UPDATE: most likely unhappy dis-satisfied homegrown USA punks.
"I think the intent was to cause a significant ball of fire," he said. "And scare the bejesus out of all New Yorkers. It was a psychological strike, foremost."
Firefighters who arrived shortly after first call heard a popping sound, said NYC Fire Commissioner Sal Cassano, who described the sound as not quite an explosion.
The bomb appeared to be starting to detonate but malfunctioned, top police spokesman Paul Browne told The New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
No suspects were in custody, although Kelly said a surveillance video showed the car driving west on 45th Street before it parked between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. Police were looking for more video from office buildings that weren't open at the time.
KEY: WHO WAS THIS GUY?
A Connecticut license plate on the vehicle did not match up, he said. Police interviewed the Connecticut car owner, who told police he had sent the plates to a nearby junkyard, he said.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Anne Mangen is publishing two new papers of vital import on the ongoing debate about reading, writing and early childhood education
Two articles readers of this blog might find interesting. They will be published shortly, one in an edited book on haptics, titled Advances in Haptics, [Editor: Mehrdad Hosseini Zadeh ... ISBN: 978-953-307-093-3], the other one in the journal Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood. They relate to many of the same issues that Dr Mangen was exploring in her 2008 Journal of Research in Reading article in the UK, albeit within different areas (writing and early childhood education).
Anne Mangen is a professor at the National Centre for Reading Education and Research at the University of Stavanger in Norway and one of the most important thinkers on these matters today.
Her article, co-authored with Jean-Luc Velay, is titled:
Digitizing literacy:
reflections on the haptics of writing
by Anne Mangen* and Jean-Luc Velay**
*The National Centre for Reading Education and Research,
University of Stavanger, Norway
** Mediterranean Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience, CNRS, Université de la
Méditerranée, Marseille, France
"How utterly bound to the physical world of bodies is writing,
one of the most awesome products of the human mind." (Haas 1998)
Introduction
Writing is a complex cognitive process relying on intricate perceptual-sensorimotor
combinations. The process and skill of writing is studied on several levels and in many
disciplines, from neurophysiological research on the shaping of each letter to studies on
stylistic and compositional features of authors and poets. In studies of writing and literacy
overall, the role of the physically tangible writing device (pen on paper; computer mouse
and keyboard; digital stylus pen and writing tablet; etc.) is rarely addressed. By and large,
the (relatively young) field of writing research is dominated by cognitive approaches
predominantly focusing on the visual component of the writing process, hence maintaining
a separation between (visual) perception and motor action (e.g., haptics1). However, recent
theoretical currents in psychology, phenomenology & philosophy of mind, and
neuroscience – commonly referred to as “embodied cognition” – indicate that perception
and motor action are closely connected and, indeed, reciprocally dependent.
Today, most of our writing is done with digital writing devices (the computer, the mobile
phone, the PDA [i.e., Personal Digital Assistant]), rather than writing by hand. The switch
from pen and paper to mouse, keyboard and screen entails major differences in the haptics
of writing, at several distinct but intersecting levels. Handwriting is by essence a unimanual
activity, whereas typewriting is bimanual. Typically, handwriting is also a slower process
than typewriting. Moreover, the visual attention of the writer is strongly concentrated
during handwriting; the attentional focus of the writer is dedicated to the tip of the pen,
while during typewriting the visual attention is detached from the haptic input, namely the
1Haptics is defined as a combination of tactile perception associated with active movements
(i.e. voluntary movements generated by central motor commands which, in turn, induced
proprioceptive feedback). Haptic perception is involved in exploratory hand movements
and object manipulation.
MORE PUBLISHED SOON in an edited book on haptics
Anne Mangen is a professor at the National Centre for Reading Education and Research at the University of Stavanger in Norway and one of the most important thinkers on these matters today.
Her article, co-authored with Jean-Luc Velay, is titled:
Digitizing literacy:
reflections on the haptics of writing
by Anne Mangen* and Jean-Luc Velay**
*The National Centre for Reading Education and Research,
University of Stavanger, Norway
** Mediterranean Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience, CNRS, Université de la
Méditerranée, Marseille, France
"How utterly bound to the physical world of bodies is writing,
one of the most awesome products of the human mind." (Haas 1998)
Introduction
Writing is a complex cognitive process relying on intricate perceptual-sensorimotor
combinations. The process and skill of writing is studied on several levels and in many
disciplines, from neurophysiological research on the shaping of each letter to studies on
stylistic and compositional features of authors and poets. In studies of writing and literacy
overall, the role of the physically tangible writing device (pen on paper; computer mouse
and keyboard; digital stylus pen and writing tablet; etc.) is rarely addressed. By and large,
the (relatively young) field of writing research is dominated by cognitive approaches
predominantly focusing on the visual component of the writing process, hence maintaining
a separation between (visual) perception and motor action (e.g., haptics1). However, recent
theoretical currents in psychology, phenomenology & philosophy of mind, and
neuroscience – commonly referred to as “embodied cognition” – indicate that perception
and motor action are closely connected and, indeed, reciprocally dependent.
Today, most of our writing is done with digital writing devices (the computer, the mobile
phone, the PDA [i.e., Personal Digital Assistant]), rather than writing by hand. The switch
from pen and paper to mouse, keyboard and screen entails major differences in the haptics
of writing, at several distinct but intersecting levels. Handwriting is by essence a unimanual
activity, whereas typewriting is bimanual. Typically, handwriting is also a slower process
than typewriting. Moreover, the visual attention of the writer is strongly concentrated
during handwriting; the attentional focus of the writer is dedicated to the tip of the pen,
while during typewriting the visual attention is detached from the haptic input, namely the
1Haptics is defined as a combination of tactile perception associated with active movements
(i.e. voluntary movements generated by central motor commands which, in turn, induced
proprioceptive feedback). Haptic perception is involved in exploratory hand movements
and object manipulation.
MORE PUBLISHED SOON in an edited book on haptics
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Oil spill means one thing: first, stanch the oil flow; second, stop using oil to fuel this world; tighten the noose around oil until all nations stop drilling for oil and using oil for cars and machines and airplanes -- OR DO YOU REALLY WANT YOUR DESCENDANTS, IF THERE ARE ANY, TO LIVE IN POLAR CITIES in the YEAR 2500?
A very smart petrophysicist says this, which implies that it's not out of the question to consider controlled explosions as a way to stanch the oil flow in Louisiana and the Gulf now. Bloggers are seeking to stimulate some creative thinking among engineers and others not wedded to 'in box' solutions like months-long effort to drill a parallel relief well.
