David Foster

Sleeping with the Enemy

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The Age of Longing by Arthur Koestler

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Why has the western world shown such loss of will in defending itself from radical Islamic terrorism? Why, indeed, do substantial numbers of people–particularly those who view themselves as intellectuals–endlessly make excuses for dictatorships and terrorist movements whose values are completely at odds with their own stated values–and even romanticize these goons? I think some clues can be found in a forgotten novel by Arthur Koestler.

The Age of Longing (published in 1950) is set in Paris, “sometime in the 1950s,” in a world in which France–indeed all of western Europe–is facing the very real possibility of a Soviet invasion. Hydie Anderson, the protagonist, is a young American woman living in Paris with her father, a military attache. Hydie was a devout Catholic during her teens, but has lost her faith. She was briefly married, and has had several relationships with men, but in none of them has she found either physical or emotional satisfaction…she describes her life with a phrase from T S Eliot: “frigid purgatorial fires,” and she longs for a sense of connection:

Hydie sipped at her glass. Here was another man living in his own portable glass cage. Most people she knew did. Each one inside a kind of invisible telephone box. They did not talk to you directly but through a wire. Their voices came through distorted and mostly they talked to the wrong number, even when they lay in bed with you. And yet her craving to smash the glass between the cages had come back again. If cafes were the home of those who had lost their country, bed was the sanctuary of those who had lost their faith.

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Bottlenecking Generics

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You’d think that if someone seriously wanted to reduce health care costs in the U.S., he would want to streamline the approval process for generic drugs.

Just the opposite seems to have occurred.

Whereas five years ago the FDA typically approved a new generic drug within 16 months of the manufacturer’s application, the typical delay is now more than 26 months. The budget for the FDA’s generics office is only $51 million for 2010: up from 2009, but still clearly insufficient to meet the need. It’s hard to think of many ways that an additional $30 million or so could be invested with better near-term payoff on the nation’s collective medical bill.

Executives at a generics meeting joked that the government spends less on reviewing applications for new generic drugs than the New York Yankees spend on the payroll for the left side of their infield.

Faux Manufacturing Nostalgia

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Politicians, writers, and policy intellectuals talk a lot about “good manufacturing jobs” and how much “working families” have been hurt by the decline in the availability of such jobs. But back when such jobs were much more plentiful as a proportion of the total workforce, the social critics of the time were by no means uniformly enthusiastic about them.

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Closing Time?

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Here’s Citigroup, with 10 mega-themes that spell the end of Western dominance

On the other hand, here’s Joel Kotkin: Complaints of China’s ascent and the U.S.’ collapse are overly pessimistic

I’m reminded of a point that was made in a 1930s book on military strategy (edited by then-colonel George C Marshall: The enemy always has problems of his own of which you are unaware.

Not that China–still less India–is the enemy. Surely the economic development of the Far East is a good thing…indeed, it is wonderful that so many hundreds of millions of people have been rescued from desperate poverty, and surely it is good for us to have millions of more creative contributors to global economy. I’m more concerned with our own level of economic growth, and whether it can be sustained at a level necessary to deal with our problems without declining living standards and permanant long-term unemployment than I am with scorekeeping vis-a-vis China and India. Economically-dynamic countries should indeed be viewed as competitors, but also as customers, suppliers, and sources of knowledge and ideas. (For military as well as competitive reasons, relative position cannot be totally ignored, given the nature of the Chinese regime.)

So what say you? Who is more convincing, Citi or Kotkin?

(Kotkin link via Newmark’s Door)

Movie Review: “Dark Blue World”

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I learned about this Czech film a couple of years ago via screenwriter/blogger Robert Avrech. It’s not very well known in the U.S. and wasn’t then available on Netflix (though it is now), so I bought it, and just re-watched it…definitely a film worth seeing more than once. Friendship, love, and war, and some aspects of history that are probably unfamiliar to most Americans.

When Czechoslovakia was occupied by German troops in 1938, many Czech pilots made their way to the West and served with the Royal Air Force. After the war, surviving/returning pilots were imprisoned by Czechoslovakia’s new Communist government, which feared that they had been contaminated by Western ideas.

Franta Slama is a Czech air force captain. His younger protege and friend, Karel Vojtisek, is an aspiring fighter pilot. After the humiliating surrender of the airfield to an ungracious German officer, Franta and Karel escape the country via motorcycle. Franta leaves behind his girlfriend, Hanicka, and his beloved dog Barcha. Karel is not in a relationship, but is girl-crazy to a degree even greater that typical for his age.

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