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As a food writer, I should never admit this, but I really hate Thanksgiving. Not the day, not the food, not the cooking or the shopping, not even the sappy reason Americans ostensibly gather to gorge in late November. What makes me totally crazy is the persistent pressure to reinvent a wheel that has been going around quite nicely for more than 200 years. Every fall, writers and editors have to knock themselves out to come up with a gimmick—fast turkey, slow turkey, brined turkey, unbrined turkey—when the meal essentially has to stay the same. It's like redrawing the Kama Sutra when readers really only care about the missionary position.

The first recipe story I ever sold, 25 years ago, was pegged to Thanksgiving—a piece on ways to use cranberries besides the inevitable sauce, as if anyone would want them anywhere near steak or salad or anything but turkey. And it's been downhill ever since. I've done a healthful Thanksgiving, budget Thanksgiving, lavish Thanksgiving, ethnic Thanksgiving (Chinese sausage in rice dressing, anyone?), even the "real" first Thanksgiving (a re-creation of a Spanish event out in El Paso, Texas). Just in the last six years, I wrote on turkey at 33 rpm (ways to keep people at the table longer), turkey in a hurry (the whole meal, supermarket to dishwasher, whipped up at the last minute), turkey in a covered roaster (a revolution in Speckleware), appetizers that won't spoil your appetite, and a menu for an "after-party" using the turkey leftovers. I should have known the well was dry when I was persuaded to write an overwrought ode to the color of cranberries for the L.A. Times' wannabe literary turkey section last Thanksgiving.

During my short time as deputy editor of the New York Times' "Dining" section, the pain was different. Rather than writing the damn stories, I had to help generate ideas for the poor reporters to wrestle with. The general groaning started in early October as we all contemplated the worst deadline of the year. Christmas (and every other holiday) was a piece of fruitcake by comparison. Even at Easter, cooks have a choice between ham and lamb, and anything goes in the basket.

We whip ourselves into a lather trying to make Thanksgiving trendy, but no one really wants to mess with the hoariest menu. In a country that worships sickening candied yams under marshmallows, I know that almost no one will try something like sweet potatoes Anna—a gratin of thin slices layered with thyme, Aleppo pepper, and lots of butter. I can angst over a new recipe for shredded Brussels sprouts with fancy-pants pistachio oil and know for certain that most tables will be disgraced by green bean casserole with onions from a can. I can't begin to count the number of alternatives to cranberry sauce I have developed—salsa, chutney, whatever—yet most cooks will blithely follow the recipe on the Ocean Spray bag (which is actually pretty hard to beat). The more we make ourselves insane in mucking with the classics, the nuttier we make our audience. Every story purporting to take the stress out of the day actually reinforces the notion that the easiest feast of the year is the most harrowing. When you think about it, Thanksgiving is not so different from a roast chicken dinner with sides. You can't screw it up; there are too many saving graces for even an under- or overcooked turkey. But that's not the message anyone absorbs from all the magazines and newspapers with their absurdly perfect birds garnished with overkill.

I guess I'm a total hypocrite, though, because I do the work I'm assigned each year and then get up on Thanksgiving morning and ignore everything I wrote. I make my stuffing as usual, roast my turkey as always, whisk up the same pan gravy, peel and mash potatoes, don't get fancy with the cranberry sauce, and cook whatever green vegetable looks best at the farmers' market. If I have time this year I'll make pumpkin-thyme dinner rolls and the sweet potato-pecan pie I have baked 20 times before. It's amazing how efficient you can be without new recipes. And if I'm thankful, it's because it will be months before it's time to tweak the turkey yet again.

Last week, I logged onto 60 Minutes' Web site to watch Barack Obama's first post-election interview. About 20 minutes into the show, the screen faded to a commercial: A middle-aged man is digging through his attic when he comes across a box marked "wedding stuff." A mischievous smile crosses his face, and next thing you know he's decked out in his old powder-blue tuxedo, skipping downstairs to present his still-dishy wife with a bouquet of roses. Yes, this was an ad for Viagra. For the next 45 seconds, the couple danced around their house while an announcer warned of the dangers of drug interactions and four-hour erections. While they engaged in safe-for-work foreplay, I switched over to my e-mail.

Eventually, Steve Kroft returned with 15 more minutes of the Obama interview. Then another commercial: A middle-aged man is digging through his attic when he comes across a box marked "wedding stuff." Mischievous smile, powder-blue tux, roses, dancing, four-hour erection. By now I'd committed some of the ad's signature lines to memory, making a mental note to ask my doctor whether my heart is healthy enough for sex. Finally, 60 Minutes returned. A few closing thoughts from Obama and then, just before Andy Rooney, one more ad break. Mischievous smile, powder-blue tux, roses, dancing, four-hour erection.

At this point, I hated everything about priapic blue-tux guy. I hated his self-satisfied grin as he struck an Elvis pose for his wife, I hated that she couldn't see him for the sex fiend he obviously was (why had he taken the blue pill if he'd only been planning on cleaning the attic?), and I hated that he'd helped lodge a stupid erectile-dysfunction jingle in my brain ("Vi-vaaaaaa Vi-agra!"). Most of all, though, I hated Pfizer's sales tactics. Why did the company believe that I was a ripe candidate for Viagra? And worse, why did it think that the best way to sell me the drug was to repeat the same ad three times, as if my real problem weren't erectile dysfunction but, rather, some kind of cognitive deficit that prevented me from understanding its message the first time. By the time the announcer told me for the third time that old couples "have a groovy thing goin' on," I'd had enough. Next time I get aroused while cleaning the attic, I'll reach for Cialis.

Pfizer and 60 Minutes aren't alone in this ad-repetition business. More than a year ago, I canceled my cable subscription, figuring I could get all the TV I needed through Netflix and the Web. This has worked out well enough: These days, you can find just about every prime-time show on Hulu or one of the networks' Web sites. There's only one problem: The ads are driving me crazy. Sure, I'm thrilled that there are fewer ads on the Web than on television, where every hourlong program is padded with about16 minutes of commercials. On the Web, I'm served only two or three minutes of ads per show, but those few minutes are often excruciating. Online video ads are repetitive, banal, completely unsuited to the speed and tone of the Web, and—for a medium rich with personalization—often clueless about my interests and tastes. The ads haven't made me turn away from Web video, but they do frequently sour me on the products and services being advertised.

The first problem is variety. Advertisers like to buy up a whole show's worth of commercials (as Pfizer did with 60 Minutes), but many times they don't produce enough different spots to fill up the block. This is partly for budgetary reasons. The Web is a new medium, and for many advertisers it's an afterthought to TV. The ads that companies put up on the Web are bastardizations—longer or shorter versions of 30-second spots first created for the tube.

For instance, consider Research in Motion. The manufacturer of the BlackBerry is a huge online advertiser, but the company has produced only a handful of Web ads. In each one, various unobjectionable pictures and logos depicting suburban life—kids playing ball, dogs running, happy people on vacation—all meld together to form a BlackBerry phone. What the announcer says next should not really offend anyone; rendered in print, the words look innocent: "Connect to everything you love in life with BlackBerry." But trust me. Hear that phrase three or four dozen times and it begins to take on an air of menace. You become attuned to the precise, demonic intonation in the voice-over. Am I paranoid to think that the announcer is laughing at me—is she having a good time taunting me with the same nearly meaningless phrase over and over and over again? I think I've seen this ad roughly 17,000 times; it ran relentlessly in an episode of The Office I recently watched on Hulu. It does not endear BlackBerry to me.

Some of this repetition is by design. Anthony Soohoo, CBS Interactive's senior vice president for entertainment, told me that advertisers choose to air the same ad many times during Web shows in an effort to boost effectiveness. This logic sounds like a holdover from the past: On TV, where any given spot is squeezed in among other ads for different companies, repeating a message may help break through the noise. But on the Web you rarely see two different ads side by side—there's often just one commercial per break. When an ad stands alone, everything about it becomes more noticeable. And if the ad sucks, having it stand out isn't a good thing. I'm sure I've seen commercials for Totino's Pizza Rolls on TV and never scrutinized them closely. But it took just two Web viewings for me to recognize that "The pizza way to snack!" is perhaps the laziest ad copy ever written.

The shame about all this is that the Web should allow for much more creativity than TV. The Internet lets advertisers track a viewer like me over time, noting which programs and ads I watch and which I ignore—technology that, in theory, should let companies show me ads tailored to my general tastes. Advertisers can also break with TV conventions. Instead of running three minute-long Viagra ads during 60 Minutes, Pfizer could have aired six 30-second spots in sequence, perhaps telling a story—of desire, loss, sadness, epiphany, and finally rejuvenation—over the course of the commercial breaks. If done well, this conceit would keep people watching; for Viagra, especially, advertising on the Web might be liberating, allowing for messages that are more suggestive and risqué than Pfizer could ever get away with on TV. And such creativity doesn't come at a steep price. Audiences on the Web are used to low-fi video, found footage, and allusions to other stuff online. Corporations might take a page from the Obama campaign, which ran many cheaply produced Web ads that featured viral videos, old movies, man-on-the-street interviews shot by hand-held cameras, and sincere testimonials from real people. This last method could be especially fruitful; the best Web videos (think Numa Numa, the Star Wars kid, the laughing baby, or Evolution of Dance) are those that seem authentically surprising. Imagine a Viagra ad featuring real men talking about how Viagra has changed their lives—wouldn't that get your attention over blue-tux guy?

In addition to Obama's videos, I'd recommend that anyone looking to produce ads for the Web consult the Onion's video site. The satirical newspaper does two things well with the ads it runs alongside its hilarious videos. First, it puts the ad in the right place—they run after, rather than before, the Onion's own content. Because the ad isn't standing in the way of your video, it doesn't annoy you as much—which is not only good for you, but good for the advertiser, too. The Onion can afford to do this because the ads it runs are pretty good—many reflect the Onion's sense of humor, and are almost as entertaining as the videos themselves. This approach reflects how the Web works: It's not important how many people see your ad, but how many people like your ad. If people respond positively to what you're shilling, they'll talk about the ad and pass it around; if people hate it, they'll click away—or, worse, decide never to buy your wares. On the Web, there's always something better to do than watch an ad.

Fortunately, a few others in the online video business are starting to figure this out. J.P. Colaco, Hulu's senior vice president of advertising, told me that his company's main goal is usability—the future of TV on the Web, he says, is fewer ads per show, with each advertiser paying high rates in order to target a compatible audience. Hulu is working with advertisers to reduce repetition; the company even has an in-house creative department to help advertisers come up with more Web-savvy ads, including ads that tell a story over a series of commercial breaks. Hulu is also developing algorithms to run ads that are tailored to your taste. As of now, each ad on Hulu features thumbs-up and thumbs-down buttons. The buttons don't do much now, but, in time, they will. If I click thumbs-down on every car ad, Hulu will realize I'm not interested in cars—and I'm not interested in that damned blue-tux guy, either.

Last summer, the Florence Nightingale Museum in London announced a holiday program for children. It ran like this: "Daily-changing drop-in activities include crafting a pattern lantern like the one made famous by the Lady with the Lamp, designing a lace bonnet like Flo's, drawing a family portrait book based on images of the Nightingale family on display in the museum, and working with an artist to create a watercolour picture of a germ." Meanwhile, across London the Serpentine Gallery was hosting a retrospective of Richard Prince's avant-gardist art, including recent work that repaints the covers of pulp novels about nurses. In stiff white gowns and tidy caps, with masks across their mouths and beneath their staring eyes, Prince's nurses (appearing under such titles as "Student Nurse," "Mission Nurse," "Runaway Nurse," and "Dude Ranch Nurse") are semi-lurid, often bloodied, and, above all remote, unsettled, opaque. Who are these nurses? What are they after?

Between sweet sentimentality and strange opacity is where Florence Nightingale lives today. Now, as back then, her reputation is tended by devoted admirers, who esteem her as the founder of modern nursing, a paragon of public service, the exemplary heroine. But already in its mid-Victorian origins there was a counter-mythology that grew and flourished in the 20^th century. It never got as edgy as Prince's nurses, but it was full of subversive implication about her sexuality, her hypochondria, her will to power. What did Nightingale want? And what did the culture want with her? The subtitle of Mark Bostridge's new biography is The Making of an Icon, and his book splendidly charts the astonishing arc of her celebrity. Even more intently, though, it follows Nightingale's passionate, obstinate self-making. The biographic record gives us no reason to believe she set out to create a legend for herself or even to achieve reputation on the small scale. Accidents of history placed her in the hanging cage of celebrity.

The shelves are cluttered with biographies of Nightingale; Bostridge's won't be the last, but for now it's surely the best. He shows great care with the overwhelming mass of material (all the published and unpublished writing, all the density of such a long life), sorting subtle personal relationships tactfully, and never pressing such a large and angular life into chewable tablets of hypothesis. He knows that every surface of Nightingale has been written up and covered over, but he efficiently steers free from both the hagiographers and the cynics who preceded him. Without straining for novelty or original synthesis, Bostridge aims for (and achieves) accuracy, coherence, balance, readability, and accumulating force. But what makes for underground excitement in the book is that the subject, F.N., lives out the spectacle and excess of her life while the author maintains the discipline of his equanimity. Her life pulls toward grand gestures and eccentricity; his account stands for fairness and sympathy. We should all be so lucky with those who think about us.

Nightingale has been marked and branded as one of the Victorians, furiously earnest and exhaustingly brisk. To open her Notes on Nursing (1860) is to snap immediately to attention and begin washing your hands. "Windows are made to open; doors are made to shut"; "[a] dark house is always an unhealthy house, always an ill-aired house, always a dirty house." She worked to save wounded soldiers in the Crimean War (1854-1856), and then the ambitions grew: to reform the management of health throughout the army, to train professional nurses of the future and domestic nurses in the present, to transform the architecture of hospitals, to improve the health of those bringing empire to the subcontinent and, finally, to all of India. She worked herself into a frenzy, then into exhaustion, and then back to frenzy. (She called her life "a fever.") A few close relatives and friends—including an aunt, a cousin, and poet Arthur Hugh Clough, whom she was accused of working to death—devoted themselves to her causes and her campaigns, which in her last four decades of life she largely directed from her bed.

But Nightingale should also be seen as one of us moderns. Nothing is more striking than her contempt for the weight of tradition and authority, her demand that we modernize our lives and transform the social world at its roots. To be serious about nursing is to consider all the circumstances that keep us from flourishing, to preserve the health of families and cities, as well as the health of the body. The goal of nursing is to heal the world. Above this grand mission stands God, but a god of her own compounding. His laws are the laws of science, and we can only serve his purposes by working, working, working—struggling without rest for the visible public good. The call is to an endless labor that we must perform on our own with nothing to sustain us but the rousing of our own conviction. The exhaustion that Nightingale felt, and that her biography stirs in us, is the modern exhaustion of the fully self-assigned life.

It's such a story, this life, and it comes in three oddly shaped acts. For a long time, much too long, Nightingale struggled against her family: its upper-middle-class complacency, its conventionality. Music, needlework, drawing-room chatter, the management of servants—these were the tasks for unmarried daughters. And in the 1840s, just when the young Florence fixed on nursing as her vocation, it was a deeply despised form of labor, recently made grotesque (though hilarious) in the person of Dickens' Sairey Gamp (Martin Chuzzlewit, 1844): the illiterate, inebriated fantasist, the prattling night thief with an imaginary friend. The genteel Nightingales could hardly imagine, and certainly could not abide, their respectable daughter stepping down the rungs of class to take up the mantle of nursing. Florence could imagine almost nothing else. The first long chapter in her life is a story of demand and resistance, Florence intent to become a nurse and her family, especially her sister (Parthenope) and mother (Fanny), refusing to unbend. They discouraged her from visiting hospitals; they prohibited her training; they called her back to the drawing room. But she was unsubdued and unreconciled. The struggle continued for years, until it became clear that the misery of the family would only worsen if Florence were not somehow accommodated.

Chapter 2 then appears in a flash. In the spring of 1853, she at last began work in London as superintendent in an institution tending "elderly gentlewomen." By the fall of 1854 she was in Turkey, leading a team of nurses at the war hospital at Scutari. In February 1855, the Illustrated London News portrayed her as the lady with a lamp, and by the end of the year her fame was an avalanche, a torrent, an inundation. But then, soon after her return from the war in 1856—when her "saintliness" was an antidote to the embarrassment of an ill-managed war and when her reputation was rivaling the queen's—the third chapter began. Nightingale refused the apparatus of fame. She kept her distance from the family, which now exulted in her success. ("They like my glory. … Is there anything else they like in me?") Physical collapse overcame her; she surrendered interest in her own practice of nursing; she retreated to the Burlington Hotel, and there, as at various other addresses, she lived mainly as an invalid for the rest of her long life.

Bostridge's account is such a good one because it breaks the grip of simplicity. Why did we ever want to keep Nightingale in a box? Why was it so important to make her saintly? And why did it feel amusing to call her a hypocrite? There were all those early idolaters, those mid-Victorians who named their children "Florence," who subscribed to the Nightingale Fund, who wrote letters to thank her and poems to celebrate her, and who made her an icon of all that was selfless in womanhood. Then there were the mockers and insinuators of later decades, Lytton Strachey above all, who in Eminent Victorians saw her as twisted into the shape of her obsessions. But thanks to Bostridge—to his unbroken nontendentious curiosity—we can have a Nightingale of our own, a mixed life, too complicated for veneration or satire.

The most memorable and indigestible thing about Florence Nightingale is finally the ferocity of her self-determination. ("No one has ever done anything great or useful by listening to the voices from without"—"I can bray so loud.") No will could be more concentrated or vehement or relentless. There in the service of others—always writing and working for the public good—she never broke free from self-assertion and self-righteousness, but also never from a clawing self-laceration. Her deepest motives? Do you really want to know them? Will we be any clearer—about Nightingale or our own call to service—if we settle questions of her desire, her ambition, her charity, her cruelty, her energy? Precisely by not settling such questions, Bostridge has told the story well, so well that we know we'll never be finished with Nightingale, not even when all the Dude Ranch Nurses have gone home to mama.

Reading the Quran can be a baffling experience. Unlike the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), the Quran is not a collection of books recounting the mythical history of a community of faith. It is not, like the Gospels, a pseudo-biographical sketch of a particular prophet in a particular time. It does not narrate the life of Mohammed, nor does it chronicle the rise of Islam (indeed, Mohammed is barely mentioned in it). Though the Quran is divided into 114 chapters (called suras), these are arranged neither thematically nor chronologically but rather from longest to shortest, the lone exception being the first and most important chapter, al-Fatiha, or "The Opening." The chapters are given evocative titles like "The Cow" or "The Feast," but these have almost nothing to do with the content that follows. The Quran itself states that its verses have multiple meanings, some of which are unfathomable to human beings and known only to God. And yet, in both style and content, the Quran is unique among scriptures.

The words of the Quran are thought to be infused with divine power. Muslims believe it to be the actual speech of God handed down through Mohammed between 610 and 632 CE. The physical book—its cover and pages—is considered sacred and is to be handled only in a state of purity. Its verses are inscribed on buildings and tombs in order to sanctify them. They are placed in lockets and worn as amulets to ward off evil. They are etched into cups so that when one drinks from them one consumes God's divine power. The mere act of writing out the words of the Quran—the art of Islamic calligraphy—has been elevated into the supreme artistic expression in the Muslim world.

The inherent sacredness of the Quran has historically created an unusual problem for many Muslims. Since the end of the seventh century CE, when its verses were collected into a single, authoritative canon, the Quran has remained fixed in Arabic, the language in which it was originally revealed. It was believed that translating the Quran into any other language would violate the divine nature of the text. Translations were done, of course. But to this day, non-Arabic versions of the Quran are considered interpretations of the Quran. Unless the original Arabic verses are embedded on the page, it cannot technically be called a Quran.

The consequences of this belief are obvious. For much of the last 14 centuries, some 90 percent of the world's Muslims for whom Arabic is not a primary language had to depend on Islam's clergy—all of them men, as women are not allowed to enter the clergy—to define the meaning and message of the Quran for them, much as pre-Reformation Christians had to rely on priests to read them the Bible, which at the time was available only in Latin. That is now changing. Over the last century, the Quran has been translated into more languages than in the previous 14 centuries combined. A great many of these translations have been done not by Muslim clergy but by scholars and academics, by Muslim laity and non-Muslims, and, perhaps most significantly, by women. (The first English translation of the Quran by an American woman, Laleh Bakhtiar, was published in 2007.)

Arabic is a language whose words can have multiple, sometimes contradictory, meanings, so how one chooses to render a particular word from Arabic to English has a lot to do with one's biases or prejudice. Take the following example from Sura 4:34, which has long been interpreted as allowing husbands to beat their wives: "As for those women who might rebel against you, admonish them, abandon them in their beds, and strike them (adribuhunna)." The problem, as a number of female Quranic scholars have noted, is that adribuhunna can also mean "turn away from them." It can even mean "have sexual intercourse with them." Obviously, which definition the translator chooses will be colored by whatever his or her preconceived notions are about a husband's authority. The new crop of Quran translators are brushing aside centuries of traditionalist, male-dominated, and often misogynistic clerical interpretations in favor of a more contemporary, more individualized, and often more gender-friendly approach to the Quran. In the process, they are not only reshaping the way Islam's holy book is read; they are reinterpreting the way Islam itself is being understood in the modern world.

The latest entry into this cornucopia of Quran translations comes from eminent professor of Islamic history Tarif Khalidi, who is currently at the American University of Beirut. Written in what Khalidi calls "measured modern English," his is an eloquent and eminently readable translation, but one that does not stray too far from other conventional English versions of the Quran. (Khalidi, like the majority of his male predecessors, renders the word adribuhunna as "beat them.") However, Khalidi's Quran is unique in that it is divided not into individual verses, as is the case with all other Qurans, no matter their language, but rather into clusters of three, four, or five verses at a time. In other words, he bundles the individual verses into lengthy paragraphs that are rendered in both prose and poetry. This may perturb those trying to pinpoint a particular verse (Khalidi does provide occasional verse markers on the margins of each page to let readers know where they are in the text), but the overall effect is that Khalidi's Quran probably reads much closer to the way the first Muslims originally experienced the Quran.

The Quran literally means the recitation, an indication that this was a text meant to be heard, not read. That may explain why the Quran was never written down in Mohammed's lifetime. Instead, the revelations were diligently memorized by a class of religious scholars called the Qurra (or "Quran readers"), who then disseminated God's words to the rest of the Muslim community in short, easy-to-remember bursts of prophecy. A few of the most important revelations—those dealing with legal or economic matters—were preserved on bits of bone or scraps of leather. But the bulk of the Quran was not collected into a single volume until about 50 years after Mohammed's death. Only then was the revelation divided into individual verses.

This made it extremely difficult to place the Quran's verses, which had been revealed to Mohammed over a 22-year span, into historical context, much less chronological order. And so the compilers of the Quran did not bother doing either. Instead, they gathered up all of the revelations and recorded them in what can be described only as random order. This was a deliberate choice on their part. Muslims perceive the Quran as God's dramatic monologue, recorded without a human filter. (According to traditional Islamic theology, the Prophet Mohammed was merely a passive conduit through which the words of God flowed.) For the compilers of the Quran to have provided any explanation or commentary to the text, for them to have organized the verses in any deliberate way—whether chronologically or thematically—would have, in their minds, interfered with the direct revelation of God. As a consequence, those who are unfamiliar with the early history of Islam, or who may not recognize the historical allusions or contextual references that assist scholars in their exegesis, can feel rudderless trying to navigate through this challenging book.

In the introduction to his Quran, Khalidi admits that "the very allusiveness of the text, its impersonality, its meta-historical tone, seem almost deliberately to de-emphasize context." But he also seems to imply that it is natural to be confused by what we read. It is through the attempt to make sense of our confusions, to work through them with reason and with faith, that the Quran's dramatic monologue transforms into an eternal dialogue between humanity and God. Indeed, of all the sacred texts of the world, Khalidi argues that the Quran is perhaps the one that most self-consciously invites the reader to engage with it, to challenge it, to ponder and to debate it. After all, as the Quran itself states, only God knows what it truly means.

"If the issue was to ... get by the point where the market is rattled wondering which big institution will go down next, I think on a scale of one to 10 we are very close to 10."



—Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, quoted in the Nov. 24 Wall Street Journal, page R8



"Bailout Talks Accelerate for Ailing Citigroup"



—Banner Page One headline, same newspaper, same day

Bonus Contradiction:

"Fed Has More Ammuniton Afte Firing Rate-Cut Bullets"



—Headline for "Outlook" column, same newspaper, same day, Page A2



"The Fed Is out of Ammunition"



—Headline for op-ed column, same newspaper, same day, Page A19

"Fed Has .

.

.

In the Nov. 20 "Jurisprudence," Dafna Linzer mistakenly stated that Ted Stevens has served in the Senate for 50 years. He has served for 40 years. The article also misspelled Ted Olson's name.

In a Nov. 19 "Explainer," Abby Callard stated that Michel Martin was a correspondent for ABC News and NPR. She hosts NPR's Tell Me More and is no longer affiliated with ABC News.

In the Nov. 18 "DVD Extras," Gary Giddins spelled Marion Mack's name incorrectly.

In a Nov. 18 "Politics," Josh Levin incorrectly stated that Florida State missed the BCS title game in 2000-01 despite beating Miami. It was Miami that missed the title game despite beating Florida State.

There's a scene midway through Twilight, the new 'tween vampire flick, in which the heroine, Bella, arrives at the vampire Edward's house—a bright, spare, Modernist home that seems stocked with Calphalon pans and furniture from Design Within Reach. She looks around wonderingly. "What did you expect?" he says. "Coffins and dungeons and moats?" It's a familiar scene to anyone who knows vampire movies: the part where the vampire (or vampire expert) turns myth-buster and explains what vampires are really like.

A perfect example is this exchange from HBO's True Blood. "I thought you were supposed to be invisible in a mirror," marvels Anna Paquin's Sookie, reclining in a bathtub. Sorry, says her vampiric love interest, Bill. "What about Holy water?" she asks. "It's just water." "Crucifixes?" "Geometry." "Garlic?" "It's irritating, but that's pretty much it." Irritating, indeed.

Vampire myth-busters are a cocky lot. Take this scene from Blade, when vampire hunter Wesley Snipes explains "vampire anatomy 101" to his new protégée. "Crosses and holy water don't do d---, so forget what you've seen in the movies," he says. "You use a stake, silver, or sunlight. You know how to use one of these?" He shows her a gun. "Silver hollow point filled with garlic. Aim for head or the heart. Anything else is your ass."

Or consider this exchange from the Twilight books: "How can you come out during the daytime?" asks Bella. "Myth," says Edward, her fanged paramour. "Burned by the sun?" "Myth." "Sleeping in coffins?" "Myth." Being smug jerks? True!

The list goes on. In Interview With the Vampire, the bloodsucker Louis corrects his interviewer on the rumor about vampires being afraid of crosses. "That is, how would you say today … b-------?" (Same goes for stakes through the heart.) In I Am Legend, the vampire book on which the Will Smith movie was based, the narrator dismisses Dracula as "a hodgepodge of superstitions and soap-opera clichés." For example, vampires are vulnerable to garlic and sunlight, but the mirror stuff is bunk. In the Last Vampire book series by Christopher Pike, sunlight doesn't kill the undead protagonist—it just makes her age at a normal rate.

What's with all the rule-rewriting? And why are vampires always crowing about it?

Vampire mythology has never been set in stone—nor has any mythology, for that matter. The folklore that eventually became modern vampire fiction varied even more wildly in past centuries than in current-day stories. Ancient Greek mythology features women who seduce men and drink their blood; in southern Africa, there is the impundulu, a giant blood-sucking bird that controls the weather; Latin American folklore has the fanged chupacabra, a scaled reptile-kangaroo monster that drains the blood from goats. It wasn't until the 19^th century, with the publication of stories like Polidori's The Vampyre, Le Fanu's Carmilla, and Bram Stoker's Dracula, that vampire became synonymous with "fanged, Euro, coffin-dwelling Goth." But even in these books, the attributes vary—Polidori's Lord Ruthven can go out during the daytime, but sunlight weakens Count Dracula.

The modern reworkings of the genre are traceable to a few different factors. For one thing, rewriting the rules is just good storytelling. Upending conventions lets you surprise the audience. You thought garlic was going to ward off the boss vampire? Sorry. You planned to kill him with that little piece of sharpened wood? Good luck. These days, you'll see vampires slapping crosses out of the way more often than shrinking in fear. Variations on the vampire rules also make for some clever plot twists. For example (spoiler alert!), in 30 Days of Night, Josh Hartnett notices that once bitten, victims become vampires right away—but they don't become evil vampires for a few hours. He therefore injects vampire blood into his veins so he can fight them off and save his wife. True Blood also has a smart twist on the myth-busting trope: The vampires started the myths themselves. "If the humans thought they couldn't see us in a mirror," explains vampire Bill, "it was another way for us to prove we weren't vampires." Plus, tweaking the rules is part of the appeal of genre fiction—authors have a template to play with, so every minor variation they make becomes loaded with meaning.

These expository scenes are also common because vampires are so darn chatty. All monster myths vary, after all. Sometimes zombies are fast, sometimes they're slow, and it always seems to take a different tactic to kill them. But zombies can't talk, so they can't haughtily explain to you why they're not like all the other zombies. They just chomp your face. Vampires, on the other hand, are the biggest self-promoters around: They can't stop talking about themselves.

Another factor is changing censorship rules. Believe it or not, vampires were not always sexy (although sexuality was part of the mix as early as Carmilla). The original Dracula film came out in 1931, a year after the Hays Code was put in place. So they shot two versions—one chaste English version for American audiences and one Spanish-language version for distribution in Mexico. The women in the foreign version wear lower-cut dresses. Hot vampires really broke out in the 1950s in the British Hammer horror films and finally made it to the United States once the Hays Code was dropped in the late 1960s, clearing the way for Andy Warhol's take on vampire sex.

Technology also plays a role in vampire transformations. Vampire films got gorier once color film made it clear they were drinking blood, not oil. Shoddy makeup on high-quality film stock sometimes made fangs unconvincing. One director, Mario Bava, decided to scrap them entirely—the vampires in the 1960 flick Black Sunday are, like the Hays Code at that time, toothless. Technology within the films plays a role, too. In recent vampire stories, science is the new magic. In I Am Legend, it's the "vampiris germ" that causes vampirism. ("You see, the bacillus is a facultative saprophyte," we're told, which is supposed to explain why a stake causes a vampire to dissolve into dust.) In Underworld, it's a genetic mutation. And as technology evolves, so do vampire-slaying methods. Blade's garlic-filled bullets are nothing compared with the bullets from Underworld that are filled with—kid you not—daylight.

Other variations are introduced because, well, they're totally sweet. The vampires in 30 Days of Night are more feral than human, with their own creepy language and two rows of shark teeth. Needless to say, they don't leave two dainty dimples in the neck. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, meanwhile, features an elaborate universe of humans, vampires, demons, werewolves, slayers, and "watchers." (Sometimes, they sing.) Underworld creates a deep mythology about a war between werewolves and vampires. In Guillermo Del Toro's Cronos, the vampire isn't human at all—it's a tiny mechanical beetle.

But the biggest reason for all the myth-busting has to do with creating a believable world. It may seem odd to explode the myth about crosses in one scene while positing that vampire blood is a sex drug in the next—neither myth is believable, taken alone. But stomping on old myths heightens the realism. It's a way of acknowledging the silliness of most vampire stories while distancing yours from the rest. We know vampire tales are childish, it says. This one is not. That's why you'll always have a character saying he doesn't believe in vampires—the filmmakers know that's what you're thinking, too. The myth-busting scene is therefore a necessary ritual. By rewriting the rules every time, you ask viewers to invest themselves in this story, not in the last vampire movie they saw.

All genres evolve, and in this respect vampire films are nothing special. But vampires seem to relish deviating from their conventions more than most. At the very least, it keeps the genre fresh for Lesbian Kung-Fu Robot Vampire Killers From Space.

It's a discovery worthy of a murder mystery: In a parking lot in the mountains outside Santa Cruz, Calif., a truck is found abandoned, the keys still hanging in the door. Inside the police find … a note? A body?

Not quite. Try 13,000 pieces of undelivered mail.

The recent discovery in Bonny Doon, Calif., of a former mail carrier's old stash was not exactly unprecedented. There's also the recent arrest of a Detroit postal carrier who squirreled away 9,000 pieces of mail into a storage locker, a work dodge worthy of a Seinfeld plot. A week earlier, a postman was nailed for hoarding 27,000 letters in Leeds, England; the week before that revealed a postal hoarder with 20,000 letters in Frankfurt, Germany. ("[He] didn't deliver mail addressed to himself either," a police statement dryly noted.) And all of them were dwarfed by the North Carolina postman who admitted in August to filling his garage and burying in his backyard nearly a tractor trailer's worth of undelivered junk mail.

But the hoarding and abandonment of mail is a phenomenon that extends at least back to 1874, when Providence, R.I., postman Benjamin Salisbury was caught throwing mail into the ocean "to avoid the trouble of delivery." Some things don't change much; a Long Island postman used the same MO in 1954, when he blamed a bum leg from the war for forcing him to dump his mail off a local pier. The scheme kind of worked … until the tide came in.

In 2006, the last year the U.S. Postal Service released figures, there were 515 arrests and 466 convictions for "internal theft." That figure includes abandonment and hoarding cases, where the motive has remained constant since the days of penny postage: A worker gets overwhelmed or simply disinclined to finish his route. "It's not a huge issue," Agapi Doulaveris of the U.S. Office of the Inspector General told me. "We work on referrals."

And there's the rub: For a referral to happen, first someone has to notice.

The deliveries affected are often what the U.S. Postal Service now terms "standard mail"—and what the rest of us call "junk." With the railroad-driven growth in catalogs, postal abandonment stories were already common by the 1880s. The New York Times complained of mailmen burning their bundles and in 1883 ran the immortal headline "To Deliver His Letters Some Time" after the discovery of a mailman's old stash in the basement of an Upper East Side saloon.

For a mail-sack slacker, there's a dark allure to hoarding junk. Think about it: If someone's first-class mail with paychecks or credit card bills doesn't show up, they're liable to complain. But if the umpteenth Eddie Bauer catalog doesn't arrive, well … who's gonna notice?

So, who does notice? The discovery of hoards follows some common narratives: They've been caught by meter readers, by housesitters feeding a rabbit for a vacationing postman, and by state troopers making traffic stops. A number of "dead-letter cars"—old clunkers filled up like a junk-mail piñatas—have been discovered by mechanics and used-car dealers. And a number of cases are broken after the stashed mail catches fire: In 1974, back-to-back cases a week apart yielded 1,200 sacks of mail in a Louisville, Ky., attic and another tractor-trailer load in a burning attic in suburban Connecticut.

Discovery becomes more likely in cases where a rogue carrier indiscriminately tosses both first-class mail and junk. In 1978, the postmaster of Roxbury, Conn., was retired after postal inspectors in a late-night raid found letters in the central office's trash cans. Among the locals, both Arthur Miller and William Styron were missing mail. "I have had over the years a large amount of mail for a well-known writer—I guess that's the term," Styron mused afterwards to the New York Times. "And in the last year and a half I've been saying to myself, 'Well, is my stock declining?' "

All these cases, however, bow before the Chicago mail scandals of 1994. Ranked dead last among cities in postal customer satisfaction, that year Chicago found itself on the receiving end of hoard stories seemingly every week. Letters burning under a railway viaduct, letters rotting under a porch, letters stuffed into a dumpster: The stuff was even found hiding at the post office itself. The post office, indeed, was as much a problem as the individual carriers: "Complaint lines might ring as often as 85 times without being answered. …" noted reporter Charles Nicodemus. "Mammoth mounds of undelivered mail were found at several stations—including one pile 800 feet long, nearly the length of three football fields."

It seemed an almost inevitable coda when, five years later, a final Chicago stash caught fire in a home and took down its mailman with it.

To be fair, the problem is not peculiar to the United States. Postal hoards turn up everywhere from Norway to Malaysia, where a postal worker caught hoarding 21,255 letters complained, "Why should I deliver the letters when I am being paid less than 500 Ringgit?" He might have taken a lesson from Italy, which gamed the practice to squeeze some money out of it: In 1974, the Poste Italiane was caught selling new mail to paper-pulp plants for $14 a ton. "Most of the mail has now been turned into cheap cardboard suitcases," the Times of London reported. Shamed by the resulting outcry, the postal service then resorted to stuffing letters into unofficial "ghost trains" that circled the country without any destination.

True to form, though, the most spectacularly eccentric cases come from Britain, where in 2004 one Staffordshire carrier achieved a monumental stash of 130,000 pieces of mail. Far from simply being too tired to carry their mail, British carriers have given excuses ranging from low blood sugar to the post-traumatic stress of having served in Northern Ireland. Most memorably, last year a cross-dressing carrier in Leeds took revenge on local yobs by tossing their mail after they made fun of her newly acquired lipstick and heels.

But when one hears of a Yorkshire postman who filled every room of his house with 35,000 undelivered letters, it's hard not to find a more universal parable of the overwhelming reach of modern communication and consumerism. The carrier, Rodger Parkinson, seemed almost relieved that his mail stash was discovered.

"I'm glad in a way," he told his judge. "It needs sorting."

Friday, Nov. 21, 2008

Summary Judgment: Dogs and Superheroes Hit Movie Theaters

Mark Jordan Legan takes us through reviews of the animated film Bolt, about a dog who lives his whole life on the set of a TV show; Twilight, about a teenage girl who falls in love with a vampire; and Special, a superhero spoof starring Michael Rapaport. Listen to the segment.

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Get "Dear Prudence" delivered to your inbox each week; click here to sign up. Please send your questions for publication to prudence@slate.com. (Questions may be edited.)

Dear Prudence,

I have not told anyone this, but I am in love. I am 17 years old and a senior in high school. I have never had a problem talking to girls, except when it comes to this one. When I first saw her in the eighth grade, the first thought that came to my mind was, "I would marry that girl." I know that this just sounds like a crush, but the more I got to know her, the more I fell for her. Even though I have been out with plenty of other girls, I still can't get her off my mind. I feel nervous, shy, and unsure of myself when I see her. Though we say "Hi" to each other just about every day, I can't ever seem to get any further then that. I have lots of things going for me: I'm an athlete, do well in school, and have plenty of friends. I just can't find the words when I am around her. I just don't want to graduate this year, never see her again, move on with my life, and wonder "what if?"

—A Guy With a Girl Problem

Dear A Guy,

Every girl should be lucky enough to have a guy feel about her the way you do about this girl. And you're right—you can't let her get away without knowing whether she feels the same. It's possible that all these years, every time you've said "Hi," she senses the same spark but has had to conclude that you're really not interested in her because she's seen you go out with plenty of other girls. In my day, you actually had to screw up the courage to speak, either in person or on the phone, to the object of your desire. But your generation doesn't even have to do that. This MacArthur Foundation study has good things to say about how online communication allows teenagers to make romantic overtures that are so casual that no one gets embarrassed if the interest is not returned. It cites this successful opening e-mail gambit: "hey…hm. wut to say? iono lol/well I left you a comment…u sud feel SPECIAL haha." No, it's not "O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!" But it worked. And from your letter, it is clear you are capable of writing a message that's actually in English. So compose an e-mail—try asking what she thinks about something that happened in school, for instance. Then, after she answers you, and before the exchange peters out, make your move and ask her on a date. And maybe someday you will say to her, "Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night."

—Prudie

Dear Prudence Video: Manipulative Cashier

Dear Prudence,

When I was in the sixth grade and my sister in the eighth, my parents divorced. My sister took it particularly hard, so my mother sent her to the parish priest for counseling. At one (and the last) session, my sister was crying, and he was standing behind her with his hands on her shoulders. He then stuck his hand down her blouse. My sister yanked his hand out and ran all the way home. She never told my parents this and only shared it with me in the last few years. Now 40, my sister teaches at a Catholic high school. One of the things she does is take student volunteers to poor areas to do cleanup work, pick up trash, and paint houses. Another teacher at the school suggested that she contact a priest in that district who organizes students from other schools to do the same work. You guessed it: It is the same priest from our parish years ago. My sister is understandably disturbed that he is still working with kids. She doesn't know if she should speak up after all these years, or how to go about it. My sister is a strong woman who has no problem with confrontation, but this scenario has her shaking.

—Protective Little Sister

Dear Protective,

I called the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests and talked to Executive Director David Clohessy. He said even though your sister was molested decades ago, since this priest is still active—and possibly has been actively assaulting children ever since—your sister should contact the police sex-crimes unit and the district attorney. She should explain that she was sexually assaulted by this priest years ago and recently discovered he is still in close contact with children, and that he needs to be investigated. This will obviously be a difficult emotional step for your sister, made more complicated by the fact that she works for the archdiocese. But silence is what allows pedophiles to damage generations of children. Clohessy says that sometimes investigators have a file on a suspected abuser but simply don't have enough evidence to do anything, and your sister's information could be crucial. He also says it is highly unlikely your sister's experience was a one-time event. The story fits the classic modus operandi of a serial predator: ingratiate himself with the family, counsel vulnerable kids, create opportunities to be alone with the child. Before your sister takes action, she might want to call SNAP herself—there could even be a chapter near her, and people there who could offer advice, encouragement, and support.

—Prudie

Dear Prudence,

My husband and I moved to a new city three years ago. We hosted a party last year, and I clearly included a "please RSVP by" on the invitation so that I could plan to have enough food and drink for all attending. Less than half of the invitees responded, and I assumed those who didn't weren't coming. Then about two-thirds of the families who failed to RSVP showed up on the day of the party! We're hosting a party again this year, and again I clearly included RSVP information in the invitation, but we've had a very low RSVP rate. It angers me that these folks can't take one minute to call or send an e-mail just to let us know if they're coming. I have two small children, so time and money are at a premium. I don't want to buy too much food and drink or have hungry and thirsty party guests. Is it impolite to contact those who haven't RSVP'd and ask for a response? Should I turn them away at the door if they show up without an RSVP? (I would never do that.) Should I try "regrets only" instead if we turn this into an annual event? Am I being unreasonable in expecting to hear from these people?

—RSVP*ssed Off

Dear RSVP*ssed,

I'm afraid it's now become the host's obligation, after going through the time, trouble, and expense of offering to entertain your friends in your home with food and spirits, to hunt down your potential guests like antelope on the veldt to find out whether they actually intend to come. In the future, when you send out invitations, you could strike a more insistent note: "Please let us know if we will have the pleasure of your company!" Whatever you do, you will regret going to "regrets only" because then you will have no idea how to calculate the silent majority. If you're willing to invest more time in your guests, sure you can send a cheery e-mail saying you hope they'll be able to attend and to let you know so you can plan the evening. (E-mail invitations have, in a way, trained people to expect to be begged and reminded about their social obligations.) Then shop and cook for however many people have replied. And if you have a bunch of people who two years in a row won't let you know they're coming but then show up at the door, do you really want to invite them for a third?

—Prudie

Dear Prudence,

I was recently helping my mom search for something in her room when I came across a little black bag. My curiosity was piqued, so I opened it up and looked inside. Big mistake! Inside I found a vibrator, lubricants, and other sex stuff. I know my parents have sex; I just don't like thinking about it. I can usually talk to my mom about this kind of stuff, but when it has to do with her and my dad, I really don't want to mention it to her (talk about embarrassing). The problem is, I don't know how to get it out of my head. I'm afraid this will haunt me for the rest of my life.

—Flustered

Dear Flustered,

Perhaps you had one of those books of Greek myths when you were a girl. Obviously you didn't spend enough time reading the story of Pandora's box before your opened your mother's little black bag. You're right—there's not much point in telling your mother you now know her favorite brand of lubricant. But let me assure you this will not cripple your own sexuality for life. First of all, it's simply confirmation of what you already knew—your parents have sex with each other, and that's actually a good thing. Second, probably more people in human history have witnessed their parents having sex than not, so just consider how you've been spared that treat. After Pandora opened the box, she closed it in time to keep hope contained in it. I have complete hope that you will be able to push your discovery out of your mind and that someday, when you recall this incident, you will laugh about it.

—Prudie

Get "Dear Prudence" delivered to your inbox each week; click here to sign up. Please send your questions for publication to prudence@slate.com. (Questions may be edited.)

Dear Prudence,

Genetic predisposition and a traumatic childhood have led me to develop debilitating mental disorders that I have spent years working to manage. I'm now at a functional place. My parents are divorced, and my mother's family has always been very supportive. My father's family, by contrast, sees mental illness as a stigma and has always disagreed with my approach to treatment. Recently, they invited me to my grandmother's birthday party. When I arrived, everyone was sitting solemnly around the living room, and the local pastor was there. He calmly explained to me that I was not actually mentally ill but possessed by agents of Satan and in need of an exorcism. I choked back tears as I explained to them that I did not need any demons driven out, and the evening ended awkwardly. Now they've invited me for Thanksgiving, and I don't know what to do. I don't want to alienate them, but my symptoms are part of a real disorder and can be treated by medication. How do I explain to them that while I do want to spend time with them, it's not the Middle Ages, and I don't want or need an exorcism?

—It's the Schizophrenia, Stupid

Dear It's the Schizophrenia,

For Thanksgiving, please exorcise these people from your life. Spend the holiday somewhere else, preferably with those who love and accept you. Perhaps your mother's family is an option. If not, maybe you can make your own gathering with friends, or friends will extend an invitation to you after realizing you'll be on your own. And if you're too uncomfortable searching for a place to go, every city has shelters or nursing homes that welcome volunteers willing to serve Thanksgiving dinner. What your father's family did to you was appalling. You're very generous not to want to alienate people who believe you are possessed by Satan; I would have been tempted to threaten them with my pitchfork. I suppose at some time less loaded than a big holiday, you can get together with them to try to explain that you have a medical condition that is being successfully treated. But as you point out, this is the 21^st century, and an unwillingness to accept that mental illness is just that—an illness—seems an act of willful bigotry not amenable to reason. Be proud of how you've worked your way to a satisfying life, and don't let people, just because they're relatives, do anything to undermine that.

—Prudie

Dear Prudence Video: Pack Rat on Steroids

Dear Prudence,

I'm 27 years old, and I've always wanted to be a mother. It's my special dream to have a daughter someday. I'm crazy about the man that I've been with for the past two years, and we have plans for marriage and kids in the future. A few months ago I found out that I was pregnant, even though I've been on birth control. I'm in a very difficult three-year program at school. My boyfriend is seven years younger than I am and is decidedly not ready for kids. (He said having a baby now would ruin his life.) So we made the difficult (at least for me) decision to end the pregnancy. The problem is this: My cousin and his wife are expecting their first child shortly. It's a girl, and the name they've chosen happens to be the name that I have long wanted to give to my own daughter. Even though I'm not especially close to my family, it's expected that I see the baby when she's born and attend Thanksgiving and Christmas with them as well. I'm happy for them, but I don't think that I'll be able to do any of that. I've cried a number of times about this and have decided to try to avoid them at all costs for the time being. However, my family will probably be very upset with me and demand to know why I'm not around. I can't tell them that I had an abortion because they believe that abortion is a sin. Would it be wrong for me to tell them that I had a miscarriage and hope they understand why I can't be around at the moment?

