How Did Roman Aqueducts Work?: The Most Impressive Achievement of Ancient Rome’s Infrastructure, Explained

in History, Technology | April 13th, 2022

At its peak, ancient Rome enjoyed a vari­ety of com­forts that, once lost, would take cen­turies to recov­er. This process, of course, con­sti­tutes much of the sto­ry of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion. Though some knowl­edge did­n’t sur­vive in any use­ful form, some of it remained last­ing­ly embod­ied. The mighty ruins of Roman aque­ducts, for exam­ple, con­tin­ued to stand all across the for­mer Empire. Togeth­er they once con­sti­tut­ed a vast water-deliv­ery sys­tem, one of whose con­struc­tion and oper­a­tion it took human­i­ty quite some time to regain a func­tion­al under­stand­ing. Today, you can learn about both in the video from ancient-his­to­ry Youtu­ber Gar­rett Ryan just above.

“Greek engi­neers began build­ing aque­ducts as ear­ly as the sixth cen­tu­ry BC,” says Ryan. “A stone-line chan­nel car­ried spring water to archa­ic Athens, and Samos was served by an aque­duct that plunged through a tun­nel more than one kilo­me­ter long.”

These sys­tems devel­oped through­out the Hel­lenis­tic era, and their Roman suc­ces­sors made use of “arch­es and hydraulic con­crete, but above all it was the sheer num­ber and scale that set them apart.” Most Roman cities had “net­works of wells and cis­terns” to sup­ply drink­ing water; aque­ducts, in large part, came as “lux­u­ries, designed to sup­ply baths, ornate foun­tains, and the hous­es of the élite.” Man’s taste for lux­u­ry has inspired no few of his great works.

The task of build­ing Rome’s aque­ducts was, in essence, the task of build­ing “an arti­fi­cial riv­er flow­ing down­hill from source to city” — over great dis­tances using no pow­er but grav­i­ty, and thus on a descend­ing slope of about five to ten feet per mile. This pre­ci­sion engi­neer­ing was made pos­si­ble by the use of tools like the diop­tra and choro­bates, as well as an enor­mous amount of man­pow­er. Roman aque­ducts ran most­ly under­ground, but more impres­sive­ly in the ele­vat­ed chan­nels that have become land­marks today. “The most spec­tac­u­lar exam­ple is undoubt­ed­ly the Pont du Gard, locat­ed just out­side Nîmes,” says Ryan, and TV trav­el­er Rick Steves vis­its it in the clip above. What once served as infra­struc­ture for the well-watered man­sions of the wealthy and con­nect­ed now makes for a fine pic­nick­ing spot.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Roman Archi­tec­ture: A Free Online Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 CE: Explore Stun­ning Recre­ations of The Forum, Colos­se­um and Oth­er Mon­u­ments

A Huge Scale Mod­el Show­ing Ancient Rome at Its Archi­tec­tur­al Peak (Built Between 1933 and 1937)

The Roads of Ancient Rome Visu­al­ized in the Style of Mod­ern Sub­way Maps

How Did the Romans Make Con­crete That Lasts Longer Than Mod­ern Con­crete? The Mys­tery Final­ly Solved

Every­thing You Want­ed to Know About the L.A. Aque­duct That Made Roman Polanski’s Chi­na­town Famous: A New UCLA Archive

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

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“Europe’s Big Lie About Ukraine,” According to Stephen Fry

in Current Affairs | April 13th, 2022

“We’ll go down in his­to­ry as the first soci­ety that would­n’t save itself because it was­n’t cost effec­tive.”
–Kurt Von­negut

When Rus­sia invad­ed Ukraine, the West respond­ed with sanc­tions, arms ship­ments, and lots of moral sup­port. But then it drew a line. Europe (par­tic­u­lar­ly Ger­many) stills buys Russ­ian gas and oil in vast quan­ti­ties, effec­tive­ly bankrolling Putin’s bloody mil­i­tary cam­paign. It shows no incli­na­tion to make hard sac­ri­fices, includ­ing cut­ting fuel con­sump­tion or poten­tial­ly putting jobs at risk. And for­get about a No-Fly zone. All of this leaves some won­der­ing about Europe’s real moti­va­tions and cal­cu­la­tions. Above, writer and actor Stephen Fry lays out his skep­ti­cal take in a 14-minute video.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Stephen Fry on the Pow­er of Words in Nazi Ger­many: How Dehu­man­iz­ing Lan­guage Laid the Foun­da­tion for Geno­cide

Stephen Fry: What I Wish I Knew When I Was 18

How Ukraine’s Works of Art Are Being Saved in Wartime–Using the Lessons of World War II

Sav­ing Ukrain­ian Cul­tur­al Her­itage Online: 1,000+ Librar­i­ans Dig­i­tal­ly Pre­serve Arti­facts of Ukrain­ian Civ­i­liza­tion Before Rus­sia Can Destroy Them

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Watch a Local TV Station Switch From Black & White to Color for First Time (1967)

in History, Television | April 12th, 2022

The his­to­ry of tele­vi­sion is a murky, con­vo­lut­ed affair, filled with patent wars, cor­po­rate back­stab­bing, and sto­ries of thwart­ed genius found in many such tales. The sto­ry of col­or TV can seem no less com­pli­cat­ed, with patents stretch­ing all the way back to 1904 (filed by a Ger­man inven­tor), decades before the mag­ic box appeared in any liv­ing room. The first mechan­i­cal col­or sys­tem was designed by Scot­tish inven­tor John Logie Baird in 1928.

Attempts to broad­cast col­or TV would­n’t be made until the 1950s, with the first com­mer­cial broad­cast made by CBS air­ing in 1951 on five sta­tions. Hard­ly any­one could see it. When NBC broad­cast the Tour­na­ment of Ros­es Parade in 1954, few­er than 8,500 Amer­i­can house­holds owned a col­or TV set. By April 1961, an edi­to­r­i­al in Tele­vi­sion mag­a­zine argued that col­or “is still in the egg, and only skill­ful and expen­sive han­dling will get it out of the egg and on its feet.” Need­less to say, the adop­tion of the new tech­nol­o­gy was exceed­ing­ly slow.

Rat­ings wars and adver­tis­ing wars forced col­or to come of age in the mid-60s, and as a result “col­or TV trans­formed the way Amer­i­cans saw the world, writes his­to­ri­an Susan Mur­ray at Smith­son­ian, as well as the way “the world saw Amer­i­ca.” Col­or tele­vi­sion “was, in fact, often dis­cussed by its pro­po­nents as an ide­al form of Amer­i­can post­war con­sumer vision: a way of see­ing the world (and all of its bright­ly hued goods) in a spec­tac­u­lar form of ‘liv­ing col­or.’” Col­or was explic­it­ly talked up as spec­ta­cle, though sold to con­sumers as a truer rep­re­sen­ta­tion of real­i­ty.

“Net­work exec­u­tives pitched [col­or TV] to adver­tis­ers as a unique medi­um that would inspire atten­tive­ness and emo­tion­al engage­ment,” writes Mur­ray, “mak­ing [view­ers] more like­ly to pur­chase adver­tised prod­ucts, a grow­ing myr­i­ad of con­sumer goods and appli­ances that were now avail­able in a wider set of vibrant col­ors like turquoise and pink flamin­go.” (Thanks, of course, to the advent of space-age poly­mers.) Such his­to­ry pro­vides us with more con­text for the puz­zle­ment of news­man Bob Bruner in 1967 (above), intro­duc­ing view­ers to Iowa’s Chan­nel 2 switch-over to col­or.

“I feel dou­bly hon­ored to have been cho­sen to be the first one involved in our big change,” says Bruner after chat­ting with sta­tion man­ag­er Doug Grant, “because there are so many much more col­or­ful char­ac­ters around here than this report in the news.” That year, there were char­ac­ters like Pink Floyd appear­ing for the first time on Amer­i­can Band­stand (see that footage col­orized here), their psy­che­del­ic vibran­cy mut­ed in mono­chrome.

Bruner had already been upstaged near­ly ten years ear­li­er, when NBC’s WRC-TV in Wash­ing­ton, DC intro­duced its first col­or broad­cast with Pres­i­dent Dwight D. Eisen­how­er, who extolls the virtues of the medi­um above, in the old­est sur­viv­ing col­or video­tape record­ing. Even so, only around 25% of Amer­i­can house­holds owned a col­or TV in 1967. It would be anoth­er decade before every Amer­i­can house­hold (or every “con­sumer house­hold”) had one, and not until the mid-80s until the medi­um reached full sat­u­ra­tion around the globe.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When Rod Ser­ling Turned TV Pitch­man: See His Post-Twi­light Zone Ads for Ford, Maz­da, Gulf Oil & Smokey Bear

Pink Floyd’s Debut on Amer­i­can TV, Restored in Col­or (1967)

Elvis’ Three Appear­ances on The Ed Sul­li­van Show: Watch His­to­ry in the Mak­ing and from the Waist Up (1956)

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

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Why Algorithms Are Called Algorithms, and How It All Goes Back to the Medieval Persian Mathematician Muhammad al-Khwarizmi

in History, Math, Technology | April 12th, 2022

In recent decades, a medieval Per­sian word has come to promi­nence in Eng­lish and oth­er major world lan­guages. Many of use it on a dai­ly basis, often while regard­ing the con­cept to which it refers as essen­tial­ly mys­te­ri­ous. The word is algo­rithm, whose roots go back to the ninth cen­tu­ry in mod­ern-day Greater Iran. There lived a poly­math by the name of Muham­mad ibn Musa al-Khwariz­mi, whom we now remem­ber for his achieve­ments in geog­ra­phy, astron­o­my, and math­e­mat­ics. In that last field, he was the first to define the prin­ci­ples of “reduc­ing” and “bal­anc­ing” equa­tions, a sub­ject all of us came to know in school as alge­bra (a name itself descend­ed from the Ara­bic al-jabr, or “com­ple­tion”).

Today, a good few of us have come to resent algo­rithms even more than alge­bra. This is per­haps because algo­rithms are most pop­u­lar­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the deep, unseen work­ings of the inter­net, a sys­tem with ever increas­ing influ­ence over the things we do, the infor­ma­tion we receive, and even the peo­ple with whom we asso­ciate.

Pro­vid­ed suf­fi­cient data about us and the lives we lead, so we’re giv­en to under­stand, these algo­rithms can make bet­ter deci­sions for us than we can make for our­selves. But what exact­ly are they? You can get one answer from “Why Algo­rithms Are Called Algo­rithms,” the BBC Ideas video at the top of the post.

For West­ern civ­i­liza­tion, al-Khwarizmi’s most impor­tant book was Con­cern­ing the Hin­du Art of Reck­on­ing, which was trans­lat­ed into Latin three cen­turies after its com­po­si­tion. Al-Khwarizmi’s Latinized name “Algo­rit­mi” gave rise to the word algo­ris­mus, which at first referred to the dec­i­mal num­ber sys­tem and much lat­er came to mean “a set of step-by-step rules for solv­ing a prob­lem.” It was Enig­ma code­break­er Alan Tur­ing who “worked out how, in the­o­ry, a machine could fol­low algo­rith­mic instruc­tions and solve com­plex math­e­mat­ics. This was the birth of the com­put­er age.” Now, much fur­ther into the com­put­er age, algo­rithms “are help­ing us to get from A to B, dri­ving inter­net search­es, mak­ing rec­om­men­da­tions of things for us to buy, watch, or share.”

The algo­rithm giveth, but the algo­rithm also taketh away — or so it some­times feels as we make our way deep­er into the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry. In the oth­er BBC Ideas video just above, Jon Stroud makes an inves­ti­ga­tion into both the nature and the cur­rent uses of this math­e­mat­i­cal con­cept. The essen­tial job of an algo­rithm, as the experts explain to him, is that of pro­cess­ing data, these days often in large quan­ti­ties and of var­i­ous kinds, and increas­ing­ly with the aid of sophis­ti­cat­ed machine-learn­ing process­es. In mak­ing or influ­enc­ing choic­es humans would once have han­dled them­selves, algo­rithms do present a risk of “de-skilling” as we come to rely on their ser­vices. We all occa­sion­al­ly feel grat­i­tude for the bless­ings those ser­vices send our way, just as we all occa­sion­al­ly blame them for our dis­sat­is­fac­tions — mak­ing the algo­rithm, in oth­er words, into a thor­ough­ly mod­ern deity.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Algo­rithms for Big Data: A Free Course from Har­vard

Advanced Algo­rithms: A Free Course from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

This Is Your Kids’ Brains on Inter­net Algo­rithms: A Chill­ing Case Study Shows What’s Wrong with the Inter­net Today

The Prob­lem with Face­book: “It’s Keep­ing Things From You”

The Com­plex Geom­e­try of Islam­ic Art & Design: A Short Intro­duc­tion

How Youtube’s Algo­rithm Turned an Obscure 1980s Japan­ese Song Into an Enor­mous­ly Pop­u­lar Hit: Dis­cov­er Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plas­tic Love”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

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How Ukraine’s Works of Art Are Being Saved in Wartime–Using the Lessons of World War II

in Art, Current Affairs, History | April 11th, 2022

Much in Ukraine has been lost since the Russ­ian inva­sion com­menced this past Feb­ru­ary. But efforts to min­i­mize the dam­age have been respond­ing on all fronts, and not just geo­graph­i­cal ones. The preser­va­tion of Ukrain­ian cul­ture has become the top pri­or­i­ty for some groups, in response to Russ­ian forces’ seem­ing intent to destroy it. “Cul­tur­al her­itage is not only impact­ed, but in many ways it’s impli­cat­ed in and cen­tral to armed con­flict,” says Hay­den Bas­sett, direc­tor of the Vir­ginia Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry’s Cul­tur­al Her­itage Mon­i­tor­ing Lab, in the Vox explain­er above. “These are things that peo­ple point to that are uni­fy­ing fac­tors for their soci­ety. They are tan­gi­ble reflec­tions of their soci­ety.”

This very qual­i­ty made them a sad­ly appeal­ing tar­get for Russ­ian attacks. As the video’s nar­ra­tor puts it, Vladimir Putin “has made it clear that iden­ti­ty is at the ide­o­log­i­cal cen­ter of Rus­si­a’s inva­sion,” osten­si­bly an effort to reuni­fy two lands of a com­mon civ­i­liza­tion. For Ukraine, the strat­e­gy to pro­tect its own cul­tur­al her­itage dur­ing wartime involves two phas­es of work.

First, “iden­ti­fy what needs pro­tect­ing,” already a require­ment of the 1954 Con­ven­tion for the Pro­tec­tion of Cul­tur­al Prop­er­ty in the Event of Armed Con­flict (known as the “Hague Con­ven­tion). In Ukraine’s case, the list includes no few­er than sev­en UNESCO World Her­itage Sites.

Step two is to secure these cul­tur­al trea­sures, whether they be paint­ings, sculp­tures, build­ings, or any­thing else besides. This requires the col­lab­o­ra­tion of “gov­ern­ment agen­cies, mil­i­taries, NGOs, aca­d­e­mics, muse­um insti­tu­tions,” says Bas­sett, as well as of vol­un­teers on the ground phys­i­cal­ly safe­guard­ing the arti­facts. This often involves hid­ing them when­ev­er pos­si­ble, and “if his­to­ry is any indi­ca­tion,” says the nar­ra­tor, “col­lec­tions have moved under­ground or out­side of major cities, or out­side the coun­try entire­ly.” So it was in Europe under the maraud­ing of Nazi Ger­many, includ­ing, as seen in the France 24 seg­ment above, with hold­ings of the Lou­vre up to and includ­ing the Mona Lisa. The state of world geopol­i­tics today may have us won­der­ing if we’ve tru­ly learned the lessons of the Sec­ond World War, but at least the fight to save Ukrain­ian cul­ture reminds that we haven’t for­got­ten them all.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Sav­ing Ukrain­ian Cul­tur­al Her­itage Online: 1,000+ Librar­i­ans Dig­i­tal­ly Pre­serve Arti­facts of Ukrain­ian Civ­i­liza­tion Before Rus­sia Can Destroy Them

