Discover the Life & Work of Stanley Kubrick in a Sweeping Three-Hour Video Essay

in Film | April 6th, 2015

For at least fifty years, the work of Stan­ley Kubrick has con­sti­tut­ed an ide­al object of study for seri­ous cinephiles. Now that the tech­no­log­i­cal democ­ra­ti­za­tion of the past decade has allowed some of the most seri­ous cinephiles to become video essay­ists, that study has flow­ered into a host of mini-doc­u­men­taries close­ly exam­in­ing the tech­niques of all of film his­to­ry’s most scru­ti­niz­able auteurs. The sub­field of Kubrick-themed video essay­ism recent­ly reached a new high water­mark with film­mak­er Cameron Beyl’s five-part, three-hour Direc­tors Series study of the man’s life and work.

“Every liv­ing film­mak­er today works under the shad­ow of Stan­ley Kubrick,” says Beyl in his nar­ra­tion toward the end of the series. “His roller-coast­er ride of a career last­ed 45 years and spanned two con­ti­nents, leav­ing four­teen fea­tures and count­less inno­va­tions in its wake.

In mak­ing his films, Kubrick ulti­mate­ly want­ed to change the form of cin­e­ma itself. His explo­ration of alter­na­tive sto­ry struc­tures and new forms of expres­sion result­ed in sev­er­al ground­break­ing con­tri­bu­tions to the devel­op­ment of the craft itself.”

If you want to find out much more about the nature of those ground­break­ing con­tri­bu­tions, block out the time and watch Beyl’s analy­ses of each peri­od of Kubrick­’s career: the time of his ear­ly inde­pen­dent fea­tures (Fear & Desire, Killer’s Kiss, The Killing), the Kirk Dou­glas years (Paths of Glo­ry and Spar­ta­cus), the Peter Sell­ers come­dies (Loli­ta and Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Wor­ry­ing and Love the Bomb), the mas­ter­works (2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clock­work Orange, Bar­ry Lyn­don, and The Shin­ing), and the final fea­tures (Full Met­al Jack­et and Eyes Wide Shut.)

The project leaves no aspect of Kubrick­’s mas­tery unmen­tioned: his painstak­ing research habits, his much-dis­cussed take-after-take-after-take shoot­ing method on set, his care­ful method of dis­cov­er­ing each film’s form in the edit­ing room, his eager­ness to incor­po­rate new tech­nol­o­gy into his pro­duc­tions, and his fin­ished pic­tures’ simul­ta­ne­ous embod­i­ment and sub­ver­sion of genre. It makes us ask the obvi­ous but seem­ing­ly unan­swer­able ques­tion: who’s the next Stan­ley Kubrick? But Beyl actu­al­ly has an answer, and one that has become the sub­ject of his next series, already in progress: David Finch­er. The direc­tor of The Game, Fight Club, and The Social Net­work has big shoes to fill —  or so he’ll real­ize even more clear­ly if he watch­es the Kubrick series him­self.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sig­na­ture Shots from the Films of Stan­ley Kubrick: One-Point Per­spec­tive

The Shin­ing and Oth­er Com­plex Stan­ley Kubrick Films Recut as Sim­ple Hol­ly­wood Movies

Lost Kubrick: A Short Doc­u­men­tary on Stan­ley Kubrick’s Unfin­ished Films

Napoleon: The Great­est Movie Stan­ley Kubrick Nev­er Made

Explore the Mas­sive Stan­ley Kubrick Exhib­it at the Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um of Art

The Mak­ing of Stan­ley Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange

Ter­ry Gilliam: The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)

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

Read An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments: A Fun Primer on How to Strengthen, Not Weaken, Your Arguments

in Books, Philosophy, Politics | April 6th, 2015

The sci­ence of argu­men­ta­tion can seem com­pli­cat­ed, but in day-to-day terms, it quite often comes down to com­pet­ing emo­tions. Polit­i­cal dis­agree­ments thrive on dis­gust and fear; we shut down our rea­son­ing when we feel stressed or angry; and it is dif­fi­cult to get oppo­nents to hear us, whether they agree or not, if we do not exhib­it any sym­pa­thy for their posi­tion, hard as that may be.

