Christopher Hitchens Creates a Revised List of The 10 Commandments for the 21st Century

in Life, Religion | April 2nd, 2015

Christo­pher Hitchens was there, rail­ing against reli­gion and war crim­i­nals one minute, and the next, it seems, he was gone, a vic­tim to esophageal can­cer in 2011. In the 2010 video above, Hitchens takes on one of the hoari­est pre­cepts of the Bible (and the Torah) and reimag­ines an updat­ed, sec­u­lar ver­sion. I mean, it’s not like the Ten Com­mand­ments are set in stone, right? (Rimshot!)

The first two-thirds of the video fea­tures Hitchens mak­ing his way through the orig­i­nal com­mand­ments one by one, pulling them apart for incon­sis­ten­cies and hypocrisy. For exam­ple Moses, hav­ing told his fol­low­ers Thou Shalt Not Kill, encour­aged them to then kill all the Mid­i­an­ites and save the vir­gin girls as chattel/prizes, which they then did.

Now, Hitchens does like the 8th Com­mand­ment (“Thou Shalt Not Steal”) because, hey, what soci­ety isn’t against steal­ing, and he saves his true admi­ra­tion for the exam­ple of “rare nuance and sophis­ti­ca­tion” in the 9th Com­mand­ment (“Thou Shalt Not Bear False Wit­ness”) because it looks ahead to a truth-based judge­ment sys­tem (and the Magna Car­ta.)

But for the rest, Hitchens sug­gests rip­ping it up and start­ing again. With a few snarky asides, the list, orig­i­nal­ly print­ed in Van­i­ty Fair, presents rules for liv­ing as an empa­thet­ic, ratio­nal human being in the 21st cen­tu­ry. He wraps it up with an anti-fun­da­men­tal­ist bow at the end.

I: Do not con­demn peo­ple on the basis of their eth­nic­i­ty or col­or.
II: Do not ever use peo­ple as pri­vate prop­er­ty.
III: Despise those who use vio­lence or the threat of it in sex­u­al rela­tions.
IV: Hide your face and weep if you dare to harm a child.
V: Do not con­demn peo­ple for their inborn nature.
VI: Be aware that you too are an ani­mal and depen­dent on the web of nature, and think and act accord­ing­ly.
VII: Do not imag­ine that you can escape judg­ment if you rob peo­ple with a false prospec­tus rather than with a knife.
VIII: Turn off that fuck­ing cell phone.
IX: Denounce all jihadists and cru­saders for what they are: psy­cho­path­ic crim­i­nals with ugly delu­sions.
X: Be will­ing to renounce any god or any reli­gion if any holy com­mand­ments should con­tra­dict any of the above.

While we’re talk­ing about rethink­ing the Com­mand­ments, George Car­lin had some sim­i­lar thoughts on the sub­ject.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Christo­pher Hitchens: No Deathbed Con­ver­sion for Me, Thanks, But it was Good of You to Ask

Christo­pher Hitchens Cre­ates a Read­ing List for Eight-Year-Old Girl

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

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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Students Tells the Passover Story with a Rube Goldberg Machine

in Random, Religion | April 2nd, 2015

Passover starts this Fri­day. And you might ask: why is this Passover dif­fer­ent from all oth­er Passovers? Because this Passover is get­ting ush­ered in by a Rube Gold­berg Machine that tells high­lights of the Passover sto­ry. Designed by stu­dents from Tech­nion — Israel Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, the device fea­tures falling matzah domi­noes, baby Moses get­ting blown across the water by a fan, and a text mes­sage telling the Pharaoh to “let my peo­ple go.” How it all came togeth­er? You can find out by watch­ing this “behind-the-scenes” video.

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Listen to Nick Cave’s Lecture on the Art of Writing Sublime Love Songs (1999)

in Music | April 2nd, 2015

Let’s take a love song—let’s take Huey Lewis and the News’ “Pow­er of Love,” why not? Catchy, right? And that video? Back to the Future! That takes you back, doesn’t it? Yeah…. Now let’s ask some hard ques­tions. Is this song an accu­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the human emo­tion we call “love”? All upbeat synths and blar­ing horns? Real­ly? But then, there’s Lewis, who, right out of the gate, acknowl­edges that love, “a curi­ous thing,” can “make one man weep” and “anoth­er man sing.” I imag­ine that love can make a woman feel the same. A curi­ous thing. Huey Lewis’ 80s anthem may not sound like love, nec­es­sar­i­ly, but he’s a smart enough song­writer to know that love often uses its pow­er for ill—“it’s strong and sud­den and it’s cru­el some­times.”

Let’s take anoth­er song­writer, one with a dark­er vision, a more lit­er­ary bent, Nick Cave. The Aus­tralian post-punk croon­er and for­mer leader of chaot­ic punk band The Birth­day Par­ty wrote a song called “Peo­ple Ain’t No Good,” the most uni­ver­sal of laments, after a breakup. See him, in the live ver­sion in Poland at the top, declare in a mourn­ful, soul­ful bari­tone accom­pa­nied only by a piano, the truth of no-good­ness. Unlike Huey Lewis, this song allows for no qual­i­ty, pow­er of love or oth­er­wise, to “change a hawk into a lit­tle white dove.” It’s Niet­zschean in its trag­ic dis­ap­point­ment. And yet, such is the pow­er of Nick Cave, to write a song of no good­ness that sounds like a hymn of praise. The dual­i­ty Cave embraces gets a part auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal, part gospel treat­ment in the lec­ture above (“The Secret Life of the Love Song”), which Cave deliv­ered at the Vien­na Poet­ry Fes­ti­val in 1999.

Cave, the son of a lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sor and him­self an accom­plished nov­el­ist and poet, knows his craft well. The bal­lads that dom­i­nate pop music have deep­er roots in a harsh­er world, one that pro­duced the “mur­der bal­lad,” not coin­ci­den­tal­ly the title of a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds record — one All­mu­sic writes Cave “was wait­ing to make his entire career.” Cave rec­og­nizes, as he says in his talk above “an uncar­ing world—a world that fucks every­body over.” And yet… and yet, he says again and again, there is love, or rather, love songs. Quot­ing W.H. Auden and Fed­eri­co Gar­cia Lor­ca, he goes on to describe the form as “a howl in the void, for Love and for com­fort.” The love song “lives on the lips of the child cry­ing for its moth­er. It is the song of the lover in need of her loved one, the rav­ing of the lunatic sup­pli­cant peti­tion­ing his God.”

The love song, then, must con­tain a qual­i­ty Gar­cia Lor­ca called Duende, an “eerie and inex­plic­a­ble sad­ness.” Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Van Mor­ri­son, Tom Waits, and Neil Young have it. “It haunts,” he says, his ex P.J. Har­vey. “All love songs must con­tain duende. For the love song is nev­er tru­ly hap­py. It must first embrace the poten­tial for pain.” Cave draws on Lou Reed’s “Per­fect Day,” the “bru­tal prose” of the Old Tes­ta­ment, and the most innocu­ous-sound­ing pop songs, which can dis­guise “mes­sages to God that cry out into the yawn­ing void, in anguish and self-loathing, for deliv­er­ance.”

He also ref­er­ences, and reads, his own song, “Far From Me,” from 1997’s The Boatman’s Call, the post-breakup record that con­tains “Peo­ple Ain’t No Good.” (Cave begins the lec­ture with a ren­di­tion of “West Coun­try Girl” from that same record.) It’s an album that brought Cave’s “mor­bid­i­ty to near-par­o­d­ic lev­els,” strip­ping the Bad Seeds stum­bling lounge punk down to most­ly piano and voice. This ref­er­ence is not a mat­ter of van­i­ty but of the most well cho­sen illus­tra­tion. Cave admits he is “hap­py to be sad,” to live in “divine dis­con­tent.” His reli­gious exis­ten­tial­ism is ulti­mate­ly relieved by the pow­er of love songs, by his “crooked brood of sad eyed chil­dren” which “ral­ly round and in their way, pro­tect me, com­fort me and keep me alive.” Maybe Huey Lewis had some­thing sim­i­lar to say, but there’s no way he could ever say it the way that Nick Cave does. Read a par­tial tran­script of Cave’s talk here.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonard Cohen and U2 Per­form ‘Tow­er of Song,’ a Med­i­ta­tion on Aging, Loss & Sur­vival

Tom Waits and Kei­th Richards Sing Sea Song “Shenan­doah” for New Pirate-Themed CD: Lis­ten Online

See Neil Young Per­form Clas­sic Songs in 1971 BBC Con­cert: “Old Man,” “Heart of Gold” & More

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

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Hunter S. Thompson’s Ballsy & Hilarious Job Application Letter (1958)

in Literature | April 1st, 2015

hst

Image by Steve Ander­son, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In 1958, Hunter S. Thomp­son applied for a job with the Van­cou­ver Sun. He was fresh out of the Air Force and strug­gling to make a liv­ing in New York City, though from the tone of the let­ter you wouldn’t know it.

