At times, men can be very stupid

I mean, really, really stupid (my links):

"Because you know how these things go," Shipman told detectives. "I said, 'Is there gonna be some crazy lady showing up at my door, trying to kill me?' He said, 'No ... she's not like that. She's fine with it. She's happy for me.'"

Stupidity, Gullibility...Whatever

That's so true (link added):

Does stupidity lead to gullibility? [F]or the most part, the movie depicts low-IQ people as very hard to trick because they scoff at whatever they do not understand.

and:

Bullies may be stupid, but it's nigh-impossible for a nerd to trick a bully into leaving him alone. The bully has a simple but powerful word that keeps the nerd from getting the upper hand: "Whatever."

What I Read Today, Plus Art Buchwald Stuff

Just to leave a trace and have something to remember 40 years from now:

Today, I skimmed over the Wikipedia article "Taboo food and drink", because it is the article of the day in the German wikipedia. Quite interesting.

Unfortunately, I then turned to the "Deaths in 2007" page, which is always a time killer. Speaking of time killers, I also read some articles about the UK Big Brother racism scandal, for example:

I'm not racist, says TV's Goody

Jade Goody, at the centre of an alleged race row on Celebrity Big Brother, has been evicted from the Channel 4 show.

Goody, 25, was up against Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty, who had been the target of the alleged abuse from Goody and others in the reality TV show.

(...)

And since I use the name Shilpa Shetty instead of "the Indian", I am apparantly no racist. I'm lucky.

To make my update concerning the BB ballyhoo perfect, I watched about three CNN vids. And being at CNN vids, I again watched the two vids about the passing of Art Buchwald, "Goodbye, Artie" by Kyra Phillips and "Buchwald: I made them laugh" (I presume, that those CNN links are not permanent; hence, a hopefully permanent youtube-link to another "dying is fun, actually" vid of Art Buchwald.)

Art Buchwald made it to German newspapers in late 2006 with his book "Too soon to say Goodbye": Der Mann, der einfach nicht sterben will, Die Welt, December 13, 2006 ("The man who simply doesn't want to die", in German.) You can find his final column, which he asked to distribute following his death here: Goodbye, My Friends, Washington Post, January 19, 2007.

Finally, I found a quote of Buchwald's over at IMDB which made me laugh:

I'm not a Republican, and I'm not a Democrat. I'm against whoever's in power. People talk about Nixon and I say, 'I worship the very quicksand he walks on.'

Humphrey Bogart died 50 years ago

How Humphrey got to be Bogie

Bogart became a legend near his death 50 years ago, when his acting was more closely aligned with his real-life personality.

By Richard Schickel

January 14, 2007

Humphrey Bogart died on Jan. 14, 1957, exactly 50 years ago. By all accounts, notably those of his friends, John Huston and Alistair Cooke, he died with great gallantry, hiding to the best of his ability the pain of the cancer that wracked and decimated him.

It worked this way: He would rest in his bedroom most of the day; then, in the late afternoon, he would be dressed in a blue blazer and ascot and transported, by wheelchair and elevator, to his living room. There, with cigarette in hand, martini at his side, he would await the arrival of friends. They brought industry gossip, in which he remained avidly interested; they went away inspired by his courage. His illness was never discussed. (read on this Los Angeles Times Op-Ed...)

When I was younger, I loved to watch film noirs with Bogart, Edward G. Robinson and Peter Lorre etc. But nowadays... I don't know... maybe it's simply too late in the evening when I happen to watch those old movies again. Anyway, here's a short sequence of the famous To Have and Have Not, giving evidence of the equally famous "onsreen chemistry" between Bogart and Lauren Bacall:

Radio Play About Bix Beiderbecke

Lots of cats tried to play like Bix; ain't none of them play like him yet.

Louis Armstrong

Yesterday, there was an radio play aired on German radio station Deutschlandfunk, called
Leben und Tod des Kornettisten Bix Beiderbecke aus Nordamerika (Life and Death of the cornett player Bix Beiderbecke from North America; link is in German), by Ror Wolf (link in German) from 1986, which was awarded with the Hörspielpreis der Kriegsblinden (radio play prize of the "Federation of the German War-Blinded"; link in German) the following year; which is the most important and prestigious prize for radio plays in Germany.

This radio play about Bix Beiderbecke brought one thing back into my mind as clear as possible, namely the importance of the internet for my little life. Because it was the third time that I listened to the play - first time was in 1986, second was in 2003 (I guess, because that was the 1ooth anniversary of Bix' birth) - and both times, I was left to my own devices concerning further information about Bix. Even in 2003, I didn't have the possibilities I have now, and in 1986, there was literally nothing I could do but wait until I happen to enter a record shop for the next time. But today, I just type in the name at wikipedia and youtube - and here we go:

Here you can find some Audio tapes of interviews conducted with people who knew Bix Beiderbecke. You can find "Bix Beiderbecke & His Rhythm Jugglers - Davenport Blues (January 26, 1925)" as mp3, too.

And finally, three videos from youtube. It's so fantastic to have all these sources, right? (Plus, I have a copy of the radio play in ogg format now!)

A tribute:



Wake Up Bix:



The Jean Goldkette Orchestra in 1926:

Syphilis: Comeback in China

Syphilis rates 'soaring in China'
By Jill McGivering
BBC News

(...)

The Lancet reports that China - which virtually eliminated syphilis in the 1960s and 70s - is now seeing the disease return with alarming intensity.

It reveals that reported rates have risen from 0.2 cases per 100,000 in 1993 to 5.7 cases per 100,000 in 2005.

Dramatic intervention is now needed, one of the report's authors says.

The study involved doctors from China's National Centre for STD Control in Nanjing and from the University of North Carolina's School of Medicine.

Dr Myron Cohen, a co-author of the report, described the spread of the disease as "fantastically rapid".

(Links added)

Further Sources:

Syphilis resurgent in China (Comment by David N Fisman, The Lancet)

China’s Health Calamity: Causes and Consequences
A Panel Discussion with Bates Gill, Myron Cohen and David M. Lampton
The Nixon Center, Washington, DC June 4, 2003


The Lancet Podcast - 13 January 2007 (mp3, 7.88Mb)

This week's podcast features an interview with Dr Miren Cohen from the University of North Carolina, one of the authors of a research article documenting a resurgence of syphilis in China over the past decade. A range of unique biological and social forces are responsible for the latest epidemic.

Syphilis rates skyrocket in China (New Scientist)

or, to put it bluntly: Sex Practice Changes in China Lead to Jump in Syphilis Cases.

The U.S. and Europe - Globalization meets cheese standards

Thomas P.M. Barnett, reviewing Roger Cohen's review of Überpower, has this to say:

Europe keeps expecting America to 'come home' and it just ain't gonna happen. We're living in the vast rule-set reset that is globalization's advance around the planet. Europe and Japan, the classic West other than America, wants largely to sit this process out, instead arguing over cheese standards and ag subsidies and UN Security Council resolutions.

(a 2006 draft leftover)

Is China going to dominate the 21st century?

From "Learning to Keep Learning" By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, The New York Times, December 13, 2006:

(...)

Sorry, but I am not ready to cede the 21st century to China yet.

No question, China has been able to command an impressive effort to end illiteracy, greatly increasing its number of high school grads and new universities. But I still believe it is very hard to produce a culture of innovation in a country that censors Google — which for me is a proxy for curtailing people’s ability to imagine and try anything they want. You can command K-12 education. But you can’t command innovation. Rigor and competence, without freedom, will take China only so far. China will have to find a way to loosen up, without losing control, if it wants to be a truly innovative nation.

(...)

Why should any employer anywhere in the world pay Americans to do highly skilled work — if other people, just as well educated, are available in less developed countries for half our wages?

If we can’t answer this question, in an age when more and more routine work can be digitized, automated or offshored, including white-collar work, “it is hard to see how, over time, we are going to be able to maintain our standard of living,” says Marc Tucker, who heads the National Center on Education and the Economy.

(...)

Tomorrow, Mr. Tucker’s organization is coming out with a report titled “Tough Choices or Tough Times,” which proposes a radical overhaul of the U.S. education system, with one goal in mind: producing more workers — from the U.P.S. driver to the software engineer — who can think creatively.

(...)

Halloween in Beijing

This comment by E.M. Cuneo reminds me of christmas in Nanning:

(...) My husband and I, along with our 2 toddlers, have been spending the fall in Beijing. I was overjoyed when I realized that we’d miss Halloween in New York — as it is, by far, the most overblown, overcommercialized and ridiculous event of the year, imho. We get here and guess what? We get invited to 4 halloween parties by people who don’t know what halloween is, yet want to impress the ex-pat community. "Ohh, darn," I said. "I think the kids are coming down with Typhoid, maybe next year." (...)

The Re-Engagement of the American People

Happy or suicidal with tonight's results, something colossal and profoundly important has happened in the United States beginning in 2000 — the re-engagement of the American people with politics. We have had four enormously consequential elections in a row now in which voters have cast their ballots in numbers that we were told we'd never see in our lifetimes. (...)

writes John Podhoretz. Glenn Reynolds calls that a good observation.

So true. Greetings from politically more and more dis-engaging Germany.

I put together some quotes concerning electronic voting machines over at B.L.O.G. The post is almost completely in English, including the following quote and youtube link:

Now that Election Day is over and done, and you're celebrating or bemoaning the win or loss of your favorite corrupt official, kick back with a drink or your morning coffee and watch this video. (...)

In the following video you can watch Prof. Edward W. Felten and "the two kids from Princeton who actually did this work" on (FOX News) air:



Update

Joerg of Atlantic Review has a first reaction from a German official and praises the direct democracy in the US: US Election Results, German Prejudices and Direct Democracy

The Germans, the War - and Bombs

60 Years Later, Buried Bombs Still Frighten Germans, and Kill Some. By MARK LANDLER, The New York Times

More than six decades after the end of World War II, Germans still routinely come across unexploded bombs beneath farmers’ fields or city streets. Lately, there has been a skein of such dangerous discoveries, one with deadly consequences.

On Monday morning, a highway worker was killed when his cutting machine struck a World War II bomb beneath a busy autobahn southeast of Frankfurt. The explosion ripped apart the vehicle and damaged several passing cars, wounding four other workers and a motorist.

(...)

It's not for the first time, that I got the impression that Mr. Landler is exaggerating things and is actually drawing a picture of Germany which strucks me as... inaccurate. He has a point in mentioning three more WWII-bomb incidents within the last week, but still: war time bombs are not a big deal in Germany - and we do not come across unexploded bombs "routinely".

Stories from the 21st century (1): Holy Innocents

From the CNN homepage:

Prosecutor: Suicidal, text-messaging teen kills woman

ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- A lovesick teenage girl drove into an oncoming car in a suicide attempt that she counted down "8, 7, 6..." in a text message to the female classmate who spurned her, authorities said. The teenager survived but a woman in the other car -- a mother of three -- died.

Louise Egan Brunstad, 16, was charged Thursday with felony murder. Prosecutors said they intend to try her as an adult. If convicted, she faces an automatic life sentence.

"She was actually counting down her imminent threat: 'Nine, eight, seven, six ... I'm going to do it,"' said Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard.

Authorities said Brunstad rammed her family's Mercedes-Benz head-on into a smaller Daewoo driven by 30-year-old Nancy Salado-Mayo, who was killed. Salado-Mayo's middle child, Lesly, 6, was in a child safety seat and was treated for fractured ribs and other injuries.

Brunstad, who was treated for an ankle injury, had told friends she planned to kill herself after another female student at Holy Innocents Episcopal School refused to have sex with her, Howard said. (...)

"...and will come again if ever needed" - Remembering JFK in Berlin

Last week, I joined a group of about 50 people for a four-days-tour to Berlin. The trip was organized by the Press and Information Office of the Federal Government (Federal Press Office) to show us citizens and taxpayers how the politicians are using our money. It was an interesting journey which most informative parts were about German history. The first site we paid a visit to was Checkpoint Charlie, and among other places, we also visited the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial, the Marienfelde Refugee Center Museum - and the Rathaus Schöneberg, the location where then US President John F. Kennedy held his famous speech in 1963, proclaiming "Ich bin ein Berliner".

A few years ago, I worked near the Rathaus Schöneberg for almost a year, and visiting the building used to be an everyday business to me. I knew about the Kennedy speech including the famous quote, but I didn't really pay attention to back then. Therefore, it was quite a strange experience to enter the building as part of a guided tour. We even entered the balcony, from which we had a similiar view as JFK on June 26, 1963, when he delivered his speech from a platform some feet below. The guide told us about the historical context of the speech and how important it was that JFK was accompanied by General Lucius D. Clay, the "father" of the Berlin Airlift. After I've watched the video of the speech, I think that the opening remark

And I am proud (...) to come here in the company of my fellow American, General Clay, who has been in this city during its great moments of crisis and will come again if ever needed.

was the most important part of the whole speech, at least for the audience at that time, giving them exactly the boost of confidence and reassurance to be under U.S. protection they needed.

JFK's interpreter, Robert H. Lochner, remembers:

Clay, whose interpreter I had been, had recommended me to Kennedy, and I interpreted for the president during the whole trip to Germany. The reception Kennedy received in Cologne, Bonn and Frankfurt had already been enthusiastic but paled against the reception by the West Berliners.

As we walked up the stairs to the city hall in West Berlin for Kennedy's major speech, he called me over and asked me to write on a piece of paper in German, "I am a Berliner." I did, and when we got to West Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt's office, while the hundreds of thousands of Berliners were cheering outside, Kennedy practiced it with me a few times before going out on the balcony for his historic speech.

The most powerful part of the speech, of course, is the following, ending with the second German phrase used by JFK, which even made it to youtube, as you can see below:

There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin.

Robert H. Lochner, again:

To Kennedy's political adviser, McGeorge Bundy, if nobody else, it was immediately apparent that making the famous "I am a Berliner" pledge in German gave it considerable additional force. Some historians argue it wouldn't have gone around the world and into history the way it did if he had said it in English. When, after the speech, we again briefly assembled in Brandt's office, I stayed close to the president in case he should talk to any Germans. I could not help overhearing Bundy saying to Kennedy, "I think that went a little too far."

I hear some, if not many Americans complaining that Germany seems to have forgotten about German-American post-war history, especially about the airlift and the contribution of John F. Kennedy and his successors as presidents of the United States. It might well be that we don't remember this history as it would be appropriate - but it is not forgotten. To illustrate my point, I want to close with a quote from a Deutsche Welle article back from 2003, dealing with the 40th anniversary of the "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech:

Today, 40 years later, Kennedy's legacy lives on in Germany's collective memory - for example in school books, documentaries about the cold war and in an exhibition at the German National Museum of Contemporary History in Bonn. There, the most famous excerpt of Kennedy's speech is displayed on a television monitor, and there is a copy of the piece of paper John F. Kennedy held in his hand when delivering his speech, complete with the lines "Ich bin ein Berliner" and "Let them come to Berlin" scrawled on it in his own hand-writing.

Herman Schäfer, a custodian at the museum, says the document still elicits a deep response today.

"The reaction of our visitors is very enthusiastic, still enthusiastic, even though this 40 years ago. Everybody - be it young or old people - have in mind that this is a quotation from John F. Kennedy. So they hear this quotation and then the look into the glass case and see with even more surprise that there is this little document with the phonetic transcription of John F. Kennedy. So there is still this enthusiasm about this quotation that (puts) so much emphasis on the German-American friendship during the 1960s."

Submitted to Carnival of German-American Relations

Update August 16, 2009: Since the originally embedded youtube video was removed, I replaced it with a similar, albeit longer, video.

__________

AMERICANS AND EUROPEANS SEE RISE OF CHINA DIFFERENTLY

Atlantic Review points to a new survey by Transatlantic Trends conducted in selected European countries and the U.S.

Transatlantic Trends 2006 is a project of the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the Compagnia di San Paolo in Turin, Italy, with additional support from the Fundação Luso-Americana (Portugal), the Fundación BBVA (Spain), and the Tipping Point Foundation (Bulgaria).

To grab just one finding from the press release:

China threatening: When asked to rate their feelings of warmth toward China on a 100-point "thermometer" scale, Americans and Europeans rate China virtually identically (46 degrees to 45 degrees). But 38% of Americans, compared with 27% of Europeans, feel that the rise of China is an "extremely important threat" in the next ten years. In the United States, the largest percentage of respondents is more concerned by the threat posed by growing Chinese military power (35%), while in Europe, the largest percentage of respondents is more concerned by the threat posed by the growing Chinese economy (37%). Among Europeans, the highest perception of the threat of the Chinese economy is in France (53%), Portugal (52%), and Italy (51%). Within the United States, Democrats are more concerned about the economic (37%) than military threat (28%), and Republicans are more concerned about the military (42%) than economic threat (21%).

Considering the fact, that the U.S. has much stronger military ties than Europe with South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, the different perception of China does not come as a surprise. Apart from that, I don't like phone-conducted surveys.

Those Asian Americans at Richard Montgomery High

Yesterday, I did a little WaPo archive diving (Yes, my early sunday morning habits are somewhat strange. Just in case you didn't know that.), and I came across a typical piece on Asian Americans. Excerpts:

Asian Students Contend With Expectations. By Marc Fisher, Washington Post.

"How many of you play piano?" I ask. Nearly everyone raises a hand.

"Been in an SAT prep course since seventh grade?" Oh yeah.

"Go to Chinese school on Saturdays?" Check.

By this point, the Asian students who fill a room at Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville are laughing -- at their stereotype, at themselves, at life as immigrants' kids.

(...)

The students summoned me here because there's a story they want told, a story about lives that others assume are copacetic -- straight A's, top colleges, smooth sailing.

Other kids at RM may see the Asians -- who make up 23 percent of students there, and 14 percent countywide -- as a privileged class, and there's something to that.

"We can get away with things that other kids can't," says Maddie Jalandoni, a senior. "They never stop us for a pass in the hallway. In ninth grade, I lost my calculator and went to the security office. Normally, they ask you for ID before they give you anything. But she just said, 'I trust you.' "

"That just happened to me today," adds senior Jessica Dinh. "Security stopped this African American girl in the hall, and I was right there and I didn't have a pass either, but nobody says anything to me."

I heard three more stories along those lines before we switched to the flip side. Asian students say teachers hold them to higher standards because they know Asian parents press their kids hard. The students say they put harsh pressure on themselves as well: Non-Asians may see 18 Asians among 26 students in a BC calculus class and think, "They have it made." Asians look at that scene and, as Dinh puts it, "you feel this pressure: I'm surrounded by Asians who are really studying hard, so now I really have to study even harder."

That attitude stems from a life of competition and striving. "I took every lesson possible," says senior Jamie Chen. "Ice skating, gymnastics, violin. Later, I asked my mother why she made me do all that, and she said she always wanted those chances."

Add the punishing quotas that Asian students face in the college admissions game -- colleges don't admit to using quotas, but the numbers tell the story -- and the result is pressure through every step of childhood.

(...)

I would love to add some rants on pressure and paternal expectations and stuff. But for me, it's back to "How can we integrate muslims into German society?". And how "We" ("the" Western world, that is) are humiliating them and how we can change our attitudes towards them to make them feel more accepted.

Zero Tolerance And Education: Crucifixion without Christ

NO MERCY. By Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker

(...)

This past summer, Rhett Bomar, the starting quarterback for the University of Oklahoma Sooners, was cut from the team when he was found to have been “overpaid” (receiving wages for more hours than he worked, with the apparent complicity of his boss) at his job at a car dealership. Even in Oklahoma, people seemed to think that kicking someone off a football team for having cut a few corners on his job made perfect sense. This is the age of zero tolerance. Rules are rules. Students have to be held accountable for their actions. Institutions must signal their expectations firmly and unambiguously: every school principal and every college president, these days, reads from exactly the same script.

(...)

Somewhere along the way—perhaps in response to Columbine—we forgot the value of discretion in disciplining the young. “Ultimately, they have to make right decisions,” the Oklahoma football coach, Bob Stoops, said of his players, after jettisoning his quarterback. “When they do not, the consequences are serious.” Open and shut: he sounded as if he were talking about a senior executive of Enron, rather than a college sophomore whose primary obligation at Oklahoma was to throw a football in the direction of young men in helmets. You might think that if the University of Oklahoma was so touchy about its quarterback being “overpaid” it ought to have kept closer track of his work habits with an on-campus job. But making a fetish of personal accountability conveniently removes the need for institutional accountability. (We court-martial the grunts who abuse prisoners, not the commanding officers who let the abuse happen.) To acknowledge that the causes of our actions are complex and muddy seems permissive, and permissiveness is the hallmark of an ideology now firmly in disgrace. That conservative patron saint Whittaker Chambers once defined liberalism as Christ without the Crucifixion. But punishment without the possibility of redemption is worse: it is the Crucifixion without Christ.

(...)

Antiterrorism "Debate" in Germany?

The second hot topic in Germany these days is the arrest of a Lebanese student on suspicion of having taken part in a stillborn terror attack on Germany's rail system, which, as SPIEGEL ONLINE puts it, "has forced the country to face up to the fact that it, too, is a target for extremists":

Big Macs and DIY Bombs

The article gives a press review of German newspapers. This review clearly shows that the perception of the terror threat is still related to the political camp a newspaper feels warm with. The Lebanese wannabe terrorists didn't change anything.

Mark Landler of the New York Times doesn't realize that:

Bomb Plot Shocks Germans Into Antiterrorism Debate. By Mark Landler, The New York Times

(...)

The bombing plot, which has led to the arrest of the Lebanese suspect in northern Germany and an intense manhunt for a second suspect, is also reshaping a politically charged debate in Berlin over how much latitude to give law enforcement authorities in fighting terrorism.

(...)

[T]he case has rattled Germans, many of whom have clung to the belief that their government’s opposition to the war in Iraq would insulate them from attacks like those in London or Madrid. The trouble-free World Cup in Germany last month reinforced the sense of security.

"People thought for the longest time that Germany would be safe because we didn’t send troops to Iraq," said Johannes Schmalz, the president of the agency for the protection of the constitution — a rough equivalent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation — in the state of Baden-Wurttemberg.

"This presumption is wrong," he said. "The enemy of violent Islamists is the Western world as a whole."

(...)

Germany, owing largely to its Nazi past, has been reluctant to pursue more aggressive antiterrorism measures that are standard in Britain and the United States. Berlin and other cities have far fewer surveillance cameras than does London, and the government does not keep a central antiterrorism database.

(...)

*sob* Yeah, Nazi past... My goodness. Did the Nazis use surveillance cameras to spy terrorists? Oups, I didn't know that.

A few points:

1.) The term "debate", used in an U.S. "quality" newspaper, is misleading (or bluntly: wrong). We don't have debates in Germany. What we have are a.) a (usually clueless) journalist interviews a biased expert and b.) a bunch of talking heads all speaking at the same time (we call it "talk show").

2.) It's not that we haven't had loads of law inforcement in the aftermath of 9/11.

3.) The fact that there isn't a national data base has nothing to do with the Nazi past, but with the federal system in Germany, which is, bwt, why the comparison between the FBI and the "Verfassungsschutz" of a German state is ridiculous.

4.) I have yet to meet a person who thinks that the decision not to send troops to Iraq was an appeasement measure to prevent terrorism.

The Finance Minister and German Holiday Habits

If you don't have much time to bother about what's going on in Germany, take the following article pars pro toto.

Germany Up in Arms Over Minister's Holiday Comments. Deutsche Welle - Business.

Apparantly, Germany's finance minister Peer Steinbrueck himself is longing for a loooong vacation:

"People are going to have to spend more on their old age and healthcare in future," he said in an interview with a magazine. "That means that we'll no doubt have to forego a holiday trip in order to put aside money for later."

This overwhelmingly stupid remark lead to an immidiate withdrawal of 650 members of the minister's (and my) party, according to the German daily Tagesspiegel.

In the meanwhile, Steinbrueck apologized (german), claiming that "misinterpretation" and "exaggeration" of his remark caused the outrage. Oh, my.

Keeping the flavor of ethnicity

Today's NYT has a piece about Devon Avenue in North Chicago, a Pakistan enclave:

Pakistanis Find U.S. an Easier Fit Than Britain. By Neil MacFarquhar, The New York Times

(...)

Although heavily Pakistani, the street is far more exposed to other cultures than are similar communities in Britain.

Indian Hindus have a significant presence along the roughly one-and-a-half-mile strip of boutiques, whose other half is named for Gandhi. What was a heavily Jewish neighborhood some 20 years ago also includes recent immigrants from Colombia, Mexico and Ukraine, among others.

"There is integration even when you have an enclave," said Nizam Arain, 32, a lawyer of Pakistani descent who was born and raised in Chicago. "You don’t have the same siege mentality."

Even so, members of the Pakistani immigrant community here find themselves joining the speculation as to whether sinister plots could be hatched in places like Devon Avenue.

The most common response is no, at least not now, because of differences that have made Pakistanis in the United States far better off economically and more assimilated culturally than their counterparts in Britain. But some Pakistani-Americans do not rule out the possibility, given how little is understood about the exact tipping point that pushes angry young Muslim men to accept an ideology that endorses suicide and mass murder.

The idea of a relatively smaller, more prosperous, more striving immigrant community inoculating against terror cells goes only so far, they say.

"It makes it sound like it couldn’t happen here because we are the good immigrants: hard-working, close-knit, educated," said Junaid Rana, an assistant professor of Asian-American studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an American-born son of Pakistani immigrants. "But we are talking about a cult mind-set, how a cult does its brainwashing."

Yet one major difference between the United States and Britain, some say, is the United States’ historical ideal of being a melting-pot meritocracy.

"You can keep the flavor of your ethnicity, but you are expected to become an American," said Omer Mozaffar, 34, a Pakistani-American raised here who is working toward a doctorate in Islamic studies at the University of Chicago.

(...)

Ifti Nasim, a former luxury car salesman turned poet and gay rights advocate, greets a visitor with a slim volume of his works. The cover photograph shows him wearing a bright orange dress, ropes of pearls and a long blond wig. He has been in the United States since 1971.

Some shoppers crowding the sidewalks on Devon Avenue greet Mr. Nasim warmly, telling him they listen to his radio show or read his columns in a local Urdu-language newspaper. In Pakistan, Mr. Nasim says, his flamboyance would not be tolerated, but here he calls his acceptance "the litmus test of the society."

Like many, however, he has moments of doubt, saying, "Pakistani society in Chicago has made a smooth transition so far, but you never know."

(...)

For the past eight years, Abdul Qadeer Sheikh, 46, has managed Islamic Books N Things on Devon Avenue, which sells items like Korans, prayer rugs and Arabic alphabet books. He says that since Sept. 11, he has seen signs of the bias that has existed in Britain for decades developing here. He describes a distinctive fear of being seen as Muslim, even along Devon Avenue. Before, a good 70 percent of the women who came into his shop were veiled, he said. Now the reverse is true, and far fewer men wear traditional clothes.

The attitude of the American government in adopting terms like "Islamic fascists" and deporting large numbers of immigrants, he said, makes Muslims feel marked, as if they do not belong here. "The society in the United States is much fairer to foreigners than anywhere else," he said, "but that mood is changing."

This piece isn't unique or outstanding at all, but it's a good reminder why immigration and integration still works in the U.S. - and does not in Europe.

Grass: Enough Said.

Grass Defends Long Silence as Book Sales Soar

This headline says it all. In case you disagree with me, I push you towards Andrew Hammel's entry on Grass: Ja, Guenter Grass was a Nazi

And once you're there, check out this entry as well: Nein, George W. Bush is not a Nazi

Btw, the Wikipedia tells me that Guenter Grass changed his family name from "Graß" to "Grass" decades ago. I consider this a bold hint. Matter-of-factly, we were all blind.