A Periodic Table Visualizing the Year & Country in Which Each Element Was Discovered

in Chemistry | March 28th, 2018

On the “Data is Beau­ti­ful” sub­red­dit, a user named Udzu post­ed a visu­al­i­sa­tion of the Peri­od­ic Table of Ele­ments that high­lights the year and coun­try in which each ele­ment was dis­cov­ered. You can view it in a larg­er for­mat here. Elab­o­rat­ing on how the graph­ic was made, he adds (his words, not mine, fol­low):

• The year and coun­try of dis­cov­ery are tak­en from Wikipedia and are based on when the ele­ment was first observed or pre­dict­ed rather than when it was first iso­lat­ed.
• The pri­or­i­ty for the dis­cov­er­ies is often con­tentious. The visu­al­i­sa­tion uses the list­ings cur­rent­ly in the Wikipedia arti­cle, with no claim as to their accu­ra­cy.
• The coun­try is typ­i­cal­ly both the cit­i­zen­ship of the dis­cov­er­er and the loca­tion of dis­cov­ery. Excep­tions include Hafni­um (dis­cov­ered by a Dutch and Hun­gar­i­an duo in Copen­hagen) and Radon (dis­cov­ered by a British and Amer­i­can duo in Mon­tre­al); these are list­ed under loca­tion.
• Coun­tries and flags are of the mod­ern equiv­a­lents when appro­pri­ate: e.g. Rus­sia rather than the USSR, UK rather than England/Scotland, and Mex­i­co rather than New Spain.
• The ety­molo­gies are also tak­en from Wikipedia.
• The leg­ends con­tain sum­ma­ry counts of the data. Good work, Swe­den.

Ranked in order, the UK could lay claim to 19 ele­ments, Swe­den and Ger­many to 18 each, France to 16, and Rus­sia and the Unit­ed States to 11 each.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Peri­od­ic Table of Endan­gered Ele­ments: Visu­al­iz­ing the Chem­i­cal Ele­ments That Could Van­ish Before You Know It

nter­ac­tive Peri­od­ic Table of Ele­ments Shows How the Ele­ments Actu­al­ly Get Used in Mak­ing Every­day Things

The Peri­od­ic Table of Ele­ments Scaled to Show The Ele­ments’ Actu­al Abun­dance on Earth

Peri­od­ic Table Bat­tle­ship!: A Fun Way To Learn the Ele­ments

“The Peri­od­ic Table Table” — All The Ele­ments in Hand-Carved Wood

World’s Small­est Peri­od­ic Table on a Human Hair

“The Peri­od­ic Table of Sto­ry­telling” Reveals the Ele­ments of Telling a Good Sto­ry

Chem­istry on YouTube: “Peri­od­ic Table of Videos” Wins SPORE Prize

Read and Hear Tristan Tzara’s “Dada Manifesto,” the Avant-Garde Document Published 100 Years Ago (March 23, 1918)

in Art, History | March 28th, 2018

Dada demands expla­na­tion, yet it some­how also demands not to be explained. In the near­ly 102 years since its incep­tion, many attempts at sum­ma­ry and analy­sis of that ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry Euro­pean avant-garde move­ment have emerged; as you can see in the relat­ed links at the bot­tom of the post, we’ve fea­tured a fair few of them here on Open Cul­ture. But to tru­ly under­stand Dada, you must, to the extent pos­si­ble, get inside the heads of its founders, and one short­cut to that artis­ti­cal­ly rich des­ti­na­tion takes the form of some­thing any move­ment worth its salt — espe­cial­ly any ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry Euro­pean avant-garde move­ment — will have drawn up: its man­i­festo.

“The mag­ic of a word – Dada – which has brought jour­nal­ists to the gates of a world unfore­seen, is of no impor­tance to us,” wrote Roman­ian-French essay­ist, poet, and per­for­mance artist Tris­tan Tzara almost exact­ly a cen­tu­ry ago.

