­thing that fit.

Han­cock drew a musi­cal les­son from the moment, yes, and he also drew a larg­er life les­son about growth, which requires, he says, “a mind that’s open enough… to be able to expe­ri­ence sit­u­a­tions as they are and turn them into med­i­cine… take what­ev­er sit­u­a­tion you have and make some­thing con­struc­tive hap­pen with it.”

This bit of wis­dom reminds me not only of my favorite Radio­head lyric (“Be con­struc­tive with your blues”), but also of a sto­ry about a Japan­ese monk who vis­it­ed a monastery in the U.S. and promised to give a demon­stra­tion in the fine art of Zen archery. After much solemn prepa­ra­tion and breath­less antic­i­pa­tion, the monk led his hosts on a hike up the moun­tain, where he then blind­ly fired an arrow off a cliff and walked away, leav­ing the stunned spec­ta­tors to con­clude the tar­get must be wher­ev­er the arrow hap­pened to land.

What mat­ters, Davis is quot­ed as say­ing, is how we respond to what’s hap­pen­ing around us: “When you hit a wrong note, it’s the next note that you play that deter­mines if it’s good or bad.” Or, as he put it more sim­ply and non-dual­is­ti­cal­ly, “Do not fear mis­takes. There are none.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear a 65-Hour, Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Miles Davis’ Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Jazz Albums

Miles Davis Dish­es Dirt on His Fel­low Jazz Musi­cians: “The Trom­bone Play­er Should be Shot”; That Ornette is “F‑ing Up the Trum­pet”

Her­bie Han­cock Presents the Pres­ti­gious Nor­ton Lec­tures at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty: Watch Online

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

Hear Albert Einstein Read “The Common Language of Science” (1941)

in Physics, Science | April 4th, 2018

Albert Ein­stein, 1921, by Fer­di­nand Schmutzer via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Here’s an extra­or­di­nary record­ing of Albert Ein­stein from the fall of 1941, read­ing a full-length essay in Eng­lish:

The essay is called “The Com­mon Lan­guage of Sci­ence.” It was record­ed in Sep­tem­ber of 1941 as a radio address to the British Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Sci­ence. The record­ing was appar­ent­ly made in Amer­i­ca, as Ein­stein nev­er returned to Europe after emi­grat­ing from Ger­many in 1933.

Ein­stein begins by sketch­ing a brief out­line of the devel­op­ment of lan­guage, before explor­ing the con­nec­tion between lan­guage and think­ing. “Is there no think­ing with­out the use of lan­guage,” asks Ein­stein, “name­ly in con­cepts and con­cept-com­bi­na­tions for which words need not nec­es­sar­i­ly come to mind? Has not every one of us strug­gled for words although the con­nec­tion between ‘things’ was already clear?”

Despite this evi­dent sep­a­ra­tion between lan­guage and think­ing, Ein­stein quick­ly points out that it would be a gross mis­take to con­clude that the two are entire­ly inde­pen­dent. In fact, he says, “the men­tal devel­op­ment of the indi­vid­ual and his way of form­ing con­cepts depend to a high degree upon lan­guage.” Thus a shared lan­guage implies a shared men­tal­i­ty. For this rea­son Ein­stein sees the lan­guage of sci­ence, with its math­e­mat­i­cal signs, as hav­ing a tru­ly glob­al role in influ­enc­ing the way peo­ple think:

The super­na­tion­al char­ac­ter of sci­en­tif­ic con­cepts and sci­en­tif­ic lan­guage is due to the fact that they have been set up by the best brains of all coun­tries and all times. In soli­tude, and yet in coop­er­a­tive effort as regards the final effect, they cre­at­ed the spir­i­tu­al tools for the tech­ni­cal rev­o­lu­tions which have trans­formed the life of mankind in the last cen­turies. Their sys­tem of con­cepts has served as a guide in the bewil­der­ing chaos of per­cep­tions so that we learned to grasp gen­er­al truths from par­tic­u­lar obser­va­tions.

