Great New Archive Lets You Hear the Sounds of New York City During the Roaring 20s

in Archives, History, Life | December 11th, 2013

NewYorkNoiseComplaints

The French refer to the decade between 1920 and 1929 as les Années folles, “the crazy years,” which is apt when you con­sid­er how the French mid­dle and upper class­es gen­er­al­ly loos­ened their brassieres and defined mod­ern bohemia, à la Coco Chanel.

But the Amer­i­can moniker — the Roar­ing 20s — fits too. Near­ly every­thing about that decade roared: cars, jazz, man­u­fac­tur­ing, con­struc­tion.

Din, in fact, came to define the age, par­tic­u­lar­ly in big cities and espe­cial­ly in New York. An unnamed Japan­ese vis­i­tor was quot­ed upon his vis­it to that city in 1920: “My first impres­sion of New York was its noise. When I know what they mean, I will under­stand civ­i­liza­tion.”

A Prince­ton his­to­ry pro­fes­sor took that chal­lenge at face val­ue, while cap­tur­ing a broad­er indus­tri­al era. The Roar­ing Twen­ties is an audio (and to some extent video) archive of what New York City sound­ed like from 1900 to 1933. Pro­fes­sor Emi­ly Thomp­son and design­er Scott Mahoy have cre­at­ed a love­ly site that’s fun to explore. The archive includes a beau­ti­ful 1933 map of New York City loaded with links to noise com­plaints (screen­shot at top), com­plete with doc­u­men­ta­tion. New York had long been a place where peo­ple from all over the world lived on top of one anoth­er, but noise lev­els were shifting—getting loud­er and more var­ied, that is—and the city was inun­dat­ed with com­plaints about fer­ry whis­tles, radio shops, street traf­fic, the clat­ter of restau­rant dish­wash­ing, and all man­ner of con­struc­tion.

CityNoiseSourcesShot

Sen­si­tiv­i­ty to the city’s vol­ume was high. The city’s Noise Abate­ment Com­mis­sion mea­sured the “deaf­en­ing effect” of sound in Times Square. The women’s cafe­te­ria in the New York Life Insur­ance build­ing was designed with state-of-the-art acoustics to keep the noise of the city out and the sound of office work­ers in.

Cort­landt Street in low­er Man­hat­tan was lined with radio shops, each broad­cast­ing dif­fer­ent music. Don’t miss that video, which you’ll find by scan­ning the Space tab map.

You can also move through time on the site, lis­ten­ing to the city’s cacoph­o­ny from the ear­ly 1900s up to the 1930s, or browse a menu of noise sources from home sounds to the noise of the har­bors and rivers. Again, you can vis­it the The Roar­ing Twen­ties site here.

via i09

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alan Lomax’s Music Archive Hous­es Over 17,400 Folk Record­ings From 1946 to the 1990s

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

The Chal­lenge of Archiv­ing Sound + Vision in the 21st Cen­tu­ry

Kate Rix writes about edu­ca­tion and dig­i­tal media. Fol­low her on Twit­ter.

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Ingmar Bergman Names the 11 Films He Liked Above All Others (1994)

in Film | December 10th, 2013

bergman favorites

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

You may remem­ber our Octo­ber post on Ing­mar Bergman’s eval­u­a­tion of his equal­ly titan­ic col­leagues in cin­e­ma, from Jean-Luc Godard (“affect­ed”) to Alfred Hitck­cock (“infan­tile”). Though the Bergman faith­ful and fans Andrei Tarkovsky often find much to dis­agree about, the Swedish direc­tor of pic­tures like Wild Straw­ber­ries and Per­sona had the absolute high­est praise for the Russ­ian direc­tor of pic­tures like Andrei Rublev and Solaris. (Watch Tarkovsky’s major films free online here.) “When film is not a doc­u­ment, it is dream,” said Bergman. “That is why Tarkovsky is the great­est of them all. He moves with such nat­u­ral­ness in the room of dreams. He does­n’t explain. He is a spec­ta­tor, capa­ble of stag­ing his visions in the most unwieldy but, in a way, the most will­ing of media. All my life I have ham­mered on the doors of the rooms in which he moves so nat­u­ral­ly.”

