I have to catch up with some reading today, but the following items caught my attention.

Firstly, the “anti-Sarkozy” riots in Lyon, Toulouse, Caen and Paris. Official figures suggest 730 cars were set ablaze by violent demonstrators. A school was set on fire in the Parisian suburb of Evry and an attempt was made to burn down Sarkozy’s local party office. Bottles, stones and, in one instance, acid were thrown at police. Yesterday, 593 people had been reported as arrested and 78 police officers reported injured. Apparently, “slogans spray-painted on the streets of Paris overnight included ‘Sarkozy = Fascist.’” There is, of course, an irony here. As Protein Wisdom noted, one can only marvel at how a democratically elected politician is denounced as “brutal” and a “fascist”, while arson, random property destruction and homicidal thuggery is imagined by some to be “justifiable” and “demanding [the] qualified and critical support” of Guardian readers.

In lighter news, the ludicrous Karen Armstrong has had her platitudes debunked in the National Review of all places. Raymond Ibrahim is “baffled” by Armstrong’s “discrepancies”, along with her “second-rate sophistry”, “false statements” and “distortions.” Unfortunately, Armstrong is still encouraged to peddle her fictions elsewhere. More on Armstrong here.

Back tomorrow. Feel free to roam the archives and browse the Greatest Hits.

Readers will be relieved to hear that a green think tank, the Optimum Population Trust, has identified a solution to a new and pressing environmental menace, namely human reproduction. An OPT briefing paper, A Population-Based Climate Strategy, argues that couples having two children instead of three would reduce that family’s carbon dioxide output by the “equivalent of 620 return flights a year between London and New York.” The OPT regards population growth as a “failure of courage and leadership” and mulls, albeit hesitantly, on the need for “intervention by the state… in individual freedoms for the foreseeable future.” OPT co-chairman, Professor John Guillebaud, claims:

“The effect on the planet of having one child less is an order of magnitude greater than all these other things we might do, such as switching off lights. An extra child is the equivalent of a lot of flights across the planet… The decision to have children should be seen as a very big one and one that should take the environment into account… The greatest thing anyone in Britain could do to help the future of the planet would be to have one less child.”

It’s easy, of course, to dismiss Professor Guillebaud’s suggestions as a kind of whimsical fascism and not entirely convincing. But regular readers will note how the Professor’s moral calculus is more or less in keeping with that of fellow environmental crusader, Dr John Reid (mentioned here), whose plan to save the world from human beings entails putting “something in the water” – specifically, “a virus that would… make a substantial proportion of the population infertile.” And while the good doctor is happy to share his view of all human life as an extraneous infestation of an otherwise pristine Earth, he’s also insistent that “affluent populations should be targeted first.” Cynics among us might wonder, with some justification, whether Dr Reid and Professor Guillebaud are motivated by an urge to save the planet or by a dislike of human beings.

Meanwhile, Carnal Reason ponders the prospect of “child offset opportunities” and suggests, dryly, that we might pursue this line of eco-logic to its obvious and challenging conclusion:

“We need to consider root causes here. Take the bull by the horn, as it were. If one less child is good, then two less is better, and no children at all is best. But there are obstacles. We will have a problem living the dream, a world devoid of humans, as long as screwing is more popular than dying. What we need is a radical change of thought and lifestyle. A new ethic, a new way of life. A new sexual revolution. You know what I’m talking about. Just think of it as Getting Gay for Gaia. It takes a real man to take one for the home world. You know what you have to do.”

Update: In related news (via Jawa), unhinged ‘conservationist’ Paul Watson describes humanity as a cancer. Vegan diets are good, we’re told, but “curing the biosphere of the human virus will require a radical and invasive approach.”

“Gigantic Wireless Robots Will Fight Our Battles.” (1934) // USB hub with self-destruct button. “Mother! Turn the cooling unit back on…!” // Via Ace, the greatest car chases in movie history. With clips and voting. // SU-30 jet with thrust vectoring technology. Extraordinary moves. Pink smoke optional. // Stealth ships. Hull designs reduce drag, look imposing. More here. // Spider bite induces crippling pain, embarrassing stiffness. // New Scientist probes erectile dysfunction with mechanical engineering. “Mathematical models predict when penises will fail.” Experiments detect “first sign of buckling.” // New volcanoes erupt on Io. Plumes extend hundreds of kilometres into space. // The Carina Nebula. 3700 light years away. More here. // “If I can just focus the Sun’s rays…” (H/T, Dr Westerhaus.) // Same idea, with super-villain in charge. // Via Ace: Show jumping. With rabbits. // Iranian government bans Western haircuts and hair gel as “immoral.” // Jihadists bomb stations in Bangladesh. More attacks threatened if Muhammad not declared “superman of the world.” // When post-it notes attack (2). // Chunky Swatch wrist device, with mp3 player, video recorder and photo album. Also a watch. // Steven Poole mistakes opacity for cleverness, calls people who disagree “reactionary anti-intellectuals.” Ironies ensue. Ophelia kicks his ass. Twice. // And finally, the Chordettes. Sand, magic beams, hair like Liberace. Every girl’s dream.

