Lawmakers Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) all disagree with President Trump's assertion that the CIA has not concluded that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
Next Thursday, I will get a vagina. The procedure will last around six hours, and I will be in recovery for at least three months. Until the day I die, my body will regard the vagina as a wound; as a result, it will require regular, painful attention to maintain. This is what I want, but there is no guarantee it will make me happier. In fact, I don't expect it to. That shouldn't disqualify me from getting it. [...]Many conservatives call this crazy. A popular right-wing narrative holds that gender dysphoria is a clinical delusion; hence, feeding that delusion with hormones and surgeries constitutes a violation of medical ethics. Just ask the Heritage Foundation fellow Ryan T. Anderson, whose book "When Harry Became Sally" draws heavily on the work of Dr. Paul McHugh, the psychiatrist who shut down the gender identity clinic at Johns Hopkins in 1979 on the grounds that trans-affirmative care meant "cooperating with a mental illness." Mr. Anderson writes, "We must avoid adding to the pain experienced by people with gender dysphoria, while we present them with alternatives to transitioning."In this view, it is not only fair to refuse trans people the care they seek; it is also kind. A therapist with a suicidal client does not draw the bath and supply the razor. Take it from my father, a pediatrician, who once remarked to me that he would no sooner prescribe puberty blockers to a gender dysphoric child than he would give a distemper shot to someone who believed she was a dog. [...]Buried under all of this, like a sober tuber, lies an assumption so sensible you'll think me silly for digging it up. It's this: People transition because they think it will make them feel better. The thing is, this is wrong.I feel demonstrably worse since I started on hormones. One reason is that, absent the levies of the closet, years of repressed longing for the girlhood I never had have flooded my consciousness. I am a marshland of regret. Another reason is that I take estrogen -- effectively, delayed-release sadness, a little aquamarine pill that more or less guarantees a good weep within six to eight hours.Like many of my trans friends, I've watched my dysphoria balloon since I began transition. I now feel very strongly about the length of my index fingers -- enough that I will sometimes shyly unthread my hand from my girlfriend's as we walk down the street. When she tells me I'm beautiful, I resent it. I've been outside. I know what beautiful looks like. Don't patronize me.I was not suicidal before hormones. Now I often am.
Papadopoulos "has failed to demonstrate that the D.C. Circuit is likely to conclude that the appointment of the special counsel was unlawful," Moss wrote, "and, indeed, he has failed even to show that the appeal raises a 'close question' that 'very well could be decided' against the special counsel."
[Kristin] Olsen, 44, told NBC News that Republicans had already struggled to adapt to a changing state, but the "division, hostility, vindictiveness, and lies" coming from President Donald Trump's White House was a knockout punch."It was the straw that broke the camel's back for many, many, many Republican voters," she said.In the Central Valley, where Olsen is a county official, a surge in Latino turnout overwhelmed four-term Congressman Jeff Denham. But the most jarring losses came in suburban Orange County, an iconic GOP enclave where Richard Nixon was born and buried and where anti-tax activists helped lead the Reagan Revolution. Democrats won all four GOP-held seats.Figures like Olsen, who identified as Republican but opposed Trump in 2016, were often mocked as irrelevant after his victory. Polls showed Republican voters united behind his presidency, despite nagging opposition from retiring GOP politicians and a handful of conservative pundits.But the midterm wave, where Democrats won close to 40 seats and romped in the suburbs, seems to have included a lot of voters who look like Olsen."It was the revenge of the Never Trumpers in the House," said David Wasserman, an elections analyst for Cook Political Report and an NBC News contributor and senior analyst with the NBC Election Unit.One analysis by Democratic firm Catalist showed a 24 point swing among white college-educated woman toward Democrats from 2014 to 2018.
