It’s true that I had a wonderful week in Istanbul in 2005. It was a quite unexpected business trip for Kathleen, and I’d never have gone along if it hadn’t been for Remicade, which I hadn’t even been taking for a year at that time. My interest in Turkey, however, pre-dates that junket. Friends remember my muttering ominously that, whatever else happened in the event of a war in Iraq, the Kurdish question would probably prove to be intractable. If Iraq were partitioned, a minority of Kurds would finally have their own Kurdistan, and it would not be long, so one thought, before their Turkish brethren sought to join them, something that would happen, not to speak too frankly, “over Turkey’s dead body.” If nothing else, our geographically illiterate populace overlooks the fact that the headwaters of the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers – sources of irrigation for Syria and Iraq, but also of hydroelectric power for Turkey – lie in southeastern Turkey, a/k/a Kurdistan.

The wonderful thing about political predictions – about negative, pessimistic ones, that is – is that the world turns so slowly (still) that dire previsions so often turn out to be wrong. It’s much too early to say that the Turks and the Kurds are going to work things out to mutual satisfaction, but, as Christopher de Bellaigue reports in the current New York Review of Books, there are some surprisingly promising signs on the horizon.

¶ Chrisopher de Bellaigue on Turkey, in The New York Review of Books.

Podcasts:

Christopher de Bellaigue on Turkey (RSS)
Christopher de Bellaigue on Turkey (MP3)

This is a test of whatever, and if I don’t take it down in time you’ll be wondering what I’m talking about. I’m reading the last line of a hilarious exchange on Craigslist for which I don’t have URL.*

It ought to be loud enough this time.

Pump (RSS)

Pump (MP3)

* As forwarded to me by the inestimable Fossil Darling:

What am I doing wrong?

Okay, I’m tired of beating around the bush. I’m a beautiful (spectacularly beautiful) 25 year old girl. I’m articulate and classy. I’m not from New York. I’m looking to get married to a guy who makes at least half a million a year. I know how that sounds, but keep in mind that a million a year is middle class in New York City, so I don’t think I’m overreaching at all.

Are there any guys who make 500K or more on this board? Any wives? Could you send me some tips? I dated a business man who makes average around 200 – 250. But that’s where I seem to hit a roadblock. 250,000 won’t get me to central park west. I know a woman in my yoga class who was married to an investment banker and lives in Tribeca, and she’s not as pretty as I am, nor is she a great genius. So what is she doing right? How do I get to her level? Here are my questions specifically:

Where do you single rich men hang out? Give me specifics- bars, restaurants, gyms.

What are you looking for in a mate? Be honest guys, you won’t hurt my feelings. Is there an age range I should be targeting (I’m 25)?

Why are some of the women living lavish lifestyles on the upper east side so plain? I’ve seen really ‘plain jane’ boring types who have nothing to offer married to incredibly wealthy guys. I’ve seen drop dead gorgeous girls in singles bars in the east village. What’s the story there?

– Jobs I should look out for? Everyone knows – lawyer, investment banker, doctor. How much do those guys really make? And where do they hang out? Where do the hedge fund guys hang out?

How you decide marriage vs. just a girlfriend? I am looking for MARRIAGE ONLY

Please hold your insults – I’m putting myself out there in an honest way. Most beautiful women are superficial; at least I’m being up front about it. I wouldn’t be searching for these kind of guys if I wasn’t able to match them – in looks, culture, sophistication, and keeping a nice home and hearth.

It’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests 

PostingID: 432279810

THE ANSWER

Dear Pers-431649184:

I read your posting with great interest and have thought meaningfully about your dilemma. I offer the following analysis of your predicament. Firstly, I’m not wasting your time, I qualify as a guy who fits your bill; that is I make more than $500K per year. That said here’s how I see it.

Your offer, from the prospective of a guy like me, is plain and simple a crappy business deal. Here’s why. Cutting through all the B.S., what you suggest is a simple trade: you bring your looks to the party and I bring my money. Fine, simple. But here’s the rub, your looks will fade and my money will likely continue into perpetuity…in fact, it is very likely that my income increases but it is an absolute certainty that you won’t be getting any more beautiful!

