Currently doing the rounds: Movie Poster Mashups… 

They’re not all good – and not all in good taste – but I quite like the reworkings of Hairspray, Finding Nemo and The Deer Hunter. 

Synaesthesia. // Star Wars in concert. // Bird music. // Hubcap creatures. (h/t, Drawn!) // Six months of London Bridge. // Illegal drug branding. // Meanwhile, at Berkeley… // The pop-up office. // Sci-fi architecture behind the Iron Curtain. // A timeline of sci-fi inventions, 1634 – 2003. // More handsome treehouses. // A treetop zeppelin hotel. // The delights of gang culture. // Vintage European geishas. (h/t, Coudal) // The Soviet Digital Electronics Museum. // The Archive. // And, via Metrolander, it’s the tonal idiosyncrasies of Mr Dusty Roads Rowe. 

Dust storm, Sydney, September 23rd.

Are you an artist based in Sheffield and in search of exposure and public funding? Of course you are. This will be thrilling news, then. Especially if you’re an artist “whose practice is felt to have a close relationship to the contextual framework” hinted at below:

Over the last year, international curators Annie Fletcher and Frederique Bergholtz have been working with curators in Sheffield to discuss ideas and to programme Art Sheffield 10. The context for this event involves looking at artists’ practices which are concerned with the idea of ‘affect’ – including care ethics, affective labour (domestic or caring labour which involves the production of affects such as ease, well-being, care, satisfaction, pleasure and so on), ideas on the politics of friendship and corresponding notions of otherness and the marginal.

I’m sure “care ethics, affective labour” and “corresponding notions of otherness and the marginal” are gripping subject matter, at least for an undergraduate socio-political thesis. Or for arts funding applications, with which such things may sometimes be confused. But are ruminations on “affective labour” and “the politics of otherness” really in demand as themes for a publicly funded city-wide art festival? Is that what punters want, and artists, and taxpayers? And if so, just how festive will it be?

Other curatorial efforts by Fletcher and Bergholtz include If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want to Be Part of Your Revolution, a “continuing exploration of paradigms such as theatricality and feminism(s).” According to the project’s helpful mission statement, “If I Can’t Dance… works along the systematic of collaboration. Each edition, defined by a certain field of investigation, engages a set of partners and unfolds along a travelling trajectory.”

The good people of Sheffield must be very excited.

(h/t, Dr Westerhaus.)

You’ll be pleased to hear that Misty Keasler, quoted above, has published a book of her photographs, Love Hotels: The Hidden Fantasy Rooms of Japan. Among her subjects is the Hotel Adonis, Osaka, which offers patrons a Naughty Nurse Play Area and a Hello Kitty S&M Room.

Ms Keasler is interviewed here. Via Coudal.

In the Telegraph, Melanie McDonagh sings the praise of religious relics and their uncanny healing powers.

As it happens, the Church is fairly nuanced about relics. You venerate them as the remains of those who were holy in life, not as objects of worship. Thomas Aquinas argued that God may work miracles in the presence of those relics but it’s not bones that do the healing. And some people do obtain benefits from visiting relics or a shrine. Lourdes is littered with discarded crutches and we can argue the toss about whether it’s a result of psychosomatic healing or divine help. But a remarkable number of those miracles of healing have been independently verified by doctors with no church connections. And that’s a fact.

To which a reader replies,

Lourdes is littered with discarded crutches, but not a single prosthetic limb.

Touché, methinks.

A tempting menu of available bachelors, as displayed on Video Mate, circa 1983.

I know, it’s a tough call. Is it toxic waste guy? Data processing guy? Or maybe Fred has the edge, what with the Viking outfit. Via Protein Wisdom.

Tomorrow’s World revisited, 1965-2003. // Sci-fi corridors of note. (h/t, Anthony) // Chlorophyll drops and night vision. // Crack bitch arachnid. // Magic lanterns and phenakistiscopes. // Man walks across China, beard growth ensues. // Beethoven’s Fifth, visualised. // Various periodic tables. // Vintage porn logos. // Little people. // A search engine for Muslims. // The Sheffield Museum of Anaesthesia. (h/t, Coudal) // An electric unicycle. // The Dyson tricycle. // The cardboard tube fighting league is not to be trifled with. // Stereogram Tetris will slowly drive you mad. // And, via The Thin Man, it’s Mephistopheles.

A while ago, I posted a video documenting the bizarre experience of Keith John Sampson, a student-employee at IUPUI, who found himself accused of “racial harassment” and “extremely poor judgment” for “openly” reading a history book in his free time. Following Sampson’s story, and others like it, readers have asked a not unreasonable question: Why does no-one get fired for this?

The FIRE blog reports that firings do happen following dubious accusations, though not in ways one might wish and not to those one might expect. 

Professor Thomas Thibeault made the mistake of pointing out – at a sexual harassment training seminar – that the school’s sexual harassment policy contained no protection for the falsely accused. Two days later, in a Kafkaesque irony, Thibeault was fired by the college president for sexual harassment without notice, without knowing his accuser or the charges against him, and without a hearing. […]

Thibeault’s ordeal started shortly after August 5, 2009 when, during a faculty training session regarding the college’s sexual harassment policy, he presented a scenario regarding a different professor and asked, “What provision is there in the sexual harassment policy to protect the accused against complaints which are malicious or, in this case, ridiculous?” Vice President for Legal Affairs Mary Smith, who was conducting the session, replied that there was no such provision to protect the accused, so Thibeault responded that “the policy itself is flawed.”

Thibeault’s account of the exchange can be read here. The following extract may be of interest, echoing as it does an assumption we’ve encountered before – specifically, that injured feelings, or claims of such, should override facts, logic and normal proprieties:

Mary Smith was explaining the sexual harassment policy and was emphasising that faculty had to report suspicions of sexual harassment by any faculty member to the college administration. She was stating that the feelings of the offended were proof of the offensive nature of the behaviour.

And thus, presumably, proof of grounds for disciplinary action, even dismissal. And why not? After all, claims of being offended never, ever hinge on the dishonesty and hypocrisy of the supposedly aggrieved party. And no-one would ever exploit the pretence of being hurt, even when it offers unilateral leverage and a license to get even with someone they just don’t like.  

Inspired by Walter Mischel’s 1960s experiments on delayed gratification, Steve V conducts an experiment of his own.

“Two hidden cameras. A bunch of kids. One marshmallow each.” 

Maybe if I just poke it. Or sniff it. Or rest it on my lip.

Via Pixelsumo.