Your Body During Adolescence: A Nakedly Unashamed Sex Ed Film from 1955

in Biology, Education, Film, K-12, Life | April 11th, 2014

A straight shoot­ing sex ed film from 1955? That’s hard to imag­ine. In my expe­ri­ence, the films of that peri­od tend to beat around the bush. The ret­i­cence of those shar­ing its play­ing field makes Your Body Dur­ing Ado­les­cence (watch it online here) all the more remark­able. It does­n’t seem so at first. The first minute is devot­ed to observ­ing a group of coed, clean cut, and unsur­pris­ing­ly Cau­casian teens, pos­ing for a year­book pho­to.

The nar­ra­tor seems des­tined to soft ped­dle things, mild­ly tak­ing note of dif­fer­ences in height and weight. I freely admit that I under­es­ti­mat­ed him. The teens in whose class­rooms this work was screened may have audi­bly squirmed at the men­tion of cer­tain words, but our nar­ra­tor is undaunt­ed by penis­es, scro­ta and labia… Shout out to the edu­ca­tion­al con­sul­tants, Dr. Harold S. Diehl, Dean of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta’s Med­ical School and Ani­ta Laton, an author and pro­fes­sor of Health and Hygiene at San Jose State. Alfred Kin­sey would’ve approved. The dia­grams are less straight­for­ward, but I kind of liked that. They look like Mid Cen­tu­ry Din­ner­ware pat­terns, which is to say, a lot sex­i­er than most of the sex organs one can find on the Inter­net. For fun and com­par­i­son, have a look at Fuzzy Bun­ny’s Guide to You Know What, the Simp­sons’ infa­mous “sex educ­ta­tion” film.

I’d say they both get it right.

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Fam­i­ly Plan­ning, Walt Disney’s 1967 Sex Ed Pro­duc­tion, Star­ring Don­ald Duck

The Sto­ry Of Men­stru­a­tion: Walt Disney’s Sex Ed Film from 1946

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of sev­en books, and cre­ator of the award win­ning East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Philosophize This!: The Popular, Entertaining Philosophy Podcast from an Unconventional Teacher

in Philosophy, Podcasts | April 11th, 2014

philosophize-this

Pod­cast­ing has treat­ed few fields of human inquiry as well as it has phi­los­o­phy. You’ll already know that if you’ve sub­scribed to the phi­los­o­phy pod­casts we’ve fea­tured before, like Phi­los­o­phy Bites, The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps, and The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life. Per­haps we can chalk this up to what any­one who has tak­en a course under an astute phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor has felt (see our list of 100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es): the sub­ject sim­ply lends itself bet­ter to con­veyance through the spo­ken words of liv­ing, breath­ing peo­ple, espe­cial­ly those with an enthu­si­asm for the sub­ject. And those who’ve ded­i­cat­ed their lives to phi­los­o­phy, giv­en the field­’s famous­ly per­sis­tent lack of both finan­cial rewards and con­crete answers, tend to have more pure enthu­si­asm for their sub­ject itself than do many oth­er intel­lec­tu­al pro­fes­sion­als. Stephen West, host of the new­er Phi­los­o­phize This! pod­cast [iTunes — Web — RSS — Lib­syn), does­n’t move among intel­lec­tu­al pro­fes­sion­als. He nev­er even took a phi­los­o­phy course him­self, with an astute pro­fes­sor or with­out one. Yet he can teach you about phi­los­o­phy with greater clar­i­ty and engage­ment than most pod­cast­ers can muster even about their favorite tele­vi­sion shows.

West begins the series, which has come to eigh­teen episodes since last June, with a two-part talk on the very ori­gins of phi­los­o­phy (Ion­ian and Ital­ian), telling us what, exact­ly, the so-called “pre­so­crat­ic” thinkers thought about the human race and whether it had devel­oped suf­fi­cient­ly advanced sur­vival mechan­ics to begin think­ing about things at all. He then con­tin­ues through his­to­ry and across the globe, explain­ing the ideas of the best-known philoso­phers from Socrates to Aris­to­tle (a two-parter) to the Bud­dha to (most recent­ly) Avi­cen­na, break­ing down how they came to those ideas, and con­nect­ing them to the broad­er philo­soph­i­cal expe­ri­ence in their his­tor­i­cal con­text and ours today (which means ref­er­ences to, among oth­er touch­stones of mod­ern life, The Walk­ing Dead). And lest you doubt the un-degree’d West­’s qual­i­fi­ca­tions, do read his brief auto­bi­og­ra­phy, which tells the sto­ry of how he rose from the worst child­hood I’ve read about in quite some time, guid­ed dur­ing his all-day shifts dri­ving a pal­let jack by the great philoso­phers: “Hume, Kant, Hegel — these men were my fathers. They were the peo­ple who made me ask ques­tions and strive to con­stant­ly improve myself.” You might place West in the tra­di­tion, now some­what with­ered, of the robust “blue-col­lar” think­ing man, draw­ing his need­ed strength from ideas. But giv­en the way he’s har­nessed our era’s tech­nol­o­gy to become a phi­los­o­phy teacher to thou­sands — hun­dreds of whom have left five-star reviews on iTunes, lead­ing to an aston­ish­ing #32 rank­ing in its Top 100 pod­cast chart — I’d say he embod­ies a brand new type of homo philo­soph­i­cus alto­geth­er.

