Making Turkish Sand Coffee: Culinary Alchemy on the Streets of Jordan

in Food & Drink | May 4th, 2015

There’s a lit­tle culi­nary alche­my hap­pen­ing in this video shot in Aqa­ba, Jor­dan. It involves cof­fee and sand. And “Broth­er Gantry” on Red­dit has it all fig­ured out. He explains:

He’s brew­ing cof­fee using tech­niques tra­di­tion­al­ly used to make Turk­ish Cof­fee...

Fill­ing each of those ves­sels (called a cezve) part­way is water, very fine­ly ground cof­fee, and pos­si­bly sug­ar. Because this is hap­pen­ing in Jor­dan there might also be a lit­tle car­da­mon in there and/or no sug­ar.

Nor­mal­ly to make prop­er Turk­ish cof­fee you heat it to a point where it just begins to bub­ble, but under a rolling boil, so it begins to foam up into the neck of the cezve before reduc­ing the heat and allow­ing the foam to die, repeat­ing the process 3 or 4 times before the mix­ture is poured into small cups (fin­can) and you’re left with a won­der­ful­ly strong, thick cof­fee with sus­pend­ed grounds which quick­ly set­tle to the bot­tom. Sand over a flame tra­di­tion­al­ly used in the process as a sort of “adjustable dou­ble boil­er” cups left on the sur­face stay warm and the heat used for brew­ing can be adjust­ed by the depth of the cezve in the sand with­out hav­ing to wor­ry about the tem­per­a­ture of the heat source itself.

The guy in this video seems to be mod­i­fy­ing a lot of the steps to make some­thing like a “reg­u­lar strength” cof­fee more the­atri­cal­ly using tra­di­tion­al equip­ment (e.g. he starts with much less ground cof­fee in the pot, judg­ing from the col­or to begin with, over­fill­ing it, not tak­ing time to let the foam die down but pour­ing out some the brew­ing cof­fee into a cup to reduce the lev­el, and pour­ing the results of a cezve made for sev­er­al cups into a nor­mal sized cof­fee cup instead).

Find more infor­ma­tion on mak­ing Turk­ish Sand Cof­fee at Secret Cof­fee Drinks.

via Digg

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and  share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hon­oré de Balzac Writes About “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” and His Epic Cof­fee Addic­tion

Philoso­phers Drink­ing Cof­fee: The Exces­sive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: An Ad for London’s First Cafe Print­ed Cir­ca 1652

An Animated Louis CK on How the Colonists Came to America and Screwed It All Up (NSFW)

in Animation, Comedy, Video - Politics/Society | May 4th, 2015

I sus­pect par­ents of school-aged chil­dren will find much to relate to in the Lord’s frus­tra­tion with mankind, above, whether or not they’re prone to vent­ing in come­di­an Louis CK’s patent­ed NSFW lan­guage.

Who among us has not turned our back for a few moments, only to dis­cov­er upon our return the house in sham­bles, the nutri­tious snack we set out passed over in favor of junk.

(“Just eat the shit on the floor! I left shit all over the floor! Fuckin’ corn and wheat and shit, grind it up and make some bread—what are you doing!?”)

It’s no won­der ani­ma­tors are drawn to CK. His dis­tinc­tive voice and impec­ca­ble tim­ing have earned him a star­ring role as a talk­ing dog in a CGI fea­ture to be released in 2016. Pri­or to strik­ing it big with the series Louie, he was a fre­quent vis­i­tor on “Dr” Jonathan Katz’s couch. His over-the-top standup spiels pro­vide the unau­tho­rized flash ani­ma­tor with an embar­rass­ment of rich­es.

Cana­di­an film stu­dent John Roney, whose YouTube chan­nel boasts spoofs of Game of Thrones and the Mag­ic School­bus, keeps his visu­als under­stat­ed, min­ing CK’s 2011 per­for­mance at New York City’s Bea­con The­ater for the 2‑dimensional realm.

