Life and Death of an Espresso Shot in Super Slow Motion

in Food & Drink | March 8th, 2015

Some YouTu­ber post­ed online a pret­ty nice clip of an espres­so shot being pulled from a La Mar­zoc­co FB80 espres­so machine at 120 frames per sec­ond. They rec­om­mend mut­ing the sound, then putting on your own music. I gave it a quick shot with the famous sound­track for Kubrick­’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. And I’ll be damned, it syncs up pret­ty well. Have a bet­ter sound­track to rec­om­mend? Feel free to let us know in the com­ments sec­tion below.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus 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:

The Clas­si­cal Music in Stan­ley Kubrick’s Films: Lis­ten to a Free, 4 Hour Playlist

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

Philip K. Dick’s Favorite Clas­si­cal Music: A Free, 11-Hour Playlist

A 56-Song Playlist of Music in Haru­ki Murakami’s Nov­els: Ray Charles, Glenn Gould, the Beach Boys & More

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18

in Music, Poetry | March 6th, 2015

In 2001 or 2002, gui­tarist and singer David Gilmour of Pink Floyd record­ed a musi­cal inter­pre­ta­tion of William Shake­speare’s “Son­net 18” at his home stu­dio aboard the his­toric, 90-foot house­boat the Asto­ria. This video of Gilmour singing the son­net was released as an extra on the 2002 DVD David Gilmour in Con­cert, but the song itself is con­nect­ed with When Love Speaks, a 2002 ben­e­fit album for Lon­don’s Roy­al Acad­e­my for the Dra­mat­ic Arts.

The project was orga­nized by the com­pos­er and con­duc­tor Michael Kamen, who died a lit­tle more than a year after the album was released. When Love Speaks fea­tures a mix­ture of dra­mat­ic and musi­cal per­for­mances of Shake­speare’s Son­nets and oth­er works, with artists rang­ing from John Giel­gud to Lady­smith Black Mam­bazo.

Kamen wrote much of the music for the project, includ­ing the arrange­ment for Son­net 18, which is sung on the album by Bryan Fer­ry. A spe­cial ben­e­fit con­cert to cel­e­brate the release of the album was held on Feb­ru­ary 10, 2002 at the Old Vic The­atre in Lon­don, but Fer­ry did not attend. Gilmour appeared and sang the son­net in his place. It was appar­ent­ly around that time that Gilmour record­ed his own vocal track for Kamen’s song.

“Son­net 18” is per­haps the most famous of Shake­speare’s 154 son­nets. It was writ­ten in about 1595, and most schol­ars now agree the poem is addressed to a man. The son­net is com­posed in iambic pen­tame­ter, with three rhymed qua­trains fol­lowed by a con­clud­ing cou­plet:

Shall I com­pare thee to a sum­mer’s day?
Thou art more love­ly and more tem­per­ate:
Rough winds do shake the dar­ling buds of May,
And sum­mer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Some­time too hot the eye of heav­en shines,
And often is his gold com­plex­ion dim­m’d;
And every fair from fair some­time declines,
By chance or nature’s chang­ing course untrim­m’d
But thy eter­nal sum­mer shall not fade,
Nor lose pos­ses­sion of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wan­der’st in his shade,
When in eter­nal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

This post was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished on Open Cul­ture on April 5, 2013. We’re bring­ing it back today for Gilmour’s 69th birth­day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Pink Floyd Plays Live in the Ruins of Pom­peii (1972)

Shakespeare’s Satir­i­cal Son­net 130, As Read By Stephen Fry

A Sur­vey of Shakespeare’s Plays (Free Course)

What Shake­speare Sound­ed Like to Shake­speare: Recon­struct­ing the Bard’s Orig­i­nal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion

Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh & Other Arists Tell Their Musical Stories in the Animated Video Series, “California Inspires Me”

in Animation, Creativity, Literature, Music | March 6th, 2015

I’ve lived all of my life in var­i­ous cities on the East Coast, north and south. Var­i­ous cul­tur­al and geo­graph­ic fea­tures of the mid-Atlantic have shaped me in ways I’m prob­a­bly only par­tial­ly aware of. But this past sum­mer I spent more time on the West Coast—L.A. to be precise—than I ever have before, and I found it com­plete­ly refresh­ing. Of course, mass com­merce being what it is, no mat­ter where you go in the U.S., you run smack into a Tar­get, usu­al­ly flanked by strips of oth­er tedious­ly famil­iar chains. But instead of the tow­er­ing pines of my cur­rent locale, I gazed up at lan­guid palm fronds, and instead of the typ­i­cal East Coast swel­ter, I rel­ished the arid heat and the faint ocean tang in the air. A change in cli­mate changes one’s per­cep­tions of the world, and that’s not even to men­tion my—admittedly superficial—tourist’s appre­ci­a­tion of myr­i­ad archi­tec­tur­al, culi­nary, and oth­er SoCal eccen­tric­i­ties.

On return­ing and set­tling back into the grind, I still felt the pull west­ward, toward L.A.’s weird­ness. This is unsurprising—it’s a city, and a state, that have always sym­bol­ized escapism, as well as dis­ap­point­ment, whether that of the Joads, Nor­ma Desmond, or count­less real anony­mous hope­fuls. The sto­ry of mov­ing west in pur­suit of some Amer­i­can Dream is as old as Lewis and Clark and as new as Devo, one of whose found­ing mem­bers, native Cal­i­forn­ian Mark Moth­ers­baugh, nar­rates above his jour­ney to Hol­ly­wood with his band­mates after col­lege at Kent State (at the top of the post). He begins with some for­ma­tive child­hood experiences—getting his first pair of glass­es in 2nd grade (Moth­ers­baugh is legal­ly blind), see­ing the Bea­t­les on Ed Sul­li­van. He then tells, in brief, the sto­ry of Devo vs. the record com­pa­ny, or how a quirky art-rock band co-opt­ed Madi­son Avenue strate­gies to “tell the good news of de-evo­lu­tion,” only to them­selves become a com­mod­i­ty after scor­ing a hit with “Whip It.”

The video is part of a series called “Cal­i­for­nia Inspires Me,” a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Google Play and Cal­i­for­nia Sun­day mag­a­zine. Beneath Mothersbaugh’s ani­mat­ed sto­ry, see one from film­mak­er and artist Mike Mills, who talks about skate­board­ing and punk rock in his L.A. youth. In the video above, singer/songwriter Thao Nguyen shares her “real­ly deep appre­ci­a­tion for the his­to­ry of San Fran­cis­co in music.” And below, Jack Black relates his expe­ri­ences grow­ing up in the “deep, deep South” of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, specif­i­cal­ly Her­mosa Beach, with its surf cul­ture, and “free-wheel­ing hip­pie love.” If there’s one thing that ties all four videos together—besides the music by Shan­non Ferguson—it’s the mel­low per­son­al­i­ties of the four Cal­i­forn­ian artists. Watch­ing the series from my cur­rent­ly blus­tery win­ter cli­mate gave me the East Coast jit­ters, fir­ing up that urge again to hit the dusty trail and revis­it, or maybe relo­cate to the Sun­shine State.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Huell Howser’s Decades of Tele­vi­sion Trav­els Online. It’s Cal­i­for­nia Gold!

The Mas­ter­mind of Devo, Mark Moth­ers­baugh, Shows Off His Syn­the­siz­er Col­lec­tion

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

Richard Dawkins’ Famous “What If You’re Wrong” Speech Animated in the Style of South Park

in Animation, Religion | March 6th, 2015

In 2006, Oxford biol­o­gist and new athe­ist Richard Dawkins made an appear­ance at the evan­gel­i­cal Lib­er­ty Uni­ver­si­ty and field­ed ques­tions from the audi­ence. One stu­dent, Amber Moore, asked Dawkins why he was more inclined to believe in extrater­res­tri­als with advanced intel­li­gence than God? When Dawkins gave his answer, explain­ing that he could only believe in bio­log­i­cal beings, Amber asked the fol­low up ques­tion, “What if you’re wrong?” Dawkins’ response went viral on Youtube, tal­ly­ing almost 4 mil­lions views. So did the South Park-style ani­ma­tion that appeared sev­er­al years lat­er. The ani­ma­tion (above) came not from the cre­ators of South Park, Trey Park­er and Matt Stone, but rather from some YouTu­ber called Tube­LooB.

Park­er and Stone did sep­a­rate­ly lam­poon Dawkins, how­ev­er, in a 2006 episode of the show. Dawkins did­n’t like it very much. If you watch this raunchy, very Not-Safe-for-Work clip, you’ll see why.

It’s also worth recall­ing that Park­er and Stone took a respect­ful whack at ani­mat­ing the philo­soph­i­cal teach­ings of Alan Watts. We always enjoy giv­ing it a watch.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Wis­dom of Alan Watts in Four Thought-Pro­vok­ing Ani­ma­tions

Grow­ing Up in the Uni­verse: Richard Dawkins Presents Cap­ti­vat­ing Sci­ence Lec­tures for Kids (1991)

Richard Dawkins’ Doc­u­men­tary The God Delu­sion Tack­les Faith & Reli­gious Vio­lence (2006)

Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Nev­er a First Human Being

Free Online Biol­o­gy Cours­es

The Paintings of Akira Kurosawa

in Art, Film | March 5th, 2015

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, “the Emper­or” of Japan­ese film, made movies — and in some sense, he nev­er was­n’t mak­ing movies. Even when he lacked the resources to actu­al­ly shoot them, he pre­pared to make movies in the future, think­ing through their every detail. Crit­ic and his­to­ri­an of Japan­ese cin­e­ma Don­ald Richie’s remem­brance of the direc­tor who did more than any­one to define the Japan­ese film empha­sizes Kuro­sawa’s “con­cern for per­fect­ing the prod­uct” — to put it mild­ly. “Though many film com­pa­nies would have been delight­ed by such direc­to­r­i­al devo­tion,” Richie writes, “Japan­ese stu­dios are com­mon­ly more impressed by coop­er­a­tion than by inno­va­tion.”

Kuro­sawa thus found it more and more dif­fi­cult, as his career went on, to raise mon­ey for his ambi­tious projects. Richie recalls a time in the 1970s when, “con­vinced that Kage­musha would nev­er get made, Kuro­sawa spent his time paint­ing pic­tures of every scene — this col­lec­tion would have to take the place of the unre­al­ized film. He had, like many oth­er direc­tors, long used sto­ry­boards. These now blos­somed into whole gal­leries — screen­ing rooms for unmade mas­ter­pieces.” When he could­n’t shoot movies, he wrote them. If he’d writ­ten all he could, he paint­ed them.

At Fla­vor­wire, you can see a com­par­i­son between Kuro­sawa’s paint­ings and the frames of his movies. “He hand-craft­ed these images in order to con­vey his enthu­si­asm for the project,” writes Ali­son Nas­tasi, going on to quote the direc­tor’s own auto­bi­og­ra­phy: “My pur­pose was not to paint well. I made free use of var­i­ous mate­ri­als that hap­pened to be at hand.”

But as you can see, the Emper­or knew what he want­ed; the actu­al shots clear­ly rep­re­sent a real­iza­tion of what he’d devot­ed so much time and ener­gy to visu­al­iz­ing before­hand. Occa­sion­al­ly, Kuro­sawa’s own art­work even made it to his movies’ offi­cial posters, espe­cial­ly less­er-known (what­ev­er “less­er-known” means in the con­text of the Kuro­sawa canon) per­son­al works like 1970’s Dodes’­ka-den and 1993’s Mada­dayo.

We might chalk up the film­mak­er’s inter­est in paint­ing — and per­haps in film­mak­ing — in large part to his old­er broth­er Hei­go, with whom he gazed upon the after­math of Toky­o’s 1923 Kan­tō earth­quake. A live silent film nar­ra­tor and aspir­ing painter in the Pro­le­tar­i­an Artists’ League, Hei­go com­mit­ted sui­cide in 1933 after his polit­i­cal dis­il­lu­sion­ment and the career-killing intro­duc­tion of sound film. Young Aki­ra would make his direc­to­r­i­al debut a decade lat­er and, in the 55 years that fol­lowed, pre­sum­ably do Hei­go proud on every pos­si­ble lev­el.

