Tag Archives: Places

Visions in the Tundra

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Michael Lewis has an excellent, long (16 pages) article about Iceland in Vanity Fair — Wall Street on the Tundra (via Paul Kedrosky). Read it all:

…you can’t help but notice something really strange about it: the people have cultivated themselves to the point where they are unsuited for the work available to them. All these exquisitely schooled, sophisticated people, each and every one of whom feels special, are presented with two mainly horrible ways to earn a living: trawler fishing and aluminum smelting. … At the dawn of the 21st century, Icelanders were still waiting for some task more suited to their filigreed minds to turn up inside their economy so they might do it. Enter investment banking.

And don’t miss the little gem about Iceland’s huldufolk (hidden people) tucked away in there:

[Iceland's President] Olafur Ragnar Grimsson theorizes that the surfeit of spirit-beings stems from Icelanders’ abiding sense of loneliness and isolation … Public opinion polls and academic studies show more than half of all inhabitants think it possible or probable — 10 percent call it “certain” — they share their island with otherly beings, ranging from grumpy glacier-dwelling trolls to occasionally gregarious hidden people. … Earlier this year, Iceland’s highway agency had to change the course of a new road leading out of Reykjavik after citizens protested that the original route would disturb an elf’s lair under a big rock. “There are people who believe in elves, and we try to show respect for people’s beliefs,” said Viktor Ingolfsson, an official of the department. “If that means building around an elf stone, we try to accommodate.”

As superstitions go, huldufolk are pretty innocuous. But you have to wonder if the commonplace acceptance of illusory beings made it slightly easier for them to believe in illusory wealth.

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“Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn’t vote for two reasons – because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin. … She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that ‘We Shall Overcome.’

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination.  And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change.

America, we have come so far.  We have seen so much.  But there is so much more to do.”

Automotive Eletrician who Built Bomb Walks Free

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If the Swiss have their private banks, which accept lucre no matter how it was obtained, why can’t Canada have its automotive electricians who build bombs out of the goodness of their heart for customers who are eager to blow up cars, bridges, or ‘something heavy’ in their home country, which conveniently happens to be miles away from Canada?

In other news, Al Qaeda’s bomb making division is planning to relocate to Canada. “Canada offers exciting opportunities to bomb makers from around the world to source materials for explosives and deliver these into the right hands with relatively little fear of prosecution”, it said in a press release. “As long as they don’t arm them, of course. Or know the people who do.” A visibly excited Canadian Trade Commission spokesman said, “Forget Afghanistan and Iraq. Canada is the place to be for sourcing explosives.” Prodded by an aide with about something that sounded suspiciously like a mumbled “war on terror”, he hastily added: “As long as you don’t actually use the darn things here, of course. I mean, you ought to only use them in places we don’t care very much about. Like India, or maybe Djibouti. Or France.”

David Warren's Wrestling with Islam

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David Warren. A must read.

The moral order of Islam, while it overlaps with Judaism, Christianity, and all of the world’s “great religions” in many crucial respects, is nevertheless unique in its emphases. Building upon such essentially tribal values as trust, honour, manliness, loyalty, the duty of hospitality, it builds a moral order in which, I will dare to say, justice is the pre-eminent value. And it is justice, beyond all other values, that is demanded in the confrontation between the Muslim and the world, between the insiders of the Islamic family and the outsiders — the people who still live beyond the Islamic “realm of peace”.

How radically different from the Christian worldview, itself deriving from the Jewish, in which, from its own Gospel beginnings, the worldly virtues are presented as written into the natural order, accessible to all whether Christian or not, so that it is quite possible for a non-Christian to be a good and worthy man. Or, turning this over, in its full universal implications, Christ proclaims that there can be no justice in this world — only in heaven. Every single one of Christ’s parables hinges not on justice but on truth, and at the center of the Christian revelation is this uncanny statement, “That you shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free.”

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Kashmir – Is Compromise Possible?

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Kashmir is not negotiable Looking for information on some bank addresses, I came upon this picture of Kashmir. Noble sentiment, yes. But I have this gut feeling that most Indians would be happy to accept the LoC as an international border provided there is real peace. On the other hand — I know as long as there is the slightest of doubts in the average Indian’s mind about the sincerity of the Pakistani leadership, there will be not an ounce of willingness to compromise. Somehow, I don’t think the situation on the Other Side is too different. Fundamentally, there is a chasm of trust, and I think it is too great a chasm to be bridged in our lifetime.