It could have been so much gross­er.

Turn down the sound and Roney’s adap­ta­tion could be high qual­i­ty children’s pro­gram­ming, the kind most of us god­like par­ents even­tu­al­ly accept as a nec­es­sary evil. Well, maybe not the part where those Aztec kids bowl Louis’ head down the pyra­mids (right above)…though they, like Roney’s oth­er mild­ly observed human and ani­mal char­ac­ters, add to the fun­ny. Here’s the orig­i­nal clip from the Bea­con The­ater show:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sur­re­al Short Films of Louis C.K., 1993–1999

Louis CK Crash­es Zach Gal­i­fi­anakis & Brad Pitt’s Very Awk­ward Inter­view

Jer­ry Sein­feld and Louis CK in Small Cars and Big Yachts, Get­ting Cof­fee

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

A Beautiful Drone’s Eye View of Antarctica

in Travel | May 4th, 2015

If you haven’t seen it already, check it out. When Stock­holm-based film­mak­er Kalle Ljung spent 16 days in the Antarc­tic ear­li­er this year, he “got to expe­ri­ence the most amaz­ing scenery and wildlife” and cap­tured some beau­ti­ful footage with a DJI Phan­tom 2 drone cam­era. Ready for some goose­bumps? Catch the scene (around the 6 minute mark) where Ljung dri­ves the cam­era straight through a hole in an ice­berg. Pret­ty amaz­ing to watch.

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 Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Auschwitz Cap­tured in Haunt­ing Drone Footage

A Eery Drone’s‑Eye View of Cher­nobyl

Drones over Los Ange­les, New York, Lon­don, Bangkok & Mex­i­co City

Read Noam Chomsky & Sam Harris’ “Unpleasant” Email Exchange

in Current Affairs, Philosophy | May 1st, 2015

In 2013, we doc­u­ment­ed the acri­mo­nious exchange between Noam Chom­sky and Slavoj Žižek, which all start­ed when Chom­sky accused Žižek of “posturing–using fan­cy terms like poly­syl­la­bles and pre­tend­ing [to] have a the­o­ry when you have no the­o­ry what­so­ev­er.” To which Žižek respond­ed: “Chom­sky, … always empha­sizes how one has to be empir­i­cal, accu­rate… well I don’t think I know a guy who was so often empir­i­cal­ly wrong in his descrip­tions…” And so it con­tin­ued.

Two years lat­er, Chom­sky now finds him­self in anoth­er fraught exchange — this time, with Sam Har­ris, author of The End of Faith and Let­ter to a Chris­t­ian Nation. It’s a lit­tle hard to pin down when the dust-up first began. But, it at least goes back to Jan­u­ary, when Har­ris took Chom­sky to task  (hear an excerpt of a longer pod­cast above) for draw­ing a moral equiv­a­lence between U.S. mil­i­tary action and the vio­lence com­mit­ted by some of Amer­i­ca’s his­tor­i­cal foes (e.g., the Nazis dur­ing WWII and lat­er Al-Qae­da).

Over the past week, Chom­sky and Har­ris con­tin­ued the debate, trad­ing emails back and forth. Their corre­spon­dence runs some 10,000 words, but it only amounts to what Har­ris ulti­mate­ly calls “an unpleas­ant and fruit­less encounter” that demon­strates the “lim­its of dis­course.” It’s an exchange that Chom­sky seem­ing­ly pre­ferred to keep pri­vate (his per­mis­sion to print the emails was grudg­ing at best), and Har­ris saw some virtue in mak­ing pub­lic. The final email by Har­ris reads:

May 1, 2015

From: Sam Har­ris
To: Noam Chom­sky

Noam—

I’ve now read our cor­re­spon­dence through and have decid­ed to pub­lish it (www.samharris.org). I under­stand your point about “exhi­bi­tion­ism,” but I dis­agree in this case.

