At dusk, after a winter storm, 2004.

Photographed by Stefan Tarzan. 

Armed with a “bounty fund” of over £9000, George Monbiot has been urging Guardian readers to effect a citizen’s arrest of Tony Blair, ostensibly for committing “an illegal act of mass murder” and “crimes against peace.” (Mercifully, this bounty doesn’t extend to parliament or a sizeable part of the British electorate.) Monbiot’s campaign website includes the former prime minister’s public schedule and a charmingly ambiguous assurance:

The fund will remain open for as long as Mr Blair lives, or until he is officially prosecuted.

The proposal met with much whooping and hooting among Guardian readers, with more than a few enthusiastic endorsements:  

I would actually like Blair’s blood on my hands.

Elsewhere, saner voices have noted some procedural concerns.

Blair hasn’t been found guilty of anything by any court, tribunal or other competent forum unless you count the High Court of Islington (Chattering Class Division).

And,

Amusingly, if someone did act in this way as a result of Monbiot’s urgings, Monbiot would also be liable, as he would have procured the wrong and the wrongdoer’s actions would also be attributed to him. I would suggest, as well, that his employer, the Guardian, would be vicariously liable for Monbiot’s wrongdoing.

Readers may recall George’s earlier attempt to arrest former US ambassador John Bolton, which didn’t go terribly well. I perhaps don’t need to add that some of us were hoping to see Mr Bolton decking Monbiot personally, quite firmly, and maybe more than once.

Shatner does Poe in terracotta face paint. Bewildering make-up aside, The Raven does lend itself to being Shatnered. Recorded for Hallowe’en, 1983.

Want hardcore Shatner? Of course you do. Via Nerdcore. 

Owls in flight. // Cheese or font? A game for all the family. // Fabric in a can. // Shockwave cannon. // The Hulc exoskeleton. // Steampunk Gameboy. // The clever bottlenose. // Bear versus cat. // Mouse versus leopard. // Nun versus shark. // On the Sherlock Holmes title sequence. // Little Italy, circa 1900. // Bacon beer. (h/t, Mr Eugenides) // Brain slug cupcakes. // Tibetan sky burials. (h/t, MeFi) // A tree house for the kids. // The redefinition of greed. // The mysteries of pinball. // Utah panoramas. // Porn for the blind. (audio nsfw)

Some rather fetching spiders photographed by Thomas Shahan.

Above: The anterior median eyes of an adult female Paraphidippus aurantius, seen here enjoying lunch.

Heaven’s Gate, oil on canvas, by Paco Pomet. Via MetaFilter.

I’ve previously noted an air of default entitlement among the UK’s arts practitioners and commentariat, but for those in need of further illustration here’s the Guardian’s Laura Barnett, alerting us to another crushing injustice.

Right now, the economic climate for artists in this country looks particularly bleak… Unlike some European and Scandinavian countries, the British government makes no specific social provision for artists,

Oh, say it isn’t so.

unless through the publicly funded regional arts councils.

Ah. So the government does in fact make special provision for artists. To the tune of almost half a billion a year. And as we know, arts councils can be counted on to spend your money wisely for the betterment of mankind.

In Denmark, for instance, 275 artists are granted an annual stipend of between 15,000 and 149,000 Danish krone (£1,750 to £17,000) every year for the rest of their lives.

Readers will no doubt recall the Danish artist Bettina Camilla Vestergaard, whose benefactors include the Danish Arts Council, the Arts Grants Committee Sweden, the Danish Ministry of Culture and the Cultural Council of Aarhus. Ms Vestergaard used her government stipend to spend six months in Los Angeles pondering “identity and gender” and working on an “intervention in public space”:

My first three months primarily consisted of passing time in residential Hollywood, sitting alone in my car, shopping and getting fuel.

The results of Ms Vestergaard’s lengthy, publicly subsidised musings can be appreciated more fully here. 

But in this country, for artists without a lucky early break, rich parents or benefactors, a day job is often the only way to survive. […] What a day job inevitably means, of course, is spending the majority of your waking hours not doing the thing you love: making art.

It’s an outrage, I tell you. Thankfully, some businesses are sensitive to the arts community and its special needs.

For the last four years, [actor, Lainy] Scott has been working at RSVP, a call centre in east London that employs only artists, taking calls for Which? magazine and WeightWatchers. Shifts are available in the day, evening, or at weekends, allowing artists to plan their work around shows, rehearsals or auditions.

Some comfort, then. However,

“There are people who get very bogged down by having to do non-acting stuff,” Scott says.

Update: An artistic Guardianista adds,

When I left college in the early 80s after finishing my Fine Art degree, I went and lived in Holland for 6 months as some artist friends of ours had been allowed to live in an old disused warehouse by Leiden council. They had electricity paid and were allowed to claim the equivalent of the dole to just be artists. We put on experimental theatre, lived and worked in the same place… This was an investment in the economy… Why have artists take up jobs that people rely on in a time of recession. Why not allow them to claim benefit but not have to job search?

“Just to be artists.” Oh, I like that. And don’t dismiss all that experimental theatre, which is after all an investment in the economy. Taxpayers can’t get enough experimental theatre.

I know you’re above such things, obviously, but you may know someone for whom this may be helpful.

Here’s a thing.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has accused the United States of causing the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti, which killed possibly 200,000 people. Chavez believes the U.S. was testing a tectonic weapon to produce eco-type devastations.

Blimey. One wonders how this revelation will go down among the Great Man’s admirers here in the UK.

But I’m confused. I thought only “The Jews” had such diabolical technology. As revealed in December 2007 when Hamas MP Ahmad Abu Halabiya informed Al-Aqsa TV that,

It is not impossible for the Jews to generate an artificial earthquake… in order to accomplish their goal of destroying the foundations of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Needless to say, The Guild of Evil™ has been conducting research of its own with this mobile apparatus.

Update: Not what it seems, it seems.

Meat hand. // Double jeopardy. // Cute things falling asleep. // First, position your molecules. // Photo manipulation of yore. // Murphy’s Law calculator. // Places you cannot go. // A pleasing sofa. // Thumbthing. // I’d like my ice in a sphere, please. // At last, a space cannon. // Professor Alexander’s botanical vasculum. // Blown metal. // Build your own working phaser. // Shatner meets Winkler, feelings ensue. // A radical breakthrough in the world of rock. // Tourism in Croatia. // Power plant time lapse. // Japanese jetpack.