Kafka’s Famous Character Gregor Samsa Meets Dr. Seuss in a Great Radio Play

in Literature, Radio | February 13th, 2014

If you don’t have enough exis­ten­tial angst in your life — and if you’re oper­at­ing on the the­o­ry that there’s no such thing as too much Kaf­ka (see our post from ear­li­er today) — then check out this radio play called Sam­sa & Seuss, which aired orig­i­nal­ly on the CBC show Wire­tap before appear­ing on This Amer­i­can Life. The piece is based on an epis­to­lary short sto­ry by the late, great David Rakoff and is per­formed by Rakoff along with Jonathan Gold­stein.

The sto­ry begins with a des­per­ate Gre­gor Sam­sa reach­ing out to Dr. Seuss look­ing for some way to cure him of his mal­a­dy — i.e. being a bug. Seuss’s reply is writ­ten entire­ly in verse — “Rest assured, I’ll endeav­or to glean and deduce. You’ll be bet­ter than ever or my name isn’t Seuss” – which con­fus­es Sam­sa to no end. At one point, Sam­sa asks, “Is met­ri­cal rhyme an Amer­i­can mode of cor­re­spon­dence?”

Yet what could be a one-joke nov­el­ty grows sur­pris­ing­ly poignant in Rakoff’s deft hands. When it becomes clear that the doctor’s eccen­tric health regime – “mag­no­lia cus­tard and rose­hip souf­flé and some dew drops with mus­tard” – has failed to fix the ail­ment of the increas­ing­ly depressed Sam­sa, Seuss’s cheery can-do atti­tude turns reflec­tive:

I’m aston­ished at times when I think of the past, of my thou­sands of rhymes, of how life is so vast. I’m left, then, to won­der how any­one gleans a pur­pose or sense of what any­thing means. It’s not ours for the know­ing. It’s mean­ing abstruse. We both best be going. Your lov­ing friend, Seuss.

And you thought The Lorax felt a lit­tle bleak.

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

BBC Radio Play Based on Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon Stream­ing Free Online

Down­load Brave New World for Free: Dra­ma­tized Ver­sion Read by Aldous Hux­ley

Isaac Asimov’s Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sic, The Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy, Dra­ma­tized for Radio (1973)

What Happens When Your Brain is on Alfred Hitchcock: The Neuroscience of Film

in Film, Psychology, Science | February 13th, 2014

If you have 22 min­utes, why not sit back and watch the clas­sic piece of tele­vi­sion above, Alfred Hitch­cock Presents’ 1961 episode “Bang, You’re Dead”? You may well have seen it before, quite pos­si­bly long ago, but you’ll find it holds up, keep­ing you in sus­pense today as art­ful­ly as it or any oth­er Hitch­cock pro­duc­tion always has. But why do we get so emo­tion­al­ly engaged in this sim­ple tale of a five-year-old boy who comes into pos­ses­sion of a real hand­gun that he mis­tak­en­ly thinks a harm­less toy? Here with detailed answers root­ed in the mechan­ics of the human brain, we have “Neu­rocin­e­mat­ics: the Neu­ro­science of Film,” a pre­sen­ta­tion by Uri Has­son of Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty’s Neu­ro­science Insti­tute.

Hitch­cock con­ceived of his style of cin­e­ma, says Has­son in the clip below, as “doing exper­i­ments on the audi­ence,” and of a movie itself as “a sequence of stages designed to have an effect on your brain.”

The brains of every­one sit­ting in the the­ater thus, the­o­ret­i­cal­ly, all become “res­o­nant and aligned with the movie in a very pow­er­ful and com­pli­cat­ed way.” Var­i­ous types of research bear this out, from mea­sur­ing the skin tem­per­a­ture, per­spi­ra­tion, and blood flow in the brains of sub­jects as they watch Hitch­cock­’s young pro­tag­o­nist add more “toy” bul­lets to the “toy” gun he bran­dish­es around the neigh­bor­hood. In the clip below, you can see exact­ly how the sci­en­tists’ func­tion­al MRI machines scan the view­ers as they watch the episode, whose plot, as one of the research team puts it, “keeps the par­tic­i­pants a bit on their feet,” flat on their back though they need to remain for the dura­tion. You’ll find the watch­ing expe­ri­ence much more com­fort­able in your chair. It won’t pro­duce much data for the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty, but at least now you’ll know what goes on in your brain as it hap­pens, some­thing about which even Hitch­cock him­self could only guess. To con­duct your own exper­i­ments, see our col­lec­tion of 21 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alfred Hitch­cock Explains the Plot Device He Called the ‘MacGuf­fin’

Alfred Hitch­cock on the Filmmaker’s Essen­tial Tool: ‘The Kuleshov Effect’

Hitchcock’s Sev­en-Minute Edit­ing Mas­ter Class

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

An Online Gallery of 30,000 Items from The British Library, Including Leonardo da Vinci’s Notebooks And Mozart’s Diary

in Art, History | February 13th, 2014

(Click image to enlarge)

This past Decem­ber, we wrote about the British Library’s releas­ing “over a mil­lion images onto Flickr Com­mons for any­one to use, remix and repur­pose.” For those who enjoyed this trea­sure trove of his­tor­i­cal con­tent, we bring more good tid­ings: the British Library also has a freely acces­si­ble online gallery, num­ber­ing some 30,000 items.

The vast dig­i­tal col­lec­tion includes books, ancient maps, and price­less prints. Amid the count­less vir­tu­al tomes, some of the more impres­sive hold­ings include Mozart’s musi­cal diary from the last sev­en years of his life, and Leonar­do da Vinci’s note­book (find both above) where the artist and inven­tor the­o­rized about mechan­ics. Da Vin­ci also record­ed rid­dles in his notes, includ­ing: “The dead will come from under­ground and by their fierce move­ments will send num­ber­less human beings out of the world” (Answer: “Iron, which comes from under the ground, is dead, but the weapons are made of it which kill so many men”).

The online col­lec­tion also con­tains a num­ber of expert­ly curat­ed exhibits by British Library staff, many of which are accom­pa­nied by a thor­ough intro­duc­tion to guide read­ers through the mate­r­i­al. I’ve always liked get­ting lost in old, detailed maps and par­tic­u­lar­ly enjoyed the Crace Col­lec­tion of Maps of Lon­don, which range from a 16th cen­tu­ry “guide for cun­trey men in the famous cittey of Lon­don by the helpe of wich plot they shall be able to know how far it is to any street,” to a 19th cen­tu­ry puz­zle-type map, whose read­ers must find a par­tic­u­lar route from the Strand to St. Paul’s. The col­lec­tion also con­tains a ter­rif­ic selec­tion of pre-print­ing-press-era illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts, deemed “illu­mi­nat­ed” because they were metic­u­lous­ly dec­o­rat­ed, often using gold leaf. Among these are the open­ing of St. Luke’s Gospel from the Lind­is­farne Bible (below), one of the ear­li­est sur­viv­ing Eng­lish lan­guage Gospels (cir­ca 715 CE), and scenes from the life of St. Guth­lac, which dates to the ear­ly 13^th cen­tu­ry.

For more of the British Library’s Online Col­lec­tion, head here.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix

The Get­ty Puts 4600 Art Images Into the Pub­lic Domain (and There’s More to Come)

The Nation­al Gallery Makes 25,000 Images of Art­work Freely Avail­able Online

Watch Langston Hughes Read Poetry from His First Collection, The Weary Blues (1958)

in Literature | February 13th, 2014

Today we fea­ture record­ings of Langston Hugh­es read­ing two of his ear­li­est and best-known poems from his debut 1926 col­lec­tion The Weary Blues. The first, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” Hugh­es wrote in 1920 when he was only 17. In her very close read­ing of this poem, Alexan­dra Socarides tells us that Hugh­es was just “emerg­ing from a dis­tinct­ly Mid­west­ern child­hood” and tak­ing a train to Mex­i­co City to spend a year with his estranged father when he wrote the lines: “I’ve known rivers: / I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and old­er than the / flow of human blood in human veins.” (You can hear Hugh­es tell the sto­ry of writ­ing the poem here). The short poem spans four rivers in three dif­fer­ent con­ti­nents, though “at the moment of its com­po­si­tion, it was the land­scape of the Mid­west [Hugh­es] knew best.”

