The Science of Breaking Bad: Professor Donna Nelson Explains How the Show Gets it Right

in Science, Television | September 24th, 2013

There’s noth­ing fun­ny about the rav­ages of high­ly addic­tive nar­cotics or gang­land turf wars. Nev­er­the­less, Vince Gilligan’s riv­et­ing hit Break­ing Bad man­aged to start on a (yes, dark­ly) com­ic note that still sounds occa­sion­al­ly as the show hur­tles toward its fate­ful con­clu­sion this Sun­day. (Conan O’Brien has had a lot of fun with these moments in par­o­dies of the show’s char­ac­ters’ quirks and its some­times-grue­some desert absur­di­ties.)

What anchors the show, even when it veers into gal­lows humor, is its sense of authen­tic­i­ty. Despite Break­ing Bad’s theatrical—almost Shakespearean—plotting, Gilli­gan and his writ­ers have tak­en care to build a very believ­able scaf­fold­ing behind every out­ra­geous set piece, even when it comes to the sci­ence of per­fec­tion­is­tic chem­istry teacher Wal­ter White’s super high-qual­i­ty crys­tal metham­phet­a­mine. In order to get the sci­ence right, Gilli­gan approached Don­na Nel­son, Pro­fes­sor of Organ­ic Chem­istry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Okla­homa.

Nel­son doesn’t only con­sult on the nature of illic­it chem­i­cal com­pounds; she has also pro­vid­ed the show’s writ­ers with insights into the moti­va­tions and meth­ods of chemists and teach­ers. As Nel­son says, “to us who are edu­cat­ed in sci­ence, when­ev­er we see sci­ence pre­sent­ed inac­cu­rate­ly, it’s like fin­ger­nails on a black­board. It just dri­ves us crazy, and we can’t stay immersed in the show.” As a Break­ing Bad fan who is, I’ll be hon­est, large­ly chem­istry-illit­er­ate, I’d still cred­it some of my immer­sion to how real the sci­ence feels, a by-prod­uct, sure­ly, of how gen­uine it is. Watch Pro­fes­sor Nel­son in the video above, pro­duced by the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety, explain how the show cre­at­ed its illu­sions with the stuff of 100% real sci­ence.

Well, okay, it’s maybe more like 96%. As you might have sus­pect­ed, the sig­na­ture pow­der blue col­or of Walter’s prod­uct is pure dra­mat­ic inven­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Orig­i­nal Audi­tion Tapes for Break­ing Bad Before the Final Sea­son Debuts

The Break­ing Bad Theme Played with Meth Lab Equip­ment

Inside Break­ing Bad: Watch Conan O’Brien’s Extend­ed Inter­view with the Show’s Cast and Cre­ator

Down­load Free Online Chem­istry Cours­es

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

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Discover Thomas Jefferson’s Cut-and-Paste Version of the Bible, and Read the Curious Edition Online

in History, Religion | September 24th, 2013

TJ Bible 2

Had he lived dur­ing the Inqui­si­tion, Thomas Jef­fer­son would have been burned at the stake. His ideas about Jesus and Chris­tian­i­ty were far from ortho­dox. A prod­uct of the Enlight­en­ment, Jef­fer­son believed that every­thing, includ­ing reli­gion, should be exam­ined in the light of rea­son.

When Jef­fer­son exam­ined the Gospels he came away with a strong­ly divid­ed opin­ion. “I find many pas­sages of fine imag­i­na­tion, cor­rect moral­i­ty, and of the most love­ly benev­o­lence,” he wrote in an 1820 let­ter to William Short, “and oth­ers again of so much igno­rance, so much absur­di­ty, so much untruth, char­la­tanism, and impos­ture, as to pro­nounce it impos­si­ble that such con­tra­dic­tions should have pro­ceed­ed from the same being.”

As ear­ly as 1804, when he was still pres­i­dent, Jef­fer­son began sep­a­rat­ing “the dia­mond from the dunghill,” as he lat­er put it, to assem­ble his own ver­sion of the Bible. He con­tin­ued the project in earnest dur­ing his lat­er years at Mon­ti­cel­lo, por­ing over var­i­ous edi­tions in Greek, Latin, French and King James Eng­lish. He clipped the pas­sages he thought were gen­uine teach­ings of Jesus and past­ed them, in the four lan­guages side by side, onto pages.

