You know. (Slurps)

Many people told me a big part of the noodle eating experience is the slurping noise.

Tom was sobbing.

He sipped the hot coffee slowly.

The girl was sobbing in the corner of the schoolroom.

I heard Tom sobbing.

I spent a lot of time in those early years weeping silently in dressing rooms.

I hope you'll drink, tweet and plant some seeds to pollinate a friendly garden.

That evening I came back to the market in the dark and I heard uhh, uhh, and sure enough I found a dying orangutan baby on a garbage heap.

This is most true in high tech industries, the sector in which the Middle East lags the most. The author of the Forbes article describes a scene in Ramallah that is indistinguishable from one in Austin or San Francisco, where twentysomething Palestinians sip cocktails, their laptops open, their smartphones on.

There is nothing devastating in this, of course, but Poland s political malaise may one day prove dangerous, and so should be scrutinized in other democracies, old and new. For the problems of anomie, apathy, and political charade are not Polish problems, but maladies that increasingly afflict democracies everywhere, and that urgently call for a restoring of faith in parties and politics.