To put out a man­i­festo you must want: ABC

to ful­mi­nate against 1, 2, 3

to fly into a rage and sharp­en your wings to con­quer and dis­sem­i­nate lit­tle abcs and big ABCs, to sign, shout, swear, to orga­nize prose into a form of absolute and irrefutable evi­dence, to prove your non plus ultra and main­tain that nov­el­ty resem­bles life just as the lat­est-appear­ance of some whore proves the essence of God. His exis­tence was pre­vi­ous­ly proved by the accor­dion, the land­scape, the wheedling word. To impose your ABC is a nat­ur­al thing — hence deplorable.

In this Dada Man­i­festo of March 23, 1918 (read it online here), Tzara goes on to define “Dada” as “a word that throws up ideas so that they can be shot down; every bour­geois is a lit­tle play­wright, who invents dif­fer­ent sub­jects and who, instead of sit­u­at­ing suit­able char­ac­ters on the lev­el of his own intel­li­gence, like chrysalis­es on chairs, tries to find caus­es or objects (accord­ing to whichev­er psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic method he prac­tices) to give weight to his plot, a talk­ing and self-defin­ing sto­ry.” And fur­ther down, just in case you haven’t quite got the pic­ture: “DADA DOES NOT MEAN ANYTHING.”

Dif­fer­ent trans­la­tions of Tzara’s words, of which you can hear read­ings in the videos at the top of the post and just above, put it some­what dif­fer­ent­ly: “Dada means noth­ing,” says anoth­er. But what­ev­er it means, exact­ly — or does­n’t mean, exact­ly — Dada burned bright­ly enough dur­ing its brief hey­day to pro­duce not just one man­i­festo, but two. “As in every human endeav­or when two strong per­son­al­i­ties meet, opin­ions may clash and an argu­ment often ensues,” writes Eli Ana­pur at Wide­walls. The Ger­man writer Hugo Ball actu­al­ly wrote his own Dada man­i­festo before Tzara did, in 1916. “Both Man­i­festos are expla­na­tions of the Dada move­ment and its goals, but the con­tent dif­fers as long as the modes of spread­ing the move­ment through­out Europe and ulti­mate­ly world, were con­cerned.”

Ball begins by describ­ing Dada as “a new ten­den­cy in art. One can tell this from the fact that until now nobody knew any­thing about it, and tomor­row every­one in Zurich will be talk­ing about it.” For the word itself he cites sev­er­al dic­tio­nary def­i­n­i­tions: “In French it means ‘hob­by horse.’ In Ger­man it means ‘good-by,’ ‘Get off my back,’ ‘Be see­ing you some­time.’ In Roman­ian: ‘Yes, indeed, you are right, that’s it. But of course, yes, def­i­nite­ly, right.’ ” Yet what a use­ful word it can be:

How does one achieve eter­nal bliss? By say­ing dada. How does one become famous? By say­ing dada. With a noble ges­ture and del­i­cate pro­pri­ety. Till one goes crazy. Till one los­es con­scious­ness. How can one get rid of every­thing that smacks of jour­nal­ism, worms, every­thing nice and right, blink­ered, moral­is­tic, euro­peanized, ener­vat­ed? By say­ing dada. Dada is the world soul, dada is the pawn­shop. Dada is the world’s best lily-milk soap. Dada Mr. Rubin­er, dada Mr. Kor­ro­di. Dada Mr. Anas­ta­sius Lilien­stein.

One hun­dred years on, the tenets of Dada may not look like an obvi­ous route to eter­nal bliss, fame, or the exci­sion of both­er­some ele­ments of life. But some­thing about the notion at the move­men­t’s core — of mov­ing rad­i­cal­ly beyond sense as a response to the state of the world — still res­onates today. The Europe of 1918 found itself in a bad spot, to put it mild­ly, but most of us in the ear­ly 21st cen­tu­ry also feel, at least occa­sion­al­ly, sur­round­ed by a real­i­ty that has lost its own sense. How much could it hurt to heed Ball and Tzara’s words and just say dada?

