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James Fallows

James Fallows - James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. He has reported extensively from outside the United States, and once worked as President Carter's chief speechwriter. His latest book, China Airborne, will be published in May.
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James Fallows is based in Washington as a national correspondent for The Atlantic. He has worked for the magazine for nearly 30 years and in that time has also lived in Seattle, Berkeley, Austin, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, and Beijing. He was raised in Redlands, California, received his undergraduate degree in American history and literature from Harvard, and received a graduate degree in economics from Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. In addition to working for The Atlantic, he has spent two years as chief White House speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, two years as the editor of US News & World Report, and six months as a program designer at Microsoft. He is an instrument-rated private pilot. He is also now the chair in U.S. media at the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, in Australia.

Fallows has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award five times and has won once; he has also won the American Book Award for nonfiction and a N.Y. Emmy award for the documentary series Doing Business in China. He was the founding chairman of the New America Foundation. His two most recent books, Blind Into Baghdad (2006) and Postcards From Tomorrow Square (2009), are based on his writings for The Atlantic; he is at work on another book about China. He is married to Deborah Fallows, author of the recent book Dreaming in Chinese. They have two married sons.

Fallows welcomes and frequently quotes from reader mail sent via the "Email" button below. Unless you specify otherwise, we consider any incoming mail available for possible quotation -- but not with the sender's real name unless you explicitly state that it may be used. If you are wondering why Fallows does not use a "Comments" field below his posts, please see previous explanations here and here.

Keyboard wear update: this time, it's depressing

By James Fallows
Nov 20 2007, 7:02 PM ET

Here is the the way the keyboard on my Thinkpad T60 looked three months ago, when it was four months old.

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r96/jfallows/IMG_3066.jpg

Here's the way it looks today, at seven months of age, after three more articles and one bazillion additional emails have been pounded out on its keys:

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r96/jfallows/IMG_4285B.jpg

This second one is a little harder to see, but here's the casualty count.

Now entirely gone: the E, N, and A keys, plus the marking.
On their way: L, M, R, S, and >
Worried: D, O.
Should be worried: U, B

No wonder my fingers are tired -- I mean, strong! And good thing China is dotted with electronic parts shops where I can buy a new keyboard, cheap, when too many letters vanish from this one. I can probably find a supplier who sent them to the factory in the first place.

When I find that guy, maybe I'll ask him whether they would consider investing an extra 50 cents for more durable keytop decals. (Yes, I know the Mac's, and others, are molded in.)

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