You and I prob­a­bly share a mil­lion read­ers who would have found a gen­uine con­ver­sa­tion between us extreme­ly use­ful. And I trust that they will be dis­ap­point­ed by our fail­ure to pro­duce one, as I am. How­ev­er, if pub­lish­ing this exchange helps any­one to bet­ter com­mu­ni­cate about these top­ics in the future, our time won’t have been entire­ly wast­ed.

Sam

Whether Sam is right about that (is there some­thing par­tic­u­lar­ly instruc­tive here?), you can decide. Here’s the entire exchange.

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:

Noam Chom­sky Slams Žižek and Lacan: Emp­ty ‘Pos­tur­ing’

Slavoj Žižek Responds to Noam Chom­sky: ‘I Don’t Know a Guy Who Was So Often Empir­i­cal­ly Wrong’

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

Read 9 Free Books By Noam Chom­sky Online

Hear the “Seikilos Epitaph,” the Oldest Complete Song in the World: An Inspiring Tune from 100 BC

in History, Music | May 1st, 2015

Last sum­mer, we fea­tured a Sumer­ian hymn con­sid­ered the old­est known song in the world. Giv­en the pop­u­lar­i­ty of that post, it seems we may have long under­es­ti­mat­ed the num­ber of ancient-musi­cophiles on the inter­net. There­fore, we sub­mit today for your approval the Seik­i­los epi­taph, the old­est known com­plete musi­cal com­po­si­tion — that is to say, a song that our 21st-cen­tu­ry selves can still play and hear in its intend­ed entire­ty, more or less as did the ancient Greeks who lived dur­ing the first-cen­tu­ry (or there­abouts) era of its com­po­si­tion.

The Seik­i­los epi­taph’s sur­vival in one piece, as it were, no doubt owes some­thing to its short­ness. The Greeks could carve the entire thing onto the sur­face of a tomb­stone, exact­ly the medi­um on which the mod­ern world redis­cov­ered it in 1885 near Aidin, Turkey. Its lyrics, lib­er­al­ly brought into Eng­lish, exhort us as fol­lows:

While you live, shine

have no grief at all

life exists only for a short while

and time demands its toll.

The sur­face also bears an explana­to­ry inscrip­tion about — and writ­ten in the voice of — the arti­fact itself:  “I am a tomb­stone, an image. Seik­i­los placed me here as an ever­last­ing sign of death­less remem­brance.” The Greeks, like many peo­ples in the ancient world of unvar­nished mor­tal­i­ty, rel­ished a good memen­to mori, and this old­est com­plete song in the world offers one whose mes­sage still holds today, and which we can trace all the way to more recent words, like those of William Saroy­an, when he said, “In the time of your life, live — so that in that good time there shall be no ugli­ness or death for your­self or for any life your life touch­es.”

Or for anoth­er inter­pre­ta­tion, you can hear a mod­ern, gui­tar-dri­ven cov­er of the Seik­i­los epi­taph by Vlog­broth­er and famous inter­net teacher Hank Green, in a tru­ly strik­ing exam­ple of two eras col­lid­ing. But of course, the Youtube era has also made every­one a crit­ic. As one com­menter per­fect­ly put it, “I pre­fer his ear­li­er stuff.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to the Old­est Song in the World: A Sumer­ian Hymn Writ­ten 3,400 Years Ago

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’

Hear The Epic of Gil­gamesh Read in the Orig­i­nal Akka­di­an and Enjoy the Sounds of Mesopotamia

Learn Latin, Old Eng­lish, San­skrit, Clas­si­cal Greek & Oth­er Ancient Lan­guages in 10 Lessons

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Do Not Track: Interactive Film Series Reveals the Personal Information You’re Giving Away on the Web

in Google, Life, Technology, Web/Tech | May 1st, 2015

If Face­book knows every­thing about you, it’s because you hand­ed it the keys to your king­dom.  You post­ed a pho­to, liked a favorite child­hood TV show, and will­ing­ly vol­un­teered your birth­day. In oth­er words, you hand­ed it all the data it needs to annoy you with tar­get­ed adver­tis­ing.

