Letter from Lebanon. I received this letter from Lebanon. I cite with permission:
"Dear Angry Arab,
I am a loyal reader of your blog, and I wrote you a while back from Columbus, where I study statistics at Ohio State. I'm in Lebanon visiting the family now, and thought I'd shoot you a few quick observations 'from the ground' that may be of interest to you.
1. The Lebanese Forces are spending a ton of Hariri's money on a full-throttle media campaign, including covering billboards all through the 'Christian region' with photos of dead people (Bachir and Pierre Gemayel, Charles Malek, Camille Chamoun) and the slogan "Antum al-arza wa na7nu khattuha al-a7mar." The Kataeb are also plastering their stuff all over the Metn, including pictures of Amin Gemayel subtitled "Al-3aneed."
2. For people who claim to love life so much, March 14 sure do have a morbid fascination with hanging up pictures of their dead all over. A stroll in my hometown of Bikfaya is particularly depressing.
3. Ever since I left Lebanon in 2004, there has been an explosion in Arab satellite media. Unfortunately, the quality of programming is horrifying. This is truly the age of 'al-tafaha wal in7itat.' For a science nerd like myself, it's particularly depressing to see all the superstition and quackery peddled to the masses by annexing one of the most remarkable achievements of modern science.
4. You always mention the Lebanese attitude towards the White Man, but I don't remember you mentioning Lebanese men's sexualization of American women. I am constantly teased that, since I live in the USA, I must be getting laid all the time, because American women are 'loose' and uninhibited when it comes to sex, and will 'put out' easily and, as the more vulgar of my interlocutors have informed, are easily convinced to perform oral sex. Some guys also advise me to have 'fun' with American women, and then come back to Lebanon when it's time to get serious and pick an 'honorable' Lebanese girl. These people sicken me!
4. Your article on the Lebanese 'genius' and obsession with ranking was very timely for me. I always have people butting their noses into my business, informing me that 'all the best schools in the USA are in Boston,' that my degree is worthless because it comes from a state school and not an Ivy League school, that a degree in statistics is worthless any way and that I should have studied medicine or engineering, and that therefore my best hope of staying in the USA is not getting a job with my 'second-rate' degree, but marrying an American woman in order to get a Green Card. (Whatever happened to romance?!)
I have grown tired of trying to explain to these people that I find statistics and probability fascinating subjects, that their beloved Ivy League schools have small statistics departments with few research areas, that my plan all along was to go to a large state school in the Heartland, with a large student population and a large, research-powerhouse statistics department, or that my advisor is a highly-regarded researcher in our field... All that matters is that I am fairly low on the Lebanese ranking system, and I've given up! "