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Robert Klitgaard on culture, education, and More Like Us
I have often thought of Robert Klitgaard's book Tropical Gangsters when living in or reporting on countries where structural corruption seems like an unavoidable and unchangeable condition of life. The book is a darkly comic, Evelyn-Waugh-as-economic-advisor account of Klitgaard's experience on World Bank project in Equitorial Guinea, often described as "the worst country in the world." I was living in Japan at the time, which was still on the way up, but also traveling in countries like the Philippines and Indonesia -- whose contrast with Japan raised obvious questions about the relative roles of policy, and of culture, in national improvement or deterioriation.
One result of this on my end was an article about the Philippines called "A Damaged Culture,"
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The cost of "security" (Cory Lidle connection)
The post-9/11 "security" restrictions in airspace around Washington have always been pointless. Now they may actually have killed people -- or helped to, and the ones who perished were not terrorists.
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The independent-minded Gregg Easterbrook
Gregg Easterbrook -- of the Washington Monthly, the New Republic, the Atlantic, Brookings, ESPN, and probably half a dozen places I am forgetting -- is a long-time friend of mine. He is also is about the most independent-minded, sometimes contrary, person to come out of the Washington Monthly culture, which is saying something. A three-book series over the last decade -- A Moment on the Earth, Beside Still Waters, and The Progress Paradox -- took on liberal conventional wisdom about the environment, spirituality, and the nature of economic life in a brave (and overall convincing) way.
Consistent with his nature, Gregg has neve been shy about saying, in public, when he disagrees with his friends. Indeed much of the item linked here (from his wonderful TMQ feature, which of course is mainly about football) consists of disagreeing with me, about my preceding book. But the item also had the following to say about my current book, which -- knowing that praise from Gregg is far from automatic -- i gratefully reprint:
His brilliant new book "Blind into Baghdad" is the most important thing anyone has written about the Iraq War. Read it.
Interview with Sir Richard Dearlove at Aspen
Sir Richard Dearlove was the former head of British secret intelligence, and a central figure in the famed "Downing Street Memorandum," reporting eons before Bob Woodward that the intelligence had been "fixed" for the plan to invade Iraq. Here is a .WMV file of my interview with him and Shashi Tharoor at Aspen. It is notable especially for his argument about why the U.S. was destroying itself by cutting legal and ethical corners in the Global War on Terror -- as described at the time here.
Interview with Bill Clinton at Aspen
This was at the "Aspen Ideas Festival," co-sponsored by the Atlantic, in July. Hour-long video, availabile in MP3 here and in a variety of other formats here (at bottom of page). It was the interview I described on the Atlantic's Aspen blog.
Interview with Michael Dell at Google Zeitgeist
Dell has released a video of the interview I conducted with its founder and CEO at Google's recent Zeitgeist conference, here.
My main personal impressions of him: mensch-like, good sense of humor, and although he traveled with what appear to be bodyguards, much less air of a big shot than a lot of other big shots.
How Gary Cooper can save us (from Mayor Daley, among others)
Here are the four ways we'll know that Americans are regaining their sanity about "Homeland Security"
1) When some politician has the guts to stop using the hideous term Homeland Security, or "Homeland" itself.
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Good item in Slate on Cory Lidle, with one crucial error
Slate's "hot documents" feature has an informative item about the sad Cory Lidle crash. (Disclosure: "hot documents" was created, and most of the time is written, by my close friend Tim Noah, although not this item.) Unfortunately the item has one innocent but major error of logic, or of understanding how airplanes work.
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The Cory Lidle crash: one fact, two explanations
The one significant fact to emerge about the Cory Lidle crash is that the other person killed was aboard the airplane with Lidle (rather than in the apartment building or on the ground), and was indeed an experienced flight instructor, or CFI. As mentioned yesterday, the whole effort to understand what went wrong goes in different directions, depending on whether Lidle, a newly minted pilot, was known to have had help in the cockpit. For one thing, the presence of a CFI makes the weather that day seem a less significant factor.
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The Cory Lidle crash in New York City (updated)
For the second time in a month, I have woken up (in China) to news of a fatal crash of exactly the kind of airplane that I used to own and fly. The plane was the Cirrus SR-20; the previous crash, which killed two prominent and respected Italian businessmen-designers, took place in bad weather over the Rockies; and this latest one, which of course killed Cory Lidle of the Yankees (and many other teams -- I saw him pitch for the A's in Oakland), took place on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
Such events are terrible and heartbreaking, and the people left behind never get over them. (My mother's father died in a car crash when she was three years old. The remaining 73 years of her life were full and happy and wondrous, but I believe there was never a day in which she did not think about the effects of that accident.) Anyone's first reaction has to be sympathy for all involved.
The second reaction is to wonder what it all means. Some things are obvious about airplane crashes from the start. Some seem obvious, and then change. Others never become clear. Here is what seems knowable, and not, about this crash at the moment -- with updates as known-facts change.
1) Cory Lidle was a brand new pilot.
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Blue Angels over San Francisco
San Francisco isn't always sunny and isn't often warm. But it was both on Saturday afternoon, for the airshow portion of "Fleet Week." There is something dapper and 1940s-ish about the groups of sailors patrolling the streets in, yes, their Navy blues and white sailor hats. There is something I can only think of as pre-2001ish about the general public enjoyment of the air show -- and I mean that in a good way.
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What you buy in America if you're going back to China
1) Shoes. (Made in China. Can't find them there.)
2) "Wicking" shirts for running and working out. (Ditto.)
3) Dental floss. (No big evidence of its use there.)
4) Books in English. (Easy to find in Japan; harder in China.)
What you would like to be able to take back:
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In praise of West Coast Live
Three weeks of a dead computer, and those same weeks of nonstop book tour and related chores, can keep a man off the internet.
A note for further consideration: this morning in the San Francisco, as the very last stop in the United States before returning to Shanghai, I had the joy of appearing on Sedge Thomson's West Coast Live.
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Audio of book talk, World Affairs Council of Northern California
San Francisco, October 5, 2006; audio here.
