Colin Marshall over at Open Culture:

“Symphonies, perfume, sports cars, graffiti, needlepoint, monuments, tattoos, slang, Ming vases, doodles, poodles, apple strudels. Still life, Second Life, bed knobs and boob jobs” — why do we make any of these things? That question has driven much of the career (and indeed life) of Brian Eno, the man who invented ambient music and has brought his distinctive, at once intellectual and visceral sensibility to the work of bands like Roxy Music, U2, and Coldplay as well as the realm of visual art. Back in September, he laid out all the illuminating and entertaining answers at which he has thus far arrived in giving the BBC’s 2015 John Peel Lecture.

We featured Eno’s wide-ranging talk on the nature of art and culture, as well as its utility to the human race, back when the Beeb offered it streaming for a limited time only. But now they’ve made it freely available to download and listen to as you please: you can download the MP3 at this link. You can also follow along, if you like, with the PDF transcript available here, which will certainly be of assistance when you go to look up all the people, ideas, works of art, and pieces of history Eno references along the way, including but not limited to the “STEM” subjects, Baked Alaska, black Chanel frocks, the Riemann hypothesis, Little Dorrit, Morse Peckham, Coronation Street, airplane simulators, the dole, Lord Reith, John Peel himself, Basic Income, Linux, and collective joy.

More here. The lecture can be found here.

Over at the New York Times:

Benedict Anderson, a Cornell University scholar who became one of the most influential voices in the fields of nationalism and Southeast Asian studies, died Sunday in Indonesia. He was 79.

Anderson died in his sleep during a visit to the city of Malang, Indonesian media reported. The cause of death was not immediately known.

“This is to inform you that Ben Anderson has passed away in Java: the land and its people he loves most,” Thai historian Charnvit Kasetsiri, Anderson's close friend and colleague, said in an email to fellow scholars. Indonesians reacted with an outpouring of tributes on Twitter and Facebook.

Anderson is best known for his 1983 book “Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism,” whose admired but debated thesis is that nationalism is largely a modern concept rooted in language and literacy. Its publisher, Verso Books, said it had been translated into more than two dozen languages.

“Many readers of 'Imagined Communities' did not know that his knowledge of Southeast Asian languages gave him insights into Indonesian, Thai, and Philippine political culture and history,” said Prof. Craig J. Reynolds of Australian National University.

Anderson's influence was not limited to the sphere of theory, as he engaged with the contentious issues of the day with a rigorous analysis and dry wit that inspired his students.

More here.

Corey Robin over at his website has some thoughts:

All morning, people from so many different fields and persuasions have been testifying to Anderson’s impact upon them and their work. Which leads to a thought: I’d put Anderson up there with Clifford Geertz and, increasingly, Jim Scott as among the most influential scholars of the last half-century. All of them scholars of Southeast Asia. I’m sure other people have noticed this and/or perhaps written about this, so forgive my saying the obvious, but what is it about that region that has made it such a site of transformative scholarship and fertile reflection?

My wife and I just watched the movie Meru about the attempted ascent of the mountain of that name, which had never been summited before, by Conrad Anker (one of the top climbers in the world), Jimmy Chin, and Renan Ozturk. It is one of the most thrilling and moving films I have seen in a long time. Do yourself a favor and watch it.

From The Economist:

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? The four members of British rock band Queen could be forgiven for asking themselves those questions on November 29th 1975, forty years ago today, when “Bohemian Rhapsody” became their first number one on the UK Singles Chart. At five minutes and fifty-five seconds in length, with distinct ballad, opera and hard rock sections—and a pensive intro and coda, for good measure—the song was not for listeners in a hurry. Nor was it an instant success. The song spent four weeks climbing through the charts before reaching the top. But there was one thing that was immediately obvious about “Bohemian Rhapsody”: nobody had ever heard anything quite like it before.

The single aroused mild curiosity in America, where it reached number nine on the BillboardHot 100. But British listeners were enthralled by the intricacy of the overdubbed harmonies, the energy of the climactic guitar solo, and the oddity of a multi-tracked chorus chanting the names of an Italian Renaissance astronomer (Galileo Galilei), a character from a nineteenth-century opera (Figaro), an Islamic prayer (bismillah) and an occult devil from “Paradise Lost” (Beelzebub). The original single spent nine consecutive weeks at the summit of the British charts, an achievement which no British band, including the Beatles, had achieved before. And the popularity of the song endured. The single was re-released in Britain in 1991 after the death of Freddie Mercury, Queen's lead singer, and spent an additional five weeks atop the charts, making “Bohemian Rhapsody” the first song to be Christmas number one on two occasions. And a year later, it enjoyed a revival in America, albeit at number two, after featuring in “Wayne’s World”. As of 2013, it had the third highest sales of any single in Britain (see chart).

The legacy of the song is indisputable. This was the tune that both inspired Slash, Guns N’ Roses' guitarist, to become a rock star, and moved Brian Wilson, the genius behind The Beach Boys’ finest arrangements, to call it “a fulfilment and an answer to a teenage prayer—of artistic music”.

More here.