The World According to John Coltrane: His Life & Music Revealed in Heartfelt 1990 Documentary

in Film, Music | April 8th, 2013

In his short life, John Coltrane con­tin­u­al­ly pushed the bound­aries of music. From swing to bebop to hard bop to free jazz, Coltrane was a rest­less seek­er of new sounds. Inspired by the hyp­not­ic, trance-induc­ing tra­di­tion­al music of North Africa and Asia, Coltrane cre­at­ed a new kind of music that fused jazz and East­ern spir­i­tu­al­i­ty.

The World Accord­ing to John Coltrane tells the sto­ry of Coltrane’s quest, from his child­hood in a deeply reli­gious house­hold in North Car­oli­na to his ear­ly days play­ing sax­o­phone in the Navy, to his appren­tice­ship with Miles Davis in the 1950s and his emer­gence as a band­leader and inno­va­tor in the 1960s. Most of the one-hour film is devot­ed to Coltrane’s lat­er peri­od, when he came into his own. The film is not a biog­ra­phy, in the tra­di­tion­al sense. There is very lit­tle about Coltrane’s per­son­al life — his mar­riages, chil­dren, drug prob­lems and declin­ing health. Direc­tor Robert Palmer focus­es instead on Coltrane’s jour­ney as a musi­cian.

The World Accord­ing to John Coltrane was made in 1990, and includes inter­views with Coltrane’s sec­ond wife, pianist Alice Coltrane, and a num­ber of oth­er musi­cians who knew Coltrane and played with him, includ­ing sax­o­phon­ist Wayne Short­er, drum­mer Rashied Ali and Pianist Tom­my Flana­gan. It pro­vides some excel­lent insights into one of the 20th cen­tu­ry’s great­est musi­cians.

via metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Coltrane’s Naval Reserve Enlist­ment Mugshot (1945)

John Coltrane Plays Only Live Per­for­mance of A Love Supreme

John Coltrane: Three Great Euro­pean Per­for­mances, 1960, 1961 and 1965

Humans of New York: Street Photography as a Celebration of Life

in Life, Photography | April 8th, 2013

These days any yahoo with a cell phone and access to the Inter­net fan­cies him or her­self a Hen­ri Carti­er-Bres­son, Ruth Orkin or Helen Levitt, but true street pho­tog­ra­phy involves more than just being in the right place at the right time. Bran­don Stan­ton, the self-taught cre­ator of the wild­ly pop­u­lar Humans of New York blog, has the ded­i­ca­tion as well as the eye and the tech­ni­cal mas­tery. His curios­i­ty and com­pas­sion are abun­dant, but what real­ly sets his work apart is its 21st cen­tu­ry imme­di­a­cy.

Dai­ly, Stan­ton wan­ders the streets of New York, approach­es strangers and asks if he can take some pic­tures. A few hours lat­er, those pho­tos light up Face­book, with cap­tions drawn from the brief col­lab­o­ra­tion between sub­ject and pho­tog­ra­ph­er. In short order, each post gar­ners hun­dreds of likes and com­ments. Nasty feed­back is a rar­i­ty. Stan­ton’s fans seem con­tent to fol­low his lead, find­ing much to cel­e­brate in straight­for­ward pos­es of par­ents with chil­dren, fes­tive­ly attired seniors, and proud odd­balls.

Cer­tain inter­ac­tions beg longer nar­ra­tives, which Stan­ton relates in the “Sto­ries” sec­tion of his web­site. These pieces offer char­ac­ter insights, and often doc­u­ment how the pho­to­graph came to be.

His gift for empa­thy is best exem­pli­fied in his por­trait of Black Wolf, The Drag­on­mas­ter. I’ve run into this dude every­where from the Coney Island Mer­maid Parade to Cen­tral Park, but con­fess that I found his visu­al pre­sen­ta­tion off putting. Unlike me, Stan­ton looked until he found some­thing uni­ver­sal in the delib­er­ate freak­ish­ness.

…we all need to feel impor­tant. Not New York impor­tant, nec­es­sar­i­ly, but impor­tant. We all need to know that there’s a place in this world that only we can fill. Some peo­ple need big­ger places than oth­ers, but every­one needs a place—a hole in the uni­verse that only they can fill. This need is so deep and food-like and so human that we will do any­thing to fill it. We’ll go crazy to feel impor­tant. A pro­tec­tive, evo­lu­tion­ary sort of crazy. When the body has no food, it will break down mus­cle to feed itself. When the ego has no food, it will break down the mind to feed itself. If we have no place in this world, we’ll with­draw from this world, and inhab­it one where we have a place.

Stan­ton’s lens pro­vides the import, yield­ing images so arrest­ing, they stop us in our tracks. Appre­ci­ate his col­lec­tion of extra­or­di­nary humans, then chal­lenge your­self to notice such spec­i­mens in the wild on a dai­ly basis.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Find­ing Vivian Maier: New Doc­u­men­tary Reveals the Vision of Obscure Chica­go Street Pho­tog­ra­ph­er

Watch as Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Steve McCur­ry Shoots the Very Last Roll of Kodachrome

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Jazz Pho­tog­ra­phy and The Film He Almost Made About Jazz Under Nazi Rule

Ayun Hal­l­i­day hopes every Glam­our Don’t will some­day find her­self a Human of New York. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

David Byrne Discusses Here Lies Love, His Disco Musical with Fatboy Slim on the Life of Imelda Marcos

in Music, Theatre | April 8th, 2013

In Imel­da Mar­cos, wid­ow of con­tro­ver­sial for­mer pres­i­dent of the Philip­pines Fer­di­nand Mar­cos, the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry had one of its most col­or­ful first ladies. Or at least, to make the most obvi­ous pos­si­ble joke, it had its first lady with the most col­or­ful col­lec­tion of shoes. In fact, giv­en her coun­try’s his­to­ry of pover­ty and cor­rup­tion, Mar­cos’ report­ed­ly vast and osten­ta­tious wardrobe made her a con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure in her­self. Yet she has nev­er seemed whol­ly uncon­cerned with her lega­cy, and in fact remains a mem­ber of the Philip­pine House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives today. She has wished aloud that her tomb­stone read, sim­ply, “Here lies love,” and that epi­taph gives a title to the dis­co musi­cal that Talk­ing Heads mas­ter­mind David Byrne and DJ/nineties elec­tron­ic phe­nom­e­non Fat­boy Slim have craft­ed to tell the sto­ry of Mar­cos’ life. “Prob­a­bly the first thing you need to know,” writes Allan Kozinn in the New York Times, “is that although it is about Imel­da Mar­cos, the for­mer first lady of the Philip­pines, her famous col­lec­tion of shoes is nei­ther men­tioned nor shown.” At the top of the post, you can watch a short clip of Byrne dis­cussing the inspi­ra­tions for and long ges­ta­tion process of Here Lies Love, not to men­tion his efforts to break down the audi­ence’s pre­con­cep­tions, shoe-relat­ed and oth­er­wise.

“Imel­da, who was this flam­boy­ant, noto­ri­ous kind of per­son on the scene, loved going to dis­cos,” he says. “She loved going to Stu­dio 54. She turned the top floor of the palace in Mani­la into a club. She had a mir­ror ball installed in her New York town­house. [ … ] Maybe there’s a con­nec­tion between the eupho­ria you feel in a dance club and the eupho­ria a per­son in pow­er has. ” Just above, you can lis­ten to the musi­cal’s title num­ber. Despite hav­ing sev­er­al times lis­tened to and enjoyed the entire Here Lies Love album, I under­stand it can’t com­pare to the live ver­sion, because the live ver­sion makes you dance — lit­er­al­ly. Kozinn describes Byrne’s lat­est venue as “trans­formed into an ’80s-style dis­co, and the audi­ence is meant to stand, mill around or, if the spir­it moves, dance through the entire 85-minute show.” Byrne has also writ­ten about the devel­op­ment of Here Lies Love on his diary, and promis­ing­ly. “The stag­ing and the con­cept work,” he assures his fans. “It works so well that I sort of cried at every per­for­mance. [ … ] In the end, I’d say it’s the best thing I’ve done since the Stop Mak­ing Sense tour—which I guess is say­ing some­thing.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

David Byrne Gives Us the Low­down on How Music Works (with Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Daniel Lev­itin)

Lis­ten to the New David Byrne/St. Vin­cent Album, Love This Giant

How David Byrne and Bri­an Eno Make Music Togeth­er: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

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.

History of Rock: New MOOC Presents the Music of Elvis, Dylan, Beatles, Stones, Hendrix & More

in MOOCs, Music | April 8th, 2013

Here’s some­thing I can get pret­ty jazzed about. Er, maybe that’s not quite the right verb. But close enough.…

On May 13, the East­man School of Music at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Rochester will launch the first of two MOOCs that will trace the his­to­ry of rock music. Taught by John Cov­ach, a pro­fes­sor of music the­o­ry, The His­to­ry of Rock, Part One will revis­it the 1950s and 1960s, the hal­cy­on days of rock ’n’ roll, which gave us the music of Elvis Pres­ley, Chuck Berry, Phil Spec­tor, Bob Dylan, the Bea­t­les, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hen­drix, Cream, and oth­er bands. The course will focus on the music itself, the cul­tur­al con­text from which rock emerged, and how changes in the music busi­ness and music tech­nol­o­gy shaped this new musi­cal form. The sec­ond course (sched­uled to start on July 8) will move for­ward to the 1970, 80s and 90s and cov­er the music of Led Zep­pelin, the All­man Broth­ers, Car­ole King, Bob Mar­ley, the Sex Pis­tols, Don­na Sum­mer, Michael Jack­son, Madon­na, Prince, Metal­li­ca, Run-DMC, Nir­vana, and oth­er artists. Stu­dents who suc­cess­ful­ly com­plete the course will receive a “State­ment of Accom­plish­ment” signed by the instruc­tor.

Oth­er music cours­es list­ed in our col­lec­tion of 300 Free MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties include Intro­duc­tion to Gui­tar and Intro­duc­tion to Impro­vi­sa­tion. They’re both cre­at­ed by the Berklee Col­lege of Music and start on April 22.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A His­to­ry of Rock ‘n’ Roll in 100 Riffs

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock

Carnegie Hall MOOC Will Teach You How to Lis­ten to Orches­tras (Free)

60 Second Adventures in Astronomy Explains the Big Bang, Relativity & More with Fun Animation

in Animation, Astronomy | April 8th, 2013

Like many pos­i­tive terms, the phrase “big bang” orig­i­nat­ed as a pejo­ra­tive. Fred Hoyle coined the term in 1949 as a way of deflat­ing the con­cept of an expand­ing uni­verse. It stuck, even after Edwin Hub­ble showed that 13.7 bil­lion years ago, all of the mat­ter in our mas­sive uni­verse was indeed com­pact­ed into “one super­dense ball.” Astronomers have also fig­ured out that the vol­ume of the big bang was only 120 deci­bels, about the loud­ness of your aver­age rock show (though how there might have been sound with­out an atmos­phere escapes me). There is some irony in Hoyle’s dig: the “big bang” wasn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly big, and wasn’t much of a bang, but it hap­pened.

We learn all this and more in the video above from The Open Uni­ver­si­ty, and all with­in a minute, as the title of the series, 60 Sec­ond Adven­tures in Astron­o­my, promis­es. These amus­ing ani­ma­tions are very much like oth­er OU series we’ve fea­tured in the past: 60 Sec­ond Adven­tures in Eco­nom­ics; 60-Sec­ond Adven­tures in Eco­nom­ics: and 60 Sec­ond Adven­tures in Thought. (Find them all on iTune­sU here.)

The uni­ver­si­ty describes the new astron­o­my series like this:

Ever won­dered where the Uni­verse came from? Or more impor­tant­ly, where it’s head­ed? Voiced by David Mitchell, this series of twelve 60 sec­ond ani­ma­tions exam­ines dif­fer­ent sci­en­tif­ic con­cepts from the big bang to rel­a­tiv­i­ty, from black holes to dark mat­ter. The series also explores the pos­si­bil­i­ty of life beyond Earth and con­sid­ers why David Bowie is still none the wis­er about life on Mars.

Spend a few extra min­utes edu­cat­ing your­self with some more 60 sec­ond astron­o­my adven­tures below, or vis­it the com­plete col­lec­tion here on YouTube or iTune­sU.

Super­novae

Exo­plan­ets

Spe­cial Rel­a­tiv­i­ty

Event Hori­zons

Life on Mars

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Answers the Big Enchi­la­da Ques­tion, “Does the Uni­verse Have a Pur­pose?”

Mea­sur­ing the Uni­verse: How Astronomers Learned to Mea­sure Celes­tial Dis­tances Explained with Ani­ma­tion

The Hig­gs Boson, AKA the God Par­ti­cle, Explained with Ani­ma­tion

Demys­ti­fy­ing the Hig­gs Boson with Leonard Susskind, the Father of String The­o­ry

MOOC Interrupted: Top 10 Reasons Our Readers Didn’t Finish a Massive Open Online Course

in MOOCs | April 5th, 2013

On Tues­day, we gave you a Visu­al­iza­tion of the Big Prob­lem for MOOCs, which comes down to this: low com­ple­tion rates. To be clear, the com­ple­tion rates aren’t so much a prob­lem for you; they’re more a prob­lem for the MOOC providers and their busi­ness mod­els. But let’s not get bogged down in that. We end­ed our post by ask­ing you to share your own expe­ri­ence with MOOCs — par­tic­u­lar­ly, to tell us why you start­ed and stopped a MOOC. We got close to 50 thought­ful respons­es. And below we’ve sum­ma­rized the 10 most com­mon­ly-cit­ed rea­sons. Here they are:

1.) Takes Too Much Time: Some­times you enroll in a MOOC, only to dis­cov­er that it takes way too much time. “Just didn’t have time to do all the work.” “As a full-time work­ing adult, I found it exceed­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to watch hours upon hours of video lec­tures.” That’s a refrain we heard again and again.

2.) Assumes Too Much Knowl­edge: Oth­er times you enroll in a MOOC, only to find that it requires too much base knowl­edge, like a knowl­edge of advanced math­e­mat­ics. That makes the course an instant non-starter. So you opt out. Sim­ple as that.

3.) Too Basic, Not Real­ly at the Lev­el of Stan­ford, Oxford and MIT: On the flip side, some say that their MOOCs weren’t real­ly oper­at­ing on a seri­ous uni­ver­si­ty lev­el. The course­work was too easy, the work­load and assign­ments weren’t high enough. A lit­er­a­ture course felt more like a glo­ri­fied book club. In short, the cours­es weren’t the real uni­ver­si­ty deal.

4.) Lec­ture Fatigue: MOOCs often rely on for­mal video lec­tures, which, for many of you, is an“obsolete and inef­fi­cient for­mat.” And they’re just some­times bor­ing. MOOCs would be bet­ter served if they relied more heav­i­ly on inter­ac­tive forms of ped­a­gogy. Val put it well when she said, “We should not try to bring a brick and mor­tar lec­ture to your liv­ing room. Use the resources avail­able and make the learn­ing engag­ing with short­er seg­ments.… The goal should be to teach and teach bet­ter. If one of these online uni­ver­si­ties can fig­ure that out, then the mon­ey will fol­low.”

5.) Poor Course Design: You signed up for a MOOC and did­n’t know how to get going. One stu­dent relat­ed his expe­ri­ence: “From day one I had no idea what I was sup­posed to do. There were instruc­tions all over the place. Groups to join with phan­tom mem­bers that nev­er com­ment­ed or inter­act­ed, and a syl­labus that was being revised as the course went through it’s first week.”

6.) Clunky Community/Communication Tools: This has been the Achilles’ heel of online learn­ing for years, and so far the MOOCs haven’t quite fig­ured it out. It’s not unusu­al to hear this kind of com­ment from stu­dents: “I find that the dis­cus­sion forums aren’t very use­ful or engag­ing. They are not a very good sub­sti­tute for active in-class dis­cus­sion.”

7.) Bad Peer Review & Trolls: Because MOOCs are so big, you often don’t get feed­back from the pro­fes­sor. Instead you get it from algo­rithms and peers. And some­times the peers can be less than con­struc­tive. One read­er writes: “I chose to stop doing the peer response sec­tion of the class due to some stu­dents being treat­ed rude­ly [by oth­er stu­dents]; in fact, the entire peer response sec­tion of the class is done in a way I would NEVER have asked of stu­dents in a class­room.… [T]here is no involve­ment of the pro­fes­sor or TA’s in mon­i­tor­ing the TORRENT of com­plaints about peer reviews.”

8.) Sur­prised by Hid­den Costs: Some­times you dis­cov­er that free MOOCs aren’t exact­ly free. They have hid­den costs. Brooke dropped her MOOC when she real­ized that the read­ings were from the pro­fes­sor’s expen­sive text­book.

9.) You’re Just Shop­ping Around: You shop for cours­es, which involves reg­is­ter­ing for many cours­es, keep­ing some, and drop­ping oth­ers. That inflates the low com­ple­tion rate, but it gives you free­dom. As one read­er said, “I am very, very hap­py about being able to be so picky.”

10.) You’re There to Learn, Not for the Cre­den­tial at the End: Some­times you do every­thing (watch the videos, do the read­ings, etc.) but take the final exam. In a cer­tain way, you’re audit­ing, which suits many of you just fine. It’s pre­cise­ly what you want to do. But that, too, makes the low com­ple­tion rates look worse than they maybe are.

Thanks to every­one who took the time to par­tic­i­pate. We real­ly appre­ci­ate it! And if you’re look­ing for a new MOOC, don’t miss our list, 300 Free MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties (Many Offer­ing Cer­tifi­cates).

The Shaggy, Cute, Eco-Friendly Lawnmowers of Paris

in Random, Technology | April 4th, 2013

They toyed with the idea of a don­key, but they went with four sheep instead, and now four ewes are mow­ing the grounds of Paris’ Munic­i­pal Archives. It’s all part of a pilot pro­gram where, if suc­cess­ful, sheep will trim the grass of Parisian pub­lic spaces and burn no fos­sil fuels along the way. The New York Times has more on this old school solu­tion to a mod­ern envi­ron­men­tal prob­lem.

Roger Ebert Talks Movingly About Losing and Re-Finding His Voice (TED 2011)

in Film, Life, Technology, TED Talks | April 4th, 2013

Film crit­ic Roger Ebert, like Pauline Kael before him, leaves behind a great tor­rent of words. Those of us accus­tomed to seek­ing out his opin­ion can com­fort our­selves on the Inter­net, where his thoughts on the great (and not-so-great) films of the last four decades live in per­pe­tu­ity.

After a rup­tured carotid artery robbed him of the pow­er of speech, words assumed an even greater impor­tance for Ebert. Even though he felt lucky to be alive in an age when most home com­put­ers come equipped with a text-to-speech option, he mourned the loss of inflec­tion, tim­ing, and spon­tane­ity. Cere­Proc, a Scot­tish firm spe­cial­iz­ing in per­son­al­ized com­put­er voic­es, cre­at­ed a cus­tom ver­sion he breezi­ly referred to as Roger Junior or Roger 2.0, a Franken­stein’s mon­ster assem­bled from hours of tele­vi­sion appear­ances. A noble, but flawed attempt. Despite his Mid­west­ern attrac­tion to Apple’s com­put­er­ized British accent, Ebert returned to its Amer­i­can male voice, “Alex”, as the most expres­sive option.

In 2011, the speech­less Ebert gave a TED Talk on the sub­ject. “Alex” was giv­en his moment to shine, but there’s no way the tech­no­log­i­cal mir­a­cle can com­pete with the human spec­ta­cle onstage.

Rather than rely on the rel­a­tive­ly autonomous voice sub­sti­tute, Ebert arranged for his wife, Chaz Ham­mel­smith, and friends Dean Ornish and John Hunter, to read his words from pre­pared scripts.

For­get W.C. Fields’ caveat about per­form­ing with chil­dren and dogs. Ebert stole his own show, shame­less­ly upstag­ing his loved ones with jol­ly pan­tomimed thumbs ups and oth­er antics. When he’s on cam­era, you can’t take your eyes off him…as he clear­ly knew. A 2010 Esquire arti­cle by Chica­go-based the­ater crit­ic, Chris Jones, described how the removal of Ebert’s low­er jaw gave him the aspect of a per­ma­nent smile. The dis­fig­ure­ment was shock­ing, but espe­cial­ly so on one whose face was so famil­iar. It led to fre­quent mis­as­sump­tions that he had been men­tal­ly inca­pac­i­tat­ed as well. Ham­mel­smith’s tears when she gets to this part of her hus­band’s elo­quent TED Talk speak vol­umes as well. His will­ing­ness to place him­self front and cen­ter, where peo­ple who might think it impo­lite to stare could not help but see and hear him as a whole per­son, was a rev­o­lu­tion­ary act.

“With­out intel­li­gence and mem­o­ry, there is no his­to­ry.”  — Roger Ebert, 1942 — 2013

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is a writer in the Big Apple.

“Professor Risk” at Cambridge University Says “One of the Biggest Risks is Being Too Cautious”

in Life | April 4th, 2013

To eat bacon sand­wich­es? Or not to eat bacon sand­wich­es? That’s a ques­tion tack­led by David Spiegel­hal­ter, who holds the title, “Win­ton Pro­fes­sor for the Pub­lic Under­stand­ing of Risk” at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty. Some­times they just call him “Pro­fes­sor Risk” for short.

In his aca­d­e­m­ic work, Spiegel­hal­ter looks at risk and uncer­tain­ty every day, see­ing how they affect the lives of indi­vid­u­als and soci­ety. You’d fig­ure that this might make him more cau­tious than the rest of us. But that’s not how it turns out. After ana­lyz­ing all of the data, Spiegel­hal­ter comes to this con­clu­sion: some cal­cu­lat­ed risks are worth it. They have min­i­mal down­side and make life worth liv­ing. Or, looked at a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly, some­times “one of the biggest risks [in life] is being too cau­tious.”

You can stay cur­rent on Spiegel­hal­ter’s think­ing by fol­low­ing his blog Under­stand­ing Uncer­tain­ty.

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:

J.K. Rowl­ing Tells Har­vard Grads Why Suc­cess Begins with Fail­ure

Paulo Coel­ho on The Fear of Fail­ure

Find Cours­es from Cam­bridge in our Col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es Online

The Popular Science Digital Archive Lets You Explore Every Science and Technology-Filled Edition Since 1872

in Archives, History, Science, Technology | April 4th, 2013

Pop­u­lar Sci­ence is the fifth old­est con­tin­u­ous­ly-pub­lished month­ly magazine—a long way of say­ing that the mag­a­zine has done a fine job of main­tain­ing a niche in a crazi­ly fast-paced indus­try. Found­ed in 1872 by sci­ence writer Edward Youmans to reach an audi­ence of edu­cat­ed laypeo­ple, Pop­u­lar Sci­ence today com­bines reviews of the lat­est gad­gets with sto­ries about inno­va­tion in design and sci­ence. It’s an orga­nized mish­mash of news about “the future now,” lib­er­al­ly defined. A recent issue includ­ed sto­ries about the military’s use of 3‑D print­ing and an astro­physi­cist who ques­tions whether Shake­speare wrote the entire Folio.

With that kind of breadth, the magazine’s archives cov­er just about every­thing. And it’s easy to browse through back issues, dat­ing all the way back to 1872, since the mag­a­zine teamed up with Google to put a search­able archive on the web. The ear­li­est issues, like this one from Feb­ru­ary 1920, fea­ture col­or cov­ers that bring to mind sci­ence fic­tion with a fas­ci­na­tion for the imag­ined future.

One of the cool things about the mag­a­zine is its equal atten­tion to new and old tech­nol­o­gy. Search for “scis­sors” and you will find this 1964 arti­cle about the mechan­ics of sharp­en­ing your own scis­sors. The archive also offers anoth­er search tool that returns results in a visu­al word fre­quen­cy grid, which is espe­cial­ly cool if you click the “ani­mate” but­ton. Any social his­to­ri­ans out there able to explain why the word “scis­sor” would appear so often in the mid-20^th cen­tu­ry?

Inter­est­ing­ly, although the word “inter­net” dates back to the 1960s, the word did­n’t appear in the magazine’s pages until 1989.

Peri­od adver­tise­ments are includ­ed, which adds to the fun. This issue from Sep­tem­ber, 1944 includes a house-adver­tise­ment on the table of con­tents page call­ing for all col­lec­tors of back issues to con­sid­er sur­ren­der­ing them for the war cause. “There’s a war going on and this is no time for sen­ti­ment,” the ad urges. “Grit your teeth and dig out those stacks of back num­bers. Then turn them over to your local paper sal­vage dri­ve!” Enter the archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

The Alan Lomax Sound Archive Now Online: Fea­tures 17,000 Record­ings

NASA Archive Col­lects Great Time-Lapse Videos of our Plan­et