High School Student Talks Symbolism with 75 Big Authors (1963)

in Literature, Writing | December 8th, 2011

Let’s let The Paris Review give you the back­sto­ry:

In 1963, a six­teen-year-old San Diego high school stu­dent named Bruce McAl­lis­ter sent a four-ques­tion mimeo­graphed sur­vey to 150 well-known authors of lit­er­ary, com­mer­cial, and sci­ence fic­tion. Did they con­scious­ly plant sym­bols in their work? he asked. Who noticed sym­bols appear­ing from their sub­con­scious, and who saw them arrive in their text, unbid­den, cre­at­ed in the minds of their read­ers? When this hap­pened, did the authors mind?

Of the 150 authors McAl­lis­ter solicit­ed, 75 wrote back, and most offered the young­ster some sub­stan­tive thoughts. Over at The Paris Review, you will find replies by Jack Ker­ouac, Ayn Rand (above), Ralph Elli­son, Ray Brad­bury, John Updike, Saul Bel­low, and Nor­man Mail­er. Not bad for a kid who sent out a form let­ter … and nev­er both­ered to send a thank-you let­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Paris Review Inter­views Now Online

Down­load 20 Pop­u­lar High School Books Avail­able as Free eBooks & Audio Books

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The Dark Knight: Anatomy of a Flawed Action Scene

in Film | December 8th, 2011

There are many ways to make a movie, says film crit­ic Jim Emer­son, and many ways to make a mess.

The truck chase scene from Christo­pher Nolan’s 2008 film The Dark Knight is frankly a mess, as Emer­son demon­strates in a fas­ci­nat­ing video essay (above) pro­duced as the first in a three-part series on the lan­guage of action sequences for the Indiewire blog Press Play. “We notice laps­es in visu­al log­ic whether our brains reg­is­ter them con­scious­ly or not,” writes Emer­son. “I found this scene utter­ly baf­fling the first time I saw it, and every sub­se­quent time. At last, I now know exact­ly why.”

After study­ing the sequence shot by shot he real­ized that Nolan had vio­lat­ed fun­da­men­tal rules of film gram­mar. You can fol­low along as Emer­son, a Seat­tle-based crit­ic who writes the Scan­ners film blog for the Chica­go Sun-Times, sorts out the con­fu­sion. (There is an accom­pa­ny­ing anno­tat­ed tran­script on Scan­ners.) And be sure to watch Emer­son­’s fol­low-up essays (below) which offer shot-by-shot analy­ses of action scenes that are clear­ly intel­li­gi­ble.

In Part II of his series (above), Emer­son breaks down the high­way chase scene from Phillip Noyce’s 2010 film, Salt. The sequence is easy to fol­low because Noyce is care­ful to estab­lish the spa­tial rela­tion­ships between the var­i­ous ele­ments, both with­in the frame and between shots. Writes Emer­son:

There are cer­tain direc­tors I think of as “one-thing-at-a-time” film­mak­ers. That is, they seem to be inca­pable of com­pos­ing shots that have more than one piece of infor­ma­tion in them at a time. This makes for a very flat, rather plod­ding style. You see what the cam­era is point­ed at in each shot, but you get very lit­tle sense of per­spec­tive when it comes to relat­ing it to oth­er ele­ments in the scene. Noyce’s tech­nique is much more flu­id, organ­ic and sophis­ti­cat­ed. He keeps things from one shot vis­i­ble in the next, even when shift­ing perspective–whether it’s only a few feet or clear across sev­er­al lanes of traf­fic.

In Part III (above), Emer­son revis­its clas­sic chase scenes from three films: Don Siegel’s The Line­up (1958), Peter Yates’s Bul­litt (1968) and William Fried­kin’s The French Con­nec­tion (1971). In each case the direc­tor takes you on a chaot­ic, bumpy ride–but nev­er los­es you.

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Life-Affirming Talks by Cultural Mavericks Presented at The School of Life

in Life, Philosophy | December 8th, 2011

Since the late 1990′s, Alain de Bot­ton has been break­ing down dif­fi­cult philo­soph­i­cal and lit­er­ary ideas and see­ing how they apply to people’s every­day lives. He did this with his 1997 best­seller, How Proust Can Change Your Life. And he took things a step fur­ther with his tele­vi­sion series called Phi­los­o­phy: A Guide to Hap­pi­ness.

Then, in the sum­mer of 2008, de Bot­ton and some col­leagues set up The School of Life, a Lon­don-based insti­tu­tion that offers cours­es “in the impor­tant ques­tions of every­day life,” in areas we all tend to care about: careers, rela­tion­ships, pol­i­tics, trav­els, fam­i­lies, etc. The school also hosts a series of “Sun­day Ser­mons” that fea­ture “mav­er­ick cul­tur­al fig­ures” talk­ing about the virtues they cling to, and the vices to be wary of.

Today, we’re fea­tur­ing sev­er­al of these ser­mons. Above, the actress, writer, and direc­tor Miran­da July takes an off­beat and endear­ing look at strangers, and the role they play in our lives. Then come some notable men­tions:

Physi­cist Lawrence Krauss on Cos­mic Con­nec­tions. (Also don’t miss this oth­er unre­lat­ed but splen­did talk by Krauss.)

Author Rebec­ca Sol­nit on Hope.

