Marble Cities

Naturally my attention today is focused on the Inauguration, with its hopeful implications.  Hussein is, I'm convinced, the brightest, most centered person I've known anything about in my 75 years of Earth.

I remember, when reading Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe how much I wished someone of his intelligence and calm acceptance of disagreements over his proposed theories would run for elective office.  It seemed then, in the days of Bushian maximum divisiveness, an impossible dream.  Yet here comes Hussein. 

Hussein crushed Bush this morning with a single phrase in his inaugural address; he made no effort to rub it in; it was almost as if the phrase was made in passing, but the crowd loved it and I suspect it was greeted with shouts of joy in many a foreign land.  And when he finished his speech, he gave Bush a bear hug.  Amazing.  Lyndon Johnston couldn't have been more dismissive and disarming; and Johnson wasn't nearly as bright.

But more on that later, when the changing of presidents has sunk in more.

Today I wish to report on a quite unusual stimulus project that Pakistan has instituted:  the construction, from scratch, of seven marble cities, one in distant, frozen Chitral.  

The cities will take about 18 months to complete once work starts.  There is as yet no indication in the English-language press about who will live in those marble homes; what economic enterprises will support their inhabitants; or where the yaks will be housed.

But what a grand concept!  I hope we do something as grand with our $8.5B stimulus money.

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A song from my youth:

I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls,
With vassals and serfs at my side,
And of all who assembled within those walls,
That I was the hope and the pride.
I had riches too great to count, could boast
Of a high ancestral name;
But I also dreamt, which pleased me most,
That you lov'd me still the same...

You old timers can hear the song sung on youtube, though gussied up more than you'll probably like.