Neural Networks for Machine Learning: A Free Online Course

in Computer Science, Online Courses | April 4th, 2017

The 78-video playlist above comes from a course called Neur­al Net­works for Machine Learn­ing, taught by Geof­frey Hin­ton, a com­put­er sci­ence pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to. The videos were cre­at­ed for a larg­er course taught on Cours­era, which gets re-offered on a fair­ly reg­u­lar­ly basis.

Neur­al Net­works for Machine Learn­ing will teach you about “arti­fi­cial neur­al net­works and how they’re being used for machine learn­ing, as applied to speech and object recog­ni­tion, image seg­men­ta­tion, mod­el­ing lan­guage and human motion, etc.” The cours­es empha­sizes ” both the basic algo­rithms and the prac­ti­cal tricks need­ed to get them to work well.” It’s geared for an inter­me­di­ate lev­el learn­er — com­fort­able with cal­cu­lus and with expe­ri­ence pro­gram­ming Python. [Get a free course on Python here.]

You can find the video playlist on YouTube. It’s also indexed in our col­lec­tion of Free Com­put­er Sci­ence cours­es, part 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!

Richard Feynman’s “Notebook Technique” Will Help You Learn Any Subject–at School, at Work, or in Life

in Education, Productivity, Science | April 3rd, 2017

Richard Feyn­man knew his stuff. Had he not, he prob­a­bly would­n’t have won the Nobel Prize in Physics, let alone his var­i­ous oth­er pres­ti­gious sci­en­tif­ic awards. But his rep­u­ta­tion for learn­ing all his life long with a spe­cial depth and rig­or sur­vives him, and in a sense accounts for his fame — of a degree that ensures his stern yet play­ful face will gaze out from dorm-room posters for gen­er­a­tions to come — even more than does his “real” work. Many stu­dents of physics still, under­stand­ably, want to be like Feyn­man, but every­one else, even those of us with no inter­est in physics what­so­ev­er, could also do well to learn from him: not from what he thought about, but from how he thought about it.

On his Study Hacks Blog, com­put­er sci­ence pro­fes­sor Cal New­port explains what he calls “the Feyn­man note­book tech­nique,” where­by “ded­i­cat­ing a note­book to a new learn­ing task” can pro­vide “con­crete cues” to help mit­i­gate the dif­fi­cul­ty of start­ing out toward the mas­tery of a sub­ject.

Feyn­man did it him­self at least since his grad­u­ate-school days at Prince­ton when, accord­ing to biog­ra­ph­er James Gle­ick, he once pre­pared for his oral exam­i­na­tions by open­ing a fresh note­book titled “NOTEBOOK OF THINGS I DON’T KNOW ABOUT.” In it “he reor­ga­nized his knowl­edge. He worked for weeks at dis­as­sem­bling each branch of physics, oil­ing the parts, and putting them back togeth­er, look­ing all the while for the raw edges and incon­sis­ten­cies. He tried to find the essen­tial ker­nels of each sub­ject.”

“At first, the note­book pages are emp­ty,” writes New­port, “but as they fill with care­ful notes, your knowl­edge also grows. The dri­ve to fill more pages keeps your moti­va­tion stoked.” In oth­er, more gen­er­al terms: “Trans­late your grow­ing knowl­edge of some­thing hard into a con­crete form and you’re more like­ly to keep invest­ing the men­tal ener­gy need­ed to keep learn­ing.” But how sure can you feel of your new­ly acquired knowl­edge if you don’t reg­u­lar­ly test it? Feyn­man had to go face-to-face with the elders of the Prince­ton physics depart­ment, but if you don’t ben­e­fit from that kind of insti­tu­tion­al threat, you might con­sid­er putting into prac­tice anoth­er Feyn­man tech­nique: “teach­ing” what you’ve learned to some­one else.

