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How To Tell If You're Watching A Bad Nicholas Cage Movie

I enjoyed this little nugget from a blog long gone ("The Jay").

Plaintext:

In any given year 300 or so movies will be released into theaters. And on average, roughly 47 of them will star Nicolas Cage. With so many kooky, Cage-alicious movies to choose from it can be hard to tell which are worth your time and which would be best viewed on TNT, muted, and in the background while you work on your computer, many, many years after its release. With a new Nicolas Cage movie due out next week (Ghost Rider), I figured the time was right to release this handy guide to determine the quality of Nic Cage’s movies.

So, if you’re watching a Nicolas Cage movie or considering watching a Nicolas Cage movie, and can’t quite decide if it’s bad or not, these 21 sure-fire red flags will make your decision for you (unless you’re watching The Wicker Man. Then you don’t need red flags, because it just sucks.)

(Ed. Note: I do like Nicolas Cage and his movies. I just don’t like some of them. Please bare that in mind.) If Nic’s hair is longer than four inches, you are watching a bad Nicolas Cage movie.

If Nic is mumbling his dialogue in an accent other than his own, you are probably watching a bad Nicolas Cage movie.

If you turn on a Nicolas Cage movie and you notice Rosie Perez’s name is in the credits, you should probably watch something else. Otherwise you’re just gonna sit through a bad Nicolas Cage movie.

nicolas cage

If Nicolas Cage is playing a musical instrument of some kind, let’s say a Mandolin for example, then you are watching a WAY bad Nicolas Cage movie.

If at any point during the movie you hear this phrase: “Put the bunny down”, you are watching a bad Nicolas Cage movie. Don’t be fooled, this isn’t meant to be hip, ironic or in on the joke of its own badness. It’s just bad. Walk away.

If Samuel L. Jackson is prominently involved in any way, you are watching a bad Nicolas Cage movie.

If you’re watching a Nicolas Cage action movie and notice that John Cusack is playing his sidekick, only he’s wearing fucking sandals instead of shoes like a normal person, because he’s pretentious and rebelling against the iron fist of creativity held by the major studios who make this crap (the same major studios who happen to be paying him millions of dollars to be in said crap, by the way), yet the fact that someone wearing fucking sandals instead of shoes (especially Lloyd freaking Dobler) can not ride a motorcycle, climb on top of a moving fire truck or help dispatch an uber-violent John Malkovich doesn’t give you pause, then you are watching a bad Nicolas Cage movie. And are also mentally retarded.

Do you like watching snuff films? Then why would you want to watch Nicolas Cage watch a snuff film? Put the bad Nicolas Cage snuff film DOWN!

If his role requires him to have any muscle tone, for whatever reason, press stop on the DVD player and go watch some Family Guy reruns, because you’re watching a shitty Nicolas Cage movie.

nicolas cage

If even the sight of a blonde, dreadlocked, lips-to-11 Angelina Jolie can’t distract you from how boring, clunky, unfunny and out and out awful Gone in 60 Seconds really is (especially when Nic is getting chased by Master P. Like, huh? And also, shut up Giovanni Ribisi!), then it’s a bad Nicolas Cage movie.

Do not be fooled by the credit “Directed by Martin Scorsese”, you are still watching a bad Nicolas Cage movie. Turn it off and go watch The Departed instead.

If Nicolas Cage is punching guys out, using double in slo-motion, blowing shit up and generally acting like a reject from Rambo-land, but the movie is NOT directed by Michael Bay, then why are you wasting your time? It’s just a bad Nicolas Cage action movie.

Oh, hello Helen Hunt, good to see you. And what are you up to today? Appearing in a Nicolas Cage movie? Well, that’ll be bad then, won’t it? Don’t forget to powder the eight-head before your close-up. Wouldn’t want to blind the camera guy, now would we?

If the director was stupid enough to let Nicolas Cage go blindly improvising into the night (Snake Eyes, I’m looking right at you), then you are watching a bad Nicolas Cage movie.

nicolas cage

If you’re watching any Nicolas Cage movie where he’s wearing army fatigues, immediately get up, go down to the local army recruitment center and apologize for what you’ve done. Not only were you watching a bad Nicolas Cage movie, you were also taking a metaphorical dump on our military.

If the Nicolas Cage movie you have on has the word “Man” in the title there’s a better than average chance you’re walking away disappointed. So make sure you either really like Tea Leoni (fat chance), have a soft spot for Wicker and/or Weather (Michael Caine softens the latter one), or are in the dire need of a Sam Rockwell fix (and really, who isn’t?), before proceeding with the watching.

If Nicolas Cage is playing the brothers of Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz, well then… do I even need to say it?

If the movie is a crappy remake of a crappy horror movie that nobody even liked in the first place, then you’re watching a crappy Nicolas Cage movie (another red flag: the involvement of Leelee Sobieski in said crappy remake).

Angelina Jolie couldn’t hottie her bad Nicolas Cage movie into a good one (or even a watchable one). Nor could Patricia Arquette, Carla Gugino, Gina Gershon, Monica Potter, Tea Leoni, Amber Valetta, Diane Kruger, Penelope Cruz or Meg Ryan (to some extent). So honestly, what chance does Eva Mendes have? Be forewarned.

nicolas cage

If you’re watching the trailer for the new Nicolas Cage superhero movie and find yourself thinking “Nicolas Cage, really? Was Ben Affleck not available?” and don’t immediately freak out that you’ve chosen Ben Affleck over Nicolas Cage, then don’t bother with Ghost Rider. Seriously. Save your money. Catch up on your TiVo. Go see one of the Academy Award movies (other than Babel). Hell, just go back and re-watch Daredevil. At least that superhero flick had a drunk out of his mind Colin Farrell walking around being bald, psychotic, and killing random bar assholes with toothpicks (not to mention an in-her-prime Jen Garner and a cameo by Coolio). And even Ben Affleck as a blind lawyer / red-leathered crime fighter it isn’t nearly as ludicrous as Nicolas Cage playing a 45 year-old motorcycle stunt man who makes a deal with the devil to turn into a burning skull of fury (literally) and fight evil (played by Wes Bentley. Yes, that Wes Bentley, the plastic bag kid from American Beauty. I’m not even kidding. That’s the bad guy. Apparently Elijah Wood wanted too much money.). Yikes, is this movie gonna be bad, or what!

Basically, if Nicolas Cage isn’t drunk, overweight, moony, exceedingly eccentric in a particular way (like, say, he steals babies for Holly Hunter), or bantering with Sean Connery, then you are watching a bad Nicolas Cage movie.