In 1820 — six years before his death at the age of 83 — Jef­fer­son pro­duced a leather-bound, 84-page vol­ume titled The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, Extract­ed Tex­tu­al­ly From the Gospels in Greek, Latin, French & Eng­lish. Jef­fer­son elim­i­nat­ed every­thing in the Bible con­cern­ing mir­a­cles. He end­ed the Gospel sto­ry with the exe­cu­tion and bur­ial of Jesus, omit­ting the res­ur­rec­tion. The retained pas­sages, Jef­fer­son explained in an 1813 let­ter to John Adams, con­tain “the most sub­lime and benev­o­lent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.”

You can exam­ine and read Jef­fer­son­’s com­plete 1820 Bible online by vis­it­ing the Smith­son­ian Insti­tu­tion’s inter­ac­tive Web dis­play.

Repro­duc­tions of Jef­fer­son­’s Bible can be pur­chased online.

The images above come cour­tesy of The Smith­son­ian.

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Watch The Surreal 1960s Films and Commercials of Jim Henson

in Animation, Film | September 24th, 2013

Today marks the 77th anniver­sary of Jim Hen­son’s birth. To cel­e­brate the pup­peteer, film­mak­er, and Mup­pet inven­tor’s life and career, we offer here three of his ear­ly short works. Most of us know only cer­tain high-pro­file pieces of Hen­son’s oeu­vre: The Mup­pet Show, the Mup­pet movies, Sesame Street, or per­haps such pic­tures now much attend­ed on the camp revival cir­cuit as Labyrinth and The Dark Crys­tal. But even by the Mup­pet Show’s 1974 debut, Hen­son (1936–1990) had already put in decades devel­op­ing his dis­tinc­tive aes­thet­ic of pup­pets and pup­petry. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured the unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly vio­lent com­mer­cials he pro­duced for Wilkins Cof­fee between 1957 and 1961 and Lim­bo, the Orga­nized Mind, his sev­en­ties trip of a John­ny Car­son seg­ment. But unless you count your­self as a seri­ous Hen­son, fan, you prob­a­bly haven’t yet seen the likes of Mem­o­ries, The Paper­work Explo­sion, and Rip­ples. Cre­at­ing each of these shorts, the young Hen­son col­lab­o­rat­ed with pianist, jazz com­pos­er, and sound engi­neer Ray­mond Scott, now remem­bered as a pio­neer in mod­ern elec­tron­ic music.

The par­tic­u­lar sound of Scott, no stranger to scor­ing car­toons (we’ve by now heard it in every­thing from Looney Tunes to Ren and Stimpy to The Simp­sons), also suit­ed the sorts of visions Hen­son real­ized for his var­i­ous projects of the six­ties. Mem­o­ries, which plunges into a man’s mind as he remem­bers (with nar­ra­tion by Hen­son him­self) one par­tic­u­lar­ly pleas­ant after­noon near­ly ruined by a headache, appeared in 1967 as a con­tin­u­a­tion of Hen­son’s com­mer­cial career; the pain reliev­er Bufferin, you see, lit­er­al­ly saved the day. That same year, the com­mer­cial (and in form, almost mini-doc­u­men­tary) The Paper­work Explo­sion illus­trates the time- space‑, and labor-sav­ing advan­tages of IBM’s then-new word-pro­cess­ing sys­tem, the MT/ST. Rip­ples Hen­son and Scott put togeth­er for Mon­tre­al’s Expo 1967. It takes place, like Mem­o­ries and Lim­bo, inside human con­scious­ness: an archi­tect (Sesame Street writer-pro­duc­er Jon Stone) drops a sug­ar cube in his cof­fee, and its rip­ples trig­ger a mem­o­ry of throw­ing peb­bles into a pond, which itself sends rip­ples through a host of his oth­er poten­tial thoughts. You’ve got to watch to under­stand how Hen­son and Scott pulled this off; con­ve­nient­ly, they only take one minute to do it.

