This is Your Brain in Love: The Stanford Love Competition Shows What Love Looks Like on an MRI

in Life, Neuroscience, Stanford | February 12th, 2016

We hear it so often it’s almost a cliché, one I’m sure I’ve repeat­ed with­out giv­ing it much thought: You can’t mea­sure love in a lab­o­ra­to­ry. But we prob­a­bly can, in fact. Or at least neu­ro­sci­en­tists can. Last year, one joint Chi­nese and Amer­i­can team of neu­ro­sci­en­tists did just that, defin­ing the feel­ing we call love as “a moti­va­tion­al state asso­ci­at­ed with a desire to enter or main­tain a close rela­tion­ship with a spe­cif­ic oth­er per­son.” This doesn’t cov­er the love of pets, food, or sun­sets, but it gets at what we cel­e­brate with can­dy and red tchotchkes every year around this time, as well as the love we have for friends or fam­i­ly.

Using fMRI scans of three groups of 100 men and women, the researchers found that an “in-love group had more increased activ­i­ty across sev­er­al brain regions involved in reward, moti­va­tion, emo­tion, and social func­tion­ing,” reports Med­ical Dai­ly. The longer peo­ple had been “in love,” the greater the brain activ­i­ty in these regions. Whether the brain states cause the emo­tion, or the emo­tion caus­es the brain states, or they are one in the same, I can’t say, but the fact remains: love can be quan­tifi­ably mea­sured.

Mean­while, Brent Hoff sep­a­rate­ly decid­ed to exploit this fact for what he calls a “Love Com­pe­ti­tion.” With the help of Stanford’s Cen­ter for Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­bi­o­log­i­cal Imag­ing (CNI), Hoff enlist­ed sev­en con­tes­tants of vary­ing ages—from 10 to 75—and gen­ders to enter an fMRI machine and “love some­one as hard as they can” for five min­utes. Who­ev­er gen­er­ates the most activ­i­ty in regions “pro­duc­ing the neu­ro­chem­i­cal expe­ri­ence of love” wins. Gives you the warm fuzzies, right?

While “the idea that love can be mea­sured may seem deeply unro­man­tic,” writes Aeon mag­a­zine, “the results were any­thing but.” The con­tes­tants were not restrict­ed to roman­tic love. Ten-year-old Milo gives his love to a new baby cousin, because “she’s very cute.” Dr. Bob Dougher­ty of CNI pre­dicts ear­ly on that an “old­er guy” like him­self might win because expe­ri­ence would bet­ter help him con­trol the emo­tion. But at the begin­ning, it’s any­one’s game. Watch the com­pe­ti­tion above and find out who wins.

Giv­en that this is billed as the “1st Annu­al Love Com­pe­ti­tion,” might we expect anoth­er this year?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What is Love? BBC Phi­los­o­phy Ani­ma­tions Fea­ture Sartre, Freud, Aristo­phanes, Dawkins & More

This Is Your Brain on Jane Austen: The Neu­ro­science of Read­ing Great Lit­er­a­ture

Steven Pinker Explains the Neu­ro­science of Swear­ing (NSFW)

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

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Hear Gabriel García Márquez’s Extraordinary Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, “The Solitude Of Latin America,” in English & Spanish (1982)

in Literature | February 11th, 2016

From the very begin­ning of Europe’s incur­sions into the so-called New World, the ecol­o­gy, the peo­ple, and the civ­i­liza­tions of the Amer­i­c­as became trans­mut­ed into leg­end and fan­ta­sy. Ear­ly explor­ers imag­ined the land­scape they encoun­tered as filled with marvels—creatures that arose from their own uncon­scious and from a lit­er­ary his­to­ry of exot­ic myths dat­ing back to antiq­ui­ty. And as the native peo­ple assumed the char­ac­ter of giants and mon­sters, sav­ages and demons in trav­el accounts, their cities became repos­i­to­ries of unimag­in­able wealth, ripe for the tak­ing.

Fore­most among these leg­ends was the city of El Dora­do. Sought by the Span­ish, Ital­ians, and Por­tuguese through­out the 15th and 16th cen­turies and by Wal­ter Raleigh in the 17th, “El Dora­do,” says folk­lorist Jim Grif­fith, “shift­ed geo­graph­i­cal loca­tions until final­ly it sim­ply meant a source of untold rich­es some­where in the Amer­i­c­as.” A cou­ple hun­dred years after Raleigh’s last ill-fat­ed expe­di­tion, Edgar Allan Poe sug­gest­ed the loca­tion of this city: “Over the Moun­tains of the Moon, down the Val­ley of the Shad­ow, ride, bold­ly ride… if you seek for El Dora­do.”