Even before he had trav­eled the globe, Hugh­es’ con­cerns were glob­al in scope. But he is most often asso­ci­at­ed with the jazz-age Harlem Renais­sance scene, and right­ly so. After his year in Mex­i­co City, Hugh­es moved to New York to study at Colum­bia and helped pio­neer a jazz poet­ry that antic­i­pat­ed Beats and Black Arts poets alike. The title poem of The Weary Blues is firm­ly sit­u­at­ed in Harlem—“Down on Lenox Avenue” where a blues­man “made that poor piano moan with melody.” It’s a poem meant to be read aloud, and in the video above, you can see Hugh­es do so with accom­pa­ny­ing jazz ensem­ble The Doug Park­er Band for a 1958 Cana­di­an pro­gram. That next year, Hugh­es col­lab­o­rat­ed with Charles Min­gus and Leonard Feath­er on an album of jazz read­ings called The Weary Blues.

Crit­ic Don­ald B. Gib­son once not­ed that Hugh­es may have “read his poet­ry to more peo­ple (pos­si­bly) than any oth­er Amer­i­can poet.” His gen­er­ous pop­ulism didn’t always mean crit­i­cal success—the two are often at odds—such that in 1969, Lind­say Pat­ter­son called him “the most abused poet in Amer­i­ca” for the neglect or out­right scorn his acces­si­ble poet­ry received from both black and white crit­ics at the time. In a review of Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee’s hard-to-find record­ed read­ings of 50 of Hugh­es’ poem, Pat­ter­son wrote that Hugh­es’ work “must be heard, rather than read silent­ly, for one to real­ize its emo­tion­al scope.” I dis­agree. From ear­ly short poems like “A Woo­ing” to lat­er, longer works like “Pre­lude to Our Age,” Hugh­es’ work on the page is deeply evoca­tive, com­plex, and reward­ing. But while Hugh­es was steeped in his­to­ry, he was also steeped in poet­ic tra­di­tion of a very Amer­i­can variety—Walt Whit­man, Claude McK­ay, Coun­tee Cullen—that priv­i­leged musi­cal lan­guage, ver­nac­u­lar expres­sions, and an exu­ber­ant per­son­al voice, and that makes his work a par­tic­u­lar joy to hear read, espe­cial­ly by the poet him­self.

Relat­ed Con­tents:

Poems as Short Films: Langston Hugh­es, Pablo Neru­da and More

Hear Sylvia Plath Read Fif­teen Poems From Her Final Col­lec­tion, Ariel, in 1962 Record­ing

Hear the Very First Record­ing of Allen Gins­berg Read­ing His Epic Poem “Howl” (1956)

Ezra Pound’s Fiery 1939 Read­ing of His Ear­ly Poem, ‘Ses­ti­na: Altaforte’

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

Painters Painting: The Definitive Documentary Portrait of the New York Art World (1940–1970)

in Art, Film | February 12th, 2014

Emile de Anto­nio is one of those peo­ple who sim­ply had a knack for being in the right place at the right time. He was a Har­vard class­mate of John F. Kennedy. He knew all of the core mem­bers of the Beat move­ment, even help­ing to dis­trib­ute the sem­i­nal Beat movie Pull My Daisies. And De Anto­nio was a friend with vir­tu­al­ly every­one in the New York art scene from Jasper Johns to Willem de Koon­ing. He once drank him­self into a stu­por for Andy Warhol’s exper­i­men­tal movie Drink. Warhol even famous­ly praised De Anto­nio say­ing, “Every­thing I learned about paint­ing, I learned from De.”

