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For her project “The Big Bang“, photographer Deborah Bay captured macro photographs of plexiglass sheets that had various types of firearms fired at them. After having professional law enforcement officers fire bullets into the glass, she brought the sheets into a studio and “shot” them again with a Contax 645 and a 120 macro lens. She writes,

I began thinking about “The Big Bang” after seeing a sales display of bullet-proof plexiglas that had projectiles embedded in it. The plexiglas captured the fragmentation of the bullets and provided a visual record of the energy released on impact. As I began to explore this concept further, I also was intrigued by the psychological tension created between the jewel-like beauty and the inherent destructiveness of the fragmented projectiles. Many of the images resemble exploding galaxies, and visions of intergalactic bling sublimate the horror of bullets meeting muscle and bone. In fact, Susan Sontag described the camera as “a sublimation of the gun” — load, aim and shoot.

[Quote]:

“Sir, your trousers.”

“Pardon?”

“Sir, please take your trousers off.”

A pause.

“No.”

[Quote]:

He wants us to trust that a 400-ml bottle of liquid is dangerous, but transferring it to four 100-ml bottles magically makes it safe. He wants us to trust that the butter knives given to first-class passengers are nevertheless too dangerous to be taken through a security checkpoint. He wants us to trust the no-fly list: 21,000 people so dangerous they’re not allowed to fly, yet so innocent they can’t be arrested. He wants us to trust that the deployment of expensive full-body scanners has nothing to do with the fact that the former secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff, lobbies for one of the companies that makes them. He wants us to trust that there’s a reason to confiscate a cupcake (Las Vegas), a 3-inch plastic toy gun (London Gatwick), a purse with an embroidered gun on it (Norfolk, VA), a T-shirt with a picture of a gun on it (London Heathrow) and a plastic lightsaber that’s really a flashlight with a long cone on top (Dallas/Fort Worth).

At this point, we don’t trust America’s TSA, Britain’s Department for Transport, or airport security in general. We don’t believe they’re acting in the best interests of passengers. We suspect their actions are the result of politicians and government appointees making decisions based on their concerns about the security of their own careers if they don’t act tough on terror, and capitulating to public demands that “something must be done.”

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DRM on ebooks is dead. (Or if not dead, it’s on death row awaiting a date with the executioner.)

It doesn’t matter whether Macmillan wins the price-fixing lawsuit bought by the Department of Justice. The point is, the big six publishers’ Plan B for fighting the emerging Amazon monopsony has failed (insofar as it has been painted as a price-fixing ring, whether or not it was one in fact). This means that they need a Plan C. And the only viable Plan C, for breaking Amazon’s death-grip on the consumers, is to break DRM.

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The United States government has adopted a take-no-prisoners attitude in its prosecution of Megaupload, seeming to raise every conceivable objection to Megaupload’s efforts to defend itself. We’ve already covered the government’s attempts to block Megaupload from spending money to preserve servers that the company says contains data needed for its defense.

Now, the government has adopted a new tactic: making it as difficult as possible for Megaupload to obtain legal counsel. The prominent law firm of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart and Sullivan has sought permission to represent Megaupload in the case. But in a legal document filed on Wednesday, the government raised several objections to freeing up money to allow the law firm to represent Megaupload in court.

As Quinn Emanuel noted in a Thursday response, the government’s objections are so broad that they would effectively prevent Megaupload from hiring any lawyer with experience litigating major copyright cases. Indeed, they could could make it impossible to hire any lawyer at all. It’s hard to see how Megaupload could get a fair trial if the government’s objections are sustained by the court.

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“I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, artists, zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world,” Steve Jobs once said.

Many of Jobs’ admirers are also artists.

Some of them are artists with a great big sense of humor.

Combine those together and you get a wacky and wonderful collection of art depicting Apple’s visionary CEO.