Category: Religion

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Just one of the Chebabs

Back in 1995, the movie Boys filmed several scenes on the campus of St. John’s College, where I was attending grad school. I was sitting out in the quad between classes one evening with my friends. The crew was getting ready to shoot an outdoor scene with Winona Ryder.

My buddy Mitch stared at the crew setting up on the lawn.

Our friend Haydn asked, “Whattaya thinking?”

Mitch replied, “I’m gonna run through that shot, throw Winona over my shoulder, and carry her all the way down to the river, shouting, ‘Court order or no, we’ll be together!'”

Mitch had been a rugby player, and if it came down to him and Lukas Haas, there was no doubt in my mind to the outcome.

I asked, “Why ya gonna do that?” I was an awful stick in the mud.

Mitch replied, “Because I want my college alumni bulletin to read, ‘Mitchell Prothero is not allowed within 50 yards of Winona Ryder.'”

Years went by, and Mitch is now writing from Gaza City:

Sure, some gunmen remain, but they’re all in Hamas uniforms, and the leadership has banned the infamous black ski mask. (Hamas leader Ismail Haniyah said militants should don masks to fight Israelis but not when patrolling the streets of Gaza.) So, people can now see the faces of their police officers. But in most cases, it’s not gunmen doing law enforcement, it’s a collection of unarmed men in Hamas hats and bright safety vests that say Police in English and Arabic. They provide traffic control, investigate petty crimes, and offer a general nonthreatening sense of security not provided in the past by surly masked gunmen with uncertain political (or ethical) affiliations.

Smart readers will be waiting for the “but” in this story. And Gaza currently has a big “but.” The semblance of normalcy on the streets belies the fundamental problems at work in this tiny, conservative coastal strip. Gaza and its 1.5 million people appear destined, at least for the moment, to be cut out of any political process involving the Palestinians. Not to mention cut off from government funds and humanitarian resources, and barely able to travel in or out of the strip. Even the Israeli fuel company that provides gas and oil for generators is operating on a day-to-day basis. If they cut those supplies, people will run out in a matter of hours, and hoarding supplies of fuel and food grows less possible each day.

Perhaps even more frightening for the people of Gaza is the sickening sense that things are about to get really bad, which they certainly will. It’s just a question of which direction the fresh hell will come from.

Give it a read, or Mitch’ll come for you next.

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Just Half-Ass It

I was sitting in Boston’s South Station for an hour or so last week, and I found myself  transfixed by Reebok’s new ad Run Easy campaign. Huge banners hung above the doors of the train station, bearing slogans that I found a little perplexing:

Run to the beat of your own drummer. Run Easy.

Conversation is fuel. Run Easy.

Enjoy the ride. Run Easy.

Why Hit the Wall? It hurts. Run Easy.

Why run till you can’t walk? Run Easy.

What are you Just Doing? Run Easy.

Congratulations. You can’t stand up. Run Easy.

A 10-minute mile is just as far as a 6-minute mile. Run Easy.

Did you beat your best time or just yourself? Run Easy.

There were a couple of Boston-specific banners:

Big Dig has set the pace. Run Easy Boston.

The British aren’t coming. The British aren’t coming. Run Easy Boston.

As I said, I was transfixed. Isn’t there a reason all sports-related marketing is aspirational? I can understand trying to subvert standard advertising tropes — those Sublymonal ads can be pretty funny — but this just goes beyond the pale. Sure, you don’t want to tell people that they’ll win the Boston Marathon if they buy your sneakers, but telling them that it’s okay to slack off?

In addition to these “Run Easy”s, each banner featured Reebok’s tagline beneath its logo: I Am What I Am. Now, I appreciate coming up with a slogan that puts us all in mind of the Torah and/or the greatest performance-enhancing-substance-abuser next to Barry Bonds, but in tandem with this campaign, it comes off as “Eh. Why bother? Running isn’t going to make me any better.”

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Progress, I guess

At my glamorous day job, I receive a ton of e-mail from PR firms. They pitch articles, send over news items, and announce events and new product launches. Sometimes, they enclose pictures, which is always nice; I can’t remember the last time I actually had to go to the “scanner pantry” to digitize a photo or chart.

Wading through this stuff and still being able to put out a magazine requires some heavy-duty triage. I’ve developed some techniques for clearing out a ton of these items and saving the ones that look interesting or come from firms that I know are going to give me a call two days later to ask me if I read their e-mail (note to PR staff: this is one of the most irritating things you can do).

On Monday, I received an announcement about a laboratory informatics group’s upcoming software user conference in Dubai. It contained the following image from a past event:

“How progressive!” I thought. “They’re letting a ninja attend their conference!”

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Missed by that much

I just finished reading Taliban, Ahmed Rashid’s study of the Taliban’s rise in Afghanistan, this weekend. The book was published early in 2001 (pre-9/11, that is), so its perspective about the civil war is untinged by What Would Come. Rashid does paint a very bleak picture about the region and the regime, and offers a ton of insight into how Afghanistan got so messed up.

The book is also a product of its time, of course. One of the “problems” with Taliban is that oil was priced around $13/barrel in the years leading up to its publication. That fact was a key to his understanding of Russian and Iranian policy, and it’s completely understandable; who would even entertain the notion that oil would someday trade for 5x that price?

I found myself marveling over how the country, long seen as the prize in The Great Game, achieved its present-day notoriety only when it fell under the radar and became an utterly failed state. Once “we” stopped paying attention to it, Afghanistan became the engine of the new world.

Which brings me to the end of the book. Usually, I don’t give away endings, but I don’t think I’m doing Rashid any disservice in this case. Here’s the final paragraph:

But if the war in Afghanistan continues to be ignored we can only expect the worst. Pakistan will face a Taliban-style Islamic revolution which will further destabilize it and the entire region. Iran will remain on the periphery of the world community and its eastern borders will continue to be wracked by instability. The Central Asian states will not be able to deliver their energy and mineral exports by the shortest routes and as their economies crash, they will face an Islamic upsurge and instability. Russia will continue to bristle with hegemonic aims in Central Asia even as its own society and economy crumbles. The stakes are extremely high.

I don’t mean to goof on Rashid by writing this, but isn’t it amazing how much worse it got than his most pessimistic projection?