—Sad and Anxious

Dear Sad,

Yes, you are going through a painful time; and, no, nobody can force you to attend a family event. But you need to accept the choice you made and get back to living a normal life. That means attending the holidays and welcoming a new member of the family. It also means letting go of the fantasy that your cousin has usurped the name for her child that you thought you had somehow reserved for the child you didn't have. Lying about a miscarriage seems exactly the wrong way to go. First, because it is a lie; and, second, because it will only mean you have to fight off a barrage of questions about your future marital and procreative plans. If you feel so stuck that you plan to avoid any event at which you will see your cousin and his baby, then you should seek short-term therapy or join a support group to come to grips with your decision. It's hard that you can't share your sadness with your family, but leaving them baffled and worried about your absence will surely only make you feel more isolated. You also need to examine where your relationship is headed. You say you want children, but given your age difference, you need to face whether your boyfriend will be ready for fatherhood in time for you to be able to be a mother.

—Prudie

Dear Prudence,

In the weeks following the presidential election, my e-mail inbox has turned toxic with virulently nasty e-mails about our new president-elect. The messages are harshly worded, patently untrue rants. I read and delete. The problem is, I work as a small-time entertainer, hosting events all over the country. My politics, which I keep to myself, are very liberal. I do not host political events of any kind because my business depends on as many bookings as I can manage, especially in these hard times. I don't want to shut off potential customers because of perceived leanings. Lots of customers and their friends have my e-mail, and because they have taken my political silence to mean I must support their extreme views, I'm getting these truly distasteful diatribes. What should I do? This is making me ill again about my country.

—For Obama

Dear For,

Don't feel ill about your country—your guy won! It may be distasteful and ridiculous that you're still getting invective-filled rants and lies about Barack Obama, but you can chuckle to yourself as you hit delete, because they lost and your guy won! Aside from the e-mails, you say that when you get together with these correspondents, you are providing entertainment for social occasions, so it should be easy to put their political views out of your mind. If politics does come up, make some noncommittal sounds and happily think to yourself: My guy won! And, surely, given the economic statistics, you will ultimately be doing more for the fortunes of President-elect Obama to be a quiet, employed supporter than a vocal, unemployed one.

—Prudie

Dear Prudie,

I have a friend whom I've seen through the best and worst of times. She suffers from depression, and I've always tried to be a good friend to her no matter what. When she is depressed, it can be a real emotional workout to spend quality time with her, but I do it because her friendship is important to me. About two years ago, she started intense therapy and has made some real changes in her life. She looks better than ever and is doing very well, however she has become critical of me lately. I wear the wrong clothes. I'm too heavy. I should work out every day. I should wear different makeup. My husband told me that when I return from my weekly outing with my friend, I'm very hard on myself. It's true I don't feel good about myself, and occasionally I give away clothing that she's insulted me about so that I don't have to be reminded how bad I look. I've never been particularly confrontational, so I tend to suffer her comments with a smile. I do enjoy her 90 percent of the time. It's just her lingering hurtful comments that leave me off balance. What do I do to save myself without hurting her in the process?

—Stung

Dear Stung,

How thoughtful of your friend, now that she's feeling better, to want you to understand what she was going through when she felt worthless by making you feel that way yourself. I actually doubt she feels as good as she says. What she's doing to you sounds like a lot of projection—she's just off-loading the running critical voice in her head onto you. Loyalty to a friend, particularly a troubled one, is admirable. But your friend sounds like a trial no matter what her emotional state, and loyalty has its limits. Perhaps you should reconsider subjecting yourself to weekly doses of this friendship. When you do get together, if she starts in with her commentary on you, tell her that while you know there are many things about you that could use improvement, you don't want to focus on them during a pleasant evening out, and say she needs to please drop the critique.

—Prudie

There are a million ways to slight a rival's manhood, but to suggest that he enjoys Zima is one of the worst. Zima was the original "malternative"—a family of alcoholic beverages that eventually came to include such abominations as Smirnoff Ice and Bacardi Silver—and it has long been considered the very opposite of macho: a drink that fragile coeds swill while giving each other pedicures.

That stereotype has persisted despite the fact that Zima's brief heyday came nearly 15 years ago. The brand was then hailed as a marketing coup, an ingenious way to sell beer—or rather, a clear, beerlike solution—to consumers who eschewed traditional suds. But virtually overnight, Zima was done in by its medicinal taste and girly-man rep: After selling an astounding 1.3 million barrels in 1994, the year it went national, Zima's sales fell to just 403,000 barrels in 1996.

Many drinkers assume that Zima vanished shortly thereafter and has since existed solely as a punch line. But Zima actually survived for more than another decade, until MillerCoors pulled the plug on Oct. 10. Rarely has such a famously maligned product enjoyed such a lengthy run—a testament to its brewers' Madonna-like knack for reinvention. The Zima that died a quiet death last month bore little resemblance to the malternative that swept the nation during President Clinton's first term.

Zima debuted in the midst of the "clear craze" of the early 1990s, when products ranging from Crystal Pepsi to Mennen Crystal Clean deodorant sought to take advantage of a vogue for (literal) transparency. Coors, then the nation's No. 3 beer-maker, hopped on the bandwagon by devising a simple process for making a clear brew—just filter your lowest-grade lager through charcoal (a process that strips away both color and taste), then make the liquid palatable by adding citrusy flavorings.

Miller, then one of Coors' chief rivals, mastered this technique, too, creating Clear Beer, which failed miserably. Coors thought it knew why: the presence of the word beer on the label. Clear brews may have been beer-based, but they were bound to disappoint true hops aficionados—there was no foamy head, and the taste was sodalike rather than malty. So Coors decided to pitch its see-through drink at male consumers who didn't love beer but fancied themselves too macho for Boone's Farm. (Coors pointedly instructed stores to never place Zima alongside wine coolers, which male drinkers regard as effete.)

Coors threw $38 million into promoting Zima's nationwide rollout in 1994, more than it spent hawking Coors Light that year. The campaign's centerpiece was a series of TV commercials starring a black-hatted pitchman who replaced his S's with Z's and touted Zima as "zomething different." The ads offered no inkling of what Zima was supposed to be, exactly, but the mystery obviously intrigued the masses: In 1994, Coors estimated that 70 percent of America's regular drinkers gave Zima a try.

Unfortunately for Coors, most of those drinkers tried it only once, since straight Zima tasted like tinfoil soaked in Fresca. Some college kids mixed the drink with schnapps, creating a head-splitting cocktail dubbed Nox-Zima, but few other drinkers were so enterprising. To Coors' horror, Zima proved most popular among young women—a demographic that, while generally fond of getting tanked, just doesn't have the same thirst for hooch as its male counterpart. And once the ladies took a shine to the stuff, the guys avoided Zima as if it were laced with estrogen. (Coors was also widely accused of marketing Zima directly to high school students, many of whom were convinced that Zima couldn't be detected by Breathalyzers.)

By the end of 1994, Zima had become a favorite whipping boy of David Letterman, who regularly featured it on his nightly Top Ten lists. (The No. 9 sign that your senator may be nuts? "Breakfast, lunch, and dinner—Zima!") Coors tried to lasso male consumers with new ads featuring pickup football, to no avail. Then in 1995 it launched Zima Gold, a caramel-colored version of the malternative that boasted high alcohol content (5.4 percent) and a bourbon-and-Coke tang. It barely lasted three months on the market before it was pulled for lack of sales. It was simply too late to salvage Zima's rep among men.

Coors was widely expected to kill the brand, as Miller had done with Clear Beer. (Several me-too malternatives, such as Pabst's Izen Klar and Stroh's Clash, had suffered similar fates.) But the company instead chose to reinvent its once-proud brew. It altered Zima's formula to make it taste even more like Sprite and launched a new ad campaign touting Zima as the ideal thirst quencher for oppressively hot days. Sales never came close to reaching their 1994 levels, but they did rebound to a respectable 610,000 barrels by 2000. That's peanuts compared with a flagship beer brand like Coors Light, which sold 16.6 million barrels that year. But Zima was a high-margin product—charcoal-filtered dreck that sold for superpremium prices. It could still earn its keep on low-volume sales, most of which took place in warm-weather states during summer.

Zima went through two more complete retoolings, the first in 2004 when it was transformed into Zima XXX. Coors pumped up the alcohol content to 5.9 percent and introduced flavors such as Hard Punch and Hard Orange. The move was made after Zima had lost significant market share to Smirnoff Ice, which benefits from confusion over whether it contains vodka. (It doesn't, at least in this country.) Coors sensed that the only way to compete was by hyping Zima as a drink worthy of daredevils.

The gambit failed. Three years later, Coors (on the verge of its merger with Miller) reversed course and decided to embrace a group of consumers it had once reviled—women in their 20s. Zima was relaunched with less alcohol, fewer calories, and an array of fruity flavors such as pineapple citrus. Going after women wasn't a great way to grow the product's market, but Coors believed that today's young females could sustain Zima as a niche product.

This last, dainty incarnation of Zima might still be with us were it not for killjoy lawmakers in Utah and California. In the former state, notorious for its tough liquor laws, Zima was one of the few potent tipples available in grocery stores. (Most alcoholic beverages are available only in state-controlled shops.) But MillerCoors withdrew the brand from Utah in September, after the state's legislature passed an onerous law requiring new labels that indicate a malternative's alcohol content in bold, all-caps letters. It didn't make economic sense for the brewer to print Utah-only labels.

In California, meanwhile, the state's Board of Equalization decided to tax malternatives as distilled spirits rather than beer (the dubious rationale being that such an increase would discourage alcohol abuse among cash-strapped minors). MillerCoors could have challenged the $3.10-per-gallon tax hike by submitting scientific evidence attesting to Zima's lack of liquor. But for a brand that already had one foot in the grave, that apparently seemed like more trouble than it was worth. Shortly after the regulation kicked in on Oct. 1, MillerCoors finally threw in the towel on Zima. California had been one of its largest markets.

For a brand that was selling tens of thousands of barrels per year up to the bitter end, Zima's demise has inspired surprisingly little anguish among its fans.

This online petition aims to send 1 million signatures to MillerCoors headquarters; as of this writing, it's just 999,947 names short of that ambitious goal.

There are surely more than 53 Zima lovers in America, and many of them are doubtless male. But that's a love that dare not speak its name.

Produced on these shores for nearly two centuries, zinfandel has long been considered the all-American wine and the ideal choice for those looking to drink domestically on Thanksgiving. Some oenophiles even assumed that the zinfandel grape was indigenous to the United States. Seven years ago, researchers proved that it is actually Croatian in origin; what we (mercifully) renamed zinfandel is an old varietal native to the Dalmatian coast called crljenak kastelanski. However, this discovery has done nothing to erode the link between zinfandel and the most gluttonous of American holidays. But not all zinfandels are up to the task of washing down the turkey. While zinfandels are by nature rich, spicy, and mouth-filling, the market is flooded these days with monster-truck zins—dense, high-alcohol wines that, whatever virtues they may possess, tend to crush any food that gets in their way. Happily, there are still some producers who believe that table manners matter and who make zinfandels in a more genteel style—wines that will flatter the bird next Thursday rather than flatten it.

Zinfandel arrived in the United States in the 1820s and was first cultivated along the East Coast. It was brought to California in the 1850s and by the late 19^th century was the state's most widely planted grape. It was very popular with home winemakers during Prohibition, but its reputation declined in the years following repeal. Wineries like Souverain and Louis M. Martini turned out good zinfandels, but the grape was generally relegated to workhorse status. That began to change in the mid-to-late 1960s, when vintners like Joseph Swan and Bob Trinchero started crafting ambitious, age-worthy zinfandels. But it is Ridge Vineyards, founded in 1962, that gets most of the credit for putting a serious face on the grape. Ridge's single-vineyard zinfandels, usually blended with small amounts of petite sirah and carignane, were complex, elegant wines that could last for years and improve with cellaring. They were often described as "Bordeaux-like," which was a testament to their path-breaking quality.

Despite the sensational wines produced by Ridge and a few other estates, zinfandel's fortunes continued to ebb and flow. Since the early 1990s, however, zinfandel has soared in popularity, to the point that there was even an effort a few years ago to designate it California's official grape. (Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the measure—maybe the Austrian native prefers grüner veltliner?) But the last two decades have also seen the ascendancy of a particular style of zin—brawny, Schwarzenegger-like wines that are very heavy on the alcohol. Nowadays, zinfandels in excess of 15 percent alcohol (an amount that can leave even seasoned drinkers in need of Tylenol in the morning) are commonplace.

In fact, zinfandel has become so synonymous with "high-octane" that it is now Exhibit A for a growing chorus of writers, sommeliers, retailers, and vintners concerned about increased potency in wines. With zinfandel, however, the alcohol issue is more complicated than is often acknowledged. The zinfandel grape is a thin-skinned one that tends to ripen easily if somewhat unevenly; riper grapes contain more sugar, which makes for more alcohol in the final product (the fermentation process converts sugar to alcohol). According to Ridge's Paul Draper, who is considered by many people (including yours truly) to be the greatest vintner this country has produced, zinfandel grapes usually can't reach full physiological maturity at less than 14 percent potential alcohol; Draper says that only if the grapevines are truly old—at least 60 years of age—can maturity be achieved below that threshold. The challenge with zinfandel, he explains, is that it doesn't take much to push the alcohol into the eyebrow-singeing range; a few hot days just before or during the harvest can send the sugar levels soaring. Draper says it is possible for a zinfandel to tip the scale at 15 percent alcohol and still be balanced, but he thinks that the ripeness of the fruit can overwhelm the influence of the vineyard, which is why he prefers his wines to be under that number.

For other producers, however, maximum ripeness is the aim; they want their zinfandels to come in above 15 or even 16 percent alcohol. It is a stylistic preference for many of them, but there are also commercial considerations: Heady zinfandels are the ones that seem to score best with critics, and the wine-buying public appears to really like them, too. A study released last year by Zinfandel Advocates & Producers, an organization that represents some 300 wineries, found that just 10 percent of consumers surveyed felt that zins were too ripe and alcoholic. The fact that demand for zinfandel remains strong clearly suggests that elevated alcohol levels are not an impediment to sales and may even be part of the attraction.

But at the risk of sounding like the persnickety, Eurocentric oenophile that I am, the problem with these steroidal zins is that they are tough to pair with any dish this side of woolly mammoth. There just aren't many foods that marry well with jammy, low-acid wines (and it doesn't help that many such zins are also so excessively oaky that they can leave your tongue feeling like a lathe). Fortunately, there are still zinfandels being made with an eye to dinner, Thanksgiving or otherwise.

I long ago owned up to my fondness for Ridge, and the trio of wines that I tasted this week did nothing to dull my enthusiasm. The excellent 2006 Ridge Vineyards Sonoma County Three Valleys ($22) is an impeccably proportioned wine redolent of raspberries, leather, and licorice, and it is a good value, too. The 2006 Ridge Vineyards Geyserville ($35) sports a terrific bouquet of crushed berries, flowers, cedar, and chocolate. It is a full-bodied, energetic, but also very suave wine with enough structure to carry it well into the next decade. The 2006 Ridge Vineyards Lytton Springs ($35) is delicious; aromas of black currants and roasted herbs float up from the glass, leading to a wine of almost Zen-like poise that exudes completeness.

Mike Dashe worked as Paul Draper's assistant before starting his own eponymous winery in 1996, and the Draper influence is unmistakable in the restrained opulence of his zinfandels. The 2007 Dashe Cellars Dry Creek Valley Zinfandel ($24) is a beautifully balanced wine, its lavish fruit parried by good acidity and ripe, perfectly integrated tannins. The 2006 Dashe Cellars Todd Brothers Ranch Zinfandel ($32) is big and lusty but with just enough acidity to avoid sliding into flamboyance. I was more impressed by the 2006 Dashe Cellars Louvau Vineyard Zinfandel ($32); a bouquet brimming with blackberries, cherries, tobacco, cedar, and leather gives way to a graceful wine that showcases zinfandel in all its palate-staining glory.

Like Ridge, Chateau Montelena is an iconic California winery; unlike Ridge, Montelena's zinfandel has always been overshadowed by its cabernet and chardonnay. But the 2005 Chateau Montelena—The Montelena Estate Zinfandel ($30) is an outstanding wine, with succulent but nicely harnessed fruit, fine structure and minerality, and a long, satisfying finish. Green & Red Vineyard is a Napa winery that has long been recognized for the quality of its zinfandels. The 2005 Green & Red Vineyard Tip Top Vineyard Zinfandel ($28) is a superb, mineral-inflected effort (with a great menthol note, too) that seems to have a foot in both the New World and the Old, combining California brightness with continental restraint. The 2006 Green & Red Vineyard Chiles Mill Vineyard Zinfandel ($25) is equally winning, although it moves at a slightly different tempo. It is a peppery, creamy, richly flavored wine with strapping tannins, but it flows harmoniously.

Celebrity wines are popping up everywhere; the 2005 Rubicon Estate Edizione Pennino Zinfandel ($40) is one that is actually worth drinking. Francis Ford Coppola owns Rubicon and consistently turns out classically robust, peppery zinfandels. The '05 is packed with lush, briary fruit, but there is ample acidity to keep the wine from becoming pudgy, and it finishes with big, ripe tannins and a nice lick of chocolate. Sonoma's Nalle Winery, by contrast, has no claim to celebrityhood; it hardly even gets mentioned in the wine press these days. Nalle makes what have become truly anomalous zinfandels, ones that trade on subtlety and finesse rather than power. The 2006 Nalle Winery Zinfandel ($32) has the light complexion of a red Burgundy and a gentle, inviting nose of cherries, flowers, cloves, and black pepper. The first sip will not impress; the wine will seem lean and lacking (especially next to other zinfandels). But wash it around your mouth a bit—this is a charming zinfandel, with plenty of concentration and flavor. It is a wine of hidden depths and a timely reminder that not all zinfandels need to smack you across the head to make an impression. The 2005 version, which goes for the same price, is equally lovely.

At a hearing of the House financial services committee last week, lawmakers scolded the CEOs of the Big Three auto companies for flying private jets to Washington, D.C., before requesting a bailout. A Chrysler spokeswoman responded that "business travel requires the highest standard of safety for all employees," and CNN noted that the Big Three "have policies requiring their CEOs to travel in private jets for safety reasons." Despite these concerns, General Motors announced yesterday that CEO Richard Wagoner will not use a private aircraft when he returns to the capital for another round of meetings next week. (Ford and Chrysler have yet to announce their plans.) Are private jets really safer than commercial airliners?

No. From Jan. 1, 2008, to Oct. 24, 2008, there were only 16 major accidents on commercial planes—including flights carrying passengers and those carrying cargo. Seven of these accidents resulted in zero fatalities while the biggest crash of the year killed 154 people (Spanair Flight JK5022 on a Boeing MD-82). During the same time period, there were 10 major accidents on business jets. There were no fatalities on three of these flights and eight (the largest number) on East Coast Jets Flight 81, which crashed at Owatonna Airport in Minnesota.

Expressed in terms of flight hours, the accident rate is nearly identical. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, there were .135 accidents per 100,000 flight hours on commercial air carriers in 2007. The NTSB breaks up business flights into two categories—"corporate" (the aircraft must be flown by a two-person, professional crew) and "business" (two-person, professional crew not required). In 2007, the corporate accident rate was .103 per 100,000 hours, and the business rate was .72 per 100,000 hours.

Of course, the Big Three may be worried about more than mechanical trouble or pilot error. When the Chrysler spokeswoman said that "business travel requires the highest standard of safety," she likely also meant security. It's true that, if they travel on private jets, CEOs can bring along security guards with handguns and get picked up in SUVs on the tarmac instead of rubbing shoulders with disgruntled or recently laid-off employees at the airport. But the risk level at, say, Reagan National Airport is low for Richard Wagoner: Few people know what he looks like, and American airports are patrolled by police.

One way in which a private jet might be considered more safe is in regard to information security. Even in first class there's no real privacy. On a private aircraft, CEOs can discuss proprietary information with colleagues or partners and keep in constant contact with their headquarters.

The real benefits of a private jet, naturally, are convenience and efficiency. Getting from Detroit to D.C. is pretty easy, but getting from Detroit to a GM factory in Quito, Ecuador, could be more of a hassle. If a senior executive needs to travel to a far-away affiliate in a town with little or no airline service or to make multiple stops in one day, a private jet seems less frivolous.

Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.

Explainer thanks Dan Hubbard of the National Business Aviation Association, Emily McGee of the Flight Safety Foundation, and Kent Moyer of the World Protection Group.

If last year's numbers are any indication, some 46 million turkeys across America will be trussed up for Thanksgiving dinner this Thursday. That's about 17 percent of all turkeys raised in the United States in a given year. How do turkey farmers meet the huge single-day demand for their birds?

They plan ahead. Major commercial turkey brands, like Butterball, Hormel, and Cargill, produce two kinds of whole bird: frozen and fresh. Turkeys destined for the freezer are produced year-round—once these birds reach the proper size and weight, they're slaughtered and blast-frozen at minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit, at which point they can be stored all year in preparation for the holiday poultry frenzy.

Producing fresh turkeys takes more planning. Market leader Butterball, for example—which grows about one fresh bird for every nine frozen ones—has already begun the production cycle for next year's holiday season. Eggs for breeder birds have been purchased from one of the world's two major genetic suppliers, Hybrid and Nicholas. Those eggs will then be hatched and placed in turkey farms so that they can grow and become sexually mature during the winter. (Butterball needs roughly 28,000 laying hens and 1,700 "stud" toms each year to produce the right amount of fresh turkeys.) Come springtime, these birds will produce the eggs that are destined to become the turkeys we actually eat. Hens produce eggs in 25-weeklong cycles: The first five weeks' worth go toward fresh turkey production, the rest toward the frozen turkey market. Breeder hens are normally used for a single cycle before being slaughtered and processed themselves.

The eggs laid next spring will be incubated for 28 days and then, after they hatch, the resulting turkeys will spend about 10 to 18 weeks on a farm before they're brought into the processing plant in late October and November. The birds are slaughtered, quickly chilled to between 40 and 26 degrees Fahrenheit, and then shipped out to retailers, usually all in the same day. (Some fresh birds have to go to market a little early because the plants can't process all of them in mid-November, even working at full capacity.) Poultry companies can also shuffle their production to meet increased demand, routing some of the birds that were meant to be turned into lunch meats, fresh breasts and legs, or ground turkey back into whole bird processing.

Bonus explainer: How do turkeys breed? With a little help from their human friends. The vast majority of turkeys sold in the United States are of the white broad-breasted variety. These birds have been bred to produce as much white breast meat as possible, resulting in males so large and unwieldy that they can't properly mount the females. Toms therefore have to be manually stimulated and "milked" for their semen, which is then inserted into a hen using a syringe. Some have decried the assembly-line-like process as inhumane—at the very least, as chronicled in this not-entirely-safe-for-work clip from Discovery's Dirty Jobs, it is extremely messy. Farmers also use artificial lights to trick birds into thinking that it's spring—their natural breeding season—all year-round, thereby increasing their production.

Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.

Explainer thanks David Anderson and Kip Bodnar of Butterball and Michael Davis of Texas A&M University.

Ever since Barack and Michelle Obama toured the White House on Nov. 11, the press has been speculating about the couple's redecoration agenda. On Thursday, the Associated Press asked several interior designers to offer advice. Taniya Nayak of HGTV's Designed To Sell said the "stone, fabrics, and flooring" of the Green Room should be made from green products; Charles B. Smith of Charles Smith & Associates thinks the state dining room should glow "with soft colors" like "pale yellows, 'pêche,' creams and white." But how much control does the first family really have over the appearance of the White House?

Quite a bit. Every four years, Congress appropriates money to maintain and redecorate the 132-room executive mansion. (George W. and Laura Bush were allocated $100,000 for the president's second term.) For the living quarters, which are located on the top two floors, the first family has significant leeway. It usually falls to the president's wife to supervise paint jobs and to acquire new furniture, wall hangings, and bedding. If, however, the president's family wants to alter the appearance of historic guest suites (like the Lincoln Bedroom) or any of the public spaces on the ground and first floors (like the Green Room and the state dining room), they must consult the Committee for the Preservation of the White House. (The curator of the White House, the director of the National Gallery of Art, and other luminaries belong to this committee, which Lyndon Johnson established by executive order in 1964.) State rooms are generally refurbished once a decade, often with funds from the White House Historical Association.

For both public and private spaces, the president's family can sort through first-rate spoils instead of relying on shopping trips. There's a White House storage house with old furniture (like four-poster beds) and an art collection with about 500 sculptures, drawings, and paintings (including works by Norman Rockwell and Georgia O'Keeffe*) obtained as gifts or by previous first families and the White House curator. Traditionally, presidents select portraits of their favorite predecessors to line the walls. For the Oval Office, George W. Bush chose a painting called A Charge To Keep. He often tells visitors that it depicts Methodist circuit riders—missionaries who spread the Good Word across the Alleghenies in the 19^th century. It actually depicts a horse thief fleeing a mob. Each president—or his wife—designs a rug for the Oval Office bearing the presidential seal.

First families may also choose to oversee large-scale home improvements and structural changes. The Kennedys commissioned a swimming pool; Nixon built a one-lane bowling alley below the driveway leading to the North Portico. Obama is thinking about constructing a basketball court. Jimmy Carter famously installed solar panels on the White House grounds that Ronald Reagan removed. George W. and Laura Bush added low-flow faucets and toilets, solar heating, and CFL bulbs.

All the original White House furnishings were destroyed in 1814, when the British set fire to the building. (The only object from the earliest days of the republic that's still in the White House is a portrait of George Washington.) Subsequently, presidents and their wives furnished the residence according to taste. James Madison favored French design; Martin Van Buren decorated a room with silver wallpaper and light-blue satin. (It's been called the Blue Room ever since.) Queen Victoria presented Rutherford B. Hayes with a desk built from the timbers of the HMS Resolute; most presidents since have sat behind it in the Oval Office. FDR commissioned a modification for the desk in 1944—a front panel to hide his wheelchair—and Reagan raised it a couple of inches to accommodate his chair.

Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.

Explainer thanks William Bushong of the White House Historical Association.

*Correction, Nov. 24, 2008: This article originally misspelled the name of the artist Georgia O'Keeffe. (Return to the corrected sentence.)

Three wildfires have been moving through Southern California in the past week, burning though 17,000 hectares of land, causing "the worst loss of homes due to fire" ever in the city of Los Angeles, and adding considerably to the state's financial woes.

Among the fires burning in Southern California were the Montecito Tea Fire, the Sayre Fire, and the Triangle Complex Fire. Who picks these names?

In general, naming rights go to the group that makes the "initial attack" on a fire, whether it's a squadron of local firefighters or a team from the U.S. Forest Service. (In contrast, every tropical storm in the Atlantic gets its name from a single organization.) The commander on the scene often uses a nearby geographical feature to describe the fire, but he's not bound by any official rules. (For more on how a wildfire gets its name, read this Explainer from 2005.)

Officials have 100 percent "contained" two out of the three fires. What does it mean to contain a fire, and how is the percentage calculated?

To prevent a blaze from spreading, firefighters dig a "fire line" around its circumference. If three miles of fire line have been built around a fire that is 10 miles in circumference, then 30 percent of the fire is contained. Once a fire is fully contained, firefighters work on "controlling" it by battling it inside the containment line. A controlled fire is one that has no risk of expanding beyond the fire line. (For more on how wildfires are rated, read this Explainer from 2001.)

According to newspaper reports, 1,500 California prison inmates are helping to put out the blaze. Why are prisoners fighting wildfires?

In California, some prisoners get transferred to a system of "conservation camps," where more than 4,000 inmates are housed and trained to fight forest fires. According to the Department of Corrections, "assignment to a conservation camp is a hard-won privilege" and provides the opportunity for prisoners to live without gun towers or security fences and to reduce the duration of their sentences by as much as two-thirds. Spots at the camps are reserved for physically fit offenders with no history of escape attempts, violent crimes, or—naturally—arson. (For more on prisoners and disaster relief, read this Explainer from 2005.)

Gov. Schwarzenegger's finance spokesman says wildfire property damage will top $305 million. What about the environmental damage from all the carbon being spewed into the atmosphere? Do wildfires have a significant impact on global warming?

A lot depends on what the fire destroys, as there is tremendous variation among tree species in terms of carbon storage. If you see a fire sweeping through an expanse of mighty evergreens, the carbon emissions will be much higher than if the conflagration were consuming wispier trees. You've also got to factor in the composition of the ravaged soil. The fires that swept across Indonesia in 1997 burned relatively thin tropical trees. But the devastated forests were also covered in carbon-rich peat. As a result, the Indonesian fires were estimated to have released between 13 percent and 40 percent of the world's annual emissions at the time. (For more on the environmental impact of wildfires, read this article from 2007.)

Santa Barbara, Calif., Sheriff Bill Brown says one of the fires was caused by a bonfire built by students, but the other two are still under investigation. How do you examine a wildfire for signs of arson?

First, figure out where it got started. The place where firefighters first engaged with the blaze is a good place to begin, as are spots where eyewitnesses say they first saw flames or charred ground. Once there, investigators can lay down something like an archaeological grid and start sifting through the debris. This evidence might include the "puddle" burn patterns caused by an accelerant—or the remains of a cigarette. Investigators also look for footprints or tire marks, and they sometimes use magnets to find stray bits of metal that might have been part of a time-delayed incendiary device. (For more on how investigators look for signs of arson, read this Explainer from 2006.)

Just this week, a homeless man in California was sentenced to four years in prison and ordered to pay costs of $101 million for setting fires that burned down 160,000 acres of national forest. How's a guy who sleeps in a tent supposed to pay $101 million?

He isn't. Instead, he's expected to pay a tiny bit every month until he dies. The man, Steven Emory Butcher, currently receives $1,000 a month in Supplemental Security Income, which is basically welfare for the elderly, disabled, or blind. The federal court ordered Butcher to pay $25 to Los Padres National Forest four times a year while in prison, then $50 a month once he's released. No one expects him to deliver the entire $101 million—even a spokesman for the prosecutor acknowledged that the odds of Butcher paying it off were "extremely slim"—but they do expect him to pay what he can. If Butcher gets a job when he's out of prison, the probation officer can modify the amount of monthly payments—the criminal equivalent of refinancing your mortgage. (For more on why a homeless man is given such an unrealistic fine, read this Explainer from 2008.)

Witnesses have described "thick clouds of gray-black smoke" blotting out the sun. Others have seen "orange-white plumes." What determines the color of smoke?

The type of fuel and how hot it's burning. A wildfire can produce both colors of smoke. First, the hot, flaming combustion of dry underbrush releases little particles of black soot into the atmosphere. But the blaze also produces smoldering combustion—think of the glowing logs at the bottom of a campfire—which don't burn quite as hot. Big branches or tree trunks that have a lot of moisture are more likely to smolder and release white smoke. (For more on what determines smoke color, read this Explainer from 2006.)

Reports have described wildfire flames as high as 100 feet in some places. How high can a fire hose shoot?

Between 75 feet and 100 feet straight up, depending on water pressure. In practice, though, firefighters on the ground rarely attempt to reach higher than 40 feet with hoses. (For more on how firefighters attack tall flames, read this Explainer from 2004.)

Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.

The Food and Drug Administration opened a new branch in Beijing on Wednesday in response to a spate of recent high-profile contamination scares. Meanwhile, the embarrassed Chinese government has promised to tighten inspection standards in the wake of the ongoing poisoned baby formula scandal. And last week, the United States implemented an "import alert" for any food products made in China to be sure they're both dairy- and melamine-free. Here's an Explainer roundup of all the ways your food can make you sick.

So is China the world capital of contaminated food?

Britain seems to be giving it quite a run for its money. In recent years, the country's cattle has fallen victim to mad cow disease, bluetongue disease, and foot-and-mouth disease. In part, the outbreaks are just bad luck. They also have something to do with the country's status as a global hub: Heathrow Airport has the most international traffic in the world, and airline-food waste is sometimes processed into the food that's fed to cattle, posing a massive risk for disease. (For more on Britain's meat problem, see this Explainer from 2007.)

In 2007, workers at a U.S. pork processing plant all reported troubling symptoms, including weakness and dizziness. All were working in the area where the pig's brains were being liquefied. Foodies everywhere wondered: Is it safe to eat pork brains?

Yes. There's no evidence that the digestion of pork brains will do you any harm, but the inhalation of them seems to be a different story. Breathing in the brain tissue triggers an immune response that leads to the sort of symptoms experienced by the factory workers. Like all meat, pork brains can be contaminated in various ways, but there's no evidence that the substance itself is bad for humans. (For more on the innards-and-outs, see this Explainer from 2008.)

To be on the safe side, I'll avoid dairy, meat, and other animal products, but nothing's safer than a PB-and-J sandwich. Right?

Nope. In 2007, ConAgra-made peanut butter, including Peter Pan, caused an outbreak of salmonella, infecting hundreds of people. Animal products are the most likely foods to harbor salmonella bacteria. But vegetables and fruits can have it, too, if they're not washed properly and infected manure makes it onto the crop through water runoff or leaky waste lagoons—remember 2008's salmonella-infected tomato scare? Peanut butter isn't usually a high-risk food for salmonella outbreak, since the peanuts are roasted at super-high temperatures, but the germs can creep back in at the jarring stage of post-processing. (This Explainer from 2007 and this one from 2008 have more details on salmonella contamination.)

Will washing my fruits and veggies help cut down on diseases?

Yes, probably. A "thorough rinsing" can cut down on microbacteria by as much as 90 percent—the remaining decile of disease is lodged in grooves on the produce's surface or attached to it by electrostatic charges. The longer the bacteria stay on, the more attached they get. Washing is more helpful in getting rid of "spoilage bacteria"—giving something a rinse before putting it in the fridge might help make it last longer. (For more detail, read this Explainer from 2006.)

The United States isn't the only place in the world to snobbishly ban food imports. In fact, Europe won't let American chickens across the pond. Are they unsafe?

No, they just taste funny to the European palate. American birds are bathed in chlorine (or another bacteria killer), a stringent regulation that was put in place after E. coli scares and salmonella scares in the 1990s. That doesn't mean that they're redolent of a swimming pool, though—tests have found that chlorinated chicken doesn't begin to taste significantly worse than its nonchlorinated counterpart until it's been reheated several times. (For more on bad-tasting birds, see this Explainer from 2008.)

Poisoned babies have been grabbing the headlines lately, but last year the victims of contaminated Chinese imports were American cats and dogs. It turned out that we were putting bad wheat gluten from overseas into our pet food. Wait, imported wheat products? Isn't America the breadbasket of the world?

Yes, but other countries make cheaper gluten. Although we're the world's largest consumer of wheat gluten, just a handful of American companies produce it, and 80 percent of our supply comes from abroad. Europe has a lot of extra gluten since they use wheat starch (what's left over when you separate out the gluten) to make sweeteners. They've also got wheat subsidies in place, which lower the price still further. China has a smaller, but growing, share of the market. (For more on wheat gluten, check out this 2007 Explainer.)

Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.

On Nov. 4, voters in California approved Proposition 8 to adopt a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. This week saw the California Supreme Court jump back into the debate with the news that it will review the legality of the ballot measure.

Fervent campaigning by members of the Mormon church may have pushed support for Prop 8 over the top. What, exactly, do Mormons think about homosexuality?

That orientation is distinct from practice. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has issued several position statements about homosexuality—or "same-gender attraction," as the church calls it. One of its most recent publications, a 2007 pamphlet titled "God Loveth His Children," states: "If you avoid immoral thoughts and actions, you have not transgressed even if you feel such an attraction." Being a practicing homosexual can be grounds for excommunication, but gay Mormons who remain celibate can continue to be members in good standing, allowed to worship in the temple and assume positions of leadership. However, gay and lesbian Mormons who publicly acknowledge their orientations—even if they don't act on them—may face informal disciplinary measures from their congregation bishops. (To read more on Mormon attitudes toward homosexuality, read this Explainer from 2008.)

Help! There are so many things I don't understand about this issue. What's the legal difference between a marriage and a civil union?

It depends where you live. Vermont's statute provides a very comprehensive set of legal rights to same-sex couples: "[T]he same benefits, protections and responsibilities under law, whether they derive from statute, administrative or court rule, policy, common law or any other source of civil law, as are granted to spouses in a marriage." Thus civil unions, as the term has come to be understood in the light of Vermont's law, have all of the same attending legal consequences as marriages; the only difference is their name. (For more answers to your FAQs on gay marriage, read this Explainer from 2004.)

The California Supreme Court has implemented a short-term freeze on gay marriage while it considers the constitutionality of Prop 8. If I get married in Canada, is it legal here in the United States?

Probably not, at least until the newlyweds pursue the matter through the courts. The United States recognizes most foreign marriages because of "comity," the legal version of the golden rule. The principle holds that lawful conduct in one jurisdiction should be respected in another, lest travelers worry about their marriages being invalidated as they cross borders. But comity is more a custom than an obligation, and neither the states nor the federal government are compelled to extend the courtesy to every couple wed abroad. They can decline if the marriage in question violates a jurisdiction's definition of an acceptable union—say, if the bride is below the age of consent or if the couple are close blood relations. Or, in the case of same-sex marriages, if a local law explicitly defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman. (To read more on the legality of Canadian same-sex marriages, read this Explainer from 2003.)

Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.

Gold prospectors in the state of Washington are up in arms about new restrictions on when they can search for gold. The rules, issued last week, are intended to limit digging and dredging in streams, which may put fish eggs at risk. Just how much gold is in those Pacific Northwest streams?

It's hard to know for sure, but don't expect a Washington gold rush anytime soon. According to the most recent estimates (PDF) by geologists with the U.S. Geological Survey, the Evergreen State had about 519 metric tons of known gold resources within its borders during the late 1990s; another study guessed that there might be 2,100 tons worth of undiscovered gold deposits throughout the Pacific Coast region. Washington ranks among the top 10 states in its existing gold deposits, but it is well outpaced by Nevada's 6,100 metric tons of gold deposits, by far the largest in the nation.

With gold prices at about $747 an ounce on Thursday, 519 tons is a significant haul. (It's $13.7 billion, to be exact.) But while no one keeps exact figures, it's hard to imagine much of that gold will show up in the pans of prospectors. Most gold that appears in streams is placer gold, which refers to gold found in the sand and gravel deposits of stream beds or beaches. (The word placer comes from the Spanish for "sand bank"; by contrast, gold that is still in solid rock is called "lode gold.") The USGS estimates (PDF) that about 20 percent of U.S. gold deposits are placer gold. But in most places—Alaska is a rare exception—placer gold is not very economical to mine, so it accounts for a much smaller percentage of gold produced nationwide. Indeed, even for a small-scale prospector, mining in a stream can get rather expensive: The suction dredges at issue in the new rules—machines that pull up material at the bottom of streams and then filter it—will set you back a few thousand dollars apiece.

The best indicator of the amount of gold in Washington's streams is probably the fact that according to the state's geology department, there isn't a single commercial placer gold operation in the state—the prospectors are all part-timers. Geologists don't offer much encouragement about the prospects of striking rich through prospecting, either. A USGS guide to prospecting notes that "[t]he grizzled prospector with a burro is no longer a significant participant in the search for mineral deposits, and the small producer accounts for only a minor share of the total production of metals including gold." Another primer from the California Geological Survey (PDF) estimates that one in every 1,000 prospectors "will ever make a strike." And in Washington—where an estimated 2,000 to 2,300 people might call themselves prospectors—the miners say that half an ounce of gold (or about $373 worth) is a pretty typical haul for a season, and that many prospectors are lucky if they find enough gold to cover their expenses.

Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.

Explainer thanks Micheal George of the U.S. Geological Survey, Dave Norman of the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, and Bill Thomas of the Washington Prospectors Mining Association.

Somali pirates seized a Saudi oil tanker worth $100 million on Saturday, and attacks on Thai and Indian vessels followed on Tuesday. So far, more than 95 ships have been attacked by pirates near Somalia this year. It's been a while since the last golden age of piracy, so the Explainer is here to get you up to speed on all the most crucial information about these high-seas renegades.

What's their motivation?

Booty, naturally. Pirates haven't changed that much. In the middle of the 20^th century, pirates tended to be merely thieves at sea, climbing aboard commercial ships and making off with whatever valuables they could grab. Some pirates are still operating on this small scale, but they tend to pack more heat—guns or even grenades. A typical yield for this sort of attack, which often involves breaking into commercial safes onboard, can range from $1,000 to $20,000. The really big bucks in pirating come from ransom, though. For instance, the Saudi oil tanker is being held captive for $25 million; a more typical ransom for a captured ship is $1 million. (The United Nations estimates that $25 million to $30 million has been paid out in ransom to pirates this year.) Human captives are sometimes taken for a less dramatic ransom, yielding tens of thousands each. (For more detail on what modern pirates want from us and how they get it, check out this Explainer from 2005.)

After the news broke of Saturday's oil tanker seizure, world oil futures spiked briefly, with investors worried about the impact such unpredictable factors could have on supply. If you're in the commercial shipping business, what steps can you take to pirate-proof your haul?

You should definitely invest in K&R insurance—that's "kidnapping and ransom." Premium costs have increased as much as tenfold over the past year, but if you're shipping through the Gulf of Aden, it's worth it. You should also consider hired muscle: Blackwater, of Iraq war fame, is offering a protection package that includes an attack helicopter and escort ships. (For more on how to cover your booty, see this article from Slate's sister site The Big Money.)

Since August, anti-piracy patrols have had a few victories. Earlier this week, the Indian navy sunk one pirate ship and forced the crew to flee another, while last week a British ship stopped a boat full of pirates and arrested eight people. How exactly do you make an arrest at sea?

First, try to contact the outlaw ship via radio or P.A. system. Then board the vessel from helicopters or smaller ships, and make a thorough search for lawbreakers and weapons. Prisoners should be handcuffed and the seized ship steered to the nearest port. If the pirates try to flee, you might try to shoot out the ship's engine or "foul its propeller" with a netlike device deployed in the water ahead of the ship. (For more detail on maritime arrests, see this Explainer from 2005.)

So, do these modern-day pirates still say "Arrr"?

No, and the old-fashioned ones probably didn't, either. Hollywood brought the phrase onto the scene in 1934, and it stuck. Arrr, pronounced with the trademark burred accent, became fixed in the popular consciousness when an actor from Southwestern England used it to great effect playing Long John Silver throughout the 1950s. Today's Somali pirates might be likely to say something more along the lines of "is dhiib" ("Surrender"), "istaag ama waan ku tooganayaa" ("Stop or I will shoot"), or perhaps one of these other useful Somalian phrases. (For more on high-seas etymology, see this Explainer from 2007.)

Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.

Garth and Christy Ross supported Barack Obama from the start. They raised money for him and knocked on doors to rally voters in Northwest Virginia. They involved their 7-year-old son and 5-year old daughter as much as possible, so when Obama won, it was a family celebration. And then, after the election, their son asked during dinner, "Why was he our first president with brown skin?" For the next 45 minutes, the couple, who are white, carefully described America's racial history, trying to add to what they'd already taught them without giving their children more of that history than they could handle. "We didn't want to give them an explanation that was laden with all of our baggage," says Garth.

For the Rosses, us, and we're sure other parents of young children, the tension in describing Barack Obama's victory is not whether to explain the racial context. If kids ask why Obama looks different from the parade of presidents before him, there's no sense pretending he doesn't. The challenge is just what to talk about—how intensely to focus kids on the historic nature of this moment and how deeply to delve into the legacy of racism that preceded it.

The Obama victory is a teachable moment (to use a piece of jargon we think Obama should outlaw if he's any kind of president at all). It gives parents a chance to talk to their children about judging people by the content of their character.

For older kids, there have been reports like this one that suggest the election helped black and white eighth graders bridge the racial barriers in a way countless talks on diversity never could. For younger kids, though, or those who live largely segregated lives, to make the lesson stick, parents might have to introduce ideas about division and hatred that young kids so far haven't confronted.

A lot of white parents aren't hugely comfortable in this terrain: It's ugly, and sometimes we're not really sure of our own relationship to this past. And even if the parents are more sure of themselves, answering certain questions gets complicated quickly. Obsessed with logistics, young kids may want to know exactly how slaves were restrained and kept from escaping. Or how long a sit-in actually lasted, or where black marchers slept if they weren't allowed into white-owned hotels. And then there's the larger question, especially for white families: When framing the issue, do parents teach it as a triumph for African-Americans or as a story about the capacity of evil in whites?

The Ross kids go to class with kids of all different ethnic and racial backgrounds and so far haven't much experienced racial tension. Which is why their parents stepped lightly. Other parents, nonblack and black, see no reason to talk about what's been overcome, because their kids didn't frame Obama's victory that way. "I'm pleased to see that they find the election of a black president to be something that's not especially remarkable," says D.J. Hoek, the white father of 5- and 7-year-old girls. "As my daughters grow up and learn more, they surely will come to a fuller understanding of what Obama's election represents. But now, in their eyes, it's completely reasonable that an African-American, or a woman, or anyone could become president, and I can think of no better indicator of just how far our country has come."

When we asked black colleagues and friends how they were handling this with their kids, we got a similar response. And also a desire to spare kids the anger and mistrust they grew up with. "You don't have to have this conversation," said our colleague Lynette Clemetson, whose older daughter is 4. "I don't think black families are sitting around talking about how this is so historic to their young kids. Part of what's amazing is that to these kids, there's nothing odd about the picture of having kids in the White House who look just like them." In the final days of the campaign, Sen. Obama used this same image of his black children playing at the White House to spur African-American leaders to turn out the vote.

At the same time, when we talked about this issue on the Slate "Political Gabfest," we heard from black listeners who said our purported dilemma existed only for white parents because black kids can't avoid learning about racism and their parents don't try to shield them. "There was no reason to hide what happened because our people were the victims," Aisha Taylor wrote to us. To us, as white parents, it's reassuring to know that black parents differ from one another on these questions—a reminder that race doesn't dictate outlook. Surely some of the distinctions drawn depend on the ages of the kids involved. But there is also evidence that white and black kids tend to diverge in how they develop consciousness about race. From 3 to 5, research shows, kids start to notice race (or really skin tone) as a difference among groups. At 5 and 6, they tend to start endorsing racial stereotypes. If you ask them who is more likely to be the boss, both black and white kids will choose the white person. At 7 or 8, kids start to understand that their own race will not change. Some African-American kids start rejecting stereotypes and express group pride.

"What's interesting is that this doesn't seem to be related to parents' attitudes, as most people think it is," says Christia Spears Brown, a psychology professor at the University of Kentucky whom we called for guidance. Instead, kids pick up on cues from the segregation in their own lives, or stray comments, or the ever-guilty media.

Just a couple of years ago, in 2006, there was also the disturbing result of a study by psychologist Rebecca Bigler, in which 205 children ages 5 to 10 were shown a poster of all presidents and asked why there were no African-American presidents. A quarter said the reason was that it was against the law. One in three children attributed the lack of female, African-American, and Latino presidents to racial and gender bias on the part of voters. Another third of the kids said people in the excluded groups lacked the skills to hold the position.

The conclusion Brown draws from this is that "kids notice really early, and the problem is that adults don't talk about what racial differences mean, so kids draw their own conclusions, and their explanations are often very flawed." Brown, who is white, gave her almost-5-year-old daughter a simplified explanation about why Obama is our first black president. African-Americans didn't have as much money to run for president, Brown told her. Also, before, some people thought that someone with darker skin wouldn't be a good president. Now we know that's not true.

Maybe one of the most profound aspects of Obama's victory is that in a year or two—or maybe even right this minute—kids won't have to come up with a cockamamie reason to explain to themselves why there have been no black presidents. They'll have different facts from which to draw conclusions about the meaning of race. And then they can teach their parents what they know and see.

It was apt in a small way that the first endorser of Hillary Rodham Clinton for secretary of state should have been Henry Kissinger. The last time he was nominated for any position of responsibility—the chairmanship of the 9/11 commission—he accepted with many florid words about the great honor and responsibility, and then he withdrew when it became clear that he would have to disclose the client list of Kissinger Associates. (See, for the article that began this embarrassing process for him, my Slate column "The Latest Kissinger Outrage.")

It is possible that the Senate will be as much of a club as the undistinguished fraternity/sorority of our ex-secretaries of state, but even so, it's difficult to see Sen. Clinton achieving confirmation unless our elected representatives are ready to ask a few questions about conflict of interest along similar lines. And how can they not? The last time that Clinton foreign-policy associations came up for congressional review, the investigations ended in a cloud of murk that still has not been dispelled. Former President Bill Clinton has recently and rather disingenuously offered to submit his own foundation to scrutiny (see the work of my Vanity Fair colleague Todd Purdum on the delightful friends and associates that Clinton has acquired since he left office), but the real problem is otherwise. Both President and Sen. Clinton, while in office, made it obvious to foreign powers that they and their relatives were wide open to suggestions from lobbyists and middlemen.

Just to give the most salient examples from the Clinton fundraising scandals of the late 1990s: The House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight published a list of witnesses called before it who had either "fled or pled"—in other words, who had left the country to avoid testifying or invoked the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination. Some Democratic members of the committee said that this was unfair to, say, the Buddhist nuns who raised the unlawful California temple dough for then-Vice President Al Gore, but however fair you want to be, the number of those who found it highly inconvenient to testify fluctuates between 94 and 120. If you recall the names John Huang, James Riady, Johnny Chung, Charlie Trie, and others, you will remember the pattern of acquired amnesia syndrome and stubborn reluctance to testify, followed by sudden willingness on the part of the Democratic National Committee to return quite large sums of money from foreign sources. Much of this cash had been raised at political events held in the public rooms of the White House, the sort of events that featured the adorable Roger Tamraz, for another example.

Related was the result of a House select committee on Chinese espionage in the United States and the illegal transfer to China of advanced military technology. Chaired by Christopher Cox, R-Calif., the committee issued a report in 1999 with no dissenting or "minority" signature. It found that the Clinton administration's attitude toward Chinese penetration had been abysmally lax (as lax, I would say, as its attitude toward easy money from businessmen with Chinese military-industrial associations).

Many quids and many quos were mooted by these investigations (still incomplete at the time of writing) though perhaps not enough unambivalent pros. You can't say that about the Marc Rich and other pardons—the vulgar bonanza with which the last Clinton era came to an end. Rich's ex-wife, Denise Rich, gave large sums to Hillary Clinton's re-election campaign and to Bill Clinton's library, and Marc Rich got a pardon. Edgar and Vonna Jo Gregory, convicted of bank fraud, hired Hillary Clinton's brother Tony and paid him $250,000, and they got a pardon. Carlos Vignali Jr. and Almon Glenn Braswell paid $400,000 to Hillary Clinton's other brother, Hugh, and, hey, they, respectively, got a presidential commutation and a presidential pardon, too. In the Hugh case, the money was returned as being too embarrassing for words (and as though following the hallowed custom, when busted or flustered, of the Clinton-era DNC). But I would say that it was more embarrassing to realize that a former first lady, and a candidate for secretary of state, was a full partner in years of seedy overseas money-grubbing and has two greedy brothers to whom she cannot say no.

Does this sibling and fraternal squalor have foreign-policy implications, too? Yes. Until late 1999, the fabulous Rodham boys were toiling on another scheme to get the hazelnut concession from the newly independent republic of Georgia. There was something quixotically awful about this scheme—something simultaneously too small-time and too big-time—but it also involved a partnership with the main political foe of the then-Georgian president (who may conceivably have had political aspirations), so once again the United States was made to look as if its extended first family were operating like a banana republic.

China, Indonesia, Georgia—these are not exactly negligible countries on our defense and financial and ideological peripheries. In each country, there are important special interests that equate the name Clinton with the word pushover. And did I forget to add what President Clinton pleaded when the revulsion at the Rich pardons became too acute? He claimed that he had concerted the deal with the government of Israel in the intervals of the Camp David "agreement"! So anyone who criticized the pardons had better have been careful if they didn't want to hear from the Anti-Defamation League. Another splendid way of showing that all is aboveboard and of convincing the Muslim world of our evenhandedness.

In matters of foreign policy, it has been proved time and again, the Clintons are devoted to no interest other than their own. A president absolutely has to know of his chief foreign-policy executive that he or she has no other agenda than the one he has set. Who can say with a straight face that this is true of a woman whose personal ambition is without limit; whose second loyalty is to an impeached and disbarred and discredited former president; and who is ready at any moment, and on government time, to take a wheedling call from either of her bulbous brothers? This is also the unscrupulous female who until recently was willing to play the race card on President-elect Obama and (in spite of her own complete want of any foreign-policy qualifications) to ridicule him for lacking what she only knew about by way of sordid backstairs dealing. What may look like wound-healing and magnanimity to some looks like foolhardiness and masochism to me.

It's already Christmas in print—this week, the mailman started delivering frost-kissed, cookie-strewn, tinseled December issues of my food magazines. But online, the media are content to let November persist until at least Thursday with lavish guides to the biggest eating holiday of the year. The Thanksgiving food advice on the Web is plentiful, copiously illustrated with videos and slide shows, and, best of all, free. I've sorted through the avalanche of online guidance and compiled a digest of cyber-Thanksgiving with trends of note—and the recipes that stand out as probable winners.

The biggest turkey trend this year is a push-back against wet brining, which the gastronomic press corps has promoted enthusiastically for the past decade or so. (Food Network star Alton Brown, for example, is a big fan.) Brining is the process of soaking the raw bird in a bath of salty—and sometimes spicy and/or sweetened—water in order to keep the breast meat moist and counteract the turkey's fundamental engineering flaw: The breast is done cooking long before the legs are. But this method isn't hassle-free. It's hard to find room in an overcrowded refrigerator for a bucketful of brine and bird. More important, as food-science maven Harold McGee pointed out in the New York Times this month, the extra salt in the turkey can botch the gravy. McGee is joined by other brine-resisters, like Thanksgiving guru Rick Rodgers, who, in Bon Appétit, recommends dry-salting the turkey 18-24 hours before cooking (which probably won't affect the gravy quite so much). Inspired by legendary chef and pre-salter Judy Rogers, the Los Angeles Times kvells over a similar technique. Saveur boasts a recipe from New Orleans chef Leah Chase in which the turkey is mostly cooked inside an aluminum foil packet, essentially steaming it en papillote. Others, like the gang at Cook's Illustrated, advise ditching the idea of a whole roast turkey. They advocate cooking it in parts instead. So does Mark Bittman of the New York Times, but he further thumbs his nose at tradition by rejecting the roasting custom altogether and recommending a braise.

As for gravy, Julia Moskin offers the eminently reasonable suggestion that you make your gravy ahead of time, not in the heat of the moment—"with gravy in your back pocket, so to speak, all that last-minute messing around with a hot roasting pan at the very moment when burner space is at a premium becomes entirely optional." Latin spices are chic this year for turkey marinades—I like the idea of a lemony Yucatan-style achiote rub offered up by Food and Wine while Gourmet suggests an earthy chile adobo.

Non-meat-eaters can get short shrift on a day devoted to turkey. Though Thanksgiving always provides lots of interesting vegetable sides, vegetarians often suffer from a lack of gravity in the main course. Take this Sunset magazine vegetarian menu, which, as its centerpiece, has a vegetarian stew served atop polenta. Though it looks appealing, it lacks the ceremonial ta-dah quality (not to mention the carving opportunity) that a big roast bird has. Kudos to Gourmet, then, for providing the most seductive vegetarian menu around, with a burnished farro and mushroom tart as the headlining act whose lustrous puff pastry crust recalls the sheen of a turkey roast. Though it's described as a side dish, another vegetarian main course option is Susan Spungen's gorgeous savory ricotta tart topped with pumpkin seeds and scalloped circles of roasted squash. The only question is, if the main course is a tart, will diners feel like pie for dessert?

With stuffing you declare your allegiance to tradition. Are you a Southern cornbread dressing traditionalist, an oyster stuffing epicure, or do you love the native-foods appeal of wild rice? Personally, I'm a stuffing bobo. I like the sweet-tart eclecticism of a fruity stuffing like this one at Bon Appetit though I'd put some nuts in it just for fun.

Cranberry sauce provides an essential tartness to the rich Thanksgiving table, and it's perpetually being tweaked—including a curious new inclination (in Saveur and the Food Network site, for instance) to roast it rather than cook it stovetop. As long as there's some sugar and citrus involved, it's hard to go wrong with homemade cranberry sauce. Even radical-seeming additions—like dates, ginger, port, or kumquats—have less impact on the finished product than you might imagine because cranberries are so domineering. My family has long gone with a raw version like this one, but cooked cranberries offer a darker, candied charm.

Slide shows of potato side dishes (like this one on Bon Appetit's site) seem a little wan in comparison with ones of golden turkeys or gleaming desserts, but there's no denying that potatoes are delicious and comforting. There is always a place at my table for buttery mashed potatoes. If you're looking for something a little more charismatic, Gourmet renders one of my favorite Mexican combinations—potatoes, cream, and poblanos—into a make-ahead gratin while Martha Stewart's braised potatoes would add great texture to a meal that boasts a lot of soft foods.

Bronzed, fluffy, toasted marshmallows are very photogenic, which is why I think so many publications still cling to one version or another of the hypersweet sweet potato casserole. (If I were going for sweet sweet potatoes, I'd skip all the way to dessert, as in this mile-high meringue pie proffered by Bon Appetit.) Perhaps for skeptics like me, Saveur offers a Solomon-like compromise—a casserole that's half marshmallowed and half topped with a crunchy cashew streusel. Meanwhile, Bittman rejects the candy-topped casserole altogether and offers up several other options, including stir-fried sweet potato shreds with sage and garlic.

For the most part, Thanksgiving focuses on lush autumnal ingredients, so I've never understood the appeal of summery green beans as part of the menu. Why not give a less mainstream veggie a chance to shine in its place? The parsnip's stock seems to be rising this year, as well it should. Though it may look like a milquetoast carrot, the parsnip's flavor is surprisingly complex—it can hold its own in a curried soup and adds depth and texture to creamed spinach. Speaking of green, the Brussels sprout is getting a lot of play this year, too. Rather than serving the minicabbage whole, food writers recommend shredding it into slaws or separating it into its cuplike leaves for a quick sauté. While these recipes look good, keep in mind such niceties take time. If you're pressed, you can make a lot of great dishes with halved Brussels sprouts, as this Chow recipe for braised sprouts suggests.

And, finally, there is dessert or, more accurately, pie. Even if I'm drawn to an uncrusted dessert like poached pears, or a ginger cake, I always give in to tradition and make a pie or two in the end. Cook's Illustrated, which verges on obsessive-compulsive when it comes to testing recipes, insists that pumpkin pie (subscription necessary) is actually best with some canned candied yams thrown in (and, while they're tinkering, with some vodka in the pie crust). But I'm most fascinated by this Frenchy tart from Saveur, which is riddled with boozy prunes. (Full disclosure: I will eat anything that is riddled with boozy prunes.) It would go nicely with a rustic apple tart like this one from Gourmet's archives or these tartlets with a base of almond cream beneath the apples. I also think the bracing taste of a Shaker lemon pie made from whole lemons would be welcome at the end of a long meal.

There is a balance to strike in preparing a Thanksgiving meal: It should be neither too complex nor too complicated. If you take on a turkey recipe that requires a lot of vigilance and manipulation—say this delicious-sounding but hands-on poached-then-smoked bird, you might want give yourself a break and stick to easy sides. On the other hand, Domino tries to simplify Thanksgiving a bit too much, promising that you can make an entire feast in one pan. It's a nice vision, but why not make dinner a little complicated at least once a year? Besides, I know at my house there would be mutiny if we skipped mashed potatoes and pie on turkey day.

How, then, to deal with the pressure? Careful delegation. In the Los Angeles Times, Russ Parsons explains how best to enlist friends and family to help: "Everybody wants to make the show-stopping centerpiece dish. But the plain fact is not everyone can be a star, and the host has to be the grown-up who tells them that." And if, in the end, it all goes to hell, the Oregonian has gathered together a list of all the Thanksgiving help lines—from Butterball to Land o' Lakes butter—each staffed with experts to talk you down from your kitchen crises.

She could be like Philander Knox, who served as secretary of state from 1909-13 and returned to the Senate in 1917. Or she could be more like Ed Muskie—the last senator to serve as secretary of state. Muskie ended his political career in 1980, when Jimmy Carter's loss to Ronald Reagan forced him out of the position just seven months after he had accepted Carter's offer.

But the closest parallel to someone like Hillary Clinton becoming secretary of state is the case of James Byrnes. Although he wasn't a senator when he was picked by Harry Truman—he had served in the Senate earlier in his career—Byrnes had been a close adviser to Truman's predecessor, Franklin D. Roosevelt (not unlike Clinton to President Clinton), and he was also Truman's rival, not for the presidency (as was the case for Clinton and Obama) but for the VP slot.

As President Barack Obama's foreign-policy agent, Hillary Clinton will have the problems all these secretaries faced—and then some. Only a true believer can envision Obama and Clinton making a good team. You have to believe in Obama's ability to control Clinton's independence, believe in Clinton's capacity to execute someone else's policies, believe in the ability of these two rivals to suddenly become close, believe that knowledge and experience are not crucial for the job, believe that the complicated Clinton family drama will not be a problem, believe that policy differences can always be bridged, and believe that it's possible to be both an ambitious politician and an honest-to-God civil servant.

Most of all, you have to believe that "change" can come not to nations alone—but also to people, even to politicians.

As Truman's secretary of state, Byrnes was not a great success. "Maddeningly independent," as David McCullough described him in Truman, Byrnes sometimes forgot that Truman was president. He eventually resigned, clearing the way for the more successful, more submissive George Marshall. Will Clinton always remember that Obama is president and that she isn't? Can she also forget, for a while at least, that she wants to return to the White House someday?

It has been a very long time since an active politician was able to overcome his ambition and become a truly effective secretary of state. The last to make the switch successfully was Cordell Hull, back in 1933, but Hull never returned to politics. It's doubtful whether Clinton plans to follow that path, just as it's hard to imagine her serving as secretary for 11 years, the way Hull did. In four years, or even eight, Clinton will still have plenty of time and energy. She'll want to do something with it.

Clinton might have more foreign-policy experience than Obama, but her record is still skimpy. Her most impressive achievement in this field may be the speech she gave in Beijing at the United Nations' fourth world conference on women. That was in 1995. In these days of celebrity culture, it's easy to forget that the most successful secretaries of the era were either knowledgeable experts (Henry Kissinger), experienced practitioners (James Baker), or both (Marshall, Dean Acheson). And they all had one advantage that Clinton will not enjoy: They served under presidents (Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, and especially George H.W. Bush) whose keen interest in foreign affairs long preceded their decisions to run for president.

Clinton is also unique because she has a husband with baggage of his own. Earlier this week, Christopher Hitchens raised important questions about the obvious problem of the Clinton money machine—and the possible conflict of interest between her role as secretary of state and his role as someone who has spent the last couple of years raising funds in all kinds of countries and from all kinds of people with all manner of agendas. But while Hitchens focused on the past, it is worth asking the same questions about the future: Will the Clinton Foundation cease to exist when Hillary Clinton becomes secretary of state? And if not, how likely is it that Bill Clinton's future adventures will complicate Hillary Clinton's job?

But the most obvious downside to Clinton's selection is the possibility that she will not be a close confidante of Obama's. Two weeks ago, writing in the Los Angeles Times about the six secretaries of state he worked under, former State Department official Aaron David Miller noted that "only one—[James] Baker—had a truly close relationship with his president." Not surprisingly, Baker is one of two secretaries Miller considers "great." The Lincoln-era "team of rivals"—popularized to exhaustion by Doris Kearns Goodwin's book—might ring nicely. But a long interval has passed since Lincoln's day, and the role of secretary of state has changed a great deal. In today's world, as Miller wrote, you "cannot expect to do serious diplomacy abroad, or in the sometimes even more perilous world of Washington, without knowing that the president has your back, will not allow domestic interest groups to undermine you or permit his other advisors to do so."

Can you imagine a Clinton secretaryship that isn't undermined by Obama advisers—or an Obama who isn't heavily pressured by "interest groups" to rein in his secretary—unless you are a true believer? And how can this work if we assume that the two of them still disagree on many of the issues they debated during the campaign?

Take Iran, for example. Obama wants to engage—as does Clinton, though she is a latecomer to this view. But he was soft, cautious even, when speaking about Iran, and she was forceful—some even described her attitude as "saber rattling." Will she be his emissary for preparatory work prior to a higher-level meeting? Will he trust her to explore the possibilities for negotiation the way he wants them to be explored? And how long will it take for Obama's other supporters to start complaining that it is her fault—not, say, the Iranians'—that the talks have not succeeded?

According to his own testimony, Obama thinks the American people—Clinton included, I presume—are "pragmatic." And in selecting Clinton, Obama sends a signal that he wants a pragmatic—not a "fundamentally ideological" type of foreign policy. Of course, the assumption that there's a pragmatic solution to every problem is quite absurd—but it tells us something about Obama: He is not much different than the Clintons. A year and a half ago, criticizing (in retrospect too harshly) the appointment of Tony Blair to be Middle East peace envoy, I wrote that Blair shares "the hubris of Clinton and the Clinton era. The idea that all the Israelis and Arabs need to solve their problem is a good-enough lawyer."

Now Obama is displaying the same hubris. With all the obvious difficulties surrounding Clinton's appointment, with all the baggage she brings, with all the clear disadvantages she will have as secretary—Obama nevertheless wants her at his side. They're both good lawyers, so clearly they believe that there's no problem that doesn't have a "pragmatic" solution.

Barack Obama's foreign-policy advisers must be hoping that Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, is ready to pull a rabbit out of his mashadda. If Obama is determined to close Guantanamo when he takes office, he'll have to strike a deal with Saleh over repatriation conditions for dozens of Yemeni men who are currently stuck in diplomatic limbo.

More than 100 Yemenis have been detained at Guantanamo since January 2002, and they now constitute the largest national population group remaining at the camp. Only 14 Yemenis (including the body of one detainee who committed suicide) have been flown home. At least 11 other Yemenis have been officially approved for release, and there are many more who are unlikely ever to face trial.

President Obama could simply put the Yemenis on the next flight home, according to Appeal for Justice's legal director, David Remes. "If we want them to go home, we'll have to leave it to Yemen to decide what to do with them when they get there," says Remes, who represents 16 Yemeni clients in Guantanamo. However, the U.S. government has been reluctant to turn the Yemeni detainees over to a country that seems unable or unwilling to control terrorism within its own borders.

Yemen is a weak, incomplete state on the southwestern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. It's a sham democracy where the tribes are heavily armed and power is brokered through personal ties and patronage payments. Twenty million Arabs inhabit one of the poorest nations on earth—a country of kickbacks and corruption, with a highly factionalized elite and a head of state who belongs to the longest-serving world-leaders club.

President Saleh has survived three decades at the top by striking deals with tribal proxies, but his divide-and-rule strategy has turned crisis management into a permanent condition. "Saleh is dealing with an on-again, off-again civil war in the north, economic and political unrest in the south, and al-Qaida in between," says Remes.

Violent jihad has been increasing since 2003, when 26 prominent terrorist suspects escaped from a high-security Yemeni prison by tunnelling their way into the bathroom of a local mosque. Central courts have limited reach, so President Saleh favors surrender-and-release deals, in which terrorist suspects-turned-informers are set free on a promise of good behavior. On Nov. 8, Yemen's appeal court halved the 10-year jail term of convicted militant Jaber al-Banna, a U.S.-Yemeni citizen who earned a place on the FBI's "most wanted" list for providing material support to a terrorist organization.

Yemen's terrorist circus could be described as farcical if the consequences weren't so tragic. In 1998, four Western tourists were taken hostage by an Islamist group and killed in a bungled rescue raid by Yemeni security forces. In October 2000, 17 U.S. soldiers died in Aden harbor when the USS Cole was bombed during a refueling stop.

As operating conditions become more difficult in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, Yemen's jihadist networks appear to be growing. Eight Europeans and four Yemeni drivers have been killed in ambushes on tourist convoys during the last 18 months. In September 2008, twin car bombs exploded outside the gates of the U.S. Embassy in Yemen's capital, Sana'a, killing six attackers, a Yemeni guard, and 10 bystanders.

Washington is demanding a monitoring system for the Guantanamo returnees and insisting on a rehabilitation plan, according to several U.S. human rights attorneys involved in the Yemeni cases. "From what I understand, the State Department would even agree to pay, but the Yemenis have yet to offer a satisfactory program," says one attorney. "I'm told that U.S. officials laughed out loud when they saw one page of bullet points, which the Yemenis submitted as an action plan."

If the United States has been demanding too much and Yemen has been offering too little, how will President Obama break the deadlock? Stewart Patrick, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, says the impasse stems from the weak central authority in Yemen and the Bush administration's narrow focus on security. Obama's National Security Council should place a higher priority on "whole of government" engagement with fragile states, such as Yemen, that are incubators for organized crime and terrorism.

"The Bush administration had the right insight. The U.S. and the international community are today threatened less by rivalry among great powers (though it is not entirely absent) than by the spill-over consequences of states that lack effective governance structures," says Patrick, who co-wrote the Index of State Weakness in the Developing World with Obama foreign-policy adviser Susan Rice. "But we now need to recognize that traditional instruments of military power are of limited utility in correcting institutional shortcomings." Patrick says it's time to elevate development as a core pillar within the U.S. foreign-policy structure, alongside diplomacy and defense.

World Bank officials and British diplomats have been trying to prod Yemeni ministers along a path of root-and-branch reform for the last few years. Billion-dollar pledges from the British government and Yemen's Arab neighbors have created an incentive for Yemeni officials to master the acronyms that dominate discourse on international development. But elite corruption has put the brakes on genuine progress, and the Bush administration's Millennium Challenge program in Yemen was suspended in 2007.

Obama's new secretary of state may sponsor fresh diplomatic initiatives to kick-start Yemen's flagging reform efforts, but she or he will struggle to finance any additional cash giveaways until the U.S. economy recovers. In the meantime, Obama needs an immediate solution to the Guantanamo problem.

With a rapidly growing population, falling water tables, and dwindling oil reserves, Yemen is teetering on the brink of failure. State collapse would create an ungoverned space on the Saudi Arabian border. Piracy and smuggling in the Gulf of Aden would escalate—with implications for the security of shipping routes and the transit of oil through the Suez Canal to Europe and North America.

Let's hope Obama's foreign-policy advisers have a good contingency plan, because President Saleh is unlikely to conjure a solution off the top of his head.

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A mashadda is a traditional headdress worn by Yemeni men.

Axl Rose understands, perhaps as well as the Chinese Communist Party, that creating Chinese Democracy requires patience. As Chinese Democracy hits stores in the United States, democracy is far from rocking China. But Rose may be consoled by the knowledge that in the 17 years it took the album to take shape, rock 'n' roll has made a ripple in China—indeed, "November Rain" can be found on the playlist of countless karaoke bars. Guns N' Roses surely owes its rising popularity with a new generation of Chinese to economic liberalization, even as its latest album's title track bemoans the state of the political system. As Rose wails that time's running out for the Chinese government, evidence suggests that, in fact, time is very much on Beijing's side.

Some in the United States were undoubtedly dejected when Deng Xiaoping, who in 1978 inaugurated sweeping market reforms of the Chinese economy, ultimately failed to deliver on promises of political liberalization. Hopes for a democratic China were violently quashed in Tiananmen Square in 1989, only to be reignited when the Soviet Union disintegrated two years later, leaving China the lone major power led by a wobbly authoritarian government. Yet as Communist regimes toppled around the world in short order, China proved immune to the democratization wave washing from Moscow to Berlin. Expectations for Chinese democratization dimmed as time wore on, and 30 years after Deng opened up the Chinese economy, China's political system remains insular. The CCP has defied predictions of its imminent collapse, and Western-style democracy has not come to China. What gives?

It's clear that China is not lurching toward democracy. Understanding why this is so requires poking some holes in underlying Western assumptions. One of the dominant assumptions is that economic liberalization will inevitably lead to political freedoms, yet China has grown ferociously for 30 years without sweating such inevitability. Another assumption, related to the first, is that China's 100 million strong and growing middle class will demand political reforms once its material wealth has been satisfied. But few signs point to concerted political activism among Starbucks-drinking, BMW-driving, Guns N' Roses-listening Chinese yuppies. A more recent assumption is that the Internet will act as a powerful tool to circumvent China's ubiquitous censorship and organize massive grass-roots movements against the status quo. Aside from Internet-organized anti-Japanese demonstrations, the Web has yet to prove its utility for fomenting serious political opposition in China.

CNN's Jack Cafferty famously called the Chinese leadership the same bunch of "goons and thugs" during the Tibet protests in spring 2008, highlighting the static image of China in the West. True, heavy-handed suppression of perceived threats to the political regime is still in Beijing's arsenal of knee-jerk, reactive policies and should not be condoned. But it is a mistake to view the Chinese leadership as simply a ruthless dictatorial regime. Mao Zedong would probably not recognize today's CCP, save several of its more anachronistic elements. It has undergone thoughtful introspection about its own legitimacy and potential demise, recently prompting Vice President Xi Jinping, the front-runner to assume the presidency in 2013, to state that the CCP's survival is not inevitable. What's more, Premier Wen Jiabao, in an unprecedented interview with Fareed Zakaria earlier this fall, unflinchingly claimed that a democratic China will be the endgame.

But the Chinese concept of "democracy" should not be conflated with the Western idea of direct elections and using the rule of law to constrain power. The utterance of the term democracy among the Chinese elite has so far meant promoting government transparency and accountability, village-level elections, rule by consensus and consultation, expanding the public sphere, co-opting entrepreneurs and intellectuals into the party—anything but conceding ultimate power to the people.

In short, the CCP has nimbly adapted, is populated largely by elites, and is essentially ruled by a nine-member oligarchy in the Politburo, the fount of power in Chinese politics. Gone are the days of a single strong man. More voices now participate in the policymaking process, creating competing factions within the party that vie for influence.

The party's subtle transformation is significant because its retooling efforts have left it standing and turned previous assumptions on their heads.

First, China's decision to attract foreign investment meant that it had little choice but to create a legal environment that Western businesses could tolerate. Its entry into the World Trade Organization expedited the creation of a sound legal regime. This has led top leaders to promote the rule of law (applicable to everyone except the party itself, of course). As a result, lawyers are proliferating and rising in rank in China, and citizens have increasingly turned to legal channels to protect their rights. Second, the Chinese middle class has benefited most from the state's economic policies. It has few incentives to dismantle the status quo. Third, far from being a liberator of thought, the Internet has in many ways been manipulated by the party to reinforce and shape its message. The Chinese state's reach at every level of society has always been overestimated, and the Internet has become a useful tool to gauge public opinion for the purpose of better governance. On the one hand, the central government has increasingly involved the public in the policymaking process by inviting online comments on major policy proposals. On the other, the CCP has cultivated a crop of young, tech-savvy cadres in universities across the country—known as the "50-cent gang"—to infiltrate online forums and bulletin boards to counter criticisms of the government with pro-CCP propaganda. Incremental tweaks and improvements in governance and public participation have apparently blunted the urgency for full-fledged democracy.

So, Western democracy will not come to China anytime soon, and, in fact, Beijing has increasingly spurned the Western model of governance. Shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a shell-shocked Beijing mustered enough reason to commission a systematic study of the causes for the Soviet implosion, followed by an assessment of the "color revolutions" in former Soviet states and an examination of Western democracies. Ultimately, it concluded that the U.S. style of democracy is unsuitable for China and that political reforms must not be rapid. Instead, Beijing appears determined to draw from various political systems, adapting when warranted, conforming where demanded, and rejecting when necessary.

For all the CCP's efforts at reinvention, it is still rarely confident in its "mandate from heaven." It is a party plagued by endemic corruption at all levels, unable to provide sufficient basic social services, terrified of collective protests, and prone to suppression rather than accommodation. Some China experts have argued that CCP rule in its current form is not sustainable and that the end is near. Another scenario, just as likely, is that piecemeal, gradual political reforms could mean that democracy arrives in China with a whimper instead of a bang. A third scenario is a CCP whose inchoate and improbable experiments with governance eventually settle upon a unique formula that satisfactorily addresses the monumental issues that China faces. The party then accrues enough political capital and overwhelming public confidence that it calls for a general election, certain of victory. It would demonstrate its embrace of democracy without actually abandoning single-party monopoly.

While it's impossible to predict with any accuracy the ultimate fate of the Chinese polity, 30 years of evidence seems to indicate that Beijing is willing to change only on its own terms. For instance, the impressive stimulus package Beijing unveiled recently was more an indication of the leaders' resolve to tackle domestic anxieties than a sign of answering the global call for stronger Chinese leadership. The stimulus is motivated as much by gloomy economic forecasts as by politics. Emphasis on rural development in the stimulus plan signals a recognition that the CCP cannot simply be a party of elites and must "spread the wealth" to the poor—the majority of China. Indeed, this has been the focus of the current Hu Jintao administration.

Domestic dynamics consistently trump outside pressure, so any potential for democracy will likely result from internal, rather than external, factors. Democracy promotion may have long lost its effectiveness on China, particularly since the nation is ruled by leaders who have virtually discredited Western democracy as a necessary, or even appropriate, end. Washington, the world, and aging '80s rock bands may have to deal with an evolving, but lasting, authoritarian government for quite some time.

The New York Times has now done it; so, recently, have European cease-fire monitors, the BBC, and NPR. These organizations, along with a whole host of other investigators, have looked once again into the events surrounding Georgia's Aug. 7 incursion into South Ossetia, the event that led, in turn, to the massive Russian invasion of Georgia on Aug. 8.

Their most important conclusion? Georgia started it and killed civilians in the process. My conclusion? We knew that already. We also knew, and indeed have known for some time, that the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, is susceptible to extreme bouts of criminal foolhardiness. A year ago this month, he attacked demonstrators in Tbilisi with riot police, arrested opposition leaders, and even smashed up a Rupert Murdoch-owned television station—possibly not, I wrote at the time, the best way to attract positive international media coverage. I'm told Saakashvili—who did indeed overthrow the corrupt Soviet nomenklatura that ran his country—has many virtues. But caution, cool-headedness, and respect for civilian lives and democratic norms are not among them.

We knew that about him—and so did the Russians. That was why they spent much of the previous year taunting and teasing the Georgians, shooting down their planes, firing on their policemen, and attacking their villages, all in an attempt to create a casus belli, either in South Ossetia or in Abkhazia, another Russian-dominated, semi-autonomous enclave inside the Georgian border. And when Saakashvili did what they'd been hoping he'd do, they were ready. As one Russian analyst pointed out, the Russian response was not an improvised reaction to an unexpected Georgian offensive: "The swiftness with which large Russian contingents were moved into Georgia, the rapid deployment of a Black Sea naval task force, the fact that large contingents of troops were sent to Abkhazia where there was no Georgian attack all seem to indicate a rigidly prepared battle plan." There was, it seems, one minor miscalculation. As a very senior Russian official recently told a very senior European official, "We expected the Georgians to invade on Aug. 8, not Aug. 7."

No matter. Once the well-planned invasion had been launched, the Russians rampaged across the countryside, systematically destroyed Georgia's sea ports and factories, killed civilians, and rolled their tanks into the middle of the country, as if preparing to cut off Tbilisi. Though they didn't invade the capital in the end, I have no doubt that their intention was to prove to the Georgians that they could have done so if they had wanted to—and that next time, they will. The operation succeeded: They went home, declared themselves the defenders of human rights in South Ossetia, exaggerated the number of Osettian civilian casualties by a factor of 20, and denounced Saakashvili as a "Soros paid, CIA/MI6 controlled puppet."

This is all old news, of course, but I'm repeating it because it is important to focus, not just once but again and again, on the nuances, complications, and layers of this story, since it is one whose retelling has recently become an important propaganda tool in an ongoing trans-Atlantic war of words. It is very satisfying to describe Georgia as a tiny, brave, and innocent democracy, proudly standing up to the evil Russian bear, and, indeed, some did so at the time: "We are all Georgians," said John McCain. It is also very satisfying, I have no doubt, to describe Georgia as a tin-pot dictatorship, an evil American-neocon lackey, and the personal fiefdom of a major war criminal—and some are doing so right now. Indeed, for those longing to go back to "business as usual" with Russia, I'm sure it is extremely satisfying to discover, suddenly, that it was all Georgia's fault in the first place.

Unfortunately, neither cartoon version of events is accurate, and no new "investigations" or "revelations" about the August war will make them so. Saakashvili's attack on South Ossetia was a disaster, made worse by the bizarrely boastful celebrations he conducted afterward. The outrageous Russian response was also horrific, both for the Georgians and for Russia, whose neighbors (and investors) now know exactly what to expect from the Medvedev-Putin regime.

The conclusions to be drawn from this unsatisfying, cloudy picture are not simple, either—but then, they never were. In the short term, the Georgians must ensure Saakashvili is not murdered or ousted in a Russian-backed coup. In the long term, the Georgians need to choose a leader who can promote true political and economic stability. Until then, Western leaders should support Georgian democracy—not particular Georgian democrats—and prepare a unified response to the Russian military escapades to come. And while the propaganda battle rages, they must stay on the sidelines.

Listen to the Gabfest for Nov. 21 by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:







You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.

Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz talk politics. This week, the Obama administration begins to take shape, politicians jockey for position, and the Big Three automakers come to Washington.

Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned in the show:

Among the people mentioned as potential Cabinet members are Sen. Hillary Clinton and Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano. Media reports indicate that former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle has been selected to become the next Health and Human Services secretary.

The group discusses what it calls the endless speculation over Obama's Cabinet.

There has been a great deal of discussion about the possible nomination of Eric Holder as attorney general. One potential pitfall for such a nomination is Holder's involvement in Bill Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich.

John mentions the so-called "Team of Rivals" approach to forming a Cabinet.

John talks about how President Bush's approval ratings continue to be low, even after the election. He says this is not helping the "Republican brand."

Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens is out, losing a squeaker to Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich. His loss came the same week as his 85^th birthday.

California Democratic Rep. Henry A. Waxman has been voted the incoming chairman of the House energy and commerce committee, ousting Rep. John Dingell of Michigan.

Former Republican primary candidate Mitt Romney made headlines this week with his New York Times op-ed, "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt."

Emily chatters about a federal court ruling involving five Algerian detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The judge, an appointee of President George H.W. Bush, ruled that the five men have been held unlawfully and should be released.

David discusses the real estate frenzy in Washington, D.C., brought on by the inauguration. Many D.C.-area residents are renting out their homes and apartments for huge amounts to people hoping to visit the capital for the festivities. By some estimates, as many as 4 million people are expected to descend on Washington.

John talks about the resurrection of photographs from Life magazine. The photos are now being made available through Google. Among them are shots of former NBC correspondent Nancy Dickerson, John's mother.

The e-mail address for the Political Gabfest is gabfest@slate.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)

Posted on Nov. 21 by Dale Willman at 11:27 a.m.

Listen to the Gabfest for Nov. 14 by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:

You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.

Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz talk politics. This week, the election, how Barack Obama will fare as president, and the future of Sarah Palin.

Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned in the show:

President-elect Barack Obama has the highest approval rating going into office of any president over the past 25 years. Outgoing President George W Bush, meanwhile, has the lowest approval rating of any president since the beginning of such polls.

It appears that the cautious tone of Obama's Nov. 4 acceptance speech was an attempt to tamp down expectations.

A major question for Obama will be whether he should behave like former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and work fast to capitalize on his current popularity or whether he should move more cautiously. John says he favors a bold approach, similar to what Obama promised in the campaign. But he says Obama's bold rhetoric does not match the more mainstream policies he is championing. John says Obama will be able to make some early choices that will be popular, including reversing current policies on the State Children's Health Insurance Program and stem cells.

The group discusses how to talk to children about the Obama victory and its place in the racial history of the United States.

Since the election, Sarah Palin has been talking a great deal about the campaign and her role in it, perhaps in an attempt to rehabilitate her public image. Emily says the visibility campaign may be an effort to become the national spokeswoman of the conservative wing of the Republican Party.

David says Slate has received many inquiries following last week's request for a Gabfest sponsor. He also chatters about a New York Times story that says more and more women are opting to give birth at home.

Emily talks about a Supreme Court argument on whether forensic scientists working for police labs can be required to testify in court about their findings in criminal cases.

John chatters about a 2004 interview in which Obama discussed his views on religion. John says the interview occurred at a time when Obama did not yet have all the filters in place that now prevent him from speaking candidly.

The e-mail address for the Political Gabfest is gabfest@slate.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)

Posted on Nov. 14 by Dale Willman at 10:30 a.m.

Nov. 7, 2008

Listen to the Gabfest for Nov. 7 by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:







You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.

John Dickerson, David Plotz, and Emily Bazelon talk politics. This week, what happened, what's next, and what will become of Sarah Palin?

Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned in the show:

This election is significant for many reasons, among them that the voter turnout was the largest in 44 years.

Exit polls turned out to be pretty accurate predictors of the final results.

Voter turnout in the District of Columbia was huge but caused few voting glitches.

John discusses Barack Obama's final campaign rally in Manassas, Va., which drew as many as 100,000 people. At the end of that speech, Obama told the story of how, months earlier, during a visit to South Carolina, one woman helped motivate him by shouting out, "Fired up, ready to go!" That moment, he says, shows how one person can make a difference. The phrase itself became a rallying cry for the Obama campaign.

John also talks about Rahm Emanuel's appointment as Obama's chief of staff. He says it shows Obama quickly moving from election mode into governing mode. The group also discusses the baggage Emanuel could bring to the Obama White House. He is known for being ruthless and is often described as having "sharp elbows."

One major question lingering after the election concerns the fate of Sarah Palin. Some Palin supporters say she is now being blamed for McCain's loss. Newsweek reported that McCain-campaign insiders are complaining that Palin spent thousands of dollars more than previously disclosed buying clothes for herself and her husband.

David chatters about Curtis Sittenfeld's novel American Wife, which is inspired by the life of first lady Laura Bush.

Emily talks about the passage of Proposition 8 in California, a constitutional amendment that bans same-sex marriage in the state. A number of lawsuits have already been filed in an effort to overturn the measure.

John chatters about the holograms CNN used during its election-night coverage.

The e-mail address for the Political Gabfest is gabfest@slate.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)

Posted on Nov. 7 by Dale Willman at 12:30 p.m.

Oct. 31, 2008

Listen to the Gabfest for Oct. 31 by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:







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Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz talk politics. This week, it's all about the last week of the presidential campaign—with a shout-out to the Philadelphia Phillies.

Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned in the show:

John writes this week about a sense of hopefulness that has come over many of the people working for the McCain campaign.

Emily attempts to correct John's pronunciation of the word dour.

Emily suggests that John McCain is getting some traction with his campaign's latest effort, which is to cast Barak Obama as a socialist who wants to redistribute wealth in the country.

John talks about the size of the crowds at campaign rallies for Obama compared with those for McCain.

The gang also discusses whether attacks on Obama's character will appeal to undecided voters. John points out that undecided voters typically vote for the challenger in a presidential race, which should mean Obama, since the Republicans currently hold the White House. One factor in McCain's favor is that during the primaries, the undecided voters favored Hillary Clinton over Obama.

John says 10,000 Elvis fans can't be wrong.

John says the optimism in the McCain camp is likely misguided, because there are too many data points favoring Obama—so many red states seem to be leaning toward the Democrat or are considered likely wins for Obama. He says Obama's early strategy of challenging McCain across the country, rather than focusing on primarily Democratic states, is now paying off.

David praises Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic Party, who designed the so-called 50-state strategy after the Democratic defeat in the 2004 presidential election.

Emily breaks the discussion of politics with her cocktail chatter, in which she brags about her hometown Philadelphia Phillies winning the World Series.

John chatters about the early vote in this election. As many as one-third of all voters will have voted by Election Day, so it is possible that the election will effectively be over by then, though no one will know for sure.

David talks about Slate's effort to have staffers publicly state who they will vote for next Tuesday. Of those who took part, the count was 55 for Obama and just one for McCain. David claims that almost all major news organizations would find similar results.

The e-mail address for the Political Gabfest is gabfest@slate.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)

Posted on Oct. 31 by Dale Willman at 10:41 a.m.

Just before Bill Clinton left office in January 2001, he granted a presidential pardon to the fugitive billionaire Marc Rich. Rich had fled the country for Switzerland in 1983 after being charged (by then-U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani) with tax evasion and the illegal purchase of Iranian oil during the 1980 hostage crisis. He'd ended up on the FBI's "10 Most Wanted List." Clinton's pardon created a furor because Rich was a fugitive, because the pardon had been subjected to little formal review, and because Rich's ex-wife had previously contributed a reported $1 million to various Democratic candidates (including senator-to-be Hillary Clinton) and to Clinton's presidential library. When the Republican-led House government reform committee held its inevitable hearings on the matter in February 2001, a star witness was the man President-elect Barack Obama reportedly has chosen to be his attorney general: Eric Holder. Holder's role in the Rich pardon is certain to come up at his Senate confirmation hearing.

Holder was deputy attorney general in Clinton's Justice Department. In his prepared statement at the 2001 hearing (below and on the following four pages), Holder told the committee that he'd never heard of Rich when he was first approached late in 1999 by Rich's attorney, former White House Counsel Jack Quinn (Page 2). Holder said he contacted Giuliani's successor as Manhattan U.S. attorney and asked her to meet with Quinn about dropping the charges. She declined. A year later, Holder met again with Quinn. This time Quinn said he planned to circumvent the Justice Department's pardon office and would instead submit a pardon application directly to the White House. Holder testified that Quinn's plan struck him as "unremarkable" (Page 3). Holder next heard about Rich on President Clinton's last full day in office. Quinn phoned to tell him to expect a call from his successor as White House counsel, Beth Nolan, about Rich's request for a pardon. When she phoned, Holder told Nolan he was "neutral, leaning toward favorable." In retrospect, Holder told the committee, he wished he'd "placed as much focus on the Rich case as I did on other pardons" (Page 4).

Rich never returned to the United States, possibly because of tax issues that the pardon never resolved. He currently runs the Marc Rich Group investment portfolio and the Rich Foundations philanthropic institutions.

Historic footnote: Another Washington lawyer called to testify in that February 2001 hearing was I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who as a private attorney had represented Rich from 1985 until the spring of 2000. At the time of the hearing, Libby was Vice President Dick Cheney's newly appointed chief of staff. Eight years later, Libby himself is considered a likely bet for a presidential pardon, this time from President Bush, for Libby's perjury conviction in connection with the Valerie Plame case. (Bush has already commuted Libby's 30-month sentence.) Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

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In its 10 years on the market, Viagra has earned a reputation for enhancing performance. "When it comes to hardness, Viagra delivers," says the pill's Web site. Thanks to the drug, the site boasts, many previously flaccid men have "achieved grade 3 or 4 erections."

Now Viagra may be in trouble for delivering a different kind of achievement. The World Anti-Doping Agency is funding studies to detect whether the drug gives athletes an aerobic advantage. If it does, it could be banned from future Olympics.

How could a drug for sex boost performance in sports? Simple. As the video on its Web site explains, "Viagra works by increasing blood flow to the penis." It's not a penis drug. It's a blood-flow drug. By dilating vessels and increasing oxygenation, it can improve athletic performance. Two studies have already verified this effect in cycling and mountaineering. "It clearly provides an unfair advantage, at least at altitude," an expert leading WADA's research tells the New York Times. "I couldn't imagine it not going down on the [prohibited drugs] list."

Note the caveat: at altitude. Only the cycling study tested Viagra at sea level, and there, the drug made no difference. Even at altitude, it improved performance only to standards normally seen at sea level. In other words, it erased an externally induced deficit. Was that an unfair advantage? Or was it just the correction of a disadvantage?

It's true that in any given race, contestants share the same altitude. But the world's best athletes don't just compete against their immediate rivals. In pursuing world records, they compete against the greats of previous years, some of whom ran at higher or lower altitudes. That's why the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, held at an elevation of 7,500 feet, produced world records in some events and debacles in others. According to the International Olympic Committee, "The altitude was an advantage in the events which needed a brief but intense effort … but a handicap for efforts lasting longer than two minutes." Advantage. Handicap. The unfairness, from a record seeker's standpoint, could hardly be clearer.

Altitude hasn't been an issue lately, since the summer Olympics have stayed closer to sea level. Pollution, however, has become a serious problem, especially this year in Beijing. That's where WADA's studies raise an interesting possibility. One of them, according to the Times, "is measuring the potential effects of Viagra as an antidote to air pollution," with 30 athletes assigned to "ride exercise bikes in clean air and in a room with the air polluted by the exhaust of leaf blowers and lawnmowers." The hypothesis seems to be that air pollution, like altitude, can constrict oxygen flow—and that Viagra might restore it.

If that proves true, it further complicates the debate. The top finisher in the Olympic men's marathon in Beijing didn't set a world record. He wasn't even close. Six of the fastest times in marathon history were recorded this year, but they didn't happen in Beijing. They happened in London and Berlin, which have hosted the world's eight fastest marathon performances and, in separate years, five of the last six record-breaking runs.

What do London and Berlin have that Beijing lacks? Clean air. According to a 2006 World Bank study based on 1999 data, Beijing's air had an estimated 106 micrograms of particulate matter per cubic meter. Of the 200 American cities tested, none reached even 50 micrograms. Los Angeles, the host of the 1984 Olympics, registered 38. Berlin had 25; London had 23. In a Beijing marathon, you have to breathe air four times as polluted as the air in London or Berlin. What chance do you have of breaking the world record?

Suppose the new studies find that Viagra cancels out pollution just as it cancels out altitude. Suppose long-distance runners in Beijing and other bad-air venues pop the little blue pill to give themselves an even chance at beating records set in London or Berlin. Are they tilting the playing field? Or are they leveling it?

Here's the next question in the evolution debate: We know roughly how the sequence of life ran forward in time. What about running it backward? How would you feel about rewinding human evolution to a species that's almost like us, but not quite?

Last week in Nature, scientists reported major progress in sequencing the genome of woolly mammoths. They reconstructed it from two fossilized hair samples. One was 20,000 years old; the other was 65,000 years old. Now, according to Nicholas Wade of the New York Times, biologists are discussing "how to modify the DNA in an elephant's egg so that after each round of changes it would progressively resemble the DNA in a mammoth egg. The final-stage egg could then be brought to term in an elephant mother."

Cool, huh? But that's not the half of it. Wade notes:

The full genome of the Neanderthal, an ancient human species probably driven to extinction by the first modern humans that entered Europe some 45,000 years ago, is expected to be recovered shortly. If the mammoth can be resurrected, the same would be technically possible for Neanderthals.

In fact, Wade points out, there are good reasons to re-create a Neanderthal: "No one knows if Neanderthals could speak. A living one would answer that question and many others."

Whoa there, says Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops: "Catholic teaching opposes all human cloning, and all production of human beings in the laboratory, so I do not see how any of this could be ethically acceptable in humans." Wade concedes that "there would be several ethical issues in modifying modern human DNA to that of another human species."

Note the qualifiers: modern human DNA. Another human species. As this uncomfortable reality of the past becomes a future prospect—transitional creatures between human and nonhuman—the "human dignity" framework starts to look a bit shaky. George Church, a leading geneticist, suggests (in Wade's paraphrase) that scientists could "modify not a human genome but that of the chimpanzee," bringing it "close enough to that of Neanderthals, [with] the embryo brought to term in a chimpanzee." No human clones or products involved. At least, no "modern" humans. This leaves the question of whether we're entitled to mess around in the lab with "another human species." But it's hard to see how the bishops and other religious critics of biotechnology can plunge into this area, having drawn a tight moral line around our species.