These colo­nial encoun­ters, and the fever­ish accounts they pro­duced, “con­tained the seeds,” says Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez in his 1982 Nobel Prize accep­tance speech, “of our present-day nov­els.” El Dora­do, “our so avid­ly sought and illu­so­ry land,” remained on imag­i­nary maps of explor­ers well past the age of explo­ration: “As late as the last cen­tu­ry, a Ger­man mis­sion appoint­ed to study the con­struc­tion of an inte­ro­cean­ic rail­road… con­clud­ed that the project was fea­si­ble” only if the rails were made of gold.

As Márquez’s work has often recount­ed, espe­cial­ly his epic One Hun­dred Years of Soli­tude, oth­er com­modi­ties suf­ficed when the gold didn’t mate­ri­al­ize, and the strug­gle between con­querors, adven­tur­ers, mer­ce­nar­ies, dic­ta­tors, and oppor­tunists on the one hand, and peo­ple fierce­ly deter­mined to sur­vive on the oth­er has made “Latin Amer­i­ca… a bound­less realm of haunt­ed men and his­toric women, whose unend­ing obsti­na­cy blurs into leg­end. We have not had a moment’s rest.”

Márquez’s speech, “The Soli­tude of Latin Amer­i­ca,” weaves togeth­er the region’s found­ing his­to­ry, its lit­er­a­ture, and its bloody civ­il wars, mil­i­tary coups, and “the first Latin Amer­i­can eth­no­cide of our time” into an accu­mu­lat­ing account of “immea­sur­able vio­lence and pain,” the result of “age-old inequities and untold bit­ter­ness… oppres­sion, plun­der­ing and aban­don­ment.” To this cat­a­logue, “we respond with life,” says Márquez, while “the most pros­per­ous coun­tries have suc­ceed­ed in accu­mu­lat­ing pow­ers of destruc­tion such as to anni­hi­late, a hun­dred times over… the total­i­ty of all liv­ing beings that have ever drawn breath on this plan­et of mis­for­tune.”

From the utopi­an dream of cities of gold and end­less wealth, we arrive at a dystopi­an world bent on destroy­ing itself. And yet,“faced with this awe­some real­i­ty,” Márquez refus­es to despair. He quotes from his lit­er­ary hero William Faulkner’s Nobel speech—“I decline to accept the end of man”—then artic­u­lates anoth­er vision:

We, the inven­tors of tales, who will believe any­thing, feel enti­tled to believe that it is not yet too late to engage in the cre­ation of the oppo­site utopia. A new and sweep­ing utopia of life, where no one will be able to decide for oth­ers how they die, where love will prove true and hap­pi­ness be pos­si­ble, and where the races con­demned to one hun­dred years of soli­tude will have, at last and for­ev­er, a sec­ond oppor­tu­ni­ty on earth.

You can hear all of Márquez’s extra­or­di­nary speech read in Eng­lish at the top of the post, and in Span­ish by Márquez him­self below that. The lat­ter was made avail­able by Maria Popo­va, and you can read a full tran­script of the speech in Eng­lish at Brain Pick­ings.

via Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 10 Short Sto­ries by Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez Free Online (Plus More Essays & Inter­views)

Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez Describes the Cul­tur­al Mer­its of Soap Operas, and Even Wrote a Script for One

William Faulkn­er Reads His Nobel Prize Speech

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

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Neil Gaiman Presents “How Stories Last,” an Insightful Lecture on How Stories Change, Evolve & Endure Through the Centuries

in Books, Literature | February 11th, 2016

gaiman how stories last

Image by Thier­ry Ehrmann, via Flickr Com­mons

Every­body knows Neil Gaiman, but they all know him best for dif­fer­ent work: writ­ing com­ic books like Sand­man, nov­els like Amer­i­can Gods, tele­vi­sion series like Nev­er­where, movies like Mir­ror­Mask, an ear­ly biog­ra­phy of Duran Duran. What does all that — and every­thing else in the man’s pro­lif­ic career — have in com­mon? Sto­ries. Every piece of work Gaiman does involves him telling a sto­ry of one kind or anoth­er, and so his pro­file in the cul­ture has risen to great heights as, sim­ply, a sto­ry­teller. That made him just the right man for the job when the Long Now Foun­da­tion, with its mis­sion of think­ing far back into the past and far for­ward into the future, need­ed some­one to talk about how cer­tain sto­ries sur­vive through both those time frames and beyond.