How­ev­er, sub­jects in tests told not to feel any­thing about an issue before view­ing media about it tend to be more sup­port­ive. They’ve had some oppor­tu­ni­ty to access high­er order think­ing skills and to over­ride knee-jerk reac­tions. Most argu­ments take place in the fray—family din­ners, online forum wars—but even in these cas­es, apply­ing the best of our rea­son­ing, before, dur­ing, or after, can put us in bet­ter stead. As Ali Almos­sawi, author of An Illus­trat­ed Book of Bad Argu­ments (read online ver­sion here) puts it in his pref­ace:

… for­mal­iz­ing one’s rea­son­ing [can] lead to use­ful ben­e­fits such as clar­i­ty of thought and expres­sion, objec­tiv­i­ty and greater con­fi­dence. The abil­i­ty to ana­lyze argu­ments also help[s] pro­vide a yard­stick for know­ing when to with­draw from dis­cus­sions that would most like­ly be futile.

Almossawi’s strat­e­gy to mit­i­gate bad, or wast­ed, think­ing comes in the form of an inoc­u­la­tion. He quotes Stephen King, who “describes his expe­ri­ence of read­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly ter­ri­ble nov­el as, ‘the lit­er­ary equiv­a­lent of a small­pox vac­ci­na­tion.’” Rather than a Ciceron­ian trea­tise on what makes a good argu­ment, Almos­sawi presents us with nine­teen exam­ples of the bad: infor­mal log­i­cal fal­lac­i­es we may be famil­iar with—Appeal to Author­i­ty (below), Cir­cu­lar Rea­son­ing (fur­ther down), Slip­pery Slope (bottom)—as well as many we may not be.

The twist here is in Ale­jan­dro Giraldo’s play­ful illus­tra­tions, and the mem­o­rable exam­ples that fol­low Almossawi’s descrip­tions. Inspired part­ly by “alle­gories such as Orwell’s Ani­mal Farm and part­ly by the humor­ous non­sense of works such as Lewis Carroll’s sto­ries and poems,” the draw­ings are also high­ly rem­i­nis­cent, if not very much inspired by, the baroque car­toons of Tony Mil­lion­aire. The art is rich and full of sur­pris­es; the sam­ple argu­ments sil­ly but effec­tive at mak­ing the point.

The next time you find your­self melt­ing down over a dis­agree­ment, it will like­ly help to take a time out and refresh your­self with this use­ful primer. If noth­ing else, it will give you some insight into the short­com­ings of your own argu­ments, and maybe some mea­sure of when to drop the sub­ject alto­geth­er. As Richard Feynman—quoted in an epi­logue to the book—once remarked, “The first prin­ci­ple is that you must not fool your­self and you are the eas­i­est per­son to fool.”  Find the book online here, or pur­chase a copy here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

130+ Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

A Guide to Log­i­cal Fal­lac­i­es: The “Ad Hominem,” “Straw­man” & Oth­er Fal­lac­i­es Explained in 2‑Minute Videos

Philoso­pher Daniel Den­nett Presents Sev­en Tools For Crit­i­cal Think­ing

Oxford’s Free Course Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing For Begin­ners Will Teach You to Think Like a Philoso­pher

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

George R. R. Martin Puts Online a New Chapter from His Highly Anticipated Book, The Winds of Winter

in Sci Fi | April 5th, 2015

Image cre­at­ed by Yulia Niko­lae­va 

Just a very quick heads up: Late last week, George R. R. Mar­tin pub­lished on his web site a new chap­ter from his upcom­ing book, The Winds of Win­ter. The chap­ter tells us about Alyne (depict­ed above) and it con­tains a few spoil­ers. Read it here.

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.

Do You See Marilyn Monroe or Albert Einstein in This Photo? An Amazing Eye Test Based on MIT Research

in Science | April 3rd, 2015

This visu­al curios­i­ty beats the black/gold dress craze of last month. The video above asks you to look at a pho­to and decide whether you see Albert Ein­stein or Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe — two 20th cen­tu­ry icons who look pret­ty much noth­ing alike. If you say Albert, your eyes are in good shape. If you say Mar­i­lyn, it’s appar­ent­ly time to pay a vis­it to the optometrist.

The sci­ence dis­cussed here is based on the research of Aude Oli­va, who works on Com­pu­ta­tion­al Per­cep­tion and Cog­ni­tion at MIT.  You can see the orig­i­nal “Marylin Ein­stein” hybrid image above, which Aude cre­at­ed for the March 31st 2007 issue of New Sci­en­tist mag­a­zine. More back­ground info on hybrid images can be found on this MIT page. Plus find a gallery of hybrid images here.

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:

The 430 Books in Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Library: How Many Have You Read?

Albert Ein­stein Reads ‘The Com­mon Lan­guage of Sci­ence’ (1941)

A Sneak Peek at Junot Díaz’s Syl­labi for His MIT Writ­ing Class­es, and the Nov­els on His Read­ing List

Listen to Bill Murray Lead a Guided Meditation on How It Feels to Be Bill Murray

in Film, Life, Philosophy | April 3rd, 2015

Pho­to by Gage Skid­more, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

How does it feel to be Bill Mur­ray?

Won­der­ful, pre­sum­ably. You’re wealthy, well respect­ed, and high­ly sought. Your ran­dom real world cameos bring joy to scores of unsus­pect­ing mor­tals.

Mur­ray’s St. Vin­cent direc­tor Ted Melfi cites his abil­i­ty to inhab­it the present moment:

He does­n’t care about what just hap­pened. He does­n’t think about what’s going to hap­pen. He does­n’t even book round-trip tick­ets. Bill buys one-ways and then decides when he wants to go home.

A stun­ning­ly good use of wealth and pow­er. If he were any­one but the inim­itable Bill Mur­ray, I bet we’d be seething with envi­ous class rage.

He devis­es the rules by which he plays, from the way he rubs shoul­ders with the com­mon man to the toll free num­ber that serves as his agent to indulging in cre­ative acts of rebel­lion that could get a younger, less nuanced star labelled brat­ty, if not men­tal­ly ill, and des­per­ate­ly in need of rehab.

As if Mur­ray needs any­one else to deter­mine when he needs a break. When his 1984 film adap­ta­tion of Som­er­set Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge failed at the box office, he grant­ed him­self a four year sab­bat­i­cal. He stud­ied his­to­ry and phi­los­o­phy at the Sor­bonne, became fas­ci­nat­ed with the Gre­co-Armen­ian mys­tic George Gur­d­j­eff…and learned how to avoid spook­ing the pub­lic by putting a light spin on a clear­ly trans­for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence:

I’ve retired a cou­ple of times. It’s great, because you can just say, “Oh, I’m sor­ry. I’m retired.” And peo­ple will actu­al­ly believe that you’ve retired. There are nut­ters out there that will go, “Oh, okay!” and then leave you alone.

But how does it real­ly feel to be Bill Mur­ray?

Relax­ing, appar­ent­ly:

…some­one told me some secrets ear­ly on about liv­ing, and that you just have to remind your­self … you can do the very best you can when you’re very very relaxed. No mat­ter what it is, what­ev­er your job is, the more relaxed you are the bet­ter you are. That’s sort of why I got into act­ing. I real­ized the more fun I had the bet­ter I did it and I thought, that’s a job I can be proud of. If I had to go to work and no mat­ter what my con­di­tion, no mat­ter what my mood is, no mat­ter how I feel … if I can relax myself and enjoy what I’m doing and have fun with it, I can do my job real­ly well. It has changed my life, learn­ing that.

When the ques­tion was put to him at the 2014 Toron­to Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, Mur­ray led a guid­ed med­i­ta­tion, below, to help the audi­ence get a feel for what it feels like to be as relaxed and in the moment as Bill Mur­ray. Putting all jok­ing to the side, he shares his for­mu­la as sin­cere­ly as Mr. Rogers address­ing his young tele­vi­sion audi­ence. Don’t for­get that this is a man who read the poet­ry of Emi­ly Dick­in­son to a room­ful of rapt con­struc­tion work­ers with a straight and con­fi­dent face. Com­plete text is below.

Let’s all ask our­selves that ques­tion right now: What does it feel like to be you? What does it feel like to be you? Yeah. It feels good to be you, doesn’t it? It feels good, because there’s one thing that you are — you’re the only one that’s you, right?

So you’re the only one that’s you, and we get con­fused some­times — or I do, I think every­one does — you try to com­pete. You think, damn it, some­one else is try­ing to be me. Some­one else is try­ing to be me. But I don’t have to armor myself against those peo­ple; I don’t have to armor myself against that idea if I can real­ly just relax and feel con­tent in this way and this regard.

