March 19, 2010

Friday Ephemera

Bollywood, where anything is possible. // The skies of Dubai. // Dung shoes. // Jonathan Miller’s A Rough History of Disbelief. Parts 2, 3. // Retro-futuristic garbage collection. (h/t, Coudal) // 1970 World’s Fair, Osaka. // Paris, gigapixelled. // The GigaPan Epic Pro. // “Gameplay continues until orgasm is achieved.” (nsfw) // “After hundreds of drinks of the radium tonic, he began having pains in his jaw.” // When the light is just so. // Steampunk lamps. // The periodic table of sci-fi film and television. // Vintage Trek photostream. // Edison’s silent Frankenstein, 1910. // Kim Jong-Il has a Plan B. // Zebra cleans hippo’s teeth. 

Posted at 06:18 in Ephemera | | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

March 18, 2010

Woodstock

Woodstock_Vermont_1940 

Woodstock, Vermont. Photographed by Marion Post Wolcott, March, 1940. Larger version here.

Posted at 10:31 in Art, History | | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

March 17, 2010

In Other News

Dr Westerhaus sends us this.

Man Used Penis to Assault Female Police Officer.

A man who assaulted a female police officer with his penis has been fined. Marium Varinauskas, 28, tried to strike the officer on the head with his penis when she was called out to his flat,

but she got out of the way.

“The accused got to his feet and was standing over the police officer exposing his penis and thrusting it in her face, forcing her to take evasive action to avoid getting struck.”

Annella Cowan was told that the Lithuanian had now quit binge drinking because of the incident.

Posted at 08:26 in Ephemera | | Comments (19) | TrackBack (0)

March 16, 2010

The Feel of Rubber

A previous, somewhat hazardous, attempt. Via Anna. 

Posted at 09:43 in Ephemera, Feats | | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)

March 15, 2010

But Left Equals Virtue...

A few days ago, my piece on the political vanities of Professor Jere Surber was linked from a message board where Karl Marx quotations are displayed triumphantly and the following question still hangs in the air:

And what’s with this historical revisionism that keeps creeping up that puts Hitler on the left?

Readers may find it odd that there are people who resent Hitler’s Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei – National Socialist German Workers’ Party – being regarded as in any way leftwing. Albeit not quite as leftwing as Stalin’s communism, with its more... international flavour. If Hitler wasn’t a socialist, or a type of socialist, it’s odd that he should give his party an overtly socialist name and outline his economic programme in overtly socialist terms: “We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system... and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions.” [Adolf Hitler, speech, May 1, 1927.] It’s odd too that Hitler should subsequently inform the “bourgeois” newspaper editor Richard Breiting that the Nazi economic programme “demands the nationalisation of all public companies, in other words socialisation, or what is known here as socialism.” Perhaps there are those who imagine the word “left” is, and always must be, universal shorthand for “good hearts, decent people and unassailable virtue.” If contributors to the aforementioned message board are visiting today, they may find what follows a tad bothersome. Here’s Stephen Hicks noting some interesting thematic links:

Baader-Meinhof was a far left terrorist group, and one of the most violent, killing dozens and maiming more during the 1970s. Its “official” name was Rote Armee Fraktion (“Red Army Faction”). The logo shows a nice big socialist red star with a Heckler Koch submachine gun. The group’s two most prominent members were Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof. Here is one of Meinhof’s explanations: “Auschwitz meant that six million Jews were killed, and thrown on the waste-heap of Europe, for what they were: money Jews. Finance capital and the banks, the hard core of the system of imperialism and capitalism, had turned the hatred of men against money and exploitation, and against the Jews… Anti-Semitism is really a hatred of capitalism.” [Source.]

Which is of course right out of Karl Marx: “What is the profane basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly cult of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly god? Money. Very well: then in emancipating itself from huckstering and money, and thus from real and practical Judaism, our age would emancipate itself. [...] As soon as society succeeds in abolishing the empirical essence of Judaism - huckstering and its conditions - the Jew becomes impossible… The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism.” [Source: On the Jewish Question (1843), in The Marx-Engels Reader, pp. 48, 52.]

Which is what Hitler agreed with: “Today I will once more be a prophet. If the international Jewish financiers, inside and outside Europe, succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevisation of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!” [Source: Hitler, speaking in the Reichstag on January 30, 1939.] As did Goebbels, in speaking of “the money pigs of capitalist democracy”: “Money has made slaves of us.” “Money is the curse of mankind. It smothers the seed of everything great and good. Every penny is sticky with sweat and blood.” [Sources: Goebbels, 1929, quoted in Orlow 1969, p. 87 and Goebbels 1929, quoted in Mosse ed., 1966, p. 107.]

Bonus question: Who said this?

“The worker in a capitalist state - and that is his deepest misfortune - is no longer a living human being, a creator, a maker. He has become a machine. A number, a cog in the machine without sense or understanding. He is alienated from what he produces.”

Answer: Joseph Goebbels, in his 1932 Those Damned Nazis pamphlet.

I talk with Stephen Hicks here. Should any visiting Marxists resent parting with money for Dr Hicks’ book Explaining Postmodernism, it can read here, for free.

Posted at 09:15 in History, Politics, Religion | | Comments (58) | TrackBack (0)

March 12, 2010

Friday Ephemera

Muscle March. (h/t, Franklin) // Magnetic rings. // The sky is rolling. // A beginner’s guide to satellites. // Secret cities of Yemen. // Sole of note. // Cycles. // Nacho cheese lip balm. // The Charles Xavier chair. // Typeface kaleidoscopes. // This is a pencil drawing. As are these. // Fun with Sellotape. // Light entertainment, Soviet style, 1976. // Accident in Detroit, 1906. // Iron Man now has travel armour. // Girl displays oral superpower. // Thin buildings. // The wrath of Shatner. // Notable chess sets. (h/t, Mr Eugenides) // Webcam roulette. 

Posted at 07:00 in Ephemera | | Comments (14) | TrackBack (0)

March 11, 2010

“They Are Ridiculous.”

Via Dan, here’s an extract from a piece by Michael Totten, in which he talks with Raluca Grosescu of Romania’s Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes:

I’ve always wondered what democrats who grew up in communist countries thought of communists who grew up in democratic countries. Hardly anyone in the West ever voted with their feet, so to speak, by moving to a communist country; but communist dictatorships created millions of refugees who fled their homelands for Western democracies. East Germans were willing to risk being shot to make a run over the wall, Cubans are still willing to risk drowning to reach Florida, yet once in a while I still meet Westerners who have a warm spot in their hearts for regimes like Castro’s.

“What do you think,” I asked her, “of people in the West who think communism is a good idea but haven’t actually experienced it? There are quite a few people who admire the system in Cuba. You know the types I mean. The people who wear Che Guevara t-shirts.”

“Ah, yes,” she said. “They are ridiculous. But somehow I can understand them. Let’s take the example of France. In France they were all socialists when they were young. Sartre was a close friend of Castro’s. Gerard Depardieu was a close friend of Castro’s. They believed in this ideal, but after they saw what Stalin did they couldn’t look to the Soviet Union. So they turned their hopes to Cuba. Then they saw what Castro did. The only one who still seemed to live up to the ideal was Che Guevara. So they turned to Che Guevara. I understand them. They were wrong their entire lives, and it is difficult to admit this.”

“They are ridiculous.” Perhaps some t-shirts could be made. After all, people who wear “Che” t-shirts and peddle communist claptrap presumably imagine they’re signalling how daring they are, righteous even. Some, like the people at 21st Century Socialism, may think of Castro’s chief executioner as “an icon, a means of identifying with the anti-establishment, a unique mix of the revolutionary ideals and pop star celebrity.” Yet it seems to me they may as well be walking around with a big notice saying, “If I had my way I’d control you and ruin the lives of everyone you care about.” Though stated in those terms it could lead to an occasional thumping.

I feel an urge to juxtapose.