Every serious scientist knows that we and other animals evolved from the same ancestors. The real question today is whether to put our DNA and theirs back together. Until now, that question has been raised in the form of human-animal hybrids made in labs for research. You can argue that these are somehow wrong because they're newfangled and artificial. But what can you say about Neanderthals? They were made by nature, not industry. In fact, we're the industrial villains who apparently wiped them out. They're as natural as we are.

If we do this Church's way, I don't see how conservatives can object. They didn't object last year when scientists announced the cloning of rhesus macaque embryos. That, too, was the creation of nonhuman primate life. Follow the human lineage three branches beyond the primate order, and the rhesus macaques are still with us. Follow the human line two more branches, and the chimps are still with us. One more branch, and you're down to us and the Neanderthals. If it's OK to clone a macaque and a chimp, it's pretty hard to explain why, at that last fork in the road, you're forbidden to clone a Neanderthal.

Is the idea repugnant? Absolutely. But that's not because we'd be defacing humanity. It's because we'd be looking at it.

What's the next best thing to having your own baby? Having your identical twin's baby.

A woman in England just did it. Her ovaries didn't work, but her sister's did. So doctors transplanted an ovary from the fertile sister to the infertile one. The result, announced a few days ago, is the first baby verifiably born from a whole-ovary transplant. The story raises a bunch of messy questions, starting with this one: Who's the mom?

If you get pregnant with a donor egg, you're the gestational but not the genetic mother. But what if the donor is your twin? It's easier to think about this in the context of organ transplants we're already familiar with. Suppose you get a kidney transplant from your identical twin sister. Genetically, your new kidney is (almost) the same as your old one. The new kidney wasn't born in you, but you and it developed from the same embryo. Not just the same womb, but same embryo. In that sense, it really is yours.

Eggs and ovaries are more complicated. Your twin sister's ovary, like her kidney, came from the same embryo that produced you. Because of reproductive cell division, any one of her eggs would differ genetically from any one of yours (though even that point is quite complicated). But over time, her ovary and yours will yield almost the same set of eggs, if not in the same order. It's as though each of you rolled the same pair of dice a million times. So when she gives you an ovary instead of an egg, the result will be as though you were getting back your original ovary.

And that's the point. Doctors are choosing twins for these pioneering ovary transplants not because it's cool or weird, but because what's cool and weird about your twin—that she's genetically identical to you and yet is a different person—is also medically crucial. One reason it's crucial is organ rejection. Ovaries, unlike kidneys, aren't necessary for survival. If you got an ovary transplant from a random woman, you'd need serious drugs to stop your body from rejecting it as foreign. The rejection or the drugs could harm or even kill you. But if the ovary comes from your identical twin, it's not foreign. Your body accepts it. This is much safer.

The second reason is that your twin, while genetically identical to you, is physically distinct. This is important because the primary purpose of twin ovary transplants isn't to help twins (there aren't that many) or to advance toward ovary transplants between strangers. The primary purpose is to perfect the best kind of transplant: the kind you get from yourself.

At first glance, this sounds nuts. If your ovary works, why take it out in the first place? There are two answers. One is that tens of thousands of still-fertile women have to get chemotherapy or radiation for cancer. They'd rather not nuke their eggs as part of the deal. By removing an ovary, freezing it during cancer treatment, and later restoring it, they stand a decent chance of beating the cancer and still having kids.

The other answer is that millions of women would like the freedom to delay motherhood beyond the years nature intended. That's the ultimate market for ovary transplants, according to Sherman Silber, the doctor who did the procedure on the woman from England*. "Women have opportunities they didn't have before, they do not want to commit to a relationship until they are sure it is the right one, they want to get the degree, save a little money and buy the nice flat," he told the Telegraph. Today, these women risk losing their fertility. IVF is expensive and uncertain. Donor eggs are hard to get, and the child isn't genetically yours. A self-ovary transplant, Silber points out, is "so much nicer and more convenient."

In fact, self-transplants of partial ovarian tissue have already been done. The problem is that when the woman subsequently gives birth, doctors can't be sure whether the egg came from the reimplanted tissue or from tissue left behind. The only way to be sure is to take out the whole ovary or, better yet, to get the ovary from somebody else. Somebody else who matches you genetically. Your twin. That's why doctors working on self-ovary transplantation are so excited about the progress in twins. It's a testing ground, says one, to see whether "the entire organ can be successfully retransplanted."

Down the road, this research raises big questions. What's going to happen to us as we detach motherhood from what were known, back in the 20^th century, as the fertile years? What happens when we can put those years in a freezer and shoot them into the future? It's great that women can have careers, take their time finding the right person, and just be themselves before starting a family. But if we think we've stopped the biological clock, we're kidding ourselves. It's more like that time-travel scenario where you send the astronaut into space at nearly the speed of light and he comes back a year later to find that everyone else has aged a decade. The clock in your frozen ovary slows, but the clock in your body keeps on ticking. The ovary comes back to an older, weaker host. Maybe you can still have a baby. But can you raise it?

For now, we're still working on twins. By last year, Silber had done ovarian tissue transplants between seven pairs of twins. More whole-ovary twin transplants will follow this one. Three years ago, the former procedure produced its first baby; now, the latter procedure has done the same. Who exactly are the biological parents of these children? "I haven't really spent any time thinking about the idea that I am the genetic mother," says the twin who donated the ovary for the child just born in England. Is she the genetic mother? Or is it her sister, who carried the child and came from the donor's embryo? Or is it both?

We've heard of scenarios like this before, but in a different context. Seven years ago, in his maiden speech on stem-cell research, President Bush warned that human cloners might "grow another you, to be available in case you need another heart or lung or liver." Critics called this science fiction. But such clones already exist. They're called identical twins. They've given each other kidneys, liver tissue, even hearts. Now they're giving each other babies. In this miracle of love and science, an embryo that split in the previous generation reunites in the next. "I always say she is the other half of me," the donor in the English case says of her sister. And so she is.

Correction, Nov. 24: The article originally said the ovary transplant was performed in England. Actually, although the patient lived in and gave birth in England, the transplant was performed in the United States. (Return to the corrected sentence.)

In early October, Bank of America quietly entered into the largest settlement in history to make amends for predatory lending, putting up more than $8 billion to rescue borrowers with faulty loans from Countrywide Financial, a notorious subprime lender recently purchased by the bank. As politicians and regulators haggle over the best approach to modify perilous mortgages and as millions of Americans fall deeper into delinquency, the Bank of America settlement offers a clear path out of the broader problem: Chuck the illegal loans and start over again, making the lawless lenders foot the bill.

Part of the backdrop here is dismayingly familiar. Explosive growth of subprime lending created perverse incentives that led to fraudulently inflated loan terms. What's less known is that some of these loans were priced higher based on the race of the borrower, with African-Americans and Latinos paying more, in secret, behind-the-scenes deals. Some of this activity will even turn out to have been criminal. There are more than 1,500 open FBI investigations into mortgage fraud, much of it concentrated in the subprime market.

At the same time, many delinquent borrowers don't know that the terms of their home mortgages may have been the byproduct of fraudulent, discriminatory, or criminal behavior by mortgage brokers and lenders. Before we end up spending billions to rescue subprime borrowers, we should figure out which loans were the products of illegal behavior, rescind them, and rewrite them on terms that are fair and legal. If there is a cost associated with this process, let lenders pick up the tab, which is precisely what Bank of America is doing. This would save taxpayer money by reducing the number of loans that the government would pay to modify. It would also help to stabilize the housing market and lay the blame for much of the subprime crisis at the feet of those most responsible: the lenders who acted like predators.

What's the evidence that African-Americans and Latinos paid more for loans in a way that's illegal? A study of lending data from 2006 by the Federal Reserve estimates that roughly 18 percent of the loans made to white borrowers in that year were subprime loans, compared with roughly half the loans made to African-Americans and Latinos during that time. When the study assessed borrowers of similar incomes, 30 percent of African-American borrowers received subprime loans, compared with 18 percent of whites and 26 percent of Latinos. These discrepancies aren't absolute proof, but they suggest that discriminatory steering took place in which otherwise qualified borrowers of color were directed to subprime, and substandard, loans. Federal law makes it illegal to discriminate based on race in the terms and conditions of a home mortgage loan. It would appear that this is exactly what happened.

This discrimination is at the core of a number of lawsuits advocates have filed across the country over the last year. Several of the cases focus on a particularly devious practice: Without borrower knowledge, many mortgage brokers received a commission from the lender for persuading a borrower to accept a higher loan interest rate than what the bank was otherwise willing to offer. The lawsuits claim that such commissions were paid more often in loans to African-Americans and Latinos than in loans to whites, revealing, again, that lenders often charged borrowers of color more than their white counterparts. As these suits progress, and the groups suing gain access to lenders' and brokers' records—e-mails, internal memoranda, training materials, and other documents—we are likely to learn more about the practices of the lenders who are the defendants and about the industry in general.

Discriminating lenders were not the only problem with the housing market that courts should now address. Mortgage brokers rushed into poor communities with exotic subprime loans during the early part of this decade, because these communities were underserved by traditional banks. During the height of the market, nearly half of all subprime loans went through a broker, compared with only 28 percent of prime loans. Brokers also dominated loans made to borrowers of color: 64 percent of African-American borrowers used a broker, compared with only 38 percent of white borrowers.

The problem with this wasn't the mortgage brokers per se. It was that many prospective borrowers wrongly assumed that the brokers were working in the borrower's best interest. But in most states, mortgage brokers do not owe any duty to the borrower to find the best possible deal. Many brokers relied on borrowers' ignorance of the mortgage market to pursue higher commissions and other financial perks for themselves. In much of the country, there's no legal remedy for this. But a few states require that brokers avoid conflicts of interest and pursue the best deal for the borrower. These states include California, home to about one-quarter of the mortgages in the United States that are in some stage of foreclosure. The Department of Justice, the state attorney general, legal-services attorneys, volunteer lawyers, and law students should all be poring over California loan documents to smoke out the brokers who violated their legally mandated duties to their clients. If a significant number of loans in California alone could be altered, consistent with the borrowers' abilities to pay, either through litigation or its threat, the federal government wouldn't have to pay as much for a national bailout.

To date, none of the proposed homeowner-rescue plans acknowledges that a significant number of the homeowners who are in distress were the victims of predatory and illegal practices. Opponents of the plans currently on the table raise three serious objections: First, any massive loan rescue would be costly; second, borrowers in good standing might intentionally default on their mortgages to benefit from a bailout; and third, investors holding securities backed by subprime loans will balk at loan modifications that diminish their already depreciated investments and will sue to stop such efforts.

Going after the lawbreakers helps to address these concerns. It would not only lower the cost of the rescue plan by reducing the number of borrowers needing help, it would also direct assistance only to those people who were victims of illegal conduct and insulate the loan modifications from litigation by investors looking to preserve their investments. Investors won't challenge loan restructuring when the underlying loans were made on illegal terms. You don't lend your horse to Jesse James and then sue the stagecoach he robbed to get it back. Investors will have to redirect their fire from the borrowers to the brokers and lenders who did the fancy loan footwork—and perhaps the ratings agencies that blessed it.

Some investors will have to line up in bankruptcy court, since more than 40 subprime lenders have gone belly up in the last two years. But there are some still standing, like Wells Fargo (already facing a discrimination lawsuit brought by elected officials in Baltimore). And where federal and state investigations have already netted criminal indictments in cases of broker and lender fraud, civil liability should follow. Lax enforcement of the laws is clearly one of the many reasons we find ourselves in the current mess. Strict enforcement of those laws would help get us out of it.

The U.S. Justice Department faces an internal crisis in morale and a public crisis in credibility. And while every Justice Department pushes its political agenda alongside its lofty goals of upholding the law, the Bush Justice Department sometimes pushed its political agenda in direct violation of the law. The question now is whether Eric Holder, Barack Obama's pick for attorney general, can fix it.

Nobody knows better than Holder that the line between law and politics at DoJ can be blurry. The one stain on his otherwise gilded legal career was the role he played, as No. 2 in the Clinton Justice Department, in the pardon of fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich during Clinton's last hours. Holder didn't give the pardon application much thought before concluding that he was "neutral leaning towards favorable." Clinton relied in part on that advice in granting the pardon. Holder later testified before Congress that he'd made a mistake.

What Holder stands to inherit from Michael Mukasey and his predecessor Alberto Gonzales is not a Justice Department that was slightly confused about where the law began and politics ended. If confirmed, he will take over an institution where, at least in recent years, politics sometimes had no end. The department became fodder for late-night TV monologues in 2007 when former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his staff flimflammed their way through congressional hearings about the partisan firings of eight U.S. attorneys. Those independent prosecutors were let go for failing to be—in the parlance of Gonzales' underage underlings—"loyal Bushies." More than a dozen officials resigned in the wake of that scandal.

Things at Justice worsened with internal reports finding the department had hired career civil servants, law student interns, assistant U.S. attorneys, and even immigration judges based on their loyalty to the GOP. Secret memos produced by the department's Office of Legal Counsel authorized brutal interrogation techniques and warrantless government eavesdropping. The subordination of law enforcement to politics led to the flight of career attorneys in the department's Civil Rights Division and especially the Voting Section, where by 2007 reportedly between 55 percent to 60 percent had transferred or left the DoJ.

If the rot at Justice could have been cured by simply replacing Gonzales, the appointment of Michael Mukasey, a respected retired federal judge in 2007, might have been enough. It wasn't. To be sure, Mukasey said noble things about the evils of torture and made moves toward disentangling the department from the White House. But more often than not, Mukasey declined to lance the boil. He refused to call water-boarding torture. He insisted no crimes were committed when department officials violated civil service laws. And he criticized those seeking accountability for the architects of the administration's torture policy as "relentless," "hostile," and "unforgiving." Mukasey collapsed while giving a speech this past week, but thankfully the incident seems not to have been serious.

Perhaps the most important quality Eric Holder would bring to his new position is his knowledge of the Justice Department and Washington—he knows both inside and out. In addition to serving as a judge in the District of Columbia, Holder was the top federal prosecutor for the District and served in the DoJ's Public Integrity Section, prosecuting government corruption. Gonzales came to the job with no understanding of the department. He seems never to have understood that at some point along the way, he had to become the people's lawyer, as opposed to the president's.

Everybody has advice for Holder, starting with shuttering Guantanamo and repairing detention and interrogation policies; recalibrating the legal limits on information-gathering by intelligence agencies; doing away with provisions of the Patriot Act that encroach on civil liberties; and restoring the integrity and independence of the Office of Legal Counsel, which advises the president on the lawfulness of a proposed action. At a speech he delivered last June, Holder condemned the Bush administration for abusing prisoners, violating the Geneva Conventions, and authorizing warrantless surveillance on Americans, promising that "we owe the American people a reckoning."

That raises the dilemma Holder will face in overhauling the Justice Department: Does the reckoning owed to the American people come with investigations, retribution, and punishment for those who authorized the lawbreaking? Holder faces tremendous pressure from congressional Democrats and civil liberties groups to go after those who authorized eavesdropping and torture. He will face as much pressure from the other side to turn the page and move on, letting bygones be bygones.

Members of Obama's transition team have recently suggested that the new Justice Department may opt to do just that. Presumably they will allow investigations to continue, and none of this would foreclose a truth commission. And as professor Scott Horton noted last week, the new Justice Department should probably not be investigating the old Justice Department in the first place.

It should not surprise anyone if Eric Holder ultimately decides that the best way to repair the Justice Department will be to look beyond the folks who wrecked it. Former Attorney General Robert Jackson famously told the nation's top prosecutors that a great U.S. attorney was someone who "tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes." The folks who want to condemn Eric Holder based solely on a mistake over Marc Rich might want to take Jackson's words to heart as well.

A version of this piece also appears in this week's issue of Newsweek.

Attention, convicts: Time is running out to get applications to the pardon attorney at the Justice Department if you're hoping President Bush will be your decider. Few of you should get your hopes up—Bush has rejected a record number of requests for pardons and commutations. In the last eight years, he has pardoned 157 people—a miserly sum compared with his predecessors. But you don't have to give up entirely: More are expected in the coming months, most notably for Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Before President Clinton went on a pardon spree for wealthy friends and campaign contributors at the end of his presidency, pardons and commutations were traditionally bestowed on average citizens who had successfully reformed their lives and given back to their communities after completing lengthy sentences. Pardon experts believe that of the Bush prospects, the 1980s junk-bond king Michael Milken best fits the rich-and-famous description.

Most of the other top prospects for pardon listed below have, like Milken, been convicted and served prison time. But not all. People who are merely charged could be eligible for pardons, as Bush's father demonstrated when he pardoned former Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger. And Washington is abuzz with the prospect that Bush might issue pre-emptive pardons for government employees who could face trouble in the future stemming from their roles in his "war on terror."

We've rated potential pardonees' chances from zero to four "Get out of Jail Free" cards.

SPORTS

TEXAS

Florita Bell Griffin: possible. As governor, Bush appointed Griffin to the oversight board of the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs. In 2000, she was convicted of bribery, theft, and money laundering. In 2003, a federal appeals court overturned a separate conviction for mail fraud. Griffin has two things going for her: Bush and Texas. Bush has pardoned more of his fellow Texans than residents of any other state.

Texas Border Patrol guards: good chance. Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean are serving sentences of 11 and 12 years, respectively, for the nonfatal shooting in the back of an unarmed Mexican drug runner in February 2005. A jury found that the two border patrolmen then tried to cover up the shooting. Their requests for pardons have won support from numerous Republican congressmen, including Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, who introduced the Congressional Pardon for Border Patrol Agents Ramos and Compean Act. Bush left open the possibility of pardons for both men during an interview with a Texas TV station.

TEAM BUSH

Scooter Libby: You betcha! Cheney's former chief of staff, who also served as assistant to the president, was convicted of perjury and of obstructing the FBI's investigation of the leak of former CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity. In June 2007, he was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison and ordered to pay a hefty fine. Bush commuted the prison time, but only a pardon will allow Libby to practice law again.

James Tobin: good chance. Tobin was Bush's 2004 New England campaign chairman and raised more than $200,000 for the president's re-election bid. He was indicted in October for making false statements to the FBI in connection with the bureau's investigation of the plot to jam Democratic Party phones in New Hampshire in 2002. Tobin was convicted in 2005 for his actual role in that scheme, but that conviction was overturned on appeal in 2007. His fundraising prowess and the overturning of his earlier conviction—in connection with the same case—make him a good pardon candidate.

Tom Noe: unlikely. Noe was a prominent Ohio Republican fundraiser for Bush-Cheney '04. He was sentenced to 27 months in a federal prison for illegally funneling money to the campaign. Two months later, he was also found guilty of theft, money laundering, forgery, and corrupt activity related to Ohio's rare-coin investment scandal. Noe might have a shot if his only offense were connected to campaign funding. But his Ohio crime was one of a number of nasty Republican scandals that badly damaged the party's standing in the 2006 midterm election.

CONGRESS

Sen. Ted Stevens: possible. Now that the 85-year-old Alaska Republican, who was found guilty last month of corruption, has lost re-election, members of his party might push for a pardon for him—after all, he spent the last 40* years in the Senate. Stevens seemed to dismiss the need for a pardon while the votes were being counted; late Tuesday, he was tight-lipped about the whether he would ask Bush for clemency.

Bob Ney: no chance. The former Republican congressman from Ohio was sentenced to two and a half years in prison after he acknowledged taking bribes from convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Ney was on the Abramoff-sponsored golfing trip to Scotland at the heart of the case against David Safavian, the former White House procurement officer who was also caught up in the scandal. A pardon of Ney could refocus public attention on cushy relationships between Republicans and lobbyists over the last eight years—relationships that a humbled GOP would rather forget.

Randy Cunningham: no chance. The former Republican congressman from California pleaded guilty in 2005 to federal conspiracy charges to commit bribery, mail fraud, wire fraud, and tax evasion. He was sentenced to eight years and four months in prison and ordered to pay $1.8 million in restitution for all the fancy gifts he racked up from lobbyists. "The Duke" has a pardon attorney, and a number of people have written to the Justice Department in support of clemency. But Cunningham's naked abuse of power tainted Republican rule and contributed to steep party losses in 2006.

Others convicted in the Cunningham scandal:

	Brent Wilkes: possible. Wilkes, a defense contractor, was sentenced to 12 years in prison in February for furnishing Cunningham with yachts, vacations, and other luxury items in exchange for lucrative contracts. Wilkes cooperated with federal investigators in the Cunningham case, and that could help him win a pardon.

Kyle "Dusty" Foggo: possible. Foggo was Wilkes' childhood friend before he rose to become executive director of the CIA, the No. 3 position in the U.S. spy agency. He was indicted in 2007 on several counts of fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering in connection with Wilkes and admitted to steering a lucrative CIA contract to his pal. Foggo remains under investigation by the CIA and other federal agencies. But his cooperation with investigators and years of service in the clandestine agency once run by Bush's father could make him a good candidate for clemency.

TEAM ABRAMOFF

WHITE COLLAR

Correction, Nov. 20, 2008: The original sentence mistakenly stated that Ted Stevens has served in the Senate for 50 years. In fact, he has served for 40 years. (Return to the corrected sentence.)

Correction, Nov. 21, 2008: The article originally misspelled Ted Olson's name. (Return to the corrected sentence.)

Imagine you're Barack Obama. You just ran "the most technologically sophisticated presidential campaign in history." Your operatives played social media like a fiddle while coordinating field operations via text message, e-mail blast, and iPhone app. You proved yourself to be a modern info-executive with your 3 a.m. e-mails and your preference for reviewing docs on your BlackBerry. (Sure, clipping the 'Berry to your belt was lame, but I assume that you did this to signal your gotta-check-the-inventory-back-in-Tucson regular-guy-ness. Nice.)

Now, you're preparing to enter the White House, and your BlackBerry is about to be ripped from your clutches because of privacy and security concerns. Savor the irony: You captured the Oval Office by making technological history, only to find that you're now required to govern like in the 19^th century. Echoes of Lincoln, indeed.

The rest of the White House will have e-mail, of course, and Obama's aides will have BlackBerrys duct-taped to their forearms, but the thought of an offline president gives pause. In the working world, many of us have witnessed the moment when the office e-mail system goes down. People emerge from their offices looking dazed, spouting inanities—"There's nothing to do!" Forced hallway conversations ensue. Others gather for a premature visit to Starbucks. One determined soul shuts her door and starts making phone calls. Underneath the vaguely party-esque air, there's a deep unease, a sense of being stranded.

Obama is about to find himself on an island—no more congratulatory e-mails from friends, no texts from the kids, no more advice from Scarlett Johansson (!). President Bush, for one, looks forward to having this private channel back again: "I can remember, as governor, I stayed in touch with all kinds of people around the country, firing off e-mails at all times of the day to stay in touch with my pals." Bush gave up e-mail when he became president. Clinton preferred the cell phone for his late night tête-à-têtes, and while e-mail was introduced to the White House under George H.W. Bush, he did not use it. Now, though, Poppy describes himself as a "black belt wireless e-mailer." He likes friends to message him during Houston Astros games, where he sits behind home plate, and waves back on TV when he gets their note.

What about the rest of the world leaders? Putin, like the good former KGB agent he is, rarely uses the phone, let alone e-mail. The Brits recently had an embarrassing diplomatic episode when an aide to Gordon Brown had his 'Berry filched by a woman at a Chinese disco. And, last summer, the French security service banned the French Cabinet from using BlackBerrys, partly for reasonable security issues and partly for the oh-so-French reason that "the BlackBerry system is based on servers located in the US and the UK." Nicolas Sarkozy also has a BlackBerry manners problem; the Telegraph reported that he "risked offending the Pope" by sneaking a peak at his 'Berry during an audience with the pontiff. Sarkozy has cut down on his public cell-phone and 'Berry use as part of a rebranding effort to "presidentialize" himself. This seems right—checking your 'Berry during a face-to-face conversation suggests a twitchy insecurity, while coolly placing it on the table and not looking at it suggests connected command.

Members of Congress were given BlackBerrys after 9/11 when it emerged that 'Berrys continued to work in the Twin Towers after cell service failed. Presently, as Daniel Libit reported in Politico, 70 percent of the Hill has a BlackBerry, with various levels of addiction. (Age isn't a predictor of 'Berry love: Sen. Ted Stevens, 85, apparently wandered the halls of power in a 'Berry daze.) Some congressmen love the buzz at their belts, while others worry that D.C. is no longer a refuge from constituents. The Politico article quotes Steve Frantzich, a professor of political science, who fears for the future of George Washington's "cooling saucer"—a metaphor the first president used to describe the Senate as the place where the frothier ideas of the House are tempered by deliberation. A Capitol Hill hopped up on push e-mail endangers the Obama "change" ideal. One of the chief appeals of e-mail, after all, is that you can avoid a face-to-face conversation. It's much easier to be partisan and dismissive with your thumbs.

On the campaign trail, Obama expressed frustration about his overscheduled day and noted the importance of setting aside time to think. So perhaps giving up the Blackberry won't be a hardship but rather the first, greatest presidential lifehack. Defeating your e-mail is the frequent dream of the productivity nerds, who counsel checking e-mail only twice a day and turning off new-message alerts. The unreachable lifehack ideal is an information flow that interrupts you only when it's important and necessary. We don't really want zero e-mail to get through—just the crucial ones. To that end, the White House is already designed (and perhaps best understood) as an information filtration system, with only the best and most urgent reaching Obama's desk. The success or failure of this system relies on the judgment of those he surrounds himself with.

Still, there's something niggling about Obama surrendering the 'Berry. Being the leader of the free world might have its compensations, but it has to be enfeebling to lack the power to hit the send button. This techno-awkwardness in the highest office brings up uncomfortable associations: an FBI with crappy computers, a government that seems backward, remote, and useless. You don't need to be a computer lover to see that smooth information flow might be a help in tackling the complexity of the financial crisis, Iraq, Afghanistan, education, and health care. Tech policy starts at the top. Obama should set a precedent by having the 'Berry at his side: Here is a government that is accessible, capable, and efficient. Plus, a man's gotta have BrickBreaker for all those long, boring meetings.

The giant bank now known as Citi bellied up to the bailout bar again on Monday morning. Because Citi is such a huge bank and one of the nation's largest advertisers, there will be great scrutiny on how it spends the latest injection of taxpayer funds—some $27 billion. And that scrutiny is well-deserved. We all have a big stake now in how Citi manages its (our) resources. Cost-cutting and parsimony should be in. Excess and profligacy should be out. This can be a difficult lesson for a big-time Wall Street firm to learn, so let's hope Citi executives have been paying attention to how other bailed-out (or wannabe bailed-out) companies have been behaving publicly.

For example, transport policy. As we saw in last week's shambolic congressional hearings, in which CEOs of the Big Three were chastised for flying their own planes to Washington, jetting in to cry poverty isn't just expensive; it's bad form. Citi should ground corporate jets and instead send execs on the Acela train or the Chinatown Bus ($35 round-trip) when they go to Washington to talk with their new stakeholders. The best option for taxpayer-financed travel: a Joad-style flatbed (American-made) truck.

Companies like Citi also need to clamp down on the luxury lifestyle that its top employees have come to expect. As AIG showed, spending $400,000 on spa treatments, fancy hotel rooms, and fine wine for agents at a time when you're burning through $100 billion-plus in taxpayer loans is a really stupid move. Citi is as well-known for its retreats as the French army. (It has its own big center in Armonk, in Westchester County, N.Y.) In August, it banned off-site meetings. The good news: There are plenty of large venues right in New York City at which employees can congregate, including on its own rapidly depopulating trading floors. The software tools that companies use to bar the use of foul language on internal e-mail should also be tweaked to delete any mention of Ritz-Carlton, Four Seasons, Tiffany's, and the Caribbean. While they're at it, Citi should cancel all Christmas parties loudly. It's unseemly for the remaining employees to get hammered and enjoy canapés while their erstwhile colleagues pound the pavement. Besides, parties are a legal nightmare for Wall Street firms (lots of opportunities for inappropriate comments and contacts). And everybody secretly hates them.

But there's a tendency for troubled companies to engage in mindless cost-cutting, which I examined in a two-part series back in 2006, here and here. Rather than focus on the things that employees will complain about to reporters or, worse, to blogs—clamping down on paper clips and Post-it notes—Citi should take a hard look at a prominent item that's both symbolic and financially meaningful: the dividend. No company that has messed up its affairs so poorly that it needs to borrow money from the taxpayers should pay a dividend to stockholders. And here, Citi is failing. Monday's press release notes that Citi "also has agreed not to pay a quarterly common stock dividend exceeding $0.01 (one cent) per share for three years." Why 1 cent? As told to me by the CEO of a banking company that had cut its dividend to a penny before being eaten by another bank, there are lots of mutual funds that invest only in companies that pay dividends. Eliminating the dividend entirely would force those funds to sell shares immediately at a time when the stock is already under stress. That makes sense, I suppose. But for Citi over the next few years, a zero dividend is enough. A penny per share per quarter works out to about $218 million a year, by my calculations—money that would be better used to pay back debt.

Citigroup would also be well-advised to save a few tens of millions of dollars by zeroing out compensation for the top executives over the next several years, especially for CEO Vikram Pandit. Pandit joined Citigroup when the bank bought his hedge fund in April 2007 for a price reported to be $800 million in cash. Within a year, the unit exploded and was folded, thus contributing to Citi's many losses. Shareholders shouldn't have to pay anything to "Mr. Vikram," as Saudi investor Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal referred to Pandit in an unintentionally hilarious interview with Maria Bartiromo. (With the horses behind him, the brown scarf, the worry beads, and the retro hairstyle, the prince looks, as a colleague noted, like a cross between Guido Sarducci and Frank Zappa circa 1979.)

But not every extra expense must be eliminated. How about those full-page advertisements Citi has been running for the last few days in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, touting its diversification, expertise, and commitment to customers? I actually think those expensive ads are fine. Citi is suffering as much from a crisis of confidence as anything else. So the company is spending a few million bucks on ads that hammer home the notion that "Citi never sleeps." If Citi, a major advertiser in a variety of media, were to withdraw entirely from the field, people would begin to think that the Citi that never sleeps is sleeping with the fishes. And the Times and the Journal need all the ads they can get. [Editor's Note: Citi would be well-advised, however, to spread some of that love to Slate and Newsweek while avoiding the properties of Time Inc. altogether.]

Citi Field is also a tough one. In 2006, Citi signed a $400 million, 20-year deal to name the Mets' new stadium after the company. It's hard to walk away from signed contracts. And if Citi manages to stick around for the next 20 years, this could turn out to be a very good deal. The company's name will be mentioned millions of times in a range of media—online, television, radio, newspapers—over the next two decades. As a gesture to the company's new partial owners, perhaps there could be some tweaks: Paulson Park at Citi Field or the Ben Bernanke Bullpen. And, of course, the field's tarp can just be called the TARP.

It's difficult to avoid the comparisons between the current sad state of financial affairs and the Great Depression. "This is not like 1987 or 1998 or 2001," Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain said at a conference on Nov. 11. "We will in fact look back to the 1929 period to see the kind of slowdown we are seeing now." Time depicted President-elect Barack Obama on its cover as Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And in Washington, the buzz is all about what the new team will do in its first 100 days. What's next? Show trials in Moscow?

All this historically inaccurate nostalgia can occasionally make you want to clock somebody with one of the three volumes of Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s history of the New Deal. The credit debacle of 2008 and the Great Depression may have similar origins: Both got going when financial crisis led to a reduction in consumer demand. But the two phenomena differ substantially. Instead of workers with 5 o'clock shadows asking, "Brother, can you spare a dime?" we have clean-shaven financial-services executives asking congressmen if they can spare $100 billion. More substantively, the economic trauma the nation suffered in the 1930s makes today's woes look like a flesh wound.

"By the afternoon of March 3, scarcely a bank in the country was open to do business," FDR said in his March 12, 1933, fireside chat (now available on a very cool podcast at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s Web site). In 1933, some 4,000 commercial banks failed, causing depositors to take huge losses. (There was no FDIC back then.) The recession that started in August 1929 lasted for a grinding 43 months, during which unemployment soared to 25 percent and national income was cut in half. By contrast, through mid-November 2008, only 19 banks had failed. The Federal Reserve last week said it expects unemployment to top out at 7.6 percent in 2009. Economists surveyed by the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank believe the recession, which started in April 2008, will be over by next summer. (Of course, back in January the same guys forecast that the economy would grow nicely in 2008 and 2009.) But don't take it from me. Take it from this year's Nobel laureate in economics. "The world economy is not in depression," Paul Krugman writes in his just-reissued book The Return of Depression Economics. "It probably won't fall into depression, despite the magnitude of the current crisis (although I wish I was completely sure about that)."

So what's with all the speakeasy-era speak? Financial executives invoke distant history in part to make up for their own recent shortcomings. If a force as powerful as the Great Depression has been unleashed on the global economy, how can a mere mortal like Merrill's John Thain be held responsible? The specter of the 1930s has also been deployed by political leaders to create a sense of urgency. "We saw a lot of overblown analogies in the run-up to the passage of the bailout bill," notes Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. President Bush's Sept. 24 address to the nation warned that "the entire economy is in danger," and that "without immediate action by Congress, America could slip into a financial panic, and a distressing scenario would unfold."

It's understandable that we make comparisons to the Great Depression. Analogies help us place things in context. But very few of us actually lived through the Depression. Studs Terkel, the great chronicler of the voices of the Depression, died in October at 96. The historical distance from today to 1929 is as vast as the chasm separating 1929 from 1850. Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at Duke University and author of Predictably Irrational, says, "The closer we are to something—an event, a person, an object—the more nuances we see." By contrast, the further away we are, the greater (and less accurate) the generalizations we make. And so when comparisons to the Great Depression are flashed on cable-news crawls, "it's all about the desire to fit everything into a snapshot," Ariely says.

Ironically, the differences between the two eras can be summed up in a few sound bites. The world of 1929-33 was one that lacked shock absorbers such as Social Security and deposit insurance to insulate people from economic disaster. In the 1930s, some of the world's largest economies—Germany, the Soviet Union, Japan, and Italy—were run by leaders hostile to the very notion of market capitalism. Today, U.S.-style market capitalism is under assault from self-inflicted wounds, and Germany, Italy, and Japan (Russia, not so much) are working with the United States to cope with a common problem. Back then, we were cursed with a feckless Federal Reserve, and a wealthy Treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon,* saw the downturn as a force for good. "Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate," he said. "People will work harder, live more moral lives." By contrast, today's Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, is a student of the Great Depression, and the wealthy Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, wants to provide liquidity to stocks, farmers, and real estate. A final difference: After the 1929 crash, the nation had to wait more than three years for a president who simply wasn't up to the job to leave the scene. This time, we've got to wait only two more months.

A version of this article also appears in this week's issue of Newsweek.

Correction, Nov. 24: This column originally misidentified Hoover's Treasury secretary as Paul Mellon. In fact, it was Andrew Mellon. (Return to the corrected sentence.)

On Friday afternoon, the markets shot up nearly 7 percent following the news that President-elect Obama was poised to name Timothy Geithner, president of the New York Federal Reserve, as the next treasury secretary. Why was this leak worth several hundred billion dollars in market capitalization?

After all, our next treasury secretary won't be a guy who made a fortune on Wall Street (like Robert Rubin or Henry Paulson), or who served as CEO of a Fortune 500 company (like Paul O'Neill or John Snow), or who's been a distinguished economist (like Larry Summers), or who held high elective office (like Lloyd Bentsen). Rather, Geithner has been an extremely effective meritocratic bureaucrat for 20 years—a sort of community organizer for the financial world.

At a time when the private-sector leadership, and Wall Street's leadership in particular, has done a collective pratfall, it was unlikely the treasury secretary would hail from a prominent private-sector company. Early speculation, which began on the eve of the election, centered on Larry Summers, the voluble, brilliant Clinton-era treasury secretary, and Geithner, his one-time deputy. (Jacob Weisberg made the case for Summers last week. And I will take this opportunity to note one of my few accurate prognostications of this, or any other, millennium: On Nov. 5, I predicted it would be Geithner.)

Geithner has a great deal in common with Obama. They're almost exactly the same age. (Both were born in August 1961.) They're both products of elite East Coast universities: Geithner was a Dartmouth undergrad and has a master's degree from Johns Hopkins. Like Obama, Geithner is a citizen of the world. He spent a chunk of his childhood in Asia. (He has "lived in East Africa, India, Thailand, China, and Japan," his résumé notes.) Both are skinny, fit, high-energy guys with two children. And like Obama, Geithner sometimes appears mismatched to the majesty of his surroundings. Geithner has a quick laugh, a sense of irony, and bounces in and out of rooms at the sedate New York Federal Reserve, a grand fortress in Lower Manhattan.

One key difference: While Obama abandoned community organizing for politics early on, Geither has stuck with it. Of course, the community Geithner has been trying to organize—with limited success—is the international and domestic financial community.

Geithner worked his way up the ladder in the Treasury Department. As a junior member of the Committee To Save the World in the 1990s, he worked long nights alongside Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Summers to douse the economic forest fires that arose in Mexico, Asia, and Russia. After a brief sojourn at the International Monetary Fund, in 2003 he was an unexpected choice for president of the New York Federal Reserve. (Unlike most of his predecessors in that post, he lacks a Ph.D. in economics.) For the last several years, he's functioned as a sort of den mother for Wall Street. The New York Fed, acting as the agent of the central bank, provides liquidity and succor to financial systems and helps organize aid when a community member fails. Geithner has played a crucial behind-the-scenes role in the bailouts (and, in the case of Lehman Bros., the nonbailouts). As the eyes, ears, and operating arm of the nation's central bank in New York, he knows all the key players. Geithner has a great appreciation for the sensitivities and workings of capital markets.

Geithner, whom I've met briefly, is a creature of the establishment. But he manages to be an establishmentarian without exhibiting self-importance and arrogance. To a degree, then, he's the un-Summers. And while previous treasury secretaries drawn from Wall Street may have called their colleagues for updates on business conditions, Geithner relies as much on charts drawn from a Bloomberg machine. Which makes him, to a degree, the un-Paulson.

So far, Geithner has been a valuable behind-the-scenes team member. Now he's been hired to be a leader. Is he worth several hundred billion dollars? We'll find out soon.

It's a mystery to me how Baz Luhrmann continues to be regarded as a director worth following. A long time has passed since I've regarded his lush, loud, defiantly unsubtle output with anything but dread. In Australia, his new romantic-epic-Western-protest-war drama, Luhrmann's dedication to cliché has become so absolute, it starts to verge on a kind of genius. There's not a single music cue that isn't obvious (swelling strings to indicate heartbreak, wailing didgeridoo to signal aboriginal nobility). Nary a line of dialogue is spoken that hasn't been boiled down, like condensed milk, from a huge vat of earlier Hollywood films (Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Out of Africa, and various John Ford cattle-drive pictures being the most obvious referents). But to marvel at the purity of Australia's corniness isn't to imply that the movie functions as so-bad-it's-good camp, or guilty pleasure, or anything else involving aesthetic enjoyment. Audiences without a vast appetite for racial condescension, CGI cattle, and backlit smooches will sit through Australia with all the enthusiasm of the British convicts who were shipped to that continent against their will in the late 18^th century.

Nicole Kidman plays Lady Sarah Ashley, a tightly wound British noblewoman who comes to Australia with the intention of selling her philandering husband's remote ranch, Faraway Downs. Upon arrival, she learns that Lord Ashley has been killed—purportedly by an aboriginal "savage" but actually, as it turns out, by a scheming local rancher (Neil Fletcher). To save her farm from being seized by this mysteriously motivated villain, Lady Sarah must oversee the drive of 1,500 distinctly digital-looking cattle to the port at Darwin. To do so, she hastily assembles an unlikely team of cowpokes, including herself, a legendary local horseman known as the Drover (Hugh Jackman), and an orphaned Aboriginal boy, Nullah (Brandon Walters, who also narrates the movie as part of a framing device).

After their arrival in Darwin, the band is subjected to a fresh set of indignities. Meddling missionaries seek to apprehend Nullah, who's become like a son to Lady Sarah, and send him to an isolated school for half-caste children. Sarah and the Drover have fallen in love, but their relationship is showing the strain of his long absences on yearly drives (or "droves"—if there's one thing you learn in this movie, it's that Australians never use the word "drive" in a cow-related context). And World War II looms on the horizon as Japanese bombers approach the Australian coast.

Hugh Jackman, with his Broadway-ready sincerity and bendable plastic physique, has just the right level of fakeness for a part like this (and I mean that in the best way; Jackman's synthetic virility can be charming in the right role, and he seems perfectly at home in Luhrmann's hokey universe). Kidman often shares that curiously artificial quality, so you'd think the two would be perfect as two action figures banged together in front of a scenic backdrop. But Kidman's performance here feels tense and uncertain. She overacts in the opening, broadly comic scenes and never finds the right tone thereafter. When she tries to comfort the newly orphaned Nullah with a half-remembered version of "Over the Rainbow," Kidman doesn't seem like a woman struggling to liberate her long-repressed maternal feelings; she seems like a genuinely cold bitch reluctantly attempting to feign empathy. But the character's incoherence isn't all Kidman's fault; the group-written script makes her conversion from effete aristocrat to weather-beaten cowgirl happen virtually overnight.

I guess I don't know enough about Australian racial politics to opine at length on this movie's vision of its aboriginal characters, but I will say that if my people were subjected to this simultaneously idealizing and condescending "magical Negro" treatment, I would seriously consider aiming a boomerang at Baz Luhrmann's head. All of the native characters, especially Nullah's grandfather, King George (David Gulpilil, who played the lead in the infinitely superior 1971 film Walkabout and who has been seen in many roles since), are benevolent, preternaturally gifted, and ultimately subservient to the white leads. Though much is made of Sarah and Drover's all-but-parental relationship to Nullah, he never stops calling them "Boss" and "Mrs. Boss."

During the film's long and troubled production, Luhrmann shot more than one ending and screened the results for Australian focus groups before choosing which to use. (You can read more here if you don't object to some minor plot spoilage.) But over the course of its 165 minutes, the movie plods through at least three apparent endings. (The first one comes one hour and 15 minutes short of the actual conclusion.) Had I been included in that focus-group audience, I could have voted on my favorite ending before the screening was even through. I'd have cast my ballot for whichever one came sooner.

The paperback cover of Twilight, the first of four best-selling teen-vampire fantasy novels by Stephenie Meyer, shows a pair of pale female hands in close-up, proffering the reader an obscurely menacing apple. I haven't been able to make it through that book's 500-plus pages of turgid vampire-ogling. ("He lay perfectly still in the grass, his shirt open over his sculpted, incandescent chest, his scintillating arms bare. His glistening, pale lavender lids were shut, though of course he didn't sleep.") But after seeing director Catherine Hardwicke's flawed yet transfixing adaptation of the book, I can understand the appeal of that poisoned apple, and I think I might want another bite.

The feminist critique of the Twilight phenomenon (see this astute reading by Laura Miller in Salon) points, quite rightly, to all that's reprehensible about the Twilight universe: the heroine's passivity and masochism, her utter lack of grrl-power spunk. Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) is the anti-Buffy; she's a mortal high-school girl committed not to slaying vampires but to being slain by them. Make that one particular vampire: Bella's highest ambition is to be snacked upon by the lavender-lidded, incandescent-chested Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and thus to join him forever in the realm of the permanently teenage dead.

As the movie begins, Bella has just relocated from Phoenix to the remote, rain-soaked town of Forks, Wash., where she's moved in with her father (Billy Burke), the small town's taciturn chief of police. Her new lab partner, Edward, spends his days glaring at her with Morrissey-like intensity, then suddenly saves her from an impending car crash with what seems like inhuman strength and speed, then returns to insulting and ignoring her. What's going on with Edward and his four impossibly attractive foster siblings? They never seem to eat or sleep, and they fraternize only with one another, floating through the school day in a pale, silent pack. Oh, and in an apparently unrelated development, Bella's dad is investigating some mysterious deaths outside of town—it's almost as if people were being eaten by some strange bloodthirsty animal. ...

This early part of the movie, in which we wait for Bella to discover what any consumer of pop horror already knows, is static and at times unintentionally funny. Pattinson, a British actor chosen for his sculpted face and gazellelike physique, doesn't seem to have been given much direction beyond "melt the camera with your eyes." But despite his studied gaze, the lens remains stubbornly at room temperature, and this opening act could have been cut by half an hour. What finally convinces Bella isn't the weeks of glaring but a few minutes of Googling: The Cullens, she realizes, are a family of "vegetarian" vampires, forcing themselves to subsist on animal blood as they chastely coexist with delicious, delicious humans. Bella's blood is especially tempting to Edward, for some reason—who can explain the vicissitudes of young love?—and he's been keeping his distance all this time for her safety. But when Edward confides his secret and starts spiriting Bella to the tops of giant pines for moony dream dates, the movie takes on a pulp immediacy that somehow draws you in, even if century-old guys with ice-cold, glittering skin are totally not your type.

The director, Hardwicke, began her career as a production designer, and that shows in the convincing texture and detail of the world she's created. The Pacific Northwest locations (with Oregon standing in for Washington) are eerily lovely, and the understated costume design by Wendy Chuck manages to make weatherproof parkas look Goth. Bella's schoolmates—the nonvampiric ones—are convincingly sketched characters, vulnerable and goofy, like real high-school kids rather than readymade archetypes.

Hardwicke, whose first film was the harrowing mother-daughter melodrama Thirteen (2003), has a keen sense memory for female adolescence—not just the social insecurity of that time but the grandiosity that can make self-destructive decisions feel somehow divinely fated. Unwholesome, sure, but arguably no more so than Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre, two better-written Gothic romances about young women in thrall to a remote, charismatic, often cruel hero. And while Pattinson's Edward is a bit of a vain prig, no one you'd want to risk your immortal soul for, his worthiness doesn't really matter. Twilight is a story about pining for the one person you can, and should, never have, and who among us hasn't at least once experienced that vampiric craving? As a life lesson for teenage girls, Twilight (excuse the pun) sucks. As a parable for the dark side of female desire, it's weirdly powerful.

Slate V: The critics' take on Twilight, Special, and Bolt

The best proof available that Beyoncé Knowles is not a cyborg came in September of 2006. It was late, outside a club, when paparazzi caught the R&B titan slumped woozily in a Maybach sedan with her hair and dress disheveled—a party girl, it seemed, after one cosmo too many. On the spectrum of celebrity gotchas, this was no Amy Winehouse moment. But it involved a star famous for her impenetrable poise—it's hard to imagine Beyoncé scratching an itch without undergoing a little media training first—so the photo dominated gossip blogs for a cycle. The picture is most revealing, though, for how unrevealing it is. Beyoncé's hair is tousled, yes, but it also hides her face; her dress is mussed, but mostly because she's tugging the hem downward, covering herself up. Beyoncé doesn't speak in the contemporary celebrity vernacular of meltdowns, nip slips, and crotch shots. In the nothing-is-private era of TMZ, she still believes there's such a thing as TMI.

Her third solo album, I Am … Sasha Fierce, is loosely built around the theme of public facades and private truths. The first half of the disc is devoted to songs by the "real" Beyoncé, a woman, promo materials inform us, we've never heard from before. The second half showcases songs by Sasha Fierce, the flamboyant alter ego Beyoncé says she employs to armor herself against the perils of fame. In her video for "Single Ladies," a Sasha track, she dances Fosse-style while wearing a bionic hand. We aren't watching Beyoncé, it turns out, but her fembot replica.

