A brief tribute to Communism. 

“Without landowners, the people are in charge.” Stalin.

“One has to wonder what kind of ‘awareness’ Islamic Awareness Week was intended to cultivate. Evidently, a free and frank discussion wasn’t – and isn’t – a welcome outcome. And one has to wonder exactly when students became so delicate and so allergic to dissent, even to matters of historical fact.”

Further to this post and this one, Lepton has steered my attention to another example of censorship in the name of religious ‘sensitivity’. From an article by Greg Lukianoff, president of the campus free speech campaign group, Fire:

“Today, Fire announced the decision by a disciplinary panel at Tufts [University] to find the conservative student newspaper, The Primary Source, guilty of ‘harassment’ for, among other things, publishing a satirical ad that listed less-than-flattering facts about Islam during Tufts’ Islamic Awareness Week.”

The advert, available here, suggests a week of alternative discussion topics to “supplement the educational experience.” Topics include slavery in Islamic history, intolerance of criticism, the treatment of gay people and the role of women under Islamic law.

I don’t usually post over the weekend, but I think this is worth the enormous personal sacrifice. It made me laugh, quite a lot. Via PES, the home of twisted stop-motion films, comes a stern moral lesson to us all. Best experienced with sound. Roof Sex:

Explore the world of PES here.

The King Novelty Company. Lodestones, roots, strange herbs, magnetic sand. (H/T, Metrolander) // “VD is for Everybody.” (1969) // “The Trouble with Women.” New bearings inspector threatens status quo. Will Dolly be as bad as Myrtle? (1959) // How to build your own autonomous, self-assembling robots. Some assembly required. (H/T, Metrolander) // Via Ace, the robot spider. Cost $15,000. Cheaper than Sam Raimi’s film, and more entertaining. // Japanese robot eats snow, shits ice. Cute. // The Tornados’ Robot (1963) Like Telstar, but with robots. // White middle-class academic asks: “Does the world really need more middle-class white babies?” (H/T, Bloody Scott) // Journalists say Islam lacks tolerance; jail sentence ensues. More here. // Hitchens on stoicism, religion and miracles with alcohol. // Theodore Dalrymple on Marx, Qutb and their mutual delusions. Self-knowledge and humility not defining features of either. // Richard Dawkins holds forth, rocks boat. “Teach your children evolution and they’ll soon move on to drugs…” // Do Penguins Fly? // 25 great Calvin & Hobbes strips. Transmogrifier, snowmen, squeezing, tragedy. // Henry Jenkins thumbs Mexico’s less reputable comics. Busty ladies, monsters, copyright be damned. (H/T, Journalista!) // Robert Hodgin’s Magnetosphere. More here. // Fractal fabrics, fractal flames. // A map of online communities. The Blogipelago, the Sea of Memes and the Bay of Angst. // Alarm clock with wheels. Rings loudly then hides out of reach, still ringing loudly. Imagine the fun. // Ron Goodwin gets fab and groovy with Miss Marple.

It isn’t easy to adequately summarise Fletcher Hanks’ comic book creations, or to convey their demented charm. Fletcher’s combination of weirdness and ineptitude has earned praise from Kurt Vonnegut and Robert Crumb and invited comparisons with the zero-budget film director Ed Wood. His characters – including Tabu, Wizard of the Jungle and a strapping lumberjack named Big Red McLane – spanned just three years of the Golden Age, from 1939 to 1941, and are among the most peculiar things I’ve found in a comic book. Which, all things considered, is saying something.

Imagine, for instance, a hero named Stardust the Super Wizard – a man with a crime-detecting laboratory on his own private star, and whose “vast knowledge of interplanetary science” makes him the “most remarkable man that ever lived.” In addition to these formidable attributes, our hero has other improbable talents. He changes size arbitrarily from one panel to the next; his limbs, head and torso swell and distend for no discernible reason beyond alarming lapses in draughtsmanship. When not racket-busting or camouflaging the Earth with a giant, sculpted cloud of steam, our hero operates his “violently vibrating crime-detectors” and tosses foreign-looking villains down the mouths of active volcanoes. He’s clearly quite a guy.