It looks like the fox has decided that this beagle needs a little help with the hunting photo: Mircea Costina

Hat tip to Vanderleun who found the Mircea Costina photo via Dmitry.

Via HuffPo.

Antoine Joseph Wiertz, Dernières pensées et visions d’une tête coupee (Last Thoughts and Visions of a Decapitated Head), 1853

The Belgian artist Antoine Joseph Wiertz (1806-1865) devoted most of his art to expressions of the Romantic era’s obsession with death.

Wiertz took a personal interest in the scientific question of just how long consciousness survived in the head of the victim of execution by guillotine, and in 1848 used hypnosis to attempt to share the pains and rapidly fading consciousness of a murderer undergoing decapitation for the crime of bludgeoning his landlady. The result (above) was a triptych completed in 1853.

There is a state museum devoted to Wiertz’s art in Brussels.

Collected images of Wiertz’s paintings.

Jeffrey Howe essay.

Sample:

link

Hat tip to Emmy Chang.

Eurasian Griffon aka Griffon Vulture aka Old World Vulture, Gyps fulvus

Wikipedia article on Tibetan Sky Burial.

These pictures are just lurid images of vultures consuming a human corpse and some Tibetan funerary practices which are actually rather worse. Looking at these will give you nightmares, so do not click on either link.

I did warn you.

Hat tip to Fred Lapides.

Tennessee has passed a measure making it a crime to transmit by telephone, in writing or by electronic communication an image that would cause “emotional distress” “without legitimate purpose.”

“Emotional distress” is a standard of practically universal application. Anything at all might cause someone emotional distress, and there is no basis to determine whether someone experiences it, beyond his own say so.

What is and what is not a “legitimate purpose” also constitutes a legal nightmare. Who wants any judge to be permitted to decide what is and what isn’t legitimate?

Volokh

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Liberals are always arguing that we need to inform the American legal system with the superior wisdom of international jurisprudence.

From Brazil, comes the story of a court decision upholding the right of one Ana Catarina Silvares Bezerra, an accountant analyst who is allegedly afflicted with a female equivalent of satyriasis, to achieve personal gratification on company time, using the company’s computer and Internet access, for 15 minutes every 2 hours.

Via Walter Olson.

In these difficult economic times. a Congressional Research Service survey finds that at least one economic group is doing well: federal employees. More than 77,000 federal government employees throughout the country — including computer operators, more than 5,000 air traffic controllers, 22 librarians and one interior designer — receive larger salaries than the governors of the states in which they work.

Gubernatorial salaries do vary. California’s governor (naturally) gets the largest salary of any state governor, $212,179, and quaint, old-fashioned Maine pays its governor a token emolument of $70,000. Oddly enough, Colorado had the largest number, 10,875, of federal employees pulling down bigger bucks than the $90,000 received by that state’s chief executive, Bill Ritter.

The Washington Times story summarized:

703 federal workers in California earned more than [the state governor] , and all but 34 of them were in medicine.

Maine’s governor, by contrast, made the lowest salary at $70,000. CRS said 3,423 federal employees in the state made more than that, including seven pipe fitters, and three people engaged in plastic fabrication work.

For individual occupations, the CRS report did not break down the states where they worked, so it was impossible to determine where the one interior designer who made more than the governor was employed.

CRS said nationwide there were 122 park rangers, 271 environmental protection specialists, 14 chaplains and one prison guard who earned more than their governors. There were also 21 archaeologists, three sociologists, 48 social workers, four food service workers and five civil rights analysts who made more than their governors.

CRS report

Magna Carta, 4th Amendment both dismissed by Indiana Supreme Court.

Orrin Kerr discusses this atrocious ruling at Volokh Cospiracy.

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Orrin Hatch on democrats: “They play politics very, very tough, they play it well, and they don’t give a damn about what’s right and what’s wrong.” That is the essential truth about liberal pols in a nutshell.

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Little girl likes to play with dead squirrel. (The sighthound killed it.)

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Garden gnome drowns 58-year-old woman.

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New Russian all-female sect, centered near Nizhny Novgorod, venerates Vladimir Putin as reincanation of St. Paul.

Hat tip to John Brewer.

Indignant female surgeons force President of the American College of Surgeons to resign over Valentine’s Day editorial. New York Times:

Dr. [Lazar] Greenfield, 78, was the editor in chief of Surgery News when the editorial was published but resigned that position in the wake of the controversy; the entire issue of the newspaper was withdrawn. He is an emeritus professor of surgery at the University of Michigan School of Medicine.

The editorial cited research that found that female college students who had had unprotected sex were less depressed than those whose partners used condoms. It speculated that compounds in semen have antidepressant effects.

“So there’s a deeper bond between men and women than St. Valentine would have suspected, and now we know there’s a better gift for that day than chocolates,” it concluded.

The editorial outraged many women in the field, some of whom said that it reflected a macho culture in surgery that needed to change.

For the Russian billionaire, Narcosyndicate chief, or Third World dictator who has everything: a diamond-encrusted, single button suit designed by Stuart Hughes of Liverpool, purveyor of the “world’s most luxurious communications and bespoke elements.”

Hughes specializes in solid gold iPhones and similar knickknacks and tailoring is a new area for him, so the actual cutting, sewing, and fitting are being done by Richard Jewels, a 27-year-old Manchester designer of Nigerian extraction who opened his own fashion house last year.

Referred to as the “R. Jewels Diamond Edition,” the world’s most expensive suit is “made from a blend of Cashmere wool, silk & diamonds, and requires 600 man hours of assembly. 480 diamonds (0.5cts, colour G, VS2 quality, totalling 240cts) are “strategically positioned” around the suit. Clients receive all expenses paid trips to luxury destinations such as the Arc en Ciel in St Lucia, presumably for fittings, as part of the deal.

It is not actually mentioned, but the photos suggest that the lucky Mafioso will receive a diamond-trimmed pocket handkerchief accessory as well.

Three of these suits are planned at a cost each of £599,000.00 ($892,250). Buyers can soothe their consciences by reflecting that 10% of the price will be donated to Haitian relief.

Telegraph

Born Rich

The Chap

Stuart Hughes demonstrates an impressive yobbo accent, and inability to stop saying “OK,” as he proudly displays gold iPhones, iPads, and Blackberries.

Hat tip to James Coulter Harbison III.

A bunch of pathetic sissies spout really amazing PC drivel in what seems to be a desperate and ill-advised effort to get laid via sucking up to women. People, especially non-moron females, are laughing at them everywhere.

A scientific swindler preyed on American scientists working in Geology during a period extending from 1884 to 1891, obtaining books, specimens, and money from a number of American scholars. He had a good knowledge of Eastern European languages, was well acquainted with the field and frequently assumed the names of prominent authorities. By the time he vanished from history, he had also accurately identified large numbers of specimens in American museum collections.