Understanding Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, Their Tribute to Departed Bandmate Syd Barrett

in Music | February 8th, 2018

Since Dark Side of the Moon, the mem­bers of Pink Floyd dealt in var­i­ous ways with the fate of their orig­i­nal singer Syd Bar­rett. As Roger Waters said about the band in 1975, “It could­n’t have hap­pened with­out him, but on the oth­er hand, it could­n’t have gone on with him.” On Dark Side of the Moon, Bar­rett is not direct­ly addressed, but the themes of mad­ness swirl through the var­i­ous big state­ment songs and in the var­i­ous quotes from friends and road­ies pep­pered through­out the mix. Lat­er on, The Wall would bring lis­ten­ers a main char­ac­ter who goes mad and shuts him­self up in iso­la­tion exter­nal­ly and inter­nal­ly. Echoes of Syd are every­where.

And right in the mid­dle of that stretch is Wish You Were Here, both a direct trib­ute to Syd Bar­rett and a caus­tic mus­ing on the music busi­ness. The lat­ter both neg­a­tive­ly affect­ed the band at the time and, in some way, accel­er­at­ed Syd’s decline into (most prob­a­bly) schiz­o­phre­nia.

YouTube chan­nel Poly­phon­ic’s eight-minute overview of the album will intro­duce casu­al lis­ten­ers to the sto­ry behind the mak­ing of the album, and the lyrics that specif­i­cal­ly applied to Syd. “You were caught in the cross­fire of child­hood and star­dom” is one of many eulo­gies to their friend, the “crazy dia­mond” of the suite of songs that book­end the album.

The video, which includes clips from the BBC doc­u­men­tary on the mak­ing of the album cur­rent­ly stream­ing in var­i­ous venues (don’t blame us for the par­tic­u­lar poor qual­i­ty of this clip, espe­cial­ly the sub­ti­tles), also men­tions a vis­it that Bar­rett made to the Abbey Road Stu­dio. Bald, eye­brows shaved, and over­weight, the man was unrec­og­niz­able com­pared to the svelte, dark­ly hand­some lead singer they had known only a few years’ ear­li­er. It’s an emo­tion­al moment that only adds to the impact of this ghost­ly and melan­cholic album.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When Pink Floyd Tried to Make an Album with House­hold Objects: Hear Two Sur­viv­ing Tracks Made with Wine Glass­es & Rub­ber Bands

Neil deGrasse Tyson: “Because of Pink Floyd, I’ve Spent Decades Undo­ing the Idea That There’s a Dark Side of the Moon”
Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Theorist Judith Butler Explains How Behavior Creates Gender: A Short Introduction to “Gender Performativity”

in Gender, Philosophy | February 7th, 2018

“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,” wrote Simone de Beau­voir in one of the most famous artic­u­la­tions of the dif­fer­ence between sex and gen­der. By this, de Beau­voir does not mean us to believe that no one is born with repro­duc­tive organs, but that the social role of “woman” (or for that mat­ter “man”) comes from a col­lec­tion of behav­iors into which we are social­ized. The dis­tinc­tion is cru­cial for under­stand­ing most fem­i­nist and queer the­o­ry and the vari­ety of human iden­ti­ty more gen­er­al­ly, yet it’s one that too often gets lost in pop­u­lar usage of the words sex and gen­der. Biol­o­gy does not deter­mine gen­der dif­fer­ences, cul­ture does.

Gen­der becomes nat­u­ral­ized, woven so tight­ly into the social fab­ric that it seems like a nec­es­sary part of real­i­ty rather than a con­tin­gent pro­duc­tion of his­to­ry. Just how this hap­pens is complicated—we don’t invent these roles, they are invent­ed for us, as Judith But­ler argues in her essay “Per­for­ma­tive Acts and Gen­der Con­sti­tu­tion.”

Gen­der iden­ti­ty “is a per­for­ma­tive accom­plish­ment,” she writes, “com­pelled by social sanc­tion and taboo…. Gen­der is… an iden­ti­ty insti­tut­ed through a rep­e­ti­tion of acts.” For a some­what more straight­for­ward sum­ma­ry of her the­o­ry of “per­for­ma­tiv­i­ty,” see But­ler in the Big Think video above, in which she describes gen­der as a “phe­nom­e­non that’s being pro­duced all the time and repro­duced all the time.”

