Obama under the arch

So somewhere between 15,000 to 25,000 New Yorkers crammed into Washington Square park yesterday to hear Barack Obabama, an especially notable figure given that NYC is supposed to be Hillary territory. As the Times hints at, the rally may mark a shift in the campaign:

Senator Barack Obama implored thousands of admirers who gathered last night in New York City to set aside their distrust in politics and believe in the long-term possibility of his presidential candidacy even though, he conceded, “there are easier choices to make in this election.”

In a giant rally in the backyard of Senator Hillary Rodham, Mr. Obama, of Illinois, drew distinctions between himself and his leading rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, insisting that only a fresh candidate could truly change Washington. Twice, he singled out Mrs. Clinton. ...

Mr. Obama, bathed in bright flood lights as he stood on a stage before a crowd stretching across Washington Square Park, struck a sharper tone than he has through much of his campaign, particularly when he stands alongside his Democratic rivals. The arguments he made, before an audience of supporters, were not articulated during a debate one night earlier.

“There were folks on the stage that said Social Security is just fine, we don’t have to do anything about it,” Mr. Obama said last night. “There are those who will tell you that getting out of Iraq will be painless, we’ll do it in a snap, not acknowledging that there are no good options in Iraq. There are folks who will shift positions and policies on all kinds of things depending on which way the wind is blowing. That’s not the kind of politics that will deliver on the change we are looking for.”

The racially diverse crowd included Obama devotees who said they came specifically to increase attendance; Greenwich Village residents who had heard the commotion and followed it with dogs and yoga mats in tow; and nostalgists who beamed at the sight of thousands of mostly young people filling the park for a liberal, antiwar cause.

Some telling quotes, via Gothamist:

An NYU freshman told the Washington Square News, "Barack Obama is the most gangster politician to ever come to Washington" and that "Hell yeah!" he would vote for him, while a 72-year-old registered Republican told the Columbia Spectator that she would be voting Democrat no matter what, "We’re in a very, very serious time now with our safety and our freedoms."

Talk is cheap, of course, and Obama's challenge is going to be to get these young voters who love nothing better than spouting off to actually drag themselves to the polls come primary or caucus day. As Real Clear Politics puts it,

While polls have Obama running behind [in Iowa], [Campaign manager David] Plouffe argues that the campaign will benefit from a "hidden vote," meaning youth and others who don't typically vote in primaries. Those voters, pollsters know, don't actually vote in most primaries, so the pollsters set up "screens" to weed them out of samples. Plouffe may be right, Obama may have a great deal more support than he shows in public polls. But there's a reason pollsters say youth and others don't vote in primaries: They don't, typically. For any campaign to rely on a population like that to win a primary can be very dangerous.

Clinton's definitely been on a roll as of late--she's running a tight, disciplined campaign, and has been benefiting from the growing sense that she cannot be sense, even if Obama continues to outraise her (which may not happen in the third quarter).

But I still think Obama has a real shot at winning the nomination--he's got the kind of charisma that I think will, in the end, win over voters in the retail politics environment of Iowa and New Hampshire.

You like him when you're exposed to him; he's just got to convince enough voters to vote their hearts. The Times article concludes with the challenge and the opportunity:

Sophie Ragir, 18, a Columbia freshman, said, “It’s a social thing. Everyone on my floor was, like, are you going to the Obama thing?”

Leyla Biltsted, 60, who is retired and lives in Manhattan, said, “I’ve never heard such a wonderful visionary speech as he did at the Democratic convention. That brought me hope.” She added: “Now, I’m waiting to see what’s behind the vision, how he’s going to implement it, who he’s going to surround himself with. We don’t vote for a little while yet; I’m on a fishing trip.”

Obama photo from Obama campaign's Flickr photostream.

Modern love fable

Online couple cheated with each other, Daily Telegraph of Australia:

A married couple who didn't realise they were chatting each other up on the internet are divorcing.

Sana Klaric and husband Adnan, who used the names "Sweetie" and "Prince of Joy" in an online chatroom, spent hours telling each other about their marriage troubles, Metro.co.uk reported.

The truth emerged when the two turned up for a date. Now the pair, from Zenica in central Bosnia, are divorcing after accusing each other of being unfaithful.

"I was suddenly in love. It was amazing. We seemed to be stuck in the same kind of miserable marriage. How right that turned out to be," Sana, 27, said.

Adnan, 32, said: "I still find it hard to believe that Sweetie, who wrote such wonderful things, is actually the same woman I married and who has not said a nice word to me for years".

Picking away

Some great works for classical guitar, inspired by Virginia Heffernan's (ugh!) blog post on meeting "Funtwo", aka Jeong-Hyun Lim, aka YouTube guitar legend.

The funniest part of her post, incidentally, was this:

But most importantly, to me:

3. He asked me why, in Auckland, New Zealand, the only people interested in neoclassical shred solo guitar work–as he is–were other Koreans? The Europeans, he said, only seemed to want to listen to Green Day and post-punk. Why not the complex digital stuff, like Dream Theater (his example)?

I ventured a couple of answers, and then he blew me out of the water with a reply that seemed to explain the earth, the universe and everything.

At the very least, it explained Asian attention to technique versus European expressionism. Wow.

Uh, okay; she leaves it at that, I guess like she says we'll have to read her piece Monday to find out what his reply was, and read more about Virginia's reduction of cultures to: Europe creative, Asia methodical.

(Even as we live in a video game age dominated by designers from Asia).

Pachelbel's Canon in D


Funtwo's version is absolutely amazing; it has 28,245,680 views, 5th all-time on YouTube. it's funny reading comments from the kids who have no idea what piece this is. Like Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet and 10 Things I Hate About You, I'm all for modern updates of classics--which themselves were often contemporary takes on the ancients.

Vivaldi's Four Seasons

Funtwo again, playing the Summer movement. I think he should join forces with the East Village Opera Company and tour the country on a twin bill playing the classics.

Asturias movement from Isaac Albéniz's Suite Española


Played by Andrés Segovia, considered the father of the modern classical guitar.

Joaquín Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez




Rodrigo's a blind Spanish composer who died in 1999; his piece, as Wikipedia notes, sounds older than it is, like something out of the Moorish 15th century. The lyric, soaring second movement is so unlike the first, which is pleasing in its own right. This version is played by John Williams with the Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by Daniel Barenboim.

Paganini's Caprice no. 24


Su Meng plays the piece generally heard on a violin.

Not fun and games

It's hard to underestimate the impact on people's views of the blaring headlines and media frenzy that accompanies a 'scandal'. Things get seared into the collective psyche--Wen Ho Lee was a spy, Richard Jewell the Olympic bomber, Iraq behind 9/11--that defy future developments or corrections, which never get the level of saturation of the original.

It's not just a matter of going with what we know at the time, either; certain people and countries never get the benefit of the doubt, aren't treated as 'us' and therefore prejudices are allowed to run roughshod over the unnatural-feeling task of restraint and the unsexy act of deliberation.

You can blame the media for sensationalism, or going for cheap ratings--but then you're divesting yourself of responsibility for the prejudices that allowed you to swallow the story in the first place.

Why didn't your gut tell you that something was being overhyped? Why didn't you have a sense that something was amiss? Because the story fit all too neatly into your map of the world.

Journalists as simply people; there are formal processes and structures set up so their flaws don't get magnified into print or air, and for the most part these safeguards work.

However, where they fall down is when journalists assume something is so obvious that they don't consciously think to question it--the everybody knows Iraq has WMDs, everybody wants to be patriotic in a time of war, nobody wants to second-guess the military while Americans are dying mentality that didn't get shaken until the horrors of reality became impossible to process within the existing frame.

By then, of course, it's too late; you have a small number of people telling you I told you so, while everybody else is in denial and the media starts looking for villains--if only Dr. Freud were around to indict all of us (or our mothers).

All this comes to mind with an article in today's Times, Mattel Apologizes to China for Recalls .

