Photographed by Michael Siward, September 2009. One of these.

What satellites see. // Airport body scans leaked online. A new fetish begins. // London gigapixelled. // Underwater filming. // How Google works. // Webbed gloves. // Flame scallop’s glowing lips. // A gallery of gorging chipmunks. (h/t, MeFi) // The periodic table of irrational nonsense. (h/t, Dr Westerhaus) // Joy Division colouring book. (h/t, Chastity Darling) // Baby sea dragons. // “There’s a horse in that car.” // Fondle your interface. // Ice-retardant nanotechnology. // It’s a helmet, it’s a sound system. // Atomic toys. // Secret kitten. // Who owns Antarctica? // One to watch in full: Martin Durkin on the weight of the state.

Misogynist violence is unacceptable, but…

So wrote the Guardian’s Priyamvada Gopal in August this year, shortly before telling us that the Taliban’s misogynist violence and kidnapping of children are actually not that bad compared to the evils of the West and its “bankrupt version of modernity.” A modernity that has “little to offer Afghans other than bikini waxes and Oprah-imitators.”

She is, of course, at it again.

Hurling a fire extinguisher into a crowd is clearly wrong, but…

This time, our esteemed postcolonial studies lecturer is conjuring equivalence between, on the one hand, arson, vandalism and attempted manslaughter, and, on the other, cuts to public spending. Cuts that will reduce overall spending to the levels of 2001/2 (ah, the dark ages) and in many cases merely slow the rate of increase in public subsidy.

It is the coalition’s policies that are going to generate bloody mayhem… Focusing on damage to buildings usefully distracts attention from the much more far-reaching and systematic violence now being visited upon our education system and society more widely.

Violence. A word Ms Gopal uses no fewer than nine times. Fiscal responsibility, albeit belated, is violence, see? Reducing the national debt is violence. Extending credit for tuition fees is violence. Attempting to contain the growth of the state –  enlarged by 17% under New Labour – that’s violence too. Audacious, isn’t it? Ms Gopal, who “teaches in the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge,” has casually redefined violence to include practically anything to which she takes political exception. A move that slyly elevates thuggery to retaliation. Now one might well have legitimate objections to particular outcomes of the proposed austerity measures, but to frame those measures as violence – and by implication as analogous to rioting and deserving of payment in kind – is not a manoeuvre that resounds with good faith. But then Ms Gopal has form in matters of distortion, hyperbole and wilful fantasy. Regarding the protestors, Ms Gopal enlightens us,

Most adhered to the prescribed rituals of peaceful and legitimate protest. But, as we should expect in times of great injustice, some departed from the script. They lit bonfires, smashed windows, occupied the roof of an unlovely building and ill-advisedly hurled the odd inanimate object.

It is indeed “ill-advised” to throw a fire extinguisher from a rooftop into a crowd, targeting police officers standing below. It’s remarkable that no-one was killed. But hey, for the cause. And readers may note that the claim of a supposedly non-violent “script” is not entirely consonant with the sight of rioters and arsonists wearing official NUS clothing and being cheered on by the crowd. It’s also somewhat at odds with NUS president Aaron Porter calling for a “demo-lition” on a route past Conservative HQ, or promising “we will use every weapon in our armoury” and telling students they needed to be “inside the rooms where the deals will be made.” Radical that she is, Ms Gopal is attuned to such sentiments and what they imply. “Non-violence,” she tells us, “has been perverted… into a subterfuge for rulers… Genteel rallies do not put sufficient pressure on the political class.” How she squares such enthusiasm with her professed disapproval of deadly projectiles is, alas, a mystery. Still, physical intimidation and property destruction are very exciting and Ms Gopal is hardly alone in finding mob violence both excusable and titillating:

“Tanks, jeeps and other test vehicles litter the desert floor milliseconds before the force of the explosion destroys them. Just below the bottom of the fireball, a crescent-shaped shock wave has bounced off the desert floor and is merging into the expanding nuclear fire.” From the New York Times slideshow, Capturing the Atom Bomb on Film. Image taken from Peter Kuran’s book, How to Photograph an Atomic Bomb.

Related: Exposure and Atomica! 

Look closely and spot the difference. // How to talk like Michael Caine. // Porn and precognition, together at last. // Play spread sheet Armageddon with Impact Earth. //  US Navy develops liquid antenna. // LIFE in the laboratory. // Impress the ladies with your speakers. Because chicks dig speakers. // Near-vacuum cooking. // Inevitably, bacon soda. // Un-sign. // Advertising Scrabble. // “Godzilla is virtually impervious to other gigantic monsters, and also to robots, artillery, laser blasts, lava and fire.” // Time-lapse marathon. // Booties for your hound. // A giant monkey made of flip-flops. // The must-have Christmas present.

I want to divorce the man I love and he wants to divorce me. We do not wish to separate – simply to end our seven-year marriage… We are both fed up with being part of the hetero-husband-and-wife brigade that is accorded so much status and privilege.

So says Lara Pawson in a piece titled The Tyranny of Marriage, thereby raising self-preoccupation – a Guardianista signature – to transcendental levels. It’s the “hegemony of coupledom,” see? Something must be done. Perhaps we should make room in our catalogue of classic sentences.

So why did we marry? Our wedding was in 2003, two years before the legislation for civil partnerships was introduced. Had civil partnerships been available we might have been the first in the queue of heterosexual couples now fighting for the right to become partners.

Heterosexual couples such as Tom Freeman and Katherine Doyle, who object to the terms “husband” and “wife” as being “patriarchal” and insufficiently egalitarian, and who claim their human rights have now been “violated.” For exhibitionist ideologues, the words “husband” and “wife” must – simply must – denote inequality. You can see the terrible bind they’re in. Will the oppression never end?

Ms Pawson continues,

We wanted a public celebration to acknowledge our love, and my husband- to-be felt strongly that a ceremony with singing and reading was important, as well as the almighty knees-up. Marriage, albeit a God-free one, seemed to be the only available path.

Ms Pawson’s marriage – or, as she puts it, “state-sanctioned agreement” – took place at a London register office,

and was followed the next day by a large party in a large garden with a grand marquee and later still, 184 hangovers.

Not exactly a shoestring do, then. Perhaps the garden marquee, extensive guest list and “almighty knees-up” were meant to express the injustice, tragedy and trauma of the event.

I did not change my name, nor he his. We simply swapped rings, gave appalling speeches and that was that. Or so I thought… Before we even tied the proverbial knot, I became swiftly aware of discrimination against wives.

Remember, this is a piece objecting to the “hetero-husband-and-wife brigade” being “accorded so much status and privilege.”

“I need to do it.” Kim Rugg remakes newspapers. Via.

Glenn Ricketts and Peter Wood on “diversity,” uniformity and things best left unsaid.

The “diversity” doctrine… urges students to huddle inside their pre-chosen identities. The Yale [application] question is the first of a long series of subtle steps that teach students to lead with their particularities and to cultivate a kind of group vanity… Would the Yale admissions office look favourably on the student who answered, “I have found ‘diversity’ to be a cudgel by which self-appointed elites attempt to enforce their preferences over others. Diversity to me has been the experience of having my individuality denied, suppressed, and demeaned. It is a word that summarizes a smarmy form of oppression that congratulates itself on its high-mindedness even as it enforces narrow-minded conformity.” No, any student really seeking admission to Yale wouldn’t say such a thing. But chances are very good that a great many students harbour insights very much like that. They know their ethnic or racial categorization, their socio-economic status, and other such characteristics matter far more to admissions offices than their actual thoughts about who they are.

Eve Binder notes the rise of Fat Studies.

