James Fallows

State of the Union update is near. In the meantime, this dispatch from Charles Stevenson, a long-time Senate staffer, former professor at the National War College, and author of a standard text on the job of the secretary of defense. He is referring to the polarization, grandstanding, and threats of filibuster that have emerged over the nomination of Chuck Hagel as SecDef:

I despair. I worked on the Senate Armed Services Committee for ten years and have followed it closely ever since. We had big fights - over Vietnam, ending the draft, the B-1 bomber and MX missile - but members always recognized that they needed to compromise in order to pass a defense authorization bill, which the committee has now done for an amazing 51 years in a row.

My bosses sometimes put holds on nominations in order to get more information from the executive branch, and we even threatened filibusters a couple of times. But nobody abused those tactics. Sometimes the committee even voted against a presidential nominee, but still reported the nomination to let the full Senate decide - by simple majority vote. SASC members always put the institution ahead of party or politics.

The one glaring exception to that committee comity was over John Tower's nomination to be secretary of defense. But the opposition to the former SASC chairman was bipartisan, over moral and character issues, and not to embarrass the president or fight administration policy. The SASC voted 11-9 to reject the Tower nomination but still sent it to the floor, where the Senate voted it down 47-53. No filibuster, just a simple majority vote. [JF note: to be clear, 53 members of the Senate, an absolute majority, voted against Tower. This wasn't like what we've become accustomed to and is in prospect in the Hagel case: a 40-something vote minority blocking the nomination by filibuster or other procedural obstacle.]

The behavior of some of the new members on the Hagel nomination is way over the line - disgraceful! They show no respect for the institution and are likely to poison its ability to work in a collaborative way. They are also hurting the institution of the office of Secretary of Defense and thus undermining our system of civilian control.

I still want to reserve the filibuster for rare and special cases, but the Hagel opponents are making it harder for us defenders of the Senate's unique character to support our own case

Ted Cruz, the new senator from Texas, is worth keeping an eye on.Ted Cruz can't help it that his voice, his intonation, his posture at the microphone, and his overall style of speaking are so strongly reminiscent of Joe McCarthy's, who died long before Cruz was born. 

I am still working on the State of the Union special-bonus annotated edition, which will take a few more hours. But in the meantime I had to mention a late twist in the ongoing Chuck Hagel saga that is too important to ignore.

As has been evident for some time, Hagel has majority support in the Senate for his confirmation as secretary of defense. As has become increasingly evident these past few days, much of the opposition to Hagel has become a parody of itself. Former Republican Senator and foreign-policy grandee Richard Lugar, himself the victim of a Tea Party challenge, said yesterday that the attack on Hagel was "unfortunate and unfair." Meanwhile the publisher of the Omaha World Herald answered allegations that Hagel (who represented Nebraska) was anti-Semitic with an article headlined, "Impressive Omaha Jewish Support for Chuck Hagel," and Aryeh Azriel, the rabbi at Temple Israel in Omaha, said that accusations that Hagel was anti-Israel were "extremely stupid."

The new development is reported by Josh Rogin on Foreign Policy's The Cable blog, which says that several Republicans intend to filibuster Hagel's nomination -- but are looking for some way to weasel around the word "filibuster." They don't like that word (a) because they have tried to normalize the idea that a 60-vote super-majority threshold, which is the margin required to break a filibuster, should be seen as the routine requirement for Senate action of any sort; (b) because several prominent Republicans, including John McCain, have already said that they don't want to filibuster Hagel; and (c) because in the long history of Cabinet-level nominations, outright filibusters are either unknown or exceedingly rare. You can get all the details on their extreme rarity from the Congressional Research Service.

