Threads

Picking up a few loose ones …

Armenia

Back in August we heard about the incipient rapprochement between Armenia and Turkey that was to culminate in an imminent restoration of diplomatic relations. On October 10, after a last-minute dispute over wording was resolved with input (shall we say) from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the two countries signed a historic agreement to do just that, reopening borders that Turkey sealed in 1993 in solidarity with Azerbaijan in its conflict with Armenia over the territory of Nagorno-Karabagh. Although some elements in the Armenian diaspora expressed displeasure at the terms of the agreement, other major players fell in line behind it, as the New York Times reports:

Despite noisy street protests, some influential expatriate groups in the United States—including the Western and Eastern Dioceses of the Armenian Church, the Armenian General Benevolent Union, the Knights of Vartan and the Armenian Assembly of America—announced they would back the agreement, in a joint statement that was released Oct. 1.

While I’m sympathetic to those who are unhappy, I think the opinions of Armenians in Armenia trump the feelings of those abroad, and I doubt the pressure Armenia was subjected to caused it to perform a suicidal, or even self-destructive, act. But time, as it always does, will tell.

Bees

The mysterious and devastating decline in honeybee populations in this country (and abroad) was noted here back in May 2007. The evidence is mounting that pesticides are the primary culprit. Now there’s a shocker.

Bikes

Bad news from Paris: their bike-sharing system has run into a nasty patch of human nature in the form of stolen and vandalized equipment.

With 80 percent of the initial 20,600 bicycles stolen or damaged, the program’s organizers have had to hire several hundred people just to fix them. And along with the dent in the city-subsidized budget has been a blow to the Parisian psyche.

“The symbol of a fixed-up, eco-friendly city has become a new source for criminality,” Le Monde mourned in an editorial over the summer. “The Vélib’ was aimed at civilizing city travel. It has increased incivilities.”

The heavy, sandy-bronze Vélib’ bicycles are seen as an accoutrement of the “bobos,” or “bourgeois-bohèmes,” the trendy urban middle class, and they stir resentment and covetousness. They are often being vandalized in a socially divided Paris by resentful, angry or anarchic youth, the police and sociologists say.

I was downtown last night and saw a half-empty SmartBike rack—the bikes that were there seemed fine, and the fact that many were missing I took as a good sign. Whether DC will eventually share the French experience remains to be seen.

Facebook

Still tired of it.

Google

I revisited my street via Google Street View and, lo and behold, I am no longer there. The building under construction on the corner is much further along in the new views—in fact, I can pretty accurately date the shots from the state of the site. So it looks like the Googlemonster is a restless beast, continually revisiting everything it encounters in addition to going new places all the time. Just like the way it crawls the web, come to think of it.

Kindle

Too many people keep borrowing it. That’s not unexpected, since it belongs to my employer, and the borrowing has to do with the stated reason for buying it: to see if we should start publishing on that platform. The upshot (for me) is that it’s a great way to read stuff that flows, where you just flow along with it. It’s not so hot for text that is technical, encyclopedic, laden with graphics or tables, or choppy—i.e., built for browsing (like a newspaper or website), not for reading straight through (like a novel). Also not great for marking up and making notes, in my opinion. It’s still pleasant to read with it, but I suspect Kindle will be seeing serious competition in the years ahead, if it isn’t already, especially from devices with touchscreens and color.

Obama

A year ago at this time we were wondering who the next president of the United States would be. Although he’s only been president since January 20, this is as good a time as any to take stock of Barack Obama. On the plus side, he made a pretty decent Supreme Court nomination and got her confirmed; he initiated bilateral talks with Iran and has ratcheted down the rhetoric; he has scrapped the antiballistic system in Eastern Europe, leading to improved relations with Russia (and maybe leverage in our dealings with Iran); and he has done some heavy lifting in pursuit of true healthcare reform, which will likely pass in some form during this current session of Congress. On the negative side, he has done little to extract the US from Iraq, and even less to shut down Guantánamo; he has continued some of the previous administration’s abuse of executive privilege and government secrecy; and he has made only a half-hearted show of exposing and dealing with White House and Justice Department culpability in justifying and providing cover for torture by the CIA and the military. Still to be scored is his approach to Afghanistan—he is currently deliberating, and the hope arises he will ditch the simpleminded bellicosity displayed in his campaign and find a saner solution to that mess.

Addendum 2009.11.02: I knew I would forget something: a small additional plus for Obama, who “took advantage of a rare political moment to break through one of Washington’s most powerful lobbies and trim more weapons systems than any president had in decades.” What makes it small is this: “Now the question is whether Mr. Obama can sustain that push next year, when the midterm elections are likely to make Congress more resistant to further cuts and job losses.” And this: “Mr. Obama has said that he does not intend to reduce military spending while the nation is engaged in two wars.” We are no closer to discarding the notion that the US must be capable of fighting multiple strategic (i.e., nondefensive) wars simultaneously.

Addendum 2009.11.03: A significantly bigger, unvarnished plus: “Without fanfare, President Barack Obama has okayed a large cash infusion to help clean up the Great Lakes, quietly signing a bill that was years in the making and marks a rare bipartisan milestone.”