(In my case, it’s an ancient secret that helped a mid­dle aged mom shave 5 inch­es off her waist­line. Let me save you a click: acai berries.)

Film­mak­er Brett Gay­lor (a “lefty Cana­di­an dad who reads sci­ence fic­tion) seeks to set the record straight regard­ing the web economy’s impact on per­son­al pri­va­cy.

Watch­ing his inter­ac­tive doc­u­men­tary web series, Do Not Track, you’ll inevitably arrive at a cross­roads where you must decide whether or not to share your per­son­al infor­ma­tion. No big­gie, right? It’s what hap­pens every time you con­sent to “log in with Face­book.”

Every time you choose this con­ve­nience, you’re allow­ing Google and oth­er big time track­ers to stick a har­poon (aka cook­ie) in your side. Swim all you want, lit­tle fishy. You’re not exact­ly get­ting away, par­tic­u­lar­ly if you’re logged in with a mobile device with a com­pul­sion to reveal your where­abouts.

You say you have noth­ing to hide? Bul­ly for you! What you may not have con­sid­ered is the impact your dig­i­tal easy-breezi­ness has on friends. Your net­work. And vice ver­sa. Tag away!

In this are­na, every “like”—from an acquaintance’s recent­ly launched organ­ic skin­care line to Star Trek—helps track­ers build a sur­pris­ing­ly accu­rate por­trait, one that can be used to deter­mine how insur­able you are, how wor­thy of a loan. Gen­der and age aren’t the only fac­tors that mat­ter here. So does your demon­strat­ed extra­ver­sion, your degree of open­ness.

(Ha ha, and you thought it cost you noth­ing to “like” that acquaintance’s smelly straw­ber­ry-scent­ed mois­tur­iz­er!)

To get the most out of Do Not Track, you’ll want to sup­ply its pro­duc­ers with your email address on your first vis­it. It’s a lit­tle counter-intu­itive, giv­en the sub­ject mat­ter, but doing so will pro­vide you with a unique con­fig­u­ra­tion that promis­es to lift the veil on what the track­ers know about you.

What does it say about me that I couldn’t get my Face­book log-in to work? How dis­ap­point­ing that this fail­ure meant I would be view­ing results tai­lored to Episode 3’s star, Ger­man jour­nal­ist Richard Gut­jahr?

(Your pro­file… says that your age is 42 and your gen­der is male. But the real gold mine is your Face­book data over time. By ana­lyz­ing the at least 129 things you have liked on Face­book, we have used our advanced algo­rithm tech­niques to assess your per­son­al­i­ty and have found you scored high­est in Open­ness which indi­cates you are cre­ative, imag­i­na­tive, and adven­tur­ous. Our per­son­al­i­ty eval­u­a­tion sys­tem uses Psy­cho-demo­graph­ic trait pre­dic­tions pow­ered by the Apply Mag­ic Sauce API devel­oped at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge Psy­cho­met­rics Cen­tre.)

I think the take­away is that I am not too on top of my pri­va­cy set­tings. And why would I be? I’m an extro­vert with noth­ing to hide, except my spend­ing habits, brows­ing his­to­ry, race, age, mar­i­tal sta­tus…

Should we take a tip from our high school brethren, who evade the scruti­ny of col­lege admis­sions coun­selors by adopt­ing some ridicu­lous, evoca­tive pseu­do­nym? Expect upcom­ing episodes of Do Not Track to help us nav­i­gate these and oth­er dig­i­tal issues.