Rogin points out the machinations through which the Republican opponents of Hagel (a Republican) are trying to insist on a 60-vote threshold without calling it a filibuster. For instance, he quotes our old friend Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, plus Sen. John Cornyn of Texas:

Inhofe's demand for 60 votes is related to his overall objection to Hagel becoming defense secretary, which is based on Hagel's past record on issues ranging from Iran, Israel, Hamas, and cuts to the defense budget. Inhofe also wants Hagel to further disclose financial records related to his past speeches.

"We're going to require a 60-vote threshold," Inhofe told The Cable.

Cornyn told The Cable, "There is a 60-vote threshold for every nomination."

Cornyn may think that, but it is not so. As a matter of history, it has obviously not been the case for Cabinet nominations; and as a matter of legality, it is true only if the opposition is willing to transform the balance of American politics by filibustering every nominee.

Turn to Rogin for more, including curlicues like this (emphasis added):

Inhofe insisted that his demand for a 60-vote threshold is not a "filibuster." Inhofe said he will object to unanimous consent for a simple majority vote, which will prevent Reid from bringing the Hagel nomination to the floor without first filing for cloture, which requires 60 votes to proceed to a final vote.

"It's not a filibuster. I don't want to use that word," Inhofe said.

It may be a distinction without a difference, but it's a distinction that GOP senators like McCain are prepared to embrace. McCain has repeatedly said he is opposed to filibustering Hagel but told The Cable Tuesday that he would vote against a cloture vote this week if the White House doesn't provide the information he has requested on the president's actions the night of the Benghazi attack.

I've long been agnostic on whether Chuck Hagel is the "best possible" nominee for this job. He's certainly a plausible one -- and people in a better position to know than I am, including Republican appointees Robert Gates, Colin Powell, Brent Scowcroft, and George Schultz, have strongly endorsed him. But I am anything but agnostic about the tactics being used against Hagel. They started with personal smears, and they've led to this new version of Congressional obstructionism. It will be a shame all around if these tactics "work." This is a fight the administration should take on, and be sure it wins.

Last night I watched, discussed, and took real-time notes on the State of the Union address at The Atlantic's viewing fest in New York. As soon as I can finish working through the approx 7000 words in the speech transcript, ideally on the train back to Washington starting soon [and the rest of the day], and as soon as our web team can get the whole thing formatted so as to display annotations, glosses, and general play-by-play with each relevant passage, I'll post the Official Annotated State of the Union, 2013 Edition, in this space. For samples of what I mean about the annotation and the formatting, you can check out last year's version, or the one before that, or the one before that (just after Scott Brown's election ended the several-month stretch in which the Democrats held a 60-vote filibuster-breaking majority in the Senate), or this one from back in G.W. Bush's second term.

Last night's speech was very long, as you may have noticed, and like Obama's second inaugural address contained some surprises of policy -- plus rhetorical surprises of both the good and bad variety. For more, watch this space, I hope some time later today probably tomorrow.

Remember this great SNL skit five years ago, when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were bitterly fighting it out for the nomination? The point of the skit was that the national media had fallen completely in love with the shiny, heroic, "Hope and Change" new idol Obama, while being openly exasperated with the "annoying, pushy, grating, bossy, shrill," etc. Clinton. Therefore they were rigging the debates in Obama's favor. At their next real debate, Clinton was able to refer to the skit by saying that she half- expected the moderators to ask Obama whether he was comfortable enough "and would like another pillow."

I hadn't looked at this skit since it first aired, and I'd forgotten how viciously brilliant it really was. It is all the more fascinating in light of what we've learned about the main figures in the five years since (including the main interrogator, the late Tim Russert.) Do yourself the favor of seeing it.

The skit below, produced last week, is nowhere close in intrinsic-comedy value. In fact, it is forced-seeming rather than very funny.* That's what the SNL producers themselves apparently recognized, in pulling it from the lineup after the dress rehearsals and substituting one (also not that hilarious) about the power failure at the Super Bowl. But as a political marker, I think it could be significant.