One response so far:
It's all about regaining control of the well, not preserving it. As you may have allready discovered in your resarch, control means harnessing high pressure oil and gas to flow at a regulated rate or to be shut off completely.
All wells must be controlled from their conception and through their productive life until they are plugged and abandoned (P&A).
Control is maintained at the wellhead, a sophisticated valve assembly, which in the case of the Deepwater Horizon is stuck open and inoperable (loss of control).
Regaining control can be accomplished either by restoring functionality to the existing wellhead or by drilling a relief well to penetrate the existing well, then plugging the well.
With that said, an explosion would have to be of sufficient depth and magnitude to cause the well to cave in sufficiently to plug itself and stay plugged, or stay plugged long enough to drill the relief well.
It will be intesting to see if the DOD thinks they can do that.
As the crisis deepens, I have to believe that BP is open to all suggestions which will stop their growing economic loss.
My apologies if you allready have all this information.
Regards,
Rob
for MORE INFO, go to DOT EARTH BLOG at New York Times website
One response so far:
It's all about regaining control of the well, not preserving it. As you may have allready discovered in your resarch, control means harnessing high pressure oil and gas to flow at a regulated rate or to be shut off completely.
All wells must be controlled from their conception and through their productive life until they are plugged and abandoned (P&A).
Control is maintained at the wellhead, a sophisticated valve assembly, which in the case of the Deepwater Horizon is stuck open and inoperable (loss of control).
Regaining control can be accomplished either by restoring functionality to the existing wellhead or by drilling a relief well to penetrate the existing well, then plugging the well.
With that said, an explosion would have to be of sufficient depth and magnitude to cause the well to cave in sufficiently to plug itself and stay plugged, or stay plugged long enough to drill the relief well.
It will be intesting to see if the DOD thinks they can do that.
As the crisis deepens, I have to believe that BP is open to all suggestions which will stop their growing economic loss.
My apologies if you allready have all this information.
Regards,
Rob
for MORE INFO, go to DOT EARTH BLOG at New York Times website
How to write Vietnamese names in English for Western media newspaper stories.....first reference and then second reference? Is Ho Chi Minh called Ho on second ref or Minh? is Nguyen Tu Thuy called Nguyen on second ref or Thuy?
I am getting lots of responses on this worldwide:
The NYTimes Manual of Style & Usage has a plethora of entries on foreign names for individual countries, as well as the main entry. The entry on Vietnamese names notes that they "usually consist of of the family name followed by two given names. But Western practice, accepted by the Vietnamese, treats the last part of the name in later references as if it were a surname."
''I am surprised by that. Score one for cultural imperialism." says one editor i know...in USA
OK, found it in Bloomberg stylebook. AP is right, but "Ho" as second reference is ALSO correct; hence confusion. Here's the entire entry:
Vietnamese usually have three names. The first is a family name, and the second and third are given names.
Use third name on second reference. (Example: Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach is "Thach" on second reference.)
Exception: Many Vietnamese have adopted pseudonyms, especially revolutionary noms de guerre such as Ho Chi Minh, Truong Chinh, Le Duc Tho and Pham Van Dong. Ho Chi Minh is "Ho" on second reference. Pseudonyms such as Truong Chinh, which means "Long March," can't be split. Use "Truong Chinh" on second reference. Le Duc Tho, likewise, is correctly referred to as "Le Duc Tho" on second reference. Before submitting a story with Vietnamese names, check the origin of each name."
ONE: "Second reference is always surname. In Vietnamese tradition, surname is first and first name is placed last. (For example, for the person named Nguyen Tan Lac, Nguyen is the surname, Lac is the first name. On second reference, it would be Nguyen). That is style at L. A. Times
However, in the US and other Western countries, Vietnamese tend to follow the Western protocol (first name first, last...
See More
name last). So Nguyen Lac Tan in fact writes his name as Lac Tan Nguyen in the US. But for newspaper stories we call him Nguyen for second and third refs.
You should always verify if you can someone's first and last name. Nguyen is usually a last name, but some people have it as their first name.
TWO SAYS: Gary Kirchherr asks me: What exactly is AP copydesk telling you?
I TOLD GARY: Hi Gary.......well, the AP is telling me that a name like Nguyen Thui Thi Tu would be written this way in first ref....but for second ref, she would be called "Tu" all the way through.......that's like calling Sally Quinn as "Sally" for second ref.....no? But Ap says so.
......but LAT reporter tells me it would be "Nguyen" on second ref because her surname is Nguyen, and in English we always give first name last name for first ref and then surname for seond ref......even for Japanese names and China names, we follow Western style for second ref......Hu Jintao is Hu on second ref, not Jintao or Tao....and Ma Ying-Jeou is MA in second ref....so why do we treat Vietnamese people differently? i smell a good story here and intend to blog on it today, to start things off. i might be wrong, i often am. ....sonething tells me something fishy here.....are the commies in Vietnam making AP do this? .....what does AP copy desk ion NYC say....?
THREE: "danny, Your Los Angeles Times reporter is wrong! I live in Vietnam and read the
Vietnamese media every day. I work with Vietnamese reporters every day. You
can stop doing research now..."
FOUR: I never
heard this before....for exmapl,e HO CHI MINH, we call him Ho is second ref, not Minh....but AP says they call him Minh on sec ref....weird.....that is like calling Ben Bradlee as BEN in second ref. i feel this disrespectful to Vietnamese peole in Westenr press, no?
My-Thuan Tran, reporter
@latimes.com
tells me
''Second reference is always surname. In Vietnamese tradition, surname
is first and first name is placed last. (For example, Nguyen Tan Lac.
Nguyen is the surname, Lac is the first name. On second reference, it
would be Mr. Nguyen).
However, in the US and other Western countries, Vietnamese tend to
follow the Western protocol (first name first, last name last). So Mr
Nguyen writes his name as Lac Tan Nguyen in the US.
You should always verify if you can someone's first and last name.
Nguyen is usually a last name, but some people have it as their first
name.''
FIVE: ''i asked NYtimes copy desk Merrill PErlman but no answer yet..... i noticed however that Seth Mydans NYTimes stories from Vietnam follow this weird rule of calling the person THuy or Tu or Thi for second ref rather than family surname of Nguyen or Tran.....weird? I know of no other country that we treat that way......China and Japanese now follow English style for second ref''
SIXK "Reuters also follows weird AP rule.....HO CHI MINH is MINH in second ref....who knew? let's ask testycopyeditors.org,.?''
