From the ever alert b3ta.com comes news of giant microbes. My favourite is the common cold.
Billions of people a year catch the cold. Now you can get one too — without getting sick! Learn all about the Common Cold with this cuddly companion.
GIANTmicrobes, in a fit of propriety, calls these things “health dolls”. No GIANTmicrobes, they’re sickness dolls.
What, you are probably asking, does this mean for the prospects of western civilisation, immediate and longer term? I do not know. They are cute, I think.
This, on the other hand, also via b3ta, has got to be bad news for France. And what does this (linked to yesterday by Dave Barry) say about Denmark?
COPENHAGEN, Denmark – The director of a Danish art museum was acquitted on charges of animal cruelty Monday after a court said a display with goldfish in 10 blenders that visitors could turn on, wasn’t cruel.
Peter Meyer, director of the Trapholt Art Museum in Kolding, drew international notoriety in February 2000 after the art exhibit, featuring the goldfish, was dubbed cruelty to animals.
The display’s blenders were plugged in and visitors were invited, if they wanted, to blend the fish. Somebody did and two goldfish were ground up.
Animal rights activists complained and the exhibit continued after the blenders were unplugged. Danish police fined Meyer 2,000 kroner (US$315) for animal cruelty but when he refused to pay it, the case went to court in Kolding, 200 kilometers (125 miles) west of the capital, Copenhagen.
Judge Preben Bagger said Monday that Meyer didn’t have to pay the fine because the fish were killed “instantly” and “humanely.”
During the two-day trial, experts including a zoologist and a representative of the blender manufacturer, Moulinex, said the fish likely died within a second after the blender started.
If someone blended me in a Moulinex, the fact that it took only a second for me to die my hideous death would, for me, be little consolation. What kind of a person unleashes a horror story like this?
The installation was the work of Chilean-born Danish artist Marco Evaristti. Beside the blenders, the temporary exhibit also included a nude picture of the artist with blackened eyes and a bazooka missile surrounded by tubes of lipstick.
And there was me thinking he might be some kind of freak.
What, no SARS doll? How disappointing!
Now, I hate PETA and greenpeace and their ilk with a great passion, and normally would never EVER agree with them. However in this one case I’d have to say this is cruelty, its not hunting for food or even sport which you could even say has a point in fulfilling some primal human need or thinning a starving deer population. Its just killing something to get some sort of visceral thrill out of it and slap it as “art”, this seems only a little better than having an “art” exhibit where patrons can shoot a 3 week old puppy for kicks.
Damn man… all you freedom freaks letting us down on this one. Who the hell are you to decide what’s worthwhile or not? The only issue is the cruelty involved, and on that front, the trout you eat for dinner was probably more cruelly killed.
Personally I’m a vegetarian, so if anyone’s got a right to be all uppity & moral about this it should be me, but I utterly fail to see the case against it, aside from fusty old “it’s not proper art… these young people today, so amoral.. and as for that terrible rap music, they can’t even sing!” crap.
Even the puppy thing.. provided it was cleanly killed.. i’d think it pretty sick, but hey! In a society that condones electrocuting/shoving bolts thru’ cows’ heads, for food which isn’t particularly needed (c’mon… most of the food, particularly meat, we eat’s a luxury, not a basic necessity), having given them a pretty shitty life first, who are you to turn round to someone else & say their art installation’s more immoral than what goes on daily all around you.
This is one of the fundamental hypocrisies that also lies at the heart of the current “ban fox hunting” debate, & i’m very surprised at the side you guys have taken here so far.
A_t
Libertarianism is a set of claims about what should and should not be legally allowed. It is not a set of assertions about what is and is not “worthwhile”, followed by the claim that if it isn’t worthwhile it shouldn’t be legally allowed. I believe that in expecting us to have relaxed non-judgemental tastes about art, you are conflating these two debates. The essence of libertarianism is not doing that.
Once we separate these two types of argument (as we libertarians do as a matter of routine), it becomes much easier for each of us to express an opinion, because none of us is saying that our opinions should have the force of law, other than our opinions about the illegitimate use of aggressive force.
So, as to “who the hell” we are to be “deciding” what is worthwhile, we’re us and you’re you. Relax man. You are reacting like a Daily Mail reader, getting all in a huff about nothing.
I’m not saying that any of this stuff should be illegal, for the reasons you correctly allude to. I’m just saying that I think some of it to be junk. If you ask me what I think of puree-ing fishes for art’s sake, or for that matter chasing and torturing foxes to death for fun’s sake, I’ll tell you I do not like it one bit.
The art thing is very interesting. Rightly or wrongly, I dislike the killing of fish for spectacle/art purposes far more than I dislike the killing of fishes for human nourishment. Provisionally, I think the difference between you and me is that maybe I take art more seriously than you do, and therefore I dislike tasteless junk art more than you seem to. On that, I’m the Dailyl Mail reader.
(Similarly, I’ve noticed that monarchists get far more upset by those they consider bad monarchs than monarchy-agnostics/atheists like me do.)
🙂 thanks for calling me up on that one brian; you’re right of course, anyone’s entitled to decide whether they think something’s worthwhile or not; it’s only when it comes to forbidding certain actions that it’s a real issue.
I thought it was quite an interesting artwork on several fronts; as the artist only set up the conditions allowing the fish to be killed, leaving the life/death decision in the hands of the ‘spectators’. So, it becomes a social experiment (experience horror at the actions of others?), an exercise in self-examination (would i like to flick that switch? what would i think of someone who did? what do i think of the person who presented me & others with this dilemma in the first place)… as well as the eternal, facile “is this art?” rubbish, if you still want to indulge in that vis-a-vis conceptual/installation art.
oh, & as you may’ve guessed from the paragraph above, i strongly reject your assertion that you take art more seriously than me, at least whilst i’ve not met you. If you turn out to be an artist, fair enough, i’ll roll over & accept your greater commitment, although it still wouldn’t make your opinion any more important than mine… otherwise, i think we’re probably on quite an equal footing, just with different concepts of what constitutes legitimate art.