By the time a habit or attitude becomes widely known enough to be worth an SNL parody, even a failed one, it is on the way to seeming ridiculous. Ridicule is generally more threatening to a public figure or a public idea than "logical" rebuttal is. That's why Colbert and the Daily Show matter, and why Rush Limbaugh first rose to influence in his early, funny-rather-than-angry-sounding phase. (And why Gerald Ford, a one-time varsity athlete, was damaged by the early-season SNL skits of his stumbling down the stairs of Air Force One.) In the case of the Hagel hearings, you could read all the analyses you want about the posturing and disproportion of the senators' grandstanding. Or you could watch the 65 seconds of the clip below that start at time 4:00.
 
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*Why un-funny? Like the 2008 skit, this new one turns on a single joke, but by comparison it's belabored and overlong. Also, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Tim Russert were richer material to work with than Lindsay Graham, Carl Levin, Bernie Sanders, and Hagel.

I don't know anything about Jack Baty, listed as "Director of Unspecified Services" at his eponymous site. Mascot photo from his site at right; I have no idea whether that's actually him. But I think we have some things in common, based on his recent post about the main problem has had with software for organizing info, tasks, and other digital junk. As Baty puts it, emphasis added:

Keeping track of All the Things(™) isn't that difficult. Or at least it shouldn't be, but I find it nearly impossible.

The problem for me isn't a lack of software, it's the abundance of great software. Here is a list of software I've used to keep track of all the digital detritus in my life:

... and he goes on to list nearly a dozen programs, most of which I've used -- along with many others! He doesn't even get into such timeless classics as Lotus Agenda, the still-evolving Zoot, TheBrain, MindManager, OmniFocus, Scapple, Thinking Rock, and .... Wisest not to get me started.

In practical terms, what Baty says is where I've also ended up:

While I love them all, I've whittled it down to 3 apps: Tinderbox, Evernote, and DEVONthink.

Tinderbox is my notebook. Evernote is my junk drawer. DEVONthink is my filing cabinet.

He goes on to explain what those analogies mean. For the record, Tinderbox and DEVONthink are Mac-only; Evernote is trans-platform; plucky Zoot is Window-only; and Lotus Agenda runs on DOS! Of course, stay on the lookout for whatever David Allen and Intentional Software are cooking up.

For decades now it's been a careful balance, between the time I "save" through new "productive" software, and the time I "waste" trying out each new release. I am somehow relieved to know that I'm not the only one contemplating this balance.

Continuing the "who's to blame for no mail on Saturday" discussion, previously here and here, we have these new entries from readers.

Heroes of the Anthrax Age. From a reader who, like me, was once on the postal payroll:

I, too, have worked at USPS and am now an executive in a Fortune 50 company.  USPS had a speedy, efficient structure compared to the corporate bureaucracy I now experience.  It's funny, the reactions I receive when I say I once worked at USPS.  Most frequently, I receive condolences.  I quickly object to that sentiment.  Some of the smartest, most hardworking people I have ever met work for USPS in both management and craft jobs.
 
Congress is the real villain here, but it's not surprising.  A perfect example is the anthrax-crisis of 2001.  In the midst of those terrible days when no one knew where or  when the next deadly letter would arrive, the Congress of the United States ran out of DC for weeks.  Postal workers came to work every day.  Within 90 days of the crisis, USPS engineers were testing a new processing machine that would detect bio-hazards in the mailstream and wouldn't disburse deadly contaminents into the air at postal facilities every time the machine was cleaned.  Four months later, USPS began delivering these new machines to processing centers.

The Vol de Nuit factor. Literary allusions from a reader:

I don't have any original thoughts of my own to add to the discussion about the postal service except to add that when it comes to romance and literary inspiration, post office beats electronic hands down.  Just two piece of evidence will suffice:
 
(1)     W.H. Auden's poem for the British post office in the 1930s, "Night Mail". [JF note: seriously, you won't regret clicking on the video below.]
 