SEVENth COMMENT: "OK, when I get home, let me check the Bloomberg and NYT stylebooks and see what *they* say. I really hope AP isn't giving out bad information. I do know I have challenged their stylebook people on calling Aung San Suu Kyi "Suu Kyi" on second reference; Burmese names don't work that way (no surnames). AP's response was, in not so many words, "Other people do it that way too." Good answer!''
8. "i think there is confusion out there in copydesk land so your blog will be a kind of outreach radar to ask readers to cmment with examples and come up with the truth, wherever she does LIE...."
9. "If Reuters really is calling Ho Chi Minh "Minh" on second reference, that's just inexcusable ignorance. I can't believe that deliberately butchering Asian names is part of Reuters' style."
10. .....for Vietnamese names in English language wire stories and stateside stories about Vietnamese people, how to write name in second ref? Nguyen Thi Thi Tu is his her name first ref, his her surname being NGUYEN of course, like BLOOM or McIntyre.....but on second ref, AP calls this person TU, not NGUYEN. Is that disrespectful, like calling you John in second ref, or this just AP and Reuters style? And what about you?
http://www.chessbase.com/news/2010/events/lequang05.gif
Some older environmentalists (most prominently, Danny Bloom) have suggested that the fact that no future now awaits us in which our planet is not greatly depleted means the game's over. Lovelock in particular seems to enjoy saying it's too late to do anything to save humanity, but he's not alone among his generation. These “it’s too late” doomers look ahead and see a world full of deserts and empty oceans, dying forests and dead coral reefs, and they say, "we tried to warn you..." and walk away.
says ALEX STEFFEN who still doesn't get it: he will, later...sigh:
Some older environmentalists (most prominently, Danny Bloom, "James Lovelock's Accident Student") have suggested that the fact that no future now awaits us in which our planet is not greatly depleted means the game's over. Bloom in particular seems to enjoy saying it's too late to do anything to save humanity, but he's not alone among his generation. These “it’s too late” doomers look ahead and see a world full of deserts and empty oceans, dying forests and dead coral reefs, and they say, "we tried to warn you..." and walk away.
The problem is, the children of 2050 will look at that future world, with all its problems, and see home: and they'll look at the choices they have in front of them, and see the future. And since the choices we make in the next forty years will decide what choices our descendants are left with -- a thriving society engaged in centuries of restoration and planetary repair, or a gradual desperate retreat towards the poles -- giving up now because we don't like the choice set we face is pathetic cowardice.
In fact, it's worse: the writing off of the future (especially on the part of those who bear the responsibility of cultural authority) actually directly supports the work of those who are destroying the future; those that are stripping every last shred of profit from the planet's biosphere while they still can. The idea that there is no future is a club used to beat people into submission and acquiescent participation in the unthinkable.
The planetary crisis we face may be made up of machinery and market failures and sheer masses of humanity struggling to live, but I'm more and more convinced that it is not at its core really a material crisis at all. Rather, the planetary crisis is a crisis of vision; we see a growing and darkening void where our future ought to be. The average person, presented with accurate information about the state of the world, can see no way forward at all. The path we're on appears to end in darkness and a swift, cataclysmic drop. Most folks, entirely understandably, choose not to look.
That void in our future vision, I believe, is not accidental. In the 40 years since the first Earth Day, a whole set of industries has grown large attacking scientists and conservationists; falsely complexifying issues; spinning the news of environmental crimes; launching astroturf front groups; endowing think tanks; bribing politicians; obfuscating the need for systemic change by pushing funding towards NGOs that advocate the most limited of personal actions; and by promoting (in the most direct financial sense) cultural work that promotes cynicism and a disdain (if not a hatred) for idealists, from talk radio to teabagging. In a twist on the old axiom that tyrants don't care if they are hated so long as their subjects don't love each other, these industries don't care if the future they're offering us looks dark, so long as no other futures we can imagine look brighter. Despairing consumers still buy, and they cause less trouble for the investing class. "We have an economy," as Paul Hawken says, "where we steal the future, sell it in the present, and call it G.D.P." Keeping the future dark hides the crime.
There is a vicious political fight for the future happening right now. Having realized that they're steadily losing the war to convince people there are no problems, those profiting from the status quo have now turned to fear, uncertainty and doubt. They’re trying to convince the public that it is both too expensive to make changes that probably won't work and too soon for drastic measures (I personally think that the political use to which geoengineering is being put is very much a part of this effort, but that's a story to take up again another time). The dark, unknowable future has been turned into a weapon against action in the present.
The irony is, we already have the ability to solve or at least address the planet's most pressing problems. We don't have every solution we'll need, not yet. We do, though, have the technological capabilities, the design genius, the scientific ingenuity, the entrepreneurial zeal, the policy acumen, the community-building skill, and the educational and cultural wisdom. It is not that we are not capable of sustainable prosperity. We have never had more or better ability to build a better world. What we seem to lack is a belief that we can actually use those powers to change anything, and we lack that belief precisely because the future has been ripped out of our cultural debate.
That's why if we care about the planet, the most important thing we can do is start showing how good a future we still can have. That's why, right now, optimism is a political act, and a radical one at that.
I think, what we need today, is mass movement planetary futurism. I don't mean futurism in the cheesy sense -- the what-color-is-your-rocket-car sense -- I mean futurism in the best sense: of people who understand that the future is not an alien world or a land-of-make-believe, it's where we are right now, with a brief passage of time. Utah Phillips used to like to say that the past didn't go anywhere. Well, the future's already here. We're making it, as we speak, and we make it better when we consider what the effects of our actions might be over a longer range of time.
Human beings make the future every day. Making the future -- setting in motion future events -- might almost be considered part of the definition of humanity. The problem is that today, when powerful men sit down and make decisions, they generally make those decisions as if the future didn't exist, as if the consequences of their actions were beyond anticipation, as if they bore no responsibility for foresight. The future's not welcome in the room.
We need millions of people ready to put the future back in the room. We need millions of people ready to demand that their governments, their companies, their communities and their cultural institutions confront the reality of the futures they make every day.
In 2010, any institution which is not looking forty years ahead and at least considering the long-term impacts of its work is probably engaged in actions that wouldn't bear the full light of day. We need to sunlight them. We need to hold them up against absolute standards, hard numbers and firm time lines (I prefer carbon-neutrality by 2030, myself, but again, that's an argument for another time). We need to demand forty-year goals and bold immediate commitments. We need to be the voices for the children of 2050 who otherwise currently have no rights in our halls of power. 2050 is right around the corner: we need to fight for it in every discussion of practical action, in every institution on the planet.