Peo­ple who are experts in such things say that good cov­er let­ters should match the employer’s needs with the appli­can­t’s abil­i­ties, should be tai­lored specif­i­cal­ly to the job in ques­tion and should show some per­son­al­i­ty. By those yard­sticks, Thompson’s let­ter to the Van­cou­ver Sun is a mod­el to be fol­lowed. He lays out his eager­ness to work: “I can work 25 hours a day if nec­es­sary, live on any rea­son­able salary.” Any HR man­ag­er would be tick­led with lines like that. He suc­cinct­ly describes his work expe­ri­ence: “most of my expe­ri­ence has been in sports writ­ing, but I can write every­thing from war­mon­ger­ing pro­pa­gan­da to learned book reviews.” And for any oth­er fault you might find with the let­ter, it def­i­nite­ly does­n’t lack in per­son­al­i­ty.

Yet the let­ter some­how failed to charm his would-be employ­er; Thomp­son nev­er moved to Van­cou­ver.  Per­haps they were giv­en pause by Thomp­son’s steady stream of insults direct­ed towards his for­mer edi­tor — “It was as if the Mar­quis De Sade had sud­den­ly found him­self work­ing for Bil­ly Gra­ham” — and towards jour­nal­ism in gen­er­al: “It’s a damned shame that a field as poten­tial­ly dynam­ic and vital as jour­nal­ism should be over­run with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-rid­den with myopia, apa­thy, and com­pla­cence, and gen­er­al­ly stuck in a bog of stag­nant medi­oc­rity.” Or per­haps it was his inten­tion­al­ly off-putting arro­gance, “I’d rather offend you now than after I start­ed work­ing for you.” In any case, it’s a hoot to read. More peo­ple should write job appli­ca­tion let­ters like this.

Read the full let­ter below.

Van­cou­ver Sun
TO JACK SCOTT, VANCOUVER SUN
Octo­ber 1, 1958 57 Per­ry Street New York City

Sir,
I got a hell of a kick read­ing the piece Time mag­a­zine did this week on The Sun. In addi­tion to wish­ing you the best of luck, I’d also like to offer my ser­vices.

Since I haven’t seen a copy of the “new” Sun yet, I’ll have to make this a ten­ta­tive offer. I stepped into a dung-hole the last time I took a job with a paper I did­n’t know any­thing about (see enclosed clip­pings) and I’m not quite ready to go charg­ing up anoth­er blind alley.

By the time you get this let­ter, I’ll have got­ten hold of some of the recent issues of The Sun. Unless it looks total­ly worth­less, I’ll let my offer stand. And don’t think that my arro­gance is unin­ten­tion­al: it’s just that I’d rather offend you now than after I start­ed work­ing for you.

I did­n’t make myself clear to the last man I worked for until after I took the job. It was as if the Mar­quis de Sade had sud­den­ly found him­self work­ing for Bil­ly Gra­ham. The man despised me, of course, and I had noth­ing but con­tempt for him and every­thing he stood for. If you asked him, he’d tell you that I’m “not very lik­able, (that I) hate peo­ple, (that I) just want to be left alone, and (that I) feel too supe­ri­or to min­gle with the aver­age per­son.” (That’s a direct quote from a memo he sent to the pub­lish­er.)

Noth­ing beats hav­ing good ref­er­ences.

Of course if you asked some of the oth­er peo­ple I’ve worked for, you’d get a dif­fer­ent set of answers. If you’re inter­est­ed enough to answer this let­ter, I’ll be glad to fur­nish you with a list of ref­er­ences — includ­ing the lad I work for now.

The enclosed clip­pings should give you a rough idea of who I am. It’s a year old, how­ev­er, and I’ve changed a bit since it was writ­ten. I’ve tak­en some writ­ing cours­es from Colum­bia in my spare time, learned a hell of a lot about the news­pa­per busi­ness, and devel­oped a healthy con­tempt for jour­nal­ism as a pro­fes­sion.

As far as I’m con­cerned, it’s a damned shame that a field as poten­tial­ly dynam­ic and vital as jour­nal­ism should be over­run with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-rid­den with myopia, apa­thy, and com­pla­cence, and gen­er­al­ly stuck in a bog of stag­nant medi­oc­rity. If this is what you’re try­ing to get The Sun away from, then I think I’d like to work for you.

Most of my expe­ri­ence has been in sports writ­ing, but I can write every­thing from war­mon­ger­ing pro­pa­gan­da to learned book reviews.

I can work 25 hours a day if nec­es­sary, live on any rea­son­able salary, and don’t give a black damn for job secu­ri­ty, office pol­i­tics, or adverse pub­lic rela­tions.
I would rather be on the dole than work for a paper I was ashamed of.
It’s a long way from here to British Colum­bia, but I think I’d enjoy the trip.

If you think you can use me, drop me a line.

If not, good luck any­way.

