Blue jean nation.

At the Capitol Square today in Madison.

"Artist Anish Kapoor Slams France For Covering Up Anti-Semitic Vandalism on 'Queen’s Vagina.'"

"The 200-foot funnel-like sculpture (official name: “Dirty Corner”) [at the Palace of Versailles, near Paris] was defaced with white spray-painted hate words including, 'At Versailles Christ is King,' and 'the second rape of the nation by deviant Jewish activism.'"

The words were gilded over in gold leaf, under the artist’s direction, after local officials rejected his desire that they stay uncovered on the steel-and-rock piece as evidence of “the scars of the renewed attack.”

“We lost, can you believe it?” Kapoor told artnet News in Moscow, where he launched a new exhibit Monday. “Some very racist, in my view, deputy from parliament took me to court. We were forced to hide the graffiti. It’s a terrible, sad thing. You want me to pretend it didn’t happen?... It happened.”

ADDED: My first reaction was that of course the graffiti must be removed. My second was a memory of Jackie Kennedy:

A white artist from Miami graffiti'd "Black Lives Matter" 2,000 times on the outside of a building in Detroit.

Analyze the racial politics of that.

The background is painted black and the writing is white, and the lettering is lined up, so it evokes the old-time school punishment of being forced to write one phrase repetitively on the blackboard (a punishment repetitively, endlessly satirized on "The Simpsons").

If you're trying to do my assignment — or you could write "Must Do Althouse Assignments" 2,000 times on a piece of paper — you should know that a Detroit gallery owner — a black man named George N’Namdi — commissioned the Miami artist —a white man named (really!) Renda Writer. N’Namdi and Writer discussed including the phrase "Lives Matter" or "All Lives Matter" and rejected it.

“It really dawned on me, we're talking about a movement here, we’re not talking about just a slogan,” N'Namdi [told The Huffington Post]. “We’re talking about something we’re trying to change, and once you start diluting the movement and making it ‘All Lives Matter’ … What issue is ‘All Lives Matter’ confronting? None.” 

That is, N'Namdi, the gallery owner, not the artist, is promoting/explaining the project to the press and telling the Huffington Post that he went through his own process of realizing exactly what the liberal press has for month's instructed us to see as the correct answer.

What about the artist? Does he have anything to say? If the Detroit gallery owner knew what he wanted on the wall in Detroit, why didn't he hire a Detroit artist? Was it sort of a performance in which the white man was the Bart Simpson, taking his punishment? Or was there no Detroit graffiti artist up to the job?

"I can't believe they're pupating right in front of us!"

From "A Beetle Utopia on an Artist's Conk Fungus" at Scientific American. Artist's conks are "woody shelf fungi that cling to the trunks of trees."

Every single life phase of some sort of beetle was playing out in and around these conks simultaneously....

I tried searching the wikigooglepediatron for the identity of these beetles, but I came up empty. If any entomologists reading know what this beetle is, please tell me!...

Well, look at those photographs. That beetle looks familiar!

The black spots on the blue beetles were also a treat – like something out of Dr. Seuss.... Surely, surely, someone out there knows the identity of this huge, gorgeous beetle, who seems to have a highly specialized relationship with what appears to to be the fungus Ganoderma aplanatum – the artist's conk...

Back in July 2014, we were walking in the foothills by Boulder, Colorado, and we were talking to a young woman, a passerby, and she spotted something on the ground, picked it up on a rock, and held it out for me to photograph:



It's the same beetle Scientific American didn't know!

IN THE COMMENTS: Larry Davis said:

Pleasing Fungus Beetle - Gibbifer Californicus

I added the link. He seems to be right. Thanks, Larry! 

"Let's See What Republicans Learn From Losing Boehner."

A Megan McArdle column that ends:

But maybe the only way Republicans will learn their limits is by crashing into them, as the Greeks did. Maybe they need to elect someone who will try what they’ve been longing for: a full throated, take-no-prisoners approach that doesn’t bother with compromise or concession. Like the Greeks, they’ll discover that this leaves them worse off, not better. If Republicans can't see that coming -- if they can't learn from Syriza's mistake -- then they will very likely learn their lesson from President Hillary Clinton.

ADDED: McArdle did something I wouldn't do — submit to a cross-examination on the "meaning of life":

"Don’t think: 'How close can I get to the rape line?'..."

"... but instead: 'How sure can I be that everyone involved in this sexual encounter is completely into it?'"

Congressman snags Pope Francis's glass of water and ritualistically drinks it and administers it to various others...

... including his wife, who looks — if I may interpret — a tad put upon.

This is not the first time Brady has pulled a stunt like this, with the Philadelphia Daily News reporting he did the same thing after President Obama's inauguration, though he just saved that glass and did not drink from it.

Yes, he's a Democrat.

"How are you going to win people’s votes if your introduction to them is ‘all you folks want is free stuff’?"

Said WaPo columnist Eugene Robinson, quoting something Jeb Bush did not say.

Jeb said: "[O]ur message is one of hope and aspiration. It isn’t one of division and ‘Get in line’, and ‘We’ll take care of you with free stuff’. Our message is one that is uplifting, that says: ‘You can achieve earned success … we’re on your side."

Shame on those who'd twist that. 

"Feeling abandoned by Democrats while fighting same-sex marriage, notorious Kentucky clerk Kim Davis has vowed to join the Republican Party..."

"... she announced on Friday at the Family Research Council’s Value Voters Summit. 'I’ve always been a Democrat, but the party left me,' she said."

Chunk.

"Chunk" is the word of the day here... for no other reason than that it's come up on its own twice: "invented something called the 'Cha-Chunker'" and "pegs in their hubs that can 'take chunks out of' the granite ledge." It's a funny word, isn't it? One thinks of "blowing chunks" or the "Goonies" boy Chunk or — if you're really old — "What a chunk o' chocolate":



The word "chunk" somehow devolved from "chuck" — the squarish cut of meat — and "chuck," like "cluck," is the English speaker's reproduction of the sound a chicken makes.

"Chunk" is a notably American word. Here are some of the quotes collected by the (unlinkable) OED:

1856   E. K. Kane Arctic Explor. II. i. 15   A chunk of frozen walrus-beef....
1833   J. Hall Legends of West 50   If a man got into a chunk of a fight with his neighbour, a lawyer would clear him for half a dozen muskrat skins....
a1860   New York in Slices, Theatre (Bartl.),   Now and then a small chunk of sentiment or patriotism or philanthropy is thrown in....
1894   Congress. Rec. 13 July 7445/1   Just one moment, my friend. You are a lawyer... Yes, a chunk of a lawyer.
1907   Chicago Tribune 8 May 7 (advt.)    It's really ridiculous the way we've knocked chunks off these Spring overcoat prices.
1923   P. G. Wodehouse Inimitable Jeeves xiii. 148   Eustace and I both spotted that he had dropped a chunk of at least half a dozen pages out of his sermon-case as he was walking up to the pulpit.
1957   T. S. Eliot On Poetry & Poets 49   Crabbe is a poet who has to be read in large chunks, if at all.

"Freeman has invented something called the 'Cha-Chunker,' a machine with a metal point that can be lowered into the mouth of any canned beverage to widen the hole."

"He then inverts a mini bottle of alcohol into the can..."

Check out the photos. A soda can is served with a mini-liquor bottle stuck into it. The effect is ludicrously low-class, but apparently it's a new and purporting-to-be-trendy thing in New York.

Here's a picture of the machine piercing the can.

"After 53 years and 23 official themes, it is not easy to create a Bond song without venturing into musical pastiche..."

"... but you would have to say they Smith has pulled it off with aplomb.... It is another attempt to give 007 an emotional inner life he rarely betrays on screen. This is a Bond who just wants to be loved. But Smith has to wrap those extraordinary vocal chords around something...."

Why did the lawyer for Patrick Kane's accuser suddenly withdraw from the case one day after doing a news conference holding up a bag he said was tampered-with evidence?

Wednesday, Thomas Eoannou claimed the bag was evidence from his client's case and that he had it because somebody had left it on the doorstep of his client's mother.

But in a news conference on Thursday, he said that the facts surrounding the evidence bag had been misrepresented. “In keeping with my ethical obligations as an officer of the court,” Mr. Eoannou said, “I can no longer represent my client effectively and am withdrawing effective immediately.”...

In his own conference on Thursday, Kane’s lawyer, Paul Cambria, said... “It’s obvious to me that Eoannou dropped out of the case because someone in this woman’s family lied to him about the evidence... I told you yesterday that this was a hoax, and now it’s obvious.”

I first read about the Kane story yesterday in The Nation, where the headline was: "The Patrick Kane Case Marks a New Low in the Long History of Rape Accusations Against Athletes/After a rape kit was dumped at the door of his accuser’s mother, the NHL can no longer be silent." That concluded:

"Speaker John A. Boehner, under intense pressure from conservatives in his party, will resign one of the most powerful positions in government and give up his House seat at the end of October..."

"... throwing Congress into chaos as it tries to avert a government shutdown. Mr. Boehner made the announcement in an emotional meeting with his fellow Republicans on Friday morning...."

IN THE COMMENTS: David Begley said:

From altar boy and Jesuit college to meeting the Jesuit Pope in the House. Crying allowed. 

Yes, that was my first thought: The Pope made that happen.

AND: There I was yesterday mocking the so-called "breaking news" of the Pope's meeting with John Boehner as "the height of banality."

ADDED: I'm watching Newt Gingrich on FoxNews, asked why is this happening now: "John had been thinking about doing it... probably a month later. But I think the emotional impact of the Pope coming, John's a very devout Catholic, this is something he'd always wanted to see happen. Yesterday, in many ways, is the high point of his speakership, and in that sense, I think, it kind of makes sense to say: I want to go out with something that he will treasure the rest of his life."

ALSO IN THE COMMENTS: MadisonMan said...

I thank him for his service -- it can't be an easy job -- and I thank him for leaving. I'm not sorry to see him go. It's too bad he was re-elected so many times.

I wonder what the real story is. He's ignored the Conservatives base for so long...what's different now? 

And Bobby said:

I'm wondering the same thing. A colleague (rating: B3) has suggested that Boehner and the conservatives cut a deal on the Planned Parenthood funding to avert the government shutdown -- i.e., the conservatives will let Boehner fund the government, and he will be forced out so they have their own victory to celebrate. Theory is the Planned Parenthood battle has gotten so large that the conservatives now need to get something tangible for losing that battle, and shooting Boehner out of the saddle is a very convenient win for them.

"I don't think I'd die for a taco. But I might die as a taco."

I don't know how I missed the viral video of the skateboarding taco, but I'm seeing him this morning, because he's on that Village Voice list of 25 New Yorkers who need the Pope to forgive them.

Now that the topic is skateboarding, I want to tell you something about the new skateboarding park in Madison, Wisconsin. It's taunting a man:

“I go out my door on my way to work and see this thing; I pass it every day,” says [Allen] Burger, a machinist who has been riding BMX bikes for 15 years. “If [the rules against biking in the skateboarding park don’t] change, I just want to move. It’s like having the love of your life dangled in front of you... This is so upsetting to have a park right there... I’ve totally lost motivation."

Yes, he's a Burger and that other guy is a taco. That's just serendipitous.

“I do feel bad,” [says Patrick Hasburgh, one of the organizers behind the Madison Skatepark Fund]. “It’s a strange thing as a skateboarder to have to exclude someone after being excluded as a skateboarder. But really, the park isn’t designed for that.”

According to the exclusionary Hasburgh — I can has burg — BMX riders put pegs in their hubs that can "take chunks out of" the granite ledges that the skateboarders would only wear away slowly.

Here's the "Equal Treatment for BMX riders in Madison Skatepark" petition.

"Martin Shkreli... hahahahaha, just kidding, that guy’s going to Hell."

From the Village Voice article "Here are 25 New Yorkers Who Really Need Pope Francis to Forgive Them."

I'm reading The Village Voice this morning — orthography buffs will know why I capitalized the "t" in "the" in this sentence and not the previous sentence — because I'd arrived at "R.I.P. St. Vincent's Hospital" in connection with the story of the white man who settled Brooklyn.

It was where the lowly, the mighty, and the garden-variety zany denizens of downtown were born, cared for, and died. Edna St. Vincent Millay, the Village poet who first proclaimed the lovely light of a candle burned at both ends, was given the hospital's name after it saved her uncle's life. It was where Gregory Corso—the beat poet who "sang Italian songs as sweet as Caruso and Sinatra," as Jack Kerouac said—was born in 1930.

St. Vincent's Hospital is the St. Vincent in Edna St. Vincent Millay:

My candle burns at both ends;
   It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
   It gives a lovely light!

The white man who settled Brooklyn is the subject of the post that's sat at the top of this blog overnight and was the subject of conversation between Meade and me as we assembled breakfast this morning. Meade thought it was funny that the article about the man had the correction: "This article initially quoted B.A. as saying he was born in 'Mt. Sinai.' He actually says he was born in St. Vincent's. We regret the error." As if such a trivial error, amidst everything else that happened, could be a subject of serious regret.

I took the position that, in New York City, the difference between Mt. Sinai and St. Vincent is huge. For a man who is adamant about his urban territorial credentials, the difference is intense. Born in St. Vincent's? He may think he's a natural-born hipster. He's 46, so he was born in 1969. That was the year of the Stonewall riots in the Village, and he was saying "I grew up with Stonewall, I grew up on the laps of drag queens." He also says: "So what I have in this city is ownership. When I look at the concrete I think, oh my blood mixes with the concrete." Blood and concrete ≈ St. Vincent's.

As for St. Vincent himself — St. Vincent De Paul — he was captured by Barbary pirates in 1605 and sold into slavery. His second master was a spagyrical physician, and Vincent learned medicine from the Muslims, converted to Islam, and had 3 wives. There's more to that story. He gets back to France and to Christianity, and, obviously, sainthood. [ADDED: The linked Wikipedia article is incredibly confusing, as discussed in the comments, but, to be brief, the "converted to Islam, and had 3 wives" part isn't about Vincent.]

And Martin Shkreli, the man whose name festers in the post title? Don't you know who he is? His fame, too, lies in the field of medicine: "Thanks to Martin Shkreli, life-saving drug Daraprim will now cost $750 per pill—up from $13.50. And no one, not even the FDA, can stop him."