Flushtracker. Where it goes. // Foiled. // The Wobbulator. Old school electron bending. // At last, a machine for making smoke-rings. // Mugshot of note. // Misplaced hair. // It’s an earpiece, it’s a camcorder. // A touchscreen made of ice. // Lightning slowed down 300 times. // Aircraft propellers + passenger’s phone camera = illusion. (h/t, Brian) // Pinheads. // Alligators versus cat. (h/t, Brian) // Cats versus rat. // Cat teepee. // Tchaikovsky’s voice (1890). // Human tissue engineering. // Bacon explosion. // Dennis Dutton on beauty and evolution. // Green dreams of dominion. // Metropolis II. // Meanwhile, in local news…

For newcomers, two more items from the archives.  

Tears and Role-Play.

Transsexuals take umbrage with the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. Cue orgy of self-pity and radical spelling.

“I ask that you respect that womon born womon is a valid and honourable gender identity. I also ask that you respect that womyn born womyn deeply need our space.”

Projecting Just a Tad. 

Disabled feminists and gender activists respond to Avatar. Psychodrama ensues.

Not long ago on Radio 4, a legless and rather prickly “activist” insisted that it was “oppressive” to view the loss of a person’s legs as in any way regrettable. Regarding this loss as something negative was apparently “ableist,” “ignorant” and offensive. This claim was repeated several times, emphatically. At one point the activist declared that given a chance to walk again he would refuse, such was his “pride” in having lost a third of his body. Anger had been displaced from the obvious grievance – the traumatic loss of one’s legs – to the supposed “injustice” of regarding limb loss as a dismaying or terrifying state of affairs. As a coping mechanism, it wasn’t entirely honest. Or, it seems, successful.

Contraband may be hidden in the greatest hits. So grope them thoroughly.

Britain’s unions, the “big society” in real life,

So says dissembler, Stalin groupie and Guardian associate editor Seumas Milne.

The election of Len McCluskey as leader of Britain’s most important trade union should be a shot in the arm for anyone who wants to see… the development of a genuine political alternative.

Yes, Labour’s new paymaster – and “the mainstream left candidate” – is a man elected on a 16% turnout by just 7% of the Unite union’s total membership. Mr McCluskey’s greatest claim to fame is his role in the British Airways cabin crew strikes, which began a year ago, have cost the airline around 150 million pounds and have yet to be resolved. McCluskey was formerly a supporter of the totalitarian Trotskyist organisation Militant and is still enthused by class war sloganeering. When not quoting Ernesto “Che” Guevara and predicting a “final victory” over capitalism and private ownership, Mr McCluskey likes to reinvent British history: “We are all supposed to believe now that the 1970s was a horrible time. It wasn’t at all.”

His memorable lines include, 

There is no such thing as an irresponsible strike.

And,

My political principles are clear. Capitalism has failed.

Mr McCluskey, who supported an organisation that planned to “abolish” capitalism, has weathered this failure remarkably well and now takes home a basic salary of £100,000. In June 2008, after tanker drivers rejected a pay increase of 6.8%, McCluskey – then Unite’s assistant general secretary – railed against Shell management, pointing out that they “have themselves enjoyed 15%-plus pay increases in the last year.” However, Mr McCluskey’s union predecessors – Derek Simpson and Tony Woodley– were spared similar opprobrium, despite salaries of £196,497 and £135,330 and despite them enjoying pay rises over three years of 56% and 62% respectively. Interviewed by the Liverpool Echo, Mr McCluskey “fondly” recalled that he had “led lots of strikes” and described his agenda as that of the “progressive left.”

Back to the future, people. A Seventies revival looms.

Previously in MilneWorld: 1, 2, 3.

Photographed by Michael Siward, September 2009. One of these.

What satellites see. // Airport body scans leaked online. A new fetish begins. // London gigapixelled. // Underwater filming. // How Google works. // Webbed gloves. // Flame scallop’s glowing lips. // A gallery of gorging chipmunks. (h/t, MeFi) // The periodic table of irrational nonsense. (h/t, Dr Westerhaus) // Joy Division colouring book. (h/t, Chastity Darling) // Baby sea dragons. // “There’s a horse in that car.” // Fondle your interface. // Ice-retardant nanotechnology. // It’s a helmet, it’s a sound system. // Atomic toys. // Secret kitten. // Who owns Antarctica? // One to watch in full: Martin Durkin on the weight of the state.