Here’s Guillaume Reymond’s stop-motion short, Space Invaders. Retro fun, made with 4 hours of film and 67 soft, puny humans.

More details here and here. If nostalgic urges have been aroused, the actual game can be played here.

I see there’s been an impressive swelling of traffic to this site during the last few days. I’d like to think this sudden interest was a result of posts on PC bigotry or unhinged postmodern scholarship, or our high-minded discussion of the arts. I notice, however, that quite a few people are finding themselves here after Googling the word “blowjob.” (The phrase “Superhero Pornface” is also being Googled with surprising frequency.) Well, however you got here, welcome aboard.

With the artistic feats of Mr Delvoye and Ms Hines still fresh in our minds, I thought I’d share an extract from an essay by Stephen Hicks, titled Why Art Became Ugly. The essay is an examination of postmodern art, its origins, and its aesthetic and ideological shortcomings. In the following extract, Hicks notes the anhedonic tendency of many artists and their professed aversion to capitalism and any successful products of it. The relevance to recent posts is, I think, fairly obvious:

“There is the long-standing rule in modern art that one should never say anything kind about capitalism… German artist Hans Haacke’s Freedom is Now Simply Going to be Sponsored – Out of Petty Cash (1991) is [a] monumental example. While the rest of the world was celebrating the end of brutality behind the Iron Curtain, Haacke erected a huge Mercedes-Benz logo atop a former East German guard tower. Men with guns previously occupied that tower – but Haacke suggests that all we are doing is replacing the rule of the Soviets with the equally heartless rule of the corporations…

We would not know from the world of modern art that average life expectancy has doubled since Edvard Munch screamed. We would not know that diseases that routinely killed hundreds of thousands of newborns each year have been eliminated. Nor would we know anything about the rising standards of living, the spread of democratic liberalism, and emerging markets. We are brutally aware of the horrible disasters of National Socialism and international Communism, and art has a role in keeping us aware of them. But we would never know from the world of art the equally important fact that those battles were won and brutality was defeated.

And entering even more exotic territory, if we knew only the contemporary art world we would never get a glimmer of the excitement in evolutionary psychology, Big Bang cosmology, genetic engineering, the beauty of fractal mathematics – and the awesome fact that humans are the kind of being that can do all those exciting things.” 

If the subject is of interest, I’d recommend making time to read the whole thing. Hicks’ book, Explaining Postmodernism, is also recommended. Feel free to rummage through the archive and browse the Greatest Hits. If you like what you find, approval can be expressed with the button below.

Further to the recent post on the conceptual artist Wim Delvoye and his x-rayed blowjobs and tattooed pigs, a reader has noted the artist’s pretentious yet depressive and nihilistic tone. Delvoye has often couched his output in terms of “the folly of human achievement” and, like many of his peers, has spent a great deal of time either manufacturing excrement or presenting human ambition as “ridiculous.” A stance which raises the question of whether Delvoye regards his own work – devoted as it is to revealing the emptiness of human endeavour – as worth pursuing, or paying for. 

In matters excremental, Delvoye’s efforts are rivalled, perhaps even surpassed, by fellow artist Michelle Hines, whose 1995 work Peristaltic Action involved Ms Hines apparently producing a single, continuous turd measuring some 26 feet in length. This prodigious feat required, we’re told, a high-fibre diet, a butt plug and a suitable venue – the Cranbrook-Kingswood High School bowling alley in Michigan – which, according to Hines, “offered a length of floor suitable for measuring the results.” Readers with a sturdy constitution can click here to see Ms Hines in action, as it were.

There is, however, some doubt as to the veracity of Hines’, er, output, and the artist has subsequently claimed that her work is in fact a “parody” that explores the “absurd lengths people will go to be remembered.” Another Hines triumph, Number of Days Without Sleep, purported to show the artist depriving herself of sleep for 528 hours in December 1994 – which, of course, she didn’t. Unlike Mr Delvoye, and with suitable postmodern irony, Ms Hines seems to believe that ersatz pretension and vacuity is much more worthwhile than the real thing.

In light of recent posts, this could be interesting. Evan Coyne Maloney’s documentary, Indoctrinate U, examines censorship, political lockstep and compulsory ‘sensitivity’ on American campuses. Take a minute to watch the trailer – if only to marvel at the placard, “U.S. out of Berkeley.”

More here and here. (H/T, Instapundit.)

Some time ago, before openDemocracy’s discussion boards became a train wreck, I posted a few links to the x-ray imagery of Belgian artist, Wim Delvoye. A reader of that epic oD thread suggested I post Delvoye’s handiwork here, for the benefit of a more… discerning audience. Ever the aesthete, I’m only too happy to oblige. The x-rays of kissing are, I think, rather sweet, if a little continental, though other examples from this series are perhaps an acquired taste and not for the faint-hearted.

More of Delvoye’s, um, penetrating insights can be found here. Unfortunately, Delvoye’s official website is rather low in content and features only the artist’s tattooed pigs, in live and stuffed varieties. (According to one critic, Delvoye has “astounded the art world with masterpieces that test the limits of art appreciation.” We’re also assured that Delvoye’s Art Farm project, which boasts 24 tattooed pigs, “satirically mirrors the society we live in.”) Tragically, the website omits what is surely Delvoye’s greatest artistic triumph: his robotic bowel, Cloaca. This bio-mechanical installation – apparently a “highly pungent comment on the folly of human achievement” – mimics the human digestive tract, from French fries to mechanically extruded faeces. This aesthetic wonder is performed in a “relatively odour-free manner” and recorded in riveting detail. Collectors will be mortified to learn the end product of that exhibit has, alas, sold out.

More here.

If this is your first visit, feel free to roam the archive and browse the Greatest Hits. Patronage and gratuities always welcome.

The year 2000, as envisioned in 1900. Chocolate manufacturer predicts weather control machines, personal airships, houses moved by train. Sounds about right. // How snakes eat larger snakes, step by step. With clips. (H/T, Maggie’s Farm) // Car wash offers extras, apparently. // Your tax dollars at work. Click to enlarge. // Via 1+1=3, Kamiya Satoshi’s hardcore origami. // Slightly less ambitious: Make your own Optimus Prime. // Cassetteboy. On room service and getting a good straight seam. Sketchy details here and here. “Retro salad, yeah?” // Self-flagellation not a good idea shock. // Iranian women dress ‘immodestly’; mass arrests ensue. More here. “Women who appear in public like decadent models endanger the security and dignity of young men.” Photos of dangerous and immodest women here, here and here. // In unrelated news… The Iranian brain drain continues. // Israel’s ‘modesty buses’. Piety and indignation in abundance. Intelligence, not so much. // Orangutans play video games, matching sounds with animals using lips and feet. Yet to master Tetris, but gaining on us slowly. // First 3D images of the Sun. 3D glasses sold separately. // Kryptonite discovered in Serbia. White and powdery, not green and radioactive. Criminal fraternity livid. // Spider-Man 3 budget redefines phrase “shitload of money.” // Christopher Butcher ponders superhero genitalia, or the lack thereof. More mulling here. // Captain America arrested with joint and burrito stuffed in tights. //

I recently pointed out how the Guardian’s deputy comment editor, Joseph Harker, has realised that if the meaning of certain words doesn’t support his argument or broad political stance then he can simply change what those words mean until they do support that argument, at least in dim light. Thus, Mr Harker can argue that “all white people are racist” while claiming that he can’t be a racist for saying so, on the basis that racism is, apparently, an exclusively Caucasian vice. Clearly, if one can redefine words to suit an existing argument, rather than rethink one’s argument to fit the meaning of words – or indeed reality – then this affords enormous opportunity, at least rhetorically.

It’s pretty clear from this unilateral definition that Harker isn’t against racism per se. Attentive readers will notice he’s not arguing for a reciprocal moral principle – i.e. that people shouldn’t be prejudged on the basis of their colour or country of origin. Instead, what we see is an expression of PC bigotry and contorted righteousness. It’s not too difficult to see how this linguistic contortion fits with certain kinds of role-play – pretentious victimhood on the one hand and narcissistic guilt fantasies on the other. Perpetuating this outlook might be politically useful to some leftist ideologues and opportunist pressure groups, but it isn’t clear how believing “all white people are racist” helps anyone see further than the colour of a person’s skin.