Free Interactive e‑Books from NASA Reveal History, Discoveries of the Hubble & Webb Telescopes

in Astronomy, e-books, iPad, Photography | June 25th, 2013

Ear­li­er this month NASA announced that the Hub­ble Space Tele­scope found evi­dence of a plan­et form­ing 7.5 bil­lion miles from its star. This aston­ish­ing dis­cov­ery chal­lenges all of our cur­rent the­o­ries about how plan­ets devel­op.

A few days lat­er, Hub­ble cap­tured images of two galax­ies merg­ing.

Hub­ble has been in orbit since 1990, col­lect­ing images with one of the largest and most ver­sa­tile tele­scopes designed for deep space. No sin­gle tool has done as much to advance astro­nom­i­cal pub­lic rela­tions in recent years.

Hubble’s devel­op­ment, launch and dis­cov­er­ies are the sub­ject of a new, free inter­ac­tive e‑book (best viewed on the iPad) that brings to life Hubble’s dis­tin­guished ser­vice as our eye on the uni­verse.

For almost as long as Hub­ble has been in space, NASA has been work­ing on the next gen­er­a­tion space tele­scope. The James Webb Space Tele­scope will fea­ture a mir­ror three times the size of Hubble’s. Once launched, the tele­scope will trav­el far beyond our Moon. NASA’s free e‑book about the Webb Tele­scope reveals the prepa­ra­tion going on to get the new tool ready for take-off.

Its large mir­ror and dis­tant view­ing posi­tion are expect­ed to give Webb’s images high­er res­o­lu­tion and sen­si­tiv­i­ty, allow­ing sci­en­tists to study the birth and evo­lu­tion of galax­ies as well as the for­ma­tion of stars and plan­ets.

The e‑books are writ­ten at a high school lev­el and can be viewed on an iPad using a free iBooks app. If you don’t have an iPad, no need to wor­ry. A non-inter­ac­tive ver­sion of the Hub­ble eBooks is also avail­able, as is one about the Webb Tele­scope.

You will find these books in our col­lec­tions, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices and 200 Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & More

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Live: Watch NASA’s Cov­er­age of Aster­oid As It Buzzes By Earth

NASA Sends Image of the Mona Lisa to the Moon and Back

Leonard Nimoy Nar­rates Short Film About NASA’s Dawn: A Voy­age to the Ori­gins of the Solar Sys­tem

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Vis­it her web­site and fol­low her on Twit­ter @mskaterix.

Watch Monty Python’s “Summarize Proust Competition” on the 100th Anniversary of Swann’s Way

in Comedy, Literature, Television | June 25th, 2013

Mar­cel Proust’s Swan­n’s Way, the first vol­ume of In Search of Lost Time, appeared in 1913. This year, exact­ly a cen­tu­ry lat­er, Proust enthu­si­asts, both indi­vid­u­al­ly and insti­tu­tion­al­ly, have found all man­ner of ways to cel­e­brate. The Mor­gan Library and Muse­um, for instance, put on an exhi­bi­tion of “a fas­ci­nat­ing selec­tion of the author’s note­books, pre­lim­i­nary drafts, gal­ley-proofs, and oth­er doc­u­ments from the col­lec­tion of the Bib­lio­thèque nationale de France” — lit­er­ar­i­ly seri­ous stuff. For a Proust cen­ten­ni­al expe­ri­ence equal­ly lit­er­ary but far less seri­ous, why not watch the Mon­ty Python sketch above depict­ing the “All-Eng­land Sum­ma­rize Proust Com­pe­ti­tion”?

