News as art

From my misspent years in DC, I believe I can identify every person in this photo (just now, from Doug Mills of the NYT):


But why didn't I take more Fine Arts classes in college? Then I would know exactly which Old Master tableau this lineup so powerfully reminds me of. The human dramas suggested by these faces. This is an impromptu work of art.

PR wizardry on display

Where did the swine H1N1 flu virus come from? I certainly don't know, and I gather that epidemiologists are not yet entirely sure. Maybe the US? Maybe Mexico? Maybe someplace else? But for the official health ministry in China to treat the question as a matter of national dignity.... Sigh. It is a reminder of the point raised here, and of the ways in which the government is still learning the basics of expressing itself to the outside world.

(The Chinese-language version of the story, here courtesy of Danwei, seems to have a similar tone -- as best I can make out. This is the Chinese version of the stalwart concluding quote: "对此, 我们坚决反对.")

After the handling of SARS in 2003 and of the "blue ear" pig virus two years ago, who could possibly doubt assurances coming from the Ministry of Health?

Here's free PR advice from an actual foreign media person: All nations get defensive and try to make things look good for themselves -- as the Mexican governor could well have been doing. But go easy on terms like "driven by ulterior motives" and "ruin China's image" when you're dealing with a scientific matter. Especially if you're representing the Ministry of Health! Just stick to facts and say you're eager to help fellow scientists in other countries get to the bottom of this case.  (And the Chinese government is giving $5 million to Mexico to help in anti-flu efforts, which is commendable.) But, please do keep saying "resolutely opposed" ("坚决反对"). Something will go out of the world when that kind of starchiness is lost.

More on Firefox 3.0.10

After mentioning recently my own frequent-crash experience with the latest release of Firefox, these results:

- Reports from a few readers who'd had similar problems, and a larger number who hadn't;

- Recommendations from several readers, most enthusiastically Parker Donham, to instead give the Opera browser a try, which no doubt in tinkering spirit I'll eventually do;

- Recommendations from friends at Mozilla to try out the beta 4 release of Firefox 3.5, which has a variety of new privacy features -- plus requests for debugging details of my crashes with 3.0.10.

The living nightmare that was my experience with Windows Vista, starting with a Vista beta back in 2006, has made me wary of trying any beta version of anything ever again. (Not that the official release version was that big an improvement. For later, after I finish some pressing "real" work: a summing up of the way that Vista + Lenovo's tweaks to the trusty ThinkPad changed 20 years of buying loyalty and put me on the Mac path.) But I did download that FF 3.5 beta and have been using it with no problems lo these past two days.  FWIW.

Two sentences on the 100 Days press conference

I agree with my colleague Andrew Sullivan that the session was somewhat "dull."

But I think it was dull in the same way Obama's inaugural address and his hour-long economic speech at Georgetown were initially thought to be: in that it was serious, meaty, sober in keeping with the topics under discussion, and therefore consistent with the Administration's long-term operational, governing, and communications strategy.

Three scenes from the subway (includes subversive panda content)

Life under ground, in three acts.

1. The subversive pandas go soft-power. For illustrations of their previous quasi-menace, check here, here, and here. Now, a love-bombing campaign, as seen at the Jianguomen station today:


It's all part of an ad campaign to boost tourism to Sichuan province, homeland of the pandas and of course the site of last year's earthquake.

2. What is inside those mysterious blue anti-bomb pots?  Not very much, it turns out. (Background here.)  At an undisclosed location, I found one of them sitting propped open. Inside there appears to be a miniature cargo net, to cradle whatever suspect item is placed there. Otherwise it's just a big metal ball. I feel safer now. (You're looking down from the top in this picture, to see an inch-thick metal lid tilted open, and the reddish metal interior.)



3. Is 'Prison Break' big in China? It is very, very big! The star Wentworth Miller -- "Michael Scofield" -- is absolutely enormous, dominating a skyline view of Shanghai in an ad for the Chevy Cruze.



That's the rocket ship-shaped Tomorrow Square building, eponym for my latest book, on the far left side.

GM looks sexier here than it may at the moment in the US -- Buick is still a dominant, tres chic brand.



Political PS: security is ratcheting up in Beijing, as we move toward a 20-year anniversary that is 36 days from today. A subway cop came over looking hostile when he saw me taking pictures of the 'Prison Break' ads. Relying on the widespread Chinese assumption that I am in fact the 43rd president of the United States, I explained reassuringly that I was interested in the posters because they were of "my friend in the United States." It was too complicated to explain the real connection -- which is that Miller's father was my classmate in graduate school.

More good news about Chinese maps

Over the eons I have grumbled about map-consciousness in China, but -- always constructive! -- I have also suggested one good online and one good printed resource. Now, thanks to reader Michael Mikita, here's another great online possibility, edushi.com. It's all Chinese language -- hey, this is China -- but it offers very useful satellite views, normal map views, and "3-D" views of many major cities.

Here is a 3-D view of my current cozy neighborhood in Beijing. The orange tags are bus stops; the blue shows an entrance to the Guomao subway station. The doses of greenery are highly imaginative; a ground-level view of the same intersection follows.


How that intersection really looks, including one of the green zones:

And where we used to live in Shanghai, with actual areas of green:

The world's view of Obama

Do you wonder how the rest of the world is responding to a new American president? I do too! But because I'm living out here among the non-Americans, my job was to try to offer a report on their reaction. It's here, as part of the Atlantic's "First 100 Days" coverage.

Stability problems with Firefox 3.0.10?

The latest release of Firefox offered itself for installation today, with this announcement of its new features:



Since then, the Mac version of Firefox has crashed constantly for me, on a MacMini under OS X 10.5.6 (including after a reboot). A local problem here in the Beijing HQ? Maybe a "major stability issue" not entirely nailed down in this latest release? I don't know yet. It's the first serious stability problem I've had in years of using Firefox. Not looking for reports from far and wide about where it's working and not. Just offering this report, as part of the crowdsourcing process, of a possible glitch. And if you haven't installed 3.0.10 yet, what's the rush?

Highly recommended: 'Lords of Finance'

If you were engrossed by today's NYT saga about Timothy Geithner as head of the NY Fed -- and even if you skipped past the story or didn't hear of it at all -- please make haste to read the saga of a previous incumbent of the job. Lords of Finance: The Bankers who Broke the World, by Liaquat Ahamed, tells the story of Benjamin Strong, head of the NY Fed through the 1920s, and of his central-banker counterparts in England, France, and Germany who, together and unwittingly, helped bring on the Great Depression.

Lords of Finance as it appeared to me on the trusty Kindle1 here in Beijing; physical copy not easy to get locally.
 

Economic theory has its place (and for me its place was grad-school classes). Well-done economic history is often far more illuminating. This is extremely well done history, and is worth mentioning now because of the obvious resonance between this tale of cleaning up after a bubble and today's predicament. Sample passage, about the 1920s but somehow sounds familiar:

Watching other people become rich is not much fun, especially if they do it overnight and without any effort. It was therefore inevitable that all this frenetic activity -- the thriving stock market, the new issues, the ballyhoo about a new era, the buying and selling of Florida real estate -- provoked a chorus of voices demanding that the Fed do something to stop the "orgy of speculation," a phrase that would become so commonplace over the next few years as to lose all meaning.

As it happens, Liaquat Ahamed and his wife Meena are friends of mine and my wife's, but I would recommend this book even if we'd never met.

On language schools and weirdo ads

Recently I mentioned "weirdo language school ads" with an apparent bondage theme, and quoted a reader who had taught English in Japan and offered some psycho-sexual interpretation of the ads. Two updates:

First, the latest entry in this category, from a billboard in Beijing yesterday. Speaking personally, nothing could give me greater confidence in the quality of English language instruction than the slogan, "Talenty English, Talenty Education."



(Yes, "Talenty" appears to be the name of the school, but I'm not sure that helps.)

Second, a letter I received from an official of the Gaba Eikaiwa (English conversation) school in Japan. He objects to the way the school's reputation was characterized by the reader I quoted. In the spirit of fair reply, his letter follows:

Dear Mr. Fallows,

I happened to recently read your blog of April 14th 2009, entitled "More on weirdo language school ads (updated)". As the person in charge of recruiting new instructors at Gaba language school, I was somewhat disturbed by the several inaccuracies referenced as "testimony from a 'former English teacher in Japan". I would like to bring these to your attention.

Firstly let me mention that the ad pictured is not reflective of current Gaba advertising. It was a poster that last ran over 6 years ago. Current Gaba advertising is significantly different in theme. Please see the J-peg attachment of our current advertising as a sample. While the ad certainly was "unique" and I won't quibble with the fact that some might even find it 'weird', I would hope that the fact that this ad is from 2002/2003 could be mentioned somewhere in the copy.

