Comedian Reggie Watts Teaches Students Bad Science in 70s Sitcom-Style Show, Teach

in Comedy, Education, Television | February 9th, 2014

Not since Gabe Kaplan’s Mr. Kot­ter has there been such a hip, big-haired, TV teacher to “help make you smart and lis­ten to your feel­ings, too.”

Does it real­ly mat­ter if come­di­an, musi­cian, and now web series star Reg­gie Watts’ Teach is deeply unclear on the sci­ence he’s impart­ing, if the kids in his class­room are learn­ing impor­tant life lessons? Why it’s uncool to bul­ly sin­gle-celled organ­isms, for instance. (“You might be mul­ti­cel­lu­lar but there’s no need to be cel­lulist.”)

As we all know, the best teach­ers awak­en their stu­dents’ curios­i­ty, send them bound­ing off in pur­suit of knowl­edge, rather than spoon-feed­ing them cor­rect answers.

That’s exact­ly what Mr. Watts did for—or pos­si­bly to—me when he talked about ‘tons: pro­tons, con­tons, decep­ti­cons, and tauntauns.  Had he said, “That last one refers to a species of imag­i­nary omniv­o­rous rep­tomam­mals from the 3rd high­est gross­ing fran­chise in film his­to­ry,” I would’ve spelled it “ton­tons” with­out a sec­ond thought. But because he delib­er­ate­ly left things a lit­tle vague, ask­ing, “How many of you have seen The Empire Strikes Back?” I was moti­vat­ed to do a lit­tle research. Star Wars was nev­er my bag…

It bog­gles the mind how much more I would’ve learned had the Inter­net exist­ed back when I was in high school. (Teach’s class­room is most def­i­nite­ly a blast from the past—not an iPad in sight and the over­head pro­jec­tor restored to its place of hon­or. The quick­ly uptilt­ed flask is, of course, time­less.)

The open­ing cred­its sug­gest that we should look for­ward to an edu­ca­tion in Lit­er­a­ture, Music, and His­to­ry in upcom­ing episodes.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Musi­cal Come­di­an Reg­gie Watts Rein­vents Van Halen’s Clas­sic, “Pana­ma”

Free Com­ic Books Turns Kids Onto Physics: Start With the Adven­tures of Niko­la Tes­la

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s graph­ic nov­el, Peanut, is a Young Adult Library Ser­vices Asso­ci­a­tion 2014 Quick for Reluc­tant Young Read­ers. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Groucho Marx and T.S. Eliot Become Unexpected Pen Pals, Exchanging Portraits & Compliments (1961)

in Comedy, Poetry | February 9th, 2014

grouchoeliot

Grou­cho Marx and T.S. Eliot: they’ve got to rank as one of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry’s most sur­pris­ing pair of pen pals. More intrigu­ing­ly still, they first got in touch — as lumi­nar­ies seem to do — out of the spir­it of mutu­al admi­ra­tion. Marx took the praise beyond Eliot’s poet­ry to his looks: “Why you haven’t been offered the lead in some sexy movies I can only attribute to the basic stu­pid­i­ty of the cast­ing direc­tors.” This he wrote in the let­ter of June 19, 1961 above, after hav­ing received a por­trait of the poet, from the poet, in exchange for a por­trait of the come­di­an, from the come­di­an. This con­sti­tutes only part of what The Econ­o­mist calls “among the strangest and most delight­ful epis­tles ever cre­at­ed.” That same arti­cle quotes a dark­er obser­va­tion on Eliot from Antho­ny Julius’ T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semi­tism, and Lit­er­ary Form: “Anti-Semi­tism sup­plied part of the mate­r­i­al out of which he cre­at­ed poet­ry.”

