Watch an Animated Buckminster Fuller Tell Studs Terkel All About “the Geodesic Life”

Will human­i­ty ever pro­duce anoth­er mind quite like Buck­min­ster Fuller’s? It does­n’t seem to have done so thus far. Even in Fuller’s own time, peo­ple could­n’t quite believe the intel­lec­tu­al idio­syn­crasy of the inven­tor who came up with the geo­des­ic dome, the Dymax­ion Car, and much, much more. “Time and again,” he once said, “I am asked, ‘who else do you know who thinks the way you do, or does what you do?’ I find it very strange to have to answer, ‘I don’t know any­body else.’ It’s not because I think of myself as unique, but sim­ply because I did choose a very dif­fer­ent grand strat­e­gy.”

Fuller — or Bucky, his pre­ferred nick­name — says more about that grand strat­e­gy and the expe­ri­ences that led him to devel­op it in the inter­views, con­duct­ed by Studs Terkel in 1965 and 1970, from which that quote comes. You can hear it in the video above, which brings the mate­r­i­al to life by visu­al­iz­ing the ele­ments of Fuller’s life and ideas through the hand of ani­ma­tor Jen­nifer Yoo. The video recent­ly debuted as part of The Exper­i­menters, a three-episode series meant to ani­mate the words of thinkers like Fuller, Jane Goodall, and Richard Feyn­man, con­cen­trat­ing on “the inspi­ra­tions from each of their per­son­al lives that helped influ­ence their careers and earth-chang­ing dis­cov­er­ies.”

Fuller enthu­si­asts have always insist­ed that his ideas have only grown more rel­e­vant with time, but now that the ear­ly 21st cen­tu­ry has found us rethink­ing the way we live — how we do it and how we make spaces to do it in being per­haps Fuller’s most abid­ing obses­sion — his engage­ment with the con­cept of “con­tin­u­al­ly doing more with less” real­ly does sound smarter than ever. If you enjoy the patch of Buck­y’s uni­verse The Exper­i­menters expos­es, con­sid­er chas­ing these four min­utes of “Buck­min­ster Fuller on the Geo­des­ic Life” with 42 hours of his video lec­ture series Every­thing I Know. The man did­n’t just think dif­fer­ent­ly from the rest of us, after all — he also thought a lot more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bet­ter Liv­ing Through Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Utopi­an Designs: Revis­it the Dymax­ion Car, House, and Map

Every­thing I Know: 42 Hours of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Vision­ary Lec­tures Free Online (1975)

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.

Hear Classical Music Composed by Friedrich Nietzsche: 43 Original Tracks

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A philoso­pher per­haps more wide­ly known for his prodi­gious mus­tache than for the vari­eties of his thought, Friedrich Niet­zsche often seems to be mis­read more than read. Even some­one like Michel Fou­cault could gloss over a cru­cial fact about Nietzsche’s body of work: Fou­cault remarked in an unpub­lished inter­view that Nietzsche’s “won­der­ful ideas” were “used by the Nazi Par­ty.” But that use, he neglect­ed to men­tion, came about through a scheme hatched by Nietzsche’s sis­ter, after his men­tal col­lapse and death, to edit, change, and oth­er­wise manip­u­late the thinker’s work in a way The Tele­graph deemed “crim­i­nal.” Fou­cault may not have known the full con­text, but Niet­zsche had about as much sym­pa­thy for fas­cism as he did for Christianity–both rea­sons for his break with com­pos­er Richard Wag­n­er.

What Niet­zsche loved most was music. Even in the wake of this scan­dal, with Niet­zsche ful­ly reha­bil­i­tat­ed at the schol­ar­ly lev­el at least, the philoso­pher is gen­er­al­ly read piece­meal, used to prop up some ide­ol­o­gy or crit­i­cal the­o­ry or anoth­er, a ten­den­cy his anti-sys­tem­at­ic, apho­ris­tic work inspires. A more holis­tic approach yields two impor­tant gen­er­al obser­va­tions: Niet­zsche found the mun­dane work of pol­i­tics and nation­al­ist con­quest, with its trib­al­ism and moral pre­ten­sions, thor­ough­ly dis­taste­ful. Instead, he con­sid­ered the cre­ative work of artists, writ­ers, and musi­cians, as well as sci­en­tists, of para­mount impor­tance.

Niet­zsche almost entered med­i­cine and was him­self an artist: “before he engaged him­self ful­ly as a philoso­pher, he had already cre­at­ed a sub­stan­tial out­put as poet and com­pos­er,” writes Albany Records. In an 1887 let­ter writ­ten three years before his death, Niet­zsche claimed, “There has nev­er been a philoso­pher who has been in essence a musi­cian to such an extent as I am,” though he also admit­ted he “might be a thor­ough­ly unsuc­cess­ful musi­cian.” In any case, he hoped that at least some of his com­po­si­tions would become known and heard as com­ple­men­tary to his philo­soph­i­cal project.

Now seri­ous read­ers of Niet­zsche, or those sim­ply curi­ous about his musi­cian­ship, can hear most of those com­po­si­tions in a Spo­ti­fy playlist above. Per­formed by Cana­di­an musi­cians Lau­ret­ta Alt­man, Wolf­gang Bot­ten­berg, and the Mon­tre­al Orpheus Singers, the music ranges from spright­ly to pen­sive, roman­tic to mourn­ful, and some of it seems to come right out of the Protes­tant hym­nals he grew up with as the son of a Luther­an min­is­ter. Niet­zsche com­posed music through­out his life—a com­plete chronol­o­gy spans the years 1854, when he was only ten, to 1887. See The Niet­zsche Chan­nel for a thor­ough list of pub­lished Niet­zsche record­ings and sheet music. To lis­ten to the music here, you will need to down­load and reg­is­ter for Spo­ti­fy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

130+ Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

The Phi­los­o­phy of Niet­zsche: An Intro­duc­tion by Alain de Bot­ton

A Free Playlist of Music From The Works Of James Joyce (Plus Songs Inspired by the Mod­ernist Author)

