Pink Floyd Provides the Soundtrack for the BBC’s Broadcast of the 1969 Moon Landing

in History, Music | August 29th, 2012

Did the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca lose much of its will to explore out­er space when the Sovi­et Union’s col­lapse shut off the engine of com­pe­ti­tion? Crit­i­cal observers some­times make that point, but I have an alter­na­tive the­o­ry: maybe the decline of pro­gres­sive rock had just as much to do with it. Both that musi­cal sub­genre and Amer­i­can space explo­ration proud­ly pos­sessed their dis­tinc­tive aes­thet­ics, the poten­tial for great cul­tur­al impact, and ambi­tion bor­der­ing on the ridicu­lous. Though we did­n’t have mash-ups in the years when shut­tle launch­es and four-side con­cept albums alike cap­tured the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion, we can now use mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy to dou­ble back and direct­ly unite these two late-twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry phe­nom­e­na. Behold, above, Pink Floy­d’s jam “Moon­head” lined up with footage of Apol­lo 17, NASA’s last moon land­ing.

But giv­en the recent pass­ing of astro­naut Neil Arm­strong, none of us have been think­ing as much about the last moon land­ing as we have about the first. Pink Floyd actu­al­ly laid down “Moon­head” at a BBC TV stu­dio dur­ing the descent of Apol­lo 11, the mis­sion on which Arm­strong would take that one giant leap for mankind. The band’s impro­vi­sa­tion made it to the ears of Eng­land’s moon-land­ing view­ers: “The pro­gram­ming was a lit­tle loos­er in those days,” remem­bers gui­tarist David Gilmour, “and if a pro­duc­er of a late-night pro­gramme felt like it, they would do some­thing a bit off the wall.” British rock­’s fas­ci­na­tion with space proved fruit­ful. David Bowie put out the immor­tal “Space Odd­i­ty” mere days before Apol­lo 11’s land­ing (to say noth­ing of “Life on Mars?” two years lat­er), and the BBC played it, too, in its live cov­er­age. Even as late as the ear­ly eight­ies, no less a rock inno­va­tor than Bri­an Eno, charmed by Amer­i­can astro­nauts’ enthu­si­asm for coun­try-west­ern music, would craft the album Apol­lo: Atmos­pheres and Sound­tracks. If we want more inter­est­ing pop­u­lar music, per­haps we just need to get into space more often.

via NYTimes and Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed con­tent:

Remem­ber­ing Neil Arm­strong, the First Man on the Moon, with His­toric Footage and a BBC Bio Film

Mankind’s First Steps on the Moon: The Ultra High Res Pho­tos

Dark Side of the Moon: A Mock­u­men­tary on Stan­ley Kubrick and the Moon Land­ing Hoax

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

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The Crimson Permanent Assurance: Monty Python’s Comic Fantasy of Revolt Against the Corporations

in Comedy, Film | August 28th, 2012

In art, cer­tain themes are ever­green. They nev­er go out of date. Among them are love, death, and the intrin­si­cal­ly dehu­man­iz­ing nature of cor­po­ra­tions.

In 1983 Mon­ty Python tapped into one of the Great Themes with their short film The Crim­son Per­ma­nent Assur­ance. It tells the sto­ry of a group of elder­ly accoun­tants, “strained under the oppres­sive yoke of their new cor­po­rate man­age­ment,” who rise up against The Very Big Cor­po­ra­tion of Amer­i­ca and set sail on the high seas of inter­na­tion­al finance as a maraud­ing band of pirates.

The film was orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived by direc­tor Ter­ry Gilliam as an ani­mat­ed sequence for inclu­sion in Mon­ty Python’s The Mean­ing of Life, but as the idea grew he talked the group into let­ting him devel­op it into a live-action film. The Crim­son Per­ma­nent Assur­ance was even­tu­al­ly shown both on its own and as a pro­logue to The Mean­ing of Life. The title was inspired by the 1952 Burt Lan­cast­er adven­ture film The Crim­son Pirate. The cast is made up most­ly of unknown actors, but if you watch close­ly you’ll catch a glimpse of most of the Python mem­bers. Gilliam and Michael Palin have cameo roles as win­dow wash­ers, and Eric Idle, Ter­ry Jones and Gra­ham Chap­man appear very briefly at the begin­ning of the board­room scene.

The Crim­son Per­ma­nent Assur­ance is a delight­ful lit­tle film–and just as rel­e­vant now as ever, a reminder of the utter absur­di­ty of the claim that “cor­po­ra­tions are peo­ple too.”

You will find The Crim­son Per­ma­nent Assur­ance added to our col­lec­tion of 500 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ter­ry Gilliam: The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)

The Best Ani­mat­ed Films of All Time, Accord­ing to Ter­ry Gilliam

Ter­ry Gilliam (Mon­ty Python) Shows You How to Make Your Own Cutout Ani­ma­tion

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Take a Virtual Tour of CBGB, the Early Home of Punk and New Wave

in Music | August 28th, 2012

Yes­ter­day we post­ed about the Talk­ing Heads’ days play­ing at CBGB, the Low­er East Side night­club rock his­to­ri­ans now dis­cuss in hushed, rev­er­ent tones. (Full name: CBGB OMFUG, or “Coun­try, Blue­grass, Blues, and Oth­er Music for Uplift­ing Gor­man­diz­ers.”) Though the place final­ly closed its doors in a rent dis­pute six years ago, you can still vis­it it on the inter­net through this vir­tu­al tour. You’ll have to guide your­self, but much of the fun comes in the free­dom to explore. Begin­ning your jour­ney in the wom­en’s restroom, you can then pro­ceed how­ev­er you like, click­ing from room to room and exam­in­ing the leg­en­dar­i­ly grit­ty sur­round­ings in all 360 degrees. If you once played or fre­quent­ed CBGB, the expe­ri­ence may well take you back, albeit with much brighter light­ing than you remem­ber. Or if, like me, you once played a lot of graph­ic adven­ture games on the com­put­er, the tour’s inter­face will cer­tain­ly take you back to that as well.

Purists will have objec­tions to a vir­tu­al tour of a place of such raw phys­i­cal­i­ty as CBGB: you can’t feel the stick­i­ness of the floors, you can’t smell the mix­ture of aggres­sive odors, you can’t trip over that one irreg­u­lar step on the stairs, and you espe­cial­ly can’t hear the awe-inspir­ing ampli­fi­ca­tion sys­tem. But you can look close and long at the club’s cul­tur­al palimpsest of stick­ers, graf­fi­ti, fliers, and hard-knocked cement. Con­ver­sa­tions sprout­ed up on MetaFil­ter both when CBGB closed and when this vir­tu­al tour debuted: some com­menters loved the place, while oth­ers could­n’t bear it; some com­menters regret­ted its pass­ing, while oth­ers thought it had long since become a shad­ow of itself. Some seemed to feel all of this at once. As one MeFite said, “Those bath­rooms are just as dis­gust­ing as I remem­ber them being. I miss the hell out of that place.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

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

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Toni Morrison, Nora Ephron, and Dozens More Offer Advice in Free Creative Writing “Master Class”

in Books, Literature, Writing | August 28th, 2012

800px-Toni_Morrison_2008

Image by Angela Rad­ules­cu, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

If you’re any­thing like me, you yearn to become a good writer, a bet­ter writer, an inspir­ing writer, even, by learn­ing from the writ­ers you admire. But you nei­ther have the time nor the mon­ey for an MFA pro­gram or expen­sive retreats and work­shops with famous names. So you read W.H. Auden’s essays and Paris Review inter­views with your favorite authors (or at least PR’s Twit­ter feed); you obses­sive­ly trawl the archives of The New York Times’ “Writ­ers on Writ­ing” series, and you rel­ish every Youtube clip, no mat­ter how lo-fi or trun­cat­ed, of your lit­er­ary heroes, speak­ing from beyond the grave, or from behind a podi­um at the 92nd Street Y.

Well, friend, you are in luck (okay, I’m still talk­ing about me here, but maybe about you, too). The Wash­ing­ton, DC-based non-prof­it Acad­e­my of Achieve­ment—whose mis­sion is to “bring stu­dents face-to-face” with lead­ers in the arts, busi­ness, pol­i­tics, sci­ence, and sports—has archived a series of talks from an incred­i­bly diverse pool of poets and writ­ers. They call this col­lec­tion “Cre­ative Writ­ing: A Mas­ter Class,” and you can sub­scribe to it right now on iTunes and begin down­load­ing free video and audio pod­casts from Nora Ephron, John Updike, Toni Mor­ri­son, Car­los Fuentes, Nor­man Mail­er, Wal­lace Steg­n­er, and, well, you know how the list goes.

The Acad­e­my of Achievement’s web­site also fea­tures lengthy profiles–with text and down­load­able audio and video–of sev­er­al of the same writ­ers from their “Mas­ter Class” series. For exam­ple, an inter­view with for­mer U.S. poet-lau­re­ate Rita Dove is illu­mi­nat­ing, both for writ­ers and for teach­ers of writ­ing. Dove talks about the aver­sion that many peo­ple have for poet­ry as a kind of fear incul­cat­ed by clum­sy teach­ers. She explains:

At some point in their life, they’ve been giv­en a poem to inter­pret and told, “That was the wrong answer.” You know. I think we’ve all gone through that. I went through that. And it’s unfor­tu­nate that some­times in schools — this need to have things quan­ti­fied and grad­ed — we end up doing this kind of mul­ti­ple choice approach to some­thing that should be as ambigu­ous and ever-chang­ing as life itself. So I try to ask them, “Have you ever heard a good joke?” If you’ve ever heard some­one tell a joke just right, with the right pac­ing, then you’re already on the way to the poet­ry. Because it’s real­ly about using words in very pre­cise ways and also using ges­ture as it goes through lan­guage, not the ges­ture of your hands, but how lan­guage cre­ates a mood. And you know, who can resist a good joke? When they get that far, then they can real­ize that poet­ry can also be fun.

Dove’s thoughts on her own life, her work, and the craft of poet­ry and teach­ing are well worth reading/watching in full. Anoth­er par­tic­u­lar­ly notable inter­view from the Acad­e­my is with anoth­er for­mer lau­re­ate, poet W.S. Mer­win.

Mer­win, a two-time Pulitzer Prize win­ner, dis­cuss­es poet­ry as orig­i­nat­ing with lan­guage, and its loss as tan­ta­mount to extinc­tion:

When we talk about the extinc­tion of species, I think the endan­gered species of the arts and of lan­guage and all these things are relat­ed. I don’t think there is any doubt about that. I think poet­ry goes back to the inven­tion of lan­guage itself. I think one of the big dif­fer­ences between poet­ry and prose is that prose is about some­thing, it’s got a sub­ject… poet­ry is about what can’t be said. Why do peo­ple turn to poet­ry when all of a sud­den the Twin Tow­ers get hit, or when their mar­riage breaks up, or when the per­son they love most in the world drops dead in the same room? Because they can’t say it. They can’t say it at all, and they want some­thing that address­es what can’t be said.

If you’re any­thing like me, you find these two per­spec­tives on poetry—as akin to jokes, as say­ing the unsayable—fascinating. These kinds of obser­va­tions (not mechan­i­cal how-to’s, but orig­i­nal thoughts on the process and prac­tice of writ­ing itself) are the rea­son I pore over  inter­views and sem­i­nars with writ­ers I admire. I found more than enough in this archive to keep me sat­is­fied for months.

We’ve added “Cre­ative Writ­ing: A Mas­ter Class” to our ever-grow­ing col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.

Image via Angela Rad­ules­cu

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.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Flan­nery O’Connor Explains the Lim­it­ed Val­ue of MFA Pro­grams: “Com­pe­tence By Itself Is Dead­ly”

William S. Bur­roughs Teach­es a Free Course on Cre­ative Read­ing and Writ­ing (1979)

Sev­en Tips From William Faulkn­er on How to Write Fic­tion

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The Talking Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club That Shaped Their Sound (1975)

in Music | August 27th, 2012

High on the list of his­tor­i­cal peri­ods I regret hav­ing missed, I would place Man­hat­tan’s Low­er East Side in the sev­en­ties. Despite being some­thing less than a shin­ing time for major cities, espe­cial­ly Amer­i­can major cities, and espe­cial­ly New York City, that era’s seem­ing­ly hol­lowed-out down­towns offered cra­dles to many a cul­tur­al move­ment. David Byrne’s band the Talk­ing Heads count as a major one unto them­selves. Gen­er­a­tion X author Dou­glas Cou­p­land mem­o­rably asked only one ques­tion to deter­mine whether one belongs to that par­tic­u­lar cohort: do you like the Talk­ing Heads? In an entire book he wrote about the band’s 1979 album Fear of Music, nov­el­ist Jonatham Lethem remem­bers this of his own enthu­si­asm: “At the peak, in 1980 or 81, my iden­ti­fi­ca­tion was so com­plete that I might have wished to wear the album Fear of Music in place of my head so as to be more clear­ly seen by those around me.”