You can lis­ten to the first first episode of Phi­los­o­phize This! above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life: A Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps – Peter Adamson’s Pod­cast Still Going Strong

Phi­los­o­phy Bites: Pod­cast­ing Ideas From Pla­to to Sin­gu­lar­i­ty Since 2007

Down­load 100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

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

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The Coffee Pot That Fueled Honoré de Balzac’s Coffee Addiction

in Food & Drink, Literature | April 10th, 2014

9 Cafetière de Balzac

Last fall, Ayun Hal­l­i­day revis­it­ed Hon­oré de Balza­c’s Humor­ous Essay, “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” and His Epic Cof­fee Addic­tion. Last night, one of our friends on Twit­ter — @thegliterati — sent this our way: A snap­shot of Balza­c’s cof­fee pot. It bears his ini­tials and cur­rent­ly resides at the Mai­son de Balzac muse­um in Paris. If you ever find your­self in the 16 arrondisse­ment, pay it a vis­it and pay it some thanks.

You can find Balza­c’s cof­fee-fueled clas­sics in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Curi­ous Sto­ry of London’s First Cof­fee­hous­es (1650–1675)

Hon­oré de Balzac Writes About “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” and His Epic Cof­fee Addic­tion

Men In Com­mer­cials Being Jerks About Cof­fee: A Mashup of 1950s & 1960s TV Ads

The His­to­ry of Cof­fee and How It Trans­formed Our World

Black Cof­fee: Doc­u­men­tary Cov­ers the His­to­ry, Pol­i­tics & Eco­nom­ics of the “Most Wide­ly Tak­en Legal Drug”

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Ernest Hemingway’s Very First Published Stories, Free as an eBook

in Books, Literature | April 10th, 2014

Hemingway1stStories1

“I like the ear­ly stuff”: the clas­sic mas­cu­line com­ment to make about the work of a well-known cre­ator, demon­strat­ing as it does the cul­tur­al con­sumer’s ded­i­ca­tion, purism, judg­men­tal rig­or, and even endurance (giv­en the rel­a­tive acces­si­bil­i­ty, in the intel­lec­tu­al as well as the col­lec­tor’s sens­es, of most “ear­ly stuff”). Now you have a chance to say it about that most osten­si­bly mas­cu­line of all 20th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can writ­ers, Ernest Hem­ing­way. Above, see the cov­er of a cov­et­ed edi­tion of the then-young “Papa“ ‘s very first book, 1923’s Three Sto­ries & Ten Poems. The print run num­bered only “300 copies, put out by friend and fel­low expa­tri­ate, the writer- pub­lish­er Robert McAl­mon,” writes Steve King at Today in Lit­er­a­ture. “Both had arrived in Paris in 1921, Hem­ing­way an unpub­lished twen­ty-two-year-old jour­nal­ist with a recent bride, a hand­ful of let­ters of intro­duc­tion pro­vid­ed by Sher­wood Ander­son, and a clear imper­a­tive: ‘All you have to do is write one true sen­tence.’ ”

Instead of shelling out to a rare-book deal­er for Three Sto­ries & Ten Poems — admire the sac­ri­fice involved though a true Hem­ing­wayite may — you can read even more of the Old Man and the Sea author’s ear­ly stuff in the free e‑book embed­ded just above: 1946’s The First Forty Nine Sto­ries. It con­tains not just “Up in Michi­gan,” “Out of Sea­son,” and “My Old Man,” those three sto­ries of Hem­ing­way’s bound debut, but, yes, 46 more of his ear­li­est pub­lished pieces of short-form fic­tion. Today in Lit­er­a­ture quotes one notable con­tem­po­rary reac­tion to Three Sto­ries & Ten Poems, from a time before Hem­ing­way had become Hem­ing­way, much less Papa: “I should say that Hem­ing­way should stick to poet­ry and intel­li­gence and eschew the hot­ter emo­tions and the more turgid vision. Intel­li­gence and a great deal of it is a good thing to use when you have it, it’s all for the best.” And who could have writ­ten such an astute ear­ly assess­ment of the ulti­mate lit­er­ary man’s man? A cer­tain Gertrude Stein.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