And Alain de Bot­ton him­self on the impor­tance of defy­ing pes­simism.

Again, you can find the full list of ser­mons orga­nized chrono­log­i­cal­ly here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

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Philosophy in Prison: Weighty Conversations about Right and Wrong

in Life, Philosophy | December 7th, 2011

When not found­ing tech com­pa­nies, Damon Horowitz teach­es phi­los­o­phy through the Prison Uni­ver­si­ty Project, bring­ing col­lege-lev­el class­es to inmates of San Quentin State Prison. In three min­utes, Horowitz raps about phi­los­o­phy meet­ing real life — about how pris­on­ers con­vict­ed of seri­ous crimes come to terms with Socrates (who fin­ished his days in prison), Hei­deg­ger, Kant, cat­e­gor­i­cal imper­a­tives, ques­tions of right and wrong, and the rest. The “talk” was orig­i­nal­ly pre­sent­ed at TED 2011 last March.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Free Cours­es from Famous Philoso­phers: From Bertrand Rus­sell to Michel Fou­cault

Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er (1971)

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps

Bertrand Rus­sell & Oth­er Big Thinkers in BBC Lec­ture Series (Free)

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Can Ants Count? Do They Have Built-In Pedometers? Animated Video Explains

in Animation, Video - Science | December 7th, 2011

Saha­ran desert ants are known to wan­der great dis­tances in search of food. Twist­ing and turn­ing on their way, the ants man­age to return to their nests along sur­pris­ing­ly direct paths. They sense direc­tion using light from the sky, but how do they judge dis­tance? By count­ing steps, appar­ent­ly.

As Nation­al Pub­lic Radio sci­ence cor­re­spon­dent Robert Krul­wich explains in this engag­ing lit­tle car­toon, a group of Ger­man and Swiss sci­en­tists have dis­cov­ered that by manip­u­lat­ing the stride of the ants halfway through their trip–by either length­en­ing or short­en­ing their legs–the ants would invari­ably over­shoot or under­shoot their return des­ti­na­tion. As Prince­ton biol­o­gist James Gould told NPR, “These ani­mals are fooled exact­ly the way you’d expect if they were count­ing steps.”

The exper­i­men­tal results were orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in 2006. You can lis­ten to Krul­wich’s radio report on the research here.

via Phi­los­o­phy Mon­key

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ant Archae­ol­o­gy

Fire Ants Cre­ate Life Raft in 100 Sec­onds Flat

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Ryan Adams Live at the Ed Sullivan Theatre (Free Pass)

in Music | December 7th, 2011

The Live on Let­ter­man con­cert series has brought you Peter Gabriel, Cold­play and Wilco (click to watch con­certs), and now it returns with Ryan Adams play­ing solo at the Ed Sul­li­van The­atre in New York city. Dur­ing the 70-minute con­cert record­ed Mon­day night, Adams per­formed “Lucky Now” from his new album Ash­es and Fire, plus some fan favorites “Oh My Sweet Car­oli­na” and “New York, New York.” Enjoy, and don’t miss Adams on his tour that kicks off Thurs­day in Boston.

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The Seven Wonders of the Microbe World

in Video - Science | December 7th, 2011

This video has been removed at the request of open uni­ver­si­ty.

After pro­duc­ing 60 Sec­ond Adven­tures in Thought and The His­to­ry of Eng­lish, the Open Uni­ver­si­ty returns with a new video series, Sev­en Won­ders of the Microbe World.

Microbes have giv­en us some dev­as­tat­ing dis­eases, every­thing from the Black Death to cholera, syphilis, typhoid and the occa­sion­al yeast infec­tion. But our micro­bial friends have also done us some good. With­out microbes, we would­n’t have wine and beer (some­thing the Ancient Egyp­tians start­ed pro­duc­ing some 6,000 years ago), nor much oxy­gen and fix­at­ed nitro­gen, all essen­tial for plant, ani­mal and human life. And don’t for­get antibi­otics, fine cheeses and the rest.

You can watch the Sev­en Won­ders of the Microbe World in sev­en install­ments on YouTube (see list below) or via iTunes. Or, sim­ply sit back and watch the 25 minute con­sol­i­dat­ed video (above) that brings it all togeth­er for you.

1. The His­to­ry of Beer
2. The Black Death
3. Food Preser­va­tion
4. Nitro­gen Fix­a­tion
5. Antibi­otics
6. Genet­ic Engi­neer­ing
7. Life on Mars

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Animated Video Shows Curiosity, NASA’s Mars Rover, in Dramatic Action

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | December 6th, 2011

In late Novem­ber, NASA’s Curios­i­ty, the world’s biggest extrater­res­tri­al rover, began rock­et­ing toward Mars (see pho­tos of the launch here) in search of any hint that the red plan­et might have pro­vid­ed a home for micro­scop­ic life. The Curios­i­ty will even­tu­al­ly reach Mars in August after cov­er­ing 345 mil­lion miles. Ear­li­er this year, an artist released a rather dra­mat­ic ani­ma­tion depict­ing key moments in the mis­sion — the voy­age, the land­ing (don’t miss this part!), the explo­ration, and all of the rest. It’s anoth­er can­di­date for our col­lec­tion of Great Sci­ence Videos.

via Coudal.com

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.