A screed:
I’m not in favor of obscenity trials, except when children are involved. You can make the case that a talented photographer forces us to confront adolescent sexuality by taking pictures of naked young people, and I can make the case that he’s a creep, because there has to be something . . . askew in an adult’s makeup to find this a compelling subject that must be expressed explicitly. There is something lacking in the hearts of people who dasn’t admit to themselves that the artist might be trusting the critical establishment to give him cover precisely because he dresses up his dank needs as Art.
If someone wants to protest child abuse, well: a painting of a child with haunted eyes, a dim room, a figure in the background. Color, composition, tone, shadow, the horrible truth implied with all the power Western representational art accumulated over the centuries.
Or, you can glue pictures you got from a google search, printed out and cut up and pasted on screen grabs from porno movies. Because you’re working in the new vernacular, the new global interconnected web of mysterious source material given meaning by recontextualization.
Also, you can’t draw worth a damn, so that whole “painting” thing is off the table.
No one skewers pretentious “transgressives” like Lileks.
People that abuse children sexually should be launched into the sun… slowly.
Another reason shame should be brought back into our culture.
should be launched into the sun
That makes no sense. It’s the most expensive place to get to in the solar system.
You took me literally? I have (‘A step farther out’ 1979) right in front of me. It has a delta V table (many actually.) I am well aware. But I’d settle for boiling in oil, if you prefer.
[i]That makes no sense. It’s the most expensive place to get to in the solar system. [/i]
Can you get to the sun by using a gravity assist such as Venus (I’m thinking more for trajectory change then velocity change)? That should reduce the needed delta-v massively, especially if you aren’t worried about arrival velocity.
Solar Probe+, scheduled for launch in 2018, is slated to use multiple grav assists from Venus to lower both perihelion and aphelion, and at perihelion it will be within the corona at about 8 solar radii. It will also be the fastest man-made object at about .07 percent of C.
Personally, I favor lava lakes as a far more convenient destination for those who prey on kids, and I prefer to save the Sun for the Senate. (Hey, we’ve got to use the Senate Launch System for something, right?)
Can you get to the sun by using a gravity assist such as Venus (I’m thinking more for trajectory change then velocity change)? That should reduce the needed delta-v massively, especially if you aren’t worried about arrival velocity.
Yes, but it’s still very expensive, and a stupidly pointless way to punish people.
But Rand, the fact that it is so insanely expensive to get to the Sun would make it an attractive destination for the senators who created the senate launch system – we know how they love doing things the most expensive way possible. Call it a billion-per-senator junket and they’d be falling all over themselves to go.
🙂
Taking nothing away from Lileks, but Tom Wolfe does it just as well if not better, and in book length to boot (and nearly forty years earlier): The Painted Word and From Bauhaus to Our House, both hilarious, terrifying, and damning. Also see Wolfe’s essay written on the death of sculptor Frederick Hart (perhaps best known for the “Three Soldiers” statue that’s part of the Vietnam Memorial on the Mall), and some parts of his latest novel Back to Blood (which I found entertaining but not living up to his earlier fiction, A Man In Full in particular).
And, apropos of any of these so-called artists that receive NEA funding, an oldie-but-goodie from Robert Heinlein: “A government supported artist is an incompetent whore!” (from Stranger in a Strange Land).
I like the phrase “covering your But” (for “We can’t justify doing heinous act XXXX, BUT…”).