Like many other people who pay taxes in the US, I am using some of the waning hours of the year to think what worthwhile causes I should be sure to remember (ie, give money to) during the 2008 Tax Year.
There are more candidates than anyone could cover, but here is a note about one that has been important to my wife and me. Several months ago I wrote an article about the Yellow Sheep River/"West China Story" project, which is designed to help poor rural children in China's arid, remote western regions, especially the girls, earn the money they need to stay in school and have a chance to escape the impoverishment to which they would otherwise be fated. For $130 a year, donors can cover one student's expenses for the year -- and in return the students must write regular accounts of the lives, their families, their studies, and their dreams on web sites their schools create.
My wife and I have met students like those our donations have supported, and everything about the project makes us respectful of what it is trying to do. (The kids below are ethnic Tibetans, at a school in Gansu province.)
I mention this now in part to remind people of one more deserving cause (and of the fact that, even during the hard times now besetting the US and the world, there are people for whom $130 will make a bigger difference than it does to most Americans). But also I wanted to mention one quirk of the online contribution process for this fund.
If you log onto the English language donation site for West China Story, you'll see a notice that contributions from US taxpayers will be tax-deductible only if handled by Give2Asia.org, which in return takes a 9.85% cut. That seemed punitive enough to stop me for a minute, and make me consider just continuing contributions in non-tax-deductible Chinese RMB cash when I'm back in Beijing. But on examination. Give2Asia appears not to be some usurious counterpart to payday check-cashing leeches but instead an operation run by the Asia Foundation to manage contributions to small organizations in Asia. Its existence is one of many illustrations of how complicated it can be to manage efforts, including charitable ones, across national borders.
In the long run, I hope this middleman cut can be avoided. But as 2008 draws to an end, I willingly used the service to support another cohort of students. This cause may not mean as much to your family as it does to mine, but perhaps it will make you think of similar efforts closer to your own heart.
December 30, 2008
Selamat Tahun Baru!
Or Happy New Year, as they put it in the Indonesian language I have been hearing around me for the past week. That week has coincided with enforced separation from the mighty Internet -- not a bad way to spend time with one's family! -- which in turn leaves me behind on various year-end updates still to come.
But I can't let this day pass, nor this moment of online connection, without mentioning that my new book Postcards from Tomorrow Square goes on sale today, with official pub date early next month. Random House's catalog listings here. Random House's e-book format is here, and Amazon's Kindle format is here. A very nice set of quotes, for which I'm grateful, here.
I won't make a habit of book promo, but I include this link to an email Q-and-A that Kate Merkel-Hess, of the influential blog The China Beat, conducted with me about the book and the general process of writing about China. She evoked from me an admission I'd long managed to avoid:
Ahah! You have cruelly revealed the trademarked secret of everything I've ever written for the magazine!
Further details and secrets at the China Beat site. Further promised year-end updates on software, hardware, the press, and China in this space very soon. New Year's greetings for now.
December 23, 2008
Selamat Hari Natal!
Or Merry Christmas, in the Indonesian language I hear around me at the moment.
In two or three days, the much-anticipated Year End Pensee series resumes, with wrap-ups on software, hardware, publishing (including the virtues of the print version of the Atlantic), politics, and a replacement for the hoary boiled frog analogy. Until then, peace on Earth, goodwill to all. Thank you for reading our magazine and its writers -- on line and in print.
December 22, 2008
Year-end pensees #2: security
Despite the best efforts of Jeffrey Goldberg in his Atlantic article last month, despite my varied efforts in articles like this and this and this, despite the books by John Mueller and others, despite the precocious academic papers of Benjamin H. Friedman -- formerly of MIT, now of Cato, not the economist Benjamin Friedman of Harvard -- we end 2008 with the rituals of "security theater" still enshrined in American life.
As Jeff Goldberg is the latest (and most amusing) to demonstrate, security routines like those of the TSA gum up travel and cost countless billions in salary, wasted time, and general hassle (not to mention the thrown-away bottled water and cigarette lighters!) without adding much that would thwart a serious terrorist.
My heart sank when I read recently about a truly idiotic last-minute Bush Administration step to lock in security theater. This is converting the "Air Defense Identification Zone," which had been "temporarily" in effect in the skies of the Mid-Atlantic since soon after 9/11, to a permanent federal regulation. (Splenetic background from me, here and here. News of the conversion to permanent status here.) Sigh. And commercial airports in the U.S. still ring with the ignored-by-all announcements warning that the "threat level" is "elevated."
If you haven't spent much time out of the country recently, it may be hard to convey how fraidy-cat all this ritual makes the US seem. Yes, the 9/11 attacks were a disaster of historic proportions. Yes, some group, somewhere, will probably manage to attack the United States again. But many, many societies around the world face an ongoing risk of attack. Life is dangerous. Over the long run, we judge societies by how they bear up under such threats (and, of course, what they do to contain them.) Compared with the Brits, the Indians, not to mention the Israelis and I bet also the Iraqis, our security theater makes us look like chickens. Reclaiming Gary Cooper, not Chicken Little, as our national icon is part of what I argued here.
But given the way politics works, security theater is a ratchet. If a public figure dares suggest reducing some for-show "protective" measure, then when an attack occurs -- as it will, someday, in a country this large and open -- the politician will be in trouble. So it's easy to add extra "safeguards"; almost impossible to remove them.
Except, perhaps, with the general housecleaning that is possible when Administrations change. Here is one very modest place to start. Please, Gov. Janet Napolitano -- please, please, please, for the love of God -- change the name of the department you have been nominated to head. "Department of Homeland Security" is not a term a real American would use. "Homeland" is something that Germans of the 1930s would say. Or Soviet Russians of the 1950s. Not Yanks. "Domestic Security" is dull but not Orwellian. Try that, or something similar.
For more ideas, I hope that everyone who can possibly be in Washington on Jan 12-13, including Napolitano, will attend this conference, at Cato, about rational and non-hysteric ways to keep America secure. (Extra background here.) A new Administration has a chance for a new start.
Oh, never mind (NYT.com blackout dept)
NYTimes.com is working fine for me once more, and I hear from friends in varied corners of China that it's up and running across the country, after three or four days of (apparent) nationwide blackout. Background here and here, with links to other stories. Who can explain. As I mentioned earlier, it's the miracle and mystery of Christmas.
December 21, 2008
Pensee dept: followup on the "no buffer, no resiliency" economy
Yesterday I mentioned a summary of the latest John Boyd conference, which included the argument that today's lean, hyper-efficient, "just in time" economy was magnifying the effects of today's economic collapse. Problems in one sector instantly become problems in another, since so many businesses were fine-tuned to await the next order, the next payment, the next shipment from someone else.
Via reader Evan Oxhorn, I learn that the novelist David Brin has recently expanded on just this theme. Anyone interested in the first dispatch will find it worth reading Brin's thoughts, here. As a preview:
I refer to a brittle weakness in our economy, courtesy of the same
smartaleck caste of MBAs who brought us derivatives and hyper-leveraged
finance. A frailty that could, potentially, turn some short-term
crisis into full-scale disaster -- and all because of a good theory
that's been taken way too far.
For
decades, we've been told -- by the same fellows who brought us
"efficient finance" -- that manufacturing and commerce should be
fine-tuned to squeeze every penny of profit, by trimming away all
"fat." ... Under this
principle, any reserves that are kept on-premises will only encourage
sloppy management and incur unnecessary storage costs -- a calculation
that has long been exacerbated by shortsighted tax policies that punish
warehousing and inventory-keeping.
This approach, called "Just-In-Time,"
is based upon ... a wholly unjustified wager
that the economy and its supporting systems will always remain stable
and never experience disruption.
The whole question of what today's economic seize-up does to comfortable, accepted economic creeds -- from management theory, as above; to the pluses and minuses of full globalization; to the role of regulators; to theories of trade -- will be with us for many years. I do not remember a time when so many ideas seemed to be pressed so hard by fast-breaking events. Probably the last time it happened quite this way was in the 1930s.
I am enough of an optimist to think that the process of working out new ideas won't be as protracted as that last time, and that it need not end in world war. My cheering thought for the day.
Atlantic readers: once again ahead of the news!
Thomas Friedman tells us in his column today about the art village of Dafen, and how it has been affected by the housing collapse in the US:
I had no idea that many of those oil paintings
that hang in hotel rooms and starter homes across America are actually produced
by just one Chinese village, Dafen, north of Hong Kong. And I had no idea that
Dafen's artist colony -- the world's leading center for mass-produced artwork
and knockoffs of masterpieces -- had been devastated by the bursting of the U.S.
housing bubble. I should have, though.
