Having spent time getting to know young British Muslims, I believe that comments like Mr. Straw’s will be counterproductive. That is because the niqab is a symptom and not a cause of rising tensions.

"The young women who choose to wear the niqab, Mr. Rehman told me, are "rebelling against what their parents tell them to do, they’re trying to differentiate themselves.”

Following up on the "let it go" thread.

Covered Faces, Open Rebellion

Dr. Smith warned against getting ahead of the day’s announcement and envisioning the disappearing Romulan warbirds of “Star Trek” on the horizon.

“It could easily take years to figure out what the stuff is really good for from a practical, pragmatic standpoint. But, boy, it sure is really cool from a short-term standpoint.”

I should have posted this next to the editorial on space policy, as Trekkies may recall The Treaty of Algeron:

The treaty stated that the Federation would refrain from researching or implementing cloaking technology. However, an amendment added later allowed the Federation to install a Romulan cloaking device on one ship, the Defiant, for use only in the Gamma Quadrant and under the supervision of a Romulan officer, and under the condition that the Federation would share its intelligence on the Dominion.

See also the articles, [2] at Memory Alpha. (In reviewing these links, I am reminded of the incredible geekiness (and perhaps wonkiness) of Star Trek.)

Scientists Take Step Toward Invisibility

The book fairly crackles with brio. Yet reading it can feel a little like watching a Michael Moore movie.

Ugh. Skip it. And is it just me, or does anyone else find those Colbert interview segments less than useless? Neither the Woz segment nor the Dawkins segment was worth the time.

% Night comes around, and the kids sit around the fire.

Terri: I'm so hungry I could eat at Arby's!
Lisa: Oh my gosh!
Nelson: That *is* hungry.
Lisa: *Really* hungry...

-- "Das Bus"

Next you'll find Dawkins guesting on an episode of South Park.

Now as a special treat courtesy of our friends at the Meat Council, please help yourself to this tripe.

Rod: "But who brings baby storks?
Ned: There's no such thing as storks! It's all God!

...

"Tim, this controversy _could_ put more meat in the seats."
Lovejoy: "I'll be a white Al Sharpton!"

The God Delusion, By Richard Dawkins

The film will carry you deep inside Mr. Gould’s musical mind: an awesome place to be, and not always a comfortable one.

"I detest audiences. Not in their individual segments but en masse, I detest audiences. I think they are a force of evil."

See also:

DANTE: You hate people.
RANDAL: But I love gatherings. Isn't it ironic?

Back to the new Gould film:

The most astonishing moment comes when Mr. Gould fluently wends his way through the climactic section of the unfinished final fugue from Bach’s “Art of Fugue,” spouting thematic analysis and quoting Albert Schweitzer as he goes.

Now reread the beginning of Gödel, Escher, Bach.

To give an idea of how extraordinary a six-part fugue is, in the entire Well-Tempered Clavier by Bach, containing forty-eight Preludes and Fugues, only two have as many as five parts, and nowhere is there a six-part fugue! One could probably liken the task of improvising a six-part fugue to the playing of sixty simultaneous games of chess, and winning them all. To improvise an eight-part fugue is really beyond human capability.

...

The six-part fugue [in the Musical Offering] is one of Bach's most complex creations, and its theme is, of course, the Royal Theme. ... To write a decent fugue of even two voices based on it would not be easy for the average musician!

...

All in all, the Musical Offering represents one of Bach's supreme accomplishments in counterpoint. It is itself one large intellectual fugue, in which many ideas and forms have been woven together, and in which playful double meanings and subtle allusions are commonplace. And it is a very beautiful creation of the human intellect which we can appreciate forever.

Glenn Gould Films - Report

"Tension is rising very dramatically. There is the will to kill."

This is not Baghdad. This is the city of lights.

In an exercise that aims to celebrate the identity of the job applicant, another organization, A.P.C., has started an alternative project — the videotaped résumé — that trains job seekers how to sell themselves on camera.

Follow through!

Anger Festering in Areas Scarred in Riots

The tone of the video -- a seven-minute clip, entitled “Impossible is nothing” -- seems too serious to be parody, yet too over-the-top to be credible.

Mr. Vayner’s experience shows the not-so-friendly side of the social-networking phenomenon.

He said he may have lost his chance to work on Wall Street, and added that he may not succeed in securing a financial job at all.

This should be a lesson to those in the APC program.

A Student’s Video Résumé Gets Attention (Some of It Unwanted)

His bedroom is at one end of a dusty old apartment on a chaotic street in the center of the city. At the other end is his office, his desk piled high with papers. In between are books — some 30,000 of them — arranged neatly on floor-to-ceiling shelves. One section is devoted to the 100 or so books he has written and translated over the course of his lifetime.

"Gamal al-Banna has opinions that fall outside the scope of religion. The people, of course, oppose anybody who talks about things that violate religion."

He doesn’t press his ideas, but instead takes the long-term view, hoping to plant a few seeds that will, in time, take root and spread. He recognizes that, at the moment, the other side is winning the contest of ideas in Egypt, and the region.

"If religion was correctly understood, it would be a power of liberation. But it is misunderstood, and so it is driving us backward."

"My idea is that man is the aim of religion, and religion only a means. What is prevalent today is the opposite."

"They don't want freedom of thought. Free thought, that will condemn them."

A Liberal Brother at Odds With the Muslim Brotherhood

We think we know books, and the imposing entrance of the New York Public Library reminds us of their weighty and solemn importance. In the great traditions of the West, the book is a foundation upon which mighty edifices of knowledge are constructed. But if you pass through the lobby to the library’s main exhibition hall and gallery, something else is revealed.

They aspire not to disclose the timeless, but to discern the transient, to clasp the texture of experience — a passing moment, an instant’s glimpse, a sensation as compressed and meticulously evoked as a haiku.

In so many of the ehon, when the evanescent is carefully contemplated, something timeless is revealed.

Ehon: The Artist and the Book in Japan

Taxpayers may now face patent infringement suits if they use a tax strategy someone else thought of first.

Huh?

You Can’t Use That Tax Idea. It’s Patented.

Lately, string theory has come in for considerable criticism. And so, this is an auspicious moment to reflect on the state of the art.

Brian Greene defends string theory against its detractors.

The Universe on a String