The exhibit includes floor-to-ceiling photos of nude toddlers, children, teens and adults, and an array of heated, flavoured and textured condoms rolled over wooden dildos. There’s also a ‘climax room’ with a round, low, leather bed, red curtains, a video screen showing animations of aroused genitals, and the voice of a man describing an orgasm.

Next to close-up photos of adult genitals are video screens using animations to explain masturbation.

Attendees are asked to write their own words for penis and vagina on a digital screen, and slang-terms like c— and pussy for female genitalia and c— for male body parts, are displayed above it in large letters.

There are listening stations with pre-written questions and push button audio answers.

Next to a printed question asking, ‘Why do many boys always want to have anal sex?’ sexologist Jamy Ryan responds that not all boys want to do it, but: “If you are comfortable trying that activity, go ahead and do it. It could be fun for you, but if you are not, you don’t really have to do it.”

Next to a question about pregnancy, the recording assures listeners that abortions are available at medical clinics and at 14 years old, you don’t need to tell your parents.

Seems to me the staid Great White North has changed a bit since I left in 1956. All for the better, I’m sure.

As noted here, I was lucky enough to do a record with Chuck long ago, and the lovely Nina and I saw him play just last summer at the bandshell near our home here in Brooklyn.

At the time of his death Chuck Brown was, by any honest measure, the funkiest man alive. I’m sorry he’s gone.

Churchill said this, once upon a time:

The worst difficulties from which we suffer do not come from without. They come from within. They do not come from the cottages of the wage-earners. They come from a peculiar type of brainy people always found in our country, who, if they add something to its culture, take much from its strength.

Spoiler: Dr. Sowell thinks they tend to gum things up, too, if you don’t keep an eye on them.

The comparison is not ideal, because the first clip animates the concerto’s first movement, and the second one animates the third. Also, the first clip features a far better performance than the second, which is obviously the output of a computer playing a programmed version of the score.

Both animations use vertical position to indicate pitch, and scroll horizontally through the score so that the notes currently being played are always in the center of the screen. Both renderings also color-code the individual musical voices. And there the similarities end.

The first animation, which is graphically far more sophisticated, uses colored circles to represent each note, strung along lines that mark off the half-dozen or so separate voices. As each note is struck, it appears as a circle whose initial size indicates the duration of the note. Each circle shrinks at the same rate, so that it has just shrunk to zero by the time the next note is struck. The circles bubble up on the right side of the screen, have their moment in the sun, then rush off to the left — solid before they are struck, and hollow afterwards. The visual effect is lively and effervescent, and in particular the vertically stacked circles that mark off the quarter-note pulse throughout most of the piece have a beautifully propulsive effect. It’s a marvelous piece of work.

The second animation is far simpler, but clearer too: it’s a simple graphic representation of exactly the same sort that one might see on a MIDI display of the score. The notes are horizontal bars, with vertical position representing pitch, and horizontal extension representing duration. As each note plays, it is is highlighted, then goes dark again. That’s it! There’s none of the fancy eye-candy we had in the first clip: the expansion and contraction of the horizontal scale as the circles approach the center, the changing sizes of the circles to represent the lifespan of each note, the passage from solid to hollow circles as each note is played — but the eye is much better able to follow the representation of each note, and to connect the visual input with the music. As much as I admired the creative ingenuity of the first animation, I found the second to be more effective in bringing eye and ear together in a unitary experience.

Have a look. Which do you like better?

(Also: was Bach a genius, or what?)

Oh, and lest we forget: here’s another way of doing this sort of thing.

Have a look. An explanatory article is here, the scientific paper mentioned in the article is here, and a Wikipedia entry on the subject is here.

I don’t suppose this will have much effect on the vote. It’s hard to imagine that his coming out in favor of SSM will snatch any supporters away from Mitt Romney, and although a majority of blacks oppose legalizing same-sex marriage (the latest poll I’ve seen reported 55% opposed and 42% in favor), I doubt that this will cost Mr. Obama much, if any, of his lock on the black vote.

Interestingly, Mr. Obama also said that although he personally approves of same-sex marriage, he thought that decisions about its legality should be left to the States. (Indeed, this just happened yesterday, with North Carolina voters rejecting the idea by a wide margin.) I mention this because I can’t think, offhand, of any other examples of Mr. Obama endorsing this sort of federalism; it isn’t generally his style at all.

Another interesting question, what with a Mormon standing as Mr. Obama’s opponent this fall: what percentage of supporters of same-sex marriage would object to the legalization of polygamous marriages? On what principled basis can they do so?

– The ongoing game between AQAP and the Saudis…

– …in particular, between Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri and Mohammed bin Nayef (little brother Abdullah Asiri having already sacrificed his life in vain on that score);

– That Fahd al-Quso was probably painted by the mole that got the upgraded package, no doubt with Saudi assistance;

– That Lil’ Squinty has been putting his feet down in the Tunbs, which is calculated to make the Emirates edgy and annoy the Saudis;

– That al-Asiri’s previous venture was thwarted in Abu Dhabi;

– That PETN is such damnable stuff: hard to detect and you don’t need much of it;

– That there is no question about which of the two Gulf powers AQAP and their pals in the Horn seem to willing to make common cause with, though they make strange bedfellows…

And that’s all just for starters. It’s enough to make your head spin.

As you’d expect, this item has evoked a lively response from the Right. For sheer entertainment value it would be hard to top Iowahawk’s riposte, which you can have a look at here.

What is constant in all of this? What gives continuity to the “self” that connects yesterday to today to tomorrow, that makes promises today that must be kept days or months or years hence? Nothing, it seems, but the dance. The “dancers”, the individual atoms and molecules and cells and squirts of neurotransmitters — those come and go; what carries our past forward into the present and the future is nothing more than a dynamic and ephemeral configuration, like the waves of the ocean or the Great Red Spot.

These personality-annihilating illnesses are so particularly heartbreaking because they attack and destroy one of our most cherished illusions, the foundation upon which we orient ourselves in relation to others: the grounding of individual personhood in the continuity of identity. Our institutions, and indeed the social instincts from which these institutions arise and take their form, assume this continuity as their axiomatic bedrock — but as these diseases demonstrate, the ground is not so stable, and for the person whose spouse simply is no longer the person she married, the effect is surely as devastating, and as terrifying at the most primordial level, as an earthquake.

More photos here.

I thought it was an interesting idea, and was actually quite besotted with it for a while. It never gained anything like mainstream acceptance, though (upon briefly meeting Stephen Jay Gould some time later, I asked him about it, whereupon he rolled his eyes and said “Oh God, that awful book” and proceeded to rattle off a series of devastating objections, many of which you can read at the article linked above).

I hadn’t heard anything about it for a very long time, when today I was walking down the street and saw a man sporting a t-shirt that advertised “The Museum of the Aquatic Ape”. I went home and looked it up, and sure enough, there really is such a place — or a strange little website, anyway. I hardly know what to make of it.

Have a look for yourself.

The word has, of course, been a rallying cry of socialists and Marxists for a very long time — so much so that Wikipedia even has an entry about it.

Perhaps this indicates a refreshing frankness on the part of the campaign, a willingness to fly their true colors, so that voters can make a genuinely informed choice — to call, as it were, a spade a spade, on the assumption that socialism is in fact what a lot of Mr. Obama’s essential coalition actually wants.

At the very least: as dog whistles go, that’s a pretty low-frequency one.

We reserve comment.

Iran: For the record. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei provided the following guidance in response to a question about whether it was sinful to use social media.

“In general, the use of social networking websites (such as Facebook, FriendFeed, Orkut, etc) is impermissible if their use entails a corrupt action (such as promoting corruption, spreading lies and false subjects) or if it creates fear of committing a sin, or if it boosts the enemies of Islam and Muslims, or if it is against the Islamic Republic’s laws.”

Comment: Khamenei’s comment is worth noting by a Western Readership for two reasons. First is that it shows how Shi’i Muslims are expected to ask their role models for emulation – the ayatollahs — for guidance on everyday activities ranging from eating to using social media.

The second reason is that the Ayatollah’s response conflates fear of committing sin with violations of the laws of the Islamic Republic or just boosting the enemies of Islam. In this moral architecture, illegality and evil are the same. That means that a traffic offense or other violation of national law is a sin, just like failure to keep the Ramadan fast, for example.

That is not how Iranian law works in daily practice, to be sure, but it is the thinking of the religious leadership and the extremely devout. The West generally abandoned such thinking before the Renaissance.

Mr. McCreary’s comment, in turn, is worth noting in that it shows he felt the need to point out to Western readers what should be completely unremarkable to anyone with an understanding of Islam, and in particular Shi’a Islam: that it is a complete, all-embracing system that provides explicit instruction for every aspect of human life; that in Shi’a Islam the guidance of the Prophet is moderated by a divinely inspired clergy; and most important of all, that the separation of religious from secular authority — in other words, the subordination of man to Man’s laws rather than God’s — is a fundamental sin.

Rhetorical question: How, in this day and age, can any educated person living in the West not know all of this?

Read the caption carefully.

What was it that Emerson said about hobgoblins?