Lawrence Ferlinghetti Turns 100: Hear the Great San Francisco Poet Read “Trump’s Trojan Horse,” “Pity the Nation” & Many Other Poems

in Audio Books, Poetry | March 24th, 2019

It has been a sea­son of mourn­ing for lit­er­a­ture: first the death of Mary Oliv­er and now W.S. Mer­win, two writ­ers who left a con­sid­er­able imprint on over half a cen­tu­ry of Amer­i­can poet­ry. Con­sid­er­ing the fact that found­ing father of the Beats and pro­pri­etor of world-renowned City Lights Book­store, Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, turns 100 on March 24th, maybe a few more peo­ple have glanced over to check on him. How’s he doing?

He’s grown “frail and near­ly blind,” writes Chloe Velt­man at The Guardian in an inter­view with the poet this month, “but his mind is still on fire.” Fer­linghet­ti “has not mel­lowed,” says Wash­ing­ton Post book crit­ic Ron Charles, “at all.” If you’re look­ing for him at any of the events planned in his hon­or, City Lights announces, he will not be in atten­dance, but he has been busy pro­mot­ing his lat­est book, a thin­ly-veiled auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal nov­el about his ear­ly life called Lit­tle Boy.

In the book Fer­linghet­ti describes his child­hood in images right out of Edward Gorey. He was a “Lit­tle Lord Fauntleroy” in a Bronxville man­sion 20 miles out­side New York, an orphan tak­en in and raised by descen­dants of the founders of Sarah Lawrence. “His new guardians spoke to one anoth­er in court­ly tones and dressed in Vic­to­ri­an garb,” notes Charles. “They sent him to pri­vate school, and, more impor­tant, they pos­sessed a fine library, which he was encour­aged to use.”

The poet would lat­er write he was a “social climber climb­ing down­ward,” an iron­ic ref­er­ence to how some peo­ple might have seen the tra­jec­to­ry of his career. After serv­ing in the Navy dur­ing World War II, earn­ing a master’s at Colum­bia, and a Ph.D. at the Sor­bonne, Fer­linghet­ti decamped to San Fran­cis­co, and found­ed the small mag­a­zine City Lights with Peter D. Mar­tin. Then he opened a book­store on the edge of Chi­na­town to fund the pub­lish­ing ven­ture.

The shop became a haunt for writ­ers and poets. Fer­linghet­ti start­ed pub­lish­ing them, start­ing with him­self in 1955. The fol­low­ing year he gained inter­na­tion­al infamy for pub­lish­ing Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (hear Gins­berg read the poem in ’56). The book was banned, and Fer­linghet­ti put on tri­al for obscen­i­ty. If any­one thought this would be the end of Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, they were mis­tak­en.

He has pub­lished some­where around forty books of poet­ry and crit­i­cism, nov­els and plays, been a pro­lif­ic painter for six­ty years, as well as a pub­lish­er, book­seller, and activist. He does not con­sid­er him­self a Beat poet, but from his influ­en­tial first two books—Pic­tures of the Gone World and 1958’s A Coney Island of the Mind—onward, Ferlinghetti’s philo­soph­i­cal out­look has more or less breathed the same air as Gins­berg et al.’s.

Quot­ing from Coney Island, Andrew Shapiro writes, “he coun­seled us to ‘con­found the sys­tem,’ ‘to emp­ty out our pock­ets… miss­ing our appoint­ments’ and to leave ‘our neck­ties behind’ and ‘take up the full beard of walk­ing anar­chy.’” He is still doing this, every way that he can, in pub­lic read­ings, media appear­ances, and a can­ny use of YouTube. His is not a call to flower pow­er but to full immer­sion in the chaos of life, or, as he writes in “Coney Island of the Mind 1” in the “ver­i­ta­ble rage / of adver­si­ty / Heaped up / groan­ing with babies and bay­o­nets / under cement skies / in an abstract land­scape of blast­ed trees.”

Fer­linghet­ti urged poets and writ­ers to “cre­ate works capa­ble of answer­ing the chal­lenge of apoc­a­lyp­tic times, even if this mean­ing sounds apoc­a­lyp­tic… you can con­quer the con­querors with words.” Despite this stri­den­cy, he has nev­er tak­en him­self too seri­ous­ly. Fer­linghet­ti is as relaxed as they come—he hasn’t mel­lowed, but he also hasn’t need­ed to. He’s a loose, nat­ur­al sto­ry­teller and come­di­an and he’s still deliv­er­ing sober, prophet­ic pro­nounce­ments with grav­i­tas.