(2)     Antoine de Saint-Exupery's novels Courrier Sud (Southern Mail) and Night Flight about the dangers of delivering the air mail in the 1930s...which adds the romance of flight as well.
 
If anyone has written a great poem or novel about sending an email or text message...let me know.

The Sneakernet Factor. Thanks to many readers who sent links to yet another great Randall Munroe xkcd entry, this one about the relative throughput capacities of the internet and physical transport systems.

'Superior in almost every way that matters.' A reader whose business depends on both virtual and physical networks writes:

I work at a small eCommerce company in Redlands, California and know from experience that the federal mail is superior to private couriers in almost every way that matters. They offer the best product at the best rate nine times out of ten. Compromising this service would be devastating to domestic commerce - particularly during the all-important Christmas season/fourth quarter....

As a Constitutionally mandated service aren't talks of why we need the post office just a little bit moot or at the least self-serving (said with all respect) punditry? We're not even talking about an amendment. The original document tells Congress to make post offices and post roads. So isn't this more of a question of: do we have a good post system or a crappy one?

The security factor. A reader makes this basic point:

One great feature of "snail mail"..... privacy!!!   No matter  how much or what is done on computers, safety and privacy are not guaranteed!!.

Right -- security can't be guaranteed in either medium. But it certainly is quicker, faster, easier, and more insidious to follow an electronic rather than a physical "paper trail."

The road not taken. A reader looks back:

I've long thought that the great opportunity for the USPS was to be the primary progenitor of the world-wide-web in the US.  That is to say, the primary ISP and Email service provider; the roles now fulfilled by Comcast, Verizon, and Google.  In the mid 90's, when home web access was all dial-up, the post office could have been as instrumental in bringing local web access to rural America as they did with postal access.  And of course then, very few envisioned cloud storage / transfer services.   USPS could have offered (at a time when no others were in the homeowner / retail space): Security, encryption, delivery confirmation, and SPAM / virus protection.  The existing distributed nature of the USPS would have been perfect in terms of support and transition from 'snail' to electronic media. 

This goes against the notion of smaller less intrusive government, but the alternative notions of real web neutrality and widely available web access would have been the kinds of things that would have helped America in the global technology challenges.  (Of course there would have been the prickly concern over how to handle the enormous amounts of porn...).  And finally, since 9/11 & Google, we must assume that all email and web traffic is subject to monitoring and recording; so they could have had a head start on all that. 

To me, this all goes along with the already deep levels of integration and regulatory relationships between the US Government and Broadcasters, Telecoms, and other public forms of media.  Quite possibly the USPS would not have been a direct service provider but, rather, a facilitator, regulator, and equalizer to ensure all America had access to reasonable service levels at reasonable cost and that various public services were integrated into the web early on.

Too late now, I suppose.  I wonder (and doubt) if Al Gore would have had the vision to pursue this approach had he been elected in 2000. 

That's enough for now. Maybe this crisis will have the silver-lining effect of nudging people away from the reflexive denigration of postal employees, postal efficiency, and "snail mail." Not sure what we can do about "going postal," though.

Striving always to encourage full and frank discussion, and following the proud Atlantic motto "of no party or clique," I give you this (fairly representative) response to my recent mention of Nataly Dawn and Pomplamoose.

To: James Fallows
From: xxx xxxx
Subject: hate Pomplamoose. they're terrible. and that's not an opinion, it's a fact

that version of "September" is cowardly and pitiful.  at first it sounds like they're really gonna do something with the song -- they change the harmony a bit.  but then they chicken out, leave the chords unchanged, and just end up making you wish you were listening to EWF.

her singing is anemic, and there's no drive or urgency to anything they do.  it's like sweatpants in Seinfeld -- it's music for people who have given up.  you haven't given up, have you?  no, you haven't!... so try this instead:

OK, I actually like Van Hunt, and I'm interested in the way the beginning of this number reminds me of Pup Tent by Luna in the 90s -- which itself is better than I remembered; but I see only peril and heartache ahead if I dig myself in any deeper on this topic. So here endeth the music blogging for the year. (Except to mention that I felt general and unaccustomed boomer-era pride in hearing the way that Fleetwood Mac's Tusk was used in the pilot of The Americans a week ago. Ok, here endeth for real.)

