May 10, 2008
May 09, 2008
Misremembered
Here’s a short Chris Ware animation for the series This American Life.
Just whose memory is it?
More Chris Ware here, on the power of unreal cameras. (h/t, Coudal.)
Friday Ephemera
San Zhi, Taiwan. Forgotten houses of the future. // Tales of Tomorrow. Leslie Nielsen mines Martian uranium. (1952) // More boomerangs in space. // The Beast in Space. Cheesy sci-fi porno. (sfw) // Roger Corman’s Fantastic Four. Crap, redefined. // Superhero fashion. Gas masks, girdles, a jaunty hat. // Cutie Honey. She fights crime, I think. // Ophelia Benson on God, types 1 and 2. // Mary Jackson on Boris Johnson. // Charles Murray on educational romanticism. // Deogolwulf on the sound of one hand slapping. // Slow motion raspberry. And. // More robotic exoskeletons. // The android keyboardist. (1985) // The Spirit. // Bomb shelters of Nazi Germany. // Smoking tourism. (h/t, 1+1=3.) // San Francisco panoramas. Sunset, dawn and twilight. // Lamps made from sheep stomach. // The Anatomical Theatre. Morbidity and wax. // Tulip farms. // Plant rights now! Two legs bad, no legs good. // The Internationale in 40 languages. Sing, comrades, sing. // Design for despots. (h/t, Things.) // Retro design. // The Virtual Museum of Vintage VCRs. (h/t, Coudal.) // Wooden shortwave radio. Mp3 compatible. // And, via The Thin Man, it’s the Reverend Robert Wilkins.
May 08, 2008
An Unthinkable Motive
Speaking of Sam Harris, in this clip he touches on a blind spot shared by many commentators, especially on the left.
Here’s the money quote:
I think liberals, almost by definition, don’t know what it’s like to really believe in God. They don’t know what it’s like to be sure that the book they keep by their bedside is the literal word of the creator of the universe and that death is merely a passage to an eternity of happiness. And so they find it very difficult to believe that anyone actually believes this stuff and is motivated by the content of their religious beliefs. And so liberals, when they see the jihadist look into the video camera and say things like “we love death more than the infidels love life” - and then he blows himself up – it’s the liberal in our society, the religious moderate or the secularist, who is left thinking that’s just propaganda.
Indeed. This disbelief in belief, as it were, helps explain the extraordinary denial of jihadists’ and former jihadists’ self-declared motives, and the hugely selective, often absurd, declarations of “root causes.” As Tawfik Hamid, a former member of Jemaah Islamiya, pointed out:
Without confronting the ideological roots of radical Islam it will be impossible to combat it... It is vital to grasp that traditional and even mainstream Islamic teaching accepts and promotes violence… The grave predicament we face in the Islamic world is the virtual lack of approved, theologically rigorous interpretations of Islam that clearly challenge the abusive aspects of Sharia. Unlike Salafism, more liberal branches of Islam typically do not provide the essential theological base to nullify the cruel proclamations of their Salafist counterparts.
It is ironic and discouraging that many non-Muslim, Western intellectuals have become obstacles to reforming Islam… They find socioeconomic or political excuses for Islamist terrorism… If the problem is not one of religious beliefs, it leaves one to wonder why Christians who live among Muslims under identical circumstances refrain from contributing to wide-scale, systematic campaigns of terror... All of this makes the efforts of Muslim reformers more difficult. When Westerners make politically correct excuses for Islamism, it actually endangers the lives of reformers and in many cases has the effect of suppressing their voices.
As explained at length here, the size of an extremist “fringe” and how it relates to mainstream conceptions of the faith, and its theology and history, is a matter of some importance and has to be considered as it actually is, not as one might wish. And, as Tawfik Hamid, Tanveer Ahmed, Hassan Butt, Tahir Aslam Gora and others have argued, omitting the role of Islamic theology, whether for reasons of preference or embarrassment, leads one to inaccurate or perverse evaluations of what we are faced with and how it might be stopped.
May 07, 2008
The Prose, It Burns
Further to this, readers may be interested in Philosophy and Literature’s gone but not forgotten Annual Bad Writing Contest. The rules are simple enough:
The Bad Writing Contest attempts to locate the ugliest, most stylistically awful passage found in a scholarly book or article published in the last few years. Ordinary journalism, fiction, etc. are not eligible, nor are parodies: entries must be non-ironic, from actual serious academic journals or books.
The winning entries are, alas, not quite so clear. This, from 1997, is Professor Rob Wilson, writing in The Administration of Aesthetics: Censorship, Political Criticism, and the Public Sphere, a collection of essays published by the University of Minnesota Press and edited by Richard Burt:
If such a sublime cyborg would insinuate the future as post-Fordist subject, his palpably masochistic locations as ecstatic agent of the sublime superstate need to be decoded as the ‘now-all-but-unreadable DNA’ of a fast deindustrializing Detroit, just as his Robocop-like strategy of carceral negotiation and street control remains the tirelessly American one of inflicting regeneration through violence upon the racially heteroglossic wilds and others of the inner city.