You can read Tzara’s man­i­festo at this Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load All 8 Issues of Dada, the Arts Jour­nal That Pub­li­cized the Avant-Garde Move­ment a Cen­tu­ry Ago (1917–21)

The ABCs of Dada Explains the Anar­chic, Irra­tional “Anti-Art” Move­ment of Dadaism

Down­load 36 Dadaist Mag­a­zines from the The Dig­i­tal Dada Archive (Plus Oth­er Avant-Garde Books, Leaflets & Ephemera)

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.

The Museum of Failure: A Living Shrine to New Coke, the Ford Edsel, Google Glass & Other Epic Corporate Fails

in Business, Design | March 27th, 2018

All suc­cess­ful prod­ucts are alike; every unsuc­cess­ful prod­uct is unsuc­cess­ful in its own way. Or so a mod­ern-day Tol­stoy might find him­self inspired to write after a vis­it to the Muse­um of Fail­ure, a mov­able feast of flops which began last year in Hels­ing­borg, Swe­den and has now opened its doors on Hol­ly­wood Boule­vard in Los Ange­les. The Don­ald Trump board game, Apple’s New­ton, Noki­a’s N‑Gage, Ford’s Edsel, Col­gate Beef Lasagne, Harley-David­son Cologne, New Coke, Google Glass: these and oth­er shin­ing exam­ples of fail­ure appear in the videos about the muse­um at the top of the post and just below.

Con­sid­ered today, many of these prod­ucts, whether well-known or thor­ough­ly obscure, look hilar­i­ous­ly ill-con­ceived. But the Muse­um of Fail­ure’s founder, a psy­chol­o­gist named Samuel West, does have high praise for some of the prod­ucts he’s col­lect­ed in his insti­tu­tion.

As you’ll find out on a vis­it there, though, they’ve all got at least one fatal flaw — a design prob­lem, bad tim­ing, mis­judg­ment of the mar­ket, falling into the cracks of exist­ing offer­ings — that drove con­sumers away. You can’t say that any of them did­n’t take a risk, but risks, by their very nature, burn out more often than they pay off.

“Why do I have all these fail­ures?” asks West in his TED Talk. “The point of hav­ing the muse­um is that we can learn from these fail­ures. I want us to start to admit our fail­ures as com­pa­nies, as indi­vid­u­als, so we can learn from it.” Amer­i­ca’s rel­a­tive lack of cul­tur­al stigma­ti­za­tion of fail­ure often gets cit­ed among the rea­sons for the coun­try’s rep­u­ta­tion for inno­va­tion and eco­nom­ic dynamism, but there, as any­where else, an increased will­ing­ness not just to fail but to bet­ter under­stand the nature of indi­vid­ual fail­ures would­n’t go amiss. Noth­ing suc­ceeds like suc­cess, so the say­ing goes, but the fas­ci­na­tion that has built around the Muse­um of Fail­ure so far sug­gests that we have much to gain from its oppo­site as well.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Thomas Edison’s Creepy Talk­ing Dolls: An Inven­tion That Scared Kids & Flopped on the Mar­ket

Blade Run­ner: The Pil­lar of Sci-Fi Cin­e­ma that Siskel, Ebert, and Stu­dio Execs Orig­i­nal­ly Hat­ed

Why Do So Many Peo­ple Adore The Room, the Worst Movie Ever Made? A Video Explain­er

Meet the World’s Worst Orches­tra, the Portsmouth Sin­fo­nia, Fea­tur­ing Bri­an Eno

Paulo Coel­ho on The Fear of Fail­ure

“Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Bet­ter”: How Samuel Beck­ett Cre­at­ed the Unlike­ly Mantra That Inspires Entre­pre­neurs Today

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.

A 17-Hour Chronological Playlist of Pink Floyd Albums: The Evolution of the Band Revealed in 209 Tracks (1967–2014)

in Music | March 27th, 2018

At the inter­sec­tion of pro­gres­sive rock, con­cep­tu­al psy­che­delia, bluesy, anthemic clas­sic rock, and exper­i­men­tal sound you’ll find Pink Floyd, a band every­one thinks they know but who always man­age to sur­prise even ardent fans with the strange twists and turns of their discog­ra­phy. One might even say, as Bill Wyman writes at Vul­ture, that “there are at least four, or arguably five, Pink Floyds.”

