Fun with words!

Ezra Klein points us to a fun new toy:

Citizens for All That Is Good About America
By Ezra Klein

Americans for America. The New Century Foundation for Progress. A Bright Future for Children and Families. PAC names are a genre unto themselves. A proud, optimistic, vapid genre that's designed to sound so much like apple pie that you never think to look at the filling -- or, to be less metaphorical, the money. The Sunlight Foundation decided to have some fun with this and set up a PAC-name generator. Some of these PACs are the real deal, but most are just perfect PAC names waiting to find a home.

He seems to have chosen "Strong Women, Good-Looking Men and Above Average Children for Liberty" as his flag to fly, but me? Well, unbeknownst to all, I am actually the founder of "New Englanders against Sinister Sentiments."

You're welcome, world.

A thought

What is the deal with genies these days? For one thing, they keep showing up in ads all of a sudden, and for another, they seem to be mostly not Arab. Like not in any way. One of them is a Scottish man in a tux:


And the other, whom I am certain I will not be able to find, is a guy who I suppose could be Arab (or meant to be) but at least initially came off Hispanic, and who was wearing a muscle shirt. He was advertising really cheap phone service.

I have no idea what this means. Not that this is the most serious trend in the zeitgeist regarding anything east of Istanbul or south of Sicily, but what the hell, I've been watching a lot of TV lately.

So I've been watching the West Wing over again

And I love it as much as I always did. And I couldn't help but be reminded of Aaron Sorkin's distinctive cadence--and I know this is maybe going out on a limb a little--by this clip of NJ Gov. Chris Christie (R) calling out a reporter on, you know, caring about knucklehead stuff:

Gov Christie calls S-L columnist thin-skinned for inquiring about his 'confrontational tone'

So I got curious and I went and looked up his record--and by looked up I mean I went to his Wikipedia page--and it's kind of mixed for me. Not sure quite what I think of the man, not that it matters at all yet. (I'll be marginally surprised if he never runs for President.) Anyway, one to keep an eye on.

P.S. I don't know enough HTML to really know why there's that huge gap there or what to do about it; I also decided screw making the video fit entirely in the margins, since you can see all of him and if I did it it would be either tiny or very distorted. I hope everyone will manage to get through their day regardless.

Nepalese reconciliation not going so smoothly

Apparently, the chief of the Nepalese Army has declared that no, he will not induct the Maoist rebel troops into the Nepalese regular army en masse, thanks all the same. That the rebel fighters should become part of the national army was part of the peace agreement between the Maoists and the government; after General Gurung's statement, the Maoists have of course started hopping up and down.

What I find much more bizarre than their reaction is that a) this concession was ever a part of the agreement to begin with, and b) that both the Times of India article discussing it (linked above) and the World Politics Review post that linked the ToI (I love me some Off-The-Radar News Roundups) seem to take the tone that this move by the general is unwise. ("The stance is in contravention of the 2006 peace accord that put an end to Nepal's insurgency, and already destabilized the country last year when the previous chief of staff adopted the same position.")

I don't know if there was a different way that General Gurung could have gone about this, but integrating several thousand rebel forces with strongly demonstrated disloyalty to the state into your armed forces en masse, in the context of a very recent total breakdown of state sovereignty, is a recipe for disaster. Wikipedia says that the Nepalese army is 95,000 strong; it does not, however, say how it knows, and despite the surprising excellence of the website of the Nepalese Army, I can't find such numbers there. If Wikipedia is correct, then 6-7,000 Maoists (this being the conservative claim from the Times of India) in an army of 95,000 is not nothing. Even if you split them up pretty extensively you could have real problems with cohesion, authority and morale.

Look, Frederick the freaking Great understood this (per a deeply pompous* series of rebuttals to Machiavelli constituting the aptly named "Anti-Machiavel"). It seems reasonable to me that General Gurung, in the advanced year of 2066 in the Nepal Sambat calendar, should understand it too. I can't pretend to know much about how this agreement came about in 2006 (the Gregorian calendar year, not Nepal Sambat)--while I do need to make a bit of a study of Nepal's situation as an ancillary case to my thesis, I haven't gotten to it yet--but all I can say is that I hope this concession was a highly, highly necessary one.