Sin­cere­ly,

Hunter S. Thomp­son

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 10 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

Hunter S. Thomp­son Inter­views Kei­th Richards

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son

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

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Download the Major Works of Jane Austen as Free eBooks & Audio Books

in Audio Books, e-books, Literature | April 1st, 2015

Jane_Austen

Why does Jane Austen feel so much like our con­tem­po­rary? Is it the way she has been appro­pri­at­ed by pop­u­lar cul­ture, turned into a vamp­ish, mod­ern con­sumer icon in adap­ta­tions like From Pra­da to Nada, Clue­less, and Brid­get Jones’ Diary? Do these can­dy-col­ored updates of Austen tru­ly rep­re­sent the spir­it of the late 18th/early 19th cen­tu­ry novelist’s world? Or do we grav­i­tate toward Austen because of nos­tal­gia for a sim­pler, almost pre-indus­tri­al time, when—as in the rather reac­tionary world of Down­ton Abbey—the com­ings and goings in a sin­gle house­hold con­sti­tut­ed an entire human soci­ety?

Why not both? As the writ­ers and artists in the video above from the Mor­gan Library assert, Austen, like Shake­speare, is a writer for every age. “The Divine Jane” as the title dubs her, had an insight into human behav­ior that tran­scends the par­tic­u­lars of her his­tor­i­cal moment. But of course, the con­text of Austen’s fiction—a time of great Eng­lish coun­try hous­es and an emerg­ing class-con­scious­ness based on rapid­ly chang­ing social arrangements—is no mere back­drop. Like Shake­speare, we need to under­stand Austen on her own terms as much as we enjoy her wit trans­posed into our own.

The Mor­gan Library’s “A Woman’s Wit” exhib­it, moved online since its debut in the phys­i­cal space in 2009, offers an excel­lent col­lec­tion of resources for schol­ars and lay read­ers to dis­cov­er Austen’s world through her cor­re­spon­dence and man­u­scripts. You’ll also find there draw­ings by Austen and her con­tem­po­raries and com­men­tary from a num­ber of twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry writ­ers inspired by her work. Much of the Austen-mania of the past sev­er­al years treats the nov­el­ist as a more-or-less post­mod­ern ironist—“hotter,” wrote Mar­tin Amis in 1996, “than Quentin Taran­ti­no.” That she has become such fod­der for films, both good and frankly ter­ri­ble, can obscure her obses­sion with lan­guage, one rep­re­sent­ed by her nov­els, of course, as well as by her let­ters—so live­ly and imme­di­ate so as to have inspired a “Per­fect Love Let­ter” com­pe­ti­tion among Austen enthu­si­asts.

As for the nov­els, well, there real­ly is no sub­sti­tute. Dress­ing Austen up in Pra­da and Guc­ci and recast­ing her bum­bling suit­ors and imp­ish hero­ines as mall-savvy teenage Amer­i­cans has—one hopes—been done enough. Let not Austen’s appeal to our age eclipse the rich, fine-grained obser­va­tions she made of hers. Whether you’re new to Austen or a life­long read­er, her work is always avail­able, as she intend­ed it to be expe­ri­enced, on the page—or, er… the screen… thanks to inter­net pub­lish­ing and orga­ni­za­tions like Project Guten­berg and Lib­rivox. At the links below, you can find all of Austen’s major works in var­i­ous eBook and audio for­mats.

So by all means, enjoy the mod­ern clas­sic Clue­less, that hilar­i­ous ren­di­tion of Austen’s Emma. And by all means, read Emma, and Pride and Prej­u­dice, and Mans­field Park, and… well, you get the idea….

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Jane Austen Used Pins to Edit Her Aban­doned Man­u­script, The Wat­sons

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

What Did Jane Austen Real­ly Look Like? New Wax Sculp­ture, Cre­at­ed by Foren­sic Spe­cial­ists, Shows Us

15-Year-Old Jane Austen Writes a Satir­i­cal His­to­ry Of Eng­land: Read the Hand­writ­ten Man­u­script Online (1791)

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

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Marshall McLuhan’s Strange Reading Habit: “I Read Only the Right-Hand Page of Serious Books”

in Books | April 1st, 2015

No doubt about it, Mar­shall McLuhan was a cryp­tic thinker and a bit of an odd duck. Ear­li­er this week, Col­in Mar­shall brought you an Intro­duc­tion to Mar­shall McLuhan, pre­sent­ed by Tom Wolfe (best known for The Elec­tric Kool-Aid Acid Test and ‎The Bon­fire of the Van­i­ties). In putting togeth­er that post, we stum­bled upon anoth­er gem of a video, a tes­ta­ment to McLuhan’s quirk­i­ness — and we mean that in the best pos­si­ble way. Above McLuhan, kick­ing back on a couch, reveals his “pecu­liar read­ing habit,” admit­ting: “If it’s a friv­o­lous, relax­ing book, I read every word. But seri­ous books I read on the right-hand side only because I’ve dis­cov­ered enor­mous redun­dan­cy in any well-writ­ten book, and I find that by read­ing only the right-hand page this keeps me very wide awake, fill­ing in the oth­er page out of my own noo­dle.” There’s a bit of hubris in that approach, but also a cer­tain amount of cre­ativ­i­ty too. Per­haps you’ll want to give it a try.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Vision­ary Thought of Mar­shall McLuhan, Intro­duced and Demys­ti­fied by Tom Wolfe

