Neil deGrasse Tyson Answers the Big Enchilada Question, “Does the Universe Have a Purpose?”

in Life, Physics | November 28th, 2012

Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked by the Tem­ple­ton Foun­da­tion to answer the unan­swer­able ques­tion “Does the Uni­verse Have a Pur­pose?” He read his answer aloud, and Minute Physics helped ani­mate it. If you head to the Tem­ple­ton Foun­da­tion web site, you can find replies by oth­er lead­ing intel­lec­tu­als, includ­ing Lawrence Krauss, Jane Goodall, and Elie Wiesel.

For more pearls of wis­dom from Tyson, check out the fol­low­ing:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

Neil deGrasse Tyson Deliv­ers the Great­est Sci­ence Ser­mon Ever

Stephen Col­bert Talks Sci­ence with Astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson

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Woody Guthrie’s Fan Letter To John Cage and Alan Hovhaness (1947)

in Letters, Music | November 28th, 2012

I’ve always felt a cer­tain close affin­i­ty with Woody Guthrie. Could be my admi­ra­tion for his unstint­ing working-man’s pol­i­tics or that he hails from my mother’s home state of Okla­homa. Those are strong appeals, and I sup­pose it’s all of that and more: Guthrie could carve out com­pact gran­ite sen­tences even Robert Frost would envy. If the let­ter above doesn’t con­vince you, read the man’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy. In the let­ter, the unapolo­getic work­ing-class folksing­ing Okie who embod­ied depres­sion-era authen­tic­i­ty writes to “Disc Com­pa­ny of Amer­i­ca” to enthuse over John Cage for his “over­haul of the fam­i­ly piano” and his “choked down odd and unusu­al kinds of things.”

Odd and unusu­al are two words that spring to mind when imag­in­ing Guthrie writ­ing a let­ter in praise of Cage. (He also prais­es Armen­ian com­pos­er Alan Hov­haness—Guthrie spells it “Hov­aness”). Writ­ten in 1947, it is the kind of text one wants to quote in its entire­ty. For­tu­nate­ly, we have the repro­duc­tion above, and you can read it for your­self. What isn’t repro­duced is the post­script, in which Guthrie wrote: “I need some­thing like this odd­strik­ing music to match the things I feel in my soul tonight.” He also wrote that that morn­ing, his wife, Mar­jorie, had “giv­en birth to a big 7‑pound boy”—Arlo.

Guthrie’s let­ter ref­er­ences a (now extreme­ly rare) two-disc set enti­tled Piano Com­po­si­tions by Alan Hov­haness and John Cage played by Maro Ajemi­an and Alan Hov­hanes, fea­tur­ing a hand-drawn cov­er by acclaimed jazz-record illus­tra­tor David Stone Mar­tin. Accord­ing to LA Times music crit­ic Mark Swed, the Cage com­po­si­tion on Guthrie’s 78-rpm record was the pre­pared piano solos from Cage’s Amores, com­posed in 1943. Below, watch a per­for­mance of the “odd­strik­ing” Amores by Span­ish ensem­ble Neop­er­cusión.

Thanks to Tris­tan for point­ing us to this let­ter orig­i­nal­ly blogged over at Stool Pigeon.

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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The Epistemology of Dr. Seuss & More Philosophy Lessons from Great Children’s Stories

in K-12, Philosophy | November 28th, 2012

horton-hears-philosophy

Now for a sto­ry which “rais­es ques­tions about the the­o­ry and nature of knowl­edge.” An ele­phant “hears a faint noise com­ing from a small speck of dust; it seems to him like a tiny per­son is call­ing out for help.” He “finds it pecu­liar that a dust speck could speak so he rea­sons that there must be a very small crea­ture on it. With­out being able to see the crea­ture, he seems to know it is there and that it is his duty to save it from harm. The oth­er ani­mals in the jun­gle see him speak to the dust speck and find it impos­si­ble that there could be a crea­ture liv­ing on it.” Met with only dis­be­lief, “he holds tight to what he knows is true and learns from the voice that there exists an entire uni­verse.” At last, the speck­’s res­i­dent tiny towns­peo­ple “come togeth­er and make enough noise for the ani­mals to hear; they have proven their exis­tence and the jun­gle ani­mals are able to know what Hor­ton has known all along.” Most of us have read this clas­sic chil­dren’s book, Hor­ton Hears a Who!  by Dr. Seuss. But how many of us have probed its “ques­tions about the nature of human knowl­edge”?

