dispensatory rhetoric.

Global event, global marketing

2011-12-19T06:37:00.010-05:00

The World Cup in South Africa is a year and half behind us, but among the hubbub and hullaballoo, one thing stood out from the rest: the event's anthem.

In this season of togetherness, no other song stands out as a more perfect example of our new global economy and how interconnected we are. In the melody, no doubt the feeling everyone shared as they were cheering for their teams was the same. But in the words, there are delightful differences—the translation process provides a window into each artist's culture, given their take on the original theme.

Some background: Somali-born Canadian artist K'naan originally wrote "Waving Flag" about his rough upbringing on the streets of Somalia, and the theme had been appropriated for the World Cup, adding the words "now wave your flag" to invite the listener into the celebration (the original song said "and then it goes back"). But to invite the world into the celebration, it needed to be translated into more languages.

Other languages use more syllables to communicate the same idea. So how did they get it across?

Original English (K'naan - Somalian-Canadian):
When I get older, I will be stronger, they'll call me freedom just like a waving flag/Now wave your flag

David Bisbal (Spanish):
Seremos grandes, seremos fuertes, sonos un pueblo, bandera de liberdad/Que viene y que va
Let's be big, let's be strong; we are one people, a banner of freedom that waves back and forth/back and forth

Féfé (Nigerian-French):
On est des soldats, sans armes au combat, ce soir la mission, c'est de chanter dans l'estade/chanter dans l'estade
We are soldiers, without arms in combat; tonight this is the mission: to sing in the stadium/sing in the stadium

Nancy Arjam (Egyptian Arabic):
Ta'rafla almak, hetla'eii helmak, oum meddi edak, sheg'aa ba'alamak da/ba'alamak da
I will teach you that you will reach your dreams, now give me your hand and let's cheer with this flag/with this flag …

The part after the slash is what gets repeated in the song for emphasis, so it's interesting to think how awkward some of those lyrics would be in English if we chose to sing them. But whatever these versions lack in the chorus, they make up for in the verses (which I might go into in a future post—for now, the Spanish chorus is most representative of that approach).

Even more revealing are the videos, which in the Spanish and Arabic versions show Coca-Cola's involvement in the sponsorship of the event—and melody. Coke's jingle makes an appearance as a soaring vocal anthem between verses. The product placement is most in-your-face in the Arabic version, which shows Nancy Arjam relaxing at the end to partake in the sponsor's beverage.

Contrast that, then, with the French version, where, unlike the English "Coca-Cola Celebration Mix," the anthem has been altered to avoid matching Coke's jingle, and the beverage is nowhere to be found among the scenes.

Which made me wonder: what would sporting events be like without product placements or ads? Would they be as exciting? Should they be?

Social reading and free will

2011-11-14T14:09:00.002-05:00

I love the new social reading feature I'm seeing on Facebook. I get to see what my friends are reading; my friends get to see what I'm reading, and there's no effort required to go through the sharing process. More information = better. What could be better?

Well, here's the problem with social reading as I see it: you're giving up free will. Which isn't necessarily a problem in itself, so much as the fact that you don't get to see an article's contents before clicking on the headline, which generates an automatic share. Your friends see that you've "read" the article whether or not it ended up living up to your expectations. Things spread quickly enough on the Internet that a bunch of your friends could end up "reading" it too, and the chain continues.

So the temptation for journalists, as if it weren't strong enough already, is to write a sensational headline and then back it up poorly with incomplete or contradictory facts.

Take this article for instance: I decided "free will" was the best way to describe what it was about. But it's an exaggeration—of course you can go back and delete an article you've shared. You're not really giving up free will; it just takes a bit of extra effort to exercise it.

But it's not too much of an exaggeration either. So much of Internet use is predicated on what's easier, that an opt-out process for sharing might as well be equated with the use of force. But not really. You get the idea.

It's a challenge for publications to bring in new revenue these days, and if social reading generates more traffic, that has to be a good thing. But I hope journalists don't lose sight of the fact either that their first obligation is to report the facts truthfully and accurately.

Back in the saddle

2011-07-23T01:07:00.006-05:00

After nearly two years of silence, I've moved my blog and I'm ready to reboot. Because Google changed the technology they use to put content on remote servers (like mine), I had to change how the blog appears on my site. The process was relatively simple, but I had to take some time out from real life to figure out how the technical details worked in the background. Now that I have that time, I'm hoping to use it to make a better blog. Who knows, maybe WordPress is in my future? Okay, one step at a time.

More to come. Or not. We'll see.

At least I'm able to publish now.

A Nobel gesture

2009-10-10T14:59:00.015-05:00

The last time a sitting president won a Nobel prize was 90 years ago. Woodrow Wilson won in 1919 at a time when America was rising on the world stage to end a bitter global conflict. His Fourteen Points, especially "peace without victory," set forth the principles that would allow America to carry out the Marshall Plan post-WWII, in sharp contrast to the steep reparations that were levied on Germany for World War I.

Now in 2009, as another president who rocketed to prominence on the world stage seeks to bring the world together after a divisive period, the principal question being debated in the media is what President Obama did to deserve the prize—as if he needed to have fielded an army in Europe or negotiated a groundbreaking treaty to deserve the award. The committee's critics charge that the prize is politically motivated, a cheap shot at the outgoing president, with the nomination having been completed only two weeks after the president was elected.

