One consequence of having been alive through a lot of modern American history is remembering a lot of mass shootings. I was working at a high school summer job when news came over the radio that Charles Whitman had gunned down more than 40 people, killing 14, from the main tower at the University of Texas at Austin. I was editing a news magazine during the schoolyard killings in Paducah, Kentucky in 1997 and sent reporters to try to figure out what it all meant. I can remember where I was when the live-news coverage switched to the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado, and the shootings at the one-room schoolhouse in the Amish country of Pennsylvania, and the Virginia Tech shootings two years ago. And all the rest.
In the saturation coverage right after the events, the "expert" talking heads are compelled to offer theories about the causes and consequences. In the following days and weeks, newspapers and magazine will have their theories too. Looking back, we can see that all such efforts are futile. The shootings never mean anything. Forty years later, what did the Charles Whitman massacre "mean"? A decade later, do we "know" anything about Columbine? There is chaos and evil in life. Some people go crazy. In America, they do so with guns; in many countries, with knives; in Japan, sometimes poison.
We know the emptiness of these events in retrospect, though we suppress that knowledge when the violence erupts as it is doing now. The cable-news platoons tonight are offering all their theories and thought-drops. They've got to fill time. I wish they could stop. As the Vietnam-era saying went, Don't mean nothing.
RIP.
November 1, 2009
Are we naked in the cloud?
A reader sends in a link to this recent post by law professor Orin Kerr, on a ruling about how 4th Amendment protections against "unreasonable search and seizure" apply to email. The central question is whether the government needs to inform individual email users when their messages are seized and read -- or whether it is sufficient to notify their internet service provider or mail service, like Google or Yahoo. According to the logic of the ruling, by the sheer act of sending email, a user has transferred custody of the messages to a third party. Thus notifying the third party -- Google, Yahoo, et al -- is enough, with the sender left in the dark.
As that post describes, the legal comparison-drawing goes in many directions. Is "giving" an email to Yahoo like putting a package in a public storage locker? Is it like putting an envelope in a regular mailbox? Does it matter if the message is encrypted? Etc. But the reader's point is less about the ins and outs of this ruling than about the broader legal/privacy implications of storing information "in the cloud." When you're working in Google Docs, as opposed to using a spreadsheet or document that lives on your computer, have you essentially surrendered custody and control of that information? What if you rely on online "cloud" systems -- Carbonite, SugarSync -- to back up or sync your files? Have you given up custody of those files too? The reader writes:
"Based, in part, on your fondness ["your" referring to me, JF] for storing your documents in "the cloud" via third-party services like Sugarsync, Google Docs, etc., I thought you would this link interesting. [It concerns an opinion] concluding that email messages - even if they are entitled to 4th Amendment protection - can be retrieved by federal law enforcement authorities WITHOUT NOTICE TO THE SUBSCRIBER. The court's rationale - that the ISP is a "third party" rather than a file cabinet inside the target's "home" - would seem to apply perfectly well to documents stored in the cloud.
"My concern about such matters is one big reason I do not rely much on "cloud" services of which you are so fond. It's not that I have much about myself that is all that interesting to third parties. It's that, as a lawyer, I have an ethical obligation to protect client confidences. And - if [this] reasoning prevails nationwide - this becomes impossible to do if I were to receive no "notice" from the ISP that they had received a search (or already complied with) a warrant for my clients' personal stuff.
"To be clear, my clients are mostly indigent disabled people rather than individuals accused of criminal conduct, but - still - these sort of "big picture" issues are what a lawyer thinks about when he or she is deciding whether to make a wholesale migration to Sugarsync or Google Docs. And, for what it's worth, it is why I think Google and Sugarsync would be well served in joining together to lobby FOR a federal statute imposing strict privacy protection on documents stored in the cloud.
"There is no way I'm putting my business docs permanently online until this issue is clearly settled in favor of privacy. It would, in fact, be unethical for me to do so.... While having copies of all your stuff stored in the cloud may be vastly more convenient than having it in your home-office file cabinet - it is a vastly less safe "place" from a privacy standpoint."
I am not equipped to say more about the legal aspects here. But as a matter of politics and policy, I think the reader's recommendation is exactly right. All parties with a stake in developing cloud-based computing -- Google and Microsoft, IBM and Apple, Yahoo and anyone else you can name -- should push for clearer policy statements about keeping things private even in the cloud. People simply are going to store and share more information this way. That shouldn't mean a further, big, automatic, unintended surrender of privacy, and it would be better to set up rules to that effect before there's a big scandal or problem.
October 28, 2009
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 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."
October 21, 2009
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.
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.
- 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!
October 9, 2009
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 7, 2009
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 2, 2009
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.
September 26, 2009
From Sudan, the Arctic, Shanghai: last takes on obesity
... at least for a while. Previously here, and with backward-reaching links here. Today's themes:
Role of psychological factors, beyond class and geography:
"Earlier this year, I spent a month in Southern Sudan. Returning to the US has many culture shocks - overpowering media environment being one. But the most striking was the preponderence not only of obese people, but people of all classes who were clearly overweight.
"I live in Rochester, upstate NY which I consider a small midwestern city. The class lines referred to in your post are easily visible and confirmed. But I'd add one other possible obesity factor that likely traverses class lines: depression. No data, but I would guess that people who are depressed or anxious most often turn to food to soothe those beasts. Perhaps there's also a subtle factor of reaction to our Calvinist, repressive cultural history when it comes to sensual pleasure; food is allowed."
The Eskimo angle:
"I live in a predominantly Yup'ik Eskimo part of the world, where education levels are typically lower and the consumption of junk food has led to rapidly increasing rates of diabetes.Overweight and obese are the norm here, and not just among Yup'iks....
"Another indicator from here: the used-clothes boutique has literally tens of feet of rack space for large, large clothes, about one foot or less for what one would consider small sizes.A doctor friend says the medical community has to redefine normal, since official normal does not represent most people...
"I recently took a trip to Kansas City - which appears periodically in those lists generated somewhere of most-obese cities - and was struck by how few overweight people I was seeing. In fact, it was notable to me how fit most people looked, whereas here it is just the opposite. I was surprised."
From a British friend in Shanghai:
"I'm not surprised you are surprised not to see so many obese people. The world is enjoying the conversation about an 'obesity epidemic' and technically America tops the scales which gives the rest of us a chance to enjoy a seeming superiority. Whether or not that situation has changed in America and whether or not the situation for the rest of us has changed (in Europe, China or wherever getting fatter) doesn't matter. It's become a truism that Americans are fatter in greater numbers. This belief is held on to by both a) foreigners who like to have a dig at the US whenever we get a chance and b) ex-pat Americans who take the ex-pat view of all ex-pats that the country they come from has gone to the dogs since they left it. As you've been mixing with both foreigners and ex-pat Americans for several years in China you've probably let your guard down a bit and allowed it all to seep into your consciousness as it sort of seems right. Therefore when you return and are re-immersed in American life your unconscious assumption made while overseas is challenged.
"Or, maybe you just need glasses!
"Seriously though, it is interesting how many myths, stereotypes and assumptions you make about your own society while out of it for even a relatively short time.
"Therefore the question is not really what happened to America's weight, good or bad, but what happened to James Fallows while he was away!"
Ah, that last line opens up some questions that reach far beyond the obesity theme... For now I'll say that I will return shortly to the ever-pressing boiled frog and slippery slope debates. And I will add, after yesterday's set of obesity maps, that a wonderful site for visualized data in general is FlowingData.com -- eg with this set of charts about making sense of flight delays. Nothing to do with body weight but interesting nonetheless. Thanks to Parker Donham for this lead.
"The one I've always used for this kind of thing is the male pattern
baldness combover. Makes sense at first, but when do you decide that
today is the day you now look like an idiot."
Thematically-related contribution from The Onion here.
Weight, class, and Wal-Mart
From a friend in Boston, a note that gives an extended version of a theme in many responses I've received. Background here and here. Charts and data on this point shortly. The argument here -- that, along with smoking, obesity has become a class-bound marker and problem in America -- is hardly surprising, but the power of the connection is what many people emphasize.
"i wonder if your seeing fewer overweight people than you expected when you got back to the states might be, at least in part, a function of class. this is a point i'm somewhat uncomfortable making, but it shouldn't be ignored. people who, just as a for instance, run and listen to npr and read (not to mention write for) the atlantic are both likelier to be fit and likelier to associate with people of the same ilk. (as a nation, we've not only gotten fatter but also, as you know, much less likely to mix with people who don't share our educational or cultural background.)
"i remember walking through harvard yard back in 1986 during the university's celebration of its 350th anniversary. the place was awash in alums, and there was something noticeably different about most of these people. it wasn't that they were expensively dressed or looked like preppies, i realized. it's that almost everyone was so *trim.* none of these people would likely be found shopping in wal-mart, where waistlines look a lot different.
"as an aside: i've long thought it would be an interesting commentary on the stratification in this society to have political candidates asked during a debate if they'd ever shopped at a wal-mart. i have to think that very few could honestly answer yes--and the higher the office the fewer the yeses. to think that a democracy's leadership class should have no connection (other than owning stock--or, in hillary clinton's case, being once on its board) to the biggest corporation in the country, how strange! back when the biggest corporation was gm or exxon, even the wealthiest people likely had *some* dealings with it, even only being chauffered in a cadillac."
To answer the last question: I'm not a political candidate, but I have not only shopped in W-Ms around the US but have also been to many outlets inside China. That's a story on its own -- the one in Shanghai has whole pig carcasses suspended by hooks right inside the front door, and tanks full of live carp, which the shopper-housewives let flop around on the floor to see which ones look best for the evening's dinner. No one will ever convince me that W-M doesn't know how to globalize/localize.
But I digress. To sharpen my friend's question: a candidate should be asked when was the most recent time he or she enjoyed Every Day Low Prices.
Are we fat?
Assents, dissents, and elaborations -- well, actually no assents -- to thesetwo earlier comments that I have not noticed the American obesity epidemic as much as I expected, after a few years away. "You need to get out more." A note representative of many I received:
"You are in Washington. Too many urbanites who buck the trend. Spend a
week off the coast - In Cincinnati, Columbus, St. Louis especially in
the suburbs and you will see it."
Ripple Effects:
"Your comment about not seeing as many obese Americans as you
expected to has prompted me to write. I teach product design in the
college of engineering at [a major public university in the Midwest], and am currently working on a
project to help the hospital technicians who do X rays, sonograms, CT
scans, etc. It turns out that many of these folks suffer quite serious
injuries at work, and by far the major cause of these injuries is the
obese patients they deal with on a daily basis.
"It
appears that most of these technicians are women who are often required
to move patients who outweigh them by several hundred pounds. In fact,
one of the techs we interviewed in our study pointed out that when she
performs vaginal sonograms on very large women, each of the patient's
legs often weighs more than she does. I've often read articles about
the growing obesity problem in the US, but I've never come across
anything concerning this large and growing problem, if you'll pardon
the pun.
"I find myself wondering, when I read
about the growing cost of obesity in the US health system, if anyone is
looking at the cost of injuries to the people who are responsible for
treating these folks?"
More refined view of the regional difference:
"My personal, unscientific evaluation of obesity is that it's
lower in big cities than small. I live in Chicago, but have friends and
family throughout the Midwest. My impression is that I see more "volume
abundant" people in the smaller and rural towns. A little Googling
gave that a bit of support, but it is related to property values:
titled "Zip Codes And Property Values Predict Obesity Rates."
I don't know where you were making your observations, but that may be a
big contributor.
In response to my observation that I hadn't encountered as many very heavy Americans as I thought I would on return from three years away:
"My
wife (who is Australian and green card-holding) and I ( who was born in
England but am now naturalized) were married this summer in Washington
DC. Naturally her Australian family and some English relations of mine
came to the wedding; for all of them it was their first time in the
States and they combined their trip to DC with the usual American
tourist visits (Disneyland, NYC, etc). On separate occasions both the
Australians and the English said to me more or less what you wrote:
"There are not as many fat people here as we expected".
"As far as I understand it the rest of the Anglophone world is not
so far behind the US in terms of obesity rates so maybe their
stereotypes about America haven't caught up with the new, fatter
reality in their own countries..."
A few more random return-to-the-homeland notes
I will never do this systematically, so I'll keep jotting them down at random. As I repatriate, I notice:
- Not as many very fat large Americans as I was expecting. Am I looking in the wrong places? So propagandized into thinking that all of my countrymen are obese that expectations are off? Something gone wrong with my visual judgment? Something gone right with public health? I don't know. Just telling you what I have (not) seen.
- In a number of airports the past few days. I can't help noticing the moronic, utterly rote and meaningless announcements that begin, "The Department of Homeland Security has determined that the threat level is Orange. Please be alert..." The way you can tell that I'm still not fully acclimated is that I notice the announcements at all. For everyone else, they are 100% white noise. Is there a stupider aspect of national policy at the moment than these formulaic "threat level" announcements, which are always orange and which give no useful info whatsoever? Okay, I'm sure there's something stupider, but for rhetorical purposes I'll say that I can't think of one right now.
- When I am king: I will outlaw "wheelie"- style rollable bags for carry-on luggage. Wheels and a handle on a big, heavy suitcase meant to be checked? Perfectly reasonable. But if you're going to carry something onto the plane, the law should require you actually to carry the thing, all the way to your seat. Why do I care? The wheelie triples or quadruples the floor space occupied by any one person, and the people tugging them don't look behind. I get my revenge by kicking the bags as they're being dragged across my path and tripping me. Then I act like it was an "accident."
- But even before that I will outlaw: leafblowers. God in heaven, do I hate that noise. Unfortunately, the neighborhood abounds in households that love hiring crews for the all-out leafblower experience -- they stagger their days, so it happens pretty much nonstop. I realize that the Beijing approach (below) is probably not practical in the U.S. But, hey, I actually have used a rake in my time. Part of the new Clean Energy policy for America?
As is obvious, I'm auditioning for Andy Rooney's role as public crank.
September 21, 2009
I love this on so many levels
It turns out that the "Chinese site" with dramatic photos of rehearsals for the 60th anniversary commemorations in Beijing on October 1, which I mentioned this morning, is a straight-ahead, flat-out, unblushing rip-off of this "The Big Picture" feature three days ago from the Boston Globe's site. I don't see any mention of the Globe on the Chinese site, either in English or what I think is the Chinese version (Boshidun Huanqiu - 波士顿 环球 ?).
I should have guessed. (Why would a Chinese site have bothered to include translated English captions? Why was there a semi-edgy photo of a lone man and a tank?) My reflexes must be going. I'll have to re-sharpen them with a visit soon. Thanks to C. Wang and others for the heads-up. Apologies to the Globe.
September 18, 2009
Slippery slope updates
A few more from a very nice array that has arrived. Original post here.
Serious:
"With the exception of the birth-death sequence of life, our notion of free will tends to negate the unavoidability of the slippery slope - to our great benefit, I would have thought."
Serious in a different way:
"Trying is the first step towards failure." Homer Simpson, The Simpsons
A powerful real-world example:
"The birth-to-death suggestion is not a valid example of a "slippery slope," in that it is not so much "slippery" as perfectly smooth. Mortality is an inevitable straight-line progression missing the essential element of choice. There is no option to "back up" the slope, to pause, or to go faster. In principle, the reader's example is no different than that of striking a match in a windless room, something that will inevitably turn the match to ashes. Nothing slippery about that, although matches flame out quicker than lives.
"The best example of a "slippery slope" in the realm of public policy may be the American journey toward racial equality. It's taken more than 100 years. There have been pauses along the way, with some temporary backtracking. We've gone from the Emancipation Proclamation, to the Anti-Slavery Amendments, to the Jim Crow era of "Separate but Equal," to Brown v. Board of Education, to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, to improvements in these statutes, to the Supreme Court's abolition of antimiscegenation laws (Loving v. Virginia). Focusing only on the "de jure" aspects of this, African Americans have traveled the complete journey, beginning as the lawful property of white men and ending with full legal equality. "
I think there is a lot to this last point. (Indeed, to all of them.) In American history the slippery-slope Cassandras whose worst fears have been most vividly realized were the segregationist hard-liners of the pre Civil Rights-legislation era. They warned that once you blurred the racial barriers you'd have race-mixing of all sorts, including intermarriage. And once you headed down that road, you'd have these mixed people all over the place... in the extreme nightmare version, even at the White House.
More in the queue. And later today, a long-promised update on whether slippery-slope thinking applies to the Chinese tire tariffs.
Why the China Daily will always be my favorite newspaper
I miss the joy of opening it each morning so much!
Full story here; earnest Onion-worthy comments here; thanks to Shanghaiist, here.
September 17, 2009
Early "slippery slope" contender
Many fine entries in hand; keep them coming. One line of reasoning predominates, well illustrated by this submission:
"Birth consistently leads to death. There are often events of interest to someone between the two. Aside from fairy tales, I know of no more reliably consistent slippery slope.
"More pop into my head, but following on their heels are exceptions.
"Here is a chain of events for you:
"Birth leads to toilet training. Toilet Training leads to puberty. Puberty leads to adulthood. Adulthood leads to death. Of course, it isn't entirely consistent given that some do not achieve all steps."
More later.
September 12, 2009
Another traveler to Yunnan
In my story in the current issue about Xizhou, a small but historically prosperous and architecturally rich village in far southern China, I mention the cautionary example of the city of Lijiang. In the 1990s, Lijiang was also small and charming. Now, most foreign visitors instantly recognize it as a combination of Atlantic City, a discount mall, and a turnpike rest stop. The Chinese domestic tourism industry, which is developing very fast, is in the stage where it is processing huge numbers of necessarily low-end travelers. As sites become popular, many of them end up looking like Lijiang. That's the fate the friends of Xizhou are trying to avoid.
Kevin Kelly, "Senior Maverick" at Wired, has traveled widely in Asia, including to both Lijiang and Xizhou. That's his picture of "old" Lijiang, to the left. His account:
"Every regular visitor to China has their own story of headsnapping change. Mine has to do with Lijiang. I
first visited Lijiang in the mid 90s on a month-long trip with my two
daughters who were 8 and 10 at the time. Lijiang was our starting point
for an excursion into the north beyond what is now called Shangrila
(Zhongdian back then) into the Tibetan areas around Litang. I've spent
a lot of time in the Himalaya and so was quite taken by Lijiang. It
seemed to have everything a Shangrila was supposed to -- views, climate,
music, and a strong unique, even isolated, culture. One could see how
the fantasy began there. I wanted to return with my wife and son
someday.
Some of the Atlantic's articles from the past eight years, collected here, stand up well as assessments of the moment and its aftermath. As a way to return to the mood, the reactions, the unity, and the incipient disagreements of the attacks on September 11, 2001, William Langewiesche's American Ground will be studied and admired for a long time.
If you're looking for thematic readings today, you could do very well with the links on this page -- not simply the four articles in the center of the page but the six others in the "From the Archives" column.
The newspaper story that struck me most today was this one, by N.R. Kleinfield in the New York Times: "A Fortress City that Didn't Come To Be." Its subject is New York, and it explains how, despite its unprecedented loss and trauma, the city recovered not just its vitality but also its deeper sense of balance. It decided to go ahead as a live, open, and inevitably still-vulnerable city, rather than surviving hunkered down, as an armed camp. Having visited New York only once since moving back to the country, I am struck by how much lower is its level of "security theater" than what prevails in Washington. Usually I regard New York as an interesting variation on "normal" American life, rather than as an example to the rest of us. I think in this case it has been the most American part of the country.
September 5, 2009
Weekend festival of updates #4: service sector!
Previous entry now redacted, as we say, for excessive churlishness. Never mind!
September 3, 2009
A very simple question about the 'public option'
No one I have ever met who is eligible for Medicare would dream of turning down its coverage.
And therefore the "public option" would be so terrible because.... ??? ____ Medicare is of course a "public option" in spades. I remember the debates before its enactment in the 1960s, about how the coming of "socialized medicine" would be the end of the American way.
Of course now we have a system that is taken for granted as a central part of the American way. Yes, yes, I am aware of the arguments (as laid out here, here, and elsewhere) about the distortions and cost pressures within Medicare. Still: as a matter of politics I have always thought that the route toward health-coverage reform in America would be steady expansion of the eligibility standards for Medicare. First down to age 60, then 55, then...
I know that "logic" tells us only so much about health policy debates. But, seriously, how can people with a sound mind and a straight face take Medicare as part of the landscape but consider the "public option" an abomination? Just curious -- but genuinely curious.
August 27, 2009
Offline
Out of internet range until until the end of the month. Enjoy the rest of August, my favorite month.
August 24, 2009
My new software favorite: Personal Brain (updated)
What is my purpose on Earth? Raising my children? Being as good and supportive a husband to my wife as (the movie version of) Paul Child was to Julia in the new film? Working for world peace and sustainable environmental development and a more humane society? Helping keep my magazine afloat?
Yeah yeah yeah.
I often think that my real purpose, apart from dreaming about getting back into aviation and tennis (and, gulp, finishing the next book), is to tinker with every piece of "interesting" software that anyone can cook up. I've written about dozens of them over the years, and still have many of them at close reach on my computer. Lotus Agenda -- the "spreadsheet for words" that was invented in the early 1990s, then cruelly orphaned by Lotus, but is still handy now. BrainStorm -- an outlining and list- based program. It is ultra-minimalist, text only, straight from the DOS age -- but after Symantec's also-tragic orphaning of the best-loved-ever outliner, GrandView, BrainStorm is often the place I turn. (Part of that bittersweet outliner history, from Dave Winer, here.) And of course Zoot, which I have used since the early 1990s and wrote about in the Atlantic 12 years ago. For all its info-organizing power, Zoot has in the past few years begun showing its age. Like BrainStorm, it is text-only and has no way even to underline or highlight important text. Also, it is too Web-friendly. But its lone-genius creator, Tom Davis of Delray Beach, FL, has been working on an all new, web-connected version, which is now in beta testing and which I'll sign up for as soon as it's released.
But for the moment: Personal Brain, from TheBrain software in Marina del Rey, California. I'm in that familiar and always-enjoyable phase of feeling: this program is really interesting, and let's see how it fits the way I think and work.
The idea of the program is to connect any item -- a call you want to make, a web site you want to quote, a PDF file you want to read, or even an entire project you're beginning -- with any other, in a flexible variety of relationships. FWIW, the program calls its items "thoughts." Here's an idea of how some of the connections look, in a view that shows many projects for which I'm collecting info or am working on.
I think this really could be the end of the Felix the Cat saga, most recently chronicled here and here. Next few items will concern software, China, and of course frogs. But before we turn the page, let us consider Felix's implications for: US-China relations; differences between England and America; and the proud heritage of New Jersey.
I. Felix as distinguished son of the Garden State Walter Maier, curator of the "Famous New Jerseyans" web site, gives Felix a prominent place among the state's honorees. As he points out, "Felix was born in New Jersey." Go here for details.
II. Felix in the context of Chinese reformers Taking an admirably post-racial stance, one reader writes in to say: "Surprised you haven't quoted Deng's 'It doesn't matter whether a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.'!" ("不管黑猫白猫，捉到老鼠就是好猫." If I were king, the standard version in English would be "Black cat, white cat -- as long as it catches mice it's a good cat.") Bottom line: if Deng Xiaoping were writing the notorious "Obama reminds me of Felix" essay, he would have begun, "It doesn't matter whether a president is black or white, so long as he fixes the economy."
[Deng, left, not with Felix but with another fine American]
III. Felix as lens for Anglo/American contrasts A reader writes:
Just a stray observation, which may be outdated by now, based on
initial Peace Corps experience meeting with Brit expats in Ghana during
the late sixties, but remaining fairly intact after 40 more years of
sporadic relevant dialogs with random but typically well educated
British folks at home and abroad.
I'm consistently (nearly 100%)
struck by the difference between white British and liberal US
perceptions of what we both call "racism" or "racialism."
A point that has fallen through the cracks in the contretemps is that Ferguson's characterization of Felix the Cat is just plain wrong -- he's not lucky, he's plucky and resourceful. His characteristic pose in the early cartoons is pacing back and forth, hands behind his back, deep in thought as he ponders his way out of the fix he's gotten into. Then he brightens, and snaps his fingers -- he's thought of a way out. There's a gag that refers to Felix's trademark pose in Buster Keaton's Go West, which should show you how far back the character goes. Also parodied on The Simpsons, where the earliest Itchy and Scratchy cartoons adopt the style of silent Felix the Cat cartoons.
[Felix pacing and pensant, in 1930:]
[Felix post-pacing, having figured out the answer:]
From a reader in Shanghai:
Mr. Fallows, Mr. Ferguson, it sounds like *somebody* needs a beer summit!
1930s Felix from here; animated-pacing Felix here.
August 17, 2009
Ferguson, Obama, Felix the Cat -- and Pluto
Let me tell this one in order:
On August 11, last Tuesday, Niall Ferguson wrote an op-ed in the Financial Times whose theme was that Barack Obama reminded him of Felix the Cat? Why? "Felix was not only black.
He was also very, very lucky."
Later that day, I did an item marveling at the column. Its final line was, " I look forward to Ferguson's discussing this over a beer with his Harvard colleague Henry Louis Gates."
Two days later, on August 13, I got an irritated note from Ferguson. Its subject line was "Rubbish." It included a quote from H.L. Gates saying that there was no problem with the Felix line -- the reported quote from Gates was "What a load of rubbish" -- and it ended with a request that I publish it. To be exact, a challenge: "I shall be interested to see if you post this on your blog."
Soon thereafter, I did indeed publish it. I sent Ferguson a note saying that I had done so, with the explanation that I took his note as a request that I share his views.
An hour later, he wrote back and requested that I remove the item from the Atlantic's site so that he could check further with Gates. Within minutes I did that, putting up this placeholder announcement instead. Since the original had been up for a while, it survived in many search caches. But I saw no reason to be difficult -- or to pretend I didn't get Ferguson's "please take it down" note; so I complied.
Over the weekend, I didn't hear from Ferguson, and on the "life is short" policy resolved to let the matter drop.
Then this afternoon, I received a followup note -- sent jointly to me and Paul Krugman, who had written in a similar vein. In its entirety it says:
Dear Paul and James,
As you both took exception to my comparison of the President
with Felix the Cat, my favorite cartoon character, implying it was racist and
recommending I consult Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., I have now done so. He
has taken the trouble to consult others in the field of African-American
Studies, including our colleague Lawrence D. Bobo, the W. E. B. Du Bois
Professor of the Social Sciences, and has written to me as follows:
"None of us thought of Felix as black, unlike some of
the racially-questionable caricatures Disney used. Felix's blackness,
like Mickey's and Minnie's, was like a suit of clothes, not a skin color. ...
You are safe on this one."
As he has made clear, you are free to publish this on your
blogs. I hope that you will, and that you will also add an apology to me for
the imputation of racism as well as, in Paul's case, the gratuitous and
puerile accusation of "whining" (i.e., defending myself against a
slur). I remain of the view that you took this line to avoid engaging with my
central points that President Obama's administration has no visible plan
for stabilizing the finances of the federal government even over ten years, and
that Congress will likely impede whatever steps he may take in this direction.
Yours,
Niall Ferguson.
On the requested "apology": Sadly, No. I don't think and didn't say that Niall Ferguson is a racist. Probably like him, I lament the way indiscriminate use of that label -- or "sexist," "anti-Semite," now "socialist" -- can shut down discussion. But there's no getting around the clumsiness of what he wrote. If Felix the Cat's blackness is a barely noticeable aspect of his identity, why on earth would anyone begin a comparison of Obama to Felix by saying "Felix was not only black"? Thought experiment: Suppose I wrote a column about Jackie Chan -- or Cabinet members Steven Chu and Eric Shinseki, or Yo-Yo Ma, or new PGA champion Y.E. Yang -- that began exactly the way Ferguson's did. "Jackie Chan reminds me of Pluto. One of the best-loved characters from the Disney studio, Pluto was not only yellow. He was also very, very likable."
I could go on to discuss policy aspects of Jackie Chan's controversial comments about democracy in China -- as Ferguson goes on to discuss Obama's problems with the budget deficit. But 99% of the readers would think, What the hell? And if asked what I was doing, I would not try to relitigate the case, as Ferguson is now doing in several venues, but would recognize that I'd blundered and back off. But apparently that's just me.
I have pulled back what I posted here a few minutes ago (yes, I know that the ambitious can still find it in a cache) in response to a follow-up message from Niall Ferguson requesting a delay. His original message concerned his "Felix the Cat" / "black, and very, very lucky" column. Stay tuned.
August 12, 2009
Apropos of nothing: new Joe Henry album available on NPR
In a feature I hadn't paid attention to while overseas, NPR has over the past year offered "Exclusive First Listens" to entire new albums on line. Today: an hour's worth of Blood From Stars by the wonderful bluesy guitarist-singer Joe Henry.
The trick is that the full-length streaming audio is turned off once the album officially goes on sale. Thus the past-events listing includes full-length sessions from Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Moby, etc -- but none of the music is still there. (The oldest still-available entry is from one week ago.) If you click on the older sessions, you're taken to an Amazon or iTunes purchase site. Fair enough: this is one more interesting twist in the vast, varied, and necessary series of experiments now underway to see how "content," from music to movies to news articles, can be "monetized" in the age when so much of it can be copied or used for free.
I mention it for that reason -- and also because anyone who, like me, hadn't known of the feature might find it worthwhile. Certainly this Joe Henry music is great. Check it out while it is there.
August 11, 2009
"Black, and very, very lucky."
I have had my disagreements with Niall Ferguson, as chronicled several times -- here, here, here, and here. But I had thought they were simply on the merits -- how to interpret the financial and strategic tensions between China and America, whether there was any serious historical parallel to be drawn between the rising China of Hu Jintao and the rising Germany of Kaiser Wilhelm. (Ferguson said Yes; I said No.)
Everything about such discussions is conditioned by Ferguson's constant reminders that he is a professional academic historian and therefore deserves deference for whatever historical connections he sees. This morning in the Financial Times he once again shows off the insight that professional training can bring. The essay on American politics begins:
President Barack Obama reminds me of Felix the Cat. One of the
best-loved cartoon characters of the 1920s, Felix was not only black.
He was also very, very lucky. And that pretty much sums up the 44th
president of the US as he takes a well-earned summer break after just
over six months in the world's biggest and toughest job.
Hu Jintao is Kaiser Wilhelm; Obama is a black cartoon cat. I look forward to Ferguson's discussing this over a beer with his Harvard colleague Henry Louis Gates.
August 7, 2009
On why I can't get in to see my doctor
I mentioned yesterday that, in this slack economy, every part of the service sector seemed poised for instant response at the slightest chance of business -- with one exception. When I called to get a back-from-China physical from my doctor, the first opening was more than three months away. (Among his other virtues, my doctor subscribes to the magazine -- but does not frequent the web site!)
Two reader-hypotheses about the difference: that it's simple medical economics, and that it's because America is not Canada.
1) From the "medical economics" reader:
My girlfriend (spanish/japanese, lives in Spain) is always amazed by the service sector when she visits... It is almost always quick, efficient and relatively cheap (compared to Europe). That is changing in Europe with cheaper labor, but the sophistication of the US service markets (24 hour call lines, next day delivery) can never be matched.
On the pricing note, the delay in office visits is mostly price related, no? My father (a GI) makes about $50 an hour on office visits, before taxes and overhead. That is a lot less than all the other wonderful service experiences you describe. [Plumbers, electricians, tree-trimmers, etc.] At that price point, what incentive do you have to make yourself available? Given access to doctors is the biggest interaction most healthy people have with the medical system, increasing those basic services would make most people feel better about reform, no?
I live in a tiny Nova Scotia community, about 45 minutes from the nearest small city. When I want to see my "good-but-normal" doctor (the same one I've had for 35 years), I don't make an appointment. I call and ask what hours he will be in the office that day, then show up at a time convenient for me. I bring The Atlantic to read for the 10-20 minutes it takes to see him.
As we watch Americans debate the future of their health care system, it's galling for Canadians to hear opponents of reform demonize our single-payer system with discredited tales of health care denied. I am in good health, and enjoy excellent medical care. A close relative whose serious congenital heart condition leads to frequent, sometimes grave emergencies and occasional surgical interventions likewise receives superb care.
Yes, Canadians sometimes wait months to see certain specialists, a problem that varies from place to place, from speciality to speciality, and by degree of emergency. A lot of effort is now focused on reducing wait times, with some progress.
Canadians live three years longer, on average, than Americans; we have lower infant mortality, less chance of dying before age five, and much less chance of dying between 15 and 60. We spend barely half what you do, per capita, on health care, and no one loses their home to pay for needed medical care. Except for American ex-pats, no one stays in a Canadian job for fear of losing health coverage without it. Our system is very popular, and in our perennial, rather touching quest to identify cultural factors that distinguish us from Americans, single payer health care always ranks near the top of the list.
I open the front door this afternoon, at our recently re-occupied house inside the District of Columbia barely three miles from the White House, and I see:
And my first thought is: this is not what you'd see three miles from Zhongnanhai [seat of power] in Beijing. Actually, that was my second thought. The first one was, "where is the camera?" -- and the deer were blase enough to stick around while I got it.
Yes, yes, I know that deer are the new rats of American cities, graceful but nonetheless troublesome supersized vermin. Still, the stark difference in circumstances of daily life in the two capitals -- the background sights, the routine nuisances and pleasures that shape consciousness -- makes it remarkable that officials of the two governments can communicate about issues as well as they do. Here is what I would see when I walked out my front door in Beijing, about as far from Zhongnanhai as my DC house is from Pennsylvania Avenue:
Yes, sure, I could find something similar in a three-mile radius of the White House too. But you couldn't find anything in Beijing like a deer-filled front yard. (I have seen people in Chinese cities trapping ducks and pigeons to eat. How long would venison on the hoof last?) I put up these pictures mainly for the benefit of readers in China. It is hard to convey to people who have lived only in one of the two countries how different everything about daily life can feel in the other. I'm still in that fleeting stage where I notice. But that will pass.
Notes on repatriation (recession, media depts)
It would be too overwhelming to try to list all the things my wife and I miss about three years' immersion in China, and all the things we enjoy about returning to the house where we've lived, off and on, since the early Reagan era. Items in the first category boil down to the daily sense of amazement at some improbability we'd seen on the street in Beijing or Urumqi or Lanzhou. Our standard evening conversation was, "You won't believe it, but..." Items in the second category have a lot to do with the physical comforts of daily life in a rich rather than a poor country. Yes, I mean starting with the air.
But here are three things we can't help but notice.
1) The service sector. I think the US consumer economy would still be in free-fall if we hadn't come back. We show up from China needing new of everything. Clothes. Camera. Two computers, plus monitors and backup drives. Housewares. Shoes. At least one fridge, probably a stove. Radios/sound system. TVs. You name the item, and the version we have is road-worn, obsolete, broken, or gone. (Sadly for Detroit, not cars: Our two, vintage 1999 and 2000 respectively and stored with friends, still seem just fine. Sorry!) Our house needs to be repainted-- and re-roofed, and re-drivewayed, and its trees trimmed. That's just a start. Good thing we saved up in those days of 20RMB noodle/dumpling dinners. And, yes, many of the items we're getting were made in China. You just can't buy them there.
Here's the surprise: We call to get service appointments, and people show up right away. Air conditioning not working in 90-degree DC swelter? We make a call one evening, and the next day it's all fixed. Plumbing clogged and leaky? A few hours later, it's not. Need the car looked at, after three years in the shed? Call the service place and the only question is: do I want to bring it in this afternoon? Or wait till tomorrow? On a Sunday, we see that a tree is dying in the back yard. By Monday afternoon, it is converted into neatly stacked wood.
These are all people and services we'd dealt with before, but in those days we learned to plan weeks in advance for service calls. America still looks incredibly rich and lush. But this little indicator suggests lots of slack in anything considered a discretionary purchase. Not startling in principle, but impressive to encounter first-hand.
Only exception: I call to get an appointment for a physical exam with our doctor -- a good but "normal" doctor, not some fancy physician to the stars. First available slot, mid-November. I have no theory for this anomaly.
2) The dispensability of TV. The first night we were in our house, three weeks ago, no internet! By the next afternoon, we'd solved that emergency. Phew. (That day I was driving around the neighborhood with a laptop, looking for no-password wifi signals from some neighbor's house.) But that first day, also no TV. Cable, satellite, and TiVo services had all timed out. Of course no broadcast signal, after the digital switch-over. Each day since then, we've looked at the list of next-most-urgent chores for getting re-settled. And each day, getting the TV going -- figuring out the right service, making the appointment calls -- has not quite made the cut for that day's to-do list.
A few times I've thought, It would be nice to turn on the TV. Like, during Obama's evening press conference last month. And I am sure we'll eventually get it going again, before football season and all. Probably the US Open tennis matches will be the trigger. But after many decades of living in a swirl of TV signals, I am surprised by how livable life is without it. For now.
3) Media. We're getting real paper newspapers and magazines again. NYT and Washington Post, and soon again the WSJ. And all our complement of magazines. Leafing through the papers is a nice ritual in the morning -- even when I've read a lot of the stories the night before online. Don't worry: I'm not even going to start down the road of comparing online/print economics or ergonomics, even though I'm impressed at how differently I read the news on a page versus on a screen.
Instead what I notice is the change within the papers I'd read before. The NYT, for all its travails, is a recognizable version of the publication I'd previously known. Personality, depth, world-view, tone. The poor Washington Post is not. Laying off -- that is, buying out -- so many reporters who knew so much about their topics has had a more profound effect than I would have guessed. (Locus classicus: Tom Ricks on defense.) And the resulting paper seems more obviously desperate to try anything that will draw attention in this new age.
To me, that was the real meaning of the unfortunate recent "Mouthpiece Theater" commotion that has accompanied my re-introduction to the Post. (And for which Chris Cillizza wrote a gracious apology.) Not the flap over the final "bitch" episode but the existence of the thing at all. Experimentation is great and necessary in journalism, always and especially now; mistakes are a natural price of that; and everyone in every field needs to make his or her work as entertaining and attractive as it can be. But trying to compete for attention on sheer yuks is a step toward the brink. "Real" entertainment will always be more entertaining -- that's how it got the name. Anyone hungry for more on this theme is invited to check out the whole chapter on the death-spiral of infotainment in Breaking the News. And I think it's why the parody-reply to "Mouthpiece" on YouTube, below, was so genuinely funny and stinging. It wasn't mocking the segment so much as the paper's overall predicament.
I've thought of the Post as my hometown paper for years and feel as if I've come back to see a family member looking suddenly very ill. I still have good friends doing good work there. Also, good work by people I don't even know! As with two Style-section pieces this morning, on Thomas Pynchon by Michael Dirda and on the Obama/Joker/Socialism posters, by Philip Kennicott. But if someone asked, what do you notice that's changed, the Post would be high on the list.
August 1, 2009
Corazon Aquino
I am sorry to hear of the death yesterday of Corazon Aquino -- former president of the Philippines, widow of the assassinated senator Benigno Aquino, heroine of the "EDSA Revolution" of 1986 that drove Ferdinand Marcos from power.
In 1987 I wrote an article about Aquino and the Philippines arguing that the removal of Marcos was sadly not likely to correct the deeper problems of political corruption and economic inequality in the country. The article was called "A Damaged Culture" and was extremely controversial in the Philippines at the time, and to a degree still now. The article as originally published is available here. Some if its references from 22 years ago now seem dated. Unfortunately many others do not. And in any reference to the Philippines, it is always important to mention the works of the great Filipino novelist F. Sionil "Frankie" Jose, whom I wrote about in the Atlantic in 1995 here and visited in Manila early this year, as described here.
From the original article, about Corazon Aquino's prospects:
"Because previous changes of government have meant so little to the
Philippines, it is hard to believe that replacing Marcos with Aquino,
desirable as it doubtless is, will do much besides stanching the flow
of crony profits out of the country. In a sociological sense the
elevation of Corazon Aquino through the EDSA revolution should probably
be seen not as a revolution but as the restoration of the old order.
Marcos's rise represented the triumph of the nouveau riche. He was, of
course, an Ilocano, from the tough, frugal Ilocos region, in the
northwest corner of Luzon. Many of those whom he enriched were also
outsiders to the old-money, old-family elite that had long dominated
the country's politics. These elite groups, often referred to in
shorthand as Makati (the name of the wealthy district and business
center of Manila), regarded Marcos the way high-toned Americans
regarded Richard Nixon: clever and ambitious, but so uncouth.
"Corazon Aquino's family, the Cojuangcos, is part of this landowning elite...."
RIP.
July 31, 2009
Discouraging news out of Oshkosh
For previous cheerier news, see here, here, and here.
The most absorbing drama in the small-plane world these past few months has been the separation between Alan Klapmeier, who with his brother Dale founded the now highly-successful Cirrus aircraft company; and the company itself. (For background on the Klapmeier / Cirrus saga, see Free Flight and this article. To see a recent sample of Alan Klapmeier in action, go here.)
The simplest way to think of it is this: Cirrus has essentially been the Apple of the small plane business. A "think different" approach compared with the rest of the industry -- for instance, the famous whole-airplane parachute that lets the craft and passengers drift to the ground in case of trouble. Very attractive design. Attention to nice little details. Using technology to make things simpler rather than more complex. And, with its SR22 models, an iPod / iPhone level of worldwide market success.
In this comparison, Cessna would be the PC equivalent -- staid, steady, established -- and Alan Klapmeier would be the Steve Jobs counterpart. Dramatic, attention-drawing, sometimes impossible, visionary, beyond doubt the personality of the company. Naturally better at explaining the disruptive potential of new technology than working through a spreadsheet to cut costs in tough times. I should say that I think of him as a good friend. (Below: Alan Klapmeier and the jet, earlier this week at Oshkosh, photo from Lane Wallace's post from the air show.)
So in the current downturn, as the company dramatically cut back to survive, Alan Klapmeier left as CEO of Cirrus. But he has been talking recently about raising money to continue development of the Cirrus Vision personal jet that had been his, well, vision since the time I first met him in Duluth ten years ago, and certainly long before that. From the Cirrus company's point of view, where his brother Dale and many long-time comrades are still major figures, selling the jet project to Alan Klapmeier would have both pluses and minuses. Plus: it would free the company of the heavy development costs but still keep the jet as an allied, fraternal project rather than letting it go to a real competitor. Minus: Cirrus would turn into a piston-airplane-only company, and although its piston/propeller planes are the market leaders, that would limit its potential. From the outside world's perspective, the main plus of any deal would be re-engaging Alan Klapmeier's energies in the business -- again, something like bringing Steve Jobs back into the main arena after his time at NeXT.
Just now the invaluable AVweb site reported that the deal had fallen through. I am biased in favor of all parties to this interaction and hope that something can work out. But for now, the news is that it hasn't.
July 30, 2009
Atlantic obesity debate: let's go to the pics (updated)
As the Atlantic's tribe of online voices has expanded, it naturally supports a range of views, opinions, subject matter, personal obsessions, styles of argument, and so on. Sometimes we have unintended overlap -- as when Lane Wallace and I were independently impressed by the same innovations on display at this week's Oshkosh air show. Sometimes we have straight-out differences of opinion, as here and here, and now between Marc Ambinder and Megan McArdle on whether obesity is a real public health problem or another instance of nanny-state moralizing. McArdle's posting is here, and Ambinder's reply is here.
I am 100% with Ambinder on this one, and would be 1000% with him if that term weren't assumed to be sarcastic. It is notable, though not noted in the original item, that the obesity-skeptic Paul Campos with whom Megan McArdle conducts an extensive, sympathetic interview is a law professor rather than a doctor, public health official, epidemiologist, etc (which of course doesn't disqualify his views but should be mentioned); and that the word "diabetes" does not appear in the discussion in which he pooh-poohs the public health effects of obesity.
If you've been around the US as long as I have (ie, if you're as old), you have seen very significant aspects of public-health behavior change in your own lifetime. When my dad went to medical conventions in the 1950s and 1960s, most of his fellow doctors smoked. By the time he retired in the 1990s, very few of them did. For better and worse, smoking has become a class-bound phenomenon in America: better for the people who don't smoke any more, worse as one more disadvantage of being poorer and less educated. The difference is startling and obvious if you spend time in, let's say, China, where many more people of all classes smoke. As individuals, Americans have the same human nature as they did 40 years ago, and the same nature as people in China. Will power, compulsions, addition-seeking instincts, etc. But their overall behavior about smoking has changed. Some individuals did not or could not change their behavior. (One of my grandmothers, who had started smoking as a flapper in the 1920s, died of a horrible case of emphysema, sneaking cigarettes on her last conscious days.) But average behavior changed dramatically. In my view, no sane person can deny that public anti-smoking campaigns have made a huge difference.
What I also know first-hand is that the average physical size of Americans has changed in my lifetime. Go look at some old clips from 1950s versions of The Honeymooners and check out Jackie Gleason. At the time, he was famed for being an enormous fatso. That was part of the joke when he came on screen. Here is the gargantua who drew those laughs:
Similarly with Alfred Hitchcock, whose portly silhouette on his 1960s TV shows was the definition of impressive girth.
Or the tubby Raymond Burr as Ironside in the 1970s:
(To spell out the joke, just in case: none of these people would draw a second glance now.) If you've spent any time in the rest of the world, you know -- first hand, for real, and no doubt -- that Americans, along with Germans, really are heavier on average than other people, and that this is significantly more so than it was 25 years ago.
Our basic nature as human beings can't have changed in that time. Nor can our genetics. If you've lived in Asia, you know that Japanese and Chinese people are on average taller and much heavier than they were a generation ago. I have met old women in China who looked barely four feet tall. In Beijing or Tokyo 25 years ago, I was always the tallest person on the subway or in a crowd; now, I usually see a few young men over 6'2". But in these countries there's an obvious explanation: poor nutrition artificially limited people's growth before, and the limit is being removed.
Exactly what this means in policies is beyond my time or ambition here. Basically I agree with Marc Ambinder's statement below. I chime in on the issue mainly to express this view: denying that America's obesity situation has changed; or that it has harmful consequences; or that it could, like smoking, be affected by public policies strikes me as antifactual denialism.
From Ambinder's reply:
"McArdle is right that it it's not fair for government to lecture people
about weight loss and exercise, but she's right for the wrong reason:
policy choices -- ag subsidies, zoning laws, education and budget
priorities -- create a flow that, absent any intervention, are sweeping
many young kids, particularly poorer kids of color, into obesity.
Government's role isn't to scold; it's to make better policy choices.
She's wrong about the interventions, too: some, like a physical
education project in Somerville, Mass., seem to be working. Taking fast
food vending machines out of schools and weighing children at least
once a year has arrested the obesity growth rate in Arkansas.
Nationally, the obesity growth rate also seems to be be slowing."
Or at least technological glamor, there may be new hope for Microsoft among the hip.
Thirty seconds in is the part that makes it all worthwhile to me. No, not any frogs involved, but the nextbest thing. Thanks to Dave Proffer.
July 26, 2009
Civil(ian)izing 'Homeland' Security
In the current issue of the magazine, I argue that creating the ungainly amalgam known as the Department of Homeland Security was a mistake in the first place. (A mistake in concept, in that it was part of the panicky "do something!" reaction after 9/11. And a disappointment in execution, in that many years later there's little evidence of money being allocated more sensibly, overlaps being eliminated, or "stovepipes" of information really being combined.) And if it's too late to do any good by pulling the pieces apart again, at least we could try to buffer its worst, permanent-security-state implications, starting with its wholly un-American name. The piece is only a little longer than this paragraph, but it has a few more details and leads.
A reader has written in with a tangible suggestion:
Yes, the name "Homeland Security" is simply horrible, but the clothes may be the real problem. This may sound frivolous, but I don't think it is. The issue is boots. Combat boots. Boots with pants tucked in and "bloused." Black boots with thick soles. Swat teams wear them, and now Border Patrol folks routinely do. Coast Guard folks wear them, when they used not to. I believe that wearing military-type boots instead of shoes tends to make the wearer feel more military and therefore more aggressive. Customs agents used not to take undocumented people off ferries that don't cross international borders, but they took people off internal Washington State ferries last year. Coast Guard personnel used to be regarded as people who helped boaters, but now they wear boots and talk like fighters.
One great way to civilize Homeland Security would be to confiscate the boots and reissue shoes.
To see what the reader is talking about, here are pictures from a startling NYT article by Jennifer Steinhauer from this past spring, which I missed while in China. It is about how Explorer Scouts are being trained for future "Homeland Security" duties, starting with realistic uniforms (complete with boots) and gear. I was once an Explorer Scout, and we spent a lot more time pitching tents and sucking rattlesnake venom out of puncture wounds than doing this. (In fairness, we did get to spend several days on a Navy aircraft carrier in San Diego wearing sailor gear.) Photos by Todd Krainin in this slide show.
Practice border-control work, by scouts whose trousers are bloused into their boots:
Scouting in the age of the permanent-security state:
July 24, 2009
Welcome, Erik Tarloff; so long, UCB
The Atlantic's roster of new online Correspondents has become quite formidable; updated list here. I've mentioned (admiringly!) a few of them and their posts previously. Let me say something about the latest arrival, Erik Tarloff, a screenwriter and comic novelist who posted his first essay this week.
I mention Erik's debut here for three reasons: as a reminder for anyone who hasn't yet prowled through the Correspondents section; because Erik is a long-time friend, who also happens to join me (and Lawrence Wright and Caleb Carr and the composer Greg Tornquist) in the loyal band of writers/artistes who share a birthday; and because I agree so much with the subject of this first essay.
It's about the demise of a great, proud public institution: the University of California at Berkeley, accelerated by today's California budget disaster but underway for a long time. Erik, who went to college at UCB and lives nearby, says:
For decades, legislatures and governors of both parties viewed the
University of California as a special jewel in the state's crown,
worthy of nurture and protection. This pride in what the state had
wrought paid dividends: Cal has long been regarded as one of the
greatest universities in the country, and in the world. A remarkable,
and unique, achievement for a public institution. But it now
looks as if those days are over. It won't happen overnight, and it
won't happen completely. But absent an unlikely, massive injection of
private funding, the university is on an inexorable glide path downward....It's not the only tragedy [in California now], nor even necessarily the worst tragedy, but
it's a very great tragedy.
My brother went to Cal; I've taught there and felt an informal part of its community for years; even though I grew up in the USC/UCLA fan zone, I rooted for the Golden Bears as a kid. When arguing about America's strengths and weaknesses in my years overseas, I've often used "Berkeley" as a shorthand reference for the glories of America's and California's commitment to public education and research. And now... read the rest of what Erik says.
Bonus note: Erik Tarloff is married to the economist and Clinton administration official Laura Tyson. My brief video Q-and-A with her at the Aspen ideas festival is here.
July 14, 2009
Here's something I've learned!
If you get a hotel room for $49 per night all-in -- free internet, free breakfast -- in Linyi, China, it's pretty nice! (Scenic central Linyi, where I was a few weeks ago on a story, below.)
If you get a get a hotel room via a special internet deal for $49 all-in -- free internet, free breakfast -- in San Jose, California, all of your neighbors are hookers! (Scenic central San Jose, where I am on a story, below.)
No one can resist that free internet. I guess I better start acclimating -- ie, getting used to paying more than $49 for a hotel -- faster.
Now if I were really ambitious in my flying plans
I mentioned recently a small-plane caravan flight along the route (more or less) of Lewis & Clark's trip to the Pacific. The same company, AirJourney.com, is sponsoring a more ambitious trip later this year.
Now, I'm not actually going to do this. Reason 1: I don't have an airplane any more. Reason 2: the landing in Narsarsuaq, Greenland for refueling is one I've heard about many times without ever wanting to attempt myself. (Problem: it's a landing you have to make, given the huge expanses of ocean on either side; the runway has ocean on one side and mountains on the others; the weather is often snowy, foggy, gusty; etc.) Reason 3: you have to wear a survival suit on the long over-water stretches, which makes you uncomfortable in the airplane and probably wouldn't save you in the frozen water anyway. Reason 4: expensive. On the other hand... flying at low altitudes over Europe! Approaching Greenland, Iceland, Scotland from the sky! Landing in Paris! Dreaming about it -- especially on Bastille Day: priceless, as they say.
Narsarsuaq on a nice day (from "Most Dangerous Landing Strips in the World" site).
Pilot suiting up for the run to Narsarsuaq in his Cessna 172, from this site:
In response to some previous queries: the planes making these journeys are typically very small craft flown by enthusiasts, not corporate big-shots in their jets (who could go nonstop anyway), and the fuel use/emissions factor is not that different from people taking long vacation drives. Overall climate-strategy discussions for another day. In response to another line of inquiry: I have no relationship of any sort with the AirJourney company -- don't know 'em, have never done business with them. Just tantalized by these plans.
July 12, 2009
Haibao is happier now!
As mentioned earlier (eg here), America's participation in the
impending Shanghai Expo 2010 has been in question, because of disputes
and uncertainties about who would design, build, and (especially) pay for the US
pavilion. Likely consequence was much shame and embarrassment for the U.S. and loss of face for its would-be Chinese hosts. Left: Haibao, beloved mascot of the Expo, in Wild West
Americana gear -- from this gallery of Haibao in an assortment of folkloric outfits.
On Friday a deal was struck to finance and move ahead with the pavilion. Official announcement here, from the site of the U.S. Consulate in Shanghai. Update on Adam Minter's Shanghai Scrap site, which has been following the action, here. More news to come on various sponsors, supporters, and consequences. Phew!
By all reports. Sec. of State Hillary Clinton played a crucial role in making sure the Expo bid happened. Here we see the victorious team: Sec. Clinton (left); Jose H. Villarreal, the newly appointed U.S. Commissioner General to the 2010 World Exposition (right), who worked hard to put a deal together after his appointment on July 1; and Haibao (center). Another excuse to get back to Shanghai...
July 9, 2009
I stand corrected (chapter 2,374,612)
After quoting Mark Feeney's recollection of seeing the late Robert McNamara in a mundane traffic jam, and mentioning that in the 1990s I once sat down on a DC metro car and was startled to see that the dignified gent in the next seat was McNamara, I agreed with Feeney's claim that modern counterparts like Rumsfeld and Cheney were not likely to expose themselves so freely to the general public.
At least about Rumsfeld, turns out that is wrong. Or has been wrong at least once. Four months ago (when, in fairness, I was somewhere in western China, so I missed it) the Firedoglake site reported on Rumsfeld's adventures while riding a DC metrobus. Details here. Wasn't clear from the item whether he'd likely ride one again. Thanks to reader DF.
July 8, 2009
Cornucopia of updates #2: Robert McNamara
I mentioned yesterday that, while having followed Robert McNamara's decisions and legacy for many decades, I had never dealt with him personally. Mark Feeney of the Boston Globe, who wrote the paper's obituary of McNamara two days ago, sent this recollection of his own encounters:
I briefly interviewed him on the phone, twice, the first time in regards to "The Fog of War." The most amusing thing about that conversation was how flabbergasted he was by the price of movie tickets. The fact he wasn't trying to be funny made it all the more amusing.
My most memorable McNamara experience didn't involve direct contact. This would have been the summer of 1978 [when Feeney was in college] on Martha's Vineyard. I was standing on the main street in Edgartown with a couple of friends, and there was a car waiting at a stop sign. I don't recall if I recognized that the driver was McNamara or only realized that's who it was after hearing the question I'm about to relate. It came from a middle-aged white guy (clearly not a summer resident) standing by the car. "Hey, are you Secretary McNamara?" he asked through the open passenger-side window. Before there was an answer, the man added, "You're one of my heroes. Let me shake your hand." He then reached in and shook hands with McNamara.
What made the scene so memorable was McNamara's response. He visibly flinched; his face just collapsed. It was horrible to see. One could easily imagine numerous similar confrontations--few, if any, ending so cordially. Here was someone who, a decade and a half earlier, had been one of the three or four most powerful men in the world reduced to fleeting agony by an innocuous question. Brief though the moment was, I've never forgotten it.
I can't imagine Donald Rumsfeld either being so publicly available or responding in such a way. Neither fact speaks well of the man.
The last point bears emphasis, and is one I wish I'd made yesterday. If we thought that Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, or for that matter George W. Bush would eventually reflect as deeply on the consequences of their decisions as Robert McNamara clearly did, they would deserve the respect for moral seriousness that the McNamara of "The Fog of War" era had clearly earned. My guess is that, Nixon-like, all of them (and certainly Cheney and Rumsfeld) instead scorn McNamara for giving in to doubts and doubters.
Uighur faces
Tomorrow, more on the substance of the racial violence in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region in northwest China. For the moment, small glimpses of what some people there look like.
Three of the students below are ethnic Uighurs -- ethnically Central Asian, generally Muslim, raised speaking a Turkic language rather than Mandarin -- on the first day of class in the fall of 2007 at 新疆大学, Xinjiang University in Urumqi. They had come from remote parts of Xinjiang and, when my wife and I saw them, were buying "Mandarin as second language" textbooks in the university book store. The man on the right of the picture, a Han Chinese, was their teacher.
The Uighur father on the right below, who wore the same expression of wistful pride my wife and I did when we took our children to college, had come a long distance from the countryside to bring his daughter, on the left, for her first day at the big-city university. He is holding the math and Mandarin textbooks he has just bought for her.
The racial tension was palpable when we traveled around Xinjiang. More on the consequences soon. After the jump, several other pictures from Xinjiang U.
Last week I mentioned my surprise at what I considered a high-handed performance by Frank Gehry at the Aspen Ideas Festival, when he dismissively shooed away a questioner whose line of persistent inquiry he didn't like.
Just now, I was at least as surprised to see in the email inbox a message from Frank Gehry, which with his permission I quote below:
Dear Mr. Fallows -
Fair enough - your impression. I have a few lame
excuses. One is that I'm eighty and I get freaked out with petty
annoyances more than I ever did when I was younger. Two, I didn't
really want to be there - I got caught in it by friends. And three -
I do get questions like that and this guy seemed intent on getting himself a
pulpit. I think I gave him an opportunity to be specific about his
critique. Turns out that he followed Tommy Pritzker [the moderator of Gehry's session] around the next day
and badgered him about the same issues. His arguments, according to
Tommy, didn't hold much water. I think what annoyed me most was
that he was marketing himself at everyone's expense. I apologize
for offending you. Thanks for telling me.
Best Regards,
Frank Gehry
To state the obvious, this reply is classy in the extreme and makes me feel better in many ways. As coda to this episode, Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA, below. (Picture from Wikipedia.)
On Robert S. McNamara
1) I never had any kind of in-person discussion with him. The closest I came was during the Vietnam era, when he was making what he thought would be a routine visit to Harvard -- and to his enormous surprise was engulfed by seas of protestors who immobilized his car and yelled "Murderer!" at him. I was a newly arrived freshman and was walking down to sports practice when I found the street full of people and police surrounding a big black limo. Thirty years later, I ended up sitting next to McNamara on a DC subway car and decided not to say anything.
2) I know some of his relatives and in-laws. They loved and also respected him, and I am sorry for the loss of their father and grandfather.
3) In 1995, when McNamara published his In Retrospect memoir of the Vietnam War, I reacted very harshly in an NPR commentary. My argument was that he had missed his chance for a respectful hearing for his admission that the war in Vietnam was a mistake. If he hadn't done anything about that war when it could have made a difference, then there was no reason to, in effect, ask for public sympathy and understanding for his belated recognition of error. (Quotes after the jump.)
My tone then was harsher than I would be now. Perhaps that's just because I'm older; perhaps because McNamara has now died; perhaps because he had fifteen more years to be involved in worthy causes, mainly containing the risk of nuclear war or accident. But mainly I think it is because of Errol Morris' remarkable 2003 film The Fog of War, which portrayed McNamara as a combative and hyper-competitive man (in his 80s, he was still pointing out that he had been top of his elementary-school class) but as a person of moral seriousness who agonized not just about Vietnam but also the fire-bombing of Tokyo during World War II, which he had helped plans as a young defense analyst.
4) In an interview with Sam Stein of Huffington Post, Errol Morris talks about McNamara's moral seriousness and Morris' ultimate respect and sympathy for him. He also echoes the main grounds of my attack on McNamara from the time In Retrospect was published:
"I share one thing with McNamara's critics. As a friend of mine said to
me, I can forgive him for Vietnam. I can forgive him for this. I can
forgive him for that. But I can never forgive him for not speaking up
about the war in the years following his resignation as defense
secretary. I kind of agree that was his most significant failing."
5) The greatest defense of McNamara's life and works will, I suspect, rest not on his poverty-alleviation projects as head of the World Bank but instead on his consistent efforts, from the Kennedy administration onward, to reduce the risk of accidental or intentional use of nuclear weapons. This included his role during the most dangerous moment of of the Cold War era, the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.*
6) Among many reasons to mourn David Halberstam's death in a traffic accident two years ago is the loss of the opportunity to hear his retrospect on McNamara. In The Best and the Brightest Halberstam wrote the passage that framed understanding of McNamara for years to come, which wound up this way:
He did not serve himself or his country well. He was, there is no kinder or gentler word for it, a fool.
7) Among many reasons to be grateful for Walter Pincus' continued presence at the Washington Post is this appreciation of his friend McNamara.
* Update: In Slate, Fred Kaplan presents the evidence that McNamara actually took a more bellicose stance during the Cuban Missile Crisis than he later claimed.
RIP -- a more freighted wish than in most cases, given McNamara's troubled recent decades. Harsh passages after the jump. ___
Now this makes me wish I were already back in the flying business
A company called AirJourney, "The Flying Adventure Journey Specialist," is sponsoring a joint small-plane fly-in next month along the route of the Lewis & Clark expedition.
Perhaps it is a stretch to claim, as AirJourney does in promos like what's shown below, that this is a deeply historical commemoration. But I flew much of this route in a small plane nine years ago (start in Minnesota, then down to Nebraska, then west) and to this day recall many vivid scenes, which I also described in my book Free Flight. The incredible breadth of the Missouri River, which in many stretches looked as it might have in the days of L&C. The carvings of Mt. Rushmore outside Rapid City, SD, which from above look surprisingly tiny and netsuke-like. The splaying delta and estuary of the Columbia River at the other end of the journey, at Astoria, Oregon, where it meets the Pacific. And a lot in between.
It's not a "rational" way to spend your time or money, but I've never forgotten the experience or regretted spending time and money in a similar venture. If you're not a pilot yet -- there's just barely time!
June 30, 2009
Toe back into the online pool
Travel* + time zones + away from internet + jet lag = no web activity. It's a mathematical axiom known since the time of Euclid. But before sleeping off the latest long-haul trip and rejoining the crack, round-the-clock Atlantic Monthly web team reporting on the Aspen Ideas Festival effective in a few hours, two notes from opposite ends of the world.
From China: Three months ago I mentioned that an "unofficial site" in Beijing was providing hourly Twitter readings on the air pollution element that is most threatening to health but is either not measured or not reported by the Chinese government itself. I knew then but did not say that the "unofficial" site was actually on the roof of the U.S. embassy in Beijing. I did not say it because friends at the embassy said that calling attention to it could seem provocative or thumbing-the-nose at Chinese authorities and could jeopardize the whole undertaking. A tremendous amount of "unofficial" activity goes on in China, under the hallowed principle of "one eye open, one eye shut." As long as the authorities' noses weren't rubbed in the flouting of rules, many things were possible.
For better or worse, and perhaps with different guidance from embassy officials, Time magazine's blog recently revealed that the site was on the embassy roof. And just now my favorite paper, the China Daily, has picked up the story. In the short run, I see that it has kicked Twitter followers for the service well up above previous levels. I hope the readings continue -- and, of course, that they eventually show healthier air.
From America: There are lots of things my wife and I will miss about China, and lots of things that are a relief to escape. I will chronicle them systematically at some point. Here's one brief "I miss China" item for the moment: Jeez is it a pain to return to the culture of tipping. I hated the haggling in Chinese markets and preferred to shop where there were simple price tags -- and the item was worth it to me, or it was not. So too did I hate this episode on arrival in Aspen today:
We got off an airplane and got into a van headed for the conference headquarters. We climb out at the HQ, and the driver stands in our path and announces, "Your transportation is covered by the conference, but you are perfectly free to tip." I guess he could tell we had been away.
I know and respect the little signs saying "Gratuities appreciated" on, say, the shuttle buses taking you to airport car-rental lots. I understand the ritual supplement at restaurants, and am always "generous" in that regard. Same with hotel maids, and so on. I have worked in tip-receiving jobs. But this episode just made me think: there has to be a better way.
I rummaged through my pockets that were still full of Chinese RMB and finally found a $5 bill. I gave it to him and thought: I do not believe that countries with a tipping culture end up having a fairer distribution of income than ones (like China) where tipping is unusual and can even seem insulting. They just end up delivering the money in a way that is more demeaning all around. The driver can't have enjoyed this exercise. I know I didn't. Please! Just add the money to the fare -- or the restaurant check or the hotel bill -- rather than having all of commercial life colored by the haggling / hostile-servile on one end / guilty-paternalistic on the other end institution of the tip. Ok, Ok, we can deal with the environmental crisis and health-care reform before that. But this is a place where the Chinese (and the Japanese and in many cases the Aussies and others) have it right. ___ * Explanation of travel oddities: We left Beijing two weeks ago today; spent 72 hours in the US; were out of the country again; and are back, today, for the duration.
June 18, 2009
Sigh, out of range again
I am no longer based in China, but am not yet actually based anyplace else. So this might be the last dispatch for the next week, and it's on the fly from yet another airport wi-fi site. Sketchy for-the-record remarks:
1) After 60+ hours in America (and on the way out again): Life is so abundant! Even in a downturn -- and, yes, in Washington, not Flint. Everything looks so comfortable and lush! The air is so clean! (Today's reading in Beijing: "Hazardous.") And the cell phone coverage is so crappy! I can barely recall a moment in China when I was out of signal range. Today alone in Washington, half a dozen dropped calls. Yes, yes, I know the reasons for this. But the difference is impressive.
1A) Bad part of my character as revealed by travel (part 2,847): When approached by spare-change panhandlers I have to bite my tongue to avoid giving the "do you know what people put up with in China?" speech. Yes, yes, I know why this is wrong.
2) Positive aviation development of the week: flight of a new all-electric plane, here.
3) Negative journalistic development of the week: the Washington Post's insane decision to fire its media-political blogger Dan Froomkin. (I know Froomkin only through his work, not personally.) We all have heard the reasons that the press is under pressure by forces not of its making. This is an example of a self-inflicted wound. Are papers like the Post under suspicion for being too insidery and old-media-y? How does it make sense get rid of an independent minded, new media, presumably not-that-expensive, non-Washington-cliquey voice on politics and the media and leave... well, the full opinion and media lineup the Post is sticking with? Some people tell me that it's a mistake to say that the Post's editorial page (and the weight of its op-ed lineup) has "become" neo-con and establishment-minded under its current editor, Fred Hiatt; the argument is that this is the Post's long tradition, which its anti-Nixon crusade concealed. I don't know. But I would have liked to have heard the argument about why Froomkin was the necessary next person to cut. More later.
4) "There will always be a China" anecdote of the day. This comes from a Chinese friend I know and trust but, for this person's own sake, will not identify. My friend asked a CCTV producer (whose name I also know) about the mystery I mentioned last week: what on earth the weird ... thing on top of the otherwise-clean CCTV tower was. Reminder:
Here is the report from my friend, recounting a conversation with the producer:
Me [my friend]: Do you know what that huge round thing protruding on the top of the main CCTV building is? Producer: What? Me: It looks like either a misshaped radar or a helicopter landing pad... Producer: Why are you asking? Me: Just curious. Producer: Well, don't be curious. You know it's a very sensitive period here at CCTV, because of Fang Jing's "spy-gate" incident. Don't ask such sensitive questions. Me: Why is it sensitive? That huge thing is right there on the very top of your landmark. Everyone could see it, even from far away. You've never thought about what it is? Nobody asks about it? Producer: No... No one. Seriously, stop asking about it!
Words to live by. With that, I leave you to my Atlantic colleagues for a week.
June 15, 2009
The next time you're in Shaanxi....
Do whatever you can to hear the Lao Qiang -- 老腔, "Old Tunes" --
musical performance held in the small city at the foot of China's most
famous mountain-climbing tourist site, Hua Shan (roughly, "Mt. China" sorry, right character- 华 - wrong etymology).
Most forms of traditional Chinese singing, Beijing opera and the like, are easier for Westerners to "admire" than to "enjoy." When I learned that I'd be spending a couple of hours hearing songs from a 2000-year-old tradition, I was preparing myself for a bout of "admiration." In fact, it was tremendously enjoyable, and I was sorry only that the program (flyer to the left) had to come to an end.
The lore of Lao Qiang is that these are songs from old-time rivermen, which have been passed down through the eons by a select few families. Heirs of those families are the current stars of the performing troupe -- notably the Wang family, whose head is the older performer in the first photo below, and the Zhang family, whose Zhang Ximin is the riveting, hard-to-take-your-eyes-off lead singer and string player -- the dark haired man in the second photo. According to the program, these performers spend their days as regular farmers, and practice and perform at night. Who knows about that; but as performers they're great.
Wang Zhenzhong (王振中) above; Zhang Ximin (张喜民) below.
The troupe:
If the music has a Western equivalent, I would say it is something like "Muleskinner blues." Lusty, rhythmic, loud, fun. More on the topic here, here, and here in English, here, here, and here in Chinese. Of course the brief clips don't really do it justice. See it yourself.
June 13, 2009
Our wacky government, chapter 21,472 (updated!)
A friend preparing to enter the foreign service was looking through the official list of "hardship" posts and the extra pay that goes with them. Some are obvious -- Kabul! I have no idea what embassy life is like there, but 35% seems only reasonable.
Same presumably true of Iraq, no matter how much "calmer" things may be getting there.
But... China?
Yeah, yeah, I've griped about pollution and traffic in Beijing, and
maybe 10% is fair, all things considered. (Hey, Atlantic head office,
just a hint!) But half again as much "hardship" to be in Shanghai???
Paris of the Orient, and all of that? And while Shenyang has its bleak
side and Wuhan and Nanjing are two of the famous "Three Furnaces of China," it's intriguing that they should be seen as constituting nearly as much hardship as Kabul. Maybe just a reminder of the oddities
that come when you try to quantify things that really aren't similar. (Hardship in Kabul: actual risk to life and limb. Hardship in Shanghai: making do with REEB beer.) On the other hand, we
have a friend soon heading off for several years' diplomatic service in
Wuhan. As far as we're concerned, she deserves every cent.
UPDATE: Many FSOs and other public employees have written in to say that "hardship pay" is only part of the story. There is also "danger pay," which obviously is higher in a place like Kabul than one like Wuhan, and other supplements. One representative note:
I'd like to point out that the hardship differential is not designed to compensate Foreign Service Officers for dangerous duty. The hardship differential is paid for a variety of reasons: if the duty location is heavily polluted, or if it is very isolated, or if it is in a very poor area and amenities are hard to come by, and so forth. It's basically an incentive for FSOs to bid on tours in places where life will be very uncomfortable. I don't know about the air in Beijing, though I've heard it's very bad; I do know about the air in Cairo, which is so bad that it does the damage of smoking several packs of cigarettes a day. Hardship pay basically compensates FSOs in places like Cairo for sacrificing their health to serve their country.
Hardship pay is separate from danger pay, which is paid for tours where life and limb are risked. There are also COLAs for tours in countries where cost of living would be very high; this could be a tour in a very wealthy country, where everything costs an arm or a leg, or in a country where a terrible exchange rate wipes out a good chunk of every pay check, or in a country where everything has to be imported and therefore costs a fortune. There is also separation pay, which an FSO can receive for an unaccompanied tour that entails
separation from one's family. An FSO could, in theory, earn multiple compensations for going on a poor, isolated, polluted, dangerous tour.
Sorry to tell only part of the story the first time through. By the way, this is an interesting little illustration of the weaknesses and also strengths of online reportage. For the print version of the magazine, I would never have published something without calling around to several people to say: OK, let's hear more about this foreign-pay schedule. What's the rationale? What else is involved? And whether or not I'd done that that, Sue Parilla or Yvonne Rolzhausen or some other member of our crack fact-checking team would have done it too. So, this kind of chart without the extra info would not have made it into the magazine.
On the other hand, in print I would never have had the chance to hear from people around the world within minutes of pushing the "save" button -- and make a correction as soon as I saw their comments when I next got email. Different media, different roles, different vulnerabilities and strengths.
OK, one mystery solved (updated)
I mentioned last night my puzzlement about why and how the dramatic new CCTV tower, whose entire point was the stark simplicity of its design (by Rem Koolhaas), had been junked up by an inexplicable and unignorable wart on its roof line. This is in keeping with the theme of last month's Atlantic article, about the tendency of many projects here to turn out almost right.
I am grateful to readers who wrote in suggesting that it was a window-washing platform, which would move along rails around the perimeter (no, it's always in the same place); or perhaps a giant satellite dish (no, as is obvious from other views).
The dispositive comment came from Jim Gourley, who reminded me that he had pointed out last year on his Rudenoon blog that it was indeed a helipad; that something similar had been in the works for a long time; but that the original idea was for something much more contained and concealed that would do less to destroy the overall look of the structure, as has now occurred. From his Flickr picture of the earlier plans:
And Jeremy Goldkorn, of Danwei, had pointed out just before the Olympics began that "The iconic new CCTV building designed by Rem
Koolhaas has had its clean lines ruined by the addition of a helicopter
landing pad on the roof." Now I know. If only there were ever any helicopters in sight above Chinese cities.... (Separate topic.)
To round out the CCTV theme, a very nice FT story by Kathrin Hille quotes Tong Bing, a Chinese journalism professor, on what's wrong with the (state-controlled) network's mainstream news show:
"Currently, the programme has three parts: political
leaders' activities for the first ten minutes, other news for second
ten minutes, and international news for last ten minutes," said Mr
Tong. "During the first part, people tend to watch commercials. They
use the second part to go to the toilet. Only for the third part will
they come back to listen."
(Thanks to D. Lippman)
Update: via Micah Sittig, info that Tong Bing's observation is a cleaned up version of a standard joke. For rendering of the joke in Chinese, see comments #24 and #29 at this site. English version, per Sittig, "Evening News classic summary. First 10 minutes: the (national) leaders are busy; middle 10 minutes: the Chinese people are prospering; last 10 minutes: the rest of the world is living in chaos and hardship." Commenter #29 points out that he often amuses himself on foreign travels observing said chaos and hardship.
June 12, 2009
Paradise Beijing, final edition
Previously in the Paradise Beijing series: here, here, and here.
Most accurate air-quality reading today: not "dangerous for sensitive groups" or "hazardous," but "good"! Temperatures balmy, winds light, skies clear. Time for a final run along the canal.
Looking east, toward the Fourth Ring Road and beyond:
Looking west, in toward the Second Ring Road (same bridge, from different sides, in both shots):
Fishermen, bicyclers, drunks and idlers, young romantics, and school kids were out enjoying the paradise too. Carpe diem, as we say in Beijing.
Departing questions
When I first arrived in China, I wrote an Atlantic article about various mysteries I hoped to explore. I've learned about some, still puzzled about others. Keep reading for further hypotheses!
But more mysteries arise as I near departure. One involves the famous CCTV tower, which has been going up a a few blocks from our apartment during the three years we've been in China and the past 18 months we've been in Beijing. Here's how it is supposed to look, in a MOMA pre-construction, heroically glamorous rendering as seen more or less from where we live.
Precious little seems to have happened to the building over the past 18 months (setting aside the fire that destroyed the adjoining Mandarin Oriental hotel in February). A year ago at this time, we thought there was a race to get it ready before the Olympics. Nope. Through all this time, my wife and I have constantly wondered what was going on with the very top of the building. Here's how the roof line actually looks as of today, starting with a long shot from the south:
Closer southerly view:
And, long shot from the Sanlitun area in the north:
For a long time, we thought hoped this was some kind of construction staging pad. But the rooftop cranes came and went, and this thing stayed. Helipad? Who knows. But I wonder whether this was quite what Rem Koolhaas had in mind when he drew the tower's stark, dramatic lines. It has, umm, a somewhat noticeable effect on the building's profile. Another reason to come back soon and see how it, like so many other parts of China, looks when it's "done."
June 1, 2009
Lost memory of June 4, update #2
Not all young Chinese people are unaware of or indifferent to the events of twenty years ago in Beijing. Late last night I heard from one such person, roughly in the student age bracket, who had just been put under house arrest for the next week, until the "sensitive" anniversary period is over. The message I received today via mobile phone/SMS, before communication ended, was this:
Could you please blog, "Chinese people, don't give up on freedom, ever."
It is heartbreaking and, in a way, shaming for outsiders to realize how little they can do directly to affect the government's handling of cases like these. I would only hurt this person's prospects by saying more about specifics. But this is where my thoughts will be in the next week.
May 26, 2009
Beijing construction triptych #3: Opposite House
The Atlantic's latest issue has a brief article by me about a very unusual new hotel in Beijing called the Opposite House. For details -- get the magazine!
Here are a few amateur shots of what makes the place a noticeable exception among the other fancy Western hotels that have sprung up all over Beijing. Giant version of a traditional Chinese medicine chest, with (mainly) workable drawers, in the atrium:
Scando-Japanese minimalism in the rooms -- I mean, "studios":
Enormous woven-metal drape or sail hanging from the upper stories down through the atrium:
There are genuine, professional photos in the magazine, and this brings me to my real point. Seriously, you should read articles like this in the magazine itself, not on line.
Some written material is merely "text" and can be absorbed equally well regardless of medium. I've claimed that I like reading novels just as much on a Kindle as in printed form. All that matters is a novel is the words. But some material is designed for something other than a computer screen, and is best absorbed from printed pages, with illustrations and thought-through layout. Most of what's in a good magazine is in this category. Long, narrative articles are simply better to read on a sequence of pages, with illustrations and margins and call-out text, than as clicked-through screens.
I'm saying: subscribe to our magazine because you'll enjoy it more that way. And: subscribe because you should! Anyone who worries about the "crisis of the press" has a chance to do something about it for two bucks a month.
May 24, 2009
Beijing construction triptych #2: Guomao
First picture: Google satellite view of the I-10 / I-405 intersection on the west side of Los Angeles. This is where the Santa Monica freeway meets the San Diego freeway, an extremely busy piece of thoroughfare. The only airline flight I've ever missed in my life was because of a jam at this very intersection -- my mother was driving me to LAX for a flight back to college after my first year's Christmas break, and we sat for two hours on one of the connectors shown below. (Part #1 of the Beijing construction triptych here.)
Next picture: the Guomao intersection in Beijing, where Jianguo Lu meets the East Third Ring Road. Our apartment building is just off screen on the lower right corner of the picture; subway entrances are on the other three corners but not on ours:
From my point of view, main difference between these intersections: no sane person would try to cross I-10/I-405 on foot. But many tens of thousands of pedestrians, including me, have to cross the Guomao intersection every day.
Above-the-fold picture on China Daily special weekly business supplement. Caption says:
"The official dance troupe of the Dallas Cowboys (a US National Football League team) perform with local elderly at a downtown park in Shanghai."
How it looked on the page:
In the circumstances, the "local elderly" don't look that bad! Must be the morning tai chi.
May 12, 2009
Design aspects of software: maps as "thinking tools"
I don't talk about it as often as, say, small-plane aviation or, recently, Chinese education, or my doomed quest in Asia for good beer. But for many many years I have been fascinated by the relationship between "pure" acts of thinking - logic, memory, argument, expression, the process of making connections and finding distinctions; all of which rely fundamentally on words - and the various tools, cues, shortcuts, and stimuli other than words that can play an important part in what we think of as thought.
I'm not talking about entirely separate realms of expression - like music, which obviously conveys meaning beyond words, or the emotional or imaginative power of artwork, photography, illustrations, and other visual representations. Rather I mean systems specifically designed to help the plain old reasoning parts of the brain do their job better, by shoring up common weak spots or by giving more or better material for the "real" brain to work on. For an Atlantic article on this topic from 2007, go here. Things have changed since then, mainly for the better, in ways I'll go into in coming days.
Today's design theme: the potential of argument maps. These are something like sentence diagrams, without the drudge-work overtone. I was introduced to them through two programs from the Austhink company of Melbourne, Australia: bCisive, whose name is I think a pun on "decisive" and is a tool for decision-making, and Rationale, which is supposed to help students improve the logic of their presentations. Tim van Gelder, who teaches philosophy at the U of Melbourne and founded Austhink, weighed in here yesterday on the Chinese education, defending the proposition that critical thinking can be taught.
Here's one illustration of an argument map, a small portion of a complex map prepared by Austhink director Paul Monk (an author and former intelligence officer) to weigh arguments about who "really" killed JFK. Different kinds of maps, and reading about them, after the jump. (His argument map on the proposition "The war on Iraq was illegal" is here.)
News and events in China today are dominated by commemorations of the Sichuan earthquake of May 12, 2008.
In that spirit, here is a link to a video released today by Afterquake, a project by Abigail Washburn and Dave Liang, American musicians living in China, to document and assist the recovery effort.
I think most people will find the video affecting but not depressing. It certainly makes clear why this event so dominated the country's consciousness last year. The only thing the post-earthquake scenes don't convey is how vast the devastated area was. You could drive for hours, far away from the epicenter, and still see crushed buildings and shaken-down mountains like those depicted here.
Further links: Sichuan Quake Relief charity Additional site on Vimeo for English version of video Sites for Chinese version of video on Tudou and Youku SexyBeijing.TV, whose Luke Mines shot and edited the video
May 5, 2009
Embarrasingly literal-minded note on "First they came for..."
A peril of today's interconnected world is that people from widely varying language backgrounds can read the same
material and come to widely different conclusions, based largely on
command of the language itself. This is especially true right now of
English, which hundreds of millions of people use as their native
tongue -- and hundreds of millions more can understand as the dominant language of international business and media, but naturally with different levels of comprehension and subtlety.
In a way this is like the problem I've recently described for politicians, who simultaneously address an internal and an external audience. A U.S. or British leader needs to assure the local citizens that he or she is defending their interests -- without doing so in a way that will offend the rest of the world. It's hard.
This is on my mind because of a post earlier today about quarantine for Canadian students in China, on the basis of nationality rather than exposure to disease, following similar handling of Mexican citizens. The post was called, "First they came for the Mexicans. Then, the Canadians...."
The "internal" audience for this post would generally recognize the title as a joke. Or at least a joking allusion. That audience -- of native speakers of English, especially native speakers of American English, especially native speakers of American English who had paid attention to politics and political sloganeering -- would know how often the "First they came for..." trope is used as the conclusion of any speech about excessive government control. If you're not already 100% familiar with it, start here. If, on the other hand, you've listened to (especially) American political speeches, you have heard this a million times, often in hyperbolic ways -- including the way I was using it, ironically, here.
But not every reader is a native speaker of English or familiar with Western political rhetoric. So I have heard from a number of people who took offense at the idea that I was describing super-seriously a systematic manhunt for various national groups. Sigh. I have dealt with enough languages over the years to be humble about the challenges of operating outside one's native language terrain (and to recognize the convenience of being able to write to an international audience in my native language). But I don't know the way out of it. This magazine, in print and on line, is deliberately aimed at high-end readers of English who will understand allusions and tricks of language. We can't water that down, or take on the lead-weight of stage direction footnotes -- "I'm being ironic here!" -- on parts that some people might misread. But the multiplicity of audiences is worth bearing in mind. And I try to.
So apologies to any who took offense. Except to those who wrote huffily about what my words "meant," when that was the very thing they didn't really understand.
May 2, 2009
News as art, continued
Back to the "what does this scene remind me of?" category, previously here, while still looking into further flu news in China. Many nominations for this painting, usually with apologies for the larger Messianic implications:
After the jump, for greater clarity of detail, an early non-Leonardo copy of the painting as it once may have looked. Plus another version not by Leonardo. More to come, with eventual wrap-up thanks to all contributors.
...in the "art prefigures" life category, previously here and here. The Anatomy Lesson of Professor Nicolaes Tulp, 1632. Some obvious differences in composition. But some nice similarities. In the role of the instructive Prof. Tulp we have the instructive Pres. Obama. In the role of the cadaver, we have the Chrysler Corporation, though out of view. (Yes, yes, I have owned several Chrysler cars and know it will be stronger than ever after the restructuring, etc.) More to come.
May 1, 2009
The Syndics of Pennsylvania Avenue
The nominees are coming in for the Fine Arts precursor to yesterday's news photo of the Obama auto-industry task force, as explained here, with several plausible contenders. First up: Rembrandt, with Syndics of the Amsterdam Drapers' Guild, 1662. More nominees on their way. And in the meantime, on the general phenomenon of Fine Arts precursors to current images, see Lawrence Weschler's Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences, with excerpt here.
I like some of the matchups of Tim Geithner and Gary Locke with their Amsterdam counterparts. Also, a fact worth mentioning to viewers of the second picture: surprising as it might seem given this picture, Lawrence Summers is actually quite a good athlete. The more I look at this picture, the richer it is.
April 30, 2009
News as art
From my misspent years in DC, I believe I can identify every person in this photo (just now, from Doug Mills of the NYT):
But why didn't I take more Fine Arts classes in college? Then I would know exactly which Old Master tableau this lineup so powerfully reminds me of. The human dramas suggested by these faces. This is an impromptu work of art.
April 29, 2009
Three scenes from the subway (includes subversive panda content)
Life under ground, in three acts.
1. The subversive pandas go soft-power. For illustrations of their previous quasi-menace, check here, here, and here. Now, a love-bombing campaign, as seen at the Jianguomen station today:
It's all part of an ad campaign to boost tourism to Sichuan province, homeland of the pandas and of course the site of last year's earthquake.
2. What is inside those mysterious blue anti-bomb pots? Not very much, it turns out. (Background here.) At an undisclosed location, I found one of them sitting propped open. Inside there appears to be a miniature cargo net, to cradle whatever suspect item is placed there. Otherwise it's just a big metal ball. I feel safer now. (You're looking down from the top in this picture, to see an inch-thick metal lid tilted open, and the reddish metal interior.)
3. Is 'Prison Break' big in China? It is very, very big! The star Wentworth Miller -- "Michael Scofield" -- is absolutely enormous, dominating a skyline view of Shanghai in an ad for the Chevy Cruze.
That's the rocket ship-shaped Tomorrow Square building, eponym for my latest book, on the far left side.
GM looks sexier here than it may at the moment in the US -- Buick is still a dominant, tres chic brand.
Political PS: security is ratcheting up in Beijing, as we move toward a 20-year anniversary that is 36 days from today. A subway cop came over looking hostile when he saw me taking pictures of the 'Prison Break' ads. Relying on the widespread Chinese assumption that I am in fact the 43rd president of the United States, I explained reassuringly that I was interested in the posters because they were of "my friend in the United States." It was too complicated to explain the real connection -- which is that Miller's father was my classmate in graduate school.
April 26, 2009
Tech and cultural followups on that Air China flight
Two days ago I mentioned the strange results when an Air China flight headed for Beijing was instead diverted to Tianjin. To anyone who receives these posts by email, the results must have seemed even stranger than they were. Because of a glitch in our web set-up, only the first third of the post went out, omitting everything in the "after the jump" section. Sorry! The full version is available here. (Hint: if you saw the picture of a crash involving a "bread box" taxi, you saw the whole thing.)
Several people who were blessed in receiving the full report challenged its main hypothesis -- which, in a nutshell, was that the Chinese traveling public had learned not to waste energy getting furious about things that were entirely out of their control. Two reactions below.
From reader David:
I enjoyed your post about Chinese having "the serenity to accept the
things [they] can't change," though your hypothesis may need some honing.
A few years ago I was on a plane that landed in Zhengzhou due to a cracked
windshield. We were stuck in Zhengzhou for over 12 hours - including a time in
the middle when we were bussed to a hotel - and the entire time the passengers
berated the Air China reps for not being able to provide information as to when
we would be leaving except that we would not have to wait overnight. At times the
Air China reps were essentially surrounded by a scrum of passengers all yelling
until finally at about 4am we were able to get back on the plane.
I've seen airport rage in the States but never with that kind of herd
mentality, though I do appreciate the fact that Chinese seem to be able to yell
and create a disturbance without actually being all that mad down inside. There
were moments of levity among the passengers in between the rage. Perhaps the
facts in my experience were different enough to give the passengers the sense
that they could control the outcome of the situation whether true or not. Also,
the youtube of the Hong Kong woman going apeshit when she missed her plane
comes to mind. [More about the Hong Kong episode here.]
Next, PT Black, of Shanghai, sends a long and interesting report with a political edge. It begins this way:
Your comments about the delayed flight from SZ to BJ strike a nerve,
though, because just last week I had a very different experience flying
from Chengdu to Shanghai, also on Air China.
It continues after the jump. If you don't see anything more, it means that our RSS system is still messed up. Hope not! ____
Two bottles of water on the dresser in my favorite hotel, the Sheraton Four Points Shenzhen (elegized here and here) earlier this week. I see that the awkward-labeling problems I often complain about in China can occur when only a single language is involved. Click for larger if you don't see the joke.
Although I suppose a language issue might be involved here, in that very few of the local Chinese staff stocking the rooms would be likely to notice the labels and say, "What the hell?" Actually I hope they never notice; this is kind of charming.
April 24, 2009
Back to Beijing #2 (better news, Air China dept)
Twenty-plus years ago, traveling around China by air was anything but a peace-of-mind experience. The planes were mainly leftover Soviet junkers; the amenities were sparse; the general atmosphere called to mind Indiana Jones.
I've done a lot of crisscrossing of China by airlines these past few years, on carriers as big and established as Air China and as exotic as Spring Airlines and Deer. (Note for the uninitiated: never, ever get Air China and China Airlines mixed up. The first is the flag carrier of the People's Republic of China. The second is from the Republic of China, aka Taiwan.) Flights going out of either Beijing or Shanghai are usually late, but that's hardly unique to China. Overall, it's less stressful than the standard airport/airline experience in the US.
Last night, my wife and I were taking an evening flight from Shenzhen to Beijing. Departure 6pm, scheduled arrival 9:15. As we got close to Beijing, the ride became very bumpy, and then a bright light illuminated the whole cabin, simultaneous with a big BOOM. A bolt of lightning had hit the wing! Attention-getting but not necessarily dangerous: planes are designed to handle this, I explained to my wife and surrounding folk, in my most patronizing "let the pilot tell you" mode.
Then my wife noticed on the "your plane in flight" GPS map that we seemed to be heading away from Beijing and toward Tianjin, near the coast. I was warming up for another patronizing "let's settle down" reply, when the attendant came on and said that because "weather in Beijing is bad" (literally "天气在北京不好") we were indeed headed for Tianjin.
From an aviation point of view, what happened after that was more or less normal. The plane landed in Tianjin, maybe 75 miles from Beijing, the standard diversion site in situations like these. I had dreaded the idea of everyone being offloaded there and bused back to Beijing, along a notoriously jam-packed and dangerous road. Instead, periodically the attendants and then the captain came on the radio to say that we were going to wait things out and eventually fly back.
I know this is not the major news story of the day. But it is what I find now jamming my email inbox, on reconnecting from the frontier of China, so I will note it for the record.
I have always liked, admired, relied on, gotten along with, and been a supporter of air traffic controllers. In the recent passenger-pilot landing mentioned here and here, I first noted that "the calm of all involved is incredible" and then, in a second installment, that the controller involved "was faultlessly calm, supportive, and reassuring, and for that he deserves great praise." I also quoted emails from two pilots about what they noticed in the exchange, including info that they as pilots would have expected to get.
I have received a very large number of responses from controllers who were anything but faultlessly calm. The majority of them take the quoted remarks as an outright slam on the controller, which was not at all the intent. One recurrent theme was: Well, asshole, I'd like to see how you'd have done under pressure! As I've made clear each time, I could hardly imagine handling things as well as the man who landed the plane, Douglas White. As for the controller: I respect people who do this job, and his calm played a very important part in this happy outcome. During probably the worst experience I've had aloft, which involved a thunderstorm over upstate New York a decade ago, the controllers from the Fort Drum site were an enormous practical and psychological help. As I called their supervisor to say, with gratitude, after I landed.
Fortunately one extensive email did arrive from a senior controller who is in print the way I assume him to be in the control room: calm, systematic, etc. His name is Paul Cox, of the FAA Follies site. He is based in Seattle and stresses that while he is speaking as a controller he most definitely not speaking for the FAA. This is the approach I've always respected from controllers. (You other guys, read and learn!) His comments below. Let me say, again, everyone involved performed very well -- in the controller's case, through the combo of projecting an air of perfect cool and finding a King Air pilot to ask questions of. In addition, the pilot performed almost miraculously. Over now to Paul Cox, who says:
Read your recent blog entries about the incident in Florida, and a few of the comments you published deserve some info. [Very long dispatch after the jump, but full of interesting details.]
On this day, April 16, in Atlantic web-land: - Ezekiel Emanuel announces that Yunnan tea is his new favorite drink; - Corby Kummer agrees; - Andrew Sullivan takes note; and - I wake up before dawn for a flight to Yunnan itself (time zones being what they are, it's already April 17 here). We're a tight-knit team; we all do our part. I'll look for some tea.
April 15, 2009
China v. Japan: the packed-train factor
Superficially Japan and China are similar; in nuance and operating details they're generally opposites, as illustrated previously here. Kathy Kriger, whom I knew in Tokyo twenty years ago and who now lives in Casablanca (where she runs, no joke, Rick's Cafe), reminds me about an important difference: What happens inside a packed train.
Japan's subways are flat-out more intensely crowded than anything I've seen in China. In Tokyo, uniformed and white-gloved "packers" are normal. The Beijing and Shanghai subways are merely "self-packed," with people crowding their way in but without that extra ratchet-up of density that only trained, professional packers can provide. In Tokyo I lived through the scene below more often than I want to recall. (Photo from Encarta.)
Clearest sign that the photo was taken in Japan rather than China: Not the packers but the next car-load of passengers, waiting punctiliously in line!
As I recently mentioned, a very-crowded Beijing subway provides the opportunity for petty theft. In Japan, it's more like petty... petting. Kriger says:
That brought back a flood of memories from Tokyo's train and
subway commutes. My most vivid were from when I lived a year in
Yokohama and commuted into Tokyo first on the JNR Negishi-sen, the blue
train. The worst was the morning, crammed in and unable to move -
invariably forced to look over the shoulder of a guy immersed in a
porno comic book. When it got too much I got out and boarded the next
train. But robbery was never a problem, ever.
My favorite story was
forgetting my purse on the upper rack exiting in Yokohama from the
Yokosuka line enroute to Yokosuka - the end of the line - and going
there the next morning to retrieve my handbag and sign a form verifying
that everything was still there.
We women didn't fear
the pick pocketers so much as those who rode the trains to take
advantage of the crowded conditions to let their hands wander. I think
it might have been Jean Pearce [a local writer] who recounted a story when an outraged
American woman, accosted on a crowded subway, grabbed the offending
hand, raised it and said in Japanese, "Whose hand is this?
The porno-comic factor was such an omnipresent aspect of Japanese public life that it drove my wife from a slow boil into outright constant rage against adult males in general, including the one who happened to be living in the same house. As for the "whose hand is this?" factor, that was so common that there is a standard term for it in Japanese (chikan, or in hiragana ちかん) and signs outside crowded stations warning "beware of subway gropers." I don't think I ever saw a sign in Japan warning against pickpockets. More here.
Seatmates on a plane: Iraq report
From a long-time friend of mine, a report of his latest domestic airline flight:
Flew from XXX to XXX seated next to a career Army sgt headed to Iraq after R&R on 3rd tour. Fascinating conversation - and I realized that being seated next to Iraq-bound or -returning soldiers is commonplace on domestic air travel these days...
Gratifying to me was his saying that the troops really do feel appreciated and supported by the public, and can distinguish criticism of the war from criticism of the men and women in uniform (unlike in Vietnam days). None of the rest was gratifying at all:
• Surge has "worked" because Iraqis who just want to start killing one another again are biding their time. Après nous, le deluge. • No one could comprehend the waste of money in US expenditures in Iraq. • IEDs have become infinitely more sophisticated, very high tech now, and can penetrate all but one type of US vehicle. Suicide bombers can penetrate anything they want. • When an IED blows up a vehicle in a convoy, and you are two vehicles away in the same convoy, the force of the explosion is so violent you are thrown against the interior of your vehicle, you are temporarily deafened, etc. • Troop morale is high because they sense they are going home, most of them. But there is no way US can be out in five years or even ten without leaving too much equipment behind. • Although troop morale is high, they universally hate George W. Bush now. • Afghanistan is much more difficult than Iraq just on the basis of terrain alone. What we have in the way of tools and weapons is far better suited to Iraq than to Afghanistan.
It was poignant his describing the "huge" increases in pay resulting from Stop-Loss, plus Congress's efforts to help: $500 a month. To him, this is a really big sum, "on top of the extra $1000 per month we already get for being in combat."
From reader Sherry S in Paris: Posters there show ads similar to Wall Street English (with the tongue, reminder below).
From numerous readers in Japan: Ubiquitous posters there for the GABA language school very similar to the English First ads in China (bondage theme). GABA below, EF reminder under that.
From numerous professional and amateur semiologists: generally worried comments about what the imagery of these ads says about the stereotyped relationships between Asian women and Western men. I'm not going near that for the moment. But here is a reminder that the target audience for these ads is in fact young Asian people, largely women. I look forward to dissertations on this topic -- and on the subtle but clear difference in affect between the Westerners shown in the Chinese vs the Japanese tied/chained-together ads. Thanks to, among others, Landon Thorpe and Jed Schmidt, and to this "Eikawa Wonderland" site for the GABA pic.
UPDATE: below and after the jump, testimony from a former English teacher in Japan about why the lashed-together imagery of the ad was shrewd target marketing:
I worked in Japan a few years ago for the now defunct Nova Corp, and Nova had an extremely strict non-fraternization
policy, which was a key selling point. Nervous moms would sign their
daughter up, safe in the knowledge that the wouldn't have to worry
about little gaijin [foreign] babies a year down the line.
Two current Beijing subway ad campaigns for two well-known English schools, Wall Street English and English First. (Sorry for subway glare+reflection in both pics):
Both are a little strange, but to me the first one is strange/eyecatching, whereas the second is closer to strange/creepy. The theme of the second, bondage-toned ad is having a 24-hour always on-call private English teacher. On the other hand, this campaign seems to have been running for years in subway, taxis, billboards, etc, and the English First school is a big success. So I guess it must work with the target demographic, which does not include me.
April 11, 2009
More on petty crime
Thanks to many who wrote in after my recent brush with a pickpocket gang in the Beijing Metro. Main themes that emerge:
- There's a lot of this going on in China, as in fact was predicted in the wake of recent large-scale factory and construction layoffs.
- There's always been a lot of this going on all around the world. From reader Pietro, who has lived in Europe, Africa, and North America:
There's more artistry in Africa. Once I stopped to take a look at a group of people surrounding a poor old man lying senseless on the pavement. My sadness was compounded by the feeling, seconds later, that his friends had consoled themselves with my wallet. Artsy setting, soft touch. Times have changed.
- The particular tactic I mentioned is time honored: confederates who create extra jamming and confusion in already-jammed circumstances, while the legerdemain artists do the snatching.
- Below and after the jump, an account from Charles Dukes, a Texan now of Beijing, about similar encounters.
- Legal sequelae: Within the few hours after we canceled our credit cards, someone tried to use them (and was turned down, with different cards) at what seems to be a fine-art dealership, for big ticket purchases. Nobody on that subway car particularly looked like an art hound, but who knows.
Dukes's account begins:
In the days before there was a huge highway called Xizhimenwai, there was a wonderful two lane street with bike lanes.
A friend and I got on the 360 bus to go to Xiang Shan.
Somewhere past the Beijing Zoo, I noticed a little guy standing at the stop waiting for a bus. I don't know why he caught my eye, but he did.
Yesterday, in the morning rush hour, I was puzzled by the presence of three fully-tricked-out SWAT team members carrying automatic weapons at the Dongdan station on Beijing's line 1.
Today, in the afternoon rush hour, I could have used the stern hand of the law. At 5:30 pm, the eastbound line 1 between Jianguomen and Guomao was so crammed with humanity that it brought to mind the glory days of the Tokyo subway when we lived there. There is a distinct feeling of having pressure on every surface of the body that I associate mainly with rush hour Asian-capital subways. I don't particular fear it (or love it), but it's part of the sensory package of Tokyo, and of Beijing's lines 1 and 2.
Then, as the train rolled into Guomao, most of this vast throng wanted to get off, including me. All were yelling at once, including me,下车! 下车! -- xia che!xia che! (getting off! getting off!) -- and had to push through a band of young country-looking men who stood inside the car right in front of the door. I finally popped out on the other side of them, as if from a rugby scrum, reaching the platform as the car's doors were closing behind me. At that second, with human pressure suddenly removed from all sides of my body, I instantly realized that my wallet wasn't there. I was wearing a business suit, with my wallet in a place it wouldn't have left by accident. There had been a distinctly manhandled sensation in fighting through the line at the door.
A planned routine by the squadron that was forcing all debarking passengers to clambor through them? Something that had happened earlier when my arms were pinned against my side? Who knows, and there is no point in wondering. Until you've seen a thronged Chinese subway station at rush hour, with a departing train pulling out, you don't realize the futility of trying to locate a culprit.
Immediately start calling the credit card companies in the U.S. Cancel the first one, no problem. The second, a Bank of America Visa card, "And we're showing that your most recent charge was for $5.16 at a Starbucks in Beijing." "Well, no...." "Yes, it was at 6:05 am" -- "That's 6:05pm here, which was ten minutes ago..." Now if only Beijing didn't have a couple hundred Starbucks outlets, I'd be on the guy like a hawk.
A subway pickpocket who then goes to Starbucks? This is an unpredictable place. And apart from the nuisance, it could have been worse. Not my passport. Not a lot of cash. Nothing of real sentimental value (apart from my FAA pilot's certificate! And my United 1K card, earned through many bitter trips back and forth to California last year). As my wife just said, consolingly, "It could have been your Kindle!"
I remember offering her support in similar loving tones when she was knocked down and injured (but not permanently) a few months ago by a motorbike that was going full speed the wrong way down a freeway-like, eight-lane, one-way section of the major thoroughfare Jianguo Lu. Silly her: she was looking in the direction the rest of the traffic was coming from. Land of adventure.
April 6, 2009
A good web site for difficult times
It's Lane Wallace's "No Map. No Guide. No Limits." here.
Lane is well known in the aviation world as a columnist for Flying magazine and author of books on adventure, science, exploration, and so forth. I've known her as a friend over the last decade, mainly through shared flying-and-writing interests. (As noted earlier, not that weird a combination of tastes.) Here's Lane, during some excursion, from her site:
As she has made clear in her writing over the years and in this new site, she has chosen a life of adventure partly in response to personal setbacks and losses. The premise of the site is related to Andrew Sullivan's popular "The View from Your Recession" feature: that many, many people have suddenly seen the "certainties" of their life disappear. The site is meant to discuss the ramifications of and best responses to this fact. And her relatively brief book "Surviving Uncertainty," available as a free .PDF download from the site, talks in detail about how to cope with situations in which you are plunged into the unknown. She uses illustrations from flying and mountain climbing to derive principles that would apply to, say, being laid off or losing a loved one. Worth checking out.
Write your own caption dept
From the main-floor display room at the Chinese Military Museum in Beijing this weekend. More on this fascinating venue shortly.
April 5, 2009
Paradise Beijing, springtime edition
Nicest day in months -- clear skies, temperature in the low 70s, glorious Sunday of a holiday weekend, forsythia and cherry trees breaking into bloom. Everyone turns out to enjoy it, which means a lot of people.
A subset of everyone walking across a bridge toward the cherry blossom grove in Yuyuantan Park, near the Military Museum on the west side of town:
Smaller subset of everyone, under the cherry trees:
Pedal boats and row boats on the park's lake (click for larger):
Thrill-ride speedboats on the nearby canal:
It's actually not all work all the time in China. Autumn 2008 edition of Paradise Beijing here.
Mea culpa
Here's the difference between writing on a web site and writing for a monthly magazine, as I usually do, or in books: on a web site the crucial "hmmm, did I really mean to say that?" delay cycle has less chance of guarding you against something you didn't really mean to say. (Yes, I know, in the hands of genuine bloggers this is part of the medium's spontaneous charm.)
On reflection, I really did mean to say that Barack Obama's top-of-his-head answer to the "Do you believe in American exceptionalism?" question was extraordinary in its combination of comprehensiveness and concision. As argued here and here. But I've been convinced by the person who posed the question (plus the Yank journalist who recommended that he ask it) that there was no lost-Empire hauteur intended in it. So I didn't really mean to make that cheap joke, and I'm sorry that I did -- and apologize to the man in question, Edward Luce.
Think how many more of these excesses our magazine would contain if it were published every hour rather than every month!
April 4, 2009
This is puerile, but it made me laugh
Just catching up with the April 1 story in the English-language Taipei Times, about the shocking revelation that Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan, the two pandas mainland China had sent to Taiwan as a good-will gesture, were actually fakes. Clip from story below.
The Onion-worthy part of the story, IMHO, is the setup for discovering the fraud. Unlike real pandas, this pair was extremely randy ("children screamed and parents became irate"). When zookeepers tried to maintain order ("whenever the moaning from the panda enclosure gets too loud we gotta go in there and hose 'em down with cold water") the painted-on panda markings wore off, revealing the truth. Many similar nice touches. See for yourself: online version here, full page PDF here, followup here and here. Thanks to Daniel Lippman.
April 3, 2009
I admit that this creeps me out a little (Lou Pai + search engine dept)
In several previous items (here and here, with other links), I mentioned a half-mocking quest for the current whereabouts of Lou Pai, the Enron official who got out of the company just before the deluge with more money than anyone else. Various newspaper stories and official documents periodically appear to mark his on-the-record activities: the $31.5 million fee and settlement with the SEC, his purchase and eventual sale of a Colorado mountain, etc.
Recently a reader sent me links to a set of candid, casual pictures of a family that appears to be Pai's. He, his wife, and a daughter (or so it appears) are happily engaged in recreational and charitable activities, in depictions from a community web site. Here, as evidence, is a thumbnail of Pai himself which I have cropped from a larger picture with his wife, their child, and a pet.
I'm not including any more clues or info about where this was found, and I don't think it was the reader's intention that I should. The creepy part is not about Pai himself -- this all started with my idle curiosity about why he was so much less well known than Skilling, Fastow, et al when he'd done so much better out of Enron. Instead it is the reminder of how many intimate views are available, through the simplest search tools, even about people who've gone to considerable lengths to shield themselves from public view. If you come across the family details I'm talking about, you'll see what I mean. And reflect about the traces we're all leaving behind.
March 30, 2009
Outflanking the cheese beagles
Barring some truly startling new development, this will be the final dispatch about the beagle-enhanced war on cheese that Chinese customs and immigration officials are waging at the spiffy new Terminal Three of Beijing's Capital Airport. For the early chronicles of this war, start here.
A frequent and experienced visitor to China, who prefers to remain anonymous, has found a way to avoid the hostilities. The secret is to come into Beijing aboard Northwest, Continental, Korean, Aeroflot, or one of the other airlines whose international flights land not at Terminal Three but at PEK's plain old unmodernized Terminal Two. My travel expert reports:
I just flew into Beijing on the evening Northwest flight Monday night. They still use the old terminal, and there were no dogs nor, for that matter, anyone looking at luggage, just a guard at the door to keep the people outside from coming in to meet their friends.
So at least for now, that's probably the way to bring in your contraband.
The writer is a distinguished academic. Good to see book-learnin' being put to practical use.
March 26, 2009
"When you're done talking, stop"
More on the uses of silence, previously here, here, and here.
Starting with Shaun FitzPatrick, Major USMC.
In the "media training" I underwent before I went to Iraq with 8th Marines, they addressed this technique in our interview practice sessions. Basically we were told, when you're done talking, stop, and don't let that pause goad you into say something stupid.
Also, we were told to watch for this especially with print reporters. With TV crews, the reporters generally try to fill the air with noise. Silence stands out uncomfortably on TV and it's the journalist's job to fill the air. You don't have that problem.
By the way toughest interviews I ever did were on NPR, not because of harsh treatment or anything like that, but because the radio reporter asks you to describe in detail for listeners who can't see what you're talking about. It's tougher than I thought it would be.
When I asked FitzPatrick if I could use his name, he said: "I was taught in The Basic School that only cowards submit anonymous reviews. Everything I ever send or say is on the record." In that admirable spirit, three real-name accounts after the jump involving sales and journalism. ___
I mentioned last week, after watching the excellent Enron documentary
The Smartest Guys in the Room, that one of the questions it provokes is
whatever became of Lou Pai. He is the lesser-known comrade of the now
infamous Skilling, Lay, and Fastow, who (apparently) took more cash out
of the company than anyone else.
This long, fascinating investigative piece about Pai by Alan Prendergast, in Denver's Westword, can't completely answer that question, since it was published in 2002, before the ramifications of the Enron debacle had fully played out. But it tells me a lot more than I had known before. It is also the source of the illustration to the left, by Jay Bevenour. It concludes with reports on the efforts of Ken Salazar -- then Colorado Attorney General, now Secretary of the Interior -- to make peace between Pai and the neighbors around his hermit-like mountain stronghold. Thanks to Alf Hickey.
March 24, 2009
Springtime comes to Beijing.... (updated)
... and the barbed wire is in bloom!
In the Sanlitun embassy district all along Dongzhimenwai Dajie, teams of PLA soldiers spent Tuesday afternoon augmenting drab, old, rusty single-strand barbed wire with generous loops of bright new green protective strands. In photo below, the old barbed wire is the lonely brownish line at top, with the new wire coiling below it.
Yes, yes, I know that the embassy area in* much of Washington DC is more fortress-like than this. No pictures of PLA troops actually installing the wires, since I have learned the hard way that pointing a camera at people in green PLA uniforms is a poor idea.
By the way, are there any little cozy street scenes in Beijing, like those I recently mentioned seeing in Shanghai? Yes indeed, and this embassy area -- protected from development, full of trees and low-rise buildings -- has many of them. Looking east on Dongzhimenwai Daijie toward the Agricultural Exhibit Center (with the flags).
On the other hand, when you get down to where those flags are, this is what you see.
More to come on the urban architecture issue shortly. Thanks to many dozens of readers for thoughtful replies. ___ * Update: this was imprecise. What I meant to note was that Washington DC itself has become unrecognizably fortress-like over the past eight years -- a point worth remembering when mentioning fortifications anywhere else. The embassy district itself along Mass Ave in DC is not particularly embunkered, though.
March 23, 2009
It's not just the Chinese
Recently I mentioned the near-universal modern Chinese belief that a mobile phone, when ringing, should take precedence over anything else that might be going on -- in particular, the person you are talking or dining with at that moment. From a reader, the cross-cultural angle:
The mobile phone versus face-to-face thing is the norm in India as well, and again, is not considered rude or even unusual by the locals. I attended a family wedding in New Delhi a couple of years ago, and the priest took several calls during the ceremony. Taking our cue from the bride's parents, everybody paused while he took each call, and then resumed as if [nothing had happened]. Apparently another priest had failed to show up at a wedding across town, and that family were ringing round all the possibles...
This is one of the few India-China similarities I have come across.
March 22, 2009
Things everyone in China knows, but...
... that few people outside have really taken in. Here I'm talking strictly about the communications-and-internet front. They were neatly summarized by Andrew Lih, in a recent SXSW panel that was in turn reported on CNReviews.com. His principles, with my marginalia [in brackets like this] below:
No one uses voicemail. When some one calls you on your mobile phone, you generally pick it up. Mobile calls take precedence over face-to-face conversation, which is generally interrupted by a call. [Too many times to count, I have seen people take mobile-phone calls while giving a speech or presiding at a meeting. It's the norm, not something rude.]
China uses SMS more intensively. SMS may have become entrenched because of the low cost of sending text messages. The first thing Chinese do in the morning is check their IM first, not their email. [Though, this assumes they turned off the phone at night!]
Instant messaging, combined with SMS, is a hugely popular means of communication. China's leading IM platform, QQ (Company: Tencent (HK:0700)), has 350 mm users-over 50 times the audience of Twitter! [Two days ago on the Beijing subway, I counted 25 people in the same car as me all typing out or reading text messages and only two actually talking on the phone. Also, you're never out of mobile-phone coverage in China -- on subways, in elevators, wherever. Discussion of reasons some other time.]
Only 56% of all Chinese internet users have email addresses. [If you want to reach a busy American, you send email to the Blackberry. That gets you nowhere here.]
Ownership of PCs is much lower, especially in 2nd and 3rd tier cities, where heavy PC usage is at Internet cafes.
Unlike the West, where e-commerce was Web 1.0 and social media is Web 2.0, China's internet usage started as a social phenomenon first and is just now moving to more utilitarian purposes.
Lih is a friend in Beijing; was a major guide/informant for the Atlantic piece I wrote about the Great Firewall; and is author of a much-anticipated book The Wikipedia Revolution, which I have ordered and look forward to reading.
I've heard from people in a surprisingly wide array of professional and personal roles about the usefulness of sitting mum and making the other person talk. To start off, one about TV interviewing style, from a 2006 episode of Brothers & Sisters written by Molly
Newman. After the jump, illustrations from deal-making, medicine, sales, and religion. More to come.
(Given that it's Sunday, see if anyone dares apply this approach on the Sunday Talk Shows.)
Also on the brighter side: better news on Chinese cheese
No, not that the beagle-enhanced war on cheese has been called off.
Rather, a reminder of one valuable inside-the-country source, Yellow Valley Cheese. When we lived in Shanghai we often bought wheels of Yellow Valley's Gouda-style cheeses, like those depicted on the company's web site, below. Indeed the picture on the left, with all the cheeses lined up, very closely resembles what we saw in our store in Shanghai.
The company's founder, the Dutch agriculturalist Marc de Ruiter
-- I assume this is him, in Mr. Cheese pose from the site -- says they're available in many places in Beijing and elsewhere,
though I haven't noticed them at our local haunt. (Jenny Lou at Jianwai Soho.) His cheeses aren't
cheap, but they are very good. My favorites were the cumin and
onion-and-garlic varieties.
De Ruiter places great stress on his
company's organic-farming and fair-trade policies. I hadn't known about the online order site, which I will now try. Go to hell, sniffer beagles. I can work around you.
Shanghai, Beijing, and the face of Chinese cities
This is an incomplete, opening entry on a subject that's increasingly on my mind: who is responsible for the look and feel of today's enormous, expanding Chinese cities, and who is happy and unhappy about their emerging character.
Two reasons it's on my mind at the moment: - Spent several days again in Shanghai, my former home, after being away for eight months; - Recently went to the top of Beijing's first true skyscraper, the newly-opened Park Hyatt hotel, and saw the city from an entirely different perspective while on the building's 65th floor.
This is not a "which do you like better?" discussion, which I've learned to finesse in a way that is both politic and true. Having now spent an equal amount of time based in each city, my wife and I have learned to appreciate the virtues of both. Their virtues are different, as Chicago's are from LA's, but are both real. (In short: we've learned more from being in Beijing, and we enjoyed the texture of daily life more in Shanghai. We feel fortunate to have lived in each place.)
Rather the question is why the look and feel of Beijing seem so clearly to represent the direction Chinese cities are heading. To oversimplify what this means: although Shanghai probably contains more people than Beijing, it feels smaller. The roads are narrower, they're more likely to bend or twist, the city unfolds on a smaller scale of neighborhoods and courtyards and little houses. Beijing is bigger and squarer and broader and more grandly imposing. To illustrate: a photo of the intersection outside our building in Beijing, followed by a place we were walking ten days ago in Shanghai.
Crossing the street at the Guomao intersection, as I do when leaving my apartment each day in Beijing:
Looking across a street in the French Concession district of Shanghai:
Yes, yes, I could have chosen pictures of each city that looked more like the other -- a little hutong in Beijing, an elevated highway in Shanghai. But anybody who has been in both cities recognizes the difference in tone and scale. This view southward from the Park Hyatt's 65th floor China Bar -- which really is the first time this view of Beijing has ever been available (since airplanes almost never fly overhead) -- gives more of the idea.
A few more pictures, and the question they suggest to me, after the jump.
Apparently I had more to worry about than I thought. The man who sat beside me on the flight from San Francisco to Beijing had to wait a little longer than I did for his bags to appear. While I was thinking "Drat! No Chinese customs agency baggage-sniffing beagles! I could have sneaked in some cheese and other stuff" he was observing things I couldn't see. From his email just now:
Apropos the cheese beagle...no more than 2 minutes after you left baggage claim yesterday the little fellow came sniffing up your track... he left carousel 40 with a rather hang-dog look! No fun at flight 889 for him!
I believe this marks the end of my cheese-beagle chronicles. To commemorate this moment, a LA Times picture of some American sniffer-beagles. The Chinese ones look pretty similar but don't wear the little nylon coats, which remind me of the windbreakers saying "FBI" or "SHERIFF" that you see on cops in TV reality shows.
Interviewing tips from a novelist
Apropos of nothing, I was struck by this passage from Lisa See's The Interior: A Red Princess Mystery, which I was reading this morning on Beijing's subway Line 1. See's novels, like the "Inspector Chen" series by Qiu Xiaolong, are meant to convey the texture of modern China via crime procedurals. From my perspective, great excuse to do "research" while enjoying noir fiction.
In this passage, See's protagonist, inspector Liu Hulan, has gone back to the rural village where she spent the Cultural Revolution years to investigate a suspicious death. In civvies and without identifying herself as a cop, she interrogates a village couple. The young man had been the fiancee of Miaoshan, the woman who has recently died; he is accompanied by his new love interest, a hot number named Siang. The investigator taunts Siang about her cozying up so quickly to the young man:
"I'm sure that Miaoshan's mother will be comforted to hear of your grief and that you have come to offer solace to her daughter's fiance."
Siang's cheeks reddened, but she said nothing.
Hulan [the cop] let the silence stretch out. She was in no hurry, and the longer she kept quiet, the sooner these two would wish to fill the void. Siang noiselessly etched a groove in the dirt with the edge of her tennis shoe, while Tsai Bing [the man] looked around nervously. Finally he said, 'I didn't see Miaoshan so much anymore...'"
The "let the silence stretch out" approach, which is not discussed as often as it should be, can be a surprisingly valuable interviewing technique. The truth is that most people who are being interviewed would like to think that they are providing you with "interesting" information, which reflects well on their knowledge, insight, sense of humor, general bonhomie, etc. People want to be liked and to feel as if they're holding up their end of the conversation. Obviously this doesn't apply in a 60 Minutes-style hostile interrogation, but in most non-adversarial interviews, the subject wants to feel that he is holding the interest of the questioner.
Thus informal body-language signs that you're getting bored or disappointed usually prompt an interviewee to try harder and say more. The strategic use of silence can send such a signal, since people become uncomfortable and think that the silence is their fault. You can't do it very often, but every now and then it works great.
In only one circumstance have I found the "I'm getting bored" approach to be ineffective. That is when interviewing Japanese corporate or political officials. If I act as if they're telling me what I've heard a million times before, generally they've seemed more satisfied than uncomfortable. If someone's goal is to stay On Message no matter how it makes him look -- think, Scott McClellan handling questions about Scooter Libby in the late Bush years -- these psycho-warfare tricks will be futile. But for you aspiring young interviewers: remember to give strategic-silence a try.
March 16, 2009
Well, this is weirdly annoying! (cheese-and-beagles dept)
I was so intimidated by the mounting reports of a crackdown on cheese-smugglers at Chinese airports that I decided not to risk it on today's SFO-PEK flight. Even though it will be three or four months before my wife and I next visit a cheese-producing land. No point getting on the officials' radar.
So just now, I collect my bags at Beijing Capital Airport, relieved not to have torrents of smuggler-sweat pouring down my face out of worry that the sniffer-beagles will detect outlaw cheese, and..... there are no damned dogs in sight! And hardly a customs inspector. Come on! If I had known this, think of the kilos of Gruyere and Caerphilly and Ricotta Salata and various blue cheeses and Mozarella and you name it I could be lugging home right now.
My friend Eamonn Fingleton has often emphasized the importance of "selective enforcement" in the Chinese government's management of internal affairs. If you never know when a certain rule will be enforced, you self-protectively act as if it might be enforced, just to be safe. There are countless examples (previous discussion here). Will a certain kind of protest be tolerated this week -- or punished? Since you don't know, you don't take the risk. Are copyright laws being enforced today? What about tax laws -- or visa rules? "Selective" enforcement suggests that the authorities turn the enforcement on and off strategically to regulate behavior. "Sporadic" enforcement suggests random ups and downs, Brownian Motion-style, depending on regional variation and individual mood and sheer chance. My default explanation for most things here is randomness and individual whim, but the result is the same.
Several readers offered hypotheses for the anti-cheese crackdown -- when it's in effect. Here's a strong contender:
Perhaps the ban on cheese is in retaliation against some nations that banned import of Chinese milk products during the melamine scandal. It doesn't hurt anybody much because the Chinese people find cheese revolting (I am told) so they don't miss it, and the cheese exporting nations don't export much to China anyway, so they don't get hurt either. Only the cheese eating, beer quaffing expats get hurt unless they can thwart the beagle.
March 14, 2009
The war against cheese is on
Yesterday I mentioned rumors of a new anti-cheese crackdown at China's ports of entry. Now this chilling confirmation from a reader:
I also live in Beijing, and, like you, I tend to bring back cheese with me from my trips out of the country. But recently, while traveling back from Spain right after Chinese New Year, I, too, encountered the beagle brigade. Having never seen them before we weren't sure if they were after drugs or food, but when one came to our cart as we waited for our luggage at the carousel and sat down, we knew it was a "food beagle". The agent asked us if we had "food", to which I ventured a meek "yes, a bit", and he asked to see our bag. As it happens, all that we had at that point was our carry on baggage and one suitcase, with our remaining suitcase--the one containing several kilos of ham, chorizo, and cheese--revolved around the carousel, but among our carry ons was a duty free bad from Barcelona airport that contained one wheel of cheese and some turron. The agent confiscated the cheese without a word of explanation, and then asked if there was anything else. We volunteered the turron, but that was not an issue, and then he asked me to open my camera bag. When that proved to have no contraband they moved on, we grabbed the remaining suitcase off the carousel and high-tailed it out of there. But before we got too far, a Chinese guy who had seen the episode told us that there is now a ban on importing dairy products, though why that was the case--and why the agent did not explain it to us--is a mystery.
I have heard stories about other people bringing cheese who had their kids play with the beagle to distract it, and I know of someone else who managed to bring in quite a bit of NZ cheese a few weeks ago, so implementation of the new rule is--surprise!!--sporadic.
The crucial word here is of course "mystery." (Second-crucial word is "sporadic.") Maybe China could be cracking down on imported dairy products because of its own recent tainted-milk scandals. Except, that would make no sense at all. (So, your own country's milk supply is questionable, and the rest of the world makes this stuff in abundance and without quality problems; plus, you have a gigantic trade surplus. So.... suddenly it's important to keep foreign cheese out??) In any case, I will scratch off "load up on cheese!" from the last-minute list of items to cram into the suitcase on my way to the airport. Coffee is still on the list, though. And if only good beer came in freeze-dried form....
March 11, 2009
If you're in San Francisco tomorrow....
... improbably enough, I will be there too.
Reason for 3-day trip from Beijing: Historic GTD Summit, held by my guru and friend David Allen (2004 Atlantic article about him here, plus this followup). It's a first-time-ever gathering of the worldwide tribe, believers in the GTD* Way, and I promised long ago to attend.
The Leader:
Side benefit of a 3-day trip to from Beijing: Seeing my son and his new wife; rolling the dice and trying to get my Chinese visa renewed one more time. If not, may be more than a very brief stay... ___ * GTD = "Getting Things Done," more at the links above and here.
Kids and Kindle
My wife is only days away from receiving her exciting new new-to-her Kindle, which is to say that I expect soon to get my hands on a Kindle 2. Meanwhile this note from a good friend about the machine's effect in his household:
An (unreported?) Kindle phenomenon: 11-year old girl, drove parents crazy by not reading books because totally addicted to electronics, has now transferred total addiction to Kindle 2 - and now does nothing, ever, but read books, one after another. In bed, in the car, while eating - while crossing streets!
[My wife] says, "Let's buy Amazon stock. In six months, the world will have discovered this particular phenomenon." (She is the one who had the sudden insight that this might work for [our daughter].)
Ah, this explains the trajectory of my financial life. On hearing the story, my first instinct was not, "Hey, let's act on the potential market-moving nature of this news" but rather "Hey, maybe this is a new answer to all those old laments about American kids refusing to read." Either way, good news for Amazon, good news for the family in question -- and not even bad news for those who have most reason to fear the coming of Kindle, book-store owners, since it sounds as if this new enthusiast was not spending that much time in book stores anyway.
March 6, 2009
A fight I didn't intend to get into: Chas Freeman
I have never met Chas Freeman, the man whose reported selection as head of the National Intelligence Council has drawn such criticism, including from my colleague Jeffrey Goldberg. Not having had a chance to assess him first hand, and not having put in time studying his views, I have not felt comfortable weighing in on the dispute about whether his outlook was unacceptably extreme. Here's the gist of the argument against him: that he is too close to the Saudis (as a former US Ambassador to the Kingdom, and now head of a think tank that has received Saudi funding); too tolerant of repression in China (because of comments saying the Chinese regime had no choice but to crack down in Tiananmen Square); and too deaf to the moral claims of Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East.
But very recently I met with a friend who had worked years ago with Freeman -- on China, not the Middle East -- and was upset about what he called the "self-lobotimization" of US foreign policy that the campaign to discredit Freeman represented. As I've looked into it, I've come to agree.
His first point was that Freeman was being proposed for a post within the president's discretionary appointment power, like one of his White House aides, and therefore didn't have to reflect the Senate's sense of who should be in the job. The more important point, he said, was that Freeman's longstanding contrarian inclination to challenge conventional wisdom of any sort, far from being an embarrassing liability, was exactly what a president needed from the person in this job.
A president's Secretary of State had to represent the country's policies soberly and predictably around the world. His National Security Advisor had to coordinate and evenhandedly present the views of the various agencies. His White House press secretary had to take great care in expressing the official line to the world's media each day. His Director of National Intelligence had to give him the most sober and responsible precis of what was known and unknown about potential threats.
For any of those roles, a man like Freeman might not be the prudent choice. But as head of the National Intelligence Council, my friend said, he would be exactly right. While he would have no line-operational responsibilities or powers, he would be able to raise provocative questions, to ask "What if everybody's wrong?", to force attention to the doubts, possibilities, and alternatives that normally get sanded out of the deliberative process through the magic known as "groupthink." As Dan Froomkin of NiemanWatch wrote in an item that called Freeman "A One-Man Destroyer of Groupthink,"
He has... spent a goodly part of the last 10 years raising questions that otherwise might never get answered -- or even asked -- because they're too embarrassing, awkward, or difficult.
For him to be put in charge of what [Laura Rozen of Foreign Policy] calls "the intelligence community's primary big-think shop and the lead body in producing national intelligence estimates" is about the most emphatic statement the Obama Administration could possibly make that it won't succumb to the kind of submissive intelligence-community groupthink that preceded the war in Iraq.
Again, I don't know Freeman personally. I don't know whether the Saudi funding for his organization has been entirely seemly (like that for most Presidential libraries), which is now the subject of inspector-general investigation. If there's a problem there, there's a problem.
But I do know something about the role of contrarians in organizational life. I have hired such people, have worked alongside them, have often been annoyed at them, but ultimately have viewed them as indispensable. Sometimes the annoying people, who will occasionally say "irresponsible" things, are the only ones who will point out problems that everyone else is trying to ignore. A president needs as many such inconvenient boat-rockers as he can find -- as long as they're not in the main operational jobs. Seriously: anyone who has worked in an organization knows how hard it is, but how vital, to find intelligent people who genuinely are willing to say inconvenient things even when everyone around them is getting impatient or annoyed. The truth is, you don't like them when they do that. You may not like them much at all. But without them, you're cooked.
So to the extent this argument is shaping up as a banishment of Freeman for rash or unorthodox views, I instinctively take Freeman's side -- even when I disagree with him on specifics. This job calls for originality, and originality brings risks. Chas Freeman is not going to have his finger on any button. He is going to help raise all the questions that the person with his finger on the button should be aware of.
Read carefully this NiemanWatch Q-and-A with Freeman from 2006 (or read any of Freeman's recent policy articles here) and ask yourself two questions: do these sound like the views of an unacceptable kook? And, would you rather have had more of this sensibility, or less, applied to U.S. policy in recent years?
March 4, 2009
Tom Geoghegan comes in 7th
Congratulations to Cook County Commissioner Mike Quigley, who came in first, with 22% of the vote, and gets the Democratic nomination (in an overwhelmingly Democratic district) to succeed Rahm Emanuel as Representative from the 5th District of Illinois.
Tom Geoghegan, often mentioned here, finished in 7th place with 6% of the vote. After the jump, the email he just sent out to supporters.
As I've said all along, I don't know the politics of the district but I do know that Geoghegan is an outstanding voice and thinker in contemporary politics. If his run for Congress, unsuccessful at this stage, call more attention to his books and outlook, it will have done some good. And having some idea of how hard it is to run for any political office, my heart is with just about anyone who gives it a try. (Just about....) ____
Still in the internet twilight zone, but happened to pass a TV that was, improbably enough, replaying Bobby Jindal's "response" speech from last week. I am the last person to say this, but let me confirm the prevailing view: Wow.
One way to think of this is: It's been a mixed week for the Rhodes Scholar tribe. Nancy-Ann Min DeParle, known in RS parlance as being of "Tennessee and Balliol College," has just been named the new White House health-reform czar(ina?), and Dominic Barton ("British Columbia and Brasenose College") was chosen capo di tutti capi of McKinsey & Co. Congratulations! On the other hand, we have .... that speech, by Gov. Jindal ("Louisiana and New College.") Maybe they can revoke these things for excessive public embarrassment? This could be called the Mel Reynolds provision? ("Illinois and Lincoln College, plus federal prison.")
Actually there is both precedent and hope for Gov. Jindal. His speech was no more humiliating a flop than was the 1988 Democratic convention speech by that other boy-wonder southern governor then making his debut on the national stage, Bill Clinton ("Arkansas and University College.") Clinton very quickly figured out that if everyone was laughing at him, the only way to come out ahead was to join in and ultimately lead the hilarity. So within a week he was on the Tonight show trading barbs with Johnny Carson about just how terrible his speech had been. Politicians' self-deprecation can never be 100% sincere, but that doesn't matter. We appreciate the gesture.
This pirouette is a little trickier for Jindal, because in addition to making fun (as Clinton did) of his ridiculous stage presence he'd probably also have to mock what he actually said, which was more or less the straight Limbaughesque anti-government line. If he's as smart as everyone thought until last week thinks, he'll figure out a way to show that he understands why people would snicker at a governor of Louisiana saying, "Who needs the federal government? Who needs warnings of natural disasters?" while recovery from Katrina is nowhere near complete. Turning the situation in his favor would be an act of Clintonlike dexterity, and would ideally happen under the auspices of today's Johnny Carson, Jon Stewart.
Daily Show bookers, throw this man a lifeline! Gov. Bobby, follow the trail that Gov. Bill has blazed! And act soon. Self-deprecation delayed is self-deprecation that just makes things worse. I'd love to hear Clinton counsel Jindal on this one.
February 22, 2009
If they really want the Oscars to have a bigger audience....
... maybe they could work out a way to have them carried here in China, where there are a whole bunch of CCTV networks available and a lot of potential eyeballs. Just a thought.*
____ * Yes, yes, I know there are a lot of doughy issues involved here, from Hollywood's grudge about the ubiquity of pirate videos in China to the ridiculously starchy Chinese policy of allowing only a handful of foreign films to be shown in legit movie houses here. For another time. Right now I'm just pouting about finding yet another anti-Japanese historical drama, plus another inter-city Chinese soccer game, on the government networks rather than getting to see Jerry Lewis and whomever else I'm missing on-screen. (And, yes, I am being catty about Jerry Lewis, but there are a lot of the other folk I'd actually like to see. Ah, the sacrifices of foreign-correspondentry.) By the way, CCTV = "China Central TV," not closed-circuit TV. UPDATE: And of course I'm pouting because last year I was actually on the Oscar show, and now.... I'm still big. It's the Oscars that got small. Update 2: I should have specified "carry them live." Readers have helpfully pointed out that they'll be on later tonight on CCTV6! Never mind, I am just pouting.
February 16, 2009
A proud father notes, #2
Lizzy Bennett, Tom Fallows:
Married yesterday, February 15, 2009, Kamalame Cay, the Bahamas.
Previously in the "Proud Father" series: Annie Kaufman and Tad Fallows. This has been, ups and downs, an eventful year.
The happy couple is heading off on a honeymoon. The bedraggled parents of the groom leaving at 4am for the Miami-Chicago-Beijing long haul, and return to "normal" lfe.
February 11, 2009
Leaving home photo album, #2
-- From my dad's driveway, a vista I will think of not only in Beijing but eventually in Washington and anywhere else. The San Bernardino mountains, where my dad often rode horses, as they looked this morning after the past few days' big storms.
-- From the photo archives, a picture I had never seen until it was discovered and digitized by my brother-in-law Bryan. My mother and father in Philadelphia General Hospital, one day after I was born there. He was 24 and just beginning his service as an intern at the hospital. She was 21, one year out of Tufts, one year into what would be her 55 years of married life.
We'll think of them too. End of this theme.
Leaving home photo album, #1
We all do it, many times. As mentioned earlier here, background here, for me this appears to be the last time. My wife and I have followed my sisters and brother in sorting through and unavoidably thinking about all the objects, collections, projects, mementos, treasures, and other miscellany of our parents' lives.
Discoveries, not necessarily in order of importance:
- From my brother's high school year book, a reminder of why the Redlands High School Terriers were often so good in football. Check out our All-Citrus Belt League quarterback:
- From my dad's book case, a reminder that The Atlantic has always been ahead of the news. My dad was a toddler himself when this issue came out 80 years ago. Although he and my mom subscribed to the magazine when we were little children, he got this one later from a collector. The January, 1929 cover evokes a different world in some ways (click for larger) -- but check the evergreen story above the banner:
From the company spam filter for my email account just now (click for larger):
Evidently spammers recognize that I am a man widely traveled and with broad linguistic skills.* I'll take respect wherever I can get it. ___ *Or maybe it shows only that spam filters are more mature for dealing with English-language influx than with this other stuff. No, I think it's a sign of respect.
Placeholder on recent news
As mentioned recently, for me this has been a period of extraordinary family and personal complication, ongoing for a few more days. Items for the web-site to do list, perhaps tomorrow:
* The fire at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in China: if we'd been in our apartment in Beijing last night, we would have in fact been outside the apartment, watching what was happening a quarter-mile up the street near the new CCTV tower. Last year, on the final night of Chinese New Year, my wife remarked that it was a miracle that the city hadn't gone up in flame. (To explain: this fire happened on the final night of this year's CNY.)
* Obama's first press conference, which I thought extremely accomplished in ways obvious and subtle. The answer that most repays careful study is the response to an economic question from our former Atlantic colleague Chuck Todd (transcript here, search for "Chuck.") Impressive aspect, about which more later: the premise of the question was -- no offense, Chuck -- somewhat confused. Obama addresses the confusion in the first paragraph of response and then has a conciliatory loopback to make an additional useful point.
* Introduction of Kindle 2. I think my wife will enjoy the Kindle 1 that is about to be hers.
* This NYT story about a change in emphasis at Newsweek, based on the recognition that weekly news magazines simply cannot compete in delivering "breaking news" to their readers.
The venerable newsweekly's ingrained role of obligatory coverage of
the week's big events will be abandoned once and for all, executives
say.
"There's a phrase in the culture, 'we need to take note of,'
'we need to weigh in on,' " said Newsweek's editor, Jon Meacham.
"That's going away. If we don't have something original to say, we
won't. The drill of chasing the week's news to add a couple of
hard-fought new details is not sustainable."
Ah, the battles over exactly that principle ten+ years ago at the weakest of the news magazines, US News. More later on this too.
* An impressively brave post by my friend Steve Clemons about a quite startling change in the leadership of the Japan Society of New York. Twenty-plus years ago, when I first went on a Japan Society fellowship for a stay in Japan (as many journalists have done since then), it would have been inconceivable that a just-retired Japanese government official (and former Mitsubishi exec) would be in charge of this American organization, for reasons that Steve Clemons clearly lays out. Although the Japan Society is not quite the same lobbying organization that AIPAC is, it would be like having an Israeli government official head that organization. This is truly startling.
* And, later, a wrapup on the real action for me of the last few days: final visit for family reasons to my home town. The moving vans arrive tomorrow to take the last shipment from my parents' house. Onward.
February 8, 2009
I'm not so sure about the timing of this business concept....
From the e-mail inbox:
Hello,
You have been invited by Xxxxx Xxxxx to join
Affluence.org.
Affluence.org is an exclusive community of affluent people
dedicated to making life better for both themselves and others.
As a member of Affluence.org you will have the ability to
find and interact with other affluent people from around the world, evaluate
and contribute to your favorite charities, and gain access to exclusive
lifestyle guides to luxury living, travel and the latest trends.Within this
elite community you will be provided with access to a dedicated Affluence
Concierge, receive priority access to the world's most exclusive premieres,
nightclubs, parties, hotels, events and much more.
To accept the invitation to our exclusive network, please
follow the link below. XXXXXXXX.
Best Regards,
Affluence.org Administration
It appears to be a legit operation. Anyone who joins, let me know how it goes.
Mickey Rourke, just now on Larry King Live, talking about his early days: "So, I had this role in Body Heat..."
Larry King, ever prepared: "You were in Body Heat?"
You were in Body Heat????
The 29-year old Rourke's unforgettable (I thought) debut as Teddy the arsonist in Body Heat, with the 31-year-old William Hurt, just before Diner:
Leonardo diC: "So I had this role in Titanic...
LK: "You were in Titanic?"
Sic transit gloria Body-Heati. Now back to work.
January 31, 2009
See you in a week
There are so many things I'd find interesting to talk about at the moment, from the latest inside dope on security theater as reported by the people who have to carry it out, to the Most Valuable Player awards for software and hardware in the last year (and updates on Offline Gmail and Windows 7), to the best replacement for the boiled frog cliche, to, yes, The Economy. Plus, the view in China at the dawn of what is both the Year of the Ox (牛) and the year of the Obama (奥巴马, the last character meaning "horse" but there just for phonetic reasons since it is pronounced ma). And so on. Including, yes, a further comment on the Inaugural Address, which will be yellowing in the National Archives by the time I type out my promised wrapup.
But because of a long-anticipated series of family and personal obligations that lie immediately ahead, some pleasant and others merely unavoidable, I will be off line for most of the next week or so. Details as relevant later on.
If this were back in my Japan days, I would sign off with じゃまた, ja mata, my favorite Japanese "see you" phrase that is the functional equivalent of Ciao! Instead I'll use my current favorite Chinese counterpart, 慢走 -- man zou, literally "walk slow" but conceptually like "take it easy" in all senses of the term. It's often said by shopkeepers or restaurant staff as patrons leave the building. To the extent the Atlantic is a hybrid of friendly specialty store and lively cafe, it therefore applies here.
慢走 to all for now.
January 29, 2009
Oops!
Have deleted previous entry for now (Fantasy Football highlights). Apparently it's CGIed or otherwise faked or enhanced. If you want to see the video in question, it's here. Sorry, late night. But what I've seen of real athletes' skills up close made me want to believe... This is why good magazines have fact checkers. I secretly still hope it's real.
January 26, 2009
Who says newspapers print only bad news?
Now I have a scientific explanation for why I am the most "mentally healthy" person you will ever meet. And I am particularly proud to have foreseen this medical discovery fifteen years ago. Coffee was making me smart even then.
Next up on our nation's research agenda: the crucial coffee/beer synergy for the ultimate in mental and physical health.
And a sign that my higher reasoning and priority-setting powers are still intact will be my likely absence from this space for the next several days. I need to finish -- what is that term, again? -- oh, yes, an actual "article."
January 24, 2009
Take my wife - please!
Anyone who knows anything whatsoever about China can stop reading here. _____
OK, now that the rest of us are alone, here's a hint about a lame but popular Henny Youngman-style joke you may be exposed to and perhaps puzzled by in coming days.
The new Chinese year begins on January 26. My own wife, still in Beijing (and to whom this item's headline very definitely does not apply -- I miss you!), reports that the deafening and insanity-inducing joyous and celebratory firecracker explosions are already underway.
The current year is the Year of the Rat, and the coming one is the Year of the Ox (or cow or bull or what have you.) No matter what it's called in English, in Chinese the bovine animal in question is written 牛 and pronounced niu.
Thus if you get cards or emails from your Chinese friends saying "Happy Niu Year!" you can join in the hearty laughter at a good bilingual pun. This is a little tip in the interests of cross-national harmony and fellow feeling. 新年快乐 to one and all.
January 22, 2009
Last words on the Geithner SE Tax issue
After the jump, samples from a surprisingly strong stream of reader mail about a comment earlier today on whether our Treasury Secretary-designate made an innocent error, or did something more, in neglecting to pay part of his federal taxes for several years. Summary of my view: I think he should be confirmed, since dealing with the economic crisis matters more than anything else. But that doesn't mean that I believe his tax story.
Mail has run approximately 3-to-1 in favor of this interpretation -- which is to say, against Geithner's explanation. (With most but not all people saying they think he should still take office, and soon.) Paragon of fairness that I am, I include samples from three posts on "I'm not buying it" side and two on the "innocent oversight" side. After that, let's move on to coping with the emergency. _____
I recognize that dealing with the world financial/economic crisis is the most important next thing the Obama Administration has to do. Without detailed knowledge, I am willing to accept that Geithner is a crucially well-prepared member of the team that will help in this effort -- and that getting the right team is a first-order national priority. I don't know him, but friends who do know him like and respect him. Fine.
I also think that it is sensible to move past the Zoe Baird / Kimba Woods era (look it up) when any tax irregularity of any sort could be taken as an absolute bar, in itself, to service in any position subject to confirmation. Some standard of reasonable judgment has to be applied here.
So by the standard of what the country needs right now, I would probably vote for Geithner's confirmation as Treasury Secretary, if I were in a position to do so.
But I do not believe, and will never believe, that his failure to pay his own self-employment tax while at the IMF was an "oversight" or a "mistake." I have many many friends who have worked for this and similar organizations. I have myself over the years juggled the complexities of what is self-employment income and what is W-2 income and how to handle income from non-US sources -- and I have a lot less financial acumen than any Treasury Secretary aspirant should and must have. (Though I also use Turbo Tax!) Not a single person I have known from the IMF or similar bodies, not a one, believes that Geithner could have "overlooked" his need to pay US self-employment tax. When I have received similar income from international sources, the need was obvious even to me -- and I wasn't receiving and signing all the forms to the same effect Geithner would have gotten from the IMF. I could go on with details but I'll just say: if this were a situation more average Americans had experienced personally, he would not dare make his "mistake" excuse because everyone would say, "Are you kidding me???"
So we're back to a judgment call. I accept the argument that he is a necessary part of what has to be the best possible team America can assemble at this moment. But I don't like the fact that he is obviously dissembling on this point, and that he obviously was not playing it straight over a long period of years.
January 21, 2009
Update on the "smoothly functioning" inauguration
On his site, here, Brian Beutler* has a detailed and vivid description of the crowd-control "challenges" I mentioned recently.
The story he tells is not funny at all -- and he and I would probably
agree that it wasn't typical of the experience of most of the
attendees, and that the mood of the throngs was overwhelmingly positive
and cooperative. But I admit that I laughed at this part:
When I arrived at the entrance for silver-ticket holders, there was a
"line" but it wasn't a line. There were no chains demarcating the line.
When people arrived late, they often walked to the front of it. At
times, this created huge problems for overwhelmed guards, who let packs
of people into the screening area, many of whom hadn't waited, some of
whom, I'm sure, had no tickets at all.
If I'd been there, I would have felt right at home. This is how all
lines operate in China! Sometime I plan to do a detailed analysis of
that seemingly-contradictory but nonetheless omnipresent Chinese
phenomenon, the "wedge-shaped line." (Yes, I know this occurs in other
cultures too.) If my wife, who after the years in Shanghai and Beijing has 101% gone native in line-management
behavior, had been there, should could have steered all of us right up
onto the swearing-in stand. ___ * Of Redlands, Ca; we stick together.
January 15, 2009
Last words on pitying Bush
(At least before his really-final farewell speech in a few hours, which I won't see because I'll be at a factory in the boondocks of Beijing.)
About GW Bush's last press conference as president (previously here, here, and here), a reader says:
President Bush's goodbye conference ... made me think of how I identify his waning days. The official White House website has a video of President Bush giving a tour of the Oval Office. Throughout the video, President Bush makes mistakes and starts over, expecting the mistakes to be edited out of the video. But they weren't. The video makes me feel pity for him, much the same way people have felt pity for him after his press conference: not for what he did say, but for what he was trying to say. At the end of the day, he's still just a man as much as you and I are, and for the first time in the eight years of his presidency, I saw him as human.
The 8-minute video is here, shot in 2006. More background here. Judge for yourself.
January 14, 2009
Bush, by Eugene O'Neill
While watching our 43rd president's final press conference two days ago, I noted in real time, here and here, that I felt the first flickers of empathy for a man whose effect on America and the world I have relentlessly deplored. (Try this, for a sample, a story the Atlantic had the guts to put on its cover just before the 2004 election that I'm still proud of.)
I got a fair amount of "how dare you feel sorry for this guy?" response -- but also one note that conveyed a reaction I wish I had captured at the time. In fairness, this came in two days after the press conference, and I was writing in the wee hours in Beijing with a Yanjing beer in hand while Bush was on the air. Still, I thought it impressive. It is from David Carr, not the NYT writer of that name, from North Carolina:
I too thought the final Bush press conference was a remarkable performance; if an actor were to memorize and replicate it, it would seem like something out of Eugene O'Neill, staged in a barroom, and we might feel pity. The inept man without words realizes that he cannot say what he must say: an admission of failures across the board, a realization that his pipe dreams were deadly, an understanding that his nation and the world now hold him in low esteem and wish him gone. And not to be able to say these things is to remain their captive forever. But there is no expiation for Mr. Bush, and that is the objective tragedy. How can he live without awareness? He also must see how much Barack Obama is his opposite, how much he is admired and welcomed to the office, so unlike the stolen Bush arrival in 2000. It's a remarkable achievement for Mr. Bush: every moment of his presidency is touched with a shame that cannot be bathed away. I think he will disappear; I cannot see any post-presidential role he could fulfill without the full recollection of that shame.
January 13, 2009
Mr. Solter
In discussing the deaths of my parents I've mentioned that people who pour themselves into one small community or local cause "deserve" more recognition from the world at large than they often get. I realize that applying this principle fully would mean talking about billions of people who have lived worthy lives. But since another example has just come up I will mention it.
I hear from hometown friends that John Solter, of Redlands, California, has just died at age 75 of kidney failure. As is the case when former students think of their former teachers, he will always be "Mr. Solter" to me -- even though I see from the remarkable obituary in the Redlands Daily Facts that he was still in his 20s when he taught my 8th grade speech class at Cope Jr. High. To me he was a sunny, brassy, somewhat hammy figure, in what we'd now think of as a classic 1960s Southern California way. Maybe even like Monty Hall, of Let's Make a Deal. He was always chastising students in mock, kidding outrage; addressing the class as "you hamburgers"; reeling off wisecracks -- but meanwhile doing a very good job of conveying the essentials not simply of stand-up performance before an audience but also of argumentative organization and logic. He and my high school speech/ debate teacher, Gertrude Baccus, hammered into me the outline-style Point 1- 2- 3 mode of thinking that for better and worse marks me to this day.
What I hadn't guessed before reading the obituary was that his super-confident, breezy cool-cat manner masked (as with Joe Biden) his own previous struggle with speech impediments:
As a youngster, John had a severe stutter. He was plagued by
criticism from his peers and some teachers who forced him to speak or
who told him he would only be able to find a job where he could "work
with his hands."...
In September 1961, John began teaching speech and drama... the very subject that had
been his life nemesis. He had empathy and compassion for those students
who were afraid to speak before a group, and the paths of many young
people changed positively as a result of his teaching techniques. One
illustration is the young woman who was too frightened to speak in
front of the class [whom he allowed] to speak to the class from the
back of the room. The young woman gained confidence through this
technique and went on to become the senior class Valedictorian at
Redlands High School.
Half a dozen teachers in my public-school career made a big and positive difference in my life. Mr. Solter was one of them. His obituary provides details of family struggles that are worth reflecting on during current economic hard times. Eg:
His father
[a railroad worker] was 53 when John was born
and had lost a leg in a
railroad accident around
1900. He had difficulty
walking with a heavy
wooden leg and, being
an older father, he
was often mistaken as
John's grandfather. Because
neither parent drove a car,
John received his driver's
license at age 13.
Another good person whose life deserves recognition. I won't go on to mention everyone I've known and respected, but I didn't want to let this moment pass unremarked. (Photo from InstantRiverside.com)
If you write me from EarthLink, here's why I won't write back
I've got nothing at all against EarthLink, its managers, or its general business reputation. On the contrary: it seems an admirable company.
But
I've come to dread getting any email with an @earthlink.net return
address, and here's why: If I go to the bother of hitting Ctl-R (in
Outlook) and sending a response, I know that I'll then be put to
several rounds of further bother, because of EarthLink's annoying and
narcissistic (and optional) "challenge-response" anti-spam system.
I previously complained about this in the Atlantic.
The system works by keeping a "white list" of approved email senders. If
someone writes in from any non-white address, EarthLink's filter bounces back a note to the effect of, "Who the hell are you?" You then have to fill out forms or interpret cryptic characters to prove you're a real person, not an e-bot, so that your message may be granted a writ of certiorari for consideration by the recipient. After the jump, samples of two such
messages I have received in the last hour.
I get
a lot of mail from people who write in about articles in the magazine or
posts on this site. Mail comes in via the "Email" button you see to your
right on this screen. If I write back, I do so from one of my normal email accounts. Very rarely is that address already entered on an EarthLink sender's white list. So the resulting cycle is: you write me on EarthLink; I take the time to write back; then Earthlink sends me an annoying message and asks me to do more work (like decoding the text in the box below, taken from an actual Earthlink challenge screen) before it deigns to disturb the sanctity of your inbox.
Why do I consider this narcissistic? Because
it assumes that the other person's time and tranquility are more valuable than mine.
Yes, spam is an issue. Yes, my situation is different from some other
people's, in that a significant share of email is with "first-time" correspondents
who are writing in cold to the magazine, rather than an established group of
friends. Still: if someone writes to me without previous "white listing," I don't like having to petition for the privilege to respond.
So, I remain happy to
hear from EarthLink users, as from all others. But as a matter of
policy I will no longer reply to messages from that domain -- unless you tell me that you've disabled challenge-response! Samples
of what makes me crabby below. __________
Refining the point about GW Bush's final press conference
I mentioned a few minutes ago, while GW Bush's final press conference was underway, that the president seemed unusually "self-aware."
That's not quite right. On matters of policy, he revealed himself to be as isolated and out of touch as his critics (including me) would have assumed all along. Two illustrations: he hotly challenged the premise of one question that his policies had made America less prestigious and respected around the world, saying that was just the view of some "elites" and other pantywaists in part of Europe. Go to China! he said. They still respect us there. Yes, sort of. As I've written many times in the Atlantic, China does not seem in any deep way "anti-American," and they generally think US-China relations are good. But no thinking person has the slightest doubt that the Iraq, Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib policies, in particular, have hurt America's image badly here as they have in most other places. To say what the President did indicates how carefully he has been protected from any unfiltered feedback from the real world.
So too with his wistful, regretful-sounding comments about the "harsh tone" in Washington DC. He was completely believable in saying that he hoped things would go better for Barack Obama. But does he recall the name Karl Rove? Does he remember which Vice President told a U.S. Senator from the other party to fuck off, on the Senate floor? There is no point refighting these wars. I'm simply saying: the very sincerity of the President's comments indicated how isolated he has been, or what he has chosen to forget.
Nonetheless: I think even people who oppose the Bush Administrations policies would find it somewhat harder to dislike him viscerally after this performance -- rather than getting angrier the more they see him, as with most of his appearances over these last eight years. The self-awareness I mentioned was purely on a personal level. Even though he defended his tax cuts and his other policies and even the execution of the Katrina response, everything in his posture, expression, and body language -- even his emphasis on the word defeat in talking about the 2008 results -- indicated that he has taken in the fact that things have not gone well.
It is true, he can hardly express himself in anything resembling sentences. But he displayed none of the little moue of pride when he got out a tricky name or a big word, a tic very familiar from his past speeches. To me, he helped rather than hurt himself with this last performance. And to recognize what an achievement this is: think how it would be to hear a valedictory hour's worth of Dick Cheney.
I didn't think I could empathize for even a second with GW Bush...
...but for at least the first fifteen minutes of his final press conference still underway, I did. I think it is because the internalized sense of defeat and unease was so patent that any human being would have at least an initial impulse of feeling sorry for him. More, he seemed to have dropped any of the masks he normally wears, and seemed to be expressing his real thoughts, emotions, and feelings, at least for a while. And his comments about Obama had not a trace of snark or edge.
The switch was thrown when someone asked him about tax cuts and he gave a little standard speech. But this is the first time I can remember when I could imagine why people who knew him earlier in his career considered him "likable," or at least appealingly self-aware.
More later.
A marketing mystery I cannot understand
This is a small thing, but intriguing (to me) because of the various strands it potentially connects. Background:
This past June, I heard about a new spy thriller called Typhoon, by the well-established UK writer Charles Cumming. It was set in China, so I put it into my "here's another way to learn about the country" mental in-basket. Its fictional time frame was the run-up to the Beijing Olympics. Since that was the real-world time frame in which I then lived, it moved up on my mental "books I should read soon" list.
Better still, the plot apparently involved something I'd been reading and thinking about, and which was an important ongoing theme in internal Chinese news coverage: the possibility of separatist or disruptive activities by the Muslim Uighur population of China's far-northwestern Xinjiang region. The Chinese press portrayed this as the main "terrorist" threat to the Olympics, justifying tight security measures. In the novel, apparently the CIA was working with the Uighurs to stir things up. Hmmmm!
Could I buy this at a book store in Beijing? Not likely -- less for censorship reasons than because of the limited number of books that ever make their way here. So I checked online. I didn't find it from any of the normal US sources. But it was being published in England first, and Amazon.co.uk had it in stock.
I ordered a copy: 9.99 pounds for the book, 7.98 pounds for postage, and that when the pound was worth about $2. Part of the cost of expatriation. Order confirmed, book shipped to Beijing. And then... it never arrived.
Amazon.uk said it had indeed sent the book. The Royal Mail tracing service seemed to confirm that fact. Yet on the Chinese end, nothing got here. Hmmm again. But this is not so unusual with mail in and out of China. Things just get lost
Amazon.uk issued a full refund. Gracious of them. And I thought, I'll get this the next time I travel to the outside world.
So I went to America that autumn -- and still didn't find the book in any US stores or sites. Had no trips planned to England, so didn't try to pick it up there. For family reasons, kept going back to the US every few weeks. Kept checking. Never saw it.
Today I thought: let's find this book! And now I see it in stock on the Amazon.uk site for 42 pounds (ok, 41.99) and two copies on the main US Amazon site for either $75 or $247.87. What the hell???
I'm almost curious enough to buy the book at these inflated prices to get a clue about what is going on. Almost. But I can't help wondering why this book's marketing history is so odd.
Why, despite generally positive comments and reviews, has it seemingly vanished from circulation? Why, unlike numerous other books by the same author, did it never successfully cross the Atlantic to be published in the US? Why on earth are re-sellers now offering it for 4x to 10x its original price? None of this makes apparent sense.
I am very skeptical that mailroom censors would have kept the book from reaching me in Beijing. Far more obviously "sensitive" printed matter - in English - comes into the country every day. I had been reading the highly controversial Jon Halliday-Jung Chang Mao biography on one interminable Newark-Beijing flight. I absentmindedly kept it in my hand as I walked through the customs and immigration gates in Beijing. No one gave it a second glance. (General point: the authorities don't really care what non-Chinese citizens are reading in languages other than Chinese. More here.) Casual screwup is the more likely explanation.
But the book's fate in the English-language markets is puzzling to me. Has it been, in some way, suppressed? Did US or UK officials somehow signal that it would make trouble if left on the market? That's hard to imagine, but other explanations seem farfetched too. If anyone has the book and can offer a hypothesis, I'd be glad to hear it. And I'll buy it from you on my next trip home, for something less than $247.87.
January 11, 2009
Presidential rhetoric evolves toward its perfect form
From today's NYT, an account of a dry run of next week's swearing-in ceremonies. An African-American soldier built roughly like Barack Obama, Army Staff Sgt. Derrick Brooks, stood in as the "Faux-Bama" as the participants walked through the planned movements on the stage. These included his inaugural address:
Mr. Faux-Bama's entire inaugural speech consisted of six words: "My fellow Americans," he said. "God bless America."
By chance, I was standing in the crowd (teleported from Beijing) watching the run through, as a C-SPAN crowd shot reveals:
Thanks to many readers who wrote in to make sure I knew about the ceremony. Later, a compare-and-contrast exercise between those two modern imperatives of Presidential comportment: the "God Bless America" sign-off and the American-flag pin in the lapel. The similarities are obvious, but there are some interesting differences.
January 9, 2009
Just kill me now (updated: no, not so fast)
"Enya's New Album Celebrates Winter"
The aptly titled And Winter Came... explores themes of the season and the passing of time.
"It
has to do with that reflective time of year," Enya says of the title.
"The spring, summer, is quite a hectic time for people in their lives,
but then it comes to autumn, and to winter, and you can't but help
think back to the year that was, and then hopefully looking forward to
the year that is approaching."
From an NPR report that includes samples of new Enya songs like "My! My! Time Flies!" Harold Arlen, * Lorenz Hart, Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer, Oscar Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, eat your hearts out in awe and envy of such word-magic artistry.
(*Erratum: Arlen wrong for this list, since he was a composer only; the rest wrote lyrics only or -- like Enya! -- both words and music. Thanks to MF for the reminder.)
UPDATE: To end on a more positive note, which is of course always my goal, in this same current weekend in which it's carrying the Enya story, NPR also has a wonderful 56-minute session of Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz with John Pizzarelli, the guitarist / singer / bandleader who, as McPartland says in her notes, has "an ultra-cool style that's both modern and rooted in the jazz tradition." The whole program is strong and ends with a rendition of Route 66 that suffers only by comparison with the spectacular version Pizzarelli performed on his Dear Mr. Cole album.
That great version can be found as the fifth song listed here, on Rhapsody, available to Rhapsody subscribers or for visitors on a free trial. Or, you could buy the CD!
See, isn't that more uplifting?
January 7, 2009
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.
January 6, 2009
On Gaza
Several of my Atlantic colleagues have explained why they are not writing more frequently about this ongoing war.
My explanation is simpler, and is the opposite of Jeffrey Goldberg's. He says, in effect, that he knows too much about the situation. I know too little. I spent the first weeks of the Iraq war in Haifa and Tel Aviv, mainly working on this article (about the Mohammed al-Dura case, which of course took place in Gaza), and I was at Camp David with Jimmy Carter's entourage when he brokered the Sadat-Begin agreements of 1978. But I understand enough about the politics of the Middle East to recognize that I don't understand enough.
The one relevant thing I do know concerns a repeated source of tragedy in foreign-policy decision making. That is the reluctance to ask, before irrevocable decisions, "And what happens then?" For instance: so we depose Saddam Hussein. What happens then? This question is all the harder to ask when the step in question feels so good. Crushing Saddam. Or, punishing Hamas.
I can imagine the Gaza ground war "working" from Israel's perspective in the short term. The obvious question is, What happens then? I find it very difficult to imagine a sequence of events that leaves Israel -- or anyone -- better off one year from now, or ten.
If I thought the people making Israel's choices were stupid, I could tell myself that they hadn't properly weighed the consequences. But I don't think they're stupid. Instead I think that, like the people who rushed the U.S. into war in Iraq, they are reckless and unwise and will therefore hurt their country. Along with hurting a lot of others.
January 5, 2009
It never ends
It is 4am in Beijing as I type. For good and sufficient reason*, I had to be at a radio studio downtown from 2:30 to 3:30am. When that session was over I went out on the street to find a cab. It is so, umm, crisp in Beijing that I went out with knit cap pulled down practically to my eyebrows, muffler wrapped from my neck up to bottom of my eyes, plus assorted huge overcoats, gloves, thermal underwear, etc. Speak to me not of the joys of winter.
Find a taxi; climb into the front seat, the comradely thing to do in Australia and China alike. Pull off my knit cap and undo the muffler. Driver turns to me, starts to chuckle, and gives a little salute.
No, this is not the Obama-honoring salute I encountered so recently in (balmy) Indonesia. No, not at all. Zongtong Bushi! "President Bush!" Hardee har har. As mentioned previously, to most citizens of China I am apparently indistinguishable from Xiao Bushi, "Little Bush." I do not reply, "Chairman Mao!" or "President Hu!"
Instead I collect myself and make a pun: Wo bushi Bushi! I'm not Bush! It does no good. He salutes again as I get out of the cab.
Somehow I hope this is good for the soul. _____ * Taping of Fresh Air interview, presumably for broadcast on Tuesday.
UPDATE: Via Tim Dorsett, a reminder that he more likely was saying Bushi zongtong, Bushi zongtong, Bushi zongtong than the opposite word order. But when he said them over and over, I could hear it either way!
January 3, 2009
Maybe Fox News has come to Indonesia?
On New Year's Day I mentioned an Indonesian military policeman's heartening response when he heard that my wife and I were Americans -- not Australians, as he had assumed. I also mentioned the traces of the top-to-bottom corruption of Indonesia in the old Suharto era that can be seen even in its spiffy new airports these days.
From reader Aaron Connelly, of Georgetown U., this amplification and reality check.
It seems the government must have upped the departure tax since I left in late November,
when it was a mere 5,000 rupiah. [For me, it was 150,000.] I suspect this is related to the 20% decline in the value of rupiah vis-a-vis the dollar since October. If it is, this might
be a land speed record for an Indonesian government policy change.
I also wanted to spoil your excitement, just slightly, with regard to the
Indonesian airport official's enthusiasm for the President-elect. It is likely
that this gentleman was either "orang sekular," ["secular person'] or a Muslim. While I
was in Jakarta and Yogyakarta for the three months leading up to our elections,
opinions on Barack Obama were very neatly divided along sectarian lines:
Muslims and secular Indonesians [the great majority] were generally enthusiastic; Christians were
uniformly pessimistic or wary of Obama.
When asked why, Christian Indonesians would tell me that they believed Obama
was a Muslim, or that they were suspicious because their Muslim friends or
coworkers were "too excited" about Obama. I was always surprised to
turn on TVRI [the national network] week to week and hear another "investigative report" on
Obama's Muslim school days. Unlike in the American press, in the Indonesian
newsmedia the "Obama was a secret Muslim" accusations were never
off-limits, though there they were treated as a much more cheerful sort of
intrigue than they were by the Jerome Corsis back in the States. Muslim
Indonesians were fascinated by the possibility, even if they ultimately doubted
the substance of the argument.
The effect of this sort of coverage, however, in the context of Indonesia's
sometimes tense sectarian politics, was to turn off Indonesian Christians to
the President-elect. Asking natives of North Sulawesi and Flores about American
politics in Jakarta, I learned to settle in for a long diatribe against Obama,
our "Muslim Senator," and for a very strangely impassioned, wholly
superficial defense of the virtues of John McCain. It was amusing at first,
frustrating and tiresome by the end of my time there-- because it says nothing
positive about the direction of sectarian politics in Indonesia.
In a followup note, Connelly said he wanted to make clear that when referring to Indonesian Christians he was talking about that country's counterpart to America's "low information voters" -- people who followed US politics hazily if at all. He did not mean the very sophisticated cadre of Christians in think tanks, academia, etc.
In any case it makes you wonder whether the anti-Obama Indonesians found this information on their own, or whether instead Roger Ailes has quietly reached a new target audience.
When traveling in Indonesia in the early 1980s, I used to
marvel at the way the high-level mega- corruption of the Suharto family had
filtered down to every level of life. The airports were somehow the most
impressive example, since you assume them to be connected to international
standards. In those days, the Garuda Airlines agent at the Jakarta airport might
sorrowfully announce that your reservation had been canceled - until a bunch
of Rupiah notes, passed discreetly across the counter, made the bookings re-appear. Bags suddenly
became "overweight" and impossible to fit onto the airplane, only to slim back down to an acceptable poundage through the same
person-to-person magic.
On this promising first day of 2009, my wife
and I walk into a vast modern-looking Indonesian airport. After we've
been
through all the check-in rigmarole, we are directed upstairs to the
departure gates. At the top of the stairs we find - surprise! - a
departure-tax toll booth, where each departee must pay 150,000
Indonesian
Rupiahs (about $13.75) in cash.
Old-fashioned element #1 in this set up: forking over cash,
rather than building it into the ticket price as in most of the world. In the old days, this was prevalent everywhere. Now it's rare. #2: no
noticeable previous mention of this fee within the airport or from the airlines, so that unless you happen to have
kept 300,000Rp on you for sentimental reasons, you're stuck, as every other foreign traveler we observed was.#3: other currencies accepted, but at
punitive rates (eg,$17 US dollars -
or 170 Chinese RMB, the only cash we had on us, which is equivalent to $25).#4: no ATMs in this part of the airport, but
plenty of little money changing booths offering similar punitive rates. The tax collectors helpfully steer each flummoxed foreigner toward these booths.
Oh well.
But the real continuity with days of yore was #5, the
solution to the problem. I had seen an ATM outside the airport. I asked a
uniformed security guard if I could go out to withdraw Rupiahs there, at a more reasonable rate than from the money changers. He
pointed to the big sign that said, "No one may leave the airport after check
in." Tidak boleh. No can do.
Then he leaned closer and said, "Boss, I help you, you help me!"I said Boleh!
- "can do!" - and slipped out the door he opened for me. I walked the few feet to the ATM, got my 300,000
Rupiahs for departure tax -- and a little more for whatever you would call lagniappe in Indonesian. Back in the
door, a Happy New Year greeting to the guard with a discreet money-passing
handshake, and on to the plane. It was as if we'd never been away.
A new era begins....
11 am Indonesia time, January 1, 2009. Present our boarding passes to uniformed military
police supervising the entrance to an international airport in Indonesia, for first
of several connecting flights back to Beijing. For reasons that will be evident after the next posting, I'm not naming
the airport.
"Where you from? Australians?" one of the policemen asks.
It is the most likely guess for people who look like us in this part of the
world. Amerika Syarikat, I reply -
"the United States." We used to live in Malaysia, and after our struggles with Mandarin the Malaysian/Indonesian language feels practically like our native tongue.
The officer pulls himself up to attention and with a huge smile gives
us a snappy military salute. "America - very good!" he said. He lowers the salute and says "Barack Obama!!"
with a big thumbs up.
It's been a while...
(Yes, yes, Obama is a particular favorite in Indonesia because his childhood years in Jakarta make him seem a local boy made good. Still, this is not the spontaneous reaction to the name "America" that traveling Yanks have gotten used to in recent years.)
December 31, 2008
Year-end pensee series: charity
Like many other people who pay taxes in the US, I am using some of the waning hours of the year to think what worthwhile causes I should be sure to remember (ie, give money to) during the 2008 Tax Year.
There are more candidates than anyone could cover, but here is a note about one that has been important to my wife and me. Several months ago I wrote an article about the Yellow Sheep River/"West China Story" project, which is designed to help poor rural children in China's arid, remote western regions, especially the girls, earn the money they need to stay in school and have a chance to escape the impoverishment to which they would otherwise be fated. For $130 a year, donors can cover one student's expenses for the year -- and in return the students must write regular accounts of the lives, their families, their studies, and their dreams on web sites their schools create.
My wife and I have met students like those our donations have supported, and everything about the project makes us respectful of what it is trying to do. (The kids below are ethnic Tibetans, at a school in Gansu province.)
I mention this now in part to remind people of one more deserving cause (and of the fact that, even during the hard times now besetting the US and the world, there are people for whom $130 will make a bigger difference than it does to most Americans). But also I wanted to mention one quirk of the online contribution process for this fund.
If you log onto the English language donation site for West China Story, you'll see a notice that contributions from US taxpayers will be tax-deductible only if handled by Give2Asia.org, which in return takes a 9.85% cut. That seemed punitive enough to stop me for a minute, and make me consider just continuing contributions in non-tax-deductible Chinese RMB cash when I'm back in Beijing. But on examination. Give2Asia appears not to be some usurious counterpart to payday check-cashing leeches but instead an operation run by the Asia Foundation to manage contributions to small organizations in Asia. Its existence is one of many illustrations of how complicated it can be to manage efforts, including charitable ones, across national borders.
In the long run, I hope this middleman cut can be avoided. But as 2008 draws to an end, I willingly used the service to support another cohort of students. This cause may not mean as much to your family as it does to mine, but perhaps it will make you think of similar efforts closer to your own heart.
December 23, 2008
Selamat Hari Natal!
Or Merry Christmas, in the Indonesian language I hear around me at the moment.
In two or three days, the much-anticipated Year End Pensee series resumes, with wrap-ups on software, hardware, publishing (including the virtues of the print version of the Atlantic), politics, and a replacement for the hoary boiled frog analogy. Until then, peace on Earth, goodwill to all. Thank you for reading our magazine and its writers -- on line and in print.
December 18, 2008
I am shocked to see a factual error in today's Washington Post!
Though to be fair, it is an error that probably only one person in the entire world is likely to have noticed. (Rather, that person's wife, from the computer in the other room just now.)* It comes in this story about Obama's chief speechwriter Jon Favreau, and it is hidden somewhere in this paragraph:
During the campaign, the buzz-cut 27-year-old at the corner table
helped write and edit some of the most memorable speeches of any recent
presidential candidate. When Obama moves to the White House
next month, Favreau will join his staff as the youngest person ever to
be selected as chief speechwriter. He helps shape almost every word
Obama says, yet the two men have formed a concert so harmonized that
Favreau's own voice disappears.
Easily fixed! If the story were merely tweaked to say "the youngest person ever to be selected as a chief speechwriter for someone renowned for giving great speeches," fact-checkers would be content. Not that I'm counting, but Favreau is roughly two months more grizzled than the person who did that job under Jimmy Carter was at the time. Personally, I think the extra maturity will be a plus. _____ * I was emboldened to post this by an email from someone else who noticed. The message's subject line was, "Have you given up the mantle?" No indeed! Until some 26-year old shows up, or someone younger than my 27-years-and-4+-months at the start of the Jimmy Carter era, I'm clinging to the title!
December 16, 2008
Mischke CD, video news
Last week, this report on the unceremonious canning of my bar-none favorite radio humorist, T.D. "Tommy" Mischke of St. Paul.
Three cheerier or at least schadenfreude-ish updates now:
1) Dave Brauer, of MinnPost.com, has this testimonial from Mark Moeller, of the local retailer R.F.Moeller Jewelers, that has had Mischke do personalized ads for them over the last 15 years, about his pulling his ads in protest.
Mischke "made a profound difference in my
business. Not a day goes by -- not a day -- where someone doesn't walk
into a store and say 'Mischke sent me.'" I pressed Moeller to tell me how much of a hit KSTP was taking for
this. "It was well into seven figures" he says of his ad buys over 15
years.
2) A YouTube video that Moeller and Mischke produced, called "Don't Jump, Tommy," whose purpose Mischke explained this way in a note to me:
So, here's what I ended up doing
over the weekend. I had a lot of listeners writing me, concerned that, because
of my occasional bouts of depression, this firing business could be
sending me right over the edge. I wanted to address that and, at the same time,
help out Mark Moeller who has stood by me through all this despite
being telephoned daily by KSTP management in an effort to lure him back on
the air.
Mischke is more derelict-looking in this video than in real life.
3) Mischke's latest music CD (not radio-humor CD) is available here. I haven't heard him sing other than in comedy bits on the program, but i will order this on faith. His humor CDs, which I have heard, will soon be available; stay tuned for details.
Amazing slop (updated)
I'm on record as thinking it Colonel Blimpish for native speakers of English to make fun of other people's mistakes in our language -- above all when we're doing it on their soil, and when our command of their language is less than total. Odds are any college-educated Chinese person I meet will be much better in English than I am in Chinese. After all, English was one of their mandatory subjects through school and in their college-entrance exams. Not quite the same for me with Chinese. (But let's try some French! Or Latin! Or Esperanto! Or Japanese!) So not once in talking with such a person have I been other than grateful for such English as they know.
On the other hand, I repeatedly marvel at the blitheness with which Chinese organizations put things in English designed for foreign readers without having even a minimally-literate native speaker give it a quick look. (Background again here and more broadly here.)
Today's case study: promotional map, conveniently in English for foreign investors and tourists, which I just received from a fancy Chinese resort I won't otherwise identify:
Sigh. My kingdom for an "e."
Update: George Bradt of Shanghai reports that the city's hockey rink has ramp marked "Sloppy Passage," for the convenience of wheelchair-bound patrons. Update #2: Via Micah Sittig, photo of the ramp, with its full name "Disabled Sloppy Passage," here.
December 15, 2008
While disagreeing with G.W. Bush on almost every item of policy...
... I thought he showed considerable physical agility and temperamental aplomb while the shoes were coming at him yesterday. This is the kind of moment when people simply react, rather than having time to think or control their behavior. He might have been recorded forever curling up in a ball or hiding behind Maliki. He didn't. It's something.
(Offset by the total humiliation of the episode, the reasons for Iraqi grievance, the unseemliness of physical assaults, etc etc.)
Every day brings a surprise
You may have read that the Chinese company BYD made big news today in unveiling the first plug-in electric car, ahead of Japanese and US competitors.
More on the substance of that another day.
You may not have imagined how the presentation began, this morning in Shenzhen. Life is interesting. (Click for larger.) The US lounge-singer industry may need to start looking over its shoulder at China, along with the automakers.
The performers in a pensive moment:
December 12, 2008
Very useful shopping advice from Roy Blount Jr.
We all know that the retailers are in trouble because of collapsing consumer demand. (For years Americans spent too much; now....) We all know that the automakers domestic and foreign are in trouble because people don't want to buy cars. Real estate is in trouble because people can't or don't want to buy houses. The stock market is in trouble because people don't want to buy stock. And, arguably most ominous for the republic, newspapers are in trouble because people are losing the habit of buying papers.
There is not much any one individual can do about this. I'm not going to buy a new house or car just because it would have useful tonic effect on the market. There are only so many papers I can buy per day. But after the jump, Roy Blount Jr, through the years a frequent Atlantic contributor and current president of the Authors Guild, suggests a voting-with-your-dollars strategy that is within people's means and can make a significant difference.
Starting now, I've changing my Christmas shopping plans based on Blount's tips. The presents he suggests are good ones -- and although I can't visit independent bookshops myself where I am, the ones I like and have shopped at (Elliott Bay, Powell's, Politics & Prose, etc) have web-based order systems. Seriously, this is a good idea -- as are, of course, gift subscriptions to our own magazine.
Blount's letter to Authors Guild members* below. _______
Last word anyone ever need speak on 'hurt feelings'
This hilarious analysis and map, courtesy of Danwei.org, of the times and places when the "feelings of the Chinese people" have been hurt. (Background here and here.)
Danwei's map of the offending countries, marked in black. For explanation, see the post.
December 9, 2008
More on the "Shinseki beret"
Results from the vast blog-reading public: 100-to-1 in favor of Gen. Eric Shinseki's conduct before and after the Iraq war. (Background here and here.) 100-to-1 in opposition to his role as "the genius who made Army troops wear the beret." (Background here.)
(Image from ad at RangerJoes.com, the online shop for "Military and Law Enforcement Gear.")
To give fair voice to the one percent not complaining about the beret, I quote reader Frank Logan:
I wish I knew who decided we should wear the Castro style hats we wore in the '60's Army so I could hate him the way today's troops apparently hate Shinseki. It's probably like hating the food in the mess which is actually pretty good.
Here endeth my Shinseki-and-beret discussion.
December 8, 2008
Zut alors! C'est une blague!
Many people in the blog-o-world, including several of my Atlantic colleagues, have noted the, umm, similarity between Barack Obama's most famous poster and the recent "SarkObama" campaign by Nicolas Sarkozy in France.
Loyal Atlantic reader Edward Goldstick sent me a note suggesting that I read what the posters actually say. As soon as you do so, it becomes evident that they're not pro-Sarkozy posters at all! They're an elegant little bit of jiujitsu to both mock and pressure Sarkozy by appearing to commit him to positions more progressive/leftist than he in fact holds.
"Produce clean and sustainable energy for Europe," the one on the upper left says. "Yes we can!" "Make polluters pay," says the next one down. "Yes we can!"
Others are in the same vein. And, as it turns out from a story in Le Monde (in French, here) published five days ago, this is part of a guerrilla campaign by Greenpeace to push its climate-change programs during EU talks on the summit in Poznan, Poland, this month.
Ah, the subtle French. But at least we know that Sarkozy is not as derivative as he seemed -- and that it takes much longer for material to make its way from the mainstream French press into English than the other way around.
Really bad news out of Minnesota: end of The Mischke Broadcast (updated)
I have done approximately one zillion articles for the Atlantic since my first one (about Lloyd Bentsen, then a presidential hopeful) back in 1975. In a very few cases, I've loved everything about the process: learning about the subject, interviewing sources for their views, letting other people know about what I've discovered, and -- when everything works right -- connecting readers with an experience, an idea, a source of information, a phenomenon that they hadn't known about but then find interesting or enjoy.
I am skipping over the "writing the article" stage, which is always unpleasant and simply must be endured.
One of the experiences that was most delightful all the way through was learning about the St. Paul-based radio humorist/musician/raconteur T.D. "Tommy" Mischke, whom I wrote about nine years ago in this article. Mischke is handsome enough, but he avoids being photographed -- except in shots like this, which we used to illustrate the article:
