Will Apple’s Kindle-killing tablet let me read Kindle and Nook books?

OK, they mean it this time: Apple is (supposedly) about to release its new tablet in January — essentially a giant iPhone meant to compete in the e-book space now mostly occupied by Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Sony. eWeek reports:

It’s eWeek’s description of the tablet as a “giant iPhone” that intrgues me most, however.

One issue that has kept me from making a full and final jump into e-reading is the matter of compatibility. You can only read Kindle books on the Kindle, Nook books on the Nook and so forth. There is — as yet — no universal e-reading format. And because the market is still shaking itself out, that makes buying an e-reader dicey for us not-quite-first-adopters: Who wants to drop a couple of hundred dollars on what will turn out to be the digital book equivalent of Betamax?

What’s nice about my iPhone as an e-reader, though, is I don’t have to choose. I’ve got — and used — reading applications from Amazon, B&N and Stanza on my phone. It’s not only allowed me to access a wider array of books on my iPhone, it’s also let me price shop. (Amazon’s usually cheaper for brand-new books, in my experience.)

Here’s the thing: When it comes to the iPhone, Apple is pretty notorious about locking competitors out of its App store. It’s why you’re forced to use a Safari browser on the phone, say, instead of Chrome. And my worry is that this attitude will find its way to Apple’s approach to bookselling on iTunes. Kindle, Nook and Stanza applications are on the iPhone. Will it be available on the tablet?

I hope so. If Apple keeps the tablet open to book apps from other companies, it can achieve what nobody else has: A quasi-universal e-book format. Instead of being forced into an exclusive relationship with one bookstore or the other, I can shop among them all! That might make an Apple Tablet worth the $500-$700 asking price.

My Top 10 books of the decade

Let me be clear here: These aren’t necessarily the 10 best books of the aughts. Just the 10 best books that I read. I tried to figure out if I should split into fiction-nonfiction categories, but that didn’t really suss out very nicely. I spent the first half of the decade immersing myself in novels and the second half in essays and long-form reporting. We all go through phases, I guess, and my Top 10 list reflects mine.

• White Teeth, Zadie Smith: Smith has proven to be a prodigious talent, and her novel On Beauty is probably more complete in its artistic expression. But this first novel — set among an interracial British family — was imperfect but oh so damned interesting.

• The Road, Cormac McCarthy: I know, Oprah, blah blah. Like Smith’s White Teeth, maybe this isn’t the “best” of McCarthy’s novels — but it is his most accessible: Written less baroquely than some of his other works. I finished it in one weekend. But it stayed with me since then.

• Fiasco, Tom Ricks: The Iraq War has produced a ton of finely reported and written books. But this piece by then-Washington Post reporter Ricks did more, probably, to document and define how the early years of the war had gone so devastatingly wrong — from the decision to invade to a host of post-invasion decisions that exacerbated a tense situation.

• Consider the Lobster, David Foster Wallace: Wallace was probably best-known as a novelist: His 1,000-page Infinite Jest is a required lit-hipster endurance test. But it was in his non-fiction that Wallace — freed from the demands of experimentation — really shined, and this collection of essays proves it. Covering everything from porn to meat-eating ethics to talk radio, Wallace still dropped plenty of five-dollar words. But he did so in the service of smartly entertaining and informing his audience.

• The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate, Robert Caro: If you want to know what power looks like — how it’s accumulated, how it corrupts, how big Texas businesses behind George W. Bush have always been around — this volume of Caro’s indispensible and ongoing biography of LBJ is a great place to start.

• Saturday, Ian McEwan: Atonement was his most celebrated work of the decade, but this novel — set in one day of the life of a London doctor shortly before the invasion of Iraq — has stuck with me longer. I think it’s because — unlike many people who took stark positions for or against the invasion — Dr. Henry Perowne is honestly conflicted: He knows the regime of Saddam Hussein to be terrible, but he also knows the war might well end up being terrible. This novel isn’t about Iraq, but it’s not not about Iraq, either. And in Perowne’s wrestling, McEwan articulated the not-quite-sure attitude that many people felt before the war.

• Pastoralia, George Saunders: I don’t know what to call this collection of short stories. Meta science fiction, maybe? It’s dyspeptic and cynical — and it’s darkest story, “Sea Oak,” about a woman who returns from the dead ready to start doing all the fornicating she’d never done in life, might well be its most inspiring.

• Gilead, Marilynne Robinson: I’ll say the same thing I did about Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois album: I’m not a Christian, but this novel comes as close as any sermon or piece of art ever has to making me reconsider.

• The 9/11 Commission Report: Not only well-reported — as it should be, given that the resources of government were at its disposal — it’s also surprisingly well-written.

• The Dark Side, Jane Mayer: There are many accounts of how the Bush Administration took us down the road to torture in the War on Terror. This is the most definitive.

What will they say in Rush Limbaugh’s obituary?

Rush Limbaugh was hospitalized overnight with chest pains and I guess some folks have been kind of gleeful about that. Feh. I’m not the kind of guy to wish death or even pain on my political opponents — no matter how wrongheaded or even destructive to the discourse I believe them to be.

We have a very strong impulse as Americans — perhaps as humans — not to speak ill of the dead or dying. (Not that I think actually Limbaugh is dying. He will never be killed.) It’s why liberal historian Rick Perlstein could write about conservative impressario William F. Buckley being his “role model” upon Buckley’s passing in 2008. And plenty of conservatives found the time to offer up some graceful thoughts about Ted Kennedy during his decline and death.

Limbaugh, as we’ve already seen, will probably be different.

Buckley and Kennedy, as polarizing as they could be, were capable of having friendly relationships with their ideological opponents and — in Kennedy’s case — working with them to get things done. They were even capable of evolving over time. It didn’t make either man any less ideological. And both were capable of impugning the motives, honesty and integrity of their opponents when the time called for it. But neither man completely fit the ideological stereotyping their opponents tried to force upon them because, well, they were human and more complex than that.

It’s probable that Rush Limbaugh is more human and more complex than our view of him. It doesn’t matter quite as much in his case. He’s worked steadily, spectacularly, to be exactly what you’d expect him to be: Mean-spirited, sexist and bigoted. A hack who rarely — never, that I can remember — took an unexpected position, never really showed graciousness to his opponents, never conceded that anybody to his left might even have a smidgen of a point, never treated liberals with anything other than contempt, really. The ugly reaction to his hospitalization, really, is only a somewhat warped mirror image of the attitude he project at his opponents over the years.

As I wrote once: “Liberals could hardly invent a better bogeyman if they tried.”

So if Limbaugh ever dies — not that I think that’s even possible — you probably won’t see many Democratic politicians offering up sincere respects. They’ll probably just keep their mouths shut. Nobody’d ever believe the condolences anyway. Limbaugh, from a liberal’s point of view, has never done anything to merit them.

My Top 10 albums of the decade

I know. I’m not a music blogger. And I’m not as cool as Goldberg. Sue me. I listen to music. This is the stuff I liked the best. In no particular order…

• Gogol Bordello, Underdog World Strike. These guys put on one of the best live shows you’ll ever see…

• Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, 100 Days, 100 Nights. …unless you see Sharon Jones, a fiftysomething woman, jump and slink her way across a stage. Amy Winehouse can go to hell.

• Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. I can’t remember why this record seemed so weird to the record companies. Maybe it’s not easily genre-classifiable, but it’s good music. And unintentionally resonant in the aftermath of 9/11.

• Sufjan Stevens, Illinois. Perfect. I’m not a Christian, but the song “John Wayne Gacy Jr.” comes as close as any sermon or piece of art ever has to making me reconsider.

• Deep Thinkers, Necks Move. (KC rappers, friends of friends, and a ton of fun to listen to.)

• Radiohead Kid A/Amnesiac. (I realize that this isn’t technically a double album, and that they were released some months apart. But conceptually and sonically they fit together. They even have one song – “Morning Bell” – in common.)

• White Stripes, Elephant. Much as I love Radiohead, Jack White is probably the rock n’ roll artist of the decade.

• The Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. The Lips toured on this album by opening for Beck on his Sea Change tour. Totally blew him off the stage, revealing him (too me, at least) as the poncey too-precious music curator/archivist he is.

• Neko Case, Blacklisted. She’s gone on to bigger venues and album sales since this disc, but the first time I saw Neko Case was in a small packed Kansas club when she had two backup musicians: An upright bass player and steel guitarist Jon Rauhouse, one of the best players ever. I’d never heard her music before that night – a friend dragged me along – but somehow we got pushed to the front where I could see the roof of her mouth as she reared back her head and belted “Deep Red Bells.” What is this album? Americana? Alt country? It sounds like something you’d find in a David Lynch film trying to convey the skewed “normalcy” of rural American life. And it’s amazing.

• Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Fever To Tell. Short, punky and soulful. I can’t not listen to Karen O when she sings.

I know, I know. Embarrassingly caucasian. There ought to be some Outkast or Jay-Z or Lil Wayne on here, right? Probably. But this is the stuff I loved and returned to, again and again. It’s the stuff I like so much, in fact, that I’m almost afraid to play it too much — afraid that I’ll accidentally ruin a transcendent experience for myself if I bleed it out of the CD or iPod too quickly. Crazy, I know. But that’s what good music does to you.