For more ear­ly works by Hen­son, see this Metafil­ter post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jim Henson’s Ani­mat­ed Film, Lim­bo, the Orga­nized Mind, Pre­sent­ed by John­ny Car­son (1974)

Jim Henson’s Orig­i­nal, Spunky Pitch for The Mup­pet Show

Jim Hen­son Pilots The Mup­pet Show with Adult Episode, “Sex and Vio­lence” (1975)

Jim Henson’s Zany 1963 Robot Film Uncov­ered by AT&T: Watch Online

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

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F. Scott Fitzgerald Tells His 11-Year-Old Daughter What to Worry About (and Not Worry About) in Life, 1933

in Letters, Literature | September 24th, 2013

f-scott-fitzgerald

Born 117 years ago today in St. Paul, Min­neso­ta, F. Scott Fitzger­ald, that some­what louche denizen—some might say inventor—of the “Jazz Age,” has been immor­tal­ized as the ten­der young man we see above: Prince­ton dropout, writer of The Great Gats­by, boozy com­pan­ion to beau­ti­ful South­ern belle flap­per Zel­da Sayre. Amidst all the glam­or­iza­tion of his best and worst qual­i­ties, it’s easy to for­get that Fitzger­ald was also the father of a daugh­ter, Frances Scott Fitzger­ald, who went on to have her own suc­cess­ful career as a writer. Unlike the chil­dren of some of Fitzgerald’s con­tem­po­raries, Frances thrived, which must be some tes­ta­ment to her father’s par­ent­ing (and to Zelda’s as well, though she alleged­ly hoped, like Daisy Buchanan, that her daugh­ter would become a “beau­ti­ful lit­tle fool”).

We get more than a hint of Fitzgerald’s father­ly char­ac­ter in a won­der­ful lit­tle let­ter that he sent to her in August of 1933, when Frances was away at sum­mer camp. Fitzger­ald, renowned for his extremes, coun­sels an almost Epi­cure­an mid­dle way—distilling, per­haps, hard lessons learned dur­ing his decline in the thir­ties (which he wrote of can­did­ly in “The Crack Up”). He con­cludes with a list of things for his daugh­ter to wor­ry and not wor­ry about. It’s a very touch­ing mis­sive that I look for­ward to shar­ing with my daugh­ter some day. I’ll have my own advice and sil­ly in-jokes for her, but Fitzger­ald pro­vides a very wise lit­er­ary sup­ple­ment. Below is the full let­ter, pub­lished in the New York Times in 1958. The typos, we might assume, are all sic, giv­en Fitzgerald’s pen­chant for such errors:

AUGUST 8, 1933
LA PAIX RODGERS’ FORGE
TOWSON, MATYLAND

DEAR PIE:

I feel very strong­ly about you doing duty. Would you give me a lit­tle more doc­u­men­ta­tion about your read­ing in French? I am glad you are hap­py– but I nev­er believe much in hap­pi­ness. I nev­er believe in mis­ery either. Those are things you see on the stage or the screen or the print­ed page, they nev­er real­ly hap­pen to you in life.

All I believe in in life is the rewards for virtue (accord­ing to your tal­ents) and the pun­ish­ments for not ful­fill­ing your duties, which are dou­bly cost­ly. If there is such a vol­ume in the camp library, will you ask Mrs. Tyson to let you look up a son­net of Shake­speare’s in which the line occurs Lilies that fes­ter smell far worse than weeds…

I think of you, and always pleas­ant­ly, but I am going to take the White Cat out and beat his bot­tom hard, six times for every time you are imper­ti­nent. Do you react to that?…

Half-wit, I will con­clude. Things to wor­ry about:

Wor­ry about courage
Wor­ry about clean­li­ness
Wor­ry about effi­cien­cy
Wor­ry about horse­man­ship…
Things not to wor­ry about:
Don’t wor­ry about pop­u­lar opin­ion
Don’t wor­ry about dolls
Don’t wor­ry about the past
Don’t wor­ry about the future
Don’t wor­ry about grow­ing up
Don’t wor­ry about any­body get­ting ahead of you
Don’t wor­ry about tri­umph
Don’t wor­ry about fail­ure unless it comes through your own fault
Don’t wor­ry about mos­qui­toes
Don’t wor­ry about flies
Don’t wor­ry about insects in gen­er­al
Don’t wor­ry about par­ents
Don’t wor­ry about boys
Don’t wor­ry about dis­ap­point­ments
Don’t wor­ry about plea­sures
Don’t wor­ry about sat­is­fac­tions
Things to think about:
What am I real­ly aim­ing at?
How good am I real­ly in com­par­i­son to my con­tem­po­raries in regard to:
(a) Schol­ar­ship
(b) Do I real­ly under­stand about peo­ple and am I able to get along with them?
© Am I try­ing to make my body a use­ful intru­ment or am I neglect­ing it?

With dear­est love,

Relat­ed Con­tent:

F. Scott Fitzger­ald Cre­ates a List of 22 Essen­tial Books, 1936

“Noth­ing Good Gets Away”: John Stein­beck Offers Love Advice in a Let­ter to His Son (1958)

Read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Sto­ry “May Day,” and Near­ly All of His Oth­er Work, Free Online

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

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The Recipes of Iconic Authors: Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, Roald Dahl, the Marquis de Sade & More

in Books, Food & Drink, K-12, Literature | September 24th, 2013

dahl-kitkat

It comes as no sur­prise that Roald Dahl, author of Char­lie and the Choco­late Fac­to­ry, pos­sessed a sweet tooth. Hav­ing daz­zled young read­ers with visions of Cav­i­ty-Fill­ing Caramels, Ever­last­ing Gob­stop­pers, and snozzber­ry-fla­vored wall­pa­per, Dahl’s can­dy of choice was the more pedes­tri­an Kit-Kat bar. In addi­tion to savor­ing one dai­ly (a lux­u­ry lit­tle Char­lie Buck­et could but dream of, pri­or to win­ning that most gold­en of tick­ets) he invent­ed a frozen con­fec­tion called “Kit-Kat Pud­ding.”

The orig­i­nal recipe is, appro­pri­ate­ly, sim­ple enough for a child to make. Stack as many Kit-Kats as you like into a tow­er, using whipped cream for mor­tar, then shove the entire thing into the freez­er, and leave it there until sol­id.

Book pub­li­cist and self-described lit­er­ary fan­girl Nicole Vil­leneuve does him one bet­ter on Paper and Salt, a food blog devot­ed to the recipes of icon­ic authors. Her re-imag­ined and renamed Frozen Home­made Kit-Kat Cake adds bit­ter­sweet choco­late ganache, replac­ing Dahl’s beloved can­dy bars with high qual­i­ty wafer cook­ies. It remains a pret­ty straight-for­ward prepa­ra­tion, not quite as deca­dent as the Mar­quis de Sade’s Molten Choco­late Espres­so Cake with Pome­gran­ate, but sure­ly more to Dahl’s lik­ing than Jane Austen’s Brown But­ter Bread Pud­ding Tarts would have been. (The author once wrote that he pre­ferred his choco­late straight.)

Vil­leneuve spices her entry with his­tor­i­cal con­text and anec­dotes regard­ing ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry can­dy mar­ket­ing, Dahl’s hatred of the Cad­bury Crème Egg, and his dog’s han­ker­ing for Smar­ties. Details such as these make Paper and Salt, which fea­tures plen­ty of savories to go with the sweet, a deli­cious read even for non-cooks.

Mean­while, dessert chefs unwill­ing to source their ingre­di­ents from Rite-Aid’s Hal­loween aisle might try Sylvia Plath’s Lemon Pud­ding Cakes (“Is it taboo to write about bak­ing and Sylvia Plath?” Vil­leneuve won­ders), C.S. Lewis’ Cin­na­mon Bour­bon Rice Pud­ding, Willa Cather’s Spiced Plum Kolache or Wal­lace Stevens’ Coconut Caramel Gra­ham Cook­ies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ernest Hemingway’s Favorite Ham­burg­er Recipe

Allen Ginsberg’s Per­son­al Recipe for Cold Sum­mer Borscht

How to Make Instant Ramen Com­pli­ments of Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion Direc­tor Hayao Miyza­ki

Ayun Hal­l­i­day  doc­u­ment­ed her own sweet tooth in Dirty Sug­ar Cook­ies: Culi­nary Obser­va­tions, Ques­tion­able Taste. Fol­low her @AyunHallliday

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Frida Kahlo Writes a Personal Letter to Georgia O’Keeffe After O’Keeffe’s Nervous Breakdown (1933)

in Art, Letters | September 23rd, 2013

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fridatoGeorgia

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Click for larg­er image

Impor­tant twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry painters, as every stu­dent of art his­to­ry learns, did­n’t tend to sail smooth­ly through exis­tence. Those even a lit­tle inter­est­ed in famed Mex­i­can self-por­traitist Fri­da Kahlo have heard much about the tra­vails both roman­tic and phys­i­cal she endured in her short life. But in this less­er-known instance, anoth­er artist suf­fered, and Kahlo offered the solace. Avail­able to view from Yale’s Bei­necke Rare Book & Man­u­script Library, we have here a let­ter Kahlo sent to Geor­gia O’Ke­effe, painter of blos­soms and south­west Amer­i­can land­scapes (and more besides), on March 1st, 1933. At that time, O’Ke­effe, who the year before had strug­gled and failed to com­plete a mur­al project for Radio City Music Hall on time, lived through the after­math of a ner­vous break­down which had hos­pi­tal­ized her (diag­no­sis: “psy­choneu­ro­sis”), sent her to no less remote a locale than Bermu­da to recu­per­ate, and pre­vent­ed her from paint­ing again until 1934.

Kahlo’s let­ter, sent from Detroit where her mural­ist hus­band Diego Rivera had tak­en a com­mis­sion for 27 fres­coes at the Insti­tute of the Arts, runs as fol­lows:

Geor­gia,

Was won­der­ful to hear your voice again. Every day since I called you and many times before months ago I want­ed to write you a let­ter. I wrote you many, but every one seemed more stu­pid and emp­ty and I torn them up. I can’t write in Eng­lish all that I would like to tell, espe­cial­ly to you. I am send­ing this one because I promised it to you. I felt ter­ri­ble when Sybil Brown told me that you were sick but I still don’t know what is the mat­ter with you. Please Geor­gia dear if you can’t write, ask Stieglitz to do it for you and let me know how are you feel­ing will you ? I’ll be in Detroit two more weeks. I would like to tell you every thing that hap­pened to me since the last time we saw each oth­er, but most of them are sad and you must­n’t know sad things now. After all I should­n’t com­plain because I have been hap­py in many ways though. Diego is good to me, and you can’t imag­ine how hap­py he has been work­ing on the fres­coes here. I have been paint­ing a lit­tle too and that helped. I thought of you a lot and nev­er for­get your won­der­ful hands and the col­or of your eyes. I will see you soon. I am sure that in New York I will be much hap­pi­er. If you still in the hos­pi­tal when I come back I will bring you flow­ers, but it is so dif­fi­cult to find the ones I would like for you. I would be so hap­py if you could write me even two words. I like you very much Geor­gia.

Frie­da

“Clear­ly Kahlo hoped for a deep­er friend­ship, or per­haps more, with O’Ke­effe, when she and Diego went to New York a few weeks lat­er,” writes Sharyn Rohlf­sen Udall in Carr, O’Ke­effe, Kahlo: Places of Their Own. “From there, she wrote to a friend on 11 April (by which time O’Ke­effe had gone to Bermu­da to con­va­lesce) that because of O’Ke­ef­fe’s ill­ness there had been no love­mak­ing between them that time. A boast­ful exag­ger­a­tion of their close­ness? Know­ing Kahlo’s predilec­tion for sex­u­al hyper­bole, this seems like­ly.”

via A Piece of Mono­logue, A Writer’s Rumi­na­tions

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Hand­writ­ing as Prac­ticed by Famous Artists: Geor­gia O’Keeffe, Jack­son Pol­lock, Mar­cel Duchamp, Willem de Koon­ing & More

The Real Geor­gia O’Keeffe: The Artist Reveals Her­self in Vin­tage Doc­u­men­tary Clips

Watch Mov­ing Short Films of Fri­da Kahlo and Diego Rivera at the “Blue House”

Fri­da Kahlo and Diego Rivera Vis­it Leon Trot­sky in Mex­i­co, 1938

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

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James Joyce’s “Dirty Letters” to His Wife (1909)

in Letters, Life, Literature | September 23rd, 2013

Writer and artist Alis­tair Gen­try once pro­posed a lec­ture series he called “One Eyed Mon­ster.” Cen­tral to the project is what Gen­try calls “the cult of James Joyce,” an exem­plar of a larg­er phe­nom­e­non: “the vul­ture-like pick­ing over of the cre­ative and mate­r­i­al lega­cies of dead artists.” “Untal­ent­ed and non­cre­ative peo­ple,” writes Gen­try, “are able to build last­ing careers from what one might call the Tal­ent­ed Dead.” Gentry’s judg­ment may seem harsh, but the ques­tions he asks are inci­sive and should give pause to schol­ars (and blog­gers) who make their liv­ings comb­ing through the per­son­al effects of dead artists, and to every­one who takes a spe­cial inter­est, pruri­ent or oth­er­wise, in such arti­facts. Just what is it we hope to find in artists’ per­son­al let­ters that we can’t find in their pub­lic work? I’m not sure I have an answer to that ques­tion, espe­cial­ly in ref­er­ence to James Joyce’s “dirty let­ters” to his wife and chief muse, Nora.

