October 29, 2015 David Byrne: How Architecture Helped Music Evolve As his career grew, David Byrne went from playing CBGB to Carnegie Hall. He asks: Does the venue make the music? From outdoor drumming to Wagnerian operas to arena rock, he explores how context has pushed musical innovation.
October 27, 2015 The Wisdom of Pessimism How do you ensure contentment? A good pessimist knows just how. In this film for The School of Life, Claudio Salas and a mix of artists tell you how you can become a good pessimist. All this is written and narrated by the philosopher Alain de Botton.
October 26, 2015 Accidental Oasis In The Middle Of Nevada Over a hundred years ago, a farmer was digging a well in his Nevada farm. It was out in the middle of the desert and he'd hoped to find a good water source below the dirt. He did find water, but it came with a surprise.
October 21, 2015 Patty Hearst on Reasonable Doubt "I'm sorry, I‘m a coward. I didn’t want to die."
- Patty Hearst in 1982 in the first interview she gave after getting out of prison
October 20, 2015 How to Hit a Fastball A major league fastball is only in flight for about 400 milliseconds (to put that in perspective, blinking takes at least 150 milliseconds, so we’re literally in “blink of an eye” territory here). Adding up all the neural action that has to happen between seeing a pitch, thinking about a pitch, and swinging at a pitch… well, suffice to say it’s considerably longer than 400 ms. If baseball players depended on their conscious brains to accomplish this, the catcher would already be throwing the ball back to the pitcher by the time they knew what was going on.
October 19, 2015 R. Crumb: The Book of Genesis In this rare look inside Robert Crumb’s studio in the South of France, R. Crumb discusses his process of illustrating and satirizing The Book of Genesis while purporting to be a faithful, literal illustration of the Book of Genesis from the Hebrew Bible.
October 15, 2015 How to Think Like a Philosopher — Daniel Dennett Daniel Dennett, one of the best-known living philosophers, a professor at Tufts University, and one of my favorite profs when I attended UCI feels it's time to unmask the philosopher's art and make thought experimentation accessible to a wider audience.
October 14, 2015 Lightest. Metal. Ever. Microlattice is the lightest metallic structure ever made. At 99.99% air, it's light enough to balance on top of a dandelion, while its structure makes it strong. Strength and record breaking lightness make it a potential metal for future planes and vehicles.
October 13, 2015 Why Jaywalking Is a Crime Adam Ruins Everything reveals the derogatory origins of jaywalking and explains how the auto industry made it illegal.
October 9, 2015 El Niño and Why We Can't Predict the Weather No matter how advanced our computers or models may get, we can never accurately predict the weather more than a few days out. In any system the tiniest change in initial conditions could lead to completely different outcomes and the farther out you try to look, the more those tiny uncertainties are amplified.
October 8, 2015 Black & White In Color One of Julianna Thomas's biggest pet peeves in art is the lazily-desaturated DSLR video. “Black & White In Color” is her personal response to treating black and white as an editing afterthought. This short video is the culmination of a year and a half of experimentation with black and white textures. Please note: in some instances, color is unavoidable -- dark purples, greens, and blues separate out of black dye within a few minutes.
October 6, 2015 How Moroccan Zellige is Made Zellige, is terra cotta tilework covered with enamel in the form of chips set into plaster. This form of Islamic art is one of the main characteristics of Moroccan architecture. It consists of geometrically patterned mosaics, used to ornament walls, ceilings, fountains, floors, pools and tables.
October 2, 2015 Adam Purple and The Garden of Eden In 1975, on the crime-ridden Lower East Side, Adam Purple started a garden behind his tenement home. By 1986, The Garden of Eden was world famous and had grown to 15,000 square feet. For Adam – a social activist, philosopher, artist, and revolutionary – the Garden was the medium of his political and artistic expression. It was razed by the city in 1986 after a protracted court battle. This film documents the creation of this artwork and its ultimate destruction. Winner of the "Neighborhood Award" at the Lower East Side Film Festival
October 1, 2015 Britain vs. America: Vegetable Names If you want to get your five-a-day in the U.K., you're going to want to know your scallions from your spring onions. Anglophenia's Kate Arnell teaches us seven vegetables with different names in America and Britain.