MORE:The idea that some form of Hinduism should be recognized in some way by the Indian state resonates among both the cosmopolitans and the dispossessed. What is at issue is how it should be recognized. The BJP is the main political party addressing this concern. Prominent leaders in the party and its parent organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), have offered four proposals, all of which raise the crucial questions not just of what place non-Hindus should have in India's political system, but also of who counts as a Hindu, and what counts as legitimate Hinduism. The label "Hindu" encompasses a great range of communities, beliefs, practices, and languages. If Hinduism is to be recognized by the state, whose Hinduism should it be?The first argument on offer holds that the Indian state should recognize Hinduism as at least symbolically pre-eminent, while guaranteeing equal rights to all citizens, including those from religious minorities. This first-among-equals view calls for India to recognize Hindus in a way that is roughly comparable to the way in which the United States recognizes Christians, for example: by privileging Christmas as a national and official holiday while not privileging the rights of Christians as a religious group.This soft pro-Hindu view, often found among those who have joined the BJP directly (that is, not by way of the RSS or its affiliated organizations), challenges the Nehruvian idea of a state equidistant from all religions. That idea is currently enshrined in law: the Indian state does not privilege Hindu religious holidays. Government offices close for the holidays of all major religious groups.If the first-among-equals view were to become law, it would not necessarily entail inequality in legal or material rights and entitlements, but it would leave non-Hindus lesser owners of their country in a symbolic sense. In addition, it would place those Hindus who do not follow whichever branch of the religion the state ended up recognizing in the same position. If the state is going to mark Hindu holidays, for instance, it would have to decide whether to privilege Diwali (the biggest festival of the year for many north Indian Hindus), Durga Puja (the major festival of Hindus in West Bengal), Ganesh Chaturthi (for those in the west of India), or Onam (the major Hindu festival in Kerala). The pluralist idea of India avoided this problem entirely.The second argument--call it majoritarianism--goes further. India, it holds, should adopt laws that privilege its Hindu majority while giving non-Hindus diminished legal status. This is the standard position the BJP and many of its leaders have articulated over the last two decades. If majoritarianism were to prevail, India's non-Hindu minorities would become second-class citizens. Many Hindus might become second-class citizens, as well.To see this, consider the BJP's position that the Indian state should ban the slaughter of cows because the cow is sacred to Hindus. This idea has assumed a new urgency following a recent spate of lynchings of those, often Muslims, accused of killing cows. Some senior BJP leaders have openly backed the killings. But as with most beliefs associated with Hinduism, some Hindus hold cows sacred and others don't. There are many perfectly traditional beef-eating Hindus, especially in southern and northeastern India. It should be no surprise that many of those lynched for cow slaughter have been Hindus. A rough count conducted by the Hindustan Times of 50 cases of "cow-terrorism attacks" since 2010 in which the identity of victims was discernible found that in at least one out of every four cases, the victim was Hindu, including Dalits (mostly Hindu groups who were once treated as untouchable). There are also many non-traditional atheist Hindus who do not hold the cow sacred. A ban on cow slaughter would discriminate against these Hindus and non-Hindus alike.According to the third argument, Hindus constitute not only a religious majority but also a nation in themselves. This nationalist view has long been the position of the RSS and of RSS traditionalists within the BJP. It is also the position reflected in the Citizenship Amendment bill, a proposed law introduced by the BJP in 2016 and now under consideration by parliament, which seeks to covertly privilege Hinduism through amendments to India's citizenship laws. This position would demand the assimilation of India's non-Hindu minorities and has already been by used by the RSS and its affiliates to justify forcing Muslims to convert to Hinduism, a process euphemistically termed "ghar wapsi" or "homecoming." It would require the assimilation of many Hindus, too, into whatever interpretation of Hinduism the state espouses.The fourth argument is the most extreme. Its proponents believe that not only should Hinduism form the basis of the nation but India should be a theocratic state with a religious leadership. The BJP and the RSS are not sympathetic to this view. But in 1964, as part of an effort to mobilize the Hindu majority, the RSS created the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, or "World Hindu Council," whose professed goal is to unite the Hindu clergy on a single ecclesiastical platform. Although this is not part of the official platform, many in the VHP espouse a theocratic idea of the Hindu nation and have now developed an independent popular base. Last year, Modi appointed the religious leader and VHP member Mahant Avaidyanath to be the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state. The selection demonstrated the degree of pressure that this theocratic tendency and its constituency exert on the RSS and BJP.