18 (Free) Books Ernest Hem­ing­way Wished He Could Read Again for the First Time

Sev­en Tips From Ernest Hem­ing­way on How to Write Fic­tion

Ernest Hem­ing­way Cre­ates a Read­ing List for a Young Writer, 1934

Ernest Hemingway’s Favorite Ham­burg­er Recipe

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

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Before The Simpsons, Matt Groening Illustrated a “Student’s Guide” for Apple Computers (1989)

in Comics/Cartoons, Technology | April 10th, 2014

A friend once told me of his old­er cousin who, for the freak­ish act of installing a com­put­er in his col­lege dorm room, found him­self imme­di­ate­ly and irrev­o­ca­bly dubbed “com­put­er Jon.” This hap­pened in the ear­ly 1980s, and boy, have times changed. They’d even changed by the late 1980s, by which time Apple’s col­lege mar­ket­ing efforts had become suf­fi­cient­ly advanced to require the tal­ents of Matt Groen­ing, best known as the man who cre­at­ed The Simp­sons. But that prime-time ani­mat­ed sit­com would­n’t begin its record-break­ing run (still with­out an end in sight) until Christ­mas 1989, while the Groen­ing-illus­trat­ed Who Needs a Com­put­er Any­way? (which you can flip through above) appeared ear­li­er that year. Back then, read­ers might well have known him first and fore­most as the cre­ator of the satir­i­cal alter­na­tive-week­ly com­ic strip Life in Hell, which had debuted in 1977. One of its stars, the hap­less but good-heart­ed young one-eared rab­bit Bon­go, even made his way to Apple brochure’s cov­er. Though com­put­ers them­selves had long since come to dom­i­nate Amer­i­ca’s cam­pus­es by the time I entered col­lege, he and Groen­ing’s oth­er now-less­er-known char­ac­ters did do their part to pre­pare me for acad­e­mia.

I refer, of course, to School is Hell, his 1987 Life in Hell book offer­ing sar­don­ic primers on each and every phase of mod­ern edu­ca­tion from kinder­garten to grad school (“when you haven’t had enough pun­ish­ment”). Groen­ing’s pages in Who Needs a Com­put­er Any­way? read like a less sharp-edged ver­sion of those car­toons, fol­low­ing Life in Hel­l’s sig­na­ture “The 9 Types of…” for­mat to present the read­er with their nine types of future col­lege class­mates, from “the stressed” to “the tech­noid” to “the unem­ployed.” Between these, you can read Apple’s pitch for why you’ll find a piece of equip­ment still some­what out­landish and expen­sive so essen­tial to every aspect of your col­lege career. Though dat­ed tech­ni­cal­ly — the text men­tions noth­ing of the inter­net, for instance, which this gen­er­a­tion of col­lege stu­dents would soon­er drop out than do with­out — it nev­er­the­less under­scores the design virtues of Apple com­put­ers — an intu­itive inter­face, appli­ca­tion inter­op­er­abil­i­ty, “every­thing you need in one small, trans­portable case” — that remain design virtues today. It also dis­plays an impres­sive pre­science of the per­son­al com­put­er’s com­ing indis­pens­abil­i­ty, a con­fi­dent pre­dic­tion that, if not for the slack­er’s lev­i­ty lent by Groen­ing’s hand, might, at the time, actu­al­ly have sound­ed implau­si­ble.

via Retro­naut/Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thompson’s Edgy 1990s Com­mer­cial for Apple’s Mac­in­tosh Com­put­er

Every Apple Ad Ever Aired on TV

Rid­ley Scott Talks About Mak­ing Apple’s Land­mark “1984″ Com­mer­cial, Aired 30 Years Ago on Super Bowl Sun­day

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

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Johnny Depp Reads Hunter S. Thompson’s Famous “Wave Speech” from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

in Books, Film, Literature | April 10th, 2014

Hunter S. Thomp­son was a lit­er­ary icon – a moral­ist, a gun nut, and the orig­i­nal gonzo jour­nal­ist. He was the inven­tor of the true break­fast of cham­pi­ons and author of the most hilar­i­ous­ly pro­fane pres­i­den­tial obit­u­ary ever.

Of all his writ­ing though, his book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a jour­ney through bat coun­try and into the twist­ed dark heart of the Amer­i­can soul, is his most famous and beloved. And aside from per­haps the book’s open­ing line – “We were some­where around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold” – the most mem­o­rable sec­tion of the work is his “wave speech” which shows up in the eighth chap­ter. It is a poet­ic, heart­felt mono­logue about the ide­al­ism and the crushed dreams of the 1960s. Thomp­son him­self said that the pas­sage is “one of the best things I’ve ever fuck­ing writ­ten.”

You can see John­ny Depp — who has played Thomp­son twice on the sil­ver screen — read an abbre­vi­at­ed ver­sion of the speech above. You can read along below. And make sure you turn up your speak­ers a bit.

Strange mem­o­ries on this ner­vous night in Las Vegas. Five years lat­er? Six? It seems like a life­time, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that nev­er comes again. San Fran­cis­co in the mid­dle six­ties was a very spe­cial time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant some­thing. Maybe not, in the long run… but no expla­na­tion, no mix of words or music or mem­o­ries can touch that sense of know­ing that you were there and alive in that cor­ner of time and the world. What­ev­er it meant.…

His­to­ry is hard to know, because of all the hired bull­shit, but even with­out being sure of “his­to­ry” it seems entire­ly rea­son­able to think that every now and then the ener­gy of a whole gen­er­a­tion comes to a head in a long fine flash, for rea­sons that nobody real­ly under­stands at the time—and which nev­er explain, in ret­ro­spect, what actu­al­ly hap­pened.
[…]

There was mad­ness in any direc­tion, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Gold­en Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Hon­da.… You could strike sparks any­where. There was a fan­tas­tic uni­ver­sal sense that what­ev­er we were doing was right, that we were win­ning.…

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable vic­to­ry over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or mil­i­tary sense; we did­n’t need that. Our ener­gy would sim­ply pre­vail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momen­tum; we were rid­ing the crest of a high and beau­ti­ful wave.…

So now, less than five years lat­er, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave final­ly broke and rolled back.

Fear and Loathing was, of course, adapt­ed into a 1998 film star­ring Depp after a very long devel­op­ment stage. Alex Cox – who direct­ed the punk cult hit Repo Man – was orig­i­nal­ly slat­ed to make the movie until he made the mis­take of propos­ing to turn the wave speech into an ani­mat­ed sequence. Thomp­son was extreme­ly unim­pressed. Cox got canned and soon after Ter­ry Gilliam was giv­en the reins to the film. You can see the Gilliam’s treat­ment of the wave speech sequence below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 10 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

Hunter S. Thomp­son Inter­views Kei­th Richards

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son

Hunter S. Thomp­son Gets Con­front­ed by The Hell’s Angels

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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Animated Video: Johnny Cash Explains Why Music Became a Religious Calling

in Animation, Music | April 9th, 2014

Blank on Blank is back with anoth­er ani­mat­ed video. This one ani­mates a long lost inter­view with the great John­ny Cash. Inter­viewed by Bar­ney Hoskyns back in 1996, Cash talked about music as a reli­gious call­ing. Play­ing music was akin to preach­ing the gospel, and he knew he’d con­tin­ue mak­ing music until his final days. Should we be sur­prised then, that sev­en years lat­er, Cash com­plet­ed more than 60 songs dur­ing the last four months of his life? He died with his boots on indeed.

Below we’ve high­light­ed for you some great John­ny Cash mate­r­i­al from our archive.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Episode of The John­ny Cash Show, Fea­tur­ing Bob Dylan & Joni Mitchell (1969)

The 1969 Bob Dylan-John­ny Cash Ses­sions: Twelve Rare Record­ings

John­ny Cash Sings “Man in Black” for the First Time, 1971

Two Prison Con­certs That Defined an Out­law Singer: John­ny Cash at San Quentin and Fol­som (1968–69)

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Jim Carrey Sings a Pretty Damn Good Cover of The Beatles “I Am the Walrus”

in Music | April 9th, 2014

Back in 1998, the Bea­t­les pro­duc­er, George Mar­tin, pro­duced an album called In My Life. It’s prob­a­bly not an LP that ever made it into your record col­lec­tion, unless you’re a fan of mid­dling cov­ers of Bea­t­les songs. (In which case, you’ll love our old post, The 15 Worst Cov­ers of Bea­t­les Songs: William Shat­ner, Bill Cos­by, Tiny Tim, Sean Con­nery & Your Excel­lent Picks.) But the com­pi­la­tion does fea­ture one record­ing that has­n’t quite fad­ed from view — Jim Car­rey’s take on “I Am the Wal­rus.” There’s a comedic com­po­nent to his per­for­mance. But Car­rey also demon­strates a “vocal elas­tic­i­ty” that you might not have expect­ed. If you’ve nev­er heard the Bea­t­les’ orig­i­nal record­ing (God help you), you can find it here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gui­tarist Randy Bach­man Demys­ti­fies the Open­ing Chord of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’

Peter Sell­ers Reads The Bea­t­les’ “She Loves You” in Four Dif­fer­ent Accents

Here Comes The Sun: The Lost Gui­tar Solo by George Har­ri­son

The Bea­t­les: Unplugged Col­lects Acoustic Demos of White Album Songs (1968)

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