A Different Drummer

The Answer is 'Yes'

2009-10-03T09:10:00.003+02:00

The National's Peter Hellyer on the ridiculous $950,000 "Sheikh Zayed Mosque rifle, designed as a tribute to the building and its creator, inlaid with 36 coloured diamonds and engraved with an image of the late founder of the nation:"

"The concept of this rifle is an insult to the mosque, to the man who spurred its construction and to Islam itself. It is also an insult to those attending the show. Do the gun’s manufacturers think that the deep affection in which Sheikh Zayed is held by the people of the UAE, both Emiratis and expatriates, is such that the mere tacking of his name on to a rifle adorned with diamonds is sufficient to persuade someone to buy it?"

Yes, yes they do. And they are almost certainly correct in their assumption, because the people of the UAE, both Emirati and expatriate, are suckers for the global "phenomenally expensive tacky shit" industry. In fact, they are fast emerging as a kind of global class of jet-setting slack-jawed yokel, getting gleefully conned into swapping their precious resources for handfuls of coloured beads.

From $80,000 Vertu mobile phones to "exclusive" $40,000 Montblanc pens with the UAE flag tacked on in coloured Swarovski crystals to an even more exclusive diamond studded television, one thing is clear: Getting your second-rate, overpriced product, covering it with lurid diamonds and crystals, pricing it in six figures and shipping it as an "exclusive" product to the UAE is a fundamentally sound business model.

It sounds better in the original German...

2009-09-11T11:31:00.002+02:00

China prepares for its National Day:

Citizens might lift their spirits with a list of 50 officially approved slogans issued to mark national day (soldiers have been ordered to post them up and shout them in their camps). “Uphold the basic economic system with public ownership playing a dominant role and diverse forms of economic ownership developing together, and with the practice of distribution according to work being carried out as the mainstay alongside other forms of distribution,” goes a particularly snappy one.

Check out the whole story in The Economist (which keeps getting better).

Money happily wasted

2009-09-07T09:39:00.002+02:00

The newest addition to my desk at work makes me happy.

I wish it was a little bit more steampunk - would be great if I could plug the iPhone into it, or at least use it as a bluetooth headset for my mobile. On the plus side, if a man busts into our office and goes on a shooting rampage (this isn't completely out of the question), I can grab my old timey desk phone by its two convenient handles, and beat him over the head with it.

Try doing that with an iPhone.

Pets, Weapons, Make-out sessions, Booze, Fire and Roller Skates

2009-08-31T10:41:00.005+02:00

One of my favourite signs in the entire world is the one that now greets staff entering our offices:

From Blogger Pictures

It should be noted that these things - guns, women, dogs, roller skates, fire, alcohol - make a beautifully comprehensive list of all the things that can bring about a man's downfall, either alone or in combination.

This sign is wise beyond our comprehension.

The Beverage Odyssey Continues

2009-08-30T13:55:00.008+02:00

I have always had a fondness for unknown drinks - not spirits and exotic tropical rums, but juices and soft drinks and strange things in cans that I have never seen before. I like to imagine that the perfect cold drink has yet to be developed, and that across the world, mad beverage scientists are working 24-7 to invent the Perfect Drink.

In Australia, I had a strange respect for Sno-Top, a drink that tastes like nothing else on earth, and so obscure that it doesn't even have a website. In Northern Ireland I was introduced to Irn-Bru, truly a badass drink if ever there was one. Not long after, in Cairo, I was singing the praises of Pinapple Fayrouz, which I maintain is the best hot weather version of a cold beer for places where a cold beer isn't going to happen. And how could you properly love Malta and its people without loving Kinnie?

In the Netherlands, the beverage marvel was Spa Marie-Henriette, the water that isn't quite still and isn't quite sparkling, for those tough times when a sparkling water would be too harsh and a still water too dull. In neighbouring Belgium, I always had a thing for Schweppes Agrum, the greatest fruity drink of them all. I don't think it has anything to do with Belgium, but I discovered it there and it always seems to be on shelves there, so maybe the Belgians have taken to it with a particular vigour.

And who could forget Shani, a vision of pure carbonated berry love, our traditional drink when hitting up the Siwa oasis in Egypt. Apparently the Siwans smuggle it in from Libya - it's that delicious.

The UAE is a brilliant aggregator of strange bottled drinks from around the world, from the wonderfully named Pocari Sweat (Japanese) to Power Horse (Austrian), the Energy Drink of Tremendous Symbolism. But last night at the little corner store near my house in Abu Dhabi, I came across this marvel:

Thums Up - tagline (at the top of the can) "Taste the Thunder." My suggested new tagline: "Thums Up: We cut out the silent b and pass on the savings to you." A scientific tasting at my place concurred that it is intended as some sort of cola, but with a decidedly ginger / spice element. My housemate's complaint of a "harsh afterburn" was pretty accurate - this isn't a drink for the novices.

My conclusion: when your product development guys don't bother to run a spellcheck on the name of your new drink, it is likely that they also cut some other corners along the way. I tasted the thunder, along with many other things, and my thumbs are not raised to the sky.

Always listen to your elders

2009-08-05T06:30:00.002+02:00

“If the wife does not hear my words I will seek another obedient wife,” he says. “She was not respecting me, maybe she is defaming me through a long tongue. Some wives shouted at me and told me to shut up....

“I married them just because I wanted to,” he says. “It is a shame to love a woman. If I see a woman, I look down. If I want to marry, I will get married.” (The National)

- Salem Juma'a, father of 52 children. A man we should all learn from, to be sure.

The Better Battle of Thermopylae

2009-07-17T10:07:00.002+02:00

Forget Spartans vs Persians. I like the one that involved Australians:

The Battle of Thermopylae during World War II occurred in 1941 following the retreat from the Olympus and Servia passes. British Commonwealth forces began to set up defensive position at the historic pass at Thermopylae....

When the order to retreat was received on the morning of the 23rd it was decided that each of the two positions was to be held by one brigade each. These brigades, the Australian 19th and 6th New Zealand were to hold the passes as long as possible, allowing the other units to withdraw. General Vasey, commander of the 19th Brigade said:

“Here we bloody well are and here we bloody well stay”

The Germans attacked on 24 April, met fierce resistance, lost fifteen tanks and sustained considerable casualties. The Australians and New Zealanders held out the entire day....

Along with our Gazan cavalry charge, this is the kind of thing that really would have made Australian Studies a lot more interesting in high school...

The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.

2009-05-31T20:21:00.003+02:00

In an effort to foster better community relations, the Abu Dhabi police got an awesome custom-made chopper motorbike, and will ride it around the emirate showing it off.

Police hope interest in the bright-red and chrome Falcon chopper, emblazoned with the Abu Dhabi Police logo and equipped with a siren, flashing lights and a baton holster, will help them build closer relationships with Emirati youth. Officials plan to take it on road shows around the emirate....

Lt Majid al Marzouqi of the Abu Dhabi Police said he hoped the chopper would help police bond with the public.

“We got more than 1,000 people at the launch, so it really worked,” he said. “This is just part of what Abu Dhabi Police are doing. We are very close to the community, and this is one way of getting even closer.” (The National)

It has a siren, flashing lights and a baton holster. It is an awesome custom chopper. We have video of it.

They don't mess about in Saudi Arabia...

2009-05-30T22:11:00.003+02:00

There is only one place in the world that can generate news stories with paragraphs like this:

Crucifying the headless body in a public place is a way to set an example, according to the kingdom's strict interpretation of Islam. Normally those convicted of rape, murder and drug trafficking in Saudi Arabia are just beheaded.

They beheaded AND crucified the guy.

In Amman

2009-05-30T16:16:00.004+02:00

Even though it's only a bus ride from Cairo, I never made it to Amman in the years I lived there. I guess when you make it as far along the Sinai coast as Basata, those extra couple of hundred kilometres just don't seem worth it...

Plus, I'm a Cairo supremacist, and had no time for secondary Non-Cairos...

Well, now I'm here. First reaction: like the Cairo suburbs, but with a Holy Land kinda feeling - rocky hills dotted with shrubs, and a nice consistent stone-y colour to everything. Seems a little boring, but it has only been 6 hours...

One nice touch: Jordan has a suggestions box:

I'm staying in the Jerusalem hotel, and its one of those delightfully old-timey relics you will find in cities all over the Arab world - straight out of the golden age, faded, completely out of date but with absolute dignity, staffed by men with moustaches and gold-rimmed glasses, who call it an "otel" in a French accent.

It's all dark wood and totally uncomfortable faux Louis XIV furnituture, old men in suits smoking in the lobby, room service menu printed 20 years ago...(Cairo people, think the Odeon, etc.) I love it.

How old-school is my hotel? This is the telephone fixed on the wall in my bathroom. Pure class:

I'm here because Jordan seems to be the place to be right now for technology startups in the Middle East, and will be writing about the whole scene, and the how and why of it, for The National. Will put up some links later, but for now, I need to explore. I've got no idea where I am and no idea where I am supposed to go, which is how it should be. Peace.

أم الدنيا

2009-05-23T13:17:00.002+02:00

Sometimes - actually, all the time - I ask myself the same question:

And I was interviewed by three young Egyptian women who asked serious, educated questions, and I asked myself - I have to repeat this question - whether the Egyptians were not better educated than I had remembered, and that perhaps Mohamed Hussainein Heikal, with our old memories, had not got Egypt wrong. I drove back to Cairo with Mohamed (yes, the old Aswan Mohamed) and I asked him to point out to me the Pyramids. And there they emerged, on the right of the car, the Pyramids of Cheops, Chephren and Mycerinus, and there they were, brilliant against the sunshine, full of life and power and danger, and I stared at them in great awe and love and wondered why I ever got tired of Egypt.

Robert Fisk's World: When I look at the Pyramids, I wonder why I tire of Egypt

BREAKING: Swine flu information you can't afford to miss

2009-05-23T10:32:00.001+02:00

UAE blogger Tariq Kadri has some important information on the swine flu outbreak that everyone should be aware of.

Thinking hard about elevators

2009-05-19T21:55:00.003+02:00

I love this wonderful New Yorker article - the elevator as enabler of urban civilisation! The elevator as deep, sprawling reflection on social space!

When filmmakers want to shoot an elevator scene, they will spin the elevator around, like a lazy Susan, so that the character can disembark into a different set. This trick captures something about an elevator ride—the way that it can feel like teleportation. You go in here and come out there, and you hardly consider that you have just raced up or down a vertiginous, pitch-black shaft. When you’re waiting for a ride, you don’t think that what lurks behind the outer doors is emptiness. Every so often, a door opens when it shouldn’t and someone steps into the void. This is worth keeping in mind.

The whole article is very much worth a read.

Screw You, Australian Labour Party

2009-05-13T17:36:00.002+02:00

I would shoot myself in the leg before voting Liberal. But what am I supposed to do here? First, you roll back the wonderful liberalism of my South Australian homeland. Then, you line up Australia with Saudi Arabia and North Korea by filtering the internet.

Now, you want to tax the money I earn while living in another country. You're dead to me.

For a classic example of the progressive impulse to see all money as the natural property of the government unless otherwise "given" to the people, read that crazy press release on the Australian treasury website.

"Many foreign countries are lower tax jurisdictions which means some Australians who earn income overseas are paying much less tax than if they earned income solely in Australia."

True. We also consume no government services, are eligible for no benefits, and cost the Australian government pretty much nothing. But I guess that isn't really the point.

The difference between investors and speculators

2009-05-02T21:22:00.002+02:00

A brilliant quote from Jeffrey Goldberg's excellent story in The Atlantic this month:

“Here’s how to know if you have the makeup to be an investor. How would you handle the following situation? Let’s say you own a Procter & Gamble in your portfolio and the stock price goes down by half. Do you like it better? If it falls in half, do you reinvest dividends? Do you take cash out of savings to buy more? If you have the confidence to do that, then you’re an investor. If you don’t, you’re not an investor, you’re a speculator, and you shouldn’t be in the stock market in the first place.”

I think a lot of people are in the stock market who probably shouldn't be.

The Other, Smarter, Tom Gara

2009-04-22T14:59:00.005+02:00

Behold, the top link on YouTube when searching for "Tom Gara".

It is my uncle Tom, whose existence and naming creates the following interesting facts:

- Despite being approximately the largest man in the world, I am known among this side of the family as "Little Tom," a relic of my childhood days as the smallest Tom Gara in the family.

- If you google for my name, you get a combination of various blogs, newspaper/ magazine articles etc written by me - but mixed in is a whole bunch of references to the impressive body of knowledge / scholarship of by Tom Gara from Adelaide, South Australia, who knows about as much about the history of Aboriginal Australians as anybody. This, to the novice who is googling me for background info / recruitment purposes, makes it look like I have a far better education than I actually do.

Anyhow, here is the man known by some as "Big Tom," talking about the interactions between famous Australian explorers Burke and Wills and the indigenous people of the Australian outback, and the general relationship between the early explorers and the Aboriginals.

My Lunchbox is Better than Your Lunchbox

2009-04-12T23:51:00.003+02:00

As part of a broad push to eat healthy food, save money and rescue Somalia from Piracy, I've been cooking at home a ton lately, taking in boxed lunches to work each day. Tonight's creation looked too delicious not to photograph and gloat over publicly:

The idea started off as a fairly straight up Thai-style squid salad, but then my urge to put snow peas and cherry tomatoes in everything kicked in, and it kinda accelerated from there. I bought a packet of wakame flakes out of curiousity over the weekend, so I threw some of them in, and before I knew it, I was charring a sheet of nori over the gas flame and crumbling that badboy in as well.

I've posted the recipe, if you can call it that, over at nomadfood. Unless I report otherwise, assume that this tastes awesome at lunchtime tomorrow...

How Hosni Mubarak Rolls

2009-04-09T14:38:00.005+02:00

Saw this over at Arabawy, just classic - Egypt's Pharaoh taking a drive along the Alexandria corniche. Why is it that the legitimacy of a ruler always seems inversely proportional to the size of his motorcade?

Hosni needs a popemobile.

Thom Yorke and the Economic Crisis

2009-03-30T08:20:00.003+02:00

Radiohead's genius frontman sings about the unexpected, unpredictable, massively bad things that are practically guaranteed to happen.