If I can just feel… Just think now: How much do you weigh? This is a thing I like to do with myself when I get lost and I get feel­ing fun­ny. How much do you weigh? Think about how much each per­son here weighs and try to feel that weight in your seat right now, in your bot­tom right now. Parts in your feet and parts in your bum. Just try to feel your own weight, in your own seat, in your own feet. Okay? So if you can feel that weight in your body, if you can come back into the most per­son­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, a very per­son­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, which is: I am. This is me now. Here I am, right now. This is me now. Then you don’t feel like you have to leave, and be over there, or look over there. You don’t feel like you have to rush off and be some­where. There’s just a won­der­ful sense of well-being that begins to cir­cu­late up and down, from your top to your bot­tom. Up and down from your top to your spine. And you feel some­thing that makes you almost want to smile, that makes you want to feel good, that makes you want to feel like you could embrace your­self.

So, what’s it like to be me? You can ask your­self, “What’s it like to be me?” You know, the only way we’ll ever know what it’s like to be you is if you work your best at being you as often as you can, and keep remind­ing your­self: That’s where home is.

via One Being

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bill Mur­ray Reads Great Poet­ry by Bil­ly Collins, Cole Porter, and Sarah Man­gu­so

Bill Mur­ray Gives a Delight­ful Dra­mat­ic Read­ing of Twain’s Huck­le­ber­ry Finn (1996)

Bill Mur­ray Sings the Poet­ry of Bob Dylan: Shel­ter From the Storm

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

Jack Kerouac Was a Secret, Obsessive Fan of Fantasy Baseball

in Literature, Sports | April 3rd, 2015

Bear in mind, fan­ta­sy base­ball fans, that with the sea­son about to start up again, you should­n’t feel like you have to take any grief for enjoy­ing the game. It counts among its enthu­si­asts no less a lumi­nary than Jack Ker­ouac, author of On The Road and The Dhar­ma Bums, and he did­n’t just enjoy it, he arguably invent­ed it. The New York Pub­lic library devot­ed an exhi­bi­tion to Ker­ouac’s near-life­long hob­by called “Fan­ta­sy Sports and the King of the Beats,” reveal­ing how the writer invent­ed an elab­o­rate means of expe­ri­enc­ing the joys of Amer­i­ca’s Nation­al Pas­time all on his own.

He also cre­at­ed an entire world of imag­ined teams, imag­ined play­ers, and imag­ined ath­let­ic and finan­cial dra­mas as well. The New York Times’ Charles McGrath writes that Ker­ouac “obses­sive­ly played a fan­ta­sy base­ball game of his own inven­tion, chart­ing the exploits of made-up play­ers like Wino Love, War­by Pep­per, Heinie Twi­ett, Phe­gus Cody and Zagg Park­er, who toiled on imag­i­nary teams named either for cars (the Pitts­burgh Ply­mouths and New York Chevvies, for exam­ple) or for col­ors (the Boston Grays and Cincin­nati Blacks).”

Rather than a dis­trac­tion from his writ­ing, all this proved to be “ide­al train­ing for a would-be author,” since his ver­sion of fan­ta­sy base­ball also required him come up with volu­mi­nous cov­er­age of the action which “imi­tates the over­heat­ed, epi­thet-stud­ded sports­writ­ing of the day.” Fan­ta­sy base­ball has since turned into a nation­al (and, to an extent, even inter­na­tion­al) phe­nom­e­non, but the game that thou­sands of base­ball nuts play today, which uses the real sta­tis­tics of non-made-up base­ball play­ers on actu­al teams, does­n’t demand near­ly as much cre­ativ­i­ty as did the one Ker­ouac played by him­self.

