Discover Japan’s Earthquake Proof Underground Bike Storage System: The Future is Now

in Design, Sports, Technology, Travel | May 25th, 2015

Behold, the inge­nious under­ground bicy­cle stor­age of Japan! What a vision of futur­ist effi­cien­cy — the only thing miss­ing is Ray­mond Scott’s Pow­er­house (aka Bugs Bun­ny fac­to­ry music).

Japan­ese cul­tur­al com­men­ta­tor Dan­ny Choo strapped a cam­era to his seat to cap­ture a bike’s eye view of the robot­ic Eco Cycle Anti-Seis­mic Under­ground Bicy­cle Park. It takes an aver­age of 8 sec­onds for two-wheel­ers to make the jour­ney — human involve­ment stops at the street lev­el card read­er.

(One inter­net com­menter won­dered what hap­pens if the sys­tem malfunctions…and all I can say is I once spent what felt like an eter­ni­ty, trapped in Disney’s Haunt­ed Man­sion.)

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As futur­is­tic visions go, it’s a finite one. The envi­ron­men­tal­ly-friend­ly design allows for fair­ly easy de-instal­la­tion, should pub­lic demand for safe, sub­ter­ranean bike park­ing wane.

It’s also earth­quake-proof, a fea­ture which gives rise to all sorts of dystopi­an Plan­et of the Apes-style fan­tasies (replace Apes with Bikes).

Cities from Lon­don and Paris to New York and Hangzhou have embraced bike­shar­ing schemes, but the Japan­ese mod­el allows cyclists to keep their own rides. Signs post­ed at street lev­el remind rid­ers to remove per­son­al effects like pets (!) before using the sys­tem.) Unlim­it­ed park­ing and retrieval comes in at under 20 bucks a month.

It’s an idea whose time has come. As of this writ­ing, the cycle-friend­ly Nether­lands is plot­ting the world’s largest bike park — under­der­ground — to be launched in 2018.

Hat tip to Dan­ny Choo.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Turn Your Bike into an Elec­tric Hybrid with MIT’s “Copen­hagen Wheel”

The Physics of the Bike

How Leo Tol­stoy Learned to Ride a Bike at 67, and Oth­er Tales of Life­long Learn­ing

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Jack Kerouac Was a Secret, Obsessive Fan of Fantasy Baseball

in Literature, Sports | April 3rd, 2015

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Bear in mind, fan­ta­sy base­ball fans, that with the sea­son about to start up again, you should­n’t feel like you have to take any grief for enjoy­ing the game. It counts among its enthu­si­asts no less a lumi­nary than Jack Ker­ouac, author of On The Road and The Dhar­ma Bums, and he did­n’t just enjoy it, he arguably invent­ed it. The New York Pub­lic library devot­ed an exhi­bi­tion to Ker­ouac’s near-life­long hob­by called “Fan­ta­sy Sports and the King of the Beats,” reveal­ing how the writer invent­ed an elab­o­rate means of expe­ri­enc­ing the joys of Amer­i­ca’s Nation­al Pas­time all on his own.

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He also cre­at­ed an entire world of imag­ined teams, imag­ined play­ers, and imag­ined ath­let­ic and finan­cial dra­mas as well. The New York Times’ Charles McGrath writes that Ker­ouac “obses­sive­ly played a fan­ta­sy base­ball game of his own inven­tion, chart­ing the exploits of made-up play­ers like Wino Love, War­by Pep­per, Heinie Twi­ett, Phe­gus Cody and Zagg Park­er, who toiled on imag­i­nary teams named either for cars (the Pitts­burgh Ply­mouths and New York Chevvies, for exam­ple) or for col­ors (the Boston Grays and Cincin­nati Blacks).”

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Rather than a dis­trac­tion from his writ­ing, all this proved to be “ide­al train­ing for a would-be author,” since his ver­sion of fan­ta­sy base­ball also required him come up with volu­mi­nous cov­er­age of the action which “imi­tates the over­heat­ed, epi­thet-stud­ded sports­writ­ing of the day.” Fan­ta­sy base­ball has since turned into a nation­al (and, to an extent, even inter­na­tion­al) phe­nom­e­non, but the game that thou­sands of base­ball nuts play today, which uses the real sta­tis­tics of non-made-up base­ball play­ers on actu­al teams, does­n’t demand near­ly as much cre­ativ­i­ty as did the one Ker­ouac played by him­self.