And now we have a few more words the old­er mas­ter spoke about the younger, whom he phys­i­cal­ly out­lived — but, by his own admis­sion, could­n’t artis­ti­cal­ly out­do — thanks to a cer­tain Tyler Har­ris, who post­ed them to My Cri­te­ri­on. In his remarks there, Bergman con­tin­ues with the metaphor of Tarkovsky an an inhab­i­tant of a realm of dreams: “Sud­den­ly, I found myself stand­ing at the door of a room the keys of which had, until then, nev­er been giv­en to me,” Bergman said of first watch­ing Andrei Rublev, which he named at the Göte­borg Film Fes­ti­val 1994 as a favorite. “I felt encour­aged and stim­u­lat­ed: some­one was express­ing what I had always want­ed to say with­out know­ing how.” He also select­ed Fed­eri­co Fellini’s La Stra­da, which prompt­ed a back­ground sto­ry about his ill-fat­ed col­lab­o­ra­tion with Felli­ni and Aki­ra Kuro­sawa under leg­endary pro­duc­er Dino de Lau­ren­ti­is. Kuro­sawa’s own Rashomon, which you can watch free online, also appears on this favorites list of Bergman’s, which runs, alpha­bet­i­cal­ly, as fol­lows:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ing­mar Bergman Eval­u­ates His Fel­low Film­mak­ers — The “Affect­ed” Godard, “Infan­tile” Hitch­cock & Sub­lime Tarkovsky

Mar­tin Scors­ese Reveals His 12 Favorite Movies (and Writes a New Essay on Film Preser­va­tion)

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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The (Beautiful) Physics of Adding Cream to Your Coffee

in Food & Drink | December 10th, 2013

Here’s a quick sce­nario for you. You’ve poured your­self a fresh cup of black cof­fee, and you want to keep it hot until you’re ready to drink it. Are you mak­ing a mis­take by adding cream to that cof­fee? Does cof­fee with cream cool faster than black cof­fee left alone? Intu­ition says yes. The laws of physics lead to a dif­fer­ent con­clu­sion.

Last year, the web site Mod­ernist Cui­sine gave three rea­sons why “cof­fee with cream cools about 20% slow­er than black cof­fee” alone. To sum­ma­rize:

1) Black cof­fee is dark­er, and dark col­ors emit heat faster than light col­ors. As such, “by light­en­ing the col­or of your cof­fee, you slow the rate at which it cools,” if only slight­ly.

2) The Ste­fan-Boltz­mann Law (appar­ent­ly) says that hot­ter sur­faces radi­ate heat faster— than cool­er ones. So if you add cream to a cup of black cof­fee, it might low­er the tem­per­a­ture of that cup of cof­fee. How­ev­er that cup could still cool at a slow­er rate than a cup of hot black cof­fee.

3) Final­ly, and per­haps most impor­tant­ly, “adding cream thick­ens the cof­fee (adds vis­cos­i­ty), so it evap­o­rates slow­er.” And, in turn, less heat gets car­ried away by the evap­o­ra­tion.

To top things off, Mod­ernist Cui­sine also pro­duced a video show­ing cream being poured into cof­fee in super slow motion. Even if you don’t care to con­sid­er the physics of cof­fee & cream, it’s pret­ty cool to watch an aver­age cup of joe get­ting turned into a roil­ing sea.

via Petapix­el

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Physics of Cof­fee Rings Final­ly Explained

Hon­oré de Balzac Writes About “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” and His Epic Cof­fee Addic­tion

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: London’s First Cafe Cre­ates Ad for Cof­fee in the 1650s

Black Cof­fee: Doc­u­men­tary Cov­ers the His­to­ry, Pol­i­tics & Eco­nom­ics of the “Most Wide­ly Tak­en Legal Drug”

Free Online Physics Cours­es

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Cancer Patients’ Extreme Makeovers Let Them To Forget Their Illness ‘If Only For A Second’

in Art, Comedy, Life | December 10th, 2013

The sea­son of giv­ing can be an unseem­ly time for non­prof­its. As New Year’s approach­es, every char­i­ta­ble insti­tu­tion down in Char­i­ta­ble Insti­tu­tionville must bang its tar-tin­ker and blow its hoo-hoover, in hope of dona­tions.

No doubt they’re all deserv­ing, but the onslaught of requests can leave sup­port­ers feel­ing a bit Grinchy. When that hap­pens, I rec­om­mend the video above, which doc­u­ments a hoax of Borat-like pro­por­tions. The per­pe­tra­tor is the Mimi Foun­da­tion, a Bel­gium-based group that offers psy­cho­log­i­cal coun­sel­ing, beau­ty treat­ments, and hair­style tips to peo­ple with can­cer.