Ker­ouac’s fan­ta­sy base­ball even achieved a kind of pre­science, not just in terms of pre­fig­ur­ing fan­ta­sy base­ball as we now know it, but events in base­ball prop­er: “As befit­ting the author of On the Road, the nar­ra­tor of which jour­neys three times to Cal­i­for­nia with a pil­grim’s zeal,” says the NYPL’s site, Ker­ouac “brought his fan­ta­sy base­ball league to Cal­i­for­nia. In this instance, fan­ta­sy trumped real­i­ty, since Ker­ouac’s Cal­i­for­nia teams are estab­lished at least one year before the Dodgers and Giants aban­doned New York for Cal­i­for­nia.” One won­ders what the vic­to­ries and tribu­la­tions of the Ply­mouths and the Chevvies, the Grays and the Blacks, their fates decid­ed with mar­bles, sticks, com­plex dia­grams, and cards full of now-inde­ci­pher­able sym­bols, might fore­tell about the fate of Major League Base­bal­l’s teams this com­ing sea­son.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jack Kerouac’s Hand-Drawn Map of the Hitch­hik­ing Trip Nar­rat­ed in On the Road

Jack Ker­ouac Lists 9 Essen­tials for Writ­ing Spon­ta­neous Prose

Jack Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road (1959)

Jack Kerouac’s Naval Reserve Enlist­ment Mugshot, 1943

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

All of Bach Is Putting Videos of 1,080 Bach Performances Online: Watch the First 53 Recordings and the St. Matthew Passion

in Music | April 2nd, 2015

Last year we fea­tured All of Bach, a site that, in the full­ness of time, will allow you to watch the Nether­lands Bach Soci­ety per­form each and every one of Bach’s com­po­si­tions, com­plete­ly for free. Back when we first post­ed about it, the site offered only five per­for­mances to watch, but now you’ll find a full 53 wait­ing there, ready for you to enjoy. Just above, we have BWV 565, “Toc­ca­ta And Fugue In D Minor,” one of Bach’s most famous organ works, thanks in no small part to the fre­quen­cy with which it appears on tele­vi­sion, video game and movie sound­tracks.

Every Fri­day brings a new per­for­mance of anoth­er Bach piece — until, that is, the Nether­lands Bach Soci­ety gets through all 1080 of them. But between now and then, they’ve also got spe­cial musi­cal events planned, such as a spe­cial per­for­mance of the whole of the St. Matthew Pas­sion sched­uled for this Fri­day, April 3. (You can now find it online here.) It will mark the prob­a­ble 288th anniver­sary of the piece’s debut, an event which musi­cal his­to­ri­ans think hap­pened in Leipzig’s St. Thomas Church, where Bach served as can­tor and cho­rus direc­tor.

“Luther­ian sever­i­ty lies at the core of Bach’s St. Matthew Pas­sion,” writes New York­er music crit­ic Alex Ross. “The immen­si­ty of Bach’s design — his use of a dou­ble cho­rus and a dou­ble orches­tra; his inter­weav­ing of New Tes­ta­ment sto­ry­telling and lat­ter-day med­i­ta­tions; the dra­mat­ic, almost oper­at­ic qual­i­ty of the choral writ­ing; the inva­sive beau­ty of the lament­ing arias, which give the sense that Christ’s death is the acutest of per­son­al loss­es — has the effect of pulling all of mod­ern life into the Pas­sion scene. By forc­ing the singers to enact both the arro­gance of the tor­men­tors and the help­less­ness of the vic­tims, Bach under­lines Luther’s point about the inescapa­bil­i­ty of guilt. A great ren­di­tion of the St. Matthew Pas­sion should have the feel­ing of an eclipse, of a mas­sive body throw­ing the world into shad­ow.”

In order to pre­pare your­self for this momen­tous musi­cal event, have a look at the teas­er for it in the mid­dle of the post, and the behind-the-scenes doc­u­men­tary Clos­er to Bach in Naar­den just above, which reveals the rela­tion­ship the musi­cians of the Nether­lands Bach Soci­ety have to the St. Matthew Pas­sion. As you can see, they’ve tak­en pains to make sure that this Good Fri­day will, for music-lovers, prove to be a very good Fri­day indeed.

Find the Matthew Pas­sion on All of Bach this Fri­day — the same place where you can find new record­ings each week.

Update: The Matthew Pas­sion is now online here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

All of Bach for Free! New Site Will Put Per­for­mances of 1080 Bach Com­po­si­tions Online

A Big Bach Down­load: All of Bach’s Organ Works for Free

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

Video: Glenn Gould Plays the Gold­berg Vari­a­tions by J.S. Bach

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

Christopher Hitchens Creates a Revised List of The 10 Commandments for the 21st Century

in Life, Religion | April 2nd, 2015

Christo­pher Hitchens was there, rail­ing against reli­gion and war crim­i­nals one minute, and the next, it seems, he was gone, a vic­tim to esophageal can­cer in 2011. In the 2010 video above, Hitchens takes on one of the hoari­est pre­cepts of the Bible (and the Torah) and reimag­ines an updat­ed, sec­u­lar ver­sion. I mean, it’s not like the Ten Com­mand­ments are set in stone, right? (Rimshot!)

