x - 37 Louis Sheehan

In the Yan'an years, Zhou was active in promoting a united anti-Japanese front. As a result, he played a major role in the Xi'an Incident, helped to secure Chiang Kai-shek's release, and negotiated the Second CCP-KMT United Front, and coining the famous phrase "Chinese should not fight Chinese but a common enemy: the invader". Zhou spent the Sino-Japanese War as CCP ambassador to Chiang's wartime government in Chongqing and took part in the failed negotiations following World War II.

[edit] Premiership

In 1949, with the establishment of the People's Republic of China, Zhou assumed the role of Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs. In June 1953, he made the five declarations for peace. He headed the Communist Chinese delegation to the Geneva Conference and to the Bandung Conference (1955). He survived a covert proxy assassination attempt by the nationalist Kuomintang under the government of Chiang Kai-shek on his way to Bandung. A time bomb with an American-made MK-7 detonator was planted on a charter plane Kashmir Princess scheduled for Zhou's trip. Zhou changed planes but the rest of his crew of 16 people died. Zhou was a moderate force and a new influential voice for non-aligned states in the Cold War; his diplomacy strengthened regional ties with India, Burma, and many southeast Asian countries, as well as African states. In 1958, the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs was passed to Chen Yi but Zhou remained Prime Minister until his death in 1976.

Zhou's first major domestic focus after becoming premier was China's economy, in a poor state after decades of war. He aimed at increased agricultural production through the even redistribution of land. Industrial progress was also on his to-do list. He additionally initiated the first environmental reforms in China. In government, Mao largely developed policy while Zhou carried it out.

In 1958, Mao Zedong began the Great Leap Forward, aimed at increasing China's production levels in industry and agriculture with unrealistic targets. As a popular and practical administrator, Zhou maintained his position through the Leap. The Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) was a great blow to Zhou. At its late stages in 1975, he pushed for the "four modernizations" to undo the damage caused by the campaigns.

Zhou, shown here with Henry Kissinger and Mao Zedong.

Zhou, shown here with Henry Kissinger and Mao Zedong.

Known as an able diplomat, Zhou was largely responsible for the re-establishment of contacts with the West in the early 1970s. He welcomed US President Richard Nixon to China in February 1972, and signed the Shanghai Communiqué.

After discovering he had cancer, he began to pass many of his responsibilities onto Deng Xiaoping. During the late stages of the Cultural Revolution, Zhou was the new target of Chairman Mao's and Gang of Four's political campaigns in 1975 by initiating "criticizing Song Jiang, evaluating the Water Margin", alluding to a Chinese literary work, using Zhou as an example of a political loser. In addition, the Criticize Lin, Criticize Confucius campaign was also directed at Premier Zhou because he was viewed as one of the Gang's primary political opponents.

[edit] Reputation in popular stories

In a society where news is restricted, much weight is put on stories which cannot be verified. It was widely believed that at the Geneva Conference of 1954 U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles snubbed Zhou by publicly brushing past his outstretched hand. Whether the incident actually happened or not, President Nixon clearly believed that it had. Therefore, when he descended from Air Force One in Beijing in January 1972, he ostentatiously and respectfully held out his hand to Zhou, who appreciated the symbolism. [10]

The clash with Russia created a number of these stories. One story had it that Zhou met Premier Nikita Khrushchev outside a meeting hall where each had denounced the other. Khrushchev, who was said to be jealous of Zhou’s cosmopolitan skills, remarked to Zhou “it’s interesting, isn’t it. I’m of working class origin while your family were landlords.” Zhou quickly replied “Yes, and we each betrayed our class!” [11]

Another such doubtful but widespread story had it that at another such encounter Khrushchev shook Zhou’s hand, then pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his hands. Zhou then pulled out his handkerchief, wiped his hands, and put the handkerchief in the nearest wastebasket. [12] This is especially interesting since apparently Richard Nixon told a similar story. He recalled that in 1954 Undersecretary of State, Walter B. Smith did not want to "break... discipline" but also did not want to slight the Chinese blatantly. Therefore, Smith held a cup of coffee in his right hand when shaking hands with Zhou. Zhou took out a white handkerchief, wiped his hand and threw the handkerchief into the garbage.

