Miri Ben-Ari featuring Scarface & Anthony Hamilton - “Sunshine to the Rain”

“If you want to get jazzed up or relax at home, you put on Miri Ben-Ari!” - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

If you haven’t heard of hip-hop violinist Miri Ben-Ari, it’s probably time to get acquainted. She studied with Isaac Stern in Tel Aviv, before immigrating to the US where she developed her signature style. She has collaborated with Jay-Z, Wyclef Jean, Alicia Keys and Wynton Marsalis, and shared a Grammy Award with Kanye West for “Jesus Walks.”

See her at 92Y in March when she talks with Tablet editor-in-chief Alana Newhouse.

The Arc: A Formal Structure for a Palestinian State

An exploration of options for strengthening the physical infrastructure for a new Palestinian state, this study builds on analyses that RAND conducted between 2002 and 2004 to identify the requirements for a successful Palestinian state. That work, Building a Successful Palestinian State, surveyed a broad array of political, economic, social, resource, and environmental challenges that a new Palestinian state would face. This study, The Arc: A Formal Structure for a Palestinian State, examined a range of approaches to siting and constructing the backbone of infrastructure that all states need, in the context of a large and rapidly growing Palestinian population. The research team develop a detailed vision for a modern, high-speed transportation infrastructure, referred to as the Arc. This transportation backbone accommodates substantial population growth in Palestine by linking current urban centers to new neighborhoods via new linear transportation arteries that support both commercial and residential development. The Arc avoids the environmental costs and economic inefficiencies of unplanned, unregulated urban development that might otherwise accompany Palestine’s rapid population growth. Constructing the key elements of the Arc will require very substantial investment of economic resources. It will also employ substantial numbers of Palestinian construction workers. It seems plausible that key aspects of the Arc design can be pursued, with great benefit, even before an independent Palestinian state is established.

Fascinating study. Two of the authors gave a presentation of it at 92Y in 2008. It won Future Project of the Year at the World Architecture Festival 2010. Download it here.

Joel Chasnoff graduated from university and entered into a career as a stand-up comic. The proceeding life of living in a basement apartment in Brooklyn and facing rejection from audiences was not what he had envisioned. So he enlisted in the Israeli army. The Jewish Daily Forward reports:

Chasnoff is 24 when he enlists, but his peers in the Armored Tank Brigade are 18. The difference in their maturity is a Grand Canyon-sized chasm, aggravated by the fact that Chasnoff has joined the Israeli military out of conviction, unlike his peers, who are there because of conscription.

The differences yield amusing fruit. Chasnoff is great at capturing dialogue, and the language used by the boys is colorful, to say the least. Chasnoff has received a swift and thorough education in Hebrew profanity. (Writing anything these guys say to one another in a newspaper article would be unseemly.) The interactions with one another veer perilously close to slapstick comedy, ranging from the Medical Excuse Guys’ endless efforts to get out of work to the description of the soldiers eating like monkeys with their fingers.

On Apr 19, Joel Chasnoff and Anthony Swofford (Jarhead: A Marine’s Chronicle of the Gulf War), with editor at large of Esquire magazine A. J. Jacobs as moderator, will discuss the sick—and, at times, disturbingly hilarious—culture of modern war, from the psyche of the American marine to the Israeli mission in Lebanon.

Upcoming talks at 92Y: