Amazing Human-Powered Helicopter Closes in on $250,000 Prize

in Technology | October 24th, 2012

A team of stu­dent engi­neers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land are clos­ing in on the Amer­i­can Heli­copter Soci­ety’s $250,000 Siko­rsky Prize, which has remained unclaimed for over thir­ty years. The require­ments of the prize sound sim­ple enough. The win­ner must build and demon­strate a human-pow­ered heli­copter that can lift off the ground ver­ti­cal­ly and hov­er for one minute, reach­ing a height of three meters (about 10 feet) with­out drift­ing from a 10-square-meter area. But as this video from the NPR “Radio Pic­tures” series explains, those para­me­ters test the lim­its of light-weight air­craft design. After four years of tri­al and error, the Mary­land team has sat­is­fied two of the three require­ments. In one recent flight they kept their heli­copter, the Gam­era II, in the air for a world-record 65 sec­onds while stay­ing with­in the required 10-meter area–but only reach­ing a height of two feet. In short­er flights they’ve approached the 10 foot goal. To learn more about the project you can read and lis­ten to Adam Cole’s sto­ry at NPR, “Human-Pow­ered Heli­copter: Straight Up Dif­fi­cult.”

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New Animated Film Tells the Life Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman

in Comedy, Film | October 24th, 2012

John Cleese, Eric Idle, Ter­ry Jones, Ter­ry Gilliam, and Michael Palin have all entered their late six­ties and ear­ly sev­en­ties in rea­son­able pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Gra­ham Chap­man, how­ev­er, “self­ish­ly dropped dead in 1989,” thus tak­ing on the offi­cial title of “the dead one from Mon­ty Python.” That comes straight from the press mate­ri­als pro­mot­ing A Liar’s Auto­bi­og­ra­phy: The Untrue Sto­ry of Mon­ty Python’s Gra­ham Chap­man, the high­ly non­tra­di­tion­al biopic that recent­ly made its debut in the Unit­ed King­dom. The elab­o­rate pro­duc­tion com­mand­ed the visu­al tal­ents of no few­er than four­teen sep­a­rate ani­ma­tion stu­dios and the vocal tal­ents of no few­er than five Pythons, Chap­man him­self includ­ed. Short­ly before his pass­ing, Chap­man record­ed him­self read­ing the text of his auto­bi­og­ra­phy A Liar’s Auto­bi­og­ra­phy (Vol­ume VI), and that audio track pro­vides the basis of the ver­i­ta­ble kalei­do­scope of aes­thet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ties and lev­els of comedic taste you can glimpse in the trail­er above. Oh, and the film’s in 3D.

The notion that a tale like Chap­man’s life demands a pack of tellers has a prece­dent in the book, which famous­ly cred­its five authors: Chap­man him­self, his part­ner David Sher­lock, The Hitch­hik­er’s Guide to the Galaxy mas­ter­mind Dou­glas Adams, crime writer David Yal­lop, and Alex Mar­tin. Those at all famil­iar with Chap­man should feel pleased to see rep­re­sent­ed in the trail­er a seem­ing­ly appro­pri­ate mix­ture of har­row­ing for­ma­tive wartime expe­ri­ence, sex­u­al adven­ture, obvi­ous fab­ri­ca­tion, and sheer drunk­en­ness — and that does­n’t yet take into account all that Mon­ty Python busi­ness. The trail­er’s final moments cred­it its absur­di­ty-lov­ing, pipe-smok­ing sub­ject with call­ing A Liar’s Auto­bi­og­ra­phy “the best movie I’ve been in since I died.” That takes it out of com­pe­ti­tion with the beloved Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail and Mon­ty Python’s Life of Bri­an in which Chap­man liv­ing­ly starred, but it still looks like a for­mi­da­ble effort. And the sur­viv­ing Pythons might tell you, it’d sure­ly hold its own against Yel­low­beard.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

