According to Eva Talmadge, co-author of The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide, Kurt Vonnegut is the big gorilla of lit tattoos (a distinction he shares with poet e.e. cummings). It’s not surprising. Vonnegut’s humor and concision make him one of the most quotable authors of all time, perfectly suited to the task. Repetition is the price Vonnegut tattoo enthusiasts must pay for such enduring popularity. The phrase "so it goes" occurs 106 times in Slaughterhouse-Five, a figure dwarfed many times over by the number of hides upon which it is permanently inked. Recurrence is so frequent that the literary tattoo blog, Contrariwise, recently hosted a round of So It Goes Saturdays. So it goes. The second runner up, also from Slaughterhouse-Five,  is the painfully ironic "Everything was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt." Those who’d rather put a bird on it than present an accessible sentiment to the uninitiated can opt for "poo-tee-weet," the catchphrase of a bird who’s a witness to war.  Certain to confound the folks staring at your triceps in the grocery line. Slaughterhouse Five is not Vonnegut’s only tattoo-friendly novel, of course. Breakfast of Champions is particularly well suited to the form, thanks to the author’s own line drawings. There’s also Slapstick: Hocus Pocus: Cat’s Cradle: God Bless You Mr. Rosewater: And then there’s the infamous asterisk, whose first appearance in Breakfast in Champions is preceded thusly: …to give an idea of the maturity of my illustrations for this book, here is my picture of an asshole" Hardcore fans can can prove their dedication by taking a portrait of the master to the grave with them. Depending on your tolerance for pain, you could squeeze in a longer sentiment: "I wanted all things To seem to make some sense, So we could all be happy, yes, Instead of tense. And I made up lies So that they all fit nice, And I made this sad world A par-a-dise." ― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country Related Content: A Dazzling Gallery of Clockwork Orange Tattoos Meet America & Britain’s First Female Tattoo Artists: Maud Wagner (1877-1961) & Jessie Knight (1904-1994) Why Tattoos Are Permanent? New TED Ed Video Explains with Animation Hear Kurt Vonnegut Read Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat’s Cradle & Other Novels Kurt Vonnegut Creates a Report Card for His Novels, Ranking Them From A+ to D Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. Her play, Fawnbook, opens in New York City later this month. Follow her @AyunHalliday Browse a Gallery of Kurt Vonnegut Tattoos, and See Why He’s the Big Gorilla of Literary Tattoos is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Briefly noted: In 43 lectures, Dr. Vida Hull offers an introduction to the art of the Italian Renaissance. Packed with slides of great paintings, the lectures (all streamable above or available individually here), cover painters like Masaccio and Botticelli, Titian, da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo and more. Hull, who taught the course at East Tennessee State, earned her Ph.D. at Bryn Mawr College. Her course has been added to the Art History section of our collection, 1150 Free Online Courses from Top Universities. Related Content: Discover 100 Great Works of Art with Videos Created by Khan Academy & Google Art Project The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Public Domain, Making Them Free to Reuse & Remix The Rijksmuseum Puts 125,000 Dutch Masterpieces Online, and Lets You Remix Its Art The History of Western Architecture: From Ancient Greece to Rococo (A Free Online Course) Free Course: An Introduction to the Art of the Italian Renaissance is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

If you’ve ever had any doubt, for some reason or other, that rock and roll descended directly from the blues, the video above, a history of the blues in 50 riffs, should convince you. And while you might think a blues history that ends in rock n roll would start with Robert Johnson, this guitarist reaches back to the country blues of Blind Lemon Jefferson’s "Black Snake Moan" from 1928 then moves through legendarily tuneful players like Skip James and Reverend Gary Davis before we get to the infamous Mr. Johnson. Big Bill Broonzy is, as he should be, represented. Other country blues greats like soft-spoken farmer Mississippi John Hurt and hardened felon Lead Belly, "King of the 12 String Guitar," are not. Say what you will about that. The recordings these artists made with Okeh Records and Alan Lomax, despite their commercial failure in the 30s, midwifed the blues revival of the fifties and sixties. Hear Lead Belly’s version of folk ballad "Gallows Pole" above, a song Led Zeppelin made famous. Lead Belly’s acoustic blues inspired everyone from John Fogerty to Skiffle King Lonnie Donegan, Pete Seeger to Jimmy Page, as did the rootsy country blues of Lightnin’ Hopkins, who is included in the 50 riffs. As are John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and BB King’s electric styles—all of them picked up by blues rock revivalists, including, of course, Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix’s "Red House" riff makes the cut here, as we move slowly into rock and roll. But before we get to Hendrix, we must first check in with two other Kings, Freddie and Albert—especially Albert. Hendrix "was star struck," says Rolling Stone, "when his hero [Albert King] opened for him at the Fillmore in 1967." For his part, King said, "I taught [Hendrix] a lesson about the blues. I could have easily played his songs, but he couldn’t play mine." See King play "Born Under a Bad Sign" in 1981, above, and hear why Hendrix worshipped him. Mississippi blues moved to Memphis, Chicago, New York and to Texas, where by the 70s and 80s, ZZ Top and Stevie Ray Vaughan added their own southwest roadhouse swagger. (No Johnny Winter, alas.) Many people will be pleased to see Irish rocker Rory Gallagher in the mix, and amused that The Blues Brothers get a mention. Many more usual suspects appear, and a few unusual picks. I’m very glad to hear a brief R.L. Burnside riff. The White Stripes, Tedeschi Trucks Band, and Joe Bonamassa round things out into the 2010’s. Everyone will miss their favorite blues player. (As usual, the powerhouse gospel blues guitarist Sister Rosetta Tharpe gets overlooked.) I would love to see included in any history of blues such obscure but brilliant guitarists as Evan Johns (above), whose rockabilly blues guitar freakouts sound like nothing else. Or John Dee Holeman, below, whose effortless, understated rhythm playing goes unmatched in my book. Like so many of the bluesmen who came before them, these gentlemen seem to represent a dying breed. And yet the blues lives on and evolves in artists like Gary Clark Jr., The Black Keys, and Alabama Shakes. And of course there’s the prodigy Bonamassa, whom you absolutely have to see below at age 12, jamming with experimental country speed demon Danny Gatton’s band (he gets going around 1:05). If you’re missing your favorites, give them a shout out below. Who do you think has to be included in any history of the blues—told in riffs or otherwise—and why? Related Content: The Thrill is Gone: See B.B. King Play in Two Electric Live Performances R. Crumb’s Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Country Features 114 Illustrations of the Artist’s Favorite Musicians Watch Rock Pioneer Sister Rosetta Tharpe Wow Audiences With Her Gospel Guitar Zeppelin Took My Blues Away: An Illustrated History of Zeppelin’s "Copyright Indiscretions" Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness   The History of the Blues in 50 Riffs: From Blind Lemon Jefferson (1928) to Joe Bonamassa (2009) is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Why must we all work long hours to earn the right to live? Why must only the wealthy have a access to leisure, aesthetic pleasure, self-actualization…? Everyone seems to have an answer, according to their political or theological bent. One economic bogeyman, so-called "trickle-down" economics, or "Reaganomics," actually predates our 40th president by a few hundred years at least. The notion that we must better ourselves—or simply survive—by toiling to increase the wealth and property of already wealthy men was perhaps first comprehensively articulated in the 18th-century doctrine of "improvement." In order to justify privatizing common land and forcing the peasantry into jobbing for them, English landlords attempted to show in treatise after treatise that 1) the peasants were lazy, immoral, and unproductive, and 2) they were better off working for others. As a corollary, most argued that landowners should be given the utmost social and political privilege so that their largesse could benefit everyone. This scheme necessitated a complete redefinition of what it meant to work. In his study, The English Village Community and the Enclosure Movements, historian W.E. Tate quotes from several of the "improvement" treatises, many written by Puritans who argued that "the poor are of two classes, the industrious poor who are content to work for their betters, and the idle poor who prefer to work for themselves." Tate’s summation perfectly articulates the early modern redefinition of "work" as the creation of profit for owners. Such work is virtuous, "industrious," and leads to contentment. Other kinds of work, leisurely, domestic, pleasurable, subsistence, or otherwise, qualifies—in an Orwellian turn of phrase—as "idleness." (We hear echoes of this rhetoric in the language of "deserving" and "undeserving" poor.) It was this language, and its legal and social repercussions, that Max Weber later documented in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Karl Marx reacted to in Das Capital, and feminists have shown to be a consolidation of patriarchal power and further exclusion of women from economic participation. Along with Marx, various others have raised significant objections to Protestant, capitalist definitions of work, including Thomas Paine, the Fabians, agrarians, and anarchists. In the twentieth century, we can add two significant names to an already distinguished list of dissenters: Buckminster Fuller and Bertrand Russell. Both challenged the notion that we must have wage-earning jobs in order to live, and that we