Flashmob Performs The Beatles’ ‘Here Comes the Sun’ in Madrid Unemployment Office

in Life, Music | August 13th, 2013

One of my favorite songs comes from the Qui­et Bea­t­le, George Har­ri­son. A tune that can rival any­thing from the Lennon/McCartney song­book, Here Comes the Sun was writ­ten in 1969, dur­ing a fair­ly bleak time. Har­ri­son sets the scene is his 1980 book, I, Me, Mine. He recalls:

“Here Comes the Sun” was writ­ten at the time when Apple [the Bea­t­les’ record label] was get­ting like school, where we had to go and be busi­ness­men: ‘Sign this’ and ‘sign that’. Any­way, it seems as if win­ter in Eng­land goes on for­ev­er, by the time spring comes you real­ly deserve it. So one day I decid­ed I was going to sag off Apple and I went over to Eric Clap­ton’s house. The relief of not hav­ing to go see all those dopey accoun­tants was won­der­ful, and I walked around the gar­den with one of Eric’s acoustic gui­tars and wrote “Here Comes the Sun.”

It’s a song about get­ting through the dark­ness — per­son­al, pro­fes­sion­al, sea­son­al, etc. And it’s sim­ply a per­fect pick for the flash­mob per­for­mance you’ll wit­ness above. Unlike so many oth­er feel-good flash­mob per­for­mances staged in Europe (see below), this one takes place in a drea­ry unem­ploy­ment office in Spain (Madrid, to be pre­cise) where unem­ploy­ment hov­ers around 26% and home­less­ness is on the rise. It does­n’t try to sug­ar­coat life in Spain. It just pro­vides a lit­tle ray of hope.

This video was shot back in Jan­u­ary. Accord­ing to a recent IMF report, con­di­tions will remain dif­fi­cult in Spain for years to come, but some new data hints that the worst may be over. Or so we hope.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Here Comes The Sun: The Lost Gui­tar Solo by George Har­ri­son

Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Mov­ing­ly Flash­mobbed in Spain

Copen­hagen Phil­har­mon­ic Plays Ravel’s Bolero at Train Sta­tion

Eric Clapton’s Iso­lat­ed Gui­tar Track From the Clas­sic Bea­t­les Song, ‘While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps’ (1968)

Dueling Divas: Aretha Franklin and Dionne Warwick Sing Two Classic Versions of ‘I Say a Little Prayer’

in Music | August 12th, 2013

Dionne War­wick:

Aretha Franklin and Dionne War­wick are two of the high­est chart­ing women in music his­to­ry. Between them, they’ve made 129 appear­ances in the Bill­board Hot 100. Two of those were with the same song: the 1966 Burt Bacharach and Hal David com­po­si­tion, “I Say a Lit­tle Prayer.”

The song was writ­ten espe­cial­ly for War­wick. David’s lyrics are about a wom­an’s dai­ly thoughts of her man, who is away in Viet­nam. Bacharach arranged and pro­duced the orig­i­nal record­ing in April of 1966, but was unhap­py with the result. “I thought I blew it,” he told the Los Ange­les Times in 1998. “The tem­po seemed too fast. I nev­er want­ed the record to come out. So what hap­pens? They put out the record and it was a huge hit. I was wrong.” The song was released over Bacharach’s objec­tions in Octo­ber, 1967 and rose to num­ber 4 on the Bill­board Hot 100 and num­ber 8 on the Bill­board R & B charts.

Aretha Franklin:

A few months after War­wick­’s sin­gle came out, Aretha Franklin and The Sweet Inspi­ra­tions were singing “I Say a Lit­tle Prayer” for fun dur­ing a break in record­ing ses­sions for Aretha Now. Pro­duc­er Jer­ry Wexler liked what he heard, and decid­ed to record the song. With Franklin on piano and the Mus­cle Shoals Rhythm Sec­tion behind her, it was record­ed in one take. Franklin’s ver­sion has more of a gospel and rhythm & blues feel, with a flu­id call-and-response inter­play between the lead and back­up singers.

Released in July of 1968, the sin­gle was less of a crossover hit than War­wick­’s ver­sion — it peaked at num­ber 10 on the Hot 100 chart — but rose all the way to num­ber 3 on the R & B chart. Over­shad­owed at first, Franklin’s record­ing has grown in stature over the years. Even Bacharach likes it bet­ter than the one he made with War­wick. As he told Mitch Albom ear­li­er this year, “Aretha just made a far bet­ter record.”