Mon­ty Python Live at the Hol­ly­wood Bowl: The Com­e­dy Clas­sic

Alan Watts and His Zen Wis­dom Ani­mat­ed by Cre­ators of South Park

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

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Helen Keller Pays a Visit to Martha Graham’s Dance Studio Circa 1954

in History | October 24th, 2012

Helen Keller’s sto­ry is remark­able. With the help of Anne Sul­li­van, Keller (1880–1968) escaped from a “dou­ble dun­geon of dark­ness and silence” and achieved great things. In 1904, she grad­u­at­ed from Rad­cliffe Col­lege (now Har­vard), becom­ing the first deaf blind per­son to earn a B.A. in the U.S..  She went on to write 14 books (a few more than the rest of us) and cham­pi­oned impor­tant polit­i­cal caus­es. A rad­i­cal at heart, she backed wom­en’s suf­frage and birth con­trol move­ments, helped found the ACLU, urged paci­fism, and railed against cap­i­tal­ism. She count­ed many world lead­ers and cul­tur­al lumi­nar­ies as friends, palling around with fig­ures like Char­lie Chap­lin and Mark Twain. And then there’s the time she paid a vis­it to the dance stu­dio of Martha Gra­ham and gained a tac­tile intro­duc­tion to mod­ern dance. The nar­ra­tor describes the mem­o­rable scene fair­ly well. But, if you want more back­sto­ry and pho­tos, you should head over to Brain­Pick­ings to get the big­ger pic­ture.

Relat­ed Must-See Video: Helen Keller and Anne Sul­li­van Togeth­er in 1930

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Tune into Allen Ginsberg’s Poetry Teaching Marathon (Free Streaming Audio)

in Poetry | October 23rd, 2012

 

Def­i­nite­ly worth a quick heads up: The folks who run PennSound, the poet­ry audio archive at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, have been stream­ing a marathon of Allen Gins­berg’s poet­ry class­es, all record­ed at the Naropa Insti­tute dur­ing the 1970s and 1980s. If you ever won­dered how the finest poet of the Beat Gen­er­a­tion taught poet­ry, now is your chance to find out. But don’t dil­ly-dal­ly around. The marathon will like­ly wrap up by Wednes­day or Thurs­day. Find the audio stream here.

via @SteveSilberman via Poet­ry Foun­da­tion

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Allen Gins­berg Reads His Clas­sic Beat Poem, Howl

Bob Dylan and Allen Gins­berg Vis­it the Grave of Jack Ker­ouac (1979)

‘The Bal­lad of the Skele­tons’: Allen Ginsberg’s 1996 Col­lab­o­ra­tion with Philip Glass and Paul McCart­ney

 

 

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Richard Linklater’s Slacker, the Classic Gen‑X Indie Film

in Film | October 23rd, 2012

Think back to the Amer­i­can inde­pen­dent film boom (some­times known as “indiewood”) of the nineties. Which of that time’s fresh-faced auteurs strike you as impor­tant? Which of their first fea­tures retain their impact? Quentin Taran­ti­no’s Reser­voir Dogs, cer­tain­ly; Kevin Smith’s Clerks, which sum­moned a vast fan cul­ture out of nowhere; Robert Rodriguez’s much-dis­cussed “$7,000 movie” El Mari­achi; Steven Soder­bergh’s con­cept-prov­ing Sex, Lies, and Video­tape, per­haps the bell­wether of the entire move­ment. But you may under­es­ti­mate Richard Lin­klater’s low-key debut Slack­er at your per­il.

He con­struct­ed the 1991 film (avail­able to view on YouTube) as a series of set pieces — some irrev­er­ent, some mean­der­ing, and some bizarre, but most all of them with stealth­ily uni­ver­sal res­o­nance — tak­ing place across the col­lege town of Austin, Texas. Dou­glas Cou­p­land hav­ing coined the term “Gen­er­a­tion X” with his epony­mous nov­el less than four months before, the North Amer­i­can zeit­geist had come to take seri­ous, if smirk­ing, notice of all these slouchy twen­tysome­things who seemed to turn up with­out warn­ing, spout­ing end­less streams of ideas, the­o­ries, wise­cracks, and elab­o­rate plans, yet drained of any­thing rec­og­niz­able as ambi­tion. These slack­ers, as we now call them with­out hes­i­ta­tion, make up the drama­tis per­sonæ of Slack­er. You can see them in their own pecu­liar type of action by watch­ing the pic­ture free online.