There we have only one of the rea­sons to believe that the author of The Waste Land count­ed as no friend of the Jew­ish peo­ple. Yet at least in cor­re­spon­dence, between 1961 and 1964, he did befriend one par­tic­u­lar Jew­ish per­son. “Enter Grou­cho,” the Econ­o­mist arti­cle con­tin­ues, “whose wit was as unique­ly Jew­ish as it was uni­ver­sal­ly com­ic. Where Eliot was the famous defend­er of tra­di­tion, order and civilised taste, the crux of Grou­cho’s humour was flout­ing tra­di­tion, foment­ing chaos and out­rag­ing taste. ‘I have had a per­fect­ly won­der­ful evening,’ he once said to a host, ‘but this was­n’t it.’ ” The famous quip could well have come at the end of Marx and Eliot’s first, and last, meet­ing in per­son, a din­ner at the Eliot house. “There were awk­ward lulls in the con­ver­sa­tion,” accord­ing to Anna Knoebel at The Out­let. “Nei­ther man was inclined to dis­cuss his own work, while the oth­er was eager to praise it. They stopped writ­ing short­ly there­after.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ray Brad­bury Gabs with Grou­cho Marx on You Bet Your Life (1955)

T.S. Eliot, as Faber & Faber Edi­tor, Rejects George Orwell’s “Trot­skyite” Nov­el Ani­mal Farm (1944)

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

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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Nietzsche Dispenses Dating Advice in a Short Screwball Film, My Friend Friedrich

in Comedy, Film, Philosophy | January 27th, 2014

My Friend Friedrich opens on awk­ward, bespec­ta­cled Colum­bia stu­dent Nate hav­ing a heart to heart on the phone with his moth­er. Then, in a phi­los­o­phy class, he almost suc­ceeds in land­ing a date by lob­bing an illus­trat­ed invi­ta­tion at his love inter­est, Emma. All goes awry when a taller, more con­fi­dent, bespec­ta­cled Colum­bia stu­dent cuts him off at the knees. So far, so very New York stu­dent film, but a con­ceit arrives to dis­tin­guish this sto­ry of Ivy League dat­ing woes: the ghost of Friedrich Niet­zsche appears before Nate to guide him towards self-actu­al­iza­tion.

In what “seems to have been a senior project at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts,” accord­ing to Crit­i­cal The­o­ry (a Vimeo upload dates the film as “cir­ca 2003), My Friend Friedrich gives us the typ­i­cal under­grad­u­ate expe­ri­ence of the philosopher’s voice. Niet­zsche instructs our young friend to regard the flash­ing lights, tall build­ings, and “horse­less car­riages” of Times Square as mean­ing­less. “Nihilism cares about noth­ing” he says and urges his pupil to will him­self to pow­er. It’s not too pro­found a por­tray­al of Nietzsche—though of course it’s only played for laughs—and seems to come main­ly from a sur­face read­ing of his Will to Pow­er, an unfin­ished man­u­script pub­lished after the philosopher’s death. (His sis­ter fraud­u­lent­ly pitched a man­gled edi­tion to the Nazis as Nietzsche’s under­writ­ing of their ide­ol­o­gy, cut­ting out all of her brother’s strong remarks against anti-Semi­tism.)

One could argue, if it’s worth explain­ing the humor, that this super­fi­cial take on Niet­zsche is pre­cise­ly the point, since it’s the dif­fi­dent Nate’s slight read­ing of Will to Pow­er at the out­set that pro­duces his hal­lu­ci­na­tion-slash-vis­i­ta­tion. Niet­zsche helps Nate win an intel­lec­tu­al piss­ing con­test by quot­ing Beyond Good and Evil chap­ter and verse, then goads him into some awk­ward out­bursts and even­tu­al­ly over­stays his wel­come. The screw­ball con­clu­sion is ripped right out of Wes Ander­son.

It’s all in good fun, but if you find your­self eager for some more sub­stan­tial Niet­zsche resources, we’ve got them aplen­ty. You might begin with emi­nent Niet­zsche schol­ar and Will to Pow­er trans­la­tor Wal­ter Kaufmann’s lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre. In our list of free phi­los­o­phy cours­es you’ll find Niet­zsche cours­es by Leo Strauss, Rick Rod­er­ick, and oth­ers. Alain de Bot­ton offers an intro­duc­tion on Niet­zsche as part of his Guide to Hap­pi­ness, and BBC pro­gram Human, All Too Human presents Niet­zsche’s life in a doc­u­men­tary series that also includes Sartre and Hei­deg­ger. Many works by Niet­zsche can also be found in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tion.