What will grow crooked, you can't make straight
It's the price you gotta pay
Do yourself a favour and pack your bags
Buy a ticket and get on the train
Buy a ticket and get on the train

Cause this is fucked up, fucked up
Cause this is fucked up, fucked up

People get crushed like biscuit crumbs
And laid down in the bitumen
You have tried your best to please everyone
But it just isn't happening
No, it just isn't happening

And that is fucked up, fucked up
And this is fucked up, fucked up
This your blind spot, blind spot
It should be obvious, but it's not.
But it isn't, but it isn't

You cannot kickstart a dead horse
You just crush yourself and walk away
I don't care what the future holds
Cause I'm right here now today
With your fingers you can touch me

I am your black swan, black swan
But I made it to the top, made it to the top
This is fucked up, fucked up

You are fucked up, fucked up
This is fucked up, fucked up

Be your black swan, black swan
I'm for spare parts, broken up

Happy Stop-Killing-Each-Other Day

2009-03-26T14:50:00.002+01:00

Today is the 30th anniversary of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty. If you measure such an agreement by a resulting lack of conflict between the two countries, it was a pretty decent deal. Arming both to the teeth seems to have been a pretty good way to stop them ever considering war again. I think Camp David and the treaty are America's best contributions toward peace in the region.

Random thoughts:

- Anwar Sadat was one of a kind, and shame on the Arab / Islamist leaders who cheered his death and shunned his funeral. From his Nobel Prize acceptance speech:

"I am convinced that we owe it to this generation and the generations to come, not to leave a stone unturned in our pursuit of peace. The ideal is the greatest one in the history of man, and we have accepted the challenge to translate it from a cherished hope into a living reality, and to win through vision and imagination, the hearts and minds of our peoples and enable them to look beyond the unhappy past."

- Avantcaire has a great post on why they are a pro-Israel Arab, well worth a read:

"surveying the middle east in the mid to late 90s i was struck by the stark difference between israel and the rest of the middle east. a reasonably well functioning democracy with pockets of real innovation in industry and academia, a press that i trusted more than any in the region. i admired (and continue to admire) the young, small country’s achievements.

i also grew up with many palestinian friends. one of my earliest loves was palestinian. i sympathized with their sense of loss, insecurity and bitterness. but that sympathy rarely translated into support for their politics. the plo reeked of the corrupt incompetence that was familiar to me from my visits to egypt."

- It is a pity that the insane war in Gaza led to relations with Qatar being frozen. A new peace treaty, this time with an emerging Gulf state, would have been a good beginning for the next decade. The UAE, which was also fairly tolerant in a dont-ask-dont-tell sort of way toward Israeli visitors, is cooling on the whole idea.

- This article in Haaretz quotes the Egyptian foreign ministry as saying that no events will be held in Egypt to mark the anniversary. It also quotes an editorial in from Egypt's Al Ahram newspaper, a government mouthpiece:

"Cairo doesn't need to explain or justify itself," read the Al-Ahram editorial. "It is clear to anyone following the mood in Egypt or other Arab countries sees that they are calling for the burial of the peace process."

Yikes.

I Lived in Dublin Once

2009-03-23T12:48:00.003+01:00

And as you can see from this rare 2003 photo unearthed by a housemate, it was a bit of a rough year:

This was, if I remember right, the night we came home to find out electricity disconnected.

It should not be confused with the night when, in punishment for losing a particularly weird little challenge, I had to go and sing the Australian national anthem at the top of my lungs out the front of St Patrick's Cathedral:

I seemed to spend a lot of time in Dublin screaming in anguish at the top of my lungs, which can be interpreted however you want.

King of the Tree

2009-03-17T01:12:00.003+01:00

This guy has made his home in my backyard over the last couple of days, moving slowly from tree to tree, eating leaves and fitting in about 22 hours of sleep each day. My mum captured him in a rare moment of full, splendid motion:

Soundtrack for a lovely holiday

2009-03-16T09:47:00.002+01:00

Have heard this one a few times in the last few weeks, a great fit with the laid-back bliss of Adelaide in March. "Brother" by the great Perth band Little Birdy:

A Fairly Nice Place, Really...

2009-03-13T15:53:00.002+01:00

The view at sunset from a barbeque this evening at a friends place in the hills of my lovely hometown of Willunga. Things could definitely be worse.

The Eye Watches Us All

2009-03-12T00:08:00.003+01:00

I know South Australia's gleeful descent into authoritarian fascism has been some time in the making, but does it have to be so explicit?

Conversation With a Genius

2009-02-22T11:15:00.002+01:00

Looking through some old emails, I came across a transcript of an interview done just after I arrived in the UAE last year. We turned some of it into a story, but to do full justice to the coolness of the guy, I'm going to post the whole thing. Enjoy:

Neil Turok's brilliant career has brought together his two great passions: theoretical physics and Africa. The son of two of South Africa's most prominent anti-apartheid activists, Cambridge University's former chair of mathematical physics is a leading force in the search for a Grand Unified Theory, a single mathematical equation that explains everything in the known universe.

In partnership with Stephen Hawking, Turok was instrumental in the development of string theory, which states that the fundamental building blocks of the universe are one-dimensional "strings." It is seen by many physicists as the most promising path to the eventual discovery of a unified theory.

In 2003, he founded the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), a pan-African postgraduate research center. Last February, he was awarded the TED prize in recognition of his achievements in both string theory and the founding of AIMS; on receiving the prize he said his wish was to see the next Einstein emerge from Africa.

In Dubai for the World Summit on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, he spoke to The National about the future of physics, why mathematics still matters, and how the UAE can contribute to the search for the next Einstein.

Will a grand unified theory mean the end of physics?

That is the goal - to find the ultimate description of nature at its most basic level. The goal was always to find a consistent mathematical framework that will be complete. But it is like mathematics: arithmetic is complete at a basic level, we know what one plus one is and so on. But that doesn't mean there aren't still untold mysteries to be understood.

We want to get the basic rules of nature. Are we going to get there? I don't know. Stephen Hawking predicted we would. He said that within 20 years we would have a unified theory. I was an undergraduate then, I went to his lecture at Cambridge. I was skeptical then, and I'm still skeptical (laughs). But I think there's no way to make progress without just going for it. Even if we don't get there, it's going to be an interesting journey along the way.

What would the role of physicists be once that theory is discovered?

They will have to work out the consequences! There will be an infinite amount of work in understanding the consequences.

The complex behaviour of complicated systems is always going to be hard to explain, and very interesting. So for example, how do stars form, how do galaxies form? How and why did life form? All of these things come down to the basic laws of nature, and we're a long way from understanding a details of all that.

And a unified theory would be a helping hand on the way to understanding that?

I think at some level it will be a helping hand. I mean, it won't explain how stars form - we know all the relevant physics there: Newton's laws of gravity, atomic physics and so on. Its just a big messy problem, like understanding the weather. Understanding string theory isn't really going to help with that.

What it will explain, I hope, is the Big Bang. And because everything we see came out of the Big Bang, that is a very fundamental question: why did the universe emerge, filled with matter, expanding into the structure that we see? That is something that string theory should explain.

People usually struggle to see how theoretical physics really connects to the way we live our lives. Would there be a consequence of a unified theory that would change the way we live?

No, and I see that as a plus (laughs)

No terrible new weapons?

Well that would certainly be dangerous, if the new physics provided us with a new weapon. I don't think there is any indication of that so far. But I have to say, there are possibilities. If we understand the Big Bang, there is obviously the risk that some person in the future might try to make another one.

For the most part, I think string theory is entirely useless in the practical sense. But I think most people want something more in their lives apart from everyday existence. They want to wonder about where we come from, why are we here, who are we, how does the world work?

There is huge popular interest in this kind of science. Just look at Stephen Hawking. Wherever he goes there are huge crowds, people want to know what his ideas are. I think it's a wonderful thing, and it has huge power in bridging barriers betweeen cultures and countries.

Basically, bright people from any country can get into this field. And when they do, it is very stimulating because people from different cultures all have slightly different ways of approaching problems, but they all agree on what is good science and what is bad science.

Scientists have a real objectivity, which is interesting. We all agree that two plus two is four, there is no disagreements about that, whether you're Muslim or Christian or whoever you are. Likewise when it comes to fundamental physics, we all agree on the rules, what is a consistent mathematical picture and what isn't. Getting all of humanity to participate in this high-level intellectual pursuit is actually a great way to connect the world.

Physics is notorious for the atom bomb, but everyone knows that Einstein is about so much more than that. And all over the world people are waiting for the next Einstein. This person could come from any culture, and I think that idea is great. The fact that physics isn't very useful is a secondary concern. Ask a young person, do you want to do something useful with your life, or do you want to do something amazing? They want to do something amazing.

There is a big trend for young people to study subjects that are needed in the workforce these days. Even in the sciences, people are looking at IT, chemistry, things that are in demand.

Well I see all these as a spinoff. Look at NASA. Kennedy said 'lets go to the moon,' but what is useful about that? There is nothing useful about the moon. But look at what happened as a spinoff of that. Computers. Velcro! So much useful knowledge came out of the space programme.

It is the same thing with CERN (the European Atomic Research Center) in Geneva. They look at the fundamental structure of matter, higgs bosons. Utterly useless for anything real. But the World Wide Web was invented there. The economic spinoff has been enormous, its the best investment ever made.

If you invest in the pursuit of deep knowledge, its extremely cost effective. Really cheap - theoretical physics cost nothing, just a pencil and paper. Students at AIMS cost $10,000 for ten months, very very cheap. But what do you get in return?

Most of the students who do this stuff will spin off into IT or business, more practical fields. But by getting their minds going, getting them to aim high and question the fundamental rules of the world, they get into the right mindset to be amazing at anything.

A lot of what is wrong with approaches to aid is that it aims very low, even in the language that they use. Look at poverty reduction - they get a negative, which is poverty, and counter it with another negative? What an awful way to look at the world.

We should look at Africa as 700 million people who, some of whom are brilliant. We should identify the brilliant minds, nurture them, connect them with the world, give them opportunities - they will be the ones who fix the problems in their countries. None of the current aid programs do that. They all say we need primary schools, food, medicine, that Africa doesn't need high level stuff.

This approach does not work. In the last fourty years, they have spent one trillion dollars on Africa, and there is very little to show for it. So what I'm talking about is really cheap, and it will really surprise people. If you just come up with a small number, 10 or 100, really brilliant minds, it will shake the world. People will say 'wow, there are some brilliant people there, maybe we should start investing.' And maybe we will get a Bill Gates for Africa, or a Sergey Brin.

I'm convinced they're there. They just need a chance, and they'll be the ones who fix their economies.

It seems like role models are important. In Egypt, the Nobel Prize winner Ahmed Zuwail inspired a lot of Egyptians to take up science. Is this happening across Africa?

No, not yet. There are some examples. A guy in Ghana, Francois Zalotti, a nuclear physicist, is regarded by people there as the country's greatest scientist. They made a postage stamp of him! He's a wonderful guy, very modest. He was head of the Ghanain Energy Commission, and has been very very influential.

You actually find that a lot across Africa, the people with the scientific backgrounds, the ones who did well in science, rapidly become influential. The education minister in Rwanda, just after the genocide, he was a mathematician, the head of a math faculty in the US. He was incredibly effective in rebuilding the education system there, recognised around the world for it.

The current minister of science and technology in South Africa, he did his degree in Applied Maths in jail. He was part of Steve Biko's movement. He came out of jail, and as a refugee in Zimbabwe, did a masters on black holes and general relativity. He is now the only minister in the South African cabinet who consistently gets a ten out of ten rating by all the newspapers, and he is not in the ANC, he is in an opposition party.

People with fundamental science backgrounds, it isn't inevitable, but they do bring logical, rational thinking, they bring ideas about impartiality, ideas about internationalism with them. Science is international, based on the logic of rationality. That's what you get with good science training, and if some of these people go into government and business, it can only be good news.

You made a pretty high profile wish last month at the TED conference. You want to expand AIMS to 15 campuses across Africa, and wished for the next Einstein to be African. How has the response been?

Phenomenal. When we started AIMS, we wanted to do something to help Africa. I don't know a thing about business or entrepreneurship, but I do know a lot about mathematics. So I started a maths institute. What happened since has massively exceeded our expectations. The students coming through have been extremely bright, incredibly motivated. I started to see that a lot of these people will go far in high level science.

I was talking about this to the grand-daughter of Max Born, founder of probability theory in quantum mechanics, and she said to me 'this sounds like how the Jews first got into physics.' There was essentially no Jewish physical scientists before 1880. Hertz was the first. They never got in because they were discriminated against.

But once they got in, they encouraged each other, supported each other, and in the twentieth century they absolutely changed everything. Now I'm not guaranteeing this will happen, but Africa is richer culturally than any other continent, it have variety, diversity in everything. Ethiopians, Madagacans, Nigerians, phenomenal variety. Its an incredible source of human talent. So I think that if Africa does get serious about science, the next Einstein is a possibility.

When they called up up and said 'you've won the TED prize, what is your wish,' I knew what it was immediately. I'd already discussed it with students just to egg them on. To set the standards high I told them straight - we want the next Einstein. So the wish was always there.

A week before TED I was wavering, quite nervous, and I called my brother. He's a successful businessman, and I told him that I was thinking of changing it to 'lets build a high skills economy in Africa.' And he told me 'don't even think about it.' He knows a good catchy line when he hears it.

As a scientist, you are always a worried about saying something unproven, because if you get it wrong, your peers will never let you forget it. My brother said 'just go with it,'and I did.

The response has been phenomenal. We have raised over $2 million in the last month, got the support of people like Richard Branson, Bob Geldof, David Cameron, the leader of the UK Conservative Party, PriceWaterhouse Coopers, lots of big companies. This idea has really caught on, people get it. It took me twenty years to understand what Einstein was talking about, but people just got this idea immediately.

We will open a new AIMS in Nigeria in July, fully funded - actually better funded than the AIMS in South Africa. I've just today spoken with some people in Egypt who want to see an AIMS open there, and what better place could there be? Geometry came from Egypt, so much of modern knowledge came from Egypt.

Do you detect much interest in maths and physics when you speak with leaders in this part of the world?

I'm not an expert, but there is a general feeling that the Muslim world, for whatever reason, lost interest in the basic sciences 200-300 years ago. This was a tragedy, because until then, it was a center for this kind of learning.

People are starting to pick up on this. At the moment, obviously people here are making money very successfully in other ways. So whether the leaders here will get more interested in basic sciences, it remains to be seen. There are enormous benefits to investing in it.

I am trying to pursuade the UAE that if it wants to be seen as a leading country, one of the most effective ways to do it is to invest in smart Africans. Instead of bringing them here to clean hotel rooms and do the basic work, invest in the brilliant ones.

What would happen is that when this group of brilliant Africans change their countries, it will be known that they were supported all the way by the UAE. You can imagine how that would build this country's reputation as a leading place. Europe hasn't done it yet, America hasn't done it yet. So it's such a big, obvious opportunity. And it fits so well with the whole futuristic vibe of the place. Go for something even more futuristic! But do it with humans, not buildings.

Salvation is Near

2009-02-18T21:20:00.001+01:00

Getting Paid to Write is Awesome

2009-02-13T07:56:00.003+01:00

Rob Long, in The National today:

"Years ago, I used to write occasionally for a marginal London literary rag, and the editor would always say something like: “Gosh, I wish we could pay you properly. Anything we’d offer would be terribly insulting, I’m afraid.”

