Real-time face substitution by Arturo Castro. Wait for Mr Jackson.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. (And previously.) // A history of invisible ink. // Manhattan in marble. (h/t, dicentra) // The Musée Dupuytren at the University of Paris medical school. // Video game in a box. // The single molecule motor. // The morality of profit. // “There are no Z-rays.” // Cube house. // Walrus chair. // Test your colour vision. (h/t, MeFi) // Falling, falling. // Awful commutes. // Chipmunk adventures. // Clothes on film. // Fun with Sellotape. // The internet, then and now. (h/t, Jen) // Root bridges. // Bottle-opening sunglasses. // Apparently Batmanning is the new planking. // And the self-explanatory beards from below.

Being as it is the very yardstick of hip and edgy, the Guardian is once again defending criminality and antisocial behaviour. A few weeks ago, it was academic radical Alexander Vasudevan and his enthusiasm for the “seizure and reclamation” of other people’s belongings as “a potent symbol of protest.” Shortly before that, we had Sam Allen telling us that not being agreed with and obeyed amounts to being “silenced,” and that her associates “will act in a way that will ensure they will be heard.” Specifically, by setting fire to Tesco stores and terrifying their neighbours with all-night rioting, and then threatening to do it again unless their demands are met. Such are the privileges of fighting for “social justice.” 

Today, Lanre Bakare, recipient of a Scott Trust bursary, is applauding graffiti and its “rising popularity”:

Now graffiti’s more outspoken critics are being drowned out again by fans and supporters, such as academics at the University of Bristol, who want to see Banksy’s work receive listed status… The critics of graffiti and street art will keep saying they have no artistic merit and should be marginalised, not publicly funded. If Banksy’s pieces do get listed status the debate will be opened up again.

Actually, the strongest objections to graffiti generally hinge not on aesthetics, but on a more prosaic detail. Defacing and damaging someone else’s property – just because you can – simply isn’t cool, dude. “Street art” rarely suggests great artistry – more typically the impression given is of territorial scent marking and a kind of moral autism. A belief that something you’d find insulting and aggravating if done to you and your belongings can nonetheless be done to others because… well, because you’re so amazingly radical and important.

The millionaire “anti-capitalist” Banksy would have us believe that “crime against property is not real crime,” though residents and business owners whose property has been defaced and who’ve been left with the cost of cleaning and repair may take a rather different, less sophisticated view. Especially given that such crime tends to affect people who earn considerably less than Banksy. Lest we forget, graffiti, like broken windows, can act as a signal to other vandals and predators. And the residents of graffiti-blighted neighbourhoods, which can subsequently become blighted by other forms of crime, may find little comfort in the notion that their own taxes could soon be funding and legitimising more of the same.

You heard me.

Utah jazz ensemble The New Hot 5 performs for a herd of cows in Autrans, France.

John Rosenberg on when cartoon narcissism becomes a job for life:

The time is fast approaching (if it is not already here) when a student can be admitted to a selective university largely on the basis of his or her racial or ethnic identity; major in his or her identity; go to graduate school (also aided by preferential admissions) and get a PhD in his or her identity; and have an entire academic career based on professing his or her identity, perhaps rewarded at some point with elevation to a vice presidency in charge of “diversity and inclusion” to oversee the management and expansion of university-wide programmes based on racial and ethnic identity.

Charlotte Allen on the hardships and heroism of a Women’s Studies professor: 

Lynn Comella’s research and teaching interests include media and popular culture, gender and consumer culture, sexuality studies, and ethnographic research. She is presently at work on a book project that explores the history and retail culture of women-owned sex toy stores in the United States.

Christopher Hitchens on excusing evil:

The proper task of the “public intellectual” might be conceived as the responsibility to introduce complexity into the argument: the reminder that things are very infrequently as simple as they can be made to seem. But what I learned in a highly indelible manner from the events and arguments of September 2001 was this: Never, ever ignore the obvious either. To the government and most of the people of the United States, it seemed that the country on 9/11 had been attacked in a particularly odious way (air piracy used to maximise civilian casualties) by a particularly odious group (a secretive and homicidal gang: part multinational corporation, part crime family) that was sworn to a medieval cult of death, a racist hatred of Jews, a religious frenzy against Hindus, Christians, Shia Muslims, and “unbelievers,” and the restoration of a long-vanished and despotic empire. […]

That this was an assault upon our society, whatever its ostensible capitalist and militarist “targets,” was again thought too obvious a point for a clever person to make. It became increasingly obvious, though, with every successive nihilistic attack on London, Madrid, Istanbul, Baghdad, and Bali. There was always some “intellectual,” however, to argue in each case that the policy of Tony Blair, or George Bush, or the Spanish government, was the “root cause” of the broad-daylight slaughter of civilians. Responsibility, somehow, never lay squarely with the perpetrators.

Attempts to be unobvious and therefore sophisticated – even at the cost of distortion and absurdity – are, for some, a regular indulgence. Not least among academics of a certain stripe.

And Guido Fawkes reminds us of the BBC’s Question Time programme that aired two days after the September 11 atrocities. Readers who saw that particular broadcast may, like me, have begun to register some now common themes. I’m not referring to the remarkable number of Guardianistas in the studio audience, which is pretty much a given, or the unhinged anti-American sentiment. What struck me at the time – for the first time – was the composition of the panel, which took the shape of one distressed American ambassador – being continually interrupted and jeered – and three prominent left-wingers. As human dust was still settling on Manhattan, our scrupulously impartial state broadcaster shared with the nation the full spectrum of political thought – from left to further left, with a token visiting dissenter as a fig leaf to “balance.” The BBC’s flagship political debate programme is currently edited by Nicolai Gentchev, previously an editor of Radio 4’s Today and a former contributor to such lofty publications as the International Socialism Journal and Socialist Review. Noting the political composition of Question Time panels has in recent years become an armchair sport.

As usual, feel free to add your own.

Your host is off in search of blogging mojo. By all means dull the pain by browsing the updated greatest hits. 

Its intrigues include a brief guide to leftist psychology, a vivid demonstration of pretentious guilt, and a glimpse at what happens when presumption and callousness become badges of feminist virtue. On a loftier note, the arts coverage may be of interest. And there’s plenty to entertain readers who find the comment pages of the Guardian inadvertently hilarious and morally bewildering.

Back in a few days.

For when there’s a fire in a girls’ college dormitory. // Bubbles + ferrofluid + magnetism. // A sonar glove for blind people. // Government plus booze machines, what could possibly go wrong? (h/t, The Thin Man) // For surfers who don’t like getting wet. // Porcelain flowers. // Vespa sculptures. // Post-it note warfare. // The Phil Collins weather report. // Now that’s a cloud. // Additional digits. // A chart of time spent using Tupperware. // Cockatoo versus laser pointer. // Postmodern pizza. // National parks, seen from space. // Superheroes over 40. // And it’s probably best not to buy your electronic goods in a McDonald’s car park.

Readers may recall the comical Marxist Bea Campbell and her urge to see the population being enlisted by an egalitarian state, in which “emancipating governance” would be based, rather curiously, on greater state control. Ms Campbell’s other convictions include a belief that Erich Honecker was more “progressive” than David Cameron, and that families and civil society are, everywhere, “riven by power, patriarchy, conflict and the unequal distribution of resources and respect.” To which, less than seriously, I added:

It isn’t clear how one might ensure that “respect” is distributed in an egalitarian fashion. Perhaps the same approach could be applied to other inequities in life – fashion sense, talent or the possession of pleasing features.

Well. Here’s a lesson for us all. Don’t joke about these things.

Herb Deutsch steers us to the New York Times, where Professor Daniel S. Hamermesh has unearthed a shocking truth:

Being good-looking is useful in so many ways. In addition to whatever personal pleasure it gives you, being attractive also helps you earn more money, find a higher-earning spouse… and get better deals on mortgages.

Naturally, he asks:

How could we remedy this injustice?

A “radical solution” is proposed, albeit of a kind that crops up remarkably often:

Why not offer legal protections to the ugly, as we do with racial, ethnic and religious minorities, women and handicapped individuals? We actually already do offer such protections in a few places, including in some jurisdictions in California, and in the District of Columbia, where discriminatory treatment based on looks in hiring, promotions, housing and other areas is prohibited… We could even have affirmative-action programmes for the ugly.

Good luck marketing that. “Excuse me, madam. Has anyone told you that you bear a striking resemblance to a fire-damaged troll and may have special needs? Step this way…” Oh, come on. Who wouldn’t want to be regarded as officially ugly? Imagine the compensation claims by failed, overweight actors with dodgy teeth, and leather-faced strippers with asymmetrical breasts. Perhaps we should all apply for a job as the new face of Cosmetics Company X, then cry discrimination and threaten law suits when politely shown the door. It could be a lucrative hustle. And what about the short, the overly tall, the inarticulate or the shy? Do we draw a line somewhere, or do we go on indefinitely, compensating all possible categories of human imperfection?

Heather Mac Donald on a company filling the knowledge gaps left by modern academia:

The company offers a treasure trove of traditional academic content that undergraduates paying $50,000 a year may find nowhere on their Club Med–like campuses. This past academic year, for example, a Bowdoin College student interested in American history courses could have taken Black Women in Atlantic New Orleans, Women in American History, 1600–1900, or Lawn Boy Meets Valley Girl: Gender and the Suburbs, but if he wanted a course in American political history, the colonial and revolutionary periods, or the Civil War, he would have been out of luck. A Great Courses customer, by contrast, can choose from a cornucopia of American history not yet divvied up into the fiefdoms of race, gender, and sexual orientation, with multiple offerings in the American Revolution, the constitutional period, the Civil War, the Bill of Rights, and the intellectual influences on the country’s founding. There are lessons here for the academy, if it will only pay them heed. […]

So totalitarian is the contemporary university that professors have written to Tom Rollins [founder of Great Courses], complaining that his courses are too canonical in content and do not include enough of the requisite “silenced” voices. It is not enough, apparently, that identity politics dominate college humanities departments; they must also rule outside the academy. Of course, outside the academy, theory encounters a little something called the marketplace, where it turns out that courses like Queering the Alamo, say, can’t compete with Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition.

At which point, readers may wish to revisit the mighty works of Duke’s Professor Pete Sigal – among them, Ethnopornography: Sexuality, Colonialism and Anthropological Knowing and Transsexuality and the Floating Phallus.

Via Jeff and not entirely unrelated, Jack Cashill on the Obamas:

Scarier than Obama’s style, however, is his thinking. A neophyte race-hustler after his three years in Chicago, Obama is keen to browbeat those who would “even insinuate” that affirmative action rewards the undeserving, results in inappropriate job placements, or stigmatises its presumed beneficiaries.

In the case of Michelle Obama, affirmative action did all three. The partners at Sidley Austin learned this the hard way. In 1988, they hired her out of Harvard Law under the impression that the degree meant something. It did not. By 1991, Michelle was working in the public sector as an assistant to the mayor. By 1993, she had given up her law license. Had the partners investigated Michelle’s background, they would have foreseen the disaster to come. Sympathetic biographer Liza Mundy writes, “Michelle frequently deplores the modern reliance on test scores, describing herself as a person who did not test well.” She did not write well, either. Mundy charitably describes her senior thesis at Princeton as “dense and turgid.” The less charitable Christopher Hitchens observes, “To describe [the thesis] as hard to read would be a mistake; the thesis cannot be ‘read’ at all, in the strict sense of the verb. This is because it wasn’t written in any known language.” 

Mrs Obama’s exercise in eye-watering narcissism can be puzzled over here.

Also vaguely related: I’ve been listening to Radio 4’s rural soap The Archers, in which teen eco-warrior and grand enunciator Pip has just received her A-level results – “a B and two Cs.” She is therefore, naturally, going to university.

By all means add your own.