“Do sto­ries grow?” Gaiman asks his years-in-the-mak­ing Long Now lec­ture, lis­ten­able on Sound­cloud right below or view­able as a video here. “Pret­ty obvi­ous­ly — any­body who has ever heard a joke being passed on from one per­son to anoth­er knows that they can grow, they can change. Can sto­ries repro­duce? Well, yes. Not spon­ta­neous­ly, obvi­ous­ly — they tend to need peo­ple as vec­tors. We are the media in which they repro­duce; we are their petri dish­es.” He goes on to bring out exam­ples from cave paint­ings, to secret retellings of Gone with the Wind in a Nazi con­cen­tra­tion camp, to a warn­ing to future gen­er­a­tions not to dig into nuclear waste sites — designed for pas­sage into the minds of pos­ter­i­ty as a robust­ly craft­ed sto­ry.

Sto­ries, writes the Long Now Foun­da­tion founder Stew­art Brand, “out­com­pete oth­er sto­ries by hang­ing over time. They make it from medi­um to medi­um — from oral to writ­ten to film and beyond. They lose unin­ter­est­ing ele­ments but hold on to the most com­pelling bits or even add some.” He knows that, Gaiman knows that, and I think that all of us who have told sto­ries sense its truth on an instinc­tive lev­el: “The most pop­u­lar ver­sion of the Cin­derel­la sto­ry (which may have orig­i­nat­ed long ago in Chi­na) has kept the glo­ri­ous­ly unlike­ly glass slip­per intro­duced by a care­less French telling.”

Anoth­er beloved British teller of tales, Dou­glas Adams, also had thoughts on the almost bio­log­i­cal nature of lit­er­a­ture. “We were talk­ing about The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” Gaiman recalled else­where, “which was some­thing which resem­bled an iPad, long before it appeared. And I said when some­thing like that hap­pens, it’s going to be the death of the book. Dou­glas said no. Books are sharks.” And what did he mean by that? “Sharks have been around for a very long time. There were sharks before there were dinosaurs, and the rea­son sharks are still in the ocean is that noth­ing is bet­ter at being a shark than a shark.” So not only do the best sto­ries evolve to last the longest, so do the forms they take.

You can find 18 sto­ries by Neil Gaiman (all free) in this col­lec­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Saun­ders Demys­ti­fies the Art of Sto­ry­telling in a Short Ani­mat­ed Doc­u­men­tary

48 Hours of Joseph Camp­bell Lec­tures Free Online: The Pow­er of Myth & Sto­ry­telling

Neil Gaiman Reads “The Man Who For­got Ray Brad­bury”

Where Do Great Ideas Come From? Neil Gaiman Explains

Aman­da Palmer Ani­mates & Nar­rates Hus­band Neil Gaiman’s Uncon­scious Mus­ings

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Take a Free Online Course on Making Animations from Pixar & Khan Academy

in Animation, How to Learn for Free, Online Courses | February 11th, 2016

It’s a good month for nur­tur­ing your cre­ativ­i­ty: the Cal­i­for­nia Col­lege of the Arts just launched a free course on mak­ing comics. And now comes anoth­er free course that will teach you the basics of ani­ma­tion. Pixar and Khan Acad­e­my have teamed up to cre­ate “Pixar in a Box,” a free online cur­ricu­lum that shows how Pixar artists use com­put­er sci­ence and math con­cepts to cre­ate their inno­v­a­tive films. Top­ic include Rig­ging (how char­ac­ters are brought to life with con­trols), Ren­der­ing (how pix­els are paint­ed using alge­bra ), Char­ac­ter Mod­el­ing (how clay mod­els are trans­formed into dig­i­tal char­ac­ters using weight­ed aver­ages) and more. Enter the self-paced series of lessons, each filled with instruc­tive videos, here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

via Make

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pixar’s 22 Rules of Sto­ry­telling … Makes for an Addic­tive Par­lor Game

Take a Free Online Course on Mak­ing Com­ic Books, Com­pli­ments of the Cal­i­for­nia Col­lege of the Arts

Lyn­da Barry’s Illus­trat­ed Syl­labus & Home­work Assign­ments from Her New UW-Madi­son Course, “Mak­ing Comics”

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

1150 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

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Download Hundreds of Van Gogh Paintings, Sketches & Letters in High Resolution

in Art | February 10th, 2016

VG Self Portrait 1887

As a cal­low young art stu­dent in high school, I dear­ly want­ed, and tried, to see the world with the same furi­ous inten­si­ty as Vin­cent van Gogh, and to cap­ture that kind of vision on paper and can­vas. I lat­er real­ized with cha­grin as I stood in a line sev­er­al blocks long for a wild­ly pop­u­lar exhib­it (Van Gogh’s Van Goghs at the Nation­al Gallery of Art) that I was but one of mil­lions who want­ed to see the world through Van Gogh’s eyes.

After wait­ing for what seemed like for­ev­er, not only could I bare­ly get a glimpse of any of the paint­ings through the scrum of tourists and gawk­ers, but I felt—in my pro­tec­tive bub­ble of Van Gogh veneration—that these peo­ple couldn’t pos­si­bly get Van Gogh the way I got Van Gogh.

VG Portrait of Theo

Well, every­body has their own ver­sion of Van Gogh, per­haps, but one I’ve out­grown is the mad, mag­i­cal genius whose men­tal ill­ness act­ed as a trag­ic but nec­es­sary con­di­tion for his tran­scen­dent­ly pas­sion­ate work. Maybe it’s age and some famil­iar­i­ty with life’s hard­ship, but I no longer roman­ti­cize Van Gogh’s suf­fer­ing. And per­haps a more real­is­tic view of what was like­ly debil­i­tat­ing bipo­lar dis­or­der has giv­en me an even greater appre­ci­a­tion for his accom­plish­ments. Dur­ing the brief 10-year peri­od that Van Gogh pur­sued his art, he was as ded­i­cat­ed as it’s pos­si­ble to be—producing near­ly 900 can­vas­es and over 1,100 works on paper, and alter­ing the way we see the world, all while expe­ri­enc­ing severe­ly crip­pling bouts of depres­sion, anx­i­ety, and self doubt; hav­ing his neigh­bors ostra­cize and evict him from his home; and spend­ing most of his final year in an insti­tu­tion.

VG Head of a Skeleton

Sad­ly, he felt him­self a medi­oc­rity at best, a fail­ure at worst. As the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art writes, “in 1890,” the final year of his life, “he mod­est­ly assessed his artis­tic lega­cy as of ‘very sec­ondary’ impor­tance.” (This despite the appre­ci­a­tion he’d begun to receive from sev­er­al gallery show­ings.) The posthu­mous recep­tion of his work—ubiquitously repro­duced and admired by count­less throngs in exhib­it after exhibit—can do noth­ing now to lift his spir­its, but sure­ly vin­di­cates his prodi­gious effort. Van Gogh’s fame has had the unfor­tu­nate side effect of crowd­ing out many stu­dents of his art from gallery exhi­bi­tions. Yet this dif­fi­cul­ty need not now pre­vent them from sur­vey­ing and see­ing up close his huge body of work in dig­i­tal archives like that of the Van Gogh Muse­um in Ams­ter­dam, the largest Van Gogh col­lec­tion in the world.

VG Letter to Theo with Willow

By enter­ing the col­lec­tion, you can see, for exam­ple, Self Por­trait with Straw Hat, at the top, from 1887, or the strik­ing­ly sim­i­lar por­trait of his broth­er and staunch sup­port­er Theo from the same year, just below it. Fur­ther down is the dark­ly humor­ous Head of a Skele­ton With a Burn­ing Cig­a­rette from 1886, and just above, see an 1882 let­ter to Theo, with a beau­ti­ful sketch of a Pol­lard Wil­low, an image he com­mit­ted to can­vas that year. Just below, see an inter­est­ing exam­ple of the very begin­nings of Van Gogh’s posthu­mous canonization—an 1891 cov­er sketch and short trib­ute arti­cle in the French satir­i­cal mag­a­zine Les hommes D’Aujourd’hui.

VG Les Hommes cover

You can search or browse the col­lec­tion, and down­load and view these images, and many hun­dreds more paint­ings, sketch­es, draw­ings, let­ters, and much more, in res­o­lu­tion high enough to zoom in to every indi­vid­ual brush­stroke and ink pen flour­ish. Miss­ing from the expe­ri­ence is the three-dimen­sion­al­i­ty of Van Gogh’s heav­i­ly tex­tur­al paint­ing, but nowhere else will you have this lev­el of acces­si­bil­i­ty to so much of his work and life.

