Saturday, July 29, 2006

[living] writer on sunday - gene weingarten

Gene Weingarten is a journalist and writer who runs a column called Below the Beltway in the Washington Post on Sunday. To access his pieces online, you need to go to the site, find the little panel to the lower left, scroll down until you find him and click.
He could also be described as a sort of blogger, in that he hosts a forum on Tuesdays at the Post Online.

He’s described as a humour writer and he certainly follows that prime directive, his Sunday articles being a must read with the early morning coffee. This, below, is from a piece called Eau de Toilet, describing his terrifying experience alone in a high end perfumerie, trying to select a gift for his wife:

Calling French perfume "pricey" is a significant understatement, like calling a tsunami "moist." Your typical ounce costs a C-note. I decided that I was going to shop intelligently and not lose my head.
Immediately, I lost my head.
I blame it on the fumes, but it may also be because perfume saleswomen tend to be young and lovely and will frequently, without warning, offer you their necks to smell.
The fact is, after about half an hour of perfume shopping, I was cheerfully looking at $150 liquids in quantities that could fit into a contact lens case.
Fortunately for me, everything stank.

He deviates from such fare from time to time to comment on the political scene and describes here the run up to the election in which Michael Dukakis was the Democratic candidate:

During the 1987-88 year, Nieman curator Howard Simons took all of us Fellows to meet a man who was running for president. Michael Dukakis … Dukakis was terrific, we said. Impressive. Commanding. Presidential. We were falling all over each other to find adequate superlatives.
Howard heard us all out, then shook his head and said: "Won't win. No sense of humor."

The Post sent him to Israel to ‘live’ what it was actually like under the threat of constant death and the result was a long piece entitled Fear Itself. Now widely acclaimed and available on the web, it put him in, as I wrote to him, ‘Great danger of losing the ‘humorous’ tag and being taken as a serious writer of note.’
This is from the introduction:

So here's a question: Would you ride a bus in Jerusalem? Right now? Here's your 5 1/2 shekels, go take a bus to market, buy some figs. Pick a bad day, after the Israelis have assassinated some terrorist leaders and everyone is waiting for the second sandal to drop. There are lots of buses in Jerusalem -- the odds are still long in your favor. Do you take that dare?
A few weeks ago, I did just that: boarded a bus on just such a day, and rode for nearly an hour. I did it because I wanted to better understand the psychology of terror. Not the psychology of the terrorist -- the psychology of the terrorized.
After 9/11, Americans are concerned enough by terror to be waging a costly war against it. But, by and large, the fear of terrorism has not seeped into our bones. We are new to this thing. The Israelis are not. Terrorism creates a hierarchy of fear; theirs is greater than ours.
Hence, this trip. Call it a scouting report.

Maybe these two commenters sum him up better than most:

Thanks for your excellent article. It was particularly gripping for me, because I felt that I lived what you described. I was in Jerusalem on Aug. 9, 2001, and was just two blocks from the Sbarro restaurant when I heard the loud explosion. In fact, had my wife not changed her mind so that we stopped at another pizza store to grab a bite instead of continuing on our original plan to eat at Sbarro, we might have been among the victims of that attack.

And another:

A great article. We sometimes forget that you're not "only" a writer of humor, and this is an excellent reminder.

Today, if you click on the Post site, you’ll get the more humourous side.

[living] blogger of the day – samantha brett

Controversial? But of course. A phenomenon? Undoubtedly. Any woman who can get 600 or 700 comments on one of her postings is a phenomenon and it appears she’s now taking the world by storm:

"Sam and the city blog" 11 July 2006 Hindustan Times, India
"Stewth mate! We love this blog" 07 July 2006 Iol Technology, South Africa
"Sex and romance blog rides Australia's Internet dating explosion" 06 July 2006 Yahoo! News International
"At 22, Sam Brett, is one of Australia's most widely read writers." 06 July 2006 Antara News, Indonesia
"Sydney's very own Carrie Bradshaw" - Daily Telegraph.

So who is she?

Author, journalist, reviewer, text messager extraordinaire – this is
Samantha Brett. Born in South Africa but moving to Sydney, Australia, she has carved out a career, speaking on matters of love, text and sex.

What’s all the fuss about? Look at
one of her postings and you’ll get the idea:

That said, perhaps next time you reach in for the kiss, remember a few golden rules: have moist lips (although too much lip gloss is a definite turn off), keep your tongue soft (find a good balance between not too much action, but not too little), and always have slab of minty gum on hand.

