Friday Ephemera

A mirror made of penguins. // PlayScanner, a toy CT scanner for children. Easy to clean, ideal for waiting rooms. // Gadgets from a parallel world. // Rotary hydroponic herb garden. // Vietnamese cave panoramas. // Caves of ice and snow. (h/t, Dr W) // Tunnelling under London. // Deep Blue is a big chap. // At last, your own 3D-printed exoskeleton hand. // 3D-print a section, any section, of New York City. // Drawing Manhattan. Keep the coffee coming. // “Man washing monster truck mistaken for plane crash.” It is a big truck. // It’s a truck, it’s a dog, it’s a truck. // In sporting news. // A map of UFO sightings, 1925-2014. Now we have smartphones they don’t seem to visit. // Office furniture of note. // Your children are filthy. // And finally, a photographer and his dog.

Comments

[PiperPaul]

Fibonacci Dodecahedron from the penguin page. I miss my old drafting tables.

[ftumch]

Maybe should post on Elsewhere, but...

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jun/11/no-men-allowed-publisher-accepts-novelists-year-of-women-challenge

[Hal]

It’s a rifle, it’s another rifle, it’s a pistol. . . . And prolly inspired by the original idea . . .

[Dave M]

Rebuttals from Martin Bashir Fun Fact: I get more hits from here than from Facebook. That's pretty good.

[WTP]

OMG, I had that Johnny Seven OMA gun. Got it second hand from the mother of a college-age "student" next door. Half the stuff on it was broken and the grenades were missing, but God was that thing fun. And quite unwieldy. You couldn't stealthily sneak up on your "enemy" with it very well. Sigh...I had some swell guns when I was a child. Poor kids today...

[Joan]

Drawing Manhattan.

That's amazing (and a bit obsessive).

[Joan]

a photographer and his dog.

I've just got something in my eye. :-)

[Quint&Jessel, Sea of Azof, Bly, UK]

That penguin thing is freakin' me out.

[John D]

I also have something in my eye.

[David]

I also have something in my eye.

Oh bloody hell. There are tissues behind the bar. They’re moistened with balm.

[David]

Why parents rarely want their children to be artists, part 13.

[Tom]

Maybe should post on Elsewhere, but...

From the article, "Small press And Other Stories has answered author Kamila Shamsie’s provocative call for a year of publishing women to redress “gender bias” in the literary world."

"Small press"... I imagine they're about to get a lot smaller, possibly invisble.

[David]

to redress “gender bias” in the literary world.

It’s a strange claim to make, given that a majority of those working in publishing are female and a majority of their readers are also female. And publishers generally try to publish books that their readers may wish to buy. (And as noted in the comments, literary agents are more likely to be female, women loan more fiction from libraries, and the last decade of Booker Prize winners is an exact 50/50 split of men and women. Hardly damning evidence of The Patriarchy In Action.) But yes, let’s see what the market makes of their assumptions. Though I notice that the publisher in question is funded by the Arts Council, which is to say, with money taken forcibly from the taxpayer. So, unsurprisingly, it’s hardly a fair test.

[Ten]

Random quote:

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.

- G. K. Chesterton

[Ted S., Catskill Mtns., NY, USA]

The parents of an NAACP leader in Spokane, WA, have outed her as white

[David]

outed her as white

We live in strange times.

[Hal]

Hmmm. In one instance, is it annoying or a relief to suddenly become poor?

[JerryC]

In fairness, there's only about 4,000 real black people in Spokane. Maybe they all had other stuff going on when the Spokane NAACP advertised the job.

[R. Sherman]

We've reached peak white privilege when Caucasians usurp NAACP jobs.

[ftumch]

I stand by #RachelDolezal. 10% of all people are born #WrongSkin It's not a joke and you have no right to shame us
- Godfrey Elfwick

https://twitter.com/GodfreyElfwick/status/609267943050997760/photo/1

[David]

outed her as white

In other news, everyone in Metropolis has finally realised that Clark Kent is basically Superman in a pair of spectacles.

[Theophrastus]

Wrongskin? So there are trans-racials as well as trans-sexuals? Will the public purse have to shell out for racial transitioning? Lip fillers, iris dyes/coloured contact lenses, melanin-boosting drugs? An industry is being born...

[wtp]

I can only imagine the torment that Rachel Dolezal went through. I hope she has found peace. If she says she’s african-american, then she’s african-american. Our responsibility as human beings is to love and accept everybody. Not to criticise people for who they are.

[Hal]

I stand by #RachelDolezal. 10% of all people are born #WrongSkin It's not a joke and you have no right to shame us
- Godfrey Elfwick

I'm reminded of the fellow who inquired of a pregnant white coworker, married to someone else white, if she and her husband were looking forward to their Chinese baby. After all, at that time there were also three other pregnant women in the office, and as everyone knows, one out of ever four babies born is Chinese.

[dicentra]

Godfrey Elfwick is the God of Twitter. It's right there, in xis name.

I thank all the deities I was blessed to be online with xim at the same time.

[Theophrastus]

Bruce Jenner identifies as a woman and so is becoming a simulacrum of a woman. Rachel Dolezal identifies as an African American and so became a simulacrum of an octoroon. But simulacra are not the real deal: a simulacrum of a woman is not a real woman, a simulacrum of an octoroon is not a real octoroon. Not sure what Godfrey Elfwick wants to be, other than a victim with the label Wrongskin.

[Darleen]

Godfrey is confounding the "news" people again

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/wrongskin-twitter-campaign-white-man-5872674#ICID=sharebar_twitter

:::snort:::

[Theophrastus]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/12/comparison-transgender-people-rachel-dolezal

[Darleen]

The fundamental difference between Dolezal’s actions and trans people’s is that her decision to identify as black was an active choice, whereas transgender people’s decision to transition is almost always involuntary.

Wow, she has sure burned a lot of brain cells typing just that sentence.

[mojo]

Put her in... THE COMFY CHAIR!

#WrongSkin is hilarious. I love the smell of sanctimony burning.

[David]

Re Ms Dolezal and her race transplant, Katherine Timpf has more:

Rachel Dolezal, the fake-black-actually-white NAACP leader, said in 2010 that she would be “nervous” about going to a Tea Party rally — partially because there would be so many white people there.

Also this.

Truly, we live in a post-satirical age.

[Patrick Brown]

David: "It’s a strange claim to make, given that a majority of those working in publishing are female"

In that very article, the publisher says all his editors are women. Why is it important to have gender equality in the authors you publish, but not in the editors you hire?

[Patrick Brown]

And Rachel Dolezal is Ali G for real.

[dicentra]

Moar on TransRachel from Ben Shapiro, who says the truest thing evar: "On Friday, after a long news week, the story of Rachel Dolezal hit the press, proving once again that God loves us and wants us to be happy."

And don't miss #AskRachel, wherein black folks quiz her on her blackness.

Best. Twitterday. EVER!

[Quint&Jessel, Sea of Azof, Bly, UK]

David, when I read about the "artist" who says she uses her teddy bear for love, comfort and all those other "superficial" things, I thought, "Are you fucking FUCKING me????" Stupid, or pathetic, or both.

[David]

Stupid, or pathetic, or both.

It’s vacuous, self-flattering and has no discernible aesthetic properties. It’s therefore very much the fashion for such radical non-conformists. I do sometimes wonder what people with actual talent make of this stuff and what its prevalence has done to the reputation of their vocation.

[David]

In other art and activism news, they are radically repeating what they’ve been told. And nothing says radical virtue like the name Ulrike Meinhof.

[Anna]

And nothing says radical virtue like the name Ulrike Meinhof.

What's the betting the 'protestors' quoting her don't even know what she did?

[David]

What’s the betting the ‘protestors’ quoting her don’t even know what she did?

The odds are good, I’d imagine. The kind of people who think self-flattering vandalism is a good way to spend a day (and other people’s money) tend not to be overly interested in such details, or terribly self-aware. Though I’m assuming that these self-inflating tossers would find Ms Meinhof’s slogans somewhat undermined by all the robbery, bombings, terrorism and murder. Which may be giving them more credit than is warranted.

[Patrick Brown]

Calvin on the Tate protest:

[David]

Patrick, you do realise that’s the first ever image anyone has posted in the comments here? Now they’ll all be wanting to do it.

[Patrick Brown]

Ah, but can they? Only if they have by 1337 haxxxor HTML skillz...

[Nikw211]

"Hayley Newman of Liberate Tate speaks at the protest performance Hayley Newman of Liberate Tate speaks at the protest performance", reports The Guardian.

And what words of wisdom does she have to speak?

"And I do not think art comes at any cost. Art is something that we make. Art is something that we contribute to the world and we give of ourselves to the world. And actually, I don't want I do to be tarnished by, uh, corrupt corporations."

I'd leave a comment on this, but I trust her own words speak quite clearly enough for themselves.

[David]

Also from the Guardian:

Elisabeth Monro, a Tate visitor who used to work in art sponsorship, said the performance was “as valid an installation art piece as anything else here. The whole reason to have modern art is to have dialogue.”

I scarcely need to point out that a pile of narcissistic wankers copying out their identikit views isn’t really a dialogue. Just a self-indulgent monologue repeated witlessly.

[Nikw211]

the performance was “as valid an installation art piece as anything else here.

The mind boggles.

I wonder how Newman and Monro can account for the 2013-2014 accounts that explain that:

Tate received £24,394,000 of Grant in Aid from Parliament […] Tate continues to supplement this grant from other sources and self-generated income from trading, admissions and fundraising amounted to £153,735,000 for the year

Monro seems to have been experiencing a temporary bout of absent mindedness to say their scrawls were "as valid … as anything else here"

As for Newman's "I do not think art comes at any cost", um, no cost - except that is for the getting on for £180,000,000 Tate received in a single year.

I can only recommend that they read The Board of Trustees of the Tate Gallery Annual Accounts 2013–2014.

It might help clear up a few misconceptions for the both of them.

[David]

The mind boggles.

I suppose what’s most dismaying (or hilarious) is that these fearsome leftist intellectuals think that Naomi Klein – a dogmatic fantasist whose poor grasp of history, detail and logic verges on the comical - is someone to be quoted unironically. I wonder, have they failed in their education or has their education failed them?