Greg Sanders

Anyone who goes by "the great" is an egomaniac 2011-04-18

Ramses the II, or Ramses the Great, was a successful conqueror who guaranteed his place in history by the incredible measures he took to ensure that he could not be forgotten. This is shown all over Egypt, but for the moment it makes a good way to introduce his work in Luxor temple. He built and expanded temples, but he also made sure that he laid claim to older sites and statues by having his name, in hieroglyphic cartouche format, over that of prior rulers. Rejecting the sentiment of "turnabout is fair play" he then commanded that his cartouche be chiseled incredibly deeply into the stone, to ensure that such a rewrite could not happen to him.

Statues of Ramses II guard the entrance to Luxor temple, and he never seems happy to have just one statue of himself when he could build two or four. That said, the pharaoh may defend himself by noting that statues do fall down and their faces all too often are eroded, which is all the more reason to make backups. At least the statues didn't always have the same pose, he would sometimes change his headdress or even his height between statues. This also happened when depicting the gods, and I suppose this reflected different aspects of himself or just was meant to keep things visually interesting.  However, we don't really see any Ramses at leisure, Ramses making a silly face, or the like.

Perhaps the least charming aspect of Egyptian temples is their tendency to depict chains of captured or beheaded foes, the pharaohs beating down enemies with their maces, or a sitting depiction of the pharaohs stepping on various rivals. As a testament to the range of peoples on Egypt's borders, these enemies tend to come in at least two ethnicities shown to the left and right. In this particular display each enemy had a cartouche with the name of the captured city, like a conquest tracking info-graphic out of the game Civilization. If I ever find an image of a bunch of these little guys pulling down the overarching figure of the king, I will snap it up in a second.

Promotional images of Luxor temple 2011-04-18

If you were an archeologist studying a mall, a "you are here" sign is among the best finds you could hope for. It would give an overall picture of the malls original dimensions and labels for various parts. A promotional image, would be a reasonable second best alternative. Such a picture could show the overall design of the mall and people using it in a typical manner. Luxor temple has the latter, and its shown on the right. Unfortunately, I haven't yet figured out an effective way to really highlight etchings, so you'll have to make do with seeing a bit of an outline in the left two thirds of the image.

What's shown is the front of Luxor temple, what's called a pylon. These two towers with an arch in between are a template for Egyptian temples. Ordinary citizens couldn't go past the pylon. They were limited to seeing decorations on the exterior and to viewing the icons of the gods on those special occasions when the priests would bring items to a window. However, there were still grand processions that were open to popular participation. The person in the right part of the image is leading a grand parade through the avenue of the sphinx from Karnak temple to Luxor Temple.

Forbidding all but a few people from even entering these grand monuments seems like a blasted waste to me. If the god are going to ask people to worship them, allowing visitors to come through the front door every now and then seems only reasonable. However, in fairness to Egyptians, just seeing the front itself must have been pretty dang impressive.

Addendum on farmland in Egypt [2011-04-18]

I spoke with our tour guide more today to nail down some uncertainties about land ownership in Egypt. She said more than 60% of the arable land is under government ownership, and that the farmers who work the land pay rent in taxes or in kind. The government does often want to claim the land for other purposes, but it sounds like the farmers successfully resist in a fair number of cases. I just saw today (April, 27) one notable example of successful resistance in the middle of Cairo. What's more, when land is seized it is reimbursed with other land. The replacement will likely be of lower quality, but that sounds like a hedge against lowballing and as a side effect slows the standard developmental transition from being a rural country to an urban one.

On the whole, these policies sound like a hedge against absolute poverty but that may also lock-in farmers. That lock-in could become a problem should urban unemployment decrease. Apparently the new government's agenda includes transitioning land from government to farmer ownership and renewed irrigation projects. Given the level of backlash against some of Mubarak's privatization policies, I'd suspect that any such steps would be pursued rather gingerly. Apparently achieving wheat self-sufficiency is also being discussed as a policy goal. I don't recall reading even liberal economist talking up self-sufficiency as a goal, but it may be a proxy for moving from subsistence farming towards a higher productivity agriculture. As an example, there's a narrow-gage railway in West Luxor for moving sugar cane which suggests that it is, or at least was, a crop that could be sold at market. I suspect that agriculture reform paired with the urban unemployment problem, will be the key tests for the upcoming democratically elected government.

Next: Luxor temple. That involve going out of chronological order, but I figure what readers I have left may be sick of farm talk.

A limited look at land distribution in Egypt 2010-04-18

The farm we visited on the banks of the Nile hadn't existed more than half a century ago. This may seem odd, Egypt is one of the world's oldest civilizations and since the beginning it has been centered around the Nile. However, until the building of the Aswan high dam, the great river's flooding was uncontrolled. When we later visited the dam, I learned that it had increased Egypt's arable land by some 30%.

When the land became safely available, Ahmed's family had claimed a small portion of it. As I understand it, West Luxor has any number of similar claims for 4-5 acres with nebulous ownership status. Denial of electricity in some cases aside, the farmers are allowed to keep their land but it wouldn't officially be there property. From what I've read elsewhere, this is important as it would mean that the land wouldn't be part of the official economy and thus couldn't easily be loaned against or sold. This, in combination with unemployment in the cities, would give farmers a reason to prefer subsistence agriculture to many alternatives.

I don't have a clear sense of whether the middle class farm we visited was representative. We did often drive by fields that were far greater than half a dozen acres. However, I'm told that in many cases the expanses are subdivided into any number of smaller farms. Thus the dam and land policy seems to effective guarantee an opportunity to earn a livelihood for some farmers, weather allowing. 

All that said, as Ahmed was the first to acknowledge, the 30% gain in arable land was not without a price. First off, there's an opportunity cost in losing the economics of scale from larger farms. More important is a legacy I'll discuss when we get to Aswan: building the dam meant that tens of thousands of Nubians were relocated from the banks of what became Lake Nasser. The human toll was supplemented by other environmental impacts such as the denial of rich silt and a raising of the water tables.

Subsistence farming: not just for the Egyptian lower classes 2011-04-18

When I think of reasonably successful farmers, I normally assume that they'd be selling their farm goods at market. However, our host Ahmed was a subsistence farmer in the Egyptian middle class. The 4-5 acres he was cultivating was aimed at feeding his twenty-some person extended family household. As you'd expect, this involved any number of ingenious techniques for making a range of products. For example, on the right is more than a dozen loafs of sun bread. While they do have an oven, the climate gives them the ability to get a fair amount of their baking done by just leaving the dough out. The end product is fine, not the best bread you've ever tasted, but it could work well combined with a good dip. The ingenious part is the baking 'stones' which are a reprocessed version of a common material that merchants are happy to give away with a purchase: egg cartoons.

Avoiding the market involves using a fair number of hand made tools, some of which are passed down through the generations. For one example, see the grindstone the family uses. While the weight is fairly daunting, the end of the video shows that even a child could operate it once you overcome the static friction when it is at rest. From what Ahmed said, not every farm has such a tool, others from the village come by to use it. I suspect that there is some in-kind trading involved as various households allow others in the village to take advantage of their specialty tools.

Manually operated grinding wheel.

Finally, those that read the last entry may be asking: so how did they afford new lights and a washing machine? The answer is that instead of selling food they use surplus labor to produce handcrafted furniture. The techniques involved in creating the wooden furniture were easily demonstrated but effective. Holes were bored with hand crafted tools and attachments made by exploiting the natural expansive properties of wood. The final pieces were great to sit on and quite attractive and I'm guessing could be sold at a much higher margin than agricultural goods. Obviously the family were good savers, reserving money for major purchases like an appliance or a trip to Mecca for Ahmed's mother. I think the key enabling factor is the small size and wide distribution of the farms, which I'll discuss in a future entry.

[Minor update: I've decided to mention Ahmed by name.]

Practical impact of the Egyptian revolution [on a farmer] 2011-04-18

Being in country for only a few weeks, let alone on a tourist trip, is regularly disparaged as a means of gaining in country knowledge. However, while hardly science, it still is a means of augmenting knowledge about a country. In this case, Overseas Adventure Travel includes a few interviews with admittedly a rather biased sample: a farmer in Luxor, a dinner with an Arab family in east Aswan, and a visit with a Nubian family in west Aswan.

Our talk with a middle class farmer was quite illuminating, his English was excellent and based on the answers he gave to our group he seemed both willing to speak honestly about his life and wise enough to see beyond his immediate situation. Like everyone else we've spoken to on the issue, he strongly favored the revolution. There wasn't much in the way of protests in west Luxor, based on what he said, but citizens did gather downtown to watch the news and cheer on the protesters.

The most immediate impact on their lives is that their farm now has electricity. That was a fairly shocking rate of progress until he explained the reason: the Mubarak government hadn't been extending electricity to parts of west Luxor in hopes that the farmers would move, which would free up more land for development. Based on this anecdotal evidence, it seems as if the difference between west and east Luxor may be the result of political battles rather than special traits of the Nile or a lack of bridges. However, that policy has now been reversed and electricity has reached the farm. This seems to be a fairly straightforward case of popular accountability sweeping away low-benefit unpopular policies. I have no idea what development approach would be best for Luxor in the long term, but I do think the high unemployment rate in Egypt shows the limitation of resort oriented development. In the meantime, I'm glad electricity has arrived to this farm and with it not television, but a washing machine (my mother noted that particularly delivery), which should greatly change how the females of the household spend their busy days.

What a difference the Nile makes: East vs. West Luxor 2011-04-18

As much as I enjoyed the trip to the Egyptian Museum, I really started to feel like I was in Egypt on the first day in Luxor. We boating over the Nile, visited with a middle class farmer, and walked the streets to a business that empowers local women, and enjoyed the view from a rooftop restaurant. I'll post on each of those in turn, but first the journey to the west and back. As a bit of context, ancient Egypt's cities were on the east bank of the Nile while the tombs were on the West side. Our guide has told us that this belief resulted from the path of the sun which when it sets in the west travels through the underworld to return to the East. While the Nile runs the length of the country there are only twenty some bridges and between Luxor and Aswan the two sides were often quite distinct from one another at times almost seeming like different countries.

Luxor proper is a city with a tourist district along the water with continuing density, five story plus buildings and the like, further in. By comparison, we spoke to a farmer directly on the west bank of the Nile and he didn't really consider himself a resident of the city. There are towns and some reasonably tall buildings amid the west bank farms, but I'm told that most of them are multi-generational extended family dwellings. [The picture to the left is of a few such buildings in West Luxor]. Population growth is fairly high here, 2-3 children for middle class farmers but 5-6 for poor ones, and from what I'm told that's driving most of the construction. Due to this growth, upper levels of buildings are often left intentionally unfinished, with rebar showing. This allows for adding more floors when finances allow or family size demands expansion. This didn't seem as common in the center of west bank towns, I would guess that this may be a somewhat recent trend.

[Update: I changed the post date to properly position it chronologically.]

Leaving Cairo for Luxor 2011-04-17-18

After the Egyptian museum and lunch, we had a bus breakdown which ate up time for any smaller trips. So after a quick stop by the Egyptian tomb of the unknown soldier and the viewing stand where Sadat was assassinated, we were off to the airport.

The flight was fairly uneventful aside from some good conversation about reading material about Lawrence of Arabia and a female counterpart that had separately worked against the Ottomans.

We were  staying at the Steinberger Nile Palace hotel in Luxor, which was off the Nile and in the city proper, albeit a fair walk south of the main river walk and Luxor temple. They had a nightly show, admittedly a more dinner theater than high culture one, put on by the staff in a lovely courtyard.  The balconies were a real perk, both for entertainment and a place for quick drying the limited pieces of clothing I ha brought.

To my chagrin, I did have a couple instance of failures to communicate with waiters that night. First, after ordering for two, I ended up with two beers rather than the beer and wine I'd selected for my mother and I.  I just went with it, but, apparently, a waiter was wandering around the wrong end of the table with an extra cup of wine that that I could have easily snagged. Second, I'd joined my mother and two friends after dinner for a hotel meal that was free for them due to their late arrival the previous night,  but I would have had to pay for it.  I wasn't really hungry and told the manager I'd be content with a piece of birthday cake I'd brought from the birthday party of someone in our tour. I was worried enough about the protocol there that I just resigned myself to paying when the waiter kept bringing dishes. That got him chewed out by a manager and an intentionally untouched dish was reclaimed. We left an extra tip. These fairly ridiculous instances of conflict aversion ended up just complicating things for everyone, and as my negotiating practicums have shown I need to stick up for myself early and often. To ameliorate the angst of this past paragraph, here's a picture of the first cat I saw in Egypt while wandering around Luxor that night. It wasn't an especially interesting trip, but it was still great being out on my own for the first time.

I'm still figuring out the character of Cairo 2011-04-17

The streets themselves kept my interest but although I didn't get any sort of big picture feel for Cairo. That may change once I've walked around some, I think navigating and recognizing neighborhoods is key to learning the character of a city. Of course, major planned features like D.C.'s mall, New York's central park, or the lakefront in Chicago give an easy point of reference that speed the process. Rivers like the Nile help, but rivers are a defining feature for so many cities that even with giant papyrus themed towers aren't quite enough to do the trick.

That said, I am shallow enough to be charmed by statues wearing fezzes without know the details of who is being depicted. This particular one also has an interesting pose. There's some sort of stand behind him and it looks like he's rested an overcoat on it. I tend to be a fan of simplifying styles, but there's something about including the right unnecessary detail that can really make a piece for me.

The streets of downtown Cairo [2011-04-17]

Mixed use is the rule, cars and buses share the streets with pedestrians. Our guide pointed out that the mix varies from neighborhood to neighborhood with richer areas like Heliopolis being more automotive and downtown having more buses pedestrians and donkeys. Bicycling doesn't seem aren't here, but I did see rental places in Luxor. The use of donkeys isn't driven by the price of gas, which is highly subsidized, but instead by the price of new cars. This can also be seen in the age of many of the automobiles.

I normally prefer not to drive in cities, and that preference would be quite vehement in Cairo. Instead, on our return, we'll be ticking to the Metro system and we've gotten confirmation that we will be staying downtown rather than off isolated by the pyramids or the airport. I wonder if they have a smart card to add to my collection. Presumably not, I'll have to research that back at the hotel.

Lunch in downtown Cairo [2011-04-17]

Hands down, my favorite part of Egyptian cuisine has the various dips and sauces that accompany the bread. There's both more variety and a mix of stronger and more sophisticated flavors than I've gotten at Middle Eastern restaurants back home. The pepper mixes and garlic dip were particularly tasty, which is good as the chicken I got for the entrée was fairly bland. Subsequent meals have had quite flavorful grilled chicken, so don't take that as a knock against Egyptian meats in general.

Fruit, typically citrus and bananas, are a common Egyptian dessert. The most distinctive other treat are variation on shredded wheat pastries or bars. In this case, they came with cottage cheese so I just sampled but subsequent encounters have been consistently positive. Honey is a major ingredient and I'm sure their loaded with calories, but the taste combines familiar ingredients in unfamiliar but pleasing ways.

Upper floor of the Egyptian Museum 2011-04-17

While the lower floor was chronologically organized, the upper floor was more thematic. Our guide took us through the Tutankhamen tomb exhibit and we were suitably overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of items stored in a rather small tomb. I do wonder what happened to everything that was stolen from the other 62 tombs in the valley of the kings. Were they sold overseas? to nobles? to future pharaohs under the table? or just melted down for their valuable components? The sheer opulence of the mummy's head piece is impressive but it hadn't grabbed me from an artistic perspective. I felt differently about the throne and much of the jewelry, those were just beautiful designed.

We'd also learned that the young king had been buried with multiple sizes of crutches and shoes because apparently you de-aged 5-10 years when going into the afterlife. I'm guessing that was a benefit aimed at those who died in old age. Speaking of after-lives, the Egyptians and the Chinese both would include scaled down items, such as ships in the Egyptian case, and modeled representations of servants. I suspect they arrived at the idea separately for practical reasons.

After finishing with the main draw, we turned to the guidebook to choose what small percentage of the rest of the exhibits we could see. The animal mummies, some for companionship, some for food, were memorable and included a mummified crocodile. Another room had Greek mummies, which unsurprisingly had rather different styles. Finally we rushed through battalions of model soldiers and got quick looks at diorama of ancient Egyptian  life. Due to the rush, I'm not sure of the purpose for which they were constructed, but it's a legacy I'm grateful for.

Ground floor of the Egyptian Museum 2011-04-17

There aren't many museums that bear the name of significant countries. There's the British museum obviously, but you don't really hear about the Japanese museum, the French museum, the American museum, etc. Being the preeminent museum's honor and the national honor at stake simultaneously. The collection must be both exhaustive to earn the "the"and so superior that it doesn't merely suggest that it's merely the only museum of note.

The Egyptian Museum accomplishes both tasks, its collection draws from all over Egypt and millennia of history. Thus, without the benefit of pictures, trying to summarize the visit would be rather a distraction from completing the rest of the trip. So, instead, a few observation. First, while Egyptian art can be rather statuary-oriented and repeats many of the same style, this does have the advantage of making it easier to see the changes. Some pharaohs have stern expressions, but a few smile. In early years both men and women are sculpted topless but as the centuries pass some of the women pick up dresses. One key point that will come up repeatedly in the temples is that classical Egyptian art was replete with color, although it has faded in many of the most familiar pieces.  Hieroglyphics can thus have a visual appeal similar to that of an illuminated manuscript when seen in their full glory.

My favorite art style is probably that of the monotheist pharaoh, Amemhotep IV [who changed his name to Akhenaten]. He introduced a less idealized style, although while more realistic in some ways, it was also more stylized than others. I'm not particularly entranced by perfect physical specimens.  I'll take interesting styles and artistic freedom to experiment any day. However, while the various periods, notably the Middle Kingdom, did experiment with realism, ultimately, the more classical style seems to have won out. I wonder how the history of world art would have changed if Amemhotep IV changes would have stuck. The Egyptians were first in so many things, and I don't doubt that their influence has carried through the ages.

Passing through Tahrir Square 2011-04-17

Our trip to the Egyptian Museum took us through Tahrir Square twice, due to confusion about which entrance to use. The boundaries were a bit ambiguous: square is more of a figurative term, it is quite active, and there's multiple entrances. That final attribute and its centrality made it a hard-to-cordon-off gathering place. There were also any number of large buildings bordering the area which provide easy roosts for cameras and snipers.

However, that Sunday, it just seemed to be the  vital center for the city's infrastructure, under construction but not revolutionary. As the news accounts have covered, the big protest day was Friday, which corresponds with Islamic services and, as a result, the main day off in Egypt. The prior week's protest had been preempted by the arrest of Mubarak, and I'm told that later this week the long standing and long hated emergency law was finally lifted. I don't know the status of the remaining political prisoners, since I've actually been catching less Egyptian news here than when I was home, but I suspect this should be a fairly effective sign of progress toward a more stable society.

