Bin Laden's TV Viewing Habits

Blogger went down yesterday Friday the 13th! I assume it was a hack attack. I lost a couple of posts and the comments on them. Here's one I've partially reconstructed...
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Last Saturday the Pentagon released a strange two minute home movie of Osama Bin Laden watching satellite TV. What we were supposed to take from the movie was Bin Laden's vanity, i.e. the only thing he watched for any length of time were news reports about himself. What I thought was interesting was the fact that any time a black person (President Obama for example) came on the box Bin Laden immediately hit the menu button; he did the same any time a woman came on. The latter is more easily explained - jihadis are not supposed to look at women who are not their wives under any circumstances. In Iraq some hostages have reported that their captors only ever watched cartoons for fear of catching a glimpse of a woman on TV. Bin Laden's beef with black people? Well he is a Saudi and I've been told by a number of people that Saudi Arabia might be the most racist country on Earth...On the other hand Wednesday's Washington Post, quoting Bin Laden's diary says that he was actively trying to recruit minorities to the cause (without any success). It all reminded me of an old - still funny - Dave Chappelle routine from a few years back that I've uploaded below (warning for those easily offended the f word is used once).

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Ok I'll come clean this entire "argument" was just an excuse to show the Dave Chappelle clip. If you want a rather more nuanced and interesting look at Osama Bin Laden and iconography check out my old buddy's Girish Shahane's latest column for Yahoo India, here.

Is The Harry Potter Thing Over Now?

I couple of days ago I read a review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Harrows, on my old pal Girish Shahane's blog. Now, if I recall correctly, Deathly Harrows is the last of the Potter books! So that's it then is it? This is the last Harry Potter film of the last Harry Potter book? Is it all over now? If so I must say I'm relieved. I've never gotten on board the Harry Potter train myself whether at Kings Cross station nor anywhere else. The books bored me silly and the clips of the films I've seen on TV looked pretty dire: a bunch of obnoxious English boarding school kids pointing magic wands at each other...Hmmm. I'm glad children seem to enjoy these novels and I hope it's got a lot of them reading, but I've never understood the appeal they have for adults. Still I'm not complaining at the moment, I'm just glad that after ten long years it's finally finished. Unless Ms Rowling writes another one of course.
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On another topic entirely...Girish also has an interesting post about an incident from our college days here.