It's the great advantage of Messianism.Theocracies are awful and abusive, not only because they oppress human beings but because they also blaspheme God.To see why, a Christian does not need simply to look at the historical and sociological data on how these theocracies harm their own people; we can also see clearly why this is the case by looking at our own gospel. The central claim of the gospel is that, as the Apostle Paul put it, "For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time" (1 Tim. 2:6). God rules and reigns through his Word, and his Word tells us that now is the time of God's patience, when all people everywhere are called to repent of sin and find mercy in Christ (2 Pet. 3:9-10).Does God intend to rule the entire universe, with his will done "on earth as it is in heaven" (Matt. 6:10)? Yes, but this kingdom is found in Jesus Christ, not apart from him. Jesus is the one anointed to rule over the cosmos, and anyone else who claims this is a pretender to the throne. Jesus himself has told us that in this time between his kingdom's inauguration and his kingdom's fulfillment, he is gathering a church of redeemed people, making a clear distinction between the church and the world (1 Cor. 5:12-13).Our call to the world at this point, Jesus tells us, is not to uproot the "weeds" in the garden (Matt. 13:29). We also are not to grab the sort of power that would cause people to pretend as though they were part of God's kingdom--a kingdom that comes through the transforming power of the Word upon the heart--when they are merely cowering before earthly power. Our power comes by the open proclamation of the truth, not by the clattering of the sword (2 Cor. 4:2-3).Jesus told us to beware those who claim messianic authority between his first and second comings. He will come to us the next time not through some person or committee claiming authority from God, but with obvious, indisputable, and unrivaled glory in the eastern skies. What is hidden now, seen only by faith, will be revealed then, perceived by sight.Those who claim earthly rule now by divine appointment are, according to Jesus and his apostles, frauds. That's true whether they are seeking a murderous rule over a nation, or whether in a more benign setting they are trying to use God's Word to snuggle up to the local powers-that-be by promising a "Thus saith the Lord" in exchange for a place at the table. This is a claim to speak where God has not spoken. God has made clear, repeatedly, what he thinks of such (Ezek. 34:7-10).
In the Iran-US wrangling over the past three decades, Tehran has repeatedly delivered on its promises, while the US has fallen short. In the late 1980s, President George HW Bush asked Iran to help with the release of Western hostages in Lebanon, vowing "goodwill for goodwill". Iran facilitated the release; in return, the US increased pressure on Iran.In 2001, when the US asked for Iran's support in its "war on terror" in Afghanistan, Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps gave crucial intelligence to the US military. Tehran also played a constructive role in Afghanistan by throwing its full support behind the US-backed president, Hamid Karzai - but President George W Bush responded by putting it on the "axis of evil".According to Ryan Crocker, the former US ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq, Iranian diplomats were "pragmatic and focused" when it came to assisting in Afghanistan, at one point even producing "an extremely valuable map showing the Taliban's order of battle just before American military action began".In each of these important episodes, Iran respected the rules of the game, while the US reneged on its promisesThat all ended after the infamous "axis of evil" speech, as the Iranian leadership "concluded that in spite of their cooperation with the American war effort, the United States remained implacably hostile to the Islamic Republic".Iran also delivered on its promises in the 2015 nuclear deal. The International Atomic Energy agency repeatedly confirmed that Iran was upholding its end of the bargain - but not only did the US withdraw from the deal, it has also since engaged in a maximum pressure policy, aiming to force Iran to capitulate to its demands.
As a state senator in 2007, Hyde-Smith cosponsored a resolution that honored then-92-year-old Effie Lucille Nicholson Pharr, calling her "the last known living 'Real Daughter' of the Confederacy living in Mississippi." Pharr's father had been a Confederate soldier in Robert E. Lee's army in the Civil War.The resolution refers to the Civil War as "The War Between the States." It says her father "fought to defend his homeland and contributed to the rebuilding of the country." It says that with "great pride," Mississippi lawmakers "join the Sons of Confederate Veterans" to honor Pharr.The measure "rests on an odd combination of perpetuating both the Confederate legacy and the idea that this was not really in conflict with being a good citizen of the nation," said Nina Silber, the president of the Society of Civil War Historians and a Boston University history professor."I also think it's curious that this resolution -- which ostensibly is about honoring the 'daughter' -- really seems to be an excuse to glorify the Confederate cause," Silber said.
God's Gamble is a strong sequel to Mr. Bailie's 1995 volume, Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads. Of the numerous theological works based on Girard's thought, Mr. Bailie's is the most creative, wide-ranging, and profound. In God's Gamble, he begins by pondering the emergence of homo sapiens wondering if the moral choices recounted in the Garden of Eden story also indicate the evolutionary step from humanoid to human.This anthropological exploration raises fascinating questions about free will, the knowledge of good and evil, the fall, original sin, and the subsequent bondage to desire, envy, murder, and Girard's perception of ritual sacrifice. Is this very dynamic the crux of the matter? Is humanity's happy fault the crisis that distinguishes us from the apes? Is the knowledge of good and evil both the glory of man and his downfall?Mr. Bailie then traces the steps from the primeval parents, to the first murder, the compulsion to blame and the emergence of ritual sacrifice in primitive religion. From there he shows how the faith and trials of Father Abraham unlock new understandings of God. He traces the strange history of the Hebrews and the development of religious knowledge, culminating in the breakthrough of the Virgin's affirmation, the incarnation, passion, and resurrection of Christ the Lord.Mr. Bailie's captivating title comes from his speculation that the heart of the passion narrative is not only the crucifixion, but Christ's herculean mystical struggle in the Garden of Gethsemane. Was Christ's abandonment there and on the cross simply his perception of a battle that did not really exist or was there a genuine break--even for a moment--in the union of dynamic love at the heart of the Trinity?In other words, did God gamble everything in the Garden of Gethsemane, the second Adam facing a real, existential, and eternal choice of going through with the Father's will or backing away from it? If Jesus had refused the cup of suffering would the unity of the Trinity itself have been broken? God's gamble is also therefore in the creation of creatures with free will.... Would the Almighty risk everything to save some knowing that we would also lose some?Mr. Bailie's book is an important contribution to the ongoing work of plumbing the depths of the providence and the paschal mystery. In every age it is the work of theologians and mystics to make clear the meaning of the saving mystery of the God-Man's self sacrifice. Giving a comprehensive overview from the Eden's garden to Gethsemane's, God's Gamble attempts that effort to re-tell the old, old story of man's fall and God's plan to lift him back again to a restored glory.
The dark impact of the UAE goes well beyond its own parched borders. The Emiratis have become a leading force for Middle East instability, starting with the influence they hold over Mohammed bin Salman (known as MbS) the notorious Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. He is widely blamed for ordering the grotesque murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.Fearing liberals and Islamists in equal measure, MbS and Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the 57-year-old Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, have embarked on reckless foreign adventures.In Yemen, the UAE has enthusiastically joined the Saudis in the grinding, bloody war against Iranian-backed Houthi militias, which had ousted the regime that the Saudis support. More than 10,000 people have died while millions are at risk of famine.Unlike the Saudis - who are conducting an air war, advised by the RAF - the UAE has boots on the ground in Yemen's killing fields, with around 1,000 special forces troops. Their methods are not pretty. It has been authoritatively reported that they run torture centres where inmates are attacked by dogs or sexually assaulted with metal poles.The UAE has paid mercenaries to travel to Yemen and stoke the conflict. At first, these were former paramilitaries from Colombia and El Salvador, but latterly a private company run by an American-Israeli called Abraham Golan - the 'go-to guy for crazy s***' in the words of the CIA - has supplied former American special forces troops for £1.16 million a month.Together, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have tried to blockade Qatar, a commercial rival to the UAE, and in so doing have ruptured regional alliances with countries including Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman. The Emiratis have also meddled in Syria and Libya.Their malign influence is felt around the globe, in fact. Wahhabis - followers of the very hardline version of Islam accused of inspiring IS - have significant influence in the UAE, and it is in the fleshpots of Dubai and Abu Dhabi that militant financiers, arms dealers and terrorists mingle - along with plane-loads of Russian and Colombian prostitutes which, unlike mild-mannered academics, are generally welcomed in Emirati clubs, restaurants and bars.
Vermont's population is the either oldest or second-oldest in the country, depending on the source of information, meaning many people are retiring right now; and Vermont has one of the lowest birthrates in the country, meaning there are fewer young workers to replace them.Vermont's population decline is well-known, and the Vermont Department of Economic Development has taken steps to address this with programs that encourage people to move to Vermont.Woolf said migration into Vermont also is suppressed by high taxes and a housing shortage that drives up prices. The state could be doing more to address that, he said. With labor and materials costs similar to those in other states, "something else is driving housing prices, and that's land development and permitting."State officials also blame the worker shortage."The tight labor market in Vermont is what you are really seeing in this data," said Lindsay Kurrle, commissioner of the state Department of Labor. Most states are seeing worker shortages, but the problem is particularly severe in Vermont because of its small population and its unemployment rate, which has been at or below 3 percent for nine months. The national unemployment rate is 3.7 percent."We have less than 10,000 people who are actively trying to find a job, so you don't have the resources to fill vacant jobs," Kurrle said. She said her department is trying to recruit people who traditionally run into barriers to employment, including job-seekers with disabilities, people who were incarcerated and people who live in very rural areas."It's really hard to move the needle because you're really working on the hardest to employ," she said.
These two powerhouses will meet in a two-leg Eastern Conference final, which begins Sunday night before another expected crowd of more than 70,000 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. The second game will be Thursday night in Harrison, N.J."The approach is what it's been all along," said Red Bulls coach Chris Armas, who took over the job at midseason when Jesse Marsch left for a job in Europe . "The last 10 games of the season felt like playoff games. We felt like we couldn't slip up. That's what it feels like now."The Red Bulls were a charter member of MLS when the league was founded in 1996 (known originally as the MetroStars), and they've been one of MLS' most successful clubs.But they've never won an MLS Cup, coming closest to a title in 2008 when they lost to Columbus Crew in the final. Despite winning the Supporters' Shield for the third time in six years with 71 points, this team knows that anything less than a championship will be viewed as a failure."Yeah, it's been an amazing season," Armas said. "But we're 23 years going, and there's a cup out there we want really bad."In just two seasons, United has quickly emerged as a league's marquee franchise, featuring two of the league's most dazzling players (Golden Boot winner Josef Martinez and Miquel Almiron, both MVP finalists) and boasting some of the best fan support of any club in the world. Atlanta broke its own attendance record this season, averaging more than 53,000 per game at its dazzling, retractable-roof home.But even with all that success, there's something missing.A trophy.
Thousands of people have protested in Budapest in support of a university founded by US-Hungarian billionaire George Soros that plans to leave the country amid strong pressure from Hungary's right-wing government. [...]The 2017 law that launched the legal dispute was one reason cited by the European Parliament for its decision to launch unprecedented legal action against Hungary in September.Attracting students from over 100 countries and offering US-accredited masters programs, CEU, founded in 1991, has long been seen by the nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban as a hostile bastion of liberalism.Orban's government has clamped down on academic freedom more broadly in recent years, banning universities from teaching gender studies in October.Orban has also targeted Soros personally, accusing the Hungarian-born philanthropist of destroying European civilization by promoting illegal immigration into the country.
According to tradition, Japanese schoolchildren preparing for entrance exams are encouraged to live by the exhausting credo of yontougoraku -- "sleep four hours, pass; sleep five hours, fail."In other words, at an early stage in people's lives, Japanese society transmits the message that sleep has intrinsically less worth than wakefulness and is a commodity that can -- and should -- be traded for something more valuable."Sleep debt" has become a national focus, but it remains unclear whether managers see this as anything more sinister than just the cost of business.However, a small company in Tokyo called Crazy, an upmarket wedding-planning boutique, has taken an unexpectedly bold stand and decided to reward sleep. It will pay its staff a bonus if they prove they sleep longer each night. If they are able to keep up a steady pace of extended slumber and manage to get at least six hours on all weekday nights, workers can accumulate the equivalent of 64,000 yen ($562) a year.
So far, Netanyahu himself has been behind this policy of ignoring Gantz. But all that finally came to an end this week when a Channel 10 poll showed Gantz winning about 15 seats. Another poll, this one by Hadashot, made matters worse, asking, "Who would you like to see as defense minister?" It gave Gantz a significant edge over Netanyahu (28% to just 7%) on the very day that the prime minister officially took over as defense minister, following Yisrael Beitenu head Avigdor Liberman's resignation.Gantz has not yet officially announced that he will launch a new party. He has remained silent about his plans, leaving the feeling that all options are open to him, including the possibility of joining one of the existing center-left parties. On the other hand, the more flattering the polls are to him, the greater his appetite will become. In other words, the chances of him joining an existing party before the next election are dwindling.Netanyahu knows how to read between the lines. He has a deep understanding of trends in the polls, regardless of whether the results are made public or if they are gleaned from privately ordered surveys. He certainly knows that his image as Mr. Security suffered a devastating blow as a result of recent events in Gaza. The trouble came to a climax last week, when Netanyahu came under a barrage of criticism from the leaders of the other right-wing parties. Liberman resigned and while Education Minister Naftali Bennett (HaBayit HaYehudi) may have remained in the government, he thinks that Netanyahu failed.As a former IDF chief of staff, Gantz is no less a security expert than Netanyahu. On the other hand, he is not tainted by corruption and is regarded by the public as a suitable candidate. Even when Netanyahu was at his lowest point in the polls, there was no one who could challenge his high levels of public support or question his suitability as prime minister or "Mr. Security." Gantz can.
White supremacist podcasts praise the Fox host for elevating white supremacist discourse into mainstream conservative media, talking about demographic change in America, and for his position on the Syrian civil war. Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke described Carlson as his "favorite commentator" and praised him for "naming the Jews" on his nightly show. White supremacist Mike "Enoch" Peinovich bragged that the "alt-right" is "putting things into the zeitgeist" that Carlson has "picked up." Daily Stormer writer Eric Striker lauded Carlson for offering "real analysis [and] real solutions" for white nationalists and that "he single handed has risen right-wing discourse by mountains." Duke associate Patrick Slattery said "on a lot of things, [Carlson]'s our only voice to a large extent."
The playwright David Mamet and the theatre director Gregory Mosher affirm that some years ago, late one night in the bar of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Chicago, this happened:Ricky Jay, who is perhaps the most gifted sleight-of-hand artist alive, was performing magic with a deck of cards. Also present was a friend of Mamet and Mosher's named Christ Nogulich, the director of food and beverage at the hotel. After twenty minutes of disbelief-suspending manipulations, Jay spread the deck face up on the bar counter and asked Nogulich to concentrate on a specific card but not to reveal it. Jay then assembled the deck face down, shuffled, cut it into two piles, and asked Nogulich to point to one of the piles and name his card."Three of clubs," Nogulich said, and he was then instructed to turn over the top card.He turned over the three of clubs.Mosher, in what could be interpreted as a passive-aggressive act, quietly announced, "Ricky, you know, I also concentrated on a card."After an interval of silence, Jay said, "That's interesting, Gregory, but I only do this for one person at a time."Mosher persisted: "Well, Ricky, I really was thinking of a card."Jay paused, frowned, stared at Mosher, and said, "This is a distinct change of procedure." A longer pause. "All right--what was the card?""Two of spades."Jay nodded, and gestured toward the other pile, and Mosher turned over its top card.The deuce of spades.A small riot ensued.Deborah Baron, a screenwriter in Los Angeles, where Jay lives, once invited him to a New Year's Eve dinner party at her home. About a dozen other people attended. Well past midnight, everyone gathered around a coffee table as Jay, at Baron's request, did closeup card magic. When he had performed several dazzling illusions and seemed ready to retire, a guest named Mort said, "Come on, Ricky. Why don't you do something truly amazing?"Baron recalls that at that moment "the look in Ricky's eyes was, like, 'Mort--you have just [****]ed with the wrong person.' "Jay told Mort to name a card, any card. Mort said, "The three of hearts." After shuffling, Jay gripped the deck in the palm of his right hand and sprung it, cascading all fifty-two cards so that they travelled the length of the table and pelted an open wine bottle."O.K., Mort, what was your card again?""The three of hearts.""Look inside the bottle."Mort discovered, curled inside the neck, the three of hearts. The party broke up immediately.One morning last December, a few days before Christmas, Jay came to see me in my office. He wore a dark-gray suit and a black shirt that was open at the collar, and the colors seemed to match his mood. The most uplifting magic, Jay believes, has a spontaneous, improvisational vigor. Nevertheless, because he happened to be in New York we had made a date to get together, and I, invoking a journalistic imperative, had specifically requested that he come by my office and do some magic while I took notes. He hemmed and hawed and then, reluctantly, consented. Though I had no idea what was in store, I anticipated being completely fooled.At that point, I had known Jay for two years, during which we had discussed his theories of magic, his relationships with and opinions of other practitioners of the art, his rigid opposition to public revelations of the techniques of magic, and his relentless passion for collecting rare books and manuscripts, art, and other artifacts connected to the history of magic, gambling, unusual entertainments, and frauds and confidence games. He has a skeptically friendly, mildly ironic conversational manner and a droll, filigreed prose style. Jay's collection functions as a working research library. He is the author of dozens of scholarly articles and also of two diverting and richly informative books, "Cards as Weapons" (1977) and "Learned Pigs & Fireproof Women" (1986). For the past several years, he has devoted his energies mainly to scholarship and to acting in and consulting on motion pictures. Though he loves to perform, he is extremely selective about venues and audiences. I've attended lectures and demonstrations by him before gatherings of East Coast undergraduates, West Coast students of the history of magic, and Midwestern bunco-squad detectives. Studying videotapes of him and observing at first hand some of his serendipitous microbursts of legerdemain have taught me how inappropriate it is to say that "Ricky Jay does card tricks"--a characterization as inadequate as "Sonny Rollins plays tenor saxophone" or "Darci Kistler dances." None of my scrutinizing has yielded a shred of insight into how he does what he does. Every routine appears seamless, unparsable, simply magical.