The let­ters are by turns scan­dalous, tit­il­lat­ing, roman­tic, poet­ic, and often down­right fun­ny, and they were writ­ten for Nora’s eyes alone in a cor­re­spon­dence ini­ti­at­ed by her in Novem­ber of 1909, while Joyce was in Dublin and she was in Tri­este rais­ing their two chil­dren in very strait­ened cir­cum­stances. Nora hoped to keep Joyce away from cour­te­sans by feed­ing his fan­tasies in writ­ing, and Joyce need­ed to woo Nora again—she had threat­ened to leave him for his lack of finan­cial sup­port. In the let­ters, they remind each oth­er of their first date on June 16, 1904 (sub­se­quent­ly memo­ri­al­ized as “Blooms­day,” the date on which all of Ulysses is set). We learn quite a lot about Joyce’s predilec­tions, much less about Nora’s, whose side of the cor­re­spon­dence seems to have dis­ap­peared. Declared lost for some time, Joyce’s first reply let­ter to Nora in the “dirty let­ters” sequence was recent­ly dis­cov­ered and auc­tioned off by Sotheby’s in 2004.

I do not excerpt here any of the lan­guage from Joyce’s sub­se­quent let­ters, not for modesty’s sake but because there is far too much of it to choose from. If those prud­ish cen­sors of Ulysses had read this exchange, they might have dropped dead from grave wounds to their sense of deco­rum. As far as I can ascer­tain, the let­ters exist in pub­li­ca­tion only in the out-of-print Select­ed Let­ters of James Joyce, edit­ed by pre-emi­nent Joyce biog­ra­ph­er Richard Ell­mann, and in a some­what trun­cat­ed form on this site. Alis­tair Gen­try has done us the favor of tran­scrib­ing the let­ters as they appear in Ellmann’s Select­ed Let­ters on his site here. Of our inter­est in them, he asks:

Does any­one have the right to read things that were clear­ly meant only for two spe­cif­ic peo­ple…? Now that they have been exposed to the world’s gaze, albeit in a fair­ly lim­it­ed fash­ion, does any­body except these two (who are dead) have any right to make objec­tions about or exer­cise con­trol over the man­ner in which these pri­vate doc­u­ments and records of inti­ma­cy are used?

Ques­tions worth con­sid­er­ing, if not answered eas­i­ly. Nev­er­the­less, despite his crit­i­cal mis­giv­ings, Gen­try writes: “These let­ters stand on their own as bril­liant and, dare I say, arous­ing Joycean writ­ing. In my opin­ion they’re def­i­nite­ly worth read­ing.” I must say I agree. Joyce’s broth­er Stanis­laus once wrote in a diary entry: “Jim is thought to be very frank about him­self but his style is such that it might be con­tend­ed that he con­fess­es in a for­eign language—an eas­i­er con­fes­sion than in the vul­gar tongue.” In the “dirty let­ters,” we get to see the great alchemist of ordi­nary lan­guage and expe­ri­ence prac­ti­cal­ly rev­el in the most vul­gar con­fes­sions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Joyce Plays the Gui­tar, 1915

On Blooms­day, Hear James Joyce Read From his Epic Ulysses, 1924

James Joyce, With His Eye­sight Fail­ing, Draws a Sketch of Leopold Bloom (1926)

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Down­load the Free Audio Book

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

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Trace Darwin’s Footsteps with Google’s New Virtual Tour of the Galapagos Islands

in Biology, Environment, Google | September 23rd, 2013

As famous­ly stud­ied as they are, the 18 Gala­pa­gos Islands haven’t been well mapped. And research in the Gala­pa­gos, sit­u­at­ed more than 500 miles west of Ecuador, is expen­sive and dif­fi­cult. Maybe that’s part of the islands’ allure—that and the stun­ning bio­di­ver­si­ty.

In part­ner­ship with the Charles Dar­win Foun­da­tion and Gala­pa­gos Nation­al Park, Google sent a team armed with Street View Trekker cam­eras to cre­ate an entire­ly new 360 degree Street View expe­ri­ence that makes three major islands, a frag­ile tor­toise breed­ing area and coastal areas, avail­able to vis­i­tors locat­ed any­where with an Inter­net con­nec­tion.