Tune in to Do Not Track here. You can find episodes 1, 2 and 3 cur­rent­ly online. Episodes 4–6 will roll out between May 12 and June 9.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Internet’s Own Boy: New Doc­u­men­tary About Aaron Swartz Now Free Online

A Threat to Inter­net Free­dom: Film­mak­er Bri­an Knap­pen­berg­er Explains Why Net Neu­tral­i­ty Mat­ters

How Brew­ster Kahle and the Inter­net Archive Will Pre­serve the Infi­nite Infor­ma­tion on the Web

Ayun Hal­l­i­day an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine invites you to look into her very soul @AyunHalliday

Klingon for English Speakers: Sign Up for a Free Course Coming Soon

in Language Lessons, Random | April 30th, 2015

Duolin­go pro­vides free edu­ca­tion­al resources that will help you learn a whole host of ter­res­tri­al lan­guages — lan­guages like Span­ish, French, Ger­man, and Ital­ian. But now they’re expand­ing into extrater­res­tri­al lan­guages too, like Klin­gon. That’s, of course, “the con­struct­ed lan­guage spo­ken by the fic­tion­al extrater­res­tri­al Klin­gon species in the Star Trek uni­verse. Cre­at­ed by Marc Okrand, the lan­guage itself is cen­tered around space­craft, war­fare, and weapon­ry — but it also reflects the direct­ness and sense of humor of the Klin­gon cul­ture.”

Duolin­go’s Klin­gon course — Klin­gon for Eng­lish Speak­ers — is cur­rent­ly under devel­op­ment.  But, so far, almost 18,000 peo­ple have request­ed to be noti­fied when the course is ready to go. You can add your name to the list here, too.

And before you go, make sure you check out our meta list of Free Lan­guage Lessons, where you can find free lessons cov­er­ing 48 dif­fer­ent lan­guages. The list includes ter­res­tri­al lessons from Duolin­go too.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn 48 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More

Ani­mat­ed Video Explores the Invent­ed Lan­guages of Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones & Star Trek

French in Action: Cult Clas­sic French Lessons from Yale (52 Episodes)

Take Free Online Cours­es at Hog­warts: Charms, Potions, Defense Against the Dark Arts & More

1100 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

George Orwell & Christopher Hitchens’ Ironclad Rules for Making a Good Cup of Tea

in Food & Drink | April 30th, 2015

Images via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

It’s not that I don’t appre­ci­ate good coffee—I con­sid­er it a del­i­ca­cy. But at the end and the begin­ning of the day, cof­fee most­ly func­tions as a caf­feine deliv­ery sys­tem. But not tea. Tea must be savored, and it must be good. Amer­i­cans’ enthu­si­asm for tea does not come nat­u­ral­ly. What pass­es for tea in the U.S. is best described by Christo­pher Hitchens as “a cup or pot of water, well off the boil, with the tea bags lying on an adja­cent cold plate.” (See his Jan­u­ary 2011 piece in Slate called “How to Make a Decent Cup of Tea.”) If this doesn’t sound wrong, he elab­o­rates, set­ting up his endorse­ment of George Orwell’s method­i­cal instruc­tions for prop­er tea:

Then comes the ridicu­lous busi­ness of pour­ing the tepid water, dunk­ing the bag until some change in col­or occurs, and even­tu­al­ly find­ing some way of dis­pos­ing of the result­ing and dispir­it­ing tam­pon sur­ro­gate. The drink itself is then best thrown away, though if swal­lowed it will have about the same effect on morale as a read­ing of the mem­oirs of Pres­i­dent James Earl Carter.

I like Jim­my Carter. I haven’t read his mem­oirs, and this does indeed sound awful. And before I had learned any­thing at all about drink­ing tea, it was all I knew. I tried. I cribbed a few notes here and there, wrote in tea shops, read the rough-hewn for­mal­ism of Sen no Rikyu, and looked to the East. I did not look to Britain and her for­mer Com­mon­wealth.

