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Embiggen. Pacific Ocean, July 21, 2003. Image: NASA, taken from the ISS. More. And. Also. Via.

On the subject of bizarre ritualistic hang-ups, here’s some lovely religious apartheid in London swimming pools. Naturally, this bold leap forward is publicly funded with council tax.

This morning, my son asked to go swimming at 10 am. As he was going to play with a friend at 11.30, I agreed to take him early. I checked the pool programme online… and the opening times. Apparently, the pool was open, and no special programmes were being run. So, off we trundled. When I arrived at the pool, I was told that we could not swim in it until 10.45. The reason is that it was being used for ‘Muslim Male Swimming’. This is apparently so every Sunday morning. I couldn’t quite believe that a swimming pool was really institutionalising both gender and religious segregation… Apparently, this is a policy insisted on by Hackney Council, which sets the policy for all Hackney pools.

A debate ensues. 

As David T (no relation) says in the comments,

As a test, how would you feel about a policy of excluding Muslims from public facilities at particular times?

I’d add that it’s interesting how a self-inflicted neurosis regarding what is impermissible, impious or unclean has to be accommodated and subsidised by others who do not share that particular irrational anxiety. Thus, the natural consequence of the hang-up in question, i.e. not being able to swim, is avoided by imposing that same disadvantage on others.

Update:

I was also told that the session was being run by the swimming pool, and had begun life as a private hire by a mosque: which had then stopped paying. Accordingly, it was being provided by Clissold Leisure Centre as an attempt to cater to Hackney’s “diversity”… I spoke to another employee this morning. He gave me an identical story. His explanation was that it was a requirement of the Muslim religion that Muslims could not swim with non-Muslims. This, he argued, was an obligation which Clissold Leisure Centre was obliged to respect, and provide for. I asked him whether Clissold Leisure Centre would institute Whites Only swimming for racists. His answer was that they would, if there was sufficient demand.

It’s my understanding that when customers stop paying for a recreational service, let alone one based on obnoxious sectarian voodoo, those customers usually have to go without. Let’s call it the price of piety – the natural consequence of a self-inflicted restriction, i.e. a choice one has made. Surely anything else is an imposition or a cheat? It is, after all, a bit rich to expect irrational hang-ups of this kind to be accommodated and paid for by the same filthy heathens that are being treated with overt disdain. But not, it seems, in Hackney, where such things are positively encouraged and publicly subsidised. Such is our New Jerusalem. 

I’ve lifted this from yesterday’s ephemera because – well, because it’s so shameless and really too good to miss. Behold the wisdom of the Saudi cleric, Muhammad al-Munajid, aired on Al-Majd TV, March 30, 2008.

If you missed the money quote, here it is.

The problem is that they want to open a debate on whether Islam is true or not, and on whether Judaism and Christianity are false or not. In other words, they want to open up everything for debate. Now they want to open up all issues for debate. That’s it. It begins with freedom of thought, it continues with freedom of speech, and it ends up with freedom of belief. So where’s the conspiracy? They say: Let’s have freedom of thought in Islam… They say: I think, therefore I want to express my thoughts. I want to express myself, I want to talk and say, for example, that there are loopholes in Islam, or that Christianity is the truth. Then they will talk about freedom of belief, and say that anyone is entitled to believe in whatever he wants… If you want to become an apostate – go ahead. Fancy Buddhism? Leave Islam, and join Buddhism. No problem. That’s what freedom of belief is all about. They want freedom of everything. What they want is very dangerous.

I’m almost tempted to admire the frankness. The chutzpah, if you will. But if such things are a dangerous “conspiracy,” an obvious question springs to mind. Dangerous for whom? What’s most interesting about the extract above, and the worldview it illustrates, is that al-Munajid doesn’t seem terribly concerned with the numinous per se, or even with an erratic and spiteful deity named Allah; instead the object of worship is Islam itself – the institution, the power, the license to control.

There’s more, of course. Al-Munajid also shares his insight regarding the use of coloured underwear and how to urinate piously.

Related: Unclean.

Crammed. (h/t, Dr Westerhaus.) // An illustrated history of computer data storage. // 3000 photos of antique computers, 1961-1989. (h/t, Coudal.) // Newspaper clippings from 1885. Tales of woe and strangeness. // Caminito del Ray, near Malaga. Not for vertigo sufferers. // The spatuletail hummingbird. // The dioramas of Lori Nix. // Control rooms of note. // How to disarm an atomic bomb. // Bomb the Bass: Butterfingers. // Laurie Anderson, O Superman. (1981) // Eugene Sandow’s Physical Culture Museum. (h/t, Things.) // Iron Man clip. Yes, I’d like one of those. // Batman and Robin take on schoolgirls, British hippies and African Death Bees. Wait for the saucy nail file scene. // Laser gloves. Fight crime, impress women. (h/t, Chastity Darling.) // Deter thieves with soiled underwear. Again, impress the ladies. // “Talking like this may get you shunned by polite society (i.e. scared society).” // Saudi cleric says questioning Islam is “barbarism” and leads to terrible things, like freedom of belief. // A Millar on why the left has gone jihadi. (h/t, Cookslaw.) // Ruth Fowler on being a middle-class lefty. “More commonly termed wankerism.” // Lost titles, reimagined. // And, via The Thin Man, Music for a Found Harmonium.

Busy today, but here are a few random films unearthed from the archives.

Carlitopolis. Experiments with a mouse.

Roof Sex. Furniture in heat.

KaBoom! Warfare with nuts and ribbon.

The power of faith. And very large vehicles.

Feel free to browse and rummage.