With chessboxing in mind, here’s a thing. If Bruce Lee played table tennis.

(h/t, Mick Hartley) 

Chinese calligrapher Wu Xubin takes an unconventional approach to his art. He uses his nose as a brush. 

Zhang Huan prefers to use his face as a canvas.

Unfortunately ambiguous Christmas decoration. // How to make silver bullets. // Melting steel with sunlight. // “When can I destroy humanity?!” // Magnetic air cars. // Strangely redundant exercise machine. // Plantbot. // Fridgehenge. A thing of beauty. // A history of chili. // Cunning penguin escapes being dinner. // PES: Moth. // Saturn’s northern aurora. // Space station spider’s whereabouts unknown. // More reconstituted Star Trek. // Eyelash bling. More. // Hug your bosons. // Visual thesaurus. // Meat water. // And, via The Thin Man, it’s the Vince Guaraldi Trio. Oh, good grief.

Via TDK, more attitude management for unsuspecting students:

Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, has hired six students whose jobs as “dialogue facilitators” will involve intervening in conversations among students in dining halls and common rooms to encourage discussion of such social justice issues as race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ability and social class.

Apparently it’s inconceivable that any right-thinking young person could tire of discussing “social justice” – a term that, as so often, remains oddly undefined yet drips with tendentious implications.

“If there’s a teachable moment, we’ll take it,” said assistant dean of student affairs Arig Girgrah, who runs the program. “A lot of community building happens around food and dining.” She gave the example of a conversation about a gay character on television as a good example of such a moment. “It is all about creating opportunities to dialogue and reflect on issues of social identity,” Ms. Girgrah said. “This is not about preaching. It’s not about advice giving. It’s about hearing where students are at.”

Oh sweet lord. Hand me the explosives.

Like dons, who serve as student authorities in residence, the six facilitators will receive full room and board and a stipend for the full-year commitment, and will receive regular training.

But of course. Correcting political waywardness is the work of heroes, after all.

“We are trained to interrupt behaviour in a non-blameful and non-judgmental manner, so it’s not like we’re pulling someone aside and reprimanding them about their behaviour. It is honestly trying to get to the root of what they’re trying to say – seeing if that can be said in a different manner.”

On what basis do these “dialogue facilitators” presume they have any business policing the private discussions of others, even during lunch breaks, and steering students towards politically modish terminology and opinions? And however coy the language, that is what’s being attempted. Just pause to consider the monumental arrogance and vanity at work. Bask in its glow. Will it, I wonder, occur to such people that their own behaviour and assumptions are intrusive and condescending? Will they dare to be surprised if their presumption meets with emphatic resistance and, one hopes, an occasional fit of violence?

Update: Temerity Revisited.

BibliOdyssey has a brief history of board games spanning five centuries. 

“For the instruction and amusement of youth.” Via Coudal.

In 2005, Karen Armstrong told Guardian readers what many would like to believe:

Sadly, we have passed our anti-Semitism to the Muslim world. Until the 20th century, anti-Semitism was not part of Islamic culture.

In the same article, she asked:

Why should [Muslims] be impressed by our liberal culture when we persistently cultivate an inaccurate image of Islam that has its roots in the medieval prejudice of the crusaders?

There’s a comical irony here and no small amount of chutzpah, as Armstrong’s own accounts are almost always sanitised, prejudicial and inaccurate, often egregiously so. I’ve highlighted some of her more fanciful distortions elsewhere, so I’ll merely note how eagerly this “provocative and inclusive thinker” steers her readers towards the customary hand-wringing and pretentious guilt.

A much more serious account of Islamic anti-Semitism and its theological roots can be found in Andrew Bostom’s excellent three-part essay linked below. Bostom positions the phenomenon within the broader context of jihad and refutes in detail a number of prevalent fictions – among them, the claim that Islamic anti-Jewish animus began with the creation of Israel and the importing of Nazi sentiment in the mid 20th century: 

A miracle breakthrough in bite counting technology. Behold the Nitto Kagaku Corporation’s Kami Kami Sensor, an electronic facial harness that counts the number of biting motions and beeps when satisfied, thus ensuring food is chewed with utmost efficiency. 

The Kami Kami Sensor retails for a trifling $188.95 and can be purchased here by all sadistic parents.

In a recent post on the neglected fallout of affirmative action, I wrote:

The justifications for PC racial discrimination have never been entirely convincing or morally palatable. Treating people not as individuals but as generic representatives of some designated victim group is condescending and unfair, and seems likely to perpetuate racial hang-ups and give license to opportunist role-play.