are not entitled to indulge our passions and interests unless we do so for monetary profit or have independent wealth. In a New York Times column on Russell’s 1932 essay "In Praise of Idleness," Gary Gutting writes, "For most of us, a paying job is still utterly essential — as masses of unemployed people know all too well. But in our economic system, most of us inevitably see our work as a means to something else: it makes a living, but it doesn’t make a life." In far too many cases in fact, the work we must do to survive robs us of the ability to live by ruining our health, consuming all our precious time, and degrading our environment. In his essay, Russell argued that "there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what has always been preached." His "arguments for laziness," as he called them, begin with definitions of what we mean by "work," which might be characterized as the difference between labor and management: What is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid. Russell further divides the second category into "those who give orders" and "those who give advice as to what orders should be given." This latter kind of work, he says, "is called politics," and requires no real "knowledge of the subjects as to which advice is given," but only the ability to manipulate: "the art of persuasive speaking and writing, i.e. of advertising." Russell then discusses a "third class of men" at the top, "more respected than either of the classes of the workers"—the landowners, who "are able to make others pay for the privilege of being allowed to exist and to work." The idleness of landowners, he writes, "is only rendered possible by the industry of others. Indeed their desire for comfortable idleness is historically the source of the whole gospel of work. The last thing they have ever wished is that others should follow their example." The "gospel of work" Russell outlines is, he writes, "the morality of the Slave State," and the kinds of murderous toil that developed under its rule—actual chattel slavery, fifteen hour workdays in abominable conditions, child labor—has been "disastrous." Work looks very different today than it did even in Russell’s time, but even in modernity, when labor movements have managed to gather some increasingly precarious amount of social security and leisure time for working people, the amount of work forced upon the majority of us is unnecessary for human thriving and in fact counter to it—the result of a still-successful capitalist propaganda campaign: if we aren’t laboring for wages to increase the profits of others, the logic still dictates, we will fall to sloth and vice and fail to earn our keep. "Satan finds some mischief for idle hands to do," goes the Protestant proverb Russell quotes at the beginning of his essay. On the contrary, he concludes, …in a world where no one is compelled to work more than four hours a day, every person possessed of scientific curiosity will be able to indulge it, and every painter will be able to paint without starving, however excellent his pictures may be. Young writers will not be obliged to draw attention to themselves by sensational pot-boilers, with a view to acquiring the economic independence for monumental works, for which, when the time at last comes, they will have lost the taste and capacity. The less we are forced to labor, the more we can do good work in our idleness, and we can all labor less, Russell argues, because "modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all" instead of "overwork for some and starvation for others." A few decades later, visionary architect, inventor, and theorist Buckminster Fuller would make exactly the same argument, in similar terms, against the "specious notion that everybody has to earn a living." Fuller articulated his ideas on work and non-work throughout his long career. He put them most succinctly in a 1970 New York magazine "Environmental Teach-In": It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest…. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. Many people are paid very little to do backbreaking labor; many others paid quite a lot to do very little. The creation of surplus jobs leads to redundancy, inefficiency, and the bureaucratic waste we hear so many politicians rail against: "we have inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors"—all to satisfy a dubious moral imperative and to make a small number of rich people even richer. What should we do instead? We should continue our education, and do what we please, Fuller argues: "The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living." We should all, in other words, work for ourselves, performing the kind of labor we deem necessary for our quality of life and our social arrangements, rather than the kinds of labor dictated to us governments, landowners, and corporate executives. And we can all do so, Fuller thought, and all flourish similarly. Fuller called the technological and evolutionary advancement that enables us to do more with less "euphemeralization." In Critical Path, a visionary work on human development, he claimed "It is now possible to give every man, woman and child on Earth a standard of living comparable to that of a modern-day billionaire." Sound utopian? Perhaps. But Fuller’s far-reaching path out of reliance on fossil fuels and into a sustainable future has never been tried, for some depressingly obvious reasons and some less obvious. Neither Russell nor Fuller argued for the abolition—or inevitable self-destruction—of capitalism and the rise of a workers’ paradise. (Russell gave up his early enthusiasm for communism.) Neither does Gary Gutting, a philosophy professor at the University of Notre Dame, who in his New York Times commentary on Russell asserts that "Capitalism, with its devotion to profit, is not in itself evil." Most Marxists on the other hand would argue that devotion to profit can never be benign. But there are many middle ways between state communism and our current religious devotion to supply-side capitalism, such as robust democratic socialism or a basic income guarantee. In any case, what most dissenters against modern notions of work share in common is the conviction that education should produce critical thinkers and self-directed individuals, and not, as Gutting puts it, "be primarily for training workers or consumers"—and that doing work we love for the sake of our own personal fulfillment should not be the exclusive preserve of a propertied leisure class. Related Content: Charles Bukowski Rails Against 9-to-5 Jobs in a Brutally Honest Letter (1986) Everything I Know: 42 Hours of Buckminster Fuller’s Visionary Lectures Free Online (1975) Bertrand Russell: The Everyday Benefit of Philosophy Is That It Helps You Live with Uncertainty Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness Bertrand Russell & Buckminster Fuller on Why We Should Spend Less Time Working, and More Time Living & Learning is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Does any couple loom larger in the world of twentieth-century American art than Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe? Not if you believe the Alfred Stieglitz/Georgia O’Keeffe Archive at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. If you go there, you’ll find "thousands of letters and hundreds of photographs in addition to a collection of literary manuscripts, scrapbooks, ephemera, fine art, and realia, primarily dating between 1880 and 1980, which document the lives and careers of the photographer/publisher/gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz and the painter Georgia O’Keeffe." But you can even view some of its material here on the internet, including photos by and of "Stieglitz and his circle of artists and writers" and "a variety of paintings and drawings, letters and ephemera, and medals and awards." The online archive does, of course, contain some paintings from O’Keeffe, such as House I Live in 1937 at the top of the post or, more in line with her famously floral focus, Pink Roses just below. But you’ll also find behind-the-work personal artifacts like the 1929 image of Stieglitz and O’Keeffe together at Lake George, New York just above. You can browse through all the material available with this list, or you can filter it down to the items pertaining specifically to O’Keeffe or those pertaining specifically to Stieglitz, though in life the two had an "instant mental and physical attraction" that kept them on some level inseparable during the course of their forty-year relationship. They even enjoyed a kind of artistic togetherness during the long-distance stretches of that relationship, when O’Keeffe "discovered her love for the landscape of the American Southwest and spent increasing amounts of time living and working there." And while many of us already know about her favorite subjects and the ways in which she realized them on canvas, fewer of us know about the efforts Stieglitz took to make photography into not just a legitimate but respected art form. To get a sense of what that took, start with Stieglitz’s autochromes (below), some of the earliest ventures made by an American artist into the realm of color photography. Both Stieglitz and O’Keeffe, each in there own medium, made us see things differently. How many art-world power couples can say the same? Related Content: The Real Georgia O’Keeffe: The Artist Reveals Herself in Vintage Documentary Clips Alfred Stieglitz: The Eloquent Eye, a Revealing Look at "The Father of Modern Photography" Frida Kahlo Writes a Personal Letter to Georgia O’Keeffe After O’Keeffe’s Nervous Breakdown (1933) Whitney Museum Puts Online 21,000 Works of American Art, By 3,000 Artists Colin Marshall writes elsewhere on cities, language, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer, the video series The City in Cinema, and the crowdfunded journalism project Where Is the City of the Future? Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook. Browse Paintings, Photos, Papers & More in the Archive of Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe, America’s Original Art Power Couple is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