Still unclear? Well, it’s com­pli­cat­ed, but so is every oth­er facet of human iden­ti­ty many peo­ple take for grant­ed, espe­cial­ly peo­ple whose gen­der expres­sion doesn’t threat­en strict soci­etal norms. For a more thor­ough overview of these con­cepts, see the Phi­los­o­phy Tube video above, which explains Butler’s the­o­ry and a num­ber of oth­er terms cen­tral to the dis­course, such as “gen­der essen­tial­ism” and “social con­struc­tivism.” One thing to note about But­ler’s the­o­ry, as both she and our philoso­pher above explain, is that “per­for­ma­tiv­i­ty,” though it uses a the­atri­cal metaphor, is not the same as “per­for­mance.” Gen­der is not a cos­tume one puts on and takes off, like a Shake­speare­an actor play­ing male char­ac­ters one night and female char­ac­ters the next.

Rather, the tech­ni­cal term “per­for­ma­tive” means for But­ler an act that not only com­mu­ni­cates but also cre­ates an iden­ti­ty. Some exam­ples offered above of per­for­ma­tive speech include say­ing “guilty” at a tri­al, which turns one into an inmate, or say­ing “I do” at a wed­ding, which turns one into a spouse. Per­for­ma­tive acts of gen­der do a sim­i­lar kind of work, not only com­mu­ni­cat­ing to oth­ers some aspect of iden­ti­ty, but con­struct­ing that very iden­ti­ty, only they do that work through rep­e­ti­tion. As de Beau­voir argued, we are not born a self, we become, or cre­ate, a self, through social pres­sure to con­form and through “reit­er­at­ing and repeat­ing the norms through which one is con­sti­tut­ed,” But­ler writes.

As we might expect of any cul­tur­al con­struct, gen­der norms vary wide­ly both inter- and intra-cul­tur­al­ly and through­out his­tor­i­cal peri­ods. And giv­en their con­struct­ed nature, they can change in any num­ber of ways. There­fore, accord­ing to But­ler, “there’s not real­ly any grounds,” as our phi­los­o­phy explain­er puts it, “for say­ing that somebody’s ‘doing their gen­der wrong.’”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Judy!: 1993 Judith But­ler Fanzine Gives Us An Irrev­er­ent Punk-Rock Take on the Post-Struc­tural­ist Gen­der The­o­rist

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Fem­i­nist Phi­los­o­phy of Simone de Beau­voir

11 Essen­tial Fem­i­nist Books: A New Read­ing List by The New York Pub­lic Library

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

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How the Brilliant Colors of Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts Were Made with Alchemy

in Art, Books, Chemistry, History | February 7th, 2018

Today the word “alche­my” seems used pri­mar­i­ly to label a vari­ety of crack­pot pur­suits, with their bogus premis­es and impos­si­ble promis­es. To the extent that alchemists long strove to turn lead mirac­u­lous­ly into gold, that sounds like a fair enough charge, but the field of alche­my as a whole, whose his­to­ry runs from Hel­lenis­tic Egypt to the 18th cen­tu­ry (with a revival in the 19th), chalked up a few last­ing, real­i­ty-based accom­plish­ments as well. Take, for instance, medieval illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts: with­out alche­my, they would­n’t have the vivid and var­ied col­or palettes that con­tin­ue to enrich our own vision of that era.

Many of the illu­mi­na­tors’ most bril­liant pig­ments “did­n’t come straight from nature but were made through alche­my,” says the video from the Get­ty above, pro­duced to accom­pa­ny the muse­um’s exhi­bi­tion “The Alche­my of Col­or in Medieval Man­u­scripts.”

Alchemists “explored how mate­ri­als inter­act­ed and trans­formed,” and “dis­cov­er­ing paint col­ors was a prac­ti­cal out­come.” The col­ors they devel­oped includ­ed “mosa­ic gold,” a fusion of tin and sul­fur; verdi­gris, “made by expos­ing cop­per to fumes of vine­gar, wine, or even urine”; and ver­mil­lion, a mix­ture of sul­fur and mer­cury that made a bril­liant red “asso­ci­at­ed with chem­i­cal change and with alche­my itself.”

The very nature of books, specif­i­cal­ly the fact that they spend most of the time closed, has per­formed a degree of inad­ver­tent preser­va­tion of illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts, keep­ing their alchem­i­cal col­ors rel­a­tive­ly bold and deep. (Although, as the Get­ty video notes, some pig­ments such as verdi­gris have a ten­den­cy to eat through the paper — one some­how wants to blame the urine.) Still, that hard­ly means that preser­va­tion­ists have noth­ing to do where illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts are con­cerned: keep­ing the win­dows they pro­vide onto the his­to­ries of art, the book, and human­i­ty clear takes work, some of it based on an ever-improv­ing under­stand­ing of alche­my. Lead may nev­er turn into gold, but these cen­turies-old illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts may sur­vive cen­turies into the future, a fact that seems not entire­ly un-mirac­u­lous itself.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold the Beau­ti­ful Pages from a Medieval Monk’s Sketch­book: A Win­dow Into How Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts Were Made (1494)

The Aberdeen Bes­tiary, One of the Great Medieval Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts, Now Dig­i­tized in High Res­o­lu­tion & Made Avail­able Online

1,600-Year-Old Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­script of the Aeneid Dig­i­tized & Put Online by The Vat­i­can

Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy Illus­trat­ed in a Remark­able Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­script (c. 1450)

Won­der­ful­ly Weird & Inge­nious Medieval Books

1,000-Year-Old Illus­trat­ed Guide to the Med­i­c­i­nal Use of Plants Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Bill Gates Names His New Favorite Book of All Time: A Quick Introduction to Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now

in Books | February 7th, 2018

How’s this for a nice book blurb?

In a recent blog post, Microsoft co-founder and phil­an­thropist Bill Gates wrote this:

For years, I’ve been say­ing Steven Pinker’s The Bet­ter Angels of Our Nature was the best book I’d read in a decade. If I could rec­om­mend just one book for any­one to pick up, that was it. Pinker uses metic­u­lous research to argue that we are liv­ing in the most peace­ful time in human his­to­ry. I’d nev­er seen such a clear expla­na­tion of progress.

I’m going to stop talk­ing up Bet­ter Angels so much, because Pinker has man­aged to top him­self. His new book, Enlight­en­ment Now, is even bet­ter.

Enlight­en­ment Now takes the approach he uses in Bet­ter Angels to track vio­lence through­out his­to­ry and applies it to 15 dif­fer­ent mea­sures of progress (like qual­i­ty of life, knowl­edge, and safe­ty). The result is a holis­tic pic­ture of how and why the world is get­ting bet­ter. It’s like Bet­ter Angels on steroids.

Although the book won’t get offi­cial­ly released until Feb­ru­ary 13th, Pinker’s Enlight­en­ment Now is already one of the 20 best­selling books on Amazon–no doubt part­ly thanks to Bill Gates. If you’re look­ing to get dis­abused of the wide­ly-shared belief that the world is mov­ing in the wrong direc­tion,  you might want to pick up your own copy. (Soon, you could also down­load it as a free audio­book through Audible.com’s free tri­al pro­gram.)

For a deep­er dive into Enlight­en­ment Now watch the video above, and par­tic­u­lar­ly read Gates’s review of what he calls “my new favorite book of all time.”

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:

Steven Pinker Explains the Neu­ro­science of Swear­ing (NSFW)

Bill Gates Rec­om­mends Five Books for Sum­mer 2017

Steven Pinker on the His­to­ry of Vio­lence: A Hap­py Tale

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Download 150 Free Coloring Books from Great Libraries, Museums & Cultural Institutions: The British Library, Smithsonian, Carnegie Hall & More

in Art, Coloring Books, Libraries, Museums | February 6th, 2018

coloring book 1

A news alert for fans of col­or­ing books.

You can now take part in the 2018 edi­tion of #Col­or­Our­Col­lec­tions–a cam­paign where muse­ums, libraries and oth­er cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions make avail­able free col­or­ing books, let­ting you col­or art­work from their col­lec­tions and then share it on Twit­ter and oth­er social media plat­forms. When shar­ing, use the hash­tag #Col­or­Our­Col­lec­tions.

Below you can find a col­lec­tion of 20 free col­or­ing books, which you can down­load, print, and col­or until you can col­or no more. Also find a com­plete list of 150 col­or­ing books over at this site main­tained by The New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine Library.

To see the free col­or­ing books offered up in 2016, click here. And 2017, here.

The image up top comes from The British Library.