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Ker­ouac’s fan­ta­sy base­ball even achieved a kind of pre­science, not just in terms of pre­fig­ur­ing fan­ta­sy base­ball as we now know it, but events in base­ball prop­er: “As befit­ting the author of On the Road, the nar­ra­tor of which jour­neys three times to Cal­i­for­nia with a pil­grim’s zeal,” says the NYPL’s site, Ker­ouac “brought his fan­ta­sy base­ball league to Cal­i­for­nia. In this instance, fan­ta­sy trumped real­i­ty, since Ker­ouac’s Cal­i­for­nia teams are estab­lished at least one year before the Dodgers and Giants aban­doned New York for Cal­i­for­nia.” One won­ders what the vic­to­ries and tribu­la­tions of the Ply­mouths and the Chevvies, the Grays and the Blacks, their fates decid­ed with mar­bles, sticks, com­plex dia­grams, and cards full of now-inde­ci­pher­able sym­bols, might fore­tell about the fate of Major League Base­bal­l’s teams this com­ing sea­son.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jack Kerouac’s Hand-Drawn Map of the Hitch­hik­ing Trip Nar­rat­ed in On the Road

Jack Ker­ouac Lists 9 Essen­tials for Writ­ing Spon­ta­neous Prose

Jack Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road (1959)

Jack Kerouac’s Naval Reserve Enlist­ment Mugshot, 1943

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Errol Morris Celebrates The Madness of Sports with Six New Mini-Docs: Watch Them Free Online

in Film, Sports | March 5th, 2015

In hon­or of Errol Mor­ris’ 67th birth­day, which just passed on Feb­ru­ary 9, Grantland.com is cel­e­brat­ing with a full week of new doc­u­men­taries shot for ESPN by the film­mak­er. Fre­quent­ly named one of the most impor­tant doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ers of our times, he rose to fame with 1978’s pet ceme­tery doc Gates of Heav­en, then cement­ed it with The Thin Blue Line, which helped save a man from the elec­tric chair. (It also start­ed his long col­lab­o­ra­tion with com­pos­er Philip Glass.) Mor­ris has been a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor, a jour­nal­ist, and a mak­er of com­mer­cials, all of which pro­vide the men­tal fuel (and fund­ing) for his film­mak­ing. He invent­ed the “Inter­ro­tron” a vari­a­tion on the teleprompter, which allowed his sub­jects to talk straight into the cam­era while he inter­viewed them. It added an unset­tling jolt to his two con­ver­sa­tions with the men vot­ed most like­ly to be war crim­i­nals, Robert McNa­ma­ra and Don­ald Rums­feld. But as Mor­ris says in a Grant­land inter­view, he is not here to accuse or pros­e­cute.

When I was inter­view­ing killers years ago, I enjoyed talk­ing to them. I enjoyed being with them. I wasn’t there to mor­al­ize with them or tem­po­rize with them, I was there to talk to them. And I think that’s still true. Rums­feld pushed it, I have to say.

It’s been two years since his last film, the Rums­feld inter­view The Unknown Known, and, while we wait for his next fea­ture and pos­si­bly a third book, Mor­ris has giv­en us six short docs that range between 10 and 20 min­utes. The Sub­ter­ranean Sta­di­um (at the top of this post) delves into the sub-cul­ture of table­top elec­tron­ic foot­ball games that have been around since the 1940s, and the grown-ups who still play them.

The Heist exam­ines, with dia­grams and sus­pense­ful music, the four col­lege stu­dents who stole Michael Jordan’s jer­sey from the vault­ed heights of a sta­di­um.


The Streak­er pro­files Mark Roberts, the affa­ble Liv­er­pudlian who has streaked at “every major sport­ing event in the world.”

