By Maniza Naqvi

Would she, the question was put to her discreetly, add a small personnel issue to her tasks on this particular field visit? Could she perhaps get a reality check on McMullen? In response, she had raised an eyebrow, conveying that she was intrigued by the request but non committal to an affirmative. It had been about Stan. Stanley McMullen. The Stanley McMullen. Legend extraordinaire in these corridors this side of the Potomac and that side of the Potahar Plateau. Could she look in on Stan and find out what was going on? Might she, probe into why there had been the sudden change of heart? She had agreed at once with a surge of patriotism and curiosity. And of course, because saying no to a superior, was never a good idea or even an option. However, being “seasoned” as was the parlance—she knew that it was always a good idea, to point out how she was over worked and would have to go out of her way to fit in this extra line item on her mission statement, this was after all adding on to her already demanding work agenda and the extra work load, given all the existing stress, would come at a huge cost to herself and her work life balance. This she duly communicated and it was as such noted. Perhaps on her way back she could consider a stop over in Rome or the Dalmatian coast or Istanbul, up to her—on the house so to speak, A little R & R for being the team player and the trooper that she was.

Now here she was in an over air conditioned coffee shop with large picture windows, clay tiled floors and elegant ceiling fans, sitting across from Stan who was going on about the view surrounding them:

Soft purple haze against those hills—like someone took a paint brush and dabbed it in–just look at it. I can never remember the name of those trees—

Jacaranda. Quite the artistic sentiment there, Stan.

Yeah! I'm dabbling in water colors—got someone coming in to give me lessons—a pretty famous guy, a celebrity around here. In the art circles. Those are the perks! You get yourself coaches and tutors who are Olympians or internationally acclaimed just because well the dollar goes the distance here. It really is value for money. Just look at those beautiful purple jacaranda blossoms out there-against the backdrop of those hills—amethyst and emerald. What a sight huh? Love it! Love it! What a location! Should've named this place Cafe Amethyst and Emerald. Damn! Did you hear the thunder last night—the lightning—the storm rolling in over the Margalla hills? Must've been two in the morning—spectacular. Nothing beats that.

He laughed—ah yes—the 70 miles from Islamabad hullaballoo—How the idea has grown! It almost makes me blush. Is it three million people we've managed to make homeless and hungry because of our campaign of screaming that Pakistan was a mortal threat to the world? Threatening them, that if they didn't do something about it, we would! Holbrooke, Clinton, Obama, Petraeus, Mullen! What a team! And boy, if they didn't hate us before—they sure do now! And you're here to show our deep humanitarian concern and to figure out how to feed them and cloth them are you? Don't look at me that way!

Is this remorse, I'm hearing from you? Guilt? Stan, come, come, is this contrition I detect writ across your face? Is that the reason for the request for early retirement?

Just told you—it's time to turn the page—do something different. It wasn't a request, by the way, it was a notification of retirement. It's time for me to notice stuff like the thunder and lightning and call it by its name: a storm. Just that: a storm. Nature's noise and drama. Count that as one of the reasons why I'm going to stay. I love the seasons here.

Love for the seasons? Uh huh.

Do you think the English took to talking so much about the weather after feeling an unbearable burden of unspeakable imperial distortions?

No. They have weather. They talk about it. I suspect they did it before they took to the high seas and took over the planet.

Nah! I suspect I'm right. They used weather to fill in the awkward pauses between why the news of a massacre in some shit hole in Africa or South Asia matched Daddy's sudden wealth in said shit hole. But, you can be funny, Eileen. I liked that about you. I liked that a lot. And just for old time's sake, you know—I'll share my latest secret with you—

Really! A secret! Do tell. I'm always up for a good secret divulged! And one from you Stanley should be just the thing.

Well no, not quite in the magnitude you might be expecting dear girl sorry to disappoint. It is not quite the geo-political seismological nature you might be expecting but rather agronomical in nature. You see I'm going to grow a hybrid new strain of coffee around here something between an Arabica and a Robusta variety. I think we've got the climate here—the high altitude—just enough rain and shine. I'm looking into it.

Uh huh. Coffee. You're going to grow it, here? And you have the know-how by surfing the internet?

Yup. In fact I was doing that before you walked in with your pretty face and got me all distracted again. That's my new project! The Pothar plateau coffee bean! I've been reading up on the internet about it—That is, when I'm not reading up on the news that we've been churning out which the free press of the free world is happily lapping up. Our stuff, is all the rage now: all our imagined goblins and monsters who threaten America—never mind that they are in reality bare foot, unwashed, frightened and hungry.

Coffee to sworn and steady tea drinkers? Your brief stint in Bogota surfacing suddenly?

I see you're not falling for the bait. Not the way you used to anyway. I can see I'm going to have to try harder. Fine.

I'm ignoring your attempts to try to provoke me Stan. So you've put down your stakes here? Is that final or are you sulking?

Yes.

Yes, what?

Yes, ma'am?

No! Which is it—final or making a point?

Yes—it's final. I'm here till they bury me in Murree next to my old, great-grand-uncle Colonel McMullen himself.

And till then it's this coffee thing?

Yup. It's time to change their tastes around here—Change of empire change of beverage of choice for the natives. That's what I think. Hey maybe —Come to think of it I'll look into buying some of the slopes in Swat valley they may be going cheap, now that we've got our minions clearing out the land for us. I could grow coffee there. Maybe—I'll come along with you when you head out for your humanitarian visit tomorrow? Have a look see myself, do a little reccy for real estate. Root around for property. What d'ya say? Yes?

No. So you're calling it quits?

You bet. After buying as many rugs as I possibly could lay out, fold, roll up, stack, give away—and after becoming an expert in kilims—and tribal carpets—and after filing reports, networking —showing around the umpteenth visiting Stateside big wig on his fact finding mission—After making up stories, to fit their needs, I should say our needs and strong arming the big muckimucks around here—after all that and then some—well then—it came time to go.

To do what? To where?

Just told ya. This is the place I've helped make into what it is—this is the place that I'm someone in. I count here, I've grown accustom to it and it to me. I've been here, now how long?

Twenty nine years—

Exactly! Give or take the mismatch in the Andes. Yeah. Wow. That long huh? Half of this country's existence almost: as Pakistan. I've gotten pretty used to people asking me to save them. Please Mr. Stanley save us! Getting that from pretty important people is heady stuff, let me tell you—Generals—Presidents—Prime Ministers! Well I felt responsible. Heck, I still do! Yeah it gives me a high—a buzz a real upper in the morning. It's my daily fix. And I decided to stay.

I know what you mean.

