Features

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence — we all know that. But how many of us have read the catchy rhyme that goes like this, “As a rule, man’s a fool. When it’s hot, he wants it cool. When it’s cool, he wants it hot. Always wanting what is not.”

I don’t know who wrote these lines because no one has come forward to claim them. And, therefore, the author remains anonymous. But I can still picture the figure of the person that drilled it into my head: the diminutive nun in my convent school who recited it over and over again — before, during and after class. 

Now the thing with the Jesuit teachers was that they never uttered a word out of place or more than was strictly necessary. Also, if they could help it, they supplied a proverb to, sort of, enhance everything that they said. Most of their discourse was didactic in nature, sometimes comically so. For instance, if a sermon began with “absence makes the heart grow fonder” and ended with “out of sight out of mind”, it left the listeners pretty confused. Were we supposed to miss the absent persons or forget about them? 

Questioning them was a big no-no. Not because they did not have an answer, of course they did. But there was simply no telling at which point it would turn into an additional homework assignment with the poor questioner having to memorise complete chapters for an impromptu quiz the next day. Believe me, I had to mug up entire Act 1 to Act 4 of Julius Caesar once. Mark Antony’s speech from Act 3 Scene 2 is something I can recite even in my sleep. To this day, that is. 

And so, when I started interviewing people in my newspaper job, it came in handy. The interviewees would be absolutely taken aback when I nonchalantly quoted passages from literary classics. They had no idea about my small town background and the role the disciplinarian nuns had in my upbringing. 

I loved writing profiles. From sportspersons, scientists, actors, dancers, artists to even comediennes. I remember doing a story on a clown once. He was part of a circus that was touring Johannesburg at the time. His reputation preceded him and he was supposed to be a tough taskmaster. “Better a witty fool than a foolish wit,” he cited at the very outset. It is a good thing I remembered my “Twelfth Night”, thanks to one more of my tedious school projects and could quip “take the fool away” as an immediate rejoinder. He dissolved into laughter and after that it was smooth sailing.

But recently I was put on the other side of the fence, so to speak. After doing endless number of interviews, a newspaper in India, my home country, wanted to interview me. I was very excited to meet the vivacious journalist. The voice on the phone sounded very poised and confident. But when she turned up at my doorstep with pen, paper and a Dictaphone, I realised she was also younger than my daughter. Rather than assuring me, I had to spend the first few minutes in reassuring her, and putting her out of her nervousness. 

“Meeting went well?” my husband asked. 

“As a rule man’s a fool,” I started.

“Aha! The nuns again!” spouse exclaimed. 

“Exactly,” I said. 

“Between the fence caught?” he laughed. 

“Wanting what is not,” I agreed. 

SAN FRANCISCO — Sony on Tuesday began taking orders for SmartEyeglass Internet-linked eyewear, moving ahead in the market as Google steps back to revise its Glass strategy.

The offering from the Japanese consumer electronics comes amid growing interest in wearable computing, but also questions about whether consumers will warm to connected eyewear.

SmartEyeglass connects with smartphones and then superimposes text, images or other information onto whatever real scene is in view.

A version of the eyewear tailored for software developers will be available in Japan, Germany, Britain and the United States on March 10. The price in the US will be $840. In Europe it will be $670 plus applicable taxes.

SmartEyeglass for enterprises will also be available in March in France, Italy, Spain and elsewhere.

Along with the hardware, Sony will release an upgraded software development kit “to tap into the ingenuity of developers to improve upon the user experience that the SmartEyeglass provides”.

Sony is encouraging software makers to develop fun, hip, or functional applications for SmartEyeglass so people will be enticed to buy the eyewear on track for commercial release in 2016.

Sony said that it “has its eyes set on the future of wearable devices and their diversifying use cases, and it hopes to tap into the ingenuity of developers to improve upon the user experience that the SmartEyeglass provides”.

Sony said it sees a wide range of uses for the eyewear, beyond the obvious display of information at eye level without having to turn attention to another device.

It sees “considerable implications for AR [augmented reality], which holds great potential in the domain of professional use as well, such as when giving instructions to workers at a manufacturing site or when transmitting visual information to security officers about a potential breach”, the Sony statement said. 

Google Glass sidelined 

Google in January halted sales of its Internet-linked eyewear Glass but insisted the technology would live on in a future consumer product.

The technology titan put brakes on an “explorer” programme that let people interested in dabbling with Glass buy eyewear for $1,500 apiece.

Glass became available in the United States in early last year to anyone with the money and desire to become an “explorer”. The Glass test programme was later expanded to Britain.

Instead of being part of the Google X lab working on innovations such as self-driving cars, the Glass team became a separate unit.

Microsoft last month introduced HoloLens eyewear that may hit a sweet spot between Google Glass and virtual reality headgear, immersing users in a mesmerising world of augmented reality holograms.

Microsoft executives said the holographic capabilities built into Windows 10 operating software — to be released late this year — would open doors for developers to augment tasks from complex surgery to motorcycle design.

AMMAN — The world of artist Emily Jacir is that of depth, intensity, dogged determination, serious questions and also a tinge of dark humour.

The versatile award-winning artist explores probing themes — such as identity, displacement, translation and loss — in installations, interventions, videos and various works of art on display at Darat Al Funun.

Although the plight of the Palestinian people plays prominently into her work, Jacir’s art reaches even farther. She looks for individuality in a sea of enforced stereotypes.

The sprawling exhibition — titled “A Star is as Far as the Eye Can See and as Near as My Eye is to Me”, a poem by Beat Generation poet Gregory Corso — encompasses work from the late 1990s until 2013 and offers a unique look at the artist’s idiosyncratic, diverse creativity.

In “Change/Exchange”, a work of performance art from 1998, Jacir took $100 and exchanged it into French francs, and vice versa over and over again, until all she was left with was some meagre change.

The exhibition shows pictures of the exchange shops, their receipts and the end result.

Fascinating in its simplicity, the work hints at the trajectories that Jacir says she is most interested in, such as transformation and “what’s lost, [and] what’s gained when people move from one place to another”.

Scattered around the complexes of Darat Al Funun are murals of dedications from three of 6,000 books that had belonged to Palestinian homes, libraries and institutions before they were taken by Israelis and classified at the Jewish National Library Jerusalem as “Abandoned Property”.

The books are all that remains of some 30,000 books lost in the creation of Israel in 1948 and the looting of Palestinian property.

Between 2010 and 2012, Jacir photographed the books using her cell phone, and the results make up the installation “ex libris”.

A simple inscription like “this book was rewarded to student Hanna Boulos for his perfect attendance at school” becomes proof of presence and ownership, and a poignant glimpse at lives long lost in the atrocities of the occupation.

In her interventions, Jacir’s work can be — in her words — “guerrilla-like”.

A case in point is the “Xmas Intervention”.

In 1999 and 2000, the artist designed and printed Christmas cards to “reclaim the image of Bethlehem from commercial hype”.

She then “secretly” added her cards to the stocks of Christmas greeting cards at New York City stores to show the general public, “unsuspecting shoppers”, what is actually happening in Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem.

The artist left her name and e-mail on the cards, and has received messages of thanks from some “unsuspecting shoppers” who asked for more information about what Palestinians face every day.

In “Sexy Semite”, Jacir asked 60 Palestinians living in New York to place personal ads in a free weekly publication seeking Jewish mates to return home through Israel’s “Law of Return”.

“I wanted to pollute the space of the personal ads section, so that one issue of ‘The Village Voice’ personal section would be full of Palestinians looking for mates,” she writes.

Participants were asked to describe themselves as “Semite” to disrupt the narrative that only associates the word with Jews.

Jacir did the intervention in 2000, 2001 and 2002, when the media finally noticed and mistook it for a terrorist threat.

The ads give a twisted sense of humour to the displacement of Palestinians, who are now looking for Jewish spouses to “legitimise” their right to return to their homes.

In one such ad, a “leggy, small-waisted Semite with Cleopatra eyes” is seeking “a tall, sexy, Jewish male to live in Jerusalem and spend weekends on Tel Aviv Beach”.

In “Burj Al Riyadh” and “Al Riyadh”, Jacir and Yazid Anani set up two billboards in Ramallah in 2010 proposing two fictional projects, with words cheekily referring to “the dream” of living in the heart of Old Ramallah “on the rubble” of the city’s historical centre.

A glossy picture of modern houses promises “intensive security” in Al Riyadh residential suburb, while the description of a project “to destroy” Ramallah’s historical vegetable market are splashed over a rendition of “Al Riyadh Tower”.

Jacir says the billboard advertising a gated community was met with anger by Ramallah Taht residents, who ended up defacing it; while the advertisement of Al Riyadh Tower was met with apathy.

Fifteen years later, the artist laments that the “neoliberal project is marching on” in Ramallah, with such plans now not far from reality.

It is easy to lose oneself in the major works on display at Jacir’s expansive exhibition, but a closer look at the simpler pieces is also rewarding.

In “From Paris to Riyadh (drawings for my mother)”, the artist extracted and collected “the illegal sections” showing exposed parts of female bodies from Vogue magazine issues between 1977 and 1997.

The parts are all blacked out, as Jacir recreated an action her mother used to do every time she flew into Saudi Arabia when the family was living there.

Dark silhouettes, half-arms, necks, shoulders and barely recognisable body parts are spread on transparent sheets in this awkward space where women as objects and women as taboos converge.

A must-see is “Today, there are four million of us”.

The installation shows a reprint of “Mural of a Refugee” brochure from the Jordanian Pavilion of the 1964 World’s Fair, which was held where the Queens Museum of Art now stands in New York.

It is accompanied by all the research Jacir conducted on the pavilion.

She discovered the brochure at the museum’s archive and had known about the pavilion from her mother, who was among the hostesses who distributed the brochures at the time.

The mural, by veteran Jordanian artist Muhanna Durra, generated controversy at the fair.

US Jewish groups said the poem in the mural was “anti-Semitic”, with some picketing the pavilion and calling for its removal, but the fair’s director, Robert Moses, “did not cave in”, according to Jacir.

The section dedicated to the pavilion is an important record of Jordan’s art history and the major role that Palestine continues to play in it.

For Jacir, showing such a wide breadth of her work in Jordan is also important.

“This is such a central place for us as Palestinians,” she says.

“It’s really an exciting place… anything can happen here — in a positive sense.”

The exhibition continues until April 23.

BEIJING — Sheep or goat?

China’s coming lunar new year has stirred a debate over which zodiac creature is the correct one — but Chinese folklorists dismiss the fixation on animals as missing the point.

Traditional astrology in China attaches different animal signs to each lunar year in a cycle of 12 years.

The symbol for the new year starting on February 19 is the “yang”, which can refer to any member of the caprinae subfamily — or even beyond — depending on what additional Chinese character it is paired up with.

For example, a goat is a “mountain yang”, a sheep is a “soft yang” and a Mongolian gazelle is a “yellow yang”.

Both goats and sheep appear in Chinese new year paintings, paper-cuts and other festival decorations.

Folklorists say it does not matter which one is used since the zodiac sign was chosen for the Chinese character’s auspicious connotation rather than the specific animal — at least in the beginning.

“This ‘yang’ is fictional. It does not refer to any specific kind [of sheep or goat],” Zhao Shu, a researcher with the Beijing Research Institute of Culture and History, told AFP.

Much ado about mutton

“Yang” is a component of the written Chinese character “xiang”, which means auspiciousness, and the two were interchangeable in ancient Chinese, experts say.

It is also a part of the character “shan”, which counts kindness and benevolence as among its meanings.

“Therefore ‘yang’ is a symbol of... blessing and fortune and represents good things,” said Yin Hubin, an ethnology researcher with the China Academy of Social Sciences, a government think tank.

“It is connected to the original implication of the Chinese character as an ideogram and reflects the world view of the Chinese people in primitive times,” he said.

That said, the zodiac sign is being shunned by some Chinese parents to be, with expectant mothers scheduling Caesarean sections to give birth before the current year of the horse ends, according to media reports.

The rush apparently stems from a Chinese superstition held by some that nine out of 10 sheep will be unhappy in life — a belief Yin dismissed as “ridiculous”.

More often, the animal plays a positive role in Chinese folklore, experts say.

A fable that can be traced back to more than 1,500 years ago depicts five goats carrying crops in their mouth to save people suffering from years of drought in Guangzhou.

The southern boom town, today the capital of Guangdong province and dubbed the City of Goats, has enjoyed timely wind and rain ever since, according to the story.

Bleat generation

While the loose concept of “yang” comes naturally to Chinese people, in the West the term can often be a source of frustration for those seeking an equivalent in their own language.

A Google search suggests that in English, “year of the sheep” is the most common phrasing.

In French, however, the reverse is true, with convention and an overwhelming Google ratio in favour of “chevre”, or goat.

Zhao thinks the translation is “open to interpretation”.

“Sheep, goat, Mongolian gazelle — whatever is fine. This is the fun of Chinese characters,” he said.

But some scholars argue goat is a better option for the traditional Han Chinese holiday, as it is a more commonly kept farm animal for the dominant ethnic group in China, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Many Chinese people appear to be unfazed by the debate.

“The year of the yang, 2015, is neither a sheep nor a goat. It is a beautiful and elegant milk yang! Abundant milk, clothes and food. It will be a halcyon year,” wrote one user on Sina Weibo, a Chinese equivalent of Twitter.

Eschewing the lexical debate, some users have simply opted for the animal that they see as possessing their own favoured qualities.

“In the year of the yang, I want to be a strong-willed and energetic goat, not a weak sheep,” another Sina Weibo user wrote.

WASHINGTON — It’s true. Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.

In fact, according to a study by media researchers, many news organisations fail to do enough to separate fact from fiction, and often help unverified rumours and reports to go viral online.

“Rather than acting as a source of accurate information, online media frequently promote misinformation in an attempt to drive traffic and social engagement,” said the study led by Craig Silverman, a research fellow at the Tow Centre for Digital Journalism at Columbia University.

While news organisations have always dealt with unverified information, practices at some websites may accelerate the dissemination of fake news, said the report: “Lies, Damn Lies and Viral Content.”

“Many news sites apply little or no basic verification to the claims they pass on. Instead, they rely on linking out to other media reports, which themselves often only cite other media reports as well,” the study concluded.

Fake stories are often sexier or more interesting than the real ones, and as such get wider dissemination, Silverman said.

“The extent to which a fake news article can get traction was surprising to me,” Silverman told AFP.

Examples cited in the study were rumours spread on Facebook and Twitter that an Ebola patient had been identified in Britain, and another that the disease had been found in Richmond, Virginia. Both reports were untrue.

‘Rehana, ISIS slayer’

In another case, a story about a Kurdish woman dubbed “Rehana the ISIS slayer”, or the “Angel of Kohane” purported to have killed 100 Daesh fighters, turned out to have no basis in fact even though reports about her spread for weeks last October.

The researchers traced the story to a tweet from Indian journalist and activist Parwan Durani, who published the woman’s picture on Twitter and asked people to retweet it.

Stories of her exploits — and reports of her death — were picked up widely by news outlets “but seemed entirely based on falsities,” Silverman’s report said.

“The simple story of the attractive Kurd who killed dozens of Daesh fighters is a powerful wish rumour. Add in a compelling image and it’s perfect for propagation on social networks. The result is that most of us will never know the woman’s true story — and the press bears a level of responsibility for that.”

Silverman said that even if much of the fake news is spread by “new media” or tabloid journals, the traditional or “quality” journalism outlets often sit by, allowing rumours to gain traction.

“When [fake] information is out there and websites are covering it, there is an imperative on the part of news organisations to look at it, flag it for readers and tell them what we know and what we don’t know,” Silverman said.

“If we remain silent, the ones who win are the mindless propagators.”

And many news organisations fail to follow up when a false report is debunked, the report said: “The explosive claim that ISIS fighters had been apprehended at the US-Mexico border was refuted within 24 hours and yet only 20 per cent of news organisations that wrote an initial story came back to it.”

A ‘disturbing trend’

The findings show “a very disturbing trend”, said Bill Adair, a Duke University journalism professor who in 2007 founded the fact checking website PolitiFact.

“It’s particularly disturbing when journalists pass along things without knowing whether they are true or not.”

Because of the fast moving nature of Twitter an other social media, Adair said that “many people including journalists feel that if it’s tweeted, it’s out there and it’s fair game. But news organisations have always had an obligation to check out what they pass on.”

Sometimes the sheer number of repetitions of false information makes people believe something is true, the researchers said. 

One example of this is the oft-repeated claim that the Obamacare health plan includes “death panels” which decide whether a person can receive treatment.

“Anyone who repeated it — even when trying to debunk it — further implanted it and its negative connotations in people’s minds,” the report said.

Nikki Usher, a George Washington University professor specialising in new media, said previous research has shown that repeating false information makes it more believable, “but what is different now is the speed with which rumours can unfold”.

The Internet’s “crowdsourcing” ability can often bring the truth out, but cannot entirely correct the problem, said Silverman, who also operates the @emergentdotinfo Twitter feed that tracks online rumours.

“Over time the truth emerges, but the corrections don’t tend to be as viral or get as widely distributed. And they don’t always reach the same people,” he said.

“I am a believer in the value of the crowd, but the truth is often far less interesting and shareable than the lie.”

Well received when first launched in 2007 as a V8 engine premium luxury sports car, it was only a matter of time that the R8 was fitted with the same V10 engine powering Audi subsidiary Lamborghini’s most prolific and now defunct Gallardo.

With its mid-engine configuration, superb four-wheel-drive and 5.2-litre V10 engine, the Audi R8 flourished into a full-blown supercar that is arguably better than its more exotic Italian cousin.

Face-lifted for the 2013 model year, Audi’s practical and luxurious supercar was augmented with a more hardcore R8 V10 Plus version, boasting a more focus fixed-rate sports suspension, an additional 25BHP output and 50kg less weight and standard high performance carbon ceramic brake discs.

Sophisticated supercar 

A more “grown-up” and understated but futuristic looking supercar with vast horizontally slatted grille and intakes, low bonnet, side intake gills, cabin-forward layout, road-hugging stance and smooth, flowing and sophisticated lines, the R8 has airs of both sophistication and urgency. Debuting with a revised 2013 model year range with slightly redesigned grille and all-LED headlights, the faster more focused R8 V10 Plus version, however, doesn’t wear “Plus” badges.

It is instead distinguished by its light and stiff carbon-fibre air splitter, mirrors, rear diffuser and vertical side blade intake covers, which contribute to its 50kg weight reduction. Also standard are matt paint options including sophisticated Sepang deep blue and standard option glossy black 19-inch alloy wheels, as tested.

With a race-derived lightweight aluminium monocoque using space-frame principles, the R8’ body rigidity effectively translate into enhanced handling precision, ride refinement and crash safety. Replacing regular R8 models’ more comfortable and complex adaptive magnetic dampers, the V10 Plus’ sophisticated double wishbone suspension features sportier standard fixed-rate spring and damper settings.

The revised R8 range also receives a dual clutch automated gearbox replacing previous R8’s and Gallardo’s jerky single-clutch robotised manual gearbox. Able to line up the next gear on a separate clutch for near seamless sequential shifts, the dual clutch gearbox — as tested — is both quicker and smoother shifting, but best of all, and contrary to some rivals, a traditional manual gearbox version is also still available.

Rev-hungry and responsive

Nestling just behind the cabin, the R8 V10 Plus’ 5.2-litre 10-pot engine is a charismatic naturally aspirated gem, with delectably crisp and precise throttle responsiveness. Developing 542BHP at 8000rpm and 398lb/ft at 6500rpm, the V10 Plus is eager and high revving, but nonetheless pulls hard from low revs and delivers versatile mid-range flexibility, as it races to its rev-limit with an electrifying linearity.

With seemingly indefatigable willingness to rev, the long-legged V10 Plus goes through a crackling, metallic-tinged, rasping and wailing concerto as it climbs to its redline. Surging through to 8000rpm, one is rewarded by manually firing off the next gear just before the rev limit, to repeat the same intensely sweet high rev onslaught over again. 

With tenacious four-wheel-drive traction channelling its ferocious power and relatively modest 1595kg weight, the V10 Plus digs hard into the tarmac and bolts off-the-line, racing through 0-100km/h in just 3.5 seconds, and is able to achieve a 317km/h top speed.

Equal to its prodigious power and swift speed are reassuringly grippy and fade free ventilated perforated carbon-ceramic disc brakes. Meanwhile, the V10 Plus’ snappy and smooth 6-speed dual clutch auto gearbox is best when using its sequential steering-mounted paddle-shift actuated manual mode in conjunction with its sportiest response setting. This enables one to dial in exact throttle inputs and without eliciting un-wanted kick-down gear changes if applying full throttle when exiting a corner by its apex.

Rear-drive instincts with all-paw confidence

Sophisticated, smooth and accessible with all-weather four-wheel-drive reassurance, the R8 V10 Plus is also a scintillatingly swift and sharp switchback scalpel that rewards driver input. Well-weighted, quick and precise, its steering turns eagerly into and weighs up naturally through corners, providing delicate feel and textured feedback.

With its big road-hugging footprint, vice-like cornering grip and slightly rear-biased but within-wheelbase weighing and agile handling, the V10 Plus is a committed and ever composed corner carving instrument with traditional mid-engine rear-drive instincts and feel, backed up by all-wheel grip, traction and confidence.

With crisp clarity and exact responsiveness, the naturally aspirated engine allows one to unleash power in nuanced precise increments to slice through corners with controlled composure.

More focused and agile with its firmer fixed rate suspension, the V10 Plus tyres bite hard on turn-in, and is buttoned down, predictable and engagingly exploitable through corners and tautly settles on rebound over compressions, dips and crests. Tightly composed, exacting and alert — but not nervous — through switchbacks, V10 Plus’ four-wheel-drive distributes power where it can best be put down, and allows one to confidently deploy its immense power.

Extended to near its grip and performance envelope, the R8’s rear lightens up momentarily as it diverts more power to the front wheels before all four wheels claw at the tarmac as one squeezes the accelerator by a corner’s apex to slingshot onto the straight.

Spacious and stable

Though firmer riding than the garden-variety Audi R8’s fluidly adaptive standard magnetic dampers at low speed, the V10 Plus’ aren’t uncomfortable around town with a smoothly firm highway ride and reassuringly planted stability. Communicative, engaging, confident and agile when driven hard, the V10 Plus is, however, a well-rounded supercar that is easy to drive at a leisurely pace.