Ein­stein con­cludes with a cau­tion­ary reminder that the sci­en­tif­ic method is only a means toward an end, and that the wel­fare of human­i­ty depends ulti­mate­ly on shared goals.

Per­fec­tion of means and con­fu­sion of goals seem–in my opinion–to char­ac­ter­ize our age. If we desire sin­cere­ly and pas­sion­ate­ly for the safe­ty, the wel­fare, and the free devel­op­ment of the tal­ents of all men, we shall not be in want of the means to approach such a state. Even if only a small part of mankind strives for such goals, their supe­ri­or­i­ty will prove itself in the long run.

The imme­di­ate con­text of Ein­stein’s mes­sage was, of course, World War II. The air force of Ein­stein’s native coun­try had only recent­ly called off its bomb­ing cam­paign against Eng­land. A year before, Lon­don weath­ered 57 straight nights of bomb­ing by the Luft­waffe. Ein­stein had always felt a deep sense of grat­i­tude to the British sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty for its efforts dur­ing World War I to test the Gen­er­al The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty, despite the fact that its author was from an ene­my nation.

“The Com­mon Lan­guage of Sci­ence” was first pub­lished a year after the radio address, in Advance­ment of Sci­ence 2, no. 5. It is cur­rent­ly avail­able in the Ein­stein antholo­gies Out of My Lat­er Years and Ideas and Opin­ions.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in March 2013.

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:

Albert Ein­stein on Indi­vid­ual Lib­er­ty, With­out Which There Would Be ‘No Shake­speare, No Goethe, No New­ton’

Albert Ein­stein Tells His Son The Key to Learn­ing & Hap­pi­ness is Los­ing Your­self in Cre­ativ­i­ty (or “Find­ing Flow”)

Albert Ein­stein Called Racism “A Dis­ease of White Peo­ple” in His Lit­tle-Known Fight for Civ­il Rights

Find Cours­es on Ein­stein in the Physics Sec­tion of our Free Online Cours­es Col­lec­tion

Aldous Huxley Tells Mike Wallace What Will Destroy Democracy: Overpopulation, Drugs & Insidious Technology (1958)

in Politics, Technology, Television | April 4th, 2018

Over­pop­u­la­tion, manip­u­la­tive pol­i­tics, imbal­ances of soci­etal pow­er, addic­tive drugs, even more addic­tive tech­nolo­gies: these and oth­er devel­op­ments have pushed not just democ­ra­cy but civ­i­liza­tion itself to the brink. Or at least author Aldous Hux­ley saw it that way, and he told Amer­i­ca so when he appeared on The Mike Wal­lace Inter­view in 1958. (You can also read a tran­script here.) “There are a num­ber of imper­son­al forces which are push­ing in the direc­tion of less and less free­dom,” he told the new­ly famous news anchor, “and I also think that there are a num­ber of tech­no­log­i­cal devices which any­body who wish­es to use can use to accel­er­ate this process of going away from free­dom, of impos­ing con­trol.”

Hux­ley’s best-known nov­el Brave New World has remained rel­e­vant since its first pub­li­ca­tion in 1932. He appeared on Wal­lace’s show to pro­mote Brave New World Revis­it­ed (first pub­lished as Ene­mies of Free­dom), a col­lec­tion of essays on how much more rapid­ly than expect­ed the real world had come to resem­ble the dystopia he’d imag­ined a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry ear­li­er.

Some of the rea­sons behind his grim pre­dic­tions now seem over­stat­ed — he points out that “in the under­de­vel­oped coun­tries actu­al­ly the stan­dard of liv­ing is at present falling,” though the reverse has now been true for quite some time — but oth­ers, from the van­tage of the 21st cen­tu­ry, sound almost too mild.