5) About the politics of the showdown:

I think it might be worth pointing out the other aspect that makes the Post Office's gambit an interesting study.  After attempts to shut down a day of service (I've read Wednesday or Saturday as the preferred days) has been rejected by Congress, along with other measures that would cut costs inflicted by the 2006 bill, the Post Office has taken the opposite tactic. They are acting and daring a dysfunctional, super-majoritarian Congress to act.  Congress can't just sit back and complain, which is something that it seems that Tea Partiers are best at. 

It'll be interesting to see if Congress can act, if Congress has to resort to the courts (which is an admission of dysfunction and its inability to act), or if they'll let this rebellion slide.  If the third, then that spells some trouble for independent government groups, such as the Fed, Fannie/Freddie (although they might, for good reason, be more reluctant), etc, who might feel empowered to rebel against non- or anti-sensical demands from Congress.

Boy, count me as on the edge of my seat for this, slow-moving drama it might be.

6) And, from someone who I think missed the emphasis of my earlier item but makes an interesting point:

Why no mention of the cap on the percentage that the USPS is allowed to raise the price of postage?  Heaven forfend it would suddenly cost $0.52  to send a letter the whole way from Maine to Hawaii or Alaska to Florida.  Or the foolishness of the unending expense of millions of gallons of gasoline required for home delivery to millions of acres of suburban subdivisions.  Or the perennial attacks from the Right to dismantle another large, unionized workforce.
 
But no it's none of these.  What you've chosen to highlight is the funding of pensions negotiated by contract and the rural post offices.  The key is to de-democratize the Post Office by recasting it as an urban institution, like the Post of a Virginia Woolf novel where a letter mailed in the morning arrives that afternoon, full of life-altering innuendo.   What craven nonsense.

I am getting on a plane at the moment. More to come shortly. (Also, the Atlas Shrugged guy is back ... )

Last summer, Boeing's top management axed the engineer CEO who had been turning around BCA [Boeing Commercial Airplanes] and making it better again. They replaced him with a non-engineer CEO. Then, management got into a confrontation with the engineer's union (which may also partly be the union's fault, but it's not a battle management can afford right now). Then Chicago put off the very promising 777X [new long-range, highly efficient model] until the next decade, which, from a customer perspective, might as well be an indefinite postponement. These moves were on top of a 787 development model that de-emphasized in-house engineering and relied on industry partners for much of the development work.

Since the 787 appeared to be out of the woods, and the 777X was put off until the next decade, Chicago likely didn't think it needed much from engineers. Then that damn 787 battery thing happened. Oops. Back in Seattle, engineers, represented by a disgruntled union and forced to report to multiple layers of non-engineer management, are working overtime on the problem, but after several weeks, nobody appears to be close to a solution. As this is written, there's a strong chance of a six to nine month grounding (due to the need for re-certification).

This terrifying state of affairs for the Dreamliner, of course, was merely background for Boeing's fourth quarter earnings call this month. The 787 fiasco wasn't discussed, except that (a) the investigation was continuing and couldn't be discussed and (b) 787 production was continuing full speed ahead, despite uncertainties about what needed to be done for the battery system, or any other aspects of the plane's design. If these planes being built need major retrofitwork in the future, well, that's for the engineers to worry about. 

Meanwhile, there was no contrition or soul-searching on the call about how the 787 could have gone this wrong, or what could be done within the company to make it right (once again, 787 program analysis was left to the journalists). Instead, the call emphasized some impressive sales and profit numbers. It was like a farmer showing off a great crop, but not mentioning that the tractor just broke, he fired the mechanic, and outsourced tractor maintenance to Bolivia. And that customers for next year's crop had been promised penalty payments if the farm didn't deliver.... 

