The Centrifuge Brain Project: Scientists Solve Mankind’s Great Problems by Spinning People

in Comedy, Sci Fi | February 7th, 2013

What if the very thing that made you feel crazy hap­py also made you smarter? That’s the ques­tion under­ly­ing the work of the Insti­tute for Cen­trifu­gal Research, where sci­en­tists believe that spin­ning peo­ple around at a suf­fi­cient­ly high G‑force will solve “even the trick­i­est chal­lenges con­fronting mankind.”

We fol­low Dr. Nick Laslow­icz, chief engi­neer, as he strolls through amuse­ment parks, wear­ing a hard hat and tak­ing notes, and describes the lib­er­at­ing pow­er of spin­ning and the “mis­take” of grav­i­ty.

The actor is ter­rif­ic. Yes, The Cen­trifuge Brain Project is a joke. Laslow­icz is just zany enough to be believ­able as a sci­en­tist whose research began in the 1970s. The sketch­es on the project’s web­site are fun too and direc­tor Till Nowak’s CGR ren­der­ing of the ride con­cepts are hilar­i­ous.

centrifuge_plan_steam_pressure_catapult

The cul­mi­nat­ing exper­i­ment fea­tures a ride that resem­bles a giant trop­i­cal plant. Rid­ers enter a round car that ris­es slow­ly up, up, up and then takes off sud­den­ly at incred­i­bly high speed along one of the “branch­es.”

“Unpre­dictabil­i­ty is a key part of our work,” says Laslow­icz. After the ride, he says, peo­ple described expe­ri­enc­ing a “read­just­ment of key goals and life aspi­ra­tions.” Though he lat­er adds that he wouldn’t put his own chil­dren on one of his rides.

“These machines pro­vide total free­dom,” Laslow­icz says, “cut­ting all con­nec­tion to the world we live in: com­mu­ni­ca­tion respon­si­bil­i­ty, weight. Every­thing is on hold when you’re being cen­trifuged.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mir­a­cle Mush­rooms Pow­er the Slums of Mum­bai

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

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Vis­it her work at .

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The Troggs Tapes: ‘Put a Little Bit of F***ing Fairy Dust Over the Bastard!’

in Comedy, Music | February 7th, 2013

Reg Pres­ley, lead singer of the Six­ties rock group The Trog­gs, died Mon­day at the age of 71. The Trog­gs (short for Troglodytes) are often men­tioned as a major influ­ence on the punk rock move­ment of the 1970s. They record­ed a string of hits between 1966 and 1968, most notably “Wild Thing.” The Trog­gs are also remembered—much to the band’s chagrin—for one of the most noto­ri­ous bootlegs ever: “The Trog­gs Tapes,” described by Uncut mag­a­zine as a “hilar­i­ous, 12-minute swearathon.”

The Trog­gs Tapes were record­ed in Lon­don in 1970. The band was work­ing on a song called “Tran­quil­i­ty,” but things weren’t going well, and the ses­sion degen­er­at­ed into a foul-mouthed orgy of acri­mo­ny and recrim­i­na­tion. A copy of the record­ing some­how made it onto the boot­leg mar­ket and became leg­endary. Sat­ur­day Night Live par­o­died the Trog­gs Tapes in a sketch with Bill Mur­ray, John Belushi and oth­ers play­ing a group of frus­trat­ed medieval musi­cians who say the word “flog­ging” over and over. The tapes are also par­o­died in This is Spinal Tap, dur­ing the record­ing scene at the “Rain­bow Trout Stu­dios.” In a piece this week pay­ing trib­ute to Reg Pres­ley, the Tele­graph music crit­ic Neil McCormick writes:

Before the inter­net, The Trog­gs Tapes were hard to find, yet every­one seemed to know about them, an elu­sive­ness that only added to their allure. I remem­ber get­ting my hands on a copy in a Dublin flea mar­ket, then sit­ting aroud late at night with friends laugh­ing our­selves sil­ly at the inani­ty and pal­pa­ble sense of frus­tra­tion as the musi­cians fail to find a way to artic­u­late and cap­ture some sound idea, beyond the reach of either their lan­guage or their tech­ni­cal abil­i­ties.… In truth, it is the kind of con­ver­sa­tion you can hear every day in record­ing stu­dios all around the world, but there was some­thing lib­er­at­ing and myth-bust­ing about the expe­ri­ence of eaves­drop­ping on these unguard­ed musi­cians at work.

