“库尔班大叔”的儿子买买提吐尔逊清明回乡祭父侧记

百度尽管没有开设网上商城，但宾客们在阿卡酒店里就可以直接购买床垫。

in Psychology | December 30th, 2016

This week-end, mil-lions of New Year’s res-o-lu-tions will go into effect, with the most com-mon ones being lose weight, get fit, quit drink-ing and smok-ing, save mon-ey, and learn some-thing new. Unfor-tu-nate-ly, 33% of these res-o-lu-tions will be aban-doned by Jan-u-ary’s end. And 80% will even-tu-al-ly fall by the way-side. Mak-ing res-o-lu-tions stick is tricky busi-ness. But it’s pos-si-ble, and psy-chol-o-gist Kel-ly McGo-ni-gal has a few sci-en-tif-i-cal-ly-proven sug-ges-tions for you.

For years, McGo-ni-gal has taught a very pop-u-lar course called The Sci-ence of Willpow-er in Stan-ford’s Con-tin-u-ing Stud-ies pro-gram, where she intro-duces stu-dents to the idea that willpow-er is not an innate trait. Rather it’s a “com-plex mind-body response that can be com-pro-mised by stress, sleep depri-va-tion and nutri-tion and that can be strength-ened through cer-tain prac-tices.”

For those of you who don’t live in the San Fran-cis-co Bay Area, you can find McGo-ni-gal’s ideas pre-sent-ed in a recent book, The Willpow-er Instinct: How Self-Con-trol Works, Why It Mat-ters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It. Below, we have high-light-ed 15 of Dr. McGo-ni-gal’s strate-gies for increas-ing your willpow-er reserves and mak-ing your New Year’s res-o-lu-tion endure.

Will pow-er is like a mus-cle. The more you work on devel-op-ing it, the more you can incor-po-rate it into your life. It helps, McGo-ni-gal says in this pod-cast, to start with small feats of willpow-er before try-ing to tack-le more dif-fi-cult feats. Ide-al-ly, find the small-est change that’s con-sis-tent with your larg-er goal, and start there.
Choose a goal or res-o-lu-tion that you real-ly want, not a goal that some-one else desires for you, or a goal that you think you should want. Choose a pos-i-tive goal that tru-ly comes from with-in and that con-tributes to some-thing impor-tant in life.
Willpow-er is con-ta-gious. Find a willpow-er role mod-el — some-one who has accom-plished what you want to do. Also try to sur-round your-self with fam-i-ly mem-bers, friends or groups who can sup-port you. Change is often not made alone.
Know that peo-ple have more willpow-er when they wake up, and then willpow-er steadi-ly declines through-out the day as peo-ple fatigue. So try to accom-plish what you need to — for exam-ple, exer-cise — ear-li-er in the day. Then watch out for the evenings, when bad habits can return.
Under-stand that stress and willpow-er are incom-pat-i-ble. Any time we’re under stress it’s hard-er to find our willpow-er. Accord-ing to McGo-ni-gal, “the fight-or-flight response floods the body with ener-gy to act instinc-tive-ly and steals it from the areas of the brain need-ed for wise deci-sion-mak-ing. Stress also encour-ages you to focus on imme-di-ate, short-term goals and out-comes, but self-con-trol requires keep-ing the big pic-ture in mind.” The upshot? “Learn-ing how to bet-ter man-age your stress is one of the most impor-tant things you can do to improve your willpow-er.” When you get stressed out, go for a walk. Even a five minute walk out-side can reduce your stress lev-els, boost your mood, and help you replen-ish your willpow-er reserves.
Sleep depri-va-tion (less than six hours a night) makes it so that the pre-frontal cor-tex los-es con-trol over the regions of the brain that cre-ate crav-ings. Sci-ence shows that get-ting just one more hour of sleep each night (eight hours is ide-al) helps recov-er-ing drug addicts avoid a relapse. So it can cer-tain-ly help you resist a dough-nut or a cig-a-rette.
Also remem-ber that nutri-tion plays a key role. “Eat-ing a more plant-based, less-processed diet makes ener-gy more avail-able to the brain and can improve every aspect of willpow-er from over-com-ing pro-cras-ti-na-tion to stick-ing to a New Year’s res-o-lu-tion,” McGo-ni-gal says.
Don’t think it will be dif-fer-ent tomor-row. McGo-ni-gal notes that we have a ten-den-cy to think that we will have more willpow-er, ener-gy, time, and moti-va-tion tomor-row. The prob-lem is that “if we think we have the oppor-tu-ni-ty to make a dif-fer-ent choice tomor-row, we almost always ‘give in’ to temp-ta-tion or habit today.”
Acknowl-edge and under-stand your crav-ings rather than deny-ing them. That will take you fur-ther in the end. The video above has more on that.
Imag-ine the things that could get in the way of achiev-ing your goal. Under-stand the ten-den-cies you have that could lead you to break your res-o-lu-tion. Don’t be over-ly opti-mistic and assume the road will be easy.
Know your lim-its, and plan for them. Says McGo-ni-gal, “Peo-ple who think they have the most self-con-trol are the most like-ly to fail at their res-o-lu-tions; they put them-selves in tempt-ing sit-u-a-tions, don’t get help, give up at set-backs. You need to know how you fail; how you are tempt-ed; how you pro-cras-ti-nate.”
Pay atten-tion to small choic-es that add up. “One study found that the aver-age per-son thinks they make 14 food choic-es a day; they actu-al-ly make over 200. When you aren’t aware that you’re mak-ing a choice, you’ll almost always default to habit/temptation.” It’s impor-tant to fig-ure out when you have oppor-tu-ni-ties to make a choice con-sis-tent with your goals.
Be spe-cif-ic but flex-i-ble. It’s good to know your goal and how you’ll get there. But, she cau-tions, “you should leave room to revise these steps if they turn out to be unsus-tain-able or don’t lead to the ben-e-fits you expect-ed.”
Give your-self small, healthy rewards along the way. Research shows that the mind responds well to it. (If you’re try-ing to quite smok-ing, the reward should-n’t be a cig-a-rette, by the way.)
Final-ly, if you expe-ri-ence a set-back, don’t be hard on your-self. Although it seems counter-intu-itive, stud-ies show that peo-ple who expe-ri-ence shame/guilt are much more like-ly to break their res-o-lu-tions than ones who cut them-selves some slack. In a nut-shell, you should “Give up guilt.”