Thus endeth the lesson.

If you use these signs to determine if you’re watching a bad Nicolas Cage movie, you’ll never go wrong. And you’ll save money. Just another service we provide here at TheJay.com. Helping audiences avoid bad Nicolas Cage movies at all costs.

Bangarang!

Bitcoin's rise

So much opinionating about Bitcoin at the moment, I figure I might as well throw in my 0.02 BTC.

I don't want to get into questions of what Bitcoin is, what it might be worth in the future, the pros and cons or ethics. I just want to focus on explaining its recent explosive rise.

What we have is a simple mismatch between supply and demand.

The demand is coming because of media attention and, yes, in part because of the Cyprus "bailout."

But what's really interesting is that there's not much supply.

There are many Bitcoin "whales" out there (no I am not one) who invested early, have thousands of Bitcoins, and would love to sell some 'coin at current prices _ but aren't.

The reasons why they would love to sell are:

1) They know it's not "worth" this much yet (even if they remain long-term believers).
and
2) Volatility is BAD for the long-term health of the Bitcoin market. People who get burned in a Bitcoin bust are not going to come back quickly. Also, it's impossible to conduct much trade in Bitcoin with prices this volatile.

So why aren't the "whales" selling some Bitcoin to stabilize prices?

Answer: Because the early adopters were almost by definition people interested in privacy. They don't want the world to know that they have a lot of Bitcoin, and they certainly don't want to open themselves up to scrutiny by tax authorities by selling on Mt. Gox.

So, any big Bitcoin sales still have to be done on the black market, and that's a daunting prospect for both buyers and sellers.

That is all.

Summa pulchritudo mea donum mundi est

Latin lessons at the Efteling.

Visiting the fairy tale display on "The Emperor's New Clothes," (De nieuwe kleren van de keiser) and I'm confronted with the inscription below. Of course my wife looks to me for translation and I'm baffled. My Latin was never very good in the first place and it's getting to be 20 years ago, after all.

Summa pulchritudo mea donum mundi est 

-Caesar Narcissus

This is a situation where the overriding meaning is clear ('My incredible good looks are god's gift to the world'), but I can't get make the words in front of me say that and remain true to what I honestly suspect are the individual word meanings and cases.

Anyhow. In the cold light of afterward, I find pulchritudo is a 3rd declention noun (feminine), so pulchritudo is the presumptive subject, which is good, and most of the rest falls in place.

"Summa pulchritudo mea" all group together, "My most-high beauty,"

The "est" could have been left off, but there it is: "is."

"Donum," gift, is also nominative, (2nd declention), not accusative as I dimly feared, and I'm almost home:

"My great beaty is a gift".

But there's the "mundi," which I would really have liked to see in the dative, "mundo," = "to the world," or "for the world."

But what we have is "mundi," genitive. Doesn't make much sense intuitively. Gift belonging to the world?

After some refresher Latin grammar Googling, I'm reluctantly calling this "mundi" either a "subjective genetive" or "objective genitive," because a gift raises the idea of a receiver.

I can't find any examples of this _ on the contrary I see donum taking a dative everywhere _ but I'm assuming whoever they let make humorous signs at the country's biggest tourist trap attraction knows more than I do.

So:

"My incomparable beauty is the world's gift." (Subjective genitive, leading candidate for correct translation)
or
"My incomparable beauty is the gift of the world."(Objective genitive)

Either way, I still think it would make more sense with "mundo," given the story.

"My incomparable beauty is a gift to the world."

Latinists? Another use of the genitive I'm not considering? Other possibilities/errors?

SNS - what a difference an external auditor makes !

So, banks balance sheets are often said to be opaque. In the Dutch ministry of finance's discussion of its decision to nationalize SNS Reaal I came across the following (translation of text in bold at bottom below).

The takeaway is that SNS had written down EUR700 million of a EUR9 billion property loans portfolio, but (quietly?) expected to take additional losses of EUR1.4 billion.

But an external auditor said the *base case* was actually additional writedowns of EUR2.7 billion.

That means starting from a loan portfolio worth EUR8.3 billion, SNS and the auditors had a difference of opinion of EUR1.3 billion as to its actual worth.

If I'm reading right, SNS hadn't taken at least EUR1.4 billion in write-downs it KNEW it should have and in the external auditor's opinion EUR2.7 billion _ ie. in the auditor's opinion, SNS should have been writing down about A THIRD of the value of this loan portfolio.

That's not even the worst case scenario.

That's my interpretation of the below. Implications for other European banks with real estate loans?

Page 4 (bullet point 14), my translation:

SNS Property Finance itself estimated the losses it expected on the basis of the information that was available as of the middle of 2012. The Real Estate Portfolio then had a net size of about EUR8.3 billion (gross size of about EUR9.0 billion minus EUR0.7 billion provisions). SNS Property Finance estimated these additional expected losses in a base scenario would amount to about EUR1.4 billion, and in a negative scenario about EUR2.1 billion. The ministry hired Cushman & Wakefield in October 2012 to make an independent valuation of the real estate portfolio of SNS Property Finance. The result of the measurement of the actual economic value on the basis of information available from mid 2012 _ the correctness of which the Ministry then presumed afterward _ was for the real estate loans [to be worth] around EUR5.6 billion in a base scenario and EUR4.9 billion in a negative scenario.
In addition, Cushman & Wakefield indicated that SNS Property Finance's real estate [i.e. actual property, not loans] has a current actual economic worth of between EUR185 million and EUR265 million.
All this can be translated into an expected loss beyond the provisions taken by SNS Property Finance on its real estate loan portfolio of between EUR2.4 billion in a base scenario and about EUR3.2 billion in a negative scenario. These losses are substantially higher than the additional expectable losses estimated by SNS Property Finance. A recently updated overview by Cushman & Wakefield doesn't materially change the picture.

Link to actual report:
http://www.rijksoverheid.nl/bestanden/documenten-en-publicaties/besluiten/2013/02/01/onteigeningsbesluit-sns-reaal-en-sns-bank/fm-2013-213-onteigeningsbesluit-sns-reaal-en-sns-bank.pdf

Dutch consumers shafted on mortgages? Say it ain't so

I've always thought it was clear that Dutch mortgage rates were being set artificially high due to overconcentration in the  banking sector: ABN, ING, and Rabobank dominate.