The last para­graph’s quot­ed text all comes from Teach­ing Chil­dren Phi­los­o­phy’s Hor­ton Hears a Who mod­ule. The project, an out­growth of Mount Holyoke Col­lege pro­fes­sor Tom Warten­berg’s course “Phi­los­o­phy for Chil­dren,” comes premised on the notion not only that young­sters can learn phi­los­o­phy, but that they pos­sess minds par­tic­u­lar­ly well-suit­ed to its study. Teach­ing Chil­dren Phi­los­o­phy draws out the rel­e­vant philo­soph­i­cal issues and ques­tions from the books they’ve been read­ing already, from the epis­te­mol­o­gy of Hor­ton Hears a Who! to the meta­physics of Sylvester and the Mag­ic Peb­ble to phi­los­o­phy of mind in Harold and the Pur­ple Cray­on. Tar­get­ed toward par­ents, edu­ca­tors, and kids them­selves, the site promis­es great solace to any philo­soph­i­cal­ly mind­ed read­er (or read­er-aloud) of chil­dren’s sto­ries who feel they have long since exhaust­ed the depths of these beloved slim vol­umes. “How does Hor­ton know that this voice means there is a per­son on the speck?” “Is the moon that Harold draws the same as the moon we can see in the sky at night?” “If Sylvester is still a don­key because he thinks, what hap­pens when Sylvester is not think­ing?” You sup­ply the chil­dren’s books, and Warten­berg and com­pa­ny sup­ply the phi­los­o­phy.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es from our Col­lec­tion of 550 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Leonard Bernstein’s First “Young People’s Concert” at Carnegie Hall Asks, “What Does Music Mean?”

in K-12, Music | November 27th, 2012

We’ve writ­ten before about the pub­lic ser­vice Leonard Bern­stein ren­dered the Amer­i­can pub­lic as an ambas­sador of clas­si­cal music. Bern­stein made some appear­ances on an arts and cul­ture pro­gram called Omnibus in the 50s, and in 1972, as the Charles Eliot Nor­ton Pro­fes­sor of Poet­ry at Har­vard, he deliv­ered a mas­ter­ful series of pub­lic lec­tures. Through his var­i­ous appear­ances on radio and tele­vi­sion pro­grams, he suc­ceed­ed bril­liant­ly in mak­ing high art acces­si­ble to the aver­age per­son. In Jan­u­ary of 1958, just two weeks after tak­ing over duties as the direc­tor of the New York Phil­har­mon­ic, Bern­stein took up a tra­di­tion in Amer­i­can orches­tras called “young people’s con­certs.”  He would lead a total of 53 such con­certs, even after his tenure at the Phil­har­mon­ic end­ed in 1969, con­tin­u­ing as con­duc­tor emer­i­tus until 1972. The con­certs were first broad­cast on Sat­ur­day morn­ings, but for a few years, CBS—probably in reac­tion to FCC direc­tor New­ton Minow’s 1961 “vast waste­land” speech about the state of television—moved the pro­gram to prime time. Bern­stein made the con­certs cen­tral to his work at the Phil­har­mon­ic, describ­ing them in hind­sight as “among my favorite, most high­ly prized activ­i­ties of my life.”

The first con­cert (above), enti­tled “What Music Means,” begins with Rossini’s “William Tell Over­ture.” While the orches­tra works away with pre­ci­sion, the cam­era cuts to the faces of aston­ished kids react­ing to what they knew at the time as the theme to The Lone Ranger TV show. Bern­stein then stops the piece, the kids cry out “Lone Ranger!” and he deft­ly piv­ots from this dis­arm­ing moment to a fas­ci­nat­ing dis­cus­sion of why music isn’t about “sto­ries,” isn’t about “any­thing, it just is.” He com­mu­ni­cates his for­mal­ist the­o­ry with­out dumb­ing-down or con­de­scen­sion, but with clar­i­ty and pas­sion. Strip­ping away the pop­u­lar notion that every work of art has some inher­ent “mean­ing” (or “hid­den,” or “deep” mean­ing), Bern­stein shows his young audi­ence instead how all art–“high” or “low”–is first and fore­most about aes­thet­ic plea­sure, and appre­ci­a­tion begins with an under­stand­ing of how any giv­en work can only appeal to our emo­tions through the sens­es. Music, Bern­stein insists, is just “made of notes.”

This con­cert, at Carnegie Hall, was the first of its kind to be tele­vised. Lat­er episodes marked the first con­certs to be tele­vised from New York’s Lin­coln Cen­ter. The remain­ing three parts of “What Music Means” are avail­able here (Part 2, Part 3, Part 4), and a full ver­sion (with Span­ish sub­ti­tles) can be found here.

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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Nine Classic Superman Cartoons Restored and Now on YouTube

in Animation, Comics/Cartoons | November 27th, 2012

At the top of this post, you can watch 1941’s Super­man, a short nom­i­nat­ed for an Acad­e­my Award and (accord­ing to 1,000 ani­ma­tion pro­fes­sion­als) the 33rd great­est car­toon of all time. When you’ve done that, how about eight more of the Man of Steel’s most aes­thet­i­cal­ly dis­tinc­tive, pristine­ly restored ani­mat­ed adven­tures? Warn­er Broth­ers has just post­ed them, free for the watch­ing, to their YouTube chan­nel. They orig­i­nal­ly came out of Fleis­ch­er Stu­dios, which ani­ma­tion buffs will know meant a true mark of qual­i­ty back then. “Then,” in this case, means the ear­ly 1940s, and these Fleis­ch­er-pro­duced Super­man shorts brazen­ly bear the styl­is­tic mark of that era. But if their rich, clean-lined look burst­ing with Tech­ni­col­or strikes our eyes today as vin­tage, it also has a cer­tain retro time­less­ness — if that does­n’t sound like too much of a con­tra­dic­tion in terms. No won­der they call this the Gold­en Age of Ani­ma­tion.

Just below, you’ll find Fleis­cher’s sec­ond Super­man short, Mechan­i­cal Mon­sters, in which our hero bat­tles exact­ly those. After it came Bil­lion Dol­lar Lim­it­ed, The Arc­tic Giant, The Bul­leteers, The Mag­net­ic Tele­cope, Elec­tric Earth­quake, Vol­cano, and Ter­ror On The Mid­way and more— all with­in a span of under two years.

After 1942, Para­mount hand­ed the Super­man con­tract to Famous Stu­dios, which rose out of Fleis­cher’s dis­so­lu­tion. Eight addi­tion­al shorts emerged, none now held in regard near­ly as high as any of the Fleis­ch­er pro­duc­tions.

Where Fleis­ch­er pos­sessed a sur­feit of imag­i­na­tion, Famous seemed to suf­fer a deficit. (Their Sec­ond World War-themed Super­man debut was titled Japo­teurs.) But those first eight have enjoyed a long lifes­pan, par­tic­u­lar­ly as high-pro­file influ­ences. The Super­man ani­mat­ed tele­vi­sion series of the 1990s owes them a debt, as does even that same decade’s Bat­man series. Fans of Japan­ese ani­ma­tion will rec­og­nize the lar­ce­nous robots of Mechan­i­cal Mon­sters in Hayao Miyaza­k­i’s series Lupin III and fea­ture Cas­tle in the Sky, and even the thor­ough­ly irrev­er­ent Fox car­toon The Tick paid them homage. So, Hol­ly­wood types strain­ing to dream up the next Super­man fran­chise reboot: spend time with these still-enter­tain­ing, still-impres­sive pieces of ani­ma­tion, Hol­ly­wood car­toons like noth­ing Hol­ly­wood has put out since.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Car­toon Brew

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Best Ani­mat­ed Films of All Time, Accord­ing to Ter­ry Gilliam

When Super Heroes Get Old and Retire to Mia­mi

Free Gold­en Age Comics

Free Vin­tage Car­toons: Bugs Bun­ny, Bet­ty Boop and More

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Google Presents an Interactive Visualization of 100,000 Stars

in Astronomy, Google, K-12, Science | November 27th, 2012

Stargaz­ers of all ages will enjoy the lat­est Google exper­i­ment designed for Chrome. One Hun­dred Thou­sand Stars is an inter­ac­tive map of space includ­ing the loca­tions of—you guessed it—more than 100,000 stars.

Ren­dered in three dimen­sions, our know­able, mapped galaxy is both stag­ger­ing­ly vast and easy to nav­i­gate. With imagery and data from NASA and the Euro­pean Space Agency, Google’s Chrome Work­shop built a 3D mod­el of our lit­tle cor­ner of the uni­verse.

You can pre­view One Hun­dred Thou­sand Stars above. Or you can enter the map, click on the upper left cor­ner, and take a tour of your own. You’ll start just beyond the stars that astronomers have stud­ied and named. Swipe all the way into our own solar sys­tem. The first thing you’ll notice is that Plu­to isn’t includ­ed, invit­ing a new mnemon­ic for the plan­et names (My Very Earnest Moth­er Just Served Us Nec­tarines?). That hazy cloud about a light year from the sun is the Oort Cloud, a mass of comets that’s thought to mark the out­er edge of the sun’s grav­i­ta­tion­al pull.