The Dig­i­tal Niet­zsche: Down­load Nietzsche’s Major Works as Free eBooks

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

An Animated Marc Maron Recalls Interviewing a Shirtless Iggy Pop in LA Garage

Marc Maron’s WTF pod­cast now clocks in at 585 episodes. Cer­tain­ly one I remem­ber — and so does Maron too — is Episode 400, which fea­tured the god­fa­ther of punk, Iggy Pop. Above, an ani­mat­ed Marc Maron recalls the many musi­cians he’s inter­viewed in his Los Ange­les garage. And espe­cial­ly the sum­mer day when Pop paid a vis­it, tore off his shirt, and gave his own nip­ple a lit­tle twist. Good times in LA.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Prof. Iggy Pop Deliv­ers the BBC’s 2014 John Peel Lec­ture on “Free Music in a Cap­i­tal­ist Soci­ety”

Hear a Great Radio Doc­u­men­tary on William S. Bur­roughs Nar­rat­ed by Iggy Pop

Iggy Pop Con­ducts a Tour of New York’s Low­er East Side, Cir­ca 1993

Elementary School Students Perform in a Play Inspired by David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

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Image by Janet McMil­lan appeared in The Mil­wau­kee Record

For those of us with kids, the grade school play is usu­al­ly a com­bi­na­tion of parental pride and teeth-grat­ing nos­tal­gic civic les­son and/or Bible study. Not so at Mil­wau­kee, WI’s High­land Com­mu­ni­ty School where super cool dra­ma teacher Bar­ry Weber has writ­ten and pro­duced Judy Plays with Fire, a love let­ter to David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks and oth­er Lyn­chophil­ia.

The play has all the hall­marks of the director–red cur­tains, strobe lights, smoke machines, a Badala­men­ti-esque score–along with a back­wards-speak­ing char­ac­ter in a red suit, two earnest and upstand­ing detec­tives, lum­ber­jacks, rab­bits, mys­te­ri­ous peo­ple in white masks, a Log Lady-like char­ac­ter who talks to a Slinky, and a mid­dle Amer­i­ca town called “Cen­ter­ville” that, like Lau­ra Palmer, is “full of secrets.” One char­ac­ter mimes Nina Simone’s “Don’t Let Me Be Under­stood” into a LED wand–shades of Dean Stock­well in Blue Vel­vet. Char­ac­ter names like Mr. Frost and the MacLach­lans nod to the cre­ators and actors behind Twin Peaks. The entire cast is played by 4th, 5th, and 6th graders, and apart from Mr. Weber, the pro­duc­tion is crewed by High­land stu­dents as well.

This isn’t Weber’s first go at push­ing the bound­aries of school the­ater. His stu­dent the­ater group put on 2014’s ZERO, a cyber­punk tale, and a post-apoc­a­lyp­tic zom­bie pro­duc­tion in 2010 called Pen­guin Attack.
The pro­duc­tion got the atten­tion of the Mil­wau­kee Record who sent reporter Matt Wild out to see the three per­for­mance run that fin­ished last Fri­day. He even gave it a bit of a Vari­ety-style review, say­ing that

“In the case of Judy, (Maeve) Haley is ter­rif­ic as the inquis­i­tive Coop­er sur­ro­gate, though diminu­tive CJ Young steals the show as the schem­ing Mr. Frost. Whether he’s bark­ing orders to his flunkies or lord­ing over his ani­ma­tron­ic house band, Young—who had to take time off from act­ing two years ago due to con­flicts with bas­ket­ball practice—imbues his char­ac­ter with a sur­pris­ing amount of grav­i­tas and men­ace.”

Matt Wild also talked to Weber, who spoke of his desire to give kids more chal­leng­ing works.

“I want to make sure that when I write the scripts there are no ‘trees,’” Weber says, ref­er­enc­ing grade school plays that often give stu­dents thank­less roles as inan­i­mate objects. “I want to write the kind of plays that as a kid I would have real­ly want­ed to do. I cer­tain­ly didn’t know who David Lynch was when I was a kid, but I’m sure I would have real­ly enjoyed it.”

No video has sur­faced yet to match the intrigu­ing pro­duc­tion stills, but we’re on the look­out. In the mean­time, how well do you know Judy?

via Wel­come to Twin Peaks

Relat­ed Con­tent

David Lynch Falls in Love: A Clas­sic Scene From Twin Peaks

The Paint­ings of Filmmaker/Visual Artist David Lynch

Watch David Lynch’s Hotel Room: The Com­plete Minis­eries Fea­tur­ing Har­ry Dean Stan­ton, Grif­fin Dunne, and Crispin Glover (1993)

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.

Philip K. Dick Makes Off-the-Wall Predictions for the Future: Mars Colonies, Alien Viruses & More (1981)

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Philip K. Dick died in 1982, but read­ers — more read­ers than ever, in all prob­a­bil­i­ty — still thrill to his dar­ing, uncon­ven­tion­al imag­i­na­tion, and how tight­ly he could weave the inven­tions of that imag­i­na­tion into mun­dane real­i­ty. (Some­times they won­der, as in his meet­ing with God, to what extent he him­self could tell the two apart.) And like many strong-visioned writ­ers of what rough­ly fell into the cat­e­go­ry of sci­ence fic­tion, Dick got con­sult­ed now and again as some­thing of a futur­ist.

In 1980, David Wal­lechin­sky, Amy Wal­lace, and Irv­ing Wal­lace (the Book of Lists peo­ple) round­ed up visions of the future from all man­ner of sages past and present, pre­scient and incom­pe­tent, in order to cre­ate The Book of Pre­dic­tions. Dick­’s con­tri­bu­tions, repub­lished in the Sep­tem­ber 2003 issue of fanzine PKD Otaku, go like this.

  • 1983: The Sovi­et Union will devel­op an oper­a­tional par­ti­cle-beam accel­er­a­tor, mak­ing mis­sile attack against that coun­try impos­si­ble. At the same time the U.S.S.R. will deploy this weapon as a satel­lite killer. The U.S. will turn, then, to nerve gas.
  • 1984: The U.S. will per­fect a sys­tem by which hydro­gen, stored in met­al hydrides, will serve as a fuel source, elim­i­nat­ing a need for oil.
  • 1985: By or before this date there will be a titan­ic nuclear acci­dent either in the U.S.S.R. or in the U.S., result­ing in shut­ting down all nuclear pow­er plants.
  • 1986: Such satel­lites as HEAO‑2 will uncov­er vast, unsus­pect­ed high ener­gy phe­nom­e­non in the uni­verse, indi­cat­ing that there is suf­fi­cient mass to col­lapse the uni­verse back when it has reached its expan­sion lim­it.
  • 1989: The U.S. and the Sovi­et Union will agree to set up one vast meta­com­put­er as a cen­tral source for infor­ma­tion avail­able to the entire world; this will be essen­tial due to the huge amount of infor­ma­tion com­ing into exis­tence.
  • 1993: An arti­fi­cial life form will be cre­at­ed in a lab, prob­a­bly in the U.S.S.R., thus reduc­ing our inter­est in locat­ing life forms on oth­er plan­ets.
  • 1995: Com­put­er use by ordi­nary cit­i­zens (already avail­able in 1980) will trans­form the pub­lic from pas­sive view­ers of TV into men­tal­ly alert, high­ly trained, infor­ma­tion-pro­cess­ing experts.
  • 1997: The first closed-dome colonies will be suc­cess­ful­ly estab­lished on Luna and Mars. Through DNA mod­i­fi­ca­tion, qua­si-mutant humans will be cre­at­ed who can sur­vive under non-Ter­ran con­di­tions, i.e., alien envi­ron­ments.
  • 1998: The Sovi­et Union will test a propul­sion dri­ve that moves a star­ship at the veloc­i­ty of light; a pilot ship will set out for Prox­i­ma Cen­tau­rus, soon to be fol­lowed by an Amer­i­can ship.
  • 2000: An alien virus, brought back by an inter­plan­e­tary ship, will dec­i­mate the pop­u­la­tion of Earth, but leave the colonies on Luna and Mars intact.
  • 2012: Using tachyons (par­ti­cles that move back­ward in time) as a car­ri­er, the Sovi­et Union will attempt to alter the past with sci­en­tif­ic infor­ma­tion.

Cher­ry-pick­ers among us will fix­ate on Dick­’s near-hits: the devel­op­ment of DNA mod­i­fi­ca­tion, a 1985 nuclear acci­dent in the U.S.S.R. (Cher­nobyl hap­pened in 1986), and com­put­er use by ordi­nary cit­i­zens (though our sta­tus as “men­tal­ly alert, high­ly trained, infor­ma­tion-pro­cess­ing experts” admit­ted­ly remains ques­tion­able). Oth­ers might pre­fer to high­light the most improb­a­ble, such as the elim­i­nat­ed need for oil, the cre­ation of arti­fi­cial life, and not just the 21st-cen­tu­ry exis­tence but even­tu­al time-trav­el­ing capa­bil­i­ties of the Sovi­et Union.

Still, even in his fic­tion, Dick does have his moments of prophe­cy, espe­cial­ly for those who share his para­noia that we’ve unwit­ting­ly let our­selves slip into sur­veil­lance-state con­di­tions. But I’ve always found him best, espe­cial­ly in the what-if-Japan-won-the-war sto­ry The Man in the High Cas­tle, as a teller of alter­nate his­to­ries, whether of the past, present, or future. These pre­dic­tions, stretch­ing from just after the writer’s death to just before our time, strike me as noth­ing so much as the premis­es for the best nov­el Philip K. Dick nev­er wrote.

You can find 33 of his sto­ries online here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Philip K. Dick Takes You Inside His Life-Chang­ing Mys­ti­cal Expe­ri­ence

Robert Crumb Illus­trates Philip K. Dick’s Infa­mous, Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Meet­ing with God (1974)

33 Sci-Fi Sto­ries by Philip K. Dick as Free Audio Books & Free eBooks

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind of Nails It

Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like Today — in 2014

Mark Twain Pre­dicts the Inter­net in 1898: Read His Sci-Fi Crime Sto­ry, “From The ‘Lon­don Times’ in 1904”

In 1968, Stan­ley Kubrick Makes Pre­dic­tions for 2001: Human­i­ty Will Con­quer Old Age, Watch 3D TV & Learn Ger­man in 20 Min­utes

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.

Take the 146-Question Knowledge Test Thomas Edison Gave to Prospective Employees (1921)

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I remem­ber open­ing my col­lege news­pa­per one day, and out of it fell what looked like an adver­tis­ing sup­ple­ment of unusu­al­ly util­i­tar­i­an design. Upon clos­er inspec­tion, it con­tained a series of math‑y look­ing prob­lems for the read­er to work out and, if they did so, mail in to an address pro­vid­ed. Word soon began to cir­cu­late that this unusu­al leaflet came from no less an insti­tu­tion than Google itself, already well known as a provider of advanced search ser­vices but not quite yet as a benev­o­lent provider of dream jobs (an image now sat­i­rized in movies like The Intern­ship).

The unusu­al hir­ing prac­tices of giant, inno­v­a­tive Amer­i­can tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies have become the stuff of mod­ern myth, but the usage of seem­ing­ly job-unre­lat­ed intel­lec­tu­al tests as a fil­ter for poten­tial employ­ees has a much longer his­to­ry. Thomas Edi­son, that orig­i­nal giant of Amer­i­can tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion, put for­ward the first famous exam­ple: a 146-ques­tion test on sub­jects of gen­er­al knowl­edge from geog­ra­phy to his­to­ry to physics to the price of gold.

“Amer­i­cans obsessed over the test fol­low­ing [the] pub­li­ca­tion of many ques­tions in the May 11, 1921 New York Times,” writes Pale­o­fu­ture’s Matt Novak. “From there the test was debat­ed, copied, and par­o­died in news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines around the coun­try.” If you’d like to get a sense of how you’d have fared in the scram­ble for a sweet Edi­son job, set your mind back to the ear­ly 1920s and tack­le these ques­tions as best you can:

1. What coun­tries bound France?

2. What city and coun­try pro­duce the finest chi­na?

3. Where is the Riv­er Vol­ga?

4. What is the finest cot­ton grown?

5. What coun­try con­sumed the most tea before the war?

6. What city in the Unit­ed States leads in mak­ing laun­dry machines?

7. What city is the fur cen­tre of the Unit­ed States?

8. What coun­try is the great­est tex­tile pro­duc­er?

9. Is Aus­tralia greater than Green­land in area?

10. Where is Copen­hagen?

11. Where is Spitzber­gen?

12. In what coun­try oth­er than Aus­tralia are kan­ga­roos found?

13. What tele­scope is the largest in the world?

14. Who was Besse­mer and what did he do?

15. How many states in the Union?

16. Where do we get prunes from?

17. Who was Paul Revere?

18. Who was John Han­cock?

19. Who was Plutarch?

20. Who was Han­ni­bal?

21. Who was Dan­ton?

22. Who was Solon?

23. Who was Fran­cis Mar­i­on?

24. Who was Leonidas?

25. Where did we get Louisiana from?

26. Who was Pizarro?

27. Who was Boli­var?

28. What war mate­r­i­al did Chile export to the Allies dur­ing the war?

29. Where does most of the cof­fee come from?

30. Where is Korea?

31. Where is Manchuria?

32. Where was Napoleon born?

33. What is the high­est rise of tide on the North Amer­i­can Coast?

34. Who invent­ed log­a­rithms?

35. Who was the Emper­or of Mex­i­co when Cortez land­ed?

36. Where is the Impe­r­i­al Val­ley and what is it not­ed for?

37. What and where is the Sar­gas­so Sea?

38. What is the great­est known depth of the ocean?

39. What is the name of a large inland body of water that has no out­let?

40. What is the cap­i­tal of Penn­syl­va­nia?

41. What state is the largest? Next?

42. Rhode Island is the small­est state. What is the next and the next?

43. How far is it from New York to Buf­fa­lo?

44. How far is it from New York to San Fran­cis­co?

45. How far is it from New York to Liv­er­pool?

46. Of what state is Hele­na the cap­i­tal?

47. Of what state is Tal­la­has­see the cap­i­tal?

48. What state has the largest cop­per mines?

49. What state has the largest amethyst mines?

50. What is the name of a famous vio­lin mak­er?

51. Who invent­ed the mod­ern paper-mak­ing machine?

52. Who invent­ed the type­set­ting machine?

53. Who invent­ed print­ing?

54. How is leather tanned?

55. What is arti­fi­cial silk made from?

56. What is a cais­son?

57. What is shel­lac?

58. What is cel­lu­loid made from?

59. What caus­es the tides?

60. To what is the change of the sea­sons due?

61. What is coke?

62. From what part of the North Atlantic do we get cod­fish?

63. Who reached the South Pole?

64. What is a mon­soon?

65. Where is the Mag­dale­na Bay?

66. From where do we import figs?

67. From where do we get dates?

68. Where do we get our domes­tic sar­dines?

69. What is the longest rail­road in the world?

70. Where is Kenosha?

71. What is the speed of sound?

72. What is the speed of light?

73. Who was Cleopa­tra and how did she die?

74. Where are con­dors found?

75, Who dis­cov­ered the law of grav­i­ta­tion?

76. What is the dis­tance between the earth and sun?

77. Who invent­ed pho­tog­ra­phy?

78. What coun­try pro­duces the most wool?

79. What is felt?

80. What cere­al is used in all parts of the world?

81. What states pro­duce phos­phates?

82. Why is cast iron called pig iron?

83. Name three prin­ci­pal acids?

84. Name three pow­er­ful poi­sons.

85. Who dis­cov­ered radi­um?

86. Who dis­cov­ered the X‑ray?

87. Name three prin­ci­pal alka­lis.

88. What part of Ger­many do toys come from?

89. What States bound West Vir­ginia?

90. Where do we get peanuts from?

91. What is the cap­i­tal of Alaba­ma?

92. Who com­posed “Il Trova­tore”?

93. What is the weight of air in a room 20 by 30 by 10?

94. Where is plat­inum found?

95. With what met­al is plat­inum asso­ci­at­ed when found?

96. How is sul­phuric acid made?

97. Where do we get sul­phur from?

98. Who dis­cov­ered how to vul­can­ize rub­ber?

99. Where do we import rub­ber from?

100. What is vul­can­ite and how is it made?

101. Who invent­ed the cot­ton gin?

102. What is the price of 12 grains of gold?

103. What is the dif­fer­ence between anthracite and bitu­mi­nous coal?

104. Where do we get ben­zol from?

105. Of what is glass made?

106. How is win­dow glass made?

107. What is porce­lain?

108. What coun­try makes the best opti­cal lens­es and what city?

109. What kind of a machine is used to cut the facets of dia­monds?

110. What is a foot pound?

111. Where do we get borax from?

112. Where is the Assuan Dam?

113. What star is it that has been recent­ly mea­sured and found to be of enor­mous size?

114. What large riv­er in the Unit­ed States flows from south to north?

115. What are the Straits of Messi­na?

116. What is the high­est moun­tain in the world?

117. Where do we import cork from?

118. Where is the St. Gothard tun­nel?

119. What is the Taj Mahal?

120. Where is Labrador?

121. Who wrote “The Star-Span­gled Ban­ner”?

122. Who wrote “Home, Sweet Home”?

123. Who was Mar­tin Luther?

124. What is the chief acid in vine­gar?

125. Who wrote “Don Quixote”?

126. Who wrote “Les Mis­er­ables”?

127. What place is the great­est dis­tance below sea lev­el?

128. What are axe han­dles made of?

129. Who made “The Thinker”?

130. Why is a Fahren­heit ther­mome­ter called Fahren­heit?

131. Who owned and ran the New York Her­ald for a long time?

132. What is copra?

133. What insect car­ries malar­ia?

134. Who dis­cov­ered the Pacif­ic Ocean?

135. What coun­try has the largest out­put of nick­el in the world?

136. What ingre­di­ents are in the best white paint?

137. What is glu­cose and how made?

138. In what part of the world does it nev­er rain?

139. What was the approx­i­mate pop­u­la­tion of Eng­land, France, Ger­many and Rus­sia before the war?

140. Where is the city of Mec­ca?

141. Where do we get quick­sil­ver from?

142. Of what are vio­lin strings made?

143. What city on the Atlantic seaboard is the great­est pot­tery cen­tre?

144. Who is called the “father of rail­roads” in the Unit­ed States?

145. What is the heav­i­est kind of wood?

146. What is the light­est wood?

Some of these ques­tions, like those on the loca­tion of Copen­hagen or the iden­ti­ty of Leonidas (you need think back only to 300), have grown eas­i­er with time. Some — “What is coke?” “What is vul­can­ite and how is it made?” — have grown hard­er. Oth­ers will require you to call upon not cur­rent knowl­edge, but peri­od knowl­edge: sure, you know the num­ber of states in the union now, but how about in 1921? And sure, you know which city is the fur cen­ter of the Unit­ed States now, but how about in 1921?