Here is Gaba's current ad, featuring its "Man to Man" (マン ツー マン) teaching approach. Underneath that, as a reminder, the previous ad; then, after the jump, the rest of the letter:

New ad


Old ad

_____

Continue reading "On language schools and weirdo ads" »

Tech and cultural followups on that Air China flight

Two days ago I mentioned the strange results when an Air China flight headed for Beijing was instead diverted to Tianjin. To anyone who receives these posts by email, the results must have seemed even stranger than they were. Because of a glitch in our web set-up, only the first third of the post went out, omitting everything in the "after the jump" section. Sorry! The full version is available here. (Hint: if you saw the picture of a crash involving a "bread box" taxi, you saw the whole thing.)

Several people who were blessed in receiving the full report challenged its main hypothesis -- which, in a nutshell, was that the Chinese traveling public had learned not to waste energy getting furious about things that were entirely out of their control. Two reactions below.

From reader David:

I enjoyed your post about Chinese having "the serenity to accept the things [they] can't change," though your hypothesis may need some honing.

A few years ago I was on a plane that landed in Zhengzhou due to a cracked windshield. We were stuck in Zhengzhou for over 12 hours - including a time in the middle when we were bussed to a hotel - and the entire time the passengers berated the Air China reps for not being able to provide information as to when we would be leaving except that we would not have to wait overnight. At times the Air China reps were essentially surrounded by a scrum of passengers all yelling until finally at about 4am we were able to get back on the plane.

I've seen airport rage in the States but never with that kind of herd mentality, though I do appreciate the fact that Chinese seem to be able to yell and create a disturbance without actually being all that mad down inside. There were moments of levity among the passengers in between the rage. Perhaps the facts in my experience were different enough to give the passengers the sense that they could control the outcome of the situation whether true or not. Also, the youtube of the Hong Kong woman going apeshit when she missed her plane comes to mind. [More about the Hong Kong episode here.]

Next, PT Black, of Shanghai, sends a long and interesting report with a political edge. It  begins this way:

Your comments about the delayed flight from SZ to BJ strike a nerve, though, because just last week I had a very different experience flying from Chengdu to Shanghai, also on Air China.

It continues after the jump. If you don't see anything more, it means that our RSS system is still messed up. Hope not!
____

Continue reading "Tech and cultural followups on that Air China flight" »

Back to Beijing #3 (even better news)

If you like maps -- well, you'll be in the same predicament in China as if you like really flavorful beer. The country has countless virtues, but a passionate modern map-making culture is not yet among them. Maps are often out of date; or out of scale; or deliberately hazy on state-security grounds. For instance, try to find a map of Beijing that includes the big military airport on the west side of town. Below is Google's satellite view of the area just west of the Fourth Ring Road; below that, the very same part of the city in Google's "map" view, which resembles what is shown on most available local maps. See if you notice any slight difference.



Same area, "map" view:


There is often also a quixotic relationship between the "real" location of a site and its depiction on paper. It's all part of the grand adventure. And I still am waiting for the first time I see a Beijing taxi driver pull out a book of maps. (I've seen them used in Shanghai.)

But if you do like maps, you will very much enjoy the highly-detailed map cards in the "Beijing By Foot" package produced by Immersion Guides. They're clear, they're accurate, they are well explained and thought-out to lead you through a series of walking tours of the city. As cities go, this is not a great one for pedestrians, but this guide makes the best of it.



It was thanks to the guides that my wife and I had our "Paradise Beijing" outing a few weeks ago. Enjoy-- and this is the "even better news" promised above. (Previously in the "Back to Beijing" series here and here.)
 
 

Somehow I find this droll

Two bottles of water on the dresser in my favorite hotel, the Sheraton Four Points Shenzhen (elegized here and here) earlier this week.  I see that the awkward-labeling problems I often complain about in China can occur when only a single language is involved.  Click for larger if you don't see the joke.



Although I suppose a language issue might be involved here, in that very few of the local Chinese staff stocking the rooms would be likely to notice the labels and say, "What the hell?" Actually I hope they never notice; this is kind of charming.

In case you haven't heard quite enough about the King Air landing....

... you have come to the right place. For completeness' sake, three more very informative links, the first two of them from immediately after the flight last week:

1) From the federal government's FocusFAA site, interviews with and pictures of the Ft. Myers controllers whose voices you hear on the tapes of the final minutes of the flight.

2) Also from Focus FAA, an interview with the passenger-pilot himself, Doug White.

3) From the unauthorized FAA Follies site, this very informative post by controller Paul Cox. Worth reading for several reasons -- among them the controller mood revealed in the comments; Cox's arguments about how the FAA needs to change under Obama; and his explanation of the mentality with which controllers should face this kind of life-or-death emergency. Cox uses an analogy to sports, saying that as a kid he was only a so-so baseball player:

One thing I didn't really understand was how the coach used to say that you had to be out there WANTING the ball to be hit towards you, because in the infield, I didn't....

One dirty little secret about controllers is that for the vast majority of us, when we hear someone say "emergency", we WANT to be the one plugged in and working that sector or position. We WANT to have someone call with a wing on fire or an engine out or lost or stuck on top of clouds, so we get something interesting and captivating to do while we're plugged in.

Yeah, we consider a "save" to be just part of the job, just another day's work, and it is... but every truly good controller I know WANTS to be in that chair when that call comes in. (And as a side note, to the weak sticks and trainees out there... if you don't want those emergency calls, well, that's a good sign that ATC is probably not the job for you. For the sake of the flying public, go do something else, okay?)

Until I became a controller, and had that almost-jealous feeling watching someone work an emergency, I didn't really get what the coach meant when he said you gotta WANT the tough situation placed in your hands. Now I know just what that feels like.

As far as I am concerned, there is such a thing as Enough about this case, and it's now been reached. (But thanks to John Dowd for these links.)

Back to Beijing #2 (better news, Air China dept)

Twenty-plus years ago, traveling around China by air was anything but a peace-of-mind experience. The planes were mainly leftover Soviet junkers; the amenities were sparse; the general atmosphere called to mind Indiana Jones.

I've done a lot of crisscrossing of China by airlines these past few years, on carriers as big and established as Air China and as exotic as Spring Airlines and Deer. (Note for the uninitiated: never, ever get Air China and China Airlines mixed up. The first is the flag carrier of the People's Republic of China. The second is from the Republic of China, aka Taiwan.) Flights going out of either Beijing or Shanghai are usually late, but that's hardly unique to China. Overall, it's less stressful than the standard airport/airline experience in the US.

Last night, my wife and I were taking an evening flight from Shenzhen to Beijing. Departure 6pm, scheduled arrival 9:15. As we got close to Beijing, the ride became very bumpy, and then a bright light illuminated the whole cabin, simultaneous with a big BOOM. A bolt of lightning had hit the wing! Attention-getting but not necessarily dangerous: planes are designed to handle this, I explained to my wife and surrounding folk, in my most patronizing "let the pilot tell you" mode.

Then my wife noticed on the "your plane in flight" GPS map that we seemed to be heading away from Beijing and toward Tianjin, near the coast. I was warming up for another patronizing "let's settle down" reply, when the attendant came on and said that because "weather in Beijing is bad"  (literally "天气在北京不好") we were indeed headed for Tianjin.

From an aviation point of view, what happened after that was more or less normal. The plane landed in Tianjin, maybe 75 miles from Beijing, the standard diversion site in situations like these. I had dreaded the idea of everyone being offloaded there and bused back to Beijing, along a notoriously jam-packed and dangerous road. Instead, periodically the attendants and then the captain came on the radio to say that we were going to wait things out and eventually fly back.

The interesting part was the passenger reaction.

Continue reading "Back to Beijing #2 (better news, Air China dept)" »

Back to Beijing #1 (not so good news)

Back to the capital very late last night, after a week in Yunnan and Guangdong, under strange circumstances to be discussed in a minute. This morning my wife says, "You know, my lungs feel a little funny here again." We look out the window. Nothing that unusual:



Then, unwisely, I look at the real-time Twitter feed of the most dangerous sort of particulate pollution in Beijing, as mentioned here earlier.


Hmmm. A reading just now of 451, "hazardous," and the US range doesn't even extend above 300.... (Update: an hour later, noon local time, it's up to 453. And now, two hours later, it's down to 276, "very unhealthy." All right! And three hours later it's 76, "moderate"! Weird. But I can go to the gym.) Oh well, time to get to the better-news posting that will follow.

