CAIRO — Egypt's most powerful and proscribed opposition movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, has decided that it will not participate in an antigovernment demonstration this week for a curious reason: The protest conflicts with a national holiday honoring the police.
"What specifically are you protesting?" I was curious.
As the unrest has intensified, Brazilian readers of The New York Times have attempted to explain the protests to a curious audience in comments posted on this site in English and Portuguese.
The protests mark a curious moment, one that is as much about culture as it is about politics.
Another Columbia student in the audience, who did not wish to be identified by name, told me he decided to see Murray speak after learning about the protests; he was curious to see what the fuss was all about.
That it was not says a lot about Japan's curious attitude towards nuclear power and towards protest.
What the article calls a "curious paradox" -- that Chiquita is protesting Europe's policy even though it sells more bananas there than any other company -- is no paradox at all.
It also drains quickly, which makes officials' complaints that the protests lack rain dates seem curious.
Visit any branch of Topshop this weekend and you'll see a curious thing: T-shirts seeming to mock this winter's student protests – the very student protests of which Topshop was a principal target.
She was curious to know how I could comment on the protests without actually witnessing them in person.
The second lost battle is more curious: it is La Manif' Pour Tous, the conservative-minded protest which rallied people opposed to same-sex marriage.