Tommy De Seno of Fox News put it thusly: How to Win the Nobel Peace Prize In 12 Days. (Mercifully, an editor's note at the beginning explains that the selection process takes a year.) Seen on an Internet forum, one commentator noted, “All you really have to do to qualify as a world-renowned humanitarian is to replace George Bush in office.”

Surprise and sarcasm over, it's time to figure out why the Nobel committee would have made the decision it did. I'm going to operate on the assumption that—understanding that it might face charges of politicization—the committee nevertheless believed that its selection would fulfill its founder's mission of promoting peace. Alfred Nobel, inventor of trinitrotoluene (TNT, or dynamite)—a mild explosive by today's standards—created the foundation that awards the prizes that bear his name as a matter of regret for having brought such a weapon of war to the world. Robert Oppenheimer, inventor of the nuclear weapon, died with similar regrets.

So the key fact that's been missing from the discussion over Obama's meriting the prize, the one that has been sorely overlooked, the one that makes the award completely consistent with the committee's founding principles and aims, is Obama's tireless work toward nuclear disarmament. Not only did he dismantle the Bush-era missile defense system that restarted a nuclear arms race between the U.S. and Russia and partially led to a war in Georgia last summer, but as Senator he worked to pass nonproliferation legislation. Beyond nonproliferation, Obama's explicitly stated goal of zero nuclear arms (nuclear disarmament) creates a bold new framework for agreement as U.S. and Russia enter negotiations on the START I missile reduction treaty that is shortly coming up for renewal. (Obama's predecessor, by contrast, withdrew from the START II treaty agreed in 1997 that explicitly banned missile defense systems.)

So we come to the supposed "cheap shot"—which I would argue, far from cheap, is both a politically and historically important message key to the promotion of peace in the 21st century. Perhaps because of the politically charged nature of the debate, this historical perspective has been most sorely missing from the media coverage of Obama's win.

The doctrine of unilateral preemption espoused by Obama's predecessor represented the most significant threat to international stability since World War II. By taking the bold political stand that the committee has done, it has fulfilled its mission to promote world peace by ensuring that policy does not stand without repudiation. Without that repudiation, it would have stood as valid precedent, a green light with strong temptation for future presidents to repeat.

While it's too early in Obama's term to know what he will or won't accomplish, and we can't know if a peace prize will be enough to stop future presidents with an itchy trigger finger, we can know what the award was trying to do. In response to a policy of pre-emptive war, we have an act of pre-emptive peace—an attempt to help Obama politically in the moment to restore diplomacy as a primary means of resolving international disagreement, and a message to future presidents that this is the right way to go about things.

As ridiculous as it might have been to award Obama with a peace prize less than a year into office, the only thing more ridiculous would be to repeat the eight years of foreign policy that preceded him. And that's a prize-worthy statement.

Democrats' supermajority dilemma

2009-07-07T21:38:00.007-05:00

Al Franken was sworn in today. But now that Democrats have their magic number of 60 Senators, they don't. Power's a funny thing like that. And — by way of the Alanis Morrisette I heard playing on the radio on the way home this evening — so is life:

"Life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
When you think everything's okay and everything's going right"

— Alanis Morrisette, "Ironic"

"Democrats now hold 60 seats, enough to block filibusters — but only if every Democrat and two independents show up, and they all vote together. The chamber's most senior members, Robert Byrd and Edward M. Kennedy, are ill and haven't voted in weeks. Without them there, Democrats need the support of at least two Republicans."

— Associated Press, "Democrats wave Franken as trophy over limping GOP"

It took Franken so long to get seated that two of the Democrats' oldest — and most powerful — Senators aren't even around to help keep the majority together. And Lieberman and Sanders aren't even technically Democrats. So can we really call it a supermajority?

In a body like the Senate where even one senator can keep legislation from passing, the job of majority leader will always be one of herding cats. And thanks to the way our country's founders set it up, there will always be a fragile tension in the balance of power.

Race over, a question of race

2008-11-06T21:22:00.017-05:00

For all the talk of reaching across party lines during the presidential election, I'm sure Democrats in the New York state house didn't have this in mind: four rogue Democratic state senators in Albany are putting Democrats' control of the house in jeopardy by threatening to vote for a Republican majority leader, potentially spoiling the first chance Democrats have had of controlling the state house and governorship since the New Deal (that's about 80 years, give or take a few). So those are the stakes.

Why the mutiny? Three of the four senators are Latino, and the incoming majority leader is African-American. While none of the rebel senators claims to be angling for the majority leader post, in the words of Rubén Díaz (representing the Bronx):

"There’s a concern that we have a black president, a black governor and we have a concern that we have to be sharing power."

Excuse me? I'm all for striving for the ideal of racial balance, but can you honestly say that because there are people in power of one race, the interests of the other won't be represented?

Despite Democrats' best intentions to embrace diversity, this could be one area where the Affirmative Action mentality needs discarding. Especially in an election with this historic scope, people elected Democrats in record numbers to move the country in a different direction. Here four senators are ready to hand power back to the minority party, against the will of the voters, to push a racial agenda.

Why am I talking about a state house in Albany? Because what happens there could happen in Congress. With a woman as Speaker of the House and an African-American in the White House, I'm worried about racial or gender angst hindering the mandate of either of these people, or members of any race in positions of power in the future. (Though I have to admit: compared to where this nation has been, that's a pretty good worry to be having.)

Let's govern a nation of people, not races. There may be a valid argument in business for hiring equally qualified minorities to address lingering economic inequality, but in government everyone is equal before the law.