Swipe out a bit to see 87 rel­a­tive­ly near­by stars. Click on their names to read about them. Sir­ius is the bright­est in the night sky, part­ly because of its own lumi­nos­i­ty but also because it is com­par­a­tive­ly close to Earth. Vega is so well stud­ied that its bright­ness is used as the base­line to clas­si­fy stars accord­ing to their col­or.

Swipe out fur­ther for a galac­tic view of the Milky Way. It appears as a beau­ti­ful illu­mi­nat­ed disc cen­tered around a bright bulge. This shape is called the Galac­tic Plane. Click and drag to tilt the disc this way and that. Total­ing to some 400 bil­lion stars and as many plan­ets, the Milky Way does in fact bulge at its cen­ter, though astronomers think that the true core is real­ly an intense black hole.

Notice the tiny icon to “Tog­gle Spec­tral Index” up in the left cor­ner. On one set­ting, each cloud is pix­i­lat­ed to high­light its col­or (a key iden­ti­fi­er for astronomers).

Here’s where it helps to know a lit­tle about stars and how they form. Stars begin as clouds of most­ly hydro­gen, becom­ing grad­u­al­ly so dense through the process of nuclear fusion that even grav­i­ty can­not make them fly apart.

The amount of light a star gives off is mea­sured as dif­fer­ent col­ors and tem­per­a­tures. “Hot­ter” stars are younger and give off more blue light, and so are indi­cat­ed as blue. “Cool” stars are old­er, give off less blue light, and are indi­cat­ed as red.

By the way, the music behind One Hun­dred Thou­sand Stars is by Sam Hulick, whose music gamers may rec­og­nize  from Mass Effect.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Vis­it her web­site and her blog, thenifty.blogspot.com.

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Hear the 1962 Beatles Demo that Decca Rejected: “Guitar Groups are on Their Way Out, Mr. Epstein”

in Music | November 27th, 2012

It’s been called the biggest mis­take in music his­to­ry. On New Year’s Day 1962, Dec­ca Records had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to hear two new bands. One was Bri­an Poole and the Tremeloes. The oth­er was an obscure group from Liv­er­pool called the Bea­t­les. Of course, Dec­ca chose the Tremeloes. “Gui­tar groups are on their way out, Mr. Epstein,” was what the label’s senior A&R man, Dick Rowe, report­ed­ly said to Bea­t­les man­ag­er Bri­an Epstein. The Bea­t­les, who at that time includ­ed Pete Best on drums, record­ed 15 songs on New Year’s Day at the Dec­ca Stu­dios in Lon­don and select­ed 10 for their demo tape. The orig­i­nal 10-song tape (see the hand-writ­ten list of tracks below) will be auc­tioned today in Lon­don. Orga­niz­ers expect it to sell for around $30,000. Despite all the pre-auc­tion hype, the demo tracks them­selves have been around for decades on boot­leg and “grey mar­ket” records. And they’re online. You can lis­ten below and decide for your­self: If you were a record com­pa­ny exec­u­tive, would you have signed the Bea­t­les?

  1. “Like Dream­ers Do” (Lennon-McCart­ney)
  2. “Mon­ey (That’s What I Want)” (Gordy/Bradford)
  3. “Till There Was You” (Mered­ith Will­son)
  4. “The Sheik of Ara­by” (Smith/Wheeler/Snyder)
  5. “To Know Her is to Love Her” (Phil Spec­tor)
  6. “Take Good Care of My Baby” (King/Goffin)
  7. “Mem­phis, Ten­nessee” (Chuck Berry)
  8. “Sure to Fall (In Love with You)” (Cantrell/Claunch/Perkins)
  9. “Hel­lo Lit­tle Girl” Lennon-McCart­ney)
  10. “Three Cool Cats” (Leiber/Stoller)
  11. “Cry­ing, Wait­ing, Hop­ing” (Bud­dy Hol­ly)
  12. “Love of the Loved” (Lennon-McCart­ney)
  13. “Sep­tem­ber in the Rain” (Warren/Dubin)
  14. “Bésame Mucho” (Con­sue­lo Velásquez)
  15. “Searchin’ ” (Leiber/Stoller)

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Mak­ing of the Bea­t­les Song ‘Tomor­row Nev­er Knows’

‘Here Comes the Sun’: The Lost Gui­tar Solo by George Har­ri­son

The ‘Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er’ Demos: The Mak­ing of a Bea­t­les Clas­sic