Exhibit "A" was friends I knew of _ with perfectly healthy finances _ having to pay around 6 percent interest rates for their mortgages while retail depositors were being offered 2 percent on their savings accounts. I figured, with a 4 percent margin, even I could run a profitable bank. And of course banks had the option to get funding even more cheaply than 2 percent from the ECB.

But amazingly, the Dutch antitrust regulator NMa did a study and concluded (my summary): "nothing to see here, move along." (Dutch language).
Key quote:

"A focused investigation into possible coordination did not deliver any evidence of price-fixing between mortgage brokers or other violations of antitrust law" -NMa, May 2011.

Anyhow, today, a Dutch politician, Stef Blok, has woken up and come to the realization that perhaps there is a problem here after all:

From the Volkskrant today:

"The mortgage market in the Netherlands is primarily the battleground of the big Dutch banks: ING, ABN Amro and Rabobank. But because the first two _ due to the crisis _ received state support, they were obliged to charge a higher mortgage rate than competitors who made it through the crisis without support. That was one of the conditions of Dutch state aid.  ING was released from this condition in November, but for a long time, the Rabobank could set rates by itself. So there could be no question of much competition, as minister Blok observed, and therefore the intererest rates are possibly higher than necessary."

The coffee, NMa. Wake up and smell it. Please.

The sad thing is that if all the consumers who are now * still * paying a percent or more too much interest on their mortgages were to successfully sue over this, what good would it do? Due to other financial woes, the banks are all undercapitalized to the point where probably none of them could survive having to give up this ill-gotten 1 percent advantage they have on a sizeable chunk of mortgages, much less pay back the years of income they've gotten from it.

And if they were forced to pay up, they'd go bankrupt. And then, the state would have to intervene to bail the banks out and prevent armageddon; and a state bailout means taxpayers would foot the bill. Net result: a new subsidy from non-home-owners to homeowners.

Justice is hard to find in the banking world.

Queen Beatrix's Abdication Speech In English

(any translation mistakes are mine. Original text at bottom)

28 Januari 2013

As you all know, I hope to celebrate my 75th birthday in several days. I am thankful that it has been granted me to see this day come in good health. At the end of this year we will commemmorate that 200 years ago our country became a kingdom, which ushered in a new era in our history. The coincidence of these two occassions has prompted me to decide to retire from my position this year. It seems to me a good moment to actually take this step, which I have considered for some years now.

I've always considered it an exceptional privilege to commit a large part of my life to the service of our country, and, in concert,  to be able to give form to my duty to the monarchy. Prince Claus was a great support to me in that for many years.

Right up until today this fine role has granted me great satisfaction. It is inspiring to feel oneself involved with people, to sympathize with sadness and to share in times of joy and national pride. I have been able to experience that as well in the Carribean parts of our kingdom, where I have always also found much warmth and friendliness. Therefore I am not abdicating because the job is too burdensome, but from conviction that the responsibility for our country should now be in the hands of a new generation. It is with the greatest faith that I will transfer the monarchy on April 30 of this year to my son, the Prince of Orange. He and Princess Maxima are completely prepared for their future role. They will serve our country with dedication, faithfully preserve the constitution, and with all their talents, impress their own mark upon the kingship.

I feel myself strengthened by the thought that making room for my successor does not mean that I say goodbye to you. I hope that I can meet many of you, upon a time. I am deeply thankful to you for the trust that you have given me in the many fine years in which I was privileged to be your queen.

28 januari 2013

Zoals u allen weet, hoop ik over enkele dagen mijn 75ste verjaardag te vieren. Ik ben dankbaar dat het mij gegund is deze dag in goede gezondheid tegemoet te gaan. Aan het éinde van dit jaar zullen wij herdenken dat ons land tweehonderd jaar geleden een koninkrijk werd, waarmee in onze geschiedenis een nieuw tijdperk aanbrak. Het samenvallen van deze twee bijzondere gebeurtenissen is voor mij de aanleiding geweest te besluiten dit jaar uit mijn ambt terug te treden. Het lijkt mij een goed moment om deze stap, die ik al enige jaren overweeg, nu daadwerkelijk te nemen. 

Ik heb het altijd als een uitzonderlijk voorrecht beschouwd een groot deel van mijn leven in dienst van ons land te kunnen stellen en overeenkomstig mijn opdracht invulling te mogen geven aan het koningschap. Daarbij was Prins Claus mij vele jaren tot grote steun.

Tot op de dag van vandaag heeft deze mooie taak mij veel voldoening geschonken. Het is inspirerend zich bij mensen betrokken te voelen, mee te leven met verdriet en te delen in tijden van vreugde en nationale trots. Dat heb ik eveneens mogen ervaren in de Caraïbische delen van ons koninkrijk, waar ik ook altijd veel warmte en hartelijkheid heb ondervonden.  Ik treed dan ook niet terug omdat het ambt mij te zwaar zou vallen, maar vanuit de overtuiging dat de verantwoordelijkheid voor ons land nu in handen van een nieuwe generatie moet liggen. Het is met het grootste vertrouwen dat ik op 30 april van dit jaar het koningschap zal overdragen aan mijn zoon, de Prins van Oranje. Hij en Prinses Máxima zijn ten volle op hun toekomstige taak voorbereid. Zij zullen ons land met toewijding dienen, getrouw de grondwet onderhouden en met al hun talenten een eigen invulling geven aan het koningschap. 

Gesterkt voel ik mij door de gedachte dat het plaats maken voor mijn opvolger niet betekent dat ik afscheid neem van ú. Ik hoop dat ik velen van u nog dikwijls kan ontmoeten. Ik ben u diep dankbaar voor het vertrouwen dat u mij heeft gegeven in de vele mooie jaren waarin ik uw koningin mocht zijn.

Does S/M fall within Staphorst's zoning plan?

Saw this on a friend's Facebook page (h/t R.V.)

There's more going on in the quaint little vacation bungalows of Holland than one might imagine...

Translation:

Vacation home owners complain about S/M cottages.

Multiple owners of vacation homes in the recreation park "t Veldhuijs" in Ijhorst are suffering disturbance from little S/M houses in the park, and they've brought this to the attention of the municipality of Staphorst. The city confirmed this yesterday.
The S and M activities have been going on for three years already in a chalet in the park. Last year other homeowners protested that. However, then the complaints concerned only one cottage. The city of Staphorst is investigating whether sadomasochism falls within its zoning code.

***

I think the highlight reel from that meeting could be quite amusing.

