It's perhaps hard to remember the hope we felt during the first flushes of the Arab Spring, when I, for one, was glued to the news websites, reading their live streams and dreaming of real change.  Despite the good news coming out of Egypt at first, it seems like the army have been playing for time, hoping that the people would grow tired of revolution and settle for something that doesn't really shift the status quo.  It can feel odd cheering on the Muslim Brotherhood, but despite what a raft of internet warriors would have you believe, there are many shades of Islamism, and the Freedom and Justice Party so far have proven closer to the Turkish sort than the Iranian.

So, how to keep the army busy and out of politics?  With nearly half a million active soldiers (the 10th largest army in the world, who knew?) they certainly have plenty of personnel.  Perhaps if the UN were serious about securing peace in Syria some of these guys could be sent over there, rather than the paltry 300 observers on the last mission.  I can't say it's a flawless plan - the Alawites in Syria might be a little worried about letting a largely Sunni force in, for a start.  Then again, Syria and Egypt were the same country in the lifetimes of most officers, if not of the grunts.  And generals with some proper action on their hands might be less inclined to spend all their time defending their personal fiefdoms.

A pipe dream at best, but given that its clear which side Saudi Arabia is on, it's a more practical solution than asking them to step in and keep the peace.

The first thing that struck me when I arrived in Egypt proper (as opposed to the Sinai), was just how lush and verdant it was.  Throughout history Egypt has been the breadbasket of empires, and driving through the fertile delta region where blocks of flats squeeze together to leave as much field space as possible it's easy to believe.  With this and the entire Nile Valley under cultivation since the Aswan Dam came into being, the contrast with much of the rest of the Middle East & North Africa couldn't be more marked.

Perhaps that's why there's been such interest in a couple of sentences thrown into a report on malnutrition by The Economist:

Egypt’s agricultural value-added per person rose more than 20% in 1990-2007. Yet both malnutrition and obesity rose—an extremely unusual combination.

Some bloggers have been swift to see the not quite so invisible hand of capitalism slapping away.  Certainly meat has been in increasing demand from the new Egyptian middle classes, with all the inefficiency of food use that implies.  Egypt has also been switching increasingly from growing wheat to growing cash crops, and the traditional fellah tending his little patch of land has been displaced by increasing levels of agribusiness.