You can lis­ten above, as War­wick per­forms “I Say a Lit­tle Prayer” in an uniden­ti­fied tele­vi­sion broad­cast and Franklin sings it with the Sweet­hearts of Soul on the August 31, 1970 Cliff Richard Show. Tell us: Which ver­sion do you think is bet­ter?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Aretha Franklin Per­forms ‘Respect’ Live in the South of France, 1970

The Queen of Soul Con­quers Europe: Aretha Franklin in Ams­ter­dam, 1968

The Breaking Bad Theme Played with Meth Lab Equipment

in Music, Television | August 12th, 2013

Last night marked the begin­ning of the final sea­son of Break­ing Bad, the AMC tele­vi­sion series that chron­i­cles the life and times of Wal­ter White, the chem­istry teacher-turned-meth king­pin. To get in the spir­it of things, Andrew Huang decid­ed to record the Break­ing Bad theme song with a gui­tar and some meth lab equip­ment. On his YouTube page he writes:

I don’t know any­thing about mak­ing meth but a lit­tle Googling let me know that if you come across a meth lab you might find, among oth­er things:

- propane cylin­ders
— rub­ber tub­ing
— paper tow­els
— cof­fee fil­ters
— lab­o­ra­to­ry beakers
— mea­sur­ing cups
— buck­ets
— plas­tic bot­tles
— fry­ing pans

Oth­er than the gui­tar, all of the sounds in this piece were pro­duced using the items above, with min­i­mal effects and some speed adjust­ments to change pitch­es.

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Orig­i­nal Audi­tion Tapes for Break­ing Bad Before the Final Sea­son Debuts

Inside Break­ing Bad: Watch Conan O’Brien’s Extend­ed Inter­view with the Show’s Cast and Cre­ator

Bryan Cranston Reads Shelley’s Son­net “Ozy­man­dias” in Omi­nous Teas­er for Break­ing Bad’s Last Sea­son

Inside Break­ing Bad: Watch Conan O’Brien’s Extend­ed Inter­view with the Show’s Cast and Cre­ator

What Prisoners Ate at Alcatraz in 1946: A Vintage Prison Menu

in Food & Drink, History | August 10th, 2013

Why would you want to escape from Alca­traz when you could eat Beef Pot Pie Anglaise for lunch on Tues­day, Baked Meat Cro­quettes on Wednes­day, and Bacon Jam­bal­aya on Sat­ur­day? On sec­ond thought, why would­n’t you want to escape.

Above, we have the actu­al menu for the meals served at Alca­traz dur­ing one week in Sep­tem­ber, 1946. (View it in a slight­ly larg­er for­mat here.) Alca­traz was, of course, a high secu­ri­ty fed­er­al prison that oper­at­ed off of the coast of San Fran­cis­co from 1933 until 1963. Some of Amer­i­ca’s more noto­ri­ous crim­i­nals spent time din­ing there — good fel­lows like Al Capone, George “Machine Gun” Kel­ly, Bumpy John­son, and James “Whitey” Bul­ger.

As you may know, Bul­ger is now back on tri­al in Boston. After being released from prison dur­ing the 1960s, he alleged­ly re-immersed him­self in the world of orga­nized crime, before even­tu­al­ly spend­ing 16 years liv­ing as a fugi­tive, large­ly in Cal­i­for­nia. While on the lam, he amaz­ing­ly had the chutz­pah to vis­it Alca­traz (now a tourist site) and pose for a pic­ture where he donned a striped suit and stood behind mock prison bars. I have to won­der whether he had some Puree Mon­gole for old times’ sake?

via SF Gate and Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Odd Col­lec­tion of Books in the Guan­tanamo Prison Library

See a Peru­vian Prison Seized with Dance Fever as They Try to Break a Guin­ness World Record

Phi­los­o­phy in Prison: Weighty Con­ver­sa­tions about Right and Wrong

Two Prison Con­certs That Defined an Out­law Singer: John­ny Cash at San Quentin and Fol­som (1968–69)

