A revisionist autobiography - A good newspaper is a nation talking to itself. - Arthur Miller

01:15 pm - A good newspaper is a nation talking to itself. - Arthur Miller

Poll #1155106 TMNT
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My favorite Ninja Turtle is/was:

I picked up a dead-tree copy of my local paper a few days ago. Inside was a snarky column by someone who ostensibly felt bad for not having any fantasies that would cost $5,000 to fulfill. But before that, I found a two-page ad put in by the Macedonian government, which is seeking support for its bid to join NATO. This was followed immediately by a full-page spread placed by a consortium of defense companies which just won a contract to supply the US military with airborne tankers. It is a testament to this town's importance that foreign governments and major corporations alike feel a need to reach elites here. But to get their message across, they use a rag that also concerns itself with squabbles over suburban sidewalks. There may be truth to the adage about all news being local, but that doesn't make it less annoying to me. I can understand that few people are quite as enthusiastic as myself about the need for a paper with a completely international outlook, but you'd think there'd at least be a market for a higher quality national daily than the abysmal USA Today. At least I can say I live in the home of the Washington Post, and not the Orange County Register.

So just what has been in the news over the last week? Let's consult the local paper in my previous hometown, Gulf News. Dubai is building a Prophet Mohammad Museum. Sadly, the short article is accompanied by two major shibboleths. The first concerns a perception of victimhood, with an Islamic scholar talking about "sufferings we have sustained due to blasphemous campaigns against Prophet Mohammad in the West." The second is the government line about the museum promoting the "true image of Islam." The concept of a 'true Islam' gets trotted out by Muslim states every time someone acting in the name of Islam does something ridiculous. The phrase may or may not have some rhetorical power over publics, but given the expediency involved, not to mention the diversity of views in the Islamic world, you can be certain it has no substantive meaning. Let's take the example of the Egyptian preacher who recently got criticized for saying hugging and kissing in public is not sinful. One of his detractors claims he is not just wrong, but promoting adultery, adding that Muslims who want to be affectionate towards one another should get married, or fast if they cannot afford to get hitched. I'm sure both scholars would be capable of finding textual justifications for their stances, but how can you definitively prove that either of them is practicing a 'true Islam'?

Staying with the broad subject of Islam, it would appear that some prominent scholarly figures are unhappy about the publication of a list describing their income levels. And to get even further away from my starting point, let me tell you about the UAE emirate of Sharjah, which forbids the possession and consumption of alcohol, ostensibly for religious reasons. So when the UAE published a list of things that could not be brought into the country, it noted that alcohol could not be brought in through Sharjah's airport. It's too bad the article doesn't note how the duty-free shop in the government-run airport is the sole place in the emirate where one can legally buy alcohol.

Finally, an interesting figure encapsulates the cumulative effects of inflation in the UAE, the decline of the dollar, and rapid economic growth in India. Five years ago, Indian construction workers made four times as much money in the Emirates as they did at home. Today, the pay differential is down to 40 percent. I am skeptical about the actual number, but if the trend is even half as powerful as that, there may be some truth to anecdotes about Gulf companies facing difficulties in their efforts to recruit subcontinental workers.

The Meme of Places:
Tell me about 10 things that not enough people know about your hometown, or an area in which you have lived. Once you're done, leave a link to your entry in the comments so that other people can see what you have to say.

I'm writing about the Washington Metropolitan Area, where I've now lived for a year and a half.
1) The District of Columbia was formed on land ceded by the states of Maryland and Virginia in 1790. But the present day counties of Arlington (where I live) and Alexandria were retroceded to Virginia 1846. Their inhabitants were unhappy with competition from another DC port, Georgetown, and feared the impact of a potential ban on slavery, a major business in the District.
2) Washington was a planned city, with streets laid down along the lines of a draft by French architect and planner Pierre Charles L'Enfant. The District is divided into four quadrants, with the Capitol in the center. As you move away from that building, north-south streets get increasing ordinal numbers (1st St. NW, 2nd St. NW, and so on), while east-west streets generally move forward in alphabetical order, with letters (e.g. E St. NW, F St. NW, G St. NW) followed by two-syllable names (e.g. Euclid St. NW, Fairmont St. NW, Girard St. NW) and then three-syllable names (e.g. Emerson St. NW, Farragut St. NW, Gallatin St. NW). Avenues run at an angles to the rest of the grid, and are usually named after states, with California Street and Ohio Drive serving as exceptions to this rule. Incidentally, Washington is also one of a few American cities with traffic circles.
3) There is a height limit on buildings inside the District. Originally, buildings could not be taller than the Capitol, but the rule was amended in 1910 to prevent the construction of any new structure more than 20 feet taller than the street in front of it. The upshot of this is that there are no skyscrapers in DC, although there are some medium-sized buildings in the suburbs. As a consequence, the District's skyline pales in comparison to that of Philadelphia, leave alone alone New York or Chicago.
4) One major advantage of being in a relatively old city is that it wasn't constructed around the automobile. What's more, the District's location means winters are milder than in the rest of the northeast. Most of DC is therefore designed to be walkable. Public transportation is fairly good, with a single body managing bus and subway services in the District, Virginia, and Maryland. As a result, a lot of people choose not to buy a car at all. Consequently, Metrorail receives more passengers than any rapid transit system in the country besides that of New York, while Metrobus' passenger numbers are a respectable fifth nationwide.
5) DC has a large bicycle culture, with a number of trails around the city. If you follow the longest one, you can go travel 531 kilometers (330 miles) to Pittsburgh without encountering traffic.
6) Northern Virginia's booming economy is drawing in educated people from around the country. And with a third of the entire state's population, the area's demographics are becoming a major driver in Virginia politics. With help from the state capital, Richmond, the DC suburbs should nudge the state into the Democratic column in this presidential election. That would be the first such win for the party since 1948, barring Lyndon Johnson's 1964 landslide.
7) Just how well is the area doing? There are 3,142 counties in the United States, and on Wikipedia's list of the 20 richest ones by median household income, counties with DC suburbs occupied positions 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, and 20. The District itself has been gentrifying rapidly, and is the ninth wealthiest city in the United States by the same measure.
8) This may help explain why the Washington Redskins were until recently the most valuable sports team in the country (the Dallas Cowboys took a slight lead last year) despite not having won the Superbowl since 1991. Thanks to its wealthy and devoted devoted fans, it can get away with selling only season tickets, rather than seats for individual games, and still generate attendance records for the NFL, which itself has the best average crowds of any domestic sports league in the world.
9) The Pentagon, home to the United States Department of Defense, lies in Virginia, rather than the District. Nevertheless, the Postal Service requires the words "Washington, DC" to be used in conjunction with the building's six ZIP codes.
10) A large portion of DC's federal buildings are concrete monstrosities constructed in the 1950s and 1960s. It is beyond me why such ugly pseudo-Soviet structures were built at the height of the Cold War, but a friend who used to work in one of them suggested that most be torn down, with one or two preserved for posterity.

I refuse, on general principle, to tag anyone for this meme, but given the geographic spread of my friends list, I'm hoping for some interesting responses!

I'm dumping all but one of my remaining sets of pictures from Dubai into this post.


While Dubai's creek may appear at first glance to have changed little in the last thirty years, a closer look reveals advertising on the abras, or wooden passenger boats, as well as flags and new buildings.


Further down are buildings that took pride of place in the city's skyline 20 years ago.


Out with the old, in with the new.


Birds fighting for crumbs.


An Iranian baker goes about his business.


The Green Community lies on the outskirts of the city.


A man-made lake lies at its center.


There are a couple of restaurants on this side.


This tower, the project's main architectural landmark, didn't fit in particularly well with the rest of the suburb's buildings.


When you walk into Dubai's Grand Hyatt, the decadence is obvious.


These are but two of the four wooden boat hulls hanging from the ceiling.


Above the tropical rainforest in the lobby.


The painting above the main entrance is a stylized depiction of Dubai.