PROCRASTINATION

Yeah, writing up articles all the time gets really sort of dull. I'm trying not to let myself get too far behind, though. These are the highlights of my readings from the last two weeks; you'll notice that the Economist is still conspicuously absent; that's due to the fact that it's still arriving conspicuously late - UNTIL THIS SATURDAY. It was sitting on my desk Monday morning, and there's no post on Sundays, which means only one thing - it actually arrived ON TIME on Saturday. Amazing. Expect article postings to resume a more normal schedule this starting this weekend.

Oh, and on a side-note, the narrative responses for the Foreign Service are due tonight and I submitted them promptly at 1:13pm. Unless I somehow completely blow them away with my brilliance, though, I don't expect to hear from them until late January. Sigh.


"Where do ghosts come from?" Mostly your brain, but possibly also magnets.

"Captives" is an amazing and extensive look at this decade's violence in Gaza and the capture and detention of Gilad Shalit by Palestinians. Even more, though, it's about how difficult any peace deal might be, because the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are not synonymous. Separated geographically by Israel, they are also controlled by two different factions - Gaza by Hamas, the West Bank by the (relatively) more moderate successor of the PLO, the Palestinian Authority. This excerpt below sums it up well enough, but the whole article is really very good.

"Such potential solutions have been poisoned by the frustration that both Israelis and West Bankers feel toward Gaza. The political distance between the two Palestinian entities has caused many Israelis to start talking of a three-state solution, rather than two. “Hamas in Gaza is a fact of life until further notice,” Yossi Alpher, a political consultant and a former Mossad officer, observed. “All our ideas about dealing with them have failed.” Shavit and other Israeli intellectuals have proposed that the Egyptians deed a portion of the Sinai to Gaza, to make the Strip more viable—“a semi-Dubai,” as Shavit terms it. The Egyptians have expressed no interest. “Egypt’s strategy for Gaza is to make sure it’s Israel’s problem,” Alpher said."

"Clearing oasis trees felled ancient Peruvian civilisation," or, those who do not learn history's mistakes are doomed to repeat them, non-Eurocentric edition.

"Rap Sheet" examines the history of American gun ownership and the history of Americans as a murderous sort of people. Guns, it turns out, probably just enabled us to act out our more murderous impulses, rather than creating them, because - get this - we became a democracy before we were civilized. Seriously. Read, it's good for a laugh, and sort of does make you wonder why we keep creating new "frontiers" outside our homes and borders that we have to "defend" ourselves from...

"Governments should get real on drugs" is a scientific editorial by David Nutt, who was ousted this month as the chairman of Britain's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs for pointing out that marijuana causes fewer health problems and deaths than either alcohol or tobacco. If this fact is news to you, or even if it isn't, you should take a look.

And finally, recovering nicely from that Sam Shepard debacle a few weeks ago, "Alone" has renewed my faith in the fiction editor's judgment. It's a sort of slow-moving story, but it isn't exactly boring... I kept at it, anyway, and I'm glad I did. No spoilers, just click it if you like short stories.