I’ve been wondering lately why artists would ever choose to expose their work anonymously; I mean you work months, years, even decades on something that you have to be emotionally attached to and proud of, and then you don’t associate your name with it? But, upon further reflection, I realized that there probably are an infinite number of legitimate reasons for keeping one’s identity secret.
For example, do the names Charles Dodgson, Mary Ann Evans, Richard Bachman, Daniel Handler, Nicholas Kim Coppola, Roderick Jaynes, Richard Starkey Starr, Reginald Kenneth Dwight, Allen Stewart Konigsberg, Dianne Belmont, Daniel Michaeli, Robert Allen Zimmerman, Adolf Schickelgruber, Julius Henry Marx, Carlos Irwin Estevez, or Fingal O’Flahertie Wills sound familiar? Perhaps a couple of them, but I bet you would recognize every one of their corresponding pseudonyms (listed at the bottom of this post in respective order).
Although most of these are famous actors, actresses, and a couple of authors, there are also thousands of paintings, pieces of music, poems, etc. with anonymous creators. But why? For privacy? For fun?
Our technology world today even seems to support anonymity and the freedom and secrecy that it offers—for better or worse. Screen names and usernames allow kids (and adults) to speak freely without the burden of identity attachment or the consequences. Is this a good thing for society though? Deflecting responsibility for what one says? Freedom of speech is great, but perhaps we’re abusing it. Sure, anonymity is convenient for Chatroulette and advice columns, but for bold, offensive statements on Twitter… that’s a bit different.
I say, own up to your opinions, but why not don a cool mask if you’re writing a novel?
(Lewis Carroll, George Eliot, Stephen King, Lemony Snicket, Nicholas Cage, the Coen Brothers’ editing alias, Ringo Starr, Elton John, Woody Allen, Lucille Ball, Danny DeVito, Bob Dylan, Hitler, Groucho Marx, Charlie Sheen, Oscar Wilde)
I am really bad at keeping secrets. I mean, really, really bad. Whenever there is gossip, I always want to be the first person to know, and the news doesn’t usually stay with me for very long. It’s something I really need to work on.
So when I started researching for my article this issue (on newsstands April 10!), you can image my surprise when I found out that Isaac Newton (the guy you learned about in physics who discovered gravity) was able to keep so many secrets. And BIG secrets too, like when he invented calculus…in his 20s! He kept this discovery to himself because he didn’t want anyone else to claim that they had invented it. If I created a new branch of math, I would be shouting it from the mountaintops!
Newton’s life was very fascinating because he was one of the greatest minds of the world but he rarely shared his findings with anyone, especially concerning his alchemical work (which you can read about in the next Inside). He was a recluse, which probably made secret keeping a lot easier than it is for me. Maybe we could all take a card from Newton and keep some of the gossip to ourselves. I’m sure our friends would appreciate it.
The Internet…meh.
So much content. So many memes. No one is impressed anymore. More often than not, our reactions are reduced to nothing more than a nonsensical interjection of apathy: “Meh.”
That being said, “meh” now has a Wikipedia page. And it was recently included in the Collins English Dictionary.
But “meh” has a much deeper history than the Internet. According to a recent piece in the Boston Globe, the word “meh” actually has Yiddish origins. In fact, a 1928 version of a Yiddish-English dictionary listed “meh” as both an interjection and adjective meaning “be as it may”, or “so-so”.
More recently (though still before the Internet as we know it today), the word rose to moderate fame through its many appearances on “The Simpsons”:
So if we are now living the “Meh” generation, it has been a long time coming. People (and “Simpsons” characters) have been expressing cool apathy for quite a while now.
I’m personally not one of those insufferable feminist types (not that there’s anything wrong with that type), but since today is the first day of the month, I thought it appropriate to acknowledge March is Women’s History Month. So, come on ladies, let’s get the party started.
Amelia Earhart (born a Hoosier) and Eleanor Roosevelt always seem to be the poster-women for female pride, which is totally called for and all, but how about some applause for more recent women kicking ass?
Sofia Coppola, director of Lost in Translation (which won an academy award for best original screenplay), The Virgin Suicides, and Marie Antoinette, has also acted in several films over the years and was the first-ever American woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for directing. Granted that she was born into the Coppola family, a cinematic powerhouse, Sofia Coppola definitely holds her own ground in the film world.
Falling under the genres R&B, experimental, Wonky pop, and Afro-beat, the musical group Tune-Yards’ lead singer Merrill Garbus is the embodiment of individualism. Usually donned in tribal face-paint, Merrill performs every show with so much energy and confidence listeners can’t help but be drawn in to her jams.
As a human right’s activist and founder of the Human Rights Center in Iran, Shirin Ebadi is the deserving first Muslim women recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize… and of a position in Forbes’ 100 most powerful women in the world list.
And now for a decree from Barack Obama: “I call upon all Americans to observe this month and to celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8, 2012, with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities that honor the history, accomplishments, and contributions of American women.”
Our country’s leader says observe, so let’s observe these awesome women and all the awesome women around us!
Good news for just about every college student:
Some new studies have shown that people perform optimally on creative and analytic tasks when they are either sleep-deprived or drunk.
One study at Albion College in Michigan, for example, assessed the sleeping habits and optimal times of day for productivity of 428 undergraduate students, and then assigned them small creative puzzles to solve at both 8:30am and 5pm. Those who reported staying up late with early mornings as their least optimal time of day actually solved more puzzles successfully in the morning than they did in the afternoon.
Another study from the University of Illinois found that moderate intoxication was key in several students’ ability to solve word puzzles.
Why, exactly? The idea is that being drunk or sleep-deprived prevents people from concentrating, but it also allows people to direct their attention to other places that might inspire unlikely but effective ideas.
It should be noted, though, that the optimal intoxication level for the Illinois study was a blood-alcohol content of .075, which most people usually reach with less than one drink. So don’t go crazy. But you might consider coming to class during Little 5 week now.
1.) Hide under your bed for the next year. Don’t come out for anything. No matter which prediction you’re counting on, if you make it to next January, you’ve survived!
2.) Find an old bomb shelter and camp out there. It will be way less crowded than under your bed, hold more supplies, and maybe you can convince your significant other to hide with you.
3.) Create a new Mayan calendar. Many people believe that the end of the world is coming because the Mayan calendar is ending. Carve up a new one and the problem is solved, right?
4.) Go to space. While costly and impractical, it is a sure way to survive any major catastrophic event that occurs on Earth.
5.) Pick up a copy of the Survival Issue on stands tomorrow! It will be full of great survival tips (as well as some info that might make you feel a little bit better about surviving 2012).
With 307 days left until the projected end of the world (Doomsday is supposedly Dec. 21, 2012, if you didn’t know), I started thinking about what I would do on my last day on Earth. It’s a scary thought actually.
I mean there are so many things I think most of us still want to do. I haven’t seen the beaches of Greece, graduated from college, or experienced the unconditional love of raising a family. While I still have time to accomplish some of my bucket list before December, there are just some line items that I won’t be able to cross off in such a limited time frame. So how would I make my last day alive memorable?
I polled some of my friends and their responses varied from running to traveling to Europe to spending time with family and friends. Personally, I would want go home and eat at my favorite restaurant with my family or do something crazy like swim with sharks. However, it seems that the common denominator for most is being with the people we love. When it comes to the end, it appears that we want to spend time with the people that have already helped us survive the little things in life.
I think one of my friends said it best, “I would tell all my family and friends that I love them.” It’s something I think we all take for granted, but letting someone know we care is a lesson I think we all can learn from. Living each and every day in the present is something we can take from this potential Doomsday situation.
But before you jump off a bridge or blow your entire paycheck on a one-way ticket to Amsterdam, check out the Survival Issue of Inside on newsstands Tuesday!
I remember the day the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan last year. I imagine many of us do.
It was one of the first days of spring break at IU, and I was getting ready to depart for a nerdy-kid spring break in Washington, D.C. A lot of my friends were already at the airport for their trip to Japan through the journalism school. I remember looking on Facebook to make sure they hadn’t left yet, that they were safe. I remember seeing the images on TV and not being able to imagine the scale of a wall of water.
Senior Megan Rippey, an IU student whom I interviewed for the Survival issue (which drops Feb. 21, if you didn’t know), could imagine. She was there. What stuck out to me most about my interview with Megan that I couldn’t fit into my story was the disconnect between what she saw in Tokyo and what we saw here, in the US, on TV screens.
