James Fallows

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January 2007 Archives

January 30, 2007

Sympathy for, yes, Microsoft

As indicated earlier, I have not had a completely blissful experience trying out the pre-release versions of Windows Vista and Office2007. But I completely believe what I wrote a few months ago in the Atlantic: these are both very good products and well worth buying.

Office's improvements are immediately visible in a snazzy, elegant, fit-and-finish way. The most important changes in Vista are largely invisible internal improvements, although it also has a gee-whiz factor in its "Aero" graphics presentation system, which is notably more attractive than any previous Microsoft standard. This new feature of Vista requires (as the new Office does not) more raw horsepower than most computers bought before 2006 are likely to have, which is one of several reasons why it makes sense to buy Vista pre-installed on your next computer but not to upgrade the one you already have.

So I respect and appreciate what Microsoft has achieved -- and empathize with them after reading in today's English-language (and state-controlled) Shanghai Daily that, on the very day the software first goes on sale worldwide: "As always, Microsoft will have to battle piracy, as Vista knockoffs are already being sold on the street for 10 yuan." Ten yuan, or kuai, is about $1.30.

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January 28, 2007

How the Aussie Open will make me into a better person

As noted earlier, the just-concluded Australian Open tennis championship was the first sports event I've seen live on TV in more than six months. My enforced weaning-away from those previous idle hours moaning about the Redskins or wondering about split-times at the Tour de France is no doubt virtuous and self-improving and so on.

But here is what I learned from the one truly startling participant at the Aussie Open: not the elegant Federer nor the gutsy Serena Williams but the computerized instant-replay system for disputed line calls. For anyone who has played tennis in the past or plans to play it again, the results of this system are worth serious, life-changing contemplation.

Here is the three-part logic:

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January 25, 2007

Full State of the Union "deconstruction" now posted...

... on the Atlantic's site, here. A less artful looking, but perhaps easier to read, version begins immediately below.

Here are the big points about this speech, then some line by line comments.

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January 24, 2007

And by the way, if anyone is watching Jim Webb...

I am biased, but I thought this was the most formidable response to the President's speech the Democrats could possibly have offered. The controlled ferocity of the last two minutes of that talk, which covered what is often called "up and down" loyalty -- the loyalty and respect troops owe their commanders, but the competence and judgment their commanders owe them -- had the good-for-TV quality of being hard to turn away from, and the unfakeable sense of coming directly from Webb's mind and heart. More on this speech, too, tomorrow. (And, yes, it ended "God Bless America.")

State of the Union Address 2007: instant analysis

As over the last few years, line-by-line speechwriter style analysis available on the Atlantic's web site tomorrow morning, U.S. time. Main point right now:

This was two different speeches, perhaps three. The first speech, on domestic policy, was list-like, uninspired, and uninspiring -- apparently even to the President himself, who trudged through it as if seeing the text for the first time. The second speech, about terrorism, Iraq, and foreign policy, reawakened Bush's own interest and advanced his case about as well as a speech at this point could.

The third speech, the brief, closing "Lenny Skutnik" portion, was the best part of the speech and the most skillful execution of this ritual that has been seen in years.

And, oh, yes, the President couldn't help himself. His text took the bold step of not ending with "God Bless America." But this apparently was so startling that President Bush had to say, "God bless....." to know that he was done.

January 21, 2007

How China is making me into a better person (sort of)

The Australian Open is underway right now; on TV I just watched Andy Roddick beat Mario Ancic in a dramatic five-set match.

In my US-based phases of life, my view on the Aussie Open was: who cares? I love tennis, but the matches happened while I was sleeping, and I can't see the point of watching even the greatest match on TV if I already know how it turned out. (Seeing top-tier tennis players perform in person is completely different. There's still the element of suspense, but that's a detail. Even watching Andre Agassi or Pete Sampras warm up, as I've done from the side of practice courts, is utterly riveting, as you see how their reflexes, power, speed, and concentration differ from those of normal human beings. As a teenager I sat a few yards away from Arthur Ashe as he played an exhibition match on my high school courts. I don't think I took my eyes off him.)

The newly-fascinating Australian Open made me realize: most of the reason to see anything on TV, at least for me, is the real-time uncertainty about what will happen next.

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January 20, 2007

A four-minute rebuttal to the "surge" plan

This link comes courtesy of my friend Richard Samuels, an expert in all things Japanese at MIT. If it is already widely known, sorry; it was news to me.

It is a "debate" on Al Jazeera between a prominent Sunni and a prominent Shiite Iraqi over the execution of Saddam Hussein.

Watch this to the end -- just over four minutes, but well spent -- and think again of the benchmarks President Bush has set for America's continued commitment to Iraq. A crackdown on sectarian militias, a fair sharing of oil revenues, a general sense of national concord.

Watch, and wonder. The link is here.

January 18, 2007

A new record for stupidity in the "Global War on Terror"

All right, I am biased. The most egregious empty-symbolism measures to "protect" Americans often involve aviation -- because airplanes attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, because airplanes scare many people, and because the inconvenienced community of aviation enthusiasts is so small. Because tens of millions of people take commercial airline flights, some sanity eventually returns to TSA airline-screening rules. For example: allowing tiny tubes of toothpaste or hand cream back onto flights. The measures that affect small-plane travel tend to get stuck at their lunatic extreme, since so few people are exposed to them and see how nutty they actually are. When I was flying in the United States, I was one of that small number; that's why I'm biased.

I had thought that the rules for "defense" of Washington DC airspace against small planes set the standard in foolishness. But we have a new winner.

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Shanghai as hub of the universe

Today, a Thursday, my wife and I had lunch with some good friends from Boston, passing through Shanghai after a few days in Beijing. Another set of American friends this coming Saturday, and different ones on Sunday. A friend from Europe passing through next Monday night.

Five times in six days is unusual:

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January 15, 2007

The painfully obvious problem at the core of the "surge" strategy

I don't know why the Democrats have not made the following a central part of their criticism of the "New Way Forward" in Iraq:

On the one hand, President Bush says that the stakes are too high even to consider the possibility of "failure" in Iraq. From his speech last week:

Failure in Iraq would be a disaster for the United States.

The consequences of failure are clear: Radical Islamic extremists would grow in strength and gain new recruits. They would be in a better position to topple moderate governments, create chaos in the region, and use oil revenues to fund their ambitions. Iran would be emboldened in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Our enemies would have a safe haven from which to plan and launch attacks on the American people. On September the 11th, 2001, we saw what a refuge for extremists on the other side of the world could bring to the streets of our own cities. For the safety of our people, America must succeed in Iraq.

But on the other hand, it turns there are, in fact, circumstances in which the United States can accept the failure of this effort.

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January 11, 2007

On the content of the "surge" speech

This was an intelligent speech, carefully written and delivered with appropriate gravitas. In striking contrast to the President's rhetoric of a year or two ago, it addressed some actual objections to the Administration's policy. Most of the time, it avoided overblown claims. Etc.

But I will bet anyone any amount of money that three or four months from now, we will look back on this as yet another "false dawn" announcement -- like the hugely publicized National Strategy for Victory in Iraq of November, 2005. At the time, this strategy was going to correct all previous errors; now, it's a previous error itself.

Here's one passage from tonight's speech that illustrates why.

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A trivial-seeming but important detail in the "surge" speech

These were the last words of President Bush's speech just now defending the commitment of more troops to Iraq:

We go forward with trust that the Author of Liberty will guide us through these trying hours. Thank you and good night.

A spiritual allusion? Sure. One of the skillful and continuing traits of George W. Bush's rhetoric has been the deft use of religious references that will be noticed by the part of the audience most likely to welcome them and that will skid right past the parts of the audience they might annoy. In many of his early speeches, written on the Michael Gerson watch, the President used "Providence" to similar effect. Like Author of Liberty in this speech, Providence was capitalized in the released versions of the speeches, to make the spiritual resonance clear.

But the most startling aspect of the conclusion was the phrase it did not include.

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January 7, 2007

Why the surge is a bad idea

Here is the clearer summary of the preceding post: Like many reporters, I admire David Petraeus and respect him for taking this new job in Iraq.

But the very probability of failure that makes it mensch-like for Petraeus to be in this job makes it insane for the nation to double-down its bets in Iraq with a "surge." Democrats should refuse even to use that term, and instead call it what it is: "escalation." And they should not let it occur.

You can say this for David Petraeus... (with big-time update)

... who will soon take over military command in Iraq:

Those who like or admire him, among them many members of the press (including me), think he is smart, imaginative, adaptable. Those who resent him, among them many of his officer-corps contemporaries, think he is too flashy, ostentatiously intellectual, publicity-minded, and above all ambitious, and that he would do anything for promotion and the next star.

But he has now agreed to accept a job in which he is very, very likely to fail -- or to be seen as failing, two or three years from now.

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January 2, 2007

The power of pop culture (Charlie Brown Christmas edition)

Just before New Year's Day it was back "home" to Shanghai, which was still in the sway of Asia's enthusiastic if wholly nonreligious Christmas mood and celebration. Through a fancy indoor gym in "Tomorrow Square," while I am using the spiffy ergometers and weight machines beneath holiday wreaths, waft the pop culture favorites of the season: Bing Crosby's White Christmas, Jose Feliciano's Feliz Navidad, Sleigh Ride Together by Leroy Anderson, and for an extra touch of campy surrealism, Eartha Kitt's Santa Baby.

Then the one that makes me simply stop what I am doing and listen: Christmas Time is Here, from Vince Guaraldi's famous soundtrack -- I want to say, "score" -- for A Charlie Brown Christmas.

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January 1, 2007

Vietnam as resort

Domestic travel within Vietnam is hard, slow, inconvenient, and, well, hard. It is not as difficult as it was twenty years ago (to say nothing of eras before that), but it still is a chore. Yesterday's edition of the Viet Nam News contained the mournful disclosure that international visits to the country had risen only 3 per cent during 2006, even though this was the country's National Year of Tourism.

But simply as landscape much of the country is beautiful. Completely apart from its historic, political, and now economic interest, sooner or later it will be a sought-after resort site. During the 1980s, the tourists we saw at the beaches were Bulgarians, Russians, and East Germans. Now they're mainly Europeans -- and here are two places they, and we, found worth the effort to reach:

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Dog: the other white meat

No kidding: click on the link below only if you would like to see pictures of the Hanoi central market on Christmas day, with fresh dog meat arrayed for holiday eating.

Not a joke.

Here is the link.

In any case, Happy New Year!

Copyright © 2007 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.