Jon Stewart’s William & Mary Commencement Address: The Entire World is an Elective

in Comedy, Graduation Speech, Life, Television | July 4th, 2012

In 1984, Jon Stew­art grad­u­at­ed from The Col­lege of William & Mary. In 1999, he began host­ing Com­e­dy Cen­tral’s news pro­gram The Dai­ly Show. In 2004, he returned to his alma mater, immea­sur­ably more influ­en­tial than he’d left it, to give its com­mence­ment address. Despite a dat­ed crack or two — this was the hey­day of George W. Bush, the Pres­i­dent who arguably gave Stew­art’s Dai­ly Show per­sona both its foil and rai­son d’être — the speech’s core remains sound. You, Stew­art tells the massed grad­u­ates, have the pow­er to become the next “great­est gen­er­a­tion,” though the chance appears espe­cial­ly clear and present because of how the last gen­er­a­tion “broke” the world. “It just kind of  got away from us,” he half-jokes, his grin com­pressed by seri­ous­ness. That admis­sion fol­lows a stream of self-dep­re­ca­tion hit­ting every­thing from his ten­den­cy toward pro­fan­i­ty to his unusu­al­ly large head as an under­grad­u­ate to how his pres­ence onstage deval­ues William & Mary’s very rep­u­ta­tion.

Whether or not you find the world bro­ken, or whether or not you believe that a gen­er­a­tion could break or fix it, Stew­art still packs a num­ber of worth­while obser­va­tions about the place into fif­teen min­utes. He per­haps deliv­ers his most valu­able words to these excit­ed, anx­ious school-leavers when he con­trasts the world to the aca­d­e­m­ic envi­ron­ment they’ve just left: “There is no core cur­ricu­lum. The entire place is an elec­tive.” Stew­art com­mu­ni­cates, as many com­mence­ment speak­ers try to but few do so clear­ly, that you can’t plan your way direct­ly to suc­cess in life, what­ev­er “suc­cess” might mean to you. He cer­tain­ly did­n’t. “If you had been to William and Mary while I was here and found out that I would be the com­mence­ment speak­er 20 years lat­er, you would be some­what sur­prised,” he admits. “And prob­a­bly some­what angry.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Conan O’Brien Kills It at Dart­mouth Grad­u­a­tion

Jon Stew­art: Teach­ers Have it Too Good (Wink)

‘This Is Water’: Com­plete Audio of David Fos­ter Wallace’s Keny­on Grad­u­a­tion Speech (2005)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

 

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Andy Griffith (1926–2012) Gives a Lesson on the American Revolution

in History, Television | July 4th, 2012

As we roll into the 4th of July hol­i­day, let’s take a nos­tal­gic look back at Andy Grif­fith as he tells the sto­ry of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion on his clas­sic 1960s TV pro­gram, “The Andy Grif­fith Show.” Grif­fith died Tues­day at the age of 86. In the eight years “The Andy Grif­fith Show” was broadcast–from 1960 to 1968–Griffith was a humane and ratio­nal pres­ence in Amer­i­can homes. His char­ac­ter, Sher­iff Andy Tay­lor, was sur­round­ed by eccentrics yet always man­aged to keep things in per­spec­tive, embody­ing what the show’s pro­duc­er, Aaron Ruben, once described as “this Lin­col­nesque char­ac­ter.” It’s a fit­ting phrase, and a good way to remem­ber Grif­fith as we enjoy the hol­i­day.

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Andy Warhol and Salvador Dalí in Classic 1968 Braniff Commercials: ‘When You Got It, Flaunt It!’

in Art, Business, Television | July 3rd, 2012


One of the scari­est things about air trav­el is the seat­ing assign­ment. You nev­er know who you’ll end up next to. This clas­sic 1968 adver­tis­ing cam­paign from Bran­iff Inter­na­tion­al Air­ways lets you imag­ine what it would be like to find your­self elbow-to-elbow with Andy Warhol and Sal­vador Dalí.

