Blogger Darren Kaplan suggests that Coalition casualties in Iraq are down because new cellular jammers are blocking the "improvised explosive devices" used by Islamic guerilla forces.
Given the increased use of IEDs, what accounts for the decline in Coalition deaths? I'm going to take a wild guess based on nothing more than my own intuition and a single sentence in an article from the Wall Street Journal. The Coalition has begun to equip its military convoys with cellular jammers. Cellular jammers are widely available and can be portable. The Pentagon is known to have been working on large-scale cellular jammers back in August, but I've thought for some time that the threat from IEDs in Iraq could be defeated by the Pentagon simply issuing portable cellular jammers to its convoy passengers. An article from Tuesday's Wall Street Journal (subscription required) strongly suggests that's exactly what the Pentagon has done.
Procurement accounts for a relatively small share, just $1.9 billion, including the purchase of 595 heavy mobile Army vehicles, kevlar body armor and electronic jammers to block terrorists from using cellular phones to trigger bombs near troops.
If IEDs can no longer be detonated by remote control, the Iraqi insurgents are going to have an even harder time inflicting casualties on U.S. troops. (I note that the most recent reported IED death does not give any indication that the targeted vehicle involved was traveling in a convoy). We'll know that jammers have come into widespread use when we begin to see increased uses of other methods of attack such as suicide bombings and truck bombings of stationary targets (which I think we've already seen). What we will not see more of is increased attacks on U.S. convoys using small arms such as rifles and RPGs, those attacks proved to be suicidal for the attackers and have now been largely abandoned by the insurgents unless they happen upon isolated vehicles as targets of opportunity.
Remember you heard it here first; cellular jammers are the newest U.S. weapon in Iraq.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 10, 2003 • Comments
To the guffaws of critics, the FCC has ruled that Howard Stern's radio show is a news interview program for regulatory purposes. The decision means that Stern can interview Arnold Schwarzenegger without giving equal time to the 134 other candidates for California governor. The decision affects only Stern. Late-night comedians, from whom some voters get political news (9 percent, the same as C-SPAN, in the the Pew Center's survey on the 2000 election), are still out of luck. In an August 30 NYT op-ed, Craig Kilbourn of CBS's Late, Late Show explained how the "equal time" rule affects his program:
Last Wednesday night, 10 minutes before we were to go on the air, a group of CBS lawyers demanded that we cut that night's comedy segment -- a satire of a speech by Gov. Gray Davis, Arnold Schwarzenegger's first political advertisement and the campaign of the porn actress (she's been downgraded from porn star) Mary Carey, all of which included images of the candidates.
This was shocking. First, because the lawyers finally conceded that our show contains comedy; second, because it was the first time I'd heard that the Federal Communication Commission's equal time rule -- which requires radio and television stations to grant equal time to all candidates -- might apply to our show. The lawyers told us that between now and Oct. 7, the date of the California recall election, we cannot show a picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger unless we are prepared to show pictures of all 135 candidates. And I can tell you from experience, the audience tends to tune out after the 81st one.
Appealing to journalists' vanity, Andrew Schwartzman, president of the leftist Media Access Project, condemned the FCC's Stern decision, telling the NYT that "Howard Stern isn't 'bona fide' anything" and that the decision "mocks that system by equating Howard Stern with Tim Russert." To the WaPost, he was a bit blunter about his desire for censorship:
"What this means is that every 'morning zoo' disc jockey whose brother-in-law is running for city council can put him on the air without worrying about giving equal time to anyone else," said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, a communications lawyer who heads the Media Access Project in Washington. "They've removed the notion that a bona fide news interview show is supposed to apply to journalists. If Howard Stern is a real journalist, real journalists should be upset."
God forbid that people get their "news and information" (as the local news shows put it) from sources other than government-certified journalists. This contempt for unorthodox sources is particularly disingenuous coming from a man whose organization supposedly "promotes the public's First Amendment right to hear and be heard on the electronic media of today and tomorrow."