There are three more videos wait­ing to be doled out. (Find them here.) One is on A.J. Mass, a writer for ESPN; anoth­er about sports col­lectibles; and the oth­er about horse rac­ing. The con­stant theme is the par­tic­u­lar mad­ness of sports fans, obses­sion being a major theme of Mor­ris’ work.

The oth­er link in all these films is the sound of Mor­ris, who choos­es not to edit out his off­screen voice. It’s the sound of a man clear­ly hav­ing a good time. How­ev­er:

“I’m sick of inter­view­ing,” he says. “I am real­ly sick of it. I’m not gonna say I do it bet­ter than any­body else, but I do it dif­fer­ent­ly than any­body else. I am good at it, for what­ev­er rea­son. There are a lot of dif­fer­ent rea­sons, but if that’s all I’m going to do for the rest of my life is stick a cam­era in front of peo­ple and say to them, “I don’t have a first ques­tion, what’s your first answer?” I think I would be very sad.”

So let’s cel­e­brate Mor­ris before he changes his mind.

This new series of short films will be added to our meta col­lec­tion, 285 Free Doc­u­men­taries Online. Find more films in our col­lec­tion of 700 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed con­tent:

30 Errol Mor­ris Movies That Can Be Streamed Online

Wern­er Her­zog Los­es a Bet to Errol Mor­ris, and Eats His Shoe

“They Were There” — Errol Mor­ris Final­ly Directs a Film for IBM

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

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Bill Nye the Science Guy Takes the Air Out of Deflategate

in Sports | January 28th, 2015

Did the weath­er have any­thing to do with those balls deflat­ing in New Eng­land dur­ing the AFC cham­pi­onship game? It’s unlike­ly, very unlike­ly. Bill Nye explains why with sci­ence, but not with­out putting the hyped con­tro­ver­sy into per­spec­tive first. Take it away Bill.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Physics of a Quarterback’s Pass

Bill Nye, The Sci­ence Guy, Says Cre­ation­ism is Bad for Kids and America’s Future

Watch the High­ly-Antic­i­pat­ed Evolution/Creationism Debate: Bill Nye the Sci­ence Guy v. Cre­ation­ist Ken Ham

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Home Movies of Duke Ellington Playing Baseball (And How Baseball Coined the Word “Jazz”)

in Jazz, Music, Sports | December 30th, 2014

“When they study our civ­i­liza­tion two thou­sand years from now, there will only be three things that Amer­i­cans will be known for: the Con­sti­tu­tion, base­ball and jazz music. They’re the three most beau­ti­ful things Amer­i­cans have ever cre­at­ed.” — Ger­ald Ear­ly talk­ing to Ken Burns.

In this clip unearthed by the Smith­son­ian ear­li­er this year, we find two great Amer­i­can tra­di­tions inter­twined — base­ball and jazz. As John Edward Has­se explains in his online essay, jazz and base­ball grew up togeth­er. Accord­ing to some, the first doc­u­ment­ed use of the word “jazz” came from a 1913 news­pa­per arti­cle where a reporter, writ­ing about the San Fran­cis­co Seals minor league team, said “The poor old Seals have lost their ‘jazz’ and don’t know where to find it.” “It’s a fact … that the ‘jazz,’ the pep­per, the old life, has been either lost or stolen, and that the San Fran­cis­co club of today is made up of jaz­z­less Seals.” Or, if you lis­ten to this pub­lic radio report, anoth­er use of the word can be traced back to 1912. That’s when a washed-up pitch­er named Ben Hen­der­son claimed that he had invent­ed a new pitch — the “jazz ball.”

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Dur­ing the Swing Era, jazz musi­cians often took a keen inter­est in base­ball. Writes Ryan Whir­ty in Off­beat, Louis Arm­strong’s “pas­sion for America’s pas­time was so intense that, in the ear­ly ’30s, he owned his own team, the Secret Nine, in his home­town of New Orleans, even deck­ing the play­ers out in the finest, whitest uni­forms ever seen on the sand­lots of the Big Easy.” (See them in the pho­to above.) And then oth­er band lead­ers like Ben­ny Good­man, Count Basie, Tom­my Dorsey, and Duke Elling­ton formed base­ball teams with mem­bers of their groups.