The unsus­pect­ing vic­tims? Twen­ty can­cer patients who took it on good faith that they were being treat­ed to stan­dard makeovers, the sort of pro­fes­sion­al artistry that cre­ates an illu­sion of health, what many think pass­es for nor­mal­cy. All the Mimi Foun­da­tion asked for in return was that the recip­i­ents keep their eyes closed as the mag­ic was being worked.

Mean­while, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Vin­cent Dixon crouched behind a one-way mir­ror, poised to cap­ture each sit­ters’ reac­tion to his or her trans­for­ma­tion.

One does­n’t want to say too much. The end results are not what you think, unless you were think­ing of one of those over-the-top bizarre Amer­i­ca’s Next Top Mod­el pho­to chal­lenges.

Dixon’s images record the shock and invol­un­tary spon­tane­ity. The video, called “If Only for a Sec­ond, shows those ini­tial respons­es blos­som­ing into …well, let’s just say the Mimi Foun­da­tion, assist­ed by a pha­lanx of styl­ists, achieved their goal.

H/T Alan Gold­wass­er

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Come­di­an Tig Notaro’s “Tru­ly Great” Can­cer Stand-up Set Now Avail­able on Louis C.K.’s Web­site

Life in 4,748 Self-Por­traits

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s heart grew three sizes today. Fol­low her @AyunHallliday

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Hear King Edward VIII Explain Why He Abdicated The Crown For Love, 77 Years Ago Today

in History, Radio | December 10th, 2013

Sev­en­ty-sev­en years ago, in a move unprece­dent­ed since the Glo­ri­ous Rev­o­lu­tion of 1688, King-Emper­or Edward VIII abdi­cat­ed the throne. Today’s audi­ences will rec­og­nize the episode from The King’s Speech: less than a year after hav­ing ascend­ed to the British king­ship in Jan­u­ary of 1936, Edward became roman­ti­cal­ly entan­gled with a yet-to-be-divorced Amer­i­can socialite named Wal­lis Simp­son. As long as the King’s liaisons remained dis­creet, the cou­ple was afford­ed a respectable amount of pri­va­cy by the roy­al fam­i­ly and the British media. Things grew more com­pli­cat­ed, how­ev­er, when Simp­son divorced her sec­ond hus­band in Octo­ber of 1936, and the pair decid­ed to mar­ry, come hell or high water.

A King of the Unit­ed King­dom of Great Britain and North­ern Ire­land being wed­ded to a twice-divorced Amer­i­can socialite would have caused a furor. As the head of the Church of Eng­land, Edward could not mar­ry a divorced woman whose for­mer hus­band (let alone hus­bands) remained alive. Simpson’s first divorce proved even more problematic—it was grant­ed based on “emo­tion­al incom­pat­i­bil­i­ty,” and may not have been rec­og­nized under both Church and Eng­lish law. The King’s mar­riage to Simp­son also raised the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an Amer­i­can Queen, a sac­ri­le­gious idea in the eyes of his sub­jects.

Faced with a choice between the crown and his love, Edward VIII chose to step down. On Decem­ber 10, 1936, the King signed the fol­low­ing dec­la­ra­tion of abdi­ca­tion:

Edward_abdication

In the audio clip at the top of the post, Edward VIII takes to the radio waves to declare his abdi­ca­tion on Decem­ber 11. Brim­ming with hard­ly-con­tained emo­tion, Edward attempts to explain his rea­sons to the British peo­ple (read the full tran­script here):

“You all know the rea­sons which have impelled me to renounce the Throne. But I want you to under­stand that in mak­ing up my mind I did not for­get the coun­try or the Empire which as Prince of Wales, and late­ly as King, I have for twen­ty-five years tried to serve. But you must believe me when I tell you that I have found it impos­si­ble to car­ry the heavy bur­den of respon­si­bil­i­ty and to dis­charge my duties as King as I would wish to do with­out the help and sup­port of the woman I love.”