True to the Atlantic's motto -- "this year's news, last year!" -- our own readers knew all about Dafen exactly 12 months ago, for example here, here, and here, plus a very good Feb, 2007 Chicago Tribune story by Evan Osnos here. The "village," by the way, would be considered a real city any place but China. Here is one of my favorite artists there, responsible for much of the varied work around him (many more pics at the links above):
No larger point here, just glad to see Dafen make the big time. It's also an interesting counterpoint to Adam Minter's recent observations about the changing ecology of the news.
Last words on NYT.com block in China
With apologies in advance for the self-referential quality* of what I'm about to say, I recommend this recent entry by fellow Atlantic Monthly contributor Adam Minter on his ShanghaiScrap blog. He makes a point that is obvious once you think about it, but which I hadn't seen laid out quite this clearly anywhere else:
The point is that a nationwide firewall-block on the NYTimes.com site, if that is indeed what's happening, is not simply questionable as a PR strategy for the Chinese government. It also emphasizes how much the information ecology has changed.
The NYT is, in my view, indispensable as a source of reported news around the world. One of the big and really alarming trends of 2008 is the hugely-accelerating economic pressure on organizations like the NYT that support reporting rather than pure opinionizing. But as Minter details, blocking this flagship site means a lot less than it used to -- and a lot less than the censoring authorities may assume -- no matter how good a job the NYT's team is doing, because of the rise of reported blogs:
What's curious to me - in fact, what's astounding to me - is that the
Chinese authorities either haven't picked up on this phenomenon, or
they don't care. Instead, they are doing what Chinese officials always
do: focusing their attention on the entity with the most prestige.
Quite honestly, I think most Chinese officials would have a hard time
believing that the rather rag-tag unwashed mass of (for the most part)
young, male, poorly compensated bloggers could actually drive news
coverage.
* The self-referential part is that Adam Minter originally sent this as an email to me, which I encouraged him to spread more generally. I hope you agree that it's worth reading.
December 20, 2008
NYTimes.com in China: Sunday morning update
1) For me, back in Beijing, the main NYT site is fully blocked, if I'm using the plain Chinese internet without a VPN or other burnishment.
2) Anyone who really wants to can find what's on that site -- with a VPN, by going through the International Herald Tribune site, by trying mobile.nytimes.com from a hand-held device, or with one of the tech workarounds mentioned here yesterday.
3) Without the relatively fast, informal-but-informative polling made possible by the internet, it would have been harder to establish that this was happening all over the vast country all at once. So thanks for writing in.
INTELLECTUAL RIGOR BONUS POINT 3A) As a matter of logic, one cannot be absolutely certain that this is a purposeful, country-wide blackout. Conceivably there is some other technological or accidental explanation. I consider this extremely unlikely, given: that the same computer that won't load the pages while using a normal connection loads them instantly when a VPN is turned on; that the pattern is reported in every corner of the country, from Urumqi to Dalian to Zhuhai and points in between; and that it involves a site about which the government has complained before and that has recently carried some sensitive items. But logically, we cannot exclude the possibility that it's all an accident.
4) While the porous nature of the current NYT block is consistent with past Great Firewall practice, the motivation for this episode remains unclear at the tactical level and puzzling at the strategic. I won't review the tactical possibilities, some of which were mentioned earlier. The real question concerns the strategy.
As i argued last month in the Atlantic, China's official PR machinery often succeeds mainly in making the country seem far more closed-off, impenetrable, defensive, and difficult to deal with than it actually is most places most of the time. By that logic, what exactly will China gain through this episode? The vast majority of Chinese net users would never look at NYTimes.com anyway -- it's in the wrong language. Those who really want to see what's on there can find a way to do so, despite the block. And how confident, open-minded, rules-abiding, modern and so on will the episode make the Chinese government look in other countries' eyes? Governments everywhere are annoyed by the press, but a mark of being in the big leagues is viewing press criticism as a necessary annoyance. This just is strange.
First in a series of year end pensees: grand strategy
Could end up being a very brief series, but here is one to start:
As my wife and I near our third consecutive Christmas/New Year stretch outside the United States, mainly we feel lucky for all that we've been able to see and do and experience in China and its environs.
But of course there are costs. And while I wouldn't exactly put this at the top of the list of things we regret missing out on (compared, say, with seeing our families and friends etc), I am in fact sorry not to have been around for the last few installments of the John Boyd Conferences, where people interested in Boyd's theories of competition gather to apply them to topics ranging from financial meltdowns to handling Iraq. Much more about Boyd via links you can find here, here (second item), here, here, and here, for starters.
(Left: the classic photo of Boyd in his days as a Korean War fighter pilot.)
So I wasn't at the University of Prince Edward Island early this month for the Boyd 2008 session. But I am struck by this summary of the session from its organizer, Robert Paterson, and how many sobering truths about the years just past and just ahead it presents. Here is one sample from a long list of bullet points:
The search for efficiency and the urge to consume has set us all up
like a row of dominoes - there is no buffer, no resiliency. As one
problem rises it causes another. As one solution is tried it drives
another problem. We all pull back and the consumer economy stalls. The
auto industry and credit firms feeds the media (40% of conventional
advertising). Papers and TV and Radio networks, many subject to LBO's
will have to fail as per the Tribune. Every sector will be laying
people off. Sales of all things fall off a cliff - driving more
business failures and layoffs. Cities and states that depend on sales
tax and property tax and the credit markets can rely on none of these.
So they too will have to lay off millions - thus making all the
problems worse. National governments will be asked to save us all and
of course cannot. As States and Cities get squeezed and cannot borrow,
they will too lay off millions - teachers, firemen police. No one will
be safe.
This is very close to what I was trying to explain three and a half years ago in my "Countdown to a Meltdown" imagined-history article in the Atlantic. The way that everything really is connected -- I recently saw a school in southern China that will be in trouble because its donors are losing money through the Madoff fraud in New York -- and that no one has "any buffer, any resiliency" is something we've known in theory but are only now comprehending in its daily, cascading reality. It's worth looking at the summary for similarly uplifting thoughts.
December 19, 2008
Tech followups on NYTimes.com blockage in China (updated)
On December 19, the NYTimes.com site was apparently blocked all across China. For the sake of completeness, these followups.
1) Could the problem be related to a recent physical break in three of the four main internet cables connecting Asia to North America? (As reported here and elsewhere.) Maybe -- but at face value that wouldn't seem to explain why the NYTimes.com site loads at normal speeds when you're using a VPN but times-out when you try it through the plain, old, Great Firewall-screened Chinese internet. It also wouldn't explain why most other international sites seem to behave normally.
When the main undersea cable off Taiwan was cut in an earthquake nearly two years ago, you knew it immediately. Internet traffic in most parts of Asia was either interrupted altogether or brought to 300-baud dialup modem speeds. But maybe this recent break somehow contributes to the NYT problem?
2) After the jump, tech details on an important point I didn't mention: Consistent with hit-or-miss, far-from-airtight nature of Great Firewall censorship, even when the site www.nytimes.com is blocked, http://nytimes.com is not. Go figure. Also, various mobile web devices seem to be able to reach any site they want.
3) I mentioned yesterday that exactly one person, from Guangdong province, had written to say that he could reach the NYT site with no problem. I heard from him again just now. Today his connection is blocked. The change in my situation is the reverse. I started having NYT problems last night -- but at the moment, it's working fine, even with the VPN turned off. It's the mystery and miracle of Christmas. Tech details below.
UPDATE: From a friend who knows the nuances of high-level Communist Party maneuvering far better than I do, this hypothesis about what's going on:
I suspect that while the reason behind this blocking is not yet clear, the process--and thereby the motivation--might be a bit less obscure. That is, given that consensus drives policy decisions here, it is very likely that different parts of the bureaucracy weighed in and officials each had a gripe with the NYT coverage of some or another issue. Collectively, they were able to push through a directive to block it.
The people here overseeing foreign journalists also know that there will soon be a new contingent manning the desks of the NYT bureau here. Those officials want to send a clear signal that they expect more positive ("objective") coverage of China.
I suppose all will be revealed in due time. Or maybe never. _______
Poll results are: NYTimes.com is being blocked throughout China (updated)
There seems to be no question: the New York Times web site is being firewalled right now all across China.
Exactly one person wrote me, from Shunde in Guangdong province, to say that he had no problem getting to www.nytimes.com and following links from the main page.
A second person wrote, from Beijing, to say that his connection was also working - and then wrote back a few minutes later to say, sorry, he forget he had the VPN turned on. Without the VPN, the site was blocked.
All the other replies (of slightly over 100) reported either that the home page wouldn't load at all, or that it loaded but that all of the links were blocked. As explained earlier, both of these are typical of the way the Great Firewall operates.