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:

The First Adult Col­or­ing Book: See the Sub­ver­sive Exec­u­tive Col­or­ing Book From 1961

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

Read Mar­tin Luther King and The Mont­gomery Sto­ry: The Influ­en­tial 1957 Civ­il Rights Com­ic Book

Dr. Seuss Draws Anti-Japan­ese Car­toons Dur­ing WWII, Then Atones with Hor­ton Hears a Who!

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Jean-Paul Sartre’s Concepts of Freedom & “Existential Choice” Explained in an Animated Video Narrated by Stephen Fry

in Philosophy | February 6th, 2018

The non-exis­tence, or non-impor­tance, of the self has for mil­len­nia been an uncon­tro­ver­sial propo­si­tion in East­ern thought. But West­ern thinkers have tend­ed to embrace the con­cept of the iso­lat­ed self as, if not suf­fi­cient, at least nec­es­sary for a coher­ent account of human life. Yet there are many ways to describe what it means to have a self—an ego, an indi­vid­ual iden­ti­ty. Is the self a prod­uct of cul­ture, his­to­ry, and econ­o­my? Is it a col­lec­tion of sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ences to which no one else has access? Is it con­sti­tut­ed only in rela­tion to oth­er selves, or in rela­tion to an ulti­mate, unchang­ing, all-pow­er­ful Self?

For the Exis­ten­tial­ists, the self can be a prison, a trap, and a source of great anx­i­ety. Hei­deg­ger called self­hood a con­di­tion of being “thrown into the world.” By the time we real­ize where and what we are, accord­ing to restric­tive cat­e­gories of his­tor­i­cal thought and lan­guage, we are already there, inescapably bound to our con­di­tions, forced to per­form roles for which we nev­er audi­tioned. Jean-Paul Sartre took this notion of “thrown­ness” and gave it his own neu­rot­ic stamp. We are indeed tossed into exis­tences against our will, but the real con­dem­na­tion, he thought, is that once we arrive, we have to make choic­es. We are doomed to the task of cre­at­ing our­selves, no mat­ter how lim­it­ed the options, and there is no pos­si­bil­i­ty of opt­ing out. Even not mak­ing choic­es is a choice.

This extreme kind of free will, as Stephen Fry explains in the short, ani­mat­ed video above, stems from the prob­lem of human nature—there isn’t any. “Accord­ing to Sartre, there is no design for a human being,” says Fry, or in Sartre’s famous phrase, “exis­tence pre­cedes essence.” There is only the absur­di­ty of arriv­ing in a world with no plan, no God, no uni­ver­sal codes or fixed stan­dards of val­ue: just a dizzy­ing array of deci­sions to make. And yet, rather than mak­ing life triv­ial, the absurd con­di­tion described by Sartre lends sub­stan­tial weight to all of our choic­es, for in mak­ing them, he claimed, we are not only cre­at­ing our­selves, but decid­ing what a human being should be.

Illu­sions of cer­tain­ty and neces­si­ty obscure the con­tin­gent nature of exis­ten­tial choice, both the true inher­i­tance and the unremit­ting bur­den of every indi­vid­ual. What we become in life is up to us, Sartre thought, a propo­si­tion that caus­es us a good deal of anguish, since we can­not know the out­come of our choic­es nor under­stand the world in which we make them beyond our lim­it­ed capac­i­ty. And yet, we must act, Sartre thought, “as if every­one is watch­ing me.” This is not a pleas­ing thought, even if, for many, the idea might actu­al­ly lead to more care­ful, sober, and delib­er­a­tive decision-making—that is, when it does­n’t lead to par­a­lyz­ing dread.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Crash Course in Exis­ten­tial­ism: A Short Intro­duc­tion to Jean-Paul Sartre & Find­ing Mean­ing in a Mean­ing­less World

What Is an “Exis­ten­tial Cri­sis”?: An Ani­mat­ed Video Explains What the Expres­sion Real­ly Means

Exis­ten­tial Phi­los­o­phy of Kierkegaard, Sartre, Camus Explained with 8‑Bit Video Games

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

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NASA Puts 400+ Historic Experimental Flight Videos on YouTube

in History, Science, Technology | February 6th, 2018

“Video,” as we now say on the inter­net, “or it did­n’t hap­pen,” artic­u­lat­ing a prin­ci­ple to which the ever-for­ward-think­ing Nation­al Aero­nau­tics and Space Admin­is­tra­tion (NASA) has adhered for about 70 years now, start­ing with film in the time before the inven­tion of video itself. Even set­ting aside the won­ders of voy­ag­ing into out­er space, NASA has done a few things right here on Earth that you would­n’t believe unless you saw them with your own eyes. And now you eas­i­ly can, thanks to the agen­cy’s com­mit­ment to mak­ing the fruits of its research avail­able to all on its YouTube Chan­nel. Take for exam­ple this recent­ly-uploaded col­lec­tion of 400 his­toric flight videos.