For context: sample sky from Yunnan. A week of this has apparently gotten us out of condition for life in the big city.

Local press: interview in The Beijinger

For the record, transcript here of long interview conducted by recent Harvard graduate Jennifer Ying Lan, for The Beijinger. Questions terse and clearly phrased! Answers, as transcribed verbatim... not so much. Includes only extant snapshot of my bus ride through Xinjiang with 50 retirees from Nanjing Steel plus my wife. Those were the days.

King Air pilot-passenger landing: yet more tape, yet more heroism all around

Via the Naples News in Florida, this update on the first 14 minutes of transmissions between Douglas White, the low-time single-engine pilot who found himself in control of a twin-engine King Air whose pilot had just died, and the controllers who talked him safely to the ground.

The segment released last week covered the final minutes of the flight, when White brought the plane in for a safe landing. These preceding minutes are if anything more dramatic. They open with White's desperate "emergency" call and also include the coordinating actions between Miami and Ft. Myers controllers to try to get White the information he needed. (Last week's audio is here, in a full 21-minute version that includes dead-air time with no transmissions; the new portion is here.) As the Naples News story says about the team effort recorded in this new tape:

Miami air traffic controller, Lisa Grimm, a commercial-rated pilot with multi-engine ratings, scrambled to coordinate the emergency with the Fort Myers TRACON (Terminal Radar Approach Control) and with the other controllers at the Miami air traffic control center...

Fort Myers air traffic controllers Brian Norton and Dan Favio took over for Grimm, when White's plain reentered Fort Myers TRACON airspace...

Favio then contacted friend and King Air pilot Kari Sorenson in Connecticut, to help relay the necessary procedure information to White, so he could land the plane.

That was the hardest part of the ordeal, according to FAA officials, because the information transfer needed to occur by relaying the information among four people

The full sequence of recordings make clear the calm, inventive, above-and-beyond, and yes heroic efforts of everyone involved in the process, notably including the controllers. It is too bad the tapes were released separately because they are part of one narrative and emotional whole. Some of the events and tone in the final-approach tape seem quite different in light of what came before.

For instance, the amazing sangfroid of White as he brought the plane to a landing is a credit both to him and to the reassurances and detailed instructions he had received in the newly-released tape. The surreally calm and casual tone of the final-approach controller also seems to follow naturally from the initial segment and be exactly right in the circumstances. Air traffic controllers are not, as a rule, themselves pilots, and talking an inexperienced pilot down to the ground is something they are not trained to or expected to do. That they accomplished it in this case is a credit to everyone involved -- White and all the controllers. Any pilot who got in trouble would thank heaven for this kind of help.

JG Ballard in Shanghai

J.G. Ballard's death this past weekend is sad news for many reasons, among them that the most lasting image he will have left of himself was as a child. I was never that interested in his bleak, "Ballardian" speculative fiction, but Empire of the Sun, based on his life as a boy captive of the Japanese in Shanghai, was a beautiful and heartbreaking book, converted by Steven Spielberg into an appropriately beautiful movie.

I read the book just before my first visit to Shanghai in 1986, and saw the movie the following year after another trip to the city. In those days the foreign "concession" mansions of Shanghai, in which expat families like the Ballards had lived before the Japanese arrived in 1937, were mainly derelict. Some stood vacant; some were occupied by numerous families, one per room; some had been converted to Party or government offices. Now, two decades later, some have been razed to make way for apartments or office blocks, some have been spiffed up and gentrified into high-rent lodging, some have been converted into shops or restaurants.

In the 1980s my wife and I were not able to figure out which house had been Ballard's -- nor the one where Nien Cheng lived during the Cultural Revolution horrors described in Life and Death in Shanghai. But we know now, thanks to a tour guided by Shanghai history expert Patrick Cranley, that Ballard's childhood home at 31A Amherst Avenue has reappeared, on Pan Yu Road, as the fancy "SH 508 Restaurant." This is how it looked, inside and out, last month (note high-rise in the background, on site of former mansion):




The attic where he played as a boy, now a private dining room:

Torture from Afar

Since the time the torture memoranda were released last week, I've been in parts of rural China where most people would have a hard time naming the current US president, let alone expressing a view about how he should handle those who endorsed a policy of torture or who carried it out. Now that I'm returning to big-city China, I see that the memoranda are inside-page news in the region's papers. This is so even in Hong Kong, where the editors can judge it on normal "news" grounds and not with whatever complications go into mainland Chinese reporting of the issue.
 
Nonetheless I contend that a full process of American self-examination and accountability will make a tremendous long-term difference in international views of the United States. Even among those who at the moment don't know that there is any controversy going on within the United States.
 
For as annoyed as foreigners may get with America and Americans, there have been two saving graces in the world's opinions of our country. One has been its permeability. Anywhere you go, someone has an uncle or cousin in America. The other, less openly stated, has been a  belief that at some point there are rules in America. Long periods may pass when the rules are ignored. Big boys may bend the rules in their favor. Some offenses are never made right. And so on. But in the end, the American system is supposed to recognize injustice and respond -- including with public accountability for even the mightiest figures. It has this in common with the British and some other systems -- which is what Gandhi relied on in knowing he could "shame" the Brits. For all the increases in liberty within China over the last generation, this is a striking difference with the world's currently-rising power. No one expects China's current leadership to conduct a "truth commission" about the Cultural Revolution or Tiananmen. But people finally expect America to apply its own rules, even against its own people. Fulfilling that expectation is not sufficient for restoring America's image international standing. But it is necessary.
 
So even though most of the world's population has no idea of what is in the torture memos or of what will happen because of them, in the long run the Administration's decisions will have a significant worldwide effect. Being true to the world's idea of America does not (in my opinion) crucially turn on prosecuting individual CIA or military interrogators. Instead it depends on full clarifying disclosure of the reasoning that led to these practices -- thus, maximum disclosure of the memos -- and full examination of the decisions that public officials made.
 
At this point I don't think it's sensible to talk about legal sanctions for Administration officials from George W. Bush on down. But the historical record of what he approved, and what Dick Cheney recommended, what David Addington egged on, and what John Yoo and (sitting Federal Judge) Jay Bybee and others rationalized, should be established in unambiguous detail. For this, some American version of a "Truth Commission" is probably the best solution. Many other countries would not bother. America -- to be true to itself -- must. This will matter in the world's eyes. More important, it  will matter to us.

Controllers speak on the King Air landing

I know this is not the major news story of the day. But it is what I find now jamming my email inbox, on reconnecting from the frontier of China, so I will note it for the record.

I have always liked, admired, relied on, gotten along with, and been a supporter of air traffic controllers. In the recent passenger-pilot landing mentioned here and here, I first noted that "the calm of all involved is incredible" and then, in a second installment, that the controller involved "was faultlessly calm, supportive, and reassuring, and for that he deserves great praise." I also quoted emails from two pilots about what they noticed in the exchange, including info that they as pilots would have expected to get.

I have received a very large number of responses from controllers who were anything but faultlessly calm. The majority of them take the quoted remarks as an outright slam on the controller, which was not at all the intent. One recurrent theme was: Well, asshole, I'd like to see how you'd have done under pressure! As I've made clear each time, I could hardly imagine handling things as well as the man who landed the plane, Douglas White. As for the controller: I respect people who do this job, and his calm played a very important part in this happy outcome. During probably the worst experience I've had aloft, which involved a thunderstorm over upstate New York a decade ago, the controllers from the Fort Drum site were an enormous practical and psychological help. As I called their supervisor to say, with gratitude, after I landed.

Fortunately one extensive email did arrive from a senior controller who is in print the way I assume him to be in the control room: calm, systematic, etc.  His name is Paul Cox, of the FAA Follies site. He is based in Seattle and stresses that while he is speaking as a controller he most definitely not speaking for the FAA. This is the approach I've always respected from controllers. (You other guys, read and learn!) His comments below. Let me say, again, everyone involved performed very well -- in the controller's case, through the combo of projecting an air of perfect cool and finding a King Air pilot to ask questions of. In addition, the pilot performed almost miraculously. Over now to Paul Cox, who says:
 

Read your recent blog entries about the incident in Florida, and a few of the comments you published deserve some info. [Very long dispatch after the jump, but full of interesting details.]

Continue reading "Controllers speak on the King Air landing" »

Harmonic convergence, Yunnan tea style

On this day, April 16, in Atlantic web-land:
 - Ezekiel Emanuel announces that Yunnan tea is his new favorite drink;
 - Corby Kummer agrees;
 - Andrew Sullivan takes note; and
 - I wake up before dawn for a flight to Yunnan itself (time zones being what they are, it's already April 17 here).  We're a tight-knit team; we all do our part. I'll look for some tea.