“The intellectuals’ vain search for a truly socialist community, which results in the idealisation of, and then disillusionment with, a seemingly endless string of ‘utopias’ – the Soviet Union, then Cuba, China, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, Tanzania, Nicaragua – should suggest that there might be something about socialism that does not conform to certain facts.” Friedrich von Hayek, The Fatal Conceit, 1988. 

“We’ve had the Soviet experiment. We’ll get it right next time.” Daoud Hamdani, The Guardian, 2010. 

Related: Memorial of the Victims of Communism. And on the “social justice icon,” Ernesto “Che” Guevara. 

Posted at 08:02 in History, Politics | | Comments (20) | TrackBack (0)

March 10, 2010

Bow

Rainbow 

Photographed in San Francisco by Scott Meinzer. Larger version here. Via Laughing Squid.

Posted at 09:15 in Art, Travel | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

March 09, 2010

Quote of the Day (4)

A while back I was chatting with a psychiatrist acquaintance about some topic or event I’ve since forgotten when he said, “From each according to ability: to each according to need.” My standard and automatic response to that statement is, “Is there any better way to get people to minimize their abilities and maximize their needs?”

Via the Farm.

Posted at 07:44 in Ephemera, Politics | | Comments (22) | TrackBack (0)

March 06, 2010

Reheated (7)

For newcomers, three more items from the archives.

Thrashing the Hegemon.

Fearless artist José Carlos Teixeira gives Western society the thrashing it deserves.

Mr Teixeira’s ostentatious subversion is all the more amusing because it’s so conformist. He, like many others, is doing what he thinks he ought to be seen doing, if only by those playing much the same game. Making a thing of beauty isn’t a consideration and isn’t attempted, possibly because it doesn’t suit the role-play of being a “social and political agent.” What matters to Mr Teixeira is demonstrating his compliance with the belief that art should be a vehicle for anti-bourgeois gestures, which signals both the cleverness of the artist and his ideological credentials. This is done by muttering the standard incantations – “hegemony,” “subversion,” etc. The use of such terms indicates the artist belongs to an approved ideological caste and has the approved political views. (We can be fairly sure that the assumptions being “challenged” and “subverted” won’t include egalitarianism, the parasitic nature of arts subsidy or the latest conceits of the postmodern left.) So the more loudly a piece of art affects an air of subversive radicalism, the less reason there is to believe it delivers anything of the sort.

Moral Inertia.

Anti-social behaviour and the weight of doing nothing.

The stare, body language and bellowing have to be calibrated just so. Too little force and mockery may ensue – from which there’s no recovery. This is after all a game of humiliation. You have to look as though you mean it absolutely. Those being bellowed at have to at least entertain the possibility that you may do them serious harm if they fail to comply. The risk of embarrassment has to be theirs and theirs alone. This requires a certain willingness to look like an escaped mental patient, at least temporarily. But looking utterly bonkers and socially incongruous is much easier to do if you’re not inhibited by a large group of other people conspicuously doing nothing.

Every Bit as Hobbled.

Christina Hoff Sommers highlights inaccuracies in feminist textbooks. The Sisterhood takes umbrage.

Needless to say, Sommers’ line of enquiry isn’t universally welcomed. Her points about gross errors, overstatement and competitive victimhood are often met with prickling indignation, not least from those whose activities include some combination of the above. Some denounce Sommers as “conservative” – a synonym for evil – a “female impersonator” and an “anti-feminist,” a term that suggests both the crime of apostasy and a very narrow definition of what “real” feminists should be concerned with and how they’re permitted see the world.

There’s more, of course, in the greatest hits.

Posted at 07:00 in Academia, Art, Culture, Ideas, Politics | | Comments (12) | TrackBack (0)

March 05, 2010

Friday Ephemera

Yes, it’s a jetpack, but could you make it smaller? // The tin foil aesthetic. // Feeder. // Dentistry of yore. // Magical Japanese toilet flushes away unhappiness. (h/t, Metrolander) // Tokyo/Glow. // A swarm of light. // Lightbotz. // Alice in Wonderland. (1903) // Horrible dragon threatens Council Worker Fantasy Land. // There are 50,000 rockets headed this way. // A day in the life of London Transport, 1962. // Someone shrank New York. // Horses made of junk. // Interact with zombies. // Play pinball with your mind. // More volcanic lightning. // Vinyl grooves. // The hazards of going to warp. // Rhombidodecadodecahedron.