The first slack­er to appear, a deeply con­flict­ed motor­mouth in the back seat of a taxi, comes played by Lin­klater him­self. He seems nor­mal enough, essen­tial­ly an aim­less late-twen­tysome­thing you still meet in cof­fee shops today. But as the cam­era drifts from block to block, from neigh­bor­hood to Austin neigh­bor­hood, pick­ing up on any low-momen­tum sto­ry it can, behav­iors turn stranger. A book­store clerk who lives for JFK con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries log­or­rhe­ical­ly describes his own book-in-progress on the sub­ject to a help­less acquain­tance. A skin­ny stu­dent type liv­ing in a room crammed with tele­vi­sions and even wear­ing one on back claims des­per­a­tion to own yet anoth­er set. Two fel­lows egg a third on to throw a type­writer off a bridge and thus sym­bol­i­cal­ly final­ize a breakup. And let us nev­er for­get the immor­tal seg­ment where­in But­t­hole Surfers drum­mer Tere­sa Tay­lor attempts to sell what she describes as a “Madon­na pap smear.” Like the ear­ly films of Taran­ti­no, Smith, and Rodriguez, Slack­er remains thrilling­ly fun to watch, espe­cial­ly for the enthu­si­ast of micro-bud­get cin­e­ma. But some­where around its final pas­sage, which begins when a slack­er picks up the Pix­elvi­sion cam­era through which we our­selves see the next few min­utes, you real­ize you’ve been watch­ing some­thing on a high­er plane. Forced to bet which of the films of this move­ment schol­ars will rel­ish enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly a cen­tu­ry from now, I’d bet on Slack­er, which has now beed added to our ever-expand­ing list, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

My Best Friend’s Birth­day, Quentin Tarantino’s 1987 Debut Film

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

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Ray Bradbury Appears with Groucho Marx on You Bet Your Life (1955)

in Books, Literature, Television | October 23rd, 2012

In 1955, Ray Brad­bury paid a vis­it to Grou­cho Marx’s icon­ic game show You Bet Your Life. Brad­bury, then 35 years old, had already pub­lished some of his now clas­sic works. But appar­ent­ly Fahren­heit 451 and The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles had­n’t made their way onto Grou­cho’s read­ing list. When Marx asked Brad­bury what he did for a liv­ing, Brad­bury had to clar­i­fy things. “I’m a writer. W‑r-i-t-e‑r.” Not a “rid­er” of motor­cy­cles or ponies. Per­haps it was a seri­ous exchange. Per­haps it was all part of a script­ed joke. Either way, it’s a great clip from the increas­ing­ly dis­tant past. You can watch the com­plete episode here.

For more Brad­bury clas­sic, spend time with:

Ray Brad­bury Gives 12 Pieces of Writ­ing Advice to Young Authors (2001)

Ray Brad­bury: Lit­er­a­ture is the Safe­ty Valve of Civ­i­liza­tion

Ray Brad­bury Reads Mov­ing Poem on the Eve of NASA’s 1971 Mars Mis­sion

via i09

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Watch German Painter Gerhard Richter Create Abstract Art

in Art | October 23rd, 2012

The Ger­man painter Ger­hard Richter goes back and  forth between pho­to­re­al­ism and com­plete abstrac­tion. In this film we see the artist in his abstract mode, using a giant squeegee to apply and scrape off suc­ces­sive lay­ers of paint.

In 2008 and 2009 the reclu­sive Richter allowed film­mak­er Corin­na Belz into his stu­dio in Cologne to doc­u­ment the cre­ation of a series of large abstract paint­ings. Belz was ini­tial­ly sur­prised by the num­ber of lay­ers Richter used to cre­ate his decep­tive­ly sim­ple-look­ing works. “Some­times,” she said in an inter­view on her web site, “I looked at a paint­ing and thought: It’s good like this. But then came the next step in the process, and what I had per­ceived as a fin­ished pic­ture would be destroyed before my very eyes; just paint­ed over. It’s not easy when your ‘pro­tag­o­nists’ are con­stant­ly dis­ap­pear­ing.”