VG Head of a Woman

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­cent Van Gogh’s “The Star­ry Night”: Why It’s a Great Paint­ing in 15 Min­utes

Dis­cov­er the Only Paint­ing Van Gogh Ever Sold Dur­ing His Life­time

Vin­cent Van Gogh’s Final Paint­ing: Dis­cov­er Tree Roots, the Last Cre­ative Act of the Dutch Painter (1890)

Down­load Vin­cent van Gogh’s Col­lec­tion of 500 Japan­ese Prints, Which Inspired Him to Cre­ate “the Art of the Future”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC.

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1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die: Stream a Huge Playlist of Songs Based on the Bestselling Book

in Life, Music | February 10th, 2016

love supreme list of 1000 recordings

Image by Hayeur­JF, via Flickr Com­mons

Though the buri­als of ancient Egypt­ian rulers offer at least one notable excep­tion, near­ly all the world’s reli­gions have agreed on one thing—if one thing only: you can’t take your stuff with you. You can leave it to the local church, mosque, or syn­a­gogue, your heirs, a char­i­ty of your choice, your dog; but your mate­r­i­al pos­ses­sions will not go wher­ev­er you might when it’s over.



How­ev­er, should con­scious­ness some­how sur­vive the body, or get uploaded to a new one in some sci-fi future, per­haps you can take with you the expe­ri­ences, mem­o­ries, sen­sa­tions, and ideas you’ve accu­mu­lat­ed over a life­time. And if that’s the case, we should all be greedy for knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence rather than prop­er­ty and con­sumer goods. And the “1,000… Before You Die” series of books, might be con­sid­ered guides to curat­ing your after­life.

The series has rec­om­mend­ed 1,000 places to see, 1,000 foods to eat, and, in 2012, 1,000 record­ings to hear before you dent the buck­et. Musi­cian and crit­ic Tom Moon, author of 1,000 Record­ings to Hear Before You Die, has cre­at­ed a list that ranges far and wide, leav­ing seem­ing­ly no genre, region, or peri­od out: from gang­ster rap, to opera, to krautrock, to coun­try, to met­al, to blues, to Zim­bab­wean folk, to… well, you name it, it’s prob­a­bly in there some­where.

For all the songs, artists, and albums I might have added to my own ver­sion of such a list, I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to find on Moon’s such indie clas­sics as Bon­nie “Prince” Billy’s haunt­ing I See a Dark­ness, hard­core mas­ter­pieces as Bad Brains’ i against i, and sem­i­nal elec­tron­i­ca as Aphex Twin’s Select­ed Ambi­ent Works. These less well-known record­ings sit next to those of John Coltrane (see A Love Supreme fea­tured above), Mar­i­an Ander­son, Son House, Pat­sy Cline, The Bea­t­les, Bach, Brahms, and vir­tu­al­ly any­one else you might think of, and dozens more you would­n’t.

One would have a very hard time mak­ing a case that Moon has any par­tic­u­lar bias against one form of music or anoth­er. (See the com­plete list here, and browse by genre, title, or artist at the 1,000 Record­ings web­site, where you can read Moon’s com­men­tary on each selec­tion.) When it came to select­ing songs or albums from artists with embar­rass­ing­ly rich cat­a­logs, Moon told NPR that he went with his gut. “I didn’t want to have a stan­dard cri­te­ria,” he said, “With­in any giv­en artist, you could go 10 dif­fer­ent direc­tions.” Agree or dis­agree with his choic­es, but mar­vel at his breadth and inclu­sive­ness.

In the past, it would have tak­en you a life­time just to track down all of these record­ings, much less find time to lis­ten to all of them. Now, you can hear 793 tracks from Moon’s 1,000 picks in the Spo­ti­fy playlist above. (Brought to us by Ulysses Clas­si­cal; down­load Spo­ti­fy here if you need it). Spend the rest of your life not only mulling them over, but dis­cov­er­ing 1,000s more. Despite the title’s ref­er­ence to mor­tal­i­ty, and my some­what face­tious intro­duc­tion, Moon real­ly means his “Listener’s Life List,” as he calls it, to be a guide for living—and for becom­ing immersed in music in a pro­found­ly expan­sive way. (For this same pur­pose, I also thor­ough­ly endorse The Guardian’s series “1,000 Albums to Hear Before You Die,” and its read­er-sourced adden­da. If any­one cares to turn the Guardian list into a Spo­ti­fy playlist, we’ll fea­ture it here too.)

