James Fallows

In the six months -- yes, it's been that long -- since Barack Obama's re-election, the drum-beats from the United States and Israel about bombing Iran have partly died down. Not totally, of course; recall the Hagel hearings, and also this Congressional resolution appearing to pre-endorse an attack if it occurs. Still, so much else has been going on -- in Syria, in North Korea, with the European economy -- that the topic has moved off the front pages for a while.

Which is why I found it so interesting to see that the possibility of an attack had literally moved back onto at least one front page. Here are our household's three papers as they looked on the breakfast table yesterday.

3. Jonathan Rowe, in his posthumous book Our Common Wealth (buy!). As I mentioned two years ago at the time of his sudden and unexpected death, Jon Rowe was a wonderful and original-minded writer who found a way to express concerns and ideas that made instant sense -- once he had pointed them out. His main contribution to The Atlantic was a 1995 cover story, with Ted Halstead and Clifford Cobb, on why GDP growth was a crude-at-best, destructive-at-worst way for a society to measure its overall progress and well-being.

At the time of his death Jonathan Rower was working on a set of ideas that now have taken form in a book edited (from his papers) by his friend Peter Barnes. Its power is, again, to give voice and form to a concept many people sense but that doesn't clearly make its way into political, journalistic, or academic discussion. That is the value of all the things to which we can't attach an immediate profit-and-loss value but that clearly matter to individuals, families, and entire societies in distinguishing satisfaction and happiness from malaise. Which is also a point Jonathan Rauch and David Runciman are addressing.

Please find the time to read these three works.

As the years wear on, my esteem grows for the writing program Scrivener as the single best bargain ever offered in the software world. And I mean: ever. It was originally for the Mac but now comes in a Windows version; it costs all of $45; and it is a program that seems ideally tailored for the way that many writers, including me, would like to approach their work. You can see its (quite impressive) list of testimonials here; read a detailed description of its power from a U Chicago student, Noah Ennis, here; and consider some previous discussion here and here. I've now written two books, two or three dozen Atlantic articles, and many other reports and presentations with Scrivener. I was pleased that its creator, Keith Blount of Cornwall, England, appeared in this space as a guest blogger two years ago.

Recently I posted a couple of pictures illustrating the role that airport-terminal floors play in the Atlantic's article-production process.

The category, I guess, is "It Was Ever Thus for Journalists, Even Before The Internet."

This is, by the way, my all-time favorite photo of my dad.  How happy I am to find it on The Atlantic's own website! [In an item about David Broder by Ron Brownstein.]

In turn, one lovely detail in this photo made me think of a famous shot from the historical archives. It's of Adlai Stevenson, during his 1952 presidential campaign:

By now you've seen the tragic footage of a Boeing 747 cargo plane crashing soon after takeoff from Bagram airport in Afghanistan. 
What does this look like, from an aviation perspective? To get the caveats out of the way:
  - I don't know first-hand that this is an authentic video, although it has been publicized widely without debunking that I have seen;
 - It is certainly possible that there are causal factors that this video doesn't reveal, from sabotage to some external force somehow not shown on screen;
 - And whatever else you can think of.

Still, if you ask what this looks like, the answer is: It looks like an aerodynamic stall.

As explained in some previous posts about crashes, here and here, an aerodynamic stall is nothing like a normal car-engine stall. The simplest way to envision it is to think of bicycling up a very steep hill in high gear. At some point, you won't be able to keep the bicycle's speed up -- and since a bike needs to be moving forward to stay upright, at that point it will fall over.

So too with an airplane. Its wings have to move through the air at a certain speed, conveniently known as "airspeed," to generate the lift that keeps the plane aloft. If they go too slowly, which often* comes from climbing too steeply, at some point they stop generating enough lift -- and then like a bike going too slowly up a too-steep hill they will "fall over" and the plane will come out of the sky.

That is what we seem to see in the video above, starting just a few seconds in. Every pilot has done "stall recovery" drills, in which you point the airplane too steeply upward, until eventually it stalls, noses over, and begins to fall. Then you recover in the prescribed way. But usually you do these drills a few thousand feet up into the sky -- to avoid exactly the fate shown in the video.

Why would an experienced flight crew get into this trouble -- if that is what occurred? Again, I don't know for sure, but one possibility would be "cargo shift." Suppose the cargo in a heavily laden plane was not securely strapped down, so that as the plane accelerated for takeoff, the cargo might shift toward the tail. That could make the plane too tail-heavy to fly. (To be more precise, it could shift the plane's center of gravity outside the acceptable flight envelope.) In general, a pilot increases a plane's airspeed -- and avoids the risk of a stall -- by pointing its nose down. The weight loaded into a plane is carefully calculated to be sure it is appropriately balanced between nose and tail so that the pilot can point the nose up and down as needed. If the tail became too heavy, essentially making the plane a see-saw with too much weight on one side, the pilot would be helpless to avoid a stall and crash.

A stall, perhaps from shifting cargo, is what this looks like. We'll learn more about what actually occurred.
__
* For the aviation crowd: yes, I realize that the technical way to put the point is that the angle of attack has become too high, which can occur even when the plane is not climbing.

I mentioned earlier how the travel day began yesterday, at the only working socket in a corridor at LAX.

For your consideration: the home page of today's Times of London.

Housekeeping note: As previously mentioned, I've been on an unexpectedly long Internet hiatus, first finishing off one Atlantic project -- and then preparing for another, about which I'm more excited than by anything in quite a long while. I'll be preparing to say more about that later this spring.

For now, to smooth the return to online presence, here is a dispatch I wrote for the latest edition of the Next Economy project, run jointly by The Atlantic and National Journal. The theme in this installment is an examination of what it means, now, to be "middle class," after many decades of economic pressure pushing people both up and down and away from the middle. My part of the project was to ask what the idea of middle-classness has meant to America. The results are in the brief item below.

****

When sociologists or historians have looked at the United States, they have quickly identified important differences of class. Indentured servants versus free settlers in the colonial era, sharecroppers versus landowners in the post-Civil War South, labor versus management in America's industrial age. Some of the most influential examinations of American culture and politics have applied a class-conscious perspective. These range from academic studies such as John Dollard's Caste and Class in a Southern Town, to novels such as John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, to great works of journalism such as J. Anthony Lukas's Common Ground, his chronicle of the struggles over school desegregation that polarized Boston in the 1970s.

Yet when Americans have looked at themselves, they have usually downplayed such differences in favor of the idea that most people are part of the great American middle class. For people at the top, this can be a form of modesty -- or, more cynically, a way of deflecting attention from inequalities. For people at the bottom, it can reflect hopes and goals -- and, of course, illusions. For everyone else, it reflects the combination of a reality and a theory.

The reality is that, compared with the still-feudal makeup of much of Europe and the stark extremes of many developing societies, America has indeed been the arena in which more people, from a broader variety of backgrounds, could pursue more opportunities than ever before. Even in rapidly growing modern China, the closest counterpart to our term for an average person would be laobaixing, with a connotation less like "middle class" and more like "the masses."

In periods when U.S. society has not been more open, mobile, and equal than others in the world, many Americans have still acted as if there are benefits to believing, or pretending, the contrary. Through ups and downs, we have preferred to believe that the standard middle-class social contract is intact, and that those who follow the rules -- study, marriage, work, discipline -- can expect a reasonable middle-class outcome.

We're now in one of those periods when the reality of intense pressure on the middle class diverges from long-held assumptions of how the American bargain should work. Compared with most European countries, our economy is more polarized and unequal. Compared with most Asian countries, the economic welfare of our middle class has been stagnant rather than rising. Compared with our own 20th-century history, our entire society is materially better off in countless ways -- from life span and environmental improvement to average education levels, house size, and most other material measures -- but is also becoming more stratified and rigid. The education and income level into which a child is born is becoming a better predictor of where he or she will end up as an adult. It has become hard to imagine new waves of opportunity and mobility comparable to those created by the 19th-century settlement of the West, the GI Bill, or the post-World War II migration to the Sun Belt.

In these circumstances, does it make sense for America to maintain the ideal, or myth, that we are a middle-class society? I believe it does, even though this concept may make it harder for us to perceive or discuss the nation's genuine and growing inequalities. It remains worthwhile, because most of the elements of middle-class identity encourage traits America needs.

One of those elements is: Because I'm middle class, I have something in common with my neighbors and fellow citizens. The United States has been at its best politically and economically when we have viewed other members of society as "us" rather than "them."

Another middle-class assumption is: I am as good as anyone else. This is in contrast to the forelock-tugging deference built into feudalism and now on display in Downton Abbey. From Poor Richard's Almanack onward, American culture has reflected the belief that ideas and ambitions deserve consideration no matter their origin. This in turn has been an element of American ingenuity and resilience.

