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In case you were really curious about my views on different topics...
For the record:
- Last night's panel discussion with Jim Lehrer on the News Hour about China, Obama, et cetera,
here;
- Also last night on BBC America with Matt Frei, also about Obama and China,
here;
- This morning on CSPAN Washington Journal, with Bill Scanlan, also about Obama and China, not on line at the moment but I will find it at some point (
here);
- Interview last week on The Kindle Chronicles, with Len Edgerly, about e-reading devices,
here;
- Radio interview two weeks ago, when I was in Australia, with Margaret Throsby of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation -- closest U.S. counterpart would be Terry Gross --
here. Her interviews are Fresh Air-like in combining policy and personal info. Also discussing my upcoming collaboration with the U.S. Studies Centre at the University of Sydney on future-of-media issues, a topic for another day.
- Just to round this out, plan to be on KQED "
Forum" with Michael Krasny at 9:30am PST / 12:30pm EST today. (Audio
here.)
- Charlie Rose this evening, with Elizabeth Economy and Nicholas Burns.
Nook, Kindle, Raz, NPR
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.
Festival of updates #5: Wolfowitz and Iraq
For the rest of his life, Paul Wolfowitz will face questions about the invasion and occupation of Iraq. You can hear that realization sinking in on him during the course of
his ten-minute interview with Guy Raz of NPR, broadcast this evening on on All Things Considered. Wolfowitz had come on the show to discusss
his essay on foreign policy "realism" in
Foreign Policy magazine -- about which more in a moment. Through the ten minutes, you can hear Wolfowitz sounding startled, then testy, then something like resigned when Raz keeps coming back to the questions he obviously had to ask, about how Wolfowitz's current theories match the record in office for which he will always be best known.
The idea that we'll "always" be known for a moment in the unchangeable past, no matter how the rest of our lives turn out, is a proposition so fatalistic that that we all naturally resist it. (Except maybe Michael Phelps, Sandy Koufax, perhaps Tom Brady and Neil Armstrong, etc.) The earnest
post-Vietnam career of Robert McNamara is a testament to how much he struggled with that reality. Remarkably and rarely, Al Gore will "always" be the man at the losing end of
Bush v. Gore, but he made a new identity after that.
In the ten minutes of his interview, whenever Wolfowitz says "Look!" what he's really signaling is: I don't want to talk about this Iraq stuff any more, so why do you keep coming back to it? The reason for coming back, of course, is that Wolfowitz does
and always will occupy a unique role in the intellectual history of the decision. Dick Cheney will apparently never reveal a doubt or second thought; George W. Bush has (with some dignity) backed off the public stage for now; Colin Powell has made sure to signal that he was never that enthusiastic; and who knows what Donald Rumsfeld will come up with. But Wolfowitz was the one who from the start had the sweeping vision of the historic rationale for removing Saddam Hussein.
The public case for invading Iraq was purely negative. ("Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons
of mass destruction." Dick Cheney, speech to national VFW Convention, August
26, 2002.) But the "enlightened" case that Wolfowitz in particular had made for years in articles, interviews, and speeches involved the broader, Wilsonian prospect of bringing democracy to the Arab world, as it had largely come to much of Asia and Latin America. I did a profile of him
in early 2002 that emphasized this theme. I also had a sense of its origins, having lived in Southeast Asia in the 1980s, when Wolfowitz helped swing U.S. policy against Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, and then was a very popular U.S. ambassador to Indonesia. By all accounts, Wolfowitz was a prominent voice telling a rattled President Bush, during the first, nervous strategy session at Camp David days after the 9/11 attacks, that for positive and negative reasons alike he had to get to the root of the terrorist problem by moving against Iraq. (For more on Wolfowitz's role in war planning, see
here and
here.)
In its way it was an honorable vision, as were most of Robert McNamara's beliefs through the early days in Vietnam. But it did not -- OK, has not so far -- turned out anything like what Wolfowitz advertised publicly and within the government. To his credit, Guy Raz of NPR played back to Wolfowitz the tape of his notorious Congressional testimony just before the invasion, in which he said "We can't be sure that the Iraqi people will welcome us as liberators
... [but] I am reasonably certain that they will greet us as
liberators, and that will help us to keep requirements down." And "It's hard to conceive that it would take
more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take
to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam's
security forces and his army. Hard to imagine."
It's worth listening to -- along with the full 37-minute unedited interview,
here. Among other reasons, I suspect it will be a while before we hear Paul Wolfowitz in such a setting again. The first 15 minutes or so of the "long" version involve what he did want to talk about -- his new
Foreign Policy article warning against excessive "realism" in America's approach to the world. Judge for yourself, but it strikes me as a concerted argument against a non-existent or straw-man foe. When an American president has given
a major speech in an Arab capital saying that the U.S. needs to engage in the modernization of the Islamic world, it's hard to argue that the U.S. is showing a steely indifference to social and political conditions outside its borders.
It took more than twenty years after Robert McNamara's departure from the Pentagon for him to begin talking seriously about Vietnam. I look forward to what Paul Wolfowitz eventually says about his war.
___
In an on-air colloquy with Guy Raz after this interview, I made my own mistake. I said that a recent
ruling by a panel of judges from the 9th Circuit held that John Ashcroft, former Attorney General, "was" personally liable for illegal detention of a U.S. citizen. Actually, the ruling said that he "could be" personally liable. My apologies.
My visit to the Motley Fool
A week ago, when for unrelated house-reconstruction reasons I was comatose from no sleep, I had a very enjoyable hour-long visit with the staff of the
Motley Fool, at their stylish HQ in Alexandria, Va. This was part of their Motley Fool Conversation series. A podcast of the result is available
here. I realize that I may have been snarkier-sounding about the future of Twitter than reasoned analysis would support. But, hey, I was only half awake! And it was at the Motley Fool. Most of the talk was about China, with side notes about Microsoft, speechwriting, the Future of the Atlantic, and so on.
Seriously, most TV and radio talk shows could take useful interviewing tips from these guys. A very enjoyable exchange, at least from my point of view.
If you're in Seattle-land
I will be on KUOW's
Weekday program today, 9am-10am PDT, talking with
Steve Scher about (guess!) China. I was supposed to do this one week ago, but had such a paralyzing case of laryngitis, based on having yelled over the noise of jet engines at the Oshkosh air show earlier that week, that I couldn't say a word and had to bail out.
Update: audio of show is available
here. It was a lot of fun. Got to talk about
my visit to the Shanghai Skin Diseases and Sexually Transmitted Diseases clinic, as a patient.
Side note: again I notice as a recent arrival on American shores the value that NPR public-affairs talk shows around the country bring. When I lived in Seattle, I often listened to Scher's show -- or to Michael Krasny's
Forum on KQED when I was living in Berkeley, or Larry Mantle's
AirTalk on KPCC when I was visiting my parents in southern California, or
Kathleen Dunn on Wisconsin Public Radio when I'm in that part of the country. And of course in many cities you can hear Tom Ashbrook's
On Point from WBUR in Boston and
Diane Rehm on WAMU in DC. I'll stop with the list before getting into the risk of "offense by omission"; the point, again, is that at a moment of justified concern about the chaos and deterioration of the media, it's worth noting that this particular kind of program -- locally-run NPR talk shows -- is an area of increasing quality and strength.
PR updates: NPR, Stanford Review, WNYC, plus NYT Mag
-
On the Media interview with Bob Garfield,
here, about the media-politics of health care reform. Back in 1995, I wrote
this Atlantic article about the way the Clinton health-care proposal fell apart -- including the damaging role played by
a hugely misleading article by Elizabeth "Betsy" McCaughey. Interview covers whether it could happen again.
- Online Q-and-A with the Stanford Review's
Bellum project,
here.
- Interview last week about China with Brian Lehrer of WNYC,
here. These all for the record.
Also for the record, let me join others congratulating the Atlantic's Megan McArdle for what she
has reported about Edmund Andrews'
gripping account of his descent into deadbeat hell.
Having had some experience with writing confessional, "here's a mistake I made, and what I learned from it" articles, I understand the fundamental premise of the tell-all bargain. You're asking for the reader's trust and, if not forgiveness or respect, at least forbearance because of your brave candor in facing unflattering truths. But in those tell-all circumstances, you really do have to tell it all. There would ordinarily be no reason whatsoever for Andrews to embarrass his wife by talking about her past financial problems (two declarations of bankruptcy) --
unless he undertook to write a warts-and-all book about how his household got into financial trouble. This is also connected to the first item, above, about the health care debate. For all the mixed effects of the internet on mainstream journalism, there
is a fast-feedback loop now that can correct errors that would otherwise have stood.
Dramatic listening: passenger-pilot landing the plane
For real-life drama fans, the air traffic control tapes of Douglas White being talked through the landing of a King Air airplane, after the professional pilot dropped dead at the controls, are riveting and, to put it mildly, admirable. An AOPA Online interview with White, including links to the recording plus the picture below, is
here. The recording itself is
here.
As news stories pointed out, White had a pilot's certificate but had done his limited amount of flying in an entirely different kind of airplane -- with one engine rather than the King Air's two, with different avionics and control systems, with much slower operating speeds. Plus, he had flown previously from the left seat -- the normal seat for the pilot -- rather than the right ("shotgun"), where he happened to be sitting when the pilot died.
In one sense landing any kind of airplane is the same, in that you're gradually slowing the aircraft as it comes closer to the ground. The most crucial information, which varies by model of plane, is the right speeds for the different stages of the approach. The speed at which you should initially descend. The speed below which you can safely lower the landing gear and the first "notch" of flaps. The speed at which you can fully extend the flaps. The "final approach" speed as you're bringing the airplane right down to the ground. The stalling speed, which you must always keep the plane above so that it doesn't just fall. In the recording, this info is what White keeps asking of the controller -- about an airplane whose basic up/down fast/slow right/left controls he understands but whose speeds he doesn't know.
The calm of all involved is incredible. All the more so after the emotional relief/breakdown you briefly hear from the pilot after he and his family are safely on the ground.
Contraband cheese and other random jet-lagged notes from the road
1) In addition to the other advertised virtues of a
three-day visit to San Francisco -- interesting conference, successful visa renewal, family-reunification, etc -- also got to see this evening a special screening of Kevin Rafferty's
fabulous documentary movie,
"Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29." Rafferty previously made very good political documentaries like
Feed and
Atomic Cafe. Even if you have no interest whatsoever in the subject matter -- no interest in Harvard, no interest in Yale, no interest in football, no interest in the year 1968 when the game was played - I predict that you will find this narrative gripping. Really high-class story telling and human portraiture. Among other benefits: fodder for wondering whether Tommy Lee Jones (lineman on the Harvard team) is poetic or merely hostile/aphasic. Also: the name Michael Bouscaren will not leave your mind once you have seen this film. Similarly J.P. Goldsmith -- but in his case, in a good way.
2) Huzzah and welcome to the
Atlantic Food Channel! It is produced by the renowned Corby Kummer, known to the world as an expert food-and-living writer but known to me as the person who has edited my articles at the Atlantic lo these last 25+ years. A fascinating array of articles for its launch -- and I say this as the most non-foodie member of the Atlantic's staff.
3) First impression of the
vaunted Kindle 2: it needs a cover, and (unlike the Kindle Classic) it doesn't come with one. ("Needs" = to keep the screen from being scratched when you're toting it around.) I ordered the cheapest one available and will report back on all things Kindle-related.
4) Latest China-related travel tip: Word from the home office in Beijing is that the customs authorites at PEK airport have launched a new crackdown on contraband....
cheese. My wife and I
always lug cheese back when we're coming to China from any other country, because practically everywhere else there is a better, cheaper selection. But now, apparently, the luggage-sniffing beagles at the airport are trying to sniff out any cheese secreted in a suitcase, and vacuum-packs or triple-plastic-bag wrapping are no protection. WTF!?!? But there is no point tempting fate. So we'll go cheeseless for another while, and hope that the beagles are not looking for ground coffee.
5) Media notes: interview this morning with KQED
here, and on All Things Considered
here. That is all.
In local news...
As mentioned
recently:
-
Got my Chinese visa renewed! These things are never a gimme, and the
outcome isn't always easy to predict by what we might call logical
factors. Eg: last summer's rash of visa denials at just the time
Beijing was "inviting the world" for the Olympics. Tale of my original
visa woes included in
this article.
Lesson of experience: if you're applying in the US, stick with the LA
and San Francisco consulates. Hyper-busy, which has its drawbacks
(bring a book! bring two!) but means that the questioning when you get
to the window often boils down to "will you pay extra for rush
processing?" Suggested answer: yes.
- For those in the KQED/SF listening area, I will be on the
"Forum" show tomorrow (Friday, March 13) morning from 9am-10am PDT, talking about
this new Atlantic article about China's economic travails.
- When I have
regained
come closer to sanity, which thanks to the PEK-SFO flight is likely to
be around 3am local time, I will try properly to register the
excitement at the array of interesting software on display at the David
Allen /
GTD Summit, plus some
architectural compare-and-contrast thoughts about the three cities
I've seen in the past four days: Shanghai, Beijing, and SF. That's for
later. Now, zzzzzzzzzzzzz.....
Edging back into connectivity: Kennedy Library Forum
Ten days ago, in what seems a different lifetime, I was at the JFK Presidential Library in Boston for one of its "
Kennedy Library Forum" presentations. Dr. Lincoln Chen, founder of Harvard's Global Equity Initiative, led an
hour-long discussion about China and America (just before he went to the airport for a trip to China himself), followed by half an hour of Q-and-A from the audience.
I enjoyed his questions a lot, plus the general direction the discussion took. Minnesota Public Radio has a webcast of the program
here. I believe that Boston's own WBUR will eventually do so
here as well. FWIW.
'On Point' interview with Tom Ashbrook
Twenty-plus years ago, Tom Ashbrook and I were both in Japan, reporting on its ups and eventual downs. He did so for the Boston Globe, I for an outstanding literary-political monthly founded in 1857. He has since been a high-tech entrepreneur, author of
a book (which I really liked) about that high-tech adventure, and now a successful WBUR/NPR
radio host. I was on his On Point program today, talking about, in part, a compare-and-contrast between Japan and China plus other topics. Webcast
here.
I fear that the Tom Waits-like effects on my voice of 30+ months of breathing l'air Chinois are becoming more evident each time I open my mouth. Oh well. Finally I have an excuse to start smoking.*
____
* Just a little joke. The one thing my parents said they absolutely, completely, unconditionally would not allow would be for their kids to smoke. My dad brought up this point one evening after he had, by chance, spent the entire day at the office telling one patient after another that the cough they'd been having or that tickle in their throat was actually lung- or throat-cancer. And he was a normal internist, not an oncologist! It impressed me.
Fresh Air update, concluding family comments
Webcast of yesterday's interview on Fresh Air available online
here.
After we'd discussed the People's Bank of China, RMB/$ exchange rates, the "financial balance of terror" between China and the US, and similar worthy topics, Terry Gross asked me in the closing moments about the deaths of my parents. Specifically, why I'd
written on this site about my father's death two months ago today. (My mother died unexpectedly, and relatively young, in her sleep nearly five years ago.)
I didn't know she would ask this but in retrospect am glad that she did. As I fumbled to explain in real time, part of my instinct in making a private matter public was the sense that people with the virtues of my parents -- talented, loving, curious, hopeful people who poured their heart and effort into the betterment of their small community and the well-being of their family -- deserve more celebration than they typically get, precisely because they have chosen not to operate on a broad public stage. My parents were very well known in our home town but unknown outside of it. It gave me heart to think that people who had never encountered them might hear something about the lives they led.
As my siblings have taken turns cleaning out our dad's house, they have come across hundreds of pictures that none of us had ever seen before. Parents are always old to their children. When parents have lived to an objectively advanced age and then physically run down, as my dad did, it is startling to be reminded how vigorous and, yes, beautiful they had once been. My mom and dad's youth is what we are discovering after their deaths.
Thus, and as the real end to this commemorative series, three pictures I had never seen while my parents were living, part of a huge collection that my brother-in-law Bryan Neider is digitizing from old, brittle prints. The first are of my parents in the late 1940s, around the time of their wedding when she was 20 and he was 23. (His wedding ring is visible in the second shot.) Then, one of the rare pictures of my dad in which he's not smiling. Here he is wearing his game face, as the four-quarters, every-play offensive and defensive lineman known as Tiger Jim. These are people we never knew and are meeting now.
My own personal Olympic marathon (NPR dept)
Sure, Michael Phelps may swim practically back-to-back Olympic finals just now and win gold medals in both of them. But I'm pulling an all-nighter for the greater good of publicizing our outstanding magazine!
Will be on NPR's Talk of the Nation live around 2:30pm EDT Wednesday, 2:30am Thurs China time, discussing
my article on presidential debates in the hot-off-the-presses
September issue of the Atlantic. It may not have as many juicy inside memos as does Josh Green's
wonderful story on the Clinton campaign's final days. But it has more words! And it has great video-clips of debates and debaters, added by Jennie Rothenberg Gritz and other members of the Atlantic web team. (Plus, it has an obscure reference to
Marshal Petain.) We all sacrifice when Going for the Gold.
Update: The audio of the interview is
here.
PS: If you're going to see only one of the clips, make sure you see the one from the Obama-v-Keyes Senate race in 2004, which is the third video clip on the web version's first page. It gives a sample of the rhetorical phenomenon that is Alan Keyes, along with how easily Obama was able to handle him back then.
But of course you should see all the clips and read the whole thing....
For the record: interview with Australian radio
I am a fan of the
Breakfast show on Australia's ABC Radio National, with regular host Fran Kelly. For US listeners, it's more or less comparable to NPR's Morning Edition, with adjustments for Aussie informality and sass.
I talked with Fran Kelly two days ago about the Olympic buildup and China's environmental efforts in general. Links
here, fwiw.
All Things Considered interview with Robert Siegel
From yesterday's (Jan 29) All Things Considered, my interview with Robert Siegel about China's vast dollar holdings here. Original story here -- free! like all our content! -- and update here.
Fresh Air interview
The Atlantic has a gala new on-site recording "studio," which casual observers might confuse with "a regular office with acoustic foam stapled on some of the walls."* But it has a high-quality transmission line and works fine. While in the U.S. last week, I used it for a conversation with Dave Davies of the Philly Daily News, guest-hosting for Terry Gross on Fresh Air. It was broadcast today in America; link here.
Yes, the first part of the show is Jerry Seinfeld! I will listen to that now, and will not blame a soul (except my dad) for starting there.
* Tech update: I am informed by the Atlantic's tech high command that this is not in fact stapled on but attached with special acoustic foam glue. No half measures for us!
Radio interview: Nevada Public Radio, about Macau
With Dave Berns on KNPR's "State of Nevada" program. Real-time description of watching welders working in the dark on nearby Shanghai skyscraper, plus real-time coughing from my once-very-healthy lungs.
Radio interview: America's Business, with Mike Hambrick
About Shenzhen and Chinese manufacturing in general (including poisonous pet food and lead paint), audio version here, PDF transcript here.
Thanks to Hambrick and Carter Wood of NAM for arranging.
'Weekend Edition Sunday' interview / Chertoff's folly
Audio here from my interview yesterday (from Shanghai) with Liane Hansen of NPR, looking back on my Sept 2006 Atlantic article arguing that the best way to hold down the threat and consequences of terrorism was to declare the "War on Terrorism" over. (Original article here; related Atlantic material here and here.) The question arose, of course, in light of Michael Chertoff's "gut feeling" that another strike might be imminent.
I didn't think to put it this bluntly over the radio, but Sec. Chertoff's comment ran about as contrary to all prevailing thought on dealing with terrorism (except, perhaps, the thoughts of GW Bush and RB Cheney) as is possible to do.
Continue reading "'Weekend Edition Sunday' interview / Chertoff's folly" »
Growth in Chinese internet use, from PRI's 'The World'
Audio here from a story this week on the public radio show "The World." The story is about the rapid growth of internet use in China and the implications thereof. It draws on a new study from the Pew Internet Project and includes an interview with the study's author and Pew's China bureau chief, Deborah Fallows, who is in the other room as I type.
Video link: Lehrer News Hour interview about Shenzhen
Just before leaving China last month, I showed up in the pre-dawn haze (referring to my state of mind, not the weather) at the Shanghai Media Group TV studios for an interview with Jeff Brown, of the Lehrer News Hour, about the nature of Chinese factory life. Streaming video is here; RealAudio here; MP3 here; transcript here.
'The World' radio interview now posted
A few days ago I talked with Lisa Mullins, of the public radio program ‘The World,’ about my current story on the factory-land of southern China. The interview was broadcast yesterday in two parts, here and here. The whole program lineup for yesterday’s show is here.
In reciprocity to the show for its attention, I’ll spell out that The World is co-produced by the BBC and PRI and WGBH in Boston. And it’s a show I’ve always liked.
Mr. Zhang's Dream Town now at Atlantic site
The March issue of the Atlantic is now out; with any luck, I'll see it myself in three or four weeks when the mail makes its way across the mighty ocean. A slide show about Mr. Zhang's utopia/mystery land in Hunan province is now at the Atlantic's site. So is the story itself; but, hey, these things are always better in real print.
Podcast of Blind Into Baghdad interview
Recently posted here.
China slideshow at the Atlantic, plus Slate
A narration of daily life in Shanghai and Beijing here, at the Atlantic's site. Of course accompanied by my wife Deb's "Diarist" this week in Slate.
Audio of book talk, World Affairs Council of Northern California
San Francisco, October 5, 2006; audio here.
Al Franken show update
Driving down 101, Santa Barbara to Los Angeles, and the cell phone rings: Ready to go on the air? Whoops! Through re-scheduling I wasn't aware of, on the Al Franken show one day earlier than I expected, and from cell phone at 75mph freeway speeds -- I mean, "keeping up with the traffic" highest legal speed -- while cradling the phone with one hand and steering with the other. Link is here.
Archives of Smiley and KUOW shows
Webcasts of Tavis Smiley show and KUOW "The Conversation" with Ross Reynolds are here.
Diane Rehm Show interview
Interview with guest host Susan Page, about Blind into Baghdad, here.
NPR Weekend Edition interview, about "Declaring Victory" terrorism story
Weekend Edition Sunday, August 20, 2006 ｷ James Fallows offers a modest proposal in the war against terrorism in the September issue of The Atlantic Monthly. His article, "Declaring Victory," calls for the U.S. to resist being provoked by terrorist acts. Audio link here.
Brian Lehrer show / WNYC interview on "Declaring Victory"
"VWOT-DAY
In 'Declaring Victory' in the new issue of the Atlantic Monthly, James Fallows makes the case that, in the five years since 9/11, we've learned that it's time to declare victory in the War on Terror and move on to a more effective counter-terrorism strategy."
Audio here.