Read Marx’s Capital with David Harvey, and Then Help Translate His Free Course Into 36 Languages

in Economics, Online Courses | August 10th, 2013

Here’s an update to our orig­i­nal 2011 post: The social the­o­rist and geo­g­ra­ph­er David Har­vey has pro­duced a free online course where he gives a close read­ing of Karl Marx’s Cap­i­tal (1867). Often con­sid­ered to be Marx’s mas­ter­piece, Cap­i­tal is where he elab­o­rat­ed a cri­tique of cap­i­tal­ism and laid the ground­work for an ide­ol­o­gy that took the 20th cen­tu­ry by storm. Har­vey has taught cours­es on Cap­i­tal for over 40 years, both in uni­ver­si­ties (Johns Hop­kins and CUNY) and in the com­mu­ni­ty as well. Now his 26 lec­ture course is freely avail­able on the web. You can watch the first lec­ture above. (It’s pre­ced­ed by an intro­duc­to­ry, six-minute inter­view.) The rest of the lec­tures can be accessed via Har­vey’s web site, YouTube, iTunes, and the Eco­nom­ics sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.

Mark­ing a new phase of the project, Pro­fes­sor Har­vey is now look­ing for vol­un­teers to help trans­late his lec­tures into 36 lan­guages. If you speak Eng­lish and lan­guages like Urdu, Ara­bic or Ital­ian (just to list a few), you can start help­ing with trans­la­tions here.

Also note that Har­vey pub­lished A Com­pan­ion to Marx’s Cap­i­tal in 2010. It’s some­thing you’ll want read along with the lec­tures.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Cri­sis of Cap­i­tal­ism Ani­mat­ed (with David Har­vey)

Hayek v. Keynes Rap

750 Free Online Cours­es

Watch the Original Audition Tapes for Breaking Bad Before the Final Season Debuts

in Television | August 9th, 2013

“Break­ing Bad is the first sto­ry to tru­ly com­mit the full spec­trum of New Mex­i­co to film,” writes Rachel Syme in a New York­er post on the crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed AMC series’ use of and effect on her home state. “The grandiose vis­tas, the soar­ing alti­tudes, the banal office com­plex­es, the Kokopel­lis and Kachi­na dolls, the seamy ware­hous­es, the marsh­mal­low clouds. The show seems to root itself deep­er in the land­scape with every new mon­tage. It has become our newest mon­u­ment.” With the con­clud­ing sea­son of the exploits of chem­istry-teacher-turned-metham­phet­a­mine-deal­er Wal­ter White debut­ing this Sun­day, Break­ing Bad fans have no doubt steeled them­selves for a tele­vi­su­al plunge back into its very own Albu­querque, which “still looks like the Wild West, a scorched, hazy, law­less place where rugged indi­vid­u­al­ism might just tip over into crim­i­nal behav­ior at any moment,” an inter­pre­ta­tion Syme deems “not whol­ly inac­cu­rate.”

To assist you in your own re-entry into Break­ing Bad’s thor­ough­ly amoral but unstop­pably com­pelling real­i­ty, we’ve round­ed up a few audi­tion tapes which let you wit­ness the ear­ly for­ma­tion of three of the show’s char­ac­ters. Every­one talks about Bryan Cranston’s star­ring per­for­mance as Wal­ter, and giv­en his ground­ed exe­cu­tion of a near-nov­el­is­tic arc of improb­a­ble trans­for­ma­tion, right­ly so. But what about his wife and even­tu­al mon­ey laun­der­er Skyler, as por­trayed by Anna Gunn? Or her broth­er-in-law Hank, the gung-ho DEA agent played by Dean Nor­ris? Or Aaron Paul as Jesse, Wal­ter’s for­mer stu­dent and cur­rent part­ner in crime? In a series so high­ly praised for the writ­ing of its char­ac­ters, you don’t want to think about just one. Or maybe your mem­o­ries of them have grown dim, in which case you’ll want to spend eight min­utes with this recap of the pre­vi­ous sea­sons before you set­tle down for the final one.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Inside Break­ing Bad: Watch Conan O’Brien’s Extend­ed Inter­view with the Show’s Cast and Cre­ator

Bryan Cranston Reads Shelley’s Son­net “Ozy­man­dias” in Omi­nous Teas­er for Break­ing Bad’s Last Sea­son