To put all of these tips into a big-ger frame-work, you can get a copy of Kel-ly McGo-ni-gal’s book, The Willpow-er Instinct: How Self-Con-trol Works, Why It Mat-ters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It. And now you can take The Sci-ence of Willpow-er as an online course that begins on Jan-u-ary 23.

Final-ly you might also want to peruse How to Think Like a Psy-chol-o-gist (iTunes Video), a free online course led by Kel-ly McGo-ni-gal. It appears in our col-lec-tion of 1200 Free Cours-es Online.

A ver-sion of this post first appeared on Open Cul-ture in 2014.

Relat-ed Con-tent:

The Pow-er of Empa-thy: A Quick Ani-mat-ed Les-son That Can Make You a Bet-ter Per-son

Carl Gus-tav Jung Explains His Ground-break-ing The-o-ries About Psy-chol-o-gy in Rare Inter-view (1957)

Jacques Lacan’s Con-fronta-tion with a Young Rebel: Clas-sic Moment, 1972

New Ani-ma-tion Explains Sher-ry Turkle’s The-o-ries on Why Social Media Makes Us Lone-ly

Free Online Psy-chol-o-gy Cours-es, a sub-set of our col-lec-tion 1,700 Free Online Cours-es from Top Uni-ver-si-ties

by OC | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Google Lets You Take a 360-Degree Panoramic Tour of Street Art in Cities Across the World

in Art | December 30th, 2016

A friend of mine, a fel-low Amer-i-can liv-ing in Seoul, just recent-ly put up a vlog in which he at once admires a piece of street art he hap-pens upon here and remarks on how much the pres-ence of the stuff both-ered him back in the States. It illus-trates an impor-tant point about the very medi-um of street art, graf-fi-ti, tag-ging, or what-ev-er you hap-pen to call it: con-text is every-thing — or rather, con-text and skill are every-thing. The worst exam-ples, as Paul Gra-ham writes, hap-pen “at the inter-sec-tion of ambi-tion and incom-pe-tence: peo-ple want to make their mark on the world, but have no oth-er way to do it than lit-er-al-ly mak-ing a mark on the world.”

How to find the best exam-ples? Ide-al-ly, they’ll catch you by sur-prise in their nat-ur-al urban envi-ron-ment, but you can’t be in every urban envi-ron-ment at once. Hence Google Street Art, the vir-tu-al muse-um we fea-tured last year. Since then Google Street Art intro-duced anoth-er inno-va-tion: the abil-i-ty to behold some of their 10,000 col-lect-ed pieces in “muse-um view.”