I got "blocked-connection" reports from people in the far west, in Urumqi; in the south, from Zhuhai and Shenzhen and Dongguan and Guangzhou; from the north and northeast, in Shenyang and Dalian and Changchun; and from all the other big cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Wuhan, Chengdu, Xian, Qingdao, Nanjing, Changsha, Hangzhou, Suzhou) and a bunch of smaller ones like Baoding and Ya'an.
Hypotheses:
Is the site blocked because of this big story today by Jim Yardley, about the economic perils China faces after 30 years of growth? Maybe .... but I have heard far worse prospects routinely discussed here at conferences, on Chinese TV shows, and by Chinese government officials in recent weeks. So that doesn't seem to make sense.
Is it blocked because of this story, by Edward Wong, reporting on the death sentences issued for two Uighurs convicted of killing 17 people in an attack on a police/military station in the far nothwestern town of Kashgar just before the Olympics? This could well be the problem. The threat of separatism in the mainly-Muslim northwestern Xinjiang region is an extremely sensitive topic in China. As Wong points out, his story carries several details of the action that differ from official Chinese government accounts.
Or is it blocked because of this unbelievably fatuous passage in yesterday's column by David Brooks: "Chinese people work hard because they grew up in a culture built around
rice farming. Tending a rice paddy required working up to 3,000 hours a
year, and it left a cultural legacy that prizes industriousness." Yes, culture matters; and yes, the structure of Chinese education, family patterns, and still-dominant agricultural life makes a difference in how people behave (not to mention the legacy of the Cultural Revolution, the years under Mao, the one-child policy, and so on). But to write something like that with a straight face suggests that one has never seen actual Chinese people at work (or ostentatiously not working) or thought about how many factors account for the wild variations in work ethic, purposefulness, scholastic aptitude, basic honesty, devotion to duty, etc among people who all supposedly share the rice paddy legacy. I would give some credit to the Chinese firewall minders if exasperation with this sort of talk were the reason for the shutdown. In fairness to Brooks, in the column he might have just been paraphrasing an argument by Malcolm Gladwell.
Or is it being blocked for some other reason?
I don't know. But this is a more heavy-handed step than I remember seeing in the past two and a half years.
Anyone who really wants to, can get around this barrier. Via proxy server or VPN; by going to the International Herald Tribune's site, which carries many of the same stories but is not blocked; through other news aggregators; by just waiting for the policy to change. But something is going on. (And, as also explained in the earlier Great Firewall article, the goal of interfering with the internet is not to make the barrier air-tight. It's simply to make finding unauthorized information enough of a nuisance that most Chinese people won't bother.)
I'm left with one other mystery: why my own connection in
Beijing has been working just fine, even when I don't use the VPN. Hmmmm. UPDATE: Mystery solved. As of midnight Friday China time, now I can't reach NYTimes.com without a VPN either. The home page loads but all the links time out. I am one with the masses!
Thanks to all who answered.
Poll will close on NYT.com China survey at 9pm China time
Strong pattern emerging in the reports; will tabulate and announce results shortly after 9pm China time December 19, 8am Eastern Standard Time for the US. Survey instructions here.
Another very impressive Obama pick
No, not Pastor Rick Warren; I'm with the multitude thinking this is one of Obama's rare clumsy steps.
Instead: John Holdren, who according to AAAS's Science Insider site will become the president's main science advisor, as head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Unlike, say, the inspiredchoice of Eric Shinseki to head the Department of Veterans Affairs, there is no fancy multi-level symbolism in the selection of Holdren. His nomination is more comparable to that of Steven Chu at the Department of Energy: he is a figure of unquestioned eminence in his field, with significant experience not just in hard science but also in the application of science to public policy.
And like Chu, much of his recent professional attention has been directed at energy and climate questions. Holdren has also worked extensively on nuclear nonproliferation, and seven years ago won the $250,000 Heinz award largely for that effort. Noting the wide range of disciplines and pursuits that have engaged him (he has also directed Woods Hole Research Center), Holdren said in his Heinz acceptance speech:
One might wonder from the array of interests of mine that have just
been mentioned, whether I simply have a short attention span, but I do
like to think that there is some method in this madness. I think that
many, if not most, of the great problems of the human predicament -
population, resources, environment, prosperity, security - are not
separate problems, but are intimately interconnected. And I believe if
they're not all addressed and solved together, they won't be solved at
all.
After the jump, some quotes from Holdren on energy and climate change from an Atlantic article by Mark Sagoff back in 1997.
Here's the only reason I can think of to worry about this pick: Knowing how bureaucratic politics works, but not myself knowing much about Holdren or Chu personally, I can imagine their shared roles as scientists-in-chief working very well, if they're a natural team, or not so well, if they are in the slightest degree turf-conscious or jealous. We'll see. _______
Poll among readers in China: is NYTimes.com now blocked?
Even without using my VPN, I've had no trouble reaching NYTimes.com or similar Western news sites in recent days from Shenzhen or Beijing. And that's from my same old apartment-house ISP in Beijing that is subject to all the standard Great Firewall strictures. (For chapter and verse on how the Great Firewall works, go here.)
But today I heard from one reader in Chengdu, another in a different part of Beijing, and another in Guangzhou that they were suddenly not able to reach the NYT site. Very few things in China happen in a consistent, everywhere-at-once way. But I am curious about whether something larger is underway.
If you're within Chinese territory could you try NYTimes.com without using a proxy or VPN and see whether you can get through? If you send me a note, via the "email me" feature on this site, and tell me what city you're in and whether you got through, I'll post the accumulated results when there are enough to show some pattern. All I'm looking for is: "Xian, YES" if you CAN get through, or "Shenyang, NO" if you can't. I won't reply to those messages but will tally them up and report later. Thanks!
UPDATE: I have already heard from several people that the main page of the NYT comes up but the links are disabled. (This is consistent with one of the patterns of GFW blocking I mentioned in an article on the topic.) So could you click a link, too, to see if it works? I have gotten a lot more "NO" replies, indicating problems, than YESes so far.
December 18, 2008
Coda (for now) to the Mischke saga
David Brauer, of MinnPost.com, has posted a two-part Q-and-A with Tommy Mischke, the recently-deposed radio humorist-genius of KSTP in St. Paul. (Previously on this subject here, here, and -- eight years ago in an Atlantic article - here.) (Mischke, as "shown" in our magazine story in 2000:)
The really surprising part of the interview is Mischke's description of exactly why he was fired "for cause" and with no warning, severance, benefits, phase-out period, etc. That's in Part 1 of the interview. In Part 2, he talks about the economic future of radio, the choices available to people like him who don't fit the standard AM political-talk mold, and various other challenges that will sound uncomfortably familiar to people in print journalism. Worth reading for culture-of-media purposes even if you've never heard of Mischke and don't care about life in "good old St. Paul, big-time Minneapolis" as Mischke always refers to "The Cities" on his show.
Actually, one other point. I hadn't looked at my article on Mischke for lo these past eight years, but I did so just now. After the jump is one passage that tries to convey the on-air effect. And, for another long interview with Mischke from three years ago, go to the MischkeMadness site here. ________
I am shocked to see a factual error in today's Washington Post!
Though to be fair, it is an error that probably only one person in the entire world is likely to have noticed. (Rather, that person's wife, from the computer in the other room just now.)* It comes in this story about Obama's chief speechwriter Jon Favreau, and it is hidden somewhere in this paragraph:
During the campaign, the buzz-cut 27-year-old at the corner table
helped write and edit some of the most memorable speeches of any recent
presidential candidate. When Obama moves to the White House
next month, Favreau will join his staff as the youngest person ever to
be selected as chief speechwriter. He helps shape almost every word
Obama says, yet the two men have formed a concert so harmonized that
Favreau's own voice disappears.
Easily fixed! If the story were merely tweaked to say "the youngest person ever to be selected as a chief speechwriter for someone renowned for giving great speeches," fact-checkers would be content. Not that I'm counting, but Favreau is roughly two months more grizzled than the person who did that job under Jimmy Carter was at the time. Personally, I think the extra maturity will be a plus. _____ * I was emboldened to post this by an email from someone else who noticed. The message's subject line was, "Have you given up the mantle?" No indeed! Until some 26-year old shows up, or someone younger than my 27-years-and-4+-months at the start of the Jimmy Carter era, I'm clinging to the title!
One more, then giving this topic a rest
New-looking part of the Shenzhen International Airport, over a door that would lead people into a staff-only zone. Yesterday.
Literally, the Chinese could be rendered as: "Traveler, halt!" Or, to sound less Teutonic, "Travelers, stop!" But if you'd asked a native speaker you'd probably just end up with the simple "No entry."
