Scientist Creates a Working Rotary Cellphone

in Technology | February 17th, 2020

In pop­u­lar his­to­ries of the mobile phone, and of the smart­phone in par­tic­u­lar, you will rarely see men­tion of IBM’s 1992 Simon, a smart­phone invent­ed before the word “smart­phone.” “You could… use the Simon to send and receive emails, fax­es, and pages,” writes Busi­ness Insid­er. “There were also a suite of built-in fea­tures includ­ing a notes col­lec­tion you could write in [with a sty­lus], an address book that looked like a file fold­er, cal­en­dar, world clock, and a way to sched­ule appoint­ments.”

Nifty, eh? But the Simon was born too soon, it seems, and its unsexy design—like a cord­less hand­set with a long, rec­tan­gu­lar screen where the num­ber pad would be—proved less than entic­ing. “IBM did man­age to sell approx­i­mate­ly 50,000 units,” a piti­ful num­ber next to the iPhone’s first year sales of 6.1 mil­lion. The Simon was an evo­lu­tion­ary dead end, while the iPhone and its imi­ta­tors changed the def­i­n­i­tion of the word “phone.”

No longer is it nec­es­sary even to spec­i­fy that one’s tele­phone is of the “smart” vari­ety. We can spend all day on our devices with­out ever mak­ing or answer­ing a call. Is this devel­op­ment a good thing? No mat­ter how we ask or answer the ques­tion, it may do lit­tle to change the course of tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment or our depen­dence on the touch­screen com­put­ers in our pock­ets.

That is, unless we have the abil­i­ty to redesign our mobile phone our­selves, as Jus­tine Haupt—a sci­en­tist in the Instru­men­ta­tion Divi­sion at the Brookhaven Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry—has done. You’ll find no men­tion of any­thing like her rotary cell­phone in any his­to­ry of mobile telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions. No one would have seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered build­ing such a thing, except as an anachro­nis­tic nov­el­ty.

But Haupt’s rotary cell­phone is not a visu­al gag or piece of con­cep­tu­al art. It’s a work­ing device she built, osten­si­bly, for seri­ous rea­sons. “In a finicky, annoy­ing, touch­screen world of hyper­con­nect­ed peo­ple using phones they have no con­trol over or under­stand­ing of,” she writes, “I want­ed some­thing that would be entire­ly mine, per­son­al, and absolute­ly tac­tile, while also giv­ing me an excuse for not tex­ting.”

Haup­t’s rea­son­ing calls to mind J.G. Bal­lard’s com­ments on the car as “the last machine whose basic tech­nol­o­gy and func­tion we can all under­stand.” She lays out the rotary cellphone’s impres­sive fea­tures in the bul­let­ed list below:

  • Real, remov­able anten­na with an SMA con­nec­tor. Recep­tions is excel­lent, and if I real­ly want to I could always attach a direc­tion­al anten­na.
  • When I want a phone I don’t have to nav­i­gate through menus to get to the phone “appli­ca­tion.” That’s bull­shit.
  • If I want to call my hus­band, I can do so by press­ing a sin­gle ded­i­cat­ed phys­i­cal key which is ded­i­cat­ed to him. No menus. The point isn’t to use the rotary dial every sin­gle time I want to make a call, which would get tire­some for dai­ly use. The peo­ple I call most often are stored, and if I have to dial a new num­ber or do some­thing like set the vol­ume, then I can use the fun and sat­is­fy­ing-to-use rotary dial.
  • Near­ly instan­ta­neous, high res­o­lu­tion dis­play of sig­nal strength and bat­tery lev­el. No sig­nal meter­ing lag, and my LED bar­graph gives 10 incre­ments of res­o­lu­tion instead of just 4.
  • The ePa­per dis­play is bista­t­ic, mean­ing it does­n’t take any ener­gy to dis­play a fixed mes­sage.
  • When I want to change some­thing about the phone’s behav­ior, I just do it.
  • The pow­er switch is an actu­al slide switch. No hold­ing down a stu­pid but­ton to make it turn off and not being sure it real­ly is turn­ing off or what.

I wouldn’t hold my breath for a pro­duc­tion run, but “it’s not just a show-and-tell piece,” Haupt insists. “It fits in a pock­et; it’s rea­son­ably com­pact; call­ing the peo­ple I most often call if faster than with my old phone, and the bat­tery lasts almost 24 hours.” For the rest of us, it’s a con­ver­sa­tion starter: in less obvi­ous­ly quirky, retro ways, how could we reimag­ine mobile phones to make them less “smart” (i.e. less dis­tract­ing and inva­sive) and more per­son­al and cus­tomiz­able, while also enhanc­ing their core func­tion­al­i­ty as devices that keep us con­nect­ed to impor­tant peo­ple in our lives?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lyn­da Bar­ry on How the Smart­phone Is Endan­ger­ing Three Ingre­di­ents of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Lone­li­ness, Uncer­tain­ty & Bore­dom

Film­mak­er Wim Wen­ders Explains How Mobile Phones Have Killed Pho­tog­ra­phy

The World’s First Mobile Phone Shown in 1922 Vin­tage Film

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch the Grateful Dead Slip Past Security & Play a Gig at Columbia University’s Anti-Vietnam Protest (1968)

in Music | February 17th, 2020

In 1968, the Viet­nam War was not a cat­a­lyst for protests but a sort of nexus for all oth­er injustices–the part con­tained ele­ments of the whole: racism, class war, cap­i­tal­ist prof­i­teer­ing, impe­ri­al­ism. It was symp­tom and cause, much like cli­mate change feels today. In April of that year, one inflec­tion point hap­pened on New York’s Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus.

The Uni­ver­si­ty want­ed to build a mil­i­tary gym, not on cam­pus, but in Morn­ing­side Park, a pub­lic space that bor­dered on Harlem. The stu­dent body imme­di­ate­ly protest­ed the con­struc­tion. For one thing, it was planned to fea­ture one entrance for stu­dents and fac­ul­ty, and anoth­er entrance in the base­ment for Harlem’s most­ly African-Amer­i­can res­i­dents. Pro­tes­tors saw this, and the dis­place­ment of black res­i­dents from their neigh­bor­hood park, as racist. The Stu­dent Afro-Amer­i­can Soci­ety (SAS) of the Uni­ver­si­ty nick­named it “Gym Crow.” At the same time, anoth­er activist group, the Stu­dents for a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Soci­ety, dis­cov­ered links between the Uni­ver­si­ty and the Depart­ment of Defense. The two events were sep­a­rate, but stood for a big­ger prob­lem.

Stu­dents staged protests, sit-ins, and gen­er­al­ly dis­rupt­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty, vow­ing to con­tin­ue until their demands were met–specifically divest­ment in the war machine and halt­ing con­struc­tion of the gym. Things got so bad, with some 148 injuries and 372 reports of police bru­tal­i­ty from New York’s Finest, that the Uni­ver­si­ty went into lock­down.

That was April. On May 3, enter the Grate­ful Dead. Still a young band, the Dead were com­par­a­tive­ly unknown on the East Coast, but set out to sup­port the stu­dents with a free con­cert. What you see above is one of the few reels of footage of the ille­gal gig, with music from ear­li­er gigs used over the silent footage. No sound record­ing exists of this event, but the uploader seems to think “The Eleven” was part of the set.

Mick­ey Hart, who had only recent­ly joined the band as a sec­ond drum­mer, recalled how they made their way onto the cam­pus:

[Grate­ful Dead man­ag­er] Rock [Scul­ly] reached out to the strike orga­niz­ers and offered to do a free show for the stu­dents. Always up for an adven­ture, we of course, went right along. Since the police and guards were clos­ing off access to the major­i­ty of the cam­pus – we were “smug­gled” on cam­pus to Low Library Plaza in the back of a bread deliv­ery truck. Equip­ment and all. We were already jam­ming away before the secu­ri­ty and police could to stop us.

This oth­er footage shows more context–shots of Morn­ing­side Park, the protests, the police response, the sit-ins, a chalk notice­board fea­tur­ing mes­sages from the out­side to the students–all tru­ly a time cap­sule. One YouTube com­menter says he was there:

They set up on the porch of Fer­ris Booth Hall, which was the stu­dent union, in effect. A small crowd gath­ered; the Dead were not wide­ly known yet in New York. I had a nice chat with Gar­cia [while] they were set­ting up. They start­ed to play, but some­one from the admin­is­tra­tion cut the pow­er, which was not received favor­ably by the stu­dents. After some brief nego­ti­at­ing — some­one point­ed out that legal­ly Fer­ris Booth Hall was owned by the stu­dents and does the uni­ver­si­ty real­ly need anoth­er riot — the pow­er was turned back on and the show con­tin­ued.

In the end, the stu­dent protests con­tin­ued right through graduation–students held their own cer­e­mo­ny off campus–but they worked. The gym was not built and the Uni­ver­si­ty broke off its work with the DoD.

Flash for­ward to 2019 and it’s all com­ing around again: stu­dents and fac­ul­ty demand­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty divest from all fos­sil fuels, in sup­port of the Extinc­tion Rebel­lion hunger strik­ers. As of this writ­ing (Feb­ru­ary 2020), the Uni­ver­si­ty is still mulling it over. (No free con­certs have been announced either…yet.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Long, Strange Trip and Stream a 346-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Live Grate­ful Dead Per­for­mances (1966–1995)

The Longest of the Grate­ful Dead’s Epic Long Jams: “Dark Star” (1972), “The Oth­er One” (1972) and “Play­ing in The Band” (1974)

How the Grate­ful Dead’s “Wall of Sound”–a Mon­ster, 600-Speak­er Sound System–Changed Rock Con­certs & Live Music For­ev­er

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Explore Ancient Athens 3D, a Digital Reconstruction of the Greek City-State at the Height of Its Influence

in Architecture, History | February 17th, 2020

Today any of us can go Athens, a city with fla­vor­ful food, pleas­ant weath­er, a pic­turesque set­ting, rea­son­able prices, and a decent sub­way sys­tem. That is to say, we can enjoy Athens as it is, but what about Athens as it was? As one of the old­est cities in the world, not to men­tion a devel­op­men­tal cen­ter of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion itself, its his­to­ry holds as much inter­est as its present real­i­ty. Despite all the his­tor­i­cal research into ancient Greece, we lack a ful­ly accu­rate image of what Athens looked and felt like at the height of its pow­er as a city-state. But thanks to the last dozen years of work by pho­tog­ra­ph­er and visu­al effects artist Dim­itris Tsalka­nis, we can expe­ri­ence Athens as it might have been in the form of Ancient Athens 3D.

“Vis­i­tors to the site can browse recon­struc­tions that date back as ear­ly as 1200 BCE, the Myce­naean peri­od â€” or Bronze Age — through Clas­si­cal Athens, fea­tur­ing the rebuilds made nec­es­sary by the Gre­co-Per­sian War, and ages of occu­pa­tion by Romans and Ottomans,” writes Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Sarah Rose Sharp.

“Tsalka­nis traces the evo­lu­tion of sites like the Acrop­o­lis through­out the ages, the rise and fall of the city walls, the Ago­ra, which served as cen­ter of city life, and var­i­ous tem­ples, libraries, and oth­er for­ti­fi­ca­tions.” All we might see only as mono­chro­mat­ic ruins on our mod­ern Athen­ian trav­els stands tall and col­or­ful in Tsalka­nis’ three-dimen­sion­al dig­i­tal recre­ation — as does all that has­n’t sur­vived even as ruins.

Tsalka­nis writes of using “artis­tic license” to recon­struct “mon­u­ments that have left few or no traces at all (like the Myce­naean palace of the Acrop­o­lis) and oth­er com­ple­men­tary con­struc­tions — such as hous­es — that were incor­po­rat­ed into the ren­der in order to cre­ate a more com­plete image of the mon­u­ment and its space.” Though he draws on all the his­tor­i­cal and archae­o­log­i­cal infor­ma­tion he can find, much of that infor­ma­tion remains sketchy, or at least incom­plete. For­tu­nate­ly, the dig­i­tal nature of the project, as well as its acces­si­bil­i­ty to view­ers with knowl­edge of their own to offer, keeps it more or less cur­rent with the state of the research. “Tsalka­nis stays up to date with his fan­ta­sy city,” writes Sharp, “updat­ing recon­struc­tions con­stant­ly for bet­ter qual­i­ty of mod­els and bet­ter archae­o­log­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal accu­ra­cy.