The pop doppelgänger is not, of course, Beyoncé's innovation. Mariah Carey has Mimi, Eminem has Slim Shady, David Bowie had Ziggy Stardust, to name only a few. The impulse among musicians to create doubles—call them poppelgängers—is decades old, and it highlights one of pop music's basic contradictions: the way every performer, to some degree, becomes another person in order to express something true about himself.

In 1950, Hank Williams, already an established country star, began recording music under the name Luke the Drifter. Luke was a rambling man who performed good deeds from town to town, spreading the Lord's word as he went. In part, this split was therapeutic—Hank Williams sang about the travails of a lovelorn tippler with wandering eyes; in Luke the Drifter songs, he could reimagine himself as an upright Christian soldier. Another reason for the split was Williams' uncertainty about how audiences and radio programmers, accustomed to a certain base line of grit in his music, would take to his Ned Flanders fantasies. (The persona didn't damage his career, as he feared, but it never rivaled Hank-proper's popularity, either.)

Luke the Drifter gets at something essential about musical alter egos. Williams was grappling with the disorienting experience of being watched by millions, of being subject to a clumsy, mass gaze that doesn't see a person in full, but rather a distortion of him. When Beyoncé talks about Sasha, she's trying to own this distortion rather than let it own her. (The case of the late Russell Jones, the brilliant, X-rated hip-hop jester better known as Ol' Dirty Bastard, offers a poignant example of the latter. Friends interviewed before and after his 2004 drug overdose say that audiences expected insanity from the Ol' Dirty Bastard persona and that Jones went around the bend trying to satisfy them.)

In hip-hop, most poppelgängers—as opposed to aliases, which abound—crop up on the genre's weirdo margins: Kool Keith recording as Dr. Dooom and Dr. Octagon; RZA recording as Bobby Digital; MF Doom recording as Viktor Vaughn. Eminem and T.I., though, have taken the tradition into the mainstream. T.I.'s 2007 album, T.I. vs. T.I.P., contrasted the Atlanta MC's pop-crossover and unreconstructed-gangsta sides, a duality that speaks to the fundamental paradox written into gangsta rap—namely, that real gangstas don't rap.

Eminem is the most fascinating persona factory in recent pop history. The way he splinters himself into different characters suggests Peter Sellers or an angrier Andy Kaufman: His identity play is anarchic, screwball, infinitely slippery. Roughly, Marshall Mathers is the real guy, and Eminem and Slim Shady are different parts of his id. They allow him to rap about murdering his wife while claiming ironic distance from the fantasy, to revile his needy fans one moment and sympathize with their obsessions the next. Eminem provoked pop music's last great parent-group outcry, and in part, his identity play explores the limits of artistic responsibility: I didn't say it, an imaginary character did! On "Ass Like That," one of the most dazzlingly layered songs on his last album, Marshall Mathers rapped as Eminem rapping as Robert Smigel rapping as Triumph the Insult Comic Dog rapping as a pedophiliac Michael Jackson rapping as Arnold Schwarzenegger. Exhilarating and destabilizing, it was a madcap, atomized vision of the self as puppet show.

There can be something self-indulgent, low-concept, or stuntlike about many pop alter egos. Garth Brooks will never live down his silly incarnation as rocker Chris Gaines. Mariah Carey's Mimi helped her to move from the girly devotionals of her Rainbow- and Butterfly-era career to her current hot-pants hypersexuality—but her characterization of this as some great personal awakening was comically solipsistic. And Beyoncé's poppelgänger move on I Am … Sasha Fierce is, in the end, a huckster's feint: The so-called unguarded tracks offer us no deeper understanding of Beyoncé, unless you count the revelation, on the shivering power ballad "If I Were a Boy," that this booty-shaking, beauty-shop feminist has feelings, too, and that they that can be hurt. Beyoncé's personality split, at least as it's explored here, comes off like a talking point.

Ultimately, the poppelgänger is redundant, because all pop artists present a persona to the world. Robert Zimmerman became Bob Dylan. Louise Ciccone became Madonna. These are two of pop's biggest shape-shifters—different people, it can seem, from one album to the next—but the same principle holds true with the most transparent, reliable, and sincere of singer-songwriters. The moment John Mayer approaches a microphone, in other words, he becomes "John Mayer." It was this tension between being and performing that Kurt Cobain—as sincere a voice as you'll find in pop—found especially tough to reconcile. It contributed to his feelings of self-alienation, his fears he'd sold out. The catch is that, in pop, being is performing. Realizing this can be liberating (I'm anyone I say I am!) or something like getting lost in a hall of mirrors. So there's a scary subtext to Beyoncé's patently unrevealing "revealing" new album—is it that she won't take off her mask or that, after so many years in the spotlight, she can't?

The news lede is simply: OMG. It's actually here. After 17 years, a reported $13 million, and countless rock critic invocations of Howard Hughes, white whales, and Fitzcarraldo, a new Guns N' Roses record will be released on Sunday. Chinese Democracy's album credits reflect the epic slog that brought it into existence, listing 14 recording studios, five guitarists, and multiple "digital editors." (British record producer Youth is cited for the "initial arrangement suggestion" on the song "Madagascar.") But the telling liner note detail is the absence of all but one of Guns N' Roses' founding members. There is no Slash, no Izzy Stradlin, no Duff McKagan. The last time a collection of original Guns N' Roses songs was released, it was 1991. Barack Obama was graduating magna cum laude from Harvard Law; GNR was the biggest rock band on earth. In the years since, Axl Rose has dithered, tinkered, and obsessed; feuded with Kurt Cobain and Tommy Hilfiger; appropriated Christina Aguilera's cornrow extensions; and watched the zeitgeist, and his band mates, leave him behind.

So make no mistake: Chinese Democracy is an Axl Rose solo record. The surprise, given Rose's reputation for volatility, is how buttoned up it is. From the first moments of the title track—an eerie swirl of siren peals and chattering voices that gives way to brutish power chords—Chinese Democracy is slick and airtight, with production values that are up-to-the-minute. The sound is heavily compressed in the contemporary style, and the music's frayed edges have been smoothed away; every kick-drum thump and keyboard tinkle gives off the glint of a thousand mouse clicks. Those digital editors earned their paychecks.

It's ultra-professional, yes—but oh my, is it busy. Guns N' Roses always mixed up its hard rock with other stuff: pop-metal, boogie-blues, Queen-inspired glam, schmaltzy piano pop in the Elton John mode. But Chinese Democracy ups the fussiness factor a hundredfold—call it hard rococo. By the sound of it, Rose simply dumped every musical idea he'd ever had, every genre he'd ever heard, into his Pro Tools. And stirred.

The result is songs like "If the World," which starts with Flamenco guitar noodling and segues into a desultory '70s funk groove, before piling on strings, wailing guitars, and a variety of showy digital effects. "Madagascar" has more orchestral strings, and brass fanfares, and drum loops, and ripping guitar solos, and drifting cloudbanks of industrial rock noise. Did I mention the samples from Cool Hand Luke? And the snippets of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech?

What Rose is trying to express with this excess is unclear. It is tempting to read a song like "Catcher in the Rye" as a statement about Rose's own Salinger-like artistic stagnation and reputation as a recluse. ("If I thought that I was crazy/ Well, I guess I'd have more fun," Rose sings.) But several songs suggest that Chinese Democracy is first and foremost a record about the torment of making Chinese Democracy. In "This I Love," a chiming ballad that boasts the album's most shapely melody, Rose pleads: "It seemed like forever and a day/ If my intentions are misunderstood/ Please be kind, I've done all I should." "Sorry" is more defiant: "You thought they'd make me behave and submit/ What were you thinking .../ You don't know why/ I won't give in/ To hell with the pressure/ I'm not caving in."

That's an Axl that Guns N' Roses fans know well: paranoid and spitting mad. But another Axl has gone missing on Chinese Democracy. In his heyday, Rose was a classic sex-symbol frontman, dreaming of a utopian Paradise City populated by babes, commanding "feel my-my-my-my serpentine," stalking arena stages in serpentine-strangling spandex biker shorts. The members of Guns N' Roses were not just archetypal rock Dionysians, they were the last great rock Dionysians—the end of a dynastic line stretching down from the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and Aerosmith.

Of course, cock rock is not unproblematic, and its problems—musical, political, and, God knows, sartorial—are epitomized by the skeezy silliness of the '80s hair metal scene that produced GN'R. But listening to Chinese Democracy, and to the earlier Guns N' Roses records, one is reminded how much pure fun was sucked out of rock circa 1992, when the last poodlehead packed away his phallus and shuffled off of the Sunset Strip, surrendering the limelight to a succession of sad sacks: grunge rockers, post-grunge rockers, and the current crop of Radiohead- and Coldplay-influenced bands, whose whimpering falsetto vocals rather pointedly dramatize the music's reduced, um, virility.

Rose is 46 years old now, so diminished libido may be par for the course. On Chinese Democracy, his voice is still an amazing, bludgeoning instrument, rising from demonic low rumble to piercing banshee wail. But listen to the words he is singing: "Sometimes I feel like the world is on top of me/ Breaking me down with an endless monotony." "Don't ever try to tell me how much you care for me/ Don't ever try to tell me how you were there for me." "I've been brought down in this storm/ And left so far out from the storm/ That I can't find my way back/ My way anymore." The priapic rock god has become just another bummed-out white guy, bellowing his angst over noisy guitars.

Of course, in rock, the sexiness starts with sound, and spreads. There's no gainsaying the skill of the L.A. studio musicians whom Rose has been touring with in recent years. (Chinese Democracy is full of virtuoso shredding sure to please the Guitar Player magazine subscribers.) But the songs lack the rugged, sexy swing of the original GN'R. It was a band par excellence: Lead guitarist Slash was Rose's sidekick and foil; rhythm guitarist Stradlin was the hook-savvy secret songwriting weapon; bassist McKagan gave the music its fearsome thrust. I can't help wondering what, pardon the expression, a real Guns N' Roses record would sound like in 2008.

For those of us who will accept no substitutes, there is hope. Rumors have flown for years about the original GN'R lineup reforming; Stradlin and McKagan have mentioned the possibility in recent interviews. Given the money involved, it may eventually prove too tempting to pass up. At the very least, a shotgun reunion is certain to take place at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2012, Guns N' Roses' first year of rock-hall eligibility. That's just three years away, a blink of the eye in Axl time. As a philosopher once said—way back when, in the heady days of the first Bush administration—all we need is just a little patience.

New York, Dec. 1

Manhattan isn't as lonely a place as people think, the cover story argues, despite having the highest proportion of single-individual households of any U.S. county. Not feeling alone—as opposed to less significant distinctions like objectively not living alone—extends life expectancy. Like spending time on the Internet, living alone in New York may seem to promote alienation but in reality facilitates more dynamic and wider interaction. The article is a paean to cities—"the ultimate habitat in which to be ourselves"—and to one in particular. ... An article explains why Barack Obama selected Hillary Clinton for secretary of state and why she's inclined to accept. Several appointments of close associates show that "the 'team of rivals' meme is vastly overdone." The author argues that this pick reinforces, rather than undermines, the president-elect's dominance over the former first lady—and her husband.

The New Yorker, Dec. 1

A valuable 12,000-word profile traces pro-free-market Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's unlikely new role as activist regulator. As a professor, Bernanke supported Alan Greenspan's "benign neglect" of the tech bubble; as head of the Council of Economic Advisers, he was sanguine about the emerging housing bubble; for his first year as Fed chair, he continued Greenspan's policies of cheap money and light regulation. Still, the downturn is "more a reflection of the limits to the Fed's power than of Bernanke getting it wrong," says former Princeton colleague Paul Krugman. "And things could have been much worse." ... An author checks in with former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. "I was scratching my head," he remarks of the Sarah Palin pick, "saying, 'Hey, wait a minute. She's wonderful, but the only difference was she looks better in stilettos than I do, and she has better hair.' "

Newsweek, Dec. 1

The cover story, "What Michelle Means to Us," ponders how Michelle Obama's stint as first lady may improve Americans' negative perception of black women and black women's ambivalent perception of themselves. The author says that Mrs. Obama has successfully navigated the line between timidity and Angry Black Womanhood. The essay also examines how Mrs. Obama's "Mom in Chief" role will play in the mommy wars and celebrates the fact that, unlike most African-American models—who tend to be light-skinned and have European features—Mrs. Obama is unequivocally "brown." ... Jonathan Alter, who wrote the book on Franklin Delano Roosevelt's famed 100 Days, says Obama is already emulating the 32^nd president's moves. FDR conditioned thousands of patronage gigs on passage of his legislation; Obama made Rahm Emanuel, who got many congressmen their jobs, his chief of staff. FDR exploited the new medium of radio to build support for his proposals; Obama has turned to the new medium of YouTube.

Weekly Standard, Dec. 1

One author concludes that Obama's plan to shutter the prison at Guantánamo Bay will prove overhasty at best and, at worst, detrimental to national security. Included among the roughly 250 detainees are 14 of "high value," some of whom helped plan and execute the 9/11 attacks. The anti-Gitmo backlash is partly the fault of the Bush administration's "strange failure to make its case to the public," its "rightly questioned" interrogation techniques, and the incompetence of its military commissions. That said, without its detention policy, the author asserts, "many more Americans surely would have perished." ... An editorial laments Obama's "neither conservative nor Clintonite" economic agenda. Sure, the Bush administration may have intervened to save the banking industry. But that was necessary because "[b]anks are the economy's circulatory system." The same cannot be said of the auto industry, which Democratic legislators will be "more than happy" to bail out in January, according to the author.

GQ, December

A profile in the "Men of the Year" issue follows Gen. David Petraeus during the last days of his stint in Iraq before his transition to U.S. Central Command. A close associate summarizes the general's innovative counterinsurgency strategy: "You have to find other kinds of ammunition, and it's not always a bullet." When Petraeus' father died earlier this year, he did not attend the funeral stateside, saying, "Our soldiers make all the same sacrifices." Petraeus' son has earned his parachuting wings and could be deployed to Iraq. ... It turns out that "Icon of the Year" Philip Roth is fairly unexciting, and nobody finds him less exciting than he does himself. "[Sabbath's Theater] would be kind of marvelous with Jack Nicholson," Roth says in reference to one of his several novels featuring aging, libidinous male protagonists. "He would understand it."

Time, Dec. 1

The cover story performs a "collective physical" of the American public and finds many in need of a salad. "By too many measures, America is a lot less healthy than a developed nation has any business being." The health care system needs to be retooled to focus on prevention, the author argues. … When Barack Obama takes office, the time will finally be right for health care reform, an article argues. Fifteen years after Hillary Clinton's failed effort to overhaul the system, the issue is no longer "politically toxic." … As rumors swirl about Obama picking Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, some are calling the move shrewd, while others grumble about the new administration being filled with too many Clintonites. "Would this move, if it happens, be just the first manifestation of that new kind of politics that Obama was promising in his presidential campaign? Or proof that he understands the oldest kind all too well?"

Economist, Nov. 22

An editorial argues the world must deal with Somali pirates, who are currently holding about a dozen ships for ransom, by addressing the anarchy that has been strangling Somalia since 2006. "This includes establishing stability inside Somalia itself, depriving the pirates of a sanctuary, and preventing the jihad-tinted anarchy there from spilling over Somalia's borders." … Where it had been the fashion for companies to keep as little cash on hand as possible, in the wake of the financial crisis, companies are scrambling for it, an editorial finds. "What was once seen as evidence of corporate fitness for the moment looks like anorexia." … Local governments across America are taking steps to tamp down the predatory cash advances of payday lenders by capping interest rates and establishing zoning ordinances against them. Consumer advocates find the practices of payday lenders akin to "financially knee-capping their customers without providing a crutch."

New York Times Magazine, Nov. 23

In a special "Screens" issue, A.O. Scott ponders how movies have fared in a world where everyone's a multitasker. Where movies once were a full-immersion experience, today people watch them on laptops and iPods, pausing periodically to check an e-mail or text message. Scott concludes that movies will prevail, as they did against the rise of television and home video. "While both of those developments appeared to threaten the uniqueness of film, they also extended the power and pervasiveness of the movies, which never surrendered their position as the highest common denominator of the popular culture." … Clive Thompson looks into the "Napoleon Dynamite problem" of Netflix's "recommendation engine." Len Bertoni, one of the computer scientists competing to write a better algorithm, is frustrated by the different ratings people give to the film; the public can't figure out whether it's a "masterpiece or an annoying bit of hipster self-indulgence."

Portfolio, December

In the cover story of what might be called Portfolio's "doom-and-gloom issue," Michael Lewis examines a Wall Street cluttered with fallen investment banks and tries to figure out how the collapse happened. He profiles Steve Eisman, a hedge-fund portfolio manager and one of the few people who understood how the "doomsday machine" of subprime mortgages turned into collateralized debt obligations. … An article chronicles the woes of the Blackstone Group, which has seen its stock hit bottom after it acquired Hilton's 4,000-hotel empire for a pretty $26 billion in October 2007. "Blackstone-Hilton was the last big deal of this noisy bonanza, the collision point of leveraged-buyout fever and the hyperinflated real estate market." … Mayor Michael Bloomberg's eponymous company is facing a class-action lawsuit claiming the company's managers discriminate against pregnant women. More than 70 women have signed up, claiming their salaries and responsibilities were slashed once they became pregnant.

Texas Monthly, December

A tale of a family torn apart during the fed's April raid on a meat-processing plant in Mount Pleasant, Texas, confronts the human costs of immigration policy. One woman, disheartened by the prospect of raising six kids alone on her $30,000 salary, may return to Mexico to rejoin her deported husband. "But just to think about it, my stomach hurts," she says. "My kids, they don't speak the Spanish they're supposed to speak in Mexico." … Someone in a University of Texas cap lobbed a Molotov cocktail at the 152-year-old Texas governor's mansion when it was under renovation this summer, torching it. The arsonist has yet to be found, but authorities suspect he could be one of the anarchists from Austin arrested during the RNC.

Must Read

Michael Lewis provides critical insight into the irresponsible Wall Street wheeling and dealing that brought about the current crisis.

Must Skip

A Newsweek piece comparing Obama with Lincoln is meandering and unfulfilling.

Best Politics Piece

Elizabeth Kolbert's comment in The New Yorker is a bleak look at the federal regulations President Bush could push through in his last 60 days in office.

Best Culture Piece

The review of "Prospect 1," the first New Orleans Biennial, tempts you down to the 9^th Ward to see it for yourself.

Late to the Party

A few weeks after other magazines did the same, Time comes out with prescriptions for the Republican Party to regroup in the wake of its Nov. 4 defeat.

Click the arrow on the audio player to hear David Ferry read this poem. You can also download the recording or subscribe to Slate's Poetry Podcast on iTunes.

That glorious morning late in August when

The rosy-fingered dawn had scattered shadows

Away from the dreams I had dreamed the night before,

I looked out the back door of my condo, seeing

The parking lot we share, the cars we own,

And the houses all around, an embracing scene,

And there was Manfred and his small child Julia,

And, I thought for a moment, a little white toy

Trundling along behind her on its wheels.

But something was wrong with this. Julia, though little,

Wasn't so little as to be trundling such

A toy as what I thought I was seeing there,

On that glorious morning late in August when

The rosy-fingered dawn had scattered shadows.

And then I saw that the toy I thought I saw

Was not a toy but a little white skunk intently

Following Julia's legs and studying them,

And then, of course, her father had snatched her up

Into his arms, and was backing away from the skunk,

And kicking at it to get it away, but the skunk

Kept following, it seemed for a very long time,

As the three of them kept on this way on their way,

Julia crying now, a piercing cry,

And Manfred perplexed, a father protecting his child,

Backing away and saying, in a voice

Carefully calm and maybe pretending to be

Almost amused, "What should I do about this?"

Holding his child in his arms, having to keep

Backing away, unable to turn his back

On this bizarre studious creature following them.

Transfixed in the doorway of the place I live in

I stood there out of time, watching them go.

But then, as they were halfway down the driveway

The creature turned aside and disappeared

Into the tall grass alongside the driveway,

And Manfred, carrying Julia, was able to turn

And quickly make his way away from there

To the preschool across the street from the end of the driveway.

A moment later the skunk appeared again

And ran across the lawn beside our house,

Intently studying the ground, near-sighted

Creature reading the ground for information,

Moving about the yard between our house

And the kindred house next door, purposeful, wandering.

What was it trying to find? Where was it going?—

A reader of the ground as if it were

The walls of the facility at Mount Auburn

Where she kept wandering the halls, reading blank walls

To see if there was an exit there, or maybe

A bulletin board telling her what to do,

Telling her how to be there, or where to be,

Or what she was trying to find, or where she was going,

Intently studying where it was she was.

The skunk was white where a skunk is normally black,

And striped black where it's normally striped white.

Was it transmogrified? Come up from down there

In the Underworld where it could have been changed like that?

It came back over across the lawn toward where

I was standing transfixed in the doorway of my dwelling,

Its eyes still intently studying the ground,

Close reader of the text whose narrative

Or whose instruction it was following.

Orpheus, I, stepped back in nameless fear,

As it looked as if the skunk was reading its way

Toward the back porch steps up into my condo,

Coming toward me as if it were coming home.

And then the skunk ran past my back porch steps

Reading the ground, paying no heed to me,

And disappeared in the ground cover we planted

To ornament the dooryard of our dwellings

In the world the strange white skunk had disappeared from.

The township animal-control man said

The skunk's behavior probably meant it was rabid

And that it was probably looking for some place to die.

It happens every year, and this Thanksgiving will be no exception. Someone in the family will start talking politics. (Given the historic, wacky, pervasive nature of the campaign just past, this time it may not even be your blowhard know-it-all uncle.) And since politics is a volatile subject and family gatherings are fraught with tension, the ensuing discussion will lead to discord.

If you want to avoid such conflict, you may want to inquire after the young ones, busy yourself with doing the dishes, or ask the host about his grill or golf swing—topics that will tie up conversation until daybreak. But if you can't shake free of a political debate, you may find yourself embracing Loudon Wainwright's Thanksgiving prayer: "If I argue with a loved one, Lord, please make me the winner." In that case, here's some help: Slate's guide to this year's political arguments.

The Election

Obama won: He played a great hand well. He was disciplined, focused, and turned the Internet into a fundraising and voter-organizing machine.

McCain lost: So long as it didn't have an (R) after its name, a wooden post could have won this election. Bush was unpopular, the Iraq war was unpopular—and yet McCain was nearly even in the September polls. Despite the hype, Obama didn't raise any more from regular folks who gave small donations than Bush did. If it hadn't been for the financial crisis, McCain might have won.

The Financial Mess

Blame the Democrats: Robert Rubin started the deregulation that led to this mess. Bill Clinton supported and signed key banking deregulation, and Obama's incoming economic adviser, Larry Summers, was also a big champion. Democrats were relentlessly blind to the dangers at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Blame the Republicans: Bush and the Republicans deregulated even more than Rubin did. Greenspan played a role, too, pushing the deregulation of derivatives. Their response has been indecisive at best and ineffective at worst.

Bonus argument: The party is clearly beholden to Wall Street.

The Detroit Bailout

Help 'em: Sure, the auto companies screwed up, but the economy can't afford to lose so many jobs right now. You can bail them out and make them restructure.

Screw 'em: Did you see that the Big Three CEOs all flew private planes to testify in Washington? As for restructuring, it will happen only if they know they won't get any help; as for the job losses, those workers will be better off in more viable industries. Did you see that the Big Three CEOs all flew private planes to testify in Washington?

Economic Stimulus

Against it: Our deficit will go through the roof, which will make us beholden to foreign creditors. A stimulus plan will delay needed behavioral changes among both individuals and companies. We're becoming a socialist country.

For it: Most economists say it's essential. Yes, the deficit will grow, but the alternative is widespread business failure and job loss. Here's the definition of socialism.

Obama's Mandate

Yes, he does: He won the biggest share of the popular vote of any Democrat since LBJ. He won nine red states, four of which a Democrat hasn't won since 1964. With seven new Democrats in the Senate and 24 in the House, it's the largest partisan mandate since FDR.

Not so fast: They might have elected the man, but there's no evidence people signed up for his policies. A lot of voters picked him because he wasn't Bush. (See McCain lost, above.)

Obama's Cabinet

No change: It's all Clinton people. The lobbying rules aren't as restrictive as he promised. He's hiring a replacement for Karl Rove.

He's the change: Change comes from the leader. He's picking competent people to execute change. His economic team is not excessively ideological, and he's likely to keep current Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Hillary at State

Great idea: She knows the issues, won't be afraid to tell Obama what she thinks, and is the perfect embodiment of American ideals of opportunity and service.

Horrible idea: Drama! She'll put her interests above the president's. Bill's conflicts of interest will be impossible to overcome. Powerful women don't do well in the Middle East.

The New Congress



Get ready for left-wing madness: Congress dominated by Democrats is going to run roughshod over Obama and push crazy liberal policies, which will lead to even bigger deficits and big losses for Democrats in the midterm. How reckless will they be? Listen to what House ways and means Chairman Charlie Rangel said: "Don't ask me where the money will come from. I'm going to the same place Paulson went."

We're all incrementalists now: Eighty-one Democrats were elected in districts George Bush won in 2004. One-third of Democrats hold seats that have Republican leanings. So nothing too crazy will happen. With such low approval ratings, Congress needs to, you know, actually pass a few bills, which means they'll need bipartisan support.

Obama Surge in Black Voters Killed Proposition 8

No, they didn't: There's no evidence that new black voters inspired by Obama made the difference on the measure reversing the California Supreme Court allowing gay marriage. New voters actually voted against the measure.

Yes, they did: How new voters behaved is not at issue. Seventy percent of African-Americans voted against Prop 8. Ninety-four percent of black voters supported Obama. The increase in turnout among African-Americans supporting Obama made the difference.

Will a Woman Ever Become President?

Sure: Hillary's campaign was a thorough mess, her husband was off message constantly, and yet she still almost beat Obama.

Not for a while: Geraldine Ferraro was right—in politics, it's harder to be a woman than a black man. It's still a sexist world. Just look how terribly everyone treated Sarah Palin.

Young Voters Decided the Election

Wrong, Sonny: They didn't turn out in greater numbers than before.

It's true, Pops: Yes, but they gave a big share of their vote to Obama.

The Republican Party Is Dead

Call the coroner: Demographically, Democrats are winning larger shares of growing populations: Latinos, unmarried voters, and those with college degrees. All Republicans have is the South.

It's just resting: Pundits declared Democrats all but dead in both 2004 and 1994. Parties don't die; they restructure. (See Detroit Bailout, above.) Historical patterns suggest a pickup in House and Senate seats in 2010.

Palin Ruined McCain's Chances

No, She Didn't: Look, just because she doesn't visit the Met and drink microclimate wine doesn't mean she's not smart. McCain lost for other reasons in a bad year for Republicans. McCain's problem with the base would have been worse without her. Exit polls showed that a majority of voters who cared about the Palin pick went for McCain.

Yes, She Did: Please keep believing she's a viable candidate. Keep her on the campaign trail. She's so entertaining. An interview while a turkey is being slaughtered? She's not fodder for a Saturday Night Live skit. She is an SNL skit. But on the merits, 41 percent of those voters said she was an important part of their voting decision, and McCain just barely won among those voters (51-48). A vice-presidential pick is supposed to really help a ticket, not be a wash.

Bush Is the Worst President of My Lifetime

Born before 1932: Son, let me tell you about a man named Herbert Hoover.

Born between 1932 and 1974: You think he was worse than that paranoid liar Nixon? There have been no attacks since 9/11. Iraq is turning around and may become a beacon for democracy in the Middle East. Bush is like Truman: unpopular now, but history will vindicate him.

Born after 1974: No need to elaborate. Use the time to get a second helping of pie.

Now that Barack Obama's selection of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state is pretty much set, all that remains is the small print about office décor, letterhead font … and her husband's continued solicitation of millions of dollars from foreign business interests.

Bill Clinton resisted pressure before and during Hillary's primary campaign to release the names of the 208,000 donors to the Clinton Foundation. Now Bill is cooperating with the Obama transition team by giving them the foundation's donor list. But that won't be enough. The only solution may be for the former president to dissolve his foundation entirely.

When public officials face conflicts of interest, there are two standard remedies: disclosure and recusal. But—to the former president's credit—the Clinton Foundation has larger array of activities and programs in more nations than any other presidential foundation. For Clinton's post-presidency, as for his presidency, the usual rules don't apply.

Clinton's position as head of the foundation is similar to that of secretary of state—he travels the world, schmoozes foreign leaders, talks global economics. But instead of advocating U.S. interests, he asks for money for his foundation. If he were in charge of the foundation while Hillary served as secretary of state, donors might assume that giving money to the foundation would buy them Hillary's ear—or, at least, an ear that rests on the same pillow as Hillary's.

Bill could, and undoubtedly would, do his best to disabuse them of that assumption. And he can be very convincing. But the assumption of influence would persist—and no amount of persuasion or disclosure could ever erase it. Disclosure, after all, does not eliminate conflict of interest. It merely exposes it. People would still give to the Clinton Foundation because they think they're buying influence.

It's not a crazy supposition. In 2005, Canadian mining executive Frank Giustra gave the foundation $31 million a few months after Bill Clinton helped facilitate a lucrative deal with the government of Kazakhstan. All told, that arrangement was relatively benign: Clinton was simply using his influence as an ex-president, as many ex-presidents do. If Clinton's wife were secretary of state, though, the exercise would be less innocent.

Financial scandal—or what passes for it with the Clintons—would be inevitable. The only variable is how hard it will be to unearth. If the foundation discloses the donors, potential conflicts of interest will be a Google search away. If it doesn't, they will dribble out one leak at a time. But, you say, the donors haven't leaked so far. Well, some have. And that was before reporters had much incentive to dig. Every foreign government or business with interests in U.S. policy would have reason to give to the Clinton Foundation. And every donation—even well-meaning ones—would therefore be suspect.

Another option is to have a third party vet the foundation's donations for conflicts of interest. Stephen Gillers, who teaches legal ethics at New York University, suggests that Obama set up an independent commission to be run out of the White House, perhaps reporting to the White House ethics officer. If a contribution is deemed too large or too sensitive—say, $1 million from a donor in Iran—the office could veto it. The trouble here is where to set the bar. Most countries do have some interest or another in U.S. policy. And as anyone familiar with accounting scandals can tell you, it's not the amount that matters—it's the fact of it.

The last option is for Bill Clinton simply to recuse himself from any official role with the foundation. Or he could stay out of its international transactions and focus on the domestic side. But these arrangements would be legal fictions. Presumably some portion of the Clinton Foundation's donors gives money to that charity, as opposed to any other, to curry favor with the former president. Others may donate because they believe a former president will have the clout to make a difference with their favored cause.

Either way, the involvement of a former president is what matters. So long as the foundation retains Clinton's name, many prospective donors will see it as a way to win favor—or at least notice—from world's most influential former president. Plus, Clinton is the foundation's top fundraiser. (The charity raised $124 million in 2007.) Who is going to fill his shoes? Chelsea?

If Obama wants to avoid awkward associations, the Clinton Foundation effectively has to close shop. This isn't an attempt to be holier than the pope. It's a recognition that given Clinton's broad pool of foreign donors, there's a chance—a likelihood, even—that some of them will look, and potentially be, very bad. Nor, it should be noted, is Bill to blame. Trawling for global cash is his job now, and his intentions are good. But there's real room for actual influence-peddling. Giustra has pledged to give half of his profits to the foundation. If foreign governments think they can win Clinton's favor by helping Giustra, they will. There are ways around it—for example, Giustra could pledge a flat amount instead or give to a different charity. But then multiply the problem by 208,000.

Obama's campaign mantra—"no drama"—has so far carried over into the transition. No administration can be expected to avoid drama entirely. But by picking Clinton as his secretary of state and allowing her husband to keep the Clinton Foundation alive, Obama ups the chances of drama.

The key to Barack Obama's success may lie with his least enthusiastic supporters. On Saturday, while the rest of America raked leaves and watched college football, 12 of them gathered in a windowless conference room to talk about the election.

The group (six men and six women, all from Virginia) had voted for Barack Obama but were, to varying degrees, late converts—some literally did not decide until they entered the voting booth on Election Day. They included former Bush voters, people who seriously considered supporting John McCain, and Hillary Clinton supporters who did not immediately back Obama. They were there at the invitation of Peter Hart, who has conducted a series of such focus groups with the Annenberg Public Policy Center. He wanted to know how they'd reached their decision and what their expectations were for Obama's presidency. These are the kinds of voters that Obama is going to need to govern effectively.

About half the group had voted against McCain as much as for Obama. They voted against the Republican because they wanted a break from the Bush years or because they could not support his choice of Sarah Palin. Nine of the 12 said McCain could have won their vote. Mark Parowski, who described himself as a "hard-core Republican," didn't pick Obama until the moment he was in the election booth. His wife had been to Obama's last rally in Manassas, Va., the night before, along with 90,000 others, and said it sounded as if Obama was talking right to her in her living room. His disgust with Republicans was a big factor in his vote, Parowski said, but he also saw backing Obama as a chance to make a generational change.

During the campaign, the McCain team tried to make Obama's celebrity status a negative. Yet all the press attention clearly helped him: Several in the group said they first heard about Obama through news reports. No one thought he was an elitist celebrity. Several mentioned that he'd once been so poor he owned a car with a hole in the floor. Two women (both of whom voted for Bush in the last two elections) had been impressed by Oprah's endorsement, which was when they first heard about Obama.

These were not low-information voters—nearly all said they used the Internet to research the candidates—and, perhaps unsurprisingly, they were a gloomy bunch. When Hart asked them to describe the country's condition in meteorological terms, among the terms they used were "hurricane" and "perfect storm." One woman worried about having enough money to buy her children presents for Christmas. Several worried whether they'd have jobs. When asked whether they thought America was in decline, nearly everyone raised their hands.

At the same time, they weren't gloomy about Obama. The word hope cropped up so often that they might have been Obama volunteers rather than late-deciding voters. But they were very patient. Obama has been careful to say change is going to come slowly, and they agree. Asked what they thought the weather would be like in a year, they had low expectations. "Hurricane cleanup," said one.

Their priorities were predictable—they want the government to help improve the economy and fix the health care system. Iraq did not come up very much at all. They do set a high bar, however, for Obama in one area: tone. They were willing to put up with slow progress on specific reforms, they said, so long as he ran a post-ideological, pragmatic, and honest White House.

They are watching him not just because they want the kind of White House Obama promised. They also think it will give them cues about whether he'll make good on his other promises. "We're expecting him to be a Reagan in a way that makes everyone proud to be an American," said John Bray. "And if he doesn't do that, people will lose faith in him."

Obama has already delivered on one promise along these lines. The group was unanimous that Obama's election had improved the country's image overseas. Unprompted, several said that his election meant that they no longer had to feel ashamed to be American. "We're not as racist as everyone thinks we are," said Ron May. He was one of several in the group who had not only voted twice for George W. Bush but who also backed Republican George Allen against Jim Webb in Virginia's 2006 Senate race.

The final question Hart asked was what each participant would tell Obama if he called to wish them a happy Thanksgiving. Their thoughts were predictable—keep your promises, etc.—but none of them argued with the premise, which is to say: They all could imagine speaking easily to their new president. And it was clear from their remarks that they are listening to what he says. They think he is one of them, which suggests Obama has a reservoir of trust that might allow him to do the kind of bold things he says he wants to do, including asking Americans to sacrifice, but they don't want him to lose touch with his own past—and, by extension, with people like them. As one woman advised the president-elect: "Just don't forget what life was like when your car had that hole."

As President-elect Obama forms his administration, he's including a lot of familiar faces. Many of Obama's picks—for his transition team, his staff, and his Cabinet—are people who worked in the Clinton administration. Where else is a Democratic president going to find people with executive branch experience?

The following chart displays Obama's choices for his team according to their Clinton or Obama bona fides (the horizontal axis) and their tenure in Washington (the vertical axis). An appointee's position along the horizontal axis is determined by the individual's service to the Clintons before or during their time in the White House, endorsements in the Democratic primaries, ties to Chicago and Obama's early political career, and anything else that hints at their loyalties. Some, like John Podesta or Valerie Jarrett, are clearly tied to one camp. Others, like Gregory Craig, are trickier; Craig is a longtime friend of the Clintons but endorsed Obama in the primaries. Mouse over any image to get details. The vertical axis defines "Washington experience" broadly, including time in the private or nonprofit sector in addition to government service.

This chart will be updated each time Obama announces a high-profile pick for his White House. Got a suggestion? E-mail me.

Update, Nov. 20, 1:15 p.m.: Added senior adviser David Axelrod and secretary of Homeland Security pick Janet Napolitano.

Update, Nov. 21, 4:55 p.m.: Added Treasury secretary pick Timothy Geithner and secretary of state selection Hillary Clinton.

Update, Nov. 24, 1:15 p.m.: Added Commerce secretary pick Bill Richardson.

Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, President-elect Barack Obama's apparent pick for Secretary of Homeland Security, has been praised as "smart, tough and funny" and "exceptionally talented." She has a record as a pragmatist on immigration and solid legal credentials as a former U.S. attorney and state attorney general. But Napolitano has also looked the other way on police excess when political calculation demanded it, as well as tolerated the questionable use of local sheriff's deputies to serve as a roving immigration patrol.

All of this can be traced to her friendship with the media-obsessed Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., who would consider it his own personal failing if you haven't yet heard of him. He is "America's toughest sheriff," a man who rose to prominence in the 1990s with such newsmaking stunts as feeding his inmates green bologna, clothing them in pink underwear, housing them in surplus Army tents behind barbed wire in the desert, and putting them to work on chain gangs. This punishment is inflicted equally on convicted criminals and those who have been convicted of no crime at all but are awaiting trial and unable to afford bail. Inmates who assault guards are put on rations of water and fortified bread.

The public devours it, and Arpaio has consistently enjoyed some of the highest approval ratings of any elected official in Arizona (Maricopa County includes Phoenix). That inmates have a way of getting killed in Sheriff Joe's jails, costing Maricopa County millions of dollars in lawsuits, has not dimmed his star. Nor has a federal judge's order that he provide a constitutionally mandated minimum level of food and health care, an order that said Arpaio had inflicted "needless suffering and deterioration" on the mentally ill.

More than a decade ago, Napolitano was in a position to help curb Arpaio's excesses. As a U.S. attorney in 1995, she was put in charge of a Justice Department investigation into atrocious conditions in Arpaio's "tent city." Napolitano carried out her task with what can best be described as reluctance, going out of her way to protect Arpaio from flak almost before the probe had started. "We're doing this with the complete cooperation of the sheriff," she told the Associated Press. "We run a strict jail but a safe jail, and I haven't heard from anyone who thinks that this is a bad thing."

"Anyone"? Maybe Napolitano needed to get out of her office a little more.

The Justice Department's final report, issued about two years later, confirmed a list of disgraces, including excessive use of force, gratuitous use of pepper spray and "restraint chairs" (since blamed for at least three inmate deaths), and hog-tying and beating of inmates. It also said Arpaio's staffing was "below levels needed for safety and humane operations."

The Justice Department filed suit and settled with the sheriff the same day after Arpaio agreed to administrative changes, including limiting the use of pepper spray and improving inmate grievance procedures. Napolitano stood with Arpaio at a press conference in which she, according to the Arizona Republic, "pooh-poohed her own lawsuit as 'lawyerly paperwork.' " Arpaio called the result a vindication.

"Let me say this for the people of Maricopa County," he told the Republic. "The chain gangs stay. The tents stay. The pink underwear stays. All my programs stay. … This has nothing to do with my policies and programs."

Arpaio, a Republican, later appeared in a television ad supporting Napolitano's 2002 run for governor, which she won by a tiny margin, fewer than 12,000 votes. His intervention was undoubtedly one of the deciding factors in her election.

Napolitano's hands-off policy toward Sheriff Joe's constabulary antics continued in her tenure as governor, even as Arpaio started pulling his deputies away from local crime investigation and to checking vehicles and making sweeps for illegal immigrants—a policy denounced by the mayor of Phoenix, among others. Napolitano did little to rein in the sheriff, refusing to say anything about the controversy for months. She finally drew his ire last spring by denying him a portion of state funding that was to have been spent on roundups of suspected illegal aliens, instead ordering that it be used to catch felons.

Of course, few governors arrive at their offices without having made a few malodorous alliances. And Arizona is one of the most conservative states in the nation, where a tough stance on immigration is necessary even to get elected dog catcher. Still, when presented the opportunity to challenge a law-enforcement practice that was splashy and crowd-pleasing but ultimately cruel and futile, Napolitano declined.

Her history with Arpaio isn't necessarily a disqualifying factor. But it is something to consider. The secretary of the Department of Homeland Security cannot be reluctant to stand up and speak out against excesses in law enforcement.

The New York Times reports that Hillary Clinton has said yes. She will be President Barack Obama's secretary of state. The Clinton selection will occasion another 10 rounds of discussion about the wisdom of no-drama Obama bringing all the Clinton troubles into his house. Will Hillary Clinton undermine him to keep her political options open? What about Bill's flair for controversy? And how's that first meeting going to go between Hillary Clinton and Obama's White House Counsel Greg Craig, who claimed during the campaign that Clinton exaggerated her foreign-policy experience?

By picking Clinton, Obama may be making some kind of special political play, removing one of his rivals to protect himself from political harm, but I think he's more serious than that. There's been no evidence over the last two years that he engages in this kind of overly clever bank shot. It's more likely he's picked Clinton because she's smart and because he wants to surround himself with people who will challenge him.

During the presidential campaign, he regularly attacked President Bush for surrounding himself with people who only told him what he wanted to hear. He promised that he wouldn't do that. Every president says he's going to foster this spirit of candor (George W. Bush often said it), and we'll see if Obama really wants the kind of free-flowing dialogue he claims to. But the Clinton pick suggests that at least Obama is trying to make good on the promise. Obama is, in a way, courting drama.

What Obama wants from Clinton is the candor that can only be delivered by someone of her stature. It's what he said he wanted from Joe Biden, too. The problem for Clinton is that when the time comes for her to deliver her opinions to Obama directly and candidly and to fight for those opinions, it's going to look to those on the outside as if she's undermining her boss. The heated conversations might stay in the Oval Office, but it's hard to keep secrets in Washington, as Obama is learning. When a Cabinet secretary really believes in something, she tends to translate that passion to her staffers, who often talk to the press.

As long as Obama knows that Clinton is loyal, it may not matter how the chattering classes interpret any disagreement between them. Then again, it may. Secretary of state is an unusual position. Diplomats in Washington and foreign capitals believe a secretary of State based on how much weight they think the secretary carries with the president. If Clinton is viewed as operating on her own—even when she's being the kind of candid diplomat Obama wants her to be—it might send confusing signals.

The perception of conflict may, of course, be avoided if Clinton and Obama see things the same way for the duration of his presidency. Though this appointment may seem like the fulfillment of Obama's promise to name a team of rivals, as President Lincoln did, Clinton was merely a political rival, not an ideological one. During the campaign her views—particularly on foreign policy—were nearly identical to Obama's. Yes, they had that spat about how and when to meet with rogue leaders, but by the time they had both tweaked their positions, they were pretty similar. Maybe she'll completely agree all the time. But if she does, she probably won't be doing her job.

Out: Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, the tough, cantankerous eminence grise of the House Democratic caucus (he's 82), who was so deferential to Detroit as chairman of the House energy and commerce committee that Lee Iacocca once said he "stood up for the auto industry beyond the call of duty." In: Rep. Henry Waxman of California, the tough, mustachioed eminence slightly less grise of House Democrats (he's 69) known for his relentless investigations and aggressive proposals for combating climate change. Waxman's mustache—it even has a nickname—haunts Rick Wagoner's dreams.

Barack Obama's own transition team could not have hoped for a better outcome. In fact, there are signs it did more than just hope.

Dingell's ouster came after the Democrats' Policy and Steering Committee voted 25-22 in favor of Waxman's candidacy. In charge of the steering committee is Waxman's fellow California Democrat, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And ousting the leader of the House's most powerful panel—environmental issues, health care, and consumer protection all fall under commerce's purview—is generally not done without permission from the top.

Of course, Waxman and Dingell did their part. As early as the 1980s, Waxman was fighting the attempts of then-Chairman Dingell, working with the Reagan administration, to weaken auto-emissions standards. Dingell, meanwhile, quashed Waxman's acid-rain legislation. More recently, Dingell's 2007 pro-coal, anti-regulatory energy independence legislation prompted Waxman to circulate a letter signed by 11 fellow committee members: "We have serious concerns about the direction the Committee is heading."

At the same time, Dingell could have been helpful to Obama as chairman on some issues. He's been a stalwart liberal almost across the board. He helped to pass Medicare in 1965 and has for years supported a national health insurance system. He and Waxman teamed up to produce the 1990 Clean Air Act. Other accomplishments he touts are the Endangered Species Act and the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

But on climate legislation, Dingell would not have been a help. Obama has pledged to make addressing climate change a priority—a commitment he reiterated in a video address this week. And some Senate Democratic leaders, normally moderate checks on their wild-eyed House counterparts, appear eager to take on clean energy and fuel efficiency.

Dingell isn't opposed to all energy regulation. In his proposed fuel efficiency legislation in 2007, he supported "incentives" for auto manufacturers but opposed forcing them to adapt. He supports cap-and-trade, but his version is more industry-friendly than Waxman's, which would actually put the Environmental Protection Agency in charge. The difference between Dingell and Waxman is best captured by the fear struck in the hearts of energy sector sympathizers: Dingell's plan would "dramatically raise energy prices," according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, while Waxman's "would send us back to the Stone Age."

Stylistically, Waxman is a better fit for an Obama-led Democratic charge. He's crazy, but unlike Dingell, he's happy-crazy. Dingell's craziness is darker. He was known for strong-headed, Lyndon Johnson-style political arm-twisting. He leaked dirt about his enemies and fed the news cycle to keep favorable coverage alive. He sometimes went overboard, as with his hearings alleging scientific fraud against Nobel Prize-winner David Baltimore, who was later exonerated, and AIDS researcher Robert Gallo, whose allegations were also dropped. Waxman is tough, too, but in a matter-of-fact, bury-you-with-evidence kind of way. He's a famed tightwad with a righteous streak, but he's not a drama queen. As head of the House oversight committee, he earned the moniker the "Mustache of Justice."

Waxman's rise has broader implications, too. He's just the latest combative Democrat to rise in the Obamaverse. Like incoming Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Waxman is a partisan. He also represents coastal creep in the legislative branch—the influence of the West and East over industrial Middle America. (Between Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barney Frank, and now Waxman, the power of pro-regulation liberals over hands-off Blue Dog Democrats is rising. And no, Chicago is not Middle America, although Obama's deference to coal could be a problem for the bicoastal mafia.) Lastly, Waxman's victory coincides with the failure (so far) of Detroit's Big Three to win a federal bailout. Dingell may have been the industry's last best hope to stave off profit-narrowing regulation. (His wife, Debbie Dingell, is an executive at General Motors.)

This doesn't mean Waxman can snap his fingers and make cars more efficient or carbon emissions more costly. As always, the question looms: Will he change the committee, or will the committee change him? He will have to twist arms and make compromises to win votes, and Dingell is not vanishing into the ether (he's now "chairman emeritus"). Meanwhile, congressional Republicans won't easily forget Waxman's grillings.

But signs suggest House Democrats are ready to be led; more than half of them voted for him. And unlike Dingell in the 1980s, Waxman will have the backing of an ambitious administration. So maybe it won't be just his fingers doing the snapping.

