David Lynch’s Unlikely Commercial for a Home Pregnancy Test (1997)

in Film | January 24th, 2014

Vision­ary direc­tor David Lynch has cre­at­ed some of the most ter­ri­fy­ing, sur­re­al images in cin­e­ma, from a danc­ing dream dwarf in Twin Peaks to that sev­ered ear in a field in Blue Vel­vet. So he might seem like an unlike­ly choice to direct a series of com­mer­cials for Clear Blue Easy One Minute home preg­nan­cy tests, but that’s exact­ly what he did in 1997.

The moody, black and white ad shows a ner­vous-look­ing woman wait­ing for the results of the test. In those ago­niz­ing moments, the face of her watch reads ‘yes’ and ‘no’ instead of num­bers – reflect­ing her anx­i­ety.

While this com­mer­cial might seem tame for Lynch, it is the­mat­i­cal­ly sim­i­lar to his oth­er work. His ear­ly mas­ter­piece Eraser­head is a biz­zaro fever dream about the abject ter­ror of par­ent­hood.

“The client was a lit­tle ner­vous that the spot would be eerie and scary,” David Cohen, exec­u­tive pro­duc­er of the ad, said to Enter­tain­ment Weekly’s A.J. Jacob. “But on the set, Lynch was con­stant­ly mak­ing sure the client was hap­py.”

In fact, Lynch has had a whole sec­ond career as a com­mer­cial direc­tor, mak­ing ads for Nis­san, PlaySta­tion and one incred­i­bly freaky PSA about the evils of lit­ter­ing. He also direct­ed a sur­pris­ing­ly lit­er­ary series of com­mer­cials for Calvin Klein using text penned by such lumi­nar­ies as F. Scott Fitzger­ald and D.H. Lawrence. We’ll post some­thing about those next week.

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:

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Weird, Sur­re­al­ist Video

David Lynch Lists His Favorite Films & Direc­tors, Includ­ing Felli­ni, Wilder, Tati & Hitch­cock

What David Lynch Can Do With a 100-Year-Old Cam­era and 52 Sec­onds of Film

Jeremy Irons Reads T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets

in Poetry | January 23rd, 2014

In 1914, T.S. Eliot moved from his birth coun­try, the Unit­ed States, to Eng­land at the age of 25 and soon there­after estab­lished him­self as one of the most influ­en­tial poets of this gen­er­a­tion, writ­ing some of the best known poems of the 20th cen­tu­ry includ­ing The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915), The Waste Land (1922) and The Hol­low Men (1925).

Yet Eliot con­sid­ered his Four Quar­tets cycle to be his finest. Pub­lished indi­vid­u­al­ly over the course of six years, the series con­sists of four poems – Burnt Nor­ton (1936), East Cok­er (1940), The Dry Sal­vages (1941) and Lit­tle Gid­ding (1942) – that are pro­found medi­a­tions on time, the cos­mos and the divine.

Eliot dis­cussed the cycle with the Paris Review in 1959. “I’d like to feel that they get bet­ter as they go on. The sec­ond is bet­ter than the first, the third is bet­ter than the sec­ond, and the fourth is the best of all. At any rate, that’s the way I flat­ter myself.”

The BBC has pro­duced an audio ver­sion of Eliot’s Four Quar­tets with none oth­er than Oscar-win­ning actor Jere­my Irons serv­ing as a read­er. The video above is a clip of that read­ing, tak­en from Burnt Nor­ton.

You can read along to Iron’s leo­nine nar­ra­tion:

Foot­falls echo in the mem­o­ry
Down the pas­sage which we did not take
Towards the door we nev­er opened
Into the rose-gar­den.
My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what pur­pose
Dis­turb­ing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves I do not know.
Oth­er echoes
Inhab­it the gar­den.
Shall we fol­low?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the cor­ner.
Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we fol­low
The decep­tion of the thrush?
Into our first world.
There they were, dig­ni­fied, invis­i­ble,
Mov­ing with­out pres­sure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hid­den in the shrub­bery,
And the unseen eye­beam crossed, for the ros­es
Had the look of flow­ers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accept­ed and accept­ing.
So we moved, and they, in a for­mal pat­tern,
Along the emp­ty alley, into the box cir­cle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry con­crete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sun­light,
And the lotos rose, qui­et­ly, qui­et­ly,
The sur­face glit­tered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflect­ed in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was emp­ty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of chil­dren,
Hid­den excit­ed­ly, con­tain­ing laugh­ter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Can­not bear very much real­i­ty.

The com­plete cycle read by Irons is on the BBC web­site for a lim­it­ed time. (If you want to skip the pro­gram’s lengthy intro­duc­tion, start at the 7:45 mark­er.)

And if you want to hear the Four Quar­tets read by T.S. Eliot him­self, check out the video below. More read­ings can be found in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

via The Poet­ry Foun­da­tion

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:

Lis­ten to T.S. Eliot Recite His Late Mas­ter­piece, the Four Quar­tets

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist Poem The Waste Land

T.S. Eliot, as Faber & Faber Edi­tor, Rejects George Orwell’s “Trot­skyite” Nov­el Ani­mal Farm (1944)

T.S. Eliot Reads The Waste Land

A List of Nelson Mandela’s Possessions Upon Leaving Prison: Surfboard, Exercise Bike & White Cardboard Hat

in History | January 23rd, 2014

Nel­son Man­dela, who passed away late last year, spent more than a quar­ter of his life in pris­ons. For the first twen­ty years, begin­ning with his 1962 incar­cer­a­tion in Johannesburg’s Mar­shall Square Prison when Man­dela was 44 years old, there was lit­tle hope of clemen­cy from the apartheid regime. By the 1980s, how­ev­er, inter­na­tion­al pres­sure was bear­ing down on the reign­ing Nation­al Par­ty. Multi­na­tion­al banks stopped invest­ing in South Africa, and sev­er­al of them, along­side British PM Mar­garet Thatch­er, demand­ed that Man­dela be released. Inter­nal­ly, the country’s ten­sions were becom­ing dif­fi­cult to con­trol, and the regime attempt­ed to enforce order by declar­ing a state of emer­gency. The crack­down result­ed in fur­ther anti-gov­ern­ment attacks by the anti-apartheid African Nation­al Con­gress. Even­tu­al­ly, the pres­sure proved insur­mount­able, and the 72 year old Man­dela was released from Vic­tor Ver­ster prison in 1990.

Upon walk­ing out of Vic­tor Ver­ster, Man­dela received the per­son­al prop­er­ty he had relin­quished dur­ing his time in jail. Above is a pho­to­graph of the hand­writ­ten list of his per­son­al effects. (Click the image to read it in a larg­er for­mat.) Our res­i­dent Afrikaans expert (i.e., Google Trans­late) pro­vides an Eng­lish trans­la­tion below:

Inven­to­ry

Prop­er­ty Mr. Man­dela

21 +1 box­es

1 Reisegers* Bag

1 Urn

1 Surf Board

4 Rat­tan Bas­kets

1 foot­stool

1 Large Birth­day Card

1 White Card­board Hat

2 Big Umbrel­las

1 Set Weights

1 Exer­cise Bike

Cor­rect Onta­vang:* [illeg­i­ble]

Urns and rat­tan bas­kets are all well and good, but I was most impressed that the great anti-apartheid leader count­ed an exer­cise bike and a set of weights among his pos­ses­sions. Don’t even get me start­ed on the surf­board. Then again, Man­dela took his fit­ness more seri­ous­ly than most dur­ing his life­time, as he not­ed in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy:

“I enjoyed the dis­ci­pline and soli­tari­ness of long-dis­tance run­ning, which allowed me to escape from the hurly-burly of school life.”

“On Mon­day through Thurs­day, I would do sta­tion­ary run­ning in my cell in the morn­ing for up to forty-five min­utes. I would also per­form one hun­dred fin­ger­tip push-ups, two hun­dred sit-ups, fifty deep knee-bends, and var­i­ous oth­er cal­is­then­ics.”

 “Exer­cise was unusu­al for African men of my age and gen­er­a­tion… I know that some of my younger com­rades looked at me and said to them­selves, ‘if that old man can do it, why can’t I?’ They too began to exer­cise.”

“I attend­ed the gym for one and a half hours each evening from Mon­day through Thurs­day… We did an hour of exer­cise, some com­bi­na­tion of road­work, skip­ping rope, cal­is­then­ics, or shad­ow box­ing, fol­lowed by fif­teen min­utes of body work, some weight lift­ing, and then spar­ring.” 