What the editor didn’t know, apparently, is that it’s almost impossible to insult a writer and offer him money at the same time. You can offer him too little, of course – if you do, he’ll probably act like he’s been insulted, but he’ll be lying. Writers, if they’re any good at all, will do it for almost free. But not entirely for free. And writers are so lazy and easily distracted – if they’re any good at all – that without even the most threadbare financial reward system in place – in my case, my English editor paid me 50 pounds per column – we simply wouldn’t get out of our bathrobes. We wouldn’t stop watching reality television during the day. We wouldn’t stop surfing the web. We wouldn’t not spend six hours at lunch."

I think journalists are at the white-collar working end of the writer spectrum - certainly compared to novelist or scriptwriters - but I'm still amazed every day that someone pays me a good sum of money to do what I love doing. I feel like one day they will be onto my little secret and cut my salary by 95 per cent, make me live in a dormitory and eat rice porridge three times a day. I will still thank them and write my ass off....

You're Dead to Me, Kelloggs

2009-02-09T22:01:00.002+01:00

Thank's to this handy online petition, not only can I confirm that the management of Kelloggs are total clueless dicks for dropping their sponsorship of Michael Phelps, but that one of their founders was a total pervert.

Read all about it - John Harvey Kellogg, a certified A-grade lunatic who, after considering the terrible problem of women who masturbate, concluded that:

"the application of pure carbolic acid to the clitoris an excellent means of allaying the abnormal excitement."

Among the solutions for boys? Sewing the foreskin shut, and electric shocks.

Screw you, Kelloggs. To scared to make a stand and support a sporting legend who smokes pot? Your weird pervert of a founder set your moral standards in the gutter. Sure, your corn flakes are delicious, but the game is up. I'm going to Subway instead.

Staggering, Beautiful Wrongness

2009-02-02T15:30:00.002+01:00

One of the worst newspapers in the world is based here in the UAE. Thats a big thing for me to say, because I come from Adelaide, home of the appropriately named Advertiser.

Anyhow, yesterday their "reporter" Vigyan Arya published a story that was plaigarised from a spoof news article. It made it all the way to the print edition, leading a page nonetheless, and was on their website until someone wisely yanked it. Thankfully Google, bless their souls, have kept a cache of the article, meaning this piece of poetic beauty will remain available for all eternity:

"Unconfirmed resources reveal President Obama allegedly signed a $30 million (Dh110m) advertising deal with smartphone maker Blackberry.

Rumour has it that president Obama secretly signed a $30m advertising promotion with the mobile phone maker during his campaign to become the President. Though he has not admitted so publicly, Obama's words and actions seem to verify the claim.

"I love my Blackberry. I never leave home without it," Obama told a reporter. "I encourage every American to buy a Blackberry. And you can buy one now for only $99.99 with a two-year activation plan from Sprint."

In a direct sales pitch by the then aspiring president, Obama seem to have told the media several times and at different places during his entire campaign to purchase Blackberry products and even offered a 20-per cent discount to anyone who said "Obama sent me" to their salesperson.

President Obama has categorically denied of any contractual arrangement with Blackberry, but has also supported the idea suggesting that it would be OK if he did have one.

"I don't have a contract with Blackberry but if I did, so what?" Obama asked. "Basketball players sell deodorant and there's no conflict of interest...."

Obama ended a recent speech by raising his Blackberry toward the cameras saying, "kids, ask mum and dad for a Blackberry!"

This is hilarious on multiple levels - not only did the guy plaigarise, but he plaigarised a satirical fiction website, faked quotes from the US president and the CEO of Apple, and said the CEO of Apple was a guy who left Apple 15 years ago. He even mispelled the name of the fake source he was plaigarising from.

The retraction / apology will need to be almost as long as the story, which is why they probably won't bother writing one at all.

Twenty-first Century Pillaging

2009-02-01T09:26:00.005+01:00

The reality of Israel's highly-targeted, precision-waged war against Hamas terrorists:

The attack on Khoza’a began at 9:30pm on January 12. For over five hours, the village was blanketed by F16s, helicopter gunships and unmanned drones. At 3am on January 13, the second phase of the attack began when Israeli bulldozers trundled up to a cluster of houses on Khozaa’s eastern fringe, a mere 500m from the “green line” separating Gaza from Israel. Scared and confused, the residents of these buildings poured onto their roofs, waving white flags under the cold night sky. “There were over 200 people from 36 families up there calling down to the Israelis,” remembers 29-year-old Iman al Najar.

As their houses were demolished one by one, a stream of people headed 100 metres uphill to the west to a small, grass-strewn courtyard off a paved alleyway, dodging fire on the way. There they were flanked by walls on three sides and sheltered from the surrounding buildings, where IDF special forces had taken up positions. As night ticked away and the small 7m x 10m square filled up with villagers, it became clear that the Israeli soldiers were intent on levelling every house on the eastern street. Rawhiya al Najar, a 50-year-old mother of three, ran back to her street to urge those still in their homes to evacuate. By 7am, when she had reached the last house, all 200 of the former roof-wavers – over half of them children – were now gathered in the courtyard. Trapped between bullets and bulldozers, the villagers had nothing to do but wait.

One kilometre to the west, on the opposite side of town, members of Rawhiya’s extended family had formed an assembly of their own. Over 20 al Najars were taking refuge in the house of Khalil, their elderly patriarch, having been forced from Riyad al Najar’s home across the street by rocket fire. As explosives pounded the area from land and air, the children were now wedged quietly under the stairs. “The adults thought this would be the safest place to be if the building collapsed,” recalls Joma’aa, 18. They were wrong. A rocket sliced through the roof and the first floor and landed under the stairs, where 16-year-old Ala’a and her 15-year-old brother Ayman had taken cover. Most of Ala’a’s waist and pelvis was blown away, as was a third of her face; she eventually died after 10 hours of surgery in Khan Younis hospital.

Ayman survived, but the burns he received were so severe that his bones were visible through the wounds. Five more missiles quickly followed, taking the lives of a 22-year-old neighbour and 75-year-old Khalil himself, who had chosen to sit out in the garden to watch his village light up with gunfire. A rocket split him in half, and his family had to lay him to rest twice; they only discovered his legs a day after burying his torso.

Stunned by the volley of explosives, the rest of the family escaped across the alley to another home, where they huddled together on the ground floor. The drones spun around and followed accordingly. First a series of missiles blew holes in all the buildings, then white phosphorus flares looped down and into the holes. This time a young boy was hit in the eyes and legs; his skin, coated in chemical toxins, could not be touched. “Trying to pick him up was like trying to carry sand or liquid in your hands – he was just falling apart,” said one relative."

Read the whole terrifying story. It is just stunning that an otherwise decent, cultured member of the civilised world can still bring itself to do this kind of stuff and look itself in the mirror the next morning.

The Black Cod Makes You Emotional

2009-01-30T22:59:00.003+01:00

It has been great having the first wife in town. Below, we share a loving gaze that can only come from the staggering goodness of the Black Cod Miso at Nobu. Pictures like these are also part of the benefit of living with a professional photographer...

The Non-Gaza Things We Dont Care About

2009-01-26T07:59:00.003+01:00

This article on the Taliban takeover of the Swat valley in Pakistan is absolutely terrifying:

Using a portable radio transmitter, a local Taliban leader, Shah Doran, on most nights outlines newly proscribed “un-Islamic” activities in Swat, like selling DVDs, watching cable television, singing and dancing, criticizing the Taliban, shaving beards and allowing girls to attend school. He also reveals names of people the Taliban have recently killed for violating their decrees — and those they plan to kill.
“They control everything through the radio,” said one Swat resident, who declined to give his name for fear the Taliban might kill him. “Everyone waits for the broadcast.”

This is in a valley 100 kilometres from the capital of Pakistan. It is a good example of how, as mentioned earlier, the world pretty much doesn't care about crimes against humanity when they are committed by primative savages like the Taliban, rather than modern democracies like Israel.

Has the Middle East Made Me Religious?

2009-01-20T22:56:00.004+01:00

Growing up in the world's least religious country, in one its most solidly atheist families, is probably not the best way to develop a mind open to the beauty and power of religion. Following that up by spending a few years in the most religious place on Earth, surrounded by God's people, opened me up a little, at least to the intense emotional lure of speaking to your God.

Speeches like this, the highlight by far of Obama's inauguration yesterday, are as close as religion gets to touching my heart.

"As we leave this mountaintop help us to hold on to the spirit of fellowship and the oneness of our family. Let us take that power back to our homes, our workplaces, our temples and our mosques, wherever we seek your will.

Bless president Barack, first lady Michelle, look over little angelic Sasha and Malia. We go down and walk together as children, praying that we wont get weary in the difficult days ahead. We know you will not leave us alone with your hands of power and your heart of love.

Help us then now Lord to work for that day when nation will not lift up sword against nation, when tanks will be beaten into tractors, when every man and every woman will sit under his and her own vine and fig tree and none shall be affraid. When justice will roll down like water and righteousness as a mighty stream.

Lord in the memory of all the saints who from their labours rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us to pray for the day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right. Let all those who do justice and love mercy say amen."

Amen.

Sauron's Powers are Growing...

2009-01-16T10:50:00.003+01:00

One of the best Dubai photos ever on the front page of today's National

If you've ever seen a one trick pony, you've seen me

2009-01-12T09:51:00.003+01:00

Last night Bruce Springsteen won a Golden Globe for his song "The Wrestler", from the wonderful Darren Oronofsy film of the same name.

We were lucky enough to see an early screening in December when the movie played at the Dubai Film Festival, and it is seriously good - some truly laugh out loud moments, but also incredibly sad - not the frontal sadness assault of dead children but the far more lurking, inevitable sadness of watching people past their prime realise that their best years are over. It is absolutely worth seeing.

But the most intense thing for me was the Springsteen song, played over the closing credits. I cannot think of another song written for a film that just captures the entire feeling of the movie and pushes it forward. OK I can - "Exit Music" by Radiohead, which plays at the end of Romeo and Juliet. But bear with me here...

So in tribute to The Boss and his new Golden Globe, I give you The Wrestler, the song, by Bruce Springsteen. See the movie and it will mean so much more...

Why do we care so much about Israel and Palestine, and so little about everyone else?

2009-01-10T13:13:00.004+01:00

It is a weird and interesting question, one that catches me particularly given I feel so connected to this part of the world over all others. How come the death of Palestinian civilians gets more attention than similar deaths anywhere else?

Ideally, every time an innocent civilian dies at the hands of military violence, the world would take note. Practically, there is only so much attention the world can give, and it feels like the overwhelming majority of it is paid on the Middle East.

Why? I could list off a hundred theories, and I'd love whoever reads this to leave their thoughts in the comments. Here is mine:

Israel is seen as a member of the modern, developed Western world, one of "us". When machete-wielding crazies take people to pieces in Africa, it is just too confusing and weird, too hard to understand motivations and prescribe solutions. But the feeling changes when a basically Western army and people, using our weapons and in good standing with the West, start killing people in big numbers.

We hold Israel to a way higher standard, because they are one of us. Israelis and their supporters call hypocrisy when people constantly talk about Israeli war crimes, Israeli breaches of human rights standards etc, but those same people never really complain about all the other nasty third world war criminals, including those of its enemies like Hamas, Hezbollah etc.

It is not exactly hypocrisy though - it's an acceptable kind of cultural supremacism, and it is pretty much a compliment to Israel. We accept that insane tribal conflicts will go on in the deep recesses of Africa, and we expect repressive military dictatorships in places like North Korea or Egypt or Zimbabwe. We are not shocked by the indifference to death of Islamic fundamentalists. But when a democratic, enlightened, prosperous nation and government go on a killing spree, it is disgusting and wrong, because they know the evil of what they are doing.

And when they talk about it in our manner - smooth-talking spokesmen in suits eloquently explaining in American accents how they respect human rights and want peace and are ready to negotiate, it seems far worse than hearing an insane paramilitary commander in Congo talk about exterminating their enemies, or hearing a Hamas spokesman scream about drowning Jews in a sea of their own blood.

Equally, we know that a country like Israel aspires to be a member in good standing among Western nations - it has more to lose by being seen as a nation that commits war crimes. Constantly emphasisng the nastiness of Sudan or Burma will mean little to its leaders and change nothing in their behaviour. In the case of Israel, which genuinely cares about its international reputation, things are different.

This is the same reason we care a lot about a company like Nike using sweatshop slave labour, but care much less about the actual slave labour situation in China. Nike interfaces with the West, relies on a good reputation in the West, is of the West, and therefore accountable to us. We have leverage, far deeper and more powerful leverage than the sanctions or bombs we can drop on other countries.

I think the same goes for why Israel's bad behaviour attracts such passionate responses by non-Westerners. The average Egyptian or Indonesian knows there is pretty much no point engaging in mass protest against other third-world despots, because they know exactly how little such protests matter in changing things. Did the Iran-Iraq war, a far bloodier and more insane conflict than the US invasion, attract mass worldwide protest and generate such anger?

This is yet another way where I feel the South Africa example should inform the way we approach Israel. (The power of a campaign of strict non-violence by Palestinians combined with an organised international effort focussed on human rights is another example, for another post.)

South Africa's whites, like Israel's Jews, were culturally "ours", and needed to be accepted by us for their long-term viability as a nation. Being shown up as nasty oppressive bastards hurt them far more than it would hurt the Chinese re: Tibet, etc etc.

I think I am fine with this situation, because it focusses attention on the places where attention can lead to changes. It is efficient. Ultimately, in an eyes-on-the-prize sense, there should be widespread action against all acts of organised state / paramilitary violence, serious enough to discourage similar violence in the future.

That isn't happening any time soon though, so we may as well focus on the ones where the attention is worthwhile.

Where Dreams of Reconciliation Go To Die

2009-01-07T06:21:00.003+01:00

Jeffrey Goldberg, who writes about Israel and the Jewish world better than anyone, has been in blogging paralysis during the Gaza war. His explanation:

"Gaza has overdetermined me into paralysis. I actually feel too close to this problem, a problem that symbolizes all problems. It's true: I have friends in Gaza about whom I worry a great deal; I've seen many people killed in Gaza; I've served in the Israeli Army in Gaza; I've been kidnapped in Gaza; I've reported for years from Gaza; I hope my former army doesn't kill the wrong people in Gaza; I hope Israeli soldiers all leave Gaza alive; I know they'll be back in Gaza; I think this operation will work; and I have no actual hope that it will work for very long, because nothing works for very long in the Middle East. Gaza is where dreams of reconciliation go to die. Gaza is where the dream of Palestinian statehood goes to die; Gaza is where the Zionist dream might yet die. Or, more to the point, might be murdered. I'm not a J Street moral-equivalence sort of guy. Yes, Israel makes constant mistakes, which I note rather frequently, but this conflict reminds me once again that Israel is up against an implacable force, namely, an interpretation of Islam that disallows the idea of Jewish national equality.

My paralysis isn't an analytical paralysis. It's the paralysis that comes from thinking that maybe there's no way out. Not out of Gaza, out of the whole thing."

Get Your Bubble On

2009-01-06T13:12:00.002+01:00

Dubai Mall, is there anything you don't have? Once you get past the 33,000 fish swimming in the world's largest acquarium, and Kinokuniya, the Japanese bookstore of unearthly greatness, can you ask for more?

I ask for Bubble Tea. And Dubai Mall delivers!

A fairly solid attempt, reminiscent of the fine bubble teas of many a Chinatown, although a couple of flaws: where's the flavours? I want my green apple, or passinfruit, or "5 Jelly Grass" or whatever other weird Singapore flavour is going down. They only had one flavor here: tea.

Second, isn't half the fun of bubble tea meant to be watching them seal it with that cartoony clear plastic that you pop open with the pointy straw? Serving it up in a frappucino cup seems like missing the point a bit.

But all in all, here's to the best - perhaps the only - bubble tea in the Middle East. It was a fine accompaniment to a long gaze at a school of reef sharks swimming around in the giant aquarium. They looked confused, happy, well fed and massively metaphorical.

How to be awesome

2008-12-31T12:39:00.000+01:00

"He saw that all the struggles of life were incessant, laborious, painful, that nothing was done quickly, without labor, that it had to undergo a thousand fondlings, revisings, moldings, addings, removings, graftings, tearings, correctings, smoothings, rebuildings, reconsiderings, nailings, tackings, chippings, hammerings, hoistings, connectings — all the poor fumbling uncertain incompletions of human endeavor. They went on forever and were forever incomplete, far from perfect, refined, or smooth, full of terrible memories of failure and fears of failure, yet, in the way of things, somehow noble, complete, and shining in the end. This he could sense even from the old house they lived in, with its solidly built walls and floors that held together like rock: some man, possibly an angry pessimistic man, had built the house long ago, but the house stood, and his anger and pessimism and irritable labourious sweats were forgotten; the house stood, and other men lived in it and were sheltered well in it."

- Jack Kerouac, The Town and the City

Sad Valentines card, part 1

2008-12-29T20:24:00.006+01:00

Expect more of these, from me and the Megan, from now until Feb 14...

Said Nails It

2008-12-29T15:56:00.002+01:00

Written eight years ago at the beginning of the Second Intifada (that one turned out nicely hey folks?), this piece by Edward Said remains pretty spot on today:

"When the PLO opted after the Gulf War to follow the example of Egypt and Jordan, and work as closely as possible with the American government, it made its decision (as had the two Arab states before it) on the basis of vast ignorance and quite extraordinarily mistaken assumptions. The essence of its calculation was expressed to me, shortly after 1967, by a senior Egyptian diplomat: we must surrender, and promise not to struggle any further—we will accept Israel and the determining role of the United States in our future. There is no doubt that continuing to fight as the Arabs had historically done would indeed have led to further defeat and disaster. But neither then nor today was it the case that the only alternative was to throw ourselves onto the mercy of America—saying, in effect, we will no longer resist you, let us join you, but please treat us well. The pathetic hope was that if Arabs cried long enough, ‘We are not your enemies’, they would be welcomed as friends. They forgot the disparity of power that remained. From the viewpoint of the powerful, what difference does it make to your own strategy if an enfeebled adversary gives up and declares, ‘I have nothing further to fight for, take me as your ally, just try to understand me a bit better and perhaps you will then be fairer?’

....To submit supinely to American designs in the Middle East, as Arabs have done for almost a generation now, will bring neither peace and justice at home, nor equality abroad. Since the mid 1980s I have tried to impress on the PLO leadership, and every Palestinian or Arab I have met, that the quest for a protector in the White House is a complete chimera, since all recent presidents have been devoted to Zionist aims, and that the only way to change US policy is through a mass campaign on behalf of Palestinian human rights, out-flanking the Zionist establishment and going straight to the American people. Uninformed and yet open to appeals for justice as they are, Americans are capable of reacting as they did to the ANC campaign against apartheid, which finally changed the balance of forces inside South Africa...

But it was soon clear that the PLO would never adopt this course anyway. There were several reasons for that. A strategy of this kind requires sustained and dedicated political work. It has to be based on democratic grass-roots organization. It can only spring from a movement, not a personal initiative by this or that leader. Last but not least, it demands genuine knowledge of US society, rather than superficial pieties or clichés. The reality is that there exists, inside America, a vast body of opinion which is often bewildered by the lurid rhetoric of Zionism and which would be capable of turning against it, were a mass campaign mobilized in the US itself for Palestinian human, civil and political rights. The tragedy is that the Arabs here have been too weak, too divided, too unorganized and ignorant to mount such a movement. But unless American Zionism is taken on in its homelands, all attempts to parley with the United States or Israel will lead to the same dismal and discrediting outcome."

RIP Samuel Huntington

2008-12-28T09:21:00.003+01:00

"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact. Non-Westerners never do."

He's dead, but it seems pretty likely civilisations will continue clashing in his absence.

Introducing Salmontron7000

2008-12-25T07:32:00.003+01:00

This is Salmontron. After living a good life in the icy waters of Norway, this five kilogram beast swam all the way to the warm waters of Abu Dhabi, before being caught just off the coast near Spinney's supermarket. I bought him just hours later, or so I like to believe.

Tonight Salmontron will be stuffed with apricots, figs, coriander and mint, and slow roasted. We will eat Salmontron with a green herb mayonnaise. Honor him, for he lived for all of us.

Disaster Breeds Nostalgia

2008-12-21T20:55:00.004+01:00

For the second time this year, three undersea fibre-optic cables that connect the Middle East to the outside world have been cut.

Sure, it is weird how these cables, hundreds of kilometres apart, can all be severed simultaneously. The conventional wisdom, which I am pushing to the masses as part of the day job, is that it was an undersea earthquake.

Some people are busting into conspiracy theories, others are showing serious YouTube withdrawal symptoms. I'm getting nostalgic.

You see, the last Great Middle Eastern Internet Blackout happened during my final days in Cairo. I was in a strange period of Zen-acceptance, saying goodbye to the city and people I love, filled with big questions and confused excitement about what life in the Gulf, and at The National, would be like.

The time of the Great Cairo Exodus was upon us, with a bunch of people all saying goodbye at the same time. We had a weekend of supreme loveliness at a nice little place outside Cairo, then came back into town and I left pretty much the next day.

But before the weekend, there was need for some kind of goodbye drinks. People who lack my semi-autistic ability to be totally unaware of the emotional needs of their friends would have organised this a couple of weeks in advance, complete with phone calls, text messages, gentle reminders, etc.

Not me. It got to late on a Tuesday afternoon when I realised we needed to do something the next night, my last free night in town. I went downstairs to the internet cafe (the internet in our house was out) to send out an email / facebook invite.

And the I found out that Egypt didn't have any internet.

There were sporadic connections, each lasting a few seconds, occassionally letting you through to a site before disconnecting. But it was hamster-powered internet, a series of small furry animals scurrying around little wheels powering the slowest most unreliable connections on earth.

In two frustrating hours I managed to get out an email and a facebook invite. But I was pretty sure nobody would get the mail. And I was pretty sure the whole going away would die a sorry, disorganised death, starved at the hands of its neglectful master.

What I understimated what the power of Cairo's vast informal energy to make things happen despite massive failures of infrastructure. This is a city that turns the lack of a garbage collection system into a giant informal economy, a place where law and order is managed not by the policemen and governors, but by a collection of doormen, family matriarchs and shopkeepers.

Was it going to let the lack of modern communications get in the way of a final night of goodbye's and frosty cold Stellas? Like fuck it wasn't.

Everybody in the known universe turned up. They didn't know why, they just appeared,in a steady stream, drawn to the Greek Club by a the force of thousands of years of victory over disorganisation. How did they find out about it? Who knows. Did we rock out? Hell yes.

There was fine beers shared between the best of buddies:

A fine game of pin the grope on the Megan:

An unexpected, extremely awesome surprise visitor:

And massive koala love

What more can you ask for? Then we left for a perfect weekend, one of history's great weekends, culminating in us jumping for joy in the gorgeous fading light of a perfect day:

Depressing in an Unsurprising Way

2008-12-17T22:55:00.004+01:00

I get the feeling 2009 could be the official Year of Being Let Down By People Who Call Themselves Progressive, with Rudd in Australia off to a good start and this kind of badness in the US:

"Barack Obama's path to the presidency included beating what had been one of the nation's most powerful families. But, in an unusual twist, his election last month is helping accelerate the trend toward dynasty politics.

His secretary of state will be Hillary Clinton, the wife of the former president. The Senate seat she’ll vacate is being pursued by Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of a president and the niece of two senators. Joe Biden’s Senate seat may go to his son Beau. Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar, Obama’s pick for interior secretary, could end up being replaced by his brother, Rep. John Salazar.

And Obama’s own seat could go to the son of the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. – less likely now in light of developments in the Rod Blagojevich scandal – or to the daughter of Illinois’ current House speaker." (Politico)

Get it together guys...

Rising From the Ashes

2008-12-16T16:30:00.004+01:00

A long, intense interview in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz between the journalist Ari Shavit and Avraham Burg, the former speaker of the Knesset. The subject is Burg's book, which was tentatively titled Hitler Won but has been released as The Holocaust is Over, We Must Rise From Its Ashes:

The end may be optimistic, but throughout its entire course the book repeatedly equates Israel with Germany. Is that really justified? Is there sufficient basis for the Israel-Germany analogy?

"It is not an exact science, but I will describe to you some of the elements that go into the stew: a great sense of national insult; a feeling that the world has rejected us; unexplained losses in wars. And, as a result, the centrality of militarism in our identity. The place of reserve officers in society. The number of armed Israelis in the streets. Where is this swarm of armed people going? The expressions hurled publicly: 'Arabs out.'"

Do you really believe that the racist slogans which, appallingly, do indeed appear on the stone walks in Jerusalem are akin to the slogans of the 1930s in Germany?

"I see that we are not weeding out those utterances with all our might. And I hear voices coming out of Sderot .... We will destroy and kill and expel. And there is a transferist discourse in the government .... We have crossed so many red lines in the past few years. And then you ask yourself what the next red lines that we cross will be."

....

I will tell you frankly. I think we have serious moral and psychological problems. But I think that the comparison with Germany on the eve of the rise of Nazism to power is baseless. One example: There is a problem with the place of the army in our lives and with the place of the generals in our politics and in the relations between the political echelon and the army. But you are likening Israeli militarism to German militarism, and that is a false comparison. You describe Israel as a Prussian Sparta living by the sword, and that is not the Israel I see outside. Certainly not in 2007.

"I envy your ability to read the situation as you read it. I very much envy you. But I think we are a society that in its feelings lives by the sword .... It is not by chance that I make the comparison with Germany, because our feeling that we are obliged to live by the sword stems from Germany. What they deprived us of in the 12 years of Nazism necessitates a very large sword. Look at the fence. The separation fence is a fence against paranoia. And it was born in my milieu. In my school of thought. With my own Haim Ramon. What is the thinking here? That I will erect a big wall and the problem will be solved because I will not see them. You know, the Labor movement always saw the historical context and represented a culture of dialogue, but here we have terrible pettiness of soul. The fence physically demarcates the end of Europe. It says that this is where Europe ends. It says that you are the forward post of Europe and the fence separates you from the barbarians. Like the Roman Wall. Like the Wall of China. But that is so pathetic. And it is a bill of divorce from the vision of integration. There is something so xenophobic about it. So insane. And it comes just at a time when Europe itself, and the world with it, has made such an impressive advance in internalizing the lessons of the Holocaust and has fomented a great advance in the normative behavior of nations."

The truth is that you are a salient Europist. You live in Nataf but you are all Brussels. The prophet of Brussels.

"Completely. Completely. I see the European Union as a biblical utopia. I don't know how long it will hold together, but it is amazing. It is completely Jewish."

The whole interview is just riveting, if you are into this stuff. You can watch the author talk more about his new book in this great inteview on bloggingheads.

I'm fairly pessimistic on the current state of Israel, and its future. But one thing that sets it so clearly apart from its neighbours is the quality of its intellectual discourse - conversations like this, happening in major national newspapers, not cursing the evils of its enemies but instead looking deep within and asking unimaginably difficult questions. Along with being a vastly more open society than any of its neighbours, this is what makes the country the strongest in the region, not nuclear weapons or the backing of the US.

A Trend that I Fully Support

2008-12-16T13:24:00.003+01:00

Environmental activists have staged protests in several Australian cities against a plan to combat climate change announced by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.....

In Adelaide, activists reportedly threw shoes at a puppet of Mr Rudd...
(BBC)

Shoe-throwing is totally the new black, and I love it. Well done, Adelaide.

Review: Nobu

2008-12-14T22:09:00.002+01:00

Nobu is new to Dubai but not to the restaurant scene. It has been one of the trendiest and most influential restaurants in the world for more than a decade. AA Gill at The Times recently said its London brach was past its prime:

They’ve packed so many into this low, unprepossessing canteen of a room that they’ve made it a labyrinth. The waiters, apparently (or, rather, not apparently — invisibly), are constantly losing their bearings and finding themselves stuck up cul-de-sacs or unmarked tracks, hemmed in by the thick vegetation of Middle Eastern small-arms dealers, knickerless Ukrainian executive-stress consultants, record pluggers and fashion PRs putting each other on expenses and an overdressed smattering of speechless visiting provincials, who booked a seat at the most exclusive room in the nation six months ago and can’t quite believe that this is it. They are left in their own private Siberias to rue the truth that the abiding emotion for the socially aspirant is a deep sense of cheated disappointment.

The whole review is classic slamming of place that clearly got a bit too cosy and lazy in its ability to charge the suckers, and makes a great read...

Anyhow, Nobu's new branch in Dubai is the flagship restaurant of Atlantis, a giant symbol of Dubai's oversized excessiveness that sits at the tip of The Palm Jumeirah, an even larger symbol of Dubai's oversized excessiveness.

It is only a couple of weeks old, and I'm no A.A Gill, but I'm pretty sure that it has yet to go down the path of its London sibling. We had an absolute stormer of a meal there on Saturday night, which I have taken the pleasure of recreating in blog form for your pleasure (and perhaps my recollection, with a tear in my eye, when I am poor and hungry in some terrible nightmare future).