For this reason alone, I wan't sure at first but gradually modified that view as I saw what she was really about. There is a lot more going down than the above.

She sometimes has upwards of 400 commenters on any one posting and testimonials are common and regular. Simply reading other people’s stories of heartache, related to your own situation, can be amazingly cathartic, something I can attest to.

There also seems to be a dating scene based around her Sydney blogs. She’s no agony aunt – that’s not her purpose - but the lady certainly has something going. What that something is, I’m still not absolutely sure about.

I’ve never seen a journo/blogger before who so assiduously answers e-mails, encourages feedback to the extent she does and who charms you to this degree. She has her detractors, to be sure, her vilifiers, and they can be found on the internet; and their vitriol convinces me they’ve never dealt with the lady on the personal front. Does she worry? She has too many other things to do.

This is one serious achiever.

[general] another scoop from iceland

A study in Eurostat report that Icelandic women are the most fertile in Europe in 2004. The birth rate per woman in Iceland is 2.03. Irish women come in number two at 1.99 and French women number three at 1.90. Morgunbladid reports on this.

All these fertility rates are too low to maintain a steady population number. To do that the rate has to be 2.1 per woman. The birth rate is lowest in Eastern Europe. Slovenian women have 1.22 children on the average and Czech women only have 1.23 children on the average.

In some countries the benefits for families have been increased to encourage women to have more children. Increase child allowance was part of the economic agreement announced in Iceland last month, but the stated purpose was not to increase the number of children but rather to meet the needs of big families.

[world] the interesting logic of political correctness

I think I need to lose weight, and the only person who would dare say anything to me is my trainer at the fitness club and I think he’s right. If he said anything to me in the US, I could take him to court for "severe induced stress, occasioning psychological damage".

I could do with the $10 000 payout, I can tell you.

So what are you allowed to call the person with the thickening waistline? Officially - "person of substance" - and that, in linguistic terms, is euphemistic claptrap.

The slow but methodical scrutinization and expurgation of anything ... read more here.

Friday, July 28, 2006

[world] look back over your shoulder

Peter Hain says the IRA has ceased its criminality; that individual IRA members may still be involved in criminal activities, but that this should not prevent political progress from being made.

Nigel Dodds said Mr Hain was living in fantasy land. "This latest assessment from the secretary of state lacks credibility … [and the] comments that the IRA is not engaged in criminality fly in the face of the recent Northern Ireland Select Affairs Committee report on organised crime."
Mr Hain countered by saying that "an absolute state of perfection" from the IRA was not realistic. There probably is still some localised individual criminality... What there is not, is organised 'from the centre' criminality any more. To that extent the IRA are delivering on their commitments made last July."
Richard Waghorne, in siciliannotes, says: The question of IRA criminality is intrinsically political because the question of whether individual crimes collectively constitute a conspiracy against the state or unrelated incidents can only be settled as a matter of political judgment exercised by the government of the day.

The Irish Anti-War organization add: Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, a veteran IRA commander who denies ever being a member, has repeatedly said IRA activity cannot be described as crime. At his most recent party conference in March, Adams said Sinn Fein would "refuse to criminalize those who break the law in pursuit of legitimate political objectives."

While the devolution and criminality questions are being debated, meanwhile we have this: Sinn Féin's International Affairs spokesperson Aengus Ó Snodaigh TD has called on members of the Oireachtas Committee on European Affairs to come together behind a motion calling for the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, which provides Israel with favourable conditions when trading with EU member states including Ireland.

The Irish have the gift of the gab, to be sure but I was in Newry myself years back, two hours before it was bombed and I know the type we’re dealing with here. I was also caught up in the Canary Wharf and Euston Station bomb threats and these things were not funny either. The son of one of my army mates went back to Northern Ireland and spent the holiday in the corridor of the house. Is it all over?
2002 was a year to note in the annals of Ireland and for the record, I'm half English and half Irish myself. Now all eyes are on Israel and Lebanon but mine also glance anxiously back over my shoulder at the same time.

[general] latest news from iceland

Seagulls Targeted in Reykjavík

The environmental committee of Reykjavík City Council has announced that it will take action on seagulls in Reykjavík and neighboring areas, as they are very prevalent in the city at the moment and many people have complained about them over the last few months, the Icelandic State Broadcasting Service reports.

Pest control officers, who will be given the responsibility of reducing the gull population, say that there have never seen as many seagulls in Reykjavík before. The gull population will be reduced by consultation with specialists and informing the general public about what to do (and not do) when near the birds. In addition, there is to be greater cooperation between local authorities on limiting the gull population.