The sit­u­a­tion presents the chal­lenge you’d expect: con­tes­tants must relate, in fif­teen sec­onds, the entire­ty of Proust’s sev­en-vol­ume mas­ter­work, “once in a swim­suit, and once in evening dress.” The attempt of one hap­less par­tic­i­pant, por­trayed by Gra­ham Chap­man, runs as fol­lows: “Proust’s nov­el osten­si­bly tells of the irrev­o­ca­bil­i­ty of time lost, the for­fei­ture of inno­cence through expe­ri­ence, the rein­stall­ment of extra-tem­po­ral val­ues of time regained. Ulti­mate­ly, the nov­el is both opti­mistic and set with­in the con­text of a humane reli­gious expe­ri­ence, re-stat­ing as it does the con­cept of atem­po­ral­i­ty. In the first vol­ume, Swann, the fam­i­ly friend, vis­its…” But ah, too long. Watch the whole thing and find out if Michael Pal­in’s char­ac­ter fares any bet­ter at sum­ma­riz­ing the unsum­ma­riz­able, and, this hap­pen­ing in Mon­ty Python’s real­i­ty, how quick­ly it will all cease to mat­ter any­way.

Works by Proust can be found in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Ani­mat­ed Film Tells the Life Sto­ry of Mon­ty Python’s Gra­ham Chap­man

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

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

Mon­ty Python Chan­nel Launch­es on Youtube

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.

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

in Music, Physics | June 25th, 2013

At the height of Albert Einstein’s pop­u­lar­i­ty, the pub­lic knew him not only as the world’s fore­most the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist, but also as an enthu­si­as­tic some­time vio­lin­ist. As a pub­li­ca­tion for the 2005 “World Year of Physics” puts it: “to the press of his time… Ein­stein was two parts renowned sci­en­tist, one jig­ger paci­fist and Zion­ist fundrais­er, and a dash ama­teur musi­cian.” While this descrip­tion may get at the pub­lic per­cep­tion of his com­po­si­tion, Ein­stein him­self seems to have favored the musi­cian over all of his oth­er “parts.” “Life with­out play­ing music is incon­ceiv­able for me,” he once said, “I live my day­dreams in music. I see my life in terms of music… I get most joy in life out of music.”

The famous sci­en­tist nev­er trav­elled with­out his beloved vio­lin, “Lina.” His affair with music began with vio­lin lessons in Munich at the age of 5. How­ev­er, his ear­ly expe­ri­ences with the instru­ment seem at best per­func­to­ry and, at worst, antag­o­nis­tic (one anec­dote has him throw­ing a chair at his teacher, who left the house in tears).

He did not tru­ly fall in love until dis­cov­er­ing Mozart at age 13. A high school friend report­ed to biog­ra­ph­er Carl Seel­ing that at this time, when the young Einstein’s “vio­lin began to sing, the walls of the room seemed to recede—for the first time, Mozart in all his puri­ty appeared before me, bathed in Hel­lenic beau­ty with its pure lines, rogu­ish­ly play­ful, might­i­ly sub­lime.”

This gush­ing rec­ol­lec­tion must inevitably prompt the ques­tion, raised in every account of Ein­stein and music—was he real­ly any good? Since he played most­ly for his own enjoy­ment, the answer seems irrel­e­vant; yet, as par­ti­cle physi­cist Bri­an Fos­ter says in the video above, Ein­stein was “com­pe­tent.” In his Berlin years, he played with renowned musi­cians like Aus­tri­an vio­lin­ist Fritz Kreisler and pianist Artur Schn­abel (as well as with founder of quan­tum the­o­ry, Max Planck). His sci­en­tif­ic noto­ri­ety gar­nered invi­ta­tions to per­form at ben­e­fit con­certs. One crit­ic remarked, “Ein­stein plays excel­lent­ly. How­ev­er… there are many vio­lin­ists who are just as good.” Anoth­er con­cert-goer quipped, “I sup­pose now Fritz Kreisler is going to start giv­ing physics lec­tures.” Accounts of his abil­i­ties do dif­fer.

Bri­an Foster’s inter­est in Ein­stein the musi­cian tran­scends the man’s vir­tu­os­i­ty, or lack there­of. Since 2005—the 100th anniver­sary of Einstein’s “mir­a­cle year,” dur­ing which he pub­lished his most influ­en­tial papers—Foster has teamed up with British vio­lin­ist Jack Liebeck and oth­er clas­si­cal musi­cians to present lec­tures and con­certs on the role of music in Einstein’s life and work. Einstein’s devo­tion to Mozart may be of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to his­to­ri­ans of sci­ence. Fos­ter describes Einstein’s tastes as “con­ser­v­a­tive”; he found Beethoven too “cre­ative,” but Mozart, on the oth­er hand, revealed to him a uni­ver­sal har­mo­ny he believed exist­ed in the uni­verse. As anoth­er author puts it:

Ein­stein rel­ished Mozart, not­ing to a friend that it was as if the great Wolf­gang Amadeus did not “cre­ate” his beau­ti­ful­ly clear music at all, but sim­ply dis­cov­ered it already made. This per­spec­tive par­al­lels, remark­ably, Einstein’s views on the ulti­mate sim­plic­i­ty of nature and its expla­na­tion and state­ment via essen­tial­ly sim­ple math­e­mat­i­cal expres­sions.

While the inter­pre­ta­tion of Ein­stein as a “real­ist” has its detrac­tors, his insis­tence on the beau­ty and sim­plic­i­ty of sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ries is not in dis­pute. Fos­ter points out above that part of Einstein’s lega­cy is his push for beau­ty, uni­fi­ca­tion, and har­mo­ny in our phys­i­cal under­stand­ing of real­i­ty, a push that Fos­ter cred­its to the scientist’s musi­cal mind.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

James Joyce Plays the Gui­tar, 1915

Albert Ein­stein on Indi­vid­ual Lib­er­ty, With­out Which There Would Be ‘No Shake­speare, No Goethe, No New­ton’

Albert Ein­stein Express­es His Admi­ra­tion for Mahat­ma Gand­hi, in Let­ter and Audio

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

Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot Perform Outlaw-Inspired Love Song, ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ (1968)

in Music, Television | June 24th, 2013

In 1967, two icons of French pop­u­lar cul­ture went out on a date. It did­n’t go well. The usu­al­ly cool Serge Gains­bourg was so intim­i­dat­ed by Brigitte Bar­dot’s beau­ty that his noto­ri­ous charm failed him. Believ­ing he had blown his chance, Gains­bourg was sur­prised when Bar­dot tele­phoned and said he could make amends by writ­ing her “the most beau­ti­ful love song you can imag­ine.”

Gains­bourg respond­ed by writ­ing two songs. One was called “Bon­nie and Clyde.” It was inspired by that year’s hit film of the same name by Arthur Penn, star­ring Faye Dun­away and War­ren Beat­ty as the noto­ri­ous 1930s out­laws Bon­nie Park­er and Clyde Bar­row.

Gains­bourg com­posed the song around a French trans­la­tion of a poem Park­er wrote a few weeks before she and Bar­row were gunned down by law­men. (See footage from the scene of their death here.) It begins:

You’ve read the sto­ry of Jesse James
of how he lived and died.
If you’re still in need;
of some­thing to read,
here’s the sto­ry of Bon­nie and Clyde.

Now Bon­nie and Clyde are the Bar­row gang
I’m sure you all have read.
how they rob and steal;
and those who squeal,
are usu­al­ly found dying or dead.

There’s lots of untruths to these write-ups;
they’re not as ruth­less as that.
their nature is raw;
they hate all the law,
the stool pigeons, spot­ters and rats.

They call them cold-blood­ed killers
they say they are heart­less and mean.
But I say this with pride
that I once knew Clyde,
when he was hon­est and upright and clean.

But the law fooled around;
kept tak­ing him down,
and lock­ing him up in a cell.
Till he said to me;
“I’ll nev­er be free,
so I’ll meet a few of them in hell.”

The scene above, with Gains­bourg and Bar­dot per­form­ing the song, was broad­cast on The Brigitte Bar­dot Show in ear­ly 1968. The song was released lat­er that year on two albums: Ini­tials B.B. and Bon­nie and Clyde. The romance between Gains­bourg and Bar­dot was short. She returned to her sec­ond hus­band and he met actress Jane Birkin, with whom he record­ed the sec­ond song he wrote for Bar­dot: “Je t’aime…mois non plus,” which means “I Love You…Me Nei­ther.”

Two Childhood Drawings from Poet E.E. Cummings Show the Young Artist’s Playful Seriousness

in Art, Poetry | June 24th, 2013

Click images for larg­er ver­sions

Rebec­ca Onion over at Slate’s his­to­ry blog “The Vault” has brought to our atten­tion two delight­ful finds from the Mass­a­chu­setts His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety: child­hood draw­ings by poet and painter E.E. Cum­mings, made when he was 6 and 7 years old. Dat­ing from 1900–1902, the sketch­es, writes Onion, “reflect Cum­mings’ immer­sion in the pop­u­lar cul­ture of the time: cir­cus­es, Wild West shows, and adven­ture fic­tion.” These two draw­ings are fas­ci­nat­ing por­traits of the young Cum­mings’ mind at work. What a young mind he had.

Cum­mings began writ­ing poet­ry at age 8, and wrote a poem a day until he was 22. His mature work, which he began pub­lish­ing after his release from an intern­ment camp in Nor­mandy dur­ing WWI (where he was held for sus­pect­ed trea­son), shows the same kind of child­like play­ful­ness and dis­ci­pline. And while the draw­ing at the top is the work of a young boy strug­gling with the con­ven­tions of the writ­ten word, its odd­ly-spaced and punc­tu­at­ed text—the lex­i­cal and syn­tac­ti­cal ambi­gu­i­ties cre­at­ed by the layout—could cer­tain­ly have come from the pen of the adult poet. Cum­mings’ ideas about his poet­ry were delib­er­ate­ly idio­syn­crat­ic and force­ful­ly indi­vid­ual. As he would write, “may I be I is the only prayer—not may I be great or good or beau­ti­ful or wise or strong.” Or, as he expressed in a sim­i­lar sen­ti­ment in his 1926 col­lec­tion, is 5, per­haps in response to some crit­i­cal oppro­bri­um:

mr youse needn’t be so spry

con­cernin ques­tions arty

each has his tastes but as for i

i likes a cer­tain par­ty

In the draw­ing above, the young Edward Estlin Cum­mings imag­ines him­self as a Buf­fa­lo Bill-like char­ac­ter. Onion points us toward the adult Cum­mings’ dark­ly iron­ic poem “[Buf­fa­lo Bill ‘s],” as a com­pan­ion to the boy Cum­mings’ star­ry-eyed self-fash­ion­ing and “hero wor­ship.” While on a super­fi­cial read­ing, Cum­mings’ work can some­times seem mad­den­ing­ly child­ish and sil­ly, poems like “[Buf­fa­lo Bill ‘s]” show him pluck­ing apart naïve illu­sions about hero­ism and spec­ta­cle as in so many of his oth­er poems he skew­ers the pre­ten­sions of urban sophis­ti­cates and tastemak­ers, pro­mot­ing a Roman­tic, unin­hib­it­ed idea of the self unfet­tered by social, and typo­graph­i­cal, con­ven­tions.

Cum­mings would be very appre­cia­tive of the work the Mass­a­chu­setts His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety has done in cat­a­logu­ing his fam­i­ly papers; he had a deep respect for history—above all for per­son­al his­to­ry. In the first of his so-called “non­lec­tures,” deliv­ered at Har­vard in 1952, he refers to his “auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal prob­lem” in a pas­sage that con­jures the dystopi­an visions of Hux­ley and Orwell:

There’d be no prob­lem, of course, if I sub­scribed to the hyper­sci­en­tif­ic doc­trine that hered­i­ty is noth­ing because every­thing is envi­ron­ment; or if (hav­ing swal­lowed this super­sleep­ing­pill) I envis­aged the future of socalled mankind as a per­ma­nent past­less­ness, pre­na­tal­ly envelop­ing semi­iden­ti­cal super­sub­morons in per­pet­u­al nonun­hap­pi­ness. Right­ly or wrong­ly, how­ev­er, I pre­fer spir­i­tu­al insom­nia to psy­chic sui­cide.

