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Ali Symons
pp. 18-20
If you and your office mates have to settle for a lunch of vending machine pretzels and Coke, and if the only available recreational activity is briskly walking to fetch said pretzels and Coke, then Time magazine’s photo essay “Life in the Googleplex” might be enough to incite a workplace revolution. As the piece suggests, coffee break at the Googleplex would be more aptly named “volleyball break,” “billiard break,” “swim break,” “fine art appreciation break,” or “massage break.” Hmmmph.
For foodies interested in “Foodie” facts, the San Francisco Chronicle ran an article on food culture at the Mountain View Google headquarters. Be sure to scroll to the bottom of the page for the Mushroom Cioppino and Tuna Confit recipes provided by renowned Google chefs.
If you, like Symons, have yet to see a server farm, a photo of Google’s first production server, circa 1999, will give you an idea of what you might be missing.
All That Glitters
Adnan Khan
pp. 20-24
Heading to Afghanistan to take advantage of its potentially lucrative (and often illegal) gem trade? Don’t get on the plane without Mining Journal’s authoritative report on the country’s gem industry. Once you’re there, to be sure you know exactly what you’re doing, consult Lapidary Journal’s step-by-step guide to gem cutting. If you find the instructions a little technical, you may prefer to simply shop till you drop, in which case you’ll be grateful if you’ve got access to International Gem Society president Don Clark’s Consumer’s Guide to Gem Grading.
What if nothing strikes your fancy? You can always stop off in the UK on your way home to check out the monarchy’s Imperial State Crown, featuring the Black Prince Ruby and world’s second largest diamond, at 317.4 carats, the Cullinan II of Africa. Or you could avoid the bother of travel altogether and rent the 1965 Jerry Lewis classic The Family Jewels.
Holy Intercourse
Jonathan Link
pp. 24-26
Islamic sexologist Dr. Kotb is not alone in her rejection of homosexuality. In Pakistan, those who have committed acts of “sexual deviance” may be put to death. The Current recently ran a documentary about a young Pakistani woman who struggles with her lesbian identity in a society that forbids it.
Zawaj.com’s Straight Talk about Sex is a gateway to a variety of sources on the subject of sex in Islam—some religious, some clinical, some entertaining. The articles are conveniently arranged in categories, including “The Islamic Perspective on Sexuality,” “Prohibited Sexual Acts,” and “Birth Control and Family Planning.”
Last year, an expert on Islamic law at al-Azhar university in Cairo spurred a peculiar debate when he argued that total nudity during sexual intercourse invalidates marriage. In reporting on the controversy, the Guardian looks at various dictates for proper sexual practices in Islam, which occasionally make for steamy reading.
Permanent Ways
Antonia Malchik
pp. 26-28
Adventurers heading to Russia should visit WayToRussia.net, a comprehensive guide to travel in the motherland. Trains on the St. Petersburg-Moscow route run both ways frequently; for a longer haul, the Trans-Siberian Railway, beginning in Moscow and finishing in Vladistovok, is still the world’s longest.
The Russian soul is a central point of interest in Russia’s modern literary heritage. Among the classics of world literature, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (New York: Vintage, 2003) and Notes from the Underground (New York: Everyman’s Library, 2004) both explore existential suffering in nineteenth-century Russian life. Similar themes are evoked in epics like War and Peace (New York: Penguin Books, 2006; Anthony Briggs trans.) and Anna Karenina (New York: Penguin Books, 2001), both by Leo Tolstoy, as well as Doctor Zhivago (New York: Pantheon Books, 1998; WM Collins Sons & Co trans.) by Nobel Prize-winner—and renouncer—Boris Pasternak. The dynamic duo of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translated the editions of Crime and Punishment, Notes from the Underground, and Anna Karenina referenced here. Their take on War and Peace comes out in November 2007, published by Knopf.
In the Soviet era, the works of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn have come to typify Russian suffering under the communist-cum-totalitarian Stalinist regime, though Maxim Gorky, Mikhail Sholokhov, and Mikhail Bulgakov, among others, have also garnered critical acclaim in the West.
