Dr Wei Sheng has a thing for decorative needles. // The stop-motion graphic equaliser. // More views from above. (h/t, 1+1=3.) // Cloud formations, seen from space. // V-2 meets the stratosphere, films curvature of the Earth. (1946) // Peter Risdon on photons, sofas and creating the world. // Your very own galaxy. 80,000 stars in a 12cm cube. // 55 metre photo of the Milky Way, viewed in infrared. // Solar System. (1977) // Mystery of levitation “solved”. // 10 scientists killed or injured by their experiments. Radiation, poisoning, staring at the Sun. // The Kneale Tapes. From Quatermass to Year of the Sex Olympics. Part 2, 3, 4. // TV “detector vans” through the ages. // An illustrated history of the Roman Empire. // The joys of fire gel. // The Glo Pillow. // What ovulation looks like. // Los Simpson. // Blu: Muto. A tale of animated paint. (h/t, Dr Westerhaus.) // Fun will balls. (h/t, Cookslaw.) // How tennis will be. // Fishing, for kids and idiots. // Tree houses of note. (h/t, Coudal.) // Things found inside old books. // A collection of unscratched lottery tickets. // The Japanese calculator museum. // And, via The Thin Man, it’s Kraftwerk, of course.

Ronnie Yarisal and Katja Kublitz’s coin-operated Passive Aggressive Anger Release Machine allows the user to select a china plate, a glass or an item of porcelain kitsch and reduce it, violently, to fragments and dust. “All you have to do is insert a coin, and a piece of china will slowly move forwards and fall into the bottom of the machine, breaking, and leaving you happy and relieved of anger.”

I suppose there’s always a chance the preferred item will be out of stock, or will fail to break on impact, or that the machine will jam when needed most and fail to refund a coin, prompting the frustrated user to shake and kick the machine, possibly to destruction. On reflection, that may prove an even better way of relieving stress. Or indeed of commenting on the duo’s art.

Via Quipsologies.

Further to the Guardian’s Jakob Illeborg and his apparent belief that freethinking societies are best defended by doing a lot less of that freethinking business, at least with regard to Islam, it seems he’s not alone.

First, there’s the Pakistani ambassador to Denmark, Fauzia Mufti Abbas:

“It isn’t just the people of Pakistan that feel they have been harassed by what [Jyllands-Posten] has begun,” she said. “I’d like to know if your newspaper is satisfied with what it has done and what it has unleashed?” The matter of the cartoons, she said, was something Danes needed to reflect on. 

I’m sure readers will spot the familiar supremacist assumptions and the consequent moral inversion. The deaths, riots and violence were, apparently, “unleashed” by infidels who drew cartoons satirising previous threats and violence by belligerent Muslims. Things of which we must not speak. Those actually doing the murdering, threatening and rioting are, it seems, “harassed”. Poor them. Thus, by the ambassador’s thinking, the fits of emotional incontinence and attempts to cow dissent become our responsibility and, conveniently, no-one else’s. And those who need to “reflect” on what has happened – and what will no doubt happen again – are infidels who are, as yet, insufficiently fearful. And, by the same logic, we must learn to pacify and accommodate people who are prideful, malevolent and insane. Or else.

Then there’s Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary-general of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, who told an audience in Kuala Lumpur,

Mere condemnation or distancing from the acts of the perpetrators of Islamophobia will not resolve the issue, as long as they remain free to carry on with their campaign of incitement and provocation on the plea of freedom of expression.

Set aside for a moment the absurdly tendentious terms “Islamophobia,” “incitement” and “provocation” – remember we’re talking about cartoons here – and note the phrase, “as long as they remain free” – i.e. free to criticise Islam and say unflattering things. Even things that are both unflattering and true. According to Professor Ihsanoglu such things must be stopped:

“It requires a strong and determined collective political will to address the challenge,” Ihsanoglu said. “It is now high time for concrete actions to stem the rot before it aggravates (the situation) any further.” Ihsanoglu did not suggest what action should be taken.

No, he didn’t offer particulars, but he’s made his feeling clear. He wants “concrete action” and the “issue” will be “resolved” when criticism of Islam stops, or at least is made illegal and thus punishable. Perhaps Ihsanoglu is waiting for others to connect the dots and do exactly as they’re told, just as Mr Illeborg seems all too keen to do.

Others, however, are more specific in their demands.

Pakistan will ask the European Union countries to amend laws regarding freedom of expression in order to prevent offensive incidents such as the printing of blasphemous caricatures of Prophet Muhammad… The delegation, headed by an additional secretary of the Interior Ministry, will meet the leaders of the EU countries in a bid to convince them that the recent attack on the Danish Embassy in Pakistan could be a reaction against the blasphemous campaign, sources said.

They said that the delegation would also tell the EU that if such acts against Islam are not controlled, more attacks on the EU diplomatic missions abroad could not be ruled out.

Peace, then, will materialise when infidels know their place.

Since 1996, Nick Veasey has been taking x-ray photographs of pretty much everything. From shoes, insects and kitchen appliances to enormous composite shots of Boeing 777s. 

A book of Veasey’s work, X-Ray, will be published in October. More. And. Related.

Samurai katana versus tomato. // How to advertise Japanese pasta sauce. // Magnetism, visualised. // John Wyndham: The Invisible Man of Science Fiction. Part 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. // Vintage Japanese robots. // 19th century scientific instruments. (h/t, Coudal.) // Diseases and genes, an interactive graph. // Typographic mishaps #231. // A history of photo tampering. // How to make a pop-up photograph. // The photography of Dennis Stock. // The hexomniscope and other unusual cameras. // Good and bad ad hominem. // Matthew Sinclair on the decline of the traditional family. // Greg Lukianoff on the creep of campus speech codes. // Pulp of the Day. // The Weener Kleener. (h/t, The Thin Man.) // Torpedo rooms of note. // Road trip from LA to New York, compressed into 4 minutes. // Geometry town. Canberra, from above. // Paris in the Fifties. // A gallery of wine labels. // The virtual corkscrew museum. // And, by The Lovers, La Dégustation.