Assorted entries from the Harbin Snow Sculpture Art Fair, China. 

More. Related: Gianni Schiumarini’s sand sculptures. (h/t, Coudal) 

Some people have strange priorities. There are those, for instance, who say:

There is something inherently paternalistic in rescuing someone. There’s no avoiding this. And this is especially pernicious in the context where someone has been methodically and institutionally disempowered – ‘saving’ them, though well-intentioned, may change many circumstances but it unfortunately continues the pattern of disempowerment.

Given the discussion from which the above is taken concerns the Taliban’s threats to murder girls who go to school, fretting about the “inherent paternalism” of rescue seems a tad… self-indulgent.

The commenter goes on to say,

I happen to care a great deal about the oppression of women, in Afghanistan and everywhere else in the world.

However,

It is not our job, as westerners – as outsiders – to specifically fight to improve the lot of Afghan women.

Well, one might argue against military intervention on an economic or tactical basis, or on grounds of pragmatism and self-interest. One might, for instance, argue that not every injustice can be engaged and it’s best to choose one’s battles. The ability to intervene is finite and conditional, and there are almost always other demands on whatever resources are available. But that isn’t the argument here. Instead, we have something much more elevated:

Ultimately, an oppressed group must empower themselves. But it is our job, and everyone’s job, to fight injustice and to oppose those barriers which prevent Afghan women from empowering themselves. We can fight sexism in Afghanistan without placing ourselves into a paternalistic position – but only if we are aware of the distinction I am discussing.

Ah, yes. The “paternalistic position” must be avoided at all costs.

Title sequences of note. // Vanishing Ganymede. // “An explosion in the 32ft-wide reaction chamber which will produce at least 10 times the amount of energy used to create it.” // “Liposuction doctor used fat from patients to power his car.” // Audi pedal car. // Concept bus. // Add bacon to any website. // A year in 40 seconds. // Live surveillance screensaver. // Microscopy gallery. // X-rayed MacBook. // Underwhelming computer ads. // Libraries with allure. (h/t, Stephen Hicks) // Princess Leia lookalikes. And how to make your very own slave girl bikini. (h/t, TDK) // Arctic Survival. Just in case. // How many 5-year-olds could you take in a fight? // Reefer Madness. (1938) // And, via The Thin Man, it’s The Flying Lizards. 

In November 2008, Keith John Sampson, a student-employee at IUPUI, was accused of “racial harassment” for reading a book on the KKK. The book in question, Notre Dame Vs the Klan, celebrates a notable defeat of the Klan by students and is available in the university’s own library. Mr Sampson initially regarded the accusation as a minor misunderstanding and, when summoned to the university’s Affirmative Action Office, he assumed the matter would be resolved with little fuss: “I had no trepidation about going there. I brought the book with me. I thought: these are educated people; they will know the difference between somebody that is in the Klan as opposed to somebody who’s trying to educate themselves on what the Klan stands for.”

He was wrong. 

The behaviour of the sensitivity guardians is, as so often, quite illuminating.

A selection of vintage balloons from Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parades.

More. And. 

Guy Dammann is pondering parenthood in that wonderful Guardian way. 

Parentitis is the well known if scarcely documented condition that transforms polite, environmentally-aware, socially co-operative adults into pushy bigots who, when they’re not making innumerable short journeys in their 4x4s, are to be found at home amassing toxic nappy mountains, cooing noisily over waste matter and £500 pushchairs… Parentitis is natural, of course, but its nature is exacerbated and contorted by the collapse of trust in extended family support structures, the “us against them” axis of corporate culture having become mirrored in the domestic sphere.

Given that the most notable features of parenthood are apparently bigotry, a “collapse of trust,” 4x4s and “toxic nappy mountains,” it’s not terribly surprising that Dammann’s article is titled Am I Fit to Breed? Such sweet moral agonies are, after all, not uncommon in the pages of the Guardian. Nor is it shocking to find an ambivalent mention of VHEMT, the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, whose website bears the slogan “may we live long and die out,” along with an assertion that, “phasing out the human race by voluntarily ceasing to breed will allow Earth’s biosphere to return to good health.”

Dreams of a planet unblemished by humanity are in fact remarkably common, at least in certain quarters. The “biocentric” conservationist Paul Watson is happy to describe humanity as a “cancer” and tells us that, while vegan diets are a good thing, “curing the biosphere of the human virus will require a radical and invasive approach.” Readers may recall another environmental crusader, Dr John Reid (mentioned here), whose plan to save the world from human beings entails putting “something in the water” – specifically, “a virus that would… make a substantial proportion of the population infertile.” And while the good doctor is happy to share his view of all human life as an extraneous infestation of an otherwise pristine Earth, he’s also insistent that “affluent populations should be targeted first.”

Last year, the Optimum Population Trust published a briefing paper, A Population-Based Climate Strategy, in which it was argued that couples having two children instead of three would reduce that family’s carbon dioxide output by the “equivalent of 620 return flights a year between London and New York.” The OPT regards population growth as a “failure of courage and leadership” and mulls, albeit hesitantly, on the need for “intervention by the state… in individual freedoms for the foreseeable future.” OPT co-chairman, Professor John Guillebaud, claims: “The greatest thing anyone in Britain could do to help the future of the planet would be to have one less child.”