In the crowded streets of Tokyo, Megan only saw the calm on people’s faces. She saw how they all worked together to help each other. Though she wasn’t in the parts most ravaged by the disaster, she was struck by the difference in culture.
Her aunt and cousins had come to stay with her family after Hurricane Katrina, and the stories they told were in stark contrast to the disaster Megan saw with her own eyes. When she got home, she was angry by what she saw on TV. The media was making it seem like the people there was chaotic and unruly, but she’d seen a different truth.
Another thing that struck me was that when Megan got home, no one in the airport knew she’d been there. Of course, looking at her now, at IU, you wouldn’t know what she’d been through, either.
What I take away from that—from Megan’s story—is that survival isn’t always what we see on TV. It isn’t always the coal miners being pulled from the earth or the tornado victim sitting in a shelter. Sometimes survival is in the quiet moments. Sometimes it’s every day. The survivor could be in your class, sitting next to you in lecture.
When I first heard of the issue theme, I couldn’t imagine I’d have anything to say. I’d never been through anything. But if you look at it that way, I guess we all have survival stories to tell. Look for Megan’s in Inside on Feb. 21.
From To Kill a Mockingbird to the Lord of the Rings, there’s certainly no shortage of films born from the literary greats, and it’s looking like an overwhelming number of movies releasing this year fall in line with this trend:
-The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (March 23rd)
-The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (December 14th)
-The Lorax by Dr. Seuss (March 2nd)
-Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (December 7th)
-The Life of Pi by Yann Martel (December 21st, starring Tobey Maguire)
-The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (December 25th, starring Leonardo DiCaprio)
-On the Road by Jack Kerouac (December 27th, starring Kirsten Dunst and Kristen Stewart)
-The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (starring Emma Waston)
(Look for an exclusive sidebar on The Hunger Games in the Survival Issue!)
Hearing about all these novel-based films got me thinking about how inspiration for movies has changed over the decades; it seems like far more movies are based off of books today than ever before, even ten years ago… Is original screenwriting going down the drain? What happened to the separate worlds of books and film?
Personally, I like the freedom of imagining the characters I read about without pegging them to actors who are already associated with so many other fictional characters. Although there is something semi-magical about seeing the words take physical form onscreen, there’s also something empty about it, like my imagination is being painted over every time I see a movie based on a book I read—like that bridge on Jordan. Adapting a book into a movie seems like it would rob potential readers of the book from unique experiences with the book as well because once they see the movie, odds are, considering the way our brains work, they’ll imagine scenes the way the movie presented them… that’s not fair!
That being said, I’m still anxious to see Martin Freeman hobble around as Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit and Leo as Jay Gatsby this December.
The way some can look at a car and identify its make, model and year, Jim Canary, Head of Conservation at the Lilly Library, can glance at a single book wedged among hundreds on a shelf among dozens and identify the tome’s country of origin and approximate year it was bound.
How does he do it? Counting the number of frayed threads poking out a volume’s spine? Feeling for a specific leather that was only found in 16th century Italy? No, the answer is: gold tooling.
For those who are not rare book enthusiasts, gold tooling describes the intricate design most often painted on a leather bound book’s spine or cover in gold leaf. Basically, it’s those really pretty curly-cues stamped on old books.
Gold tooling began no later than 1470 in Italy and became popular in England around 1530 and traveled to the U.S’s bookbinding shops around 1669. Because it traveled throughout Europe, Canary says each country has a distinct look that you can use to determine a book’s origin. For instance, a book from 17th century France may be almost entirely covered in the detailed gold designs recognized by the opulent styles of art that are characterized in most French art of that time.
Canary occasionally gets to redo tooling on books in the Lilly if he is revamping a cover. Sometimes a book must be rebound if the binding is completely destroyed whether by an insect infestation or general wear and tear.
Today, gold tooling is considered to be part of the fine art of bookbinding. The process is slow and intricate, but can still be performed.
Because many of the tools that were once used to create these beautiful designs no longer exist, Canary explained that he sometimes creates his own makeshift tools. For example by splitting a metal pipe and dipping the tip of it in gold, he says he is able to create a delicate half-moon design.
To learn what else Jim Canary and the rest of the Lilly Library is doing to preserve books, some thousands of years old, check out Inside’s Survival Issue on Feb. 21.
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