Eggs with decorative holes. Made with a very small electric drill. (H/T, Coudal.) // One man, one parachute, one very large catapult. (H/T, The Thin Man.) // Shaft soundtrack rehearsal. // Oh. Dear. Lord. // Cigarettes and magic. // Green movement demands greatest sacrifice yet. “Even among very green households the family cloth creates controversy.” // George Monbiot bemoans jet skis and diamond saucepans; prays for recession in the interests of equality. // Chinese cave dwelling. “It’s a matter of tradition and sheer common sense.” (H/T, Chastity Darling.) // Population density as art. London, Cairo, Mexico City. People per square kilometre. // Good news, everyone. Che Guevara still dead. // Fabian Tassano on Terry Eagleton. // Mick Hartley on Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth and the staggering bollocks written about it. “An artwork that provokes us to question the very foundations of our ways of thought.” Or maybe not. // Via 1+1=3, old signs exposed. // An abundance of nudity. // How to iron a shirt. // Via Coudal, how to cook lasagne in a dishwasher. // “Few critters make for better eating than feral hog.” (H/T, Maggie’s Farm.) // The social lives of baboons. “Monkey society is governed by the same two general rules that governed the behaviour of women in so many 19th-century novels.” // Synthetic genomics. “The successful completion of this research will allow us to realize the ultimate goal of creating a synthetic organism.” // Custom creature taxidermy. Winged kitten, vampire squirrel, two-headed rat. // Greyhounds doped with cocaine. (H/T, Metrolander.) // Cross-dressing cartoon rabbit. (H/T, Savage Popcorn.) // Bloody Cartoons. // Artist has third ear grafted on forearm. “He hopes to have a microphone implanted to allow others to listen to what his extra ear picks up.” (H/T, Dr Westerhaus.) // This is Tengu! // And, via The Thin Man, this is Vera.

Further to yesterday’s post on the excellent Spectator debate, which I urge you to download, a few thoughts occur.

One of Tariq Ramadan’s favoured rhetorical ploys, employed during the debate, is to blather at length about the need for “dialogue” and “discourse” (as if no-one else had thought to suggest such a thing), before denouncing as “arrogant” almost any statement, question or discussion that might realistically address the fundamental issues. In response to this manoeuvre, Douglas Murray asks how a “dialogue” might begin:

“Where does [the dialogue] start? Would it start, for instance, with making a joke? Contra Mr Khomeini – not a funny man. Or, would it start with an article, perhaps? Would it start, perhaps, with a film? It did, a few years ago, with Submission, and Theo van Gogh was killed. Could it start with making a joke, perhaps? A joke in a cartoon? Well, apparently not, because we know there were burnings and killings and lootings and rioting across the globe in reaction to those cartoons. If you’re going to start a dialogue, what could you do that would be smaller than drawing a cartoon? This dialogue which we keep on being offered is not reciprocated.” 

Indeed. The “dialogue” Ramadan forever alludes to, somewhat vaguely, is by implication a dialogue on strictly Islamic terms – which is to say, on terms that are censorious, often circular and profoundly unrealistic. In this, Ramadan is far from alone. I’ve lost count of how many people seem to imagine that it’s somehow possible to challenge jihadist ideology and related horrors without mentioning Muhammad’s rather central role in the origination, sanctioning and perpetuation of those horrors, and without offending an apparently endless menu of other ‘sensitivities’. But if one cannot – dare not – draw attention to the link between sacralised atrocity and the exhortations of Islam’s founder, then what kind of dialogue is likely to be had?

Related. And. Also. Plus.

Those of you who missed the Spectator’s excellent live debate, We Should Not Be Reluctant to Assert the Superiority of Western Values, can download an mp3 here. Ibn Warraq, Douglas Murray and David Aaronovitch trade spirited arguments with Tariq Ramadan, Charles Glass and William Dalrymple. One audience member raises the question of whether such a freewheeling debate could be had in certain other societies without fear or threats of violence. Tempers do fray a little towards the end of the Q&A session – most notably when a rattled Tariq Ramadan shouts about his “humility” – but no shoes or chairs are thrown. Feel free to take notes. There may be a test later.

Douglas Murray’s article to accompany the debate can be read here, and Tariq Ramadan’s forked tongue is visible here. Update: see this.

Related. And. Also. Plus.

A reader named Peetbox thinks this site needs more music. Well, at least one musical item usually appears in the weekly ephemera round-up, spanning anything from Charles Trenet and Keiishi Suzuki to Herbie Hancock and Doris Day (alas, not together). But I agree with Mr, um, Box. There’s always room for more. To that end, here’s the video for Promesas by Chilean super-group, Los Mono. I suppose it might be described as bracing electro-jive. 

From the album Somos Los Que Estamos. More. And. Random monkey link.

This seems relevant. Wilfred McClay reviews Todd Gitlin’s The Intellectuals and the Flag, a critique, from the left, of the left’s intellectual malaise and the academic world that it dominates.

“The left embraced the smug disassociation from existing society epitomized in the sweeping call by Herbert Marcuse for a ‘Great Refusal’ of the confining ideals and crass manipulations of the modern capitalist political economy. But the embrace of Marcuse’s slogan has amounted in practice to a ‘great withdrawal,’ a narcissistic retreat into self-proclaimed ‘marginality,’ an obsession with ever more minute forms of identity politics and the infinite ‘problematizing’ of ‘truth,’ a reflexive opposition to America and the West, and an immurement in ‘theories’ whose radicalism is so pure that they never quite touch down to earth – follies all underwritten and protected by the perquisites and comforts of academia.”

More. Related. And. Plus. Also. Via Arts & Letters Daily.