National Public Radio (NPR)
SHOW: Weekend Edition Saturday 12:00 AM EST NPR
October 15, 2005 Saturday
Voices of Turkey; Street of the Cauldron Makers
ANCHORS: SCOTT SIMON
SCOTT SIMON, host:
Turkey emerged in the 1920s as a new nation, fundamentally different
from the old Ottoman Empire. Modern Turkey would be secular and
Western. Its people would look forward, rarely back. But today,
Turkey’s past looms over its future. This month, Turkey and the
European Union began talks to determine whether that nation belongs
in the European Union. A variety of factors will be discussed,
including Turkey’s history of human rights abuses, and ethnic
resentments against Kurds, Cypriots and Armenians date back to the
Ottoman era. Memories long buried are cropping up again.
Excavating Turkey’s past is a central theme in the work of novelist
Elif Shafak. In this next story, part of the documentary series
Worlds of Difference, the author explores her nation’s past on a sad,
hilly street in Istanbul, where she once lived and wrote. It’s called
“The Street of the Cauldron Makers.”
(Soundbite of people’s voices, traffic)
Ms. ELIF SHAFAK (Novelist): At the first glance, there’s nothing
extraordinary about the place, just another narrow, winding street in
Istanbul–only this one sharply slopes down to the Bosphorus, which
divides Europe from Asia. From where I can stand, I can see that band
of water in the distance, a shimmering silver.
(Soundbite of music)
Ms. SHAFAK: At the top of the street, nearly hidden behind a green
iron fence stands an ageless tomb. It is the tomb of the saint who
protects the street against all evil. Yet given the street’s history,
I tend to think this is a saint that has been sleeping on the job.
Unidentified Person: (Shouting in foreign language)
Ms. SHAFAK: Or perhaps he isn’t sleeping. After all, his tombstone is
written in the Ottoman script, long ago banished by the engineers of
the modern Turkish state in favor of the Western alphabet.
(Soundbite of people’s voices)
Ms. SHAFAK: Perhaps the patron saint has simply been trying to convey
a message from the past, but in a script the new generations can no
longer understand. Our conversation with the past has been broken,
but our history, our stories lie here in the layers just beneath our
feet. As a storyteller, it is my job to collect them.
(Soundbite of door being opened)
Ms. SHAFAK: (Foreign language spoken)
MEHMET (Grocer): (Foreign language spoken)
Ms. SHAFAK: (Foreign language spoken)
Right across from the saint stands a small grocery. The owner of the
place is a slim, balding man in his 60s.
MEHMET: (Foreign language spoken)
Ms. SHAFAK: Mehmet is here every day from early morning till dusk.
After dark, his son takes the shift.
MEHMET: (Foreign language spoken)
Unidentified Man #1: (Foreign language spoken)
Ms. SHAFAK: You can find almost everything here, from pomegranates to
laundry detergents, from candy bars to alcohol, which some
conservative grocers refuse to sell.
MEHMET: (Through Translator) This grocery is open 24 hours. I don’t
sell much in the day, but at night I sell more; bread during the day,
beer at night.
(Soundbite of a clink, cat meowing)
MEHMET: (Foreign language spoken)
Ms. SHAFAK: Other than the usual customers–Muslims and non-Muslims
alike–the grocer also serves the Russian and Moldavian working girls
living in a grimy hotel up the street.
MEHMET: (Through Translator) I dread to see a child or adult, someone
who doesn’t have enough money to pay for something. I feel bad and I
usually don’t ask. Someone says, `I’m hungry,’ I give bread, and my
children and my kids get angry at me.
(Soundbite of cat meowing)
MEHMET: (Foreign language spoken)
Ms. SHAFAK: He even cares for the street’s army of cats, some
incredibly majestic…
(Soundbite of cat meowing)
Ms. SHAFAK: …some so miserable.
(Soundbite of cat meowing, rain, creaking sound)
Ms. SHAFAK: The grocer and I, we look outside to a cascading rain.
Water gushes down in a river toward the Bosphorus. Sometimes I think
of my old street as a boat traveling through time, a street boat
expelling its passengers every few years, only to take on new ones
who have no memory of the past. The water streams as if to remind us
of how easily things can be washed away on Kazanci. But it’s not only
rainwater that has been pushed down the steep street throughout its
history.
(Soundbite of rain, clinking sounds)
MEHMET: (Through Translator) On the 6th of September, there was a
nationalist uprising, 1955.
Ms. SHAFAK: Fifty years ago, this street was populated by Turks,
Jews, Armenians and Greeks. In 1955, throngs of Turkish nationalists
gathered here, chanting slogans and anthems before they razed to the
ground virtually every store operated by ethnic minorities. There was
so much shattered glass all around that the whole neighborhood
glittered like a mirror in the sun. On that day, some among the mob
dragged out the newly introduced, pasty white, rounded refrigerators
and rolled them one by one all the way down our street, cheering with
the fall and crash of each machine.
MEHMET: (Through Translator) There were wheels of cheese. They rolled
it down the street because the grocer was Greek, they took his cheese
and rolled it down a street. Of all Turkey’s neighbors, the Greeks
are my favorite. Yes, I am sad. We are sad because we were so fond of
them. Also as a grocer I was very fond of them. They were good
customers. They know quality. The Greeks, they like artichokes a lot.
(Soundbite of store activity)
MEHMET: (Through Translator) Half of our customers were Greeks and
Armenians. They were afraid to stay here. They left Turkey.
(Soundbite of door being opened, traffic, rain, man singing)
Ms. SHAFAK: Once in a while in my dreams I see refrigerators spinning
down our street, only those make no noise, do not tumble. Instead,
they float light as a feather along the searing river of rainfall.
(Soundbite of rain)
NICK (Jeweler): OK, this is classified …(unintelligible). If you
like this, I can put the glue here. I mean, whichever you like.
Ms. SHAFAK: In another part of Istanbul, inside the Grand Bazaar,
this is Nick, an Armenian jeweler whose family was pushed off the
Street of Cauldron Makers. He grew up hearing all about the events of
1955.
NICK: Those days was very terrible. Lots of shops are actually
broken, you know?
Ms. SHAFAK: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
NICK: And people were coming by hundreds by hundreds, you know? And
they were just like animal. They were crazy. They were breaking
everywhere.
Ms. SHAFAK: He goes to America very often, as he has relatives and
business partners in California. He sells basterma, a kind of spicy
pastrami so dear to both Turks and Armenians. I ask him, despite all
this that happened, why hasn’t he wanted leave Turkey? Why hasn’t he
settled in America or elsewhere?