In the com­mer­cial above, Warhol tries to explain the inher­ent beau­ty of Cam­bel­l’s Soup cans to heavy­weight box­er Son­ny Lis­ton. Below, Dalí and major league base­ball pitch­er Whitey Ford com­pare notes on the knuck­le­ball ver­sus the screw­ball. The com­mer­cials were part of Bran­if­f’s ambi­tious “End of the Plain Plane” rebrand­ing cam­paign, which com­plete­ly revamped the com­pa­ny’s stodgy image. Adver­tis­ing exec­u­tive Mary Wells Lawrence hired archi­tect and tex­tile design­er Alexan­der Girard to redesign every­thing from air­plane fuse­lages to ash trays. Ital­ian fash­ion design­er Emilio Puc­ci cre­at­ed flam­boy­ant uni­forms for the stew­ardess­es, or “Bran­iff girls.” And in 1968 Lawrence brought in art direc­tor George Lois to over­see the “When You Got It, Flaunt It!” adver­tis­ing cam­paign for print and tele­vi­sion.

Lois lat­er said he came up with the slo­gan before the celebri­ties were cast. In addi­tion to the Warhol/Liston and Dalí/Ford pair­ings, the cam­paign includ­ed ads with anoth­er odd cou­ple: pulp writer Mick­ey Spillane and poet Mar­i­anne Moore. In an inter­view with the New York Dai­ly News ear­li­er this year, Lois remem­bered that Warhol had trou­ble with his lines. “Andy had to say, ‘When you got it, flaunt it.’ But I end­ed up hav­ing to dub his voice. Lat­er, after I sent him a copy of all the com­mer­cials, he told me that he said the line bet­ter than any­body.” The ads were a prod­uct of Lois’s gut-instinct approach to adver­tis­ing. “Those ads,” he said in anoth­er inter­view, “would have total­ly bombed in ad tests. As things turned out, it tripled their busi­ness.”

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New Crowdfunding Site, Unglue.It, Releases Books Stuck in Publishing Limbo

in Books, e-books | July 3rd, 2012

When Ruth Finnegan pub­lished Oral Lit­er­a­ture in Africa in 1970, she was award­ed an Order of the British Empire for her exhaus­tive and pio­neer­ing research on the his­to­ry of sto­ry­telling in Africa. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the book was so expen­sive that it was large­ly out of reach for African read­ers.

Now it’s out of print, but the book and many of the audio record­ings Finnegan made in her research will soon be avail­able through unglue.it, a kick­starter-style cam­paign to release out-of-print books.

Unglue.it raised $7,578 from 259 supporters—mostly in the library world—to make the book avail­able “on any device, in any for­mat, for­ev­er.” The mon­ey will help off­set the costs of pro­duc­ing the e‑book and a dig­i­tal archive of record­ings and pho­tographs tak­en dur­ing Finnegan’s field­work. In addi­tion to the ebook, the pub­lish­er, Open Book Pub­lish­ers, will pro­duce free, down­load­able pdf edi­tions of the work.

Unglue.it has three oth­er titles in fundrais­ing mode:  Love Like Gum­bo by Nan­cy Rawles, a set of young read­er books and the auto­bi­og­ra­phy 6–321 by Michael Laser. Using the kick­starter-style mod­el, Unglue.it is try­ing to raise an agreed-upon fair licens­ing fee to release the books under Cre­ative Com­mons licens­ing, com­plete­ly lib­er­at­ed from dig­i­tal rights man­age­ment tech­nol­o­gy.

Books are cho­sen by the crowd too. At the moment A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy tops the wish list.

Kate Rix is an Oak­land-based free­lance writer. Check out her work at .

