Do You Drink Soda, Pop or Soft Drinks?: 122 Heatmaps Visualize How People Talk in America

in English Language, Maps | June 11th, 2013

RegionalTerms

Click each map for larg­er image

Amer­i­cans use words dif­fer­ent­ly in dif­fer­ent regions of the country—a “moot” or “mute” point? There’s a gram­mat­i­cal argu­ment to be made here for sure, but for a sim­ple yes or no answer check out a series of new maps released by sta­tis­ti­cian Joshua Katz.

The maps are of the con­ti­nen­tal Unit­ed States (Alas­ka and Hawaii are not includ­ed for geo­graph­i­cal prox­im­i­ty pur­pos­es) and they reveal delight­ful­ly quirky trends. Some relate to things you might think of your­self: How do you pro­nounce aunt? (most respon­dents would say “ant” while those in New Eng­land would say “ahnt.”) Oth­er ques­tions get at more obscure (and ques­tion­able) region­al dif­fer­ences, like dri­ve-through liquor stores.

RegionalTerms2

When most of the peo­ple on tele­vi­sion sound like they’re from some gener­ic Amer­i­can city with no accent or idioms, it’s easy to lose track of local dialect. How would you pro­nounce “caramel”? Dif­fer­ent­ly, accord­ing to Katz’s maps, if you’re from the East­ern Seaboard than if you’re from the West or Mid­west. And “pecan” has at least four dif­fer­ent region­al pro­nun­ci­a­tions.

It turns out that many Amer­i­cans would call a bug that flies around in the sum­mer and has a rear sec­tion that lights up a “fire­fly.” Many would also call it a “light­ning bug” and per­haps just as many would use the two words inter­change­ably.

I’m not sure I’d want to be in either Michi­gan or New Jer­sey on the night before Hal­loween.

Katz is a grad­u­ate stu­dent at North Car­oli­na State Uni­ver­si­ty. He designed the maps to reflect respons­es to 122 ques­tions about pro­nun­ci­a­tion and word usage based on research orig­i­nal­ly con­duct­ed by Pro­fes­sor Bert Vaux at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of the Eng­lish Lan­guage in Ten Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

Speak­ing in Whis­tles: The Whis­tled Lan­guage of Oax­a­ca, Mex­i­co

Steven Pinker Explains the Neu­ro­science of Swear­ing (NSFW)

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Vis­it to see more of her work or fol­low her on Twit­ter @mskaterix.

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Listen to T.S. Eliot Recite His Late Masterpiece, the Four Quartets

in Poetry | June 11th, 2013

Here is a com­plete record­ing of T.S. Eliot read­ing the mas­ter­piece of his lat­er years, the cycle of poems called Four Quar­tets.

Eliot con­sid­ered the Four Quar­tets his great­est work. “I’d like to feel that they get bet­ter as they go on,” he told Don­ald Hall in a 1959 inter­view for the Paris Review. “The sec­ond is bet­ter than the first, the third is bet­ter than the sec­ond, and the fourth is the best of all. At any rate, that’s the way I flat­ter myself.”

The Four Quar­tets are per­haps the most mys­ti­cal and reli­gious of Eliot’s poems. Each one is a med­i­ta­tion on time, mix­ing Chris­t­ian and Hin­du imagery with per­son­al and his­tor­i­cal events. “In The Waste Land the waste was place, the ‘Unre­al City,’ ” writes Eliot’s biog­ra­ph­er, Lyn­dall Gor­don; “here, the waste is time–time unre­deemed by a sense of the time­less.”

As in The Waste Land, Eliot uses the four clas­si­cal ele­ments as a struc­tur­al device in the Four Quar­tets. The first poem, “Burnt Nor­ton,” is asso­ci­at­ed with the ele­ment of air. It is named for an Eng­lish manor house Eliot vis­it­ed in the 1930s. The poem was first pub­lished in 1936. “East Cok­er” (which begins above at 10:46) is asso­ci­at­ed with Earth, and takes its name from the vil­lage in Som­er­set, Eng­land, from which the poet­’s ances­tor, Andrew Eliot, set out for Amer­i­ca in 1669. The third poem, “The Dry Sal­vages,” (begin­ning at 24:17) is asso­ci­at­ed with Water and is named for a treach­er­ous clus­ter of rocks off Cape Ann that was among the haz­ards Andrew Eliot’s ship need­ed to avoid in order to safe­ly reach the coast of Mass­a­chu­setts. The final poem, “Lit­tle Gid­ding,” (39:08) was pub­lished in 1942. Its under­ly­ing theme is one of pur­ga­to­r­i­al Fire. The poem is named for a vil­lage in Cam­bridgeshire, Eng­land, which was the site of a 17th cen­tu­ry Angli­can com­mune that based its dai­ly life around the Book of Com­mon Prayer.