Posted at 07:00 in Ephemera | | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

March 03, 2010

Chiselled

Pouty, cartoonish and oddly androgynous: the cosmetic surgery aesthetic, as photographed by Phillip Toledano.

Toledano5 Toledano7 Toledano4

Toledano3 Toledano2 Toledano6 

Click to, um, enlarge. Via Mr Eugenides. Welcome, Instapundit readers. The greatest hits and head enlargement may be of interest. 

Posted at 09:32 in Art, Culture, Ephemera | | Comments (22) | TrackBack (0)

Two Views

The International Space Station, currently occupied by five astronauts, photographed from the shuttle Endeavour, February 19.

ISS_2010
 Larger version here. And the same as filmed by Dirk Ewers, 350 km below, May 2008. More. Via APoD. 

Posted at 08:37 in Feats, Science, Travel | | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

March 02, 2010

Squealing and Plasma

It isn’t every day you see, or hear, a thing like this.  

Via Anna.

Posted at 09:59 in Ephemera | | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)

Elsewhere (20)

A happy, fluffy Islam edition.

Virginia Haussegger on beer, public whipping and the gentle kiss of Sharia.

Who gives the government the right to do moral policing and why should a personal sin be turned into a crime against the state? 

An article by Taslima Nasrin “causes” rioting in India. 

Shimoga and Hassan cities witnessed widespread violence on Monday following protests by Muslim organisations against the publication of an article in the Sunday magazine section of a Kannada daily. The article is a translation of an essay by Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen on wearing of the burka by Muslim women, and contains remarks that could be considered religiously insensitive and provocative. [...] Several persons were injured and there was large-scale destruction of property in different parts of the city. Police reports stated that at least 15 two-wheelers, three auto rickshaws and a large number of shops in the main market areas were set on fire. It is stated that three persons with bullet wounds were admitted to the McGann Hospital in a serious condition. A person manning a telephone booth on Nehru Road was seriously injured when a petrol bomb was thrown at him.

Readers may recall Ms Nasrin’s earlier, firsthand experience of Muhammadan umbrage when a book launch ended in the author being violently assaulted by Islamic lawmakers and members of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, whose piety entailed throwing chairs at a terrified woman. Hyderabad police subsequently filed a case against Nasreen for allegedly “creating religious tensions” and writing “provocative literature.”

And Bruce Bawer interviews Geert Wilders. 

Thomas Mertens, a law professor at universities in Nijmegen and Leiden, argues that Wilders, by seeking so urgently to clarify for the general public the truth about Islam, is actually undermining the central precept that underlies the Dutch social contract which has been in place for centuries: namely, the agreement among members of different faith traditions to tolerate their theological differences – to close their eyes, as it were, to one another’s truth claims. What Mertens and others like him refuse to acknowledge is that the willingness of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Catholics, Calvinists, Lutherans, and others to agree to disagree about theological abstractions has no relevance whatsoever to the present situation, in which the Netherlands, and the West generally, are confronting a faith tradition for whose most committed adherents theological abstractions have calamitous real-world consequences. 

As usual, feel free to add your own.

Posted at 09:17 in Politics, Religion | | Comments (11) | TrackBack (0)

February 28, 2010

Is That Your Hand In My Pocket?

The playwright Jonathan Holmes indulges in some special pleading for the arts, and for people much like himself.

All three parties find themselves scrambling for a coherent arts policy, with the Tories currently making the running by suggesting a combination of a revamped lottery contribution plus a peculiar beast they are calling “philanthrocapitalism.” What they seem to mean by this is that businesses and wealthy individuals will make up the shortfall left behind when Jeremy Hunt and co have finished taking the Arts Council to pieces – in other words, a spectacular piece of wishful thinking.