Motsneeuw

The Dutch weather service was warning of 'motsneeuw' yesterday, reminding me that this country has more words for its weather than the eskimos have for snow.

The longest part of any Dutch news broadcast is the weather report, 10 solid minutes or so. They put it last because it's the most interesting part. Certainly the only part with any practical usefulness.

So back to motsneeuw.

I guess it's a real word, drawn by analogy from the word "motregen." Motregen is like that kind of rain that's so weak and pathetic that it doesn't qualify as rain. However, it is strong enough that if you have go to the store and back in motregen, you will come back soaking wet.

I guess in English we might say motregen is a "heavy mist." Fog won't get you wet, mist won't get you wet either, but a heavy mist just might.

I see Wikipedia calls motregen 'drizzle,' but I think that's wrong, because a drizzle is definitely a kind of light rain, and motregen doesn't quite rise to the level of rain.

Motsneeuw. A kind of misty snow so light that you might not notice it, except it makes it difficult to breathe and tears your face to shreds if you try to bike through it.

Facebook contacts to LinkedIn

Facebook doesn't want to let you bring your FB friends to LinkedIn, the bastards.

Because obviously LinkedIn and Facebook are mortal enemies.

But there's a fairly easy workaround if you have a Yahoo! email account (or just make one).

Okay it's not that easy, but it does work.

First, let Yahoo mail import your Facebook contacts. That's automatic.

You would think that you could then just go to LinkedIn and import Yahoo mail contacts (which is also *supposed* to be automatic).

But LinkedIn won't "see" any Yahoo contacts that originate from Facebook unless they have been changed in some way. So what I'm saying is that, Facebook some 'cripples' the contacts in some way when sending them to Yahoo! Mail, in order to make sure they can't be "reused." By people using LinkedIn, for instance. Yeah. The Bastards.

The Workaround (s).

0) Export your Yahoo contacts list to a .csv file. Hey, wait, this doesn't work? Why? Because Yahoo has also struck a deal with Facebook to cripple the export function for any Facebook-derived contacts. So your export file will come up empty of any Facebook-originated contacts. Just in case you might be planning to bring them over to LinkedIn. Bastards.

1) Hard solution. You could just change every contact in Yahoo Email that cames from Facebook. Any small change will do. Then LinkedIn *can* see them and import them. But of course, that involves a little work.

2) Easier solution. Go to "Print" your Yahoo contacts. Use that "Print" table without actually printing it. Once it's in print form, you can get it to something usable in various ways, like converting to a PDF or table, or even just copy-pasting to Excel or a spreadsheet. Whatever.

3) Easiest, but requires a teeny bit of tech fearlessness. This dude http://campkludge.org/?q=yahoocontactexport has built a workaround.
You save the Yahoo contacts as a .html webpage.
Then download (from sourceforge) a program he made that will convert the webpage to a good old .csv file. (and then just upload it to LinkedIn, instructions below).
That worked for me.
I guess I should caution that you need to follow his directions closely. The idea of dragging and dropping a saved .html page onto an .exe is a little weird (to me) but it works, and you also have a real .csv file for *all* your Yahoo contacts, including the Facebook crippled ones.
Then you go to LinkedIn's "Add Connections" --> "Any Email" and you'll see the additional options "Upload Contacts File" and you can upload your new .csv file and just get a big list. Clink on any FB friends you want to also LinkIn with.

This sounds complicated, I know, but it worked in less than 5 mins for me. Actually the hardest part was once I had the list in front of me in LinkedIn, clicking on which FB friends I wanted to Link with anyhow, since only about half of my FB friends had LinkedIn accounts (and about half of those cared enough about LinkedIn to actually have uploaded a photo or resume).

Anyhow. This was one satisfiying way to circumvent the shitheadedness of The FaceBook.

Dell Latitutde e6410 battery doesn't charge

So that 'future' me (or 'right now' you) do not have reverse-engineer the Manhattan Project to fix this.

1) Pull the battery out and put it back in, and double check that Windows recognizes it (with zero charge, 'not charging,' but on AC power).

2) Hold the little blue FN button down and then press F2. 

3) Or hold it down and press F3, then repeat step 2).

4) Or restart the computer and return to step 1).

That is all. 

Er is sprake van / er is geen sprake van

An easy way to translate these correctly is "it's a matter of" and "it's not a matter of."

Er is spraken van een vergissing = "One could call it a mistake." In other words, somebody blew it but I want to use passive language that avoids saying exactly who.

Er is geen spraken van een vergissing = "It was definitely not a mistake." In other words, it looks like a mistake to many observers, but the speaker wants to deny it.

It's a lot like the French "question," which can also be found in English, and is used in the sense of 'issue.' As in: "it's a question of right and wrong." and "there can be no question of him being temporarily insane."

As an editorial remark, I find the idiom strangely annoying in Dutch. Its use is confined mostly to politicians.

Klaas Knot interview with Het Financieele Dagblad

Below follows a quick and dirty translation of statements made by Klaas Knot in an interview with Het Financieele Dagblad published Saturday.

Before the interview, the newspaper rehashed recent history. Knot had said in early July that the ECB's government bond buying program was in the "deep freezer, and it will stay there" _ only to see the crisis intensify and Draghi say he would save the euro _ by any means necessary _ later the same month. In September, Draghi unveiled the new, as-yet untapped OMT program to buy government bonds. Knot, somewhat surprisingly, broke from the Netherlands' traditional support for German monetary policy, and supported the measure, leaving Bundesbank president Jens Weidmann isolated as sole opponent of the plan on the ECB's governing council.

For ease, I pulled the single best quote up to the top, and then translated most of the rest of the interview.


Q: Draghi says the instrument [OMT] is not intended to help individual countries, but to make sure that monetary policy continues to pass through to the real economy. Is that Kosher?
A: "If we were doing this to lower financing costs for individual countries, this would be at odds with the ban on monetary financing [under the Maastricht treaty which established the euro]. The only goal must be the restoration of the monetary transmission process. That this leads to lower financing costs is a side-effect."

*


Q: Weren't politicians supposed to sort out the euro mess?
A: "Even if politicians take all sensible measures to find a lasting solution to the euro crisis, there are moments when financial markets act irrationally and there is a collective loss of confidence.
Then the speed at which interest rates [on Spanish and Italian debt] were rising caused a disorderliness which also threatened to undermine the political process. In that kind of situation there is only one entity that has both the balance and the decision making speed to act to stem that very destructive dynamic." [: ie, the ECB.]
Q: What would have happened otherwise?
A: "Then the interest rates of Italy and Spain would have kept rising by thirty, forty basis points per day. And then serious problems with debt sustainability would have emerged.
Q: [ECB action was an] Easy way out for the politicians, no?
A: "At a moment like that, speed is essential, because you don't want to let the genie out of the bottle. We wanted to nip that development in the bud, because once the rates get above 8, 9, 10 percent, then you'll have a lot of trouble getting them back again. We couldn't have waited, not even if all the government leaders had come from vacation. They would have also felt obliged to consult with their national parliaments over possible action. You don't have that kind of time at that moment."
Q: Otherwise saving [bailing out] Spain and Italy would have been unavoidable?
A: "The costs of a rescue operation, if we had delayed, would no doubt have been many times greater than the costs of any rescue operation now will be."
Q: Did you know Draghi was going to announce this new plan in July?
A: "I didn't know exactly what he was going to say, but I knew that the technical work in the ECB was already taking place. We had discussed within the ECB that it was unacceptable for us that investors should start pricing in that the eurozone could fall apart; and that combating such a development in interest rates falls completely within the mandate of the ECB."
Q: Well, there was certainly no way back for [national] central banks once he made the statement, no?
A: "I've said from the very beginning what my conditions were for any new program. If those conditions hadn't been met, I would have distanced myself immediately."
Q: So what were your conditions?
A: "I wanted that the countries in question would have strict conditions put upon them and that the IMF be involved. The IMF can, as a party outside the eurozone, credibly check those conditions are met. In addition, I wanted guarantees for an ECB exit as automatically as possible if a country failed to keep to the conditions. A third condition was that we would not set any exact target for interest rates [of government bonds in Spain or Italy]. The ECB must not think that it knows better than the market what the correct interest rates are. The intervention is only aimed at investors who are taking into account a eurozone disintegration."
Q: It's not that irrational that investors take into account the chance the euro could fail, is it?
A: The euro is irreversible. We've all said that together many times. Combating these extreme scenarios falls within the mandate of the ECB and that's also the goal of the new instrument [the OMT].
That's why we're not imposing any interest ceiling on the market, but we are rather reacting to disorderly market movements."
Q: Draghi says the instrument is not intended to help individual countries, but to make sure that monetary policy continues to pass through to the real economy. Is that Kosher?
A: "If we were doing this to lower financing costs for individual countries, this would be at odds with the ban on monetary financing [under the Maastricht treaty which established the euro]. The only goal must be the restoration of the monetary transmission process. That this leads to lower financing costs is a side-effect."
Q: Why would there be conditions imposed on the Spanish government if the instrument is only intended for the real economy?
A: "That has everything to do with the ability of a country to pay back its debt. That improves significantly because of such an imposed adjustment program of spending cuts and reforms. In this way, we as ECB reduce our risks. In addition, we are not alone in influencing the transmission of monetary policy in the economy: the behavior of the governments is at least an equally great influence on the long-term interest rates as our own behavior is."
[long passage of BS]
Q: [Jens] Weidmann of the Bundesbank is isolated [on the ECB governing council in opposing bond-buying], how bad is that?
A: "It's extremely distressing that we weren't able to reach a consensus. In my opinion, I am pursuing exactly the same goals as Weidmann. But I think I can be more effective within the governing council than outside it. Weidmann has chosen a different strategy."
Q: What does it mean that the Netherlands and Germany have been driven apart?
A: "This [the OMT] is a measure that I do not take lightly. It would have been my great preference that governments hadn't put us in this position. I have the same revulsion at monetary financing as Weidmann. I think that the guarantees that are built in ensure that this does not lead to monetary financing. We can, in the short term, create a little breathing room and buy time for the governments so that they can work on long term solutions for this crisis. The previous bond buying program proved to undermine the policy changes that are needed in the long term. The essential difference is that the new program is conditional and that is precisely what supports the long-term solutions."
Q: Is it credible to say the ECB will halt acting if Spain fails to satisfy the conditions?
A: "We will stop with our interventions once the inspection [sic] arrives in the capital. A positive judgment is a necessary condition, not a sufficient condition, to resume the program.'
Q: Suppose Spain doesn't keep to the agreements, and the interest rates start rising again, won't there be a moment when the ECB has to intervene again anyway?
A: No, because in that case a country [ie. Spain] apparently wouldn't be giving its all to reach a sustainable solution for the euro crisis. Then there's no more role for the ECB to play."
Q: Even if that means the end of the euro?
A: "All we can do is contribute what we can if the governments continue giving it their maximal effort toward a sustainable solution. If that condition is not met, everything we can do won't be effective anymore. This is a major step forward to do all that we can do. But we are dependent on politicians to do the same.
Q: The ECB has kept bending in recent years. Are their situations in which it would go still further?
A: "I can't respond to that. It's completely clear that if our governments don't choose a constructive attitude, we can't keep on doing our part. I would point out that we stopped buying Greek state bonds when we saw that Greece wasn't sticking to the agreements."
Q: You won't say that this plan [OMT] is the last and utmost?
A: "Take it from me that we are very close to it, but I can't see the future."

Manhole covers for cash

From NOS: "In Velp, Gelderland [East of Amsterdam], sixty manhole covers were stolen last night. The city has marked off the holes with cones and ordered replacements. No one has been reported injured. Manhole covers are much-loved by thieves. They think the metal is worth a lot."

 And sure enough, there's a whole (no pun intended) Wikipedia entry on the phenomenon.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhole_cover_theft

 A little back of the envelope math.

The price of iron has been *falling* for most of this year. Very generously, it looks like the thieves might get $100-$200 per metric ton for this scrap (assuming of course they have a buyer willing to take 'hot' manhole covers, no questions asked,and pay the full price). Assume the covers were made of pure iron (and not with concrete filling), and weighed 50 kg each. By my calculations, the thieves got away with 60*50 = 3000kg, or 3 tons worth of iron, so a maximum of about $600, or EUR460.

Some doubt about how many thieves would be involved: a minimum of two, I'd say, and a maximum of five.

 I hope it was worth it, in terms of their muscle power, time spent planning, risk of arrest, and the gas they used transporting it to wherever they plan to unload it.                     

Dutch court rules giant phallus is insulting

(Photo by Omroep Brabant, translation of story by NOS below:)

"Wooden penis insulting to Agent A wooden penis in the garden of an artist in Steenbergen is insulting to a police officer. That is the ruling of a court in Breda. Artist Peter Koning put the big wooden penis this spring in his garden and put a sign on it referring to the agent. Koning thinks that the police officer went too far while frisking his daughter. The judge said that the reference is insulting to the agent and levied a conditional fine of 1000 euros."