The Four Quar­tets were first pub­lished as a uni­fied whole in 1943. Despite their ini­tial appear­ance as four sep­a­rate poems, the themes are tight­ly inter­wo­ven and each poem is com­posed of five par­al­lel parts. You can hear Eliot read­ing the Four Quar­tets above. To fol­low along as you lis­ten, click here to open the full text in a new win­dow. The first poem begins:

Time present and time past
Are both per­haps present in time future,
And time future con­tained in time past.
If all time is eter­nal­ly present
All time is unre­deemable.
What might have been is an abstrac­tion
Remain­ing a per­pet­u­al pos­si­bil­i­ty
Only in a world of spec­u­la­tion.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Foot­falls echo in the mem­o­ry
Down the pas­sage which we did not take
Towards the door we nev­er opened
Into the rose-gar­den. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

T.S. Eliot Reads His Mod­ernist Mas­ter­pieces “The Waste Land” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Rare 1959 Audio: Flan­nery O’Connor Reads ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’

Rare Record­ing: Leo Tol­stoy Reads From His Last Major Work in Four Lan­guages, 1909

Nabokov Reads Loli­ta, Names the Great Books of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

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Zen Master Alan Watts Discovers the Secrets of Aldous Huxley and His Art of Dying

in Life, Literature, Religion | June 11th, 2013

Few fig­ures were as influ­en­tial as Alan Watts and Aldous Hux­ley in pop­u­lar­iz­ing exper­i­ments with psy­che­del­ic drugs and East­ern reli­gion in the 20th cen­tu­ry. Watts did more to intro­duce West­ern­ers to Zen Bud­dhism than almost any­one before or since; Huxley’s exper­i­ments with mesca­line and LSD—as well as his lit­er­ary cri­tiques of West­ern tech­no­crat­ic rationalism—are well-known. But in a coun­ter­cul­tur­al move­ment large­ly dom­i­nat­ed by men—Watts and Hux­ley, Ken Kesey, Tim­o­thy Leary, Allen Gins­berg, etc—Huxley’s wid­ow Lau­ra came to play a sig­nif­i­cant role after her husband’s death.

In fact, as we’ve dis­cussed before, she played a sig­nif­i­cant role dur­ing his death, inject­ing him with LSD and read­ing to him from The Tibetan Book of the Dead as he passed away. In the inter­view above, Lau­ra speaks with Watts about that expe­ri­ence, one she learned from Aldous, who per­formed a sim­i­lar ser­vice for his first wife as she died in 1955. The occa­sion of the interview—conducted at Watts’ Sausal­i­to home in 1968—is the pub­li­ca­tion of Lau­ra Huxley’s mem­oir of life with her hus­band, This Time­less Moment. But talk of the book soon prompts dis­cus­sion of Huxley’s grace­ful exit, which Watts calls “a high­ly intel­li­gent form of dying.”

Watts relates an anec­dote about Goethe’s last hours, dur­ing which a vis­i­tor was told that he was “busy dying.” “Dying is an art,” says Watts, “and it’s also an adven­ture,” Lau­ra adds. Their dis­cus­sion then turns to Huxley’s final nov­el, Island (which you can read in PDF here). Island has rarely been favor­ably reviewed as a lit­er­ary endeav­or. And yet, as Watts points out, it wasn’t intend­ed as lit­er­a­ture, but as a “soci­o­log­i­cal blue­print in the form of a nov­el.” Lau­ra Hux­ley, upset at the book’s chilly recep­tion, wish­es her hus­band had “writ­ten it straight.” Nonethe­less, she points out that Island was much more than a Utopi­an fan­ta­sy or philo­soph­i­cal thought exper­i­ment. It was a doc­u­ment in which “every method, every recipe… is some­thing he exper­i­ment­ed with him­self in his own life.” As Lau­ra wrote in This Time­less Moment:

Every sin­gle thing that is writ­ten in Island has hap­pened and it’s pos­si­ble and actu­al … Island is real­ly vision­ary com­mon sense. Things that Aldous and many oth­er peo­ple said, that were seen as so auda­cious — they are com­mon sense, but they were vision­ary because they had not yet hap­pened.

Those things includ­ed not only rad­i­cal forms of liv­ing, but also, as Hux­ley him­self demon­strat­ed, rad­i­cal ways of dying.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aldous Huxley’s Most Beau­ti­ful, LSD-Assist­ed Death: A Let­ter from His Wid­ow

Aldous Hux­ley Reads Dra­ma­tized Ver­sion of Brave New World

Leonard Cohen Nar­rates Film on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Fea­tur­ing the Dalai Lama (1994)

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

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Maurice Sendak Animated; James Gandolfini Reads from Sendak’s Story “In The Night Kitchen”

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, K-12 | June 10th, 2013

Mau­rice Sendak (1928–2012), the great writer and illus­tra­tor of chil­dren’s books, would have turned 85 today. To cel­e­brate his birth­day, Google has adorned its web site with a fan­tas­tic ani­mat­ed doo­dle (make sure you press the “play” but­ton) and Blank on Blank has released a video that ani­mates Sendak’s mus­ings about being a kid. Based on a pre­vi­ous­ly-unheard inter­view record­ed in 2009, Sendak speaks in the clip about his dif­fi­cult child­hood, which was sur­round­ed by tragedy. (He grew up in Brook­lyn, the child of Pol­ish Jew­ish immi­grants whose remain­ing fam­i­ly per­ished dur­ing the Holo­caust.) He also recalls how chil­dren all have prob­lems to work through — prob­lems that remained at the front of his mind when he start­ed writ­ing his clas­sic chil­dren’s books. It’s worth pair­ing the video above with anoth­er ani­mat­ed video of Sendak’s emo­tion­al last inter­view with NPR’s Ter­ry Gross. And, for a com­plete­ly ran­dom bonus, we’ve added below a clip of James Gan­dolfi­ni (aka Tony Sopra­no) read­ing from Sendak’s con­tro­ver­sial sto­ry book In The Night Kitchen. The read­ing took place on Sep­tem­ber 15, 2008 at the 92nd St Y in New York City, at a trib­ute held on the occa­sion of Sendak’s 80th birth­day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Late James Gan­dolfi­ni, Star of The Sopra­nos, Appears on Inside the Actors Stu­dio (2004) 

The Mind & Art of Mau­rice Sendak: A Video Sketch

An Ani­mat­ed Christ­mas Fable by Mau­rice Sendak (1977)

 

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Making Radiolab: A Soup-to-Nuts Recipe for a Great Radio Show/Podcast

in Podcasts, Radio | June 10th, 2013

Now that vir­tu­al­ly every­one in the West­ern Hemi­sphere has the means to make and dis­sem­i­nate a pod­cast, are there any tips to guar­an­tee suc­cess?

Jad Abum­rad, a host of the enor­mous­ly pop­u­lar, curios­i­ty-based pod­cast, Radi­o­lab, strives for every show to sound like “two guys talk­ing in a sur­re­al­is­tic mul­ti-dimen­sion­al space.” His degree in music com­po­si­tion at Ober­lin Col­lege is an asset in achiev­ing this goal, as is his easy rap­port with cohost Robert Krul­wich.

Radi­o­lab’s appeal is such that direc­tor David Fine sin­gled it out for his Amer­i­can Hip­ster project, a year long inves­ti­ga­tion into the tastes of a cer­tain seg­ment of the pop­u­lace. The result­ing video above sketch­es out the cre­ation process, from the first impulse to inter­view an inter­est­ing per­son to the fin­ished episode.

It’s not sur­pris­ing that Radi­o­lab’s brass has seized on Fine’s effort as a fundrais­ing tool. His depic­tion of their behind-the-scenes labors is insis­tent­ly upbeat, com­plete with a mon­tage of laugh­ing pro­duc­ers, writ­ers and stars. As hard to as it is to believe this tells the whole sto­ry of what it’s like to bar­rel toward a col­lec­tive cre­ative dead­line, it’s also hard to begrudge them their sun­ny depic­tion when Abum­rad him­self vol­un­teers that the cre­ation of a nat­ur­al-sound­ing pod­cast  is a far-from-nat­ur­al thing.

Per­haps the biggest take­away for aspir­ing pod­cast mavens is that qual­i­ty wins out. Radi­o­lab is right­ly renowned for its excel­lent pro­duc­tion val­ues, a lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al­ism that has paved the way for a live show fea­tur­ing such lumi­nar­ies as come­di­an Demetri Mar­tin and Pilobo­lus Dance The­ater. If you’re not famil­iar Radi­o­lab, then we sug­gest you catch an episode, “Mem­o­ry and For­get­ting,” below. More episodes can be found on Sound­Cloud.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The New Yorker’s Fic­tion Pod­cast: Where Great Writ­ers Read Sto­ries by Great Writ­ers

Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk Radio Show Pod­cast Tack­les the His­to­ry of Video Games

The Pod­cast His­to­ry of Our World Will Take You From Cre­ation Myths to (Even­tu­al­ly) the Present Day

Ayun Hal­l­i­day owes Radi­o­lab a depth of grat­i­tude for the cheer with which her hus­band does the dish­es.

