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valentinaonthemoon · 3 years ago

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Masterpost of video essays I've watched in 2021.

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About Cinema and TV, in general:

How Brian David Gilbert's Audience Changes the Definition of Cinema - What'sBehindTheSky

Chinese Animation: In Search of a Style | Video Essay - Accented Cinema

British vs American Comedy - A Comparative Analysis - The Film Essay

Interracial Romance & Fandom | Black History Month Vid #3 - Melina Pendulum

A Marxist Reading of the Marx Brothers - David J Bradley

The Problem of Method Acting - Broey Deschanel

Reality TV & The Glamorous Lies it Sells - Salari

The Rise and Fall of Teen Dystopias - Sarah Z

About Music / Musicals:

How The Beatles Changed Album Covers - Nerdwriter1

The most elegant key change in all of pop music - Adam Neely [All By Myself]

The Problem With Auto-Tune - Sideways

8 Things The Beatles Pioneered - David Bennett Piano

A Brief Analysis of Bohemian Rhapsody - David Bennett Piano

The Hidden Battles Behind Evanescence & "Bring Me to Life" - Trash Theory

Before The Beatles: The Birth of British Rock - Trash Theory

Blur Vs. Oasis: Who Won The Battle of Britpop? - Trash Theory

Why the Music in Cats (2019) is Worse than you Thought - Sideways

The Story of Pulp and COMMON PEOPLE | New British Canon - Trash Theory

The Evolution of The Cure: From Goth to Pop and Back Again - Trash Theory

The Conflicted Horror of DEAR EVAN HANSEN | Explained - Amanda the Jedi

The Worst Musical You've Never Seen... | DIANA THE MUSICAL - uncle herman

Why Elton takes 2½ minutes to get to the chorus - David Bennett Piano

Muse Why They Sued Nescafe and Nestle Over The Song "Feeling Good" - Rock N' Roll True Stories

How George Harrison changes key in Beatles songs - David Bennett Piano

4 Inventive Key Changes in Pop Music - David Bennett Piano

Hamilton Bad? - Video Essay - CJ The X

10 AMAZING Musical Details in the First 8 Minutes of In the Heights - Howard Ho

In the Heights Ending Explained & Why It's More Amazing Than You Think - Howard Ho

Stop Calling Lizzo a Mammy—And Other Bad Faith Criticism - Melina Pendulum

Microtonality in Western Music - David Bennett Piano

14 Muse Songs Inspired By Classical Music - David Bennett Piano

The Dark Side of The Nutcracker - Listening In

DEEP DISCOG DIVE: OutKast - Mic The Snare

A Love Letter to Pop Punk - Polyphonic

The Woman who Invented Rock n' Roll - Polyphonic [Sister Rosetta Tharpe]

Songs that use 7/4 time - David Bennett Piano

A Conversation with Igor Stravinsky, 1957 - John Randolph

The Shocking Real-Life Story Behind "Teenage Dirtbag" by Wheatus - Trash Theory

Why Twisted Is So Good - Silvana Ltd. [Starkid musical]

West Side Story: An Unappreciated Masterpiece - Sideways

Miscellaneous:

Grooming Aaron Taylor-Johnson - Gustaf Genz

Alexandria's Genesis: The Internet's Fakest "Disease" - Izzzyzzz

Asexuality:

Asexuality is not a 'white thing' | Asexual activist Yasmin Benoit - PinkNews

ASEXUALS AREN'T LGBT? | My Thoughts on the Debate - Yasmin Benoit

Realising I'm Aromantic Asexual - Yasmin Benoit

Maybe You Haven't Met The Right Person Yet | An Asexual Video Essay - David J Bradley

Asexuals and Sex - David J Bradley

Objectively Bad Art - Video Essay - CJ The X

i read the "bridgerton" book and it's... problematic (racism, sexism, consent, and bad writing) - Jack Edwards

It's Not a Coincidence. It's Colorism. - Tee Noir

I TESTED Corsets vs. Knives (For Science!) - Jill Bearup

Why Netflix should NOT adapt Avatar and adapt A Court of Thorns and Roses instead (a video essay) 🧐 - withcindy

What happens when you try to be inclusive, but mess up anyway? *A closer look at A Deadly Education* - withcindy

Double Standards and Diverse Media - Sarah Z

i followed famous authors' daily routines for a week as an act of self-sabotage - Jack Edwards

In Search Of A Flat Earth - Folding Ideas

That Time Geocentrists Tricked A Bunch of Physicists - Folding Ideas

Responding to JK Rowlings Essay | Is It Anti-Trans? - Jammidodger

Parasocial Relationships In The Age of the Internet | John Mulaney - uncle herman

The Parasocial Problem with Livestreaming - Glink

The Ocean Cleanup begins cleaning the Great Pacific Garbage Patch - CNET

Why Oil Paint Is So Expensive - Business Insider

The Oubliette - History's Most Brutal Torture Method? - TheUntoldPast

The Radical Overhaul of Smosh - j aubrey

Vaccines: A Measured Response - hbomberguy

Why medieval people didn't wash their hair, and how it stayed clean | Historical Myth Busting - SnappyDragon

Performative Wokeness - T1J

Youtube Is Absurd - David J Bradley

Short Films:

101 THINGS TO DO INSTEAD OF SCROLLING // ideas to have a fun, productive summer - studyquill

How To Be Alone - Andrea Dorfman

kittykat96 - vewn

Teaching Jake about the Camcorder, Jan '97 - brian david gilbert [CW: Horror short]

The Neighbors' Window - Oscar Winning Short Film - marshallcurry [CW: cancer, death]

The Period Cramp Machine with Simone Giertz - Kotex

What Is Fire? - It's Okay To Be Smart

I think I won't make any more of these masterposts in the future, but I hope you enjoyed them so far! (check out also [2020 part I - part II] and [2021 part I])

#video essays #youtube masterpost #my post i guess #long post #you can reblog this if you want!

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jmsa1287 · 5 years ago

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A Year in Review: The 31 Best Episodes of TV of 2019

There's never been more TV than this year. Thanks to the launch of new streaming services like Apple TV+ and Disney+ (with more to come in 2020!), there is an infinite number of hours of content out there. And while not all those TV shows are worth a watch, mot seasons of shows genuinely contain at least one great-to-amazing episode. The 31 episodes listed below are the ones that stood out the most; that either became part of the cultural conversation or were not well-watched but still resonated in a way that deserved more attention. Whether it was the writing, the acting, a visual moment or a hilarious scene, these selected episodes rose above the cut to show what TV can do in this unprecedented era.

31. “Striking Vipers,” Black Mirror Season 5, Netflix

30. “Smell Ya Later,” Killing Eve Season 2, BBC America

29. “Chase Gets the Gays,” The Other Two Season 1, Comedy Central

28. “Refugees,” Ramy Season 1, Hulu

27. “Finish It,” The Deuce Season 3, HBO

26. “Chapter 7: The Reckoning,” The Mandalorian Season 1, Disney+

25. “Life’s a Beach,” Pose Season 2, FX

24. “Easter,” Better Things Season 3, FX

23. “Chapter 8: Overview,” The OA Season 2, Netflix

22. “Reborn,” Servant Season 1, Apple TV+

21. “Stories,” Broad City Season 5, Comedy Central

20. “Blondie,” High Maintenance Season 3, HBO

19. “The Trials and Tribulations of Trying to Pee While Depressed,” Euphoria Season 1, HBO

18. “The Bad Mother,” Big Little Lies Season 2, HBO

17. “405 Method Not Allowed,” Mr. Robot Season 4, USA

16. “1:23:45,” Chernobyl Season 1 HBO

15. “Dundee,” Succession Season 2, HBO

14. “Episode 9,” Mindhunter Season 2, Netflix

13. “401 Unauthorized,” Mr. Robot Season 4, USA

12. “Take Me as I Am, Whoever I Am,” Modern Love Season 1, Amazon

11. “Part Four,” When They See Us Season 1, Netflix

Ava DuVernay's achingly painful "When They See Us" miniseries about the persecution of the Central Park 5 is capped off with its brilliant final episode; a showcase for Jharrel Jerome ("Moonlight") who undergoes a transformation here unlike any other actor on TV this year. Playing Korey Wise, we see Jerome go from happy-go-lucky New Yorker to a victim of the vicious prison system who is beholden to his truth despite its consequences. It is a harrowing 88 minutes of TV that is both devastating and beautiful, carried on the shoulders of Jerome's unparalleled performance.

10. “A God Walks Into a Bar,” Watchmen Season 1, HBO

The penultimate episode of "Watchmen," the buzziest show of the fall, is the most Damon Lindelof has been during this stellar season of TV. "A God Walks into a Bar" is a revealing episode in the same way as the last season of "The Leftovers," Lindelof's previous project. The episode reveals that for all of its surrealness and commentary about race and gender in our world, the "remix" of the popular comic book series is, at its core, a love story. Lindelof sets the episode as a classic cosmic joke but as it goes on, it exposes itself to be full of heart and emotion; about two people from different parts of the universe (and different parts of the space-time continuum?) connecting. At a bar. Over beer, conversation, and eggs.

09. “Strawberries,” Ramy Season 1, Hulu

Unlike anything depicted on TV, "Strawberries," the peak of Hulu's comedy "Ramy," created by standup Ramy Youssef, is told in flashback, tracking a young Ramy in the days leading up to and after 9/11. Seeing the event play out from the perspective of a young Muslim child in middle school is heartbreaking and raw; a highlight that is thoughtful, meditative, funny and surprising.

08. "Shook One Pt. II,” Euphoria Season 1, HBO

It's not until "Shook One Pt. II" that "Euphoria" finally clicks and finds its groove. Playing out at a carnival, the episode raises the dramatic stakes for the show's young cast, where creator Sam Levinson's bold aesthetic choices complement the intense tension on display. Part thriller, part romance and all edge, this episode of "Euphoria" features stellar performances from Zendaya, Hunter Schafer, Jacob Elordi and more.

07. “Volume 7: The Magician" + "Volume 8: The Hanged Man,” Too Old to Die Young Season 1 Amazon

It was hard to pick just one episode of Nicolas Winding Refn's twisted noir cop saga "Too Old to Die Young." The controversial auteur made a perfect thing for streaming age; somewhere between a film and a series. NWR said himself that you can watch the episodes out of order, or start from anywhere, which is sort of true. But it's the back-to-back episodes towards the back half of the series, "Volume 7: The Magician" and "Volume 8: The Hanged Man," that stand out the most; a chaotic and insane set of events that turn "TOTDY" on its head.

06. “Posh,” PEN15 Season 1, Hulu

"PEN15" is hands down the funniest show of 2019 but it's the Hulu series episode "Posh" — a thoughtful and insightful examination of racism in the 00s — that is the show's highlight. In the episode, BFFs Maya (Maya Erskine) and Anna (Anna Konkle) make their own version of the Spice Girls with a group of mean girls at their middle school for a class project. They force Maya, who is Japanese-American, to play Scary Spice — the only woman of color in the insanely popular British girl group, because Maya is the only girl of color among them. It sparks a deep divide between Maya and Anna that is explored in the short episode with maximum effect.