My comment: the freedom of speech includes the freedom to insult, as many court cases have shown (see: Geert Wilders). The Dutch law making an exemption for police is a mistake. So is the law making it a crime to insult the queen. Showing respect for a police officer (and everybody) should be common sense; not insulting people should also be common sense. People do dumb things when they're angry including saying mean things. But the law should only get involved when verbal anger turns to physical attack or other harassment. IMO.

Press Any Key

If by chance you ever get stuck on the page http://adamatomic.com/pressanykey/ just save yourself the bother. The point is to get you to type a bunch of keystrokes so that you'll see how big a number 100,000 is _ and that that's supposedly the number of civilians who have died because of the war in Iraq. So now you know, save yourself a sermon.

Seif al-Islam Gadhafi speaks

As a public service, these are the remarks made by Seif al-Islam to his defense lawyers in Zintan, Libya, on June 7, 2012, as recorded by defense lawyers in a filing to the International Criminal Court submitted July 31, 2012.July 31page3 July 31page4

But doesn't cold tea kind of miss the point?

This fell into my inbox this afternoon. They want to sell cold tea for 8 euros. What would Arthur Dent say?

Making real tea with cold water










Usables GmbH in Düsseldorf has come up with a real tea that does without hot water.
Dusseldorf, Germany, 26 July, 2012 – Anyone looking for a fruity and refreshing thirst-quencher on hot summer days need look no further.
Making this tea couldn't be simpler. You just pour cold water onto the teabag. The water can flow straight out of the tap onto the bag. The tea draws in cold water and develops its full flavour nonetheless. A refreshing drink is ready in about 8 minutes, so your tea is ready for drinking in next to no time without time-consuming and awkward preparation.
The flavours – Cherry-Cranberry and Apple & Vitamin C – taste natural and distinctly refreshing, says the tea figures' originator. But Usables does not stop here, for the product's main attraction is its "cool tea figures". Fastened to the lip of the cup, these figures are likeable and amusing and are certain to put a smile on the tea imbiber's face as well. If, say, the tea figure is used as an advertising giveaway, the giver will make a lasting and fun impression on the customer, says Usables CEO Oliver Plantenberg.
The teas have a lot going for them in terms of health benefits. For how quickly do we reach for an ice tea or sickly lemonade without thinking of the sugar content? All the teas therefore come with an unsweetened fruit flavour. A 200 ml cup of Cherry-Cranberry has only 5 Kcal, and is also free of artificial sweeteners. 2 cups of tea cover half the daily recommended intake of vitamin C. These teas not only taste different, but are also far better for you than conventional thirst-quenching alternatives.
The tea is now available online for 7.95€ at 


**


End

I think we should make sure this story is not purged from (digital) memory

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Asma al-Assad: A Rose in the Desert

by Joan Juliet Buck | photographed by James Nachtwey

  

        

Photographed by James Nachtwey

Asma al-Assad is glamorous, young, and very chic—the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies. Her style is not the couture-and-bling dazzle of Middle Eastern power but a deliberate lack of adornment. She’s a rare combination: a thin, long-limbed beauty with a trained analytic mind who dresses with cunning understatement. Paris Match calls her “the element of light in a country full of shadow zones.” She is the first lady of Syria.

Syria is known as the safest country in the Middle East, possibly because, as the State Department’s Web site says, “the Syrian government conducts intense physical and electronic surveillance of both Syrian citizens and foreign visitors.” It’s a secular country where women earn as much as men and the Muslim veil is forbidden in universities, a place without bombings, unrest, or kidnappings, but its shadow zones are deep and dark. Asma’s husband, Bashar al-Assad, was elected president in 2000, after the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, with a startling 97 percent of the vote. In Syria, power is hereditary. The country’s alliances are murky. How close are they to Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah? There are souvenir Hezbollah ashtrays in the souk, and you can spot the Hamas leadership racing through the bar of the Four Seasons. Its number-one enmity is clear: Israel. But that might not always be the case. The United States has just posted its first ambassador there since 2005, Robert Ford.

Iraq is next door, Iran not far away. Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, is 90 minutes by car from Damascus. Jordan is south, and next to it the region that Syrian maps label Palestine. There are nearly one million refugees from Iraq in Syria, and another half-million displaced Palestinians.

“It’s a tough neighborhood,” admits Asma al-Assad.

It’s also a neighborhood intoxicatingly close to the dawn of civilization, where agriculture began some 10,000 years ago, where the wheel, writing, and musical notation were invented. Out in the desert are the magical remains of Palmyra, Apamea, and Ebla. In the National Museum you see small 4,000-year-old panels inlaid with mother-of-pearl that is echoed in the new mother-of-pearl furniture for sale in the souk. Christian Louboutin comes to buy the damask silk brocade they’ve been making here since the Middle Ages for his shoes and bags, and has incidentally purchased a small palace in Aleppo, which, like Damascus, has been inhabited for more than 5,000 years.

The first lady works out of a small white building in a hilly, modern residential neighborhood called Muhajireen, where houses and apartments are crammed together and neighbors peer and wave from balconies. The first impression of Asma al-Assad is movement—a determined swath cut through space with a flash of red soles. Dark-brown eyes, wavy chin-length brown hair, long neck, an energetic grace. No watch, no jewelry apart from Chanel agates around her neck, not even a wedding ring, but fingernails lacquered a dark blue-green. She’s breezy, conspiratorial, and fun. Her accent is English but not plummy. Despite what must be a killer IQ, she sometimes uses urban shorthand: “I was, like. . . .”

Asma Akhras was born in London in 1975, the eldest child and only daughter of a Syrian Harley Street cardiologist and his diplomat wife, both Sunni Muslims. They spoke Arabic at home. She grew up in Ealing, went to Queen’s College, and spent holidays with family in Syria. “I’ve dealt with the sense that people don’t expect Syria to be normal. I’d show my London friends my holiday snaps and they’d be—‘Where did you say you went?’ ”

She studied computer science at university, then went into banking. “It wasn’t a typical path for women,” she says, “but I had it all mapped out.” By the spring of 2000, she was closing a big biotech deal at JP Morgan in London and about to take up an MBA at Harvard. She started dating a family friend: the second son of president Hafez al-Assad, Bashar, who’d cut short his ophthalmology studies in London in 1994 and returned to Syria after his older brother, Basil, heir apparent to power, died in a car crash. They had known each other forever, but a ten-year age difference meant that nothing registered—until it did.

