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A Japan That Can 'Just Relax'
In response to this article in the current issue -- short, but heartfelt; seriously, I hope you'll read it! -- a reader in Yokohama writes to say how the same phenomena look from a Japanese...
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What An Evacuation Slide Looks Like When Not Being Used By Steven Slater
Via Jason Stverak, president of the Franklin Center, video from inside the airport of passengers evacuating a United jet earlier today at O'Hare. YouTube video is here, screen shot below. If you watch...
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Readers on Iran, Bombing, and the Atlantic (very long)
As mentioned earlier, it's awkward for me to quote and answer hostile mail about Jeff Goldberg's cover story, and about my subsequent claim that it is a valuable work of reportage that does not...
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A Fascinating Communications Map (updated)
Via Richard Forno, of Infowarrior, this interactive map of the world's undersea data-cable architecture. You can zoom the map in and out and click on any individual cable to see its routes and landing...
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Imagining What China Looks Like
My standard "learning to live with China" pitch includes exhortations for foreigners actually to go and spend serious time there -- and as much time as possible away from Shanghai and Beijing and other...
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Carolyn Jensen Chadwick
Because most people did not know Carolyn Jensen Chadwick by name -- only through hearing her work on the radio -- I wanted to mention my sadness at hearing of her death, from cancer, today.I originally...
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On the "Bomb Iran" Debate
Previously here (Jeff Goldberg's current cover story, "Point of No Return"), here (my anti-bombing story from 2004), here and here (my defense of Jeff Goldberg's reporting achievement), and here...
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Charlie Rose Show, on China's Economy
Last night I was on the Charlie Rose show, with Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley, talking about what it means, and doesn't, that China's economy has now become the second-largest in the world....
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Why China Daily Is Facing Competition as My Favorite Newspaper
New(ish) kid on the block: Global Times. Like China Daily (reigning champion) it is government-guided. Also like China Daily, it's designed to present China's case to the world in a language more of...
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Elsewhere on The Atlantic's Site: Mosques, College, China
1) 'Mosque' speech. Last year I mentioned that, off the top of his head, Barack Obama gave an answer about "American exceptionalism" that would be very hard to improve on even if you had weeks to edit...
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My Last Word on Iran: Dissenting from Gerecht
Reuel Marc Gerecht has weighed in, on behalf of an Israeli strike against Iran.Based on his service in the CIA and other experience in the Middle East, he knows far more about the inner machinations...
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If You Like 'Mad Men'...
... especially the very-tail-end-of-the-Fifties aesthetic of the first shows, you may be as transfixed as I was by "The Subject is Jazz" programs from 1958, on YouTube here. Screenshot below; embedded...
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Jimmy Carter: Not the King of Beers? (Updated)
Here is potentially disappointing news. After receiving waves and waves of reminders about an essay crediting Jimmy Carter (my one-time employer) with having ushered in the microbrew / craftbrew...
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Last Word on Carter as King of Beers and Roi Soleil
Previously here and here. Reminder of the state of play: one person (Erik Kain), on the Balloon Juice site, wrote to praise Jimmy Carter for having brought on today's American craftbrew golden age,...
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While I'm in the Cheesecake Chinese Pop Culture Mode
Bear with me here. Previously in the cheesecake series, we had Global Times' latest attempt to see how China measures up with dominant Western powers. Now the photographer Han Jun Wei, 韓軍,偉 has a...
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Gary Hart on Bombing Iran
I am biased in favor of Gary Hart. I met him when researching my book National Defense back at the dawn of the Reagan Administration. At the time, as a first-term Senator in his early 40s, he was a...
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I Agree With the Underlying Political Point, But....
... maybe another way to illustrate it? Mike Luckovich's cartoon for today: In Luckovich's defense, most of the time political cartoonists, like political speakers, are working with the stock array of...
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A Word More About Gary Hart
Yesterday I mentioned that Gary Hart has played a more consistently valuable role, over a longer span of years, on questions of national security and national values than the great majority of other...
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A Rare Lapse of Google Earth: Chinese Airline Crash
We're so used to the all-seeing powers of Google Earth that it is surprising when it can't provide an aerial view of whatever locale is most recently in the news. Yet that is the circumstance with the...
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The Glory of American Politics Goes Worldwide
I am in San Francisco at the moment -- hot yesterday, back to typical August raw chill tonight -- and was typing up the notes from the day's interviews. Naturally this involves going to track down odd...
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