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New MOOC Introduces You to the Wonderful World of Infographics & Data Visualization

in Education, Online Courses | November 26th, 2012

Hans Rosling, a pro­fes­sor of glob­al health at Sweden’s Karolin­s­ka Insti­tute, became some­thing of an inter­net celebri­ty because of his knack for pre­sent­ing data in extreme­ly imag­i­na­tive ways. As you’ll see above, he’s the mas­ter of data visu­al­iza­tion. Now, thanks to a new MOOC from the Knight Cen­ter for Jour­nal­ism in the Amer­i­c­as at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin, you can devel­op some of these skills your­self. The free course, Intro­duc­tion to Info­graph­ics and Data Visu­al­iza­tion, begins on Jan­u­ary 12th and runs 6 weeks. The course is not taught by Rosling (sigh), but the cur­rent ver­sion of the course has drawn more than 2,000 peo­ple from 109 coun­tries. Intro­duc­tion to Info­graph­ics and Data Visu­al­iza­tion has been added to our col­lec­tion of our Com­plete List of MOOCs and Cer­tifi­cate Cours­es.

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Existential Moments with Theo Jansen and His Amazing Kinetic Sculptures, the Strandbeests

in Art, Life | November 26th, 2012

One gets the impres­sion that Theo Jansen sub­scribes to Dan­ish Philoso­pher Soren Kierkegaard’s max­im : Once you label me, you negate me.

(Aw hell, just acci­den­tal­ly negat­ed Kierkegaard again…)

In any event, no sin­gle label can suf­fice where Jansen is con­cerned. A mak­er of kinet­ic sculp­tures who resists defin­ing him­self as an artist. A trained physi­cist who cel­e­brates evo­lu­tion as a ‘mir­a­cle.’ An ear­ly morn­ing opti­mist. An evening depres­sive. An engi­neer of life, pre­oc­cu­pied by death.

All this is to say, Theo Jansen is an orig­i­nal, as com­pelling as the awe­some, lum­ber­ing crea­tures he con­jures from plas­tic tub­ing and wind. Hear him speak for him­self, above. Watch his Strand­beests in action below. And don’t feel bad if the labels you’ve spent a life­time amass­ing begin to feel a bit nar­row com­pared.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day built a Rube Gold­berg Device under duress.

 

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Introducing 200 Free Educational Resources for K‑12 Students: Spread the Word & Tell Us Your Favorites

in Education, K-12 | November 26th, 2012

We got busy dur­ing the Thanks­giv­ing hol­i­day and put togeth­er a long-planned col­lec­tion of free edu­ca­tion­al resources for K‑12 stu­dents and their par­ents and teach­ers. We’re just get­ting start­ed with the list, and we’re hop­ing you could help make it bet­ter with your own sug­ges­tions. Right now the col­lec­tion fea­tures 200 help­ful resources, includ­ing free video lessons/tutorials; free mobile apps; free audio­books, ebooks and text­books; qual­i­ty YouTube chan­nels; free for­eign lan­guage lessons; test prep mate­ri­als; and free web resources in aca­d­e­m­ic sub­jects such as lit­er­a­ture, his­to­ry, sci­ence and com­put­ing. We hope you make good use of it with your fam­i­lies. We hope you tell a friend. And, right now, we hope you’ll tell us what great resources we’re miss­ing. We’d real­ly appre­ci­ate it if you would send us your thoughts.

You can start brows­ing here: 200 Free K‑12 Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Web Sites, Apps & More.

You can find this list in the future by click­ing on K‑12 Resources in the top nav­i­ga­tion bar.

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Watch The Mind of a Chef, the Unconventional Travel-Cooking Show Online (for a Limited Time)

in Television | November 26th, 2012

Ear­li­er this month, PBS pre­miered The Mind of a Chef, a 16-episode series that fea­tures nar­ra­tor Antho­ny Bour­dain tak­ing view­ers inside the mind of the award-win­ning Kore­an-Amer­i­can chef David Chang. In the series pre­miere above, David “dis­sects the roots of his pas­sion for ramen dish­es and tsuke­men on a trip to Japan,” giv­ing you an overview of the famous noo­dle and tak­ing you right to a ramen fac­to­ry. If the first episode, um, whets your appetite, then you’ll want to spend time with nine oth­er episodes from the series. They’re now post­ed online for a lim­it­ed time, cour­tesy of PBS, and they each run about 20 min­utes. But don’t dil­ly dal­ly, some will go offline on Novem­ber 30.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wim Wen­ders Vis­its, Mar­vels at a Japan­ese Fake Food Work­shop

Woody Allen Lives the “Deli­cious Life” in Ear­ly-80s Japan­ese Com­mer­cials

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