This is really rather silly.

An Al-Qaeda website has said that, um, they endorse John McCain for American president. Apparently, it'll be easier to bring down the 'evil US empire', or something. Who knew endorsements were so vital to terrorist organisations?

In other news, my companies are doing well, despite the downturn: Google and Apple have surpassed expectations, bringing some cheer to beleaguered markets. And I read this really fun essay in the NYT a couple days ago, arguing that following the prescribes of great literature might not work out so well in real life.

I think I got the blues

Maybe it's the festive season, or certain facts of life just sinking in now, but I've been a bit gloomy recently. Of course, that could just be because of the economy in general and how the world is going down the toilet. But there's a lot to love, certainly, and I'm going to try to cheer myself up by posting happy links.

• A legendary investigative reporter tells it like it is in the Observer's profile of Seymour Hersh.
• Colin Powell points out the obvious in his endorsement speech for Obama. I love that someone has finally said it: Even if Obama were Muslim, that shouldn't have been a talking point.
  
• Also I really, really love the fact that Tina Fey said, in reponse to Carly Fiorina's criticism that her portrayal of Sarah Palin was sexist, "I saw one lady trying to form a thought that it was sexist on the news, but she didn't really get it together. Probably because she was a lady and she was dumb. (beat) Wait. Is that sexist?" HAH. This is old, now, but I only just found out and I love Tina Fey more than ever.
• Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize in Economics (or the Bank of Sweden.. whatever, if you want to get technical). Yay!
  

A rather motley collection

of links and such things. I have just finished reading Tim Harford's the Logic of Life, and like the blurb behind the book promised, I feel like I have a pair of x-ray vision goggles to look at the world with. Unfortunately, it is little help in understanding the utter chaos in the world right now. And if you read the papers, you'd be forgiven for thinking the world is ending. I get scared every time I look at a newspaper, and its hard not to be pessimistic. On the other hand, you take relatives out shopping to boutiques and look at this gorgeous, gorgeous kurta and think, hmmm, maybe 32k isn't that unreasonable an amount to spend on something so pretty. Thankfully, sanity reigns before you can spend money that you don't have on clothes that you don't need.

So onto the fun stuff: Foreign Policy wonders what Google would be like as US President. I so love the idea of the article, I wish I'd written it! And I'm sure Google would have done better than Dubya. And there's an amusing bit here about how Bill Adama is the leader we need. Not as fun is three US states trying to challenge the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court ruling. This NYT editorial on the matter is spot on in its estimate that the measures these three states have taken will have far-reaching consequences. And there's an alarming piece in the Times UK about how the credit crunch might mean the end of sport. But to end on a bit of a happy note: people are apparently getting mixed-up over which is Sarah Palin and which is Tina Fey. And in other bit of news, McCain has rescheduled with Letterman after the relentless ribbing he took when he cancelled his last appearance on the show to ostensibly deal with the financial crisis.

ETA: This lovely article in the NYT about caricature and its influence on politics. Again, I lament the lack in India.

So much news!

The two weeks or so I haven't blogged have been incredibly newsy -- from the nuclear deal Finally getting passed, to the economy in meltdown, to new Sarah Palin shenanigans, Tata pulling out of Singur and the ever-worsening situation in Orissa and Karnataka. So I'm not sure where to start, except with... me. I went to Milan, and it was fun! I also took advantage of having been to Milan before and travelled to Bergamo one day and Como another. Both were beautiful, in different ways. Italy is a gorgeous country and the gelato and the buildings are wonderful. I even found the requisite South Asian in Piazza Del Duomo, which is like the centre of the city. In fact, I found two -- one was a Bangladeshi who owned one of the tourist kiosks in the square and sweetly gave me a discount once he found out I was Indian, and the other was an Indian man selling flying helicopters who wanted to know if all was ok in Delhi (this was just after the blasts).

