The Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Board Game, Inspired by Hunter S. Thompson’s Rollicking Novel

in Games | December 22nd, 2016

There was a time, fair chil­dren of the late 20th cen­tu­ry, when every movie and tele­vi­sion show had itself a board game. Most were bad. But we bought them, and then tried our best to make it work. You can see a col­lec­tion here. Few ever recre­at­ed the spir­it of the orig­i­nal work, but instead coast­ed by on a cyn­ic’s heart hop­ing to har­vest your pop cul­ture mem­o­ries.

How­ev­er, the board game ver­sion of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, cre­at­ed by design­er, pro­gram­mer, and artist J.R. Bald­win, is very much in the spir­it of Hunter S. Thompson’s book and well-loved film adap­ta­tion by Ter­ry Gilliam. It is also very dan­ger­ous to play, and is prob­a­bly not sur­viv­able unless you are Hunter S. Thomp­son and you have trav­eled in time to 2009. That’s the year of our clip above, when Alana Joy inter­viewed Bald­win for a web chan­nel called Life on Blast.

The game comes in a brief­case mod­eled after Thompson’s trav­el­ing apothe­cary, and uses a board, game pieces, and cards. The board is designed to look like a psy­che­del­ic trip, with the spaces and indeed the whole board mod­eled after pey­ote but­tons, which were also part of Thompson’s Gonzo logo. The start­ing space quotes the famous first lines of the book (“We were some­where around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold”) and the goal space uses the quote “All ener­gy flows accord­ing to the whims of the great mag­net” writ­ten around a brain.

But it’s the oth­er con­tents of the case that make the game spe­cial: drugs and alco­hol, to be tak­en depend­ing on what cir­cle you land on the game board. Three dif­fer­ent card groups dic­tate actions to take dur­ing the game. Yel­low cards mean the play­er must mea­sure out an amount of drugs (includ­ing stim­u­lants, inhalants, or hal­lu­cino­gens) or a shot of booze or absinthe and ingest. (The game help­ful­ly comes with a scale.) Blue cards send the play­er on an adven­ture or activ­i­ty. Red cards are chal­lenges to be tak­en while under the influ­ence of the sub­stances.

So, okay, Baldwin’s game is not to be tak­en seriously…or tak­en oral­ly. It’s actu­al­ly a one-of-its-kind piece of art that can be pur­chased for $3,500. Drugs, like bat­ter­ies, are not includ­ed. You must sup­ply your own, pos­si­bly through your attor­ney.

“You could, the­o­ret­i­cal­ly, sur­vive the entire game, on all these dif­fer­ent sub­stances” Bald­win says. “So why not?”

You can get a sense of the game from the images above. They come from Bald­win’s web­site, where you can see yet more visu­als.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thompson’s Har­row­ing, Chem­i­cal-Filled Dai­ly Rou­tine

Read 11 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

Play­ing Golf on LSD With Hunter S. Thomp­son: Esquire Edi­tor Remem­bers the Odd­est Game of Golf

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Foundations of Modern Social Theory: A Free Yale Course

in | December 22nd, 2016

Taught by pro­fes­sor Iván Szelényi, this Yale course “pro­vides an overview of major works of social thought from the begin­ning of the mod­ern era through the 1920s. Atten­tion is paid to social and intel­lec­tu­al con­texts, con­cep­tu­al frame­works and meth­ods, and con­tri­bu­tions to con­tem­po­rary social analy­sis.” And the writ­ers cov­ered “include Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Mon­tesquieu, Adam Smith, Marx, Weber, and Durkheim.”

The 25 lec­tures can be found on YouTube and iTunes (in audio and video). A com­plete syl­labus can be found be on this Yale web site.

Foun­da­tions of Mod­ern Social The­o­ry has been added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Yes, the Holocaust Happened, Even If a Top Google Search Result Says It Didn’t

in Current Affairs, History, Politics | December 21st, 2016

We’re well into the back­lash cycle of the post-elec­tion out­rage over “fake news,” as com­men­ta­tor after com­men­ta­tor calls this phrase into ques­tion and cel­e­brates the fall of the gate­keep­er media. Tak­ing a phrase from Tom Wolfe, Matthew Con­tinet­ti at the con­ser­v­a­tive Com­men­tary argues that “the press… is a Vic­to­ri­an Gen­tle­man, the arbiter of man­ners and fash­ion, the judge of right con­duct and good breed­ing.” We should not lament this gentleman’s loss of a “lib­er­al, afflu­ent, enti­tled cocoon.” He had long ago “changed his job descrip­tion and went from telling his read­ers what had hap­pened to telling them what to think.”

Like­wise, The Inter­cept has shown how fake news pan­ic pro­duced a “McCarthyite Black­list” of inde­pen­dent orga­ni­za­tions lumped togeth­er by “shod­dy, sloth­ful jour­nal­is­tic tac­tics” of the kind used by “smear artists” and ped­dlers of dis­in­for­ma­tion. Pol­i­tics aside, what we should at least gath­er from this firestorm is that the sto­ry of “fake news”—or of delib­er­ate hoax­es, lies, and propaganda—is much old­er than the Inter­net, though the speed at which it spreads has increased expo­nen­tial­ly with the dom­i­nance of social media. We’re left won­der­ing how we might reclaim some ori­en­ta­tion toward the truth in any media. If every­thing is poten­tial­ly fake news, what can we trust?

With the pro­fes­sion­al vet­ting of infor­ma­tion in cri­sis, we are thrown back on the pop­u­lar­iza­tion of Dar­win­ism advanced by “British defend­er of cap­i­tal­ism” Her­bert Spencer, who—writes Tim­o­thy Sny­der in his New York Times best­seller Black Earth: The Holo­caust as His­to­ry and Warn­ing—described the mar­ket as “an ecos­phere where the strongest and best sur­vived.” In our infor­ma­tion ecosys­tem, “strongest and best” is often deter­mined not by nat­ur­al forces, nor by expert adju­di­ca­tion of mer­it, but by algo­rithms… and cash. And as jour­nal­ists at The Inde­pen­dent and else­where dis­cov­ered last week, Google’s algo­rithms have decid­ed that the best, most help­ful answer to the ques­tion “did the holo­caust hap­pen?” comes from neo-Nazi hate site Storm­front, in a piece glibly titled “Top 10 rea­sons why the Holo­caust didn’t hap­pen.”

It should go with­out saying—and yet it must be said—that no seri­ous his­to­ri­an of the peri­od con­sid­ers the sys­tem­at­ic mass mur­der of mil­lions of Jews and oth­er “unde­sir­ables” to be an open his­tor­i­cal ques­tion. The hor­ror of the 30s and 40s, writes the U.S. Holo­caust Memo­r­i­al Muse­um, is “one of the best doc­u­ment­ed events in his­to­ry” and denials and dis­tor­tions of these events “are gen­er­al­ly moti­vat­ed by hatred of Jews.” (See their video explain­ing denial­ism at the top.) There’s no ques­tion that’s the motive in Google’s top search result for Holo­caust denial­ism. Google admits as much, writ­ing this past Mon­day, “We are sad­dened to see that hate orga­ni­za­tions still exist. The fact that hate sites appear in search results does not mean that Google endors­es these views.”

And yet, writes Car­ole Cad­wal­ladr at The Guardian, the search engine giant also “con­firmed it would not remove the result.” Cad­wal­ladr details how she dis­placed the top result her­self “with the only lan­guage that Google under­stands: mon­ey.” Lil­ian Black, the daugh­ter of a Holo­caust sur­vivor, com­pared the tech giant’s response to “say­ing we know that the trains are run­ning into Birke­nau, but we’re not respon­si­ble for what’s hap­pen­ing at the end of it.” But they should bear some respon­si­bil­i­ty. Google, she says, shapes “people’s think­ing… Can’t they see where this leads? And to have a huge world­wide orga­ni­za­tion refus­ing to acknowl­edge this. That’s what they think their role is? To be a bystander?”

The ques­tion forces us to con­front not only the role of the press but also the role of the new gate­keep­ers, Google, Face­book, Twit­ter, etc., who have dis­placed Vic­to­ri­an sys­tems of man­ag­ing infor­ma­tion and knowl­edge. The loss of sta­tus among aca­d­e­mics and pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ists and edi­tors may have salu­tary effects, such as a democ­ra­ti­za­tion of media and the emer­gence of cred­i­ble voic­es pre­vi­ous­ly con­fined to the mar­gins. But what can be done about the cor­re­spond­ing rise in delib­er­ate mis­in­for­ma­tion pub­lished by hate groups and pro­pa­gan­da orga­ni­za­tions? Moral con­sid­er­a­tions car­ry no weight when the fig­u­ra­tive “mar­ket­place of ideas” is reduced to the lit­er­al mar­ket.

Dan­ny Sul­li­van, a search engine expert Cad­wal­ladr cites, sug­gests that the rea­son the Storm­front result rose to the top of Google’s search may be noth­ing more than pop­ulism for prof­it: “Google has changed its algo­rithm to reward pop­u­lar results over author­i­ta­tive ones. For the rea­son that it makes Google more mon­ey.” The ris­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of hate sites presents a growth oppor­tu­ni­ty for Google and its com­peti­tors. Mean­while, racist hate groups spread their mes­sages unim­ped­ed, ordi­nary cit­i­zens are bad­ly mis­in­formed, and so-called “self-rad­i­cal­ized” indi­vid­u­als like mass killer Dylann Roof and Tom­my Mair—who mur­dered British MP Jo Cox this past sum­mer—con­tin­ue to find the “strongest and best” cas­es for their homi­ci­dal designs, no mat­ter that so much of the infor­ma­tion they con­sume is not only fake, but designed­ly, malev­o­lent­ly false.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

High School Teacher & Holo­caust Expert Sus­pend­ed for Draw­ing Par­al­lels Between Trump & Hitler’s Rhetoric

Mem­o­ry of the Camps (1985): The Holo­caust Doc­u­men­tary that Trau­ma­tized Alfred Hitch­cock, and Remained Unseen for 40 Years

The Touch­ing Moment When Nicholas Win­ton (RIP) Met the Chil­dren He Saved Dur­ing the Holo­caust

Rudolf Braz­da, Last Man to Wear the Pink Tri­an­gle Dur­ing the Holo­caust, Tells His Sto­ry

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

Hear the First Live Performance of the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar:” Recorded at the Fateful Altamont Free Concert in 1969

in History, Music | December 21st, 2016

In Jan­u­ary, 1970—with a line that might have come right out of any num­ber of cur­rent opin­ion pieces tak­ing the media to task—Rolling Stone ripped into Time, Life, Newsweek, the New York Times for their cov­er­age of the 1969 Alta­mont Free Con­cert: “When the news media know what the pub­lic wants to hear and what they want to believe, they give it to them.”

What did the pub­lic want to hear? Appar­ent­ly that Alta­mont was “Wood­stock West,” full of “peace and love” and “good vibes.” Since, how­ev­er, it was “unde­ni­able that one man was actu­al­ly mur­dered at the con­cert, a cer­tain min­i­mal adjust­ment was made, as if that event had been the result of some sort of unpre­dictable act of God, like a stray bolt of light­ning.” The mur­dered fan, 18-year-old Mered­ith Hunter, was not, of course, killed by light­ning, but stabbed to death by one of the Hell’s Angels who were hired as infor­mal secu­ri­ty guards.

Hunter was killed “just 20 feet in front of the stage where Mick Jag­ger was per­form­ing ‘Under My Thumb,’” writes the His­to­ry Chan­nel: “Unaware of what had just occurred, the Rolling Stones com­plet­ed their set with­out fur­ther inci­dent, bring­ing an end to a tumul­tuous day that also saw three acci­den­tal deaths and four live births.”

We know the moment best from the Maysles broth­ers con­cert film Gimme Shel­ter, which opens with a scene of Jag­ger view­ing footage of the vio­lence. See the unrest dur­ing “Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il,” above, and the con­fused scene of the killing dur­ing “Under My Thumb,” fur­ther down.

In an inter­view about that grim day, Joel Selvin, music crit­ic and author of a book on Alta­mont, sums up the judg­ment of forty years of his­to­ry:

It’s one of the few dark days in the his­to­ry of rock. This was the anti-Wood­stock. It also took place in Decem­ber of 1969, so it book­marked the end of the ‘60s in a chrono­log­i­cal way. The loss of inno­cence that day real­ly is why this has last­ed and why it endures as a cul­tur­al touch­stone.

The loss of Amer­i­can inno­cence is an old trope that assumes the coun­try, at some myth­i­cal time in the past, was a blame­less par­adise. But who was to blame for Alta­mont? The Stones were not held legal­ly account­able, nor was the bik­er who stabbed Hunter. In anoth­er echo from the past into the present, he was acquit­ted on self-defense grounds. “What hap­pened at Alta­mont,” was also “not the music’s fault,” writes The New York­er’s Richard Brody, who blames “Celebri­ty” and a loss of “benev­o­lent spir­its… the idea of the unpro­duced.”

To ascribe such incred­i­ble weight to this incident—to mark it as the end of peace and love and the birth of “infra­struc­ture” and “author­i­ty,” as Brody does—seems his­tor­i­cal­ly tone deaf. Strict­ly from the point of view of the Stones’ musi­cal devel­op­ment, we might say that the close of the six­ties and the year of Alta­mont marked a tran­si­tion to a dark­er, grit­ti­er peri­od, the end of the band’s for­ays into psy­che­delia and folk music. That sum­mer, Bri­an Jones drowned in his swim­ming pool. And the band fol­lowed the sneer­ing “Under My Thumb” at Alta­mont with a brand new tune, “Brown Sug­ar,” a song about slav­ery and rape.

You can hear the first live per­for­mance of the song at the top of the post, cap­tured in an audi­ence record­ing, two years before its offi­cial record­ing and release on 1971’s Sticky Fin­gers. “It was a song of sadism,” writes Stan­ley Booth, “sav­agery, race hate/love, a song of redemp­tion, a song that accept­ed the fear of night, black­ness, chaos, the unknown.” It’s a song that would face instant back­lash were it released today. “Twit­ter would lam­poon [the band] with care­ful­ly thought out hash­tags,” writes Lau­ret­ta Charl­ton, “Mul­ti­ple Change.org peti­tions would be signed. The band would be forced to issue an apol­o­gy.”

Jag­ger him­self said in 1995, “I would nev­er write that song now. I would prob­a­bly cen­sor myself.” And he has, in many sub­se­quent per­for­mances, changed some of the most out­ra­geous lyrics. Charl­ton con­fess­es to lov­ing and hat­ing the song, call­ing it “gross, sex­ist, and stun­ning­ly offen­sive toward black women.” And yet, she says, “When I hear ‘Brown Sug­ar,’ the out­rage hits me like a post­script, and by that point I’m too busy clap­ping and singing along to be indig­nant.” Sur­round­ed by the vio­lence at Alta­mont, Jag­ger chan­neled the vio­lence of his­to­ry in a raunchy blues that—like “Under My Thumb” and “Sym­pa­thy for the Devil”—captures the seduc­tive nature of pow­er and sex­u­al­ized aggres­sion, and gives the lie to facile ideas of inno­cence, whether of the past or of the con­tem­po­rary social and polit­i­cal late-six­ties scene.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Nev­er Released Ver­sion of The Stones’ “Brown Sug­ar,” With Eric Clap­ton on Slide Gui­tar

The Rolling Stones Intro­duce Blues­man Howl­in’ Wolf on US TV, One of the “Great­est Cul­tur­al Moments of the 20th Cen­tu­ry” (1965)

The Haunt­ing Back­ground Vocals on The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shel­ter:” Mer­ry Clay­ton Recalls How They Came to Be

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

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

in History, Online Courses, Yale | December 20th, 2016

Taught by Yale pro­fes­sor Don­ald Kagan, this intro­duc­to­ry course in Greek his­to­ry traces “the devel­op­ment of Greek civ­i­liza­tion as man­i­fest­ed in polit­i­cal, intel­lec­tu­al, and cre­ative achieve­ments from the Bronze Age to the end of the clas­si­cal peri­od.” In it, stu­dents “read orig­i­nal sources in trans­la­tion as well as the works of mod­ern schol­ars.” You can watch the 24 video lec­tures above, or find them on YouTube. The lec­tures also appear on iTunes in audio and video. Find the texts used in the course below. More infor­ma­tion about the course, includ­ing the syl­labus, can be found on this Yale web­site.

• Pomeroy, Burstein, Don­lan and Roberts. Ancient Greece. Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press: New York, 1999.
• Kagan, Don­ald. “Prob­lems in Ancient His­to­ry.” In The Ancient Near East and Greece. 2nd ed., vol. 1. Pren­tice-Hall: New York, 1975.
• Herodotus, The His­to­ries.
• Plutarch, The Rise and Fall of the Athens.
• Thucy­dides, The Pelo­pon­nesian War.

Intro­duc­tion to Ancient Greek His­to­ry will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Online His­to­ry cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent

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

Roman Archi­tec­ture: A Free Online Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

George Orwell’s Life & Literature Presented in a 3‑Hour Radio Documentary: Features Interviews with Those Who Knew Orwell Best

in History, Literature, Politics, Radio | December 20th, 2016

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Say you find your­self in a one-par­ty state that promis­es to dis­man­tle every civ­il insti­tu­tion you believe in and tram­ple every eth­i­cal prin­ci­ple you hold dear. You may feel a lit­tle despon­dent. While a “this too shall pass” atti­tude may help you gain per­spec­tive, the prob­lem isn’t sim­ply that you’re on the los­ing side of a polit­i­cal con­test. As George Orwell wrote in 1984, total author­i­tar­i­an con­trol means that “Who con­trols the past con­trols the future. Who con­trols the present con­trols the past.” The epis­temic base­line you took for grant­ed may become increas­ing­ly, fright­en­ing­ly elu­sive as the rul­ing par­ty reshapes all of real­i­ty to its designs.

With more vivid clar­i­ty than per­haps any­one since, Orwell char­ac­ter­ized the mech­a­nisms by which total­i­tar­i­an­ism takes hold. His 1948 nov­el has not only giv­en us a near-uni­ver­sal set of terms to describe the phe­nom­e­non, but it also gives us a met­ric: when our soci­ety begins to resem­ble Orwell’s dystopia in per­va­sive and alarm­ing ways, we should know with­out ques­tion things have gone bad­ly wrong. Whether we can do much about it is anoth­er ques­tion, but we should remem­ber that Orwell him­self was not sim­ply an arm­chair observ­er of Fas­cism, Sovi­et total­i­tar­i­an­ism, or oppres­sive Eng­lish colo­nial rule. He fought Franco’s forces in Spain dur­ing the Span­ish Civ­il War and as a jour­nal­ist wrote crit­i­cal arti­cles and essays expos­ing hypocrisies and abus­es of law and lan­guage. The impact of his work on lat­er gen­er­a­tions speaks for itself.

In the CBC radio doc­u­men­tary The Orwell Tapes, in three parts here, we have a com­pre­hen­sive intro­duc­tion to Orwell’s work, thought, and life. It opens with alarm­ing sound­bites from light­ning rods (and vil­lains or heroes, depend­ing on who you ask) Julian Assange and Edward Snow­den. But it doesn’t stray into the clichéd ter­ri­to­ry of over­heat­ed con­spir­a­cy those names often inspire. Instead we’re large­ly treat­ed through­out each episode to first­hand accounts of the sub­ject from those who knew him well.

“CBC is the only media orga­ni­za­tion in the world,” says host Paul Kennedy, “with a com­pre­hen­sive archive of record­ings fea­tur­ing peo­ple who knew Orwell, from his ear­li­est days, to his final moments. 75 peo­ple, 50 hours of record­ings.” Edit­ed snip­pets of these audio record­ings make up the bulk of The Orwell Tapes, hence the title, mak­ing the pro­gram oral his­to­ry rather than sen­sa­tion­al­ism. The inter­vie­wees include friends, for­mer girl­friends, com­rades-in-arms, and crit­i­cal oppo­nents. Each episode’s page on the CBC site fea­tures a list of names and rela­tions to Orwell at the bot­tom.

But of course, accu­sa­tions of sen­sa­tion­al­ism always fol­low those who warn of Orwellian trends and ten­den­cies. Like many of our con­tem­po­raries, Orwell was a con­tra­dic­to­ry fig­ure. He served as a colo­nial police­man in Bur­ma even as he grew dis­gust­ed with Empire; he con­sid­ered him­self a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ist, but he nev­er looked away from the author­i­tar­i­an hor­rors of state com­mu­nism; and he has been held up as a pil­lar of resis­tance to state sur­veil­lance and con­trol, even as he also stands accused of “nam­ing names.” But the over­all impres­sion we get from Orwell’s friends and col­leagues is that he was ful­ly committed—to writ­ing, to polit­i­cal engage­ment, to telling the truth as he saw it.

In releas­ing The Orwell Tapes this month, the CBC gives us five rea­sons why Orwell “is still very much with us today.” Some of these—modern sur­veil­lance, the cor­rup­tions of pow­er (and the pow­er of corruption)—will be famil­iar, as will num­ber 3, a vari­a­tion on what we’ve come to call “empa­thy” for one’s oppo­nent. The 4th rea­son, CBC notes, is the renewed rel­e­vance of social­ism as a viable alter­na­tive to cap­i­tal­ist pre­da­tion. And final­ly, we have the con­tin­ued dan­ger of speak­ing truth to pow­er, and to those who serve it reli­gious­ly, uncrit­i­cal­ly, and often vio­lent­ly. As Orwell wrote in the pref­ace to Ani­mal Farm, “If lib­er­ty means any­thing at all, it means the right to tell peo­ple what they don’t want to hear.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

George Orwell Tries to Iden­ti­fy Who Is Real­ly a “Fas­cist” and Define the Mean­ing of This “Much-Abused Word” (1944)

George Orwell’s Six Rules for Writ­ing Clear and Tight Prose

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

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

in Art, Books | December 20th, 2016

The writer David Auer­bach once post­ed a fas­ci­nat­ing inquest on left-brained lit­er­a­ture, an exam­i­na­tion of what he calls “a par­al­lel track of lit­er­a­ture that is pop­u­lar specif­i­cal­ly among engi­neers,” exclud­ing genre fic­tion (sci­ence- or oth­er­wise), with an eye toward “which nov­els of some noto­ri­ety and good PR hap­pen to attract mem­bers of the engi­neer­ing pro­fes­sions.” Favored author names turn out to include Richard Pow­ers, Umber­to Eco, Haru­ki Muraka­mi, William Gib­son, Ita­lo Calvi­no, and Jorge Luis Borges.

More of these lit­er­ar­i­ly inclined left-brain­ers exist than one might imag­ine. From the pub­lish­er’s point of view, what cov­er art could best attract them? Books tar­get­ed toward that demo­graph­ic could do far worse than to use the work of M.C. Esch­er, who spent his career with one foot in art and the oth­er in math­e­mat­ics.

In the hith­er­to unseen (and even unimag­ined) worlds pic­tured in his wood­cuts, lith­o­graphs, and mez­zot­ints, he made use of math­e­mat­i­cal con­cepts from tes­sel­la­tion to reflec­tion to infin­i­ty in ways at once impos­si­ble and some­how plau­si­ble, all of them still intel­lec­tu­al­ly and aes­thet­i­cal­ly com­pelling today.

The non-nov­el­ist Dou­glas Hof­s­tadter appears in Auer­bach’s inquest since his best-known work, Gödel, Esch­er, Bach: an Eter­nal Gold­en Braid, “which part­ly uses fic­tion­al forms, is too great not to list.” Not only does Escher’s name appear in Hof­s­tadter’s book title, his art informs its cen­tral con­cepts. “Hof­s­tadter wove a net­work of con­nec­tions link­ing the math­e­mat­ics of Gödel, the art of Esch­er, and the music of Bach,” writes Allene M. Park­er in the paper “Draw­ing Borges: a Two-Part Inven­tion on the Labyrinths of Jorge Luis Borges and M.C. Esch­er.” In Gödel, Esch­er, Bach he describes their com­mon denom­i­na­tor as a “strange loop,” a phe­nom­e­non that “occurs when­ev­er, by move­ment upwards (or down­wards) through the lev­els of some hier­ar­chi­cal sys­tem, we unex­pect­ed­ly find our­selves right back where we start­ed.”

Park­er iden­ti­fies 1948’s “Draw­ing Hands” as a “par­tic­u­lar­ly strik­ing and famil­iar exam­ple” of a strange loop in Escher’s work. We can inter­pret that image by rec­og­niz­ing that “it is Esch­er, the artist, who is draw­ing both hands and who stands out­side this par­tic­u­lar puz­zle.” Or we can “adopt a Zen-inspired solu­tion and let mys­tery be mys­tery by choos­ing to embrace a uni­ty which con­tains oppo­si­tions,” such as one described by the open­ing of Borges’ poem “Labyrinths”:

There’ll nev­er be a door. You’re inside

and the keep encom­pass­es the world

and has nei­ther obverse nor reverse

nor cir­cling in secret cen­ter.

The Esch­er-Borges con­nec­tions go deep­er beyond, and as you can see in John Coulthart’s orig­i­nal post, the selec­tion of Esch­er-cov­ered books extends far­ther.

Aside from count­less non­fic­tion pub­li­ca­tions, the Dutch math­e­mat­i­cal mas­ter’s work has graced sci­ence-fic­tion and fan­ta­sy mag­a­zines, one edi­tion of Flat­land, a col­lec­tion of “Forteana, weird fic­tion, occultism and his­tor­i­cal spec­u­la­tion,” Clive Bark­er’s The Damna­tion Game, and George Orwell’s 1984, a nov­el more wide­ly read than ever by the left- and right-brained alike. But no mat­ter which hemi­sphere we favor, Esch­er — like Orwell, Borges, and Calvi­no — shows us how to see real­i­ty in more inter­est­ing ways.

via John Coulthart

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

The Cov­er of George Orwell’s 1984 Becomes Less Cen­sored with Wear and Tear

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.

Learn Python: A Free Online Course from Google

in Google, Online Courses, Technology | December 19th, 2016

Google has cre­at­ed a free Python class designed for “peo­ple with a lit­tle bit of pro­gram­ming expe­ri­ence who want to learn Python.” A for­tu­nate thing since Python is a com­put­er lan­guage that’s now strong­ly in demand. (By the way, did you know that Python takes its name from Mon­ty Python? A true sto­ry.)

Accord­ing to Google’s course descrip­tion:

The class includes “writ­ten mate­ri­als, lec­ture videos, and lots of code exer­cis­es to prac­tice Python cod­ing. These mate­ri­als are used with­in Google to intro­duce Python to peo­ple who have just a lit­tle pro­gram­ming expe­ri­ence. The first exer­cis­es work on basic Python con­cepts like strings and lists, build­ing up to the lat­er exer­cis­es which are full pro­grams deal­ing with text files, process­es, and http con­nec­tions. The class is geared for peo­ple who have a lit­tle bit of pro­gram­ming expe­ri­ence in some lan­guage, enough to know what a “vari­able” or “if state­ment” is. Beyond that, you do not need to be an expert pro­gram­mer to use this mate­r­i­al.

This mate­r­i­al was cre­at­ed by Nick Par­lante work­ing in the engE­DU group at Google. Google’s Python class will be added to our list of Free Online Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es, a sub­set of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

For any­one inter­est­ed in an intro­duc­to­ry pro­gram­ming course that uses Python, see: Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­er Sci­ence and Pro­gram­ming: A Free Course from MIT.

Oth­er out­fits offer­ing free instruc­tion in Python include Udac­i­ty, Codecad­e­my, and Cours­era.

If you’re look­ing for a gen­er­al­ly well-reviewed text­book, con­sid­er Learn­ing Python, 5th edi­tion (from O’Reil­ly Media.

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!

Introduction to Computer Science and Programming: A Free Course from MIT

in | December 19th, 2016

Taught by Pro­fes­sor John Gut­tag, this MIT course pro­vides an Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­er Sci­ence and Pro­gram­ming. It cov­ers “intro­duc­to­ry com­put­er sci­ence meth­ods and top­ics,” and “all pro­gram­ming assign­ments use Python.”

You can watch all 26 lec­tures above, or find them on YouTube. A syl­labus for the course and relat­ed mate­ri­als can be found on MIT’s web site. The option­al text­book used in the course is Intro­duc­tion to Com­pu­ta­tion and Pro­gram­ming Using Python.

For any­one inter­est­ed in a course more square­ly focused on Python itself, see: Learn Python: A Free Online Course from Google.

Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­er Sci­ence and Pro­gram­ming will be added to our list of Free Online Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es, a sub­set of our larg­er 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!

Learn Python: A Free Online Course from Google

in | December 19th, 2016

Google has cre­at­ed a free Python class designed for “peo­ple with a lit­tle bit of pro­gram­ming expe­ri­ence who want to learn Python.” A for­tu­nate thing since Python is a com­put­er lan­guage that’s now strong­ly in demand. (By the way, did you know that Python takes its name from Mon­ty Python? True sto­ry.)

Accord­ing to Google’s course descrip­tion:

The class includes “writ­ten mate­ri­als, lec­ture videos, and lots of code exer­cis­es to prac­tice Python cod­ing. These mate­ri­als are used with­in Google to intro­duce Python to peo­ple who have just a lit­tle pro­gram­ming expe­ri­ence. The first exer­cis­es work on basic Python con­cepts like strings and lists, build­ing up to the lat­er exer­cis­es which are full pro­grams deal­ing with text files, process­es, and http con­nec­tions. The class is geared for peo­ple who have a lit­tle bit of pro­gram­ming expe­ri­ence in some lan­guage, enough to know what a “vari­able” or “if state­ment” is. Beyond that, you do not need to be an expert pro­gram­mer to use this mate­r­i­al.

This mate­r­i­al was cre­at­ed by Nick Par­lante work­ing in the engE­DU group at Google. Google’s Python class will be added to our list of Free Online Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es, a sub­set of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

For any­one inter­est­ed in an intro­duc­to­ry pro­gram­ming course that uses Python, see: Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­er Sci­ence and Pro­gram­ming: A Free Course from MIT.

Oth­er out­fits offer­ing free instruc­tion in Python include Udac­i­ty, Cours­era and Codecad­e­my.

If you’re look­ing for a gen­er­al­ly well-reviewed text­book, con­sid­er Learn­ing Python, 5th edi­tion (from O’Reil­ly Media).

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!