A cat­a­log includ­ing 40 vivid, large, full-col­or draw­ings by Kuro­sawa was pub­lished in 1994 to accom­pa­ny an exhi­bi­tion in New York.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aki­ra Kurosawa’s 80-Minute Mas­ter Class on Mak­ing “Beau­ti­ful Movies” (2000)

Aki­ra Kurosawa’s List of His 100 Favorite Movies

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa & Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez Talk About Film­mak­ing (and Nuclear Bombs) in Six Hour Inter­view

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.

Artist Takes Old Books and Gives Them New Life as Intricate Sculptures

in Art, Books, TED Talks | March 5th, 2015

New York-based artist Bri­an Dettmer cuts into old books with X‑ACTO knives and turns them into remixed works of art. Speak­ing at TED Youth last Novem­ber, he told the audi­ence, “I think of my work as sort of a remix .… because I’m work­ing with some­body else’s mate­r­i­al in the same way that a D.J. might be work­ing with some­body else’s music.” “I carve into the sur­face of the book, and I’m not mov­ing or adding any­thing. I’m just carv­ing around what­ev­er I find inter­est­ing. So every­thing you see with­in the fin­ished piece is exact­ly where it was in the book before I began.”

Dettmer puts on dis­play his pret­ty fan­tas­tic cre­ations, all while explain­ing how he sees the book — as a body, a tech­nol­o­gy, a tool, a machine, a land­scape, a case study in archae­ol­o­gy. The talk runs six min­utes and deliv­ers more than the aver­age TED Talk does in 17.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus 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.

Read Chez Foucault, the 1978 Fanzine That Introduced Students to the Radical French Philosopher

in Philosophy, Politics | March 5th, 2015

The recent “adjunct walk out day” has remind­ed peo­ple out­side academia—at least those who paid any attention—of the decay­ing state of Amer­i­can high­er edu­ca­tion, a con­di­tion dri­ven in part by a sear­ing under­cur­rent of anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism in U.S. polit­i­cal cul­ture. It’s a trend his­to­ri­an Richard Hof­s­tadter iden­ti­fied last cen­tu­ry in his Pulitzer Prize-win­ning 1963 study Anti-Intel­lec­tu­al­ism in Amer­i­can Life. But not long after Hofstadter’s book appeared, anoth­er, more vital cur­rent took hold in the 60s and 70s, one brought on by the broad­en­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties for those pre­vi­ous­ly denied access to elite uni­ver­si­ties, and by rec­i­p­ro­cal rela­tion­ships between rad­i­cals and schol­ars. Aca­d­e­mics like Tim­o­thy Leary became fig­ure­heads of the coun­ter­cul­ture, rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies like Huey New­ton earned Ph.D.s, and activist pro­fes­sors like Angela Davis held the line between the worlds of high­er ed and pop­u­lar dis­sent. The uni­ver­si­ties became not only sites of stu­dent protest, but also matri­ces of rev­o­lu­tion­ary the­o­ry.

Into this foment­ing intel­lec­tu­al cul­ture stepped French the­o­rist Michel Fou­cault, who first lec­tured in the U.S. in 1975 after the pub­li­ca­tion of his His­to­ry of Sex­u­al­i­ty. Fou­cault was a true prod­uct of the French uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem and an aca­d­e­m­ic super­star of sorts, as well as a gad­fly of rev­o­lu­tion­ary move­ments from Paris in ’68, to Iran in ’79, to Berke­ley in the 80s. His work as a philoso­pher and polit­i­cal dis­si­dent prompt­ed one biog­ra­ph­er to refer to him as a “mil­i­tant intel­lec­tu­al,” though his pol­i­tics could some­times be as obscure as his prose. By 1981, he had risen to such cul­tur­al promi­nence in the States that Time mag­a­zine pub­lished a pro­file of him and his “grow­ing cult.” One of Foucault’s Amer­i­can acolytes, Sime­on Wade, befriend­ed the philoso­pher in the mid-sev­en­ties and wrote an unpub­lished, 121-page account of Foucault’s alleged 1975 LSD trip in Death Val­ley (referred to in James Miller’s The Pas­sion of Michel Fou­cault). Wade, along with a num­ber of oth­er Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia stu­dents, also inter­viewed Fou­cault the fol­low­ing year.

In 1978, Wade pub­lished the inter­view in what may be the most pop­ulist of mediums—the fanzine. Titled Chez Fou­cault, with a ded­i­ca­tion “for Michael Stone­man,” the mimeo­graphed doc­u­ment looks on its face like a typ­i­cal hand­made self-pub­li­ca­tion from the peri­od, with its murky let­ter­ing and gen­er­al­ly hap­haz­ard design. But inside, Chez Fou­cault is far denser than any chap­book or rock ‘zine. In his pref­ace, Wade describes Chez Fou­cault as “a work­book I tin­kered togeth­er for teach­ers and stu­dents in the human­i­ties, social sci­ences and nat­ur­al sci­ences.” Accord­ing­ly, in addi­tion to the inter­view, he includes a syn­op­sis of Foucault’s Dis­course on Lan­guage, a “tran­scrip­tion” of his Dis­ci­pline and Pun­ish, a sketch of “The Ear­ly Fou­cault,” and a bib­li­og­ra­phy, glos­sary, read­ing and film list, and ver­i­ta­ble course out­line. It’s a very rich text that pro­vides a thor­ough intro­duc­tion to many of Foucault’s major works. Of prin­ci­ple inter­est, how­ev­er, is the inter­view, seem­ing­ly unpub­lished any­where else. In it, Fou­cault elab­o­rates on sev­er­al of his key con­cepts, such as the rela­tion­ship between dis­course and pow­er:

I do not want to try to find behind the dis­course some­thing which would be the pow­er and which would be the source of the dis­course […]. We start from the dis­course as it is! […] The kind of analy­sis I make does not deal with the prob­lem of the speak­ing sub­ject, but looks at the ways in which the dis­course plays a role inside the strate­gi­cal sys­tem in which the pow­er is involved, for which pow­er is work­ing. So pow­er won’t be some­thing out­side the dis­course. Pow­er won’t be some­thing like a source or the ori­gin of dis­course. Pow­er will be some­thing which is work­ing through the dis­course.

This con­cise expla­na­tion offers a key to Foucault’s method. Dis­avow­ing the labels of both philoso­pher and his­to­ri­an (he calls him­self a “jour­nal­ist”), Fou­cault defines his pro­gram as “an analy­sis of dis­course, but not with the per­spec­tive of ‘point of view.’” (If the dis­tinc­tion is con­fus­ing, a read­ing of his essay “What is an Author?” may help clar­i­fy things.) Fou­cault dis­cuss­es the biopol­i­tics of pow­er, call­ing the human body “a pro­duc­tive force,” which “exists in and through a polit­i­cal sys­tem.” He also talks about the “polit­i­cal use” of a crit­i­cal the­o­ry such as his, and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of rev­o­lu­tion­ary phi­los­o­phy:

I do not think there is such a thing as a con­ser­v­a­tive phi­los­o­phy or a rev­o­lu­tion­ary phi­los­o­phy. Rev­o­lu­tion is a polit­i­cal process; it is an eco­nom­ic process. Rev­o­lu­tion is not a philo­soph­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy. And that’s impor­tant. That’s the rea­son why some­thing like Hegelian phi­los­o­phy has been both a rev­o­lu­tion­ary ide­ol­o­gy, a rev­o­lu­tion­ary method, a rev­o­lu­tion­ary tool, but also a con­ser­v­a­tive one. Look at Niet­zsche. Niet­zsche brought forth won­der­ful ideas, or tools if you like. He was used by the Nazi Par­ty. Now a lot of Left­ist thinkers use him. So we can­not be sure if what we are say­ing is rev­o­lu­tion­ary or not.

