The Smithsonian Presents a Gallery of 6,000+ Rare Rock ‘n Roll Photos on a Crowdsourced Web Site, and Now a New Book

in Film, Music | October 5th, 2017


Rock pho­tog­ra­phy is an art form in itself, as demon­strat­ed by books and exhi­bi­tions of some of its mas­ters like Mick Rock, Jen­ny Lens, Pen­nie Smith, and so many oth­ers. But two years ago, the Smith­son­ian turned to the crowd, to the fan, to the ama­teur pho­tog­ra­ph­er, with a call to sub­mit pho­tos from over six decades of rock and roll that weren’t hang­ing on gallery walls, but sit­ting in a shoe­box some­where. From fans with insta­mat­ic cam­eras to ama­teurs cov­er­ing con­certs for their school paper, the Smith­son­ian want­ed anoth­er angle on our cul­tur­al obses­sion.

Many of the con­tri­bu­tions now live on a crowd­sourced web­site. And a result­ing book Smith­son­ian Rock and Roll: Live and Unseen col­lects the best of these in a chrono­log­i­cal his­to­ry of the genre, from post-war blues to the late 20th cen­tu­ry. It will be offi­cial­ly released on Octo­ber 24, though you can pre-order now.

Web­sites Mash­able and Dan­ger­ous Minds present a selec­tion of pho­tos from the book, such as a shot of Sly Stone at the height of his pow­ers (and belt buck­le size), a pic of the Talk­ing Heads on stage in Berke­ley, 1977; a dark and mys­te­ri­ous glimpse of Bon­nie Raitt, cir­ca 1974; and a shot of Cream play­ing the Chica­go Col­i­se­um tak­en from the side of the stage, with Gin­ger Baker’s head a com­plete blur. Also find Joni Mitchell at Klein­hans Music Hall. And The Ramones in Tempe, Ari­zona, cir­ca 1978.

Bon­nie Raitt at the Har­vard Square The­atre, by Bar­ry Schneier/Smithsonian Books

It’s a reminder of how unpre­ten­tious these live shows could be, hap­pen­ing in a world with the sim­plest of light­ing rigs and decades from the big screen pro­jec­tions even up-and-com­ing bands now indulge in. For the most part, this was an inti­mate con­tract between the artist and the audi­ence, all crammed into small clubs with smoke, sweat, heat, and, most impor­tant­ly, elec­tric­i­ty in the air.

The new book also fea­tures tales from the peo­ple who took the pho­tos, along with some more pro­fes­sion­al pho­tos to “flesh out this overview of rock and roll,” accord­ing to the intro­duc­tion by orga­niz­er Bill Bent­ley. He adds: “The results, span­ning six decades, aim for nei­ther ency­clo­pe­dic author­i­ty nor com­pre­hen­sive final­i­ty, but rather an index of supreme influ­ence.”

The Ramones in Tempe, Ari­zona, by Dori­an Boese/Smithsonian Books

That supreme influ­ence con­tin­ues to be felt, for sure. Although the sub­mis­sion win­dow is now closed, the Smith­so­ni­an’s web­site allows you to look through the hun­dreds of sub­mis­sions to the project.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

UC San­ta Cruz Opens a Deadhead’s Delight: The Grate­ful Dead Archive is Now Online

Bea­t­les, Friends & Fam­i­ly: Pho­tos by Lin­da McCart­ney

Judy!: 1993 Judith But­ler Fanzine Gives Us An Irrev­er­ent Punk-Rock Take on the Post-Struc­tural­ist Gen­der The­o­rist

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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Depeche Mode Releases a Goosebump-Inducing Cover of David Bowie’s “Heroes”

in Music | October 4th, 2017

40 years ago, David Bowie record­ed “Heroes,” a song that tells the sto­ry of two lovers who embrace in a kiss by the Berlin Wall. How the song was record­ed gets won­der­ful­ly retold by pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti, in a post/video we fea­tured in Jan­u­ary 2016. Don’t miss it.

Above, you can watch Depeche Mod­e’s new cov­er of “Heroes,” record­ed to com­mem­o­rate the 40th anniver­sary of the song’s offi­cial release (Sep­tem­ber 23, 1977). “ ‘Heroes’ is the most spe­cial song to me at the moment,” Depeche Mode front­man Dave Gahan told NME. “Bowie is the one artist who I’ve stuck with since I was in my ear­ly teens. His albums are always my go-to on tour and cov­er­ing ‘Heroes’ is pay­ing homage to Bowie.”