“I was always very serious at work, and suddenly I started to take weekends, or disappear, and people just couldn’t figure it out,” explains the first lady. “What do you say—‘I’m dating the son of a president’? You just don’t say that. Then he became president, so I tried to keep it low-key. Suddenly I was turning up in Syria every month, saying, ‘Granny, I miss you so much!’ I quit in October because by then we knew that we were going to get married at some stage. I couldn’t say why I was leaving. My boss thought I was having a nervous breakdown because nobody quits two months before bonus after closing a really big deal. He wouldn’t accept my resignation. I was, like, ‘Please, really, I just want to get out, I’ve had enough,’ and he was ‘Don’t worry, take time off, it happens to the best of us.’ ” She left without her bonus in November and married Bashar al-Assad in December.

“What I’ve been able to take away from banking was the transferable skills—the analytical thinking, understanding the business side of running a company—to run an NGO or to try and oversee a project.” She runs her office like a business, chairs meeting after meeting, starts work many days at six, never breaks for lunch, and runs home to her children at four. “It’s my time with them, and I get them fresh, unedited—I love that. I really do.” Her staff are used to eating when they can. “I have a rechargeable battery,” she says.

The 35-year-old first lady’s central mission is to change the mind-set of six million Syrians under eighteen, encourage them to engage in what she calls “active citizenship.” “It’s about everyone taking shared responsibility in moving this country forward, about empowerment in a civil society. We all have a stake in this country; it will be what we make it.”
In 2005 she founded Massar, built around a series of discovery centers where children and young adults from five to 21 engage in creative, informal approaches to civic responsibility. Massar’s mobile Green Team has touched 200,000 kids across Syria since 2005. The organization is privately funded through donations. The Syria Trust for Development, formed in 2007, oversees Massar as well as her first NGO, the rural micro-credit association FIRDOS, and SHABAB, which exists to give young people business skills they need for the future.

And then there’s her cultural mission: “People tend to see Syria as artifacts and history,” she says. “For us it’s about the accumulation of cultures, traditions, values, customs. It’s the difference between hardware and software: the artifacts are the hardware, but the software makes all the difference—the customs and the spirit of openness. We have to make sure that we don’t lose that. . . . ” Here she gives an apologetic grin. “You have to excuse me, but I’m a banker—that brand essence.”

That brand essence includes the distant past. There are 500,000 important ancient works of art hidden in storage; Asma al-Assad has brought in the Louvre to create a network of museums and cultural attractions across Syria, and asked Italian experts to help create a database of the 5,000 archaeological sites in the desert. “Culture,” she says, “is like a financial asset. We have an abundance of it, thousands of years of history, but we can’t afford to be complacent.”

In December, Asma al-Assad was in Paris to discuss her alliance with the Louvre. She dazzled a tough French audience at the International Diplomatic Institute, speaking without notes. “I’m not trying to disguise culture as anything more than it is,” she said, “and if I sound like I’m talking politics, it’s because we live in a politicized region, a politicized time, and we are affected by that.”

The French ambassador to Syria, Eric Chevallier, was there: “She managed to get people to consider the possibilities of a country that’s modernizing itself, that stands for a tolerant secularism in a powder-keg region, with extremists and radicals pushing in from all sides—and the driving force for that rests largely on the shoulders of one couple. I hope they’ll make the right choices for their country and the region. ”

Damascus evokes a dusty version of a Mediterranean hill town in an Eastern-bloc country. The courtyard of the Umayyad Mosque at night looks exactly like St. Mark’s square in Venice. When I first arrive, I’m met on the tarmac by a minder, who gives me a bouquet of white roses and lends me a Syrian cell phone; the head minder, a high-profile American PR, joins us the next day. The first lady’s office has provided drivers, so I shop and see sights in a bubble of comfort and hospitality. On the rare occasions I am out alone, a random series of men in leather jackets seems to be keeping close tabs on what I am doing and where I am headed.

“I like things I can touch. I like to get out and meet people and do things,” the first lady says as we set off for a meeting in a museum and a visit to an orphanage. “As a banker, you have to be so focused on the job at hand that you lose the experience of the world around you. My husband gave me back something I had lost.”

She slips behind the wheel of a plain SUV, a walkie-talkie and her cell thrown between the front seats and a Syrian-silk Louboutin tote on top. She does what the locals do—swerves to avoid crazy men who run across busy freeways, misses her turn, checks your seat belt, points out sights, and then can’t find a parking space. When a traffic cop pulls her over at a roundabout, she lowers the tinted window and dips her head with a playful smile. The cop’s eyes go from slits to saucers.

Her younger brother Feras, a surgeon who moved to Syria to start a private health-care group, says, “Her intelligence is both intellectual and emotional, and she’s a master at harmonizing when, and how much, to use of each one.”

       

Photographed by James Nachtwey

In the Saint Paul orphanage, maintained by the Melkite–Greek Catholic patriarchate and run by the Basilian sisters of Aleppo, Asma sits at a long table with the children. Two little boys in new glasses and thick sweaters are called Yussuf. She asks them what kind of music they like. “Sad music,” says one. In the room where she’s had some twelve computers installed, the first lady tells a nun, “I hope you’re letting the younger children in here go crazy on the computers.” The nun winces: “The children are afraid to learn in case they don’t have access to computers when they leave here,” she says.
In the courtyard by the wall down which Saint Paul escaped in a basket 2,000 years ago, an old tree bears gigantic yellow fruit I have never seen before. Citrons. Cédrats in French.

Back in the car, I ask what religion the orphans are. “It’s not relevant,” says Asma al-Assad. “Let me try to explain it to you. That church is a part of my heritage because it’s a Syrian church. The Umayyad Mosque is the third-most-important holy Muslim site, but within the mosque is the tomb of Saint John the Baptist. We all kneel in the mosque in front of the tomb of Saint John the Baptist. That’s how religions live together in Syria—a way that I have never seen anywhere else in the world. We live side by side, and have historically. All the religions and cultures that have passed through these lands—the Armenians, Islam, Christianity, the Umayyads, the Ottomans—make up who I am.”

“Does that include the Jews?” I ask.

“And the Jews,” she answers. “There is a very big Jewish quarter in old Damascus.”