“You can immerse into this envi­ron­ment,” Tsalka­nis tells Sharp, “or you can even 3D print it if you like.” You can also view the indi­vid­ual dig­i­tal recon­struc­tion videos post­ed to Ancient Athens 3D’s Youtube chan­nel, which show­case such mon­u­ments as the Tem­ple of Ilis­sos, the Tem­ple of Hep­haes­tus, and the city of Del­phi. Just as Tsalka­nis’ his­tor­i­cal mod­els of Athens will con­tin­ue to be filled in, expand­ed, and improved, the tech­no­log­i­cal range of their pos­si­ble uses will only expand. Tsalka­nis him­self men­tions the smart­phone apps that could one day enrich our vis­its to Athens with aug­ment­ed real­i­ty — allow­ing us, in oth­er words, to expe­ri­ence Athens as it is and Athens as it might have been, both at the same time.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ancient Greeks: A Free Online Course from Wes­leyan Uni­ver­si­ty

The His­to­ry of Ancient Greece in 18 Min­utes: A Brisk Primer Nar­rat­ed by Bri­an Cox

Intro­duc­tion to Ancient Greek His­to­ry: A Free Course from Yale

How Ancient Greek Stat­ues Real­ly Looked: Research Reveals their Bold, Bright Col­ors and Pat­terns

Watch Art on Ancient Greek Vas­es Come to Life with 21st Cen­tu­ry Ani­ma­tion

An Ani­mat­ed Recon­struc­tion of Ancient Rome: Take A 30-Minute Stroll Through the City’s Vir­tu­al­ly-Recre­at­ed Streets

French Illus­tra­tor Revives the Byzan­tine Empire with Mag­nif­i­cent­ly Detailed Draw­ings of Its Mon­u­ments & Build­ings: Hagia Sophia, Great Palace & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 9 ) |

The New York Public Library Creates a List of 125 Books That They Love

in Books, Libraries, Literature, Podcasts | February 17th, 2020

The New York Pub­lic Library sure knows how to cel­e­brate a quasqui­cen­ten­ni­al. In hon­or of its own 125th anniver­sary, it’s rolling out a num­ber of treats for patrons, vis­i­tors, and those who must admire it from afar.

In addi­tion to the expect­ed author talks and live events, Patience and For­ti­tude, the icon­ic stone lions who flank the main branch’s front steps, are dis­play­ing some read­ing mate­r­i­al of their own—Toni Morrison’s 1987 nov­el Beloved and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age clas­sic The Great Gats­by, from 1925.

Donors who kick in $12.50 or more to help the library con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing such pub­lic ser­vices as ear­ly lit­er­a­cy class­es, free legal aid, and job train­ing cours­es will be reward­ed with a cheer­ful red stick­er bear­ing the easy to love slo­gan “♥ read­ing.”

The cov­er image of Ezra Jack Keats’ 1962 Calde­cott Award-win­ning pic­ture book The Snowy Day, which at 485,583 check­outs holds the title for most pop­u­lar book in the cir­cu­lat­ing col­lec­tion, graces spe­cial edi­tion Library and Metro­Cards.

And a team of librar­i­ans drew up a list of 125 books from the last 125 years that inspire a life­long love of read­ing.

The list is delib­er­ate­ly inclu­sive with regard to authors’ gen­der, race, and sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion as well as lit­er­ary genre. In addi­tion to nov­els and non-fic­tion, you’ll find mem­oir, poet­ry, fan­ta­sy, graph­ic nov­els, sci­ence fic­tion, mys­tery, short sto­ries, humor, and one children’s book, Har­ry Pot­ter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, which the judges decid­ed “tran­scends age cat­e­gories.” (A sim­i­lar list geared toward younger read­ers will be released lat­er this year.)

The list was drawn from a pool con­tain­ing any­thing pub­lished after May 23rd, 1895, the day attor­ney John Bigelow’s plan to com­bine the resources of the Astor and Lenox libraries and the Tilden Trustin into The New York Pub­lic Library was offi­cial­ly incor­po­rat­ed.

The selec­tion cri­te­ria can be viewed here.

Obvi­ous­ly, the list—and any per­ceived omissions—will gen­er­ate pas­sion­ate debate amongst book lovers, a prospect the library rel­ish­es, though it’s enlist­ed one of its most ardent sup­port­ers, author Neil Gaiman, whose Amer­i­can Gods made the final cut, to remind any dis­grun­tled read­ers of the spir­it in which the picks were made:

The New York Pub­lic Library has put togeth­er a list of 125 books that they love—the librar­i­ans and the peo­ple in the library. That’s the cri­te­ria. You may not love them, but they do. And that’s excit­ing. The thing that gets peo­ple read­ing is love. The thing that makes peo­ple pick up books they might not oth­er­wise try, is love. It’s per­son­al rec­om­men­da­tions, the kind that are tru­ly meant. So here are 125 books that they love. And some­where on this list you will find books you’ve nev­er read, but have always meant to, or have nev­er even heard of. There are 125 chances here to change your own life, or to change some­one else’s, curat­ed by the peo­ple from one of the finest libraries in the world. Read with joy. Read with love. Read!

To real­ly get the most out of the list, tune in to the NYPL’s The Librar­i­an Is In pod­cast, which will be devot­ing an episode to one of the fea­tured titles each month.

The cur­rent episode kicks things off with co-hosts Frank Col­lerius and Rhon­da Evans’ favorites from the list:

Maus by Art Spiegel­man

Beloved by Toni Mor­ri­son

Invis­i­ble Man by Ralph Elli­son

The Haunt­ing of Hill House by Shirley Jack­son

The House of Mirth by Edith Whar­ton

Har­ry Pot­ter and the Sor­cer­er’s Stone by J.K. Rowl­ing

In Cold Blood by Tru­man Capote

Their Eyes Were Watch­ing God by Zora Neale Hurston

Read­ers, have a look at the com­plete list of the New York Pub­lic Library’s 125 Books for Adult Read­ers, and leave us a com­ment to let us know what titles you wish had been includ­ed. Or bet­ter yet, tell us which as-yet unread title you’re plan­ning to read in hon­or of the New York Pub­lic Library’s 125th year:

George Orwell, 1984

Saul Bel­low, The Adven­tures of Augie March

W.H. Auden, The Age of Anx­i­ety

Ron Cher­now, Alexan­der Hamil­ton

Erich Maria Remar­que, All Qui­et on the West­ern Front

James Pat­ter­son, Along Came a Spi­der

Michael Chabon, The Amaz­ing Adven­tures of Kava­lier & Clay

Neil Gaiman, Amer­i­can Gods

Mary Oliv­er, Amer­i­can Prim­i­tive

Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None

Mag­gie Nel­son, The Arg­onauts

Sylvia Plath, Ariel

Ian McE­wan, Atone­ment

Anne Car­son, Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Red

Toni Mor­ri­son, Beloved

Ray­mond Chan­dler, The Big Sleep

Tom Wolfe, The Bon­fire of the Van­i­ties

Eve­lyn Waugh, Brideshead Revis­it­ed

Colm TĂłibĂ­n, Brook­lyn

Joseph Heller, Catch-22

J.D. Salinger, The Catch­er in the Rye

Clau­dia Rank­ine, Cit­i­zen

Sta­cy Schiff, Cleopa­tra

David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

Langston Hugh­es, The Col­lect­ed Poems of Langston Hugh­es

Ter­ry Pratch­ett, The Col­or of Mag­ic

Alice Walk­er, The Col­or Pur­ple

Wal­ter Mosley, Dev­il in a Blue Dress

Erik Lar­son, The Dev­il in the White City

Frank Her­bert, Dune

Michael Ondaat­je, The Eng­lish Patient

Alyssa Cole, An Extra­or­di­nary Union

Ray Brad­bury, Fahren­heit 451

J.R. R. Tolkien, The Fel­low­ship of the Ring

N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Sea­son

Ali­son Bechdel, Fun Home

George R. R. Mar­tin, A Game of Thrones

James Bald­win, Giovanni’s Room

Arund­hati Roy, The God of Small Things

Flan­nery O’Connor, A Good Man is Hard to Find

Edwin G. Bur­rows and Mike Wal­lace, Gotham

John Stein­beck, The Grapes of Wrath

F. Scott Fitzger­ald, The Great Gats­by

Mar­garet Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

J.K. Rowl­ing, Har­ry Pot­ter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Shirley Jack­son, The Haunt­ing of Hill House

Car­son McCullers, The Heart Is a Lone­ly Hunter

Dave Eggers, A Heart­break­ing Work of Stag­ger­ing Genius

Dou­glas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles

V.S. Naipaul, A House for Mr. Biswas

Edith Whar­ton, The House of Mirth

Mar­i­lynne Robin­son, House­keep­ing

Allen Gins­berg, Howl

Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Tru­man Capote, In Cold Blood

Bev­er­ly Jenk­ins, Indi­go

Jhumpa Lahiri, Inter­preter of Mal­adies

Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air

Ralph Elli­son, Invis­i­ble Man

Gore Vidal, Julian

Khaled Hos­sei­ni, The Kite Run­ner

Ursu­la K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Dark­ness

Mary Karr, The Liars’ Club

Kate Atkin­son, Life After Life

Tra­cy K. Smith, Life on Mars

Vladimir Nabokov, Loli­ta

Art Spiegel­man, Maus

David Sedaris, Me Talk Pret­ty One Day

John Berendt, Mid­night in the Gar­den of Good and Evil

Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Chil­dren

Mar­tin Amis: Mon­ey

Michael Lewis: Mon­ey­ball

Jonathan Lethem, Moth­er­less Brook­lyn

Vir­ginia Woolf, Mrs. Dal­loway

Ele­na Fer­rante, My Bril­liant Friend

J.D. Robb, Naked in Death

Richard Wright, Native Son

Eliz­a­beth Strout, Olive Kit­teridge

Jack Ker­ouac, On the Road

Gabriel Gar­cĂ­a Márquez, One Hun­dred Years of Soli­tude

Jeanette Win­ter­son, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Adam John­son, The Orphan Master’s Son

Per Pet­ter­son, Out Steal­ing Hors­es

Octavia E. But­ler, Para­ble of the Sow­er

Mar­jane Satrapi, Perse­po­lis

Annie Dil­lard, Pil­grim at Tin­ker Creek

Philip Roth, Portnoy’s Com­plaint

Gra­ham Greene, The Qui­et Amer­i­can

Daphne du Mau­ri­er, Rebec­ca

Kazuo Ishig­uro, The Remains of the Day

Louise Erdrich, The Round House

Amor Towles, Rules of Civil­i­ty

Alice Munro, Run­away

John Ash­bery, Self-Por­trar­it in a Con­vex Mir­ror

Stephen King, The Shin­ing

Annie Proulx, The Ship­ping News

Rachel Car­son, Silent Spring

Nali­ni Singh, Slave to Sen­sa­tion

Joan Did­ion, Slouch­ing Towards Beth­le­hem

Leslie Fein­berg, Stone Butch Blues

John Cheev­er, The Sto­ries of John Cheev­er

Albert Camus, The Stranger

Ernest Hem­ing­way, The Sun Also Ris­es

Patri­cia High­smith, The Tal­ent­ed Mr. Rip­ley

George Saun­ders, Tenth of Decem­ber

Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watch­ing God

Chin­ua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

Cix­in Liu, The Three-Body Prob­lem

Harp­er Lee, To Kill a Mock­ing­bird

Denis John­son, Train Dreams

Hen­ry James, The Turn of the Screw

Milan Kun­dera, The Unbear­able Light­ness of Being

Col­son White­head, The Under­ground Rail­road

Joseph Mitchell, Up in the Old Hotel

Jef­frey Eugenides, The Vir­gin Sui­cides

Jen­nifer Egan, A Vis­it from the Goon Squad

Isabel Wilk­er­son, The Warmth of Oth­er Suns

Alan Moore and Dave Gib­bons, Watch­men

Ray­mond Carv­er, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Don DeLil­lo, White Noise

Zadie Smith, White Teeth

Haru­ki Muraka­mi, The Wind-Up Bird Chron­i­cle

Hilary Man­tel, Wolf Hall

Max­ine Hong Kingston, The Woman War­rior

Via Lit Hub

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The New York Pub­lic Library Announces the Top 10 Checked-Out Books of All Time

The New York Pub­lic Library Lets You Down­load 180,000 Images in High Res­o­lu­tion: His­toric Pho­tographs, Maps, Let­ters & More

New York Pub­lic Library Card Now Gives You Free Access to 33 NYC Muse­ums

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join Ayun’s com­pa­ny The­ater of the Apes in New York City this March for her book-based vari­ety series, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, and the world pre­miere of Greg Kotis’ new musi­cal, I AM NOBODY. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 11 ) |

Discover the Artist Who Mentored Edward Hopper & Inspired “Nighthawks”

in Art | February 14th, 2020

Every good teacher must be pre­pared for the stu­dents who sur­pass them. Such was the case with Mar­tin Lewis, Edward Hop­per’s one­time teacher, an Aus­tralian-born print­mak­er who left rur­al Vic­to­ria at age 15 and trav­eled the world before set­tling in New York City in 1900 to make his fame and for­tune. By the 1910s, Lewis had become a com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful illus­tra­tor, well-known for his etch­ing skill. It was then that he took on Hop­per as an appren­tice.

“Hop­per asked that he might study along­side him,” writes DC Pae at Review 31, “and Lewis there­after became his men­tor in the dis­ci­pline.” The future painter of Nighthawks even “cit­ed his appren­tice­ship with the print­mak­er as inspi­ra­tion for his lat­er paint­ing, the con­sol­i­da­tion of his indi­vid­ual style.” Messy Nessy quotes Hopper’s own words: “after I took up my etch­ing, my paint­ing seemed to crys­tal­lize.” Hop­per, she writes, “learned the fin­er points of etch­ing and both artists used the great Amer­i­can metrop­o­lis at night as their muse.”