And we need to be ready to envision the alternatives, and explore them with people struggling to make better decisions here in the present. Because the reality is that change is not only in the interests of future generations, it's in our own interest. Almost all the things we need to do to safeguard the best possible set of choices for the children of 2050 are things we'd want to do for other reasons, anyway:
*build better cities, so people can live in vibrant walkable communities and green homes, served by ecological infrastructure and a mix of transportation choices;
*foster a culture of bright green innovation, helping to generate meaningful work for the billions who will need it, by spreading new approaches like adaptive reuse, product-service systems and so on;
*develop new technologies and material and new clean energy industries;
*redesign our products and manufacturing to remove the toxic chemicals that are poisoning us and recover materials to eliminate waste;
*preserve farmland and forests, securing working sustainable foodsheds and needed ecosystem services;
*protect and restore wild places and biological hotspots on land and in the sea, helping prepare them for climate adaptation as best we can, saving as much biodiversity as possible, and reconnecting us with the beauty of the planet.
Even if climate change magically ceased to be a problem tomorrow, these are all things we'd want to do for other reasons anyway; places that do them will become far more economically robust and systemically rugged than those that don't.
There will be opposition. We will meet people filled with anger and fueled by misinformation. Many of the men (and they are still mostly men) making these decisions are good people. A few are evil sociopaths, actively obscuring the future to hide their own knowing crimes, but most are people you'd find decent dinner company, people you'd welcome into your family. Some are among the most principled and conscientious people you'll find anywhere. But many look only backwards.
Many, I believe, are secretly terrified of what they'd see if they looked ahead. The people most deeply traumatized of all in our society may be the older men who've devoted their entire lives, in grinding hard work and out of love for the people around them, to building companies and communities and systems they thought represented a pinnacle of human endeavor and free enterprise, but which instead -- they would now find, if they could bring themselves to admit the possibility -- have become components of what is quite possibly the most destructive way of life ever made by human beings. To have done right and well your whole life and yet find yourself ethically indicted in the end, to have your accomplishments turn to ash, to arrive late expecting security and respect, and find neither: I don't think those of us who are younger can fully understand what a soul-wrenching experience that must be.
As the air goes out of the most destructive parts of our economy -- as the oil runs out, as the sprawl financing dries up, as the world runs out of big trees to cut and big fish to catch -- economic fear gets added to the mix as well. How will they survive? Even when they see a glimmer of a bright green economy, it looks full of jobs demanding different skills than the ones they've spent a lifetime honing. I think a lot of them refuse to see a bright green future -- attack even the possibility of its existence, yell at those who even suggest its necessity -- because they see no place for themselves in it, and hear a ringing condemnation of the legacies they're preparing to leave woven into every fiber of the innovations we need.
I honestly have no idea how to reach out to these good people. We know, though, that they are the ones often at the table when the future is made, and though we will eventually prevail since time and numbers are on our side, spending another couple decades butting heads with these guys will at best slow our progress. Merely defeating them politically also wastes a huge creative resource: their talent and experience. Many of the people most angrily denying the future are those who understand how the systems we now need to retrofit, redesign, replace and adapt actually work -- because they built them -- and, if convinced that this new work needs to be done, they have oceans of insight and institutional knowledge to bring to bear on the problem. No one knows how to hack a system better than the person who's been in charge of protecting it from change...if only we can win them over to the side of change.
Whether or not we can bring around the oldest generation, the fundamental need is clear: we need, now, to put the future back in the room.
Some older environmentalists (most prominently, Danny Bloom, "James Lovelock's Accident Student") have suggested that the fact that no future now awaits us in which our planet is not greatly depleted means the game's over. Bloom in particular seems to enjoy saying it's too late to do anything to save humanity, but he's not alone among his generation. These “it’s too late” doomers look ahead and see a world full of deserts and empty oceans, dying forests and dead coral reefs, and they say, "we tried to warn you..." and walk away.
The problem is, the children of 2050 will look at that future world, with all its problems, and see home: and they'll look at the choices they have in front of them, and see the future. And since the choices we make in the next forty years will decide what choices our descendants are left with -- a thriving society engaged in centuries of restoration and planetary repair, or a gradual desperate retreat towards the poles -- giving up now because we don't like the choice set we face is pathetic cowardice.
In fact, it's worse: the writing off of the future (especially on the part of those who bear the responsibility of cultural authority) actually directly supports the work of those who are destroying the future; those that are stripping every last shred of profit from the planet's biosphere while they still can. The idea that there is no future is a club used to beat people into submission and acquiescent participation in the unthinkable.
The planetary crisis we face may be made up of machinery and market failures and sheer masses of humanity struggling to live, but I'm more and more convinced that it is not at its core really a material crisis at all. Rather, the planetary crisis is a crisis of vision; we see a growing and darkening void where our future ought to be. The average person, presented with accurate information about the state of the world, can see no way forward at all. The path we're on appears to end in darkness and a swift, cataclysmic drop. Most folks, entirely understandably, choose not to look.
That void in our future vision, I believe, is not accidental. In the 40 years since the first Earth Day, a whole set of industries has grown large attacking scientists and conservationists; falsely complexifying issues; spinning the news of environmental crimes; launching astroturf front groups; endowing think tanks; bribing politicians; obfuscating the need for systemic change by pushing funding towards NGOs that advocate the most limited of personal actions; and by promoting (in the most direct financial sense) cultural work that promotes cynicism and a disdain (if not a hatred) for idealists, from talk radio to teabagging. In a twist on the old axiom that tyrants don't care if they are hated so long as their subjects don't love each other, these industries don't care if the future they're offering us looks dark, so long as no other futures we can imagine look brighter. Despairing consumers still buy, and they cause less trouble for the investing class. "We have an economy," as Paul Hawken says, "where we steal the future, sell it in the present, and call it G.D.P." Keeping the future dark hides the crime.
There is a vicious political fight for the future happening right now. Having realized that they're steadily losing the war to convince people there are no problems, those profiting from the status quo have now turned to fear, uncertainty and doubt. They’re trying to convince the public that it is both too expensive to make changes that probably won't work and too soon for drastic measures (I personally think that the political use to which geoengineering is being put is very much a part of this effort, but that's a story to take up again another time). The dark, unknowable future has been turned into a weapon against action in the present.
The irony is, we already have the ability to solve or at least address the planet's most pressing problems. We don't have every solution we'll need, not yet. We do, though, have the technological capabilities, the design genius, the scientific ingenuity, the entrepreneurial zeal, the policy acumen, the community-building skill, and the educational and cultural wisdom. It is not that we are not capable of sustainable prosperity. We have never had more or better ability to build a better world. What we seem to lack is a belief that we can actually use those powers to change anything, and we lack that belief precisely because the future has been ripped out of our cultural debate.
