Further to Nick Veasey’s x-ray photographs, here’s another collection of radiological images, taken by medical student Satre Stuelke using a CT scanner. Colours denote the various densities within the objects being probed. 

There are short films too. Related.

A discussion with Stephen Hicks.

“In politicized forms, then, postmodernists will behave like the stereotypical unscrupulous lawyer trying to win the case: truth and justice aren’t the point; instead using any rhetorical tool or trick that works is the point. Sometimes contradictory lines of argument work. Sometimes your audience’s desire to belong to the in-group can be played upon. Sometimes appearing absolutely authoritative works to camouflage a weak case. Sometimes condescension works.”

Dr Stephen Hicks is Professor of Philosophy and Executive Director of the Centre for Ethics and Entrepreneurship at Rockford College, Illinois. He is co-editor with David Kelley of Readings for Logical Analysis (W. W. Norton, 1998), and has published in academic journals as well as The Wall Street Journal, The Baltimore Sun, and Reader’s Digest. His book Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault was published in 2004 by Scholargy Publishing and is now in its eighth printing. He is the author and narrator of a DVD documentary entitled Nietzsche and the Nazis, which was published in 2006 by Ockham’s Razor Publishing. 

DT: In an exchange with Ophelia Benson, I mentioned Explaining Postmodernism and suggested one of the book’s main themes is that postmodernism marks a crisis of faith and a retreat from reality among the academic left. Is that a fair, if crude, summary?

SH: It is striking that the major postmodernists – Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, Richard Rorty – are of the far left politically. And it is striking that all four are Philosophy Ph.D.s who reached deeply skeptical conclusions about our ability to come to know reality. So one of my four theses about postmodernism is that it develops from a double crisis – a crisis within philosophy about knowledge and a crisis within left politics about socialism.

Return of the Post-It notes. // Tactile illusions. // Magnetic cows. // The healing power of spider bites. // How South Park is made. // Battlefield lasers. // Radioactive scrap yard. (h/t, Mick) // Stockholm public library. (h/t, Growabrain) // The EU language police. // Evan Sayet generalises wildly, but he’s not without a point. // What are your political coordinates? (h/t, HP) // Victimology and pies. // Early medical paraphernalia. // “The finger is not permanently attached to his hand, so it can be easily left plugged into a computer.” (h/t, EQ-aliser) // The hammock you’ve always wanted. // Pizza vending machines. // The polygraph museum. (h/t, Things) // Browser ball. // And, via The Thin Man, it’s Luthor’s Luau.

Readers will doubtless recall Daito Manabe and his electrically triggered facial contortions. Manabe has now roped in some friends for an ensemble performance.

Wes Johnson’s short impromptu film of birds on power lines. 

powerlinerflyers from wes johnson on Vimeo

Music by Yann Tiersen.