You can lis­ten to an abridged ver­sion of The Trog­gs Tapes above. To learn more about Reg Pres­ley, you can read his fit­ting­ly uncon­ven­tion­al obit­u­ary in The Tele­graph. And to end things off on a pos­i­tive note, we offer a glimpse of The Trog­gs when things were going con­sid­er­ably more smooth­ly, with the band per­form­ing “Wild Thing” in 1966:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the 1962 Bea­t­les Demo that Dec­ca Reject­ed: “Gui­tar Groups are on Their Way Out, Mr. Epstein”

8,976 Free Grate­ful Dead Con­cert Record­ings in the Inter­net Archive, Explored by the New York­er

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The Beauty of Namibian Nights in Timelapse Motion

in Photography | February 6th, 2013

It took Marsel van Oost­en two years and 16,000 images to cre­ate a time­lapse video that cap­tures the inef­fa­ble beau­ty of Namib­ian Nights. Shot with Nikon D3, D3s and D4 cam­eras, the film high­lights van Oost­en’s favorite sites in Namib­ia — “the fairy­tale-like quiv­ertrees and the eery, dead camelthorn trees in Dead­vlei.” For each sec­ond of video, 30 pho­tographs were tak­en. Namib­ian Nights won First Prize in the 2012 Trav­el Pho­tog­ra­ph­er of The Year Awards.

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How to Build a Country From Scratch

in Current Affairs | February 6th, 2013

After half a cen­tu­ry of war, the peo­ple of south­ern Sudan vot­ed in ear­ly 2011 to break away from the Sudan and cre­ate their own inde­pen­dent state. The Repub­lic of South Sudan, formed in July of 2011, has its work cut out for it. South Sudan is one of the poor­est and least devel­oped nations in the world, with only a few paved roads in a ter­ri­to­ry the size of France. In most areas of the coun­try there is no for­mal legal sys­tem. And accord­ing to the Unit­ed Nations, more than half of its 9 mil­lion peo­ple live in a con­di­tion of food inse­cu­ri­ty.

In the year and a half since break­ing out on its own, South Sudan has man­aged to under­mine its rep­u­ta­tion as the “good guys” by arrest­ing jour­nal­ists, shoot­ing down a U.N. heli­copter, expelling a U.N. human rights offi­cer and using its mil­i­tary to seize an oil field in Sudanese ter­ri­to­ry. Mean­while, in a coun­try sat­u­rat­ed with weapons, fight­ing has bro­ken out among var­i­ous eth­nic groups.

So there is an ele­ment of irony in the title of this “Op-Doc” from the New York Times by inde­pen­dent film­mak­ers Flo­rence Mar­tin-Kessler and Anne Poiret. How to Build a Coun­try From Scratch (above) is a nine-minute excerpt from a fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary that Mar­tin-Kessler and Poiret are work­ing on, called State Builders. The film­mak­ers made four trips to Juba, the largest city and pro­vi­sion­al cap­i­tal of South Sudan, to doc­u­ment the daunt­ing process of cre­at­ing a new nation. “Our mis­sion as film­mak­ers,” they wrote this week in the Times, “was to fol­low the ‘state builders’–those peo­ple in the South Sudanese gov­ern­ment and in the Unit­ed Nations who would be on the front line of imple­ment­ing, step by step, a road map for the world’s newest state.”

