Mick Hartley on Freud, Marx and Hegel – and being antiquated. 

Freud didn’t cure anyone, or come to his conclusions through the hard work of trial and error. The analytic situation was merely the backdrop for what was really going on: myth-making on a grand scale… To use [Freud’s theorising] to explain Western literature, as generations of academics have done, following Freud’s example, is to hold up a mirror and believe you’re seeing through a window.

Thomas Sowell on some economic fallacies. (h/t, Lattenomics.) 

If it was really true that you could hire a woman for three quarters of what you could hire a man with exactly the same qualifications, then employers would be crazy not to hire all women. It would be insane to hire men. Not only would it be insane, it would probably put them out of the business because the ones that were smart enough to hire women would have such a cost advantage that it would be really hard for the others to compete.

Norman Geras on Seumas Milne’s latest apologia for Hamas.

Milne tactfully passes over what Hamas’s charter reveals about it: that it is a programmatically anti-Semitic organization which quotes from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and promises the killing of Jews. How is it thinkable that a Guardian journalist doesn’t notice this or, if he does, discounts it? It’s thinkable. In fact, it’s getting to be an old story. [There] was a time when it was kind of shocking.

Yet now it’s a routine pathology among a large part of the left, perhaps the larger part, and its mainstream British publication.

Further to my comments on Zack Synder’s forthcoming film of Watchmen, the first trailer is now online.

Here’s the high-definition version. More. And. Also.

Woody Allen interviews Billy Graham. // NASA wants your urine. For the toilets of tomorrow. // Wine in a can. // Toys for cats. // Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes. Part 2, 3, 4, 5. // Stephen Salmieri’s photographs of cadillacs. (h/t, Coudal.) // Build your own giant cardboard Ghandi. // 100 ways to draw manga eyes. // “My boots are all sticky.” // Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along. It’s tough being evil. // The Victim Privilege Checklist. (h/t, Anna.) // Communist Loser: James Kirchick on the delusional Eric Hobsbawm. // Cultural imperialism! // Latte art and assorted cakes. More. // The German Hosiery Museum. // World’s largest subwoofer. (h/t, Chastity Darling.) // Colour flipbook. // 696 book covers. // San Francisco panorama. // Skyscraper earthquake dampening. A 728-ton sphere should do it. // Dismantling old buildings, from the bottom up. // Ship graveyard. (h/t, Tim239.) // Steve Reich: Piano Phase. // And, via The Thin Man, it’s Ms Ethel Waters.

Thank God for the Guardian. No, really. I mean, where else would you turn to find a socialist named Jemima lecturing us on snobbery and the evils of the word “chav”? Yesterday, Tom Hampson and Jemima Olchawski, both pillars of the Fabian Society, urged Guardian readers to fret about their language:

We have to stop using the word “chav”… It is deeply offensive to a largely voiceless group and – especially when used in normal middle-class conversation or on national TV – it betrays a deep and revealing level of class hatred.

It’s interesting to note how readily vulnerability is assigned to “a largely voiceless group” that isn’t actually defined anywhere in the article. Apparently, it’s no longer necessary to specify who or what is vulnerable, or how; one can merely assert that something, somewhere is. But which “group” are we talking about? Poor people? Criminals? Antisocial youths? Or some subset thereof? 

We have heard it increasingly used in conversation over the last year, invariably to casually describe people “not like us” and very often used by people who are otherwise rather progressive in their politics.

Doesn’t that say something about the company being kept by the scrupulously leftwing authors, rather than, necessarily, the population as a whole?

You cannot consider yourself of the left and use the word. It is sneering and patronising

And that would be unheard of. Especially among those who hold in such esteem that thing called “middle England”.

On completion, the Burj Dubai will reach an estimated height of 818m and be the tallest man-made structure in the world. In the image below, taken earlier this year, the tower is a mere 400m tall. It currently measures some 636m in height and is expected to be operational in September 2009.

More. Some punier buildings.