Though he is not pop­u­lar­ly known for the art, Hop­per him­self became an accom­plished print­mak­er, cre­at­ing a series of around 70 works in the 1920s that drew from both Edgar Degas and his etch­ing teacher, Lewis.

“Hop­per eas­i­ly took to etch­ing and dry­point,” writes the Seat­tle Artist League. “He had a pref­er­ence for a deeply etched plate, and very black ink on very white paper, so the prints were high con­trast, sim­i­lar to Mar­tin Lewis…, Hopper’s pri­ma­ry influ­ence in print­mak­ing.”

A sim­i­lar series by Lewis in the 1920s, which includes the strik­ing prints you see here, shows a far stronger hand in the art, though also, per­haps, some mutu­al influ­ence between the two friends, who exhib­it­ed togeth­er dur­ing the peri­od. But there’s no doubt Lewis’s long shad­ows, for­lorn street-lit cor­ners, and cin­e­mat­ic scenes left their mark on Hopper’s famous lat­er paint­ings.

It was to paint­ing, after the mas­sive pop­u­lar­i­ty of print­mak­ing, that the art world turned when the Depres­sion hit. Lewis found him­self out of date. Hop­per left off etch­ing in 1928 to focus on his pri­ma­ry medi­um. In many ways, Pae points out, Lewis served as a bridge between the doc­u­men­tary Ash­can School and the more psy­cho­log­i­cal real­ism of Hop­per and his con­tem­po­raries. Yet he “died in obscu­ri­ty in 1962, large­ly for­got­ten” notes Messy Nessy (see much more of Lewis’s work there). “His­to­ry chose Edward Hop­per but Mar­tin Lewis was his men­tor,” and a fig­ure well worth cel­e­brat­ing on his own for his tech­ni­cal mas­tery and orig­i­nal­i­ty.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

10 Paint­ings by Edward Hop­per, the Most Cin­e­mat­ic Amer­i­can Painter of All, Turned into Ani­mat­ed GIFs

Sev­en Videos Explain How Edward Hopper’s Paint­ings Expressed Amer­i­can Lone­li­ness and Alien­ation

Edward Hopper’s Icon­ic Paint­ing Nighthawks Explained in a 7‑Minute Video Intro­duc­tion

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

America’s First Drag Queen Was Also America’s First LGBTQ Activist and a Former Slave

in Gender, History, Life | February 14th, 2020

Negro Dive Raid­ed. Thir­teen Black Men Dressed as Women Sur­prised at Sup­per and Arrest­ed. —The Wash­ing­ton Post, April 13, 1888

Some­times, when we are engaged as either par­tic­i­pant in, or eye­wit­ness to, the mak­ing of his­to­ry, its easy to for­get the his­to­ry-mak­ers who came ear­li­er, who dug the trench­es that allow our mod­ern bat­tles to be waged out in the open.

Take America’s first self-appoint­ed “queen of drag” and pio­neer­ing LGBTQ activist, William Dorsey Swann, born into slav­ery around 1858.

30 years lat­er, Swann faced down white offi­cers bust­ing a drag ball in a “qui­et-look­ing house” on Wash­ing­ton, DC’s F street, near 12th.

“You is no gen­tle­man,” Swann alleged­ly told the arrest­ing offi­cer, while half the guests broke for free­dom, cor­rect­ly sur­mis­ing that any­one who remained would see their names pub­lished in the next day’s news­pa­per as par­tic­i­pants in a bizarre and unseem­ly rit­u­al.

A lurid Wash­ing­ton Post clip­ping about the raid caught the eye of writer, his­to­ri­an, and for­mer  Ober­lin Col­lege Drag Ball queen, Chan­ning Ger­ard Joseph, who was research­ing an assign­ment for a Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­ate lev­el inves­tiga­tive report­ing class:

An ani­mat­ed con­ver­sa­tion, car­ried on in effem­i­nate tones, was in progress as the offi­cers approached the door, but when they opened it and the form of Lieut. Amiss was vis­i­ble to the peo­ple in the room a pan­ic ensued. A scram­ble was made for the win­dows and doors and some of the peo­ple jumped to the roofs of adjoin­ing build­ings. Oth­ers stripped off their dress­es and danced about the room almost in a nude con­di­tion, while sev­er­al, head­ed by a big negro named Dorsey, who was arrayed in a gor­geous dress of cream-col­ored satin, rushed towards the offi­cers and tried to pre­vent their enter­ing.

Joseph’s inter­est did not flag when his report­ing class project was turned in. House of Swann: Where Slaves Became Queens will be pub­lished in 2021.

Mean­while you can bone up on Swann, Swann’s jail time for run­ning a broth­el, and the Wash­ing­ton DC drag scene of the Swann era in Joseph’s essay for The Nation, “The First Drag Queen Was a For­mer Slave.”

Please note that William Dorsey Swann does not appear in the pho­to at the top of the page. As per Joseph:

The dancers — one in striped pants, the oth­er in a dress — were record­ed in France by Louis Lumière. Though their names are lost, they are believed to be Amer­i­can. In the show, they per­formed a ver­sion of the cake­walk, a dance invent­ed by enslaved peo­ple, and the pre­cur­sor to vogue­ing.

via The Nation

Relat­ed Con­tent:

100 Years of Drag Queen Fash­ion in 4 Min­utes: An Aes­thet­ic Jour­ney Mov­ing from the 1920s Through Today

Before Broke­back: The First Same-Sex Kiss in Cin­e­ma (1927)

When John Waters Appeared on The Simp­sons and Changed America’s LGBTQ Views (1997)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join Ayun’s com­pa­ny The­ater of the Apes in New York City this March for her book-based vari­ety series, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, and the world pre­miere of Greg Kotis’ new musi­cal, I AM NOBODY. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch This Year’s Oscar-Winning Short The Neighbor’s Window, a Surprising Tale of Urban Voyeurism

in Film | February 14th, 2020

As the last cou­ple of gen­er­a­tions to come of age have redis­cov­ered, urban liv­ing has its ben­e­fits. One of those ben­e­fits is the abil­i­ty to keep an eye on your neigh­bors — quite lit­er­al­ly, giv­en a sit­u­a­tion of build­ings in close prox­im­i­ty, suf­fi­cient­ly large win­dows, and min­i­mal usage of drapes. Fortysome­thing Brook­lyn cou­ple Alli and Jacob find them­selves turned into voyeurs by just such a sit­u­a­tion in Mar­shall Cur­ry’s The Neigh­bor’s Win­dow, the Best Live Action Short Film at this year’s Acad­e­my Awards. “Do they have jobs, or clothes?” asks Alli, over­come by the frus­tra­tion of look­ing after her and Jacob’s three young chil­dren. “All they do is host dance par­ties and sleep ’till noon and screw.”

You may rec­og­nize Maria Dizzia and Greg Keller, who play Alli and Jacob, from their appear­ances in Noah Baum­bach’s While We’re Young. That film, too, dealt with the envy New York Gen-Xers feel for seem­ing­ly more free­wheel­ing New York Mil­len­ni­als, but The Neigh­bor’s Win­dow takes it in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion.

Cur­ry based it on “The Liv­ing Room,” an episode of the sto­ry­telling inter­view pod­cast Love and Radio in which writer and film­mak­er Diana Weipert tells of all she saw when she enjoyed a sim­i­lar­ly clear view into the life of her own younger neigh­bors. “Am I sup­posed to have maybe respect­ed their pri­va­cy and just looked away?” Weipert asks, rhetor­i­cal­ly. “But it’s impos­si­ble because that’s the way the chairs face. They face the win­dow! I could­n’t have not seen them if I want­ed to.”

Then again, she adds, “I guess I could’ve not got­ten the binoc­u­lars.” That irre­sistible detail makes it into The Neigh­bor’s Win­dow as a sym­bol of Alli and Jacob’s sur­ren­der to their fas­ci­na­tion with the cou­ple across the street. “They’re like a car crash that you can’t look away from,” as Alli puts it. “Okay, a beau­ti­ful, sexy, young car crash.” Yet both she and her hus­band, like any human beings with a par­tial view of oth­er human beings, can’t help but com­pare their cir­cum­stances unfa­vor­ably with those seen from afar. Even­tu­al­ly, as in “The Liv­ing Room,” the twen­tysome­things expe­ri­ence a rever­sal of for­tune, chang­ing Alli and Jacob’s view of them. They also regain the view of them­selves they’d lost amid all their voyeurism — enough of it to make them for­get that the observers can also be observed.

The Neigh­bor’s Win­dow will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 66 Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed-and-Award-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Shorts Online, Cour­tesy of the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

Father and Daugh­ter: An Oscar-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Short Film

The Last Farm: An Oscar Nom­i­nat­ed Short Film

Watch A Sin­gle Life: An Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed Short About How Vinyl Records Can Take Us Mag­i­cal­ly Through Time

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch Footage from the Psychology Experiment That Shocked the World: Milgram’s Obedience Study (1961)

in Psychology | February 13th, 2020

For decades fol­low­ing World War II,  the world was left won­der­ing how the atroc­i­ties of the Holo­caust could have been per­pe­trat­ed in the midst of—and, most hor­rif­i­cal­ly, by—a mod­ern and civ­i­lized soci­ety. How did peo­ple come to engage in a will­ing and sys­tem­at­ic exter­mi­na­tion of their neigh­bors? Psy­chol­o­gists, whose field had grown into a grudg­ing­ly respect­ed sci­ence by the mid­point of the 20th cen­tu­ry, were eager to tack­le the ques­tion.

In 1961, Yale University’s Stan­ley Mil­gram began a series of infa­mous obe­di­ence exper­i­ments. While Adolf Eichmann’s tri­al was under­way in Jerusalem (result­ing in Han­nah Arendt’s five-piece reportage, which became one of The New York­er magazine’s most dra­mat­ic and con­tro­ver­sial arti­cle series), Mil­gram began to sus­pect that human nature was more straight­for­ward than ear­li­er the­o­rists had imag­ined; he won­dered, as he lat­er wrote, “Could it be that Eich­mann and his mil­lion accom­plices in the Holo­caust were just fol­low­ing orders? Could we call them all accom­plices?”

In the most famous his exper­i­ments, Mil­gram osten­si­bly recruit­ed par­tic­i­pants to take part in a study assess­ing the effects of pain on learn­ing. In real­i­ty, he want­ed to see how far he could push the aver­age Amer­i­can to admin­is­ter painful elec­tric shocks to a fel­low human being.

When par­tic­i­pants arrived at his lab, Milgram’s assis­tant would ask them, as well as a sec­ond man, to draw slips of paper to receive their roles for the exper­i­ment. In fact, the sec­ond man was a con­fed­er­ate; the par­tic­i­pant would always draw the role of “teacher,” and the sec­ond man would invari­ably be made the “learn­er.”


The par­tic­i­pants received instruc­tions to teach pairs of words to the con­fed­er­ate. After they had read the list of words once, the teach­ers were to test the learner’s recall by read­ing one word, and ask­ing the learn­er to name one of the four words asso­ci­at­ed with it. The exper­i­menter told the par­tic­i­pants to pun­ish any learn­er mis­takes by push­ing a but­ton and admin­is­ter­ing an elec­tric shock; while they could not see the learn­er, par­tic­i­pants could hear his screams. The con­fed­er­ate, of course, remained unharmed, and mere­ly act­ed out in pain, with each mis­take cost­ing him an addi­tion­al 15 volts of pun­ish­ment. In case par­tic­i­pants fal­tered in their sci­en­tif­ic resolve, the exper­i­menter was near­by to urge them, using four author­i­ta­tive state­ments:

Please con­tin­ue.

The exper­i­ment requires that you con­tin­ue.

It is absolute­ly essen­tial that you con­tin­ue.

You have no oth­er choice, you must go on.

In a jar­ring set of find­ings, Mil­gram found that 26 of the 40 par­tic­i­pants obeyed instruc­tions, admin­is­ter­ing shocks all the way from “Slight Shock,” to “Dan­ger: Severe Shock.” The final two omi­nous switch­es were sim­ply marked “XXX.” Even when the learn­ers would pound on the walls in agony after seem­ing­ly receiv­ing 300 volts, par­tic­i­pants per­sist­ed. Even­tu­al­ly, the learn­er sim­ply stopped respond­ing.

Although they fol­lowed instruc­tions, par­tic­i­pants repeat­ed­ly expressed their desire to stop the exper­i­ment, and showed clear signs of extreme dis­com­fort:

“I observed a mature and ini­tial­ly poised busi­ness­man enter the lab­o­ra­to­ry smil­ing and con­fi­dent. With­in 20 min­utes he was reduced to a twitch­ing, stut­ter­ing wreck, who was rapid­ly approach­ing a point of ner­vous col­lapse… At one point he pushed his fist into his fore­head and mut­tered: “Oh God, let’s stop it.” And yet he con­tin­ued to respond to every word of the exper­i­menter, and obeyed to the end.” 