My reaction to this and innumerable similar signs in China has become sympathy rather than anything else (frustration, mirth, etc). All the fiddling with computerized translation programs, all the paging through English textbooks, all of whatever other effort came up with "The traveler halts," for a result whose oddities could so easily have been avoided. Oh well. The airport itself is nice. Other topics shortly.
December 16, 2008
Mischke CD, video news
Last week, this report on the unceremonious canning of my bar-none favorite radio humorist, T.D. "Tommy" Mischke of St. Paul.
Three cheerier or at least schadenfreude-ish updates now:
1) Dave Brauer, of MinnPost.com, has this testimonial from Mark Moeller, of the local retailer R.F.Moeller Jewelers, that has had Mischke do personalized ads for them over the last 15 years, about his pulling his ads in protest.
Mischke "made a profound difference in my
business. Not a day goes by -- not a day -- where someone doesn't walk
into a store and say 'Mischke sent me.'" I pressed Moeller to tell me how much of a hit KSTP was taking for
this. "It was well into seven figures" he says of his ad buys over 15
years.
2) A YouTube video that Moeller and Mischke produced, called "Don't Jump, Tommy," whose purpose Mischke explained this way in a note to me:
So, here's what I ended up doing
over the weekend. I had a lot of listeners writing me, concerned that, because
of my occasional bouts of depression, this firing business could be
sending me right over the edge. I wanted to address that and, at the same time,
help out Mark Moeller who has stood by me through all this despite
being telephoned daily by KSTP management in an effort to lure him back on
the air.
Mischke is more derelict-looking in this video than in real life.
3) Mischke's latest music CD (not radio-humor CD) is available here. I haven't heard him sing other than in comedy bits on the program, but i will order this on faith. His humor CDs, which I have heard, will soon be available; stay tuned for details.
Amazing slop (updated)
I'm on record as thinking it Colonel Blimpish for native speakers of English to make fun of other people's mistakes in our language -- above all when we're doing it on their soil, and when our command of their language is less than total. Odds are any college-educated Chinese person I meet will be much better in English than I am in Chinese. After all, English was one of their mandatory subjects through school and in their college-entrance exams. Not quite the same for me with Chinese. (But let's try some French! Or Latin! Or Esperanto! Or Japanese!) So not once in talking with such a person have I been other than grateful for such English as they know.
On the other hand, I repeatedly marvel at the blitheness with which Chinese organizations put things in English designed for foreign readers without having even a minimally-literate native speaker give it a quick look. (Background again here and more broadly here.)
Today's case study: promotional map, conveniently in English for foreign investors and tourists, which I just received from a fancy Chinese resort I won't otherwise identify:
Sigh. My kingdom for an "e."
Update: George Bradt of Shanghai reports that the city's hockey rink has ramp marked "Sloppy Passage," for the convenience of wheelchair-bound patrons. Update #2: Via Micah Sittig, photo of the ramp, with its full name "Disabled Sloppy Passage," here.
December 15, 2008
While disagreeing with G.W. Bush on almost every item of policy...
... I thought he showed considerable physical agility and temperamental aplomb while the shoes were coming at him yesterday. This is the kind of moment when people simply react, rather than having time to think or control their behavior. He might have been recorded forever curling up in a ball or hiding behind Maliki. He didn't. It's something.
(Offset by the total humiliation of the episode, the reasons for Iraqi grievance, the unseemliness of physical assaults, etc etc.)
Every day brings a surprise
You may have read that the Chinese company BYD made big news today in unveiling the first plug-in electric car, ahead of Japanese and US competitors.
More on the substance of that another day.
You may not have imagined how the presentation began, this morning in Shenzhen. Life is interesting. (Click for larger.) The US lounge-singer industry may need to start looking over its shoulder at China, along with the automakers.
The performers in a pensive moment:
One more word about "books as gifts"...
... following Roy Blount Jr's testimonial two days ago on behalf of independent book stores, here are two other sites, one from the Association of American Publishers and another from Random House but concerning books in general. All make the case for this year as the Year of the Gift Book.
Judge for yourself, but I'm persuaded: placing online orders now with various independent bookstores in the US. For searchable directories of such stores, check here; for a subjective top-10 list of indie bookstores, go here. Read up!
1) A great 57-minute TV interview with Chu, conducted in 2004 by Harry Kreisler of UC Berkeley as part of his generally-great "Conversations with History" series.
In my experience over decades of conducting interviews, the people who are truly the greatest masters of their own rarefied fields often have a gift for explaining complex problems to outsiders in vivid, non-condescending ways. Think years ago of Richard Feynman, of Caltech, plunging a rubbery "O-ring" into a glass of ice water to demonstrate how it might have become rigid and failed during the launch of the doomed space shuttle Challenger. Think of Bill Clinton illustrating any point with one of his home town analogies.
Chu comes across very much that way in this session. Modest, funny, and willing to explain the work of of a scientist in terms and images most people can understand. A scientific explainer-in-chief? It would be nice to have such a person once more on the public scene.
2) Let's analogize one more time to another great Obama cabinet pick, Eric Shinseki as Secretary of Veterans Affairs. "Identity politics" was not the most important element in Shinseki's selection. "Policy politics" was what mattered most: Shinseki's having been right about Iraq. But there was an additional grace note, noted in particular by many Japanese-Americans, that a military leader named Shinseki was given this honor on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day.
So too with Chu. Identity politics is a second- or third-order aspect of this nomination. Mainly his choice says something about the role of real science in public life, about America's commitment to retain its leadership as a research power, and about the redoubling of scientific/technical efforts to deal with energy and climate problems. But in karmic terms it doesn't hurt that Chu, who was born in St. Louis of Chinese parents, will head the very department that, under then-secretary Bill Richardson, was involved in the Wen Ho Lee imbroglio in the late 1990s. (In brief: Lee, who was born in Taiwan and who worked at Los Alamos, was accused of massive theft of U.S. nuclear secrets on China's behalf. The NY Times loudly trumpeted this story. Eventually nearly all the charges were dropped, and the presiding federal judge apologized to Lee for government excesses.)Â Again, this is not a reason to have chosen him, but it's worth noticing.
December 14, 2008
More on the case for Steven Chu at energy
When Eric Shinseki was nominated as the new Secretary of Veterans Affairs, I argued that this was an inspired pick, on its own merits and for its sublime symbolism. (The man whom the Bush administration had ridiculed for being right about Iraq now restored, with honor, to cope with, among other things, the consequences of the Bush policy).
When Steven Chu was nominated as the new Secretary of Energy, I said that this was an even better choice, in both symbolism (no-kidding scientist to head what has become the government's leading science agency) and substance (his post-Nobel prize work has largely involved pushing for fundamental research on energy). Fortunately my friend Steve Corneliussen has done the work of spelling out some of the support for that assertion. Corneliussen, who is a writer rather than a scientist, has worked with the American Institute of Physics and other professional organizations. After the jump, parts of his email reporting reaction among the scientists he has been talking with. ________
We all know that the retailers are in trouble because of collapsing consumer demand. (For years Americans spent too much; now....) We all know that the automakers domestic and foreign are in trouble because people don't want to buy cars. Real estate is in trouble because people can't or don't want to buy houses. The stock market is in trouble because people don't want to buy stock. And, arguably most ominous for the republic, newspapers are in trouble because people are losing the habit of buying papers.
There is not much any one individual can do about this. I'm not going to buy a new house or car just because it would have useful tonic effect on the market. There are only so many papers I can buy per day. But after the jump, Roy Blount Jr, through the years a frequent Atlantic contributor and current president of the Authors Guild, suggests a voting-with-your-dollars strategy that is within people's means and can make a significant difference.
Starting now, I've changing my Christmas shopping plans based on Blount's tips. The presents he suggests are good ones -- and although I can't visit independent bookshops myself where I am, the ones I like and have shopped at (Elliott Bay, Powell's, Politics & Prose, etc) have web-based order systems. Seriously, this is a good idea -- as are, of course, gift subscriptions to our own magazine.
Blount's letter to Authors Guild members* below. _______
1) About today's Beijing haze (previously here). Part of it was cloud! The blear lifted slightly later in the day. Still, it strained common conceptions of a "blue sky" day.
2) About those bogus Sarkozy posters (previously here), still taken at face value in many parts of American blog land. I mentioned, thanks to a tip, one clue that they were fake: what they said in French. Reader William Vambenepe pointed out another: what they said in English!
Under French law, foreign phrases in such ads must have a French translation. Thus the absence of Oui, nous pouvons! under "Yes we can!" might have been a hint that they were not authorized posters from the president of the Republic.