In anoth­er inter­view with Rolling Stone, Gahan talked more about the expe­ri­ence of record­ing this song: “I was so moved, I bare­ly held it togeth­er, to be hon­est.” Watch­ing the per­for­mance, I got a few goose­bumps, I have to admit.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti Breaks Down the Mak­ing of David Bowie’s Clas­sic “Heroes,” Track by Track

David Bowie Per­forms a Live Acoustic Ver­sion of “Heroes,” with a Bot­tle Cap Strapped to His Shoe, Keep­ing the Beat

David Bowie & Bri­an Eno’s Col­lab­o­ra­tion on “Warsza­wa” Reimag­ined in a Com­ic Ani­ma­tion

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Three Blade Runner Prequels: Watch Them Online

in Film, Sci Fi | October 4th, 2017

Even if you’ve spent each and every day since you first saw Rid­ley Scot­t’s Blade Run­ner wait­ing for a sequel, you still might not be ful­ly pre­pared for Denis Vil­leneu­ve’s Blade Run­ner 2049 when it opens in the­aters this Fri­day. The 1981 orig­i­nal took place in the Los Ange­les of the then-far-flung future of 2019, mean­ing that 30 years have elapsed in the Blade Run­ner uni­verse between its first fea­ture film and its sec­ond. Much has tak­en place over those three decades, some of it por­trayed by the three offi­cial short pre­quels released to the inter­net over the past month. Today we present them all in chrono­log­i­cal order to catch you up with what hap­pened after Har­ri­son Ford’s Blade Run­ner Rick Deckard picked up that origa­mi uni­corn and left the build­ing.

In 2020, the year after Blade Run­ner, the arti­fi­cial-being-mak­ing Tyrell Cor­po­ra­tion intro­duces a new mod­el of repli­cant, with a longer lifes­pan, called the Nexus 8S. Two years lat­er comes “the Black­out,” an elec­tro­mag­net­ic pulse attack that destroys all tech­nol­o­gy with­in its reach. You can see it hap­pen in Blade Run­ner Black Out 2022, the short at the top of the post direct­ed by respect­ed Japan­ese ani­ma­tor Shinichi­ro Watan­abe (and fea­tur­ing a score by Fly­ing Lotus as well as a reprisal of the role of the qua­si-Esperan­to-speak­ing police offi­cer Gaff by Edward James Olmos).

Repli­cants hav­ing tak­en the blame for the Black­out, their pro­duc­tion gets legal­ly pro­hib­it­ed until the efforts of an orga­ni­za­tion called the Wal­lace Cor­po­ra­tion get the ban over­turned in 2030. The man at the top of the Wal­lace Cor­po­ra­tion, a cer­tain Nian­der Wal­lace, first appears in 2036: Nexus Dawn (mid­dle video), direct­ed by Rid­ley Scot­t’s son Luke.

In that pre­quel we see Wal­lace, who rose to promi­nence on his com­pa­ny’s solu­tion to glob­al food short­ages, sub­mit­ting for approval his lat­est repli­cant, the Nexus 9 (although his nego­ti­a­tion strat­e­gy leaves lit­tle room for com­pro­mise). The younger Scot­t’s 2048: Nowhere to Run (below), which intro­duces a new and impos­ing repli­cant char­ac­ter by the name of Sap­per Mor­ton, takes place just a year before the sequel, by which time, accord­ing to the time­line unveiled at this past sum­mer’s Com­ic-Con, “life on Earth has reached its lim­it and soci­ety divides between repli­cant and human.” Enter Ryan Gosling’s K, one of a new gen­er­a­tion of repli­cant- hunters, who goes out in search of a pre­de­ces­sor who went miss­ing some 30 years ago. All of this, of course, still leaves ques­tions unan­swered. Chiefly: will Blade Run­ner 2049 deliv­er what we’ve been wait­ing even more than three dea­cades for?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the New Ani­me Pre­quel to Blade Run­ner 2049, by Famed Japan­ese Ani­ma­tor Shinichi­ro Watan­abe

Jared Leto Stars in a New Pre­quel to Blade Run­ner 2049: Watch It Free Online

Blade Run­ner 2049’s New Mak­ing-Of Fea­turette Gives You a Sneak Peek Inside the Long-Await­ed Sequel