The very silliness of having to declare Howard Stern a journalist reveals how ridiculous and antithetical to the free flow of ideas our broadcast regulation is. As Kilbourn points out in his Times op-ed, cable shows don't suffer from the same constraints. Like print, they're free to provide whatever interviews, information, and entertainment, they think will serve their audience, without government editors telling them what to include or omit. That's called freedom of speech and the press. It ought to apply to radio and over-the-air TV as well--with no Stern exceptions needed.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 10, 2003 • Comments
They're young. They're glamorous. They're pro-market, and pro-American. Anne Applebaum writes in today's WaPost:
But a movement organized around fashion dies quickly when fashion changes, and while reading the reports of the dozen-odd protesters squirming about in the Mexican sand, I began to wonder whether it has already happened. Compare the squalid sand protest, for example, with another scene: Last spring a 21-year-old French student named Sabine Herold stood up in front of 2,000 people and called on them to "take back the streets" from the strikers then blocking the Paris traffic. Herold instantly became a counterculture heroine, hailed as the new Joan of Arc, admired for her daring and her chic. And she is not alone: Further north, a 30-year-old Swede with long blond hair has recently conquered Europe with a book called "In Defense of Global Capitalism," just published here by the Cato Institute. Johan Norberg, a former anarchist who believes in a world without borders, makes the case that free trade is good for the developing world, good for freedom, good for social progress, even if the dull old Marxists refuse to see it.
It can be no accident that not one but two glamorous young pro-capitalists have emerged in Europe over the past year.
I wouldn't, however, call Johan Norberg's hair "long"--except, of course, in ever-so-conservative DC. It doesn't even reach his shoulders. (You be the judge.)
Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 10, 2003 • Comments
The last few days in Washington have been hectic and gratifyingly full of interviews about The Substance of Style. For those who just can't get enough of me talking about my book, WAMU's WAMU: The Kojo Nnamdi Show has put our interview online. (WAMU is an NPR affiliate based at American University.)
You can also read my article, essentially a book excerpt, in the October issue of Men's Journal, their annual design issue.
In other book-related news, I've (easily) persuaded The Atlantic to put online their classic 1927 article, "Beauty the New Business Tool" by Earnest Elmo Calkins, which is cited in chapter 2 of TSOS. (No, there is no comma in the title.) My book's bibliography continues to add links, and simply having an alphabetical list of sources adds a reference commercial publishers don't like to spend pages on.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 10, 2003 • Comments
The Substance of Style
American Enterprise Institute
September 9, 2003 (video)
Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 09, 2003 • Comments
ELLE.com names The Substance of Style today's "Essential," a must-have for the fashion-savvy:
Hailed [in Elle--vp] as one of an exciting new breed of public intellectuals, Postrel has the rare gift of being able to synthesize fields as diverse as economics (her specialty), fashion, politics, and more. Here, she uses this talent to argue persuasively and engagingly that, increasingly, style is substance, that our aesthetic choices, far from being shallow, can actually provide valuable cultural insights. Which, as every woman with a pair of Manolos and a brain knows, is brilliantly obvious.
No Manolos for me. But I swear by these Via Spiga pumps. You can stand in them for hours (at least if you're me and naturally walk on your toes).
Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 08, 2003 • Comments
California's budget crisis hasn't gone away just because the legislature passed a budget and there's a recall election underway. Former state controller Kathleen Connell, who ought to be the next Democratic governor, lays out the ugly facts in a San Francisco Chronicle oped:
While we're off being entertained by recall theater, the perfect economic storm may soon hit the shores of California. It turns out that the recently passed state budget isn't much of a budget at all. It's the equivalent of you and me sitting down at the dinner table and figuring out which credit card we should use to buy groceries and pay the rent.
The state budget features at least $18 billion in borrowing this year. And since California's credit rating is the second-worst in the nation's history, taxpayers will pay enormous interest rates on the state's looming credit card charges. But if that's not enough, some of the borrowing may actually be illegal.