Inside Break­ing Bad: Watch Conan O’Brien’s Extend­ed Inter­view with the Show’s Cast and Cre­ator

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

Allan Bloom’s Lectures on Socrates (Boston College, 1983)

in | August 9th, 2013

Accord­ing to Archive.org: “Allan Bloom deliv­ered this talk as part of the series enti­tled “Philo­soph­ic Per­spec­tives” at Boston Col­lege in 1983. The series was intend­ed to help teach­ers of under­grad­u­ates in their teach­ing of those great works that are essen­tial to a lib­er­al edu­ca­tion. The series addressed the decline of lib­er­al learn­ing in the Uni­ver­si­ties, in Amer­i­ca espe­cial­ly. In this lec­ture Bloom dis­cuss­es the found­ing of the idea of lib­er­al edu­ca­tion, and the mean­ing of the philo­soph­ic life expressed in the exam­ple of Socrates. The con­flict between Phi­los­o­phy and the City, or Phi­los­o­phy and Polit­i­cal Life is explored by way of an inter­pre­ta­tion of Pla­to’s Apol­o­gy of Socrates.”

Lec­ture 1:

Lec­ture 2:

Lec­ture 3:

Lec­ture 4:

This course has been added to our col­lec­tion of 750 Free Cours­es Online.

Allan Bloom’s Lectures on Machiavelli (Boston College, 1983)

in | August 9th, 2013

Accord­ing to Archive.org: “Allan Bloom deliv­ered this talk as part of the series enti­tled “Philo­soph­ic Per­spec­tives” at Boston Col­lege in 1983. The series was intend­ed to help teach­ers of under­grad­u­ates in their teach­ing of those great works that are essen­tial to a lib­er­al edu­ca­tion. The series addressed the decline of lib­er­al learn­ing in the Uni­ver­si­ties, in Amer­i­ca espe­cial­ly. This lec­ture presents an inter­pre­ta­tion of Machi­avel­li’s “Prince” and teach­es one how to under­stand Machi­avel­li’s art of writ­ing. An inter­pre­ta­tion of the “Prince” is giv­en chap­ter by chap­ter.”

You can stream the five audio lec­tures below.

Lec­ture 1:

Lec­ture 2:

Lec­ture 3:

Lec­ture 4:

Lec­ture 5:

See our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

See a Peruvian Prison Seized with Dance Fever as They Try to Break a Guinness World Record

in Life | August 9th, 2013

Imag­ine the trail­er for this Hol­ly­wood movie:

(Shots of mus­cu­lar, heav­i­ly tat­tooed gang-bangers glow­er­ing, fight­ing, smok­ing pot, and enjoy­ing super-hot twice-week­ly con­ju­gal vis­its) 

“In a hell­ish, over­stuffed max­i­mum secu­ri­ty prison in Peru…”

(Close up of Vin Diesel or Vin Diesel-type wip­ing away a tear as he bids good­bye to a neat­ly dressed, bespec­ta­cled teenage girl)

 “One man will do what­ev­er it takes to win the respect of his daugh­ter…”

 (Cut to Vin in a col­or­ful, coor­di­nat­ed out­fit, lead­ing hun­dreds of fel­low inmates in an aer­o­bics class as they attempt to break a Guin­ness World Record)

No doubt it would be godaw­ful. That’s not to say con­vict­ed kid­nap­per Ale­jan­dro Nuñez del Arco’s sto­ry isn’t inspir­ing in the orig­i­nal.

Colonel Tomas Garay, who green­light­ed del Arco’s Full Body aer­o­bics class back in Novem­ber, is pleased by the changes in atti­tude he’s noticed at Luri­g­an­cho, “a branch of hell” where drugs, alco­hol, and vio­lence were pre­vi­ous­ly the norm. Although the sport, a car­dio­vas­cu­lar work­out com­bin­ing dance, box­ing, and Tae Bo was invent­ed by a Peru­vian man, macho inmates were stand­off­ish at first. A mere eight attend­ed del Arco’s first class. By June 14, the date he attempt­ed to best the Philip­pines’ Cebu Pris­on’s world record for the most peo­ple danc­ing behind bars, at least 1179 of his fel­low inmates were rag­ing with dance fever. Talk about trans­for­ma­tive effects…

