Year: 2013

Trashing The Treasures Of Timbuktu, Ctd

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Vivienne Walt reports that many of the city’s revered manuscripts were actually moved before the immolation of the Ahmed Baba Centre:

By phone from Bamako on Monday night, [presidential aide Mahmoud] Zouber told TIME, “They were put in a very safe place. I can guarantee you. The manuscripts are in total security.” In a second interview from Bamako, a preservationist who did not want to be named confirmed that the center’s collection had been hidden out of reach from the militants. Neither of those interviewed wanted the location of the manuscripts named in print, for fear that remnants of the al-Qaeda occupiers might return to destroy them.

Lila Azam Zanganeh adds:

Unfortunately, very few of the manuscripts had been copied electronically.

And since many of the areas of knowledge they cover—anatomy, erectile dysfunction, women’s rights, medicine, music—are domains traditionally despised by Islamists, the Ahmed Baba Centre had several times been ransacked by armed men, though no damage had yet been done to the manuscripts themselves.

Last spring, the magazine Jeune Afrique reported that curators and private collectors were already organizing themselves to conceal the most important documents. Families spontaneously followed course on their own accounts. According to some manuscript-conservation specialists, it is believed that these libraries bring “baraka” (“good luck”), and that dismantling them attracts misfortune. Besides, many of these texts (or jottings in the margins of the manuscripts) contain family secrets, correspondences, accounts, and diaries, owing to the fact that most of Timbuktu’s inhabitants, including its skilled-craftsman class, were literate since the fifteenth century.

(Photo: Men recover burnt ancient manuscripts at the Ahmed Baba Centre for Documentation and Research in Timbuktu on January 29, 2013. French-led forces seized yesterday Mali’s fabled desert city of Timbuktu in a lightning advance north as fleeing Islamists torched a building housing priceless ancient manuscripts. Mayor Ousmane confirmed the fire at the Ahmed Baba Centre for Documentation and Research that housed between 60,000 and 100,000 manuscripts, according to Mali’s culture ministry. By Eric Feferberg/AFP/Getty Images)

Will The Scouts Lose The Millennials? Ctd

A reader rejoices over news that the Boy Scouts of America is now strongly considering “leaving local sponsoring organizations free to decide for themselves whether to admit gay scouts”:

Our Scout Executive just made it official in our office, that the Boy Scouts of America will no longer prohibit open and avowed homosexuals from being leaders or receiving their Eagle Scout awards. I have felt left out of the discussion about homosexuality because, for me, coming out meant losing my affiliation with an organization of which I have been an active member for 30 of my 37 years. I don’t have to hide anymore.

Although everyone in my office knows about me and several of my co-workers who are gay as well, we always had to keep it a mystery to the higher officials in the organization. We have had to fight this on two fronts. On the one hand, we had to endure the slanders of many volunteers who felt that the Boy Scouts was a safe environment to deride others for their sexual orientations. On the other hand, we had to continually justify and support to our friends in the gay community, an organization for which we feel so deeply passionate.

I’ve always believed and loved all that the Boy Scouts meant to boys, with the exception of a single repugnant policy. My immediate superior is also gay and it hurt everyday listening to him justify to donors a policy that explicitly stated that the organization he was supporting deemed him to be immoral and unfit to lead youth.

I never wanted to leave the scouts and have never felt that the right thing to do was boycott or encourage others to give up on the organization. I have always believed that the way to beat the ban was to support the good that scouting does while consistently expressing my, and others’, opposition to the policy. We didn’t need lawsuits or threats to change. We just needed to ride the changing attitudes about our community to their fortunate and, as we always believed, inevitable outcome.

When I heard the news there were several people who I wanted to contact. My ex-wife had recently filed a custody suit against me because I continued to take my son to scouting, even though she was a lesbian and was, therefore, banned from being involved as well. Now she, as well as myself, can be involved with or son’s activities. Also on my list was you, as I have always found inspiration and comfort in your perspective and comments on these issues.

Recent Dish on the cultural shift in the Boy Scouts here.

The Daily Wrap

Today on the Dish, Andrew declared the status of same sex couples to be an essential part of now-tangible immigration reform. He mulled over Gerald Scarfe’s controversial cartoon on Netanyahu, and demanded that Fox News (and MSNBC) accept the consequences of peddling propaganda. He and Chait rolled their eyes at Free Beacon’s latest nonsensical screed against Chris Hughes and TNR, wished the Palins all the best in the land of political obscurity, and sighed as Tom Tancredo went back on his promise to smoke, and, what’s more, inhale.

In other political coverage, we suspected that immigration reform will do the GOP itself more harm than good: Harry Enten observed that shifting Latino attitudes wouldn’t affect many too swing states, and Pareene measured serious potential for a rightwing revolt agains any reform at all. Debate broke out at The American Conservative over Obama’s foreign policy credentials as Drum summed up the root of the president’s pragmatism abroad. We sifted through the wreckage of Timbuktu’s library, destroyed by the Malian jihadists, Evan Osnos spied a gulag map on Google Maps, and we anticipated the next debate over women in the military.

Elsewhere, Erick Erickson shared some intriguing personal details as he departed CNN, Danny Hayes noted that the media improved its attention span after the Newtown shooting, while Joe Romm called out George Will for once again muddying climate data. We considered the prosecution of juvenile killers, in light of a tale of gruesome homicide, Naomi Rovnick pulled back the curtain on factory audits in China, and Antigua had a shot at sidestepping copyright.

In assorted news and views, Seth Fischer wrote a dispatch from a world of personal trauma, John H. Richardson appointed promiscuity as a new holy virtue, and Daniel Altman refuted Pixar’s vision of the End of History. Readers sounded off on setbacks to their youthful ambition, Wayne Curtis strapped on jackboots for a tutorial on goose-stepping, and we encountered Ed Kilgore’s alter ego, in name only (Andrew’s, too).

Alison Motluck pointed out a snag in the way we practice fertility medicine, Ta-Nehisi pointed to some unsettling facts about the NFL, and we continued to search for a signal on plans for better Amtrak Wifi. We stared out at a white Vista Verde Ranch in Colorado for the VFYW, met an incoming American in the Face of the Day, and set the millennial generation to music in the MHB. Finally, readers managed to spot Winooski, Vermont in the latest VFYW contest (to Andrew’s great delight).

–B.J.

Achievement Anxiety, Ctd

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A reader writes:

In what I trust will not be breaking news: achievement anxiety (particularly in relation to others) is nothing new. Consider this famous anecdote from Suetonius’ “Life of Julius Caesar”:

As quaestor it fell to [Caesar’s] lot to serve in Further Spain. When he was there…he came to Gades, and noticing a statue of Alexander the Great in the temple of Hercules, he heaved a sigh, and as if out of patience with his own incapacity in having as yet done nothing noteworthy at a time of life when Alexander had already brought the world to his feet, he straightway asked for his discharge, to grasp the first opportunity for greater enterprises at Rome.

Another:

I’m a 22-year-old, freshly graduated, unemployed, parents’ basement-dwelling sometimes-writer and aspiring comic. I just watched all of Girls. I think it’s great. I think it’s also maddening how greedy Lena Dunham is with all of the material I was going to use – right down to HPV. I can’t speak for anyone else my age who similarly strives for creative success, but for my part, I’ve gradually become used to the idea that it’s not going to happen over night.

That’s been really hard and hugely important for me. Writing in particular has really taught me patience. No, actually, I’m still not that great and neither are the things that I write. Why would they be? What have I done? What do I know that’s worth writing?

Mark Twain is one of my idols. Being Mark Twain is my career goal. Which is why I have to remind myself that when Samuel Clemens was my age, he was still Samuel Clemens, and he still had a few years of steamboat operation ahead of him before the “Celebrated Jumping Frog.” And that he claimed to have met every character in all of his stories while working up and down the Mississippi. Which he did, as a dream-fulfilling career, for years.

So good on Lena for all of her successes; may she grace us for years to come. But to the others like me who are prone to frustration and anxiety and discouragement and ice cream: don’t be in such a hurry to finish your masterpiece that you ignore all of its characters and dialogues and subplots waiting to be discovered on your steamboat or in your office or at the bar you tend or on that trip you couldn’t take because you really, really need to focus on your writing this year.

Another:

One of my best friends from college struck it big as a designer shortly after graduation and was a millionaire by 24. But the success went straight to his head, causing him to alienate most of his closest friends. He also never felt satisfied with the project he was currently doing and was always trying to live up to that sudden and overwhelming success of his early twenties. His experience reinforced my long-held belief that slow but steady success that ends in greatness is a far more preferable path. That way you get to savor every stage of success and never take it for granted.

De-Legitimizing Fox And MSNBC, Ctd

Well, viewers under 54 are doing the former anyway. I suppose I should know this but Fox’s prime-time really does skew old.  A remarkable 1.6 million watched on average in primetime in January, but only 267,000 of them were between the ages of 25 and 54. That’s the lowest number of that demo since 2001. The culture has moved on, hasn’t it?

Face Of The Day

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Malaika Chaudhary, 3, whose parents immigrated from Pakistan, stands with her father during an interview at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), district office on January 29, 2013 in New York City. Some 118,000 immigrants applied for U.S. citizenship and 2,500 children received citizenship certificates in the New York City dictrict in 2012. Although underage children of naturalized immigrants usually receive U.S. citizenship, they must go through a process at the USCIS in order to receive legal certificates. Children born in the United States are American, regardless of the immigrant status of their parents. By John Moore/Getty Images)

Alrighty Then …

“I’ve learned that using my wife’s blush brush to put on my own TV makeup is more than a little problematic from both a marriage stand point and the extra color it adds. I’ve also learned that my make up is more expensive than my wife’s make up, but that’s a whole other story,” – Erick Erickson, reflecting on his time as a CNN dude.

Zooming In On North Korea

Osnos reflects on Google’s new map of North Korea:

[T]he dominant sensation in seeing the spidery new detail on the land is that it reminds us just how much we still can not see. For now, it’s hard to envision how the map will have much impact inside North Korea, because almost nobody there has access to the Web. The delight we get in a digital glimpse of the North Koreans’ land only underscores the span between their reality and ours. The map allows us to indulge our curiosity, but we are just as in the dark as ever about the mysterious realm inside the heads of Kim Jong Un and his mercurial men. Politically, North Korea remains as black as a satellite map at night.

(Image: A Google map of a North Korean gulag)

The GOP Calculus On Immigration Reform, Ctd

Continuing the debate, Harry Enten points out that “most of the growth in the Latino vote is occurring in non-swing states”:

The only swing states in which Latinos make up the same or a greater percentage of the electorate than nationally are Colorado, Florida, and Nevada. A modest improvement for Republicans in these states could make a difference in a close election. That’s nothing to sneeze at, but the majority of swing states like Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia are more likely to be determined by African-American and non-Hispanic white voters.

WALL-E Was Wrong

At least according to Daniel Altman, who isn’t worried that the increased automation of our economy might lead to a future of pure leisure:

The problem with these predictions is that providing for basic needs is not the only thing that compels us to work. We also like to follow through on our ideas by achieving goals that make us proud, creating new products to improve our lives, and feeling the thrill of power and control. In short, opportunity to do all these things can be as important as material compensation. … Even when the day comes that we can count on a comfortable lifestyle regardless of our income, we will still work to fulfill our personal goals and, of course, to keep up with the Joneses.