The Offi­cial Trail­er for Rid­ley Scott’s Long-Await­ed Blade Run­ner Sequel Is Final­ly Out

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Philosophy & Music of Devo, the Avant-Garde Art Project Dedicated to Revealing the Truth About De-Evolution

in Art, Music | October 4th, 2017

The chief dif­fi­cul­ty for any­one want­i­ng to make an assault on our munic­i­pal the­atre… is that there can be no ques­tion of reveal­ing a mys­tery. He can­not just point a stumpy fin­ger at the theatre’s ongo­ings and say, “You may have thought this amount­ed to some­thing, but let me tell you, it’s a sheer scan­dal; what you see before you proves your absolute bank­rupt­cy; it’s your own stu­pid­i­ty, your men­tal lazi­ness and your degen­er­a­cy that are being pub­li­cal­ly exposed.” No, the poor man can’t say that, for it’s no sur­prise to you; you’ve known it all along; noth­ing can be done about it.

–Berthold Brecht, “A Reck­on­ing”

Have you ever felt like Net­work’s Howard Beale? Rant­i­ng to any­one who’ll lis­ten about how mad as hell you are? “I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Every­body knows things are bad.”

Or maybe agreed with the weary cyn­i­cism of his boss, Max Schu­mach­er? “All of life is reduced to the com­mon rub­ble of banal­i­ty.”

Faced with the cru­el, stu­pid the­ater of mass pol­i­tics and cul­ture, we begin to feel a blan­ket of over­whelm­ing futil­i­ty descend. All of the pos­si­ble moves have been made and absorbed into the programming—including the out­raged crit­ic point­ing his fin­ger at the stage.

Avant-garde artists since the late 19th cen­tu­ry have cor­rect­ly sized up this depress­ing real­i­ty. But rather than seize up in fits of rage or suc­cumb to cyn­i­cism, they made new forms of the­ater: Jar­ry, Dada, Debord, Artaud, Brecht—all had designs to dis­rupt the oppres­sive banal­i­ty of mod­ern stage- and state-craft with mock­ery, sadism, and shock.

And so too did DEVO, the authors of “Whip It.”

Their 80s New Wave antics seemed like a juve­nile art-school prank. Behind it lay the­o­ret­i­cal sophis­ti­ca­tion and seri­ous polit­i­cal intent. “When we first start­ed Devo,” says Mark Moth­ers­baugh in the “Cal­i­for­nia Inspires Me” video above, “we were artists who were work­ing in a num­ber of dif­fer­ent media. We were around for the shoot­ings at Kent State. And it affect­ed us. We were think­ing, like, ‘What are we observ­ing?’ And we decid­ed we weren’t observ­ing evo­lu­tion, we were observ­ing de-evo­lu­tion.”

Won­der­ing how to change things, the band looked to Madi­son Avenue for inspiration—intent on tak­ing the tech­niques of mass per­sua­sion to sub­vert the enchant­ments of mass per­sua­sion, “report­ing the good news of De-Evo­lu­tion” in a joy­ous the­ater of mock­ery. The phi­los­o­phy itself evolved over time, first tak­ing shape in 1970 when Moth­ers­baugh and Ger­ald Casale met at Kent State. Casale had already coined the term “De-Evo­lu­tion”; Moth­ers­baugh intro­duced him to its mas­cot, Jocko-Homo, the 1924 cre­ation of anti-evo­lu­tion fun­da­men­tal­ist pam­phle­teer B.H. Shad­duck.

Fas­ci­nat­ed by Shadduck’s bizarre, pro­to-Jack Chick, illus­trat­ed freak-outs, Moth­ers­baugh and his band­mates adopt­ed the char­ac­ter for the first sin­gle from their 1978 debut album (top). Are We Not Men? We Are Devo! announced their car­ni­va­lesque gospel of human stu­pid­i­ty. Devo proved noth­ing we didn’t already know. Instead, they showed us the ele­va­tion of idio­cy to the sta­tus of a civ­il reli­gion. (Lat­er in the 80s, they would express­ly par­o­dy the nation­al reli­gion with their Evan­gel­i­cal satire DOVE.)

