The Most “Intellectual Jokes”: Our Favorite Open Culture Reader Submissions

in Comedy | July 8th, 2013

Last week, we point­ed to a Red­dit thread that asked for users’ most “intel­lec­tu­al jokes.” Using that idea as a plat­form, we asked our read­ers to sub­mit their favorites, and we received a healthy num­ber of howlers (and some clunk­ers). We also got a piece of dour crit­i­cism from one read­er, who wrote, “real­ly? intel­li­gent humor means that it’s wit­ty and sub­tle, not that it’s [sic] stan­dard type of joke with ‘smarter’ con­tent..
come on amer­i­cans, you can do bet­ter.”

I can only assume two things here (per­haps mak­ing an an ass of u and me): the writer is not an “amer­i­can” and is some­thing of a con­nois­seur of what he or she calls “intel­li­gent humor.” I am very sym­pa­thet­ic. Whether this per­son has in mind the mor­dant absur­dism of Beck­ett, the tren­chant wit of Swift or Wilde, the sur­re­al­is­tic flights of farce in Von­negut, or the heights of high-toned silli­ness in Mon­ty Python, I can’t say. All of these are excel­lent exam­ples of “intel­li­gent humor.”

But I’m afraid our read­er has mis­read the prompt, which asked specif­i­cal­ly for “intel­lec­tu­al jokes”—like the ani­mat­ed New York­er car­toon above. The for­mu­la for jokes every­one knows: set­up, punch­line. The “intel­lec­tu­al” part relates, I think, express­ly to the “smarter” con­tent, but the judg­ment of such humor is sub­jec­tive, of course, and in the brief selec­tion below of my favorite sub­mis­sions, I will cer­tain­ly admit as much. My sense of humor is nei­ther wit­ty nor sub­tle; I’m par­tial to the puerile—puns, sil­ly rever­sals, broad satire. Of course, the same can be said of all of the writ­ers above to some degree or anoth­er.

So with­out fur­ther going-on about it, here are a few of my favorite Open Cul­ture read­ers’ “intel­lec­tu­al jokes” (with my edi­to­r­i­al intru­sions in brack­ets):

• Rene Descartes is attend­ing a soiree at the Palais Ver­sailles. A som­me­li­er approach­es and asks, “Mon­sieur Descartes, would you like a glass of wine?” Descartes paus­es and answers, “I think not.” And poof!–he dis­ap­pears.

[This one’s not par­tic­u­lar­ly funny—it’s cute—but I quite like the speci­fici­ty in the set­up and the fun sur­prise of “poof!”]

•  I used to be a struc­tur­al lin­guist, but now I’m not Saus­sure.

[Told you I like puns]

• Masochist walks up to a sadist in a bar, says to the sadist “hurt me.” Sadist says “no.”
• What do you get when you com­bine a joke with a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion?

[So dry and dead­pan, these two. Love it.]

• What did the indige­nous per­son say to the post­mod­ern anthro­pol­o­gist? “Can we talk about me for a change?”

[A lit­tle crack at navel-gaz­ing po-mo academics—part of a pop­u­lar genre]

• Blind guy with a see­ing eye dog walks into a depart­ment store. Guy picks up dog by the tail and starts swing­ing him around over his head. Clerk rush­es over and says ner­vous­ly “Can I help you sir?” Guy replies: “No thanks, I’m just look­ing around.”

[I don’t think the con­tent of this one is par­tic­u­lar­ly “intel­lec­tu­al,” but the style is—it’s dark and weird and skirts a line between slap­stick and cru­el­ty, requir­ing a mor­bid and elas­tic imag­i­na­tion.]

• Q: What does a dyslex­ic, agnos­tic insom­ni­ac do? A: Stays up nights won­der­ing if there’s a dog.
• JOKE: What do Japan­ese pigeons sing? Answer: High Coos

[More puns, bless ‘em]

• Argon walks into a bar and orders a drink. The bar­tender says, “sir, we don’t serve noble gasses.”
 There was no reac­tion.

[For you sci­ence types. Anoth­er read­er responds with a pun for bonus points]:

• Thanks. Now all the good chem­istry jokes Argon.

Good work, read­ers. Keep ‘em com­ing. This was fun. Remem­ber, you can scan through the oth­er sub­mis­sions here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What’s the Most Intel­lec­tu­al Joke You Know?: The Best from Red­dit (and You?)