The main exception to a typical city center square was the building that ha been the former home of Mubarak's National Democratic Party which went up in flames after the revolution started. Last I heard, there hasn't been any attribution of responsibility on that one, although the popular theory is that it was self-inflicted to destroy records. I've got no particular insight on that score, but I am rather curious what will happen to the building. It borders the Nile and is visible from the square, an it is obviously on a prime piece of real estate. I suspect whatever happens with the building, it will be a symbol of the larger fortunes of the party. Supposedly, this party has more of a chance in the upcoming elections as they're to be held in only six months.  With the exception of the Muslim Brotherhood, no other group has existing campaign infrastructure. However, that doesn't accord with what I've heard from some of the locals.

Bargaining Practicum: Cairo [2011-04-16-17]

By the end of my trip to China, I was starting to pick up the ability to walk away. That was a skill I put to use with mixed success in Cairo. On the first day, we were stuck way out of town and our guide mentioned hitting a local mall as something to do within free time. I checked with the travel service at the desk about getting a ride their and back and their price was nowhere close to the $4-5 each way that my guide had mentioned. I got them down from 300 (~$50) Egyptian to 150 Egyptian (~$25) and was offering 100 Egyptian ($17) which was probably still too high but an acceptable markup for something to do. They told me to go talk to the taxis outside, and we failed to reach an agreement.

I'm fairly satisfied with that outcome, although my counter price should have been lower. I think they also may just honestly charge more than my guide thought when it comes to the pickup on the way back. I ended up swimming a bit, prepping my room, and checking out the hotel instead. I also exploited my two paid for meals and skipped getting a lunch. In the Cairo section, I actually overdid it a bit on the free food. By the time I left I was better knew my limits.

I did no other shopping of note in Cairo, sadly my subsequent bargaining experience have been les impressive.

Driving through Heliopolis to and from downtown Cairo 2011-04-17

People told me to take lots of photographs when I visited Egypt. After this post, they'll probably stop saying that. Helipolis is a ritzy neighborhood between the Airport and downtown Cairo. The mansion to the right was the fanciest, I believe it was own by a European baron, but there were any number of gated houses for the well to do visible directly off the highway.

Speaking of that highway, Cairo traffic was just as notoriously bad as everyone says. We did get stuck fairly often and my mother watched someone cut across at least three lanes of heavy traffic, including a bus, within about a cars length. Horns were rather prevalent and apparently it's rather difficult to even travel times. That said, I didn't pay that much attention to the traffic as I hate driving in cities in any event. One sign of hope, Cairo is apparently expanding its subway in reality after promising to do so for some time. We also later saw what might be a light rail track but perhaps is just the route for an electric train, as I don't recall hearing anything about that.

The traffic isn't surprising. Egypt's capital has 20 million people, more than a fifth of the countries 85 million total, but it only has two subway lines. A mix of underinvestment in infrastructure and incredibly cheap gas probably bare much of the blame. Thanks to subsidies, apparently 1 Egyptian pound a liter is common. That said, while infrastructure may improve, I doubt the new government is going to take on subsidies anytime soon unless the economic situation forces their hand.

Saving the downtown itself for the next entry, on the way back the bus managed to break down. Thankfully our driver managed to get us off the road safely and was able to call in another driver who managed to fix the problem. This whole trip is a bit of a special case, but I do feel substantially strengthened in my conviction to find walkable downtown hotels. That's no proof against breakdown of course, but I do feel I understand cities better when I navigate them by foot and transit and I'm biased towards transit-friendly cities in any event. It's not yet clear where we'll be at the end of the trip, but we'll find a way to try out the Metro in our last few days in Egypt one way or another.

Catching up on entries

Sorry to have a bit of a backlog. I've been rather enjoying Luxor, although so far my favorite Temple is Queen Hatshepsut's. The architecture is lovely and it depicts her expedition to Punt, now known as Somalia, rather than her stepping on conquered countries or lines of her beheaded enemies.

Welcome to Free Egypt [2011-04-16]

The flight was a smooth one and the terminal appears to be quite new. The initial heat, sandstone style, Arabic, and other design elements all announce the location, but otherwise this seems like a standard word class terminal. Many of the people on the tour came over on this flight, which was a rather different experience than my arrival in Hong Kong a day before my tour in China. I suppose it isn't surprising that airports may become one of the more cosmopolitan and universal parts of world culture, although of course only to those who fly which excludes a large portion of the world's population. As I quickly learned, airport hotels are another area of similarity. The Iberotel has an all in one resort quality that reminds me of some time shares I've seen and includes both a Chinese and an Italian restaurant. That said, it does have its charms in the form of large stained glass windowss and some eat room art.

In any event, our next meeting is four hours away, so I may try to do some quick local exploring under the guidance of our guide. She gave the title to this particular post as its her first post-revolutionary tour. I must say, that was fairly exciting to hear. While I did speak to some friend Egyptians and Egyptian-Americans on the plane ride, that was the first time I actually have really heard commentary on the revolution directly from a local. That has a rather different feel than watching it on television or reading updates from twitter.

Underway to Egypt [2011-04-15/16]

As I write this our Egyptian Air flight is passing south of Barrington en route to Cairo. I'd flown up to JFK, which had a nicer terminal than I expected and an unusual system of check-in desks at terminal four that seemed geared handling large numbers of passengers and easy reassignment of airline slots. As expected, I had to leave and re-enter through security which seems unnecessary but I did enjoy riding the air train between the terminals.

I believe I've managed to pack everything I need, about twenty-five pounds worth in my main bag and fifteen in my backpack, a good portion of that being my laptop. I would have liked to have done a more research on Egypt prior to the trip, although my obsessive following of the recent revolution means I know a reasonable amount about the present situation.

Reading the complimentary copy of the Daily News Egypt does bring home Egypt's status as a country that recently went through a revolution. In the day's news: eight of twenty six governors were fired, former President Mubarak remains detained for questioning despite claims of health issues, the treatment of 35 detained protesters is debated and a range of tycoons and former government leaders find their financial dealings investigated or their ability to leave the country denied. Critically though, it's a state more thrilling than frightening, the future is still unclear but disputes are of critical importance but appear to be handled through political and judicial venues. There's still much to be settled, but there's always something cheering about legal consequences for those once above the law.

While it's doubtless provincial to say so, I'm still impressed by international flights. The Spartan outlook of Southwest, my domestic carrier of choice, means that the TV screens, meals, and excellent features like under-seat outlets still strike me as extraordinary. We got a nice bag of freebies including a practical items like a toothbrush and toothpaste and a sleep mask, the ever popular standby of cheap headphones, and, to my surprise, a set of socks. There's also an under seat Ethernet plug but I have no idea if it's active, I'm told by a friend that I have a shot at wifi on my Lufthansa flight home but for  now I'd say Egyptair has treated me rather well. Now I should probably get some sleep, as at this point it's 4:12 am Cairo time.

Transit blogging: JFK Airtrain [2011-04-15]

The Airtrain at JFK appears to be a fairly recent addition. I only rode it two stops, but it appears that there are lines (possibly via bus) to connect to several different means of traveling to New York proper. This is exciting news to me as it means we may have a chance to leave the airport during our the six hours we'll be laid over on our way home in two weeks.

As is fairly universal with these new airport train system the platform is completely separated from the tracks as a safety measure. In America, that practice seems largely reserved to the airports although when I was in Beijing the newer lines also employed it. I do wonder to what extent older system can be reverse-engineered to add such precautions. I recall a handful of suicides in recent in the D.C. Metro that disrupted whole lines and traumatized the Metro drivers in ways likely to stick with them for much of their lives. However, I suspect that there are considerable cost issues or engineering problems in achieving the required precision, as I don't recall ever seeing retrofitting to add these to an existing system.

(I could probably find the answer with some quick googling, but I figure that's not the best use of my time in Egypt and there's a hefty per minute charge on the broad band.)

Fandom has made it, what next?

First off, I'd like to second Freddie over at L'Hote that if someone says they enjoy difficult text, like Ulysses, you should believe them. For example, I don't fully understand the old school revival RPG movement - not my thing for half a dozen different reasons - but they're certainly welcome to have their fun and I'm glad that they find intellectual stimulation in games with crazy deathtraps and the like. I haven't actually read Ulysses, but having heard about Joyce while wandering Dublin I may well try someday.

Second, I'm going to quote myself, with some edits, from the comments of that particular entry. I disagreed with Freddie's argument that fandom had gotten all they wanted from the commercial establishment. Instead, I think it would be fair to say that the commercial market has given fandom as much as they give anyone. No one, ever, consistently gets good writing, good direction, good actors/actresses, and large budgets. (That said, I want M. Night Shyamalan to stay the hell away from the Avatar the Last Airbender franchise until, at the very least, he develops a sense of humor.)

Fandom has arrived, but arriving brings the unpleasant realization that the long-desired prize still involves artistic compromise for mass-market appeal. Moreover, the secret language and community of niche connoisseurs is lost as many of the crown jewels of fandom become available with a lower cost of entry.

Balkanization seems like the inevitable result of this process, but aside from showing basic respect to those with different tastes, I think the question before fandom is how best to use the new-found power with what remains of a the sense of community.

I do think a wide variety of fan groups, helped shape the usage of new opportunities from digital technologies to get some major wins over the last decade or two:

• Subtitles or quality dubbing are now much more the standard.
• The death of full screen adaptations of wide screen films.
• A wider sense of many and varied forms of animation and sequential art/graphic novels/comics as a medium for adults.
• Availability of a wide range of overseas cultural products for conventional purchase or viewing rather than bootlegs and rare showings on late night television.

I'll concede that much of that might have happened anyways due to the internet, but I think total technological determinism is a mistake. Regardless, mutual respect is certainly a worthy goal, but rather than focusing on gratitude I think old and new fandom communities would do better to find ways to chase new goals that may have been long cherished by other cultural communities (see the sub/dub issues).

Just throwing a few ideas out there, but:

• Championing new mediums, often awkward, rather than responding in a curmudgeonly manner to the next newcomer.
• Alyssa Rosenberg has raised the issue of just outright importing more British shows rather than creating new American versions. I think that's a worthy goal that could be steadily expanded upon.
• Find and support economic models for realizing grand artistic visions that aren't reliant on big budgets and the commercial interference that comes with them.

In pragmatic terms, there's still a lot of bad stuff in popular culture and uniting against common enemies can be a good way of avoiding counter-productive griping by common groups. That said, sometimes fights about fandom will just be necessary. There can be very good things in emergent medium from a gender/sex perspective but there's also matters that are worse than even the low standards of existing pop culture. I don't think that's a battle that can be finessed.

Kronos Quartet Concert

As with many people, I knew the Kronos Quartet primarily through Requiem for a Dream (and the even better known remix for the Two Towers trailer). While one viewing of the quality but draining film was enough, I did buy the soundtrack and was excited when they appeared on the program for the Clarice Smith Art Center at the University of Maryland. Seeing them in concert was quite an experience: a mix of live strings, recorded voices and sometimes music, striking light work. For one song they had a vocalist/storyteller that proved a welcome addition. For the record, the performers were two violinists, David Harrington and John Sherba, Han Duftt on viola, and Jeffrey Zeigler on cello.

Proceeding in order, we were both fond of their performance of Ben Johnston's arrangement of Amazing Grace. While that particular song is highly traditional, Johnston's take is avant-garde and approaches the well-known melody from a variety of angles with increasing complexity. Based on the program there was a specific method to the approach, but I may need to speak to some more music-savvy friends before I could really understand the underlying logic. Kate was particularly fond of the next piece, Missy Mazzoli's Harp and Altar, which introduced the use of vocal samples and was dedicated to the Brooklyn Bridge. This was probably their piece that ran closest to my expectations after having listened to the Requiem soundtrack CD, but unsurprisingly an architectural love song was far more uplifting than the Requiem. Next was Flow by  Laurie Anderson, arranged by Jacob Garchik, which was a more soothing contrast to the prior two pieces.

That sense of calm was shattered by Steve Reich's WTC 9/11 which involved a mix of audio clips from the attacks, and other sounds, all closely coordinated with the strings. Combined with the use of backlighting, the performance very effectively evoked memories of that day. However, we weren't really sure we wanted those memories evoked in this particular setting. The real audio clips in particular seemed excessive as strings are well known for their ability to express tension and horror. Fifteen and a half minutes later the piece ended and intermission begun, leaving the audience to contemplate the ongoing scar on the nation's psyche.

The show resumed with Morton Feldman's Structures, a minimalist piece that played with a variety of forms in comparative isolation. We enjoyed listening to it, but neither Kate nor myself felt we had quite the technical expertise to fully grasp the experiments of the composition. The program, which was strong throughout, bracketed the performance with a quote from Feldman: "A modest statement can be totally original, where the 'grand scale' is, more often than not, merely eclectic." The next piece had that grander scale but went far beyond being eclectic.

The finale piece was Ben Johnston's arrangement of Harry Partch's "U.S. Highball: A Musical Account of Slim's Transcontinental Hobo Trip."  The subject matter was delightful and reading about it had renewed our spirits during intermission and we greatly anticipated the performance of vocalist David Barron while studying the included hobo glossary and asking ourselves important questions such as "Does John Hodgman know about this song?" The composition follows the trip of an itinerant riding the freight trains from San Francisco to Chicago while troubled by the jerks of the train and the bulls (private railway security) that sought to keep the lines free of stowaways. The tale is a bit of a geography lesson, announcing as towns are passed through and often bemoaned. As impressive as Barron's work was, both in singing and acting, the quartet certainly kept of their end of the piece. Each segment of the journey was marked with its own style of music showcasing the wide variety of methods the four have mastered.

The applause after that finale was rewarded with two encores. First an arrangement of Thelonious Monk's work and then a song brought to the U.S. in the early part of the last century by a Greek immigrant whose name we do not recall but will research, found on an album entitled Black Mirror (no relation to the Arcade Fire song, to our knowledge).

Ultimately, we're both glad we went. I do think the 9/11 piece was perhaps meant as a counterpoint to everything else, a way of expressing a current pain in the American experience that has yet to be properly resolved. However, I still feel that the effect could have been achieved far more tersely.

This time next week, I'll be on a plane to Egypt

My mother had planned a trip with two friends and a tour company well before the revolution. Egypt's future is still uncertain but the State Department has pulled back its travel warnings and the upcoming battles should be organizing and ballot box focused rather than taking place between protestors and police.

