Border-crossing

After over a hundred thousand refugees have left Libya, for Egypt or Tunisia or Europe, the Arab Spring and the resistance to it have now led to the flight of hundreds of people from Syria.

In Geneva, Andrej Mahecic, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees reported today that during the past week around 1,400 people have left the Syrian town of Tall Kalakh, which is under attack by the military, and crossed the border to the Lebanese regions of Wadi Khaled and Tall Biri. Refugees had already been entering Lebanon around the end of April.

"UNHCR working with Lebanon to help people fleeing Syria" (Briefing Notes) [UNHCR] (May 20, 2011)

Don Lemon and the Black + Gay + High Profile Equation

Yesterday, in a New York Times article about his forthcoming book, the CNN news anchor Don Lemon effectively 'came out.'

There are only two other major news anchors who are 'out'; the others are Rachel Maddow and Thomas Roberts of MSNBC. So, through his public profile, Mr. Lemon hopes to encourage openness and feelings of security in other gay Americans.

His coworkers at CNN, he explains, have partly already known that he was gay, and the company is inviting him to appear on its shows to promote the book Transparency, like the Newsroom.

In the Times article, he says, “I think if I had seen more people like me who are out and proud, it wouldn’t have taken me 45 years to say it [. . .], to walk in the truth.”

The reaction to it seems to have been friendly. "I'm overwhelmed by all your tweets and support!", Mr. Lemon wrote on Twitter, "Hoping this prevents more tragedies like tyler clementi's suicide." (Background on Tyler Clementi.)

The $3.9 Million Retirement and a California Hospital

Yesterday the Los Angeles Times reported that California's State Assembly has decided to audit the Salinas Valley Memorial Healthcare District, after the newspaper dug up the fact that its former CEO Samuel Downing was given a retirement package with nearly 4 million dollars in extra pension benefits last month.

There are more details in the article, but the splurge looks even more grandiose contrasted in this paragraph to the general financial situation of the hospital and its low-level employees:

International Nurses Day

It's International Nurses Day and the birthday of Florence Nightingale.

Albertus Seba and the Didelphis Marsupialis Terror

The Guardian's website is running a slideshow of Albertus Seba's painstaking colour-plate portrayals of animal and insect life, in honour of publisher Taschen's release of his drawings. And if old-fashioned illustrations of people and cooking implements and so on can be peculiar, sometimes animal sketches can be even more so.

Greek Salad and the Dodgy Sheep's Cheese

Greek salad is a dish which I have never managed to get very wrong. Today I tweaked the dressing and it turned out fine, so here is the (mostly) unquantified recipe:

From: Wikimedia Commons, by Fir0002/Flagstaffotos
Licensed under GNU Free Documentation License, 1.2

In Brief: Philip Morris and Labour

On May 9 the watchdog Verité published its report on tobacco industry workers in Kazakhstan and the firm Philip Morris reemphasized its commitment to protecting the workers in its supply chain. In 2009 Human Rights Watch criticized the mistreatment of migrant labourers under the Kazakh farmers who cultivate tobacco for the company's Kazakh base; for example the suppliers withheld their workers' passports, used child labour, and refused to pay their wages.

The language of the HRW and Verité reports is surprisingly gentle; apparently Philip Morris approached Verité to examine the problem in the first place and it is probable that the company had not known what suppliers' working conditions were like. From one or two other instances I guess that on the whole multinational corporations are taking more pains not to be flagrantly diabolical; from what I remember of the No Logo era, the attitudes used to be far more unrepentant and belligerent.

Kazakhstan: Philip Morris International Overhauls Labor Protections [Human Rights Watch] (May 9, 2011)

*

Postscript: Child labour in carpet factory, Pakistan (UNICEF photo)

Forewarned, Forearmed: Da Vinci in London

The exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci's paintings and sketches at the National Gallery in London will probably not fail to be talked to pieces once it opens in November,

A Day in the Life of a Bookshop Help

IT is Monday and, as must be sometimes the case, I was not in an awake frame of mind even when I got up, and once at the bookshop submerged myself in news, blogs and blogging as customary. The paradoxical question of how to look and be forthcoming to customers when sitting at the computer remains unsolved;

Photo credit: Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive)
via Wikimedia Commons

The Question of Pioneer Woman

The way I discovered the website Pioneer Woman was that people on Jezebel were recommending the recipes; after looking at it three or so times and finding it impressive, I have revisited it semi-regularly since.

Among the rubrics of photographing, gardening, cooking and homeschooling life on a comfortable ranch in the American Midwest . . .


Medieval spoons from the Château de Chillon, Photo by Rama
Wikimedia Commons

A Retrospective on Princess Beatrice and the Hat

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth

— John Keats
From The Literature Network

*

A week after the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton, our absorption in the Ascot-esque hats and fascinators worn by their guests has endured, and Princess Beatrice's hat has outdone all the rest.

A confection by Philip Treacy, it stood at her forehead, a beige ring with a loopy bow and rippling ends affixed to its top, placed on (from what one could tell on photos) a rounded foundation like a flatscreen computer monitor. I didn't think it was too bad, but it has generally been deemed incredibly ugly. Now it has acquired immortality by virtue of Photoshop.

The masterpiece of the genre is undoubtedly the photo where the hat is 'shopped onto President Obama, Hillary Clinton and the other American officials in the situation room during the military operation against Osama bin Laden. But the rest of the photoshopped oeuvre is also worth a look:

Princess Beatrice's royal wedding hat goes viral [Daily Telegraph] (May 6, 2011)
Princess Beatrice's Royal Wedding Hat: Birth of a Meme [Gawker] (April 29, 2011)
Etc.
Princess Beatrice Royal Wedding Hat [KnowYourMeme]

The milliner has defended The Hat in the press. But Hilary Alexander's article in the Daily Telegraph today implies that Mr. Treacy has decided to stop swimming against the current; he promises that whoever wins the newspaper's competition will receive an extra-special item of his headgear.

Win a 'mystery' hat by Philip Treacy inspired by Princess Beatrice [Daily Telegraph], by Hilary Alexander (May 6, 2011)

***

Postscript: the 3-year-old bridesmaid covering her ears with her hands:

"Royal Wedding Girl" [KnowYourMeme]

Cinco de Mayo: A Profoundly Researched Insight

It's Cinco de Mayo! To look at this traditional Mexican-American feast in greater depth I turned to Wikipedia and the Urban Dictionary, where the first definition put the feast in a somewhat insensitive but likely accurate nutshell:

Photo: El Castillo at Chichén Itzá [Wikimedia Commons] by Eric Baetscher (March 29, 2008)
Licensed under GNU Free Documentation License