Per­haps Cum­mings could thank “spir­i­tu­al insom­nia” for his seri­ous word­play and bound­less curiosity—two child­hood traits he nev­er let go of.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Sylvia Plath: Revis­it Her Sketch­es, Self-Por­traits, Draw­ings & Illus­trat­ed Let­ters

Dylan Thomas Sketch­es a Car­i­ca­ture of a Drunk­en Dylan Thomas

William S. Bur­roughs Shows You How to Make “Shot­gun Art”

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

Mickey Mouse In Vietnam: The Underground Anti-War Animation from 1968, Co-Created by Milton Glaser

in Animation, History | June 24th, 2013

Dur­ing World War II, Dis­ney’s lov­able char­ac­ters made their own con­tri­bu­tion to the war effort. In short pro­pa­gan­da films, Don­ald Duck, Goofy and the gang encour­aged fel­low Amer­i­cans to sup­port the draft and pay their tax­es. And, through Dis­ney char­ac­ters, Amer­i­cans learned about the evils of the Nazi regime. Here, we’ve gath­ered five of these ani­mat­ed pro­pa­gan­da films: Don­ald Gets Draft­ed (1942); Der Fuehrer’s Face (1943), The Spir­it of 43′ (1943), The Old Army Game (1943), and Com­man­do Duck (1944).

Fast for­ward 25 years and Amer­i­ca found itself fight­ing a very dif­fer­ent war, the Viet­nam War. So far as I know, Dis­ney nev­er threw its cul­tur­al weight behind this divi­sive con­flict. It would­n’t have made good busi­ness sense. How­ev­er, Dis­ney’s most icon­ic char­ac­ter, Mick­ey Mouse, did appear in an ani­mat­ed under­ground  film cre­at­ed by two crit­ics of the war, Lee Sav­age and the cel­e­brat­ed graph­ic design­er Mil­ton Glaser.

Pro­duced in 1968 for The Angry Arts Fes­ti­val, the one minute ani­ma­tion shows Mick­ey get­ting lured into fight­ing in Nam, and then, rather imme­di­ate­ly, get­ting shot in the head. The anti-war com­men­tary gets made bru­tal­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly. Some­times less is more. In a recent inter­view with Buz­zfeed, Glaser recalls: “[O]bviously Mick­ey Mouse is a sym­bol of inno­cence, and of Amer­i­ca, and of suc­cess, and of ide­al­ism — and to have him killed, as a solid­er is such a con­tra­dic­tion of your expec­ta­tions. And when you’re deal­ing with com­mu­ni­ca­tion, when you con­tra­dict expec­ta­tions, you get a result.”

Mick­ey Mouse In Viet­nam aired once at the afore­men­tioned fes­ti­val, then fad­ed into obliv­ion, only to resur­face lat­er at the Sara­je­vo Film Fes­ti­val and now on YouTube.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

How Bertrand Rus­sell Turned The Bea­t­les Against the Viet­nam War

Bed Peace Revis­its John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Famous Anti-Viet­nam Protests

“Notebook on Cities and Culture,” a Worldwide In-Depth Interview Podcast, Kickstarting Now

in Podcasts | June 23rd, 2013

Ever since I’ve writ­ten posts here on Open Cul­ture, I’ve host­ed and pro­duced Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture, a pod­cast ded­i­cat­ed to in-depth, long-form inter­views with cul­tur­al cre­ators, inter­na­tion­al­ists, and observers of the urban scene. In its three sea­sons so far, I’ve roamed cities like Los Ange­les, San Fran­cis­co, Port­land, Van­cou­ver, Mex­i­co City, Kyoto, Nara, and Osa­ka record­ing all of these con­ver­sa­tions face to face with guests like writer of place Pico Iyer, Book­worm host Michael Sil­verblatt, MetaFil­ter founder Matt Haugh­ey, film crit­ic Kari­na Long­worth, Los Ange­les Review of Books edi­tor Tom Lutz, graph­ic design­er Clive Pier­cy, park­ing the­o­rist Don­ald Shoup, con­cep­tu­al artist Jonathon Keats, Slate pod­cast pro­duc­er Andy Bow­ers, Japan spe­cial­ist Roland Kelts, nov­el­ist Tim­o­thy Tay­lor, and monolo­gist Josh Korn­bluth.

For the next sea­son, the show’s fourth and most ambi­tious, I’ll record full-length con­ver­sa­tions with six­ty more lumi­nar­ies not just in Los Ange­les, but in the Lon­don, Toron­to, and Copen­hagen as well. As with pre­vi­ous sea­sons, I launched a Kick­starter dri­ve last week to fund it. As of this writ­ing, it’s raised $5,138 of its $8,000 bud­get, but it only has six­teen hours. If we don’t raise the full amount by Mon­day, June 24th at noon Pacif­ic time, the sea­son won’t hap­pen at all. If Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture’s fourth sea­son strikes you as some­thing you’d like to help make a real­i­ty, please do vis­it the show’s Kick­starter page. Thanks very much indeed!

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.

Iggy Pop Conducts a Tour of New York’s Lower East Side, Circa 1993

in Film, Life, Music | June 21st, 2013

I moved to New York City in 2000, and to the Low­er East Side in 2002. To my dis­may, the grit­ty down­town New York I’d loved from afar since childhood—represented by films like The War­riors, bands like Son­ic Youth, and graf­fi­ti artists like Zephyr—was near­ly at an end. CBGB’s was stag­ger­ing toward its final years; local venue Brown­ies, right across the street, closed dur­ing my tenure, then re-opened as anoth­er bar, the live bands replaced by a juke­box; the few remain­ing artists from the old days holed up in their apart­ments, surly and for­got­ten; and rumors of Whole Foods and glass & steel con­dos proved true in the com­ing years. It was sad.

But oh, to be there in the 80s and ear­ly 90s, when flow­ers of dirty punk art grew from the nee­dle-strewn Tomp­kins Square Park and the decay­ing squat­ters par­adis­es along Avenue A. Of course I’m roman­ti­ciz­ing a time of high crime, pover­ty, and low expec­ta­tions, a time many native New York­ers do not remem­ber fond­ly (then again, it seems, just as many do). There are many, many doc­u­ments of the old East Vil­lage mean streets—too many to prop­er­ly list in this short post. But I can imag­ine no bet­ter tour guide to pre-mil­len­ni­al NYC than Iggy Pop.

In the short film above, watch him show Dutch film­mak­er Bram van Splun­teren around Alpha­bet City. Grant­ed this is 1993. Things weren’t near­ly as hairy as they were a few years pri­or (a fact Iggy points out right away), but it’s still a world away from the Low­er East Side of today. Pop traipses through the neigh­bor­hood, point­ing out favorite land­marks and pieces of graf­fi­ti. No stranger to urban decay, the Detroit native seems right at home. This being New York, Pop can stroll around with­out being molest­ed (or most­ly even rec­og­nized). All in all it’s a pret­ty leisure­ly tour of the 90s Low­er East Side on a bright and sun­ny day with the guy who more-or-less invent­ed punk. What more could you want?

via Coudal.com

Relat­ed Con­tent:

From The Stooges to Iggy Pop: 1986 Doc­u­men­tary Charts the Rise of Punk’s God­fa­ther

Jim Pow­er, aka “the Mosa­ic Man,” Adorns the Lamp­posts of New York City’s East Vil­lage

Nico Sings “Chelsea Girls” in the Famous Chelsea Hotel

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

150 Free Online Business Courses

in | June 21st, 2013

Find over 150 cours­es, many from lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties, that will deep­en your pro­fes­sion­al edu­ca­tion. Top­ics include finance, tech­nol­o­gy, entre­pre­neur­ship and much more.

Note: If you sign up for a Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC), select the “Full Course, No Cer­tifi­cate” (edX) or “Audit” (Cours­era) option when you enroll in order to take the course for free.  If you opt to take the course for a certificate/credential, you will be charged a fee, and we will receive a com­mis­sion from our affil­i­ate partners–Coursera, Future­Learn and edX.

• An Intro­duc­tion to Con­sumer Neu­ro­science & Neu­ro­mar­ket­ing — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Copen­hagen
• Advanced Busi­ness Strat­e­gy — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia
• Agile Meets Design Think­ing — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia
• Becom­ing a Change­mak­er: Intro­duc­tion to Social Inno­va­tion — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Cape Town
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• Intro­duc­tion to Nego­ti­a­tion: A Strate­gic Play­book for Becom­ing a Prin­ci­pled and Per­sua­sive Nego­tia­tor — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Bar­ry Nale­buff, Yale
• Lead­er­ship in 21st Cen­tu­ry Orga­ni­za­tions — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Copen­hagen
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• Mar­ket­ing in a Dig­i­tal World — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois
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• Intro­duc­tion to Nego­ti­a­tion: A Strate­gic Play­book for Becom­ing a Prin­ci­pled and Per­sua­sive Nego­tia­tor — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Yale Uni­ver­si­ty
• Intro­duc­tion to Strate­gic Man­age­ment — Free Online Video — R. Srini­vasan, IISC Ban­ga­lore
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• Sta­tis­tics 101 (for Cor­po­rate Finance and Invest­ing) — Free Online Video — Relat­ed Mate­r­i­al — Aswath Damodaran, NYU
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How to Make a Mummy — Demonstrated by The Getty Museum

in History | June 21st, 2013

From the day we first learn of them, ancient Egypt­ian mum­mies fas­ci­nate us. Grant­ed, that day usu­al­ly comes in ele­men­tary school, and soon after it we become aware of the mum­my as a promi­nent pres­ence in var­i­ous hor­ror movies. But the elab­o­rate, rit­u­al­is­tic process of mum­mi­fi­ca­tion, and what it says about ancient Egypt­ian soci­ety, con­tin­ues to intrigue, even though we might no longer want a mum­my of our own to prop up in our room like we did at age sev­en. As it hap­pens, though, the Get­ty Vil­la in Mal­ibu has a mum­my of their own: a fel­low by the name of Her­ak­lei­des, mum­mi­fied around 150 A.D., who “com­bines the mil­len­nia-old Egypt­ian tra­di­tion of mum­mi­fi­ca­tion of the dead with the Roman tra­di­tion of indi­vid­u­al­ized por­trai­ture.”

In the three-minute Get­ty-pro­duced video at the top of the post, you can see a recon­struc­tion of Her­ak­lei­des’ mum­mi­fi­ca­tion process, from inter­nal organ removal (a par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing phase back in first grade, as I recall) to de-mois­tur­iz­ing with salt, to the appli­ca­tion of oils and resins, to the char­ac­ter­is­tic wrap­ping with lay­er upon lay­er of linen strips. Though this gives you an accu­rate overview of how the ancient Egyp­tians pre­served their dead, much more remains to be said about mum­mies in gen­er­al and this mum­my in par­tic­u­lar. If you now feel that same desire for fur­ther detail that you felt in the class­room those decades ago, see also the lec­ture just above, “Get­ting to Know Her­ak­lei­des: Explor­ing a Red-Shroud Mum­my from Roman Egypt,” from the Get­ty Muse­um’s asso­ciate con­ser­va­tor of antiq­ui­ties Marie Svo­bo­da.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids Were Built: A New The­o­ry in 3D Ani­ma­tion

How a Bal­ti­more Hair­dress­er Became a World-Renowned “Hair Archae­ol­o­gist” of Ancient Rome

Rome Reborn – An Amaz­ing Dig­i­tal Mod­el of Ancient Rome

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.