Hope­ful­ly not com­ing soon to a the­ater near you, unless it’s as an expan­sion of the five-minute doc­u­men­tary above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Til­da Swin­ton and Bar­ry White Lead 1500 Peo­ple in Dance-Along to Hon­or Roger Ebert

Pris­on­ers Dance to Michael Jack­son Tunes in the Philip­pines

Ayun Hal­l­i­day can zum­ba with the best of ’em. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Richard Feynman’s Letter to His Departed Wife: “You, Dead, Are So Much Better Than Anyone Else Alive” (1946)

in Letters, Life, Physics | August 8th, 2013

In June 1945, the 27-year-old physi­cist Richard Feyn­man lost his wife, Arline Feyn­man, to tuber­cu­lo­sis. Only 25 years old, she was Richard’s high-school sweet­heart. And yet she was much more. As Lawrence Krauss writes in 2012 biog­ra­phy on Feyn­man:

Richard and Arline were soul mates. They were not clones of each oth­er, but sym­bi­ot­ic oppo­sites — each com­plet­ed the oth­er. Arline admired Richard’s obvi­ous sci­en­tif­ic bril­liance, and Richard clear­ly adored the fact that she loved and under­stood things he could bare­ly appre­ci­ate at the time. But what they shared, most of all, was a love of life and a spir­it of adven­ture.

Dur­ing their years togeth­er, Richard and Arline exchanged fre­quent let­ters, many now col­lect­ed in the vol­ume, Per­fect­ly Rea­son­able Devi­a­tions from the Beat­en Track. But none is more poignant than the one writ­ten to Arline six­teen months after her death. Still despair­ing, still lost, Feyn­man wrote a cathar­tic let­ter that was sealed and nev­er opened until his own death in 1988. Deeply touch­ing, it reads as fol­lows:

Octo­ber 17, 1946

D’Arline,

I adore you, sweet­heart.

I know how much you like to hear that — but I don’t only write it because you like it — I write it because it makes me warm all over inside to write it to you.

It is such a ter­ri­bly long time since I last wrote to you — almost two years but I know you’ll excuse me because you under­stand how I am, stub­born and real­is­tic; and I thought there was no sense to writ­ing.

But now I know my dar­ling wife that it is right to do what I have delayed in doing, and that I have done so much in the past. I want to tell you I love you. I want to love you. I always will love you.

I find it hard to under­stand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead — but I still want to com­fort and take care of you — and I want you to love me and care for me. I want to have prob­lems to dis­cuss with you — I want to do lit­tle projects with you. I nev­er thought until just now that we can do that. What should we do. We start­ed to learn to make clothes togeth­er — or learn Chi­nese — or get­ting a movie pro­jec­tor. Can’t I do some­thing now? No. I am alone with­out you and you were the “idea-woman” and gen­er­al insti­ga­tor of all our wild adven­tures.

When you were sick you wor­ried because you could not give me some­thing that you want­ed to and thought I need­ed. You needn’t have wor­ried. Just as I told you then there was no real need because I loved you in so many ways so much. And now it is clear­ly even more true — you can give me noth­ing now yet I love you so that you stand in my way of lov­ing any­one else — but I want you to stand there. You, dead, are so much bet­ter than any­one else alive.

I know you will assure me that I am fool­ish and that you want me to have full hap­pi­ness and don’t want to be in my way. I’ll bet you are sur­prised that I don’t even have a girl­friend (except you, sweet­heart) after two years. But you can’t help it, dar­ling, nor can I — I don’t under­stand it, for I have met many girls and very nice ones and I don’t want to remain alone — but in two or three meet­ings they all seem ash­es. You only are left to me. You are real.

My dar­ling wife, I do adore you.

I love my wife. My wife is dead.

Rich.

PS Please excuse my not mail­ing this — but I don’t know your new address.

via the always great Let­ters of Note

Relate Con­tent:

‘The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law’: Richard Feynman’s Leg­endary Lec­ture Series at Cor­nell, 1964

Richard Feyn­man Presents Quan­tum Elec­tro­dy­nam­ics for the Non­Sci­en­tist

Leonard Susskind, Father of String The­o­ry, Warm­ly Remem­bers His Friend, Richard Feyn­man

Free Online Physics Cours­es