Boeing's problem isn't just that the engineers have been nudged aside by the bean counters. It's that the bean counters need to rethink the way they manage the company. 

In the long annals of business history, the tension Aboulafia describes -- engineer vs. bean counter -- occurs again and again. Like farmer vs. rancher, Roundhead vs. Cavalier, paleface vs. redskin (in the literary sense), yin vs. yang, it's one of the great divides. In the long run, companies where the engineers (and designers) win are stronger. Boeing "knows" this, from its history. Let's hope it can remember that principle in time.

Yes, The Atlantic had its "One Graph" explanation today, showing that Postal Service volume and revenue were going down in the email/PDF age. I will assume that you have already read that.

But if you would like to understand why the USPS has not been able to adapt to these trends, please read, right now, John Tierney's new article in Salon (plus one earlier today by Annie-Rose Strasser in ThinkProgress). Here is the headline on Tierney's item, which makes the main point:

ChinaFile is a new venture by the Asia Society, for which the Atlantic will be a partner and to which I will be one of many contributors.

The discussion today genuinely is worth noticing. It's about the reasons for, and likely consequences of, the "Airpocalypse" that is now evident through so many big Chinese cities. For reference: That's our old neighborhood in Beijing, in a picture shot from a 30th floor window last week.

It's been a while since we've caught up with news in this category. In case you missed it, Nataly Dawn has a new single album coming out:

1) The Senate discovers the Constitution. Barring some development no one now anticipates, former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) will become the next secretary of defense. We know that because Hagel opponents like John McCain and others have magnanimously said that they will "allow" an up-or-down vote on his nomination, rather than subjecting it to a filibuster. Here is how another Republican put it:

"For a cabinet office, I think 51 votes is generally considered the right standard for the Senate to set, and at that level, I think he makes it," Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri [right], a member of the Republican leadership, said Friday on Fox News, even as he announced his opposition to Mr. Hagel.

Why is this interesting? Because "at that level" could also be described as "what the Constitution says."* For those joining us late:

• Most A hugely disproportionate share** of the filibusters in the two centuries-plus of America's history as a republic have happened since 2006, when the Democrats regained control of the Senate and the Republican minority, under Mitch McConnell, made the filibuster a routine blocking technique;
• Before that time, most nominations and legislation required a 51-vote majority for approval, with rare exceptions requiring 60 votes to break a filibuster. Since then, 60 votes have been required for almost everything;
• This defacto rewriting of the Constitution is ratified each time a news organization says (as reporters from both NPR and MSNBC did during this past week) that a certain measure lacks "the 60 votes required for passage," and it is reflected by "concessions" like Sen. Blunt's, above. Pretty soon no one will remember that a "simple" majority vote, far from being some exceptional bipartisan allowance for cabinet appointments, is how the system was designed -- and had operated through its first two centuries;
• In fact, in the entirety of American history, no Cabinet nomination has ever been filibustered. As a marker of how far we've come, most media reports treated the Blunt and McCain announcements as "news" -- rather than underscoring that the very idea of a filibuster would have been a historic first. 
  

2) Walter Pincus states the plain truth. As I argued before, no one came out looking good after Hagel's day in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee last week. But the veteran Walter Pincus of the Washington Post highlights a particularly awkward reality:

There were several obvious answers on Thursday when Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) asked Defense Secretary-designate Chuck Hagel to "name one person, in your opinion, who is intimidated by the Israeli lobby in the United States Senate" during the Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing.

One answer could have been "the two of us": Graham, for example, by asking such a silly gotcha question, and Hagel for not standing up for his past words that reflect the belief of many who have watched the Senate over the years....

When Graham asked Hagel to "name one dumb thing we've been goaded into doing because of the pressure from the Israeli or Jewish lobby," the answer should have been "a good part of today's eight-hour hearing."...

Thursday's hearing was a perfect illustration of why the public has such a low opinion of Congress and why Americans should be concerned that their legislative branch often seems no longer to be playing a serious role in government.

Of course, Hagel would have been crazy to say any of those things. The goal of a witness in a confirmation hearing is not to score debating points with Senators but instead to act cooperative as they perform in front of the cameras -- and just get the process over with. But if Hagel had been willing to go down in flames, he could with complete justification have said what Pincus suggests.

Update: In case you haven't seen it, at Time online Brandon Friedman has this chart of senators' questions about Israel and about Afghanistan, where some 65,000+ U.S. troops are still in combat. As mentioned earlier, a chart contrasting mentions of Iran vs. those of  Afghanistan would have shown a similar skew.

 
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* Article II, section 2, on presidential powers:

The President ... shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

That is: The Constitution sets out certain exceptional circumstances, like approval of treaties, for which more than a simple majority vote is required. For the rest, majority rule is assumed, within all the other checks-and-balances created by the Constitution. You already knew that -- but it would be natural to have forgotten it in recent years.

The issue today isn't that we see 50, or 100, or 150 filibusters. It's that the filibuster is a constant where it used to be a rarity. Indeed, it shouldn't even be called "the filibuster": It has nothing to do with talking, or holding the floor. It should be called the 60-vote requirement. It applies to everything now even when the minority does not specifically choose to invoke it. There are no longer, to my knowledge, categories of bills that don't get filibustered because such things are simply not done, though there are bills that the minority chooses not to invoke their 60-vote option on.

Last week I mentioned Mark Bernstein's essay on the surprisingly complex sequence of decisions, trade-offs, and design choices that went into creating even the most routine-seeming aspects of the electronic environment that surrounds us.

I'm a software engineer by education (CSC) and have been in the software world for 30 years now, 98% of the time working for companies that develop and sell software products (as opposed to consulting or IT)...I've been a CTO for the last 12 years.

On the specifics of the author's example of "writing software today", the example he uses is really no different than software design 30 years ago, meaning that the simplest of capabilities has many details that must be addressed in order to make it function correctly in all situations as well as to provide the "quality" expected by its users.  His specific example of UI design is stuff commonly dealt with since the advent of GUIs [Graphical User Interfaces, like Windows or MacOS]....

The portion of the article (and part of Mark's bigger point) that is interesting to me and is definitely a change in the larger software market is that of the "App" (small, specialized applications generally targeted at the mobile computing market; typically either free or at extreme low cost (i.e. $0.99)).  One of Mark's points is that there is so much cost to deliver even the smallest of features (even those which are minor/secondary) that it can make it extremely difficult to build a profitable business.

So is this a good or bad thing?  Someone could argue that this is "bad" and that Apple and gang have ruined things for the software market, even perhaps arguing that there will now be a whole set of software that will never be built and delivered because it can't be done profitably.  

However, the flipside can also be argued in several ways.  There is of course the obvious advantage of now having a centralized delivery system connected with a huge potential set of buyers, enabling a company of any size (1 and above) to sell in large volume immediately with virtually no capital outlay. The accompanying downside of this is the challenge of having your offerings be discovered among the endless set of apps available. But beyond this basic level of the marketplace dynamics is the pressure it puts onto software organizations to build the right products.

Ultimately, software products survive and thrive based on the real value that they provide their users.  That "value" is wrapped up in many things, both obvious and subtle. Products with no real value come and go very quickly, or never really make it ever.  Products which start well, but then go off track (either through bad vision or bad execution/engineering) fail as well, and the marketplace is very quick to choose, very unforgiving, and long on memory.