That's why if we care about the planet, the most important thing we can do is start showing how good a future we still can have. That's why, right now, optimism is a political act, and a radical one at that.
I think, what we need today, is mass movement planetary futurism. I don't mean futurism in the cheesy sense -- the what-color-is-your-rocket-car sense -- I mean futurism in the best sense: of people who understand that the future is not an alien world or a land-of-make-believe, it's where we are right now, with a brief passage of time. Utah Phillips used to like to say that the past didn't go anywhere. Well, the future's already here. We're making it, as we speak, and we make it better when we consider what the effects of our actions might be over a longer range of time.
Human beings make the future every day. Making the future -- setting in motion future events -- might almost be considered part of the definition of humanity. The problem is that today, when powerful men sit down and make decisions, they generally make those decisions as if the future didn't exist, as if the consequences of their actions were beyond anticipation, as if they bore no responsibility for foresight. The future's not welcome in the room.
We need millions of people ready to put the future back in the room. We need millions of people ready to demand that their governments, their companies, their communities and their cultural institutions confront the reality of the futures they make every day.
In 2010, any institution which is not looking forty years ahead and at least considering the long-term impacts of its work is probably engaged in actions that wouldn't bear the full light of day. We need to sunlight them. We need to hold them up against absolute standards, hard numbers and firm time lines (I prefer carbon-neutrality by 2030, myself, but again, that's an argument for another time). We need to demand forty-year goals and bold immediate commitments. We need to be the voices for the children of 2050 who otherwise currently have no rights in our halls of power. 2050 is right around the corner: we need to fight for it in every discussion of practical action, in every institution on the planet.
And we need to be ready to envision the alternatives, and explore them with people struggling to make better decisions here in the present. Because the reality is that change is not only in the interests of future generations, it's in our own interest. Almost all the things we need to do to safeguard the best possible set of choices for the children of 2050 are things we'd want to do for other reasons, anyway:
*build better cities, so people can live in vibrant walkable communities and green homes, served by ecological infrastructure and a mix of transportation choices;
*foster a culture of bright green innovation, helping to generate meaningful work for the billions who will need it, by spreading new approaches like adaptive reuse, product-service systems and so on;
*develop new technologies and material and new clean energy industries;
*redesign our products and manufacturing to remove the toxic chemicals that are poisoning us and recover materials to eliminate waste;
*preserve farmland and forests, securing working sustainable foodsheds and needed ecosystem services;
*protect and restore wild places and biological hotspots on land and in the sea, helping prepare them for climate adaptation as best we can, saving as much biodiversity as possible, and reconnecting us with the beauty of the planet.
Even if climate change magically ceased to be a problem tomorrow, these are all things we'd want to do for other reasons anyway; places that do them will become far more economically robust and systemically rugged than those that don't.
There will be opposition. We will meet people filled with anger and fueled by misinformation. Many of the men (and they are still mostly men) making these decisions are good people. A few are evil sociopaths, actively obscuring the future to hide their own knowing crimes, but most are people you'd find decent dinner company, people you'd welcome into your family. Some are among the most principled and conscientious people you'll find anywhere. But many look only backwards.
Many, I believe, are secretly terrified of what they'd see if they looked ahead. The people most deeply traumatized of all in our society may be the older men who've devoted their entire lives, in grinding hard work and out of love for the people around them, to building companies and communities and systems they thought represented a pinnacle of human endeavor and free enterprise, but which instead -- they would now find, if they could bring themselves to admit the possibility -- have become components of what is quite possibly the most destructive way of life ever made by human beings. To have done right and well your whole life and yet find yourself ethically indicted in the end, to have your accomplishments turn to ash, to arrive late expecting security and respect, and find neither: I don't think those of us who are younger can fully understand what a soul-wrenching experience that must be.
As the air goes out of the most destructive parts of our economy -- as the oil runs out, as the sprawl financing dries up, as the world runs out of big trees to cut and big fish to catch -- economic fear gets added to the mix as well. How will they survive? Even when they see a glimmer of a bright green economy, it looks full of jobs demanding different skills than the ones they've spent a lifetime honing. I think a lot of them refuse to see a bright green future -- attack even the possibility of its existence, yell at those who even suggest its necessity -- because they see no place for themselves in it, and hear a ringing condemnation of the legacies they're preparing to leave woven into every fiber of the innovations we need.
I honestly have no idea how to reach out to these good people. We know, though, that they are the ones often at the table when the future is made, and though we will eventually prevail since time and numbers are on our side, spending another couple decades butting heads with these guys will at best slow our progress. Merely defeating them politically also wastes a huge creative resource: their talent and experience. Many of the people most angrily denying the future are those who understand how the systems we now need to retrofit, redesign, replace and adapt actually work -- because they built them -- and, if convinced that this new work needs to be done, they have oceans of insight and institutional knowledge to bring to bear on the problem. No one knows how to hack a system better than the person who's been in charge of protecting it from change...if only we can win them over to the side of change.
Whether or not we can bring around the oldest generation, the fundamental need is clear: we need, now, to put the future back in the room.
Schooling Ross Douthat in Conspiracy Theory
Schooling Ross Douthat in Conspiracy Theory
What the New York Times columnist misses about fringe thinkers.
By Jack Shafer
Posted Monday, March 22, 2010, at 7:03 PM ET
Ross DouthatSteering his workmanlike review of David Aaronovitch's Voodoo Histories: The Role of Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History toward a satisfying conclusion in the March 21 Times Book Review, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat drops this bomb of a final paragraph:
Yesterday's conspiracy theorists governed countries, commanded armies and dealt out death and destruction on a vast scale. Today's conspiracy theorists have detailed Web sites, slick videos and best-selling books, but precious little direct power. The paranoid mood helps polarize our politics, no doubt, and can inspire spasms of nihilistic violence. But for now, at least, it's more of a sideshow than a clear and present danger. [Emphasis added.]
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CLOSESeeing that Aaronovitch's book deals primarily with Anglo-American-European conspiracy theories, Douthat isn't completely out of bounds insisting that today's conspiracy theorists hold "precious little direct power." But remove the Western blinders to gaze upon South America, the Middle East, and Africa, and a conspiracy renaissance comes into view! A short list of contemporary leaders with unorthodox views of causation would include:
Fidel Castro
Uncle Fidel, the genuine target of U.S. assassination conspiracies, has long made military and diplomatic mischief around the world. In the 1970s, his Cuba might have been the most powerful tiny country in the world. He's never been shy to express his dubious views. For instance, he claimed in 2007 that a rocket, not an airliner, struck the Pentagon on 9/11. In truther fashion, he also said the real story behind the attacks would probably remain a mystery. ... According to a 2007 article in the Atlantic, Castro said the U.S. government's early-1960s venture "Project Stormfury" was an attempt to weaponize hurricanes.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it's safe to say, is currently incubating several nuclear weapons. Whether they'll hatch or not is the subject of debate. In 2008, Ahmadinejad said U.S. forces in Iraq intended to kidnap and kill him during a visit there. ... Later that year, Iran's ambassador to Italy asserted that Western agents had tried to kill Ahmadinejad with radiation during a visit to Rome. ... In 2009, he called the Holocaust "a lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim." ... Just this month, Ahmadinejad described the belief that Osama bin Laden was behind the 9/11 attacks as a "big lie" designed to marshal support for the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.