My Top 10 blog posts of 2009

These were the traffic-getters:

A nice mix of politics and culture, no? It’s been a fun year. Thanks to those of you who read me regularly.

Federal court rules: Police can’t shoot unarmed and unthreatening people in the back with a Taser

I’m going to go ahead and say this qualifies as good news:

A federal appeals court this week ruled that a California police officer can be held liable for injuries suffered by an unarmed man he Tasered during a traffic stop. The decision, if allowed to stand, would set a rigorous legal precedent for when police are permitted to use the weapons and would force some law enforcement agencies throughout the state — and presumably the nation — to tighten their policies governing Taser use, experts said.

The unanimous ruling, issued Monday by a three-judge panel, stemmed from a 2005 encounter in which a former Coronado, Calif., police officer, Brian McPherson, stopped a man for failing to wear a seat belt while driving. The driver, Carl Bryan, who testified that he did not hear McPherson order him to remain in the car, exited the vehicle and stood about 20 feet away from the officer. Bryan grew visibly agitated and angry with himself, but did not make any verbal threats against McPherson, according to court documents. McPherson has said he fired his Taser when Bryan took a step toward him — a claim Bryan has denied.

That description of the incident actually is kind of a gloss. The court ruling itself — one of the more entertainingly written I’ve read in awhile — gives more details: Carl Bryan was barely clothed, so Officer McPherson knew that Bryan had no place “to secrete any weapons.” And here’s the real kicker: The evidence indicates that Bryan was actually facing away from McPherson when he was tased. That’s uncool, to say the least.

The court ruling establishes, basically, that a police officer can’t tase you merely for acting in a manner they don’t like or find inconvenient. You actually have to be acting in a threatening manner — and the simple assertion of a police officer doesn’t establish that threat. The facts have to support that.

The court writes:

While Bryan’s behavior created something of an unusual situation, this does not, by itself, justify the use of significant force. “A desire to resolve quickly a potentially dangerous situation is not the type of governmental interest that, standing alone, justifies the use of force that may cause serious injury.” Id. Rather, the objective facts must indicate that the suspect poses an immediate threat to the officer or a member of the public.”

Seems reasonable. Maybe this ruling is the beginning of the seemingly epidemic spate of incidents in which police use Tasers in obviously inappropriate situations. Then again, maybe not. But it’s good that a federal appeals court has decided to draw the line.

Dick Cheney should just shut up: A continuing series

He’s at it again:

“As I’ve watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war. He seems to think if he has a low key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of 9/11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won’t be at war.

“He seems to think if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core al Qaeda trained terrorists still there, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gets rid of the words, ‘war on terror,’ we won’t be at war. But we are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe. Why doesn’t he want to admit we’re at war? It doesn’t fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn’t fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency – social transformation—the restructuring of American society. President Obama’s first object and his highest responsibility must be to defend us against an enemy that knows we are at war.”

It’s interesting that in the immediate aftermath of the deadliest terrorist attack in American history, the reaction of Democrats was to rally behind a Republican president, proclaim unity against outside attackers and give him everything he wanted. But the failure of a much smaller-scale attack is used by Republicans to pound away at the idea that Democrats aren’t up to the task of defending the country.

I’m tempted to say it’s time for Democrats to start regularly and loudly comparing death tolls of Americans killed by Al Qaeda during Democratic and Republican administrations. I have no doubt Republicans would do it if 9/11 had happened, say, on President Clinton’s watch. But it still strikes me as intellectually dishonest; Al Qaeda has been attempting attacks on America during Dem and GOP administrations both. And if those attacks happened to be much, much, much deadlier while the Republicans were in charge of defending the country — well, that’s probably just a coincidence.

Terrorism, full body scans, condoms and how one TSA screener humiliated me

A few months ago I went through security at Philadelphia International Airport for a flight to Memphis. Something in my bag didn’t look right to the X-ray scanners, so it was pulled off the conveyor and I was summoned to a side table, where a TSA employee opened up my luggage and started to sift through my belongings.

Sure enough, among those belongings: A pack of condoms. I’m a little embarrassed to mention this publicly; when it comes to sex I still retain a bit of modesty. And I still get teen-style heebie jeebies trying to purchase prophylactics at a local drug store. But I’m even more interested in not fathering another child. Which is why the condoms were in my bag.

I do not remember, at this date, specifically what the TSA screener said. What I do remember is that he pulled the condoms out, giggled, made a couple of jokes about them to me — and waved them at another screener nearby while making another joke. It was, all in all, mildly humiliating. It was certainly unprofessional on the part of the TSA screener. And as far as I know, none of it served any security purpose.

