A collection of vintage slide rules for calculating the effects of nuclear weapons. 

Also, assorted film posters.  

Film of the atomic cannon test, May 25, 1953. A single 280mm shell was fired seven miles, yielding a 15 kiloton explosion.

And a gallery of toys with an atomic theme.

(h/t, Coudal)

David T on the credulous “partnership” between the Metropolitan Police and the Muslim Brotherhood: 

Azad Ali’s post entitled Defeating Extremism by Promoting Balance is a good example of how Islamists think about these issues. In the post, he argues that the only way to ‘deradicalise’ Muslims is to promote the thinking of an Al Qaeda related theoretician: Abdullah Azzam. Azzam’s slogan was “Jihad and the rifle alone: no negotiations, no conferences and no dialogues.” However, Islamists urge us to accept him as a good role model for British Muslims: because in later life he argued that global jihad should not be carried out against civilians in their own countries. You might think this is crazy. Who would give such a man the time of day?

But Azad Ali is a founder member of the Muslim Safety Forum – where apparently he “leads on the Counter Terrorism work-team for the Forum – working with the Home Office, ACPO and Security Services.” He is a National Council member of Liberty, President of the Civil Service Islamic Society. He sits on the Strategic Stop & Search Committee and Police Use of Firearms Group with the Metropolitan Police, and is a member of the IPCC’s Community Advisory Group and the Home Office’s Trust and Confidence Community Panel.

These are the sort of people who [former anti-terrorist officer] Andy Hayman thinks we ought to be using as our secret weapon against jihadism. But many of the people with whom the Metropolitan Police were partnering in the Muslim Contact Unit are very close indeed, ideologically speaking, to the jihadists. What is the rationale? [Former Special Branch detective] Bob Lambert appears to have believed that the only way to get through to would-be British Muslim suicide bombers is for the police to say: “Yes, we recognise that blowing yourself up for God, and taking as many other people as possible with you, is a truly glorious and noble ambition. You’re right to want to do so. But don’t do it on the No. 30 bus in London, please.”

Kenan Malik on learned dishonesties and other emasculations: 

In 1989 even the Ayatollah’s death sentence could not stop the publication of The Satanic Verses. Rushdie was forced into hiding for almost a decade. Translators and publishers were killed, bookshops bombed and Penguin staff forced to wear bomb-proof vests. Yet Penguin never wavered in its commitment to keep it published. Today, all it takes for a publisher to run for cover is a letter from an outraged academic. In the 20 years between the publication of The Satanic Verses and the withdrawal of The Jewel of Medina, the fatwa has in effect become internalised. […]

Twenty years ago, most liberals defended Rushdie’s right to publish The Satanic Verses despite the offence it caused many Muslims. Today, many argue that whatever may appear to be right in principle, in practice one must appease religious and cultural sensibilities because such sensibilities are so deeply felt. The avoidance of ‘cultural pain’ is seen as more important than what is regarded as an abstract right to freedom of expression. But such a policy creates the very problems to which it is supposedly a response. […] The lesson of the Rushdie Affair that has never been learnt is that liberals have made their own monsters. It is the liberal fear of giving offence that has helped create a culture in which people take offence so easily.

Regarding the above, readers may recall the obliging contortions of Jakob Illeborg, whose cowardice and dishonesty define what I’ve come to call The Guardian Position™.  

Ingredients, all of which can, or should, be stolen: 

Envelopes
Paperback Book
Toilet Paper
Spinach
Dried Mint
Dried Oregano
Tea Bags
Cotton Balls
Lighter or Matches

Following the tremendous success of how to make wine in prison, here’s another handy tip for detainees.

How to smoke spinach. 

The results, we’re assured, are “not completely awful.”

Readers may recall our last encounter with Extensions: the Online Journal of Embodiment & Technology. Contributors to this publication include that mistress of mangled language, Professor Caroline Guertin, and Headlong Dance Theatre, whose Thrash: Physical Responses to the Bush Administration is forever seared into our memories. Another, no less daunting, contributor is Bettina Camilla Vestergaard, a Danish artist whose work “explores how collective identity and personal narrative engage one another using a variety of mediums.” Vestergaard’s artistic approach is described, by herself, as

Conceptual and research based. She works with photo, video, sound, drawing and installation. Her latest projects concern identity and gender with a focus on how this is constituted in public space.

The Online Journal of Embodiment & Technology is no doubt honoured to host a Vestergaard original titled Free Speech on Wheels, Let Your Opinion Roll, and which takes the form of

Intervention in public space, writings on car, photos and video.

I can tell you’re intrigued. Vestergaard obliges us with an account of how this “intervention in public space” came to pass:

I had been awarded a stipend from the Swedish government that enabled me to live and work in L.A. for 6 months.

But of course. And why not? Artists do endure hardship for the betterment of all mankind.

I had high expectations of the city’s complex cultural diversity, so it was quite frustrating that my first three months primarily consisted of passing time in quite residential Hollywood, sitting alone in my car, shopping and getting fuel for yet another round.

As I said, hardship.

I had a feeling of involuntarily being trapped in a fixed pattern that repeated itself: like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, my life had begun to revolve around itself, slowly but surely reducing my mental activity to a purposeless series of meaningless events. I conceived Free Speech on Wheels as a means of short-circuiting this experience.

For the betterment of mankind.

The basic idea was to muddle the barrier between public and private, by creating a space where the many and varied identities of L.A.’s communities could be expressed. I began by parking my car where a large group of people were wandering about and proceeded to put up a sign with the following text: “Free Speech on Wheels – Let your opinion roll.”

Of course some artistic interventions need a little nudge:

In order to kick-start the process, I asked the first volunteers the question: “What does being an American mean to you?” I received a lot of different responses depending where I had parked. For example, there was intense writing activity during a downtown student demonstration and at Earth Day, while it was absolutely zero at the Santa Monica Beach promenade.

Fortunately, things soon picked up dramatically.

A while ago, I posted some extracts from Alvaro Vargas Llosa’s article on Ernesto “Che” Guevara:

In April 1967, speaking from experience, he summed up his homicidal idea of justice in his Message to the Tricontinental: “Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective and cold-blooded killing machine”… In a letter to his mother in 1954, written in Guatemala, where he witnessed the overthrow of the revolutionary government of Jacobo Arbenz, he wrote: “It was all a lot of fun, what with the bombs, speeches, and other distractions to break the monotony…”

With the above in mind, readers may be interested in Ted Balaker’s short film on the suckers who fellate this “social justice” icon.

“Rock and roll as well as jazz was what they called ‘imperialist music’… He hated artists, so how is it possible that artists still today support the image of Che Guevara?” Paquito D’Rivera.

Related: Harry’s Place versus defiant fellators, the chic of concentration camps.

(h/t, Daimnation!) 

Snowball gun. // Photographs of Antarctica. // How to Build an Igloo. (1951) // The Clangers build a pipe organ. // How to make wine in prison. “An odd burning sensation accompanies the first sip.” (h/t, Coudal) // Water pipes. // Monstrous yacht. // Self-assembling machines. // The geometry of beauty. // Ana Serrano’s cardboard sculptures, including Cartonlandia. // Watchmen montage. Rorschach, Moloch, Nixon! // Desirable goggles. // The American Widescreen Museum. // Low-cost video object manipulation. // Fun with “bullet-time”. // What’s a turbaconducken? (h/t, Daimnation!) // Head wipes. (h/t, PooterGeek) // A Photograph of Jesus. // And, via The Thin Man, it’s Les 5 De l’Harmonica.

Snowflakes photographed by Kenneth Libbrecht.

More. How to photograph snow.

Her name is Jessica and she’s fond of coffee.  

I know, I know. Now you all want one. Via Maggie’s Farm. 

The Guardian’s Leo Hickman shares his wisdom on today’s security breach at Stansted Airport, courtesy of activists from the environmentalist group, Plane Stupid:

My first reaction was to wonder whether those inconvenienced by this self-aggrandising display would be able to demand compensation from the airport’s security provider. Using a snowplough to shift protestors is faintly amusing, I grant you, but in an age of terrorist attacks on airports, five hours is a long time to wait and firearms might have expedited matters.

A second reaction came to mind after seeing this on the Plane Stupid website: “Plane Stupid welcomes actions in its name, provided they are non-violent and accountable.” Accountable, eh? Presumably, then, the fifty or so middle-class hippies and student eco-poseurs would have no objection in principle to facing whatever legal action might be taken against them individually by the airlines, by the airport and by each and every one of the inconvenienced travellers. And, presumably, the protestors will soon be offering to personally reimburse the thousands of people affected by their actions. Even, one hopes, to the point of destitution.

Mr Hickman continues:

Actually, the effects of the protest, which began at 3:15am, are still being felt as I type, with stranded passengers being interviewed live on television some eleven hours later. Some 56 flights have so far been cancelled, affecting thousands of passengers, and disruption is expected to continue for up to three days. Mr Hickman doesn’t seem inclined to linger on the possibility that quite a few of those passengers may have been travelling on matters of urgency and personal or financial import – weddings, funerals, job interviews, business meetings, etc – and that their needless delay may have serious consequences. Instead, Mr Hickman’s attention is on much loftier matters:

Ah, the protestors wish to be noticed. Sorry, they wish their cause to be noticed.

It’s odd how some are so keen to dismiss the “normal democratic processes” in favour of undemocratic, criminal – and much more exciting – avenues. Specifically, avenues unburdened by details like persuasion, verification and reasoned argument, and which instead hold passengers to ransom with a display of theatrical onanism. One wonders if Mr Hickman would be similarly well-disposed to other fringe groups, perhaps groups antithetical to his worldview, which nonetheless deem their cause of such importance that discussion and legality are readily dispensed with.

At this point, comment is perhaps unnecessary.

In a similar vein to this, here’s a random panel.

A partial explanation can be found here.