From what I gather, the current unrest in the Middle East is being followed for three major reasons:

1) Concern about oil/safety/foreign relations (they’re all intertwined)
2) The growing power and role of social media (a little blue bird is toppling autocratic regimes)
3) When was the last time any of us (i.e. Americans) actually saw a revolution that wasn’t a re-enactment in a lower school gymnasium?

Based on those three reasons, there’s a lot of speculating about what happens next. Who will take control? When will the volatility settle? How long before there is actually reform? Will it get anymore violent?

Suzy Menkes raises her own “this is what will happen” point in an article from the IHT on February 26. If everything works out for the protestors, if regimes change and reforms are installed, one thing is certain: the middle class in the Middle East is going to grow. This has broad implications, in particular, for the luxury business.

Menkes quotes Michael Burke, chief executive of Fendi:

“This could be the best news since 1978, when China decided to go with the market economy,” said Mr. Burke, lamenting that in Egypt, a country of almost 83 million people, he does not have a single Fendi product on sale — even though its wealthy elite may have bought into luxury. “For every dictator, we could have one million customers. Traditionally, we do well when the many are integrated into society.”

Mr. Burke’s comments do not indicate that LVMH, Fendi’s parent company, is going to set-up boutiques in Libya anytime soon–the luxury industry is not about volatility and change and is, in general, not able to cope with it until the situation has died down. However, Mr. Burke’s observations about market economies and his blatant revenue chasing are telling.

The revolution(s) in the Middle East could go several ways. There is no certainty that progress will be made, especially in the short term. Even the countries that aren’t yet facing protests, let alone the ones that are, face other problems like rapidly growing populations and a standard of living that cannot keep pace. At the end of it all, however, these protests and revolutions are fundamentally about a skewed distribution of wealth. And, the moment that a little re-distribution starts to happen (even if that moment is years away), the middle class, also known as the driver of consumerism, is going to be front and center. And, if Menkes’ article is any indication about the mentality of the international business/retail industry, there are a lot of people poised to make money as soon as the average person in the Middle East starts earning a little more of their own.

I read Zadie Smith’s critique of Aaron Sorkin’s ‘The Social Network’ end-to-end twice, making it the longest electronic anything I’ve read in ages. I didn’t think I had that kind of attention span any more. But, then again, articles online aren’t usually of the same calibre of Smith’s prose. I’m not going to summarize it because you should read it all yourself, but here are five of her more compelling statements.

On the effect of Facebook in general:

“[T]he more time I spend with the tail end of Generation Facebook (in the shape of my students) the more convinced I become that some of the software currently shaping their generation is unworthy of them. They are more interesting than it is. They deserve better.”

On girls and boys:

“Fincher’s [the director's] contemporary window-dressing is so convincing that it wasn’t until this very last scene that I realized the obvious progenitor of this wildly enjoyable, wildly inaccurate biopic. Hollywood still believes that behind every mogul there’s an idée fixe: Rosebud—meet Erica.”

On kids these days:

“Watching this movie, even though you know Sorkin wants your disapproval, you can’t help feel a little swell of pride in this 2.0 generation. They’ve spent a decade being berated for not making the right sorts of paintings or novels or music or politics. Turns out the brightest 2.0 kids have been doing something else extraordinary. They’ve been making a world.”

On the consequences of losing your privacy:

“What’s striking about Zuckerberg’s vision of an open Internet is the very blandness it requires to function, as Facebook members discovered when the site changed their privacy settings, allowing more things to become more public, with the (unintended?) consequence that your Aunt Dora could suddenly find out you joined the group Queer Nation last Tuesday. Gay kids became un-gay, partiers took down their party photos, political firebrands put out their fires.”

On reducing ourselves to fit one software’s idea of communication:

“When a human being becomes a set of data on a website like Facebook, he or she is reduced. Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility. In a way it’s a transcendent experience: we lose our bodies, our messy feelings, our desires, our fears. It reminds me that those of us who turn in disgust from what we consider an overinflated liberal-bourgeois sense of self should be careful what we wish for: our denuded networked selves don’t look more free, they just look more owned.”

Genius and gorgeous.

The birthplace of Simone de Beauvoir and Brigitte Bardot may look Scandinavian in employment statistics, but it remains Latin in attitude. French women appear to worry about being feminine, not feminist, and French men often display a form of gallantry predating the 1789 revolution. Indeed, the liberation of French women can seem almost accidental — a byproduct of a paternalist state that takes children under its republican wings from toddler age and an obsession with natality rooted in three devastating wars.

The NYT ran an article today, “Where Having it All Doesn’t Mean Having Equality“, about the trials and tribulations of the modern French woman. She must be the embodiment of physical perfection and a doting mother. She must be a career woman and a housewife. In other words, she must be the envy of every American woman. Yet she remains under-represented in both politics and high level corporate positions because of a dense history of paternalism and waves of feminism that never quite arrived.

In abstract, the article almost sounds like a mockery of French women’s dissatisfaction while using the French Revolution and the animosity towards the Germans as a backdrop. Yet I found the article fascinating, perhaps one of the best demographic portraits I’ve read in the NYT for a while. Not only does it embody (both in the content and the way it’s written) every stereotype Americans have of the French but it actually discusses a legitimate concern. Here are some interesting highlights:

1. France falls behind Kazakhstan and Jamaica when it comes to gender equality yet they statistically have .5 more children than the rest of the EU. (Remember, France is a developed country, a G7 country even.)
2. Childcare is free and guaranteed and, after four kids, French families effectively stop paying taxes.
3. Abortion and birth control are legal and subsidized (even though France is predominantly “Catholic”) but only one of the country’s top companies is run by a woman. (The NYT means to make this a point about gaps in women’s liberation, but some may wrongly view this comparison has correlation and/or causation.)
4. French political parties are required to have an equal number of men and women on their party lists.
5. The French government will pay for vaginal and ab workouts after a woman gives birth. It isn’t clear whether this is so that they can start having great sex again or have more babies sooner. One sounds very French, the other a French twist on “I’m a European country with a population problem”.

If you can get past the images of couture and mothers dropping their children off at daycare in pencil skirts and stilettos, the article hits at 2 points for further consideration: 1) one of the most developed countries in the world is still incredibly paternalistic and 2) using extensive social programs to correct population problems has significant long-term side effects that could damage the progress of another demographic.

If you haven’t called your mother yet, shame on you.

• I can’t withdraw $20 from an ATM without being asked to “confirm my request” so how does that option not exist when someone is trying to trade $15 billion million?
• Dear Newsweek, I used to race home to read your “Conventional Wisdom” but then you got a makeover. Now, my grandma is more pop-culture than you. That’s all.
• According to National Geographic, the only conclusive reason we need sleep is because we get sleepy. Captain Obvious 1, Science 0.
• I think most econ professors would die a little inside if they saw this NYT graph about the relationship between miles driven and gas prices, but I think it’s fantastically creative and illustrative.
• Internet (and, by Internet, I mean Lady Gaga) killed the MTV star.
• I loved/love watching the British elections for prime minister play out because I’m fascinated by functioning 3-party systems, but there are just too many ways to read this headline: “Labour majority ends with hung parliament”.
• Not only is the most recent Greek drama ruining the concept of the euro, but it turns out Apollo, the Greek sun god, could physically wipe out the global monetary system.
• Russians are getting kidnapped by aliens.

Video of the Week: Betty White deals with the Census. After popular demand, Betty White finally hosted SNL last night. I’m the only one of my friends who thought it was pee-your-pants hilarious, so I’m not sure what that means. But, as you can tell from below, she didn’t do too badly for an 88.5 year old woman.

Everyone seems to have taken one step forward and two steps back this week. It’s like studying for midterms: you muster all your energy to study all weekend only to discover there is so much you have yet to learn. It’s like finally meeting your dining hall crush: you now know their name but realize you still have to get their phone number and their friends’ approval.

• EDUCATION: Just as Obama promised sweeping education reforms in place of No Child Left Behind and new national standards, Texas proposed some changes of its own, like eliminating Thomas Jefferson and Hip-hop from history books. Does this mean that the Declaration of Independence doesn’t apply in Texas?
• MASSA: I don’t want to mention Massa, I really don’t [so insert unsettling jumble about Tickling, Harassment, Strategyand Secrets here]
• GOOGLE: Google may be giving in to China and shutting down Google.cn, but one international writer, racer and sex symbol is not.
• ISRAEL: Just a week after Israeli president Benjamin Natanyahu offended Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reprimanded him personally…via telephone…for 43 minutes.
• MEDICINE: Sometimes, medicine does what it’s supposed to do. Vaccines don’t give babies autism. Birth Control makes you live longer. And scientists can map your genes to pinpoint the source of genetic diseases.
• SUPREME COURT: The people of the Supreme Court have been generating a lot of news lately. Chief Justice John Roberts has come out against Obama. Clarence Thomas’s wife has joined the Tea Party. And Justice Stevens just wants to retire to Florida.
• COOPERATION: You know things are bad when France and Germany can come together to bailout Greece before Democrats and Republicans can even talk rationally about finance or health care.
• FASHION: Now that former power brokers are falling apart, those in the fashion industry are rising to the top of the wealth scale, shopping at department stores, buying $5,000 ostrich handbags and worshiping lines like Alexander McQueen’s AW2010 (posthumous), all because of the industry’s unique business model based on creativity and innovation and imitation. Welcome to a post-financial meltdown world.
• LADY GAGA: See Gaga’s newest music video, “Telephone” ft. Beyonce. [NSFW]

Video of the Week: “So That Means You Love Each Other.” If kids keep thinking like this one, even more cities will be like DC.

The production and subsequent popularity of the “Midd Kid” song shows there is an interest in unraveling the layers, peeking behind closed doors and glossy magazine pages to catch a glimpse of what life is really like. Here are a few articles worth reading this week that peer deeper into issues like poverty, big business and politics. But caution, as the “Midd Kid” song also shows, what is revealed is likely just one perspective, not the entirety, of the truth.

• DAVID & GOLIATH: Damian Kulash of OK GO finally explains why you can’t embed some YouTube videos on your blog, roughly how much money his band makes per stream and exactly how idiotic major record labels are in reality.
• TABLOIDS: John Edwards may not have helped the Democratic Party with his little affair, but he did help The National Enquirer, which is now in the running for a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the scandal.
• POVERTY: Speaking of Edwards, it looks like his message of the poor and “two Americas” may not have been off-base given that the recession has given a whole new meaning to being poor.
• CRIME: Poverty may be increasing, but crime is not. Is it because of abortion, Democrats, Republicans or jail?
• POLITICS: Senator Evan Bayh of Indian is leaving the Senate because it’s rampant partisanship makes it dysfunctional, but Arianna Huffinton says only the best changes are made under times that are “too partisan”. Who’s right and who has the extra agenda?
• CONSERVATIVES: It was easy to say that the Tea Party movement is just a fleeting political phenomenon, but the incendiary remarks of Glen Beck, caustic attacks on the Democratic Party by Ann Coulter, and presidential straw poll win of Ron Paul, all at CPAC this weekend, make one think that activism in the Republican Party is here to stay.
• FASHION: Sometimes, in the fashion world, there are geniuses like the late Alexander McQueen, but, for the most part, the fashion industry is shaped by women like Anna Dello Russo of VOGUE Japan and Li Edelkoort who have worked 15+ years not just predicting trends, but setting them as well.

Video of the Week: The Big Green Screen. Prepare yourself. I bet you  had no idea just how many outdoor scenes were filled against a green screen.

Why does Middlebury’s Dating Game never cease to be amusing (even if it is ineffective–I speak from experience)? The loaded questions and nervous laughter are always a hilarious form of Saturday night entertainment, as well as a painful reminder of how sexually repressed this college is. The fact that it occured on the 13th this year may have left some wondering what they are going to do now for the actual Valentine’s Day. So, whether your alone today or just killing time until dinner in Proctor with your Valentine, check out some these articles:

• LOVE: Don’t have a date this year for V-day? Try your luck next year with a personal ad, next year’s Dating Game or some handy-dandy “How-to” pages. (Yes, I did Google “How to get a date on Valentine’s Day.”)
• OLYMPICS: There’s more fear than love in Vancouver after one Olympic luge participant died during practice on opening day and as Canadians fear they might not win a medal.
• FASHION: The fashion world has had only loving things to say for British design icon Alexander McQueen who committed suicide on the first day of NY fashion week, a week that is starting to heat up as designers shed the limitations of recession-style thinking.
• GREECE: Aphrodite and Cupid are going to have a tough time making Europe fall back in love with Greece. Their debt could spell disaster of epic proportions for the euro-zone economy.
• WORDS: “Cellar Door” is one of the most beautiful words in the English language. Whisper that in your date’s ear to night. I dare you.
• VICE PRESIDENTS: Joe Biden sees no need to sugarcoat today more than it already is. The current Vice President is on a mission today to deride former Vice President Dick Cheney as much as possible on Sunday talk shows.
• EDUCATION: Language on Valentine’s Day can be a little suggestive, but it pales in comparison to the language some people want inserted into US history books in TX, like the fact that birth control is a form of “eugenics.”

Video of the Week: The re-recording of “We are the World” for the benefit of Haiti.