Obama's victory in traditionally red states is in itself evidence that white voters are moving past race in their voting decisions. So why the hangup among these Latinos? What can one race possibly do in power that the other one wouldn't do? Maybe I need an education here. Help me out.

Comic relief

2008-09-15T20:24:00.004-05:00

What do you get when you cross one YouTube video hit with a controversial moment in a televised interview about a political figure previously unknown to the national stage?

Room for satire.

But of course, SNL does it best:

Hey, Democrats. Let's talk.

2008-09-15T18:54:00.010-05:00

Joe Biden. Really? Joe Biden? I know he's the one that all the analysts were predicting. He's old; he's white; he knows about foreign policy. But look at that Sarah Palin over there, all the cameras on her. That could have been you getting all that attention.

Remember Bill Richardson? No one paid much attention to him in the primaries, but boy would he have been an answer to the GOP talking up Palin's executive experience and energy-cum-national-security cred. So she's been governor of a state for 2 years that has a bunch of oil. Richardson was Secretary of Energy under Clinton and called for an Apollo plan for energy independence before Al Gore got all the attention for it. This is supposed to be your issue.

He's a governor, too. The last pair of Senators to win office on a ticket was half a century ago — JFK and LBJ, 1960. We know them by their initials. What's Biden's middle name?

And oh yeah, he's Hispanic. You had a chance to make history, but instead you repeated it (LBJ was pretty boring too at first). So much for all those voters in New Mexico and Florida that might have been as excited about the Democratic ticket as all those lipstick-wearing pitbull hockey moms are for Palin (did Obama call them pigs?). And you let that Massachusetts guy, Mitt Romney, tell us that the sun will rise in the West against the Eastern elites! Who says regional balance is dead?

Did I mention he was our ambassador to the U.N.? There's your foreign policy experience. Boom, a trifecta: executive, energy, foreign P. Instead we've got old blue eyes over there with a seat on some obscure Senate committee talking about how to divvy up Iraq between the people fighting over there — which is great, except nobody gets it.

You need to jazz him up a bit. Tell his story. What's he been doing in the Senate for 30 years? How will his plan for Iraq mean victory? And didn't he get some bipartisan support for it too?

And Obama, you with the negative ads. What's that about? "Change we can believe in" is suddenly "change we need" — and boy do we need it because we sure can't believe in it anymore, what with the FISA crap and the McCain-bashing. "Vote for me because McCain can't send an e-mail" — there's a message that will get those senior voters in Florida off their walkers.

What you need to do is tell the American people what you can do for them. I know JFK said ask not what you can do, but we weren't heading off an economic cliff in 1960. Tell them how clean energy can get Americans working again, building roads, bridges, schools. How cutting earmarks means cutting jobs, and how 80 percent of Americans will benefit from a hefty Obama tax cut and energy credit to get the economy going again — or at least keep us on our feet. Not to mention all that stuff you did in Illinois.

And you know, the same people who told you to make the safe choice with that white guy are going to tell you to go negative, hit back hard. They love distorting the truth and making the other guy look evil and bad. McCain's got that cartoon character of your face plastered up there next to the slimy messages — why not put your face next to the good stuff about your plans? Images, man. That's how you fight back. People won't read, but they sure do remember those images in the voting booth.

And the thing is you know the negative campaigning doesn't work, that it turns people off politics. It's why we can't sit at a dinner table and have a decent conversation about the country. It's why you won the nomination in a fair fight. Don't let the wonks make you fall for McCain's trap. He's got the positive side of the story. You need to tell yours.

Said it once, I'll say it a thousand times: only a Democrat could lose this election.

Newsy grab bag

2008-08-04T19:43:00.005-05:00

Professional life is full of joys and hardship, one of the latter being that I don't have as much time to keep up with the news as I used to. But I still snatch enough peeks that something catches my eye, so in case you missed it, here goes:

Global warming has a new victim. There were penguins, island natives and seaside residents; now landlubbers have something to worry about: their kidneys. Increasing temperatures will mean people might be more susceptible to getting the painful little buggers – more than 2 million in America alone, but fortunately the cure's easy enough (assuming enough of it will be around given the droughts going on in certain parts of the world): drink more water.

Chavez wants a hug. That evil little Latin American dictator that called Bush the devil (and has the power to shift time)? He's a softy. After a spat last year in which the King of Spain told the Venezuelan leader to "shut up," Chavez offered the guy a hug. And you know what? The guy took him up on it – sort of (The New York Times has the full story). Maybe international relations aren't so complicated after all.

Going boldly where New Media has been before — a recent study shows that online ad campaigns are more effective when they can also be printed out, a new twist on Internet advertising for "old media" print publications that are making the jump online. Don't forget to make those ads printable, guys. Are you listening, Washington Post? (Not to mention — many Internet users will link to printable editions of articles to avoid all the clutter.)

There you go – just a taste. Hopefully more to follow.

Everything’s going to be OK … eventually

2008-05-15T12:21:00.018-05:00

McCain: Keeping hope alive

As our nation's problems continue to mount, it seems Reagan's "morning in America" has reached full noon.

After a speech today that paints a rosy picture of America's future over the next four years, Senator McCain seems to have joined Barack Obama as pretender to the title of the candidate of hope and optimism for the future (Obama has expressed admiration for Reagan's tone in the past).

So now both leading candidates for the presidential nomination are competing to become the focal point of America's optimistic spirit. Obama has "hope"; McCain foresees strong economic growth and troops out of Iraq in four years — or, as one satirical image put it, whatever your heart desires.

