A bunch of controversy has erupted recently in Australia over the work of artist Bill Henson, whose exhibition at the Roslyn Oxley gallery has been the target of police raids over his shadowy depictions of young adolescents with not many clothes on.

I really don’t know how I feel about his work, but I do know that he’s been working on similar themes for decades and until now hasn’t caused an explosion of outrage. I know that I am disappointed by Kevin Rudd’s public reaction against the work:

"I find them absolutely revolting… Kids deserve to have the innocence of their childhood protected. I have a very deep view of this. For God’s sake, let’s just allow kids to be kids… Whatever the artistic view of the merits of that sort of stuff - frankly I don’t think there are any - just allow kids to be kids."

Myself, I find the pictures a little creepy, and think it would be foolish to try to pretend that these images aren’t about adolescent sexuality and even occasionally titillating— Perhaps the issue is that they aren’t de-sexualized enough?

It all poses an interesting question: is it ever ok to publish photographs of naked kids? When I first added the image above it was without the nipple-blocking squares, but to be honest it was kind of creeping me out (and I didn’t want to risk problems with my ISP) so I went ahead and censored it. Even the newspaper article linked at the top of the page published it intact, so I’m more of a wowser/prude than I realized— and look, by censoring the image I have in fact made it dirty; it’s no longer art when black bars appear!

When good people with good intentions (ie protecting children) start yelling about this stuff it’s hard not to wonder where the line can be drawn between the artistic and the criminal. Personally I don’t think Henson should be charged… and as long as only nice people look at his work in nice ways I guess I have no problem with what he does. Even if creepy pervs now flock to his exhibitions (they won’t) in order to catch a glimpse of the occasional pubescent tit, it’s still a long way from conventional child pornography in that these works are created with the blessing of the subjects and their parents.

Of course porn could created with similar consent… so… I guess it’s both the consent and the intention that matter. But what if the intention is, say, to create a serious work about the sexualization of children by photographing them in overtly erotic situations…?

Obviously I have no frakking clue where I stand on this… but I know criminal prosecution is really inappropriate in a case like this (logically they would also implicate curators and collectors everywhere for providing a "market" for this alleged exploitation).

Related: Lock up Lewis Carroll

My 3-month-old niece Bea helps me resist cigarettes with her unwavering anti-nicotine stance.

In Sydney, having a much needed minor holiday. From shaving among other things.

Many people probably don’t know I started smoking again a couple of months ago, after a break of more than 5 years. I mention it now as a way to add shame as an additional motivation to quit again. Last time I needed patches to wean myself off nicotine, hopefully this time I can do without (although I am feeling crazy anxious right now).

(original image sourced from )

If you haven’t heard of the alleged documentary film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, it’s basically a slimy turd of a propaganda piece designed to sell the ideas that:

a) Evolution (or "Darwinism") is an outmoded theory being unfairly promoted by atheistic biologists who refuse to accept evidence that life and its complexity can be attributed to an intelligent designer, and

b) Evolution/Darwinism is a philosophy which leads to things like mass-murder, genocide, eugenics etc.

The star of the show is Ben Stein, an intellectual luminary whose credits include being a speech writer for disgraced former president Richard M Nixon, starring as the droning teacher in the 1980s classic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and hosting some shit game/reality shows such as Win Ben Stein’s Money and America’s Most Smartest Model.

Until now I assumed he was just another anti-science nutjob who failed to understand that intellectual freedom does not include the right to be paid to teach bullshit at an educational institution. But hearing some of the things he says in this I realize he is in fact quite horribly stupid, and more ignorant than the average 13 year old when it comes to science.

To clarify my position on stupid: there is nothing inherently evil about it per se… I harbour no ill will toward the stupid in general, except where they exercise their stupid in a detrimental way, and Stein’s attempt to rouse the heaving masses of latent stupidity against the scientific "establishment" is a very good example of what I consider beyond stupid and well into very fucking evil territory.

Some of the stupid things Stein appears to believe about the Theory of Darwinism (he believes these things enough to spout them in TV interviews and press conferences)

• Evolution claims that life arose from non-life via natural selection — it does not; evolution is concerned with speciation, ie how life diverges into new and complex species, as it clearly does based on fossil and genetic records.
• A keystone of the theory is that new species can arise from existing ones, and yet this has never been observed — in fact it has been observed in multiple instances, but even had it not this wouldn’t be a deal breaker anyway… evolution has taken place over hundreds of millions of years, so new species can’t be expected to crop up in front of your eyes.
• Evolution is flawed because it does not account for the origin of the universe — WTF? Here his stupidity burns so bright it hurts. Because in his tiny brain he is seeing Darwinism as the key opposition to Creationism, I think he forgets that evolution is a theory specific to the origin of the biological diversity we see today; it was not invented to replace creationism, but Stein is unable to grasp this very simple fact. He also complains that evolution fails to explain gravity, thermodynamics and astronomy…!?!

It’s kind of ironic that Stein is the host of America’s Most Smartest Model, where he plays the sneering intellectual tripping up models with trivial questions like "what is the square root of 144?"— The ignorance of the pretty boys and girls he mocks will never do the kind of damage that his own much more potent and willful stupidity might under the guise of intellectual freedom.

I finally got an about and contact link back on here, currently appearing in the page header with subscribe and search options as well (previously in the sidebar on the front page only). Apologies to people who have previously had to leave general enquiries in the comments on random posts, you can now send me private random messages whenever you like!

Hillary Clinton is annoying me and I don’t even live in the US. Theories that she is attempting to sabotage the Democrats’ election chances if she can’t win the nomination are starting to seem less far-fetched (the logic being that she can try again in four years after a disastrous McCain first term).

Just recently she decided to call Obama elitist since he refers to the bitterness and frustration of certain working class people. Speaking as someone who had to put up with a conservative government who took to labelling underpaid left-leaning secondary school teachers as elitist, this marks her as a total bitch in my books; it’s mere pandering to the anti-intellectual crowd, most of whom who wouldn’t vote Democrat anyway, and it also makes no sense for one mega rich presidential candidate to refer to another in this way— Pot… Kettle. etc.

PS I wish there could be some kind of representation for "the rest of the world" when you elect your presidents/administrations over there, because every fucked up Decision they make cause problems for us non-citizens as well, and a truly democratic leadership should be elected by ALL those whose lives they directly affect (including prisoners and convicted felons). How about 1 vote for every 100 foreigners? That would give the rest of the world the democratic power of about 40 million Americans— is that so much to ask?

Boo me for not updating for so long… I’ve been very busy which is one poor excuse (it really doesn’t take so long to bang out a post), but also I’ve been spending time with a certain someone, a certain female someone, and there is not a whole lot more I’m really comfortable saying on the topic apart from that she is rather nice. And cute. And ummm… significantly younger than me, so I simultaneously feel older by comparison and younger by association… It’s all good :)

So now I’m wracking my brain for other things that have been on my mind which I can blurt out for your reading pleasure, and all I have are bits and pieces… which will follow shortly in separate entries since I’ve realized that posts covering multiple topics tend to discourage comments.

But I am enjoying his company. I like cats but am not ready to adopt one of my own, since I can’t really say where I’m going to be more than a year ahead of time, and cat ownership can be a super humungous pain when you want to move. Buddy, as I call him, because he is my buddy, turned up over the Easter weekend, and has been hanging around ever since—perhaps because he is always hungry and I feed him tuna and smoked chicken. He has a collar but no tag, so I guess someone is probably worried about him somewhere. But should I snub him and assume he will find his way home?