The Art of Punk, MOCA’s Series of Punk Documentaries, Begins with Black Flag: Watch It Online

in Art, Music | June 18th, 2013

First you set out to smash all insti­tu­tions, but then you find the insti­tu­tions have enshrined you. Isn’t that always the way? It cer­tain­ly seems to have turned out that way for punk rock, in any case, which vowed in the sev­en­ties to tear it all up and start over again. Now, in the 2010s, we find trib­ute paid to not just the music but the aes­thet­ics, lifestyles, and per­son­al­i­ties of the punk move­ment by two sep­a­rate, and sep­a­rate­ly well-respect­ed, insti­tu­tions. We recent­ly fea­tured the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art’s exhi­bi­tion Punk: Chaos to Cou­ture. Today, you can start watch­ing The Art of Punk, a series of doc­u­men­taries from MOCAtv, the video chan­nel of Los Ange­les’ Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art. Its trail­er, which appears at the top of the post, empha­sizes its focus on, lit­er­al­ly, the visu­al art of punk: its posters, its album art, its T‑shirts, and even — un-punk as this may sound — its logos.

The series opens with the episode just above on Black Flag and Ray­mond Pet­ti­bon, design­er of the band’s well-known four-bar icon. It catch­es up with not just him, but found­ing singer Kei­th Mor­ris and bassist Chuck Dukows­ki, as well as Flea from the Red Hot Chili pep­pers, who grew up a fan of the greater Los Ange­les punk scene from which Black Flag emerged.

The episode con­cludes, need­less to say, with Hen­ry Rollins, who, though not an orig­i­nal mem­ber of the band and now pri­mar­i­ly a spo­ken word per­former, has come to embody their punk ethos in his own high­ly dis­tinc­tive way. In the lat­est episode, just out today, The Art of Punk series takes you inside the world of Crass, the Eng­lish punk band formed in 1977. Watch the remain­ing install­ments at the playlist.

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:

Punk Meets High Fash­ion in Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Exhi­bi­tion PUNK: Chaos to Cou­ture

Hen­ry Rollins Remem­bers the Life-Chang­ing Deci­sion That Brought Him From Häa­gen-Dazs to Black Flag

Mal­colm McLaren: The Quest for Authen­tic Cre­ativ­i­ty

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock

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.

Introducing Wireless Philosophy: An Open Access Philosophy Project Created by Yale and MIT

in Philosophy | June 18th, 2013

“Wire­less Phi­los­o­phy,” or Wiphi, is an online project of “open access phi­los­o­phy” co-cre­at­ed by Yale and MIT that aims to make fun­da­men­tal philo­soph­i­cal con­cepts acces­si­ble by “mak­ing videos that are freely avail­able in a form that is enter­tain­ing” to peo­ple “with no back­ground in the sub­ject.” To accom­plish this goal, they have con­tract­ed with an impres­sive range of pro­fes­sors of phi­los­o­phy from pres­ti­gious uni­ver­si­ties across the coun­try. Wiphi is still very much a work-in-progress, but they cur­rent­ly fea­ture some inter­est­ing intro­duc­tions to clas­si­cal philo­soph­i­cal issues. Cur­rent­ly, the site divides into sev­er­al basic cat­e­gories like “Crit­i­cal Think­ing,” “Epis­te­mol­o­gy,” “Meta­physics,” “Ethics,” and “Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy.” Much of these are still unfin­ished, but the few videos on the site, such as those relat­ed to the prob­lem of free will and the exis­tence of God, pro­vide view­ers with much to chew on.

In the video above, MIT phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor Richard Holton explains the basics of the prob­lem of free will. He divides this into two dis­tinct prob­lems: the meta­phys­i­cal and the epis­te­mo­log­i­cal. The first prob­lem states that if the laws of nature are deter­min­is­tic, every­thing that will hap­pen is fixed, and there is in fact no free choice (no mat­ter how we feel about it). Holton choos­es to focus on the sec­ond prob­lem, the prob­lem of fore­knowl­edge. Put sim­ply, if things are deter­mined, then if we know all of the con­di­tions of real­i­ty, and have ade­quate resources, we should be able to pre­dict every­thing that is going to hap­pen.

Holton leaves aside enor­mous­ly com­pli­cat­ed devel­op­ments in physics and opts to illus­trate the prob­lem with what he calls “a sim­ple device.” In his illus­tra­tion, one must pre­dict whether a light­bulb will turn on by turn­ing on anoth­er light­bulb, part of a sys­tem he calls a “frus­tra­tor.” In this sce­nario, even if we have all the knowl­edge and resources to make per­fect­ly accu­rate pre­dic­tions, the prob­lem of “frustrators”—or faulty observers and feed­back loops—complicates the sit­u­a­tion irrev­o­ca­bly

In the video above, Pro­fes­sor Tim­o­thy Yen­ter describes the Cos­mo­log­i­cal argu­ment for the exis­tence of God, clas­si­cal­ly attrib­uted to Aris­to­tle, elab­o­rat­ed by Islam­ic philoso­phers and Thomas Aquinas, and tak­en up in the Enlight­en­ment by Leib­niz as the prin­ci­ple of suf­fi­cient rea­son. One of that argument’s premis­es, that the cos­mos (every­thing that exists) must have a cause, assumes that the causal cir­cum­stances we observe with­in the sys­tem, the uni­verse as a whole, must also apply out­side of it. Pro­fes­sor Yen­ter describes this above in terms of the “fal­la­cy of com­po­si­tion,” which occurs when one assumes that the whole has the same prop­er­ties as its parts. (Such as argu­ing that since all of your body’s atoms are invis­i­ble to the naked eye, your whole body is invis­i­ble. Try head­ing to work naked tomor­row to test this out.)

This brings us to the prob­lem of infi­nite regress. In the sec­ond part of his intro­duc­tion to the Cos­mo­log­i­cal Argument—in which he dis­cuss­es the so-called Modal Argument—Professor Yen­ter explains the key prin­ci­ple of Ex nihi­lo nihil fit, or “out of noth­ing, noth­ing comes.” This seems like a bedrock meta­phys­i­cal prin­ci­ple, such that few ques­tion it, and it intro­duces a key dis­tinc­tion between nec­es­sary things—which must exist—and con­tin­gent things, which could be oth­er­wise. The most impor­tant premise in the Modal Argu­ment is that every con­tin­gent thing must be caused by some­thing else. If all caus­es are con­tin­gent (which they seem to us to be) they must pro­ceed from a nec­es­sary, self-exis­tent thing. Whether that thing has all or any of the prop­er­ties clas­si­cal­ly ascribed to the the­is­tic God is anoth­er ques­tion all togeth­er, but Aquinas and the clas­si­cal Islam­ic philoso­phers cer­tain­ly thought so.

While there may be no philo­soph­i­cal nut­crack­er large enough to crack these prob­lems, they remain per­pet­u­al­ly inter­est­ing for many philoso­phers and sci­en­tists, and under­stand­ing the basic issues at stake is fun­da­men­tal to any study of phi­los­o­phy. In that sense, Wiphi pro­vides a nec­es­sary ser­vice to those just begin­ning to wade out into the sea of The Big Ques­tions.

 Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 90 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Lawrence Krauss Explains How You Get ‘A Uni­verse From Noth­ing’

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Lec­tures Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

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

A Look Inside Mel Blanc’s Throat as He Performs the Voices of Bugs Bunny and Other Cartoon Legends

in Comics/Cartoons, Random | June 18th, 2013

Last month we told you about The Strange Day When Bugs Bun­ny Saved the Life of Mel Blanc. It’s a true tale about how, back in 1971, Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bun­ny and oth­er beloved Looney Tunes char­ac­ters, got into a ter­ri­ble car acci­dent in Los Ange­les and slipped into a coma. Blanc’s wife and son spent two long weeks in the hos­pi­tal try­ing to revive him, but got no response. But then, one day, Blanc’s neu­rol­o­gist walked into the room and said to the patient: “Bugs Bun­ny, how are you doing today?” After a pause, a voice said, “Myeeeeh. What’s up doc?” You can get more on that sto­ry here. In the mean­time, we’ll amuse you with anoth­er short sto­ry. Once upon a time, an ear-nose-and-throat spe­cial­ist want­ed to see how Mel Blanc (1908–1989) per­formed all of those Looney Tunes car­toon voic­es. So he took a fiber optic laryn­go­scope, stuck it down Blanc’s throat, and here’s what he saw. Watch above.

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:

Cel­e­brate Superman’s 75th Anniver­sary by Enjoy­ing the Orig­i­nal Super­man Car­toon and Radio Show

The Sto­ry Of Men­stru­a­tion: Watch Walt Disney’s Sex Ed Film from 1946

Don­ald Duck’s Bad Nazi Dream (1942)

Kickstart Sound Poetry, Ken Berman’s Jazz Album Inspired by Allen Ginsberg & Bob Dylan

in Music | June 17th, 2013

Here’s a chance to be a patron of the arts on what­ev­er scale you can afford. Last week Ken Berman, a San Fran­cis­co-based jazz musi­cian (and the teacher of an excel­lent Bob Dylan class at Stan­ford) launched a Kick­starter cam­paign to fund the record­ing of an album called Sound Poet­ry. Born out of Berman’s friend­ship with the late poet Eythan Klam­ka (1967–2011), the project builds on Klamka’s notion that “any good musi­cian is a sound poet.” “Con­vinced that the finest impro­vi­sa­tion is essen­tial­ly a lyri­cal art,” Berman draws “inspi­ra­tion from a range of diverse sources, whether Zen prac­ti­tion­er Thich Nhat Hanh, W.B. Yeats, Langston Hugh­es, George Gersh­win, Bob Dylan, and of course the jazz greats from Duke Elling­ton, Lester Young, Bil­ly Stray­horn, Miles Davis to Bill Frisell – all of whose unique con­tri­bu­tions con­tin­ue to be guide­posts and indi­cate the realm of pos­si­bil­i­ty in impro­visato­ry art.” To date, sup­port­ers of the Sound Poet­ry project have pledged $4,956 of the $11,150 goal, and the fund­ing peri­od still has 25 days to go. Con­tri­bu­tions will help pay for every­thing from stu­dio time, mix­ing and mas­ter­ing, to cre­at­ing cov­er art, man­u­fac­tur­ing CDs & DVDs, pub­lic­i­ty for the album, and a three con­ti­nent tour. You can learn more about Sound Poet­ry from the video above and make your own con­tri­bu­tions here. If you pledge $15 or more, you’ll get a copy of the album upon its com­ple­tion.

You can also sam­ple Ken’s ear­li­er com­po­si­tions here or vis­it his web site here. And if you live in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area, I’d encour­age you to check out Ken’s course Like a Rolling Stone: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan. It will be offered in July through Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies and it’s open to the pub­lic.

Want to Know What Makes the Troops Laugh? Comedian Louis CK in Afghanistan (Quite NSFW)

in Comedy, Video - Politics/Society | June 17th, 2013

The oth­er day, a teenaged friend asked me if the war in Afghanistan is still going on. The answer is yes. Pre­sum­ably, it won’t be when he reach­es draft age.

In the mean­time, here’s some extreme­ly NSFW footage of Louis CK enter­tain­ing the troops at Bagram Air­field in Afghanistan a few years back. Look­ing for a quick overview of what makes the troops laugh? Cinnabon, schlub­by mid­dle aged dudes com­par­ing them­selves unfa­vor­ably to the audi­ence’s rock hard lean­ness, and the F word. The one whose non-slang def­i­n­i­tion is “a bun­dle of sticks.”

Giv­en the make up of the crowd, it made me uneasy. This was most assured­ly not a preach­ing-to-the-choir sit­u­a­tion, though the young audi­ence mem­ber who filmed the rou­tine with­out the ben­e­fit of a tri­pod notes: ” I did­n’t even know who he was before this set. He’s one of my top 3 favorites now. I just want­ed oth­er peo­ple to see him like I did. I wish I could have a con­ver­sa­tion with him!”

Hope­ful­ly, by now, hero wor­ship will have steered him to the sec­ond episode of CK’ s semi­au­to­bi­o­graph­i­cal show, in which extreme­ly forth­com­ing gay come­di­an, Rick Crom, schools a table­ful of straight pok­er bud­dies on var­i­ous sex­u­al prac­tices. His mat­ter-of-fact demeanor leads CK to ask how a queer crowd might react to his “fag­got” rou­tine. The fact that CK also pro­duced and script­ed this show is enough to con­vince me that his aim is true.

It’s worth not­ing that the pre­sum­ably straight (watch his oth­er videos) Youtu­ber who filmed and hosts this video liked ‘Louis CK — Laugh­ing at Gay Peo­ple” but also the Fred­die Mer­cury Google Doo­dle.

Giv­en CK’s mad respect for any­one serv­ing in the mil­i­tary, per­haps this young man can con­vince him that it’s time to retire “retard” as a pejo­ra­tive … even if he’s talk­ing about his own kids.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Louis CK Ridicules Avant-Garde Art on 1990s MTV Show

Sein­feld, Louis C.K., Chris Rock, and Ricky Ger­vais Dis­sect the Craft of Com­e­dy (NSFW)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is also sick of epilep­sy as punch­line or short­cut. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

James Joyce Reads a Passage From Ulysses, 1924

in Books, Literature | June 16th, 2013

Today is “Blooms­day,” the tra­di­tion­al day for book lovers to cel­e­brate James Joyce’s mas­ter­piece, Ulysses (text — audio). To mark the occa­sion we bring you this rare 1924 record­ing of Joyce read­ing from the Aeo­lus episode of the nov­el. The record­ing was arranged and financed by the author’s friend and pub­lish­er Sylvia Beach, who brought him by taxi to the HMV (His Mas­ter’s Voice) gramo­phone stu­dio in the Paris sub­urb of Bil­lan­court. The first ses­sion did­n’t go well. Joyce was ner­vous and suf­fer­ing from his recur­ring eye trou­bles. He and Beach returned anoth­er day to fin­ish the record­ing. In her mem­oir, Shake­speare & Com­pa­ny, Beach writes:

Joyce had cho­sen the speech in the Aeo­lus episode, the only pas­sage that could be lift­ed out of Ulysses, he said, and the only one that was “declam­a­to­ry” and there­fore suit­able for recital. He had made up his mind, he told me, that this would be his only read­ing from Ulysses.

I have an idea that it was not for declam­a­to­ry rea­sons alone that he chose this pas­sage from Aeo­lus. I believe that it expressed some­thing he want­ed said and pre­served in his own voice. As it rings out–“he lift­ed his voice above it boldly”–it is more, one feels, than mere ora­to­ry.

The pas­sage par­al­lels the episode in Home­r’s Odyssey fea­tur­ing Aeo­lus, god of the winds. As a pun, Joyce sets it in a news­pa­per office where his hero Leopold Bloom stops by to place an ad, only to be stymied by the blus­tery noise of the print­ing press­es and of the var­i­ous “wind­bags” in the office.

One char­ac­ter tries to enter­tain a cou­ple of his friends with a mock­ing recital of a politi­cian’s speech print­ed in the day’s news­pa­per. Here is the pas­sage Joyce reads:

He began:

–Mr. Chair­man, ladies and gen­tle­men: Great was my admi­ra­tion in lis­ten­ing to the remarks addressed to the youth of Ire­land a moment since by my learned friend. It seemed to me that I had been trans­port­ed into a coun­try far away from this coun­try, into an age remote from this age, that I stood in ancient Egypt and that I was lis­ten­ing to the speech of a high­priest of that land addressed to the youth­ful Moses.

His lis­ten­ers held their cig­a­rettes poised to hear, their smoke ascend­ing in frail stalks that flow­ered with his speech…Noble words com­ing. Look out. Could you try your hand at it your­self?

–And it seemed to me that I heard the voice of that Egypt­ian high­priest raised in a tone of like haugh­i­ness and like pride. I heard his words and their mean­ing was revealed to me.

From the Fathers
It was revealed to me that those things are good which yet are cor­rupt­ed which nei­ther if they were supreme­ly good nor unless they were good could be cor­rupt­ed. Ah, curse you! That’s saint Augus­tine.

–Why will you jews not accept our lan­guage, our reli­gion and our cul­ture? You are a tribe of nomad herds­men; we are a mighty peo­ple. You have no cities nor no wealth: our cities are hives of human­i­ty and our gal­leys, trireme and quadrireme, laden with all man­ner mer­chan­dise fur­row the waters of the known globe. You have but emerged from prim­i­tive con­di­tions: we have a lit­er­a­ture, a priest­hood, an age­long his­to­ry and a poli­ty.

Nile.

Child, man, effi­gy.

By the Nile­bank the babe­maries kneel, cra­dle of bul­rush­es: a man sup­ple in com­bat: stone­horned, stonebeard­ed, heart of stone.

–You pray to a local and obscure idol: our tem­ples, majes­tic and mys­te­ri­ous, are the abodes of Isis and Osiris, of Horus and Ammon Ra. Yours serf­dom, awe and hum­ble­ness: ours thun­der and the seas. Israel is weak and few are her chil­dren: Egypt is an host and ter­ri­ble are her arms. Vagrants and day­labour­ers are you called: the world trem­bles at our name.

A dumb belch of hunger cleft his speech. he lift­ed his voice above it bold­ly:

–But, ladies and gen­tle­men, had the youth­ful Moses lis­tened to and accept­ed that view of life, had he bowed his head and bowed his will and bowed his spir­it before that arro­gant admo­ni­tion he would nev­er have led the cho­sen peo­ple out of their house of bondage nor fol­lowed the pil­lar of the cloud by day. He would nev­er have spo­ken with the Eter­al amid light­nings on Sinai’s moun­tain­top nor even have come down with the light of inspi­ra­tion shin­ing in his coun­te­nance and bear­ing in his arms the tables of the law, graven in the lan­guage of the out­law.

For more of Ulysses, click here to find out how you can down­load it as a free audio book. And to hear a clear­er record­ing of Joyce’s voice made five years after this one, see our 2012 post: “James Joyce Reads ‘Anna Livia Plura­belle’ from Finnegans Wake.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hen­ri Matisse Illus­trates 1935 Edi­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses

Stephen Fry Explains His Love for James Joyce’s Ulysses

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Reads Joyce’s Ulysses at the Play­ground (1955)

Japanese Animation Director Hayao Miyazaki Shows Us How to Make Instant Ramen

in Animation, Film, Food & Drink | June 16th, 2013

Writer-Direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki is renowned for the gor­geous­ness of his fea­ture length ani­ma­tions, and sto­ry­lines that com­bine indige­nous Japan­ese ele­ments with super­nat­ur­al whim­sy. In a world of Dis­ney princess­es, let us give thanks for fam­i­ly enter­tain­ment in which an eccen­tric cas­tle roams the coun­try­side on chick­en legs, a stink spir­it wreaks hav­oc in a bath­house, and a fur-lined cat bus trans­ports pas­sen­gers at top speed.

The first gen­er­a­tion of Amer­i­can chil­dren to have grown up on Miyaz­ki films — My Neigh­bor Totoro was released in the States in 1993 — has entered their col­lege years. A por­tion of them will have eager­ly sought out his lat­est offer­ing, a semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal tale direct­ed by his son, Goro. Some will have felt them­selves too mature for such fare. Being col­lege stu­dents, both groups are like­ly to be hork­ing down a fair amount of cheap pack­aged ramen noo­dles.

As evi­denced above, Miyaza­ki has some pret­ty spe­cif­ic ideas on what to do with those. Prepar­ing a late night work­place din­ner for his Spir­it­ed Away team, the great direc­tor rivals Good Fel­las’ sliced gar­lic maven Paul Sorvi­no for culi­nary sang-froid. Stuff­ing ten blocks of the stuff into a sin­gle pot might get an ordi­nary mor­tal vot­ed off of Top Chef, but aside from that Miyaza­k­i’s staff meal is an excel­lent, instant tuto­r­i­al for those inter­est­ed in soup­ing up low bud­get, col­le­giate cui­sine.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cook­pad, the Largest Recipe Site in Japan, Launch­es New Site in Eng­lish

Kafka’s Night­mare Tale, ‘A Coun­try Doc­tor,’ Told in Award-Win­ning Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion

Japan­ese Car­toons from the 1920s and 30s Reveal the Styl­is­tic Roots of Ani­me

The New York Times Makes 17,000 Tasty Recipes Avail­able Online: Japan­ese, Ital­ian, Thai & Much More

Watch Sher­lock Hound: Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­mat­ed, Steam­punk Take on Sher­lock Holmes

French Stu­dent Sets Inter­net on Fire with Ani­ma­tion Inspired by Moe­bius, Syd Mead & Hayao Miyaza­ki

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s favorite moment is when Totoro and the chil­dren make the cam­phor tree grow. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Bertrand Russell: The First Media Academic?: A Retrospective of His Influential Radio Appearances

in Philosophy, Radio | June 14th, 2013

Bertrand Rus­sell was one of the most impor­tant logi­cians and math­e­mat­i­cal philoso­phers of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry. He was also a tire­less cam­paign­er for peace and social progress. Born into an aris­to­crat­ic British fam­i­ly, Rus­sell believed that the social and polit­i­cal ills of the world could be less­ened if peo­ple of all social class­es had a bet­ter grasp of knowl­edge and crit­i­cal rea­son­ing. To this end, he devot­ed a great deal of his time to writ­ing pop­u­lar books on moral and intel­lec­tu­al mat­ters. He was also a reg­u­lar pres­ence on BBC radio dur­ing the 1930s, 40s and 50s.

Most of Rus­sel­l’s sur­viv­ing radio pro­grams have been locked away in the archives for all these years. But in Jan­u­ary of 2012, pro­duc­ers at BBC Radio 4 assem­bled some inter­est­ing excerpts from the philoso­pher’s many radio appear­ances for a ret­ro­spec­tive. Bertrand Rus­sell: The First Media Aca­d­e­m­ic? (above, in its entire­ty) is a fas­ci­nat­ing overview of Rus­sel­l’s life as a pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al. Host­ed by come­di­an and writer Robin Ince, the pro­gram includes com­men­tary from two of Britain’s cur­rent crop of media aca­d­e­mics: physi­cist and for­mer pop musi­cian Bri­an Cox and math­e­mati­cian Mar­cus du Sautoy, who cur­rent­ly holds Richard Dawkin­s’s old seat as the Simonyi Pro­fes­sor for the Pub­lic Under­stand­ing of Sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford. There are excerpts from vin­tage inter­views with peo­ple who knew Rus­sell, includ­ing his son Con­rad and his sec­ond wife, Dora Black Rus­sell. But the best con­tri­bu­tions are from the philoso­pher him­self. Even the most devot­ed fan of Rus­sell will find some­thing new and inter­est­ing to lis­ten to in this excel­lent assem­blage of rare audio clips.

Note: You can down­load a fine­ly-pol­ished record­ing of Bertrand Rus­sell: The First Media Aca­d­e­m­ic? from Audible.com. And you could always get it for free by tak­ing advan­tage of Audi­ble’s 30-day Free Tri­al. Find details on that here. When­ev­er a read­er signs up for a free tri­al with Audi­ble, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bertrand Rus­sell in Bol­ly­wood: The Old Philosopher’s Improb­a­ble Appear­ance in a Hin­di Film, 1967

Lis­ten to ‘Why I Am Not a Chris­t­ian,’ Bertrand Russell’s Pow­er­ful Cri­tique of Reli­gion (1927)

Bertrand Russell’s Ten Com­mand­ments for Liv­ing in a Healthy Democ­ra­cy

Bertrand Rus­sell on His Stu­dent Lud­wig Wittgen­stein: Man of Genius or Mere­ly an Eccen­tric?

The Faces of Great Physicists on International Currency

in Economics, Physics | June 14th, 2013

Click for larg­er image

Amer­i­cans some­times com­plain that, unlike the cur­ren­cy of many oth­er coun­tries, which fea­ture por­traits of artists, sci­en­tists, and writ­ers, U.S. dol­lar bills don’t tend to fea­ture intel­lec­tu­als. But one could, I think, make the case for Ben­jamin Franklin, who must cer­tain­ly count as a man of let­ters, and did illus­trate an impor­tant physics les­son when he flew that kite with a key on it. Still, that does­n’t exact­ly make him a physi­cist, as res­i­dents of Aus­tria, New Zealand, Scot­land, and Croa­t­ia, all of whom have used bills embla­zoned with the faces of physi­cists, well know.

It does, how­ev­er, get Franklin a place on Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land physi­cist Edward F. Redish’s page “Physi­cists on the Mon­ey,” which was fea­tured on Jason Kot­tke’s site yes­ter­day. Redish high­lights 24 bills bear­ing por­traits of not­ed fig­ures through­out the his­to­ry of physics, includ­ing, at the top of the post, the Dan­ish 500-kro­ner note that pic­tures quan­tum the­o­rist Niels Bohr. Just above we have the uni­ver­sal­ly rec­og­niz­able dishevel­ment of Albert Ein­stein, who found his way onto Israel’s five-pound note by, among oth­er achieve­ments, com­ing up with the gen­er­al the­o­ry of rel­a­tiv­i­ty. Below you’ll see a physi­cist you may not have heard of, let alone spent: tenth-cen­tu­ry schol­ar Abu Nasr Al-Fara­bi, pic­tured on Kaza­khstan’s one-tenge note. Redish’s delight­ful­ly retro site also offers a col­lec­tion of physi­cists on stamps, and links to a page with more sci­en­tist- and math­e­mati­cian-bear­ing ban­knotes.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Physics Cours­es

Do Physi­cists Believe in God?

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

The Karl Marx Cred­it Card – When You’re Short of Kap­i­tal

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 Extraordinary Life and Art of Henri Cartier-Bresson Revealed in 1998 Documentary

in Art, Photography | June 14th, 2013

The cam­era, Hen­ri Carti­er-Bres­son once said, is an instru­ment of intu­ition and spon­tane­ity — “the mas­ter of the instant which, in visu­al terms, ques­tions and decides simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.” Like a Zen archer, Carti­er-Bres­son viewed his méti­er as a way of being in the world. Pho­tog­ra­phy for him was an “art­less art,” best approached by for­get­ting tech­nique and open­ing one­self to the uncon­scious. “To take pho­tographs,” he said, “means to recognize–simultaneously and with­in a frac­tion of a second–both the fact itself and the rig­or­ous orga­ni­za­tion of visu­al­ly per­ceived forms that give it mean­ing. It is putting one’s head, one’s eye, and one’s heart on the same axis.”

Hen­ri Carti­er-Bres­son: Pen, Brush and Cam­era (above) is an excel­lent overview of the great pho­tog­ra­pher’s life and work. Direct­ed and nar­rat­ed by Patri­cia Wheat­ley, the film was pro­duced for the BBC in 1998, the year four major exhi­bi­tions were held in Lon­don to cel­e­brate Carti­er-Bres­son’s 90th birth­day. The film traces the pho­tog­ra­pher’s extra­or­di­nary life, from his ear­ly train­ing as a painter and his infat­u­a­tion with Sur­re­al­ism to his lat­er work as a globe-trot­ting pho­to­jour­nal­ist and his deci­sion, after 40 years of work in the medi­um, to give up pho­tog­ra­phy and ded­i­cate the last decades of his life to draw­ing. The film includes rare footage of Carti­er-Bres­son at work, along with inter­views by Mag­num pho­tog­ra­ph­er Eve Arnold and oth­ers. Best of all, Wheat­ley was able to film exten­sive inter­views with the noto­ri­ous­ly shy pho­tog­ra­ph­er, both in Lon­don and in his apart­ment over­look­ing the Tui­leries Gar­dens in Paris.

To learn more about Carti­er-Bres­son and to see a won­der­ful slide show of his pho­tog­ra­phy nar­rat­ed by the man him­self, please see our ear­li­er piece, “Hen­ri Carti­er Bres­son and the Deci­sive Moment.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Cre­ative Process of Ansel Adams Revealed in 1958 Doc­u­men­tary

Dis­cov­er Ansel Adams’ 226 Pho­tos of U.S. Nation­al Parks (and Anoth­er Side of the Leg­endary Pho­tog­ra­ph­er)

Alfred Stieglitz: The Elo­quent Eye, a Reveal­ing Look at “The Father of Mod­ern Pho­tog­ra­phy”

1972 Diane Arbus Doc­u­men­tary Inter­views Those Who Knew the Amer­i­can Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Best