On Dec. 10, America's first military execution since 1961 will take place in Terre Haute, Ind. Pvt. Ronald Gray has been on death row since 1988 for rape and murder. In 2003, Brendan I. Koerner explained the history of military executions in the United States and the circumstances under which they happen. The article is reprinted below.

Senior Airman Ahmad I. al-Halabi, the Air Force translator charged with espionage and aiding the enemy, could face the death penalty if convicted. Coverage of the case has mentioned that the last military execution took place in 1961. What were the circumstances of that case, and what military crimes are punishable by death?

John A. Bennett, an Army private, was hanged on April 13, 1961, at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. In December of 1954, while stationed in Austria, he had raped and attempted to drown an 11-year-old girl. The execution was carried out despite pleas for clemency from the victim and her family, who opposed the death penalty on principle. President John F. Kennedy, however, ignored their entreaties, as well as a last-minute telegram from a frightened Bennett. According to a 1994 Los Angeles Times recap, the soldier's last words, directed toward the small gathering of witnesses who braved a downpour, were "May God have mercy on your souls."

There are currently seven men on the military's version of death row, a high-security unit nicknamed "The Castle" at Fort Leavenworth's U.S. Disciplinary Barracks. All the condemned were convicted of murder. The closest to execution is Dwight J. Loving, convicted in 1989 of murdering two cab drivers in Killeen, Texas. Before the sentence can be carried out, however, Loving's death warrant must be personally reviewed by the commander in chief. His decision is supposed to be informed by a special Department of Defense recommendation, although the Uniform Code of Military Justice does not specify how that recommendation should be prepared.

The military death penalty was temporarily scratched in 1983, when the Armed Forces Court of Appeals ruled that judicial guidelines did not adequately define the aggravating factors that might justify a capital sentence. The penalty was reintroduced a year later, after President Ronald Reagan issued an executive order detailing exactly how capital courts-martial should proceed and listing 11 aggravating circumstances (such as killing for monetary gain) that can qualify a defendant for a death sentence.

The UCMJ lists 15 offenses that are potentially punishable by death, though the majority of the crimes must be committed during wartime in order to carry the maximum penalty. In addition to espionage, aiding the enemy, and murder, soldiers can also be executed for "misbehavior before the enemy" (including cowardice or throwing down one's arms), "improper use of countersign" (giving away a secret password), and, of course, mutiny. Military crimes not on the capital list: dueling, maiming, and "improper hazarding of vessel."

Popular lore holds that the first American soldier to be executed was Thomas Hickey, a personal guard of George Washington, who was convicted of plotting to kill the general and was put to death in 1776. (There's a myth that Hickey planned to poison Washington's green peas.) The last soldier to be executed during wartime was Pvt. Eddie Slovik, shot for desertion in 1945. He was later portrayed by Martin Sheen in a made-for-TV movie.

Explainer thanks the Death Penalty Information Center.

The New York Times reported Thursday that over the past eight years, Dr. Frederick K. Goodwin, who hosts the public-radio series The Infinite Mind, received at least $1.3 million for giving marketing lectures for drug companies that could have benefited from preferential treatment on his show. In a "Medical Examiner" published earlier this year, Shannon Brownlee and Jeanne Lenzer detailed the profitable connections Goodwin and other doctors in the media have to the pharmaceutical industry. The article is reprinted below.

A few weeks ago, devoted listeners of National Public Radio* were treated to an episode of the award-winning radio series The Infinite Mind called "Prozac Nation: Revisited." The segment featured four prestigious medical experts discussing the controversial link between antidepressants and suicide. In their considered opinions, all four said that worries about the drugs have been overblown.

The radio show, which was broadcast nationwide and paid for in part by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, had the air of quiet, authoritative credibility. Host Dr. Fred Goodwin, a former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, interviewed three prominent guests, and any radio producer would be hard-pressed to find a more seemingly credible quartet. Credible, that is, except for a crucial detail that was never revealed to listeners: All four of the experts on the show, including Goodwin, have financial ties to the makers of antidepressants. Also unmentioned were the "unrestricted grants" that The Infinite Mind has received from drug makers, including Eli Lilly, the manufacturer of the antidepressant Prozac.

We don't know just how much funding or when the show last received it, since neither Goodwin nor the show's producers responded to repeated requests for interviews. But the larger point is that undisclosed financial conflicts of interest among media sources seem to be popping up all over the place these days. Some experts who appear independent are, in fact, serving as stealth marketers for the drug and biotech industries, and reporters either don't know about their sources' conflicts of interests, or they fail to disclose them to the public.

Take the November 2006 NBC Nightly News story that asked, "Can lung scans really prevent cancer death?" Reporter Mike Taibbi, a former smoker, underwent scanning by Dr. Claudia Henschke, a professor of radiology at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York. Henschke claimed on the show that early detection with lung scans could prevent 80 percent of deaths from lung cancer. Although Taibbi included another expert who said that Henschke's claim was "outrageous," viewers were left with little way to evaluate the two conflicting viewpoints. And Taibbi himself concluded that early detection was his "best chance." At no point did viewers learn that Henschke's research was funded by a tobacco company, which has an investment in making the risks of smoking appear to be manageable—or that many experts warn that more research is needed to determine whether the potential benefits of scanning outweigh its harms.

How frequently are journalists glossing over such conflicts? Gary Schwitzer, a professor of journalism at the University of Minnesota, is the publisher of HealthNewsReview.org, a Web site that reviews health care news for balance, accuracy, and completeness. Schwitzer and his team of reviewers have looked at 544 stories from top outlets over the two-year period from April 2006 to April 2008. Journalists had to meet several criteria in order to receive a satisfactory score, among them: They had to quote an independent expert—someone not involved in the relevant research—and they had to make some attempt to report potential conflicts of interest. Half the stories failed to meet these two requirements, Schwitzer says.

Conflicts of interest abound even in unexpected places. A recent survey of academic medical centers published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 60 percent of academic department chairs have personal ties to industry—serving as consultants, board members, or paid speakers, while two-thirds of the academic departments had institutional ties to industry. Such ties can be extremely lucrative. And according to these articles in the medical literature, researchers who receive funding from drug and medical-device manufacturers are up to 3.5 times as likely to conclude their study drug or medical device works than are researchers without such funding.

An equally clever way for companies to get out their marketing messages is to go through a consumer group. Drug companies often seed "pharm teams," consumer groups that start out as legitimate advocacy organizations and are subtly manipulated by funding from pharmaceutical companies to convey the desired talking points. Unless reporters ask where groups and individual researchers get their money, they have no idea that their sources may be biased—and neither do their readers, viewers, and listeners.

Which brings us back to The Infinite Mind and "Prozac Nation: Revisited," a show that may stand in a class by itself for concealing bias. In addition to the show's unrestricted grants from Lilly, the host, Goodwin, is on the board of directors of Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, an industry-funded front, or "Astroturf" group, which receives a majority of its funding from drug companies. CMPI President Peter Pitts was one of Goodwin's three guests for "Prozac Nation." We don't know which companies fund his group because when we asked him, Pitts said, "I don't want to go into that." But CMPI took in more than $1.4 million in 2006 and, according to its tax forms, spent $210,000 to influence the media through a large conference, a blog the group maintains, op-eds published in major newspapers, and multimedia programs and podcasts. Pitts has another title that might have been relevant to The Infinite Mind; he is the senior vice president for global health affairs at the PR firm Manning Selvage & Lee, which represents Eli Lilly Inc., GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, and more than a dozen other pharmaceutical companies. Yet on the show, Pitts was identified only by his title as "a former FDA official."

The second guest on "Prozac Nation," Andrew F. Leuchter, is a professor of psychiatry at UCLA who has received research money from drug companies including Eli Lilly Inc., Pfizer, and Novartis. The third guest, Nada Stotland, president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association, has served on the speakers' bureaus of GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer. None of Leuchter and Stotland's ties to industry was revealed to listeners—instead, each was introduced as a prominent academic.

The Infinite Mind's Web site states, "Our independence is perhaps our greatest asset." Perhaps, indeed. Neither Goodwin nor the show's producers responded to our repeated requests for interviews and queries about their funding. Pitts, who to his credit did give us an interview, said he didn't know why his ties to industry weren't revealed on the show. Curious, we tried to learn more about the funding for The Infinite Mind—and could discover only that the show's award-winning production company, Lichtenstein Creative Media, was dissolved by the state of Massachusetts on March 28 for failing to file a single annual report since its establishment in 2004.

Some reporters and producers argue that they can't be expected to ask every source whether he or she gets money from the drug industry. But there are obvious first steps to take. A list of academic researchers who are known to have financial ties to the drug and medical-device industries is available through the Center for Science in the Public Interest. (Yes, the name is a lot like the Astroturf group we mentioned earlier—coincidence?) To be fair, the list is inevitably incomplete, and Astroturf groups and academics with undeclared financial ties can make it difficult to ferret out their financial conflicts.

In hopes of making reporters' jobs a little easier, we've created for journalists an international list of prestigious and independent medical experts who declare they have no financial ties to drug and device manufacturers for at least the past five years. We have nearly 100 experts from a wide array of disciplines. E-mail us at Brownlee.Lenzer@gmail.com, and we'll be happy to name names.

Correction, May 9, 2008: After this piece first appeared, Slate posted a correction saying that the piece had incorrectly stated that The Infinite Mind is carried on National Public Radio, rather than public radio stations. We now understand from NPR's ombudsman, Alicia Shepard, that it was the correction that was wrong. In fact, NPR has a contractual relationship with The Infinite Mind to run the show on two Sirius channels. The show also runs on NPR member stations. Return to the corrected sentence.)

I've attended churches, Quaker Meetings, synagogues, and Buddhist temples. I've taken yoga and read Joseph Campbell, Thomas Merton, C.S. Lewis, St. Augustine, and the Bible. I pray often. But I had an unsettling realization recently, which is that my steer Elvis already has the spiritual equanimity I have been seeking. He is comfortable within himself, has no discernible anxiety, rolls with life as if it were a gentle wave, is uncomplaining, generous and loyal to his mate, and trusts and accepts people.

Cold, rain, snow, flies, ticks, mud, and muck—none disturbs him. He is as peaceful covered in ice as he is taking in the sun with the Guernsey steer, and his pal, Harold.

Elvis is affectionate in his own way. He eats hats and loves doughnuts, he drools generously on my head and shoulders, and his tongue is impressive. Once, he licked me and sucked the scarf right off my shoulders, just before he ate it.

Elvis, who weighs 3,000 pounds, is the size of a small mobile home, a vast sea of brown with big, soulful brown eyes that suggest, perhaps misleadingly, sadness and wisdom. I need a wide-angle lens just to take a decent photo of him, and more than once, he has swung his head toward me in a burst of affection and sent me flying. He is always puzzled by this, obviously having no idea of his size or strength.

He loves to have his nose and ear scratched and will lower his head, rub against me, and nearly purr if I brush his neck. I am the only person he will permit to get close for bug-spraying and medications. If Elvis does not want you to come near him, you will not.

I once tried to tie him to the side of the barn so that the vet could examine a wound on his leg, and he pulled the side of the barn about three feet into the pasture before I panicked and cut the rope. Elvis goes where he wants to go. In the days before I got the cow Luna to keep him company, he would routinely walk right through my expensive fences to visit me, pulling up stakes one by one like a cartoon character and dragging hundreds of yards of fence easily behind him. I have electrified the fence, and the high-voltage shocks seem to annoy him mildly, but not so much that he won't graze right underneath them.

Elvis is as smelly as he is big, and he travels in a cloud of bugs, waste, dust, and drool, punctuated by grunting, belching, and various emissions of gas that literally do take your breath away if you are downwind. When he is wet, he is especially game and raunchy. He has peed on my shoes and taken a staggeringly impressive dump right in the middle of a conversation. When Elvis runs to say hello, you have to be alert, because he usually can't stop, and you have to make sure there is room to step aside while he lumbers to a halt. Once he swiveled his butt into a small tree and knocked it over with a crack. Then he ate the bark and the leaves.

I have trained him to slow down, and to "stay" briefly, but Elvis is not really into training. And why should he be? He pretty much does what he wants.

I am finding in Elvis the spiritual life I have been searching for myself. A few months ago, I brought Elvis a volume of W.B. Yeats poems. I don't like poetry much, but I often read poems to Elvis, as he seems to love them, swishing his tail to keep the flies off his gargantuan butt. Elvis has his own rhythms. He is usually in the same place at the same time doing the same thing—eating, mostly—every day. I've read St. Augustine's City of God to him, some James Herriott, Merton, and Carl Sandburg, to appeal to his masculine side. I've read from C.S. Lewis' The Problem of Pain, and more recently, I climbed to the top of the hill and read from an anthology of haiku, which seemed appropriate for such a centered, easygoing creature.

I read two or three Yeats poems to him and put the book down, and Elvis ate the paperback, almost inhaled it, really, and enjoyed it as much as any donut. Then he looked up at me, as if to say, "What's next, bub?"

What was next was my sitting down next to him and the two of us spending a lovely hour chewing our respective cuds and staring meaningfully at nothing in particular. I enjoyed it. Elvis is a contemplative, capable of long hours of meditation and observation. Sometimes, it rubs off on me.

I'm a bit jealous. I got these books for me, of course, and I suppose the drive to share them with Elvis comes from my dawning realization that he naturally embraces so many of the traits I have been looking for so long and often with such difficulty. It occurs to me that the price of such equanimity is that you have to be a cow and that to be a human means you struggle to find these things but know in your heart that this is an uneven struggle, filled with successes and victories, ups and downs, crooked lines and gates and fences.

Thomas Merton wrote that one of the most important and neglected elements in the beginnings of an authentic and interior life is the ability to see the value and the beauty in ordinary things. Elvis seems to have that. I do not. When I take photos or write, I struggle to see how light and color suffuse our world and sometimes rise above myself to capture the beauty in ordinary things. But much of the time, I'm on the phone, trying to convince some disembodied computer or human that I do, in fact, exist and did, in fact, order those HDTV channels.

Elvis is beyond this. He doesn't have to work at acceptance, or retrain his mind to accept the bad with the good.

One afternoon recently, I was rattled by the drumbeat of grim and contentious news pouring out of Wall Street and Washington, first from the car radio, and then from shouting and hysterical commentators on cable news channels. "We are going over the cliff," one said, as a means of offering perspective. I went out to the pasture with an apple and sat down next to Elvis.

"We are going over a cliff, it seems," I said. He turned his enormous brown eyes upon me and looked back to the fence, back at the pastures beyond, back at less fortunate cows who lived in barns, ate silage instead of fresh hay, slept on mats on concrete, and would shortly go to market.

It does not really matter, he seemed to be saying, and I agreed.

This, I think, is the spiritual center of animals like Elvis, the thing that they can teach us and show us.

Elvis is not, to my knowledge, self-aware. He has no consciousness that I can see. He eats, rests, and stares out at the world, content to observe it.

When things are bad or I am nervous, I sometimes have fantasies of killing Elvis, of sending him to another farm or off to market, as it is tough to justify spending so much money on so much hay for a steer.

But I even when I have these bad dreams, I doubt I will ever kill Elvis, because I have been oddly blessed in life to see that creatures like him have lives, just as I do. It is sometimes difficult for me to justify the idea of keeping such a creature as a pet and spending so much money on his feed and care.

Elvis does not know, and will not ever know, that he should be on the menu at McDonald's by now and is destined for a short life, as few steers see their fifth birthdays because their legs are not designed to carry such massive weight for too many years. There are few ways to treat such a massive and powerful beast if he gets sick, so when he does, it will almost surely be the end of him.

Sometimes this makes me sad, even as I grasp the irony: It will never bother him.

My mom is not much of a honker. You know what I mean when I say that: If a driver in front of her fails to hit the gas when the light turns, she simply waits. Time passes, and the green light glows. Eventually, the driver notices the signal change, or the cars behind begin to lay on their horns. Traffic proceeds. But no thanks to my mom; she's just not much of a honker.

For years I've been telling my mom that she ought to learn to honk a little more. After all, honking is a venerable automotive tradition. Just over a century ago, Henry Ford's first Model T rolled off the production line. Inside, near the driver's side window, was a grapefruit-sized squeeze bulb affixed to a twice-looped brass trumpet. It was a horn—one of only a few basic amenities that came standard. Thus, the car that "put the world on wheels" also gave the world a way to complain about it: a horn for the great honking masses.

And honk we have. No one keeps official tallies, but with nearly 1 billion cars on the roads, there is no doubt that worldwide honking is on the rise. In dense cities in places like India and China, where hordes of new drivers are now navigating ancient tenement districts, horn-honking is so constant that it is a major noise problem. In July, traffic police in Mumbai launched a "No Honking Movement" led by taxi drivers who took an oath not to toot. Last year, Shanghai banned honking downtown, with the prohibition set to expand to the entire city. Dhaka is a riot of honking. Cairo is the unofficial honking capital of the world. Islamabad, Ho Chi Minh City, Lima, Katmandu, Accra, and New York have issues. Even the virtual world is getting into the act.

In theory, the horn is a safety device; it might rightly be called the world's first "collision-avoidance system." But exactly how many collisions it serves to avoid has never been clear. From its earliest days, some observers wondered whether the horn wasn't actually facilitating certain road mishaps by shifting the burden of evasion from the honker to the honkee. A Londoner argued this case in a 1912 letter to the Times: "Drivers have escaped punishment because they hooted loudly just before killing an aged and deaf colonel, or an elderly woman, deaf, and blind of one eye, or capsizing another car and injuring three or four persons … Ordinary care and precaution would have prevented each of such accidents. Hooting, however, is counted a sufficient set-off against the lack of such care and precaution."

By the 1930s, this judgment was gaining converts. First Paris and then London outlawed horn-honking at night. In 1935, New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia kicked off a nighttime honking ban with a radio address in which he praised the English anti-horn effort: "The results have been so good that there is no demand from any quarter for their return. Automobile accidents, fatalities, and injuries have been reduced to an appreciable extent merely because the campaign against horns there has caused drivers to drive more carefully." He said deaths were down 17 percent and injuries 7 percent since the ban had taken effect. A New York Times article from the same year documented new horn restrictions in Rome, Stockholm, Vienna, and Berlin, under the headline, "Honking Autoist a World Problem; Every Nation Seeks to Curb Him; Horns Viewed as Contributing Cause of Accidents Rather Than Aid to Safety—Campaign On Here to Curb Drivers Who Depend on Blasts Instead of Brakes."

This assessment of the horn—that it is not in fact an instrument of safety but something else entirely—has not been refuted. Most honking research has examined the relationship between horn use and aggression. People honk more when it's hot than when it's cold, more on weekdays than on weekends, more if they are male than if they are female, more at beaters than at Benzes, more if they feel they can do so anonymously (PDF), and more in the city than in the country. My mother is a classic nonhonker: She is female, suburban, patient, and climate-control-oriented. Still, it would be nice to know whether her anti-honk bias poses a risk to society. A spokesman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Jose Ucles, could not point to any studies on safety and the car horn. "It's sort of like brakes," he said. "Everyone's just always thought it was a good idea."

Jeff Muttart, a traffic-accident reconstructionist, has pored over hundreds of surveillance videos of real-life car crashes and near-crashes. In 2005, he concluded that emergency horn use is not associated with decreased accident involvement. He found that drivers never steered and honked at the same time, and usually they didn't honk at all. About half of emergency honks were meant to chastise and came only after the danger was over. The other half were just preludes to a crash. "It really didn't serve any purpose at all. It was just, Hey, by the way, I'm going to hit you."

Also: We stink at honking. A 2001 survey for the U.K. Institute of Traffic Accident Investigators shows that most people take two to three times as long to honk as they do to brake or steer. Professional drivers, like cabbies, are a bit quicker—they practice. (Now that automakers are getting over the whole tiny-horn-buttons craze, honk times may improve.)

Muttart explains this honking deficiency by the fact that many people view the horn as a tool for scolding rather than safety. So when we want to avoid a crash, we don't think to use it. (You don't look for a phone when you need a fire extinguisher.) It's possible honk speeds are better in India, where no one overlooks the horn, and the honking is more existential than aggressive. Of course, the street noise there can be literally deafening, and India's roads have one of the highest death rates in the world.

Perhaps the world just needs more standardized honking education. Here are some tips from AAA on how to use the horn to warn a child cyclist: "Ideally, you should sound the horn when you're about a half-block away … If you blast the horn at close range, you'll startle the cyclist. He may look over his left shoulder in surprise and steer inadvertently into your path. Worse, he may lose control and fall directly in front of you."

In other words: If you see a kid on a bike and he's at least a half-block away (the block being the standard unit of distance used by AAA's honking scientists), then give a toot. But take care: If you screw up, you may crush his tiny body beneath your wheels. This kind of messaging hardly helps: Instead of teaching us good behavior, it makes us afraid of the horn and takes the joy out of honking.

The truth is, many cities have already ruled out all the lighthearted, benign uses of the horn—rolling up to a girlfriend's house with a cool beep-beep, practicing Morse code in the grocery store parking lot … S-O-S … Saaaaave Ouuuur Shiiiiip! Even honking to celebrate Obama can get you a ticket. All that's left now are the aforementioned and ineffective "emergency" hoots. If that's the case, maybe we should eliminate honking altogether.

In Berlin in 1936, the Nazis put yellow spots on the cars of people who honked unnecessarily. The honking ceased. Memphis in the 1950s was called "the quietest city" thanks to a tough horn law. But horn bans are hard to enforce and maintain. In Cairo, drivers outmaneuvered an ordinance by reverting to squeeze horns. Shanghai's ban last year reportedly inspired one driver to install a custom horn that played a recording: "Please mind the car, we are making a turn." New Yorkers honk unflinchingly in the face of the city's many silly "Don't Honk" signs. Hey, man, free speech!

New weapons are joining the War on Honking. The Automobile Horn Audit System could track honk rate and location and transmit data to a state-run central computer. Australia is deploying "noise cameras." And in a nod to the Nazis, some Manhattanites want to fit cabs with lights to identify deviant honkers. Others say, Let's turn up the honk volume inside cars. The boors among us prefer eggs, or Taliban-style hand dismemberment. A more modest proposal, made by psychologist Charles Spence, is to replace the horn with a sharp spike protruding from the steering wheel. The spike would make driving "feel more dangerous," so people would go slower.

Last summer I was in Colombia on vacation, and one day I visited downtown Medellin. I was sporting sunglasses, short pants, and dirty white flip-flops. Near the Botero sculpture garden, after checking my map, I stepped into the road. A spray of honks ensued. Cars and motorbikes buzzed past. I felt as if I'd been Tased. But I was alive: a well-timed honk had saved my life.

Or maybe it hadn't. It felt like a near-miss, but the driver had seen me several seconds earlier, in time to honk me out of the way. Maybe he didn't even need to honk. Maybe he could have braked instead. That's what my mom would have done. Or what if his car had been equipped with the spike?

Horns don't honk at people. People honk at people. Whatever legislative remedies or gadgeteer fixes we can invent, I'm counting on one fact: We won't give up our horns until they're pried from our cold, dead, honking hands.

For America's 7.3 million vegetarians, Thanksgiving is a day of thanks but no thanks. On this holiday built around meat-eating, it's difficult to avoid niggling questions about your diet from the cousin you've never met, the uncle who doesn't approve, or the grandmother who just doesn't understand. (For the last time: If you cook the vegetarian stuffing inside the turkey, it's no longer vegetarian.) Try as you might to enjoy your green-bean salad in peace, you end up spending half the meal explaining why you refuse even to try the bird that your selfless mom spent all afternoon preparing.

Under such intense pressure, convictions can crumble like an apple crisp. Years ago, when I was still new to the no-meat game, I gave in to the siren song of flexitarianism and helped myself to a drumstick. But I came to regret making this exception. Turkey is a gateway meat, and during a tryptophan-induced nap I dreamed of bacon.

This year, to withstand the seductive bird at the center of the table, I decided I need more than a steely will or a tasty side—I need a turkey substitute, a main course to call my own. I resolved to find the best faux turkey on the market.

Methodology

I had a simple but strict litmus test in putting together a list of products. Most families cook a whole turkey on Thanksgiving, so I decided to test imitation roasts rather than sampling vegetarian deli slices or ground meat. After perusing sites like VeganEssentials and the Vegan Store, I picked out four brands, two of which can be ordered online and all of which can be found at Whole Foods throughout the holiday season.

It's been nine years since I last ate meat, so I've developed strong opinions about what makes a good substitute. But asking a committed vegetarian to evaluate fake meat is like asking someone who's colorblind to comment on a landscape painting—she can say whether she likes it but not whether it's an accurate representation. So I recruited meat-eaters to serve as co-judges.

Each fake turkey could score a possible 25 points, with either 5 or 10 points assigned in the following categories:

Appearance (5 points)

The Thanksgiving spread, with its autumnal colors, can be as beautiful as it is tasty. Would the ersatz bird fit right in, or would it be an eyesore?

Meatiness (10 points)

Some vegetarians turn up their noses at imitation meat, preferring less aspirational fare—like carrots. But those who miss turkey as the centerpiece of the meal have a right to expect a convincing impression. The key to meatiness is texture. Fake turkey should be tender, not rubbery or spongelike.

Overall Taste (10 points)

Overall taste encompasses not just consistency but seasoning. This category comes down to a simple multiple-choice question—would I, or my fellow-tasters, be a) unwilling, b) willing, or c) eager to eat the un-beast again?

The results, listed from "Please pass the squash" to "Hands off, Grandma, you've got your own bird."

Field Roast Stuffed Celebration Roast, $8.99



Appearancewise, the Celebration Roast can't quite pass for turkey, but it might be mistaken for a small ham. The stuffing had a mashed, canned-cat-food quality, but my meat-eating friend and I agreed that the tawny brown, corrugated sheath coating the roast did look rather like crispy animal skin, while the wheat-protein-based "meat" resembled pâté. All told, it was easy on the eyes.

Our opinion of the Celebration Roast diminished rapidly, however, when we started eating it. The stuffing, ostensibly made from butternut squash, apples, and mushrooms, tasted like soggy breadcrumbs. The "meat" was pleasantly chewy, and, in that sense, turkey-ish, but it was too savory. I felt as if I were biting into a vegetable bouillon cube—onion, garlic, and salt were the dominant flavors. My test partner said it "tasted like smoke." To find out what we were eating, I peeked at the ingredient list, which read like an Army recipe for gussying up not-quite-USDA-prime meat: garlic powder, onion powder, garlic, natural liquid smoke (!), Irish moss extract (!!), and unspecified spices. If my Thanksgiving host had Celebration Roast on offer, I'd stick to the green beans.



Appearance: 4

Meatiness: 6

Overall Taste: 2

Total: 12

Quorn Turk'y Roast, $6.99



Uncooked, the Turk'y Roast looks like raw dough. Cooked, it resembles spam—a beige, tubular monstrosity. Determined to judge the Turk'y Roast not by the color of its skin but by the content of its character, I cut myself a slice. To my pleasant surprise, I didn't gag. The meat-eaters, for the most part, also overcame their initial prejudice. All but one conceded that, just like real turkey, the mycoprotein (read: fungus) roast was springy and pleasant to chew. Unfortunately, it was a bit too much like real turkey: It was dry and rather bland. Of all the fakes, the Turk'y Roast best captured the experience of biting into a bird prepared by a less-than-expert chef. It deserves high marks for mimicry but falls short in overall taste.

Appearance: 1

Meatiness: 9

Overall Taste: 6

Total: 16

Tofurky Roast, $15.69



What Kleenex is to tissues, Tofurky is to faux turkey. It's also the most aspirational brand. Quorn offers an unadorned loaf, Celebration Roast comes with stuffing, but Turtle Island Foods, maker of Tofurky, is big on trimmings. There's Tofurky Wild Rice Stuffing, Tofurky Giblet and Mushroom Gravy, even Tofurky Jurky Wishstix (imitation wish bones), all of which you can purchase together in a maroon box labeled "Vegetarian Feast." The company also provides customers with a promotional postcard depicting a happy interspecies family (that is, humans and turkeys), digging into a Tofurky Roast.

Tofurky gets full credit for appearance. Like the Celebration Roast, it closely resembles a small ham. In the oven it develops a brown sheen and the "meat" takes on a turkey-ish golden-brown tone. The wild rice stuffing looked not only edible but appealing.

At a school with moderate grade inflation, the Tofurky would earn a B for taste. While the stuffing was genuinely good, the "meat" (wheat gluten and tofu) was a little rubbery and had a disconcerting Asian tang—no doubt a result of the recommended basting concoction: soy sauce and olive oil. The meat-eaters and I agreed, however, that it was perfectly palatable and might even work well in a sandwich the next day.

Appearance: 5

Meatiness: 7

Overall Taste: 7

Total: 19

Gardein Stuffed Veggie Turkey Roast, $7.99 per pound



Perhaps it's unfair to compare Gardein's roast with the products above, because I found it in the hot foods section at Whole Foods, meaning I didn't have to prepare it myself. Whether the Whole Foods chefs or the culinary artists at Gardein deserve credit for the final product, I can't say, but the Veggie Turkey Roast was certainly the best fake of the batch.

Shaped like a Twinkie, with a crispy bread-crumb coating, Gardein's imitation bird doesn't resemble a roast, but it won't elicit any boos around the dinner table, either. And the "meat" itself (soy, wheat, peas, beets, and carrots) really does have the color and texture of a turkey. After my first bite, I felt a little anxious—I wondered briefly whether I'd mistakenly bought real turkey and glanced at my taste partner to see whether she, too, had a "Wait a minute" look on her face. She didn't. While she conceded that the Veggie Turkey Roast had a meaty quality, she argued that it wasn't, in fact, as convincing as Quorn's Turk'y Roast.

In evaluating the un-beast's taste, however, we had no disagreement. The Celebration Roast, Turk'y Roast, and Tofurky were all quite dry, but the Veggie Turkey Roast could almost pass for succulent. It wasn't too rubbery or too porous, too salty or too bland. If, come Thanksgiving, you place a Gardein roast next to the turkey, you may not win any converts, but you won't be tempted to defect.

Appearance: 4

Meatiness: 8

Overall Taste: 10

Total: 22

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Actually, I'm not technically a vegetarian—I still eat fish. But "non-meat-eater" is a clunky handle, and I refuse to call myself a "pescatarian."

Someday, we may all tire of Sarah Palin, but we're nowhere near that point yet. Last Wednesday, the Alaska governor visited a turkey farm in Wasilla to grant a pre-Thanksgiving pardon to one lucky Tom. She was borrowing a White House tradition that's the equivalent of a political layup. But she managed to blow the shot.

After issuing the reprieve, Palin took questions while standing in front of a farm worker who was preparing other turkeys for slaughter. You have to see the interview to believe it, and thanks to YouTube, you can.

Only here, though, can you see the outtakes Slate V has uncovered.

After the gun sounded to end this month's 13-13 tie between the Eagles and the Bengals, Donovan McNabb looked stunned. He'd thought the teams were going to keep playing until someone scored. "I've never been a part of a tie," McNabb said in his postgame press conference. "I never even knew that was in the rule book."

Bookwormy sportswriters who have read the rule book mocked McNabb as a clueless jock. But, as the Eagles quarterback pointed out, the tie has almost disappeared from football. Only the NFL still allows them (at least in the regular season), and then after a 15-minute overtime. The Eagles-Bengals push was the league's first tie in six years. "In college, there are multiple overtimes," McNabb noted, "and in high school and Pop Warner. I never knew in the professional ranks it would end that way."

Thanks to that Cincy-Philly deadlock, newspapers have been forced to add an extra column to the football standings, reminding me of the pleasing symmetry of college football's pre-overtime era, when teams could end the season 8-0-2. As George S. Patton put it, "America loves a winner." And fans pay to see one. But nothing's more memorable than a great tie, even if Navy football coach Eddie Erdelatz did, in 1954, say that a deadlocked game is "like kissing your sister." (The Washington Post's deadpan next line: "No one asked the mild spoken Navy coach to explain.") Unfortunately, college football and the NHL, the last bastions of tiedom, have both instituted ridiculous overtime schemes in recent years. Now, all we tie aficionados have left is soccer. And does anyone really care one way or the other when Real Salt Lake and D.C. United draw nil-nil?

Here's where I stand on ties: If a game can't be decided by the regulation rules, it shouldn't be decided at all. That's why the NCAA's system, instituted in 1996 in Division I-A, is such a tacky tack-on to 60 minutes of hard-fought football. Each team gets a chance to score from its opponent's 25-yard line. If the game is still tied, they line up again at the 25 and keep doing it until someone comes out ahead. That leaves out only such essential elements of football as punting, deep pass patterns, and long-distance field goals. Hockey shootouts, which became inevitable once Disney was granted an NFL franchise, are even worse. They dispense with defense all together. It's like settling a basketball game with H-O-R-S-E.

But ties are on a winning streak lately, which is restoring my equanimity. The same week as the Bengals-Eagles tie, the documentary Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 had its premiere. In 1968, both Harvard and Yale entered The Game (as only Ivy Leaguers call it) with undefeated records. But Yale was ranked 16^th in the entire nation and had Brian Dowling at quarterback, a future NFL scrub who hadn't lost a game since he was in sixth grade. As the Yale Daily News put it, "God Plays Quarterback at Yale." Cartoonist Garry Trudeau immortalized him as the helmet-wearing B.D.

Considering we know that no one will win, Harvard Beats Yale is an incredible piece of sports drama. Ever since The Bad News Bears, there have been countless of movies about scrappy underdog teams. But those guys are always playing against rich, good-looking jocks. This movie turns the difficult trick of making you root for Harvard (a Harvard team that included Tommy Lee Jones, no less).

With two minutes left, Harvard was down 29-13, with the ball on its own 15-yard line. Yalies were chanting, "You're No. 2." The Yale band was playing The Mickey Mouse Club theme. But a holding call against Yale and a forward fumble by Harvard's second-string quarterback Frank Champi advanced the ball to the Yale 15. Champi threw a touchdown pass with 42 seconds to go. Harvard then recovered an onside kick, and a facemask penalty put them in the red zone. On the final play, Champi threw for another touchdown. A two-point conversion made it 29-29.

Harvard fans mobbed the field. The Crimson players ran to the locker room, waving their helmets. The Elis slumped away, having blown a 16-point lead and a perfect season. That's the beauty of a tie. With no winner and no loser, each side has to provide its own resolution. The reactions of the players, 40 years later, validate the Harvard Crimson headline that gave the movie its title. Interviewed in their offices or their kitchens, the grayed, softened men—all big winners in life—recall the one event in their lives that was never decided, and never will be. A tie game never really ends. It's only suspended, to be taken up again as a perennial debate over how each team might have broken the deadlock.

Jones, who speaks laconically, as though he's reciting Cormac McCarthy, recalls a missed extra point in the first half. "I can't help but think of how everyone's lives would be different if we'd made that extra point," he says. For most Harvard players, The Game was a moral victory. For Yalies, a disgraceful defeat. Champi sees it differently. "I think the Yale players will admit to, if it wasn't for that game, they wouldn't be remembered today," he says. "By losing, sorry about that, by tying, by not winning or routing poor Harvard, both teams have a small place in football history, especially Ivy League football. It's a win-win for everyone."

Since this is an article celebrating nonvictory, I hate to declare that two teams ever tied better than Harvard and Yale. But two teams did. One was my alma mater, Michigan State. In 1966, the Spartans met Notre Dame in East Lansing for a matchup hyped as the Game of the Century. Both were undefeated. Notre Dame was No. 1 in the UPI poll, Michigan State No. 2. If it didn't turn out to be the Game of the Century, it was undoubtedly the Tie of the Century.

The Spartans took a 10-7 halftime lead on a touchdown by fullback Regis Cavender and a field goal by barefoot kicker Dick Kenney. Notre Dame tied the game with a fourth-quarter field goal. With 1:10 left, the Fighting Irish had the ball on its own 30-yard line. A team with less to lose would have mounted a touchdown drive. Instead, coach Ara Parseghian decided to run out the clock, unwilling to risk a turnover that would give Michigan State a chance to win.

After 60 minutes—the natural life of a football game—the two best teams in the country had achieved perfect equilibrium. It was the most significant tie in sports history. Not only did it fail to resolve the game, it failed to resolve the national championship. Both the Spartans and the Fighting Irish were awarded that year's MacArthur Trophy. (Notre Dame preserved its top ranking in the UPI poll.) Sports Illustrated put the game on the cover with the tag line "Furor Over No. 1." Inside, Dan Jenkins wrote that Parseghian had disgraced the legacy of Knute Rockne by changing the school's fight song to "Notre Dame will tie over all."

Parseghian didn't see it that way. At least that's what he told his players. "We didn't win, but, by God, we did not lose," he said in the locker room afterward, according to Notre Dame's Rocky Bleier. "They're crying about a tie, trying to detract from your efforts. They're trying to make it come out a win. Well, don't you believe it. Their season is over. They can't go anywhere. It's all over and we're still Number One."

Outside the military, there is no more black-and-white world than football. It's the game that gave us "Winning isn't everything. It's the only thing." If that's true, then a tie means no one gets nothing, but no one gets anything, either. Was the tie eliminated to spare players and coaches from pondering this Zen koan?

Like the Harvard-Yale game, the Tie of the Century never ended, either. It inspired a book, and Rocky Bleier and Michigan State's Bubba Smith got together for a TV special on The Tie. Forty years later, Parseghian was still defending his strategy, and the two schools played their annual game in throwback jerseys, commemorating 1966 in a way that would have been impossible had either school won.

Obviously, not all ties are memorable. No one deserved to win that Eagles-Bengals thing. (Which is why it's so nice that no one did.) But it's a shame that the Harvard-Yale and the Michigan State-Notre Dame ties couldn't happen today. Tommy Lee Jones' Harvard roommate Al Gore, you might recall, was once involved in a close competition that required a winner. "You know you win some, you lose some," he said about the outcome. "And then there's that little-known third category." Just more proof that wins and losses are forgotten, but a tie is argued about forever.

Earlier this year, I called my phone company to talk about my bill. For years, I'd been paying about $25 a month for a land line arrayed with a panoply of services that I rarely used—unlimited local calls, cheap long distance, call-waiting, and several other fancy options. I wanted to cancel all of it. I've long used my mobile phone as my primary line; I'd only kept the land line because I get poor cellular reception in my house. A year ago, though, I switched over to Skype. It beats cell phones and land lines in both price and quality. Best of all, it's portable: I can use the same phone plan to make calls from home, from the office, and even from hotels around the world—again, for very little money.

Skype isn't new—it launched in 2003*, and millions of people around the world use it. But because Skype is so unbelievably cheap, I've run across lots of people who still consider it some kind of Internet dark art—a service with mysterious inner workings, one that requires some kind of special equipment or technical know-how to get it up and running.

This isn't so. Skype, which routes your calls through the Internet, is easy to set up and pretty hassle-free to use. Unlike Vonage or other Internet phone services, it requires no contract or installation; you can set it up yourself and use it as often as you like, and you can use it to supplement (rather than replace) your normal phone if you prefer. It's also completely legal and here to stay—eBay bought the company in 2005, and you don't have to worry about the Feds shutting it down. You do need to buy some equipment to use Skype, but none of it is exotic or expensive. And once you're using it, it feels no different from an ordinary phone. (Do note, though, that Skype doesn't do emergency calls; if you need 911, use a real phone.)

I've put together a primer (below) on how to get started with Skype. Follow these simple steps, and soon you, too, will be calling your phone company to cancel everything.

What you need: There are two ways to run Skype—from your computer or from a phone equipped with Skype's software.

Starting with your computer is easier. For this you need a machine capable of running Skype's software (something made within the last five or so years), a broadband Internet connection, and a USB headset and mic, which should set you back about $25 to $30. (Your laptop's built-in mic will work, but a headset sounds sound better. If your computer has a Bluetooth chip, you may be able to use the Bluetooth headset you use for your cell phone.)

After you connect your headset, download and install Skype and create a free user account. That's it—now you can make Skype calls from your computer. (To test out your setup, type echo123 into Skype's address bar and press Call. This will give you a prompt asking you to say something. Skype will then play back what you said—if you can hear yourself, your setup is working.)

I make most of my Skype calls through a headset attached to my computer. But if you'd prefer to use your home phone to make calls, you can buy an adapter that turns any ordinary phone into Skype's mic and speaker. Plug the adapter into your computer, then plug your phone into the adapter—now all your Skype calls will be routed through your home phone. I've found this works pretty well; you can even use a cordless phone to roam around the house.

Both those options require that your computer be turned on when you're using Skype. If that's too much of a burden, you can buy a special Skype phone with a built-in Wi-Fi radio. These phones connect directly to your wireless network, bypassing your computer altogether. They're slightly expensive, running between $120 and $200. On the other hand, they're very portable, allowing you to use Skype wherever you've got Wi-Fi—very handy if you're traveling internationally and want to call home for cheap. A word of caution, though: Despite telecom company objections, more and more new cell phones are capable of running Skype. If you wait a while, your iPhone or Google phone may get Skype capabilities, and then you won't need a dedicated Skype phone.

Calling other Skype users: How cheap is Skype? If you want to talk to other Skype users, it's free. If you're in a long-distance relationship or have grandkids on the other side of the country, you should get your chatting partner on Skype immediately. (The software also does video—buy two webcams, and you're up and running.)

Calling people who don't use Skype: Skype is an Internet app—it works by streaming your calls over the network on a peer-to-peer protocol. (The software's inventors are peer-to-peer devotees, having developed the file-sharing program Kazaa and the TV-streaming app Joost using the same principles.) But Skype's magic is that it connects to the phone system, too, letting you talk to people who have no interest in any of this computer mumbo jumbo.

Calling people's phones isn't free: To get started, you've got to give Skype your credit card number (or your PayPal account). Then type in the phone number and press Call.

You can pay for your Skype calls on a per-call basis or through a subscription. Skype's pay-as-you-go rates are very good. You can talk to most people in Asia, Europe, and North and South America for about 2 cents a minute. (Calling mobile phones in some countries costs a bit more; every time you make a Skype call, you'll see your current rate on the screen.) If you install Skype on your laptop, you've now got an international roaming phone—go to a hotel in London, and you can call New York for a few cents a minute.

Skype's subscriptions are an even better deal: You can get unlimited calling in the United States and Canada for $3 a month and unlimited calls to 36 counties around the world for $10 a month. If you subscribe, you also get a free online voice mailbox.

Receiving calls: If you want to switch over to Skype completely, you need to pay for a service called SkypeIn—a dedicated Skype phone number that allows people to call you from their phones. When someone dials your SkypeIn number, your Skype device—your computer or your Wi-Fi phone—will ring.

Skype numbers are available in area codes across the United States and 21 other countries. You can even buy multiple numbers in different countries. This way, your friends in London can call your U.K. Skype number while your friends in New York call your Manhattan number; each of them will pay only the cost of a local call.

SkypeIn numbers cost $60 a year or $18 for three months. (You get a discount if you subscribe to one of Skype's calling plans.)

Other stuff you can do with Skype: Making calls through the Internet rather than the phone network brings all kinds of advantages. Because your phone is a piece of software, you can tweak it in many ways—for instance, use Skype recording software to save all your calls or use a digital voice modulator to make prank calls. One add-on claims to analyze the other person's voice to detect whether she really loves you. You can also run a baby monitor (or a nanny cam) through Skype: Attach a webcam to one computer, then Skype in to it from another machine—you'll see everything come in live.

Even with all these bells and whistles, the best thing about Skype is still the price. If you're already paying for Internet service, there really is no need to pay for phone service, too. The Internet is already your phone. Use it.

Correction, Nov. 24: This piece originally misstated the year when Skype launched as 2005. (Return to the corrected sentence.)

Guff goes around about the future of show business, namely: The democratic Web video will displace the monarchs of the TV networks and film studios. Some apostles of the digital age point to the fact that anyone with a camera and a high-speed connection can distribute a piece of entertainment to be consumed by millions, and they prophesy that the corporate showbiz establishment as we know it, with its crummy sitcoms and wooden movies, will wither. Others foresee home-schooled talent surging forth to compete with the polishing pros, imagining a day when, say, Magibon displaces Miley Cyrus in the world's heart and frontal lobe. All of that is nonsense, it's clear, after Saturday's presentation of YouTube Live—a variety show, a branding event, a minor atrocity.

The "show" spewed fitfully into existence to frame some of YouTube's flashiest talent as pop-culture champions and idols of mainstream youth culture. If I were in the business of producing crummy sitcoms, I would take it as a signal that the Internet poses no immediate threat and that I could feel secure in the crumminess of my product. But the show drew a decent audience; at its peak, 700,000 viewers watched what a press release promised would be "a celebration of the vibrant communities that exist on the site including bedroom vloggers, budding creatives, underground athletes, world-famous musicians, gut-busting comedians and more." To some of them, this must have looked as sweet as a pep rally or as spirited, in its somewhat homely way, as Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland puttin' on a show.

It all went down in a venue in San Francisco, warm within the radius of Silicon Valley's vibe. The opening act was Katy Perry, who now qualifies as a world-famous musician partly because her summer hit "I Kissed a Girl," that synthetic tribute to recreational lesbianism, has been viewed on YouTube more than 12 million times. "Ladies and gentleman, it's time to turn off your televisions and turn your computers on," she said at the start of the show. Got-up like a Varga girl, she took a roundabout route to the stage, pausing to flirt with representatives of the vibrant communities. These included black-helmeted Chad Vader, the protagonist of a comedic Web series about Darth's supermarket-manager younger brother, and the "Free Hugs" guy, a hippie long-hair who has even made it to Oprah's set with an act about bringing kindness to strangers. (You can click here to delve into the Free Hugs oeuvre. The clips are safe for work, though perhaps not for diabetics.) This prologue, with the YouTubers fixed in a tableau fit for an awards show at a second-tier music-video channel, set the tone for the evening. Grass-roots hustlers met glossy spectacle and arrived at the definition of mundane.

You had to admire each of the amateurs for putting on a smile, giving it a shot, sallying forth in the name of greater fame. Those with clear skills—such as Funtwo, the virtuoso guitarist who plays a metal version of Pachelbel's "Canon in D" and who here played alongside Joe Satriani—radiated the charge of ingénues bursting onto the stage of Carnegie Hall. Those lacking skills—a "vlog squad" of unaccountably popular video bloggers, four persons pressed into service as a supergroup of shtick and snark—warmed themselves in the crowd's gaze. No, the embarrassment was all on the viewer's end. YouTube Live took a broad sample of cultural detritus and shaped it into an awkward monument to populist entertainment and popular triviality.

By some thermometers, NCIS (CBS, Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET) is the hot show of the moment. Last week's installment played to a record-high 18.8 million viewers—"more than any other show on television for the week," the New York Times reported on Monday, further noting that it's also been a smash in Friday-night repeats and cable-network reruns. The Los Angeles Times cocked an eyebrow at those numbers the same day, likewise observing that the six-year-old series has achieved its success in the absence of any industry accolades, critical praise, or rousing racket of buzz: "The media try very hard to ignore the show." On that last point, I demand a correction. Until this week, ignoring the show hasn't required the slightest effort.

Now, having taken a breather from not even bothering to snub the program, I can report that NCIS—amiable, unpredictable, and no more outlandish than any other prime-time fantasy about battling evil—gives you a lot for your 44 minutes. Mingling elements of a hardy cop show with those of a svelte espionage drama, segueing from macabre moments at the autopsy table to small giggles of office comedy, it's lively with variety. Last week, the heroes, solving a murder, nabbed a gang of jewel thieves; this week, in spy mode, they apprehended a mole threatening national security. The formula is so elastic that it doesn't resemble a formula.

The show follows a team of federal agents employed by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and team is the operative concept. Many a TV crime-fighting unit offers the audience an idealized vision for its daily life between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., transforming the pressure and drudgery and compensating camaraderie of the workplace into a spectacle of valor, and this one does, too. But something here indicates that the NCIS agents are further bound together like a squad of athletes. Maybe it's their solidarity in the face of frequent turf wars with a haughty FBI. Maybe it's the jockish jocularity they show when huddling in surveillance vans or shooting the breeze by the office snack machine. Perhaps it's all in their frequent donning of ball caps and windbreakers bearing the horsy initialism of the show's title. In any event, on last night's episode, the character Tony DiNozzo—one of those perennial frat boys with a mouth for bold flirting and a head full of pop culture—rhapsodized about the NBA great Bill Russell, encouraging fans in the belief that this group is analogous to the Boston Celtics of yore.

Their Red Auerbach would be Leroy Jethro Gibbs—not, as his name might suggest, an early-modern agriculturalist or some session musician who once played slide guitar with Skynyrd—but a special agent from the school of crisp, taciturn, stoic-but-sensitive bosses. There has been an effort to make the actor in the role, Mark Harmon, look awful, and it has succeeded. The choppy haircut, the noxiously patterned sport coats, the perpetual wedge of white undershirt under his floppy open collar—these all communicate that the man's lack of polish is proof of his trustworthiness.

Gibbs commands the loyalty of subordinates whose determined quirkiness never quite undermines their integrity as characters. The forensic specialist, a perky woman in dour garb, is a Goth girl whose pallid neck will forever be ringed by some velvet choker or studded dog collar. In turn, the fussy British medical examiner will never be seen without a bow tie. The babe on the unit is a former Mossad agent; in keeping with a recent tradition of chick investigators on conservative-leaning shows, she often wears low-slung trousers.

DiNozzo recently explained to a new recruit that "bad guys would rather confess than be interrogated by" Gibbs. He was joking but not really kidding, it seems, as the producers' every choice endorses the sentiment. Where Jack Bauer and the boys on 24 fairly revel in resorting to torture, Gibbs can make a suspected terrorist come clean simply by slapping his palm against the interrogation-room table and shooting rays of resolution from his pale blue eyes. Though a man's man, he never threatens to overdose on his own testosterone—a disposition in keeping with the show's gender-balanced sensibilities. Its warmth keeps its gung-ho instincts in check, as on a rerun that aired last Monday on USA. There, a female Navy pilot faced the wrath of al-Qaida assassins—and also, it turned out, a soccer-mom neighbor with designs on her husband. At some point, in between images of exploding minivans, the pilot shared her troubles as a working mother (and her qualified remorse about having bombed civilians in Afghanistan) with the female agent protecting her. They both stood around a handsome living room holding their coffee cups with two hands, as if this were a commercial advertising human sympathy, the war on terror, and instant cappuccino to boot. The moment suggested that NCIS has thrived by crafting its own genre: action melodrama.

To listen to the Slate Audio Book Club discussion of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, click the arrow on the player below.

This month, the Audio Book Club revisits F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Our critics try to discover what it is about this book—so much about insubstantiality and itself quite insubstantial—that gives it such a permanent and undisputed place in the American canon. How does it work so well when the plot is ridiculous, gimmicky, and almost incidental? The 45-minute conversation explores these and other questions.

If you'd like to get an early start on the next book-club selection, we've chosen David Foster Wallace's massive novel Infinite Jest. Watch for—and listen to—our Audio Book Club about Infinite Jest in December.

You can also listen to any of our previous club meetings through our iTunes feed or by clicking on the links below*:



The Night of the Gun, by David Carr

American Wife, by Curtis Sittenfeld

Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh

Netherland, by Joseph O'Neill

Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy

Beautiful Children, by Charles Bock

All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren

Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert

Tree of Smoke, by Denis Johnson

The Audacity of Hope, by Barack Obama

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton

Independence Day, by Richard Ford

The Emperor's Children, by Claire Messud

The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan

Beloved, by Toni Morrison

Everyman, by Philip Roth

Saturday, by Ian McEwan

The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion

Questions? Comments? Write to us at podcasts@slate.com. (E-mailers may be quoted by name unless they request otherwise.)

* To download the MP3 file, right-click (Windows) or hold down the Control key while you click (Mac), and then use the "save" or "download" command to save the audio file to your hard drive.

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Slate columnist Farhad Manjoo and The Big Money blogger Chris Thompson were online at Washingtonpost.com to chat with readers about the iPhone features borrowed by Google's Android, and BlackBerry's Storm. An unedited transcript of the chat follows.

Farhad Manjoo: Hi everyone. Chris Thompson and I are ready to answer your questions about Google, Apple and BlackBerry and their smartphones. Let's begin!

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New York, N.Y.: Not a question about the Google phone, but the new Blackberry Storm. It seems to be relatively close to the iPhone and as someone who needs a new phone and wants an iPhone but doesn't want to leave Verizon, would you recommend this as an alternative?

Farhad Manjoo: That's the big question. It does look pretty good, and paired with Verizon's excellent network, it may indeed be a viable alternative. I haven't had a chance to review it yet, though, and I haven't seen many reviews. I'd suggest waiting a few weeks or even a couple months for the verdict to come in. Also, for prices to drop over the holidays!

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Arlington, Va.: What are you hearing about the G2? Is it worth it to wait until next summer to buy the updated model? Are any other cell providers coming out with their version of the Google phone soon? I really want one but I don't want a superior product to come out two months later.

Chris Thompson: Motorola is scheduled to have an Android phone on the market sometime next year, built around social networking sites. No one yet knows how it will do with users.

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Idaho Falls, Idaho: Will these new phones have the ability to copy and paste, so one could forward a text message, edit a Word Document, modify an Excel spreadsheet, etc.?

Farhad Manjoo: Both the G1 and the BlackBerry Storm have copy and paste functions. The iPhone, notoriously and annoyingly, does not—though everyone suspects that at some point, Apple will add that (and when it does, the update will be through software, meaning that older current phones will also get those capabilities).

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New York, N.Y.: How many municipalities does the Google phone have in comparison to the iPhone? How is T-Mobile's service rating these days against AT&T's? (Personally, I'm quite unhappy with AT&T but I've never used T-Mobile.) Thanks.

Chris Thompson: As I understand it, T-Mobile's 3G service is fairly limited and very much a work in progress; the company just got 3G coverage for the Washington D.C. area a little over a week ago.

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Adamstown, Md.: Let's start with the best feature the Google Phone has that the iPhone does not. (along with what they "borrowed")

Farhad Manjoo: There's one main feature: A physical keyboard. There are some people—or perhaps many people—who can't stand Apple's on-screen keyboard; for these folks, the G1 will always be superior.

Other smaller features that the G1 has but the iPhone lacks include copy and paste and MMS (short messages that can include multimedia, like pictures).

But there are also features that the iPhone has that the G1 lacks. The most annoying, for me: The G1 does not have a headphone jack—it comes with a special earbud set that plugs into its USB port.

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N.Y.: So, what's going to win out? How viable is Android?

Chris Thompson: In theory, Android is as viable as the developers make it, although Farhad's pointed out plenty of advantages to the iPhone's closed app model. Maybe in the end, China Mobile will win out; it's the largest cell phone service provider in the world with 436 million subscribers, it's planning to roll out its own version of the Android phone, and it just announced plans to open its own mobile applications store. With hundreds of millions of potential Android users, that kind of market power could set the tone for future mobile applications.

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Silver Spring, Md.: Hello, I am a Verizon customer and I like the idea of the BBstorm but I'm wondering why Verizon chose not to include a WI-FI service on the phone? Do you think future generations of the BB will have WI-FI, or any Verizon phone for that matter? Also, I heard about the new applications that they BB would be able to download, would that be for free or at additional cost? Thanks a bunch!

Farhad Manjoo: Nobody quite knows why the Storm doesn't include Wi-Fi (both the iPhone and the G1 do), but according to at least one report, it's Verizon's doing: That is, the phone is technically capable of handling Wi-Fi, but Verizon crippled it for business reasons (presumably because when you're using Wi-Fi, you're not using Verizon's network).

Research in Motion, BlackBerry's manufacturer, plans to launch an app store for the phone next year. Like on the iPhone's App Store, third-party developers will be able to set their own prices for their apps.

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Falls Church, Va.: Please help me avoid hours of internet research! My phone contract is up and I want to upgrade from my current phone to either a Blackberry Pearl (for the small size) or an iPhone. My main goals are to be able to check email, get directions, look up movie times ... and of course make calls and text message. Which one would you recommend? I think the monthly plan costs are similar, but which one is more user friendly and reliable? Thanks!

Farhad Manjoo: Alas, you really should do your own Web search! Both phones have received high marks and can handle what you're looking to do, but your choice will likely depend on a number of personal factors—how much you use your phone (and thus which service plans are better), which networks are strongest in your area, and whether you're switching over to a new plan or staying with your current provider.

Here's one thing I will say: If you plan to use the Web a lot, go with the iPhone.

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Baltimore, Md.: Does the Storm have auto-text correction that is anything like the iPhone? If so, does it work as well, and as unobtrusively, as the iPhone? BTW, iPhone's come with key-clicks, as in the Storm's TV ad. It was one of the first things I turned off on mine. Annoying! I'd much rather have the visual feedback of the key getting bigger.

Farhad Manjoo: The Storm does include a predictive text-entry system, and early reviews have called it pretty good.

The Storm also features an innovative "tactile feedback" mechanism that's meant to make typing on its screen something like typing on a physical keyboard. When you press down on the glass, its surface depresses a bit, as if you're pressing a real button. But reviews of this feature have been mixed. PC Mag says the system "ends up feeling like a lot of work in a way that typing on a hardware keyboard (or on the iPhone's software keyboard, for that matter) never did."

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Washington, D.C.: Chris, this question is for you. In your blog you talk about Yahoo's 20 percent loss. What do you think their next move will be? Can we expect other corporations to fall during these depressing times?

Chris Thompson: Once they find themselves a new CEO, Yahoo will get down to the pleasant task of wondering just what they'll do next. There's been some talk that Yahoo will rebrand itself as a email and news platform, the default starting point for users logging in to check their mail and scan the news each morning. Yahoo is also thinking about setting up an open-source network, allowing developers to write apps to customize the site and make it more interesting. But the company's got a long way to go before it figures out its next move; outgoing CEO Jerry Yang put the company through a lot of turmoil by playing hard to get with Microsoft and then rolling the dice with the Google-Yahoo search deal that Justice just killed.

Whether Yahoo is a harbinger for the rest of the tech sector is an interesting question. In a way, the real question is: just how badly will Google do in the downturn? For years, Google has suggested that it's impervious to recessions, precisely because its text search ads are cheaper than display ads. During a downturn, as companies scale back their advertising budgets, we can expect Yahoo's display ads to take a hit. But in theory, Google will clean up, because everyone will flock to its relatively cheaper ads. On the other hand, Google's stock is less than half what it was a year ago, so investors are clearly feeling a little jumpy.

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Norfolk, Va.: It may not have phone capabilities but the Kindle does have some music and Internet capabilities. Have you heard anything about a 2.0 of the Kindle? New features? Release date?

Farhad Manjoo: There have been many rumors about this, but the only news that Amazon has confirmed is that it's working on new versions, one of which will be targeted to the student textbook market (which would presumably have a bigger screen than the current version).

I'd say it's a stretch to expect a Kindle cell phone.

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Nashville, Tenn.: I realize this is a little outside the topic, but how does the LG Dare stack up to the other phones?

Farhad Manjoo: I haven't used the Dare, but here's CNET's review. They liked that it was packed with features, but thought it wasn't great for browsing the Web.

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Farhad Manjoo: Well, thanks everyone! Chris and I are hanging up. Happy phone calls with whatever devices you choose.

On Wednesday, I'm heading back to my grandparents' house for Thanksgiving via Amtrak. (They live near Philadelphia, I live in Boston.) Compared with the alternatives—either flying or braving the holiday-weekend traffic—I imagine this is the greenest way to go, since the trains will be packed. But it got me thinking: A few weeks from now, the train will have many more empty seats. Will it still be a more eco-friendly way to travel?

Last year, the Lantern pondered how you could make your turkey dinner greener—and even contemplated the heretical idea of eating Thanksgiving chicken instead. But while cooking a more carbon-conscious meal is a good step, the steps you take to get to the table in the first place can have a much greater environmental impact.

To answer the question of how to best make your trip home, the Lantern calls your attention to a recent study conducted by Mikhail Chester and Arpad Horvath, researchers at the University of California-Berkeley. When we typically think of the environmental impact of driving, we focus on the energy and emissions associated with moving a car, say, 30 miles. In reality, that sort of analysis is incomplete: How the car is made, how the road is built, and even whether the roads have been salted because of ice all have some effect, too. And while those effects are spread out over many cars and many different trips, they still take a toll. When we start thinking about train travel, the infrastructure matters even more, since getting a rail line up and running requires enormous amounts of construction and manufacturing.

The UC-Berkeley analysis tries to get a more complete picture of how we travel by taking all these variables into account—down to the impact of planting grass on the side of the road. Chester and Horvath's data suggest that riding in the average train is a significantly greener choice than the average car or plane. For example, they find that Caltrain (a system similar to Amtrak, averaging 155 passengers per train) produces less than half as many greenhouse-gas emissions or particulate matter per passenger mile compared with driving a sedan (average passengers: 1.58).* (The sedan comes out better when it comes to sulfur dioxide but much worse on volatile organic compounds.) And on Thanksgiving weekend, when trains are certain to be full and cars are likely to spend a long time idling in traffic, rail is easily a better option.

But you can come up with examples in which driving a car looks better. A train produces more emissions per trip than any car, bus, or truck; it makes up for that fact environmentally because it carries a lot more people. It stands to reason, then, that if you ride in a full sedan on a day when the train is pretty empty—and, in particular, if you are in a fuel-efficient car—the car could conceivably be greener per passenger mile. (The study says a car would need to have about three passengers—double the average—to break even environmentally with the typical train.) The numbers are even more striking for buses, which can experience extreme variability in ridership between peak and nonpeak hours. At peak hours—with 40 riders onboard—the Berkeley researchers find that buses often look like the greenest option, producing fewer greenhouse-gas emissions than even the average train per passenger mile. At off-peak hours, a bus looks a lot worse, performing even more poorly than a gas-guzzling pickup truck.

Does that mean we shouldn't run buses or trains during off-peak hours? No. If you want people to ride public transportation at rush hour, you need to make it possible for them to get around the rest of the day, too. (Not to mention the fact that some people—for either physical or economic reasons—simply can't drive.) And as long as those buses and trains are kept running, it's better—environmentally speaking—to take public transportation, since the marginal impact of your trip will be very low. (For more on this point, click here.)

Like any sophisticated environmental accounting, these evaluations have pitfalls. They rest on a lot of uncertain assumptions—how long a vehicle will last, for example—and require using data from a wide range of sources that may not always be reliable. (It's also worth noting that the Berkeley center where this research was conducted is sponsored by a Volvo-funded foundation, although that funding isn't directed toward specific projects.) Depending on the assumptions you make, similar data can be used to make contradictory arguments—see, for example, these arguments for (PDF) and against expanding rail systems.

But the Lantern thinks there are a few basic lessons that these life-cycle analyses can teach us. First, no matter what data you use, two very simple variables make a big difference: how far you travel and how many passengers are in your vehicle. Air travel is much maligned as a source of CO₂ emissions, and the Berkeley research confirms that airplanes do emit more than trains or buses per passenger mile. But the differences aren't as large as you think, and the real reason air travel contributes so much to our collective carbon footprint is that we use planes for longer trips. That's not to say you shouldn't go to your Grandma's house for Thanksgiving, but if she lives across the country, any means of getting over the river and through the woods is going to have a hefty carbon footprint. Likewise, designing bus routes and train schedules that fit rider demand—along with encouraging urban development that gives transit more appeal—makes a big difference, owing to the environmental downsides of traveling alone.

Secondly, you can't discuss the environmental impact of getting around without considering the infrastructure that makes travel possible. We have a tendency to focus on the environmental impact of the things that move—the cars, trains, and planes we see getting from point A to point B. But Chester and Horvath found that in some cases, construction is the biggest polluter. Roads were responsible for more particulate matter than tailpipes, for example. For rail travel, operating the trains actually accounts for less than half of a system's greenhouse-gas emissions. The implication: Making concrete and asphalt in a more environmentally friendly way can be just as important as getting vehicles to run more efficiently. In other words, it's not just the road you take, but what it's made out of, too.

Is there an environmental quandary that's been keeping you up at night? Send it to ask.the.lantern@gmail.com, and check this space every Tuesday.

*Correction, Nov. 25, 2008: This article originally misstated the relationship between the emissions produced by Caltrain and those produced by a sedan. The train generates less than half as many greenhouse-gas emissions or particulate matter per passenger mile as a sedan, not less than twice as much. (Return to the corrected sentence.)

Return to article

It's possible to figure the environmental impact of public transportation in two different ways. So does it make more sense to focus on the average environmental impact of an additional rider (which basically entails dividing the total impact of public transportation by the number of riders) or the marginal environmental impact (which would mean calculating how much more energy is required or pollution is created when one more person gets on the bus)?

Often, the Lantern makes the case—as do many "cradle-to-grave" environmental analyses—that we should look at the average. (Consider, for example, last week's discussion of takeout, in which we were talking about averaging out the energy use of the restaurant across every meal.) Here's why: In many cases, looking at the marginal environmental burden of one consumer gives you a value close to zero. For example, as long as a plane has an empty seat, you aren't responsible for any of its emissions when you fly. So fly all you want! But in truth, each consumer contributes to the demand for a new restaurant or a new flight. With that in mind, it seems to make sense to focus on the average.

But in the case of public transportation, the Lantern makes an exception. We've already made the case that it's necessary to run off-peak buses and trains if you also want people to use public transportation at rush hour. If that's the case, then those off-peak buses will run whether there are five passengers or 25. It certainly makes sense to have these lonely buses run as infrequently as possible. But as long as some need to stay on the road to keep a public transit system functioning, you might as well hop aboard.

Everyone leads with the latest efforts by the federal government to thaw frozen credit markets, hints of which had already appeared in some of the papers yesterday, most notably the New York Times. The government announced it will pump up to $800 billion into credit markets to make it easier for Americans to get loans, with a particular focus on residential mortgages. Most of the money will come directly from the Federal Reserve and will make the central bank "a lender to almost every corner of American life," points out the Wall Street Journal. The new massive commitment of taxpayer money is essentially divided into two programs. The Federal Reserve will purchase up to $600 billion of debt issued or backed by government-sponsored lenders, such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in an effort to make mortgages cheaper. Separately, the Fed and Treasury Department will create a $200 billion program to lend money against securities tied to car loans, student loans, credit card debt, and small-business loans. The program, which aims to make consumer loans more readily available, "comes close to being a government bank," notes the NYT.

In addition to making loans more readily available, USA Today points out that a "secondary effect of the programs" is that cash will be injected into the financial system, which could "help inflate the economy at a time when officials are increasingly worried about possible deflation." The Los Angeles Times notes that by getting involved in consumer debt, the government is making it clear that it's willing to "adopt strategies carrying greater risks." In a sign of just how quickly the financial crisis has progressed, the Washington Post points out that the new program will commit the Fed to "spend nearly 100 times as much to buy mortgage-backed securities as the government envisioned in early September."

The mortgage program announced yesterday is the easiest to understand since it's pretty straightforward. The Fed will buy up to $100 billion of debt issued by government-sponsored lenders. In addition, the central bank will buy up to $500 billion of mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae, and the Federal Home Loan Banks. The response from the mortgage market was almost immediate. The NYT points out interest rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages plunged "almost a full percentage point, to 5.5 percent, from 6.3 percent." In a separate front-page piece, the WSJ points out that the announcement quickly led to a huge "burst of refinancing activity" across the country. The mere action of refinancing helps the economy because it gives consumers more cash to spend elsewhere, but economists also predict that in time these lower interest rates will also lead to at least a modest increase in home sales.

As encouraging as these signs were, it's important to note that this new program will do little to prevent foreclosures since they're mostly tied to high-risk mortgages that aren't linked to government-sponsored lenders. As the WSJ points out, lower mortgage rates won't help the estimated 11.8 million homeowners who aren't able to refinance because they owe more than their homes are worth.

The consumer loans program announced yesterday involves up to $200 billion. It's a rather complicated program, but essentially what could be characterized as the new government bank would lend money against securities backed by highly rated consumer and small-business loans. Part of the reason why it has been difficult for consumers to borrow money lately is because few investors have been willing to buy these securities. The program will be run by the Fed, but the Treasury will cover the first $20 billion in losses, which would come out of the $700 billion bailout package. As the LAT clearly explains this is potentially perilous territory for the government in part because credit card debt and student loans are often unsecured, "unlike home loans or auto purchases, which have tangible assets behind them," which means there's a higher risk they won't be repaid.

Besides the danger that taxpayers could suffer huge losses, there are plenty of other risks in these new programs. "The long-term risks are enormous but difficult to estimate," summarizes the NYT. The most obvious one is that it could cause inflation after the economy recovers. Some are also worried that once the Fed has made use of these unprecedented powers it could be hard to turn back. "Now that it has used those levers, don't you think Congress will want it to start using them again? The Fed could become the go-to place for bailouts," a former Fed official tells the NYT.

There's also the clear risk that this program might not work or that more money could be needed in the future. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson hinted as much yesterday saying that the new program was just a "starting point." In the future it could be expanded to include other types of assets, such as commercial real estate. After hinting last week that the Treasury wouldn't start any new programs until the next administration, Paulson made it clear yesterday that he won't shy away from new initiatives in the coming weeks. "Well, I tell you, I am going to run right to the end, OK?" Paulson told reporters. "And we're going to continue to develop programs, deploy them when they're ready to go and work on having a very seamless, very seamless transition here."

Despite all the potential risks, most agree that they pale in comparison to what could happen if the government failed to do anything. "They're not messing around here," an economist tells the Post. "This is a very aggressive effort. They're not going to prevent a recession, it's too late for that, but they're trying to prevent a catastrophe." Trying to prevent a catastrophe isn't cheap. The NYT highlights that over the last year "the government has assumed about $7.8 trillion in direct and indirect financial obligations," which is "equal to about half the size of the nation's entire economy."

In a sign of how much Americans are hurting during the economic downturn, the WP fronts word that the number of people on food stamps is set to pass the 30 million mark for the first time this month. "If the economic forecasts come true, we're likely to see the most hunger that we've seen since the 1981 recession and maybe since the 1960s, when these programs were established," the president of an anti-hunger policy organization tells the Post.

Moving on to transition news, the NYT, LAT, and WP front, and everyone mentions, word that President-elect Barack Obama will keep Defense Secretary Robert Gates in his current position. The news is hardly surprising as the possibility has been floating around for a while, but everyone notes the decision could disappoint some in the Democratic Party who want a clean break from the Bush era. The NYT notes it would mark the first time an incoming president has kept a defense secretary from a predecessor of a different party. Everyone notes it looks like Gates will stay on for about a year, though the WP does have sources who say he could stay indefinitely. The WP says most of the deputies under Gates would be replaced, while the LAT highlights that issue hasn't been resolved yet. "The real issue is: Who does Gates keep, and does Obama have a say in what team is there?" one official tells the LAT. But no one actually thinks that would derail his appointment.

Obama is expected to make the Gates appointment official early next week, when he will also name other members of his national-security team. Everyone says it seems almost certain that Obama will name Gen. James Jones, a retired Marine commandant and onetime NATO supreme commander, as his national-security adviser.

The NYT points out Democrats are no longer using the word stimulus. And it's no accident. Democratic leaders and members of Obama's team are pushing members of their party to use the words economic recovery program when they're talking about the stimulus package they want to push through Congress early next year. The public apparently responds to it better, and Democrats want to emphasize that turning the economy around is going to take time.

In an op-ed piece in the WP, Karl Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac write that New York Gov. David Paterson should send former President Bill Clinton to the Senate. If, as expected, Sen. Hillary Clinton becomes secretary of state, Paterson would be faced with "the agonizing dilemma" of choosing someone from around 20 candidates. But by picking the former president, Paterson would not only appoint someone who could be a great asset to New York in a time of crisis, he would also "offer a refreshing reverse twist on a tradition whereby deceased male senators, representatives or governors are succeeded by their widows."

The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal's world-wide newsbox lead with President-elect Barack Obama making it clear that he plans to be ready to tackle the nation's economic woes from his first day in office. At a news conference, Obama instructed his economic team to come up with the details of a new stimulus package large enough to "jolt the economy back into shape." Obama noted that he wants to create 2.5 million jobs and spend big on infrastructure as well as clean energy projects. The incoming and outgoing president both took pains to emphasize that they'll be working together in the coming weeks. "It's important for the American people to know that there is close cooperation," President Bush said. The NYT says the Fed and Treasury will be announcing a new plan today that aims to get the loan markets moving again.

The Washington Post leads with an inside look at the Citigroup bailout that highlights how the three men who got the deal moving "have for years followed one another in and out of jobs." The paper points out that Timothy Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, was deeply involved in formulating the rescue package but took a step back from dealing with Citigroup's leaders after it became clear that he would be Obama's nominee to head the Treasury Department. As part of the package, Citigroup would be forbidden from paying dividends of more than a penny a share to common shareholders for the next three years, while the government's preferred stock would get a dividend payment of 8 percent.

The NYT points out the new program that will be announced by the Fed and Treasury will essentially "create a government bank to finance hundreds of billions of dollars in commercial debt." Although there had already been some talk about doing something for consumer loans, the program would go beyond that to also include business debt. The program would get started with an infusion of $10 billion to $20 billion, which would come out of the $700 billion bailout package, and the Fed is prepared to lend "as much as 20 times that amount" toward the effort. As designed, the Treasury money would take the hit for most of the losses, while the Fed funds would be used to purchase relatively safe assets. So, for those keeping track at home this marks yet another trackback from Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's announcement less than two weeks ago that the Troubled Asset Relief Program wouldn't be used to purchase troubled assets. If it works as expected, the new program should make it cheaper to borrow money.

While Obama had previously been careful to say the country has only "one president at a time" he seems to have realized that at a time of crisis he doesn't have the luxury of staying behind closed doors until he's actually sitting in the Oval Office. Indeed, everyone points out that yesterday seemed to mark a new phase in the transition process where Obama will be more visible. Bush appears to have accepted this new reality and emphasized that "anytime we're to make a big decision during the transition, [Obama] will be informed, as will his team." Bush also said he wouldn't shy away from considering new bailouts before he leaves the White House.

At his news conference, Obama was careful not to attach a desired dollar figure to his stimulus package and declined to state whether he would seek to repeal Bush's tax cuts as soon as he takes office or just wait until they expire at the end of 2010. The WSJ highlights that if there's one thing that's clear, it's that Obama plans to kill two birds with one stone and include several of his campaign spending promises in the stimulus package. "Not only do I want the stimulus package to deal with the immediate crisis, I want it also to lay the groundwork for long-term sustained economic growth," Obama said.

Obama officially introduced his economic team to the nation yesterday. As expected, Geithner was selected to lead the Treasury Department, Lawrence Summers will head the White House Economic Council, and Christina Romer will serve as chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers. Geithner is expected to sail through confirmation hearings (Romer must also be confirmed), but, as the LAT points out, senators might raise questions about his role in developing all the financial rescue packages in the last few months.

In a piece inside, the NYT's Andrew Sorkin says "a number of Wall Street chieftains" are quietly wondering whether Geithner is really the best choice to deal with the current mess. Of course, Geithner has the advantage that he won't have to be briefed on everything that has happened recently, and no one doubts that he's a "a 47-year-old wonder boy," but some wonder whether his ties to the mistakes of the past shouldn't disqualify him from the position. "We have only two things to say about Tim Geithner, who we do not know: A.I.G. and Lehman Brothers," one analyst said. "Geithner, in our view, deserves retirement, not promotion." Geithner was the leader in putting together the American International Group rescue package, and appears to have been Paulson's strongest backer in the decision to let Lehman Bros. fail, a move that is widely seen as a mistake now. The Obama team and the New York Fed are working hard to distance Geithner from these decisions, but executives who participated in the frantic meetings the weekend of Lehman's fall aren't buying it.

These Wall Street skeptics appear to be in the minority though because the Obama announcement, coupled with news of the Citigroup rescue, sent the stock markets soaring for the second day in a row. Between Friday and Monday the market increased 891 points, which made up the largest two-day surge in percentage terms since October 1987. Citigroup shares soared 58 percent yesterday but, as the WSJ points out on its front page, that hardly means the financial giant's troubles are anywhere near over. Executives at Citigroup said the government wants the financial institution to reduce risk and give serious consideration to a restructuring that could include breaking up the company. There are ongoing talks among executives about the possibility of merging with other financial institutions or selling off major parts of the operation.

The WP off-leads word that Osama Bin Laden's former driver will soon be transferred from Guantanamo to Yemen, his home. The Pentagon has decided to allow Salim Ahmed Hamdan the remainder of his prison sentence in Yemen's capital, where he's expected to arrive within the next two days. The Bush administration has long described Hamdan as a dangerous terrorist, but a military commission found he was a minor player and set Dec. 27 as his release date. The Bush administration had said that regardless of the military commission's decision Hamdan could be held indefinitely. By sending him to Yemen the Pentagon not only avoids what would surely have been "a sticky diplomatic situation," as the Post puts it, but also helps Obama since he won't have to make any decisions about the detainee's fate in the first days of his presidency.

The LAT fronts a startling look at how some injured veterans are falling victim to a "little-noticed regulation change" that took place earlier this year that amended the military's definition of what constitutes a combat-related disability. The regulation seems nothing short of nonsensical, not to mention cruel. The Pentagon now differentiates between those injured during actual combat and service members who are wounded in other situations. So someone who is injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq while not participating in actual combat would be entitled to smaller disability payments. Veterans' groups are lobbying to get the rule changed and are getting some support from lawmakers. "I was blown up twice in Iraq, and my injuries weren't combat-related?" said a Marine who estimates he was denied about $16,000 in benefits before he fought the Pentagon and won a change of his designation. "It's the most imbecile thing I've ever seen."

In the NYT's op-ed page, Daniel Kahneman and Andrew Rosenfield write that while bankruptcy protection can work well for certain companies, it would likely prove to be disastrous for U.S. automakers because of the "uncertainty and stigma" that it would produce with consumers. Businesses have a natural propensity to fight until the bitter end, but the writers suggest that they should give up this instinct and all three companies should file for bankruptcy protection simultaneously. This would send the signal that "the problem is systemic" and that an industrywide solution is in the works. Of course, such coordinated action would have to be facilitated by the government. "Any other form of bailout for Detroit would likely require a long political process, and that would only worsen the economic destruction."

The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street Journal lead with the late-night announcement of a plan to rescue ailing banking giant Citigroup. Under a plan that the NYT describes as "radical" and "complex," the federal government will protect Citigroup from potential losses on a pool of troubled assets worth around $306 billion. On top of that, the Treasury Department will inject $20 billion into the company—in addition to the $25 billion the financial institution has already received from the department's Troubled Asset Relief Program. The LAT highlights that this is "the largest single rescue effort thus far in the current financial crisis."

The Washington Post off-leads the Citigroup rescue but leads with word that President-elect Barack Obama and Democratic leaders are considering a huge fiscal stimulus plan that could total $700 billion over the next two years. Transition officials aren't confirming that something of that magnitude is being considered, but more Democrats are raising it as a possibility. USA Today leads with a look at how those who will be flying over the Thanksgiving holiday have a better chance of making it to their destination on time this year. Efforts to decrease congestion at New York airports coupled with the schedule cutbacks by financially struggling airlines have cut down on traffic and have decreased delays.

After Citigroup's stock plunged about 60 percent last week when it became engulfed in a crisis of confidence, executives and federal officials began intense negotiations to try to prevent the problem from spreading to other big banks. "This time … the company in jeopardy is truly gigantic," notes the WP. Citigroup is the largest U.S. bank by assets. It is involved in so many aspects of the financial system—and in more than 100 countries—that it seems to fit the very definition of "too big to fail."

Under the plan, the government will protect Citigroup from losses on a $306 billion portfolio of assets mostly made up of loans and securities that are backed by residential and commercial real estate. Citigroup will be responsible for covering the first $29 billion in losses. (The LAT says $36 billion, because, it specifies, the $29 billion would be on top of approximately $7 billion already in a rainy-day fund.) After that threshold has been reached, the Treasury Department, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., and the Federal Reserve will absorb 90 percent of any further losses.

For its trouble, the government will receive $7 billion in preferred shares—on top of the $20 billion of preferred stock it will get for its additional cash infusion. The government didn't mandate any changes to the company's leadership, but the banking giant did agree to grant the government power over its operations. The LAT notes that the government can now "effectively prohibit stock dividends for the next three years" and everyone says Citigroup had to accept limits on executive compensation and agree to implement a plan to modify mortgages to avoid foreclosures.

Of course, no one knows whether it will be successful. The NYT highlights that this will be the "government's third effort in three months" to stabilize the markets and could be used as a precedent to rescue other financial firms. To recap: First, the government said it would buy troubled assets, then scrapped that plan in favor of injecting money into financial institutions. Now it's made it clear that it's ready to try a mixture of the two for certain institutions. The previous efforts led to a bit of optimism in Wall Street, but that optimism has always proved short-lived. The WSJ points out that the portfolio involved in this rescue is really only a drop in the bucket for a company that has $3 trillion in assets, including $667 billion in mortgage-related securities alone.

In a separate piece inside, the NYT points out that this new plan "raises about as many questions as it answers," particularly if it's seen as a model for an industrywide rescue. How does the government decide which assets to include? How would potential losses be calculated? Has it even considered all the assets that could lead to losses in the future? Even if this helps the market as a whole, there's no guarantee that it will pervent problems in financial institutions further down the road.

It's unclear how influential President-elect Barack Obama's pick for Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, was in the weekend's negotiations. The WP and LAT both say that as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Geithner was involved and kept Obama updated. The NYT agrees Geithner was critical to the negotiations on Friday, but says he backed away a bit after news began circulating that he would be appointed.

The WP adds a little historical gem by pointing out that Citi's origins can be traced back to a firm called First National City Bank that, in the 1920s, repackaged and sold bad loans from Latin America and billed them as safe securities. After the scheme collapsed, it became Citibank. Decades later, repackaging bad loans as safe securities is at least part of the reason why Citigroup is suffering so much heartache. Curious about how Citigroup got into the predicament it's in today? If so, be sure to read yesterday's detailed NYT piece that explains how the company went from being worth $244 billion two years ago to $20.5 billion today. The story is particularly interesting, considering that Robert Rubin, Treasury secretary under President Clinton and an economic adviser in Obama's transition team, plays a starring role in the saga.

Speaking of Rubin, the NYT takes a look at how Obama is creating "a virtual Rubin constellation" in his economic team. Obama's three top economic advisers "are past protégés" of Rubin, who also has ties to other members of the president-elect's transition team. But even though the three advisers once shared Rubin's formula of favoring balanced budgets, free trade, and financial deregulation that was so popular in the 1990s, they all recognize that times have changed. They're now following Obama as he promises to increase regulation and plans to take the country deeper into debt.

While the WP says the next fiscal stimulus package could involve as much as $700 billion, the real number could prove to be even greater. The LAT says "congressional allies" are talking about a program that could total as much as $900 billion of new spending and tax cuts. Whatever the exact number may be, everyone says Democrats in Congress want to pass legislation at the beginning of the new year so Obama can sign the new stimulus package quickly. Besides the obvious point that such huge amounts of spending will dramatically increase the national debt, there's also concern that it could prove too much stimulus, which would create massive inflation once the economy recovers. But many seem to agree the real risk is doing not enough rather than too much.

The WSJ also notes Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is considering asking for the second half of the $700 billion bailout package to implement new programs, which would mark a reversal from what he said last week. Paulson apparently would use the funds to make it easier for households to borrow money and to reduce foreclosures.

The WP takes a look at how the Federal Reserve has been playing a relatively quiet role in the crisis. Even as the Treasury's every move is analyzed and debated, the Fed has lent $893 billion to a variety of institutions that are having trouble getting a hold of cash to continue operating. In some ways, it's carrying out the original goal of the TARP program by allowing financial institutions to put up troubled assets as collateral for the loans. But it's doing it all out of public view, as the Fed is refusing to reveal not only which companies are asking for money but what collateral they pledged. The Fed insists this type of secrecy is necessary to avoid creating a stigma for the firms that ask to borrow money, which would make the program much less effective, because companies would be reluctant to seek the central bank's help.

In other news, the LAT takes a look at how there's growing concern in Iraq that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is setting himself up to become "a benevolent Shiite Saddam." Once dismissed as a weak leader without real power, Maliki has been able to navigate his relationship with the United States and stands to gain if the security agreement is approved this week as expected. He would then officially become the man who brought an end to U.S. occupation, which could help him consolidate power in January's provincial elections. Supporters dismiss the suggestion that Maliki could become a dictator but say that Iraq needs strong leadership in order to move forward. "In some ways, we are seeing a return to traditional Iraqi political culture, where authority is centralized in the person of the leader in Baghdad," a U.S. official said.

The NYT points out that after preaching to his 20,000-member congregation that they should strengthen their marriages through Seven Days of Sex, the Rev. Ed Young told the couples yesterday to keep going. "We should try to double up the amount of intimacy we have in marriage," Young said. "And when I say intimacy, I don't mean holding hands in the park or a back rub." Young insists this is not a publicity gimmick but rather a simple way to feel closer to a spouse and to God. "If you've said, 'I do,' do it," he said. What about singles? "I don't know, try eating chocolate cake."

The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times all lead with President-elect Barack Obama's announcement Saturday of a sweeping stimulus plan designed to create 2.5 million jobs by spending billions on infrastructure, education, and alternative energy. The plan is more expansive than anything Obama proposed during his campaign and eclipses the last stimulus proposal attempted by President Clinton in 1996. Front page and A-section stories also analyze Obama's relationship with Hillary Clinton, who is all but guaranteed to become his secretary of state.

The LAT sees Obama's two-year job proposal as "the latest indication that the president-elect has decided to use the transition period to influence events at a time of crisis, when the current administration appears powerless to stop a slide." All three papers highlight the fact that Obama's new plan is more aggressive and expensive than the one he proposed during the campaign, though the WP notes that Obama's address was vague on specifics and price tags. (The Post also projects that the package will cost "well over" $200 billion, which would be "bold" compared to previous presidents' similar plans.) The NYT and WP both consider the possibility that Republicans could block such an ambitious deficit-spending measure.

The papers all report that Obama is considering allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire in 2010, rather than roll them back immediately. To do so would be to renege on a campaign promise, the NYT notes, but it's also a no-brainer considering how the economic crisis has brought bipartisan agreement that the government should be pulling out all the stops to spur economic growth. Obama has scheduled a Monday press conference to introduce his economic advisers. The team will be led by Timothy Geithner, currently the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who Obama has selected for treasury secretary.

The NYT fronts a story about the "strategic courtship" between Obama and Hillary Clinton, who reportedly agreed to be Obama's secretary of state late Friday. Their relationship first thawed, the soft-lede anecdote suggests, when Clinton gave a passionate speech asking voters to support Obama—a move that caused Obama's senior aides to give her a standing ovation. Democrats close to the senators say the two got past their bitter campaign fight long before their party did, and Clinton's tireless work on the campaign trail has proved her loyalty. The story's final paragraph reports Clinton has also spoken to Michelle Obama several times recently about raising a family in the White House.

The WP reports nervousness in the Arab world that Clinton, the "most reliably pro-Israel" contender for secretary of state, will continue what they see as a lack of balance in the United States' refereeing of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. Clinton has made hawkish statements against Iran and has always spoken favorably of Israel, though supported the creation of a Palestinian state in 1998. Democratic senator Evan Bayh says Clinton is, above all, a "pragmatist" who will be most interested in a workable solution to Middle East conflicts.

The LAT fronts the post-election ire "liberal Hollywood" is feeling for supporters of Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that banned same-sex marriage in California. Activists "continue to comb donor lists and employ the Internet to expose those who donated money to support the ban." Prominent artists and companies have been "outed" by activists, including California Musical Theater director Scott Eckern, the Mormon director of the company that puts on the L.A. Film Festival, and the Cinemark theater company. A lone gay rights supporter in the story expresses reluctance at the notion of firing someone for their beliefs.

A profile of Michael Eisner in the NYT finds the ex-Disney chief "much happier" outside of the company he led until the "bitter, public fight" that ended his tenure. Eisner now hosts a talk show on CNBC and dabbles successfully in new media ventures that include a video site and a video production company.

An NYT review describes Guns N' Roses' first album in 17 years as "outsize, lavish, obsessive, technologically advanced and, all too clearly, the end of an era." Chinese Democracy, which features front man Axl Rose as the only original member, belatedly comments on eras that passed while his band was off the stage, from Metallica to Nine Inch Nails to U2. Full of Rose's famous indulgence, the record is a "letdown" that "leaves his worst impulses unchecked."

A pair of reviews in the WP "Book World" section ponders the stunning achievement that is the modernization of the Hebrew language. Hebrew has developed a "new vibrancy" in less than a century, but is now, one author argues, "messy, boisterous, even chaotic."

The WP "Style" section previews tomorrow night's two-hour "prequel" of the 24 season that begins in January, in which iron-fisted counterterrorism agent Jack Bauer has moved on to humanitarian missions. The show still looks to be packed with sometimes-gruesome action, but has clearly entered a new, post-Bush administration paradigm: "Torture has been discredited and abandoned as official policy. 24 seems to have gotten that memo."

Transition is in the air: the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times all lead with reports that Barack Obama, under pressure to fill a perceived leadership vacuum in the face of the global financial crisis, is to appoint Timothy Geithner, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, as his treasury secretary. Obama's pick of a technocrat with a background in crisis management was welcomed by Wall Street: After reports of Geithner's selection, the Dow rallied in the final hour of trading to end up almost 500 points in a strong finish to an otherwise wretched week.

Today's other big story also comes courtesy of the Obama transition team: The New York Times leads, and the Post and LAT off-lead, reports that Hillary Clinton now seems likely to accept a job as Obama's secretary of state. Leaks suggest that the Obama camp is now confident that Clinton's nomination will not present any conflicts of interest and that—according to Clinton "confidants"—the New York senator is now willing to give up her seat and join Obama's star-studded Cabinet.

In the absence of action from Congress or the White House, Obama's rapid selection of Geithner as treasury secretary appeared intended to reassure jittery investors and provide a sense of direction. In that sense, analysts tell the NYT, the speed of the decision mattered more than the specific merits of the man Obama tapped to run the Treasury. "The most important thing for the market and for the economy is that these decisions are made and uncertainty is removed," noted one relieved investor.

Still, there's a broad consensus that Geithner has the chops for the job. He's something of a crisis-management specialist, having worked in the 1990s on bailouts of Mexico, South Korea, and Indonesia. More recently, he was an early critic of the arcane financial instruments at the heart of the current crisis, and worked closely with current Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke on the Bear Stearns and AIG bailouts, as well as on the controversial decision to hang Lehman Bros. out to dry.

An IMF alumnus who once worked for Henry Kissinger, Geithner doesn't have close ties to Obama and is seen as politically independent. His appointment was welcomed by conservatives, and viewed with slight concern by some union leaders. Still, Geithner is perceived as the product of Clinton-era economic centrism, having worked closely with Clinton-era Treasury Secretaries (and Obama economic advisers) Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin.

The NYT notes that Rubin protégés are likely to dominate the Obama economic team, which is expected to be rolled out in full on Monday: Rubin ally Peter Orszag is expected to become budget director, while Clinton-era budget director Jacob Lew is likely to head up the White House's National Economic Council. Summers—once seen as a front-runner for the Treasury job —is likely to stay on as a senior White House adviser, perhaps foreshadowing a promotion to chairman of the Federal Reserve when Bernanke's term ends in 2010, while Gov. Bill Richardson will become commerce secretary.

Obama is also moving to pin down the details of his security and diplomatic team —and it's looking increasingly likely that former rival Hillary Clinton will head up the State Department, becoming Obama's public face on the international stage. The pair spoke by telephone Thursday, reports the NYT. Obama reportedly assuaged Clinton's lingering concerns about access and personnel, leaving her inclined to accept the position. A Clinton spokesman said discussions remain "very much on track," although a formal announcement isn't expected until sometime after Thanksgiving.

The WSJ eyes the diplomatic problems Clinton would face in her likely new role; in an editorial, the paper calls Clinton's nomination "a clever, interesting choice", but says Obama's team of rivals could prove more trouble than it's worth. The Post notes dryly that installing Clinton at Foggy Bottom suggests the president-elect has "a tolerance for drama," but argues that the pick also speaks to his confidence and his determination to assemble an experienced, smart, and pragmatic group of advisers. The NYT argues that the appointment—along with Geithner's appointment to the Treasury and former NATO commander James Jones' likely selection as national security adviser—suggests that Obama will be a pragmatic, center-right president. "This is the violin model: Hold power with the left hand, and play the music with your right," notes one former Clinton official.

In other news, things are looking bleak for General Motors: The WSJ fronts word that some members of the company's board would be willing to consider filing for bankruptcy, a measure opposed by the automaker's chief executive. The NYT turns its attention to the Chevrolet Volt, which GM is currently touting as evidence that a federal bailout would be a sound investment: The plug-in hybrid is scheduled to hit showrooms in 2010, but some industry analysts say the expected $40,000 price tag means the vehicle will have only a niche appeal.

And finally … could piracy on the high seas help to rehabilitate neoconservatism? In an essay for the WSJ, historian Michael Oren compares the pirates currently wreaking havoc off the Somali coast to the Barbary buccaneers who attacked American merchants two centuries ago, and concludes that only U.S. military might can restore order to the world's shipping routes. "Addressing the threat of Somali pirates must be made a national priority while there is still time," he writes. "Much like terrorism, piracy, unless uprooted, will mushroom."

The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street Journal lead with yet another horrible day for stocks that sent one clear message: Investors are freaked out. Another grim milestone was reached yesterday as the broad Standard & Poor's 500-stock index plunged 6.7 percent and reached its lowest level since 1997. The NYT puts it in context and reminds readers that 1997 was "before the dot-com boom, the Nasdaq market bust and the ensuing bull market that drove stocks to record heights." The WP highlights that this latest downward spiral comes after a few weeks when it looked like things could get better, but now there are fears that the recession will be longer and deeper "than even many pessimists had expected." The LAT points out that those who followed the all-too-common advice of not selling when the market is down have continued to lose money at a terrifying rate, and now many are throwing up their hands and giving up before they lose more.

USA Today leads with a look at how states are being forced to impose higher taxes on employers and reduce benefits as the number of people filing for unemployment has reached a 16-year high. Funds to pay for these benefits were down in 32 states compared with last year. Yesterday, Congress passed an extension of unemployment benefits after it became clear the White House would support such a measure.

The S&P 500 is down 52 percent from its high reached a little more than a year ago, which marks the "sharpest decline since the Great Depression," notes the LAT. The WSJ points out that if the index were to finish the year with yesterday's numbers, it would mark "the worst annual percentage drop in its 80-year history." The Dow Jones industrial average is a bit more insulated from financial stocks, so it didn't plunge as far, but it still fell 5.56 percent to close at its lowest level since March 2003. The credit markets continued to suffer a thrashing as investors ran as far away as possible from corporate and mortgage bonds. Investors continued to seek safety in the warm embrace of ultra-safe U.S. government securities. Demand for short-term Treasury bonds was so high that investors were, once again, essentially paying the government to hold onto their money, and the LAT notes that the yield on two-year Treasury notes fell below 1 percent for the first time. Commodity prices responded in kind, and crude oil closed below $50 a barrel for the first time since 2005.

There was some fresh grim economic data yesterday, including news that weekly unemployment claims reached a 16-year high. But as the WP highlights, "[T]he misery on the financial markets had no single cause." Investors are quite simply in full panic mode because they don't know when the pain is going to stop, and many have decided it's better to just watch from the sidelines rather than see their entire wealth disappear. "We'll have a whole generation of people whose retirement plans have been wiped out," one expert tells the LAT, which points out economists are worried that the market losses have been so great that it virtually assures a long and painful recession is ahead. As people see their nest eggs disappear, they're likely to cut back on spending and fuel the vicious cycle.

Investors are also panicking because of the uncertainty of how much the government can do to solve the problem. The WSJ points out that since the government decided to pump money into nine major financial companies, their stocks plunged an average of 46 percent. There's no better example than banking giant Citigroup, which received $25 billion from the government last month but saw its stocks plunge 26 percent yesterday, its worst one-day percentage decline ever. Citigroup shares have lost half their value this week, and its board of directors will have a meeting today to discuss the company's condition. Executives are apparently considering auctioning off pieces of its business or perhaps even just selling the whole company, notes the WSJ in a separate front-page piece.

Most important of all, though, investors are wondering: Who's in charge here? As markets plummet, unemployment increases, and those close to retirement wonder how they'll make ends meet during their golden years, lawmakers in Washington spent the day bidding farewell to the longest-serving Republican senator, and Democrats devoted time to an intraparty leadership scuffle. At the same time, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson basically implied a few days ago that further action would have to wait until President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration. Yes, it's transition time, but apparently no one got the memo that a financial crisis can't be put on hold until all the pieces of the new administration and Congress are in place.

Things are developing much more rapidly than anyone thought possible. As a separate front-page piece by the NYT's Floyd Norris points out, in late October the Federal Reserve thought the unemployment rate could rise to as high as 6.5 percent this year, and a few days later it turned out that rate had already been reached. And think about everything that has happened since Lehman Bros. collapsed. Now, investors are looking to Washington for answers, and all they get back is a message to wait. The NYT's Norris says that "Obama may have missed an opportunity to exert leadership" when he resigned from the Senate so soon after winning the presidency.

The NYT's Paul Krugman takes up this issue and points out that "the emergence of a power vacuum at the height of the crisis" is one disturbing way in which 2008 is starting to look like 1932. Although the deterioration of the economy appears to be picking up speed, "economic policy, rather than responding to the threat, seems to have gone on vacation."

That's not to say everything that has been going on in Congress has been insignificant. The LAT and NYT front news that House Democrats ousted Michigan Rep. John Dingell from the chairmanship of the House energy and commerce committee and installed Rep. Henry Waxman of California. Dingell is the longest-serving member in the House, and removing him from his favored post after an intense two-week campaign by Waxman was highly unusual for a place that usually values seniority above all. The news was a clear blow to Detroit's Big Three, as Dingell was a reliable ally who has long been criticized for blocking regulatory efforts. Having Waxman at the head of such a critical committee will in all likelihood make it easier for Obama to get his energy agenda through Congress.

Speaking of seniority, one of the reasons that Sen. Hillary Clinton is allegedly interested in leading the State Department under Obama is frustration at her relatively junior status in the Senate. But Democratic leaders may be trying to work around that, notes the NYT. Senate leaders are apparently ready to give the former first lady some sort of leadership role in the Senate, which is part of the reason why she hasn't decided whether she will, in fact, join the Cabinet. An Obama adviser said that Clinton's nomination is "on track" and that the announcement is expected after Thanksgiving. Still, the Senate majority leader is apparently looking for a leadership position that Clinton could take on in the Senate that would have enough stature to appeal to the former first lady.

The NYT is alone in fronting news that for the first time a federal judge ordered the release of a group of prisoners from Guantanamo. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said five Algerian detainees have been held illegally for seven years because the government's evidence in the case was extremely weak. The judge did rule that one other Algerian prisoner shouldn't be released because the government presented enough evidence that he worked for al-Qaida. Leon urged the men be released "forthwith" and also said the government should "end this process" and not appeal the decision. "Seven years of waiting for our legal system to give them an answer to a question so important is, in my judgment, more than plenty," he said.

Nobody fronts the results of an internal CIA inquiry that revealed the agency purposefully misled Congress and investigators during inquiries relating to the 2001 shooting of an airplane carrying American missionaries in Peru. One of the missionaries and her 7-month-old daughter were killed. While at the time the CIA insisted it was one mistake in an otherwise successful anti-narcotics program, the new report reveals that the agency repeatedly failed to make sure that sufficient care was taken to identify and warn the planes before calling on Peruvian fighter pilots to shoot down the target.

Remember that WP story from earlier this month about Eugene Allen, the African-American butler who worked at the White House for 34 years? Sony Pictures plans to turn it into a movie.

In a Page One piece, the NYT looks into how superstar Angelina Jolie has been able to shape her public image like few other celebrities. She has been able to successfully change from one of Hollywood's wildest figures into someone who focuses on charity work and her family, all through a cunning ability to control her image and demand certain concessions from the media that can't get enough of her. Jolie now "expertly walks a line between known entity and complete mystery," notes the NYT. And most impressively of all, she doesn't do it through huge teams of publicists that are so common in Hollywood. Although Jolie does rely on a longtime manager, not to mention her partner, Brad Pitt, the "keys to her public image belong to her alone."

The New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal lead with yet another terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day at the stock market. The Dow Jones industrial average plunged 5.1 percent and closed below the 8,000 mark for the first time since March 2003. The market is now down 43.5 percent from a high point hit a little more than a year ago. USAT notes that the market has "wiped out nearly $10 trillion in wealth since the October 2007 peak," and the WSJ highlights that the recent plunges have nearly wiped out "all the gains from the last bull market, which lasted from October 2002 to October 2007." Optimists who had hoped the market had nowhere to go but up after the lows of last month were hit with a cold dose of reality by a string of grim economic news that made it clear the pain is far from over.

The Los Angeles Times gives big play to the stock market woes but leads with news that the California Supreme Court has agreed to review legal challenges to Proposition 8, the voter initiative that banned same-sex couples from getting married in the state. The court's move suggests that it wants to resolve all issues relating to marriage between two people of the same sex in one ruling. The court refused to allow the marriages to continue until a decision has been made, but legal experts warn this shouldn't be read as a sign that the court is ready to uphold the ban.

Investors looking for reasons to be anxious about the economy's future didn't have to look far. The leaders of Detroit's Big Three were grilled for a second day by skeptical lawmakers who made it pretty clear the U.S. auto industry shouldn't be expecting a bailout. The Federal Reserve's leaders warned that they expect the economy to be in a recession through the middle of next year, if not longer; new data showed that builders started fewer homes last month, marking the fourth straight month of declines to reach the lowest level in at least the 49 years since the government has kept track. And those weren't the only data to reach a record. Perhaps most worrying of all, the Consumer Price Index fell 1 percent in October, its biggest one-month drop in the index's 61-year history.

While the average consumer is likely to welcome a decrease in prices, the decrease can be disastrous for an economy and has brought back the much-talked-about fears of deflation, a prolonged period of falling prices. The NYT focuses on deflation—"an economists' nightmare"—in its lead story, while the WSJ devotes a separate front-page story to the issue. Deflation was "a hallmark of the Depression and Japan's so-called lost decade," notes the NYT. Everyone still thinks the chances of deflation are extremely slim but the fact that it's even a concern ramps up the pressure on President-elect Barack Obama and lawmakers to pass a new fiscal stimulus package. "Whatever I thought that risk was four or five months ago, I think it's bigger now, even if it is still small," Fed Vice Chairman Donald Kohn said. Even talking about deflation now marks an amazing turn of events considering that this summer the big concern was inflation and many economists openly worried about the prospects of stagflation, the simultaneous increase of inflation and unemployment.

The only reason people aren't more freaked out at the record-breaking price decline is that it was mainly due to falling energy prices, which is good for consumers and is generally seen as a bad indicator of long-term trends. Excluding energy and food, prices fell 0.1 percent in October, which is far more modest but hardly insignificant since, as the WSJ notes, it marked the first decline since 1982. The WP points out that broadly speaking, economists worry that "businesses are losing any ability to set prices because demand for their goods has dried up." Due to all the depressing economic news, more consumers are choosing to play it safe and save what they have. Or as one economist succinctly puts it: "People are scared to death." The LAT points out that this decline in spending suggests that the only way the economy will get a boost is through increased government spending. Indeed, the NYT points to a number of statistics that make it seem "clear that the nation is entering a more frugal era after several years of conspicuous consumption."

The nervousness over the economy's future could clearly be seen in the markets, where, as the WSJ points out, investors seem once again to be willing to accept nearly no returns in order to sink their money into the safe haven of short-term Treasury bills. The pain wasn't isolated in stocks. The WSJ highlights that by some measures, "bonds were hit harder than stocks." The WP points out that this anxiety in the bond markets makes it difficult for companies to raise money.

In the WSJ's op-ed page, Andy Kessler says that while investors are taught that they should listen to the stock market, right now you should "stick wax in your ears and don't listen to the market until February." When it's working properly, the market can be a good indicator of the economy as a whole, but due to the credit crisis, Kessler is "convinced the stock market is at its least efficient today," and investors shouldn't read too much into the declines that are sure to come in the next two months.

While investors have lost trillions in the stock market over the past year, many top officials at companies that are at the heart of the current crisis managed to make a pretty penny over the past five years, reveals a WSJ analysis. Fifteen leaders of large home-building and financial firms made more than $100 million in that time period, for example. Among the 15 are the heads of Lehman Bros. and Bear Stearns. This is hardly a new phenomenon as periods of economic booms usually translate into astronomical paychecks for those who participated in the bubble. During the technology bubble of the late 1990s, more than 50 people made more than $100 million right before the crash.

The LAT and NYT front, and everyone mentions, the latest news from the presidential transition. President-elect Obama has decided to nominate Tom Daschle, the former Senate Democratic leader, as secretary of Health and Human Services. Everyone sees the nomination as a sign that Obama plans to aggressively tackle health care since Daschle is an experienced legislator who wrote a book about the issue. Apparently, Daschle made it clear he would only accept the Cabinet position if Obama also named him the administration's point man to develop a health care plan. "Being a Cabinet secretary is a car and driver and you get to go to the head of the line at the airport, unless you're Defense or State," a Daschle associate tells the WP. "This was key for Tom to have that White House connection." In other transition news, Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona appears to be Obama's choice to become homeland security secretary.

Daschle's selection not only provides another example of how Obama is filling his administration with Washington veterans, but also promises to test his strict ethics rules. Daschle's wife is a registered lobbyist whose list of clients might provide conflicts of interest for her husband, but her focus is in the aerospace and military industries. And, as the NYT details in a piece inside, Daschle himself is also open to examination. Since leaving the Senate, Daschle has been a board member of the Mayo Clinic as well as an adviser to a law and lobbying firm. Although this might not prevent his appointment, Daschle might have to recuse himself from issues that relate to his former employers, "a potentially broad swatch of the health secretary's portfolio," says the NYT, which notes the lobbying firm has dozens of health care industry clients, including pharmaceutical companies and health care providers.

The LAT fronts an interesting interview with a senior officer, "Zimbabwe's version of the KGB: the Central Intelligence Organization." The meeting between journalist and spy, which was carried out in the utmost secrecy, reveals how a group of people who could once be counted on to be the most loyal to the president have become disenchanted. The senior officer estimates that 60 percent to 70 percent of CIO officers no longer back President Robert Mugabe. "That the dark heart of Mugabe's web of fear is abandoning him underscores how tenuous his grip on power has become," writes the LAT's Robyn Dixon.

In the WP's op-ed page, Slate founder Michael Kinsley writes that Americans may have just elected a president who is part of the one group that suffers from socially sanctioned discrimination in the United States: smokers. Although Obama claims to have quit smoking, "the evidence is ambiguous." Regardless, if he hasn't quit, "we should forgive him" because his "good habits outweigh his single bad one." And perhaps his failure to quit is part of the reason why he's been able to maintain his now-famous calm demeanor. "If he needs an occasional cigarette to preserve it," writes Kinsley, "let's hand him an ashtray, offer him a light and look the other way."

Donald Rumsfeld is writing his memoirs, and if his op-ed in the Nov. 23 New York Times is any preview, it should be a classic of self-serving revisionism.

On the surface, the former defense secretary's piece seems to be a warning—sound, if unoriginal—that merely sending more troops to Afghanistan won't fix that country's problems or win the war.

But his real intent is clearly to justify his own policies on the war in Iraq, to refute the (properly) widespread idea that he committed serious errors, and even more to deny that he held the views that he actually did hold.

The first eyebrow-raiser comes in the second paragraph, in which he writes, almost in passing, "As one who is occasionally—and incorrectly—portrayed as an opponent of the surge in Iraq. …"

Let's stop right there.

From beginning to end—from the preparations for the invasion in the summer and fall of 2002 until his (forced) resignation was announced in November 2006—Rumsfeld consistently opposed all proposals to send more troops to Iraq.

The quarrels between Rumsfeld and the generals over how many troops to send at the outset of the war have been well-documented. It turned out that Rumsfeld was right about how few troops would be needed to overthrow Saddam Hussein—and very wrong about how many would be needed to impose order afterward.

That is to say, he understood (as many of the Army's senior officers did not) that the new GPS-guided "smart bombs"—which could destroy enemy tanks and troop formations from the air with extreme accuracy—meant that massive artillery units, with their heavy weapons and long logistical lines, were no longer necessary. However, he did not understand (as those officers did) that when it comes to postwar "stability operations," the key ingredient is boots on the ground—and lots of them.

Rumsfeld saw the Iraq war primarily as a showcase for a new style of warfare known as "military transformation"—the idea that, in the post-Cold War world, America could project power and topple rogue regimes with a small number of troops (backed by high-tech air forces) and that, therefore, we could do so repeatedly, anytime, anywhere, at low cost and with little effort. The Pentagon laid out no official plans for post-Saddam Iraq because Rumsfeld wasn't interested in the subject. To him, Iraq wasn't what the war was about.

He felt confident in his views because of the lightning victory in Afghanistan, where a very small contingent of Special Operations forces, backed by smart bombs and indigenous guerrilla fighters, ousted the Taliban regime from Kabul in a matter of weeks—much more rapidly than the year or two that many Army generals guessed it would take. But Rumsfeld erred here, too. He thought that the war was over when Kabul fell and the Taliban retreated. At that point, according to Sean Naylor's excellent book Not a Good Day To Die, he issued orders that no more ground forces could be deployed to Afghanistan—not even an individual soldier or Marine, much less a battalion or brigade—without his explicit approval. It was a few months after this decision that U.S. forces fought their toughest battle, in Operation Anaconda (made all the tougher because they were so short on troops), and when Osama Bin Laden escaped into the mountains.

In his memoirs, Rumsfeld will no doubt reprint a memo that he wrote in November 2006 in which he supported the surge in Iraq. (A former official who took part in these deliberations tells me that such a memo does exist.) However, it is worth noting that he wrote the memo after the midterm elections—that is, after President George W. Bush forced him to resign. The policy was moving in the direction of a surge and Bush was about to sign on, so Rumsfeld went there, too. This isn't necessarily a cynical interpretation; he may have supported the surge not so much to give the appearance that he was on "the right side" as simply to support the president's policy. In any case, two points should be kept in mind: He did so without enthusiasm, and the policy went totally against the spirit and substance of his positions up until then.

Later in the Times op-ed, Rumsfeld argues that the surge was a matter of timing—that had he sent more troops sooner, they would not have accomplished anything. The implication is that Rumsfeld was right when he decided not to send more troops—and he was right toward the end, when he had no choice and signed on.

Rumsfeld notes that the surge improved Iraq's security only because it coincided with other developments. These included the "Anbar Awakening," in which Sunni insurgents formed alliances with U.S. troops against the larger enemy of al-Qaida in Iraq; the improvement of Iraq's own security forces; and the cease-fire called by Shiite militia leader Muqtada Sadr. The surge wouldn't have worked earlier, he writes, "because large segments of the Sunni population were still providing sanctuary to insurgents, and Iraq's security forces were not sufficiently capable or large enough."

He's right, but the real meaning of what he's saying—though he wouldn't put it so starkly—is that an earlier surge wouldn't have had much effect because the U.S. military (i.e., Secretary Rumsfeld) had no counterinsurgency strategy to go with it. In fact, until very late in the game, Rumsfeld refused even to call the enemy "insurgents"—because if he did, he would have had to mount a counterinsurgency strategy, which would have required more troops, and he had no interest in that.

A few field officers pursued a strategy on their own, to the extent they could. Early in the occupation, David Petraeus, who was then a lieutenant general commanding the 101^st Airborne Division, carried out such a strategy in Mosul, facilitated in large part by a huge stash of Saddam's cash, which Petraeus and other commanders were permitted to spend on restoring basic services and paying off tribal leaders who cooperated. (When the money ran out, Mosul started to fall apart.) H.R. McMaster, who was then a colonel commanding the 3^rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, ran a similar, more comprehensive strategy in Tal Afar.

The problem was not that Iraq wasn't ready for a surge before 2007; it was that Rumsfeld and his top generals at the time weren't doing anything that might make Iraq ready. They were very slow and unimaginative at training the Iraqi army. And they had no ideas about how to convince the Sunnis to stop sheltering insurgents, besides banging down doors and shooting people without thinking first—a practice that created more insurgents than it killed.

Another misleading claim in Rumsfeld's op-ed: "During my last weeks in office, I recommended to President Bush that he consider Gen. David Petraeus as commander of coalition forces in Iraq."

This may be true. Again, Rumsfeld has no doubt rustled up a memo in which he said just that. However, note that he writes that he made this recommendation "during my last weeks in office." He left the job, and Robert Gates took his place, on Dec. 18, 2006. The timing is unclear, but it may well be that by the time Rumsfeld "recommended" him, Petraeus was already the all-but-certain pick.

One thing is clear: In November, just a month earlier, in one of his final official acts, Rumsfeld blocked Bush's chief of staff Josh Bolten from appointing Petraeus to chair a White House review of Iraq policy. "Rumsfeld loathed Petraeus," one officer who worked high up in the Pentagon at the time recalled in a phone conversation this week.

Is Rumsfeld lying in this op-ed? No. He did support the surge—after (or perhaps just before) Bush put it in motion and after firmly opposing anything like it for the previous three years. He did recommend Petraeus to be commander of multinational forces in Iraq—after the appointment was in the cards and after blocking him from a crucial position on Iraq a few weeks earlier.

During his six years as defense secretary, Rumsfeld famously wrote hundreds, maybe thousands, of memos to subordinates—they fell so rapidly from on high that his aides called them "snowflakes." According to several officials, many of these snowflakes contradicted one another; he seemed to be staking out several positions on key issues so that he could later claim that he'd taken the right side. In his forthcoming memoirs, he will no doubt quote chapter and verse from just the right snowflakes. Readers, be forewarned—he's blotting out the full storm.

Looking over the list of top players on President-elect Barack Obama's transition team, one gets the sense that serious people are coming back to power. On the national-security team in particular, they're professional, thoughtful, cognizant of the world's complexities, engaged with cutting-edge ideas but not dogmatic about them. This may not sound exciting, but those who think it doesn't constitute "change" haven't paid enough attention to these last eight years of Jacobin zeal and blundering.

Let's look at a few of these players:

Sarah Sewall, director of Harvard University's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and deputy assistant secretary of defense for peacekeeping during the Clinton administration, was a member of the panel that Gen. David Petraeus assembled a few years ago to write the U.S. Army's field manual on counterinsurgency. She also wrote an insightful foreword to the book version of the manual (published by the University of Chicago Press), in which she grasped the truly radical nature of the strategy, the overhaul in tactics, training, and weapons procurement that its full adoption would require, yet also the risks that it entails—the danger of becoming enmeshed in endless, unnecessary wars—and the still greater demands that it places on informed civilian control.

Michèle Flournoy, another former deputy assistant secretary of defense during the Clinton administration, is president of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank that in its mere two years of existence has emerged as a magnet for innovative strategic thinkers. When John Nagl and Nathaniel Fick, two of the military's most creative officers, quit the Army and the Marines, respectively, they came to CNAS—not Brookings, as might have been the case a decade ago—or, more to the point, CNAS reached out to them. Richard Danzig, a member of the center's board, is said to be a strong candidate for Obama's secretary of defense (or deputy secretary if Robert Gates is asked to stay on for a while). Flournoy's papers on the Iraq war call for gradual troop withdrawals and a policy of "conditional engagement," in which the United States agrees to maintain any troop presence only if the Iraqis hammer out their political differences. This may seem tepid in light of the current debate over the Status of Forces Agreement—which will almost certainly demand a total U.S. pullout by 2011—but at least her views are grounded in an understanding of war as a political instrument with, in Iraq's case, a goal of stability, not some utopian dream.

Wendy Sherman, a former assistant secretary of state, played a big role in negotiating the nuclear accord with North Korea toward the end of the Clinton years. The accord had its imperfections (it was called an "Agreed Framework," which is to say, it was meant to have a sequel, which Clinton lacked the time to complete and George W. Bush lacked the slightest interest in so much as beginning). But it did keep the Yongbyon nuclear reactor's fuel rods locked up and thus kept Kim Jong-il from building an A-bomb. (Bush's moralistic refusal to hold talks left Kim an opening to do just that.)

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Rand Beers, a counterterrorism specialist in the National Security Council under Presidents Clinton and George H.W. Bush, resigned in protest during George W. Bush's administration, stating that the latter's policies—particularly the war in Iraq—strengthened al-Qaida and exacerbated the threat to America.

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Clark Kent Ervin used to be inspector general in the Department of Homeland Security, until he was canned by George W. Bush after complaining about incompetence in the department's intelligence-gathering divisions.

Judith "Jami" Miscik was a longtime analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency—rising, in 2002, to be the agency's deputy director for intelligence—who resigned in 2005, along with many career veterans, during the short-lived, scapegoat-hunting tenure of Porter Goss. In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Miscik came under sustained pressure from the White House—especially from aides to Vice President Dick Cheney—to find links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. According to Ron Suskind's book The One Percent Doctrine, Miscik came back from one such meeting "shaking with rage" and telling then-Director George Tenet that she would not put up with any more pressure. (Tenet backed her up, at least for a while.)

In other words, the appointments of Beers, Ervin, and Miscik in particular send a signal that Obama may be more willing to hear, and possibly heed, uncomfortable dissents from men and women of principle. This alone is comforting news.

Martin Parr is taking a picture of my breakfast.

With an impish smile, he glides behind our chairs, leaning over our shoulders to neatly frame pale yellow eggs, fat sausages, grilled tomatoes, and racks of thin, evenly toasted slices of bread. The 12 photographers gathered in the dining room of the Northbank Hotel—eight men, four women; some professionals, some enthusiasts—study him eagerly. We are on the Isle of Wight, a roughly diamond-shaped piece of land in the English Channel, for an educational weekend with Britain's pre-eminent documentary photographer. Occasionally Parr discusses technique and technology with individual members of the group, but mostly we learn by watching him. The lesson is simple: Photograph what you love.

In Parr's case, this means traditional breakfasts, seaside resort towns, dazed tourists, English people caught being their unguarded English selves. Parr's photos are suffused with nostalgia for the postwar country that he grew up in, a make-do, working-class world of garish entertainments, greasy meals, and unapologetically frumpy homes that he captures in brilliant, saturated color. (Often, he adds a blast of flash in broad daylight, making his subjects paler than usual.) At times, his pictures veer toward the grotesque, and he has been accused of misanthropy. His career is bigger in continental Europe than in his home country; with Brits, he says, "I can confirm all their worst nightmares." In a recent monograph, a critic writes that Parr's work betrays "amused disappointment" and calls his subject "the human effects of globalized corporate culture"; his depictions of English food are "close to hatefulness." But on the Isle of Wight, I detect more amusement than disappointment—he seems to be perpetually smiling—and he tucks into a glistening rasher of bacon, cooked on the Northbank's Aga stove, with gusto.

Our weekend with Martin Parr is one of the inaugural events of London's new School of Life, the brainchild of Sophie Howarth, formerly a curator of public programs at the Tate Modern. Howarth's mentor and collaborator is writer Alain de Botton, whose books, such as How Proust Can Change Your Life and The Art of Travel, invented their own genre: literary self-help. The school's courses—on such broad-stroke subjects as "Love," "Work," and "Family"—encourage enrollees to seek self-improvement in the writings of Plato and Rousseau rather than the pages of Real Simple. But the organization's brightest idea might be its "holidays," which pair marquee-name writers, artists, and scholars with weekend destinations that complement their chosen trades. Howarth asked Parr to lead the school's first holiday to the location of his choice. The quintessentially English Isle of Wight, with its taffy-colored towns and seasonal vacationers, was a natural fit. Parr and his wife, Susie, take a yearly trip here—"usually on a bank holiday," he says.

The Northbank Hotel is located in Seaview, a small village on the northern coast of the island. "Remember," Parr tells us on Friday evening as we gather in the nautically themed hotel bar, "we're back 20 years. You think it's 2008, but it's 1988." A short distance away—out the sliding doors, over a canted green lawn with a flapping Union Jack and tables shaded by umbrellas marked with the Pimm's logo, across a thin stretch of shingle—is the Solent, the branch of the English Channel that separates the island from the mainland. (A 20-minute ferry ride connects Portsmouth and Ryde, the nearest large town to Seaview.) Day and night, ocean liners and shipping vessels glide past the hotel.

Most of the clocks in the Northbank Hotel have stopped. In the lobby, a framed portrait of Winston Churchill sits atop a table next to a rotary telephone and a particularly large marrow, a type of gourd that seems to be the island's signature crop. On the side lawn of the hotel, inexplicably, is a weather-warped piano. Everyone remarks on the sunshine—after a cold, wet summer, England is experiencing an unusually warm September—but the inside of the hotel has the legendary briskness of English hotels. We wear our jackets. Before going to bed, I turn on the heater in my room, an electric grate with glowing-red coils and fake coals that light up. In the morning, I stand before the tap with my little pink stick of Pears soap, waiting for the water to run lukewarm.

Parts of the Isle of Wight haven't escaped modernization—on a bus ride inland, I spot a Staples, a Tesco supermarket, and a few other chains. But Seaview is seemingly untouched by time. Walking up the high street, past a tea shop and a small store that sells "provisions," I think of Marianne Moore's poem "The Steeple-Jack":

Dürer would have seen a reason for living

in a town like this …

… with the sweet sea air coming into your house

on a fine day, from water etched

with waves as formal as the scales

on a fish.

On the ferry from the mainland, a video plays commercials for some of the island's attractions. There is a castle in Carisbrook where Charles I was imprisoned. Osborne House, Queen Victoria's magisterial summer residence in East Cowes, is open to the public. But Parr stresses at the beginning of the weekend that we won't be going anywhere near these tourist sites. I ask him if we're going to see the Needles, three mountainous rocks that jut into the ocean and are the island's primary postcard fodder. Nope—too obvious, too overdone.

Instead, our group spends the weekend crisscrossing Wight in a minivan, in search of what Parr calls "Britain at its absolute best." The Brighstone Holiday Centre, for example, is pure Parr-World, a self-catering campsite on the southwest coast of the island (otherwise known as "the back of the Wight"). When we arrive, a silent culture clash takes place. The photographers, bulky cameras swinging from their necks, fan out to take pictures of the camp's rows of miniature chalets with their Mondrian-esque, primary-colored doors. The campers, resting in folding chairs on a perfectly green blanket of lawn, watch the photographers skeptically. Two chickens dart around the site, ducking under mobile homes—or "caravans," as they're called over here—to escape the pursuing camera lenses.

A little while later, Parr directs us to the Haylands Horticultural Show, an annual event held at a church in Ryde. Local farmers have displayed their largest and most shapely products, which are judged by such criteria as condition and uniformity. (To taste them would mar their appearance.) Potatoes, apples, raspberries, shallots, cranberry beans, cabbages the size of human heads, and marrow—marrow is everywhere—are embossed with prize pins and displayed on paper plates on tables that run the length of the church hall. Cameras at the ready, Parr and his acolytes dart up and down the aisles, snapping both the carefully arranged vegetables and the crowd, who stand in clusters and contemplate the harvest. One might wonder, judging from the median age of the horticulturists—a man in his '90s, a regular contestant since 1978, won prizes this year for 20 of his 24 entries—if this is an English tradition on the verge of extinction. But I'm betting that the Haylands Horticultural Show will live on for years to come. The Isle of Wight seems quite un-self-conscious of its eccentricities and fogeyisms. It's quite happy being its changeless self.

In Sandown, a working-class resort on the Isle of Wight with a wide, golden beach, the members of Martin Parr's photography class shoot a miniature golf course, a rinky-dink amusement park, and a cricket field. I notice that my vision has taken on a Parr-like cast. Looking over the railing of the elevated main street, I get an aerial view of a beachside cafe, where a family, their ample flesh roasted red, savors slick plates of sausage and beans. Meanwhile, Parr spies a "car boot sale"—a flea market where vendors sell goods from their car trunks and hatchbacks—and we follow him there. The merchandise forms a capsule history of 20^th-century British culture: Rupert Bear books, Cliff Richard DVDs, the self-published first and second editions of The History of the Sandown Conservative Clubs.

As we gather back at the van, seven air force jets blaze down the strand in formation, leaving red, white, and blue smoke trails that form a cloud like a melted Bomb Pop. The moseying pedestrians come to a standstill. It's the Red Arrows, someone says—the RAF's aerobatic team, which performs displays of synchronized flying around the United Kingdom. Children, grannies, young couples with spiky gelled hair, all look up at the sky, shading their eyes from the sun, oblivious to the photographers capturing their open-mouthed poses. The planes swan and pirouette, break apart and reshuffle themselves like a deck of cards. Parr looks as pleased as if he had organized the air show for our pleasure.

Parr has invited a friend, Jem Southam, whom he calls "Britain's greatest landscape photographer," to be a co-instructor for the weekend. Southam is gentle and earnest where Parr is puckish. His dense, painterly images of English forests, ponds, fields, and rock falls offer a different kind of sublime than Parr's witty documentation of English society. Often, Southam photographs the same location over months or years, illustrating the effects of time and fate on the countryside.

Southam directs our minivan to Whale Chine, a breathtakingly steep ridge of coastal cliffs that he has been photographing since the 1990s. Dressed in cargo shorts, hiking boots, and a corduroy blazer with a map sticking out of the pocket, he looks like a traditional British explorer-gentleman. He handily balances a large-plate camera—the kind that 19^th-century photographers used—as he leads us to the edge of a cliff and onto a wooden staircase that plunges into a deep ravine. The staircase halts abruptly midway down; after that, we shin along a rope and hop over dirt paths and stone ledges to the beach, 140 feet below the cliff top. The photographers scatter along the shore, taking pictures of the sea, the piles of garbage that have accumulated at the foot of the cliffs, the silver and rust horizontal lines that rivulets of water have painted down the rock face. Southam sets up his camera on a tall tripod and aims the lens at a rock fall—rain regularly chips away at the cliffs. These rocks weren't here a month ago, he tells us, and at the current rate of erosion, the Isle of Wight will disappear in 8,000 years. We watch Southam climb up a stepladder to the viewfinder and duck in and out from under a large black cloth. After much preparation, he takes precisely one exposure. "This is going to cost me 15 quid," he explains, "so you don't exactly go bang-bang-bang."

At the beginning of the weekend, Parr sets out two challenges for the group. Prizes—signed Martin Parr books—will go to whoever takes the most interesting photograph of the hotel and whoever finds the best postcard of the Isle of Wight. He doesn't define what he means by "best," but an evening slide presentation makes clear that his own taste leans toward kitsch. In addition to postcards of shopping malls, holiday camps, highways, postwar German housing projects, and other mundanities, he hoards—"perversely"—Margaret Thatcher plates, Spice Girls chocolate bars, Lawrence Welk trays, and other junk-culture souvenirs. ("If I didn't collect Saddam Hussein watches," he says, "no one would.") Parr's massive collections will one day be inherited by the Victoria and Albert Museum.

We find the most fruitful postcard shopping in Ventnor, another quaint seaside town, with Victorian-era residences skirting a steep hill. It's Sunday, and the antique shops on the high street are closed; there is a foot race today, and a scant few half-marathoners run their final miles through the quiet city. The photographers scout the souvenir shops along the beachfront street. Martin and Susie Parr rest outside a Victorian bathing hut on rented deck chairs made from brightly colored, mismatched fabrics.

Back at the Northbank Hotel, over a cream tea, the group gathers for a collective vote. (Parr refrains from casting a ballot in either contest.) A young art school student wins the postcard contest for a weird, blurry card of a collie running along the shore. Each photographer displays his or her pictures of the hotel—some chintz drapes, the moldering piano, the telephone table marrow—before we elect one of the Union Jack framed by a hotel window and surreally reflected in a wardrobe mirror. It's appropriately Parr-ish.

The School of Life is housed in a sleek storefront on Marchmont Street in London's Bloomsbury neighborhood. The ground-floor shop, painted in cool gray with bright yellow signage, reflects the school's tongue-in-cheek approach to its own mission. Aphorisms are typeset on large sheets of paper and suspended in the street-facing window; a quotation from Emerson was on rotation the week that I visited. ("All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients.") Clusters of cedar trunks rise from floor to ceiling. A carefully curated selection of books is shelved by the reader's immediate need rather than by subject: books for those in love or for those worried about death. If you stand looking out through the window at the street, you can watch the faces of the passers-by as they try to puzzle out what kind of establishment the School of Life is. A jar of free candy bars on a front counter is popular with local children.

The school's single classroom is downstairs in the basement—and when I use the word basement, I don't mean to imply a dark, cement-walled room. Around the School of Life's cellar walls runs an illustrated mural by artist Charlotte Mann that depicts the sort of cheerful cultural clutter you might find in the world's best rec room: bookshelves crammed with art books, great novels, and DVDs of classic films; paintings by Picasso and Breugel; a guitar and a copy of Bowie's Aladdin Sane; a soccer game on the television—all drawn in a loose, squiggly freehand. There's no sign of the chalk-dusted desks and humming fluorescent lights typically found in a continuing-education classroom. Instead, chairs are arranged in semicircular rows. The room is softly lit; during classes, a table is set with hummus and pretzels, and the wine flows freely, symposium-style.

On a Monday evening in September, the school launched its "Work" course.

Roman Krznaric, a self-described "writer and teacher on creative thinking about the art of living and social change," gives us colored pens and large sheets of paper and asks us each to draw a "career map." Make yourself comfortable, he tells us, feel free to sprawl out on the carpet. The members of the class—who seem to be in their late 20s and 30s and who range from a barrister to a cheese monger—giggle nervously. Yet there we are, our pens swirling and dipping across our papers as we excitedly cast our employment histories into geographical form.

Taped onto the basement walls are quotations about work, from Thomas Carlyle and Mark Twain down the cultural high-low scale to Rosanne Barr; we break off into clusters in front of our favorites and discuss them. We watch a slide presentation on the history of work from Egyptian slavery to the rise of women in the paid economy. We sketch out our family trees, with an emphasis on the roles that choice and fate have played in our forebears' work lives and ours, and we pair up to chat about our work histories. Krznaric—an Australian with thick, curly hair and an appealingly open, stubbly face—explains that over six weeks, we will be "trying to discover a way of working that's more interesting, more creative, more adventurous." In future sessions, students will take to the Bloomsbury streets to interview passers-by on their work lives; have the option of participating in a job swap with fellow classmates; and query diversely employed visitors to the course, including a hedge-fund manager and a druidic bard. The first evening's session runs well over its two and a half hour time slot, but the students are so energized, no one seems to notice.

In one corner of the room is a plush Victorian divan, scrolled at one end, of the type that Freud used. I lie upon it the next day while Susan Elderkin leads me through a one-on-one "bibliotherapy" session. Elderkin asks me about my reading history and habits (where do I read? what books figured largely in my childhood?) and delves into personal issues that might affect my choice of reading material (what do you feel is missing from your life?) before coming up with a list of suggested titles. Elderkin, who has published two novels, was awarded a place on Granta magazine's best of young British novelists list in 2003, and her therapeutic prescriptions lean heavily toward fiction. I admit that I'm a tough nut to crack—I'm an ardent fiction reader who once worked for the book review section of a New York newspaper. Nevertheless, she suggests some titles that I've heard of but haven't read, and afterward, I head down to Foyles on Charing Cross Road to seek out Shirley Hazzard's Transit of Venus and Helen Garner's The Spare Room.

The list of School of Life events and programs goes on. Group meals, where perfect strangers gather to share food and practice the art of conversation at Bloomsbury's Konstam restaurant, are scheduled for January and February. (Two meals held around Valentine's Day have a matchmaking theme; one is for straight singles and the other is for single gay men.) A Sunday morning lecture series of "sermons," as the school cheekily calls them, features well-known writers and artists on what Sophie Howarth, the founder and director of the School of Life, describes as "rather ungroovy virtues." Writer Alain de Botton will speak on pessimism, popular scientist Robert Winston will extol curiosity, and Sam Roddick, founder of "erotic emporium" Coco de Mer and daughter of Body Shop entrepreneur Anita Roddick, will discuss seduction. Future holidays include a "Sky Holiday" in an observatory, led by cloud expert Gavin Pretor-Pinney, and an "Austerity Holiday," featuring Krznaric and Sara Maitland, a writer at work on a book about silence, in Northumberland, near St. Cuthbert's home on Lindisfarne Island. Not all of the programs are of the so-crazy-it-just-might-work variety: Good old-fashioned psychotherapy with licensed psychotherapists is available for individuals, couples, and families.

Howarth is a London native with a shock of straight hair and the energy of a Superball. For seven years, she developed educational programs at the Tate Modern—"the most dreamy job," she says—before hatching a plan to create a space where people could meet for culture and conversation. She flirted with various concepts, including a philosophical cooking school, before settling upon "a kind of ideas store." ("Every little girl wants to have a shop," she says.) Friends ribbed her that she wanted to develop a "university of life." She protested before realizing that that was indeed what she wanted to do. "And what would they teach at the University of Life?" she asks. "They'd teach how to die well, how to raise children, how to enjoy your job. Through a lot of conversations with different people, I began to think it would be better if we just had a very few subjects, and they were big subjects, and they were totally enduring. And we didn't change them a lot, because then we could really do the research."

The School of Life's course programs were developed over a year and a half with the help of various experts, many of whom are now on the school's faculty. Actors and performers were called in to help choreograph classes; picture researchers created audio-visual programs. Along the way, de Botton served as a tutelary spirit, helping to set the intellectual agenda and structure curriculum. Indeed, the school might be seen as a natural extension of de Botton's books, which address contemporary issues using the teachings of Greek philosophers or Enlightenment thinkers. "I'm interested in how culture can inform our lives and be of assistance to us by echoing and enhancing our own dilemmas and life challenges," de Botton says. "We feel less alone—we feel that we have thousands of years of reflection and responses to things."

From the beginning, seducing a potentially doubtful public with good design was an important consideration. Everything about the School of Life, from the shop layout to the Web site to the stationery letterhead, is art-directed to the teeth. "I don't see why education should always have such bad design," says Howarth. "If it's about communication, which it is, then communication means good fonts, inspiring graphics, strong pictures—obviously." Howarth and de Botton were careful to build in a healthy dose of humor. "We've had to pedal extra hard to embed within our offering certain things to reduce British anxiety," he says. "We are dead earnest, but in order to be earnest in this culture, you have to joke along. You have to work extra hard against an audience that can very easily think it's pretentious or American—an insult."

One of Howarth's inspirations is indeed American: Dave Eggers' 826 National, a quirky, nonprofit chain of tutoring and writing centers that fosters literacy among young people. Each branch is fronted by a kid-friendly shop. One sells pirate supplies; another, robots; another, Sasquatch paraphernalia. The School of Life, says Howarth, "takes a bit of the openness of America, a bit of the intellectual and philosophical culture of France, and perhaps some of our British reticence as well." She hopes to eventually open up more schools, perhaps even in the United States. "Because we're concerned with the big ideas and enduring themes," she says, "they're pretty culturally exportable. They're the same things people worry about all over the world."

It's easy to get sniffy about Howarth and de Botton's ambitious project. And yet their meticulous organization and rigorous quality control have turned what might have been pie in the sky into a very inspiring reality. I visited the School of Life at a time when personal circumstances had laid me low. I came back to America with a wholly different attitude. The School's Isle of Wight holiday had expanded my horizons by taking me to a place of great natural beauty where I might never have gone on my own. It forced me to mingle with total strangers from other fields and walks of life. I began to take pictures again and to think about photography in new ways. I only had the chance to attend one session of the school's "Work" course, but it encouraged me to think about my career path in relation to my parents' and grandparents' and to better appreciate the freedoms and opportunities they had given me.

Howarth and de Botton's idea—to change society, one life at a time, through culture, literature, philosophy, and conversation—is quixotic. The thing about quixotic ideas is that, every so often, they work.

When I saw the Catholic bishops had declared war on President-elect Obama at their semiannual meeting in Baltimore two weeks ago, my first reaction was pique: Gosh, guys, it isn't even parade day yet, and here you are, all dressed up and ready to rain on it.

Were they in spasm because Obama had won Catholics by nine points? (Nine! A landslide compared with the five by which my co-religionists had favored Bush in '04.) Peeved because even some of the most ardent pro-lifers had broken ranks? (In Colorado, where Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput called Obama "the most committed 'abortion rights' presidential candidate of either major party since the Roe v. Wade abortion decision in 1973,'' it was Catholic voters who turned the state from red to blue.) Obama and Biden won 63-36 in Pennsylvania's heavily Catholic Lackawanna County, home to Scranton Bishop Joseph Martino, who seemed beside himself over the pro-choice position taken by Vice President-elect Joe Biden, a Catholic: "I cannot have the vice president coming to Scranton and saying he learned his values there, when those values are utterly against those of the Catholic Church," Martino said in Baltimore.

In a speech at Catholic University, Cardinal Frank Stafford almost sounded like one of those people who thinks Obama is the Antichrist, referring to the president-elect as "apocalyptic." Stafford told his audience, "For the next few years, Gethsemane will not be marginal," comparing Christ's agony in the garden to the suffering of Catholics under Obama. "On Nov. 4, 2008," he added, "America suffered a cultural earthquake." Oy.

What in the world were these bishops talking about, claiming that religious freedom in America was under attack? Keep up the hysterics, boys, I thought as I scanned the latest story, and this will be birth control all over again: Your lips are moving but no one can hear you. And the most ludicrous line out of them, surely, was about how, under Obama, Catholic hospitals that provide obstetric and gynecological services might soon be forced to perform abortions or close their doors. Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Chicago warned of "devastating consequences" to the health care system, insisting Obama could force the closure of all Catholic hospitals in the country. That's a third of all hospitals, providing care in many neighborhoods that are not exactly otherwise overprovided for. It couldn't happen, could it?

You wouldn't think so. Only, I am increasingly convinced that it could. If the Freedom of Choice Act passes Congress, and that's a big if, Obama has promised to sign it the second it hits his desk. (Here he is at a Planned Parenthood Action Fund event in 2007, vowing, "The first thing I'd do as president is, is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That's the first thing I'd do.") Though it's often referred to as a mere codification of Roe, FOCA, as currently drafted, actually goes well beyond that: According to the Senate sponsor of the bill, Barbara Boxer, in a statement on her Web site, FOCA would nullify all existing laws and regulations that limit abortion in any way, up to the time of fetal viability. Laws requiring parental notification and informed consent would be tossed out. While there is strenuous debate among legal experts on the matter, many believe the act would invalidate the freedom-of-conscience laws on the books in 46 states. These are the laws that allow Catholic hospitals and health providers that receive public funds through Medicaid and Medicare to opt out of performing abortions. Without public funds, these health centers couldn't stay open; if forced to do abortions, they would sooner close their doors. Even the prospect of selling the institutions to other providers wouldn't be an option, the bishops have said, because that would constitute "material cooperation with an intrinsic evil."

The bishops are not bluffing when they say they'd turn out the lights rather than comply. Nor is Auxiliary Bishop Robert Hermann of St. Louis exaggerating, I don't think, in vowing that "any one of us would consider it a privilege to die tomorrow—to die tomorrow—to bring about the end of abortion.''

Whatever your view on the legality and morality of abortion, there is another important question to be considered here: Could we even begin to reform our already overburdened health care system without these Catholic institutions? I don't see how.

People on both sides of the abortion argument have told me that despite a clear pro-choice majority in Congress, it's not clear the Democrats have the votes to pass this particular bill. It hasn't been put forward in a serious way—with any real chance of passing—in 15 years, and many members have never cast a vote on it. Some of the newly elected Democrats are pro-life—backed by their party for seats that would otherwise have gone to pro-life Republicans—and others are in the center on the abortion issue, meaning that they favor keeping it legal but with some limits. There are also serious questions about whether FOCA as currently drafted exceeds congressional authority. But when Obama was campaigning on FOCA, he didn't say anything about wanting to change it.

And those who argue that FOCA poses no actual threat to Catholic hospitals are not so laid back when it comes to assessing the threat that conscience laws supposedly pose to clinics. Whenever I see conscience laws written about in—even in print, I have to sigh before saying this—the mainstream media, they are always framed as Italianate laws that would force unsuspecting abortionists to hire kooks who would then crow, "Ha! Gotcha, I'm a pro-lifer, so I'm going for coffee now. See ya on payday.''

Even without the passage of FOCA, conscientious objectors are already feeling pressure to provide services they don't believe in. Sister Carol Keehan, a former hospital administrator who runs the Catholic Health Association, told the Times that "we have seen a variety of efforts to force Catholic and other health care providers to perform or refer for abortions and sterilizations." This is why the Bush administration is trying to rush through a new Health and Human Services regulation that the New York Times said would grant "sweeping new protections'' to health care providers opposed to abortion on moral grounds.

If Bush's HHS does manage to push through the proposed changes before Tom Daschle takes over there, Obama has promised to rescind the new regulation. The president's supporters say it merely implements existing legal protections for conscientious objectors (much like abortion-rights supporters say FOCA only codifies Roe).

So where does all this leave us? On the one hand, I agree with Bishop Blase J. Cupich of Rapid City, S.D., who reminded his brother bishops in Baltimore to "keep in mind a prophecy of denunciation quickly wears thin, and it seems to me what we need is a prophecy of solidarity, with the community we serve and the nation that we live in."

And as I think I have made clear—here, here, here, and here—I have high hopes for President Obama, I was so looking forward to dancing at this party. Yet, although abortion was not a major issue in the race, the pro-life argument that he was the candidate most likely to decrease the need for—and number of—abortions did make it easier for many Catholics to cast their votes for him. I think we should hold him to that commitment now.

At the very moment when Obama and his party have won the trust of so many Catholics who favor at least some limits on abortion, I hope he does not prove them wrong. I hope he does not make a fool out of that nice Doug Kmiec, who led the pro-life charge on his behalf. I hope he does not spit on the rest of us—though I don't take him for the spitting sort—on his way in the door. I hope that his appointment of Ellen Moran, formerly of EMILY's List, as his communications director is followed by the appointment of some equally good Democrats who hold pro-life views. By supporting and signing the current version of FOCA, Obama would reignite the culture war he so deftly sidestepped throughout this campaign. This is a fight he just doesn't need at a moment when there is no shortage of other crises to manage.