No surprise there, then. The magazine has been of the opinion for as long as I can remember that France is a basket case, economically speaking. What the French need — according to the Economist — is a short sharp shock to jolt them out of their state-subsidised complacency. The editors clearly think Sarkozy is the man for the job.
Hmmm… This is the magazine that also supported George W. Bush for the presidency.
Douglas and Quentin deep in conversation at Ndiyo yesterday.
He’s gone, and we will miss him. The NYT obit captured his essence nicely.
To Mr. Vonnegut, the only possible redemption for the madness and apparent meaninglessness of existence was human kindness. The title character in his 1965 novel, “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or Pearls Before Swine,” summed up his philosophy:
“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ ”
Mr. Vonnegut eschewed traditional structure and punctuation. His books were a mixture of fiction and autobiography in a vernacular voice, prone to one-sentence paragraphs, exclamation points and italics. Graham Greene called him “one of the most able of living American writers.” Some critics said he had invented a new literary type, infusing the science-fiction form with humor and moral relevance and elevating it to serious literature.
He was also accused of repeating himself, of recycling themes and characters. Some readers found his work incoherent. His harshest critics called him no more than a comic book philosopher, a purveyor of empty aphorisms.
With his curly hair askew, deep pouches under his eyes and rumpled clothes, he often looked like an out-of-work philosophy professor, typically chain smoking, his conversation punctuated with coughs and wheezes. But he also maintained a certain celebrity, as a regular on panels and at literary parties in Manhattan and on the East End of Long Island, where he lived near his friend and fellow war veteran Joseph Heller, another darkly comic literary hero of the age.
Like many baby boomers, I loved his work. During a sojourn in the UK, he once said something very generous on TV about a newspaper column I had written, and one never forgets compliments from people like him.
One of the most infuriating things aspects of the Blair hooey about the ’45 minute’ threat to Britain posed by Saddam Hussein was the way it diverted attention from real and substantive threats to the country’s national security. Like the stranglehold that Putin’s Russia now exerts on our energy supplies.
This week’s Economist has a sobering piece about it.
RUSSIA’S president, Vladimir Putin, must be feeling smug. His strategy of using the country’s vast natural resources to restore the greatness lost after the break-up of the Soviet Union seems to be paying off. If power is measured by the fear instilled in others—as many Russians believe—he is certainly winning.
The Soviet Union relied on its military machine for geopolitical power: its oil and gas were just a way to pay for it. In today’s Russia, energy is itself the tool of influence. To use it the Kremlin needs three things: control over Russian energy reserves and production, control over the pipelines snaking across its territory and that of its neighbours, and long-term contracts with European customers that are hard to break. All three are in place. For all the talk of a common strategy towards Russia, the EU is divided and stuck for an answer.
Gazprom, Russia’s energy giant, cherished by Mr Putin as a “powerful lever of economic and political influence in the world”, has long-term supply contracts with most European countries, including France, Germany, Italy and Austria. It also has direct access to these countries’ domestic markets. The EU reckons that half its gas imports now come from Russia. Newer EU members, such as Hungary and the Czech Republic, are almost entirely dependent on Russian gas. Moreover, a pipeline network that it inherited from the Soviet Union gives Russia control over gas imported from Central Asia.
The EU has few ideas for how to deal with its chief energy supplier. “We know we should do something about Russia, but we don’t know what,” one Brussels official says. “In the EU we negotiate on the rules, whereas Russia wants to do deals.” The deals are coming thick and fast. Last month, Russia secured one to build an oil pipeline from Bulgaria to Greece that will bypass the Bosporus. Symbolically, it will be the first Russian-controlled pipeline on EU territory. The pipeline will carry Russian and Central Asian oil straight to the EU, avoiding Turkey.
Oil can at least be bought from elsewhere. The bigger worry is about the EU’s dependence on Russian gas. The flow of natural gas depends on the routes and control of pipelines, as European consumers were reminded when Russia switched off the gas supply to Ukraine just over a year ago and Ukraine started to steal Russian gas that was destined for the EU. Russia’s pipeline routes encircle the EU from the north and south…
Wonderful account by the NYT’s David Pogue of his struggle to install a Netgear 802.11n USB adapter onto a brand-new, spotless Lenovo ThinkPad laptop. Sample:
Screen #1: “Netgear WN121T Smart Wizard.” The startup window offers a photo of the product–but in the place of honor, in the lower-right, right where the Next button should be, it says only Quit. That’s the only choice there.
There are also SIX buttons to the left of the picture. One of them is Setup. Well, that sounds right, but it belongs in the lower-right. At the very least, it needs a border or something to differentiate it from the other five buttons (Registration, Web Support, etc.).
Screen #2: Tells me that my software might need updating already. My options are “Check for Updates” or “Install from CD.”
This is a totally unnecessary screen. Do what Apple and Microsoft do: quietly check for updates. If there is a newer version, THEN tell me about it (and give me a one-click way to download it). If there isn’t one, don’t even bring up the subject.
Screen #3: Now a second installer launches ON TOP of the first one–yes, we’ve got superimposed dialog boxes. What the heck?
Anyway, this one says “Welcome.”
Here it is: the very definition of a time-waster. If I’ve come this far, don’t you think I already know that I’m in the Netgear Installer?
Screen #4: “License Agreement.” The entire agreement is typed in capital letters, just to make sure it’s as difficult as possible to read.
Nobody reads these license agreements–nobody. What is Netgear worried about, anyway–that you’re going to distribute its USB software driver on Kazaa?
At least Netgear lets you just hit Enter to blow past this screen. Most companies don’t. It’s as though the software company lawyers are saying, “Nyah, nyahhh, you can’t ignore us!”
Guess what? We’ll still ignore you, even if you make us use the mouse.
Screen #5: “Select Destination.” Here’s where we specify where we want the software put. This, too, is a waste of time. Who on earth doesn’t want programs put in Programs?
Screen #6: “Software Installation Complete.” Yay!
But if it’s complete, then why is there a Next button?
Screen #7: Uh-oh. “The Software you are installing has not passed Windows Logo testing. Continuing your installation of this software may impair or destabilize the correct operation of your system… Microsoft strongly recommends that you stop this installation now.”
Here it is, on one screen: everything that’s wrong with Microsoft and the Windows software industry. I’m sorry, but you would NEVER see this kind of idiocy on the Macintosh.
Who’s being dumber here? Netgear, for not getting Microsoft’s blessing for its software? Or Microsoft, for trying to scare people away from perfectly legitimate software (and, presumably, for charging software companies for Logo testing)?
There’s more, much more. Why do people put themselves through this crap?
What I love about the blogosphere is its collective intelligence — notwithstanding all the fuss about incivility etc. I’ve been fuming quietly ever since I read about the experience of Professor Walter Murphy, a decorated former marine who found himself on Homeland Security’s No-Fly list.
But now Ed Felten casts a calmer (and more informed) eye on the matter, and comes to a different conclusion:
There are two aspects to the no-fly list, one that puts names on the list and another that checks airline reservations against the list. The two parts are almost entirely separate.
Names are put on the list through a secret process; about all we know is that names are added by intelligence and/or law enforcement agencies. We know the official standard for adding a name requires that the person be a sufficiently serious threat to aviation security, but we don’t know what processes, if any, are used to ensure that this standard is followed. In short, nobody outside the intelligence community knows much about how names get on the list.
The airlines check their customers’ reservations against the list, and they deal with customers who are “hits”. Most hits are false positives (innocent people who trigger mistaken hits), who are allowed to fly after talking to an airline customer service agent. The airlines aren’t told why any particular name is on the list, nor do they have special knowledge about how names are added. An airline employee, such as the one who told Prof. Murphy that he might be on the list for political reasons, would have no special knowledge about how names get on the list. In short, the employee must have been speculating about why Prof. Murphy’s name triggered a hit.
It’s well known by now that the no-fly list has many false positives. Senator Ted Kennedy and Congressman John Lewis, among others, seem to trigger false positives. I know a man living in Princeton who triggers false positives every time he flies. Having many false positives is inevitable given that (1) the list is large, and (2) the matching algorithm requires only an approximate match (because flight reservations often have misspelled names). An ordinary false positive is by far the most likely explanation for Prof. Murphy’s experience.
Note, too, that Walter Murphy is a relatively common name, making it more likely that Prof. Murphy was being confused with somebody else. Lycos PeopleSearch finds 181 matches for Walter Murphy and 307 matches for W. Murphy in the U.S. And of course the name on the list could be somebody’s alias. Many false positive stories involve people with relatively common names.
Given all of this, the most likely story by far is that Prof. Murphy triggered an ordinary false positive in the no-fly system. These are very annoying to the affected person, and they happen much too often, but they aren’t targeted at particular people. We can’t entirely rule out the possibility that the name “Walter Murphy” was added to the no-fly list for political reasons, but it seems unlikely.
Nice comment by Don Dodge…
MySpace has blocked Photobucket content again. Robert Scoble reminds us when you host your content on free services nasty crap can happen. TechMeme is flooded with blogs angrily protesting MySpace’s actions. The lesson is this; Free services always come with strings attached, limitations, service outages, advertising, and rules that can change at any time without notice.
Consumers sometimes forget the bargain they made in exchange for the free services. Sometimes it means your personal information can be sold or marketed. Other times it means your content is not really yours anymore. Sometimes it means you get to pay for additional services once you are hooked. Or maybe that the rules change over time and the service is unreliable. Most times things work out OK and consumers don’t complain too much.
Consumers will put up with hassles and uncertainty in exchange for a “free” service. Businesses will not. Business customers require solid, reliable systems and they are willing to pay for them.
