Monthly Archives: September 2012

Apparitions by French artist Soasig Chamillard. Madonna reinvented: found or damaged Virgin Mary miniatures reimagined as pop culture icons. As you’d expect, Chamillard’s work is not to everyone’s taste:

In 2011, Chamaillard’s reimagined icons created quite the controversy in Nantes, France, where Catholic critics declared her exhibit at Galerie Albane “scandalous,” “shameful,” and “blasphemous.” One disapproving commenter wrote on the Catholic web site Observatoire de la Christianophobie: “Faced with so much sacrilege tears came spontaneously to my eyes.” Another user simply stated: “May this ‘artist’ burn in hell and may flames devour this gallery.”

The spirit of Christian forgiveness, there.

The Virgin Mary Becomes Superman: Artist Soasig Chamaillard Creates Saintly Pop Culture Icons (Huffington Post)

laughingsquid

(For Charles Kenny)

Falls mainly on the 99 per cent.

The woman, 33, said that she had once worked at the post office but that her unemployment benefits had run out and she was living now on 400 euros a month, about $520. She was squatting with some friends in a building that still had water and electricity, while collecting “a little of everything” from the garbage after stores closed and the streets were dark and quiet.

Such survival tactics are becoming increasingly commonplace here, with an unemployment rate over 50 percent among young people and more and more households having adults without jobs. So pervasive is the problem of scavenging that one Spanish city has resorted to installing locks on supermarket trash bins as a public health precaution.

 

Austerity, que?

Spain Recoils as Its Hungry Forage Trash Bins for a Next Meal (Suzanne Daley, New York Times)

(Samuel Aranda/NYT)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RnkwXYmq-4

Dr Roy Lowry of Plymouth University demonstrates the deeply satisfying explosive power of liquid nitrogen returning to its gaseous state.

Wait for it.

(We posted this the other day but the YouTube link disappeared. A replacement has appeared. We felt it worth reposting.)

awesomer/sisfti