Has Tech­nol­o­gy Changed Us?: BBC Ani­ma­tions Answer the Ques­tion with the Help of Mar­shall McLuhan

McLuhan Said “The Medi­um Is The Mes­sage”; Two Pieces Of Media Decode the Famous Phrase

Mar­shall McLuhan: The World is a Glob­al Vil­lage

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Guernica: Alain Resnais’ Haunting Film on Picasso’s Painting & the Crimes of the Spanish Civil War

in Art, Film | April 1st, 2015

Note: You will hear sound 37 sec­onds into the film.

Human­i­ty has endured a great many wartime atroc­i­ties since 1937, but to this day, if you think of an art­work born of one such event, you’ll more than like­ly still think of Guer­ni­ca. Pablo Picas­so’s large black-and-white can­vas, which he began paint­ing less than a month after the aer­i­al bomb­ing dur­ing the Span­ish Civ­il War of the small Basque town which gave it its name, ren­ders the hor­ror of sud­den, thor­ough destruc­tion in a way nobody had ever seen before, or has seen again since.

“When I vis­it­ed the town the whole of it was a hor­ri­ble sight, flam­ing from end to end. The reflec­tion of the flames could be seen in the clouds of smoke above the moun­tains from 10 miles away,” wrote The Times’ war cor­re­spon­dent George Steer, in the report that moved Picas­so to take on the sub­ject of Guer­ni­ca for the mur­al the Span­ish Repub­li­can gov­ern­ment had com­mis­sioned for the 1937 World’s Fair. “Through­out the night hous­es were falling until the streets became long heaps of red impen­e­tra­ble debris.”

In 1950, both Guer­ni­ca and Guer­ni­ca inspired an equal­ly haunt­ing short film of the same name [part one, part two] by Alain Resnais and Robert Hes­sens. In black and white just like Picas­so’s paint­ing, the pic­ture uses night­mar­ish cut­ting to com­bine imagery from Guer­ni­ca and oth­er artis­tic sources, a score by Guy Bernard, and the poem “Vic­to­ry of Guer­ni­ca” by Paul Élu­ard. “You hold the flame between your fin­gers and paint like a fire,” said the poet to the painter dur­ing their close friend­ship in the years after the bomb­ing.

Resnais, who would go on to direct such clas­sics of French cin­e­ma as Hiroshi­ma mon amour (anoth­er study of an after­math) and Last Year at Marien­bad, only just end­ed his long and dis­tin­guished film­mak­ing career when he died last year. But in 1950, his career had only just begun, his first for­ays into film hav­ing come in the form of short doc­u­men­taries on work­ing artists in the mid-1940s. Those led to a com­mis­sion to do one on the paint­ings of Van Gogh for a Paris exhi­bi­tion, which led to one on Gau­guin, which led to Guer­ni­ca. Clear­ly, Resnais had the ten­den­cy to unite the arts in his work from the very begin­ning, and many of his fans would say it served him well to the end.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A 3D Tour of Picas­so’s Guer­ni­ca

Watch Alain Resnais’ Short, Evoca­tive Film Toute la mémoire du monde (1956)

Pho­tos of Hiroshi­ma by Hiroshi­ma mon amour Star Emmanuelle Riva (1958)

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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Langston Hughes Presents the History of Jazz in an Illustrated Children’s Book (1955)

in K-12, Music | March 31st, 2015

The_First_Book_Of_Jazz_00

I can imag­ine no bet­ter guide through the his­to­ry and vari­ety of jazz than Langston Hugh­es, voice of the Harlem Renais­sance and poet­ic inter­preter of 20th cen­tu­ry black Amer­i­can cul­ture. Hugh­es’ 1955 First Book of Jazz is just that, a short primer with a sur­pris­ing­ly high degree of sophis­ti­ca­tion for a children’s book. I would, in fact, rec­om­mend it as an intro­duc­tion to jazz for any read­er.