We’ve all used Google Street View to remote-ly explore the far-away places that pique our curios-i-ty, and some of us have already tried using it to check out the world’s street art, but this pro-vides a kind of Street View espe-cial-ly for street art, a high-res-o-lu-tion 360-degree panoram-ic per-spec-tive that lets you step for-ward and back-ward, to the left and to the right, and look at it from whichev-er angle you want to look at it.

Now you can check out 94 pieces and count-ing in much greater detail, from Los Ange-les to Bal-ti-more, Lis-bon to Lon-don, Buenos Aires to Mel-bourne. The selec-tion even includes pieces of street art brought indoors, as found in Paris’ Palais de Tokyo and the Gyeong-gi Muse-um of Art right here in Korea. Whether street art has the prop-er impact out-side its orig-i-nal urban con-text, or in a dig-i-tal rather than a con-crete ver-sion of that urban con-text, will sure-ly remain an inter-est-ing debate. “A city can nev-er be a uni-fied work of art or a beau-ti-ful object,” argues archi-tec-tur-al his-to-ri-an Joseph Ryk-w-ert in The Seduc-tion of Place, since “all sorts of things buf-fet and push human inten-tions about.” Per-haps, but that buf-fet-ing and push-ing cre-ates so much, from the grand-est tow-ers to the hum-blest alley murals, that counts as art in itself.

Relat-ed Con-tent:

Google Puts Online 10,000 Works of Street Art from Across the Globe

The Cre-ativ-i-ty of Female Graf-fi-ti & Street Artists Will Be Cel-e-brat-ed in Street Hero-ines, a New Doc-u-men-tary

Obey the Giant: Short Film Presents the True Sto-ry of Shep-ard Fairey’s First Act of Street Art

Big Bang Big Boom: Graf-fi-ti Stop-Motion Ani-ma-tion Cre-ative-ly Depicts the Evo-lu-tion of Life

Artists Paint Paris, Berlin and Lon-don with High-Tech Video Graf-fi-ti

The Bat-tle for LA’s Murals

Google Gives You a 360° View of the Per-form-ing Arts, From the Roy-al Shake-speare Com-pa-ny to the Paris Opera Bal-let

Based in Seoul, Col-in Mar-shall writes and broad-casts on cities and cul-ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange-les, A Los Ange-les Primer, the video series The City in Cin-e-ma, the crowd-fund-ed jour-nal-ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange-les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol-low him on Twit-ter at @colinmarshall or on Face-boo k.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Jim Jarmusch Lists His Favorite Poets: Dante, William Carlos Williams, Arthur Rimbaud, John Ashbery & More

in Film, Literature, Poetry | December 30th, 2016

Wiki-me-dia Com-mons pho-to by Chrysoula Artemis

When it comes to Amer-i-can indie direc-tor Jim Jar-musch, we tend to think right away of the impor-tance of music in his films, what with his col-lab-o-ra-tions with Neil Young, Tom Waits, and Iggy Pop. (Jar-musch is him-self a musi-cian who has released two stu-dio albums and three EPs under the moniker Sqürl.) But Jarmusch’s most recent film, Pater-son, is an ode to poet-ry, drawn from his own love of New York School poets like Frank O’Hara and John Ash-bery. Set in Pater-son, New Jer-sey and fea-tur-ing a main char-ac-ter also named Pater-son (Adam Dri-ver), the film aims to show, writes Time mag-a-zine, “how art—maybe even espe-cial-ly art made in the margins—can fill up every-day life.”

Jar-musch was drawn to Pater-son, the town, by William Car-los Williams. The mod-ernist poet called the town home and pub-lished an epic poem called Pater-son in 1946. Although that dense, com-plex work is “not one of my favorite poems,” Jar-musch tells Time, he namechecks Williams as one of his favorite poets.

I think we can see the influ-ence of Williams’ spare visu-al imag-i-na-tion in Jar-musch films like Stranger than Par-adise, Down by Law, Ghost Dog, and Bro-ken Flow-ers. Jar-musch goes on in the course of his dis-cus-sion about Pater-son, the film, to name a hand-ful of oth-er poets he counts as inspi-ra-tions. In the list below, you can find Jarmusch’s favorites, along with links to some of their most-beloved poems.

