Nirvana's Unplugged set is my favourite recorded musical performance - I like that DVD more than any of their individual albums. Their whole attitude to the thing is what makes it for me - eschewing the big hits and focusing on other lesser album tracks (Pennyroyal Tea is a highlight), inviting relatively unknown band The Meat Puppets to join them on-stage where the expectation would have been to play with another of Seattle's leading lights, and a bunch of fairly random covers.

The set finishes with a cover of Leadbelly's Where Did You Sleep Last Night?, which remains a chilling, intense climax. Watch at 4:40 on the video where Kurt looks like he's about the explode. Sensational.

As requested, admittedly a while back, I'd like to point you, dear reader of these words, in the direction of another blog of equal import. My friend Tom is, amongst other things, an excellent stand-up comedian and is so far exceeding even my own high expectations in his role as director of our new improvised comedy project, The Four Gallants.

He is also, if not my favourite Tory on the planet (I have these parents), then certainly the one I would most willingly listen to on matters of politics. This, after a recent revelation that Andy isn't a Tory, despite wearing his shirts like that.

It is, however, strictly for people who are thoughtful and interested in all manners of the living. Warning: lovers of banality and mindlessness may be offended.

Had a culinary success yesterday evening entertaining a couple of our friends. I like having dinner parties, because it gives me an excuse to try and impress people with food - I wouldn't say I'm a natural, instinctive cook, but I like trying new things, and I'm building a decent repetoire.

Anyway, our guests impose an additional problem when coming up with a menu, because one of them is vegetarian. The actual problem is that Cath can't stand all the usual things you substitute in for meat as the main ingredient in a vegetarian meal - mushrooms, nuts, aubergines, butternut squash are all off list, and there's a few others that she doesn't really like.

So, we had a warm salad of chargrilled leeks and red onion with mozzarella and a tarragon and mustard (and some other things) dressing to start, and linguine (in a a creamy sauce of parmesan and dolcelatte) with feta stuffed roasted figs - ours were wrapped in parma ham - as a main. It worked really well, and there were excellent reviews.

I must remember to have more dinner parties.

I've been reading a lot of Chuck Pahalniuk this year - Fight Club, Survivor, Haunted and Rant - and haven't read one yet that I wouldn't recommend to anyone.

Something I discovered after reading Haunted was that the opening short story (it's a book of short stories, about each of the characters in the main story), which is called "Guts" was often read to promote the book. Given the reported effects of these readings on its audience (causing people to pass out night after night), I wanted to hear it performed live. I found it on YouTube here (part 2 and part 3 follow on). Inhale. Take in as much air as you can. Have a listen, and tell me what you think.

I've read and see a couple of things recently about sex education in schools. One piece was about how progressive teaching methods have failed, according to a recent paper in the BMJ which found that one particular programme actually appeared to raise teen pregnancy rates (or, that the pregnancy rate in the treatment group was significantly higher than that in the control group). I haven't read the paper, but I also haven't read any particular methodological criticisms of it, so I will continue on the assumption that it is a valid contribution to the debate.

There was also a debate on The Wright Stuff yesterday morning about a new form of sex ed which emphasised more positive messages ("Sex is fun", "Sex is good for your health") rather than the more typical negative messages ("Sex will kill you dead if you do it wrong"). The argument made for this trial scheme was that if sex was seen as something to be enjoyed rather than something to be worried about, children would be less susceptible to peer pressure, and would wait rather than just try to get it over with as soon as possible. I'm not sure I get the logic exactly, nor the necessity of pointing out how much fun sex is, but I'm wouldn't write it off out of hand.

The main point I wanted to make, which I think is being missed in this debate is this: when did the goals become preventing young people having sex and reducing teen pregancy? The actual goal should be preventing the spread of sexually transmitted disease, and reducing unwanted pregnancy. Those are the actual social ills, and the only way to combat them is by education, in quantities great enough for everyone to know exactly what could happen if you have sex, including the exact medical risks, financial issues resulting from unexpected pregnancy and legal matters than may arise from negligent parenting.

If, as the critics say, sex education programmes expose more children to the idea of sex (which seems unlikely in given the high sexualised multimedia world we live in) and ends up encouraging more young people to have sex or get pregnant, then this really isn't a problem. Providing those people are fully informed about what they are doing, they have the right to make their own decisions, and the real concern for a government should be making sure everyone is able to make the decisions that are best for themselves.

And why does becoming twenty years old necessarily make your pregnancy better for society? I'm sure there are sixteen year olds who could be better parents than some thirty year olds. Age isn't particularly important, unwantedness is. If you are old enough to fully comprehend a pregnancy and all its implications, then that's enough to take age out of the equation. Would it be better for society if teenagers stayed in school and developed skills and contributed more to the economy? Maybe. But that isn't a decision a government should be involved in. After all, a fully informed person can choose which path makes him or her better off, and such decisions don't just reflect monetary rewards from economic input.