Hugh­es thor­ough­ly cov­ers the musi­cal con­text of jazz in brief chap­ters like “African Drums,” “Old New Orleans,” “Work Songs,” “The Blues,” and “Rag­time.” He then “dis­cuss­es the mechan­ics of jazz,” writes author and blog­ger Ariel S. Win­ter, includ­ing “impro­vi­sa­tion, syn­co­pa­tion, per­cus­sion, rhythm, blue notes, tone col­or, har­mo­ny, break, riff….” Through it all runs the life and career of Louis Arm­strong, whose sto­ry, Hugh­es states “is almost the whole sto­ry of orches­tral jazz in Amer­i­ca.”

Old New Orleans

The book is very patri­ot­ic in tone, a fact dic­tat­ed by Hugh­es’ recent appear­ance before Sen­a­tor McCarthy’s Sub­com­mit­tee, which exon­er­at­ed him on the con­di­tion that he renounce his ear­li­er sym­pa­thies for the Com­mu­nist Par­ty and get with a patri­ot­ic pro­gram. Hav­ing fall­en out of favor with the pub­lic, Hugh­es began the non­fic­tion children’s series to win back read­ers, also writ­ing the quaint­ly named cul­tur­al his­to­ry First Book of Negroes and the Whit­manesque First Book of Rhythms. All of the books were illus­trat­ed by dif­fer­ent artists. The First Book of Jazz received spe­cial treat­ment from pop­u­lar illus­tra­tor Cliff Roberts, who made its pages close­ly resem­ble clas­sic album cov­ers by artists like Jim Flo­ra.

Jazz Pianists

Although Hugh­es may have been some­what con­cil­ia­to­ry in his atti­tude toward inequal­i­ty, he nonethe­less makes the ori­gins and impor­tance of jazz clear:

A part of Amer­i­can music is jazz, born in the South. Woven into it in the Deep South were the rhythms of African drums that today make jazz music dif­fer­ent from any oth­er music in the world. Nobody else ever made jazz before we did. Jazz is Amer­i­can music.

“The par­tic­u­lar Amer­i­cans in ques­tion,” writes Win­ter, “are unde­ni­ably black,” and “when Hugh­es cov­ers the vast array of Amer­i­can styles that went into jazz, they tend to be (as they should be) black inter­pre­ta­tions of each musi­cal form.” But as he had always done, whether under pres­sure from McCarthy­ism or not, he proud­ly declares jazz yet anoth­er invalu­able con­tri­bu­tion African-Amer­i­cans, as well as Euro­pean immi­grants, made to the nation­al cul­ture. How­ev­er far left his polit­i­cal sym­pa­thies, Hugh­es was always a patri­ot, in the best sense, an admir­er of his country’s achieve­ments and gen­uine lover of its peo­ple.

Syncopation

Although it is a children’s book, Hugh­es’ First Book of Jazz is still a schol­ar­ly one, with a host of ref­er­ences in the Acknowl­edge­ments, and a list of famous jazz musi­cians, and their instru­ments, at the end. Also round­ing out the short course on jazz his­to­ry and musi­cian­ship is a two-part list of “Sug­gest­ed Records for Study” and one called “100 of My Favorite Record­ings.” Hugh­es even con­vinced Folk­ways records to release The Sto­ry of Jazz, an LP Hugh­es nar­rat­ed with exam­ples of each style of jazz he dis­cuss­es. You can read the full First Book of Jazz at Winter’s Flickr, where he has post­ed scans of every page. Vin­tage copies can be pur­chased online. See a gallery of Roberts’ full page illus­tra­tions here.

First Book

via Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Child’s Intro­duc­tion to Jazz by Can­non­ball Adder­ley (with Louis Arm­strong & Thelo­nious Monk)

Watch Langston Hugh­es Read Poet­ry from His First Col­lec­tion, The Weary Blues (1958)

Charles Min­gus Explains in His Gram­my-Win­ning Essay “What is a Jazz Com­pos­er?”

The Cry of Jazz: 1958’s High­ly Con­tro­ver­sial Film on Jazz & Race in Amer­i­ca (With Music by Sun Ra)

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

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Isaac Newton Creates a List of His 57 Sins (Circa 1662)

in History, Physics, Religion, Science | March 31st, 2015

isaac newton list of sins

Sir Isaac New­ton, arguably the most impor­tant and influ­en­tial sci­en­tist in his­to­ry, dis­cov­ered the laws of motion and the uni­ver­sal force of grav­i­ty. For the first time ever, the rules of the uni­verse could be described with the supreme­ly ratio­nal lan­guage of math­e­mat­ics. Newton’s ele­gant equa­tions proved to be one of the inspi­ra­tions for the Enlight­en­ment, a shift away from the God-cen­tered dog­ma of the Church in favor of a world­view that placed rea­son at its cen­ter. The many lead­ers of the Enlight­en­ment turned to deism if not out­right athe­ism. But not New­ton.

