Watch Historic Footage of Joseph Kittinger’s 102,800 Jump from Space (1960)

in History, Random | October 25th, 2012

When I first heard that 43-year old Aus­tri­an dare­dev­il and for­mer mil­i­tary para­chutist Felix Baum­gart­ner would be jump­ing 128,000 feet from space, my imme­di­ate reac­tion was, “What? Why?!” Because why would any­one do that? And I assumed it was all some macho stunt to pro­mote Red Bull, his cor­po­rate spon­sor, which isn’t entire­ly unfound­ed. But I also had no sense of the his­toric con­text, the sci­en­tif­ic impli­ca­tions, and until I read the details, the tru­ly death-defy­ing mag­ni­tude of it all. As I watched the jump and then learned more, my won­der and admi­ra­tion grew, par­tic­u­lar­ly in read­ing Baumgartner’s own accounts of his sev­en years of prepa­ra­tion for the feat.

Baum­gart­ner best­ed Chuck Yea­ger on the same day in his­to­ry that Yea­ger broke the sound bar­ri­er (he says Yeager’s going to be “pissed”). He also broke the record set by Joseph Kit­tinger, an Air Force pilot who leapt from 102,800 feet (19.5 miles) above earth in 1960. You can watch a short doc­u­men­tary of Kittinger’s famous jump above. The tech­nol­o­gy of 1960 didn’t allow for the crys­tal-clear images Baum­gart­ner cap­tured with his two suit cam­eras, but it’s still an impres­sive lit­tle film, made more so by Kittinger’s voice over describ­ing the sen­sa­tions he expe­ri­enced dur­ing free fall. Below is a clas­sic 1960 news­reel film of the jump, with a dra­mat­ic announc­er and tri­umphal, mar­tial music.

Kit­tinger and Baum­gart­ner first met in 2008, and the elder test pilot sup­port­ed and helped plan the Red Bull Stratos project that would break his record. He also served as Baum­gart­ner’s mis­sion con­trol, guid­ing him from his tiny space cap­sule to the ground. The jump was appar­ent­ly sup­posed to take place two years ear­li­er, on the 50th anniver­sary of Kittinger’s, but was delayed. Below, you can watch Kit­tinger dis­cuss the project and his own career in a 2010 inter­view with Red Bull.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Alan Rickman Does Epic Violence to a Cup of Tea in Super Slow Motion

in Film, Random, Theatre | October 22nd, 2012

“Epic Tea Time with Alan Rick­man” comes from a video series called Por­traits in Dra­mat­ic Time, which fea­tures “an array of glacial­ly paced per­for­mances of the­ater artists and actors.” Accord­ing to its cre­ator David Michalek, the por­traits, each offer­ing “a phys­i­cal metaphor for an emo­tion­al con­di­tion,” were orig­i­nal­ly pro­ject­ed onto a build­ing facade at Lin­coln Cen­ter in New York City dur­ing a 2011 fes­ti­val. This par­tic­u­lar por­trait shows actor Alan Rick­man (you know him from Har­ry Pot­ter, Dog­ma, Die Hard, etc.) doing epic vio­lence to a cup of tea. As one YouTu­ber put it, “It’s a bit like watch­ing God cre­ate the uni­verse. A very angry God.”

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Muhammad Ali Plans to Fight on Mars in Lost 1966 Interview

in Comedy, History, Random | October 19th, 2012

Per­haps you remem­ber the short ani­mat­ed film, I Met the Wal­rus. It revis­its the moment when Jer­ry Lev­i­tan, a 14-year-old kid, slipped into John Lennon’s Toron­to hotel room in 1969 and asked the Bea­t­le for an inter­view. And he got one. The film pro­vides all the proof you need.

Now here’s a nice com­pan­ion sto­ry. It’s the sum­mer of 1966, and 17-year-old Michael Ais­ner approach­es Muham­mad Ali, then the heavy­weight cham­pi­on of the world, and asks him to appear on his high school radio show. The kid per­sists and even­tu­al­ly lands the inter­view. The audio seg­ment, rarely heard until now, reminds us what makes Ali so charis­mat­ic and endear­ing. The champ answers some of Ais­ner’s ques­tions seri­ous­ly. But he also launch­es into a hilar­i­ous riff about how he plans to take a space­ship to Mars, bat­tle the Mar­t­ian champ (named some­thing like Win­nekawana­ka) and there­by win the “Uni­ver­sal Title.” Pret­ty price­less. The com­plete audio seg­ment appears here.

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Hunter S. Thompson Calls Tech Support, Unleashes a Tirade Full of Fear and Loathing (NSFW)

in Literature, Random, Technology | October 17th, 2012

It has been said that “the true voice of [Hunter S.] Thomp­son is revealed to be that of Amer­i­can moral­ist … one who often makes him­self ugly to expose the ugli­ness he sees around him.” That ugli­ness served its lit­er­ary and jour­nal­is­tic pur­pose, no doubt. As for the pur­pose it served in his pri­vate life, in the realm of get­ting nit­ty-grit­ty, mun­dane things done, that’s a whole oth­er ques­tion. Not much is known about this clip oth­er than it fea­tures a NSFW voice­mail that the gonzo jour­nal­ist left for his local AV guy in Woody Creek, Col­orado. The poor man.…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thomp­son Remem­bers Jim­my Carter’s Cap­ti­vat­ing Bob Dylan Speech (1974)

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

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son (NSFW)

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Watch a Water Droplet Bounce (That’s Right, Bounce) in Super Slow Motion

in Random | October 11th, 2012

Which wise sage said “Life moves pret­ty fast. If you don’t slow down and look around, you might miss it”? I can’t quite recall. It does­n’t mat­ter. But the Phan­tom v7.3 Dig­i­tal High Speed Cam­era sug­gests that there’s some­thing to that adage. The cam­era shoots up to 6688 frames-per-sec­ond, and lets you look at every­day phe­nom­e­na in an entire­ly dif­fer­ent way. We’ve shown you pret­ty cool footage of what a vibrat­ing cym­bal looks like while cap­tured in super slow mo. Now we give you a glimpse of some­thing you don’t see very often — water bounc­ing.

via @Wired

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The Scotch Pronunciation Guide: Brian Cox Teaches You How To Ask Authentically for 40 Scotches

in Random | October 5th, 2012

Some Scotch names are fair­ly straight­for­ward — Glen­livet, Glen­fid­dich, Laphroaig. Oth­ers not so much. I mean, give Bun­na­hab­hain and Caol Ila a try. Well, if you’re a con­nois­seur strug­gling to get the pro­nun­ci­a­tion right, this will serve you well. Esquire has cre­at­ed “The Amer­i­can Man’s Scotch Pro­nun­ci­a­tion Guide” (though you hard­ly need to be male to prof­it from it), which fea­tures “esteemed actor and proud Scot” Bri­an Cox sipping/talking his way through more than 40 brand names. Catch them all here.

via @PartiallyExLife

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Thomas Edison’s Boxing Cats (1894), or Where the LOLCats All Began

in Film, Random, Technology | September 18th, 2012

I’m will­ing to bet a lot of some­one else’s mon­ey that there are thou­sands more lol­cat lovers than cat lovers in the world. Since I hap­pen to be unashamed­ly both, I was suck­ered by the lit­tle 1894 film above from Thomas Edison’s Black Maria stu­dios fea­tur­ing “Pro­fes­sor Welton’s Box­ing Cats.” Now, grant­ed, there is no dis­claimer telling us no ani­mals were harmed, but it looks to me like good clean cat-box­ing fun. As the Smith­son­ian page that post­ed this lit­tle gem declares, Edi­son is per­haps the “mogul who start­ed lol­cats.”

Edi­son is giv­en cred­it for invent­ing a lot of things, many of which he sim­ply appro­pri­at­ed, made his own, and mar­ket­ed heav­i­ly. In this way, he exem­pli­fies a par­tic­u­lar brand of Amer­i­can entre­pre­neur skilled not so much in mak­ing things as in patent­ing them. The so-called “Wiz­ard of Men­lo Park” patent­ed 1,093 inven­tions, among them his motion pic­ture cam­era, or “kine­to­graph.” But as the Library of Con­gress reports, it is like­ly that Edison’s awk­ward­ly-named assis­tant William Kennedy Lau­rie Dick­son did the actu­al work of turn­ing Edis­on’s con­cept (which he took from Ead­weard Muy­bridge) into a real­i­ty.

Com­plex­i­ties of due cred­it aside, we can at least thank Edi­son for man­ag­ing an effi­cient oper­a­tion and also, for bet­ter or worse, pio­neer­ing lit­i­ga­tion against his com­peti­tors (putting many of them out of busi­ness). His Black Maria Stu­dios amassed quite an archive of ear­ly “actu­al­i­ty” films and silent fic­tion­al films of the Nick­elodeon era, the most famous of which, The Great Train Rob­bery, you can watch below (with dubbed-in score).

The Library of Congress’s Edi­son page is an excel­lent resource for infor­ma­tion on the his­to­ry of film in gen­er­al and Edison’s con­tri­bu­tions in par­tic­u­lar, and it fea­tures dozens of his short films avail­able for down­load in Real­Me­dia, Quick Time, or as MPEGs.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Danny MacAskill, Biker Extraordinaire, Takes on the Streets of San Francisco

in Random | September 5th, 2012


Dan­ny MacAskill spent sev­er­al months rid­ing the streets of Edin­burgh, Scot­land in 2009, demon­strat­ing his unique set of tal­ents on the moun­tain bike. It was all cap­tured in a video called Inspired Bicy­cles. Did you catch it? If so, you’re not alone. The video has clocked more than 31 mil­lion views. Now, Dan­ny is back, this time tak­ing on the mean streets of San Fran­cis­co. It’s all about, as Rem­ing­ton likes to say, pre­ci­sion, pow­er and con­trol. You can find more of Dan­ny’s videos on his web site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sci­ence Behind the Bike: Four Videos from the Open Uni­ver­si­ty on the Eve of the Tour de France

Brus­sels Express: The Per­ils of Cycling in Europe’s Most Con­gest­ed City

David Byrne: From Talk­ing Heads Front­man to Lead­ing Urban Cyclist

The Physics of the Bike

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.