Cat!

Courtesy of my little brother.

---

Also this (thanks Brendan). If any musicians don't know this piece, it's especially important that you look at the score, which is... utterly mad. And beautiful, and cool, and funny, and fun, and generally awesome.



---

Ron Proser, the Israeli ambassador to the UK, gave a talk in St. Andrews today, which I attended. He was a large man, who spoke softly and slowly, and in a slightly patronising way that would've been far less offensive to most people there had he not been, y'know, defending Israel in Britain. The talk, entitled "Israel's Search for Peace," was all right: nothing special; but then, what can one expect from just one talk? Especially given that he only talked for twenty minutes, and gave the next two hours or so to questions. The questions were all civil, but largely critical; Proser fielded them well. He evaded some questions, omitted a few relevant things, but was, on the whole very honest and straightforward. For example: when asked about the Israeli preponderance to jail people unjustly (e.g., minors for throwing stones at the wall), he made some good points about how, in times of trouble, such as the present, the law is bound to be stricter than in times of peace; but he failed to answer the specific question asked. He apologised for very little of Israel's actions, insisting that the actual situation is more complicated that the questioners think (the only apology he made was over the timing of the announcement of the new settlements earlier this year). I'm hardly now a friend of Israel because of the talk, but I do see a bit more clearly the motivations of the Israelis.

There was a bizarre amount of security there. Police everywhere. We had to bring our passports to buy our tickets yesterday, and to bring them again to the talk - and we didn't even know where the venue was (or who the speaker was!) until two hours before the talk started. Bags were forbidden, and every single of the c. 500 people was screened and metal-detected before being allowed in. My body set the policeman's hand-held detector off a few times (once my shin set it off??) and I got a pat-down each time. Very unsettling.

There was a crowd of anti-Israel protesters outside - a lot of them good friends of mine. Again, they were civil enough, but I was angered to hear one of them (whom I didn't know) accusing the people in the queue of being supporters of Israel, and of not listening to the Palestinian side of the argument. This was retarded: first because pro-Israel opinions are rare as can be in Britain, and so this is the "other side," second because just going to a lecture is hardly sufficient for you to be legitimately labelled an advocate of the views expressed by the lecturer, third because it is a deeply stupid and unhelpful separating of people into 'us' and 'them,' which is the last thing Palestinians need, fourth because it amounts to a demand that people don't educate themselves about an important conflict, and fifth because it's hateful, which is always retarded.

So that's the end of my ramblings.