In 1936, a doc­u­ment of Newton’s dat­ing from around 1662 was sold at a Sothe­by’s auc­tion and even­tu­al­ly wound up at the Fitzwilliam Muse­um in Cam­bridge, Eng­land. The Fitzwilliam Man­u­script has long been a source of fas­ci­na­tion for New­ton schol­ars. Not only does the note­book fea­ture a series of increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult math­e­mat­i­cal prob­lems but also a cryp­tic string of let­ters read­ing:

Nabed Efy­hik
Wfn­zo Cpm­fke

If you can solve this, there are some peo­ple in Cam­bridge who would like to talk to you.

But what makes the doc­u­ment real­ly inter­est­ing is how incred­i­bly per­son­al it is. New­ton rat­tles off a laun­dry list of sins he com­mit­ted dur­ing his rel­a­tive­ly short life – he was around 20 when he wrote this, a stu­dent at Cam­bridge. He splits the list into two cat­e­gories, before Whit­sun­day 1662 and after. (Whit­sun­day is, by the way, the Sun­day of the feast of Whit­sun, which is cel­e­brat­ed sev­en weeks after East­er.) Why he decid­ed on that par­tic­u­lar date to bifur­cate his time­line isn’t imme­di­ate­ly clear.

Some of the sins are rather opaque. I’m not sure what, for instance, “Mak­ing a feath­er while on Thy day” means exact­ly but it sure sounds like a long lost euphemism. Oth­er sins like “Peev­ish­ness with my moth­er” are imme­di­ate­ly relat­able as good old-fash­ioned teenaged churl­ish­ness. You can see the full list below. And you can read the full doc­u­ment over at the New­ton Project here.

Before Whit­sun­day 1662

1. Vsing the word (God) open­ly
2. Eat­ing an apple at Thy house
3. Mak­ing a feath­er while on Thy day
4. Deny­ing that I made it.
5. Mak­ing a mouse­trap on Thy day
6. Con­triv­ing of the chimes on Thy day
7. Squirt­ing water on Thy day
8. Mak­ing pies on Sun­day night
9. Swim­ming in a kim­nel on Thy day
10. Putting a pin in Iohn Keys hat on Thy day to pick him.
11. Care­less­ly hear­ing and com­mit­ting many ser­mons
12. Refus­ing to go to the close at my moth­ers com­mand.
13. Threat­ning my father and moth­er Smith to burne them and the house over them
14. Wish­ing death and hop­ing it to some
15. Strik­ing many
16. Hav­ing uncleane thoughts words and actions and dreamese.
17. Steal­ing cher­ry cobs from Eduard Stor­er
18. Deny­ing that I did so
19. Deny­ing a cross­bow to my moth­er and grand­moth­er though I knew of it
20. Set­ting my heart on mon­ey learn­ing plea­sure more than Thee
21. A relapse
22. A relapse
23. A break­ing again of my covenant renued in the Lords Sup­per.
24. Punch­ing my sis­ter
25. Rob­bing my moth­ers box of plums and sug­ar
26. Call­ing Dorothy Rose a jade
27. Glutiny in my sick­ness.
28. Peev­ish­ness with my moth­er.
29. With my sis­ter.
30. Falling out with the ser­vants
31. Divers com­mis­sions of alle my duties
32. Idle dis­course on Thy day and at oth­er times
33. Not turn­ing near­er to Thee for my affec­tions
34. Not liv­ing accord­ing to my belief
35. Not lov­ing Thee for Thy self.
36. Not lov­ing Thee for Thy good­ness to us
37. Not desir­ing Thy ordi­nances
38. Not long {long­ing} for Thee in {illeg}
39. Fear­ing man above Thee
40. Vsing unlaw­ful means to bring us out of dis­tress­es
41. Car­ing for world­ly things more than God
42. Not crav­ing a bless­ing from God on our hon­est endeav­ors.
43. Miss­ing chapel.
44. Beat­ing Arthur Stor­er.
45. Peev­ish­ness at Mas­ter Clarks for a piece of bread and but­ter.
46. Striv­ing to cheat with a brass halfe crowne.
47. Twist­ing a cord on Sun­day morn­ing
48. Read­ing the his­to­ry of the Chris­t­ian cham­pi­ons on Sun­day