The publisher’s blurb informs us that the purpose of the book quoted above is to “seek a deeper understanding of what ‘censorship’, ‘criticism’ and the ‘public sphere’ really mean.”
There’s more, of course. (h/t, Stephen Hicks.)
Astronomical Odds
Here’s the third episode of the excellent BBC documentary series, The Planets. Titled Giants, the film follows the ingenuity and serendipity of the 1977 Voyager mission and its “grand tour” of the outer planets.
A happy alignment. Slingshot. Magnetic Jupiter. 3 million amps. Rings and ghosts.
Fearsome weather. Saturn’s other side. Shattered. Perfect timing. Still listening.
Other episodes can be viewed here.
May 06, 2008
Porcupines
Over at Easily Distracted, Tim Burke highlights two recent academic news stories and finds a common theme.
This is what I call the porcupine strategy. Make yourself as pointy, sharp and inflated as you can, and hope that any predators will just go away. The problem with this particular porcupine act is that it’s not fooling anyone. Scholars who know something about the theories [Aliza] Shvartz is fumbling to deploy know full well that she’s said very little that makes sense in this passage, that it’s close to being a random assemblage of words. Observers who don’t know anything about those theories just see it as babble.
In fairness to casual readers, several, more seasoned, purveyors of postmodernist theory have also lapsed into random assemblages of words. Even those figures held in great esteem by other likeminded theorists have often proved no less impervious to comprehension. Oddly, this tendency hasn’t stopped many of their admirers from hailing the results as “skillfully poetic”.
Priorities
Sam Harris chances his arm at the Huffington Post – not an obvious venue for realistic debate - and comments on a “psychopathic skewing of priorities.” Specifically, the tensions between free enquiry and deference to traditional Islam:
The point is not (and will never be) that some free person spoke, or wrote, or illustrated in such a manner as to inflame the Muslim community. The point is that only the Muslim community is combustible in this way. The controversy over Fitna, like all such controversies, renders one fact about our world especially salient: Muslims appear to be far more concerned about perceived slights to their religion than about the atrocities committed daily in its name.
A point that’s been illustrated here more than once.
Our capitulations in the face of these threats have had what is often called “a chilling effect” on our exercise of free speech. I have, in my own small way, experienced this chill first hand. First, and most important, my friend and colleague Ayaan Hirsi Ali happens to be among the hunted. Because of the failure of Western governments to make it safe for people to speak openly about the problem of Islam, I and others must raise a mountain of private funds to help pay for her round-the-clock protection. The problem is not, as is often alleged, that governments cannot afford to protect every person who speaks out against Muslim intolerance. The problem is that so few people do speak out. If there were ten thousand Ayaan Hirsi Ali's, the risk to each would be radically reduced.
For more on this, see my post quoting Robert Tracinski and Salman Rushdie.
Harris offers another, personal, illustration.
As for infringements of my own speech, my first book, The End of Faith, almost did not get published for fear of offending the sensibilities of (probably non-reading) religious fanatics. W.W. Norton, which did publish the book, was widely seen as taking a risk - one probably attenuated by the fact that I am an equal-opportunity offender critical of all religious faith. However, when it came time to make final edits to the galleys of The End of Faith, many of the people I had thanked by name in my acknowledgments (including my agent at the time and my editor at Norton) independently asked to have their names removed from the book. Their concerns were explicitly for their personal safety.
Several examples of backstage trepidation are listed, including this, which is far too typical.
Nature, arguably the most influential scientific journal on the planet, recently published a lengthy whitewash of Islam (Z. Sardar Beyond the Troubled Relationship. Nature 448, 131-133; 2007). The author began, as though atop a minaret, by simply declaring the religion of Islam to be “intrinsically rational.” He then went on to argue, amid a highly idiosyncratic reading of history and theology, that this rational religion’s current wallowing in the violent depths of unreason can be fully ascribed to the legacy of colonialism. After some negotiation, Nature also agreed to publish a brief response from me. What readers of my letter to the editor could not know, however, was that it was only published after perfectly factual sentences deemed offensive to Islam were expunged.
And there’s the rub. If unflattering statements and facts are excised in the name of respect and sensitivity - or quite often, fear - a realistic and honest discussion is unlikely even to begin. (This is the approach favoured by, among others, Tariq Ramadan, who forever speaks of “dialogue” while dictating the terms on which any discussion should, eventually, take place.) It is, for instance, difficult to take any meaningful kind of stand against the barbarities of Islam without challenging the specific religious beliefs that justify and perpetuate that barbarism. And how can one honestly discuss how such things might be ended without suggesting, at least by implication, that those beliefs - and their originator - are immoral and disgusting?