“We must­n’t be caught by sur­prise by our own advanc­ing tech­nol­o­gy,” Hux­ley says in that time before smart­phones, before the inter­net, before per­son­al com­put­ers, before even cable tele­vi­sion. We also must­n’t be caught by sur­prise by those who seek indef­i­nite pow­er over us: to do that requires “con­sent of the ruled,” some­thing acquirable by addic­tive sub­stances — both phar­ma­co­log­i­cal and tech­no­log­i­cal — as well as “new tech­niques of pro­pa­gan­da.” All of this has the effect of “bypass­ing the sort of ratio­nal side of man and appeal­ing to his sub­con­scious and his deep­er emo­tions, and his phys­i­ol­o­gy even, and so, mak­ing him actu­al­ly love his slav­ery.”

Wal­lace’s ques­tions bring Hux­ley to a ques­tion of his own: “What does a democ­ra­cy depend on? A democ­ra­cy depends on the indi­vid­ual vot­er mak­ing an intel­li­gent and ratio­nal choice for what he regards as his enlight­ened self-inter­est, in any giv­en cir­cum­stance.” But democ­ra­cy-debil­i­tat­ing com­mer­cial and polit­i­cal pro­pa­gan­da appeals “direct­ly to these uncon­scious forces below the sur­faces so that you are, in a way, mak­ing non­sense of the whole demo­c­ra­t­ic pro­ce­dure, which is based on con­scious choice on ratio­nal ground.” Hence the impor­tance of teach­ing peo­ple “to be on their guard against the sort of ver­bal boo­by traps into which they are always being led.” The skill has arguably only grown in impor­tance since, as has his final thought in the broad­cast: “I still believe in democ­ra­cy, if we can make the best of the cre­ative activ­i­ties of the peo­ple on top plus those of the peo­ple on the bot­tom, so much the bet­ter.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aldous Hux­ley Reads Dra­ma­tized Ver­sion of Brave New World

Hux­ley to Orwell: My Hell­ish Vision of the Future is Bet­ter Than Yours (1949)

An Ani­mat­ed Aldous Hux­ley Iden­ti­fies the Dystopi­an Threats to Our Free­dom (1958)

Aldous Hux­ley Pre­dicts in 1950 What the World Will Look Like in the Year 2000

Aldous Hux­ley, Psy­che­delics Enthu­si­ast, Lec­tures About “the Vision­ary Expe­ri­ence” at MIT (1962)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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.

Stream a 144-Hour Discography of Classic Jazz Recordings from Blue Note Records: Miles Davis, Art Blakey, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman & More

in Jazz, Music | April 4th, 2018

There have been many influ­en­tial jazz record labels through­out the pre­vi­ous cen­tu­ry and into the cur­rent one, but there is no more rec­og­niz­able label than Blue Note Records. Blue Note is “unques­tion­ably the most icon­ic jazz label there has ever been,” claims the site Udis­cov­er Music in a post on the “50 Great­est” Blue Note albums. Indeed, “it may well be the most icon­ic record label of all time… a brand rec­og­nized the world over for the ‘finest in jazz.’”

Out­side of the label iden­ti­ties in cer­tain sub­cul­tures like punk and elec­tron­ic music, no oth­er name so instant­ly con­jures up a ful­ly-formed, dis­tinc­tive look and sound. It is the mono­chrome look of dap­per, too-cool musi­cal giants in tai­lored suits and skin­ny ties, and the sound, pri­mar­i­ly, of the Hard Bop era—of Art Blakey, Wayne Short­er, Son­ny Rollins, Dex­ter Gor­don, Bud Pow­ell, McCoy Tyn­er, and, of course, Miles Davis, Thelo­nious Monk, and John Coltrane, artists who total­ly enlarged the bound­aries of jazz. (See the trail­er above for the Sophie Huber doc­u­men­tary Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes.)

By design, Blue Note’s unfor­get­table 50s and 60s album cov­ers—most cre­at­ed by artist Reid Miles and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Fran­cis Wolff—sug­gest brim­fuls of pos­si­bil­i­ty. “Right from the begin­ning,” says pro­duc­er and writer Michael Cus­cu­na in the video above, “they real­ly took their cov­ers seri­ous­ly.”

