Oops.

Few people noticed, but China got smaller the other day. According to new estimates, the colossal Chinese economy that has been making marketers salivate and giving others an inferiority complex may be roughly 40 percent smaller than previously thought: worth $6 trillion rather than $10 trillion.

It turns out that things in China are more expensive than we thought. It’s as though we discovered that the real price of the noodles in Beijing was 50 yuan, yielding a P.P.P. of 12.5 yuan to the dollar rather than 10. That means the Chinese are relatively poorer and China’s economy is smaller than everybody thought.

This is not a mere technicality.

China Shrinks

No one wants to utter the word "depression." But the truth of the matter is that the American economy may be entering a state of free fall.

This article seems less rigorous than the Lawrence Summers piece, but may be of interest.

Symptoms of an economic depression

ONCE it was only revolutionaries such as Fidel Castro who could seize a Caribbean island. Yesterday it was Google, the internet giant, that took control of Necker in the British Virgin Islands for the wedding of Larry Page, its co-founder.

There was a price: Sir Richard Branson, the island’s owner, was ready to step up as best man for the marriage of his fellow multi-billionaire.

Google boss’s Virgin wedding

The two Iranians were of opposite worlds, one secular and rich, the other pious and poor. In post-revolutionary Tehran, they built a friendship and a business.

Redesigning two women's lives

These five papers—Information Operations and the New Threat, by Lieutenant Colonel Terry R. Ferrell, USA; The Media and National Security Decision Making, by Lieutenant Colonel James M. Marye, USA; Embedded Media: Failed Test, or the Future of Military/Media Relations? by Lieutenant Colonel Michael J. Oehle, USMC; Leveraging the Media: The Embedded Media Program in Operation Iraqi Freedom, by Colonel Glenn T. Starnes, USMC; and Embedding Success into the Military Media Relationship, by Commander Jose L. Rodriguez, USNR—have been collected in this volume. With the authors’ experiences fresh in their minds, these papers provide a timely and credible review of the successes and failures of the Embedded Media Program; moreover, they provide recommendations and predictions of future difficulties that should be reviewed by anyone with a role to play in the evolving relationship between the media and the military.

Perspectives on Embedded Media Selected Papers from the US Army War College

This volume of essays showcases CSIS's collective wisdom on the most important security issues facing America in 2008—the major political, military, and economic challenges likely to have strategic implications for the nation. Some of these challenges depend on political developments in other countries, while others hinge on U.S. actions. Some are regional in focus; others have transnational or global reach. All have the potential to expand into full-scale crises and must be watched and managed carefully.

Top CSIS scholars look at Asia, especially China, Taiwan, the Korean peninsula, and Pakistan; Europe, including Russia, Turkey, and Kosovo; Africa (AFRICOM); Cuba; a new climate change framework; nuclear proliferation; the Iraqi refugee crisis; and America at war in Afghanistan and Iraq and the possibility of war with Iran. The main event likely to shape U.S. security in 2008, however, will transpire at home—namely, the U.S. presidential election—where foreign policy will likely play a dominant role. In an afterword, Richard Armitage and Joseph Nye offer their vision of a new approach to U.S. foreign policy that relies on the exercise of "smart power." America needs such a vision, particularly at a time of so much uncertainty.

Regarding "smart power":

Report of the Commission on Smart Power

Video of Armitage and Nye

Smart Power and the U.S. Strategy for Security in a Post-9/11 World

Testimony on November 7, 2007 to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, Hearing on Smart Power and the United States Strategy for Security in the Post-9/11 World

The illusion of American 'smart power'

Global Forecast | Center for Strategic and International Studies

Midgets everywhere. Rappers, starlets, shrinks, scolds, facilitators, litigators, hustlers, hucksters, victims, vegans. Ours is the age of the shallow, the small, the squalid. Where are the great?

"There were giants in the earth in those days," says Genesis. Granted, every era magnifies the memory of bygone times. But what now passes for excellence in manhood and womanhood, thought and expression, moral and civic life, would make our grandparents shake their heads.

Where are the great?

American reading habits have turned south. Only 30 percent of 13-year-olds read almost every day, according a recent NEA study. The number of 17-year-olds who never read for pleasure increased from 9 percent in 1984 to 19 percent in 2004. Almost half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 never read books for pleasure, which may explain why one out of three does not make it to high school graduation.

As teachers cite the lack of parents’ involvement as a primary cause of faltering of education, parents blame that lack of discipline as the major cause. Both camps, however, can agree on one thing: lack of funding is the second biggest problem.

Indeed, even if nobility is still associated with the profession, the economy is far from showing its appreciation. Many young people who would have gone into teaching have told me they were deterred by financial insecurity. “I would consider teaching seriously but if I ever want to own a house in the Bay Area, I might as well forget that profession,” a graduate from Berkeley recently told me. In Silicon Valley, in order to keep talented teachers, there are now housing units being built for many who couldn’t afford a home, as the average salary for a beginning high school teacher is $44,000 in a county where the median income is around $85,000.

Something about our fast-paced, super consumerist society seems to have robbed the teaching vocation the respect it deserves, disposing that once concrete and tender human relationship to a matter of mere transaction. "You’re a paying customer!” said the yoga student. If in my mother’s world of North Vietnam, the word “teacher” is still interchangeable with the word “father,” in the world I live in now, I fear teaching as a profession is in danger of being reduced to "humble scutwork."

Hot for Teacher

The Legacy Tobacco Documents Library (LTDL) contains more than 7 million documents (40 million pages) created by major tobacco companies related to their advertising, manufacturing, marketing, sales, and scientific research activities.

See also, Smoke This Book:

In 1958, the Madison Avenue adman Roy Benjamin founded the Quality Book Group, a consortium of the paperback industry heavyweights Bantam Books, Pocket Books and the New American Library. Despite the lofty name, the group’s real purpose was to sell advertisements in paperbacks, and its first target was the biggest success of them all: Dr. Benjamin Spock’s “Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care.” A 1959 Pocket Books print run of 500,000 included advertisements by Q-Tips, Carnation and Procter & Gamble. By 1963, a 26-page insert in Spock was commanding $6,500 to $7,500 per page, and ads were spreading into mysteries and other pulps as well.

It was a windfall for everyone — everyone, that is, except the authors. “Authors were horrified by these ads,” Paul Aiken, the executive director of the Authors Guild, said in a recent interview, adding jokingly, “And doubly horrified that they weren’t paid for them.”

Legacy Tobacco Documents Library

This article explores the practice of "beeping" or "missed calling" between mobile phone users, or calling a number and hanging up before the mobile's owner can pick up the call. Most beeps are requests to call back immediately, but they can also send a pre-negotiated instrumental message such as "pick me up now" or a relational sign, such as "I'm thinking of you." The practice itself is old, with roots in landline behaviors, but it has grown tremendously, particularly in the developing world. Based on interviews with small business owners and university students in Rwanda, the article identifies three kinds of beeps (callback, pre-negotiated instrumental, and relational) and the norms governing their use. It then assesses the significance of the practice using adaptive structuration theory. In concluding, the article contrasts beeping with SMS/text messaging, discusses its implications for increasing access to telecommunications services, and suggests paths for future research.

The Rules of Beeping