Even Richter often does­n’t know when one of his abstract paint­ings will be fin­ished. “It’s very sur­pris­ing often,” he told Tate Mod­ern Direc­tor Nicholas Sero­ta in a filmed inter­view last year, before the open­ing of a major ret­ro­spec­tive of his work. “I’m paint­ing again and again every day and so it seems you will nev­er come to an end, it will nev­er become a good paint­ing, and sud­den­ly it’s fin­ished: ‘Oh, good.’ ”

Belz’s film, Ger­hard Richter Paint­ing, was released in 2011 to crit­i­cal acclaim. Ear­li­er this month an abstract paint­ing by the 80-year-old Richter set a record for the most mon­ey ever paid for a work by a liv­ing artist, bring­ing $34.2 mil­lion at Sothe­by’s in Lon­don.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­tage Footage of Picas­so and Jack­son Pol­lock Paint­ing … Through Glass

Anselm Kiefer at Work, Cre­at­ing His “World of Ruina­tion”

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John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Two Appearances on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971 and 72

in Music, Television | October 23rd, 2012

I imag­ine there are some pret­ty bizarre con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries out there about the fact that John Lennon pre­miered his film for the song “Imag­ine” on Sep­tem­ber 11th, 1971. You won’t find any of them here, but it is an odd coin­ci­dence. Lennon and his oft-maligned wife Yoko Ono made their first appear­ance on The Dick Cavett show on that day (above) to debut their new work. They ban­ter about their hair­cuts (they donat­ed their long hair to be auc­tioned at Sotheby’s—it wasn’t). They dis­cuss Lennon’s chang­ing music career. There’s some strange fun with peo­ple in head-to-toe burqua-like bags. Most­ly they plug: screen­ing some of their films and debut­ing a song from Yoko’s weird (I’d argue weird­ly-bril­liant) dou­ble album Fly.

Cavett looks ner­vous, but most­ly holds his own against Lennon’s quick-wit­ted music hall chat­ter, always unpre­dictably dis­arm­ing. Lennon is the star here, of course; he had just turned thir­ty and only days ear­li­er released the Imag­ine album in the U.S., which would go to num­ber one world­wide. Nev­er­the­less, he does his lev­el best to make this a joint inter­view and to pro­mote his wife’s work as much, if not more, than his own. I imag­ine there’s no short­age of peo­ple who hat­ed this, and still do, but I think it’s gal­lant and sin­cere. But maybe I’m easy on them. Because I can fast for­ward. View­ers of the orig­i­nal broad­cast had to wait till near­ly the end to see the “Imag­ine” film. With the mag­ic of dig­i­tal, all you have to do is skip ahead to 58:05. It’s worth the effort.

John and Yoko returned to Cavett’s show in 1972.  Lennon seems a bit jumpy here—nervous per­haps since both he and Yoko per­form live in this appear­ance; John does his less-than-stel­lar anthem “Woman is the Nig­ger of the World” and elo­quent­ly defends the inflam­ma­to­ry title line; Yoko sings her, well, weird “We are Water,” both with the back­ing band Elephant’s Mem­o­ry.

There’s a humor­ous ref­er­ence to George Harrison’s appear­ance on the show the pre­vi­ous year, but things take a slight­ly more seri­ous turn here than their pre­vi­ous inter­view. The show aired in May, just a few months before the his­toric 1972 elec­tion in which incum­bent Nixon round­ly trounced the recent­ly depart­ed George McGov­ern. Lennon and Ono dis­cuss their pos­si­ble depor­ta­tion that year due to Nixon’s dis­plea­sure at their anti-war activ­i­ties. This nev­er came to pass, but it was a tense time for Lennon since he had made New York his base of oper­a­tions for the past year. I imag­ine someone’s writ­ten an alter­nate his­to­ry in which Lennon was deport­ed, said the hell with it, and nev­er returned to New York. No telling what he’d be up to now, but as these inter­views make clear, he wouldn’t be sell­ing nos­tal­gia or mount­ing Bea­t­les reunion tours.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

 

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