Thanks to a car-equipped and open-minded Friend of Crescat, I have begun exploring the recommendations in Tyler Cowen's invaluable Ethnic Dining Guide.

Il Mee, 7031 Little River Turnpike, Annandale: This is a Korean buffet, so I must confess that when I saw the large quantites of sushi under plastic wrap I was a little bit dubious. The real point of the meal (other than to devour endless quantities of kim chi pancakes), it turns out, is to pick scraps of many kinds of raw meats and bring them to your table, where an efficious waittress armed with tongs and a pair of sewing scissors will sprinkle them all over a griddle built into your table. (Load up on more meat than she can fit and she will just keep coming back). the results are spicy, tender, and delicious-- everything the Melting Pot would love to be, for less money, more (yummier) food, and no dubious mandarin salad. However, it has apparently not fared terribly well in health inspections and I did feel a little bit ill later that night, so it may be a little bit harmful for you, as Rufus Wainwright would say. [UPDATE: A reader points out that sushi is common in Korean restaurants, and that many maintain that Koreans invented the concept. Fine, by me, but my wariness was not because the sushi was ethnically out of place, but rather because it was plastic-wrapped.]

Sodere: No need for a car here, as the place is less than two blocks from my summer digs. Indeed, the neighborhood is packed (as Matt Yglesias notes) with good-looking Ethiopian food, so comparisons will be necessary. Sodere's yellow lentils were less well-cooked than I like them, and the beef Awaze was not particular tender, despite its alleged 3 days of marinating. I still thought it was delicious, but the potatoes and red lentils were the superstars. Maybe Queen Makela will be next.

I think my favorite part of moving is unpacking the box (or boxes) of books I always send along to accompany me. Since I rely heavily on the USPS book rate, I almost always beat my books to town by several days, giving me a chance to start settling in and stocking up before they arrive. Thus, splitting open the re-used cardboard boxes if often a sign that I've really arrived.

Here, Calvino sits side-by-side with Lincoln, The Federalist with Darlington's Fall. I am always amused by what books I thought, a week ago, that I would want to read today.

"Marriage shall be based only on the mutual consent of both sexes and it shall be maintained through mutual cooperation with the equal rights of husband and wife as a basis. With regard to choice of spouse, property rights, inheritance, choice of domicile, divorce and other matters pertaining to marriage and the family, laws shall be enacted from the standpoint of individual dignity and the essential equality of the sexes."

What do you do if you're an originalist in Japan? Perhaps you're one of those conservatives who does not like that above equal rights clause from the Japanese constitution, blaming it for "a variety of social ills, including a plunging marriage rate, an anemic birthrate and increasing delinquency in the schools." Or perhaps it's another topic entirely. But anyway, you're dealing with a constitution that was written in a week by an American team that wanted to "weaken the country's feudal society and the role of the emperor" and create a Japan that America would like better than the last one. If you're looking for original meaning, do you turn to the U.S. constitution or common law for enlightenment, presuming that those motivated the drafters? Or do you turn to pre-1946 Japanese law and custom?

EurasiaNet (a publication of the Open Society Institute) reports that some Christian and Muslim missionaries have been recently expelled from southern Kazakhstan, and that authorities have tried to shut down the seminary (home to kind and welcoming students from across Central Asia) at the Shymkent Full Gospel Church that I attended once.

Unregistered religious associations will likely soon become officially forbidden in Kazakhstan: a bill proposing just that has cleared the lower house of parliament. If approved by the upper house and signed by President Nazarbayev, they will be banned in the name of national security. Currently, EurasiaNet notes, religious associations are not required by law to register, but they are frequently punished for not doing so; registration requires 10 signatures and roughly $100. The fines for unregistered missionary work--""preaching and promotion of any faith-based doctrine by means of religious proselytising activity"---by anyone, foreigner or Kazakhstani citizen, are 15 times the minimum monthly wage. According to Forum 18, once registered, missionaries must still receive approval from the authorities for their religious documents. People who violate rules on participation in, leadership of, or financing of unregistered religious associations faces fines of 50, 100, and 200 times the minimum monthly wage.

Below the fold are several quotes about the religious situation by parliamentary deputies, religious experts, and the secret police. The quotes represent a trend to think of Kazakhstan as Kazakh, and Kazakhs as Muslim. I don't know if this is just a result of the reporting, but there's no mention in anything I've found about what the Rusisan Orthodox and other long-established religious populations think of this new law. Even if the law is aimed to maintain Kazakhs as Muslims (blame it on the First Amendment, but I don't think laws should have that type of aim), it still has a significant impact on other ethnic groups' freedom of religion. That church in Shymkent began when missionaries from South Korea came over to mission to the ethnic Korean population; the services have expanded to two Russian-language and one Kazakh-language service every Sunday. I rather liked the picture of people uniting around something inter-ethnic after questioning their old views and deciding to adopt a new belief, but apparently the authorities think otherwise.

EurasiaNet quotes:

"The Almaty-based religious expert Murtaza Bulutai suggests that religious communities have found a fertile ground in the republic to promote their doctrines.

'The religious situation becomes more and more complicated. And one wouldn’t exaggerate by saying Kazakhstan is becoming a place for religious expansion,' Bulutai said."

"Independent Deputy Amangeldi Aitaly has argued the draft law defends the 'historic values' of the Kazakh nation against the expansion of foreign religious doctrines."

Forum 18 quotesfrom here

"The first deputy chairman of the KNB secret police, Vladimir Bozhko, declared in January that efforts were needed to 'defend society from the penetration of ideas that are alien to our mentality, alien to our traditional forms of religious expression'. He emphasised that the KNB 'definitely' intended to regulate missionary activity strictly.

In other words, the current draft law is simply a logical continuation of the KNB's policy to exert greater control over religious organisations.

However, some religious leaders seem unconcerned by the draft legal changes now in parliament. 'I am sure that the draft law does not in any way limit Muslims' rights,' Ongar Omerbek, press secretary to the Muftiate of Kazakhstan, told Forum 18 on 8 April. The dean for the Almaty region in the Orthodox Astana and Almaty diocese, Fr Vasili Zaleznyak, turned out to be even more adamant. 'We simply welcome the new draft law,' he told Forum 18 the same day. 'The requirement to register a religious community does not present any problem to us. Now Protestants and religious missionaries will not be so free in their activities in Kazakhstan.'"

Russian Jehovah's Witnesses dropping in on Kazakh families to talk to the American who's just gotten out of the shower (the shower which stands alone in the front yard and from which I've emerged, still rather wet, in shorts and a t-shirt, ready to go into the the house to dry myself) are really just a problem that must be regulated by the government, and can't be solved by simply saying "Thank you very much, it's been lovely to talk to you, but I'm just not interested."

and from there

"According to independent deputy Amangeldy Ayatyly 'the Kazakhs are too inexperienced as far as the religious upbringing of the nation is concerned'. 'The West takes advantage of this and tries to undermine our traditional culture by means of ideological expansion and sometimes direct bribes,' he told Forum 18 from Astana on 12 May. He maintains that the draft law defends the 'historic values' of the Kazakh nation and is long overdue. In the view of Askar Beysenbayev, a deputy of the pro-government Otan (Fatherland) party, there has long been a legal vacuum in the sphere of religion and the draft law 'at last does away with anarchy and introduces order into the activity of religious associations'.

Most outspoken is Communist party deputy Yerasyl Abylkasymov. He claims that power in the United States and Europe is in the hands of a Jewish-Masonic conspiracy which is trying to dominate the whole world. 'They have already conquered Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova and Kyrgyzstan and now they are sneaking up on Kazakhstan,' he told Forum 18 on 12 May from Astana. According to Abylkasymov, Protestant "sects" are carrying out the role of 'ideological saboteurs' and he claims the CIA has allocated 12 billion dollars to support their activities. 'In the time of Genghis Khan such ideological saboteurs were hung, drawn and quartered,' he told Forum 18. 'Alas it is now unfortunately not possible to do this and so we have to defend ourselves by means of laws.'"

There was bridenapping in the area of Kazakhstan where I lived. I have gradually ceased to become surprised by the surprised reactions Americans have given me. True, in some cases, it’s arranged between the couple --- “Honey, I’ll pick you up at 4pm tomorrow” --- and is, like eloping, a way to avoid the expensive cost and elaborate ceremony of a wedding. The rates of consensual bridenapping are unclear: one study from Kyrgyzstan estimates the rate at 25%, noting that the male respondents had given the consent rate at 44% but the female respondents had said 14%. [1] But in others, yes, women are taken against their will by men they know by varying degrees, taken to the groom’s house, and pressured by the groom and his family to accept the marriage. It happens in Kyrgyzstan, parts of Kazakhstan, Karakalpakstan (in western Uzbekistan)[2], and in Mordovia (in southern Russia)[3]. I bring this up because Nathan has linked [4] to a Frontline segment on Kyrgyz bridenapping (I do recommend following that link).