I'm quite excited to be going. I lack the words to express the admiration I feel for what the youth of Egypt have already accomplished by nonviolent means. The trip will be focused on Egypt's ancient history, starting in Cairo, going to Luxor, and then traveling down the Nile. It isn't oriented towards current politics and the State Department advises staying away from demonstrations, but during my guided travels and despite my lack of Arabic skills allows I hope to listen and observe and enhance my meager understanding. My regional interest is East Asia and that's not likely to change, but I've long studied attempts at democratization without ever coming much closer than East Germany a decade later.

Thus if any readers have any advice for my travels, please leave them in comments or send an email (gsanders at zort.net). I'll similarly take postcard requests for those so inclined.

Abortive review: Chasm City

I feel quite the slacker. Not only was I running behind in Alyssa Rosenberg's book club, I'm bailing out before finishing.  [I feel particularly bad, as I voted for it in the tiebreaker. I should have listened to my wife.] Chasm City is a reasonable noir/science fiction tale about a hard-bitten security expert out for revenge and a megalomaniac that had colonized the protagonist's world ages before. I think it manages to be fairly solid on the science; foe example, there's no faster than light drives. The novel has some interesting ideas, such as a cultist virus that can implant flashbacks and stigmata, and a city whose upper reaches have gone mad due to the combination of programmable growing buildings and a form of computer virus. The pacing, at least outside of the flashbacks, is fairly quick which kept me turning pages even when the content did not grab me.

However, while I could sense [Alastair Reynold's] creative, hard-working mind behind the book, I've chosen to put it down. As I mentioned in my review of Blacksad, I don't tend to enjoy straight noir and in this case science fiction wasn't enough of a twist. I didn't really care about the main character's underwhelming revenge motive and while I got attached to ancillary characters, they didn't stick around for long. Moreover, the wars and apocalypses of this universe distance us from the speculative future that undergirds it. Chasm City before the crash sounds like it would be something to see, although from what I've read of Rosenberg's posts on the book the life-extended aristocracy is consistently hateful so even then we'd be at a loss for interesting characters.

I like noir adaptations like Brick, Veronica Mars, Blacksad, and Cowboy Bebop because it is fun to see styles breed. There's nothing wrong with a hard-bitten hero, but that alone can't carry the story for me. Moreover, noir's love of pushing away or killing secondary characters and penchant for misogyny are both weak points of the genre that weren't overcome in the first sixteen chapters. On the upside, I was reminded of my love of Cowboy Bebop by comparison: the supporting cast that noir-émigré Spike can't get rid of, the vibrant world that stays grounded without being constantly run down, and of course the vibrant soundtrack that requires exceptional writing to match. Bebop's ending is pure noir and that's okay; in film-sized doses, as with L.A. Confidential, noir works for me. However, I don't think I'll be picking up another long form noir unless I'm confident that it transcends the genre.

Community is awesome

We came into the show late, despite having good things about it from various blogs and friends for ages. Happily, we're now remedying that oversight and had a marathon of episodes 1-5 tonight. The pilot weirdness of the show was fairly subdued; the characters aren't quite the same ones we've been seeing in the most recent episodes, but the changes are of a sort that can be attributed to character development (not all of it positive) and not just the aging of the show.

It also joins Venture Brothers in the list of shows with a degree of failure as a major theme. I wonder to what extent that's a new thing. Any number of sitcoms in the past had a notable degree of stagnation, but I think in both cases these shows actually grapple with these issues rather than just use it as an excuse to keep tired tropes going in perpetuity. So, any of my television history-aware friends have any insight?

Source: Kate's Mom. Thanks!

Metaphor duel: Zombies versus Robots/Cyborgs

In a clash of professors Charli Carpenter has been making a humorous but genuine critique of Dan Drezner's International Politics and Zombies. She gave a video presentation at the International Studies Association that's well worth watching if you have any interest at all in international relations and or the pop culture topics. If your interest runs deeper, check out their bloggingheads.

Experimenting with Tweetdeck

I've heard about tweetdeck for ages but I finally got around to trying it. The point is that it's a highly polished way to access all of your social networks. It covers a wide array of major platforms and I'm happy with both the chrome and the android app. There's obviously been a good deal of user interface work here, even the scrollbar does a particularly good job of announcing how many entries you have left to read. This fine tuning doesn't appear to come at the cost of features, it seems capable of doing everything my current Twitter app can do, and it does more than the official application.

I wonder if we're starting to enter an area where applications that used to be the province of fiddlers willing to tolerate poor interfaces become accessible to the general public. I do think that usability can be a technology, albeit an often neglected one. There's no reasons that proper design can't advance as other forms of software do.

Quick review: The Fall

Kate had given me this for Christmas after I expressed an interest some time back. Probably just as well she waited until we had a nice television, because it really is all about its lush locales and vivid colors. The plot, while certainly meta, managed to stay grounded in characters I cared about and thus avoided floating away in the breeze, which often occurs with stories about stories.