Fact finding missions—god those are the worst—aren't they? Ridiculous—comedy if they weren't so dangerous. Everything one of those fact finders sees becomes a defining fact—every person he meets becomes an important resource person, no matter who, no matter how briefly met, no matter how stupid, nope that person becomes important, providing important data points—to be magnified and extrapolated to whole populations—everything noticed no matter how trivial becomes a feature of the country—They'll sit in their bullet proof cars—yammering on about their gardens in DC, their hotel rooms, the airport business and first class lounges and their upgrades—until they are interrupted by “another fact” which catches their attention as it flashes by along the roadside— which they file away immediately to generalize and extrapolate onto the whole country in their fact finding report. Spending exactly forty-eight hours in bleary jetlag in three spots close to Islamabad usually all three in luxury hotels and perhaps another as a photo op with the natives—makes them an expert on the country.

Now don't be so harsh. You've been quite the fact maker yourself.

Yes.

And now these new facts about yourself…..

Who would have thought that this dead town would grow on me? Look at them those hills—aren't they the loveliest sight. The jacaranda in bloom all purple on Ataturk avenue—against those emerald green hills—

Yes, we've established that Stan. Purple, green, amethyst, emerald, ruby, diamond. They are lovely, but not enough reason to stay.

Cricket in the parks—-In the early mornings –a walk—I go right up the hill nearest to my house—mist—wild monkeys—parrots—its bliss. And late at night—like it was last night — the rain comes in to keep me company with thunder and lightning over the hills—it is spectacular. I love it here. The view. For a guy like me, who's spent his life observing—a view is important, you know. You can say “I've grown accustomed to her face”.

Her?

Islamabad. Pakistan. Margalla Hills.

So I am to conclude that the hills have conspired to keep you here? I think you've lost the plot.

Believe and think what you will, Eileen. It's all plausible, if I say so isn't it? It used to be that way. The hills have conspired? Yes! Conspiracies—Well this is the town for them. And nothing like a café to hear them or hatch them don't you agree? Three just this week I've overheard that will be doing the rounds if they aren't already. You will hear them—Obama is the brainchild of Wolfowitz—then there's the one that Cheney killed Benazir—And of course Hoodbouy and Ahmed Rashid are working for the US Military—writing articles about the Taliban threat. Even though it is a non-existent Taliban threat.

She shrugged. The door opened and several women walked in. They stood chatting noisily, fussing about which table to sit at until a waiter ushered them to one.

It's a little morning coffee party—we arrange those here. Very popular with the housewives!

Ah! She said, as though searching amongst the group for another reason for Stan's decision. She twisted her body, and turned to take a sweeping glance at the group of women. None, not one of them, would fit Stan's taste for the very fit, young things.

He said: The late evenings are more stimulating. The clientele more erudite. If we made a list, we could fill this café with all the intellectual hoi polloi in this town—in this country—all of whom, by the way have been my willing story tellers—collaborators—willingly expanding on our myths—I call them our list of coffee drinkers—our plot makers. I throw them a sentence and they run with it. Very talented. Most remarkable.

She watched him wipe the surface of the marble topped round table between them–removing the traces of moisture left from the condensation of their tumblers of iced water.

A habit of erasing one's tracks. He said grinning at her.

She managed to smile back uncomfortable that the twist of her mouth felt more like an expression of pitiful contempt then one that played as affectionate indulgence.

As he turned to motion to the waiter behind the counter to come over and take her order, she noticed how Stan's hair had thinned-a bald patch had begun on his pate. And there was quite the beer bulge around the waist. He held the glass with an outstretched arm—his other arm thrown over the back of his chair—legs splayed—still the master of his domain. His fingers grasping the glass, too pale, almost reptilian she thought, pudgy. Had he always been this way–it had only been a few years since she had last seen him. Was lust's inevitable fate loathing? She couldn't remember what she had found so attractive, those many years ago in Islamabad. Must be power she thought. She was a visiting novice—brought in as a USAID consultant for a couple of weeks—and he was the political advisor at the Embassy. The inevitable cocktail party in the big lawn on a sultry summer evening. Just like in the movies—she in something flowing bought that day with a colleague at the bazaar—he in a linen suit. Now, a cafe owner, gone native, wearing a white kurta-shalwar, an image immaculate enough—with a two day bristle on his chin, but simply no contest to the dazzling spy master. Back then she had talked about conspiracies—he had made fun of her. She had sipped on some third rate white wine and he had tossed back whiskey shots one after the next steadily through the evening. Now she said macchiato and he said double espresso. He spoke to the waiter in Urdu. The waiter nodded and moved away.

Nice, she said, jerking her head in the direction of the surroundings around her: You've done a great job going native. A company of your own. No pun intended! A coffee shop, exactly what Islamabad needed, Stan. Why call it The Little Margalla Cafe. Why not Coffee is Stan—or Café Stan? Or apostrophe ‘stan's Cafe?

Very funny. And not to mention that one—stan–is an over-used pun —no jab left in it any more.

Or the Little Coffee Company? Or The Red Zone. You should've stayed within the secure diplomatic zone—-The Green Zone in Baghdad, the Red Zone here, what's the color in Kabul? I mean you have seen the graffiti across the street I presume? It's hard to miss!

You mean the “Go America Go!?”

Yup.

Ah shucks I'm a dumb American I thought they were cheering me on! That's what Holbrooke seems to think! Someone needs to clue in the protesters— —Go means: Yes! OK! The Red Zone—now that has a certain kick to it. If they'd zoned it as amethyst or emerald then I would have gone for it! No, I'm sold on calling my little sanctuary Little Margalla Café. A place in which to be transformed. I sell conversation, ideas injected with caffeine.

Ah yes—staying within your competencies. How should I put it, for transformative information.

And I import coffee—that was one of the perks of my position—I managed to wrangle a little import license. And I'm looking into buying a little land in the hills—like I said, new project. I'm going to try my hand at a little coffee growing. The Generals were quite taken with the idea that I wanted to stay back. Touched —really. They wanted to gift me a piece of property—for my services rendered here. A plot in Chuk Shezad—prime land around here is all called Chuk-this and Chuk-that in this lovely little vipers' nest called Islamabad. Yeah, chuck the poor powerless bastards out of their ancestral villages to make way for villas is more like it! At least two dozen villages leveled, bulldozed to make way for these orderly pretty neighborhoods of gentility—and the Generals so called farm houses and ranch houses. But I resisted giving in to their generosity. Then the hills knocked some sense into me. I wanted to stay. So I insisted on paying for my plot. I asked them to set a price tag and they did.

