Ailing Christopher Hitchens Creates a List of Essential Books for an 8‑Year-Old Girl to Read

in Books | September 7th, 2012

In the last months of his life, a phys­i­cal­ly weak­ened Christo­pher Hitchens trav­eled to the Texas Freethought Con­ven­tion to accept the Richard Dawkins Award. While there, an eight-year-old girl, Mason Crumpack­er of Dal­las, asked Hitchens what books she should con­sid­er read­ing. Intrigued, Hitchens spent 15 min­utes chat­ting with the young­ster and sketch­ing out a read­ing list. And, accord­ing to the Hous­ton Chron­i­cle, it looks some­thing like this:

A detailed account of the con­ver­sa­tion by Mason Crumpack­er’s moth­er can be found here.

Mean­while, if you’re look­ing for anoth­er set of rec­om­men­da­tions, don’t miss this: Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read.

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60-Second Adventures in Economics: An Animated Intro to The Invisible Hand and Other Economic Ideas

in Animation, Economics | September 7th, 2012

The Invis­i­ble Hand:

Back in 2011 The Open Uni­ver­si­ty released an engag­ing series of ani­mat­ed intel­lec­tu­al puz­zles called 60-Sec­ond Adven­tures in Thought, nar­rat­ed by the British come­di­an and writer David Mitchell. The series offered a wit­ty and fast-paced trip through some of the most famous para­dox­es and thought exper­i­ments in the his­to­ry of ideas. This week the same team is back with six new adven­tures, this time focused on eco­nom­ics. As the intro­duc­tion on the OU chan­nel at YouTube says:

Ever shak­en an invis­i­ble hand? Been flat­tened by a falling mar­ket? Or won­dered what took the bend out of Phillips’ curve? David Mitchell helps reveal some of the great dilem­mas faced by gov­ern­ments try­ing to run an economy–whether to save or spend, con­trol infla­tion, reg­u­late trade, fix exchange rates, or just leave every­one to get on with it and not inter­vene. You’ll learn why Adam Smith put such a high price on free mar­kets, how Keynes found a bold new way to reduce unem­ploy­ment, and what econ­o­mists went on to dis­cov­er about the impact of pol­i­cy on peo­ple’s and busi­ness­es’ behavior–which may not always be entire­ly ratio­nal.

60-Sec­ond Adven­tures in Eco­nom­ics is a fast and fun way to acquaint your­self with a few of the fun­da­men­tal ideas in eco­nom­ics. All six episodes are here, begin­ning with “The Invis­i­ble Hand,” above, and con­tin­u­ing below.

The Para­dox of Thrift:

The Phillips Curve:

The Prin­ci­ple of Com­par­a­tive Advan­tage:

The Impos­si­ble Trin­i­ty:

Ratio­nal Choice The­o­ry:

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Jimi Hendrix Wreaks Havoc on the Lulu Show, Gets Banned From the BBC (1969)

in Music, Television | September 6th, 2012

Can you imag­ine Jimi Hen­drix singing a duet with Lulu? Well, nei­ther could Hen­drix. So when the icon­o­clas­tic gui­tar play­er showed up with his band at the BBC stu­dios in Lon­don on Jan­u­ary 4, 1969 to appear on Hap­pen­ing for Lulu, he was hor­ri­fied to learn that the show’s pro­duc­er want­ed him to sing with the win­some star of To Sir, With Love. The plan called for The Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence to open their set with “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” and then play their ear­ly hit “Hey Joe,” with Lulu join­ing Hen­drix onstage at the end to sing the final bars with him before segue­ing into her reg­u­lar show-clos­ing num­ber. “We cringed,” writes bassist Noel Red­ding in his mem­oir, Are You Expe­ri­enced? The Inside Sto­ry of The Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence.

Red­ding describes the scene that he, Hen­drix, and drum­mer Mitch Mitchell walked into that day as being “so straight it was only nat­ur­al that we would try to com­bat that atmos­phere by hav­ing a smoke in our dress­ing room.” He con­tin­ues:

In our haste, the lump of hash got away and slipped down the sink drain­pipe. Pan­ic! We just could­n’t do this show straight–Lulu did­n’t approve of smok­ing! She was then mar­ried to Mau­rice Gibb of the Bee Gees, whom I’d vis­it­ed and shared a smoke with. I could always tell Lulu was due home when Mau­rice start­ed throw­ing open all the win­dows. Any­way, I found a main­te­nance man and begged tools from him with the sto­ry of a lost ring. He was too help­ful, offer­ing to dis­man­tle the drain for us. It took ages to dis­suade him, but we suc­ceed­ed in our task and had a great smoke.

When it was time for The Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence to go on cam­era, they were feel­ing fair­ly loose. They tore through “Voodoo Child” and then the pro­gram cut to Lulu, who was squeezed awk­ward­ly into a chair next to an audi­ence mem­ber in the front row. “That was real­ly hot,” she said. “Yeah. Well ladies and gen­tle­men, in case you did­n’t know, Jimi and the boys won in a big Amer­i­can mag­a­zine called Bill­board the group of the year.” As Lulu spoke a loud shriek of feed­back threw her off bal­ance. Was it an acci­dent? Hen­drix, of course, was a pio­neer in the inten­tion­al use of feed­back. A bit flus­tered, she con­tin­ued: “And they’re gonna sing for you now the song that absolute­ly made them in this coun­try, and I’d love to hear them sing it: ‘Hey Joe.’ ”

The band launched into the song, but mid­way through–before Lulu had a chance to join them onstage–Hendrix sig­naled to the oth­ers to quit play­ing. “We’d like to stop play­ing this rub­bish,” he said, “and ded­i­cate a song to the Cream, regard­less of what kind of group they may be in. We ded­i­cate this to Eric Clap­ton, Gin­ger Bak­er and Jack Bruce.” With that the band veered off into an instru­men­tal ver­sion of “Sun­shine of Your Love” by the recent­ly dis­band­ed Cream. Noel Red­ding con­tin­ues the sto­ry:

This was fun for us, but pro­duc­er Stan­ley Dorf­man did­n’t take it at all well as the min­utes ticked by on his live show. Short of run­ning onto the set to stop us or pulling the plug, there was noth­ing he could do. We played past the point where Lulu might have joined us, played through the time for talk­ing at the end, played through Stan­ley tear­ing his hair, point­ing to his watch and silent­ly scream­ing at us. We played out the show. After­wards, Dorf­man refused to speak to us but the result is one of the most wide­ly used bits of film we ever did. Cer­tain­ly, it’s the most relaxed.

The stunt report­ed­ly got Hen­drix banned from the BBC–but it made rock and roll his­to­ry. Years lat­er, Elvis Costel­lo paid homage to Hen­drix’s antics when he per­formed on Sat­ur­day Night Live. You can watch The Stunt That Got Elvis Costel­lo Banned From SNL here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

‘Elec­tric Church’: The Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence Live in Stock­holm, 1969

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Mitch Hedberg Remembered by Modern Comedian, a New Documentary Web Series

in Comedy | September 6th, 2012

If ever there was a gold­en era to enjoy com­e­dy, it’s now, a moment when come­di­ans and those who love their work have hearti­ly exploit­ed near­ly every form of media new­ly gen­er­at­ed by the inter­net. At times I won­der if the medi­um of pod­cast­ing does­n’t owe its very exis­tence to those fun­ny men and women — the ear­li­est high-pro­file exam­ple being Ricky Ger­vais, col­lec­tive­ly with his writ­ing part­ner Stephen Mer­chant and oracle/object of ridicule Karl Pilk­ing­ton  — who imme­di­ate­ly under­stood its poten­tial. Some come­di­ans pod­cast so well that you’d almost believe they had just been wait­ing for the tech­nol­o­gy to arrive. Alas, it arrived in the mid-2000s, too late for Mitch Hed­berg to make use of it. Though we’ll nev­er know how or if Hed­berg, who died in 2005, would have pod­cast, we can at least still call up his comedic spir­it at a momen­t’s notice through the mir­a­cle of inter­net video.