As Moon sum­ma­rizes his intent, “the more you love music, the more music you love.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Free Music from 150+ Clas­si­cal Com­posers, Cour­tesy of Musopen.org

1200 Years of Women Com­posers: A Free 78-Hour Music Playlist That Takes You From Medieval Times to Now

Music from Star Wars, Kubrick, Scors­ese & Tim Bur­ton Films Played by the Prague Phil­har­mon­ic Orches­tra: Stream Full Albums

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

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The Princeton Bitcoin Textbook Is Now Free Online

in Computer Science, e-books | February 10th, 2016

free princeton bitcoin textbook

Image by Jason Ben­jamin, via Flickr Com­mons

On the Free­dom to Tin­ker blog, Arvind Narayanan, a com­put­er sci­ence pro­fes­sor at Prince­ton, announced yes­ter­day:

The first com­plete draft of the Prince­ton Bit­coin text­book is now freely avail­able. We’re very hap­py with how the book turned out: it’s com­pre­hen­sive, at over 300 pages, but has a con­ver­sa­tion­al style that keeps it read­able.

If you’re look­ing to tru­ly under­stand how Bit­coin works at a tech­ni­cal lev­el and have a basic famil­iar­i­ty with com­put­er sci­ence and pro­gram­ming, this book is for you. Researchers and advanced stu­dents will find the book use­ful as well — start­ing around Chap­ter 5, most chap­ters have nov­el intel­lec­tu­al con­tri­bu­tions.

Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty Press is pub­lish­ing the offi­cial, peer-reviewed, pol­ished, and pro­fes­sion­al­ly done ver­sion of this book. It will be out this sum­mer. If you’d like to be noti­fied when it comes out, you should sign up here.

The Prince­ton Bit­coin text­book is already being used in Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ty class­rooms (includ­ing at Stan­ford) and it’s also the text that sup­ports a Prince­ton Bit­coin course being taught on Cours­era.

You can now find it added to our col­lec­tion of Free Text­books.

via Boing­Bo­ing

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Bit­coin, the New Decen­tral­ized Dig­i­tal Cur­ren­cy, Demys­ti­fied in a Three Minute Video

Harvard’s Free Com­put­er Sci­ence Course Teach­es You to Code in 12 Weeks

Cal­cu­lus Life­saver: A Free Online Course from Prince­ton

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Russian Superheroes: Artist Draws Traditional Russian Folk Heroes in a Modern Fantasy Style

in Comics/Cartoons | February 10th, 2016

A pho­to post­ed by amokrus (@amokrus) on

Where do super­heroes come from? The con­cept did­n’t just emerge ful­ly formed into the world when, say, Super­man showed up on the cov­er of Action Comics in 1938. Human­i­ty has enjoyed sto­ries of super­hu­man hero fig­ures since time immemo­r­i­al; you can find prece­dents for the super­hero deep in the mytholo­gies of a vari­ety of cul­tures. When the Russ­ian illus­tra­tor Roman Pap­suev looked deep into the mythol­o­gy of his own cul­ture, he found plen­ty of mate­r­i­al he could car­ry right over into a mod­ern visu­al idiom. And what with the cur­rent Game of Thrones-dri­ven wave of swords and sor­cery in the glob­al pop-cul­ture zeit­geist, he picked the right time indeed to pub­lish his elab­o­rate draw­ings of Russ­ian folk­lore heroes in the style of today’s high-fan­ta­sy com­ic books, movies, TV shows, and video games.

A pho­to post­ed by amokrus (@amokrus) on

“The first char­ac­ters were based on the author’s feel­ings and fan­tasies,” writes Daria Don­ina at Rus­sia Beyond the Head­lines. “He began, of course, with Ilya Muromets — the main Russ­ian epic hero and the strongest bogatyr or war­rior.” Then, “the more the author got immersed in the sub­ject, the more accu­rate his pic­tures became.

A pho­to post­ed by amokrus (@amokrus) on

He began to reread the tales and study the works of famous folk­lorists.” Don­ina quotes Pap­suev him­self: “ ‘What I like most is when peo­ple look at my pic­tures and then begin to read the tales and under­stand why, for instance, Vasil­isa the Beau­ti­ful has a doll in her bag or why Vodyanoy rides a giant cat­fish. This grass­roots revival of ancient folk­lore through my hum­ble project gives me great plea­sure.’ ”

A pho­to post­ed by amokrus (@amokrus) on

You can browse all of these illus­tra­tions and more at Pap­suev’s Insta­gram page, which includes not just fin­ished pieces but works in progress as well, so you can get an idea of just what sort of process it takes to ren­der a Russ­ian hero for the 21st cen­tu­ry. To a non-Russ­ian, this all may seem like sim­ply a neat art project, but any Russ­ian will rec­og­nize these char­ac­ters as cen­tral to a set of sto­ries them­selves cen­tral to the cul­ture. “The tales are stamped in the sub­con­scious from child­hood,” Pap­suev says in the Rus­sia Beyond the Head­line arti­cle, and as with any mate­r­i­al with which peo­ple grew up, any rein­ter­preter takes them into his own hands at his per­il.

A pho­to post­ed by amokrus (@amokrus) on

“This project has no rela­tion to real his­to­ry or real life,” says the artist. “These are just tales, trapped in a world of games. It’s a fun project. Don’t take it too seri­ous­ly.” But which enter­pris­ing Russ­ian devel­op­er, I won­der, will take it seri­ous­ly enough to go ahead and make an actu­al video game based on Pap­suev’s too-hero­ic-to-waste folk­loric char­ac­ters?

A pho­to post­ed by amokrus (@amokrus) on

Find more draw­ings at at Pap­suev’s Insta­gram page.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 650 Sovi­et Book Cov­ers, Many Sport­ing Won­der­ful Avant-Garde Designs (1917–1942)

Bat­man & Oth­er Super Friends Sit for 17th Cen­tu­ry Flem­ish Style Por­traits

The 1982 DC Comics Style Guide Is Online: A Blue­print for Super­man, Bat­man & Your Oth­er Favorite Super­heroes

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

 

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New App Lets You Explore Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights” in Virtual Reality

in Art | February 9th, 2016

Yes­ter­day, Col­in Mar­shall told you how you could take a Vir­tu­al Inter­ac­tive Tour Through Hierony­mus Bosch’s Mas­ter­piece “The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights,” thanks to this web­site.

Today, we dis­cov­ered that there’s also an app (designed for iPhone, iPad and Android) that lets you take a vir­tu­al real­i­ty trip through the very same paint­ing. Cre­at­ed as part of the 500th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion of Bosch’s life, the app–previewed in the trail­er above–lets you “ride on a fly­ing fish into a Gar­den of Eden, be tempt­ed by strange fruit and even stranger rit­u­als in the Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights. And vis­it hell and hear the devil’s music.”

The app is free. And you can explore parts of Bosch’s famous trip­tych at no cost. It will cost you a small fee–$3.99–to unlock the remain­ing part.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!



via The Cre­ator’s Project

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Bewil­der­ing Mas­ter­piece The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

 Walk Inside a Sur­re­al­ist Sal­vador Dalí Paint­ing with This 360º Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Video

Free Course: An Intro­duc­tion to the Art of the Ital­ian Renais­sance

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Iggy Pop Reads Walt Whitman in Collaborations With Electronic Artists Alva Noto and Tarwater

in Music | February 9th, 2016

whitman pop

Image of Iggy Pop by Patrick McAlpine, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

I don’t know why no one thought of this ages ago: an album of Walt Whitman’s poet­ry, set to moody, atmos­pher­ic elec­tron­ic music and read by for­mer Stooge and cur­rent Amer­i­can badass Iggy Pop. It makes per­fect sense. Though Pop may lack Whitman’s ver­bal excess­es, pre­fer­ring more Spar­tan punk rock state­ments, he per­fect­ly embodies—in a very lit­er­al way—Whitman’s fear­less, sex­u­al­ly-charged “bar­bar­ic yawp.” And both artists are very much Amer­i­can orig­i­nals: large­ly self-taught Whit­man cast aside 19th-cen­tu­ry deco­rum and for­mal con­straints to write wild­ly expres­sive verse that cel­e­brat­ed the body, the indi­vid­ual, and Amer­i­can indus­tri­al noise; self-taught Pop cast aside 20th cen­tu­ry rock for­mal­ism to cre­ate dan­ger­ous­ly expres­sive music that cel­e­brat­ed… well, you get the idea.

I don’t know if he would have writ­ten “Now I wan­na be your dog,” but in con­trast to “the pop­u­lar, well-edu­cat­ed poets of the time, those sen­si­tive noble­men,” Whit­man wrote—says Pop in his own dis­tinc­tive paraphrase—“Fuc% as$.” 

You know, I think he had some­thing like Elvis. Like Elvis ahead of his time, one of the first man­ic Amer­i­can pop­ulists. You know you’re look­ing at pic­tures of him, and he was obvi­ous­ly some­one who was very much involved with his own phys­i­cal appear­ance. His poet­ry is always about motion and rush­ing ahead, and crazy love and blood push­ing through the body. He would have been the per­fect gang­ster rap­per. Whit­man says, even the most beau­ti­ful face is not as beau­ti­ful as the body. And to say that in the mid­dle of the 19th cen­tu­ry is out­ra­geous. It’s a slap in the face. 

