An Animated Introduction to Goethe, Germany’s “Renaissance Man”

in History, Literature | January 28th, 2016

We all know the name Goethe — some of us even know the full name, Johann Wolf­gang von Goethe. I’ve nev­er lived in the renowned 18th- and 19th-cen­tu­ry writer, politi­cian, and cul­tur­al poly­math­’s home­land of Ger­many, but even when I lived in Los Ange­les, I reg­u­lar­ly went to my local branch of the Goethe-Insti­tute for Ger­man cul­tur­al events. Even in Korea, where I live now, Goethe has left a wide if shal­low mark: you can see The Sor­rows of Young Werther in the form of an elab­o­rate stage musi­cal, for instance, and buy almost all the goods you need in life from the enor­mous con­glom­er­ate named after the young lady on whom Werther con­cen­trates his doomed affec­tions, Lotte.

But why, more than 180 years after Goethe’s death, does his name still come up in so many dif­fer­ent con­texts? And giv­en that, why do so many of us know so lit­tle about his long, var­ied, col­or­ful, and high­ly pro­duc­tive life and career? This sounds like a job for the video wing of Alain de Bot­ton’s School of Life, whose short primers con­tin­ue to bring us up to speed on why the lega­cies of so many cul­tur­al fig­ures (with one sec­tion giv­en over to the lit­er­ary) have endured, or should endure. “Goethe is one of the great minds of Euro­pean civil­i­sa­tion, though his work is large­ly unknown out­side of the Ger­man speak­ing coun­tries,” says de Bot­ton in their video on Goethe: “He deserves our renewed atten­tion.”

To fill out the details pro­vid­ed in the School of Life’s video, you can read an overview of Goethe’s career (includ­ing details on the prop­er pro­nun­ci­a­tion of his name) in the accom­pa­ny­ing Book of Life entry online. It tells the sto­ry of not just Young Werther’s cre­ator, but “one of Europe’s big cul­tur­al heroes – com­pa­ra­ble to the likes of Shake­speare, Dante and Homer,” skilled in let­ters, of course, but also in “phys­i­ol­o­gy, geol­o­gy, botany and optics,” who also spent stretch­es of his career as “a diplo­mat, fash­ion guru, a senior civ­il ser­vant, a pornog­ra­ph­er, the head of a uni­ver­si­ty, a fine artist, an adven­tur­ous trav­eller, the direc­tor of a the­atre com­pa­ny and the head of a min­ing com­pa­ny.”

We might call Goethe, inso­far as he devel­oped his own mas­tery, span­ning so much of the human expe­ri­ence, a Renais­sance man out of time — but one who, in his way, out­did even the actu­al men of the Renais­sance. “We have so much to learn from him,” adds the Book of Life. “We don’t often hear peo­ple declar­ing a wish to be a lit­tle more like ‘Goethe.’ But if we did, the world would be a more vibrant and humane place.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Goethe’s The­o­ry of Col­ors: The 1810 Trea­tise That Inspired Kandin­sky & Ear­ly Abstract Paint­ing

The Tale of the Fox: Watch Ladis­las Starevich’s Ani­ma­tion of Goethe’s Great Ger­man Folk­tale (1937)

The Death Masks of Great Authors: Dante, Goethe, Tol­stoy, Joyce & More

Har­ry Clarke’s 1926 Illus­tra­tions of Goethe’s Faust: Art That Inspired the Psy­che­del­ic 60s

Eugène Delacroix Illus­trates Goethe’s Faust, “One of the Very Great­est of All Illus­trat­ed Books”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Stephen Hawking & Actor Paul Rudd Play an Epic Game of Quantum Chess, Narrated by Keanu Reeves

in Games, Physics | January 28th, 2016

The Insti­tute for Quan­tum Infor­ma­tion and Mat­ter (IQIM) at Cal­tech post­ed on its YouTube chan­nel today a fun lit­tle video called “Any­one Can Quantum”–the “Any­one” prob­a­bly refer­ring to actor Paul Rudd, who takes on Stephen Hawk­ing in a game of Quan­tum Chess, nar­rat­ed by Keanu Reeves. Quan­tum Chess, a made-up thing, a gim­mick, you say? Not so appar­ent­ly. It’s a thing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Psy­che­del­ic Ani­ma­tion Takes You Inside the Mind of Stephen Hawk­ing

Down­load the Soft­ware That Pro­vides Stephen Hawking’s Voice

Stephen Hawking’s Big Ideas Explained with Sim­ple Ani­ma­tion

Free Online Physics Cours­es

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Rare Video Captures 29-Year-Old Luciano Pavarotti in One of His Earliest Recorded Performances (1964)

in Music, Opera | January 28th, 2016

Some­times it’s hard to believe that cer­tain enter­tain­ers did not arrive ful­ly formed with their famous look already part of the act. It’s still weird to me, for exam­ple, to see very ear­ly George Car­lin, look­ing like a nephew to the but­ton-down com­e­dy of Bob Newhart. You might get the same shock see­ing this very early—possibly the first, but not verified—televised appear­ance of mas­ter tenor Luciano Pavarot­ti.

In this archived clip from Sovi­et tele­vi­sion, the future opera super­star looks more like come­di­an Jack­ie Glea­son than the beard­ed, icon­ic fig­ure he would become. Those eye­brows are work­ing over­time, though.

The year is 1964, only three years after his pro­fes­sion­al debut in a region­al Ital­ian opera house, where he played the lead, Rodol­fo, in a pro­duc­tion of La Boheme. It was also a year after his first major accom­plish­ment, sup­port­ing and singing with Joan Suther­land on an Aus­tralian tour. He was yet to have an Amer­i­can pre­miere, and was still try­ing to make a name for him­self.

This above clip, a jaun­ty and con­fi­dent take on Verdi’s “La Don­na e Mobile” from Rigo­let­to, shows all the youth­ful promise in his 29-year-old voice. Com­pare and con­trast below his 1982 ver­sion from Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s film ver­sion of the opera. It’s sweet­er and Pavarot­ti has less to prove, firm­ly estab­lished in the fir­ma­ment of singing stars. The song remains the same, but this ear­ly glimpse into Pavarotti’s career shows he knew he was going places, but just need­ed that chance to prove it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Pavarot­ti Sings with Lou Reed, Sting, James Brown and Oth­er Friends

New Web Site, “The Opera Plat­form,” Lets You Watch La Travi­a­ta and Oth­er First-Class Operas Free Online

Stephen Fry Hosts “The Sci­ence of Opera,” a Dis­cus­sion of How Music Moves Us Phys­i­cal­ly to Tears

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Stephen Hawking’s New Lecture, “Do Black Holes Have No Hair?,” Animated with Chalkboard Illustrations

in Physics, Radio | January 28th, 2016

You can now hear in full on the BBC’s web­site the first part of Stephen Hawk­ing’s 2016 Rei­th Lec­ture—“Do Black Holes Have No Hair?” Just above, lis­ten to Hawk­ing’s lec­ture while you fol­low along with an ani­mat­ed chalk­board on which artist Andrew Park sketch­es out the key points in help­ful images and dia­grams. We alert­ed you to the com­ing lec­ture this past Tues­day, and we also point­ed you toward the paper Hawk­ing recent­ly post­ed online, “Soft Hair on Black Holes,” co-authored with Mal­colm J. Per­ry and Andrew Stro­minger. There, Hawk­ing argues that black holes may indeed have “hair,” or waves of zero-ener­gy par­ti­cles that store infor­ma­tion pre­vi­ous­ly thought lost.

The arti­cle is tough going for any­one with­out a back­ground in the­o­ret­i­cal physics, but Hawk­ing’s talk above makes these ideas approach­able, with­out dumb­ing them down. He has a win­ning way of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with every­day exam­ples and wit­ti­cisms, and Park’s illus­tra­tions fur­ther help make sense of things. Hawk­ing begins with a brief his­to­ry of black hole the­o­ry, then builds slow­ly to his the­sis: as the BBC puts it, rather than see black holes as “scary, destruc­tive and dark he says if prop­er­ly under­stood, they could unlock the deep­est secrets of the cos­mos.”

Hawk­ing is intro­duced by BBC broad­cast­er Sue Law­ley, who also chairs a ques­tion-and-answer ses­sion (in the full lec­ture audio) with a few select Radio 4 lis­ten­ers whose ques­tions Hawk­ing chose from hun­dreds sub­mit­ted to the BBC. Stay tuned for Part Two, which should come online short­ly after Tues­day’s broad­cast.

The short ani­mat­ed video above gives us a tan­ta­liz­ing excerpt from Hawk­ing’s sec­ond talk. “If you feel you are in a black hole,” he says reas­sur­ing­ly, “don’t give up. There’s a way out.” That nice lit­tle aside is but one of many col­or­ful ways Hawk­ing has of express­ing him­self when dis­cussing the the­o­ret­i­cal physics of black holes, a sub­ject that could turn dead­ly seri­ous, and—speaking for myself—incomprehensible. As far as I know, black holes work in the real uni­verse just like they do in Inter­stel­lar.

I kid, but there is, how­ev­er, at least one way in which Christo­pher Nolan’s apoc­a­lyp­tic space fan­ta­sy with its improb­a­bly hap­py end­ing may not be total hokum: as Hawk­ing the­o­rizes above, cer­tain par­ti­cles (or anti-par­ti­cles) may escape from a black hole, “to infin­i­ty,” he says, or “pos­si­bly to anoth­er uni­verse.” The main idea, says Hawk­ing, is that black holes “are not the eter­nal pris­ons they were once thought.” Or, in oth­er words, “black holes ain’t as black as they are paint­ed,” which also hap­pens to be the title of his next talk. Stay tuned: we’ll bring you more of Hawk­ing’s fas­ci­nat­ing black hole the­o­ry soon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Psy­che­del­ic Ani­ma­tion Takes You Inside the Mind of Stephen Hawk­ing

The Big Ideas of Stephen Hawk­ing Explained with Sim­ple Ani­ma­tion

Watch A Brief His­to­ry of Time, Errol Mor­ris’ Film About the Life & Work of Stephen Hawk­ing

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

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Discover Europeana Collections, a Portal of 48 Million Free Artworks, Books, Videos, Artifacts & Sounds from Across Europe

in Archives, Art, Maps, Photography | January 27th, 2016

MNAC 72

“Where is the wis­dom we have lost in knowl­edge? Where is the knowl­edge we have lost in infor­ma­tion?,” asked T.S. Eliot in lines from his play “The Rock.” His pre­scient descrip­tion of the dawn­ing infor­ma­tion age has inspired data sci­en­tists and their dis­senters for decades. Thir­ty-six years after Eliot’s prophet­ic lament over “End­less inven­tion, end­less exper­i­ment,” futur­ist Alvin Tof­fler described the effects of infor­ma­tion over­load in his book Future Shock, and though many of his pre­dic­tions haven’t aged well, his “prog­no­sis,” writes Fast Com­pa­ny, “was more accu­rate than not.” Among his many “Tof­flerisms” is one I believe Eliot would appre­ci­ate: “The illit­er­ate of the future will not be the per­son who can­not read. It will be the per­son who does not know how to learn.”

Indeed, the expo­nen­tial accu­mu­la­tion of data and infor­ma­tion, and the incred­i­ble amount of ready access would make both men’s heads spin. Inter­net archives grow vaster and vaster, their con­tents an embar­rass­ing rich­ness of the world’s trea­sures, and a per­haps even greater store of its obscu­ri­ties. Each week, it seems, we bring you news of one or two more open access data­bas­es filled with images, texts, films, record­ed music. It can indeed be dizzy­ing. And of all the archives I’ve sur­veyed, used in my own research, and pre­sent­ed to Open Cul­ture read­ers, none has seemed to me vaster than Euro­peana Col­lec­tions, a por­tal of “48,796,394 art­works, arte­facts, books, videos and sounds from across Europe,” sourced from well over 100 insti­tu­tions such as The Euro­pean Library, Europho­to, the Nation­al Library of Fin­land, Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Dublin, Museo Galileo, and many, many more, includ­ing con­tri­bu­tions from the pub­lic at large. Where does one begin?

europeana grammophone

In such an enor­mous ware­house of cul­tur­al his­to­ry, one could begin any­where and in an instant come across some­thing of inter­est, such as the stun­ning col­lec­tion of Art Nou­veau posters like that fine exam­ple at the top, “Cer­cle Art­s­tique de Schaer­beek,” by Hen­ri Pri­vat-Live­mont (from the Plandiu­ra Col­lec­tion, cour­tesy of Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalynya, Barcelona). One might enter any one of the avail­able inter­ac­tive lessons and cours­es on the his­to­ry of World War I or vis­it some of the many exhibits on the peri­od, with let­ters, diaries, pho­tographs, films, offi­cial doc­u­ments, and war pro­pa­gan­da. One might stop by the vir­tu­al exhib­it, “Pho­tog­ra­phy on a Sil­ver Plate,” a fas­ci­nat­ing his­to­ry of the medi­um from 1839–1860, or “Record­ing and Play­ing Machines,” a his­to­ry of exact­ly what it sounds like, or a gallery of the work of Swiss painter Jean Antoine Linck. All of the arti­facts have source and licens­ing infor­ma­tion clear­ly indi­cat­ed.

Vue du Mont-Blanc, prise du Sommet du Col de Balme

The pos­si­bil­i­ties may lit­er­al­ly be end­less, as the col­lec­tion con­tin­ues to expand at a rate far beyond the abil­i­ty of any one per­son, or team of peo­ple, or entire research insti­tute of peo­ple to match. It is easy to feel adrift in such a data­base as this, which stretch­es on like a Bor­ge­sian library, offer­ing room after end­less room of visu­al splen­dor, doc­u­men­ta­tion, and inter­pre­ta­tion. It is also easy to make dis­cov­er­ies, to meet peo­ple, stum­ble upon art, hear music, see pho­tographs, learn his­to­ries you would nev­er have encoun­tered if you knew what you were look­ing for and knew exact­ly how to find it. Eliot warned us—and right­ly so—of the dan­gers of infor­ma­tion over­load. But he neglect­ed, in his puri­tan­i­cal way, to describe the plea­sures, the minor epipha­nies, the hap­py chance occur­rences afford­ed us by the ever-expand­ing sea of infor­ma­tion in which we swim. One can learn to nav­i­gate it, one can drift aim­less­ly, and one can, simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, feel immense­ly over­whelmed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Archive Makes Avail­able 800,000 Pages Doc­u­ment­ing the His­to­ry of Film, Tele­vi­sion & Radio

Yale Launch­es an Archive of 170,000 Pho­tographs Doc­u­ment­ing the Great Depres­sion

The New York Pub­lic Library Lets You Down­load 180,000 Images in High Res­o­lu­tion: His­toric Pho­tographs, Maps, Let­ters & More

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

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The Society of Mind: A Free Online Course from Marvin Minsky, Pioneer of Artificial Intelligence

in Computer Science, Online Courses | January 27th, 2016

This past week­end, Mar­vin Minksy, one of the found­ing fathers of com­put­er sci­ence, passed away at the age of 88. Edu­cat­ed at Har­vard and Prince­ton, The MIT Tech­nol­o­gy Review recalls, “Min­sky believed that the human mind was fun­da­men­tal­ly no dif­fer­ent than a com­put­er, and he chose to focus on engi­neer­ing intel­li­gent machines, first at Lin­coln Lab, and then lat­er as a pro­fes­sor at MIT, where he cofound­ed the Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Lab in 1959 with anoth­er pio­neer of the field, John McCarthy.” Dur­ing the 1980s, Min­sky pub­lished The Soci­ety of Mind, a sem­i­nal work which posit­ed that there’s no essen­tial dif­fer­ence between humans and machines, because humans are “actu­al­ly machines of a kind whose brains are made up of many semi­au­tonomous but unin­tel­li­gent ‘agents’.” (Quote comes from this NYTimes obit, not Min­sky direct­ly).

Above, you can watch The Soci­ety of Mind taught as a free online course. Pre­sent­ed at MIT in 2011, Min­sky takes you through his the­o­ries about how the human mind works, empha­siz­ing “aspects of think­ing that are so poor­ly under­stood that they are still con­sid­ered to be more philo­soph­i­cal than sci­en­tif­ic.” The goal, how­ev­er, is to “replace ill-defined folk the­o­ries of ‘con­scious­ness’, ‘self’ and ’emo­tion’ with more con­crete com­pu­ta­tion­al con­cepts.” Lec­tures in the course include ones intrigu­ing­ly called “Falling in Love,” “From Pan­ic to Suf­fer­ing,” and “Com­mon Sense.” In addi­tion to The Soci­ety of Mind, the course also cen­ters around anoth­er book by Min­sky, The Emo­tion Machine, which you can pur­chase online here.

