James Fallows

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:

1) Earlier today I mentioned several valuable, and in all cases downbeat, after-action reports on the dustup between former Senator Chuck Hagel and the current members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. To put the links all in once place, it's worth reading: Winslow Wheeler at Time's Battleland site, Michael Cohen in The Guardian, Matthew Duss in The American Prospect, Fred Kaplan in Slate, and John Judis in The New Republic. Plus others I'm sure I've missed. (Like Amy Davidson in The New Yorker.)

2) Here is a bonus entry by Gordon Adams in Foreign Policy. Apart from the reasons to moan about what the senators said at yesterday's session, Adams says we should worry about what they didn't say:

Putative secretary of defense Chuck Hagel had his baptism-by-fire yesterday at the Senate Armed Services Committee. It was all theater. One of its most striking features was the absence of almost any serious attention to the challenge he will actually face if he is confirmed: the management of a defense drawdown.

No senator focused on the Pentagon's long-term budget and management challenges. Not one.

3) A staff member for a former Republican member of the Senate adds this note of cheer:

Here's what bothers me about yesterday's confirmation hearing.

Say former Sen. Hagel does get confirmed.  The first bar a Secretary of Defense has to clear to be effective involves persuading people in that building across the river that he can't be pushed around.  You'll remember that Les Aspin, smart and well-connected as he was, failed to clear that bar 20 years ago.  But Gates cleared it, and so did Panetta.  Even Rumsfeld cleared it.

It will be more important for a Secretary who will have to impose budget reductions and other policy changes on the services to show he's not just a nice, thoughtful guy.  He'll need to show people in the Pentagon he can't be taken advantage of -- and also that he's strong enough to stick up for them should they come under political attack.

My sense is that Hagel didn't clear that bar yesterday.  Sure, members of the committee were unimpressive.  I don't know why people would be surprised by that.  The whole reason Hagel got this nomination, though, was that President Obama thought he'd be an effective Secretary of Defense.  Hagel's performance yesterday made me wonder whether Obama was right.

4) In the same vein, from another reader:

The 'beware what you wish for' misery index watch is next.

Hagel now knows that his tenure,while likely, is now doomed to ridicule and Senate/ House staff harassment.

That is now the true internal question.

Does he want to endure 4 years of staff to staff strife ?

10 to 15 Senate Dem staffer back stair emails to the WH is the key for the week. With the Iran whiff being the primary topic.

Secondly, if Republicans pick up Senate seats in 2014 the misery index will get pegged.

William Cohen must be grinning at this ...

5) Finally from Charlie Stevenson, former long-time Senate staffer and general expert in defense policy, this summary:

The Republican Senators seemed to be trying to bloody Hagel's nose as a surrogate for Obama's. They performed typically -- McCain especially. [I remember how he called the Joint Chiefs of Staffs liars in the late 1990s when they were unwilling to say Clinton's defense budget left America weak.] They acted as if Hagel would have the final say on policy questions, most of which would for sure be decided by the President. In other words, they were grandstanding. They had no strong argument against Hagel, just a thousand cuts of little misstatements from his past.

Hagel wasn't as crisp or clever or self-assured as I expected. He may not have realized how tough it is to be on the receiving end of TV-conscious Senators. He may also have thought that prior friendships would still count in this age of hyper-partisanship and after he became an apostate Republican.

I still think he can win a majority vote if it's taken soon. But if Republicans want to delay a vote with a threatened filibuster, they might reach a tipping point where the White House and Senate Democrats give up.

I also still think that Hagel will (and should be) confirmed. But his situation looks worse now than it did a few days ago.

Two years ago, Mark Bernstein was part of the stellar guest-blogger team in this space, when I was holed up in China in a fever of book-writing. In his day job, Mark Bernstein is the head of Eastgate software and the creator of a program I use every day, Tinderbox.

He is in his own own fever of composition now, preparing a new version of Tinderbox. On his site he has a fascinating account of how he went about adding a particular feature to this new release. Here's the headline:



If you have any interest in software, I think you'll find this worth reading. It reminded me in many ways of the months I once spent on a Microsoft program-design team. But much more broadly it is part of the endlessly engrossing category of "how things work" in the world.

I won't give my full speech on that topic right now, but I will say that for me one of the big appeals of journalism is the opportunity and excuse to meet people in far-flung roles and ask: OK, can you tell me exactly, step by step by step, how you [decide on questions for the SAT / figure out how much weight you can take out of a car's design so it uses less gas / decide when software is "bug-free enough" to be released / create an airplane with a parachute / teach a computer to "understand" speech or automatically group related news articles / set up a factory that employs 250,000 people / decide what to put into a half-hour news broadcast, back when those existed / anything else.]

Almost any organized human activity is much more complicated and interesting than you would expect, once you examine it in its particularity. For instance: I have never taken mail delivery for granted after my earliest paying jobs as a parcel-post sorter and then letter carrier at the local Post Office. People scoff at the USPS, but it pulls off some amazing feats of volume management -- even as today's volume sadly goes down.