“The first was a goofy and absur­dist pop-rock band, led by one Syd Bar­rett,” writes Wyman. This orig­i­nal Floyd released The Piper at the Gates of Dawn then fell apart after its lead singer/writer/guitarist’s men­tal health declined pre­cip­i­tous­ly. The sec­ond Pink Floyd first took shape “before Bar­rett joined, and then reached full pre­ten­tious flower after his depar­ture” and replace­ment by David Gilmour. This was the “psy­che­del­ic, space-rock­‑y, qua­si-impro­vi­sa­tion­al ensem­ble” of A Saucer­ful of Secrets, Ummagum­ma, and Atom Heart Moth­er.

The third Floyd, Wyman argues, “is the one we know and love; the organ­ic unit that cre­at­ed Med­dle, The Dark Side of the Moon, and Wish You Were Here”—arguably the band’s cre­ative zenith. From here, we move to the fourth ver­sion, “which saw a dom­i­neer­ing [Roger] Waters tak­ing con­trol,” pro­duc­ing records that increas­ing­ly became Roger Waters solo albums—Ani­mals, The Wall, and The Final Cut. The band’s sta­di­um shows became bom­bas­tic affairs of Spinal Tap pro­por­tions.

Final­ly, the fifth and final iter­a­tion, crit­i­cal­ly snubbed but com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful, left the dis­af­fect­ed Waters to his solo work and went on with Gilmour at the helm to record A Momen­tary Lapse of Rea­son, The Divi­sion Bell, and twen­ty years lat­er, the final Pink Floyd album, the most­ly instru­men­tal End­less Riv­er, made in 2014 after key­boardist Richard Wright’s death and draw­ing on record­ings from The Divi­sion Bell ses­sions.

It’s easy to find fault with this schemat­ic out­line of Pink Floyd’s career—which leaves out their detours into film sound­tracks with More, Obscured by Clouds, and an abort­ed score for Michelan­ge­lo Antonioni’s film Zabriskie Point. It leaves out a mis­be­got­ten, but notable excur­sion into bal­let (!), and exper­i­ments with found sound record­ings in the late-60s. This quick sur­vey also under­es­ti­mates the impor­tance of Syd Bar­rett.

Pink Floyd’s first front­man may have tak­en his odd­ball sen­si­bil­i­ty with him when he left the band—and brought it to his cap­ti­vat­ing­ly weird solo work—but his pres­ence remained with them for years after­ward and haunts one of their finest achieve­ments, 1975’s Wish You Were Here. There are all sorts of lines that run through the var­i­ous ver­sions of Pink Floyd, con­nect­ing their strange, youth­ful, unpre­dictable ear­ly work to the high­ly-pol­ished, and much less inter­est­ing, mature late record­ings.

And yet, Wyman’s sum­ma­ry is a use­ful cat­e­go­riza­tion nonethe­less, a suc­cinct expla­na­tion for how Pink Floyd “may be the only rock band that can cred­i­bly be com­pared to both the Bea­t­les and Spinal Tap.” His mas­sive under­tak­ing—rank­ing every Pink Floyd song from worst to best—deserves a thor­ough read. Long­time lovers of the band and new­com­ers alike will find the com­men­tary enlight­en­ing and infor­ma­tive (and he does include those film scores and gives Bar­rett his due).