To learn more about Nel­son Man­dela and view oth­er orig­i­nal doc­u­ments, head over to the Nel­son Man­dela Foundation’s Dig­i­tal Archives.

And if you can help us fig­ure out what “Reisegers bag” and “Cor­rect Onta­vang” mean and write the trans­la­tion in the com­ment sec­tion, we’d appre­ci­ate it!

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nel­son Man­de­la’s First-Ever TV Inter­view (1961)

Mor­gan Free­man Mas­ter­ful­ly Recites Nel­son Mandela’s Favorite Poem, “Invic­tus”

U2 Releas­es a Nel­son Man­dela-Inspired Song, “Ordi­nary Love”

How Cooking Can Change Your Life: A Short Animated Film Featuring the Wisdom of Michael Pollan

in Food & Drink | January 23rd, 2014

Michael Pol­lan, the best­selling author who describes him­self jok­ing­ly as a “lib­er­al food­ie intel­lec­tu­al,” pub­lished Food Rules in 2009, a hand­book that offers “straight­for­ward, mem­o­rable rules for eat­ing wise­ly.” The one I remem­ber best is Rule #2. “Don’t eat any­thing your great-grand­moth­er would­n’t rec­og­nize as food.” That’s because it’s like­ly processed and “designed to get us to buy and eat more by push­ing our evo­lu­tion­ary but­tons, our inborn pref­er­ences for sweet­ness and fat and salt.” A few oth­er note­wor­thy sug­ges­tions and asser­tions include:

Rule #6: “Avoid foods that con­tain more than five ingre­di­ents.”

Rule #20: “It’s not food if it arrived through the win­dow of your car.”

Rule #37: “The whiter the bread, the soon­er you’ll be dead.”

Rule #17: “Eat only foods that have been cooked by humans.”

That last rule gets tak­en up again in How Cook­ing Can Change Your Life, a short ani­mat­ed film just released by the Roy­al Soci­ety of the Arts (RSA). The audio in the clip is an out­take from a longer talk that Pol­lan gave at RSA in Lon­don, last May. Lis­ten to the talk in full here. Below, we’ve also post­ed anoth­er RSA video that takes more Food Rules by Pol­lan and ren­ders them in stop motion ani­ma­tion. This sec­ond clip first appeared on our site back in 2012. (For a more sus­tained intel­lec­tu­al expe­ri­ence, see our pre­vi­ous post: Michael Pol­lan Presents an Edi­ble Edu­ca­tion, A Free Online Course From UC Berke­ley.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

MIT Teach­es You How to Speak Ital­ian & Cook Ital­ian Cui­sine All at Once (Free Online Course)

Sci­ence & Cook­ing: Har­vard Profs Meet World-Class Chefs in Unique Online Course

Albert Einstein Holding an Albert Einstein Puppet (Circa 1931)

in Physics, Theatre | January 22nd, 2014

The Yale Pup­peteers, con­sist­ing of For­man Brown, Har­ry Bur­nett, and Rod­dy Bran­don, came togeth­er in the 1920s and spent almost the next sev­en decades tour­ing the Unit­ed States, putting on satir­i­cal per­for­mances that fea­tured pup­pets in star­ring roles. They also staged per­for­mances at the Turn­about The­ater from 1941 to 1956, turn­ing it into a Hol­ly­wood insti­tu­tion.

In 1965, while speak­ing to the Los Ange­les Times, Har­ry Bur­nett reflect­ed on his career and recalled how the pup­pet troupe “enter­tained Charles Chap­lin, Gre­ta Gar­bo, Lionel Bar­ry­more,” and even “pre­sent­ed a spe­cial show for Dr. Albert Ein­stein when he vis­it­ed the street while teach­ing at Cal­tech.” That’s like­ly the ori­gin of the ear­ly 1930s pho­to above, which fea­tures Ein­stein pos­ing with an Ein­stein mar­i­onette. The web­site Retro­naut pro­vides a lit­tle more back­ground on the pho­to:

Ein­stein saw the pup­pet per­form at the Teatro Tori­to [a pre­de­ces­sor to the Turn­about The­ater] and was quite amused. He reached into his jacket’s breast pock­et, pulled out a let­ter and crum­pled it up. Speak­ing in Ger­man, he said, ‘The pup­pet wasn’t fat enough!’ He laughed and stuffed the crum­pled let­ter up under the smock to give the pup­pet a fat­ter bel­ly. This is a won­der­ful pho­to­graph that Har­ry trea­sured. Har­ry Bur­nett also kept the let­ter in a frame and loved to retell the sto­ry and at the end give his pix­ish laugh.