This brings me back to Mark Bernstein's chronicle. The next time you grumble at some aspect of the tech world -- "wow, this is ugly UI!" "why won't this damned program do what I want?" -- reflect on the long series of choices and trade-offs that go into even the simplest-seeming feature of program. As a reminder, here is where you can read more.

For decades Winslow Wheeler was an influential congressional staffer on matters of budget, strategy, and policy involving the military. Back in 2008 I mentioned the excellent book he had overseen, America's Defense Meltdown.

This morning, on Time's Battleland site, he convincingly explains why yesterday's Chuck Hagel hearing should be considered "profoundly depressing" all around. Heart of the argument, with which I agree:

Unlike most effective politicians who are always clever at saying nothing or changing positions, [Hagel] was so inarticulate at doing so that it is also hard to understand how he ever could have been elected twice to the Senate from Nebraska.

As fumbling and apologetic as Hagel's answers were to the members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, even my low expectations for the performance of the senators on that committee went unmet.

A few more details after the jump. Not a great day for anyone.

More »

1) Whoever helped former Senator Chuck Hagel (AP photo) prepare for today's hearings should retire from the hearing-preparation business. It is hard to imagine how Hagel could have walked into that hearing room without bulletproof (or at least confident-sounding) replies ready on three of the questions he was sure to be asked: about his opposition to the Iraq "surge," about his comments on "the Jewish lobby," and about his policy toward Iran.

Maybe this was the same team that prepared Barack Obama for his first debate last fall? Just a thought.

2) Whatever mistakes Obama may have made as president, today's hearings reminded us of one very important accomplishment. Because of him, the choleric and bullying figure that John McCain has become does not sit in the White House.

3) Virtually none of the hostile questions for Hagel reflected awareness that a secretary of Defense, no matter how influential, does not set U.S. foreign policy, does not decide where and whether to commit troops, does not decide on boycotts versus engagement with Iran, does not make war-or-peace decisions, and in countless other ways is not the President of the United States. We're used to "security theater" at the airport. "Hearings theater" is a far longer-established practice.

1) Here is a beautiful photo by Patrick Yuen, used with his permission, that captures the mood and drama of Chen Guangcheng's presentation at the National Cathedral last night.



The picture is from more or less the place where I was sitting and distills the hold that Chen Guangcheng had over the audience as he spoke.

2) In addition to the Washington National Cathedral's own webcast of the event, another MP4 video of the whole session is available here.

When I find a transcript of the speech as a whole, I will mention it. But here is another sample section, about the role and potential influence of foreigners:

I'm often asked what the international community can do to help promote democracy and rule of law in China. I sincerely hope that people around the world will lose their fear of offending China because it's rich and powerful. I want people to stop turning a blind eye to the abuses that people throughout China are suffering. Stop supporting the myth that anyone who urges the Communist Party to abide by their own laws will be retaliated against and be treated as an enemy of the state. Don't do anything on the basis that China's rulers will be pleased or not pleased

In the last part of the panel discussion, Jerome Cohen, Cheng Li, and Dorinda Elliott enlarge on what this means in practice.

3) The latest Chinese-based hacking attacks against the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, and other news outlets may well have occurred at a level where passwords on individual accounts don't offer protection. Nonetheless, I've used this as an occasion to change all my important passwords, which I've done today. (Background point one: this piece. Background point two: I use and like LastPass.)

Of course, we must maintain an open mind about these episodes. Heed the words of the Chinese foreign ministry, which says that the idea of Chinese hacking is "groundless":

"To arbitrarily assert and to conclude without hard evidence that China participated in such hacking attacks is totally irresponsible," said spokesman Hong Lei.

"China is also a victim of hacking attacks. Chinese laws clearly forbid hacking attacks, and we hope relevant parties takes a responsible attitude on this issue."

Noted. For the record, here is Chen Guangcheng last night on what Chinese laws "clearly forbid." Let's hope his assessment proves too harsh:

In China, the law is optional, something that those in power use when it suits them and ignore when it doesn't. The law in China is nothing more than empty words, just scraps of paper. 

I think most members of the (very large) crowd that came (through thunderstorms) to the Washington National Cathedral to hear Chen Guangcheng tonight had the sense of witnessing a moment they will remember.

Just now I see that a video of the whole session has been posted on the National Cathedral's site. I don't see a way to embed it, but here is a shot of how things looked in real time. 

Anyone interested in China, anyone interested in democratic change and the power of individuals and groups, will find Chen's presentation moving, and inspiring. His presentation starts at around time 7:40 of the video; the standing ovation that followed his remarks begins about 30 minutes later; the post-speech panel, featuring Cheng Li, Dorinda Elliott, and Jerome Cohen and moderated by me, starts at around time 39:00.