While you read about each of the band’s offi­cial­ly-released, 165 songs, you can lis­ten to them as well in the Spo­ti­fy playlist above, which not only includes every stu­dio release, but every live album as well. 17 hours total of Pink Floyd’s quirky pop, space‑y, prog­gy exper­i­men­tal­ism, mas­ter­ful psych-rock sound­scapes, cli­mac­tic, polit­i­cal­ly-charged con­cept albums, and the denoue­ment of their final three albums. No mat­ter how long you’ve fol­lowed the band over their 40-plus year career, you’re like­ly to find some sur­pris­es here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The “Lost” Pink Floyd Sound­track for Michelan­ge­lo Antonioni’s Only Amer­i­can Film, Zabriskie Point (1970)

When Pink Floyd Tried to Make an Album with House­hold Objects: Hear Two Sur­viv­ing Tracks Made with Wine Glass­es & Rub­ber Bands

Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” Pro­vides a Sound­track for the Final Scene of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

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

Tom Waits Curates a 76-Song Playlist of His Own Music: An Introduction to Tom Waits by Tom Waits

in Music | March 26th, 2018

If you ever find your­self in an argu­ment about the best Tom Waits songs, say, or best Tom Waits albums, or best Tom Waits peri­od, you now have the lux­u­ry of call­ing Mr. Waits him­self to the stand. Or, at least, you can point to the 76-song playlist below, curat­ed by Waits to mark the re-release of his first sev­en albums, all “orig­i­nal­ly released through Elek­tra Asy­lum Records in the 1970s,” notes Folk Radio UK, “many of which have been long out of print.” (If you don’t have Spo­ti­fy, you can also stream the playlist on iTunes if you have Apple Music.)

All sev­en records have been re-mas­tered and made avail­able dig­i­tal­ly, on CD, and vinyl pre-order at the offi­cial Tom Waits online store. Clos­ing Time, Heart of Sat­ur­day Night, Nighthawks at the Din­er, Small Change, For­eign Affairs, Blue Valen­tine, Heart Attack and Vine…. If you don’t know this first phase of Waits’ career, the titles alone should clue you in to the fact that he spent most of the 70s as a Sina­tra-lov­ing lounge singer, com­pos­ing the sad drunk­en sound of 2 A.M. heart­break at a seedy Hol­ly­wood dive.

This side of Waits sur­vives, of course, in bet­ter-known albums like Sword­fishtrom­bones, Rain Dogs, and Real Gone, but it’s often buried deep with­in the crash­ing, smash­ing, bang­ing, clang­ing sound of his lat­er work (or—in the case of his cov­er of Daniel Johnston’s “King Kong”—beat­box­ing, Tom Waits-style). In the 1987 live ver­sion of Rain Dogs’ “Clap Hands” (top), the first song on Waits’ playlist, he mix­es his reg­is­ters, trad­ing his ear­li­er raspy croon for his lat­er com­mand­ing bark, over cool, lounge‑y Latin-tinged jazz.

“Span­ning decades of mate­r­i­al,” writes Reid McCarter at The Onion’s A.V. Club, the playlist has Waits, “like a growl­ing Vir­gil tak­ing your soft lit­tle hand safe­ly into his gnarled grip,” lead­ing you through his cat­a­log as only he could. Have a quar­rel with his choic­es? “Upset that the first half hour is dom­i­nat­ed by piano bal­lads?” Well, take it up with the man him­self. “Sure­ly,” McCarter taunts, “you must know Tom Waits’ music bet­ter than Tom Waits him­self.”

Of course, we’re always free to dis­agree with the artist’s assess­ment of his work. But if you’re a Waits new­bie, I couldn’t rec­om­mend a bet­ter guide. Alter­nate­ly, you can work your way through his entire cat­a­log from start to fin­ish—stream it all, from Clos­ing Time to his last stu­dio album Bad as Me, here.

via A.V. Club

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream All of Tom Waits’ Music in a 24 Hour Playlist: The Com­plete Discog­ra­phy

Tom Waits Makes a List of His Top 20 Favorite Albums of All Time

Tom Waits For No One: Watch the Pio­neer­ing Ani­mat­ed Tom Waits Music Video from 1979

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

Come on Down to David Byrne’s Giant Suit Emporium: We’re Burning Down the House with Savings!

in Music, Random | March 26th, 2018

A fun­ny bit of com­e­dy that accom­pa­nied David Byrne’s recent vis­it to The Late Show with Stephen Col­bert, where he per­formed ‘Every­body’s Com­ing To My House,’ the lead track off of his new album Amer­i­can Utopia. Pick up the album. Catch one of his con­certs this sum­mer. And don’t miss his new uplift­ing web site, Rea­sons to Be Cheer­ful.