See and hear Fer­linghet­ti take on con­querors, bul­lies, and xeno­phobes, under­wear, and oth­er sub­jects in the read­ings here from his through­out his career, includ­ing a full, 40-minute read­ing in 2005 at UC Berke­ley, below, an album of Fer­linghet­ti and Ken­neth Rexroth, above, and at the top, a video made last year of the 99-year-old poet, in Lady Lib­er­ty mask, read­ing “Trump’s Tro­jan Horse” under a grin­ning, gray-beard­ed self-por­trait of his younger self. Hap­py 100th to him. “I fig­ure that with anoth­er 100 birth­days,” he says, “that’ll be about enough!”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bill Mur­ray Reads the Poet­ry of Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, Wal­lace Stevens, Emi­ly Dick­in­son, Bil­ly Collins, Lorine Niedeck­er, Lucille Clifton & More

Allen Ginsberg’s Howl Man­u­scripts Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online, Reveal­ing the Beat Poet’s Cre­ative Process

The First Record­ing of Allen Gins­berg Read­ing “Howl” (1956)

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

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24 Common Cognitive Biases: A Visual List of the Psychological Systems Errors That Keep Us From Thinking Rationally

in Psychology | March 22nd, 2019

There’s been a lot of talk about the Dun­ning-Kruger effect, the cog­ni­tive bias that makes peo­ple wild­ly over­con­fi­dent, unable to know how igno­rant they are because they don’t have the basic skills to grasp what com­pe­tence means. Once pop­u­lar­ized, the effect became weaponized. Peo­ple made arm­chair diag­noses, gloat­ed and point­ed at the obliv­i­ous­ly stu­pid. But if those fin­ger-point­ers could take the beam out of their own eye, they might see four fin­gers point­ing back at them, or what­ev­er folk wis­dom to this effect you care to mash up.

What we now call cog­ni­tive bias­es have been known by many oth­er names over the course of mil­len­nia. Per­haps nev­er have the many vari­eties of self-decep­tion been so spe­cif­ic. Wikipedia lists 185 cog­ni­tive bias­es, 185 dif­fer­ent ways of being irra­tional and delud­ed. Sure­ly, it’s pos­si­ble that every sin­gle time we—maybe accurately—point out some­one else’s delu­sions, we’re hoard­ing a col­lec­tion of our own. Accord­ing to much of the research by psy­chol­o­gists and behav­ioral econ­o­mists, this may be inevitable and almost impos­si­ble to rem­e­dy.


Want to bet­ter under­stand your own cog­ni­tive bias­es and maybe try to move beyond them if you can? See a list of 24 com­mon cog­ni­tive bias­es in an info­graph­ic poster at yourbias.is, the site of the non­prof­it School of Thought. (The two gen­tle­men pop­ping up behind brainy Jeho­vah in the poster, notes Visu­al Cap­i­tal­ist, “hap­pen to rep­re­sent Daniel Kah­ne­man and Amos Tver­sky, two of the lead­ing social sci­en­tists known for their con­tri­bu­tions to this field. Not only did they pio­neer work around cog­ni­tive bias­es start­ing in the late 1960s, but their part­ner­ship also result­ed in a Nobel Prize in Eco­nom­ics in 2002.”)

Grant­ed, a Wikipedia list is a crowd-sourced cre­ation with lots of redun­dan­cy and quite a few “dubi­ous or triv­ial” entries, writes Ben Yago­da at The Atlantic. “The IKEA effect, for instance, is defined as ‘the ten­den­cy for peo­ple to place a dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly high val­ue on objects they par­tial­ly assem­bled them­selves.’” Much of the val­ue I’ve per­son­al­ly placed on IKEA fur­ni­ture has to do with nev­er want­i­ng to assem­ble IKEA fur­ni­ture again. “But a sol­id group of 100 or so bias­es has been repeat­ed­ly shown to exist, and can make a hash of our lives.”

These are the tricks of the mind that keep gam­blers gam­bling, even when they’re los­ing every­thing. They include not only the “gambler’s fal­la­cy” but con­fir­ma­tion bias and the fal­la­cy of sunk cost, the ten­den­cy to pur­sue a bad out­come because you’ve already made a sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment and you don’t want it to have been for noth­ing. It may seem iron­ic that the study of cog­ni­tive bias­es devel­oped pri­mar­i­ly in the field of eco­nom­ics, the only social sci­ence, per­haps, that still assumes humans are autonomous indi­vid­u­als who freely make ratio­nal choic­es.

But then, econ­o­mists must con­stant­ly con­tend with the counter-evidence—rationality is not a thing most humans do well. (Evo­lu­tion­ar­i­ly speak­ing, this may have been no great dis­ad­van­tage until we got our hands on weapons of mass destruc­tion and the tools of cli­mate col­lapse.) When we act ratio­nal­ly in some areas, we tend to fool our­selves in oth­ers. Is it pos­si­ble to over­come bias? That depends on what we mean. Polit­i­cal and per­son­al prejudices—against eth­nic­i­ties, nation­al­i­ties, gen­ders, and sexualities—are usu­al­ly but­tressed by the sys­tems errors known as cog­ni­tive bias­es, but they are not caused by them. They are learned ideas that can be unlearned.

What researchers and aca­d­e­mics mean when they talk about bias does not relate to spe­cif­ic con­tent of beliefs, but rather to the ways in which our minds warp log­ic to serve some psy­cho­log­i­cal or emo­tion­al need or to help reg­u­late and sta­bi­lize our per­cep­tions in a man­age­able way. “Some of these bias­es are relat­ed to mem­o­ry,” writes Kendra Cher­ry at Very Well Mind, oth­ers “might be relat­ed to prob­lems with atten­tion. Since atten­tion is a lim­it­ed resource, peo­ple have to be selec­tive about what they pay atten­tion to in the world around them.”

We’re con­stant­ly miss­ing what’s right in front of us, in oth­er words, because we’re try­ing to pay atten­tion to oth­er peo­ple too. It’s exhaust­ing, which might be why we need eight hours or so of sleep each night if we want our brains to func­tion half decent­ly. Go to yourbias.is for this list of 24 com­mon cog­ni­tive bias­es, also avail­able on a nifty poster you can order and hang on the wall. You’ll also find there an illus­trat­ed col­lec­tion of log­i­cal fal­lac­i­es and a set of “crit­i­cal think­ing cards” fea­tur­ing both kinds of rea­son­ing errors. Once you’ve iden­ti­fied and defeat­ed all your own cog­ni­tive biases—all 24, or 100, or 185 or so—then you’ll be ready to set out and fix every­one else’s.

via Visu­al Cap­i­tal­ist

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Research Finds That Intel­lec­tu­al Humil­i­ty Can Make Us Bet­ter Thinkers & Peo­ple; Good Thing There’s a Free Course on Intel­lec­tu­al Humil­i­ty

Why Incom­pe­tent Peo­ple Think They’re Amaz­ing: An Ani­mat­ed Les­son from David Dun­ning (of the Famous “Dun­ning-Kruger Effect”)

The Pow­er of Empa­thy: A Quick Ani­mat­ed Les­son That Can Make You a Bet­ter Per­son

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

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Beautiful Hand-Colored Japanese Flowers Created by the Pioneering Photographer Ogawa Kazumasa (1896)

in Art, Photography | March 22nd, 2019

Ogawa Kazu­masa lived from the 1860s to almost the 1930s, sure­ly one of the most fas­ci­nat­ing 70-year stretch­es in Japan­ese his­to­ry. Ogawa’s home­land “opened” to the world when he was a boy, and for the rest of his life he bore wit­ness to the some­times beau­ti­ful, some­times strange, some­times exhil­a­rat­ing results of a once-iso­lat­ed cul­ture assim­i­lat­ing seem­ing­ly every­thing for­eign — art, tech­nol­o­gy, cus­toms — all at once. Nat­u­ral­ly he picked up a cam­era to doc­u­ment it all, and his­to­ry now remem­bers him as a pio­neer of his art.

At the Get­ty’s web site you can see a few exam­ples of the sort of pic­tures Ogawa took of Japan­ese life in the mid-1890s. Dur­ing that same peri­od he pub­lished Some Japan­ese Flow­ers, a book con­tain­ing his pic­tures of just that.