Min­sky’s course will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties. His book, The Emo­tion Machine, can be found in our oth­er col­lec­tion: 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

via Boing Boing/O’Reil­ly Radar

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Now Com­plete­ly Online

Harvard’s Free Com­put­er Sci­ence Course Teach­es You to Code in 12 Weeks

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John Lennon Jams With Eric Clapton, Keith Richards & Mitch Mitchell at the Rolling Stones’ Rock and Roll Circus (1968)

in Film, Music | January 27th, 2016

In 1968, Mick Jag­ger and Michael Lindsay-Hogg—director of the Let It Be film and sev­er­al pro­mo music videos for the Bea­t­les and the Rolling Stones—sat down to brain­storm ideas for a full-length tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tion that would be unlike typ­i­cal con­cert films. Lind­say-Hogg drew a cir­cle on a piece of paper, and an idea was born for a rock and roll cir­cus: two shows fea­tur­ing the Stones, the Who, Mar­i­anne Faith­full, Taj Mahal, Jethro Tull, and John Lennon’s super­group Dirty Mac, with Yoko, Eric Clap­ton, Jimi Hen­drix’s drum­mer Mitch Mitchell, and Kei­th Richards on bass. That Decem­ber, the bands played on a cir­cus set in a Lon­don TV stu­dio to a live audi­ence.

Unhap­py with the result­ing footage, Jag­ger shelved the project, feel­ing like the Stones’ per­for­mance wasn’t up to snuff. (They went on ear­ly in the morn­ing, and some say Jag­ger felt upstaged by the Who.) Some film of the con­cert made it into the 1979 doc­u­men­tary The Kids Are Alright, but much of it was lost until 1989, when it turned up in the Who’s pri­vate archive. The full con­cert film even­tu­al­ly pre­miered in 1996 at the New York Film Fes­ti­val (and it’s now out on Blu­Ray-see trail­er below), where it appeared, wrote Janet Maslin, “straight out of its time cap­sule,” bring­ing back “the sleek young Stones in all their inso­lent glo­ry, recall­ing a time when they ruled the roost.” Despite Jag­ger’s mis­giv­ings, they real­ly did dom­i­nate that cir­cus stage, but the event is notable for a num­ber of oth­er rea­sons.

Of course, there’s the Lennon super­group, whose per­for­mance of his “Yer Blues,” sans Yoko (top) is “indis­pens­able,” writes All­mu­sic. That’s no over­state­ment. Clap­ton’s sin­u­ous leads and Mitch Mitchel­l’s busy fills sit beau­ti­ful­ly with Lennon’s con­fi­dent deliv­ery. Rock and Roll Cir­cus also fea­tures the only filmed per­for­mance of soon-to-be Black Sab­bath gui­tarist Tony Iom­mi in his tenure with Jethro Tull (“arguably,” Maslin says, “the most unbear­able band of their day.”)

As amaz­ing as so many of these per­for­mances are (Taj Mahal’s “Ain’t That a Lot of Love” seri­ous­ly rocks), as Maslin point­ed out, the Stones “ruled the roost,” and they knew it, even if they had to go on at five in the morn­ing to accom­mo­date dif­fi­cult setups between acts.

It just so hap­pens that Rock and Roll Cir­cus rep­re­sents Bri­an Jones very last gig with the band. (It was not, as Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock reports, an ear­li­er show at Empire Pool that May.) He looks par­tic­u­lar­ly unen­thused above play­ing “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” and the rest of the band looks exhaust­ed as well—all except Jag­ger whose “fab­u­lous per­for­mance,” Maslin writes, “near­ly turns this into a one-man show.” Just above, see them do “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” intro­duced by Lennon in sign lan­guage (“one of two live ren­di­tions it ever got with Bri­an Jones in the line­up,” writes All­mu­sic). You can also see the bar­room blues tune “Para­chute Woman” here and below, a jumpy, funky “Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il” (with Span­ish sub­ti­tles).

To see the full concert—including the Who’s quick appear­ance, more Dirty Mac (with Yoko), and a bunch of sideshow extras—pick up a copy of the Rock and Roll Cir­cus on Blu­Ray.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Lennon Writes Eric Clap­ton an 8‑Page Let­ter Ask­ing Him to Join the Plas­tic Ono Band for a World Tour on a Cruise Ship

The Last Time Lennon & McCart­ney Played Togeth­er Cap­tured in A Toot And a Snore in ’74

Gimme Shel­ter: Watch the Clas­sic Doc­u­men­tary of the Rolling Stones’ Dis­as­trous Con­cert at Alta­mont

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

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Archive of 35,000 TV Political Ads Launched, Creating a Badly Needed Way to Hold Politicians Accountable

in Internet Archive, Politics, Television | January 27th, 2016

The long-loom­ing 2016 Unit­ed States pres­i­den­tial elec­tion has already got many of us, even (or maybe espe­cial­ly) non-Amer­i­cans, instinc­tive­ly flinch­ing at any­thing that smacks of polit­i­cal cam­paign­ing. Giv­en that the noise has noth­ing to do but inten­si­fy, how do we stay sane for the dura­tion of the year, not to men­tion able to tell the cred­i­ble claims from the incred­i­ble?

