Your Mustache or Your Life

Sometimes you just gotta share... (thanks to the Beirut Daily Star)

Mustache war shakes southern Egypt
By Agence France Presse (AFP)

Monday, July 23, 2007

CAIRO: When an elder was kidnapped in a clan dispute in conservative southern Egypt, the Al-Arab family's worst fears were soon realized - they received a package containing his moustache, local media reported on Sunday. The man himself was returned uninjured, but the use of the new shaving tactic sent shockwaves through the town of Mahrusa, near Luxor 650 kilometers south of Cairo, where a man's honor is measured by the size of his moustache, the Al-Gomhuriyya daily said. The conflict that started with a coffee shop brawl swiftly spiraled out of control, with the Al-Arab carrying out a humiliating reprisal shave on a leading member of the Fallaheen family, followed by all-out battles with sticks and clubs. Police and community leaders then intervened, restoring a relative calm to the town, the paper said, with those worst hit by the conflict set to remain indoors for the coming weeks pending the re-growth of their manliness. - AFP

Some Tragic Casual Corner

I'm working out syllabi for fall. Here is an example of the limits of individual choice in a complex social system. Meryl Streep is fashion editor Miranda Priestly and Anne Hathaway playing Andy Sachs, her unfashionable new assistant.



Script:

Andy Sachs: [chuckles]

Miranda Priestly: Something funny?

Andy Sachs: No, no, nothing. Y'know, it's just that both those belts look exactly the same to me. Y'know, I'm still learning about all this stuff.

Miranda Priestly: This... 'stuff'? Oh... ok. I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don't know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue, it's not turquoise, it's not lapis, it's actually cerulean. You're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar De La Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn't it, who showed cerulean military jackets? And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of 8 different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of stuff.