Thabo Mbeki
Former South African President Thabo Mbeki, who rejected the idea that HIV caused AIDS, claimed that the CIA and U.S. pharmaceutical companies marketing HIV drugs were conspiring against him because he blocked their paths to world domination and corporate profits. Reported the Guardian, "Mbeki said that his advisers were seeking to discover who was spreading the idea that he was 'deranged,' itself a part of the conspiracy against him."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Related in Slate
In 2007, Anne Applebaum explained why actors and models love to hang out with Hugo Chavez. In 2008, Andres Martinez visited the Chavez revolution in progress.Hugo Chavez
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who fancies himself a postmodern Castro, has an oil bomb at his disposal and has exerted political influence on the heads of state in neighboring Bolivia and Ecuador. He is good buddies with Ahmadinejad and his government has been implicated in the training of Basque separatists, which he denies. In January, state-owned television in Venezuela claimed that the Haitian earthquake was caused by a U.S. Navy secret weapon. (See also this report in the Spanish newspaper ABC.) ... In 2006, Chavez added this comment (ragged translation by CNN) after a Venezuelan TV program explored the theory that the United States was behind the 9/11 attacks: "The hypothesis that is gaining strength, which was said on television last night and which could soon blown up, it that it was the same U.S. imperial power that planned and carried out this terrible terrorist attack or act against its own people and against citizens from all over the world." ... In 2000, Chavez accused the Omaha, Neb., vendor Election Systems & Software as being part of a scheme to "destabilize" the election in Venezuela. ... According to Commentary, Chavez uses anti-Semitism as a "political tool," and since he took office in 1999, "there has been an unprecedented surge in anti-Semitism throughout Venezuela. Government-owned media outlets have published anti-Semitic tracts with increasing frequency. Pro-Chávez groups have publicly disseminated copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the early-20th-century czarist forgery outlining an alleged worldwide Jewish conspiracy to seize control of the world."
Eric M. Gairy
Gairy welded no real power when he served as Grenada's prime minister in the 1970s, but he's worth mentioning in this short list for two reasons. In 1977, he addressed (paid) the United Nations General Assembly about the existence of UFOs, which he claimed to have seen. Gairy wanted the U.N. to establish an international agency for the study of UFOs and extraterrestrials. (Gairy shared his UFO interest with President Jimmy Carter just prior to his U.N. address.) In a previous visit to the U.N., he told members about the powers of the "Bermuda triangle." A not-so-subtle conspiracy of silence prevented Gairy's supernatural ideas from advancing at the U.N. In 1979, a coup commanded by a Castro supporter toppled him from power; in 1983, the U.S. invaded Grenada and threw the leftists out. A 1997 New York Times obituary captured Gairy in all of his nutty glory. His political party portrayed him as a messiah sent by God to rule Grenada, and he once said, "He who opposes me opposes God.'' That's a conspiracy we can all be proud to be a part of.
Addendum, March 23, 2010: Reader Nicolas Businger points my attention to the heavy-duty theories advanced by Libya's El Supremo, Muammar Qaddafi, last fall in a 90-minute speech before the United Nations. Qaddafi speculated that the swine flu virus may have been manufactured by the military and then escaped from the lab, asserted that John F. Kennedy was assassinated because he "wanted to investigate the nuclear reactor of the Israeli demon," and proposed that Barack Obama serve as president "forever."
Addendum, March 24, 2010: Reader Robert Andrews demands equal scrutiny for Mahathir Mohamad, the former prime minister of Malaysia. At a January conference, Mohamad asserted that the 9/11 attacks were staged. "If they can make Avatar, they can make anything," he said. ... He blamed Malaysia's 1997 financial crackup on a Jewish conspiracy. ... In 2003, he stated that "the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them."
******
I shave all conspiracy theories with my self-lubricating, five-bladed, tilting-and-vibrating Occam's razor: The simpler the theories are, the more I like them. What powerful conspiracy theorists have I overlooked? Send candidates to slate.pressbox@gmail.com and join my Twitter conspiracy. (E-mail may be quoted by name in Slate's readers' forums; in a future article; or elsewhere unless the writer stipulates otherwise. Permanent disclosure: Slate is owned by the Washington Post Co.)
Track my errors: This hand-built RSS feed will ring every time Slate runs a "Press Box" correction. For e-mail notification of errors in this specific column, type the letters Douthat in the subject head of an e-mail message, and send it to slate.pressbox@gmail.com.
Become a fan of Slate on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.
What the New York Times columnist misses about fringe thinkers.
By Jack Shafer
Posted Monday, March 22, 2010, at 7:03 PM ET
Ross DouthatSteering his workmanlike review of David Aaronovitch's Voodoo Histories: The Role of Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History toward a satisfying conclusion in the March 21 Times Book Review, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat drops this bomb of a final paragraph:
Yesterday's conspiracy theorists governed countries, commanded armies and dealt out death and destruction on a vast scale. Today's conspiracy theorists have detailed Web sites, slick videos and best-selling books, but precious little direct power. The paranoid mood helps polarize our politics, no doubt, and can inspire spasms of nihilistic violence. But for now, at least, it's more of a sideshow than a clear and present danger. [Emphasis added.]
DISCUSS
RSS
RECOMMEND...
