Good Reads: From Chinese dreams, to the Tsarnaevs, to a QWERTY challenger
China asks its citizens to dream
A nation confidently on its way听to becoming the biggest economy in the world ought to be chasing its own special dreams. So Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping has taken on promoting 鈥渢he Chinese dream鈥� as his personal motto, and the Chinese character for 鈥渄ream鈥� has been declared the 鈥渃haracter of the year鈥� in China. But what do Chinese think about when they dream? In 鈥淐hasing the Chinese dream,鈥澨齪oints out the term鈥檚 vagueness is both an advantage and a difficulty, a meme able to be fitted to many goals. Militarists see it as more than just an 鈥淎merican dream鈥� of middle-class prosperity; it鈥檚 their dream of a powerful China preeminent on the world stage. Democratic reformers see a move toward Western-style personal and political freedoms. US Secretary of State John Kerry recently tried to lasso the term in the service of better Sino-American relations, proposing that Chinese and American dreams merge into a vision of a 鈥淧acific Dream鈥� that the two nations pursue together. But where it鈥檚 all headed is uncertain: When a people are allowed, even encouraged, to 鈥渄ream,鈥� the process may set off a series of unintended consequences.
How radical were the Tsarnaev brothers?
What caused Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to carry out their bombing of the Boston Marathon? We may never get a definite answer. But in 鈥淭he Bombers鈥� World,鈥澨齞igs for facts and theories and concludes that despite possible links to radical Islamists 鈥渢here are many other details of the Tsarnaev brothers鈥� case that make it seem starkly unique, more of an outlier than something that can be easily slotted into a larger pattern.鈥� Those particulars include the Chechen culture, which places a high value on family and 鈥渉onor鈥� (and put immense pressure on Tamerlan, the older brother, to succeed when at the same time he was failing). Among the unanswered questions: Why was this particular Chechen family unable to assimilate into American culture when other Chechens have?
Stopping a humanitarian disaster
The sectarian war in Bosnia in the 1990s taught American presidents two irreconcilable lessons: First, US involvement is indispensable when it comes to stopping a humanitarian disaster. Second, a US president has little to gain politically from intervening overseas and plenty to lose if it goes badly. Just ask President George W. Bush, who ignored the lessons, invaded Iraq, and suffered the consequences. In 鈥�The Thin Red Line: Inside the White House debate over Syria,鈥�听听paints a grim portrait of US alternatives in Syria. (鈥淎ll the options are horrible,鈥� says one former presidential adviser.) Disturbing reports indicating that the Syrian regime is using poison gas, perhaps sarin, (cautiously and selectively to not rouse world opinion) have upped the stakes. President Obama has looked tentative, perhaps for good reason 鈥� drawing a 鈥渞ed line鈥� warning against the use of chemical weapons but then being vague in assessing whether they have been used or saying exactly what the US response would be. 鈥淧eople on the Hill ask me, 鈥榃hy can鈥檛 we do a no-fly zone? Why can鈥檛 we do military strikes?鈥� 鈥� a senior US official says. 鈥淥f course we can do these things. The issue is, where does it stop?鈥�
A future with 鈥榖aked in鈥� heat
听is among a throng of scientists and journalists noting that the level of carbon dioxide in the world鈥檚 atmosphere is about to pass a significant threshold: 400 parts per million. Why should we care? 鈥淭he last time CO2 听levels were this high was likely during the Pliocene epoch, between 3.2 million and 5 million years ago,鈥� he points out. 鈥淭he Earth鈥檚 climate was warmer during the Pliocene than it is today 鈥� perhaps by 2 to 3 [degrees] C 鈥� and sea levels were much higher. It was a very different planet than the one we鈥檝e lived on so successfully for thousands of years.鈥� Passing 400 p.p.m. means that warming effects of rising CO2 听are already 鈥渂aked in鈥� to Earth鈥檚 future for many years to come. The Keeling Curve, which has measured and documented the rise in worldwide CO2 听levels over the past half century, is 鈥渁 roadmap for our future,鈥� he says, 鈥渁 future that will almost certainly be hotter and wilder.鈥�
A keyboard for fat thumbs
KALQ is an effort to redesign a keyboard for mobile devices that better arranges the pattern of letter keys for the ubiquitous two-thumb system of typing. But can any new arrangement ever replace QWERTY, the more-than-a-century-old arrangement of letter keys on, first, typewriters and now computers and even tiny phones and tablets? 鈥淔act of Fiction? The Legend of the QWERTY Keyboard,鈥� a post at the听听blog at Smithsonian magazine, notes that the origin of QWERTY remains 鈥渁 little foggy.鈥� The popular notion that the keys were arranged so as to not jam the mechanisms of early typewriters may not be true. A new theory suggests the arrangement was a convenience for telegraph operators, who were among the first workers to adopt touch typing. Once early typewriter companies banded together and agreed on QWERTY, and set up training courses to learn the system, the die was cast. QWERTY has become what鈥檚 known in the design world as a 鈥減ath dependency,鈥� too entrenched to be replaced even by a superior system. Other letter arrangements have been proposed over the years, most notably the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard in the 1930s, but none have typed over QWERTY. Will KALQ be the first?