For those who had doubts about Simpson’s true feel­ings for the King (some sus­pect­ed her of car­ing only about the king’s mon­ey), the next 35 years would pro­vide suf­fi­cient proof. The pair remained mar­ried until Edward’s death in 1972.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

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Gustave Doré’s Exquisite Engravings of Cervantes’ Don Quixote

in Art, Books, Literature | December 10th, 2013

QuixoteandPanza

In a now defunct list­ing from Bau­man Rare Books for an 1868 edi­tion of Miguel de Cer­vantes’ Don Quixote with illus­tra­tions by Gus­tave Doré, we find the fol­low­ing unat­trib­uted quo­ta­tion: “in every Eng­lish-speak­ing home where they can spell the word ‘art,’ you will find Doré edi­tions.” It’s odd that the homes should be “Eng­lish-speak­ing” when Doré’s illus­tra­tions were orig­i­nal­ly an 1860 French com­mis­sion, but the quote at least demon­strates the enor­mous pop­u­lar­i­ty of Doré’s Quixote. His ren­der­ings were so influ­en­tial they deter­mined the look of Quixote and San­cho Pan­za in many sub­se­quent illus­trat­ed ver­sions, stage and film pro­duc­tions, and read­ers’ imag­i­na­tions.

Per­haps the most suc­cess­ful illus­tra­tor of the 19th cen­tu­ry, the dap­per Doré was also at work on a momen­tous commission—this time from an Eng­lish publisher—to illus­trate the Bible. He went on to edi­tions of Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Par­adise Lost, The Divine Com­e­dy, Poe’s The Raven, and many oth­er famous works of lit­er­a­ture. But his Don Quixote may be the lit­er­ary com­mis­sion for which he’s best remem­bered.

QuixoteCaged

Doré appar­ent­ly entered a crowd­ed field when he took on Cer­vantes’ foun­da­tion­al text. For a lit­tle con­text, Bau­man Rare Books also quotes a cer­tain schol­ar sur­named “Ray,” who offers this pré­cis of the edition’s cre­ation:

Don Quixote was a text cal­cu­lat­ed to test even Doré. He was match­ing him­self against Coypel and Tony Johan­not, not to men­tion the Span­ish illus­tra­tors of the great Ibar­ra edi­tion pub­lished in Madrid in 1780. He met the chal­lenge superbly… At first he intend­ed only 40 designs, but Cer­vantes’ book cap­tured his imag­i­na­tion, and he arranged for a major work… Don Quixote and San­cho Pan­za reached their defin­i­tive ren­der­ing in Doré’s designs.

Doré end­ed up com­plet­ing over 200 illus­tra­tions for his edi­tion. You can see a cou­ple of those “defin­i­tive,” and exquis­ite, engrav­ings above and below. The edi­tors of Bib­liokept main­tain a sep­a­rate site post­ing all of the Doré Quixote illus­tra­tions. Project Guten­berg has an Eng­lish full text Quixote with the illus­tra­tions scanned in, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Buf­fa­lo has an exten­sive search­able dig­i­tal col­lec­tion of Doré illus­tra­tions. And if you just have to con­form to the tastes of “every Eng­lish-speak­ing home where they can spell the word ‘art’ ” and own a Doré Quixote of your own, you can pur­chase a re-cre­ation of an 1870 edi­tion for only three month­ly install­ments of $125. It’s a “pub­lish­ing trea­sure.” Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty has more infor­ma­tion on the engrav­ings.

QuixoteHanging

via Bib­liokept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gus­tave Doré’s Dra­mat­ic Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy

Sal­vador Dalí’s 100 Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s The Divine Com­e­dy

Hen­ri Matisse Illus­trates 1935 Edi­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses

See Pablo Picasso’s Spare, Ten­der Illus­tra­tions For a Lim­it­ed Edi­tion of Aristo­phanes’ Lysis­tra­ta (1934)

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

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Google’s Moving Ad About 1947 Partition of India & Pakistan Tops 10 Million Views

in Google, History, Television | December 9th, 2013

Recent­ly, Wired writer Steve Sil­ber­man (aka @stevesil­ber­man) shot us a note on Twit­ter, say­ing, “@openculture, do not miss this bril­liant ad. Most touch­ing movie (in 3 mins!) I’ve seen in years.” Released on Novem­ber 13th, the video has already clocked over 10 mil­lion views. But chances are you haven’t seen it. And that’s because it’s tar­get­ed to the web-enabled mid­dle class of India and Pak­istan. As The Dawn, Pak­istan’s old­est Eng­lish news­pa­per, describes it, the Google-cre­at­ed ad enti­tled “Reunion” “por­trays two child­hood friends, now elder­ly men, who haven’t seen each oth­er since they were sep­a­rat­ed by the 1947 par­ti­tion that cre­at­ed India and Pak­istan from the old British empire in South Asia. Par­ti­tion sparked a mass exo­dus as mil­lions of Mus­lims and Hin­dus fled across the new bor­ders amid reli­gious vio­lence.” Now Google search prod­ucts are help­ing to bring old friends and neigh­bors back togeth­er.