The Jewish quarter of Damascus spans a few abandoned blocks in the old city that emptied out in 1992, when most of the Syrian Jews left. Their houses are sealed up and have not been touched, because, as people like to tell you, Syrians don’t touch the property of others. The broken glass and sagging upper floors tell a story you don’t understand—are the owners coming back to claim them one day?

The presidential family lives surrounded by neighbors in a modern apartment in Malki. On Friday, the Muslim day of rest, Asma al-Assad opens the door herself in jeans and old suede stiletto boots, hair in a ponytail, the word happiness spelled out across the back of her T-shirt. At the bottom of the stairs stands the off-duty president in jeans—tall, long-necked, blue-eyed. A precise man who takes photographs and talks lovingly about his first computer, he says he was attracted to studying eye surgery “because it’s very precise, it’s almost never an emergency, and there is very little blood.”

The old al-Assad family apartment was remade into a child-friendly triple-decker playroom loft surrounded by immense windows on three sides. With neither shades nor curtains, it’s a fishbowl. Asma al-Assad likes to say, “You’re safe because you are surrounded by people who will keep you safe.” Neighbors peer in, drop by, visit, comment on the furniture. The president doesn’t mind: “This curiosity is good: They come to see you, they learn more about you. You don’t isolate yourself.”

There’s a decorated Christmas tree. Seven-year-old Zein watches Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland on the president’s iMac; her brother Karim, six, builds a shark out of Legos; and nine-year-old Hafez tries out his new electric violin. All three go to a Montessori school.

Asma al-Assad empties a box of fondue mix into a saucepan for lunch. The household is run on wildly democratic principles. “We all vote on what we want, and where,” she says. The chandelier over the dining table is made of cut-up comic books. “They outvoted us three to two on that.”

A grid is drawn on a blackboard, with ticks for each member of the family. “We were having trouble with politeness, so we made a chart: ticks for when they spoke as they should, and a cross if they didn’t.” There’s a cross next to Asma’s name. “I shouted,” she confesses. “I can’t talk about empowering young people, encouraging them to be creative and take responsibility, if I’m not like that with my own children.”

“The first challenge for us was, Who’s going to define our lives, us or the position?” says the president. “We wanted to live our identity honestly.”

They announced their marriage in January 2001, after the ceremony, which they kept private. There was deliberately no photograph of Asma. “The British media picked that up as: Now she’s moved into the presidential palace, never to be seen again!” says Asma, laughing.

They had a reason: “She spent three months incognito,” says the president. “Before I had any official engagement,” says the first lady, “I went to 300 villages, every governorate, hospitals, farms, schools, factories, you name it—I saw everything to find out where I could be effective. A lot of the time I was somebody’s ‘assistant’ carrying the bag, doing this and that, taking notes. Nobody asked me if I was the first lady; they had no idea.”

“That way,” adds the president, “she started her NGO before she was ever seen in public as my wife. Then she started to teach people that an NGO is not a charity.”

Neither of them believes in charity for the sake of charity. “We have the Iraqi refugees,” says the president. “Everybody is talking about it as a political problem or as welfare, charity. I say it’s neither—it’s about cultural philosophy. We have to help them. That’s why the first thing I did is to allow the Iraqis to go into schools. If they don’t have an education, they will go back as a bomb, in every way: terrorism, extremism, drug dealers, crime. If I have a secular and balanced neighbor, I will be safe.”

When Angelina Jolie came with Brad Pitt for the United Nations in 2009, she was impressed by the first lady’s efforts to encourage empowerment among Iraqi and Palestinian refugees but alarmed by the Assads’ idea of safety.

“My husband was driving us all to lunch,” says Asma al-Assad, “and out of the corner of my eye I could see Brad Pitt was fidgeting. I turned around and asked, ‘Is anything wrong?’ ”

“Where’s your security?” asked Pitt.

“So I started teasing him—‘See that old woman on the street? That’s one of them! And that old guy crossing the road?

That’s the other one!’ ” They both laugh.

The president joins in the punch line: “Brad Pitt wanted to send his security guards here to come and get some training!”

After lunch, Asma al-Assad drives to the airport, where a Falcon 900 is waiting to take her to Massar in Latakia, on the coast. When she lands, she jumps behind the wheel of another SUV waiting on the tarmac. This is the kind of surprise visit she specializes in, but she has no idea how many kids will turn up at the community center on a rainy Friday.

As it turns out, it’s full. Since the first musical notation was discovered nearby, at Ugarit, the immaculate Massar center in Latakia is built around music. Local kids are jamming in a sound booth; a group of refugee Palestinian girls is playing instruments. Others play chess on wall-mounted computers. These kids have started online blood banks, run marathons to raise money for dialysis machines, and are working on ways to rid Latakia of plastic bags. Apart from a few girls in scarves, you can’t tell Muslims from Christians.

Asma al-Assad stands to watch a laborious debate about how—and whether—to standardize the Arabic spelling of the word Syria. Then she throws out a curve ball. “I’ve been advised that we have to close down this center so as to open another one somewhere else,” she says. Kids’ mouths drop open. Some repress tears. Others are furious. One boy chooses altruism: “That’s OK. We know how to do it now; we’ll help them.”

Then the first lady announces, “That wasn’t true. I just wanted to see how much you care about Massar.”

As the pilot expertly avoids sheet lightning above the snow-flecked desert on the way back, she explains, “There was a little bit of formality in what they were saying to me; it wasn’t real. Tricks like this help—they became alive, they became passionate. We need to get past formalities if we are going to get anything done.”

Two nights later it’s the annual Christmas concert by the children of Al-Farah Choir, run by the Syrian Catholic Father Elias Zahlawi. Just before it begins, Bashar and Asma al-Assad slip down the aisle and take the two empty seats in the front row. People clap, and some call out his nickname:

“Docteur! Docteur!”

Two hundred children dressed variously as elves, reindeers, or candy canes share the stage with members of the national orchestra, who are done up as elves. The show becomes a full-on songfest, with the elves and reindeer and candy canes giving their all to “Hallelujah” and “Joy to the World.” The carols slide into a more serpentine rhythm, an Arabic rap group takes over, and then it’s back to Broadway mode. The president whispers, “All of these styles belong to our culture. This is how you fight extremism—through art.”

 Brass bells are handed out. Now we’re all singing “Jingle Bell Rock,” 1,331 audience members shaking their bells, singing, crying, and laughing.

“This is the diversity you want to see in the Middle East,” says the president, ringing his bell. “This is how you can have peace!”

February 25, 2011 9:03 a.m.