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 @dark_shark

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Byrne Launch­es the “Rea­sons to Be Cheer­ful” Web Site: A Com­pendi­um of News Meant to Remind Us That the World Isn’t Actu­al­ly Falling Apart

David Byrne’s Grad­u­a­tion Speech Offers Trou­bling and Encour­ag­ing Advice for Stu­dents in the Arts

David Byrne: From Talk­ing Heads Front­man to Lead­ing Urban Cyclist

Philosophy for Beginners: A Free Introductory Course from Oxford University

in Online Courses, Philosophy | March 26th, 2018

Phi­los­o­phy does­n’t have to be daunt­ing. Thanks to the Con­tin­u­ing Edu­ca­tion pro­gram at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty, you can now ease into philo­soph­i­cal think­ing by lis­ten­ing to five lec­tures col­lec­tive­ly called Phi­los­o­phy for Begin­ners. (The video above is admit­ted­ly grainy, so you could always explore the audio options avail­able on iTunes or this Oxford web­site.) Taught by Mar­i­anne Tal­bot, Lec­ture 1 starts with a “Romp Through the His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy” and moves in a brief hour from Ancient Greece to the present. Sub­se­quent lec­tures (usu­al­ly run­ning about 90 min­utes) cov­er the fol­low­ing top­ics: log­ic, ethics, pol­i­tics, meta­physics, epis­te­mol­o­gy, and lan­guage.

Lec­ture One: A Romp Through the His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy from the Pre-Socrat­ics to the present day

Lec­ture Two: The Philo­soph­i­cal Method: Log­ic and Argu­ment

Lec­ture Three: Ethics and Pol­i­tics

Lec­ture Four: Meta­physics and Epis­te­mol­o­gy

Lec­ture Five: Phi­los­o­phy of Lan­guage and Mind

You can find more cours­es by Tal­bot in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, a sub­set of our meta 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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Oxford’s Free Intro­duc­tion to Phi­los­o­phy: Stream 41 Lec­tures

Oxford’s Free Course A Romp Through Ethics for Com­plete Begin­ners Will Teach You Right from Wrong

Down­load 100 Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es & Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

A His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy in 81 Video Lec­tures: From Ancient Greece to Mod­ern Times

The Entire Archives of Rad­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy Go Online: Read Essays by Michel Fou­cault, Alain Badiou, Judith But­ler & More (1972–2018)

Death: A Free Phi­los­o­phy Course from Yale

135 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks

The History of the U.S. Civil War Visualized Month by Month and State by State, in an Infographic from 1897

in Education, History, K-12, Maps | March 26th, 2018

There’s been a lot of hand­wring­ing over the i‑Generation’s lack of map read­ing skills.

While we’re at it, let’s take a cold, hard look at the Gild­ed Age info­graph­ic, above.…

… and con­clude that peo­ple who live in glass hous­es should stop reach­ing for stones.

Pub­lished in 1897 by the Com­par­a­tive Syn­op­ti­cal Chart Com­pa­ny, this now unfath­omable doc­u­ment–His­to­ry of the Civ­il War in the Unit­ed States: 1860–1865–achieved its goal of squeez­ing the max­i­mum amount of con­tent onto a sin­gle sheet.

This is in direct oppo­si­tion to today’s gen­er­al­ly accept­ed rules for cre­at­ing suc­cess­ful info­graph­ics, one of which is to sim­pli­fy.

Anoth­er holds that text should be used spar­ing­ly, lest it clut­ter up strong visu­als. Con­sumers have a lim­it­ed atten­tion span, and for con­tent to be con­sid­ered share­able, they should be able to take it in at a glance.