The the­ater of Devo was weird­ly com­pelling then and is wierd­ly com­pelling now, since the banal­i­ty and casu­al vio­lence of late-cap­i­tal­ism that threat­ened to swal­low up every­thing in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry has, if any­thing, only become more bloat­ed and grotesque. “As far as Devo was con­cerned,” writes Ray Pad­gett at The New York­er, “Devo wasn’t a band at all but, rather, an art project… inspired by the Dadaists and the Ital­ian Futur­ists, Devo’s mem­bers were also cre­at­ing satir­i­cal visu­al art, writ­ing trea­tis­es, and film­ing short videos.”

One of those videos, “In the Begin­ning Was the End: The Truth About De-Evo­lu­tion,” fea­tured their “first ever cover”—Johnny Rivers’ “Secret Agent Man”—before they re-invent­ed (or “cor­rect­ed,” as they put it), the Rolling Stones’ “Sat­is­fac­tion.” They would screen the 9‑minute film, with its footage of two men in mon­key masks spank­ing a house­wife, before gigs.

The con­cepts are aggres­sive­ly wink-nudge ado­les­cent, reflect­ing not only Devo’s take on the regres­sive state of the cul­ture, but also Casale’s belief that “high-school kids know every­thing already.” But amidst the synths and shiny suits, we still hear Howard Beale’s cri de coeur, “I’m a human being dammit! My life has val­ue!” Only in Devo’s hands it turns to dark comedy—as in the title of a song from their 2010 come­back record Some­thing for Every­body, tak­en from words print­ed on the back of a hunter’s safe­ty vest that call back to the band’s begin­nings at Kent State: “Don’t Shoot, I’m a Man.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mas­ter­mind of Devo, Mark Moth­ers­baugh, Shows Off His Syn­the­siz­er Col­lec­tion

New Wave Music–DEVO, Talk­ing Heads, Blondie, Elvis Costello–Gets Intro­duced to Amer­i­ca by ABC’s TV Show, 20/20 (1979)

Devo’s Mark Moth­ers­baugh & Oth­er Arists Tell Their Musi­cal Sto­ries in the Ani­mat­ed Video Series, “Cal­i­for­nia Inspires Me”

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

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How Buddhism & Neuroscience Can Help You Change How Your Mind Works: A New Course by Bestselling Author Robert Wright

in Psychology, Religion | October 3rd, 2017

Bud­dhist thought and cul­ture has long found a com­fort­able home among hip­pies, beat­niks, New Age believ­ers, artists, occultists and mys­tics. Recent­ly, many of its tenets and prac­tices have become wide­ly pop­u­lar among very dif­fer­ent demo­graph­ics of sci­en­tists, skep­tics, and athe­ist com­mu­ni­ties. It may seem odd that an increas­ing­ly sec­u­lar­iz­ing West would wide­ly embrace an ancient East­ern reli­gion. But even the Dalai Lama has point­ed out that Buddhism’s essen­tial doc­trines align uncan­ni­ly with the find­ings of mod­ern sci­ence

The Pali Canon, the ear­li­est col­lec­tion of Bud­dhist texts, con­tains much that agrees with the sci­en­tif­ic method. In the Kala­ma Sut­ta, for exam­ple, we find instruc­tions for how to shape views and beliefs that accord with the meth­ods espoused by the Roy­al Soci­ety many hun­dreds of years lat­er.

Robert Wright—best­selling author and vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor of reli­gion and psy­chol­o­gy at Prince­ton and Penn—goes even fur­ther, show­ing in his book Why Bud­dhism is True how Bud­dhist insights into imper­ma­nence, delu­sion, igno­rance, and unhap­pi­ness align with con­tem­po­rary find­ings of neu­ro­science and evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gy.

Wright is now mak­ing his argu­ment for the com­pat­i­bil­i­ty of Bud­dhism and sci­ence in a new MOOC from Cours­era called “Bud­dhism and Mod­ern Psy­chol­o­gy.” You can watch the trail­er for the course, which you can take any time, just above.

The core of Bud­dhism is gen­er­al­ly con­tained in the so-called “Four Noble Truths,” and Wright explains in his lec­ture above how these teach­ings sum up the prob­lem we all face, begin­ning with the first truth of dukkha. Often trans­lat­ed as “suf­fer­ing,” the word might bet­ter be thought of as mean­ing “unsat­is­fac­tori­ness,” as Wright illus­trates with a ref­er­ence to the Rolling Stones. Jag­ger’s “can’t get no sat­is­fac­tion,” he says, cap­tures “a lot of the spir­it of what is called the First Noble Truth,” which, along with the Sec­ond, con­sti­tutes “the Buddha’s diag­no­sis of the human predica­ment.” Not only can we not get what we want, but even when we do, it hard­ly ever makes us hap­py for very long.

Rather than impute our mis­ery to the dis­plea­sure of the gods, the Bud­dha, Wright tells Lion’s Roar, “says the rea­son we suf­fer, the rea­son we’re not endur­ing­ly sat­is­fied, is that we don’t see the world clear­ly. That’s also the rea­son we some­times fall short of moral good­ness and treat oth­er human beings bad­ly.” Des­per­ate to hold on to what we think will sat­is­fy us, we become con­sumed by crav­ing, as the Sec­ond Noble Truth explains, con­stant­ly cling­ing to plea­sure and flee­ing from pain. Just above, Wright explains how these two claims com­pare with the the­o­ries of evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­o­gy. His course also explores how med­i­ta­tion releas­es us from crav­ing and breaks the vicious cycle of desire and aver­sion.

Over­all, the issues Wright address­es are laid out in his course descrip­tion:

Are neu­ro­sci­en­tists start­ing to under­stand how med­i­ta­tion “works”? Would such an under­stand­ing val­i­date meditation—or might phys­i­cal expla­na­tions of med­i­ta­tion under­mine the spir­i­tu­al sig­nif­i­cance attrib­uted to it? And how are some of the basic Bud­dhist claims about the human mind hold­ing up? We’ll pay spe­cial atten­tion to some high­ly coun­ter­in­tu­itive doc­trines: that the self doesn’t exist, and that much of per­ceived real­i­ty is in some sense illu­so­ry. Do these claims, rad­i­cal as they sound, make a cer­tain kind of sense in light of mod­ern psy­chol­o­gy? And what are the impli­ca­tions of all this for how we should live our lives? Can med­i­ta­tion make us not just hap­pi­er, but bet­ter peo­ple?

As to the last ques­tion, Wright is not alone among sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-mind­ed peo­ple in answer­ing with a resound­ing yes. Rather than rely­ing on the benef­i­cence of a super­nat­ur­al sav­ior, Bud­dhism offers a course of treatment—the “Noble Eight­fold Path”—to com­bat our dis­po­si­tion toward illu­so­ry think­ing. We are shaped by evo­lu­tion, Wright says, to deceive our­selves. The Bud­dhist prac­tices of med­i­ta­tion and mind­ful­ness, and the ethics of com­pas­sion and non­harm­ing, are “in some sense, a rebel­lion against nat­ur­al selec­tion.”

You can see more of Wright’s lec­tures on YouTube. Wright’s free course, Bud­dhism and Mod­ern Psy­chol­o­gy, has been added to our list of Free Reli­gion Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Mind­ful­ness Makes Us Hap­pi­er & Bet­ter Able to Meet Life’s Chal­lenges: Two Ani­mat­ed Primers Explain

Dai­ly Med­i­ta­tion Boosts & Revi­tal­izes the Brain and Reduces Stress, Har­vard Study Finds

Philoso­pher Sam Har­ris Leads You Through a 26-Minute Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tion

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

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The Aberdeen Bestiary, One of the Great Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts, Now Digitized in High Resolution & Made Available Online

in Books, History | October 3rd, 2017

For thou­sands of years, ordi­nary peo­ple all over the world not only worked side-by-side with domes­tic ani­mals on a dai­ly basis, they also observed the wild fau­na around them to learn how to nav­i­gate and sur­vive nature. The close­ness pro­duced a keen appre­ci­a­tion for ani­mal behav­ior that informs the folk tales of every con­ti­nent and the pop­u­lar texts of every reli­gion. Our delight in ani­mal sto­ries sur­vives in children’s books, but in grown-up lan­guage, ani­mal com­par­isons tend to be nasty and dehu­man­iz­ing. The demean­ing adjec­tive “bes­tial” con­veys a typ­i­cal atti­tude not only toward peo­ple we don’t like, but toward the ani­mal world as well. Orwell’s Ani­mal Farm and Kafka’s Meta­mor­pho­sis have become the stan­dard ref­er­ences for mod­ern ani­mal alle­go­ry.

