Bookmarks (1882)

Yoga as an athletic series of postures for physical health came into being only about 100 years ago, part of a wave of gymnastics and calisthenics that spread around the Western world in the 1920s and made its way to India, combining with classical Indian spirituality and asanas, a word which translates to “seat.”  Yoga, […] Beautiful 19th-Century Indian Drawings Show Hatha Yoga Poses...

Recently, I was walking with a young relative who, upon passing a mural of the late Prince Rogers Nelson, looked up at me and asked, “who is that?,” whereupon my eyes grew wide as saucers and I began the tale of a musical hero who conquered every instrument, every musical style, every chord and scale, […] Watch a New Director’s Cut of Prince’s Blistering...

Courtesy of The London Review of Books, you can now watch Eric Hobsbawm: The Consolations of History: In this documentary, Anthony Wilks traces the connections between the events of Eric Hobsbawm’s life and the history he told, from his teenage years in Germany and his communist membership, to the jazz clubs of 1950s Soho and […] Watch Online <i>Eric Hobsbawm: The Consolations of History,</i>...

We should just trust the experts. But wait: to identify true expertise requires its own kind of even more specialized expertise. Besides, experts disagree with each other, and over time disagree with themselves as well. This makes it challenging indeed for all of us non-experts — and we’re all non-experts in the fields to which […] Watch “Degrees of Uncertainty,” an Animated Documentary about...

In April of 1967, Muhammad Ali arrived at the U.S. Armed Forces Examining and Entrance Station in Houston, Texas. “Standing beside twenty-five other nerve-racked young men called to the draft,” writes David Remnick at The New Yorker, Ali “refused to respond to the call of ‘Cassius Clay!’” Offered the choice of going to Vietnam or […] Muhammad Ali Explains Why He Refused to Fight...

What is with the weird relationship we Americans have with our pets? Many of us treat them as our babies, yet of course they’re our captives. Dog trainer Hannah Branigan joins your hosts Mark Linsenmayer, Erica Spyres, and Brian Hirt to talk about pets as entertainment, as hobby, and as pandemic companions. How can we […] Diagnosing America’s Relationship with Pets — Pretty Much...

For the guitarist, alternate tunings expand the sonic possibilities of the instrument. But where, say, a progressive metal player will add a seventh or eighth string, pitch everything down, and get technical, the opposite is the case with “open” tunings in folk and blues. They are an ideal basis for slide guitar and three-chord, 12-bar […] Keith Richards Demonstrates His Famous 5-String Technique (Used...

In 2015, 3.8 billion years after “creativity emerged” out of “sheerest emptiness,” Kermit the Frog was tapped to give a talk on creativity at TEDxJackson. How did a local, one-day event manage to snag such a global icon? Roots. The famed frog’s creator, Jim Henson, spent his first decade in Mississippi (though Kermit was born of a ping pong […] Kermit the Frog Gives a TED Talk About...

In the history of recorded music, no medium has demonstrated quite the staying power of the phonograph record. Hearing those words, most of us envision a twelve-inch disc designed to play at 33 1⁄3 revolutions per minute, the kind still manufactured today. But like every other form of technology, that familiar vinyl LP didn’t appear ex […] How the Internet Archive Has Digitized More than...

“Oh, would some Power give us the gift / To see ourselves as others see us!” wrote poet Robert Burns. “It would from many a blunder free us, And foolish notion.” I cannot vouch for a being blunder-free, but reading historical accounts of our nation from foreign visitors does help to increase our worldly perspective, […] Hear the First Japanese Visitor to the United...

The anti-distraction device is the modern mousetrap: build a better one, and the world will beat a path to your door. Or so, at least, will the part of the world engaged in the pursuits we’ve broadly labeled “knowledge work.” Even among the knowledge workers who’ve spent most of the past year in pandemic-prompted isolation, […] The Isolator: A 1925 Helmet Designed to Eliminate...

The Rolling Stones define the rock-and-roll band, as they have for nearly six decades now. Exactly how they’ve done so is thoroughly documented, not least by the band’s own expansive and still-growing catalog of songs and albums (all of which I happen to have spent the last few months listening through). But the story of […] The Story of the Rolling Stones: A Selection...

How many historic chess games can Magnus Carlsen recognize just by looking at the placement of chess pieces on the board? It turns out a lot. And that’s partly what makes him the reigning World Chess Champion. via Kottke Related Content Learn How to Play Chess Online: Free Chess Lessons for Beginners, Intermediate Players & […] Magnus Carlsen’s Mind-Blowing Memory of Historic Chess Matches...

FYI: Until May 23, you can have 30-day free access to a Udacity Nanodegree program and start learning for free. Popular Udacity Nanodegree subjects include: Intro to Programming, Become a Product Manager, Become a Data Scientist, Digital Marketing, and Become a Data Analyst. But there are many more subjects to choose from. The deal is […] Get 30-Day Free Access to a Udacity Nanodegree...

Can great art be explained? Isn’t it a little like explaining a joke? Yet this can be worthwhile when the joke is in a foreign language or an unfamiliar idiom, a long-forgotten dialect or an alien idiolect. Consider, for example, the most common response to Mark Rothko’s monochromatic rectangles: “I don’t get it.” Will perplexed […] Great Art Explained: Watch 15 Minute Introductions to...

Originally recorded back in 2014, this clip of David Blaine performing a card trick for Harrison Ford went viral this week. (Can we still use this expression in the age of COVID?) Hang with it until the end. It’s worth the 1:50 of your time. via Clarisse Loughrey Related Content: Willie Nelson Shows You a […] Harrison Ford Gets Delightfully Dumbfounded by David Blaine’s...

Over the past year, the story of evictions during COVID has often risen above the muck. It’s made headlines in major newspapers and TIME magazine, and received serious attention from the government, with stop-gap eviction moratoriums put in effect and renewed several times, and likely due to be renewed again. Stopping evictions is not enough. “For many […] Invisible People: Watch Poignant Mini-Documentaries Where Homeless People...

Thrillseekers! Are you girding your loins to rejoin the amusement park crowds this summer? No worries if you don’t feel quite ready to brave the socially distanced rollercoaster lines. Indulge in some low-risk vertigo, thanks to British Pathé‘s vintage newsreels of steeplejacks, steelworkers, and window cleaners doing their thing. While these tradespeople were called in whenever an […] Nerves of Steel!: Watch People Climb Tall Buildings...

A gentleman goes to the movies, only to find a marquee full of retreads, reboots, sequels, and prequels. He demands to know why no one makes original films anymore, a reasonable question people often ask. But it seems he has run directly into a graduate student in critical theory behind the glass. The ticket-seller rattles […] A Short Animation Explores the Nature of Creativity...

To understand why Citizen Kane has for so long been referred to as the “greatest film of all time,” simply watch any film made before it. Glib though that often-made prescription may sound, it gets at a truth about Orson Welles’ tale of the rise and fall of an American media magnate, his first and by […] What Makes <i>Citizen Kane</i> a Great Film: 4...

In a similar way to how Open Culture aims to distill in one place the web’s high-quality free cultural and educational media, so The Public Domain Review aims to help readers explore the vast (and sometimes overwhelming!) sea of public domain works available online — like a small exhibition gallery at the entrance to an […] <i>Affinities</i>, a Book of Images to Celebrate 10...

“Before playing guitar for Captain Beefheart and Jeff Buckley,” John Kruth writes at the Observer, “Gary Lucas worked as a copywriter for CBS/Epic Records,” where he fell in love with a punk band called the Clash, just signed to the label in 1977. “They weren’t easy to work with,” he remembered. “Like Frank Zappa, they […] How the Clash Embraced New York’s Hip Hop...

Marshall McLuhan famously said “The medium is the message,” by which he meant that when we receive information, its effect on us is determined as much by the form of that information as by the actual content. Neil Postman, in his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, […] Has TV Rotted Our Minds? On Neil Postman’s...

You’re certainly familiar with Nouvelle Vague, the “French new wave” that shook up world cinema in the mid-2oth century. You’ve probably also heard of Hallyu, the “Korean wave” of pop music and television dramas (and, increasingly, films) now crashing across not just Asia but the West. As for Deutsche Welle, literally the “German wave,” you […] Watch 400+ Documentaries from German Broadcaster Deutsche Welle:...

The question of whether or not Ringo Starr is a great rock drummer — maybe one of the greatest– seems more or less settled among drummers. “From the simplistic heavy-hitting of Dave Grohl, to the progressive mind bending of Mike Portnoy, and way beyond,” writes Stuart Williams at Music Radar, “all roads lead back to […] What Makes Ringo Starr a Great Drummer: Demonstrations...

“Regular features of the time: neatly swept-up piles of glass, litter of stone and splinters of flint, smell of escaping gas, knots of sightseers waiting at the cordons.” — George Orwell What was it like to live in London during and after the Blitz? George Orwell’s notebooks from the time contain a “fascinating account of […] Watch Colorized 1940s Footage of London after the...

Experience Venice in this boat tour through 17 miles (27 km) of canals. “You will see the full Grand Canal going in both directions, navigate through the small canals and under bridges and see sites that you cannot see by walking.” It’s quiet, meditative, a mental escape from the tedium of quarantine life. Right below, […] A Relaxing 3-Hour Tour of Venice’s Canals is...

There was a time, not long after the widespread adoption of telegraphy in the 19th century, when the written Chinese language looked doomed. Or at least it did to certain thinkers considering the implications of that instant global communication-enabling technology having been developed for the relatively simple Latin alphabet. And as unsuited as the Chinese […] Behold the 1940s Typewriter That Could Type in...

Whatever marketing materials may claim, the Rolling Stones did not just happen upon Buddy Guy’s Checkerboard Lounge on Chicago’s South Side (before it closed, reopened in Hyde Park, then closed again for good) on a night when Muddy Waters happened to be there in 1981. And they did not spontaneously get invited to jam, as it […] The Rolling Stones Jam with Muddy Waters for...

Xiulin Ruan, a Purdue University professor of mechanical engineering, holds up his lab’s sample of the whitest paint on record. Purdue University/Jared Pike Surely, you’ve heard of Vantablack, the high-tech coating invented by UK company Surrey NanoSystems that absorbs over 99 percent of light and makes three-dimensional objects look like black holes? Aside from its […] Scientists at Purdue University Create the “Whitest White”...

Over the half-millennium since Hieronymus Bosch painted it, The Garden of Earthly Delights has produced an ever-widening array of interpretations. Is it “a painting about sexual freedom”? A “medieval acid trip”? An “erotic fantasy”? A “heretical attack on the church”? The work of “a member of an obscure free-love cult”? James Payne, the London curator behind the […] The Meaning of Hieronymus Bosch’s <i>The Garden of...

1987’s low budget sleeper hit, Dirty Dancing, propelled its leads, Jennifer Grey and the late Patrick Swayze, to instant stardom. Swayze later mused to the American Film Institute about the film’s remarkable staying power: It’s got so much heart, to me. It’s not about the sensuality; it’s really about people trying to find themselves, this young dance instructor feeling […] Quarantined Dancer Creates Shot-for-Shot Remake of the Final...

Back in 2017, Ray Dalio published Principles: Life and Work, a bestselling book where the creator of the world’s largest hedge fund shared “the unconventional principles that he’s developed, refined, and used over the past forty years to create unique results in both life and business.” You can find a distilled version of those unconventional principles […] Ray Dali & Adam Grant Launch Free Online...

Here’s the original from AC/DC. And here you can find more sing-alongs from Frank Maglio Tico & the Man. Enjoy. Related Content: Science Shows That Snowball the Cockatoo Has 14 Different Dance Moves: The Vogue, Headbang & More Hear the Sound Of Endangered Birds Get Turned Into Electronic Music Cornell Launches Archive of 150,000 Bird […] Parrot Sings AC/DCs “Whole Lotta Rosie” is a...

All Hollywood musicals need a big final set piece, one final rousing number to bring all the narrative threads back together, and provide redemption to our fallen hero. Bohemian Rhapsody, the 2018 biopic about Freddie Mercury and the band Queen, uses Live Aid as its final number. We’ve written elsewhere about how this was not […] Freddie Mercury & Rami Malek’s Live Aid Performance:...

Everyone has waited in a long line — for burgers, Broadway tickets, Black Friday sales… But few us have the notorious queuing resilience of the Soviets. “When the first McDonald’s arrived in Moscow in 1990, the city went mad,” Boris Egorov writes at Russia Beyond. “Thousands of Muscovites flocked to the new burger joint, forming […] 30,000 People Line Up for the First McDonald’s...

To recent news stories about 3D printed guns, prosthetics, and homes, you can add Scan the World’s push to create “an ecosystem of 3D printable objects of cultural significance.” Items that took the ancients untold hours to sculpt from marble and stone can be reproduced in considerably less time, provided you’ve got the technology and the know-how to use […] 3D Print 18,000 Famous Sculptures, Statues & Artworks:...

The road movie has long since proven itself as one of the great American cultural forms, not least by capturing the imagination of other societies, no matter how distant or different. As New York Times critic A.O. Scott declares in the video above, “one of the finest road movies, and perhaps the purest of them […] Critics Celebrate <i>Two-Lane Blacktop</i>, the 1971 Existential Road-Movie...

Sometime in the mid-1990s, my father gave me his hi-end, hi-fi stereo system from the mid-1970s: a vacuum tube-powered amplifier, pair of stereo speakers in walnut cabinets, and a turntable. Heavy, bulky, and built with hardly an ounce of plastic between them, these components lacked all of the functionality we look for in consumer audio […] Watch “Hi-Fi-Fo-Fum,” a Short Satirical Film About the...

How excited would you be to listen to a recording, made at an AM radio station in 1963, labeled “JONI ANDERSON AUDITION TAPE”? If you know much about the singer-songwriters of the mid-20th century, you’d be quite excited indeed. For Joni Anderson is none other than Joni Mitchell, who under that married name would go […] Hear Joni Mitchell’s Earliest Recording, Rediscovered After More...

There are two late-20th century rock bands named Genesis and both of them featured Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford, and Tony Banks. The second Genesis we know of as one of the biggest-selling bands of all time and authors of such massive hits as “Land of Confusion,” “In Too Deep,” and “Throwing It All Away.” The […] Watch a Newly-Restored Peter Gabriel-Era Genesis Concert Film...

What’s the meaning behind the continued international popularity of kaiju media in which giant creatures stomp on cities and beat each other up? Is this just pro wrestling drama with special effects, or does it relate to deep-seated feelings of helplessness in the face of natural disasters? Perhaps both? Your Pretty Much Pop hosts Mark […] Godzilla, Kong, et al: Stupid Fun or Channeling...

When John Ringling North, then president of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, saw a pair of German  jugglers and acrobats perform in Spain, he immediately invited them to join “the Greatest Show on Earth.” A brother and sister team, Francis and Lottie Brunn would astonish audiences. In 1950, theater critic Brooks Atkinson called […] Watch the “Greatest Juggler of the Ages,” Frances...

How many architectural careers have been kindled by Lincoln Logs? Since their invention in the mid-1910s, these deceptively simple wooden building blocks have entertained generations of children, whichever profession they entered upon growing up. I myself have fond memories of playing with Lincoln Logs, which, with about 70 years of history already behind them, were […] How Frank Lloyd Wright’s Son Invented Lincoln Logs,...

In the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union a “triumphalist discourse” arose in the U.S., writes historian Richard Sakwa, “which suggests that the Soviet demise was a deliberate act plotted and executed by president Ronald Reagan” with massive military budgets and nuclear threats. This narrative has less...

FYI: You can download 10 free international ebooks as part of Amazon’s free giveaway for World Book Day. Writes CNET: World Book Day is on April 23 and to celebrate the day, alternatively referred to as World Book and Copyright Day or International Day of the Book, Amazon is giving away 10 Kindle ebooks from around ...

Growing up, we assembled our worldview from several different sources: parents, siblings, classmates. But for most of us, wherever and whenever we passed our formative years, nothing shaped our early perceptions of life as vividly, and as thoroughly, as cartoons — and this is just as Lenin knew it would be. “With th...

Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker is a bleak masterpiece. Released just 19 days before his death, the album sounds like a warning from beyond, one Cohen seemed to know we’d never heed. His sympathy for human failure reached its denouement in the posthumous Thanks for the Dance, a project “much less apocalyptic” in ...

More than a quarter-century ago, Toy Story made Pixar Animation Studios into a household name. Nobody had ever seen a computer-animated feature of such high quality before — indeed, nobody had ever seen a computer-animated feature at all. Though the movie succeeded on many more levels than as a proof of technologica...

Google has worked with experts at Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab to develop a time-lapse feature within Google Earth, which allows you to see firsthand the changes to our planet since 1984. In the biggest update to Google Earth since 2017, you can now see our planet in an entirely new dimension — time. With...