Cyn­ics may be quick to judge this a sac­cha­rine, manip­u­la­tive ad. But oth­ers are see­ing in it some­thing else — a sign that “per­son­al con­nec­tions between Indi­ans and Pak­ista­nis run deep.” Even if their gov­ern­ments gain some­thing from keep­ing the con­flict alive, every­day peo­ple in India and Pak­istan are increas­ing­ly ready to put his­to­ry aside.

Note: If you click CC at the bot­tom of the video, you can use cap­tions to trans­late the film into nine lan­guages, includ­ing French, Malay­alam and Urdu. It is pre­set to Eng­lish.

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email orRSS Feed. And we’ll send qual­i­ty cul­ture your way, every day.

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The Clash Mauls a Teddy Bear and Plays Two Songs on The Tom Snyder Show (1981)

in Music, Television | December 9th, 2013

The Clash’s San­din­ista!, their fourth and penul­ti­mate stu­dio album (let’s not talk about Cut the Crap) inspired crit­i­cal rhap­sodies and rose to the top of lists every­where in 1981. When I encoun­tered it almost ten years lat­er as a young fan, I didn’t give it much of a chance, except for a song with the same name as my belea­guered hometown’s NBA team. In hind­sight, it was my loss, but it’s also true that near­ly every gen­er­a­tion of Clash fans, includ­ing the very first, has put their fin­ger on the band’s moment of either “sell­ing out” or sharply declin­ing. Maybe for me it was what a Rolling Stone review called San­din­ista!’s “main­stream moves” and “stu­dio sophis­ti­ca­tion.” Maybe it was the “whiff of grandeur” of the triple album. I think it also had to do with what Tom Sny­der, in his 1981 inter­view with the band above, says of them in his intro­duc­tion: they pre­ferred to be iden­ti­fied “not so much as a Rock and Roll group but as a ‘News-giv­ing group.’”

It was hard­ly news when I heard it, and I didn’t much care for top­i­cal songs any­way. But I’ve always admired Joe Strummer’s sin­cer­i­ty and sense of polit­i­cal urgency. I don’t know how seri­ous­ly Strum­mer takes Snyder’s “News-giv­ing” open, but he rolls with it, and the band turns on the charm offen­sive, alter­nate­ly cud­dling and abus­ing a ted­dy bear (against Snyder’s protes­ta­tions), pro­fess­ing their sin­cere loy­al­ty to their fans, and cov­er­ing the host with mer­chan­dise. It’s a fun eight and half min­utes. Then they do two songs, “The Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en” (above), from San­din­ista!, and “This is Radio Clash” (below), which doesn’t appear on any of their stu­dio albums. Behind Mick Jones’ wall of amps, pio­neer­ing graf­fi­ti artist Futu­ra 2000 spray-paints some uniden­ti­fi­able words, and beneath the whole affair is what Dan­ger­ous Minds calls “an under­cur­rent of con­trolled may­hem.” This kind of TV just doesn’t hap­pen any­more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Audio Ammu­ni­tion: Google’s New Doc­u­men­tary Series on The Clash and Their Five Clas­sic Albums

Rare Live Footage Doc­u­ments The Clash From Their Raw Debut to the Career-Defin­ing Lon­don Call­ing

Mick Jones Plays Three Clas­sics by The Clash at the Pub­lic Library

The Clash: West­way to the World (The 2002 Gram­my Win­ning Film)