General Gurung has some pretty good suggestions for what to do with the People's Liberation Army instead, if you ask me:

Gurung said the PLA could be accommodated in the police, border security forces and other non-military agencies. They could also be sent overseas for jobs or be rehabilitated with an economic incentive.

Meanwhile, the PLA seems to be acting in pretty bad faith, waiting for an excuse to break the agreement:

Gurung also expressed concern at Maoist chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda giving training to the PLA in their cantonments and urging them to be ready for another revolution if the government failed to implement the new constitution by May 28.

And, of course, what would be an attempt at post-civil-war reconciliation without a "you first" standoff:

There is growing uncertainty over the fate of the fighters with their own leaders saying the new statute should be promulgated before they are disbanded while the ruling parties are demanding the discharge of the PLA first.

At any rate, I currently feel quite a bit of sympathy for the good General, who seems to be very sensible and is being asked to do something that seems to me to be rather less sensible.


*Actual excerpt from Frederick the Great, I kid you not:

Where do these examples leave Machiavelli, and what comes of the ingenious allegory of David refusing to fight Goliath with the armor of Saul because of its weight? It is a lot of whipped cream! I admit that auxiliaries sometimes inconvenience princes, but I ask if conquering cities and provinces is not worth a little inconvenience.

Upon first reading, I recall picturing David facing up to Goliath covered from head to toe in whipped cream armor. Oops.

In lieu of a real post

I'm afraid I've gotten too busy to keep up with this like I used to--I keep catching things I want to post about and never getting around to posting them. So here we'll have a link dump, but first I wanted to mention:

I AM THIS HIPSTER PUPPY:

don’t use the term “world music” around thurston unless you want a 20 minute lecture

It's true. I will give a lecture about the problematic nature of "world music" to most anyone. Maybe not a full 20 minutes, though.

Anyhoodle, here are some things I've been meaning to post about:

Kate Harding on Kevin Smith's Southwest experience and the perils of flying while fat.

Ta-Nehisi Coates on how we define terrorism, who is a terrorist and who is not, and the lessons we have failed to learn from our national history of domestic race terrorism.

Finally, this article on depression and what it does to your brain--and what it may do for your brain--struck a chord with me.

Good advice

"It's always hard to say, 'I don't know.' But no one else can say it for you."
--Ta-Nehisi Coates, January 28th, 2010.

Now the question is, when I say this to my hypothetical future children, do I say "there was this blogger..." or do I just lie and say Grandpa said it?

Oh no pigeons!

Thanks, Pictures for Sad Children, for explaining everything!

I love it when this happens.

The singer from The Shins is collaborating with Danger Mouse. The single (and website, actually) is pretty cool. Looking forward to the album.

Christmas has been very nice. I asked primarily for socks, and I got so many! I can make it through the winter now! (This at the age of 21. I shudder to think what I'll want for Christmas by the time I'm 70).

Happy holidays to anyone reading!

Depressing realities

So I'm in that delightful stage of one's fourth year of college where one attempts to decide "what to do" after graduation.

I decided at least a year ago that I don't want to go to grad school right away, but rather after two or three years. UChicago has burned me out pretty well, for one thing, but for another my degree is highly interdisciplinary and as a result I'm not even sure what departments I would want to apply to (though lately a Ph.D. in Middle East Studies seems more and more likely). More importantly, though, I'm fundamentally uncomfortable with the idea of making a living off of theorizing human beings without ever knowing them or doing any concrete work with them toward improving their circumstances. It's not right.

So I decided at around the same time that I want to work in probably an NGO for a while in a fairly concrete capacity--not desk work and not theory stuff. I don't need an organization that's promising transformational change, largely because I'm too cynical to believe in such promises--I'd rather just do some good work that maybe helps some people just a little in their actual lives for a while, without yammering about civil society development or investing in the change of tomorrow and so on.

The problem, right, is that it's very hard to find out what organizations of this sort exist because most of the ones with web presence are large and/or more think-tank or diplomacy oriented. This isn't a path I've ruled out, but it's not what I'm ideally looking for.

So last week I got an email from the International Studies listhost about government and NGO jobs which included a link to a website that serves as a hub for professionals and organizations in "international development, global health and humanitarian aid." I did a simple search for "Middle East" under "Companies & NGOs" and my god, it is discouraging.

It's discouraging for the following reason: probably 90% of the results I scrolled through that day (haven't had time to continue) were consultancies of one sort or another, usually concerned with economic development. I'm profoundly skeptical of such organizations: I don't think they necessarily do much good, and most often they serve to make consultants rich off the needs of poor people without having much other effect. This is precisely the antithesis of what I want to spend the next couple years doing.

I don't have any deep thoughts right now about that fact that aren't deeply obvious, in part because it's very late at night and I spent the evening at a Girl Talk show followed by watching 10 Things I Hate About You (incidentally, one of my favorite movies of all time) and drinking beer. But the basic fact of it is depressing to me, and I wish it weren't so.

I had to

This site is brilliantly inevitable.

Culture shock is always fun.

So I culture shocked real hard when I left Syria. This was to be expected and I sort of went through it in stages; one phase when I got to Beirut and they had (gasp) more than two kinds of restaurant and (gasp) tall buildings and (gasp) women wearing tank tops and (gasp) fashion and (gasp) Dunkin Donuts.

But I got over that pretty fast; it was still an Arab country and people still spoke Arabic and I could more or less make my way around as not-quite-a-tourist.

Then I got to Istanbul and the world sort of exploded around me. I did not speak the language, I could not find my way around, and I was definitely 100% a tourist. On top of this I was on my own; I left my travel companion in Beirut. I can't remember the last time I've been that disoriented.

It wasn't just the disorientation of being in a new place; it was the disorientation of a complete change of role. I had been very definitely Not A Tourist in Damascus and invested a fair amount of energy in making that clear: when you're Not A Tourist people don't rip you off as much, they treat you better, and it's much easier to fend off inquiring men. In Istanbul I had none of the necessary tools for Not A Tourist vibes and as a result became fair prey for everyone. To be frank, it was horrible. I clung to Arabic like a safety raft, constantly searching for Turkish cognates and on occasion replying to people who addressed me in Turkish (apparently I look potentially Turkish enough that people got confused a lot) in Arabic because I felt better about that than English. Somehow admitting to being an English speaker without language skills made me feel less safe, possibly because the first thing to do in an Arab country to get someone on your side is to show that you speak Arabic.

I did notice, in my defense, that I did have a much easier time if I spoke only Arabic and pretended not to speak or understand English, if only because many Turks speak English but none that I encountered spoke Arabic. This made it much easier to fend off shopkeepers, tourguides, and enquiring men (though some of their persistence in the face of apparent total noncomprehension was rather impressive).

Finally I got back to the States, where I continued to suffer from culture shock somewhat but got over it fairly fast--at least this place is familiar to me, just less recently.

But what I find interesting is that the longest-lingering aspect of culture shock so far has been my perception of my own appearance. In Damascus, there weren't a lot of mirrors around, diet culture is more or less nonexistent if you're me and hanging out with boys all the time, and we were all more or less equally scruffy and resigned to looking, well, like students abroad. I got back and all of a sudden realized how much weight I had gained, how completely not used to thinking about, oh, outfits and accessories and such I am, and how (seemingly) effortlessly everyone around me is in a completely different sartorial mentality--that is to say that they have one.

In reaction I basically feel like a sort of poor FOB and eternally, inescapably scruffy. This too, shall pass, of course, but of all things I did not expect beauty culture to be the last and in some ways most difficult hurdle.

Retrospect

So I'm back.

I didn't update here nearly as much as I expected I would. There were some practical reasons: I didn't and couldn't go to the internet cafés as often as would have been required to keep the posts coming at regular speed, and when I did go I had to catch up with email; anything with the word "blog" in it is liable to be blocked in Syria, so I couldn't always access the blog even if I wanted to.

But more than that, as it was happening I just sort of decided to let it happen to me and not make such a project of every little thing. I disconnected from the Internet completely for a few weeks at one point before eventually coming back, but then only for the minimum, really. I feel okay about that.

It was a fantastic summer, the best in years. Whether or not I wrote, I definitely learned a lot.

I do have some thoughts worth posting (by my standards anyway), and I'm sure more will come to light as time goes on and I get some perspective. But for right now, I'm going to let them all wait.

It is good to be back. I think.

Travel

I don't have anything intellectual and fascinating to say about Syria, but for the sake of recollection here are things I've written to inquiring people:

Damascus does indeed stand; it's full of interesting people as well as crazy people. (Same as anywhere, to an extent, but just wait.) The foreigners here are almost uniformly awesome people, since I think you have to be a bit odd and thus a bit interesting to come here. I'm sitting next to a Portuguese woman who has been a poet and ballet dancer and is now a singer of Arab music and a Muslim convert; my best friends here are mostly American students, but I've also got a British Iraqi optometrist, an American who was once an I-banker in Dubai, sundry Brits, a German guy studying Turkish education, and on and on. It's a fun time.

The crazies are mostly Arab. When you make friends with a Syrian, they think it means you're best friends forever and they can immediately start calling you all the time and hanging out every day. I have a good friend who has actually started just hanging out at my house and my friends' houses whether I'm there or not. I rolled out of my room at like 8 last night after a nap and he was just sitting there in my courtyard. And he's one of the more chilled out ones. I have recieved a few insanely poetic text messages full of stars and moons from people (plural, yes) I have never expressed any romantic interest in. Another one complains every time I go somewhere without them that I never invite them anywhere, and I have been offered $20,000 for my hand in marriage. One of my male British friends has said that Syrian girls just say "I love you" to him on the street every five minutes. It's all a bit mad. (This is not to imply that all Syrians are nuts or anything; some of it is cultural difference, and, as anywhere, the crazies stand out.)

But nonetheless, it's fun. People here make friends quickly and easily, so every time you go out you never know what will happen. I met one of my best Syrian friends because he worked in a cafe I went to to study in. I met a Syrian girl because she was at the next table. I met a Greek guy at my Syrian friend's house and a couple Syrian guys at a club last night. Today I met two Syrians and a Moroccan who are starting an art collective and wanted me and my friends to come to their show August 10th.

That's the other thing: this city is full of art. A Syrian alcoholic painter moved into my house two days ago.

I don't really have a point, but that's what's up, I guess. I had my final yesterday and inshallah I passed enough to go on to the next level. (If they make me do level three again I may shoot myself in the face. It was boring enough the first time.) My Arabic has improved massively, hamdulillah (thank god), and hopefully by the end of my time here I'll be pretty good. I didn't expect to have come as far as I have already by this point.

Public Service Announcement

This space has generally been fairly non-personal. The thoughts are personal, but the data and the material has generally been garnered from other people.

Well, my summer studying in Damascus starts tomorrow; I'm leaving tonight. I've decided not to make a separate travel blog or journal because 1) it strikes me as a slightly wanker move when I've already got a blog, 2) it's not like the material is irrelevant, and 3) this is my nefarious plan to make more people who know me read the blog.

Plus, frankly, I hope to be spending less time surfing the blogosphere and more time, you know, experiencing the place I'll be in. I'd rather this particular field not lie fallow all summer.

So just a heads up: I don't know how often I'll get internet (frequently, no doubt, but not continuously as it has been), and the nature of the content is about to change.

You have been warned.

Moar music

I really really really like this song a lot. And I love the video concept. It's rare that a video makes me want to see a band live as much as this one did, which I think was owed to the fact that a) the singer's dancing reminds me of one of my roommates and b) the way the video concept illustrated and emphasized movement.

Friendly Fires 'Skeleton Boy' by Clemens Habicht from Nexus Productions on Vimeo.

I'm getting the record right now.

Whoa

Vampire Weekend + Ra Ra Riot = not what I would have expected. (It also equals broken embed code, apparently.)

H/t Alan Jacobs at The American Scene

I AM always late

I don't know how I missed Designing Women for my entire life, but thanks to Dorothy Snarker I have seen the light. SO GOOD:

History Has Shown
by tehdownloads

Still life

Tortoise - Prepare Your Coffin from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.

The lovely conceit here is that we follow a photographer around a city, and the whole video is itself a series of gorgeous black and white photographs--even the shots that have motion in them. They remind you of this with frequent cuts and by keeping the camera very still most of the time. It's very beautiful.

Amazing

I love baseball. I love it a lot. What can I say, I'm from Boston.

A little night music

I haven't really been encountering new music I actually like much lately--not since the beginning of the quarter, really--but I just found this courtesy of TNC and I am liking it very much.

Passion Pit - The Reeling from phantomcolor on Vimeo.

It's downright infectious.