Ennis on the melancholia of objects

His paper abstract is HERE.

Egyptian police will have to take human rights courses

Good idea. HERE.

As for the latter part of the story, I think a good point is made. Why be so surprised that crime is a bit higher right now? 4,000 armored cars were destroyed and 90 police stations were burned down during the Revolution, along with the fact that the police have never had a worse reputation than now. That all goes with the territory. It will improve with time, and I for one am willing to be a bit more careful for a few months about crime as the price for free speech and a generally more positive atmosphere in Egypt. The security situation will eventually become much better, and it’s not scary horrible even now, just a bit more like a big American city (with less gun violence too, though a lot more than Egyptians are used to).

delayed honeymoon greeting

To Azeb and Paul, who are probably reading this in Venice. Have a great weekend. You are both dearly missed.

Tamanya coming back tomorrow A.M.

The kitten’s babysitter has not even demanded, but “reserved” the right to take her every time I travel, so obviously she made a great impression as a house guest.

I’ve also been told that she’s picked up a habit of playing with tissues now, and that she really loves it.

More immediately, however, she’ll be showing up in Zamalek at around 8:30 tomorrow. I’ll play with her for awhile just to remind her of what things are like in this place, then go into work a couple of hours late and stay a couple of hours late to make up for it.

October chill in the Cairo air

This rarely happens in mid-May, but we have a nice chilly evening for a jacket in Cairo. Headed to celebrate my last-ever promotion at a nearby rooftop restaurant.

But first I thought I would share the political views of my taxi driver from the airport tonight. Most of the Egyptians I hang out with are professors and students, and I’m never sure how representative they are of the populace as a whole. So, I tend to ask lots of political questions of secretaries and taxi drivers, who are of course closer to the average income, living conditions, and presumably political outlook.

Tonight’s driver was a very kind elderly Coptic gentleman from the vast neighborhood of Shubra. Very religious guy: lots of icons in his car that he wanted to show me. (St. George is a particular favorite among Christians in Egypt, and this guy had a “Guirguis” icon of his own.)

He seemed especially bothered by the vast looting of Egyptian wealth by regime figures. He rattled off the names of perhaps 15-20 officials, beginning with the Mubaraks, and in each case he cited an exact number of Egyptian Pounds that they were responsible for stealing. Not sure where he got the numbers, but he had them completely memorized.

Like everyone else, he also blames former Interior Minister Habib al-Adly for orchestrating the January 1 church bombing in Alexandria. That’s one conspiracy theory that is now so universally accepted that it’s not even a conspiracy theory anymore: it’s either stone-cold truth or mass hysteria, nothing in between. I haven’t honestly read what the evidence is, but I have yet to meet even one Egyptian who denies it, no matter their religion. There may be some who don’t believe the theory, they simply haven’t said so in my presence.

The minor good news for al-Adly is that this taxi driver was the first I’ve had since February who didn’t make the knife-across-the-throat gesture when mentioning al-Adly’s name. However, I sensed that this driver was simply a very nice guy who wouldn’t want to see anyone executed, so that may not reflect any change on the Egyptian street.

I then asked him his top choices for the next President. (At first I was always hearing either El Baradei or Amr Moussa, with Moussa leading slightly among taxi drivers and El Baradei among secretaries. But lately I’ve heard less about both of them.)

The driver’s first choice tonight was one I’ve heard from no one else before– Samir Radwan, the Finance Minister. Interesting suggestion. Radwan is sufficiently well-liked that no one seems to be holding it against him that he was part of Mubarak’s final new cabinet and even spoke in favor of keeping Mubarak while the Revolution was ongoing. He’s a labor economist and comes off as a very sincere champion of the poor and an excellent communicator in both Arabic and English. He wants Egypt to shoot for full employment rather than GDP growth. I met him briefly a year ago because he was the keynote speaker at our annual conference, though he was simply another economist at the time. It was a shot in the dark, but he gave an outstanding lecture that left everyone in the room impressed. I’ve not seen him mentioned as Presidential timber anywhere else, but the driver (who seemed rather poor, being the owner of the most dilapidated taxi I’ve ridden in for maybe the past 3-4 years) may be representative of a poorer section of the working electorate who are perhaps beginning to rally slowly behind Radwan. I don’t know, but I’ll keep my eyes open.

His second choice seemed more likely: Prime Minister Essam Sharaf, who is viewed by everyone I’ve met as an all-around good guy. He was the former Mubarak Transportation Minister from some years ago who resigned, went back to being an Engineering professor at Cairo University, and in that capacity had the guts to lead a march of professors to Tahrir during the Revolution. Many of my Egyptian colleagues at AUC know and love Sharaf. Maybe he’ll go for it. I haven’t been paying close attention for the past 10-12 days due to all my obligations.