The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association has a Sept. 17 court date to challenge the state's use of $2 billion in bonds to pay its contribution to the retirement system. Other groups are considering lawsuits to block the sale of more than $10 billion in deficit bonds because Californians did not vote on the bonds, as required by the constitution.
If courts do block California from selling the bonds, things will get very ugly, very quickly, because there isn't a backup plan and there isn't much cash on hand. Schools, Medicare, law enforcement, recreation activities, and just about everything else -- will be immediately reduced, and the quality of such services will predictably suffer.
If the state does manage to sell the bonds, the recall winner will inherit a budget with an estimated deficit of $10 billion to $20 billion next year, plus all the debt the state has already piled up.
Pretty scary stuff. When Connell used to warn of budget trouble ahead, Gray Davis mocked her. Picking up on an idea from the Reason Foundation and Performance Institute budget plan (one of the few with actual details), she advocates a budget commission modeled on the federal base-closing commission. If you're following California politics, you should read the whole thing. The Reason Foundation/Performance Institute commission plan, to which Connell is a signatory, is here, as a .pdf file.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 08, 2003 • Comments
In a column in the Las Vegas Review Journal, Rick Henderson applies the lessons of The Substance of Style to his city's leading industry:
The concentration of gambling and related entertainment options in Las Vegas has always offered travelers a "nowhere else" experience. But as legal gambling proliferates, and as tribal operators in nearby California and Arizona become more attuned to the value of aesthetics -- witness the spiffy new properties in San Diego, Sacramento and Phoenix -- Las Vegas must continue to differentiate itself from its competitors by providing more: greater amenities, better service, more value.
Otherwise, the Strip may eventually resemble a larger version of today's downtown.
Keeping up with the aesthetic competition is increasingly essential just to stay in business--and not just for casinos.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 08, 2003 • Comments
Last week, a Washington Post poll reported thatmore than two-thirds of Americans believe Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11. From the Post report:
Nearing the second anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, seven in 10 Americans continue to believe that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had a role in the attacks, even though the Bush administration and congressional investigators say they have no evidence of this.
Sixty-nine percent of Americans said they thought it at least likely that Hussein was involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, according to the latest Washington Post poll. That impression, which exists despite the fact that the hijackers were mostly Saudi nationals acting for al Qaeda, is broadly shared by Democrats, Republicans and independents.
The president's speech last night (text with links to video and audio) simultaneously reinforced and corrected this belief. Saddam wasn't behind 9/11, but it's still all one war--one loose coalition against another.
For a generation leading up to September the 11th, 2001, terrorists and their radical allies attacked innocent people in the Middle East and beyond, without facing a sustained and serious response. The terrorists became convinced that free nations were decadent and weak. And they grew bolder, believing that history was on their side. Since America put out the fires of September the 11th, and mourned our dead, and went to war, history has taken a different turn. We have carried the fight to the enemy. We are rolling back the terrorist threat to civilization, not on the fringes of its influence, but at the heart of its power.
Bush's rhetoric continues to have two major problems, neither of which is likely to disappear. The first, and most obvious, is that he says the enemy is terrorism rather than Islamicism using terrorism as a weapon (including against Muslims). The second, less obvious, is that he says we are fighting to defend democracy, when in fact we are fighting to defend liberalism (or liberal democracy). Iran is a democracy, in the normal sense of holding real elections, but it is not liberal.
The fundamental conflict is over whether the systems of limited, non-theocratic, individual-rights-based governments that developed over centuries in the West are good or bad. Outside of the academy and other intellectual circles, however, American political discourse has literaly lost the words to describe what the "civilized world" has in common. We think "liberal" means Hillary Clinton, when it also means George Bush.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 08, 2003 • Comments
Warren Zevon has died. MSNBC's Michael Ross has a nice obituary/retrospective. I completely agree with Bill Barol's Slate review of his last album. I've written two books and countless columns to Zevon's music (including this Thursday's NYT piece). Thanks.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 08, 2003 • Comments