Dar­win made his first expe­di­tion to the islands 178 years ago. This might have been his first view of San Cristo­bal Island.

GalapagosApproach

After explor­ing San Cristobal’s rocky coast, Google trekkers made their way to Gala­pa­guera, a giant tor­toise breed­ing cen­ter, where they saw new­ly hatched babies and adults munch­ing on leaves and stalks.

Off the coast of Flo­re­ana Island, trekkers went under­wa­ter and caught images of seals play­ing in the water. They also shot images inside the Charles Dar­win Research Station’s ver­te­brate, inver­te­brate and plant col­lec­tions.

Google does a good job of doc­u­ment­ing its own process. Trekkers trav­eled to Gala­pa­gos in May and spent 10 days hik­ing, boat­ing, and div­ing. It’s fun to watch them climb and scoot around the islands loaded with a geo­des­ic cam­era back­pack.

Sci­en­tists get real­ly excit­ed when they find new tools to do their work. And why shouldn’t they? These islands are amaz­ing and are home to so many unique species, like the Marine Igua­na. We land­lub­bers may not get there any­time soon, but this is the next best thing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read the Orig­i­nal Let­ters Where Charles Dar­win Worked Out His The­o­ry of Evo­lu­tion

The Genius of Charles Dar­win Revealed in Three-Part Series by Richard Dawkins

Dar­win: A 1993 Film by Peter Green­away

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

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10th Graders Draw Pictures Imagining Philosophers at Work

in Architecture, Art | September 21st, 2013

philos at work 3The Tum­blr called Philoso­phers at Work has gath­ered togeth­er a fun series of draw­ings by 10th graders from Madi­son WI, who were asked by their teacher to  â€” you guessed it — “draw a philoso­pher at work.” I will leave it to you to peruse the gallery of draw­ings. But I’ll just say this: What­ev­er their virtues, the draw­ings don’t look any­thing like real philoso­phers. (For some pic­tures of real philoso­phers, see, of course, the Looks Philo­soph­i­cal tum­blr.) Nor do tenth graders, no dis­re­spect to them, depict philoso­phers near­ly as artis­ti­cal­ly as RenĂ©e Jor­gensen Bolinger, whose paint­ings of Wittgen­stein, Frege and Rus­sell we showed you a few weeks back. If you missed her paint­ings, I’d encour­age you to see Philoso­pher Por­traits: Famous Philoso­phers Paint­ed in the Style of Influ­en­tial Artists. Enjoy your week­end.

philosophers at work

Note: if you click on the images above and below, you can see each in an expand­ed for­mat.

via Leit­er Reports

Relat­ed Con­tent:

10 Famous Philoso­phers in Words and Images

Pho­tog­ra­phy of Lud­wig Wittgen­stein Released by Archives at Cam­bridge

Phi­los­o­phy: Free Cours­es

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy … With­out Any Gaps

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William S. Burroughs Explains What Artists & Creative Thinkers Do for Humanity: From Galileo to CĂ©zanne and James Joyce

in Art | September 20th, 2013

The inter­view clip above, from the 1991 doc­u­men­tary Com­mis­sion­er of Sew­ers, puts a two-part ques­tion to Naked Lunch author, “cut-up writ­ing” mas­ter, and coun­ter­cul­ture emi­nence William S. Bur­roughs: “What is the orig­i­nal feel of the writer? What mech­a­nisms should he con­sid­er, work on?” That may sound like a slight­ly odd line of inquiry — the inter­view­er, bear in mind, does­n’t speak Eng­lish native­ly â€” but Bur­roughs responds with an impor­tant point, clear­ly made. “The word should should nev­er arise,” he first insists, though per­haps self-con­tra­dic­to­ri­ly. “There is no such con­cept as should in regard to art — or any­thing — unless you spec­i­fy. If you’re try­ing to build a bridge, then you can say we should do this and we should do that, with respect to get­ting a bridge built, but it does­n’t float in a vac­u­um.” All well and good for engi­neer­ing. But what can art do, if not build a bridge?

“One very impor­tant aspect of art is that it makes peo­ple aware of what they know and what they don’t know that they know,” Bur­roughs says. “This applies to all cre­ative think­ing. For exam­ple, peo­ple on the sea coast in the mid­dle ages knew the Earth was round. They believed the Earth was flat because the church said so. Galileo tells them the Earth was round, and near­ly was burned at the stake for say­ing so.”