The first two-thirds of the video fea­tures Hitchens mak­ing his way through the orig­i­nal com­mand­ments one by one, pulling them apart for incon­sis­ten­cies and hypocrisy. For exam­ple Moses, hav­ing told his fol­low­ers Thou Shalt Not Kill, encour­aged them to then kill all the Mid­i­an­ites and save the vir­gin girls as chattel/prizes, which they then did.

Now, Hitchens does like the 8th Com­mand­ment (“Thou Shalt Not Steal”) because, hey, what soci­ety isn’t against steal­ing, and he saves his true admi­ra­tion for the exam­ple of “rare nuance and sophis­ti­ca­tion” in the 9th Com­mand­ment (“Thou Shalt Not Bear False Wit­ness”) because it looks ahead to a truth-based judge­ment sys­tem (and the Magna Car­ta.)

But for the rest, Hitchens sug­gests rip­ping it up and start­ing again. With a few snarky asides, the list, orig­i­nal­ly print­ed in Van­i­ty Fair, presents rules for liv­ing as an empa­thet­ic, ratio­nal human being in the 21st cen­tu­ry. He wraps it up with an anti-fun­da­men­tal­ist bow at the end.

I: Do not con­demn peo­ple on the basis of their eth­nic­i­ty or col­or.
II: Do not ever use peo­ple as pri­vate prop­er­ty.
III: Despise those who use vio­lence or the threat of it in sex­u­al rela­tions.
IV: Hide your face and weep if you dare to harm a child.
V: Do not con­demn peo­ple for their inborn nature.
VI: Be aware that you too are an ani­mal and depen­dent on the web of nature, and think and act accord­ing­ly.
VII: Do not imag­ine that you can escape judg­ment if you rob peo­ple with a false prospec­tus rather than with a knife.
VIII: Turn off that fuck­ing cell phone.
IX: Denounce all jihadists and cru­saders for what they are: psy­cho­path­ic crim­i­nals with ugly delu­sions.
X: Be will­ing to renounce any god or any reli­gion if any holy com­mand­ments should con­tra­dict any of the above.

While we’re talk­ing about rethink­ing the Com­mand­ments, George Car­lin had some sim­i­lar thoughts on the sub­ject.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Christo­pher Hitchens: No Deathbed Con­ver­sion for Me, Thanks, But it was Good of You to Ask

Christo­pher Hitchens Cre­ates a Read­ing List for Eight-Year-Old Girl

Bertrand Russell’s Ten Com­mand­ments for Liv­ing in a Healthy Democ­ra­cy

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

Students Tells the Passover Story with a Rube Goldberg Machine

in Random, Religion | April 2nd, 2015

Passover starts this Fri­day. And you might ask: why is this Passover dif­fer­ent from all oth­er Passovers? Because this Passover is get­ting ush­ered in by a Rube Gold­berg Machine that tells high­lights of the Passover sto­ry. Designed by stu­dents from Tech­nion — Israel Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, the device fea­tures falling matzah domi­noes, baby Moses get­ting blown across the water by a fan, and a text mes­sage telling the Pharaoh to “let my peo­ple go.” How it all came togeth­er? You can find out by watch­ing this “behind-the-scenes” video.

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Listen to Nick Cave’s Lecture on the Art of Writing Sublime Love Songs (1999)

in Music | April 2nd, 2015

Let’s take a love song—let’s take Huey Lewis and the News’ “Pow­er of Love,” why not? Catchy, right? And that video? Back to the Future! That takes you back, doesn’t it? Yeah…. Now let’s ask some hard ques­tions. Is this song an accu­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the human emo­tion we call “love”? All upbeat synths and blar­ing horns? Real­ly? But then, there’s Lewis, who, right out of the gate, acknowl­edges that love, “a curi­ous thing,” can “make one man weep” and “anoth­er man sing.” I imag­ine that love can make a woman feel the same. A curi­ous thing. Huey Lewis’ 80s anthem may not sound like love, nec­es­sar­i­ly, but he’s a smart enough song­writer to know that love often uses its pow­er for ill—“it’s strong and sud­den and it’s cru­el some­times.”

