Useful Advice

You may or may not be aware of a syndicated New York Times column called "The Ethicist," to which you can write for advice on ethical dilemmas. IMO, it's kind of a stupid column. Sometimes the answers are pretty obvious, and other times I think the guy is just flat-out wrong. Then again, I have what might charitably be referred to as an ambiguous morality.

At any rate, this guy on Gawker.com is The Unethicist. He takes the questions from the NYT column and responds to them...well, you can read it yourself to see how he responds.

I am so pissed off I didn't think of this first.

The Art of Mel Kadel

I came across an amazing artist this evening and am sure that all three of our readers will agree that she is quite excellent indeed. All I could find out about her was this blurb ripped from from a bio page for her over at oolongtees.com (which warrants a look itself I might add... some very cool original t-shirts on display there).

"Mel Kadel is originally from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and graduated from Moore College of Art in Philadelphia. She now resides in Los Angeles, in a log cabin by the 5 freeway. She works using ancient papers, tiny pens, Q-tips and glue."

Well her ancient paper and tiny pens are suiting her very, very well. Be sure to rummage around on her site, melkadel.com, in particular check out the photos link which has photos of a series of drawings and collaborations with sarcastically enlightened messages. I hope she is considering a book collection of these some day, I would sure as hell buy it.

Japan is different from America

Refreshing!

'Strands' Painted Wine Glasses from Woodeye.com

These glasses are available in any custom colors you would like for no extra charge. Every glass is first airbrushed with dishwasher safe, oven hardened glass paints, then etched with the 'Strands' design by Jeffrey Woods, and signed by the artist on its base. For more details you can click here.

Internet Dating Tips #4

Let's talk about representation.

There's much to be said for mixing it up, for branching out from your comfort zone to seek new friends. Opposites, they say, attract. Then again, birds of a feather.... You can't structure your life around aphorisms. And you can't structure a great relationship on false pretenses. To that end:

If you have a child, your on-line profile should reflect this.
If you're still married, your on-line profile should reflect this.
If you spend every weekend out of town, or don't believe in long-term relationships, or are only looking for sex, your on-line profile should reflect this.

These factors all influence how ultimately available you are, and it's unfair to prospective partners to go into a first date without knowing that you're attached to a person or idea that will influence the course of your relationship.

In the same vein, make sure you're on the right board. For instance, if you do not enjoy dressing up in mascot costumes or rubbing against stuffed animals, do not create a profile on a furry board. To do so is disingenuous, and people you meet will not be impressed by your snide comments about fox tails. If you self-identify as a vampire, and only want to meet other vampires, or maybe a vampire-fairy, stick to an otherkin site. Don't post on Christiansingles.com and then get pissed off when people tell you you're going to hell. And finally, and I can't stress this enough, IF YOU'RE NOT JEWISH, DON'T TRY TO MEET GIRLS ON J-DATE. I don't care about your love of kabala, or your resemblance to Woody Allen, or your desire to get in on ZOG. Unless you're Jewish, you shouldn't be looking for a partner on the world largest Jewish dating site. Yeah, I know American Dad said it's a great place to meet desperate women. They're still desperate Jewish women, and they don't want to meet you. Call me racist, if you like. Just stay the hell away.

The Art of Spirals

I stumbled upon this collection of photos and photo manipulations of spirals and felt it was worthy of sharing with others. There are some stunning images in here as well as some highly unique photoshopped creations as well.

The times, they are a-changin'

A Seattle high school teacher is on paid administrative leave after telling his students, "I ought to take whoever is talking in my class, line them up against a wall and shoot them."

It's hard being a teacher these days. You've got privileged kids, helicopter parents, No-Child-Left-Untested regulations. You have students with mosquito ringtones text-messaging each other in class, students buying custom papers off the internet, students whose behavior is determined by whether they've taken their Ritalin orally, ground it up to snort it, or sold it to a drug dealer. What you don't have is an authority to compel the kids to learn.

This article scares me. Granted, there's nothing funny about school shootings, but this wasn't about school shootings. Even the dumbest of kids understood that the teacher was not threatening to kill them, as the article explains. In fact, he didn't say, "I will." He said, "I ought to." He never suggested he would hurt a child. High school kids, after all, have the capacity to understand nuance and sarcasm, just as they have the ability to shut up and listen for 44-minute blocks.

As a college instructor, I once resorted to a graphic threat when a scholarship athlete undermined classroom organization. My star football player habitually walked in twenty minutes late, and neglected paperwork required by the department. One day, when he strolled in tardy, I confronted him before he reached his seat.

"You're late," I told him.

"I had practice. I'm only a minute late."

"Class starts at 8. You're 20 minutes late. Football is not an excuse. Do you have your copy card?"

"Um..."

"You need to be on time every day. And if you don't have your copy card on Thursday, I'm going to take you out to the fountain and drown you."

On the one hand, it was a threat. I didn't say, "I ought to drown you." I said I would. On the other hand, football jock was 12 inches taller and 100 pounds heavier than me, and he brought his copy card on Thursday, and began showing up early for class. In discussing the scenario with my peers and supervisors, almost everyone found the incident a good example of using humor to solve a problem quickly. The one person who found my words inappropriate was the woman who gently told troublemakers that their behavior hurt her feelings. She lost her job for "inadequate" teaching a few months later.

Maybe those kids in Seattle felt threatened. But maybe they needed to. Instead, a 16-year-old cried to her mommy to get rid of a teacher she didn't like. I spent my entire public school career trying to explain to adults that I felt threatened in school, and no one ever suggested that school should change to make me more comfortable. You see, the world doesn't work like that. There's an old proverb that says something like, "To avoid stones piercing your feet, you can either cover the world in leather, or wear shoes."

My fourth grade teacher, Ms. Faas, threatened us a hell of a lot more than this man in Seattle, and we were 9, not 16. She repeatedly told us that if instructions were not followed, if we talked out of turn, if lessons were ignored, "heads will roll and blood will flow." This woman scared me out of my wits. I despised her. Every moment in her class was torture. To this day, my mother remembers her as the best elementary school teacher I ever had. My mother did not complain to the school board when I told her what went on in my classroom. Rather, she challenged me to reveal what inappropriate behavior of mine had brought the threat on. Then she warned me to behave.

I hate to sound like a crochety old fart, but if kids get yelled at for not paying attention, maybe the solution is for them to pay attention, or at least pretend to pay attention, not to get rid of the teacher.

Vienna, Austria: World Leader in Literate Smut

I'm Feeling awfully proud of my Austrian heritage right now...

Viennese Sex Hotline to Help Library

A novel idea for municipal fundraising involves an Austrian actress reading from works of erotic literature.

For the benefit of lonely people who hide with old books in the rear stacks -- or anyone who likes literate smut -- Vienna City Hall now runs an "Eros-hotline" to benefit its main library.

Through May callers can pay €0.39 (53 US cents) per minute to hear an actress read from classic and modern erotic literature. Anne Bennent, an Austrian stage and film star, reads passages from the library's so-called "Secreta" collection of erotic fiction from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.

Callers will hear hot and heavy passages from German-language writers like Hans Carl Artmann, Annemarie Weber and Ferdinand Lasalle; or writers in German translation like Anaïs Nin.

"So far 158 people have phoned up," Vienna Library spokeswoman Suzie Wong told an Austrian news agency on Monday. "They've spent around 660 minutes on the phone."

The hotline has been in operation since April 4. The idea is to raise money for an expansion and remodelling of the city's main public library.

George W: Rap Battle Master

Intricately Painted Eggs by Paul Fanning

My cousin Paul blew us all away last Christmas when he sent out a series of hand painted eggs he had crafted. Each egg is tapped and drained, and then painted or dyed (possibly both, I need to verify with him) with multiple colors in unique designs. Please take a look at his Flicker gallery to see more of his creations.

Keep making more of these Paul, they freaking rock!

Weird Works of Elizabeth McGrath

Somewhere between dollmaking, a disturbing sideshow and a cryptozoological study, Elizabeth McGrath's works are beautiful and disturbing.


Check out the octo-lady (St. Amphitrite) in "The Sailor's Valentine" gallery.

And below: Merle the Maggot!


From "Everything that Creeps"

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

“Why lie around on your back when you can do something interesting and new, something useful?” asks Mary Roach. Some folks prefer not to think about what will happen to their body when they’re done with it. If they do think about it, most don’t think beyond the funeral, where their family will mourn as their remains are interred in the earth in a box, or the moment their cremains are scattered to the wind. Mary Roach is not most people, and she wanted to know: what happens to those of us who aren’t immediately laid to rest? If, for instance, we donate our remains to science, what then? In Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Roach answers this question, and many other questions that might not occur to the casual reader. How do forensic scientists learn about decomposition? Why do engineers need corpses? Are there better ecological alternatives for the disposal of human bodies?

In smooth prose that is bubbling with curiosity at the same time that it slyly pokes fun at its author and subject matter, Roach moves through the life-affirming world of the dead, witnessing medical students practice plastic surgery on severed heads, the harvesting of organs from a beating-heart cadaver, human decomposition experiments informing crime-scene investigation, impact tests on corpses, and unsettling encounters with the funeral industry on several continents. Along the way, she evokes the past with historical documents about early anatomy labs, medical cannibalism, grave robbers, and head transplants. She does not deny a certain squeamishness at her subject matter, merely counters her discomfort with light humor and a the journalist’s zest for a good scoop. “Many people will find this book disrespectful,” she writes, “There is nothing amusing about being dead, they will say. Ah, but there is. Being dead is absurd. It’s the silliest situation you’ll find yourself in.”

Roach has the utmost respect for those men and women who donate their bodies to science, and repeatedly discusses the implication of such beneficial selflessness. She just understands the dead bodies piling up in her experience as something separate from the variegated lifetimes of their former inhabitants. Of one cadaver, a subject furthering the borders of science at the only field research facility “in the world dedicated to the study of human decay,” she observes, “Like many big-bellied people in Tennessee, the dead man is dressed for comfort. He wears gray sweatpants and a single-pocket white T-shirt.” Another body, “is dressed this evening in a Smurf-blue leotard and matching tights. Beneath the tights he wears a diaper, for leakage. The neckline of his leotard is wide and scooped, like a dancer’s.” Bodies are ridiculous. Even her quest for knowledge, she understands, is a little bit ridiculous. Still, it’s fascinating to see through her eyes and learn from her experience (and more pleasant than smelling through her nose). Stiff is a fast-paced, rollicking ride. Life after death, may be impossible, and yet the dead can still go on being useful to society.

Buy this book direct from Amazon through Dragon's Library!

I am not making this up

Here's a great toy for those of you who can't get enough of the whole-molecule flavor of good old-fashioned nitrates. Find other inexplicably unmarketable entertainment for children like Whack the Camel, Senor Schnozzbot, Hair Putty, and Ethel the Opera Lobster at Gobler Toys.

Little People All Around

"My message is, don't pick on midgets or we will kick you in the knee."

Usually try not rip stuff off from fark.com, but this quote was too good to pass up. While little people playing basketball isn't news to fans of Little People, Big World, it just makes for some good, positive entertainment, particularly in a world cobbled together from so many simultaneous tragedies.

Internet Dating Tips #3

Dear gawd, don't do it.

There are some messed-up people on-line.