Stephen Hicks outlines some common arguments on the subject and notes their essential distinctions:

The argument for racial affirmative action usually begins by observing that blacks as a group suffered severe oppression at the hands of whites as a group. Since that was unjust, obviously, and since it is a principle of justice that whenever one party harms another, the harmed party is owed compensation by the harming party, we can make the argument that whites as a group owe compensation to blacks as a group. Those opposed to affirmative action will respond by arguing that the proposed “compensation” is unjust to the current generation. Affirmative action would make an individual of the current generation, a white who never owned slaves, compensate a black who never was a slave.

And so what we have here, on both sides of the arguments, are two pairs of competing principles. One pair is highlighted by the following question: Should we treat individuals as members of a group or should we treat them as individuals? Do we talk about blacks as a group versus whites as a group? Or do we look at the individuals who are involved? Advocates of affirmative action argue that individual blacks and whites should be treated as members of the racial groups to which they belong, while opponents of affirmative action argue that we should treat individuals, whether black or white, as individuals regardless of the colour of their skin. In short, we have the conflict between collectivism and individualism. […]

This seems a good point to ask which of the above sounds less bigoted and insulting. Less racist, if you will.

Advocates of affirmative action rely upon a principle of social determinism that says, “This generation’s status is a result of what occurred in the previous generation; its members are constructed by that previous generation’s circumstances.” The other side of the argument emphasizes individual volition: individuals have the power to choose which social influences they will accept. The second pair of competing principles follows: Do individuals most need to be made equal in assets and opportunities, or do they most need liberty to make of their lives what they will?

Some peddlers of grievance, among them Shakti Butler, Joseph Harker and Peggy McIntosh, have redefined racism as “prejudice + power” and argue that racism is something only members of the “dominant group” can indulge in. The “dominant group” is, of course, understood to be Caucasian, though one might wonder how this addresses overtly racist assaults committed by people with dark skin or the realities of power in other parts of the world – Zimbabwe, for instance. The formulation of “prejudice + power” is, it seems to me, disingenuous and absurd, and wilfully so. Consider, for instance, the following personal experience:

Variety magazine recently announced the next project by former Marvel supremo Stan Lee: a cable TV drama about the travails of a gay superhero. As yet untitled, the hour-long programme is based on the novel Hero by Perry Moore, in which a novice crime fighter must contend with parental expectations, serial killers and his own sexual identity. Bearing in mind Lee’s previous efforts include the hypnotically awful reality show Who Wants to Be a Superhero?, expectations are no doubt high.

Homosexuality as a comic book plot device is hardly new, of course. Michael Chabon’s novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, published in 2000, incorporated gay themes and symbolism, and, in September 2002, DC’s Green Lantern series swapped the familiar space opera for unrequited lust and a case of earthbound queer bashing. Given the superhero’s universe has always been populated by dashing young men with improbable physiques and vacuum-tight costumes, one might consider such storylines a little overdue. What seems surprising isn’t the exploration of homosexuality as a prominent narrative, but the fact that such stories took so long to surface in a mainstream comic. Although comic book creators have on the whole remained silent on the subject, the fetishistic symbolism of the costumed hero has long been registered elsewhere.

In 1954, New York psychiatrist Dr Fredric Wertham published Seduction of the Innocent, an apocalyptic assertion that comic books were morally corrosive to impressionable young minds and the primary cause of juvenile delinquency. Hysterical in tone and often bizarre, the book claimed comic publishers were using the medium to teach children how to steal, enabling them to buy more comics. Wertham famously suggested that Batman and Robin were obviously having a homosexual relationship and were therefore in need of “readjustment therapy”. Wertham also developed elaborate theories regarding Wonder Woman and her equally obvious leanings toward bondage and lesbianism. At the time, few people thought to comment on the good doctor’s apparent conviction that comic book heroes were somehow not only real, but also having paranormal sex lives beyond the printed page.

Interactive mirror. // Flea circus contraptions. // If Photoshop were real. // Bacon apple pie. (h/t, Maggie’s Farm) // The healing power of bacon. (h/t, Franklin) // Bioluminescent shrimp spit. // Must wash hands. // Sleeveface. (h/t, Peter Risdon) // Your very own levitation wand. // Sarugaku, Tokyo’s micro shopping mall. // Amusement parks of North Korea: “The Wheel of Death is notorious for ejecting riders.” (h/t, Coudal) // Michael Portillo on Ayn Rand. // Theodore Dalrymple on social pathology. 2, 3, 4, 5. // Google Earth: Ancient Rome. // Early Star Wars storyboards. // Zoom into distant galaxies. // Tales to Astonish. Monsters, heroes, strange goings-on. // Second Watchmen trailer*. // Handsome spiders. // Alan King: Survived by his Wife. (1987) (h/t, Cookslaw) // And, via The Thin Man, it’s Mr Elvis Aaron Presley. 

*Update: