the random oracle

I came across two interesting articles today, here and here.  The first is by Charles McGrath and the second by Nicholas Kristof.  The first really pissed me off, and the second I found very encouraging.

The first one pissed me off because as usual the journalist takes a very (falsely) negative view of things.  Of course the first half of the article focuses on what the government did to “clean up” the city before the games, e.g. removing beggars and increasing security.  And of course this was reported from the point of view that these are all infringing on human rights etc. etc.  But what would the media have reported if the government hadn’t done such things?  That China is a dirty ugly mess.  Moreover, the main point of the article, that the Olympic volunteers are overwhelmingly young, is false.  I’ve been walking around Beijing for the last few days and I see tons of volunteers who have thoroughly grey hair, and they are just as warm, helpful, and proud of the Olympics as the young people are.  Now maybe there is some truth in the article, because the older volunteers don’t appear at Olympic venues or the more thoroughly touristed areas; I’ve encountered them more in residential areas that don’t attract the Olympic crowds.  But maybe the reason isn’t some ulterior age-ist agenda, and maybe it’s just that the younger volunteers are more proficient in English and would be better suited to dealing with so many foreigners?

The second I found encouraging because Kristof hits the nail on the head.  Foreign policy (not just American, but also Chinese, Japanese, British, Russian, you name it) is horribly biased towards “defense” and not building friendly relations.  We wouldn’t need all those fancy guns and missiles if we didn’t fear each other, and the fact that we spend hundreds of times more on the guns and missiles than on simple programs to promote understanding between nations is more than just a shame, it’s liable to be the death of us all.  Someone should make Kristof’s article required reading in every high school classroom.  It might be too late to change the mind of this generation but maybe we can convince the next generation that talking to and learning from each other is more productive than lobbing bombs.