I suppose I first heard directly of local, modern-day bridenapping when I went to visit my friend Yasameen in a village about 60km north of mine. Her host mother had told her that a thirteen year old girl had recently been bridenapped when she climbed into a taxi. This was one of those cautionary stories about what could happen to you if you ever leave the house or travel outside the village. When I returned to my village, I asked around about bridenapping. The story of nonconsensual bridenapping in Kazakhstan seems similar to that in Krygyzstan: she’s picked up and taken to the groom’s home, where his family and female relatives are all around, trying to put a head scarf on her head.

The summary of the Frontline episode doesn’t really emphasize the head scarf. Not all married women wore head scarfs, but it could only be worn by a married woman. A woman who was not married was properly a girl, whether she were 26 or 62. Female virginity before marriage is very important to many in the area where I lived. To wear one of these head scarfs means that one is no longer a virgin. This is important: it’s checked. If the sheets do not pass inspection on the first morning after marriage, it’s grounds for the in-laws to throw the new bride out of their house. It doesn’t always happen, but it’s not unheard of. For $100, though, one can go to the city for the type of operation that will fix perceptions, if one has that sort of money.

If a woman refuses enough times---if her family finds her and puts up a fuss---if she’s just so stubborn that the groom and his family agree with her that the marriage won’t work---then she may be allowed to leave. Her reputation, though, is probably not intact. Finding a later marriage becomes more difficult.

There’s something else at stake here: social security. One of the women in Frontline is lucky, at the age of 25, to be bridenapped, because she’s virtually an old maid. A pensioner in Kazakhstan doesn’t have much. Children---male children---are social security because the oldest son and his family live with his parents and support them in their old age. An unmarried woman, or a couple without a son, do not receive this unless a family decides that practicalities should trump tradition (my parents were pitied for having three daughters).

There’s another custom, too, that acts as extra insurance. Sometimes, the grandparents take their son’s first-born child (boy or girl), and raise the baby as their own child. The child may be told of this from an early age, as my friend Yasameen’s host brother was. Others, like my Kazakh language teacher, grow up in the same extended household where their birth parents reside, told that their birth parents are their older brother and sister, and never learning the truth of their genealogy until the age 17 or so. This, when my Kazakh teacher first told us about it in response to Yasameen’s questions about her host brother, really shocked us: the mother is not allowed to acknowledge her own child if the parents-in-laws do not want her to. This wasn’t a topic that was spoken much about, and following oral descriptions of Kazakh family trees is tricky (one word serves for older brother, and uncle, and also as an honorific for a male that has somewhat taken that relationship to a family. It makes feeling adopted feel easy, but it makes parsing out American-style blood ties quite tricky).

People need security. Before people began expecting it from the government and their jobs, the family was the traditional means. Bridenapping is illegal in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, but the governments haven’t been actively enforcing the law. Nor have the government and jobs, especially with the fall of the USSR, been providing sufficient security.

- - - - - - - - -

[1] This study also quotes another study saying that 80% of the marriages in a particular rural region of southern Kazakhstan were by bridenapping. All I can say is that neither I nor any of my friends in the south ever got the impression it was that high. Werner’s actual paper, cited by the above study, is not available for free online to non-academics. Cynthia Werner (1997) "Marriage, Markets and Merchants: Changes in Wedding Feasts and Household Consumption Patterns in Rural Kazakhstan." Culture and Agriculture, Nos. 1/2. pp. 6-13.

[2] Nathan comments on his own blog that:

I met a Kazakh girl who had been kidnapped twice and raped once. Her father refused to let her marry either time and ended up moving out of Karakalpakstan to get away from the practice. Sadly, he ended up arranging a marriage for her when she started getting too close to “too old for marriage” age. Because of her past, she ended up with a less than desirable husband.

I knew a few people who had friends in Karakalpakstan who used the practice to their advantage–forcing their parents to acquiesce to a marriage they might not otherwise allow.

[3] Radio Free Europe reports that bridenapping in the Russian republic of Mordovia is common among the Tartar villagers of Belozerye. There are three differences between this report and what I heard of bridenapping. First, “ local media are openly linking bride-napping with the villagers' alleged Muslim religious extremist views.” In Kazakhstan, bridenapping was something Kazakhs did---in the tones of the Kazakhs with whom I spoke, it was something the other Kazakhs, the bad Kazakhs, did, not the ones with whom I was friends, but the ones of whom I should be wary. Religion wasn’t mentioned. Second, it’s said that stealing the young girls in Mordovia is a form of bribery, done not to avoid the wedding costs but to get money from the girls’ families. In Kazakhstan, much of the economic cost of a wedding rested on the groom’s family, because they were getting the benefit of the bride’s future work and help. Third and most troubling, the report from Mordovia implies that the girls were both stolen and raped.

[4] Registan is a wonderful source of news about all things Central Asia. I hope you’re using it to keep up with events in Uzbekistan (you are paying attention, of course, aren’t you?).

I'm not sure I have overmuch to say about John and Karen Hess's Taste of America, published in 1972. It is, as the cover proudly notes, a merciless attack on America's cooking at that time. And much of it is right, even if the authors are bizarrely obsessed with discrediting baking powder (they never quite explain what is wrong with quick breads so long as you realize they aren't actual breads), and even more obsessed with insulting James Beard and Julia Child. As they say in one of their 13 separate attacks on the former,

"How shall we tell our fellow Americans that our palates have been ravaged, that our food is awful, and that our most respected authorities on cookery are poseurs?" (1).

But the book does do me a great service. Almost a year ago, the inimitable Belle and I had the mildest of fallings out over food. After reading my macaroni and cheese recipe, she noted

"What's all this just melting the cheese in the half-and-half short-cuttery I see? Where is the white sauce?"

And so today, I'm able to call forth the Hess's on my behalf. Here's what they have to say:

"It is sad to report that Mrs. Randolph likely gave many Americans their first macaroni and cheese recipe. She directs that the macaroni be boiled in milk and water until 'quite tender' (God help us), then drained, put in layers with cheese and butter, and baked in a 'quick oven' for twenty to thirty minutes . . . As long as it involved only good cheese and butter, it wasn't too bad, but in the latter half of the nineteenth century it began turning up in its present hybrid form - overcooked factory macaroni, floury white sauce, and process cheese. The cheese has no more taste than the macaroni, and if it did, the library paste would blanket it".

Harumph.

Self-centered book addict that I am, I cannot resist Angus's call to answer some questions:

1. Total number of books I've owned: Hmm. At the end of my third year of college I owned probably about 500 books, and acquired another 100 or so in the next year. I probably owned about that many over again in the earlier phases of life. So a thousandish?

2. Last book I bought: The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, by Umberto Eco. However, I have been distracted by a couple of law review articles (Ellickson on street people; Goldsmith and Sykes on the internet and the dormant commerce clause) so I have not finished it. My ever-moody reading habits reign again.

3. Last book I read: The Constitution and Criminal Procedure: First Principles.

4. Five books that mean a lot to me: Hmm...

Vladimir Nabokov's Ada and Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing are out in front by a mile. I still carry both of them with me on almost every trip, and flip back and forth through the life, love, agony of Van Veen whenever I am lost or sad. ("It did not matter, it did not matter! Destroy and forget!")

David Friedman's Law's Order also makes the list, because it was basically the start of my addiction to acquiring books. I got in a knock-down drag-out fight about the philosophical coherence of libertarianism with a smooth-talking socialist during my first month of college, and was so shaken by losing the argument (by being demolished in the argument) that I stumbled into the Seminary Coop in search of solace, and came out with a love of Law & Economics.

For my other two books I'll pick my volume of the Complete works of e.e. cummings that I commandeered from my parents and Pablo Neruda's Captain's Verses. Although there are better poems not contained in either book (e.g. Elizabeth Bishop's One Art; Eliot's Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock) I have plenty of history, romantic and otherwise, bound up in each book, although not to blogged here and now.

5. Tag five people and have them do this on their blog. I disapprove of passing memes along to other people directly. [UPDATE: Yes, as a reader points out, I have recently done exactly that-- but I disapproved of it then and so will now start standing on the principle I was too lazy to defend then.]

Marty Lederman, whose speculation on the authorship of Raich I linked to earlier has now come up with a more plausible hypothesis, that Souter had a majority but lost it, and that Rehnquist will write Raich. For those who, like me, do not want to see the court retreat from the Lopez/Morrison line (such as it is) this is one of the better results that could be hoped for, I think, since a Rehnquist opinion upholding the CSA is unlikely to do much damage to the previous precedents.