Milgram’s study set off a pow­der keg whose impact remains felt to this day. Eth­i­cal­ly, many object­ed to the decep­tion and the lack of ade­quate par­tic­i­pant debrief­ing. Oth­ers claimed that Mil­gram overem­pha­sized human nature’s propen­si­ty for blind obe­di­ence, with the exper­i­menter often urg­ing par­tic­i­pants to con­tin­ue many more times than the four stock phras­es allowed.

In the clip above, you can watch orig­i­nal footage from Milgram’s  exper­i­ment, fright­en­ing in its insid­i­ous sim­plic­i­ty. (See a full doc­u­men­tary on the study below.) The man admin­is­ter­ing the shock grows increas­ing­ly uncom­fort­able with his part in the pro­ceed­ings, and almost walks out, ask­ing “Who’s going to take the respon­si­bil­i­ty for any­thing that hap­pens to that gen­tle­man?” When the exper­i­menter replies, “I’m respon­si­ble,” the man, absolv­ing him­self, con­tin­ues. As the per­son receiv­ing the shocks grows increas­ing­ly pan­icked, com­plain­ing about his heart and ask­ing to be let out, the par­tic­i­pant makes his objec­tions known but appears par­a­lyzed, sheep­ish­ly turn­ing to the exper­i­menter, unable to leave.

Although Milgram’s work has drawn crit­ics, his results endure. While chang­ing the experiment’s pro­ce­dure may alter com­pli­ance (e.g., hav­ing the exper­i­menter speak to par­tic­i­pants over the phone rather than remain in the same room through­out the exper­i­ment decreased obe­di­ence rates), repli­ca­tions have tend­ed to con­firm Milgram’s ini­tial find­ings. Whether one is urged once or a dozen times, peo­ple tend to take on the yoke of author­i­ty as absolute, relin­quish­ing their per­son­al agency in the pain they impart. Human nature, it seems, has no Manichean leanings—merely a pli­ant bent.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Novem­ber 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Lit­tle Albert Exper­i­ment: The Per­verse 1920 Study That Made a Baby Afraid of San­ta Claus & Bun­nies

The Pow­er of Con­for­mi­ty: 1962 Episode of Can­did Cam­era Reveals the Strange Psy­chol­o­gy of Rid­ing Ele­va­tors

Her­mann Rorschach’s Orig­i­nal Rorschach Test: What Do You See? (1921)

Carl Gus­tav Jung Explains His Ground­break­ing The­o­ries About Psy­chol­o­gy in Rare Inter­view (1957)

Free Online Cours­es Psy­chol­o­gy

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based sci­ence and cul­ture writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Wes Anderson Releases the Official Trailer for His New Film, The French Dispatch: Watch It Online

in Film | February 13th, 2020

James Pogue in the Baf­fler recent­ly lament­ed the rise of “share­able writ­ing,” man­i­fest in a now-com­mon breed of arti­cle both “easy for pub­lish­ers to repro­duce” and for read­ers to absorb. Share­abil­i­ty requires, above all, that pieces “be sim­ple to describe and pack­age online.” This in con­trast to the writ­ing pub­lished by, say, The New York­er in decades past. “Every time I have a rea­son to pull up a piece from the archives, I am shocked at how strange and out­rĂ© the old­er pieces read — less like work from a dif­fer­ent mag­a­zine than doc­u­ments from an alien soci­ety.” That alien soci­ety pro­vides the back­drop for Wes Ander­son­’s next fea­ture film The French Dis­patch, whose trail­er has just come out.

Any­one who watch­es one of Ander­son­’s films will sus­pect him of lov­ing all things mid-cen­tu­ry — that is to say, the arti­facts of life as it was lived in the decades fol­low­ing the Sec­ond World War, espe­cial­ly in west­ern Europe. This love comes through in the look and feel of even Ander­son­’s ear­li­er pic­tures, like Rush­more and The Roy­al Tenen­baums, whose sto­ries osten­si­bly take place in con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­ca. But in recent years Ander­son has gone in for increas­ing­ly intri­cate peri­od pieces, set­ting Moon­rise King­dom in mid-1960s New Eng­land and The Grand Budapest Hotel in the years 1932, 1968, and 1985, all in the imag­ined Euro­pean coun­try of Zubrowka. The French Dis­patch takes place in the 1960s in the very real Euro­pean coun­try of France, but a fic­tion­al town called “Ennui-sur-Blasé” that allows Ander­son to con­jure up a mid-20th-cen­tu­ry France of the mind.

The mid-cen­tu­ry objects of Ander­son­’s love include The New York­er, a mag­a­zine he’s read and col­lect­ed since his teen years. The influ­ence of that love on The French Dis­patch has not gone unno­ticed at the cur­rent New York­er. A piece pub­lished there offer­ing stills of Ander­son­’s new film describes it as “about the doings of a fic­tion­al week­ly mag­a­zine that looks an awful lot like — and was, in fact, inspired by — The New York­er. The edi­tor and writ­ers of this fic­tion­al mag­a­zine, and the sto­ries it publishes—three of which are dra­ma­tized in the film — are also loose­ly inspired by The New York­er.” Head­ing the tit­u­lar dis­patch is Arthur How­itzer, Jr., played (nat­u­ral­ly) by Bill Mur­ray and inspired by New York­er found­ing edi­tor Harold Ross. Owen Wilson’s Herb­saint Saz­er­ac is “a writer whose low-life beat mir­rors Joseph Mitchell’s.” Jef­frey Wright as Roe­buck Wright, “a mashup of James Bald­win and A. J. Liebling, is a jour­nal­ist from the Amer­i­can South who writes about food.”

Oth­er reg­u­lar Ander­son play­ers include Adrien Brody’s Julian Cadazio, an art deal­er “mod­elled on Lord Duveen, who was the sub­ject of a six-part New York­er Pro­file by S. N. Behrman, in 1951.” Con­sid­er, for a moment, that there was a time when a major mag­a­zine would pub­lish a six-part pro­file of a British art deal­er who had died more than a decade before — and when such a piece of writ­ing would draw both con­sid­er­able atten­tion and acclaim. There are those who crit­i­cize as mis­placed Ander­son­’s appar­ent nos­tal­gia for times, places, and cul­tures like the one The French Dis­patch will bring to the screen this sum­mer. But here in the 21st cen­tu­ry, inun­dat­ed as we are by what Pogue calls the “large­ly voice­less and pre­cise­ly for­mu­la­ic” writ­ing of even respectable pub­li­ca­tions, can we begrudge the film­mak­er his yearn­ing for those bygone days? The only thing miss­ing back then, it might seem to us fans, was Wes Ander­son movies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wes Ander­son Explains How He Writes and Directs Movies, and What Goes Into His Dis­tinc­tive Film­mak­ing Style