U.S.-based toy giant Mattel Inc. issued an extraordinary apology to China on Friday over the recall of Chinese-made toys, taking the blame for design flaws and saying it had recalled more lead-tainted toys than justified.

The gesture by Thomas A. Debrowski, Mattel's executive vice president for worldwide operations, came in a meeting with Chinese product safety chief Li Changjiang, at which Li upbraided the company for maintaining weak safety controls.

''Our reputation has been damaged lately by these recalls,'' Debrowski told Li in a meeting at Li's office at which reporters were allowed to be present.

''And Mattel takes full responsibility for these recalls and apologizes personally to you, the Chinese people, and all of our customers who received the toys,'' Debrowski said. ...

Mattel ordered three high-profile recalls this summer involving more than 21 million Chinese-made toys, including Barbie doll accessories and toy cars because of concerns about lead paint and tiny magnets that could be swallowed.

The recalls have prompted complaints from China that manufacturers were being blamed for design faults introduced by Mattel.

On Friday, Debrowski acknowledged that ''vast majority of those products that were recalled were the result of a design flaw in Mattel's design, not through a manufacturing flaw in China's manufacturers.''

Lead-tainted toys accounted for only a small percentage of all toys recalled, he said, adding that: ''We understand and appreciate deeply the issues that this has caused for the reputation of Chinese manufacturers.''

In a statement issued by the company, Mattel said its lead-related recalls were ''overly inclusive, including toys that may not have had lead in paint in excess of the U.S. standards.

''The follow-up inspections also confirmed that part of the recalled toys complied with the U.S. standards,'' the statement said, without giving specific figures.

The co-owner of the company that supplied the lead-tainted toys to Mattel, Lee Der Industrial Co. Ltd., committed suicide in August shortly after the recall was announced.

It's the third item on the Times' website; and buried among headlines everywhere else.

It seemed obvious to me when it all broke a few weeks ago that Mattel's campaign blaming China was ridiculous. The problems were so widespread and the recall so big it clearly wasn't the result of some rogue factory--Mattel, thus, was guilty of a systematic failure to properly oversee its own products.

But it fed so well into the China-bashing that's become part of our culture that everyone ate it up. We already all think of China as the Wild West; there's already a significant part of Americans who are bigoted against the Chinese, a racism with hundreds of years of formal and de facto roots in the U.S.

Stir that in with an all-American company like Mattel's motivation to deflect blame, and our underriding fear of being overtaken by the Chinese juggernaut, and you have a scapegoat.

Notice that the retraction was made in China, by the way--if Mattel were serious about it, they should take out full-page ads and buy airtime in the American media, because left to its own whims this isn't nearly as sexy a story for 'free media' as the original charges.

This isn't to say China doesn't have serious, 'The Jungle'-type problems. But let's not use that as a whitewash for the very-American problems of corporate malfeasance and lack of oversight that Mattel should become the poster child for.

Of course, this being China, you also have this:

Li reminded Debrowski that ''a large part of your annual profit ... comes from your factories in China.

''This shows that our cooperation is in the interests of Mattel, and both parties should value our cooperation. I really hope that Mattel can learn lessons and gain experience from these incidents,'' Li said, adding that Mattel should ''improve their control measures.''

Maybe Mattel can write some self-criticisms.

Or maybe we, as the American people, should examine why we find it so easy to see Muslims as terrorists, curse Indians for bad tech support, demean the Japanese (did you miss the profound racism in Lost in Translation?), ignore Africa, look down on illegal immigrants.

These things shouldn't come so easy to us, shouldn't be such a familiar narrative frame; they shouldn't go unquestioned, seeped up in the air around us--and we shouldn't blame the media for tapping into our national neuroses.

Jim Young photo from Reuters via MSNBC

Our face to the world

I was struck today by how invisible the post of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations has become.

I couldn't even remember who the current ambassador is; ah, yes, Zalmay Khalilzad, of course--you'd think the highest-ranking Muslim in the Bush administration would have a higher media profile, but then again, how many people can name the two Muslims who won Nobel prizes this year?

It really is odd that the Bushies aren't putting Khalilzad out there more, given the amount of discussion of Islam and the level of ignorance and bigotry regularly paraded by politicians, pundits and officials. You'd think the one-eyed man would be king in the land of the blind.

And he does have some interesting thoughts; George Packer posted on his New Yorker blog some excerpts from an interview he did with Khalilzad:

Khalilzad sees the Iranian regime as ambitious, insecure, and, above all, divided among “multiple players.” But there are two basic points on which Iran’s leaders agree:

"One is that Iraq should not return to be a rival in the balance of power in the Gulf, that it shouldn’t play that role. A Shia preëminence in Iraq, or a Shia dominance with a not-so-centralized government, gives Iran that. Iraq will be more internally preoccupied, more friendly, so it helps your regionally preëminent role. This is something the Iranians, regardless of whether you’re a monarch or a religious fellow, share: the belief that Iran is a great civilization.
Second is the Iranians’ great fear of us, but they see an opportunity at the same time. Great fear because if we have it easy in Iraq they could be next, and sometimes the rhetoric from some people here gives them that impression. There is no substance to it, but the rhetoric gives that impression. That concern would lead them to make it difficult for us, and get us out ultimately. The other part is the opportunity: that they would get a broader understanding with us, a kind of recognition of Iran, of the preëminence of Iran. Iran’s role in the region would be accepted by us and legitimated. It’s Iran and the U.S. that decide what happens in the region, which reinforces the impression of preëminence. Iran and the U.S. are sitting and discussing Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon. On the one hand, Iran is very self-assured, but on the other it’s very insecure. That’s a Shia psychology, unfortunately.

They don’t believe that we will leave. Maybe they are beginning to. But they do mirror-imaging rather than reading our politics correctly. What they think is: Would we want to leave an oil-rich country? My god, Baghdad, this is one of the seats of one of the great world empires, right in the middle of the Gulf."

I don't agree with all of Khalilzad's thoughts on Iran--as an ethnic Pashtun he's likely prone to an (understandable) inferiority complex when it comes to Persians--but I do agree that the Iranians see our invasion of Iraq as driven by a desire to control oil, and threaten Iran (and help Israel).

Thus they filter our actions there as the timeless acts of an imperial power, which they have thousands of years of experience dealing with and acting as.

My general view when foreigners or myopic liberals decry the American empire is that we are nothing like an empire--otherwise, where are the tributes, the taxes, the fawning, the begging, from our subject states?

Wikipedia has rankings of world empires by various measures that includes America--it's interesting to see how highly we rank historically, without even trying. I think that's what drives Europeans, in particular, crazy about us--their ancestors scrapped, fought and cheated to get their hands on as much land and wealth as possible. I'm not sure they understand a people who are inherently so powerful that we feel no need to do the same.

But in the vein of our invisible UN ambassador, the Bush administration does seem to have adopted the mindset of an empire, without accruing to us any of its 'benefits'.

Whereas once the post of UN ambassador was the province of lions of American thought and politics like Henry Cabot Lodge, Adlai Stevenson, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Andrew Young, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and even Madeleine Albright, under Bush et al it's become a revolving door of misfits.

So far, Bush Jr., whose own father represented the U.S. at the UN, has had as many ambassadors as years he's been in office:

-James B. Cunningham (acting)
-John D. Negroponte
-John Danforth
-Anne W. Patterson (acting)
-John R. Bolton
-Alejandro Daniel Wolff (acting)
-Zalmay Khalilzad

Given that the U.S. has had a total of 26 ambassadors since the UN was founded in San Francisco in 1945, more than 25% of them have served under GWB!

It's an astonishing stat; and is a pretty strong indicator of how little the present administration values the views of the rest of the world, even as our percentage of the world's economy continues to drop (from an inconceivable 46% after WWII to a still amazing 25-30% now).

We're going to pay a price for this. Simple statistics tell you that when the U.S. makes up just 5% of the world population, everything else being equal we're likely to not know everything. And things are becoming more equal even as we veer more unilateral.

The UN may not necessarily be the best forum for the U.S. to interface with the rest of the world--NATO and APEC have some pretty significant advantages in efficiency and efficacy.

