Eye of the Tiger, the dot matrix printer remix. // Eye of the pigeon. // How to entertain goats. (h/t, Kate) // The glamour of figure skating. // The frequency of things, from flushing politicians to shoe sales in Phoenix. // The utterly stylish Fujitsu finger glove. // And then it just fell off. // Miliband: man of destiny. (h/t, TDK) // Made with sand. // Birds Eye Mashtags. // Amps. // Socks. // Saturn V cutaway. // “The hippo’s testes are totally invisible from the outside.” And removing them is tricky. // Vertical cinema is a thing, apparently. // 500,000 sugar cubes. // A boy and his dog. // And the wafty, tendentious bollocks of leftwing cultural ‘theorists’. You see, Close Encounters is in fact “a fascist film, capitalist propaganda.”

Some pressing issues of the day, expressed via the medium of Guardian reader polls. 

Is Barbie’s Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover empowering or demeaning? 

“Is the doll still an icon worth looking up to, or another bad example of unrealistic body image?” 30% said it’s demeaning and that something must be done. Reader comment of note: “I think Barbie should be updated for the 21st century to reflect modern reality. So what about Homeless Barbie, Single Mother Barbie, Brain Surgeon Barbie, Autistic Barbie, Astronaut Barbie, Binge Drinker Barbie, Minimum Wage Barbie, etc.?”

Should Facebook remove all gender options or create more?

“Facebook recently added over 50 custom gender options for users in addition to ‘male’ and ‘female’. While the site’s move has largely been hailed as progressive, users are divided on the next step.” There’s a next step? This one was a close-run thing, with a narrow majority (54%) in favour of abolishing gender options altogether. Reader comment of note: “Fifty seems enough to cover all possible bases.”

Should restaurants ban people from taking photos of their food?

How should society deal with the menace of the me-and-my-food selfie? Only 30% said yes to a ban. Reader comments of note: “It’s time to ban mobile phones AND restaurants.” And, “The people who take photo’s [sic] of their food are lacking in confidence [and] are really trying to show others that they are able to eat out at the current ‘in’ place[,] a sort of pathetic status symbol. I would fully support the restaurants in refusing people who are eating there to take photo’s [sic] of their food.”

Should Disney create a plus-size princess? 

“What do you think?” Surprisingly, a majority (82%) didn’t see much need for a hefty ballgowned heroine. Reader comment of note (and I like this one): “Should Metallica do more Celine Dion covers?”

Patrons are reminded that this rickety barge is kept afloat by the kindness of strangers. If this place has entertained you during the last few months – say, with things like these – then by all means feel free to monetise your love. Think of it as a magazine subscription. Or an act of nobility in a cruel, cruel world. 

I’ll just leave this here, should you feel the urge. 

Update: 

The keen-eyed among you may have noticed that Amazon search widgets have appeared at the top left and right of this page, for the US and UK respectively. Any items bought via the widgets will result in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you. Now you can indulge your consumerist lust with the loftiest possible motive. 

Via TDK, Theodore Dalrymple on rhetorical leverage and ‘progressive’ self-flattery: 

Professor Lakoff uses the term ‘progressive’ freely. Now there is a framing metaphor if ever there was one. What person of goodwill could possibly be against progress, that is to say betterment of the human condition? So if you are a person in favour of progress – in short, a progressive – only the malevolent could disagree with you.

However, there is a rather large question begged here, namely ‘What is progress?’ There is rarely gain without loss, and loss can easily exceed gain. Human action has unintended and unforeseen consequences, sometimes beneficial, often not. Progress in society is not the same as progress in internet speeds… It is possible for reasonable people to disagree… Yet Professor Lakoff seems to use the term ‘progressive’ as if those he calls progressives brought about progress ex officio, as it were, merely by virtue of their self-designation. This is a form of magical thinking.

I’m reminded of the modesty of Mr George Monbiot, a man who also deploys the word ‘progressive’ as if it were a talisman, and who dismisses his political opponents as dullards struggling with “low intelligence” and racial phobias. 

BenSix on learning to be mute and befuddled: 

These posters and drawing hardly seem to be the stuff of Voltairian pamphlets. They do not renew the liberal flames in me. What should inspire one, though, is the response to them. It is alarming that our national media feels that it cannot publish a drawing of a cartoon man for fear of violent reprisals. If people are scared to show innocuous cartoons, how might they react to a novel that may provoke controversy, or to academic research that might inspire outrage? …If, indeed, Rory Bremner is scared to joke, or Grayson Perry to make art, how many commentators, novelists and scholars have allowed their thoughts to be repressed?

And Jonah Goldberg on hammers, sickles and not saying certain things: 

In its opening video for the Olympic Games, NBC’s producers drained the thesaurus of flattering terms devoid of moral content: “The empire that ascended to affirm a colossal footprint; the revolution that birthed one of modern history’s pivotal experiments. But if politics has long shaped our sense of who they are, it’s passion that endures.” To parse this infomercial treacle is to miss the point, for the whole idea is to luge by the truth on the frictionless skids of euphemism.

As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments.

Nipple fortune telling, or “areola reading.” // Probe your colon with PillCam. // Cookbook of note. (h/t, Kurt) // A squirrel attempts to hide a nut in the fur of a Bernese mountain dog. // The Bond villain lair you’ve always wanted. // B-movie titles we have known and loved. // Boy quite chuffed with $60 robot hand. // This is what £197 billion worth of gold looks like. (h/t, drb) // A mouth’s-eye view of kissing. // More animal portraits. // Painted. // Unorthodox door. // Sunrise in Chicago. (h/t, Coudal) // Spectacles in New York. // Walking City. // Photographed cities. // “The taste certainly gets richer with age.” (h/t, Ace) // At last, a nocturnal toilet landing light. // And finally, Tainted Love, the floppy disc drive remix. 

