Jace Clayton:

Borders are about violence and fixedness and centralised authority. Music is about pleasure and fluidity and endless waves of influence.

Decius, from the archive:

Al Qaeda is not an organization. It is a scene.

From Tim Winton's Breath:

The angelic relief of gliding out onto the shoulder of the wave in a mist of spray and adrenaline. Surviving is the strongest memory I have; the sense of having walked on water.

From the recent archive:

Though some federal appellate courts do not appear to require any degree of suspicion to justify a search, one federal district court stated categorically that all laptop searches conducted at the border require at least reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing.

From way back:

Neyshabur, one of the oldest cities on the Silk Road, was a major cultural crossroads that boasted one of the ancient world's first universities. It produced many of Iran's greatest poets and was also known for its turquoise.

In Blue as the Turquoise Night of Neyshabur, Kayhan Kalhor combines Western strings and Indian tabla with his core ensemble of kemancheh, santur, and ney.

The piece is an arabesque-like elaboration of an Iranian melodic formula called chahargah. According to Kalhor, chahargah means literally "fourth time," and its mood reflects the quiet and introspective atmosphere of the fourth part of the old Iranian daily cycle, from late night until just before dawn.

Rory Stewart:

Without music, time has a very different quality.

Rupturing Borders

Back in October, in the NYT:

The average Afghan spends one-fifth of his income on bribes.

Now, Dexter Filkins reports from Kabul:

Governments in developing countries are often riddled with corruption. But Afghans say the corruption they see now has no precedent, in either its brazenness or in its scale.

Ghafar said he routinely paid bribes to the police who threatened to hinder his passage through Kabul, sometimes several in a day.

Nowhere is the scent of corruption so strong as in the Kabul neighborhood of Sherpur.

Often, the corruption here is blatant.

Follow the money, and then ask:

What happens when the militants you have been encouraging grow too strong and set their sights on Pakistan itself?

Filkins' The Forever War was published last year to wide acclaim:

... searing, unforgettable ... amazing characters and astonishing scenes ... visceral ... brilliant, fearless ...

From an excerpt:

There was no law anymore, no courts, nothing — there was nothing at all.

Finally, from a few months ago:

We're not going to win this war.

Bribes Corrode Trust

In August, I noted:

Carla Bruni, first lady of France, has a new album.

Recently, Bruce Sterling reported:

During a ceremony in Paris, France’s first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy donated the total profit from her newly released album to children’s charities in Haiti.

Entitled “Comme si de rien n’etait” (Simply), the album is Bruni-Sarkozy’s third release. Since its debut in July, it has sold 190,000 copies in France and 220,000 copies abroad.

Regarding the purpose of her donation, the First Lady was simple in her remarks: “I’m pleased that music can be used for this.”

In other music news:

In a stunning turn of events, the US music industry has ceased its long-time litigation strategy of suing individual P2P file-swappers.

Kindly Gesture

"Take one of these. You'll love it," the officer said. Compliments of Uncle Sam.

"Whatever it takes to make friends and influence people."

From the archive:

People say to me, "Whatever it takes." I tell them, It's going to take everything.

"I'm more concerned in the long term about the results of the drug war in Afghanistan than I am about resurgent Taliban," said the NATO military commander.

Little Blue Pills Among the Ways CIA Wins Friends in Afghanistan

Marcia Angell:

After much unfavorable publicity, medical schools and professional organizations are beginning to talk about controlling conflicts of interest, but so far the response has been tepid. They consistently refer to "potential" conflicts of interest, as though that were different from the real thing, and about disclosing and "managing" them, not about prohibiting them. In short, there seems to be a desire to eliminate the smell of corruption, while keeping the money.

Have you seen Perfume?

From the archive:

The average Afghan spends one-fifth of his income on bribes.

The current method for disclosing conflicts of interest among medical researchers is an honor system in which researchers report their relationships with drug and medical-device makers, but nobody checks to make sure the information is accurate.

Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption

Coca-Cola douches were a part of folklore about birth control during the 1950s and 1960s, before effective contraceptive methods were readily available. It was rumored that the acidity of Coca-Cola killed sperm, and the classic coke bottle provided a convenient "shake and shoot" applicator. Recently, an old study from our group confirming the spermicidal effects of various Coca-Cola formulations was awarded the 2008 IgNobel prize in chemistry. The press releases surrounding our IgNobel award might have repopularized this method, and soft drink douches are apparently still used to prevent pregnancy in resource-poor settings. There are, however, many reasons why women should not rely on this method.

From the archive:

Have ever seen a "soft look" at or a "lighthearted take" on teenage pregnancy?

Coca-Cola douches and contraception

Scientists already knew that appropriate scents can improve the mood of those who wear them. What they recently discovered is that when a man changes his natural body odor it can alter his self-confidence to such an extent that it also changes how attractive women find him.

The perfume's effectiveness may have nothing to do with a woman’s appreciation of the smell, and everything to do with its psychological effect on the man wearing it.

From the archive:

Like humans, squirrels must first be familiar with an individual before an odor can become associated with that other animal.

The squirrel kept running and finally stopped when it realized there was still nowhere to go.

Focusing on offenses to the eyes, ears, noses, taste buds, and skin of inhabitants of England’s pre-Industrial Revolution cities, Hubbub transports us to a world in which residents were scarred by smallpox, refuse rotted in the streets, pigs and dogs roamed free, and food hygiene consisted of little more than spit and polish.

You can make all sorts of useful things out of exploded whale, including perfume.

The reality is that, despite fears that our children are "pumped full of chemicals", everything is made of chemicals.

The scent of a man

Mark Steyn:

General Motors now has a market valuation about a third of Bed, Bath And Beyond.

From 2005, Rattle:

The valuation of porn must remain steady, or the new economy created by the Internet breaks down.

Have our shiny new SIVs broken down?

You won't buy our shitty cars.

So we'll be taking your money anyway.

Martin Wolf knows a steal when he sees one:

There are, nevertheless, formidable pressures for further falls in valuations, as leveraged players continue to be forced to offload assets at bargain prices.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb prefers to steer clear:

Many hedge fund managers ... are just picking up pennies in front of a steamroller. And sometimes the steamroller accelerates.

Rattle would like to be quite clear:

I think Decius and I should start practice claiming that MemeStreams is worth four billion while keeping a straight face.

For Paul McCulley, practice makes perfect -- but you must wait your turn:

When we all try to do it at the same time, we actually do less of it.

One step forward, and two steps back:

Valuation decisions are ubiquitous in human interaction and thought itself. Incorporating information valuation into a computational layer will be as significant a step forward as our current communication and information retrieval layers.

Can You Still See the USA in Your Chevrolet?

Mr. Tarantino may be most celebrated for his imaginative explosions of violence, but his greater talent lies in structuring long periods of inaction, in the leisurely construction of dramatic contexts, in sketching large casts of characters and getting them to interact with one another through dialogue that generally has no direct bearing on the plot.

From the archive:

A film buff tells a friend that he's finally broken "the code" -- the mystery behind the character and story threads that bleed from one Quentin Tarantino movie or screenplay into the next. His friend is less than impressed.

It calls to mind a rollicking R-rated version of Mad magazine featuring Dave Chappelle and Quentin Tarantino.

Walk down the right back alley in Sin City and you can find anything.

Tarantino and Rodriguez, who worked together on Sin City, will each write and direct an hour-long feature for Grind House, which will be released in early 2006.

Positively Proustian (By Comparison)

“They’re about as god-awful as they can get,” said Robert Barbera, chief economist at ITG.

“This is pretty breathtaking stuff.”

Earlier this month:

"The results, I confess, were somewhat surprising, and not in a good way."

From the archive:

How many people should own homes, anyway?

Can't someone else do it?

Recall:

"This place is really nice and tranquil."

Beware:

It seems the perpetual garage sales were annoying some residents.

Home Sales Fell Sharply in November