Two years ago, Osama bin Laden warned the American people, “Operations are under preparation, and you will see them on your own ground once they are finished.” Because the danger remains, we need to ensure our intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists.

Unfortunately, Congress recently sent me an intelligence authorization bill that would diminish these vital tools. So today, I vetoed it.

... Limiting the CIA's interrogation methods to those in the Army field manual would be dangerous because the manual is publicly available and easily accessible on the Internet.

Have you seen John Yoo in Taxi to the Dark Side?

Bush on Veto of Intelligence Bill

Richard Sennett, author of The Culture of the New Capitalism, and husband of Saskia Sassen (colleague and counterpoint to Manuel Castells) has a new book.

He says:

“It’s a book about the relation between doing things physically, with your hands, and thinking,” he said. “We’re losing that connection between physical and mental skills. Even the most abstract kinds of thinking, like mathematics, draw on something physical.”

From the jacket:

Defining craftsmanship far more broadly than “skilled manual labor,” Richard Sennett maintains that the computer programmer, the doctor, the artist, and even the parent and citizen engage in a craftsman’s work. Craftsmanship names the basic human impulse to do a job well for its own sake, says the author, and good craftsmanship involves developing skills and focusing on the work rather than ourselves. In this thought-provoking book, one of our most distinguished public intellectuals explores the work of craftsmen past and present, identifies deep connections between material consciousness and ethical values, and challenges received ideas about what constitutes good work in today’s world.

The Craftsman engages the many dimensions of skill—from the technical demands to the obsessive energy required to do good work. Craftsmanship leads Sennett across time and space, from ancient Roman brickmakers to Renaissance goldsmiths to the printing presses of Enlightenment Paris and the factories of industrial London; in the modern world he explores what experiences of good work are shared by computer programmers, nurses and doctors, musicians, glassblowers, and cooks. Unique in the scope of his thinking, Sennett expands previous notions of crafts and craftsmen and apprises us of the surprising extent to which we can learn about ourselves through the labor of making physical things.

Praise from Robert Reich:

As Richard Sennett makes clear in this lucid and compelling book, craftsmanship once connected people to their work by conferring pride and meaning. The loss of craftsmanship -- and of a society that values it -- has impoverished us in ways we have long forgotten but Sennett helps us understand.

New Statesman says:

The sociologist Richard Sennett has a habit of writing the things that we end up talking about years later.

To learn more, read the prologue, or check out this ... [ Read More (0.7k in body) ]

The Craftsman, by Richard Sennett

Here's President Bush:

“The good news is, we anticipated this and took decisive action to bolster the economy, by passing a growth package that will put money into the hands of American workers and businesses.”

"He didn't do anything!"

Lisa: I'll stop buying Malibu Stacy clothing.
Bart: And I'll take up smoking and give that up.
Homer: Good for you, son. Giving up smoking is one of the hardest things you'll ever have to do. Have a dollar.

[Homer gives a dollar bill to Bart]

Lisa: But he didn't do anything!
Homer: Didn't he, Lisa? Didn't he?

Maybe you'd like to reconsider:

Clerk: Son, are these counterfeit bills?
Butt-head: Uh, why do you ask?
Clerk: Son, I've got a mind to throw you out of the store.
Butt-head: Maybe this will change your mind. (gives him another counterfeit bill)
Clerk: I don't think you understand. I could have the cops in here to bust you.
Butt-head: Here, let's just forget all about it. (gives him another fake bill)
Clerk: Do I look like a moron? Why don't you get the hell out of my store?
Butt-head: Maybe you'd like to reconsider. (he gives him a fake dollar, Beavis gives him a fake nickel)
Clerk: GET OUT! (rips up the fake money)
Beavis: Ah, what are you doing?
Clerk: GET THE HELL OUT!
Beavis: Butt-head, he's ripping all our cash!

Sharp Drop in Jobs Adds to Grim Economic Picture

The median household earned $48,201 in 2006, down from $49,244 in 1999, according to the US Census Bureau.

It now looks as if a full decade may pass before most Americans receive a raise.

Seeing an End to the Good Times (Such as They Were)

Vint Cerf, circa 2002:

The Internet is for everyone.

How easy to say - how hard to achieve!

How have we progressed towards this noble goal?

As high bandwidth access becomes the norm through digital subscriber loops, cable modems and digital terrestrial and satellite radio links, the convergence of media available on the Internet will become obvious. Television, radio, telephony and the traditional print media will find counterparts on the Internet - and will be changed in profound ways by the presence of software that transforms the one-way media into interactive resources, shareable by many.

...

The Internet is for everyone - but it won't be if it isn't affordable ...

The Internet is for everyone - but it won't be if Governments restrict access to it ...