Finally, to be middle class is to believe that any goal should be within reach. Success takes effort, and it depends on luck. But a long string of ascents from middle-class-or-below origins, from the Wright brothers and Henry Ford a century ago to Steve Jobs and Barack Obama and Sonia Sotomayor in our day, suggests a possibility rare in other societies. We are better off believing that this is still the American way.

 

To get a sample of the discourse, you could skip to time 38:20. There you'll hear an admirably direct question from an audience member: Why, exactly, is manned space flight sensible? And two interesting answers -- first Walker's on the history of national exploration ventures in general, then Pace's emphasis that a successful manned mission requires a broader range of competencies and achievements than almost anything else human beings try to do, and therefore is valuable in a skill-advancing sense. Pace also goes into that point starting at time 27:40 -- and much earlier, around 12:40, talks about how our plans for space exploration differ, depending on whether we see outer space as more similar to Mt. Everest or Antarctica. You can go to that section for fuller explanation.

If you find this engaging, there's a lot more in the hour of discussion. Groggy as I was, I was glad to hear it myself.

I am in Internet range for only a few minutes, so let me just type this right out:

1. Today a provision that would increase background checks for gun purchases was blocked in the Senate, even though consideration of the bill was supported by 54 senators representing states that make up (at quick estimate) at least 60 percent of the American population.
2. The bill did not fail to "pass" the Senate, which according to Constitutional provisions and accepted practice for more than two centuries requires a simple majority, 51 votes. Even 50 votes should do it, since the vice president is constitutionally empowered to cast the tie-breaking and deciding vote, and Joe Biden would have voted yes.
   
3. It failed because a 54-vote majority was not enough to break the threat of a filibuster, which (with some twists of labeling) was the real story of what happened with this bill. Breaking the filibuster would have required 60 votes.
4. Since the Democrats regained majority control of the Senate six years ago, the Republicans under Mitch McConnell have applied filibuster threats (under a variety of names) at a frequency not seen before in American history. Filibusters used to be exceptional. Now they are used as blocking tactics for nearly any significant legislation or nomination. The goal of this strategy, which maximizes minority blocking power in a way not foreseen in the Constitution, has been to make the 60-vote requirement seem routine.
5. As part of the "making it routine" strategy, the minority keeps repeating that it takes 60 votes to "pass" a bill -- and this Orwellian language-redefinition comes one step closer to fulfillment each time the press presents 60 votes as the norm for passing a law.

Yes, this is the 20 millionth time I have made this point. (Recently here, with special Orwell-homage.) But here is why it is worth noting again. Just in the past few minutes readers have sent in these illustrations of the success of step No. 5, above:

From Business Insider (source of screen grab above):

GUN CONTROL VOTE FAILS IN SENATE -- Obama Speaks Now On Failure

With Vice President Joe Biden presiding over the Senate, an amendment to expand background checks on gun purchases failed to pass through the body, falling by a mostly partisan vote of 54-46...

Sixty votes were needed to pass the legislation through the Senate.

No, 60 votes were needed to break the filibuster threat. Note that in the "mostly partisan vote of 54-46" the 54 senators were voting for the measure.

From Politico, emphasis added:

The Senate has rejected a bipartisan proposal to expand background checks on firearms and close the so-called gun show loophole, handing President Barack Obama and Democratic leaders a major defeat on one of the key pieces of the president's second-term agenda.

The vote was 54-46, with only four Republicans crossing the aisle and voting with the Democrats in favor of the bipartisan proposal by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). Sixty votes were needed.

I won't add the line-by-line explication because you can do it yourselves. Actually, I can't resist: that last passive-voice sentence calls out for "to break a filibuster threat." Look at this home-page splash from Politico (below), and imagine if it said what actually happened: "GOP filibusters gun control."

In a day or two I will resume normal programming here.In the meantime, many people have written to ask whether I was being literal and sincere in saying that Nancy Sinatra's "Boots" video was "the best part of the 1960s."

>>During television news coverage in 1966/67, the song was aired as a soundtrack as the cameras focused on US Infantrymen on patrol during the Vietnam War. Later, during that same time frame, Sinatra traveled to South Vietnam to perform for U.S. servicemen. It was used on the soundtrack to Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (1987). Sinatra also sang it on an episode of China Beach in the late-1980s. In 2005, Paul Revere & the Raiders recorded a revamped version of the song using Sinatra's original vocal track. It appeared on the CD Ride to the Wall, Vol. 2, with proceeds going to help Vietnam veterans.

In addition, the Fembots were introduced to the strains of the opening and closing notes of the song in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.<<

The best part of the 1980s:

The best part of the 1960s—OK, there were a lot of them, but this is one that is particularly unbelievable in retrospect.

The "Hah!" at time 1:50 is the part that I always thought would make Frank Sinatra proudest of his daughter's ability to express the meaning of a song.

For myself, I am proud to be an American.

___

Update OK, here is a third video tribute-to-a-decade. It is of toddler-aged pandas playing on a slide at the Panda Base in Chengdu, and it is from the 2010s. I am still proud to be an American, but I'm glad to have seen animals like this at Sichuan province panda reserves.

Thanks to DL for this one, and thanks to the world for providing such riches.

Here's another quick item I can take six minutes to post while still in article-deadline-hell mode. It's a warning, from a computer-security conference in Amsterdam, that hackers equipped merely with Android phones could remotely take control of an airliner and guide it in all sorts of unwelcome ways, including right into another plane. As in the classic pilot-world joke photoshopped item above.

Once [the hacker with an Android] was into the airplane's computer, he was able to manipulate the steering of a Boeing jet while the aircraft was in "autopilot" mode. The only countermeasure available to pilots, if they even realized they were being hacked, would be to turn off autopilot. Yet many planes no longer have old analog instruments for manual flying. 

This is the kind of item I can post while finishing a print-magazine story. A friend in China sends this compare-and-contrast photo:

>>I am a United brat - my dad was a pilot with them for 20 years and I grew up traveling only on them.  Clearly I have flown United more than any other airline.  That said, as I have grown up and graduated from my flight benefits, I have begun traveling for business with other airlines, primarily with American, so I'm not completely inexperienced.

 Maybe I'm feeling defensive, but I really think you are using your position as a national journalist to pursue vendetta of opinion against United. I genuinely do not understand why you think it's professional to publish 4 or 5 articles about how terrible they are, based off of biased and anecdotal evidence and pass it off as journalism - when it is clearly opinion.

 Other thoughts:

  Traveling is no longer a luxury experience.  As people demand and airlines come under increasing pressure to lower the costs of their flights, any costs that can be cut will.  In order for airlines to be cost competitive, employees have seen their benefits and pensions cut, threatened with furlough, and been generally asked to do more with less. If people want that luxury experience they need to pay for it - like paying for a business for first class seat.  Every time I fly in a premium class my experience is unctuous and overwhelmingly decadent.  And I like it!  You get what you pay for.

 We live in a post -9/11 world, and this has infused every aspect of the flying experience.  As someone who still lived at home post-9/11, I can give a firsthand account about the pervasive fear of flight attends and pilots after. They were literally worried about their lives  You and other may think that the captain from the Baltimore flight made a poor judgment call - but that's what it was - a judgment call.  The captain is ultimately responsible for the lives and safety of his passengers and crew, and he did what he thought was best.  Also, it doesn't shock me that the airline stood behind the captain and crew. That's what they should do. When there are 230 people rocketing through 30,000 feet, there needs to be some sense of hierarchy and leadership.

I genuinely think your article showed shoddy journalism.  You only presented only one side of the situation -  although I grant that you did reach out to United, but unequivocally accepted their story, without exploring other explanations.  Do you really and honestly believe that the pilot grounded the flight because two parents coolly and collegially  voice rational complaints?  Clearly there are other elements to this story and I should think, as someone how has "millions upon millions of accumulated miles, and super-elite status", you should be able to provide some critical thinking and insight to the situation.

Yes, there are heinous airline employees but there are also awesome employees.  How about mentioning every incident when an airline employee goes out of their way to accommodate, because in my experience, that is by far more common.  I mean, the guy from the dress code story obviously a bit over the top - he wanted to claim assault on the pilot for poking him and he's listed at least two other incidents when he's formally complained to the airline.  So while I'm not defending the pilot from his dress code story, you have to admit that this person has no problem complaining (and is clearly an asshole - who takes a photo and sends it to corporate, a fucking tattletale?).  You're publishing these horror stories from people who obviously have a bone to pick - and it's fantastical journalism and completely biased towards the person complaining. A little objectivity and research might do you some credit.<< 

3) From a United pilot, short version:

>>I fly for the "Continental" side of United as a line pilot. My wife, though, is a pilot for the United side. This story is very incredible indeed. There is NO WAY this is a normal occurrence. I don't know any pilots that would react that way. I think the story needs further context. Although United, like most airlines, have cranky bad seeds that bloom into bad customer experiences once in a while, this kind of behavior is unheard of. I am very skeptical of the story. Nearly all of the flight crew members I deal with every day I go to work are professional and indeed, pleasant.<<

1. The parents are misremembering, or sugar-coating, how much of a fuss they put up;
2. The pilot grossly over-reacted; or
3. The flight attendants exaggerated or hyped the problem in describing it to the pilot. 

>>I just caught up with your most recent series on airline service and your search for a "United Field Theory." I have what might be a relevant data point.

I was a United frequent flyer for many years (although hardly "elite") until I finally got tired of writing them letters of complaint...  Sometime probably in late 2002, when I was still plenty steamed with United, I was invited to be a member of a focus group in Los Angeles on airline service. As usual, they didn't tell us who the client was, but from the timing I think it might have been part of the market research aimed at launching "Delta Song."

I went in and vented about United and about the generally bad experience we were all getting from airlines. (We got paid extra for cutting up magazines and making a collage -- no kidding, just like in grade school -- that expressed our views on this topic. Mine included a United plane that was part Tyrannosaurus and was chomping on some hapless guy. But I digress.)

It became obvious from the questions that the focus group was intended to test how much more people would pay for better service. At one point, we were given three one-page descriptions of a flying experience: one that sounded like Southwest, one that seemed to be based on the normal service on major carriers, and one that sounded fabulous, like flying the QE II. Then we were asked this: If a normal LA to New York fare on the regular carrier was $300, how much more would you pay for that luxury service? We were supposed to raise our hands, listen while the market researcher raised the price in increments, then drop our hands when the price passed our dealbreaker point.

Well, it seemed like my hand was up for the next half-hour. I was by far the last holdout, agreeing to pay something approaching $500 for what they'd described. Now, I was a nontenured college instructor and not anything like wealthy. Granted, I also wasn't raising a family. But an extra $100 or $150 to be treated like royalty instead of herded like cattle? Yeah, sign me up.

But I was the ONLY person who was so price-elastic. One other guy held out to $375, as I recall, but most of the dozen or so other focus-ees said they wouldn't pay more than an extra $25. I'm still kind of astonished when I think about this. I pointed out to everyone that $300 was already not very much money for the amazingly complex, high-tech operation of flying someone in near-perfect safety from one coast to another, while also managing hundreds of other flights at the same time. (They might even have said round-trip, I don't remember.) I got the impression that some of my fellow panelists had never thought of it that way, but also that I wasn't changing anyone's mind.

The point is, United is dealing with a public that would board a flying concentration camp if it would save them a few bucks. What's amazing, really, is that some airline service for non-elite coach passengers is still decent, that there hasn't been more of a race to the bottom already.<<

>>The plane that the parents were surely on was an A320 series airplane, which has drop-down screens. The flight attendants can only make all of the screens go up or down, they have no control over individual screens. Moreover, I find it highly unlikely the flight attendants are allowed to simply stop showing movies to everyone on the plane at the request of one set of parents. The parents should complain to United about their movie choices (although the movie was PG-13 and already edited for content, as are all mainscreen movies), not insinuate that the flight attendants are lying.

It sounds more like your correspondent was being over-entitled and potentially repeatedly harassed flight attendants about something which they made clear at the start they had no control over.

In general, it is this kind of attitude - that the airline should make heroic accommodations just for them - that I've sadly seen much too much of as a long time 1K.

One of the things about elite status is that it gives certain fliers the right to feel like self-centered jerks around airline staff - to put on airs and treat staff as their lessers. I'm not saying I can excuse poor airline staff behavior, but I feel a certain amount of sympathy for airline staff (flight attendants, etc.) that must continually put up with over-entitled yahoos bossing them around and making unreasonable requests.

In a way, I feel like the rise of airline elite status and the decline of the flying experience for the "regular person" has only been a bad thing. It used to be there were few elites on airplanes and everyone was treated reasonably well. Now, a select group of people (me included sometimes) get pampered by the airline while the rest get treated poorly. The pampering goes to some people's heads while the experience of being treated poorly makes the rest resentful and unhappy about flying.<<

>>As a million miler with United I'd ask you to please continue to investigate the story  around the family that were ejected from the plane for complaining about the movie.  The airline industry in general is known for the low quality of customer service. However  post 9/11,  and as a frequent traveler, I  see more and more abuse from airline personnel  who are empowered to use "security" as an excuse for what often amounts to pettiness.

In this case, law enforcement determined that an obvious mistake was made that victimized the innocent and wasted tax payer dollars. Someone was either incompetent or malicious. Either way, they should be held accountable.

Please keep after United and do not let the story drop.  They care nothing for consumers but you in the media, you they fear. Please make them explain what happened.  Nothing would make me happier than to see this story go viral.     If nothing else, some "heat" might make the individuals involved behave better in future.

I'd also be interested in the view of law enforcement of the issue ? if I as an individual, deliberately waste the time of law enforcement, that in itself is a crime.<<

>>Thank you for publicizing how United Airlines has dealt with parental concerns over showing violent movies on shared screens.  I have written to United about this twice.  I received a brush off both times.  Here is my most recent letter in case it is of interest.  I would be extremely interested to know if and how United changes their movie policy based on the incident you report.  My son's comment to me during the flight (full context below), "Mama, it is nicer to watch dancing than people being shot" was especially poignant as this was the day after the Sandy Hook elementary school shootings (of which my son knew nothing, thankfully).

 

Content of letter to United:

 

"I am writing to request a change in your in-flight movie policy.  Please stop showing violent films on all flights with shared movie screens.  My family and I are in the Foreign Service and thus fly regularly.  I have written to your company about this issue once previously and our most recent travel has brought it up again.  

"On December 15, 2012 we flew from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia to Denver Colorado.  On the leg of the trip from Seoul to San Francisco, our plane had a shared movie screen.  The first movie screened was the Bourne Legacy.  I was flying with my 7 year old son.  This movie was not only violent, but contained a scene in which multiple individuals were hiding in their workplace being stalked and shot and killed one by one by a co-worker.  When the screen is shared there is no way to shield my son from these images without literally covering him with a blanket.  As this was the first movie screened and during meal service this was impossible.  I did my best to distract him but he, of course, witnessed the violence.  The next morning while breakfast was being served a movie about dancing was being screened.  It was quite sad to hear my seven year old state, "Mama, it is nicer to watch dancing than people being shot."

"As an attorney and a strong supporter of the First Amendment, I do not see the answer to this problem in regulation of your ability to show these movies nor of Hollywood's ability to make them.  I see the answer in individual and corporate responsibility.  As a matter of corporate responsibility, please do not force me to subject my child to these violent images.

"As you know, Foreign Service personnel are required to use American carriers as their first choice for business related travel.  Although I do not feel it is appropriate to legislate your choice of movies, my choice of airlines is legislated.  I will be bringing this issue up with AFSA (the American Foreign Service Association) if I do not receive a satisfactory response.

"My first e-mail to you about violent movies being screened was answered with "Thank you for your input.  Please see our in-flight magazine for all our great movie selections."  Please do not send a similar response to this correspondence.<<

>>An interesting thread.  I just had one comment.  To this day I vividly remember seeing the movie "Manhunter", the first appearance of Hannibal Lecter on screen as an in-flight movie.  It must have been 1986 or 1987.  I was twelve or thirteen.  Suffice it to say, not really appropriate for a mass audience on a plane.<<

Over the years I've chronicled the activities of Liam Casey -- an entrepreneur originally from Cork, Ireland; then based in Southern California until he couldn't get a green card; then working since the late 1990s in Shenzhen, southern China, where he has been at the center of the Chinese outsourced-manufacturing boom. Here are two articles about him, from 2007 and last year.

>>A good friend and academic colleague (prof at [a well-known West Coast university]), Chinese citizen with a green card, 28 year resident of the USA, is in the customs line at the Bradley Terminal [international-arrivals area at LAX.]

Asked if he had any cash, he answered 'none'. Then, realizing he had some pocket money, he said, "Oh, I forgot - I have a little. Poquito." (smiling)

"Please step over to that line, sir."

In 'the line you don't want to be in', he was searched carefully. He asked why.

"We have a lot of rich Chinese trying to bring lots of money into the USA these days."

"Do I look like a rich Chinese?"

"Could be, sir."

Upshot was that they confiscated both mobile devices and the laptop. He received the mobile devises several days later, they still have the laptop.

He thinks maybe it was the attempted Spanish that ticked off the Latino officer.<<

Again, for making a joke to a customs agent, a professor coming back to work lost control of the electronic devices through which many people manage their business and personal activities. You can choose how you would like to categorize these reports: under "the way we live now," or "seeing ourselves as others see us." Other possibilities: "life under the sequester." Or, "annals of the security state."