But the idea of the UN is unique; given our founding role in a post-war world where nations willingly negotiate away congenital advantages in exchange for systemic stability, it'd be a tragedy if through arrogance and xenophobia we found ourselves midwives of a world where norms and predictability are replaced by the force of ideology and individuals.

That, after all, is what Al-Qaeda seeks.

Uncredited photo of Khalilzad and Bush from the U.S. State Department.

Bad headline writing

The headline and summary sentence on the homepage of the Washington Post (at the moment):

Warner Seeks Senate Seat in '08

Former Va. governor to announce Thursday that he plans to run for seat vacated by John Warner.

What, it'd have killed them to include a 'Mark' in the headline?!

Good music

At some point, Kate Nash is gonna become big; Maz Azria used one of her songs, Merry Happy, for his show at fashion week, it was totally infectious and was stuck in my head all day.

It's hard finding a non-mushy version of her song online, but try this (the funny lyrics are here):



There's a slower, not as great version but cleaner audio on her Myspace page; which also has her catchy song Foundation. The rest of her music is good, too.

NYC: Comedy capital of the world

From Overheard in New York, we learn kids (and vendors) say the craziest things....

Mom: I need a size 'Small.'
Little girl, loudly: Mommy, aren't you a Large?

Ice cream vendor: Why don't you go for it? You are eating for two!
Woman: I am not eating for two.

Rude famous guy: Do you know who I am?!
Waitress: No... But I know your type...

Bimbette: Look, it's not like I mind tall, dark, and handsome, but it's like, 'Look at me -- I'm hot... I should be able to nab a nerd.'
Friend: Nerds aren't like shoes -- you can't just try them on for size. They have feelings, too.
Bimbette: And glasses.

Hefty guy: Excuse me, I really need to go to the bathroom. Can I go in front of you?
Woman in front of him in line: I'm in a rush, too.
Hefty guy, to no one: Can you believe this city? Everyone is in a rush. Everyone is rude. I just need to go to the bathroom... No one will ever help you out.
Woman in front of him: Sir, you are the one that is being rude.
Hefty guy, yelling: I am not a sir, I am a ma'am! [Silence ensues.]

Man: Excuse me, miss, do you have the time?
Girl with headphones: No thanks, I have a boyfriend.

Seven-year-old girl: I'm going to see a movie this weekend. Can anyone guess what I'm going to see?
Seven-year-old boy: Ratatouille! I already saw it.
Seven-year-old girl: Yeah, I'm going to go see Ratatouille this weekend.
Seven-year-old boy: Yeah, I already saw it. And there's this one part -- yuck -- you don't want to see it. It's bad, you really don't want to see that part -- it's gross. [Whispers it to another kid.]
Seven-year-old girl: What? Is there kissing? I can see kissing... If you think I've never seen kissing before, there's kissing in every other movie I have ever seen in my life!

Suit, embarrassed after tapping man on shoulder: ... Sorry, I thought I knew you [starts to walk away].
Man he tapped: I'm your cousin!

Guy: So, when did you guys get married?
Husband: March.
Wife, at same time: May.
Husband: Uh-oh.

High school kid #1: I've never been to Staten Island.
High school kid #2: It's weird -- there are random delis in between houses.

Hot dog vendor: How you like it?
Tourist: Just ketchup, please.
Hot dog vendor: You not like New York style?
Tourist: Sure, but not today.
Hot dog vendor, reluctantly handing over dog: I think you make very big mistake today, sir, and every day, too.

List of best fiction series

There's nothing like the thrill of discovering an amazing novel that's the first in a series, knowing thousands of pages of an alternate world lie ahead of you.

It's interesting seeing how characters grow as authors themselves mature through years and sometimes decades; it gives you an almost personal connection to the author, especially if read in real time. Plus there's a real sense of comfort dipping into a familiar world at will, which lends itself to rereading.

Not to mention a good series gives you something to hunt bookstores for.

Below is the beginning of a list of my favorite fiction series; it's weighed toward science fiction, because the genre tends to spawn series and because I seem to have read a lot of it in recent years.

I'm generally defining series as any multiple books by one author containing commmon characters, and/or internal references to previous works. (Number in parentheses is how many times I've read the series).

-Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin historical fiction series (once)
Nominally about a British captain and ship's doctor during the Napoleonic wars, as I've written before these twenty books are like a male version of Jane Austen's novels, with all the insights into character and humor that her works contain. They're among the best contemporary writing of any kind I've read; it's a shame O'Brian died recently, just as the books were gaining a significant mainstream following (with the likes of a Times reviewer tagging it the best historical novels, ever). This is my standard suggestion for friends looking to get some guy (especially) in their life a gift. The first chapter of the first book speaks for itself.

-J.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings fantasy series (four/five times)
Britain may have long lost its status as a world power, but it's still dominant when it comes to creating alternate worlds--and Tolkien's three LOTR novels (plus the Hobbit) have long been the gold standard. His Middle Earth is so detailed it feels as if the novels are just one path through it; now if they could only make a decent movie out of it.

-Issac Asimov's Foundation science fiction series (twice)
This trilogy turned heptalogy (plus there are an additional eight novels roughly set in the same universe) follows a series of heroes as they meddle with the politics of man, robots and empires 50,000 years in the future. They can be a bit comic-booky, but are by far the most influential of science fiction works--everything goes back to Asimov. It's even spawned the name for at leastone real world tech company .

-Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children/Shame/Satanic Verses fiction series (twice, once, once)
I habitually cite Rushdie as among my favorite contemporary writers, on the basis of the three books above (which may not technically be a series, but to me their magical realism exploration of religion, identity and India are strongly interdependant) and his "children's" book, Haroun and the Sea of Stories. He's startingly yet casually insightful--I always feel like any one of many of his seemingly-throw-away lines would be the basis for an entire story by a lesser writer. Rushdie's overflowing in every sense of the word; nobody belongs in Shakespeare's category, but when I read Rushdie I have a similar sense of multiple thoughts dancing on the head of a pin.

-Orson Scott Card's Ender science fiction series (twice for Ender's Game, once for rest)
These eight novels (and counting) have grown in ambition and scope along with the boy that first appeared in Ender's Game, set at a training school for child soldiers around 2165. Card, in my view, is our leading science fiction thinker (along with Neal Stephenson). He explores honestly and without blinders what we call multiculturalism, which is simply the universe in his books. Ender's Game is in a class of its own because of its inventive plot, but the themes explored in Speaker for the Dead is more representative of the author Card has become.

-Naguib Mahfouz's Palace Walk fiction series (once)
Until his death almost exactly a year ago, Nobel prize winner Mahfouz was considered the leading writer of the Arab world; in my estimation, he's also one of the (necessarily) few writers who will be read generations from now--the way he captures character and evokes emotion is usually compared to Dickens. His Palace Walk trilogy, set in 1950s Cario, is pre-Islamic in the sense that although the specifics of that religion plays a role in the series, the themes are broadly universal ones of love, family and man's place in society. It's unfortunate the trilogy isn't required reading in American schools, instead of some of the token multicultural works that are notable only for their clumsiness.

-Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea fantasy series (twice for original trilogy, once for rest)
I think LeGuin's the most literate of science fiction writers, a field traditionally known for interesting ideas embodied by wooden characters via clunky prose. I don't think it's a coincidence that she's one of the few female sci fi writers; her grasp of character and nuance is poetic. She reminds me of Georgia O'Keefe in how varied her works are in their greatness, from the stark exploration of ideas in the Left Hand of Darkness to the charming world of dragons and people spun in the five Earthsea novels and a collection of short stories. As is typical in series, she wrote the initial trilogy in six years, then after they found acclaim wrote the final three works after a 16-year gap. Incidentally, LeGuin wrote an interesting article about her unhappiness with the Sci Fi Channel's decision to whitewash Earthsea in their television miniseries.