With direct fuel injection, the V10 Plus’ charismatically spine-tingling and rev-hungry large naturally aspirated engine good-for-its-segment 12.9-litre/100km combined fuel efficiency, and this exotic and evocative combination of high rev thrills and linear delivery is expected to survive to the next generation R8, despite many competitors adopting more efficient and powerful turbocharged engines. Additionally, the R8’s huge 90-litre fuel tank provides a long driving range.

An understated, practical and “grown-up” supercar, the R8’s big doors, wide swing angle and un-obstructive sills allow easy access for the more “well-fed” occupant. With plenty of head- and legroom for tall drivers inside the two-seat cabin, the R8 also features an ideal driving position, good ergonomics, logical layouts, and good front and side visibility.

Luggage space includes a reasonably sized 100-litre boot and cabin parcel shelf, for which specifically designed optional luggage is available. With quality finish and materials include soft quilted leathers, suede-like headliner, real metals and carbon fibre panels the V10 Plus is available with a variety of highly tasteful colours to choose from, and a vivid all-red ensemble, as per the driven demo car.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 5.2-litre, mid-mounted, dry sump, V10 cylinders

Bore x stroke: 84.5 x 92.8mm

Compression ratio: 12.5:1

Valve-train: 40-valve, DOHC, direct injection

Gearbox: 7-speed automated dual clutch, four-wheel-drive

Top gear/final drive: 0.65:1/3.59:1

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 542 (550) [404] @ 8000rpm

Specific power: 104.2BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 339.9BHP/tonne

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 398 (540) @ 6500 rpm

Specific torque: 103.8Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 338.5Nm/tonne

0-100km/h: 3.5 seconds

Top speed: 317km/h

Fuel consumption, urban/extra-urban/combined: 19.9/8.6/12.9 litres/100km 

CO2 emissions, combined: 299g/km

Fuel capacity: 90 litres

Length: 4,440mm

Width: 1,929mm

Height: 1,252mm

Wheelbase: 2,650mm

Track, F/R: 1,638/1,595mm

Overhang, F/R: 1,007/783mm

Headroom: 975mm

Shoulder room: 1,392mm

Luggage volume: 100 litres

Unladen weight: 1595kg

Weight distribution, F/R: 44 per cent/56 per cent

Steering: Power-assisted rack & pinion

Suspension: Double wishbones

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated, perforated ceramic discs 380mm/356mm

Brake callipers, F/R: 6-/4-piston callipers

Tyres: 235/35R19/305/30R19 (optional)

The Essential Guide to Jordan and the Middle East: Conversations from a Cross-Cultural Perspective

Usama Shair and Petra Shair

Amman, 2014

Pp. 110

This book is literally a cross-cultural endeavour as intimated by the title. Usama and Petra Shair, a husband and wife team — he born in Jordan and she in Germany — combine their two individual perspectives to fill a gap in the prevailing guide book genre. “The Essential Guide” doesn’t tell the reader what sights to see — there are plenty of books for that already. Instead, it provides an introduction to local society and customs, a guidebook to people, focusing on socio-cultural attitudes and practices, rather than relics. 

Writing in alternate passages, Usama from the perspective of “insider” and Petra from the viewpoint of “outsider” (though she’s lived in Jordan for decades), the Shairs pack a lot of information into a small volume. There are also occasional dashes of humour, mostly provided by Petra who appears to relish playfully, but patiently, countering misconceptions about Arabs as reflected in questions she has been asked over her 35 years of marriage to Usama. The first part of the book is based on these questions. Petra has her own set of questions that lead to logical answers to queries such as: “Did you convert to Islam?” This question is ironic since Usama is Christian, but Petra discovered how many people in the West don’t know there are Arab Christians, or that God and Allah are one and the same.

Actually, the issues raised are quite serious, as is driven home when Petra writes: “Throughout my married life, I have been asked many questions about being the wife of an Arab and living in the Middle East, and the nature of these questions has not changed in all of this time. When I first got married, I was asked whether my husband rides a camel, and if we were going to live in a tent. More recently, after a four-year stint living in Dubai, I have been asked if we live in a palace and drive a Rolls Royce.” (p. 7) 

Augmenting Petra’s account of her own experience in Jordan and Germany, Usama provides further background explanations. He takes on the greater role in narrating the three ensuing parts of the book covering Jordanian culture and traditions, religions and a very brief summary of Middle East history starting from just before World War I. While vividly describing the consequences of the post-war division of the area, the text, surprisingly, does not mention the division and ensuing occupation of Palestine, although this is certainly the most abrupt and damaging of all the divisions.

Hospitality and the significance of coffee lead off in the section on Jordanian traditions which explains the customs surrounding marriage, condolences, meals and social life. Throughout the importance of family is apparent. Religion is covered in great detail, presumably because of its centrality to people’s lives, but also because it is what is most misunderstood in the West. While sketching the history, practices and legal issues pertaining to Islam and Christianity respectively, Usama notes the many commonalities between Jordan’s two religions. Only one point is contestable: The book states that government and non-Christian schools are not permitted to teach Christianity to Christian students, but this is no longer the case. 

Usama and Petra Shair serve as genuine goodwill ambassadors for Jordan and the Arab world overall. They present Jordan as a more complex society than is usually assumed, and emphasise the coexistence and good neighbourliness that prevails among the different religious, ethnic and cultural groupings that make up its population. Another strong point is that they go beyond the parameters of West Amman and the city itself to describe life in the villages. Much of the information provided would apply to other countries in the region as well, making the book very useful for travellers and newcomers.

Their main message — don’t stereotype, don’t make sweeping generalisations — is ever more relevant, and their solid information should be a powerful tool in countering

Islamophobia and other misconceptions about Arabs and the Middle East. The fact that they write from the heart, as well as from the mind, makes their message very accessible. As Petra says in conclusion, “Jordan is my family.” (p. 110)

“The Essential Guide” is available at Readers/Cozmo Centre.

OSLO — Large storms like the blizzard that battered New England this week may become more severe but less frequent as the Earth’s climate changes, scientists recently said.

The Canadian-led study noted that warmer air can hold more moisture, meaning more fuel for rain, hail or snow, and found knock-on effects on how the atmosphere generates storms.

“In a future climate, the global atmospheric circulation might comprise highly energetic storms,” they wrote in the journal Science.

At the same time, “fewer numbers of such events” may occur, they said. More evaporation and precipitation of water are likely to use up more energy in the atmosphere, contributing to reduce the intensity of winds around the world.

The report looks at how the atmosphere works as a heat engine, shifting heat from the sun from the tropics towards the poles. It is part of the effort to pin down the probable affects of climate change to help everyone from farmers to city planners cope with the shifts.

“This is about the large-scale storms... like the storm in the northeast of the United States,” lead author Frederic Laliberte of the University of Toronto in Canada told Reuters of the findings, which also involved other experts in Britain and Sweden. “More moisture creates very strong storms.”

In 2013, a UN report by leading climate scientists found that heavy downpours and days with extreme heat and cold had become more frequent. It linked the shift to man-made emissions of greenhouse gases.

Richard Allan, a professor of climate science at the University of Reading who was not involved in Thursday’s study, said it gave a new perspective into how the atmosphere acts as a heat engine.

More powerful but less frequent storms would be “more bad than good” overall, he said. “The intensity of the rainfall can do damage to crops. And a lack of rainfall over extended periods can also do damage.”

Governments will meet in Paris in late 2015 to work out a global deal to limit rising emissions of greenhouse gases.

AMMAN — “It makes no sense to reproduce reality as we see it,” says artist Fausto Borge, “that is why I became an abstract painter.”

His abstracts on display at Nabad Art Gallery, an attempt to follow the “dynamics” and “evolution” of objects, are inspired by “what we do not see”. 

“This reality is a fiction; we only comprehend 1 per cent of what it is,” says Borge, which must be why he seems compelled to “erase what is explicit”, the “sharp edges and contrasts” of an “opaque” reality, leaving the viewer with mysteries to decipher in a world of his own creation.

Avowedly influenced by sciences — “I love physics, chemistry; I worked as a mason and as a car mechanic when I was a student” — Borge then has to reconcile order and minuteness with his rejection of reality as a comprehensible concept.

The result: a collection aptly titled “Order and Chaos”, a stunning set of abstracts that may get a perfunctory look from a casual viewer but that require long scrutiny from a more inquisitive soul seeking to “read” his message.

The envoy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to Jordan, the artist is an ambassador in more than one way: representing his country as a diplomat, but also presenting art to the world at large.

“The recumbent”, the work that meets the viewer at the entry to the gallery, and one of few titled, may suggest, as its title implies, a body lying in a wooden receptacle, but it could also be cooling magma in some primordial earth crust formation, a window to a fiery horizon or a prehistoric monolith, man’s first attempt at leaving something to his likeness to the future.

This almost monumental work is offset by five small ones on the adjoining wall. It is as if the artist decided to deconstruct the “whole” into several components, recognisable yet different, and leave it for the viewer to choose which he can relate to better.

The smaller abstracts are created by geometrical patterns — order — or images reminiscent of cave paintings, a few “chaotic” outlines hinting at some form of life.

And then, like a conductor changing tenor, the artist presents a different kind of work. Small paper paintings are replaced by bigger sculptural metal representations, solid yet soft, permanent yet fragile. 

The “Homage to Rothko” — who, incidentally, like Pollock, was a student at the Arts Students League of New York, where Borge also studied from 1980 to 1983 — is a sober silver aluminium square on which, playing with texture, the artist creates another square almost three dimensional, bringing to mind cubism.

But if this image is rather trompe l’oeil, “An ancient bread recipe” is truly in relief.

A blue wooden background supports aluminium squiggles, little shiny, playful blobs that create an imaginary text of a bread recipe, known to the artist but a total mystery for the viewer.

Then it is paper, again, dainty abstracts in colours that defy description and challenge imagination, juxtaposed to big wood works in such seamless fashion that one has difficulty distinguishing one medium from another. 

The temptation to touch the works is irresistible. Their surface is smooth, despite appearing rugged and ridged, almost sensual, in warm, earthly colours. Their enigmatic imagery lends itself to interpretation.

Aluminium in Borge’s hands is pliant. But then, he confesses using the torch as his brush. It moulds and smelts to become a starry night, the lights of a city seen from high above, a bubbly magic potion or gold nuggets buried in dark basalt. 

It becomes, in other instances, flattened ore placed by the artist haphazardly on wood in apparent chaos to create, depending on one’s imagination, arcane heraldry or some exotic plant.

Borge plays with texture skilfully to create depth and movement.

Whether paper, canvas, wood or aluminium, his works, in subdued, soothing, almost monochromatic colours, are rich and intriguing. They reflect the artist’s distinct aesthetic and a wealth of artistic experience.

Each painting, the artist says, is a project; each object has its own dynamism whose evolution and effect he follows to create his reality, one only he can see and we only can hope to understand.

In Jordan for five years now, Borge, who was “always able to draw” is content to have been able to create a workshop in the basement of his residence, where he can put to good work this natural skill, finely honed in schools in the US and France.

“I became a painter when I was 30. I studied painting in New York, engraving under the direction of Krishna Reddy and conventional painting at the Arts Students League of New York.”

Further studies in France yielded a certificate in aesthetics and a master’s degree in sociology from the University of Bordeaux.

Born in Costa Rica, when he was “five or six” his parents emigrated to Venezuela, a country with which he entirely identifies. 

“Even though I have French nationality, as I lived for 20 years in France, I consider myself Venezuelan.”

Since 1982, Borge has held solo exhibitions in France, Venezuela and now Amman, and participated in group exhibitions in the US, France and Venezuela.

His “Amman period” is on display until March 11.

SAN FRANCISCO — Kill switches that render stolen smartphones useless were recently credited with stifling robberies and thefts in London, New York City and San Francisco. 

In London, the number of reports of smartphones being stolen from people dropped 40 per cent last year, after kill switches were introduced there, according to officials.

San Francisco last year recorded a 27 per cent decrease in overall mobile phone robberies, and a 40 per cent plunge in robberies targeting iPhones, according to the district attorney here.

California-based Apple was the first company to build in kill switches that let people remotely disable its smartphones, making them worthless to thieves interested in selling them to new users.

In New York City, there was an overall decline of 16 per cent in mobile phone robberies and a 25 per cent drop in iPhone robberies, officials there reported.

In London, the monthly average for the number of phones stolen has halved since September 2013 resulting in 20,000 fewer victims annually, according to figures released by Mayor Boris Johnson.

“The significant decrease in smartphone thefts since the implementation of kill-switch technology is no coincidence,” New York Police Commissioner William Bratton said in a joint release.

“Restricting the marketability of stolen cellphones and electronic devices has a direct correlation to a reduction of associated crimes and violence, as evidenced in London, San Francisco and New York.”

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, San Francisco District Attorney George and Johnson co-chair a Secure Our Smartphones initiative launched in June of 2013 to find solutions to a violent crime wave of smartphone thefts.

The initiative pressed the smartphone industry to adopt kill switch technology as a theft deterrent.

Apple’s home state of California was the first in the nation to mandate kill switches in smartphones, passing a law that will take effect in July of this year.

Apple added the technology to iPhones in September of 2013 in the form of an Activation Lock feature added to the iOS 7 version of its mobile software and made it standard in new-generation iPhone 6 models.

Activation Lock calls for an Apple ID and password to reactivate an iPhone that has been remotely disabled by its owner.

South Korean consumer electronics titan Samsung released a “kill switch-type solution” last year for its Galaxy S5 smartphone, officials noted.

Google added a smartphone disabling feature to the Lollipop version of its Android mobile device software, and Microsoft is expected to have the capability built into a version of its smartphone operating system due out later this year.

“The wireless industry continues to roll out sophisticated new features, but preventing their own customers from being the target of a violent crime is the coolest technology they can bring to market,” Gascon said.