The whole thing is well worth reading.
A Firm Hand
Until The Thin Man brought this to my attention, I’d been blissfully unaware of the cat paddling phenomenon.
Apparently, it’s become a thing.
More.
May 03, 2008
The Horror
I wasn’t going to comment on Boris Johnson becoming the next mayor of London, but I couldn’t resist airing a few reactions to that prospect from the pages of a certain newspaper.
A breathless Zoe Williams writes:
God alone knows what this moneyed creep would get up to… He despises gays and he despises provincials… and he despises Africans. He despises them, and he despises those of us who would hold such judgments to be bigoted and inhuman.
And,
He despises people who are not of his class because he is a snob.
An ironic statement, one might think, coming from a Guardian columnist, especially one whose own elitist affectations have entertained us so. This denunciation of snobbery is almost immediately followed by,
We know what London is. Boris is not London.
So no snobbery there.
Williams’ piece concludes with some quotes from notable Londoners. The actress Arabella Weir, daughter of former British ambassador Sir Michael Weir, offers this:
How do we trust a guy who says he knows about London, when he’s just taken three of his kids out of state school and put them into private schools?
Then there’s this, from fashion designer Vivienne Westwood:
Boris as mayor? Unthinkable. It just exposes democracy as a sham, especially if people don’t vote for Ken.
Ms Westwood appears to have difficulty grasping the concept of democracy, which generally entails the possibility that other people – perhaps a great many of them – will have preferences that differ from one’s own. Still, there’s an almost charming megalomania to the implication that a system which allows people to vote on those preferences must be a “sham” when the people doing the voting disagree with Vivienne Westwood.
It’s a safe bet that the Guardian’s imperious dowager in residence, Polly Toynbee, won’t be too chuffed either. Toynbee famously said of Johnson,
Perhaps because he was not born to great wealth… he revels in everything elite - intellectual, social or monied.
Unlike Polly - a member of the rather grand Toynbee family and descendant of the Earls of Carlisle - who was born into wealth. As Guardian readers will know, Polly’s peeves include private education and other people’s money:
He earned more than £400,000 last year in journalism and after-dinner speaking on top of his MP’s salary.
Oddly, while Toynbee makes a point of announcing the earnings of others, supposedly on principal, she refuses to disclose the details of her own salary and extracurricular income; though one might assume her Guardian salary alone is comfortably within six figures. And it’s worth noting that Johnson earned less than Polly’s employer at the Guardian, the privately educated Alan Rusbridger, who last year was paid £520,000.
Johnson’s reply to Toynbee is worth reading in full, but here’s a taste:
She joins the usual Labour snarling against fee-paying education, and selective education of all kinds. In reality, of course, she is the beneficiary of a highly selective education and also sent her own offspring to one of the most expensive public schools in the country, an establishment way beyond the means of most people. Of course there will be those who accuse her of monstrous hypocrisy, and wonder… how on earth she can insist on imposing a one-size-fits-all comprehensive system on the rest of the country, and close down the opportunities of so many poor but bright kids, when she has so ruthlessly maximised the opportunities of her own children…
Then there will be those who complain that it is hypocritical of Polly to have her lovely second home in Italy, to which she doubtless repairs on so many cheapo flights that she has personally quilted the earth in a tea-cosy of CO2; to which I say, yes, it probably is wrong of Polly to keep calling for higher taxes when that would put such opportunities - for air travel to second homes - beyond the reach of millions slightly less fortunate than her. But never mind the hypocrisy: look at the fundamental Tory behaviour. At least she's renting the villa out at pretty keen rates.
For that alone, I’m quite pleased Boris is London’s new mayor. And besides, what could possibly go wrong?
May 02, 2008
Friday Ephemera
Air jelly. // Neo Cube. (h/t, Artblog.) // Nano photos. // Molecule-sized switches. // The tunnels of Niagara Falls. // Architecture in Dubai. // Tokyo’s automated multi-story bike parking. // When galaxies collide. // Brian Greene on superstrings. Vibrating in 11 dimensions. // Heather MacDonald on poisonous “authenticity”. (h/t, Cookslaw.) // PoMo professor threatens to sue ungrateful students. They “discriminated” against her by pointing out she’s incompetent. More. // Parody of gender studies flyer constitutes “violence”. // “My epiglottis is full of bees.” // Bubble cars. // Traffic jam shockwave. // Iron Man: Secret Origins. 1, 2, 3, 4. // The museum of unworkable devices. (h/t, Maggie’s Farm.) // Muppetstar Galactica. // Magic lanterns. Brass, glass and kerosene. // Unusual plants. (h/t, Ace.) // Orange Sunshine. (h/t, Dr Westerhaus.) // The Hendrix sex tape. He’s dead, Jim. (h/t, Protein Wisdom.) // The Kleenex Pillow. // Ten annoying alarm clocks. // And, via The Thin Man, it’s a footwear thing.
May 01, 2008
Tears and Role-Play
Further to Amanda Marcotte’s ongoing tussle with the Even More Righteous Sisterhood, this seems relevant. A couple of weeks ago, I posted a link to an item on the tribal agonies of the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival and their struggles to be sufficiently sensitive and inclusive. Each year the festival is shadowed by an organisation called Camp Trans, whose activities include a “radical masculinities workshop,” “flirting workshops” and
Protesting the exclusion of trans women from women-only spaces, most notably the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival.
Writer and activist Michelle Tea explains the origin of this dispute:
In 1991 a transsexual woman named Nancy Jean Burkholder was evicted from MWMF. Transsexual women, for those not up-to-date with the growing transgender revolution, are women who were born in male bodies and have been fighting against that ever since. They may or may not be on hormones, which can be costly or unavailable. Same goes for sex reassignment surgery, which is often prohibitively expensive and not covered by insurance… A lot of women inside the festival want to keep trans women out. Some staunchly insist that these individuals are not women but men in dresses trying to ruin the feminist event. Others concede that trans women are women, but because they were born boys and may still have penises, the festival is not the place for them.
Feelings continue to run high in both camps, as it were, and the list of possible identity subgroups continues to grow, along with a helpful lexicon of radical spellings, as can be seen from a recent festival communiqué:
I deeply desire healing in our communities, and I can see and feel that you want that too. I would love for you and the other organisers of Camp Trans to find the place in your hearts and politics to support and honour space for womyn who have had the experience of being born and living their life as womyn. 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 — as do all communities who create space to gather, whether that be womyn of colour, trans womyn or trans men… I wish you well, I want healing, and I believe this is possible between our communities, but not at the expense of deeply needed space for womyn born womyn.
Such is the drama of identity politics and the competitive victimhood it necessarily engenders.
A reader, R Sherman, highlighted the following comment, made in response to the MWMF’s attempt at conciliation.
What really makes me angry about this whole situation is non-trans people deciding what is and is not transphobia… The sentiment of this release is blatant transphobia, and the section calling it otherwise is just rhetoric. I don’t really believe that anyone has the right or ability to accurately gauge their own actions as phobic or not. The community being harmed is the only one with the perspective necessary to make that distinction. It is overstepping and disrespectful, to say the least, for the non-trans authors of this release to say that their policies are not transphobic and further to attempt to explain why.
The implications of this claim did not go unnoticed among other regulars of this site. The Thin Man added,
Let’s transpose the object of that phrase and see what happens:
“I don’t really believe that anyone has the right or ability to accurately gauge their own actions as witchcraft or not. The community being harmed is the only one with the perspective necessary to make that distinction.”
Or,
“I don’t really believe that anyone has the right or ability to accurately gauge their own actions as heresy or not. The community being harmed is the only one with the perspective necessary to make that distinction.”
Or,
“I don’t really believe that anyone has the right or ability to accurately gauge their own actions as counter-revolutionary or not. The community being harmed is the only one with the perspective necessary to make that distinction.”
Quite. And throughout the Farce of Marcotte™ similar sentiments were internalised and expressed, with one reader of Ms Marcotte’s website offering the following pearl of wisdom:
As a white woman, though, I’m not the one offended, so it’s not my call as to what an appropriate response is.
And thus any claim to moral agency is surrendered to those members of a favoured group who happen to be shouting loudest. But despite the howls of victimhood, which so define our age, it’s hard to excuse the opportunist denial of any objective criteria or coherent ethical rationale. Thus, injustice is defined, unilaterally, by feelings, or claims of feelings - and, of course, by leverage. Phobias, prejudice and oppression become whatever the Designated Victim Group, or its representative, says they are. And the basis for apology, compensation and flattery becomes whatever the Designated Victim Group says it is. The practical result of this is egomaniacal license and the politics of role-play.
April 30, 2008
Elsewhere
Busy for much of today, but here are a few items of possible interest. Feel free to add your own.
Gail Heriot notes the fallout of affirmative action and enforced diversity.
“It didn't seem to matter that… students admitted with lower academic credentials would end up incurring heavy debt but never graduate.”
Mark Steyn runs his tongue over Michelle Obama.
“Mrs Obama regards state-mandated compensation for previous racism as a new form of [burden] to bear. In an early indication of post-modern narcissism… she arrived as a black woman at Princeton and wrote her undergraduate thesis on the problems of being a black woman at Princeton… [She] embodies a peculiar mix of privilege and victimology.”
And Adam Platt encounters poison of a different kind.
“Tonight, I’ve been told, he’ll be serving that most prized portion of the fugu anatomy known as shira-ko, a.k.a. the engorged fugu sperm sac.”
Do try to keep the place tidy.
April 29, 2008
Borrowed Shame
Via a reader, JuliaM, here’s a footnote to yesterday’s adventure with Amanda Marcotte and the Hysterical Sisterhood. Faced with the aforementioned disapproval, Ms Marcotte’s publishers, Seal Press, distinguish themselves with this:
We do not believe it is appropriate for a book about feminism, albeit a book of humor, to have any images or illustrations that are offensive to anyone… As an organisation, we need to look seriously at the effects of white privilege. We will be looking for anti-racist trainings [sic] offered here in the Bay Area.
Perhaps Shakti Butler and Peggy McIntosh will be willing to screw in the mental braces.
In the meantime, please know that all involved in the publishing of It’s a Jungle Out There, from editorial to production were not trying to send a message to anyone about our feelings regarding race. If taken seriously as a representation of our intentions, these images are also not very feminist. By putting the big blonde in the skimpy bathing suit with the big breasts, the tiny waist, and the weapon on our cover, we are also not asserting that she is any kind of standard that anyone should aspire to. This 1950s Marvel comic is not an accurate reflection of our beauty standards, our beliefs regarding one’s right to bear arms, nor our perspectives on race relations, foreign policy, or environmental policy.
Beauty standards, gun laws, race relations, foreign policy, the environment… Heavens. That covers everything, surely?
UPDATE:
Ah.
Please note that, upon reflection, we realise that the second to the last paragraph of this post doesn’t do a good job of conveying our intended meaning… We apologise that this paragraph undermines our apology. We acknowledge that the images are racist and not okay under any circumstances. We are wholeheartedly sincere in our apology, and the actions we’ve laid out above will be acted upon immediately.
As I mentioned in the comments yesterday, there’s a farcical through-the-looking-glass quality to outpourings of this kind. But it strikes me as more than just absurdity. It’s disabling too, and more than a little malign. One of the surest ways to erode a person’s probity is to make them repeat in public, among their peers, things that are unrealistic and absurd; things they know, or suspect, to be untrue. The more incoherent and ridiculous the claim - or apology - and the greater the mismatch with reality, the larger the effect. Bad medicine.
April 28, 2008
Tales of Woe
The mighty Cath Elliott, a Guardian regular whose devotion to identity politics and hand-wringing has previously entertained us, now turns her attention to matters of a more mundane kind, with a piece titled, How Do You Keep a Sock on a Dog? Sadly, this rambling and incongruous article about a pet’s plastic surgical collar offers precious little scope for Ms Elliott’s usual agonising, though, of course, the urge hasn’t entirely been frustrated.
I’m feeling guilty because it seems so cruel making him wear it.
Thankfully, others take their guilt very seriously indeed and reach almost operatic levels of indignation and remorse. Among them is Amanda Marcotte, whose Pandagon website provides a safe and hegemony-free environment in which devotees can rend their garments and gnaw at their own wrists. The latest drama, discovered via Protein Wisdom, concerns the inadvertently scandalous imagery chosen to illustrate Ms Marcotte’s new book, It’s a Jungle Out There: the Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments. The illustrations in question, which parody 1950s comic books - themselves very often parodies - have injured feelings on a truly devastating scale:
I feel so nauseous and sleepless about this whole thing that I felt the need to weigh in as well.
And,
In the history of this country, there has always been one broad and well-lit path for oppressed classes of people to “better themselves” — side with the oppressors against someone else. That is exactly what these images are depicting: women gaining power through helping men against savage, violent brown people.
There ensues a long and emotionally fraught debate about whether to withdraw the offending publication, or boycott it, or reprint the book denuded of its connotations of “white privilege”.
I’m not going to pretend any of this is easy. Of course it’s hard to figure out what to say when you are under attack, when you feel defensive, when you feel like throwing up your hands and saying “Fuck it.”
However, while much of the feminist blogosphere still trembles with shock and umbrage, the greatest expression of feeling is found at Ms Marcotte’s own site, where the suitably chastened host offers an apology.
I can understand why anyone would choose to boycott a book with these images, and I respect that choice. Hopefully, once they are removed, people will reconsider supporting the book if they like the content. I, for one, will be ripping the pages out of my copy but keeping them as a reminder to be alert.
Not to be outdone, hundreds of Pandagon readers begin a chorus of wailing and righteous theorising.
Like I said in the thread at Feministe, that’s not a kitschy and ironic use of racist imagery. If that were actually the point, the purpose of the images, OMG, that would NOT make it okay. The use of images of scary black native men to convey a sense of danger is a blatantly RACIST use of racist imagery, wherein the racist message is the point. Offensive. Very, very offensive.
It isn’t long before a phantom subtext is discovered, and combed over in great detail.
Although one can still make the argument that using colonialism/expansionism as the underpinning for a metaphor to describe the ‘battles’ of feminism is inherently problematic. But racistly depicted indigenous peoples? This clearly crosses the line. It suggests that what feminists need to conquer is dark people.
And,
I really, really didn’t see the racism ‘til it was pointed out to me. THEN I saw it, oh boy did I see it! And I was so ashamed of my blindness.
And, a personal favourite,
White privilege is deeply rooted. It takes concerted effort to sensitise oneself (if one is white, that is) to recognise it, both in oneself and in the world around one. Hell, my husband and son are Asian, and sometimes I forget they’re not white like me.
If you’ve a stomach for high drama and competitive pseudo-grief, the Pandagon comments may entertain as a kind of identity politics pantomime. There is, I think, something quite compelling about watching people elevate paranoid self-loathing to the level of both piety and art form. A more realistic, and quite funny, discussion can be found at Protein Wisdom.
Update: The sorrow escalates.
Ease your guilt with a donation.
April 27, 2008
Extrapolations
The Thin Man directs us to this item at the Washington Policy Centre, on Earth Day predictions of yore.
Seattle – Another Earth Day is upon us. This is a good time to look back at predictions made on the original Earth Day about environmental disasters that were about to hit the planet. Most Earth Day predictions turned out to be stunningly wrong. In 1970, environmentalists said there would soon be a new ice age and massive deaths from air pollution. The New York Times foresaw the extinction of the human race. Widely-quoted biologist Paul Ehrlich predicted worldwide starvation by 1975. Documented examples are below.
“By 1985... air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching the earth by one half.” Life magazine, January 1970
“Civilisation will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” Biologist George Wald, Harvard University, April 19, 1970.
Because of increased dust, cloud cover and water vapour “...the planet will cool, the water vapour will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born.” Newsweek, January 26, 1970.
“By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half...” Life magazine, January 1970.
Ehrlich also predicted that in 1973, 200,000 Americans would die from air pollution, and that by 1980 the life expectancy of Americans would be 42 years.
Our purpose on Earth Day 2008 is not simply to point out how often environmental activists have been wrong, but to learn from the mistakes made during past Earth Days. Learning from the past will give us a better understanding of our world and the threats that face it. By being sceptical about routine portents of doom, we can stay focused on the real threats that face our planet, and on the reasonable and achievable actions we as a society can take to meet them.
The Thin Man also points out a not entirely unrelated phenomenon, noted by, among others, Richard Tomkins of the Financial Times:
At the time Elvis Presley died in 1977, he had 150 impersonators in the US. Now, according to calculations I spotted in a Sunday newspaper colour supplement recently, there are 85,000. Intriguingly, that means one in every 3,400 Americans is an Elvis impersonator. More disturbingly, if Elvis impersonators continue multiplying at the same rate, they will account for a third of the world’s population by 2019.
April 26, 2008
A Little Unhinged
Further to Dr Abd al-Baset al-Sayyed’s call for the global adoption of “Mecca Time” - and the shocking discovery that “in Mecca there is no magnetic force” - here’s another nugget. In this clip from Saudi Arabia’s al-Majd TV, first broadcast in January 2005, Dr al-Sayyed shares the extraordinary news that people living in Mecca are “less affected by gravity.” No less remarkable is the claim that NASA discovered “short wave radiation” emanating from Mecca – a discovery hastily concealed from the world at large. However, Dr al-Sayyed is sure this sacred Mecca radiation is “infinite” and extends well past the planet Mars.
Related: The Earth is flat and larger than the Sun, which is also flat. It’s Qur’anic science.
Update:
For some reason I’m reminded of this.
(h/t, The Thin Man.)
April 25, 2008
Friday Ephemera
Zombie Strippers. You heard me. // Robotic exoskeletons. // Can Gary Cooper save the town from androids? (h/t, AC1.) // The Jeep Waterfall. // The Slacker. A game-player’s throne. $3000. // The Esse sex chair. Machine washable cover. // More expensive version of same. Comes with Ultrasuede™. // A dictionary of Victorian London. From the perils of onanism to cycling capes and quackery. // A history of recording technology. (h/t, Coudal.) // Cheesy instruments. // China from the air. (h/t, Coudal.) // A slideshow from North Korea. Holidays in hell. // Adopt Mecca time. // Blasphemy and atrocity. // “We have to argue… and we can’t do that by threatening to take people to court, or by killing them.” // Heroin substitute a “human right”. // My Paper Mind. It’s done with layers. // Pedal powered apparatus. // Bugatti Veyron special edition. // Science Machine. // Rainbows. // The smell of space. (h/t, 1+1=3.) // Stuff being shot in slow motion. // Bionic vision. “The camera is very, very small, so it can go inside your eye.” // Mousetrap writ large. // When logos go awry. // And, via The Thin Man, It’s Sly and the Family Stone.