Once you’ve made your guess­es, you can check your answers over at Pale­o­fu­ture. Edis­on’s test will almost cer­tain­ly frus­trate you — and if it does­n’t, you may have a career wait­ing not at Google, but on Jeop­ardy! — and it may even fill you with grat­i­tude that we live in an age where hot employ­ers check for raw brain­pow­er, not the abil­i­ty to mem­o­rize a seem­ing­ly ran­dom assort­ment of facts. But the test itself, like sev­er­al of its ques­tions, pulls a bit of a trick. The tremen­dous amount of atten­tion it received when the pub­lic caught a glimpse of it reveals Edis­on’s mas­tery of the high­est Amer­i­can force: pub­lic­i­ty.

Note: Thanks to one of our read­ers, you can see how Edi­son defend­ed the test in the pages of The New York Times.

via Pale­o­fu­ture

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Har­vard Stu­dents Fail the Lit­er­a­cy Test Louisiana Used to Sup­press the Black Vote in 1964

Thomas Edi­son & His Trusty Kine­to­scope Cre­ate the First Movie Filmed In The US (c. 1889)

Take The Near Impos­si­ble Lit­er­a­cy Test Louisiana Used to Sup­press the Black Vote (1964)

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.

Say What You Really Mean with Downloadable Cindy Sherman Emoticons

CindyShermanicon

As the world becomes increas­ing­ly depen­dent on vir­tu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the poten­tial for mis­un­der­stand­ing is ever present. I resist­ed the use of emoti­cons and stick­ers at first. They struck me as the pic­to­r­i­al equiv­a­lent of LOL. If that’s the best you can man­age, why try at all?

I’ve since reversed my posi­tion. Sev­er­al things con­tributed to this change in atti­tude:

  • The peace of mind that comes from any kind of con­fir­ma­tion that one’s mes­sage has indeed been received.
  • The unsup­port­ably terse com­mu­ni­ca­tion style of a col­league. Whether inten­tion­al or not, his mono­syl­lab­ic replies to my flur­ry of texts and emails seemed to indi­cate dis­dain… for me! Hey Buster, I’m busy too…

By curat­ing my emo­tions and Face­book stick­ers care­ful­ly, I’ve cob­bled togeth­er a visu­al short­hand vocab­u­lary that works for me. It’s a mat­ter of self respect. (And self preser­va­tion. My wardrobe’s already run­ning afoul of the Secret Inter­net Police. Why give them ammo to accuse me of unseem­ly cling­ing to a long gone stick­er-obsessed girl­hood?)

If you think I’m over­think­ing this, you like­ly won’t be inter­est­ed in down­load­ing artist Hyo Hong’s Cindy Sher­man-icons for your per­son­al use.

Or maybe they’re exact­ly what you’ve been wait­ing for, you old art snob, you!

Either way… enjoy!

The Sher­man-icons are a log­i­cal exten­sion of oth­er Hong projects that play with per­cep­tions of non-face-to-face inter­ac­tions, includ­ing the Upside Down Face­book Page, the New York Taxi Guest­book, and Hand-Writ­ten Face­book Com­ment.

If the pur­pose of an emoti­con is to con­vey a cer­tain feel­ing or atti­tude on the part of the respon­dent, the chameleon­ic Sher­man is well suit­ed to car­ry the bur­den. The pho­tog­ra­ph­er has served as her own mod­el for four decades worth of por­traits. She has embod­ied such arche­types as house­wife, pros­ti­tute, dancer, actress, damsel in dis­tress, and socialite. Her pur­suit of cer­tain truths often leads her to embrace the grotesque. Her will­ing­ness to look like hell in the ser­vice of her art con­tin­ues to shock and some­times offend. (Let’s just say my late moth­er-in-law was not a fan.)

How won­der­ful that this rad­i­cal artist’s work is now avail­able to you in a form that may prove every bit as use­ful as a gift shop tote bag or umbrel­la.

CindyShermanicon_emoticons-int-9Feel­ing beat­en down by life?

3043342-slide-s-8-cindy-shermans-face-makes-for-the-worldsSus­pi­cious of another’s motives?
3043342-slide-s-1-cindy-shermans-face-makes-for-the-worlds
Hope­ful in a sit­u­a­tion where hopes are almost cer­tain to be dashed?

Do you real­ly want to depend on a car­toon smi­ley face to get that across for you? (See below.)

No guar­an­tee that Sher­man-icon users’ impuls­es will be cor­rect­ly inter­pret­ed on the receiv­ing end, but it seems a risk worth tak­ing.

Click here for easy 3‑step instruc­tions for down­load­ing and using Cindy Sher­man-icons.

via Its Nice That

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cindy Sher­man and the Art of Imper­son­ation

Stephen Hawk­ing Starts Post­ing on Face­book: Join His Quest to Explain What Makes the Uni­verse Exist

Art for the One Per­cent: 60 Min­utes on the Excess & Hubris of the Inter­na­tion­al Art Mar­ket

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and per­former whose next mis­sion is por­tray­ing a decid­ed­ly Cindy Sher­manesque busi­ness woman in a free read­ing of Lunchtime, Greg Kotis’ play of office romance in the time of the New York Deli Wars.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Download Free NASA Software and Help Protect the Earth from Asteroids!

NASA’s Asteroid Data Hunter

Yes, you can help save the world. And just by down­load­ing some free soft­ware. Writes NASA:

Pro­tect­ing the Earth from the threat of aster­oid impacts means first know­ing where they are. NASA is har­ness­ing the incred­i­ble poten­tial of inno­va­tors, mak­ers and cit­i­zen sci­en­tists by open­ing up the search. In an increas­ing­ly con­nect­ed world, NASA rec­og­nizes the val­ue of the pub­lic as a part­ner in address­ing some of the country’s most press­ing chal­lenges. We need your help in iden­ti­fy­ing aster­oids – and to help fur­ther this effort, we’ve built an appli­ca­tion that enables every­one, every­where, to help solve this glob­al chal­lenge.

To down­load the app and join the hunt for aster­oids, please click here. To get more infor­ma­tion on the project (in which Har­vard is a strate­gic par­tic­i­pant) click here.

Next up? Hope­ful­ly an app that saves Cal­i­for­nia, which, a NASA offi­cial projects, will run out of water by next year.