Speaking of, it's humbling to be inside Milan's Duomo. It is Beautiful. So Spectacular and so peaceful. The Duomo in Como was also lovely, though unlike the one in Milan, it was not gothic in the slightest and had many German influences. Bergamo had an incredible one in its old city, and the new one had a wedding in progress!

I've been watching the Daily Show religiously now. Jon Stewart is on such a roll, he's been pretty fantastic lately. Political satire, Yay! I loved the Ricky Gervais/Steve Carell bit at the Emmys -- could they please host next time, please, since you won't ever give BSG its due, you may as well do this, Academy.

And the Saturday Night Live skits with Tina Fey as Sarah Palin. OMG. She got it SO RIGHT. The US election continues to be the best dramedy to follow. Apparently, some 70 million Americans tuned in to watch the vice-presidential debate -- more than the presidential debate, btw -- and that's not counting the international audience. Wow.

More Palin

Wow, this woman has inspired comment like no other. Now, bringing you more about Palin and feminism, here are:

• Camille Paglia ('dissident feminist') in Salon about Palin as a feminist icon.
• Judith Warner in NYT about Palin as an anti-feminist icon.
• Also in Salon, my hero Rebecca Traister and another columnist, Cintra Wilson are Pissed about Palin.
• How Biden should debate Palin, in Slate.
• On a more general note, Paul Krugman has written in the NYT about how 'the resentment strategy' might lead to a Republican victory.

Another very cool thing I found out about yesterday is The Bechdel Rule. It's kind of awesome.

Texas and Ohio

So, Hillary Clinton is back in the race! This is very much of the good. I truly believe she's the better candidate at this point in time, she has the experience and the policies. There's lots of good stuff around the Internet on the gender vs. race question as well as on the primaries. NYT's Maureen Dowd, who has in recent times ripped Hillary Clinton apart in not nice ways, raises an important point when she says here:

With Obama saying the hour is upon us to elect a black man and Hillary saying the hour is upon us to elect a woman, the Democratic primary has become the ultimate nightmare of liberal identity politics. All the victimizations go tripping over each other and colliding, a competition of historical guilts. People will have to choose which of America’s sins are greater, and which stain will have to be removed first. Is misogyny worse than racism, or is racism worse than misogyny?

While I disagree with her on many counts, not least the extremely snide way in which she derides the Clinton campaign, I think this is a very important point and one that is aiding the Republicans more than anything. While the Democrats are busy fighting amongst themselves, John McCain has formally won the Republican nomination. This means that he can now start campaigning for President - a hell of a head start.

There are also other, very interesting pieces. Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post has argued that if Clinton loses the nomination it will have more to do with things other than her two X chromosomes. The most intriguing piece for me was this one, from the Seattle Post Intelligencer. The blogger, Monica Guzman, argues from a perspective I think many young women my age will be familiar with. We take so many things for granted as women that our mothers and grandmothers had to fight to achieve. And so in a large way in our day to day lives are removed from the issue of gender, and this, I imagine, holds true particularly for women living in developed liberal societies. But I don't agree (entirely) with her concluding thoughts:

That voters can see beyond gender when picking a candidate should serve as reward to the generation who fought so hard to make that possible.

I think her earlier paragraph contradicts this. She says:

But a female presidency, like a black one, will reflect a truly equal world only when the candidate's gender or race is as important as his or her hair color -- which, ironically, is when the fewest people will notice. That gender is an issue in this campaign should remind all us young women that the battle is not yet won.

More on the Democratic identity politics can be found here, in an excellent analysis of how much the race vs gender campaign is hurting the Democrats. And this piece on CiF should be read for different reasons entirely. The second comment is a good response, so I don't want to say much. Except I will link to this absolutely no-holds-barred indictment of all the people - liberals and otherwise - intent on either dismissing gender as a factor in the elections or arguing that its somehow less of an issue than race. And here is yet another excellent Washington Post piece on how much Hillary's candidacy means to women voters.