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French Philosopher Jean Baudrillard Reads His Poetry, Backed By All-Star Arts Band (1996)

in Music, Philosophy, Poetry, Random | February 6th, 2013

jean-baudrillard

Image by Euro­pean Grad­u­ate School, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

French post-struc­tural­ist philosopher/sociologist Jean Bau­drillard—usu­al­ly iden­ti­fied with his post­mod­ern the­o­ries of sim­u­lacra—is a lit­tle bit of a fringe fig­ure in pop cul­ture. Known to hip aca­d­e­m­ic types and avant-garde-ists, he’s maybe the kind of thinker who gets name-dropped more than read (and he’s no easy read).

But in the audio clip above, Bau­drillard reads to us, from his poet­ry no less, while backed by the swirling abstract sounds of The Chance Band, an all art-star ensem­ble fea­tur­ing Tom Wat­son (of The Miss­ing­men), George Hur­ley (of The Min­ute­men and fIRE­HOSE), Lynn John­ston, Dave Muller, Amy Stoll, and guest vocal­ist, the­o­rist Alluc­quère Rosanne (“Sandy”) Stone. It’s an odd, one-time, assem­blage of artists and thinkers UbuWeb describes as “unbe­liev­able but true!”:

Record­ed live as part of the Chance Fes­ti­val at Whiskey Pete’s Casi­no in State­line Neva­da, 1996. You’ve nev­er heard Bau­drillard like this before! Music to read Niet­zsche to.

Indeed. The track above is num­ber two on a twelve-track album called Sui­cide Moi, released in 2002 by Com­pound Annex Records. You can buy the CD here or stream and down­load indi­vid­ual tracks for free on UbuWeb.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Avant-Garde Media: The UbuWeb Col­lec­tion

Der­ri­da: A 2002 Doc­u­men­tary on the Abstract Philoso­pher and the Every­day Man

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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Destination Earth: The Greatness of American Civilization Revealed in 1950s Sci-Fi Cartoon

in Animation, Business, History | February 6th, 2013

Many sci-fi tales go some­thing like this: The human race trav­els into the great unknown, deep out­er space, and encoun­ters beings with forces greater than its own. Greater fire pow­er. Greater intel­li­gence. Greater tech­no­log­i­cal abil­i­ty. But, in Des­ti­na­tion Earth, the stan­dard nar­ra­tive gets flipped on its head. Here, Mar­tians come to Earth — the Unit­ed States actu­al­ly — and dis­cov­er a vast­ly supe­ri­or civ­i­liza­tion. A civ­i­liza­tion supe­ri­or because it enjoys an end­less sup­ply of petro­le­um (used to make gas, tires, tooth­brush­es, cos­met­ics and insec­ti­cides) and the cap­i­tal­ist spirt of com­pe­ti­tion. Now, Sher­lock, if you’re think­ing this isn’t your aver­age Sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toon, I’d say you’re onto some­thing. Des­ti­na­tion Earth was the cre­ation of The Amer­i­can Petro­le­um Insti­tute, still the biggest lob­by for the U.S. oil and gas indus­try. And the film was shot in 1956, smack dab in the mid­dle of the Cold War. If you think Mars, the red plan­et, might be a proxy for the Sovi­et Union (and Ogg looks like Stal­in), you might be the new James Bond.

Des­ti­na­tion Earth appears in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 500 Free Movies Online. For more vin­tage pro­pa­gan­da car­toons, check out: Don­ald Duck’s Bad Nazi Dream and Four Oth­er Dis­ney Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons from World War II.

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Download Walter Kaufmann’s Lectures on Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Sartre & Modern Thought (1960)

in Philosophy | February 6th, 2013

walter kaufman

Wal­ter Kauf­mann spent 33 years (1947–1980) teach­ing phi­los­o­phy at Prince­ton. And more than any­one else, Kauf­mann intro­duced Niet­zsche’s phi­los­o­phy to the Eng­lish-speak­ing world and made it pos­si­ble to take Niet­zsche seri­ous­ly as a thinker – some­thing there was­n’t always room to do in Amer­i­can intel­lec­tu­al cir­cles.