Bur­roughs sum­mons as exam­ples CĂ©zanne, whose stud­ies of what “objects look like seen from a cer­tain angle and in a cer­tain light” at first made view­ers think “he’d thrown paint on can­vas,” and Joyce, who “made peo­ple aware of their stream of con­scious­ness, at least on a ver­bal lev­el,” but “was first accused of being unin­tel­li­gi­ble.” Yet Bur­roughs found he lived in a world where, this art already hav­ing expand­ed human­i­ty’s con­scious­ness, “no child would have any dif­fi­cul­ty in see­ing a CĂ©zanne” and few “would have any dif­fi­cul­ty with Ulysses. The artist, then, expands aware­ness. Once the break­through is made, this becomes part of the gen­er­al aware­ness.” Such insight makes Bur­roughs, as one Youtube com­menter puts it, “so down-to-earth that he’s far-out.”

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:

When William S. Bur­roughs Joined Sci­en­tol­ogy (and His 1971 Book Denounc­ing It)

Com­mis­sion­er of Sew­ers: A 1991 Pro­file of Beat Writer William S. Bur­roughs

William S. Bur­roughs on the Art of Cut-up Writ­ing

William S. Bur­roughs’ Short Course on Cre­ative Read­ing

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

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What Was Your First Live Concert? We’ll Show You Ours, Share Yours.

in Music | September 20th, 2013

I’m gonna tell you some­thing. Most of my life I’ve been a snob. A music snob. I know, peo­ple like me can suck the fun out of a five-year-old’s birth­day par­ty. But I wasn’t always such a twist­ed killjoy. For a cou­ple years of my life, between the ten­der ages of 11 and 13, I was a wide-eyed naĂŻf, groov­ing to what­ev­er late eight­ies R&B pow­er bal­lad rap hits hap­pened to come on the radio, and it all sound­ed pret­ty good to me. Sure, I should’ve known better—I grew up folk and blues and gold­en age rock and roll. But that was my par­ents’ music. To para­phrase Mor­ris­sey, it had noth­ing to say about my life.

No, in that excru­ci­at­ing­ly earnest yet also oh-so painful­ly awk­ward way, the first band I believed spoke to me was INXS. Yes, that’s right, those ridicu­lous Aussie are­na rock­ers whose tum­ble from cheesy to mor­bid­ly tawdry to Real­i­ty TV we all know so well. At 13, I was con­vinced that Michael Hutchence was my gen­er­a­tion’s Jim Mor­ri­son. And so one night in March, dressed in a sleeve­less INXS t‑shirt, ripped jeans and high-top sneak­ers, my hair teased into some kind of Prince-like pom­padour, I told my par­ents I was going to a sleep­over. Instead, I rode with a few neigh­bor­hood friends to the Patri­ot Cen­ter at George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty, the tick­et I’d had a bud­dy’s old­er broth­er buy with the last of my paper route mon­ey tucked neat­ly into the fold of my black Vel­cro INXS wal­let. I mount­ed the stairs to a sec­tion so high that our view of the stage looked like a Georges Seu­rat up close, all dis­ori­ent­ing lit­tle col­ored dots.

But I was there, man, in the throng, in the thick of a rock and roll show, hear­ing the hits blare across acres of scream­ing heads. And it was mag­i­cal. Not very long after, I would turn to hard­er stuff, become jad­ed and crusty and look back with dis­dain on the smooth sounds of INXS. But that feel­ing then… stand­ing there amidst those crowds, almost every­one old­er than me, wob­bling in the haze of sur­rep­ti­tious pot smoke and the slight­ly nau­se­at­ing high of cheap beer drunk fast in an old mus­cle car… I had arrived. I told my par­ents about this years lat­er, when the statute of lim­i­ta­tions ran out. And they laughed. And so did I. Because, c’mon. It’s INXS. Then again, watch­ing the footage above from 1988, the same year I saw them at 13, I have to admit that they don’t sound half bad. But good­ness, those out­fits. Prob­a­bly for the best I couldn’t actu­al­ly see them on the stage back then.

So there’s my sto­ry, read­ers, inspired by this Metafil­ter thread. Now that I’ve told you mine, please tell me yours. What was your very first con­cert? There’s no shame here, friends. Only nos­tal­gia. Extra points to those who pro­vide links to live con­cert footage.

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

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