More on Robert Gates's rationale

I mentioned last week Robert Gates's remarkably lucid argument for why the Air Force should stop most future purchases of the wonderful-if-we-could-afford-it-but-we-can't F-22 fighter plane.

Yesterday, he went to the Air War College, at Maxwell AFB in Alabama, to lay out the rationale for thinking about the F-22 and defense planning in general. Why "go to the war colleges to discuss this topic?" Gates asked rhetorically in the speech. Because "these recommendations are less about budget numbers than they are about how the U.S. military thinks about and prepares for the future."

If you're interested in such thinking and preparation, the speech is very much worth reading. It includes passages like the following, which to put it mildly are not what we've mainly heard from Secretaries of Defense over the decades (emphasis added):  

Another important thing I looked at was whether modernization programs, in particular ground modernization programs, had incorporated the operational and combat experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan. The problem with the Army's Future Combat Systems vehicles was that a program designed nine years ago did not adequately reflect the lessons of close-quarter combat and improvised explosive devices that have taken a fearsome toll on our troops and their vehicles in Iraq, and now in Afghanistan.
 
Finally, I concluded we need to shift away from the 99 percent "exquisite" service-centric platforms that are so costly and complex that they take forever to build and only then in very limited quantities.  With the pace of technological and geopolitical change, and the range of possible contingencies, we must look more to the 80 percent multi-service solution that can be produced on time, on budget, and in significant numbers. As Stalin once said, "Quantity has a quality all of its own."

Does this mean that everything Gates proposes is right, that the defense budget has been pared to the essentials, and that all systemic problems have been solved? Of course not. The best single starting point for the necessary ongoing critique is the venerable "Defense and the National Interest" site here, or the book America's Defense Meltdown which I have so often touted, now on sale here.

But Gates in this speech (and some previous ones) does the very things I found admirable in Barack Obama's recent long-form economic presentation. He treats the audience like adults, he fairly presents opposing viewpoints, and he explains why he nonetheless considers the path he's on the most sensible one. All in all, he sounds like a man who makes his own decisions on the basis of evidence and logic -- and who presents issues as if he expects the public to do the same. That's worth noticing.

Update: For an extensive (and very supportive) parsing of the intellectual and argumentative structure of Obama's economic speech, see this entry at XPostFactoid.

Another view of the impressive passenger-pilot landing

From Dave Kammeyer, a pilot-reader who was more impressed by the pilot-hero in this recent case than with the much-celebrated air traffic controller.

I heard the audio of the King Air pilot the other day, and found it very interesting.  You didn't mention it in your post, but frankly, when I imagined what would happen in a similar situation, I thought that the controller would be a lot more helpful.

It was like pulling teeth just to get a proper approach speed from the controller.  As a pilot of little single engine aircraft myself, I was imagining the information I would need to get the plane on the ground, and things that I would want from the controller would be:

1. Flap and gear deployment speeds, which eventually were provided 2. The appropriate flap settings 3. The appropriate power setting for approach, which was never provided 4. How to operate the various controls, which the pilot figured out without any help from the controller

When I read the press accounts of the incident, they were really just NATCA [air traffic controllers' union] press releases, which heaped huge praise on the controller, who kept his cool, but failed to provide timely critical information.  In this case I think that basically all of the credit belongs to the pilot, who figured out how to make an adequate approach without much help.

Imagining the situation where a non-pilot passenger was forced to take control in the same situation, I don't think that this controller could have gotten them on the ground.  I don't understand why they didn't patch a King Air pilot onto the radio directly...

I will admit that some of the same thoughts occurred to me when listening. The controller was faultlessly calm, supportive, and reassuring, and for that he deserves great praise. But the real above-and-beyond performance here was by Douglas White, who suddenly was in charge of a high-powered twin-engine plane with a dead man slumped across the controls to his left. If Tom Wolfe were re-writing the intro to The Right Stuff, which so memorably begins with evocation of the slow, confident drawl of airline pilots who can't be ruffled by anything, he could do worse than to recreate this recording of a man landing an airplane he had never flown before, while returning from his brother's funeral, with his loved ones aboard.


Update: Jorge Guajardo, a pilot-friend who in his day job is Mexico's Ambassador in Beijing,  notices one other intriguing element of the recording.

Continue reading "Another view of the impressive passenger-pilot landing" »

China v. Japan: the packed-train factor

Superficially Japan and China are similar; in nuance and operating details they're generally opposites, as illustrated previously here. Kathy Kriger, whom I knew in Tokyo twenty years ago and who now lives in Casablanca (where she runs, no joke, Rick's Cafe), reminds me about an important difference: What happens inside a packed train.

Japan's subways are flat-out more intensely crowded than anything I've seen in China. In Tokyo, uniformed and white-gloved "packers" are normal. The Beijing and Shanghai subways are merely "self-packed," with people crowding their way in but without that extra ratchet-up of density that only trained, professional packers can provide. In Tokyo I lived through the scene below more often than I want to recall. (Photo from Encarta.)



Clearest sign that the photo was taken in Japan rather than China: Not the packers but the next car-load of passengers, waiting punctiliously in line!

As I recently mentioned, a very-crowded Beijing subway provides the opportunity for petty theft. In Japan, it's more like petty... petting.  Kriger says:

That brought back a flood of memories from Tokyo's train and subway commutes.  My most vivid were from when I lived a year in Yokohama and commuted into Tokyo first on the JNR Negishi-sen, the blue train.  The worst was the morning, crammed in and unable to move - invariably forced  to look over the shoulder of a guy immersed in a porno comic book.  When it got too much I got out and boarded the next train.  But robbery was never a problem, ever. 

My favorite story was forgetting my purse on the upper rack exiting in Yokohama from the Yokosuka line enroute to Yokosuka - the end of the line - and going there the next morning to retrieve my handbag and sign a form verifying that everything was still there. 

We women didn't fear the pick pocketers so much as those who rode the trains to take advantage of the crowded conditions to let their hands wander.  I think it might have been Jean Pearce [a local writer] who recounted a story when an outraged American woman, accosted on a crowded subway, grabbed the offending hand, raised it and said in Japanese, "Whose hand is this?

Seatmates on a plane: Iraq report

From a long-time friend of mine, a report of his latest domestic airline flight:

Flew from XXX to XXX seated next to a career Army sgt headed to Iraq after R&R on 3rd tour.  Fascinating conversation - and I realized that being seated next to Iraq-bound or -returning soldiers is commonplace on domestic air travel these days...

Gratifying to me was his saying that the troops really do feel appreciated and supported by the public, and can distinguish criticism of the war from criticism of the men and women in uniform (unlike in Vietnam days).  None of the rest was gratifying at all:

•    Surge has "worked" because Iraqis who just want to start killing one another again are biding their time.  Après nous, le deluge.
•    No one could comprehend the waste of money in US expenditures in Iraq.  
•    IEDs have become infinitely more sophisticated, very high tech now, and can penetrate all but one type of US vehicle.  Suicide bombers can penetrate anything they want.
•    When an IED blows up a vehicle in a convoy, and you are two vehicles away in the same convoy, the force of the explosion is so violent you are thrown against the interior of your vehicle, you are temporarily deafened, etc.
•    Troop morale is high because they sense they are going home, most of them.  But there is no way US can be out in five years or even ten without leaving too much equipment behind.
•    Although troop morale is high, they universally hate George W. Bush now.
•    Afghanistan is much more difficult than Iraq just on the basis of terrain alone.  What we have in the way of tools and weapons is far better suited to Iraq than to Afghanistan.

It was poignant his describing the "huge" increases in pay resulting from Stop-Loss, plus Congress's efforts to help:  $500 a month.  To him, this is a really big sum, "on top of the extra $1000 per month we already get for being in combat."

Somehow additionally poignant on income tax day.

Dramatic listening: passenger-pilot landing the plane

For real-life drama fans, the air traffic control tapes of Douglas White being talked through the landing of a King Air airplane, after the professional pilot dropped dead at the controls, are riveting and, to put it mildly, admirable. An AOPA Online interview with White, including links to the recording plus the picture below, is here. The recording itself is here.

As news stories pointed out, White had a pilot's certificate but had done his limited amount of flying in an entirely different kind of airplane -- with one engine rather than the King Air's two, with different avionics and control systems, with much slower operating speeds. Plus, he had flown previously from the left seat -- the normal seat for the pilot -- rather than the right ("shotgun"), where he happened to be sitting when the pilot died.

In one sense landing any kind of airplane is the same, in that you're gradually slowing the aircraft as it comes closer to the ground. The most crucial information, which varies by model of plane, is the right speeds for the different stages of the approach. The speed at which you should initially descend. The speed below which you can safely lower the landing gear and the first "notch" of flaps. The speed at which you can fully extend the flaps. The "final approach" speed as you're bringing the airplane right down to the ground. The stalling speed, which you  must always keep the plane above so that it doesn't just fall. In the recording, this info is what White keeps asking of the controller -- about an airplane whose basic up/down fast/slow right/left controls he understands but whose speeds he doesn't know.

The calm of all involved is incredible. All the more so after the emotional relief/breakdown you briefly hear from the pilot after he and his family are safely on the ground.

An impressive piece of explanation

An American president can't expect a large real-time audience for an hour-long, policy-dense speech delivered in the middle of the work day. But the timing of his speech at Georgetown University just now was fine for me, around midnight in Beijing, and for the moment these real-time thoughts.

What I liked about the speech:
 
- Obama crafted the message with an intellectual thoroughness and emotional steadiness that I think will impress its real audience: not the students sitting at Georgetown or those like me watching live, but the politicians, financiers, and members of the commentariat who will read the text and respond after a little while. He showed he was aware of criticisms and was willing to state them in recognizable form before offering his rebuttal. (Think of the contrast of GW Bush or Cheney acknowledging criticism of their strategy and world view. Or even Richard Nixon.)

Eg: People say this plan is too jumbled. In fact, here is how the pieces fit together. People say we're spending like crazy. In fact, here's why we can't cut government spending just now, while consumers and businesses are cutting too -- but why we have to cut in the longer term. People say that we're coddling the banks. In fact, here is what we don't like about what banks have done but why they're necessary to a recovery. It is SO easy in political rhetoric to assume that the audience is dumb and that you can burlesque the other side's argument. Nixon, in fact, was great at this. ("There are those who say we should cut and run...") I didn't see Obama doing this once.

- He used analogies that were homely, accessible, and clarifying without being patronizing. Eg, "Just as a cash-strapped family may cut back on luxuries but will insist on spending money to get their children through college, so we as a country have to make current choices with an eye on the future.  If we don't invest now in renewable energy or a skilled workforce or a more affordable health care system, this economy simply won't grow at the pace it needs to in two or five or ten years down the road." These are harder to come up with than they seem.

- Pushing just hard enough with a vivid metaphor, that of building on a rock. Viz:

There is a parable at the end of the Sermon on the Mount that tells
the story of two men.  The first built his house on a pile of sand,
and it was destroyed as soon as the storm hit.  But the second is
known as the wise man, for when "...the rain descended, and the floods
came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house...it fell not:  for
it was founded upon a rock."

We cannot rebuild this economy on the same pile of sand.  We must
build our house upon a rock.  We must lay a new foundation for growth
and prosperity - a foundation that will move us from an era of borrow
and spend to one where we save and invest; where we consume less at
home and send more exports abroad.

What I wasn't so crazy about: personal tics (of my own) in both cases.

- Maybe it's only veterans of the Carter Administration who remember this, but "new foundations," a leitmotif of this speech, was also the motto of one of Carter's State of the Union addresses 30 years ago. The phrase didn't catch on then. Or maybe it's been three decades in gestation.

- Obama has apparently decided to embrace, as an affirmative policy rather than an ad-libbed nervous tic, ending his big speeches with "God Bless the United States of America." It's there in the prepared text, not thrown in on scene. Oh well. Every speech has its shortcomings.

But on the whole, a quite impressive job. No matter your view of his policies before this speech - hostile, lukewarm, enthusiastic -- reasonable people would have to be moved an increment toward a more positive view by the speech.*

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* Oddly, the speech text itself seems not yet to be available on the WhiteHouse.gov site. (When they come up with it, it will be here.) Instead, again oddly, there is a blog item about the speech, with some excerpts. Come on guys, this is Gov 1.0-era thinking.  UPDATE: The as-delivered transcription of the speech is now online here, for some reason classified under "Remarks" rather than "Speeches."

Update 2: A reader reminds me that Jimmy Carter was far from the first to talk about "new foundations." Eg:

No more tradition's chains shall bind us,
Arise you slaves, no more in thrall!
The earth shall rise on new foundations

From the Internationale. Daniel Patrick Moynihan made that point about Carter's speech soon after it was delivered.

Update 3: Ah, how the mists of time cloud these things!  The Internationale rhapsodized about new foundations, while Jimmy Carter spoke movingly about a new foundation. Thanks to my former Carter collaborator (and successor) Rick Hertzberg.

The new Nigeria

What is it with the Russians?  Below, from a recent trip through the spam filter on my Atlantic email account. My Gmail spam filter doesn't show any of this -- I imagine because they have already worked out more sophisticated multi-language anti-spam tools. (Click on the image for more detailed view. And here for earlier Russian spam.):


Now, if only they'd be considerate enough to send the spam in Chinese, so I could read the subject lines. No larger point here, but it is odd.

More on weirdo language school ads (updated)

Following this from yesterday.

From reader Sherry S in Paris: Posters there show ads similar to Wall Street English (with the tongue, reminder below).


From numerous readers in Japan: Ubiquitous posters there for the GABA language school very similar to the English First ads in China (bondage theme). GABA below, EF reminder under that.

   


From numerous professional and amateur semiologists: generally worried comments about what the imagery of these ads says about the stereotyped relationships between Asian women and Western men. I'm not going near that for the moment. But here is a reminder that the target audience for these ads is in fact young Asian people, largely women. I look forward to dissertations on this topic -- and on the subtle but clear difference in affect between the Westerners shown in the Chinese vs the Japanese tied/chained-together ads.  Thanks to, among others, Landon Thorpe and Jed Schmidt, and to this "Eikawa Wonderland" site for the GABA pic.

UPDATE: below and after the jump, testimony from a former English teacher in Japan about why the lashed-together imagery of the ad was shrewd target marketing:

I worked in Japan a few years ago for the now defunct Nova Corp, and Nova had an extremely strict non-fraternization policy, which was a key selling point. Nervous moms would sign their daughter up, safe in the knowledge that the wouldn't have to worry about little gaijin [foreign] babies a year down the line.

Continue reading "More on weirdo language school ads (updated)" »

Now this doesn't make me feel all that great....

As mentioned recently, the skies have been ocher in Beijing these last few days. Thanks to a tech source I've recently discovered, I now know that the conditions are actually way more dangerous than I thought. Gee, great.

The official Chinese government air pollution readings, found most conveniently in the right hand column here, give daily average air-quality info for many big Chinese cities. The main pollutant measured in these figures is -- to the best of my understanding -- "PM 10," which covers relatively "large" particulate matter. These are particles of up to 10 micrometers in diameter, including some large enough to darken the air and what would normally be called "dust."

What the Chinese authorities don't seem to report routinely is PM2.5. These are very fine particles, of up to 2.5 microns in diameter, which may not darken the air but are more dangerous to the lungs, precisely because they don't get filtered out in the nose or throat and instead get down deep into the alveoli. The US EPA does feature PM2.5 in its particulate measures of US air quality -- for instance, the real-time map here.

None of this is new, including the PM10 / PM2.5 omission in Chinese monitoring. What is new to me is that an unofficial monitoring station in Beijing puts out, via Twitter, hourly measures of PM2.5 readings. And after checking out the readings for earlier today I say...   gacckkk, ccougghhhhh, haccckkkk.... In the columns below we have: date and time; PM2.5 reading for that time; Air Quality Index on the US scale (321 in the first one); air quality classification on US scale; and average figures for the day.


Note that the US classification system, here, does not even allow for readings above the 300 range, which it lumps together as "hazardous." As I check the real-time map just now, virtually every reporting city in the US has an AQI reading below 50 ("good"), and one or two miscreants are around 70. The reading through most of today where I live has been above 300. Hmmmmm.

Action plan for me: I decided to skip going to the gym for a breathe-hard workout today. Action plan for US and China: no joke, working on environmental, climate, and energy matters is the most important thing that will happen during this new U.S. Administration. More on this front when I catch my breath.
__
Note: to avoid causing problems for some people inside China, I have slightly changed this posting from an earlier version. Anyone who notices the difference, please keep it to yourself.

Brilliant advertising imagery? Or.....

Two current Beijing subway ad campaigns for two well-known English schools, Wall Street English and English First. (Sorry for subway glare+reflection in both pics):

 

 Both are a little strange, but to me the first one is strange/eyecatching, whereas the second is closer to strange/creepy. The theme of the second, bondage-toned ad is having a 24-hour always on-call private English teacher. On the other hand, this campaign seems to have been running for years in subway, taxis, billboards, etc, and the English First school is a big success. So I guess it must work with the target demographic, which does not include me.

Alan Klapmeier on hope for general aviation

One of the heroes of my book Free Flight, and of this excerpted Atlantic cover story, was Alan Klapmeier, who with his brother Dale founded and ran the Cirrus Design aircraft company of Duluth, MN. Ten years ago, when I was spending time with them in a mainly-vacant hangar in Duluth, they had not delivered the first airplane to the first customer and were in promising-startup mode. Through most of the years since then, their mainstay SR-22 propeller plane has been the most popular single-engine plane in the world. More than 4,000 of them are in service in North America, Europe, South America, Australia, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and other places too. Like all airplane companies from Boeing on down, Cirrus has had to cut way back in the past year.

Manufacturing people are not always eloquent about their work and its implications. Alan Klapmeier is a dramatic exception. He is an interviewer's dream: able -- and all too willing! -- to talk for hours about why he made this decision versus that one, why he believes in his work, what his vision of the future is and how he plans to get there.

Klapmeier is still chairman but no longer CEO of Cirrus, for reasons I'd know more about if I were on scene to talk with him. But via the Cirrus owners' site I found this link to a speech he delivered recently at the Atlanta Aero Club. Index of Aero Club speeches here; direct link to video of Klapmeier's appearance here. From the video: 



People who are interested in aviation will be interested in the whole hour-plus presentation. Klapmeier talks about the real-world barriers to the expansion of general aviation; Cirrus's upcoming models including its new jet; the problem of icing in small planes; and many other topics.

People who don't care about aviation but are interested in human nature, innovation, technical progress, and the kind of advances on which future U.S. prosperity depends might want to watch at least a few minutes. I think they give exposure to an impressive person who can not only "do" but also talk engagingly about what he is doing. We're used to encountering this kind of person in. say, the biotech or software world. This is a sample from the world of producing tangible, highly-complex physical objects -- working, by the way, in the only manufacturing category (aerospace) in which the U.S. has long produced a significant trade surplus.

The first eight or nine minutes, in which he discusses why small aircraft became an oddball specialist taste, give an illustration. (Forgive the first 45 seconds, in which he is fiddling with the projector.) From about minute 20 through minute 30 he talks about the problem of icing and pilot safety. From minute 30 onward, he talks about Cirrus's new "personal jet." From minute 45 onwards, an entrepreneur's perspective of Wall Street, derivatives, etc. But right at minute 37:00 through about 43:00 you get a full view of the entrepreneur's passion that I encountered when I first met him. This may give a little taste of why I thought I had come across an interesting story after that first visit to Duluth.

Shanghai Expo and looming US embarrassment

Of course everything on the Atlantic's site is great. Or almost everything. But in case you missed it, be sure to read Adam Minter's dispatch from Shanghai about a looming potential big (and avoidable) embarrassment for the United States.

The campy mascot of next year's Shanghai World's Fair -- 海宝, Haibao, "Treasure of the Sea" -- is all over Shanghai these days, somewhat belying its self-image as suavest place in China.
 
But Haibao will wear a frown, and so will Uncle Sam, if the U.S. screws this up. Check out Adam's report for more.

I kind of like Haibao. That could be because I'm not living in Shanghai any more and so don't see him all the time. Or maybe it is because, like me, he has strong Scottish heritage.

  In a similar spirit of tasteful international goodwill, El Haibao:

Seriously, it's a consequential issue that is barely on the radar screen in America but certainly will be noticed here where a billion people live. Congrats on this story.

Happy Easter from Beijing

The view at 11 am on this springtime Sunday morning:
 

It was glorious just one week ago, and in the six+ months since the Olympic games, skies have generally been far clearer than in the previous six months. The economic slowdown / factory shutdown / decline in electricity use (and therefore combustion of coal to create power) has to have been part of the answer. Maybe this is an early sign that the Chinese economy is indeed coming back? Green shoots in an ironic brown guise? In any case joyous Easter wherever you are.

More on petty crime

Thanks to many who wrote in after my recent brush with a pickpocket gang in the Beijing Metro. Main themes that emerge:

- There's a lot of this going on in China, as in fact was predicted in the wake of recent large-scale factory and construction layoffs.

- There's always been a lot of this going on all around the world. From reader Pietro, who has lived in Europe, Africa, and North America:

There's more artistry in Africa. Once I stopped to take a look at a group of people surrounding a poor old man lying senseless on the pavement. My sadness was compounded by the feeling, seconds later, that his friends had consoled themselves with my wallet. Artsy setting, soft touch. Times have changed.

- The particular tactic I mentioned is time honored: confederates who create extra jamming and confusion in already-jammed circumstances, while the legerdemain artists do the snatching.

- Below and after the jump, an account from Charles Dukes, a Texan now of Beijing, about similar encounters.

- Legal sequelae: Within the few hours after we canceled our credit cards, someone tried to use them (and was turned down, with different cards) at what seems to be a fine-art dealership, for big ticket purchases. Nobody on that subway car particularly looked like an art hound, but who knows.

Dukes's account begins:

In the days before there was a huge highway called Xizhimenwai, there was a wonderful two lane street with bike lanes.

A friend and I got on the 360 bus to go to Xiang Shan.

Somewhere past the Beijing Zoo, I noticed a little guy standing at the stop waiting for a bus. I don't know why he caught my eye, but he did.

Continue reading "More on petty crime" »

"It could have been the Kindle..."

My wife's consoling comment the other day -- that I had lost all my credit cards and cash, but at least I still had my own Electronic Reading Device -- brings up two relevant updates. One is about the evolution of the device; the other, about the ergonomics of reading.

First, Kindle 1 versus Kindle 2. Below, a compare and contrast from the Kindle labs here at the Beijing HQ. On the right, in brown, the original, time-tested Kindle Classic, with an add-on leather cover from M-Edge. On the left, in black, the updated Kindle 2, in the standard-issue Amazon-logo'd leatherlike cover (though it doesn't come standard with the Kindle -- you have to buy it separately. I now have an even fancier add-on cover):

Continue reading ""It could have been the Kindle..."" »

Where was that subway SWAT team when I needed it?

Yesterday, in the morning rush hour, I was puzzled by the presence of three fully-tricked-out SWAT team members carrying automatic weapons at the Dongdan station on Beijing's line 1.

Today, in the afternoon rush hour, I could have used the stern hand of the law. At 5:30 pm, the eastbound line 1 between Jianguomen and Guomao was so crammed with humanity that it brought to mind the glory days of the Tokyo subway when we lived there. There is a distinct feeling of having pressure on every surface of the body that I associate mainly with rush hour Asian-capital subways. I don't particular fear it (or love it), but it's part of the sensory package of Tokyo, and of Beijing's lines 1 and 2.

Then, as the train rolled into Guomao, most of this vast throng wanted to get off, including me. All were yelling at once, including me,下车! 下车! -- xia che! xia che! (getting off! getting off!) -- and had to push through a band of young country-looking men who stood inside the car right in front of the door. I finally popped out on the other side of them, as if from a rugby scrum, reaching the platform as the car's doors were closing behind me. At that second, with human pressure suddenly removed from all sides of my body, I instantly realized that my wallet wasn't there. I was wearing a business suit, with my wallet in a place it wouldn't have left by accident. There had been a distinctly manhandled sensation in fighting through the line at the door.

A planned routine by the squadron that was forcing all debarking passengers to clambor through them? Something that had happened earlier when my arms were pinned against my side? Who knows, and there is no point in wondering. Until you've seen a thronged Chinese subway station at rush hour, with a departing train pulling out, you don't realize the futility of trying to locate a culprit.

Immediately start calling the credit card companies in the U.S. Cancel the first one, no problem. The second, a Bank of America Visa card, "And we're showing that your most recent charge was for $5.16 at a Starbucks in Beijing." "Well, no...." "Yes, it was at 6:05 am" -- "That's 6:05pm here, which was ten minutes ago..." Now if only Beijing didn't have a couple hundred Starbucks outlets, I'd be on the guy like a hawk.

A subway pickpocket who then goes to Starbucks? This is an unpredictable place. And apart from the nuisance, it could have been worse. Not my passport. Not a lot of cash. Nothing of real sentimental value (apart from my FAA pilot's certificate! And my United 1K card, earned through many bitter trips back and forth to California last year). As my wife just said, consolingly, "It could have been your Kindle!"

I remember offering her support in similar loving tones when she was knocked down and injured (but not permanently) a few months ago by a motorbike that was going full speed the wrong way down a freeway-like, eight-lane, one-way section of the major thoroughfare Jianguo Lu. Silly her: she was looking in the direction the rest of the traffic was coming from. Land of adventure.

Bomb security: Israel v China

After seeing yesterday's picture of the "Suspect Bomb Container" in the Beijing Metro (previously here), reader Alex wrote:

In Israel there are thousands of explosion containers, but they are just holes in the ground, roughly one foot deep, lined with some metallic or plastic sheet. The Hebrew name is "bor bitahon" (you'd pronounce it "Bawr Bee-tuh-HONE") literally "security hole". The logic would be that the good Earth will do the job of containing a significant proportion of the impact, with people feeling just a tremor. (A Chinese metal box could be blown to dangerous flying smithereens if the explosion is loud enough.) The Israeli version is also cheaper if you must deploy it everywhere, including schools, malls, streets, parks, etc.

Probably the other important difference is that Israel has a serious bomb threat to worry about and so can't just fool around with "security theater."

This too is puerile but pretty funny

On my tombstone it will say, "He dealt with Clippy." Ten years ago, during an (enjoyable!) six-month stint at Microsoft, I was supposed to be providing a "writer's perspective" on editing features being added to what became Word XP. These mainly involved the track-changes functions, plus embryonic hopes for what is now OneNote. In my spare time, I was inveighing against the maddening feature generally called Clippy -- or TFC* to insiders -- that would pop up and say "You seem to be writing a letter!" whenever you typed out "Dear Mr. ..."

Soon Clippy was turned Off by default (rather than On), and then it was completely deep-sixed.  We all leave a mark on the world.

I am therefore particular delighted to see the homage to the original Clippy provided by this mildly subversive new program. You install it on a "friend's" computer -- and until he or she figures out how to turn it off, it pops up every 60 seconds with Clippy-worthy tips like these:






Download site here; info, including how to turn it off, here. I loaded this onto a backup computer and was able (I think!) to stop and completely remove it when the hilarity was done. But why take a chance? Put it on someone else's computer, not your own.  Thanks to R. Manzetti.
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* TFC = The F... Clown

What is this?? (SWAT team in the subway dept)

8:10 am, April 8, Dongdan 东单 metro station in Beijing: at the exit turnstiles, three black-uniformed troops, with "SWAT" written across their backs in English, holding big, genuine automatic weapons. Considerately, they pointed their rifles at the ground.

??

 I'm used to rent-a-cop style Metro security officers; I'm used to PLA soldiers standing guard around the embassies; I'm used to various uniformed but feckless traffic-"control" agents; I'm used to policemen listening patiently as the antagonists in a fender-bender grow hoarse yelling at each other. But actual soldiers with machine guns? What is this? I thought a photo would be ill-advised.

On the other hand, and still on the security theme, Kevin Miller, of the University of Michigan, submits a photo of another of the mystery bomb-disposal containers I mentioned recently. Conveniently, his had a label in English.  

Words I never thought I'd hear from a Secretary of Defense

From Robert Gates's press briefing today on the 2010 defense budget:

It is important to remember that every defense dollar spent to over-insure against a remote or diminishing risk - or, in effect, to "run up the score" in a capability where the United States is already dominant - is a dollar not available to take care of our people, reset the force, win the wars we are in, and improve capabilities in areas where we are underinvested and potentially vulnerable.  That is a risk I will not take.

Emphasis mine; sentiments his. This has obvious bearing, as Gates made clear, on whether it is worth "running up the score" in an area of current U.S. dominance by buying more F-22s, among other systems. (Previously on the F-22 here and here.) More later on the details and implications of Gates's budget, and whether he'll be systematic in applying the rationale he has laid out. For the moment, the simple logic of his statement is worth noting. As is the sense of shock at hearing something so logical as part of a budget presentation.
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* Update: I see that Fred Kaplan is already on the case.

A good web site for difficult times

It's Lane Wallace's "No Map. No Guide. No Limits." here.

Lane is well known in the aviation world as a columnist for Flying magazine and author of books on adventure, science, exploration, and so forth. I've known her as a friend over the last decade, mainly through shared flying-and-writing interests. (As noted earlier, not that weird a combination of tastes.) Here's Lane, during some excursion, from her site:

As she has made clear in her writing over the years and in this new site, she has chosen a life of adventure partly in response to personal setbacks and losses. The premise of the site is related to Andrew Sullivan's popular "The View from Your Recession" feature: that many, many people have suddenly seen the "certainties" of their life disappear. The site is meant to discuss the ramifications of and best responses to this fact. And her relatively brief book "Surviving Uncertainty," available as a free .PDF download from the site, talks in detail about how to cope with situations in which you are plunged into the unknown. She uses illustrations from flying and mountain climbing to derive principles that would apply to, say, being laid off or losing a loved one. Worth checking out.

Write your own caption dept

From the main-floor display room at the Chinese Military Museum in Beijing this weekend. More on this fascinating venue shortly.

For the record: three book reviews

I am grateful for, and note for the record, three recent and positive reviews of my Postcards from Tomorrow Square.

Here, by Sam Oglesby, in the Philadelphia Bulletin (newspaper from the city of my birth);

Here, by John Pomfret, in the Washington Post (newspaper from the city where I usually live);

Here, by John Guise, in the China Economic Review (magazine from the country where I'm living now).

So where's the Redlands Daily Facts? Newspaper from the city of my childhood. But I digress.

The nature of the book-writing life is often to grind your teeth about the insights and sublime subtleties of your argument that brutish (or biased!) reviewers have somehow missed. In these cases I feel fortunate in reviewers who saw and explained exactly the points I was trying to make. Also, these writers are Genuine China Hands -- including Pomfret, whose Chinese Lessons is a genuinely important book. Now, back to work.

Paradise Beijing, springtime edition

Nicest day in months -- clear skies, temperature in the low 70s, glorious Sunday of a holiday weekend, forsythia and cherry trees breaking into bloom. Everyone turns out to enjoy it, which means a lot of people.

A subset of everyone walking across a bridge toward the cherry blossom grove in Yuyuantan Park, near the Military Museum on the west side of town:


Smaller subset of everyone, under the cherry trees:


Pedal boats and row boats on the park's lake (click for larger):


Thrill-ride speedboats on the nearby canal:


It's actually not all work all the time in China. Autumn 2008 edition of Paradise Beijing here.

Mea culpa

Here's the difference between writing on a web site and writing for a monthly magazine, as I usually do, or in books: on a web site the crucial "hmmm, did I really mean to say that?" delay cycle has less chance of guarding you against something you didn't really mean to say. (Yes, I know, in the hands of genuine bloggers this is part of the medium's spontaneous charm.)

On reflection, I really did mean to say that Barack Obama's top-of-his-head answer to the "Do you believe in American exceptionalism?" question was extraordinary in its combination of comprehensiveness and concision. As argued here and here. But I've been convinced by the person who posed the question (plus the Yank journalist who recommended that he ask it) that there was no lost-Empire hauteur intended in it. So I didn't really mean to make that cheap joke, and I'm sorry that I did -- and apologize to the man in question, Edward Luce.

Think how many more of these excesses our magazine would contain if it were published every hour rather than every month!

That tricky old language barrier (China, Tibet, and France)

As I so often say, my favorite newspaper is the (state-controlled) China Daily. It's possible that the French ambassador in Beijing, Herve Ladsous, now has a different view.

Ladsous was the star of yesterday's newspaper, thanks to his observation in a China Daily interview that Tibet had been a "slave society" before the arrival of Mao's liberators 60 years ago. Below, the lead story on the front page, and the lead paragraphs in that story:

The front page:


The story:


The man himself, as shown in the China Daily:


Such observations would be heartily welcomed by officials and many citizens in China. That Tibetans lived as slaves under the lamas is one of the Three Unappreciated Truths about Tibet, as propounded by the Chinese government and endorsed by most of the public. The other two: that Tibet has since ancient times been an acknowledged and inseparable part of China; and that the Dalai Lama, despite having gulled naive foreigners into thinking him a "spiritual" figure, is actually a cunning "splittist" bent on breaking up the Chinese state.

Was this simply...what is the mot juste? Oh, yes, kow-towing by the government of France, in awareness of how many fences it has to mend in China? The complaints on the Chinese side are numerous but mainly seem to involve Tibet (eg, protests in Paris against the Olympic torch relay, mainly about Tibet; Sarkozy's initial claim that he would boycott the Olympics, and his recent meeting with the "splittist" leader). Carrefour, Airbus, and other big French names have felt the heat of Chinese popular ill will.