Per­haps I should. George Orwell would prob­a­bly say so. Hitchens as well, though they don’t per­fect­ly agree with each oth­er. “Tea,” wrote Orwell in his famous 1946 essay “A Nice Cup of Tea,” “is one of the main­stays of civ­i­liza­tion in this coun­try, as well as in Eire, Aus­tralia and New Zealand, but… the man­ner of mak­ing it is the sub­ject of vio­lent dis­putes.” The only dis­agree­ment Hitchens musters against Orwell is that some of his rules, “(always use Indi­an or Ceylonese—i.e. Sri Lankan—tea; make tea only in small quan­ti­ties; avoid sil­ver­ware pots) may be con­sid­ered option­al or out­mod­ed.”

Many old restraints may be loos­ened. But make no mis­take, for Hitchens, as for Orwell, mak­ing a good cup of tea is not about mind­ful­ness, patience, imper­ma­nence, or med­i­ta­tion. It is about rules. Orwell had 11. The “essen­tial ones are eas­i­ly com­mit­ted to mem­o­ry, and they are sim­ple to put into prac­tice.” What are they? Hitchens has his own suc­cinct para­phrase, which you can read over at Slate. Orwell’s rather baroque list we reprint, in part, below for your edi­fi­ca­tion. Read the com­plete essay here. Hitchens rec­om­mends you straight­en out your next barista on some tea essen­tials. Imag­ine, how­ev­er, pre­sent­ing such an unfor­tu­nate per­son with this list of demands:

• First of all, one should use Indi­an or Cey­lonese tea. Chi­na tea has virtues which are not to be despised nowa­days — it is eco­nom­i­cal, and one can drink it with­out milk — but there is not much stim­u­la­tion in it.…
• Sec­ond­ly, tea should be made in small quan­ti­ties — that is, in a teapot.… The teapot should be made of chi­na or earth­en­ware. Sil­ver or Bri­tan­ni­aware teapots pro­duce infe­ri­or tea and enam­el pots are worse.…
• Third­ly, the pot should be warmed before­hand. This is bet­ter done by plac­ing it on the hob than by the usu­al method of swill­ing it out with hot water.
• Fourth­ly, the tea should be strong. For a pot hold­ing a quart, if you are going to fill it near­ly to the brim, six heaped tea­spoons would be about right.…  I main­tain that one strong cup of tea is bet­ter than twen­ty weak ones. All true tea lovers not only like their tea strong, but like it a lit­tle stronger with each year that pass­es.…
• Fifth­ly, the tea should be put straight into the pot. No strain­ers, muslin bags or oth­er devices to imprison the tea.…
• Sixth­ly, one should take the teapot to the ket­tle and not the oth­er way about. The water should be actu­al­ly boil­ing at the moment of impact, which means that one should keep it on the flame while one pours.…
• Sev­enth­ly, after mak­ing the tea, one should stir it, or bet­ter, give the pot a good shake, after­wards allow­ing the leaves to set­tle.
• Eighth­ly, one should drink out of a good break­fast cup — that is, the cylin­dri­cal type of cup, not the flat, shal­low type.…
• Ninth­ly, one should pour the cream off the milk before using it for tea. Milk that is too creamy always gives tea a sick­ly taste.
• Tenth­ly, one should pour tea into the cup first. This is one of the most con­tro­ver­sial points of all; indeed in every fam­i­ly in Britain there are prob­a­bly two schools of thought on the sub­ject. The milk-first school can bring for­ward some fair­ly strong argu­ments, but I main­tain that my own argu­ment is unan­swer­able. This is that, by putting the tea in first and stir­ring as one pours, one can exact­ly reg­u­late the amount of milk…
• Last­ly, tea — unless one is drink­ing it in the Russ­ian style — should be drunk with­out sug­ar. I know very well that I am in a minor­i­ty here. But still, how can you call your­self a true tealover if you destroy the flavour of your tea by putting sug­ar in it? It would be equal­ly rea­son­able to put in pep­per or salt.…

Relat­ed Con­tent

10 Gold­en Rules for Mak­ing the Per­fect Cup of Tea (1941)

10 Essen­tial Tips for Mak­ing Great Cof­fee at Home

Hon­oré de Balzac Writes About “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” and His Epic Cof­fee Addic­tion

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

Take a Virtual Tour of Robben Island Where Nelson Mandela and Other Apartheid Opponents Were Jailed

in Google, History | April 30th, 2015

Ted Mills recent­ly told you all about the Google-pow­ered vir­tu­al tour of Abbey Road Stu­dios. What should­n’t go with­out men­tion is the new, Google-pow­ered vir­tu­al tour of Robben Island — “the island where Nel­son Man­dela and many of South Africa’s free­dom fight­ers were impris­oned dur­ing their quest for equal­i­ty.” Along with over 3,000 polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, Nel­son Man­dela spent 18 years impris­oned here, much of the time con­fined to a 8 x 7 foot prison cell. (Don’t for­get Man­dela also spent anoth­er nine years in Pollsmoor Prison and Vic­tor Ver­ster Prison.)

All of the Robben Island tours are con­duct­ed by ex-pris­on­ers. On the new vir­tu­al tour, you will encounter Vusum­si Mcon­go (see above), a mem­ber of the anti-Apartheid move­ment who was jailed on Robben Island from 1978 to 1990.

You can start the tour of the max­i­mum secu­ri­ty prison and UNESCO World Her­itage Site here.

via Google

John Green’s Crash Course in U.S. History: From Colonialism to Obama in 47 Videos

in History | April 30th, 2015

Those who can­not remem­ber the past, said George San­tayana, are con­demned to repeat it. Luck­i­ly, if you learn about the past from John Green’s Crash Course video series, you can play them on repeat as many times as you like until you do remem­ber it. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured the acclaimed young-adult nov­el­ist, pio­neer­ing vlog­ger, inter­net edu­ca­tor, and appar­ent his­to­ry buff Green’s Crash Course in Big His­to­ry and Crash Course in World His­to­ry, and today we have for you his much more nar­row­ly-focused Crash Course in U.S. His­to­ry.

The his­to­ry of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca — an enti­ty much younger than not just the uni­verse and the world but than most oth­er coun­tries — would seem entire­ly man­age­able by com­par­i­son, one Green and his team could knock off in a few weeks and move on to grander sub­jects. But as any­one in the non­fic­tion pub­lish­ing indus­try knows, when Amer­i­can his­to­ry sells, it sells, not just because of the coun­try’s promi­nent place on the world stage, but because Amer­i­can his­to­ry con­nects to so many oth­er not just his­tor­i­cal but social, polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, and even tech­no­log­i­cal themes.

Green and com­pa­ny (a group that includes his one­time high school his­to­ry teacher) thus have more than enough to work with for all 47 episodes of Crash Course U.S. His­to­ry, from the natives and the Spaniards to the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion to the Civ­il War to the Great Depres­sion to the 60s to the Clin­ton years to what the series calls Oba­ma­na­tion — with plen­ty in between. Green tells the sto­ry with his usu­al mix­ture of well-select­ed detail, copi­ous visu­al aids, and dizzy­ing speed (enough of all of them so that you real­ly do need to re-watch the videos, or at least pause them fre­quent­ly), result­ing in a breezy yet sur­pris­ing­ly com­pre­hen­sive long-form primer on just what made the Unit­ed States so big, so pow­er­ful, so inno­v­a­tive, so self-regard­ing, so frus­trat­ing — and, ulti­mate­ly, so fas­ci­nat­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Crash Course in World His­to­ry

Crash Course Big His­to­ry: John Green Teach­es Life, the Uni­verse & Every­thing

Down­load 78 Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es: From Ancient Greece to The Mod­ern World

A Short His­to­ry of Amer­i­ca, Accord­ing to the Irrev­er­ent Com­ic Satirist Robert Crumb

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.