Jacqueline Johnson knows what it’s like to be shunned because of her weight. In the early 2000s fat activism was edging into existence, and Johnson, a weight studies scholar, was deemed too skinny to take part. “I tried to join a fat activist group, and I was rejected because I was not of size,” she remembers… Today it’s a different story. Johnson, who teaches a course on weight and society at George Washington University, is currently a professor with 25 students of all heights and widths. Her Fat Studies class is one of a handful popping up on campuses across the country, teaching students to think about body size critically, politically, and regularly. But despite such courses’ popularity among students, critics worry that such classes emphasize bleeding-heart politics over intellectual rigour.

And Jeff Goldstein on the same.

The only epidemic at issue here is the epidemic of grievance-mongering passing itself off as legitimate “scholarship.” A course on the psychology of creating and empowering ever more oppressed victim groups and the new politically correct vocabulary (and corresponding “hate speech”) that will grow around them… would be far more valuable for students.

Feel free to add your own.

At last, a blog devoted to William Shatner’s hair. // Happy dog. // Sneakers made from Play-Doh. // An igloo made from fridges. // Couches made from fridges. // A skeleton made from wool. // Dinosaur skull found embedded in church wall. // Implanted sight. // Freelensing. // Bagelfest. // Nuclear weapons simulator. // Near Earth objects. // The Nile. // Spicules. Side view. // Making glass signs. // Steep. // Tipping etiquette. // How to eat sushi. // Water, sand, slow motion. // Condoms of yore. // Filip Dujardin photographs unreal architecture. // There’s pleasure to be had in a pile of leaves.

With bonfire night almost upon us – and with it a feeling of crushing ecological terror – let’s turn for reassurance to the pages of a certain newspaper. A troubled Guardian reader asks,

Setting light to bonfires and sending fireworks up into the sky don’t strike me as very environmentally friendly. Is there a better way to mark bonfire night?

Mercifully, Leo Hickman has some thoughts.

Attend an organised public display instead of setting off fireworks yourself in your own backyard. Surely it’s better to contain the noise and pollution in one area than see it dispersed across a wider area?

This fairly innocuous suggestion leads Mr Hickman to more emphatic, and revealing, territory:

Quite why fireworks are not just restricted to organised public events has always been beyond me, given how dangerous they can be to children. Or maybe – as was fiercely debated on this site last year – fireworks should be banned altogether?

An earlier Guardian poll – Should Fireworks be Banned on Environmental Grounds? – was a close-run thing, with a narrow majority willing to permit an evening of explosive hedonism. The Guardian’s Felicity Carus suggested a possible compromise in the form of “green fireworks,” a quieter, less colourful, less explosive alternative made from sawdust and rice chaff.

As regulars will know, Mr Hickman and his colleague Lucy Siegle steer Guardianistas through the labyrinth of modern living with their Ask Leo & Lucy column – “your ethical dilemmas sorted.” Dilemmas that, for Guardian readers, include, Should I Employ a Cleaner? (“If you employ a cleaner, their pay should be fair. Buy some less toxic cleaning products or make them yourself using ingredients such as vinegar, lemon juice or vegetable-based soap.”) Among many other agonies of note are, What’s the Greenest Way to Wrap my Sandwiches? and What Should I Do with the Fur Coats I Inherited from my Mother? (Since you ask, suggestions range from the inventive – “donate them to an animal sanctuary that uses them as bedding for abandoned puppies” – to the slightly surreal – “Turn the central heating down and wear them indoors.” And, “Use them in the home, where everyone understands their history etc.”)

Mr Hickman, whose radical credentials have impressed us previously, is also the author of A Life Stripped Bare: My Year Trying to Live Ethically, the cover of which displays the Guardian’s eco-gnome denuded and brandishing his veg box. Positioned to the right of Mr Hickman’s shirtless torso is an approving comment by Radio 4’s Libby Purves:

Very entertaining.

Full of useful new things to fret about.

The Observer’s Carol McDaid was equally thrilled:

There are plenty of facts – Quaker Oats and Tropicana juices are both owned by George Bush-backing PepsiCo – and a selection of helpful letters, like the inspiring one from a woman who crochets her own dishcloths.

An essential purchase, clearly.