The power of Chen Guangcheng's statement, and the subject of most of the post-speech discussion, was its combination of harsh realism and idealistic confidence. A sample of the harsh assessment (my notes, not official transcript -- which I'll provide when available):

The current situation in China works against the long-term stability of the Party, and senior officials are aware of this--they just can't do anything because the Party refuses to relax its grip on power. As long as China's rulers use mafia-like suppression to maintain stability, rather than legitimacy, China will only become increasingly unstable. The Communist Party officials are leaders in name only, in reality closer to our nation's kidnappers.

And of the contrasting confidence:

Courage is starting to spread as Chinese citizens become more aware of the issues via the Internet and more willing to speak out about injustices. They are no longer afraid,

According to a Chinese saying, there are no difficult tasks, but rather only people who lack the courage to act. And as more and more Chinese people speak out and demand their rights, change in China will become unstoppable. ...

 Our fate is in our own hands. People are overcoming their fears and when this number reaches a critical mass change will become inevitable. Nothing could scare the Chinese government more than the fact that the people are losing their fear.  In the past, threats and violence were effective.  But when people are no longer afraid, violence and threats lose their power.  Instead of silencing people, it motivates them. 

I don't think anyone filling the recesses of the Cathedral regretted the effort of getting there on a difficult night. Jerome Cohen also pointed out the the very act of gathering a large crowd for Chen in America offset one of the standard fears of the exile civil-liberties crusader: that once he is sent away from the homeland, people will stop paying attention. Chen deserves close attention, and respect.

If you're in Washington DC this evening, January 30, you have a chance to hear Chen Guangcheng speak about the "Search for China's Soul." Here is a picture of Chen from our "Brave Thinkers" issue last fall.

1) What's wrong with the 787 Dreamliner? No one knows for sure, now that the simplest and most easily correctable problem -- some production defect in the specific batch of batteries involved in two recent incidents -- appears to have been ruled out.

2) Which means that the problems are by definition worse than they originally appeared. Not necessarily worse in a fundamental-safety or design-defect sense, but worse for Boeing and the airlines in commercial and reputational terms, because it will take longer to be sure what exactly has gone wrong and what it will take to correct the problem.

2A) It is still likely that this will ultimately prove to be one more "glitch" in the roll-out of the 787, rather than a "threat" to its commercial and technological viability. Most new airliners have early problems as they go into service. But no one can be sure that this is in "glitch" category until the problem is fully understood.

2B) This is "one more" glitch for the Dreamliner because of the multi-year delays that arose from Boeing's unusually aggressive outsourcing of the plane's design, as I discussed in China Airborne and as the LA Times exhaustively examined two years ago.

3) Today's most trenchant data point comes from Elon Musk (above), one of the Atlantic's "Brave Thinkers" from two years ago, whom I interviewed at our 'Atlantic Meets Pacific' conference late in 2011. In an email exchange with Zach Rosenberg of Flight Global, Musk says that the lithium-ion batteries in the Dreamliner are "inherently unsafe" in the configuration Boeing has chosen for the plane.

Musk's views have weight. Not simply does he have aerospace credibility, as head of the SpaceX company that has sent successful missions into space. He also is head of Tesla, which uses lithium-ion batteries in its electric cars. [For the record: his SpaceX company also competes with a Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture for commercial launch customers.] The Flight Global article lays out his argument in detail. The simplest version of Musk's complaint is that Boeing has concentrated the battery power in too small a number of large cells located too close to one another -- rather than dispersing the power among smaller, more widely separated cells. As Musk put it:

When thermal runaway occurs with a big cell, a proportionately larger amount of energy is released and it is very difficult to prevent that energy from then heating up the neighboring cells and causing a domino effect that results in the entire pack catching fire.

Every day the problem is not isolated and identified makes the story worse for Boeing. Again, it's likely that this will be a containable and correctable issue, but Boeing will be in much better shape when it can say that for sure.

I mentioned last month that the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, "my" NRA, was like the real NRA in some of its intransigent lobbying -- but different in its near-obsessive focus on identifying and reducing the factors that create dangers from flying, for pilots and innocent passengers alike. The video below is the kind of thing I have in mind. It's a recreation, from the AOPA's Air Safety Foundation, of the "accident chain" that led to the death of four people -- in the same kind of airplane that I fly. ___
* In both cases, the essential problem was the one that William Langewiesche described 20 years ago in his Atlantic article "The Turn." If you cannot see out of an airplane, if you can't look at the ground or orient yourself to the horizon, it is simply impossible by "seat of the pants" sensations to tell up from down, or know which direction you are flying. That sounds unlikely, but Langewiesche explains why it is so -- and why pilots who have not been through "instrument training" inevitably start spiraling toward the ground once they get into the clouds. That is what happened to JFK Jr., and it is what appears to have happened in this sad case.

I took my "practical exam," or check flight, for an instrument rating the day after the JFK Jr. crash. I heard about it in detail through those next few hours.

Last week I mentioned the effects that China's latest pollution emergency was having on Chinese citizens and foreigners living there. Here's a picture posted on Twitter just now from a friend in Beijing, showing the view from the 30th floor out toward our former neighborhood.



Some related notes that have come in, about a problem increasingly recognized inside China as a national emergency. From a reader in the United States: