the definition of "funny, but not ha-ha-funny"

Actual Palin interview.

The Saturday Night Live version.

I can't tell the two apart, except one is hysterically funny, and the other one makes me hysteric. I'm foetal under the desk right now.

Also note how the SNL version uses many actual quotes from the Couric/Palin interview, with almost no change.

Love song for the internet age

I've been there:

(Amanda Palmer: "I Google You")

Esbjörn Svensson has died

I just got the terrible news that the Swedish jazz pianist Esbjörn Svensson of EST (the Esbjörn Svensson Trio) has died in a diving accident, only 44 years old.

I interviewed Svensson at least once. He struck me as a wonderfully friendly, articulate guy with a lot of humility about his work.

I'm not sure I always liked the direction they were taking the trio in the last couple of years (flirting with varying degrees of success with electonics, moving in a more pop/rock/easy listning direction – even though I'm not really much of a jazz purist, I never thought it worked when they got too "easy"). But I won't soon forget the concert they gave at USF in Bergen in 2002. I was having a bad month of epic, biblical proportions. (The kind of month where the bills pile up, you do badly on exams, a flock of locusts threaten your crops, barbarians pillage your tribe and hear the lamentation of your women, fire and brimstone fall from the sky, etc.) I came late, and walked in in the middle of "And God Created the Coffee Break":



And I felt my foot tapping, and then they segued into an extraordinary version of "Behind the Yashmak":



And after that it just got better and better. And seriously, I think that concert was the only time I felt really happy for like three months.

Elephants in Porcelain Shops

I'm breathless. The Republican primary debates in the US really makes our local right wing parties seem wonderful. They are coherent, realistic and humane. The most interesting thing in these videos is almost seeing the crowd that the candidates have to pander to. Check out the question marked "Do you believe every word in the Holy Bible?" Or the guy who asks the candidates what kind of guns they have. (McCain, knowing he has to answer, and probably hating every second of pandering to people like this sucks it up and says "I've used guns in Vietnam. I know how to use a gun. I don't currently own a gun." Poor guy.) It's like watching a horror movie, only real. When they say that the Christian fundamentalists have gotten control of the GOP, they weren't kidding. Also note what makes the crowd applaud.

And then, check out question 8. "What three federal programs would you cut?" Watch, as with one fell stroke, they cut away the dept. of Education, the Dept. of Energy and then go all one-upmanship on each other: "I'm gonna cut the Dept. of Education!" "Yeah, well I'm going to cut even MORE departments!" "Yeah, well, I'M GOING TO CUT THE IRS!" "WELL I'M GOING TO CUT EVERYTHING, EVEN MYSELF. LOOK, I'M SLASHING MY ARMS WITH A KNIFE. THE BLOOD! THE BLOOD! THE DARKNESS COMETH! COME, DARK ONE!" Or anyway, that's what it sounded like to me. These people are politically crazy. Cut the department of education, social security and the IRS? Seriously? You can say that at the top level of American politics and not get laughed out of office?

In Rainbows

I just bought the new Radiohead album I'm dying to hear it. Here's the opening track. It's all clappy. Not crappy. Clappy

Humiliation ⇒ Terrorism ⇒ Al-Qaeda (⇒ George Bush)

A while back, I linked to a video of Lawrence Wright talking on Al Qaeda. I finally got the time to watch it - home internet I worship at thy fibre-optic'd feet - and it's even better than I thought. Wright is a commanding public speaker, fluently speaking from a rich reserve of first-hand, historical and statistical knowledge to paint a lucid portrait of the islamic radicalism of the previous 50 years. If you want to have a sensible picture of Islamic terrorism, you should take the hour-and-change out of your day it takes to watch this. If nothing else, watch the first 15 minutes or so, in which the most important points pop up. If you have a little more time, watch the 40 minutes of his prepared speech, and quit after the questions (there are too many not-questions-but-comments (to one of which Wright gives only a delightfully dry "I agree"), but Wright gives interesting, well-composed, eloquently improvised answers).

And really, we should have a sensible picture of terrorism. Not because terrorism is a threat to us* but because it has become the universal symbol of evil which is used to justify political oppression. When we juxtapose the minor but very real threat of Al-Qaeda with the massive, completely insurmountable political and social problems of which the terrorist organisation is merely a symptom, one realises just how completely and utterly the Bush administration has destroyed any hope of ending radical Islam in our lifetime. In unilaterally and single-mindedly pursuing the military "war on terror", they have exacerbated the demographic, sociological and political problems which are causing the problem they are trying to defeat. Like slamming your fist repeatedly into an anthill to stop the ants from biting you. The increasing alienation of immigrant populations in Europe; the continuuing conflict in Israel/Palestine; world poverty (Islam encompasses roughly 1/5th the world's population, but roughly 1/2 the world's poor); the reinvigoration of Al-Qaeda in Iraq and the general sense of cultural humiliation which Wright describes so vivily. These are the real problems.

But I don't want to make this a rant against Bush. That's an easy strategy. The problem is far more decentralised and far more subtle than that. The basic premise of Wrights speech is that what Al-Qaeda really is, is a manifestation of cultural humiliation and alienation. The overriding sociological factor of islamic extremists is that they are generally young men who feel alienated from the culture they are in. They find other young men who feel the same way, one thing leads to another, and they go blow something up. This happens easily in societies with little or no social life - 15 of the 19 terrorists on 9/11 were Saudis, you will recall - but it can just as well happen in cultures that have social lives that exclude young men of their religion. In short: the backlash, when it happens, will be easy to blame on the terrorists, but a more correct way of putting what is happening is that we are helping to create the problem ourselves. Sowing the wind, as it were.

And in the end, it is us here in Europe who will be at the receiving end of the backlash. The gap between the native populations and immigrant populations in Western Europe are widening, and recent events like the Muhammed caricatures of Denmark are just flashpoints in the development of a smug cultural identity founded on intolerance and exclusion. The idea that we can stop globalisation is childish and selfish. The idea that we should combat Islam and muslims - Huntingtons clash of civilisations - is a part of the very structures which produce terrorism and extremism.

Last words of the film: "I don't think the future in Europe looks very attractive." Boy, no.

* "More people die in car chrashes every day than died on 9/11", to use a common comparison. Other things that kill more people every year than terrorism: WAR. FAMINE. PLAGUE.