Hendrix

As a Jimi Hendrix fan who has been to London multiple times, it’s odd that it had never occurred to me until last night to see the place where Hendrix died. I went over there this morning.

And by the way, it’s a gorgeous morning in London.

Bill Simmons on Phil Jackson

HERE.

Bottom line: Jackson is simply crippled with physical problems dating all the way back to drastic spinal fusion surgery during his days as a player. He’s now in his 60’s and it’s simply starting to catch up with him. I agree with Simmons that we’ll never see Jackson coaching again.

People sometimes downplay Jackson’s achievements with a frustrating line of reasoning that is often encountered in many other contexts as well. Namely, some people repeatedly say that Jackson deserves little credit for all his championships, because “he always had superstars”.

The problem with that argument is that the superstars were in place prior to Jackson’s arrival, but did not win championships until he arrived. Superstars don’t automatically win. LeBron James is in roughly the same league as Shaq, Kobe, and Jordan (to the extent that anyone can possibly be in the same league as Jordan), and LeBron still hasn’t won a championship. Charles Barkley and Karl Malone never won championships, and neither will Allen Iverson.

But they all probably would have won championships with Phil Jackson as their coach. He is a master ego manager, knowing precisely how to motivate the great players and make them buy into the passing-heavy triangle offense. In both the 1991 and 1993 Finals, Coach Phil convinced Jordan to pass to John Paxson for the biggest shots in the Finals. Coach Phil convinced Shaq and Kobe in L.A. to run layup drills with no ball in a sot of Zen exercise, which one cannot imagine a lesser coach having pulled off.

I even once had a conversation with someone who claimed that he wouldn’t be sold on Phil until he took over some rock-bottom NBA team and lead them from the bottom all the way to the championship. But I’m not sure that has ever happened in the NBA (though it’s happened in both baseball and football, which use many more players and hence are less superstar-centric than basketball).

In any case, those arguments will be forgotten over time, and Phil will be remembered as a guy who won an incredible 11 NBA titles in a 21-year period, with two different teams.

But perhaps his most startling coaching job was in 1993-94,when Jordan had just retired for the first time. That Pippen-led team might possibly have won the championship yet again without Jordan, if not that the Bulls were screwed by a Hue Hollins mystery foul call against New York.

It’s interesting to speculate how NBA history might look a bit different if the Bulls had won the title that year without Jordan. The obvious guesses are that Phil Jackson and Scottie Pippen’s historical stock would rise dramatically, and Jordan’s would sink to a limited extent. Actually, Jordan might not have returned from retirement if the Bulls had won without him– there might have been concerns that he would “disrupt the chemistry” of what would now have been Scottie Pippen’s team.

Instead, Jordan (who is certainly the greatest player ever) now also looks like a magical team savior, and Pippen is dismissed by some of his detractors as a coattail-riding supporting actor amd perhaps even a head case who also helped Portland choke with a big lead against L.A. in the 2000 playoffs.

Granted, Pippen brought some of that on himself. His tantrum in the 1994 playoffs when the final play was drawn up for Toni Kukoc, his refusal to re-enter the game for the final 1-point-whatever seconds as Kukoc did hit the dramatic winning shot against New York, did not put Pippen in a good light.

But as for Phil, I think he has to be called the greatest NBA coach of all time. Red Auerbach coached with one dynasty in a less competitive-era. Phil skillfully managed two different teams to multiple championships over a period of two decades. He’ll be missed.

last morning in London

Didn’t see too much of it on this trip, which was Oxford-dominated.

Last night, while walking and talking with a friend, the thought occurred to me that in some ways my knowledge of London has degenerated since I’ve started to know people here.

It makes sense when you think about it. Whenever I come here now, I’m going straight to them, and they always frequent the same limited circle of places as we all do in our home cities. On top of that, since they’re the London residents I’m always following them around like a child and paying no attention to how we’re getting where we’re going, since I can trust them to do it for me.

What made me think of this was that we happened to be walking last night in a neighborhood where I spent a lot of time on my first couple of trips to London before I ever knew a soul in this city. And it brought back the freshness of those early visits, when I never had any idea where I was, and would simply look for interesting streets and follow them. We ended up on some of those very same streets last night, and I remembered them pretty clearly, considering the amount of time that has passed.

promoted

This morning I was promoted to Full Professor.

This came as a pleasant surprise not because of the result, but because I thought it was something for the very end of May. (Despite actually working in the Provost’s Office, I’ve obviously needed to be kept completely in the dark about my own case.) It’s typical of Provost Haroun that this happened in an email stamped 4:30 AM; that’s how hard he works.

What strikes me as most significant about this moment is that it’s the end of a 25-year period (since graduating from high school) in which there was always some next degree or next promotion looming on the road. It’s a relaxing sensation to be done with all that. There are still plenty of other things to worry about, but never again these particular sorts of things.