Bertrand Russell’s 10 Commandments for Living in a Healthy Democracy

‌

Image by J. F. Horra­bin, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Bertrand Rus­sell saw the his­to­ry of civ­i­liza­tion as being shaped by an unfor­tu­nate oscil­la­tion between two oppos­ing evils: tyran­ny and anar­chy, each of which con­tains the seed of the oth­er. The best course for steer­ing clear of either one, Rus­sell main­tained, is

Watch the Original Nosferatu, the Classic German Expressionist Vampire Film, Before the New Remake Arrives This December

‌

F. W. Mur­nau’s Nos­fer­atu, far and away the most influ­en­tial ear­ly vam­pire movie, came out 102 years ago. For about ten of those years, Robert Eggers has been try­ing to remake it. He would­n’t be the first: Wern­er Her­zog cast Klaus Kin­s­ki as the blood-suck­ing aris­to­crat at the cen­ter of his own ver­sion in 1979, and, though…

Behold the Oldest Written Text in the World: The Kish Tablet, Circa 3500 BC

‌

Image by José-Manuel Ben­i­to, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Some refer to the writ­ten Chi­nese lan­guage as ideo­graph­ic: that is, struc­tured accord­ing to a sys­tem in which each sym­bol rep­re­sents a par­tic­u­lar idea or con­cept, whether abstract or con­crete. That’s true of cer­tain Chi­nese char­ac­ters, but only a small minor­i­ty. Most of them are…

Hear the Isolated Vocals of Peter Gabriel & Kate Bush in “Don’t Give Up”: The Power of Perseverance

‌

Just by chance, could you use a song about per­se­ver­ance and over­com­ing adver­si­ty? Some­thing to give you a lit­tle encour­age­ment and reas­sur­ance? Then we sub­mit to you “Don’t Give Up,” fea­tur­ing the iso­lat­ed vocals of Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush.

When he released the song on his 1986 album So, Gabriel told NME: “The…

How Car Chase Scenes Have Evolved Over 100 Years

‌

For many a clas­sic action-movie enthu­si­ast, no car chase will ever top the one in Bul­litt. The nar­ra­tor of the Insid­er video above describes it as “the scene that set the stan­dard for all mod­ern car chas­es,” one made “icon­ic part­ly because of the char­ac­ters, but also because of their cars.” The pur­suer dri­ves a…