Mr Dammann isn’t entirely disapproving of such notions:

The followers of [VHEMT] take to its logical conclusion the observation that the population growth of the human species is unsustainable. Rather than waiting for nature to extinguish us by itself, which process will almost inevitably involve the destruction of many other species besides, we should initiate proceedings ourselves by refusing to have any more children… [T]here is something magnificent about the thought of an entire species simply switching itself off, without violence or force of anything other than will, to make way for something more lasting. It is unthinkable within the system of nature, unless as the conscious, involuntary corollary to a process that may be occurring anyway. But the absurdity lies not in the aim, which is in many ways laudable, but in the idea that the compassionate motivation in which it originates could possibly see the project through.

The problem, then, is not the premise of voluntary self-eradication, but merely its impracticality.

Despite the festive cheer, which I hope you’ve all enjoyed, it’s important to remember that goodwill isn’t something one should extend to all men.

The Taliban have ordered the closure of all girls’ schools in the war-ravaged Swat district and warned parents and teachers of dire consequences if the ban is flouted. In an announcement made in mosques and broadcast on radio, the militant group set a deadline of January 15 for its order to be obeyed or it would blow up school buildings and attack schoolgirls. It also told women not to set foot outside their homes without being fully covered. “Female education is against Islamic teachings and spreads vulgarity in society,” Shah Dauran, leader of a group that has established control over a large part of Swat district in the North West Frontier Province, declared this week. […] The militants have also prohibited immunisation for children against polio – claiming that the UN-sponsored vaccination drive is aimed at causing sexual impotence – causing a sharp rise in cases of the disease.

They’re freedom fighters, you see.

The musical potential of 49 microwave ovens.

To you and yours, a very good one.

Several readers have steered me towards a recent, bewildering article by Jeanette Winterson that had somehow escaped my attention. It’s a strikingly unhinged piece and has been noted elsewhere, so I’m mortified to have missed it.

However, Ms Winterson’s descent into madness hasn’t entirely escaped my notice. Radio 4’s The Food Programme is usually relatively sober and free of the tacit leftist bias that informs so much else at the BBC. The broadcast I happened to hear featured a panel of guests choosing their food books of the year. This genteel routine was interrupted by several prolonged and incongruous tirades by Ms Winterson. The particulars of the tirades are difficult to recall due to their disarray, but each outburst relied heavily for its effect on loud repetition of the words “corporations” and “multinationals”. According to Winterson, these unspecified corporations and multinationals are controlling consumers’ dietary choices in ways that are intimate and fiendish though curiously vague. (Those of you familiar with South Park may recall an episode in which the children encounter a group of college hippies, whose boilerplate “insights” they immediately assimilate and repeat. It was much like that.) Such was the vehemence and incongruity of the outbursts, I half expected one of the other guests to throw a damp towel over Ms Winterson’s head in the hope she might calm down.

But back to the article. In it, a great many things are asserted in a dense rhetorical barrage. Among the gems on offer are:

We have created a society without values that believes in nothing. Reviving the god of the Philistines – Baal, the flesh-eater – human dignity has been eaten away by the relentless drive to make money at any cost and to spend money at any cost; especially money you don’t have.

And,

We laugh at the primitive religious idea of human sacrifice – but whatever fancy words and theories you want to play with to describe this present spectacular collapse of global capitalism, it is human sacrifice on a scale undreamt of at the altars of idols.

These lurid claims have been addressed elsewhere, most notably by Norm, who observes:

Here is a woman enjoying every advantage vouchsafed by the rights and liberties of the country she lives in (the institutional expression, these, precisely of certain important moral values) lightmindedly opining that the society has no values.

Indeed. Ms Winterson is yet another well-heeled leftwing novelist and commentator – a member of the media elite – affecting to disdain the secular, capitalist society on which her livelihood and status depend. Regular readers will note how closely Winterson’s claims follow the rhetorical trajectory of that other Handmaiden of the Apocalypse, Madeleine Bunting, whose warnings of “hyper-frantic consumerism” entertained us so. I probably don’t need to point out how Winterson, like Bunting, is eerily sure that “we” share her anhedonic passion and tolerance of hyperbole. But I will, just in case. It’s important to remember how psychodrama works.

Jason Tozer’s water droplets. // How to make soap from bacon. // Burger King cologne. Because a man should smell of cheeseburger. // DIY surgery. // A sea of piety. // Assorted spinning tops and dreidels. // Albino animals. The pygmy hedgehogs we like. // Donald, deconstructed. // Herb and Dorothy are art collectors. // An appetite for vinyl. // A Betamax Xmas. // Festive cards. // The 12 days of Christmas. // Seasons greetings from Soviet aerospace. // All I want for Christmas is… // A set of ninja star fridge magnets. // A safe made from Lego. // The Concept Ice Vehicle. // SAM. It’s a car, just about. // Alphabet blocks for the mad scientist of tomorrow. // Return of the Uniqlo Grid. // And, via The Thin Man, it’s Ms Annette Lajon.