The sto­ry of Bur­nett and his com­rades was told in a 1993 doc­u­men­tary, Turn­about: The Sto­ry of the Yale Pup­peteers. Unfor­tu­nate­ly it’s not avail­able online.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

“Do Sci­en­tists Pray?”: A Young Girl Asks Albert Ein­stein in 1936. Ein­stein Then Responds.

Ein­stein for the Mass­es: Yale Presents a Primer on the Great Physicist’s Think­ing

The Musi­cal Mind of Albert Ein­stein: Great Physi­cist, Ama­teur Vio­lin­ist and Devo­tee of Mozart

Free Physics Cours­es in our Col­lec­tion of 825 Free Online Cours­es

Sonic Youth Guitarist Thurston Moore Teaches a Poetry Workshop at Naropa University: See His Class Notes (2011)

in Music, Poetry | January 22nd, 2014

It’s not unusu­al for intro­spec­tive indie song­writ­ers to make for­ays into poet­ry. Some do it rather suc­cess­ful­ly, like Sil­ver Jews’ Dave Berman; some, like Will Old­ham, stir up the poet­ry world by turn­ing against poet­ry. Then there are indie stars like the inde­fati­ga­bly youth­ful Thurston Moore—for­mer­ly of Son­ic Youth, cur­rent­ly of Chelsea Light Mov­ing—who was asked to teach at the Jack Ker­ouac School of Dis­em­bod­ied Poet­ics at Naropa Uni­ver­si­ty. Bet­ter known for his numer­ous ven­tures in the New York exper­i­men­tal art world, Moore led a three-day poet­ry work­shop at the Boul­der, Col­orado school’s sum­mer writ­ing pro­gram in 2011.

Moore was very much in demand. Anne Wald­man, co-founder of Naropa’s writ­ing pro­gram with Allen Gins­berg, said at the time, “We’ve been try­ing to get him for a while. We need him.” (Poet­ry teacher Ken­neth Gold­smith recalls that the only one who was­n’t impressed with Moore was the recent­ly depart­ed Amiri Bara­ka, who said “he needs to work on those poems.”) Thanks to some very chat­ty stu­dents, we have detailed descrip­tions of Moore’s teach­ing style, as well as scans of his class notes. See the first page of Moore’s notes to him­self for “Poet­ry / Music Work­shop #1” at the top and a tran­scrip­tion of his ellip­ti­cal, idio­syn­crat­ic method below:

Teacher impro­vis­es on elec­tric
gui­tar while
     stu­dents write sin­gle words
each to his/her own sense of
     space and Rhythm and evo­ca­tion
For 4 min­utes
     the gui­tar is record­ed on
        cas­sette recorder
       or com­put­er
Record­ed music played back
      through amp. while stu­dents
   Read aloud their writ­ing
Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, All record­ed
by cas­sette rec’r or comp.

     MAKE CASSETTES

Stu­dent Katie Ingeg­neri, who inter­viewed Moore, brings us the page of text as well as the video above of Moore read­ing at Naropa. Accord­ing to anoth­er one of Moore’s for­mer stu­dents with the unlike­ly name Thorin Klosows­ki, the first day of the work­shop con­sist­ed of a “ram­bling, three-hour intro­duc­tion” dur­ing which Moore “revealed that when he ini­tial­ly moved to New York in the ’70s, it was not to make music, but rather to be a writer.” Klosowski’s piece includes addi­tion­al pages of Moore’s notes, like that above, which cites coun­ter­cul­tur­al hero Emmett Gro­gan’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Ringole­vio. Klosows­ki tells us that once things loos­ened up, Moore “did a bet­ter job of teach­ing than when he was pre­tend­ing to be a lec­tur­er.” The work­shop also includ­ed some “gos­sipy tid­bits”:

For instance, did you now that Kim Gor­don had a tex­ting rela­tion­ship with James Fran­co? That Stephen Malk­mus hates slam poet­ry? Or that even after years of being out of print, Moore’s list of ten essen­tial free jazz records he wrote for Grand Royale was still brought into record stores (Twist & Shout and Wax Trax includ­ed)?