All these dishes, except the desserts, were served one at a time and shared between three. Cold, then hot, then sushi, then dessert, then wandering, stuffed and delighted, out the door for a long hard gaze into a stupidly large aquarium.

Cold

Yellowtail sashimi with jalepeno and citrus
The cleanest tasting, freshest piece of raw fish I have ever had. The jalepeno added a nice zing to the crystal-clear flavour of the yellowtail. If I was running the show, I would make the citrus sauce a little more citrussy. But I will never second guess The Nobu.

Sashimi Tacos
The most average dish of the night. Fairly plain, just pieces of raw fish in little mini taco shells. By mini, i mean the size of a box of matches. Came with a bland tomato salsa. Nothing memorable here.

Mixed seafood ceviche
Wonderful. A lovely stack of mixed fish and shellfish, all soaked in an intense citrus dressing. Took me to the citrus wonderland I was hoping to get to with the Yellowtail, and further. "It's lucky you're sharing it between three," said our American waiter, "because that can really burn out your palate if you had it to yourself." Sissy.

Hot

Duck breast with wasabi
Pretty excellent. Avoided the usual greasy fattyness you usually get with duck dishes, and had a nice degree of zing from the wasabi, which was grated whole on top of the duck, rather than turned into the typical green paste you see in sushi restaurants. Was interesting to taste wasabi in its pure form.

Black cod miso
One of the world's great fish dishes. It is what made Nobu famous, and understandably so. The waiter told us it might be the best piece of fish we will ever eat, and that is not an understatement.

The first mouthful of this is one of those flavours I will never forget, like big overripe peaches from the tree in our backyard when I was a little kid. Each of us literally moaned. I'm a big believer in simplicity when it comes to fish - make it awesomely fresh, barbeque it with a touch of seasoning, serve it up with a fat wedge of lemon. But when it comes to fancy "cooked" fish, this was indeed the best I have ever had.

Snow crab in tomato cream
Nice big chunks of sweet, juicy crab, but slightly drowned out by the creamyness of the sauce. On any other night this dish would have you in tears of joy, but with such illustrious neighbours, this one was about in the middle.

Sushi
Once you are done with the hot and cold dishes, they bring out the sushi menu, which seems to be aimed as a kind of "filler" for those still hungry after all the fairly small plates before. We ordered a mixed plate of whatever the chef reccomended, and requested a few pieces of Toro, the fatty tuna belly that we will probably only have the pleasure of eating for a few more years.

The sushi was great, basically perfect. But it is almost anticlimactic after the culinary acrobatics of all the more complex dishes. It was probably the best sushi I have ever had, but it was just upstaged by all that had come before.

The toro was good, not great. Again, it could just be time and place, but it only seemed marginally better than regular tuna. And in a pretty seriously expensive restaurant, it stood out for its extra, insanely expensive price: $15 per piece. You would get a fairly decent sushi meal at many good restaurants around the world for the price of two pieces of this stuff.

Dessert

Dessert Bento Box
Seriously chocolatey, seriously delicious pudding, served with a damn fine scoop of ice cream. This desert was good, but I'm marking it down for being sold as a dessert "bento box". Bento normally involves a box segmented into many small compartments filled with little tasty things, this was just pudding and a scoop of ice cream served in a box. Which doesn't detract from the amazing chocalateyness and perfect composition of one of the best chocolate desserts I have ever had.

Nobu Cheesecake
This is apparently Nobu's world famous cheese cake, the most delicious cheese cake in the world, made by a blind chef in London who has taken vows of chastity and silence to give a dignity and purity to his cheesecake making etc.

It was absolutely lovely,but the highlight for me was the scoop of unbelievably good passionfruit ice cream served along side it. Passionfruit is just a fruit of the Gods to me, and that incredibly lively flavour was just translated perfectly into an ice cream. One of the best ice creams I've ever had. (The competition? Turkish dondurma, El Abd in Cairo, Golden North honey ice cream from rural South Australia).

Mochis
Weird, weird, weird. Ice cream wrapped in a kind of glutinous, gummy wrapper. A really interesting texture, and tasty, but they were a little boring: it was three Mochi balls, each cut in half. All were different colour but tasted exactly the same, they got a bit repetitive by the end.

-----------

All in all, this was a seriously excellent meal, almost as good as any high-end restaurant meal I have ever had. We literally just walked in off the street and got a table, which by Nobu standards anywhere in the world is pretty crazy. Notice to UAE food lovers - Nobu claims over the phone to always be fully booked for weeks, but a number of people, including us, have just shown up and got a table. They made us wait for about 5 minutes while they checked if it was possible, then called one of us over and said that luckily there was cancellation.

I call bullshit, the place was never more than 75% full between 8pm and 11pm when we left. Just show up and get your Nobu on.

Money: Nobu is expensive, really expensive, there is no way of getting around it. Including a tip for the waiter, we spent about $170 each, and we did not buy wine. That's almost one third less than the bill that AA Gill described as "disgusting and embarassing" on his recent trip, but it is still plenty. But...

Two things:

1) Included in this price is about $30 each spent purely on water and a piece of toro. The water came at $10 per 800ml bottle, which is a pretty good scam if you can get in on it. And the toro was the second most expensive dish we ordered, even though it was just one individual piece of sushi each.

2) This is not really food, and shouldn't be priced as such. This is an event, a series of memories, inspiration and joy. The happiness I received from the meal would equal a good dinner, followed by a decent concert, followed by a boat ride on a river, chased down with a late-night move in an outdoor cinema. Just shut up and pay for it, or don't, whatever floats your boat.

I'll probably go to a place like Nobu about three times a year. I don't care how much it costs, just like I don't care about the cost of flying to Amsterdam and seeing Radiohead in the park. Counting little piles of golden beans and hording them away obsessively has never really been my strong point, and although it has to change, it doesn't have to change too much. Life is too short etc....

Next up, sometime in 2009, Reflets a Pierre Gagnaire. And El Bulli looms on the long-term horizon, as long as I can have my shit together enough to remember to enter the booking lottery next September.

Best and Worst: Airports

2008-12-09T23:48:00.002+01:00

I went on a trip last week that involved six flights in seven days. Aside from the loveliness of being in three of Europe's great cities, it also got me thinking about airports and air travel.

As we all know, a big part of the flying experience sucks - waiting, queuing, trudging around soulless places at four in the morning, being crammed like cattle into aethetically horrible spaces. If the end result - being in a place thousands of kilometres away in hours, not days or weeks - was not so awesome, we would never do it.

One thing that can really swing the experience from terrible to tolerable to terrific is the airport itself. So in that spirit, I present:

The Five Best and Worst Airports in the World
An incomplete, evolving list based on limited experience and strong feelings, written during a week of many hours spent in airports.

The Worst

Douala (Cameroon)

The zen of crappyness. Everything that could be wrong with an airport is perfectly, effortlessly wrong with this blight on the international aviation community.

Lets start with its lack of...electricity. I'm sure there is a power connection at some fundamental level, but that is not reflected in electric lighting, a public announcement system, refrigerators for drinks or any kind of electronic screen that displays flight information.

You know that big electronic arrival and departure board they have in airports? Here, it is a large notice board with flight information printed onto A4 sheets of paper and stuck up with thumbtacks. There is no computers or printers at check in - they look up your name on a clipboard, and hand-write your boarding pass and luggage tags. The windows aren't windows in the traditional sense of the word, but more like holes in walls - glass is a key ingredient in windows, as you may have noticed.

It didn't help my perception of this shithole when its charming security staff detained three of us for about 15 hours on arrival, hoping to get a bribe from the lovely Cameroonians who were there to pick us up. And it certainly didn't help our perceptions when they dragged what looked like a homeless man into the room they were holding us in, starting slapping him up, and then beating him on the soles of his feet with a stick.

Take a boat instead.

London Heathrow

I've never stood in longer lines, walked longer distances, dealt with more ridiculous "security" theatrics and paid more for worse internet access or crappier food than at Heathrow.

One time when I was there, they decided to implement a new policy: only one item of hand luggage per passenger. They counted hangbags, shoulder bags and laptop cases as an item, and refused to budge an inch or make any exception. Given that every single traveler in the universe carries one of these things, plus a carry-on bag, the result was an airport that stopped working, as every single person had to stop in the lines and try and stuff their smaller bags into bigger ones. There is no conceivable way this stupid policy made a lick of difference to security, but it just furthered the airport's image in my mind as a banana republic joke.

If you are changing flights in Heathrow, you need a solid two hours between landing and take off. Get there a good three hours before flying for regular flights. The stupid security, terrible queues and death march distances between terminals means even this might not be enough.

This isn't all Heathrow's fault - its location in London means it is incredibly hard to expand the airport, with environment and citizen groups opposing anything that might make the airport actually decent. How tough is it to improve Heathrow? They're been talking about a third runway for a decade, they expect it to be finished by 2030, when Dubai will likely have a spaceport and an underwater nuclear powered train that takes you to London in 2 hours.

"Brussels" Charleroi

Ahh Ryanair, you glorious bastards. Those 30 Euro flights to Brussels seem so cheap, until you land in Charleroi and realise that you are not in Brussels. You are in a nasty decaying industrial wasteland best known for its dungeon-master paedophiles.

There's a reason Ryanair is so cheap: it flies to cheap airports, some so cheap they actually pay for the privilige of receiving traffic. There is a reason Charlerois is cheap: it is a nasty, second rate piece of crap in the middle of nowhere, and certainly not in Brussels.

Cairo International, Terminal Two

Cairo has three terminals. One is old, refurbished and pleasant (the "old" airport). One is new and shiny and great, but you never land there (I think maybe it is only used for domestic flights to Sharm el Sheikh?). One is newer than the old one, but more run down and nasty (the "new" airport).

The New Airport - terminal 2 I think - is not very old, but it is seriously nasty. They chose not to buy properly made baggage trolleys, instead getting some random local metal workshop to weld wheels onto strips of scrap steel. Seriously, I am not exaggerating.

Nothing is sadder than a run-down airport. It is like a guy with no pants. Airports, like pants, are one of the few dignities we all expect, a minimum level of having your shit together, whose abscence signifies failure and decline. Given that Egypt is has been in glorious, super styling decline and failure for thousands of years, I guess this crappy airport is only appropriate. But seriously Cairo, put your pants on.

Mumbai

The only international airport I have ever been to where taxi drivers and tourist touts are allowed all the way into the heart of the airport, milling around by the baggage carousel and maximising the amount of time you spend getting hassled.

Everything that could be made uncomfortable in Mumbai airport has had its nastiness turned up to eleven - stinking, nightmare bathrooms, seats so uncomfortable that make you look longingly at the ground, a staff whose entire job description seems to be trying to score some bribe money without actually doing anything bribe-worthy.

They even managed to sell me a horrible cup of tea - it tasted like detergent mixed with dirty bathwater. In a country where incredibly delicious tea is available everywhere, all the time, for less than a cent per cup, this was a big achievement.

Top 5

Singapore Changi

The Grand Master, Governing Body and God-Emperor of airports. It hits every spot you can imagine - close to the city, a pleasant place to spend a few hours, sparkly and tricked out with high tech. It is huge, but seems small and easy to wander around, and like the city-state it serves, is packet to the brim with so many delicious places to eat great Asian food. Out the front is an endless line of luxury London-style black cabs, driven by honest men for a reasonable fee. Can an airport get better than this?

Amsterdam Schipol

You can land in Schipol and be on a fast train to Brussels, Paris, London and a bunch of other great Euro cities within an hour; for a couple of Euros the train will take you to central Amsterdam in 15 minutes. As well as being one of Europe's busiest airports, it is kind of like the central station of the great Dutch train system as well. Its just an ass-kicking piece of infrastructure that powers up everything within a few hundred kilometres of it.

Abu Dhabi

This is not a major world airport - it is not even a significant regional one. But for a small airport, Abu Dhabi runs the game. Most importantly, it is quick - you can literally be getting into a cab less than 20 minutes after the plane hits the runway, with baggage hitting the carousel absurdly fast. It is super well designed around a central hub that is just a couple of minutes walk from anywhere - check in, baggage reclamation, customs, departure gates, nothing is more than maybe 100 metres from the spacey pyschadelic centre that looks like a giant tiled mushroom in full bloom.

It gets the job done with simplicity and style, and the immigration people don't have the inclination to anally probe and strip search anyone with long hair or a sense of style like the lovely folk at Dubai seem to do....

Munich

It is like you have died and gone to efficient German heaven. There's no fucking around in Munich, everything just works - which is what you really want at 6am after a 4 hour flight. And be honest, after a nasty sleepless night on a crowded flight, you know what you want. You want a grilled sausage the size of your forearm served with a pretzel and some kinky mustard, washed down by litre of craftsman-like beer served in a glass you could bludgeon a man to death with.

Other airports will try to deny you this, telling you they know better. They'll tell you that what you really want is a Delifrance sandwich and a cappucino made in a Nescafe machine. But not Munich. It will not judge you. It will respect your wishes with clinical German excellence.

London City

London is full of shit airports. Heathrow is a like a voluntary, upmarket Guantanamo Bay, while Gatwick is in the middle of nowhere and monopolised by a ridiculously expensive train service. From this pile of manure grows a delicate flower, known as London City Airport.

My memory might be fooling me, but I remember it taking about 7 minutes by train to get from London City to the centre of town. It has to be the most centrally located airport in any major world city. There are downsides - its tiny size means proper jumbo jets cannot use it, so you need to fly on on a smaller plane. The one I took from Rotterdam used propellers. But it was great.

Anyhow, London City is like a little private airport shared exclusively between friends. Batman totally flies into London City. Nobody seems to know about it, and I like it that way. Consider yourselves let in on the secret.

The Finest of Gaytimes

2008-12-09T10:22:00.004+01:00

I've been away from Australia long enough to forget about the Golden Gaytime, one of our great nation's finest ice creams on a stick. It just reemerged into my consciousness via that masterpiece of ambient awareness, the Facebook news feed. Thanks to Jess letting the world know she was having a Golden Gaytime for dessert, it is all coming flooding back to me.

Oh for the simplicity of a bygone age, when a brand like this didn't raise eyebrows:

The company that makes them seem to be pretty in on the joke now - when you buy a box of 4 at the supermarket, the packaging promises "Four delicious chances to have a gay time".

And another sign that I have been out of Australia too long - a Golden Gaytime costs 4 freaking dollars?

Spain, Where the God of Awesome Goes to Chill

2008-12-07T20:21:00.006+01:00

So much prettyness, so little time to spend lying on the ground laugh-weeping in awe and glee. Check out the whole album, but as a taste:

A Sphinx for our modern age: "Puppy" by Jeff Koons stands guard in front of the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao. As I was taking this picture, a super cute little local kid came up to me and said "He come to Bilbao, so we build him the kennel," and pointed at the building of the century sitting behind it.

As far as small, diverse bites of delicious things, washed down by wonderful wine, served in an unpretentious environment goes, Spanish tapas - pintxos in Basque country - are as good as it gets. Above, various delicious things, all tasty as can be. The highlight, which I didn't get a picture of, was a warm chorizo sausage, wrapped in thin flaky pastry, drizzled with rasberry sauce. Yes.

Barcelona's pigeons are rivalled only by the white royal doves of Bruge in Belgium as the world's finest rats with wings.

And they live in a fittingly regal home - Gaudi's Park Güell, overlooking Barcelona, is one hell of a park / lookout / work of surreal genius.

Santiago Calatrava's dreamy little footbridge is the second most awesome piece of architecture in Bilbao.

Although a pretty frigging distant second....

Buildings I Would Happily Make Love To, Part 1

2008-12-06T23:06:00.003+01:00

I'm smitten...

You Turn a Corner in Bilbao....

2008-12-06T10:37:00.004+01:00

And this bad boy is sitting there waiting for you.

In typical fashion, I forgot to bring my camera cable with me, so this is just an iPhone pic to get the ball rolling. Expect more images of three of Europe's great cities in the next couple of days.

The Facebook vs. MySpace thing, settled

2008-12-02T18:51:00.002+01:00

It has always felt self evident to me that the venn diagram of people who can read and write and people who use MySpace is basically a horizontal figure 8. MySpace is for children and idiots, Facebook is for all the rest. But it's good to see someone smarter than me - Rupert Murdoch's new biographer, in this case, saying the same thing:

"...if you’re on MySpace now, you’re a [expletive] cretin. And you’re not only a [expletive] cretin, but you’re poor. Nobody who has beyond an 8th grade level of education is on MySpace. It is for backwards people..."

Read the whole interview for more telling it like it is....

Kofi Annan has Visa Issues

2008-11-22T13:25:00.003+01:00

Zimbabwe joins Israel in deciding not to allow outsiders to witness its disgraceful shagging of a population:

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said Saturday that he and others planning a humanitarian mission in Zimbabwe had been refused entry to the impoverished African country.

Carter and two other members of The Elders group — former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and rights advocate Graca Machel, who is married to Nelson Mandela — had planned to assess the country's humanitarian needs as Zimbabweans are stalked by disease and hunger while political crisis occupies its politicians.

But they were told Friday night by former South African President Thabo Mbeki, who is mediating the political crisis, that efforts to secure travel visas for the group had failed, Carter told reporters at a news conference in Johannesburg.

I assume that Kofi failed to correctly fill in the application form.

Israel's Shame

2008-11-18T20:06:00.003+01:00

Jonathan Cook is getting righteous in The National on Israel's slow-motion strangulation of 1.5 million people:

There are likely to be few witnesses to Gaza’s descent into a dark and hungry winter. In the past week, all journalists were refused access to Gaza, as were a group of senior European diplomats. Days earlier, dozens of academics and doctors due to attend a conference to assess the damage done to Gazans’ mental health were also turned back.

Journalists aren't allowed witness Israel's Apartheid 2.0 for security reasons, I presume.

Throught for the Day

2008-11-17T11:26:00.004+01:00

"We always overestimate what we will achieve within two years, and underestimate what we will achieve in ten years"

- Eric Anderson, the founder of the space tourism company Space Adventures, on the need to establish a stronger international order surrounding the exploration / exploitation of space. A short story based on my interview with him is here, something longer to come...

He's spot on with the time thing. In 1998, would you have guessed that you could book a ticket to outer space on a commercial flight in less than ten years? For the right amount of cash, you can now book a ten-day holiday to the international space station. Would be have guessed that the world's largest music retailer would be Apple?

On the other side, we always think that short-term trends will take off much faster than they actually do. The internet is only now starting to approach what a lot of the late 90s dotcom businesses thought it would look like in just a couple of years; it has taken a decade to get serious amounts of people buying things online, watching web television, browsing the internet from their phone etc...

Doesn't this kind of short-term optimism and long-term skepticism apply in a lot of different areas?

Tradition, Resurrected

2008-11-13T12:56:00.003+01:00

There are certain happenings that are burned into our conciousness over thousands of years. Sometimes men get savaged by lions. Sometimes the volcano erupts and swallows its surroundings. Sometimes the rain becomes a flood and washes it all away.

The more advanced we become, the more we pretend these things can no longer happen, that we live in a new age. But then the Earth opens up and swallows a city, or an elephant escapes from the zoo and rampages through a city, and we are all reminded of the primal earthy realities that drive us and occasionally savage us.

These events put us back in touch with that early reasoning that made us what we are: shoot the wild animal. Run away from the vast cracks in the Earth's surface. Fear the lightning.

Anyhow, in this tradition, its good to see that the British Royal Navy is battling pirates off the coast of Africa again. Fearsome men from unfriendly places have been fucking with sailors for thousands of years, navies have been paid to kick their asses for almost as long.

Its a little bit sobering, in the midst of all this craze for Pirates etc, to actually see the "pirate ships" these guys are crusing around in:

And the Navy boat that we kick their asses from.

It's not exactly a fair fight. But pirates don't fight fair, my friends. That's why God invented the airplane.

Worst-case Scenario

2008-11-13T08:39:00.002+01:00

Let's say you're inside a coffin. After trying to sit up and bumping your head (don't feel embarrassed; everyone does it), you should lie still a few minutes and get your bearings. Keep your breathing slow, and let your heart rate come down to a normal pace. Remind yourself that people have been buried alive for thousands of years and that you are now connected to each and every one of them.

- So You've Been Buried Alive, McSweeney,s

Freud and Eels

2008-11-12T11:56:00.002+01:00

The fact that Sigmund Freud's early days were spent on a frustrating search for hidden genitalia is not exactly surprising, but the nature of the search is pretty incredible. According to Wikipedia:

"After planning to study law, Freud joined the medical faculty at University of Vienna to study under Darwinist Prof, Karl Claus. At that time, eel life history was still unknown, and due to their mysterious origins and migrations, a racist association was often made between eels and Jews and Gypsies. In search for their male sex organs, Freud spent four weeks at the Austrian zoological research station in Trieste, dissecting hundreds of eels without finding more than his predecessors such as Simon von Syrski. In 1876, he published his first paper about "the testicles of eels" in the "Mitteilungen der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften", conceding that he could not solve the matter either. Frustrated by the lack of success that would have gained him fame, Freud chose to change his course of study. Biographers like Siegfried Bernfeld wonder if and how this early episode was significant for his later work regarding hidden sexuality and frustrations. "

Gee, I wonder.

Where I am From

2008-11-01T16:59:00.002+01:00

Why do I live away from my home town? Among other reasons, this is about the biggest news story to hit my city this year:

Outrage in Australia After Teens Beat Blind Flamingo

The beating of a blind flamingo at a zoo in Australia has sparked outrage and prompted calls to review laws preventing underage offenders from being named.
Readers of the AdelaideNow newspaper have vented their fury over Wednesday's attack on the Adelaide Zoo's 78-year-old flamingo — one of the zoo's main attractions since the 1930s. (Fox News)

Good to see everthing back home is ticking over just nicely...

The Nazi case for Obama

2008-10-30T20:40:00.002+01:00

Esquire's incredible piece on America's leading white supremacists, and why they are voting for Barack:

According to Rocky Suhayda, the chairman of the American Nazi Party:

“White people are faced with either a negro or a total nutter who happens to have a pale face. Personally I’d prefer the negro. National Socialists are not mindless haters. Here, I see a white man, who is almost dead, who declares he wants to fight endless wars around the globe to make the world safe for Judeo-capitalist exploitation, who supports the invasion of America by illegals -- basically a continuation of the last eight years of Emperor Bush. Then, we have a black man, who loves his own kind, belongs to a Black-Nationalist religion, is married to a black women -- when usually negroes who have ‘made it’ immediately land a white spouse as a kind of prize -- that’s the kind of negro that I can respect. Any time that a prominent person embraces their racial heritage in a positive manner, it’s good for all racially minded folks. Besides, America cares nothing for the interests of the white American worker, while having a love affair with just about every non-white on planet Earth. It’d be poetic justice to have a non-white as titular chief over this decaying modern Sodom and Gomorrah.”

Read the whole article...

Seriously, Egypt, Try a Little Harder

2008-10-30T13:03:00.002+01:00

Preparing for a week of reporting from the Mother of the Earth next week, I have been making some calls and trying to set up interviews and meetings with people in Cairo. Or at least trying to.

The large Egyptian organisations whose main switchboard phone numbers are either disconnected, not working or ringing out without being answered include:

- The Egyptian Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Technology
- The Egyptian Ministry of Investment
- Orascom Telecom (the largest private sector company in Egypt)
- Vodafone Egypt
- Xceed (ironically, Egypt's largest call centre operator)
- Telecom Egypt

I know the country has problems and sometimes the odds are stacked up against you there, but seriously, this is not complicated stuff. Get main switchboard number. Post on website. Have human being who picks up phone and says "alloo?" when it rings between 9 in the morning and 6 at night.

I swear, if the pyramids could be made "out of order" somehow, Egyptians would work out how to do it. Luckily, it is extremely difficult to break a ten million tonne pile of rocks. Breaking the cornerstone of basic communications is far easier, unfortunately.

Is the Arab - Gangsta Rap convergence approaching?

2008-10-29T13:15:00.003+01:00

I've said for a long time that it is only going to take a little push for gangsta rap culture and Arab culture to fuse in a weird and awesome way. You just need the right photo of 50 Cent chilling in a flowing white robe, or a badass bunch of homeboys sitting on the steps in front of a building smoking shisha in the next Timbalnd video clip.

And lets not even get started on how sweet if would be if Dr Dre talked up how he swaggers around with a falcon on his arm instead of an AK-47.

How to be a proper badass, part 1: Have an Awesome Falcon

Anyhow, I reckon "Arab Money" by Busta Rhymes is getting pretty close to that magical mark. Think it's hard to make "Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Al-Saud respects the value of my work" sound smooth? Take it away, Busta:

(lyrics)

A few random points:

- It would be a lot better if he didn't pronounce Arab as Ay-Rab in that retarded American way

- Is it just me or is the pseudo-Arabic chorus not Arabic at all? Sounds more like Hindi

- While the more mass-market gangsta rap and Arab culture are yet to fuse, its fair to say the Islam has been pretty tightly assciated with the more quality hip-hop for quite a while - super awesome Muslim rappers include: A Tribe Called Quest, Afrika Bambatta, Mos Def, Jurassic 5, Lupe Fiasco and Brother Ali, plus hundreds more.

The Strange Country

2008-10-24T09:28:00.003+02:00

This edition of The UAE: It's Really Weird is sponsored by my iPhone and its surprisingly good camera.

- Be warned: if you mess with the image of Abu Dhabi, these guys will come after you:

- On the entrance to a ludicrously upmarket new neighbourhood in Dubai - so upmarket that it felt more like a giant hotel than a suburb - these friendly notice was posted for all the residents. If this doesn't throw you into dystopian nightmare-future freakouts, nothing will. We will all live like this one day, and this notice will be read to us by a soothing female robotic voice FOREVER:

"HELP US, HELP YOU...

Community living is the cornerstone of a progressive society. However, living together calls for guidelines, which when followed, give direction to achieving the common goal of enjoying our community.

The community rules are for the benefit of owners and residents alike. The Intent is to create a serence, attractive and safe environment for all. Following these rules will enhance and protect the property values and assets of the Community.

Violation of the Community Rules will result in Notices of Violation being issued and may attract financial penalties. "

- And finally, there are moments when the Dubai skyline really makes you stop and take a good long look, I had one of them yesterday evening. On the right are the Emirates Towers, my pick for the best looking buildings in the UAE. On the left is the Burj Dubai, already the world's tallest building and still with a couple of hundred metres more to go:

I spent Eid in the Mother of the Earth, and Have the Pictures to Prove It

2008-10-17T22:55:00.002+02:00

The week in Cairo was a welcome refresher on the place and people I love - from the humming buzz of a great city celebrating Ramadan:

To the chillaxing that Egypt naturally facilitates:

To quality time with the world's finest people and Cuba's finest cigars:

Full album is here.

Quote of the day

2008-10-16T15:35:00.002+02:00

"If they want to call the movie `Zack and Miri,' that's fine, but Zack and Miri cannot make a porno on my bus shelters," Cutler said.

Committed to the Cause

2008-10-15T05:58:00.006+02:00

Doing some research on a story, part of which involves "solid ink" technology, basically printers that use sticks of solid rather than liquid ink. The ink stick gets slowly melted as the printer uses it.

Anyhow, the whole thing became 50 times more interesting when I read this:

"The sticks are non-toxic and safe to handle. In the mid 1990s, the president of Tektronix actually ate part of a stick of solid ink, demonstrating that they are safe to handle and presumably, eat. The medium of the ink was (at least at the time) made from food-grade processed vegetable oils."

If you truly believe in your product, you should be willing to ingest it. No questions asked.

Australia's Incredibly Awful Internet Law

2008-10-14T13:34:00.006+02:00

The new law requiring internet filtering in Australia is as bad as anything done by John Howard's government, and mocks the idea that the new Rudd government is genuinely progressive or visionary:

Australians will be unable to opt-out of the government's pending Internet content filtering scheme, and will instead be placed on a watered-down blacklist, experts say. (Computerworld)

Yes, John Howard had warships tow boats full of refugees to random deserted islands for offshore "processing". But censoring the internet is absolutely fucking disastrous in the long run. Sure, in the beginning it will be some kind of benign cutting of gory death videos and how-to guides to making your own crystal meth - and even censoring this is wrong.

But just watch - the moment a government body makes decisions about what can't be shown on the internet, the government effectively assumes responsibility for everything else online. All of a sudden everything that isn't censored has kind of government stamp of approval. And then every little interest group and whining gang of righteous victims will begin calling for whatever ails them to also get the chop.

Promoting ideas somebody feels is racist? Bye bye. Saying something someone else thinks defames their religion? Gone. Saying anything that shouldn't be said in front of the children - remember, always think of the children - good night.

Combined with the retarded new attitude towards soft drugs in once-tolerant South Australia - also gleefully championed by a so-called progressive Labour government - this makes me seriously wonder if I could ever vote Labour.

The Edge

2008-10-12T22:15:00.004+02:00

My dad used to ride a motorcycle, before I was born, and his big learning from the whole experience was that I was definitely not allowed to get a motorcycle.

I pushed my luck as hard as I hope it will ever be pushed a few months ago; turned a small Japanese car into a twisted lump of metal origami at 150 km/h and somehow walked away without a scratch, so unbelievably unharmed that it is the lack of injury that actaully freaks me out now more than the crash.

But as anyone who has properly destroyed a car will tell you, there is a really clear moment where all possible control over whether you live or die in the coming three seconds leaves your hands. For me, it was a fraction of a second where I tried to swerve, hit the brakes, do something - but realised that I was no longer driving a car but strapped to some kind of blazing comet, its motion and my future completely unrelated to anything I do.

That point, when life is determined by the physical laws of mass and velocity, is absolutely fucking terrifying. But is there something in that moment that sits apart from any other experience in life?

All of this is a long-winded way to introduce one of the best things Hunter S. Thompson ever wrote, the end of the epilogue to Hells Angels, his best book. After he finished riding with the Angels, he kept the bike, and would sometimes take it out late at night, riding Too Fast and pushing his luck because:

"...with the throttle screwed on, there is only the barest margin, and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right... and that's when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhileration and vibrates along your arms. You can barely see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporize before they get to your ears. The only sounds are the wind and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You watch the white line and try to lean with it... howling through a turn to the right, then to the left, and down the long hill to Pacifica... letting off now, watching for cops, but only until the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge... The Edge... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others - the living - are those who pushed their luck as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later.

But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it's In. The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions."

My son will not be getting a motorcycle.

The LA Times Likes The National

2008-10-11T16:09:00.002+02:00

Spacious and airy, the newsroom of the National seems a newfangled journalistic field of dreams, with its stylish furniture, flat-panel monitors and roomy, uncluttered desks.... (LA Times)

The lead may be a bit overwritten, but it is a generally good story about The National and how we are doing. They obviously didn't see my desk when they wrote the "uncluttered" comment...

Why Egyptians are the World's Greatest People

2008-09-29T00:36:00.003+02:00

A Badly Translated, Innacurate but Fundamentally True Account of the Conversation that Just Happened in Front of Me

Dubai Airport, 1am, every Egyptian in the world is lined up trying to check in for the last Egyptair flight that will get them home in time for Eid. Everyone is carring way too much luggage, loaded to the brim with the wondrous Dubai gifts that will be the star attraction of their family get togethers on their return: 100-piece dining sets, 5 kilogram packs of shelled pistachio nuts, thick downy blankets and bedroom sets. Mothers and aunts and in-laws will beam with pride and joy at the bounties brought home by their hard-working heroes:

Working Class Upper Egyptian Man In Front of Me: What is the problem?

Egyptair Check In Lady: Sir, you have 140 kilograms of luggage, and your limit is 20 kilograms.

WCUEMIFM: No problems! Its nothing, just a little thing!

(Among the things he is trying to check in is one of those big 25 litre barrels of water you would put into an office water cooler)

ECIL: It is a problem sir, we can make an exception, but this is too much

WCUEMIFM: Too much? Thank God! Thank God! Its no problem...

ECIL: Thank God. But you will have to pay for the extra above 40 kilos

WCUEMIFM: OK, OK, lets go, how much

ECIL: It is 170 Dirhams per kilogram, so in this case, it will be 11,700 Dirhams ($3200)

WCUEMIFM: God! God! Look, here, I have....

(counts money carefully from wallet, note by note...)

WCUEMIFM: 175 Dirhams . Thank God. Happy Eid. Happy Eid.

(tries to hand the cash around the side of the counter directly to ECIL)

ECIL: Happy Eid. But this cannot be accepted, it is forbidden.

WCUEMIFM: OK, who is the boss here. Where is the boss, the prince (Arab-speakers, translate Pasha as you wish)

WCUEMIFM, gesturing at a man with a moustache in a suit jacket in the corner: Prince, Prince

Man: She is the boss, I just do the bags

WCUEMIFM: Something in Arabic I couldn't understand that makes both men crack up laughing, presumably related to the woman being the boss, but I might be wrong

ECIL: Shame! I am trying to help you!

WCUEMIFM: For 11 thousand dirhams! Shame! Happy Eid! Thank God! Thank God

ECIL: Thank God!

At this point I had my boarding pass and was just hanging around watching the beautiful spectacle. I assume it went on for another hour, and I have the feeling our Hero-Protagonist got his luggage on the plane without paying 6 month's wages. I just saw him walking into the booze section of the duty free.

The Hottest Nissan Sunny You'll Ever See

2008-09-27T00:23:00.003+02:00

On the way to a shisha place we saw a car park loaded with young Emirati men and some pretty interesting looking cars. We stopped to check it out. All over the world you'll see this: young guys on a Friday night, converging on a car park somewhere to show off their cars and sound systems. But I will say this with authority: only in the Gulf will you see a Nissan Sunny modded to have gullwing doors. And not just two gullwing doors. Four gullwing doors:

It must have been crazy door theme night, because just opposite it was a giant Chevy Suburban rocking the same deal:

But as an Australian patriot, my true highlight for the night was this evil looking Holden Monaro. They export these to the UAE as a "Chevrolet Lumina", but this one still had the Holden badge on it, suggesting a private import by a discreet young Emirati man who demands nothing but the best from his Australian muscle cars:

Relief and Joy

2008-09-25T12:03:00.003+02:00

I always knew that my Hungarian ancestry and instinctive connection to Egypt could be resolved rationally, and now it has - I am a member of the Magyarab tribe of the Nile Valley:

The Magyarab are a people living along the Nile River in Egypt and Sudan. They are of Hungarian ancestry, probably dating back to the late 16th century.

According to legend, Christian Hungarians who had only recently been brought under the control of the Ottoman Empire formed a part of the Ottoman army that was fighting in southern Egypt. Evidently, a portion or the entirety of the fighting unit remained there and intermarried with the local Nubian women.

It's like all the pieces are slowly coming together, and it is a giant weight off my shoulders, identity-wise.

As the locals in Southern Egypt say about their Magyarab neighbours, "Ras el Magyar zey el haggar" - "The Hungarian's head is as hard as stone."

I'm sure plenty of people who know me well will back up such sentiments.

Overheard:

2008-09-24T23:18:00.002+02:00

"You're fucked, and your unborn children are fucked"

- A smart, experienced man, with abundant qualifications, explaining the ramifications of the current economic craziness

Your Cousin, the Enemy

2008-09-19T23:09:00.002+02:00

The American girl killed in the Yemen embassy attack may have been killed by her own cousin, a senior member of the local Al Qaeda cell:

Susan Elbaneh, 18, and her Yemeni husband, Abdul Jaleel, whom she had just married on a trip her ancestral homeland, were among the 17 people killed in the well-coordinated attack Wednesday in Sana, the Yemeni capital, relatives and State Department officials said.

Two senior federal officials confirmed that the investigation of the attack, the deadliest direct assault on a U.S. embassy in a decade, is focusing on local Al Qaeda cells that they believe have some connection to Jaber Elbaneh, Susan's cousin. (LA Times)

The story suggests its a total coincidence - she hasn't met the cousin since she was a little kid, and she was just waiting outside the embassy to get in. But a sad and incredible story, however it turns out.

The Plane Has Crashed Into the Mountain

2008-09-15T23:16:00.002+02:00

Two excellent looks at the US financial craziness from two of the smartest guys in the room at The National. The economics editor Wayne Arnold:

What is perhaps most important is not the way that Lehman’s collapse is likely to affect America and its financial system. That will be truly breathtaking, but what is likely to prove more significant is how widely it affects investors and institutions elsewhere around the world, particularly dollar-linked economies like those herein the Gulf and in Europe, whose banks and economy are already looking poised to suffer the same drop whose consequences the US is now suffering (It isn’t the fall. It’s the sudden stop)....

Ultimately, Lehman’s failure will help hasten an end to the financial crisis, in the same way that a house burning down helps stop the fire that consumed it.

And the business editor Bill Spindle:

Among the highest priority of the cabal of investment banking chieftains who met over the weekend is to set up a system to prevent those securities, and the complex contractual agreements based upon them, from flooding on to the market at once. They agreed to set up a joint fund to that would take on Lehman’s troubled portfolio and unwind its positions slowly and spent much of the weekend in unprecedented sessions revealing trading positions with each other and attempting to puzzle out ways to pair and counteract them to lessen the confusion Lehman’s failure may cause.

Read them both.

The biggest thing for me is the way this effects confidence in what we used to call knowledge and expertise. A big assumption behind these investment banks was they that were filled to the rafters with quantitative geniuses who worked 110 hour weeks grinding away on the details; hence the crazy salaries and bonuses, and the huge profits.

The world's collective resources geniuses didn't pick the approaching spike in food prices until it hit the third world on the head. Nobody seems to understand what the right price should be for a barrel of oil. And the world's pre-eminent intelligence and military machine failed so flamingly in Iraq. Our understanding of how the world works feels extra fallible right now.

All we have left is the Large Hadron Collider. If that thing fails us, all hope is lost.

The Ugly Tacky Tastelessness Tipping Point

2008-09-14T09:03:00.002+02:00

Ignore the terrible mauling of the English language in this Gulf News story, and instead bathe in the terrible awfulness of its underlying message:

"German company Schaub Lorenz has unveiled the world's most expensive and ultra luxurious LCD TV in the Middle East market for $130,000 (Dh477,100).

The 40-inch LCD TV is studded with diamonds and white gold. Each diamond is of V VS1 brilliant white colour.

The eco-friendly TV is made with degradable and reusable components....."
(Gulf News)

Oh God, make it stop. I don't know what is more offensive, that companies think that all you have to do is stud something with diamonds and it will sell like mad in the Gulf, or that these kind of things actually DO sell like mad here.

At least it's biodegradable. I like to throw my old televisions into the river every now and then, and the thought that they may not fully dissolve and return to the mother earth that they emerged from keeps me awake at night.

I'm all in favor of needless wasteful hedonism: taking your morning bath in 1960s champagne, colour-coded Ferrari for each day of the week, insisting on Ph.D qualified house cleaners, your own private superconducting supercollider to entertain the kids. Go right ahead and spunk your money on needless excess, enjoy.

Just don't become the clueless slack-jawed yokel of the rich world, gleesfully excchanging your cash for a handful of coloured beads. It's embarassing for all concerned.

Head in the Sand Time

2008-09-13T00:31:00.006+02:00

This is a combination of public announcement and call for help.

First, the public announcement part. As of yesterday, I have made the vow to not read, watch, listen to or discuss another word about American politics until after this election is over. Despite being pretty important for the world (although less important than people think), I just don't care one bit about what happens between now and November.

Everything of importance that needs to be said, has been said. All that will happen for the next two months is an idiotic cycle of manufactured ups and downs and repositionings. There will be scandals, outrage, missteps, gotchyas and great rhetorical victories. All this stuff is irrelevant, and I don't care.

Second, the call for help. The other side of my resolution is to spend the time I would spend reading and thinking about the election on getting under the skin of other things of pressing importance to the world that I know nothing about. So far, I'm thinking I want to get some clues about Japanese and Chinese politics, Hindu nationalism and Russia.

My plea: if you are immersed in some topic or idea of flaming importance to the world that you think people don't spend enough time thinking about, let me know what it is and where I can read about it. As Rumsfeld famously put it, I'm talking about "unknown unknowns" here, things I don't know about and don't know that I don't know about them.

Disclaimer: Unless there is some new take on things vastly different to the one commonly thought of, I don't want to hear about the environment or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Bombs away! I'm thinking that given most of the people who read this blog are geniuses of some description, you'll all have something to contribute to my quest to stop caring about one thing and begin caring about something else....

How to enter a room

2008-09-09T22:59:00.002+02:00

After Bloomberg News accidentally published his pre-written obituary a few weeks ago, the very-much-alive Steve Jobs shows up to give another of his famous Apple product launch keynotes:

(Pic via Gizmodo)

New Rule: It it isn't gold, I don't eat it

2008-09-08T19:26:00.004+02:00

Iftar at the Emirates Palace was delightful, and this gold-topped rasberry helped me realise that I haven't been getting anywhere near my daily intake of gold lately. That needs to change.

The Problem with Dubai

2008-09-04T15:15:00.002+02:00

Women are supposed to be encouraged and rewarded for kissing each other, not thrown in jail.

Gaddafi Gets a Promotion

2008-09-02T17:17:00.003+02:00

A meeting of more than 200 African kings and traditional rulers has bestowed the title "king of kings" on Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. (BBC)

The irony of a man who once claimed to be a socialist reduced to basking in the praise of a snivelling gaggle of second-rate heriditary monarchs is pretty delicious.

But the title bestowed upon him has some pretty hardcore precedents - among those who have been historically dubbed "king of kings" are Ramses II, Jesus Christ, and the great man himself, Haile Selassie, whose full title was "King of Kings, Lord of Lords, the Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah".

You have to do more than lose a war with Chad and father a servant-beating pervert to earn that title, Colonel.

Free Speech in America

2008-08-31T09:28:00.004+02:00

These protesters in their approved "protest zone" at the Democratic convention in Denver remind me of the protests in Cairo, where protesters were usually outnumbered 5:1 by security forces:

(pic via Arabawy)

A man-drought in Australia

2008-08-30T16:50:00.003+02:00

I blame this on foreign girls with their gorgeous accents:

An analysis of new census figures has shown that Australia is suffering from an unprecedented "man drought". The statistics have revealed that there are almost 100,000 more females than males in Australia.
Thirty years ago Australia was with flush with men thanks to immigration policies that favoured males. That position has been reversed because thousands of Australian men in their 20s and early 30s have gone overseas either to travel or work....
"If you go into the United Arab Emirates census you'll find there is around 12,000 Australians living in Dubai, mostly male, mostly in the 25 to 34-year age group." (BBC)

The whole story shows two big demographic shifts are happening: men from the big cities are moving abroad, and women from the country towns are moving to the cities. So you have big cities flooded with single women and country towns flooded with single men.

There are plenty of good reasons why young Australians are choosing to live abroad in their twenties and thirties, but no I have no idea why it is disproportionately men who are doing so.

The numbers could also be a bit more complicated than the story suggests. Sure, there are more expat Aussie men than women in Dubai, but I'm sure the numbers are much closer to even in places like London, home to something like 200,000 Aussies.

An Olympic-sized failure in the Arab World

2008-08-27T12:48:00.002+02:00

A brilliant, righteous editorial in The National today by Ayman Safadi:

Winning in the Olympics requires planning, hard work, commitment and institutions that design strategies and invest in the requirements for success. All these are missing in an Arab world still intoxicated by a false sense of supremacy and unwilling to admit failure. The fiasco at the Olympics is not a rare disappointment. It is repeated in almost all aspects of life...

It is telling that there are no role models in the Arab world. Bed-time stories still summon personalities belonging to centuries gone by. Disgruntlement with the present and lack of trust in a better future force people to remain stuck in the perceived glories of the past. Dreams take people centuries backward rather than carrying them into the future. The personalities celebrated in popular culture are mainly historical war heroes, invoking memories of a “golden era” with little or no actual relevance to the present. They do not provide incentives for excellence in sport or the arts.
Only political leaders are allowed to compete with glorified historical figures. The majority of them, however, does not inspire excellence or innovation or the belief that hard work yields success. Nor do these leaders invest in the conditions necessary for nurturing the talent of their populations. State resources are mainly channelled toward erecting security structures that protect their regimes. In some Arab countries, the sum of money spent on arms, mainly used to suppress domestic discontent, is far greater than the money spent on education, health and, of course, sport."

Read it all.

The best part? Hosni Mubarak has ordered an enquiry into why Egypt did so poorly at the Games. Gee, I wonder.

Hello, Babel

2008-08-25T15:38:00.002+02:00

Easily the most awe-inspiring photo of the ~~Deathspire~~ Burj Dubai that I have ever seen:

Click on it for the full-size terror - and check the whole gallery by the photographer David Hobcote at gizmodo.com.

My doomed dream profession

2008-08-24T22:21:00.000+02:00

Getting to talk to interesting people about how the world works and then write about it is pretty much my dream job, so getting to do it for the time being is pretty awesome. But it certainly does suck to hear all these smart people talking about how my industry is doomed. As a geek, technophile and Google lover, hearing Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO, calmly and dispassionately explain how screwed we all are is especially rough. Check it out, three minutes of pure bring the pain...

Best newlyweds ever

2008-08-21T16:23:00.002+02:00

As a journalist, you dream of writing two paragraphs like this:

As the newlyweds struggled on the ground, a police officer used a Taser on Somora, 29, police said. Pastuszwska, 28, was holding her new husband tight, and was shocked as well, Skowron and authorities said.

"Imagine the kids and grandma seeing the bride and groom getting Tasered on the floor," said Skowron. "In my opinion, the police totally overreacted."

The whole story must be read, as an epic reflection on the beauty of life. That wasn't the last time the couple would be tasered in the days following their wedding....

Iran learns from Russia

2008-08-21T09:23:00.005+02:00

Are you a big, militarised nation pissed of at a small, overconfident neighbour that acts like it can stand up to you because of implicit US backing? Fear not! As Russia has shown, that US backing probably won't convert into much to be too worried about.

So Iran's timing in starting a small, seemingly unimportant fight with the UAE is interesting. Especially when they start busting out rhetoric like this from the Iranian foreign ministry:

“The next crisis predicted to cover mainly the Persian Gulf is the crisis of legitimacy of the monarchies and traditional systems which, considering current circumstances, cannot go on living.”

Zing. It should be said, there are some pretty important differences between the Russia-Georgia situation and the Iran-Gulf one:

- Nobody wants to pick an actual fight with Russia, for both practical and strategic reasons. Plenty of countries would love to send a few thousand-pound bombs into Tehran, and are itching for the excuse to do it.

- Iran and the UAE are very closely connected - as one of the only places they can still do business, there is a ton of Iranian money invested in Dubai, and a shitload of Iranaian trade goes via the UAE.

- Iran is not stupid. Just as clearly would not start a nuclear war that would lead to its annihilation, it seems crazy to think that it would start a pointless war with a Gulf state that would lead to bad consequences (big economic problems, further isolation, no more pilgrims to Mecca etc).

- Although the committment of its largely expatriate armed forces is questionable, the UAE is the third-largest importer of American weapons, and would certainly do some damage to Iran.

But none of these points really undercuts the basic realisation that big, armed up countries are having post-Georgia: discount the real hard power of "Western" backing, remind your blustering smaller neighbours who the real daddy is.

What to make of Pakistan

2008-08-18T17:26:00.003+02:00

Emad on the failed opportunity that was Pervez Musharraf:

"Sitting at the student lounge at LUMS, I saw the small crowd erupt in an applause the moment the words (I translate), ".. in light of this, I am resigning from my post", were spoken by the now former President Musharraf.

Almost 9 years ago, I had rejoiced in a similar manner seeing him oust Nawaz Sharif in a military-led coup. For years after that, I was a vehement supporter of the man and his policies, calling him a benevolent leader. I did buy into his charisma and the straightforward manner of his expression. I did appreciate the skill and confidence with which he carried the flag of the country internationally. I liked the easing relationship with India and I appreciated the moderate views he brought with him to office."

Read the whole thing. Most of the switched on middle-upper class Pakistanis I have met say similar things, that Musharraf was right to oust Sharif, that he pushed things in the right direction economically and socially, that he completely fucked it all up in the last year.

With The General gone, the country will be ruled by someone with a pretty questionable moral code ("Mr Ten Per Cent"), which sadly is seen as an improvement by many. Like India, Pakistan is crammed to the rafters with some of the world's most talented, passionate, honorable and hard-working people; you can only hope it moves forward in the same direction as its neighbour to the south, rather than its considerably less successful neighbour to the north.

(I should take this occasion to direct newer readers to the first and only poem I have ever written, "How My Uncomfortable Lunch With Pervez Musharraf, President of Pakistan and Chief of Army Staff of the Pakistan Armed Forces, Didn't Work Out So Well". Read it with low expectations and you'll only be mildly dissapointed.)

True Greatness

2008-08-17T09:03:00.004+02:00

(UPDATED below)

Bolt's absolute dominance of the 100 metre sprint was impressive. But it is incumbent on me as an honest patriot to direct all readers to Australia's greatest Olympic moment. Our first ever gold medal at the Winter Olympics.

You see, winning in sports that your country cares deeply about is all well and good. But the truly great wins, the ones you savour for decades to come, happen when you are victorious at a sport you don't even try to compete in, like handball or soccer.

So when Stephen Bradbury triumphed in the speed skating at Salt Lake City, it really meant something, because we only have about three skating rinks in Australia, and they are filled with stumbling 13 year olds for most of the day. As you will see in the clip below, it was a truly glorious Aussie victory:

UPDATE: I'd be a fool not to include the greatest moment of the 2000 Olympics in Sydney - the stunning mens 100-metre freestyle heat featuring the one and only (literally the only) Eric "the Eel" Moussambani:

The Oldest Trade, Eradicated

2008-08-11T22:13:00.003+02:00

Some people will tell you that farming is the world's oldest profession, some say it's prostitution.

They'e all wrong. For thousands of years, Egyptians have been ripping off tourists at the pyramids. They spotted Herodotus for a sucker, fleeced the 14th-century King of Mali, extracted rivers of baksheesh from Mark Twain and probably conned more money from American tourists today than you'll earn this year.

It is an ability that has become almost genetic, as if those who live and work by the pyramids have evolved over thousands of years in a brutal Survival of the Dodgiest. Only the man who can sucker foreigners into paying $80 for a ten-cent piece of cloth is destined to reproduce and have his unique, sketchy blueprint remain in genetic circulation.

But all that may be coming to an end. Things are changing, for the better or worse depending on your outlook:

"Visiting Egypt's famed Giza Pyramids has long been a nightmare, with hawkers peddling camel rides and pharaonic trinkets hustling tourists relentlessly at every turn.
But now the hustlers are gone, as Egypt unveiled on Monday the first stage of an elaborate project to modernize the site and make it more tourist-friendly, complete with security cameras and a 12-mile fence with infrared sensors surrounding the site.

"It was a zoo," Zahi Hawass, Egypt's chief archaeologist, said of the usual free-for-all at the pyramids. "Now we are protecting both the tourists and the ancient monuments." (IHT)

I suppose this is "good" news, but I don't like it, for a few reasons:

- The pyramids are MEANT to be a strange, uncomfortable experience involving way too much haggling and frustration. Welcome to Cairo, assholes. If you want pleasant, comfortable serenity, go to the frigging British Museum or something.

- The pyramids are like flypaper for the bumbag-and-backpack gaggle of lurid tourists and the awful Cairo conmen who prey upon them. If the conmen can't do business there, they will probably just descend on other parts of the great city, becoming apartment brokers in Zamalek or something....

- It's not as if the pyramids really need the preservation. Of all the historic sites in the world that can handle as much punishment as human beings can physically throw at them, the pyramids have to be number one, two and three. They are indestructible. If you want to protect something, how about all those gorgeous thousand year old mosques in the Old City that are falling to pieces and under the sole jusridiction of some random 120 year-old dude who uses them as a storehouse for piles of broken pieces of other mosques, etc...

- "Hawass insisted none of the innovations will diminish the experience of the visit. "We are giving back the magic of the pyramids," Hawass said."

Wrong. The magic of the pyramids is that despite thousands of years of total neglect, non-existent management and industrial scale fleecing and harassment, they are still the world's greatest tourist site. Only Egyptians can pull of a trick like that, and this is just messing it up.

Put the Shadows Back Into the Boxes

2008-08-07T13:05:00.005+02:00

The geek within me was almost uncontrollably turned on by these wonderful photos of the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, which will soon start accelerating atoms to just below the speed of light, racing them around a 27 kilometer tunnel cooled to absolute zero, then smashing them down into their sub-sub-atomic components and looking at them.

As a pure, audacious feat of human potential, the LHC is probably the most significant achievement since reaching the moon. It comes at a perfect time - when people around the world are losing faith in institutions and our ability to navigate a tricky future, the world's smartest people are about to pull of a feat of literally unimaginable complexity. The reward will be clues to nothing less than how it is the universe came into existence, and what it is made out of on a fundamental level.

That is seriously cool - as cool as the space program, as cool as DNA, as cool as the internet. I need to go and hug a scientist.

In tribute, I offer one supercollider to another: Large Hadron Collider, let me introduce you to "supercollider", the lovely brand spanking new Radiohead song that I was lucky enough to see performed last month in Amsterdam.

Supercollider
Twisted and broken
Particles scatter
Brought in from the sun
Swimming up stream, before the heavens crack open
Thin pixelations, coming up from the dust

In a blue light
In a green light
In a half-life
In an odd light

I’m a brain stem flip-flopping
I’m a pulse wave hot-stepping
I put the shadows back into the boxes
I am open
I am welcome
For a fraction of a second
I have jettisoned my illusions
I have dislodged my depressions
I put the shadows back into the boxes.
I put the shadows back into the boxes.

Why Soccer Sucks

2008-07-29T11:20:00.002+02:00

There's a key reason why the manly cultures of Australia, the US etc will never fully accept soccer as a real national sport. Its the falling over and acting like you're hurt.

You see, in real sports, of course professionals will know how to game the referee, look like contact was harder than it was, take the occasional dive etc. But only in soccer do you do this and actually writhe around in pretend agony, acting like you are in excruciating pain.

This is the core wimpyness of soccer that hardy cultures will never accept. In cricket, if the bowler hits you in the elbow with a ball travelling at 150 km/h, the whole idea is to stare straight act him and act like it didn't hurt at all. Dont even rub it or acknowledge the impact at all if possible.

In the spirit of ridiculing this pansy'ness, here is a great video of the best soccer "dives" of all time, set to an incredibly awesome loopy acoustic guitar/whistling version of the Star Wars imperial march tune....

Watch Egypt Get Veiled

2008-07-25T00:15:00.002+02:00

This year is the 100th anniversary of Cairo University, the largest university in the Middle East. The Egyptian bog Hatshepsut has posted some pictures of Cairo Uni English Faculty graduating classes from the last 50 years.

You'll have to click on each pic to see it in full size - but the generational changes in the wearing of headscarves is amazing.

1959:

1978:

1995:

2004:

Come for the existential despair, stay for the shotgun

2008-07-22T16:59:00.003+02:00

Abu Dhabi offers first US$1 million holiday

A luxury hotel in the United Arab Emirates has unveiled the world's most expensive holiday, with a seven-day break at the hotel costing US$1 million (£500,000).

Abu Dhabi's 7-star Emirates Palace Hotel will offer two people 'the ultimate holiday experience', which will include two first-class airline tickets to the city, followed by a booking in the hotel's Palace Suite - three gold, silver and marble bedrooms with a giant plasma television screen.

Those lucky enough to be able to stump up the cash will be able to take a private jet on day trips to Bahrain to dive for pearls, Iran to choose hand-woven Persian carpets and the Dead Sea for health treatments.

Other perks will include your own golf course, a personal butler, free designer perfume and a complimentary shotgun. (World Travel Guide)

Giving weapons to people who you've just handed a million-dollar bill to doesn't sound like the sharpest idea to me....

File under: No Shit, Sherlock

2008-07-21T00:09:00.003+02:00

CAIRO (Reuters) - Nearly two-thirds of Egyptian men admit to having sexually harassed women in the most populous Arab country, and a majority say women themselves are to blame for their maltreatment, a survey showed Thursday.
The forms of harassment reported by Egyptian men, whose country attracts millions of foreign tourists each year, include touching or ogling women, shouting sexually explicit remarks, and exposing their genitals to women. "Sexual harassment has become an overwhelming and very real problem experienced by all women in Egyptian society, often on a daily basis," said the report by the Egyptian Center for Women's Rights.

The survey also said a majority cited a lack of awareness or religious values as the reason behind the widespread harassment.

I blame the common belief that the responsibility for preventing sexual harassment lies with women, who must ensure not to "tempt" men through their dress and behaviour. And I think that belief comes largely from religious values.

And yes, I know that these are not pure religious values, that they have been misunderstood, misinterpreted etc. But ideas should be assessed based on their actual impact in the real world, rather than according to the ideals of their most enlightened believers.

And in that sense, the practical implication of headscarves is pretty clear. Once the majority of women are wearing them, the minority that don't become the "sluts". And then once everyone is wearing them, the self-devouring begins - the ones who have bright colours, tighter fitting pants, defined features, the ones who go out in public without a man, the ones who stay out after dark....

A question on body swapping

2008-07-17T14:03:00.003+02:00

(updated at bottom)

There is a big question in my head after reading about the Israel-Lebanon prisoner/body swap, and it comes from details like this:

The bodies of nearly 200 Lebanese and Palestinian fighters, returned as part of an exchange deal with Israel, are heading towards Beirut from southern Lebanon.
The remains of the Arab fighters passed through the border town of Naqura on Thursday, a day after Israel exchanged them along with five prisoners for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers held by Hezbollah.

My question: How did Israel come into posession of all those bodies? The war was fought entirely on Lebanese soil, save the Hizbollah incursion that set things in motion. So does that mean the Israeli army collected the bodies of dead Hizbollah guys, loaded them into their jeeps and took them back to Israel?

Is it just me, or it that incredibly spooky and weird? Maybe I'm not up to date on modern warfare techniques and collecting enemy bodies and taking them away with you is standard procedure...

Or maybe the bodies were killed (or at least died) in Israel at some time other than the war?

Can anybody shed some light on this?

UPDATE: A guy in my office with a fair bit of experience with this stuff thinks - and he stressed that he thinks, not knows - that most of the bodies would be people who were killed, captured or kidnapped during the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. Sounds plausible.