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Wasting (Whose) time? George Bush Touches Down in India

By PLS

George Bush is going to India. But he’s not going to waste his precious time on “sightseeing.” This is a characteristically penny wise but pound foolish decision. “Sightseeing” is a denigration of what's really just a courteous gesture by official visitors. Look at it this way: politics is ephemeral, but culture endures---and respect never goes out of style.

Wise international players know they can’t become experts on every culture they have to deal with. That’s why they consult specialists, and everyone knows they do. But when in Rome, sensible VIPs at least pretend to take an interest in Rome. That satisfies the minimum for civilized behavior.

So far as India is concerned, a trip to Agra kills half a day or less, by air, but shows appreciation. A little of that can have a certain facilitative effect should negotiations get tough.

And they may. Even during the bad old days of the abysmal “Hindu rate of growth,” Indians did not suffer from a noticeable inferiority complex. Now the Indians want access to non-military nuclear technology, and they want it badly, but that doesn’t put Bush in an especially strong position. At this point he’s a wounded President. His poll numbers keep plunging, and he can’t afford a botched summit. He may have to give more than he wants to get the appearance of success, and Indian sources are hinting that no deal will be finalized during the visit.

Tuesday Spring Raven and Question Blogging

by CKR

It's been warm the past few days, so I got out in the yard and started the spring yard work. It's horrendously dry, so I watered and watered.

This fellow arrived and stuck around for a couple of hours on Saturday, then came back with some delicious treats, probably from the hamburger stand down the hill, on Sunday. I'm wondering if he's the Raven of myth, like this Kamchatka incarnation.

Looking to Franchise! Contact the Pentagon

By PLS

Setting a Date - Updated

by CKR

When President Bush and India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed an agreement to work toward nuclear cooperation last July, they wisely did not specify a time or a very exacting goal for President Bush’s projected reciprocal visit.

The two leaders agreed to establish a working group to undertake on a phased basis in the months ahead the necessary actions mentioned above to fulfill these commitments. The President and Prime Minister also agreed that they would review this progress when the President visits India in 2006.

However, news reports at the time suggested that President Bush was hoping to quickly hammer out the details, present the agreement to a pliant Congress and willing Nuclear Suppliers’ Group, and have everything in place by March 2006.

March 2006 is now less than a week away, and negotiations on separating India’s nuclear complex into civilian (to be under International Atomic Energy Agency inspection) and military are heated, far from being wrapped up. The date of President Bush’s visit has been set for Wednesday, March 1, with an obligatory after-stop in Pakistan.

A message for NBC and the International Olympic Committee

By PHK

(Not that they’ll ever read it.)

The nice thing about blogging is that it is a license to write about anything and everything. So I’m going to write about the 2006 Olympics, not foreign affairs for a change – or, oh, well, just maybe a little.

I’ve spent parts of the last couple of weeks watching – or more accurately attempting to watch – the Twentieth Olympic Winter Games in Torino. That is, through the fog of inordinate number of commercials and, for the most part, the incessant blather of NBC’s sports commentators. The saving grace? The mute button on my television’s remote.

Given an option, I’d rather watch the games almost anywhere else in the world than the U.S. even if I have to get up at 3 in the morning to do so. Sure, tell me how new scoring systems work; explain the intricacies of any new sport, but for heaven’s sake, just show the performances and keep chatter to a minimum. As for the personal interviews that seem so popular with American viewers – they’re certainly better than commercials, but focus on the competitions, please.

My view: more live footage, fewer commercials and minimum personality profiles. Might also be nice to know the name of the music a skater is skating to – not every skater is fixated on replaying Katerina Witt’s show-stopping rendition of Bizet’s Carmen. Did I hear Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet” at some point? Actually, this was one of the few times NBC announcers identified the music - so I’m sure I did. But what about the others?

Given the intersection of the web and the MSM today, why not just put the personality profiles on the NBC website – and let people click on them if they want to know more about a favorite – or unfavorite - athlete’s personal habits, family, trials and tribulations. Actually, some bloggers are doing this quite well with their behind the scenes Olympics looks - and the Olympians often have their own websites.

Also, forget about holding live footage for prime time. With the 24/7 news cycle, just show the competitions as they occur, then the excerpts which pass as Olympics coverage in these United States in the 7-10 pm slot. And if this is not cost effective for commercial television - why not let PBS do it - at least show the unadulterated, real time competition?

Let’s get this straight: we already know the results. Let’s also get this straight, it might be useful for the American public to see the many terrific athletes from other countries also competing in the games, and learn that the competition is far from just the 15 year old buried history of the Cold War US vs. Soviets head-to-head. In fact, why shouldn’t Americans be exposed to sports Americans do not excel in – might be an incentive to improve U.S. performances in those lesser known sports in the future.

Personally, I’m delighted that the Finns and the Swedes are vying for Gold in men’s hockey. There is nothing like a Finnish-Swedish competition to bring out the best – and the worst - from both national teams. Why the US men behaved so badly in their match against the Finns escapes me. I suppose the most likely reason was that they were outclassed and outplayed. No one should be surprised: Finnish kids are on skates from the time they take their first steps. And they train seriously.

Since the Finnish-Swedish match is a contest for the Gold, I assume this game will make NBC’s cut, at least I hope so. I remember being in Helsinki in 1980 watching Finnish TV coverage when the upstart U.S. team first beat the Soviets and the Finns at Lake Placid. That was pretty neat – and let me tell you, the Finns and Soviets were extremely gracious at the time. The Finns also showed both games from start to finish (no pun intended) even though they had been eliminated from the final match.

Rethinking the rules?

One of the things that struck me as I’ve been watching what I could of the Olympics - given the lousy coverage here - was how far parts of the world have come from petty national squabbles – the divisions upon which the modern Olympic Games are based.

Which Political Correctness?

by CKR

A currently politically correct (rightwing) interpretation of Larry Summers's resignation from the presidency of Harvard University is that political correctness (leftwing) brought him down. So say the Economist, the Times of London, and the Los Angeles Times, along with many others.

It is true that Summers did some good things for students and irritated the faculty. It is true that he was brought in to "reform" some of Harvard's practices. But it is necessary to bring the people you want to reform along with you, the faculty in this case, and Summers didn't bother to do that. Sometimes it appeared that he was going out of his way to irritate them.

But is that the main story here? Timing suggests otherwise, and Time and The Nation have picked up that story.

The Institutional Investor published an 18,000-word story about a month ago on the Andrei Schleifer affair. Schleifer went to Russia from Harvard in the 1990s on a grant from US AID to help with the development of free markets. He, his wife and associates wound up pushing their own investment schemes and getting wealthy. The government found this to be a misuse of its funds and sued Harvard for $31 million. Schleifer is still a professor in Harvard's economics department, and the committee that investigates ethics violations has lain dormant. Summers urged the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences to keep Schleifer on.

Summers has been Schleifer's friend for a long time, before Schleifer went to Russia, through those times when Summers was in the Treasury Department and the World Bank and on to today. The Institutional Investor article found no connection between Summers and Schleifer beyond friendship. The Harvard Corporation has said that he had no connection to their part in the Schleifer lawsuit.

The Institutional Investor article may have been the last straw on the camel's back. But it raises questions as to Summers's relationship with Schleifer while Schleifer and friends were partying it up in Moscow.

Spiders, Mammals, and the Uneasy Earth

by CKR

Spider Myths

If you want to check up on spider lore, this is the place to do it. I’ll quibble about the name, because the site deals with a variety of misconceptions and popular beliefs about spiders. It’s myth in the sense of urban myth.

Everything You Want To Know About Mammals

This site offers detailed scientific descriptions (pdf files) of 761 species, including photos and maps of occurrence. Each description is several pages long. The listings are by chronological order of addition of the description or by taxon. A search function might be helpful, but if you’re like me, you won’t mind browsing.

Now Erupting…

You can find what volcanoes are currently erupting at Volcano World, with links to satellite views of the volcanoes from Google Earth (so they’re not of the current eruption) and webcams where they are available. Lots of other information too, including Volcano of the Week and FAQs about volcanoes.

…And Quaking

The latest earthquakes are listed at the US Geological Survey’s Earthquake Hazards site. Lots more about earthquakes, too. Get ready for the centennial of the Great San Francisco Earthquake on April 18!

Not the First Time

by CKR

I’ve just finished Secrecy, by Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The book was published in 1998, and Moynihan died in 2003. It’s an interesting book, made more interesting by the 9/11 filter.

Moynihan was one of the few people who could claim to have anticipated the fall of the Soviet Union, and one of his themes is that secrecy keeps the conversation internal, resulting in bad decisions because fresh thought is excluded. It’s a good argument, and I would have liked the book better if it had made that argument more cleanly.

But the book rambles and the result is more of a history (with jarring flashbacks and jumps) of secrecy within the United States government. There are also thoughts on implications for the today of 1998, which turn out to be about the same for the today of 2006.

It doesn’t make much, explicitly, of framing, but the idea is implicit in places in the book. I don’t know if Moynihan thought of this before he died, but he provides an example of a precursor to 9/11 and how America reacted to it. We've forgotten it, but the laws and institutions produced in reaction to it continue.

It’s become something of a commonplace to refer to 9/11 as the first attack on American soil, the worst terrorist attack. What’s notable when you google such phrases is the absence of another big terrorist attack on American soil. It was less than a hundred years before, an ammunition explosion at Black Tom Island, New Jersey.