Moore had vis­it­ed Naropa once before. In 2006 at a ben­e­fit for Bur­ma Life and La Casa de la Esper­an­za, he read from his books Alaba­ma Wild­man, What I Like About Fem­i­nism, and Nice War and played some songs from Son­ic Youth’s Rather Ripped. Hear the audio of that event above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fear of a Female Plan­et: Kim Gor­don (Son­ic Youth) on Why Rus­sia and the US Need a Pussy Riot

Allen Ginsberg’s “Celes­tial Home­work”: A Read­ing List for His Class “Lit­er­ary His­to­ry of the Beats”

“Expan­sive Poet­ics” by Allen Gins­berg: A Free Course from 1981 

William S. Bur­roughs’ Short Class on Cre­ative Read­ing 

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

Download Over 300+ Free Art Books From the Getty Museum

in Art, e-books, Museums | January 22nd, 2014

Yes­ter­day, we wrote about the Well­come Library’s open­ing up of its dig­i­tal archives and mak­ing over 100,000 med­ical images freely avail­able online. If you’ve already made your way through this choice selec­tion (or if the prospect of view­ing a 19^th cen­tu­ry leg ampu­ta­tion doesn’t quite pique your curios­i­ty) have no fear. Get­ty Pub­li­ca­tions just announced the launch of its Vir­tu­al Library, where read­ers can freely browse and down­load over 250 art books from the publisher’s back­list cat­a­logue.

The Vir­tu­al Library con­sists of texts asso­ci­at­ed with sev­er­al Get­ty insti­tu­tions. Read­ers can view exten­sive­ly researched exhi­bi­tion cat­a­logues from the J. Paul Get­ty Muse­um, includ­ing Paul Cézan­ne’s late-life water­colours, when the painter raised the still life to a high art (Cézanne in the Stu­dio: Still Life in Water­col­ors, 2004), as well as the woe­ful­ly under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed Flem­ish illus­tra­tions of the 15th and 16th cen­turies (Illu­mi­nat­ing the Renais­sance: The Tri­umph of Flem­ish Man­u­script, 2003).  The col­lec­tion also con­tains detailed trea­tis­es on art con­ser­va­tion from the Get­ty Con­ser­va­tion Insti­tute, and schol­ar­ly works from the Get­ty Research Insti­tute, both of which include a mul­ti­tude of books on spe­cial­ized top­ics. Fan­cy read­ing about the rela­tion­ship between Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder, the two leg­endary 17^th cen­tu­ry painters who lived in the Nether­lands’ city of Antwerp? There’s a book on that. Intrigued by all the pros­ti­tutes in French impres­sion­ism? Try Paint­ed Love: Pros­ti­tu­tion in French Art of the Impres­sion­ist Era (2003). Per­haps you’re par­tial to ancient vas­es, and have already read The Col­ors of Clay (2006), Pots & Plays (2007), and Greek Vas­es (1983)? Don’t wor­ry, the Getty’s vir­tu­al library has at least 8 more vase-ori­ent­ed books.

All of the Getty’s vir­tu­al library vol­umes are avail­able in PDF for­mat, and can be added to your Google Books library. If you’re look­ing for more free art books, don’t miss our post from last year: The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art and the Guggen­heim Offer 474 Free Art Books Online.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

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

Read 700 Free eBooks Made Avail­able by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia Press

Alice B. Toklas Reads Her Famous Recipe for Hashish Fudge (1963)

in Books, Literature | January 22nd, 2014

Alice Babette Tok­las met Gertrude Stein in 1907, the day she arrived in Paris. They remained togeth­er for 39 years until Stein’s death in 1946. While Stein became the cen­ter of the avant-garde art world, host­ing an exclu­sive salon that wel­comed the likes of Ernest Hem­ing­way, Pablo Picas­so, James Joyce, Ezra Pound and F. Scott Fitzger­ald, Tok­las large­ly pre­ferred to stay in Stein’s shad­ow, serv­ing as her sec­re­tary, edi­tor and assis­tant.

That changed in 1933 when Stein wrote The Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Alice B. Tok­las (read it online) – a retelling of the couple’s life togeth­er with Tok­las serv­ing as nar­ra­tor. The book is Stein’s most acces­si­ble and best-sell­ing work. It also turned the shy, self-effac­ing Tok­las into a lit­er­ary fig­ure.