I think that this is actually a good thing for the software business for these reasons:  (1) product managers and software designers must be much more thoughtful in what they build and how they build it, being keenly focused on end user value, and (2) software engineers must be much more careful on the design and implementation of the system.  In a sense, it drives software back to being "crafted" rather than just built.  Ultimately it's a win/win: (1) the software community (individuals as well as teams) is forced to be much better at what it does; and (2) the value of software is pushed higher and higher, providing great impact on peoples lives.

I can think of examples that both support and work against this "overall things are better" thesis. What's striking about the goods and bads of these new pressures on the software world is how they resemble what is happening to publishing, academia, journalism, and discourse in general. For now, offered as one more data point for the record.

For the "glamorous life of a journalist" chronicles, an item from the morning's mail bag, verbatim:

Hi James,

Here's a fun talker for you right in time for Valentine's Day. Want to make the opposite sex swoon? Forget good looks or a charming personality. A new international survey reveals if you want to light libidos on fire, learn to "parle francai"s or "habla espanol" - speak another language!

The international survey of more than 5,000 men and women (1300 Americans) reveals if you speak a different language:
    •    79% find you more attractive
    •    77% rate you as more intelligent

Also, it turns out the French tongue isn't only famous for kissing.

HOTTEST LANGUAGES OF LOVE  
The survey reveals:
    •    French is the #1 Sexiest Language, (chosen by 41%)
    •    #2 Italian (chosen by 16%)
    •    #3 Spanish (chosen by 15%)

Chill dudes. We Americans still have some swag. English ranked #4th sexiest language (chosen by 10%).  And so much for Gangnam style. The Korean language came in dead last - the least sexy language....

When people polled were asked the top pick-up line they'd like to hear or say in another language the top choices are:

#1 "Where have you been all my life?" or in French "Où as-tu été toute ma vie?"
#2 "Can I get you a drink?" or in Italian "Ti posso offrire da bere?"
#3 "I lost my phone number. Can I have yours?"  Or in Spanish "¿Perdí mi número de teléfono, me podrías dar el tuyo?"

The company conducting the survey asks to be credited with its results, and you can find them easily if you search. As well as capsule bios of some of your prospective teachers:

James, we German speakers all figure out that German is a favorite foreign language for gay men here.

I don't know why it works out that way, but I've noticed that for many years.

Maybe a reporter could figure it out?

You might already have seen this. I hadn't until just now, thanks to reader RJ of California (and in his case via The Register; also, NY Daily News). It's an absolutely charming video and set of photos from a science project by Lauren Rojas, a 13-year-old in Antioch, California, east of San Francisco. She decided to send a Hello Kitty "catonaut" nearly 100,000 feet into space, with a high-altitude balloon, and to record the results.

Those results really are amazing. You'll see the whole thing laid out in the video -- with a dramatic climax around time 2:15. At that point the balloon that has carried its passenger into "near space" finally explodes -- and the spacecraft's descent, under a small parachute, begins.

Ms. Rojas obviously had help with the balloon rigs and photographic systems -- which is another great lesson from the experiment, in that innovation and discovery involve both collaboration and individual pondering. Here is just one of the stills from the flight -- not some CGI recreation but an actual photo, from the high-def camera that went aloft with H. Kitty.




And here is the video. Congrats to all. Finally I see a reason for Hello Kitty having come into existence.

In gratitude to the many readers who have sent in pointers to this item, and in ongoing appreciation of the living national treasure that is Randall Munroe of xkcd, and as a little pre-Superbowl feature, here is a look at Munroe's latest "What If?" feature. In this installment, "Interplanetary Cessna," he asks how a small aircraft would fare on different bodies in and around the solar system. Sample visual aid:

Just now on CNN, the estimable* Candy Crowley asked a panel about the endless partisan standoffs and battles between the Obama administration and the Republican opposition.__

OK, I know, we get the point that Chuck Hagel's appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee displayed neither the nominee nor his inquisitors in a flattering light.

But there's another reason to feel bad about it! Here is a "word cloud" of what was discussed in the questions and the answers during Hagel's testimony: