Below and after the jump, highlights from many interesting dispatches on the "all in one" question: whether cameras, computers, e-readers, etc will naturally converge into one multi-purpose super-device -- or whether people will continue to carry separate cameras, laptops, e-readers, and so on. This is long but is meant as a wrap-up survey of views. (Update: in fact, there are a few more items for one more installment soon.) Thanks to many readers for their thoughts.
From a reader in Vietnam:
"If your all in one device crashes, then all your devices have crashed. If your cell phone crashes, only your cell phone has crashed. If your all in one is picked out of your pocket by a thief, they are all gone..."
From a reader in the US:
"In a sense, the all-in-one debate began with the laptop. The laptop bundles processor, hard drive, screen, keyboard, mouse, microphone, speakers, and webcam, all of which are inferior to their desktop relatives. Yet, laptops are extremely popular, certainly not eliminating desktop computers, yet replacing them much more than had been expected.
"One of the significant factors in that evolution is that the limited laptop is happy to be extended into greater desktop fullness. Some of the most elaborate and delicious desktop systems out there are extensions of laptops, such that, when the room full of hardware becomes an immobilizing anchor, the user can walk away with the all-in-one that everything plugs into. That kind of extensibility is the real next step in smart phones, one that we're only getting hints at, now. Yes, we will use specialized devices to take pictures, write books, watch full large screen movies, etc., but those devices will more and more be extenders of the all-in-one devices that will always be in our pockets, allowing us to do the full range of functions in small form when their extensions, for whatever the reason are not handy."
From a reader in the US on the Kindle-v-Nook point (yes, off topic, but on point):
"The main reason I have chosen not to buy the Kindle is Amazon. I view
Amazon as a threat to something I value almost as much as books.
"If I have to choose between Amazon's device or B&N's, I will choose
the latter. I want to support a company that maintains
brick-and-mortar bookstores. These kinds of business help to make
neighborhoods lively and livable. Moreover, only in real bookstores do
I discover so many books that I never would have thought to look for.
"Whereas Amazon's business model diminishes communities, Barnes and Noble makes a neighborhood better."
National advertising campaign for the Atlantic, October, 2008:
National advertising campaign for The Australian newspaper, October, 2009 (billboard in Sydney, Circular Quay, today).
I take it as a compliment.
Ivory Coast = France = Japan, in language habits at least
In this scene from Dan Chaon's very bleak but memorable mistaken-identity novel Await Your Reply, a young American woman named Lucy goes into a hair salon in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire. The country is French speaking, and Lucy is apprehensive about communicating. She addresses an African woman in the shop:
"Excusez-moi," Lucy said stiffly. "Parlez-vous anglais?"
She was aware of how clumsy she sounded... She remembered how, back in high school French, Mme Fournier would grimace with pity as Lucy tried to bumble her way through a conversational prompt. "Oh!" Mme Fournier would say. "Ca fait mal aux oreilles!" ... The African woman nodded at her politely. "Yes, mademoiselle," she said. "I speak English."...
The woman's name was Stephanie, and she was from Ghana, she said, though she had lived in Cote d'Ivoire for many years now. "Ghana is an English-speaking country. That is my native language," Stephanie said. "So it's pleasant to speak English sometimes. That's one characteristic with the Ivoirians I don't understand. They turn to laugh at a foreigner who makes a mistake in French, so even when they know a little English, they refuse to speak. Why? Because they think the Anglophones will laugh at them in turn!"
I can't help myself, so when I read this passage, I thought not so much about French and English but about Chinese and Japanese. With allowances for obvious differences, it's useful (as I've mentioned before) to think of Japan's attitude toward its national language as being similar to France's, and China's attitude as being similar to America's.
That is: in France and Japan, the deep-down assumption is that the language is pure and difficult, that foreigners can't really learn it, and that one's attitude toward their attempts is either French hauteur or the elaborately over-polite and therefore inevitably patronizing Japanese response to even a word or two in their language. "Nihongo jouzu! Your Japanese is so good!" Correspondingly, like the Ivoirians in this novel, Japanese people (to generalize) often seem self-conscious about potential errors in English. Of course, French speakers of English are marvelously non-self-conscious, even jauntily willful, about retaining their French accents, especially the trademark "z" sound for "th." " Zees ees what I mean..." (Yes, I am aware that the fricative th phoneme is the most difficult sound in English for non-native speakers, our counterpart to r's in French.)
The American attitude towards English is: everyone should get with the program, there are a million variants and accents of the language, all that really matters is that you can somehow get your meaning across. Because there are so many versions of Chinese in use within China, my impression is that the everyday attitude of Chinese people toward language is similar: You're expected to try to learn it, no one will spend that much time mocking your mistakes, mainly they are trying to figure out what you are trying to say. Probably both the U.S. and Chinese attitudes reflect the outlook of big, continental nations that encompass lots of internal diversity -- and in America's case, absorb huge numbers of immigrants. In any case it was interesting to see what I am considering the French/Japanese outlook also depicted in Francophone Africa.
October 30, 2009
Appreciation of an appreciation (Soupy Sales dept)
Usually my theory is: if it is elsewhere on the Atlantic's web site, you've already seen it. But in case anyone missed today's wonderful appreciation by Erik Tarloff, about Soupy Sales in his prime, I hope you will check it out. It includes a seven-minute clip of one of the mid-1960s Soupy Sales programs, but Erik's description (he's a friend) does an even better job of conveying the tone, structure, and effect of the show.
This item also helped me understand, in an "OK, now that makes sense to me!" way, why my mother, who was then in her mid-30s and whose ideal afternoon would be to sit on the sofa reading Ivanhoe or some biography of Cromwell (she was in sunny Southern California but not of it), would usually join the kids to watch the Soupy Sales show when it came on. It's obvious in retrospect, but wasn't to me as a child, that it was not just a kids' show. In any case, worth reading.
Exhaustive Kindle/Nook smackdown
Below and after the jump, an extremely detailed Kindle/Nook compare and contrast from a well-informed reader, in response to this previous comment by someone on the Nook team. This is presented in the public interest for those interested in the future of e-reading. More on the "all in one device" front later today.
"1. Google Books linkup. It might be worth clarifying for your readers
that, like the Nook, the Kindle also can be used to read many
(increasingly most) books that are available in "Full" (as distinct
from Snippet or Preview) on Google Books. The only limitation is that
Google Books aren't accessible through the Amazon wireless link or
stored in the Amazon cloud -- and I haven't been able to figure out
from the Nook publicity whether that's going to be substantially
different for the Nook.
A person who was involved in Barnes & Noble's launch of the Nook sends this info about its positioning relative to the Kindle and other potential competitors. This person naturally has a bias in favor of the Nook, but this is interesting as a view onto B&N's thinking.
"Nook advantages "- More open with ePub, Android OS, and lending "- My guess is Amazon will copy lending "- In store WiFi. Users can go in stores and access lots of content from entire books to free publications. Len Riggio, founder and CEO of B&N fought to have comfortable seating in the stores and has prevailed against naysayers thought it would waste valuable space. I think you'll see even more space allotted to this. There's lots of space devoted to music that will be replaced with nook areas. "- The color touch display really brings the ease of use to ebooks much as Apple did with iPhones. "- Much larger bookstore that includes Google books "- Holding. Easier to grip with a contoured and soft touch back. Works equally well for right and left handed."
Again, this comes from an interested party, but it's worth bearing in mind as the product hits the market.
October 28, 2009
More on the "all in one device" debate
Below and after the jump, voice of the reading public on whether various electronic devices (camera, phone, e-reader, computer, what have you) will eventually converge in one super-duper device. I say No. The readers I quote here agree! And they have facts, tech specs, and so on to back up their/my case...
From a reader outside the US, on whether the coming pixel improvement in camera phones will be the magic moment when you no longer need a "real" camera:
"You probably know this, but they can cram 30 megapixels into a digital phone and it won't improve the picture quality much beyond 6 or 7MP. The hard-to-surmount-with-technology issue with tiny cameras is the width of the lens (how much light can come in). Other problems are focal length (hard to build a tiny zoom lens, although my old EX-V7 did a decent job of it) and the fact that a cellphone camera is bound to have a puny flash if any. Beyond a fairly low (well below the promised 10) threshold, adding megapixels is just a sales gimmick."
From a reader in the Midwest, on the general problem of all-in-one-ism:
"The are some obvious problems with the idea that there will eventually
be one device that is "good enough" to replace separate phones,
cameras, computers, etc.
"One is that the separate versions of these devices will continue to
improve. The pictures made with pocket cameras for example do indeed
rival the best film cameras of a few years ago. And they will get
better (and cheaper). A dedicated camera will always have more space
for a larger sensor (sensor size, not megapixels is the critical issue)
and as pocket cameras improve to the point where they can also take 720
or 1080p, 30fps video, they will maintain the performance advantages
they have over phones. And if today's consumers prefer separates, why
should they stop doing so when the performance of pocket cameras moves
from good to superb while the cost comes down?
Health-related follow up: can Asians drink? (UPDATED)
The latest installment of the Doing Business in China series talked about the ritual of drinking-to-the-point-of-drunkness in formal Chinese "business" gatherings. This doesn't always happen, but it happens enough to be a factor in professional life. In my experience, it was even more common in the provinces than in the big cities, and most likely in "getting to know you" dinners involving big delegations. Now a reader in Philadelphia writes with a question about the practice:
"I read your post on Doing Business in China, and I wondered to what extent the prevalence of alcohol in after-hours business gatherings is complicated by the alcohol flush reaction common to so many people of East Asian descent. I am an American of Chinese descent with this particular genetic variation and I find that the unpleasant side effects of alcohol consumption interfere with any desire to drink until intoxication. Given the frequency of this condition, do business people in China simply accept the situation as normal or is there a demurral from overconsumption, where someone may take one drink as a courtesy and then decline politely thereafter, so as to avoid such intoxicating effects?"
The issue here involves an enzyme called acetaldehyde dehydrogenase, or ALDH2. It is part of the metabolic chain for breaking down alcohol, and people who lack it are subject to a kind of "alcohol poisoning." Their face and/or neck turns red, they sweat, they flush and may pass out. Interestingly (and to the best of my understanding), the anti-alcoholism drug Antabuse, which is supposed to make drinking so unpleasant that people are forced to swear off, works by mimicking the effect of a blocked ALDH2 enzyme.
Caucasians rarely lack this enzyme, but as many as half the people do among some East Asian and North Asian population groups -- Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, Mongolians, many Native American groups in the US and Canada. (I don't know about Africans, South Asians, etc.) So at a drinking party in China, you'll typically see some faces turn bright red after a couple of sips.
How do people who have this problem cope? Obviously it depends, but I've seen two main patterns. Some people politely avoid the baijiu or similar high-proof spirits. They stick to tea or hot water or soft drinks. Others plunge right ahead, as if getting drunk is the point (to promote a shared dropping of inhibitions). It's tough work but must be done. Whenever I felt sorry for myself at these rituals, I realized that there were people who were facing even greater challenges. 干杯 - Ganbei!
UPDATE: thanks to reader M.L. a map from a paper in the Annals of Human Genetics showing with dark shade the prevalence of the genetic problem in question. Centered farther south in China than I would have guessed. Mongolia not very much affected. As for adjoining areas, M.L. reports "Central Asians - and I can back this up from direct observation, especially in former Soviet Central Asia, most certainly do not seem to be afflicted with any symptoms of alcohol allergies."
The logical core of Matthew Hoh's resignation letter (updated)
This passage from his letter is to me the heart of the argument for curtailing rather than expanding America's stake and commitment in Afghanistan:
"I find specious the reasons we ask for bloodshed and and sacrifice from our young men and women in Afghanistan. If honest, our stated strategy of securing Afghanistan to prevent al-Qaeda resurgence or regrouping would require us to additionally invade and occupy western Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, etc. [My emphasis.] Our presence in Afghanistan has only increased destabilization and insurgency in Pakistan where we rightly fear a toppled or weakened Pakistani government may lose control of its nuclear weapons. However, again, to follow the logic of our stated goals we should garrison Pakistan, not Afghanistan. More so, the September 11th attacks, as well as the Madrid and London bombings, were primarily planned and organized in Western Europe; a point that highlights that the threat is not one tied to traditional geographic or political boundaries."
The United States entered Afghanistan -- properly and with every moral and practical justification -- to disrupt, punish, and kill groups that had planned the 9/11 attacks. It is now in a mess in Afghanistan largely because of the crucial misjudgment nearly eight years ago to shift effort and attention to Saddam Hussein and Iraq. Not everything in foreign affairs can be explained by logic. But as Hoh argues, if we're serious in thinking we can now eliminate terrorist threats with our troops in Afghanistan, then logically we must also send them to Pakistan and beyond. And if we're not serious, then how can we keep them there?
For-the-record point: resignations on principle are vanishingly rare in U.S. government practice. It's much easier to keep your head down, protect your career prospects, and when it's over say that you had been against [failed policy xx or yy] all along. Apart from the merits of his argument, Hoh deserves respect for taking this step so forthrightly. Each person who does so creates an example for others to reflect upon.
UPDATE: A reader in Europe writes,
"There's an interesting book (dated,may well be 30 yrs old) comparing resignations in the UK with those in the USA, showing that the British tradition allows to resign and later be appointed again because you did the "honourable thing" whereas in the US excuses like"return to the family"or "other pursuits" were mostly used to cover up."
The book he is referring to is Resignation in Protest by Edward Weisband and Thomas Franck, which I have heard of but have not read. Thanks to reader P.A.
October 27, 2009
Tech followups: Kindle, Swiss Army Knife
After my gripe yesterday that Amazon and Visa should work out a kink in their billing plans, I heard from a lot of readers who'd had the same problem. (Gist: Amazon charges 15 or 30 cents for Kindle-related fees; Visa flags these micro-charges as likely fraud and freezes your card.) Here's a sample reply, which also includes a sensible fix:
"The charges are doubly surprising, because for that small rate I suspect Amazon pays more in Visa fees than it gets in money.
"I'm surprised they aren't doing what Apple does in the iTunes store. For a $0.99 purchase, Apple pre-authorizes your card for something like $10 and then, once your purchases accrue to a reasonable level, they actually run the larger charge on the accumulated purchases. The only way they will end up running a 99-cent charge is if you buy a track and then don't buy anything more until the pre-authorization is about to expire." _____
After my claim a few days ago that we were still a long way from the day of the "all in one" electronic device -- camera plus phone plus e-reader plus netbook plus personal groomer etc -- Derek Thompson elaborates on his views, and a reader writes in, to similar effect:
"It's a debatable point, for sure, but I think your time horizon is a little short and have missed some recognition of how much the era has already arrived.
"Only a few years ago, no digital camera could match a 'real' camera, and we're already at a point that consumer point-and- shoots rival film cameras from 5 years ago, aside from the lens flexibility that most people don't need. Give it a few more years and you'll see 10 megapixel cameras in cell phones. And while you probably will never want to put a cellphone photo of mom hanging over the mantle, we've already reached the point where cellphones are rivaling dedicated cameras and camcorders for the *volume* of photos and videos taken.
Ah, drinking in China as part of business negotiations. Where to start... This next installment of the Doing Business in China series is a beginning. It really is true that the purpose of many "business" dinners is for everyone, Chinese and foreign, to become drunk (often on Chinese Baijiu, 白酒, vodka-ish raw spirit). In becoming drunk and lowering defenses, people prove their mutual trust, or something. In any case, it's real. Note the appearance of Chinese beer, on which I often commented during my time of residence, starting about time 0:11. Main point: this sounds like a joke or cliche but actually makes a difference.
This is heartwarming! (From Shaanxi to Carnegie Hall)
This summer I mentioned the mesmerizing experience of hearing lao qiang, "Old Songs," in a middle-of-nowhere rural theater in Shaanxi province in China. The patriarch and star of the troupe I saw was Zhang Ximin, more or less a traditional Chinese counterpart to BB King:
Today I see in the New York Times that he and Zhang Family Band were at Carnegie Hall over the weekend! That's Zhang Ximin in the red shirt in the NYT's picture, below.
This should support some new version of the "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" joke, but I can't think of one at the moment.
October 26, 2009
The only thing I will ever say on this subject (Redskins)
I highly recommend Steve Coll's mini-screed on the New Yorker's web site right now. Like Coll, I enjoyed playing offensive line back during (briefly) the Peewee Football/Pop Warner stage of life. Unlike him, I was not a childhood fan of the Redskins -- the L.A. Rams, as then existed, had their summer training camp in my home town, and my brother and I lived for the moments when we could watch them up close and get autographs on the practice field. But you can't raise sons in DC, as my wife and I have done, without having the Redskins be the common bonding experience, topic of phone calls on Sunday afternoon, and all-purpose cultural touchstone for a lot of people in DC.
Unfortunately the Redskins of the Dan Snyder era, which is now a decade long with no sign of relief, are simply a cause of heartache, nausea, and depression. The only reason I've been able to watch this year is the stylish and stalwart Chris Cooley, who tonight apparently has been injured in the soon-to-be completed loss to the Iggles. Jeez.
Back to Steve Coll. He has won every journalistic prize, been a power at the Washington Post, now runs the New America Foundation, etc. But the words he may always be proudest of are those he's written about what has happened to the city's team:
"The issue is not the team's performance on the field, dismal as that
is. It is the culture created by the owner--one of greed, expediency,
and mean-spiritedness. The general atmosphere around the team suggests
Zimbabwe--a failed state, an intractable dictator, and an impotent and
suffering populace."
More on the Minneapolis "overflight"
According to numerous accounts in the last hour -- AP here, Reuters here, WSJ here -- the current story from the Northwest flight crew that forgot to land in Minneapolis is that they were so absorbed in using laptops in the cockpit that they neglected to talk with air traffic controllers for more than an hour and didn't get around to descending.
I hate to say this about people with enough other problems already, but: that's simply impossible to believe.
Flying an airplane is different from driving a car, in that it doesn't take constant second-by-second attention to the mechanics of where you're going and how you're handling the controls. If you type out a text message while you're driving a car, you really are putting yourself and others in danger. But if you take a minute in an airplane to check a detail of the routing, or a weather report, or anything else that comes up, in most phases of flight nothing bad is going to happen. The plane will cruise along with its autopilot, and most of the time no other planes are anywhere nearby. (Obviously this doesn't apply in takeoff and landing, in busy airspace, etc.)
That's why some of the stories tut-tutting the pilots for breaking company rules by opening laptops during flight are beside the point. That's a for-form's-sake only rule whose violation may be"wrong" but is not intrinsically dangerous.
The difficulty for the pilots is that the version of the story they're resisting -- that they simply fell asleep -- is less damning for them than any alternative version. If they fell asleep, that's bad, but they could argue some kind of force majeure. But if their "heated conversation" (previous story) or intense laptop use (current story) kept them from remembering their most elemental responsibility as pilots, that really is beyond the pale. The closest comparison would be, say, to an operating-room team that got so interested in watching a football game on TV that they sliced open a patient but forgot to take out his appendix. Forgetting where you are going is incredible enough on its own. And not having any back-of-mind nag saying, "Wait a minute, we haven't heard anything on the air-traffic control frequency for a while" also is outside any known experience of the professional flight-crew world.
I say this not to rub it in for people who have lots of trouble ahead -- and who, to their credit, did get their passengers down safely. I mention it to underscore how much an outlier the apparent failure in this case is -- and to emphasize the trouble they're creating for themselves with the "conversation" and "laptop" alibis. If they fell asleep, that's embarrassing. If they were awake, it is far, far worse.
Maybe Amazon and Visa should talk?
Packing for an airline trip. My wife online booking the next family trip. Keeps trying to confirm and pay for the tickets -- cheap advance purchase deal! System keeps rejecting the Visa card number she feeds it. Hmmmm. Am I going to have trouble using the card on the upcoming trip?
I continue to pack. She holds on the phone with Visa. Suddenly the answer is there: card has been frozen because of suspicious tiny transactions. One for thirty cents, one for forty-five. Just the kind of "probing" charge that credit card thieves attempt to see if a card number is good -- and that, for the same reasons, credit card companies block.
But wait a minute. These charges -- shown below -- were for the fifteen-cent conversion fees that Amazon charges when you mail it a .PDF or .DOC file to be sent to your Kindle. I was sending several files so I could read them on the plane. (The $1.25 charge is for my monthly Kindle version of the world's finest magazine -- better on paper, but this is a nice backup.) You can get files converted for the Kindle for free, but it means manually transferring them via your computer. I thought it was worth the seventy-five cents to skip that phase.
I can't be the first person to use a credit card for tiny Kindle charges. Maybe a little coordination to be worked out here, guys? Another opportunity for the Nook?
McChrystal as Obama's savior?
I mentioned recently William S. Lind's argument that Gen. Stanley McChrystal has, intentionally or not, done the Obama Administration a favor with the bleakness of his report on the prospects in Afghanistan. In response to the recent Australian analysis of the McChrystal report, cited here, a reader writes with a view complementary to Lind's:
"I suspect that the news media and blogosphere has overplayed the
tension between McChrystal and the Obama administration. As your
recent post on the Afghan Rorschach test suggests, McChrystal has given
an unvarnished assessment of the state of play, and a fairly
unvarnished assessment -- or at least a shockingly high assessment --
of the numbers of troops he needed to 'turn the conflict around.'
"In short, he made his troop request high enough to be
fairly easy to reject, and his report pessimistic enough to rule out an
Obamaesque middle course He can't be expected to craft a report that
would make withdrawal seem easy, but it is to his credit that he
(unlike Westmoreland) has made a good faith effort to make increased
commitment seem hard.
"One of the problems with civilian commentary on
Afghanistan is that civilians have been much slower than the military
to learn the lessons of Vietnam."
October 25, 2009
More on the Afghan Rorschach test
A friend in Australia pointed me to the transcript of a speech in Canberra last week by Paul McGeough of the Sydney Morning Herald, who has reported extensively from Afghanistan over the past eight years. The war in Afghanistan has been a bigger matter for a longer time in Australia than in the US, in part because Australian troops have suffered many more casualties in Afghanistan than in Iraq. McGeough's speech is coruscating, and it uses Gen. McChrystal's report in a way I haven't seen applied anywhere else: as a radically honest reporting document, which in its very honesty reveals why its recommendations would not work out.
I mean these few samples to whet interest rather than to substitute for reading the presentation as a whole. Although he is tough on the Obama Administration, McGeough offers no support to the likes of Dick Cheney and his recent criticisms. As McGeough says in the final words of the speech, referring specifically to the Bush Administration's choice to switch manpower, money, and attention from Afghanistan to Iraq starting in late 2001:
"By the way, a recent American intelligence estimate put the
insurgency's full-time fighting strength at at-least 25 000, up 25 per
cent on the previous year. There should never have been a debate about
how strong the insurgency is. They were on the run in 2001 - and they
came back, only because they were allowed to."
Below and after the jump, other samples of his reasoning. But please do check it out. First, on the similarity between the Soviet and American wars.
"After eight years, Washington finds itself in the same position that the Soviet Union was in Year 8 of its occupation of Afghanistan, seemingly having learnt nothing from history - until McChrystal's bombshell assessment.
"I want to read from a defence official's letter dated August 17. He calls for an honest admission of failure after eight years, citing the squandering of huge material resources and considerable casualties and a failure to stabilise the country - militarily or politically. Most of the population has lost trust, because the campaign is bogged down and a strategic breakthrough is unlikely.
"The experience of the past years," he continues somberly, "clearly shows that the Afghan problem cannot be solved by military means only. We should decisively reject our illusions and undertake principally new steps, taking into account the lessons of the past, and the real situation in the country..."
"That might have been a note to General McChrystal as he prepared his report - but the date was August 17, 1987. And the author, Colonel K. Tsagalov, was addressing the then newly appointed Soviet defence minister, Dmitry Yazov."
On today's All Things Considered a hands-on comparison of Nook vs Kindle -- something I have not been able to do myself. (More from the interviewee, Gizmodo's Matt Buchanan, here.) I am agnostic about which is better -- or whether something by Apple or somebody else will ultimately be "the" right electronic reader. The one certainty is that the appearance of a new, attractive product from a strong competitor is good for everyone. Even, in an enlightened self-interest sense, for Amazon/Kindle itself, since real competition is likely to make this whole market larger and more viable.
Two more points on which I'm not agnostic are: Is this good for publishing? And, will we get used to reading this way? The answers are Yes, and Yes. Anything that makes it easier to spend money on books, as the Kindle undeniably does, has to be good in the long run for publishing and writers, despite some in-the-meantime disruptions. And I already find it as natural to read on the Kindle's screen as from a paperback. I still like the heft and feel of real books in the right circumstances, and magazines are night-and-day preferable to read in print. But these devices are clearly a step forward overall.
(PS: I disagree with the interesting post by the Atlantic Business Channel's Derek Thompson, who looks at the new e-readers and says that we're headed for a Swiss Army Knife-style combination of many different functions in a few all-purpose electronic gizmos. I'm skeptical because of the dozen previous times through the computer era in which that prediction has not panned out. "Real" cameras are still much better than in-phone cameras; the right device to carry in your pocket, as a phone or PDA, will always be worse to read on than a device with a bigger screen, which in turn is too big to fit in your pocket; keyboards are simply better than little thumbpads for entering more than a few words, and any device with a real keyboard has to be a certain size. So, sure, some things will be combined, but the all in one era is not at hand, and won't be.)
I was also on today's show in a "news analysis" spot, as I've done several times in recent weeks with the host, Guy Raz, this time talking about errant airplanes, Fox News, Baby Einstein, etc. I very much like the savvy and cultural mix of the show, and happily serve in the "someone has to dish up the liver and vegetables" capacity.
From an Airbus captain, about recent flight errors
A reader writes:
"I just thought you might like to know that while the airplane overflying Minneapolis received major headlines, the Delta airplane which landed on a taxiwayin Atlanta earlier this week received minimal coverage. As you can imagine the taxiway landing is much more of a close call (that is a greater chance of casualties) than overflying an airport at altitude. As I've come to expect from the press there is no perspective on the relative danger of either incident. Somewhat similar to focusing on shark attacks while we kill approximately 40,000 every year on our roads.
"As an A-320 captain I don't mean to throw stones at either crew (there but for the grace of God...)... As to the Atlanta taxiway incident there were multiple factors including a long overnight flight, a sick check airman who was in the back, and a change of runway inside the marker [well into the plane's final descent, shortly before landing] to a runway without approach lighting... But it is interesting that one incident is totally ignored while the other gets major media play."
Google Earth view of approach to runway 27R at Atlanta. Where they should have landed is the runway at center of this view, with the chevron markers on black background pointing towards it. Where they actually landed was the taxiway just to its right. This happened in the dark. At night the taxiway would have blue lights and the runway white lights.
Why a taxiway landing is potentially much more dangerous: another airplane could theoretically be turning onto the taxiway just as the incoming plane was touching down, raising the prospect of a repeat of the deadliest accident in aviation history, the collision of two fully-loaded 747s on the runway at Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, in 1977. Why the current "overflight" incident, despite its safe conclusion, has gotten attention: for what it may show about pilot-fatigue and work-rule questions (plus the melodrama factor of passengers sitting, reading, dozing innocently while things in the cockpit are not as they should be; plus the melodrama factor of controllers, hearing nothing from the plane, not knowing whether it was another hijacking/terrorist episode). Why news coverage does not follow statistical risk of danger: this is life.
More on missing an airport (updated, on pilot fatigue)
Not sure if this makes me feel better or worse. I mentioned yesterday that I had once inadvertently been steering a small airplane toward Ellsworth Air Force Base, in South Dakota, rather than the Rapid City airport a couple of miles to its side, where I really intended to land. (Pilot-world detail: Airports in the US are officially known by a four-letter identification scheme, starting with K, rather than the three letters familiar from airline tickets. Thus LAX is KLAX for purposes of filing a flight plan; O'Hare is KORD; Logan is KBOS; and so on. The airport in Rapid City is KRAP. For the record, Ellsworth is KRCA.) The two airports are close together; their runways are laid out the same way; and so on. Via SkyVector.com, here's the FAA chart of KRCA, nearer the top, and KRAP below it, with green circles on each. I was way off the lower right side of the chart when trying to find the airport.
Now I hear from several readers that five years ago a Northwest Airlines flight from Minneapolis-St Paul (KMSP) did what I avoided -- went all the way and landed at Ellsworth, on a flight that was supposed to end at Rapid City. In my case I think that, even if a controller had not alerted me from ten minutes out that I needed to turn slightly to the left, I would have figured it out before I actually landed at an Air Force base. For one thing, the numbers at the end of the runway, which you can see from far away, would have been a clue. (The relevant runway would say 32 in big numbers at Rapid City, and 31 at Ellsworth. You know the number of the runway you're planning to land on, and if you see something different, it would give you pause.) For whatever reason, this NWA flight made it all the way to a landing at Ellsworth.
Sorry for the passengers, who had to spend several hours on the ground before the five-minute flight to KRAP, and sorry for the pilots too.
UPDATE: This story in today's LA Times goes frontally at what I suspect will be the main question in the current "ooops, we missed Minneapolis" airline incident: whether, why, and how often airline pilots fall asleep in the cockpit. Obviously that was not the case with the five-year-old Ellsworth/KRAP incident discussed in this post. I expect this is just the beginning of broad discussion on pilot-fatigue issues coming out of the Minneapolis case. Thanks to reader D.L.
The pictures below are from an extremely powerful exhibition by Lu Guang (卢广), a Chinese photographer, about pollution and its effects in his home country. His photos have just won a major prize from the Asia Society. While not all of China looks like what he has depicted, I have seen things exactly like what is shown in these photos, and so has anyone else who has traveled outside the big cities or visited factories and mines. Two samples from Lu Guang's work: a power plant in Inner Mongolia, then a migrant laborer in the coal regions of Shanxi province.
These are pictures to bear in mind the next time you read a "China is an unstoppable superpower with an ability to solve all problems" story; it's worth emphasizing, as I have here and elsewhere, that there is tremendous pressure within China to change course environmentally for the survival of its own people.
Many pending messages in the queue with more info about the measurable health effects, for foreigners and Chinese citizens, of China's environmental situation. Will get to them in due course. Thanks to many people who have sent in notes about the Lu Guang photos.
On the Fox News / White House dispute
I didn't see anything on Fox from mid-2006 through mid-2009; for better or worse, it's not carried in China. (The English TV news channels you can get there are BBC, CNN International, CNBC, sometimes Bloomberg.) I have seen it since coming back this summer. And in a way, I realize that I had been seeing it all along: except for more modern production values, it's the closest thing America offers to what it's like to be exposed to the Chinese government's 24/7 internal propaganda machine. When I saw the clip below from Media Matters, as highlighted by Andrew Sullivan, I thought: make it a little more boring, put it in Mandarin, and substitute "splittists" etc for the people Fox is talking about (maybe the Dalai Lama in place of Van Jones), and I could be right back in Beijing.
Are Maddow and Olbermann on MSNBC comparably relentless and "biased"? Of course they are. But no one pretends their shows are "real" news operations or are "fair and balanced." And certainly they have become what they are as a market and political response to Fox's success. Indeed, the general polarization and spectacle-mindedness of the news ecology in part is homage to what Fox has figured out as a business and political model. Any fair person also has to acknowledge the better production values Fox brought to TV news over the past decade: it's lively, it's fast, it's interesting, the women on screen (to a shocking degree, if you've been away) set a new standard in physical looks, the whole thing gets your attention.
But a crucial part of this clip, and of the White House complaint, is that it's not just the out-and-out commentators on Fox -- the Hannities and O'Reillies who begat Maddow and Olbermann -- who supply a one-note politicized world view. It's the texture of the overall operation. I can think of honorable exceptions among correspondents and anchors, like Major Garrett (whom I do know) and Shepherd Smith (whom I don't). But this clip suggests the seamlessness of the Fox News outlook, which has impressed me on watching it. Again something it shares with China Central TV.
Main point: I disagree with my journalistic colleagues who are huffy because the Obama White House is treating Fox differently from the way it is treating other news organizations. Fox is different. As a practical matter, saying so could backfire on the White House. But as a matter of observing and stating reality, they're right.
Win 7, Nook, and other tech follow ups
Windows 7: My wife will get it for the HP laptop she bought when we returned from China, since that qualifies for a free upgrade. Don't think I will myself. My original-Vista-blighted ThinkPad T60 is having so many other problems that I am keeping it alive purely for organ-farm purposes, serving as an extra hard disk on the home network. My three Macs (early 2008-vintage Air and Mini, new MacBook Pro) are all running WinXP in the Windows half of their brains, under VMware Fusion. Since installing Win7 on an XP machine involves backing up and removing all data, installing the OS from scratch, and then reinstalling all programs (the real stopper -- where are those install CDs?), making the switch does not seem worth it. Net result of three years of terrible experience with early Vista+ Lenovo-era ThinkPad: putting me onto a path that may keep me from ever seeing what's good with Win7. That's not quite true. Some day I'll get around to creating a Win7 "virtual machine" under Fusion and give it a try.
The advance reviews are all positive, eg this from Wired. (It must be said: Vista was supposed to be good too.) Most interesting Win7 review I've seen is this one from Philip Elmer-DeWitt.
Nook and Kindle: Via Chinese manufacturing- world contacts, I have known this was coming for a while. Looks nice (left), and even if it looked bad it would be a huge plus for the industry, the reading public, and the publishing world to have competition for Amazon and its Kindle. I say that as a member of a two-Kindle household who has spent a lot on e-books. I'll see if I can rationalize a "need" for the Nook at some point.
All e-readers apparently need to have somewhat weird names that include a "K." I suggest "Kewpie" for whichever one comes next. Or maybe "Amok." Keokuk? (Which has a charming little airport where I have landed.)
On the social-benefit potential of e-readers in general, David Rothman, who has been on this case since long before the Kindle was invented, has a new argument here.
October 22, 2009
In case you were wondering.... (Updated)
... the Northwest Airlines flight that apparently "missed" the Minneapolis-St Paul airport today and overshot it by 150 miles did not make an ordinary mistake, like missing Exit 32A on a busy freeway and having to get off on Exit 32B.This is more like ... well, it's hard to think of a comparison, because it's pretty startling.
Once when I was flying westward toward the Rapid City airport in South Dakota, I found myself lining up 25 miles away instead with the much bigger runway of Ellsworth Air Force Base nearby. I must not have been the first one to do so, because the controller said in a routine way, "What you're probably heading for is Ellsworth. You want to turn your head ten degrees to the left and look for a little airport that's closer. That's where you want to go." This was embarrassing enough, and it was just my wife and me, not a bunch of paying passengers. (Below, Google Earth's view of what caused my problems. The runways have similar orientation, and Ellsworth is the first one you see from a distance. And this is from straight overhead! I was looking from a slant, into a setting sun, from a relatively low altitude, way off in the distance. It's a miracle I saw either of them!)
In contrast, from the air you really cannot miss a big, busy, international airport. It's unlike anything else you see -- especially when controllers are talking you every step of the way, as they are required to with airliners. Rather, I guess you can miss it, but it's a surprise.
Glad everyone is safe. Will be interesting to hear the pilots' account. I have my own hypotheses, but it's fairer to wait.
UPDATE: To avoid being coy about my "hypothesis," it's hard to imagine how this could have happened if the pilots were awake. There is too much going on in the last 45 minutes of a flight -- with procedures for arrival, approach, and landing, many checklists -- just to be "distracted." So most likely either they both fell asleep in the normal sense or, weirdly, were both disabled in a way they then recovered from. After a cockpit crew on Go! airlines fell asleep for fifteen minutes in Hawaii last year while their plane was headed out toward the open ocean, one of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin's readers offered this possible explanation:
"Aliens I say. They took the pilots to their spaceship, then put them
back in the plane. They were gone for 2 weeks, but only 15 minutes
Earth time."
Bonus analysis point: on top of the Colgan crash in Buffalo early this year, plus that previous Hawaiian sleeping-pilots problem, we are bound to see more serious political attention to the question of work rules, fatigue, pilot training, etc under the new operating realities of the airline industry. Thanks to M. Griffith for the Go! tip.
Bad news, good news on the air-traffic beat
Bad news: further evidence that the worldwide GPS system, which is run by the US government and on which everything from airline navigation to iPhone mapping apps relies, is at risk of "browning out." Earlier mention of the problem, back in May, here, based on this government report. Update this month, from Avionics magazine, here. Talk about your deteriorating critical infrastructure! Headline below gives you the gist.
"Fixing GPS
"Almost half of the current
constellation of GPS satellites are at or approaching 'single thread'
operation, where a critical system failure could render a satellite
inoperative. What are the options for replacing GPS satellites?"
Now, the better news. Assuming that the GPS network gets tuned up in time, Scott McCartney, of the WSJ, explains some of the potential for better, more efficient, and safer airline navigation -- including over the vast oceanic "big blue data void" into which Air France 447 disappeared. The "NextGen" navigation systems McCartney describes have their strong supporters and critics, when it comes to specific configurations and timetables for the program. But a shift to some version of the new system is as inevitable, and McCartney explains clearly what the benefits can be.
Doing Business in China: A Piece of the Pie
Next in Doing Business in China: the pizza wars! Early in our stay in Shanghai, my wife and I tried to stop in to the Pizza Hut just north of People's Square -- and were turned away, by a head waiter whose face was barely visible beneath his gigantic sombrero. We didn't have reservations, on this routine weekday night -- what were we thinking in trying to get in? This is one illustration of the social and business complications of the pizza business in China, which has been good for Pizza Hut and very rough for Domino's. This segment narrated by Emily Chang, series co-host.
A Rorschach test on Afghanistan
The NYT op-ed page that has just gone up, for tomorrow morning's paper, has as concise a paired description of options in Afghanistan as anyone could want. Each of the articles is by an American writer with experience in the region. One says we should send more troops; the other says that would be a mistake. Each is clearly written with a brief passage that distills the outlook and sensibility.
One says:
"The United States was born of our ancestors' nationalistic resentment
of a foreign power whose troops we saw as occupiers, not protectors.
The British never fathomed our basic grievance -- this was our land, not
theirs! -- so the more they cracked down, the more they empowered the
American insurgency....
"We have been similarly oblivious to the strength of nationalism in
Afghanistan and Pakistan, particularly among the 40 million Pashtuns
who live on both sides of the border there. That's one reason the
additional 21,000 troops that President Obama ordered to Afghanistan
earlier this year haven't helped achieve stability, and it's difficult
to see why 40,000 more would help either."
And the other says:
"During 10 days spent in Afghanistan at the invitation of Gen. David
Petraeus, the head of Central Command, I observed that a difficult task
has been further complicated by the checkered results of the Afghan
election. But what seems to be conspicuously absent from the
conversation in the United States is the realization that Afghanistan's
corruption problem, like its security problem, can be best addressed by
additional troops.
"Given what I saw and heard on my visit, I
believe it is indeed possible to get Afghanistan's politicos to do a
better job -- you just have to watch them closely.... Poor governance is an argument for, not against, a troop surge. "
The writers' identities are after the jump. I'm concentrating on the arguments themselves because I think they represent an extraordinarily pure Rorschach test. There are cases where you can listen to various sides and think, "Well, they've all got good points." But in this case, I bet most people will think: one of these perspectives rings true, and one sounds tragically deluded. Certainly that was my instant reaction -- and for that clarifying power I am grateful to both authors. Read, react, reflect.
I love the English-language Chinese press (chap. 17,825)
An article now buzzing around the China-hand blogosphere: multi-shot photo feature on "Most beautiful Chinese female soldier" from the People's Daily today.
For later discussion: why the PLA often seems less fearsome inside China than when described in Western news reports. Bonus photo collage after the jump.
Chris and Monique Fallows are a naturalist-photographer team based in Cape Town, South Africa, who produce documentaries and conduct adventure trips in hopes of protecting marine life, especially sharks. I don't know them, but there are not that many of us with the same name, so we have to stick together. I bought one of their books when I saw it at the bookstore of the wonderful Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town several years ago. I'll get this new one too. Maybe they'll do the same for mine!
First-hand experience with Chinese air, pro and con
Following this item yesterday, about this article in the current issue on the health effects of living in China, good-news and bad-news reports from American friends with long experience in Asia.
First, the bad news.
"I check the BeijingAir Twitter every time I'm headed there for work. I thought I'd report an anecdote from a friend who has worked in China since the 1970s and lived there for many years (though moved back partly to raise children in a more healthy environment!). She had MRIs performed on her lungs some time ago and they indicated significant scarring and other damage, despite the fact that she has never been a smoker. She has never complained of any symptoms or health problems but clearly some damage was done."
FWIW, I heard similar stories from a variety of people who had been in and out of China since the 1980s, but I don't know of any systematic data. Maybe I'll have another data point two weeks from now, when my appointment with my own doctor for a welcome-home physical exam finally rolls around. Only has taken three months to get on his schedule! Good thing we don't have Canadian-style socialized medicine in this country, what with its long waiting lists and rationing-by-delay etc.
Now, the better news:
"We were back in China for a couple of weeks this past summer to visit my former students in Beijing and then to travel in Hunan for a week or so. I think the air has improved. It was mostly blue skies, even in Beijing, which I rarely saw when we lived there for 10 months in 2003-04. I think you are right to conclude that expats do get over the problems once they leave. At least we haven't had lasting health problems -- at least not yet."
As a side note, based on my experience anyone who wants to visit Beijing in particular should go in October. Even though the current BeijingAir Twitter reading is deep into the "unhealthy" zone, this seems reliably the nicest time of the year.
October 20, 2009
The air over there
In the new issue of the magazine (subscribe!) I have a short article about a topic I discussed constantly with Chinese and foreign friends over the past few years: how dangerous it is, really, just to live in China. To breathe the air, drink the water, eat the food. Won't spoil the suspense about conclusions in the article itself. But the note below is from a reader whose experience is similar to mine:
"I just returned to the US after a four-year tour in Shanghai. I major reason for returning was that I knew that living over there was terrible for my health. I always told myself that I couldn't live in that poor environment for five years. Aside from the terrible air quality, I did four stints in hospitals for food poisoning.
"But since I have been back, I have found that recovery has been easier than expected. I am now running about four to six miles four times a week. I think it may have been like living at high altitudes - you body gets used to being deprived of oxygen and becomes more efficient.
"Plus, just having the space and good weather adds to the motivation. As I am sure you know."
For perspective, here is today's real-time air pollution map for the US, emphasizing the dangerous small-particulate pollution (PM2.5) plus ozone (O3). Green "good" areas have readings below 50; the yellow "moderate" areas are 51-100; and the little spot of orange "unsafe for sensitive groups" air, near Pittsburgh, is 101-150. Maybe they're reopening the steel works? Most times when I look at this map, it's virtually all green.
Meanwhile, readings earlier today from Beijing, taken by the clandestine "Beijing Air" monitoring station I describe in the article:
The point is that the Chinese readings would be in the red "unhealthy" (151-200) or magenta "very unhealthy" (201-300) zones if they were mapped. Like anyone in Beijing, I've breathed my way through a large number of purple "hazardous" days, with readings over 300.
For the benefit of Chinese readers, let me say for the millionth time that to stress this comparison is not to put down China's successes, underestimate the difficulties of dealing with these problems, deny that a high-pollution phase is part of every move toward industrialization, etc. China's situation is tough, and a lot of forces within the country are working to improve it, as laid out at length here. Instead it's worth emphasizing that the people of China themselves are the ones with most at stake in improving its environment. And because of global effects of climate, as I've also said a million times, it's crucial for the US and China, the two biggest-emitting countries, to work together on energy and pollution issues. Indeed, this is the historically most important business for the two countries to take up.
In the meantime, it's a nice day in DC, so like my correspondent I'll plan to take another run.
Doing Business in China: From Supply Chains to Supply Networks
Next up in the Doing Business in China series: a clip that gives a brief look at one of several central, and complex, parts of the US-China business interaction. This clip has some worthwhile shots of the insides of several Chinese factories -- a relatively new one, and a ponderous old state-owned metal works.
It also introduces an aspect of the "outsourcing" wave that I discussed two years ago in "China Makes, the World Takes": that factories in China, serving US and other foreign customers, are providing a lot of jobs for Chinese laborers, but are also providing a majority of the profits, plus most of the associated design, marketing, R&D, etc jobs elsewhere, especially in the US. The furniture company featured here had never done production inside the US: it was a pure startup, with factories in China and design/marketing/management in the US, to serve a mainly US market. The ramifications of this overall division of labor, and how it might change in the future, obviously go beyond the bounds of this clip (and are considered in the series as a whole, in my book, etc). But this is an opening look.
October 19, 2009
More on US presidents as Japanese words
Several readers, plus my raised-in-Japan Atlantic colleague James Gibney, have reminded me that Barack Obama is not the first American president whose name has been converted into an ordinary word in Japanese. After the first President Bush fell ill and vomited on Japanese Prime Minister Miyazawa at a state dinner in Tokyo in 1992, the term Bushu-suru -- ブッシュする, "do a Bush" -- became a joke staple of Japanese slang. Bush understood how Montezuma must have felt about having his name appropriated for gastrointestinal use.
Real time picture, via Wikipedia, of Barbara Bush and PM Miyazawa coming to the aid of the stricken president (behind napkin):
Via Google Books, an account from the Encyclopedia of Political Communication of the meaning of Bushu-suru, though I prefer my own "do a Bush" English version.
I don't know whether doing "a Clinton" -- クリントンする -- came to mean anything in Japanese.
"To Obama" in Japanese
Last week the NYT ran a story about how Barack Obama's version of spoken English has become a huge hit in Japan, emerging as the new standard for language-learning. This rings true to the fad/blockbuster nature of many commercial and cultural phenomena in Japan. And, we can all think of worse versions of English for them to emulate. (Carville? Stallone?)
But I thought that this item from the Ampontan blog, written by a foreigner in Japan, was more fascinating. It is about the way the invented verb Obamu -- オバむ, "to Obama" -- has gained currency among some Japanese youths. Explanation:
"obamu: (v.) To ignore inexpedient and
inconvenient facts or realities, think "Yes we can, Yes we can," and
proceed with optimism using those facts as an inspiration (literally,
as fuel). It is used to elicit success in a personal endeavor. One
explanation holds that it is the opposite of kobamu. (拒む, which means to refuse, reject, or oppose).
"[Japanese bloggers] give the following example:
:ほら、何落ち込んでいるんだよ。オバめよ、オバめ。
"Or, "Hey, why are you so down in the dumps? Cheer up, cheer up!"...
"One more Japanese-language citation is from a Twitter tweet, which defines it simply as believing you can accomplish something.
"Those familiar with the language will understand immediately that
such a coinage would sound very natural, and that it is typical of
Japanese creativity and their sense of humor."
The absorptive-and-transforming power of the Japanese language is indeed one of its charms. It will be a good sign for Obama if his name continues to be used in this mainly-positive context.
Thanks to many tech-world friends for the lead. Eventually I'll make a separate "security theater" category for this site. For the moment, some previous entries here.
This is good news
I emerge briefly from writing-induced blog exile to celebrate a well deserved honor for a comrade: our own James Bennet, editor of the Atlantic, being selected as AdAge's "Editor of the Year."
I have worked for five editors during my time at the Atlantic: Robert Manning, William Whitworth, Michael Kelly, Cullen Murphy, and now James Bennet. They have been different people with different styles dealing with different challenges in different times. But all have been absolutely committed to the idea that this kind of magazine, with its determination to deal with serious issues in as interesting and news-making a fashion as possible, has a role in national life and can find an audience that will value what we do. I feel very fortunate to have been part of this institution for so long -- and I know that what makes it special are people who really do think all the time about improving the magazine. That describes everyone on the staff -- now, and over the years.
Industry "honors" like this are highly unscientific, hit-and-miss propositions. But when they work out, that's worth celebrating, as I do now.
If you feel like joining in, a subscription always makes the ideal gift! I'll save the full pitch for another time. (Andrew Sullivan has made his case here.) But, seriously, in the long run, enterprises like this have to figure out how to pay for what they do, and subscriptions make a big difference. Plus, the layout and pictures make magazines much better to read in print. Meanwhile, as members of the extended Atlantic family, please enjoy this nice bit of news.
October 15, 2009
Doing Business in China: Keeping Employees Happy
Next up in the Doing Business in China series: a look at an issue whose importance may come as a surprise to people who have not worked in the country. This is the challenge of keeping Chinese employees, once they have become skilled in factory or white-collar procedures. Among other things it mentions why "Spring Festival," aka Chinese New Year, is the moment of greatest turnover, as workers go to their home villages and then often shop around for new jobs when they return to factory centers. Plus, another cameo by Kaifu Lee!
October 14, 2009
On the chain of command
After I mentioned last night that I disagreed with Robert Kaplan's call for an immediate commitment of more US troops in Afghanistan, I received a note that reminded me of a point I had meant to make. It concerns the chain of command and the different responsibilities of a theater commander (like Gen. McChrystal, in Afghanistan) and the commander in chief (like Pres. Obama, in Washington). I raise the point not to drag out a disagreement with a friend and colleague but to clarify an elementary but sometimes muddied issue.
My correspondent, a veteran of the defense and technology businesses, notes these lines from Kaplan's piece:
"The position Obama's now in is similar to that of former Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld some years back--appearing not to be listening
to his generals. If the president doesn't agree with his field
commander, that's fine. Just don't make a public spectacle of it."
And says that this misconstrues the way the disagreement came to light:
"...since it was the leaks (from wherever -- I suspect [name redacted!] to Bob Woodward that publicly highlighted McChrystal's disagreements with the President. Only in the face of continued leaks about how "long" McChrystal's report had sat on the President's desk sans action did the President's team (NSA Jim Jones, CJCS Mullen) finally proceed to remind -- and quite obliquely -- those in uniform that disagreements with the Commander in Chief should be expressed privately, not aired publicly.
I think that's right as a matter of fact. And as a matter of policy, the point I meant to make is that a president should of course listen to his generals on questions of military operations, trade-offs, resources, etc. But it's worth remembering from Civics 101 that they must listen to him on questions of larger national interest and strategy.
The complaint about Rumsfeld was that he ignored -- in cases like Eric Shinseki's, stifled -- military professionals who warned how hard it would be and how many troops it would take to complete the mission the Bush administration had decided on. Their argument was: if you're going to do this, do it right. That is exactly the kind of advice military professionals are expected to give their civilian commanders. It's what Bush, Rumsfeld, et al should have listened to. (Apart, of course, from listening to a wider range of views about launching the invasion at all.)
That is a different kind of listening from what is emerging with Gen. McChrystal. Whether or not this was his intention, his quoted advice comes across less as, "If you're going to do X, then do it right" than as, "You should do X..." Figuring out what it would take to protect Afghan citizens and win a counterinsurgency effort is the general's job. Figuring out whether that is worth doing is the president's. Again, an obvious point but worth restating.
One comeback would be: Obama's already made up his mind! He said that Afghanistan was the "necessary war," and if he is committed to the end then he is committed to the means. To call his original choice into question would waste time and look weak. As Bob Kaplan put it, "the time to roll out a new or adjusted strategy would have been
when McChrystal's selection was announced, so that he could become the
face of the new policy."
This is where we disagree. I think the time to adjust the strategy is as new evidence comes in and until you've done something irreversible -- and that in these war-and-peace matters it is better to be inconsistent than wrong. That is why I think a thorough reconsideration is just what the Administration should be doing right now. I start out believing that the less-bad option is to curtail rather than expand America's commitment in Afghanistan -- all options being bad because of the fateful mistake of switching attention to Iraq eight years ago. But I'll listen to a case for expansion differently if I think it comes from an open assessment of all possibilities, rather than because it's too late to change course or risk losing face.
Last on this theme: the same reader offered this link to another valuable "be careful what you're getting into" analysis of Afghanistan, from Survival magazine. I agree with Andrew Sullivan's current examinations of this difficult choice, here and here. And, having watched the Frontline "Obama's War" broadcast last night, I share the widespread endorsement of it. Can be viewed online here.
- Like my Atlantic colleague Ta-Nehisi Coates, I've been in a no-TV mode for a while -- in my case, most of the time since returning from China. We finally got TV coverage re-connected last month for the US Open tennis matches and the start of the NFL season. But I realize that I'm turning on the TV only for live sports and the occasional real-time spectacle that's easier to watch on the big screen than find on line. David Letterman's first post-scandal show; the new (and just so-so) season-opener of The Simpsons this weekend; the PBS "Obama's War" tonight. Not Mad Men, because we have to catch up with the first two seasons on DVDs.* For old times' sake and for language practice, my wife sometimes has the Chinese-language station on in the background. But in general, it's not a factor -- compared either with radio or, of course, the internet. Certainly less a presence in our life than it used to be.
I'm not making any big cultural point about TV or our haughtiness in rising above it. I am convinced that our children's four elementary-school years when we were living in Japan and Malaysia and rarely saw TV at all, were good for them (and us) in various ways. My only point at the moment is that the same technological shifts that have caused problems for the print media have, in our household's case, made even more of a difference when it comes to TV.
- My Atlantic colleague Robert Kaplan has argued on our site very strongly that it is "Time for Decisiveness on Afghanistan," by which he means that it's time to send more troops to wage a thorough counter-insurgent action. Here is why I disagree.
Bob Kaplan knows more about Afghanistan and its environs than I ever will. I like and respect him, even though we usually disagree about foreign policy, notably about Iraq. But his essay is only in part about the right strategy for Afghanistan. It is also about the way presidents make decisions about war and peace. That's something I know about, and I think his basic assumptions are wrong.
He says that Obama is causing great damage by taking so long to decide on the right course for Afghanistan. I think that presidents have caused damage by making decisions too quickly much more often than by taking too long. And he says that Obama runs the risk of seeming inconsistent -- and therefore of becoming ineffective. To me, presidents have hurt themselves and the country through rigidity born of a fear of looking inconsistent, much more often than they have by being too flexible.
A sample passage from his essay:
"It's perfectly legitimate for Obama to review Afghanistan strategy
and troop numbers. But by calling into question the very strategy that
he put into place earlier in the year, when he called Afghanistan the
"necessary war," and promised to properly resource it, Obama is
courting charges from the right that he is another ineffectual Jimmy
Carter--that other Nobel Peace Prize winner....
"The Administration had many months, beginning the moment Obama was
elected, to recalibrate Afghan strategy. Yet it's now in the position
of publicly questioning the fundamental wisdom of the general it has
chosen.... Even if Obama does end up making the correct decision on
Afghanistan strategy (by which I mean adding troops, since
counterinsurgency is manpower-intensive), the public agony over his
deliberations may already have done incalculable damage."
You should read his whole argument. If he or others can really establish that a decision right this minute about Afghanistan is indispensable -- that this is a moment comparable to the Cuban Missile Crisis etc -- then, OK. (For a contrary argument, see this.) Otherwise, everything I've learned about politics indicates that impatience is almost always destructive, that especially when it comes to military commitments it's crucial to think and think again, and that a president should be less afraid of being "inconsistent" than of making a big mistake.
- My Atlantic colleague Josh Green, co-author with Henry Waxman of The Waxman Report, adds this about the disagreement over calorie labeling I mentioned earlier today.
"To
chime in with a congressional/historical angle on the Corby/Megan
labeling imbroglio: Congress considered the lack of information on most
products serious enough from a public health standpoint that (led by
Henry Waxman!), it passed the dull-sounding-but-important Nutrition
Labeling and Dietary Supplement Act in 1996. Waxman devotes a full
chapter to it in his book. Example of typically misleading industry
behavior: Sara Lee Lite Cheesecake actually contained more calories
per serving than Sara Lee's regular cheesecake. The "lite" was a
marketing ploy. Confronted by an FDA task force, Sara Lee claimed that
the "lite" referred to the color, not the caloric content, of the
cheesecake. Similar examples abound. A perhaps more resonant point for
the general public: without the Nutritional Labeling Act there would be
no South Beach Diet!"
___ * Why we're behind on Mad Men: Tried three times to get Seasons 1 and 2 from pirate video stores in Beijing. First time, the version we got was in Russian. Second time, Spanish and Portuguese. Third time, it was some other show altogether. Actually relieved to have a chance to rent legit versions at full price in DC!
Festival of links, part 1
Before an impending "real," as opposed to false-alarm, absence from this site for a while, because of impending "real" writing, a variety of links about things I've meant to mention. Two now, two or three later in the day.
- Everyone on the China-media beat is aware of the turmoil at Caijing, a unique and important magazine in China. The title means "Finance and Economics"; an English site is here. (Disclosure: one of my sons worked there right out of college, during the SARS epidemic, and I know many of the staff.) Caijing has become a powerhouse in both the business and the journalistic sense. It publishes thick issues and holds big, influential conferences -- but it has also been a crucial leader in real business/financial reporting and exposes of financial chicanery, corruption, pollution, and other topics usually hard for the Chinese press to cover. Evan Osnos, who wrote a New Yorker profile of the founder and sparkplug of the magazine, Hu Shuli, has an update on the turmoil here. Other info from the FT here, from the AP here, from the WSJ (subscription wall) here, from the Guardian here, from the NYT here, and from Yahoo news here. None of this is good news.
- In their respective parts of the Atlantic's site, my colleagues Corby Kummer and Megan McArdle make opposite cases about the effects of New York City's calorie-labeling law. McArdle says it hasn't done any good; Kummer argues that it has already done something and, over time, will undoubtedly do much more. Read and judge for yourself, but one part of Kummer's argument seems obviously true and worth underscoring. He stresses (as did the authors of the original study) that calorie labels -- like mileage labels on cars or electric-consumption labels on appliances -- can make a difference even if customers don't think they're paying attention to them. As the original study said:
"Calorie labeling could result in changes that do not rely primarily on alterations in consumers' food choices. Menu
labeling regulations may encourage chain restaurants to offer more
nutritious or otherwise improved menu offerings, which could be
profoundly influential. [italics Kummer's] Public health experts have
shown that creating "default" incentives to improve well-being is
essential to improving public health. By indirectly influencing
restaurants to offer more lower-calorie items, menu labeling
regulations could help encourage such default options for consumers."
As Kummer added:
"Yuppie avatar Starbucks immediately
changed its default milk from whole to 2 percent, so it wouldn't have
to admit that a Frappuccino could amount to practically as many
calories as you should eat in a whole day... Just this week, [a NYC official] told me... Burger King began a new ad campaign
telling how customers could eat a full meal for 650 calories or less.
McDonalds took .7 ounces and 70 calories out of its standard portion of
french fries. Dunkin Donuts introduced an egg-white breakfast. KFC put grilled skinless chicken on its menu--not something anyone expected to see at KFC."
Again, decide for yourself, but this corresponds to effects I've seen in other areas over the years. Labeling and disclosure in itself has an influence, in encouraging organizations to offer more of what they think will look "good" and less of what looks "bad."
Doing Business in China: What is Communism?
I love this clip, once again from the Doing Business in China series. In particular I love the initial interviews with business people, average folk, Communist Party members, etc. about what this thing called "communism" (共产主义, Gongchan zhuyi) might possibly be. You'll see what I mean. And again this rings true to my daily experience there over the years.
October 11, 2009
The speech Obama won't ace (plus, WaPo gaffe followup)
So far, as noted here, Barack Obama has faced mounting expectations through a sequence of high-stakes speeches, from the "race" speech that saved his campaign 18 months ago to the Joint Session address on health care that appears to have changed momentum for his proposal. So far he has met or beaten expectations just about every time, most recently here.
I confidently predict that this string will end with his address in Oslo on receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. My argument is probabilistic: of the hundreds of addresses that have been given by Nobel laureates (last year's here), exactly one is frequently quoted or referred to. That is William Faulkner's address on receiving the literature prize 60 years ago. The transcript is here, including the best known line: "I believe that man will not
merely endure: he will prevail." It's only three minutes long, and you can hear him delivering it below:
Will Obama give the second-ever memorable speech? That would be impressive but seems unlikely. For context: Martin Luther King's quite long speech here; T.S. Eliot's here; Winston Churchill's here, which includes the Onion-esque line, "The world looks with admiration and indeed with comfort to
Scandinavia." ___ Also, to follow up on the WaPo Nobel editorial gaffe from yesterday: I mentioned soon after moving back from China that the New York Times looked like the same newspaper I remembered, while the Washington Post sadly did not. This is the kind of thing I had in mind. The NYT has its lapses and embarrassing errors (as do we all). But for this lengthy, lead editorial to have appeared in the Post yesterday, it had to have passed through at least three people's hands -- and probably many more. Those three would be: the editorial board member who wrote it; the editor of that section; and the copy editor who was on duty for the page as a whole. In reality, other people almost certainly saw it before publication.
The editorial as published -- with its recommendation that the Peace Prize should instead have been given posthumously to the martyred young woman Neda from the Iranian uprising -- required that none of those three people was aware that Nobel prizes are not given posthumously. That's surprising for people in those positions, on general-education principles, but in no sense negligent. We're all ignorant, just of different things. Before the current flap, I had never heard that Peace Prize nominations had to be filed by February, which would have ruled out figures from the Iranian uprising this summer.
But it also required that none of the three people was curious enough or worried enough to check, before publishing not a blog post or a real-time update but a major paper's main editorial. That is a surprise. I don't think we can imagine a similar gaffe in a NYT lead editorial -- other problems, sure, but not a general-knowledge fact-check howler. More to the point, I can't imagine a comparable error in the WaPo's own sports section, which has been outstanding for years and still is now. (The counterpart might be a column about the World Series noting that the NL pitchers looked better when at bat than AL pitchers did, and wondering why that might be.) FWIW the Neda editorial is still online, with no correction note or update.
October 10, 2009
Don't these people have The Google?
The Washington Post's lead editorial today argues that a more deserving winner for the Nobel Peace Prize would have been Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman whose death during the Iranian uprising became a worldwide symbol, comparable to the Tank Man of Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Defensible point, though obviously purely symbolic in its own way too. As the paper says, after arguing that the selection of Barack Obama is an expression of hope rather than a post-achievement recognition:
"The Nobel Committee's decision is especially puzzling given that a
better alternative was readily apparent.... A posthumous award for Neda, as the avatar of a
democratic movement in Iran, would have recognized the sacrifices that
movement has made and encouraged its struggle in a dark hour."
Would it have been so hard to mention the complicating fact that Nobel prizes are only for still-living people? And that this is a basic element of discussion when, for example, the literature prize rolls around each year? (After John Updike's death in January, one of the Post's own writers noted that among the sadnesses was that Updike would never be recognized with a Nobel prize.) And that therefore the omission of Neda is not "especially puzzling" at all? The FAQ page at NobelPrize.org (yes! there is such a site) makes this clear:
"Is it possible to nominate someone for a posthumous Nobel Prize?
"No, it is not. Previously, a person could be awarded a prize posthumously
if he/she had already been nominated (before February 1 of the same
year), which was true of Erik Axel Karlfeldt (Nobel Prize in Literature 1931)
and Dag Hammarskjöld (Nobel Peace Prize, 1961). Effective from 1974,
the prize may only go to a deceased person to whom it was already awarded
(usually in October) but who had died before he/she could receive the
Prize on December 10 (William Vickrey, 1996 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in
Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel). See also par.
4 of the Statutes of the
Nobel Foundation."
And this paragraph is the very first thing that comes up on a Google search for "posthumous Nobel prize." According to Google's meter, it took 0.24 seconds to find that info, and it would have taken maybe another fifteen seconds to change the sentence in the editorial to say: "Although the Nobel committee ordinarily rules out posthumous awards, an exception in this case... [and make the argument]."
Maybe the no-posthumous-award rules make sense. (Otherwise, you could have a debate every year on whether Abraham Lincoln, St. Francis of Assisi, or Gandhi was the most deserving choice.) Maybe they don't. Maybe they should have exceptions for deaths within the calendar year. Etc. But these are the widely-understood rules. Who is on the copy desk these days? Or writing editorials like this?
October 9, 2009
Obama's Nobel remarks: four very skillful paragraphs
Six months ago I mentioned that it would be hard to improve on Barack Obama's impromptu press conference answer as to whether he believed in such a thing as "American exceptionalism." I think the same is true of his remarks this morning about the Nobel Peace Prize. Each of the first four paragraphs was surprisingly artful, given the obviously short notice on which he spoke:
Let's take them one by one:
"THE PRESIDENT: Good
morning. Well, this is not how I expected to wake up this morning.
After I received the news, Malia walked in and said, "Daddy, you won the
Nobel Peace Prize, and it is Bo's birthday!" And then Sasha added,
"Plus, we have a three-day weekend coming up." So it's good to
have kids to keep things in perspective."
No one is going to sound truly modest in these circumstances -- you've just won the Nobel Peace Prize -- but the obligatory opening bout of self-deprecatory humor can sound more or less forced. This is about as natural-sounding and effective as it can be, meanwhile offering a glimpse of both vitality/youth and as much normality as can intrude into an American president's existence.
"I am both surprised and deeply
humbled by the decision of the Nobel Committee. Let me be clear: I
do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an
affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in
all nations."
Surprised, yes; humbled, something that is necessary to say. But very effective to turn at once to the idea that this is not his reward and recognition but that of the country as a whole. It won't keep his detractors from talking about his narcissism and vainglory, but nothing would; it is what his supporters would want to hear, and probably what the prize committee had in mind. He has probably figured out to say at every turn that this is an award not for him but for America and its ideals. And he can leave unsaid the reality that, from the prize committee's perspective, it's an award for returning to those ideals after an unpleasant hiatus.
"To be honest, I do not feel that I
deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've
been honored by this prize -- men and women who've inspired me and inspired the
entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace."
Again a compulsory note of modesty, which sets him up for the crucial following paragraph:
"But I also know that this prize
reflects the kind of world that those men and women, and all Americans, want to
build -- a world that gives life to the promise of our founding
documents. And I know that throughout history, the Nobel Peace Prize has
not just been used to honor specific achievement; it's also been used as a
means to give momentum to a set of causes. And that is why I will accept
this award as a call to action -- a call for all nations to confront the common
challenges of the 21st century."
This was the most important and shrewdest thing he said, because it is where he acknowledges an uncomfortable fact that everyone knows to be true.
Of course the award can't be in recognition of projects he has already
achieved and completed, because there aren't that many of them. In these third and fourth paragraphs, Obama acknowledges that point -- but adds the news-analyst's argument that often the Nobel committee awards these prizes as encouragements, signals, or what it hopes will be momentum-changers. If other people are going to say that, Obama does well to signal his understanding of the point himself. And from there he's off to the rest of the (fairly brief) statement, enumerating the sorts of common challenges he has in mind.
My point here concerns rhetoric and persuasion. Agree or disagree on his deserving the award, but reasonable people have to note the skill with which he used this opportunity.
On a related topic: Jerome Doolittle, my one-time colleague in the Jimmy Carter speechwriting office, posted a set of tips early this morning for Republican reaction to the award. So far his predictions are holding up well.
About the Nobel prize, two years ago
The last time an American won the Nobel Peace Prize, two years ago, I posted an item that I think has more relevance now. That winner was of course Al Gore. The remarks began as follows:
"I am old enough... well, there are many ways to end that sentence,
but for now: I am old enough to remember, from my school years, the
disdainful reaction in my home town to the news that Martin Luther King
had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
"The reaction was, of course, racial at its root. This was a
majority-white, minority-Hispanic small town with very few black
residents, which went for Barry Goldwater over Lyndon Johnson in the
presidential election that same fall. [And narrowly went for McCain over Obama last year, while California as a whole went strongly for Obama.]
"But the stated form of the objection concerned not King's race but
his obnoxiousness as a man. He was a windbag. He was pompous and
self-dramatizing, He was holier than thou. Plus, he had started getting
involved where he didn't belong, in raising questions about the Vietnam
War. Through the rest of Martin Luther King's life, the father of my
best home-town friend always went out of his way to refer sneeringly to
"Martin Luther Nobel."
"As is the case now with some similar complaints about Al Gore, the criticisms weren't about nothing...." [continues here]
The complaint about Obama will of course be that he has not yet "earned" the prize, and of course that criticism isn't about nothing. But there's something more at work too. More to come in this space too, about Obama's remarks, by this evening. Mainly noting this previous item in a parallel situation. It also included this disclaimer:
"There are a few choices that look fishy in retrospect. (Henry Kissinger
and Le Duc Tho in 1973??? Arafat as co-winner with Peres and Rabin in
1994?) But the great majority
stand up very well. Desmond Tutu, and then Mandela and deKlerk. Albert
Schweitzer. George C. Marshall. Lech Walesa, Willy Brandt, and Mikhail
Gorbachev. The Dalai Lama and Aung San Suu Kyi. The Norwegian Nobel
Institute has earned the benefit of the doubt for choosing people whose
achievements will stand up over time."
Yes, that Olympic rejection really makes Obama look weak...
Talk about a contemptuous outside world.
More on this in eight or ten hours, when next near a computer.
October 8, 2009
Doing Business in China: Kissing in Public
All I'll say about this clip, next in the Doing Business in China series, is that I did in fact frequently patronize the Haagen-Dazs stores shown in Shanghai to get presents of ice cream for my wife. The clip explains why this makes me a romantic-hearted person. The fashion show at the end also gives a little glimpse of why it can seem, well, incomplete to refer to modern China as only a grim land of sweatshops, or a culture under careful control by the central government, et cetera.
Offline for a little while
For reasons involving -- what was that concept again? Oh, yes, reporting and writing -- online activity will be suspended here for a few days. Except for Business in China clips, of which more in the pipeline.
October 7, 2009
Carter "crisis of confidence" retrospective this evening
Thirty years ago this summer, Jimmy Carter delivered his famous "Crisis of Confidence" adddress to the nation, generally mis-identified as the "malaise" speech -- a word he didn't use. I was gone from the Carter speechwriting empire by then. My successor and longtime friend Hendrik Hertzberg was in the hot seat that time. (Below, screenshot of Carter at the start of the speech.)
Recently Kevin Mattson, of Ohio University, published a book about that speech, its origins, and its aftermath, called What the Heck Are You Up to, Mr. President?This evening, October 7, I'll be joining him in Washington for a discussion of the speech, the book, and the general phenomenon of political calls, like Carter's, for "higher purpose" and "rebirth of citizenship." A live stream of the program, from 6:30pm to 7:30pm Eastern time, will be here.
Other details about the event, including the many political worthies who will be on hand, and sponsorship by the Progressive Book Club and the Center for American Progress, are here. As Mattson knows, I have some quarrels about first-hand details of his reconstructed account. But I certainly support the larger case he is making in his book.
The TSA: bringing us ever closer to China!
One of the predictably nutty aspects of life in China was the tyranny of objectively unimportant details of ID records. To mention only experiences I had first-hand:
I once had to buy a whole new airline ticket for a Beijing-Shanghai flight, and tear up my existing one, because the airline ticket agent had hand-written my first name on the ticket as "Jame," which didn't match my passport name. Similarly: the English-language on-line ticketing system for the Beijing Olympics had spaces for entering your first name and family name -- but no space for a middle name. (The Chinese version had spaces for the three characters in most Chinese names.) So when I went to the Bank of China to pick up the tickets I'd ordered and paid for, I showed my passport for identification -- and settled in for hours of argument, since my passport showed that I was James M. Fallows and the tickets were for James Fallows. How could this be the same person?
Thus it was with with a sense of deja vu and doom that I heard this summer about the TSA's new "Secure Flight" system, designed to match the Chinese government's pettifoggery about ID cards. (And in China, it is a more defensible bias. They have many more people, and many fewer available names, so their hairsplitting about naming details comes closer to making sense.) Well done yet again, TSA! If you were going to learn something from the Chinese security system, how about their "of course you can keep your shoes on" screening policy at airports?
Just now in the email, I find that this insistence on form rather than common sense ("the appearance of security is security") is leaking over to some of the private sector too. Thus, a similar "Secure Drive" message from a car rental company.
Grrr. I childishly express my resistance by signing in as "Jabba the Hutt," "Charles Manson," "Kim Jong-il" etc when made to sign my name on "security" registers -- really, "security theater" registers -- at office buildings. I'm waiting for the time some dozing security official calls me back and says, "Wait a minute, Mr. Hutt, why isn't your middle name capitalized?"
October 6, 2009
Doing Business in China: Battling Pirates
Next in the Doing Business in China series: a look at the morass of intellectual property protection, plus ways that some foreign companies have tried to cope with it. I'm not entirely sure, but I think that the opening scenes, in which CDs of operating systems and similar big-ticket software items are being sold for a dollar or two, were taken in front of the same high-tech mall in Shenzhen that I wrote about in 2007.
This clip is also notable for the cameo appearances by Kaifu Lee, a very attention-getting figure in the Chinese technology business. During the early filming for this series, he was Microsoft's man in China -- working, as the clip explains, to build relationships that would keep other companies and government ministries from simply stealing Microsoft products. By later stages of the filming, he was directing Google's operations in China. Very recently, he left to form his own VC firm. This clip concentrates on what he did with Microsoft; the whole series covers other companies' answers to the piracy problem.
October 5, 2009
Press items roundup
- TNR/McCaughey watch. As mentioned here numerous times, starting 14 years ago, The New Republic made Elizabeth McCaughey a public figure in 1994 and has been trying to mitigate the damage ever since. Concluding installment, under the circle-closing headline "No Exit" [also the title of McCaughey's original article], from Michelle Cottle here.
- Unknown gigantic cities watch. In my story last year about the surprisingly intense struggles within China to improve environmental protection, I mentioned a visit to Zibo, a coal-and-ceramics center in Shandong province. Zibo is one of countless cities in China that few outsiders have heard of but that are larger than, say, Chicago or Milan. The always interesting Moving Cities site, a Beijing-based effort to document urban design in fast growing cities, recently took a trip to Zibo to show what it looks like. Description and four photo essays about Zibo can be found here. (Note: for me, the Javascript on this site always stalled with Firefox. Worked OK with IE, Chrome, and Safari.)
Downtown view, with housing from the 1980s onward -- horizontal black bar is part of the site's convention for presenting photos:
On the way into town:
Alley that I've walked down myself, with pre-1980s housing:
- Problems of the press watch. I am grateful to Jake Seliger, of The Story's Story site, for a retrospective of my 1996 book Breaking the News. He makes the discouraging but, I think, accurate point that the arguments and criticisms from back in that era are all truer now. I have thought several times about revising or updating the book but have held back for two reasons. One is the shark-like instinct that it's worth always moving ahead to new territory. The other, that the central points to make remain the same; the details would differ and be more depressing.
Just a little more on the obesity front
The pensees keep on coming. More on simple phenomenon of weight this time, less on poverty or class issues. Previously here.
My God, you're skinny!
"I agree with your reader who theorized that
"My god, you're fat!" is a nice compliment from a culture where an
overabundance of food is a luxury. I would also like to note that the
exact opposite is true in America as well.
"I am underweight. I'm a 118 lbs, 6 foot tall male.
It's not that I do not eat, I certainly do, my genetics just do not
help me gain any weight at all. But the amount of people who
willfully come up to me and say "My god, you're
skinny!" never ceases to amaze me. I can be particularly embarrassing,
especially when you have a hangup about being so thin. I always found
it interesting that people here can so freely point out my frailness
and yet if I were to point out their obesity it would be considered quite rude.
"It wasn't until somewhat recently that I realized
most people saying this to me mean it as a compliment. Many people
would like to be as skinny as I am and have my genetics (even though I
don't particularly care for it), and this is just their way of
expressing that fact. I have no doubt that in a different culture it
could be skewed the other way."
My God, they're fat!
"Last week on a flight to Kansas City to visit family I had a layover at O'Hare and I spent some time counting fat men. I wanted to see what the percentage of fat to normal was. I used a simple visual standard- if the belly exceeded the belt by a certain degree I considered the men fat. This is a very generous criteria since good tailoring can hide a lot. After an hour of counting I came up with a ratio of three fat men to every normal man. I know that this was a survey rife with error but still, James, our empire is truly dying.
"Full disclosure- I am now 5,10 and 150 lbs but I was once (15 years ago) 190 lbs."
The real problem: sitting disease.
"The Mayo Clinic is doing some interesting research on what actually causes the human body to burn calories and a huge amount of it is activity outside of intentional exercise. In short the biggest cause of obesity per Dr. James Levine of the Mayo Clinic is "sitting disease". He's a big advocate of standing desks (which worked for Donald Rumsfeld, he had plenty of energy at 70something to act on his bad ideas) and some more futuristic solutions (adding treadmills to said desks) but all of the work is based on results which are backed up by research at Mayo's labs...
1) I love Chicago, but Rio is the best choice overall. Probably better for most people in Chicago (I speak from having lived through the ramp-up to the Beijing Olympics these past few years), although some of them may not feel that way right now. Certainly better for the whole spirit of the Games.
The US has had a lot of Olympics; no country in South America has had any. I think that these events feel more special, and get a better all-out push from the host country, when they represent some kind of inclusive "first ever" achievement. Japan marked its post-WW II recovery as before and after its 1964 Olympic games. South Korea in 1988 and China in 2008 used their host role, in different ways, as big national milestones. Athens in 2004, too, had some kind of closing-the-circle fulfillment in bringing the games back to their original home. Whereas for Los Angeles in 1984, Atlanta in 1996, and I assume London three years from now, the Olympics are mainly big logistics challenges to be coped with and endured.
2) Obama was in a no-win situation about his personal lobbying. The other candidate chiefs of state had also made personal pitches. If he hadn't made the trip and Chicago lost, you can imagine today's right-wing theme being: he didn't care enough about his country even to try. (Probably because it's not really his country. Now, if Kenya had been a finalist...) Since he did make the trip, the theme is: what a loser.
Yeah, yeah, his advisers "should have" had a clearer sense of the nuttiness that is the modern Olympic governing process; and yeah, yeah, knowing that, he should have limited his exposure by letting his wife be his representative. But -- and I would have said this if John McCain were president and had made the trip -- it was never really about him.
3) It's superfluous to link to anything in the omnipresent BoingBoing, but in this item, yesterday, Cory Doctorow made an important point that everyone outside the U.S. knows but that few resident Americans take seriously: It has become a tremendous nuisance, and often a humiliation, for foreigners to get through U.S. customs-and-immigration clearance. Lots of people still want to immigrate to the US, but people who have a choice are often glad not to travel here. (How to imagine this, if you hold a US passport? Think of your most unpleasant TSA screening experience, and multiply it by a hundred -- with an extra dose of, Why should we think you're not a terrorist? Yes, I hold a US passport, but I've heard tales like Doctorow's too many times not to get the point.) It's hard to know how much this affected the Olympic bid but is worth realizing as part of our connections with the rest of the world.
4) From a Chicagoan:
"As an unabashed Obama-phile, I'm distraught at how badly he
miscalculated in going to Copenhagen. Not only because the failure
could be damaging in itself, but also because, as you promised after
Obama's health care speech, the time has finally come that he wasn't
able to "pull himself out of pinch with a big speech."...
"This
latest speech may not perfectly fit, as Obama didn't think he was in a
pinch in the first place. Still, his failure does break his string of
very good luck (which included, for example, his three-point shot in
Kuwait)."
The theme of luck brings us back to the main point: Anyone who appreciates big cities should always love Chicago, but best of luck to Rio.
October 2, 2009
Obesity compendium
Various of my colleagues -- Corby Kummer, here, plus T-N Coates and Andrew Sullivan -- have picked up the conversation involving the connections among obesity, class, region, etc in America. Reasons for my returning to this topic:
- When the original reader messages came in, I did not give them a consistent category tag. I've now gone back and labeled them all with "Obesity," so the whole thread (including this item) can be found here.
- Below and after the jump, a few more reader notes to carry out the discussion.
From a reader who works for a major US corporation:
"[Another reader] wrote: . I did this primarily because I was tired of my business associates in Asia beginning every conversation with "My god, you are fat!".
"My Asian experience pales in comparison to yours (and presumably to your reader's), but my hunch is that your reader's business associates believe they were paying him a nice compliment. The long and tragic history of undernourished Asians led to a cultural view that to be of a healthy weight was to be prosperous. Hence, "My God, you are fat!" is equivalent to a Westerner saying "nice car!" or "you look great!" I can see how your reader might have felt insulted or hurt, but I am pretty sure the intentions were exactly the opposite. [JF note: Certainly in China, "Hey Fatty" is not a term of abuse.]"
From a (female) graduate of CalTechCaltech [I always forget]:
"Are science nerds fat? The answer is an unequivocal no, especially for women.
Another day, a lot more stimulation, at the "First Draft of History" event, as previously reported here.
I was the Atlantic's assigned chronicler/blogger for the interview with Lawrence Summers. First installment here; full wrapup, with clips, here. Then I got to interview Eric Schmidt of Google, who put on a real tour de force. The Atlantic's writeup by Derek Thompson, with clips, here.
Tomorrow back to reading, interview, writing -- you know, the stuff of getting the next issue of the magazine produced. But this was a worthwhile two days.
The big parade
As I mentioned in real time while watching the 60th anniversary festivities from Beijing on middle-of-the-night Chinese language TV, the whole event was a surprising relief. It had been shaping up ahead of time as a mammoth and imposing display of military hardware. The hardware and missiles were there -- but there was, to put it mildly, a lot of other stuff too.
As anyone watching in real time can attest, the appearance of this troupe was the first time that Hu Jintao, from the reviewing stand, broke into anything that looked like a relaxed expression:
What this picture (by Diego Azubel / European Pressphoto Agency) tragically doesn't convey is that members of scarlet-miniskirted division were actually goose-stepping.
A wonderful video summary from Dan Chung and Xiaoli Wang, of the Guardian, below, boils the many hours of the parade into four minutes -- and conveys the dramatic shift from tanks-and-missiles, to Mardi Gras/County Fair, at about time 1:55 of the clip.
Two other nice summaries: a live blog from the WSJ's China staff here; and a comparison of the parade to the movie Hangover here.
Here's one of the groups that came soon after the tanks. As I say, I'm relieved to see this chaos diversity, which reflects some of the wild range of Chinese life. Congrats to all involved.
More about visualizing words
I mentioned two days ago the very nice tool for mapping word-use in presidential inaugural addresses, created by Jonathan Feinberg of IBM.
I should have mentioned the underlying open-ended tool Wordle, also by Feinberg, which allows you to create "word clouds" from any arbitrary piece of text (or web feed etc). You can find it here, and I've used it just now to create clouds from two recent Atlantic web posts. This is how one recent post about obesity-and-class looks when word frequency is converted to graphics (most of the contents here comes from readers' letters; click for larger):
And here is how my post from a few hours ago about David Petraeus's comments looks with a slightly different layout scheme:
No cosmic point here, but interesting. Try it out -- an email from the boss, company vision statement, etc.
October 1, 2009
At the F'DOH
Today and tomorrow, most of the Atlantic's staff is at the Newseum in Washington, for the "First Draft of History" conference. Live streaming webcast here, along with pictures, real-time updates, after-action analyses, and so on. Atlantic staff members are rotating in the role of Official Recording Secretary (aka blogger) for each session. My duty today was the Brian Williams-David Petraeus discussion. First dispatch here; longer followup, with four clips of Petraeus in action, here. __ I spell F'DOH with an apostrophe in homage both to Homer Simpson and to Portuguese Fado music. Although I realize that for Homer alone, it should be FD'OH.
Doing Business in China: As Good as Their Word
Next up in the Doing Business in China series, a look at the implications of the heavily freighted term guanxi -- 关系, usually rendered in English as "relationship" and often thought by Westerners to indicate the shadier senses of that term. As the interviewees in this clip indicate, the emphasis on guanxi has evolved in response to China's particular circumstances -- especially, the centuries-long absence of an effective legal system. In the video series as a whole, we talk about the ways in which it persists, and doesn't, in modern China.
Nook and Kindle: Via Chinese manufacturing- world contacts, I have known this was coming for a while. Looks nice (left), and even if it looked bad it would be a huge plus for the industry, the reading public, and the publishing world to have competition for Amazon and its Kindle. I say that as a member of a two-Kindle household who has spent a lot on e-books. I'll see if I can rationalize a "need" for the Nook at some point.