The offer of land by the Generals at a throw away price was too good to pass up?

At market rate, Eileen, top dollar, market dictates.

Yes. As you know the Internal Corruption Investigation Unit –the ICIU is looking into your little purchase.

Well good for them. Eye See I You. How droll! They'll find nothing. All the papers are in order. Fair and square. They sold, I bought. Market economy, baby. These hills yes these hills are a sight of heaven itself aren't they with that incredible clear sky? Personally give me the view of the hills any day to a view of the sea. Others, including the Generals themselves of course choose to retire on the Mediterranean—Marbella —But not me! I'll take Margalla any day. And I have. So I said yes—give me a couple of acres—of destroyed ancestral homes, a hamlet and village. Ah come off it, don't look at me that way— what's the good of such strict standards, such high morals, Eileen? All you are left with is a list of regrets.

Mmmm.

Every man has a dream and mine is to switch the loyalties of the Pakistani palates to caffeine. I plan to sell them coffee, addict them to double espressos—three times a day all from my little Margalla café—on Ataturk avenue.

Well it's the choice you've made. But we haven't decided if you can. If we let you, then you can stay.

Let me? If I can? I have news for you, doll. I did! My choice.

Don't tell me Stan that you are so naïve. You choose? You choose nothing. It is decided for you pal—you only get to acquiesce. And the day you do not, then that's the day you will have chosen, and will, most definitely, my friend feel a bullet go through the base of your skull.

A reference to Benazir?

No. But it could apply,

I decided to open a coffee shop—at the foot of the foothills—

Sure, Stan. You decided. We haven't made up our mind yet, about your choice. We haven't decided, you see. And that's what matters.

The coffees arrived. She stirred the liquid in the tall glass. He rocked his cup back and forth on its saucer and contemplated her. You know the offer still stands. Come live with me. Retire here with me. Make this choice. You know you would enjoy it here.

At the Conspiracy café? What would I do? Eavesdrop on your customers and send memos out about possible threats?

Yup.

Hmmm.

I heard a great one the other day. Should have sent in a memo. Someone sitting right over here at that table was talking about having read somewhere that Paul Wolfowitz's wife Clare Selgin is an anthropologist specializing on Indonesia. Worked for USAID projects there?

Ex-wife. So?

So this guy says Obama's mom, she was an anthropologist specializing on Indonesia—lived there—worked on USAID projects—there and here, in Pakistan.

Uh-huh.

Paul Wolfowitz was an Ambassador there, to Indonesia—His wife and Ann Durham—Obama's mom well they were friends, had to be friends you see—like everyone in Islamabad always is? The Ambassador had at the very least barbeques for compatriots on fourth of July, and so on, and that, you see is when he met Ann's amazing and wonderful boy? So you see, as the story would have it, Paul discovered our young shining new talent!

Ahhh. Plausible. Makes perfect sense.

Doesn't it? I'm telling you, this is my perfect treasure trove, my perfect listening post.

I thought you set it up for hours of languid discussion on art and existentialism.

That too—But after I retired from let's call it the enterprise—and had decided to stay, since everyone knew I had gone native anyway, I decided to open this little café. I thought our sleepy little town in the shade of the lovely Margalla hills could use some espresso and latte. Too bad I can't dissuade the clientele from calling it expresso coffee. But really, this little café is for people like you visiting Islamabad—with too many time zones under their belt—in need of the real deal. And of course, conversations about the latest fiction and discussions on existentialism.

Existentialism. When you sent your final memo saying that you were retiring to set up a cafe in the hope of bringing intellectual discourse Parisian style with cafe charm to Islamabad—I sent out an email to everyone in the office with the subject line: Stan our man in Pakistan: Threatens Existentialism. Do you think I started something?

He laughed. So that's where that idea took off about an Existentialist threat. And we're bombing the hell out of ‘em now. Clearing the land so to speak for prosperity and our way of life! Someday we'll replace Tomahawk missiles, Black Hawks, Chinnoks, and Cherokee helicopters with names of other tribes that they will have destroyed—there will be the Achakzai fighter jet—the Dawoodkhel missile….the Yousafzai drone….

Ah c'mon Stan! Don't you get bored with your predictable outrage—considering that you contributed so much to it? You bore me.

Really? I didn't used to. I thought this was the feisty me that you found attractive. Besides I seem to remember your outrage. I thought it charming.

It's old now. Fifteen years ago—perhaps it was instructive then, now it's just old.

Instructive when you were reading my memos on the Taliban? And when you were a junior to me? Under me and come to think of it over me—most enjoyable back then. Thank you for your service!

Yes, then. Every which way. But now that's done and the game is on and you my friend are old. And so am I. And yes, I have been your boss for quite a while now—longer then I care to remember.

Hard to believe that my one liners about the threat of the Taliban—the threat of madrassas was turned into a strategy for invasion and occupation. Dear God, madrassas: Those negligible numbers of students and religious schools, completely inconsequential! But we didn't present them that way, did we?

You didn't present it that way, you mean. I seem to remember a rather clever one liner from you as a way of defending one of your obscure data points of the day—pandemics begin with a single sneeze. Yes—those not to be sneezed at data blipswere very useful. But it is what it is—if you write well, you create the facts on the ground. And sooner or later someone pulls out the wealth of information you've provided over the years and turns it into something meaningful. The art of brewing I guess. You picked the perfect retirement business. –Anymore conspiracy theories overheard?

Uh huh. They're trying to connect the dots–SARS cropped up just before the Iraq invasion–the Swine flu–just before the Swat valley operation. Keeping the world marinated in fear and therefore, malleable and unquestioning. But hell we don't want to depress everyone too much or have them out on the streets protesting, overturning–raging—

Don't worry about that! They're all too busy pouring their rage into Facebook and Twitter—it's only a cyber- virtual mob, a virtual outrage–not even that. We're safe.

And then there is the injecting of a little hope to keep their minds off of war, recessions and the arrests of innocent guys –so give them a Scottish plump spinster a little off in the head–who sings like an angel. Ah, something to make us all relate to—see the silver lining–feel that this is a just and good world! Everyone can be a star!

Now is that what people coming in here are talking about Stan? Or is that just Stan-speak.

It's the conversations I hear Eileen. And here's another one the guy who swam across the lake to Ang San Su Kyi's home— John Yettaw word around the latte tables is that he went there to warn her that she was going to be assassinated. He was an ex-military guy—what if he knew something about this —about how they killed Benazir? General Stanley McChrystal presided over the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. And now he's heading the show across the border.

Well that one, that rumor was started on our side—Seymour Hersh in search of another go at stardom. Anything else?

Yup–Asif Zardari helped General McChyrstal and got rewarded. He had his innocent child call her mother on the cellphone right after the speech to tell her that she was watching her live on TV in Dubai and to ask mama to wave to her. So then just as Benazir was leaving the grounds after the rally, safely tucked away in her SUV—ring–ring–“Mom–stick your head out of the car and wave to me!” The kid apparently has gone crazy. That's the talk in this cafe.

Uhuh. That's pretty sick.

Yup. Sick are us. Hey here's an idea. Don't scowl like that—I'm making a proposal! You could finally get on with it. Like you've always wanted to do. Here's your chance for getting more than just carpets on this trip. It's a bonanza out there. Go get a kid—a baby—get a dozen for Godssake if you want to. Let's go to the refugee camps tomorrow pick a few. I'd be happy to raise them with you. We could play Mom and Dad. Give some lucky kids a lucky break—The American dream. What do you say? We could be like the Negropontes. I heard he adopted four kids from Honduras.

Lovely! No.

Not buying that? Not interested in saving me? C'mon Eileen—save me. Okay. I'll let it percolate in your head. The idea may grow on you, it has happened before. I've managed to pollinate that fertile brain of yours before with my words.

Pollinate or pollute—poison?

A sudden burst of laughter from the party of women on the other side of the café made her turn to look at them again—chewing the inside of her lower lip as she surveyed the group with a calculating contemplative gaze. The women had grown in numbers—a dozen or so—milling around the buffet table near the far wall. An impression of expensive handbags; glamorous hair; stunning jewelry and yards of pretty, delicate colorful scarves over elegant tunics and pants.

She turned her attention back to Stan as he said: Pollinate! It's a beautiful concept—us using words to make a thousand flowers bloom!

She looked back again and her gaze focused on a slender figure who had her back to them—she must've just come in. A pale peach colored dupatta covered the length of her, undulating over the curves of her shoulder blades and hips, like a chaddar—There seemed to be altogether, too much perfume in the air, she thought.

God what a gaggling bunch they are—Stan continued—as she turned her attention back to him. Look at them those women over there–the wives of grade 21-22 officers, attacking the buffet. I mean they've come to a café but they're laying into the food.

Well you're serving it—why do you have a buffet in a café?

They wouldn't come otherwise!

Then don't complain! The customer knows best.

Just look at them—fat—corpulent, thunder thighs every last one of them, like great big pigs at a trough. Oh excuse my cultural insensitivity—cows.

Not all of them Stan.

They are the real problem in this country—if you want to save this country from the great big burden of its own rot and corruption it is not the mullahs or the military or the civil officers that you need to get rid of, its these wives of the bureaucrats with their endless demands and greed—bigger cars, bigger villas—more silk cloth to wrap their bulging bodies into. I say line ‘em up, every last ill tempered heaving bitch and shoot ‘em between those scowling cold eyes.

Really? Come now, that much resentment Stan? Too much expensive perfume in the air——Can we open a window? Air out your air-conditioned café?

Air it out, all you want, He said rising to his feet suddenly. I'm off and I'm staying put. Make of it all what you will Eileen.

Yes, thank you. I will.

(To be continued, maybe.)

By Shiko Behar

1.

A reminder, comrades: Barack Hussein Obama is president of the United States of America. Since his Cairo address this simple fact seems to have been overlooked by some commentators who make their living off the Palestine/Israel matrix. Step back for a moment from his Cairo address to remember that despite his name, his parentage and his half-white color – by virtue of being the US president, all of Obama’s words and actions will by definition always be quintessentially “mainstream.”

When Obama’s Cairo address is read from this vantage-point – the only realistic vantage-point that currently exists (irrespective of whether one loves or hates this) – his address is a tour de force of words – and at the moment nothing more than words. Granted, Obama’s 6000 word text on numerous international issues contained many weaknesses, omissions, distortions, shortcomings, simplifications, dishonesties and asymmetries; yet can anyone retrieve a 6000-word text that addresses as many global themes and that is free of such weaknesses? It is more productive politically to test Obama’s text against the prevailing sociopolitical reality – rather than against a sociopolitical fantasy (as seems to have been done by some critical commentators).

2.

Obama’s address neither focused, nor should have focused, on the Palestine/Israel question alone; this is notwithstanding the undeniable global importance of this particular question for ongoing and future relationship between Euro-America, on the one hand, and majority-Muslim states and societies, on the other. For lack of both space and time, the remainder below centers solely on the Palestine/Israel section of Obama’s speech, and is a stream of unpolished reflections in the context of the upcoming Sunday – the day when, in response to Obama’s Cairo address, Benjamin Netanyahu – an intellectual dwarf compared to Obama – will voice his political vision at Bar Ilan University (curiously the university where the law student who assassinated Yitzhak Rabin was educated, socialized and politicized).

Read more »

By Siavash Habibi

President Barack Obama's recent speech in Cairo attracted a lot of attention. But an earlier, much shorter message he delivered to Iranians also deserves serious consideration. On March 20, 2009, Mr. Obama congratulated the Iranian people on the Persian New Year with a video address, less than four minutes in length, that rapidly spread on the internet. The gesture represented a new policy spirit toward Iran — a spirit of diplomacy that has been widely expected of him since his campaign days. The Nowruz speech represented the unclenching of the American fist and a congratulation of the New Year, but it also indicated a less obvious policy strategy.

During his campaign, Mr. Obama emphasized the “worthwhile” benefits of diplomacy. Thus, he contrasted himself against President Bush's more aggressive approach to foreign policy. Mr. Obama's Nowruz speech demonstrated follow-through on his campaign promise and showed consistency in his approach of using diplomacy first.

This was important, because Mr. Obama not only established some credibility at home and abroad, but he also completed some of the hard preparation for potentially more aggressive actions against Iran in the future. For if Iran rejects the President's diplomatic gestures, then the United States will have cleared the way for more violent measures, perhaps with the backing of international allies. Military actions will appear more legitimate when President Obama already explored his diplomatic options and proceeded only after they failed.

But this begs the question: Why would the Iranian leaders reject President Obama's gestures?

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Krzysztof Kotarski

First, a note about me.

I am an outsider in the country of my birth.

I am too happy, too trusting, too Canadian. I walk into a shop and expect the shopkeeper to smile. I expect bureaucrats to help me when I seek official documents, and when presented with an idea, I think “why not?” instead of “why?”

For a long time, I chalked this up to personality. I tend to be excessively optimistic at times, and although I always laugh that “I am educated enough to be cynical,” I am cynical when confronting the realm of ideas, but naïve to a fault when confronting the realm of man.

My Polish family and acquaintances have always told me that my behaviour and worldview were deeply rooted in Canada, that although I could speak the language and read the books, I was too foreign in my temperament to fit in in my native Warsaw. After a while, I came to believe this. After all, in some matters, Canada and Poland sit on the opposite ends of the same axis, with Canada’s broad open spaces, easy smiles and obsessive deference to the law contrasting starkly with Poland’s confining apartments, sulking functionaries and a citizenry that dislikes and distrusts the state.

Yet, sometime over the past five years, I came to discover that things are not always so black and white. I began to notice a dark and cynical current that runs through Canada’s continuing struggles with collective identity, and I began to rethink my view of Poland as a place where cynicism triumphs en masse.

The 1980s, the decade of Solidarność, was my first in this world.

I was born in 1981, a few months before martial law was declared, so for as long as I can remember, everything around me was always on an upward trajectory.

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by Olivia Scheck

When Hedwig and the Angry Inch creator John Cameron Mitchell began casting his follow up film, Shortbus, members of the gay dramarati flocked. Hoping to set himself apart from the crowd, Jonathan Caouette supplemented his headshot and resume with a gritty montage of dramatic clips, including a drag impersonation of his mother (performed when he was only fifteen, inspired by Lindsay Wagner in The Bionic Woman) and naked footage of himself with boyfriend, David. While this unorthodox film reel did not land Caouette a role in Mitchell’s film, it did earn him several meetings with the director. “We both knew I wasn’t right for the part, but he kept calling me back to meet with him,” Caouette explained in a Q and A at Yale University in 2006. What caught Mitchell’s eye was Caouette’s unique style of editing – a whirlwind of picture and sound, oscillating between the serenity of suburban life and the cacophony of fucked up circumstances that underlie it. Moreover, Mitchell was amazed by the electronic archive that Caouette had compiled throughout his life – everything from B-horror films he made with friends at age 11 to super-8 footage of his delusional grandmother and old voicemail recordings. Unsure of what else to do with it, Mitchell began screening the reel obsessively to friends and colleagues.

Simultaneously, at his Brooklyn apartment, Caouette was busily collaging together recordings of his life to songs by Nick Drake. He was doing this at the prompting of friends who had seen the original montage and with the goal of submitting it to the MIX Film Festival for experimental films by gay directors. The hitch was that the deadline was only two weeks away, and his editing software was a copy of imovie that came with his computer. So, Caouette took leave from his night job as a doorman and embarked on a caffeine binge to compress his life and more than twenty years of footage into a feature film. It would end up taking only three and a half weeks.

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Odder Still
Jim Culleny
……………………..

As odd as it is that a moon comes up
behind the inelegant tree behind our house
over the dark mountain, grey-white
and silver-dollar like –a night eye
crying silver– it’s odder still to think
of a moon that never was
……………………

As odd as spring seems, fresh and green
as the crisp salad before the salmon fillet,
as odd as the salmon fillet itself seems,
pink upon my plate, it’s odder still
to think, no salmon, and spring
never was
……………………
As odd as I live and breathe this night air
cool as a cucumber into my lungs
with a vague taste of pine and
something else, maybe a wood fire
ablaze in a stove down the valley; as odd
as pine and burning wood seems, it’s
odder still to think otherwise, now,
standing upon two feet and good legs
and all the electricity I need to be
sparking, snapping, seeing
—that seems odder still to me

by Evert Cilliers

There is a specter haunting the planet. It is the specter of the failure of Western capitalism.

All that is solid — jobs, homes, retirement savings — melts into air. Our cock-a-hoop capitalism is staring into a pesky abyss which is either Lacan's mirror or the funky Weltschmerz of its own rectum.

Yet far away in communist China, capitalism is alive and well — maybe because China is not a democracy.

In Western democracies, capitalism is in crisis — maybe because capitalism is not democratic.

The fact is that capitalism is a feudal system, which therefore works well in a feudal society like China.

But in modern, highly evolved democracies, capitalism is a handicap.

Why? Democracy has evolved, but capitalism hasn't. It's essentially unchanged from its 18th century origins. Capitalism is so feudal, it's almost medieval. It requires a subservience from its minions that hints at slavery, serfdom, or peonage. It grants its captains of industry the freedom to lord it over everyone else like banana-republic dictators or command-economy Kremlin bosses. It booms and busts with the fervor of a yo-yo being yanked by a spastic on steroids. Every so often it poops itself like a toddler sans toilet training, and sits there bawling in its own excreta until the state steps in to clean its unruly bottom.

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One day back when I was living in Minneapolis, an ice-cream truck came trolling down our tree-lined street. Despite the dearth of children in the neighborhood, the squat beige van came not infrequently, usually tooting something innocuous like “Pop Goes the Weasel” to rally a small crowd. One blistering afternoon it started whistling a different song, no less bouncy but with a tad darker history. Without my wanting it to, the whose first verse played in my memory.

My roommates went bounding down the steps when they heard the tune. They saw the look on my face. “Didn’t you hear the ice cream truck?” they asked.

“Yeah. Didn’t you?”

“What did you mean?”

“Didn’t you recognize the song they were playing?” I hummed. Nothing.

The incident sort of fell out of my mind until a few weeks ago, when two consecutive buses came roaring down the street in front of my DC apartment. After months of construction the street looks a little like some of the harder-hit patches of Dresden after World War II, and there are plenty of metal plates and potholes to crash into. With the buses’ squeaky brakes and clattering mufflers they raised quite a racket. A whole string of car alarms went off in the buses’ wake, like windows exploding. It was a too familiar happening around here, and I was seething over the five-movement symphony-alarm from the grey minivan with the Maryland plates (again!)—when suddenly, beneath it, came rising up the same tinny ice-cream truck song from a decade earlier. No words, just electric synth sound.

“Dixie.”

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by David Schneider

If you're asked, “So, what are you reading these days?” do not under any circumstances reply The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Unless, of course, you intend to frighten off acquaintances, old friends, petrified Republicans, pie-eyed Democrats, overstaying guests, job interviewers, potential lovers– heck, just about anyone. Trust me. In this age of Life, Inc., in that mumbled admission you instantly brand yourself: prolix, patrician, and pessimistic. (Yeah, names don't hurt me, but ouch.)

Look, blame Battlestar Galactica for my parade of pedantry. You might remember–– a while back I was thinking about that sci-fi epic as “Romans: Remixed,” so – as part of my new venture, Reading Books So You Don't Have To, Unlimited – I decided to check out the original track recorded by Gibbon. (Decline and Fall must have sounded pretty interesting when it premiered, in London, in 1776.)

I regret to report that, as a literary work of art, it has a few significant defects.

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H. G. Wells lobbied widely in the 1920's and 30's for something he called a “World Brain,” a continuously updated Global Encyclopedia containing the sum total of human knowledge. He described it with terms we might call “cybernetic” now, although Norbert Wiener wouldn't write a book with that name for more than a decade. Did Wells really predict the Internet? Not really. The enabling technology would have been unimaginable for him. But he was on the right track.

Wells was already a pretty damned good forecaster by that point. It's easy enough to check out his predictions for the 20th Century in an uncopyrighted (at least in the 1902 book called Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress Upon Human Life and Thought For road travel, for example, he predicted use of the “motor truck,” the “motor carriage,” and the “motor omnibus.”

That's “tractor trailer,” “car,” and “bus” to you. From that he extrapolated a new kind of road that “will be very different from macadamized roads; they will be used only by soft-tired conveyances; the battering horseshoes, the perpetual filth of horse traffic, and the clumsy wheels of laden carts will never wear them.” And from that he was able to predict that the United States would become the home of suburban sprawl.

He even saw Amazon.com coming … well, almost … together with a continued need for shopping centers. He wrote: “(F)or all such “shopping” as one cannot do by telephone or postcard (okay, okay – I said almost!), it will still be natural for the shops to be gathered together in some central place.” He went on:

Did you catch that? The guy predicted shopping malls, for crying out loud. In 1902! It wouldn't have been surprising if he had foreseen the Yogurt Hut and Urban Outfitters while he was at it. He didn't do as well at global issues. He predicted a disastrous conflict that would eliminate the ruling oligarchies of the 20th Century, replacing them with the more enlightened intellectual meritocracy of a “New Republic.”

So he got a Big Question wrong. But how about those shopping malls? And he predicted dishwashing liquids, too. (I'm not making that up.)

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by Colin Marshall

It's a bit of a tic among cinephiles to label filmmakers “auteurs of x“, where x is whatever theme, mood or sensibility of which said auteur has made a habit. Ming-liang Tsai is a common target. With his spare casts of isolated characters spending so much of their time in the frame alone and longing, is he “the auteur of urban alienation”? Is he “the auteur of the moment”, focusing with the utmost patience and stillness on the subtlest human actions? Is he more of an auteur of base bodily functions, throwing around scenes of masturbation, urination and awkward sex with grimy abandon?

This no doubt conjures a bizarre mental image in the mind of the reader without experience of Tsai's films, but do rest assured that they're not quite that weird. Puzzlement, however, is far from an unheard-of a reaction. 2001's What Time is it There? appears to have provoked the same questions as its predecessors — “Why are the characters doing that?”, “Why do things look that way?”, “What's going on?” — but it does so with expertise honed over nearly a decade of cinematic experience. It's the pinnacle of a loose quadrilogy, also comprising 1992's Rebels of a Neon God, 1994's Vive l'Amour, 1997's The River and 1998's The Hole, wherein Tsai employs a stable core of actors, places them in many of the same Taipei locations and expresses their attempts, usually ill-faited, at connection.

At the heart of the movies is Kang-sheng Lee, a nonprofessional actor Tsai happened upon while casting his first feature. Never has the director's enthusiasm for mixing the trained and the untrained been more profitable than when Lee's self-styled mannerisms and methods of reaction interact with his castmates'. “In his own world” would be a tired description; “on his own plane of existence” is more apt. Words fail to describe exactly what's different about his acting style — perhaps it's more of a “being style” — but it becomes immediately clear after viewing any of his scenes why Tsai would want to repeatedly cast the fellow in such central roles. He's got something, and that something definitely didn't come from a workshop.

Here, Lee takes his recurrent Tsai character name, Hsiao-kang. Whether he's the same Hsiao-kang that appears in The River, The Hole and Vive l'Amour remains a matter of open debate, though his father is played by the usual fellow as well. Not for long, though; just a few shots in, Dad's already dead and cremated, his ashes gripped by Hsiao-kang, who urges his father's spirit to keep on flying alongside his car as it passes through a tunnel. Wearing the deceased man's watch, Hsiao-kang resumes his daily existence supported by timepieces sold out of a suitcase on a skybridge. He manages to close a sale with Shiang-chyi, a student on her way to Paris, but does so only reluctantly; it's his father's watch she wants, capable as it is of displaying two times at once. One for Taiwan, she figures, one for France.

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Elatia Harris

Earlier this year, Affinity Konar, a former 3 Quarks Daily blogger, published her first novel, The Illustrated Version of Things (Fiction Collective Two, April 2009.) One of the very few 3QD columnists to post short fiction, her pieces were received in a way that suggests the form has a future here. Her novel, too, has been greeted with excitement – and read hungrily by me, among others.

In a bookstore, one might find The Illustrated Version of Things shelved under coming-of-age fiction. From time to time while reading it, I spared a thought for some classics of the genre – one in which growing up usually does a young protagonist a bittersweet bit of good. Less usually, a bleak childhood will be seen as a lost paradise by a narrator who has crossed over — if only he’d known. Whatever happens, poignant is the watchword. If to have that note sounded is why you would read about kids, then this is probably not the book for you. Sam Lipsyte has a word for the experience of reading it: “singular.” Ben Marcus, a phrase: “the far limits of sorrow and isolation.” I don’t disagree, but it’s worth adding that it’s also a very funny book.

Affinity and I exchanged emails over 10 days as she and her family prepared to move from Virginia to California, where she grew up. They’re all on the road as I write, headed west.

Elatia Harris: Though the brother and sister in the novel are extreme cases, I got an uncanny sense as I read of how provisional every childhood is. That it's kind of amazing that any of us makes it through — assuming adulthood is the point. A children's advocate I know says that adulthood is not really the point, only the result of childhood.

Affinity Konar: I see it as provisional as well, and have always been tempted to view individuals who surface from horrific childhoods—not only intact, but functional beyond all understanding–as unusually talented people. It’s as if they have an extra muscle in their bodies, or a passport that allows travel between worlds with disparate laws of maturity and justice.

EH: Do those laws bind fictional characters? The brother and sister in your novel?

AK: I’d hoped that the brother character would dilute the notion that their childhood experiences were solely responsible for the narrator’s failures. Her language and perspective were the more pressing issues to me, and I’m still unsettled as to whether or not she’s actually interested in making her life livable.

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by Shiban Ganju

One formula to cut the cost of health care: stay healthy until you die. Unfortunately for the payers of health care, disease intervenes between health and death. That costs money. And the more chronic the disease, the more money it gobbles up.

Prevention and management of chronic disease are two important planks of cost-saving in the Obama health plan. But will it reduce the expenditure? Only if staying healthy generates more profits for all compared to profits generated by caring for the sick. And that needs a strong political will for financial reengineering of the system.

A health care system aims to fulfill a need of a society but often falls short of its aspiration. The devil lurks in its delivery. In a simplistic form, a health system aims to achieve the following:

1. Prevent the preventable.
2. Cure the curable.
3. Research the unknown.
4. Palliate the incurable.
5. Rehabilitate the disabled.
6. Minimize suffering when death is inevitable.

We derive maximum value for the money spent on the top three ventures on the list. But we spend disproportional amounts of available money in ‘sick’ care and in trying to cure the incurable. And we spend less in ‘health’ care to keep the population healthy. In the USA, only 2 to 3 percent of health expenditure goes for prevention. The medical industrial complex, which profits by treating the ‘disease’, has little incentive to invest in ‘prevention’, which does not yield high return on investment.

So the often asked question: does prevention decrease the cost of health care? The question has thee dimensions. First: is the question relevant? Second: How does one measure cost? Third: what can we prevent?

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A conversation about the upcoming French Open between three tennis fans: Sydneysider Lucy Perkins, New Yorker Asad Raza, and Ecuadorian-North Carolinian Juan José Vallejo.

Asad Raza: Hey guys, thanks for coming aboard the 3quarksdaily raft. So here we are at Roland Garros time, again, where for the last several years Rafa Nadal has been the bear that eats Roger Federer. J.J., you have the best account of the state of their rivalry I've heard. Care to run through it?

Juan José: I'm currently toasted, but I promise I'll send my run-through tomorrow. Hope you're all doing well!

Lucy: JJ! If I had thought one of us was gonna delay writing on account of being under the influence, you would have been my THIRD choice. I'll check back in after Fed's straight-set drubbing of Rafa in his HOME MASTERS FINAL. Oh yes. (Ed. Note: this message written eight hours before Roger Federer's May 17th straight-sets defeat of Rafael Nadal in the Madrid final.)

Juan José: Eh…oops. Wrong choice of words there!

What happened was that yesterday ended up being way more exhausting than I expected. It all started at 7:40 in the morning, when I woke up to fish for an internet stream so I could watch my Manchester United clinch the English Premier League title. Which they did, and I was very happy. Shortly after the celebrations ended, Nadal and Djokovic were on.

Now, I had already written off the match as a straight sets defeat for Djokovic, since he was playing on his third straight week, and Nadal even had a walkover in his “home” tournament. But then the match started, Nadal looked terrible and Djokovic looked good. When Djokovic served out the first set, I thought he had a great chance to win this, if Nadal didn't improve dramatically. Djokovic was playing his game, not even going for anything spectacular, and it seemed that staying the course would be enough to win the match. Then, at 1-2 in the second, Nadal calls for the trainer, and he gets his knee taped. I thought, hey, now there's an enormous chance. Djokovic adjusted on the fly, making Nadal hit loads of backhands, since the taped knee was his right one, which he pushes off when he hits off his backhand side. That was a nice adjustment to see. So I thought, man, this is really going to happen! Even if it was similar to last year's Nadal-Ferrero match in Rome, who cares, it was a clay win over Nadal. And Nadal didn't look good. He wasn't moving well. He looked like he was about to retire.

But of course, that didn't happen. What happened instead was that he stopped missing. Welcome to Nadal hell. However, Djokovic was still playing well, so even when he lost that second set tiebreaker, I thought he had a big chance in the third. So it was no surprise to see him go up a break. But then cramps hit, he gets broken, and the real match started.

I'll echo Djokovic in saying that there is very little to say about what followed. All the evidence you need to see was there in those last games of the third set. It was unbelievable, it was ridiculous, it was crushing, and it was heartbreaking, in a strange way. The worst way to endure a defeat is if your sporting entity choked, and that was not the case. But it also hurts when your sporting entity plays as well as he can possibly play, and still lose. As an Agassi fan, I've been through that before. It's a special kind of heartbreak.

So the only influence I was under all day was from a pint of Guiness I had stored in our refrigerator here for extreme emergencies. It had been sitting there for about 9 months. So that and videos of Manchester United celebrating made me happy again.

Anyway, we're missing the Madrid final here because of Amy's birthday brunch. I'll talk about the Federer-Nadal thing when I get back.

Asad: Actually, I think it's quite appropriate that we ended up talking about Djokovic, who has been pushing Rafa on clay more than anyone else–Federer may have won the Madrid final, he might owe Novak part of that check–it was the match with Novak that took the starch out of Rafa. Or did Federer make a true breakthrough just when none of us expected him to beat Nadal on clay again, Luce?

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Part 1 of “My Life as a Crime Fighter: The Case of the Predator Psychiatrist” can be found HERE.

[Note: Some names and details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals, especially the victims.]

Wearing a Wire

I offered to go see the psychiatrist, Dr. Joseph R. Dorsey, and try to get him to make incriminating statements about having sex with his patient, Gertrude (Gerti) Kossik. Gerti's husband, Nathan, and her (now former) lover, Janice Wines, were surprised that I would offer to play cloak and dagger. It never occurred to them, but they felt it could help their complaint with the New York State Department of Education concerning Dorsey's medical license, as well as their civil case. Their attorneys, Willard Marino and Robert Cohen, thought it was a great idea. I agreed to wear a wire, a concealed tape recorder, to gather the evidence. It wouldn't be a problem getting access to Dorsey because we knew each other from varied professional events in the mid-Hudson Valley. Also, I consulted with him about IBM employees who were having adjustment problems at work. I was at his office once or twice, so there shouldn't be a problem making an appointment to see him under the pretense of discussing matters about a couple of employees.

The trial attorney, Bob Cohen, gave me a legal briefing on the secret recording of telephone and personal conversations. By this time, I was sure Bob had been a yeshiva student, if not a trained rabbi, in an earlier life. Not only did he look and sound like a biblical scholar, but he would raise his right hand, index finger extended and pointing toward heaven, to emphasize the authority of his points of analysis and conclusions, “Now if you consider the intent, and the fact that it will be a matter for both a civil and administrative trial, …”. Later I told him he presented himself like a biblical scholar. He smiled at me and said, “Thanks. That's a great compliment.” I asked why he was called a 'trial attorney'. “Don't all attorneys participate in trials?”, I asked. He smiled again and said, “Asking me that question is good news for you.” “How's that?”, I replied. He straightened up a bit and said, “It means you've been fortunate, to this point in your life, not to have been involved in matters that required interactions with lawyers.” He went on to explain the distinction between solicitor and barrister in the U.K. While we don't have the same formal classification in the U.S., there is an informal and practical alignment that results from personal preferences and experiences among attorneys. My status as a legal ingénue would come to an end in a couple of years.

For New York State, the law concerning the secret recording of a conversation is as clear as it is simple. Anyone can can record any telephone conversation, or personal conversation, to which one is a party. There is no requirement to inform the other person in advance of, during, or following the conversation. Permission from the other party, or parties, is not required. The laws in other states will vary. For example, Linda Tripp was violating the laws of the State of Virginia when she secretly recorded her conversations with Monica Lewinsky.

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Justin E. H. Smith

I would like to lead my life, with Spinoza, sub specie aeternitatis. I truly would. But every now and then my fellow men show themselves to be so brutish that I have no choice but to come back down to earthly reality and cry shame. Such a moment was the Israeli siege on Gaza that began at the end of last year, which prompted me to try to do what I could, with the low-grade weaponry of rhetoric, to convince the unconvinced that this was a thing to be harshly denounced. What did I do? Well, I wrote up my case, and I made it known through various low-voltage electronic media. Why did I not do more, like Jeff Halper? As I've said, I am hardly a philosophe engagé. I confess to doing as little as possible.

In any case, my minor foray into activism was also a learning experience. What did I learn? Among other things, I learned that, as one might fear, criticism of Israel really does draw the creeps out of the woodwork: there are indeed many out there who are far too eager to see in Israel's aggression the confirmation of their own fantastical, alternative accounts of the secret forces guiding world history. I also learned that there are many out there who take the opinions of these alienated, ill-informed bigots far too seriously, and who mistakenly suppose that any and all criticism of Israel must come from, or lead to, that same dark place.

Should one then refrain from criticizing Israel altogether? This is a privilege no one would dream of granting to any other state in the world, and one I certainly don't grant to my native country or to my adoptive one. Or should one instead insist that such delicacy around the question, such special treatment, is itself a manifestation of the same sort of unhistorical, unscientific Sonderweg-thinking that, under other circumstances, has been used not to hold Israel above all criticism, but rather to blame Jews for whatever goes wrong with the world? I know which of these two approaches I choose, and I insist that to say this is also a choice to stoke antisemitism is not only a fallacy, but also a smear.

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By Namit Arora

Various societies at different times have dazzled with their bursts of creative and intellectual energy. Historians have a penchant for dubbing them Golden Ages. Examples include the Athens of Herodotus, the Baghdad of Haroun al-Rashid, and the India of the Buddha. But though India has long been famous for its “ancient wisdom”, the few historical sources that survive shed woefully inadequate light on the Buddha's society. By contrast, far better portraits of classical Greece and Abbasid Baghdad are available to us.

Still, evidence at hand suggests that around 600-500 BCE, in parts of the Indo-Gangetic plain of north India, people were asking some very bold and original questions: What is the nature of thought and perception? What is the source of consciousness? Are virtue and vice absolute or mere social conventions? Old traditions were under attack, new trades and lifestyles were emerging, and urban life was in a churn, reducing the power of uptight Brahmins.

Philosophical schools flourished in a marketplace of ideas, and included chronic fatalists, radical materialists, self-mortifying ascetics, die-hard skeptics, cautious pragmatists, saintly mystics, and the ubiquitous miracle mongers. “Rivalries and debates were rife. Audiences gathered around the new philosophers in the kutuhala-shalas—literally, the place for creating curiosity—the parks and groves on the outskirts of the towns…. The presence of multiple, competing ideologies was a feature of urban living.”[1] It was also an age of nascent democratic republics, which, like Athens later, did not ultimately survive the march of monarchy and empire.[2]

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Figurehead
Jim Culleny

Sometimes a poet will sail
the line of a poem
like Leonardo DiCaprio:
a figurehead on Titanic,
arms spread, embracing the wind,
the air, the fabulous future,
poised before the next word,
only to find it isn’t there:
the right word,
the one that says it all,
the one that pulls the rabbit out of the hat of the poem,
that drops scales from blind eyes,
that gives ears their plum and brain its due
and (without the need to be said)
ends its longing for what the heart
already knew

by Aditya Dev Sood

This is Delhi in its glory. Hotter, even, than when I knew it as a child, the temperatures these days scratching past the 45 degrees Celsius that were their absolute threshold then. Every day the earth baking, every night the atmosphere billowing in response, plumes of invisible heat unsettling the skies, a sudden imbalance and extreme of the natural order, corrected by crazy dust storms in the late afternoon, whose special, threatening light, one knows, will never break to rain. The dust is everywhere. On window sills and on the floors of my home, on doorknobs and banisters, and even hidden atop curtain rods and high shelves. The body is always tormented by the heat, always seeking respite, coolness, moisture, a wet towel, ginger-lemonade, the direct draft of an air-conditioner.

In the center of the two-storied house is a kind of small atrium, or large shaft, which stretches from plinth to roof. My neighbor has one just like it — it is mandated by local zoning. The idea was, in those pre-aircon-days of the Raj and early Indian post-coloniality, that air would circulate through the house, gathering heat from the groins and armpits of its wilting inhabitants, before entering the atrium and rising up as hot air must, but also following Bernoulli's principle, that fluids will accelerate as they pass through a narrower channel. The logic of air-conditioning, sadly, runs so directly counter to this ecological understanding of architecture, as a coordination of air flows from outside the building, in through its interiors, all the way out its top.

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New Thing
Jim Culleny

I opened a Twitter acccount out of curiosity.

I admit it, I was born into a far simpler techno world —pre-TV, prime-time radio, number-please phones on party lines, straight-6 engines with carburetors, 78 records with needles the size of ten-penny spikes —an antiquated world. And although it’s a little murky to me now, we are each what we were to a great extent. So when I finally grasped the concept “Twitter” my first response was WTF?

The idea that an up-to-the-minute account of my thoughts and actions, no matter how brief, would have any value, or would be worth the bother to anyone, seemed pretty absurd. But it wouldn’t be the first absurdity to take-off like the Enola Gay.

I first became aware of Twitter listening to political debates and interviews. It seemed interviewers and the world suddenly wanted to know which well-placed twits Twitter, and how many follower-twits they’d accrued. Who knew that something as edgy as Twitter would appeal to dinosaurs in dark suits & red ties, or pant suits with PC dos?

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