“Get Data”: UCSD Neuroscience Grad Students Create Parody Video to Tune of Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky’

in Random, Science | December 8th, 2013

Last month, the UCSD Neu­ro­sciences Grad­u­ate Pro­gram held a lit­tle par­ty at a local bar, and the invi­ta­tion (above) came in the form of a video based on Daft Punk’s pop­u­lar video/song “Get Lucky” (below). Writes a local San Diego news­pa­per: “In sweet, fun­ny and saucy ways, [the video] shows the stress and mad­ness grad stu­dents go through in try­ing to come up with new data for sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies. The stu­dents released the video to coin­cide with this week’s Soci­ety of Neu­ro­science meet­ing at the San Diego Con­ven­tion Cen­ter.” Enjoy the clip and find more grad school odd­i­ties below.

via Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Phys­i­cal Attrac­tion: Mar­riage Pro­pos­al Comes in the Form of a Physics Paper

Grad­u­ate School Bar­bie: A New Gift Idea for The Demor­al­ized Grad Stu­dent in Your Life

The Illus­trat­ed Guide to a Ph.D.

Ser­i­al Entre­pre­neur Damon Horowitz Says “Quit Your Tech Job and Get a Ph.D. in the Human­i­ties”

Turn Your Bike into an Electric Hybrid with MIT’s “Copenhagen Wheel”

in MIT, Sports, Technology | December 6th, 2013

Bonaverde’s “Roast-Grind-Brew Cof­fee Machine” seemed like one of the cool­er inven­tions I’ve recent­ly stum­bled upon. But then I came across this: The Copen­hagen Wheel. Orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed by researchers at MIT, the Copen­hagen Wheel “trans­forms ordi­nary bicy­cles quick­ly into hybrid e‑bikes.” It allows bike rid­ers to “cap­ture the ener­gy dis­si­pat­ed while cycling and brak­ing and save it for when you need a bit of a boost” — like climb­ing a hill in San Fran­cis­co. The wheel also feeds data to your iPhone, allow­ing you to mon­i­tor pol­lu­tion lev­els, traf­fic con­ges­tion, and road con­di­tions in real-time. After spend­ing sev­er­al years in devel­op­ment, the wheel can now be pre-ordered online and it will ship next spring. It retails for $699.

Get more back­ground infor­ma­tion on The Copen­hagen Wheel via this MIT web site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Design­ers of the Invis­i­ble Bike Hel­met Describe Their Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Prod­uct in Short Doc­u­men­tary

Sci­ence Behind the Bike: Four Videos from the Open Uni­ver­si­ty on the Eve of the Tour de France

Brus­sels Express: The Per­ils of Cycling in Europe’s Most Con­gest­ed City

David Byrne: From Talk­ing Heads Front­man to Lead­ing Urban Cyclist

The Physics of the Bike

The World’s First “Roast-Grind-Brew” Coffee Machine Could Bring About a Coffee Revolution

in Food & Drink, Technology | December 6th, 2013

Bonaverde is “a small, ded­i­cat­ed team of young, sleep­less Berlin­er entre­pre­neurs that [have] made it their goal to rev­o­lu­tion­ize the cof­fee world.” How? By build­ing the world’s first “Roast-Grind-Brew Cof­fee Machine.” Oth­er machines might grind and brew the cof­fee. This one will roast the beans too, which is no triv­ial inno­va­tion. It promis­es to sig­nif­i­cant­ly decrease the num­ber of steps, and the amount of time, it takes to turn a har­vest­ed cof­fee bean into your morn­ing cup of joe, which means a much fresh­er cup of cof­fee. And per­haps a cheap­er one too.

Bonaverde has already devel­oped a pro­to­type. (See how it works below.) Now the ven­ture needs to bring the machine into pro­duc­tion. Through a Kick­starter cam­paign end­ing on Decem­ber 8th, the ven­ture ini­tial­ly hoped to raise $135,000. But it has already blown past that fig­ure, rais­ing $582,693 thus far. Any­one who con­tributes $250 (or more) to the cam­paign will get one of the very first Roast-Grind-Brew Cof­fee Machines, plus 6.6 lbs. (3kg) of green cof­fee. The­o­ret­i­cal­ly all you need to brew one very fresh cup of cof­fee. Find more infor­ma­tion on the next-gen­er­a­tion cof­fee machine over on Bonaverde’s Kick­starter page.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hon­oré de Balzac Writes About “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” and His Epic Cof­fee Addic­tion

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: London’s First Cafe Cre­ates Ad for Cof­fee in the 1650s

The His­to­ry of Cof­fee and How It Trans­formed Our World

How Cli­mate Change Is Threat­en­ing Your Dai­ly Cup of Cof­fee

A Short, Ani­mat­ed Look at What’s Inside Your Aver­age Cup of Cof­fee

Black Cof­fee: Doc­u­men­tary Cov­ers the His­to­ry, Pol­i­tics & Eco­nom­ics of the “Most Wide­ly Tak­en Legal Drug”

John Cleese Stars in a Morbidly Funny Anti-Smoking Campaign (1992–1994)

in Comedy, Television | December 5th, 2013

In 1992, the Health Edu­ca­tion Author­i­ty (HEA) began run­ning a series of ads on British tele­vi­sion star­ring the Mon­ty Python come­di­an and ex-smok­er, John Cleese. Smok­ing remained the #1 cause of pre­ma­ture death in the UK, and the HEA want­ed to see if a media cam­paign could make a dent in the epi­dem­ic. As part of a con­trolled exper­i­ment (all detailed here), ads star­ring Cleese were shown in cer­tain parts of the UK (but not oth­ers), and they used mor­bid humor and macabre sce­nar­ios “first to engage the view­ers’ curios­i­ty,” and then to “high­light the dan­gers of smok­ing, show[ing] the ridicu­lous­ness of the smok­ing habit.” Final­ly, view­ers were giv­en a phone num­ber to call where they could get more infor­ma­tion on how to quit.

So what were the results? Dur­ing the cam­paign (which ran from 1992 to 1994), the “quit­line” received around 20,000 calls over­all. Data crunch­ers lat­er found that the con­trol groups exposed to the ads quit smok­ing at a high­er rate than groups that had­n’t seen the com­mer­cials. Plus the relapse rates of the con­trol group were low­er than the norm. All of this led the gov­ern­ment to con­clude that “anti-smok­ing TV adver­tis­ing should be under­tak­en rou­tine­ly as an essen­tial com­po­nent of any pop­u­la­tion smok­ing reduc­tion strat­e­gy.” In this post, we’ve high­light­ed three of the bet­ter pre­served ads in the cam­paign.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Anti, Anti-Smok­ing Announce­ment from John Waters

Bertrand Rus­sell: “I Owe My Life to Smok­ing”

John Cleese’s Phi­los­o­phy of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Cre­at­ing Oases for Child­like Play

John Cleese’s Eulo­gy for Gra­ham Chap­man: ‘Good Rid­dance, the Free-Load­ing Bas­tard, I Hope He Fries’

Filmmaker Luis Buñuel Shows How to Make the Perfect Dry Martini

in Food & Drink | December 5th, 2013

The once-sur­re­al­ist (and, in a sense, always sur­re­al­ist) Span­ish film­mak­er Luis Buñuel made such clas­si­cal­ly bleak, humor­ous, and bleak­ly humor­ous pic­tures like Virid­i­ana, The Exter­mi­nat­ing Angel, The Dis­creet Charm of the Bour­geoisie, and That Obscure Object of Desire. He also made per­son­al con­nec­tions with an inter­na­tion­al range of idio­syn­crat­ic cre­ative lumi­nar­ies includ­ing Fed­eri­co Gar­cía Lor­ca, Sergei Eisen­stein, Char­lie Chap­lin, Aldous Hux­ley, Pablo Picas­so, Bertolt Brecht, Octavio Paz, Alexan­der Calder, and Sal­vador Dalí (his col­lab­o­ra­tor on the noto­ri­ous short Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or). Hav­ing lived a life like that, Buñuel sure­ly could­n’t help but write one of the most fas­ci­nat­ing auto­bi­ogra­phies in print. To become such a human cul­tur­al nexus, one needs not make motion pic­tures as endur­ing­ly strik­ing as Buñuel’s, but one must cer­tain­ly make a dry mar­ti­ni on the lev­el of his own. For­tu­nate­ly for the aspir­ing Buñuels of the world, My Last Sigh, that for­mi­da­bly intrigu­ing life sto­ry, includes his per­son­al recipe.

Dan­ger­ous Minds has post­ed the rel­e­vant excerpt. “To pro­voke, or sus­tain, a rever­ie in a bar, you have to drink Eng­lish gin, espe­cial­ly in the form of the dry mar­ti­ni,” writes Buñuel. “To be frank, giv­en the pri­mor­dial role in my life played by the dry mar­ti­ni, I think I real­ly ought to give it at least a page.” He rec­om­mends that “the ice be so cold and hard that it won’t melt, since nothing’s worse than a watery mar­ti­ni,” then offers up his pro­ce­dure, “the fruit of long exper­i­men­ta­tion and guar­an­teed to pro­duce per­fect results. The day before your guests arrive, put all the ingredients—glasses, gin, and shaker—in the refrig­er­a­tor. Use a ther­mome­ter to make sure the ice is about twen­ty degrees below zero (centi­grade). Don’t take any­thing out until your friends arrive; then pour a few drops of Noil­ly Prat and half a demi­tasse spoon of Angos­tu­ra bit­ters over the ice. Stir it, then pour it out, keep­ing only the ice, which retains a faint taste of both. Then pour straight gin over the ice, stir it again, and serve.” In the clip above, you can wit­ness the man him­self in action, a sight that gets me won­der­ing whether Buñuel ever crossed paths with John Updike. Imag­in­ing such a meet­ing sets the mind reel­ing, but few quotes seem as apro­pos here as the New Eng­land nov­el­ist’s obser­va­tion that “excel­lence in the great things is built upon excel­lence in the small.”

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Two Vin­tage Films by Sal­vador Dalí and Luis Buñuel: Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or

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

The Recipes of Icon­ic Authors: Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, Roald Dahl, the Mar­quis de Sade & More

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.

Download a Prototype of Ever, Jane, a Video Game That Takes You Inside the Virtual World of Jane Austen

in Literature, Video Games | December 4th, 2013

A few days ago, 3 Turn Pro­duc­tions fin­ished rais­ing $109,563 (from 1,600 back­ers) on Kick­starter to fund the devel­op­ment of “Ever, Jane,” a vir­tu­al game that allows peo­ple to role-play in Regency Peri­od Eng­land. 3 Turn describes the gist of their game as fol­lows:

Sim­i­lar to tra­di­tion­al role play­ing games, we advance our char­ac­ter through expe­ri­ence, but that is where the sim­i­lar­i­ties end. Ever, Jane is about play­ing the actu­al char­ac­ter in the game, build­ing sto­ries. Our quests are derived from play­er’s actions and sto­ries. And we gos­sip rather than swords and mag­ic to demol­ish our ene­mies and aid our friends.

Try to win the sym­pa­thy of Lizzie Ben­net by telling lies about your rival, as Mr. Wick­ham does, but be care­ful. The sys­tem will noti­fy some­one if they are being talked about too often and a good sleuth may find the play­er who is spread­ing such rumors. If you are caught in your lies, the con­se­quences you intend­ed for your tar­get will hit you two-fold.

A descrip­tion is nice, but a demo is even bet­ter. And hap­pi­ly you can down­load a pro­to­type that “pro­vides ful­ly func­tion­al infra­struc­ture for both the gos­sip and the invi­ta­tion sys­tems as well as a 3D vil­lage in which you can walk about, bow­ing and curt­sy­ing to peo­ple appro­pri­ate­ly.” There’s also a tuto­r­i­al that walks you through the basic mechan­ics and UI. (It should be includ­ed in the down­load from this link.) More infor­ma­tion about Ever, Jane can be found on the pro­jec­t’s Kick­starter page.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

As Pride and Prej­u­dice Turns 200, Read Jane Austen’s Man­u­scripts Online

‘Pride and Prej­u­dice’ Author Jane Austen Will Appear on the £10 Note

Jane Austen, Game The­o­rist: UCLA Poli Sci Prof Finds Shrewd Strat­e­gy in “Clue­less­ness”

Long Live Glitch! The Art & Code from the Game Now Released into the Pub­lic Domain

Find Austen’s works in our col­lec­tions of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books

Susan Sontag’s 50 Favorite Films (and Her Own Cinematic Creations)

in Film | December 4th, 2013

Susan Son­tag’s fans would each describe her a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly: many would call her a writer, of course, though some would opt for more speci­fici­ty, call­ing her a nov­el­ist if they like her fic­tion or a crit­ic if they don’t. Oth­ers, speak­ing more grand­ly, might pre­fer to sim­ply call her an “intel­lec­tu­al.” Under this wide umbrel­la Son­tag pro­duced a vari­ety of works for the page, the stage, and even the screen. Between 1969 and 1983, she made four films: 1969’s Duett för kan­ni­baler (Duet for Can­ni­bals), 1971’s Broder Carl (Broth­er Carl), 1974’s Promised Lands, and, above, 1983’s Unguid­ed Tour, also known as Let­ter from Venice. Son­tag adapt­ed the Ital­ian-lan­guage fea­ture from her sto­ry of the same name, orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in 1977 in the New York­er. Promised Lands, her only doc­u­men­tary, med­i­tates on Arab-Israeli rela­tions at the end of the Yom Kip­pur War. The Bergmanesque, sym­bol­ism-filled Broth­er Carl takes place, suit­ably, at a Swedish island resort.

And her debut Duet for Can­ni­bals, accord­ing to Dan­ger­ous Minds, embod­ies — or, if you like, cin­e­ma­tizes — her tout­ed dis­taste for the inter­pre­ta­tion of art­works. Son­tag, they say, “sought to lib­er­ate art from inter­pre­ta­tion (which is a bit iron­ic, of course, for some­one who was essen­tial­ly an exalt­ed crit­ic). When it came to her own film, she made some­thing that intend­ed to delib­er­ate­ly con­found the notion that there was any sort of under­ly­ing mean­ing beyond exact­ly what the audi­ence was see­ing on the screen direct­ly in front of them.”

Son­tag’s famous 1966 essay “Against Inter­pre­ta­tion” counts here as essen­tial read­ing, not just before you watch her own films, but also before you watch through her list of favorite films. Richard Brody, post­ing in the New York­er, rec­om­mends accom­pa­ny­ing it with “The Decay of Cin­e­ma,” which Son­tag wrote three decades lat­er in the New York Times, and in which she declares that “you hard­ly find any­more, at least among the young, the dis­tinc­tive cinephilic love of movies that is not sim­ply love of but a cer­tain taste in films (ground­ed in a vast appetite for see­ing and resee­ing as much as pos­si­ble of cinema’s glo­ri­ous past).”

Read­ing over the top fifty films she con­sid­ered the great­est back in 1977 (and pub­lished in her vol­ume of jour­nals As Con­scious­ness is Har­nessed to Flesh), we find plen­ty of evi­dence Son­tag her­self, unsur­pris­ing­ly, had such a cinephilic love of and vast appetite for movies, espe­cial­ly for Euro­pean film­mak­ers but also the best-known Japan­ese ones of the day:

1. Bres­son, Pick­pock­et
2. Kubrick, 2001
3. Vidor, The Big Parade
4. Vis­con­ti, Osses­sione
5. Kuro­sawa, High and Low
6. [Hans-Jür­gen] Syber­berg, Hitler
7. Godard, 2 ou 3 Choses …
8. Rosselli­ni, Louis XIV
9. Renoir, La Règle du Jeu
10. Ozu, Tokyo Sto­ry
11. Drey­er, Gertrud
12. Eisen­stein, Potemkin
13. Von Stern­berg, The Blue Angel
14. Lang, Dr. Mabuse
15. Anto­nioni, L’Eclisse
16. Bres­son, Un Con­damné à Mort …
17. Gance, Napoléon
18. Ver­tov, The Man with the [Movie] Cam­era
19. [Louis] Feuil­lade, Judex
20. Anger, Inau­gu­ra­tion of the Plea­sure Dome
21. Godard, Vivre Sa Vie
22. Bel­loc­chio, Pug­ni in Tas­ca
23. [Mar­cel] Carné, Les Enfants du Par­adis
24. Kuro­sawa, The Sev­en Samu­rai
25. [Jacques] Tati, Play­time
26. Truf­faut, L’Enfant Sauvage
27. [Jacques] Riv­ette, L’Amour Fou
28. Eisen­stein, Strike
29. Von Stro­heim, Greed
30. Straub, …Anna Mag­dale­na Bach
31. Taviani bro[ther]s, Padre Padrone
32. Resnais, Muriel
33. [Jacques] Beck­er, Le Trou
34. Cocteau, La Belle et la Bête
35. Bergman, Per­sona
36. [Rain­er Wern­er] Fass­binder, … Petra von Kant
37. Grif­fith, Intol­er­ance
38. Godard, Con­tempt
39. [Chris] Mark­er, La Jetée
40. Con­ner, Cross­roads
41. Fass­binder, Chi­nese Roulette
42. Renoir, La Grande Illu­sion
43. [Max] Ophüls, The Ear­rings of Madame de …
44. [Iosif] Kheifits, The Lady with the Lit­tle Dog
45. Godard, Les Cara­biniers
46. Bres­son, Lancelot du Lac
47. Ford, The Searchers
48. Bertoluc­ci, Pri­ma del­la Riv­o­luzione
49. Pasoli­ni, Teo­re­ma
50. [Leon­tine] Sagan, Mäd­chen in Uni­form

“She was wrong,” Brody writes of Son­tag’s epi­taph for her kind of enthu­si­asm for film. “Cinephil­ia was there, but, for cer­tain prac­ti­cal rea­sons, it was rel­a­tive­ly qui­et. It’s not qui­et any­more, and great, dis­tinc­tive movies were issu­ing from around the world.” As ever, “the nar­ra­tive of nos­tal­gia for a lost gold­en age is real­ly one of the writer’s own nos­tal­gia for youth” — but in her youth as well as after­ward, Son­tag saw some aston­ish­ing movies indeed.

Find a wide range of avant-garde films in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via The New York­er

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Young Jean-Luc Godard Picks the 10 Best Amer­i­can Films Ever Made (1963)

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists the 12 Great­est Films of All Time: From Taxi Dri­ver to The Bad News Bears

Woody Allen Lists the Great­est Films of All Time: Includes Clas­sics by Bergman, Truf­faut & Felli­ni

Mar­tin Scors­ese Reveals His 12 Favorite Movies (and Writes a New Essay on Film Preser­va­tion)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

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.

See the Original Magazine Publication of Heart of Darkness and Other Great Works by Joseph Conrad

in History, Literature | December 4th, 2013

Like many oth­er nov­el­ists of his era, Joseph Con­rad began by pub­lish­ing his work in seri­al­ized mag­a­zines. Nov­el seri­al­iza­tion, which had first gained pop­u­lar­i­ty and com­mer­cial appeal with Charles Dick­ens’ Pick­wick Papers in 1836, was com­mon­place through­out the 19^th cen­tu­ry. By the time that Con­rad released his first nov­el in 1895, enti­tled Almayer’s Fol­ly, pub­lish­ing seri­ous work with­in the pages of week­ly lit­er­ary peri­od­i­cals had become de rigueur. Indeed, Scribner’s Month­ly mag­a­zine not­ed that it is the “sec­ond and third rate nov­el­ist who could not get pub­lished in a mag­a­zine and is oblig­ed to pub­lish in a vol­ume, and it is in a mag­a­zine that the best nov­el­ists always appear first.” Although Scrib­n­er’s claim doubt­less con­tains an ele­ment of self-pro­mo­tion, one can­not deny that it is pre­cise­ly through seri­al­ized pub­li­ca­tion that Con­rad  joined the ranks of lit­er­ary greats such as Alexan­dre Dumas, Hen­ry James, Gus­tave Flaubert, and Leo Tol­stoy.

Through the web­site Con­rad First: The Joseph Con­rad Peri­od­i­cal Archive, con­tem­po­rary read­ers can enjoy the orig­i­nal, dig­i­tized ver­sions of Conrad’s first edi­tions. The data­base, which holds some 80,000 images and links to over a hun­dred peri­od­i­cals, includes the orig­i­nal releas­es for Conrad’s many nov­els, includ­ing Heart of Dark­ness (1899, Black­wood’s Mag­a­zine), Lord Jim (1899, Black­wood’s Mag­a­zine), Nos­tro­mo (1904, T.P.‘s Week­ly), and The Secret Agent (1906, Ridg­way’s Mag­a­zine), as well as essays, such as Rud­yard Kipling: A Crit­i­cism on His Poems and A pro­pos of Alphonse Daudet. For those more inter­est­ed in house­hold goods of yore than Con­rad’s prose, these pages will also prove enjoy­able; ads for the Har­lene Rem­e­dy for Bald­ness and requests implor­ing read­ers to Employ British Labour abound.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alfred Hitch­cock Adapts Joseph Conrad’s Nov­el of Ter­ror­ism in Sab­o­tage (1936)