The Clash Live in Tokyo, 1982: Watch the Com­plete Con­cert

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

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View Bill Gates’ Mobile Library: The Books & Courses That Help Him Change The World

in Books, Education | December 9th, 2013

Step­ping down as Microsoft’s chief exec­u­tive offi­cer in 2000 had giv­en Bill Gates some extra time, which the auto­di­dact imme­di­ate­ly expend­ed by attempt­ing to learn… well, every­thing. Per­haps Gates threw him­self at learn­ing to make up for aban­don­ing col­lege for greater pursuits—he attend­ed Har­vard but left after two years’ study to pur­sue his pas­sion for com­put­ers. What­ev­er his rea­sons, Gates has begun to assid­u­ous­ly learn all he can about the world, and is record­ing his edu­ca­tion process for pos­ter­i­ty on his web­site, The Gates Notes. As the video above explains, Microsoft’s founder has lis­tened to hun­dreds of hours of uni­ver­si­ty lec­tures from The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny; he got hooked after lis­ten­ing to Robert Whap­les’ Mod­ern Eco­nom­ic Issues and breez­ing through Tim­o­thy Tay­lor’s Amer­i­ca and the New Glob­al Econ­o­my. His num­ber one pick? Big His­to­ry which is taught by David Chris­t­ian and, Gates says, “is still my favorite course of all. The course is so broad that it syn­the­sizes the his­to­ry of every­thing includ­ing the sci­ences into one frame­work.”

Wher­ev­er Gates trav­els, he is also eter­nal­ly accom­pa­nied by his read­ing bag. Sur­prised that the her­ald of the dig­i­tal age is pack­ing paper­backs? Don’t be. “I’m still pret­ty much an old-school print guy,” Gates writes, “because I like to jot notes in the mar­gins, but I assume I’ll move over to ebooks when anno­ta­tion fea­tures get bet­ter.”

Last week, Gates showed WIRED the con­tents of his decid­ed­ly 20th cen­tu­ry mobile library. The books, which Gates replen­ish­es at an impres­sive rate, encom­pass an admirable breadth of top­ics. As befit­ting the over­seer of the Bill and Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion, the major­i­ty of Gates’ read­ing con­sists of non-fic­tion (only Gary Shteyn­gart’s recent nov­el made the fic­tion cut this round). His­to­ry, psy­chol­o­gy, sci­ence, sound busi­ness coun­sel, soci­ol­o­gy, eco­nom­ics, and his­to­ry all make up the dizzy­ing array of Gates’ every­day read­ing. Here is a selec­tion from WIRED’s par­tial list, includ­ing Gates’ own com­ments on the impor­tance of each choice:

-Feynman’s Tips on Physics by Richard Feyn­man– A short com­pan­ion book to Richard Feynman’s clas­sic Lec­tures on Physics. Always worth­while to return to the feet of the mas­ter.

-Super Sad True Love Sto­ry: A Nov­el by Gary Shteyn­gart– I don’t read a lot of fic­tion, but I thought this was an inter­est­ing study of the moral impli­ca­tions of tech­nol­o­gy. Will tech­nol­o­gy con­tribute to everyone’s well-being or just make peo­ple more nar­cis­sis­tic?

-The Car­toon Intro­duc­tion to Sta­tis­tics by Grady Klein– Bought this to use with one of my kids. Help­ful in explain­ing a com­pli­cat­ed sub­ject to a teenag­er.

-The Path Between the Seas: The Cre­ation of the Pana­ma Canal by David McCul­lough – I read this to pre­pare for a fam­i­ly vaca­tion to Pana­ma. It’s pure McCul­lough: epic dra­ma, polit­i­cal intrigue, heart­break­ing defeats, and even­tu­al tri­umph.

-The Bet­ter Angels of Our Nature: Why Vio­lence Has Declined by Steven Pinker– One of the most impor­tant books I’ve read. Steven Pinker demon­strates how the world evolved to be far less vio­lent. Coun­ter­in­tu­itive, if you watch the news, but true.

We’ve also used the trusty Con­trol + Scroll func­tion to zoom in and name a few addi­tion­al titles:

An Uncer­tain Glo­ry: India and its Con­tra­dic­tions by Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen

Engi­neers of Vic­to­ry: The Prob­lem Solvers Who Turned The Tide in The Sec­ond World War by Paul Kennedy

The Price of Inequal­i­ty: How Today’s Divid­ed Soci­ety Endan­gers Our Future by Joseph Stiglitz

Why Does Col­lege Cost So Much? By Robert Archibald and David Feld­man

Mon­do Agnel­li: Fiat, Chrysler, and the Pow­er of a Dynasty by Jen­nifer Clark

How Chil­dren Suc­ceed: Grit, Curios­i­ty, and the Hid­den Pow­er of Char­ac­ter by Paul Tough

The One World School­house: Edu­ca­tion Reimag­ined by Salman Khan

Far From The Tree by Andrew Solomon

For the orig­i­nal list, head over to WIRED. For more of Gates’ com­men­tary, check out his site, The Gates Notes, here. You can also con­tin­ue your self-edu­ca­tion by vis­it­ing our lists of Free Online Cours­es, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Lan­guage Lessons, Free Text­books, and Free MOOCs.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

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Did Leonardo da Vinci Paint a First Mona Lisa Before The Mona Lisa?

in Art | December 9th, 2013

Leonar­do da Vin­ci’s Mona Lisa has been called “the best known, the most vis­it­ed, the most writ­ten about, the most sung about, the most par­o­died work of art in the world.” (Did you catch the Lego Mona Lisa that made the rounds on the web last week?) Com­plet­ed in the ear­ly 16th cen­tu­ry, the paint­ing offers a por­trait of Lisa Gher­ar­di­ni, wife of a Flo­ren­tine cloth mer­chant named Francesco del Gio­cond. (Hence why the paint­ing is some­times called La Gio­con­da or La Joconde.) Today, the Renais­sance mas­ter­piece hangs in the Lou­vre in Paris, where it’s vis­it­ed by an esti­mat­ed six mil­lion peo­ple each year.

There’s no short­age of debates sur­round­ing the Mona Lisa. Was it com­plet­ed in 1506? Or is 1517 a more accu­rate date? Does the por­trait actu­al­ly fea­ture Lisa Gher­ar­di­ni? (Most art his­to­ri­ans think so, but schol­ars have spec­u­lat­ed about oth­er fig­ures, includ­ing Leonar­do’s own moth­er, Cate­ri­na.) And then there’s this big­ger ques­tion. Was da Vin­ci’s Mona Lisa his first Mona Lisa? That debate starts with a tan­ta­liz­ing piece of text writ­ten by the artist/art his­to­ri­an Gior­gio Vasari in his 16th cen­tu­ry book, The Lives of the Most Excel­lent Painters, Sculp­tors, and Archi­tects. In a sec­tion called “Life of Leonar­do da Vin­ci: Painter and Sculp­tor of Flo­rence,” Vasari wrote: “Leonar­do under­took to exe­cute, for Francesco del Gio­con­do, the por­trait of Mon­na Lisa, his wife; and after toil­ing over it for four years, he left it unfin­ished.…” And then Vasari attrib­uted to the por­trait some char­ac­ter­is­tics that don’t quite line up with the famous paint­ing hang­ing in the Lou­vre today — “rosy and pearly tints,” eyes that had a “lus­tre and watery sheen which are always seen in life,” a nose “with its beau­ti­ful nos­trils, rosy and ten­der,” etc. All of this left some to won­der: Was Vasari talk­ing about anoth­er paint­ing? Per­haps an ear­li­er, unfin­ished ver­sion of the Mona Lisa?

Mona-Lisa-merge

Enter The Mona Lisa Foun­da­tion, a non-prof­it based in Switzer­land, that claims they’ve per­haps found an ear­li­er Mona Lisa. In an essay appear­ing on their web­site, and in a 20 minute video (top), the Foun­da­tion makes the case that “Isle­worth Mona Lisa” (right above) was prob­a­bly paint­ed by da Vin­ci around 1505, though nev­er com­plet­ed. Cen­turies lat­er the por­trait end­ed up in the hands of an Eng­lish col­lec­tor Hugh Blak­er, only to be then locked away in a Swiss vault for 40 years. It was final­ly brought out, and made avail­able to the pub­lic for the first time, in 2012.

Skep­tics have been quick to point out prob­lems with the “Isle­worth Mona Lisa.” Some note that it was paint­ed on can­vas, where­as Leonar­do typ­i­cal­ly paint­ed on wood. Oth­ers claim that x‑rays of the paint­ing call its authen­tic­i­ty into doubt. And then oth­ers sug­gest that the “Isle­worth Mona Lisa” is mere­ly a late 16th cen­tu­ry copy of the paint­ing now hang­ing in the Lou­vre. (The Mona Lisa Foun­da­tion web site doc­u­ments the skep­ti­cal claims and offers a rebut­tal for reach.)