Mod­ern eyes may be for­giv­en for mis­tak­ing this chart for the world’s most con­vo­lut­ed sub­way map. But those aren’t stops, friend. They’re minor engage­ments. Blood­i­er and bet­ter-known bat­tles are delin­eat­ed with larg­er circles—yellow cen­ters for a Union vic­to­ry, pale green for Con­fed­er­ate.

The fastest way to begin mak­ing heads or tails of the chart is to note that each col­umn is assigned to a dif­fer­ent state.

The ver­ti­cal axis is divid­ed into months. Notice all the neg­a­tive space around Fort Sumter.

And the con­stant entries in Vir­gini­a’s col­umn.

The pub­lish­er not­ed that the loca­tion of events was “entire­ly gov­erned” by this time scale.

You’ll have to look hard for Lincoln’s assas­si­na­tion.

Con­sumers who pur­chased the His­to­ry of the Civ­il War in the Unit­ed States 1860–1865 pre­sum­ably pored over it by can­dle­light, sup­ple­ment­ing it with maps and books.

It would still make a superb addi­tion to any his­to­ry teacher’s class­room, both as dec­o­ra­tion and the tin­der that could ignite dis­cus­sion as to how we receive infor­ma­tion, and how much infor­ma­tion is in fact received.

Explore a larg­er, zoomable ver­sion of the map here.

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Free Course from Yale on the U.S. Civ­il War

Watch Vet­er­ans of The US Civ­il War Demon­strate the Dread­ed Rebel Yell (1930)

Visu­al­iz­ing Slav­ery: The Map Abra­ham Lin­coln Spent Hours Study­ing Dur­ing the Civ­il War

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Spike Lee Teaching an Online Course on Independent Filmmaking: The Course Is Now Officially Live

in Film, Online Courses | March 23rd, 2018

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.

When Spike Lee makes a movie, peo­ple talk about it. Peo­ple talked in 1986 when he made the black-and-white indie com­e­dy She’s Got­ta Have It; they talked even more when he came out with Do the Right Thing a few years lat­er; they talked, with sharply divid­ed opin­ion, about his most recent pic­ture, the crime-themed musi­cal Chi-Raq; and they’re already talk­ing about his upcom­ing Black Klans­man, and not just because of the title. Lee has man­aged to remain cul­tur­al­ly and artis­ti­cal­ly rel­e­vant through­out a career of more than thir­ty years and count­ing, and his new online course at Mas­ter­class just might let us in on how he’s done it.

“When you’re an inde­pen­dent film­mak­er, and mak­ing films out­side Hol­ly­wood, that’s hard,” says the long Brook­lyn-based Lee in the trail­er for the course above. “You have to pray on bend­ed knee at the church of cin­e­ma.” But even as an aspir­ing auteur with a pock­et-change bud­get — Lee remem­bers well when he “was a cater­er, the pro­duc­er, the direc­tor, the screen­writer, act­ed in it, and I was the first AD” on his first fea­ture — you already pos­sess “tools that can help you tell a sto­ry”: height­en­ing dynam­ic cam­er­a­work to height­en the emo­tions, for instance, or writ­ing char­ac­ters with strong beliefs to inten­si­fy the con­flicts of the sto­ry. He used such tech­niques when he start­ed out, and he still uses them today.

Though Lee seems more than will­ing to talk about his meth­ods, you can’t ful­ly under­stand any film­mak­er unless you under­stand that film­mak­er’s influ­ences. And so we offer you Lee’s list of 95 essen­tial movies every aspir­ing direc­tor should see, expand­ed from his orig­i­nal list of 87, drawn up to hand out to the grad­u­ate-school class­es he’s taught. Fea­tur­ing mul­ti­ple works from direc­tors like Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, Alfred Hitch­cock, Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, John Hus­ton, and Stan­ley Kubrick, the first ver­sion of the list runs as fol­lows:

Tak­en to task for that list’s lack of female film­mak­ers, Lee came up with these addi­tions:

• The Piano — Jane Cam­pi­on (1993)

• Daugh­ters of the Dust — Julie Dash (1991)