De Anto­nio was also a major voice of dis­sent dur­ing the Cold War. He direct­ed a series of scathing doc­u­men­taries includ­ing Point of Order (1964), about the McCarthy hear­ings; Rush to Judg­ment (1966), a sta­ple among JFK assas­si­na­tion the­o­rists; and the Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed anti-Viet­nam war movie In the Year of the Pig. (1968)

For his 1972 movie Painters Paint­ing: The New York Art Scene 1940–1970, De Anto­nio man­aged to get artists like Warhol, Johns, and De Koon­ing along with Robert Rauschen­berg, Frank Stel­la, Bar­nett New­man and Helen Franken­thaler to talk about their craft. It is the defin­i­tive doc­u­men­tary por­trait of the New York art world.

De Anto­nio talked about Painters Paint­ing in a 1988 inter­view:

I was prob­a­bly the only film­mak­er in the world who could [have made Painters Paint­ing] because I knew all those peo­ple, from the time that they were poor, and unsuc­cess­ful and had no mon­ey. I knew Warhol and Rauschen­berg and Jasper Johns and Stel­la before they ever sold a paint­ing, and so it was inter­est­ing to [do the film about them]. They appeared in the film along with De Koon­ing, whom I knew very well, and Bar­nett New­man, who is now dead. They talked to me in a way that they would nev­er have talked to any­body else because they knew I knew the sub­ject.

The film, a tad grainy, appears above. A high­er res ver­sion of the film can “rent­ed” on Ama­zon. Ama­zon Prime mem­ber can watch it for free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:
Watch Por­trait of an Artist: Jack­son Pol­lock, the 1987 Doc­u­men­tary Nar­rat­ed by Melvyn Bragg

635 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

Rauschen­berg Eras­es De Koon­ing

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

Mark Twain Creates a List of His Favorite Books For Adults & Kids (1887)

in Books, Letters, Literature | February 12th, 2014

In Jan­u­ary of 1887, Mark Twain wrote the above let­ter to a Rev­erend Charles D. Crane, pas­tor of a Methodist Epis­co­pal Church in Maine, to advise him of the most suit­able read­ing for both chil­dren and adults. Twain’s letter—which, as he did near­ly all his let­ters, he signed with his giv­en name of Samuel Clemens (or “S.L. Clemens”)—came in response to a query in three parts from the Rev. Crane. But we do not seem to have Crane’s let­ter (at least a thor­ough search of the exhaus­tive cat­a­log at the online Mark Twain Project yields no results.) Nonethe­less, we can rea­son­ably infer that he asked the famous author—who was between Adven­tures of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn and A Con­necti­cut Yan­kee in King Arthur’s Court—some­thing like the fol­low­ing:

1) What books should young boys read? 2) And young girls? … 3) [and both/either] What should grown-ups read? [and/or] What are Mr. Samuel Clemens’ favorite books?

Twain, in a hur­ry, “took a shot on the wing” and replied with the let­ter below, which, despite his protes­ta­tions of haste, seems fair­ly well-con­sid­ered. I’ll admit that the ambi­gu­i­ty of the last sen­tence, how­ev­er, gives me the researcher’s buzz to go back and dig through more archives for Crane’s orig­i­nal let­ter.

Dear Sir:



I am just start­ing away from home, & have no time to think the ques­tions over & prop­er­ly con­sid­er my answers; but I take a shot on the wing at the mat­ter, as fol­lows:



1.Macaulay;
Plutarch;
Grant’s Mem­oirs;
Cru­soe;
Ara­bi­an Nights;
Gul­liv­er.



= 2. The same for the girl, after strik­ing out out Cru­soe & sub­sti­tut­ing Ten­nyson.
 


I can’t answer No. 3 in this sud­den way.  When one is going to choose twelve authors, for bet­ter for worse, for­sak­ing fathers & moth­ers to cling unto them & unto them alone, until death shall them part, there is an awful­ness about the respon­si­bil­i­ty that makes mar­riage with one mere indi­vid­ual & divorcible woman a sacra­ment sod­den with lev­i­ty by com­par­i­son. 



In my list I know I should put Shak­s­peare [sic]; & Brown­ing; & Car­lyle (French Rev­o­lu­tion only); Sir Thomas Mal­o­ry (King Arthur); Park­man’s His­to­ries (a hun­dred of them if there were so many); Ara­bi­an Nights; John­son (Boswell’s), because I like to see that com­pla­cent old gas­om­e­ter lis­ten to him­self talk; Jowet­t’s Pla­to; & “B.B.” (a book which I wrote some years ago, not for pub­li­ca­tion but just for my own pri­vate read­ing.)



I should be sure of these; & I could add the oth­er three — but I should want to hold the oppor­tu­ni­ty open a few years, so as to make no mis­take.



Tru­ly Yours



S.L. CLEMENS



See all six man­u­script pages of Twain’s let­ter (and zoom in to exam­ine them close­ly) at the Shapell Man­u­script Foun­da­tion. We’ve added links to Twain’s rec­om­mend­ed texts above. You can find many in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read.

“Noth­ing Good Gets Away”: John Stein­beck Offers Love Advice in a Let­ter to His Son (1958)

F. Scott Fitzger­ald Tells His 11-Year-Old Daugh­ter What to Wor­ry About (and Not Wor­ry About) in Life, 1933

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

The Very First Written Use of the F Word in English (1528)

in History, Writing | February 11th, 2014

Eng­lish speak­ers enjoy what seems like an unmatched curios­i­ty about the ori­gins and his­tor­i­cal usages of their lan­guage’s curs­es. The exceed­ing­ly pop­u­lar “F word” has accret­ed an espe­cial­ly wide body of tex­tu­al inves­ti­ga­tion, wide-eyed spec­u­la­tion, and implau­si­ble folk ety­mol­o­gy. (One of the ter­m’s well-known if spu­ri­ous cre­ation myths even has a Van Halen album named after it.) “The his­to­ry begins in murky cir­cum­stances,” says the Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary’s site, and that dic­tio­nary of dic­tio­nar­ies has man­aged to place the word’s ear­li­est print appear­ance in the ear­ly six­teenth cen­tu­ry, albeit writ­ten “in code” and “in a mixed Latin-and-Eng­lish con­text.” Above, you can see one of the few con­crete pieces of infor­ma­tion we have on the mat­ter: the first defin­i­tive use of the F word in “the Eng­lish adjec­ti­val form, which implies use of the verb.”

Here the word appears (for the first time if not the last) not­ed down by hand in the mar­gins of a prop­er text, in this case Cicero’s De Offici­is. “It’s a monk express­ing his dis­plea­sure at an abbot,” writes Katharine Tren­da­cos­ta at i09. “In the mar­gins of a guide to moral con­duct. Because of course.” She quotes Melis­sa Mohr, author of Holy Sh*t: A Brief His­to­ry of Swear­ing, as declar­ing it “dif­fi­cult to know” whether this mar­gin­a­lia-mak­ing monk meant the word lit­er­al­ly, to accuse this abbott of “ques­tion­able monas­tic morals,” or whether he used it “as an inten­si­fi­er, to con­vey his extreme dis­may.” Either way, it holds a great deal of val­ue for schol­ars of lan­guage, giv­en, as the OED puts it, “the absence of the word from most print­ed text before the mid twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry” and the “quo­ta­tion dif­fi­cul­ties” that caus­es. If you find noth­ing to like in the F word’s ever-increas­ing preva­lence in the media, think of it this way: at least future lex­i­cog­ra­phers of swear­ing will have more to go on.

To view the com­plete man­u­script page, click here. The doc­u­ment seem­ing­ly resides at Brasenose Col­lege, Oxford.

via io9

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steven Pinker Explains the Neu­ro­science of Swear­ing (NSFW)

Stephen Fry, Lan­guage Enthu­si­ast, Defends The “Unnec­es­sary” Art Of Swear­ing

George Car­lin Per­forms His “Sev­en Dirty Words” Rou­tine: His­toric and Com­plete­ly NSFW

Medieval Cats Behav­ing Bad­ly: Kit­ties That Left Paw Prints … and Peed … on 15th Cen­tu­ry Man­u­scripts

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

Play the Great Language Game: It’s Fun and Free

in Language Lessons | February 11th, 2014

Are you ready to play The Great Lan­guage Game? This online game “chal­lenges you to dis­tin­guish between some eighty or so lan­guages [see a list here] based on their sound alone. In each game you’re allowed three mis­takes, which are kept for you to study at the end. If you’re feel­ing com­pet­i­tive, share your score with some friends and com­pete for some seri­ous brag­ging rights.” You can even see how oth­er play­ers are far­ing inter­na­tion­al­ly.

If you rock the game, let us know in the com­ments below.

If you come out of the game feel­ing like you could brush up on your  lan­guages (which you pret­ty well might), then head over to our col­lec­tion of Free Lan­guage Lessons. It offers free lessons in 46 lan­guages, every­thing from Ara­bic to Yid­dish. Have fun.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn 46 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More

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

Speak­ing in Whis­tles: The Whis­tled Lan­guage of Oax­a­ca, Mex­i­co

“Learn Eng­lish With Ricky Ger­vais,” A New Pod­cast Debuts (NSFW)

How a Book Thief Forged a Rare Edition of Galileo’s Scientific Work, and Almost Pulled it Off

in Books | February 11th, 2014

A cou­ple of weeks ago, we pub­lished a post that fea­tured Galileo’s Moon draw­ings, “the first real­is­tic depic­tions of the moon in his­to­ry.” As it turns out—some read­ers alert­ed us—some of the Moon illus­tra­tions attrib­uted to Galileo are actu­al­ly very con­vinc­ing forg­eries, so con­vinc­ing, in fact that when the draw­ings sur­faced in 2005, they ini­tial­ly swayed such experts as rare books deal­er Richard Lan, Har­vard pro­fes­sor of astron­o­my and his­to­ry of sci­ence Owen Gin­gerich, and art his­to­ri­an Horst Bre­dekamp. All of these experts have since come to learn—partially through the inves­ti­ga­tions of Geor­gia State Uni­ver­si­ty his­to­ri­an Nick Wild­ing—that an unusu­al edi­tion con­tain­ing detailed water­col­ors, pur­port­ed­ly in Galileo’s own hand (above and below), was in fact cre­at­ed by forg­er, book thief, and for­mer direc­tor of the State Library of Giro­lami­ni, Mari­no Mas­si­mo De Caro, who now stands accused of steal­ing thou­sands of vol­umes, includ­ing cen­turies-old edi­tions of Aris­to­tle, Descartes, Galileo and Machi­avel­li.

The draw­ings we fea­tured at the top of our pre­vi­ous post—from a set of five inkwash­es made in 1609, called “the Flo­rence Sheet”—are gen­uine, as are the etch­ings in the orig­i­nal text of Galileo’s sci­en­tif­ic trea­tise, Sidereus Nun­cius. How­ev­er, as inves­tiga­tive reporter Nicholas Schmi­dle doc­u­ment­ed in a lengthy arti­cle pub­lished in last December’s New York­er, the edi­tion pic­tured above—purchased for half a mil­lion dol­lars by Richard Lan of rare book­sellers Mar­tayan Lan and once val­ued at over ten mil­lion dol­lars for its unique rust-col­ored illustrations—is a fake, despite being authen­ti­cat­ed by a team of schol­ars in 2007.

The sto­ry of how De Caro’s forgery came to fool near­ly every­one who exam­ined it (end­ing up in Time mag­a­zine and dozens of oth­er pub­li­ca­tions and schol­ar­ly web­sites) is a long and wind­ing tale. Like many forg­ers, De Caro act­ed out of a mix­ture of greed, envy, and a desire to prove him­self to a field he felt did not rec­og­nize his tal­ents (De Caro also forged a copy of Galileo’s 1606 Com­pas­so to replace a stolen ver­sion). A col­lege dropout, he “held an impe­ri­ous grudge against peo­ple who had spent years study­ing in libraries,” writes Schmi­dle. Instead, De Caro had earned an hon­orary pro­fes­sor­ship by donat­ing four Galileo edi­tions (pre­sum­ably gen­uine) and a chunk of mete­orite to a pri­vate insti­tu­tion in Buenos Aires. More than just a sto­ry of fraud and theft, De Caro’s is one of aca­d­e­m­ic impos­ture. In 2006, for exam­ple, he par­tic­i­pat­ed in a pan­el dis­cus­sion on Galileo at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty, and despite the skep­ti­cism of actu­al schol­ars, his exper­tise was trust­ed in the rare books and muse­um worlds until his dis­cov­ery.