And if it’s more Niet­zsche humor you’re after, see this failed attempt to explain the philoso­pher to a group of 5‑year-olds.

via Crit­i­cal The­o­ry

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dai­ly Habits of High­ly Pro­duc­tive Philoso­phers: Niet­zsche, Marx & Immanuel Kant

Sartre, Hei­deg­ger, Niet­zsche: Three Philoso­phers in Three Hours

Dis­cov­er Friedrich Nietzsche’s Curi­ous Type­writer, the “Malling-Hansen Writ­ing Ball”

Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Clas­sic Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

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

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Student Rickrolls Teacher By Sneaking Rick Astley Lyrics into Quantum Physics Paper

in Comedy, Physics | January 17th, 2014

funny physics paper

Here’s a fun­ny lit­tle vari­a­tion on “rick­rolling,” a term some of our read­ers might not be famil­iar with. So let’s quick­ly refer you to Wikipedia:

Rick­rolling is an Inter­net meme involv­ing the music video for the 1987 Rick Ast­ley song “Nev­er Gonna Give You Up”. The meme is a bait and switch; a per­son pro­vides a hyper­link which is seem­ing­ly rel­e­vant to the top­ic at hand, but actu­al­ly leads to Ast­ley’s video. The link can be masked or obfus­cat­ed in some man­ner so that the user can­not deter­mine the true des­ti­na­tion of the link with­out click­ing. Peo­ple led to the music video are said to have been rick­rolled. Rick­rolling has extend­ed beyond web links to play­ing the video or song dis­rup­tive­ly in oth­er sit­u­a­tions, includ­ing pub­lic places, such as a live appear­ance of Ast­ley him­self in the 2008 Macy’s Thanks­giv­ing Day Parade in New York. The meme helped to revive Ast­ley’s career.

Now, in anoth­er sign that rick­rolling has gone beyond the web, we have above a snap­shot of a quan­tum physics writ­ten by Sairam Gud­i­s­e­va, a stu­dent at (we believe) White Sta­tion High School in Ten­nessee. As the snap­shot shows, Gud­i­s­e­va man­aged to run the lyrics of “Nev­er Gonna Give You Up” down the left mar­gin of the page … while still keep­ing his ideas flow­ing. Well done, young man. You can see a full page of his essay here.

By the way, this is not the first time some lev­i­ty has been intro­duced to a physic paper. You might want to refer back to our 2012 post, Phys­i­cal Attrac­tion: Mar­riage Pro­pos­al Comes in the Form of a Physics Paper.

via i09

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Physics: Free Online Cours­es (Part of our col­lec­tion of 825 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties)

Neil deGrasse Tyson Talks Aster­oid Physics & “Non New­ton­ian Solids” with Inspir­ing 9‑Year-Old Stu­dent

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Explains Rel­a­tiv­i­ty to Albert Ein­stein (in a Nico­las Roeg Movie)

The Most “Intel­lec­tu­al Jokes”: Our Favorite Open Cul­ture Read­er Sub­mis­sions

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Jerry Seinfeld and Louis CK in Small Cars and Big Yachts, Getting Coffee

in Comedy | January 13th, 2014

Sea­son 3 of Come­di­ans in Cars Get­ting Cof­fee kicks off with Jer­ry Sein­feld and his pal Louis CK pil­ing into a very small 1959 Fiat Jol­ly and tak­ing a leisure­ly (death) ride through New York City. Even­tu­al­ly, they escape the city and wind up at an unex­pect­ed place — aboard CK’s yacht. There, they share a cap­puc­ci­no, nav­i­gate var­i­ous nau­ti­cal dan­gers, crack their sig­na­ture jokes, and kib­itz the day away. Not a bad way to pass some time. If you’d like to see Jer­ry and Louis togeth­er in anoth­er con­text, see our pre­vi­ous post: Sein­feld, Louis C.K., Chris Rock, and Ricky Ger­vais Dis­sect the Craft of Com­e­dy (NSFW).