SINGLE PAGE
Yahoo! Buzz
MySpace
Mixx
Digg
del.icio.us
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Sphere
StumbleUpon
CLOSESeeing that Aaronovitch's book deals primarily with Anglo-American-European conspiracy theories, Douthat isn't completely out of bounds insisting that today's conspiracy theorists hold "precious little direct power." But remove the Western blinders to gaze upon South America, the Middle East, and Africa, and a conspiracy renaissance comes into view! A short list of contemporary leaders with unorthodox views of causation would include:
Fidel Castro
Uncle Fidel, the genuine target of U.S. assassination conspiracies, has long made military and diplomatic mischief around the world. In the 1970s, his Cuba might have been the most powerful tiny country in the world. He's never been shy to express his dubious views. For instance, he claimed in 2007 that a rocket, not an airliner, struck the Pentagon on 9/11. In truther fashion, he also said the real story behind the attacks would probably remain a mystery. ... According to a 2007 article in the Atlantic, Castro said the U.S. government's early-1960s venture "Project Stormfury" was an attempt to weaponize hurricanes.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it's safe to say, is currently incubating several nuclear weapons. Whether they'll hatch or not is the subject of debate. In 2008, Ahmadinejad said U.S. forces in Iraq intended to kidnap and kill him during a visit there. ... Later that year, Iran's ambassador to Italy asserted that Western agents had tried to kill Ahmadinejad with radiation during a visit to Rome. ... In 2009, he called the Holocaust "a lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim." ... Just this month, Ahmadinejad described the belief that Osama bin Laden was behind the 9/11 attacks as a "big lie" designed to marshal support for the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.
Thabo Mbeki
Former South African President Thabo Mbeki, who rejected the idea that HIV caused AIDS, claimed that the CIA and U.S. pharmaceutical companies marketing HIV drugs were conspiring against him because he blocked their paths to world domination and corporate profits. Reported the Guardian, "Mbeki said that his advisers were seeking to discover who was spreading the idea that he was 'deranged,' itself a part of the conspiracy against him."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Related in Slate
In 2007, Anne Applebaum explained why actors and models love to hang out with Hugo Chavez. In 2008, Andres Martinez visited the Chavez revolution in progress.Hugo Chavez
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who fancies himself a postmodern Castro, has an oil bomb at his disposal and has exerted political influence on the heads of state in neighboring Bolivia and Ecuador. He is good buddies with Ahmadinejad and his government has been implicated in the training of Basque separatists, which he denies. In January, state-owned television in Venezuela claimed that the Haitian earthquake was caused by a U.S. Navy secret weapon. (See also this report in the Spanish newspaper ABC.) ... In 2006, Chavez added this comment (ragged translation by CNN) after a Venezuelan TV program explored the theory that the United States was behind the 9/11 attacks: "The hypothesis that is gaining strength, which was said on television last night and which could soon blown up, it that it was the same U.S. imperial power that planned and carried out this terrible terrorist attack or act against its own people and against citizens from all over the world." ... In 2000, Chavez accused the Omaha, Neb., vendor Election Systems & Software as being part of a scheme to "destabilize" the election in Venezuela. ... According to Commentary, Chavez uses anti-Semitism as a "political tool," and since he took office in 1999, "there has been an unprecedented surge in anti-Semitism throughout Venezuela. Government-owned media outlets have published anti-Semitic tracts with increasing frequency. Pro-Chávez groups have publicly disseminated copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the early-20th-century czarist forgery outlining an alleged worldwide Jewish conspiracy to seize control of the world."
Eric M. Gairy
Gairy welded no real power when he served as Grenada's prime minister in the 1970s, but he's worth mentioning in this short list for two reasons. In 1977, he addressed (paid) the United Nations General Assembly about the existence of UFOs, which he claimed to have seen. Gairy wanted the U.N. to establish an international agency for the study of UFOs and extraterrestrials. (Gairy shared his UFO interest with President Jimmy Carter just prior to his U.N. address.) In a previous visit to the U.N., he told members about the powers of the "Bermuda triangle." A not-so-subtle conspiracy of silence prevented Gairy's supernatural ideas from advancing at the U.N. In 1979, a coup commanded by a Castro supporter toppled him from power; in 1983, the U.S. invaded Grenada and threw the leftists out. A 1997 New York Times obituary captured Gairy in all of his nutty glory. His political party portrayed him as a messiah sent by God to rule Grenada, and he once said, "He who opposes me opposes God.'' That's a conspiracy we can all be proud to be a part of.
Addendum, March 23, 2010: Reader Nicolas Businger points my attention to the heavy-duty theories advanced by Libya's El Supremo, Muammar Qaddafi, last fall in a 90-minute speech before the United Nations. Qaddafi speculated that the swine flu virus may have been manufactured by the military and then escaped from the lab, asserted that John F. Kennedy was assassinated because he "wanted to investigate the nuclear reactor of the Israeli demon," and proposed that Barack Obama serve as president "forever."
Addendum, March 24, 2010: Reader Robert Andrews demands equal scrutiny for Mahathir Mohamad, the former prime minister of Malaysia. At a January conference, Mohamad asserted that the 9/11 attacks were staged. "If they can make Avatar, they can make anything," he said. ... He blamed Malaysia's 1997 financial crackup on a Jewish conspiracy. ... In 2003, he stated that "the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them."
******
I shave all conspiracy theories with my self-lubricating, five-bladed, tilting-and-vibrating Occam's razor: The simpler the theories are, the more I like them. What powerful conspiracy theorists have I overlooked? Send candidates to slate.pressbox@gmail.com and join my Twitter conspiracy. (E-mail may be quoted by name in Slate's readers' forums; in a future article; or elsewhere unless the writer stipulates otherwise. Permanent disclosure: Slate is owned by the Washington Post Co.)
Track my errors: This hand-built RSS feed will ring every time Slate runs a "Press Box" correction. For e-mail notification of errors in this specific column, type the letters Douthat in the subject head of an e-mail message, and send it to slate.pressbox@gmail.com.
Become a fan of Slate on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.
'The Imperfectionists,' by Tom Rachman
The true protagonist of Tom Rachman's beguiling first novel is a newspaper, never named, published in Rome but written in English and dispatched to the Earth's remotest corners, where it gives isolated readers "their only link to the greater world, to the big cities they left, or the big cities they have never seen, only built in their minds." The paper has a distinguished pedigree; its daily ration of 12 pages boasts top-of-the-line reportage; its editors and writers, after serving their time, are routinely snatched up by prestigious stateside publications.
The paper is doomed.
Circulation, never robust, has dwindled to around 10,000. Readers are dying off. Red ink is flowing. The paper's parent company is itching to offload it, and its inept young publisher thinks its only value is as a dog-food tray. For God's sake, it doesn't even have a Web site! And who needs overpaid journalists anymore when every patriotic citizen has become his own news gatherer and interpreter?
"The Imperfectionists" is about what happens when professionals realize that their craft no longer has meaning in the world's eyes (think of all those hardworking monk-scribes idled by Gutenberg) and that the only people who really understand them are on the same foundering ship, and that, come to think of it, they really loved that damn ship for all it made their lives hell.