–William Car-los Williams (“Aspho-del, That Gree-ny Flower,” “4th of July”)
–Wal-lace Stevens (“The Man with the Blue Gui-tar,” “The Snow Man,” “Thir-teen Ways of Look-ing at a Black-bird”)
–Dante Alighieri (Can-to I of the Infer-no)
–Arthur Rim-baud (“The Drunk-en Boat,” “Vagabonds”)
–John Ash-bery (“Self-Por-trait in a Con-vex Mirror”—read by Ash-bery)
–Ken-neth Koch (“In Love With You,” “One Train May Hide Anoth-er”)
–Frank O’Hara (“Steps,” Var-i-ous Poems)

As we read or re-read these poets, we might ask how they have informed Jar-musch’s styl-ish films in addi-tion to the influ-ence of his cin-e-mat-ic favorites. Sev-er-al great direc-tors have con-tributed to his pecu-liar visu-al aes-thet-ic. The only film-mak-er he men-tions as a hero in his Time inter-view is Bernar-do Bertol-luc-ci, but you can read about Jar-musch’s top ten films at our pre-vi-ous post–films direct-ed by such lumi-nar-ies as Yasu-jiro Ozu, Nicholas Ray, and Robert Bres-son.

via Austen Kleon’s week-ly newslet-ter

Relat-ed Con-tent:

Jim Jarmusch’s 10 Favorite Films: Ozu’s Tokyo Sto-ry, Kurosawa’s Sev-en Samu-rai and Oth-er Black & White Clas-sics

Jim Jar-musch: The Art of the Music in His Films

Wern-er Her-zog Cre-ates Required Read-ing & Movie View-ing Lists for Enrolling in His Film School

Josh Jones is a writer and musi-cian based in Durham, NC. Fol-low him at @jdmagness

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Watch Neil Gaiman & Amanda Palmer’s Haunting, Animated Take on Leonard Cohen’s “Democracy”

in Animation, Current Affairs, Music, Politics | December 30th, 2016

The late Leonard Cohen’s 1992 anthem “Democ-ra-cy” feels not just fresh, but painful-ly rel-e-vant these days.

Cohen, a Cana-di-an who spent much of his adult life in the States, avowed that the song was nei-ther sar-cas-tic nor iron-ic, but rather hope-ful, an “affir-ma-tion of the exper-i-ment of democ-ra-cy in this coun-try.”

He start-ed writ-ing it in the late ’80s, churn-ing out dozens of vers-es as he pon-dered the impact of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Tianan-men Square protests.

The press kit for the album on which the song orig-i-nal-ly appeared stat-ed:

These are the final days, this is the dark-ness, this is the flood. What is the appro-pri-ate behav-ior in a cat-a-stro-phe, in a flood? You know, while you’re clean-ing out your orange crate in the tor-rent and you pass some-body else hang-ing on to a spar of wood. What do you declare your-self? “left wing” “right wing” “pro-abor-tion” “against abor-tion”? All these things are lux-u-ries which you can no longer afford. What is the prop-er behav-ior in a flood?

For musi-cian Aman-da Palmer and her hus-band, author Neil Gaiman, the answer to Cohen’s ques-tion is the stripped down, spo-ken word ver-sion of “Democ-ra-cy,” above—a fundrais-er for the free speech defense orga-ni-za-tion, PEN Amer-i-ca.

The video’s stir-ring water-col-ors are cour-tesy of artist David Mack, an offi-cial Ambas-sador of Arts & Sto-ry for the US State Depart-ment who has illus-trat-ed sev-er-al of Gaiman’s poems. Singer-song-writer Olga Nunes, anoth-er in Gaiman and Palmer’s vast sta-ble of tal-ent-ed co-con-spir-a-tors, ani-mat-ed.

Gaiman fans will no doubt thrill to hear that unmis-tak-able accent game-ly tack-ling such lyrics as “the homi-ci-dal bitchin’ that goes down in every kitchen,” but for my mon-ey, the most mem-o-rable phrase is the descrip-tion of this coun-try as “the cra-dle of the best and of the worst.”

Tru-ly.

You can pur-chase the track here—the project was fund-ed by 9,408 con-trib-u-tors to Palmer’s Patre-on and all pro-ceeds ben-e-fit PEN Amer-i-ca.

Relat-ed Con-tent:

Hear Leonard Cohen’s Final Inter-view: Record-ed by David Rem-nick of The New York-er

Hear Aman-da Palmer’s Cov-er of “Pur-ple Rain,” a Gor-geous Stringfelt Send-Off to Prince

Neil Gaiman Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”: One Mas-ter of Dra-mat-ic Sto-ry-telling Reads Anoth-er

Ayun Hal-l-i-day is an author, illus-tra-tor, the-ater mak-er and Chief Pri-ma-tol-o-gist of the East Vil-lage Inky zine. Her play Zam-boni Godot is open-ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol-low her @AyunHalliday.

