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.