Friday Ephemera
For when there’s a fire in a girls’ college dormitory. // Bubbles + ferrofluid + magnetism. // A sonar glove for blind people. // Government plus booze machines, what could possibly go wrong? (h/t, The Thin Man) // For surfers who don’t like getting wet. // Porcelain flowers. // Vespa sculptures. // Post-it note warfare. // The Phil Collins weather report. // Now that’s a cloud. // Additional digits. // A chart of time spent using Tupperware. // Cockatoo versus laser pointer. // Postmodern pizza. // National parks, seen from space. // Superheroes over 40. // And it’s probably best not to buy your electronic goods in a McDonald’s car park.
For when there’s a fire in a girls’ college dormitory.
So more haste is actually more speed.
David, the perfect example of taxpayer-funded ‘art’.
http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/38506/cash-is-auctioned-as-art-in-australia-and-everyone-loses-money/
Min,
“…the perfect example of taxpayer-funded ‘art’.”
What’s interesting is that the artist and his admirers would have us believe that this kind of derivative flummery “explores the tension between economic value and cultural value,” etc., and is therefore, somehow, socially beneficial. He and his peers are making us better people because they’re so insightful and wise. Again, it’s a form of overlording.
In fact, the artist is inadvertently telling us something else entirely, something more prosaic. Say, regarding opportunist parasites and the need to cut their funding.
Government plus booze machines, what could possibly go wrong?
Tsk. You should trust the state, David. They’re good people and they mean well.
Love the video of the Hamboards gliding down the walkways of Huntington Beach. Such a contrast to the hyperactive skateboarders
Though, I’m surprised in the People’s Republic of CA, someone didn’t bust the kids for riding their long boards without shoes, pads and helmets.
Confession, growing up in SoCal, Huntington was the summer hangout of my youth.
Re the ferro-magnetic bubbles. I see my dream about time-lapse bovine farts in IR is approaching. The future will be sweet…
-S
The firefighters are from Russia I think. Impressive displays of reckless bravado are not uncommon there.
Another item on the arts – while the intellectuals can’t create art that we appreciate, they can certainly try to disrupt art that we do appreciate instead;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrjvUkt7zKA
I guess this is transgressive or subversive in some way or another…
-S
Simen,
You have to wonder what kind of public reaction the protestors hoped to elicit. Did they imagine that 5,600 people would suddenly sympathise with their cause, such as it is? Didn’t they grasp that almost everyone whose evening they’d disrupted – in person and listening at home – would regard them with anger and detestation? Given that the protestors almost certainly regard themselves as “intellectuals,” you’d think they might have considered this. You’d think they might have registered the unflattering precedents of their behaviour and its ugly symbolism. Unless, of course, they’re narcissists as well as moral cretins, and simply believed that their egos should be heard above and beyond all else.
The PSC’s stunt at the Proms disgusted me, as it was basically an act of naked bigotry. Their stance is not one of ‘Protest against the Israeli government’s policy towards Palestinians’, but one of ‘Shun any contact whatsoever with Israeli citizens’. It is a blatantly racist attitude, and one which is surprisingly common in academia.
But what was heartening was the audience’s response. Complete rejection of the protesters, and fervent applause for the IPO at the concert’s end. It does reassure me that outside the fringes of the so-called ‘intellectual’ world, my fellow citizens are broadly speaking honourable people, and they will recognise and reject brownshirt thuggery when they see it.
The PSC crowd – and the BDS movement – have tried to present Israel as the moral equivalent of apartheid South Africa, but despite all their efforts they have failed utterly, not least because people recognise that the comparison is an absurd one (Hamas, for starters, is not the ANC). Compare the reaction of the Proms crowd to the ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ concert. The anti-apartheid cause was one with which any decent individual would automatically associate himself or herself. But the anti-Israel cause is the sole preserve of a clique of white elitists (with their echo chamber in the Graun, Indie and the Beeb) and Islamist radicals. They are basically today’s equivalent of the ‘Monday Club’ and the other far-right apologists for South Africa in the 1970s and the 1980s, insofar as their views have no appeal beyond their immediate circle.
sackcloth,
“But what was heartening was the audience’s response. Complete rejection of the protesters, and fervent applause for the IPO at the concert’s end.”
It was as unambiguous a rebuttal as anyone could hope for. What I find interesting, though, is the bizarre mismatch between what the protestors presumably imagine they were communicating and what was actually being communicated. Perhaps they believe the audience’s unanimous contempt somehow confirms their own righteousness and daring.
I’m sure that the PSC crowd will find some way of ‘explaining’ their failure. ‘False consciousness’, Zionist sympathies etc.