A Com­plete Col­lec­tion of Wes Ander­son Video Essays

Wes Anderson’s First Short Film: The Black-and-White, Jazz-Scored Bot­tle Rock­et (1992)

Watch Wes Anderson’s Charm­ing New Short Film, Castel­lo Cav­al­can­ti, Star­ring Jason Schwartz­man

Watch the New Trail­er for Wes Anderson’s Stop Motion Film, Isle of Dogs, Inspired by Aki­ra Kuro­sawa

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

How the Brooklyn Bridge Was Built: The Story of One of the Greatest Engineering Feats in History

in History | February 13th, 2020

When Emi­ly Roe­bling walked across the Brook­lyn Bridge on May 24th, 1883, the first per­son to cross its entire span, she capped a fam­i­ly saga equal parts tri­umph and tragedy, a sto­ry that began six­teen years ear­li­er when her father-in-law, Ger­man-Amer­i­can engi­neer John Augus­tus Roe­bling, began design work on the bridge. Roe­bling had already built sus­pen­sion bridges over the Monon­ga­hela Riv­er in Pitts­burgh, the Nia­gara Riv­er between New York and Cana­da, and over the Ohio Riv­er between Cincin­nati and Cov­ing­ton, Ken­tucky. But the bridge over the East Riv­er was to be some­thing else entire­ly. As Roe­bling him­self said, it “will not only be the great­est bridge in exis­tence, but it will be the great­est engi­neer­ing work of the con­ti­nent, and of the age.”

New York City offi­cials may have had lit­tle rea­son to think so in the mid-1860s. “Sus­pen­sion bridges were col­laps­ing all across Europe,” notes the TED-Ed video above by Alex Gendler. “Their indus­tri­al cables frayed dur­ing tur­bu­lent weath­er and snapped under the weight of their decks.” But the over­crowd­ing city need­ed relief. An “East Riv­er Bridge Project” had been in the works since 1829 and was seen as more nec­es­sary with each pass­ing decade. Despite their mis­giv­ings, the author­i­ties were will­ing to trust Roe­bling with a hybrid design that com­bined meth­ods used by both sus­pen­sion and cable-stayed bridges. Two years lat­er, he was dead, the result of a tetanus infec­tion con­tract­ed after he lost sev­er­al toes in a dock acci­dent.

Roebling’s son Wash­ing­ton, a civ­il engi­neer who had fought for the Union Army at the Bat­tle of Get­tys­burg, took over the project, only to suf­fer from paral­y­sis after he got the bends while trapped inside a cais­son in 1870. For the remain­der of the bridge’s con­struc­tion, he would advise from his bed­room, relay­ing instruc­tions through his wife Emily—who became after a time the bridge’s de fac­to chief engi­neer. She “stud­ied math­e­mat­ics, the cal­cu­la­tions of cate­nary curves, strengths of mate­ri­als and the intri­ca­cies of cable con­struc­tion,” writes Emi­ly Nonko at 6sqft.  She knew the bridge so well that “many were under the impres­sion she was the real design­er.”

“1.5 times longer than any pre­vi­ous­ly built sus­pen­sion bridge,” the video les­son notes, Roebling’s design worked because it used steel cables instead of hemp, with tow­ers ris­ing over 90 meters (295 feet) above sea lev­el. This is almost three times high­er than edi­tors at the New York Mir­ror pro­ject­ed in 1829, when they called the brand new “East Riv­er Bridge Project” an “absurd and ruinous” propo­si­tion. “Who would mount over such a struc­ture, when a pas­sage could be effect­ed in a much short­er time, and that, too, with­out exer­tion or trou­ble, in a safe and well-shel­tered steam­boat?”

Just six days after Emi­ly Roe­bling crossed the new­ly opened Brook­lyn Bridge, a stam­pede killed twelve peo­ple, and months lat­er, P.T. Bar­num led 21 ele­phants over the bridge to prove its safe­ty. Who would cross such a struc­ture? It turned out, for bet­ter or worse, any­one and every­one would dri­ve, walk, run, sub­way, bike, scoot, climb up, leap from, and oth­er­wise “mount over” the East Riv­er by way of the neo-goth­ic won­der (and lat­er its much ugli­er sib­ling, the Man­hat­tan Bridge). Learn much more in the short les­son above how John A. Roebling’s bom­bas­tic claims about his design were not far off the mark, and why the Brook­lyn Bridge is one of the great­est engi­neer­ing feats in mod­ern his­to­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Mes­mer­iz­ing Trip Across the Brook­lyn Bridge: Watch Footage from 1899

An Online Gallery of Over 900,000 Breath­tak­ing Pho­tos of His­toric New York City

Immac­u­late­ly Restored Film Lets You Revis­it Life in New York City in 1911

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Robin Williams’ Celebrity Struggles: A Discussion with Dave Itzkoff by Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast (ep. 31)

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | February 13th, 2020

New York Times cul­ture reporter Dave Itzkoff joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to con­sid­er issues raised by Dav­e’s 2018 biog­ra­phy Robin: How do we make sense of our strange rela­tion to celebri­ties, and what are strate­gies that celebri­ties use to deal with their asym­met­ric rela­tion­ship to the world? While Robin Williams tried, in grat­i­tude, to share him­self with his fans, and was very anx­ious about let­ting us all down when some of his lat­er work did­n’t gar­ner the wide­spread praise he was used to, some­one like Joaquin Phoenix takes a much more seem­ing­ly detached atti­tude, keen­ly aware of the absur­di­ty of the celebri­ty-audi­ence rela­tion.

We also talk to Dave about inter­view tech­nique and the dif­fer­ent atti­tudes that his sub­jects take toward him. Can an inter­view be some­thing that has intrin­sic val­ue and not just par­a­sitic on pop­u­lar media?

For more about Robin, Dave par­tic­i­pat­ed in a recent pod­cast called Know­ing: Robin Williams, which was cre­at­ed in part to sup­port Dav­e’s book (which some of us read for this episode; it’s real­ly good). HBO also recent­ly released the doc­u­men­tary Come Inside My Mind that relates much of the same sto­ry.

For more on Joaquin Phoenix, read Dav­e’s inter­view, this 2017 Times arti­cle by Bret Eas­t­on Ellis, or this Guardian arti­cle on I’m Still Here.

Read Dav­e’s inter­views at nytimes.com/by/dave-itzkoff or fol­low him @ditzkoff.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |


« Newer Entries | Older Entries »

  • Great Lectures

  • Sign up for Newsletter

  • About Us

    Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.


    Advertise With Us

  • Great Recordings

  • Book Lists By

  • Syllabi

  • Favorite Movies

  • Archives

  • Search

    • Quantcast
    Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.