Will work for food, promises made but unkept

From the Associated Press:

Photo by Matt Rourke.

Recent La Salle University graduate Sean Christman of Westmont N.J., attempts to hand out resumes to passing motorists in Philadelphia, Wednesday, July 22, 2009. The number of newly laid-off workers seeking jobless benefits rose last week, though the government said its report again was distorted by the timing of auto plant shutdowns.

Why is it that whenever my alma mater, La Salle University, appears in the news, it’s for something dreadful?  Basketball rape scandals, rapacious tuition rates, and now unemployment.

Nevertheless, it’s a powerful statement Christman’s making: whither America’s promise that with education would come opportunity, career, and normality?  Was our generation just fed a line long enough so that Wall Street could cut and run?

I commend Christman for his good sense of publicity to highlight not only his personal plight and that of Philadelphia, but that of so many people around the world in today’s “brave new economy”.

Why can’t we eat books?

It’s Koninginnenacht tonight, so here’s a story to mark the occasion…

While wandering the streets of Den Haag today, I came upon a store called, “Boekhandel en Antiquariaat” (“Booktrader and Antiquarian”).  Sitting there on a display shelf was a beautiful 1976 edition of Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyyat, the famous English rendition by Edward Fitzgerald.

I stopped dead in my tracks and stared, transfixed.  Like a whore in an Amsterdam window, it beckoned to me with its crimson leather cover and Indianesque lithographs, whispering, “I’m only €16…”

“But that translates to $26,” I protested.  “That’s a week’s worth of food!  I’m not exactly making a lot of money here in the Netherlands and I need to save up for tuition at Leuven.”

“Ah, my cute little intellectual.  Who needs to munch on crumbs and cheese when you can devour words of wisdom?” retorted the tomeful temptress.

Thus enticed, I enterred the store in the hopes of haggling, only to discover, to my horror, that if there’s one nation on the earth that wholly, utterly lacks the bazaar mentality, it’s the Dutch.  I explained how happy I would be to purchase the book, but as a poor student and even more impoverished journalist all I could afford would be, say, €10, tops.  My negotiation attempt was met with the Netherlands’ legendary vermanende vinger (wagging finger).

The elderly clerk, with daggers of disdain in her eyes, then inquired, “Why do you even want this book?”

“Because I study Islam,” I answered frankly.

“Islam?” she exclaimed, then shook her head sadly, as though she were saying to herself, Mijn gott, heidense een andere.  Finally, with a heavy sigh, she asked, “Do you want it or not?”

I rubbed my hands.  The crimson cover seemed to wink at me, whispering, “I accept Visa or Mastercard.”

No!  I had to resist the impulse to buy!  Baha’u'llah teaches us to be sacrificing, diligent, and disciplined, and so I turned away, hand upon my brow in consternation.  As I stumbled out of the store, I nearly tripped over someone’s sleeping child, carefully forgotten in a stroller right smack in the middle of the doorway.  I wondered to myself, What the hell is wrong with this country?  Leaving kids in doorways, refusing to haggle for books — I’m a long way from America or the Middle East.  And while I’m at it, why, O God, can’t we drink ink instead of wine and eat ideas instead of bread?

Do scientists hate sex?

Modern science may soon need its own Martin Luther to set it straight.

Using a profoundly flawed methodology, researchers at Nottingham University have recently asserted that men with a high sex drive are more prone to prostate cancer.

The study was based upon a pool of volunteers self-reporting their frequency of sex as young men.  The researchers were surprised to find that the risk of prostate cancer diminished with age.  No shit, Sherlock; have we learned nothing from Kinsey?

Have scientists replaced clergy as the Jeremiads of our era?  They substitute the tortures of bad health for hellfire and brimstone, but the message is the same: under no circumstances are you to enjoy life.  Whether by the cancer of Original Sin or the cancer of clogged sperm, it seems there are some determined to believe that to be human is to be ill.

Cylonic dreams of the eternal return

Wow. Well, I’ve got to hand it to the writers.  I heard rumors swirling for a while, but didn’t believe them.  Her? Nah, get real; what a lame choice.  But after watching the episode I now agree with the blogger at Galactica Variants: not only does the choice work, but it’s powerful.  And I think it’s only the beginning, since the LA Times reports that we should expect to see this character, somehow, some way, over the course of the final story arc.

In light of the revelation, I am further awe-filled by the sheer time scale in which Galactica as a story operates, especially the way in which it is conveyed so intimately, personalizing the effect.  There is truly something mysterious, terrifying, and enticing about the concept of eternal return, and the show manages to connect it to identity, history, and mortality in ways that never cease to evoke wonder and reflection.  Truly, this is more than masterful television: it’s nigh philosophy.

(If you feareth not the spectre of spoilers, click on the image above to see the big revelation, and “read more” for some more thoughts.)

Is the shoe mightier than the pen (or postcolonial theory)?

Bush's image has been associated with shoes throughout the Arabic Middle East (photo: BBC)

There’s been a lot of debate in the blogosphere whether it is “racist,” “anti-Arab,” or “Orientalist” to claim that shoe-throwing is a distinctly Arab way of flipping a person the bird.  Consider the following exchange between readers on the Foreign Policy blog:

TheScudStud88: Er, Orientalist cliches aside, is it not an insult in the West to throw a shoe at someone?

Blake Hounshell: That one’s really not an Orientalist cliche; It really is an insult. Sure, it’s not exactly a friendly thing in the United States, but it’s not the default option.

TheScudStud88: So you agree then that [the characterization] is a taaaaaaad misleading/ wrong categorization? I mean who wouldn’t consider it an insult to have a shoe thrown at them?

kidzib: i don’t think arabs devote nearly as much symbolic value to foot-oriented insults as, say, thais. maybe there was some symbolism to it all, but it was probably the only projectile object available for him to hurl at bush. what else would he have thrown? it’s not like he could’ve smuggled in anything heavier and more dangerous…

then again, a common arabic insult translates as “may a shoe land on your head!” but do you really think the guy thought all that out before he went ballistic (literally!)?

And so on. Part of the problem is that people are confusing their particularist apples with generalist oranges.  Think about it: when was the last time you saw an American, European, African, or Asian lobbing their shoes at a political leader?  Speaking for Americans, we prefer pies.

Funnily enough, a blogger is at the center of the debate:  Asa’ad Abu Khalil, a.k.a., the Angry Arab News Service.  In 2007, Khalil wrote,

Don’t you love it when Western reporters explain to their readers differences between their culture and Arab culture?  I don’t know about you, but I really love it.  Here is from the New York Times:   “During the argument, heated words were exchanged and shoes were thrown, a severe insult in the Arab world.”

So throwing a shoe at somebody is a “severe insult in the Arab world” but not anywhere else?  How exotic.  Tell me more, o culture experts of the New York Times.

Bush’s reaction to shoe-toss reveals his lack of cultural understanding

An Arab reporter flung his shoes at President George W. Bush today.  In characteristic fashion, he took the incident in cowboy stride, but overall his reaction indicated the depths of his ignorance of Arab culture.

Bush called the act an attempt at “attention-grabbing” and compared this to people shouting at a political rally.  Attentiong-grabbing is precisely what shoe-throwing by an Arab is not!

Throwing one’s shoes is a symbolic act of major disrespect and disdain in Arab culture.  Short of throwing stones at Bush, the reporter was decrying him as an oppressor and ignoramus.  In other words, it was a profoundly angry political statement.  (Note also the fact that the act came immediately upon the heels of Bush speaking in Arabic, evidently the straw that broke the camel’s back for the reporter.)

I find it reprehensible that after six years of military intervention in Iraq that Bush hasn’t learned something as simple as this about Arabs!

*sigh Well, let’s consider it that country’s parting message to him…

Who is Sifr Nil?

One of the mosaics Sifr Nil enjoys using as his Facebook profile

I’ve received some e-mails asking whether I’m Sifr Nil, author of the mysterious new blog Cyberquran (al-qur’an as-cyber).  Were I so imaginative.  No, I’m not Sifr Nil — but apparently I may know who he is.

The astute reader will have noticed the play behind his pseudonym: “sifr” (صفر) is Arabic for “zero, empty,” whence we English-speakers get the word “cipher“; and “nil,” of course, is a synomym for “zero” or “nothing.”  In other words, “Sifr Nil” is a double negative (befitting his first “sura”).  Evidently he is also something of a cyberculturalist, as well as a peculiarly kabbalistic Muslim.

Friends have noted the similarity between his poetic style and mine, leading at least a few to suspect him and I of being one and the same.   The similarity is definitely notable, and I’m seriously flattered that someone out there has been moved enough by my poetry to emulate it.  However, there are definite differences.

For one thing, a friend speculated that English is not his first language.  From the point-of-view of content, his use of cybernetic metaphor is not something that would have occurred to me since, as all of you know, I’m a bit leery of transhumanism (although it’s interesting he chose to use my “super-tribe” post as one of his first “hints”).  Additionally, I’ve never been comfortable with the depiction of God as “emptiness,” although I’m familiar with it from the post-Holocaust theological works of Richard Rubinstein.

So, now comes the scoop — an e-mail from the poet himself!  I wrote him many of the questions friends have been asking me.  What follows was his interesting and somewhat laconic reply.

Swimming in the Sambatyon (Re-post/Back-dated)

What follows was the supplemental to “Zion in the Desert.” It’s not so much an article as a personal introduction, intended for a future Thinking-East weblog that never quite got off the ground. — CS 12.06.2008

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Why am I alive? (Re-post/Back-dated)

Two years before “Who can fathom the abyss?” there was this piece.  I no longer agree with the nihilistic narcissism of this essay, but I include it anyway because it’s historical, as well as one of the few moments before grad school where I was able to achieve succinctness.  — CS 12.06.2008