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NASA & Grateful Dead Drummer Mickey Hart Record Cosmic Sounds of the Universe on New Album

in Music, Science | July 3rd, 2012

Yes­ter­day we fea­tured UC San­ta Cruz’s new Grate­ful Dead Archive Online. There you’ll find a wealth of mate­ri­als about the band from their incep­tion in 1965 until their dis­band­ment in 1995. But over the past 17 years, the sur­viv­ing mem­bers of the Dead have pur­sued all sorts of fas­ci­nat­ing projects, musi­cal and oth­er­wise. Mick­ey Hart, the group’s drum­mer between 1967 and 1971 and again between 1974 to the end, has put out a par­tic­u­lar­ly unusu­al new album that takes its basic mate­ri­als from the heav­ens. As both a musi­cian and musi­col­o­gist, Hart has estab­lished a prece­dent for such son­ic exper­i­ments. Craft­ing his 1989 album Music to Be Born By, he record­ed his yet-unborn son’s heart­beat with­in the womb — the most nat­ur­al of all per­cus­sion, you might say — and record­ed tracks on top of it. For his lat­est record, Mys­teri­um Tremen­dum, he lis­tened not to the core of a human being but as far in the oth­er direc­tion from human­i­ty as pos­si­ble, col­lect­ing and com­pos­ing with “cos­mic sounds” made in out­er space.

To make music like this, you need some unusu­al col­lab­o­ra­tors. Hart went to NASA, Penn State, and the Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry, work­ing with sci­en­tists like George Smoot, win­ner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics with John C. Math­er. They helped con­vert light, radio waves, and oth­er elec­tro­mat­ic radi­a­tion into sound waves that Hart and his band could put to musi­cal use. After get­ting a sam­ple of the result­ing extrater­res­tri­al grooves in the videos above, you might con­sid­er lis­ten­ing to this recent inter­view with Hart on KQED’s Forum. Why go to all the trou­ble of sam­pling the bil­lons-of-years-old sounds of the infi­nite uni­verse? Because the Big Bang, Hart thinks, marked the very first beat. “Four words: it’s the rhythm, stu­pid,” he explains. “That’s what I always say to any­one, and myself as well. It all goes back to that. We are rhythm machines, embed­ded in a uni­verse of rhythm.” Spo­ken like a true drum­mer.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Sound­track of the Uni­verse

UC San­ta Cruz Opens a Deadhead’s Delight: The Grate­ful Dead Archive is Now Online

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.


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Amelia Earhart: In Her Own Words

in History | July 2nd, 2012

It was 75 years ago today that Amelia Earhart van­ished. The famous Amer­i­can fli­er and her nav­i­ga­tor, Fred Noo­nan, took off on July 2, 1937 from Lae, Papua New Guinea in a cus­tom-made Lock­heed Elec­tra 10E air­plane on the most per­ilous leg of their attempt­ed round-the-world jour­ney.

Their goal was to reach tiny How­land Island in the cen­tral Pacif­ic Ocean, more than 2,500 miles from Lae. As Earhart and Noo­nan neared the end of their 20-hour flight (it was still July 2–they had crossed the Inter­na­tion­al Date­line) they planned to make con­tact with the U.S. Coast Guard cut­ter Itas­ca, sta­tioned just off the island, and use radio sig­nals to guide their way in. How­land Island is only a half mile wide and a mile and a half long. The com­mu­ni­ca­tions crew of the Itas­ca heard sev­er­al radio trans­mis­sions from Earhart, but for some rea­son she and Noo­nan were appar­ent­ly unable to hear the ship’s respons­es. “We must be on you,” Earhart said, “but we can­not see you. Fuel is run­ning low. Been unable to reach you by radio. We are fly­ing at 1,000 feet.” They nev­er made it.

The pre­vail­ing assump­tion is that Earhart and Noo­nan sim­ply ran out of fuel and crashed into the Pacif­ic. But there is some evi­dence to sug­gest they may have made it to Gard­ner Island (now called Niku­maro­ro), some 350 nau­ti­cal miles south­east of How­land. Tomor­row an expe­di­tion to Niku­maro­ro will set out from Hawaii on a mis­sion to explore the ocean floor around the small island, search­ing for evi­dence of Earhart’s plane. Expe­di­tion orga­niz­ers hope to final­ly solve the mys­tery. In the mean­time you can learn more about Earhart’s extra­or­di­nary achieve­ments, includ­ing her tri­umphant 1932 solo trans-Atlantic flight, by lis­ten­ing to Earhart her­self (above) in a fas­ci­nat­ing news­reel. And below you can watch the very last footage of Earhart, made as she and Noo­nan took off from Papua New Guinea on that fate­ful day exact­ly 75 years ago.