• The Hurt Lock­er — Kathryn Bigelow (2008)

• Sug­ar Cane Alley - Euzhan Pal­cy (1983)

• The Seduc­tion of Mimi — Lina Wert­muller (1972)

• Love and Anar­chy - Lina Wert­muller (1973)

• Swept Away - Lina Wert­muller (1974)

• Sev­en Beau­ties — Lina Wert­muller (1975)

Lee’s Mas­ter­class on film­mak­ing joins the site’s oth­er offer­ings on the same sub­ject from auteurs no less dis­tinc­tive than Mar­tin Scors­ese and Wern­er Her­zog. Though all three became major film­mak­ers at dif­fer­ent times and under dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances — and end­ed up with very dif­fer­ent cin­e­mat­ic sen­si­bil­i­ties — they all, as Lee might put it, pray at the same church.

And just as it takes the per­spec­tive of many the­ol­o­gists to get a sense of the inef­fa­ble essence of the divine, so it takes the per­spec­tive of many film­mak­ers to get an inef­fa­ble essence of cin­e­ma. You could take all three cours­es with Mas­ter­class’ $180 all-access pass, or you could pay $90 for just Lee’s. Either way, you’ll learn how he made She’s Got­ta Have It for a then-dirt-cheap $175,000, but these days you could sure­ly go out and shoot your own film after­ward for not much more than the cost of the Mas­ter­class itself. It’s still hard out there for an indie film­mak­er, mind you; just not quite as hard as it was.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Spike Lee Got His First Big Break: From She’s Got­ta Have It to That Icon­ic Air Jor­dan Ad

Spike Lee’s List of 95 Essen­tial Movies – Now with Women Film­mak­ers

Mar­tin Scors­ese to Teach His First Online Course on Film­mak­ing

Wern­er Her­zog Teach­es His First Online Course on Film­mak­ing

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.

The MC5’s Wayne Kramer Demonstrates the Correct & Official Way to Play “Kick Out the Jams” on the Guitar

in Music | March 23rd, 2018

If you’re an aspir­ing gui­tar play­er, you’re in luck. In the age of YouTube, there’s no short­age of tal­ent­ed YouTu­bers who will teach you how to play the gui­tar parts of your favorite songs. How to play George Har­rison’s gui­tar solo on “Let It Be”? This video has every lit­tle detail cov­ered. Mean­while, oth­er videos neat­ly map out the fin­er points of Pink Floy­d’s “Wish You Were Here” or Led Zep­pelin’s “Stair­way to Heav­en.” Pick your favorite song, and chances are some­one has cre­at­ed a primer.

Then occa­sion­al­ly you run into videos like this–a tuto­r­i­al straight from the artist him or her­self. Above, Wayne Kramer, co-founder of Detroit’s ur-punk band, the MC5, sets the record straight and shows you the authen­tic way to play the 1969 anthem, “Kick Out the Jams.” “There are guys out there try­ing to show you how to play ‘Kick Out the Jams,’ and they’re all get­ting it wrong,” says Kramer. “They’re all mess­ing it up. None of them are doing it right, and I’ve had enough.” So here is the “the prop­er, cor­rect and offi­cial way” to play it. Let the les­son begin.

For good mea­sure, he includes the lyrics and chords in the YouTube blurb:

You can find more lessons from Pro­fes­sor Kramer here.

This fall, Kramer will be launch­ing a 50th anniver­sary MC5 tour and also releas­ing a mem­oir enti­tled The Hard Stuff: Dope, Crime, the MC5, and My Life of Impos­si­bil­i­ties. You can pre-order it now.

For a very dif­fer­ent set of gui­tar lessons, see: James Tay­lor Teach­es You to Play “Car­oli­na in My Mind,” “Fire and Rain” & Oth­er Clas­sics on the Gui­tar.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The MC5 Per­forms at the 1968 Chica­go Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion, Right Before All Hell Breaks Loose

Pete Seeger Teach­es You How to Play Gui­tar for Free in The Folksinger’s Gui­tar Guide (1955)