Yesterday I mentioned Elliott Gerson's op-ed in the Washington Post, which said that a shift in career choices for Rhodes scholars -- before, mainly politics/academics/writing; now, increasingly Wall Street -- was one more illustration of how outlandish pay in the financial world was distorting American incentives. For a Chinese perspective on this same point, see the thoughts of Gao Xiqing in my article last year, here.
A current Rhodes scholar at Oxford writes in defense of today's students:
"Although I'm [from a country other than the US] and so outside of Mr
Gerson's jurisdiction, I'm friends with many American Rhodies and I
think it's worth noting one or two things about his article. It was an
interesting and thought-provoking piece, but...
"First, it should not
be assumed that Rhodes Scholars are leaving Oxford for business in
overwhelming numbers. The most convincing evidence Mr Gerson cites is
that 6 (presumably 6 out of 32 American Scholars) went into business
"recently". While 6/32 is a lot more than the 3/320 in the 1970s, it
hardly signals that there has been a fundamental change in the nature
of the organisation or the Scholars involved. The road from Oxford High
Street to Wall Street is far less well travelled than the road from
Oxford to law school in New Haven or med school in Cambridge, MA.
Signs of the apocalypse from an unexpected angle, #13,287
In case you haven't seen it, check out Elliott Gerson's op-ed in the Washington Post today, offering an unexpected measure of what has gone wrong with America's economic and social structure. Gerson is the American secretary of the Rhodes scholarship trust, and his data track follows... what Rhodes Scholars do with their lives once they come home from England.
Precis: in the olden days, they wanted to be big shots, a la Bill Clinton. Politicians, professors, writers, people paid in part or full in currency other than plain cash. Now, they want to be rich. And Gerson has a theory about what that change shows.
There is a reverse-backflip aspect to this shift that Gerson is certainly aware of but doesn't have the space to mention: Over the past 20 years or so, the selection process for Rhodes scholars has shifted to place less emphasis on Clinton-style BMOC traits and more on expressed or proven commitment to "service." So a group that starts out being more interested in social service ends up being more likely to go to Wall Street. Read and reflect.
November 12, 2009
A bucolic world capital
Our back yard, 2pm yesterday afternoon, three miles from the White House in northwest Washington DC. I think this is one of the fawns from the summer, grown out of its dappled phase. It sat there thinking and observing for an hour or two, about 50 feet from our house, until a drizzle turned into a downpour and it went somewhere else. For Chinese friends, that is indeed a bamboo stand in the background. We lack pandas so make do this way.
November 9, 2009
Mad magazine takes on the birthers
I don't know whether the birthers are petering out on their own. If they're still around, here's an additional challenge for them that springs from the glory days of Mad magazine.
A friend has recalled a classic Mad riff from its "Strangely Believe It! Strangely True" series, produced by comedian Ernie Kovacs in the late Fifties as a knock-off of Ripley's Believe It or Not. It concerned -- well, see for yourself, in this detail of a scan of the original page, courtesy of Scott Gosar at TheMadStore. [Thanks to reader JS for title catch.]
The punch line -- hardee har! -- is that news of the baby girl's birth had to be telegrammed to her mother, who had missed the plane on which the surprise birth occurred.
What's the connection to the birthers? If Barack Obama had actually been born in Kenya, then his mother would have to have been in Kenya too! I don't think anyone has dreamed of suggesting that his mother was other than the one he has always claimed, Stanley Ann Dunham. Presumably somewhere in the passport records of the United States or Kenya is information about whether his mother (a) left the United States, or (b) entered Kenya in 1961 when her son was born. If she didn't leave the United States, including the fully-fledged state of Hawaii, in the summer of 1961, then by definition her child has to have been a natural-born U.S. citizen.
I recognize that if this were a matter of -- how do we say? -- "reality" or "facts," it would have been settled long ago, as it has been for everyone except the birther stalwarts. But this is an interesting additional angle worth considering; plus, it's great to see these detailed old Mad drawings. FYI, you can see a zoomable full-page version of the "Strangely Believe It!" illustration, by Wallace Wood, if you click on the smaller image below.
November 5, 2009
The meaninglessness of shootings
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:
I first learned about him when I was making a lot of long, late-night drives from the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport to Duluth, for reporting that led to this article, and I was scanning the radio for something worth listening to.
I actively looked forward to those drives once I had discovered The Mischke Broadcast on KSTP-AM, which mixed story-telling, political commentary, humor, music, and listener calls in a bizarre and addictive way. For samples, which require Real Player to listen to, there is this bit, in which Mischke interviews an expert on the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (if you can listen, you'll learn why it's funny) and this bit of extended, real-but-unbelievable Fargo-esque surrealism, involving a character name "Bocky."
I have kept in touch with Mischke and occasionally appeared on his show.
The black news today is that KSTP has pulled the plug on the show. Info here and here and, with a lot of background details, here. I really hope that Mischke can find another home or vehicle. He is a talent and a mensch.
UPDATE: Two more items on the Mischke firing from MinnPost.com's David Brauer here and here.
December 7, 2008
Bonus points for elegance in the Shinseki pick (updated)
Barack Obama is all about bipartisanship, conciliation, binding up wounds, and so forth. Great! If only more presidents saw things that way.
But in his (reported) choice of Eric Shinseki as Secretary of Veterans Affairs, there is also an extremely refined aspect of sticking in the shiv.
Whenever he talks about this selection, Obama (plus his lieutenants) can describe it completely, sufficiently, and strictly in the most bipartisan high-road terms. They have selected a wounded combat veteran; a proven military leader and manager; a model of personal dignity and nonpartisan probity: an unimpeachable choice. Symbolic elements? If people want them, they can work with Shinseki's status as (to my recollection at the moment) the first Asian-American in a military-related cabinet position, not to mention a Japanese-American honored for lifelong military service on Pearl Harbor Day.
As for the other symbolic element -- that Obama is elevating the man who was right, when Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney, et al were so catastrophically wrong -- that is something that neither Obama nor anyone around him need say out loud, ever. The nomination is like a hyper-precision missile, or what is known in politics as a "dog whistle." The people for whom this is a complete slap in the face don't need to be told that. They know -- and know that others know it too. So do the people for whom it is vindication. And all without Obama descending for one second from his bring-us-together higher plane.
The artistry here is remarkable. Along with the inspired nature of this choice.
UPDATE: I see from the MTP webcast just now available (below) that Tom Brokaw directly asked Obama about Shinseki's disagreement with Rumsfeld, and Obama said of his new nominee, "he was right." Consistent with the argument above, that's as much as he ever needs to say.
Karmic justice: Gen. Eric Shinseki
One of the truly nauseating moments in the run-up to the Iraq war was the humiliating public rebuke that Paul Wolfowitz, then Donald Rumsfeld's #2 at the Pentagon, delivered to Eric Shinseki, then a four-star general serving as Army chief of staff.
Shinseki, a wounded combat veteran of Vietnam, was by career and reputation a cautious, methodical person. Those who criticized his performance as Army chief mainly complained that he was too traditional and non-innovative in his approach. Thus, he was constantly at odds with Rumsfeld's crew, who viewed him as a passive-aggressive, fuddy-duddy obstacle to doing things in their new lean-and-mean way.
The showdown came just before the war began. Shinseki, who had direct experience with land warfare (in Vietnam) and post-combat occupation (in the Balkans), was urging that the U.S. go in with a force large enough to ensure that it could maintain order and genuinely control Iraq's sizable territory and potentially fractious society after it ousted Saddam. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz hated this whole idea.
After the jump, a passage from my Atlantic article and subsequent book, both called Blind into Baghdad, describing what happened next. I think this also explains why it is so satisfying and right that Barack Obama will (reportedly) name Shinseki to his Cabinet as the Secretary of Veterans Affairs.
(Shinseki after his retirement, at a museum in his honor in Hawaii. Photo from a profile of him at this official Army web site.)
Here's one other point that is not as widely known as Rumfeld's and Wolfowitz's bullying of Shinseki: Despite being unfairly treated, despite being 100% vindicated by subsequent events, Shinseki kept his grievances entirely to himself. Although my book contains accounts of Shinseki's inside arguents with Rumsfeld et al, and his discussions with his own staff, zero of that information came from Shinseki.
I made a complete nuisance of myself requesting an interview, or a phone conversation, or an email exchange, or even some "you're getting warmer" guidance from him. Nothing doing, in any way. (I did track him down at an ROTC commissioning ceremony where he was speaking; he greeted me politely, but that was it.) I am confident in the accounts I presented, which came from a variety of first-hand participants; but Shinseki, who could have had a lucrative career on the talk show/lecture circuit giving "I told you so" presentations, has not indulged that taste at all.
So congratulations to Eric Shinseki, who has stoically served his country for decades and was wounded in that cause, in several senses, on this new honor -- and on the responsibility to help others who have served. Congratulations, too, that a Japanese-American patriot from Hawaii should receive this news on December 7. And not just congratulations but wonderment at the Obama team's deftness in the symbolism and substance of this choice.
Details of Shinseki-Wolfowitz showdown after the jump. _________
Twice during our past two and a half years of living in China, my wife and I have made vacation trips to Turkey. I had not been before and now really regret that fact.
My brief travel article in the new issue of the Atlantic, here, offers a vignette that may convey part of what I found so intriguing about Istanbul. This slide show, with the Atlantic's slickest new video-effect tools by Jennie Rothenberg Gritz, has more of the Ottoman empire look. Go see for yourself -- I mean, not just via the articles but with a trip to Turkey.
December 5, 2008
About that oddball Korean game show....
.... the one where contestants wore campy, antique Harvard/Yale-style blazers:
Courtesy of a reader who knows Korean pop culture, the real story:
The show is actually a take-off of another game show "The Golden Bell", which is a quiz show for high school students. (Basically, they go to a high school and gather 100 students and the students all answer tough trivia questions round by round until no students are left or until the final round, which is the 'golden bell' round. It's very tough and 'golden bell' winners are rare and highly regarded, apparently.)
Anyway, the stills/video you have are for a show that features actors/musicians/MCs who compete in a "Golden Bell" take-off. The questions aren't really tough trivia, but little word-games and puzzles that the stars play to collect money for charity.
The uniforms are supposed to be take-off of school uniforms, so it makes sense that they remind one of the Yale/Harvard uniforms.
So there. As I said when first raising this topic, life is strange.
December 3, 2008
Updates on "Forgetting? Fuhgeddaboudit"
Three quick followups to yesterday's mention of an IBM research project that would involve all-hours recording of all circumstances in your life.
1) As many, many people have noted, yesterday's English version of Spiegel Online carried a story about a woman with this very capacity naturally built into her own brain, and she's not so crazy about it.
2) After the jump, an extended version of the IBM release on the topic, which has more details and hints at some of the promising but complicated implications of this kind of effort.
3) From reader Karen Weickert, an account of an earlier foray in the same direction, under the auspices of Paul Allen's paradoxically secretive-but-publicized, and now defunct, Interval Research Corporation. (Long and interesting 1999 Wired story on Interval here.)
In the 1990's, a research shop funded by Paul Allen worked on a number of the IBM projects described in their press release. Specifically, the "memory" idea was put into practice by a researcher who strapped a video and audio recorder to his body, and recorded his daily rounds for weeks. He attempted to capture 360 degree audio and video. The point was to never miss anything that happened in your day, such as important conversations, your child's first steps, etc.
What happened instead is that no one wanted to speak with him. We assume in conversation that what we say will not be recorded and played back directly (if we are not politicians, of course). If all social interaction was assumed recorded, as opposed to the opposite, our shared world becomes something very different. It was creepy.
There were a number of other projects toying with social connectedness and interaction -- virtual offices and researchers connected through "surround sound" for example. Again, something important about our assumptions of social interaction were broken. We assume all work happens when groups are connected, but of course, we are private beings as well.
I don't understand Korean, so I can't really be sure, but this afternoon Korean KBS-2 (part of our rich array of viewing choices here in China) carried what seemed to be either a dating program, or a College Bowl-type contest, between teams dressed in what looked for all the world like Harvard and Yale "Oldest Living Alum"-type blazers. It was as if we were at the Henley Royal Regatta or something. Life is strange.
Judge for yourself.
December 2, 2008
More on the Sleeping Giant
After yesterday's post on the prevalence of Chinese people sleeping in public places, I got many responses saying that this was merely a sign of how hard-working the country was -- everyone is exhausted! True enough, in many cases. But, as reader John Neville points out, unremitting physical toil might not be the only explanatory factor:
I have to agree, the Chinese are napping maniacs. I teach at a university in Wuhan, where on my first day I was told that the couch in my office is there for sleeping on, not sitting. Any teachers or administrators who come to my office during the lunch break always close the door behind them as they leave, so as to give me more privacy for napping (I've still never once slept on that couch, but I guess they hope that some day I will). I need to get some pictures of people sleeping on the rattling, wildly careening and hard-breaking buses that make up the Wuhan bus fleet.
I'll simply leave it as an interesting -- to me -- aspect of contemporary Chinese life.
The burden of expatriation, part 1,547
You probably know the white man in this photo below, shown with Hu Jintao on a recent front page of the China Daily:
You probably don't know this white man (recent picture of me in China):
OK, yes, they're both middle-aged white men looking somewhat the worse for life's wear. And believe me, I have fished around for the most similar-looking poses and expressions and hair styles etc I could find, minus the accompanying Chinese dignitary. Still, despite these powerful similarities, the fact is that not once in my life has someone in the United States or Europe stopped me on the street to say, or mentioned in a conversation, "Oh, you look just like George W. Bush."
Rarely has a day passed in China without a Chinese person saying this.
I think this reflects the same principle by which any middle-aged, non-glasses-wearing Chinese man might be told in America, "You know, you look just like Jackie Chan," or a middle-aged black man might be asked, "Are you Sidney Poitier?" (Samuel L. Jackson, Forest Whitaker, Dennis Haysbert, Laurence Fishburne, etc). We all look the same....
It could be worse. They could be asking if I was Karl Rove. Or Cheney.
December 1, 2008
The 'Sleeping Chinese' exhibit (updated)
The first picture below is from the Qingdao Beer Festival in the summer of 2006 -- back when I made the rookie error of thinking that a "beer festival" would offer a greater variety of brands than I could find in the local shops. (The most exotic brew I found at the festival was Pabst Blue Ribbon, which had its own promotional tent.) This photo is of some construction workers who, as I later determined, had not been laid low by drink but were just taking a little break. The following shot is a standard street scene in Shanghai from about the same time. More in similar vein after the jump.
I mention this in connection with the fascinating collections of photos on the "Sleeping Chinese" site. They're similar to what I'm showing here but vastly more numerous. In an introduction to the collection, the site's author, Bernd Hagemann, a German living in Shanghai, says this:
I gotta warn you! Before you click through my large collection of photos,you should not forget, what you hear and read daily in of your home country's media about China's boom. They talk about "The Sleeping Giant". About "The Birth of the New Super
Power" or "The Awakening of the Red Dragon". Often with a strange kind
of undertone, which is supposed to frighten us. The reality definitely
looks more peaceful.
Obviously this kind of analysis can be taken too far. Probably people have been sneaking catnaps even in the most aggressive, malign and dangerous of history's powers. But the sheer abundance of napping photos on the Sleeping site is one more illustration of why it's hard to maintain a 24/7 state of alarm about China's ceaseless rise if you're exposed to the way most people in China actually live and behave.
It's been a year-plus since I last saw a bottle of Sam Adams beer in an import-grocery store in Beijing. So when I found some in a store recently, at a reasonable-for-a-luxury-good-that-has-traveled-a-long-way 11.6 RMB/bottle ($1.70), naturally I ... bought every bottle they had:
It's hard to avoid such behavior when you confront erratic supply situations: buy now, because you have no idea when the chance will come again. Of course the next forlorn Westerner into the store will think: Jeez, I remember years ago when I saw some good, flavorful beer in this place. Guess they can't get it any more.
This behavior is made all the more painful on the heels of reading the great New Yorker story on extreme beer, which featured my former staple brew, Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA, and realizing that in some parts of the world people can walk into a store and buy any kind of beer they want! Ah, but they don't have the adventure I'm enjoying here on the frontier. Plus those 20 bottles to work through. Slowly.
Update: Via the Brezhnev.net blog from Shanghai, evidence that I'm not the only one to think and act this way. On the other hand, my wife and I have avoided the specific heartbreak described in that post by hauling Skippy and real mayo back with us on provisioning runs from the US. (Mayo visible in this linked picture, PB not because we'd brought a lot the previous time.)
November 20, 2008
Boy, do I feel old (chapter 2,895)
Reading the NYT on line just now, I see a review of a "historical documentary" movie of something I can remember vividly but that apparently happened forty years ago this week: the Harvard-Yale football game in which Harvard scored 16 points in the last 42 seconds to "win," 29-29. (Touchdown with 2-point conversion; onside kick with recovery; another touchdown as the clock ran out and 2-point conversion.) Tick-tock footage of the game, from a Harvard athletic department perspective, here:
I mention this dawn-of-time occurrence for two reasons: I was excited during the game itself because one of the big stars for Harvard was tight end Bruce Freeman, who caught two crucial touchdown passes. We had grown up and gone to school together in the Western hinterland, where our fathers were doctors in the same small clinic. Also, I was about to take over as the editor of the Crimson and so was part of the squadron responsible for our post-game special edition.
I have never been 100% sure of exactly who in the small group was first to say that the special-edition headline needed to be: HARVARD BEATS YALE, 29-29. It wasn't me; and I think it was my classmate Bill Kutik. But everyone instantly recognized a stroke of genius, and so it was set in hot lead, on Linotype machines, and was on the streets in a matter of minutes:
Maybe if the movie makes its way to Beijing's pirate video stores I'll find out what really happened.
(I have seen the image above on several sites. Somewhere in the attic of my real house in the US, I have the special edition itself, which I suppose I should scan or preserve in amber someday, given its status as a treasured antiquity.)
UPDATE: I have heard from Bill Kutik, who was indeed centrally involved, and even more so was the person I thought to name, but didn't: Tim Carlson. Further background (complete with Rashomon-like conflicting memories and accounts) here.
November 4, 2008
Non-political, highly personal: my dad
On Election Day, I am at the bedside of my father, James A. Fallows MD, who is nearing the end of his extraordinary life. Six months ago, when he first seemed mortal, I was grateful for the opportunity to talk about him at the college he attended for two years -- before being rushed straight to medical school for service as a Navy doctor -- and from which he received his honorary bachelor's degree 60 years later.
Just now I have received a note that expresses more vividly than I could what a life well, fully, and joyously lived can mean. I share it now, with the writer's permission, at a time when my dad himself can no longer appreciate it but while it is not yet purely retrospective.
The note begins:
My name is Erin Cox-Holmes, and I'm a fan of the Atlantic ...As I was trolling sites today, waiting
through the nail-biter until the results came in, I happened upon your site.
And, as I always do when I see your name, I thought of your dad.
I am away from a computer most of the time now*. But there's a TV droning in the background, which for the last two hours has been on MSNBC.
During that period, I have seen at least three, maybe four, times a voice-of-doom style TV spot about Barack Obama and Rev. Wright. It opens with a dark-visaged grainy picture of Obama, cuts to Wright's famous "not God bless America, but God damn America!" speech (with the "damn" bleeped out), and ends with bold words on the screen saying something like: Barack Obama. RADICAL. RISKY. General aura of the ad Willie Horton-ish. A group called GOPTrust.org takes the responsibility.
Brilliant move! On the last day of the campaign, using money for a saturation ad campaign (a) in California, no one's idea of a swing state; (b) on MSNBC, with no one's idea of an "undecided" audience; and (c) on a theme that the candidate himself has theoretically forsworn, therefore probably building up as much extra resentment among the California/MSNBC viewers as it does enthusiasm among the GOP base.
Not for the first time during this campaign, I've wondered whether some of McCain's "brains trust" actually are moles trying to make sure he goes down hard. (Previous occasions for wonder: the "suspend the campaign" gambit, the "angry old man" debate-prep strategy, the Steve Schmidt radio interview, the McCain SNL cameo, and, we've got to say it, the Palin choice.)
As skillful as the Obama team has been in its two-year campaign, McCain and his team have been that incompetent and ineffective. Any Republican candidate this year would have been dealt a bad hand. It is remarkable that McCain has misplayed every single card.
UPDATE: I hear from a reader that the ad is also playing in Austin. This is crazy on two fronts: Texas will go for McCain with or without this ad, and Austin will go for Obama with or without. I guess the money is burning a hole in GOPTrust's pocket. Update 2: Apparently this is playing all over the place: Connecticut, South Carolina, and even Gotham itself. Shrewd, as part of discount bulk-buy strategy? Deliberate, as a way of limiting down-ticket losses for House races? Or just "maverick"? Maybe some day we'll know. ___ * At a health-care facility where I am on family business. Now, signing off again.
November 2, 2008
The black sheep of August 2 (updated)
I am usually proud to have been born on August 2. Two of my writer friends were also born on that day: Lawrence Wright and Erik Tarloff. Same with Caleb Carr. And let's not forget James Baldwin, or Peter O'Toole plus Carroll O'Connor. Or for that matter, Judge Lance Ito.
But now I find: our fellow August 2 person Victoria Jackson is doing a very convincing imitation of a nut job. I always thought she was deliberately playing a ditzy airhead on Saturday Night Live. Is she still putting on a front? I hope? As O'Connor did, in character as Archie Bunker?
Oh well. We'll always have Judge Lance. Update: And my hometown high school friend, the musician and composer Greg Tornquist. The lingering aftereffects of the time I spent with him drifting around Northern California in the late Sixties are even now working their magic on my memory cells.
My anecdote about the political ground game
Three days before the election, walking down State Street, the old-fashioned shopping area in my home town of Redlands*, California. This is a city that went for Barry Goldwater when I was a kid and that has been part of a solidly Republican Congressional district for most of the time since then. For the last 30 years it has supported Rep. Jerry Lewis, once the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and more recently under Federal investigation for doing favors for lobbyists. (His opponent this year is Tim Prince.)
In a State Street storefront that was some kind of variety discounter the last time I saw it, I now see... Obama headquarters! And it is packed. Old people. College students. Everybody on the phones. People walking in and out with material supporting Obama, Biden, and the rest of the Democrats. I cannot emphasize enough how unusual this is. California may be a blue state, but this part of it has not been.
Most of the yard signs around town seem to be McCain-Palin. But in other times, nearly all of the yard signs would have been Republican. A bustling, unembarrassed Democratic headquarters here takes me by surprise. ____
* Personal note: I spent practically no time in the United States during 2007 but have traveled repeatedly from Beijing to Redlands this year. This reason, as mentioned earlier, is the declining health of my father, which will keep me from from dealing with email or doing much more on this site for a while.
October 31, 2008
Our bumpy electoral system (random data point)
I have missed voting in only one presidential election during the many years in which I've been eligible. It wasn't in 1988, while we were living in Japan -- and when we succeeded in getting absentee ballots so we could vote in Washington DC. My one omission was, gasp, the razor's-edge 2000 election*, but I was voting in California that year, where the race wasn't even close.
I'm getting worried that 2008 may be my second no-show. Something like one percent of the entire electorate is voting from overseas, or so I am told by various expatriate groups. In any case it's enough to make a difference in close elections and close states. My vote is not likely to make an Electoral College difference, as my non-vote didn't eight years ago. (I'm voting in DC.) But I really like voting anyway, and here's how it has gone.
In theory, voting from overseas is easy. The requirements are:
Being registered. No sweat. Fully signed up in DC.
Request an ballot, through this streamlined form at VoteFromAbroad.org. This is a great site that provides a great service. You tell it where you're registered, and it pulls up the right official form to request an absentee ballot from your state. Our your District, in our case. My wife and I filled out the forms to get our DC ballots. We listed a friend's address in DC where the ballots could be sent (if mailed to China they would never get here), and we gave the request forms to a friend headed to SF to mail them in early September. (If mailed from China they would never get there.)
But.... the absentee ballots never arrived. Rather, as of the moment I write, nearly eight weeks after they were requested, have not yet arrived at our US address. So we go to the...
Emergency write-in provision. To allow for circumstances like ours, another site conveniently lets you print out a write-in ballot for president, which you can mail to your home jurisdiction. Write in ballots available here or here (Republican- and Democratic-sponsored sites). To qualify, you have to do what we've already done: already be registered, already have requested the absentee ballot, but not yet have received it.
So, we printed out those absentee ballots, hand-wrote in our choices for President and VP, and gave them to another US-bound friend to mail. Will they ever get there? Will they ever be counted? We will never know. So I just hope the election is not close. At least not in DC.
My compatriots based in America: enjoy your convenient right to vote! ____ * Bizarrely, just before the election I was flying a small airplane across the country to the Berkeley CA area, where we were living at the time. I planned to arrive at the Concord CA airport on the night before the election. But an early blizzard and ice storm kept me grounded in Duluth for four days, and I watched the election and preliminary recount drama from bars in the Lake Street area while drinking Minnesota's own Summit beer.
October 30, 2008
After the Obama infomercial
Let's review what we have seen from Barack Obama through the two years of his campaign:
- Skills in formal oratory that, in my view, you'd have to go back to John F. Kennedy to match. Bill Clinton could, and can, hold an audience spellbound, but his speeches are a collection of brilliant apercus more than a central argued-out idea. (Illustrative experience: read one of Clinton's books, and read Obama's first book.) In his main speeches, starting with the 2004 Boston convention speech and with a particular highlight in the "Jeremiah Wright" speech about race in Philadelphia, Obama has been both interesting to listen to serious in trying to present a main idea. The other competitor would be Ronald Reagan. I don't think most of his speeches pass the "serious big idea" test, but I know that some people do.
- Skills in using technology to raise money for which there is no real precedent (as Josh Green was one of the first to describe, in this Atlantic article).
- Skills in Get Out the Vote organizational efforts that we saw in the Iowa primary and which we're primed to look for next Tuesday.
- Skills in one-on-one debating technique that led to all three presidential debates being seen by the public as big Obama wins. And now, with the informercial:
- Skills in telling stories (and evoking emotions) through pictures that we associate mainly with Reagan and no one since.
- And (update) skill in personal presentation, which means that the candidate is never seen as being testy, rarely seems rattled, seems to know where he wants to go and makes some progress every day -- the only candidate this really resembles is Ronald Reagan.
We can wonder later on -- and, minus something we can't now imagine, we can wonder pretty soon -- about the organizational and analytic skills Obama will display in office. But as a collection of talents brought to bear in a campaign, this is quite remarkable. And the sequential underestimations -- by the Hillary Clinton camp, and now by the Republicans -- will merit future analysis.
October 26, 2008
'My Beijing Birthday,' now in Beijing
Last week I mentioned how much I enjoyed and admired the documentary film My Beijing Birthday, which was having a special showing in Hong Kong.
This week it's having another screening in Beijing -- tomorrow night, Tuesday, October 28. Details below.
The trailer for the film, here, which I didn't mention before, will give you an idea of the approach and tone, including the before-and-after of kids who were playful tots in 1996 and have changed in heartening and heartrending ways since. I can't recommend this highly enough.
EVENT DETAILS:
Date: Tuesday 28th October 2008
Time: 18:00 Registration
18:30 Screening
Venue: Saatchi & Saatchi
The Penthouse 36/F Central International Trade Centre Tower C
6A Jianguomen Wai Avenue, Beijing, China 100022
October 22, 2008
Must-see in Hong Kong: 'My Beijing Birthday'
If you're in Hong Kong tomorrow night, October 23, and you're not hospitalized, in jail, running the control tower at Hong Kong airport, or otherwise in possession of a good excuse for not attending, please get to the Hong Kong Arts Center by 7pm to see a screening of the wonderful hour-long documentary, My Beijing Birthday. Details here.
My wife and I saw a preview screening of the film before a small audience in Beijing back in July. (The audience was small mainly because of the pre-Olympic Beijing security hysteria. Authorities were discouraging or prohibiting gatherings of any size, for any reason, on grounds of general paranoia.) My main reaction after seeing it was the hope that very large audiences would be able to see it soon.
The set-up and plot-line sound bizarre when described. Howie Snyder, a New Yorker and skillful Mandarin-speaker now in his 40s, was in Beijing twelve years ago attending a school for traditional Chinese "cross-talk" stand-up comics. All the other students in the class were Chinese eight-year-olds. They specialize young here. Part of the film is footage of Snyder and his classmates back then; the other part is a revisit to the school this year, showing very dramatically what the passage of time has meant for Snyder, for the city of Beijing, for the tough-but-heart-of-gold director of the school, and for the kids, now age 20.
The film is funny and poignant in its own right; it made me fonder of Beijing than I would otherwise be; and it is one of the most powerful demonstrations of a theme I've tried to get across in most articles for the Atlantic: that this is a great big country not of a billion-person mass but of a billion-plus highly individualistic people.
See it in Hong Kong, or see it someplace else, as Snyder continues to work out distribution deals. (I believe it is now on the film-festival circuit.) You will thank me.
October 20, 2008
Non-politics: David Allen's 'GTD Times'
It was only four years ago that I wrote in the Atlantic about David Allen, the "productivity expert" and inventor of the influential Getting Things Done (GTD) approach to life. I say "only" four years because it feels as if Allen and his outlook have been with me for a much longer time.
It's hard to top the wonderful LifeHacker blog as a source for practical tips about gadgetry workplace tools, habits, and shortcuts, many in the GTD spirit. But for the last six months, David Allen's organization has been operating its own "official" blog, called GTD Times. I like it -- and as a sample, I direct your attention to this recent post, arguing that you really do become dumber and slower if you try to do too many things at the same time. This applies not only to that modern plague of texting-while-driving (or walking) but also to having a zillion IM and other popup windows on your screen while you work. For doubters, there is a sobering online test to demonstrate the point, taken from the book The Myth of Multitasking.
What other point was I going to make? I forget, I was thinking about something else...
October 19, 2008
Intersecting arcs: McCain, Powell
The plotlines and character-motivations of the two Bush Administrations, 41 & 43, are perhaps too broad and obvious ever to support a first-rate novel. At least that is what reviews of Oliver Stone's Wsuggest to those, like me, who have not seen the film. (Not yet on the pirate-video market here in Beijing. Maybe next
week.) Or if could be simply that Stone and other Bush chroniclers have taken a family saga of Shakespearean scale and presented it without corresponding richness and nuance.
Still, someone will eventually do something compelling with the intersecting stories of John McCain and Colin Powell, including the latest chapter that began today.
Close contemporaries, born eight months apart; both headed toward military careers, but from very different starting points -- immigrants' son, versus son and grandson of admirals. Lives changed by the Vietnam War, including ultimately putting both on the track to top-level politics.
Powell declining to take what could have been a promising path to the Republican nomination in 2000; McCain trying hard for that nomination but losing out to a slime-rich campaign by GW Bush and Karl Rove. It was during a debate in this campaign that McCain delivered his famous and withering line directly to Bush's face, about his campaign's character-assassination ads. The line, spat out with more contempt than anything McCain later displayed toward Obama, was "You should be ashamed" -- and, when Bush tried to answer, "You should be ashamed."
After that, diverging arcs: Powell providing cover and legitimacy for the Bush-Cheney WMD argument in favor of the Iraq war, and despite acclaim for his record as Secretary of State clearly understanding how his historical standing had been diminished. McCain increasing his "maverick" reputation, before that term became a joke, right through his defense of John Kerry against the Bush-Rove Swift Boat ads in 2004.
And now the arcs reverse again. Powell, with his endorsement of Obama, taking a cleansing step not because he is endorsing a Democrat or the person who, instead of him, has a chance to become the first black President. But rather because Powell is at last free to say the many "Cut the crap!" things that his fealty to the Administration had kept him from saying publicly while in office or until now, ranging from the perverse effects of anti-Muslim hysteria to the dangers of scorched earth political campaigns.
Meanwhile, John McCain, once laid low by those very tactics, embracing them as his best chance for victory this year. Powell, tainted by his association with the Bush Administration, choosing at age 71 to restore his reputation for recognition of higher principles. McCain, who earlier opposed Bush tactics, choosing at age 72 a path that in the end is likely to bring him both defeat and dishonor. Maybe we need a Shakespeare to do this story justice.
October 18, 2008
On Obama's steadiness
As mentioned yesterday, what struck me most, in reviewing Barack Obama's oratorical and debate performance since the first cattle-call, Gravel-equipped televised primary debate early last year, was his unchanging nature. He got better as he went along, but as an improving version of the same thing. I said I couldn't be sure whether Obama's consistency arose from deliberate strategic choice, flawlessly executed over a very long time, or whether it simply reflects the way he is. Odds favor the latter.
Reader D.M. writes about the way this trait has worked in the general election campaign:
I'm hoping it is a
deliberate calculation on Obama's part, or else it is genuine and not a
calculation at all, because it is brilliant. By being a rock- steady,
unflappable, boring (according to some commentators) - Obama accomplishes two
things. It's a lot harder to find any personality hooks for passionate
dislike. See, e.g. Hillary's dynamism, Bush's feigned Texas dialect,
McCain's temper.
Second, by being bland, consistent and totally straight, any tactical changes
by opponents makes them look erratic, scheming and without integrity. Had
Obama joined in the personal mudslinging, he would have slipped his tether, and
would have looked just like McCain. He's a mirror against which we view
the opponent. He's a survey marker against which all territorial changes
of opponents can be measured. It really is a new kind of politics.
And in a related post here, Michael Batz argues that through the course of the debates, Obama has won the argument for "argument" -- that is, for a calm and reasoned approach to issues, not by going with emotion, anger, and the gut. He wrote to me:
In short, McCain is going for emotion and
Obama for reason. Ordinarily, I'd go with emotion, but crazy times flip
everything on its ear. I also am amazed, honestly, that Obama has used these
debates to UTTERLY reverse his public persona from the great lofty orator with
few specifics to the down-in-the-numbers reassuring policy wonk at the same
time he practically destroyed McCain's leadership mantle by baiting him into
anger and carefully pushing the message of McCain as erratic and unpredictable.
It's pretty remarkable.
As always, I give the time-battered caution that we can't know how and whether these traits will work in office until we get a chance to see. But in making it likely that we will get that chance, the campaign approach has indeed been remarkable.
And, as a subject for a later day, I remember how often, how vehemently, and with what certainty Obama's detractors during the Democratic primaries said that he could not, possibly, in any way, in any real world, withstand the onslaught of GOP negative campaigning once it geared up against him. That he's been seriously underestimated twice -- by the Hillary Clinton camp, and now by McCain -- doesn't prove his potential in office but is interesting.
OK, I lied, one more thing about debates
My recent article about the 2007-2008 primary campaign debates -- you remember, "Raise your hand if you can spell 'Paraguay' " -- applied well to the general-election debates in some ways, and was overtaken by events in some others. (Note: this item supersedes my previously-advertised "last words" about the whole topic of debates.)
Here is what strikes me in retrospect as the most important continuity between the earlier round of debates and what we've just seen: It is continuity itself, specifically the unchanging nature of Barack Obama's presentation of himself, his personality, and his message.
I mentioned in the article that Hillary Clinton was technically a much more polished debater than Obama through the primaries. She answered quickly and crisply; she always got to her talking points; she was almost always on her game and almost never fazed. The problem was that the deeper identity and personality she presented changed dramatically from one debate to the next. Conciliatory toward her rivals in some encounters, harshly critical in others, the shifts matching U-turns in the campaign. With equal levels of effectiveness, she could appear to be a different person each time:
Hillary Clinton's level of skill remained consistent; the ends
toward which she used it varied. We have seen this pattern before, with
Al Gore's performances in his three debates against George W. Bush in
2000.... By scoring
logical points but confusing his identity, Gore hurt himself with the
"jury." So did Hillary Clinton.
Obama, by contrast, had varying levels of skill through the debates -- but almost no variation in the personality, message, or what we now call "temperament" he displayed:
Barack Obama's evolution through the debates was just the opposite
of Clinton's. To an amazing degree, his message never changed; it
matured.
Knowing where Obama ended up by the late debates and
primaries, it is easy to see what he was trying to say early on. In his
often fuzzy answers in the early debates, sometimes so long in the
buildup that he didn't get to the main point before his time was cut
off, Obama tried to do two things. He grappled with the question at
hand--paying for his health-care proposals, dealing with Pakistan--while
also moving to the "real question" about the need for a "new kind" of politics.
The pairing of those answers was second nature by the last
debates but not in the early rounds. In these he wasted time on hedges
and footnotes, and did not manage to make his slight pause before
answering seem like a sign of reflection, as it came to later on.
Again, knowing how things are ending up, it's easy to see a pattern looking back. John McCain, likely Hillary Clinton, has suffered from internal shifts and contradictions in his message and affect. Gracious, high-minded, and bi-partisan seeming in some cases. (The first half of his convention speech; interviews like the one mentioned here in which he pleads for a civil, high-road campaign; his generous remarks about Obama just now at the Al Smith dinner in New York; and of course the identity he cultivated with the press over the previous decade or two.) And on the other hand: the choice of Palin, the Bill Ayers-style campaigning, and most of all his ill-concealed contempt and choler through all three debates.
Obama, like all politicians, has trimmed or shifted on some issues and straddled some mismatched policies. But that it is so hard to find contradictions in his style, personality, and larger "work together" message either says something impressive about his discipline or shows something deeper about his essential nature. To persuadable voters, I think it has come across as "integrity" in the neutrally descriptive sense: that is, wholeness and consistency, as opposed to internal tension and contradiction. What it would mean in office we'll see if he wins. I think we've already seen that it is a huge electoral asset.
Poor little USB! Previous chapter here, which includes links back through the whole trail of tears. When last sighted, the USB had been through a Chinese washer and dryer twice, had been resurrected through the miracle balm of WD-40, and was now chugging along in a working computer, minus any protective shell.
(Reminder picture here:)
Let's not get into the details, but ... while operating in that exposed state, the little USB got some, ummmm, beer all over it. It made a snazzling sound, there was a little spark, and suddenly there was no more "Removable Drive F:" on the computer. The beer was only Yanjing, the Beijing area's answer to Shanghai's REEB, so it was as benign and watery a splash as it could be. Still....
Powered down the computer, and started the USB on a long, long soak in WD-40. Now the extensive drying out process begins (below, fresh out of the WD-40, on a napkin from a local eatery). When the vapors of WD-40 have dissipated in a day or two, we'll see just how much this tough little device can take.
October 13, 2008
This is impressive, and yet sort of sad (USB immortality dept)
Over the last three and a half months, I have recounted the travail of my brave little USB stick:
First an unanticipated trip through the washer and dryer. Then, miraculously, it survives and still works! Then, a warning from a tech savant that corrosion is already setting in. Then, a bath in WD-40 as salvation. Then, another trip through the washer and dryer. And another WD-40 dunk. And all the while... still chugging along.
Here is how it looked after the first ordeal:
Yesterday, I grabbed it to switch it to another machine, and the plastic housing simply fell off. Post-traumatic stress effects of the washer and dryer? Of WD-40? Of general abuse? Who knows. Yet even in this naked, skeletal condition .... still it works. Though here is how it looks these days: The bare green circuit board, shown plugged into a ThinkPad, is what's left of the USB stick. It's hard to see in this picture, but its red LED light is flashing, showing that it's actively doing something. (Click for closeup.) The castoff plastic housing, like a shed skin, is beneath it, in two halves.
I will rename my USB stick "Hawking," signifying a being that, as its corporeal shell has suffered and been diminished, has been distilled to its pure thinking essence.
I take these in the spirit of "psst, you have some spinach in your teeth"-style friendly warnings. It dilutes my gratitude not at all to say, I am aware of this, and it was the point! The drollness and incongruity of applying the familiar Brockman theme is what I thought was funny. And, no, no, no, I'm not implying any similarity among the different kinds of overlords! It just made me laugh.
Serious point: when writing for the mixed audience that comes to web sites -- much more thoroughly mixed by nationality, language skill, age range, and cultural reference points than is the case for most print publications -- it can be a challenge to figure out exactly how much to explain. Some parts of an audience will instantly get any quote or reference -- "Luke, I am your father" / Dave's "Top Ten" List / "Harmonious Society" / "I, for one, welcome.." Others won't. Explain too little, and you're being obscure; explain too much, and you risk sounding over-obvious or killing a joke -- with instant feedback either way.
Anyone who has ever written or spoken via any medium in any age has faced the challenge of knowing the audience. But with newspapers, magazines, and books the problem it's not as tricky because like-minded audiences tend to self-select. That's true to a degree of web sites. But the worldwide reach, the scale, the speed, the unpredictable patterns of searching and linking, etc all make for a larger probability that a given posting may be seen by people outside its "natural" audience.
The solution is probably one that good written publications apply in any case, and that is also generally useful in life: finding unobtrusive ways to explain allusions when there's even a slight chance they may be missed. In conversation, I absolutely hate it when people say "Have you heard of Mr. X?" or "Does the name Y mean anything to you?" I prefer to say, "Mr X, who of course was Czar of all the Russias, ..." or "Mr. Y, the renowned pimp from Baltimore,..." If you say "of course" or "the famous" you can convey the information while implying that of course the other party already knows it. On the same principle, I always say my name as the first thing out of my mouth when meeting someone I haven't seen for a while, to avoid any potential "What the hell is this guy's name?" awkwardness on the other end. Correspondingly, I think people are behaving badly when they fail to extend the same courtesy, and I outright hate it when someone asks, "Do you remember me?" I generally do, but this gets things off on the wrong foot.
In any case, thanks to readers for the reminders. And shortly, the much less lighthearted topic of economic collapse. Jeesh.
October 9, 2008
I will always find this topic interesting (language dept.)
Air China night flight, Beijing to Seoul. Air crew is Chinese; passengers, mostly Korean. And the language I hear around me, as the flight attendants yell "You must sit down! Our airplane is taking off!" or ask "Do you want rice, or noodles?" ?
Often those very words, in English. Chinese and Korean are both "hard" languages, with limited overlap in writing systems and virtually none in grammar. Though the cultures have interacted for centuries, these days speakers of one language are apparently less likely to speak the other than to know some English. The point is unsurprising but its manifestations are often interesting.
This is not to imply that English will get you far in either place.
And speaking of universal languages, it may not be hard to guess where I dined in Seoul this evening:
A question I've often asked myself
From Kate Atkinson's chilling new novel When Will There Be Good News?, in a scene where a man drives through the hinterland in a rented car:
There was no signal on his phone, and the radio had given out nothing but crackle and hiss for some time now. The CD player contained one disc accidentally left over from the previous rental, and Jackson wondered in what circumstances he would feel so desperate for the sound of another voice that he would listen to Enya's.
(For Enya fans, this is just a little joke, occasioned by the view in our household that the most reliable gender marker is not in fact the Y-chromosome but rather an appetite for County Donegal's answer to Kenny G. No joke, though, Atkinson's book is remarkable.)
October 7, 2008
The only thing I will say about debate #2 in real time
Two minutes ago, McCain half-pointing at Obama and calling him, in the third person, that one.
The sense of seeing in real time a gesture that will be regretted for a long time.
One clip worth a thousand words
Andrew Sullivan and others have already mentionedthis clip by TPMtv, but here is why I think it is important: It does a lot to explain why many people who felt they "knew" John McCain in his earlier DC life have been slow to face and accept what he has become.
The video alternates clips of the "good" McCain, talking about respect and commitment to high-road politics, with ads and other evidence of the way he is running his campaign.
For another time, discussion of whether the "good" McCain was ever an authentic product. I'll just say, many people including me found it appealing at the time. What is undeniable is the contrast between the way he then seemed and the way he now acts. This is obviously an anti-McCain clip, but I think it's instructive even for his supporters. And, in real time before tonight's debate, it shows the range of personas he might choose to project.
October 6, 2008
Our capacity for self-government
From twelve time zones away, it looks as if the United States is in one of those moments where the capacity to get serious and face big problems is sorely tested.
In the short term, a worldwide financial panic and crisis. Just beyond that, the real economic and social problems that come when large numbers of people lose their jobs, their businesses, their investments, their homes, and even larger numbers become fearful about what might happen to them. And then, when we get a minute to think, profound global energy and environmental challenges, security concerns that range from loose nukes to terrorist organizations, plus a couple of ongoing wars and ever-rising medical costs. Just as starters. The United States is still incredibly rich, powerful, and productive. But the current situation is no joke, for America or the world.
In these circumstances, and with a presidential election four weeks away, is it conceivable that candidates will waste time arguing whether one of them has been in the same room with a guy who had been a violent extremist at a time before most of today's U.S. citizens were even born? (William Ayres was a Weatherman in the late 1960s. Today's median-aged American was born around 1972.) Of course, it's not only conceivable: it's the Republican plan for this final push -- "turning the page" on economic concerns and getting to these "character" and "association" questions about Barack Obama.
Grow up. If John McCain has a better set of plans to deal with the immediate crisis, and the medium-term real-economy fallout, and the real global problems of the era -- fine, let him win on those. But it is beneath the dignity he had as a Naval officer to wallow in this mindless BS. I will say nothing about the dignity of a candidate who repeatedly winks at the public, Hooters-waitress style. A great country acts great when it matters. This is a time when it matters -- for politicians in the points they raise, for journalists in the subjects they write about and the questions they ask of candidates. And, yes, for voters.
October 2, 2008
The debate tonight
I have no idea what to expect any more. And, hey, I'm the champion debate watcher in the entire world!
For instance:
"Everyone knows," based on a long string of past episodes, that some unintentional flash of character revelation usually turns out to be the memorable aspect of a presidential debate. Eg: Nixon looking furtive and sweaty in 1960, Ford momentarily seemed befuddled in 1976, Dukakis seeming bloodless in 1988, etc. All these moments "mattered" because they crystallized a feeling that, in retrospect, people knew they'd "always had" about the candidate.
In the days since the first Obama-McCain debate, it's become ever clearer that John McCain's sourness and anger are the traits unintentionally revealed in the debate and now working against him. His shockingly dyspeptic performance two days ago at the Des Moines Register was as remarkable as Bill Clinton's worst moments during the primary season this year. The difference is that in his prime Clinton never allowed the public to see that side of him. Plus, the image Clinton had cemented back then was of someone who was genial and talented though undisciplined. Thanks to McCain's hostile refusal to engage Obama as a human equal face-to-face at the debate, the image he is cementing is that of a seething older man. Like Bob Dole in 1996, with less of a gift for one-liners.
It all fits into a pattern in retrospect -- but I don't know a single "expert" who predicted that avoiding eye contact would be the enduring image of the first debate. By similar reasoning, I'm sure that two or three days from now, we'll all say "Of course!" about some moment in the Biden-Palin debate that none of us can foresee now. That's why we watch! .
"Everyone knows" that Sarah Palin has set expectations so low that she is likely to do "surprisingly" well. Joe Biden will be judged on whether he gets anything wrong; Palin, on whether she gets anything right.
But each time we think we've seen the bottom of her performance, she has gone on to do even worse. Looking back, her reponse to Charlie Gibson about "the Bush doctrine" now seems harmless and comparatively well-informed. Each of her interviews with Katie Couric has revealed greater ignorance, compared with the previous one.
The latest, about the Supreme Court, was unbelievable not for the most highly-publicized reason (inability to name any Court decision other than Roe v Wade) but for her apparent unfamiliarity with the relationship between the U.S. Constitution and individual states' rights. She asserted, with great geniality and calm, that a right could be "inherent" in the Constitution but then be administered at each state's discretion. Kind of like the right to vote regardless of gender being recognized in the 19th Amendment, but then left to each state to enforce or not. People have remarked on her nervousness when grasping for names or references. I actually find her confidence at moments like this more disturbing, since it indicates that she has no idea of what she has revealed.
I still think she'll beat expectations, because her basic political and empathetic skills have to be better than what we've seen so far. Also, the format of the debate allows less room for the immediate follow-up questions that Katie Couric used to such polite but devastating effect. But it's all a guess.
"Everyone knows" that Joe Biden has to be careful tonight -- not make any more of his own frequent gaffes, not do anything that would engender (interesting word in itself) underdog sympathy for Palin. But no one really knows beforehand how much assertiveness by Biden would seem too much, too little, or Just Right. Once it's over, we'll all be able to judge whether he struck the right balance. Ahead of the game, no one can be sure.
Sign of my sincerity in saying this will be deeply interesting: postponing a big trip for 24 hours, because the original schedule would have had me on an airplane when the debate goes live. This is not to be missed.
September 29, 2008
Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?
I am late on the follow-up to this story, already addressed by my colleagues Sullivan and Coates, plus, notably, Todd Gitlin. On the other hand, I was early in identifying the original problem!
The original problem was McCain's flat, obvious, no-two-ways about it, witnessed- by-tens-of-millions-of-people refusal to look at Obama at any point during the debate last week. The problem now is the contrast between that indisputable reality and McCain's flat refusal to admit that this was so, in his interview yesterday with George Stephanopoulos. (Excerpt from interview at end of this post; representative photo, via Andrew Sullivan, right here.)
There are three ways to account for McCain's current claim:
1. He did not remember on Sunday morning the way he had behaved on stage 36 hours earlier; 2. The reasons for his behavior were so powerful, instinctive, and atavistic that he was not aware of what he was doing at the time; 3. He was aware of his behavior at the time, and remembers it, but has decided that this is not a plus and so is telling a lie.
Logically I see no alternative to these three options. All in all, the least damaging to McCain is probably the last, the flat-out lie.
UPDATE. At the suggestion of several readers, I'll agree that logically there is a possibility #4, or maybe #3.5: That McCain has mis-remembered his behavior in a convenient and more positive way, so that he is "sincere" in saying that the worst aspects of it didn't happen. This is less a "flat-out lie" than a common sort of self-delusion. Whatever the genesis, his body-language on stage was unbelievably insulting and classless.
________
STEPHANOPOULOS: You know, during the debate, it seemed that you were reluctant to look at Senator Obama.
MCCAIN: I wasn't.
STEPHANOPOULOS: No?
MCCAIN: Of course not.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, we went back through the tape, and some people
were saying that that was showing disdain for him. Is that fair?
MCCAIN: I was looking at the moderator a great deal of time. I was
writing a lot of the time. I in no way know how that in any way would
be disdainful.
September 28, 2008
At last for Mike Mussina!
My sons adopted Mike Mussina as their favorite player when he came up to the Orioles in 1991 and seemed an ace of limitless promise. At the time, the Orioles were classy and great, and were the only available "local" team for kids in the DC area.
Since then, Mussina has been very good, and has become extremely rich, but has had a kind of asterisk for coming within an inch of a number of unquestionable milestones. Eighteen wins in his first full season, then 19 wins in two other early years. But not 20, for various hard-luck reasons. A perfect game taken well into the ninth inning -- I still remember the screams around the TV in our living room when that blew up. Number two in Cy Young voting one year (behind Pedro M), in the top handful seven other times -- but never the winner. Going from the Orioles, whose descent into mediocrity seemed to deny him a chance at the world series, to the unlovable Yankees just as their era of dominance was ending and just in time to join their gradual descent.
Today, it looked like one more "what might have been" moment. Starting with 19 wins, in his last appearance of the season, he took a 3-0 lead into the seventh. And then, as in the bad old Orioles days, the bullpen came within one run of letting him down. They escaped (thanks to 9th-inning Yankee offense) which meant that he escaped -- and ends up 20-9. Whew! What happens from now on with Moose is impossible to say, but for now, congrats.
September 26, 2008
I've now seen much of the Katie Couric / Sarah Palin interview...
... and I genuinely feel sorry for Palin. This really is pathetic. Again it's not a mass/elite matter. Anyone who has been to high school immediately recognizes the terror of facing a pop quiz or an oral exam when you just have no idea what you're talking about.
One hour after her pick was announced, I wrote here:
Let's assume that Sarah Palin is exactly as smart and disciplined as
Barack Obama. But instead of the year and a half of nonstop campaigning
he has behind him, and Joe Biden's even longer toughening-up process,
she comes into the most intense period of the highest stakes campaign
with absolutely zero warmup or preparation. If she has ever addressed
an international issue, there's no evidence of it in internet-land.
The
smartest person in the world could not prepare quickly enough to know
the pitfalls, and to sound confident while doing so, on all the issues
she will be forced to address...
So
the prediction is: unavoidable gaffes. The challenge for the
McCain-Palin campaign is to find some way to defuse them ahead of time,
since Socrates, Machiavelli, and Clausewitz reincarnated would
themselves make errors in her situation. And the challenge for
Democrats is to lead people to think, What if she were in charge?,
without being bullies about it.
My for-the-sake-of-argument assumption was unwarranted. She is not as smart or disciplined as Barack Obama. If she were, she would sound better than she does at this point. And the McCain team has done absolutely nothing to defuse these problems -- nor, to be honest, has Palin herself apparently learned the first thing about successfully finessing questions she is not ready to handle. (Hint: the approach is not the one she has tried to apply with Katie Couric, that of repeating verbatim the answer that did not do the job the first time around.)
Couric deserves better ratings for the CBS news based on the steely relentlessness of her questions. Unlike Charlie Gibson, and unlike Joe Biden in a (possible!) future debate, she has no background complications of the older white man bullying the younger, attractive woman. She was a professional woman who has clearly earned her position grilling someone whose bona fides she clearly doubted.
And Couric displayed one brilliant technique I recommend to all future questioners. When Palin ducked a question about financial-bailout provisions, saying that "John McCain and I" had not yet reached a decision, Couric asked the deadly question: "So what are the pros and cons?" There is no way to fake your way around that. As Palin showed.
September 24, 2008
Worst self-inflicted campaign move ever?
Candidates have made a lot of unforced errors over the years. Richard Nixon promising to campaign in all 50 states when running against John Kennedy in 1960 -- and getting sick, tired, and cadaver-looking as a result. Nixon again thinking he had to get those crucial Democratic National Committee records from the Watergate building in 1972. (He obviously made it through the election, but then....) Dukakis getting into the tank in 1988.
But compared with John McCain "suspending" his campaign and trying to postpone the debates? Puh-leeze. None of the reasons below is original, but it's worth adding them up to see how risky McCain's proposal is, in giving people impressions he doesn't want to convey.
The senator with (understandably) one of the lowest actual-attendance rates at the Capitol in the last two years, and who has played little role in crafting legislation recently, suddenly needs to be nowhere but Washington -- exactly now?
The candidate whose strongest claim to office is his experience, mastery, and understanding of foreign policy, cannot handle a debate on that topic, against a rookie, when he has other things on his mind?
The candidate who wants to quash any suspicion that he is not quick enough, not vigorous enough, or not multi-tasking enough to handle a job that poses a new challenge every minute, is essentially asking for everyone to take things a little slower so he can concentrate?
The candidate whose first response to the financial crisis was to propose firing the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and whose second response was to run ads linking his opponent (hazily) to former Fannie Mae officials (before news came out that his own campaign manager was still on the Freddie Mac payroll), now wants us to believe that statesmanship and love of country govern his every move on this issue?
The most famously stoic candidate of recent times is willing to have it look as if he's running away from a confrontation while he's behind.
Now, maybe I am misjudging my fellow citizens. Maybe most people will say: Yes, it's perfectly understandable that John McCain, having traveled constantly for years on the campaign trail, suddenly can't make it down to Mississippi on Friday. We respect him all the more! But I don't think this is some mass-vs-elite type question. This involves basic "dog ate my homework" appearances that anyone can understand.
To my taste, the strongest moment in John McCain's long debating history happened more than eight years ago, when he took on George W. Bush in South Carolina. McCain was furious at Bush for the underhanded campaign ads the Bush-Rove campaign had run against him in the South. He excoriated Bush (description of the whole scene after the jump) and, with acid in his voice, said "You should be ashamed."
If that John McCain were still around, I can guess what he would think about the man now campaigning under his previously-good name. ______________
A week and a half ago, when Barack Obama seemed to be floundering and the McCain-Palin team was in ascent, I mentioned Chuck Spinney's observation that McCain might in fact be in the process of destroying himself.
Spinney's argument -- with excerpts after the jump -- was that McCain's tactical, day by day, "winning the news cycle" plan for attacking Obama with often-misleading ads could amount to a strategic, long-term, self-inflicted defeat. The idea was that McCain's entire political identity rested on an image of honesty, decency, and not playing petty political games. So if his campaign seemed to contradict his essential values, it could in the end hurt him more than its intended victim.
By the way: McCain didn't need Spinney to explain this principle to him. It's basically the same point McCain has passionately made in saying that a decent, democratic society committed to rule-of-law simply cannot afford to condone torture as official policy.
(Why didn't the same Swiftboat scorched-earth tactics hurt GW Bush? Well, given the extreme narrowness of the margins in 2000 and 2004, perhaps they did. But the real point is, Bush never relied on a reputation for bipartisan, above-the-fray, national-interest politics the way McCain has.)
I'll have more about McCain's latest debate "plan" and financial proposals later this evening. For the moment I say: the obvious, desperate, 100% transparent stunt of ducking the first debate for the "good of the nation" exactly fits Spinney's analysis. For each voter who believes McCain's explanation for this proposal, ten more will say: Are you kidding? How gullible do you think we are?
It is a long, depressing, and self-inflicted descent for a man many people, including me, once respected.
And by the way, whatever McCain does, Obama should show up as scheduled at Ole Miss for the debate.
Many people have noted that this past week was a bad time for John McCain to have published an article promising to deregulate the health insurance industry, "as we have done over the last decade in banking," given the collapse of the banking industry due in part to that deregulation.
True enough. For later, something "serious" about the relationship between financial chaos and the McCain/Palin predicament in this race.
But my immediate reaction to the flap was to sympathize with whatever poor schlub had actually cranked out the article in question, which appeared in Contingencies, the closely-followed journal of the American Academy of Actuaries. The article just before it in Contingencies's newest issue was "An Actuary Weighs the Proposals." I love the magazine business.
1) If you feel as if you'll drink the hemlock if you have to hear another discussion about the short-knives tactics of the campaign -- which negative McCain themes are working, whether Obama needs to get more negative fast -- I highly recommend instead listening to this 40-minute Fresh Air interview, originally aired two days ago. In it, Terry Gross draws out Andrew Bacevich, of Boston UniversityCollege [brain-freeze typo, sorry] on his views about America's strategic situation. Bacevich, whom I have praised many times here before, is no pinko or softie. West Point grad; career Army guy; self-proclaimed conservative; and, a delicate point, the father of a son who was killed in combat in Iraq.
Listen to the interview, reflect, and moan about the way these issues generally get discussed when we choose our next crop of leaders. I will also mention, because it's relevant to Bacevich's outlook, this cover story, by me, in the Atlantic two years ago. Update: This interview with Bacevich, on Bill Moyers Journal last month, is also worth watching.
2) On the same strategic level I recommend a dispatch, after the jump, by Chuck Spinney. Spinney, who is now on an extended stay outside the country, was for decades a leading "defense reform" advocate inside the Pentagon and close collaborator with the legendary John Boyd. One of Boyd's great insights was that the moral element of conflict -- between nations, companies, or even political candidates -- had tremendous importance in the end. Spinney applies that logic to the McCain-Obama race. ______
In which I reveal myself as Marie Antoinette (VPN dept)
Through the past year-plus I've discussedseveraltimes the value of Virtual Private Networks, VPNs, for avoiding the hassles created by China's internet-control system generally known as the Great Firewall. I won't give one more plug for the for-pay service my wife and I have been using, since I've mentioned it so often. But at $40 per year, per computer, to us it is worthwhile.
In an Atlantic article six months ago about the Great Firewall, I noted that $40 per year meant different things to different people:
An expat in China [me!] thinks: that's a little over a dime a day. A Chinese factory worker thinks: [$40] is a week's take-home pay. Even for a young academic, it's a couple days' work.
My reaction to a new VPN offering shows that I may have forgotten my previous point. The service is called Hot Spot Shield, from AnchorFree. It's effective, extremely easy to install and run, designed for both Windows and Mac -- and absolutely free. (To download, and for more info, go here.)
I first heard about this from my friend Simon Elegant, and then from other China-based users. I tried it and found it technically very nice and efficient. But I didn't like using it at all. The reason is its "ad-based" business plan. In order to underwrite its free VPN service, it inserts an inch-high banner ad, often flashing, at the top of every new web page you load or visit. There is a "close" button on those ads, but unless you click it every single time, you have an extra, flashing ad wherever you go.
To me, on a day at the desk when I might open hundreds of new web sites, it is worth a total of 11 cents not to see a flashing banner at the top of every one. But the recent surge of interest in Hotspot Shield within China suggests that for lots of people, this is an attractive tradeoff.
Update: Peter Bollig reports that the Opera browser automatically ignores the banner ads. Probably others can be configured the same way, but I didn't take the time to figure out how to do so with IE or Firefox.
I have absorbed enough Protestant sermons, homilies, and parables over the years to think that I can usually pick up Christian "dog whistles" in political speeches. Those are the words and phrasings that signal to some listeners that you are part of their "faith community," but that other members of the audience don't hear at all. Simplest example: when George W. Bush talks about "Providence" in his speeches, he doesn't mean a city in Rhode Island.
But I guess I must have really lost some of my high-frequency hearing. Because I entirely missed the cue in what I previously described as the "weird" and illogical homily in Mike Huckabee's convention speech.
As a reminder: Huckabee told a shaggy-dog story about a teacher who wouldn't let students have their school desks until they explained how to "earn" a desk. The punchline was that they didn't have to earn desks at all! US military veterans had earned them for the students, through their sacrifice.
At face value, this simply makes no sense. If the U.S. had no brave veterans and had lost every single war, it would still have schools and desks, since even conquered countries do. (It would be different if the story concerned voting booths, the free press, protest marches, or other signs of liberty that American veterans had defended things that on the battlefield.) But, as explained in this post at the Taking Steps site, the story makes perfect sense once you assume that its real subject is eternal salvation through the grace and sacrifice of Jesus:
This is the doctrine of "Grace, Not Works" or "Grace Alone," a theological position expounded during the Reformation, cuddled by Calvin*, and popular among evangelical Christians. It's not a desk, it's a place in Heaven. And it's not soldiers we're talking about, it's Jesus Christ.
The post goes on to interpret the whole allegory. Of course that's the explanation, as anyone who has listened to religious radio shows should know. I feel silly to have missed it. (Why else would Huckabee, an ordained minister and very smart person, keep using the story in his stump speeches, despite its surface-level pointlessness?) Thanks to Karen Seriguchi for the lead.
At one level, I feel better to see that Huckabee was getting at something with this tale. At other levels..... _____ * One could argue that Luther works better here than Calvin, but that's not the main point for now.
August 31, 2008
A proud father notes
Annie Kaufman, Tad Fallows:
Married today, August 31, 2008, Pasadena, California.
August 18, 2008
Empty-seat mystery, cont.
In several previous posts I've mentioned the paradox of Olympic tickets being flat "sold-out," yet huge tracts of seats sitting empty. Many people have written in to solve the mystery. This, from Alf Hickey, reflects the consensus view:
Large amounts of empty seats are actually quite common at Chinese concerts or sporting events that claim to be "sold out." The reason for this is that a large amount of tickets are given to the bigwigs who organize the events so they can guanxi them out ["build relationships"] as needed. Since the Olympics had so many different organizing bodies, the central government, the local Beijing government and the Chinese Olympic committee, I'm sure there were vast amounts tickets given to various officials.
The reason that these tickets are not used is that by the rules of Chinese guanxi, you don't refuse a gift, especially not from someone connected enough to get Olympic tickets. So the tickets to the rowing finals are probably in the hands of people who have no desire to see the event, but just needed to stay in the good graces of some random Beijing bureaucrat. I suspect that the tickets have already changed hands more than once, passed along like a box of moon cakes that no one actually wants to eat.
Biggest news of the Olympics for China: Liu Xiang is out
Incredible. During the entirety of our past two years in China, Liu Xiang has been the face of the upcoming Olympic games. He is China's greatest-ever track and field athlete, defending Olympic gold medalist in the 110m hurdles, the man whose smile and whose action-shots soaring over hurdles we have seen in maybe ten thousand TV ads, billboards, subway signs, and every other medium.
In happier times, as Olympic champion in Athens:
He stumbled just now in a heat in which someone else false-started; then he withdrew from the event. As I mentioned a month ago, Liu has probably been under more individual pressure than any other person involved in these Games. It would be as if Michael Phelps were the only American ever to have won a gold medal in swimming -- Liu's position among Chinese male track and field athletes -- and would be racing only once, in the 50-yard freestyle.
Liu has known for four years that a billion-plus people in his country would be watching -- and that, in something less than thirteen seconds, he would be celebrated forever as the man who helped glorify the Olympics and his country, or reviled as a big disappointment. I don't have them on hand at the moment, but there have been many recent quotes to the effect of: "If Liu Xiang fails to win a second gold, on his home soil in front of his countrymen, everything he has achieved so far will be dirt." Etc.
Probably there's something so wrong with his foot or Achilles tendon that he couldn't even try to compete in the re-run of the heat. But it would be natural and human if it were something more too: perhaps better not to try at all than to be captured forever on tape coming up short. It's hard to feel sorry for someone as rich and celebrated as Liu Xiang. But you can sympathize.
August 13, 2008
Two very eloquent articles about the people behind China's gold-medal run
This wonderful article by Rebecca Blumenstein in the Wall Street Journal, about Chen Yanqing, a female Chinese weightlifter who is now a repeat Olympic gold medalist and part of the dominant Chinese weight squad I've been following on TV. The article was published a few days ago, so check it out soon in case it is one of the WSJ articles that times-out in a week and goes off the public site. A sample, from the lead:
As a child, Chen Yanqing was the fastest girl in this
farming village. She often outran the boys. One day at a sporting
match, a coach noticed her throwing skills and took out a tape measure.
She was 11 years old, and the muscles in her arms and legs were
extraordinary.
So was the proposition her parents received: Release their daughter to the state, and she could go away to sports school and improve her future, with possible financial benefits for the entire family.
"It was rock hearted of us, but we had no choice," says her father, a farmer named Chen Zufu. "If we didn't send her away to sports school, she would have ended up a farmer."
Later in the story, Blumenstein quotes the father as saying, "A rich person would never let his child do this." Worth bearing in mind whenever you hear about the "natural" collective-mindedness of today's Chinese.
Also, this one, by Adrian Wojnarowski on Yahoo Sports, about the burden Yao Ming is carrying for his country, even though it's not likely to lead to a medal of any sort. (Thanks to Rick Gunnell for the tip.) Both well worth reading.
Jia you!
August 11, 2008
Non-Olympics, non-China: check out Josh Green's memo haul
In case you have not seen any of the (deserved) zillion other references to this at various Atlantic sites, it is very much worth reading my colleague Joshua Green's new story about what went wrong with Hillary Clinton's campaign, and the trove of memos he collected while reporting the story.
Josh has done an outstanding job on this beat for a long time, starting with his definitive article nearly two years ago about how Hillary Clinton's success in the Senate had prepared her, and perhaps mis-positioned her, for a run for the presidency. Also, as everyone in media-land knows, a year ago GQ commissioned him for a big piece on the Clinton campaign -- which the magazine then killed, by all accounts as part of a deal to get better access to Bill Clinton for a different story. Josh then published this excellent account instead in the Atlantic.
The magnum opus among the memos, based on what I've seen, is this one from Mark Penn, which is sure to be parsed and reflected-upon for months and years.
Related thought that comes to my mind while reading through these documents: I make my living writing things down, but even I have reached the point where I am not willing to put any sentiment whatsoever into reproducible form -- in an email that could be forwarded, in a document that could be cut-and-pasted -- without thinking about how it would look if it got into unintended hands.
That is, the perfection of the technology for spreading and sharing written material has made writing weirdly less useful for conveying private thought. It's risky as a way to share thoughts about running a political campaign; it's reckless as a way to say anything about any other person you might not want him or her to hear. The evolution of technology may return us to the era when the no-tech face-to-face meeting, or the hard-to-copy handwritten note, is the most secure means of communication. And when written statements, even in the "privacy" of email, are necessarily blanded-down by pre-knowledge that they could turn up somewhere unexpected months or years or decades later.
Hmmm, maybe this explains some of my visa problems?
President George W. Bush was there with his family in suit and tie,
despite strong advice against it from John MacCaine, Nancy Pelosi, Mia
Fallows, and probably his own conscience....
_____
Explaining the joke #1: Mia F is a big activist for declaring the Beijing Olympics the "Genocide Olympics" because of China's role in Darfur.
Explaining #2: Close study will reveal that her last name is in fact subtly different from mine....
Explaining #3: In contrast to Mia Farrow, I think that Bush did the right thing in attending the ceremonies and some events -- but also speaking up for values of liberty and religious tolerance.
Explaining #4: Actually my visa is just fine! Still, it made me think.....
Bonus explanation #5, pointed out by several readers: Pelosi told him that in the heat he should stick to a nice blue sports shirt. ("...in suit and tie,
despite strong advice against it..")
August 10, 2008
"Chauvinism" and Olympic TV
Every four years some people moan and hand-wring about American TV's excessive focus on American athletes and the Olympic events where Americans are likely to win medals.
These people need to get out more.
Or at least they need to spend a little time watching CCTV in China. Today's early morning and evening Olympic coverage -- was gone in the interim, at a real Olympic venue about which more later -- focused heavily on events like Women's Air Pistol (Gold medal: China), Men's Air Pistol (Gold medal: China), Women's 48kg Weightlifting (Gold medal: China), Men's 56kg Weightlifting (Gold medal: China), and... you get the idea.
This applied even to coverage of the Sunday morning's swimming finals, Saturday night in the US. This is not a strong category for China, but after each race the replays and interview were with whatever Chinese swimmer had made it into the finals. When that swimmer did well, as with the silver medalist in the 400m men's freestyle, there was a happy-seeming interview. In the other cases, including when swimmers dragged in dead last, there would be a stiff-upper-lip interview with the athlete and melancholy -- I will say mawkish -- shots of the coach or parents getting teary-eyed in the stands.
This is normal! I switched just now to Korean TV, where I saw the Korean team playing soccer. Then NHK, the Japanese network, with a badminton doubles match involving a Japanese team.
The Olympic Games are for "the youth of the world," but they're organized and scored by countries. It's no surprise that countries treat them as vehicles of national pride, and assume that their people will be most interested in their own athletes. So anybody who was saving up to write an angry letter, blog post, or op-ed about NBC's chauvinistic coverage: don't bother! They're actually more above-the-fray than most. Also, their coverage is not shown anywhere except America -- I know, it's because I can't get it that I'm watching Women's Air Pistol -- so can't ruffle feathers elsewhere.
Now, I have to get back to listening to CCTV announcers yell piaoliang! -- "beautiful!" -- whenever Yao Ming sinks a three-pointed in the US-China basketball game now turning into a runaway. (And in fairness, they've said piaoliang! after some shots by LeBron and Kobe too.)
August 7, 2008
About those U.S. cyclists with gas masks
I don't mean to judge them as people. They did the right thing in apologizing. But in wearing protective masks inside the Beijing airport they were acting like jerks.
Photo by AFP
I grant: these are athletes at the peak of their conditioning. But they can't endure the air inside a building? While they're walking, rather than running or breathing hard? And for the few minutes it would take to get past all the photographers and into the privacy of their buses or cars?
Yeah, no kidding, the air in Beijing is worth complaining about. I've done so plenty, starting with an article I wrote more than two years ago, shortly after I arrived:
Many aspects of the new, improved China will be up for the world's
inspection during the Olympic Games. But there is one little catch: the
air. Unless something radical changes, I do not understand how athletic
events can take place in air as dirty as Beijing's....
Everyone assumes
that when the time comes for the Games, the authorities will do
whatever they have to--closing factories, banning private traffic--to
bring pollution down to an endurable level.... Still. If the marathon runners, or
even the archers, can finish their events without clutching their
chests and keeling over, the Chinese authorities will have accomplished
something special.
But complaints should come in the context of realizing that Chinese officials, companies, and citizens actually have done quite a lot to try to cope with the problem (details here) -- and that it's sad in many ways, rather than contemptible, that the first view the world's TV audience will have of spiffed-up Beijing will be of the opaque gray-brown skies. Unless, of course, there's a big cleansing wind out of Mongolia right now.
It's embarrassing enough for the Chinese hosts that the air looks so bad. It's tasteless, prissy, and showboating for visitors to rub it in this way. (Again, I'm talking about wearing the masks inside, in front of cameras, while standing around -- not sensible precautions for training.)
Why should I rub it in, now that the cyclists have done themselves and their country credit by apologizing? Just to set down an early marker that there is such a thing as dignified and considerate behavior -- even for athletes on the cusp of the competition of their lives, and even when coming to a country where there are ample legitimate grounds for complaint.
August 6, 2008
Uncle! Or let's make that, 叔叔!
In response to widespread popular demand, I will admit: screwed-up translations of Chinese into English can be very funny! The G-rated classic version is this one:
(That picture has been widely circulated; I found it here.) The R- and X- rated versions can be found in considerable detail here -- scroll all the way down and you'll see what I mean.
So what did I mean, in recently cutting some slack to the geniuses who produced the "Wet Turban Needless Wash" that I received on a recent Air China flight? Or the zillion other instances of laughable mis-translations into English I come across all the time in China. ("Please shit here" over a toilet -- not sure if it's a typo, or an instruction.) Only this:
When you're a native speaker of what has become the dominant international language, there's something undeniably Colonel Blimp-ish in making fun of the locals for their flawed command of your own mother tongue. Especially when this is happening in their own country, and all the more so when the people doing the chuckling can't do as well in Chinese as the Chinese are trying to do in English. In my observation, the less effort an outsider has put into coping with Chinese language, the more likely he or she is to chortle at the embarrassing "Chinglish" signs.
So just as a personal matter, laughing at someone else's mistakes in your (outside, Western, superpower) native language is not that charming a thing to do.
On the other hand, it truly is bizarre that so many organizations in China are willing to chisel English translations into stone, paint them on signs, print them on business cards, and expose them permanently to the world without making any effort to check whether they are right. I can't resist this example: when we lived in Shanghai, a local museum had a very evocative and politically daring exhibit about villages that were being drowned by the Three Gorges Dam. And on huge banners outside, in letters six feet high, it said: "Three Georges Exhibit." If they had shown the banners to anyone who actually spoke English....
Why does this happen? I wish I knew. In micro terms, it must come from rote reliance on dictionaries or translation software. For instance, the title of this post: the dictionary will tell us that 叔叔, shu shu, means an uncle. But of course it does not mean what "Uncle!" means in U.S. slang -- as any Chinese speaker would point out if you asked him to check out the title. (For those who don't know, "Uncle!" means, "I give up! You win!") In the larger sense, why so many people would so carelessly waste money and -- the real mystery, considering Chinese sensitivities -- so brazenly expose themselves to ridicule is a puzzle. Learning a language means being willing to make mistakes. That's different from presenting formal, error-filled material for outsiders to read.
After the jump, a sample (long) bit of testimony from someone who thinks it's time for a harder line on mistranslations -- and more laughing too. To which I can only say, 叔叔! ___________________
Americans' faith that they can do anything, that they won't be bogged down by the frustrations that stymie lesser peoples, is one of their (our) greatest attributes. And one of the most dangerous.
The French got bogged down in Vietnam? No problem, we'll do it right. The Brits in Iraq? The Soviets (and Brits) in Afghanistan? Step aside, and we'll show you how it's done.
Thus this note in today's NYT from a writer who is determined to keep up her running discipline while in Beijing for the Olympics:
Yes, I'm going. I'll be part of the New York Times reporting team.
And yes, I intend to run when I'm in China. I'll even have a training
schedule and will e-mail my results to [her coach] and talk to him via Skype.
One
running partner, if our plans work out, will be Mary Wittenberg,
president of New York Road Runners. She hopes to run for an hour at
least every other day, if not more often.
"I'm going in there optimistic," she said. "How bad can it be?"
Hooo boy. ("How bad can it be?," Donald Rumsfeld asked as he approved the stripped-down troop plans for Iraq. "How bad can it be?" asked Robert S. McNamara...)
Before coming here two years ago, I had been a pretty serious runner for many decades in the past. Never broke three hours in the Boston or Marine Corps marathons, but came close. (3:02, but who's counting.) Once insanely took part in a 24-hour relay marathon, in which teams of ten people took turns running a mile each on a track, around the clock -- and our goal was to average under 5:15 per mile over the whole period, though that was long ago.
Yet I have not found it sensible to run outside, even one time, in Shanghai or Beijing. Of course there were days when I could have done so. But on average??? That's what the indoor gym is for, with its illusion of filtered air.
Good luck to the NYT running team, and to the Olympics as a whole. And may America preserve the good parts of its touching "how bad can it be?" creed.
Coates, Yglesias, (Fallows), and Atlantic Blogs
I am sorry to see the talented and original-minded Matthew Yglesias leave the Atlantic's blog team, and I wish him well at his new site. I am glad to see the talented and original-minded Ta-Nehisi Coates join the Atlantic's blog team.
A word about that team and its makeup. Four of its members, as you can tell by their output, are "real" bloggers, whose work on this site is their main job for the Atlantic. These are: Andrew Sullivan, Megan McArdle, Marc Ambinder, and now Ta-Nehisi Coates. Matthew Yglesias was previously in this category.
Four of us, as you can also usually tell by our output, are in a different situation, with online writing as a side responsibility that is supposed to fit around, and come second to, main jobs writing or editing articles for the print magazine. These are: Ross Douthat, Clive Crook, Jeffrey Goldberg, and me.
As is evident in many ways, I am not producing an actual blog. So perhaps this is a moment for a one-time-only explanation of what I think I am doing, which appears after the jump.
I don't think "funny" translations are all that funny...
... my theory being, I am allowed to make fun of someone's translation of Chinese into English only when I'm ready to have a Chinese person make fun of my translation of English into Chinese. And I will never be ready to do that.
On the other hand: If I were going to translate something into Chinese, for a wide audience of Chinese people to read, I might possibly consider having a native Chinese speaker take a look at it before I gave the final OK.
Which is why I continue to marvel at specimens like this: the always-welcome "moist towelette" from yesterday's Air China flight from Chengdu to Beijing (click for larger view if the point is not clear): This was not the strangest aspect of the flight, however. As part of a general tightening up of security in China, the screening line in the Chengdu airport required me to do two things I haven't done on any of my 40 or 50 previous domestic flights in the country: remove my belt, and take off my shoes.
It was boiling hot in Chengdu, and I was wearing shorts and moccasin-type shoes with no socks. So when I took the shoes off, I was just there in bare feet. Nonetheless, like the other passengers who had socks on when they removed their shoes, I had to hold my feet up while a young security officer waved a metal-detecting rod around the top, bottom, and sides of them. "Those are my feet," I helpfully pointed out to her. "For the Olympics!" ("为奥运会!") she said, with what looked like a smile.
July 30, 2008
Chinese fender-bender, in five scenes
After several days in the sticks, we drive through a county seat in western Sichuan province. Pass a scene we've come across many many times before -- huge throng of people crowding the street around what appears to be a traffic accident.
Scene 1: the throng itself
Scene 2: dramatis personae emerge. The more-aggrieved party is the young woman on the right in white T-shirt, with arms crossed. (Click for larger shot.) She was riding the blue motorbike, when (apparently) the green taxi make a sudden turn in front of her and she plowed into its side.
The taxi driver, partly visible, is the man she is looking daggers at, who is also looking at her. And a white van marked Gong An, "public security," has just rolled up.
1) Whole different way of thinking about buying books:
Sitting on the airplane at Newark airport Friday afternoon, getting ready for the 13-hour flight to Beijing. People are still trudging aboard, still OK to talk on the phone, chatting with a friend who mentions a great new book he's sure I'll want to read. While talking with him, I take out the Kindle that I got three days earlier, search the Kindle online store, find and buy the book, have it delivered to the Kindle to read during the flight -- all within about two minutes total. Huge reduction in the gap between "thought that a book might be interesting" and "paying money for that book." Works only for books in the Kindle catalogue, of course. Implications not so good for book stores but positive for the overall industry of selling ideas / thoughts / writing, I would think.
2) And about not buying books:
Giant supply of books for free download, in Kindle and other eBook formats, here and here, among other sites. They're mainly out-of-copyright classics, from Ulysses to War and Peace to Huckleberry Finn to Persuasion to Looking Backward to The Oregon Trail to Anne of Green Gables to the Complete Works of Shakespeare (and many by PG Wodehouse). Plus a few new ones. Small donations solicited here. In most cases you download to your computer and transfer to Kindle via USB cable, which is extremely easy.
3) And about the process of reading:
Spent six or seven hours of the flight reading on the Kindle. Perfectly pleasant and legible. Only one inconvenience relative to " real" books -- harder to flip ahead or back several pages at a time. (You scroll page by page, or else go to the table of contents.) And a kind of mental-picture adjustment: it's easier to insert bookmarks or placeholders, or seach for a specific word in the text; harder to have a remembered visual image of a certain passage as it fits on a certain place on a page. Not good for books where pictures, illustrations, maps, production quality matter a lot. Very, very good for reading Word .DOC files or .PDFs that I would otherwise have to read on the computer.
My theory: television didn't eliminate radio, telephones didn't eliminate personal conversations, eBooks won't eliminate real books. People always find more ways to communicate, and this will be another way. Very good for some kinds of information, not so much for others. A welcome new addition to the mix.
July 23, 2008
Our American media landscape
For reasons too odd to contemplate, a quick, business-related, out-and-back trip from Beijing airport to.... Newark! With stay at an airport hotel designed to make me newly grateful for the environmental pleasures of Beijing. Surrounded on three sides by freeways. On the fourth, by check-cashing storefronts, pawn shops, liquor stores, tattoo parlors, car-auction sites. Kind of disappointed not to see some gun shops in there too.
All the other occupants of the hotel that I have seen are flight crews on Newark layovers. At least it's my aspirational peer group! Get to sit with the grizzled pilots in the bar and talk about "there I was...."-type flying tales and which airline will fold next.
On the first night in the hotel, dragging in late from the PEK-EWR flight, I see... a single copy of the New York Times in the hotel gift shop! I snap it up. Second day, leave in a rush before dawn, back late in the afternoon and see there is still one copy of the NYT left. Snap that up too. Just now, day three (nearing the end of the adventure), on my way in to breakfast I see that again I've had the luck to get the last copy of the paper.
I remark on my good fortune to the woman at the news stand. She says, "Oh, sir, we only get the one."
When my family lived in Malaysia twenty years ago, Anwar was the bright-eyed, somewhat fiery-tongued young Malay leader on the rise. Malaysia, then as now a prosperous, diverse, and overall very modern country, then as now had a nascent fundamentalist-Islamist movement to deal with. Anwar in his youth stood for a kind of Islamic reassertion, but of a very suave and modern kind. I was at a conference in Singapore in the late 1980s where he appeared along with Lee Kuan Yew. The arrogant mandarin and the confident young aspirant made an impressive complementary pair.
Then in the 1990s he seemed to pose too direct a challenge to his one-time patron, the overly-long-staying Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir, and he was imprisoned on sodomy charges that most outsiders considered politically motivated. He has recently become eligible to run for office again and has attracted wide support. And now, incredibly, the government has come up with a new 23-year-old male witness to make the same old shocking allegations against him.
I am not aware of anyone outside the Malaysian ruling party who doesn't think this is a politically-engineered charge. To be precise: I know nothing about Anwar's personal life, and perhaps it is conceivable that at two crucial moments in the country's political history he has committed an offense guaranteed to humiliate him in most Malaysians' eyes. But it seems unlikely. The timing and nature of the accusation, this time as before, are too convenient to be easily believable.
Malaysia is a better country than this -- that is, its ruling practices and its judiciary have often been above this kind of opportunism. I hope it shows that it's a better country. Meanwhile, outsiders should remind Malaysia's regime that this is wrong.
July 15, 2008
One thing I had forgotten about Shanghai...
..., before visiting last week, is how many women carry umbrellas to keep the sun from darkening their skin. OK, in this context I should call them "parasols." By whatever name, when women hold these devices over their heads, the difference in our relative heights is such that the metal or bamboo tines are usually right at my eye level. So as I walk down a crowded sidewalk on a sunny day I have my hands up as if to shield my eyes from the glare. I'm really trying to keep them from being poked out from the sides.
What I need is some kind of protective blinder system, like this:
Or, as customized for Western middle-aged man use:
Really, I think I'd shell out for this if I could. No one in Shanghai gives a second glance to people wearing pajamas outside at 4pm, or the older gents who on hottest days wear boxer underwear, flipflops, and nothing else. I bet they'd take this in stride too.
Why not the same problem in Beijing? Maybe the broader streets and sidewalks, so I can keep a safe distance? Women less fastidious on this point? Comparative rarity of direct sun? Don't know but I'll see if I notice them, as the skies clear in the Olympic era.
July 10, 2008
Wonderful online treasure trove of old photos of China
Duke University has has just put online a collection of 5,000 photos shot in China between 1917 and 1932. They were taken by Sidney D. Gamble, heir to part of the Procter & Gamble fortune, who according to the Duke news release was "a sociologist, China scholar and avid amateur photographer."
The photos (that I've seen) vary in artistic quality, but some are great and all are evocative. The most amazing part is that they're searchable. You enter a place name, like Guangzhou, or a keyword, like temple or rice or funeral, and the relevant pictures immediately come up. I'd use one as an illustration, but I'm not sure of the propriety of doing so. You can check them out for yourself here.
Well done Duke, Sidney Gamble, and P&G. And thanks to Michael Ham of Later On for the tip.
July 5, 2008
What you notice about Shanghai if you've been in Beijing for a while
No intention of entering the irresolvable Shanghai v Beijing taste wars. Think Yankees v Redsox, England v France, Rome v Milan, LA v SF. But this is what we notice on a brief return to Shanghai, where we lived for 16 months, after being in Beijing for eight.
- Scale: In its streets, its shops, its buildings, and its ambiance, Shanghai is built for human beings. Beijing, for super-human beings: the emperors of old, the party leaders of today. Crossing the street in front of our apartment in downtown Shanghai required getting across four lanes. In downtown Beijing, 15. (Huangpi Rd in Shanghai, vs East Third Ring Road in Beijing.) Yes, there are little neighborhoods in Beijing, and yes, Shanghai's Pudong district has Beijing-like vast lunar expanses. But in general Beijing is the city of giant buildings and giant roads. Shanghai's People's Square is full of curved paths and intimate areas. Beijing's Tiananmen Square -- well, everyone has seen that.
- The state: In Beijing, it's everywhere. Ministries; embassies; soldiers; police. In Shanghai... government? What government?
- Video stores in Shanghai: more numerous, better stocked, easier to find. See "absence of state power," above.
- Traffic: Much more congested in Beijing, much more reckless in Shanghai. Probably these two are related. That is, Shanghai drivers can build up a dangerous head of steam.
- Pollution: Let's not get into it.
- Stylishly: The way many Shanghainese women carry themselves. No matter what combination of stripes, plaid, op-art, argyles, Hello Kitty, etc they are wearing at the same time.
- Public art: My measure is the share of available billboard and building-side space devoted to Olympic propaganda morale-building posters and pictures. In Beijing, >90%. In Shanghai, <10%. These are approximations. I feel a little nervous and disoriented not seeing my familiar reminders to welcome the world to the games. But I will cope.
July 3, 2008
Dead men walking, USB-stick variety
"In the midst of life we are in death," as the Book of Common Prayer puts it. Every faith has a way of conveying the same idea.
The technology world's version is the sad recognition that any device starts becoming obsolete the instant you buy it. But there perhaps should be a specific line or verse referring to USB sticks. I mentioned recently that one of mine (a PNY Optima Attache model) had survived a trip through the washer and dryer and still worked fine. Reader Gary Allen Vollink brings the unsurprising but sobering news that all is transience even with the hard silicon of USBs:
The corrosion starts once they get wet. There's no stopping it. It will die suddenly and unexpectedly. It will probably take between 4 and 8 weeks.
Sadly, I've done this with THREE already, and one of them was also an Attache. They all reacted - pretty much the same way.
That is -- back up your backup.
Book of Common Prayer: "Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower." Tech world: "Back up your backup." It comes to the same thing.
Update: this does nothing about the human "in the midst of life" problem, but reader Matthew Wilbert reminds me that soaking the USB stick in WD-40 can do wonders against corrosion. "That's (more or less) why it was invented." FWIW.
June 16, 2008
A simple point about being a foreigner in China
I have been complaining about Beijing's bad air, and soon I will complain about some other aspects of China's preparations for the Olympics. So it seemed a good time to make a point that has finally occurred to me in clearer form than before. I think I now can explain why, despite the pollution and congestion and overall ceaseless hassle of big-city life in China, I always tell friends or visitors that I "like" Chinese people in general.
The reason is that, most of the time, people in China treat me as ... a person.
Not always and in every circumstance as a foreigner, though I obviously am that. I hear the Chinese words for "look, a foreigner!" and feel the general ripple of outsiderness much less often than I hear or sense the counterparts in (richer and more sophisticated) Japan. In some rural areas, my wife and I have been the first foreigners that locals had ever seen in person. They were interested but got over it.
Not as a walking bag of money to be taken advantage of, except in the markets, where any potential customer can be treated that way.
A month ago I made a crazed out-and-back trip from Beijing to the U.S. East Coast, stopping in LA, to fulfill an obligation many years in the making. This was to give a commencement speech at Ursinus College, outside Philadelphia. I mention it, on this Father's Day, because it directly concerned my father, and because some of the homilies involved were rounded up in today's NYT selection of "the future lies ahead"-ish thoughts from Commencement speeches. Pensees of mine are nestled in there between those of Clarence Thomas and Jessica Lange.
Here is a transcript of the whole thing, in its 11-minute entirety. Happy Father's Day!
June 8, 2008
The lines in today's NYT most likely to raise Bill Clinton's blood pressure
From Bob Kerrey, former governor and senator from Nebraska, as part of the "What went wrong" panel on the Hillary Clinton campaign:
I am a supporter of Hillary Clinton with an unusual perspective: I was defeated by her husband in the Democratic presidential race of 1992...
No doubt she’s feeling the disappointment that all of us who have lost races feel...
She shouldn’t be too hard on herself. If Barack Obama had been born 10 years earlier and had been a candidate for the Democratic nomination in 1992, neither I nor Bill Clinton would have defeated him.
This last sentence takes us into "thinking the unthinkable" territory, as Kerrey certainly knew when writing it. Once I interviewed Bill Clinton at a public event shortly after the Atlantic had published a cover story by me that had nothing to do with Clinton himself. But it did have a throwaway line about how Clinton might not have won in 1992 without the disruptive presence of Ross Perot in the race. Charmingly, but pointedly and with a lot, lot of detail, Clinton revealed to me the many aspects of my error before the interview began. I would pay to be there when he straightens Kerrey out.
June 3, 2008
While waiting for political news, three nice things to say
1) If you're looking for a file-sync program it's worth checking out the widely-praisedSugarSync. The name gives me the creeps, and I'm almost embarrassed to use its "Magic Briefcase" feature. But these people have figured out something important: an easy way to keep files synchronized among a bunch of computers.
I actually do use three computers almost interchangeably: a ThinkPad PC laptop, a MacAir notebook, and a MacMini desktop. I always taking notes or checking off items on files I want to keep current among all the machines. (Word files; Excel files; my oddball Zoot and Brainstorm files; and others.) I've generally transferred these from machine to machine with a USB stick, or emailed them back and forth. Overall, this is a pain, plus it can be hard to remember which file on which machine is the current version. With the "magic briefcase" feature, which I won't explain, changes in the files on one machine are instantly available on all the others.
SugarSync is initially available on free trial and then costs about $30 a year, which I'll probably pay. It makes me reflect on how computer spending has changed. I very rarely spend money for actual software any more. But I'm paying more and more for services -- $40 a year for a VPN, $25 or so for photo storage, $40 or so for online backup service, more than I want to think for internet service and international cell phone and data service, and about ten others I can't think of now. I guess I'll think of it as part of the evolution toward a "service" economy.
The one thing my colleagues didn't point out about Sydney Pollack
In theirgraciousencomia to the late Siydney Pollack earlier this week, my Atlantic colleagues pointed many of his admirable traits but didn't highlight* this one: avid pilot! As he said in an interview with AOPA Pilot magazine ten years ago:
"I don't have other hobbies. I've never been on a golf course, I don't play cards, and I don't collect art; but I love to fly airplanes."
Pollack decided to learn to fly when he grew irritated with the hassles of commercial airlines, and that was decades ago, back in what now seems the golden age of comfort aloft. And for better or worse, it was Pollack who convinced Tom Cruise to learn to fly, after Cruise starred in Top Gun. RIP.
* Jeffrey Goldberg mentioned that he "flew his own plane," though this could be read as in "he flew Northwest to Detroit."
May 29, 2008
Simple comment on Jim Webb as veep
Since I am the last person within reach of a computer to weigh in about Jim Webb as a running mate for Barack Obama, I'll make up for the lateness with the simplicity of my point:
- Until 7pm November 4, 2008, Webb might well be a very strong addition to the ticket.
- On November 5, the troubles -- for Webb -- would begin.
About Webb's value up through election day, I realize that there's an argument: Would his credentials on national security and as an undoubtedly tough southern Populist offset, among other problems, the perceived slight to older women among Hillary Clinton's base? It's like a vector problem in physics. My belief is that, purely as a matter of electoral math, Webb would help Obama much more than he would hurt. But I know that's a judgment call, with countless ramifications to argue out.
The problem is what would happen if he did help Obama win. Having first met Webb nearly thirty years ago -- and having co-written an Atlantic cover story with him, and having broken my rule against giving money to political candidates two years ago when he began his Senate run -- I can't imagine a job he would enjoy less than the vice presidency.
Who could ever have seen this coming? (Macau dept)
In an article last week that is now behind the WSJ's subscriber wall, two reporters whom I mercifully won't name say that US-based "gaming" companies like Las Vegas Sands and Wynn are starting to have problems in Macau. Heart of the story:
Even as the U.S. operators pour billions into the market, they are struggling to overcome an unforeseen obstacle: the growing power of local middlemen in determined where big-spending, so-called VIP players spend their money
"Unforeseen"? The few prescient geniuses who happened to anticipate this problem included, let's see.... every single person I interviewed about the Macau situation in the spring and summer of last year, for this article in the Atlantic. There is even an authoritative academic study of the phenomenon, here. "Stanley Ho’s four-decade monopoly on all casino business might seem the strangest part of Macau’s economic structure," my story said, referring to the local Mr. Big. "It was not: That distinction has belonged to the related system of VIP rooms, which has also been the foundation of Macau’s gambling economy—and which poses the greatest challenge to Macau’s ability to come into sync with international norms."
If the big U.S. companies really have been blindsided by the VIP phenomenon, maybe customers have a better chance in Vegas casinos than they thought. Maybe "the house" is not really that sharp.
May 23, 2008
Whining for just a minute (re Citibank, Amazon)
I will get this off my chest, then back to matters of consequence:
1) A message in the inbox from Vikram Pandit! New CEO of Citibank! I have been a customer for decades, mainly because an immediate family member works there. Mr. Pandit tells me (and presumably zillions of other customers):
I want you to be among the first to know about the bold steps we are taking at Citi to be the premier, global, fully integrated financial services firm.
Our objective is to create for our customers an experience in which services are seamless, payments and transfers effortless, and distances meaningless. My commitment - and the commitment of everyone at Citi - is to work tirelessly around the world and around the clock to deliver outstanding value and service as we continue to earn your trust.
Here's a thought: maybe as a step toward your goal you could stop charging a TWO PER CENT service fee on ATM withdrawals at Citibank's own, branded, logo'ed ATMs overseas, or at least in China. I withdraw $300 worth of RMB from my US Citibank account, at a Citibank ATM in Beijing, and a $6 fee is tacked on. I realize that "usury" is not the correct term, but it's the general idea. Please don't hold it against my family member, but my wife and I just switched to Bank of America for this precise reason. FYI for anyone in China who doesn't know this already: B of A offers zero-fee withdrawals via China Construction Bank ATMs, which are everywhere across China. This adds up.
2) Amazon's "recommendation" service has sent me a message too! It thinks that, based on my previous purchases, I might like Vienna Blood, by Frank Tallis.
Very good guess! I thought that Tallis's Death in Vienna was a great genre book! Atmosphere (Vienna, 1902); suspense; learning about something you didn't know about before (Hapsburg culture, some history-of-psychology) -- all the elements of a satisfying mystery.
Maybe this is why I already ordered this exact book Amazon is now recommending, and about ten others, when I learned on May 5 that I would be making a quick trip later in the month to the United States. All the books I ordered were listed as "in stock." Of course they'd be ready by the time I headed back to China on May 22? Right?
Sigh. Wrong. Thanks, Amazon, for the recommendation -- and for the delivery notice I got on arrival in Beijing, saying that they would arrive at my father's house in California a few days from now. I'll pick them up on my next visit in the fall.
Communicating with the customer: it doesn't always work out just the way it's foreseen.
My commitment: no more whining for six months or so.
May 14, 2008
Masses, and individuals, in China
The human scale of almost anything in China is predictably shocking. I go to a city I'd never heard of -- say, Zibo -- and learn that it has about as many people as Chicago. I go to a city I have heard of and learn that estimates of its population are accurate only within a couple million. And of course we now have the staggering figures coming out from Sichuan province and its surroundings -- about 900 children trapped in one school, tens of thousands missing in another town, whole villages being swallowed up by landslides. America has never known mass tragedy on this scale -- or even on a pro-rated version of this scale. China has of course known it many times.
Here is a classroom picture from last fall, at a high school outside Sichuan province but close to the earthquake zone. These are the kinds of schools and classrooms you're seeing in "after" pictures now. (Yes, there is a ringer in this picture, whom I couldn't photo-shop out.) These are the kinds of children who have been affected.
Here, from a middle school, is a dormitory room where 18 girls sleep each night and eat all their meals. They sleep side by side, nine on the bottom bunk and nine on the top, with their heads to the left of the picture and their feet to the center. All of their clothes and belongings are in the gray lockers in the right background.
Some of the students at that school. Although multi-child families are more common in rural areas than in the cities, most of the children involved in the earthquake would have been their parents' only child.:
The masses in China are overwhelming; the people in them are vividly and irrepressibly individual. Via Rebecca MacKinnon, here are some ways to contribute to relief efforts in China.
May 13, 2008
Earthquake accounts from foreigners in Chengdu
After the break, two first-person accounts of the earthquake and its aftermath, from foreigners in Chengdu. These are long and, to me, vivid in their detail, but skip past if you're not interested. I'm providing them here for real-time documentary purposes.
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Two or three years ago, David Allen, father of the "Getting Things Done"/GTD approach to life, started a personal blog. He kept it up for a couple of months and then, no doubt realizing that this kind of daily fritter was at odds with his larger message about sensible use of your time, put it to sleep. (My 2004 Atlantic article about David Allen here; recent item about GTD-type software here.)
In the absence of blog-world messages from The Man himself, many other GTD-related blogs have continued to spring up. That's all to the good -- but a few weeks ago Allen and his team launched their own blog, straight from GTD Central. It is called GTDTimes and is worth checking out.
May 7, 2008
The China price (updated)
My wife's new favorite food is fresh yogurt, which comes in individual ceramic pots at the local grocery store. (Full one in the middle; already-enjoyed ones on the sides.)
The pots are about four inches tall, and quite solidly made. Empty ones could serve as nice little vases or general knick-knacks and could easily go for a dollar or two apiece, or more, in a U.S. housewares store. Here each yogurt plus its pot costs two and a half RMB (35 US cents). It's either two RMB (28 cents) for the yogurt and one-half RMB (7 cents) for the pot, or vice versa. My wife didn't remember which the sign said. We're building up quite a supply. Maybe the foundation of a specialty-import business if we can get them back to America? The spirit of Chinese entrepreneurialism is infectious.
Update: Several correspondents have usefully pointed out that the pots can be returned for a deposit, just like beer bottles. Makes sense! It turns out that my wife knew this (I have never bought them myself) but just didn't mention it to me! Now I know -- the real communications problems are within one language, not across language boundaries -- and we can haul a bunch of them back to the store for pockets full of cash.
May 5, 2008
"Stupidest policy ever" contest results
Hundreds of entries later, the results are clear. An absolute majority of contestants spoke in favor of ... mandates and subsidies for ethanol use as the stupidest manifestation of bipartisan public policy in the last 50 years.
There could have been a recent-events bias in this choice. (We all think that today's athletes are "the best ever," and so too with stupid policy decisions.) Still, the sentiment was strong, and so was the reasoning. I quote from the lucky subscription-to-the-Atlantic winner, Justin Cohen, who himself begins by quoting his father Reuben Cohen on the stupid aspects of this policy. The Cohen-Cohen team is chosen winner because they entered early, and because I have decided to show a bias in favor of collaborative family efforts:
"I think bi-partisan support for ethanol is more stupid [than the McCain-Clinton 'gas tax holiday' plan], because it's actually harmful and because it not only panders to the public ... worse it panders to a special interest group (Midwest farmers and their regional politicians).
It's harmful because: 1) it helped to catalyze higher levels of food inflation, 2) it consumes as much energy to make and distribute as it provides, 3) it deflects attention from developing trying sound policies to enhance our energy security, 4) it didn't allow for removal of taxes on the import of truly energy efficient ethanol produced in Brazil from sugar, and 5) it's a such an extreme example of government disfuntionality it causes people like me to become truly disillusioned with the political process."
I would add on my own that, to my limited understanding, most of the money for ethanol goes to large corporate farms and trickles down and around through agro-business, with only minimal impact on small family farmers (the ones our politicians claim to support), making the whole venture politically disingenuous in addition to economically-unsound and environmentally dubious.
After the jump, a list of some other popular nominees. Where I can think of some reason why a particular suggestion didn't end up the winner, I include that in parentheses. Thanks to all! And God help our country.
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May 4, 2008
Beijing must-see: "Tibet of China, Past and Present"
This week the "Cultural Palace of Nationalities" in Beijing -- 民族文化宫 in Chinese, also known as "Cultural Palace of Minorities" -- opened an exhibit on the history and future of Tibet. Let me just say: if you want a quick but thorough immersion in the prevailing Chinese view of this issue, you could do far worse than to spend an hour or two here.
The historical part goes under the general heading "The Feudal Serfdom of Old Tibet." The narrative introduction begins, "Before 1959, Tibet was a feudal society of serfdom, darker and more backward than European slavery in the Middle Ages." The more contemporary part is under headings like "New Tibet Changing with Each Passing Day" and "Emancipated Serfs Become Masters of Their Homeland."
As documentation for the historical perspective, the hundreds of pictures in the exhibit include some of tortured serfs from the old days, and a photo of what appear to be two nearly-whole human skins -- one of an adult, one of a child -- from what is described as a human sacrifice of serfs in the olden days. (I'm just telling you what's in the exhibit, and I am not including a photo of this item.) For the modern part, there are pictures of the progress and prosperity of today's Tibet. Here is a modern Tibetan herder, with a fridge full of beer:
.... in the Pittsburgh election-eve rally ongoing as I type:
1) Michelle Obama, comparing her husband to his crucial Pennsylvania supporter, Sen. Bob Casey. "They both have households full of bright, beautiful young girls." Fine; charming. "And they both married brilliant, accomplished, and beautiful women." What??? The husband says "I married up." The wife doesn't make that point.
2) Barack himself, talking about his new approach to politics, points out that he discussed energy efficiency in front of an auto-industry audience in Detroit, discussed progressive taxation in front of fat cats on Wall Street, and generally believed in telling truths the hard but honest way. I was waiting to hear how he'd work in "and I discussed the biases of small-town Pennsylvania losers before rich donors in the Bay Area." But he just kind of slid to a different topic. Probably wiser not to have started down this rhetorical road to begin with -- not in the Keystone State. (Addendum: not meaning to hype the importance of "bittergate" here, just saying this is a rare instance of Obama not addressing a "Hey, wait a minute" point that would be on many Pennsylvania listeners' minds.)
I blame the fatigue (a theme close to my heart these days). Get out the vote, Pennsylvanians! And let these candidates get some sleep.
April 19, 2008
My two home towns
Redlands, California (view out the window from my dad's house, orange groves across the street)
Beijing, China (view out the window from our apartment, just before I left)
I will confess that I have never actually seen Sex and the City on American TV. (I know, that's a shocker.) In fact, we didn't have HBO in America, so we saw the Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, etc, via the video store. (And king of them all, The Wire, via pirate-video store in China.) But because I had never seen the Sex and the Cityopening credits, I didn't realize what Danwei.org'sSexy Beijing was making fun of.
Even so, I knew that it was very funny -- and the star Sufei, aka Anna Sophie Lowenberg, is all the more charming when you think of her playing off Sarah Jessica Parker. A sample is below (the subtitling is great). I mention it now because apparently an episode is going to be on the PBS show Global Watch on the night of April 9. Check it out.
Update: 1) I hear from Luke Mines of SexyBeijingTV that tonight's episode is "Beijing Caucus," in which Beijingers talk to the star, Sufei, about Hillary, Barack, Chuck Norris, and so on. Clip here on SBTV's site or here on YouTube. 2) I also hear that SBTV is no longer part of Danwei.org.
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April 8, 2008
Hiatus update, and a China comment
Thanks to many people who wrote with kind inquiries about my terse "going offline" note of several days ago. I had meant merely to be private, rather than willfully cryptic. To be somewhat less cryptic but still discreet: for a while I am out of China and in California, with my father.
Let me mention only one point I would have mentioned earlier, if it hadn't happened just when I was scrambling to arrange a trip from Beijing to Los Angeles: the sentencing of Hu Jia to three and a half years in prison is serious and dismaying news.
Hu is best known for his work advancing the rights of people with AIDS and HIV in China. He was arrested early this year on charges of "inciting subversion of state power," because of quotes and articles on his blog and in foreign papers, and was convicted and sentenced a few days ago. Rob Gifford's book China Road, mentioned here earlier, includes some descriptions of Hu and his work. Except by the Chinese security services, he is widely admired and respected and considered a "reformer" rather than a rebel directly challenging the legitimacy of the Chinese regime.
Here is the one and only mention of his sentencing that I see in the China Daily, official voice of the government to the outside world. That is worth comparing with the statement from the U.S. State Department, hardly a source of rabble-rousing observations about China. Or with this, from Rebbeca MacKinnon. Or this posting by Simon Elegant, of Time. Elegant is writing about Tibet rather than Hu Jia, but he explains the perverse logic, which applies in both instances, by which internal Chinese repression and controls are very likely to be tightened just as the world turns its attention to the country for the Olympic Games, rather than relaxed -- as normal PR instincts would dictate and as the regime promised years ago when China was bidding for the Games. The paradox, as discussed earlier here and elsewhere, is that much of real, daily Chinese life is fairly free-wheeling and uncontrolled. But what the Chinese regime is showing is the most repressive side of its nature, at the time the world's attention is directed there.
Hu Jia's case is on a scale different from the events in Tibet, but in its way it is as disturbing.
With that, again going dark for a while.
April 3, 2008
Hiatus
For personal/family reasons, there may be no entries here for a while. Good wishes to all.
April 2, 2008
Just a little data point
I have been planning on making a quick trip to Russia, which for reasons unrelated to my comments here will not occur. But in preparing to apply for my visa at the Russian embassy in Beijing, I was just adjusting to the quite amazingly thorough visa form ("List every educational institution you have ever attended... Give name, supervisor, and supervisor's telephone number for everywhere you have worked for the last XX years...") when I encountered the real problem. US cash!
Depending on how quickly I needed the visa, the fee would be $150 (for five-day service) or $300 (same-day). But the fee had to be in cash, U.S. greenbacks, and not just any old dollars but "new bills with the watermark and large portrait." Hmmm.
Since I have about $28 in US cash with me in China, I was asking American friends for help ... when I recently learned that the policy has changed. No more Yankee dollars! Only Chinese RMB accepted -- no word on required newness. And at a punitive exchange rate too. (The rapidly-sinking dollar is worth just about 7 Chinese RMB now, so $300 would be 2100RMB. But the Russians are multiplying it at the rate that applied more than a year ago, 7.8 to 1. So the "$300" visa now costs 2340RMB, or about $334.)
Of course the exchange rate is not the issue. It's the "your money is no good here" aspect that I found interesting. Another round in the Bush-Putin war of nerves? Just a scheme to profit on exchange rate arbitrage? A sign of respect to their local Chinese hosts? Or maybe the Russians are reading the U.S. financial pages too?
March 30, 2008
Reality check
This is the kind of scene I wish I could convey to people who worry about China as the all-conquering juggernaut that has coped with every internal challenge and is sitting around thinking about how to take over the world.
My wife and I spent the afternoon at a public "High Tech Middle School" in Ningxia autonomous region, in western China bordering Inner Mongolia. The students could not have been more charming or open-spirited. Here's how a few of the girls looked:
There are wearing school uniforms in the picture -- it's a Sunday afternoon, and they'd returned from their homes and villages in a 25-mile radius, to spend the next six days at school. During the week they live in dorms eight to a room. But you'll notice something about the uniforms:
(Update after the jump.)
Out of Net range for the next few days, a picture before going.
Looking towards Puxi, from the river, 7pm, on a visit to Shanghai last week:
Our fondly-remembered former home visible in middle distance, but only if you know just what you're looking for.
JMW Turner, some time ago:
Previously in the European Artists Come to China series here and here.
The other is Mike Huckabee, who (as I see via Andrew Sullivan and others) dared speak as a human being rather than as an on-message apparatchik in his comments about Obama and Wright. More specifically, he spoke as a "hate the sin, love the sinner" Christian, as a preacher who has delivered extemporized sermons of his own, and as a white product of the segregated South who did not blind himself to how that world would look if he were black. Consider and be in awe of this:
And one other thing I think we've gotta remember. As easy as it is for those of us who are white, to look back and say "That's a terrible statement!"...I grew up in a very segregated south. And I think that you have to cut some slack -- and I'm gonna be probably the only Conservative in America who's gonna say something like this, but I'm just tellin' you -- we've gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told "you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can't sit out there with everyone else. There's a separate waiting room in the doctor's office. Here's where you sit on the bus..."
And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.
Actual honest and empathetic discussion about race...! We've come to expect that presidential campaigns will be the equivalent of World War I trench slaughter, in which there is a "winner" at the Somme but really everyone loses and it's a matter of who is farthest from being bled dry at the end. But the idea of actual discourse about real issues -- it would be nice to think that it could happen.
It was a moment like this that first drew John McCain to my attention as a politician, nearly 30 years ago.
About a third of the pirate videos we get in China are fine, in the sense that they play properly and are in the advertised language. About a third are studio-promo copies, which were originally handed out "for your consideration" at Oscar time. When you watch these, you see "Property of Columbia Pictures" or some such label across the screen every few minutes, like this.
The other third of the videos are in Russian. (The really cheapo videos, shot by somebody sitting in a movie theater with a concealed camera, and chock-full of audience noise and people walking around, are pretty rare now.) I don't mean movies made in Russia or starring Russians. I mean the standard American or British studio film dubbed into Russian language. For instance, the lightweight Hollywood aerial-action movie about the WW I Lafayette Escadrille, Flyboys. Here's its opening menu
Russian? Why so many films in Russian, and not, say, Spanish or Thai? What does it say about a country that China looks to it as a source of pirated videos? I wonder this every time I play pirate-video-roulette and wonder whether this new video will be another unintended step in my familiarity with the Russian language.
Reader Ed Fisher helpfully provided the answer, which appears to check out:
Regarding your knockoff DVDs: The reason so many of them are dubbed into Russian is because the studios have started releasing movies for Region 5 (which includes Russia) much earlier than in the US, to combat piracy. Of course, it's had the opposite effect - Russian releases are immediately pirated and then either distributed as-is or merged with US audio from the theatrical release.
Next on the trail of gray-zone inquiry: Who, exactly, in China controls the business that makes these billions of DVDs, and how are they so thoroughly protected against enforcement? Like most people here, I have my suppositions; and like most people here, I prudently keep them to myself.
February 25, 2008
Oscar category: Best documentary
I don't think the Oscar show was run live here in Beijing, and anyway I've been out interviewing people all day. (About Chinese coal mines and so on. Bracing!)
I had a personal though divided rooting interest in one category, Best documentary. There, one film that I hear is outstanding -- Taxi to the Dark Side, by Alex Gibney, son of the esteemed late writer Frank Gibney and brother of my friend and Atlantic colleague James Gibney (which I haven't seen because it has not yet shown up in the local pirate video stores) -- was up against another film that I know is outstanding. This is No End in Sight, by my friend Charles Ferguson. I had talked with Ferguson while he was developing this film and had a little cameo interview appearance in the final version.
Maybe they could share the prize?
Alex Gibney's film won, and sincere congratulations both to him and to Charles Ferguson for illuminating the consequences of America's perverse approach to "security" these last six years.
The odd part is, the clip that was shown at the Oscars to introduce No End was apparently of me talking, from my cameo interview. Via instant-feedback on Blackberry, I got a quick pulse on which of my friends and family were watching the Oscars (as I would have been, if in range) - and which were not. And, yes, in the "not" category I'm talking about you, Dad! Time to get back in touch with mass culture!
My ambition for next year: the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
February 24, 2008
Ralph Nader: tragedy to farce
I have liked and admired Ralph Nader so much. I first worked for him when I was in my teens (and he was in his 30s). Under his auspices, encouragement, and relentless pressure, I'd written two books for his organization by the time I was 23 -- if only I'd been able to keep up that pace! Or that sales success, since one of them -- Who Runs Congress, turned out in eight weeks, with Mark Green and David Zwick --- eventually sold in the millions.
Nader was funny, warm, brilliant-seeming, and, yes, caring. He visited my wife in the hospital after our first child was born. For years after that, he never failed to ask about both of our kids (or my wife) whenever I talked with him. I say all this as an indication of why Ralph Nader has so many people who actually are loyal to him -- and who wish they didn't have to face the reality about the choices he has made over the last eight years.
That he stayed in the race in 2000 was tragedy. (See: Invasion of Iraq, 2003, and subsequent occupation.) That he came back in 2004 was unfortunate; his entry in 2008 is farce. Farce because it suggests detachment from political reality (the differences between the Republican and Democratic nominees are so faint that we can say, What the hell!) and, worse, narcissism. The fact that it won't make any difference in the outcome actually is sad.
I will always like and respect Ralph Nader and will always admire the wonderful things he has done. But I wish to God that he had not made this decision, or will reverse it soon. (And, I am sorry that saying this will make me an enemy in his eyes.) He is a better man than his recent decisions indicate.
February 19, 2008
4GW Meets Campaign '08
I have known and liked Chuck Spinney for a very long time, since I wrote about him and his original "defense reform" colleagues, notably John Boyd and Pierre Sprey, in the Atlantic and in National Defense in the early 1980s. Boyd of course originated the concept of the "OODA Loop." This was the idea, derived from Boyd's "Patterns of Conflict" briefing, that the victor in any conflict would not necessarily be the stronger or better-prepared party. Rather it would be the one who recognized changing realities, and chose and implemented the right new course of action, faster than the opponent. Boyd came up with the theory by analyzing aerial combat among fighter planes, but in his view it could be applied to every sort of human contest, from sports to business to armed conflict.
(OODA stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. To react to changing reality faster than the opponent can, or to interfere with the opponent's ability to perceive realistically what is happening to him, is to "get inside his OODA loop." Everything anyone would ever want to know about Boyd, Spinney, Sprey; about their contemporary colleagues like Chet Richards, Donald Vandergriff, WIlliam Lind, GI Wilson, etc; and about OODA loops and the related concept of 4GW, or Fourth Generation Warfare, can be found at two excellent, related "Defense and the National Interest" sites, here and here.)
And the theory also applies to politics, as Spinney has argued in a recent item about the contest for the Democratic nomination. His analysis, "Is Obama inside Hillary's OODA loop?" comes after the jump. The incidents he mentions are all familiar; what's at least a little new is his combination of them in Boyd-style perspective -- in particular Bill Clinton losing his sense for how the battle is shifting. I am posting this before the Wisconsin results are known, and before the (in my view bogus) "plagiarism" flap has died down, so that Spinney's observation can be tested against those results.
As I mentioned a few months ago ("Tales from the everything's-slightly-substandard economy"), there is a strange trade-off in a lot of daily life in China. Nearly everything's cheap. But a whole lot of everything is a little bit off, marred in some subtle but grating way, not quite legit, and, well, cheap.
Today's illustration: On my trip to the U.S. last month, I saw that a 14-screen theater near the office in DC was playing a whole bunch of movies I had heard about and wanted to see. Juno. There Will Be Blood. The Great Debaters. No Country for Old Men. Charlie Wilson's War. American Gangster. Sweeney Todd. Eastern Promises. A revival of I'm Not There, about Bob Dylan. And some others I'm surely forgetting now -- whatever was popular a month ago. (Even Golden Compass???)
I thought: hey, I'm here on my own, I'll see a bunch of these. Life got busy, and I saw only one. But this weekend, on the street in Beijing, my wife and I found a good video store -- they're slightly more discreet than in Shanghai -- and loaded up on every movie I've just named, plus a bunch more, at a little under $1.40 each. Extortionate, compared with Shanghai, but the best we could do.
The good news is, we get to see these movies, and they don't cost much. The bad news is, there's something a little bit wrong with all of them. For instance: tonight's showing was The Great Debaters, with Denzel Washington and Forest Whitaker, which we actually liked. Here is a typical scene, featuring Denzel Whitaker (no relation to the other Whitaker, or to Washington) as a young Wiley College debater, going up against some snooty Harvard boys:
Sigh. I assume it was a "for your consideration" Oscar-promotion version of the movie. At least it hadn't been dubbed into Russian, like a lot of the cheapo movies we see here. For another time: consideration of what this gray-zone existence might mean for the Chinese economy in the long run.
February 16, 2008
Tom Tancredo's nightmare
Outside the Instituto Cervantes, the Spanish language and cultural organization (like the Alliance Francaise or the Goethe-Institut), in Beijing . Apparently it's not just Little Havana any more!
Update: Those spots next to the bicycle, in the inset in the bottom-left corner of the map? Apparently they're the Philippines! As reader Andrew Miller points out, counting them in the world of Espanol, even cross-hatched, is a much bigger stretch than counting the United States.
----
To spell out the joke for non-Americans or those not sodden in U.S. politics: Tancredo, now disappeared from the Republican presidential race, was the main alarm-raiser about the immigrant menace to America -- especially immigrants from Mexico and points south. How would he feel about a sign saying: "Do you know that Spanish is spoken in more than twenty countries?" -- with a map showing the United States already halfway there??
February 10, 2008
Brueghel comes to Beijing
(Previously in the Brueghel comes to China series, here.)
Sunday morning, February 10, 2008, Houhai area:
A few hundred years earlier, in Europe:
A friend is doing a story about the odd variety of vehicles Beijingers have adapted to the ice, so nothing more about that now. I will say that on the latest supply run from the U.S. I had brought along an old, crummy pair of ice skates, with frayed and re-knotted laces and blades as sharp as a rolling pin. Imagine my relief in spotting a sign that said 北京冰刀王 -- Beijing Ice Skate King -- and being helped by the king himself, as he put a razor edge on the skates and added a new set of laces, all for 35 RMB (a little under $5).
The king and his crest:
February 8, 2008
New Order at New America
Yesterday the New America Foundation announced that Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, would become the new chairman of its board. He replaces the person who has been in that job in the nine-plus years since New America was founded, ie me.
In 1998, during a brief spell when I was not working for the Atlantic, I heard from a group of people who had been cooking up plans for a new, non-partisan, non-crony-ridden think tank that could help young journalists and policy people get started in their careers. These were Ted Halstead, Walter Russell Mead, Sherle Schwenninger, and Michael Lind -- people all known by that point for their writing and editing achievements who were hoping to create a new institution.
Their appeal to join this effort was persuasive. Over the next year, Halstead (who became New America's president, and who by that time had cowritten a cover story for the Atlantic) and I spent a lot of time raising money to get the institution started -- I mean, mainly he did. Mead (who has an article in the Atlantic's upcoming issue) has been on New America's board since that time; Schwenninger and Lind (lots of good articles too!) have been important figures in its operation. If we were honest all of us would have to admit we are amazed at the scale, importance, and standard New America has attained.
Last fall, Ted Halstead, still in his 30s, stepped down as president after nine years of non-stop effort, to be succeeded by the highly accomplished Steve Coll. In a complementary move toward new blood, Eric Schmidt has agreed to become the new chairman of the board. Given the gazillion-dollar enterprise that Schmidt oversees at Google, versus the tiny, ramshackle enterprise of my own writing life that I "manage," this is a preposterously out-of-scale transition. But it is evidence of Schmidt's public-mindedness that he would take it on.
(Steve Clemons, whom I met while living in Japan twenty years ago and who is now a New America comrade, has a separated-at-birth hypothesis about the Coll-Schmidt working relationship.)
Congratulations to all. Not being by nature an organization guy, I'm actually very proud of what this organization has become -- and has ahead of it.
Year of the Rat
Twenty four hours into Year of the Rat, and safely back "home" in Beijing. Actually feels like home -- or maybe it's just the travel-induced thousand-yard-stare 24 hours after starting the trek from DC. Apartment looks and smells great; Beijing Capital Airport keeps applying various de-bureaucratizing (!) speed-up tactics US international airports could study*;and my wife and I are hoping that the ongoing cannonade of New Year's fireworks outside the window, will, in compliance with "strict city regulations," end as promised at midnight.** Or that we'll be tired enough not to care.
新年快乐, Happy New Year.
--
* One-third as many forms to fill out as on our previous visits. Immigration card, yes. But no longer a public-health screening form, which I assume got started during SARS; and no customs form at all, unless you have goods to declare. Despite our huge, groaning suitcases full of supplies from the U.S., we technically had nothing to tell the officials about.
** This might sound like an amusing festive touch, but based on last year's New Year celebrations in Shanghai, it's closer to living through some documentary about City At War, with concussive blasts round the clock. In this new year of pre-Olympic orderliness for Beijing, we'll see how the not-past-midnight rule goes. Outside just now: KABOOM!!!
February 1, 2008
I'll say this for South Florida....
...where I have (intentionally) spent very little of my previous life but where I have been, for oddball reporting reasons, these last couple of days:
Being in the San Francisco Bay area makes me feel old, since everyone else is 25.
Being in the Boca Raton area makes me feel young, since...
Pretty soon I'll be back in Beijing, where I'll have no time to fritter away on such thoughts, since like everyone else I'll mainly be concentrating on surviving the next traffic jam or "mist" event that would be called deathly smog elsewhere. I am weirdly beginning to miss the focus-on-the-now such daily challenges educe. Rather than "old" or "young," it makes me feel... engaged.
January 31, 2008
Fun with datelines from the NYT (updated)
(Update below) Traveling during the Barack-Hillary debate, so no thoughts on that until I see a replay. But this passage from today's NYT, perused during an endless session on US Air, certainly caught my eye:
REDLANDS, Calif. — The most trenchant symbol of the California presidential primary can be found on an isolated stretch of Interstate 15, smack in the middle of the Mojave Desert. There, affixed to an old trailer, is possibly the largest candidate billboard in the entire state, and it is for the Republican fringe candidate, Ron Paul.
Why did I notice?
1) Redlands is where I grew up and where my dad still lives, and it doesn't get that much national ink. So, great!
2) Redlands is not "smack in the middle of the Mojave Desert." To put this in terms that might resonate with the NYT copy desk, this would be like saying: White Plains is smack in the middle of the Adirondacks. More or less in the same part of the country? Yes. In the middle of? Not hardly.
3) Interstate 10 passes through Redlands. Interstate 15? Unt-uh -- at its closest point 15 or 20 miles away.
Maybe the writer was talking about some other place? Fine. But (not that I want to look a hometown gifthorse in the mouth), why this dateline?
On to weighter matters another time.
Update: Fellow son-of-Redlands Brian Beutler observed the same phenomenon on his blog.
Seriously, wasn't sloppiness about datelines one of the complaints about the NYT during the wild and woolly days of Howell Raines? I'm sure what happened in this case was the following: the Ron Paul sign in question was probably someplace on I-15 en route to Barstow, which is in the middle of the Mojave Desert and which is the heartland of Paul-type libertarian/survivalist sentiment. And for the Times's purposes, it was no doubt all close enough to fit under a 40-miles-away dateline. On the other hand: Bill Keller, the NYT's editor, went to college right in this same area and presumably would have known better if he had seen the story. That's all on this subject.
January 24, 2008
The stupidest thing I've done (twice) in China; a stupid thing I didn't do in the US
Twice during my first year in China I did something so obtuse I can hardly stand to think back on it. In each case I was so mad at the bus or taxi that had come within one millimeter of running me down -- while I was in a crosswalk with a green light and it was roaring at full speed straight ahead through a red light -- that I slapped its fender as it went by. I didn't even have to move my arm to reach it, since it was right there.
In many American cities, perfectly normal! I've seen road-raged pedestrians or bicyclists in San Francisco and New York yell at and pound the hoods of cars they judged to be cutting it too close.
But in China -- not such a good idea! The screech of brakes and squeal of tires. (Hmm, if the brakes work so well, why couldn't they have been applied before the red light?) Door flung open. Multi-lingual festival of curses and gestures. Contorted face of rage on the Chinese driver's side. And my chagrined realization that I had for no good reason made somebody very angry at me and, by extension, the outside world of laowai (老外, foreigners). Even though the bastard did almost just kill me.
I've had this reaction on each of my previous return trips to America over the last 18 months: the abundance! The affluence! The choice!
I walked into a high-end Whole Foods grocery store in Washington this morning -- and after a few minutes, had to walk out again.
The burnished fruits and vegetables. The forty varieties of bread. The souvenir-looking cuts of meat. The wines and cheeses. (The beers!!) Emotionally it was too much.I realized that my wife and I spend a significant amount of time each day in China thinking about how to get stuff -- food, clothes, supplies. I know that America is on the verge of disastrous recession and that China is dynamic power of tomorrow, etc etc. But, my lord, life can be good here. (And where are the men pulling carts full of coal or scrap paper down the street, as if they were human beasts of burden?)
By tomorrow I won't notice any more.
January 15, 2008
We're No Longer Number One?
One of many memorable columns by the Atlantic's former editor, the late Michael Kelly, came after he'd spent a wonderful summer spell at Cape May with his family, and it began this way: "I have been for some days at the shore, in the company of many of my fellow middle-aged Americans who are wearing not a lot of clothes, and I have a report. My fellow middle-aged Americans, we are some kind of fat."
I don't mean we are getting a bit thick around the middle, or that we are pleasantly plump, or that we are zaftig, or Rubenesque (we are Reuben-esque), or settling into our bodies. I mean we are fat, fat, fat. It's true: As a people, we have never been this fat. Probably, no people has ever been this fat. We are billowing immensities of avoirdupois, great, soft bins of finest quality lard, a nation of wide loads wallowing down the highway of life.
Americans are indeed the proud world champions of fatness. But here as in so many areas we may soon be pushed from the throne.
At least that's what I thought after a few days at a Chinese beach resort where virtually all the other foreign visitors were Russians. For sure in the men's division, they're giving us a run for the money.
Perhaps the group at the resort was unrepresentative of its home population (rich enough to travel -- and eat everything they want?). And perhaps they unfairly seem bigger than they are because, unlike Americans of similar stature, they prefer Speedos. But the three shown here (two more after the jump) are a fair sample of the travelers we saw. OK, the first one was larger than normal - but the other two were on the svelte side and, from their faces, appeared to be no older than about 35.
Clean your plates, America! There are hungry middle aged men in Russia who wish they had that food.
Imagine my surprise when I switch on the TV a few hours ago, Sunday night China time, and see -- a NFL playoff game! And one involving my "hometown" team, the Redskins! (My boyhood hometown team, the LA Rams, is of course lost to history.) But wait a minute... They're playing in Seattle. And as I turn it on, the Redskins have just stormed from behind to take a 14-13 lead! And, the Seahawks mishandle the ensuing kickoff return, so that the Redskins get the ball deep in Seahawks' territory, with a lead, in the fourth quarter. Huzzah!
As anyone still reading knows, what followed, from the game actually played one week ago, was about the most disspiriting ten minutes in any franchise's history. Moral question: with full foreknowledge of what's ahead, do I leave the TV on to watch those ten minutes?
Would Red Sox fans keep watching if they happened upon a replay of the 1986 World Series? Would Yankees fans, if they found a broadcast of the 2004 AL playoffs? If they were in China, maybe they would. And I did.
I have decided to be happy that a waste-gas line in our apartment building in Beijing is no longer (as of two days ago) feeding into our own apartment's ventilation ducts. Rather than making myself.... less happy through dwelling on what we have been breathing and living in these last two months.
I think this is part of my ongoingacclimatization process: learning to look on the bright side. Mind over miasma!
For another day: observations on the uneven levels of fit-and-finish in a country that is developing and modernizing, as opposed to developed and modern.
January 8, 2008
A fact to understand about all the candidates' performances
If you have not worked or traveled on a political campaign, you really cannot imagine the importance of sheer mind-destroying, bone-sapping, emotion-straining, personality-fraying exhaustion as a factor in performances by candidates. Especially the moments that seem angry, thin-skinned, dazed-sounding, ill-advised, or clumsily-worded. Where there is a "gaffe," there is usually an over-tired candidate backed up by over-tired staff.
I'm not saying this is the only activity that pushes people beyond reasonable limits, sleep-wise. (Combat. Medical-intern duty. Overnight shift work or long distance trucking. Infants in the house. Etc.) I'm saying that it's the one where the very great importance of the fatigue-tax is most likely to be missed by onlookers.
Two masters of their disciplines, who triumphed while young and stepped aside from competition (Clinton because he had to) while still in top form. Gibbs was 52 when he retired for the first time as Redskins coach, with three Superbowl wins behind him and election to the Hall of Fame ahead. Clinton was 54 when he watched George W. Bush sworn in as his successor, knowing that he would have won in a landslide if he were allowed to run again.
Then each returned. Coach Gibbs, for a disspiriting 31-36 four-year stint with the Redskins capped, if that's the right word, by the extremely disspiriting playoff loss to the Seahawks three days ago (and his resignation today). President Clinton, for what looks like a disspiriting 0-2 run as his wife's campaign booster and apparent strategist, and occasional negative-spin specialist against the candidate who is beating her. [Update: Coach-President Clinton has in fact opened 1-1. The questions below still apply.]
Will either of them be glad he came back into the fray? Were they rash to defy the maxim that there are no second acts in American lives? Other people have much worse problems, and Bill Clinton is probably not the most disspirited member of his household right now. Nonetheless I feel for both him and Gibbs.
Addendum: As readers Matt Megas and Robert Lamirande have pointed out, other obvious entries in this category include: Earl Weaver, who was brilliantly successful in his first stint as manager of the Orioles and then had his only losing season ever during his brief return run; Michael Jordan, who had the least successful of his several comebacks when he joined the Washington Wizards at the end of his career; and, tragically, too many boxers to mention, all of whom kept coming back.
A distraction from New Hampshire news
For a little glimpse of life in a not-quite-new apartment building in Beijing, and as a way to pass the time while the NH vote comes in, see if you can guess why my wife and I are spending so much time studying sites like this one.
(OK, if you don't want to click, it's about how to tell if you're being poisoned in your dwelling by sewer gas. Ah, the glamorous life of the foreign correspondent!)
For further amusement and distraction, feel free to tell your friends that in China the overnight news will cover primary voting in the state called 新罕布什尔 or sometimes 新罕布夏, xin hanbushier or xin hanbuxia. Yes, those are two versions of "New Hampshire," the second apparently with a Boston accent.
January 6, 2008
Winter fun, Beijing
Outdoor ice skating, Sanlitun area, Beijing, January 6.
What I found (sincerely) most charming about the scene: the "Stay Off the Ice" signs along the banks.
The essential exchange of the New Hampshire Democrats' debate
It involved Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, on the power of words in presidential leadership.
Each made his or her respective point clearly, calmly, and appealingly. This was not an ambush or a gotcha or a gaffe or an unintentionally revealing quicksilver exchange. It was the expression of thought-through and well expressed views. And on the merits I think it left the Clinton camp at a terrible disadvantage.
Clinton, after pointing out that Obama voted for an energy bill that was full of the special-interest tax breaks he now criticizes in speeches:
So you know, words are not actions.
And as beautifully presented and passionately felt as they are, they are not action. You know, what we've got to do is translate talk into action and feeling into reality. I have a long record of doing that, of taking on the very interests that you have just rightly excoriated because of the overdue influence that they have in our government. And you know, probably nobody up here has been the subject of more incoming fire from the Republicans and the special interests, so I think I know exactly what I'm walking into and I am prepared to take them on.
Then, after an appeal by John Edwards to the Teddy Roosevelt tradition of head-on trust-busting, this response from Obama:
Look, I think it's easier to be cynical and just say, "You know what, it can't be done because Washington's designed to resist change." But in fact there have been periods of time in our history where a president inspired the American people to do better, and I think we're in one of those moments right now. I think the American people are hungry for something different and can be mobilized around big changes -- not incremental changes, not small changes....
[T]he truth is actually words do inspire. Words do help people get involved. Words do help members of Congress get into power so that they can be part of a coalition to deliver health care reform, to deliver a bold energy policy. Don't discount that power, because when the American people are determined that something is going to happen, then it happens. And if they are disaffected and cynical and fearful and told that it can't be done, then it doesn't. I'm running for president because I want to tell them, yes, we can. And that's why I think they're responding in such large numbers.
Of course each of them was right. Each expressed part of the job of a president, or any leader. Words and deeds. Talk and action. Poetry and prose. Presidents obviously do best when they can do both.
But only Obama captured what is unique about a president's role. A President's actions matter -- Lyndon Johnson with his legislation, Richard Nixon with his opening to China -- but lots of other people can help shape policies. A President's words often matter more, and only he -- or she -- can express them. Grant led the Union Army, but Abraham Lincoln, in addition to selecting Grant, wrote and delivered his inaugural and Gettysburg addresses. Long before Franklin Roosevelt actually did anything about the Great Depression, his first inaugural address ("the only thing we have to fear...") was important in itself. The same was true of Winston Churchill just after he succeeded Neville Chamberlain. It would be years before the Nazi advance would be contained, but Churchill's words and bearing were indispensable to Britain's recovery.
Certainly Hillary Clinton knows this. And she knows the political record of poetry-vs-prose matchups in the past. Kennedy vs. Nixon. Carter vs. Ford (yes, Carter was a man of healing-America poetry in those days). Reagan vs. Mondale. And of course the first Candidate Clinton against his Democratic rival Paul Tsongas and then against the first President Bush. She is playing the hand she holds, but it's worse than the other hand.
One extra thought on this point, from Jimmy Carter himself. This is the way he described the words-vs-action tension in the major speech that laid out his human rights policy, the commencement address at Notre Dame in 1977. I am partial to this formulation, because I was involved in putting it together. But I think it, like Obama's comment, is closer to what Americans expect of their president than what Hillary Clinton has been left with, the "let me handle the details" appeal. Especially what they'll expect of the next president:
We live in a world that is imperfect and which will always be imperfect--a world that is complex and confused and which will always be complex and confused.I understand fully the limits of moral suasion. We have no illusion that changes will come easily or soon.
But I also believe that it is a mistake to undervalue the power of words and of the ideas that words embody. In our own history, that power has ranged from Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream."
December 21, 2007
Feliz Navidad
The Jose Feliciano version has always expressed the True Meaning of the Holiday Season in our household.
So Feliz Navidad to one and all. I am out of range for internet contact until early next year. Prospero año y felicidad.
Reader updates on three points
After the jump, updates from readers on three points: the etymology of "Suntime" wine and the Uighur Autonomous Region in general; a critique of my wife's feather-light Sherpa haul from the U.S.; and, about that battered ThinkPad T60 keyboard.
Procedural note: I appreciate hearing from readers via the "email" button to the right. I will try to be less slothful about posting interesting responses and elaborations. Toward that end, I announce this policy: Unless a writer says otherwise, I will assume that I am free to quote the comments and attribute them to the writer by name. If you say "Please don't quote" or "Don't use my name," no problem! But to avoid having to email each person for permission, I'll assume from now on that a comment is on the record unless otherwise stated.
A little more about the "art factory village" of Dafen
Because I can't help it, a few more pictures below and after the jump of the "art factory village" of Dafen, outside Shenzhen. All are clickable for larger version.
Plus, two updates: First, thanks to Evan Osnos of the Chicago Tribune for getting his story about Dafen back on line, here. It explains some of the business fundamentals of the place.
And, from Keith Snodgrass of the South Asia Center at the Jackson school at the University of Washington, this background of the Dafens of yesteryear:
[You give] somewhat the impression this is a new activity. As a matter of fact, Chinese artists have supplied mass production art for western markets for at least 200 years. Many early 19th century paintings of George Washington circulated in the US were originally produced in southern China, as were many of the "ship portraits", paintings which look like 2-3 ships at sail in a bay, but which are actually 2-3 different views of the same ship.
Ajay Sinha at Mt. Holyoke college gave a talk on this topic at the University of Washington in 2004. You can find him through http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/misc/profile/asinha.shtml
Yes, I would be glad that my wife is now back from an unexpected trip to the U.S. even if she hadn't hauled along a suitcase full of provisions for the Beijing winter. But she did! Much of this is in the comfort-food category. Several items were made in China but are not that easy to find here. Not fully visible is the element that brought the sherpa suitcase up to its full 60-pound weight: twenty-plus new books from Amazon. But as I pointed out to her, they couldn't have been as heavy as they seemed, because after all most were paperbacks.
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The keyboard propped up in the background is a replacement for my battered eight-month-old ThinkPad T60 keyboard.
December 10, 2007
Yet a little more on fiction, genre, and memory
Not to run the topic into the ground, but: following this and this on what makes fiction remember-able (subtly different from memorable) and which "genre" books achieve that goal, a little more.
- I recognize that what I'm about to say slightly undercuts my point that powerful fiction, of any sort, gets into your mind and won't get out. Still I will confess that I (ahem) forgot to mention unforgettable genre books like Ken Bruen's The Guards and related novels, from the cop-and-criminal world of Ireland. Or, Michael Dibdin's Aurelio Zen mysteries, set in Venice. Dibdin's unrelated but remarkably creepy (and funny) The Dying of the Light is very much worth finding. Or, The Whispering Wall, by the Australian writer Patricia Carlon. (Premise: a rich old woman has had a stroke and can't talk or move, but she can hear and understand every detail of the plot being hatched by her relatives to do her in.) Or, three Japanese murder mysteries that have nothing in common except that each believably creates a sociopathic monster as the central character: Honeymoon to Nowhere, by Akimitsu Takagi; Out, by Natsuo Kirino; and the recently-released The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, by Soji Shimada. Or, for a monster of a different sort, the "Ripley" books by Patricia Highsmith.
- On remember-ability in general: I am not sure how I feel about the fact that on average I can remember movies more completely and clearly than I can remember books. Take some oddball feature I saw on a Saturday afternoon as a kid --The Cardinal, let's say, an Otto Preminger potboiler from the 1960s about a Boston boy who becomes a prince of the Church.
Like most people who enjoy spy novels and crime fiction, I feel vaguely guilty about this interest. I realize that crime fiction is classy now, and has taken over part of the describing-modern-life job that high-toned novelists abdicated when they moved into the universities. My friend Patrick Anderson*, who has reviewed mysteries for years at the Washington Post, recently published a very good book to this effect: The Triumph of the Thriller. Still, you feel a little cheesy when you see a stack of lurid mystery covers sitting next to the bed.
So I've figured out a way to tell the books I can feel good about reading from the ones I should wean myself from. The test is: can I remember something from the book a month later -- or, better, six months or a year on. This is the test I apply to "real" fiction too: surprisingly often, a great book is great because it presents a character, a mood, a facet of society, a predicament that you hadn't thought of before reading the book but that stays with you afterwards. Rabbit Angstrom, Captain Ahab, and Clyde Griffiths (of An American Tragedy), to choose the first three examples that pop into my mind from American fiction.
I say that "genre" fiction, like spy and crime novels, ascends into the "real" fiction category when the world it presents can exert the same tenacious hold on your mind. (Meta point: in choosing life activities, I place a high premium on things I'm likely to remember -- new places, new activities -- because otherwise you feel you're just tearing pages off the calendar, in the way that old-time movies illustrated the passage of the years.) As I've thought about it I've been struck by how many "genre" books marvelously pass the test. For example:
I am in the local WuMart -- largest supermarket chain in Beijing, so I'm told, signage not that different from the nearby Wal-Mart's, motto "a dream of establishing an everlasting retail chain that Chinese people love patronizing, and that mingles with their daily lives" -- and I spot a great bargain in the wine department.
The label says "China Red Wine" in English, and 中国红葡萄酒, or "China Red Wine" in Chinese. It costs 11.8 RMB, or $1.60. I ask myself, How bad can it be?
Knowing that in this last year-plus I have often been startled by the answer to that question, I decide to wait for a while to find out. But I am curious.
December 2, 2007
What was I thinking (Tommy Lee Jones update)
It must have been the travel blear of the Beijing-Tokyo flight, but I missed the obvious point about the Tommy Lee Jones "Boss" advertising campaign mentioned earlier. Here we truly have a case of life imitating art. Jones is living out the fictional role portrayed by Bill Murray in every gaijin's favorite movie about Japan, Lost in Translation:
I realize that Murray's role was itself art imitating life, based on countless Japanese ad campaigns by foreign celebrities. But Jones's "Boss" presentation does seem to owe something to Murray's "Bob Harris" in the movie. Thanks to Eric Redman for pointing out the connection. I'm sure that he, like me, remembers that Lost had another main character "Charlotte." Of course the homage to a great movie could not have gone that far, but it's interesting to think about.
November 27, 2007
"The" way vs "a" way (Japan v China dept)
This is not a scientific comparison, but when i saw one scene I remembered another.
This is the recent scene: yesterday afternoon, Naha airport, Okinawa, Japan. Line crew gassing up a Cirrus SR22:
My family has so many real and important things to be thankful for that of course I can only address the ephemera here. For instance:
Windows Vista is no longer consuming the totality of my hard drive! Talk about your happy Thanksgiving Day!
Anton Kucer and his colleagues at Microsoft dutifully tried to figure out why, on a 105GB hard drive containing maybe 30-35GB of "real" data, my computer kept showing that it had virtually no space left.
They came up with an answer! We won't exactly call it a bug, and we won't exactly call it user error, but we will call it an interaction among three forces: Lenovo ThinkPad design, Microsoft Vista design; and JFallows user design. All details are after the jump, but the headline version is: if you have Vista and are using a ThinkPad, there is a way to keep your hard drive from being totally gobbled up. I take my Thanksgivings where I can find them.
Good: bonding with other expat Yanks over our shared secret national ritual. Foreigners know about the 4th of July but are always a little hazy about the point of Thanksgiving and when exactly it is. Bad: just another Thursday for everyone else. No NFL on TV.
Last year: a very nice turkey dinner with others of our tribe in our apartment in Shanghai. This year: our apartment building in Beijing is thoughtfully having an evening turkey dinner, advertised this way: "See you in your scariest costume & display your creativity in the Pumpkin Carving Competition." Hmmmm.
But to start the list of things to be thankful for: the English-language state-controlled Chinese media! Life would be duller without it. For instance, today's front-page story about the problems caused by the Three Gorges Dam.
Perhaps the predictions they have in mind are those in the Book of Revelations, about the End of Days? It's a possibility.
Here is the the way the keyboard on my Thinkpad T60 looked three months ago, when it was four months old.
Here's the way it looks today, at seven months of age, after three more articles and one bazillion additional emails have been pounded out on its keys:
This second one is a little harder to see, but here's the casualty count.
Now entirely gone: the E, N, and A keys, plus the < marking.
On their way: L, M, R, S, and >
Worried: D, O.
Should be worried: U, B
No wonder my fingers are tired -- I mean, strong! And good thing China is dotted with electronic parts shops where I can buy a new keyboard, cheap, when too many letters vanish from this one. I can probably find a supplier who sent them to the factory in the first place.
When I find that guy, maybe I'll ask him whether they would consider investing an extra 50 cents for more durable keytop decals. (Yes, I know the Mac's, and others, are molded in.)
The only thing I will ever say about music videos
To my Atlantic colleague Andrew Sullivan, in the spirit of constructive criticism :
You host an important 80s Video Contest on the Atlantic's site and don't include this?????
Last year I mentioned how disorienting it can be to come across people wildly famous in their own culture whom you'd never heard of and to whom you'd ordinarily never give a second glance.
In that context: we can hardly turn on CCTV at night without seeing one or both of the gentlemen below hosting a variety, talk, or game show:
The pictures, from our apartment TV both on the same evening, don't do justice to the androgynous charm of their varying outfits.
Veterans' Day (and, my interview with Donald Rumsfeld...)
...back in 1993.
By my local China time it is now the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. This is November 11, which means variously, Remembrance Day, Armistice Day, or Poppy Day among countries on the Allied side of World War I, and of course Veterans' Day in the United States.
Originally this was a moment for looking backwards, to honor those who had served in the Great War and mourn those who had died. Its retrospective purpose remains. But for Americans right now it should also be a moment to honor the men and women who continue to serve and sacrifice and be injured and die -- and to reflect on the fact that, for the first time in our modern history, they do so with absolutely no shared sacrifice or service from the public at large. Everyone knows this and avoids thinking much about it. Today it's worth at least remembering.
Also it is worth looking at several articles the Atlantic has brought up from the archives and made available free, for now. They're about Vietnam, not Iraq or Afghanistan (or Iran), but several are significant in their own right in addition to shedding indirect light on our current and continuing wars. Let me emphasize two:
With all the expertise that comes from a full two days in country, en route to Beijing.
1) These people are tall! For my purposes, human beings come in two sizes: Taller than me, and any other height.* I can't help noticing that many more Germans fall into the first category than I am used to encountering -- and don't get me started on the giant Dutch. I had followed the whole academic/journalistic discussion of the fact that Americans are no longer, on average, the tallest people on earth. It's hard to appreciate this when in China, where people are larger in all ways than they were twenty years ago but on average nowhere near as tall, big, or heavy as the typical Yank. In Western Europe you see that the phenomenon is real.
2) I had better start thinking of Germans as a distinctly good-looking people, because apparently they're how I look. In most places where I don't belong, culturally or linguistically, my outsiderness is obvious at a glance. In Asia or Africa: naturally. Even in France -- maybe it's the clothes, maybe the lack of a Gallic je ne sais quoi, but for whatever reason no one ever approaches me there and starts speaking French.
In Germany, they come up all the time and start speaking German. It's happened every time I've been there, and it happened often this time. My point is not: "people in Germany are always speaking German." What I mean is, "people in Germany are always speaking German to me." Which I can't speak back.
It's quite a strange feeling to be assumed to belong -- as someone asks quickly for directions on the street or a shopkeeper starts making colloquial banter, in the quick informal tone you use only with native speakers -- and then have to explain, haltingly, that in fact you have little idea of what's being said. In Germany (or Holland or Sweden), the speaker then usually apologizes and switches to a cultured variety of English, which completes the humiliation. This gives me a glimpse into the experiences of my Chinese-American, Japanese-American, and Korean-American friends who show up in their ancestral homeland without knowing the ancestral tongue.
* Ask me if someone is closer to 5'6" or 5'10" and I'll say, I'm not sure. Ask me if someone is 6' 1 1/2" versus 6'2" and I'll know exactly, since that's the critical zone.
October 30, 2007
Executive hypercompensation: this time it's personal
So it appears that Stanley O'Neal will leave Merrill Lynch with > $160 million in stock options and other retirement benefits, after being paid nearly $50 million last year and immediately after the company reported a gigantic loss, based largely on sub-prime mortgage risks O'Neal had decided it should take on.
I know that markets are markets, that financiers go into finance because they like the dough, that compared with 99.9% of people on earth I myself am rich, and so on. But every now and then one of these sticks in the craw. For me, it's this one -- and probably because of the years-long struggle I have waged to get my retirement-style savings out of ML, where I put some of them 15 years ago and where the meter immediately started running on high and not very well disclosed fees.* You would think that a brokerage itself would not be too comfortable with so flagrant a reminder of how hefty its fees must be, if it can afford this kind of payout.
I also wasn't crazy about the news, during the 2004 election, that O'Neal had ginned up nearly $300,000 in donations to the Bush-Cheney campaign from Merrill Lynch employees -- you know, the people whose future and careers he controlled. I probably also would have objected if he had been pressuring his own people to give to Kerry-Edwards. In either case, the idea of my (steep) account fees supporting this kind political activity didn't sit well.
Enjoy the money, Mr. O'Neal. That's what it's all about.
* Where are they now? It would not be very hard to guess: a well-known low-fee, not-for-profit investment organization. Why is the fight still going on? Because ML tied some of the money up in annuities that I still must spend several years waiting out -- while the fee meter keeps turning over.
October 15, 2007
Happy 150th Birthday, Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic’s 150th anniversary issue* is out, and my (obviously biased) view is that it’s great. This is a good illustration of the truth that some things look much better and more attractive on paper than on the computer screen. Typography, graphic design, and the whole ergonomics of in-print presentation have evolved over the last 500 or so years to suit the human eye and mind very well. (Yes, yes, I know about consumption of paper and so on.) If you get the issue you won’t regret it.
I remember, from elementary school, seeing my mom and dad get the 100th anniversary issue of the Atlantic in the mail and read it at home. They read it to us squirmy kids too -- I think there were stories by Ernest Hemingway and Thornton Wilder, and a poem by Robert Frost. Also something by James Thurber, which is where my dad, a humorist, would have started.
After seven months away from Washington, very little about the city looks objectively different. Main exception: self-scan checkout machines in the Giant grocery store and the CVS. Where did these things come from? I feel like some shtetl or boondocks character trying to figure out how the newfangled contraptions work. Worse: like the first George Bush staring in puzzlement at the supermarket bar-code reader before the 1992 campaign
But naturally we see the unchanged city differently, Via Wi-Fi cadged from a local Shlotzky’s sandwich shop, the first round of emotions:
1) Once again, the beauty, wealth, polish, finished-ness, natural abundance, cleanliness, order, consumer choice, etc of America’s polished cities is just stupefying. Yes, this was a clear and perfect autumn afternoon in a prosperous capital. Still: my wife and I walked into a run-of-the-mill drug store and stood for a moment, stunned: there was a wider array of stuff on shelves within our immediate range of vision than we’d seen in months in Shanghai, the cosmopolitan pride of China.
Americans read so many reports about the dynamism of China’s industries and the skyscrapers of its big cities that they may begin to think there is some overall comparability between the two economies. No. There isn’t. Not to mention: at the friends’ house where we’re staying, we drank water… out of the tap!
2) Related point: it is tremendously exciting to see China developing all around us, and we’ll dive back in for another long stint by the end of this month. But I had a glimpse as to why it can be wearing. In four hours on Sunday afternoon, I did a series of things I have always liked to do and that just aren’t possible while “on assignment.” I went for a run outside, in the sunshine and clear, breathable air. I bought and read the fat Sunday copies of good newspapers. I went into a wonderful book store. I watched a pro football game on in real time. (Redskins receivers other than the excellent Chris Cooley: you’ve got to hold onto the ball!) I had a very good beer, Hop Devil, from Victory Brewing Company, without worrying where or whether I’d be able to find another. And I talked to friends and family without waiting till the middle of the night.
Obviously: it’s a tremendous, historic privilege to have a role in and a view on China like the ones that we now do. But this helped clarify why a privilege isn’t the same as a picnic.
3) Manners-in-public point: my first domestic-US flight in a while was on Saturday, San Francisco to DC. I watched carefully to see: no one got up into the aisle until the little chime sounded to show that the plane had stopped. Here is a picture of a recent flight on Shanghai Airlines.* I took this picture while the plane was still on the runway, slowing toward a halt perhaps 20 seconds after touching down. The flight attendants were yelling in Mandarin, “Sit down! sit down!” but…
4) Tech point: Wow! The internet is fast when it doesn't have to go through the Great Firewall.
[Another installment shortly....]
* If you look carefully you see a foreigner in the picture. As noted earlier, sooner or later you have to do things the local way.
October 13, 2007
About self-righteousness and Al Gore
I am old enough... well, there are many ways to end that sentence, but for now: I am old enough to remember, from my school years, the disdainful reaction in my home town to the news that Martin Luther King had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
The reaction was, of course, racial at its root. This was a majority-white, minority-Hispanic small town with very few black residents, which went for Barry Goldwater over Lyndon Johnson in the presidential election that same fall.
But the stated form of the objection concerned not King's race but his obnoxiousness as a man. He was a windbag. He was pompous and self-dramatizing, He was holier than thou. Plus, he had started getting involved where he didn't belong, in raising questions about the Vietnam War. Through the rest of Martin Luther King's life, the father of my best home-town friend always went out of his way to refer sneeringly to "Martin Luther Nobel."
As is the case now with some similar complaints about Al Gore, the criticisms weren't about nothing.
Five minutes after the movers show up, to collect all the goods from our Shanghai apartment for shipment to Beijing, I see, via my Atlanticcolleagues, this new report on the most- and least-livable among 72 of the world's major cities.
The good news for my wife and me is that we're leaving city #71, the next-to-worst!
The bad news ...
5 Worst:
68. Bangkok
69. Guangzhou
70. Mumbai
71. Shanghai
72. Beijing
But, hey, life's not just about livability. It's pretty interesting here.
October 6, 2007
Already getting nostalgic...
Eighteen hours or so to go in our Life In Shanghai (moving to Beijing, after trip to the U.S.) and already thinking we'll miss X, Y, and Z. Shanghai, unexpectedly, seems to be a more interesting place to live in than to visit. The big obvious sites (museum, Bund*, Pudong skyscrapers) are fine, but the little everyday crannies are better.
Some day, I'll collect a list of the interesting crannies. One of our favorites: the under-appreciated Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Centre, in the French Concession. 100% guaranteed to hold the interest of anyone who spends an hour or two there.
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* Local lore update: Virtually all Western visitors pronounce this word as if it were drawn from the German word Bund, with a longish U sound almost as if it rhymed with "spoon." In fact, it's an Indian and/or Persian word for "embankment," which is what the Shanghai Bund is, and it's pronounced with an "uh" sound, like the last part of "cummerbund," which has the same origin. Or so I believe! More info here, scroll down to "cummerbund."
October 4, 2007
A brief, positive, and cultural note
If, in your life, you have a chance to see in person Yo Yo Ma's Silk Road Project Ensemble, do so. And do whatever it takes to get tickets close enough that you can see the musicians interact, smiling and nodding and keeping an eagle eye on each other as they keep time on amazingly fast and intricate pieces with no conductor. This is instant reaction after three of the most memorable hours I have spent at a live event, in our waning days in Shanghai.
September 28, 2007
Umm, about that "good" Chinese wine...
This is why we have the internets:
- 1. After my report that I had found an "actually good" red wine in Gansu province, a reader in Berkeley wrote to say that this was exactly the same wine he had practically spit out in disgust when he tried it in Gansu. Versus my "actually good," his tasting notes:
Worst wine ever. It was pinot noir, but off-brown colored and tasted like crap. Supposedly the best wine of the gansu province. I think Chinese wine has about 50 million years before it catches up with the rest of the world. It made me end up barfing (well that plus a lot of weak chinese beer).
The explanation for this difference? I think it's not just that my standards have been affected by too much exposure to Great Wall and Changyu. It may be our old friend "quality control in Chinese manufacturing" raising its head once again. What my wife and I had didn't taste like crap and was normal red-wine color rather than brown. Your experience may vary! Caveat potor.
- 2. Fareed Zakaria, oenophile among other distinctions, reports that the "best wine in China" is from Grace Vineyards, in particular the "Chairman's Reserve." I have tried Grace's 60RMB/ $8 Chardonnay, which was OK. Could it be time to spring for the 388RMB / $52 Chairman's Reserve Cabernet? On the one hand, that's only a little more than twice as much as the 188RMB "Pride of Gansu" pinot noir in question. On the other hand, for the same money I could eat street food for two weeks and have change left over for REEB. Decisions....
September 23, 2007
Brueghel comes to rural China
Village near Yellow Sheep River, Gansu province, western China, 9am today. Harvest time:
In the middle and background: stacks of hay, waiting to be collected in carts drawn by people or cattle. The people in the middle and foreground are threshing the wheat and winnowing it the old-fashioned way, by tossing shovelsful in the air and letting the wind carry off the chaff. The village's houses are built around courtyards, with families and animals living inside each compound's walls. The line running through the picture is fiber for internet connections, which bypass this village but go to a nearby small town.
September 18, 2007
Shanghai typhoon watch: pretty much still watching
When my wife and I went to bed last night, we expected that through the night we'd hear the ever-more-howling winds of the approaching Typhoon Wipha. Perhaps the tall, skinny building in which we live would itself sway, which we'd watch and feel from the 22nd floor?
So far (10:30am China time), things are still pretty tame. At 8:30 this morning, the pavement was still dry. Now the wind is just beginning to push on the trees, and the skies are starting to drizzle, but not much more.
If this were the U.S., where Doppler Radar is everywhere, we'd watch the storm expand, contract, veer around, go out to sea, etc, and have some idea of whether we should be relaxing or hunkering down. As best I know, no such radar exists for most of China -- and if it does, its results aren't instantly and publicly available as they are on countless web sites and weather stations in the U.S.
So we go about our business, and wait, which maybe is a metaphor for the right way to approach life in general, where you have no idea what really lies ahead.
My Shanghai comrade Adam Minter is doing a Live Typhoon Blog. In a few minutes I'm planning to walk across the town, to get an idea of how the big city looks and feels before the typhoon hits (or perhaps doesn't).
Nanjing Xi Lu and Xinchang Lu, downtown Shanghai, 9am:
Landfall south of Shanghai in a few hours. Shanghai is just to the right of the red dot on the map. Raining like mad today. I wonder what real winds will do in a city where there are construction cranes, stacks of metal siding, etc all over the place, not to mention a lot of vulnerable people living in exposed circumstances.
Update: Ahah! It turns out the that graphic below is from a dynamic, updated site rather than a static image. So at this moment, nearly a day after original posting, it shows a green dot near Shanghai, and eventually it will show no dots from this typhoon at all. To find Shanghai on the map, follow the 30-degree latitude line over to the coast of China. Shanghai is just north of the big inlet, which is the mouth of the Yangtze River.
September 11, 2007
Maybe I was too hasty on this "world is not flat" business?
The debate will go on about whether the world is merely "flattening" in an economic and cultural sense, as everyone would agree it is; or whether it has in any meaningful way become "flat," as Thomas Friedman has so prominently argued. Before a TV appearance with Friedman last year, I calculated that more than a billion pages of his thoughts about the "flat earth" now exist. A big thick book, millions of copies in print, it adds up. Not nearly as many pages as the Harry Potter series, but still.
(And since I'm disagreeing with Friedman on the shape of the world, I should probably say that in his current "geo-green" campaign he is truly doing the Lord's work. On this theme his worldwide audience makes him a force for enormous good.)
On a recent very long, very draining, very interesting Chinese tour-bus trip through Xinjiang Province, China's northwest frontier, with all-Chinese travel companions and all-Mandarin language operations (except for the lessons in how to greet people in Uighur), my wife and I saw evidence on both sides of the flat-world case. I'll leave for another time the many, many, many illustrations of how bumpily different things can be from country to country and city to city. Instead, I'll stick with a heartening reminder of the common heritage that connects the diverse peoples of the modern world.
After trekking for hours across a stark, lunar desert landscape awesome in its harsh beauty, our bus rolled into a former Silk Road waypoint where today's craftsmen still specialize in hand-knotted rugs. We passed through a beaded curtain to see, on the place of honor on the main wall, this:
`
(For context, the 4' x 6' rug in its natural setting:)
September 4, 2007
Throwing like a girl
The most fun I have had (so far) researching a magazine article was 11 years ago, for an Atlantic piece called "Throwing Like a Girl."
It was fun because, as the piece explains: I got to interview the actor John Goodman about how he learned to throw left-handed (to play Babe Ruth in the movie The Babe). I got to watch super slo-mo tapes of Major League pitchers with the sports-science whiz Vic Braden, at whose tennis camp I had previously had my own sporting form slo-mo analyzed (to great dismay). And I got to ask the press secretary to Hillary Clinton, then America's First Lady, where Mrs. Clinton had developed her throwing arm -- and why, ahem, she had unfortunately thrown out an Opening Day pitch at Wrigley Field "like a girl."
In the interests of science I also got to do something that I now recommend to every American male: play catch with your spouse, girlfriend, mother, or other female acquaintance who does not think of herself as having a good arm, using your "off" hand to throw. I explain in the article why this is a good thing to do.
This article has now been excavated from the Atlantic's for-pay archives and is available on a non-firewalled "Pursuits" page here. (Still -- subscribe! Right after you have that left-handed-if-you're-a-righty game of catch.)
Bonus: what are the three crucial elements of throwing "like a girl" -- or "like a poor male athlete," in the words of the female coach of a college softball team whom I quote in the story?
1) Body directed straight-on toward the target, rather than turned 90 degrees away;
2) Elbow lower than shoulder as your arm comes forward;
3) Wrist inside elbow (closer to your head) as you release the ball and/or palm facing up, giving a pushing rather than hurling motion. Now you know.
September 3, 2007
Jean Mackenzie Fallows, September 3, 1927
My mother would be 80 years old today. These things should be noted.
In her 20s (minus our sister Katie, born a few years later)
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In her 70s, at home in California.
August 31, 2007
Final words on Friday Night Lights
As mentioned earlier, my wife and I were having some trouble seeing how things turned out for Coach Taylor and the Dillon Panthers in the new series Friday Night Lights. Thanks to our Shanghai-based friend Tom Carter, we got .AVI files of the final two episodes, which allowed us to watch them on a laptop computer (hey, the rigors of the foreign-correspondent life) without the 30-seconds-on, 45-seconds-off herky-jerky effect of watching "streaming" video from NBC's own site while based in China.
So now we know the first-season fate of Coach, Mrs. Coach, Smash, Riggins, Buddy, Tyra, Landry, Lyla, Street, Matt Saracen, and all the rest of the Dillon population. (An important virtue of the series: every one of these people, plus many more, comes across as a fully-rendered non-cliche character. Eg Tyra's mother, Matt's father and grandmother, Riggins's neighbor and her son, Smash's mother and girlfriend, Jason Street's parents, Herc, and Coach and Mrs. Coach's daughter.)
Concluding remarks:
1) I cannot easily come up with a more impressive series on network TV than this one.
Recognizing generosity: David Valentine and Raider Ramstad
This week in his Wall Street Journal "Middle Seat" column, Scott McCartney* compliments Denny Flanagan, a United Airlines captain who goes to unusual lengths to make sure his passengers enjoy rather than endure their flights with him. (Placing mass orders for food from McDonald's if passengers are stranded for hours, calling the parents of children traveling unaccompanied on his plane, etc.)
I have compliments to pass along to two of Flanagan's colleagues, United captains David Valentine, whom I have met, and Raider Ramstad, whom I haven't.
Last Saturday morning China time, when I was in the rural hinterland, I got a very early-morning mobile phone call from a friend on the U.S. east coast, where it was Friday night. For medical reasons I won't go into, it was a matter of life-and-death importance that a close friend of his in New York receive a certain medical supply, available in Shanghai, as soon as possible.
He had contacted the international courier companies -- DHL, UPS, FedEx -- and had learned that, between weekend-service issues and time allowed for customs clearance, they could not deliver it fast enough. Also, it wasn't clear that they could keep it cold, in its insulated box, long enough to survive all the stages and formalities of the journey Did I happen to know anyone flying from Shanghai to the US in the next day, who might hand-carry it?
There are two kinds of food I simply can't get enough of here in China. One is peanut butter, usually Chinese-made Skippy and usually slathered on a piece of toast. The other is deep-fried Chinese peanuts, which I buy at the corner Quicky Mart-style store in 20-cent packets like this (shown with Chairman Mao):
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In my previous life I liked peanut butter OK but didn't wolf down greasy peanuts. Do I crave them now because fried peanuts are one of the foods in China that perfectly satisfy all three taste needs at once: salty, oily, and sugary too? Is it because of something now missing from my normal fare that peanuts replace? Lord knows. I haven't been putting on pounds, so the peanuts must be crowding out something else. I have recently heard of several people who were diagnosed with heavy-metal poisoning after spending a few years in China. I will no doubt be diagnosed with the peanut-induced equivalent of that malady... for starters!
August 1, 2007
Harry Potter comes to China.
There are areas where, as best I can tell, the Chinese authorities actually struggle to Do the Right Thing when it comes to international responsibilities. For instance, a U.S. business bigshot who visited Shanghai yesterday said that not one of the Chinese officials he'd recently met in Beijing had "been in denial" about the country's food safety problems. They didn't pretend that the poison-pet food stories and related horrific accounts were somehow anti-Chinese or unfair; instead they admitted that there were big problems to deal with.
Then there is the realm of intellectual property, where to a first approximation the government doesn't lift a finger to prevent counterfeiting. Maybe that's unfair -- I'm only judging on what I see. Like, the video stores full of 90-cent DVDs of all recent movies. Or a report like this, from a state-controlled English-language newspaper, about the abundance of Chinese translations of the last Harry Potter book available free, on line. Howard French of the New York Times has just written a related story.
Oh well. On the brighter side, and with a sustained literary theme: it is now August 2 in China, which means that it is time to offer birthday greetings to my friend Lawrence Wright, author of the widely-acclaimed The Looming Tower; and to my friend Erik Tarloff, author of the acclaimed-by-those-in-the-know Face Time and The Man Who Wrote the Book; and to the departed James Baldwin and the still-with-us Peter O'Toole and others (like Judge Lance Ito!) i know only from a distance; and all of this from their fellow member of the August 2 fraternity. Update: I see that my friend-via-correspondence, Caleb Carr, author of many books from The Alienist to The Lessons of Terror, is also part of this select club.
July 29, 2007
OK, I'm a sucker for "productivity" gimmicks, but here's an idea for dealing with email
Three years ago in the Atlantic, i wrote about the productivity expert David Allen, who offers both a high-road philosophy and a lot of nitty-gritty tips for "getting things done."
One of the latter is Allen's "two minute rule": if a task comes up that you think you're ever going to do (write a thank-you note, look up a reference, make a call), and if doing it will take less than two minutes, then you should always do it now. The rationale is that keeping track of it to do it later would take much more time than those initial two minutes, and delaying it will cause you mental friction in the meantime. If it's more than a two-minute task, then it's worth treating it as part of a longer-term system (which Allen also lays out) for keeping track of what to do when.
No kidding, Allen's book Getting Things Done is very much worth the money it costs to buy and the time it takes to read.
Now another useful-gimmick in the same vein: a way not to go crazy in dealing with email. The policy ls laid out here (and I learned about it here). Like the two-minute rule, it probably is impossible to observe in all circumstances all the time. And applying the hard-core version of this productivity strategy, laid out here, would probably make people think you are crazy. But the general idea makes good sense.
July 22, 2007
The two Benjamin Friedmans: sequel
As mentioned earlier, Cambridge MA is barely big enough to contain two public-affairs academics of different specialties and generations but the same name: the battling Ben Friedmans of Harvard and MIT. "Battling" just a jazzy epithet here; I assume they're on good terms.
Ben the Younger, of MIT, reports:
Once I got invited to Harvard to speak to a small group. Beforehand I was introduced to an elderly gentleman who told me that he was very excited to hear me speak because he really liked Day of Reckoning (copyright 1988, when I turned 10). I was tempted to tell him that it was very hard writing a book about the national debt with only a fourth grade education, and that I had to skip a lot of recess.
This Friedman reports that the codger (maybe in his 40s? just guessing) politely stayed and enjoyed the speech, even though it concerned why America had become too obsessed with terrorism.
July 12, 2007
You can't easily imagine how odd it is....
... to see resurrected, on the Atlantic's home page at the moment, an article written at the dawn of the personal computer age, when simple things like not having to hit the return key while typing seemed like miracles.
(Note from the century before: the "return key," like the "carriage return," was something you used when you got to the end of a line of type with a typewriter, so you could move down to the next line. A "typewriter" was...)
In retrospect one thing I should explain about the article is its opening paragraph. My office was then in the basement of our house. I was trying to finish the article on a very hot Washington day, and an unscreened window to our back yard was wide open. Through it my older son -- then 5 years old, now 30 -- called for me to come see the treasure he had just found. It was a long-dead and apparently mummified cat, which he and his friend Nina had discovered under a rock (or someplace) and excitedly hauled over to the window to share with me. For a minute, I thought, Oh no... But at least it gave me an idea of how to begin the article:
I 'd sell my computer before I'd sell my children. But the kids better watch their step. When have the children helped me meet a deadline? When has the computer dragged in a dead cat it found in the back yard?
June 13, 2007
The Chinese tennis festival continues
It’s not just Ashe-Connors or McEnroe-Borg. Tonight Macau TV brings me Chris Evert vs Martina Navratilova, Wimbledon finals, 1978. The one, like McEnroe-Borg three years later, looks quite retro. Evert, then 23, still has baby fat. Navratilova — 21 years old, pre-blonde, pre-defection to the US, pre-out, pre-chic — has very dark chestnut hair and a clunky Eastern Bloc look. Both women use wooden rackets.
Why look at these old matches, given my previous protestation that sports is worth watching only if you don’t know how things turn out? Because there is a different kind of real-time tension built into the matches.
Sunday update: China making me a better person (sort of)
When the Australian (tennis) Open was on TV back in January, I noted that this was the first time Chinese television had shown any sport I cared about in the slightest — other than in pure curiosity fashion, like the Cambodian soccer playoffs. And, as I noted, in the absence of watchable sports suddenly I had all this time that in my previous life I had devoted to seeing what was happening to the Redskins, or in the Final Four, or with my kids’ childhood idol Mike Mussina (based on his days as an Oriole), or in general any real-time interesting sports contest.
As i write, the most graceful tennis player anyone now living has ever seen, Roger Federer, is struggling to shake off a one-set deficit and a plague of sloppy errors against Rafael Nadal in the French Open final. And Chinese TV is carrying it live! I am fascinated, and again I’m reminded: this is how I used to spend my time. Ah well, I can tell myself that I’m getting language benefits too. If you want an endless-repetition drill on how the Chinese word for “beautiful,” 漂亮 or piaoliang, is pronounced, just watch one of Federer’s matches (even this one, despite the errors) as covered by CCTV5.
Sunday update: "Trenton Makes"
I learn from my friend Charles Stevenson that I am not the only one with an ancestral tie to Trenton’s days of manufacturing glory. I met Stevenson back at the dawn of time, when I was briefly a freshman member of the college debate team and he was the grad-student coach. He now informs me that his wife’s grandfather, S. Roy Heath, owner of the Heath Lumber Company in Trenton, was the creator of the slogan back in 1910. In fact Heath won $25 in a contest sponsored by Trenton Chamber of Commerce to come up with the phrase that best captured the city’s spirit.
Charlie Stevenson was too modest to tell me that Heath went on to become a New Jersey state senator — and, much more impressive, that his family’s business, unlike my family’s, is still open today. Apparently it still features another of S. Roy Heath’s literary creations: the company motto, “If it’s in the woods, Heath can furnish the goods.” This kind of literary talent will always find an outlet.
(Speaking of literary talent, Charlie Stevenson’s book about the structural impossibility of leading the Pentagon, SECDEF, is actually very good.)
June 6, 2007
A personal note about manufacturing
The title of my latest article in the Atlantic is “China Makes, the World Takes.” The title wasn’t my idea– I believe it came from Corby Kummer, who edited this article as he has nearly everything I’ve written for the magazine in the last 25 years. But the instant I heard it I thought: yes, that’s right. It exactly suits the argument of the article. And as a bonus, it has great family and emotional resonance for me.
The title of course is a play on the famous slogan spelled out in neon lights over the Delaware River bridge in Trenton, New Jersey: “Trenton Makes, The World Takes.”
About credentialism and the Marilee Jones / MIT case
We can make it three for three — sort of — among Atlantic “voices” on the folly of being obsessed with whether someone has an academic credential, versus whether that person can actually do the job. I dealt with and respected Marilee Jones, the now-cashiered admissions director at MIT, during my various stints of writing about the (folly of the) college admissions process. Her message boiled down to: Oh, calm down, which is exactly the message students applying to college should hear.
You're in Shanghai now and will be out of the country for a while. What will you miss most about the States?
In several "what have we done??" moments before we left D.C., my wife and I reminded ourselves that we were casting aside a very, very nice life there: friends of a lifetime's standing, close colleagues at work, daily routines and household setups that we had adjusted to exactly suit our preferences over the years. Tiny examples: the C&O Canal in D.C. is one of the world's best places to go for a run; I am a beer devotee and know where to get just the kinds I want at the best price in the greater Washington area; we had the world's best cat and had to find a home for him; and all that is to say nothing of being in frequent touch with our parents and children. (Our kids have to fend for themselves, but our cat Mike now has a wonderful new home.) I could go on. And we were trading this for a city of 18 million where we started out not knowing a single soul.
On the other hand, we've been through this kind of complete-uprooting experience before—when moving to Japan, Malaysia, Texas, Seattle, Berkeley, and during jaunts elsewhere—and have found it to be stimulating, enriching, and memorable after a while. We just haven't reached the "after a while" stage yet.
