“The Tolkien Professor” Presents Three Free Courses on The Lord of the Rings

in Literature, Online Courses | January 15th, 2014

A quick update: Last year, we told you about Corey Olsen, an Eng­lish Pro­fes­sor at Wash­ing­ton Col­lege, who start­ed pub­lish­ing online lec­tures on the writ­ing of J.R.R. Tolkien. We ini­tial­ly fea­tured his lec­ture series on The Hob­bit. Now “The Tolkien Pro­fes­sor,” as Olsen is oth­er­wise known, presents a series of online cours­es on The Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy:

• Lord of the Rings I: The Road Goes Ever On — iTune­sU
• Lord of the Rings II: The Two Tow­ers — iTune­sU — Web
• Lord of the Rings III: Return of the King - iTunes U — Web

As a bonus, you can access Olsen’s Under­grad­u­ate Sur­vey Course on Tolkien (avail­able on the web). The 14-week course was pre­sent­ed and record­ed at Wash­ing­ton Col­lege in the Spring of 2010.

All of Olsen’s cours­es are cat­a­logued in the Lit­er­a­ture sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 825 Free Online Cours­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to J.R.R. Tolkien Read a Lengthy Excerpt from The Hob­bit (1952)

Lis­ten to J.R.R. Tolkien Read Poems from The Fel­low­ship of the Ring, in Elvish and Eng­lish (1952)

Fan­tas­tic BBC Footage of J.R.R. Tolkien in 1968

Free Audio: Down­load the Com­plete Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia by C.S. Lewis

Read David Foster Wallace’s Notes From a Tax Accounting Class, Taken to Help Him Write The Pale King

in Literature | January 15th, 2014

Click images once to enlarge, and twice to zoom in.

There are two ways to gath­er mate­r­i­al for a book. The first is to live life to the full. Ernest Hem­ing­way fished, fought, and went to bull­fights. Her­man Melville and Charles Bukows­ki slept their way through an impres­sive por­tion of the West­ern world. Jack Ker­ouac spent years trav­el­ling before he reached the crit­i­cal moment where he was ready to write On The Road. These authors lived with a pal­pa­ble inten­si­ty, and used their expe­ri­ences as fuel for their writ­ing. Oth­ers, how­ev­er, did not rely on first­hand accounts. Elmore Leonard paid a leg­man named Gregg Sut­ter to do his research, using Sutter’s accounts of loca­tions as the scaf­fold­ing for his descrip­tions. Nathan Eng­lan­der wrote a fine­ly-tuned nov­el about the dis­ap­peared dur­ing Argentina’s Dirty War hav­ing only vis­it­ed Buenos Aires for a week. He did a lot of read­ing.

In writ­ing The Pale King, a nov­el of 1980s IRS agents stul­ti­fied by bore­dom in Peo­ria, Illi­nois, David Fos­ter Wal­lace joined the lat­ter group. Although Wal­lace had left an unfin­ished man­u­script when he com­mit­ted sui­cide in 2008, he had spent more than a decade work­ing on it. In fact, a year after the release of his opus, Infi­nite Jest, Wal­lace enrolled in account­ing class­es at Illi­nois State Uni­ver­si­ty to learn about pre­cise­ly what IRS agents did. Accord­ing to The New York Times’ Jen­nifer Schuessler, the author began “plow­ing through shelves of tech­ni­cal lit­er­a­ture, tran­scrib­ing notes on tax scams, cri­te­ria for audit and the prob­lem of ‘agent ter­ror­ism’ into a series of note­books.”

Today, we bring you two pages of his notes (click the images to enlarge). In the first, above, Wal­lace has jot­ted down a few key points about accru­al and defer­ral, along­side what is like­ly a note to self on the subject’s dif­fi­cul­ty: “A BITCH.”

In the sec­ond, below, Wal­lace writes, “‘You’re home free, you did it,’ says teacher. Account­ing is sea of dis­parate data threat­en­ing to drown us. One ‘escapes,’ ‘gets out safe­ly’ from a clos­ing cycle.” Cryp­tic? You bet. But not as cryp­tic to the untrained eye as “ACCOUNTANTS ARE THE COWBOYS OF INFORMATION,” scrawled diag­o­nal­ly across the bot­tom of the page.

For an astute inter­pre­ta­tion of these notes, I urge you to head over to The New York­er and read Seth Colter Walls’ “David Fos­ter Wallace’s Tax Class­es.”

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

David Fos­ter Wallace’s Love of Lan­guage Revealed by the Books in His Per­son­al Library

The David Fos­ter Wal­lace Audio Archive: A Lit­tle Gift For the Novelist’s 50th Birth­day

How Coffee Affects Your Brain: A Very Quick Primer

in Animation, Food & Drink | January 14th, 2014

The morn­ing cup of cof­fee sweeps the cob­webs off of your brain. Almost mag­i­cal­ly. Just like that. If you care to get ana­lyt­i­cal about what’s going on in your caf­feinat­ed brain, we give you a short video from PHD comics — short, of course, for Piled High­er and Deep­er. For more of their videos see:

The Hig­gs Boson, AKA the God Par­ti­cle, Explained with Ani­ma­tion

What’s Next for the Large Hadron Col­lid­er? PhD Comics Intro­duces the Search for Extra Dimen­sions

Dark Mat­ter Ani­mat­ed: The Next Fron­tier of Dis­cov­ery for Physi­cists and Cos­mol­o­gists

Vintage Photos of a Young Virginia Woolf Playing Cricket (Ages 5 & 12)

in Literature | January 14th, 2014

Scenes, I note, sel­dom illus­trate my rela­tion with Vanes­sa; it has been too deep for ‘scenes’. Vanes­sa and I were both what we call tomboys; that is, we played crick­et, scram­bled over rocks, climbed trees, were said not to care for clothes and so on.

Until she was fif­teen indeed, she was out­ward­ly sober and aus­tere, the most trust­wor­thy, and always the eldest; some­times she would lament her “respon­si­bil­i­ties”. But beneath the seri­ous sur­face … there burnt also the…passion for art. …Once I saw her scrawl on a black door a great maze of lines, with white chalk. “When I am a famous painter-” she began, and then turned shy and rubbed it out in her capa­ble way…She was awk­ward as a long-legged colt.

This is how Vir­ginia Woolf remem­bered her sis­ter Vanes­sa Bell in cor­re­spon­dence that’s been revived by a Smith Col­lege web site. Lat­er in life, of course, Woolf wrote some of the finest mod­ernist works of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Mean­while Vanes­sa became a respect­ed painter — see 142 of her paint­ings here — and a cen­tral mem­ber of the avant-garde Blooms­bury Group. As adults, they both had a lot of cul­tur­al clout. But dur­ing anoth­er time — dur­ing their “tomboy” years — they were just kids look­ing for a good game of crick­et. Above, we have an 1894 pic­ture of Vir­ginia (in the front, about 12 years old) and Vanes­sa, play­ing crick­et at St. Ives. Below we have a shot, cour­tesy of Smith’s web site, of 5‑year-old Vir­ginia play­ing crick­et with her lit­tle broth­er Adri­an Stephen (also lat­er a mem­ber of the Blooms­bury Group) in 1886.

Works by Woolf can be found in our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks col­lec­tions.

via The Paris Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Pat­ti Smith Read from Vir­ginia Woolf, and Hear the Only Sur­viv­ing Record­ing of Woolf’s Voice

Vir­ginia Woolf Writes About Joyce’s Ulysses, “Nev­er Did Any Book So Bore Me,” and Quits at Page 200

Por­traits of Vir­ginia Woolf, James Joyce, Wal­ter Ben­jamin & Oth­er Lit­er­ary Leg­ends by Gisèle Fre­und

Read 12 Masterful Essays by Joan Didion for Free Online, Spanning Her Career From 1965 to 2013

in Literature, Writing | January 14th, 2014

Image by David Shankbone, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In a clas­sic essay of Joan Didion’s, “Good­bye to All That,” the nov­el­ist and writer breaks into her narrative—not for the first or last time—to prod her read­er. She rhetor­i­cal­ly asks and answers: “…was any­one ever so young? I am here to tell you that some­one was.” The wry lit­tle moment is per­fect­ly indica­tive of Didion’s unspar­ing­ly iron­ic crit­i­cal voice. Did­ion is a con­sum­mate crit­ic, from Greek kritēs, “a judge.” But she is always fore­most a judge of her­self. An account of Didion’s eight years in New York City, where she wrote her first nov­el while work­ing for Vogue, “Good­bye to All That” fre­quent­ly shifts point of view as Did­ion exam­ines the truth of each state­ment, her prose mov­ing seam­less­ly from delib­er­a­tion to com­men­tary, anno­ta­tion, aside, and apho­rism, like the below:

I want to explain to you, and in the process per­haps to myself, why I no longer live in New York. It is often said that New York is a city for only the very rich and the very poor. It is less often said that New York is also, at least for those of us who came there from some­where else, a city only for the very young.