To be sure, the Isle­worth Mona Lisa has its crit­ics, but it also has some sup­port­ers. In Sep­tem­ber 2012, the Swiss Fed­er­al Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy in Zurich car­ried out car­bon-dat­ing tests on the can­vas and con­firmed that it was like­ly man­u­fac­tured between 1410 and 1455, which helped refute claims that the paint­ing was a late 16th cen­tu­ry copy. Mean­while, John Asmus, a UCSD physics pro­fes­sor who “intro­duced the use of holog­ra­phy, lasers, ultra­son­ic imag­ing, dig­i­tal image pro­cess­ing, and nuclear mag­net­ic res­o­nance to art-con­ser­va­tion prac­tice,” car­ried out a brush­stroke analy­sis and con­clud­ed that “the same con­struc­tion prin­ci­ples” were used in the design of both Mona Lisas, increas­ing the like­li­hood that they were cre­at­ed by the same artist. And final­ly, Joe Mullins, a foren­sic spe­cial­ist trained at the FBI, “age regressed” the orig­i­nal Mona Lisa to see what she would have looked like at an ear­li­er point in time. His con­clu­sion? “Every­thing lined up per­fect­ly.” “This is Mona Lisa, two dif­fer­ent images at two dif­fer­ent times in her life.”

But still, skep­tics cer­tain­ly remain.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

NASA Sends Image of the Mona Lisa to the Moon and Back

Watch Leonar­do da Vinci’s Musi­cal Inven­tion, the Vio­la Organ­ista, Being Played for the Very First Time

The Anatom­i­cal Draw­ings of Renais­sance Man, Leonar­do da Vin­ci

What Leonar­do da Vin­ci Real­ly Looked Like

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The Pulp Fiction Archive: The Cheap, Thrilling Stories That Entertained a Generation of Readers (1896–1946)

in Archives, Art, Books, Comics/Cartoons, History | December 8th, 2013

Phantm_d

For the first half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, pulp mag­a­zines were a quin­tes­sen­tial form of Amer­i­can enter­tain­ment. Print­ed on cheap, wood pulp paper, the “pulps” (as opposed to the “glossies” or “slicks,” such as The New York­er) had names like The Black Mask and Amaz­ing Sto­ries, and promised read­ers sup­pos­ed­ly true accounts of adven­ture, exploita­tion, hero­ism, and inge­nu­ity. Such out­lets offered a steady stream of work for sta­bles of fic­tion writ­ers, with con­tent rang­ing from short sto­ries about intre­pid explor­ers sav­ing damsels from Nazis/Communists (depend­ing on the pre­cise time of pub­li­ca­tion) to nov­el-length man vs. beast accounts of courage and cun­ning. This, inci­den­tal­ly, gave birth to the term “pulp fic­tion,” pop­u­lar­ized in the 1990s by Quentin Tarantino’s epony­mous film.

In the 1950s, the pulps went into a steep decline. In addi­tion to tele­vi­sion, paper­back nov­els, and com­ic books, the pulps were over­tak­en by the more explic­it, and even low­er brow men’s adven­ture mag­a­zines (read­ers of Tru­man Capote’s In Cold Blood may remem­ber Per­ry Smith, the socio­path­ic mis­fit who mur­dered the Clut­ter fam­i­ly, being an enthu­si­as­tic read­er of these ear­ly lads’ mags). Thanks to The Pulp Mag­a­zines Project, how­ev­er, many of the most famous pub­li­ca­tions remain acces­si­ble today through a well-designed online inter­face. Hun­dreds of issues have been archived in the data­base that spans from 1896 through to 1946. It includes large mag­a­zines, such as The Argosy and Adven­ture, and small­er, more spe­cial­ized fare, such as Air Won­der Sto­ries and Bas­ket­ball Sto­ries. Although good writ­ing occa­sion­al­ly made its way into the pulps, don’t expect these mag­a­zines to mir­ror the lit­er­ary depth of seri­al­ized pub­li­ca­tions of the 19th cen­tu­ry; rather, the archive pro­vides a ter­rif­i­cal­ly enter­tain­ing look at the pop­u­lar read­ing of ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca.

To browse the com­plete data­base, head over to The Pulp Mag­a­zines Project.

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:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Gives Sneak Peek of Pulp Fic­tion to Jon Stew­art (1994)

Isaac Asi­mov Recalls the Gold­en Age of Sci­ence Fic­tion (1937–1950)

Did Shake­speare Write Pulp Fic­tion? (No, But If He Did, It’d Sound Like This)

Down­load 14 Great Sci-Fi Sto­ries by Philip K. Dick as Free Audio Books and Free eBooks

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