It's interesting to note that McCain made his promises in terms of a four-year window, not eight, perhaps a choice that, consciously or otherwise, gives deference to his age (if Obama can be criticized for being too young, then it's only fair to bring up the opposite about McCain).

But McCain was not alone in his optimism today. His sentiment seemed to be echoed by President Bush, who — in Israel marking the nation's 60th anniversary — predicted that in the next 60 years there will be "free and independent societies” across the region. “Iran and Syria will be peaceful nations, where today’s oppression is a distant memory.” Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas “will be defeated.”

White House spokesman Gordon D. Johndroe defended the comments as being realistic, pointing out that "If you don’t set out a goal for what the region should look like, then what’s the point in anyone sitting down to talk at all?"

We all hope flowers will bloom across the Middle East, but they have to be cultivated first.

McCain had a similar response to a reporter who called his speech a "magic carpet ride," saying "I don’t think it has anything to do with fantasy; I think it has everything to do with setting goals and achieving."

Well yes, have lofty goals. But to predict that they will be reached is getting a little bit ahead of ourselves, isn't it? (Along with Hillary Clinton's "Yes we will," that may be a running theme these days.)

If nothing else, we would hope for a detailed explanation of how to get there. We all hope flowers will bloom across the Middle East, but they have to be cultivated first.

McCain speaks out for the poor

2008-04-27T17:37:00.016-05:00

Taxes: Who's getting shafted?

And in the same breath he speaks out for the "100 million Americans" — less than one-third — who would be affected by a capital gains tax increase under Barack Obama's economic proposal. So as the Republican nominee McCain is carrying the mantle of supply-side conservatism (or, as Bush put it in 2000, calling the elites "his base"). That's understood.

But what caught my breath was seeing McCain refer to Obama's stance on the gas tax as being "defined by special interests." (For the record, McCain proposed a summer gas tax holiday, while Obama is against.) Now, it seems to me lower gas taxes might mean more gasoline sales for oil companies, which would mean more profits for them. What special interest could possibly stand to gain from lower gas sales figures?

Obviously Sen. Obama does not understand that this would be a nice thing for Americans, and the special interests should not be dictating this policy.

— Sen. John McCain on a temporary suspension of the federal gas tax, currently fixed at 18.4 cents a gallon

The only "special interest" I could find pushing for a higher gas tax was in Minnesota — home of last summer's I-35W bridge collapse — where the state's association of counties wanted more revenue. But with crumbling infrastructure around the country, tight state budgets and mounting national debt, if government itself has become a special interest in McCain's dictionary, we're in for a more topsy-turvy campaign season than I expected.

And if this is what the national debate looks like, God forbid what might happen if anyone were to suggest increasing the tax.

McCain's economics lesson

2008-04-15T18:23:00.007-05:00

Aptly enough, John McCain chose today, April 15th (tax day), to unveil his economic stimulus package (original speech here) after having been the subject of attack by his two Democratic rivals. Like him, I've never understood economics very well, so my interest is not so much in the substance of his proposals as his style – the way he chose to present them.

Seeking perhaps to reassure us that he understands economics, Sen. McCain had the exceptional insight to point out that "Economic policy is not just some academic exercise, and we in Washington are not just passive spectators. We have a responsibility to act. And if I am elected president, I intend to act quickly and decisively."

Wonderful! So apparently the economy is something the president should do something about. I'm reassured. Do go on.

"In all of this, it will not be enough to simply dust off the economic policies of four, eight, or twenty-eight years ago. We have our own work to do. We have our own challenges to meet."

Now this is interesting, because in one sentence McCain — or his speechwriters — has at once dismissed the approaches of his predecessor (also a Republican), his predecessor's predecessor (President Clinton, the one whose experience the current Senator Clinton is running on), and — here's the kicker — Barack Obama's.

How is Obama's policy one of twenty-eight years ago? Very simply, Obama has been on the campaign trail criticizing the economic policies of Republicans and Democrats over "the last 25, 30 years" — the same policies that he says have made people bitter, and the same policies McCain and Hillary accuse him of being "elitist" and "out of touch" for criticizing.

It's a tantalizing hint as to how McCain will combat Obama's message of "change" as the fall approaches. All he has to do, it seems, is remind voters of who was in office before Reagan. I'm predicting here and now he will try to compare Obama to Jimmy Carter. It will be up to Obama to show how he will be able to do better.

A bitter pill to swallow

2008-04-12T22:50:00.002-05:00

The latest kerfuffle from the campaign trail involves Obama's use of the word "bitter." Not as in the kind of discourse we've seen between the candidates, and no, not to describe Hillary's attitude toward Obama's lead in pledged delegates racked up in "undemocratic" caucuses (and, to be fair, the attitude Obama's supporters will probably have if superdelegates reverse the results of those caucuses).

No, the bitterness in question here is that of working-class Americans who have seen their wages decline and their jobs shipped overseas over the last couple of decades. Because if that happened to me, I know I would be shouting to the hills for joy. Enough irony, though; here's the substance of what Obama said (the offending word highlighted for our benefit):

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them ... And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion ... as a way to explain their frustrations."

And Clinton's response:

I saw in the media that its being reported that my opponent said the people of Pennsylvania who faced hard times are ‘bitter.’ Well, that’s not my experience as I travel around Pennsylvania I meet people who are resilient, who are optimistic who are positive who are rolling up their sleeves.

So for once, Hillary takes on the role of the wide-eyed optimist, Obama the pragmatic realist (or, if you would believe his opponents, "elitist").

But the difference is that while Obama inspires optimism about the future and our ability to solve problems, it seems Hillary wants people to feel good about themselves even as economic opportunities disappear around them. We'll see which approach wins at the ballot box in the weeks and months ahead.

Surge. Pause. Repeat.

2008-04-08T18:46:00.003-05:00

I was going to write a blog about General Petraeus' testimony before Congress today, but Arianna Huffington did it for me:

Surge, Pause... Surge, Pause... We can't pull out! It's all starting to sound a bit sexual, isn't it? But the American people are the ones getting screwed.

Not that this is news, as The New York Post could have told you back in February. Apparently, some people just don't understand war isn't won on a schedule.

Civility on the campaign trail

2008-04-06T22:04:00.003-05:00

Back in January, President Bill Clinton said that if his wife and Senator John McCain "wound up being the nominees of their party, it would be the most civilized election in American history, and they're afraid they'd put the voters to sleep because they like and respect each other."

"She and John McCain are very close. They always laugh that if they wound up being the nominees of their party, it would be the most civilized election in American history, and they're afraid they'd put the voters to sleep because they like and respect each other."

— President Bill Clinton, January 2008

The most civilized election in American history. Hillary certainly seems to believe that the primary season has been civil thus far, so we can only imagine what flowers are waiting to bloom between whenever the nomination contest is settled and November should she become the nominee.

But you have to wonder about this civility thing. After Hillary tried to revive the scandal surrounding Barack Obama's ties to Reverend Wright, Obama responded by saying that it was "fair game" to do so.

John McCain, on the other hand, recently said Barack Obama would be "absolutely qualified" to be president, while when given the chance to compare herself to McCain, Hillary left Obama out in the cold.

Two points I want to make here: One, it is a good thing that this election season so far is even allowing us to contemplate who is being the most civil (instead of who is reaching lowest in the bag of political tricks). Two, I'm not sure all the candidates are equally displaying the potential for civility that exists. I'd love to be proven wrong.

The cheese stands alone

2008-04-04T20:50:00.004-05:00

"The cheese stands alone. The cheese stands alone!" So says loveable loser Carter Doleman in the 2003 flick Scorched, a movie in which a group of small-town bank employees working dead-end jobs individually decide to take action to improve their lives by robbing their employer. Carter, the only one whose idea of success is to land a job at the bank, yells this realization in a moment of self-empowerment before deciding to get dressed up for his interview.

And so we have President Bush staring blankly into the camera, alone, in the midst of world leaders at Thursday's group photo at the NATO summit in Bucharest. The photo waa seized upon by the German publication Der Spiegel to suggest that he looked like "a defiant child with his head against the wall." Certainly it has echoes of Bush's adventure with a locked door in China in 2005, but perhaps he was just more eager than his counterparts to get the thing over with.

All this serves as pretext, then, for a new New York Times/CBS poll, which has asked since the early 1990s whether Americans believe America is "on the right track." For the first time since the poll was taken, 81 percent of us have said "no," including a majority of Republicans. With all the headlines that have greeted us about the falling Dollar, rising oil prices, job losses, etc. this might sound like a reasonable thing.

But not to a talk show host I found on the radio dial this morning, who mocked The New York Times for declaring that "the sky is falling" and said that "wrong track" is "pretty strange language for a poll" (perhaps it was so strange to him he didn't realize "wrong track" doesn't mean "end of the world" — it's the start of a process). He then took his first caller, who happily declared that he wasn't worse off than he was four years ago, and that people should just "go to a restaurant" (assuming people can afford one these days).

Pessimism such as that displayed by The New York Times, the host argued, "becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy," and he declared himself proudly to be one of the one in five Americans who believe everything is going just fine and dandy, thank you very much. The caller told us Ronald Reagan showed us optimism is key to addressing our problems. While it helps to face them with a sense of optimism that we can solve them, it certainly doesn't help to pretend everything is going just fine to the point that it prevents us from identifying problems to be solved.

Caller and host agreed on a bumper sticker slogan — "Annoy a liberal — work hard, raise a family and be happy." I prefer to remember the lesson of Voltaire's Candide, in which the eternal optimist Professor Pangloss refused to make any judgments about his own hanging — or in Sondheim's dramatization, praised the design of the rope even as it was being drawn around his neck.

Has NATO lost its way?

2008-04-03T17:40:00.012-05:00

Uneasy alliance? After today's meeting, NATO's path from West to East seems less certain. To those less in the know, NATO stands for North Atlantic Treaty Organization (you might be forgiven for not knowing it exists). The image above is based on the organization's flag, a white four-point compass on a blue field.

It's a question that's stayed in my mind — and indeed many others — since the end of the Cold War. With the threat of Soviet domination gone, why do we need a transatlantic military alliance? To many, the answer is obvious, and they are not necessarily wrong in thinking so: the new global, non-state threat of radical Islamic terrorism has replaced the old totalitarian Soviet bloc.

But as today's meeting of the 60-year-old alliance revealed, there is a larger question at stake in the future of NATO. Though its members are generally supportive of combating terrorism (France has committed new troops to Afghanistan, par exemple), they are less certain about expanding the membership of NATO eastward. In his attempt to bring the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Ukraine into the fold, President Bush ran into resistance from France and Germany, who wanted to avoid antagonizing Russia.

“Georgia's and Ukraine's membership in the alliance is a huge strategic mistake which would have most serious consequences for pan-European security.”

— Alexander Grushko, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister

While Albania and Croatia were extended formal invitations — the former of which should be eyebrow-raising as Serbia chafes over the recent independence declaration by majority-Albanian Kosovo — Georgia and Ukraine were put on hold for now, (though they have been promised closer relations of some kind). The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia was rejected outright after objections from Greece, who chafed at posters recently on display in Macedonia's capital depicting Greeks as Nazis.

Combined with U.S. plans to install a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe (which NATO backed at the meeting), Russia's skittishness about an American military alliance reaching into its sphere of influence should be understood. It may even be just a point of pride, as former Warsaw Pact members (NATO's old Soviet equivalent) fall away from the old Soviet influence and embrace the West (Bush has been particularly keen to reward Eastern European allies for their participation in Iraq). Perhaps not coincidentally, today's meeting was held in the capital of Romania, a former Warsaw Pact member.

“The Cold War is over and Russia is not our enemy.”

— U.S. President George W. Bush

But as NATO invites each new member into the fold, it invites new possibilities for military intervention in the future — each member of the alliance is pledged to defend the other in the event of an attack. I can't help but recall how the world wars showed us how entangled alliances can be troublesome — something that couldn't have been far from France's and Germany's national memories as they raised their objections.

While it is admirable to seek to bridge the gap that was carved between Europe's East and West during the Cold War, Macedonia, Georgia and Albania each have their own simmering disputes and political baggage to carry with them. As NATO seeks to expand, it should tread carefully, and watch out for the Russian bear in the woods.

A turn of phrase

2008-04-02T17:26:00.014-05:00

Perhaps a sign of the times in which we live, a phrase made popular four years ago seems to be making a comeback. Or "turning a corner," if you will.

Made popular in modern times by President Bush's attempts to describe progress in Iraq, especially on the campaign trail in 2004 (and afterward), the phrase made a surprise appearance more recently when Senator Clinton used it to describe her campaign's fortunes after her (arguably) pyrrhic victories in Texas and Ohio. But since then, I've seen the phrase pop up in a quote from a midwesterner in this BBC article about the world's opinion of America, which told me something must be up.

Maybe it's just me, but I remember more definite turns of phrases, like "light at the end of the tunnel," or "turning things around" (as long as we're going to turn something). But since it's been used to describe American progress in Iraq, however incremental it might be, it can't help but carry a connotation that there's a much longer and involved process afoot. And there are no shortage of problems in America today that might need such an approach for solving them.

And then there are the Yoko Ono lyrics to the song of the same name:

I turned a corner,
It didn't seem that was wrong,
I was just having a laugh.
But suddenly my friends are gone
And I didn't know that life would be so long.

I guess more than a question of how many corners we'll have to turn, it's what's around the corner (or what isn't) when we get there that counts.

In their own words

2008-02-26T22:57:00.005-05:00

Tonight's debate between Senators Clinton and Obama dived deep into substance, and that's a good thing (18 pages' worth of goodness, if you care to read it, over at NYTimes). But I couldn't help but notice one aspect of Hillary's style that confirmed for me the criticism that she represents the old guard of politics:

MR. RUSSERT: I want to ask both of you this question, then. If we — if this scenario plays out and the Americans get out in total and al Qaeda resurges and Iraq goes to hell, do you hold the right, in your mind as American president, to re-invade, to go back into Iraq to stabilize it?

SEN. CLINTON: You know, Tim, you ask a lot of hypotheticals. And I believe that what's —

MR. RUSSERT: But this is reality.

SEN. CLINTON: No — well, it isn't reality. You're — you're — you're making lots of different hypothetical assessments.

Contrast that with the last time I remember hearing a response like that from someone in power when a journalist asked a pretty reasonable question about the consequences of our actions:

JIM LEHRER: Let's cut to the crunch on this question. If in fact this team does not find any weapons of mass destruction, do you believe that would do serious harm to the credibility of the president and this administration and particularly on the… in the long run and when history looks back on this?

DONALD RUMSFELD: I mean, the intelligence that our country had— has— was over a sustained period of time, it was validated by other intelligence services. I have to believe it was reasonably correct— obviously not perfect. No intelligence is ever perfect. And that as the reports come out, they will find evidence of the kinds of programs that Secretary Powell presented to the United Nations. That's my… yes, I mean that's what I believe.

JIM LEHRER: But if they don't? Is that a problem?

DONALD RUMSFELD: I don't do hypotheticals.

JIM LEHRER: You don't do politics; you don't do hypotheticals.

DONALD RUMSFELD: I don't. I don't. Why? I can't speculate.

One of the necessary qualities of leadership is looking ahead to the possibility that plan A may not work as you thought it would. I don't know about you, but when someone running for president today, knowing what we know now, refuses to engage in hypotheticals, I'm a little bit worried.

~~But maybe I'm wrong. Can anyone out there on the Internets think of a time where it would be a good thing to avoid hypothetical questions?~~

Scratch that. I think I found one …

Victory of reason (redux)

2008-01-03T23:15:00.000-05:00

Sanity prevailed over fear in the midterm elections. This time idealism is king. The come-from-behind victories of the aw-shucks governor from Arkansas and the skinny kid with Kenyan roots (not to mention the second-place finish of the son of a millworker) are signs that the country is ready not only for change, but for humble leadership. For the first time in about seven years, I have hope for the country.

Thanksgiving at war

2007-11-24T00:07:00.000-05:00

As much as we have to be thankful for as Thanksgiving draws to a close, it's important to remember those who aren't here to be thankful with us. And while I admire the sentiment expressed in this cartoon — those serving abroad in our place certainly deserve our thanks — let us hope as well that the soldiers themselves will be equally able to thank us for the support they deserve — before, during and after the war; at home and abroad.

Fired up about Amazon's Kindle

2007-11-23T20:58:00.001-05:00

Poster child: Bezos' new toy

Leave it to Newsweek to try to get out in front of a technology trend. But this time they may have gone too far.

It began innocently enough — without notice or a buildup of anticipation that normally accompanies the introduction of such gadgets, Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled a new eBook reader at an Apple-like special event Monday. What followed was predictable — gadget sites online got their hands on one ASAP to give their take on the device. The verdict? A great leap forward, but not the be-all end-all of eBook readers. (Sony, after all, has had theirs out for a while now; Microsoft took a crack at it with their Reader software nearly a decade ago).

So I walk into a drugstore today, and see this on the cover of Newsweek: "Five centuries after Gutenberg—" stop right there. If anything should be compared to the invention of the printing press, it's the digital word, a phenomenon that goes way beyond any one device. The hyperbole left me wondering whether Newsweek was incapable of making a good analogy at best, or allowing themselves to be used as a free advertisement at worst (c|net's Amy Tiemann "had to check twice to make sure the article wasn't a paid product placement").

I can't be sure how the Kindle will fare, but my guess is that it will remain a niche product for the following reasons:

One screen is not enough. You read a book two pages at a time; an electronic reader should have two screens (or at least a wide screen that folds in the middle) with opposing faces.

It should be familiar. Open the cover of a Kindle, and it doesn't feel like a book. It feels like a PDA. People like the way the weight of a book feels in their hands. They like to take the book in their hands and flip through the pages. Until a reader mimics these existing ways of interacting with the medium, I don't think it will have mass appeal.

Ditch the keyboard. Like Apple's brilliant stroke with the iPhone did to the smartphone, an e-reader should not have a keyboard that distracts you when you're trying to focus on reading the screen. It should just be you and the words. Even Bezos said he wanted the Kindle "to disappear in your hands — to get out of the way — so you can enjoy your reading." It's hard to do that with a keyboard staring back at you at the bottom — and what about accidental taps? Like the iPhone, fixing this will require a touchscreen replacement (all the better to simulate flipping pages with?) — Apple's approach in a recent patent filing is one way.

The X factor in all this is Apple's response. The Kindle's launch has inspired comparisons to the iPod, and reviewers have mentioned the iPod and iPhone's potential to be used as an eReading display. I, for one, wouldn't mind using a click wheel to scroll down a chapter of text after selecting it from a playlist-like selection menu (are you listening, Apple?).

Whatever the case, the Kindle did get two things right: wireless downloads wherever you are, and page-turn buttons that don't leave you feeling all thumbs. Is that enough to spend $400 on a device that looks like it would have been at home next to a 1980s PC? Time will tell. But at least for now, it seems the reports of the book's death at the hands of the Kindle are greatly exaggerated.

GOP Congressmen demand withdrawal

2007-11-16T13:10:00.002-05:00

Democrats' report: Inconvenient truths?

— not from Iraq, but of a report issued by the Democratic members of the Congressional Joint Economic Committee seeking to estimate the "hidden costs" of the Iraq war.

The call comes from Senator Sam Brownback and Representative Jim Saxton, the ranking Republican members of the Joint Economic Committee, who claim that the report is "defective" and riddled with "factual errors," though the specific examples they gave have been corrected in the online version of the report.

It's all well and good to demand accuracy, but calling for the report's withdrawal?

While telling us to stand strong in the face of hardship in Iraq and asking our soldiers to continue to shoulder the necessary sacrifices, it seems to me these Republicans have found an enemy more formidable than the terrorists in Afghanistan or the insurgents in Iraq — a differing point of view.

Go ahead and call the report "defective," go ahead and tell us where the Democrats erred — even better, issue your own report in response. That's the beauty of open academic debate. But to tell the opposing side to take back what they said is the intellectual equivalent of cut and run.

Read the report for yourself (PDF, 400KB) and decide whether it makes a rhetorical leap too far.

But as for the Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is opposing any talk of a timetable — for charging Bush administration officials with contempt of Congress.

Too easy to be green?

2007-11-15T19:20:00.000-05:00

Ecstasy is all you need
Living in the big machine now …
Now your world is way too fast
Nothing's real and nothing lasts

These lyrics from the Goo Goo Dolls' 2002 release, Gutterflower, serve as pretext to a larger point about the state of the auto industry ahead of this week's Los Angeles Auto Show, not just in America but abroad as well. As German automakers struggle to increase fuel efficiency, America's largest, GM, is celebrating today's pronouncement of its 2007 Chevy Tahoe Hybrid — using a hybrid drive co-developed with its German counterparts — as Green Car of the Year.

Excuse me. Chevy Tahoe? Green? Car?

This effusive article from Reuters praises the Tahoe as "the first full-size hybrid SUV" that gets "21 miles per gallon in the city, the same as a Toyota Camry sedan." 21 miles per gallon? Break out the champagne! We can all go home now.

Even more galling is this gem from GM spokesman Dave Barthmuss:

When you think of a hybrid, you think of a small car that has been built from the ground up to eke out the most miles, but now you can have that kind of system in a large vehicle.

Yes, by all means! Let's throw away any mileage gains that could come from designing a new kind of SUV with efficiency in mind and just throw an electric motor on the existing one. That's progress! (To be fair, GM did make the doors out of aluminum, but most likely only to offset the added weight from the hybrid drive train.)

GM's mild Malibu and Aura hybrids, meanwhile, eke out only small mileage gains (perhaps why GM is advertising them as America's "most affordable" hybrids — they can't win on engineering).

Honda, for its part, is rolling out the first hydrogen fuel cell production car in the middle of next year to a "limited" number of customers in southern California for a bargain $600 per month ("affordable," according to MSNBC — we can only hope they took "relatively speaking" as granted). Good luck finding a filling station!

The Los Angeles Times' Dan Neil takes a longer view, saying that automakers cannot "throw a switch" and turn all their cars into hybrids at once — though that's exactly what GM seems to have done with its Tahoe. And, again according to Neil, automakers have more reason to appear green than just good PR:

Consider the context of this year's auto show. The price of oil is flirting with $100 a barrel. Recent studies suggest that, as the energy demands of emerging giants India and China increase, world oil consumption could rise 55% by 2030. Even oil executives concede we cannot drill or mine enough to satisfy that kind of energy appetite.

Two automakers seem to be headed in the right direction. Ford's CEO, Alan Mulally, talked about reducing vehicle weight as a means to increase fuel efficiency. Toyota, meanwhile, has a concept car with reduced weight instead of added batteries (though its larger image as a green company may be faltering).

On the plus side, automakers are finally waking up to the reality that oil is a finite resource. Their attempts at introducing greener technologies, if self-serving, are about as much as survival as social responsibility. But as they fight higher fuel economy standards at the same time, by and large their green effrontery remains a façade.

Liveblogging* Leopard: First impressions

2007-10-26T17:17:00.000-05:00

Rite of initiation: Getting a free T-shirt for being one of the first to show up. And Photo Booth doesn't look half bad, either.

Okay, so now that I'm an Apple geek I get to take part in one of the Apple fanboy's time-honored transitions: slavishly whoring oneself out for Apple's marketing purposes the day they launch their new operating system (or is that just all the time?).

In other words, I waited in line. In front of people. Showing up at an Apple Store the day of a software release announces to the world either that their latest release was really worth waiting that long for – or that you're a hopelessly devoted nerd devoid of friends, girlfriends, social skills, or all of the above (there were a few of those in line, no doubt).

But it wasn't all geekiness. Or maybe it was, but it was geek chic.

Apple's stores were closed Friday, presumably to upgrade their machines to Leopard, the latest release of Apple's flagship Mac OS (or Macintosh Operating System, in 1980s speak – this is version 10.5 for those of you who are counting). The 6 p.m. Friday release echoed a similar event this past summer when Apple chose the time and day of the week to release its much-hyped iPhone (and given the iPhone's strong numbers, the hype appears to have been deserved).

As the premiere event approached, a roped-off line snaked halfway down the plaza, cameras snapped, and Apple Store associates served Starbucks coffee to those waiting in line. And at the grand moment, the opening of the door, store associates clapped and cheered, I grabbed my T-shirt and promptly exited the line for those waiting to buy the new software. I headed instead straight for the bank of computers awaiting an OS that I had been waiting for since I got my first Apple in 2005.

Did it live up to the hype? Well, as much as I love Apple, I have to say it doesn't match the groundbreaking release of the iPhone. Instead, Leopard is just a nice refresh to keep the OS as useful as ever and shiny and new. I'll go over the main features here:

Time Machine. This is the biggie. Basically, your computer is now able to backup every change you ever make in real time, and you can go back in time whenever you want. Pretty cool, but get the largest hard drive you can if you want this feature to work the way it should. A terabyte (1,000 gigabytes) no longer sounds quite so large.
Spaces. If you hear something about Leopard "conquering time and spaces," this is why. You can now have multiple desktop spaces to keep windows open in, a handy way for a chronic multitasker like me to stay organized. As you can see, I have my movies playing in one window; working on photos in another; my calendar in notes in one … let's just say I could get used to this. Oh, and one more thing: you can make more than 4 spaces if you want – up to 16.
Quick Look. Not revolutionary, but potentially incredibly handy. For applications that support it (Microsoft Office excluded at the moment), you can see what a document looks like without having to open a separate program. It saves time and keystrokes.
Grid and Fan. It seems simple enough, but it's probably one of the greatest leaps forward in Mac OS usability yet. It would be even better if Applications were one of the default icons in the dock so you could use it like a faux Start button (something to help the switching Windows users out there). But when you add it, you have instant access to your programs. Cool beans.

Finally, Cover Flow. Now you can look at the files on your hard drive like you can browse album covers in iTunes. This is especially useful for photos, and as more applications support Quick Look, can get really exciting. But I'll try to contain my enthusiasm for now (Apple has spoiled me into thinking that features like this are something to be taken for granted).

So that's a "Quick Look" at the features of Leopard – I didn't even get into the add-on software that comes with the OS, and there are more features that can't be captured in one photo. Aside from having the first computer I tried crash on me twice when I tried to use Photo Booth's more advanced effects (hopefully not an omen), everything was surprisingly slick and smooth. Computing has definitely been vaulted into the next generation, at least until Apple releases its next update in 12-18 months.

* The asterisk in the title? It would have been liveblogging, but I had to yield my computer for about an hour while an Apple Store associate gave some pretty impressive demos of Leopard features (thank goodness for Blogger's autosave feature; I almost lost this post). So while I may not have been impressed with Leopard's features on my first go around, it just goes to show that if you take some time to sit down with it, you might be surprised by what you'll find. In other words: there's more than one way to skin a cat.