Talk­ing about the ori­gin of the Talk­ing Heads, we must talk about CBGB, the Bow­ery night­club that host­ed for­ma­tive shows for such punk, new wave, and cul­tur­al­ly prox­i­mate but dif­fi­cult to cat­e­go­rize acts like Tele­vi­sion, the Cramps, Blondie, the Pat­ti Smith Group, and the B‑52s. Byrne and com­pa­ny began play­ing there in the mid-sev­en­ties, and would even­tu­al­ly drop the place’s name in the track “Life Dur­ing Wartime.” (“This ain’t no Mudd Club or CBGB…”) At the top of this post, you’ll see their 1975 per­for­mance of “Psy­cho Killer” at CBGB, along with “Ten­ta­tive Deci­sions” and “With Our Love.” Though CBGB shut down in 2006, its essence lives on in the influ­en­tial music it shaped. “It is the venue that makes the music scene hap­pen just as much as the cre­ativ­i­ty of the musi­cians,” wrote Byrne him­self in CBGB and OMFUG: Thir­ty Years from the Home of Under­ground Rock. “There is con­tin­u­al­ly and for­ev­er a pool of tal­ent, ener­gy, and expres­sion wait­ing to be tapped—it sim­ply needs the right place in which to express itself.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Live in Rome, 1980: The Talk­ing Heads Con­cert Film You Haven’t Seen

Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

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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Rudolf Brazda, Last Man to Wear the Pink Triangle During the Holocaust, Tells His Story

in History | August 27th, 2012

Accord­ing to esti­mates by the Unit­ed States Holo­caust Muse­um, any­where from 5,000 to 15,000 gay men were impris­oned in con­cen­tra­tion camps under the Third Reich, where they were some­times the sub­jects of grue­some exper­i­ments. Pri­or to this mass per­se­cu­tion, homo­sex­u­al­i­ty was crim­i­nal­ized under the so-called Para­graph 175 of the crim­i­nal code, and the Gestapo was charged with “reg­is­ter­ing” gays, who could be sen­tenced to prison terms of up to ten years for violations–in addi­tion to per­ma­nent loss of many civ­il rights–and even worse penal­ties, like cas­tra­tion. Gay men con­vict­ed under these laws had to wear a pink tri­an­gle to iden­ti­fy them­selves. The short doc­u­men­tary above tells the sto­ry of Rudolf Braz­da, the last camp sur­vivor to have worn the pink tri­an­gle. Braz­da died last year at the age of 98.

Braz­da, who lived as an open­ly gay man in the thir­ties, was con­vict­ed under Para­graph 175 in 1937 and served a term of six months. He thought this might be the extent of his harass­ment by the Nazis, but ulti­mate­ly, he was arrest­ed and sent to Buchen­wald in 1942, where he would spend three years. In the video above, Braz­da most­ly tells his own sto­ry, in Ger­man with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles. It’s not the first time he has done so. Brazda’s sto­ry was promi­nent­ly fea­tured in a book by author Jean-Luc Schwab (who also appears above), Itin­er­ary of the Pink Tri­an­gle (Itin­eraire d’un Tri­an­gle rose), which recounts the dehu­man­iz­ing expe­ri­ences of gay men dur­ing the Holo­caust. Schwab’s book and the brief inter­view above pre­serve impor­tant tes­ti­mo­ny from a man who was “very like­ly the last vic­tim and the last wit­ness” of the Nazi per­se­cu­tion of homo­sex­u­al men in the 30s and 40s. Braz­da’s will­ing­ness to tell his sto­ry has been invalu­able to schol­ars and activists seek­ing to doc­u­ment this lit­tle-known (and often denied) his­to­ry.

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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What Do Satellites Have in Common with Falling Cats? Attitude Control

in Physics, Science, Technology | August 27th, 2012

Have you ever won­dered how the Hub­ble Space Tele­scope and oth­er satel­lites can be point­ed in any direc­tion at the will of sci­en­tists on the ground? Giv­en the ener­gy con­straints for satel­lites designed to stay in space for years, the tech­ni­cal chal­lenges are immense.

In this video from the “Smarter Every Day” YouTube series we learn a lit­tle about two clever meth­ods sci­en­tists use to con­trol the atti­tude, or ori­en­ta­tion, of satel­lites with very lit­tle ener­gy. The first method exploits the pow­er of the Earth­’s mag­net­ic field by using elec­tric cur­rent to selec­tive­ly acti­vate elec­tro­mag­nets and nudge the satel­lite in a desired direc­tion, rather like the nee­dle of a com­pass. The sec­ond and, in some ways, more fas­ci­nat­ing method takes its inspi­ra­tion from the amaz­ing­ly agile cat. It has long been known that cats can fall from any ini­tial ori­en­ta­tion and almost always land on their feet. They can reori­ent them­selves 180 degrees with­out vio­lat­ing the con­ser­va­tion of angu­lar momen­tum. They do it by adjust­ing their shape and thus rear­rang­ing the mass, and chang­ing the moment of iner­tia, with­in their bod­ies. Sci­en­tists employ a sim­i­lar tac­tic using mov­ing parts with­in satel­lites.

The host of the “Smarter Every Day” videos goes only by the name of “Des­tin,” and is report­ed­ly a mis­sile engi­neer at the U.S. Army’s Red­stone Arse­nal, near Huntsville Alaba­ma. Some view­ers will, like us, find the tone and sen­si­bil­i­ty of this video juve­nile and annoy­ing, with its overuse of the words “cool” and “awe­some” and with the gra­tu­itous cat-drop­ping scenes (note to future YouTube auteurs: con­sid­er using stock footage) but the sci­ence itself is, with­out a doubt, fas­ci­nat­ing.

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Bill Nye, The Science Guy, Says Creationism is Bad for Kids and America’s Future

in Education, K-12, Science | August 27th, 2012

Bill Nye will tell you that he’s a man on a mis­sion. He’s out there try­ing to “help fos­ter a sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly lit­er­ate soci­ety, to help peo­ple every­where under­stand and appre­ci­ate the sci­ence that makes our world work.” From 1993 to 1998, Nye host­ed Bill Nye the Sci­ence Guy, a Disney/PBS chil­dren’s sci­ence show that won 18 Emmys along the way. A grad­u­ate of Cor­nell and a stu­dent of Carl Sagan, Nye has also pre­sent­ed shows on the Sci­ence Chan­nel, the Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel and oth­er media out­lets.

If you’re famil­iar with Bill Nye, you’ll know that he’s not exact­ly an in-your-face kind of sci­en­tist. He’s no Richard Dawkins. Nye is mild-man­nered, affa­ble and wears a bow tie. But, like Dawkins, he’ll tell you that if you deny evo­lu­tion, you’re not liv­ing in the world of basic facts. And if you teach cre­ation­ism to kids, you’re not prepar­ing them to com­pete in a world where sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­cy means every­thing. That bodes ill for your kids in par­tic­u­lar, and for Amer­i­ca’s future more gen­er­al­ly.

Now you might be inclined to say that Amer­i­ca has always had cre­ation­ists, and that did­n’t stop the coun­try from becom­ing an eco­nom­ic and mil­i­tary super­pow­er. Per­haps that’s true. But you need to recall this. Amer­i­ca reached its zenith when every oth­er pow­er had blown them­selves to smithereens. We were the only game in town. And it almost did­n’t mat­ter what we thought, or how much we thought. We just need­ed to show up to work. Nowa­days, we don’t have that lux­u­ry. We face stiff com­pe­ti­tion from ambi­tious nations that take sci­ence and edu­ca­tion seri­ous­ly. A coun­try that scoffs at sci­en­tif­ic rea­son­ing, that dis­miss­es it all as “elit­ist,”  has only one way to go, and that’s down. God help us.

You can find more clips from Nye’s talk here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan Presents Six Lec­tures on Earth, Mars & Our Solar Sys­tem … For Kids (1977)

Grow­ing Up in the Uni­verse: Richard Dawkins Presents Cap­ti­vat­ing Sci­ence Lec­tures for Kids (1991)

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