-Frank Herbert's Dune science fiction series (twice for first book, once for rest)
I've only read the first three of the six ecologically-themed Dune books Herbert wrote, all set in the distant future and centering around the species-altering 'spice' of a desert planet (with, I think, aspects of Islam/Christianity). The drop-off between the amazing first and very good second book is noticeable, and becomes severe by the end of the not-bad third book.

-J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter genre-busting series (three or two times for most, once for last)
I'm curious as to whether this becomes a series all kids grow up with, perhaps alongside (or muscling out) the likes of Narnia. I definitely plan on reading it to my kids... well, at least the first few of the seven.

-Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials fantasy series (twice)
Compared most often to his arch-nemesis forebearer C.S. Lewis, Pullman can stand on his own--and for an adult, at least, I think his Paradise Lost-inspired trilogy about teens, their daemons and their souls is more rewarding, if less traditional. Like many of the authors on this list, Pullman follows in the footsteps of H.G. Wells in asking you to suspend disbelief about one thing; once you accept his conception of a world in which people's partner animals embody a literal second half to their selves, everything else flows with internal logic. Plus, his kids are neither annoying mini-adults nor infantile vessels for cloying set pieces.

-John LeCarre's George Smiley thriller novels (twice for some, none others)
I've often said LeCarre is the most literate writer of thrillers (more so than Graham Greeene even), especially once you get past the first two hundred establishing pages. He's best known for The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (which is the one book I'd recommend to a space alien who wants to understand the Cold War), but since this is a list of series he's here for the five spy novels that center around Smiley (only three of which I knew about).

-Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes detective series (twice)
As I've written before, I don't think the four novels that make up the Holmes series quite live up to their reputation. But the stories are so inventive and the sense of 19th century Britain so exact that I still put Holmes at the top of the detective genre.

-Christopher Paolini's Inheritance fantasy series(twice)
I guess Paolini's 24 by now; he was just 19 when Eragon, the first of a planned trilogy about a boy/then young adult and his dragon, came out. As I wrote before, there are traces of his age in his at-times clunky writing, but he's got a first-rate imagination. The last book in his series is due out sometime soon (hopefully).

-John Fitzgerald's Great Brain historical fiction series (few times, as a kid)
These eight (! I only thought there were three!) books set in frontier Utah about a boy and his active brother may have been my favorite growing up. They had an irresistible mix of humor and classic action, and lots of interesting scheming.

-Lawrence Block's Bernie Rhodenbarr detective series (once for most)
I read most of Block's ten books about a suave Manhattan-based burglar as a kid; they convey pretty well what a certain strata of people are like in NYC, with the sense of skimming lightly through life, conversant with culture and the arts even if not drinking deeply of them. These are a fun read; they're on the list mainly for nostalgic reasons, not great literature but about the best of what's become a horrific detective genre.

-C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia fantasy series (twice)
As I've mentioned before, I reread these books recently and was a bit disappointed that, in contrast with my glowing childhood memories, the Oxford prof's seven books about kids whisked into a fairytale land weren't that good, and were perhaps actively harmful. It's on the list anyway because I think they're worth reading, maybe as a kid and in conjunction with Pullman's works.

-Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern fantasy series (twice some, none most)
I thought about not putting this series on the list, because McCaffrey (and now her son) has essentially taken a great first few novels and spun them into dross, at 18 works and counting. But I loved reading Dragonflight/quest/song as a kid, and all three held up upon more recent rereading. (It's interesting, by the way, how Wikipedia's entry on Pern is barely distinguishable from its entries on real countries/planets; it's like a dry run for the discovery of alien civilizations).

-Other series that I've liked, but would put below the 'classics' tier:

-Roger Zelzany's Amber sci fi series
-Stephen Donaldson's Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever fantasy series
-James Herriot's All Creatures Great and Small veterinary series
-Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan thriller series
-Ian Fleming's James Bond thriller series
-Larry Niven's Ringworld sci fi series (I've read just the first two of four, the original novel's first half was great, rest wasn't bad)
-Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars sci fi series
-And a whole host of other childhood favorites, like Tom Swift, Encylopedia Brown, Beverly Cleary's, works, etc.

On a related note, there's a running users-generated list of the top 100 Sci-Fi Books; it includes ever sci fi series I've listed, although not in the order which I rank them.

I've read all of the top twenty save two (#4 Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and #19 Hyperion), all of the top fifty but ten others... odd, especially since I never read any science fiction as a kid.

America's blockhead

They don't make newspaper columnists like Jimmy Breslin anymore, and we're all the poorer for it. From a column purportedly about Mitt Romney is this gem about Rudolph Giuliani:

I today direct you to how religion overwhelmed this Giuliani, who always has been a little man in search of a balcony. Each time he inspected a height he stood there and rehearsed for the moment when the whole nation would look at him in fear and awe. Then he paused to scowl at the West Side of Manhattan, with its grubby liberals who say that he was the worst mayor we've had. Then came the attack on the World Trade Center and Giuliani ran right up the street from the smoke and into a television studio. There he remained for day after day until the cameras made him America's Mayor.

I mean, you could read the I-can't-believe-there-are-still-trees-left New Yorker profile (in 16 parts) or professional Rudy-hater Wayne Barrett's Village Voice job (or not read Harper's take).

But really, Breslin's sketch of him atop a balcony really captures it all; the arrogance, the righteousness, the terrible isolation, the fascism, the evocation of Mussolini and (Eva) Peron, the stature--even the Italianness.

Uncredited photo of Giuliani in various places online.

Unarmed opponent

Buried in the middle of Paul Gigot's WSJ column that broke the news that Karl Rove is resigning is this:

The president calls him to chat about politics on Sunday mornings, and they have a contest to see who can read the most books. (Mr. Rove is winning.)

Why Republicans will choose a Hispanic for VP

Come next September in Minneapolis, the Republicans should nominate a Hispanic candidate for vice president.

A Hispanic nominee totally changes the dynamic of the election. It'd give the GOP a shot at capturing the fastest-growing bloc of voters, lets voters make history by voting Republican, blows up the electoral map, and allows the traditional black/Latino fault line to tear Democrats apart from within.

A Hispanic is the only person who can fulfill the VP nominee's traditional job of attack dog against the other party's presidential candidate without coming across as racist (if it's Barack Obama) or a bully (if it's Hillary Clinton).

A Hispanic gives minorities a credible reason to not vote Democratic without feeling like traitors or bigots or sexists.

A Hispanic is the only way the Republicans can dodge the growing feeling that they're yesterday's party, top-heavy with tired white males.

A Hispanic ties 15% of the population to the Republicans, via an ethnic pride/emotional/historic appeal that cannot be underestimated.

A Hispanic demolishes the electoral map--it locks up Texas for the GOP, solidifies their hold on Florida, shores up their razor-thin margins in Arizona and New Mexico, forces Democrats to put more resources into the expensive New York and Illinois media markets, and--in combination with Schwarzenegger--actually puts California into play.

A Hispanic in the second spot gives cover for the Republicans to play their favorite wedge issue, immigration, following the George Bush/Karl Rove playbook.

There are only two reasons the GOP wouldn't nominate a Hispanic: The prejudices of their own core voters, and the lack of a credible Hispanic Republican candidate (Mel Martinez is the only one in the ballpark).

I guess it's apt that the only thing preventing the Republicans from seizing control of the 2008 race could be themselves.

When not winning is losing

In sports there's the concept of a team being behind in the game, but actually being ahead.

Like let's say in football, you turn the ball over 4 times deep in your own territory in the first half, but the other team is only up 10-0 on the scoreboard.

Really, you should be losing like 21-0, so the halftime speech from the coach goes something like they've taken their best shot at us and this is all they can do--this game is ours to win.

You'd be surprised at how often the team that's 'down' winds up winning the game in situations like that; you've got to make the most of your chances in sports, and when you don't the other team usually does.

The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll from Iowa has Barack Obama at 27%, Hillary Clinton at 26%, and Johh Edwards at 26%.

I'm shocked. Edwards has practically lived in Iowa the last four years; the state gave him a surprisingly strong second place finish the last time out, and his entire strategy this time around is built around winning Iowa so he's devoted the bulk of his resources to the state.

Clinton's also been running for president for the past four years, has poured money and staff into Iowa, is married to someone who's enormously popular in the state, and has picked up the endorsements of most of Iowa's political heavyweights.

And yet they're both not only not up on Obama, but are actually trailing a man whose only advantage in Iowa is his ads in the Illionois Senate race leaked over the border.

I mean, if four years of concentrated work by Edwards and Clinton in a state that's 94% white can't even give them a lead over someone who's basically just shown up, my gosh, where are they gonna beat him once voters get to know him?

Polls are generally pretty soft this far out--the article notes:

History suggests that these voters are quite willing to change their mind as caucus day approaches and the campaign intensifies with television advertising and more direct engagement among the candidates. In the 2004 Iowa caucus day poll by the National Election Pool, 42 percent of caucus-goers said they made up their mind in the last week of the campaign. Just 30 percent made their final decision more than a month before caucus day.

However, this year is pretty different--the race has started earlier than ever before, and the people polled in Iowa are paying attention:

Americans elsewhere may not be paying attention to the presidential race on a day-to-day basis, but nine in 10 likely Democratic caucus attendees said they are closely following the movements and statements of the candidates. Seven in 10 said they have been contacted by at least one of the presidential campaigns this year, and four in 10 said they have attended at least one campaign event. ...

The poll provides stark evidence of how intense the early campaigning has been. The 71 percent of voters who have already received a telephone call from one of the campaigns is about equal to the percentage of likely caucus-goers who reported getting called in December 2003, the month before the 2004 caucuses.

The portion having already attended one or more campaign events, 40 percent, is up somewhat from that time, and the percentage donating money to one of the candidates is about as high. A third of likely voters have already received e-mails from a campaign, and a third have visited a candidate's Web site.

I don't know; the Iowa caucuses are one of the weirdest things in politics, it's pretty amazing that one of the key events in how a nation of 300 million people chooses the next leader of the free world centers around a few thousand people getting together in living rooms and arguing.

And the people responding to the poll may not be at all the people who are gonna spend hours taking part in the caucus next winter. Plus there's the complicating factor of the built-in bias against black candidates by white voters, vying with the 'Bradley effect' where black candidates generally do about 10 points worse on election day than polls show (a combination of bigots lying to pollsters, and last-minute undecideds often breaking for the default choice).

Nevertheless, this poll result from a state with voters who are paying the most attention in the nation, along with Obama's ability to outraise Hillary, along with the size of crowds he's drawing everywhere, along with the people he's managed to get to run his campaign, are all pretty telling that this game is gonna play out differently.

Scott Morgan photo of Obama from Getty Images via USA Today.

Midseason form

Gilbert Arenas is the king of all blogging. Mark Cuban needs to start taking lessons from him.

There Are No Such Thing as Shark Attacks

I know this is random, but I just want to clear this up for people out there.
There are these things called shark attacks, but there is no such thing as a shark attack. I have never seen a real shark attack.

I know you’re making a weird face as you’re reading this. OK people, a shark attack is not what we see on TV and what people portray it as.

We’re humans. We live on land.

Sharks live in water.

So if you’re swimming in the water and a shark bites you, that’s called trespassing. That is called trespassing. That is not a shark attack.

A shark attack is if you’re chilling at home, sitting on your couch, and a shark comes in and bites you; now that’s a shark attack. Now, if you’re chilling in the water, that is called invasion of space. So I have never heard of a shark attack.

When I see on the news where it’s like, “There have been 10 shark attacks,” I’m like, “Hey, for real?! They’re just running around? Sharks are walking now, huh! We live on the land, we don’t live underwater.”

And, from an earlier post:

I know I said was was afraid of the stingrays and sharks, but I actually got into the water with sharks on my vacation. I was swimming every morning with them. They were little 3-foot long sharks called blackheads. The locals said nobody has ever been bitten by a shark, there haven’t been any shark attacks, you know they’re not aggressive sharks.

So I was like, “All right, let me go in and give it a try.” But that was after I’d seen little kids in there swimming already, then I knew I could go in. I wasn’t going to be the first one in, that’s for sure.

More of my Gilbert posts here (although really, his posts are much more entertaining).

Uncredited image of Arenas from Detroit Bad Boys blog, who got it from who knows where.

Stripping Hillary

So the Times has gotten ahold of some letters Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote to a friend while she was in college, and set Mark Leibovich to analyze them.

It's an exceedingly odd and cringe-inducing article--there's no awareness of how weird it is to parse the words of a college freshman, no sense of embarassment, no acknowledgement of invading her privacy (it's her letters, made public by the person she wrote to), no caveats--just straight-forward literary analysis, as if they were going over the text of her latest stump speech.

Which, come to think of it, I've never seen the Times do.

More than anything it's pathetic; there are insights in there, much like any biography would benefit from such primary source material--but the difference is the letters section would be placed in context within a long biography, whereas here we have a front page Times article making much out of her scribblings 40 years ago.

If they're going to go that route, they need to analyze the friend Hillary sent the letters to, what he was like, what the nature of their friendship was (reading between the lines he seemed to like her more than a friend, she not at all). These weren't meant for public consumption, so whatever peek of intimacy the Times gleans from them should be offset by an understanding that they were tailored words.

But none of that's there; the words are quoted at face value, as if they speak for themselves.

I conclude the guy Hillary wrote to was a bit of a prat--there's no acknowledgement by him or the Times that what he's doing, in releasing her side of a two-way conversation, isn't right.

He's even quoted as saying:

Mr. Peavoy’s letters to Ms. Rodham are lost to posterity, unless she happened to keep them, which he doubts. He said he wished he had kept copies himself. “They are windows into a time and a place and a journey of self-discovery,” he said in an interview. “This was what college students did before Facebook.”

Oh yes, what a loss that we weren't able to read your words too, John Peavoy.

At least wait until she's dead; apparently he missed the day at school where they taught manners and how to be a gentleman.

And thank you for placing this within a wider cultural context--of course that's why you made the letters available and the Times printed them, it's almost your duty in this Facebook age to remind us all of that archaic form of communication you used to utilize.

If you wind up reading the article, you're struck by how the Times tries to torture conclusions out of her words; it's quite sad, actually--and of course, Clinton comes across all the better for it.

This is why a lot of good and qualified people refuse to run for office; who wants stuff like this considered fair game?

There's gotta be room for people to form themselves without thinking it could all be dredged up years later--and in this particular case, the Times should really question dealing with the kind of person who lets you read another person's private letters without their consent.

The Times may argue it's an unvarnished, unspun look into the life of a famously tightly-controlled politician.

Odd; that's what the tabloids say about their ambush snapshots of celebrities.

Era photo of Hillary Rodham from a fan site.

Fallen giant

There's a lengthy, interesting interview with Alexander Solzhenitsyn (yes, he's still alive!) in Der Spiegel; reading it--a German publication talking to a Russian about totalitarianism and its enduring stain--made me think how truly foreign the experiences of a Europe that grew up either directly under or in the shadow of first Nazism and then Communism can be to us.

His political views aren't what I expected, based on what I remember from reading the Gulag Archipelago and what I'd assume the leading anti-Communist dissident (along with Natan Sharansky) would think about post-Communist Russia.

His take on Vladimir Putin was particularly surprising:

Vladimir Putin -- yes, he was an officer of the intelligence services, but he was not a KGB investigator, nor was he the head of a camp in the gulag. As for service in foreign intelligence, that is not a negative in any country -- sometimes it even draws praise. George Bush Sr. was not much criticized for being the ex-head of the CIA, for example. ...

SPIEGEL: How do you assess the period of Putin's governance in comparison with his predecessors Yeltsin and Gorbachev?

Solzhenitsyn: Gorbachev's administration was amazingly politically naïve, inexperienced and irresponsible towards the country. It was not governance but a thoughtless renunciation of power. The admiration of the West in return only strengthened his conviction that his approach was right. But let us be clear that it was Gorbachev, and not Yeltsin, as is now widely being claimed, who first gave freedom of speech and movement to the citizens of our country.

Yeltsin's period was characterized by a no less irresponsible attitude to people's lives, but in other ways. In his haste to have private rather than state ownership as quickly as possible, Yeltsin started a mass, multi-billion-dollar fire sale of the national patrimony. Wanting to gain the support of regional leaders, Yeltsin called directly for separatism and passed laws that encouraged and empowered the collapse of the Russian state. This, of course, deprived Russia of its historical role for which it had worked so hard, and lowered its standing in the international community. All this met with even more hearty Western applause.

Putin inherited a ransacked and bewildered country, with a poor and demoralized people. And he started to do what was possible -- a slow and gradual restoration. These efforts were not noticed, nor appreciated, immediately. In any case, one is hard pressed to find examples in history when steps by one country to restore its strength were met favorably by other governments.

He's nuts! Gorbachev didn't renounce power--he renounced a sham by which the USSR, by starving its people via a permanent war-time footing, put forth the ultimate Potemkin village for seven decades.

It was a farce that could not last in the Information Age, that managed to hang on only when the state had a shot at controlling all lies and truths.

And Putin hasn't revived anything--it's been the monstrous jump in the price of oil that's dragged the Russian economy back from collapse; all Putin's done is set up a cult of personality dictatorship under the guise of nationalism.

I guess what we forget is that Solzhenitsyn was so anti-Communist in part because they enslaved what he saw as the greatest of all nations, of all people. For him, Russia's natural place is in front, which to me is ridiculous.

Aside from the steroid-like 'power' that the Communists projected, Russia after the devastating Mongol invasions of the 13th century has always been at least decades behind the West. Their tiny intellectual class has been fiercely productive, but the vast majority of the country has always been a brutish wasteland.

Look at the astonishing rates of alcoholism in Russia; and how it's about the only industrialized country that's suffered a decrease in life expectancy, currently standing at 59 years for males and 72 years for females.

That, and a startling decline in its birth rate (forcing the government to try bribing women to have kids), adds up to a place that, if you took away their nuclear weapons, would be the definition of a Third World country.

But Solzhenitsyn being so Russian there is also this:

SPIEGEL: Your recent two-volume work "200 Years Together" was an attempt to overcome a taboo against discussing the common history of Russians and Jews. These two volumes have provoked mainly perplexity in the West. You say the Jews are the leading force of global capital and they are among the foremost destroyers of the bourgeoisie. Are we to conclude from your rich array of sources that the Jews carry more responsibility than others for the failed Soviet experiment?

Solzhenitsyn: I avoid exactly that which your question implies: I do not call for any sort of scorekeeping or comparisons between the moral responsibility of one people or another; moreover, I completely exclude the notion of responsibility of one nation towards another. All I am calling for is self-reflection.

You can get the answer to your question from the book itself: "Every people must answer morally for all of its past -- including that past which is shameful. Answer by what means? By attempting to comprehend: How could such a thing have been allowed? Where in all this is our error? And could it happen again? It is in that spirit, specifically, that it would behoove the Jewish people to answer, both for the revolutionary cutthroats and the ranks willing to serve them. Not to answer before other peoples, but to oneself, to one's consciousness, and before God. Just as we Russians must answer -- for the pogroms, for those merciless arsonist peasants, for those crazed revolutionary soldiers, for those savage sailors."

And then, there's this example of myopia:

SPIEGEL: But Russia often finds itself alone. Recently relations between Russia and the West have gotten somewhat colder (more...), and this includes Russian-European relations. What is the reason? What are the West's difficulties in understanding modern Russia?

Solzhenitsyn: I can name many reasons, but the most interesting ones are psychological, i.e. the clash of illusory hopes against reality. This happened both in Russia and in West. When I returned to Russia in 1994, the Western world and its states were practically being worshipped. Admittedly, this was caused not so much by real knowledge or a conscious choice, but by the natural disgust with the Bolshevik regime and its anti-Western propaganda.

This mood started changing with the cruel NATO bombings of Serbia. It's fair to say that all layers of Russian society were deeply and indelibly shocked by those bombings. The situation then became worse when NATO started to spread its influence and draw the ex-Soviet republics into its structure. This was especially painful in the case of Ukraine, a country whose closeness to Russia is defined by literally millions of family ties among our peoples, relatives living on different sides of the national border. At one fell stroke, these families could be torn apart by a new dividing line, the border of a military bloc.

So, the perception of the West as mostly a "knight of democracy" has been replaced with the disappointed belief that pragmatism, often cynical and selfish, lies at the core of Western policies. For many Russians it was a grave disillusion, a crushing of ideals.

At the same time the West was enjoying its victory after the exhausting Cold War, and observing the 15-year-long anarchy under Gorbachev and Yeltsin. In this context it was easy to get accustomed to the idea that Russia had become almost a Third World country and would remain so forever. When Russia started to regain some of its strength as an economy and as a state, the West's reaction -- perhaps a subconscious one, based on erstwhile fears -- was panic.

Anyone who calls the bombing of Serbia--a last-ditch and successful effort to stop ethnic cleansing via the slaughter of civilians by Slobodan Milosovic and his ilk--"cruel" is living in a fantasy world borne of some pretty deep-seated prejudices, perpetuated by delusions of grandeur and the daily slap of shame from reality.

That's really the legacy of the Communists--via the shortcut of five-year plans built on the hidden muscle of slave labor camps, they perpetuated a psychological fraud on the Russian people in making them think they had caught up with the West and could take their "rightful" place.

But what they've left behind is a deluded populace that not only can't catch up to Europe--but is in the process of being passed by Asia.

Which more than anything lends a sense of sadness to Solzhenitsyn's archaic beliefs, anchored in the false memories that Communism must have instilled even as he fought it:

But did not Russia clearly and unambiguously stretch its helping hand to the West after 9/11? Only a psychological shortcoming, or else a disastrous shortsightedness, can explain the West's irrational refusal of this hand. No sooner did the USA accept Russia's critically important aid in Afghanistan than it immediately started making newer and newer demands. As for Europe, its claims towards Russia are fairly transparently based on fears about energy, unjustified fears at that.

Isn't it a luxury for the West to be pushing Russia aside now, especially in the face of new threats? In my last Western interview before I returned to Russia (for Forbes magazine in April 1994) I said: "If we look far into the future, one can see a time in the 21st century when both Europe and the USA will be in dire need of Russia as an ally."

Ah, yes, Russia as an ally against Islamic fundamentalism--why no mention of Chechnya in your interview, Alexander Isayevich?

Friends like that we don't need.

Jurij Filistow photo of Solzhenitsyn in Der Spiegel

Thoughts on finishing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

I think you'd have to go back to the days of Dickens to match the anticipation for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

J.K. Rowling doesn't disappoint. I raced through the book on a beautiful mid-summer New York day, propelled forward by the desire to know but balanced, always, by the acute awareness as each page slipped by that there was that much less Harry Potter, ever, to read.

It's a great read, for any Harry Potter fan. A lot of things come back; many red herrings just float away; for me, the book matched my expectations and was one of the rare finales that didn't fall short.

Rowling must have increasingly felt like Potter himself as she wrote the finale, with all the pressure and huge expectations and legions of critics with their knives all sharpened ready (hoping?) to pounce.

And like him, she's true to who she is, and follows that through to the end, for better or for worse. And, in my mind, pulls it off--without magic, no less.

I was struck by how accurate some of the fan sites had been in their speculation about some important small items; and any close reader (or rereader) of the series will be rewarded with nods 'of course' throughout.

That's one of the great things about Rowling, she's internally and logically consistent; she's not making up things as she goes along, throwing up everything and the kitchen sink to dazzle and distract us--her world has core principles, and even when they call for hard choices she makes them and plays them out to their end.

And so how right--yet totally unexpected--the overall story was. Like the best explanations, that always seem so obvious and singular and elegant in hindsight. Of course it had to end the way it did--it makes sense, in every sense of the word, from plot to Rowling's style to our expectations and beliefs about how life plays out.

Like our fairy tales there's a connection to something that predates all of us, and Rowling follows the rules, even as she finds new ways to illuminate and play with them.

As Michicko Kakutani notes in her oddly once-over review, the story "could be Exhibit A in a Joseph Campbell survey of mythic archetypes."

Maybe that's why it felt so satisfying to close the thick tome.

And yet, of course, because although Rowling is no great shakes as a writer she's an amazing storyteller, finishing the book--the series!--leaves you with a certain emptiness.

I'd never thought I'd see the kind of outward passion for books Harry Potter has kindled; who'd have ever thought thousands of (creatively costumed!) kids and adults would pack a bookstore for the chance to, together, start reading a 759-page book?!

That the city of New York would shut down a city block so people could gather in celebration of a world that gushed from the pen of a former Scottish welfare mother (now certainly a queen)?!

I feel bad for people who haven't been reading the books, who haven't had a chance to experience the solitary wonders of Rowling's creation mixed with the communal passion of Harry Potter's fans, without whom the entire journey wouldn't have been nearly as much fun.

There's a diversity, an innocence, to Potter fans that I've never found in Trekkies and their ilk; maybe because it's so obviously a series for children that happens to stretch to create lots of room for adults, I've seen little of the weird obsessiveness that seems to me to mar other outwardly-similar events. There's plenty of room, for everyone to share their own version of Rowling's world.

It's a once-in-a-lifetime thing, I think; there will be others along these lines, but now that we've experienced it, the next time can only be 'better' at the margins, it can never spark this type of authentic phenomenon, at least not in this genre.

And not, at least, for us--first love being what it is.

I'll leave for another day the parsing of the meaning of it all (the series definitely changed after 9/11, or to be more accurate grew to encompass more of the world as we see it now); the recounting of what was guessed and wasn't, the musings about why Rowling writes the way she does, my subjective list of what made sense and what was muddled.

What a great ride it's been; I'm sad to see it end, but happy for all the pleasures of the journey.

Image of Deathly Hallows cover found everywhere.

King it

There are actually three stories in Kenneth Chang's piece in the Times, Champion at Checkers That Cannot Lose to People.

One the putative subject; another the astonishing human; and third the step closer to humans feeling like second class citizens on our own world.

Oh well; at least we'll always have each other to jump over.

Checkers has been solved.

A computer program named Chinook vanquished its human competitors at tournaments more than a decade ago. But now, in an article published Thursday on the Web site of the journal Science, the scientists at the University of Alberta who developed the program report that they have rigorously proved that Chinook, in a slightly improved version, cannot ever lose. Any opponent, human or computer, no matter how skilled, can at best achieve a draw. ...

The earlier incarnation of Chinook, relying on artificial intelligence techniques and the combined computing power of many computers, placed second in the 1990 United States championship behind Marion Tinsley, the world champion, who had won every tournament he had played in since 1950.

That achievement should have earned Chinook the right to challenge Dr. Tinsley, a professor of mathematics at Florida A&M University, for the world championship, but the American Checkers Federation and the English Draughts Association refused to sanction a match. After much wrangling in the checkers world, Dr. Tinsley and Chinook battled for the man-versus-machine checkers title in 1992.

Dr. Tinsley won, 4 to 2 with 33 draws. Chinook’s two wins were only the sixth and seventh losses for Dr. Tinsley since 1950. In a rematch two years later, Dr. Tinsley withdrew after six draws, citing health reasons. Cancer was diagnosed, and Dr. Tinsley died seven months later. ...

The next game Dr. Schaeffer hopes to conquer is poker, which is harder to solve, because players do not have complete knowledge of their opponents’ positions. Next week, his program, Polaris, will take on two professional poker players in Texas Hold ’Em for the $50,000 man-versus-machine world championship.

Soon, computers may not just be winning games, but taking people’s money, too.

Photo of Tinsley found in various places online.

Blackout redux

It was 30 years ago that New York City was plunged into darkness (again)--and this
time, looters came out before the lights came back out.

It's astonishing how much the city has changed, for the better, since then--much of the period articles almost read more as if they're movie reviews of Escape From New York, Batman or Soylent Green than actual dispatches from the flesh and blood city.

The Times' perpetual reporting machine Sewall Chan has pulled together a nice section looking back at the coverage of the blackout that features some great first-person accounts from users who were there.

Although, oddly, no HTML links to the original Times reporting.

Nevertheless, via the magic of a PDF link in a photo caption, we start with the authoritative Times, and their now-legendary (and still working) spot news man, Robert D. McFadden: Power Failure Blacks Out New York; Thousands Trapped in Subways; Looters and Vandals Hit Some Areas

A power failure plunged New York City and Westchester County into darkness last night, disrupting the lives of nearly nine million people.

Spokesmen for the Consolidated Edison Company said that power for all of its 2.8 million customers would not be restored until late this mornign.

By 2 A.M., the utility had restored power to 150,000 customres in the Jamaica, Flushing, Queens Village and Kew Gardens sections of Queens, and to 50,000 customers in the Pleasantville area in Westchester County.

Thought not as big as the nine-state blackout that hit the Northeast in November 1965, last night's power failure was in some respects an uglier experience. There was widespread looting in Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn, and four hours after the blackout began, the police had arrested nearly 900 people.

Several thousand subway riders were trapped in trains between stations--but nowhere near the masses stranded 12 years ago during the rush hour.

With hindsight, the subhead should've put the Looters part about the subway part, since that's what was different about this blackout.

But a masterpiece of concise, this is what happened and this is what you need to know writing. If the looting seems a little undercovered, it's because they broke that part out into the left margin article, by Lawrence Van Gelder.

The PDF of the front page is worth reading; other pieces cover how people helped their neighbors, explained what exactly happened with the lightning bolt, covered the subways, noted Long Island was fine, and detailed doctors at Bellevue using hand-squeezed air bags to resusciate some patients.

Next, the Daily News' lead article, written by Dick Brass: Blackout! Lighting Hits Con Ed System

A massive power failure plunged New York City and most of Westchester County into darkness in sweltering midsummer weather last night, stranding millions in buildings, disrupting communications, slowing fire-fighting efforts, encouraging looting and evoking grim memories of the great 1965 Northeast power collapse.

A Con Ed spokesman blamed the blackout on severe lightning strikes at about 8:40 p.m. on a 345 kilovolt transmission cable suspended across the Hudson River to the company's nuclear plant at Indian Point on the Hudson. The lightning strikes led to what the spokesman called a "cascading effect" that shut down the power system at about 9:30 p.m.

I think Brass tries to do too much with his lead, and in trying to put it all in context leaves you breathless.

In contrast to today's paper, the rest of the News piece is written in a very dry tone; it's facts-on-a-stick, no real personality.

The next day's News lead article, by Donald Singleton, is better and reflects that the News, like just about everyone else, missed the lead the previous night: Lights Go on, End Nightmare: 3,400 Jailed, 558 Cops Hurt in 25 Hours of Terror

The Great Blackout of 1977 ended late last night after 25 hours that saw the city racked by arson and looting in a night and day of "terror."

The awakening from the total power blackout left many streets littered with ugly debris, and a strange, groggy day of empty skyscrapers and locked stores and hushed subways and streets without traffic lights, and buildings that were burning for no sensible reason.

Oddly, the New York Post doesn't have their original coverage up; instead, they've been running boring lookbacks.

The Times' Joyce Purnick, who was at the Post then, remembers what it was like: The ’77 Blackout: Inside the Command Center

I was a reporter at The New York Post then, a mayoral election was under way, I was covering it, and the blackout hit just as I was leaving The Post’s office downtown on South Street that very hot summer night. I ran up the stairs to the city room, said I would find the mayor, Abe Beame, ran back down the stairs, and walked over to City Hall. It was deserted. ...

There were frequent briefings — many by the shirt-sleeved mayor, who was 71 at the time. Throughout the night and into the morning hours, he and members of his administration reflected confidence that the city would get through the emergency, that the mayor was in firm control of a tough situation. “You couldn’t buy this attention,’’ said one of Mr. Beame’s political deputies, obviously confident his candidate had done well.

I still wonder whether they were not fully aware of the city’s trauma that night. Because reporters in the command center didn’t get a valid sense of the city’s reality. We were in a bunker, living on shards of fact, fragments of information, in an era, remember, without cellphones and text-messaging, and on a night without television.

Only later did we learn about the extent of the chaos and looting in the South Bronx, Harlem and in Bushwick. In pockets of the city — in lower Manhattan where the mayor toured hospitals and fire houses at 2 a.m. — things were calm. And in other pockets, New Yorkers were frightened of New Yorkers. In some places New Yorkers were abusing their neighbors.

Only when I got back to The Post the next day did I realize the destructive toll the blackout had taken.

Beame's aides thinking they had handled things well has gotta be one of the all-time political blunders.

Finally, Time magazine's article after the blackout shows the advantages of its extra time, with a great lead and all sorts of interesting details that didn't need to be filed over the phone or by candlelight (oddly enough, there's no byline on the piece): Night of Terror

It was a crisis of light, and of darkness—the kind of event that brings out the best and the worst in people. Certainly the 1965 blackout could never happen again, or so New Yorkers had thought. But something very much like it struck Wednesday the 13th, only this time it was frighteningly different. Through the long, sweaty night and most of the following day, the nation's largest city was powerless, lacking both the electricity on which it depends so heavily and any means to stop a marauding minority of poor blacks and Hispanics who, in severe contrast to 1965, went on a rampage, the first since the hot summer riots of the 1960s. They set hundreds of fires and looted thousands of stores, illuminating in a perverse way twelve years of change in the character of the city, and perhaps of the country. ...

At Hearn's department store in Brooklyn, youths stripped clothing from window mannequins, broke their limbs and scattered them on the floor. Said Miguel Ten, a Viet Nam veteran who stood guarding Arnet's Children's Wear store: "This reminds me of Pleiku in 1966. There was a war out here. And the mannequins remind me of the dead people I saw in Nam without legs and arms." ...

Many looters seemed scarcely aware that they were stealing. Said one of two black boys standing outside a stripped bicycle shop near Columbia University: "We're just out shopping with our parents. This is better than going to Macy's." Some blacks resented all the fuss over the looting. Said Lorraine, 14, who had helped plunder a drugstore in East Harlem: "It gets dark here every night. Every night stores get broke into, every night people get mugged, every night you scared on the street. But nobody pays no attention until a blackout comes."

More people than just store owners had to make fresh starts on the morning after the night of darkness. Rose Stevens, an elderly widow, wandered weeping down Broadway in Brooklyn, looking for a new place to live after spending the night alone in her $57-a-month apartment above a meat market that had been burned out by vandals. "I wish I died," she cried. "I'm almost 70 years old, and I have no place to go."

Many black and Hispanic leaders across the country were dismayed by the rioting. In a typical comment, Carlos Castro, president of Chicago's Puerto Rican United Front, noted that the plunderers were poor and lived in slum housing, though he said of the violence: "You can't justify it." So far, there were no signs of a white backlash, even though many broadcast and newspaper accounts of the power failure emphasized the disorders. Sample headline from the Los Angeles Times: CITY'S PRIDE IN ITSELF GOES DIM IN THE BLACKOUT. Newspapers abroad also focused on the looting. A headline from Tokyo's Mainichi Shimbun: PANIC GRIPS NEW YORK; from West Germany's Bild Zeitung: NEW YORK'S BLOODIEST NIGHT; from London's Daily Express: THE NAKED CITY. ...

Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority of New Yorkers and visitors responded to the crisis with some of the same good humor and willingness to help each other that they had exhibited twelve years earlier. At Beame's request, stores, banks and most offices closed, reducing traffic on the city's streets. At the intersection of Park Avenue and 79th Street in Manhattan, an athletic young man wearing a cape and holding a pink flare controlled traffic like a matador handling a bull. On the other side of the island, traffic was directed on Riverside Drive by David Epstein, 17 He joked: "My mother told me to go out and play in the traffic, and here I am." Sixteen passers-by turned Coney Island's 150-ft.-high Wonder Wheel by hand, enabling stranded riders to reach the ground. ...

Few bars remained open, and they were packed with thirsty people even though their ice supplies were rapidly melting. Said one woman who had visited three other bars before she stopped at P.J. Clarke's, a well-known East Side watering place: "We're typical New Yorkers. We're going to get smashed." At Elaine's restaurant on Manhattan's upper East Side, tables were moved outdoors for a block party. The guests included Woody Allen, Al Pacino, Andy Warhol and Designer Calvin Klein. At One Fifth, a Greenwich Village restaurant decorated with fittings from the cruise ship R.M.S. Caronia, a patron quipped: "We've hit an iceberg." Pianist Nat Jones scrounged a candle to light his keyboard and played It Ain't Necessarily So. Unfortunately, it was. ...

Times photo of people on Broadway in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn looting by Tyrone Dukes.

Fourth fireworks

It's in some ways appropriate that Wimbledon always falls on the Fourth--even as the Brits are reminded of their biggest loss ever, they can also futilely try to win their own tournament (Virginia Wade was the last Englishwoman to win, in 1977 (on her 18th try); Fred Perry was the last Englishman to win, in 1936).

Oh well, at least the British press can have a field day with Rafael Nadal (who's my favorite player, largely thanks to his French Open blogging the last two years) and his match today:

Nadal Beats Soderling and the Rain at Wimbledon , John Branch in the Times: Rafael Nadal and Robin Soderling took the court eight times. The first was on Saturday. The last was today.

Their five-day, five-set passion play at Wimbledon finally ended after more than 4 hours of tennis on the court and 92 hours of waiting off of it. Nadal beat Soderling and the rain, ending a tedious and testy match, 6-4, 6-4, 6-7 (7), 4-6, 7-5.

Nadal, from Spain and seeded second in the tournament, dropped to his knees in joy, as if he had won something far more meaningful than a third-round match over a 28th-ranked player. Soderling, a Swede, challenged the last point before offering a tepid congratulatory handshake.

“Very happy,” said Nadal, who called it the toughest match of his career. “Very happy with the victory. Very happy about finishing the match.” ...

The drama of the day belonged to Nadal and Soderling, and much of it came after their match ended. Nadal sniped at the perceived slights he felt from Soderling. Among other things, Nadal said Soderling would not say hello to him, even after Nadal greeted him repeatedly.

“After four days, that’s not normal, no?” Nadal said. ...

When the it finally ended, Nadal was relieved to advance to the fourth round, where he will meet Mikhail Youzhny. But he struggled to look forward, not back. He accused Soderling of many discourtesies, on and off the court.

Soderling picked at his shorts between points, imitating a Nadal habit and drawing laughter from the crowd. In the 10th game of the fifth set, Soderling cheered with a fist pump when a ball hit the tape atop the net and trickled over for a point, though it has become custom among players to offer a sheepish apology. Nadal, annoyed by the post-match frostiness, later imitated Soderling’s handshake by sticking out his hand and turning his head away.

He was asked how he thought Soderling conducted himself.

“Really, the truth, maybe worst possible,” said Nadal, who speaks with fractured, but improving, English, and sometimes asks an interpreter for help.

“In the end, we will see what’s happening in the end of life, no?” he added. ...

Soderling did not hear Nadal’s comments, and seemed surprised to learn of the criticism. He said he would not air such laundry in public.

“If he’s complaining about that, that I never say ‘Hi’ to him, what can I do?” Soderling said.

Asked about the omission of a courtesy wave when his ball struck the net and trickled over, Soderling seemed perplexed by the custom.

“Why should I say I’m sorry when it’s the happiest moment of my life?” he said.

European Pressphoto Agency photo of Nadal by Lindsey Parnaby in the Times.