We have, in short, a dysfunctional family of expansive proportions. Over there, by the pen cupboard: obituary writer Arthur Gopal, whose "overarching goal at the paper is indolence, to publish as infrequently as possible, and to sneak away when no one is looking. He is realizing these professional ambitions spectacularly." Herman Cohen, the corrections editor, has poured what's left of his soul into a massive style guide aimed at determining "whether a 'ceasefire' is, properly speaking, a 'cease-fire' or indeed a 'cease fire.' " Business writer Hardy Benjamin is so desperate to hold on to her young Irish boyfriend she will ignore the inconvenient fact that he's stealing from her. Spinster copy editor Ruby Zaga brushes up against strangers in public just for human touch and is still, months later, stalking the man who, in a weak moment, kissed her.
One by one, these journalists are trotted through their tragicomic hamster wheels: hope spinning toward joy, spiraling down to loneliness. This episodic structure could easily turn dreary and repetitive if Rachman weren't always finding new ways to surprise us. That tightly coiled chief financial officer, for instance -- we can well believe she hates talking to people on airplanes. ("Once, she allowed a fellow passenger to engage her in conversation and it became the longest flight of her life. He made her play Scrabble and insisted that 'ug' was a word.") But who would guess she'd make an exception for the man she has just laid off? And that their post-flight relationship would develop in ways she (and we) never expected?
In "The Imperfectionists," even individual paragraphs have a way of twisting off path. An impoverished old journalist named Lloyd Burko pauses in the midst of hunting for stories in Paris to contemplate his sexless existence. "Libido: it has been the tyrant of his times, hurling him from comfortable America all those years ago to sinful Europe for adventure and conquest, marrying him four times, tripping him up a hundred more, distracting and degrading and nearly ruining him. Yet now it is mercifully done with, desire having dwindled these past years, as mysterious in departure as it was on arrival. For the first time since age twelve, Lloyd witnesses the world without motive. And he is quite lost."
Rachman is a fine observer and a funny writer -- and a writer who knows how to be funny in character. I loved the moment when a shy young American, trying to win an overseas stringer job, confesses his reservations about Cairo: "Well, the air is kind of hard to breathe, with all this pollution. Sort of like inhaling from an exhaust pipe. The heat makes me faint sometimes. And the food isn't all that edible. Or maybe I've just been unlucky. Also, it's a police state, which I don't love. And I get the impression the locals want to shoot me. Only when I talk to them, though. Which is my fault -- my Arabic is useless. But basically, yeah, it's really interesting."
The wire-service reporter who receives this confession will later declare that "good reporting and good behavior are mutually exclusive." I think Rachman's bittersweet book makes the opposite case. Every individual, from the cuckolded news editor to the frozen-in-amber Italian baroness who's still working through newspapers from 1994, is treated with discretion and humanity. And if a certain soft-focus sentimentality clings to Rachman's elegy for old-school journalism and its practitioners, it nevertheless embodies its own principle -- namely, that craft can be its own reward. Indeed, these days, it must be.
Bayard is a novelist and reviewer in Washington.
The paper is doomed.
Circulation, never robust, has dwindled to around 10,000. Readers are dying off. Red ink is flowing. The paper's parent company is itching to offload it, and its inept young publisher thinks its only value is as a dog-food tray. For God's sake, it doesn't even have a Web site! And who needs overpaid journalists anymore when every patriotic citizen has become his own news gatherer and interpreter?
"The Imperfectionists" is about what happens when professionals realize that their craft no longer has meaning in the world's eyes (think of all those hardworking monk-scribes idled by Gutenberg) and that the only people who really understand them are on the same foundering ship, and that, come to think of it, they really loved that damn ship for all it made their lives hell.
We have, in short, a dysfunctional family of expansive proportions. Over there, by the pen cupboard: obituary writer Arthur Gopal, whose "overarching goal at the paper is indolence, to publish as infrequently as possible, and to sneak away when no one is looking. He is realizing these professional ambitions spectacularly." Herman Cohen, the corrections editor, has poured what's left of his soul into a massive style guide aimed at determining "whether a 'ceasefire' is, properly speaking, a 'cease-fire' or indeed a 'cease fire.' " Business writer Hardy Benjamin is so desperate to hold on to her young Irish boyfriend she will ignore the inconvenient fact that he's stealing from her. Spinster copy editor Ruby Zaga brushes up against strangers in public just for human touch and is still, months later, stalking the man who, in a weak moment, kissed her.
One by one, these journalists are trotted through their tragicomic hamster wheels: hope spinning toward joy, spiraling down to loneliness. This episodic structure could easily turn dreary and repetitive if Rachman weren't always finding new ways to surprise us. That tightly coiled chief financial officer, for instance -- we can well believe she hates talking to people on airplanes. ("Once, she allowed a fellow passenger to engage her in conversation and it became the longest flight of her life. He made her play Scrabble and insisted that 'ug' was a word.") But who would guess she'd make an exception for the man she has just laid off? And that their post-flight relationship would develop in ways she (and we) never expected?
In "The Imperfectionists," even individual paragraphs have a way of twisting off path. An impoverished old journalist named Lloyd Burko pauses in the midst of hunting for stories in Paris to contemplate his sexless existence. "Libido: it has been the tyrant of his times, hurling him from comfortable America all those years ago to sinful Europe for adventure and conquest, marrying him four times, tripping him up a hundred more, distracting and degrading and nearly ruining him. Yet now it is mercifully done with, desire having dwindled these past years, as mysterious in departure as it was on arrival. For the first time since age twelve, Lloyd witnesses the world without motive. And he is quite lost."
Rachman is a fine observer and a funny writer -- and a writer who knows how to be funny in character. I loved the moment when a shy young American, trying to win an overseas stringer job, confesses his reservations about Cairo: "Well, the air is kind of hard to breathe, with all this pollution. Sort of like inhaling from an exhaust pipe. The heat makes me faint sometimes. And the food isn't all that edible. Or maybe I've just been unlucky. Also, it's a police state, which I don't love. And I get the impression the locals want to shoot me. Only when I talk to them, though. Which is my fault -- my Arabic is useless. But basically, yeah, it's really interesting."
The wire-service reporter who receives this confession will later declare that "good reporting and good behavior are mutually exclusive." I think Rachman's bittersweet book makes the opposite case. Every individual, from the cuckolded news editor to the frozen-in-amber Italian baroness who's still working through newspapers from 1994, is treated with discretion and humanity. And if a certain soft-focus sentimentality clings to Rachman's elegy for old-school journalism and its practitioners, it nevertheless embodies its own principle -- namely, that craft can be its own reward. Indeed, these days, it must be.
Bayard is a novelist and reviewer in Washington.
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