New York­er Car­toon Edi­tor Bob Mankoff Reveals the Secret of a Suc­cess­ful New York­er Car­toon

What’s the Deal with Pop Tarts? Jer­ry Sein­feld Explains How to Write a Joke

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

George Orwell Explains How to Make a Proper Cup of Tea

in Food & Drink, Literature | July 8th, 2013

Next to my bed lies George Orwell’s Essays, the brick­like Every­man’s Library edi­tion of the 1984 author’s thoughts on ide­ol­o­gy, colo­nial­ism, the abuse of lan­guage, crime and pun­ish­ment, and just what con­sti­tutes a nice cup of tea. The astute essay­ist keeps his mind pre­pared to go any­where, and Orwell’s rig­or­ous love of sim­ple Eng­lish plea­sures places him espe­cial­ly well to write on the sub­ject of how best to pre­pare a serv­ing of “one of the main stays of civ­i­liza­tion in this coun­try, as well as in Eire, Aus­tralia and New Zealand.” His essay “A Nice Cup of Tea,” which first ran in the Evening Stan­dard of Jan­u­ary 12, 1946, breaks the process down into eleven points, from “One should use Indi­an or Cey­lonese tea” to “One should take the teapot to the ket­tle and not the oth­er way about” to, final­ly, “Tea — unless one is drink­ing it in the Russ­ian style — should be drunk with­out sug­ar.” These guide­lines may sound to us a tad aus­tere at worst, but Orwell presents some of them as down­right “con­tro­ver­sial.” Dare he so bold­ly insist upon drink­ing only out of a “good break­fast cup,” de-cream­ing milk before pour­ing it into tea, and nev­er, ever using strain­ers nor bags?

He does indeed. His­to­ry has remem­bered Orwell as one of author­i­tar­i­an­is­m’s most out­spo­ken ene­mies, but clear­ly he had moments, espe­cial­ly when it came to his bev­er­age of choice, where he him­self would brook no dis­sent. Decades lat­er, a much more easy­go­ing writer would make his own con­tri­bu­tion to the lit­er­a­ture of Eng­lish tea pro­ce­dure: A short piece by Hitch­hik­er’s Guide to the Galaxy author Dou­glas Adams sug­gests that you “go to Marks and Spencer and buy a pack­et of Earl Grey tea” (this may, depend­ing upon your loca­tion, require an over­seas trip), that “the water has to be boiling (not boiled) when it hits the tea leaves,” and that “it’s prob­a­bly best to put some milk into the bot­tom of the cup before you pour in the tea,” since “if you pour milk into a cup of hot tea you will scald the milk.” Though we here at Open Cul­ture have made no secret of our inter­est in cof­fee, how could we turn down a cup of tea made to the stan­dards of such well-respect­ed men of let­ters?

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

10 Gold­en Rules for Mak­ing the Per­fect Cup of Tea (1941)

Epic Tea Time with Alan Rick­man

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.

What’s the Most Intellectual Joke You Know?: The Best from Reddit (and You?)

in Comedy | July 7th, 2013

Long before cap­i­tal “A” Acad­e­mia became a pro­fes­sion­al net­work of accred­it­ed schol­ars and fund-grub­bing insti­tu­tions, intel­lec­tu­al dis­course con­sist­ed of near­ly as much humor—bad puns, scat­ol­ogy, innu­en­do, bit­ing caricature—as deep philo­soph­i­cal dia­logue and sparkling eru­di­tion. So-called “wits” gath­ered in cof­fee hous­es to trade barbs and bon mots and to cir­cu­late their favorite lit­er­ary satires from writ­ers like Jonathan Swift, Alexan­der Pope, and John Wilmot, the 2nd Earl of Rochester, whose poet­ic out­put was often equal parts raunchy prosody and thought­ful crit­i­cal inquiry.

In our dig­i­tal times, intel­lec­tu­al humor bub­bles around the mar­gins of high cul­ture, as much as in the oblique car­toons of The New York­er as in forums like Red­dit, where jokes can be crude, hate­ful, and bor­der­line psy­chot­ic, or gen­uine­ly wit­ty and unique. Slate recent­ly picked up on a Red­dit thread that asked users “what’s the most intel­lec­tu­al joke you know?” The authors of the Slate piece com­piled sev­er­al con­tenders (and inane­ly explained each joke with  “why it’s fun­ny” addenda—good humor should­n’t require didac­tic com­men­tary).