Above, you can watch Elling­ton play­ing ball in some home videos, both hit­ting and pitch­ing. When the Duke was a kid, he imag­ined him­self becom­ing a pro­fes­sion­al base­ball play­er one day. But the young­ster even­tu­al­ly got hit in the head with a bat dur­ing a game, and that’s where his base­ball career end­ed. He lat­er not­ed, “The mark is still there, but I soon got over it. With that, how­ev­er, my moth­er decid­ed I should take piano lessons.”

Note: The Duke Elling­ton Cen­ter writes on Youtube that “The appear­ance of Ben Web­ster at the end of the clip times the video to around 1940–41.”

via The Smith­son­ian and That Eric Alper

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Video: Fidel Cas­tro Plays Base­ball (1959)

Free: Watch Jack­ie Robin­son Star in The Jack­ie Robin­son Sto­ry (1950)

The Grate­ful Dead Rock the Nation­al Anthem at Can­dle­stick Park: Open­ing Day, 1993

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Muhammad Ali Gives a Dramatic Reading of His Poem on the Attica Prison Uprising

in History, Life, Poetry, Sports, Television | December 10th, 2014

In July of 1972, box­er Muham­mad Ali trav­eled to Dublin to fight Alvin ‘Blue’ Lewis, an ex-con from Detroit. In the days lead­ing up to the bout, he amused him­self by bust­ing on Fight of the Cen­tu­ry vic­tor Smokin’ Joe Fra­zier from afar, refer­ring to him on live tele­vi­sion as a “tramp” and a “slave” who lived on a “chick­en plan­ta­tion.”

It was a career defin­ing encounter for inter­view­er Cathal O’Shan­non, who praised Ali’s deft­ness in that area and not­ed that the champ said things “he would not have been able to say in Amer­i­ca.”

It’s doubt­ful that O’Shannon was refer­ring to the name call­ing, part of Ali’s cam­paign to draw Fra­zier back into the ring. (The champ got his wish less than two years lat­er, when he defeat­ed Fra­zier at Madi­son Square Gar­den in the sec­ond of their three fights.)

What’s more like­ly is that O’Shannon was allud­ing to the orig­i­nal poem Ali recites from mem­o­ry, one minute into clip above, after ori­ent­ing Irish view­ers to the pre­vi­ous fall’s Atti­ca Prison upris­ing, still the dead­liest in U.S. his­to­ry.

Ali imag­ines him­self in the shoes of a black pris­on­er, respond­ing to the white war­den issu­ing a final ulti­ma­tum. His reply, which could be tak­en as a call to arms , but which Ali touch­ing­ly calls a “poet­ic poem,” takes the form of a dozen ter­cets:

Bet­ter far from all I see

To die fight­ing to be free

What more fit­ting end could be?

Bet­ter sure­ly than in some bed

Where in bro­ken health I’m led

Lin­ger­ing until I’m dead

Bet­ter than with prayers and pleas

Or in the clutch of some dis­ease

Wast­ing slow­ly  by degrees

Bet­ter than of heart attack 

Or some dose of drug I lack 

Let me die by being Black 

Bet­ter far that I should go 

Stand­ing here against the foe 

Is the sweet­er death to know 

Bet­ter than the bloody stain 

On some high­way where I’m lain 

Torn by fly­ing glass and pane 

Bet­ter call­ing death to come

Than to die anoth­er dumb

Mut­ed vic­tim in the slum

Bet­ter than of this prison rot

If there’s any choice I’ve got

Kill me here on the spot

Bet­ter far my fight to wage

Now while my blood boils with rage

Lest it cool with ancient age

Bet­ter vow­ing for us to die

Than to Uncle Tom and try

Mak­ing peace just to live a lie

Bet­ter now that I say my sooth

I’m gonna die demand­ing truth

While I’m still akin to youth

Bet­ter now than lat­er on

Now that fear of death is gone

Nev­er mind anoth­er dawn.

The poem draws to a close with an inex­pert but heart­felt sound effect.

