Wednesday, July 27, 2005
The Informationist Hits the Airwaves - KQED in San Francisco, Monday 8/1 at 9 AM
Well, okay, perhaps not the Informationist per se, but Michael Krasny will host Bruce Abramson on KQED’s Forum on Monday, August 1, 2005, at 9 AM Pacific Time. More information to follow as I learn it.
Update 7/29: Now it’s official. The KQED have me listed as “upcoming” a on its website.
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You Get What You Pay For, or Beware the Free G!
I’ve been using Gmail for the past couple of months now, and I’ve been pretty happy with the service--until Monday.
Monday morning, I found myself unable to log in to my gmail account. When I tried, Google informed me that it was experiencing a server error, and urged me to try again “in 30 seconds.” I tried numerous times throughout the day, but the problem persisted at least through midnight.
Fine. Everyone has hardware errors. The problem came when I tried reporting the error. Google maintains no customer service for Gmail users. There is no phone number, no one to talk to, and no e-mail address to which to report problems. In fact, the e-mail addresses that are there (if you’re patient enough to look for them), respond by repeating FAQ responses and explaining that Google doesn’t respond to individual requests.
Eventually--some time mid-morning Tuesday, my account reappeared, but without any new mail (including several tests that I had sent myself from other accounts). Again, my attempts to learn the source of the problem and its likely resolution led to nothing other than useless rehashed FAQs. My tests did eventually straggle in, though without any information from Google I have no idea what happened, what might have been lost, and when it will recur.
Does Google owe me better? Probably not. After all, it’s not like I’m paying for Gmail. But this entire episode serves as a reminder: you get what you pay for. It was a mistake for me to trust important correspondence to an organization that owes me nothing.
Caveat emptor? Perhaps. More like caveat freerider. I’m still not certain how best to adjust my behavior in the future, but there is an important lesson here--one worth pondering until it does lead to new action items.
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Monday, July 25, 2005
Neoconservative Triumphalism
Charles Krauthammer’s The Neoconservative Convergence in the current issue of Commentary promises a critical analysis in its opening paragraph:
The post-cold-war era has seen a remarkable ideological experiment: over the last fifteen years, each of the three major American schools of foreign policy—realism, liberal internationalism, and neoconservatism—has taken its turn at running things. (A fourth school, isolationism, has a long pedigree, but has yet to recover from Pearl Harbor and probably never will; it remains a minor source of dissidence with no chance of becoming a governing ideology.) There is much to be learned from this unusual and unplanned experiment.
Unfortunately, Krauthammer failed to deliver. Much of what he said about neoconservatism is true enough, but his analysis of the period between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the destruction of the twin towers was disappointing. He seemed to be more interested in partisan politics than in informed analysis.
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Friday, July 15, 2005
A Republican Notices Democratic Support for American Values
While visiting family in New Jersey yesterday, I ran across Cliff May‘s syndicated column in the Bergen Record. Among other things, Cliff points to an important new book, A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for War in Iraq
For those who don’t know, Cliff is the founder and President of an important non-partisan organization, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Though the foundation’s board includes prominent liberals like Donna Brazile, Chuck Schumer,Frank Lautenberg, and Elliot Engel, it has much less success getting the word of its important work out to those left of center than to those right of center.
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More Defense of Neocons over at TPM Cafe (sigh)
Frank Gaffney wrote an excellent article in the National Review Online, noting that Israel’s planned withdrawal from Gaza, at least as currently envisioned, will be a boon to Islamofascit terrorists. Shockingly, Steve Clemons disagreed strongly, over on TPMCafe. I decided to tilt at some more windmills.
I could hardly disagree more strongly. How would--or should--the U.S. respond if Pervez Musharraf decides that policing Baluchistan is draining resources that he would prefer to allocate elsewhere, and that he is therefore withdrawing from the region? The outcome would be disastrous. It would give the Taliban and Al Qaeda a new safe haven and destabilize Afghanistan.
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Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Arab Genocide, Arab Silence
Joseph Britt wrote an important Op-Ed piece in this morning’s Washington Post, Arab Genocide, Arab Silence. His column fits neatly within the “dogs that don’t bark in the night” category. Britt wonders why, amidst the international outcry against the Sudan’s genocide, the Arab nations don’t seem to care very much. Why, he asks, are the U.S., Canada, and even Nigeria more active in fighting for the basic human rights of Darfur’s dark-skinned Muslims than are Egypt and Saudi Arabia (the former sharing a border with Sudan and possessing a more powerful military, and the latter blessed with ample money that could be used for aid). And (here are the dogs) why has the global press paid so little attention to this Arab apathy?
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Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Greece at a Crossroads: A Book Review (Sort of)
Like many people, I view travel as an excuse to read about the place I’m visiting. My personal preference, though, is to dig deeper than Fodor’s and Let’s Go! guides, and to try to take the pulse of my hosts and their country. Who are these people? What is this culture I’m sampling? What animates their thinking about society, about religion, about economics, about politics—not to mention about wine and food? How do they feel about America and about Americans? How do they see our role in the world—and how do they feel about having folks like me “check in” to their own world for a brief visit, only to return home as a self-style regional expert? Granted, such queries might not be for everyone, but they define my own approach to travel.
So it’s hardly coincidental that my entertainment/education in Greece last week included two very different recent books, Unholy Alliance: Greece and Serbia in the Nineties
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Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Two Cents of Free Trade
Free trade seems to be the topic of the day, so I thought that I would add my two cents.
The dilemma of free trade is that it is always good economics and bad economics. Societies that reduce their trade barriers always gain; those that erect and maintain barriers always lose. But within societies, the gains and losses are uneven. Small numbers of people tend to lose significant amounts, while much larger numbers of people gain small amounts. While the net effect is always positive (hence good economics), those losing the most will fight the hardest (hence bad politics).
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