The Atlantic, April 2013 (II)

choi

(6) Graeme Wood, My Hyperinflation Vacation; A trip to the Iranian resort island of Kish illuminates the pressures, limits, and strange consequences of economic sanctions.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magaz ... on-vacation/309263/

Note:
(a) The English surnames Graham and Graeme are both derived from the town of Grantham.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeme_(surname)

* Nellie Graham Lowry, Theories on the Origins of the Grahams. The Graham Clan (Specifically the Graham's of Gatherick in Northumberland), July 2000.
http://www.grahamfamily.biz/home/orogins.html
(b) I myself read
(i) the first seven paragraphs (paragraph 8 starts with "IF YOU WANT" (all letters in upper case), and
(ii) on web page 2, start from "I LEFT KISH the next day" to the end.

(c) I am not interested in what happens to Kish or Iran.

Kish Island
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kish_Island
(When Marco Polo visited the Imperial court in China, he commented on the Emperor's wife's pearls, he was told that they were from Kish)
(d) Amazingly, paragraph 2 talks about hyperinflation in Taiwan
("Steve Hanke, an economist at Johns Hopkins University, has documented 56 instances since 1795, ranging from a comparatively benign monthlong burst in Taiwan in 1947 (prices rose by a little more than half in that month, then the increase slowed), to a truly surreal year in Hungary in 1945–46, when at one point prices doubled every 15 hours")
, but not China. In Taiwan when I was there, nobody talked about it--though some said "priced soared" but the word "hyperinflation" was not used (cause or consequences not mentioned, maybe for lack of knowledge in economics but certainly unrelated to politics--so I knew nothing about it.
(e) Steve Hanke
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Hanke
(f) hyperinflation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation
(section 4.32 Taiwan: Peak Month and Rate of Inflation: Feb 1947, 50.8%)

Feb 28, 1947 was the day of failed Taiwanese uprising (against KMT/China).
(g) Steve H Hanke and Nicholas Krus, World Hyperinflations. Cato Institute, Aug 15, 2012 (working paper No 8)
http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.o ... /WorkingPaper-8.pdf


(to be continued for (7))

choi

(7) What Was the Worst Marriage Ever?  (In the column The Big Question)
http://www.theatlantic.com/magaz ... ig-question/309262/


Note:
(a) Raoul Felder discusses Jocelyn Wildenstein and her husband Alec ("my clint").
(i) Raoul Felder, born in 1939, is Jewish.
(ii) Jocelyn Wildenstein
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocelyn_Wildenstein
(1940- )

Check out her photos at images.google.com.
(iii) The given name Jocelyn
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocelyn
was first a surname.
(iv) The English surnames Jocelyn and Joslin (pronounced the same) are cognate. See (ii).

(b) Paul Theroux is quoted as saying, "Norman Mailer stabbed his wife, Adele, during a party—a rather ungrateful thing to do."
(i) Norman Mailer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Mailer
(1923-2007; American playwright; married six times; "Mailer married his second wife, Adele Morales, in 1954. * * * On one occasion Mailer drunkenly stabbed her twice with a penknife, puncturing her pericardium and necessitating emergency surgery. His wife would not press charges, and he later pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of assault, and was given a suspended sentence")
(ii) grateful (adj): "PLEASING"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grateful

(c) "And Claire Bloom wrote extensively about her unhappy marriage to Philip Roth; he countered with his novel I Married a Communist."

Claire Bloom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claire_Bloom
(1931- ; English actress; section 3 Personal life; married three times, the last to Philip Roth ending also in a divorce)

(d) "One of my favorites is the unconsummated six-year union of the Victorian writer John Ruskin and his wife, Effie Gray, not least because of his traumatic wedding-night discovery that she, unlike the ancient marble statues of his acquaintance, had pubic hair."
(i) John Ruskin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ruskin
(1819-1900; English art critic; section 2.1 Marriage to Effie Gray; section 3.4 Rose La Touche: the 10-year-old girl)
(ii) acquaintance can be "persons" or "a person."
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/acquaintance

In the former definition (persons), Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1961) had these two example: "<let your men-acquaintance be of your husband's choice--Jonathan Swift>--sometimes pl[ural] in constr[uction] <The acquaintance * * * were unworthy of her--Jane Austen>"


(e) For Burt Pugach and Linda Riss, see

Margalit Fox, Life Ripped From the Headlines. New York Times, Jan 24, 2013.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/2 ... nes-dies-at-75.html
(f) Attorney Gloria Allred tends to represent celebrity women, like those implicated in Tiger Wood's sex escapades. Ms Allred would come out and threatened to the effect: if you say it one more time, I will sue you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Allred

(g)
(i) Thomas Carlyle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Carlyle
(1795-1881; Scottish; section 3.1 Marriage)
(ii) English surnames Carlyle/ Carlisle (pronounced the same) is from town of
Carlisle, Cumbria
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlisle,_Cumbria
("The settlement was named Luguvalion or Luguwaljon, meaning 'strength of the god Lugus.' It was Latinised to Luguvalium and later still was derived to Caer-luel (Caer meaning fort in Brythonic)")