Lis­ten as Orson Welles Reads ‘The Secret Shar­er,’ by Joseph Con­rad

We Were Wan­der­ers on a Pre­his­toric Earth: A Short Film Inspired by Joseph Con­rad

Neil deGrasse Tyson Talks Asteroid Physics & “Non Newtonian Solids” with Inspiring 9‑Year-Old Student

in K-12, Physics | December 4th, 2013

Just this week, some new test results showed that Amer­i­can teens, com­pared to oth­er stu­dents world­wide, “failed to reach the top 20 in math, sci­ence or read­ing,” accord­ing to The Guardian. After­wards, Arne Dun­can, the U.S. Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion, called the results a “pic­ture of edu­ca­tion­al stag­na­tion.”

The results are deflat­ing. But maybe we should­n’t lose hope, not when we have kids like Jacob com­ing of age, and teach­ers like Neil deGrasse Tyson men­tor­ing him along. Speak­ing last month at Grand Val­ley State Uni­ver­si­ty in Michi­gan, Tyson field­ed a ques­tion — the last ques­tion of the night —  from a nine-year-old ele­men­tary school stu­dent named Jacob. To para­phrase, Jake want­ed to know why we could­n’t shoot a “chunk of ran­dom mate­r­i­al” at a hypo­thet­i­cal aster­oid and stop it from hit­ting earth. This ends up being the first of a two-part ques­tion, which leads Jacob to demon­strate physics con­cepts with his clip­board and debate whether these fly­ing objects share prop­er­ties with “non-New­ton­ian solids.” Yes, I’m feel­ing a lit­tle bet­ter about the Amer­i­can edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem, espe­cial­ly since Jake’s dad con­firms on YouTube that his son attends “great pub­lic schools.”

You can find Neil’s com­plete GVSU talk here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Physics: Free Online Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties

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

Free Com­ic Books Turns Kids Onto Physics: Start With the Adven­tures of Niko­la Tes­la

200 Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & More

The Library: A World History Presents a Stunning Visual Survey of The World’s Great Libraries

in Architecture, Art, Books, History | December 3rd, 2013

Volu­mi­nous­ly well-read author and ama­teur librar­i­an Alber­to Manguel opens The Library at Night, a com­pen­dious trea­tise on the role of the library in human cul­ture, with a star­tling­ly bleak ques­tion. “Why then do we do it?” He asks, why do we “con­tin­ue to assem­ble what­ev­er scraps of infor­ma­tion we can gath­er in scrolls and books and com­put­er chips, on shelf after library shelf” when “out­side the­ol­o­gy and fan­tas­tic lit­er­a­ture, few can doubt that the main fea­tures of our uni­verse are its dearth of mean­ing and lack of dis­cernible pur­pose.” Manguel goes on—in beau­ti­ful­ly illus­trat­ed chap­ter after themed chapter—to list in fine detail the host of virtues each of his favorite libraries pos­sess­es, answer­ing his own ques­tion by ref­er­ence to the beau­ti­ful micro­cos­mic orders great libraries man­i­fest.

A new book, The Library: A World His­to­ry by author James Camp­bell and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Will Pryce, takes a more work­man­like approach to the sub­ject, steer­ing clear of Manguel’s meta­physics. Even so, the book will deeply move lovers of libraries and his­to­ri­ans alike, per­haps even to ecsta­sy. One Ama­zon review­er put it sim­ply: “Book Porn at its best.”

Boing Boing calls Pryce’s pho­tographs “the cen­ter­piece of the book,” and you can see why in a cou­ple of selec­tions here. Even with­out his eye­sight, this is a project that would have delight­ed that rhap­sodist of the library, Jorge Luis Borges. At the top, see the Stra­hov Abbey library in Prague. Halfway across the world, we have the Trip­i­ta­ka Kore­ana library in South Korea (above). CNN has a gallery of Pryce’s pho­to­graph­ic trib­utes to the world’s great­est libraries, and find here a crit­i­cal review of the book by The Guardian’s Tom Lam­ont, who laments that the book sole­ly “focus­es on insti­tu­tions cre­at­ed for the priv­i­leged.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Look Inside Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Per­son­al Library

The Odd Col­lec­tion of Books in the Guan­tanamo Prison Library

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

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