But this would have meant lit­tle if they hadn’t tak­en the music just as seri­ous­ly as the styl­ish art­work that adorns it. Found­ed in 1939 by Alfred Lion and Max Mar­gulis, the label first served as a home for more tra­di­tion­al big band and swing, but in the late for­ties, Blue Note seemed to real­ize bet­ter than any oth­er com­mer­cial enti­ty that the future of jazz had arrived, thanks in part to sax­o­phon­ist and tal­ent scout Ike Que­bec.

“Not real­ly in the pan­theon of Blue Note play­ers of the 1960s,” writes Burn­ing Ambu­lance (he died in ear­ly ’63), Que­bec is still cen­tral to the label’s suc­cess. As an A&R man, he signed Monk and Bud Pow­ell, and “it’s been said that he did a lot of uncred­it­ed arrang­ing on oth­er musi­cians’ ses­sions, too.” His lat­er record­ings fit right in with his more famous peers (check out his “Blue and Sen­ti­men­tal”). Quebec’s own work doesn’t come up in many Blue Note ret­ro­spec­tives, includ­ing the Spo­ti­fy discog­ra­phy above, and that’s too bad. But it’s hard to com­plain when you’ve got so many incred­i­ble, icon­ic Blue Note record­ings in one place.

Cre­at­ed by Junior Bon­ner, the Blue Notes Records Discog­ra­phy playlist is not “com­plete” in that it con­tains every album the label ever released—an impos­si­ble expec­ta­tion, sure­ly, espe­cial­ly since Blue Note is still going strong. But, with a run time of 144 hours, it more than suf­fi­cient­ly cov­ers the ros­ter of the label’s great­est play­ers, includ­ing sev­er­al many of us prob­a­bly haven’t heard before in much depth. Hard­core audio­phile record col­lec­tors should vis­it Lon­don­Jaz­zCol­lec­tor and Jazzdisco.org to get the full Blue Note cat­a­log of every Blue Note artist and release. But lovers of jazz who don’t mind dig­i­tal stream­ing instead of pre­cious vinyl and shel­lac will be thrilled with this impres­sive anthol­o­gy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear a 65-Hour, Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Miles Davis’ Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Jazz Albums

Hear 2,000 Record­ings of the Most Essen­tial Jazz Songs: A Huge Playlist for Your Jazz Edu­ca­tion

Women of Jazz: Stream a Playlist of 91 Record­ings by Great Female Jazz Musi­cians

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

The Illustrated Medicinal Plant Map of the United States of America (1932): Download It in High Resolution

in Chemistry, Health, Maps, Nature | April 3rd, 2018

Two years ago, we high­light­ed col­lec­tor David Rumsey’s huge map archive, which he donat­ed to Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty in April of 2016 and which now resides at Stanford’s David Rum­sey Map Cen­ter. The open­ing of this phys­i­cal col­lec­tion was a pret­ty big deal, but the dig­i­tal col­lec­tion has been on the web, in some part, and avail­able to the online pub­lic since 1996. Twen­ty years ago, how­ev­er, though the inter­net was decid­ed­ly becom­ing an every­day fea­ture of mod­ern life, it was dif­fi­cult for the aver­age per­son to imag­ine the degree to which dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy would com­plete­ly over­take our lives, not to men­tion the almost unbe­liev­able wealth and pow­er tech com­pa­nies would amass in such short time.

Sim­i­lar­ly, when the above 1932 Med­i­c­i­nal Plant Map of the Unit­ed States (see in a larg­er for­mat here) first appeared—one of the tens of thou­sands of maps avail­able in the dig­i­tal Rum­sey col­lec­tion—few peo­ple oth­er than Aldous Hux­ley could have fore­seen the expo­nen­tial advances, and the rise of wealth and pow­er, to come in the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try.

But the phar­ma­cists had a clue. The map, pro­duced by the Nation­al Whole­sale Drug­gists’ Asso­ci­a­tion, “was intend­ed to boost the image of the pro­fes­sion,” writes Rebec­ca Onion at Slate, “at a time when com­pa­nies were increas­ing­ly com­pound­ing new phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals in labs,” there­by ren­der­ing much of the drug-mak­ing knowl­edge and skill of old-time drug­gists obso­lete.

Although the com­mer­cial phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try began tak­ing shape in the late 19th cen­tu­ry, it didn’t ful­ly come into its own until the so-called “gold­en era” of 1930–1960, when, says Onion, researchers devel­oped “a flood of new antibi­otics, psy­chotrop­ics, anti­his­t­a­mines, and vac­cines, increas­ing­ly rely­ing on syn­thet­ic chem­istry to do so.” Over-the-counter med­ica­tions pro­lif­er­at­ed, and phar­ma­cists became alarmed. They sought to per­suade the pub­lic of their con­tin­ued rel­e­vance by point­ing out, as a short blurb at the bot­tom left cor­ner of the map notes, that “few peo­ple real­ize the extent to which plants and min­er­als enter into the prac­tice of phar­ma­cy.”

The map appeared dur­ing “Phar­ma­cy Week” in Octo­ber, when “phar­ma­cists in Anglo-Sax­on coun­tries” pro­mote their ser­vices. Los­ing sight of those impor­tant ser­vices, the Drug­gists’ Asso­ci­a­tion writes, will lead to suf­fer­ing, should the tra­di­tion­al phar­ma­cist’s func­tion “be impaired or destroyed by com­mer­cial trends.” Thus we have this visu­al demon­stra­tion of com­pe­tence. The map iden­ti­fies impor­tant species—native or cultivated—in each region of the coun­try. In Ken­tucky, we see Nicoti­na tabacum, whose cured leaves, you guessed it, “con­sti­tute tobac­co.” Across the coun­try in Neva­da, we are intro­duced to Apoc­ynum cannabinum, “native of U.S. and South­ern Canada—the dried rhi­zome and roots con­sti­tute the drug apoc­ynum or Cana­di­an hemp.”

The bet­ter-known Can­nibus sati­va also appears, in one of the box­es around the map’s bor­der that intro­duce plants from out­side North Amer­i­ca, includ­ing Ery­throx­y­lon coca, from Bolivia and Peru, and Papaver som­nifer­um, from which opi­um derives. Many of the oth­er med­ica­tions will be less famil­iar to us—and belong to what we now call natur­opa­thy, herbal­ism, or, more gen­er­al­ly, “tra­di­tion­al med­i­cine.” Though these med­i­c­i­nal prac­tices are many thou­sands of years old, the drug­gists try to project a cut­ting-edge image, assur­ing the map’s read­ers that “intense sci­en­tif­ic study, expert knowl­edge, extreme care and accu­ra­cy are applied by the phar­ma­cist to med­i­c­i­nal plants.”

While phar­ma­cists today are high­ly-trained pro­fes­sion­als, the part of their jobs that involved the mak­ing of drugs from scratch has been ced­ed to mas­sive cor­po­ra­tions and their research lab­o­ra­to­ries. The drug­gists of 1932 saw this com­ing, and no amount of col­or­ful pub­lic rela­tions could stem the tide. But it may be the case, giv­en chang­ing laws, chang­ing atti­tudes, the back­lash against over­med­ica­tion, and the dev­as­tat­ing opi­oid epi­dem­ic, that their craft is more rel­e­vant than it has been in decades, though today’s “drug­gists” work in mar­i­jua­na dis­pen­saries and health food stores instead of nation­al phar­ma­cy chains.

View and down­load the map in a high res­o­lu­tion scan at the David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion, where you can zoom in to every plant on the map and read its descrip­tion.

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 67,000 His­toric Maps (in High Res­o­lu­tion) from the Won­der­ful David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

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

1,000-Year-Old Illus­trat­ed Guide to the Med­i­c­i­nal Use of Plants Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online

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