I gather some of you are looking forward to the upcoming Iron Man film, a clip from which can be found here. Apparently, the trailers are very popular, prompting this item from the Onion.

Wildly Popular ‘Iron Man’ Trailer To Be Adapted Into Full-Length Film

Related: Iron Man: Extremis.

This I like.

The Fairmont Royal York hotel, Toronto. Via Daily Dose of Imagery.

Speaking of pious opportunism, here’s a piece by Robert Tracinski from 2006 on the lessons of the MoToons saga, which I think bear repeating. 

[Republishing the cartoons] is not merely a symbolic expression of support; it is a practical countermeasure against censorship. Censorship — especially the violent, anarchic type threatened by Muslim fanatics — is effective only when it can isolate a specific victim, making him feel as if he alone bears the brunt of the danger. What intimidates an artist or writer is not simply some Arab fanatic in the street carrying a placard that reads “Behead those who insult Islam.” What intimidates him is the feeling that, when the beheaders come after him, he will be on his own, with no allies or defenders — that everyone else will be too cowardly to stick their necks out.

The answer, for publishers, is to tell the Muslim fanatics that they can’t single out any one author, or artist, or publication. The answer is to show that we’re all united in defying the fanatics. That’s what it means to show solidarity by re-publishing the cartoons. The message we need to send is: if you want to kill anyone who publishes those cartoons, or anyone who makes cartoons of Muhammad, then you’re going to have to kill us all. If you make war on one independent mind, you’re making war on all of us. And we’ll fight back… 

This is the final lesson of the cartoon jihad. The real issue at stake is not just censorship versus freedom, but something much deeper: the need to recognise the real essence of the West. The distinctive power and vibrancy of our culture, the source of our liberty, our happiness, and our unprecedented prosperity, is our Enlightenment tradition of regard for the unfettered reasoning mind, left free to follow the evidence wherever it leads.

And from an earlier post, here’s Salman Rushdie on his experience of the same.

When people said they didn’t publish [the cartoons] out of respect for Muslims, what they meant is they didn’t publish them because they were afraid of their offices getting bombed. And when you create that kind of climate of fear, when you concede… you don’t as a result have less intimidation… As a result you have more intimidation…

[T]he question is how do you respond to intimidation, and do you give in to it or do you not give in to it. I think that when the intimidation became as heavy as it did, the only proper response was everybody should have published the cartoons the next day. And not to do that was a way of showing that threats work.

Exactly. It’s a strange, though common, logic that leads a person to believe handing over his lunch money will keep the bully from calling again.

Related. And.   

You are here.

Embiggen. Pacific Ocean, July 21, 2003. Image: NASA, taken from the ISS. More. And. Also. Via.

On the subject of bizarre ritualistic hang-ups, here’s some lovely religious apartheid in London swimming pools. Naturally, this bold leap forward is publicly funded with council tax.

This morning, my son asked to go swimming at 10 am. As he was going to play with a friend at 11.30, I agreed to take him early. I checked the pool programme online… and the opening times. Apparently, the pool was open, and no special programmes were being run. So, off we trundled. When I arrived at the pool, I was told that we could not swim in it until 10.45. The reason is that it was being used for ‘Muslim Male Swimming’. This is apparently so every Sunday morning. I couldn’t quite believe that a swimming pool was really institutionalising both gender and religious segregation… Apparently, this is a policy insisted on by Hackney Council, which sets the policy for all Hackney pools.

A debate ensues. 

As David T (no relation) says in the comments,

As a test, how would you feel about a policy of excluding Muslims from public facilities at particular times?

I’d add that it’s interesting how a self-inflicted neurosis regarding what is impermissible, impious or unclean has to be accommodated and subsidised by others who do not share that particular irrational anxiety. Thus, the natural consequence of the hang-up in question, i.e. not being able to swim, is avoided by imposing that same disadvantage on others.

Update:

I was also told that the session was being run by the swimming pool, and had begun life as a private hire by a mosque: which had then stopped paying. Accordingly, it was being provided by Clissold Leisure Centre as an attempt to cater to Hackney’s “diversity”… I spoke to another employee this morning. He gave me an identical story. His explanation was that it was a requirement of the Muslim religion that Muslims could not swim with non-Muslims. This, he argued, was an obligation which Clissold Leisure Centre was obliged to respect, and provide for. I asked him whether Clissold Leisure Centre would institute Whites Only swimming for racists. His answer was that they would, if there was sufficient demand.

It’s my understanding that when customers stop paying for a recreational service, let alone one based on obnoxious sectarian voodoo, those customers usually have to go without. Let’s call it the price of piety – the natural consequence of a self-inflicted restriction, i.e. a choice one has made. Surely anything else is an imposition or a cheat? It is, after all, a bit rich to expect irrational hang-ups of this kind to be accommodated and paid for by the same filthy heathens that are being treated with overt disdain. But not, it seems, in Hackney, where such things are positively encouraged and publicly subsidised. Such is our New Jerusalem.