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.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free NASA eBook The­o­rizes How We Will Com­mu­ni­cate with Aliens

NASA Puts Online a Big Col­lec­tion of Space Sounds, and They’re Free to Down­load and Use

NASA Archive Col­lects Great Time-Lapse Videos of our Plan­et

Ray Brad­bury Reads Mov­ing Poem on the Eve of NASA’s 1971 Mars Mis­sion

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The Keys to Happiness: The Emerging Science and the Upcoming MOOC by Raj Raghunathan

Psy­chol­o­gy has made many advances in the past few decades, notably in cog­ni­tive sci­ence, neu­ro­science, and behav­ioral psy­chol­o­gy. A major new focus area in psy­chol­o­gy that draws upon these dis­ci­plines start­ed in 1998 when Mar­tin Selig­man, then pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion, called on his col­leagues to start study­ing hap­pi­ness, rather than ill­ness­es, the tra­di­tion­al focus of psy­chol­o­gy. The result was an explo­sion of research, aca­d­e­m­ic depart­ments, and pop­u­lar books and the cre­ation of a new field of ‘pos­i­tive psy­chol­o­gy’. It is this field that Dr. Raj Raghu­nathan stud­ies, and he pas­sion­ate­ly teach­es his stu­dents about the sci­ence of hap­pi­ness at the McCombs School of Busi­ness  at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin. He also writes a blog col­umn for Psy­chol­o­gy Today. This sum­mer, Raghu­nathan, who is cur­rent­ly vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor at the Indi­an School of Busi­ness, will be offer­ing his MOOC, A Life of Hap­pi­ness and Ful­fill­ment, to the pub­lic on the Cours­era plat­form.

It may be sur­pris­ing that a course on hap­pi­ness is being offered in busi­ness school, the sup­posed fac­to­ry of bud­ding ruth­less cap­i­tal­ists. How­ev­er, times are chang­ing, and enlight­ened busi­ness schools can be a good set­ting to think about the social and eco­nom­ic means and ends in our cur­rent soci­ety. In fact, it was a busi­ness con­text which steered Raghu­nathan towards study­ing hap­pi­ness in the first place:

When I vis­it­ed India in 2007 I met up with my class­mates from 15 years ago and I dis­cov­ered two things. One, there’s very lit­tle cor­re­la­tion between aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess and career suc­cess. The peo­ple who were at the top weren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly the ones who were doing well in their careers, which is, of course, quite well known in the research. But sec­ond, there was an even small­er cor­re­la­tion between career suc­cess and life suc­cess. The guys who were real­ly suc­cess­ful weren’t able to main­tain a con­ver­sa­tion with me and weren’t able to be present, they were con­stant­ly dis­tract­ed. They had bags under their eyes, had put on weight, and it was clear that they weren’t very hap­py.

Fast for­ward and you find Raghu­nathan, after obtain­ing a PhD at New York Uni­ver­si­ty, a tenured fac­ul­ty mem­ber at the McCombs School of Busi­ness, a top-20 U.S. busi­ness school, teach­ing stu­dents about hap­pi­ness. There are only a few tenure-track pro­fes­sors in the coun­try teach­ing a whole course on hap­pi­ness in U.S. busi­ness schools, so Raghu­nathan has been a trail­blaz­er. It is also a great tes­ta­ment to the Indi­an School of Busi­ness, a pre­mier busi­ness pro­gram in a rapid­ly indus­tri­al­iz­ing coun­try, that this sub­ject was cho­sen to be their first MOOC offer­ing in its new part­ner­ship with Cours­era.

Hap­pi­ness Sci­ence vs. the Wis­dom Lit­er­a­ture

As peo­ple have been con­cerned with hap­pi­ness from before the dawn of civ­i­liza­tion, we’ve had many sources to turn to with regard to hap­pi­ness: intu­ition, tra­di­tion, rea­son, but most­ly, reli­gious and spir­i­tu­al wis­dom. Now sci­ence has recent­ly added a new dimen­sion to our under­stand­ing. We can see, for exam­ple, which parts of the brain are active dur­ing dif­fer­ent emo­tion­al states, and under­stand bet­ter the role of neu­ro­trans­mit­ters, such as sero­tonin and dopamine. One very con­ve­nient, prac­ti­cal result for psy­chol­o­gy is that these changes in brain states are large­ly cor­re­lat­ed with self-report­ed answers of how hap­py peo­ple feel—so hap­pi­ness is fair­ly straight­for­ward to mea­sure (you can take a 20-minute hap­pi­ness test here if you are inter­est­ed). So what have we found out about hap­pi­ness? It turns out that many of the find­ings sup­port the religious/spiritual view­points. For exam­ple:

  • Mon­ey can­not buy you hap­pi­ness, unless you’re poor. Robust sur­veys among a broad array of peo­ple across coun­tries indi­cate that beyond a cer­tain thresh­old, peo­ple do not report being hap­pi­er. Specif­i­cal­ly, in the U.S., Daniel Kah­ne­man and Angus Deaton found through a robust sur­vey of 450,000 Amer­i­cans that once peo­ple reach an income thresh­old of around $75,000 per year, they tend not to be any hap­pi­er.
  •  Car­ing for oth­ers is one of the most impor­tant things you can do. Anoth­er spe­cif­ic find­ing that the sci­ence brings us is the val­ue of altru­ism. Stud­ies have shown, for exam­ple, that when giv­en a small sum of mon­ey, the peo­ple who give it to oth­ers, rather than spend­ing it on them­selves, actu­al­ly report being hap­pi­er. Raghu­nathan also adds that being altru­is­tic does­n’t have to mean being bor­ing, and he has his class­es exper­i­ment with fun ways to be altru­is­tic.

These find­ings are sim­i­lar to the teach­ings of many wis­dom tra­di­tions, but they also give more specifics and pro­vide insight into the under­ly­ing mech­a­nisms involved. These can result in prac­ti­cal sug­ges­tions and tips for man­ag­ing our­selves bet­ter through set­ting up help­ful habits, mind­sets, and trig­gers. But a puz­zling ques­tion has emerged: why do we often not pur­sue what we sup­pos­ed­ly want?