Ear­ly lit­er­a­ture shows us a range of dif­fer­ent atti­tudes, where ani­mals are treat­ed as equals, with char­ac­ter traits both good and bad, or as noble mes­sen­gers of a god or gods rather than live­stock, mov­ing scenery, or exploitable resources.

We might refer in an east­ern con­text to the Jata­ka Tales, fables of the Buddha’s many rebirths in the human and ani­mal worlds that pro­vide their read­ers with moral lessons. In the Chris­t­ian west, we have the medieval bestiary—compendiums of ani­mals, both real and mythological—that intro­duced read­ers to a moral typol­o­gy through “read­ing” what ear­ly Chris­tians thought of as the “book of nature.”

The most lav­ish of them all, the Aberdeen Bes­tiary, which dates from around 1200, was once owned by Hen­ry VIII. Now, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Aberdeen has dig­i­tized the text and made it freely avail­able to read­ers online. Begin­ning with the key cre­ation sto­ries from the book of Gen­e­sis, the book then dives into its descrip­tions of ani­mals, begin­ning with the lion, the pard (pan­ther), and the ele­phant.

You’ll notice that these are not ani­mals that your typ­i­cal medieval Euro­pean read­er would have encoun­tered. One impor­tant dif­fer­ence between the bes­tiary and the fable is that the for­mer draws many of its beasts from hearsay, con­jec­ture, or pure fic­tion. But the intent is part­ly the same. These “were teach­ing tools,” notes Claire Voon at Hyper­al­ler­gic, and the Aberdeen Bes­tiary con­tains illus­trat­ed “lengthy tales of moral behav­ior.”

Like the sto­ries of Aesop, the bes­tiary presents impor­tant lessons, mix­ing in the fab­u­lous with the nat­u­ral­ist. As Voon describes the Aberdeen Bes­tiary:

The illus­tra­tions are impres­sive­ly var­ied, depict­ing com­mon ani­mals from tiny ants to ele­phants, as well as fan­tas­tic beasts, from the leocro­ta to the phoenix. Even the moral qual­i­ties of the hum­ble sea urchin are hon­ored with para­graphs of dis­cus­sion. Beyond this array of crea­tures, the bes­tiary details the appear­ances and qual­i­ties of var­i­ous trees, gems, and humans. Some of these may seem com­i­cal to 21st-cen­tu­ry eyes: a swarm of bees, for instance, resem­bles an order­ly line of shut­tle­cocks stream­ing into their hives. Yet oth­er paint­ings are impres­sive for their near-accu­ra­cy, such as one image of a bat that shows how its mem­bra­nous wings con­nect its fin­gers, legs, and tail. All of these rich details would have helped read­ers bet­ter under­stand the nat­ur­al world as it was defined at the time of the book’s cre­ation. 

Incred­i­bly ornate and bear­ing the marks of dozens of scrib­al hands, the book, his­to­ri­ans believe, was orig­i­nal­ly pro­duced for a wide audi­ence, then tak­en by Henry’s librar­i­ans from a dis­solved monastery. Nev­er ful­ly com­plet­ed, it remained in the Roy­al Library for 100 years after Hen­ry. “I doubt if the Tudor mon­archs took it out for a reg­u­lar read,” says Aberdeen Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Jane Ged­des. Now an open pub­lic doc­u­ment, it returns to its“original pur­pose of edu­ca­tion,” writes Voon, “although for us, of course, it illu­mi­nates more about the past than the present.” See the high res scans here.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Won­der­ful­ly Weird & Inge­nious Medieval Books

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Bizarre Car­i­ca­tures & Mon­ster Draw­ings

1,000-Year-Old Illus­trat­ed Guide to the Med­i­c­i­nal Use of Plants Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online

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

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The Famously Controversial “Monty Hall Problem” Explained: A Classic Brain Teaser

in Math, Television | October 3rd, 2017

When the news broke last week of the death of game-show host Mon­ty Hall, even those of us who could­n’t quite put a face to the name felt the ring of recog­ni­tion from the name itself. Hall became famous on the long-run­ning game show Let’s Make a Deal, whose best-known seg­ment “Big Deal of the Day” had him com­mand­ing his play­ers to choose one of three num­bered doors, each of which con­cealed a prize of unknown desir­abil­i­ty. It put not just phras­es like “door num­ber three” into the Eng­lish lex­i­con but con­tributed to the world of stumpers the Mon­ty Hall Prob­lem, the brain-teas­er based on the much-con­test­ed prob­a­bil­i­ty behind which door a con­tes­tant should choose.