Here we have just a sam­pling of the hun­dreds of videos avail­able to all: the M2-F1, a pro­to­type wing­less air­craft, towed across a lakebed by a mod­i­fied 1963 Pon­ti­ac Catali­na con­vert­ible; a mid-1960s test of the Lunar Lan­der Research Vehi­cle, also known as the “fly­ing bed­stead,” that will sure­ly remind long-mem­o­ried gamers of their many quar­ters lost to Atar­i’s Lunar Lan­der; a spin tak­en in the Mojave Desert, forty years lat­er, by the Mars Explo­ration Rover; and, most explo­sive­ly of all, a “con­trolled impact demon­stra­tion” of a Boe­ing 720 air­lin­er full of crash-test dum­mies meant to test out a new type of “anti-mist­ing kerosene” as well as a vari­ety of oth­er inno­va­tions designed to increase crash sur­viv­abil­i­ty.

These his­toric test videos were all shot back when the Arm­strong Flight Research Cen­ter (re-named in 2014 for Neil Arm­strong, whose lega­cy stands as a tes­ta­ment to the cumu­la­tive effec­tive­ness of all these NASA tests) was known as the Hugh L. Dry­den Flight Research Cen­ter: you can watch the 418 clips just from that era on this playlist.

Rest assured that the exper­i­men­ta­tion con­tin­ues and that NASA still push­es the bound­aries of avi­a­tion right here on Earth, a project con­tin­u­ous­ly doc­u­ment­ed in the chan­nel’s newest videos. As aston­ish­ing as we may find mankind’s for­ays up into the sky and beyond so far, the avi­a­tion engi­neer’s imag­i­na­tion, it seems, has only just got­ten start­ed.

via Pale­o­Fu­ture

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Best of NASA Space Shut­tle Videos (1981–2010)

Free NASA eBook The­o­rizes How We Will Com­mu­ni­cate with Aliens

NASA Puts Online a Big Col­lec­tion of Space Sounds, and They’re Free to Down­load and Use

NASA Releas­es 3 Mil­lion Ther­mal Images of Our Plan­et Earth

NASA Archive Col­lects Great Time-Lapse Videos of our Plan­et

NASA Releas­es a Mas­sive Online Archive: 140,000 Pho­tos, Videos & Audio Files Free to Search and Down­load

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Hear Freddie Mercury’s Vocals Soar in the Isolated Vocal Track for “Somebody to Love”

in Music | February 6th, 2018

For some time now, cer­tain fans of Queen have sought the elu­sive answer to the ques­tion “what made Fred­die Mer­cury such an incred­i­ble singer?” That he was an incred­i­ble singer—one of the great­est in terms of vocal range, emo­tive pow­er, stage pres­ence, song­writ­ing, etc.—is hard­ly a fact in dis­pute. Or it shouldn’t be. You don’t need to love Queen’s music to acknowl­edge its bril­liance, and mar­vel at its frontman’s seem­ing­ly super­hu­man pow­er and sta­mi­na. The expla­na­tions for it are mul­ti­ple and have become far more sophis­ti­cat­ed in recent years.

Sci­en­tif­ic research has exam­ined the pos­si­ble phys­i­o­log­i­cal struc­ture of Mercury’s vocal chords, and con­clud­ed that he was able to vibrate sev­er­al vocal folds at once, cre­at­ing sub­har­mon­ics and a vibra­to faster than that of any oth­er singer. It’s a com­pelling the­o­ry, albeit a lit­tle gross. Who wants to lis­ten to “Some­body to Love”’s glo­ri­ous, swoop­ing soul­ful vers­es and Broad­way show­stop­per cho­rus­es and pic­ture vibrat­ing vocal folds? Mer­cury was a show­man, not a singing machine—and his unique inflec­tions derived not only from biol­o­gy but also—argues Rudi Dolezal, direc­tor of Fred­die Mer­cury: The Untold Sto­ry—from cul­ture.

Mercury’s for­ma­tive expe­ri­ences as a child in Zanz­ibar and India, and the “cul­ture shock” of his move to Lon­don as a teenag­er, may have con­tributed to his expan­sive vocal prowess: “it was mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism that was com­bined in Fred­die Mer­cury,” says Dolezal, sug­gest­ing that Mercury’s voice went places no one else’s did in part because he com­bined the strengths of East­ern and West­ern music. Maybe. Mer­cury grew up emu­lat­ing Eng­lish and Amer­i­can artists like Cliff Richard and Lit­tle Richard, but one of his biggest influ­ences was Bol­ly­wood super­star Lata Mangeshkar.

Mer­cury him­self had his own unusu­al the­o­ry, believ­ing that his dis­tinc­tive over­bite some­how played a part in his singing abil­i­ty, which is why he nev­er had his teeth straight­ened despite a life­time of self-con­scious­ness about them. Maybe the most hon­est fan answer to the ques­tion might be, “who cares?” Just enjoy it—over-analysis of the parts takes away from the expe­ri­ence of Queen’s bom­bas­tic the­atri­cal whole. That’s fair enough, I sup­pose, but if there’s any voice worth obsess­ing over it’s Mercury’s.

If you’re still in doubt about why, lis­ten to the iso­lat­ed vocal track at the top for “Some­body to Love” from start to fin­ish. You’ll hear a singer who sounds capa­ble of doing pret­ty much any­thing that it’s pos­si­ble to do with the human voice except sing off-key. Yes, of course, it’s impres­sive in con­text, with the band’s vocal har­monies lift­ing Mercury’s voice like a great pair of wings. Take them away, how­ev­er, and strip away all of the song’s instru­men­ta­tion, and Mercury’s vocal seems to soar even high­er. I’d kind of like to know how he did that.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Made Fred­die Mer­cury the Great­est Vocal­ist in Rock His­to­ry? The Secrets Revealed in a Short Video Essay

Sci­en­tif­ic Study Reveals What Made Fred­die Mercury’s Voice One of a Kind; Hear It in All of Its A Cap­pel­la Splen­dor

Fred­die Mer­cury: The Untold Sto­ry of the Singer’s Jour­ney From Zanz­ibar to Star­dom

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

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A Map Shows What Happens When Our World Gets Four Degrees Warmer: The Colorado River Dries Up, Antarctica Urbanizes, Polynesia Vanishes

in Environment, Maps, Science | February 5th, 2018

Human­i­ty faces few larg­er ques­tions than what, exact­ly, to do about cli­mate change — and, in a sense larg­er still, what cli­mate change even means. We’ve all heard a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent future sce­nar­ios laid out, each of them based on dif­fer­ent data. But data can only make so much of an impact unless trans­lat­ed into a form with which the imag­i­na­tion can read­i­ly engage: a visu­al form, for instance, and few visu­al forms come more tried and true than the map.

And so “lead­ing glob­al strate­gist, world trav­el­er, and best-sell­ing author” Parag Khan­na has cre­at­ed the map you see above (view in a larg­er for­mat here), which shows us the state of our world when it gets just four degrees cel­sius warmer. “Microne­sia is gone – sunk beneath the waves,” writes Big Think’s Frank Jacobs in an exam­i­na­tion of Khan­na’s map. “Pak­istan and South India have been aban­doned. And Europe is slow­ly turn­ing into a desert.”

But “there is also good news: West­ern Antarc­ti­ca is no longer icy and unin­hab­it­able. Smart cities thrive in new­ly green and pleas­ant lands. And North­ern Cana­da, Scan­di­navia, and Siberia pro­duce boun­ti­ful har­vests to feed the hun­dreds of mil­lions of cli­mate refugees who now call those regions home.”

Not quite as apoc­a­lyp­tic a cli­mate-change vision as some, to be sure, but it still offers plen­ty of con­sid­er­a­tions to trou­ble us. Lands in light green, accord­ing to the map’s col­or scheme, will remain or turn into “food-grow­ing zones” and “com­pact high-rise cities.” Yel­low indi­cates “unin­hab­it­able desert,” brown areas “unin­hab­it­able due to floods, drought, or extreme weath­er.” In dark green appear lands with “poten­tial for refor­esta­tion,” and in red those places that ris­ing sea lev­els have ren­dered utter­ly lost.