I hope Internauts everywhere will join with the Internet Society and like-minded organizations to achieve this, easily stated but hard to attain goal. As we pass the milestone of the beginning of the third millennium, what better theme could we possibly ask for than making the Internet the medium of this new millennium?

The Internet is for Everyone

Much of the constitutional struggle that engulfed the English-speaking world in the seventeenth century revolved around two fairly simple phrases. One was “no man is above the law,” and the other “the king can do no wrong.” Each of these expressions reflected a fundamentally different notion of the rule of law, and they could not be reconciled.

Post-Restoration Britain found a series of legal fictions to address the problem of misconduct by the state, but in concept this often turned on the notion that the king commanded compliance with the law so that unlawful conduct could not be the king’s.

In America today, the mentality of courtiers has reappeared, and many of them seem bent on reassembling the fragments of that old crown that our ancestors brushed from the head of a Hanoverian usurper. They’re offering that crown up to a new King George. And the new attorney general, barely three months on the job, is installing himself not as a law officer to a republic but as a lackey bent on undoing not one revolution, but three.

What were those legal principles that allowed the Justice Department to find that torture was not torture, and that torture was therefore lawful? When we pull back the curtains, and shine a bright light, we find it rested on the same royal prerogative that Charles Stuart maintained all the way up the steps to the scaffold.

Have you seen John Yoo in Taxi to the Dark Side?

Mukasey’s Law

Save the Internet!

The central question for the economy is this: Will the medicine work?

If the American economy were entering a standard cyclical downturn, there would be good reason to believe that a timely countercyclical stimulus like that devised by Washington would be effective. But this is not a standard cyclical downturn. It is a post-bubble recession.

American authorities may be deluding themselves into believing they can forestall the endgame of post-bubble adjustments. A more effective strategy would be to try to tilt the economy away from consumption and toward exports and long-needed investments in infrastructure.

American authorities harbor the mistaken belief that swift action can forestall a collapse. The greater imperative is to avoid toxic asset bubbles in the first place. Steeped in denial and engulfed by election-year myopia, Washington remains oblivious of the dangers ahead.

(This article was published at NYT as Double Bubble Trouble.)

Double Bubble Trouble

Living a good life requires a kind of balance, a bit of quiet. There are questions about the limits of the brain and the body, and there are parallels here to the environmental movement.

Who would say you don’t need time to think, to reflect, to be successful and productive?

I believe that there has to be a way to regularly impose some thoughtfulness, or at least calm, into modern life. Once I moved beyond the fear of being unavailable and what it might cost me, ... I felt connected to myself rather than my computer. I had time to think, and distance from normal demands. I got to stop.

From the archive:

All we need to do is remember that reading, in order to allow reflection, requires slowness, depth and context.

To be sure, time marches on.

Yet for many Californians, the looming demise of the "time lady," as she's come to be known, marks the end of a more genteel era, when we all had time to share.

Perhaps the most powerful way in which we conspire against ourselves is the simple fact that we have jobs.

Although my grandmother has seen a lot of it, she never liked change much. "The things you see when you don't have a gun" was a favorite expression, delivered on encountering any novelty or irritant.

I Need a Virtual Break. No, Really.

There's no denying that we're in thrall to the purveyors of low-hanging fruit; to overcome our intertwined ignorance, we must ask hard questions about man-tiger conflict.

There is no denying that for some middle-class Americans, the past few years have indeed been a struggle. What is missing from Mr Obama's speeches is any hint that this is not the whole story: that globalisation brings down prices and increases consumer choice; that unemployment is low by historical standards; that American companies are still the world's most dynamic and creative; and that Americans still, on the whole, live lives of astonishing affluence.

Above all, he says: "Don't be afraid to ask hard questions when you find something funny."

There is no denying that the security situation has deteriorated in the past year.

In a New York Times/CBS News telephone poll conducted Feb. 20-24 and released Tuesday, nearly half of those respondents who described themselves as voters in Democratic primaries or caucuses said the news media had been “harder” on Mrs. Clinton than other candidates. (Only about 1 in 10 suggested the news media had been harder on Mr. Obama.)

There is no denying that it is arguably the most attractive notebook computer currently in the market and there is also no denying that appearance is incredibly important to a large portion of the buying audience.

I fill the gaps by fulminating about French movies. When I finally stop, the second-most-beautiful woman in the room reveals she is French and asks me awfully hard questions.

There is no denying that the South African fashion industry is gaining in strength.

As efforts are made to reduce man-tiger conflict, another threat is looming over the horizon, the threat of global warming.

Like Mrs Clinton (who calls for a “time-out” on trade deals, whatever that may mean), he is maddeningly vague.

The ... [ Read More (0.5k in body) ]