The fol­low­ing year, Ogawa’s hand-col­ored pho­tographs of Japan­ese flow­ers also appeared in the Amer­i­can books Japan, Described and Illus­trat­ed by the Japan­ese, edit­ed by the renowned Anglo-Irish expa­tri­ate Japan­ese cul­ture schol­ar Fran­cis Brink­ley and pub­lished in Boston, the city where Ogawa had spent a cou­ple of years study­ing por­trait pho­tog­ra­phy and pro­cess­ing.

Ogawa’s var­ied life in Japan includ­ed work­ing as an edi­tor at Shashin Shin­pō (写真新報), the only pho­tog­ra­phy jour­nal in the coun­try at the time, as well as at the flower mag­a­zine Kok­ka (国華), which would cer­tain­ly have giv­en him the expe­ri­ence he need­ed to pro­duce pho­to­graph­ic spec­i­mens such as these. Though Ogawa invest­ed a great deal in learn­ing and employ­ing the high­est pho­to­graph­ic tech­nolo­gies, they were the high­est pho­to­graph­ic tech­nolo­gies of the 1890s, when col­or pho­tog­ra­phy neces­si­tat­ed adding col­ors — of par­tic­u­lar impor­tance in the case of flow­ers — after the fact.

Some Japan­ese Flow­ers was re-issued a few years ago, but you can still see 20 strik­ing exam­ples of Ogawa’s flower pho­tog­ra­phy at the Pub­lic Domain Review. They’ve also made sev­er­al of his works avail­able as prints of sev­er­al dif­fer­ent sizes in their online shop, a selec­tion that includes not just his flow­ers but the Bronze Bud­dha at Kamaku­ra and a man locked in bat­tle with an octo­pus as well. Even as every­thing changed so rapid­ly all around him, as he mas­tered the just-as-rapid­ly devel­op­ing tools of his craft, Ogawa nev­er­the­less kept his eye for the nat­ur­al and cul­tur­al aspects of his home­land that seemed nev­er to have changed at all.

via Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hand-Col­ored 1860s Pho­tographs Reveal the Last Days of Samu­rai Japan

Hand-Col­ored Pho­tographs from 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan: 110 Images Cap­ture the Wan­ing Days of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Soci­ety

1850s Japan Comes to Life in 3D, Col­or Pho­tos: See the Stereo­scop­ic Pho­tog­ra­phy of T. Ena­mi

Hun­dreds of Won­der­ful Japan­ese Fire­work Designs from the Ear­ly-1900s: Dig­i­tized and Free to Down­load

His­toric Man­u­script Filled with Beau­ti­ful Illus­tra­tions of Cuban Flow­ers & Plants Is Now Online (1826)

How Obses­sive Artists Col­orize Old Pho­tographs & Restore the True Col­ors of the Past

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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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An Archive of Animations/Cartoons of Ancient Greece & Rome: From the 1920s Through Today

in Animation, Comedy, Comics/Cartoons, History, Literature | March 22nd, 2019

Ancient Greece and Rome have pro­vid­ed fer­tile hunt­ing grounds for ani­mat­ed sub­ject mat­ter since the very incep­tion of the form.

So what if the results wind up doing lit­tle more than frol­ic in the pas­toral set­ting? Wit­ness 1930’s Play­ful Pan, above, which can basi­cal­ly be summed up as Sil­ly Sym­pho­ny in a toga (with a cute bear cub who looks a lot like Mick­ey Mouse and some flame play that pre­fig­ures The Sorcerer’s Appren­tice…)

Oth­ers are packed with his­to­ry, myth­ic nar­ra­tive, and peri­od details, though be fore­warned that not all are as visu­al­ly appeal­ing as Steve Simons’ Hoplites! Greeks at War, part of the Panoply Vase Ani­ma­tion Project.

Some series, such as the Aster­ix movies and Aesop and Son—a sta­ple of The Rocky and Bull­win­kle Show from 1959 to 1962—have been the gate­ways through which many his­to­ry lovers’ curios­i­ty was first roused.

(Russ­ian ani­ma­tor Ana­toly Petrov’s erot­ic shorts for Soyuz­mult­film may rouse oth­er, er, curiosi­ties, and are def­i­nite­ly NSFW.)