Now might be a good time to ask whose thinking is most wishful here. If the art world’s theoretical customers don’t regard what’s on offer as of sufficient value to hand over their cash directly, voluntarily, then isn’t that telling us something? Isn’t it a tad grandiose to expect one’s commercially unviable art to be subsidised by the taxpayer - irrespective of whether those taxpayers would choose to fork over their cash, which they most likely had to earn by doing something of more obvious market value? What Holmes and his colleagues are advocating is a confiscation of other people’s money and therefore other people’s freedom, though of course he takes great care to avoid such unambiguous phrasing. Sadly, Mr Holmes doesn’t quite get to grips with such basics or their moral implications. He teases us, though, with this:

Lurking underneath all this there is, of course, a much bigger issue. Why should the arts receive any subsidy at all? The first argument is that almost everyone else is subsidised too, so why not the arts?

Despite the regularity with which it’s aired, this is a not the strongest argument to advance. The fact that six people already have their hands in my back pocket isn’t the most persuasive reason for inviting in a seventh, eighth and ninth. There is, after all, only so much pocket.

Mr Holmes then changes tack.

The arts in this country are a major financial success story. The income from creative industries generates revenues of around £112.5bn, and they employ more than 1.3 million people, which is 5% of the total employed workforce in the UK.

Note the sly use of the term “creative industries,” which includes advertising, commercial television, recording studios, graphic designers, computer games developers... i.e., businesses run as businesses and which generate profit because what they produce is of value to their customers, as determined by their customers and not by some imperious committee.

Continue reading "Is That Your Hand In My Pocket?" »

Posted at 10:48 in Art, Politics | | Comments (30) | TrackBack (0)

February 26, 2010

Friday Ephemera

Live holographic heads. // Car horns of yore. // The teenager tone. // The $1,000,000 comic book. // A game about robots. // At last, a cocktail robot. // Robot solves Rubik’s cube in under 12 seconds. (h/t, Evan) // Wi-fi drone controlled by your phone. // A war of paper toys is bound to escalate. // Atomic orbitals, or where electrons are likely to be. // Aerial photography by Kacper Kowalski. // The Clavilux 2000 visualises music. // Underground water network in Kasukabe City. (h/t, MeFi) // Noteworthy vases. // Eye-catching trousers. // Wooden clocks. // How to order beer in 50 languages. // “Don’t worry, dad.”

Posted at 07:00 in Ephemera | | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

February 24, 2010

Projection Indeed

Readers may recall the Guardian’s Laura Barnett and her insights on the subject of arts funding, not least her belief  that “the government makes no specific social provision for artists.” Except insofar it does exactly that via publicly funded regional arts councils to the tune of almost half a billion a year. Ms Barnett’s latest piece involves an exhibition titled Star City: The Future Under Communism, which gathers together artists inspired by the space race and Soviet visions of the future. The self-declared communist Daoud Hamdani is invited to share his responses to the artworks on display:

I’m no art critic, but I was fortunate enough to be able to look at this exhibition from an informed, leftwing perspective – and I was very impressed... In one room, Jane and Louise Wilson’s film Star City, shot on location, is shown on all four walls using four projectors. It’s an all-encompassing, smothering experience, symbolising the capitalist state’s suppression of the individual for the sake of profit.

Mr Hamdani’s grasp of reality is such that it is not in fact his beloved communism that was “all-encompassing,” “smothering” and intent on “suppression of the individual.” Instead, these characteristics are assigned – one might say projected – to the freewheeling West, to which so many reluctant communists tried to flee.

The exhibition’s main theme is escapism – both through the space race and science-fiction. I took this to be symbolic of the escape from capitalist barbarism that the Soviet system as a whole achieved.

Readers may be surprised to discover that barbarism was unknown in the Soviet Union and other communist nations, where altogether more civilised standards were adhered to and 100 million souls died of entirely natural causes.

Mr Hamdani continues,

I walked away from this exhibition with a sense of the artists’ overwhelming conviction that socialism and communism are still the future. We’ve had the Soviet experiment. We’ll get it right next time.

Whether for reasons of space or sheer critical acumen, Ms Barnett leaves these assertions unchallenged. Ms Barnett is a commissioning editor on the G2 arts desk and “writes across the arts, with a particular interest in theatre, dance and world music.” Though not, one might suppose, with an interest in history. Mr Hamdani is a member of the Midlands Young Communists League. 

The Star City exhibition is at the Nottingham Contemporary until April 17. Related: An Unsustainable Evil and Mutterings in Bedlam.

Posted at 11:29 in Art, History, Politics, Psychodrama | | Comments (22) | TrackBack (0)

February 23, 2010

Dancing for Gaia

Via Zombie comes news of a tremendous intellectual breakthrough at U.C. Berkeley. At midday on Friday, students will be graced by visiting lecturer Maximilian Mayer, a Research Fellow at Bonn University’s Centre for Global Studies. The lecture in question, Mitigating Global Warming Through Art - Exploring the Importance of Music for the Change of Lifestyles, offers no less than a blueprint for saving the world. The university’s events calendar provides a glimpse of things to come:

Whatever the new law carbon life may look like, simplification is a central issue. From the vantage point of the actor-network theory, simplification means to reduce the complexity of collectives. In order to simplify our life has to decrease the number of “things” one is entangled with in his/her daily life.

The language, she is beautiful.

Yet, one cannot substitute something with nothing.

This must be where the global salvation comes in.

What is the relevance of music for revolutions and societal cohesion? On a personal level, we are looking for an utterly new way of happiness and a quotidian practice that provides postmodern urban dwellers with sense and orientation.

An utterly new way of happiness. I told you it was big.

Music in general and art in particular seems to be a promising Archimedean point for multiple new life styles. Performing music and dancing... may be powerful enough to substitute the culture of consumerism since they enable a creativity-based self-autonomy as well as cultural self-sufficiency. “Back to art” could even open up the path to self-induced simplification in order to overcome the hegemonic consumerist environment... Humanity should not be primarily treated according to the logic of homo economicus. Rather it might be best envisioned as communities of artists.

It’s a revolution, people. Humanity will be reconceived as one big drum circle and the hegemon will be crushed beneath our happy, happy feet. Readers are welcome to speculate as to what form this momentous dancing endeavour might take. Doubtless it will be both elegant and awe-inspiring, perhaps a little like this.

Posted at 17:12 in Academia, Art, Music, Politics, Psychodrama | | Comments (23) | TrackBack (0)

February 22, 2010

Urban Oils

Oil paintings and concept art by Samuel Michlap.

Samuel_Michlap_books_001_3

Above, Books. Larger version here.

Continue reading "Urban Oils" »

Posted at 14:37 in Art | | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

February 21, 2010

Chase

Directed by David Rosenbaum for Mothership. 

Posted at 10:51 in Film, Media, Television | | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

February 19, 2010

Friday Ephemera

For when you crave a forbidden tingle. // “This is good shit.” // Nobuhiko Obayashi’s Hausu, 1977. // Nuit Blanche. // New York, circa 1905. // Snow in Washington. (h/t, Coudal) // Mosquito versus laser. // Bats with adhesive sweat. // Bees and nicotine. // The bumps you see are moons. // One Button Bob, a game with no instructions. // Onion calendar. // Quote. // Circulatory tights. // Handcrafted yoyos. // Mighty pipe organs. // Robot vibraphone. // Visualising Twitter. // Erecting the Eiffel Tower. // And, via Anna, Russia’s wooden churches. 

Posted at 07:00 in Ephemera | | Comments (11) | TrackBack (0)

February 17, 2010

Elsewhere (19)

Thomas Sowell on the idea of fairness.

If by “fair” you mean everyone having the same odds for achieving success, then life has never been anywhere close to being fair, anywhere or at any time. If you stop and think about it (however old-fashioned that may seem), it is hard even to conceive of how life could possibly be fair in that sense. Even within the same family, among children born to the same parents and raised under the same roof, the first-borns on average have higher IQs than their brothers and sisters, and usually achieve more in life.

Unfairness is often blamed on somebody, even if only on “society.” But whose fault is it if you were not the first born? Since some groups have more children than others, a higher percentage of the next generation will be first-borns in groups that have smaller families, so such groups have an advantage over other groups. Despite all the sound and fury generated in controversies over whether different groups have different genetic potential, even if they all have identical genetic potential the outcomes can still differ if they have different birth rates. Twins have average IQs several points lower than children born singly. Whether that is due to having to share resources in the womb or having to share parents’ attention after birth, the fact is what it is - and it certainly is not fair.

Shrinkwrapped ponders “diversity,” culture and social constructs.

It is not politic to ask, but here goes: Who constructs inner city culture, anyway? Is it cooked up in some hidden smoke filled room somewhere by evil WASP social engineers and then imposed on unsuspecting black gang bangers? Are rappers the unwitting agents of such nefarious plots aimed at destroying the work ethic and academic accomplishments of young black children? The idea that the black community has suffered egregious social damage from the liberal enabled destruction of the black family is rarely mentioned in polite society.

John Hawkins interviews Thomas Sowell.

This notion in academia of publish or perish - well, there is a certain merit to that. But like everything else, you can carry it to point of absurdity, which is where we are in a lot of fields. If you’ve mastered the writings of William Shakespeare and convey that to the next generation, who have obviously not mastered it, you’re performing a valuable service. But, that’s not going to advance your academic career. You’ve got to come out with some new theory of Shakespeare. You’ve got to go through and show how there is gender bias or the secret gay message somewhere coded in Shakespeare. You’ve just got to come up with something.

And Julia M notes some arts funding disasters.

As usual, feel free to add your own.

Posted at 08:15 in Academia, Art, Politics | | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

February 15, 2010

HexaKopter

You will, I think, be wanting one of these. It’s equipped with a camera and GPS and I’m pretty sure it could be modified to bring terror to your enemies.

Ambitious readers will no doubt be itching to build their own. Here’s a software demo. Via Grinding.

Posted at 09:25 in Ideas, Toys | | Comments (15) | TrackBack (0)

February 13, 2010

Comedy Economics

Courtesy of the New Economics Foundation, allegedly “the UK’s leading independent think tank.” The NEF was founded in 1986 and its members have spent the intervening years carefully blueprinting their socialist utopia. Here’s what they’ve come up with.

“Our consumption habits are squandering the earth’s natural resources,” says Anna Coote, Head of Social Policy at the NEF. “Spending less time in paid work could help us to break this pattern.”

We – that’s thee and me, apparently – would then become warmer, kinder, more compassionate people, more in tune with Gaia and sensitive to her needs. Much like the mighty thinkers at the NEF.

We’d have more time to be better parents, better citizens, better carers and better neighbours.

I’m feeling warm and a little fuzzy. It’s almost too good to be true.

If we are to seize these opportunities, the inevitable consequence is a much shorter standard working week, with 21 hours as the goal.

Ah. So by “better parents” and “better neighbours,” Ms Coote actually means poorer parents and poorer neighbours. Parents and neighbours with little if any disposable income. Parents and neighbours who default on their mortgages and rent payments. Parents and neighbours who find themselves evicted and their homes repossessed. These will be the warmer, kinder, more compassionate beings of whom the legends foretold.

Andrew Simms, Policy Director at NEF, said, “A cultural shift will throw up real challenges, but there could also be massive benefits for our economy, our quality of life and our planet. After all, hands up who wouldn’t like a four-day weekend?”

A four-day weekend entails... oh yes, a three-day week. Hm. I’m pretty sure something along those lines occurred here during the Seventies. And it isn’t generally regarded as a high point in British history, whether viewed in terms of quality of life, prosperity or indeed social cohesion. Despite the ominous precedent, the brains trust at the NEF are convinced that, once implemented, their recommendations would “heal the rifts in a divided Britain” and leave the population “satisfied.” That’s satisfied with less of course, and the authors make clear their disdain for the “dispensable accoutrements of middle-class life,” including “cars, holidays, electronic equipment and multiple items of clothing.” 

Continue reading "Comedy Economics" »

Posted at 18:27 in Ideas, Politics | | Comments (97) | TrackBack (0)

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