There is much more worth read­ing in Foucault’s inter­view with Wade and his fel­low stu­dents, and stu­dents and teach­ers of Fou­cault will find all of Chez Fou­cault worth­while. You can read and down­load the entire Fou­cault ‘zine here. And lest you think it’s the only one of its kind, don’t miss Judy!, the 1993 fanzine devot­ed to philoso­pher Judith But­ler.

via Pro­gres­sive Geo­gra­phies and Mono­skop

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Michel Fou­cault Deliv­er His Lec­ture on “Truth and Sub­jec­tiv­i­ty” at UC Berke­ley, In Eng­lish (1980)

Hear Michel Foucault’s Lec­ture “The Cul­ture of the Self,” Pre­sent­ed in Eng­lish at UC Berke­ley (1983)

Michel Fou­cault – Beyond Good and Evil: 1993 Doc­u­men­tary Explores the Theorist’s Con­tro­ver­sial Life and Phi­los­o­phy

Watch a “Lost Inter­view” With Michel Fou­cault: Miss­ing for 30 Years But Now Recov­ered

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

A Final Wish: Terminally Ill Patients Visit Rembrandt’s Paintings in the Rijksmuseum One Last Time

in Art, Life | March 4th, 2015

On Mon­day, the Dutch vol­un­teer orga­ni­za­tion called Sticht­ing Ambu­lance Wens Ned­er­land (rough­ly trans­lat­ed as Ambu­lance Wish Foun­da­tion Nether­lands) took three ter­mi­nal­ly ill patients to see The Late Rem­brandt Exhi­bi­tion cur­rent­ly being held at the Rijksmu­se­um in Ams­ter­dam. The exhib­it fea­tures over 100 paint­ings, draw­ings and prints that Rem­brandt pro­duced dur­ing the final phase of his life. And the patients, near­ing the end of their lives, want­ed to see the exhib­it and expe­ri­ence the artistry of the great Dutch painter one last time.

Staffed by 200 med­ical­ly-trained vol­un­teers, the orga­ni­za­tion has ful­filled thou­sands of wish­es since its cre­ation in 2007, and they did­n’t dis­ap­point this time. As visu­al­ly doc­u­ment­ed on its Twit­ter account, the non­prof­it took the guests to the exhib­it, each in an ambu­lance. The muse­um-goers were then treat­ed to a one-hour pri­vate tour of the col­lec­tion. Some poignant pic­tures cap­ture the bit­ter­sweet moment.

via Laugh­ing Squid

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 Rijksmu­se­um Puts 125,000 Dutch Mas­ter­pieces Online, and Lets You Remix Its Art

Rembrandt’s Face­book Time­line

16th-Cen­tu­ry Ams­ter­dam Stun­ning­ly Visu­al­ized with 3D Ani­ma­tion

Has Technology Changed Us?: BBC Animations Answer the Question with the Help of Marshall McLuhan

in Animation, Photography, Technology | March 4th, 2015

In Jan­u­ary, we fea­tured series of short ani­ma­tions from BBC Radio 4 address­ing the ques­tion “How Did Every­thing Begin?” In Feb­ru­ary, we fea­tured its fol­low-up on an equal­ly eter­nal ques­tion, “What Makes Us Human?” Both came script­ed by Phi­los­o­phy Bites co-cre­ator Nigel War­bur­ton and nar­rat­ed by X‑Files co-star Gillian Ander­son (in full British mode). Now that March has come, so has the next install­ment of these brief, crisp, curios­i­ty-fueled pro­duc­tions: “Has Tech­nol­o­gy Changed Us?”

In a word: yes. But then, every­thing we do has always changed us, thanks to the prop­er­ty of the brain we now call “plas­tic­i­ty.” This we learn from the video, “Rewiring the Brain” (right below), which, bal­anc­ing its heart­en­ing neu­ro­sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence with the prover­bial old dog’s abil­i­ty to learn new tricks, also tells of the “atten­tion dis­or­ders, screen addic­tions, and poor social skills” that may have already begun plagu­ing the younger gen­er­a­tion.

