¶ While things are going well for Turkey at the moment — a booming economy (and Turkey had a lot of room to boom in) has eased many of the nation’s chronic social tensions — a clamor for war is getting louder  in Azerbaijan. The difference, you might say, is that Azerbaijan, whose population is primarily Turkic, still has an Armenian problem, while Turkey has only the memory of one. A look at most maps (although not those in Wikipedia’s entry) will show why: the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, autonomous since a 1994 cease-fire agreement, displaced tens of thousands of Azerbaijani refugees, many of them still awaiting the restoration of something like their old lives (while many others are children who have grown up on venom). If it were just a question of Azerbaijan versus Armenia, the enclave would be reclaimed by Azerbaijan in a trice. But Russia would certainly come to Armenia’s aid. It does make one rather wish that the Ottoman Empire were still with us, except that the sultans were far better at conquering than they were at governing — and Azerbaijan wasn’t part of the empire, anyway.

¶ We don’t know what made the Blank-Simkin case newsworthy enough for coverage in this morning’s Times; the case, which seeks to reopen a divorce agreement on grounds of “mutual mistake,” is currently between appeals, and the next decision isn’t expected until later this year. But Peter Lattman’s report leaves us wondering why there’s a case at all. Like Laura Blank, we can’t see why her ex-husband, Paul Weiss partner Steven Simkin, should be allowed to reappropriate a portion of her settlement because he (subsequently) discovered that his account with Bernard Madoff was worthless. Comparing that account to a counterfeit Stradivarius is such a bogus analogy that we can attribute only to latent judicial sexism. ¶ Don’t miss Lawrence Altman’s summary of thirty years of AIDS reporting. “A common attitude was that all diseases were known…”

¶ One of the victims of Daren Palmer’s Ponzi scheme seems to want it known that she was ripped off by a nicer sort of thief: Bernard Madoff was probably not the sort of man to get down on his knees and clean sanctuary floors. Her point goes to the heart of affinity fraud; Mr Madoff’s victims would have had a number of unflattering names for such a guy, and “neighborly” would not be among them. ¶ Call us cynics, but we’re not nearly as interested in right and wrong as we are in political viability (the alternative to which is the wrongest wrong of them all, social or political breakdown), so we’ll be watching to see whether Michael Bloomberg’s emphatic endorsement of same-sex marriage achieves its intended effect, which will have more to do with the mayor’s personal patronage — he is a generous political contributor, after all — than with his bully pulpit in City Hall. If this mayor’s efforts fail to bring about marriage equality in New York State, our conviction that political progressives don’t know what they’re doing will plumb new depths. ¶ From our deep reading in the history of the so-called Dark Ages we have found few barbarities to compare with the American treatment of recreational drugs and drug addiction. In the evitable museum that will be erected to remind us of our benightedness, we hope that prominent display will be made available for the children’s coloring books into which solutions of the addiction-treatment drug Suboxone have been painted. We’d be sorry to see them cluttering a museum of American ingenuity.

¶ We think that Agnes Treuren, of the Dutch Consulate here (and a resident of the Upper East Side), must be mistaken: she claims never to have been on the “Fon Weig” Expressway. (That’s ‘Weig’ as in ‘leg,’ according to Ms Treuren.) It is impossible to avoid the Van Wyck when arriving or departing from New York City via Kennedy Airport, without going perversely out of your way. Wouldn’t you know: Bronson Van Wyck, descendent of the first mayor of Greater New York whose name Robert Moses slapped on the highway (and a genuine Knickerbocker), is an affable party planner who calls himself “Van Wike.” ¶ A new statue of John Paul II in Rome, outside the railroad terminal, is exciting all the disgust of a future masterpiece. The sculptor, Oliviero Rainaldi, says he usually gets more compliments on his work, which is sweet. Rainaldi’s inpiration was a photograph of the late pope enfolding a child in his robes. In the statue, the child has been replaced by a cavity. Hmmm… ¶ We think that Ashton Kutcher is loaded with geniality, but is a shrewd venture capitalist? Read Jenna Wortham’s breathlessly admiring story as many times as you like. We think that the actor’s value lies rather in the company he keeps, and his willingness to share what he hears. Which is plenty good enough!

¶ Our view of the Central Country as an unstable giant is painfully confirmed by Keith Bradsher’s report about the problems bedevilling China’s electric power supply. The environmental side-effects are undoubtedly the worst of it — China is the world’s largest producer of greenhouse emissions, spewing ever-larger quantities of unwanted gases into the atmosphere — but trouble in the near teerm lurks in the disingenuous relations among the powers that be. When the grid operators defy Beijing’s demands for supply, only to watch their profits eaten up by trhe demands of environmental regulators, it would be healthy if they could squabble more openly, but instead, in the Chinese manner, they must smile unanimously for the camera — until one of them pulls the rug out from under the others and all hell breaks lose. Well, maybe this time, it will be different. ¶ We thank the Supreme Court and its rulings on campaign finance for turning Congress into a pack of dogs: “Mr. Netanyahu received so many standing ovations that at times it appeared that the lawmakers were listening to his speech standing up,” writes Helene Cooper. Just like dogs, they wagged their tails at the prospect of handouts from AIPAC and other lobbying groups — and that is the only policy that they understand.

¶ Manchester footballer Ryan Giggs’s “superinjunction” problem looks, from our Olympian perch, like a made-to-order generational culture clash. Is the doddering British judiciary going ga-ga over reputations? Or does an infantile Twitter need an intervention? What made us laugh was the technico-legalooneyness that allowed the British press to circumvent the inunction and mention Mr Giggs’s alleged affair with a Big Brother contestant (a lady!) once the matter was bruited in House of Commons discussion. We were reminded, in any case, that it has been months and months and months since we last checked our Twitter account. But nothing ever happens on Olympus; that’s the point. ¶ Jean-Claude Trichet storms out of a meeting rather than discuss the restructuring of the the European Central Bank’s Greek bond holdings, and Landon Thomas concludes his account of the mess by quoting Edward Hugh, the genius behind A Fistful of Dollars. Meanwhile, the Spaniards and the Italians are inveighing against the prospect of Greek backsliding. Too bad about that Rapture thing on Saturday.

¶ The weather here in New York is so grimly unseasonable that the sad story of Joseph Brooks, composer of the song “You Light Up My Life,” seems like the only story worth telling. Joseph Goldstein’s news item does not appear to be an obituary. What pathos! ¶ David Carr considers electrocuting Nancy Grace. Not really! He is cheered to note that her falling ratings may induce a fate worse than death. If we took a dimmer view of human nature, we would not be surprised that standing up for the victims of crimes could involve so much unattactive behavior.

¶ Floyd Norris writes sardonically about what may prove to be the dooming flaw of late-stage capitalism: the strange political power of big-time losers (ie banks) to compel governments to bail tham out. ¶ It’s not clear why now, but “China Admits Problems With Three Gorges Dam.” Opposition within China to this monumentally disruptive state project has never been quieted. Orville Schell applauds; we wonder what Henry Kissinger is thinking. ¶ We’ll believe that Peter Thiel is a genuine innovator when we learn that he is experimenting with different business models, especially as regards rentier investment. Until then, we’re still happy to applaud his $100,000 grants to whizbang students willing to drop out of college to write their own educations.

¶ We’re taking the day off, but we wouldn’t want you to miss the great write-up of Christine Lagarde, the formidable Frenchwoman who may fill out Daniel Strauss-Kahn’s term at the IMF. ¶ Department of Duh: privatizing prisons does not save taxpayers’ dollars. Don’t expect conservative ideologues, who insist on the right to be as brain dead for as long as their Soviet counterparts were in the last century, to pay much attention to the findings.

¶ Our eyebrows cocked at the mention of an understandably surreptitious luxury private club in the Jian Fu Palace Garden of the Imperial Palace in Beijing. We hope to hear more about this operation, which appears to be the backwash of a preservation project designed by Pei Partnership Architects and funded by Hong Kong jillionaires. Forbidden fun in the Forbidden City! Doesn’t get any better. All they need is DSK. ¶ Sometimes, it’s hard to tell the goose from the golden eggs — which is the one that will work better in your portfolio? Silicon Valley’s ground assault walkers (Google, Facebook, &c) have been buying up start-ups not in order to own the latest gizmos but to shut them down and “acqhire” the engineers who designed them. It will be interesting to see if the fizz kills the whiz. ¶ Now it can be told: Elaine Kaufman’s eponymous eatery, long a watering hole for literary lions, wasn’t doing so well even before she died. Not six months later, her heir, Diane Becker, is closing the joing. “The nature of a business is to make a profit.” Hemingway himself couldn’t have put it more concisely.

¶ Senator John Kerry’s visit to Pakistan appears to have calmed our roiling relationship with that perfidious ally — for the moment. Interestingly, what the Pakistanis appear to have wanted was an assurance that the United States has no designs upon its nuclear capabilities. As usual, Pakistan is thinking about its epic rivalry with India, not about the United States and its problems. ¶ New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has requested “information and documents” relating to mortgage securitization at Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley. Gretchen Morgenson doesn’t tell us why Mr Schneiderman’s move, which seems too good to be true (we’d given up on seeking bankers brought to justice), and which was apparently launched a few weeks ago, is news today.

¶ Less shocking, sadly, than the news of DSK’s downfall, “Your So-Called Education” is nevertheless a great deal more disturbing. Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa measured college students at the beginning of their first year, at the end of their second, and upon graduation. 36% of the students failed to gain the equivalent of even one point over their entire undergraduate career. Almost as upsetting, 36% of a smaller group — students who reported spending five hours or fewer on weekly studying — maintained grade point averages of 3.16. This is what consumer-driven education must inevitably lead to: zero product.

¶ Although we can’t claim to have been “distracted by flooding along the Mississippi, warfare in Libya or the latest on Newt Gingrich,” we didn’t know about the James Tate Prom Saga until we read about it this morning. Our verdict: “grim-faced” headmaster Beth Smith should be thrown into a Polish space capsule for 1000 hours of community entertainment. ¶ And what, pray tell, is Arthur Newmyer’s lawsuit against Sidwell Friends doing in the pages of the Times? We should have thought that Mr Newmyer is too old to carry on like James Tate, but, sadly not.

¶ Vitaly Borker, the online eyeglasses merchant who couldn’t resist boasting to David Segal  about his deplorable business practises, may be regretting his Iron Curtain cheekiness. Having plead guilty to High Crimes and Naughtiness, he now faces sentencing of up to six years.

¶ They say that Nicolas Sarkozy is not happy about La Conquête, a new movie that’s about him — “the story of a man who wins power and loses his wife.” The film opens nationally and at Cannes next week, along with Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, a film in which Carla Bruni, the president’s current wife, has a small role. Ms Bruni has plead pregnancy as her excuse for missing the film festtival. ¶ Princess Chulabhorn Walailak, the youngest daughter of Thailand’s ailing King Bhumibol thinks that flattering coverage of royal family news ought to be given ten more minutes of daily air time. We can only imagine what her father’s subjects think about that, because unflattering coverage of the royal family is prohibited by law. Somsak Jeamteerasakul, a history professor who spoke out against princess (on the Internet), has been charged with violating the country’s draconian laws forbidding lèse majesté. ¶ Manuel Zelaya is going home, sometime soon, to Honduras. How we’ve missed him!

¶ It took the whole length of the story for Jesse McKinley to mention the bitter child-custody battle that might have disturbed the unnamed son of neo-Nazi Jeff Hall enough to make him shoot his father dead. What this story is doing on the front page of the Times is beyond us — unless, that is, it’s another Idiocracy alert. ¶ Westie gangleader Jimmy McElroy died recently in prison (sentence: “forever and a day”) but got a nice send-off Holy Cross, just off Times Square, occasioning an hommage à la manière de Joseph Mitchell by Jim Dwyer. ¶ Omar bin Laden and three of his brothers have “lashed out” at President Obama for killing their unarmed father. In a statement that, if not quite politely phrased, was presumably politely delivered, Mr bin Laden reminds us that he disavowed his father’s violent undertakings; by the same token, he feels that his father ought to have stood trial. We agree, although we’re glad for Barack Obama’s political career that  that is not what happened. What we’d really like to see is the complete destruction of Pakistan’s military resources. We paid for it, after all, and it would send a message to other potentially perfidious allies.

¶ Although there’s not much real news in today’s Times, there are lots of interesting items about personal technology, such as the really very intriguing story about the Polara golf ball, which is dimpled in a directional manner that reduces slices and hooks. It’s also “illegal” — not permitted in official tournaments. The substrate of the story is an anxiety about making the pastime attractive to young man who are inclined to play in cargo shorts and whose sense of the rules is flexible at best. Will golf develop a hardball/softball divide? ¶ After months of dithering, Condé Nast and Apple have finally come up with a subscription model for The New Yorker. Not that we’re excited. The great thing about the print issue is that you don’t need a connection to read it. And while the online archives make it unnecessary to stack unread issues or even to clip favorite articles, you still have to type out anything that you want to copy — cutting and pasting are not enabled. Makes you feel like it’s the Middle Ages! ¶ Further proof that it was the tablet, and not the personal computer, that would save trees (because reading a tablet involves the same body moves as reading a book) is forthcoming in Martha White’s story about Ativ Software, an outfit that packages conference materials in a tidy app. (Sell Staples!) ¶ Facebook 2.0: in which the Zuckerberg competes with a crowd of “anti-oversharing” alternatives.

¶ Whatever you think of Paul Krugman and his insistence upon the priority of jobs creation (we’re inclined to agree), there’s no disputing his account of the deficit, which we note particularly because he places responsibility for the ballooning of our national debt entirely upon the shoulders of “the elite.” The Bush tax cuts, the Iraqi misadventure, and the recession were all the doing of powerful cliques who now, because they can, blame ordinary Americans for “wanting something for nothing.” We wish that Mr Krugman would resort to different terminology: “elite” is now a cant word that means little more than “powerful people whom I don’t like.” ¶ Here’s hoping that Dominique Browning will galvanize American mothers (and fathers) and create an effective demand for thoroughgoing regulatory reform on the product-safety front. There can be no unguided free markets in anything pertaining to infants.

¶ Michael Kimmelman meditates on the fiftieth anniversary of the Eichmann trial, causing us to meditate on the ineffable transformation of the present — now — into “history.” Hannah Arendt would be unpleasantly surprised to learn that her theory of totalitarianism was richly grounded in the Zeitgeist — but so it seems to have been. We’re also reminded of Jonathan Littell’s sharp portrait of Adolf Eichmann in Les Bienveillantes — nothing banal about him!

¶ Even more regrettable, in our view, than the CUNY board’s yielding to Jeffrey Wiesenfeld’s opposition to granting the author of Angels in America an honorary degree is the bizarre assertion by Valerie Lancaster Beal, one of the trustees, that she doesn’t know who Tony Kushner is. “I don’t know his issues,” she is reported to have said. We only wish that we were surprised to discover that the governance of an important institution of higher learning is shouldered in part by such an uninformed person. We have no idea what degree of remediation would equip Ms Beal to perform her duties to CUNY, but Mr Wiesenfeld is as beyond the pale as he charges Mr Kushner with being, and his resignation ought to be demanded immediately.

¶ Elisabeth Bumiller writes about Team 6, the crème de la crème of Navy SEAL units that allows no margin for error. If not exactly unsung, these heroes stay out of the limelight, at least until they retire. Interestingly, these paragons of fitness are about ten years older than average servicemen — mature judgment is one of their precious skills. ¶ We agree with President Obama’s decision to withhold photographs of the dead Osama bin Laden, especially after LiveLeak got scammed.

¶ That David Barton is considered by anyone, much less former presidents of the United States, to be a reputable historian is surely a grave indictment of the academic establishment. If it’s pretty clear that the self-taught, Christianist Mr Barton doesn’t really “do history,” it’s also evident that there’s something that the professionals aren’t getting right, either.  ¶ And let’s remember what Dave Eggers and Ninive Clements Caligari had to say about not blaming underpaid and undersupported teachers when we decide what to do about American students’ pervasive ignorance of the nuts and bolts of “civics.”

¶ Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan, has called upon Libyan strongman Muammar el-Qaddafi to step down. As symbolic gestures go, this is an important one, but some sort of material follow-up will be required to strengthen Turkey’s position as a “regional power broker.” ¶ The pros and cons of Chinese direct investment in American industry always pit realism (take the money) against idealism (it’s tainted money!). We’re inclined toward the realism espoused by the Asia Society’s Orville Schell.