If you’re near Pasadena, California, stop by the Flower Pepper Gallery and see Facade, the new exhibition featuring the work of visual artist Randy Hage. For decades now, Hage has been fascinated by the beauty of aging structures in New York City. This led him, beginning in the late 1990s, to start photographing aging storefronts in the city, "with their hand painted signs, layers of architecture, wonderful patinas and intriguing history." Later, he decided to preserve their memory in miniaturized, hyper-realistic sculptures (like the ones now on display in Pasadena through November 18th). In the video above, see just how perfectly Hage manages to recreate New York storefronts in miniature. Here’s another famous-but-now-defunct facade you might recognize: Miniature sculpture of CBGB. Real structure was located at 315 Bowery, LES, NYC. Shown lighted. Piece measures 19″ x 17″ x 7″. Follow me on FB for event info. If you have friends who might be interested in seeing my work, please pass this on. Many thanks! #cbgb #omfug #bowery #scalemodel #Randyhage #disappearingNY #façade #flowerpeppergallery #graffiti #graffitinyc #miniature #miniatureart #nyc #newyork #nycdecay #nycstorefront #nycstorefronts #newyorkstorefront #newyorkinspiredart #oldNYC #storefront #vintagenewyork A photo posted by Randy Hage (@rhageart) on Oct 5, 2015 at 8:19am PDT To take a closer look at his work, visit Hage’s Instagram page where you will see mini sculptures of fading New York institutions like Katz’s Deli, CBGB, McSorley’s Old Ale House, Vesuvio Bakery, and more. via SuperSonic Art/BoingBoing Follow Open Culture on Facebook and Twitter and share intelligent media with your friends. Or better yet, sign up for our daily email and get a daily dose of Open Culture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts definitely appear in your Facebook newsfeed, just follow these simple steps. Amazing Miniature Sculptures of New York City Landmarks: CBGB, Katz’s Deli, Vesuvio Bakery & More is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

We have become quite used to pronouncements of doom, from scientists predicting the sixth mass extinction due to the measurable effects of climate change, and from religionists declaring the apocalypse due to a surfeit of sin. It’s almost impossible to imagine these two groups of people agreeing on anything other than the ominous portent of their respective messages. But in the early days of the scientific revolution—the days of Shakespeare contemporary Francis Bacon, and later 17th century Descartes—it was not at all unusual to find both kinds of reasoning, or unreasoning, in the same person, along with beliefs in magic, divination, astrology, etc. Yet even in this maelstrom of heterodox thought and practices, Sir Isaac Newton stood out as a particularly odd co-existence of esoteric biblical prophecy, occult beliefs, and a rigid, formal mathematics that not only adhered to the inductive scientific method, but also expanded its potential by applying general axioms to specific cases. Yet many of Newton’s general principles would seem totally inimical to the naturalism of most physicists today. As he was formulating the principles of gravity and three laws of motion, for example, Newton also sought the legendary Philosopher’s Stone and attempted to turn metal to gold. Moreover, the devoutly religious Newton wrote theological treatises interpreting Biblical prophecies and predicting the end of the world. The date he arrived at? 2060. Newton seems, writes science blog Another Pale Blue Dot, "as confident of his predictions in this realm as he was in the rational world of science." In a 1704 letter exhibited at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, above, Newton describes his "recconing": So then the time times & half a time are 42 months or 1260 days or three years & an half, recconing twelve months to a yeare & 30 days to a month as was done in the Calendar of the primitive year. And the days of short lived Beasts being put for the years of lived [sic] kingdoms, the period of 1260 days, if dated from the complete conquest of the three kings A.C. 800, will end A.C. 2060. It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner. Newton further demonstrates his confidence in the next sentence, writing that his intent, "though not to assert" an answer, should in any event "put a stop the rash conjectures of fancifull men who are frequently predicting the time of the end." Indeed. So how did he arrive at this number? Newton applied a rigorous method, that is to be sure. If you have the patience for exhaustive description of how he worked out his prediction using the Book of Daniel, you may read one here by historian of science Stephen Snobelen, who also points out how widespread the interest in Newton’s odd beliefs has become, reaching across every continent, though scholars have known about this side of the Enlightenment giant for a long time. Snobelen appears in the BBC documentary Newton: The Dark Heretic (above), which has further brought the public a wealth of scholarly detail about Newton’s alchemy and prophecy. For a sense of the exacting, yet completely bizarre flavor of Newton’s prophetic calculations, see another Newton letter at the of the post, transcribed below. Prop. 1. The 2300 prophetick days did not commence before the rise of the little horn of the He Goat. 2 Those day [sic] did not commence a[f]ter the destruction of Jerusalem & ye Temple by the Romans A.[D.] 70. 3 The time times & half a time did not commence before the year 800 in wch the Popes supremacy commenced 4 They did not commence after the re[ig]ne of Gregory the 7th. 1084 5 The 1290 days did not commence b[e]fore the year 842. 6 They did not commence after the reigne of Pope Greg. 7th. 1084 7 The diffence [sic] between the 1290 & 1335 days are a parts of the seven weeks. Therefore the 2300 years do not end before ye year 2132 nor after 2370. The time times & half time do n[o]t end before 2060 nor after [2344] The 1290 days do not begin [this should read: end] before 2090 [Newton might mean: 2132] nor after 1374 [sic; Newton probably means 2374] The editorial insertions are Professor Snobelen’s, who thinks the letter dates "from after 1705," and that "the shaky handwriting suggests a date of composition late in Newton’s life." Whatever the exact date, we see him much less certain here; Newton pushes around some other dates—2344, 2090 (or 2132), 2374. All of them seem arbitrary, but "given the nice roundness of the number," writes Motherboard, "and the fact that it appears in more than one letter," 2060 has become his most memorable dating for the apocalypse. It’s important to note that Newton didn’t believe the world would "end" in the sense of cease to exist or burn up in holy flames. His end times philosophy resembles that of a surprising number of current day evangelicals: Christ would return and reign for a millennium, the Jewish diaspora would return to Israel and would, he wrote, set up "a flourishing and everlasting Kingdom." We hear such statements often from televangelists, school boards, governors, and presidential candidates. As many people have argued, despite Newton’s conception of his scientific work as a bulwark against other theologies, it ultimately became a foundation for Deism and Naturalism, and has allowed scientists to make accurate predictions for hundreds of years. 20th century physics may have shown us a much more radically unstable universe than Newton ever imagined, but his theories are, as Isaac Asimov would put it, "not so much wrong as incomplete," and still essential to our understanding of certain fundamental phenomena. But as fascinating and curious as Newton’s other interests may be, there’s no more reason to credit his prophetic calculations than those of the Millerites, Harold Camping, or any other apocalyptic doomsday sect. Related Content: Neil deGrasse Tyson on the Staggering Genius of Isaac Newton Isaac Newton Creates a List of His 57 Sins (Circa 1662) Sir Isaac Newton’s Papers & Annotated Principia Go Digital Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness In 1704, Isaac Newton Predicts the World Will End in 2060 is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

I admit it now, I was once an avid listener of the soothing new age music of Enya. At the time, in my musical circles, this was not cool, and at the time I cared about such things. So Enya was my guilty secret. I didn’t need to work that hard to hide my affection. I only listened to Enya at night, as I lay in bed alone and drifted off. I used my Enya cassette tapes (yes tapes), you see, to put myself to sleep. I’ve had other sleep favorites. Beethoven, Mozart, Bach… interpretations of Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach by synthesizer wizard Wendy Carlos…. It may seem disparaging to say that a certain composer’s music lulls one to sleep, but I think it’s just the opposite. So does composer and musician Max Richter, who has created an eight-hour piece called "Sleep" that is "meant to be slept through," says Richter. (There’s also a one hour version that’s more readily available for purchase.) Its gentle waves of strings, voice, piano, and synths are like a musical Lethe one floats on into oblivion. Richter has performed the piece with other musicians, just recently overnight on a September 27th BBC Radio 3 broadcast, "the longest live broadcast," writes The New Yorker, "of a single piece of music in the station’s history." The small audience in attendance mostly stayed awake. One member reportedly hallucinated. The composition consists of thirty-one themed movements (Hear "Dream 3 (in the midst of my life)" above). Lovers of modern minimalist composers like Philip Glass and William Basinski will notice similar uses of drone notes and repetition in "Sleep." You may even hear a touch of Enya…. Richter’s is the perfect music to accompany me into dreamland; even those movements that include a vocalist use the voice as a wordless, ethereal instrument, as so many ambient musicians do. I’ve come across more than a few favorite ambient and minimalist composers late at night, when Spotify begins recommending sleep playlists. "Sleep," it turns out, "is one of Spotify’s most popular categories," according to Billboard. However, the "world’s favorite choice when choosing music to unwind" may surprise you: red-headed English singer/songwriter Ed Sheeran. I’m not personally a fan of his music, but even if I were, I can’t imagine listening to it as I settle down to sleep. Nonetheless, millions of people stream Sheeran’s songs on repeat at bedtime, along with other pop artists like Ellie Goulding, John Legend, Sam Smith, and Rihanna. To each their own, I guess. Hear a playlist of the most-streamed "sleep" music on Spotify above. (If you don’t have Spotify’s free software, download it here.) If none of these tunes do it for you, consider giving iTunes’ 27th most popular podcast, Sleep With Me, a chance. Or, let us know in the comments below what music, if any, helps calm your nerves and soothe your tired brain as you climb into bed after a long day. Related Content: Stream 58 Hours of Free Classical Music Selected to Help You Study, Work, or Simply Relax Music That Helps You Write: A Free Spotify Playlist of Your Selections Free Audio: Go the F-k to Sleep Narrated by Samuel L. Jackson Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness Music That Helps You Sleep: Minimalist Composer Max Richter, Pop Phenom Ed Sheeran & Your Favorites is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

For all the neon-Ferrari-and-raw-silk garishness the show now seems to embody, Miami Vice (1984-1990) paid uncommon attention to cultural detail. Music, for instance, didn’t get thrown onto its soundtrack, but carefully selected to reflect both the mid-80s zeitgeist and the aesthetic of a particular episode. Any time you tuned in, you could hear the likes of Devo, Phil Collins, The Tubes, Depeche Mode, or the Alan Parsons project behind the action. Sometimes you could also see musicians onscreen, involved in the action, albeit musicians of a somewhat different kind: the innovative experimental composer and rocker Frank Zappa, for instance, once appeared as "weasel dust" dealer Mario Fuente. That happened on "Payback," the nineteenth episode of Miami Vice‘s second season which aired on March 14, 1986, a clip of which you can watch at the top of the post. (Naturally, the scene takes place on a boat staffed with armed thugs and bikini girls.) If, after the cliffhanger it ends on, you simply must see the whole thing, you may be able to watch the full episode on Hulu, though unfortunately Hulu only permits those in the United States to view it. (Apologies in advance to those who are geo-blocked.) The same goes for November 8, 1985’s "Junk Love," another episode from the same season with no less distinguished a musician guest star than Miles Davis. "The idea is that Crockett and Tubbs arrest the owner of a whorehouse," writes Dangerous Minds’ Martin Schneider, "a dude named ‘Ivory Jones’ — played by Miles." And while "most of Davis’ dialogue is semi-incomprehensible… you haven’t lived until you’ve seen the genius behind Bitches Brew croak, ‘Watch that big cabin cruiser, he has a thing about them.'" We’ve embedded the entirety of "Junk Love" on Hulu just below, which, since "Ivory is a scumbag but collaborating with the local constabulary," offers "plenty of scenes of him hanging out with Crockett and Tubbs." Add to this Leonard Cohen’s 1986 role as malevolent French secret service agent Francois Zolan, and you realize that Miami Vice has turned out to cater straight to culturally omnivorous 21st century viewers: those who can appreciate Songs of Love and Hate as well as a neon Ferrari, Freak Out! as much as raw silk, and Devo as much as Davis. You can view more complete episodes of Miami Vice on Hulu here. via Dangerous Minds Related Content: Watch Frank Zappa Play Michael Nesmith on The Monkees (1967) The Paintings of Miles Davis Frank Zappa Debates Censorship on CNN’s Crossfire (1986) Colin Marshall writes elsewhere on cities, language, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer, the video series The City in Cinema, and the crowdfunded journalism project Where Is the City of the Future? Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook. When Frank Zappa & Miles Davis Played a Drug Dealer and a Pimp on Miami Vice is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

From Alain de Botton’ School of Life comes the latest in a series of animated introductions to influential literary figures. Previous installments gave us a look at the life and work of Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf. This one takes us inside the literary world of Jane Austen. And, as always, de Botton puts an accent on how reading literature can change your life. "Jane Austen’s novels are so readable and so interesting…" notes The School of Life Youtube channel," because she wasn’t an ordinary kind of novelist: she wanted her work to help us to be better and wiser people. Her novels [available on this list] had a philosophy of personal development at their heart." The video above expands on that idea. Enjoy. Related Content: An Introduction to the Literary Philosophy of Marcel Proust, Presented in a Monty Python-Style Animation An Animated Introduction to Virginia Woolf Jane Austen Used Pins to Edit Her Abandoned Manuscript, The Watsons Download 55 Free Online Literature Courses: From Dante and Milton to Kerouac and Tolkien Download the Major Works of Jane Austen as Free eBooks & Audio Books An Animated Introduction to Jane Austen is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.