Below, find a sam­pling of some of the Red­dit sub­mis­sions. In the com­ments sec­tion, please feel free to sub­mit your own “intel­lec­tu­al jokes” after perus­ing Red­dit to make sure some­one hasn’t beat you to the punch­line.

• From user Watch_Closely: “It’s hard to explain puns to klep­to­ma­ni­acs because they always take things lit­er­al­ly.”
• From user Arca­di­an 5656: “A biol­o­gist, a chemist, and a sta­tis­ti­cian are out hunt­ing. The biol­o­gist shoots at a deer and miss­es 5ft to the left, the chemist takes a shot and miss­es 5ft to the right, and the sta­tis­ti­cian yells, ‘We got ‘im!’ ”
• From user shan­n­man: “Who does Polyphe­mus hate more than Odysseus? Nobody!”

And below, two of the Red­di­tors’ favorites:

• From user phattmatt: “Jean-Paul Sartre is sit­ting at a French cafe, revis­ing his draft of Being and Noth­ing­ness. He says to the wait­ress, “I’d like a cup of cof­fee, please, with no cream.” The wait­ress replies, “I’m sor­ry, Mon­sieur, but we’re out of cream. How about with no milk?”
• From user snake­sand­doves: “An Irish­man goes to a build­ing site for his first day of work, and a cou­ple of Eng­lish­men think, ‘Ah, we’ll have some fun with him!’ So they walk up and say, ‘Hey, Pad­dy, as you’re new here make sure you know a joist from a gird­er…’ ‘Ah, sure, I knows’ says Pad­dy, ‘twas Joyce wrote Ulysses and Goethe wrote Faust.’”

Some clever humor above, I’d say (and in the ani­mat­ed New York­er car­toon at the top of the post). So, you think you can do bet­ter? Let’s hear your jokes in the com­ments.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New York­er Car­toon Edi­tor Bob Mankoff Reveals the Secret of a Suc­cess­ful New York­er Car­toon

Friedrich Niet­zsche & Exis­ten­tial­ism Explained to Five-Year-Olds (in Com­i­cal Video by Red­dit)

What’s the Deal with Pop Tarts? Jer­ry Sein­feld Explains How to Write a Joke

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

Charles Bukowski Sets His Amusing Conditions for Giving a Poetry Reading (1971)

in Poetry | July 6th, 2013

It takes a spe­cial kind of ded­i­ca­tion for a writer to quit his day job. When notably hard-liv­ing, hard-writ­ing poet Charles Bukows­ki took the plunge in 1969, at the behest of his Black Spar­row Press pub­lish­er John Mar­tin, he did it in the same spir­it of seri­ous­ness he’d reserved for smok­ing, drink­ing, women, and the writ­ten word. “I have one of two choic­es,” he wrote in a let­ter at the time, “stay in the post office and go crazy… or stay out here and play at writer and starve. I have decid­ed to starve.” Lat­er, in 1971, he wrote the let­ter above, a reply to an inquiry about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of his giv­ing a read­ing in Flori­da. His price? Round-trip air­fare from his home in Los Ange­les to Flori­da, rides from and back to the air­port, a place to stay, and $200.

Hav­ing already spent about two years work­ing as a writer and a writer alone (and hav­ing spent the first twen­ty nights of that peri­od furi­ous­ly com­pos­ing his first nov­el, Post Office), Bukows­ki quick­ly devel­oped a head for what he called “the lit­er­ary hus­tle.” He makes a dis­tinc­tive pitch for his poet­ic ser­vices: “Auden gets $2,000 a read­ing, Gins­berg $1,000, so you see I’m cheap. A real whore.” I can eas­i­ly envi­sion Bukows­ki ham­mer­ing out this let­ter at the front win­dow of his now-icon­ic bun­ga­low up on De Long­pre Avenue on anoth­er hot sum­mer 42 years ago, not least because he describes him­self doing it: “They say it’s 101 degrees today. Fine then, I’m drink­ing cof­fee and rolling cig­a­rettes and look­ing out at the hot baked street and a lady just walked by wig­gling it in tight white pants, and we are not dead yet.” If you nev­er had a chance to catch a Bukows­ki read­ing your­self, you can catch his read­ing at City Lights Poets The­ater, record­ed in Sep­tem­ber 1973. It’s just above.

via This Isn’t Hap­pi­ness

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Charles Bukows­ki Reads His Poem “The Secret of My Endurance”

“Don’t Try”: Charles Bukowski’s Con­cise Phi­los­o­phy of Art and Life

Charles Bukows­ki: Depres­sion and Three Days in Bed Can Restore Your Cre­ative Juices (NSFW)

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.

