A Bird Ballet in Southern France

in Random | January 31st, 2013

Look at what Neels Castil­lon unex­pect­ed­ly cap­tured on film while doing some shoot­ing at a Mar­seille air­port. Birds doing a pret­ty incred­i­ble bal­let in the sky. If you enjoy watch­ing mur­mu­ra­tions, you’ll want to watch this oth­er footage shot in Rome and espe­cial­ly this breath­tak­ing (no hyper­bole here) clip from Ire­land. It’s all quite stun­ning.

via Andrew Sul­li­van

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Read Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts Free Online

in Literature | January 31st, 2013

“Cur­rent­ly, it seems, Jane Austen is hot­ter than Quentin Taran­ti­no.” Mar­tin Amis wrote this in the New York­er back in 1996, when Taran­ti­no had cul­tur­al heat to spare. Even today, as the film­mak­er rides high on anoth­er one of his peri­od­ic waves of pop-cul­tur­al exu­ber­ance and con­tro­ver­sy-court­ing vio­lence, Austen may still win the pop­u­lar­i­ty con­test. Her much-read, often-adapt­ed sec­ond nov­el Pride and Prej­u­dice has, in fact, just passed its 200th anniver­sary of pub­li­ca­tion, and its rep­u­ta­tion as a reli­ably sharp and engag­ing com­e­dy seems stronger than ever.

Espe­cial­ly strik­ing for a nov­el of its age, this rep­u­ta­tion appears to have also grown wider than ever. Though some have always dis­missed her — and will always dis­miss her — as a writer of mere roman­tic fic­tion meant sole­ly for women, admi­ra­tion for Austen knows no demo­graph­ic bound­aries. Just look at her high-pro­file liv­ing male enthu­si­asts, a group that ranges from Amis to ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist and essay­ist Paul Gra­ham, who names Austen as one of his heroes. “In her nov­els I can’t see the gears at work,” Gra­ham writes. “Though I’d real­ly like to know how she does what she does, I can’t fig­ure it out, because she’s so good that her sto­ries don’t seem made up.”

“When I was intro­duced to the nov­el, at the age of four­teen,” Amis writes of Pride and Prej­u­dice, “I read twen­ty pages and then besieged my stepmother’s study until she told me what I need­ed to know. I need­ed to know that Dar­cy mar­ried Eliz­a­beth. (I need­ed to know that Bin­g­ley mar­ried Jane.) I need­ed this infor­ma­tion as bad­ly as I had ever need­ed any­thing. Pride and Prej­u­dice suck­ers you. Amaz­ing­ly — and, I believe, unique­ly — it goes on suck­er­ing you.” And if that 200-year-old nov­el fails to suck­er you, per­haps its 202-year-old pre­de­ces­sor Sense and Sen­si­bil­i­ty or its 199-year-old suc­ces­sor Mans­field Park will. You can browse Austen’s hand-writ­ten man­u­scripts per­tain­ing to these and oth­er of her nov­els in Jane Austen’s Fic­tion Man­u­scripts, an online joint project from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford and King’s Col­lege Lon­don. Austen’s fan­base, per­haps because of its broad­ness, seems to con­tain rel­a­tive­ly few obses­sive exegetes (com­pared to, say, acolytes of Thomas Pyn­chon), but you can only read her six nov­els so many times before feel­ing a need, if a vain one, to glimpse those “gears at work.” And if this con­tact with Austen’s cre­ative spir­it moves you to write your own adap­ta­tion of Pride and Prej­u­dice, why not think out­side the box and check on Taran­ti­no’s avail­abil­i­ty to direct?

Copies of Pride and Prej­u­dice can be found in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks.

You can also down­load free audio ver­sions of Jane Austen nov­els if you take part in the free tri­al pro­grams offered by Audible.com and FreeAudioBooks.com.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Jane Austen’s Fight Club

Dominic West (aka Jim­my McNul­ty) Reads Jane Austen

Niet­zsche, Melville, Jane Austen & More: The Lat­est Audio Book Clas­sics Released by Lib­rivox

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.