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The History of Philosophy Visualized

in Philosophy | July 2nd, 2012

Simon Rap­er at Drunks & Lamp­posts has com­posed a data visu­al­iza­tion of the rela­tions of influ­ence among philoso­phers. This was put togeth­er to demon­strate Rap­er’s data extrac­tion algo­rithm; he col­lect­ed the con­tents of all the “influ­enced by” fields on Wikipedia, dis­play­ing each philoso­pher as a node con­nect­ed to all oth­er philoso­phers that he or she influ­enced. The more con­nec­tions, the big­ger the node. The result is visu­al­ly fas­ci­nat­ing and an inter­est­ing touch­stone for phi­los­o­phy fans.

Who was more impor­tant, Edmund Husserl or Jean-Paul Sartre? Well, you may not have heard of Husserl, but the size of his node is a bit big­ger than Sartre’s, so accord­ing to the graph, he’s had more of an influ­ence on the pro­fes­sion. The fact that Husser­l’s hey­day was thir­ty years ear­li­er than Sartre’s may explain that fact, but as Mark De Sil­va at the New York Times Opin­ion­ater points out, it’s also unclear how well these “influ­enced by” rela­tions in Wikipedia cor­re­late with real influ­ences in the his­to­ry of phi­los­o­phy. Rap­er’s graph seems to pro­vide an excel­lent start for pon­der­ing the ques­tion. More graphs by his­tor­i­cal peri­od can be found here.

Mark Lin­sen­may­er appears on The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast, offer­ing live­ly, in-depth intro­duc­tions to Husserl, Sartre, and many oth­er fig­ures in phi­los­o­phy.

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A History of Rock ‘n’ Roll in 100 Riffs

in Music | July 2nd, 2012

Give the tal­ent­ed Alex Chad­wick 12 min­utes, and he’ll give you A Brief His­to­ry of Rock ‘n’ Roll, with each defin­ing moment rep­re­sent­ed by a famous gui­tar riff. Our jour­ney starts in 1953, with “Mr. Sand­man” by Chet Atkins. Pret­ty soon, and quite seam­less­ly, we get to The Bea­t­les and The Rolling Stones, Hen­drix and Led Zep­pelin, Queen and The Ramones, and even­tu­al­ly some more con­tem­po­rary pair­ings — Green Day and White Stripes. The video is spon­sored by the Chica­go Music Exchange, a store spe­cial­iz­ing in vin­tage gear, like the $32,995 1958 Fend­er Strat played in the clip. A full list of riffs appears below the jump.

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.

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Look­ing for free, pro­fes­­sion­al­­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

 

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UC Santa Cruz Opens a Deadhead’s Delight: The Grateful Dead Archive is Now Online

in Archives, Internet Archive, Music | July 2nd, 2012

“They’re not the best at what they do,” said respect­ed rock pro­mot­er Bill Gra­ham of the Grate­ful Dead. “They’re the only ones that do what they do.” The band devel­oped such an idio­syn­crat­ic musi­cal style and per­son­al sen­si­bil­i­ty that their legion of devot­ed fans, known as “Dead­heads,” tend­ed to fol­low them every­where they toured. The Dead with­stood more than their fair share of clas­sic-rock tur­bu­lence in the thir­ty years from their for­ma­tion in 1965, but did­n’t dis­solve until the 1995 death of found­ing mem­ber and unof­fi­cial front­man Jer­ry Gar­cia. The bereft Dead­heads, still in need of a con­stant flow of their eclec­tic, impro­vi­sa­tion­al, psy­che­del­ic-tra­di­tion­al, jam-inten­sive sound of choice, took a few dif­fer­ent paths: some began fol­low­ing oth­er, com­pa­ra­ble groups; some would go on to rely on acts formed by ex-Dead mem­bers, like Bob Weir and Phil Lesh’s Furthur; some made it their life’s mis­sion to col­lect every­thing in the band’s incom­pa­ra­bly vast col­lec­tion of demos, live record­ings, and son­ic mis­cel­lany.