Any­one who has ever loved and left New York—or any life-alter­ing city—will know the pangs of res­ig­na­tion Did­ion cap­tures. These eco­nom­ic times and every oth­er pro­duce many such sto­ries. But Did­ion made some­thing entire­ly new of famil­iar sen­ti­ments. Although her essay has inspired a sub-genre, and a col­lec­tion of breakup let­ters to New York with the same title, the unsen­ti­men­tal pre­ci­sion and com­pact­ness of Didion’s prose is all her own.

The essay appears in 1967’s Slouch­ing Towards Beth­le­hem, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive text of the lit­er­ary non­fic­tion of the six­ties along­side the work of John McPhee, Ter­ry South­ern, Tom Wolfe, and Hunter S. Thomp­son. In Didion’s case, the empha­sis must be decid­ed­ly on the lit­er­ary—her essays are as skill­ful­ly and imag­i­na­tive­ly writ­ten as her fic­tion and in close con­ver­sa­tion with their autho­r­i­al fore­bears. “Good­bye to All That” takes its title from an ear­li­er mem­oir, poet and crit­ic Robert Graves’ 1929 account of leav­ing his home­town in Eng­land to fight in World War I. Didion’s appro­pri­a­tion of the title shows in part an iron­ic under­cut­ting of the mem­oir as a seri­ous piece of writ­ing.

And yet she is per­haps best known for her work in the genre. Pub­lished almost fifty years after Slouch­ing Towards Beth­le­hem, her 2005 mem­oir The Year of Mag­i­cal Think­ing is, in poet Robert Pinsky’s words, a “traveler’s faith­ful account” of the stun­ning­ly sud­den and crush­ing per­son­al calami­ties that claimed the lives of her hus­band and daugh­ter sep­a­rate­ly. “Though the mate­r­i­al is lit­er­al­ly ter­ri­ble,” Pin­sky writes, “the writ­ing is exhil­a­rat­ing and what unfolds resem­bles an adven­ture nar­ra­tive: a forced expe­di­tion into those ‘cliffs of fall’ iden­ti­fied by Hop­kins.” He refers to lines by the gift­ed Jesuit poet Ger­ard Man­ley Hop­kins that Did­ion quotes in the book: “O the mind, mind has moun­tains; cliffs of fall / Fright­ful, sheer, no-man-fath­omed. Hold them cheap / May who ne’er hung there.”

The near­ly unim­peach­ably author­i­ta­tive ethos of Didion’s voice con­vinces us that she can fear­less­ly tra­verse a wild inner land­scape most of us triv­i­al­ize, “hold cheap,” or can­not fath­om. And yet, in a 1978 Paris Review inter­view, Didion—with that tech­ni­cal sleight of hand that is her casu­al mastery—called her­self “a kind of appren­tice plumber of fic­tion, a Cluny Brown at the writer’s trade.” Here she invokes a kind of arche­type of lit­er­ary mod­esty (John Locke, for exam­ple, called him­self an “under­labour­er” of knowl­edge) while also fig­ur­ing her­self as the win­some hero­ine of a 1946 Ernst Lubitsch com­e­dy about a social climber plumber’s niece played by Jen­nifer Jones, a char­ac­ter who learns to thumb her nose at pow­er and priv­i­lege.

A twist of fate—interviewer Lin­da Kuehl’s death—meant that Did­ion wrote her own intro­duc­tion to the Paris Review inter­view, a very unusu­al occur­rence that allows her to assume the role of her own inter­preter, offer­ing iron­ic prefa­to­ry remarks on her self-under­stand­ing. After the intro­duc­tion, it’s dif­fi­cult not to read the inter­view as a self-inter­ro­ga­tion. Asked about her char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of writ­ing as a “hos­tile act” against read­ers, Did­ion says, “Obvi­ous­ly I lis­ten to a read­er, but the only read­er I hear is me. I am always writ­ing to myself. So very pos­si­bly I’m com­mit­ting an aggres­sive and hos­tile act toward myself.”

It’s a curi­ous state­ment. Didion’s cut­ting wit and fear­less vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty take in seem­ing­ly all—the expans­es of her inner world and polit­i­cal scan­dals and geopo­lit­i­cal intrigues of the out­er, which she has dis­sect­ed for the bet­ter part of half a cen­tu­ry. Below, we have assem­bled a selec­tion of Didion’s best essays online. We begin with one from Vogue:

“On Self Respect” (1961)

Didion’s 1979 essay col­lec­tion The White Album brought togeth­er some of her most tren­chant and search­ing essays about her immer­sion in the coun­ter­cul­ture, and the ide­o­log­i­cal fault lines of the late six­ties and sev­en­ties. The title essay begins with a gem­like sen­tence that became the title of a col­lec­tion of her first sev­en vol­umes of non­fic­tion: “We tell our­selves sto­ries in order to live.” Read two essays from that col­lec­tion below:

“The Women’s Move­ment” (1972)

“Holy Water” (1977)

Did­ion has main­tained a vig­or­ous pres­ence at the New York Review of Books since the late sev­en­ties, writ­ing pri­mar­i­ly on pol­i­tics. Below are a few of her best known pieces for them:

“Insid­er Base­ball” (1988)

“Eye on the Prize” (1992)

“The Teach­ings of Speak­er Gin­grich” (1995)

“Fixed Opin­ions, or the Hinge of His­to­ry” (2003)

“Pol­i­tics in the New Nor­mal Amer­i­ca” (2004)

“The Case of There­sa Schi­a­vo” (2005)

“The Def­er­en­tial Spir­it” (2013)

“Cal­i­for­nia Notes” (2016)

Did­ion con­tin­ues to write with as much style and sen­si­tiv­i­ty as she did in her first col­lec­tion, her voice refined by a life­time of expe­ri­ence in self-exam­i­na­tion and pierc­ing crit­i­cal appraisal. She got her start at Vogue in the late fifties, and in 2011, she pub­lished an auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal essay there that returns to the theme of “yearn­ing for a glam­orous, grown up life” that she explored in “Good­bye to All That.” In “Sable and Dark Glass­es,” Didion’s gaze is stead­ier, her focus this time not on the naïve young woman tem­pered and hard­ened by New York, but on her­self as a child “deter­mined to bypass child­hood” and emerge as a poised, self-con­fi­dent 24-year old sophisticate—the per­fect New York­er she nev­er became.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Joan Did­ion Reads From New Mem­oir, Blue Nights, in Short Film Direct­ed by Grif­fin Dunne

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

10 Free Sto­ries by George Saun­ders, Author of Tenth of Decem­ber, “The Best Book You’ll Read This Year”

Read 18 Short Sto­ries From Nobel Prize-Win­ning Writer Alice Munro Free Online

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

How Hunter S. Thompson — and Psilocybin — Influenced the Art of Ralph Steadman, Creating the “Gonzo” Style

in Art, Literature | January 14th, 2014

Though the two men only occa­sion­al­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed over their long friend­ship, the work of Ken­tucky-born “gonzo” jour­nal­ist Hunter S. Thomp­son and that of British illus­tra­tor Ralph Stead­man enjoy a cul­tur­al sym­bio­sis: Thomp­son’s style of writ­ing puts you in the mind of Stead­man’s style of draw­ing, and vice ver­sa even more so. At this point, I have a hard time imag­in­ing any suit­able visu­al accom­pa­ni­ment to the simul­ta­ne­ous­ly clear- and wild-eyed sen­si­bil­i­ty of Thomp­son­ian prose — “I hate to advo­cate drugs, alco­hol, vio­lence, or insan­i­ty to any­one,” he famous­ly said, “but they’ve always worked for me” — oth­er than the bold strokes and vio­lent blotch­es with which Stead­man ren­ders visions of high­ly con­trolled mad­ness. The clip above, from Alex Gib­ney’s doc­u­men­tary Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thomp­son, explores the ori­gins of their aes­thet­ic and psy­cho­log­i­cal part­ner­ship.