Get Ready for MIT’s “Introduction to Biology: The Secret of Life” on edX

in Biology, MIT, MOOCs | January 30th, 2013

edX announced today what looks like a promis­ing new open course — Intro­duc­tion to Biol­o­gy: The Secret of Life. Host­ed by pro­fes­sor Eric Lan­der, one of the lead­ers of the Human Genome Project, this course will give stu­dents a ground­ing in “top­ics taught in the MIT intro­duc­to­ry biol­o­gy cours­es and many biol­o­gy cours­es across the world.” The course will cov­er every­thing from the basics of DNA to the intri­ca­cies of genomics. And it won’t run you any mon­ey. But it will require some time — about 6–8 hours per week, across 12 weeks (March 5 — May 28). Plus here’s a nice perk: any stu­dent who earns a pass­ing grade will receive “a cer­tifi­cate of mas­tery,” also free of charge. You can enroll in the course right here.

We have added Intro­duc­tion to Biol­o­gy: The Secret of Life to our ever-grow­ing list of MOOCs/Free Cer­tifi­cate Cours­es, along with anoth­er pri­mo edx course, a MOOC ver­sion of Michael Sandel’s Jus­tice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?. Be sure to check it out.

W.H. Auden Recites His 1937 Poem, ‘As I Walked Out One Evening’

in Literature, Poetry | January 30th, 2013

Today we bring you one of the best-loved poems of W.H. Auden, “As I Walked Out One Evening,” read (below) by the poet him­self. Auden wrote the poem in 1937 and first pub­lished it in his 1940 vol­ume, Anoth­er Time. The poem is a vari­ant of the bal­lad form, made up of 15 rhymed qua­trains. It’s a med­i­ta­tion on love and the remorse­less­ness of time, told in three voic­es: the nar­ra­tor, a rap­tur­ous lover, and the reproach­ful clocks that speak back to the lover.

‘The years shall run like rab­bits,
     For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
    And the first love of the world.’

But all the clocks in the city
    Began to whirr and chime:
‘O let not Time deceive you,
    You can­not con­quer Time

Auden made a num­ber of audio record­ings over the years, and we were unable to track down the time and place of this one. It may be a 1953 record­ing orig­i­nal­ly released by Caed­mon Records. “As I Walked Out One Evening” is includ­ed in the Ran­dom House audio col­lec­tion, Voice of the Poet: W.H. Auden.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

500 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free 

375 Free eBooks: Down­load to Kin­dle, iPad/iPhone & Nook

Kingsley Browne, Wayne State Law Prof, Embarrasses Himself Spectacularly on The Daily Show

in Comedy, Law | January 30th, 2013

Jon Stew­art and com­pa­ny can make pret­ty much any­one look like an imbe­cile. Some nights they have to put a lot of elbow grease into it. Some nights less. And, some nights, they can just leave the elbow grease on the work­room shelf. Like Mon­day night, when Kings­ley Browne, law pro­fes­sor at Wayne State, gave an inter­view to The Dai­ly Show and opined on whether women should take part in front­line com­bat. While some con­ser­v­a­tives have opposed widen­ing wom­en’s role in com­bat by point­ing to “anatom­i­cal facts,” Kings­ley pulled some pop psy­cho-biol­o­gy out of his dusty store­house of patri­cian knowl­edge. “Girls become women by get­ting old­er; boys become men by accom­plish­ing some­thing, by prov­ing some­thing.” Saman­tha Bee could have just stayed home and col­lect­ed a pay­check that night. 1950s prat­tle just sounds increas­ing­ly fool­ish and fun­ny in 2013 (even if its effects are still per­ni­cious). But, even so, Bee did add the Andy Grif­fith fade-to-black & white, and that was a pret­ty nice touch.

Note: If Mr. Browne feels like his views weren’t ade­quate­ly expressed on The Dai­ly Show, we would wel­come him to elab­o­rate on his views in the com­ments sec­tion below.

Also note, if you’re look­ing for more musty mus­ings from the liv­ing muse­um, you can catch Mr. Browne on CNN.

Asteroid Will Give Earth a Close Shave on February 15

in Astronomy | January 30th, 2013

Prep­pers, it’s almost the big day you’ve been wait­ing for — the apoc­a­lypse and armaged­don all rolled into one. Almost, but not quite. Accord­ing to NASA, “an aster­oid about half the size of a foot­ball field will fly past Earth only 17,200 miles above our plan­et’s sur­face.” “This [will be] a record-set­ting close approach,” says Don Yeo­mans of NASA’s Near Earth Object Pro­gram at The Jet Propul­sion Lab­o­ra­to­ry. “Since reg­u­lar sky sur­veys began in the 1990s, we’ve nev­er seen an object this big get so close to Earth.” It’ll be a close call and that’s all. So, prep­pers, keep your com­pass­es, iodine pills and dehy­drat­ed lentils packed and ready for anoth­er day. You’ll get your chance.

A Look Back at Andy Kaufman: Absurd Comic Performance Artist and Endearing Weirdo

in Comedy | January 29th, 2013

Andy Kauf­man had too much per­son­al­i­ty for one per­son, so he split him­self into sev­er­al, and nobody seemed to know which one of them was Andy Kauf­man. Andy Kauf­man prob­a­bly could have faked his death, then returned for the big ta-da twen­ty years lat­er, but he didn’t (prob­a­bly). Andy Kauf­man, ladies and gen­tle­men, was a genius. I don’t mean that in the idiomat­ic sense of “he was real­ly great,” no. I mean that he had a com­ic IQ of sev­er­al hun­dred points. Which is why so many of his bits are so baf­fling and rib-crack­ing­ly fun­ny at once: he played dolts, sim­ple­tons, and drool­ing, almost cata­ton­ic idiots so per­fect­ly that you might swear that there was real­ly some­thing wrong with him. Except that dur­ing a per­for­mance, you might also swear you’d caught a wicked glint in his eye—for frac­tion of a second—as if you’d almost, maybe, but not quite seen a sub­lim­i­nal ad flash over the screen dur­ing a movie.

Then there were the Kauf­man char­ac­ters so unlike­able, so ruth­less­ly obnox­ious and dan­ger­ous­ly unhinged, you’d swear that there was some­thing wrong with him, again. And maybe there was, but I’m con­vinced he was in full con­trol of it. In the clip above, from The David Let­ter­man Show in 1980, Kauf­man sends Let­ter­man into a fit of stam­mer­ing “uh, oh… ums” and the audi­ence into fits of laugh­ter by look­ing like he’s just stum­bled in from a psych ward and isn’t sure exact­ly where he is or why. When he final­ly opens his mouth to speak, at near­ly two min­utes into the inter­view, he seems lost, dazed, almost child­like. Which every­one thinks is hilar­i­ous, because, well, it’s Andy Kauf­man. It must be per­for­mance art, right? No mat­ter which Andy Kauf­man appeared before an audi­ence, they always had the sense there was anoth­er one, or sev­er­al, under­neath, whether they knew his act or not. But you could nev­er know if you’d hit bedrock. Joaquin Phoenix—whose attempts to stunt the pub­lic a few years ago most­ly pro­voked befud­dle­ment and pity—never came close to this lev­el of weird. If Char­lie Sheen had been hoax­ing, instead of just los­ing his mind… maybe.

One might say Andy Kauf­man invent­ed trolling, the art of ril­ing peo­ple up by imper­son­at­ing idiots, cra­zies, and abra­sive jerks. And he got away with it for one sim­ple rea­son; he was authentic—all of his char­ac­ters had some kind of endear­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, even at their most deranged. This was cer­tain­ly the case with the TV char­ac­ter that made him famous, Taxi’s Lat­ka, an immi­grant dri­ver of inde­ter­mi­nate ori­gin, whose naïve demeanor and unin­tel­li­gi­ble lan­guage nev­er smacked of mere, broad par­o­dy of “the for­eign­er,” although in any­one else’s hands, that would have hap­pened. But Kauf­man brought to the char­ac­ter a sub­tle­ty that made Lat­ka an instant indi­vid­ual. Watch the scene below, for exam­ple, in which Kauf­man, as Lat­ka, trans­forms into a swing­ing Play­boy mag­a­zine afi­ciona­do, then back to Lat­ka, all in under two min­utes of Char­lie Chap­lin-wor­thy phys­i­cal com­e­dy.

Lat­ka grew out of an ear­li­er per­sona of Kaufman’s who claimed to be from a fic­tion­al island in the Caspi­an Sea called “Caspi­ar.” This character’s ner­vous inep­ti­tude was charm­ing enough, but the pay­off, as you’ll see below, was when Kauf­man broke out of char­ac­ter into his swag­ger­ing Elvis imper­son­ation. It’s said that the real Elvis loved it, and it’s the bit that inspired the immor­tal lines in R.E.M.’s Kauf­man trib­ute song, “Man on the Moon”: “Andy are you goof­ing on Elvis (hey baby) / Are you hav­ing fun?” Below, see Kaufman’s trans­for­ma­tion into Elvis from an appear­ance on The Tonight Show with John­ny Car­son in 1977. Tell me if you think he’s enjoy­ing him­self.

The dark­er side of Andy Kauf­man comes out in such abu­sive char­ac­ters as vit­ri­olic lounge singer, Tony Clifton, some­times played by Kaufman’s friend and part­ner, Bob Zmu­da (watch Kauf­man and Zmu­da togeth­er on a kids show called Bananaz in 1979). Tony Clifton became Kauf­man’s evil alter-ego, an ali­bi for his more destruc­tive urges, and a char­ac­ter that out­lived him, res­ur­rect­ed after his death by Zmu­da, and lat­er by come­di­an Ben Isaac. Below, see Kaufman’s first per­for­mance as Clifton in 1977.

Clifton, and Kauf­man, got mean­er and weird­er over the years (or so it seemed). Any­one who’s seen Milos Forman’s biopic Man on the Moon is famil­iar with Kaufman’s obses­sive prank­ing of pro­fes­sion­al wrestling: his feud with wrestler Jer­ry Lawler (who was in on the joke), his relent­less taunt­ing of the South­ern Lawler and the most­ly South­ern audi­ence as red­necks and rubes, and his turns in the ring with female wrestlers. This part of his career is tru­ly bizarre, though sure­ly no less a con­trolled demo­li­tion than any­thing he’d done before. And the weird­er Kauf­man got, the more he seemed to con­firm some­thing many peo­ple had always sus­pect­ed. What­ev­er the stunt, the char­ac­ter, or impres­sion, the joke was on every­one, and nobody knew what was hap­pen­ing but Andy. In 1989, five years after Kaufman’s death from can­cer, his girl­friend Lynne Mar­gulies and friend Joe Orr fin­ished a doc­u­men­tary about his adven­tures in pro­fes­sion­al wrestling called I’m from Hol­ly­wood, after one of his sneer­ing, faux-elit­ist insults of Lawler. It’s the last piece of Kaufman’s lega­cy, and it’s avail­able in sev­er­al parts on YouTube. Watch and try to imag­ine, if you can, what the wrestling fans ring­side made of Andy Kauf­man.

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

Watch a New Music Video Shot Entirely Within an MRI Machine

in Music, Technology | January 29th, 2013

It’s not as poignant as The Love Com­pe­ti­tion, a short film that used an MRI machine to visu­al­ize the human brain in love. Nor is it quite as tan­ta­liz­ing as anoth­er clip doc­u­ment­ing brain activ­i­ty when peo­ple expe­ri­ence the highs of sex­u­al inter­course and divine rev­e­la­tion. We’ll give you that. But, per­haps you’ll find it fas­ci­nat­ing to watch British singer Sivu per­form his song “Bet­ter Than He” through the prism of mag­net­ic res­o­nance imag­ing. Or, if you’ve ever spent time enveloped in an MRI machine, you’ll say the oper­a­tive word is “anx­i­ety-pro­duc­ing.” If the reports are true, Sivu spent three hours record­ing the three-minute song. Just imag­ine the amount of Ati­van and com­mit­ment that got him through…

Learn to Build iPhone & iPad Apps with Stanford’s Free Course, Coding Together

in iPad, iPhone, Online Courses, Stanford | January 28th, 2013

Just a quick fyi. In the past week, Stan­ford has launched the lat­est ver­sion of Cod­ing Togeth­er, the pop­u­lar course that teach­es Stan­ford stu­dents — and now stu­dents world­wide — how to build apps for the iPhone and iPad. Taught by Paul Hegar­ty, the lat­est ver­sion of the free course focus­es on how to build apps in iOS 6, and the lec­tures will be grad­u­al­ly rolled onto iTunes from Jan­u­ary 22 through March 28. Find the first lec­tures here.

This course, along with oth­er top-flight cod­ing cours­es, appears in the Com­put­er Sci­ence sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion of 650 Free Online Cours­es, where you’ll also find cours­es on Phi­los­o­phy, His­to­ry, Physics and oth­er top­ics.

Look­ing for tuto­ri­als on build­ing apps in Android? Find them here.

John Coltrane’s Naval Reserve Enlistment Mugshot (1945)

in Jazz, Music | January 28th, 2013

Do you ever have déjà vu? Last week we post­ed Jack Ker­ouac’s U.S. Naval Reserve enlist­ment mugshot from 1943 and the response was enthu­si­as­tic. Many of you were fas­ci­nat­ed to see the great Beat writer at such a ten­der age and in such an atyp­i­cal, unlib­er­at­ed con­text. Today we offer an eeri­ly sim­i­lar pho­to of anoth­er free­wheel­ing icon of 20th cen­tu­ry art: John Coltrane, when he was 18 years old.

Coltrane entered the Navy on the same day the Unit­ed States dropped the atom­ic bomb on Hiroshi­ma (August 6, 1945) and was assigned reserve sta­tus, as were many African-Amer­i­cans at that time. Accord­ing to Lewis Porter in John Coltrane: His Life and Music, only lim­it­ed num­bers of black men served as sea­man after 1942. Pri­or to that, they were only allowed to work as kitchen help. The Navy was seg­re­gat­ed, and Coltrane was sent to boot camp at the black sec­tion of Samp­son Naval Train­ing Cen­ter in upstate New York. By the time he fin­ished train­ing, World War II was over.

In late Novem­ber of 1945, after a tran­si­tion­al month at Camp Shoe­mak­er near San Fran­cis­co, sea­man sec­ond class Coltrane was assigned to active duty in Hawaii. Sta­tioned on the island of Oahu, Coltrane played clar­inet and alto sax­o­phone in a black Navy band called the Melody Mas­ters. He made his first record­ings with some of the musi­cians from the band in the sum­mer of 1946. But all the while Coltrane was serv­ing, the Navy was in the process of down­siz­ing. With the war over, bands were no longer need­ed to boost morale. So on August 11, 1946–just over a year after his enlistment–Coltrane was dis­charged from the Navy and sent home.

Relat­ed con­tent:

John Coltrane and His Great Quin­tet Play ‘My Favorite Things’

John Coltrane Plays Only Live Per­for­mance of A Love Supreme

John Coltrane: Three Great Euro­pean Per­for­mances, 1969, 1961 and 1965