3) About adventures in Chinese mis-translation into English (too many previous mentions to list). Thanks to the many, many readers who passed along this example of a translation mishap going the other way. It's the now-notorious case of the Max Planck Forschung in Germany using the text of an ad from a south-China strip club to illustrate the cover of a special issue on China. Embarrassing!
... that Beijing had a record-high number of "blue sky" days in 2008, including a long stretch during and after the Olympics when the air really was marvelously clear and clean.
The bad news is that today counts as one of the "blue sky" days, since the pollution index is 96, just below the blue-sky cutoff of 100. Ten am, December 12, 2008:
Maybe it's just fog. And, I can see the sun:
For the big-picture perspective on serious Chinese efforts to improve the situation, please see here.
Subversive pandas are back
When last seen, two months ago, the ambiguously subversive pandas of Sichuan Province's tourism-promotion campaign were talking about.... something, as a way of encouraging Chinese travelers to come see them in their western homeland.
Discussion of what "More Freedom, More Happiness" might and might not mean here and here.
In the last two or three days, the Tourist Promotion Pandas of Sichuan have come back -- I've seen four or five different posters in subway stations. All similar in look and typeface, different in slogan. Only this evening did I have a camera on hand to record one of them. The message this time (Jianguomen station) is more straightforward -- and, according to me, is just about the same in English and Chinese. But the panda on the bottom right still has that strange, unreadable, possibly-menacing expression as in the original poster.
It's been a very long and very cold day. More in the future on other poster pandas -- and probably tomorrow on the startling development of China showing a surge in its trade surplus just as all of its customer-economies are collapsing.
Last word anyone ever need speak on 'hurt feelings'
This hilarious analysis and map, courtesy of Danwei.org, of the times and places when the "feelings of the Chinese people" have been hurt. (Background here and here.)
Danwei's map of the offending countries, marked in black. For explanation, see the post.
December 10, 2008
An even more impressive pick than Shinseki (updated)
More to say about the whys and wherefores later. For the moment: the ability of an incoming administration to select such people, and -- even trickier -- convince them it will be worth their while to move to Washington and wrestle with the most complicated politico / technical / diplomatic problems, given all the hassles and built-in frustrations and lack of privacy in governmental life, is both surprising and encouraging. Very good news.
Update: to flesh out a point made while I was rushing out the door earlier: obviously a Cabinet position is "a [bleeping] valuable thing," as the still-governor of Illinois might put it, and many people scheme and scramble for the offer. Also, I am not in the camp of people who feel very sorry for those who accept the "burden" of public service in high appointed office. It's a great challenge, a great opportunity, and a great thrill.
My point was that there are real trade-offs in public life: making all of your finances public, for example, or realizing that while you're in office everything you do or say is on the record and potentially embarrassing. Precisely the kind of person who is not actively scheming for the job, who already has a very good position (as Chu does), and who may give some weight to these personal tradeoffs, is the kind of person an administration may not manage to attract. When that person brings unusual eminence ot the job, as Chu does, then it's worth noting this achievement.
Beijing Metro
Recently I took my 200th trip on the Beijing Metro. I know because I used up the fourth 100RMB charge on my Metro card, below. (Rides are for now 2RMB apiece, about 28 cents, regardless of distance.) Actually, the 200th ride since the metro finished its switch from paper tickets to magnetic cards early this year.
The card, like its owner, is beginning to show the wear and tear of life in the big city. That's its peeling-off plastic covering in the upper right corner. But, having complained every now and then about certain imperfections of urban life in Beijing, let me take this opportunity to remark on what a miraculous change the rapidly-expanding metro has wrought in a very short time.
As recently as the middle of last year, the subway system didn't go many places -- and could be ferociously crowded when it went there. (I am thinking mainly of Line 1 at rush hour, as locals will know.) Here's how the route system looked when we arrived:
The map below shows the working system as of now -- the interesting detail being that lines 5, 8, and 10 have come into operation on our (brief) watch here in Beijing. They are the magenta, green, and light blue lines, respectively. (Also, the "airport express," the diagonal red line heading to the northeast.) Line 10 in particular is nothing less than a godsend. My wife and I live in the "Central Business District" at the Guomao intersection, right at the place where the horizontal red line crosses the vertical light-blue line on the map above. Before line 10 opened in July, getting to two other main parts of town I visit many times per week -- the "Kempinski"/Sanlitun/Gongti area two miles or so straight north, and the university/high-tech "Haidian" district several miles to the northwest -- could be done only by driving (bus or taxi), and through traffic so unpredictably horrible that you had to allow an hour or two if you wanted to be there on time. Now the Kempinski-etc area is a few quick stops north on Line 10, and the far northwest Peking U /Tsinghua U /Google/ Microsoft areas involve just one change of subway lines. That still takes 45 minutes -- but it's dependable, and you're not sitting in a taxi worrying.
And more is underway. Here is the route plan for three-plus years from now, with a lot of cross-town and zig-zag routes that will make a huge difference in land travel:
What's my point? First, recognizing something good that's happened in a city about which I and many others often complain. And second: Wonder if infrastructure and public-transport improvements can make a difference in basic livability? Yes they can.
More on "hurt feelings"
I mentioned recently that I'd had developed a perverse alertness to the phrase "hurting the feelings of the Chinese people." For me, hearing it is like letting scalding hot water run over a poison ivy rash. It is painful and yet somehow.... satisfying.
The Shanghai-based author and consultant Paul French, who has been here much longer and heard the phrase much more often than I have, sends a note putting it in practical and historical context:
For me that has always acted as a full stop in a conversation or negotiation. When the other side says that to do something (concede invariably) would hurt the feelings of the Chinese people (i.e. building that supermarket and refusing to pay as much as I want you to for the land would hurt the feelings of the Chinese people) it's a way of saying - thus far and no further.... That phrase really is the point at which no more negotiation is possible. I can't think of an equivalent phrase in English or American/European business-political etiquette.
But you got me wondering if the hurting of feelings predated 1949. Seems not - can't find it anywhere in KMT pronouncements nor did Sun Yat Sen use the phrase in 1911 or the students during May 4th 1919. Indeed this week is the anniversary of China declaring war on Japan, Germany and Italy in 1941 and their formal declaration of war on the Axis was quite well written actually - http://chinarhyming.blogspot.com/ -- and no talk of hurt feelings.
Offered gratis, to PhD candidates in search of a worthy topic: the linguistic, historical, ideological, and cultural aspects of the emergence of "hurting the feelings" as a major theme in international relations. Just give French, and me, a line in the Acknowledgments.
December 9, 2008
More on the "Shinseki beret"
Results from the vast blog-reading public: 100-to-1 in favor of Gen. Eric Shinseki's conduct before and after the Iraq war. (Background here and here.) 100-to-1 in opposition to his role as "the genius who made Army troops wear the beret." (Background here.)
(Image from ad at RangerJoes.com, the online shop for "Military and Law Enforcement Gear.")
To give fair voice to the one percent not complaining about the beret, I quote reader Frank Logan:
I wish I knew who decided we should wear the Castro style hats we wore in the '60's Army so I could hate him the way today's troops apparently hate Shinseki. It's probably like hating the food in the mess which is actually pretty good.
Here endeth my Shinseki-and-beret discussion.
I guess it wasn't all cloud
I mentioned yesterday that, after a spell of very cold and very clear days in Beijing, the ferociously cleansing wind from the northwest had abated and the dark laden air had returned, held in place by an inversion layer. As a reminder, the view out my window yesterday at 10am:
I rounded off the post with a chipper hope that all I was seeing was cloud.
Apparently not.
Thanks to Michael Standaert's China Notebook report, with a link to this official daily Chinese government pollution-reading site, the air pollution index yesterday was an almost incredible 246. A full discussion of the ins and outs of pollution measure, and how China counts some pollutants differently from the way the US or Europe does, is here. But this chart, from the same Beijing Air Blog as in the previous link, might get the point across. You'll note that 246 is not even on the scale.
To put it differently: I think it's likely that people in the United States, unless they have been in a forest-fire zone, have not in many decades experienced a 246-scale day. That could be wrong -- can't find data at the moment -- but the general impression is correct. And the only other thing I can say is: I think I'll have one of my remaining Sam Adams beers and see how it looks tomorrow.
December 8, 2008
Annals of agitprop
Today's category: phrases that have outlived their time. Today's winner: "hurting the feelings of the Chinese people."
The front page of the Dec 8 edition of the (state-run, English-language, indispensable) China Daily had this item on Chinese-EU tensions, especially Chinese-French, because of Nicolas Sarkozy's recent decision to meet with the Dalai Lama:
Fair enough: it's an area of genuine contention. But then we have the quote from China's deputy foreign minister laying out the specifics of France's offense:
Ah, it "hurt the feelings of the Chinese people." This is the phrase I wait for in every Chinese government statement on matters of international disagreement.
Yes, there is a real concept buried beneath this boilerplate slogan. The concept might be expressed other places as "an insult to the dignity of our nation," or "disrespect for our people and their principles" or something. But it is generally used quite sparingly in other nations' pronunciamentos, because in the end listeners don't find it that persuasive.
Yes, one nation should not gratuitously offend any others -- a point my recent interviewee, the Chinese mega-banker Gao Xiqing, makes very effectively.* And, yes, in many personal dealings, saying "you hurt my feelings!" may be an important part of reaching a resolution. But you don't find Talleyrand, Metternich, George C. Marshall, and even Sun Tzu recommending this complaint as a big part of international strategy. And remember, this is not some sand-bagging trick of mistranslation. These are the English words the Chinese government itself selects.
As I argued last month in the Atlantic, China's official spokesmen make the country seem far less appealing than it really is, because their sloganized responses display so little grasp of how outsiders act, think, and respond. Important evidence that my contention is out of date will be the disappearance of "hurt our feelings" from future official statements. _____ * The way Gao put it, talking about what he learned from hardships working on a railroad gang during the Cultural Revolution:
I learned that, from a social point of view, no matter how lowly
statured a person you are talking to, as a person, they are the same
human being as you are. You have to respect them. You have to apologize
if you inadvertently hurt them. And often you have to go out of your
way to be nice to them, because they will not like you simply because
of the difference in social structure.
Hmmmm.....
Last week, Beijing's weather was very clear and very, very cold. Both conditions were thanks to some enormous howling Siberian gelid-air mass that made its way down from the dreaded boreal land of snow. For a reminder of how things can look when clear, try here.
Today temperatures are moderating, which means that the northern wind is not there to do its brutally cleansing work. Ten am, December 8, 2008.
Some of this could be cloud, although air-quality readings the last two days have been bad. Here's hoping a lot is cloud!
Zut alors! C'est une blague!
Many people in the blog-o-world, including several of my Atlantic colleagues, have noted the, umm, similarity between Barack Obama's most famous poster and the recent "SarkObama" campaign by Nicolas Sarkozy in France.
Loyal Atlantic reader Edward Goldstick sent me a note suggesting that I read what the posters actually say. As soon as you do so, it becomes evident that they're not pro-Sarkozy posters at all! They're an elegant little bit of jiujitsu to both mock and pressure Sarkozy by appearing to commit him to positions more progressive/leftist than he in fact holds.
"Produce clean and sustainable energy for Europe," the one on the upper left says. "Yes we can!" "Make polluters pay," says the next one down. "Yes we can!"
Others are in the same vein. And, as it turns out from a story in Le Monde (in French, here) published five days ago, this is part of a guerrilla campaign by Greenpeace to push its climate-change programs during EU talks on the summit in Poznan, Poland, this month.
Ah, the subtle French. But at least we know that Sarkozy is not as derivative as he seemed -- and that it takes much longer for material to make its way from the mainstream French press into English than the other way around.
Really bad news out of Minnesota: end of The Mischke Broadcast (updated)
I have done approximately one zillion articles for the Atlantic since my first one (about Lloyd Bentsen, then a presidential hopeful) back in 1975. In a very few cases, I've loved everything about the process: learning about the subject, interviewing sources for their views, letting other people know about what I've discovered, and -- when everything works right -- connecting readers with an experience, an idea, a source of information, a phenomenon that they hadn't known about but then find interesting or enjoy.
I am skipping over the "writing the article" stage, which is always unpleasant and simply must be endured.
One of the experiences that was most delightful all the way through was learning about the St. Paul-based radio humorist/musician/raconteur T.D. "Tommy" Mischke, whom I wrote about nine years ago in this article. Mischke is handsome enough, but he avoids being photographed -- except in shots like this, which we used to illustrate the article:
I first learned about him when I was making a lot of long, late-night drives from the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport to Duluth, for reporting that led to this article, and I was scanning the radio for something worth listening to.
I actively looked forward to those drives once I had discovered The Mischke Broadcast on KSTP-AM, which mixed story-telling, political commentary, humor, music, and listener calls in a bizarre and addictive way. For samples, which require Real Player to listen to, there is this bit, in which Mischke interviews an expert on the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (if you can listen, you'll learn why it's funny) and this bit of extended, real-but-unbelievable Fargo-esque surrealism, involving a character name "Bocky."
I have kept in touch with Mischke and occasionally appeared on his show.
The black news today is that KSTP has pulled the plug on the show. Info here and here and, with a lot of background details, here. I really hope that Mischke can find another home or vehicle. He is a talent and a mensch.
UPDATE: Two more items on the Mischke firing from MinnPost.com's David Brauer here and here.
December 7, 2008
Vox militis* on Shinseki
I am grateful for a flood of mail from active-duty and retired military people, and their families, expressing admiration and excitement about Barack Obama's choice of Eric Shinseki as his Secretary of Veterans Affairs. (On the merits and symbolism of the choice, here; on the politics, here.)
Below, from reader Larry Senechal of Seattle, a representative note of appreciation. After the jump, from a currently-serving Army officer, a representative complaint -- which may surprise many people outside the military.
First, the appreciation:
I'm an old former Marine, infantry type.
General Shinseki is old school General Officer corps,
unlike many Generals and senior officers who go through the revolving
door to become Defense contractor lobbyists, media analysts and Defense
contractor employees. It seems when this happens "Duty, Honor,
Country" are secondary to making money. In my opinion after 37 years
of service to this country, this doesn't seem appropriate payback to a country
who gave them so much and continues to do so with their OWN legacy costs to the
American taxpayer. The stories of just how corrosive this has been on the
military services and our Defense policy abound and have yet to be dealt with
effectively.
My father was a retired senior Army Officer as was my
father-in-law and both highly decorated infantry commanders. My dad often
lamented the growing "revolving" door and the poor leadership of many
in the General Corps and the dileterious effect it was having on the Army. When
the military first started using bonuses during the Clinton years to keep
captains and majors in the service, he observed that the retention problem said
less about the attractiveness of the private sector and more about the quality
of senior leadership who seemed more committed to their careers and less to the
men they commanded. I didn't fully appreciate and understand his remark at the
time. I now do after the last eight years.
Imagine my surprise when I read an article at MSNBC quoting
Shinseki stating,....""You must love
those you lead before you can be an effective leader," he said. "You
can certainly command without that sense of commitment, but you cannot lead
without it. And without leadership, command is a hollow experience, a vacuum often
filled with mistrust and arrogance."
Bonus points for elegance in the Shinseki pick (updated)
Barack Obama is all about bipartisanship, conciliation, binding up wounds, and so forth. Great! If only more presidents saw things that way.
But in his (reported) choice of Eric Shinseki as Secretary of Veterans Affairs, there is also an extremely refined aspect of sticking in the shiv.
Whenever he talks about this selection, Obama (plus his lieutenants) can describe it completely, sufficiently, and strictly in the most bipartisan high-road terms. They have selected a wounded combat veteran; a proven military leader and manager; a model of personal dignity and nonpartisan probity: an unimpeachable choice. Symbolic elements? If people want them, they can work with Shinseki's status as (to my recollection at the moment) the first Asian-American in a military-related cabinet position, not to mention a Japanese-American honored for lifelong military service on Pearl Harbor Day.
As for the other symbolic element -- that Obama is elevating the man who was right, when Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney, et al were so catastrophically wrong -- that is something that neither Obama nor anyone around him need say out loud, ever. The nomination is like a hyper-precision missile, or what is known in politics as a "dog whistle." The people for whom this is a complete slap in the face don't need to be told that. They know -- and know that others know it too. So do the people for whom it is vindication. And all without Obama descending for one second from his bring-us-together higher plane.
The artistry here is remarkable. Along with the inspired nature of this choice.
UPDATE: I see from the MTP webcast just now available (below) that Tom Brokaw directly asked Obama about Shinseki's disagreement with Rumsfeld, and Obama said of his new nominee, "he was right." Consistent with the argument above, that's as much as he ever needs to say.
Karmic justice: Gen. Eric Shinseki
One of the truly nauseating moments in the run-up to the Iraq war was the humiliating public rebuke that Paul Wolfowitz, then Donald Rumsfeld's #2 at the Pentagon, delivered to Eric Shinseki, then a four-star general serving as Army chief of staff.
Shinseki, a wounded combat veteran of Vietnam, was by career and reputation a cautious, methodical person. Those who criticized his performance as Army chief mainly complained that he was too traditional and non-innovative in his approach. Thus, he was constantly at odds with Rumsfeld's crew, who viewed him as a passive-aggressive, fuddy-duddy obstacle to doing things in their new lean-and-mean way.
The showdown came just before the war began. Shinseki, who had direct experience with land warfare (in Vietnam) and post-combat occupation (in the Balkans), was urging that the U.S. go in with a force large enough to ensure that it could maintain order and genuinely control Iraq's sizable territory and potentially fractious society after it ousted Saddam. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz hated this whole idea.
After the jump, a passage from my Atlantic article and subsequent book, both called Blind into Baghdad, describing what happened next. I think this also explains why it is so satisfying and right that Barack Obama will (reportedly) name Shinseki to his Cabinet as the Secretary of Veterans Affairs.
(Shinseki after his retirement, at a museum in his honor in Hawaii. Photo from a profile of him at this official Army web site.)
Here's one other point that is not as widely known as Rumfeld's and Wolfowitz's bullying of Shinseki: Despite being unfairly treated, despite being 100% vindicated by subsequent events, Shinseki kept his grievances entirely to himself. Although my book contains accounts of Shinseki's inside arguents with Rumsfeld et al, and his discussions with his own staff, zero of that information came from Shinseki.
I made a complete nuisance of myself requesting an interview, or a phone conversation, or an email exchange, or even some "you're getting warmer" guidance from him. Nothing doing, in any way. (I did track him down at an ROTC commissioning ceremony where he was speaking; he greeted me politely, but that was it.) I am confident in the accounts I presented, which came from a variety of first-hand participants; but Shinseki, who could have had a lucrative career on the talk show/lecture circuit giving "I told you so" presentations, has not indulged that taste at all.
So congratulations to Eric Shinseki, who has stoically served his country for decades and was wounded in that cause, in several senses, on this new honor -- and on the responsibility to help others who have served. Congratulations, too, that a Japanese-American patriot from Hawaii should receive this news on December 7. And not just congratulations but wonderment at the Obama team's deftness in the symbolism and substance of this choice.
Details of Shinseki-Wolfowitz showdown after the jump. _________
Twice during our past two and a half years of living in China, my wife and I have made vacation trips to Turkey. I had not been before and now really regret that fact.
My brief travel article in the new issue of the Atlantic, here, offers a vignette that may convey part of what I found so intriguing about Istanbul. This slide show, with the Atlantic's slickest new video-effect tools by Jennie Rothenberg Gritz, has more of the Ottoman empire look. Go see for yourself -- I mean, not just via the articles but with a trip to Turkey.
December 5, 2008
Gao Xiqing interview in the new Atlantic
I think highly of Gao Xiqing. He is the president of the China Investment Corporation, which oversees about $200 billion of China's overseas investment, largely in U.S. markets. (You think you're worried about the market's collapse....) He knows the United States and American culture well: he went to Duke Law School in the 1980s, was the first Chinese citizen to pass the NY State Bar, and practiced at Richard Nixon's old firm, Mudge, Rose. And he gives every sign of having enjoyed this immersion in America. Twenty years ago he came back to help build China's securities
industry, and he took his current position when the CIC was created
last year.
Gao has an earthy, jokey command of colloquial English and -- at least on my exposure to him -- he laughs frequently, including about himself. (The picture above is how he would look just before cracking a joke.) I was grateful that he agreed to an on-the-record interview, in Beijing, shortly before the U.S. presidential election. I think it is worth reading with some care: the article about the interview is in the new issue, here.
In the previous issue of the Atlantic, I complained that Chinese officialdom generally has a tin ear when it comes to explaining itself to the outside world. It is trapped in formulations and stilted language -- "jackal with a human face" to refer to a certain "splittist" leader of Tibetans, for instance -- and seems unable to present arguments that actually engage the thought processes of the outside world, as opposed to reflecting internal-Chinese concepts and power plays. Gao is a striking exception. I am in no position to assess his financial expertise, but I can judge his ability to engage seriously with outside questions. If more powerful Chinese people spoke more often to more outsiders this way, things would be better all around.
About that oddball Korean game show....
.... the one where contestants wore campy, antique Harvard/Yale-style blazers:
Courtesy of a reader who knows Korean pop culture, the real story:
The show is actually a take-off of another game show "The Golden Bell", which is a quiz show for high school students. (Basically, they go to a high school and gather 100 students and the students all answer tough trivia questions round by round until no students are left or until the final round, which is the 'golden bell' round. It's very tough and 'golden bell' winners are rare and highly regarded, apparently.)
Anyway, the stills/video you have are for a show that features actors/musicians/MCs who compete in a "Golden Bell" take-off. The questions aren't really tough trivia, but little word-games and puzzles that the stars play to collect money for charity.
The uniforms are supposed to be take-off of school uniforms, so it makes sense that they remind one of the Yale/Harvard uniforms.
So there. As I said when first raising this topic, life is strange.
December 4, 2008
Harping on the RMB
I truly love the (state controlled, voice to the outside world) China Daily. There is a wonderful purity to the worldview it conveys. It never disappoints -- as with this front page story yesterday setting the stage for the latest meetings in the US-China "Strategic Economic Dialogue" series.
Those urging the U.S. to stop harping on currency values turn out to be two Chinese analysts, one at a government agency. Who needs to hear from financiers, business people, economists, or, ahem, experts from any other country!
As it happens, I too have been continually urging American politicians to stop harping on beating their gums about the "rigged" Chinese currency, notably here and here -- mainly because, until quite recently, it was already rising in value. Moreover, the obsession with the RMB seemed mainly to show a failure of imagination on the US side: it was the only thing Americans could think of to "do" about China's trade surpluses.
Yes, the Chinese government was obviously "managing" the currency's rise and keeping it unnaturally low to help exporters (as explained blow-by-blow here). But U.S. discussion seemed based on the assumption that this was the secret of China's export boom. As I heard constantly from the foreign and Chinese business people I visited in factories and export shops and quoted in those stories, it was at best a secondary factor.
Now things are different. China's exporters, like businesses in every part of this recession-slowed world, are losing orders and laying off workers. This is tough for them -- as the counterpart is tough everywhere else. In response, governments elsewhere in the world are taking steps that, at a minimum, should not worsen conditions for other economies. That is, they mainly are mounting stimulus programs to keep people buying, whether from domestic suppliers or foreign sources. China too has of course announced a huge stimulus program.
Yet there are increasing rumbles of China's desire/intent to do something that would in fact aggravate problems elsewhere: trying to help its exporters by pushing the RMB's value down again, after two-plus years of letting it rise. In essence, this would be a game of exporting unemployment -- yes, yes, with all caveats about Chinese people being on average so much poorer than Americans or Europeans and suffering so much more when laid off.
Some very interesting economic discussions in and around China concern exactly this issue. Will the government try to devalue the RMB again? Should it try? Could it succeed? And if it tries, how will other countries respond? Could this be the step that turns a "contained" international economic crisis into something worse?
This subject is so complex, deep, and fast-changing that there are countless angles to explore. For now, as a first installment, after the jump are excerpts from my friend Andy Rothman's "Sinology" newsletter for CLSA, arguing that on balance the Chinese authorities won't take this step. (Proprietary newsletter, so no web link.) More on this theme to come. ______
Aviation buffs only: heartening update on the Cirrus jet
Even non-buffs might be attracted to the several videos listed on this page, where Cirrus Design officials talk viewers through the concepts, trade-offs, and progress stages involved in building the Cirrus Vision, their forthcoming "personal jet."
I enjoy this not just because, in times of overall retrenchment, it's encouraging to see ambitious product development of any sort; and not just because in my dream life, in sharp contrast to my actual life, I would be able to have and fly one of these (~$1 million) airplanes. In my actual pre-China life I did own and fly one of their SR-20 propeller planes.
The extra pleasure for me is seeing the very people I first interviewed in Duluth ten years ago, when they had not yet delivered their first airplane to their first customer, having come so far while maintaining the same sense of excitement and passion. You'll see two of those people on the main video at the site: the CEO, Alan Klapmeier, who introduces the video, and the designer Mike Van Staagen, who when I met him was building models of cockpit interiors out of clay and wood and now is Vice President of Advanced Development. Such people bring us the new things we enjoy, and not just in the world of airplane nuts.
December 3, 2008
Updates on "Forgetting? Fuhgeddaboudit"
Three quick followups to yesterday's mention of an IBM research project that would involve all-hours recording of all circumstances in your life.
1) As many, many people have noted, yesterday's English version of Spiegel Online carried a story about a woman with this very capacity naturally built into her own brain, and she's not so crazy about it.
2) After the jump, an extended version of the IBM release on the topic, which has more details and hints at some of the promising but complicated implications of this kind of effort.
3) From reader Karen Weickert, an account of an earlier foray in the same direction, under the auspices of Paul Allen's paradoxically secretive-but-publicized, and now defunct, Interval Research Corporation. (Long and interesting 1999 Wired story on Interval here.)
In the 1990's, a research shop funded by Paul Allen worked on a number of the IBM projects described in their press release. Specifically, the "memory" idea was put into practice by a researcher who strapped a video and audio recorder to his body, and recorded his daily rounds for weeks. He attempted to capture 360 degree audio and video. The point was to never miss anything that happened in your day, such as important conversations, your child's first steps, etc.
What happened instead is that no one wanted to speak with him. We assume in conversation that what we say will not be recorded and played back directly (if we are not politicians, of course). If all social interaction was assumed recorded, as opposed to the opposite, our shared world becomes something very different. It was creepy.
There were a number of other projects toying with social connectedness and interaction -- virtual offices and researchers connected through "surround sound" for example. Again, something important about our assumptions of social interaction were broken. We assume all work happens when groups are connected, but of course, we are private beings as well.
I don't understand Korean, so I can't really be sure, but this afternoon Korean KBS-2 (part of our rich array of viewing choices here in China) carried what seemed to be either a dating program, or a College Bowl-type contest, between teams dressed in what looked for all the world like Harvard and Yale "Oldest Living Alum"-type blazers. It was as if we were at the Henley Royal Regatta or something. Life is strange.
1) Another company covering a lot of territory with propeller-driven Cirrus SR-22 airplanes is Midwest Air Taxi, which is based in Iowa and says it serves 450+ airports in the sizeable area below:
2) As several readers have reminded me, for decades passengers in the Pacific Northwest, Florida, Maine, and a few other lucky, watery places have been familiar with a form of air taxi known as float-plane travel. One of the best-known companies is Kenmore Air, in Seattle -- known in particular to me because I took seaplane lessons at Kenmore in the late 1990s. There are few more enjoyable forms of flying for the pilot -- you go low and slow over interesting scenery, you usually get to land straight into the wind -- and where the topography allows it, it's a great way to travel too.
After yesterday's post on the prevalence of Chinese people sleeping in public places, I got many responses saying that this was merely a sign of how hard-working the country was -- everyone is exhausted! True enough, in many cases. But, as reader John Neville points out, unremitting physical toil might not be the only explanatory factor:
I have to agree, the Chinese are napping maniacs. I teach at a university in Wuhan, where on my first day I was told that the couch in my office is there for sleeping on, not sitting. Any teachers or administrators who come to my office during the lunch break always close the door behind them as they leave, so as to give me more privacy for napping (I've still never once slept on that couch, but I guess they hope that some day I will). I need to get some pictures of people sleeping on the rattling, wildly careening and hard-breaking buses that make up the Wuhan bus fleet.
I'll simply leave it as an interesting -- to me -- aspect of contemporary Chinese life.
Quasi-nerds only: interesting little compare and contrast
Two of America's tech powers -- IBM and Microsoft -- have given glimpses of what they consider the most exciting and promising research opportunities for the future. Their lists are fascinating in their own right but also in a comparative sense, for what they show about the two companies.
There will be more to say about specific items later on. For now, you can see IBM's list of "Five Innovations That Will Change Our Lives in the Next Five Years" here, and a Network World report on 10 hot projects from Microsoft's research center here. I think much about both companies is revealed by the comparison -- not to mention the implications for all of us if these visions are fulfilled.*
Now, where's Google's list? _____ * This one from IBM has philosophical ramifications worth exploring in the longer run:
Forgetting will become a distant memory Information overload keeping you up at night? Forget about it. In the next five years, it will become much easier to remember what to buy at the grocery store, which errands need to be run, who you spoke with at a conference, where and when you agreed to meet a friend, or what product you saw advertised at the airport. That's because such details of everyday life will be recorded, stored, analyzed, and provided at the appropriate time and place by both portable and stationary smart appliances. To help make this possible, microphones and video cameras will record conversations and activities. The information collected will be automatically stored and analyzed on a personal computer. People can then be prompted to "remember" what discussions they had, for example, with their daughter or doctor by telephone. Based on such conversations, smart phones equipped with global-positioning technology might also remind them to pick up groceries or prescriptions if they pass a particular store at a particular time. It's not hard to imagine that TVs, remote controls, or even coffee table tops, can one day be the familiar mediums through which we tap into our digitally-stored information.
For a change, some positive air-taxi news
Attentive readers will be familiar with the trail of tears recounted here, involving the dashed hopes of the small-jet maker Eclipse and the pioneering air-taxi company DayJet. Sigh sigh sigh.
But all along, air taxi companies that have flown passengers not in the spiffy new Eclipse jets but rather in also-spiffy Cirrus SR-22 propeller planes have survived and have steadily been expanding their service. For background on the best known of these, SATSair, see this; for info on another called Miwok, see this. For more on the propeller/jet difference in business models, see the second half of this post.
Recently, there's another entrant, which will use the same Cirrus SR-22s to transport passengers on short-haul trips around the SF Bay area. It's called Indigo Flyer, and its service map is here (detailed pricing and route info at its site):
Will it succeed? Lord knows. But the entrepreneur in me, and the aviation enthusiast, and the person who thinks this air-taxi model actually has a future, all wish it the best. (Thanks to Chris Baker, my instrument-rating instructor ten years ago, for the tip.)
The burden of expatriation, part 1,547
You probably know the white man in this photo below, shown with Hu Jintao on a recent front page of the China Daily:
You probably don't know this white man (recent picture of me in China):
OK, yes, they're both middle-aged white men looking somewhat the worse for life's wear. And believe me, I have fished around for the most similar-looking poses and expressions and hair styles etc I could find, minus the accompanying Chinese dignitary. Still, despite these powerful similarities, the fact is that not once in my life has someone in the United States or Europe stopped me on the street to say, or mentioned in a conversation, "Oh, you look just like George W. Bush."
Rarely has a day passed in China without a Chinese person saying this.
I think this reflects the same principle by which any middle-aged, non-glasses-wearing Chinese man might be told in America, "You know, you look just like Jackie Chan," or a middle-aged black man might be asked, "Are you Sidney Poitier?" (Samuel L. Jackson, Forest Whitaker, Dennis Haysbert, Laurence Fishburne, etc). We all look the same....
It could be worse. They could be asking if I was Karl Rove. Or Cheney.
December 1, 2008
If you're in the DC area on Wednesday night...
... you can meet the people responsible for the book that I keep on lauding, America's Defense Meltdown -- plus get a free copy of the book, by coming to a book-launch reception. You have to pay for your own beer, but it's at a place I have been many times and whose beer quality I can vouch for.
Details: Wednesday, December 3, 6pm, at the Officers' Club at Fort Myer, across the river from downtown Washington in Rosslyn, Va. This same site has for several decades been the location for weekly beer sessions among the defense-reform community that originally featured the famous, late Col. John Boyd. Further info about the event, including instructions for RSVPs, at the Center for Defense Information site here. I'd be there if I weren't on the other side of the world. Have a beer and get a book for me.
The 'Sleeping Chinese' exhibit (updated)
The first picture below is from the Qingdao Beer Festival in the summer of 2006 -- back when I made the rookie error of thinking that a "beer festival" would offer a greater variety of brands than I could find in the local shops. (The most exotic brew I found at the festival was Pabst Blue Ribbon, which had its own promotional tent.) This photo is of some construction workers who, as I later determined, had not been laid low by drink but were just taking a little break. The following shot is a standard street scene in Shanghai from about the same time. More in similar vein after the jump.
I mention this in connection with the fascinating collections of photos on the "Sleeping Chinese" site. They're similar to what I'm showing here but vastly more numerous. In an introduction to the collection, the site's author, Bernd Hagemann, a German living in Shanghai, says this:
I gotta warn you! Before you click through my large collection of photos,you should not forget, what you hear and read daily in of your home country's media about China's boom. They talk about "The Sleeping Giant". About "The Birth of the New Super
Power" or "The Awakening of the Red Dragon". Often with a strange kind
of undertone, which is supposed to frighten us. The reality definitely
looks more peaceful.
Obviously this kind of analysis can be taken too far. Probably people have been sneaking catnaps even in the most aggressive, malign and dangerous of history's powers. But the sheer abundance of napping photos on the Sleeping site is one more illustration of why it's hard to maintain a 24/7 state of alarm about China's ceaseless rise if you're exposed to the way most people in China actually live and behave.
Literally, the Chinese could be rendered as: "Traveler, halt!" Or, to sound less Teutonic, "Travelers, stop!" But if you'd asked a native speaker you'd probably just end up with the simple "No entry." 