So perhaps the French representative had gotten the signal to truckle make nice? I wondered when I saw the story -- and also saw no related item at the sites of Le Monde or Figaro, nor at Agence France-Presse. But it appears -- zut! -- that it was all a misunderstanding, accidental or otherwise. Just now, France-Info has posted an item in which the Ambassador says that the story "did not reflect the tone of the interview" and that "this was not the first time that China Daily" has misrepresented a discussion. I will try to deal with the disillusionment.

More on Obama, exceptionalism, and impromptu speaking

The transcript of the NATO press conference I mentioned a few hours ago is now available here, via CQ Politics. For some reason, I don't see the transcript at the official WhiteHouse.Gov site, though a blog item about the conference is here. Ie, if the transcript is there, at the site run by this famously tech-hip White House staff, it is not in an immediately obvious location, like via a link from the aforementioned blog entry, nor does it come up on a "NATO press conference" search of the site.

After the jump, the text of what Obama actually said when asked about "American exceptionalism." To my relief, it more or less resembles the way I characterized it from memory! On re-reading, I'm more impressed by how terse it is -- and, as mentioned earlier, how hard it would be to improve on it in the same space, especially in real time.

Also after the jump, two other excerpts, prompted by this comment from reader Edward Goldstick:

I think two other moments were even more 'remarkable' than the one that caught your attention (though it is, too):
 
1) In response to the provocative Major [Garrett] of Fox News who asked about Afghan laws that supposedly endorsed spousal rape and other dubious practices, I found that Obama walked confidently between the moral imperatives that the questioner presented so blithely and the primacy of the post 9/11 mission and the complex and uncomfortable realities in which the United States and NATO are currently operating.
 
2) Perhaps it was a setup, but I thought the question to the audience about US journalists getting questions from the other heads of state was a sly move... though I won't hide my lack of surprise (nor my glee) when he used Sarko as a target.

On #2, the context of which will be apparent in the excerpt, what I noticed was his light use of the term "Sarkozy" -- not "President Sarkozy" -- which had the same cheeky effect as the reference to "the Brits." Details below.
___
 

Continue reading "More on Obama, exceptionalism, and impromptu speaking" »

This is puerile, but it made me laugh

Just catching up with the April 1 story in the English-language Taipei Times, about the shocking revelation that Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan, the two pandas mainland China had sent to Taiwan as a good-will gesture, were actually fakes. Clip from story below.

 

Obama on exceptionalism

It's after midnight in China, but I wanted to mention in real time an oratorical performance that deserves a second look. It's from Barack Obama's NATO press conference that just wrapped up, and the part worth studying is the two or three minutes that followed a question by Edward Luce of the Financial Times.

I have nothing against Luce, who wrote a very good recent book about India, but here he asked in what can only be called plummy tones whether Obama still clung to the idea of "American exceptionalism." The general phrasing of the question held that idea out at arm's length as a kind of yahoo colonial oddity.

"I believe in American exceptionalism," Obama said after one beat for thought. "Just as the Brits believe in British exceptionalism, and the Greeks in Greek exceptionalism..." I don't have a transcript here, but what was impressive was how rapidly he seemed to have figured out the full shape of his answer; how effortlessly the term "the Brits" (and the instant pairing with "the Greeks") offset the seeming Oxbridge hauteur* of the question; and how he went on to give so balanced a response that no one, Yank or otherwise, could fail to be satisfied.

Of course he was proud of his country, Obama said. But it was also objectively exceptional in several ways: it still had the world's largest economy; its military power was unmatched; and -- with emphasis here -- its Constitutional principles enshrined values and ideals that truly were exceptional. Therefore it should be proud of its role in the world, and embrace its responsibilities.

Then came the pivot, introduced as usual with the word "Now..." Of course America's strength didn't mean it could do things wholly on its own. And of course Obama's pride in his country didn't blind him to the fact that it sometimes could be wrong, nor to the idea that other people from other countries had good ideas that had to be heeded. Indeed, the very fact of American leadership made it all the more important to show respect and listen attentively. He wrapped it all up by saying he saw "no contradiction" between the idea that America was exceptionally strong and had an exceptional leadership role, and the reality that it needed to work with others as part of a team.

When a transcript or YouTube clip comes out, give it a look. The thoughts may seem banal, but I challenge anyone to come up with a clearer explanation of American exceptionalism to an international audience in the same number of words -- not to mention doing so on live TV with maybe five seconds to figure out what your answer will be. In a world where evidence mattered, these few minutes would put an end to the "can't talk without a teleprompter" madness. More important, they're a way of explaining to Americans the potential and limits of our international role.

And, yes, Obama did end the press conference by ducking a question about Kosovo. But knowing what not to answer is a part of rhetorical effectiveness too. Update: He also appeared to refer to the language of Austria as "Austrian," thus: "I don't know how you say it in Austrian, but we call it wheeling-dealing." If this had been GW Bush, it would have been taken as an obvious gaffe, as in his calling the residents of Greece "Grecians." Here you can't be sure whether it's a plain error or a knowing casualism, as in saying that Australians speak "Australian" -- eg, in the ad that says, "Foster's: Australian for 'beer.' "

* UPDATE #2: The questioner has convinced me that he didn't really mean it that way. See this mea culpa.

I admit that this creeps me out a little (Lou Pai + search engine dept)

In several previous items (here and here, with other links), I mentioned a half-mocking quest for the current whereabouts of Lou Pai, the Enron official who got out of the company just before the deluge with more money than anyone else. Various newspaper stories and official documents periodically appear to mark his on-the-record activities: the $31.5 million fee and settlement with the SEC, his purchase and eventual sale of a Colorado mountain, etc.

Recently a reader sent me links to a set of candid, casual pictures of a family that appears to be Pai's. He, his wife, and a daughter (or so it appears) are happily engaged in recreational and charitable activities, in depictions from a community web site. Here, as evidence, is a thumbnail of Pai himself which I have cropped from a larger picture with his wife, their child, and a pet.

I'm not including any more clues or info about where this was found, and I don't think it was the reader's intention that I should. The creepy part is not about Pai himself -- this all started with my idle curiosity about why he was so much less well known than Skilling, Fastow, et al when he'd done so much better out of Enron. Instead it is the reminder of how many intimate views are available, through the simplest search tools, even about people who've gone to considerable lengths to shield themselves from public view. If you come across the family details I'm talking about, you'll see what I mean. And reflect about the traces we're all leaving behind.

Good tech news: SugarSync for BlackBerry

The Sharpcast company of San Mateo, Ca., maker of the invaluable SugarSync backup-and-sync utility, has recently announced that its system will work on BlackBerrys, in addition to today's coverage of Macs, PCs, and some mobile devices. Here's why I think this is great news.

I mentioned recently that I have come to rely completely on Google's calendar sync tools because of their "never have to worry about it" effect. When I want to add, delete, or change an appointment, I never have to worry about whether I'm entering the info into my Outlook calendar,  Google's online calendar, or my BlackBerry. The sync tools make sure that info entered any one place shows up in the other two -- so far, unerringly.

As I thought about it, I realized that there are three other utilities I esteem because of the same "never have to worry about it" quality:

- The PC indexer X1. I never have to worry about where I've stored a file or piece of email, because I know that X1 will be able to find it. (As mentioned before, the program sometimes hangs but has never lost data.)

- VMWare's Fusion program. I never have to worry about whether a program I like is for Macs or PCs, because I know that with Fusion I can run either kind (plus Linux etc) on an Intel-based Mac. Sometimes Windows programs can slow down when run with Fusion on the underpowered (though elegant!) MacBook Air. But overall Fusion works so well that I simply never have to think about the Mac/Windows difference.

- And SugarSync (earlier mentions here and here). I never have to worry about copying files from desktop to laptop before I take a trip or or wonder where I've stashed the latest version of something I'm working on. I know that when I change a file on one computer, SugarSync will copy it to the others. There are a few files that can stump it (namely Outlook .PSTs, a subject for another day), and some friends have reported glitches with certain other file types. But I have come to rely on it entirely -- and on the fact that it's simultaneously backing up all my files, in the "cloud". And now, with the BlackBerry? According to the announcement:

The BlackBerry application is very advanced and it brings capabilities not present before in the SugarSync offering... allowing users to access and share remotely all the SugarSync data available in all of their computers. ...From the road you can easily review documents, send them to colleagues, and collaborate with them and see in real time the changes they may have made to files present in a given shared folder.

But that is not all. The BlackBerry client allows users to open and EDIT files ON the Blackberry while traveling and makes those updates quickly available for others.

 Emphasis in the original -- and the implication, of course, is that from your BlackBerry you could dig out the file you'd left at home, change part of it, and pass it on by email to someone else -- all with your poor little thumbs. Here's the company's illustration of what the file directory of your home computer looks like when accessed from the road