Everything You Wanted to Know About Going to the Bathroom in Space But Were Afraid to Ask

in Astronomy, Physics | January 9th, 2013

Maybe you have won­dered about it. Maybe you haven’t. But either way, astro­naut Chris Had­field answers the big ques­tion — how one goes to the bath­room in space.

Had­field is cur­rent­ly aboard the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion, where he’s active­ly tweet­ing about life in orbit. You can fol­low him on Twit­ter here (and find us here).

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Astro­naut Suni­ta Williams Gives an Exten­sive Tour of the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion

The Won­der, Thrill & Mean­ing of See­ing Earth from Space. Astro­nauts Reflect on The Big Blue Mar­ble

Astro­naut Takes Amaz­ing Self Por­trait in Space

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Jacques Lacan Talks About Psychoanalysis with Panache (1973)

in Philosophy, Psychology | January 9th, 2013

Both psy­cho­analy­sis and psy­chother­a­py act only through words. Yet they are in con­flict. How so? There we have the ques­tion posed to psy­cho­an­a­lyst, psy­chi­a­trist, and world-famous pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al Jacques Lacan in the video above, a clip from a script­ed qua­si-inter­view called Tele­vi­sion whose answers play like his famous lec­tures. Watch it, or watch our pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured video of Lacan giv­ing a talk, and you’ll expe­ri­ence one qual­i­ty that made him world-famous. Few oth­ers could com­bine such high-flown sub­ject mat­ter with such the­atri­cal­ly emphat­ic ora­tor­i­cal abil­i­ty — an abil­i­ty you can sense even if you don’t under­stand French. For­tu­nate­ly, sub­ti­tles have been pro­vid­ed, offer­ing Anglo­phones a chance to under­stand what con­nec­tions the man saw between the uncon­scious, lan­guage, Freud, sex­u­al rela­tions, and com­e­dy.

“There are, inso­far as the uncon­scious is impli­cat­ed, two sides pre­sent­ed by the struc­ture, the struc­ture which is lan­guage,” Lacan begins. “The side of mean­ing, the first side, the side we would iden­ti­fy as that of analy­sis, which pours out a flood of mean­ing to float the sex­u­al boat.” These remarks come pre-writ­ten in the script of Tele­vi­sion, some­thing between a con­ver­sa­tion and a play that grew out of Jacques-Alain Miller’s failed attempt to film a tra­di­tion­al inter­view of the psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic lumi­nary. “After every cut, when it was time to start up again, Lacan shift­ed a bit in his dis­course,” Miller wrote in Micro­scopia: An Intro­duc­tion to the Read­ing of Tele­vi­sion. “Each time he gave an addi­tion­al twist to his reflec­tions which were unfold­ing there, under the spot­lights, thwart­ing any chance of bridge-build­ing. We stopped after two hours; I gave him in writ­ing a list of ques­tions; and he wrote [Tele­vi­sion] in about two weeks’ time. I saw him every evening and he gave me the day’s man­u­script pages; then he read or act­ed out — with a few impro­vised vari­a­tions — the writ­ten text. He made a spring-board of this false start.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Jacques Lacan Speaks; Zizek Pro­vides Free Cliffs Notes

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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David Bowie Celebrates 66th Birthday with First New Song in a Decade, Plus Vintage Videos

in Art, Music | January 9th, 2013

Note: If this ver­sion does­n’t play for you, find an alter­nate ver­sion here.

We can thank many of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s roy­al­ty for show­ing us how to age with style. Mick Jag­ger is still a pro­fes­sion­al rock­er, as dis­ci­plined and out­ra­geous as ever. Now David Bowie has intro­duced a new album—his first in a decade—on the day he cel­e­brat­ed his 66th birth­day.

Bowie’s new album The Next Day comes out in March, but a sin­gle, “Where Are We Now?,” is avail­able to down­load on iTunes. The song is love­ly and melan­choly, as is the accom­pa­ny­ing video, shot by artist Tony Oursler.

Bowie, offi­cial­ly in his late 60s, is in a nos­tal­gic mood. The video is set in a clut­tered artist’s stu­dio dom­i­nat­ed by pro­ject­ed images of Berlin in the late 1970s. The video is alter­nate­ly inscrutable (who is the woman whose face shares the two-head­ed pup­pet with Bowie while he sings?) and reflec­tive. The old Berlin footage, it turns out, is from Bowie’s old neigh­bor­hood where he once shared an apart­ment with Iggy Pop. Bowie moved to West Berlin in 1976 and record­ed his Berlin tril­o­gy—Low, Heroes and Lodger—with pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti.

The Next Page was also pro­duced by Vis­con­ti, and that’s no coin­ci­dence. Bowie seems to be tak­ing stock of his musi­cal life, and that’s a lot to inven­to­ry. The con­ti­nu­ity between the new album and one of the rich­est peri­ods of his career bodes well for this lat­est work.

