Tunnel vision?

I’ve been watching CNN for the past few days.  Although I usually watch MSNBC, when it comes to something like this CNN is a much better source.  CNN International, that is.  Today they’re back to CNN domestic.  It’s the same correspondents, and some of the anchors are great.  But then Wolf Blitzer comes on in The Situation Room…and it’s probably time to turn away from CNN.

While a lot of people were saying al Qaeda early on, by today it’s pretty clear that the experts believe that talking about an al Qaeda link isn’t terribly useful.  On comes Wolf Blitzer and his first question is “link to al Qaeda?”  Each correspondent he speaks to says “probably not, this appears to be linked more to Pakistan and Kashmir”.  And Blitzer then asks the next one “al Qaeda?”  And they answer “probably not”.  (Actually they give an intelligent, nuanced answer.)

It’s really remarkable.  For two days we had solid coverage from CNN International.  Then we had decent, if not stellar coverage from CNN domestic.  New we get to one of their big-name shows…and the bottom falls out.  Has he been watching CNN?  Does he pay attention to what the correspondents say on his own show?  Or is it that he simply thinks that his audience is too stupid to understand that “terrorism” is a complicated, multi-dimensional question?

New plant biology blog

Biofortified is a new addition to the (rather small) world of plant biology blogs.  Their blurb says:

Biofortified is a group website devoted to providing factual information and fostering discussion about plant genetics, especially genetic engineering. The site is written by grad students, professors, and the occasional guest expert.

Not a lot of content yet, but any blogging effort takes a while to get going.  Here’s wishing them all the best.

H/T Laurent

Update: Would have been a good idea if I’d actually linked to the site… 🙂

Berry Go Round

The 11th edition of Berry Go Round will be appearing soon at Catalogue of Organisms,so get your submissions in within the next three days to gerarus at westnet.com.au.

Disturbingly self-absorbed

I understand that the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade is a big deal.  But listening to the commentary on the parade yesterday, you would never have known that over 100 people were dead in an ongoing terrorist attack.  I understand that the parade would have gone on no matter what – and it should have gone on…after all, terrorist deal in fear, so the simple act of carrying on as normal is an act of defiance.

It’s one thing to carry on.  It’s another to totally ignore tragedy simply because it’s going on in another country.  A major fire in another US city would have attracted the attention of the commentators, it would have coloured their commentary.  But of the tragedy in Mumbai they seemed blissfully unaware.  What does it take to be that self-absorbed?  It’s very disturbing.

Day three in Mumbai

Indian security forces stormed the Chabad House in Mumbai; the rabbi and his wife, Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg, their two small children and their housekeeper are dead.  Not sure if they were killed in the attack or before.  The Oberoi Hotel has been cleared, apparently.  There’s still one gunman at the Taj.

Three days seems like forever.  But then, that’s half as long as the coup.  I don’t mean to downplay the trauma of what’s going on in Mumbai.  I’m trying to understand the magnitude of what we lived through 18 years ago.  And, you know…I can’t wrap my mind around it.

Stumbling in the dark

In his Op-Ed column at the NY Times Paul Krugman writes:

A few months ago I found myself at a meeting of economists and finance officials, discussing — what else? — the crisis. There was a lot of soul-searching going on. One senior policy maker asked, “Why didn’t we see this coming?”

There was, of course, only one thing to say in reply, so I said it: “What do you mean ‘we,’ white man?”

Krugman goes on to explain that, while people like to call the current financial crisis “unprecedented”, there were lots of warning signs.  Some were obvious – it seems like everyone was aware that the housing bubble was a bubble.  But, shockingly, the banks and rating agencies didn’t seem to realise that house prices might decline.  And we all know what the collapse of the real estate markets in Japan did to the Japanese economy.  No, most people don’t recall what happened in the early 90s.  But economists and policy makers should.  That’s kinda their job.

While the Japanese example is solidly cemented in my mind (thanks, in a large part, to Krugman’s Op-Eds almost a decade ago), I wasn’t familiar with the implications of the collapse of the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management in 1998.  I remember it being a big deal at the time, and every time I hear the word “hedge fund” something stirs in my memory.  But I had no idea that it “temporarily paralyzed credit markets around the world”.

Krugman goes on to talk about the triumphalism that characterised the recovery from the 1997-1998 crisis and the collapse of the dot-com bubble, and how the fact that the world managed to step back from the brink made people more complacent.

In fact, both the crisis of 1997-98 and the bursting of the dot-com bubble probably had the perverse effect of making both investors and public officials more, not less, complacent. Because neither crisis quite lived up to our worst fears, because neither brought about another Great Depression, investors came to believe that Mr. Greenspan had the magical power to solve all problems — and so, one suspects, did Mr. Greenspan himself, who opposed all proposals for prudential regulation of the financial system.

People on the brink of disaster are often blissfully unaware.  Point it out to them and their reaction tends to be one worthy of a teenager; as Krugman said, “nobody likes a party pooper”.  Talk about the housing bubble, or the dot-com bubble, or the looking climate crisis, and people accuse you of fearmongering.  Or they simply do nothing because the implications are too disturbing to deal with.