Qurans and Bibles

One example of why the left looks hypocritical to the right: there’s a “Qur’an-burning” day coming up which has caused quite a bit of consternation on the left, but there was a Bible-burning day at a church in NC not long ago. (The pastor of the church hosting it believes any translation other than the KJV is a satanic perversion).

Where were the howls from the left then? I’m not saying that this is actual hypocrisy, because I understand that the left sees this Qur’an-burning as representing a potentially oppressed minority in the country, etc., but when the right talks ironically about the left’s “new-found passion for freedom of religion,” they’re not totally off-base (in their sarcasm), since the left does not regularly go out and stump for greater religious expression in US society.

It’s only when it’s the religious expression of Muslims that this happens. And it does look pretty hypocritical.

1Q84

Mother-in-law is here from Japan, and she brought the third volume of IQ84 I asked for. I’m going to read it because I read the first two volumes last year, but not because I enjoyed them. Murakami’s literary career has been an almost completely downward trajectory. How many other writers in the world have gone from being very good to laughably bad?

What’s strange about Murakami, though, is that on the level of simple writing skills, he’s still very good. What he writes is very, very readable. The language, the words, the way it flows together. He’s a master of the unexpected simile.

It’s just the content of what he’s writing that is so preposterous: hot lesbian assassins into orgies and men who (hey what a coincidence) look like Haruki Murakami, endless descriptions of this one teenage girl’s breasts, a sensitive gay bodyguard to an eccentric rich lady who is a secret vigilante, hiring hot lesbian assassins to kill men who abuse their wives, etc., etc.

Where’s the moody, almost noire-ish realismo mágico of his early novels? Where is the revealing introspection of his early characters? Where’s the plain-spoken otherworldliness of his early imagination?

I miss it.

Basque translations for the monolinguals?

Basque-language news show — and some reports provide Basque translations for the Spanish-speakers they interview!! (??) The sentiment is nice, but the *only* monolingual Basque speakers these days are five years old and younger, and I somehow doubt they’re glued to the TV when the news comes on.

Google Translate fail

Hezkuntzak porrot egin duela iritzi dio Munillak eta inoizko onena dela erantzun dio Zelaak

(Education seems to Munilla to have failed and Zelaa responds that it is better than ever.)

becomes

Education has been the failure of the opinion that the best response to the unprecedented and How to Father

(From a Berria.info story today.)

How to Father?

Fight in Catalunya

Bullfighting supporters and opponents clashed verbally before the first bullfight to be put on since the passage of a law that will prohibit the sport in Catalonia starting January 1, 2012.

I wonder how politicized the issue has become. I’ve heard Catalans say the sport as a Castillian thing that’s foreign to their culture, even though history says otherwise. Still, this kind of rejection of things associated with Madrid is an expression of Catalan identity which is to be expected. Of the multi-ethnicity European nations created in the 19th century (Germany, Italy, Spain), Spain probably has the least cohesive sense of nationhood, which is maybe why it needed a dictator to hold it together.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see how this plays out in the future. The Constitutional Court in Madrid recently struck down or weakened a few parts of the Catalan Statute, but didn’t invalidate the whole thing. It’ll be a long process.

WSJ fighting for the consumer!

The Wall Street Journal is doing some activist journalism, helping the little guy fight big credit card corporations.

Nevertheless, Discover reviewed Mr. Condon’s account at The Wall Street Journal’s request and decided to waive the late fee and reduce Mr. Condon’s interest rate to its earlier level.

The only interesting thing about this non-story…

… is that the bridegroom has a microphone attached to his tie.

Where’s hers?

Greener Grass

Interesting juxtaposition in yesterday’s New York Times: an article about young Germans choosing to live under Sharia law in Waziristan and an article about young Afghan women worried that the return of the Taliban will mean an end to their freedom.

What symptom of modernity is it that causes young women to choose to live a life of medievally circumscribed freedom and servitude to their husbands? It would also be interesting to see how the young German women leaving Germany for Waziristan would react to Afghan women’s fear of the Taliban. What would one of these young German women say to the young Afghan woman? We know exactly what the Afghan woman would say to the German, of course: “you’re out of your mind!”