Bowie has also re-launched his web­site as part of the birth­day cel­e­bra­tion. He offers a new col­lec­tion of videos—some nev­er before broadcast—from his stel­lar stage career. As his audi­ence we get a chance to appre­ci­ate his breadth as an artist and the amaz­ing arc of his career. Dig the red boots in 1972’s Queen Bitch. This song endures after more than forty years. One of the best videos is an alter­nate take of Oh You Pret­ty Things from 1972. Bowie is young and brash at the piano in full Zig­gy Star­dust regalia. Look Back in Anger from 1979 shows the man at his rock­ing, oper­at­ic best. Even the less-than-stel­lar Let’s Dance from 1983 looks bet­ter now than it did at the time.

Watch­ing him per­form over the decades high­lights just how authen­tic Bowie’s artistry has been and con­tin­ues to be. When he flips his blond mop and croons into the micro­phone, he’s no poseur. He’s the real thing: a man try­ing on all the masks he can as a way to show all of him­self to the world.

This is one birth­day that won’t go for­got­ten. Thanks, David, for the ter­rif­ic par­ty.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at .

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Slavoj Žižek Demystifies the Gangnam Style Phenomenon

in Music, Philosophy | January 8th, 2013

Back in late Novem­ber, Psy’s “Gang­nam Style” had clocked 792 mil­lion times on YouTube, and the Chi­nese dis­si­dent artist Ai Wei Wei filmed his own Gang­nam Style par­o­dy video. Now, just five weeks lat­er, the video has logged over 1.1 bil­lion views. That’s one view for every sev­en peo­ple on the plan­et. What has made this pop song a glob­al phe­nom­e­non? Var­i­ous crit­ics have chalked it up to a fluke, or to the ran­dom­ness that belongs to many inter­net memes. Such non-answers prob­a­bly would­n’t fly with Slavoj Žižek, the nose-rub­bing, shirt-tug­ging, Sloven­ian philoso­pher who offered his own take on the Gang­nam Style Phe­nom­e­non. Speak­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ver­mont on Octo­ber 16th, 2012, Žižek attrib­uted Gang­nam’s wild pop­u­lar­i­ty to mod­ern forms of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. But I’m sure that that sum­ma­ry is over­sim­pli­fy­ing things. If you have 90 min­utes to kill (and I do mean kill), you can watch Žižek’s com­plete UVM talk below. His Gang­nam mus­ings come around the 35:10 mark.

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Muhammad Ali Surprises Kids in a Classic Candid Camera Show, 1974

in Sports, Television | January 8th, 2013

For lit­tle boys grow­ing up in the late 1960s and ear­ly 1970s, Muham­mad Ali was more than a world box­ing cham­pi­on. He was a per­son­al­i­ty of almost unimag­in­able charis­ma. At recess and after school, kids would shuf­fle their feet in imi­ta­tion of the champ, put up their dukes and joy­ous­ly chant to one anoth­er, “I float like a but­ter­fly and sting like a bee. Your hands can’t hit what your eyes can’t see!”

So it’s fun­ny to watch in this video as the flam­boy­ant Ali, at the peak of his fame, pays a sur­prise vis­it to kids at an ele­men­tary school in New York. The year is 1974. Ali has recent­ly won his re-match with Joe Fra­zier and is prepar­ing for his much-hyped “Rum­ble in the Jun­gle” with George Fore­man. He plays a joke on a series of unsus­pect­ing stu­dents at P.S. 41, in Green­wich Vil­lage, for the TV show Can­did Cam­era. Dis­guised as a jan­i­tor, Ali sneaks into the room just as the kids are explain­ing what they would say if they ever met Muhammed Ali. When they real­ize the champ is stand­ing right next to them, their reac­tions are price­less.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Muham­mad Ali Plans to Fight in Mars in Lost 1966 Inter­view

Mail­er on the Ali-Fore­man Clas­sic

Woody Allen Box­es a Kan­ga­roo

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“The Value of Culture” Revealed in a New BBC Radio Series by Melvyn Bragg

in History, Podcasts | January 8th, 2013

value of cultureYour pres­ence here indi­cates that you have an inter­est in cul­ture. But what, exact­ly is cul­ture? I’ve long addressed that per­haps too-broad ques­tion with a sim­ple work­ing def­i­n­i­tion: if Melvyn Bragg broad­casts about it, it’s prob­a­bly cul­ture. You may remem­ber the Eng­lish writer, pre­sen­ter, and House of Lords mem­ber from our posts on his doc­u­men­taries on Jack­son Pol­lock and Fran­cis Bacon, or from the men­tion of his long-run­ning BBC Radio 4 pro­gram In Our Time. But while that show cer­tain­ly has cov­ered sci­en­tif­ic top­ics — evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­o­gy, genet­ic muta­tion, the neu­tri­no — Bragg and his pan­els of experts spend even more air­time dis­cussing sub­jects claimed by the human­i­ties. Some of its most inter­est­ing moments hap­pen at the crossover, with sci­en­tif­ic angles on the human­is­tic and vice ver­sa; “Goethe and the Sci­ence of the Enlight­en­ment” comes to mind, to name but one exam­ple. Where con­ver­sa­tions like those can arise, I dare­say we have cul­ture at its most robust.

But I mere­ly cir­cle around the issue. Brag­g’s five-part Radio 4 series The Val­ue of the Cul­ture deals with the ques­tion of cul­ture’s nature head-on. Need we call cul­ture any­thing more spe­cif­ic than the body of things that mankind makes? Does cul­ture work as a force for good? What does cul­ture look like from an anthro­po­log­i­cal per­spec­tive? Must works reach a cer­tain stan­dard, or dis­play cer­tain qual­i­ties, to count as cul­ture? What does the gap between the sci­ences and the human­i­ties mean for cul­ture? How did “mass cul­ture” come about, as opposed to “high cul­ture”? And what does all this say about the cul­ture we have today? Assem­bling his typ­i­cal­ly impres­sive range of lumi­nar­ies from across the British intel­lec­tu­al land­scape, Bragg asks these ques­tions and many more besides, using as a point of depar­ture ninetheenth-cen­tu­ry poet, crit­ic, and school inspec­tor Matthew Arnold’s descrip­tion of cul­ture as “the best which has been thought and said” which pro­vides life its “sweet­ness and light.” But much has changed in how we regard cul­ture since the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, and here we have just the pro­gram to get us think­ing hard­er than ever about it.

All episodes of The Val­ue of Cul­ture: Cul­ture and Anar­chy (above), Cul­ture and the Anthro­pol­o­gists, Two Cul­tures, Mass Cul­ture, What’s the Val­ue of Cul­ture Today?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Por­trait of an Artist: Jack­son Pol­lock, the 1987 Doc­u­men­tary Nar­rat­ed by Melvyn Bragg

Fran­cis Bacon on the South Bank Show: A Sin­gu­lar Pro­file of the Sin­gu­lar Painter

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Wake Up and Smell the Coffee with Blind Master Roaster Gerry Leary

in Life | January 8th, 2013

Close your eyes. Makes it kind of hard to read your screen, huh? You can imple­ment a text-to-speech workaround, but after that, your sens­es are pret­ty much exhaust­ed as far as this forum is con­cerned.

Mas­ter cof­fee roast­er Ger­ry Leary, of Boul­der, Col­orado, would not be daunt­ed by such an exer­cise. You’ve like­ly heard oth­er DIY suc­cess sto­ries cit­ing a will­ful­ly blind eye with regard to all the things that could have gone wrong ear­ly on. Leary, who’s been blind since birth, may have blun­dered onto his life’s call­ing in a San Fran­cis­co cafe where he mis­took a roast­ing machine for a rock tum­bler, but after that, his route seems care­ful­ly plot­ted. He enrolled in a pro­fes­sion­al train­ing pro­gram. Before tak­ing over the lease to what is now the Unseen Bean Cafe, he tuned his ears to the pre­cise num­ber of feet con­sti­tut­ing near­by foot traf­fic. He is one of the very few with­in his field to roast by sound and scent rather sight, not­ing that the fla­vors of any bean is sub­ject to fla­vor vari­ance with every new crop.

He’ll have to take some­one else’s word for it that he’s best­ing the com­pe­ti­tion in the area of logo design. The Unseen Bean’s blind­fold­ed, cup-sniff­ing guide dog strikes this view­er as apt on every lev­el.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day depends on her dai­ly buck­et of black snakes to get her through.

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The Existential Adventures of Iconoclastic Brazilian Musician Tim Maia: A Short Animated Film

in Animation, Music | January 7th, 2013

Late last year, Lua­ka Bop Records released Nobody Can Live For­ev­er: The Exis­ten­tial Soul of Tim Maia, a ret­ro­spec­tive album that includes 15 tracks record­ed by Tim Maia, the great­est Brazil­ian singer of all time, accord­ing to Rolling Stone. Maia “was the Big Bang who com­plete­ly changed the scene when he arrived [in Brazil] at the turn of the ’70s,” Nel­son Mot­ta told The New York Times last fall. “He took the black Amer­i­can thing and mixed it with Brazil­ian forms like sam­ba, baião and xax­a­do, inau­gu­rat­ing a new direc­tion in Brazil­ian pop that remains pop­u­lar even today: that of urban black music.” As this short ani­mat­ed film makes clear, Maia also had an out­sized per­son­al­i­ty and appetites that brought about his ear­ly demise, but not with­out first mak­ing him a leg­end. Below we have rare footage of Tim Maia per­form­ing live in 1971:

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