In addi­tion to being a great sci­en­tist, explains study-skills vlog­ger Thomas Frank, Feyn­man “was also a great teacher and a great explain­er,” owing to his abil­i­ty to “boil down incred­i­bly com­plex con­cepts and put them in sim­ple lan­guage that oth­er peo­ple could under­stand.” Only when Feyn­man could do that did he know he tru­ly under­stood a con­cept him­self — be it a con­cept in physics, safe­crack­ing, or bon­go-play­ing. As Frank explains, “if you’re shaky on a con­cept and you want to quick­ly improve your under­stand­ing,” try your hand at pro­duc­ing a Feyn­manesque sim­ple expla­na­tion, which will “test your under­stand­ing and chal­lenge your assump­tions.” Just make sure to bear in mind one of Feyn­man’s most quotable quotes: “The first prin­ci­ple is that you must not fool your­self — and you are the eas­i­est per­son to fool.” And if you find that you have indeed fooled your­self, head right back to the draw­ing board — or rather, to the note­book.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Richard Feyn­man Cre­ates a Sim­ple Method for Telling Sci­ence From Pseu­do­science (1966)

Richard Feyn­man Presents Quan­tum Elec­tro­dy­nam­ics for the Non­Sci­en­tist

‘The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law’: Richard Feynman’s Leg­endary Course Pre­sent­ed at Cor­nell, 1964

The Draw­ings & Paint­ings of Richard Feyn­man: Art Express­es a Dra­mat­ic “Feel­ing of Awe”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Neural Networks for Machine Learning: A Free Online Course Taught by Geoffrey Hinton

in | April 3rd, 2017

The 78-video playlist above comes from a course called Neur­al Net­works for Machine Learn­ing, taught by Geof­frey Hin­ton, a com­put­er sci­ence pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to. The videos were cre­at­ed for a larg­er course taught on Cours­era, which gets re-offered on a fair­ly reg­u­lar­ly basis.

Neur­al Net­works for Machine Learn­ing will teach you about “arti­fi­cial neur­al net­works and how they’re being used for machine learn­ing, as applied to speech and object recog­ni­tion, image seg­men­ta­tion, mod­el­ing lan­guage and human motion, etc.” The cours­es empha­sizes ” both the basic algo­rithms and the prac­ti­cal tricks need­ed to get them to work well.” It’s geared for an inter­me­di­ate lev­el learn­er — com­fort­able with cal­cu­lus and with expe­ri­ence pro­gram­ming (Python).

You can find the video playlist on YouTube. It’s also indexed in our col­lec­tion of Free Com­put­er Sci­ence cours­es, part of our meta col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Søren Kierkegaard: A Free Online Course on the “Father of Existentialism”

in Philosophy | April 3rd, 2017

The playlist above fea­tures rough­ly eight hours of video lec­tures on Søren Kierkegaard, the “father of exis­ten­tial­ism.” They’re pre­sent­ed by Jon B. Stew­art, cur­rent­ly a fel­low at Har­vard’s Rad­cliffe Insti­tute for Advanced Study, and before that Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor at the Søren Kierkegaard Research Cen­ter at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Copen­hagen. You can watch them inde­pen­dent­ly, or as part of an online course reg­u­lar­ly offered by Cours­era. Here’s the descrip­tion for the course:

It is often claimed that rel­a­tivism, sub­jec­tivism and nihilism are typ­i­cal­ly mod­ern philo­soph­i­cal prob­lems that emerge with the break­down of tra­di­tion­al val­ues, cus­toms and ways of life. The result is the absence of mean­ing, the lapse of reli­gious faith, and feel­ing of alien­ation that is so wide­spread in moder­ni­ty.

The Dan­ish thinker Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55) gave one of the most pen­e­trat­ing analy­ses of this com­plex phe­nom­e­non of moder­ni­ty. But some­what sur­pris­ing­ly he seeks insight into it not in any mod­ern thinker but rather in an ancient one, the Greek philoso­pher Socrates.

In this course cre­at­ed by for­mer asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at the Søren Kierkegaard Research Cen­tre, Jon Stew­art, we will explore how Kierkegaard deals with the prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with rel­a­tivism, the lack of mean­ing and the under­min­ing of reli­gious faith that are typ­i­cal of mod­ern life. His pen­e­trat­ing analy­ses are still high­ly rel­e­vant today and have been seen as insight­ful for the lead­ing fig­ures of Exis­ten­tial­ism, Post-Struc­tural­ism and Post-Mod­ernism.

