Le Monde has called Life and Fate “the greatest Russian novel of the twentieth century,” and Martin Amis once described its author, Vasily Grossman, as “the Tolstoy of the USSR.” Now, if you haven’t read the novel, you can begin to understand the reason for all of the high praise.
Starting this week, the BBC will air an eight-hour dramatization of the masterpiece that offered a sweeping account of the siege of Stalingrad, one of the bloodiest battles of World War II. Although originally written in 1959, the book was officially censored in the Soviet Union until 1988 because, in the estimation of the apparatchiks, it threatened to do more harm to the USSR than Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago.
If you’re not familiar with The Westboro Baptist Church, it’s a hate group seemingly masquerading as a religious organization based in Topeka, Kansas. It has only 71 members, mostly from the same family, and they’re known for tastelessly traveling across the U.S. and protesting against homosexuality and gay rights at the funerals of fallen U.S. soldiers. A logical connection, right?
In late August, the “church” brought its members to Kansas City to protest at the Foo Fighters concert, citing the band’s support of “fornication, adultery, idolatry and fags.” And the band didn’t back down. Dave Grohl & Co. sang a mocking version of a homoerotic tune Keep It Clean (above), all while wearing the same trucker garb they had worn in a NSFW video to promote their “Hot Buns” tour. The “Hot Buns” video (below) was shot around the same time, seemingly also to tweak the Westboro clan. Watch the censored version below, and the uncensored version here.
Here’s what a little time and creativity brings. James Drake, a professor of Physics at U. Maryland, downloaded 600 images from The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth, stitched them into a marvelous 60 second time-lapse film, then posted it on his Tumblr blog, Infinity Imagined, along with this description of what the viewer sees:
A time-lapse taken from the front of the International Space Station as it orbits our planet at night. This movie begins over the Pacific Ocean and continues over North and South America before entering daylight near Antarctica. Visible cities, countries and landmarks include (in order) Vancouver Island, Victoria, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles. Phoenix. Multiple cities in Texas, New Mexico and Mexico. Mexico City, the Gulf of Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula, Lightning in the Pacific Ocean, Guatemala, Panama, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and the Amazon. Also visible is the Earth’s ionosphere (thin yellow line) and the stars of our galaxy.
It’s a wonderful long-distance view of our great planet. But it’s not the only one out there. Some of our other favorites include:
Touring the Earth from Space (in HD) – Video — Give NASA 7 minutes, and they’ll show you the Earth’s most impressive landscapes (including a giant hurricane) as seen from space.
Earthrise in HD – Video — In November 2007, Japan’s Kaguya spacecraft orbited the moon and captured the first HD footage of an “earthrise” and “earthset.” Stunning to see.
A Day on Earth (as Seen From Space) – Video – Astronaut Don Pettit trained his camera on planet Earth, took a photo once every 15 seconds, and then created a brilliant time-lapse film. Very similar to what you see above.
This week marked the eight anniversary of Johnny Cash’s death. Google didn’t give Johnny a doodle, unlike Freddie Mercury earlier this month. However the Googlers did create a special theme for their Chrome browser based on The Johnny Cash Project. And they announced it on Monday Night Football earlier this week. (Watch the commercial above.)
As you may recall, The Johnny Cash Project was launched as a global art initiative to honor the legacy of the influential singer. The project asked fans to use a custom drawing tool to create personal portraits of Johnny. Then, the images were integrated into a music video set to “Ain’t No Grave,” the first track on the album released posthumously in February, 2010. The clip right above brings you inside the making of the crowdsourced video. The end result can be viewed right here.
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After the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb in August, 1949, American anxiety levels ran higher. The fear of nuclear war was in the air. And a young generation of Americans soon got its introduction to Duck and Cover, the little technique that would save lives if the U.S. ever endured a Hiroshima-style bombing. Or so it was believed.
In 1951, the US government, working with Archer Productions and students from Queens, NY, produced a short instructional film given the no-frills title Duck and Cover. Shown to millions of children nationwide over many years, the film became a centerpiece of the government’s emergency preparedness program. Since then, the film has been entered into the National Film Registry (2004) and has inspired various parodies, including this recent goof from the “Australian Board of Civil Defence.” Hope you get something from this nostalgia-inducing piece of film.…
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Long before anyone started talking about “green” or “sustainability,” Jack Nicholson put his money and star power behind a new alternative energy — solar-powered hydrogen. The year was 1978, and solar hydrogen, a limitless resource, promised to lower energy costs and pollution levels, all at once. Fast forward 30+ years, and we know one thing: hydrogen Chevys never saw the light of day … until 2007.
This clip has been added to our collection of 275 Cultural Icons, where you’ll find great artists and thinkers speaking in their own words, mostly on video. The collection includes footage of Tolstoy and Twain and, of course, more contemporary figures.
