A party in Princeton

I have a journalist's instinct to prolong conversations, an English retience about asking personal questions and a terrible memory for names: which makes me a dunce at parties. You could put me in a corner with the president of France, I would bore him all evening, and when it was over I would be able to tell you only that I had met somebody who knew a whole lot about French politics.

Yesterday I went to Princeton for the launch of Nina Khrushcheva's much-praised book on Nabokov, and met, by my imperfect reckoning: (i) a man of English descent who was on a high floor of one of the twin towers on 9/11 and survived; (ii) a professor of French descent who negotiated with the Russians in occupied Berlin in 1945; (iii) a woman who has moved to New Jersey from Santa Monica and fallen in here with a monastery of Tibetan Buddhists; and (iv) an architect who lived in Russia as a boy under Nikita Khrushchev, and made his pocket-money hawking cigarettes.

The talk was of American politics, including the view that Paul Krugman has been letting down Princeton badly by turning on Barack Obama.

And of Russian politics. Steve Myers of the New York Times (I know it was him, because we exchange business cards) pointed out that George Bush would have a popularity rating equal to Vladimir Putin's in Russia, if he had Putin's control of the broadcast media—which puts today's Russian election into perspective.

Driving back into Manhattan, just before the Lincoln tunnel, I saw a billlboard advertising a Panasonic laptop computer, with the slogan:

"Legally, we cannot say this is the official laptop of the US Army".

I do believe this is the closest thing to a logical paradox that I have seen in a public place.

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