A number of bloggers are discussing racial profiling at the moment. But what if the enemy is in disguise? Simon’s Brain ponders the imponderable!

What if the Hasidic guy was an Islamist in disguise? I knew the absurdity of what I was thinking but I also new I was onto something. The guy had a bag on the floor and a large rucksack on his back. I looked up to see his face. He was fairly dark skinned. I started wondering how dark Jewish people can be. I knew I was being stupid and ignorant and probably racist but the thoughts kept coming. Wouldn’t dressing as a Hasidic Jew be the perfect disguise? Who would ever stop you and check your bag? And what about all those mad clerics who believe in Zionist plots to take over the world? They’d have a field day when they saw the CCTV footage on the news. Oh brain, please, no more!

Why Do You Stay Up So Late?—a Poem. (Via Boingboing.)

Brownie of Harry’s Place fame appears to have had a slightly frustrating time on the UK’s Question Time programme.

Don’t be cowed by the loud-mouthed membership of the UK branch of Baathists Abroad. Give them both barrels, deride their isolationism, be appalled at the apologia, heap scorn on their childish anti-Americanism, and be proud of the fact that you believe people you will never meet, living in a country you will never visit, deserve a chance to experience the democratic and free existence that is the birthright of every last one us.

If the Daily Ablution gets any better I think it will explode…Not only has the Guardian’s executive editor for news now resigned over the Aslam affair…

But the Ablution also points out that the newspaper published a comment and analysis piece today by a black reporter about the racism of British policemen shooting Brazillian Jean Charles de Menezes who was, unfortunately for the Guardian reporter, white!
Read it and weep.

On London appeared in Danish today—in one of Denmark’s national newspapers Weekendavisen! Unfortunately, it is behind a paywall, so none of you can laugh at the stupid headshot that accompanied the piece, which was taken at 8am the morning after too much red wine the night before. I had to trim about 400 words off the original post and tweak a few things to make it fit for print, but it is essentially the same piece…

It also completely slipped my mind to mention that if you are in the Boston area between now and January, 2006, you can check out an audio tour I wrote for the Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston. The exhibition is called Sounds of the Silk Road, and covers musical instruments from across Asia: Japan, China, Korea, Indonesia, Burma, Thailand, Tibet, India, and Turkey. One of the highlights of the exhibition (apart from the audio tour) is a Javanese gamelan, a traditional Indonesian orchestra, which will be performing every other Wednesday evening between July 13 and December 14, from 7 pm to 9 pm in the exhibition gallery, culminating in a gamelan concert in January 8, 2006. The tour was a lot of fun to write and has some excellent music on it…