“I think what he saw in this con­nec­tion was some­body that some­how saw the thing in pic­tures as he saw it in life,” says Stead­man. “Our chem­istry there made gonzo pos­si­ble.” We then see the rel­a­tive­ly tame, con­ven­tion­al style in which he drew before Thomp­son roared into his life, bear­ing a hand­ful of psilo­cy­bin. Their paths had con­verged at the Ken­tucky Der­by, which Scan­lan’s mag­a­zine had assigned them to cov­er, and the drugs made the already grotesque scene even more vivid­ly trou­bling. “I was a qui­et boy,” Stead­man remem­bers. “Decent. An inno­cent abroad. So I guess it was attrac­tive, that kind of raci­ness. I think the birth of gonzo hap­pened when the evil came out of me in the draw­ings.” You can read the ground­break­ing fruit of their hal­lu­cino­geni­cal­ly enhanced labors, “The Ken­tucky Der­by is Deca­dent and Depraved,” at our col­lec­tion of Hunter Thomp­son arti­cles online. For more on Stead­man’s tech­nique and career, which con­tin­ues today, watch the Econ­o­mist’s vis­it to the “sav­age satirist’s” stu­dio just above.

You can find a fair­ly com­pre­hen­sive com­pendi­um of Stead­man’s art in the 1998 book Gonzo: The Art, which fea­tures an intro­duc­tion by Thomp­son him­self.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 10 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

Fear and Loathing on the Road to Hol­ly­wood: The BBC’s 1978 Por­trait of Hunter S. Thomp­son

The Crazy Nev­er Die: Hunter S. Thomp­son in Rare 1988 Doc­u­men­tary (NSFW)

Hunter S. Thompson’s Har­row­ing, Chem­i­cal-Filled Dai­ly Rou­tine

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.

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

in Comedy | January 13th, 2014

Sea­son 3 of Come­di­ans in Cars Get­ting Cof­fee kicks off with Jer­ry Sein­feld and his pal Louis CK pil­ing into a very small 1959 Fiat Jol­ly and tak­ing a leisure­ly (death) ride through New York City. Even­tu­al­ly, they escape the city and wind up at an unex­pect­ed place — aboard CK’s yacht. There, they share a cap­puc­ci­no, nav­i­gate var­i­ous nau­ti­cal dan­gers, crack their sig­na­ture jokes, and kib­itz the day away. Not a bad way to pass some time. If you’d like to see Jer­ry and Louis togeth­er in anoth­er con­text, see our pre­vi­ous post: Sein­feld, Louis C.K., Chris Rock, and Ricky Ger­vais Dis­sect the Craft of Com­e­dy (NSFW).

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send cul­tur­al curiosi­ties your way, every day. And if you like what we’re doing, please share our site with fam­i­ly and friends.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

How the Great George Car­lin Showed Louis CK the Way to Suc­cess (NSFW)

David Lynch Teach­es Louis C.K. How to Host The David Let­ter­man Show

Patti Smith Documentary Dream of Life Beautifully Captures the Author’s Life and Long Career (2008)

in Film, Music, Photography, Poetry | January 13th, 2014

My wife jokes that I’m pre­ten­tious for my love of what she calls “tiny awards” on the cov­ers of movies—little lau­rel leaf-bound seals of fresh­ness from the art film fes­ti­val cir­cuit. It’s true, I near­ly always bite when unknown films come to me preap­proved. Were I to encounter the cov­er of the 2008 Pat­ti Smith doc­u­men­tary Dream of Life I should be forced to watch it even if were I total­ly igno­rant of Pat­ti Smith. It won sev­er­al tiny awards—including a Sun­dance Prize for best cin­e­matog­ra­phy, a well-deserved hon­or that shows direc­tor Steven Sebring’s high regard for his sub­ject. Any worth­while film about Smith—singer, writer, poet, artist—must priv­i­lege the visu­al as well as the musi­cal and lit­er­ary. Smith’s world has always been one of high con­trast and dan­ger­ous pre­science, like the work of her child­hood friend, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Robert Map­plethor­pe, with whom she moved to the Chelsea Hotel in 1969 and who took the icon­ic pho­to on the cov­er of her first album, Hors­es. Her and Mapplethorpe’s sto­ried part­ner­ship helped both take New York City by storm. As a young Smith says above, “New York is the thing that seduced me; New York is the thing that formed me; New York is the thing that deformed me.”

Born in Chicago—“mainline of Amer­i­ca” she calls it—Smith’s fam­i­ly moved across the Mid­west to rur­al New Jer­sey. Her work also bespeaks of an expe­ri­ence of East­ern Migra­tion, with nos­tal­gic traces of long­ing for open spaces. The film opens with a gal­lop­ing herd of hors­es, nod­ding to Smith’s 1975 debut, a blast of punk poet­ry that still sounds men­ac­ing and raw. But the documentary’s title comes from a 1988 record that marked a sort of cesura for Smith, as one peri­od of her life end­ed and anoth­er wait­ed to begin. Pro­duced by her hus­band, Fred “Son­ic” Smith (for­mer­ly of the MC5), whom she met in 1976, it’s an album of “pol­ished love songs, lul­la­bies, and polit­i­cal state­ments” and it’s a very grown-up record, the some­times adult con­tem­po­rary sound saved from bland­ness by Smith’s com­pelling lyri­cism and beau­ti­ful voice.

Fred “Son­ic” Smith fell ill not long after the album, and Pat­ti retired, more or less, from music. She returned to per­form­ing and record­ing after her husband’s death in 1994, after the loss also of her broth­er and Map­plethor­pe. Always an intense­ly emo­tion­al writer and per­former, her lat­er peri­od is marked by memo­ri­als and med­i­ta­tions on loss—not unusu­al for an old­er poet and long­time sur­vivor of rock and roll, as well as the lit­er­ary and art worlds. All of Smith’s many changes occur before us above as she remem­bers and reflects in her poet’s voice over that Sun­dance-win­ning cin­e­matog­ra­phy. It’s hard to imag­ine anoth­er document—save her Nation­al Book Award-win­ning mem­oir Just Kids—doing more jus­tice to Smith’s vision than Dream of Life.

This comes to us via BrainPicking’s Maria Popo­va, who points us toward a cof­fee-table book of pho­tographs from the film. The select­ed few she fea­tures are stun­ning indeed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith Reads Her Final Words to Her Dear Friend Robert Map­plethor­pe

1976 Film Blank Gen­er­a­tion Doc­u­ments CBGB Scene with Pat­ti Smith, The Ramones, Talk­ing Heads, Blondie & More

Four Female Punk Bands That Changed Women’s Role in Rock

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

Watch Morgan Spurlock’s Documentary on the 15-Year-Old Who Invented a New Way to Detect Early Stage Pancreatic Cancer

in Biology, Science | January 13th, 2014

If you believe, as Whit­ney Hous­ton once did, that chil­dren are our future, you’ll be grat­i­fied by the work of Jack Andra­ka, age 15.

Describ­ing him as a kid with a pas­sion for sci­ence is an under­state­ment on par with call­ing Mr. Peabody a car­toon dog.

Not that I’ve got a crys­tal ball or any­thing, but let’s just say if you or your loved one come down with pan­cre­at­ic can­cer a decade from now, you’ll be very glad this young man—the 2012 grand prize win­ner of the Intel Inter­na­tion­al Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing Fair, as well as the Smith­son­ian Amer­i­can Inge­nu­ity Award—did­n’t squan­der his fresh­man year’s extracur­ric­u­lar hours on sports and glee club.

Instead, he became the “can­cer paper boy.” His men­tor, Johns Hop­kins pathol­o­gist and researcher, Anir­ban Maitra floats com­par­isons to Edi­son. As Mor­gan Spur­lock points out in his show doc­u­men­tary on Andra­ka — You Don’t Know Jack (above) — many of Ein­stein’s dis­cov­er­ies were made before he stuck his tongue out beneath that white mane.

Spurred on in part by the death of a fam­i­ly friend, Jack, then 14, devel­oped an inex­pen­sive pro­ce­dure that can diag­nose the pres­ence of the noto­ri­ous­ly stealthy can­cer of the pan­creas while treat­ment is still an option. Through tri­al and error, he devel­oped an absorbent fil­ter paper dip­stick that helps mea­sure the elec­tri­cal sig­nal of a nan­otube net­work laced with anti­bod­ies spe­cif­ic to the pro­tein mesothe­lin, after a sixth of a drop of blood has been intro­duced.

As a the­ater major, I fear I may not be sum­ma­riz­ing the sci­ence with suf­fi­cient accu­ra­cy. The Smith­son­ian pub­lished an arti­cle describ­ing Jack­’s process in detail.  While I don’t know much about pan­cre­at­ic func­tion, can­cer­ous or oth­er­wise, I do know enough to have deep respect for Jack­’s sup­port­ive par­ents, and Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty, the only insti­tu­tion (of 200 con­tact­ed) to respond in the affir­ma­tive when the then-14-year ‑old got in touch, seek­ing lab space. (Host­ing the Cen­ter for Tal­ent­ed Youth may have primed them for such queries.) If this sci­ence thing does­n’t work out, Jack could total­ly make a go of it as a pub­li­cist. He’s got the tenac­i­ty.

Again, it’ll take anoth­er ten years or so before the fruits of Jack­’s labors can be part of main­stream med­ical prac­tice, but it does give one hope for the future. Some paper boy!

This lit­tle Spur­lock film will be added to the Doc­u­men­tary sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Micro­scop­ic Bat­tle­field: Watch as a Killer T Cell Attacks a Can­cer Cell

Can­cer Patients’ Extreme Makeovers Let Them To For­get Their Ill­ness ‘If Only For A Sec­ond’

Come­di­an Tig Notaro’s “Tru­ly Great” Can­cer Stand-up Set Now Avail­able on Louis C.K.’s Web­site

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

Memory of the Camps (1985): The Holocaust Documentary that Traumatized Alfred Hitchcock, and Remained Unseen for 40 Years

in Film, History | January 13th, 2014

You may have heard the news that the world will soon see “Alfred Hitch­cock­’s unseen Holo­caust doc­u­men­tary.” That intrigu­ing sound­ing announce­ment belies a more com­pli­cat­ed real­i­ty. This new, restored film draws on footage shot by the British Army Film Unit in Nazi con­cen­tra­tion camps in 1945, which was actu­al­ly released in the mid-80s, in a film called Mem­o­ry of the Camps. This first ver­sion, which you can watch above, took near­ly forty years to reach the pub­lic, when it was final­ly released in 1984, first at the Berlin Film Fes­ti­val, then on PBS. Until that time, the orig­i­nal footage sat unused in stor­age at the Impe­r­i­al War Muse­um, con­signed there after the Allied mil­i­tary gov­ern­ment decid­ed that such pub­lic­i­ty for Nazi atroc­i­ties would­n’t get Ger­many recon­struct­ed any faster. How, right in the after­math of the Sec­ond World War, might we have react­ed to its haunt­ing­ly reveal­ing cov­er­age of Bergen-Belsen?

Accord­ing to the Inde­pen­dent, a screen­ing of Mem­o­ry of the Camps’ mate­r­i­al left even Alfred Hitch­cock, cer­tain­ly no stranger to death and malev­o­lence, “so trau­ma­tised that he stayed away from Pinewood Stu­dios for a week.” He’d shown up there in the first place as an advi­sor, and in that capac­i­ty offered direc­tor Sid­ney Bern­stein advice on how, visu­al­ly, to place these shock­ing rev­e­la­tions in a rec­og­niz­able geo­graph­i­cal and human con­text. “He took a cir­cle round each con­cen­tra­tion camp as it were on a map, dif­fer­ent vil­lages, dif­fer­ent places and the num­bers of peo­ple,” Bern­stein remem­bers. “Oth­er­wise you could show a con­cen­tra­tion camp, as you see them now, and it could be any­where, miles away from human­i­ty. He brought that into the film.” For more on Mem­o­ry of the Camps and its upcom­ing suc­ces­sor, a remas­tered ver­sion with a “lost” sixth reel restored, see also Richard Brody’s relat­ed New York­er post.

Mem­o­ry of the Camps and oth­er wartime films appears in our col­lec­tion of 700 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch World War II Rage Across Europe in a 7 Minute Time-Lapse Film: Every Day From 1939 to 1945

Did Hol­ly­wood Movies Stu­dios “Col­lab­o­rate” with Hitler Dur­ing WW II? His­to­ri­an Makes the Case

Don­ald Duck’s Bad Nazi Dream and Four Oth­er Dis­ney Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons from World War II

How Alice Herz-Som­mer, the Old­est Holo­caust Sur­vivor, Sur­vived the Hor­rif­ic Ordeal with Music

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.