Those last include the edges of many coun­tries in Asia (and all of Poly­ne­sia), as well as the area where the south­east of the Unit­ed States meets the north­east of Mex­i­co and the north and south coasts of South Amer­i­ca. But if you’ve ever want­ed to live in Antarc­ti­ca, you won’t have to move into a research base: with­in a cou­ple of decades, accord­ing to Khan­na’s data, that most mys­te­ri­ous con­ti­nent could become unrec­og­niz­able and “dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed with high-rise cities,” pre­sum­ably with their own hip­ster quar­ters. But where best to grow the ingre­di­ents for its avo­ca­do toast?

Any­one inter­est­ed in Parag Khan­na’s map will want to check out his book, Con­nec­tog­ra­phy: Map­ping the Future of Glob­al Civ­i­liza­tion.

via Big Think

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Glob­al Warm­ing: A Free Course from UChica­go Explains Cli­mate Change

A Cen­tu­ry of Glob­al Warm­ing Visu­al­ized in a 35 Sec­ond Video

Ani­ma­tions Show the Melt­ing Arc­tic Sea Ice, and What the Earth Would Look Like When All of the Ice Melts

132 Years of Glob­al Warm­ing Visu­al­ized in 26 Dra­mat­i­cal­ly Ani­mat­ed Sec­onds

Music for a String Quar­tet Made from Glob­al Warm­ing Data: Hear “Plan­e­tary Bands, Warm­ing World”

A Song of Our Warm­ing Plan­et: Cel­list Turns 130 Years of Cli­mate Change Data into Music

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Slow Burn: An Eight-Episode Podcast Miniseries on the Unfolding of the Watergate Scandal

in History, Podcasts | February 5th, 2018

A crime was com­mit­ted dur­ing a pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. Then came a cov­er up and oth­er skull­dug­gery. Final­ly, there was a res­ig­na­tion. Nope, we’re not talk­ing about the tra­jec­to­ry of the Mueller inves­ti­ga­tion. We’re talk­ing about Watergate–the sub­ject of Slow Burn, a new, eight-episode pod­cast minis­eries from Slate.

Avail­able on iTunes, the web, and oth­er pod­cast play­ers, Slow Burn zeroes in on the ques­tions: “What did it feel like to live through the scan­dal that brought down a pres­i­dent? What was that strange, wild ride like?” Below, you can read the intro­duc­to­ry words from the pod­cast’s host, Leon Ney­fakh. And then stream the first episode called “Martha,” as in Martha Mitchell, wife of John Mitchell, the Attor­ney Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed States under Pres­i­dent Nixon.

One day at the end of April 1973, Richard Nixon stood on a porch at Camp David and told John Ehrlich­man he want­ed to die. Nixon had sum­moned Ehrlich­man, his long-serv­ing domes­tic pol­i­cy advis­er, to tell him he was being fired from the White House.

Nixon had been dread­ing the con­ver­sa­tion, but he knew it had to be done. The Depart­ment of Jus­tice had recent­ly informed the pres­i­dent that Ehrlich­man could be fac­ing crim­i­nal charges. Nixon felt the walls clos­ing in.

Lat­er, Nixon would tell the jour­nal­ist David Frost how he gave his old friend the news: “I said, ‘You know, John, when I went to bed last night … I hoped—I almost prayed—I wouldn’t wake up this morn­ing.’ ” Accord­ing to Ehrlich­man, the pres­i­dent then began to sob. It would be 15 months before he resigned from office.

So, that’s how Richard Nixon felt as the Water­gate sto­ry went from a curi­ous bur­glary to a nation­al obses­sion. What was it like for every­one else? That’s the ani­mat­ing ques­tion behind my new eight-episode pod­cast series for Slate, Slow Burn.

Episode 1: Martha

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!

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Werner’s Nomenclature of Colour, the 19th-Century “Color Dictionary” Used by Charles Darwin (1814)

in Art, Books, History, Science | February 5th, 2018

Before Pan­tone invent­ed “a uni­ver­sal col­or lan­guage” or big box hard­ware stores arose with pro­pri­etary dis­plays of col­or­ful­ly-named paints—over a cen­tu­ry before, in fact—a Ger­man min­er­al­o­gist named Abra­ham Got­t­lob Wern­er invent­ed a col­or sys­tem, as detailed and thor­ough a guide as an artist might need. But rather than only cater to the needs of painters, design­ers, and man­u­fac­tur­ers, Werner’s Nomen­cla­ture of Colours also served the needs of sci­en­tists. “Charles Dar­win even used the guide,” writes This is Colos­sal, “dur­ing his voy­age to the Madeira, Canary, and Cape Verde islands on the H.M.S. Bea­gle.”

