We're No. 5! We're No. 5!

Perhaps I just lack the mentality of a true winner, but there's something weird to me about the way this New York Times story is framed:

The United States continues to lag other nations in its use of computing and communications technology, according to an annual study issued Tuesday by the World Economic Forum.

That's awful! We need to win the future and build a bridge to the 21st century! Otherwise our kids will someday play with their iPads while more forward-thinking countries use personal holograms in the classroom! Oh the humanity!

For the second consecutive year, the United States finished fifth in the study’s comparison of 138 countries that make up 98.8 percent of the world’s total gross domestic product. Sweden was first, followed by Singapore, Finland and Switzerland.

Wait. What? We're No. 5? Out of 138 countries? That puts us in the top 3.6 percent of nations? And we're much, much, much bigger than the nations ahead of us—meaning their higher ranking might be partly the result of the ease of organizing and wiring up smaller communities than big, continent-spanning countries with big, continent-spanning populations?

USA! USA! USA!

Now, it's true that the Times points out some of America's weaknesses in the ranking: "For example, it ranked 76th in the rate of mobile phone subscriptions, 48th in low-cost access to business phone lines and 24th in percentage of households with a personal computer — behind Bahrain, Singapore and Brunei, among others." Hey: Let's work on that stuff.

But it seems that in the big picture, the United States has actually done a pretty decent job of transitioning society into its current tech-centric incarnation. The nations we "lag" behind just don't face the same challenges of scale that we do. Are we so fixated on being No. 1 in all things that we can't see when we're actually doing a pretty good job?

 

Why can't Chuck Grassley just say no to Trump?

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a longtime GOP leader in the Hawkeye State, tells National Review Online that he is open to hearing Donald Trump’s case for the presidency. But that’s where his enthusiasm ends. “I’ll listen to anybody,” he says, “but I wish that General Petraeus would get interested. I’ve only had one person in Iowa ask me about Donald Trump.”

via nationalreview.com

Obviously, this is a long way from being a full-throated endorsement of Donald Trump on Grassley's part. But given that Donald Trump is a reality TV host who has lately been doubling- and tripling-down on "birther" accusations against President Obama, would it hurt Grassley to skip the politeness and say flatly: "This guy has no credibility"? Is he being overly polite, or is the Republican party that far gone these days that even the worst conspiracy-driven vanity candidates must be given a respectful hearing?

Today in inequality reading: Kevin D. Williamson

The numbers generally cited in support of this argument do not actually tell us much about what has happened to the incomes of wealthy households over time. That’s because the people who are in the top bracket today are not the people who were in the top bracket last year. There’s a good deal of socioeconomic mobility in the United States — more than you’d think. Our dear, dear friends at the IRS keep track of actual households (boy, do they ever!), and sometimes the Treasury publishes data about what has happened to them. For instance, among those who in 1996 were in the very highest income group isolated for study — the top 0.01 percent — 75 percent were in a lower income group by 2005. The median real income of super-rich households went down, not up. The rich got poorer. Among actual households, income grew proportionally more for those who started off in the low-income groups than those that began in high-income groups.

Kevin D. Williamson, via nationalreview.com

This piece appeared a day ago and I've been waiting to see a good blogospheric response to it. I'm still waiting. All the data I've looked at in recent months suggests that income mobility is as stagnant as wages in the lower quintile—and, in fact, what makes the income inequality problem a problem is that there's not much chance you're going to be able to work your way out of those lower quintiles.

But I'm not an economist: I rely on economists to make sense of the data for me. And I'd really like to know if Williamson's right or wrong about this, or if this information looks different within a larger picture. Anybody out there?

Listening to my iPod songs, A-Z

Started my iPod from the beginning of the song list this morning. There's 5,000 songs on there, so this project might take ... awhile. Here's the first 10 selections:

• "Abandon Love," by Drakkar Sauna.

• "Abigail, Belle of Kilronan," by Magnetic Fields.

• "About A Girl," by Nirvana.

• "About Face," by Grizzly Bear.

• "About Her," by Malcolm McLaren.

• "Abracadabra," by Judee Sill.

• "Absolutely Cuckoo," by Magnetic Fields.

• "Acapulco," by Neil Diamond.

• "Accidents Will Happen," by Elvis Costello & The Attractions.

• "Ach, Elslein, liebest Elslein," King's Singers.

 

Congress and war

What dirty hippie said this?:

"The Constitution vests the power of declaring war with Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject, and authorized such a measure."

Just George Washington is all. Conor Friedersdorf notes: "So 218 years ago, the ratification of the Constitution having just occurred, the first president of the United States insisted in the face of raids on the homeland, and the virtual certainty of future attacks, that he couldn't commit to a military response without the permission of the United States Congress."

I'm sure John Yoo, Dick Cheney, and (cough, sputter) Barack Obama would be happy to set George Washington straight. One of those three actually used to talk the same way.

Deborah Solomon is gone, but her spirit still lives at the New York Times

I rejoiced when Deborah Solomon's needlessly inane interviews disappeared from the Sunday Times Magazine. Unfortunately, they've been replaced with ... needlessly inane interviews. Take this Q&A with CBS anchor Katie Couric:

Since your new book, “The Best Advice I Ever Got: Lessons From Extraordinary Lives,” is about great advice, imagine that your boss, Les Moonves, called you on Christmas 2009 and said: “Charlie Sheen was just arrested for holding his wife at knife point. He has a history of this sort of behavior with women, but he makes a ton of money for the network.” What do you tell him?
Fire him.

Have you told him as much?
No. He hasn’t really sought my advice on Charlie Sheen. I hope what Charlie Sheen did wouldn’t be consistent with the values of this network. That’s probably an unrealistic response, but that’s my initial gut reaction. Luckily, that’s not my job.

Did you feel less proud going to work at CBS knowing that he was essentially a colleague?
I don’t really consider Charlie Sheen a colleague.

You know, this is inane bullshit. I wouldn't pick Katie Couric as one of the top five people I'd like to interview, but this is like if I asked Andrew Goldman--the interviewer--if he was less proud going to work at the New York Times because he once had Manny Ramirez as a colleague. After all, the Times owns a chunk of the Boston Red Sox, and Ramirez won the World Series MVP playing for the Red Sox, and Ramirez just retired after failing a test for performance-enhancing drugs. Why won't Andrew Goldman stick up for the integrity of the New York Times?!

That's ridiculous. And it's ridiculous the New York Times--which is better than this in so many ways--keeps giving space to pointless provocation. It's an insult to the interviewees, and it's an insult to the readers.

Single-Tasking Sundays: Week Two

"Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life."

Our second Single-Tasking Sunday occurred the same day Virginia Heffernan's column, debunking the notion of Internet addiction, appeared in the New York Times. New pastimes have often drawn widespread condemnation, she noted, but today's Web-enmeshed folks are merely finding new ways to play, do some intellectual exploration, and (yes) waste time that might be used clearning house.

At first, this might seem to rebuke my efforts to create a day each week that isn't dominated by the Internet and electronic doo-dads. I don't think so, in part because I believe Heffernan is largely correct.

After all, I spent a day last week hosting a Facebook thread about Paul Ryan's proposed budget, a sometimes fierce blow-by-blow that featured contributions from really smart and passionate people from coast-to-coast--some of whom I have never met in person, but whose place in my circle of online friends I find nonetheless enriching.

And on Saturday night, we hosted--in person--new friends here in Philadelphia whome we'd most likely never met without Facebook. They were friends of a Facebook friend, another man whom I've not met in "real life," but whose interactions I've valued. He recommended we me Joe and Stephanie, Philadelphia residents whose daughter is just a little younger than our son. It's been a real pleasure getting to know them. And I can provide several more examples of how Facebook and Twitter have widened our circle of attachments here and thus rooted us more deeply in Philadelphia. Many of the good things that have happened in my life have been connected, in some way, to the rise of the Internet during my adult life.

However....

There is one thing the Web does not give me, and that is a few moments of quiet, a chance to sit, to watch people walk by my front door, to be bored, to be at a momentary loss for what to do next. It is always there--especially in this still-young era of the mobile Web--coloring in the blank spaces.

I don't know how to explain the worth of my one-a-week down time, then, except to note that I find it valuable. So many days of the week, I wake up and plunge straight into cyberworld, sometimes not coming up for air again until it is time to sleep. The self-enforced day off from that world distrupts the pattern, lets me think more clearly, lets me think without distraction, and gives me space to think about how to live more intentionally the other six days a week.

Heffernan suggests it's not such a bad thing to be distracted from our most depressive and anguished thoughts by an immersive pastime--and, true, angst is way overrated-- but I can't help but suspect that complete and total distraction is somehow hollow. Perhaps I'm a Puritan after all.

But I don't think so. I do not rebuke the blessings of the Internet--I'm not wearing the Information Age equivalent of a hair shirt--but neither do I surrender completely to its charms. One day a week spent drying off next to the digital pool isn't the first step toward giving up swimming. It's an attempt at balance, an effort to ensure that the fingers of my experience (to stretch a metaphor way too far) aren't always pruney.