One of the blog entries of independent journalist Michael Yon describes an informal interview of a young Kurdish woman soon after the overthrow of Saddam. Yon

One of the blog entries of independent journalist Michael Yon describes an informal interview of a young Kurdish woman soon after the overthrow of Saddam. Yon said that the Kurds had no material resources, but a can-do attitude. He described the young woman as extremely self-confident. Asked about her plans for the future, she said she wanted to emigrate to France, hang out with the cool people there for a while, then move to San Francisco. (France and SF are respectively the number one and two tourist destinations, BTW.) So, by "the spiritual center of the world," what the Indians in the article might have meant is that SF is the best place they know of for a person to live. And I do not scoff at that notion.