Diary
Rarely do I see good short films. Two Cars, One Night is a sweat little film. I stumbled across it on home page of youtube. I have no idea how this film became so popular within little more than a week. I guess most of us appreciated the romance of childhood once we are adults. Watch it.Two Cars, One Night
Diary
So your mother told you that one day you also can be president ...She exaggerated a bit your chances of getting into the White House—nothwithstanding the recent episode with Michaele and Tareq Salahi. But today you can step into the presidential flight simulator and make a decision about how to handle the request of your generals to increase signanficantly the troops fighting in Afghanistan. The first article will take you behind the scences of the process that led to the decision over a three months period. Make your decision. Then think about how you would address the country. Give a little speach to anyone who want to listen. Next you can read or watch how Obama did address the nation. Finally, you can read two diametrically opposed reactions. David Brooks cheers your decision wheres Frank Rich finds it fundamentally flawed. After taking the ride, tell your mother whether you still want to be president. How Obama Came to Plan for ‘Surge’ in AfghanistanFree Ride in the Presidential Flight Simulator
By PETER BAKER (NY Times, Dec 6, 2009)
WASHINGTON—On the afternoon he held the eighth meeting of his Afghanistan review, President Obama arrived in the White House Situation Room ruminating about war. He had come from Arlington National Cemetery, where he had wandered among the chalky white tombstones of those who had fallen in the rugged mountains of Central Asia.
Diary
Switzerland’s Invisible Minarets By PETER STAMM Winterthur, SwitzerlandBackground: A Novelists explains what just happened in Switzerland
THREE years ago I was invited to the Tehran International Book Fair; afterward I traveled around the country. The mosques I visited were so empty as to give the impression that Iran was as secular as Western Europe.It wasn’t until I took a trip to a place of pilgrimage in the mountains that I saw large numbers of the faithful. The traffic started piling up even before my group reached the town of Imamzadeh Davood. A few of the pilgrims were making the trek on foot, together with the sheep they intended to sacrifice. The narrow streets were bustling just as at Christian places of pilgrimage: booths crammed with junk, groups of teenagers taking pictures of each other, every nook and cranny packed with candles lighted by believers in the hope their wishes would be fulfilled.
Diary
Crashing a party that you are not invited to takes guts. Crashing Obama’s first state dinner takes more than nerve. Before you decide to imitate Michaele and Tareq Salahi and crash the next state dinner, wait and see what happens to the couple. DOUGLASS K. DANIEL, Associated Press Writer, reports: WASHINGTON - Crashing a state dinner at the White House apparently takes a security breakdown as well as some kind of nerve. The Secret Service is looking into its own security procedures after determining that a Virginia couple, Michaele and Tareq Salahi, managed to slip into Tuesday night’s state dinner at the White House even though they were not on the guest list, agency spokesman Ed Donovan said.Couple Crashes Obama’s First State Dinner
Diary
Jill Lapore reviews in the New Yorker a number of books that try to explain why the US is so violent in international comparison. Historians have shown that the murder rate in America has always been higher than in Western Europe. Why? Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky, who met three years ago in a Hartford drug-treatment center and shared a room in a halfway house in between stints in prison, were both seasoned burglars, though Hayes, a forty-four-year-old crack addict, was quite a bit older than Komisarjevsky, who was twenty-six, and the great-grandson of a Russian princess. In the spring of 2007, both men were paroled.Why is American history so murderous?
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