Rapping About Science: Watch High School Senior Jabari Johnson Talk Physics with Poetic Lyrics

in Music, Science | July 6th, 2013

Christo­pher Emdin, an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor at Teach­ers Col­lege, Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, loves to rap. And he loves using rap to teach kids all about sci­ence. That’s why he helped put togeth­er B.A.T.T.L.E.S., a New York City-wide com­pe­ti­tion that chal­lenges stu­dents to put sci­en­tif­ic con­cepts into lyri­cal raps. The kids were up to the task and rapped about every­thing from “rock sci­ence, nat­ur­al selec­tion and genet­ics to how mate­ri­als freeze or melt.” And the win­ner — Jabari John­son, a senior from Urban Assem­bly School for the Per­form­ing Arts in Harlem — was named on June 21, after the final com­pe­ti­tion took place on the Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus. John­son will now have a chance to make a pro­fes­sion­al record­ing of his song about Kinet­ic Ener­gy and post it on the Rap Genius web­site.

via Colum­bia

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Great­ness of Charles Dar­win Explained with Rap Music

The Large Hadron Col­lid­er Rap, Yo

The Hayek vs. Keynes Rap

A Short Film on the Famous Crosswalk From the Beatles’ Abbey Road Album Cover

in Film, Music | July 5th, 2013

It’s one of the most famous images in pop cul­ture: the four mem­bers of the Bea­t­les — John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Paul McCart­ney and George Har­ri­son — strid­ing sin­gle-file over a zebra-stripe cross­ing on Abbey Road, near EMI Stu­dios in St. John’s Wood, Lon­don.

The pho­to­graph was tak­en on the late morn­ing of August 8, 1969 for the cov­er of the Bea­t­les’ last-record­ed album, Abbey Road. The idea was McCart­ney’s. He made a sketch and hand­ed it to Iain Macmil­lan, a free­lance pho­tog­ra­ph­er who was  cho­sen for the shoot by his friends Lennon and Yoko Ono.

Macmil­lan had only ten min­utes to cap­ture the image. A police­man stopped traf­fic while the pho­tog­ra­ph­er set up a lad­der in the mid­dle of the road and framed the image in a Has­sel­blad cam­era. The Bea­t­les were all dressed in suits by Sav­ile Row tai­lor Tom­my Nut­ter — except Har­ri­son, who wore den­im. It was a hot sum­mer day. Mid­way through the shoot, McCart­ney kicked off his san­dals and walked bare­foot. Macmil­lan took a total of only six pho­tos as the musi­cians walked back and forth over the stripes. The fifth shot was the one.

Since then, the cross­ing on Abbey Road has become a pil­grim­age site for music fans from all over the world. Every day, motorists idle their engines for a moment while tourists reen­act the Bea­t­les’ cross­ing. It’s a spe­cial place, and film­mak­er Chris Pur­cell cap­tures the sense of mean­ing it has for peo­ple in his thought­ful 2012 doc­u­men­tary, Why Don’t We Do It In the Road?  The five-minute film, nar­rat­ed by poet Roger McGough, won the 2012 “Best Documentary“award at the UK Film Fes­ti­val and the “Best Super Short” award at the NYC Inde­pen­dent Film Fes­ti­val. When you’ve fin­ished watch­ing the film, you can take a live look at the cross­walk on the 24-hour Abbey Road Cross­ing Web­cam.

via That Eric Alper

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Chaos & Cre­ation at Abbey Road: Paul McCart­ney Revis­its The Bea­t­les’ Fabled Record­ing Stu­dio

John, Paul and George Per­form Duel­ing Gui­tar Solos on The Bea­t­les’ Farewell Song (1969)

Bob Egan, Detec­tive Extra­or­di­naire, Finds the Real Loca­tions of Icon­ic Album Cov­ers

Mark Twain Drafts the Ultimate Letter of Complaint (1905)

in Life, Literature, Writing | July 5th, 2013

Click above for a larg­er ver­sion of page one and click here to see page two. 