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send cul­tur­al curiosi­ties your way, every day. And if you like what we’re doing, please share our site with fam­i­ly and friends.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

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

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“Lol My Thesis” Showcases Painfully Hilarious Attempts to Sum up Years of Academic Work in One Sentence

in Comedy, Education | January 9th, 2014

ThesisOrigin

Image from Ph.D. Comics

A true fact about the the­sis stage of an advanced degree: What­ev­er the aca­d­e­m­ic field, whether writ­ing a fifty page bachelor’s or master’s the­sis or 250 plus page doc­tor­al dis­ser­ta­tion, at some point, you will need to win­now your argu­ment down to an abstract sum­ma­ry of a cou­ple suc­cinct para­graphs. Then, one inevitably finds—when rid­ing ele­va­tors with col­leagues and men­tors, talk­ing to rel­a­tives over hol­i­day din­ners, jus­ti­fy­ing one’s exis­tence to friends and acquaintances—that the whole damned thing needs to some­how reduce to one intel­li­gi­ble sen­tence or two. It’s all any­one has the patience for, hon­est­ly, and it saves you the trou­ble of try­ing to recon­struct com­plex argu­ments for peo­ple who won’t under­stand or care about them and who gen­er­al­ly only asked out of polite­ness any­way.

But how, how, to cram years of research, agony, tur­moil, crush­ing fail­ure and soar­ing epiphany into bite-sized con­ver­sa­tion­al nuggets with­out gross over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion to the point of tau­to­log­i­cal absur­di­ty? Can it even be done?! The blog “lol my the­sis,” start­ed last year by a Har­vard senior study­ing Human Devel­op­men­tal and Regen­er­a­tive Biol­o­gy, sug­gests that it can, but not with­out hilar­i­ous results. Part of an explod­ing genre of aca­d­e­m­ic par­o­dy (and pro­cras­ti­na­tion) sites, lol my the­sis proud­ly ven­tures forth in its mis­sion of “sum­ming up years of work in one sen­tence” with open sub­mis­sions from cur­rent stu­dents. Many of the sub­mis­sions are from the sci­ences, and many from under­grad­u­ate the­ses, but a fair num­ber also come from human­i­ties and post-grad­u­ate stud­ies. Take, for exam­ple, the fol­low­ing sub­mis­sion from an MFA Cre­ative Non­fic­tion stu­dent at Emer­son Col­lege, which direct­ly address­es the intend­ed audi­ence:

“A col­lec­tion of non­fic­tion essays, which means they’re writ­ten about real peo­ple and events, mom. Remem­ber all those times you accused me of not lis­ten­ing to the things you said?”

A pas­sive aggres­sive exam­ple that most of us who’ve been through the process can relate to at some lev­el. Anoth­er one that hits home is this, from a Vas­sar Polit­i­cal Sci­ence major, who dis­cov­ers too late that the argu­ment doesn’t work: “Oops: Turns out self-pub­lished poet­ry didn’t actu­al­ly affect Indi­an pol­i­tics but I’m 60 pages in, so.”

The sub­mis­sions from the sci­ences do not dis­ap­point. For exam­ple, from a Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land stu­dent of Bio­log­i­cal Sci­ences: “We spent thou­sands of gov­ern­ment dol­lars to cre­ate a mouse mod­el for a dis­ease only 32 peo­ple in the world have.” And a Sci­ence Writ­ing stu­dent at M.I.T. gives us this par­tic­u­lar­ly impres­sive exam­ple of brevi­ty: “Wolves + humans, the ulti­mate fren­e­mies.” Not to be out­done, a Stem Cell Biol­o­gy stu­dent at Har­vard offers a grim­ly terse con­fes­sion­al: “I have killed so many fish.”

The sub­mis­sions are anony­mous, but some good sports have cho­sen to include links to their the­ses, endear­ing­ly hop­ing that some­one besides their advi­sor will actu­al­ly want to read them. Most of the sub­mis­sions, how­ev­er, sim­ply com­bine two qual­i­ties every advanced stu­dent knows all too well: a well-earned feel­ing of futil­i­ty and the mor­dant wit required to keep going any­way.

