Hyrax rides tortoise. // Suren Manvelyan has been photographing eyes. // America in colour, 1939-1943. (h/t, John Symes) // Remnants of Supernova 1987A. // “The Earth is expanding rapidly.” // Southern sky panorama. // Magnetic putty. // Tigers and pigs. // Tiger Dust. // Abandoned lairs of supervillains. // Supersized art. // Bug nests of note. (h/t, Coudal) // Because all food should taste of smoke. // A film I just have to see. // Papercraft Queen. // Attention, hepcats. It’s a James Brown ski party. // Bid now for a jar of Elvis’ hair. // Intriguing dioramas. // Agreeable graphs. // Avengers pre-make. // Useful Idiots.

Anna steers us to the latest doings of “holistic nutritionist” and health guru Gillian McKeith. Readers may recall Ms McKeith’s television series You Are What You Eat, in which our host thrilled the nation with her enthusiastic cataloguing of human excrement. Ms McKeith’s latest venture is more ambitious still. Indeed, it’s positively mind-bending.

The Gillian McKeith Wellness Retreat in southern Spain is an educational inspirational centre for the spirit, mind and body to learn, discover, explore and get closer to the essence of Your Self and Life; and through this process you seek to garner inner harmony and balance.

I can tell you’re intrigued. Who wouldn’t want to get closer to their essence? Intimacy with one’s essence is apparently achieved in seven days by means of,

High enzyme vegan foods, raw meals, sprouts and juices,

Combined with,

massage, Chi Yoga, meditation,

And,

tennis.

After seven days of tennis, sprouts and essence fondling,

You will receive a Certificate of Completion and join the Path for a whole new life.

You’ll also receive a bill for £1,500. Though the fee does include,

a nurturing staff,

nurturing mountains,

And,

swooning eagles.

Yes, the eagles actually swoon. Imagine the spectacle of magnificent birds keeling over from sheer emotional fatigue. The place must be littered with them. It’s the “natural vitality” of the region that does it.

Oh, there’s more.

 
Assorted opera houses photographed by David Leventi. Via Coudal.

An intriguing offer.

“You’ll get paid after we get back.” Via Ka-Ching! 

The drawbacks of working in a music store. // Wealth-wise, where you do fit in? // Tyres that glow. // Lightning, baby. // Humungous bubbles. // Abbey Road webcam. // At last, a use for fly eyes. // Photography by Laurent Nivalle. // Banana vending machine. // I think the word is bijou. // Ice cubes with spikes. // Air plant globe. // An interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali. // Planetary mass. // Mathematical drawings. // Orbital washing machine. // A brief history of beards. // Teen chat acronym decoder. // St. Mary’s Cathedral, San Francisco. // Roger Corman’s X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes.

Our favourite postcolonial studies lecturer, Priyamvada Gopal, is troubled by the cover of Time magazine’s August issue. The cover features an 18-year-old Afghan woman named Bibi Aisha, whose nose and ears were cut off by order of the Taliban as punishment for fleeing her abusive in-laws. The image shows not an accident of war, but Taliban justice. With the support of the Grossman Burn Foundation and Women for Afghan Women, Aisha, who lives under armed protection in a women’s shelter in Kabul, is soon to head to the U.S. for reconstructive surgery. However, Ms Gopal isn’t happy about Time magazine “condensing Afghan reality into simplistic morality tales”: 

Misogynist violence is unacceptable, but…

Ah. The but.

 …but we must also be concerned by the continued insistence that the complexities of war, occupation and reality itself can be reduced to bedtime stories.

Readers can peruse the Time articles accompanying the image and decide for themselves whether the complexities of war and “occupation” are being “reduced to bedtime stories.” Ms Gopal’s own article – titled, somewhat bizarrely, Burkas and Bikinis – has a subheading that reads:

Time magazine’s cover is the latest cynical attempt to oversimplify the reality of Afghan lives.

Simplifying reality is a bad thing, see? “Afghans,” we’re told, “have been silenced and disempowered” by simplistic Western stereotypes. But the people who actually do, physically, silence and disempower Afghans – with threats and knives and acid, for instance – don’t seem to register as worthy of discussion.

The mutilated Afghan woman ultimately fills a symbolic void where there should be ideas for real change. The truth is that the US and allied regimes do not have anything substantial to offer Afghanistan beyond feeding the gargantuan war machine they have unleashed.

So no simplification there. Apparently, the restoration of education for millions of Afghan girls doesn’t count as “real change,” and nor do those dastardly and imperialist school building projects, which the Taliban so righteously endeavour to destroy. When not burning food aid intended for pregnant women or spraying acid in the faces of schoolgirls. And I suspect the Afghan woman who chose to be photographed for Time’s cover in the hope of encouraging even more dastardly imperialism might regard her disfigurement, and that of other women in Afghanistan and elsewhere, as more than mere symbolism. Though the perpetrators of such acts are very much aware of symbolic value, with their handiwork often serving as a warning to other women who presume to misbehave.

Undaunted, our esteemed educator continues,

In the affluent west itself, modernity is now about dismantling welfare systems, increasing inequality (disproportionately disenfranchising women in the process), and subsidising corporate profits.

Yes, of course. That’s all modernity is about. We are insufficiently socialist, so who are we to judge barbarism? I’m sure these things must be foremost in Bibi Aisha’s mind as she prepares for her flight to America and reconstructive surgery. Truly, she is heading for the belly of the beast.

For newcomers, three more items from the archives. 

Being Reasonable. 

Intruders, self-defence and “reasonable force.”

Is it “reasonable” to assume that the intruder is merely a thief who doesn’t mind terrorising those whose homes he violates and whose property he steals, but isn’t prepared to do actual violence to his victims, even when cornered? And on what is that assumption based? Given the situation, and the fact your heart is pounding, do you really have the time and means to fathom the intruder’s motives and take them into account before acting – and acting without “excess”?

Naming the Devil.

The basic flaw of Islam is its founder. Dishonesty won’t change that.

By whitewashing the concept of jihad and its fundamental importance in Islamic history, apologists, moderate believers and those to whom they appeal are tactically wrong-footed. Moderation so conceived is essentially a sleight-of-hand and, however well-intended, is at odds with history and Muhammad’s own exhortations to violence. It isn’t enough to pretend that jihad was originated and understood as something fluffy and benign. (In May 1994, when Yasser Arafat called for a “jihad to liberate Jerusalem,” it wasn’t entirely obvious how such a thing might be achieved by an inner spiritual struggle with no physical connotations.)

Overlords. 

In order to fix us, someone has to be in charge.

And then there’s the leftwing think-tank, the New Economics Foundation, whose Head of Social Policy, Anna Coote, tells us we would become “better parents, better citizens, better carers and better neighbours” if only our incomes were dramatically reduced. “We,” she says, will be “satisfied” without the “dispensable accoutrements of middle-class life,” including “cars, holidays, electronic equipment and multiple items of clothing.” The preferences of the British electorate – whose taxes fund the NEF – don’t figure in this brave new world and the NEF’s deep thinkers simply know what’s best for us. What’s best for us is “introducing measures to reduce the gradient between high and low earners,” “growing our own food,” and “mending and repairing things.” According to Ms Coote, “freedom” will be found in sameness, make-do and unpaid manual labour.

And by all means fondle the greatest hits.