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The Russian Empire - full colour photos

Between 1909 and 1912, photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii embarked on a photographic survey of the Russian Empire. His technique of using a specialized camera that caught images in rapid succession with red, blue, and green filters allowed them to be later recombined and run through filtered lanterns to create “near true colour” photos - a bit like the old projectors you used to get on aeroplanes and stuff. Click here to see the full set (that's a self-portrait of his by the river). [slideshow]

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UncategorizedJack Dysonphotography, russiaComment
Impossible interview questions (some answers)

Blogged about a collection of impossible interview questions by CBS recently (here) and, unfazed by their awkwardness, Giles Turnbull on The Morning News had a crack at answering them: Procter & Gamble: Sell me an invisible pen. Imagine that pen you loved. Remember? It was a great pen. Then that jerk in the office asked “Can I borrow that for a second?” and it was gone, never to be returned. You still see that jerk every day, but have you seen your pen? That need never happen again with the invisible pen. It’s a pen only you can use, because you’re the only one who knows it’s there.

Facebook: Twenty-five racehorses, no stopwatch, five tracks. Figure out the top three fastest horses in the fewest number of races. The fewest number of races is one. Just keep those suckers running round and round and round until they collapse from exhaustion. The final three make it through, the rest end up as dog food. Actually, I thought that’s how they make dog food.

Citigroup: What is your strategy at table tennis? The way to win at table tennis is to not think about playing table tennis. It’s too fast. No-one can concentrate on a ball moving at that kind of speed, so the only way to win—in fact, the only way to hit the thing at all—is to think about something totally different, and just let your hands go all floppy, and it kind of happens automatically. It’s like we’re born with a table-tennis sixth sense that takes over for us. Usually, I think about laundry, and whether or not I have enough clean underwear to last me the rest of the week.

Google: You are climbing a staircase. Each time you can either take one step or two. The staircase has n steps. In how many distinct ways can you climb the staircase? There’s a typo in your question, there, dude. You said “n,” but I think you were supposed to put a number.

Enterprise Rent-A-Car: Would you be okay hearing “no” from seven out of 10 customers? HA HA HA HA HA! I wish it was only seven out of 10! HA HA HA HA HA. No thanks, I have a handkerchief right here. Seven out of 10. You’re killing me.

Goldman Sachs: Suppose you had eight identical balls. One of them is slightly heavier and you are given a balance scale. What’s the fewest number of times you have to use the scale to find the heavier ball? You don’t need the scales at all, you just juggle those cuties. The heaviest one will be revealed in seconds. I did a juggling course at college, I totally know what I’m doing here. You’ve seen that trick where people juggle a chainsaw, a dead rodent, and a lemon? Turns out you can tell which one is the chainsaw even if you’re juggling with your eyes closed. You can just tell what’s heavy as it passes through your hands. And that’s science.

Towers Watson: Estimate how many planes there are in the sky. What, the sky just here? Or the whole sky, everywhere? And do you just mean big planes like 747s, or are you including itty-bitty one-seaters, and training flights for learner pilots? What about remote-control planes? Those drones the Army uses to spy on people? They could have thousands of those and none of us would know. That’s a very wide question. I’m going to say six. No, 14.

Lubin Lawrence: If you could describe Hershey, Godiva, and Dove chocolate as people, how would you describe them? I went to school with Hershey. He thought he was so special, and people were all like “Ooooh Hershey,” but then I went to college and forgot all about him. Last I heard, he was cleaning windows for a living. Godiva inherited the house after her aunt died, and tried making a career as an artist. No-one liked her work—too much violence, not enough humanity. We’re still in touch, but our Facebook conversations are about trivia and crap on TV. I don’t think I have much to say to her anymore. Dove does telephone sales calls. I think she got married to some guy from Denver. They don’t have kids.

Pottery Barn: If I was a genie and could give you your dream job, what and where would it be? Shit, anything? Oh man. Well, I’d get out of Pottery Barn faster than you could say “Breakages must be paid for,” and I’d become an executive in the music industry. No wait, it gets better: I’d be a music executive who also understands the internet. I’d be like, Hey, you, release your album as DRM-free MP3s from some random blog, but keep your band name secret, and we’ll rely on word-of-mouth, it’ll be huge. And there’d be drugs and free music everywhere and pornography and shit. And yellow stretch limos, the ones with drinks cabinets and tables in them. And swimming pools, and free phones, and trips around the world, and it would all be mine, every last lazy minute of it. Either that, or I’d like to be a chocolate taster. VWR International: How would you market a telescope in 1750 when no one knows about orbits, moons, etc.? “Hey you! Wanna discover orbits and moons, etc.? Then you need this, baby!” Either that, or just sell to peeping toms. Peeping toms have a long, proud history.

Diageo North America: If you walk into a liquor store to count the unsold bottles, but the clerk is screaming at you to leave, what do you do? What in the name of God would I be doing counting unsold bottles in a liquor store? Are you trying to fuck with my mind? I mean, what is that supposed to even mean? If, for some insane reason, I was in such a store to do such a thing, and the clerk screamed anything at me, I’d probably do exactly what he said. I mean why wouldn’t I? I did get screamed at in a liquor store once. And now I stop to think about it, it was the clerk screaming. But I’m pretty damned certain I wasn’t counting anything at the time. I think I was texting my aunt.

Brown & Brown Insurance: How would you rate your life on a scale of 1 to 10? On bad days, I’d say it was a 1. Perhaps a 2. I mean, there are people who have it much worse than me, yeah? On good days, I’d say 3. You’re the first people I’ve spoken to since last Friday, did you know that?

Jane Street Capital: What is the smallest number divisible by 225 that consists of all 1’s and 0’s? Um… 10. Tens into 225 is 2.25. No, 2250. No—ah, what is it? I know you have to move the decimal point somewhere; I can never remember where. Not a biggie, though. I hate math. That’s why spreadsheets were invented. I can remember being asked questions like this in math classes at school and I wasn’t much good at answering them back then, either.

UBS: If we were playing Russian roulette and had one bullet, I randomly spun the chamber and fired but nothing was fired. Would you rather fire the gun again or respin the chamber and then fire on your turn? I’d rather get the fuck out of your office and run away very fast. What the hell are you people on? Haven’t you heard of email? Or official dispute procedures? Jesus.

Merrill Lynch: Tell me about your life from kindergarten onwards. Well I sort of went to school, then I went to college, then I had a dozen crappy dead-end jobs to make ends meet. I wasted my money on alcohol, drugs, gadgets, and pointless leisure activities. I tried settling down a couple of times but we couldn’t make it work, then afterward I usually spent six months in a haze of self-doubt and did lots of crying to myself on the couch in the evenings. There was a spell when I moved back in with my parents, partly because I couldn’t afford to live anywhere else and partly because the judge said I had to. When that was over, I drifted a bit. I have nothing meaningful to show for my time on this Earth so far, but I do own a pretty nice phone and a pair of incredibly expensive running shoes.

Susquehanna International Group: Five guys, all of different ages, enter a bar and take a seat at a round table. What is the probability that they are seated in ascending order of age? I’ve heard this one! I think. Wait, I’ll remember in a moment. Is it “Because the chicken told them to?” No? I could have sworn I’d heard this one. I love jokes. I tell lots of jokes; that’s one of the great things about me. You can’t say that on a resumé can you? But it’s true. That’s why you need me on your international group team. I’ll have you laughing so much, you’ll never get any work done. Ha! That was one right there.

(full article is here)

UncategorizedJack Dysonimpossible interview questions, writing Comments
The Talks - Mick Jagger

The Talks is a new website with some rocking interviews - Mike Tyson, Mick Jagger, Valentino, Ewan McGregor and more (with, I hope, more to come). Here's a snip of the Mick Jagger chat. Not sure if it's just me, but he doesn't come across as *that* charismatic or interested, mind you, context is king.

Mr. Jagger, what kept you from completely going off the deep end? I mean we all did excessive things and I had a lot of unstable moments as I’m sure everyone does in their life. Maybe it helped me that I had a very centered upbringing.

So your parents basically. Yeah, I think so. When you are young and you have a sort of close family life and stuff, it helps you to be centered for later. If you don’t have a centered upbringing, I think it is much more difficult.

You still had a very destructive lifestyle back then. Excess was the order of the day. But that was just a period. You know you get excessive people nowadays as well. Today people are excessive consuming things, like consumer goods.

But you were even chased by the police for your drug abuse. How do you remember those days? At the time it wasn’t very funny. It wasn’t very good because it completely took over our lives creatively and we couldn’t do this and couldn’t do that. You had to spend all your time trying to deal with all the police and you didn’t have time to do anything else.

Were there moments where you were lying in your bed thinking that you should slow down? I was not that bad, no. I was pretty centered really. Once I even had a very nice house in the South of France that I rented from someone. I had a very nice garden, I could walk around, I had a really nice swimming pool. A friend of mine was a falconer and he used to come and train his falcons in my garden. I found that very restful and interesting.

The period you are referring to now was in 1971 when The Rolling Stones had to leave London because of massive tax problems. You were world famous back then, broke with the government on your tail. We were broke, yeah. Taxes very were punitive. Through our own fault and other people’s faults we had not been very good with looking after our money. We got money from the record company to fund our album, otherwise we couldn’t have come to the South of France and lived in a nice place. But we had a lot of back taxes to pay and that was the only way we could do it at that time.

You ended up recording Exile on Main Street there, an album that became part of rock history. Looking back do you consider this as your most important work? My finest hour. (laughs) Well, it is certainly good and certainly it was a very creative period, a really good period. Some very good things came in that period in music. There was some crap as well but there were some really good things, some good rock things, it was a very good period for soul music as well. They had great albums by Curtis Mayfield, James Brown, Marvin Gaye. It’s a very good album, but I don’t know if I have a best one. I mean do you have a best film? I don’t really have favorites. And I don’t listen to Rolling Stones albums.

How long does it take before you start to miss music? I did seven years in the 80’s where I didn’t do any shows and I didn’t really miss it very much.

What’s your perception of yourself today? English gentleman or rock legend? I don’t think of any of those things. They are all sort of meaningless. Meaningless typecasts. Do you wake up in the morning and think, “I’m such and such?” You just are you. You become aware of all that when you’re doing these kinds of official appointments. That’s the only time you ever think of it.

Your history with beautiful women is widely known and now your daughter Georgia Jagger is becoming a famous model. You know exactly how dirty that business is. Yeah, well we chat about all that. We talk about all that quite a lot.

So any specific recommendations you give her? Don’t take life too seriously and always remember: it is just a passing fad.

Read the full interview here.

UncategorizedJack Dysoninterview, mick jagger, writingComment
Friday in Brasil, three artists I need to know more about

1. Antonio Carlos JobimAlso known as Tom Jobim, he was the father of the modern bossa nova (with Joao Gilberto). Worked with everyone from Stan Getz and Herbie Hancock to Frank Sinatra. Amazing pianist. Stick with this at least until 1.20 - 1.40. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2d-GtJUO_w&w=700]

2. Arthur Verocai Hard to fund out much about him, but Verocai started out in the mid- to late-Sixties, using his musical direction to wriggle around the censorship laws. Lots of funk and soul in amongst the jazz - imagine this as sample - he doesn't mess around with his musicians or arrangements, all business making the party work. Amazing. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j535pdeL80A&w=700]

3. Jorge Ben Mas Que Nada was his first hit, more of a samba guy than anything else, cover's of his songs seem to have done better outside of Brasil than his own versions. Perhaps not surprising as they've been covered by Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie, the Black Eye Peas and more. His song, Taj Mahal, is also legally recognised as the source of the melody for Rod Stewart's Do ya Think I'm Sexy (he sued him and won). [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDlVZNfxVtE&w=700]

UncategorizedJack Dysonantonio carlos jobim, arthur verocai, bossa nova, brasil, brazil, jorge ben, musicComment
Papua New Guinea tribe meet first European

Filmed in 1976, this shows the Toulambi tribe making contact with the outside world for the first time. Yes, the music is kind of annoying, as it would be amazing to hear what they (both sides) are saying, and yes there's an element of voyeurism, but it's beautiful too. How do you think we might act if we met a whole new species of human for the first time? (no that's not an excuse to start talking about elves and stuff) [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyLvdm1JXsg&w=700]

The film was taken (I think) by Jean Pierre Dutilleux - see his website for more images - who says:

For centuries the hill tribes of the Owen Ranmge in Papua, New Guinea have lived in isolation to avoid war. In a landscape of dense tropical rainforests each tribe stays within a well established territory. This explains why some of them have survived into the new millennium without any contact with the outside world.

Others previously known have left their villages to move deeper in the forest to escape conflicts or the religious zeal of evangelical preachers only to be rediscovered and labeled as lost tribes. European explorers first encountered the Toulambi in 1993.

They were almost entirely decimated by malaria. Modern medicine helped to stop the ravages of the disease. They didn't believe white men existed but if they did, they must be the 'living dead.'

Taking a lot of care with their appearance, the Toulambi men wear a bird from the Cassowary bird through the nose, large necklaces of river shells and bird of paradise feathers in their hair. They must look their best to attract a mate and reproduce. They are hunters and gatherers. The entire tribe moves in uncanny silence for fear of alerting the game. They know the migration trails of animals and the best time of year to find fish, the growing cycles of the palms, bamboo, wild fruits and the roots they rely on. Always on the move. The rhythm of their lives is that of the jungle. It gives them no time to create complex art, to develop science or conceive profound metaphysical philosophies.

The Toulambi consume wild tobacco heavily. The first transatlantic tribes found by Europeans said the white man gave them alcohol but they got their revenge by giving him tobacco.

The Toulambi are among the very last witnesses of our distant past. When the last tribe is contacted and moved from the Stone Age into the modern world, from being free and masters of their own destiny to being poor and at the lowest level of our western society, it is a part of ourselves that will vanish forever.

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UncategorizedJack Dysondiscovery, first contact, jean pierre dutilleux, papua new guinea, toulambi, tribesComment
WWII Before the war - photo essay

World War II: Before the War is the first part in a series of 20 retrospective photo essays for Atlantic by Alan Taylor. It was a fascinating time of huge upheaval. Spain locked in civil war, Fascism on the rise, Japan invading China, the US still reeling from the Great Depression - and far from the only country to be suffering. I've chucked a couple of images below, but make sure you look at the whole series here. It's a powerful reminder that however much time or Hollywood might blunt the edges this was, for the whole world, a period of massive change and conflict that is all too easily dismissed but should never be forgotten.

UncategorizedJack Dysonphotography, warComment
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UncategorizedJack DysonComment