The lec­ture series is avail­able on YouTube. Or find them indexed in our col­lec­tion of 150 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, a sub­set of our meta col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Phi­los­o­phy of Kierkegaard, the First Exis­ten­tial­ist Philoso­pher, Revis­it­ed in 1984 Doc­u­men­tary

An Ani­mat­ed, Mon­ty Python-Style Intro­duc­tion to the Søren Kierkegaard, the First Exis­ten­tial­ist

Down­load Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard, Sartre & Mod­ern Thought (1960)

Exis­ten­tial Phi­los­o­phy of Kierkegaard, Sartre, Camus Explained with 8‑Bit Video Games

Iggy Pop Sings Edith Piaf’s “La Vie En Rose” in an Artfully Animated Video

in Animation, Music | April 3rd, 2017

It’s been cov­ered by every­one from Daffy Duck to Grace Jones, from Pas­cal of Bol­ly­wood to a ukulele-strum­ming Madon­na…

It’s graced the sound­tracks of dozens of films, and pro­vid­ed the title for at least two more: the recent Edith Piaf bio-pic and an award win­ning French fea­ture about a pre-ado­les­cent trans­gen­der girl…

Its title has been hijacked for rose-col­ored mem­oirs, beer bot­tle labels, an arti­cle about women in board­rooms…

And now the above love sto­ry, set on the Pont des Art, star­ring an anthro­po­mor­phic rose and a long tall stick of beef jerky bear­ing a sus­pi­cious resem­blance to Iggy Pop.

The ani­mat­ed Iggy stalks across toward his lady love with the stiff­ness of a White Walk­er, but it’s unde­ni­ably mov­ing when this bio­log­i­cal­ly ill-matched cou­ple begins to dance in a swirl of green and red leaves sig­ni­fy­ing… what?

The imper­ma­nence of romance? (The pad­locks which star­ry eyed cou­ples affixed to the Pont des Art were uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly removed a few years ago…)

The imper­ma­nence of icon­ic pop stars?

The thorny per­sis­tence of vision­ary artists in a con­sumer dri­ven econ­o­my?

Ah well, the lyrics have always been a bit open to inter­pre­ta­tion, but the sen­ti­ment is eter­nal.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Édith Piaf Sing Her Most Famous Songs: “La Vie en Rose,” “Non, Je Regrette Rien” & More

Iggy Pop Reads Walt Whit­man in Col­lab­o­ra­tions With Elec­tron­ic Artists Alva Noto and Tar­wa­ter

Iggy Pop Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s Clas­sic Hor­ror Sto­ry, “The Tell-Tale Heart”

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

Wynton Marsalis Gives 12 Tips on How to Practice: For Musicians, Athletes, or Anyone Who Wants to Learn Something New

in Creativity, Education, Life, Music, Productivity, Psychology | April 3rd, 2017

Image by Eric Del­mar, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Prac­tic­ing for count­less hours before we can be good at some­thing seems bur­den­some and bor­ing. Maybe that’s why we’re drawn to sto­ries of instant achieve­ment. The monk real­izes satori (and Neo learns kung fu); the super­hero acquires great pow­er out of the blue; Robert John­son trades for genius at the cross­roads. At the same time, we teach chil­dren they can’t mas­ter a skill with­out dis­ci­pline and dili­gence. We repeat pop psych the­o­ries that spec­i­fy the exact num­ber hours required for excel­lence. The num­ber may be arbi­trary, but it com­forts us to believe that prac­tice might, even­tu­al­ly, make per­fect. Because in truth we know there is no way around it. As Wyn­ton Marsalis writes in “Wynton’s Twelve Ways to Prac­tice: From Music to School­work,” “prac­tice is essen­tial to learn­ing music—and any­thing else, for that mat­ter.”