More wit­ty sum­maries can be found at lol my the­sis.

Relat­ed Con­tents:

The Illus­trat­ed Guide to a Ph.D.

Grad­u­ate School Bar­bie: A New Gift Idea for The Demor­al­ized Grad Stu­dent in Your Life

The Ph.D. Grind: Philip J. Guo’s Free Mem­oir Offers An Insider’s Look at Doc­tor­al Study

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

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Sir Patrick Stewart Demonstrates How Cows Moo in Different English Accents

in Comedy, Politics, Radio, Theatre | January 6th, 2014

cow stewart

Hav­ing spent the fall loung­ing in the bath dressed as a lob­ster, and gam­bol­ing around New York City with Wait­ing for Godot cast mate Ian McK­ellen, the irre­press­ible Patrick Stew­art brought 2013 to a close by indulging a curi­ous fan of NPR’s How To Do Every­thing pod­cast.

Her ques­tion? What do Eng­lish cows sound like when they moo.

The knight­ed star does not skimp on his answer, even if, as he repeat­ed­ly sug­gests, one can­not do the sub­ject jus­tice in less than an entire after­noon. The dialects of British cows, like those of their human coun­ter­parts, under­score that theirs is a soci­ety “dom­i­nat­ed by class, social sta­tus and loca­tion.”

The moo of a cow from West Oxford­shire, home to Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron, is quite con­ser­v­a­tive com­pared to the lusty bel­low of a spec­i­men from West York­shire, where Stew­art grew up. (The lat­ter is so aston­ish­ing, he imme­di­ate­ly offers to pro­duce it twice.)

Cock­ney cows, a breed whose ranks have thinned con­sid­er­ably since Shake­speare’s day, sound like sheep.

May­fair cows sound like for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Sir Alec Dou­glas-Home.

As an extra treat, Stew­art gen­er­ous­ly agrees to the host’s request for an Amer­i­can cow, imper­son­at­ing a Neva­da-dweller, a geo­graph­ic homage to the orig­i­nal ques­tion­er as well as his bride, jazz singer Sun­ny Ozell.

Is there any­thing this man can’t — or won’t — do?

via Laugh­ing Squid

Ayun Hal­l­i­day wish­es her favorite play­wright a very hap­py birth­day. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Sell­ers Gives a Quick Demon­stra­tion of British Accents

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

Patrick Stew­art Talks Can­did­ly About Domes­tic Vio­lence in a Poignant Q&A Ses­sion at Comic­palooza

Acclaimed BBC Pro­duc­tion of Ham­let, Star­ring David Ten­nant (Doc­tor Who) and Patrick Stew­art (Star Trek)

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Lego Video Shows How David Bowie Almost Became “Cobbler Bob,” Not “Aladdin Sane”

in Comedy, Music | January 5th, 2014

In Octo­ber, 1973, David Bowie made his last live appear­ance as Zig­gy Star­dust. (Watch it here.) Pret­ty soon, Bowie would morph into a new per­sona Aladdin Sane and lat­er The Thin White Duke. But, for a moment there, he almost went with anoth­er unlike­ly char­ac­ter, “Cob­bler Bob.” Or so that’s the play­ful sce­nario that Eng­lish come­di­an and actor Adam Bux­ton imag­ines in this short lego video. Enjoy.

When you’re done hav­ing a laugh and ready for some­thing more seri­ous, we’d encour­age you to see these relat­ed posts:

The Sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust: How David Bowie Cre­at­ed the Char­ac­ter that Made Him Famous

David Bowie Recalls the Strange Expe­ri­ence of Invent­ing the Char­ac­ter Zig­gy Star­dust (1977)

David Bowie Sings ‘I Got You Babe’ with Mar­i­anne Faith­full in His Last Per­for­mance As Zig­gy Star­dust

David Bowie Releas­es Vin­tage Videos of His Great­est Hits from the 1970s and 1980s

via Metafil­ter

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