Since Whit­sun­day 1662

49. Glu­tony
50. Glu­tony
51. Vsing Wil­fords tow­el to spare my own
52. Neg­li­gence at the chapel.
53. Ser­mons at Saint Marys (4)
54. Lying about a louse
55. Deny­ing my cham­ber­fel­low of the knowl­edge of him that took him for a sot.
56. Neglect­ing to pray 3
57. Help­ing Pet­tit to make his water watch at 12 of the clock on Sat­ur­day night

via JF Ptak Sci­ence Books/Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Sir Isaac Newton’s Papers & Anno­tat­ed Prin­cip­ia Go Dig­i­tal

Neil deGrasse Tyson Deliv­ers the Great­est Sci­ence Ser­mon Ever

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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President Obama Chats with David Simon About Drugs, The Wire & Omar

in Politics, Television | March 31st, 2015

Back in 2012, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, already on record as being a fan of The Wire, was asked by ESPN to name his favorite char­ac­ter on the show, to which he replied “It’s got to be Omar, right? I mean, that guy is unbe­liev­able, right?” Fast for­ward to 2015, and we find Mr. Oba­ma host­ing David Simon (the cre­ator of The Wire) at the White House, and hav­ing a frank con­ver­sa­tion about the TV show and the war on drugs, and what lessons we’ve learned along the way. Of course, the con­ver­sa­tion does­n’t end with­out Omar get­ting a men­tion … or with­out us get­ting to see Oba­ma as TV host. A sign of what’s to come after 2016?

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and  share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

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The Visionary Thought of Marshall McLuhan, Introduced and Demystified by Tom Wolfe

in Media, Philosophy | March 31st, 2015

Mar­shall McLuhan and Tom Wolfe: both writ­ers, both astute observers of mod­ern human­i­ty, and both pub­lic fig­ures whose work has, over the years, enjoyed high fash­ion­abil­i­ty and endured high unfash­ion­abil­i­ty. You might think the con­nec­tion between them ends there. But when the 100th anniver­sary of McLuhan’s birth and the cen­ten­ni­al-cel­e­brat­ing site Mar­shall McLuhan Speaks came about, whose elo­quent intro­duc­tion to the thinker (who famous­ly declared the world a “glob­al vil­lage” where “the medi­um is the mes­sage”) got used there? Why, the man in white’s.

In the 20-minute video above, Wolfe lays out not just a pré­cis of the insights that made McLuhan “the first seer of cyber­space,” but gets into his biog­ra­phy as well: his humbly respectable ori­gins in Edmon­ton, his back­ground as a lit­er­ary schol­ar, his con­ver­sion to Catholi­cism, the begin­nings of his teach­ing career in Cam­bridge and Wis­con­sin, his “extracur­ric­u­lar gath­er­ings devot­ed to the folk­lore of indus­tri­al man,” his strug­gle to rec­on­cile his inter­est in the writ­ings of philoso­pher-pale­on­tol­o­gist Pierre Teil­hard de Chardin with his own reli­gious con­vic­tions, and the con­sid­er­able fame he accrued mak­ing pro­nounce­ments on the media in the media.

“No doubt the inter­net would have delight­ed him,” says Wolfe. “He would have seen it as a ful­fill­ment of prophe­cies he had made thir­ty years before it was born, as an instru­ment for the real­iza­tion of his dream of the mys­ti­cal uni­ty of all mankind. [Watch him pre­dict the world would be knit­ted into a glob­al vil­lage by dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy in some vin­tage video.] Here, in a spe­cif­ic, phys­i­cal, elec­tron­ic form, was the seam­less web of which he had so often spo­ken. Today thou­sands of young inter­net apos­tles are famil­iar with Mar­shall McLuhan, and are con­vinced his light shines round about them. From the edi­tors of Wired mag­a­zine to the most mis­er­able dot-com lizards of the chat room, they have made him their patron saint.”

To get an even deep­er sense of how much Wolfe has thought about McLuhan, have a look at his first annu­al Mar­shall McLuhan Lec­ture, deliv­ered at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty in 1999. And unlike many intel­lec­tu­als who only turned back to re-exam­ine McLuhan after the age of the inter­net had retroac­tive­ly val­i­dat­ed even some of his wildest-sound­ing spec­u­la­tions, Wolfe has been tuned in to McLuhan’s fre­quen­cy since way back. In 1970, the two even got togeth­er for a tele­vised chat in McLuhan’s back yard (a clip of which you can watch just above), which revealed that, for all the fas­ci­na­tion Wolfe had with McLuhan, the inter­est was mutu­al.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Has Tech­nol­o­gy Changed Us?: BBC Ani­ma­tions Answer the Ques­tion with the Help of Mar­shall McLuhan

McLuhan Said “The Medi­um Is The Mes­sage”; Two Pieces Of Media Decode the Famous Phrase

Mar­shall McLuhan: The World is a Glob­al Vil­lage

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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