by Ayun Halliday | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

25 Animations of Great Literary Works: From Plato, Dostoevsky & Dickinson, to Kafka, Hemingway & Bradbury

in Animation, Literature | December 29th, 2016

Over the years, we’ve fea-tured a large num-ber of lit-er-ary works that have been won-der-ful-ly re-imag-ined by ani-ma-tors. Rather than leav-ing these works buried in the archives, we’re bring-ing them back and putting them all on dis-play. And what bet-ter place to start than with a foun-da-tion-al text — Pla-to’s Repub-lic. We were tempt-ed to show you a clay-ma-tion ver-sion of the sem-i-nal philo-soph-i-cal work (watch here), but we decid-ed to go instead with Orson Welles’ 1973 nar-ra-tion of The Cave Alle-go-ry, which fea-tures the sur-re-al artis-tic work of Dick Oden.

Stay-ing with the Greeks for anoth-er moment … This one may have Sopho-cles and Aeschy-lus spin-ning in their graves. Or, who knows, per-haps they would have enjoyed this bizarre twist on the Oedi-pus myth. Run-ning eight min-utes, Jason Wish-now’s 2004 film fea-tures veg-eta-bles in the star-ring roles.

One of the first stop-motion films shot with a dig-i-tal still cam-era, Oedi-pus took two years to make with a vol-un-teer staff of 100. The film has since been screened at 70+ film fes-ti-vals and was even-tu-al-ly acquired by the Sun-dance Chan-nel. Sep-a-rate videos show you the behind-the-scenes mak-ing of the film, plus the sto-ry-boards used dur-ing pro-duc-tion.

Eight years before Piotr Dumala tack-led Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Pun-ish-ment, the Russ-ian ani-ma-tor pro-duced a short ani-mat-ed film based on The Diaries of Franz Kaf-ka. Once again, you can see his method, known as “destruc-tive ani-ma-tion,” in action. It’s well worth the 16 min-utes. Or you can spend time with this 2007 Japan-ese ani-ma-tion of Kafka’s cryp-tic tale of “A Coun-try Doc-tor.” And if you’re still han-ker-ing for ani-mat-ed Kaf-ka, don’t miss The Meta-mor-pho-sis of Mr. Sam-sa (Car-o-line Leaf’s sand ani-ma-tion from 1977) and also Orson Welles’ nar-ra-tion of the Para-ble, “Before the Law.” The lat-ter film was made by Alexan-der Alex-eieff and Claire Park-er, who using a tech-nique called pin-screen ani-ma-tion, cre-at-ed a longer film adap-ta-tion of Niko-lai Gogol’s sto-ry, “The Nose.” You can view it here.

The ani-mat-ed sequence above is from the 1974 film adap-ta-tion of Her-man Hes-se’s 1927 nov-el Step-pen-wolf. In this scene, the Har-ry Haller char-ac-ter played by Max von Sydow reads from the “Trac-tate on the Step-pen-wolf.” The visu-al imagery was cre-at-ed by Czech artist Jaroslav Bradác.

In 1999, Alek-san-dr Petrov won the Acad-e-my Award for Short Film (among oth-er awards) for a film that fol-lows the plot line of Ernest Hemingway’s clas-sic novel-la, The Old Man and the Sea (1952). As not-ed here, Petrov’s tech-nique involves paint-ing pas-tels on glass, and he and his son paint-ed a total of 29,000 images for this work. (For anoth-er remark-able dis-play of their tal-ents, also watch his adap-ta-tion of Dos-to-evsky’s “The Dream of a Ridicu-lous Man”.)

Ita-lo Calvi-no, one of Italy’s finest post-war writ-ers, pub-lished Ital-ian Folk-tales in 1956, a series of 200 fairy tales based some-times loose-ly, some-times more strict-ly, on sto-ries from a great folk tra-di-tion. Upon the col-lec-tion’s pub-li-ca-tion, The New York Times named Ital-ian Folk-tales one of the ten best books of the year. And more than a half cen-tu-ry lat-er, the sto-ries con-tin-ue to delight. Case in point: in 2007, John Tur-tur-ro, the star of numer-ous Coen broth-ers and Spike Lee films, began work-ing on Fiabe ital-iane, a play adapt-ed from Calvi-no’s col-lec-tion of fables. The ani-mat-ed video above fea-tures Tur-tur-ro read-ing “The False Grand-moth-er,” Calvi-no’s rework-ing of Lit-tle Red Rid-ing Hood. Kevin Ruelle illus-trat-ed the clip, which was pro-duced as part of Fly-p-me-di-a’s more exten-sive cov-er-age of Tur-tur-ro’s adap-ta-tion. You can find anoth-er ani-ma-tion of a Calvi-no sto-ry (The Dis-tance of the Moon) here.