I recent­ly made the mis­take of craft­ing a let­ter of com­plaint that sound­ed much more tem­per­ate than I felt. On the advice of my hus­band, I delet­ed any­thing smack­ing of emo­tion, lim­it­ing my griev­ances to incon­tro­vert­ible fact. A month lat­er and I am still wait­ing for a reply.

Wish that I had let it all hang out, as Mark Twain did in the above 1905 let­ter to J. H. Todd, a snake oil sales­man whose “Elixir of Life” was alleged to cure even the most ter­mi­nal of med­ical con­di­tions. How sat­is­fy­ing it would have been to indulge in phras­es like “idiot of the 33rd degree” and “scion of an ances­tral pro­ces­sion of idiots stretch­ing back to the Miss­ing Link”!

Hav­ing answered phones in cus­tomer ser­vice, I can attest that there are times when such phras­es are mis­di­rect­ed. This was not one of them. Sub­ject your­self to a thor­ough read­ing of the Elixir’s claims (a typog­ra­phy chal­lenge on order of a Dr. Bron­ner’s label) and you will share the author’s out­rage.

Char­la­tans could be dealt with light­ly in lit­er­a­ture—wit­ness Huck­le­ber­ry Finn’s self-pro­claimed Duke—but hav­ing lost chil­dren to two of the dis­eases Tod­d’s potion pur­port­ed to cure, Twain refused to let Todd off the hook in real life. His “unkind state of mind” is as brac­ing as it is war­rant­ed.

Though I doubt he got a reply either.

Tran­scrip­tion:

Nov. 20. 1905

J. H. Todd

1212 Web­ster St.

San Fran­cis­co, Cal.

Dear Sir,

Your let­ter is an insol­u­ble puz­zle to me. The hand­writ­ing is good and exhibits con­sid­er­able char­ac­ter, and there are even traces of intel­li­gence in what you say, yet the let­ter and the accom­pa­ny­ing adver­tise­ments pro­fess to be the work of the same hand. The per­son who wrote the adver­tise­ments is with­out doubt the most igno­rant per­son now alive on the plan­et; also with­out doubt he is an idiot, an idiot of the 33rd degree, and scion of an ances­tral pro­ces­sion of idiots stretch­ing back to the Miss­ing Link. It puz­zles me to make out how the same hand could have con­struct­ed your let­ter and your adver­tise­ments. Puz­zles fret me, puz­zles annoy me, puz­zles exas­per­ate me; and always, for a moment, they arouse in me an unkind state of mind toward the per­son who has puz­zled me. A few moments from now my resent­ment will have fad­ed and passed and I shall prob­a­bly even be pray­ing for you; but while there is yet time I has­ten to wish that you may take a dose of your own poi­son by mis­take, and enter swift­ly into the damna­tion which you and all oth­er patent med­i­cine assas­sins have so remorse­less­ly earned and do so rich­ly deserve.

Adieu, adieu, adieu!

Mark Twain

via Let­ters of Note

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mark Twain Wrote the First Book Ever Writ­ten With a Type­writer

Mark Twain Shirt­less in 1883 Pho­to

Mark Twain Cap­tured on Film by Thomas Edi­son in 1909. It’s the Only Known Footage of the Author.

Ayun Hal­l­i­day sus­pects Mum­my Pow­der is not an effec­tive treat­ment for epilep­sy. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Version of “Little Wing” Played on Traditional Korean Instrument, the Gayageum

in Music | July 4th, 2013

Ear­li­er this year, we showed you Luna Lee rock­ing out a ver­sion of Jimi Hendrix’s 1968 song “Voodoo Chile” on the tra­di­tion­al Kore­an stringed instru­ment called the Gayageum. Now she’s back with an Asian-inflect­ed ren­di­tion of “Lit­tle Wing,” a song orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten by Hen­drix, but then lat­er cov­ered in a 1991 Gram­my-win­ning ver­sion by the late, great blues­man Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an. On her YouTube page, Lee tells us that it’s Vaugh­an’s ver­sion that she’s bas­ing her charm­ing pro­duc­tion on.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

The Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play Amaz­ing Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

The Genius of Albrecht Dürer Revealed in Four Self-Portraits

in Art | July 4th, 2013

Age 13:

The Ger­man artist Albrecht Dür­er (1471–1528) was one of the great­est fig­ures of the North­ern Renais­sance. As a draughts­man and painter, he rivaled his elder con­tem­po­rary Leonar­do Da Vin­ci, and his mas­ter­ful wood­cuts and engrav­ings of myth­i­cal and alle­gor­i­cal scenes made him famous across Europe.

In the first half of his life, Dür­er made a series of exquis­ite self-por­traits. The ear­li­est (above) was made in 1484, when the artist was a pre­co­cious boy of 13. It was drawn in sil­ver­point. Some­time lat­er, he wrote in the upper right-hand cor­ner: “This I have drawn from myself from the look­ing-glass, in the year 1484, when I was still a child — Albrecht Dür­er.” The draw­ing, now in the col­lec­tion of the Alberti­na muse­um in Vien­na, was made at about the time Dür­er became an appren­tice gold­smith in his father’s jew­el­ry shop in Nurem­berg. Much to his father’s dis­ap­point­ment, he would leave the gold­smith shop about a year lat­er to become an appren­tice to the promi­nent Nurem­berg artist and print­mak­er Michael Wol­ge­mut. But the ear­ly expe­ri­ence of work­ing with the tools in the gold­smith shop would prove invalu­able to Dür­er’s lat­er work as an engraver.

Age 22:

After Dür­er fin­ished his appren­tice­ship with Woleg­mut at the age of 19, he fol­lowed the tra­di­tion of young artists and embarked on a guild tour of south­ern Ger­many to study the work of var­i­ous artists and print­mak­ers. He was prob­a­bly in Stras­bourg when he paint­ed his “Por­trait of the Artist hold­ing a This­tle” (above) in 1493. He was 22 years old. The por­trait was paint­ed in oil on vel­lum, and was past­ed on can­vas sev­er­al cen­turies lat­er. Johann Wof­gang von Goethe saw the paint­ing in 1805 at a muse­um in Leipzig and was deeply impressed. In 1922 it was pur­chased by the Lou­vre.

“The face still has some of the child­ish fea­tures seen in his ear­ly draw­ing of a Self-Por­trait,” says the Lou­vre Web site, “but the man­ly neck, the strong nose, and the vig­or­ous hands are already those of an adult. Dür­er, who was also an excel­lent engraver, com­posed his works in a very graph­ic fash­ion. The almost metal­lic fine­ness of detail, seen in the prick­les of the this­tle, also recalls his ear­ly train­ing as a gold­smith.”

There are two com­pet­ing the­o­ries about the mean­ing of the paint­ing. Some schol­ars believe it was an engage­ment present for Agnes Frey, whom Dür­er would mar­ry the fol­low­ing year. “In fact,” says the Lou­vre, “the this­tle held by the artist is called ‘Mannstreu’ in Ger­man, which also means ‘hus­band’s fideli­ty.’ This pledge of love would also explain the ele­gance of the cos­tume. The main loop­hole in this hypoth­e­sis is that Dür­er may still have been unaware of the mar­riage, which had been arranged by his father.” A rival the­o­ry is that the this­tle rep­re­sents the crown of thorns from Christ’s Pas­sion. In any case, the artist’s inscrip­tion reads, “Things hap­pen to me as it is writ­ten on high.”

Age 26:

The sec­ond of Dür­er’s three paint­ed self-por­traits was made in 1498, when he was 26 years old and enter­ing his mature peri­od as a mas­ter artist. Dür­er had made his first of two vis­its to north­ern Italy a few years ear­li­er to study Ital­ian art and math­e­mat­ics. While there, he was impressed and grat­i­fied by the ele­vat­ed social sta­tus grant­ed to great artists. In Ger­many he had been looked down upon as a low­ly crafts­man. “How I shall freeze after this sun!” Dür­er wrote home to his friend Willibald Pir­ck­heimer from Italy. “Here I am a gen­tle­man, at home only a par­a­site.” Upon his return to Nurem­berg, Dür­er assert­ed his new sense of social posi­tion. In the por­trait above he depicts him­self as some­thing of a dandy, with flam­boy­ant dress and a haughty bear­ing. The paint­ing was made in oil on a wood pan­el, and now resides in the Museo del Pra­do in Madrid.

Age 28:

The Christ-like self-por­trait above was paint­ed in 1500, short­ly before Dür­er’s 29th birth­day. The paint­ing was made in oil on a wood­en pan­el, and is now in the col­lec­tion of the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. Unlike his ear­li­er self-por­traits, which were com­posed in the cus­tom­ary three-quar­ters view, Dür­er’s self-por­trait of 1500 depicts the artist faced square­ly toward the view­er — a pose usu­al­ly reserved at that time for images of Christ. His hand, touch­ing the fur col­lar of his coat, brings to mind the ges­tures of bless­ing in reli­gious icons. The high­ly sym­met­ric com­po­si­tion draws atten­tion to the eyes, which gaze direct­ly at the view­er. The artist’s mono­gram, “AD,” and the Latin inscrip­tion — “I, Albrecht Dür­er of Nurem­berg, por­trayed myself in ever­last­ing col­ors aged twen­ty-eight years” — are placed at eye-lev­el to strength­en the effect. The year “1500” is writ­ten direct­ly above the mono­gram, giv­ing the “AD” a sec­ond mean­ing as Anno Domi­ni, which fur­ther rein­forces the con­nec­tion between Dür­er and Christ. The art his­to­ri­an Joseph Koern­er has sug­gest­ed that the entire com­po­si­tion, from the tri­an­gu­lar out­line of the frontal like­ness to the curve of Dür­er’s fin­gers, echoes the over­ar­ch­ing “A” and nes­tled “D” of the artist’s mono­gram. “Noth­ing we see in a Dür­er is not Dür­er’s,” writes Koern­er, “mono­gram or not.”

The Relativity Series Features 24 Free Plays About Great Scientists and Scientific Endeavors

in Radio, Science | July 4th, 2013

I grew up lis­ten­ing to radio plays, keep­ing in high rota­tion vin­tage broad­casts of shows like Sus­pense, Amos ‘n Andy, and Drag­net. These stoked in me a fas­ci­na­tion with the medi­um of radio, and they also taught me a thing or two about life in ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca — most­ly lessons, by way of the com­mer­cials, about its var­i­ous con­sumer prod­ucts (usu­al­ly soaps). With the mod­ern inter­net, kids today can not only lis­ten to their fill of old-time radio pro­grams essen­tial­ly with­out effort — no boot­leg cas­sette tapes for them, like I had to use — but eas­i­ly find new­er, more inno­v­a­tive, and I dare­say more inter­est­ing audio pro­duc­tions as well. Case in point: the Los Ange­les The­atre Works’ Rel­a­tiv­i­ty Series, offer­ing sci­ence-themed plays you can lis­ten to free online, fea­tur­ing per­for­mances by well-known actors like Alfred Moli­na, Jason Rit­ter, and Ed Asner.

But don’t mis­take any of the Rel­a­tiv­i­ty Series’ 24 cur­rent­ly avail­able pro­duc­tions as straight­for­ward­ly “edu­ca­tion­al.” Know­ing that no lis­ten­er, man, woman, or child, wants a sim­ple physics or biol­o­gy les­son tart­ed up with a thin scrim of dra­ma, the pro­duc­ers have instead record­ed new ver­sions of full-fledged works for the stage that hap­pen to have sci­en­tif­ic themes or involve events and play­ers from the his­to­ry of sci­ence. How it delight­ed me to find, for instance, Tom Stop­pard’s Arca­dia in the Rel­a­tiv­i­ty Series. Stop­pard, per­haps the most intel­lec­tu­al­ly omniv­o­rous writer alive, became a fas­ci­na­tion of mine around the same time I delved into old-time radio, and Arca­dia remains the finest play deal­ing with chaos the­o­ry to take place on an Eng­lish coun­try estate in two cen­turies at once. Oth­er pro­duc­tions deal with the lives of sci­en­tists like Alan Tur­ing and Richard Feyn­man as well as events like the Scopes Mon­key Tri­al and the devel­op­ment of the atom­ic bomb. Above, you can lis­ten to a unique per­for­mance where mem­bers of the Star Trek cast recre­ate Orson Welles’ dra­mat­ic 1938 “War of the Worlds” broad­cast.

You can access all 24 plays in the Rel­a­tiv­i­ty Series here.

via Metafliter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Orson Welles Vin­tage Radio: The War of the Worlds That Pet­ri­fied a Nation

Wern­er Her­zog and Cor­mac McCarthy Talk Sci­ence and Cul­ture

Ira Glass on the Art and Craft of Telling Great Radio Sto­ries

Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk Radio Show Pod­cast Tack­les the His­to­ry of Video Games

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.