The poet — whose mater­nal great-grand­fa­ther was born in Coun­ty Clare — went on to knock out his oppo­nent in the 11th round.

The trail­er for the doc­u­men­tary, When Ali Came to Ire­land, fea­tur­ing Cathal O’Shan­non, is below.

More poet­ry read­ings can be found in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Muham­mad Ali Plans to Fight on Mars in Lost 1966 Inter­view

Mal­colm X, Debat­ing at Oxford, Quotes Shakespeare’s Ham­let (1964)

Mail­er on the Ali-Fore­man Clas­sic

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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All of Lionel Messi’s 253 Record-Setting Goals in La Liga, Shown in One Video

in Sports | November 30th, 2014

Ear­li­er this month, when Lionel Mes­si scored a hat-trick against Sevil­la, he reached a mile­stone. He had scored his 253rd goal in La Liga, mak­ing him the all-time top scor­er in the elite Span­ish soc­cer league. His first goal came on May 1, 2005, and it took him just 289 match­es to break the record pre­vi­ous­ly held by Tel­mo Zarra. If you’re late to appre­ci­at­ing the artistry of Mes­si, not to wor­ry. Above, we have a video that runs 31 min­utes and brings togeth­er footage of every Mes­si goal in La Liga — all 253 in a row. To see the goals pre­sent­ed in anoth­er fash­ion, check out this info­graph­ic.

via Twist­ed Sifter

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Albert Camus’ Lessons Learned from Playing Goalie: “What I Know Most Surely about Morality and Obligations, I Owe to Football”

in Philosophy, Sports | November 7th, 2014

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Albert Camus, born 101 years ago today, once said, “After many years in which the world has afford­ed me many expe­ri­ences, what I know most sure­ly in the long run about moral­i­ty and oblig­a­tions, I owe to foot­ball.”

He was refer­ring to his col­lege days when he played goalie for the Rac­ing Uni­ver­si­taire Alge­rios (RUA) junior team. Camus was a decent play­er, though not the great play­er that leg­end lat­er made him out to be. For Jim White, author of A Mat­ter of Life and Death: A His­to­ry of Foot­ball in 100 Quo­ta­tions, soc­cer per­haps taught Camus a few things about self­less­ness, coop­er­a­tion, brav­ery and resilience. That’s a sun­ny way of look­ing at things. But per­haps The Tele­graph gets at the deep­er, dark­er life lessons Camus took away from soc­cer:

[T]here is some­thing appro­pri­ate about a philoso­pher like Camus sta­tion­ing him­self between the sticks [that is, in goal]. It is a lone­ly call­ing, an indi­vid­ual iso­lat­ed with­in a team eth­ic, one who plays to dif­fer­ent con­straints. If his team scores, the keep­er knows it is noth­ing to do with him. If the oppo­si­tion score, how­ev­er, it is all his fault. Stand­ing sen­tinel in goal, Camus had plen­ty of time to reflect on the absur­dist nature of his posi­tion.

And per­haps the absur­dist nature of life itself…

Camus — who appears in the pic­ture above, wear­ing the dark col­or jer­sey in the front row — con­tract­ed tuber­cu­lo­sis when he was only 18 years old. His lungs too dam­aged to con­tin­ue play­ing sports, the young man turned to phi­los­o­phy. When Camus moved from Alge­ria to France, he learned that phi­los­o­phy was a rough and tum­ble game too — some­thing his soc­cer days pre­pared him for. He once quipped, “I learned … that a ball nev­er arrives from the direc­tion you expect­ed it. That helped me in lat­er life, espe­cial­ly in main­land France, where nobody plays straight.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jorge Luis Borges: “Soc­cer is Pop­u­lar Because Stu­pid­i­ty is Pop­u­lar”

Video: The Day Bob Mar­ley Played a Big Soc­cer Match in Brazil, 1980

Albert Camus Writes a Friend­ly Let­ter to Jean-Paul Sartre Before Their Per­son­al and Philo­soph­i­cal Rift

Albert Camus Wins the Nobel Prize & Sends a Let­ter of Grat­i­tude to His Ele­men­tary School Teacher (1957)

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