Further to the saga of the underpants statue and the subsequent swooning of Wellesley College’s liberated ladies, Fred Reed has more evidence of feminist fortitude: 

It seems that at Columbia University a rat pack of nursery feminists have got their skivvies in a knot because the library, Butler, is named for an, ugh!, man. Yes. It cannot be denied. In protest, these girls, apparently having nothing more important to do, have filmed “feminist pornography” in the library.

Indeed they have. It’s a “guerrilla action” response to “gender tension” and “male-centricity.” And “of course, it is a feminist statement.”  

Anyway, one of these drab libertines, a Sara Grace Powell, says, “Butler is an extremely charged space – the names emblazoned on the stone facade are, for me, a stimulant for resistance.” A stimulant to grow up might be more to the point. She means “stimulus,” of course, but why would a child at an Ivy university be expected to know English? To an extent I have to sympathise with Sara. I grant that seeing a horrible male name “emblazoned” would send me into a decline also. Wouldn’t it you? Never mind that if the man thus emblazoned had not made the money to donate the library, Sara wouldn’t have one in which to make pornography, presumably the purpose of libraries. 

As some readers may be intrigued by the notion of all-female feminist pornography, here’s a brief description:

It begins with a group of girls sitting around a library table taking their shirts off. As the film progresses, the girls engage in activities including kissing, rubbing eggs on their bodies and twerking around a chicken carcass.

The finished political opus, starring the aforementioned Ms Powell and titled Initiation, also features the somewhat lacklustre use of a riding crop, extended scenes of floor-wiping and what feels like an eternity of general aimlessness. It can be savoured at length here. Those hoping for red-blooded boi-oing fuel may, however, be disappointed. One of the film’s makers, Coco Young, has stressed the intent to transgress rather than titillate:

She was happy to see one commenter note that it was “hard to masturbate to this.” After all, the girls aimed to “create a repulsion”; there were naked women onscreen, but “they’re not there to make you sexually aroused.”

Despite dashed hopes and the sheer radicalness of it all, I trust readers will somehow get over it and get on with their lives. 

Woven strips of film by South Korean photographer Seung Hoon Park. 

Above: Textus #034-1, Hong Kong. 24” x 30”, 2011. More at Colossal.

Two hot air balloons and a tightrope. What could possibly go wrong? 

Filmed by Sébastien Montaz-Rosset, the chap who made this. 

Via dicentra, Kevin D Williamson on the many heads of modern feminism: 

Feminism is not an idea or a collection of ideas but a collection of appetites wriggling queasily together like a bag of snakes… A useful definition is this: “Feminism is the words ‘I Want!’ in the mouths of three or more women, provided they’re the right kind of women.” Feminism must therefore accommodate wildly incompatible propositions – e.g., (1) Women unquestionably belong alongside men in Marine units fighting pitched battles in Tora Bora, but (2) really should not be expected to be able to perform three chin-ups. Or: (1) Women at Columbia are empowered by pornography, but (2) women at Wellesley are victimised by a statue of a man sleepwalking in his Shenanigans. And then there is Fluke’s Law: (1) Women are responsible moral agents with full sexual and economic autonomy who (2) must be given an allowance, like children, when it comes to contraceptives.

Walter Russell Mead on how to ruin your life: 

Enrol in a college you can’t afford. Take really easy, fun courses [e.g., Politicizing Beyoncé, or The Sociology of Hip-Hop: The Theodicy of Jay-Z]. Don’t worry about marketable skills. Blame society for the consequences (unemployment) of your attitude problem. Then demand the government (or your parents) bail you out. We guarantee you all the misery you could ever want.

Robert Stacy McCain argues with a middle-class communist: 

The extreme egoism of communist leaders is a trait displayed throughout the history of the movement since Marx’s ridiculous insistence that only his socialism was “scientific.” Yet such is Jesse Myerson’s egoism that he imagines himself superior even to Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin. At least they had the integrity to admit that the abolition of private property — the expropriation of the bourgeoisie — could only be accomplished by violent revolution, and that the victors of such a revolution would have to employ the methods of violent terror to establish their dictatorship.

And Daniel Hannan on the politics of spite:  

Ponder the graph above. Sixty-nine per cent of Labour supporters would want a top rate tax of 50 per cent even if it brought in no money… This is a blog about the mind-set of people who see taxation, not as an unpleasant necessity, but as a way to punish others.

As we’ve seen here many times, some Labour supporters are quite happy to parade their vindictiveness as if it were virtue. 

Feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments. 

Impressive cocks. // When couples go shopping, the menfolk tire first. (h/t, TDK) // With pencil and acrylic. // Casting shadows. // At last, pentagonal fruit. // But it’s what transformers do. // The same, on a budget. // A brief history of drum machines. And a book too. // Atomic pills. // Pondering pop culture, 1984. // Testing with noise. // Designer fire-making kit. // The Russian cheese label museum. (h/t, Coudal) // Logan’s Run street game. “Brief periods of running, wear comfortable shoes.” // I want one and so do you. // And finally, students suffer “apprehension, fear and triggering” because of underpants statue. It’s “assaulting,” a source of “undue stress” and making students “feel unsafe.”