I rec­om­mend get­ting some per­spec­tive with a vis­it to the Inter­net Archive’s new­ly opened Polit­i­cal TV Ad Archive. Its cre­ators have, “after sift­ing through more than 100,000 hours of broad­cast tele­vi­sion cov­er­age and count­ing,” orga­nized “more than 30,000 ad air­ings” into a site meant to, in the words of Inter­net Archive’s Tele­vi­sion Archive Man­ag­ing Edi­tor Nan­cy Watz­man, “bring jour­nal­ists, researchers, and the pub­lic resources to help hold politi­cians account­able for the mes­sages they deliv­er in TV ads.” A for­mi­da­ble task, giv­en that the cur­rent storm of polit­i­cal ads in which we find our­selves comes as only the lat­est vis­it of the larg­er bliz­zard of polit­i­cal ads that has swirled around us since Eisen­how­er answered Amer­i­ca 55 years ago.

At this point, even the most well-informed and media-lit­er­ate among us face a dif­fi­cult search for clar­i­ty amid all the slant­ed­ly aggres­sive “mes­sag­ing,” and so the Polit­i­cal TV Ad Archive has accom­pa­nied its data with links to “fact-check­ing and fol­low-the-mon­ey jour­nal­ism by the project’s part­ners,” which include the Amer­i­can Press Insti­tute, the Cen­ter for Pub­lic Integri­ty, FactCheck.org, and The Wash­ing­ton Post’s Fact Check­er. “Before the pri­maries are over, the pub­lic in key pri­ma­ry states will be buried in cam­paign ads gen­er­at­ing more heat than light,” Watz­man quotes Tele­vi­sion Archive direc­tor Roger Mac­don­ald as say­ing, high­light­ing the ease with which it lets us “have a bet­ter chance at sep­a­rat­ing lies from truths and learn who is pay­ing for the ads.”

What has the project found so far? To take exam­ples just from its scruti­ny of the can­di­dates draw­ing the most media atten­tion, part­ner Poli­ti­fact “rat­ed a claim in this Don­ald Trump cam­paign ad as ‘Pants on Fire’ because it pro­claimed that Trump would ‘stop ille­gal immi­gra­tion by build­ing a wall on our south­ern bor­der that Mex­i­co will pay for,’ while show­ing footage not of Mex­i­can immi­grants, but rather of refugees stream­ing into Moroc­co that had been pulled from an Ital­ian news net­work.”

On the oth­er side of the great divide, part­ner FactCheck.org “report­ed that a Hillary Clin­ton TV ad that claimed that drug prices had dou­bled in the last sev­en years was inac­cu­rate,” claim­ing that “brand-name drug prices on aver­age have more than dou­bled” when “more than 80 per­cent of filled pre­scrip­tions are gener­ic drugs, and those prices have declined by near­ly 63 per­cent, that same report says.”

The les­son to take away so far: ads are ads, and polit­i­cal ads are even more so. We have no defense against them but what facts we learn and what degree of hair-trig­ger skep­ti­cism we bring to the table, both of which tools like the Polit­i­cal TV Ad Archive can only increase. Eval­u­ate these flur­ries of claims from all sides as best you can with­out get­ting too obses­sive about it, and you’ll sure­ly sur­vive 2016 with your rea­son intact, and even a thing or two learned about the dark arts of polit­i­cal adver­tise­ment. Stay smart out there, ladies and gen­tle­men — espe­cial­ly if you live in a swing state.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Eisen­how­er Answers Amer­i­ca: The First Polit­i­cal Adver­tise­ments on Amer­i­can TV (1952)

Dizzy Gille­spie Runs for US Pres­i­dent, 1964. Promis­es to Make Miles Davis Head of the CIA

2,200 Rad­i­cal Polit­i­cal Posters Dig­i­tized: A New Archive

Free Online Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Cours­es

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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