Though Hed­berg has gone, his fans’ inter­est in his uncon­ven­tion­al per­sona, sen­si­bil­i­ty, and deliv­ery haven’t. A new doc­u­men­tary web series called Mod­ern Come­di­an has even put out a whole episode ded­i­cat­ed to him, based upon an inter­view with his wid­ow Lynn Shaw­croft. She describes Hed­berg as “a huge pro­po­nent of day­dream­ing,” which seems only to begin to describe his way of life and work. If you missed out on Hed­berg dur­ing his life, don’t miss out on him dur­ing this wave of posthu­mous pop­u­lar­i­ty. Just above, you’ll find embed­ded a five-minute stand-up set that should give you a glimpse of the dis­tinc­tive angles from which Hed­berg viewed exis­tence. And the next time a whole bunch of inter­net com­e­dy enthu­si­asts insist that you sim­ply must check out a strange young ris­ing tal­ent, cer­tain­ly don’t make the same mis­take I did eight years ago and tell your­self you can always catch him lat­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Learn Eng­lish With Ricky Ger­vais,” A New Pod­cast Debuts (NSFW)

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

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Demystifying the Higgs Boson with Leonard Susskind, the Father of String Theory

in Physics | September 6th, 2012

In ear­ly July, researchers work­ing at CERN in Europe announced they had found it — the Hig­gs Boson. Final­ly, we had proof of a the­o­ry first for­mu­lat­ed in 1964. It was a big day. Physi­cists every­where rejoiced. The media did too. But the media cov­er­age did­n’t help the pub­lic under­stand the dis­cov­ery very well. Leonard Susskind, a promi­nent the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist at Stan­ford, real­ized that. So, days lat­er, he gave a free pub­lic lec­ture where he explained how the Hig­gs mech­a­nism works and what it actu­al­ly means to “give mass to par­ti­cles.” And it all involved tak­ing his audi­ence through some basic quan­tum mechan­ics and explain­ing the con­cept of fields, plus using a handy-dandy som­brero for a prop. You can watch the full pre­sen­ta­tion above.

When not teach­ing under­grads and grad stu­dents, Susskind teach­es in Stan­ford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram where he intro­duces life­long learn­ers to the heady world of physics. Most notably, Susskind has offered a six-quar­ter sequence of cours­es called “Mod­ern Physics: The The­o­ret­i­cal Min­i­mum.” It’s aimed at a gen­er­al audi­ence of life­long learn­ers (like you), and it pro­vides stu­dents with a base­line knowl­edge for think­ing intel­li­gent­ly about mod­ern physics. Hap­pi­ly, the com­plete lec­ture series is avail­able online. You can find the video lec­tures right below, or find more intro­duc­to­ry cours­es in the Physics sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.

Mod­ern Physics: The The­o­ret­i­cal Min­i­mum

  • Mod­ern The­o­ret­i­cal Physics: Clas­sic Mechan­ics (Video) – iTunes –YouTube
  • Mod­ern The­o­ret­i­cal Physics: Quan­tum Mechan­ics (Video) –iTunes – YouTube
  • Mod­ern The­o­ret­i­cal Physics: Spe­cial Rel­a­tiv­i­ty (Video) – iTunes –YouTube
  • Mod­ern The­o­ret­i­cal Physics: Ein­stein (Video) – iTunes –YouTube
  • Mod­ern The­o­ret­i­cal Physics: Cos­mol­o­gy (Video) - iTunes –YouTube
  • Mod­ern The­o­ret­i­cal Physics: Sta­tis­ti­cal Mechan­ics (Video) –iTunes – YouTube

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Charles Bukowski Tells the Story of His Worst Hangover Ever

in Life, Literature, Poetry | September 6th, 2012

Charles Bukows­ki, “Hank” to his friends, was once called the “best poet in Amer­i­ca” by kin­dred spir­it Jean Genet. He was a writer who told the truth, when he wasn’t lying, and who could tell a great sto­ry, whether sober or drunk. Bukows­ki once told Sean Penn in a 1987 Inter­view mag­a­zine piece: “Alco­hol is prob­a­bly one of the great­est things to arrive upon the earth — along­side of me. Yes…these are two of the great­est arrivals upon the sur­face of the earth. So…we get along.” This state­ment encap­su­lates the qual­i­ties Bukows­ki is best known for—lifelong heavy drink­ing and brava­do. They tend to go hand in hand, espe­cial­ly in nov­el­ists of his gen­er­a­tion. But what made him a poet was anoth­er qual­i­ty the booze helped him cope with, his ten­den­cy to be “a shy, with­drawn per­son,” an almost ten­der per­son, and humane in his own low-rent way. In the video above, he tells the sto­ry of his worst hang­over ever. I’ll let him tell it. There’s no way a para­phrase could come close to Bukowski’s own voice.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Charles Bukows­ki: Depres­sion and Three Days in Bed Can Restore Your Cre­ative Juices (NSFW)

