In his 2006 TED lecture, Professor of International Health, Hans Rosling, shows that, contrary to rumours, the end is not yet nigh. Complex global trends – in life expectancy, child mortality and poverty – are revealed in ways that may surprise. See the world changing. Marxists please take note.

Professor Rosling’s follow-up lecture, filmed in March 2007, can be viewed here. More here and at TEDblog.

(H/T, Vitruvius.)

Via 1+1=3, Peter Murphy’s VR panoramas. From Sydney New Year celebrations to the Dalai Lama tour. More. // Also, Japanese condom packaging. From monkeys and fish to mighty phallic robots. Something for every taste. // Implausible superhero origins and what would actually happen. Radiation mishaps, hair loss and sterility. // Comic cover browser. Over 77,000 covers, from Tales to Astonish to Howard the Duck. (H/T, 3:AM.) // Modesty Blaise. (1966) Espionage, shades, general fabulousness. (H/T, Coudal.) // Image Mosaic Generator. // Megunica. // The Electric Eel (1954) // The Pitfalls of Tele-Shopping. (1983) // The Large Hadron Collider, part 2, part 3. // World distribution of religious belief. (H/T, Stephen Hicks.) // Robert Spencer on toileting the Qur’an and unilateral “hate crime”. // Hitchens versus CAIR’s dissembler-in-chief, Ibrahim Hooper. // Links between CAIR, Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. // Professor of linguistics calls nerds “hyperwhite”. And racist, naturally. // On horseplay, hysteria and lawsuit opportunism. 13-year-olds’ obnoxious prank equated with rape. Tearing of hair ensues. // Ancient Egyptian wig, circa 1550 BC. Human hair, resin and wax. // Via Coudal, bees. // What’s that bug? From Cyphoderris Monstrosa to the Silver Argiope. Know your bugs. // Millimetres Matter. Scaled-down slapstick. // How to make very small pancakes with a syringe, a spoon and a credit card. // Justinas Vinevicius’ promo for G&G Sindikatas’ Burning Snow. Lithuanian hip hop. // Or maybe a spot of Hank. Williams, not Marvin.

Thanks to Drawn!, I discovered Hans Bacher’s archive of Animation Treasures. Bacher collects, restores and annotates rare frame grabs and background paintings from classic animations. From What’s Opera Doc? to Max Fleischer’s Technicolor Superman cartoons. For anyone with an interest in animation, it’s a wonderful find. Even for mere mortals, it’s still rather lovely.

Head there now.

Fleischer’s Superman animations can be downloaded here and here. Magnetic telescopes, mechanical monsters, foreign people, Lois in a jam! Something for everyone. Related, and possibly NSFW, Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex.

I’ll be away tomorrow, but, please, dry your eyes; I’ll post fresh ephemera on Friday.

Via Mick Hartley, a collection of misshapen fruit and vegetables from Berlin farmers’ markets, photographed by Uli Westphal. Westphal describes his Mutatoes project as “documenting these last survivors of biological variety.” The peppers in particular are rather stunning; though I’m not sure I’d be quite so thrilled to eat them.

More.

Further to recent comments on rebellion, hostility to bourgeois values and art’s political lockstep, Fabian Tassano’s Iconoclasm by Decree seems relevant.

“Literature should be political and … should unmask the rottenness of bourgeois culture.” Lenin.

“Question: How do you know when a society’s culture has stopped being genuinely challenging and iconoclastic? Answer: When a government minister insists that ‘challenge’ and ‘iconoclasm’ are essential components of culture… A mediocracy has ersatz versions of everything related to intellectual or artistic independence: questioning, analysis, scepticism, radicalism, and so on. No real questioning or radicalism is involved, since that would be too dangerous.”

More.