April 24, 2008
An Unlikely Headline
An obliging reader has steered my attention to this item from Reuters, titled Lynchings in Congo as Penis Theft Panic Hits Capital.
Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men’s penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft. Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur. Rumours of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo’s sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.
And,
Some Kinshasa residents accuse a separatist sect from nearby Bas-Congo province of being behind the witchcraft in revenge for a recent government crackdown on its members.
Loving the Bomb
Here’s the extended trailer, by Pablo Ferro, for Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film, Dr Strangelove.
And here’s a clip. “Well, how do you think I feel about it?”
More. Transcript. Via.
April 23, 2008
Filler
Busy today, so here are a few short films lifted from the archives. Use them wisely.
Freefall. Joe Kittinger embraces rapid downwardsness.
Lovely Monsters. Flirting squid and other beasts of the sea.
Very Impaired. British troops test LSD, unwittingly, circa 1953.
Lefties. From big idea to burning wreckage.
Craters. Flagstaff, Arizona, gets a radical lunar makeover.
Feel free to browse the greatest hits and generally root and rummage. And making a donation will make you a better person.
April 22, 2008
What Art Isn’t
Over at Carnal Reason, Pwyll has some rules of art appreciation.
I developed my first rule of art while studying a purported work of art on display at the University of South Florida. The work consisted of a beat to hell La-Z-boy style recliner. It was cloth covered, or once was. The cloth was trashed, at least one spring was sticking out. The thing was probably ugly when new, and time had not been kind to it. It looked like it must smell bad. I examined it closely, searching for some sign of deliberate modification, a hint of an artist’s hand. I saw nothing not attributable to abuse, neglect, or decay.
I was with a young lady who asked me what I thought. I proposed a thought experiment. Imagine someone died and left you an old and neglected property. You find an object in the garage. The question is whether that object is a work of art. If your first impulse is to wonder whether the county land fill will accept the object, then with high probability that object is not art.
My second rule of art was born in an art gallery in NYC. On display was a brand new galvanised steel garbage can. In it was a cinder block. A rope was tied to the block, and to a hook in the wall, in such a way that the garbage can stayed tilted, but did not fall over. My second rule of art: anything I can reproduce in under fifteen minutes with materials available at a hardware store is not art.
I will not recount the disgusting details of the Aliza Shvarts episode at Yale. If you have not heard about it, you can get the details straight from the source. Ms Shvarts has inspired my latest rule of art: anything which appears to be hazardous medical waste, or the product of a sewage system malfunction, is not art.
The mention of sewage naturally brings to mind the towering works of Wim Delvoye and Michelle Hines, whose names may not be familiar to newcomers. Delvoye is perhaps best known for his x-rays of blowjobs and for creating Cloaca, a machine that generates artificial shit, and which the artist describes as “a highly pungent comment on the folly of human achievement.” Ms Hines is remembered, no doubt fondly, for her apparent hands-on production of a single, continuous turd measuring some 26 feet in length. Readers with a sturdy constitution can click here to see Ms Hines in action, as it were.
Never let it be said this site neglects the finer things.
Update:
In the comments, Georges offers the following:
There are two different qualities: impact and resonance. Impact is about grabbing the audience’s attention by any means necessary. Resonance is about leaving something lingering in their consciousness afterwards.
Exactly. There’s a difference between shock and awe. And between wonderment and tedious disgust. Righteous deconstruction and ludicrous parroted theory are poor substitutes for being captivated by beauty. Another guide to art appreciation might be to ask the question: Does this object make me wish I could make something beautiful? Or: Does the world of possibility feel bigger as a result, or has it actually shrunk?
Theory is cheap, in every sense, and easy to reproduce. Talent is not.
Nutshell
A disgruntled Guardian reader attempts to summarise the politics of associate editor, Seumas Milne:
To recap: if we leave dictators in place in a Muslim country and do business with them, we are responsible for repression in those countries and this will encourage terrorism. If we do remove them forcefully, which means war, we are responsible for the subsequent sectarian carnage in the country and this will encourage terrorism. The only other solution is a system of sanctions as with between-wars Iraq, which I don’t remember Milne as being a particular supporter of. In summary, whatever happens we’ll get bombed and it’ll serve us right.
Pretty good, I thought. Certainly, it captures something of the knotted logic typical of Milne, and of countless resentful teenagers in sixth form common rooms. It isn’t just Milne, of course. Contorted self-abasement and pretentious agonising are practically default settings among Guardian regulars. Scanning the paper’s archives, it’s remarkable just how often one trips over headings such as Collective Complicity, How Could We Let This Happen? and - a personal favourite - Their Homophobia is Our Fault. And two weeks rarely pass without some claim that Islamic zealotry and efforts to blow up infidels are entirely our own doing - a result of “gross social inequality” and “Islamophobia” (but never the other way round). Or that alcoholism and overeating have nothing whatsoever to do with personal choices and everything to do with supermarkets, pornography and the crushing social force that is Heat magazine. Or that “hyper-frantic consumerism” and our wicked materialism must be punished, and quite severely, with rationing by the state.
It’s a strange moral landscape at the Guardian, and frequently disgusting. Yet it’s hard to look away.
Update:
Another reader weighs in with an imaginary classified ad:
Puerile spokesman for defeated revolutionary movement seeks violent theocratic reactionaries for a long term relationship based on shared interests of killing westerners (commuters or office workers will do fine) and subjugating the global masses to the dictatorship of a monopoly doctrine (any doctrine will now do) and to generally obtain revenge against liberal market democracies for failing to collapse under the weight of their own contradictions as predicted by the delusional ‘revolutionary’ mass murderers of an early era.
Again, not bad at all.
April 21, 2008
My Fault Entirely
Speaking of phantom guilt and those it afflicts, over at the Augean Stables, another, related, malady has been found.
Like all potent and difficult psychological talents, however, self-criticism has its pathologies. Whereas most people dislike and avoid self-criticism at all costs, some few find it exhilarating, and engage in it unilaterally. This passion for self-criticism has created, in our day, a kind messianic pathology, what I call masochistic omnipotence syndrome, in which, “everything is our fault, and if only we could be better, we could fix anything.”
To this end, we forfeit normal protections. “Who are we to judge?” we say, as we accept as valid the stories and deeds of the oppressed “other,” no matter how dishonest the narrative and its intentions might be... From moral equivalence: “We’re as bad as you are”; to moral inversion: “No, we’re worse than you are.” The Muslim terrorists who blow up fellow Muslims at prayer in Iraq are thus to Michael Moore “Minute Men” resisting American soldiers who represent the forces of the evil empire. And if we just do this kind of moral reckoning enough, we seem to reason, we will eventually elicit good will and negotiate an end to all conflicts. “War,” we all know, “is not the answer.” We have the responsibility to repent for our imperialism and ask forgiveness for our crimes against native peoples. And all of this might be reasonable in the framework of good intentions on both sides.
But some use these principles to criticise us, not because they respect and admire the values they invoke, but only because of the positional advantage it gives them. They have no intention of reciprocating. They do not believe in these values, and they see us as irremediably stupid and effeminate for embracing self-criticism and commitments to treating others fairly... For them, our self-criticism registers as signs of weakness and an invitation to further aggression. The vulnerability we painfully but magnanimously adopt triggers not reciprocity and reconciliation, but predatory hopes.
Related ground is covered in the latest Shire Network News podcasts, which include a two-part exchange between Nick Cohen and Douglas Murray on left, right and the decidedly non-reciprocal nature of jihadi Islam. Part one. Part two. Well worth a listen.
Update:
Democratiya’s Alan Johnson chances his arm by sharing with Guardian readers a few unflattering truths.
By reducing the complexity of the post-cold war world to a single great contest in which “imperialism” or “empire” faced “anti-imperialism” or “the resistance”, parts of the left had transformed themselves into a reactionary post-left that took its enemy’s enemy for its friend. We were “all Hizbullah now” as the placards had it. Listen to John Rees, a leader of the Stop the War Coalition and Respect: “Socialists should unconditionally stand with the oppressed against the oppressor, even if the people who run the oppressed country are undemocratic and persecute minorities, like Saddam Hussein.”
America was the global oppressor and Bush was the “Number 1 terrorist”. Anyone shooting at Americans became, by that act, the resistance to empire. A collapse of sensibility followed. The reductionism in the theory licensed habits of mind and structures of feeling well-known among the older fellow travellers of Stalinism - apologia, denial, grossly simplifying tendencies of thought, moral relativism. The consequence was profound political disorientation. Tony Benn sat in front of the mass murderer, Saddam Hussein, and asked him, “I wonder whether you could say something yourself directly through this interview to the peace movement of the world that might help to advance the cause they have in mind?” Days later, Benn was less kind to an Iraqi oppositionist, spitting the words “CIA stooge!”
Naturally, Johnson’s comments don’t go down terribly well with the devout:
The only ones on the (supposed) left who “lost their way” were those who happily allied themselves with an unholy alliance of NeoConservative apologists for authoritarianism, free-market oligarchs and far-right fundamentalist Christians.
It’s dizzying stuff, and just a bit grubby.
Help fund my filthy excavations.