Simulate the Damage Caused by Comet and Asteroid Collisions with Impact: Earth!

in Astronomy, Technology | February 18th, 2013

On Fri­day, the world had its eyes focused on the big aster­oid fly­by. For weeks, we knew it was com­ing, and we watched it buzz by with mild curios­i­ty. But, that same day, we were all caught off guard by a ten-ton mete­orite that blast­ed into the Siber­ian town of Chelyabin­sk, injur­ing 1,200 peo­ple and caus­ing con­sid­er­able struc­tur­al dam­age. (Watch footage here.) This abrupt and unex­pect­ed event has giv­en gov­ern­ments a rea­son to start tak­ing the risk of aster­oid impacts a bit more seri­ous­ly. And it might renew inter­est in a tool cre­at­ed by sci­en­tists at Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty and Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don in 2010.

In a nut­shell, Impact: Earth! is an inter­ac­tive tool that lets any­one cal­cu­late the dam­age a comet or aster­oid would cause if it hap­pened to col­lide with our plan­et. You can cus­tomize the size and speed of the incom­ing object, and then find out if mankind sur­vives. (Usu­al­ly it does.) A grainy primer appears below. You can enter the web­site and start run­ning your own sce­nar­ios right here.

via @moseshawk

The Art of Illustration: Four Illustrators Introduce You to the Awe-Inspiring State of Their Art

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, Video - Arts & Culture | February 17th, 2013

Con­tem­pla­tive types used to los­ing them­selves in an image may wish to have a motion sick­ness bag on hand when view­ing The Art of Illus­tra­tion, the lat­est entry in Off Book, a PBS web series explor­ing cut­ting edge art and inter­net cul­ture. The edit­ing seems even more ver­tig­i­nous than in episodes devot­ed to indie video game design­ers and glitch artists. The score recalls R. Crum­b’s exis­ten­tial hor­ror inside a mod­ern night­club.

Watch it any­way, for the inter­vie­wees thoughts on the state of illus­tra­tion.

Pro­fes­sor Steven Guar­nac­cia of the The New School’s Illus­tra­tion Pro­gram describes how illus­tra­tion’s cre­ative poten­tial explod­ed once pho­tog­ra­phy became the prime way of doc­u­ment­ing celebri­ty appear­ances and oth­er such news­wor­thy visu­als.

Edi­to­r­i­al Illus­tra­tor Yuko Shimisu inter­nal­izes those obser­va­tions, throw­ing shade on any idea she feels would look bet­ter in pho­to form. Shimisu, like all of the artists fea­tured in the short video, uses tra­di­tion­al media to make her draw­ings, but col­ors them dig­i­tal­ly. The form may pre­date pho­tog­ra­phy, but Shimisu implies that any prac­ti­tion­er unwill­ing to embrace the trend toward new media will find them­selves going the way of the dodo, as edi­to­r­i­al gigs migrate onto tablets and even small­er dig­i­tal devices.

Mean­while over at DC Comics, Sean Mur­phy has yet to dis­cov­er a super­pow­er capa­ble of speed­ing up the work that goes into ren­der­ing a sto­ry in com­ic book for­mat. The facial expres­sions, grand per­spec­tives, and moody light­ing that are his stock in trade could the­o­ret­i­cal­ly be cap­tured with a shut­ter click, but at what cost to the over­all nar­ra­tive?

And then there’s the inim­itable Mol­ly Crabap­ple, pur­vey­or of Vic­to­ri­an-fla­vored kink and founder of Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School, whose Occu­py Wall Street posters chal­lenged the visu­al bound­aries of activist art. Find­ing a per­son­al style one can blow up into a brand is not just a choice, she implies. It’s one’s best hope of sur­vival in a sea flood­ed with com­peti­tors.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day pub­lish­es her illus­trat­ed zine, The East Vil­lage Inky the old fash­ioned way, then pro­motes it across all man­ner of dig­i­tal plat­forms, includ­ing @AyunHalliday.

All Criterion Films Streaming Free on Hulu This Weekend (in the US)

in Film | February 16th, 2013

Over this Pres­i­dents’ Day week­end, Hulu is stream­ing all of the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion movies for free. That’s right, free! We’re talk­ing hun­dreds of films by the likes of Ing­mar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky, Char­lie Chap­lin, Jean-Luc Godard, Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, David Lynch, Nag­isa Oshi­ma, François Truf­faut, and Orson Welles. So can­cel your week­end plans, wish your friends and fam­i­ly well, and start pack­ing in as many clas­sic films as you can. We rec­om­mend get­ting start­ed with Kuro­sawa’s Sev­en Samu­rai, Godard­’s Breath­less, David Lynch’s Eraser­head or Bergman’s The Sev­enth Seal.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this col­lec­tion is only acces­si­ble to view­ers in the Unit­ed States. We usu­al­ly don’t fea­ture geo-restrict­ed mate­r­i­al, but this seemed too good to pass up. In the mean­time, if you live out­side of the U.S., we’d encour­age you to vis­it our col­lec­tion of 500 Free Movies Online, where you’re bound to find some­thing you’ll enjoy. Or you can check out our spe­cial­ized film col­lec­tions by Andrei Tarkovsky, Alfred Hitchock, Char­lie Chap­lin and John Wayne, not to men­tion our col­lec­tion of Film Noir Clas­sics.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

Jean-Luc Godard’s After-Shave Com­mer­cial for Schick

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

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

in Astronomy | February 15th, 2013

Writes NASA:

NASA Tele­vi­sion will pro­vide com­men­tary start­ing at 11 a.m. PST (2 p.m. EST) on Fri­day, Feb. 15, dur­ing the close, but safe, fly­by of a small near-Earth aster­oid named 2012 DA14. NASA places a high pri­or­i­ty on track­ing aster­oids and pro­tect­ing our home plan­et from them. This fly­by will pro­vide a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty for researchers to study a near-Earth object up close.

The half-hour broad­cast from NASA’s Jet Propul­sion Lab­o­ra­to­ry in Pasade­na, Calif., will incor­po­rate real-time ani­ma­tion to show the loca­tion of the aster­oid in rela­tion to Earth, along with live or near real-time views of the aster­oid from obser­va­to­ries in Aus­tralia, weath­er per­mit­ting.

At the time of its clos­est approach to Earth at approx­i­mate­ly 11:25 a.m. PST (2:25 p.m. EST / 19:25 UTC), the aster­oid will be about 17,150 miles (27,600 kilo­me­ters) above Earth­’s sur­face.

The com­men­tary will be avail­able via NASA TV and streamed live online at: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv and http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2

Or you can just watch above.…

Note: You can also watch footage of the mete­orite hit­ting Siberia this morn­ing here.

David Lynch Talks About His 99 Favorite Photographs at Paris Photo 2012

in Photography | February 15th, 2013

We don’t need to tell you, an Open Cul­ture read­er, about the rich­ness of David Lynch’s con­tri­bu­tion to motion pic­tures. But the auteur also has an ongo­ing rela­tion­ship with still pho­tog­ra­phy which the past decade has seen emerge into pub­lic light. Years ago, I attend­ed an open­ing in Los Angeles—the city so thor­ough­ly cap­tured by Lynch’s surrealism—of an exhi­bi­tion of his own shots. Now, the Los Ange­les Review of Books presents Lynch’s com­men­tary, in the video above, on 99 pic­tures tak­en by oth­ers. Lis­ten to him describe his view­ing approach—that of a voyeuris­tic, all-feel­ing detective—and you’ll nev­er look the same way at cur­tains, wom­en’s shoes, stone Bud­dhas, and fes­ter­ing sores again.

Lynch select­ed these favorite 99 pho­tos from the thou­sand pre­sent­ed at 2012’s Paris Pho­to, the inter­na­tion­al pho­tog­ra­phy fair that hap­pens each Novem­ber dur­ing the Euro­pean Month of Pho­tog­ra­phy. He arrived as the inau­gur­al selec­tion of “Paris Pho­to vu par…,” a new tra­di­tion that will each year com­pile a book of images, their selec­tion “entrust­ed to a dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ty each year.” Die-hard fans will sure­ly need to own their idol­’s edi­tion, and in late April they can make a pil­grim­age to Lynch’s town for the launch of Paris Pho­to Los Ange­les. Its loca­tion? The lot of Para­mount Pic­tures, dis­trib­u­tor of Lynch’s pho­to­graph­i­cal­ly strik­ing The Ele­phant Man.

Relat­ed con­tent:

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

What David Lynch Can Do With a 100-Year-Old Cam­era and 52 Sec­onds of Film

David Lynch Teach­es Louis C.K. How to Host The David Let­ter­man Show

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.

Beat Writer William S. Burroughs Spreads Counterculture Cool on Nike Sneakers, 1994

in Business, Literature, Television | February 14th, 2013

Nike footwear and celebri­ty ath­letes usu­al­ly go hand-in-hand. When you think Nike, you think of Michael Jor­dan, Bo Jack­son and Mia Hamm. And let’s not for­get the now trou­bled duo of Tiger Woods and Lance Arm­strong too. Fit, lithe bod­ies gen­er­al­ly sell sneak­ers, we know that.

But then there’s the bizarre, odd excep­tion. Let’s rewind the video­tape to 1994, when Nike enlist­ed William S. Bur­roughs to sell its Air Max shoes. That’s right a decrepit 79-year-old Beat writer, known for his hero­in addic­tion, manslaugh­ter con­vic­tion and cut up writ­ing. William S. Bur­roughs is pret­ty much the anti-Mia Hamm. And yet the ad works in its own way. Just like the Gap could use Jack Ker­ouac to lend hip­ster cred to its stodgy khakis, so Bur­roughs could bring a main­streamed coun­ter­cul­ture cool to Nike shoes as his head, appear­ing in a TV set pro­claims, “The pur­pose of tech­nol­o­gy is not to con­fuse the brain, but to serve the body, to make life eas­i­er, to make any­thing pos­si­ble. It’s the com­ing of the new tech­nol­o­gy.” That new tech­nol­o­gy being, I guess, the cut­ting edge cush­ions in Nike’s shoes?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981

How Spike Lee Got His First Big Break: From She’s Got­ta Have It to That Icon­ic Air Jor­dan Ad

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His First Nov­el, Junky (find it also in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books)

Tom Waits Shows Us How Not to Get a Date on Valentine’s Day

in Comedy, Film | February 14th, 2013

It’s Valen­tine’s Day and love is in the air. Or at least some­thing is in the air in this delet­ed scene from the 1999 cult film Mys­tery Men. We’re not sure exact­ly what. In the film, Tom Waits plays the mad sci­en­tist Dr. Heller, inven­tor of “Fog-in-a-Tube” and “Truth­paste,” among oth­er things. For anoth­er strange scene of cupid’s arrow gone bad­ly astray, see our post from last year, David Lynch Falls in Love: A Clas­sic Scene From Twin Peaks.

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:

Tom Waits’ Clas­sic Appear­ance on Aus­tralian TV, 1979

Tom Waits Makes Com­ic Appear­ance on Fer­n­wood Tonight, 1977

Tom Waits and Kei­th Richards Sing Sea Song “Shenan­doah” for New Pirate-Themed CD: Lis­ten Online

Watch Lambeth Walk—Nazi Style: The Early Propaganda Mash Up That Enraged Joseph Goebbels

in Comedy, Film, History, Politics, Video - Arts & Culture | February 14th, 2013

In a ter­rif­ic his­tor­i­cal prank that sent Nazi Pro­pa­gan­da Min­is­ter Joseph Goebbels storm­ing out of the screen­ing room, British min­is­ter Charles A. Rid­ley edit­ed togeth­er scenes from the film Tri­umph of the Will with the music from the musi­cal Me and My Girl to cre­ate a spoof that infu­ri­at­ed lead­ers of the Third Reich.

Lam­beth Walk—Nazi Style was released in 1941 to news­reel com­pa­nies. It was billed as “Schich­le­gru­ber Doing the Lam­beth Walk, Assist­ed by the Gestapo Hep Cats,” and lays the catchy tune against images of Hitler and Nazi sol­diers from Leni Riefenstahl’s sem­i­nal pro­pa­gan­da film.

The sto­ry goes that the par­o­dy enraged Goebbels to such an extent that he ran out of the screen­ing room, kick­ing at chairs and scream­ing obscen­i­ties.

“The Lam­beth Walk” tune was writ­ten for the 1937 musi­cal, about a Cock­ney boy who inher­its a for­tune and must leave behind his work­ing-class ways to become a gen­tle­man. Nazi par­ty offi­cials called the tune “Jew­ish mis­chief and ani­mal­is­tic hop­ping,” mak­ing it even fun­nier as the back­ground music for Nazi sol­diers parad­ing.

The name “Schich­le­gru­ber,” by the way, was also a dig at Hitler. It was the name of his mater­nal grand­moth­er, whose son Alois (Hitler’s father) was an ille­git­i­mate child. Oops!

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

“The Duck­ta­tors”: Loony Tunes Turns Ani­ma­tion into Wartime Pro­pa­gan­da (1942)

Hitler Reacts to Take­down of Hitler Par­o­dies

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at .

From the Annals of Optimism: The Newspaper Industry in 1981 Imagines its Digital Future

in Technology, Television | February 14th, 2013

“Imag­ine, if you will, sit­ting down to your morn­ing cof­fee, turn­ing on your home com­put­er to read the day’s news­pa­per.” A flam­boy­ant­ly spec­u­la­tive-sound­ing notion, no doubt, were you watch­ing this tele­vi­sion news broad­cast back when it aired in 1981. A pro­duc­tion of San Fran­cis­co’s KRON, the seg­ment takes a look at how the city’s news­pa­pers, dis­play­ing admirable far­sight­ed­ness, were then “invest­ing a lot of mon­ey to try and get a ser­vice just like that start­ed.” We see North Beach res­i­dent Richard Hal­lo­ran (he of  the immor­tal­ly meme-wor­thy onscreen iden­ti­fi­er, “Owns Home Com­put­er”) dial­ing, on his rotary tele­phone, “a local num­ber that will con­nect him with a com­put­er in Colum­bus, Ohio.” We also see the edi­tors of the San Fran­cis­co Exam­in­er “pro­gram­ming today’s copy of the paper into that same Ohio com­put­er.” Hal­lo­ran plops the phone’s receiv­er into his modem’s acoustic cou­pler, pre­sum­ably pours his morn­ing cof­fee, and down­loads the day’s paper — which takes two hours, at a cost of five dol­lars an hour.

“This is only the first step in news­pa­pers by com­put­er,” says KRON sci­ence reporter Steve New­man. “Engi­neers now pre­dict the day will come when we get all out news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines by home com­put­er.” We see footage of a tra­di­tion­al news­pa­per ven­dor: “But that’s a few years off, so for the moment, at least, this fel­low isn’t wor­ried about being out of a job.” That day came over a decade ago, and that fel­low sure­ly wor­ries now, as do the pub­lish­ers of his wares. We who start each day read­ing the news on our “home com­put­ers” laugh at the news­pa­per indus­try’s evi­dent hubris­tic self-destruc­tion by its fail­ure to under­stand the inter­net, much less engage with it. But this report shows us that cer­tain papers — the eight that Hal­lo­ran’s menu offered him, at least — seem­ing­ly had their eyes on the ball long before we did. Do we see here an indus­try sow­ing the seeds of its own inevitable destruc­tion, or evi­dence that things could have turned out dif­fer­ent­ly?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Clay Shirky on the Demise of the News­pa­per

Wal­ter Cronkite Imag­ines the Home of the 21st Cen­tu­ry … Back in 1967

The Inter­net Imag­ined in 1969

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.

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

in Audio Books, Philosophy, Religion | February 13th, 2013

The Eng­lish logi­cian and philoso­pher Bertrand Rus­sell was con­vinced that the reli­gions of the world are not mere­ly untrue, but that they do griev­ous harm to peo­ple. That con­vic­tion is very much in evi­dence in his 1927 speech, “Why I Am Not a Chris­t­ian,” read here in its com­plete form by the British actor Ter­rence Hardi­man.

Rus­sell begins by estab­lish­ing a very gen­er­al and inclu­sive def­i­n­i­tion of the term “Chris­t­ian.” A Chris­t­ian, for the pur­pos­es of Rus­sel­l’s argu­ment, is one who believes in God and immor­tal­i­ty and also in Christ. “I think you must have at the very low­est a belief that Christ was, if not divine, at least the best and wis­est of men,” says Rus­sell. “If you are not going to believe that much about Christ, I do not believe you have any right to call your­self a Chris­t­ian.”

Begin­ning with the belief in God, Rus­sell points out the log­i­cal fal­lac­i­es in sev­er­al of the most pop­u­lar argu­ments for the exis­tence of God, start­ing with the ear­ly ratio­nal argu­ments and mov­ing along what he sees as the “intel­lec­tu­al descent” of Chris­t­ian apolo­get­ics to some of the more recent argu­ments that have “become less respectable intel­lec­tu­al­ly and more and more affect­ed by a kind of mor­al­iz­ing vague­ness.” Rus­sell then goes on to explain why Jesus, as depict­ed in the Gospels, has nei­ther superla­tive wis­dom nor superla­tive good­ness. Although Rus­sell grants Christ “a very high degree of moral good­ness,” he asserts that there have been wis­er and bet­ter men.

The speech was pub­lished in 1957 in the book Why I am Not a Chris­t­ian and Oth­er Essays on Reli­gion and Relat­ed Sub­jects. The text is avail­able online, and you can click here to open it in a new win­dow. This record­ing will be added to our Free Audio Books col­lec­tion. Although Rus­sell is address­ing the major­i­ty reli­gion of his own coun­try, he is equal­ly crit­i­cal of all reli­gions. He leaves off with these words:

The whole con­cep­tion of God is a con­cep­tion derived from the ancient Ori­en­tal despo­tisms. It is a con­cep­tion quite unwor­thy of free men. When you hear peo­ple in church debas­ing them­selves and say­ing that they are mis­er­able sin­ners, and all the rest of it, it seems con­temptible and not wor­thy of self-respect­ing human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be bet­ter than what these oth­ers have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowl­edge, kind­li­ness, and courage; it does not need a regret­ful han­ker­ing after the past or a fet­ter­ing of the free intel­li­gence by the words uttered long ago by igno­rant men. It needs a fear­less out­look and free intel­li­gence. It needs hope for the future, not look­ing back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far sur­passed by the future that our intel­li­gence can cre­ate.

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:

Face to Face with Bertrand Rus­sell: ‘Love is Wise, Hatred is Fool­ish’

Bertrand Rus­sell and F.C. Cople­ston Debate the Exis­tence of God, 1948

Bertrand Rus­sel­l’s ABC of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty: The Clas­sic Intro­duc­tion to Ein­stein