Take a Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Tour of the World’s Stolen Art

Ukraini­ans Play­ing Vio­lin in Bunkers as Rus­sians Bomb Them from the Sky

Lis­ten to Last Seen, a True-Crime Pod­cast That Takes You Inside an Unsolved, $500 Mil­lion Art Heist

When Pablo Picas­so and Guil­laume Apol­li­naire Were Accused of Steal­ing the Mona Lisa (1911)

Why Rus­sia Invad­ed Ukraine: A Use­ful Primer

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

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Mark Knopfler Shows How to Play His Fingerpicking Guitar Style

in Music | April 11th, 2022

So, you want to play gui­tar like Mark Knopfler? I mean, who wouldn’t, right? His style has been “leg­endary in the gui­tar com­mu­ni­ty for decades,” notes Ulti­mate Gui­tar. Seems every­one who’s picked up the instru­ment has har­bored a secret or not-so-secret desire to knock out “Sul­tans of Swing,” flaw­less­ly, no mat­ter what kind of music they play.

Accord­ing to the Inter­net, it’s easy. There are How-to guides, promis­ing 5 Ways to play like Knopfler. At least one les­son admits, “imi­tat­ing Mark Knopfler’s play­ing style is much eas­i­er said than done.” I’ve seen it done con­vinc­ing­ly once, by a gui­tar prodi­gy, raised by musi­cians, who toured with Bud­dy Guy. Oth­er­wise, I’m here to inform you that you can­not learn to play like Mark Knopfler in Five Min­utes.

For one thing, it took Knopfler him­self decades to hone his style, tone, and tech­nique — years and years of lis­ten­ing to old records, learn­ing Blind Willie John­son, Chet Atkins, and every­thing in-between. “Even when I would be about 20 or so,” he says, “I was already steeped in a lot of ear­ly coun­try blues and every­thing.” Then there were the “years of liv­ing hand to mouth as a gig­ging gui­tarist,” Jamie Dick­son writes at Music Radar.

Knopfler also admits, mod­est­ly, to being a bit of a prodi­gy. “I could do Elmore James-style steel from the very, very begin­ning when I was just a kid. After I heard it, I could just kind of do it.” When Dire Straits released their huge-sell­ing fifth album Broth­ers in Arms in 1985, it seemed like blues gui­tar was the last thing any­one want­ed. The era was all about show­ing off. Syn­th­pop, new wave, met­al, and rap ruled. Dire Straits played clean, laid-back tunes with tasty, taste­ful Amer­i­can licks.

Tak­ing show­man­ship cues from big sta­di­um acts (what he’s called “jack­boot” rock bands), Knopfler adapt­ed the folk blues styles he’d learned on acoustic and Nation­al res­onator gui­tars to the red sig­na­ture Stra­to­cast­ers he became famous for play­ing, pick­ing loud, elec­tri­fied roots rock with his fin­gers and thumb. “I real­ized the pick was becom­ing redun­dant,” he tells Gui­tar.

So, if you want to play like Knopfler, you’ll have to lose the pick. More­over, you might want to con­sid­er switch­ing to your non-dom­i­nant hand. “I’m left-hand­ed,” he says in his Gui­tar inter­view, “but I play right-hand­ed. They tried to teach me vio­lin at school for two or three years — right hand­ed– so by the time I was 15, I was into the habit of play­ing that way round.” It’s a lot to ask of any gui­tar stu­dent.

But there are plen­ty of ways to start pick­ing up Knopfler’s basics, then prac­tic­ing them year after year as he did, and lis­ten­ing to all of his influ­ences. Watch his whole appear­ance at the top, giv­ing brief fin­ger­pick­ing demon­stra­tions — from Singing Nun syn­co­pat­ed bass lines to his trade­mark singing dou­ble and triple stops. Learn more about his “fin­ger style finesse” at Pre­mier Gui­tar and see how his sound devel­oped around his favorite gui­tars in the short film above.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Mark Knopfler Gives a Short Mas­ter­class on His Favorite Gui­tars & Gui­tar Sounds

Gui­tar Sto­ries: Mark Knopfler on the Six Gui­tars That Shaped His Career

Mark Knopfler Plays a Poignant, Over­driv­en Ver­sion of “The Last Post,” Remem­ber­ing the Many Lives Lost in World War I

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

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Pink Floyd Releases Its First New Song in 28 Years to Help Support Ukraine

in Current Affairs, Music | April 8th, 2022

“I rang Nick up and said: ‘lis­ten, I want to do this thing for Ukraine. I’d be real­ly hap­py if you played on it and I’d also be real­ly hap­py if you’d agree to us putting it out as Pink Floyd.’ And he was absolute­ly on for that.

In 2015, David Gilmour was sched­uled to play a con­cert in Lon­don with the Ukrain­ian band Boom­Box. As he explained in a recent state­ment, the band’s lead singer Andriy Khlyvnyuk had trou­ble with his visa, leav­ing the rest of the Boom­box to back Gilmour on a ver­sion of “Wish You Were Here.” That song’s sen­ti­ments took on an entire­ly dif­fer­ent kind of urgency last month after Rus­sia invad­ed Ukraine.

“Recent­ly I read that Andriy had left his Amer­i­can tour with Boom­Box, had gone back to Ukraine, and joined up with the Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Defense,” said Gilmour. “Then I saw this incred­i­ble video on Insta­gram, where he stands in a square in Kyiv with this beau­ti­ful gold-domed church and sings in the silence of a city with no traf­fic or back­ground noise because of the war. It was a pow­er­ful moment that made me want to put it to music.”

The song Khlyvnyuk sings is “Oh, the Red Vibur­num in the Mead­ow,” a “1914 protest song,” The Guardian reports, “writ­ten in hon­or of the Sich Rifle­men who fought both in the first world war and the Ukrain­ian war of inde­pen­dence.” Gilmour decid­ed to go fur­ther and use the “big plat­form” of Pink Floyd to release a sin­gle by the band – their first orig­i­nal song in 28 years. He called drum­mer Nick Mason and they record­ed the track in Gilmour’s barn with bassist Guy Pratt and key­boardist Nitin Sawh­ney.

Released as “Hey, Hey, Rise Up” – with Khlyvnyuk’s approval (Gilmour says it took some doing to track him down) – the track’s pro­ceeds will be donat­ed to the Ukraine Human­i­tar­i­an Relief Fund. It’s prob­a­bly safe to say that this is not a Pink Floyd reunion. Gilmour insist­ed the band was done when key­boardist Richard Wright died in 2008. “This is the end,” he told the BBC, and there’s lit­tle rea­son to think he’s gear­ing up for a tour or a new Pink Floyd album now.

Instead, “Hey, Hey, Rise Up” is part of a larg­er protest by Gilmour, who writes of his Ukrain­ian daugh­ter-in-law Jan­i­na, his grand­chil­dren, and his “extend­ed Ukrain­ian fam­i­ly” as a very per­son­al con­nec­tion to the news of the inva­sion. But he also wants to give young Ukraini­ans like Khlyvnyuk – who had no idea the world was watch­ing – a larg­er voice and give voice to the shock and hor­ror felt the world over as civil­ian deaths and atroc­i­ties mount. As he wrote in his state­ment:

We, like so many, have been feel­ing the fury and the frus­tra­tion of this vile act of an inde­pen­dent, peace­ful demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try being invad­ed and hav­ing its peo­ple mur­dered by one of the world’s major pow­ers… We want to express our sup­port for Ukraine and in that way, show that most of the world thinks that it is total­ly wrong for a super­pow­er to invade the inde­pen­dent demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try that Ukraine has become.

Gilmour has pulled all his solo records and Pink Floyd’s cat­a­logue post-1987 from stream­ing ser­vices in Rus­sia. As for spec­u­la­tion that Roger Waters blocked the removal of ear­li­er Pink Floyd mate­r­i­al, or con­tro­ver­sies over Waters’ state­ments to Rus­sia Today and oth­er out­lets – “Let’s just say I was dis­ap­point­ed and let’s move on,” says Gilmour.

He’s more inter­est­ed in talk­ing about the war and Khlyvnyuk’s expe­ri­ences. “He said he had the most hell­ish day you could imag­ine,” when Gilmour spoke to him and sent him the song — a day spent “pick­ing up bod­ies of Ukraini­ans, Ukrain­ian chil­dren, help­ing with the clear­ing up. You know, our lit­tle prob­lems become pathet­ic and tiny,” he says, “in the con­text of what you see him doing.”

See the Eng­lish trans­la­tion of the song just below:

In the mead­ow a red vibur­num has bent down low
Our glo­ri­ous Ukraine has been trou­bled so
And we’ll take that red vibur­num and we will raise it up
And we, our glo­ri­ous Ukraine shall, hey—hey, rise up—and rejoice!
And we’ll take that red vibur­num and we will raise it up
And we, our glo­ri­ous Ukraine shall, hey—hey, rise up and rejoice!

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Pink Floyd’s First Mas­ter­piece: An Audio/Video Explo­ration of the 23-Minute Track, “Echoes” (1971)

Watch the Last, Tran­scen­dent Per­for­mance of “Echoes” by Pink Floyd Key­boardist Richard Wright & David Gilmour (2006)

Watch Pink Floyd Play Live Amidst the Ruins of Pom­peii in 1971 … and David Gilmour Does It Again in 2016

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

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The Rembrandt Book Bracelet: Behold a Functional Bracelet Featuring 1400 Rembrandt Drawings

in Art, Creativity, Design, Fashion, Museums | April 8th, 2022

Admit­ted­ly jew­el­ry is not one of our areas of exper­tise, but when we hear that a bracelet costs €10,000, we kind of expect it to have a smat­ter­ing of dia­monds.

Design­ers Lyske Gais and Lia Duinker are get­ting that amount for a wrist­let com­prised chiefly of five large paper sheets print­ed with high res images down­loaded free from the Rijksmu­se­um’s exten­sive dig­i­tal archive of Rem­brandt draw­ings and etch­ings.

Your aver­age pawn­bro­ker would prob­a­bly con­sid­er its 18-karat gold clasp, or pos­si­bly the cus­tom-made wood­en box in which it can be stored when not in use the most pre­cious thing about this orna­ment.

An ardent bib­lio­phile or art lover is per­haps bet­ter equipped to see the book bracelet’s val­ue.

Each gilt edged page — 1400 in all — fea­tures an image of a hand, sourced from 303 down­loaded Rem­brandt works.

An illus­tra­tion on the design­ers’ Duinker and Dochters web­site details the painstak­ing process where­by the book­bracelet takes shape in 8‑page sec­tions, or sig­na­tures, cross stitched tight­ly along­side each oth­er on a paper band. Put it on, and you can flip through Rem­brandt hands, Rolodex-style. When you want to do the dish­es or take a show­er, just pack it flat into that cus­tom box.

Gais and Duinker also include an index, which is handy for those times when you don’t feel like hunt­ing and peck­ing around your own wrist in search of a hand that appeared in the Flute Play­er or  Christ cru­ci­fied between the two mur­der­ers.

The Rembrandt’s Hands and a Lion’s Paw bracelet, titled like a book and pub­lished in a lim­it­ed edi­tion of 10, nabbed first prize in the 2015 Rijksstu­dio Awards, a com­pe­ti­tion that chal­lenges design­ers to cre­ate work inspired by the Rijksmuseum’s col­lec­tion.

(2015’s sec­ond prize went to an assort­ment of con­serves and condi­ments that harkened to Johannes Hannot’s 1668 Still Life with Fruit. 2014’s win­ner was a palette of eye­shad­ow and some eye­lin­ers inspired by Jan Adam Kruseman’s 1833 Por­trait of Ali­da Christi­na Assink and a Leen­dert van der Cooghen sketch.)

But what about that spe­cial art lov­ing bib­lio­phile who already has every­thing, includ­ing a Rem­brandts Hands and a Lions Paw boekarm­band?

Maybe you could get them Col­lier van hond­jes, Gais and Duinker’s fol­low up to the book bracelet, a rub­ber chok­er with an attached 112-page book pen­dant show­cas­ing Rem­brandt dogs sourced from var­i­ous museum’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tions.

Pur­chase Rem­brandt’s Hands and a Lions Paw lim­it­ed edi­tion book bracelet here.

And embark on mak­ing your own improb­a­ble thing inspired by a high res image in the Rijksmu­se­um’s Rijks Stu­dio here.

via Colos­sal/Neatora­ma

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and cre­ator, most recent­ly of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Why Dutch & Japanese Cities Are Insanely Well Designed (and American Cities Are Terribly Designed)

in Environment, Technology | April 7th, 2022

Pity the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca: despite its eco­nom­ic, cul­tur­al, and mil­i­tary dom­i­nance of so much of the world, it strug­gles to build cities that mea­sure up with the cap­i­tals of Europe and Asia. The likes of New York, Los Ange­les, and Chica­go offer abun­dant urban life to enjoy, but also equal­ly abun­dant prob­lems. Apart from the crime rates for which Amer­i­can cities have become fair­ly or unfair­ly noto­ri­ous, there’s also the mat­ter of urban design. Sim­ply put, they don’t feel as if they were built very well, which any Amer­i­can will feel after return­ing from a trip to Ams­ter­dam or Tokyo — or after watch­ing the videos on those cities by Dan­ish Youtu­ber OBF.

In Ams­ter­dam, OBF says, “com­muters will use their bikes to get to and enter tran­sit sta­tions, where they sim­ply park their bikes in these enor­mous bike-park­ing garages. Then they’ll trav­el on either a bus, tram, or train to their final des­ti­na­tion, but most of the time, the fastest and most con­ve­nient option is sim­ply tak­ing the bike to the final des­ti­na­tion.”

Near-impos­si­ble to imag­ine in the Unit­ed States, this preva­lence of cycling is a real­i­ty in not just the Dutch cap­i­tal but also in oth­er cities across the coun­try, which boasts 32,000 kilo­me­ters of bike lanes in total. And those count as only one of the infra­struc­tur­al glo­ries cov­ered in OBF’s video “Why the Nether­lands Is Insane­ly Well Designed.”

Tokyo, too, has its fair share of cyclists. When­ev­er I’m over there, I take note of all the well-dressed moms bik­ing their young chil­dren to school in the morn­ing, who cut fig­ures in the stark­est pos­si­ble con­trast to their Amer­i­can equiv­a­lents. But what real­ly under­lies the Japan­ese cap­i­tal’s dis­tinc­tive­ly intense urban­ism, lit­er­al­ly as well as fig­u­ra­tive­ly, is its net­work of sub­way trains. OBF takes the pre­ci­sion-engi­neered effi­cien­cy and the impec­ca­ble main­te­nance of this sys­tem as his main sub­ject in “Why Tokyo Is Insane­ly Well Designed.” But enough about good city design; what accounts for bad city design, espe­cial­ly in a rich coun­try like the U.S.?

OMF has an answer in one word: park­ing. Philadel­phia, for exam­ple, sup­plies its 1.6 mil­lion peo­ple with 2.2 mil­lion park­ing spaces. The con­se­quent defor­ma­tion of the city’s built envi­ron­ment, clear­ly vis­i­ble in aer­i­al footage, both sym­bol­izes and per­pet­u­ates the hege­mo­ny of the auto­mo­bile. That same con­di­tion once afflict­ed the Euro­pean and Asian cities that have since designed their way out of it and then some. While “some peo­ple might think it’s near­ly impos­si­ble to imple­ment these meth­ods into oth­er coun­tries,” says OBF, they “can be repli­cat­ed any place in the world if the peo­ple and lead­er­ship are will­ing to col­lab­o­rate and lis­ten to one anoth­er, and invest in infra­struc­ture that is people‑, environment‑, and future-cen­tered.” As an Amer­i­can liv­ing in a non-Amer­i­can city, I here­by invite him to come have a ride on the Seoul Metro.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Why Pub­lic Tran­sit Sucks in the Unit­ed States: Four Videos Tell the Sto­ry

Ani­ma­tions Visu­al­ize the Evo­lu­tion of Lon­don and New York: From Their Cre­ation to the Present Day

Why Europe Has So Few Sky­scrap­ers

Ani­mat­ed GIFs Show How Sub­way Maps of Berlin, New York, Tokyo & Lon­don Com­pare to the Real Geog­ra­phy of Those Great Cities

Leonar­do da Vin­ci Designs the Ide­al City: See 3D Mod­els of His Rad­i­cal Design

The Utopi­an, Social­ist Designs of Sovi­et Cities

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

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What Did People Do Before the Invention of Eyeglasses?

in Biology, Health, History | April 7th, 2022

You remem­ber it — one of the most heart­break­ing scenes on TV. A man longs for noth­ing more than time to read, to be free of all those peo­ple Sartre told us make our hells. Final­ly grant­ed his wish by the H‑Bomb, he then acci­den­tal­ly break his glass­es, ren­der­ing him­self unable make out a word. Oh, cru­el irony! Not an optometrist or opti­cian in sight! Sure­ly, there are “Time Enough at Last” jokes at eye care con­ven­tions world­wide.

Moral­i­ty tales wrapped in sci­ence fic­tion might make us think about all sorts of things, but one of the most obvi­ous ques­tions when we wit­ness the fate of Mr. Hen­ry Bemis, “char­ter mem­ber in the fra­ter­ni­ty of dream­ers,” might be, but what did peo­ple do before cor­rec­tive lens­es? Were mil­lions forced to accept his fate, liv­ing out their lives with far­sight­ed­ness, near­sight­ed­ness, and oth­er defects that impede vision? How did ear­ly humans sur­vive in times much less hos­pitable to dis­abil­i­ties? At least there were oth­ers to read and describe things for them.…

In truth, the Twi­light Zone is not far off the mark. Or at least near­sight­ed­ness and read­ing are close­ly linked. “As long as pri­mates have been around, there’s prob­a­bly been myopia,” says pro­fes­sor of oph­thal­mol­o­gy Ivan Schwab. But Schwab argues in his book Evo­lu­tion’s Wit­ness: How Eyes Evolved that the rise of read­ing like­ly caused sky­rock­et­ing rates of myopia over the past three hun­dred years. “Though genes and nutri­tion may play a role in near­sight­ed­ness,” Natal­ie Jacewicz writes at NPR, “[Schwab] says edu­ca­tion and myopia seem to be linked, sug­gest­ing that when peo­ple do a lot of close work, their eyes grow longer.”

As the His­to­ry Dose video above explains, the old­est image of a pair of glass­es dates from a 1351 paint­ing of Car­di­nal Hugh of Saint-Cher. The paint­ing is an anachro­nism — spec­ta­cles, the nar­ra­tor tells us, were invent­ed 23 years ear­li­er in Pisa, after the car­di­nal’s death. They “grad­u­al­ly spread across Europe and trav­elled the Silk Road to Chi­na.” (The old­est sur­viv­ing pair of glass­es dates from around 1475). So what hap­pened before 1286? As you’ll learn, glass­es were not the only way to enlarge small items. In fact, humans have been using some form of mag­ni­fy­ing lens to read small print (or man­u­script or cuneiform or what-have-you) for thou­sands of years. Those lens­es, how­ev­er, cor­rect­ed pres­by­opia, or far-sight­ed­ness.

Those with myopia were most­ly out of luck until the inven­tion of sophis­ti­cat­ed lens-grind­ing tech­niques and improved vision tests. But for most of human his­to­ry, unless you were a sailor or a sol­dier, you “like­ly spent your day as an arti­san, smith, or farm work­er,” occu­pa­tions where dis­tance vision did­n’t mat­ter as much. In fact, arti­sans like medieval scribes and illu­mi­na­tors, says Neil Han­d­ley — muse­um cura­tor of the Col­lege of Optometrists, Lon­don — were “actu­al­ly encour­aged to remain in their myopic con­di­tion, because it was actu­al­ly ide­al for them doing this job.”

It was­n’t until well after the time of Guten­berg that wear­ing lens­es on one’s face became a thing — and hard­ly a pop­u­lar thing at first. Ear­ly glass­es were held up to the eyes, not worn. They were heavy, thick, and frag­ile. In the 15th cen­tu­ry, “because… they were unusu­al and rare,” says Han­d­ley, “they were seen as hav­ing mag­i­cal pow­ers” and their wear­ers viewed as “in league with the dev­il, immoral.” That stig­ma went away, even if glass­es picked up oth­er asso­ci­a­tions that some­times made their users the sub­ject of taunts. But by the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, glass­es were com­mon around the world.

Giv­en that we all spend most of our time inter­act­ing with small text and images on hand­held screens, it seems maybe they haven’t spread wide­ly enough. “More than a bil­lion, and maybe as many as 2.5 bil­lion, peo­ple in the world need but don’t have glass­es to cor­rect for var­i­ous vision impair­ments,” notes Live­science, cit­ing fig­ures from The New York Times. For many peo­ple, espe­cial­ly in the devel­op­ing world, the ques­tion of how to get by in the world with­out eye­glass­es is still a very press­ing, present-day issue.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The World’s Old­est Sur­viv­ing Pair of Glass­es (Cir­ca 1475)

James Joyce, With His Eye­sight Fail­ing, Draws a Sketch of Leopold Bloom (1926)

Oliv­er Sacks Explains the Biol­o­gy of Hal­lu­ci­na­tions: “We See with the Eyes, But with the Brain as Well”

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

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Jim Morrison Accurately Predicts the Future of Electronic Music in 1969

in Music | April 6th, 2022

Jim Mor­ri­son didn’t fare par­tic­u­lar­ly well, health-wise, in the last years of his life. Alco­holism took a heavy toll, as we know. “Images of him with the shag­gy beard, hair reced­ing at the tem­ples, and excess flesh gath­er­ing around the armpits,” writes Rob Fis­ch­er at Rolling Stone, “can resem­ble, in ret­ro­spect, T.J. Miller more than Father John Misty. This is the out-to-seed drunk­ard that Val Kilmer por­trays in Oliv­er Stone’s icon­ic film The Doors.” It is also an unfor­tu­nate car­i­ca­ture that leaves out the cre­ative and intel­lec­tu­al ener­gy still left in the artist once called “the first major male sex sym­bol since James Dean died and Mar­lon Bran­do got a paunch.”

There was always more to Mor­ri­son than that, and in the 1969 inter­view above, filmed over a week in L.A. with Rolling Stone’s Jer­ry Hop­kins, he is still “remark­ably sharp,” Fis­ch­er writes.

Even though the con­ver­sa­tions includ­ed many rounds of whiskey, scotch and beer, his respons­es give the impres­sion of a thought­ful and engaged artist strug­gling to real­ize the full extent of his already colos­sal pow­ers of expres­sion. He was read­ing wide­ly, writ­ing poet­ry, grav­i­tat­ing more towards film­mak­ing, all while long­ing to recon­nect with the explo­sive ener­gy that comes with play­ing small venues and clubs like the Whiskey a Go Go.

Mor­ri­son and the Doors were exper­i­men­tal artists, tak­ing musi­cal risks and sell­ing them with sex. The Doors were the first rock band, for exam­ple, to use the new Moog syn­the­siz­er on an album. Even before Wendy Car­los’ Switched-On Bach intro­duced pop­u­lar audi­ences to the tech­nol­o­gy of audio syn­the­sis in 1968, the band brought jazz musi­cian Paul Beaver into the 1967 record­ings ses­sions for Strange Days to use Moog for effects on sev­er­al tracks and to dis­tort Mor­rison’s voice.

Beaver, an ear­ly adopter of the syn­the­siz­er, pro­duced two sem­i­nal Moog records in the late six­ties: The Zodi­ac: Cos­mic Sounds (1967) with Mort Gar­son and dou­ble album The None­such Guide to Elec­tron­ic Music (1968) with Bernie Krause.

There­fore, when Mor­ri­son, in his astute analy­sis of Amer­i­can music, “pre­dicts” the future of elec­tron­ic music in 1969 dur­ing the course of his inter­view with Hop­kins, he knows of what he speaks. He’s already seen it, and being the hip guy that he was, he had like­ly heard the work of elec­tron­ic pio­neers Sil­ver Apples and maybe even of the band White Noise, a side project of BBC Radio­phon­ic Work­shop com­pos­er Delia Der­byshire that pro­duced music far ahead of its time that very year — music made almost exact­ly the way he describes:

I can kind of envi­sion one per­son with a lot of machines, tapes and elec­tron­ics set up, singing or speak­ing while using machines.… 

At the end of the brief clip at the top, we hear Hop­kins ignore this idea and move Mor­ri­son back to talk­ing about rock. But Jim had already moved on — and so had the cul­ture, he knew. The music he describes was hap­pen­ing all around him, and we might imag­ine he was a lit­tle frus­trat­ed that oth­er peo­ple could­n’t hear it. What Mor­ri­son brought to it, how­ev­er — or might have, had he lived — was the lyri­cal, the sen­su­al, the per­for­ma­tive, the melo­dra­mat­ic, and the tru­ly fright­en­ing, all qual­i­ties it would take new wave and goth acts like Echo and Bun­ny­men, Depeche Mode, and a host of Doors-influ­enced dark wave bands to bring to fruition in the elec­tron­ic music of future past.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Moog Syn­the­siz­er Changed the Sound of Music

This Is “The End”: A Video Explo­ration of The Doors’ Exis­ten­tial Epic

The Doors’ Ray Man­zarek Walks You Through the Writ­ing of the Band’s Icon­ic Song, “Rid­ers on the Storm”

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

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