05. “DC,” Succession Season 2, HBO

Over the last few years, Americans have made Congressional hearings they're own sort of perverse reality show. So, it's no surprise that "Succession" would go there and put members of the Roy family on display and under scrutiny. The main targets here are Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) and Cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun), who have to answer a number of questions about Waystar Royco's handling of alleged sexual assaults and crimes involving the company's cruise line. "Succession" had been building up to this moment since early Season 1 and the payoff is both cringe-worthy and hilarious.

04. “The Great War and Modern Memory,” True Detective Season 3 HBO

Filmmaker Jeremy Saulnier's ("Green Room," "Hold the Dark") crack at a TV show is nothing short of spectacular. With "The Great War and Modern Memory," he establishes an unsettling mood and tone to the third installment of "True Detective," a somber story about two cops investigating the disappearance of two young children over the span of several decades. The episode is poetic and solemn, featuring two mind-blowing performances from its stars Mahershala Ali and a career-best Stephen Dorff. They're both in tune with what kind of show they're in, selling creator Nic Pizzolatto's writing, which coming out of the mouths of other performers would likely sound dreadful.

03. “Episode 1,” Fleabag Season 2, Amazon

Filming a dinner scene is not as easy as it looks. For the first episode of the second season of the outstanding "Fleabag" both writer/creator/star Phoebe Waller-Bridge and director Harry Bradbeer hit out of the park. It's a whirlwind of an episode where PWB's Fleabag character literally tells the audience Season 2 is a love story, which, of course, involves the so-called Hot Priest (Andrew Scott). "Episode 1" is fast, zippy, and manages to get most of the show's cast in one room, featuring wonderful performances from not only PWB and Scott but also Olivia Coleman, Sian Clifford and Brett Gelman. It's a chaotic half-hour of TV that has a kinetic energy unlike anything else this year, taking an awkward family dinner to its limits.

02. "Series Finale Part 2: Hello, Elliot,” Mr. Robot Season 4, USA

The series finale of “Mr. Robot” is as emotional as it is shocking. Sam Esmail sticks the landing with his hacking drama, turning a story about a vigilante and his crew trying to right the wrong world into a personal journey of a young man struggling with deep trauma. It’s a beautiful sendoff, that is fully satisfying and a magnificent accomplishment of modern television.

01. “Never Knew a Love Like this Before,” Pose Season 2, FX

"Pose" proved itself to be an uplifting and hopeful show, uprooting cliched and tragic stories about trans people we've come to see on screen and instead, opts to show us something beautiful. But its "Never Knew a Love Like This Before" that is 2019's best episode of the year — a heart-wrenching and unexpected boom and a reminder that trans people, especially trans women of color, are often in danger. Here, Candy (an out-of-this-world performance from Angelica Ross), who orbited around the main cast in the series, is murdered. She returns to her funeral in spirit, having in-depth conversations with her friends, enemies and frenemies. Pray Tell (Billy Porter) honors her by moving forward with her wish — a lip-synch category for the balls that he previously rejected. It's a beautiful story about the history of queer culture that's personalized in an unexpected way.

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well-red-commie-gf · 5 years ago

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On the Myth of Mass Rapes by the Red Army

I just completed a course focused on war crimes of WWII. Here's something I wrote in response to an article accusing Stalin of condoning rape, among other articles which (I belive) massively inflated the number of rapes that occurred.

While I am aware that sexual violence was committed by Allied troops (including the American GIs and British Soldiers) as well as the Axis troops, I found it difficult to believe that any leader would condone the act. Stalin was accused of exactly that, but the accounts of Stalin condoning rape (whether implicitly or explicitly) can be traced back to a single primary source, the book “Conversations with Stalin” by Yugoslavian author Milovan Djilas, who later became one of communism’s first prominent Eastern European dissidents and one of Stalin’s harshest critics. The novel was written some twelve years after the war’s conclusion, and contains many (otherwise unverified) “quotes” from Stalin.

It is no secret that Stalin committed atrocities against the enemy in WWII as well as against his own people, and I want to ensure that my attempt at seeking historical truth is not interpreted as a defense of those acts. However, I also feel that it is somewhat unfair to assert that Stalin or his officers condoned or encouraged soldiers to rape the enemy, when there are numerous other primary sources indicating the opposite. I found nothing to corroborate the claim that Stalin believed this a good method of “mentally breaking” the enemy. There is significant evidence in Russian literature indicating that rape would not have been tolerated by military command. The concept of gender equality and the emancipation of women was deeply embedded in Marxist communist doctrine upon which the Constitution of the USSR was based [1].

Under Stalin, women were able to choose their careers and acted as active participants in the national economy. It is estimated that over 800,000 women served in the Red Army during WWII and some became decorated officers. It is likely that the empowerment of women in Soviet society was what led so many women to enlist. The author of "The Unwomanly Face of War", Svetlana Alexievich, makes this very assumption in the introduction to her novel, which is a collection of stories compiled from interviews with women who served on behalf of the Red Army during WWII. There are accounts in the novel of rape, but it is clear even from these accounts that superior officers would punish soldiers who were found committing sexual violence against the citizens of the territories they occupied. One interview with a Junior Sergeant named A. Ratkina reveals that there were harsh punishments for even consorting with female citizens, and that rape was punishable by court martial.

"One of our officers fell in love with a German girl … our superiors heard about it … He was demoted and sent to the rear. When we entered a town or a village, for the first three days there was looting and [rape] … Well, in secret, naturally … You understand … After three days you could wind up in court" [2].

In Soviet Russia, rape was an offense punishable by death [3]. While Ratkina admits that Red Army soldiers were likely guilty of rape, she also reveals that this was not tolerated by her command. Ratkina recalls that, when five German girls came to her commander weeping and stating that they had been raped, and this account was confirmed by a gynecologist’s examination, “we told those German girls: go and look, and if you recognize someone, we’ll shoot him on the spot. We won’t consider his rank” [4].

Additionally, many Russian soldiers-turned-academics have said that Stalin issued an executive order on 19 January, 1945, explicitly outlawing mistreatment of citizens by his soldiers [5]. One soldier-turned-professor also added that “4,148 Red Army officers and many privates were ‘punished’ for committing atrocities” [6]. I have not been able to find a copy of this executive order to corroborate their statements, but have researched the claimants and found that they hold prestigious positions in their respective fields.

This executive order has been mentioned in several of the articles I perused, so it is likely that it existed in some form. One Russian website provides the text of the order as follows:"Officers and Red Army! We are going to the country of the enemy. Everyone should keep his composure, everyone should be brave ... The remaining population in the conquered areas… should not be subjected to violence. Perpetrators will be punished under the laws of war. In the conquered territory, sexual relations with the female sex are not allowed. For violence and rape the perpetrators will be shot" [7].

While I am unable to independently verify the content of the order, I feel that I have found sufficient evidence to confirm that the claim that Stalin or his officers encouraged or condoned rape was false. It is likely that rape occurred, but certainly not to the extent claimed in the articles linked in the first paragraph of this post. Stalin was unrelenting and unforgiving, both qualities which assisted his pursuit of victory in the war. It is highly unlikely that he would have tolerated any acts that would cast a poor image on the Red Army.

There are far more primary sources documenting rapes committed by the US Army, though they are generally not easy to find in English. One such article can be found from Der Spiegel, which claims "US criminology professor Robert Lilly, who examined rape cases prosecuted by American military courts, arrived at a number of 11,000 serious sexual assaults committed by November, 1945" [8]. Additionally shocking is the evidence that, not only did American GIs commit mass rape, they blamed it on black soldiers and even fabricated stories to justify segregation upon returning home [9]. I would especially recommend reading this article, as few articles explore the rape committed by American GIs so thoroughly.

[1] Alice Erh-Soon Tay, “The Status of Women in the Soviet Union,” The American Journal of Comparative Law 20, no. 4 (1972): pp. 662-692, https://doi.org/10.2307/839036.[2] Svetlana Alexievich, “And She Puts Her Hand to Her Heart,” in The Unwomanly Face of War, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, [epub] (Penguin Classics, 2017).[3] Ger P. Van Den Berg, “The Soviet Union and the Death Penalty,” Soviet Studies 35, no. 2 (1983): pp. 154-174, https://doi.org/10.1080/09668138308411469.[4] Alexievich, The Unwomanly Face of War.[5] Sergey Turchenko, “Sex Liberation: Erotic Myths of WWII (Translated Automatically from Russian),” Free Press, May 5, 2011, https://web.archive.org/web/20140530214602/http://svpressa.ru/war/article/8271/. See also O. A. Rzheshevsky, “Berlin Operation 1945: Discussion Continues (Translated from Russian),” World of History (Russian Electronic Magazine), May 8, 2003, https://web.archive.org/web/20120401022017/http://gpw.tellur.ru /page.html?r=books&s=bevor.[6] Chris Summers, “Red Army Rapists Exposed,” BBC News (BBC, April 29, 2002), http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe /1939174.stm.[7] Daniil Ivanov, “The Myth of Millions of Raped German Women,” State History, October 20, 2009, https://statehistory.ru/32/Mif-o-millionakh-iznasilovannykh-nemok/.[8] Klaus Wiegrefe, "Postwar Rape: Were Americans As Bad as the Soviets?" Spiegel International, March 2, 2015, https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/book-claims-us-soldiers-raped-190-000-german-women-post-wwii-a-1021298.html[9] Ruth Lawlor, "When commemorating D-Day, don’t forget the dark side of American war efforts," The Washington Post, June 6, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/06/06/when-commemorating-d-day-dont-forget-dark-side-american-war-efforts/

#stalinism #stalin #communism #world war 2 #wwii #women in wwii #womeninwwii #soviet #sovietrussia #ussr #rape #sa #sexualassault #potentially triggering #triggerwarning #tw

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gnosticgnoob · 5 years ago

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Variations on a Theme: "The Weird vs The Quantifiable" -- Aggregated Commentary from within the Gutenberg Galaxy

The pursuit of examining the world through philosophy, mathematics, and science tends to be seen as expanding the borders of what is known and quantified, conquering the territory of what is not yet known. In this pursuit, the investigator encounters wonder or the "weird", and what ideologically separates some philosophers and scientists from others is whether the investigator sets aside the weird as a misunderstood quirk of what is not yet known but still knowable, or the investigator takes into account the weird as a fundamental, permanent attribute of the landscape of inquiry that may perhaps always represent factors which intrinsically and inescapably evade knowledge and literary explanation, not as a bug of our understanding but as a feature of the true ontological state of affairs. The former mindset supposes that with more time and rigor, our inquiry will finally arrive at a sort of epistemological/ontological "bedrock" that dispels any sense of the bizarre, the latter treats scientific inquiry itself as necessitating the injection of a sort of subjective poetry or play to adequately do justice to the full reality of what is observed and described for our purposes, without ever expecting that we will hit such bedrock. Materialism/scientism perhaps would posit that any inclusion of the mystical or poetic in the language we use to describe the world is inappropriate, pseudo-scientific, pseudo-intellectual, or maladaptive; the mystic posits conversely that to exclude the poetic and not make room for the weird is maladaptive.

I have here a collection of excerpts from other thinkers that I think work together to allude to the mystical as a permanent fixture of our endeavors for clarification through experimentation and language, or at least suggest that a more "mystical" mindset will always be more useful than one that is conversely more in the vein of materialism/scientism trying to arrive at a "final technical vocabulary":

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“We say the map is different from the territory. But what is the territory? Operationally, somebody went out with a retina or a measuring stick and made representations which were then put on paper. What is on the paper map is a representation of what was in the retinal representation of the man who made the map; and as you push the question back, what you find is an infinite regress, an infinite series of maps. The territory never gets in at all. […] Always, the process of representation will filter it out so that the mental world is only maps of maps, ad infinitum.” --Gregory Bateson, English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician, and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. His writings include Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972) and Mind and Nature (1979). In Palo Alto, California, Bateson and colleagues developed the double-bind theory of schizophrenia. Bateson's interest in systems theory forms a thread running through his work. He was one of the original members of the core group of the Macy conferences in Cybernetics (1941- 1960), and the later set on Group Processes (1954 - 1960), where he represented the social and behavioral sciences; he was interested in the relationship of these fields to epistemology.

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“The mind is somehow a co-creator in the process of reality through acts of language. Language is very, very mysterious. It is true magic. People run all over the place looking for paranormal abilities, but notice that when I speak if your internal dictionary matches my internal dictionary, that my thoughts cross through the air as an acoustical pressure wave and are reconstructed inside your cerebral cortex as your thought. Your understanding of my words. Telepathy exists; it is just that the carrier wave is small mouth noises.” --Terence McKenna, "Eros And The Eschaton". McKenna was called the "Timothy Leary of the '90s", an American ethnobotanist, mystic, psychonaut, lecturer, author, and an advocate for the responsible use of naturally occurring psychedelic plants. He spoke and wrote about a variety of subjects, including psychedelic drugs, plant-based entheogens, shamanism, metaphysics, alchemy, language, philosophy, culture, technology, environmentalism, and the theoretical origins of human consciousness. -------------------------------------

“If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet. Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.” --Niels Bohr, Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. Bohr developed the Bohr model of the atom, in which he proposed that energy levels of electrons are discrete and that the electrons revolve in stable orbits around the atomic nucleus but can jump from one energy level (or orbit) to another. Although the Bohr model has been supplanted by other models, its underlying principles remain valid. He conceived the principle of complementarity: that items could be separately analysed in terms of contradictory properties, like behaving as a wave or a stream of particles. -------------------------------------

“We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.” --Werner Heisenberg, German theoretical physicist known for the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which he published in 1927. Heisenberg was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics for the creation of quantum mechanics. He also made important contributions to the theories of the hydrodynamics of turbulent flows, the atomic nucleus, ferromagnetism, cosmic rays, and subatomic particles, and he was instrumental in planning the first West German nuclear reactor at Karlsruhe. -------------------------------------

“We have no right to assume that any physical laws exist, or if they have existed up to now, that they will continue to exist in a similar manner in the future.” --Max Planck, German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. Planck made many contributions to theoretical physics, but his fame as a physicist rests primarily on his role as the originator of quantum theory; the discovery of Planck's constant enabled him to define a new universal set of physical units (such as the Planck length and the Planck mass), all based on fundamental physical constants upon which much of quantum theory is based. -------------------------------------

“There is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination.” --Daniel Dennett, American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. A member of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, he is referred to as one of the "Four Horsemen of New Atheism", along with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens. -------------------------------------

“Things themselves become so burdened with attributes, signs, allusions that they finally lose their own form. Meaning is no longer read in an immediate perception, the figure no longer speaks for itself; between the knowledge which animates it and the form into which it is transposed, a gap widens. It is free for the dream.” --Michel Foucault, French philosopher, historian of ideas, social theorist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how they are used as a form of social control through societal institutions. His thought has influenced academics, especially those working in communication studies, anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, literary theory, feminism, and critical theory. Though often cited as a post-structuralist and postmodernist, Foucault rejected these labels. -------------------------------------

“When the mind projects names and concepts on what is seen through direct perception, confusion and delusion result.” --Patanjali, sage in Hinduism, thought to be the author of a number of Sanskrit works. The greatest of these are the Yoga Sutras, a classical yoga text. -------------------------------------

“The man who says that he has no illusions has at least that one.” --Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes (1911). Polish-British writer regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. Conrad wrote stories and novels, many with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit in the midst of what he saw as an impassive, inscrutable universe. Heart of Darkness is among is most famous works. Conrad is considered an early modernist, though his works contain elements of 19th-century realism. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced numerous authors, and many films have been adapted from, or inspired by, his works. Numerous writers and critics have commented that Conrad's fictional works, written largely in the first two decades of the 20th century, seem to have anticipated later world events. -------------------------------------

“I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.” --Richard P. Feynman, American theoretical physicist, known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics for which he proposed the parton model. For contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965. He assisted in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II and became known to a wide public as a member of the commission that investigated the Challenger shuttle disaster. Along with his work in theoretical physics, Feynman has been credited with pioneering the field of quantum computing and introducing the concept of nanotechnology. -------------------------------------

“The critical ontology of ourselves has to be considered not, certainly, as a theory, a doctrine, nor even as a permanent body of knowledge that is accumulating; it has to be conceived as an attitude, an ethos, a philosophical life in which the critique of what we are is at one and the same time the historical analysis of the limits that are imposed on us and an experiment with the possibility of going beyond them.” --Michel Foucault -------------------------------------

“In mystical literature such self-contradictory phrases as ‘dazzling obscurity,’ 'whispering silence,’ 'teeming desert,’ are continually met with. They prove that not conceptual speech, but music rather, is the element through which we are best spoken to by mystical truth. Many mystical scriptures are indeed little more than musical compositions. “He who would hear the voice of Nada, 'the Soundless Sound,’ and comprehend it, he has to learn the nature of Dharana…. When to himself his form appears unreal, as do on waking all the forms he sees in dreams, when he has ceased to hear the many, he may discern the ONE—the inner sound which kills the outer…. For then the soul will hear, and will remember. And then to the inner ear will speak THE VOICE OF THE SILENCE…. And now thy SELF is lost in SELF, THYSELF unto THYSELF, merged in that SELF from which thou first didst radiate.… Behold! thou hast become the Light, thou hast become the Sound, thou art thy Master and thy God. Thou art THYSELF the object of thy search: the VOICE unbroken, that resounds throughout eternities, exempt from change, from sin exempt, the seven sounds in one, the VOICE OF THE SILENCE. Om tat Sat.” (H.P. Blavatsky, The Voice of the Silence). These words, if they do not awaken laughter as you receive them, probably stir chords within you which music and language touch in common. Music gives us ontological messages which non-musical criticism is unable to contradict, though it may laugh at our foolishness in minding them. There is a verge of the mind which these things haunt; and whispers therefrom mingle with the operations of our understanding, even as the waters of the infinite ocean send their waves to break among the pebbles that lie upon our shores.” --William James, Varieties of Religious Experience. American philosopher and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. James was a leading thinker of the late nineteenth century, one of the most influential U.S. philosophers, and has been labeled the "Father of American psychology". Along with Charles Sanders Peirce, James established the philosophical school known as pragmatism. James also developed the philosophical perspective known as radical empiricism. James' work has influenced intellectuals such as Émile Durkheim, W. E. B. Du Bois, Edmund Husserl, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Rorty, as well as former US President Jimmy Carter. -------------------------------------

“Metaphysical assertions, however, are statements of the psyche, and are therefore psychological. … Whenever the Westerner hears the word ‘psychological’, it always sounds to him like ‘only psychological.’” --Carl Jung, “Psyche and Symbol”. Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work was influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philosophy, and religious studies. Jung worked as a research scientist at the famous Burghölzli hospital, during which time he came to the attention of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. The two men conducted a lengthy correspondence and collaborated, for a while, on a joint vision of human psychology. Among the central concepts of analytical psychology is individuation—the lifelong psychological process of differentiation of the self out of each individual's conscious and unconscious elements, a process which Jung considered to be the main task of human development. He created some of the best known psychological concepts, including synchronicity, archetypal phenomena, the collective unconscious, the psychological complex, and extraversion and introversion. -------------------------------------

“God is a psychic fact of immediate experience, otherwise there would never have been any talk of God. The fact is valid in itself, requiring no non-psychological proof and inaccessible to any form of non-psychological criticism. It can be the most immediate and hence the most real of experiences, which can be neither ridiculed nor disproved.” --Carl Jung -------------------------------------

“Daniel C. Dennett defines religions at the beginning of his Breaking the Spell as ‘social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought,’ which as far as Christianity goes is rather like beginning a history of the potato by defining it as a rare species of rattlesnake…. He also commits the blunder of believing that religion is a botched attempt to explain the world, which is like seeing ballet as a botched attempt to run for a bus.” --Terry Eagleton, Reason, Faith, and Revolution. British literary theorist, critic, and public intellectual, Eagleton has published over forty books, but remains best known for Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983). The work elucidated the emerging literary theory of the period, as well as arguing that all literary theory is necessarily political.

#occult #scientism #mysticism #esoterica #philosophy

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jedboudreaux427-blog · 6 years ago

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Jazz And Classical—Musical, Cultural, Listening Differences

Portmanteau class holding classes that represent kinds or classifications of music, useful in figuring out and organizing comparable musical artists or recordings. Freakbeat isn't something you hearken to over Halloween 9 Spooky Spotify Playlists Good for Any Halloween Get together 9 Spooky Spotify Playlists Perfect for Any Halloween Social gathering Finding the proper music for this 12 months's Halloween social gathering shouldn't be a problem. As a result of Spotify has a seemingly unlimited supply of Halloween playlists to select from. Read More , it is the genre that hyperlinks a few of the early-Sixties UK R&B music with the psychedelic rock songs that had been produced later within the decade. A type of American roots music with its personal roots within the English, Irish and Scottish traditional music of immigrants from the British Isles (notably the Scots-Irish immigrants of Appalachia), in addition to the music of rural African-People, jazz, and blues. Like jazz, bluegrass is performed with each melody instrument switching off, taking part in the melody in turn while the others revert to backing; this is in distinction to previous-time music, in which all instruments play the melody collectively or one instrument carried the lead all through whereas the others present accompaniment.

Since musicians will be very artistic, not all songs have a selected and defined genre. Some are a combination of many, others current a new sample with no related style in any respect (for instance, in our fast-sluggish music instance, what do we do with songs that don't have any evident tempo, or songs with variable velocity, or a song that can be described at more than one velocity like 80 and 160 bpms?). In distinction, there are songs that share well-outlined patterns (by custom, convention, influence, whatever) and are simpler to catalog. Named by McDonald himself, fallen angel is the place calamitously overwrought feminine-led symphonic rock meets fantastically melodramatic, shred-happy energy metal. If that sounds a bit like Bonnie Tyler on each ice and drugs with the whole lot turned up to eleventy-seven then, damn it all, you are kind of proper. Anticipate twinkly pianos, blankly private lyrics and window-bending, hair-shaking riff-bombs. Maybe even a violin right here and there. Fallen angel is, actually, the uncoolest music of all time. Which makes it awesomely cool. Since chances are you'll be operating on a small funds in school, music of this kind is incessantly worth getting from web sites with free online streams. For example, presents common online radio streams like Drone Zone, Groove Salad, and Secret Agent. And Digitally Imported presents online radio channels in virtually every digital style, together with cool channels for stress-free study music like Area Desires. And should you're a Spotify consumer, you have got access to a huge number of songs and playlists.

The music that composers make will be heard by means of a number of media; essentially the most conventional way is to listen to it live, within the presence of the musicians (or gennieclunie0878.mobie.in as one of the musicians), in an outside or indoor house reminiscent of an amphitheatre, live performance corridor , cabaret room or theatre Since the twentieth century, reside music can be broadcast over the radio, television or the Web, or recorded and listened to on a CD player or Mp3 participant. Some musical styles give attention to producing a sound for a efficiency, while others give attention to producing a recording that mixes together sounds that had been never played "stay." Recording, even of primarily reside types akin to rock, often makes use of the power to edit and splice to supply recordings which may be thought-about "better" than the actual efficiency. Today, you could be a Juggalo in a Garth Brooks tribute act and somebody will nonetheless accuse you of being a hipster. Actually, maybe the only genre of music you may be into without somebody, somewhere, accusing you of being a hipster is metalcore, and even that's iffy. It is because the term "hipster" denotes an id that is laborious to nail down, but might be damaging and positively disingenuous one way or the other(i.e., two dudes can be sporting the same Unhealthy Brains T-shirt, however the one you want and assume is "for actual" is a punk, and the one you think is a filthy hobbyist is a hipster). Unhealthy religion and pattern-hopping is the default assumption in music, as a result of god forbid anybody like something ever.

Word that for basically every style, you may add the phrase for music to the top, i.e. 古典音乐 (classical music), 摇滚音乐 (rock music), or 世界音乐 (world music). This is not all the time essential, however. The word 民乐 (people music) already has the character for music in the identify, 说唱 (rap) is completely tremendous by itself, as is 歌剧 (opera). If the conversation is clearly centered on music, you will be understood whether or not or not you add the phrase 音乐 onto the style. Just don't be surprised if Chinese language individuals have no idea what you are talking about when you point out something like bluegrass or world music - these genres merely aren't quite common. Dubstep is an EDM genre that started in South London within the late materialized as an evolution of related kinds music genres like the damaged beat, techno, dub, reggae, drum, and base. Within the UK the origins of this music may be traced back to party scenes growth of Jamaican sound methods. Within the early Eighties, the music featured percussion patterns, syncopated drums, sparse among others. First releases of this music date back to 1998 the place the only release of B-sides of two-step garage was featured. The underside-up technique begins from the decided amount of music genres and locations them in a two-dimensional house. Their coordinates are based on the style-defining characteristics and www.audio-Transcoder.com thus comparable genres are positioned shut to one another. As soon as again, parametrically primarily based programming to create this chart is nigh impossible because the traits (parameters) are too broad, not solely measurable, and even variable in importance (weight). The profit from this methodology is that tremendous-genres will finally emerge as amorphous zones, overlapping and connecting other tremendous-genres at numerous points. This is a extra lifelike visualization of the musical genre network, although still restricted by two-dimensional constraints.

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toneyhanson9-blog · 6 years ago

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Which Style Of Music Has The Slowest BPM?

The second half of the Sixties ushered in the era of music festivals — culminating with the granddaddy of them all, Woodstock, in August 1969. Rock monsters Led Zeppelin are one of the best, hardest rock bands ever, and the four individual members are all among the finest players of their era too. Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, John Bonham, and Jimmy Page stand head and shoulders above their contemporaries as particular person musicians, and their abilities combined to create a number of the heaviest rock of their era. In fact, Communication Breakdown is often cited as the primary heavy metal track. Whether or not you believe that or not, the band's influence is undeniable and their status as British rock gods is untouchable.

This is a superb thing, culturally speaking. The national music scene has never been this diverse. Too usually, especially in rock's heyday, it was dominated by acts that made their bones from taking nonwhite music and sanitizing it for white audiences. That custom undoubtedly lives on, www.audio-transcoder.com in musicians like Justin Bieber, but the pop charts and critics' notebooks precisely mirror the American mosaic in a method that they actually have not before. We may be in the midst of a gigantic leap backward as a rustic, but not less than the music is sweet. Even the country charts are pretty woke. Musicians from the older genres - blues, jazz (together with bebop and dixieland), nation (including country and western, boogie woogie, honky tonk and bluegrass), and gospel (including religious and Christian rock) - enjoyed, on average, similar lifespans as these from the US population with the identical 12 months of birth and gender. Jazz strikes beyond live performance levels and into the homes, church buildings, and excessive colleges of Jap North Carolina. It is a tradition that has been passed down generationally by music educators and particular person players, and continues to tell a lot to the area's music at this time.

Music was once easy. Some folks favored rock. Some people preferred pop. Some folks liked jazz, blues or classical. And, basically, that was sort of it. However, musicians are a stressed bunch and you'll only play Smoke on the Water, Always Crashing within the Identical Car or Roast Fish and Cornbread so many occasions earlier than someone is certain to say: Hold on a minute, what would happen if we performed them all on the similar time?" And so it's that new genres are born. Now think about that taking place for at the very least half a century or so - all around the world - and you reach some extent at which, in accordance with the engineer and information alchemist" Glenn McDonald, there are now 1,264 genres of well-liked music; all it is advisable do is go on to his startlingly clever web site and look - nicely, pay attention - for yourself. Flamenco is a tune, music and dance style which is strongly influenced by the Gitanos (Spanish Gypsies), but which has its deeper roots in Moorish and Jewish musical traditions. Originally, flamenco consisted of unaccompanied singing (cante). Later the songs have been accompanied by flamenco guitar (toque), rhythmic hand clapping ( palmas), rhythmic ft stomping (zapateado) and dance (baile). The toque and baile are also typically found with out the cante, although the tune remains at the coronary heart of the flamenco tradition. What distinguishes these sounds and scenes from lengthy-standing genres like techno or drum & bass is that they now not hold to the notion of center and periphery. They're not shaped from the highest down by a handful of wealthy, influential cities who transmit the culture while all people else is relegated to receiving it. If something, comparable club scenes in places like London and Berlin wish to their Latin American counterparts for inspiration. From this new ecosystem, an unbiased community of artists has begun to take shape, and whereas London and Berlin are welcome to hitch the dialogue, they're definitely not dominating the conversation. In case you are still having bother identifying the style, the association of the music could offer you some clues. For instance in genres like chill-out and ambient there's a distinct lack of any structure, as the music doesn't progress radically over its duration. 7. Hennion A. The manufacturing of success: an anti-musicology of the pop tune. Standard Music. 1983 Jan 1;three:159-93. A controversial term in hip-hop, many "aware rappers" don't like to be labeled as such. Nonetheless, there is no denying the importance of this subgenre, which promotes concepts corresponding to data of self and awareness of huge-ranging social issues. Many different subgenres accomplish the same, however alternative rap (a better phrase) is labeled as such due to its smoother, different types of dj music genres extra laid-back production fashion.

Rock critics do not usually like (or know a lot about) music that isn't rock, however they're wary of attacking genres that they know they don't understand. In order that they depart Classical, Blues, Jazz, and "World" alone. But Broadway present tunes do not have the mystique that makes these different genres so scary. If it was sung in a theater, rock critics dismiss it as sappy, soulless stuff for lame fifty-one thing white individuals in 1955. One of many inventory humorous anecdotes among music critics is that Marvin Gaye , the master of suave Motown love ballads with soul, originally wanted to sing showtunes.YouTube Music is a new music streaming service with the official audio, official video, playlists and artist stations. Plus, the rest of the story you possibly can't discover wherever else: stay performances, remixes and extra. I like rock music because it retains me pumped up all the time. Before I do one thing that's actually nervous to me, I like to take heed to my music to calm me down, however not too much. I can not stand sluggish music as a result of it makes me really sleepy and it gets annoying. I'd hearken to something, but nation is essentially the most annoying of all for me. I simply wish to get their cowboy hats and stomp all over them.Howdy readers of ! We present an inventory more on the fun facet of things. Don't fret, we've included typical data about universities in our write ups, but in contrast to our rankings of the best online doctoral packages , we current a listing of rockers, digital, avante-garde composers, alt-rockers, and tremendous stars who can play their axes with finesse and, on the similar time, have a PhD. Our prime 8 are presently PhD's of their fields whereas the final two are at the moment doctoral candidates. From Brian May to Jessica Rylan, there are a number of degrees represented within the checklist along with music genres.

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dweemeister · 7 years ago

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The Journey of Natty Gann (1985)

Almost a hundred years after the United States started settling its West, most of the land west of the Mississippi River remained “untamed” by humans. Today, much of the American West still has humans at the mercy of nature. Jeremy Kagan’s The Journey of Natty Gann sees a young, tomboyish girl that endures some of nature’s harshness in her long westward adventure – eventually finding peace with it and surviving. This one of the strongest films from one of the worst decades for Walt Disney Studios; yet the film is all but forgotten. In the years after Walt Disney’s death, the studio that bears his name attempted to make live-action films within the family-friendly confines that Disney himself established, yet making these newer films appeal to contemporary audiences. That tricky balancing act has continued into the present day, yet few have ever succeeded to the extent Natty Gann does.

It is 1935 in Chicago. Sol Gann (Ray Wise) lives in an aging apartment complex with his fifteen-year-old daughter Natalie Sue/“Natty” (Meredith Salenger). It seems as if he has been unemployed for some time, but soon finds a job in Washington state as a lumberjack thanks to the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The catch: he must leave on a bus for the Pacific Northwest immediately. Once he arrives home, Sol is unable to find his child anywhere. Considering his financial desperation, he leaves a note for Natty and arranges for the landlord, Connie (Lainie Kazan), to be a temporary guardian. Connie disapproves of Natty, and circumstances will force Natty to leave Chicago on her own. While traveling west on foot, by train, and automobiles, she will save and befriend a wolfdog from a dogfighting organization and meet a young man named Harry (John Cusack).

The Journey of Natty Gann marks the final on-screen appearance of dancer/singer/actor Scatman Crothers (the voice of Hong Kong Phooey, 1970′s The Aristocats, 1980′s The Shining), who appears in a brief role.

There is no denying that Natty Gann is as sentimental a movie as it sounds. It presents itself as a family film but does not see the need to sugarcoat everything: the dogfighting scene is more violent than expected, we are shown a few instances of a worried Sol calling a prevaricating Connie about his missing daughter, and Natty must fend off someone heavily implied to be a pedophile. Screenwriter Jeanne Rosenberg (1979′s The Black Stallion, 1991′s White Fang… yes, she specializes in animal movies) turns the film into part animal movie, part coming-of-age - when the film concentrates on the latter, it is at its best. This is because Natty is a street-smart Chicagoan who knows how to navigate life in a big city. But when tossed into wilderness without anyone to fall back upon, she retools her sense of resourcefulness and inner courage to suit her passing surroundings. Never despairing, a quiet go-getter by nature, always retaining some shred of optimism within but – unlike many Disney female characters – in touch with her anger, Natty is wonderfully portrayed by Salenger as one of the least Disney-esque female protagonists. It helps to have the Disney label, but The Journey of Natty Gann is an excellent film for youngsters who can take some of the film’s violence.

A sorta-first romance occurs with John Cusack’s character of Harry, but so little is made of this and so underdeveloped is their emotional connection that it seems like just another throwaway subplot in the film’s final third. Cusack, whose career was just beginning and had starred in Sixteen Candles (1984) and Better Off Dead (1985), is like a teenage Humphrey Bogart mixed with a teenage James Cagney (in his non-gangster roles) in this film – even though he does not appear in Natty Gann long, it should be of great interest to his fans.

One cannot ignore the other half of the film, as it is also a decent animal movie. Walt Disney Pictures has a long history of making live-action animal films from Old Yeller (1957) to various incarnations of The Incredible Journey (1963) and others, the studio has produced plenty in that subgenre – even if they might not be the most artistic movies ever made, there is no denying their enjoyability or emotional hold on audiences. To its credit, Natty Gann leaves its wolfdog protagonist as more of an open question, an unpredictable and fickle (like nature itself) aspect of the story that takes his time to warm up to Natty. Trust and understanding is not developed instantaneously, and the relationship between Natty and the wolfdog progresses as she comes closer to reuniting with her father. The film concentrates on Natty, not the wolfdog who never receives a proper name other than “Wolf”.

The canine actor here is a wolf-malamute named Jed. Born in 1977, Jed appeared in four films: a cameo in 1982′s The Thing, The Journey of Natty Gann, and White Fang and its 1994 sequel. His owner-trainer was Clint Rowe, who has trained animals for movies and television for more than thirty years. Ferocious though he might be at first, he wins over Natty’s and the audience’s affections as the film concludes.

From the film’s beginning in Chicago until its closing minutes, this is one of the prettiest films ever photographed with Disney. Cinematographer Dick Bush outdoes himself (1979′s Yanks, 1982′s Victor Victoria) in a setting – because of his British background – he has little experience with. The North American outdoors, as I have already waxed upon earlier, are unlike anything else in the world and often becomes a character of its own when Hollywood movies warrant it. Shot in various places along the route of the BC Rail (westward from Prince George to Vancouver) in Canada, Bush – when the action slows down – captures enormous panoramas of the forests, mountains, and waterways to trumpet the immense scope of Natty’s journey. During more intimate moments (like to emphasize the lack of space in the Chicago apartment complex Natty and Sol live out of), Bush’s camera lingers on conversations without gimmicks – and assisted by a lack of unnecessary editing by David Holden (1979′s The Warriors, 1980′s The Long Riders). And in moments of peril, the camera keeps the action within the entirety of the frame, rather than fragmenting it as it happens too often in contemporary films.

There is nothing more traumatic for a film score composer than when one has composed an entire score for an upcoming project, only to have it entirely tossed out and be replaced with another composer’s work. This trend increased in major Hollywood studios once the old Studio System disintegrated. For Natty Gann, Elmer Bernstein (1956′s The Ten Commandments, 1960′s The Magnificent Seven) submitted a score, rewrote it once, edited some of the cues after the second rejection, but ultimately was dismissed from the film. The already-established, but young, James Horner (1982′s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, 1989′s Glory) came in. Horner’s score recalls the works of Aaron Copland in its musical expanse – Americana music replete with optimistic woodwinds and free-flowing strings. Later in his career, Horner’s compositions for Americana would incorporate tragic motifs like in Legends of the Fall (1994), so Natty Gann represents Horner at his most adventurous and clear-eyed for a film sent in the West. Influences from Copland’s Rodeo appear in cues like “Into Town” (and would be replicated for Horner’s work in 1991′s An American Tail: Fievel Goes West). The final minutes of the film are blessed with two cues – “Farewell” and “Reunion/End Title” – which encapsulate all the emotion building to the only ending that this movie could entertain. It is excellent work from a young James Horner.

To appreciate The Journey of Natty Gann in all its scenic beauty, do not purchase the 2004 DVD/VHS release. That home media edition employs pan-and-scan – a bastardized method of video presentation meant for square televisions, but chops off chunks of the film’s imagery. For a proper letterboxed experience, all editions of Natty Gann legally streaming are presented in the correct format. This review, based on the March 29 airing on Turner Classic Movies’ (TCM) Treasures from the Disney Vault bloc, has been written on the letterboxed version.

Today, Disney is approaching a time where a majority of its live-action/hybrid films are remakes or reimaginings of its animated classics. Longtime readers will notice, thanks to TCM’s periodic bloc, has featured many live-action Disney titles from yesteryear not based on any pre-existing Disney property. Where have lower-mid and mid-budget original films like The Journey of Natty Gann gone? 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) this is not, nor is it trying to be. In that wonderful modesty, set amidst beautiful landscapes, verdant forests, and shimmering rivers, The Journey of Natty Gann – along with another film with wolves, Never Cry Wolf (1983) – is one of the best Disney films of the 1980s, and ranks comfortably in the studio’s top tier of live-action films.

My rating: 7.5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

#The Journey of Natty Gann #Jeremy Kagan #Meredith Salenger #John Cusack #Ray Wise #Lainie Kazan #Scatman Crothers #Jeanne Rosenberg #Dick Bush #David Holden #James Horner #TCM #My Movie Odyssey

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meditationadvise · 5 years ago

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A Shamanic Odyssey – Journey Into Ayahuasca Spirituality

Every now as well as then a great book goes along that not only wows its target market yet sparks movement. Which is just what Aya: A Shamanic Odyssey is.

Here is a passage from guide thanks to the writer as well as author. Enjoy.

Introduction: Candidates of the Mystery

Lima Airport, Peru Wednesday, June 28th, 2006

THE CLEAN WHITE WALLS OF THE WORK AREA ARE TAGGED WITH grafiti: "We that resolve mystery, come to be secret," alchemical knowledge bied far via the ages and also currently in the clean and sterile men's bathrooms at the Lima airport terminal departure lounge. Scrawled, no question, by among the travelers suffering in the food court.

Outside, milling under the common stare of safety and security video cameras are brilliant sprinkles of vivid spirits wearing crystals, grains as well as indigenous American Indian paraphernalia, middle-aged academics with "Erowid" medicine internet site t-shirts, and passengers that provide you that weird conspiratorial smile that claims: yes, we are right here for the conference. And here we are chowing down on McDonalds and also Donut King, getting our last hits of human being before hitting the jungle city of Iquitos and also shamanic boot camp.

It seems like some whacked out truth TV program, a generational photo of a new psychedelic wave just prior to it damages. Bright-eyed Westerners about to die as well as be reborn in the damp jungles of Peru, consuming alcohol the hallucinogenic mixture ayahuasca ...

Ayahuasca is a plant medication that has been used by the aboriginal individuals of South The U.S.A. for centuries to heal physical disorders and, they claim, to cleanse and cleanse the spirit. It was discovered by the West in 1851 when the epic British botanist Richard Spruce checked out the Rio Basin and was presented to the creeping plant by the Tokanoan Indians. Spruce gave the creeping plant its taxonomic name Banisteriopsis caapi, in different locations of South America it is also called yagè or hoasca. For a while in the mid-20th century drug stores that isolated the active residential or commercial properties of the vine called their compound "telepathine."

Research revealed it consisted of different harmala alkaloids which are after that boiled up in a mixture (likewise called ayahuasca) with a plethora of other plants, one being the leafy Psychotria viridis, which consists of the effective hallucinogenic chemical Dimethyltryptamine, also known as DMT. On its own the vine is not orally energetic but it does consist of powerful MAO (mono-amine oxidase) inhibitors that subdue the body's very own enzymes as well as allow the DMT to potentiate.

Science has made mindful ventures into the forest to study the vine in its native setting or, as with the "Hoasca Job" in the 1990s, to study church members of groups like União do Vegetal (UDV) who consume ayahuasca as part of their syncretic Christian-jungle religious beliefs. Exactly what they located was that routine ayahuasca usage purged the mind clean as well as enhanced receptor sites, recommending the vine might be a medical goldmine.

But what science can not explain is the psychic result of this "mother of all plants", the feeling of the numinous and also the spiritual globe it supposedly opens. Those that consume alcohol state that each ayahuasca trip is distinct. They say that the spirit of the vine comes active, it overviews as well as shows as well as on the other side absolutely nothing is ever before the exact same. Approximately they say.

The indigenous males and females that guard the knowledge of the creeping plant and also of the spirits it is stated to reveal are the curanderos and curanderas-- or as the West would call them-- shamans. Their duty has been that of therapist, priest and tourist in between globes, acting as intermediaries between the spiritual dimension as well as this globe in behalf of their patients.

Yet the needs of the work and the surge of Western materialism throughout South America have seen a loss in status-- and also clients-- for the curanderos. The career, generally genetic, was in danger of termination before an unmatched wave of Western gringos began being available in search of ayahuasca and the recovery it could provide.

Over the last twenty years or so a new gringo path-- this a trip of the soul-- has been blossoming in the jungles of South America. Hunters and also thrillseekers alike have actually been coming from the West for a reconnection to the much deeper fact shamanism connects one to-- and restoring amazing tales of hallucinogenic journeys, healing as well as enlightenment.

Indigenous shamanism has quickly come to be the most successful organisation in town and various forest lodges as well as hideaways have emerged across South America to accommodate the influx of abundant visitors. This has actually spilled over into the net as hundreds of ayahuasca internet sites, conversation spaces and also forums have actually arised to crystallize a global subculture engaging with a native spiritual method and also seeding it back into the Western world.

As well as being utilized by hundreds of thousands, maybe countless indigenous individuals throughout South The U.S.A., ayahuasca has also ended up being one of the globe's fastest expanding religions, with branches of Brazilian churches like Santo Daime as well as União do Vegetal emerging in Europe, Britain, Australasia, The U.S.A., Japan as well as elsewhere. In January 2006 the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of a New Mexico branch of the UDV, saying they had a constitutional right to be permitted to lawfully practise their ayahuasca ceremonies under the liberty of religion law. The US government promptly appealed, however the genie ran out the bottle.

The secret of ayahuasca had left the jungle and also entered the cities, by means of religious beliefs, media and the web. And here I was, a thirty-six-year-old freelance reporter, a gonzo reporter in the classic Hunter S. Thomson as well as Tom Wolfe style, freelancing for Australian Penthouse on an academic-style seminar with a pronounced spin: it was everything about Amazonian shamanism, with a hands-on component.

Strange, to believe that in the first years of the 21st century I would certainly be going to the Peruvian jungles in search of a link to the primitive consciousness that aboriginal knowledge exposed. Yet in a globe of global warming and also environmental collapse it seemed even more urgent to reconnect with the earth in a visceral means. And also in this age of fact television, blog writing as well as city monitoring, being an embedded journalist was par for the program. Nowadays we're all part of the story-- and getting down-and-dirty in the far abyss of awareness was a possibility I was relishing.

Despite cultural diffidence back in the standard world of battle, home mortgages as well as climate adjustment, Australian Penthouse was willing to have a peek under the covers of reality as well as welcome the tale I was going after-- to comprehend the mythic pull of shamanism-- one of the last worldwide archetypes that connects to a numinous "Various other." At the very same time it's also one of the most appropriated, glorified and also repackaged brand names embedded in the worldwide consciousness. So a lot so that it now attracts thousands of Westerners yearly back to the going away forests as well as the plant medications they provide.

But what was the company of spirituality doing to all these backpacking ayahuasca tourists that dared to trip into the enigmas of creation? And what did it say regarding the expanding Western demand for a genuine reconnection to the planet?

' Margaret ... Shane?' I detect a number of acquainted faces sitting at a table in the McDonalds food court, surrounded by their travel luggage and that homogenized glaze that global vacationers give off when they've remained in flight terminal separation lounges for also long and their inner body clocks have actually gone crazy. Margaret's furiously filling electronic images from their video camera into an iBook while Shane stops briefly over the keyboard and also searches for with a smile. With his stocky broad shoulders and also close-shaven head he resembles a cop, but nothing might be additionally from the truth.

' Dr Razam, I presume,' Shane jokes, trembling my hand as well as grinning extensively. 'I'm grateful you might make it.' 'Consuming hallucinogenic brews with the medicine men of the Amazon? I wouldn't miss this for the globe.' 'Rak? Just how are you beloved?' Margaret cries, standing up as well as offering me a hug filled with unconditional love.

#healing #how to meditate #meditation #meditation music #religious beliefs #spiritual

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camploah · 8 years ago

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In the wake of its February release, writer-director Jordan Peele’s debut film, Get Out, has done what few others in recent memory have — it’s a genre film that became a surprising box office success and cultural lightening rod, while centering on an exploration of racism and black identity. By its very nature, it shouldn’t be surprising that Get Out has inspired fraught conversations that have real-world implications. But there is one topic that has proved to be the most intense when discussing the film.

In a Hot97 interview last month, Samuel L. Jackson reflected on how different Get Out would be had the lead role been played by an American actor. Daniel Kaluuya, a black actor from London of Ugandan descent, stars as Chris, a photographer who travels with his white girlfriend to meet her liberal-minded parents in upstate New York*. Horror quickly ensues. In his interview, Jackson said, “I tend to wonder what that movie would have been with an American brother who really feels that. Daniel grew up in a country where they’ve been interracial dating for 100 years. What would a brother from America have made of that role?” Jackson acknowledged that Hollywood provides black actors more opportunities than the British film and television industry does. “It’s all good. Everybody needs work,” he added. Even when he later softened his criticism, it didn’t matter. The damage was done. Soon enough, Jackson’s comments spurned impassioned responses from casting directors and British actors like John Boyega, David Harewood, and Kaluuya himself, as well as kickstarting a round of wars among the members of black Twitter. The criticism against Jackson’s comments were united in arguing that what he said was ultimately divisive, given the racism black actors throughout the diaspora experience in crafting their careers.

Jackson’s critique touched a nerve, reigniting an old argument about the need for authenticity within black stories, and the value of black American actors in the face of the widespread, misguided belief that their British colleagues are more well-trained. The conversation around the merit of British actors over American ones is not novel, and it typically transcends racial distinctions. This tense dynamic has existed for decades, a classic example being the chatter around Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe during the 1957 film A Prince and a Showgirl. He was a British acting titan revered for his stage and screen work. She was a blonde bombshell who at the time had only recently become enamored of method acting, an American discipline that many mid-century homegrown actors like Paul Newman and Gena Rowlands trained in and is usually curiously absent in conversations of this sort. In recent memory, this conversation was sparked in 2015 around the release of Ava DuVernay’s Martin Luther King Jr. biopic, Selma, whose leads were British, with pieces like this one from BuzzFeed News, declaring “the rise of the black British actor in America.” I think it would be impossible to ask that all distinctly black American roles be played by black American actors. It’s also arguably a limiting way to think of art, always equating it to identity to such an extreme degree. But the rebuttals to Jackson’s comments haven’t actually engaged with what Jackson was saying. Take, for example, Kaluuya’s response in an interview with GQ: “That’s my whole life, being seen as ‘other.’ Not fitting in in Uganda, not Britain, not America. They just highlight whatever feature they want. […] I really respect African-American people. I just want to tell black stories.” He concluded by saying, “I resent that I have to prove that I’m black.” While Jackson frames the matter rather inelegantly, to put it mildly, nowhere in the interview does he question Kaluuya’s blackness. What Jackson was doing was pointing out that the black experience throughout the diaspora isn’t an interchangeable one like some filmmakers may like to believe.

As the black-American experience is proving to be seen as creatively and financially fertile territory in film and TV, you have to wonder why, if these stories are seen as vital, actual black American actors aren’t necessarily viewed as their ideal storytellers?

Generally, the answer to this question, and to arguments against comments like Jackson’s, fall into two camps: 1) That acting by its very nature is the art of evoking the lives of others, so black-American actors aren’t essential to these roles; and 2) British actors get these opportunities due to being better trained in a rigorous theater tradition that leaves them more artistically capable, whether it’s Chiwetel Ejiofor in 12 Years a Slave, Idris Elba in The Wire, or the leads of Selma. On the latter point, a 2015 Entertainment Weekly piece argued, “[P]erhaps the biggest factor leading to the perception that American actors are falling behind is that the path to Hollywood fame in this country doesn’t necessarily go through the Actors Studio or Juilliard or the Yale School of Drama. Though Hollywood has its share of Jessica Chastains and Mark Ruffalos, well-trained professionals who studied at revered dramatic institutions, the difference might lie in the other cases, in which actors get a break in Hollywood with limited training or acting background.” The most damning statement about this ongoing feud comes at the very end of the essay, “the British are coming … because Hollywood needs them.”

That filmmakers repeat this argument is more troubling. During the promotion for Selma in 2015, writer-director Ava DuVernay, who is considered one of the most talented and politically aware directors working, explained to BuzzFeed News why she likes working with black Britishactors: “I think there’s something about the stage, because they have that stage preparation. Their work is really steeped in theater. Our system of creating actors is a lot more commercial … there’s a depth in the character building that’s really wonderful.” That same year, Spike Lee told Slate, “Their training is very proper, whereas some of these other brothers and sisters, you know, they come in here, and they don’t got that training. The training and craft, it’s the same thing and I see it when people come in to audition and stuff, they don’t got it together.” Lee and DuVernay’s beliefs suggest that there is something inherently missing when it comes to the American talent pool. That their quotes are somewhat insulting to actors stateside is one thing, but they’re also simply untrue. If you take a look at established and fledgling black American actors working today, you’ll find that many are highly trained: Denzel Washington went to Fordham and the American Conservatory Theater. Viola Davis, Tracie Thoms, Nelsan Ellis, Rutina Wesley (who stars in DuVernay’s Queen Sugar), and Anthony Mackie all went to Julliard. Mahershala Ali, who won Best Supporting Actor for his marvelous turn in Moonlight, earned a masters degree from New York University’s acting program. (He joked after his win to reporters on Oscar night, “I’m just so fortunate that Idris [Elba] and David Oyelowo left me a job. It was very, very kind of them.”) Ali’s Moonlight co-star Ashton Sanders was studying acting at DePaul University before dropping out to pursue his career full-time. This is a small sampling, but you get the idea.

André Holland, who’s had mesmerizing turns in Moonlight and The Knick and received his masters in acting at NYU, spoke about the bias against black American actors in a 2015 discussion with Interview magazine. “There are so many brilliant, trained actors of color in America. If you just think about it, every year in the spring Julliard and NYU and Yale and hundreds of schools across the country graduate classes of trained actors, and in those classes are actors of color. So to say that there aren’t enough actors of color is factually inaccurate. But more than it being inaccurate, it’s also really divisive and damaging and frankly disrespectful to the actors who are out here working. […] It really sometimes feels like a slap in the face to hear these British actors say that,” Holland said.

When I spoke to Prema Cruz, a black American actress who most recently had a brilliant guest spot on The Good Fight and went to Yale University for acting, she echoed Holland’s view. “There are people graduating from my program — black men and women — and they’re killing it. They aren’t Hollywood stars. If we’re talking about stars that’s a whole different thing,” Cruz said. What Cruz is alluding to is that there isn’t so much a dearth in black American actors who go through rigorous training so as much they aren’t given the opportunity to lead films and series with enough regularity that filmmakers and audiences would notice them. She also spoke of the “fetishized obsession” that is attached to British actors regardless of race, which itself has an undercurrent of classism. “There’s this misconception that [British, theater-trained actors] are more elite or more sophisticated than American actors,” she continued. This is something British actress Kate Winslet touched on in a 2015 interview: “When you are an English actor and you go into another country. They automatically assume you are fully trained … Which I’ve played on, believe me.”

The language that directors like Spike Lee use insinuates that stage preparation is both essential to great acting and that American actors demonstrate a lack of this. And while there are plenty of classically trained American actors, this obsession with theatrical training is in and of itself misguided. To make that argument ignores the differences between film and stage acting as well as the lineage of actors who haven’t had such training, but have given amazing performances that in turn shaped the medium itself — from classic Hollywood stars like Joan Crawford, who in many ways wrote the playbook on what it means to be a screen actor, to modern powerhouses like Elisabeth Moss. One of my favorite performances last year was Trevante Rhodes as the eldest version of Chiron in Barry Jenkins’s Academy Award–winning film Moonlight. His turn was brimming with sincerity and intensity. It is also the work of an actor not trained on the stage. Film history is richer for such performances.

One crucial aspect missing from this conversation are the inherent class politics of who has the resources and access to make such training possible. Many black actors in the early days of Hollywood had to find training elsewhere due to the deeply entrenched, racist attitudes that barred black performers from gaining access to it. As Cruz said toward the end of our interview, “Black actors have had to carve their own path.” Her statement can be applied to everything from black American actors who had to work the Chitlin’ Circuit from the 19th century onward to classic Hollywood denizens like Canada Lee to modern icons like Gina Torres. In their own way, each of these references reflects a truth all black artists must learn: to see yourself in places the rest of the industry could never imagine you being.

While the first issue Jackson raised relates to opportunity, the second comes down to craft: How might being a black American actor inform a black American role? This conversation keeps popping up in part because there has been a much-needed rise within the last few years in stories detailing the intricate history of the black American experience — some of which are explicitly about America’s own turbulent racial history — including Selma, 12 Years a Slave, Hidden Figures, Black-ish, and Queen Sugar. It’s important to note that while the leads in Selma and 12 Years a Slave are British, many of these examples employed black American actors in leading and supporting roles. That includes Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Shots Fired, a new TV series that subverts the expectations that come with police brutality stories by making the police officer black and the victim who dies a young white man. It forces us to confront some nasty questions about how racism flourishes in America and the black community’s relationship with the police, particularly within a southern milieu. That the executive producer, Prince-Bythewood, many of its directors like Millicent Shelton and Kasi Lemmons, and its star, Sanaa Lathan, are black Americans doesn’t mean the show is necessarily any better than if British artists were involved. But in showing the particulars of an experience that is not universal, there is a perspective they undoubtedly bring to the table. Black people throughout the diaspora, whether you’re from South Side Chicago or London or Nigeria, experience racism. But to say that this racism exists at the same tenor and manifests in the same ways flattens the diversity within the black experience itself. As Jackson said in his Hot97 interview, “Some things are universal but everything ain’t.”

There are a few things that underlie the belief that, because acting requires imagination and transformation, direct experience isn’t a necessity. And that thanks to some shared history and the common experience of racism, black actors no matter their origin are interchangeable (of course, American actors like Will Smith have been criticized for taking on African roles, like his work in Concussion, which had him adopt a shoddy Nigerian accent). As Richard Brody curiously expressed in The New Yorker, “In the case of Kaluuya, the gap between the experience of being a black person in Great Britain and the United States is perhaps not as wide as Jackson assumes.”

Some British actors take it even further, arguing that they have just the right amount of commonalities and distance to bring to life American stories in ways American actors may be too mired in direct experiences to do as poignantly. Carmen Ejogo, who played Coretta Scott King in Selma, told BuzzFeed News, “I’ve been trying to convince myself that being British has had no bearing on any of this, but actually I think that’s where it served me well. I’m not as entrenched in the history so immediately. […] I didn’t know who Coretta was until I played her the first time. And I think I have permission — that’s the definition of the artist, in my opinion — to be a little deviant. It wasn’t as daunting as it might have been for an American actress. An African-American actress … that might have been a bit more of a challenge.” In a BBC America interview, Oyelowo argued that having British actors spearhead Selma may have been a wise decision since they don’t have the so-called baggage American actors have when it comes to such a towering historical figure like Dr. Martin Luther Jr. “There’s something to be said for the fact that we are able to come at these films clean,” Oyelowo noted. And actor David Harewood, who played Martin Luther King Jr. onstage in The Mountaintop, argued in a piece for The Guardian, responding to Jackson’s criticism, that “[British actors are able] to unshackle ourselves from the burden of racial realities – and simply play what’s on the page.” Oyelowo, Harewood, and Ejogo’s comments are troubling in how they frame black Americans’ abilities to speak to their own history, as if we all have the same perspective on the civil-rights leaders whose stories were drilled into us in school, in church, in the living rooms of our homes. The relationship to this history doesn’t mean black Americans lack nuance or an understanding of the jagged edges these people had in their lifetime. Furthermore, the black experience, even in America, is not a universal one, although it is bound together by a bloody historical lineage. As Cruz said in our interview, “Being American is a very specific thing. Being a black American is even more specific. What’s even more specific than that is being a Southern black American. It isn’t a matter of just shifting your vowels and consonants and now I have a Southern accent. […] It’s a culture you come from, the mentality, the food you eat, the racial tension you’re constantly faced with. It’s slavery. What it does to your spirit and mentality. That seeps into your DNA, into your bones, into the way you see the world.”

Growing up as a black woman of Dominican heritage between Miami and New Orleans, I grew up learning very early the weight of slavery because I could see its aftermath on the faces of my own family. When you grow up passing by plantations in which it is safe to assume that someone from your own family line was brutalized, it undoubtedly shapes how you conceive of your blackness, racism, and the legacy of America itself. It’s this history that informs my work as a writer and my life as a woman today. To pretend the presence or absence of such experiences couldn’t enrich an actor’s work is to believe the fallacy that the black experience is a monolith.

I don’t fault black British actors for coming to America for work. It’s simple pragmatism. Many have spoken about why British actors move Stateside in order to find artistic fulfillment. As K. Austin Collins wrote in an essay for the Ringer, “Hollywood being the center of the West’s film industry, there are simply more opportunities for black actors of every stripe. That explains why black Brits come here. It doesn’t explain the perceived advantage they seem to have when going up for American parts.” I’m also happy to see more black talent doing well in Hollywood. That this argument rears its head so often demonstrates the paltry opportunities for all black actors, forcing them to look at their peers with wary cynicism. But criticizing black American actors and treating the black experience as if it is universal is not a way to combat this. If anything, this tactic reaffirms class biases and mistruths that deprive black American talent from having a voice in the way their history is refracted in film.

*An earlier version of the piece noted that Get Out takes place in the South. In fact, it takes place in upstate New York.

#Black Films

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kristablogs · 4 years ago

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How a 19-year-old lion fathered 35 cubs in 18 months

Lion tamer at work. Though no evidence is available, the mustachioed man is unlikely to have survived this scene. (Library of Congress, 1873/)

Popular Science’s WILD LIVES is a monthly video series that dives like an Emperor penguin into the life and times of history’s noteworthy animals. With every episode debut on Youtube, we’ll be publishing a story about the featured beasts, plus a lot more fascinating facts about the natural world. Click here to subscribe.

Feature Creature: Frasier the Sensuous Lion

Have you ever wondered about the number of lions at your zoo? You probably don’t think about lion reproduction too much. Well, consider this:

If one female lion in captivity has a litter of cubs and they all survive and breed—for reference: zoo lions can start breeding before their third birthday—and then those offspring all survive and breed, and then the next generation the same, and so on, it would take about 37 years until that one family tree of descendants from that one lioness needed to eat the entire population of Los Angeles every day just to survive.

Dr. Craig Packer, Professor and Head of the Lion Center at the University of Minnesota, originally came up with this thought experiment. He used it as a way to answer a question on if lions have any difficulty breeding in captivity or the wild. Clearly, no panda bear-type pornos are needed to stimulate mating here. This lion factoid came up during a conversation about a lion that actually did take over L.A. That prolific Panthera leo was named Frasier. In the video above, we tell his story.

Let us now praise other famous animals

Below, a collection of fast facts about famous critters.

Question: why does this Peruvian military helicopter emblem have a tiger on it—its tail around a missile—when there are no tigers anywhere in South America? (Tom McNamara/)

Magicians Siegfried and <a href="https://ift.tt/2yKi50i" target=_blank>Roy</a> got their start in 1957 in Germany when Roy, who apparently took care of a cheetah at a local zoo, borrowed the animal and used it as part of the duo’s show. Nearly half a century later, their act came to an end when Roy was attacked by a tiger named Montecore onstage at the Mirage hotel and casino in Las Vegas.

In 2015, Cecil the Lion was killed by American dentist Walter Palmer. The <a href="https://ift.tt/2YVVIPJ" target=_blank>13-year-old lion</a> was a popular attraction at Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park, known for his striking black mane and comfort with tourist vehicles. His fate drew intense news coverage, a flurry of celebrity tweets, and an impassioned monologue from Jimmy Kimmel. <a href="https://ift.tt/2YVVIPJ" target=_blank>Read more. >></a>

In a recent book, <a href="https://amzn.to/2E4SQ8P" target=_blank>No Beast So Fierce: The Terrifying True Story of the Champawat Tiger, the Deadliest Animal in History</a>, author Dane Hucklebridge details the surprisingly methodical and incredibly blood machinations of a single Bengal tigress. Between 1900 to 1907, the Champawat man-eater stalked humans living in the villages of southern Nepal and, because tigers know no borders, eventually northern India. Along her route, she killed 435 people, making her perhaps the most murderous non-human animal in recorded history. <a href="https://ift.tt/2D4Kuk7" target=_blank>Read more. >></a>

El Jefe the Jaguar is the last known of his species to be seen in the United States. The Panthera onca was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTC8XdViC5s" target=_blank>spotted in the Santa Rita Mountains near Tucson, Arizona</a>, between 2011 and 2017.

In 2014, I accompanied a scientific expedition to a previously unexplored part of the Peruvian Amazon. When I boarded a military helicopter to get there, I noticed the design on the door pictured above. Why a tiger? There are no tigers anywhere in Amazonia. Well, first, there are no tigers or lions in Detroit, but that doesn’t stop the city from having those animals as their mascots. A member of the expedition clued me in, though, saying that across South America the Amazon Jaguar is often called “tigre” or tiger. And, let’s be honest, the tail around the missile is a nice touch.

Popular Science’s Encyclopedia of Big Cat Facts

The math of tiger stripes:

How’d the tiger get its stripes? MATH! (Pond5/)

Math might be able to predict the tiger’s stripes. Or, more accurately, mathematical rules likely work with biological processes to determine patterns on animals—the leopard’s spots, the horse’s dapples, and, yes, those beautiful black stripes that contour and bend around the tiger’s orange fur.

Famed World War Two codebreaker and British mathematician Alan Turing first theorized in the 1950s that spontaneous patterns emerge when “chemicals [react] together and [defuse] through tissue,” writes Ian Stewart in his 2017 book, The Beauty of Numbers in Nature. These chemicals are also known by another name: morphogens, a term Turning coined. We should think of them as shape creators.

Over half a century later, scientists found support for these theoretical models in the real world. A 2015 study published in Cell Systems used them to take Turing’s theories a step further to explain pattern orientation. Think about it, if math can predict an animal’s spots and stripes, why couldn’t it also tell us why a tiger’s stripes are vertical and an okapi’s stripes are horizontal? The most abstract level of mathematics can play out in the day-to-day lives of the biological world. Read more about the study, this way. >>

The Saber-toothed cat

Los Angeles looked a lot different 10,000 years ago. Teratornis birds, saber-toothed cats, and an extinct species of horse all roamed around the La Brea Tar Pools. Fall in and you’ll be preserved forever! (Field Museum/Charles R. Knight, 1921./)

How long did it take for Smilodon fatalis—the saber-toothed cat—to grow their 7-inch long mouth swords? Well, the extinct feline’s fearsome canine teeth grew at an incredibly quick 6 mm per month, almost twice as fast as human fingernails.

(Oh, and that picture is by way of famed early 20th Century natural history painter Charles R. Knight, who was legally blind. Some of his paintings are hidden like Easter eggs on random walls at The Field Museum in Chicago and the American Museum of Natural History in New York.)

How climate is changing animals

Snow Leopard, Panthera unica. (Joel Sartore/Getty Images/)

This spotted and thick-coated Snow Leopard thrives in a Goldilocks zone between 9,800 to 17,800 feet in altitude across the Tibetan Plateau, a frigid, rocky region that offers wild goats and sheep as prey. But rising temperatures are pushing the zone higher, forcing leopards and their quarry up the slopes, fragmenting their habitats into isolated summits. Rising temps also pull in competing predators like common leopards, which previously avoided the chilly heights in favor of forested hunting grounds at lower elevations. Humans are moving in as well to graze their domesticated goats and sheep, which sometimes requires killing cats who get too curious about the flocks. Read more about animals reacting to climate change, this way. >>

Calls of the Wild

East African Cheetah, Acinonyx jubatus jubatus. Serengeti National Park, Tanzania. (Tom McNamara/)

If you had to guess, what sound does a cheetah make? Lions roar. Tigers bellow and growl. And cheetahs…chirp? Yup. They also purr, hiss, bark, and even meow. It turns out, their chirp can mean a lot of things. Females, who are more solitary compared to males, chirp to attract mates. Yet both sexes also chirp when they’re distressed. Males do it if they get split up from their pack—and they chirp in celebration when the crew gets back together again. Same goes for mothers and their cubs. According to the National Zoo, “cheetahs may even be able to identify each other by the sound of their chirps.”

Denzil Mackrory · Cheetah Chirp

And, finally, rabbit holes I went down while researching this video

What’s the lion equivalent of a rabbit hole? “Daniel in the Lions' Den” is a 1614–1616 painting by the Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens, now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. (National Gallery of Art/)

Did you know in the 1970s. actor Tippi Hedren (probably most famous for her role in the Hitchcock classic, The Birds), her husband Noel Marshall, and their whole family lived with 150 untrained wild animals? And filmed it? Roar, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi3fz5Dbn6k" target=_blank>released in 1981</a>, became known as “the most dangerous movie ever made”—mostly because 70 members of the cast and crew were injured in its creation. Someone even got their scalp sliced clean off. New Yorker <a href="https://ift.tt/2RW2X6o" target=_blank>remembers the film</a> here. The movie is somehow worse than you’re imagining.

This headline from <a href="https://ift.tt/2hV7IhF" target=_blank>The Washington Post in 2017</a> says it all: “The strange and deadly saga of 15 circus cats’ final week in America.” Also, this <a href="https://ift.tt/2FZXjx3" target=_blank>history of the Indian circus from Quartz India</a> is fascinating.

Ever wonder what it’d be like to be a lion tamer? OK. Probably not. But one-third of Errol Morris’ 1997 documentary <a href="https://ift.tt/3lqtu9l" target=_blank>Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control</a> will make you glad you found out about lion tamer Dave Hoover. The other two-thirds of the movie are pretty weird in a good way, too.

After watching the PopSci <a href="https://youtu.be/eK_zmYWHxxo" target=_blank>video short about Frasier the Sensuous Lion</a>, you might start having questions about if it’s ethical to keep wild animals in captivity or not. This <a href="https://ift.tt/3gymgfQ" target=_blank>2007 Radiolab episode</a> about zoos is a must-listen, especially the first segment.

PopSci found out if <a href="https://ift.tt/2EBUq54" target=_blank>a lion could live on veggie burgers</a>. Also, did you know that <a href="https://ift.tt/31AkExU" target=_blank>mountain lions are so scared of humans that the sound of talk radio sends them running</a>?

And, if you can stomach it, you can meet the deadliest cat in the world via <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl8o9PsJPAQ" target=_blank>a PBS Nature clip</a>. It’s intense. Seriously. Turn back now. OK, you’ve been warned.

Subscribe to WILD LIVES on YouTube for more wild stories about animals like Frasier the Sensuous Lion.

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scootoaster · 4 years ago

Text

How a 19-year-old lion fathered 35 cubs in 18 months

Lion tamer at work. Though no evidence is available, the mustachioed man is unlikely to have survived this scene. (Library of Congress, 1873/)

Feature Creature: Frasier the Sensuous Lion

Have you ever wondered about the number of lions at your zoo? You probably don’t think about lion reproduction too much. Well, consider this:

Let us now praise other famous animals

Below, a collection of fast facts about famous critters.

Question: why does this Peruvian military helicopter emblem have a tiger on it—its tail around a missile—when there are no tigers anywhere in South America? (Tom McNamara/)

Popular Science’s Encyclopedia of Big Cat Facts

The math of tiger stripes:

How’d the tiger get its stripes? MATH! (Pond5/)

The Saber-toothed cat

How climate is changing animals

Snow Leopard, Panthera unica. (Joel Sartore/Getty Images/)

Calls of the Wild

East African Cheetah, Acinonyx jubatus jubatus. Serengeti National Park, Tanzania. (Tom McNamara/)

Denzil Mackrory · Cheetah Chirp

And, finally, rabbit holes I went down while researching this video

Subscribe to WILD LIVES on YouTube for more wild stories about animals like Frasier the Sensuous Lion.

0 notes

newshoeser-blog · 5 years ago

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Golden Goose Sneakers Sale want

Converse is one of those classic brands that has managed to maintain relevancy across generations and regions. They're also about individuality and personalization, which is why this Toronto project is an interesting addition to the bustle and color of Queen West.

Kate Bellman, the fashion director of footwear at Nordstrom gives us a theory on why we are gravitating toward the sleek silhouette. "A resounding trend of the season is tailoring, and the same holds true for footwear.

Their eco-friendly Cotton Corn collection launched last year, then received a more elevated revisal in 2019 when it was made vegan. A pair of the lime green sandals languished in my cart for a few days, until an e-mail arrived in in my inbox with the subject line: 'Why To Buy Labucq Shoes.' The note outlined the small, family-owned Italian factory the shoes are made in and the brand's lack of overhead.

At Hermes, there was no shoe collection proper. There were some styles that went from one season to another, but no specific creative statement. Martens 1461 shoe as part of his F/W19 collection. It was a particularly momentous moment given that it was his first show since leaving the American brand.

Fun note: The upside down heart actually means five in the Persian alphabet (AyoubZadeh was born in Iran), and five is also her lucky number. Prada's chunky oxfords and Bottega Veneta's heavy Chelsea boots are trending on Instagram, but you can go straight to the punk rock source with Underground, a British shoe brand that's been making authentic creepers since the eighties.

I know what you're thinking-yes, I am a poser. Sure, I dabbled with teenage mosh pits and cried to The Cure in my bedroom like any healthy adolescent, but I have never been part of a subculture. New shoes on budget day is a longstanding Canadian tradition though it's roots are hard to trace. The act of putting on new shoes (or wearing old ones for that matter) is laden with meaning and cultural significance.

The CBC's Nil Koksil, the Toronto Star's Shinan Govani and Soho House's Markus Anderson, who is part of Meghan and Harry's inner circle, cheered on the steamy performance, before the dance floor was filled again with non-stop action. Actually I wasn't bad, I was lazy and didn't Golden Goose Sneakers Sale want to pay attention, so I didn't do architecture.

In the future, I'll probably just combine all https://www.goldengoosebigdeals.com/ three methods the next time I have to wear painful heels for a long period of time. Our customers can choose any silhouette, pick any artwork and really do anything they'd like with the shoes.

#Golden Goose

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topworldhistory · 5 years ago

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Got history lovers on your list? Stock up here.

If your holiday shopping includes a history lover, HISTORY's editors have carefully chosen gifts and experiences for fans of any era. Whether it's tickets to see two former U.S. presidents in person or a set of the same teas American patriots dumped into Boston Harbor, there's history here to read, watch, listen, use, play and wear.

HISTORY recommends products our editors think you’ll like, and if you buy something through our links HISTORY may get a share of the revenue. Prices may fluctuate.

History by Mail

BUY HERE: Weekly Historic Letters, from $49.99 for 3 months, Letterjoy

Who doesn’t love getting a letter in the mail? Letterjoy sends your favorite history buff one historic letter weekly from figures like John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein and Marie Curie, based on monthly themes. Each letter is carefully selected, researched and reproduced on fine stationery, paired with an expertly researched "postscript" that puts the letter in historical context. Plans range from one year for $159.99 ($13.33 per month) down to six months for $99.99 ($16.66 per month) or three months for $49.99 ($16.66 per month). Reduced rates available for educators’ in-classroom use.

Hear from Former U.S. Presidents in New York City

BUY HERE: HISTORYTalks ‘Leadership & Legacy’ Ticket, from $287, HISTORY

Be on hand for history-in-the-making at the inaugural HISTORYTalks event at Carnegie Hall in New York City, where prominent leaders and thinkers, notable historians and inspiring performances will offer reflections on the past—and informed insights for our future. This unforgettable day-long experience, focused on the topic of Leadership & Legacy, will culminate with an exclusive conversation between two former U.S. presidents, led by a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian. Don’t miss it.

Just in Time

BUY HERE: Chronology 20 Anniversary Edition, about $17, Amazon

Which came first—Isaac Newton’s telescope or Martin Luther’s 95 Theses? Test your knowledge of the past with this Chronology card game where players compete to put historical events in the correct chronological order; the first player to build a timeline of 10 cards wins. Recommended for 2 to 8 players, ages 14+. Includes 429 double-sided cards with 858 events. History is more fun with friends!

Go (History) Camping

BUY HERE: History Camp Gift Certificates, $100, History Camp

History Camp welcomes history lovers from all walks of life for a full day of talks on all eras and aspects of history. In 2020 History Camps will be held in six cities: Boston, MA, Holyoke, MA, Philadelphia, PA, Washington, D.C., Des Moines, IA, and Denver, CO. History Camp Gift Certificates are available for all locations and come with a limited-edition History Camp shirt, along with more information on the programs, so your gift recipient can select and register for the location of their choice. Also included: a gift certificate redeemable for merchandise from The History List Store.

Nerd Out

BUY HERE: History Nerd with WWII Paratrooper Crewneck Sweatshirt, $33.95, HISTORY Store

Every history lover, especially WWII buffs, will appreciate this unique History Nerd with WWII Paratrooper sweatshirt commemorating the 75th anniversary of D-Day. Picturing a World War II paratrooper, it also features a special hang tag with the “Orders of the Day” sent to the Allied troops on June 6, 1944 on one side, and a handwritten message from General Eisenhower on the other.

For an even more immersive gift, pair the sweatshirt with a World War II on the Homefront Poster, also $33.95, showing more than 100 WWII patriotic posters that hung in U.S. post offices, railroad stations, schools, restaurants and elsewhere, exhorting Americans to buy bonds, contribute to scrap drives and otherwise support the national war effort.

READ MORE: D-Day: How Allied Forces Overcame Disastrous Landings to Rout the Nazis

New Facts Daily

BUY HERE: This Day in History Box Calendars, about $15, Amazon

Learn something new every day with HISTORY's 2020 This Day in History box calendar, filled with 365 of history’s most influential and extraordinary events, inspiring people and inventions and facts any trivia buff will love.

Also available in This Day in Military History, This Day in Women’s History and–all new in 2020–Unexplained Mysteries for each day of the year.