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We told you about the book earlier this year, and now it’s just about here. Set for release on October 4th, The Magic of Realitywill be unlike any book written by Richard Dawkins before. It is illustrated for starters, and largely geared toward young and old readers alike. Perfect, he says, for anyone 12 and up. When it comes to the structure and gist of the book, Dawkins does a pretty good job of explaining things. So let’s let the video roll…
Note: If you’re willing to tweet about the book, you can view the first 24 pages of The Magic of Reality here.
Earlier this summer, the good folks at The Word assembled 40 Noises That Built Pop, a collection of distinctive pop music sounds that have “caused your ears to prick up, or your eyebrows to raise.” Some were originally created in quite calculated ways. Others were happy accidents. Either way, theses sounds are now part of the pop tradition. We have highlighted four sounds that speak to us. But you should really dive into and enjoy The Word’s collection that was clearly put together with loving care.
The Power Chord from The Kinks: You Really Got Me (1964)
“It’s the essential building block of rock; the root and the fifth of the chord played at substantial volume on guitar and distorted to taste. It’s also the musical equivalent of the poker face; with just the two notes, it’s neither a sunny-sounding major chord nor a gloomy minor… Without the power chord entire genres of metal simply wouldn’t exist.”
Vinyl Scratch from Herbie Hancock: Rockit (1983)
“Any DJ cueing up a record through one ear of a pair of headphones will have heard the sound of scratching, but it wasn’t until the early days of hip hop that it was incorporated into musical performance… Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa and Kool Herc became the pioneers of “turntablism”, while Grand Mixer DXT’s work on Rockit propelled the sound into the mainstream and transformed the DJ into an unlikely frontman.”
Handclap from Kool & The Gang: Ladies Night (1979)
“As a percussive sound, [the handclap has] been used by everyone from flamenco dancers to Steve Reich, but it was in the mid-1970s when it found its true calling. Layered on top of the snare drum to emphasise the second and fourth beats of the bar, its formidable “crack” can be heard throughout disco and funk, and has since been employed by anyone wishing to hint at a party atmosphere…”
Guitar Feedback from Gang Of Four: Anthrax (1981)
“A classic case of rock music taking an undesirable noise and moulding it to suit its own purposes. The reason for feedback is simple: the guitar pickup “hears” itself being blasted out of a speaker cabinet, processes the sound and passes it to the speaker: noise piled upon noise. As rock music became less polite, more liberties were taken with feedback; while there’s an unintentional burst at the front end of I Feel Fine by The Beatles, the outro to The Who’s My Generation uses the sound more creatively.”
Iran had a rich tradition of filmmaking before the Revolution of 1979, when the fundamentalists burned cinemas and shut down productions. But, by the late 80s, the clerics warmed up to cinema again and a filmmaking renaissance got underway. Then, in 1997, the whole world took notice when Abbas Kiarostami won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Taste of Cherry. Nowadays, Iranian films show up regularly at film festivals worldwide.
Getting inside the vibrant Iranian film scene hasn’t been terribly easy, especially for Americans. Blame that on politics. But last year, the folks behind the Vice Guide to Film traveled to Tehran and put together a reportage on Iranian cinema past and present. It runs 23 minutes and overturns a few stereotypes along the way. Definitely worth a watch.
Note: According to our Twitter friends, the film should be viewable around the world. We only encountered one exception — Canada. So we offer our apologies in advance to Canadian viewers. You can find us on Twitter here.
Two scientific fields find themselves under attack in the United States. Evolutionary biology and climatology. No matter what the science shows, no matter how great the evidence, evangelicals dismiss the whole idea of evolution, and our free market dogmatists, operating under the assumption that “the business of America is business,” reject conclusions accepted by 98% of climate scientists — that human activities are warming the planet. Especially when it comes to climate change, we put dogma before science at our own peril. And that’s why The Reality Climate Project, led by Al Gore, is hosting today and tomorrow an online program called 24 Hours of Reality. Here’s what it’s all about:
24 Presenters. 24 Time Zones. 13 Languages. 1 Message. 24 Hours of Reality is a worldwide event to broadcast the reality of the climate crisis. It will consist of a new multimedia presentation created by Al Gore and delivered once per hour for 24 hours, representing every time zone around the globe. Each hour people living with the reality of climate change will connect the dots between recent extreme weather events — including floods, droughts and storms — and the manmade pollution that is changing our climate. We will offer a round-the-clock, round-the-globe snapshot of the climate crisis in real time. The deniers may have millions of dollars to spend, but we have a powerful advantage. We have reality.
Click here to find the location — or locations — where you would like to watch a presentation.
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