And then there are instant clas­sics like 2004’s It’s All Greek to Scoo­by in which “Shag­gy’s pur­chase of a mys­te­ri­ous amulet only serves to cause a pes­ter­ing archae­ol­o­gist and cen­taur to chase him.”  (Ye gods…)

Senior Lec­tur­er of Clas­si­cal and Mediter­ranean Stud­ies at Van­der­bilt, Chiara Sul­prizio, has col­lect­ed all of these and more on her blog, Ani­mat­ed Antiq­ui­ty.

Begin­ning with the 2‑minute frag­ment that’s all we have left of Win­sor McCay’s 1921 The Cen­taurs, Sul­prizio shares some of her favorite car­toon rep­re­sen­ta­tions of ancient Greece, Rome, and beyond. Her areas of pro­fes­sion­al spe­cial­iza­tion—gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty, Greek com­e­dy, and Roman satire—are well suit­ed to her cho­sen hob­by, and her com­men­tary dou­bles down on his­tor­i­cal con­text to include the his­to­ry of ani­ma­tion.

The appear­ance of car­toon stars like Daffy Duck, Tom and Jer­ry, and Pop­eye fur­ther demon­strates this antique sub­ject matter’s stur­di­ness. TED-Ed and the BBC may view the genre as an excel­lent teach­ing tool, but there’s noth­ing stop­ping the ani­ma­tor from shoe­horn­ing some fab­ri­ca­tions in amongst the bux­om nymphs and buff glad­i­a­tors.

(Raise your hand if your moth­er ever sac­ri­ficed you on the altar to Spinachia, god­dess of spinach, in hopes that she might unleash a mush­room cloud of super-atom­ic pow­er in your puny bicep.)

You’ll find a num­ber of entries fea­tur­ing the work of Japan­ese and Russ­ian ani­ma­tors, includ­ing Ther­mae Romae, part of the jug­ger­naut that’s sprung from Mari Yamazaki’s pop­u­lar graph­ic nov­el series and Icarus and the Wise Men from the leg­endary Fyo­dor Khitruk, whose retelling of the myth sent a mes­sage about free­dom from the Sovi­et Union, cir­ca 1976.

Begin your decade-by-decade explo­rations of Chiara Sulprizio’s ani­mat­ed antiq­ui­ties here or sug­gest that a miss­ing favorite be added to the col­lec­tion. (We vote for this one!)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Art on Ancient Greek Vas­es Come to Life with 21st Cen­tu­ry Ani­ma­tion

18 Clas­sic Myths Explained with Ani­ma­tion: Pandora’s Box, Sisy­phus & More

An Ani­mat­ed Recon­struc­tion of Ancient Rome: Take A 30-Minute Stroll Through the City’s Vir­tu­al­ly-Recre­at­ed Streets

25 Ani­ma­tions of Great Lit­er­ary Works: From Pla­to, Dos­to­evsky & Dick­in­son, to Kaf­ka, Hem­ing­way & Brad­bury

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, this April. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Case for Why Captain Beefheart’s Awful Sounding Album, Trout Mask Replica, Is a True Masterpiece

in Music | March 21st, 2019

I’ve had Trout Mask Repli­ca in my col­lec­tion for years. I can’t say I reg­u­lar­ly pull it out to give it a lis­ten, but I know I’d nev­er get rid of it. It’s a some­times impen­e­tra­ble slab of genius, wrought from end­less ses­sions and then a short burst of record­ing, led by a man who couldn’t read music, was prone to fits of vio­lent anger, but dammit knew what he want­ed. (And Zap­pa pro­duced.) When I learned lat­er that the house where a lot of this went down was locat­ed in the hills behind the sub­urbs of Wood­land Hills, it made the insur­rec­tion of the album all the more mag­i­cal.

But yes, it’s a hard one to get into. There are no “hits.” There’s no foot tap­pin’ pop (well, mayyyyybe “Ella Guru,” and only because I knew it first as a cov­er by XTC.) It’s dis­cor­dant. Don Van Vli­et aka Cap­tain Beef­heart sounds pos­sessed by Howl­in’ Wolf try­ing to sing nurs­ery rhymes on acid, and it often plays like mem­bers of the band are in dif­fer­ent areas of the house with a vague idea of what the oth­ers are doing. (This is actu­al­ly a bit close to the truth).

Vox’s con­tin­u­ing series “Ear­worm,” host­ed by Estelle Caswell, attempts to con­vert lis­ten­ers who may have nev­er heard of the album, by tak­ing apart the open­ing track, “Frown­land.”

As Caswell explains, with help from musi­col­o­gists Samuel Andreyev and Susan Rogers, Van Vli­et meld­ed blues and free jazz, and played it with a decon­struct­ed rock band instru­men­ta­tion. Drums and bass did not lock down a rhythm–they played inde­pen­dent of the oth­ers, with the bass even play­ing chords. Rhythm and lead gui­tar played two dif­fer­ent time sig­na­tures each, and nei­ther were easy, 4/4 rhythms. And then there’s the sax­o­phone work, drop­ping in to squonk and thrash like Ornette Cole­man. As Mag­ic Band mem­bers point out, Van Vli­et didn’t under­stand that a bass or a gui­tar did not have the same range of notes as an 88-key piano, which was Van Vliet’s song­writ­ing instru­ment.

How­ev­er, only jazz­bos dig on learn­ing about polyrhythms. There’s so many oth­er rea­sons to appre­ci­ate Trout Mask. For one, it’s in the proud tra­di­tion of Euro­pean sur­re­al­ism but also comes from a par­tic­u­lar “old weird Amer­i­ca” that pro­duced some of our most bril­liant nut­cas­es. (How many peo­ple, learn­ing that Van Vli­et was raised near Joshua Tree, nod­ded in enlight­en­ment? Of course he was.) You want drug music, the album says…well then, this is the uncut stuff.

And then some­times it real­ly just hits hard: “Moon­light On Ver­mont” is relent­less, with a cor­r­us­cat­ing gui­tar line and Beef­heart worked up into a lath­er over “that old time reli­gion.” He quotes Blind Willie John­son, con­flates pagan­ism and Puri­tanism, and tran­scends both. (Maybe this is the gate­way song for new­bies?)

The Vox video pre­cedes its defense with some neg­a­tive reviews from the con­tem­po­rary press, but this Dick Lar­son review from the time under­stood it from the get go, who writes about it as a giant step for­ward after Beefheart’s two pre­vi­ous, more acces­si­ble albums:

Dylan would sym­pa­thise with Beefheart’s ‘nature-and-love-trips’, but the Cap­tain is faster and more bul­bous (and he’s got his band). But this is it. In straight­en­ing out his music, he’s found some kind of reli­gion. It may be in hair pies (yes!) or in Frown­land, but main­ly it’s peo­ple, chil­dren and coun­try men and women. And this is a new delight for Beef­heart – a rough out­door human­i­ty blend­ed with humour and a rich ver­bal vom­it of imagery.

It is a wild album, lit­er­al­ly. There are field record­ings in between the music, with sounds of crick­ets and a plane pass­ing over­head. The LP art shows the band stand­ing, crouch­ing, and hid­ing in the over­grown back­yard of the house. There’s mys­te­ri­ous things in the stream below and only some of them are fish.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tom Waits Makes a List of His Top 20 Favorite Albums of All Time

Hear a Rare Poet­ry Read­ing by Cap­tain Beef­heart (1993)

Cap­tain Beef­heart Issues His “Ten Com­mand­ments of Gui­tar Play­ing”

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. 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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Why We Dance: An Animated Video Explains the Science Behind Why We Bust a Move

in Dance, Neuroscience | March 21st, 2019

Has any cul­ture, apart from that of the tiny Utah town in Foot­loose, done entire­ly with­out danc­ing? It would at first seem that any human need the rhyth­mic shak­ing of one’s limbs to orga­nized sound ful­fills must reside pret­ty low on the over­all pri­or­i­ty scale, but anthro­pol­o­gy tells us that var­i­ous human soci­eties start­ed danc­ing before they got into most every oth­er activ­i­ty that fills their time today. “Why is this osten­si­bly friv­o­lous act so fun­da­men­tal to being human?” asks the Aeon video above. “The answer, it seems, is in our need for social cohe­sion — that vital glue that keeps soci­eties from break­ing apart despite inter­per­son­al dif­fer­ences.”