For jazz musi­cians, the time spent learn­ing the­o­ry and refin­ing tech­nique finds elo­quent expres­sion in the con­cept of wood­shed­ding, a “hum­bling but nec­es­sary chore,” writes Paul Klem­per­er at Big Apple Jazz, “like chop­ping wood before you can start the fire.”

Yet retir­ing to the wood­shed “means more than just prac­tic­ing…. You have to dig deep into your­self, dis­ci­pline your­self, become focused on the music and your instru­ment.” As begin­ners, we tend to look at prac­tice only as a chore. The best jazz musi­cians know there’s also “some­thing philo­soph­i­cal, almost reli­gious” about it. John Coltrane, for exam­ple, prac­ticed cease­less­ly, con­scious­ly defin­ing his music as a spir­i­tu­al and con­tem­pla­tive dis­ci­pline.

Marsalis also implies a reli­gious aspect in his short arti­cle: “when you prac­tice, it means you are will­ing to sac­ri­fice to sound good… I like to say that the time spent prac­tic­ing is the true sign of virtue in a musi­cian.” Maybe this piety is intend­ed to dis­pel the myth of quick and easy deals with infer­nal enti­ties. But most of Marsalis’ “twelve ways to prac­tice” are as prag­mat­ic as they come, and “will work,” he promis­es “for almost every activity—from music to school­work to sports.” Find his abridged list below, and read his full com­men­tary at “the trumpeter’s bible,” Arban’s Method.

1. Seek out instruc­tion: A good teacher will help you under­stand the pur­pose of prac­tic­ing and can teach you ways to make prac­tic­ing eas­i­er and more pro­duc­tive.

2. Write out a sched­ule: A sched­ule helps you orga­nize your time. Be sure to allow time to review the fun­da­men­tals because they are the foun­da­tion of all the com­pli­cat­ed things that come lat­er.

3. Set goals: Like a sched­ule, goals help you orga­nize your time and chart your progress…. If a cer­tain task turns out to be real­ly dif­fi­cult, relax your goals: prac­tice does­n’t have to be painful to achieve results.

4. Con­cen­trate: You can do more in 10 min­utes of focused prac­tice than in an hour of sigh­ing and moan­ing. This means no video games, no tele­vi­sion, no radio, just sit­ting still and work­ing…. Con­cen­trat­ed effort takes prac­tice too, espe­cial­ly for young peo­ple.

5. Relax and prac­tice slow­ly: Take your time; don’t rush through things. When­ev­er you set out to learn some­thing new – prac­tic­ing scales, mul­ti­pli­ca­tion tables, verb tens­es in Span­ish – you need to start slow­ly and build up speed.

6. Prac­tice hard things longer: Don’t be afraid of con­fronting your inad­e­qua­cies; spend more time prac­tic­ing what you can’t do…. Suc­cess­ful prac­tice means com­ing face to face with your short­com­ings. Don’t be dis­cour­aged; you’ll get it even­tu­al­ly.

7. Prac­tice with expres­sion: Every day you walk around mak­ing your­self into “you,” so do every­thing with the prop­er atti­tude…. Express your “style” through how you do what you do.

8. Learn from your mis­takes: None of us are per­fect, but don’t be too hard on your­self. If you drop a touch­down pass, or strike out to end the game, it’s not the end of the world. Pick your­self up, ana­lyze what went wrong and keep going….

9. Donʼt show off: It’s hard to resist show­ing off when you can do some­thing well…. But my father told me, “Son, those who play for applause, that’s all they get.” When you get caught up in doing the tricky stuff, you’re just cheat­ing your­self and your audi­ence.

10. Think for your­self: Your suc­cess or fail­ure at any­thing ulti­mate­ly depends on your abil­i­ty to solve prob­lems, so don’t become a robot…. Think­ing for your­self helps devel­op your pow­ers of judg­ment.

11. Be opti­mistic: Opti­mism helps you get over your mis­takes and go on to do bet­ter. It also gives you endurance because hav­ing a pos­i­tive atti­tude makes you feel that some­thing great is always about to hap­pen.

12. Look for con­nec­tions: If you devel­op the dis­ci­pline it takes to become good at some­thing, that dis­ci­pline will help you in what­ev­er else you do…. The more you dis­cov­er the rela­tion­ships between things that at first seem dif­fer­ent, the larg­er your world becomes. In oth­er words, the wood­shed can open up a whole world of pos­si­bil­i­ties.

You’ll note in even a cur­so­ry scan of Marsalis’ pre­scrip­tions that they begin with the immi­nent­ly practical—the “chores” we can find tedious—and move fur­ther into the intan­gi­bles: devel­op­ing cre­ativ­i­ty, humil­i­ty, opti­mism, and, even­tu­al­ly, maybe, a grad­ual kind of enlight­en­ment. You’ll notice on a clos­er read that the con­scious­ness-rais­ing and the mun­dane dai­ly tasks go hand-in-hand.

While this may be all well and good for jazz musi­cians, stu­dents, ath­letes, or chess play­ers, we may have rea­son for skep­ti­cism about suc­cess through prac­tice more gen­er­al­ly. Researchers at Prince­ton have found, for exam­ple, that the effec­tive­ness of prac­tice is “domain depen­dent.” In games, music, and sports, prac­tice accounts for a good deal of improve­ment. In cer­tain oth­er “less sta­ble” fields dri­ven by celebri­ty and net­work­ing, for exam­ple, suc­cess can seem more depen­dent on per­son­al­i­ty or priv­i­leged access.

But it’s prob­a­bly safe to assume that if you’re read­ing this post, you’re inter­est­ed in mas­ter­ing a skill, not cul­ti­vat­ing a brand. Whether you want to play Carnegie Hall or “learn a lan­guage, cook good meals or get along well with peo­ple,” prac­tice is essen­tial, Marsalis argues, and prac­tic­ing well is just as impor­tant as prac­tic­ing often. For a look at how prac­tice changes our brains, cre­at­ing what we col­lo­qui­al­ly call “mus­cle mem­o­ry,” see the TED-Ed video just above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wyn­ton Marsalis Takes Louis Armstrong’s Trum­pet Out of the Muse­um & Plays It Again

Son­ny Rollins Describes How 50 Years of Prac­tic­ing Yoga Made Him a Bet­ter Musi­cian

Play­ing an Instru­ment Is a Great Work­out For Your Brain: New Ani­ma­tion Explains Why

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

S‑Town: The Podcast That Will Help You Binge-Listen Your Way Through This Week

in Podcasts | April 3rd, 2017

Last week, the folks behind Ser­i­al and This Amer­i­can Life, teamed up to release S‑Town (short for Shit­town), a sev­en-episode/­sev­en-hour pod­cast which I devoured in three days flat. I don’t want to give any spoil­ers. So let me give you just the text that pro­motes the pod­cast on iTunes, and then sug­gest you start lis­ten­ing:

John despis­es his Alaba­ma town and decides to do some­thing about it. He asks a reporter to inves­ti­gate the son of a wealthy fam­i­ly who’s alleged­ly been brag­ging that he got away with mur­der. But then some­one else ends up dead, spark­ing a nasty feud, a hunt for hid­den trea­sure, and an unearthing of the mys­ter­ies of one man’s life.

Find episodes on iTunes, Stitch­er, RSS feed, Radio Pub­lic, or the web.

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!

Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles: A Radio Drama Starring Derek Jacobi & Hayley Atwell (Free Audio Book)

in Audio Books, Sci Fi | March 31st, 2017

Image by Futuril­la, via Flickr Com­mons

For your week­end lis­ten­ing plea­sure, we present a 70 minute radio drama­ti­za­tion of The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles, Ray Brad­bury’s “time­less fable of doomed Mar­t­ian coloni­sa­tion.” Aired by the BBC, this pro­duc­tion stars Derek Jaco­bi and Hay­ley Atwell. Read this lit­tle blurb, which helps set the stage. Then stream the embed­ded Spo­ti­fy audio below.

When the first expe­di­tion to Mars mys­te­ri­ous­ly dis­ap­pears, Earth sends a sec­ond to find out what hap­pened. But the real mis­sion is clas­si­fied. And only Cap­tain Wilder knows the truth. Spender, an anthro­pol­o­gist on Wilder’s crew, attempts to pre­vent the coloni­sa­tion that she believes will erad­i­cate the last of an ancient peo­ple liv­ing on Mars. But to what lengths will she go?

As the hon­ourable but duty-bound Cap­tain Wilder tracks the now rogue Spender into the Mar­t­ian moun­tains, the future of this ancient plan­et is at stake. Mean­while, Earth itself teeters on the brink of its own glob­al cat­a­stro­phe as the very sur­vival of human­i­ty hangs in the bal­ance.…

If you need Spo­ti­fy, down­load it here.

This pro­duc­tion will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­­sion­al­­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

Animated Introductions to Edward Said’s Groundbreaking Book Orientalism

in Current Affairs, Literature, Philosophy, Politics | March 31st, 2017

For a few years, many people—those who might these days be called a “self-sat­is­fied lib­er­al elite” (or some­thing like that)—believed that the argu­ments in Edward Said’s 1978 book Ori­en­tal­ism were becom­ing gen­er­al­ly accept­ed. Put broad­ly, Said argued that our con­cep­tions of cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal dif­fer­ences between “the West” and “the East” are pro­duced by Euro­pean intel­lec­tu­al and lit­er­ary tra­di­tions that have exag­ger­at­ed and dis­tort­ed such dif­fer­ences, cre­at­ing a nar­ra­tive in which “the West” is civ­i­lized, dis­ci­plined,  indus­tri­ous, and enlight­ened and “the East” is exot­ic, back­ward, sen­su­al­ist, lazy, pas­sive, dan­ger­ous, irra­tional.…

The tra­di­tion of Ori­en­tal­ism—which stretch­es back into the mid­dle ages—came to jus­ti­fy colo­nial­ism, land and resource theft, slav­ery, and impe­r­i­al aggres­sion in the name of civ­i­liza­tion and sal­va­tion, Even where Euro­pean Ori­en­tal­ist schol­ars and writ­ers had a nuanced under­stand­ing of oth­er cul­tures, such nuance was lost in the pop­u­lar­iz­ing and instru­men­tal use of their ideas.

Said’s the­o­ret­i­cal inter­ven­tion into Ori­en­tal­ist dis­course showed us how the “clash of civ­i­liza­tions” trope that per­vades hun­dreds of years of inter­ac­tions between “the west and the rest” of the world itself has a history—as a ratio­nal­iza­tion for dom­i­nance and exploita­tion. The short ani­mat­ed Al Jazeera video above neat­ly sum­ma­rizes Said’s major argu­ments in the book, and asks us to “unlearn the myth.”

Cast­ing West and East as two dis­tinct civ­i­liza­tions makes lit­tle com­mon sense on its face. Chris­tian­i­ty, one key sup­posed bedrock  of West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion, is an East­ern reli­gion. Aris­to­tle, a foun­da­tion of West­ern thought, was pre­served for many years by Islam­ic schol­ars, who were in fre­quent dia­logue with Greek thinkers, who were them­selves in fre­quent dia­logue with North Africans…. the inter­re­la­tion­ships and cor­re­spon­dences between con­ti­nents and cul­tures are innu­mer­able, the bound­aries between the cat­e­gories high­ly per­me­able. But with the rise of what we’re call­ing “pop­ulism” in the past decade or so, the nuances of intel­lec­tu­al his­to­ry have been lost. Old false dichotomies, always haunt­ing the mar­gins, have once again moved firm­ly to the cen­ter.

