There are too many Wangs in China. “There are 93 million Wangs and 92 million Lis.” // When squirrels attack. // Warfare with drugs. And pterodactyls. // Lego furniture. Not really made of Lego. // The Music Sofa. // Robo-chair. // Mary Jackson on Deleuze and the passing of gas. // Oh, look. It’s Carolyn Guertin. Deploy the weapon. // Photoluminescent acrylic brick. // Flow. Trailer. // Julie Szego interviews Ayaan Hirsi Ali. “The term ‘enlightenment fundamentalist’ makes reason and tolerance seem negotiable.” // Iranian judiciary advisor defends stoning. “We had a revolution so that Islamic laws would be implemented.” // Mick Hartley on Jihadi Etiquette. Killing bystanders with car bombs isn’t a problem. Allah will sort innocent souls from their disassembled bodies. // Education as social engineering. Making sure youngsters have the right kind of thoughts. // Via 1+1=3, ambient intermission sounds. Murmurs, coughs, tuning. An extract. More here. // Vintage comic books and dust jackets. // Pies Across America. Where to find good pie. // Exercise your teeth. (1939) // The International Toaster Museum. “The world’s largest online toaster collection.” // The Toaster Film Festival. // Typorganism. // Via Artblog, a rather wonderful TV moment. Nicely done, Mr Potts. Nicely done.

Here’s Jonathan Klassen and Dan Rodrigues’ short animation, An Eye For Annai. For children of all ages.

More here.

Sato Shintaro’s photographs of Tokyo at twilight, as seen from various fire escapes.

More here.  (H/T, Coudal.)

Readers with an interest in philosophy will probably know Richard Rorty died last week. Of the summaries of Rorty’s thinking, two in particular caught my eye. Their connection to each other, and to recent posts, is, I think, pretty obvious.

Norman Geras wrote:

“Rorty’s anti-foundationalism, his refusal of the idea of an objective realm beyond the language in which we try to apprehend it, leaves us intellectually defenceless in the face of a cognitive relativism for which any view must be just as good as any other. Rorty denied this consequence of his own arguments, but the denial struck me as one example among many of his tolerance for internal contradiction.”

Roger Scruton had this to say:

“[Rorty’s] venture into political theory took [him] in new and unforeseeable directions, as he tried to reconcile his view that some versions of political order are superior to others, with his belief that there is no trans-historical perspective from which any such judgment can be made. It is a testimony to his literary skills that he was able repeatedly to stare refutation in the face, and to go on staring…

Undoubtedly he was the most lucid of the postmodernist philosophers – though that is, given the competition, no great achievement… Rorty was paramount among those thinkers who advance their own opinion as immune to criticism, by pretending that it is not truth but consensus that counts, while defining the consensus in terms of people like themselves.”

Rorty was a learned man, to be sure, but, like so many of his postmodernist peers, he tried to deform logic to fit a political prejudice.

Related: On Derrida’s clotted prose.

Via Digital Clendening, a gallery of Chinese public health posters for a happy proletariat. Posture, hygiene, vaccination. “Eat clean food.”

Related: “Japanese Art on the Subject of Medicine.”