Accord­ing to Schmi­dle, De Caro and an accom­plice artist aged sev­er­al bot­tles of nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry ink to cre­ate the Galileo draw­ings, using the Flo­rence Sheet as a guide for the sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry astronomer’s hand. After open­ing a bot­tle of red wine, he had his accom­plice trace the out­line of the moons with the foot of his wine­glass. Then they baked the pages in his home oven to age them. It’s hard to believe De Caro’s fake sur­vived scruti­ny for over five years, until Wild­ing began to express his doubts in 2011. Though fac­ing sev­er­al years in prison, De Caro hopes to work some­day with the F.B.I., help­ing them dis­cov­er forged and stolen books. He cites famous con man Frank Abag­nale, played by Leonar­do Di Caprio in the 2002 film Catch Me If You Can, as an inspi­ra­tion. “I want to do for books what he did for checks,” says De Caro. “I can help them find all the black, off­shore accounts of all the book­sellers.” Read a fac­sim­i­le of Schmidle’s arti­cle here. And for more on De Caro’s brazen crimes, see this detailed Exam­in­er arti­cle.

Relat­ed Con­tents:

Galileo’s Moon Draw­ings, the First Real­is­tic Depic­tions of the Moon in His­to­ry (1609–1610)

Meet “Father Phil­an­thropy”: America’s Most Pro­lif­ic and Unlike­ly Mas­ter Art Forg­er

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

Free Guided Meditations From UCLA: Boost Your Awareness & Ease Your Stress

in Creativity, Health, How to Learn for Free, Psychology | February 11th, 2014

Pre­vi­ous­ly, we’ve writ­ten about a grow­ing num­ber of cul­tur­al fig­ures who prac­tice tran­scen­den­tal med­i­ta­tion, with Paul McCart­ney, David Lynch, Leonard Cohen, Ellen Degeneres, and Sheryl Crow being ardent sup­port­ers. Mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion, while less known, has also steadi­ly increased in pop­u­lar­i­ty over the past half-decade. In part, there’s its inher­ent appeal: mind­ful­ness cul­ti­vates an all-accept­ing aware­ness of the present moment, there­by dis­solv­ing anx­i­eties about the future or pre­oc­cu­pa­tions with thoughts of the past. There’s also the grow­ing momen­tum of mind­ful­ness research in the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty, with stud­ies sug­gest­ing that mind­ful­ness-based ther­a­peu­tic approach­es may ben­e­fit a host of psy­cho­log­i­cal issues. Its use to alle­vi­ate anx­i­ety, depres­sion, and stress is par­tic­u­lar­ly promis­ing.

“Sounds tempt­ing,” you say, “but where does one try this mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion busi­ness, any­way? Can I try it with­out going any­where?” You’re in luck, my friend! UCLA’s Mind­ful Aware­ness Research Cen­ter (MARC) has uploaded a set of mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tions to iTune­sU, where the series is present­ly the #1 down­load. “I’m too busy,” you say, open­ing a Face­book tab. Not so fast! Most of the med­i­ta­tions are under 10 min­utes long, with the com­plete series clock­ing in at two hours.

We’ve had trou­ble lis­ten­ing to the lec­tures on the UCLA site, so if you’re inter­est­ed, head over to iTune­sU to down­load Mind­ful Med­i­ta­tions. Oth­er­wise, if you live with­in a rea­son­able dis­tance of UCLA’s Ham­mer Muse­um, drop in for free week­ly med­i­ta­tion ses­sions (record­ings for most of these are avail­able here).

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alan Watts Intro­duces Amer­i­ca to Med­i­ta­tion & East­ern Phi­los­o­phy (1960)

David Lynch Talks Med­i­ta­tion with Paul McCart­ney

Mihaly Czik­szent­mi­ha­lyi Explains Why the Source of Hap­pi­ness Lies in Cre­ativ­i­ty and Flow, Not Mon­ey

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Enhances Our Cre­ativ­i­ty