Grate­ful Dead com­pletists now have anoth­er source of solace in the Grate­ful Dead Archive Online from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San­ta Cruz. Lest you assume your­self Dead-savvy enough to have already seen and heard every­thing this archive could pos­si­bly con­tain, behold the new­ly added item fea­tured on the front page as I type this: Jer­ry Gar­ci­a’s Egypt­ian tour lam­i­nate. Accord­ing to the press release, the archive’s inter­net pres­ence fea­tures “near­ly 25,000 items and over 50,000 scans” from the uni­ver­si­ty’s phys­i­cal archive, includ­ing “works by some of the most famous rock pho­tog­ra­phers and artists of the era, includ­ing Herb Greene, Stan­ley Mouse, Wes Wil­son and Susana Mill­man.” Rest assured that it offers plen­ty of non-obscu­ran­tist Dead-relat­ed plea­sures, includ­ing tele­vi­sion appear­ances, radio broad­casts, posters, and fan record­ings of con­certs. Like any rich sub­ject, the Grate­ful Dead pro­vides its enthu­si­asts a life­time of mate­r­i­al to study. UC San­ta Cruz, a school often asso­ci­at­ed in the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion with the Dead­’s greater San Fran­cis­co Bay Area ori­gins as well as their pen­chant for laid-back good times, has just made it that much eas­i­er to plunge into.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Van Mor­ri­son, Jef­fer­son Air­plane & The Grate­ful Dead: Watch Clas­sic Con­certs from Wolfgang’s Vault

Free Grate­ful Dead Con­cert Archive

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

 

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Evolver: A Darwinist Reimagination of The Beatles’ 1966 album

in Music, Science | July 2nd, 2012

The Evolver T‑Shirt, it’s the per­fect gift for the sci­ence believin’ Bea­t­les fan.  It’s obvi­ous­ly a play on The Bea­t­les’ great 1966 album Revolver. And, over at Boing­Bo­ing, Mark Frauen­felder asked read­ers to rethink the titles of var­i­ous songs on the album — to imag­ine them in evo­lu­tion­ary terms. Here are some of the cre­ative sug­ges­tions:

Tax­man = Macaques, Man

And Your Bird Can Sing = And Your Chimp Can Swing

I’m Only Sleep­ing = I’m Only Simi­an

Doc­tor Robert = Doc­tor Fos­sey

I Want to Tell You = I Want to Groom You

Tomor­row Nev­er Knows = Too Many Bono­bos

Per­son­al­ly, I think “Tomor­row Nev­er Knows” could stay just as it is. Does­n’t it already cap­ture the Dar­win­ian spir­it in its own way?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­tage Lit­er­ary T‑Shirts

Darwin’s Per­son­al Library Goes Dig­i­tal: 330 Books Online

Dar­win: A 1993 Film by Peter Green­away

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William Shatner Sings O Canada (and Happy Canada Day)

in Television | July 1st, 2012

There’s some­thing time­less about William Shat­ner. The man hard­ly looks his age — 81 — though syn­thet­ic enhance­ments prob­a­bly have some­thing to do with it. And he has­n’t lost his gift for shtick. Back in the 1960s, Shat­ner began talk-singing his way through var­i­ous songs. Per­haps you’ll recall his ren­di­tion of “Lucy in the Sky with Dia­monds” record­ed in 1968, which we recent­ly fea­tured on our list of The 15 Worst Cov­ers of Bea­t­les Songs Ever. A good four decades lat­er, the tra­di­tion con­tin­ues. For Cana­da Day, eh, we have the Shat recit­ing the nation­al anthem, O Cana­da, is his inim­itable way. The clip was record­ed in 2011 when Canada’s Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al gave Shat­ner a Life­time Achieve­ment Award. Thanks to Denise for the tip.

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