James Fallows: I have relentlessly beat the drum for Google's 'two-ste...

Considering all the different ways in which China has interacted with the world in the last 50 years, considering all the challenges ordinary Chinese people have to put up with, it's beneficial and, and, by any rational standard, non-threatening to have national energies channeled into this kind of competition. It's touching to see so many ordinary Chinese crowds cheering for their new heroes.

James Fallows

cheer hero years

The Hawk and the Dove is a wonderful idea for a book, wonderfully carried out. Nicholas Thompson has used illuminating new material to present each of his protagonists in a convincing, respectful, but unsparing way. Even more valuable, he has used the interactions and tensions between Paul Nitze and George Kennan to bring much of American 20th century foreign policy to life, with human richness ever present but with the big issues clear in all their complexity.

James Fallows

issues book ideas

A basic rule of life for reporters is that you should spend your time talking with and learning about people who are not sending you press releases, rather than those who are.

James Fallows

release talking people

There's no longer any surprise in noting that China has grave environmental problems.

James Fallows

environmental surprise problem

Societies are healthiest when their radius of trust is broad and when people feel they can influence their own fate.

James Fallows

fate society people

Our military plans should be based on the assumption of unpredictability, rather than on carefully drawn, static models of the world.

James Fallows

assumption military world

Racial prejudice boils down to the deeply anti-American message that some people are born to fail.

James Fallows

prejudice messages people

It is not widely known that, ever since the end of the Korean War, the United States has spent essentially the same amount of money on defense, in real terms, every single year.

James Fallows

real war years

According to the Office of Technology Assessment, 3 Minuteman missiles and 7 Poseidon missiles could destroy 73 percent of oil-refining capacity in the Soviet Union.

James Fallows

assessment oil technology

Up or out" greatly magnified the careerist emphasis on holding a position rather than doing a job.

James Fallows

emphasis bureaucracy jobs

The worst kind of management seeks a single optimum, a one-scale index of efficiency, like the mindless scales of 1 to 10 for grading a woman's beauty or one to four stars for a movie's appeal.

James Fallows

womens-beauty four stars

A rigid America is also weak and vulnerable, because it sacrifices its unique strength: the energy of people who think they can always make something new of their lives.

James Fallows

sacrifice unique thinking

Successful societies-those which progress economically and politically and can control the terms on which they deal with the outside world-succeed because they have found ways to match individual self-interest to the collective good.

James Fallows

progress successful self

Make the important interesting.

James Fallows

important interesting

In a time of transition for journalism all around the world, it's reassuring to know that some of the old ways endure.

James Fallows

transition way world

I've learned that I need to spell out, even in cases seemingly so blatant, that in fact I am not taking this at face value and am being 'sarcastic.

James Fallows

sarcastic faces needs

I am explicitly not opening the giant can of worms that is the ongoing current discussion of patent, copyright, and trademark reform.

James Fallows

patents reform giants

For a decade or more after the Vietnam war, the people who had guided the U.S. to disaster decently shrank from the public stage.

James Fallows

vietnam war people

Everyone moans about the collapsing U.S. infrastructure.

James Fallows

infrastructure

Environmental disaster is the gravest threat to China's continued development. That's according to me, but it is not some wacko view.

James Fallows

environmental development views

I have relentlessly beat the drum for Google's 'two-step' authentication systems for Gmail and other services, which radically reduce the likelihood that your account can be hacked from afar.