The Fun­da­men­tal Hap­pi­ness Para­dox

There is a phe­nom­e­non that most of us will prob­a­bly rec­og­nize, which Raghu­nathan calls the Fun­da­men­tal Hap­pi­ness Para­dox: we want to achieve hap­pi­ness, but often pur­sue things that clear­ly don’t lead to it. Raghu­nathan elab­o­rates:

On the one hand peo­ple think hap­pi­ness is very, very impor­tant to them, so there­fore you would think that they ought to be mak­ing deci­sions are con­sis­tent with that, but when we observe their deci­sions, a good 50–60 per­cent of the time they are sac­ri­fic­ing hap­pi­ness for the sake of oth­er things as they go about their dai­ly lives, in lit­tle small ways, and even in big ways.

The prob­lem is that we pur­sue hap­pi­ness through var­i­ous means, such as mon­ey, sta­tus, esteem, or health, but we some­times over­ly fix­ate on these means rather than the ends. As a soci­ety we do rec­og­nize this on some level—think of all the movies and tele­vi­sion shows that end with the pro­tag­o­nists real­iz­ing what’s real­ly impor­tant to them. Yet, it tells you some­thing if we keep hav­ing to remind our­selves about this con­stant­ly and repet­i­tive­ly in our cul­tur­al sto­ries. Psy­chol­o­gy has already explained why we eat the last few Chee­tos in a bowl, and in the future may help explain this mys­tery of why we don’t pur­sue our hap­pi­ness as direct­ly as we could.

Hap­pi­ness Comes in Threes

The Three Pil­lars of Hap­pi­ness

So what should we do to pur­sue hap­pi­ness? Raghu­nathan groups the research find­ings into three main pil­lars:

  1. Pur­sue mean­ing­ful work – Try to spend your ener­gy in ways that are mean­ing­ful to you, at work or at home. Mihaly Csik­szent­mi­haly has pop­u­lar­ized the notion of “flow”, those times when we are doing some­thing that so ful­ly absorbs our atten­tion that we lose track of time (I guess I must be in “flow” when­ev­er I’m watch­ing Grey’s Anato­my…). From a career stand­point, Raghu­nathan rec­om­mends mak­ing pas­sion a cri­te­ri­on for choos­ing your work: “you spend so much time at work you might as well make that a mean­ing­ful thing that you are doing in your life”. Per­haps this is not fea­si­ble for every­one at every point in their career, but it is sure­ly a sound guid­ing prin­ci­ple, as it has been echoed by Steve Jobs, Thore­au, Glo­ria Este­fan, and oth­ers.
  2. Main­tain close rela­tion­ships – Most peo­ple, upon reflec­tion, con­sid­er the rela­tion­ships they’ve devel­oped with fam­i­ly, friends, col­leagues, and oth­ers to be the most mean­ing­ful part of their lives. How­ev­er, we often don’t place a high pri­or­i­ty on build­ing or main­tain­ing these. Rela­tion­ships are like invest­ments that require time and atten­tion, and they are bonds that rep­re­sent com­mit­ments and expec­ta­tions, yet we are quick to down­play or dis­miss them. Social sci­ence offers tips and prac­ti­cal sug­ges­tions for improv­ing rela­tion­ships, such as: giv­ing your brain a cool­ing off peri­od when you are angry, see­ing for­give­ness as an inte­gral part of free­ing up your own mind, and cul­ti­vat­ing face-to-face time in our mobile con­nect­ed world.
  3. Have a spir­i­tu­al atti­tude – A strong sense of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, whether reli­gious­ly or oth­er­wise sourced, has been asso­ci­at­ed with reduced stress lev­els, and we know we can’t be hap­py when we are over-stressed. There is also grow­ing evi­dence that med­i­ta­tion prac­tices have ben­e­fi­cial effects. In fact, in the MOOC, Raghu­nathan will have a cou­ple of experts lead­ing par­tic­i­pants through the steps of the med­i­ta­tion process.

Do these three pil­lars reveal any shock­ing sur­pris­es? No, and thank­ful­ly not–otherwise it would be a dec­la­ra­tion that pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions had missed the boat on under­stand­ing hap­pi­ness (though Raghu­nathan points out that few spir­i­tu­al tra­di­tions empha­size the first pil­lar –pur­su­ing mean­ing­ful work). Rather, the con­tri­bu­tion of sci­ence is in the details. We start to see what cog­ni­tive dri­vers and bar­ri­ers to hap­pi­ness are. From this under­stand­ing comes evi­dence-based tech­niques and frame­works we can use to help our­selves con­struct hap­pi­er lives.

There is some seri­ous research on hap­pi­ness, and it has the poten­tial to direct­ly impact our lives. Whether you are in busi­ness school or high school, on the farm or in city hall, in a cubi­cle or at a retire­ment home—why wouldn’t you want to know more about what makes us hap­py? And you have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to be guid­ed by Dr. Raghu­nathan by sign­ing up for his free MOOC: A Life of Hap­pi­ness and Ful­fill­ment, which starts this sum­mer.

Char­lie Chung is pas­sion­ate about the inter­sec­tion of learn­ing and tech­nol­o­gy. He is Chief Edi­tor at Class Cen­tral, a MOOC search engine and reviews site. Spe­cial thanks to Raj Raghu­nathan, who agreed to be inter­viewed for this arti­cle, the Indi­an School of Busi­ness, and Cours­era.

Bob Dylan Goes Film Noir in His New Music Video

Bob Dylan’s new­ly-released album, Shad­ows in the Night, fea­tures Dylan cov­er­ing pop stan­dards made famous by Frank Sina­tra dur­ing the 1940s and 1950s. And what bet­ter way to pro­mote the album than to release a music video that pays homage to a great style of film from the same era — film noir.  The track show­cased in the noir video, “The Night We Called It A Day,” was record­ed by Sina­tra not once, not twice, but three times — in 1942, 1947 and 1957.  Between the sec­ond and third record­ings, Sina­tra starred in a noir film of his own. Now in the pub­lic domain, Sud­den­ly (1954) can be viewed online. It also appears in our col­lec­tion of 60 Free Noir Films.

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.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Roger Ebert Lists the 10 Essen­tial Char­ac­ter­is­tics of Noir Films

Watch Bob Dylan Play a Pri­vate Con­cert for One Lucky Fan

The 5 Essen­tial Rules of Film Noir

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist Poem The Waste Land

Bob Dylan and The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987. Lis­ten to 74 Tracks.

74 Essential Books for Your Personal Library: A List Curated by Female Creatives

virginia woolf list

Pub­lic domain image orig­i­nal­ly tak­en by George Charles Beres­ford.

When Open Cul­ture recent­ly pub­lished Jorge Luis Borges’ self-com­piled list of 74 ‘great works of lit­er­a­ture’, com­mis­sioned by Argen­tine pub­lish­er Hys­pamer­i­ca, I, along with many oth­ers, saw one glar­ing issue in the oth­er­wise fan­tas­ti­cal­ly diverse list: it includ­ed no works by female writ­ers.

Whether inten­tion­al or not, the fact that women are exclud­ed from Borges’ note­wor­thies (and in 1985, no less) means that a vast num­ber of his­tor­i­cal­ly and cul­tur­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant books and writ­ings have been over­looked. While this ought not to dis­cred­it the works list­ed in any way, after wit­ness­ing the immense pop­u­lar­i­ty of Borges’ list I cer­tain­ly felt that for his selec­tion to be rel­e­vant today it need­ed to be accom­pa­nied by a list of works which had been over­looked due to the gen­der of their respec­tive authors.

I decid­ed to put a sug­ges­tion to a group of inter­na­tion­al women writ­ers, artists and cura­tors, and we com­piled our own list of 74 ‘great works of lit­er­a­ture’ — one just as var­ied, loose and sub­stan­tial as that of Borges, but made up sole­ly of writ­ers iden­ti­fy­ing as women or non-gen­der-bina­ry. Over two days we amassed many sug­ges­tions, which I’ve now curat­ed to form the list below. It’s not intend­ed to inval­i­date the orig­i­nal, but rather to serve as an accom­pa­ni­ment to high­light and encour­age a dia­logue on gen­der imbal­ances in cre­ative and intel­lec­tu­al realms, as well as to pro­vide a bal­ance by active­ly ‘equal­is­ing’ that of Jorge Luis Borges.

  1. Agatha Christie — The Mouse­trap
  2. Alber­tine Sar­razin — L’As­tra­gale
  3. Alice Walk­er — The Col­or Pur­ple
  4. Anaïs Nin — Lit­tle Birds
  5. Angela Carter — Nights at the Cir­cus
  6. Angela Davis — Are Pris­ons Obse­lete?
  7. Ani­ta Desai — Clear Light of Day
  8. Anne Car­son — Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Red
  9. Anne Frank — The Diary of a Young Girl
  10. Anne Sex­ton — Live or Die
  11. Arund­hati Roy — The God of Small Things
  12. Banana Yoshi­mo­to — Kitchen
  13. bell hooks — Ain’t I a Woman?
  14. Beryl Bain­bridge — Mas­ter Georgie
  15. Beryl Markham — West with the Night
  16. Buchi Emecheta — The Joys of Moth­er­hood
  17. Car­son McCullers — The Heart is a Lone­ly Hunter
  18. Char­lotte Bronte — Jane Eyre
  19. Char­lotte Roche — Feucht­ge­bi­ete
  20. Chris Kraus — I Love Dick
  21. Colette — Chéri
  22. Daphne du Mau­ri­er — Rebec­ca
  23. Doris Less­ing — The Gold­en Note­book
  24. Edith Whar­ton — Age of Inno­cence
  25. Eileen Myles — Infer­no
  26. Elfriede Jelinek — Women as Lovers
  27. Emi­ly Bronte — Wuther­ing Heights
  28. Flan­nery O’Con­nor — Com­plete Sto­ries
  29. Françoise Sagan — Bon­jour Tristesse
  30. George Eliot — Silas Marn­er
  31. Gertrude Stein — The Mak­ing of Amer­i­cans
  32. Gwen­dolyn Brooks — To Dis­em­bark
  33. Han­nah Arendt — The Human Con­di­tion
  34. Harp­er Lee — To Kill a Mock­ing­bird
  35. Hillary Man­tel — Wolf Hall
  36. Iris Mur­doch — The Sea, The Sea
  37. James Tip­tree Jr. — Her Smoke Rose Up For­ev­er
  38. Jean Rhys — Wide Sar­gas­so Sea
  39. Jhumpa Lahiri — Inter­preter of Mal­adies
  40. Joan Did­ion — Slouch­ing Towards Beth­le­hem
  41. Joyce Car­ol Oats — A Blood­smoore Romance
  42. Jung Chang — Wild Swans
  43. Kate Zam­breno — Hero­ines
  44. Kathy Ack­er — Blood and Guts in High School
  45. Leono­ra Car­ring­ton — The Hear­ing Trum­pet
  46. Leslie Fein­berg — Stone Butch Blues
  47. Lor­rie Moore — Who Will Run the Frog Hos­pi­tal?
  48. Louise Erdrich — The Beet Queen
  49. Mar­garet Atwood — The Hand­maid­’s Tale
  50. Mar­guerite Duras — Le ravisse­ment de Lol V. Stein
  51. Mary Shel­ley — Franken­stein
  52. Mary Woll­stonecraft — A Vin­di­ca­tion of the Rights of Women
  53. Maya Angelou — I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
  54. Michelle Cliff — Abeng
  55. Miran­da July — No One Belongs Here More Than You
  56. Monique Wit­tig — Les Guéril­lères
  57. Murasa­ki Shik­ibu — Gen­ji Mono­gatari
  58. Muriel Spark — The Dri­ver’s Seat
  59. Octavia But­ler — Kin­dred
  60. Rachel Car­son — Silent Spring
  61. Rox­ane Gay — An Untamed State
  62. Sap­pho — Frag­ments
  63. Sara Strids­berg — Dar­ling Riv­er
  64. Sei Shō­nagon — The Pil­low Book
  65. Simone Weil — Grav­i­ty and Grace
  66. Sylvia Plath — The Bell Jar
  67. There­sa Hak Kyung Cha — Dic­tée
  68. Toni Mor­ri­son — Beloved
  69. Tove Jans­son — Mumintroll series
  70. Tsit­si Dan­garem­b­ga — Ner­vous Con­di­tions
  71. Ursu­la K Le Guin — The Left Hand of Dark­ness
  72. Vir­ginia Woolf — The Waves
  73. Willa Cather — The Song of the Lark
  74. Zadie Smith — On Beau­ty

Lulu Nunn is a Lon­don-based artist, writer, cura­tor and edi­tor of HOAX, an inter­na­tion­al jour­nal pub­lish­ing cre­ative work incor­po­rat­ing text. You can fol­low her at @lulu_nunn and HOAX at @hoaxpublication.

 


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