I wouldn’t tell this story, except that the failed Christmas Day Crotch Bombing has revived interest in placing full body scanners at every airport. At the risk of oversimplifying, the technology would allow TSA screeners to peer through your clothing to see if you’re carrying any weapons — and, incidentally, how much (ahem) you’re packing. It’s like having the X-Ray glasses every teen boy ever dreamed of.

Which is fine with Conor Friedersdorf:

Admittedly, I’m an outlier here: my hatred for lines is such that I’d gladly walk a gauntlet of TSA employees completely naked were it offered as a speedy alternative to arriving at the airport two hours early and standing in line for 45 awful minutes. But don’t the people who are apparently uncomfortable with this get checkups at the doctor? Didn’t they take showers after gym class? Shouldn’t ‘t be far easier for the modest person to stay dressed while passing through a scanner being viewed by a TSA employee they’ll likely never see again? So long as faux-nudity isn’t irrationally fetishized, I don’t understand what the big deal is here.

Here’s the problem: Faux-nudity will be fetishized. Security professionals claim that the virtually-naked images won’t be stored — but does anybody really want to bet the over-under on how long it takes for some of those images to hit some creepy website somewhere?

The problem is that TSA screeners aren’t doctors, who have years of training on how to act professionally and a massive financial incentive to keep their jobs. And airport security isn’t the after-gym shower: In that case you might’ve been naked — but so was everybody else. The vulnerability was roughly equal. Not so in an airport security line.

It’s possible that we’ll decide full-body scans are a necessary tool to deter terrorists. And we will probably adjust. But when I think about the TSA screener who waved my condoms around to his friend, I know that abuse of a full-body scan by TSA screeners isn’t just a possibility — it’s a dead-on certainty.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s failed Christmas Day terror plot and the folly of war in Afghanistan

I suggested yesterday that the failed Christmas Day Crotch Bombing indicates the bankruptcy of trying to defeat Al Qaeda by occupying Afghanistan. A look at Umar Abdulmutallab’s history suggests more along these lines, indicating that his radicalization began … in Britain. John Burns writes in the Times:

In recent days, officials in Washington and London have said they are focusing on the possibility that his London years, including his possible contacts with radical Muslim groups then, were decisive in turning him toward Islamic extremism.

That view, if confirmed, would offer a stark reaffirmation that Britain, the United States’ closest ally, poses a major threat to American security. Critics say the British security forces have failed to adequately monitor and restrain the Islamic militancy that thrives in the vast network of mosques that serve the nation’s 1.5 million Muslims, and on university campuses across the country where nearly 100,000 of the 500,000 students are Muslims, including many, like Mr. Abdulmutallab, from overseas.

I think it’s safe to say we won’t be invading and occupying Britain. Nor should we.

There’s no silver bullet that will win the “War on Terror.” Truth is, it can’t be won — at least, not in the sense that we’ll completely deter every radical Muslim who dreams of inflicting damage on the United States. Which is why our investment in fighting that war should be proportionate to what’s possible — and directed toward efforts that have maximum effectiveness. The war in Afghanistan fails the test: tens of thousands of troops spending billions of dollars in a country where fewer than 100 Al Qaeda operatives are thought to be located. And it’s doing nothing to keep Al Qaeda from attempting attacks on America. It’s time to bring the troops home and focus on sustainable efforts to reduce and manage the risk of terrorism.

It’s time for President Obama to give up golf

Though it was kind of icky when President Bush revealed he’d given up golf as a measure of solidarity with American soldiers serving abroad, it really was a pretty smart decision on his part. You can look only so serious when you have moments like this:

For the same reason, it’s probably time for Barack Obama to give up golf. Michelle Cottle makes the case in The New Republic:

But just because other presidents have done it doesn’t mean there aren’t political risks involved. In the popular imagination, golf is the stuff of corporate deal-cutting, congressional junkets, and country club exclusivity. And, unless a president is very careful, a golf habit can easily be spun as evidence of unseemly character traits ranging from laziness to callousness to out-of-touch elitism. As a senator, John F. Kennedy scored political points on Eisenhower by mocking Ike’s golf obsession–while taking pains to keep his own golfing gifts under wraps.

Cottle also makes the case that golf is dying because dads who once spent the weekend roaming the links are now dutifully assisting their wives in shuttling their kids off to soccer games. I’m … dubious of that theory. Nonetheless, despite efforts to democratize the image of golf, it’s true that the sport still reeks of upper-class frivolity — not really the image the president should be peddling during a time of war and recession. That’s why the basketball games work for him: You don’t need a membership at a fancy club to get into a playground pickup game; anybody can do it. Probably a better message to send.