The Last Faxed Poem of Charles Bukows­ki

Charles Bukows­ki Reads His Poem “The Secret of My Endurance”

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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The Second Known Photo of Emily Dickinson Emerges

in Photography, Poetry | September 5th, 2012

Until now, we’ve only had one authen­ti­cat­ed pho­to of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry poet, Emi­ly Dick­in­son (1830–1886). The pho­to (above), tak­en when she was only 16 years old, shows Dick­in­son as a young­ster in high school cir­ca 1847, well before her lit­er­ary career came into full bloom. That has been the only visu­al trace of her to date.

But now, as The Guardian reports, Amherst Col­lege thinks it has dis­cov­ered an 1859 daguerreo­type show­ing the poet with her friend Kate Scott Turn­er. When this new­ly-dis­cov­ered image was tak­en, Emi­ly (on the left below) was 28 years old and like­ly writ­ing her mys­te­ri­ous mas­ter let­ters, as one Metafil­ter read­er points out.

Poems by Emi­ly Dick­in­son can be found in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books, along with lots of oth­er great works.

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Listen to the New David Byrne/St. Vincent Album, Love This Giant. Free for a Limited Time

in Music | September 5th, 2012

Over twen­ty years after the Talk­ing Heads, the band’s for­mer front­man David Byrne seems more cre­ative than ever. Even aside from his numer­ous solo albums, he’s late­ly writ­ten books on cycling and the nature of music, advo­cat­ed for cycling itself, and craft­ed an intri­cate dis­co opera with Fat­boy Slim about Imel­da Mar­cos, for­mer first lady of the Philip­pines. (Less recent­ly, but still a per­son­al favorite of mine, was his “I ♥ Pow­er­Point” tour.) Now we have Love This Giant, a new musi­cal col­lab­o­ra­tion between Byrne and singer-song­writer Annie Clark, bet­ter known as St. Vin­cent. Hav­ing orig­i­nal­ly joined forces on a ben­e­fit for the AIDS and home­less­ness char­i­ty Hous­ing Works, the two decid­ed to go ahead and cre­ate an entire album togeth­er, engag­ing a brass band and craft­ing a dozen songs well up to Byrne’s eclec­tic, cere­bral, and sur­pris­ing­ly funky stan­dard (even if those three descrip­tors, though appro­pri­ate, have become clichés regard­ing any music in the sphere of the Talk­ing Heads).

At the top of this post, you’ll find embed­ded the video for “Who,” one of the tracks which fea­tures the vocals of both Byrne and Clark but on which Byrne takes the lead. Just above, you’ll find “Week­end in the Dust,” with Clark at the top of the mix. But why set­tle for YouTube videos when, at least for a lit­tle while, you can stream the entire album at NPR.org?

For a record­ing artist of long stand­ing, Byrne has dis­played an unusu­al­ly clear head about the changes under­way in the com­merce of music: “The ‘indus­try’ had a nice 50-year ride,” he once blogged, “but it’s time to move on.” With that in mind, he and Clark will launch a 24-date tour lat­er this month which promis­es many things, includ­ing but not limt­ed to “com­plex chore­og­ra­phy.” Still, no mat­ter the state of sales and dis­tri­b­u­tion, it always comes back to how strong­ly the music com­pels. “A lot of peo­ple, hear­ing a descrip­tion of this project, assumed that it might be an art­sy indul­gence,” Byrne writes on Love This Giant’s site. “But some­how it did­n’t turn out that way. It’s a pop record—well, in my book any­way.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

How David Byrne and Bri­an Eno Make Music Togeth­er: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

David Byrne: From Talk­ing Heads Front­man to Lead­ing Urban Cyclist

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

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

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