Of the many rock and roll inter­preters of lit­er­ary greats we’ve fea­tured on this site, I’d say Iggy Pop’s read­ing of, and com­men­tary on, Whit­man may be my favorite.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we can only bring you a short excerpt, above, from Pop’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with instru­men­tal duo Tar­wa­ter and Ger­man elec­tron­ic artist Alva Noto (who recent­ly scored Ale­jan­dro Iñárritu’s The Revenant with Yel­low Mag­ic Orchestra’s Ryuichi Sakamo­to). This two-minute sam­ple comes from a 2014 album these artists made togeth­er called Kinder Adams—Children of Adam, which fea­tures sev­er­al abridged ren­di­tions in Ger­man of Whitman’s most famous book, Leaves of Grass by var­i­ous voice actors, then a com­plete read­ing by Pop, set to a throb­bing, haunt­ing score.

Now, Pop, Alva Noto, and Tar­wa­ter have come togeth­er again to revis­it Whit­man with a sev­en-track EP sim­ply titled Leaves of Grass. Like the ear­ly, self-pub­lished first edi­tion of Whitman’s book, this work will only reach a few hands. “Released on Morr Music with no dig­i­tal ver­sion planned,” reports Fact Mag, “Leaves of Grass is only avail­able in a lim­it­ed vinyl edi­tion of just 500 copies, com­plete with embossed art­work.” You can pur­chase a copy of this arti­fact here (act fast), or—if you pre­fer your more tra­di­tion­al Iggy Pop with­out the lit­er­a­ture, moody, post-rock sound­scapes, and rar­efied formats—wait for his new album in March with Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme, sure to hit dig­i­tal out­lets near you. Whether or not he’s read­ing Whit­man, he’s always chan­nel­ing the poet­’s ener­gy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Iggy Pop Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s Clas­sic Hor­ror Sto­ry, “The Tell-Tale Heart”

Tom Waits Reads Two Charles Bukows­ki Poems, “The Laugh­ing Heart” and “Nir­vana”

Walt Whitman’s Poem “A Noise­less Patient Spi­der” Brought to Life in Three Ani­ma­tions

Orson Welles Reads From America’s Great­est Poem, Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” (1953)

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

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Claymation Film Recreates Historic Chess Match Immortalized in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

in Film, Games | February 9th, 2016

Fans of Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 2001: A Space Odyssey will remem­ber the scene: On a long jour­ney through space, astro­naut Frank Poole plays a casu­al game of chess with the HAL 9000 super­com­put­er … and los­es deci­sive­ly. No doubt about it. Watch it down below.

Pas­sion­ate about chess and noto­ri­ous­ly obsessed with detail, Kubrick based the scene on a chess match that took place in 1910, pit­ting the Ger­man chess­mas­ter Willi Schlage against a fel­low named A. Roesch. Whether Kubrick was per­son­al­ly famil­iar with the match, or sim­ply found it by perus­ing Irv­ing Chernev’s book The 1000 Best Short Games of Chess (p. 148), it’s not entire­ly clear. But what we do know is that Kubrick­’s scene immor­tal­ized the Schlage — Roesch match played all of those years ago. And it inspired ani­ma­tor Ric­car­do Cro­cetta to recre­ate that 1910 match in the fine clay­ma­tion above. The notes accom­pa­ny­ing Cro­cetta’s film on YouTube record all of the orig­i­nal moves. Appar­ent­ly the ones fea­tured in 2001 come after black­’s 13th move.

Game: 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. Qe2 b5 6. Bb3 Be7 7. c3 O‑O 8. O‑O d5 9. exd5 Nxd5 10. Nxe5 Nf4 11. Qe4 Nxe5 12. Qxa8 Qd3 13. Bd1 Bh3 14. Qxa6 Bxg2 15. Re1 Qf3 16. Bxf3 Nxf3#

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Wis­dom & Advice of Mau­rice Ash­ley, the First African-Amer­i­can Chess Grand­mas­ter

Vladimir Nabokov’s Hand-Drawn Sketch­es of Mind-Bend­ing Chess Prob­lems

Watch Bill Gates Lose a Chess Match in 79 Sec­onds to the New World Chess Cham­pi­on Mag­nus Carlsen

Mar­cel Duchamp, Chess Enthu­si­ast, Cre­at­ed an Art Deco Chess Set That’s Now Avail­able via 3D Print­er

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