Werner’s is one of many such “col­or dic­tio­nar­ies” from the 19th cen­tu­ry, “designed to give peo­ple around the world a com­mon vocab­u­lary,” writes Daniel Lewis at Smith­son­ian, “to describe the col­ors of every­thing from rocks and flow­ers to stars, birds, and postage stamps.” These guides appealed espe­cial­ly to nat­u­ral­ists.

Indeed, the book began—before Scot­tish painter Patrick Syme updat­ed the sys­tem in Eng­lish, with swatch­es of exam­ple colors—as a naturalist’s guide to the col­ors of the world, nam­ing them accord­ing to Werner’s poet­ic fan­cy. “With­out an image for ref­er­ence,” the orig­i­nal text “pro­vid­ed immense hand­writ­ten detail describ­ing where each spe­cif­ic shade could be found on an ani­mal, plant, or min­er­al. Many of Wern­er’s unique col­or names still exist in com­mon usage, though they’ve detached from his scheme ages ago.

Pruss­ian Blue, for instance, which can be locat­ed “in the beau­ty spot of a mallard’s wing, on the sta­mi­na of a bluish-pur­ple anemone, or in a piece of blue cop­per ore.” Oth­er exam­ples, notes Fast Company’s Kelsey Camp­bell-Dol­laghan, include “’Skimmed Milk White,’” or no. 7… found in ‘the white of the human eye’ or in opals,” and no. 67, or “’Wax Yel­low’… found in the lar­vae of large Water Bee­tles or the green­ish parts of a Non­pareil Apple.” It would have been Syme’s 1814 guide that Dar­win con­sult­ed, as did sci­en­tists, nat­u­ral­ists, and artists for two cen­turies after­ward, either as a tax­o­nom­ic col­or ref­er­ence or as an admirable his­toric artifact—a painstak­ing descrip­tion of the col­ors of the world, or those encoun­tered by two 18th and 19th cen­tu­ry Euro­pean observers, in an era before pho­to­graph­ic repro­duc­tion cre­at­ed its own set of stan­dards.

The book is now being repub­lished in an afford­able pock­et-size edi­tion by Smith­son­ian Books, who note that the Edin­burgh flower painter Syme, in his illus­tra­tions of Werner’s nomen­cla­ture, “used the actu­al min­er­als described by Wern­er to cre­ate the col­or charts.” This degree of fideli­ty to the source extends to Syme’s use of tables to neat­ly orga­nize Werner’s pre­cise descrip­tions. Next to each color’s num­ber, name, and swatch, are columns with its loca­tion on var­i­ous ani­mals, veg­eta­bles and min­er­als. “Orpi­ment Orange,” named after a min­er­al, though none is list­ed in its col­umn, will be found, Wern­er tells us, on the “neck ruff of the gold­en pheas­ant” or “bel­ly of the warty newt.” Should you have trou­ble track­ing these down, sure­ly you’ve got some “Indi­an cress” around?

While its ref­er­ences may not be those your typ­i­cal indus­tri­al design­er or graph­ic artist is like­ly to find help­ful, Werner’s Nomen­cla­ture of Colours will still find a trea­sured place in the col­lec­tions of design­ers and visu­al artists of all kinds, as well as his­to­ri­ans, writ­ers, poets, and the sci­en­tif­ic inher­i­tors of 19th cen­tu­ry nat­u­ral­ism, as a “charm­ing arti­fact from the gold­en age of nat­ur­al his­to­ry and glob­al explo­ration.” Flip through a scanned ver­sion of the 1821 sec­ond edi­tion just above, includ­ing Wern­er’s intro­duc­tion and care­ful lists of col­or prop­er­ties, or read it in a larg­er for­mat at the Inter­net Archive. The new edi­tion is now avail­able for pur­chase here.

via This Is Colos­sal/Fast Co

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Vibrant Col­or Wheels Designed by Goethe, New­ton & Oth­er The­o­rists of Col­or (1665–1810)

Goethe’s Col­or­ful & Abstract Illus­tra­tions for His 1810 Trea­tise, The­o­ry of Col­ors: Scans of the First Edi­tion

How Tech­ni­col­or Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Cin­e­ma with Sur­re­al, Elec­tric Col­ors & Changed How We See Our World

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

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