Today's NYT article on the new president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, describes him as "a whirling dervish of ideas..."

Ah, being a whirling dervish of ideas is different from having my head spin with info from my first week of my new job last week (yes, a regularly paid job finally!). But let's see if I could take the spin to the level of good ideas, or solutions at least.

Where does this phrase "whirling dervishes" come from anyway? I have a vague notion of it as something connected to Middle Eastern mysticism but ignoramus moi was amused to learn that dervishes do whirl! Duh. See some videos of whirling dervishes at whirlingdervishes.org.