Both markets, consumer and business, are important and potentially profitable. However, the economics and expectations are different for consumers. As an example, Microsoft has 260 million Hotmail consumer users and over 500 million Outlook business users. The terms of service and feature sets are different and so are the business models.
MySpace, YouTube, FaceBook, and other Web 2.0 free services get lots of attention. They are held up as examples of innovation and the new way of doing things. I agree they are fun services but innovative? Depends on your perspective…
Nick Carr gleefully pitches in:
It’s worth remembering that the business model of Web 2.0 social networks is the sharecropping model. After the Civil War, when the original sharecropping system took hold in the American south, the plantation owners made money in two ways. They leased land to the sharecroppers, and they also leased them their tools. It’s no different this time. The payments for land (Web pages) and tools (video widgets et al.) don’t come directly, through exchanges of cash, but rather indirectly, through the sale of advertisements. But the idea is the same. If there’s a widget that can accommodate advertising, that tool will be supplied by the plantation owner, not by some interloping varmint. Whine all you want, but that’s the way it’s going to be.
Photographed on a friend’s kitchen table!
[Warning: retired colonel rant upcoming. Sensitive souls look away now.]
I’ve just listened to the first of this year’s Reith Lectures, delivered by Jeffrey Sachs, billed as “one of the world’s foremost economists and advisor to several governments around the world”. It was held in the Royal Society before an invited audience. And it was ‘introduced’ by the fragrant Sue Lawley, a broadcasting celeb, the high point of whose career to date has been hosting Desert Island Discs. The event consisted of a short sermonette by Sachs, followed by an inane Q&A session moderated — if that is the right word — by Lawley.
This has been the pattern for the Reith ‘lectures’ for the last few years. The old idea of a lecture as an hour-length talk, preferably covering terrain that is intellectually demanding, has been abandoned. And not by some brain-dead commercial broadcaster, but by the BBC. Investing the Sachs/Lawley travesty with a Reithian aura warrants prosecution under the Trades Description Act. One of the glories of the ‘real’ Reith Lectures was that they made no concessions to intellectual feebleness or short attention spans (just look at the list of past lecturers and subjects). I still remember wonderful Reith series given by, for example, Edmund Leach, Donald Schon, Richard Hoggart and Daniel Boorstin.
Bah!
Update…A friend tells me that one of the luminaries who asked a ‘question’ was a former Spice Girl. Only David Beckham was missing from the stellar line-up.
There’s a very interesting item on Andrew Sullivan’s blog. It’s about the British service personnel who were held by the Iranians and the prevailing double-think about confessions obtained under duress.
Here’s the problem: the Royal Navy folks were captured and subjected to some forms of duress, as a result of which they said all kinds of foolish things on Iranian TV — such as the admission that they had trespassed on Iran’s sovereign territory. Nobody believes this: the Brits knew exactly where they were. They’ve been using TomToms (as it were) for aeons. So when they arrive home, all kinds of accommodating noises are made; the poor kids had to say these idiotic things simply to get their tormentors off their backs, etc. etc. But it didn’t mean anything really.
One of Sullivan’s readers made an astute comment about this:
Meanwhile, the U.S. position is that torture (or torture-like) techniques garner valuable information as opposed to false statements engineered to end discomfort. Anybody else see a disconnect here?
Sullivan responds:
Count me in – but the public doesn’t seem to grasp this. It’s especially telling since we dismiss the statements of the captive British soldiers as the fruit of coercion even though their treatment was like a bed and breakfast compared to what has taken place at Abu Graib, Camp Cropper, Bagram or Gitmo. Why are we unable to make the same assumptions about other coerced testimony?
One possible answer is simply that as long as the victims of torture are not white or Western, they are not seen as fully human victims of torture – and therefore none of the rules we apply to full human beings count. Since any information from sub-humans is sketchy anyway, why not torture it out of them? It’s as legit as anything we’re likely to get out of them by conventional techniques. “Treat them like dogs” was General Miller’s express instructions at Abu Ghraib. And he saw the prisoners as dogs. In fact, if animal shelter workers in the West treated its dogs as some US forces have treated some detainees, they’d be fired for cruelty.
The scenario changes instantly when the victim of coercion is white or an allied soldier. It’s striking, isn’t it, that the only cases of torture in Gitmo and elsewhere that have had any traction in the wider culture have been people who do not fit the ethnic profile of Arabs. Jose Padilla is Latino; David Hicks is Australian. When they’re tortured, we worry about the reliability of the evidence. But when we torture “information” out of men called al-Qhatani or Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the information we get is allegedly saving “thousands of lives.” How do we know this? Because the torturers, i.e. the Bush administration, tell us so. And so the circle of cognitive dissonance tightens until it becomes airtight.
Spot on. This is not a criticism of the Royal Naval hostages btw. They did what most of us would have done in the circs. There are strong moral arguments against torture. But there is also a very good pragmatic argument against it, namely that people will say anything — anything — to stop the torture. Ergo, you cannot believe anything they tell you under such circumstances.