[edit] Death and reactions

Zhou was hospitalized in 1974 for bladder cancer, but continued to conduct work from the hospital, with Deng Xiaoping as the First Deputy Premier handling most of the important State Council matters. Zhou died on the morning of 8 January 1976, eight months before Mao Zedong. In their book Mao: The Unknown Story, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday assert that Mao had intentionally denied Zhou treatment for his cancer while in the hospital because Mao did not want Zhou to outlive him.[13] However, there is some controversy concerning the general accuracy of this book's depiction of Mao's life. Zhou's death brought messages of condolences from many non-aligned states that he affected during his tenure as an effective diplomat and negotiator on the world stage, and many states saw his death as a terrible loss. Zhou's body was cremated and the ashes scattered by air over hills and valleys, according to his wishes.

Inside China, the infamous Gang of Four had seen Zhou's death as an effective step forward in their political maneuvering, as the last major challenge was now gone in their plot to seize absolute power. At Zhou's funeral, Deng Xiaoping delivered the official eulogy, but later he was forced out of politics until after Mao's death.

Because Zhou was very popular with the people, many rose in spontaneous expressions of mourning across China, which the Gang considered to be dangerous, as they feared people might use this opportunity to express hatred towards them. During the Tiananmen Incident in April 1976, the Gang of Four tried to suppress mourning for the "Beloved Premier", which resulted in rioting. Anti-Gang of Four poetry was found on some wreaths that were laid, and all wreaths were subsequently taken down at the Monument to the People's Heroes. These actions, however, only further enraged the people. Thousands of armed soldiers repressed the people’s protest in Tiananmen Square, and hundreds of people were arrested. The Gang of Four blamed Deng Xiaoping for the movement and temporarily removed him from all his official positions.

Since his death, a memorial hall has been dedicated to Zhou and Deng Yingchao in Tianjin, named Tianjin Zhou Enlai Deng Yingchao Memorial Hall (天津周恩來鄧穎超紀念館), and there was a statue erected in Nanjing, where in the 1940s he worked with the Kuomintang. There was an issue of national stamps commemorating the first anniversary of his death in 1977, and another in 1998 to commemorate his 100th birthday.

[edit] Assessment

Zhou Enlai is regarded as a skilled negotiator, a master of policy implementation, a devoted revolutionary, and a pragmatic statesman with infinite patience and an unusual attentiveness to detail and nuance. He was also known for his tireless and dedicated work ethic. He is reputedly the last Mandarin bureaucrat in the Confucian tradition. Zhou's political behavior should be viewed in light of his political philosophy as well as his personality. To a large extent, Zhou epitomized the paradox inherent in a communist politician with traditional Chinese upbringing: at once conservative and radical, pragmatic and ideological, possessed by a belief in order and harmony as well as a faith in the progressive power of rebellion and revolution.

Though a firm believer in the Communist ideal on which the People's Republic was founded, Zhou is widely believed to have moderated the excesses of Mao's radical policies within the limits of his power. It has been assumed that he protected imperial and religious sites of cultural significance (such as the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet) from the Red Guards, and shielded top-level leaders from purges.

Zhou has not shared in the personal and political charges leveled at Mao. The recent biography by Gao Wenqian implies that during the Cultural Revolution, Zhou gave in to Mao's whims rather than consistently mitigating them, and that he did not protect all of those he could have.[14] However, it is to be noted that Zhou, although sometimes giving in to Mao, was constantly having his political power undermined by the paranoid Mao.[15]

Pyrrhus (318-272 BC was one of the most successful ancient Greek generals of the Hellenistic era. He was king of the Greek tribe of Molossians[1](from ca. 297 BC), Epirus (306-301, 297-272 BC) and Macedon (288-284, 273-272 BC), and one of the strongest opponents of early Rome. Some of his battles, though successful, cost him staggering losses, from which the term Pyrrhic victory was coined.

Pyrrhus was the son of Aeacides of Epirus and Phthia, and a second cousin of Alexander the Great. Prince of one of the Alexandrian successor states, Pyrrhus' childhood and youth went by in unquiet conditions. He was only two years old when his father was dethroned and the family took refuge with Glaukias, king of the Taulanti, one of the largest Illyrian tribes.

Later, the Epirotes called him back but he was dethroned again at the age of 17 when he left his kingdom to attend the wedding of Glaukias' son in Illyria. In the wars of the diadochi Pyrrhus fought beside his brother-in-law Demetrius I of Macedon on the losing side in the pivotal Battle of Ipsus (301 BC). Later, he was made a hostage of Ptolemy I Soter by a treaty between Ptolemy I and Demetrius. Pyrrhus married Ptolemy I's stepdaughter Antigone and in 297 BC, with Ptolemy I's aid, restored his kingdom of Epirus. Next he went to war against his former ally Demetrius. By 286 BC he had deposed his former brother-in-law and taken control over the kingdom of Macedon. Pyrrhus was driven out of Macedon by Lysimachus, his former ally, in 284 BC.

In 281 BC, the Greek city of Tarentum, in southern Italy, fell out with Rome and was faced with a Roman attack and certain defeat. Rome had already made itself into a major power, and was poised to subdue all the Greek cities in Magna Graecia. The Tarentines asked Pyrrhus to lead their war against the Romans.

Pyrrhus was encouraged to aid the Tarentines by the oracle of Delphi. His goals were not, however, selfless. He recognized the possibility of carving out an empire for himself in Italy. He made an alliance with Ptolemy Ceraunus, King of Macedon and his most powerful neighbor, and arrived in Italy in 280 BC.

He entered Italy with an army consisting of 3,000 cavalry, 2,000 archers, 500 slingers, 20,000 infantry and 20 war elephants in a bid to subdue the Romans.

Due to his superior cavalry and his elephants he defeated the Romans, led by Consul Publius Valerius Laevinus, in the Battle of Heraclea in 280 BC. There are conflicting sources about casualties. Hieronymus of Cardia reports the Romans lost about 7,000 while Pyrrhus lost 3,000 soldiers, including many of his best. Dionysius gives a bloodier view of 15,000 Roman dead and 13,000 Greek. Several tribes including the Lucani, Bruttii, Messapians, and the Greek cities of Croton and Locri joined Pyrrhus. He then offered the Romans a peace treaty which was eventually rejected. Pyrrhus spent winter in Campania.

When Pyrrhus invaded Apulia (279 BC), the two armies met in the Battle of Asculum where Pyrrhus won a very costly victory. The consul Publius Decius Mus was the Roman commander, and his able force, though defeated, broke the back of Pyrrhus' Hellenistic army, and guaranteed the security of the city itself. The battle foreshadowed later Roman victories over more numerous and well armed successor state military forces and inspired the term "Pyrrhic victory", meaning a victory which comes at a crippling cost. At the end, the Romans had lost 6,000 men and Pyrrhus 3,500 but, while battered, his army was still a force to be reckoned with.

In 278 BC, Pyrrhus received two offers simultaneously. The Greek cities in Sicily asked him to come and drive out Carthage, which along with Rome was one of the two great powers of the Western Mediterranean. At the same time, the Macedonians, whose King Ceraunus had been killed by invading Gauls, asked Pyrrhus to ascend the throne of Macedon. Pyrrhus decided that Sicily offered him a greater opportunity, and transferred his army there.

Pyrrhus was proclaimed king of Sicily. He was already making plans for his son Helenus to inherit the kingdom of Sicily and his other son Alexander to be given Italy. In 277 Pyrrhus captured Eryx, the strongest Carthaginian fortress in Sicily. This prompted the rest of the Carthaginian-controlled cities to defect to Pyrrhus.

In 276 BC, Pyrrhus negotiated with the Carthaginians. Although they were inclined to come to terms with Pyrrhus, supply him money and send him ships once friendly relations were established, he demanded that Carthage abandon all of Sicily and make the Libyan Sea a boundary between themselves and the Greeks. Meanwhile he had begun to display despotic behavior towards the Sicilian Greeks and soon Sicilian opinion became inflamed against him. Though he defeated the Carthaginians in another battle, he was forced to abandon Sicily and return to Italy.

While Pyrrhus had been campaigning against the Carthaginians, the Romans rebuilt their army by calling up thousands of fresh recruits. When Pyrrhus returned from Sicily, he found himself vastly outnumbered against a superior Roman army. After the inconclusive Battle of Beneventum in 275 BC Pyrrhus decided to end his campaign in Italy and return to Epirus which resulted in the loss of all his Italian holdings.

Though his western campaign had taken a heavy toll on his army as well as his treasury Pyrrhus yet again went to war. Attacking King Antigonus II Gonatas he won an easy victory and seized the Macedonian throne.

In 272 BC, Cleonymus, a Spartan of royal blood who was hated among fellow Spartans, asked Pyrrhus to attack Sparta and place him in power. Pyrrhus agreed to the plan intending to win control of the Peloponnese for himself but unexpectedly strong resistance thwarted his assault on Sparta. He was immediately offered an opportunity to intervene in a civic dispute in Argos. Entering the city with his army by stealth, he found himself caught in a confused battle in the narrow city streets. During the confusion an old Argead woman watching from a rooftop threw a roofing tile which stunned him, allowing an Argive soldier to kill him (some reports claim he was poisoned by a servant).

hile he was a mercurial and often restless leader, and not always a wise king, he was considered one of the greatest military commanders of his time. Plutarch records that Hannibal ranked Pyrrhus as either the greatest or the second greatest commander the world had seen (after Alexander the Great if the second version of the tradition is followed). Pyrrhus was also known to be very benevolent. As a general Pyrrhus' greatest political weaknesses were the failure to maintain focus and the failure to maintain a strong treasury at home (many of his soldiers were costly mercenaries).

His name is famous for the phrase "Pyrrhic victory" which refers to an exchange at the Battle of Asculum. In response to congratulations for winning a costly victory over the Romans, he is reported to have said: "One more such victory will undo me!"

yrrhus wrote Memoirs and several books on the art of war. These have since been lost although Hannibal was influenced by them and they received praise from Cicero.

THE Israel Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the country's most glittering cultural jewels. Created ten years before the state, it has gone out to the battlefields in wartime to boost the troops' morale, and built a reputation as one of the world's leading orchestras. But in a country stuffed to the rafters with classical musicians, many of them immigrants from the former Soviet Union, competition for funds is inevitable—and increasingly bitter.

But that, the management at the Philharmonic seems to feel, has gone far enough. So it has mounted a public campaign to shame the government into giving it more money, after being allotted a little over 8m shekels ($2.37m) this year, some 1.5m less than it got last year.

Avi Shoshani, the orchestra's director, blames the cuts on the fact that the number of cultural bodies in Israel is growing but the state budget for the lot of them is not. The government now covers around 12% of the Philharmonic's costs. Around half—an unusually high proportion—is paid for by ticket sales and membership fees; private donors make up the difference. But this seems to irk audiences. At a gala concert last month, Mr Shoshani was jeered when he made a speech effusively thanking a corporate sponsor. It was unclear whether the anger was directed at the sponsor, the government or Mr Shoshani.

There is discontent in the ranks too. Some musicians complain that the music director, the jet-setting Indian-born Zubin Mehta, who fought to find space on an aircraft to Israel during the 1967 war and made the trip sitting on ammunition boxes, is good at bringing in the money but that there is too little time for rehearsal with him or with local guest conductors. So quality, they say, has dropped.

But the budget issue is clearly a sore point at the ministry for science, technology, culture and sport. “What budget issue?” explodes a spokeswoman, Liat Gur. The ministry has just 35m shekels to dole out to 17 different musical ensembles. Moreover, she says pointedly, one reason the Philharmonic's budget was cut was that for two years running the Philharmonic paid more than was agreed—to Mr Shoshani himself.

ABOUT one in 20 children (those under 18) have a group of symptoms that has come to be known as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). About 60% of them carry those symptoms into adulthood. For what is, at root, a genetic phenomenon, that is a lot—yet many studies have shown that ADHD is indeed genetic and not, as was once suspected, the result of poor parenting. It is associated with particular variants of receptor molecules for neurotransmitters in the brain. A neurotransmitter is a chemical that carries messages between nerve cells and, in the case of ADHD, that chemical is often dopamine, which controls feelings of reward and pleasure. The suggestion is that people with ADHD are receiving positive neurological feedback for inappropriate behaviour. The surprise is that the variant receptors are still there. Natural selection might have been expected to purge them from the population unless they have some compensating benefit.

Of course, this analysis turns on the definition of “inappropriate”. The main symptom of ADHD is impulsiveness. Sufferers have trouble concentrating on any task unless they receive constant feedback, stimulation and reward. They thus tend to flit from activity to activity. Adults with ADHD tend to perform poorly in modern society and are prone to addictive and compulsive behaviour. But might such people do well in different circumstances?

One hypothesis is that the behaviour associated with ADHD helps people, such as hunter-gatherers and pastoral nomads, who lead a peripatetic life. Since today's sedentary city dwellers are recently descended from such people, natural selection may not have had time to purge the genes that cause it.

Dan Eisenberg, of Northwestern University in Illinois, and his colleagues decided to test this by studying the Ariaal, a group of pastoral nomads who live in Kenya. The receptor Mr Eisenberg looked at was the 7R variant of a protein called DRD4. Previous work has shown that this variant is associated with novelty-seeking, food- and drug-cravings, and ADHD.

The team looked for 7R in two groups of Ariaal. One was still pastoral and nomadic. The other had recently settled down. As they report in this week's BMC Evolutionary Biology, they found that about a fifth of the population of both groups had the 7R version of DRD4. However, the consequences of this were very different. Among the nomads, who wander around northern Kenya herding cattle, camels, sheep and goats, those with 7R were better nourished than those without. The opposite was true of their settled relations: those with 7R were worse nourished than those without it.

How 7R causes this is not yet known. It may stem from behavioural differences or it may be that different versions of DRD4 have different effects on the way the body processes food. Nevertheless, this discovery fits past findings that 7R and a set of similar variants of DRD4, known collectively as “long alleles”, are more common in migratory populations.

One suggestion is that long-distance migration selects for long alleles (see chart) because they reward exploratory behaviour. This might be an advantage in migratory societies because it encourages people to hunt down resources when they constantly move through unfamiliar surroundings.

As for the Ariaal, there remains the question of why 7R—although it is apparently beneficial to a nomadic way of life—is found in only a fifth of the population. One possibility is that its effects are beneficial only when they are not universal, and some sort of equilibrium between variants emerges. A second is that the advantage is gained when 7R exists along with another version of DRD4 (the genes for the two variants having come from different parents). Unfortunately, the way Mr Eisenberg collected the data does not allow these hypotheses to be tested.

Either way, his research raises the question of whether people suffering from ADHD and conditions related to it, such as addiction, are misfits coping with a genetic legacy that was useful in the evolutionary past, but is now damaging. As society continues to diverge from that evolutionary past, the economic and social consequences of being such a misfit may become increasingly important.

Jack Simplot, potato- and memory-chip tycoon, died on May 25th, aged 99

DOES the American Dream come with fries or hash browns? In Jack Simplot's version, it came with both. Starting out at 14 with little education and only $80 from his mother, Mr Simplot died a multi-billionaire. Much of his success he owed to the Russet Burbank that grows so well in Idaho's light volcanic soil, and Mr Spud, as he became known, never forgot this debt, nor rejected his roots: till the day he died his favourite restaurant was McDonald's, where he always ordered either french fries or hash browns.

Mr Simplot's was an all-American story, even involving a log cabin. That was the house built by his father, after the family moved to Idaho from Iowa in 1910. Dad, however, was stern and after a series of rows young Jack left home for the small town of Declo. The teachers in his boarding-house there were paid with IOUs that carried interest if held long enough. With money raised from rearing orphaned lambs, Jack bought these notes for 50 cents on the dollar and used them as collateral for a bank loan. That money bought him several hundred pigs, which he fattened with swill made from potato peelings and the meat of wild horses: “I shot 'em, jerked the hides off and cooked 'em myself,” he said. He sold the pigs for $7,800.

Next came farming and a half share in a machine that sorted potatoes. Unwilling to let Jack rent the machine out, his partner, who was “about half alcoholled up”, agreed to see outright ownership settled by the toss of a coin. Jack won. Mass sorting then began, followed by processing and drying, not just of potatoes but of other vegetables, too. A trip to California to collect a debt resulted in Mr Simplot coming back with an order for 500,000lb (227 tonnes) of dried onions; and onion powder, he said, was like gold dust.

By 1940 he had 30,000 acres (12,150 hectares) of land and was filling 10,000 freight wagons with potatoes a year. Once America was at war, every third portion of potatoes on the GIs' plates was supplied by Mr Simplot. He could take the credit when, in 1948, Idaho first put “World Famous Potatoes” on its car licence plates.

Eager to cut costs and to keep control, he became a great vertical integrator, owning much of the land on which he grew his produce and fertilising it with phosphate from his own mines. He even owned the forests that provided the wood for the boxes in which his veg was packed before he processed it. Any food he could not sell he fed to his cattle, and in time he would own the biggest cattle ranch in America.

With restless energy and a gambler's love of a new enterprise, he was always innovating. Not all his ventures succeeded. An attempt to take large-scale farming to Germany was a failure, and other investments in Latin America and Europe flopped. But he looked only for a 51% success rate, and that he far exceeded. A hugely profitable breakthrough came in 1953, when one of his chemists perfected a technique for freezing chipped potatoes. By the late 1960s Mr Simplot was the biggest supplier of french fries to McDonald's. In 1980 a $1m investment gave him 40% of a start-up that became Micron Technology, which makes semiconductors for storing data in microchips and memory cards.

The odd felony

Mr Simplot's success had the traditional ingredients: hard work, thrift, enterprise, readiness to take risks and a shrewd ability to assess an opportunity. It also involved an occasional brush with the tax man. The authorities first accused him of tax dodging after the war. Charged with trying to manipulate potato futures, he paid $50,000 in fines in 1976, and he and his privately owned company both paid more fines for tax fraud in 1977.

In other respects, too, Mr Simplot departed from the usual heroic script. The patriot who flew a gigantic Stars and Stripes above his house thought religion was “hocus-pocus”. The lifelong teetotaller and anti-smoker was addicted to sleeping pills. The munificent donor to many good causes was ready to foreclose on a loan to his son. Indeed, the man who said he put his family above all else was a distant father to both his eldest boys, whom he sent away to school. He made more time, though, for his adored grandchildren.

He had critics, too. Environmentalists in particular were horrified at his company's hostility to land-use and clean-air laws. Mr Simplot himself, an avowed lover of skiing, duck shooting and the great outdoors, was attacked in the 1970s for his support for new coal-fired electricity plants along the Snake river and for a scheme to generate hydro-power by diverting water from another river into a vast underground tube. Free-traders took him to task for his readiness to lobby President Ronald Reagan to put a $300m tariff on imported computer chips.

Other traits earned a certain admiration. Mr Simplot was unstuffy: he often answered the telephone himself and his number was never ex-directory. He was frugal to the point of stinginess, driving a scruffy Lincoln Town Car for six or seven years before buying a new one, and he did not like paying to have the brakes fixed. Even his hostility to “goddamn parking spaces for cripples” may not have done him any harm. In potato country, the American Dream does not have much room for political correctness.

WHAT do you give a man who has everything, or at least the seemingly permanent presidency of a big Central Asian republic? You rename its capital in his honour, of course. That is how Sat Tokpakbayev, a member of the one-party parliament and former Kazakhstani defence minister, wanted to mark the 68th birthday next month of President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

In suggesting in parliament that Astana change its name to “Nursultan”, Mr Tokpakbayev achieved the near-impossible: distinguishing himself for sycophancy from the mass of other well-wishers, not least those in parliament. His proposal was at once enthusiastically endorsed by an estimated 90% of the deputies. (The others, all also members of the president's party, Nur-Otan, must be ruing their absence that day.)

Mr Tokpakbayev and his supporters point to precedents. Russia has St Petersburg, named after Peter the Great's patron saint, America has Washington, neighbouring Turkmenistan has the Caspian port of Turkmenbashi, named for its late dictator. But Kazakhstan's opposition newspapers scoffed. Respublika, a weekly, recommended that the circus clowns take a holiday so the parliamentarians could take their place.

With Kazakhstan facing an economic slowdown and galloping inflation, many observers wondered whether parliament might not find more urgent topics to discuss. But Mr Nazarbayev has turned down parliament's petition. “The decision to change the name will be made by another generation,” he said. This has given rise to speculation that the suggestion was merely intended to burnish the image of a man not known for self-effacing modesty.

Be that as it may, Astana, which will celebrate its tenth anniversary as Kazakhstan's capital next month, is used to name changes. It has been called Akmolinsk, Tselinograd and Akmola. Mr Nazarbayev himself renamed it Astana (“capital”). A more fitting gift might have been to rename the presidency: the “Nursultanate”, perhaps?

I have received the following e-mail from Alex Kozinski’s wife:

    Mr. Frey:

    My name is Marcy Tiffany. I have been married to Alex Kozinski for over thirty years and we have raised three sons together. First, let me thank you for making the effort to discover the truth about what happened, and for giving me an opportunity to respond to the stories that have been circulating about Alex.

    Turning to the facts of the matter, the LA Times story, authored by Scott Glover, is riddled with half-truths, gross mischaracterizations and outright lies. One significant mischaracterization is that Alex was maintaining some kind of “website” to which he posted pornographic material.

    Obviously, Glover’s use of the word “website” was intended to convey a false image of a carefully designed and maintained graphical interface, with text, pictures, sound and hyperlinks, such as businesses maintain or that individuals can set up on Facebook, rather than a bunch of random files located in one of many folders stored on our family’s file server. The “server” is actually just another home computer that sits next to my desk in our home office, and that we use to store files, perform back-ups, and route the Internet to the family network. It has no graphical interface, but if you know the precise location of a file, you can access it either from one of the home computers or remotely.

    Using the term “website” also gives the impression that Alex was actively aware of all of the material, when, in fact, it had accumulated over a number of years and he didn’t even remember that some of that stuff had been stored there or whether it had been put there by him or one of our sons, who also have access to the server.

    Glover also wrote that “the sexually explicit material on the site was extensive.” In fact, of the several hundred items in the “stuff” folder, the vast majority was cute, amusing, and not in the least bit sexual in nature. For example, there’s a program that lets you build a snowman (no private parts involved). There’s a “stress reliever” that lets you take a virtual hammer to your desktop (which I’ve been using a lot lately). There’s a picture of freshly painted double-yellow lines that go right over road kill, with the caption “not my job award.” There’s something called “cool juggle” that shows a video of a guy juggling who drops a ball outside the frame and becomes a stick figure when he goes to pick it up. There are over 300 individual items in the “stuff” folder, the vast majority of which are of this nature. In addition, this folder contains about a half-dozen items that, while humorous, also have some kind of sexual aspect. Most of these you have already identified on your website.

    I would note that in addition to the “stuff” folder, which Alex and my sons used to store a hodge-podge of miscellaneous humorous items, we use to the server to store several dozen other folders that contain a lot of personal material. For example, there is a folder that has copies of papers my kids have written in school. There is another folder that has family photos. There is a folder that has copies of articles that Alex has written. Obviously, the advantage of using a server is so that we can access the material from other computers and also send family members and friends links that will allow them to see a specific item in a folder. For example, this allows me to send links to my sisters so that they can see the latest photo of our grandchild.

    This brings us to another falsity in the LA Times article. The reporter describes the handful of comic-sexual items as follows: “the sexually explicit material on the site was extensive.” He then includes graphic descriptions that make the material sound like hard-core porn when, in fact, it is more accurately described as raunchy humor.

    One especially egregious misrepresentation is that there was a “video of a half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal.” In subsequent articles, including one in the S.F. Chronicle, this has been described as a “bestiality” video. In fact, as you reveal on your Blog, it is a widely available video of a man trying to relieve himself a field when he is attacked by a donkey he fights off with one hand while trying to hold up his pants with the other. I would note that there is a version of this video on YouTube that apparently aired on the Fox channel. Crude and juvenile, for sure, but not by any stretch of the imagination is it bestiality. The fact is, Alex is not into porn - he is into funny – and sometimes funny has a sexual character.