Let’s Make a Deal pre­miered in 1963, but only in 1990, when Mar­i­lyn vos Savant wrote one of her Q&A columns about it in Parade mag­a­zine, did the Mon­ty Hall Prob­lem draw seri­ous, frus­trat­ed pub­lic atten­tion.

“Behind one door is a car; behind the oth­ers, goats,” went the ques­tion, set­ting up a Let’s Make a Deal-like sce­nario. “You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what’s behind the doors, opens anoth­er door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, ‘Do you want to pick door No. 2?’ Is it to your advan­tage to switch your choice?” Yes, replied the unhesi­tat­ing Savant and her Guin­ness World Record-set­ting IQ, you should switch. “The first door has a 1/3 chance of win­ning, but the sec­ond door has a 2/3 chance.”

This log­ic, which you can see bro­ken down by Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley sta­tis­tics pro­fes­sor Lisa Gold­berg in the Num­ber­phile video at the top of the post, drew about 10,000 let­ters of dis­agree­ment in total, many from aca­d­e­mics at respectable insti­tu­tions. Michael Sher­mer received a sim­i­lar­ly vehe­ment response when he addressed the issue in Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can eigh­teen years lat­er. “At the begin­ning of the game you have a 1/3rd chance of pick­ing the car and a 2/3rds chance of pick­ing a goat,” he explained. “Switch­ing doors is bad only if you ini­tial­ly chose the car, which hap­pens only 1/3rd of the time. Switch­ing doors is good if you ini­tial­ly chose a goat, which hap­pens 2/3rds of the time.” Thus the odds of win­ning by switch­ing becomes two out of three, dou­ble those of not switch­ing.

Use­ful advice, pre­sum­ing you’d pre­fer a Brick­lin SV‑1 or an Opel Man­ta to a goat, and that the host opens one of the uns­e­lect­ed doors every time with­out fail, which Hall did­n’t actu­al­ly do. When he did open it, he lat­er explained, the con­tes­tants made the same assump­tion many of Savant and Sher­mer’s com­plainants did: “They’d think the odds on their door had now gone up to 1 in 2, so they hat­ed to give up the door no mat­ter how much mon­ey I offered. By open­ing that door we were apply­ing pres­sure.” Ulti­mate­ly, “if the host is required to open a door all the time and offer you a switch, then you should take the switch. But if he has the choice whether to allow a switch or not, beware. Caveat emp­tor. It all depends on his mood” — a rare con­sid­er­a­tion in any­thing relat­ed to math­e­mat­ics, but when deal­ing with the Mon­ty Hall prob­lem, one ignores at one’s per­il the words of Mon­ty Hall.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Are You One of the 2% Who Can Solve “Einstein’s Rid­dle”?

Can You Solve These Ani­mat­ed Brain Teasers from TED-Ed?

John Cage Per­forms Water Walk on US Game Show I’ve Got a Secret (1960)

A Young Hunter S. Thomp­son Appears on the Clas­sic TV Game Show, To Tell the Truth (1967)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch Tom Petty (RIP) and the Heartbreakers Perform Their Last Song Together, “American Girl”: Recorded on 9/25/17

in Life, Music | October 2nd, 2017

It was already a ter­ri­ble day. Then came the news (retract­ed, then lat­er sad­ly con­firmed by The New York Times and the BBC) that Tom Pet­ty has passed away at the age of 66. The cause, appar­ent­ly a heart attack. This sum­mer, I trav­eled to Philadel­phia to see my first Tom Pet­ty show, know­ing it might be, as he said, his “last trip around the coun­try,” the final big tour. And I’m so glad I did. What more could I say? It was a won­der­ful show, a mag­i­cal two-hour sin­ga­long, which end­ed with “Amer­i­can Girl,” one of my favorites.

Above, you can see Tom Pet­ty and the Heart­break­ers play their last song together–again “Amer­i­can Girl”–at their final gig at the Hol­ly­wood Bowl. This video was record­ed just last week.

If you’ve nev­er giv­en their music a seri­ous lis­ten, just click play on the playlist below. It might be one of the best wall-to-wall hours in music.

via Rolling Stone

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