From the website of “The American Museum of Beat Art”:

Despite the ‘beatnik’ stereotype, Kerouac was a political conservative, especially when under the influence of his Catholic mother. As the beatniks of the 1950′s began to yield their spotlight to the hippies of the 1960′s, Jack took pleasure in standing against everything the hippies stood for. He supported the Vietnam War and became friendly with William F. Buckley.

Image Source: LiveScience

An Irish filmmaker’s claim that footage from a Charlie Chaplin movie premiere in 1928 reveals a time-traveling woman speaking on a mobile phone has been debunked:

“As you can tell from these, old-fashioned mechanical or resonating hearing aids were not necessarily long and rounded,” said Philip Skroska, an archivist at the Bernard Becker Medical Library of Washington University in St. Louis. “Short, compact rectangular forms were not unusual.”

A hearing aid sounds about right, but I am still amazed that George Clarke (who discovered the footage and promoted the theory) skipped right over this woman is insane to this woman is a time traveler.

See the video that started it all here.

This nostalgic look back at the videos of the 1990s includes “Buddy Holly” by Weezer (1994), a nostalgic spoof of “Happy Days,” a sitcom (’74-’84) which itself reminisced an idealized 1950s. Count it: 3 layers of nostalgia. And when I look back upon this post years from now, we will have reached Inception-level nostalgia.

SEE ALSO: A compilation of the some of the most 90s stuff ever.

Here a 16- or 17-year old Chilton performs the Box Tops’ hit “The Letter”:

A HUNDRED MILES AN HOUR; PROMISED RATE OF TRAVEL FROM ST. LOUIS TO CHICAGO. DR. WELLINGTON ADAMS TELLS ELECTRIC CLUB MEMBERS OF A WONDERFUL ELECTRIC RAILROAD — THE SECRET OF HIS MOTORS RETAINED.

The Empire State Express, which flies from New-York to Buffalo, is soon to be entirely eclipsed by an electric express traveling at thunderbolt speed over a road as straight as an arrow’s course, if the story be not a dream which Dr. Wellington Adams unfolded last night to the members of the Electric Club…

I feel something similar for Disney’s Tomorrowland (probably heir to Futurama), but the nostalgia is balanced out to some degree by a sense of parallel-world eeriness.

(I’m still looking for a great word for “nostalgia for a future envisioned in the past,” but I enjoyed this piece from the Atlantic’s Word Fugitives from a few years back– October 2001, as it turns out– curiously apropos.)

Each video begins with a mushroom cloud cartoon and concludes with what somebody on Wikipedia aptly called “a memorably unsettling electronic musical phrase.”

Most of the crap you’re instructed to do seems like a doomed, absurd existential charade, and altogether unlikely to save any lives. (Much like our own “Duck and Cover,” as I understand it.)

Witness this comically futile fall-out “refuge” from part 6 (“Refuges“).

And this guy, hiding from fall-out under a bridge.

And this pitiful attempt to dignify a shit bucket. (Which actually seems like a very British thing to do.)

All the videos are available here, but I’ve embedded a small selection:

#1. Nuclear Explosions Explained

#3.  ”What To Do When The Warnings Sounds” (Jesus, even the “All Clear” signal is deeply unnerving.)

#4. “Stay At Home”

#10. “Action After Warnings”

#15. “Life Under Fall-Out Conditions”

#20. “Casualties” (Creepy. I can understand why they saved this one for last.)