As for society, there are a couple of issues. Let's suppose greater sex education leads to more teen pregnancies, but that these pregnancies are (in general) wanted. It's not clear to me that more children with dedicated parents would do more harm to society than less children, but those who are born are much more likely to be the result of an uninformed mistake. Yes, children create costs for the government through the payment of benefits. But arguing that sex education policy should be designed to minimise the demands placed on the welfare state is ridiculous - if there's a problem with the the benefits system, reform the benefit system. If you think that the benefit system creates distortionary incentives for childbearing over work or further education, then the indirect solution of designing sex education policy to counter this is clearly inferior to changing the incentives directly.

And, on a related point, the dependency ratio (retirees to workers) in the UK is projected to exceed 40% by 2050. It shouldn't inform policy on sex education, but it does help to remember that an ageing population also creates massive problems, and that there could be some benefits to increasing the population at the other end.

Colbert on Berlusconi, a couple of weeks ago: "Still, Berlusconi maitains a solid 56% approval rating among his people, mainly because they're worried if his rating drops into the teens, he'll try and fuck it."

The whole thing is here.

I've been learning the play the guitar for a while now, and as my musical tastes and the acoustic guitar are not quite the happy bed fellows you at first might imagine, I like trying to find songs I enjoy and would listen to that could be played unplugged. Youtube is your friend in this situation, as there is no end of people posting their cover versions of pretty much anything. Anyway, I've recently been trying to find versions of Bad Religion songs, having seen a couple of tracks Greg Gaffin himself has done acoustically (Sorrow, already discussed, and God Song, both of which I can kind of sort of nearly play a passable version of).

There's some nice covers out there, but I just found quite a few performed by one girl (whose name is Emily, we're very close), and some of them are really great. This is not just because she has a strong voice and plays well, but because, if you know the originals (find the originals, know them, love them), you'll see they're not just carbon copies played on an acoustic guitar.

Anyway, have a listen - I recommend Faith Alone, Walk Away and You. I'll be stealing them soon. You should all be aware that I only try to sing along when I'm sure most of East Oxford is out.

Here's a challenge. Watch Sarah Palin's resignation speech, and see how long you last. Not because she's saying anything particularly objectionable, but because after a certain number of minutes of hearing words unrestrained by grammer or sentence structure, you may actually start to feel dizzy, unsettled or even nauseous.

I made it to 10.11, when I was finally finished off by: "Life is too short to compromise time and resources and though it may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along, and appease those who demand 'sit down and shut up', but that's the worthless, easy path-out, that's a quitter's way out and I think a problem in our country today is apathy. It would be apathetic to just hunker down and go with the flow. We're fisherman, we know that only dead fish go with the flow."

Then I thought I'd try to finish it, but a minute later this happened: "I've never believed that I, nor anyone else, needs a title to do this, to make a difference, to help people. So I choose, for my state and my family, more freedom to progress, all the way around, so that Alaska may progress, I will not seek re-election as Governor." And I rested.

On The West Wing, they would occassionaly do an episode where a conventional bit of liberal thinking was taken apart. In one episode, a gay Republican congressman argues with Josh over the Defence of Marriage Act, and Josh finally says "how can you be a member of this party". The answer given is that although gay, there was a lot more to the congressman's politics and beliefs than just his sexuality.

For most people, we rarely agree with everything the party we vote for has in its manifesto. You try and find the best fit. I tend to vote Liberal Democrat, but I was uneasy in 2005 with their stance on top-up fees, for example. This is unremarkable. However, for some people, there's a tendency for the rest of us to believe they can only care about one issue, and the LGBT community is one of them. It seemed incredible to Josh in that episode, and it apparently seems incredible to the government that according to a recent survey, 38% of homosexuals would vote Tory at the next election, even though the Conservative Party have had by far the weaker record on supporting gay rights (as acknowledged even by the respondents in the same survey)

The irony here is that this stance is in itself homophobic, implying that the only thing a homosexual cares about is being homosexual, and that the only thing they seek from a government is that it lets they be as homosexual as they want to be. Far be it for gays to be interested in the same concerns that have driven the nationwide decline in Labour support, or to care about a number of issues. A fiscally conservative gay? An anti-EU gay? How can you be pro-business or in favour of tougher immigration policies AND a homosexual? Where would you even find the time?

I find it hard to work out where the Conservative Party currently stands on gay rights, as I don't think the positions espoused by Cameron are necessarily spreading throughout his party, nor do I think he is definitely not posturing. I see nothing on the policy section of the website about gay rights (while I do see a section on the countryside). But it's one area that voters - all voters - get to decide about, and that includes heterosexuals who are also able to care about fringe issues like equality and personal freedom. Making it a rallying call against the Tories makes you as much of a hinderance to progress as the anti-gay Conservative party (if it even exists) that you want to stop getting into power.