Stephen Hayes on Wisconsin, high passions and the caring, compassionate left: 

Unions and other Walker opponents have certainly shown a willingness to do anything to win. Walker and his family have been harassed regularly. Unions and their backers have marched on Walker’s personal residence in Wauwatosa. His wife has been subjected to repeated verbal harassment. His sons have been targeted on Facebook. Walker himself has been compared to a variety of terrorists and, of course, to Adolf Hitler. He long ago stopped eating out at restaurants and has stepped up security for all of his public appearances.

Kristi LaCroix, a Kenosha teacher who appeared in a pro-Walker ad supporting the reforms, received so many threats that she later said she wished she’d never done the ad. When a student at Two Rivers High School showed up at school wearing a pro-Walker T-shirt, the head of the school’s technical education program, who is also the chairman of the local teachers’ union, sent an email to the business that produced the T-shirt noting that the company does business with the school and threatening a “loss of profits.” A reporter for a liberal Madison newspaper telephoned Ciara Matthews, communications director for the Walker campaign, and expanded the definition of “news” by publishing an entire article about the fact that she worked at Hooters to put herself through college. Another Walker staffer returned home one day to find his dog defecating blood. The veterinarian who treated the dog – at a cost of $1,500 – told him the most likely culprit was a high dose of rat poison, something he doesn’t have in his house.

John Aziz highlights the even more charming sentiments of Finnish eco-radical Pentti Linkola: 

The United States symbolises the worst ideologies in the world: growth and freedom… Any dictatorship would be better than modern democracy. There cannot be so incompetent a dictator that he would show more stupidity than a majority of the people. The best dictatorship would be one where lots of heads would roll and where government would prevent any economic growth… A fundamental, devastating error is to set up a political system based on desire. Society and life have been organised on the basis of what an individual wants, not on what is good for him or her… Our only hope lies in strong central government and uncompromising control of the individual citizen.

It’s for our own good, obviously. Yes, Mr Linkola is rather, er, hardcore, but he’s far from alone in the nature of his fantasies. 

And Thomas Sowell on when a person’s race gets reported and when it doesn’t:  

Similar episodes of unprovoked violence by young black gangs against white people chosen at random on beaches, in shopping malls, or in other public places have occurred in Philadelphia, New York, Denver, Chicago, Cleveland, Washington, Los Angeles, and other places across the country. Both the authorities and the media tend to try to sweep these episodes under the rug. […] A wave of such attacks in Chicago was reported, but not the race of the attackers or victims. Media outlets that do not report the race of people committing crimes nevertheless report racial disparities in imprisonment and write heated editorials blaming the criminal-justice system.

On which, Heather Mac Donald is worth revisiting: 

In fact, the race of criminals reported by crime victims matches arrest data. As long ago as 1978, a study of robbery and aggravated assault in eight cities found parity between the race of assailants in victim identifications and in arrests – a finding replicated many times since, across a range of crimes. No one has ever come up with a plausible argument as to why crime victims would be biased in their reports.

Apparently there are even significant racial variations in speeding offences. 

By all means add your own links in the comments. 

Tadao Cern’s photographs of people being blown by a whole heap of wind. 

Further to this and this, what men really, really want to talk about.

Aesthetes that my readers are, you’ll no doubt be familiar with the name of Jan Fabre, a Belgian performance artist and “theatre-maker” who, we’re informed, “expands the horizons of every genre to which he applies his artistic vision.” Mr Fabre’s acclaimed efforts at horizon-expanding include Preparatio Mortis, a piece unveiled at the Vienna International Dance Festival and which entertained us no end with its combination of moths, underwear and staggering pretension.

While writhing in her bra and panties, the dancer, Annabelle Chambon, was tasked with nothing less than “an attempt to reconcile life and death.” Or as one commenter suggested, to reconcile boredom with public subsidy.

You will, therefore, be thrilled to the tips of your nipples by Mr Fabre’s recent curatorial triumph. Sweat is a performance piece by fellow Belgian Peter De Cupere, choreographed by Fabre, in which five dancers spend fourteen minutes rolling about and jumping up and down – naked, obviously – while attempting to fill their transparent plastic overalls with all manner of body odour. “The intention,” we’re told, “is to catch the sweat from the dancers and to distil it. The concrete of the sweat is sprayed on a wall of the dance lab and protected by a glass box. In the glass is a small hole where visitors can smell the sweat.” Yes, you can smell the sweat.

If that’s not a good night out, I don’t know what is.

Oh, there’s more to it than that of course.

Peter De Cupere is creating his smell. Not just a smell, but a composition of the smells of his body, skin of different parts, breath, sweat, sperm, spittle, nose drops, blood and many more smells you can imagine with a person. The smells are and will be subtracted on different times, after different moments, after special dinners made for himself by himself. A research that will go on his whole life. His first edition of his perfume will be soon available… The perfume is called ‘Peter’.

Now, who’s up for fourteen minutes of excruciating toss?

Don’t think of running. I’ve locked the doors.

This is all for your benefit.

Hold still, goddammit. I’m nailing some culture into you.

Update:

According to ArtNews, De Cupere is “incorporating scent into the aesthetic experience.” Thing is, the performance above isn’t an aesthetic experience. It isn’t by definition. (By all means feel free to point out the beauty. There’s cake to be won.) Described more honestly, it’s a hackneyed, rather desperate, attempt to transgress. (“Sweat, sperm, spittle, nose drops, blood…”) Now imagine if arts writers were fined £5 every time they lied. Destitution would ensue in a matter of days.

And from the same article, this:

New York activist-artist Lisa Kirk was seeking to evoke a social experience when she developed a perfume called Revolution for her 2008 exhibition at Participant Inc. on the Lower East Side. Kirk contacted witnesses to political upheavals, including Central American revolutionaries and ex-Black Panthers, and asked them, “What does revolution smell like?” The answer: dried blood, smoke, burning tires, gasoline, and urine. Kirk relied on perfumer Patricia Choux to create the scent and jeweller Jelena Berhrend to design containers that looked like pipe bombs, fabricated in silver, gold, and platinum, and priced from $3,750 to $47,750 per bottle. “If we can’t start a revolution, at least we can create a fragrance that symbolises rebellion,” says Kirk.

Yes, rebellion. She’s an “activist-artist,” see.

Hey, it could happen. // Hands up if your garage contains a Boeing 737 nose cone and flight simulator. // Bees that drink human tears. // Harvesting bees in the Himalayas. // Elephant chair. // Elephants have big innards. // Tiny tarantula. // Cocktail shaker of note. // Coffee maker of note. // Now this is a shopping trolley. // How a Bicycle is Made, 1945. // Watch lithium burn. // Skydiving in a kayak. // The radio time machine. // Retro synth sofa. (h/t, Robert) // The power of wearing spectacles. // The physics of a jumping Hulk. // Can your pet mouse do this? // And finally, Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf narrated by Boris Karloff.