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.

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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.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus.

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Time Travel Back to 1926 and Watch Wassily Kandinsky Make Art in Some Rare Vintage Video

in Art | June 29th, 2012

Have you ever won­dered what it would be like to trav­el back in time and look over the shoul­der of one of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry’s great­est artists to watch him work? In this brief film from 1926, we get to see the Russ­ian painter Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky as he turns a blank can­vas into one of his dis­tinc­tive abstract com­po­si­tions.

The film was made at the Galerie Neu­mann-Nieren­dorf in Berlin by Hans Cürlis, a pio­neer in the mak­ing of art doc­u­men­taries. At the time the film was made Kandin­sky was teach­ing at the Bauhaus. It was the same year he pub­lished his sec­ond major trea­tise, On Point and Line to Plane. The con­trast­ing straight lines and curves that Kandin­sky paints in the movie are typ­i­cal of this peri­od, when his approach was becom­ing less intu­itive and more con­scious­ly geo­met­ric.

Kandin­sky believed that an artist could reach deep­er truths by dis­pens­ing with the depic­tion of exter­nal objects and by look­ing with­in, and despite his ana­lyt­ic turn at the Bauhaus he con­tin­ued to speak of art in deeply mys­ti­cal terms. In On Point and Line to Plane, Kandin­sky writes:

The work of Art mir­rors itself upon the sur­face of our con­scious­ness. How­ev­er, its image extends beyond, to van­ish from the sur­face with­out a trace when the sen­sa­tion has sub­sided. A cer­tain trans­par­ent, but defini­nite glass-like par­ti­tion, abol­ish­ing direct con­tact from with­in, seems to exist here as well. Here, too, exists the pos­si­bil­i­ty of enter­ing art’s mes­sage, to par­tic­i­pate active­ly, and to expe­ri­ence its pul­sat­ing life with all one’s sens­es.

kandinsky 1926

Relat­ed con­tent:

Helen Mir­ren Tells Us Why Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky Is Her Favorite Artist (And What Act­ing & Mod­ern Art Have in Com­mon)

The Inner Object: See­ing Kandin­sky

Vin­tage Footage of Picas­so and Jack­son Pol­lock Paint­ing … Through Glass

Watch Icon­ic Artists at Work: Rare Videos of Picas­so, Matisse, Kandin­sky, Renoir, Mon­et, Pol­lock & More

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Sonny Rollins Plays Jazz on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1977 Pioneer Electronics Ad

in Music | June 29th, 2012

In this 1977 tele­vi­sion ad for Pio­neer Elec­tron­ics, jazz sax­o­phone great Son­ny Rollins wails into the New York City night air while stand­ing on the Brook­lyn Bridge. A voice-over announc­er tells view­ers of Rollins’ 1959–61 hia­tus from the jazz scene, when he took his sound to the streets to redis­cov­er him­self musi­cal­ly. It’s most­ly a true sto­ry. Only trou­ble is, Rollins actu­al­ly retired to the Williams­burg Bridge—admit­ted­ly not quite as pic­turesque! Here’s the sto­ry as Rollins tells it:

In the 50s and 60s, Lucille and I had a small apart­ment on Grand Street on the Low­er East Side of New York. It was a nice time. I had a lot of friends there and I was wel­comed by the neigh­bor­hood peo­ple. Like most of New York, the Low­er East Side has under­gone gen­tri­fi­ca­tion but back then, it was a much more eth­nic place.

I start­ed prac­tic­ing in the house because I had to prac­tice, but I felt guilty because I’m a sen­si­tive per­son and I know that peo­ple need qui­et in their apart­ments.

I was walk­ing on Delancey Street one day, not far from where I lived on Grand Street and I just hap­pened to look up and see these steps that I decid­ed to check out. And there, of course, was the bridge, the Williams­burg Bridge. It was this nice big expanse going over the East Riv­er. There was nobody up there. So I start­ed walk­ing across the bridge and said, “Wow. This is what I have been look­ing for. This is a pri­vate place. I can blow my horn as loud as I want.” Because the boats are com­ing under, and the sub­way is com­ing across, and cars, and I knew it was per­fect, just serendip­i­ty. Then, I began get­ting my horn and going up there reg­u­lar­ly. I would be up there 15 or 16 hours at a time spring, sum­mer, fall and win­ter.

Rollins’ per­fec­tion­ism paid off. He returned to the music busi­ness with his bril­liant 1962 album The Bridge, a chron­i­cle of where he’d been those four years, some­times in freez­ing cold tem­per­a­tures, alone or with friends. British doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Dick Fontaine cap­tured Rollins dis­cussing his bridge sab­bat­i­cal and has released a 2012 film about Rollins called Beyond the Notes, which fea­tures live per­for­mances of the jazz great in his 80s, and has been show­ing in the UK since last spring. Rollins recent­ly took home three tro­phies from the annu­al Jazz Awards in New York, includ­ing a best-record award for his lat­est album of live record­ings, Road Shows, Vol. 2.

Josh Jones is cur­rent­ly a doc­tor­al stu­dent 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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Science Behind the Bike: Four Videos from the Open University on the Eve of the Tour de France

in Physics, Science, Technology | June 29th, 2012

Right in time for the Tour de France (which gets under­way tomor­row) the Open Uni­ver­si­ty has released a new video series called Sci­ence Behind the Bike. Dur­ing the past two decades, sci­ence has tak­en cycling to new places — some­times good, some­times bad. The intro­duc­tion of per­for­mance enhanc­ing drugs near­ly dam­aged the sport beyond repair, and it cer­tain­ly destroyed the careers and rep­u­ta­tions of many lead­ing cyclists. But all along, some­where out­side the pub­lic glare, many well-inten­tioned sci­en­tif­ic minds have toiled away, try­ing to find legit­i­mate ways to advance the sport. Phys­i­ol­o­gists, physi­cists, engi­neers, soft­ware design­ers, techies from For­mu­la 1 rac­ing — they’ve all brought a new per­spec­tive to cycling.

In the video above, Sci­ence Behind the Bike looks at how sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy have influ­enced the mak­ing and break­ing of the pres­ti­gious World Hour Record first estab­lished in 1893. Then, below, Forces breaks down the physics of cycling; Phys­i­ol­o­gy explains, well, the phys­i­ol­o­gy that boosts per­for­mance; and Tech­nol­o­gy digs deep­er into the high-tech hard­ware that cyclists push along. If you’re a fan of the sport, you’ll undoubt­ed­ly appre­ci­ate appear­ances by Chris Board­man, Francesco Moser, Graeme Obree and Rebec­ca Romero.

Forces

Phys­i­ol­o­gy

Tech­nol­o­gy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Brus­sels Express: The Per­ils of Cycling in Europe’s Most Con­gest­ed City

David Byrne: From Talk­ing Heads Front­man to Lead­ing Urban Cyclist

The Physics of the Bike

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