In the realm of cable news pun­dit­ry, cor­po­rate secu­ri­ty con­fer­ences, and con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tees not only do we rarely see actu­al schol­ars rep­re­sent­ed, but we almost nev­er see schol­ars like Edward Said, a Pales­tin­ian intel­lec­tu­al who spoke and wrote crit­i­cal­ly as a per­son from the Mid­dle East with exper­tise in West­ern lit­er­a­ture and his­to­ry. This fact is itself cen­tral to the con­struc­tion of Ori­en­tal­ist dis­course, as Said wrote in 1978:

The Ori­ent and Islam have a kind of extrareal, phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal­ly reduced sta­tus that puts them out of reach of every­one except the West­ern expert. From the begin­ning of West­ern spec­u­la­tion about the Ori­ent, the one thing the Ori­ent could not do was to rep­re­sent itself.

We can accept noth­ing about “the East,” in oth­er words, unless it is first fil­tered through the lens­es of Euro-Amer­i­can admin­is­tra­tive “experts,” who often have extrem­ist views, very lit­tle schol­ar­ly exper­tise, and whose ideas often still come direct­ly from Ori­en­tal­ist nov­els and philoso­phies.

Said’s the­o­ries in Ori­en­tal­ism have received ample crit­i­cism from across the polit­i­cal spec­trum. He’s been cast by the right as a kind of reverse racist against “Cau­casians,” an anti-intel­lec­tu­al accu­sa­tion that dis­torts his views and makes ad hominem attacks. Said traced Euro-Amer­i­can colo­nial his­to­ry with a lev­el of depth that demon­strat­ed the remark­able con­ti­nu­ity in the way major Euro­pean colo­nial pow­ers and the U.S.—their suc­ces­sor by the late 20th century—constructed ide­olo­gies of excep­tion­al­ism and supe­ri­or­i­ty through very sim­i­lar rhetoric.

For a slight­ly dri­er overview of Said’s Ori­en­tal­ism, watch the short video above from edu­ca­tion­al com­pa­ny Macat, a self-described “glob­al leader in crit­i­cal think­ing.” Nei­ther of these explain­ers can sub­sti­tute for actu­al­ly engag­ing with the argu­ments in Said’s book. His his­to­ry of Ori­en­tal­ist fables is itself an adven­tur­ous tale. As a lit­er­ary prod­uct, “the Ori­ent was almost a Euro­pean inven­tion,” he writes in his Intro­duc­tion, yet as a region, it “is an inte­gral part of Euro­pean mate­r­i­al civ­i­liza­tion and cul­ture.” There is no one with­out the oth­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Edward Said Recalls His Depress­ing Meet­ing With Sartre, de Beau­voir & Fou­cault (1979)

Edward Said Speaks Can­did­ly about Pol­i­tics, His Ill­ness, and His Lega­cy in His Final Inter­view (2003)

Clash of the Titans: Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er on Dutch TV, 1971

Mid­dle East­ern His­to­ry: Free Cours­es

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

The M.C. Escher Mirror Puzzle: Test Your Imagination & Concentration with an Artistic Brain Teaser

in Art, Games | March 31st, 2017

The art of M.C. Esch­er appar­ent­ly makes for some good puz­zles. Head over to Ama­zon and you’ll find a num­ber of ornate Esch­er works of art turned into tra­di­tion­al 1,000-piece puz­zles. They’ll keep you busy for hours on end. But will they chal­lenge you as much as the M.C. Esch­er Mir­ror Puz­zle fea­tured above? This puz­zle takes things to anoth­er lev­el. The direc­tions read like this: “Use the slant­ed mir­ror inside each cube to reflect the image on the side of an adja­cent cube. Once you place all nine cubes in the right pat­tern, a com­plete Esch­er image will appear.” Fin­ish the first puz­zle, and then start on the next one. There are five puz­zles in this set.

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:

M.C. Esch­er Cov­er Art for Great Books by Ita­lo Calvi­no, George Orwell & Jorge Luis Borges

Watch M.C. Esch­er Make His Final Artis­tic Cre­ation in the 1971 Doc­u­men­tary Adven­tures in Per­cep­tion

Meta­mor­phose: 1999 Doc­u­men­tary Reveals the Life and Work of Artist M.C. Esch­er

Inspi­ra­tions: A Short Film Cel­e­brat­ing the Math­e­mat­i­cal Art of M.C. Esch­er