So, in economic terms you are a depreciating asset and I am an earning asset. Not only are you a depreciating asset, your depreciation accelerates! Let me explain, you’re 25 now and will likely stay pretty hot for the next 5 years, but less so each year. Then the fade begins in earnest. By 35 stick a fork in you!So in Wall Street terms, we would call you a trading position, not a buy and hold…hence the rub…marriage. It doesn’t make good business sense to “buy you” (which is what you’re asking) so I’d rather lease.

In case you think I’m being cruel, I would say the following. If my money were to go away, so would you, so when your beauty fades I need an out. It’s as simple as that. So a deal that makes sense is dating, not marriage. Separately, I was taught early in my career about efficient markets. So, I wonder why a girl as “articulate, classy and spectacularly beautiful” as you has been unable to find your sugar daddy. I find it hard to believe that if you are as gorgeous as you say you are that the $500K hasn’t found you, if not only for a tryout.

By the way, you could always find a way to make your own money and then we wouldn’t need to have this difficult conversation.

With all that said, I must say you’re going about it the right way. Classic “pump and dump.” I hope this is helpful, and if you want to enter into some sort of lease, let me know.

¶ It’s great to read, in an AP story from Strasbourg, that Abdullah Gul, the Turkish president who made Turkey’s liberal elites shake in their shoes earlier this year, only to win a handy victory in August, is committed to revising Turkey’s Article 103, the controversial law that criminalizes “insults to Turkish identity” – whatever that means. The international attention that was focused on Turkey during the dark days in which Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk was up for trial for violating 103 appears to have embarrassed Turkish cultural conservatives into reconsidering the law, which is something of a vague but blunt instrument that leaves too much power in the hands of opportunistic prosecutors.

“No one is going to prison for expressing their views freely,” [Mr Gul] told representatives of the council. The Council of Europe, which has 47 member states, seeks to develop common and democratic principles based on the European Convention on Human Rights and other documents.

That’s good to hear. Now, let’s see what actually happens.

¶ Neela Banerjee’s “Panel Says Episcopalians Have Met Anglican Directive” is not, unfortunately, the easiest story to follow, but after sifting through it several times I came to the conclusion that the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katherine Jefferts Schori, is playing Bushie games when she claims to be “gratified” that the American church’s panel has opted to comply with Anglican Communion strictures on recent liberalizing moves. It pains me to say this, because my sympathies are all with the supporters of W Gene Robinson, gay bishop of New Hampshire – and because I become positively redneck when I think that a gang of African prelates whose not-so-distant ancestors, at least according to Evelyn Waugh, were probably cannibals, are directing the affairs of a venerable American sect. It would appear, however, that the Communion conservatives are right to cock an eyebrow at Bishop Jefferts Schori’s conciliatory utterances. As Ms Banerjee’s editor, I’d have yanked “victory” from her opening sentence.

Fossil Darling sent me a lovely note first thing this morning. “Congratulations,” it was headed. “It was a lovely day, all of which is such a fond memory……….” he wrote. My first thought was that, yes, I enjoyed walking down to the river the other day and taking photographs. But, no: it couldn’t be that. Hmm.

I am pretty sharp, first thing in the morning, but Fossil Darling is a professional. I must live up to his standards. Had I been able to, I’d realized right off, instead of after a few head-scratchings, that he was talking about the twenty-sixth wedding anniversary that Kathleen and I celebrate today.

Nothing could be more conclusive proof of my bourgeois degeneracy than my heartwarmed response to a story in today’s Times about the recaptured grandeur of the Paramount Ballroom in Shanghai. Built in 1933, the dance palace almost immediately began to slide, and the fun stopped completely in 1956, but somehow the building survived, and lived to be restored by a Taiwanese businessman in 2001. Zhao Shichong invested three million dollars in the restoration of the Paramount, (They laugh at me when I predict that Taiwan is going to take over China in a bloodless IPO…)

Howard W French’s story, “Where West Met East, and Then Asked for a Dance,” predictably reports the reappearance, as if from cryogenic preservation, of pre-Communist-era dandies and tai-tais who claim to need no other exercise to maintain their svelte figures. But we hear nothing of young people discovering the ancient glamour on their own. I have a bunch of Yao Li CDs, if anyone wants to get in the mood.

I had no particular desire to visit Shanghai until I read about the Paramount this morning. Now I wish I had a full head of hair just so that I could slick it back with Brylcreem. Pretty soon, I’ll be looking svelte, too. I’m sure that Kathleen will lend me to a respectable matron, particularly since my cha-cha is still in fine form.

What’s heart-warming about the return of the Paramount is the rediscovery, in so many places around the world, of good old-fashioned fun. Fun was so not Mid-Twentieth Century – and don’t let them tell you otherwise. Maoism was so pervasive in those earnest days that I was genuinely shocked, when I began paying attention to the lyrics in the early Sixties, that Queen Victoria had not ordered Gilbert and Sullivan to be burned at the stake for committing the sacrilege of The Mikado.

I don’t know how many Shanghainese actually call the ballroom “Paramount.” It wouldn’t be the easiest thing to say. Mr French has been kind enough to supply the Putonghua (Mandarin) version: “Bai Le Men,” or “Gate of a Hundred Pleasures.”

No sooner do I discover the comfort of writing my Book Review review with the wireless laptop in my cozy bedroom chair than I discover that wireless works better at some times than at others. I don’t understand why, not really, but I expect that it has something to do with a lot of network demand. At least, that’s why I hope it is. I can go for hours without signal interruption most of the time, but early in the evening (to name one egregious time of day) I can hardly hold onto a signal for thirty seconds. Also, I haven’t yet downloaded an HTML text editor onto the laptop. So life remains hard, and I’m sure that you feel very sorry for me.

PS: Late at night, when traffic drops off precipitously, is a great time for reeading everyone else’s blogs. Lookinat photographs, reading longer entries, following comment threads – all stuff that I can hardly bear to do when I’m preoccupied by churning out my own content during the daylight hours.

¶ Stanley, I Presume?

On Sunday, Kathleen and I walked down to the river. I wanted to try my hands, now considerably less shaky, at photography. The results were mixed, but I liked this picture of the river, which, as you can plainly see, is not a river, but a swatch of turbulent water churned by ever-shifting tides. I am very fond of rivers; I like their inexorability. The water keeps coming from one direction and running off in another. “Time, like a never-ending stream,” as the hymn has it. But if the East River were a river, time’s sons would still be floating back and forth perpetually.

Last May, The New Yorker published an article, “The CSI Effect,” by Jeffrey Toobin, about the really rather shaky foundations on modern forensic science. It turns out that hair, for example, is usually pretty uninformative as evidence. Fibers shed by clothes and upholstery aren’t much better. Aggressive prosecutors (pardon the tautology) are past-masters at finessing the doubts that crime lab technicians might have about their own findings. It turns out that the triumphs of dispositive clues on TV crime shows are about as realistic as your basic Seventies sitcom.

I was heartened, therefore, to read this morning that states are buckling down, not only on crime labs, but on lineup procedures and the use of DNA evidence. According to Solomon Moore’s sotry, “DNA Exoneration Leads to Change in Legal System,”

Nationwide, misidentification by witnesses led to wrongful convictions in 75 percent of the 207 instances in which prisoners have been exonerated over the last decade, according to the Innocence Project, a group in New York that investigates wrongful convictions.

The great thing about all of this is changes are being mandated by state legislatures, not by courts. I’m second to none in believing that judicial activism is our ultimate bulwark against profound social injustice, but in a well-run democracy that fallback is rarely if ever necessary, because legislatures do what they’re supposed to do: pass intelligent laws.

Cheering as this news is, it oughtn’t to deflect our attention from the fact that the far dirtier blot on American justice is the shameless exploitation of unconscionably broad drug laws to incarcerate African Americans.