Wired, April 2005 Alternative-fuel cars are poised to overtake China, according to a piece on the booming Chinese auto market. As pollution rises and automobiles become more affordable, going green may be a matter of necessity for the country’s centrally controlled auto industry. This could give China a jump-start on the hydrogen economy. “China may actually benefit from it’s very backward-ness,” writes Lisa Margonelli. “All those bicycles mean there isn’t a cumbersome—and entrenched—gasoline infrastructure to stand in the way of the next big thing.”… A piece explores how four Mexican teenagers, all undocumented immigrants living in Phoenix, beat MIT’s team at a national underwater robotics competition. The team built a robot capable of surveying mock submarine wreckage 50 feet underwater, all for just $800, compared with the MIT team’s $11,000 budget.—J.S.
New Republic, April 11 Claiming that most liberals are “trapped in the politics of churlishness,” Martin Peretz offers kudos to President Bush for breaking with previous U.S. foreign policy and doggedly spreading democracy in the Middle East: “As the ancient Israelite king observed, let he who girds his harness not boast as he who takes it off. But the mission is nonetheless real, and far along, and it is showing thrilling accomplishments.”… A doctor who flew to Sri Lanka immediately after the tsunami reflects on his experience there. He treated very few major injuries but realized that a “national epidemic of post-traumatic stress disorder” is in the works. He suggests that the country should put people to work building hospitals and roads and asserts that “by bringing the world’s attention to the acute and chronic disasters of Sri Lanka, the tsunami may paradoxically have come with the silver lining that lifts the country” out of poverty.—B.B.
Economist, April 11 The cover package examines how the Internet has empowered consumers. Even though plenty of people still shop at stores, a study found that “more than 90 percent of people aged between 18 and 54” used online research to decide what to buy. Because young people spend so much time on the Internet, incentive-based advertising (like Google’s Gmail) and brand showrooms (like the Apple Store) are flourishing. “[The showrooms’] main role is to demonstrate a range of the company’s products, with knowledgeable and enthusiastic staff on hand who are under no pressure to clinch a sale. Where people actually buy the product in the end becomes of secondary importance.”… Another piece surveys successful “urban regeneration” projects across Europe. Historically, such projects have been hindered by bureaucracy and underfunded by governments; but increasingly, a combination of public money and private investment is turning fallow industrial zones into profitable cultural sites. A good example is the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, a former shipbuilding town.—B.B.
GQ, April 2005 A profile on deliberately evasive Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan traces his political career in search of some insight into one of politics’ most inscrutable minds. The piece tracks Greenspan’s political ideology back to his friendship with Ayn Rand, calling Greenspan “not so much a Republican as a non-Democrat” and portrays his often contentious working relationships with half a dozen commanders-in-chief. “It is not that Greenspan dislikes the six presidents he has served; it’s that he has known them all too well,” writes Wil Hylton. “He has seen average men of average intellect enchant the nation with average ideas and the temptation to influence them has been too great to resist.”… Jake Tapper’s piece follows gay activist Mike Roger’s crusade to out closeted gay Republicans who support the proposed federal marriage amendment, a quest that’s already ended the career of former Rep. Ed Schrock.—J.S.
Rolling Stone, April 7 A cover story on the kids of pop gods from Marvin Gaye to Art Garfunkel explores not only the pressure of being the child of someone famous, but the unusual bonds that form among the progeny of musical legends. “There’s a mysterious gravitational pull that seems to bond the children of legendary musicians,” writes Mark Binelli. “Encounter enough of them and it starts to feel like a secret society. They’ve all grown up with parents who have simultaneously rejected society’s rules and reaped its rewards, and they all recognize certain traits in each other.”… Oil at $55 a barrel may be only the beginning of a permanent energy crisis, writes James Howard Kunstler in a piece on what he calls the “long emergency”: the end of an oil-based economy, after which, he argues, “Our twenty-first century economy may focus on agriculture, not information.”—J.S.
New York Times Magazine, April 3
A profile looks at Dutch legislator Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born Muslim who, in the weeks after Sept. 11, declared Islam a “backward religion” that needed “its own Voltaire” and whose collaboration with Theo van Gogh was one cause of the director’s 2004 murder. Called an “Enlightenment fundamentalist” by her critics, the liberalizing, assimilationist Ali has become a pivotal figure in the Netherlands, where immigration and cultural conflict have produced a volatile political terrain. … In an essay adapted from his upcoming book, The World Is Flat, Thomas L. Friedman describes the transformation of the global economy into an equal-opportunity domain and sounds a warning for the future of American economic pre-eminence. … The cover story profiles Takashi Murakami, “Japan’s answer to Andy Warhol,” widely known in the U.S. for his line of Louis Vuitton handbags, whose work draws on the Japanese traditions of print-making and anime, unified by a pet aesthetic theory he calls “Superflat.”—D.W.
Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report, April 4
Terri Schiavo: All three newsweeklies dissect the Terri Schiavo case and point out the sudden popularity of living wills; the magazines caution that such a will is most effective when it has been discussed with a designated proxy. (Read U.S. News’ living-will advice here.) Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter excoriates the Republicans’ political opportunism; Anna Quindlen rejects the premise of “a culture of life,” because it’s meaningless without “an individual to give it shape.” After examining Oregon’s unique Death with Dignity Act, which legalizes assisted suicide for the terminally ill, Time predicts that “physician-assisted suicide is likely to erupt as the next big conflagration over end-of-life issues.”U.S. News links Schiavo’s case to the anti-abortion movement and claims that “The future of the culture wars may ride on whether the religious right’s success in the Schiavo case is a harbinger of future gains or a spark that ignites a backlash from the rest of the country.”
Dirty laundry:U.S. News reports on Lebanon’s Bank Al-Madina, which collapsed in 2003 amid a massive scandal. Claiming that Al-Madina “laundered” Saddam Hussein’s money and bankrolled Hezbollah, the piece notes that the scandal provides “a rare glimpse inside the corrupt profiteering long understood to be a by-product of Syria’s 30-year occupation of Lebanon.” …Newsweek looks at the U.S. government’s apparent willingness to overlook corruption in Iraq. The piece focuses on Custer Battles, a U.S. contractor that reportedly cheated the Coalition Provisional Authority out of at least $50 million. Although watchdogs believe that the U.S. government should join a lawsuit against Custer Battles, the Bush administration has argued that the CPA was not technically part of the U.S. government. But Bush also signed a law in 2003 that calls the CPA “an entity of the United States government.” Consequently, a former CPA adviser opines that “the administration’s reluctance to prosecute has turned the Iraq occupation into a ‘free-fraud zone.’ ”
Odds and ends: Newsweek’s cover profiles Jack Welch, General Electric’s former CEO. Several years ago, scandal swirled around Welch: He published a poorly received memoir and had an affair with the Harvard Business Review’s Suzy Wetlaufer. Now the couple has published Winning, a “comprehensive instruction manual for corporate climbers” that the article calls “smart, practical and not afraid to address tough subjects.” … U.S. News reports on H5N1, a new strain of bird flu that has struck Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia; the piece notes that “normally sanguine health officials have been making increasingly dire predictions of a nightmarish 1918-style assault, one that could kill up to 2.2 million people in the United States.” Time focuses on Pima County, Ariz., and its plan to balance growth with desert conservation. The county’s residents strive to plant native species only, protect endangered species (like the Pygmy Owl, which inhabits cactus cavities), and pay close attention to water use.—B.B.
New Yorker, April 4
In an article about doctors’ incomes, one physician tries to explain how doctors calculate their earnings—most formulas look at the “time spent, mental effort and judgment, technical skill and physical effort, and stress”—and notes that the lowest Medicare payment is $10.15 (for “trimming a patient’s nails”) and the highest is $5,366.98 (for making a new diaphragm for an infant). The piece also examines why doctors are so prone to dissatisfaction with their jobs, and examines a New York City doctor who has become tremendously rich by forgoing dealings with insurance companies altogether. The piece concludes that America has the best paid doctors in the world. … In a profile of playwright Edward Albee, Larissa MacFarquhar points out his love of animals, especially his “allegiance to feral behavior and feral people.” She examines his habit of micromanaging productions of his work, and notes that, “at seven, [Albee] walked around wearing a smoking jacket and carrying a cigarette holder.”—B.B.
Weekly Standard, April 4
A warm review of K., Roberto Calasso’s new book about Kafka, makes much of Calasso’s “neopaganism” (he salutes magic and idolatry) and claims that Calasso “might have been invented by a novelist or drafted by a filmmaker to embody the European Union’s dream of itself.”Calasso, an erudite polyglot author who has said that the gods of the ancient world are both “real and unreal,” criticizes atheism and explores Kafka’s neopagan side. … Ambassador and Cold War strategistGeorge Kenan’s “supreme gift was not for diplomacy, but for self-dramatization,” claims an obituary that also notes that Kenan had an “irresistible, self-destructive impulse.” … Also, there’s an odd Netflix appreciation written by someone who just learned of its existence. “News like this, I’m realizing, travels slow when you’re off the telecom beat,” claims the author.—B.B.