Emi-ly Dick-in-son’s poet-ry is wide-ly cel-e-brat-ed for its beau-ty and orig-i-nal-i-ty. To cel-e-brate her birth-day (it just recent-ly passed us by) we bring you this lit-tle film of her poem, “I Start-ed Early–Took My Dog,” from the “Poet-ry Every-where” series by PBS and the Poet-ry Foun-da-tion. The poem is ani-mat-ed by Maria Vasilkovsky and read by actress Blair Brown.

Shel Sil-ver-stein wrote The Giv-ing Tree in 1964, a wide-ly loved chil-dren’s book now trans-lat-ed into more than 30 lan-guages. It’s a sto-ry about the human con-di-tion, about giv-ing and receiv-ing, using and get-ting used, need-i-ness and greed-i-ness, although many fin-er points of the sto-ry are open to inter-pre-ta-tion. Today, we’re rewind-ing the video-tape to 1973, when Sil-ver-stein’s lit-tle book was turned into a 10 minute ani-mat-ed film. Sil-ver-stein nar-rates the sto-ry him-self and also plays the har-mon-i-ca.

Dur-ing the Cold War, one Amer-i-can was held in high regard in the Sovi-et Union, and that was Ray Brad-bury. A hand-ful of Sovi-et ani-ma-tors demon-strat-ed their esteem for the author by adapt-ing his short sto-ries. Vladimir Sam-sonov direct-ed Bradbury’s Here There Be Tygers, which you can see above. And here you can see anoth-er adap-ta-tion of “There Will Come Soft Rains.”

The online book-seller Good Books cre-at-ed an ani-mat-ed mash-up of the spir-its of Franz Kaf-ka and Hunter S. Thomp-son. Under a buck-et hat, behind avi-a-tor sun-glass-es, and deep into an altered men-tal state, our nar-ra-tor feels the sud-den, urgent need for a copy of Kafka’s Meta-mor-pho-sis. Unwill-ing to make the pur-chase in “the great riv-er of medi-oc-rity,” he instead makes the buy from “a bunch of rose-tint-ed, will-ful-ly delu-sion-al Pollyan-nas giv-ing away all the mon-ey they make — every guilt-rid-den cent.” The ani-ma-tion, cre-at-ed by a stu-dio called Buck, should eas-i-ly meet the aes-thet-ic demands of any view-er in their own altered state or look-ing to get into one.

39 Degrees North, a Bei-jing motion graph-ics stu-dio, start-ed devel-op-ing an uncon-ven-tion-al Christ-mas card sev-er-al years ago. And once they got going, there was no turn-ing back. Above, we have the end result – an ani-mat-ed ver-sion of an uber dark Christ-mas poem (read text here) writ-ten by Neil Gaiman, the best-selling author of sci-fi and fan-ta-sy short sto-ries. The poem was pub-lished in Gaiman’s col-lec-tion, Smoke and Mir-rors.

This col-lab-o-ra-tion between film-mak-er Spike Jonze and hand-bag design-er Olympia Le-Tan does-n’t bring a par-tic-u-lar lit-er-ary tale to life. Rather this stop motion film uses 3,000 pieces of cut felt to show famous books spring-ing into motion in the icon-ic Parisian book-store, Shake-speare and Com-pa-ny. It’s called Mourir Auprès de Toi.

Oth-er nota-bles include: a two minute take on Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Mas-ter and Mar-gari-ta; a 1977 exper-i-men-tal adap-ta-tion of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which mar-ries the clas-sic engrav-ings of Gus-tave Doré to an Orson Welles nar-ra-tion of Coleridge’s poem; and “Beer,” a mind-warp-ing ani-ma-tion of Charles Bukowski’s 1971 poem hon-or-ing his favorite drink.

Are there impres-sive lit-er-ary ani-ma-tions that did-n’t make our list? Please let us know in the com-ments below. We’d love to know about them.

Relat-ed Con-tent:

Spike Jonze’s Stop Motion Film Haunt-ing-ly Ani-mates Paris’ Famed Shake-speare and Com-pa-ny Book-store

Piotr Dumala’s Art-ful Ani-ma-tions of Lit-er-ary Works by Kaf-ka & Dos-to-evsky

A Beau-ti-ful-ly Hand-Paint-ed Ani-ma-tion of Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea (1999)

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Download 20 Free eBooks on Design from O’Reilly Media

in Business, e-books | December 29th, 2016

A quick note: Thanks to O’Reil-ly Media, you can now down-load 20 free ebooks focused on design–every-thing from Design-ing for Cities, to Design-ing for the Inter-net of Things, to Design Essen-tials. You can down-load the books in PDF for-mat. No cred-it card is required. See the com-plete list here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet-ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun-dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup-port the mis-sion of Open Cul-ture, con-sid-er mak-ing a dona-tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con-tri-bu-tions will help us con-tin-ue pro-vid-ing the best free cul-tur-al and edu-ca-tion-al mate-ri-als to learn-ers every-where. You can con-tribute through Pay-Pal, Patre-on, and Ven-mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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Roman Architecture: A Free Online Course from Yale University

in Architecture, Online Courses, Yale | December 29th, 2016

Taught by Yale pro-fes-sor Diana E. E. Klein-er, this course offers “an intro-duc-tion to the great build-ings and engi-neer-ing mar-vels of Rome and its empire, with an empha-sis on urban plan-ning and indi-vid-ual mon-u-ments and their dec-o-ra-tion, includ-ing mur-al paint-ing.”

The course descrip-tion con-tin-ues: “While archi-tec-tur-al devel-op-ments in Rome, Pom-peii, and Cen-tral Italy are high-light-ed, the course also pro-vides a sur-vey of sites and struc-tures in what are now North Italy, Sici-ly, France, Spain, Ger-many, Greece, Turkey, Croa-t-ia, Jor-dan, Lebanon, Libya, and North Africa. The lec-tures are illus-trat-ed with over 1,500 images, many from Pro-fes-sor Klein-er’s per-son-al col-lec-tion.”

You can watch the 24 lec-tures above, or find the com-plete lec-ture set on YouTube and iTunes. To get more infor-ma-tion on the course, includ-ing the syl-labus, please vis-it Yale’s web-site.

Texts used in this course include:

Ward-Perkins, John B. Roman Impe-r-i-al Archi-tec-ture. New Haven: Yale Uni-ver-si-ty Press, 1994.
Clar-idge, Aman-da. Rome: An Oxford Archae-o-log-i-cal Guide, sec-ond edi-tion, Oxford and New York: Oxford Uni-ver-si-ty Press, 2010.

Roman Archi-tec-ture will be added to our col-lec-tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours-es from Top Uni-ver-si-ties. Find more cours-es focused on the Ancient world here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet-ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun-dled in one email, each day.

Relat-ed Con-tent:

Rome Reborn: Take a Vir-tu-al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir-ca 320 C.E.

The His-to-ry of Rome in 179 Pod-casts

The Rise & Fall of the Romans: Every Year Shown in a Time-lapse Map Ani-ma-tion (753 BC ?1479 AD)

Watch the Destruc-tion of Pom-peii by Mount Vesu-vius, Re-Cre-at-ed with Com-put-er Ani-ma-tion (79 AD)

Free Cours-es in Ancient His-to-ry, Lit-er-a-ture & Phi-los-o-phy

What Life Was Like for Teenagers in Ancient Rome: Get a Glimpse from a TED-ED Ani-ma-tion

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An Animated Introduction to Voltaire: Enlightenment Philosopher of Pluralism & Tolerance

in Animation, Philosophy | December 29th, 2016

Got-tfried Wil-helm Leib-niz has the dis-tinc-tion of hold-ing promi-nent places in both math-e-mat-ics and phi-los-o-phy. A con-tem-po-rary of Isaac New-ton, a rival, and Baruch Spin-oza, an acquain-tance, Leib-niz will for-ev-er be asso-ci-at-ed with Enlight-en-ment Ratio-nal-ism. But thanks to French philoso-pher and writer Voltaire, he will also be asso-ci-at-ed with a strain of thought gen-er-al-ly tak-en much less seri-ous-ly: the phi-los-o-phy of Opti-mism.

In the Theod-i-cy, the only philo-soph-i-cal book he pub-lished in his life-time, Leib-niz attempts to rec-on-cile divine prov-i-dence, human free-dom, and the nature of evil. He con-cludes, more or less, that the world is a per-fect bal-ance between the three. As “an absolute-ly per-fect being,” God must have made the best pos-si-ble world, he rea-soned, and many con-ser-v-a-tive the-olo-gians then and now have agreed. But not Voltaire.

Draw-ing on a diverse body of genres—travel nar-ra-tive, Bil-dungsro-man, picaresque novel—the French writer’s rol-lick-ing satir-i-cal novel-la Can-dide, or the Opti-mist presents us with a com-i-cal-ly grotesque and hyper-bol-ic world that is nonethe-less much more like the vio-lent, chaot-ic one we actu-al-ly expe-ri-ence than like Leibniz’s ide-al-iza-tion. The novel’s hero, a gullible na?f, traipses through Europe and the Amer-i-c-as with his men-tor, Pro-fes-sor Pan-gloss, “the great-est philoso-pher of the Holy Roman Empire.” A broad car-i-ca-ture of Leib-niz, Pan-gloss insists—as the two run into dev-as-tat-ing earth-quakes, war, tor-ture, can-ni-bal-ism, vene-re-al dis-ease, and yet more earthquakes—that they live in “the best of all pos-si-ble worlds.”

The asser-tion comes to seem increas-ing-ly, out-ra-geous-ly absurd and will-ful-ly obtuse. In the end, the var-i-ous char-ac-ters come around to the idea that their grand meta-phys-i-cal ques-tions have no real pur-chase on human exis-tence, and that they would do best to prac-tice a kind of qui-etism, set-tling down to small farms to, as Can-dide says, “cul-ti-vate our gar-den.” The response does not enjoin us to pas-siv-i-ty, but rather to the use of our abil-i-ties for pur-pose-ful work rather than con-tentious spec-u-la-tion or in the ser-vice of blind faith. From his start as a writer, Voltaire fierce-ly attacked “fanati-cism, idol-a-try, super-sti-tion,” as Alain de Bot-ton says in the School of Life intro-duc-tion to Voltaire above, as the basis of peo-ple killing each oth-er “to defend some bit of reli-gious doc-trine which they scarce-ly under-stand.”

Voltaire found the phe-nom-e-non of reli-gious war “repel-lant,” and his age had seen its share of war. In the his-tor-i-cal back-ground of Can-dide’s com-po-si-tion were the Sev-en Years’ War, the glob-al impe-r-i-al con-flict that claimed the lives of eight mil-lion, and the Thir-ty Years’ War: the 17th cen-tu-ry reli-gious con-flict that spread vio-lent death, famine, and dis-ease all over the Euro-pean con-ti-nent. In addi-tion to these appalling events, Voltaire and his con-tem-po-raries were left reel-ing from the 1755 Lis-bon earth-quake, which his-to-ri-ans esti-mate may have killed upwards of 100,000 peo-ple. This nat-ur-al evil was whol-ly unre-lat-ed to any kind of human misbehavior—as Voltaire bit-ter-ly argued in his “Poem on the Lis-bon Dis-as-ter”—and so made Opti-mistic phi-los-o-phy and the-ol-o-gy seem cru-el and ridicu-lous.

The bawdy, bloody, and hilar-i-ous Can-dide has remained the most inci-sive lit-er-ary rep-re-sen-ta-tion of dis-il-lu-sion-ment in “best of all pos-si-ble worlds” theod-i-cy. It is by far Voltaire’s most pop-u-lar work—a best-seller from the day that it appeared in 1759—and is still giv-en to stu-dents to help them under-stand the philo-soph-i-cal Enlight-en-ment, or what is often called, as de Bot-ton says, “The Age of Voltaire.” With more clar-i-ty than even Jonathan Swift’s satires, Voltaire helps us grasp and remem-ber the major his-tor-i-cal, reli-gious, and philo-soph-i-cal con-flicts of the time. A “mas-ter at pop-u-lar-iz-ing dif-fi-cult mate-r-i-al,” Voltaire also used lit-er-ary tech-niques to explain the ideas of con-tem-po-rary thinkers like Locke and New-ton.

The anec-dote of the apple falling on Newton’s head, for exam-ple, “is due entire-ly to Voltaire,” who heard it from Newton’s niece and includ-ed it in his Let-ters Con-cern-ing the Eng-lish Nation. This work, com-posed dur-ing his two-year stay in Eng-land, implic-it-ly cri-tiques the intol-er-ance of French society—causing the book to be banned—and makes the case for some of the philoso-pher’s most cher-ished val-ues: plu-ral-ism, reli-gious tol-er-a-tion, mutu-al respect, and free inquiry. We find these ideals all through-out the works of Enlight-en-ment philoso-phers from all over the con-ti-nent, but nowhere do we find them artic-u-lat-ed with such force-ful wit and vivid style as in the work of Voltaire.

Relat-ed Con-tent:

Voltaire: “Those Who Can Make You Believe Absur-di-ties, Can Make You Com-mit Atroc-i-ties”

Voltaire & the Lis-bon Earth-quake of 1755

Philoso-phers Drink-ing Cof-fee: The Exces-sive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

Josh Jones is a writer and musi-cian based in Durham, NC. Fol-low him at @jdmagness

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

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