After Stein’s death, Tok­las pub­lished The Alice B. Tok­las Cook­book in 1954, which com­bined per­son­al rec­ol­lec­tions of her time with Stein along with recipes and mus­ings about French cui­sine. Yet it wasn’t her sto­ries about tend­ing to the wound­ed dur­ing WWI or her opin­ions on mus­sels that made the book famous. Instead, it was the inclu­sion of a recipe giv­en to her by Moroc­can-based artist Brion Gysin called “Hashish Fudge.”

In this 1963 record­ing from Paci­fi­ca Radio, Tok­las reads her noto­ri­ous recipe. The snack “might pro­vide an enter­tain­ing refresh­ment for a Ladies’ Bridge Club or a chap­ter meet­ing of the DAR,” Tok­las notes in her reedy, dig­ni­fied voice. Then she gets on to the recipe itself:

Take one tea­spoon black pep­per­corns, one whole nut­meg, four aver­age sticks of cin­na­mon, one tea­spoon corian­der. These should all be pul­ver­ized in a mor­tar. About a hand­ful each of stoned dates, dried figs, shelled almonds and peanuts: chop these and mix them togeth­er. A bunch of Cannabis sati­va can be pul­ver­ized. This along with the spices should be dust­ed over the mixed fruit and nuts, knead­ed togeth­er. About a cup of sug­ar dis­solved in a big pat of but­ter. Rolled into a cake and cut into pieces or made into balls about the size of a wal­nut, it should be eat­en with care. Two pieces are quite suf­fi­cient.

Tok­las con­cedes that get­ting the key ingre­di­ent “can present cer­tain dif­fi­cul­ties” and rec­om­mends find­ing the stuff in the wild, which might have been pos­si­ble to do in the ear­ly 1960s. Nowa­days, the best course of action is to move to Wash­ing­ton, Col­orado or Uruguay.

In the record­ing, Tok­las then goes on to recall how hashish fudge came to be includ­ed into her book.

“The recipe was inno­cent­ly includ­ed with­out my real­iz­ing that the hashish was the accent­ed part of the recipe,” she says with­out a trace of face­tious­ness. “I was shocked to find that Amer­i­ca wouldn’t accept it because it was too dan­ger­ous.”

“It nev­er went into the Amer­i­can edi­tion,” she says. “The Eng­lish are braver. We’re not coura­geous about that sort of thing.”

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:

Find The Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Alice B. Tok­las in our col­lec­tion of 500 Free eBooks

Gertrude Stein Gets a Snarky Rejec­tion Let­ter from Pub­lish­er (1912)

Hear Gertrude Stein Read Works Inspired by Matisse, Picas­so, and T.S. Eliot (1934)

Gertrude Stein Recites ‘If I Told Him: A Com­plet­ed Por­trait of Picas­so’

Download 100,000+ Images From The History of Medicine, All Free Courtesy of The Wellcome Library

in Art, Biology, History, Science | January 21st, 2014

The Well­come Library, in Lon­don, spe­cial­izes in the his­to­ry of med­i­cine. While the insti­tu­tion has long offered a good dig­i­tal col­lec­tion for brows­ing, the library announced yes­ter­day that they are mak­ing more than 100,000 his­tor­i­cal images free to down­load under a Cre­ative Com­mons CC-BY license. (Users can dis­trib­ute, edit, or remix at will; the license even allows for com­mer­cial use, with attri­bu­tion.)

The Wellcome’s hold­ings rep­re­sent the institution’s long-term inter­est in col­lect­ing art relat­ed to med­i­cine, the body, pub­lic health, and med­ical sci­ence. The drop-down menu labeled “Tech­nique” in the stan­dard search box returns a stag­ger­ing array of types of visu­al cul­ture, from aquatint to carv­ing to fres­co to X‑ray. The library reports that the ear­li­est image avail­able is from 400 AD: a frag­ment of papyrus from an illus­trat­ed herbal man­u­script, fea­tur­ing a fad­ed col­or draw­ing of a plant.

Some images in the col­lec­tion are, per­haps unsur­pris­ing­ly, squirm-induc­ing (an 1851 Japan­ese wood­cut show­ing an ampu­ta­tion of the low­er leg; a Dutch etch­ing depict­ing a 17^th-c mas­tec­to­my; a Ger­man illus­tra­tion show­ing 17th-cen­tu­ry monks per­form­ing eye surgery). But there is plen­ty of beau­ty here, as well. I loved an a 19^th-c wood­cut of a sumo match, and a Tibetan illus­trat­ed man­u­script used in the pro­duc­tion of med­i­cines.

Browsers inter­est­ed in dip­ping a toe into the stream of images may try out the gal­leries list­ed on the Images home­page. The “Olympic Sports” gallery offers an 1829 engrav­ing of the famous con­joined twins Chang and Eng hold­ing bad­minton rack­ets, and an 1870 illus­tra­tion of rec­om­mend­ed ring exer­cis­es for lady gym­nasts. The “Witch­craft” col­lec­tion (under the “Favourites” tab) con­tains many illus­tra­tions from his­tor­i­cal books cov­er­ing witch­craft in Europe and the Amer­i­can colonies, along with a more sur­pris­ing 19^th-cen­tu­ry Malayan black-mag­ic charm.

Rights-man­aged images are marked as such in the thumb­nail results that appear after a search. Although the archive requires you to enter a CAPTCHA to access the free images, you can select sev­er­al thumb­nails on the search-results page in order to bulk-down­load files for many images at the same time. The sam­ple files I request­ed arrived on my desk­top at 300 dpi.

The image above is an illus­tra­tion of a mechan­i­cal hand from 1564.

h/t @kirstinbutler

Rebec­ca Onion is a writer and aca­d­e­m­ic liv­ing in Philadel­phia. She runs Slate.com’s his­to­ry blog, The Vault. Fol­low her on Twit­ter: @rebeccaonion. 

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

Google’s Music Timeline: A Visualization of 60 Years of Changing Musical Tastes

in Google, Music | January 21st, 2014

The state of music has changed rad­i­cal­ly in recent years. Of course, the largest change that springs to mind is Nap­ster, the pro­gram that made col­lec­tive musi­cal shar­ing pos­si­ble and trig­gered the inex­orable decline in record sales in the ear­ly 2000s. Busi­ness mod­el aside, how­ev­er, the music indus­try has also weath­ered tremen­dous­ly volatile changes in taste over the past half-cen­tu­ry.

To see just how dra­mat­ic the changes in musi­cal fash­ion have been, check out Google’s new Music Time­line, pic­tured above. This sim­ple, col­or-cod­ed chart dis­plays the pop­u­lar­i­ty of var­i­ous gen­res from 1950 onwards (pre-50s sales data is just too spot­ty and incon­sis­tent). While jazz record sales held the lion’s share of the mar­ket through­out much of the 1950’s, the advent of rock and pop acts such as the Bea­t­les in the 1960s rel­e­gat­ed jazz to the minor leagues.

The time­line also allows you to look at the pop­u­lar­i­ty of var­i­ous bands through­out the course of their careers. Metal­li­ca, the liti­gious crit­ics of Napster’s file-shar­ing ways, are an inter­est­ing exam­ple of the wax­ing and wan­ing of a par­tic­u­lar band’s suc­cess. Ini­tial spike of pop­u­lar­i­ty aside, as is clear from the image right above, the band had been rel­a­tive­ly suc­cess­ful with each of their stu­dio albums. After the release of their cov­er album in 1998, enti­tled Garage Inc., things quick­ly head­ed south. Whether it’s because of the Nap­ster deba­cle of 2000, when the band’s law­suit effec­tive­ly shut down the com­pa­ny, or a regret­table change of direc­tion, many for­mer fans sim­ply weren’t inter­est­ed any­more.

Before fans come to the defense of whichev­er bands were slight­ed by Google’s visu­al­iza­tion, a few caveats: the data used to judge rel­a­tive suc­cess is derived from Google Play user libraries. The more users have an album, the more suc­cess­ful it’s deemed by the algo­rithm. Addi­tion­al­ly, if you’re a clas­si­cal music fan, you’re out of luck. For var­i­ous logis­ti­cal rea­sons, Google decid­ed against its inclu­sion in the time­line.

For more infor­ma­tion about Google’s Music Time­line, click here. For a Michael Hann’s first look review over at The Guardian’s music blog, which dis­cuss­es the pos­si­ble skews in the data, head this way.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Music Told in Sev­en Rapid­ly Illus­trat­ed Min­utes

100 Years of Rock in Less Than a Minute: From Gospel to Grunge

The Sto­ry of the Bass: New Video Gives Us 500 Years of Music His­to­ry in 8 Min­utes