via Coudal

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David Byrne’s Graduation Speech Offers Troubling and Encouraging Advice for Students in the Arts

in Art, Education, Graduation Speech, Music | June 10th, 2013


How could David Byrne nev­er have giv­en a com­mence­ment address before? As an expe­ri­enced pub­lic speak­er, a well-known cre­ator who has carved out his own cul­tur­al niche, an advo­cate of things (such as cycling) beloved among world-chang­ing young peo­ple, the founder of a band with a sur­pris­ing mul­ti-gen­er­a­tional appeal, and a man with no small com­mand of Pow­er­point, he’d seem to make an appeal­ing choice indeed. His first com­mence­ment address ever came this year at the Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty School of the Arts, and, view­able from 1:17:00 in the video above, it has cer­tain­ly made an impact in the inter­net. The mes­sage some grads and fans have tak­en away? “If you chose a career in the arts,” as the New York­er’s Rachel Arons puts it, “you are, basi­cal­ly, screwed.”

“A pie chart, based on 2011 data, showed that only three per cent of film and the­atre grads, and five per cent of writ­ing and visu­al-arts grads, end up work­ing in their areas of con­cen­tra­tion,” she writes of the visu­al aids deliv­er­ing Byrne’s grim ini­tial mes­sage. “A sub­se­quent bar graph showed that, accord­ing to those stats, four­teen writ­ing and four­teen Colum­bia visu­al-arts grad­u­ates will go on to careers in their fields, and eight the­atre and eight film grads will go on to careers in theirs.” But first­hand reports from the cer­e­mo­ny don’t describe a too ter­ri­bly shak­en Colum­bia grad­u­at­ing class, and even Byrne took pains to empha­size, or at least emphat­i­cal­ly imply, that tru­ly worth­while careers — such as, I would say, his own — lay out­side, or in between, or at the inter­sec­tion of, defin­able fields. And why would you want to work in the same field you stud­ied, any­way? To para­phrase some­thing Byrne’s friend and col­lab­o­ra­tor Bri­an Eno said about tech­nol­o­gy, once a whole major has built up around a pur­suit, it’s prob­a­bly not the most inter­est­ing thing to be doing any­more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

David Byrne: From Talk­ing Heads Front­man to Lead­ing Urban Cyclist

David Byrne Gives Us the Low­down on How Music Works (with Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Daniel Lev­itin)

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

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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Patti Smith Reads Federico Garcia Lorca’s “Little Viennese Waltz” in New York City

in Poetry | June 10th, 2013

Last Wednes­day night, New York Insti­tu­tion Pat­ti Smith appeared at down­town venue Bow­ery Ball­room with a few friends to read poet­ry and play some music. The occa­sion? One of many in an almost two-month-long cel­e­bra­tion of Span­ish poet and play­wright Fed­eri­co Gar­cia Lorca’s brief sojourn in New York City in 1929–1930 while he was a stu­dent at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty. That year inspired a book, Poet in New York, which has been repub­lished in a revised bilin­gual edi­tion by Far­rar, Straus & Giroux.

In the clip above, watch Smith read a selec­tion of Gar­cia Lorca’s “Lit­tle Vien­nese Waltz.” Her Jersey/New York inflec­tions make the lines her own (love the way she says “piano”), and her ban­ter with the audi­ence is price­less.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via The New York Times

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith Shares William S. Bur­roughs’ Advice for Writ­ers and Artists

Watch Pat­ti Smith Read from Vir­ginia Woolf, and Hear the Only Sur­viv­ing Record­ing of Woolf’s Voice

Pat­ti Smith’s Cov­er of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Strips the Song Down to its Heart

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

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Louis CK Ridicules Avant-Garde Art on 1990s MTV Show

in Art, Comedy | June 10th, 2013

In the 1990s, some­where on his long road to star­dom, Louis CK made an appear­ance on a satir­i­cal “Artu­men­tary” aired by MTV. In it, CK plays the role of David Cross, a would-be artist who spe­cial­izes in pho­tograph­ing toi­lets filled with ink — a not-so-sub­tle metaphor for the tripe that often gets passed off as avant-garde art. In case there’s any ambi­gu­i­ty about the under­ly­ing mes­sage, Cross add wry­ly, “Basi­cal­ly, see, MTV will show you a lot of crap, and they’ll tell you it’s art. But I show you crap, and it’s, like, art.”

via Petapix­el

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sur­re­al Short Films of Louis C.K., 1993–1999

How the Great George Car­lin Showed Louis CK the Way to Suc­cess (NSFW)

David Lynch Teach­es Louis C.K. How to Host The David Let­ter­man Show

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