19 Nov 2008 09:50 pm
Here is exciting news. The (state-run)
China Daily may be opening a US edition!! Clues
here, with thanks to Michele Travierso. If you're an experienced but job-threatened native speaker of English who can see the
wry possibilities in writing headlines like the front-pager below, your time may have come. I might look into it myself.
A few other keeper headlines shown
here,
here,
here, and
here; and an exploration of the thinking behind this form of journalism
here. (
Update: via
Charlie McElwee of Shanghai, more info from the China Daily-USA
web site.)
19 Nov 2008 04:31 pm
Time and again I've
praised (or
eulogized) DayJet, the radically innovative but now out-of-business air taxi company based in Florida. And I've
praised VMware, the still-in-business California company that lets you run Windows and Mac software seamlessly side-by-side on a Mac.
Now it turns out that one of VMware's main backers is... preparing to invest in the software from DayJet!
In my
Atlantic article on DayJet earlier this year, I emphasized that it was, in its founders' view, a software company that happened to operate airplanes. That is, its real strength lay in the sophisticated algorithms for matching airplanes, passengers, pilots, and destinations. The weakness was the real-world big-ticket cost of the airplanes, which brought the firm down when the credit crisis began.
Paul Maritz, a Microsoft veteran who is now CEO of VMware, is according to
this TechFlash report, interested in DayJet Technologies, a spin-off company designed to apply the DayJet systems elsewhere As the TechFlash story said:
There are some interesting clues as to why Maritz and others in the technology industry are excited about DayJet.
Georgia Tech professor George Nemhauser, who helped develop DayJet's
technology, said via phone that the system could help airlines,
trucking firms and other transportation companies plan more-efficient
routes between locations. Or, he said, it could be used by government
agencies to plan evacuation routes during public emergencies. The
original promise of the DayJet airline, he said, was to allow travelers
to book flights when they wanted them rather than relying on an
airline's set schedule.
"The whole idea is disruption
technology," said Nemhauser. "You get a plan for something, and then a
disruption occurs -- weather or something else -- and you have to make
a new plan very quickly."
What's left for me to dream of, in the convergence department? Maybe news that a
craft-beer company is investing in software that will make it easier for me to
speak Chinese.
19 Nov 2008 09:10 am
It's conventional chattering-class wisdom to say that Terry Gross of
Fresh Air is a "great interviewer." In the early days I think that wisdom originated to some significant extent in male-listener fascination with the sound of her voice. But a broadcast I just heard was not only a reminder that she is, in fact, truly a great interviewer but also a demonstration of what that means in practice.
The broadcast in question was her
43-minute session yesterday with Ayers, the person presented by GOP campaigners as Barack Obama's closest and most influential friend. Ayers himself came across, inevitably, as a more complex character than the campaign caricature: more sympathetic in some ways, not necessarily in others. But much of what Ayers "reveals" comes out precisely because of the way Gross posed and sequenced the questions. If he had just been parked in front of the microphone by someone who said, "Well, how can you hold your head up?" or "So, tell us about Barack Obama," the results would have been much duller.
At the most obvious level, Terry Gross succeeds in this interview simply by avoiding the two most common, and laziest, styles of today's broadcast interviewers: surplus aggressiveness, long ago made familiar by Mike Wallace and now lampooned by Stephen Colbert; and lapdogism, most recently on display in Greta Van Susteren's sessions with Sarah Palin and the default mode of Larry King Live. Both of these extremes reflect the confusion of toughness of
manner -- do you interrupt, are you scowling, are you borderline impolite -- with toughness of inquiry, which is something altogether different and can happen under the most polite and civil auspices.
She also avoids the common pitfall of highbrow public broadcasting-style interviewers: giving in to the temptation to show off how much she knows and how smart she is in the set-up to the questions.
What she does instead, and what she shows brilliantly in this interview, is: she
listens, and she
thinks. In my experience, 99% of the difference between a good interviewer (or a good panel moderator) and a bad one lies in what that person is doing while the interviewee talks. If the interviewer is mainly using that time to move down to the next item on the question list, the result will be terrible. But if the interviewer is
listening, then he or she is in position to pick up leads ("Now, that's an intriguing idea, tell us more about..."), to look for interesting tensions ("You used to say X, but now it sounds like..."), to sum up and give shape to what the subject has said ("It sounds as if you're suggesting..."). And, having paid the interviewee the respect of actually listening to the comments, the interviewer is also positioned to ask truly tough questions without having to bluster or insult.
If you have this standard in mind -- is the interviewer really listening? and thinking? -- you will be shocked to see how rarely broadcast and on-stage figures do very much of either. But listen to this session by Gross to see how the thing should be done.
19 Nov 2008 02:43 am
A Chinese fighter plane! At least, a 1:48 scale model of one, the domestically-produced 歼-10, or
J-10, courtesy of a friend at AVIC, China's giant aerospace company. Click for larger, including a glimpse of the teeny blue-suited model pilot inside:
And just down the street, at the main AVIC building, the full-sized J-10 itself, in a static display that I watched workers prepare shortly before the Olympics:
No larger theme for the moment; I just like having the model, which is made of metal rather than plastic and feels surprisingly sturdy.
18 Nov 2008 03:28 pm
I won't do this systematically, because that would mean I'd have to include bad reviews too!, but for the record here is
an early, nice PW note on my forthcoming collection of China writings,
Postcards from Tomorrow Square. It's a "starred" review about halfway down the page that this link brings up. Actual text of the review after the jump. The book is a Vintage paperback original (bargain!) and has a pub date of January. (Links through
Amazon,
B&N,
Powell's.)
_____
Continue reading "Advance review from Publisher's Weekly" »
18 Nov 2008 09:35 am
Outsiders who follow Chinese events have known for years about Roland Soong's
EastSouthWestNorth site*, which draws from Chinese-language and English-language sources for reports and analysis.
I've just seen
this post, from a few days ago, which strikes me as something that people who don't normally follow Chinese events should know about. It's the text of a speech Soong prepared for last weekend's annual
Chinese Bloggers conference (but did not deliver, for family-emergency reasons). In it, he discusses the differences the Internet has, and has not, made in the Chinese government's ability to control information and maintain power within China.
This is a subject easily misunderstood in the United States, where people tend to assume either that the cleansing power of the Internet will ultimately make government efforts at info-control pointless, or, on the contrary, that the bottling-up effectiveness of the Great Firewall will protect the government from the power of an informed citizenry. (My own Atlantic article on the subject
here.)
Soong elegantly illustrates why such categorical assumptions miss the complexity of what's going on. The whole speech is worth reading, but the passage below is especially important for Americans. First he describes the way info would flow when bloggers and net connections first became significant in China, around 2003:
1. A bad thing happens somewhere in China (such as police brutality, government malfeasance, a forced eviction, a coal mine disaster, etc).
2. The local government suppresses all information.
3. All media reports are censored. (But if it wasn't reported in traditional media, there are other alternatives now on the Internet.)
4. The victims begin a petitioning process up the hierarchy in order to seek justice. The road is long and hard, and nothing ever comes out of it.
5. The Internet forums/blogs rushed to report on the case. But within approximately 48 hours, all traces of information are erased by order of the authorities. (Thus, one of the excitements of my blogging activity was to find and translate that information within this time window.)
6. Western media catch wind of the incident, and follow through. This creates an international scandal.
7. Senior Chinese officials take notice, and corrective actions are taken.
Then he describes what has changed in the past five years, in this 2008 update:
Continue reading "A fascinating document about the internet and "public opinion" in China" »
17 Nov 2008 11:00 pm
A mere 22 hours after we started driving toward LAX at 4:15am through what seemed to be snowfall but in fact was ashfall from Yorba Linda version of the recent SoCal fires*, my wife and I are back in our apartment in Beijing. And reassuringly, we have the joys of the English-language Chinese press to welcome us home. Front page of today's (state controlled) China Daily:
Apart from the picture of the baby-holding Premier Wen Jiabao in his now-iconic role as Beloved Grandpa of the Nation, I invite attention to the headline in the top right corner of the front page:
On line and in print, I have
often marveled at
why Chinese organizations make so many careless and unintended errors when rendering material into English for foreigners to read. (Locus classicus, discussed
here: the huge signs outside an art museum in Shanghai last year. They announced a big exhibit of photos from the Three Gorges dam area and read: THE THREE GEORGES.)
With the China Daily and sister publications, it's a different matter. Judging from the result, it's obvious that native English speakers have a final pass at the stories, headlines, and captions there. They have very few unintended, "Three Georges"-type errors. But it also seems obvious that the British, Canadian, American, Australian, Indian, South African, Singaporean, etc subeditors hired for this role can have a slyly subversive bent. Often little touches show up in the publication that will seem
Onion-like to any native speaker but that even very capable English-speaking Chinese supervisors would likely miss. At least that's what I hope is going on here -- intentional wry precision rather than unaware imprecision. I'm applying an Intelligent Design model in my newspaper reading.
______
* For those who know the LA Freeway system: this was along Highway 91 west of I-605, which we were detoured onto because signs said that I-105 was closed, apparently for fire reasons. The fires were of course aggravated by the hot, dry Santa Ana winds. On the weather report we heard while passing through the ashfall, the reported atmospheric humidity was six percent.
15 Nov 2008 01:35 am
... the innovative, Albuquerque-based small-jet company that appears to be in deep economic distress. Background
here.
- An irate perspective from a New Mexico political commentator,
here. (Sample: "Eclipse has been on the ropes for years, yet our political and economic establishment kept pumping it up.")
- An apologia pro mananagement sua from Eclipse's now-ousted founder, Vern Raburn,
here. (Sample: "The reason I got fired was simple: I pissed off the investors.") Note: the link above, to the original AINOnline story, is sometimes slow to load. If it doesn't work, a text-only cached version from Google is available
here.
- And after the jump, official word from the Eclipse PR department about the whole dicey payroll situation. (Summary: No one got paid on payday, yesterday. They "will receive their pay" by next Tuesday.)
Here endeth the Eclipse watch for now. Thanks to Mary Grady, Jim Terr, David Strip.
_______
Continue reading "Three more ways of looking at Eclipse" »
13 Nov 2008 05:43 pm
Background: the "air taxi" model, discussed in these
posts, this
article, this
book, and this
website, is showing viability around the world -- especially with companies using relatively inexpensive
SR22 propeller planes from Cirrus, rather than faster-but-costlier small jets. Transportation of every kind is under pressure because of worldwide economic collapse and environmental concerns, but in the circumstances air taxis are doing OK.
And the "Very Light Jet" movement, discussed at all the places above and also
here and
here, has led to the development of several smaller, cheaper jets that are thought to have a commercial future, of which the best known is the Eclipse 500.
But oh, my, the poor
Eclipse company that actually came up with these new planes. As chronicled here frequently in the past, it has had
management struggles and financial crises and
legal disputes that have called its existence into question. The latest discouraging news is
here and
here and concerns such ominous subjects as not meeting the payroll and employees emptying their desks. (Update: more end-of-days news
here.)
The general economic and credit chaos that is felling older, stronger companies in more established industries is obviously doing no favors to these startups. And anyone who has seen the life cycle of, say, the computer business knows that Wang, KayPro, Eagle, Altos, Victor, Osborne, and other once-promising firms went down but that the computer industry itself surged forward. So it may be with the Eclipse company and the transportation systems it helped make possible. But this is another sad chapter in the era's economic contraction.
13 Nov 2008 02:36 pm
This is the book
I mentioned yesterday, a very useful overview of the issues, challenges, constraints, and possibilities for America's defense policy. Two tech-related positive developments concerning this book.
- Hardcovers of the book will be available sometime soon. But if you would like to start reading it today, you can get an electronic copy, free, by requesting one from Winslow Wheeler, the book's editor. He has placed his email address on the
Center for Defense Information web site, and (with his permission) I also give it here: WinslowWheeler@msn.com .
UPDATE: free PDF download now available directly via
this link.
- If, in addition to being interested in a sustainable defense policy for America, you use a Kindle, you will find that the emailed PDF version formats itself well for Kindle reading. (Thanks to Dave Finton on this point. For info and links about how to view .DOC and .PDF files on a Kindle, check
here.)
12 Nov 2008 02:47 pm
At its site
here, the Center for Defense Information announces the imminent release of its new book "America's Defense Meltdown." Really this is a guide on how to think about, pay for, reconfigure, equip, deploy, withdraw, modernize, simplify, support, strengthen, lead, motivate, inspire, and in all other ways improve America's military establishment.
I hardly need to mention why such a book is useful, at a time when the United States and its new Administration must figure out how to manage whatever comes next in Afghanistan and Iraq, the ongoing challenge of possible terrorism, America's new financial realities, and on down a very long list.
What is most remarkable about the book is the array of authors who have joined to produce this anthologized volume. If I started listing a few, I would have to name them all (PDF of full list
here.) They include the closest colleagues and collaborators of the late Air Force colonel
John Boyd plus leading defense analysts and practitioners of the next generation. They have amply earned the right to be listened to. What I said in a blurb on the book's jacket* is, if anything, not enthusiastic enough:
The talent, judgment, and insight collected in this book are phenomenal. Over the last generation, the authors have been more right, more often, about more issues of crucial importance to American security than any other group I can think of. It is a tremendous benefit to have their views collected in one place and concentrated on the next big choices facing a new Administration. This really is a book that every serious-minded citizen should read.
For more about the book, from one of its organizers, Chet Richards, see
this. Check it out.
____
* On blurbs: I have a bias in favor of giving blurbs for books, because in my experience most books deserve a better chance and a broader audience than they're likely to receive. Obviously there are exceptions. But I try to be very precise about the aspects of a book I compliment and the kinds of readers I recommend it to. Thus this comment really does reflect my respect for the authors and their collective contribution.
12 Nov 2008 02:46 pm
My
dad's former medical office, the Beaver Medical Clinic in Redlands, California. Flag at half-staff this week.
08 Nov 2008 04:45 pm
This has been a good week for America but a rough week for certain Americans. Barack Obama's grandmother. Michael Crichton, and the book critic John Leonard. Many others, but of importance to me: my father, James A. Fallows, yesterday, November 7.
After the jump, an obituary prepared for his hometown newspaper (and my first journalistic outlet), the
Redlands Daily Facts. His son-in-law, Jack Tierney, paid him an eloquent tribute
here, and I previously posted a letter from one of his former patients,
here. Below, images of the active, enthusiastic, joyful man I will remember, engaging in two of his favorite activities: camping out while trail-riding in the California canyons, and winning a tennis point.
Formal obituary below.
______________
Continue reading "James A. Fallows, 1925-2008" »
06 Nov 2008 12:31 am
I am sorry to be in a commemorative mode, but I can't let the day pass without saying something about Michael Crichton.
In the car this afternoon I turned on the radio and heard a news report ending ".... Crichton was 66."
Was? That Michael Crichton
has died in his 60s shocked me not simply because I'm now concentrating on the mortality of
my father, in his 80s, but also because he always looked at least 20 years younger than his chronological age. I'd corresponded with him recently and didn't know he was sick.
Crichton had his enemies, especially after his recent
anti-global-warming book (which I chose not to read). That he was married five times suggests that his personal life was not entirely tranquil. And he was hyper, hyper aware that in America he was regarded as a "genre" writer whereas in Italy, for example, he would be listed among the big names of Quality Lit.
But I was honored to have met him 20 years age, when I was living in Japan, and to have been a friend since then. He seemed unassuming, funny, charming in every way -- the unusual famous person who was genuinely considerate of one's spouse and kids. Very earnest about his political causes, including a very prescient argument fifteen years ago about the impending decline of the "
Mediasaurus," now known as MSM. And, there is no way around it,
incredibly talented. At one point in the 1990s, he was responsible for the #1-rated TV show (
ER), the #1 box office movie (
Jurassic Park), and the #1 best selling-novel -- and I'm not even sure now which of his novels it was. He must have been the only person in history to have paid his way through medical school by writing successful novels.
I loved hearing from him about oddball "practical" matters. For instance, height: he appeared to be nearly 7 feet tall, and explained to me (6'2") that up until 6'6" height was an advantage, but after that it was a big inconvenience -- door frames, beds, airplane seats. Or, getting ready for book writing bursts: He said he removed complications from his life while writing by having exactly the same food at every meal, so he never had to waste time deciding what to eat. He was a tech enthusiast, and the most passionate Mac advocate I have encountered.
He will be missed.
05 Nov 2008 12:42 am
The whole Grant Park pageant recalled Little Rock in 1992, when the crowd was swaying to "Don't Stop Thinking about Tomorrow" and the young-looking Clintons were in their full glory.
This was far more sober, as Obama has been throughout; and paradoxically both calming and inspiring. It's easier to sound inclusive when you have won than when you have lost, but Obama -- that is, President-Elect Obama -- did far more than the minimum with the "I will be your president, too" passage.
Performance expectations have been higher and higher for Barack Obama's set-piece high-stakes speeches, and so far he has not fallen short even once. This one was delivered with unusual poetic skill. This can't go on forever, but the string continued in a heartening way this evening.
04 Nov 2008 11:33 pm
Would things have been different if we had seen more of this man during the campaign? We will never know. But all congratulations and honor to him for comporting himself this way at this time.
A wonderful moment for America, which McCain did absolutely nothing to diminish. (The booing yahoos in his crowd are a different matter.) Going out on a high note.
04 Nov 2008 04:45 pm
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.
It continues below:
Continue reading "Non-political, highly personal: my dad" »
04 Nov 2008 02:24 am
Three negative reasons, one positive, to believe that Barack Obama's victory will advance America's interests, and that John McCain's would be severely damaging:
_____
Negative 1:
Accountability. There have been minor positive aspects to the eight-year Bush-Cheney era now coming to an end. But when the diplomatic, fiscal, Constitutional, economic, and other civic consequences are viewed as a whole, this era has, in my view, been a disaster for the United States.
And evidently this assessment of our recent history is not just my view. That is what the record-low approval ratings for President Bush, and the record-high "wrong track" poll readings indicate. For America to return the incumbent party to power after this record would make a mockery of the idea of ballot-box accountability and two-party competition. If an incumbent party retains power after this record, what is the meaning of party competition at all?
I have spent a lot of time as an American overseas, starting in the
bitter Nixon years of the early 1970s. Never has the "brand identity"
of being an American suffered as much as it has under George W. Bush.
Any American business person operating overseas will confirm this fact.
John McCain pretends that he is not from the incumbent party. But in economic policy and international diplomatic/military vision there is no significant difference, none at all, between his policies and what the Bush Administration has offered. The "maverick" distinctions boil down to McCain's acknowledgment of climate change, his wildly disproportionate emphasis on the "earmark" menace, and -- to his credit -- his early opposition to the Bush-Cheney torture policies. Those matter but are not enough.
_____
Negative 2:
Leadership style. John McCain is not willfully ignorant and incurious, which is a welcome contrast to George W. Bush. But he has shown during the campaign that he shares Bush's weakness for impulsive, gut-instinct decisions. For Bush: the Iraq war; for McCain, the choice of Sarah Palin and the short-lived "emergency suspension" of his campaign.
Some presidential decisions do require quick, "3 am" instinctual responses. Most do not -- and instead require a willingness to think broadly and dispassionately about the consequences of each alternative, since big decisions have effects that ripple for years. (See: "Iraq war," above.) Like Barack Obama, McCain does not have a record of executive decision-making. Unlike Obama, McCain has provided powerful reasons to doubt his judgment under the kind of pressure that matters most: the pressure to make decisions that are not quick but wise.
_____
Negative 3:
Sarah Palin.
_____
Positive: The tone, the policies, the cast of mind, the talent, and, yes, the hope consistently represented by Obama during these past two years on the trail. If he is elected, disappointment will certainly follow. The expectations now projected upon him far exceed what any mortal can achieve. But to give the country a new chance, a leader must inspire, and he can.
03 Nov 2008 05:10 pm
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.
02 Nov 2008 01:15 pm
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.
Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China
Blind Into Baghdad: America's War In Iraq
Free Flight: Inventing the Future of Travel
Breaking the News
Looking at the Sun