Mar­shall McLuhan, of course, could have fore­seen all this. Hence his appear­ance in “The Medi­um is the Mes­sage” (top), a title tak­en from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to Eng­lish pro­fes­sor turned com­mu­ni­ca­tion-the­o­ry guru’s famous dic­tum.

The video actu­al­ly spells out McLuhan’s own expla­na­tion of that much-quot­ed line: “What has been com­mu­ni­cat­ed has been less impor­tant than the par­tic­u­lar medi­um through which peo­ple com­mu­ni­cate.” Whether you buy that notion or not, the whole range of procla­ma­tions McLuhan had on the sub­ject will cer­tain­ly get you think­ing — in his own words, “You don’t like these ideas? I got oth­ers.”

The oth­er two videos in this series, despite their short length, get into oth­er intrigu­ing relat­ed con­cepts: “The Fourth Rev­o­lu­tion” that comes as a result of life in a “mass age of infor­ma­tion and data,” and the work­ings of “The Antikythera Mech­a­nism,” the first com­put­er ever built. Our per­son­al tech­nol­o­gy has cer­tain­ly come a long way, but we should­n’t fall into com­pla­cen­cy about it, lest, as Ander­son says in this series, it all wrecks our atten­tion spans and “edu­ca­tion will all have to be deliv­ered in two-minute ani­ma­tions.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Did Every­thing Begin?: Ani­ma­tions on the Ori­gins of the Uni­verse Nar­rat­ed by X‑Files Star Gillian Ander­son

What Makes Us Human?: Chom­sky, Locke & Marx Intro­duced by New Ani­mat­ed Videos from the BBC

McLuhan Said “The Medi­um Is The Mes­sage”; Two Pieces Of Media Decode the Famous Phrase

Mar­shall McLuhan: The World is a Glob­al Vil­lage

A His­to­ry of Ideas: Ani­mat­ed Videos Explain The­o­ries of Simone de Beau­voir, Edmund Burke & Oth­er Philoso­phers

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es (130 in Total)

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.

Discover the Oldest Beer Recipe in History From Ancient Sumeria, 1800 B.C.

in Food & Drink, History | March 3rd, 2015

Image cour­tesy of Lock, Stock, and His­to­ry

Beer, that favorite bev­er­age of foot­ball fans, frat boys, and oth­er macho stereotypes—at least accord­ing to the advertisers—actually has a very long, dis­tin­guished her­itage. It’s old­er, in fact, than wine, old­er than whiskey, old­er per­haps even than bread (or so some schol­ars have thought). As soon as humans set­tled down and learned to cul­ti­vate grains, some 13,000 years ago, the pos­si­bil­i­ty for fermentation—a nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring phenomenon—presented itself. But it isn’t until the 5th cen­tu­ry, B.C. that we have sources doc­u­ment­ing the delib­er­ate pro­duc­tion of ale in ancient Sume­ria. Nonethe­less, beer has been described as the “mid­wife of civ­i­liza­tion” due to its cen­tral role in agri­cul­ture, trade, urban­iza­tion, and med­i­cine.

Beer became so impor­tant to ancient Mesopotami­an cul­ture that the Sume­ri­ans cre­at­ed a god­dess of brew­ing and beer, Ninkasi, and one anony­mous poet, smit­ten with her pow­ers, penned a hymn to her in 1800 B.C.. A daugh­ter of the pow­er­ful cre­ator Enki and Nin­ti, “queen of the sacred lake,” Ninkasi is all the more poignant a deity giv­en the role of women in ancient cul­ture as respect­ed brew­ers. The “Hymn to Ninkasi,” which you can read below, not only pro­vides insight into the impor­tance of this cus­tom in Sumer­ian mythol­o­gy, but it also gives us a recipe for brew­ing ancient Sumer­ian beer—the old­est beer recipe we have.

Trans­lat­ed from two clay tablets by Miguel Civ­il, Pro­fes­sor of Sumerol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, the poem con­tains instruc­tions pre­cise enough that Fritz May­tag, founder of the Anchor Brew­ing Com­pa­ny in San Fran­cis­co, took it upon him­self to try them. He pre­sent­ed the results at the annu­al meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion of Micro Brew­ers in 1991. The brew­ers, writes Civ­il, “were able to taste ‘Ninkasi Beer,’ sip­ping it from large jugs with drink­ing straws as they did four mil­len­nia ago. The beer had an alco­hol con­cen­tra­tion of 3.5%, very sim­i­lar to mod­ern beers, and had a ‘dry taste lack­ing in bit­ter­ness,’ ‘sim­i­lar to hard apple cider.’” A chal­lenge to all you home brew­ers out there.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, May­tag was unable to bot­tle and retail the recre­ation, since ancient Mesopotami­an beer “was brewed for imme­di­ate con­sump­tion” and “did not keep very well.” But what Civ­il learned from the exper­i­ment was that his translation—in the hands of a mas­ter brew­er “who saw through the dif­fi­cult ter­mi­nol­o­gy and poet­ic metaphors”—produced results. Below, see the first part of the “Hymn to Ninkasi,” which describes “in poet­ic terms the step-by-step process of Sumer­ian beer brew­ing.” A sec­ond part of the hymn “cel­e­brates the con­tain­ers in which the beer is brewed and served” and “includes the toasts usu­al in tav­ern and drink­ing songs.” You can read that joy­ful text—which includes the line “With joy in the heat [and] a hap­py liver”—on page 4 of Pro­fes­sor Civil’s arti­cle on the Hymn.

Hymn to Ninkasi (Part I)
Borne of the flow­ing water,
Ten­der­ly cared for by the Nin­hur­sag,
Borne of the flow­ing water,
Ten­der­ly cared for by the Nin­hur­sag,

Hav­ing found­ed your town by the sacred lake,
She fin­ished its great walls for you,
Ninkasi, hav­ing found­ed your town by the sacred lake,
She fin­ished it’s walls for you,

Your father is Enki, Lord Nidim­mud,
Your moth­er is Nin­ti, the queen of the sacred lake.
Ninkasi, your father is Enki, Lord Nidim­mud,
Your moth­er is Nin­ti, the queen of the sacred lake.

You are the one who han­dles the dough [and] with a big shov­el,
Mix­ing in a pit, the bap­pir with sweet aro­mat­ics,
Ninkasi, you are the one who han­dles the dough [and] with a big shov­el,
Mix­ing in a pit, the bap­pir with [date] — hon­ey,

You are the one who bakes the bap­pir in the big oven,
Puts in order the piles of hulled grains,
Ninkasi, you are the one who bakes the bap­pir in the big oven,
Puts in order the piles of hulled grains,

You are the one who waters the malt set on the ground,
The noble dogs keep away even the poten­tates,
Ninkasi, you are the one who waters the malt set on the ground,
The noble dogs keep away even the poten­tates,

You are the one who soaks the malt in a jar,
The waves rise, the waves fall.
Ninkasi, you are the one who soaks the malt in a jar,
The waves rise, the waves fall.

You are the one who spreads the cooked mash on large reed mats,
Cool­ness over­comes,
Ninkasi, you are the one who spreads the cooked mash on large reed mats,
Cool­ness over­comes,

You are the one who holds with both hands the great sweet wort,
Brew­ing [it] with hon­ey [and] wine
(You the sweet wort to the ves­sel)
Ninkasi, (…)(You the sweet wort to the ves­sel)

The fil­ter­ing vat, which makes a pleas­ant sound,
You place appro­pri­ate­ly on a large col­lec­tor vat.
Ninkasi, the fil­ter­ing vat, which makes a pleas­ant sound,
You place appro­pri­ate­ly on a large col­lec­tor vat.

When you pour out the fil­tered beer of the col­lec­tor vat,
It is [like] the onrush of Tigris and Euphrates.
Ninkasi, you are the one who pours out the fil­tered beer of the col­lec­tor vat,
It is [like] the onrush of Tigris and Euphrates.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cook Real Recipes from Ancient Rome: Ostrich Ragoût, Roast Wild Boar, Nut Tarts & More

The Art and Sci­ence of Beer

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

Free Cours­es in Ancient His­to­ry, Lit­er­a­ture & Phi­los­o­phy

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