Links For Monday

Stuff to read:

Please watch this video of Sarah Silverman exhorting young Jews to convince their grandparents in Florida to vote for Obama. She suggests cutting off visits to them as ransom.

Speaking of Jews, here's an article on a "kosher" cell-phone that, well, I'll let BBC describe it (courtesy Wasay):

The kosher cellphone looks like an ordinary cellphone, can make and receive calls, and may have a calculator and alarm clock.

But it cannot send or receive text messages, browse the internet or take photos - all activities that could potentially involve behaviour considered "immodest" among Haredis.

For example, SMS capability could lead to the unwitting receipt of mass text messages publicising secular events. It could also be used as a method of illicit communication between male and female teenagers.

And all photos of women are forbidden, as is accessing websites with content deemed inappropriate.

Sometimes I think people like Imran Khan would be happiest living with Ultra Orthodox Jews.

Speaking of people like Imran Khan, Nawaz Sharif is trying to negotiate peace between the Taliban and the Karzai regime. Well, better for us he stays out of our affairs and fucks up Afghanistan's, yes?

Here's a couple of Sarah Palin links. The first (courtesy Adeel) is a pretty scathing column in the Guardian which has the matter-of-fact line of the week: "Palin is a never-ending train wreck of ignorance, inconsistency, outright contradiction and sneering." The second (courtesy Lindsey) is a pretty funny piece in the New Yorker.

One of the Obsidian Wings guys wonders at what point the hateful demonization of Barack Obama by the McCain-Palin ticket and their subsidiaries morphs into actual incitement of violence. Considering Obama is the first viable black candidate for President in a country that still suffers from a fair degree of latent racism - not to mention quite a bit of overt racism too - combined with the constant "He's a Muslim!" rumors in an age where Muslims are largely deemed to be terrorists in the country in question, I'd say that line has been crossed. One of Andrew Sullivan's readers concurs.

Finally, a couple of links on Business School types. The first (courtesy Nikhil) is one of those "day in the life of" tidbits from students at Harvard Business School, and this one is from a woman from Islamabad. Here's the best bit:

My phone rings. It's my mother from Pakistan who was thinking of me over breakfast. She reminds me as usual to eat healthy food, and we exchange good morning/good night wishes. I lay in bed reflecting on my journey from Pakistan to HBS. I feel blessed to be here and with that thought fall asleep.

Um, ok. The second B-School type link is this great column by Judith Warner, who can't conjure up the proper feelings of schadenfreude in response to this Wall Street crisis, mainly because we're all basically fucked along with them. This is the bottom line for me:

A couple of years ago, at the height of the boom, a friend in New York publishing described to me the indignities of being a five-figure employee commuting daily from suburban New Jersey on trains packed with traders, stock brokers and hedge-fund types.

“These were the guys who, in college, I used to step over on Sunday mornings when they were lying in a pool of their own vomit,” he said. “And now they’re earning millions and millions – in bonuses alone.”

This is the thing that has always pissed me off the most about bankers, hedge funders, private equity-ers and godknowswhatelse-ers: they're all dumber than I am. No, seriously. I know, because I went to high school and college with these idiots, and now they all make more in a year than I will make in 10 years at the peak of my career. Ok, so not ALL Wall Street-types are bad (I'm marrying one, so I guess she falls under the "not so bad" category) but in general, the point stands: these people are overpaid pricks who wouldn't know the answer to "How many World Wars were there in the 20th century" and do charity work only because it looks good on their resume.