Direct­ed and ani­mat­ed by Rosan­na Wan and Andrew Khos­ra­vani, the four-minute explain­er frames our deep, cul­ture-tran­scend­ing need to “bust a move” in terms of the work of both 19th- and ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry French soci­ol­o­gist Émile Durkheim and more recent research per­formed by Bron­wyn Tarr, an Oxford evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist who also hap­pens to be a dancer her­self.

Durkheim posit­ed the phe­nom­e­non of “col­lec­tive effer­ves­cence,” or “a sort of elec­tric­i­ty,” or “that exhil­a­ra­tion, almost eupho­ria, that over­takes groups of peo­ple unit­ed by a com­mon pur­pose, pur­su­ing an intense­ly involv­ing activ­i­ty togeth­er.” When you feel it, you feel “a flow, a sense that your self is meld­ing with the group as a whole.” And has any prac­tice gen­er­at­ed as much col­lec­tive effer­ves­cence through­out human his­to­ry as dance?

Mod­ern sci­ence has shed a bit of light on why: Tarr has found that “we humans have a nat­ur­al ten­den­cy to syn­chro­nize our move­ments with oth­er humans,” thanks to a region in the brain which helps us make the same move­ments we see oth­ers mak­ing. “When we mim­ic our part­ner’s move­ments, and they’re mim­ic­k­ing ours, sim­i­lar neur­al net­works in both net­works open up a rush of neu­ro­hor­mones, all of which make us feel good.” Lis­ten­ing to music “can cre­ate such a euphor­ic delight that it appears to acti­vate opi­oid recep­tors in the brain,” mak­ing it even hard­er to resist get­ting up and danc­ing. “They said he’d nev­er win,” Foot­loose’s tagline said of the movie’s big-city teen intent on get­ting the town danc­ing again, but “he knew he had to” — an assur­ance that turns out to have had a basis in neu­rol­o­gy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tions to Three Soci­ol­o­gists: Durkheim, Weber & Adorno

The Strange Danc­ing Plague of 1518: When Hun­dreds of Peo­ple in France Could Not Stop Danc­ing for Months

The Addams Fam­i­ly Dance to The Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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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Oxford’s Free Course Critical Reasoning For Beginners Teaches You to Think Like a Philosopher

in Online Courses, Philosophy | March 21st, 2019

Image by Pablo Fer­nán­dez, via Flickr Com­mons

When I was younger, I often found myself dis­agree­ing with some­thing I’d read or heard, but could­n’t explain exact­ly why. Despite being unable to pin­point the pre­cise rea­sons, I had a strong sense that the rules of log­ic were being vio­lat­ed. After I was exposed to crit­i­cal think­ing in high school and uni­ver­si­ty, I learned to rec­og­nize prob­lem­at­ic argu­ments, whether they be a straw man, an appeal to author­i­ty, or an ad hominem attack. Faulty argu­ments are all-per­va­sive, and the men­tal bias­es that under­lie them pop up in media cov­er­age, col­lege class­es, and arm­chair the­o­riz­ing. Want to learn how to avoid them? Look no fur­ther than Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing For Begin­ners, a top rat­ed col­lec­tion of lec­tures led by Oxford University’s Mar­i­anne Tal­bot.

Tal­bot builds the course from the ground up, and begins by explain­ing that argu­ments con­sist of a set of premis­es that, log­i­cal­ly linked togeth­er, lead to a con­clu­sion. She pro­ceeds to out­line the way to lay out an argu­ment log­i­cal­ly and clear­ly, and even­tu­al­ly, the basic steps involved in assess­ing its strengths and weak­ness­es.

The six-part series, which was record­ed in 2009, shows no sign of wear, and Tal­bot, unlike some phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sors, does a ter­rif­ic job of mak­ing the con­tent digestible. If you’ve got some time on your hands, the lec­tures, which aver­age just over an hour in length, can be fin­ished in less than a week. That’s peanuts, if you con­sid­er that all of our knowl­edge is built on the foun­da­tions that this course estab­lish­es. If you haven’t had the chance to be exposed to a class on crit­i­cal thought, I can’t rec­om­mend Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing For Begin­ners with enough enthu­si­asm: there are few men­tal skills that are as under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed, and as cen­tral to our dai­ly lives, as crit­i­cal think­ing.

Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing For Begin­ners is cur­rent­ly avail­able on the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford web­site in both audio and video for­mats, and also on iTunes and YouTube. You can find it list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, part of our col­lec­tion of 1300 Free Online Cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Oxford’s Free Intro­duc­tion to Phi­los­o­phy: Stream 41 Lec­tures

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

Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Online Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty 

200 Online Cer­tifi­cate & Micro­cre­den­tial Pro­grams from Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties & Com­pa­nies.

Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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Mythos: An Animation Retells Timeless Greek Myths with Abstract Modern Designs

in Animation | March 20th, 2019

Design­er Stephen Kelle­her and ani­ma­tor Chris Guy­ot present “Mythos,” an ani­ma­tion that tells time­less stories–Greek myths–with sim­ple abstract designs. Here’s how they describe this project where the ancient unex­pect­ed­ly meets the mod­ern:

For cen­turies the Greek Myths have been used as cau­tion­ary tales and teach­ing tools for peo­ple both young and old. These sto­ries con­vey deep wis­dom about the human con­di­tion which con­tin­ue to res­onate with us. I want­ed to hon­or these ancient sto­ries by inter­pret­ing them in the age of the pix­el and gif.

The chal­lenge was to com­mu­ni­cate these com­plex sto­ries in the most min­i­mal way pos­si­ble while retain­ing their essence. By hav­ing each vignette loop seam­less­ly, the time­less and peren­ni­al nature of these sto­ries are rein­forced. Ulti­mate­ly these ani­ma­tions serve as visu­al short­hand for ancient truths which are as rel­e­vant today as they were when first told.

Sisy­phus:

After numer­ous trans­gres­sions, Zeus decid­ed to pun­ish the deceit­ful king Sisy­phus once and for all by forc­ing him to push a huge enchant­ed boul­der up a steep hill. As soon as he reached the top, the boul­der would roll back down to the base of the hill, con­demn­ing Sisy­phus to an eter­ni­ty of frus­trat­ed labor.

Icarus:

King Minos impris­oned Icarus in a tow­er along­side his father, the mas­ter crafts­man Daedalus. As a means of escape Daedalus cre­at­ed a set of wings made of feath­ers and wax for his son but warned him not to fly too close to the sun. Icarus did not how­ev­er heed his father’s advice. His wings dis­solved and Icarus fell into the sea below and drowned.

Perse­phone:

The daugh­ter of Zeus and Deme­ter, Perse­phone was abduct­ed by the god of the under­world Hades. Although Zeus inter­vened and brought her back to the land of the liv­ing, Perse­phone was bound to Hades for four months of each year. In her grief, Deme­ter would make the soils bar­ren there­by cre­at­ing win­ter while Persephone’s return would mark the start of the spring.

Nar­cis­sus:

As pun­ish­ment for mor­tal Nar­cis­sus’ cru­el treat­ment of the nymph Echo, he was cursed by Neme­sis, the god­dess of revenge. She led him to a pool where upon see­ing his own reflec­tion, he became besot­ted with his image and was unable to leave. Fix­at­ed, starv­ing and in despair, he fell into the pool and drowned.

Midas:

Hav­ing done a great ser­vice for the god Diony­sus, King Midas was grant­ed one wish of his choos­ing. He wished that every­thing he touched would turn to gold. Upon turn­ing food, water and even his own daugh­ter to gold how­ev­er, he soon real­ized his fool­ish­ness and prayed to Diony­sus to undo his wish. Diony­sus took pity on King Midas and duly undid the wish.

The­seus:

A Greek hero of many adven­tures, The­seus is best known for his defeat of the Mino­taur. Under the decree of King Minos, every year four­teen young Athe­neans were sac­ri­ficed to the Mino­taur — a mon­strous half bull, half man who resided deep with­in the Labyrinth. Not only was The­seus able to slay the Mino­taur but he also suc­cess­ful­ly escaped the com­plex Labyrinth, solid­i­fy­ing his leg­end.

Enjoy…

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via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Short Video Intro­duc­tion to Hilma af Klint, the Mys­ti­cal Female Painter Who Helped Invent Abstract Art

36 Abstract Cov­ers of Vin­tage Psy­chol­o­gy, Phi­los­o­phy & Sci­ence Books Come to Life in a Mes­mer­iz­ing Ani­ma­tion

Free Cours­es on Design from the Famous Cal­i­for­nia Design Firm IDEO Start This Week

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