With­out sim­pli­fy­ing things too much, Kauf­mann saw Niet­zsche as some­thing of an ear­ly exis­ten­tial­ist, which brings us to these vin­tage lec­tures record­ed in 1960 (right around the time that Kauf­mann, a Ger­man-born con­vert to Judaism, also became a nat­u­ral­ized Amer­i­can cit­i­zen). The three lec­tures offer a short primer on exis­ten­tial­ism and the mod­ern crises philoso­phers grap­pled with. Kierkegaard and the Cri­sis in Reli­gion begins the series, fol­lowed by Niet­zsche and the Cri­sis in Phi­los­o­phy and Sartre and the Cri­sis in Moral­i­ty.

Kauf­man­n’s talks are now list­ed in the Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es. There you will also find cours­es pre­sent­ed by more con­tem­po­rary philoso­phers, includ­ing John Sear­le, Hubert Drey­fus, and Michael Sandel.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Free Cours­es from Famous Philoso­phers: From Bertrand Rus­sell to Michel Fou­cault

Phi­los­o­phy with a South­ern Drawl: Rick Rod­er­ick Teach­es Der­ri­da, Fou­cault, Sartre and Oth­ers

Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er (1971)

Leo Strauss: 15 Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Online

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Monty Python’s Life of Brian: Religious Satire, Political Satire, or Blasphemy?

in Comedy, Film, Religion, Television | February 6th, 2013

Before I saw Mon­ty Python’s Life of Bri­an, I only knew that reli­gious peo­ple did­n’t like it, which intrigued me. Then I found out that some reli­gious peo­ple like it very much indeed, which real­ly intrigued me. Build­ing its sto­ry on a satir­i­cal par­al­lel of the life of Jesus Christ, Life of Bri­an could nev­er have helped draw­ing fire. But the Pythons knew how to use it: “So fun­ny it was banned in Nor­way!” read one of the film’s posters, and indeed, the Nor­we­gian gov­ern­ment put the kibosh on its screen­ings, as did Ire­land’s, as did a num­ber of town coun­cils in Eng­land. “As a satire on reli­gion, this film might well be con­sid­ered a rather slight pro­duc­tion,” writes Richard Web­ster in A Brief His­to­ry of Blas­phemy. “As blas­phe­my it was, even in its orig­i­nal ver­sion, extreme­ly mild. Yet the film was sur­round­ed from its incep­tion by intense anx­i­ety, in some quar­ters of the Estab­lish­ment, about the offence it might cause. As a result it gained a cer­tifi­cate for gen­er­al release only after some cuts had been made. Per­haps more impor­tant­ly still, the film was shunned by the BBC and ITV, who declined to show it for fear of offend­ing Chris­tians in this coun­try.”

All this con­tro­ver­sy came to a now-infa­mous 1979 tele­vi­sion debate: In one cor­ner, we have Python’s John Cleese and Michael Palin. In the oth­er, we have con­trar­i­an satirist Mal­colm Mug­geridge and Bish­op of South­wark Mervyn Stock­wood. You can watch the whole broad­cast on Youtube (part one, part two, part three, part four). In the extract above, you can hear Cleese argue that the film does not, in fact, ridicule Jesus Christ, but instead indicts “closed sys­tems of thought” of the type drilled into his con­scious­ness dur­ing his board­ing school years. Palin takes pains to under­score its nature as not whol­ly a reli­gious satire, but more of a jab at mod­ern Eng­lish soci­ety and pol­i­tics trans­posed into the Bib­li­cal past. Mug­geridge and Stock­wood, while den­i­grat­ing Life of Bri­an’s cin­e­mat­ic mer­it all the while, nonethe­less see in it a dan­ger­ous poten­tial to cor­rupt the youth. But it turns out that they’d shown up at their screen­ing fif­teen min­utes late, miss­ing the scenes which would have told them that Jesus Christ and the hap­less Bri­an of the title are two dif­fer­ent peo­ple. Indeed, Bri­an is not the mes­si­ah. The les­son here: watch Life of Bri­an in full, as many times as it takes to get you draw­ing your own non-received con­clu­sions about reli­gion, soci­ety, and com­e­dy.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

Mon­ty Python’s Away From it All: A Twist­ed Trav­el­ogue with John Cleese

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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