NICK: All my latest children’s boyfriends are there, and each time I
go somewheres they keep asking me when I’m going to move. And I think
I’ll never move this township. Sometimes they–when they hear my
name, they say, `Oh, we are Armenians. When did you come?’ I say, `We
were here before you come. We are here since 3,000 years.’
Ms. SHAFAK: The ethnic minorities weren’t the only ones our street
boat disgorged. During the 1970s, this street of cauldron makers
became notorious for its cluster of seamy residents, Istanbul’s
underbelly of drug dealers, pimps and transvestites, prostitutes.
They used to live here, all of them, in the flats where later we
would live. This used to be their street; now only a few remain and
remember.
Unidentified Man #2: (Foreign language spoken)
Unidentified Man #3: (Foreign language spoken)
Unidentified Woman: (Foreign language spoken)
Ms. SHAFAK: Madame Trukianna(ph) lives in a dingy basement room with
bare walls and meager furnishings. Six other transvestites, much
younger, sit on their haunches and listen to her respectfully.
Trukianna has been living on this street for more than 30 years. She
knows its story. She blames the transvestites themselves for their
expulsion from the streets.
Unidentified Man #4: (Foreign language spoken)
Madame TRUKIANNA (Transvestite): (Through Translator) We should
behave well, I told them. We shouldn’t lose these houses. But they
didn’t behave well. They kept on showing their bodies in the windows,
so they were kicked out of those houses.
Ms. SHAFAK: Istanbul police broke down doors and forced them out.
Those who resisted were beaten with hoses.
Madame TRUKIANNA: (Through Translator) They were kicked out of those
houses into the street. On the streets, they had to hitchhike. They
began to do prostitution on the roadsides.
Ms. SHAFAK: Many began doing business on the highways, only to make
the inside pages of Turkish newspapers when killed in hit-and-run
accidents.
Madame TRUKIANNA: (Coughs, foreign language spoken)
(Soundbite of traffic)
Ms. SHAFAK: During the years to follow, our street boat took on yet
another group of passengers. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, a
large number of jobless people, especially women, found their way to
Kazanci from Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Moldavia. Some were
transients; others came to stay, working as dancers in glitzy
nightclubs.
(Soundbite of people’s voices)
Ms. SHAFAK: The flow of women from the ex-Soviet Union coincided with
the flow of students from central and north Africa, and this went
hand in hand with migration from the little towns in the province of
Anatolia, coming to the big city for better jobs and living
standards.
(Soundbite of traffic, people’s voices)
Ms. SHAFAK: I now stand at the end of Kazanci, near the bottom of the
street and its second grocery store. Here there are no beer cans, nor
raki, the Turkish brandy. This is Gusun(ph), the conservative grocer.
She’s from Anatolia, too.
GUSUN (Grocer): (Through Translator) I don’t get out and encounter
other people much. The ones I do see, the ones I talk to are fine.
There is no problem with them, thanks be to God. Since I don’t go
anywhere else, I don’t know. I just go from here to home each day.
Ms. SHAFAK: The differences between ethnic, religious or sexual
minorities have been sharply drawn throughout the history of the
street of cauldron makers. And yet, there came a time when such
differences entirely lost their meaning: the night of the earthquake
in the summer of 1999.
GUSUN: (Through Translator) That night, God forbid it should happen
again. We were sleeping. We mostly woken up with the noise and the
shaking. There is a bright red thing like a flame, like fire.
Ms. SHAFAK: Only on that night, only when they were survivors in the
shared misfortune, did the conservative grocer on Kazanci offer a
cigarette to an aging transvestite and an old Greek neighbor, and
they all smoked their cigarettes together. Even so, the very next
day, the ground had settled again and old boundaries were quickly
redrawn.
GUSUN: (Through Translator) Because you can’t get along with
everyone, some people have lost themselves. We can’t be close to
whoever we meet. Allah will not come to that. That’s the way it is.
Ms. SHAFAK: Yaniburday(ph): That’s the way it is.
(Foreign language spoken)
GUSUN: (Foreign language spoken)
Ms. SHAFAK: Thus they and their stories came and went: the Armenians,
the Greeks, the transvestites, the Africans, the Russian working
girls. All these people seemed to have but one thing in common: All
have been fleeting passengers of the street of cauldron makers. And
then in the late 1990s, artists, musicians, bohemians, activists,
feminists boarded our street boat, carrying a new set of stories. I
came here around the same time.
(Soundbite of people’s voices)
Ms. SHAFAK: I’m inside a coffeehouse on Kazanci.
(Soundbite of dice)
Ms. SHAFAK: At one table, I notice a hippie-like woman playing
dominoes alongside Kurdish revolutionaries and the pizza boy. These
new groups are open-minded, critical, and they have the will to
co-exist in a way their grandfathers didn’t.
(Soundbite of dice)
Ms. SHAFAK: They only know Kazanci as it is today. Their eyes are
fixed on the future.
(Soundbite of laughter, people’s voices, music)
Ms. SHAFAK: Outside again, in the sudden silence that envelopes the
street, I breathe in the smell that follows a torrent of rain.
(Soundbite of traffic)
Ms. SHAFAK: I wrote a novel here on Kazanci. On the fringes of the
book is an old woman who secretly collects the artifacts that the
other residents are so eager to discard.
(Soundbite of metallic clanking)
Ms. SHAFAK: Sometimes I liken my writing to walking in a pile of
rubble. Atop the pile I stop and listen for the sounds of breathing
amid the stones. Perhaps this is what the saint at the top of the
street was trying to tell us: Look to the stories beneath your feet.
(Soundbite of traffic)
SIMON: Elif Shafak’s piece is part of the Worlds of Difference, a
documentary series on global cultural change. It was co-produced by
Sandy Tolan and Melissa Robbins. Worlds of Difference is a project of
Homelands Productions. For more information, you can visit our Web
site at npr.org.
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I’m Scott Simon.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

National Public Radio (NPR)
SHOW: Morning Edition 11:00 AM EST NPR
October 13, 2005 Thursday
Rumblings of controversary at the Swedish Academy [DP]
ANCHORS: STEVE INSKEEP
REPORTERS: NEDA ULABY
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Moving now from one untold story to another, the winner of this
year’s Nobel Prize for literature will be announced this morning. The
announcement usually comes with all the other Nobel winners, and that
would have been last week, and when it was delayed rumors circulated
there was a split among the judges. Earlier this week, a member of
the Swedish Academy resigned over a seemingly unrelated matter.
Seemingly. NPR’s Neda Ulaby reports.
NEDA ULABY reporting:
When Austrian author Elfriede Jelinek won last year’s Nobel Prize for
literature, it took Katherine Arens by surprise.
Ms. KATHERINE ARENS (University of Texas): Completely.
ULABY: Arens teaches German at the University of Texas. She co-edited
a book about Jelinek.
Ms. ARENS: Completely from the point of view of eminent Austrian
authors, not surprised if one takes the last 20 years of the Nobel
Prizes being responses to certain kinds of political correctness.
ULABY: Arens believes Jelinek was chosen because the Swedish Academy
had decided to reward a postmodern European feminist.
Ms. ARENS: So she fit a lot of the bills.
ULABY: But such pigeonholing was not the complaint of Nut Onland(ph).
He’s an older, inactive member of the Swedish Academy. He quit
Tuesday over Jelinek’s selection. It’s not clear why he waited a full
year to do it, but Onland attacked Jelinek’s work in a Swedish
newspaper. He called it, quote, “a mass of text that appears shoveled
together without trace of artistic structure.”
Ms. ARENS: There is a point there.
ULABY: Katherine Arens.
Ms. ARENS: Even if you accept postmodern literature pastiche as a
kind of deconstruction of an untenable political viewpoint.
ULABY: Snap. And there’s a heated debate this year, according to
international newspapers, over whether to honor Turkish author Orhan
Pamuk. Erdag Goknar is an assistant professor at Duke University who
translated one of Pamuk’s novels into English.
Professor ERDAG GOKNAR (Duke University): He’s young to get the
Nobel. I mean, he’s 53 years old. That would be young.
ULABY: Pamuk has written just seven novels. And Goknar concedes that
most Nobel literature laureates are rewarded for a lifetime of
achievements.
Prof. GOKNAR: But he’s at a point in his career where he is both a
cultural figure inside and outside of Turkey and he’s now a very
political figure inside and outside of Turkey.
ULABY: Pamuk is scheduled to stand trial in his homeland this
December for publicly commenting on Turkey’s role in the massacre of
thousands of Armenians during World War I. Palmuk’s selection would
be additionally freighted because the European Union is deciding
whether to include Turkey as a member.
But there’s also speculation that delay came, not from international
politics, but aesthetics; specifically, whether to choose a
nonfiction writer as this year’s Nobel literature laureate. Neda
Ulaby, NPR News, Washington.
INSKEEP: You can find details about this year’s Nobel winners, from
peace to physics, at npr.org.
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. With Renee Montagne, I’m Steve Inskeep.

National Public Radio (NPR)
SHOW: Morning Edition 11:00 AM EST NPR
October 12, 2005 Wednesday
Patriot camps cause concern in former Soviet Republic [DP]
ANCHORS: RENEE MONTAGNE
REPORTERS: LAWRENCE SHEETS
In the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, thousands of young people
have been attending voluntary Patriot camps. The government says the
camps help to counter cynicism and hopelessness among young
Georgians, but the camps feature basic military training and they’ve
been criticized by Georgia’s political opposition. NPR’s Lawrence
Sheets reports.
Unidentified Man: (Foreign language spoken)
LAWRENCE SHEETS reporting:
Along the lush green mountainside, military officers in tan fatigues
bark out commands to young men and women dressed in orange and blue
uniforms and caps emblazoned with the word `Patriot.’ The military
officers pass out loaded Kalashnikov rifle magazines to the 15- to
20-year-olds who stand at attention.
(Soundbite of a rifle)
SHEETS: Marika Bayurmanyan(ph), a university student from the capital
of Tbilisi, lies down in a firing trench.
What does it feel like when you’re shooting a Kalashnikov?
Ms. MARIKA BAYURMANYAN (University Student): I don’t know. I think
that’s great.
SHEETS: A military trainer help Marika steady the weapon as she
unloads a hail of bullets at white targets about 80 yards away.
(Soundbite of gunfire)
SHEETS: Marika’s one of more than 15,000 young people attending the
10-day Patriot camps this year. Next year the Georgian government
says 100,000 will attend. Sergeant Yorgi Tzeveteli(ph) says the
military aspect is secondary.
Sergeant YORGI TZEVETELI: (Through Translator) This training provides
the young people a basis for how to handle weapons. This is not
enough for them. The main principle is to raise their spirits as
patriots.
SHEETS: The government of President Mikhail Sakashvili says the camps
are needed to induce young Georgians with a sense of discipline and
national pride. Sakashvili recently spoke with several hundred young
patriots after they completed camp.
President MIKHAIL SAKASHVILI: (Through Translator) Two years ago, our
country was laughed at and ridiculed, above all by its own government
and president. Not only did they have no idea what governing a
country was about, but they did not have any self-respect and
dignity. They were not proud to be Georgian.
SHEETS: Another idea behind the camps is ethnic integration.
Relations between minorities and ethnic Georgians are not always
smooth. Marika Bayurmanyan, an Armenian herself, says the camps try
to break down those barriers.
Ms. BAYURMANYAN: Yeah, we have different nationalities and the
children, for example, Armenians or others–children are from all
parts of Georgia, and they learn how to communicate with each other,
with children from different parts of Georgia.
SHEETS: But critics, like opposition lawmaker Pata Zakarashvili(ph),
say the Georgian Patriot camps are just an updated version of the
Soviet Pioneer camps.
Mr. PATA ZAKARASHVILI (Opposition Lawmaker): (Through Translator)
This is dangerous. Sakashvili wants to instill these people with his
own ideology. He wants to mobilize the young people so that they
don’t mobilize against him.
SHEETS: Zakarashvili says the weapons training in the Patriot camps
is part of a campaign by the government to encourage militant
attitudes and prepare people psychologically for new wars against
Georgia’s two separatist regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. But
even the opposition admits the camps are popular. Many of the kids
are from poor backgrounds. Drug abuse, unemployment and street crime
have exploded in Georgia since the Soviet collapse. And many parents
are happy to keep their kids off the streets, if only for a couple of
weeks. Lawrence Sheets, NPR News, Bakuriani, Georgia.

RusData Dialine – Russian Press Digest
October 13, 2005 Thursday
Eurasian horde
by Mehman Gafarli
SOURCE: Noviye Izvestia, No 187, p.4
Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are creating a
jointarmed force
A major group of forces will be created in Central Asia to protect
regional countries from external military threats, Nikolai Bordyuzha,
general secretary of the Collective Security Treaty Organization
(CSTO’s members are Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia
and Tajikistan), said on October 12. Independent analysts say the
authorities of Russia and some former Soviet republics of Central
Asia need a joint army to fight “color” revolutions.
This rather big army will “consist not of battalions, as the
Collective Rapid Deployment Forces, but of regiments and divisions,
and possibly larger formations,” Bordyuzha said. The regional
countries need it to “protect the sovereignty of CSTO member states
in all directions against a threat of military conflict.”
In case of an all-out war, four of the six member states (Russia,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) will put their armed forces at
the disposal of the organization. In fact, they are creating a
military bloc under the patronage of Russia. Uzbekistan is expected
to join as well.
The main dangers to stability in Central Asia are drugs, terrorism,
political and religious extremism, organized crime, illegal
migration, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and
man-made and natural disasters. However, independent analysts say
that Russia and Central Asian states are creating their military bloc
to prevent “color” revolutions and fight the growing influence of the
United States in the region.
Political scientist Andronik Migranyan, a professor of the Moscow
State University, said it would not be a joint army of Russia and
Central Asian states but a common group of military forces, which is
a normal practice in the world.

Agency WPS
What the Papers Say. Part B (Russia)
October 12, 2005, Wednesday
ORANGE REVOLUTION WILL BE MET WITH WATER
SOURCE: Nezavisimaya Gazeta, October 12, 2005, pp. 1, 3
by Andrei Riskin, Mikhail Tolpegin
Law-enforcement agencies are preparing to suppress mass protest
rallies. Large-scale exercises by Interior Ministry special units
intended for countering public unrest have been held in some regions.
New weapons and equipment intended for dispersing rallies and
demonstrations are being purchased abroad. For example, a large batch
of water cannon will be bought in Israel.
Major General Mikhail Sukhodolsky, Deputy Interior Minister,
announced this yesterday. Sukhodolsky said, “We have already signed a
contract with the Israeli party on purchase of water cannon that will
be used very soon for liquidation of unauthorized rallies and mass
street disorders.” The police official did not say because of what
the authorities were afraid of mass disorders very soon.
Meanwhile, if we believe the optimistic reports of senior state
officials, the situation in Russia has become completely stable. The
Stabilization Fund is growing rapidly, billions of rubles are
allocated for the national programs announced by President Putin,
state-sector workers are promised wage rises, and so on. The most
recent mass protests were connected with monetization of social
benefits, and the participants were mostly law-abiding pensioners. So
the law-enforcement agencies did not need water cannon. Even in the
rare cases when use of force was required, the police made do with
cheaper but equally effective rubber batons.
Of course, it is possible that the authorities are afraid of, mass
actions by skinhead youth gangs, for instance. However, skinheads do
not march in lines. They commit their crimes usually under disguise
of darkness and do not war the authorities. If they do this in
daytime like in Voronezh last Sunday they are not caught at the site
of the crime anyway. Thus, a water cannon – even Israeli-made – will
hardly manage to arrive at the event location on time.
Incidentally, Sukhodolosky emphasizes that “purchase of armament and
equipment from foreign manufacturers is a single case and the
Interior Ministry is mostly oriented at Russian developments in this
area.” Sukhodolosky remarked patriotically, “We have weapons that can
be fired in such a way that you won’t be able to tell which direction
the fire is coming from.” We can only hope that in the course of
“eliminating unauthorized rallies and mass street disorders” matters
will not deteriorate to the point of firing weapons, especially since
our weapons usually don’t hit their proper targets. Incidentally,
according to Sukhodolsky, “By resolution of the government last
summer the Interior Ministry adopted the use of 17 kinds of new small
arms and 23 new kinds of ammunition.” By and large, additional
allocations for arming of OMON and police special units this year
will amount to 370 million rubles.
One aspect is alarming in all this. Sukhodolsky said, “Simultaneously
we are developing a water cannon of our own and plan that a prototype
model will be received in October or early November.” Why it was
impossible to wait until production of domestic models? What will
happen “very soon”?
Lyudmila Alexeeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, says, “The
Deputy Minister knows best, but I don’t expect such mass disorders
and such street actions against which sensible people use water
cannon. It seems to me that after the well-known events in Georgia,
Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan state officials starting from deputy ministers
and higher have lost sleep and quietness. That is why they buy water
cannon on money of taxpayers to disperse these taxpayers although
they do not plan to gather yet.”
Boris Makarenko, deputy general Director of the Center of Political
Technologies, says, “Water cannon and tear gas are absolutely
necessary tools in the inventory of a police force in a democratic
state. As everyone knows, the lack of such non-lethal weapons in the
arsenal of Kyrgyzstan’s police had very bad results last spring. With
regard to the statement of the Deputy Minister about the use of this
equipment very soon, I think that he simply expressed himself in an
unfortunate way. He probably wanted to say that the use of water
cannon would be adopted soon, not that dangerous rallies would be
held soon. Since last autumn our law-enforcement agencies have been
seeing orange devils everywhere.”
Last Monday, special units of the Russian Interior Ministry and
Armenian police had joint tactical special exercises in stopping mass
disorders in the Krasnodar territory. According to the legend of the
exercises, a group of about 150 aggressive young people went out on
an unauthorized rally into the square in front of the building of the
administration and arranged mass disorders there shouting
anti-governmental slogans. Afterwards a group of armed rebels broke
into the building of the administration, looted it and took hostages
(interestingly, all this reminds very much events in
Karachaevo-Cherkessia last autumn and in Kabardino-Balkaria this
summer). Naturally, “by skillful actions of special police and
Interior Forces units with use of armored personnel carriers the mob
was dispersed and ousted from the square and afterwards the building
of the administration was released with assistance of paratroopers
and landing of a special police department.” All criminals were
arrested and sent to a filtration camp, and the hostages were
liberated.
Among the observers at the exercises were Russian Interior Minister
Rashid Nurgaliev, chief of Armenian police Aik Arutyunyan and
representatives of the law-enforcement agencies of Ukraine,
Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Similar exercises were arranged last December in Altai, this May in
Chuvashia, in June in the Orenburg Region, in July in the Khabarovsk
Region and so on. As a rule, many policemen from various regions of
the country participated in them. For instance, 1,500 servicemen of
special police units, police of Armenia and Russian Emergencies
Ministry participated in the exercises in Krasnodar.
When asked if the exercises in Krasnodar and the intention to buy
Israeli water cannon mean that the Interior Ministry expects mass
unrest, Interior Ministry spokesman Valery Gribakin said, “This is
not connected with any possible demonstrations and actions.
Rearmament of special police units is underway. New uniforms and
equipment are being purchased. We bought new Russian-made Tigr
all-terrain vehicles, similar to the Hummer. By the end of the year
22 such vehicles will be supplied to the regional OMONs. We have
bought one water cannon, made in Israel, and a number of Russian
plants are currently making counterparts. With regard to the
exercises in Krasnodar, they have been planned a long time ago. We
are not preparing for any war.”
Translated by Pavel Pushkin

RosBusinessConsulting Database
October 12, 2005 Wednesday
Russian transportation minister on cooperation with Armenia
Russia may soon become a major trade partner with Armenia, Russian
transportation minister and co-chairman of the Armenian-Russian
economic commission, Igor Levitin, reported. Moscow is still
considering possibilities for oil, fuel and petrochemical supplies to
Armenia, Levitin said. It is necessary to develop the legal basis for
cooperation and to organize a railway ferry service for the direction
the Port of Caucasus – the Port of Poti. “The transportation link has
not existed for 15 years, so we should not assume it would be easy to
reestablish it,” Levitin stressed. The transportation minister also
pointed out that businesses should take part in the restoration of
the ferry service, because it would enable them to supply goods to
Caucasus and Iran. It is important for Armenia to develop relations
with Moscow further and Russia has always considered Armenia a
reliable partner and friend, Levitin concluded.

RusData Dialine – Russian Press Digest
October 12, 2005 Wednesday
Russian police to face an “orange revolution” well-prepared
by Andrey Riskin, Mikhail Tolpegin
SOURCE: Nezavisimaya Gazeta, No 220, p.1
Law enforcers getting ready to suppress large-scale riots
Russian law enforcement agencies are preparing to deal with mass
protest actions. Large-scale exercises of the Interior Ministry riot
units have been held in several regions of the country and new riot
equipment and hardware is being purchased abroad. A large batch of
water cannons will be bought in Israel, Major General Mikhail
Sukhodolsky, deputy interior minister, said Tuesday. He said they
“will soon be used to stop unsanctioned demonstrations and riots.”
The general also said that an additional sum of 370 million rubles
($13 million) would be allocated for the OMON special police units
and special operations forces.
“Fear sees danger everywhere,” said Lyudmila Alekseyeva, the head of
the Moscow Helsinki Group, a prominent non-governmental human rights
body. “Officials, starting from the deputy minister, have lost sleep
after the events in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. So, they are
spending taxpayers’ money to buy water cannons so that they can
disperse those same taxpayers, although those have shown no intention
to riot so far.”
“Water cannons and tear gas are the necessary instruments of police
in a democratic state,” said Boris Makarenko, deputy general director
of the Center for Political Technologies. “The absence of such
non-lethal weapons in the arsenal of the Kyrgyz police led to very
serious consequences this spring.” As for the deputy minister’s words
about the use of such special equipment ‘soon’, the expert described
it as a Freudian slip: “Our law enforcers have been seeing orange
everywhere since last autumn.”
Last Monday, the special units of the Russian Interior Ministry and
the Armenian police held a joint anti-riot tactical exercise in the
Krasnodar region. Similar exercises were held in Altai last December,
in Chuvashia last May, in the Orenburg region in June and in the
Khabarovsk region in July.

SUNDAY TELEGRAM (Massachusetts)
October 09, 2005 Sunday, ALL EDITIONS
Too big for his own good;
Successful jeweler leaving stress behind
by Dianne Williamson
He came to the United States as a teenager and slept with his parents
on an Oriental rug in a small apartment off Grafton Street. He got
started in the jewelry business by making two filigreed rings with
the melted gold from his mother’s wedding band and his father’s
teeth.
Today he’s known simply as Shavarsh, like Picasso or Cher, a local
artist who built from nothing a business so bustling that soon he’ll
be forced to retire at age 43, a victim of his own success, and he’s
literally heartsick at the prospect of closing his doors for good.
“I feel so bad I’m doing this,” he said last week, sitting in his
office at Shavarsh Elite Jewelry Design at 420 Main St., a space he’s
occupied for more than two decades. “But it’s time. I make my
business too big, way too big. My dream was to make a success in this
country. But this was more than my expectation.”
Only the prospect of death could force a man such as Shavarsh Azizian
to abandon his passion. Three years ago, he was diagnosed with heart
disease that his doctors attribute to stress. He’s had 10 stents
inserted to keep his arteries open and still must undergo heart
bypass surgery in February. These days when he works, he often feels
a searing pressure in his chest, he said.
His last day on the job is Dec. 24. To strengthen his resolve to
retire, he keeps a photograph on his desk that he cut from a
magazine, showing a dead man being wheeled into a morgue.
The picture keeps things in perspective.
“I don’t want to end up in that place,” he said. “But I’m very
emotional and enthusiastic about my work. Everything has to be
perfect. If I don’t like it, I crush it and start again. I get
tension when I’m working. I don’t want to close, but I don’t want to
end up like in that picture. All this money and jewelry means
nothing.”
He still speaks with the accent of his native Armenia, where both his
father and grandfather were jewelry makers. The young Shavarsh was
somewhat of a prodigy in his country; an accomplished portrait of his
father that he drew at age 13 hangs in his office. He trained with
one of the top jewelry makers in the former Soviet Union and, at 16,
became the youngest jeweler in the Armenian capital of Yerevan.
That same year, in 1979, his parents emigrated with their only son to
the United States. They lived briefly in California before moving to
Worcester and staying in an apartment owned by his mother’s uncle.
They came only with jeweler’s tools and the Oriental rug they used
for a bed. The young Shavarsh made pies for Table Talk before getting
started in his craft by selling the two rings he made with help from
his parents. Soon he was selling to other stores, eventually moving
to a workshop at 405 Main St.
In 1984, he opened Guaranty Jewelers and in 2001, changed the name to
Shavarsh, because by then he was the draw. Today he has a
multimillion-dollar inventory of rings, bracelets, necklaces and
earrings, 80 percent of which he makes by hand with the help of his
assistant, Hosep Atechian. Much of their work is custom-designed for
clients.
“I’m good,” Shavarsh said simply, with neither modesty nor bravado.
“There’s so much passion in my job, but business got too good. If I
throw my customers out the door, they’ll come in through the window.
Once they find me, they never leave.”
Indeed. Shavarsh said he served 5,000 customers last year, many of
whom become friends who send their friends to see him. One such
client is local lawyer John Murphy, who bought his fiancee’s
engagement ring from Shavarsh two years ago.
“I love the guy,” Mr. Murphy said unabashedly. “When I bought my
ring, he was so warm and he was so happy for my happiness. And he’s
one of the most generous men I’ve ever met. He carries a lot of
people on his back. He has a box where he keeps slips of paper from
people who owe him money. It’s overflowing. There’s a great loyalty
among his customers because he treats everyone with respect.”
Frank Carrier, owner of F. Carrier Corp. and the Zipango sushi
restaurant on Shrewsbury Street, has been a friend and client for 14
years.
“I absolutely know he’s one of the best jewelry designers in New
England, if not the Northeast,” Mr. Carrier said. “His work is very
detailed, meticulous and precise. He’s a great jeweler and a great
friend.”
For years, he never took a vacation and typically worked 12- and
14-hour days. He’s used some of his success to help other families
emigrate from Armenia.
Now he and his wife, Lusia, spend a week in Aruba every year. He
recently stopped taking orders from customers and will have a closing
sale beginning Oct. 24.
“I have dedicated my life to carving jewels for customers I truly
cared for,” Shavarsh wrote in a mailing to customers. “Now with this
closing, I must carve time for my own special jewels: my wife and my
children.”
He looks forward to driving his three children to school and helping
them with homework. He’d like to teach them to draw and perhaps teach
one of them the craft of his father and grandfather. He may “do
golf,” he said, and he wants to travel. But he’ll make no more
jewelry, he claimed, because he can’t do anything halfway.
“I’m very heartbroken because this is all I’ve ever known,” he said.
“This business was like my fourth child. But I’m a lucky man. I
started with zero and look what I did.”
Then he brightened like the diamonds and rubies that shine from the
storefront he loves.
“I was lucky to have my customers,” Shavarsh said with a wide smile.
“But they were lucky to have me, too.”

Chicago Daily Herald
October 9, 2005 Sunday
F3 Edition; F4 Edition
Parents’ language of love for newlyweds needs no interpreter
Marnie Mamminga
They spoke almost no English.
Journeying from the biblical vistas of Mount Ararat, they flew
thousands of miles across the cities of Europe, the blue-green swells
of the Atlantic Ocean, and the drought-dried fields of America’s
heartland before arriving in the concrete heat waves of the
distinctly different Dallas.
He is Hamlet and she is Karine (Kara), and they traveled all this way
bearing gifts of cognac and hand-made pillow covers from their native
Armenia in celebration of their daughter’s wedding to my nephew.
It is my fifth wedding of the summer, beginning with my own son’s
joyous celebration to his beautiful high school sweetheart and
concluding with our nephew’s long-awaited marriage to his Armenian
bride. In between were the wonderful weddings of friends.
Each celebration reflected not only the unique love of the bride and
groom but of the parents’ love for their children as well. For
although it is a time of great happiness, it is also a time of
separation as our children journey forth with their beloved partners
and create lives of their own.
They go, of course, with our blessings but not without a soft sigh
from our hearts in the definite realization that our children are now
grown and belong to someone else.
We try to be subtle about this letting go, but we are not so good at
it.
I witnessed it in a myriad of undisguised moments during each of
these summer breeze-brushed weddings: the gradual weakening of a
dad’s voice at the rehearsal dinner as he delivered a humorous and
heartfelt toast; a mother’s sweet, prolonged adjustment of her son’s
tuxedo tie as they wait for the ceremony to begin; and a father’s
continuous tender kisses on his daughter’s forehead as they so
lovingly dance at the reception.
Like the ancient rivers that have long caressed the Earth, such small
moments are wordless expressions of the deep, ever-flowing love a
parent has for a child.
And although we parents try to keep these powerful emotions under
wraps, they keep bubbling up at unexpected moments. So my heart went
out to Hamlet and Kara, who were not only celebrating their only
daughter’s wedding in a foreign land but also adjusting to their
first trip to America as well.
Besides not knowing the language, there was the heavy heat of Dallas,
the congested traffic, the mix of American-Mexican food, and the
ongoing introductions to yet another set of family members that kept
appearing on the scene. Not to mention, that as the bride’s parents,
they had an important role to play.
But none of that seemed to ripple Hamlet or Kara’s demeanor. Kara’s
beautiful smile and sparking eyes spoke volumes, and she knew a
smattering of gracious words like “beautiful” and “good” and “thank
you” which, when you think about it, cover a lot of territory.
Hamlet emanated a quiet dignity that overshadowed what must have been
tremendous cultural differences. Although he knew no English, he was
not afraid to venture forth in his own language with interpreting
help from the bride’s two Armenian girlfriends. (After all, the
bride, who also speaks impeccable English, could hardly be expected
to translate her father’s toast to herself.)
“Shhhhhh, Hamlet is going to speak,” someone would announce
throughout the weekend celebrations. And then Hamlet would take
center stage, gather his thoughts, and in a strong voice, confidently
deliver a toast in the musical language of his native tongue.
” ‘He says we parents are like gardeners, and these are our
flowers,'” the young Armenian woman translated to the groom’s parents
in impeccable English. “‘We have raised and nurtured our flowers
separately, but now these beautiful flowers will bloom together.’ ”
Gathered guests nodded in perfect understanding of this wisdom.
” ‘He wants to know if the vows included honoring one another in
sickness and health, in good times and bad?’ ” the young interpreter
asked the bride and groom, who confirmed this was so.
” ‘He wishes that you love each other always. May you share one
pillow as you go through life and grow old together.
” ‘When you have difficulties, and you will, for life is hard,'”
Hamlet continued, “but your love can overcome these obstacles. Your
love will see you through.’ ”
Although we do not know much of Hamlet’s Armenian or personal
background, it is clear he knows of what he speaks.
Earlier in the day, with the morning shadows still cooling the
wedding’s backyard garden setting, Hamlet stood poised in his
American tuxedo with his radiant daughter on his arm. To the sounds
of a lush brass quintet, they started down the down the aisle
together.
This is always one of the most poignant moments of a wedding for me,
for unaccountably, even if I don’t know the family well, a wall of
emotion surges up like a dam ready to burst. It takes all my strength
to keep from breaking into a sea of sobs.
I can only attribute this emotional flash to the sub-conscious memory
of my own deep love for my father as we began our walk down the aisle
together at my wedding 35 years ago. I was only 20, and at the end of
the aisle waiting for me was a man my father loved and respected and
I adored (still do).
Perhaps it is because my father died a mere six years later that such
a bonding moment, a time to leave and a time to join together, holds
such a cherished place in my heart.
And so I felt a special empathy for this Armenian father as he
listened and watched an entire ceremony whose words held no meaning
for him. What could be going through his head as his daughter not
only leaves his family to join another’s but also trades a culture
and a country?
As the bride and groom concluded their vows with a kiss and began
their walk back down the garden path to a new life of their own,
Hamlet spoke out over the background of the brass in his native
Armenian language to his once little girl:
” ‘Be happy,'” he says in a loud and clear voice. “‘Happiness to you
always.’ ”
The universal language of a parent’s heart.
No interpretation needed.

New Scientist
October 15, 2005
The riddle of time;
What keeps the cosmic clock surging onwards? The answer is written in
curious elliptical patterns in the sky, says Amanda Gefter
by Amanda Gefter
YOU wake up one morning and head into your kitchen, where you get the
distinct feeling that something strange is going on. A swirl of milk
separates itself from your coffee, which seems to be growing hotter
by the minute. Scrambled eggs are unscrambling and leaping out of the
pan back into their cracked shells, which proceed to reassemble. And
the warm sunlight that had flooded the room seems to be headed
straight for the window. Apparently, you conclude, time is flowing in
reverse.
You can deduce this because it is obvious that time has an arrow,
which, this morning aside, always points in the same direction. We
take the unchanging arrow of time for granted. Yet there is nothing
in the laws of physics as we know them that says it can’t point the
other way. So the riddle is: where does time’s arrow come from?
Our perception of the direction of time is linked to the fact that
the world’s entropy, or disorder, tends to increase. When you pour
milk into your coffee, the concoction, at first, is highly ordered,
with all the milk molecules entering the coffee in a neat stream. But
as time passes, the milk loses its organisation and mixes randomly
with the coffee. Keep watching and you will see it become thoroughly
mixed, but you won’t see the milk suddenly regroup. Strange as it may
seem, it’s not that such a scenario is impossible. It’s just
incredibly unlikely.
That’s because there are vastly more ways for the molecules to
arrange themselves in a random, spread out, high-entropy fashion than
in the tight formation in which they began. It’s a matter of
probability: as the molecules perpetually rearrange, they almost
always find themselves in high-entropy arrangements. Of course, if
they start off in a high-entropy arrangement, we won’t notice any
change. But if entropy is low at the start, it’s bound to increase.
Therein lies the origin of the arrow of time as we perceive it. It
has two essential ingredients. The first is a low-entropy beginning,
like the milk starting out in an ordered arrangement. The second is
mixing: the constant rearrangement of the milk and coffee molecules.
Mixing is necessary for the system to evolve and rearrange from a
low-entropy to a higher-entropy state.
And exactly the same must be true on much grander scales. The
cosmological arrow of time – the process that started with the big
bang – requires the universe to have started off with low entropy,
and the contents of the cosmos to have mixed ever since.
First evidence
So can we find these ingredients for time’s arrow in our universe?
Cosmologists already have evidence for the first one. They see that
the universe had a low-entropy beginning by looking at the
arrangement of the photons in the cosmic microwave background
radiation that provides a snapshot of the universe near the beginning
of time.
The CMB photons are uniformly spread out, with variations in density
and temperature detectable at a mere 1 part in 100,000. If the spread
of the CMB photons is uniform, we can assume that the other contents
of the nascent universe – such as the atoms – were also spread
uniformly at that time.
At first glance, that seems like the very definition of a disordered,
high-entropy state, but it’s not. The universe is governed by
gravity, which always clumps things together, so a spread-out state
is incredibly unlikely. Although no one knows exactly why, it seems
the universe was born in a low-entropy state.
So what provides the second ingredient? What mixes and rearranges the
contents of the universe? According to Vahe Gurzadyan, a physicist at
the Yerevan Physics Institute in Armenia and La Sapienza University
in Rome, the answer is the shape of space itself.
In 1992, Gurzadyan and his student Armen Kocharyan were looking at
what a universe with “negative curvature” would do to the CMB.
Negative curvature – the exact opposite of the curvature of a sphere
– means that every point in space would be curved both up and down,
like the mid-point of a saddle or a Pringle chip. Physicists have
long considered this to be a possible geometry for the universe.
The temperature of the CMB varies slightly from point to point in the
sky, and maps of this variation reveal a multitude of hot and cold
spots. These maps have enabled cosmologists to infer many things
about the universe: its age and composition, for example. In their
theoretical work, Gurzadyan and Kocharyan found that negative
curvature would stretch the CMB spots into ellipses. That’s because
the CMB photons we observe today have been travelling through the
universe for nearly 14 billion years. If that journey took them
through negatively curved space, each little patch of light would
appear as if it has been through a distorting lens. Five years later,
Gurzadyan was looking at data from NASA’s COBE satellite, one of the
first to map the CMB, and saw exactly what he and Kocharyan had
predicted: all the spots appeared elongated (Astronomy and
Astrophysics , vol 321, p 19).
The observation was exciting but inconclusive because COBE did not
provide sufficiently fine resolution to measure the shape of the
spots precisely. Perhaps, Gurzadyan and Kocharyan reasoned, this
apparent elongation was just an illusion created by the low-quality
images. But when vastly more detailed CMB maps arrived from NASA’s
Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) in 2003, Gurzadyan and
colleagues ran the data through their programs, removing all
irrelevant distortion effects – and there it was (Modern Physics
Letters A , vol 20, p 813). “All the spots have the same constant
elongation, independent of temperature and the size of the spots,”
Gurzadyan says.
Because spots of all sizes are distorted in exactly the same manner,
this effect can’t be due to something that happened at the time the
radiation was created. Some of the spots are so big that their
extremities were already out of causal contact at the time of their
creation: light from one side could never reach the other. Just as
there is no way for us to communicate with a region that has slipped
beyond our causal horizon (New Scientist , 20 October 2001, p 36),
there is no way a distortion effect at that point in time could have
produced the symmetry of the ellipse. So it must have happened some
time later, during the photons’ journey through the universe.
And if that’s the case, Gurzadyan says, we have all the ingredients
we need for the arrow of time. The universe starts out in an
unlikely, low-entropy arrangement, with all of its contents almost
perfectly spread out. But as particles travel through the universe,
their paths follow the curves of space. In a negatively curved space,
any two particles that start off next to one another quickly diverge,
which means all the particles dramatically rearrange: the geometry of
space mixes the cosmos.
Since most particle arrangements correspond to high entropy, the
negative curvature inevitably guides matter into higher-entropy
states. In the case of the universe, that means states with
gravitational clumping: as entropy increases, things like stars and
galaxies form and with them heavy elements and, eventually, us.
Evidence of this process is encoded in the CMB. The elliptical shape
of the CMB spots reveals that the photons’ paths diverged in
precisely the way Gurzadyan expected for a negatively curved
universe. If spatial geometry mixed the photons, then it also mixed
everything else. And low-entropy beginnings plus mixing equals the
arrow of time.
Although Gurzadyan has published his ideas and his data in various
places, the work remains controversial: the traditional view is that
the universe is flat, not negatively curved. The usual interpretation
of the WMAP results, which comes not from looking at the shape of the
temperature spots but instead from what’s called the power spectrum,
is that the universe is flat. And most cosmologists believe this
flatness supports the cherished theory of inflation, the idea that
the universe underwent a fleeting moment of faster-than-light
expansion shortly after its birth.
The trouble with that objection is that a different aspect of WMAP’s
findings goes against inflation’s predictions. When astronomers plot
the power spectrum of the data, they see a big problem – hints of
which had also been seen with COBE. The power spectrum compares the
amount of temperature variation at different scales in the sky. When
close regions of the sky are being compared, the temperature
variations of the CMB fit with the predictions of inflation. But on
very large angular scales the variation conflicts with inflation’s
prediction. The anomaly, for which there is no accepted explanation,
suggests that there is something strange going on in the large-scale
geometry of the cosmos, perhaps because it is not flat. “This anomaly
is very curious,” says Roger Penrose, a mathematical physicist at the
University of Oxford. “It seems to be out of kilter with the
inflation model, and it could be due to negative curvature.”
Gurzadyan regards the elongation of the hot and cold spots as
powerful evidence that the universe is negatively curved, and Penrose
agrees. Negative curvature would distort the CMB far more than a flat
universe could, Penrose explains, squashing the light in one
direction and stretching it in another. “If the geometry of space is
negative, then you expect the ellipses to stretch much more than they
would in positively curved or flat space,” he says. “And this is
exactly what Gurzadyan sees.”
Nonetheless, most cosmologists are still not ready to abandon the
flat universe or inflation. Although no one has actually shown or
even suggested that there is anything wrong with Gurzadyan’s
elliptical spots, they are hesitant to accept its implications. “At
the moment, I don’t feel that we have any compelling evidence against
space being flat,” says Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Princeton University’s Lyman
Page, a member of the WMAP team, is similarly reluctant. “Though I’m
a strong believer in alternative analyses of data, it is too early to
put much stock into the interpretation of Gurzadyan’s result,” Page
says.
Penrose, however, is excited by the result, and says there is much
more to be gained from the CMB than physicists so far seem to
realise. “There’s vastly more information in the data than people
look at normally. So far we’ve seen an infinitesimal amount, and
people tend to look at the same things that everyone else is looking
at. Gurzadyan is only using a tiny bit, but it’s a different tiny
bit. I think the analysis has to be taken very seriously.”
Elliptical time
Of course, directly linking the ellipses to the flow of time is even
more controversial, but we don’t have any other satisfactory
explanation. The flow of time we observe is certainly not compulsory:
it is perfectly possible for the time-symmetry of relativity, quantum
theory and our other descriptions of the universe to produce a
universe where time doesn’t flow – or even one where time flows in
the opposite direction to the one we experience. In 1999 Lawrence
Schulman of Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York, showed that in
principle regions of the universe where time flows in the normal
direction can coexist with regions where it flows backwards (New
Scientist , 6 February 2000, p 26).
But in our universe a negative curvature would stop this by imposing
a global condition for the increase of disorder. This may even be
what allows life to exist in the universe, Gurzadyan suggests: a new
kind of anthropic principle .
Of course, if the saddle-shaped universe provides us with a mechanism
for the increasing cosmic disorder, it still doesn’t explain the
arrow’s ultimate origin: it doesn’t explain the first ingredient, why
the universe began with low-entropy conditions. “Of course you need
mixing,” explains University of Chicago physicist Sean Carroll, “but
that’s the easy part. The hard part is getting the initial entropy to
be low.”
That remains a mystery, perhaps only to be resolved by the “theory of
everything” that physicists are avidly searching for. And we do have
hints that this final theory might address the problem. For example,
Rafael Sorkin of Syracuse University in New York state has proposed
“causal set theory”, which attempts to unite quantum theory and
relativity. It supposes that the fabric of the universe grows as
effects follow causal events – giving a sense of time’s flow (New
Scientist , 4 October 2003, p 36). Although Sorkin and his colleagues
admit it is not yet a complete theory of quantum gravity, it does at
least install a one-way arrow of time and a low-entropy beginning.
Of course, all these attempts to understand the irrepressible passage
of time assume that time’s arrow is a “real” phenomenon to do with
the physical universe – and that is not entirely certain. Some think
it might arise from the strange metaphysics of the quantum world;
others see it as a purely psychological phenomenon, an artefact of
our consciousness.
But Gurzadyan is now convinced that the passage of time is a
cosmological process. The hands on the cosmic clock are driven round
by the chaotic movements of photons through the negatively curved
universe, he says. Though that may be a little beyond what most
cosmologists are willing to accept for now, the idea must be worth
exploring: the search for answers to the flow of time goes to the
heart of physics, Penrose believes. “The problem of the arrow of time
is absolutely fundamental,” he says. “It’s telling us something very
deep about the universe.”
Life and time
Amanda Gefter
Vahe Gurzadyan’s idea has a startling implication: if the geometry of
space were different, there would be no “arrow” of time. Could life
exist in a universe without an arrow? If not, would that help explain
why the geometry of our universe is as we observe? Gurzadyan has
dubbed this idea the “curvature anthropic principle”.
The standard anthropic principle says that certain aspects of the
universe – like the values of physical constants – are the way they
are because otherwise we wouldn’t be here to wonder about them. For
instance, if the mass of the electron were different, the universe
would be unable to support human life, so we shouldn’t be surprised
by its value, given our very existence. Some scientists consider this
common sense, while others see it as a sorry stand-in for a real
explanation. The curvature anthropic principle applies this logic to
the shape of space: without this negative curvature, we wouldn’t have
evolved as we did, Gurzadyan suggests.