Let’s take anoth­er song­writer, one with a dark­er vision, a more lit­er­ary bent, Nick Cave. The Aus­tralian post-punk croon­er and for­mer leader of chaot­ic punk band The Birth­day Par­ty wrote a song called “Peo­ple Ain’t No Good,” the most uni­ver­sal of laments, after a breakup. See him, in the live ver­sion in Poland at the top, declare in a mourn­ful, soul­ful bari­tone accom­pa­nied only by a piano, the truth of no-good­ness. Unlike Huey Lewis, this song allows for no qual­i­ty, pow­er of love or oth­er­wise, to “change a hawk into a lit­tle white dove.” It’s Niet­zschean in its trag­ic dis­ap­point­ment. And yet, such is the pow­er of Nick Cave, to write a song of no good­ness that sounds like a hymn of praise. The dual­i­ty Cave embraces gets a part auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal, part gospel treat­ment in the lec­ture above (“The Secret Life of the Love Song”), which Cave deliv­ered at the Vien­na Poet­ry Fes­ti­val in 1999.

Cave, the son of a lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sor and him­self an accom­plished nov­el­ist and poet, knows his craft well. The bal­lads that dom­i­nate pop music have deep­er roots in a harsh­er world, one that pro­duced the “mur­der bal­lad,” not coin­ci­den­tal­ly the title of a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds record — one All­mu­sic writes Cave “was wait­ing to make his entire career.” Cave rec­og­nizes, as he says in his talk above “an uncar­ing world—a world that fucks every­body over.” And yet… and yet, he says again and again, there is love, or rather, love songs. Quot­ing W.H. Auden and Fed­eri­co Gar­cia Lor­ca, he goes on to describe the form as “a howl in the void, for Love and for com­fort.” The love song “lives on the lips of the child cry­ing for its moth­er. It is the song of the lover in need of her loved one, the rav­ing of the lunatic sup­pli­cant peti­tion­ing his God.”

The love song, then, must con­tain a qual­i­ty Gar­cia Lor­ca called Duende, an “eerie and inex­plic­a­ble sad­ness.” Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Van Mor­ri­son, Tom Waits, and Neil Young have it. “It haunts,” he says, his ex P.J. Har­vey. “All love songs must con­tain duende. For the love song is nev­er tru­ly hap­py. It must first embrace the poten­tial for pain.” Cave draws on Lou Reed’s “Per­fect Day,” the “bru­tal prose” of the Old Tes­ta­ment, and the most innocu­ous-sound­ing pop songs, which can dis­guise “mes­sages to God that cry out into the yawn­ing void, in anguish and self-loathing, for deliv­er­ance.”

He also ref­er­ences, and reads, his own song, “Far From Me,” from 1997’s The Boatman’s Call, the post-breakup record that con­tains “Peo­ple Ain’t No Good.” (Cave begins the lec­ture with a ren­di­tion of “West Coun­try Girl” from that same record.) It’s an album that brought Cave’s “mor­bid­i­ty to near-par­o­d­ic lev­els,” strip­ping the Bad Seeds stum­bling lounge punk down to most­ly piano and voice. This ref­er­ence is not a mat­ter of van­i­ty but of the most well cho­sen illus­tra­tion. Cave admits he is “hap­py to be sad,” to live in “divine dis­con­tent.” His reli­gious exis­ten­tial­ism is ulti­mate­ly relieved by the pow­er of love songs, by his “crooked brood of sad eyed chil­dren” which “ral­ly round and in their way, pro­tect me, com­fort me and keep me alive.” Maybe Huey Lewis had some­thing sim­i­lar to say, but there’s no way he could ever say it the way that Nick Cave does. Read a par­tial tran­script of Cave’s talk here.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonard Cohen and U2 Per­form ‘Tow­er of Song,’ a Med­i­ta­tion on Aging, Loss & Sur­vival

Tom Waits and Kei­th Richards Sing Sea Song “Shenan­doah” for New Pirate-Themed CD: Lis­ten Online

See Neil Young Per­form Clas­sic Songs in 1971 BBC Con­cert: “Old Man,” “Heart of Gold” & More

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