Dmitry Orlov:

In the waning days of the American empire, we find ourselves mired in political crisis, with our foreign policy coming under sharp criticism and our economy in steep decline. These trends mirror the experience of the Soviet Union in the early 1980s. Reinventing Collapse examines the circumstances of the demise of the Soviet superpower and offers clear insights into how we might prepare for coming events.

Rather than focusing on doom and gloom, Reinventing Collapse suggests that there is room for optimism if we focus our efforts on personal and cultural transformation. With characteristic dry humor, Dmitry Orlov identifies three progressive stages of response to the looming crisis:

* Mitigation-alleviating the impact of the coming upheaval
* Adaptation-adjusting to the reality of changed conditions
* Opportunity-flourishing after the collapse

He argues that by examining maladaptive parts of our common cultural baggage, we can survive, thrive, and discover more meaningful and fulfilling lives, in spite of steadily deteriorating circumstances.

This challenging yet inspiring work is a must-read for anyone concerned about energy, geopolitics, international relations, and life in a post-Peak Oil world.

Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects

Where would we be without rating and reputation systems these days? Take them away, and we wouldn’t know who to trust on eBay, what movies to pick on Netflix, or what books to buy on Amazon. Reputation systems (essentially a rating system for people) also help guide us through the labyrinth of individuals who make up our social web. Is he or she worthwhile to spend my time on? For pity’s sake, please don’t check out our reputation points before deciding whether to read this article.

Rating and reputation systems have become standard tools in our design toolbox. But sometimes they are not well-understood. A recent post at the IxDA forum showed confusion about how and when to use rating systems. Much of the conversation was about whether to use stars or some other iconography. These can be important questions, but they miss the central point of ratings systems: to manage risk.

So, when we think about rating and reputation systems, the first question to ask is not, “Am I using stars, bananas, or chili peppers?” but, “what risk is being managed?”

On A Scale of 1 to 5: Understanding Risk Improves Rating and Reputation Systems

Ouch.

DIY Yahoo! Resignation Letter

New work by Jon Kleinberg and Duncan Watts:

Social networks are of interest to researchers in part because they are thought to mediate the flow of information in communities and organizations. Here we study the temporal dynamics of communication using on-line data, including e-mail communication among the faculty and staff of a large university over a two-year period. We formulate a temporal notion of "distance" in the underlying social network by measuring the minimum time required for information to spread from one node to another -- a concept that draws on the notion of vector-clocks from the study of distributed computing systems. We find that such temporal measures provide structural insights that are not apparent from analyses of the pure social network topology. In particular, we define the network backbone to be the subgraph consisting of edges on which information has the potential to flow the quickest. We find that the backbone is a sparse graph with a concentration of both highly embedded edges and long-range bridges -- a finding that sheds new light on the relationship between tie strength and connectivity in social networks.

The Structure of Information Pathways in a Social Communication Network

Andrew Bacevich reviews new books by Douglas Feith and Ricardo Sanchez.

Setting aside combat memoirs, of which there are a growing number, the literature of the Iraq War divides neatly into two categories. The first category, dominated by journalistic observers, indicts. The second category, accounts authored by insider participants, acquits. The two books reviewed here fall into the second category: They are exercises in self-exculpation. Pretending to explain, their actual purpose is to deflect responsibility.

Apart from the finger-pointing and score-settling, these two accounts do agree at least implicitly on a single issue: taken as a whole, the national security apparatus is irredeemably broken. The so-called “interagency process” created to harmonize the efforts of national security institutions so that the president receives sound and timely advice and to ensure that presidential decisions are promptly implemented, whether in Baghdad or within the Beltway, actually produces the opposite effect. From quite different vantage points, Feith and Sanchez affirm that the principal product generated by the interagency process is disharmony, dishonesty, and dysfunction. Whether a different process employing the same people or recruiting different people while retaining the existing process would yield different results is difficult to say. To imagine, however, that simply electing a new chief executive in November will fix the problem is surely to succumb to an illusion.

Fault Lines: Inside Rumsfeld's Pentagon

After five years as a student at the University of Texas at Austin, I joined the Army because I wanted a challenge. I wanted adventure. Then I started basic training on September 11, 2001, and got more than I expected. After serving multiple tours in Iraq—patrolling city streets in the dead of night, hunting down insurgents, shooting at the enemy and being shot at—I will never be the same.

Soldier: Texas Monthly July 2008

Its mysterious power may be a clue to a new theory about brains and bodies.

Annals of Medicine: The Itch

A new Alice Munro story.

Sally packed devilled eggs—something she usually hated to take on a picnic, because they were so messy.

Deep-Holes

In this issue of the magazine, Paul Goldberger writes about Beijing’s changing skyline and the new headquarters of the Chinese television network CCTV. “In Beijing, the latest trend is architecture that will force the world to pay attention, and the result is a striking, unmistakably twenty-first-century city,” Goldberger writes.

Here is a portfolio of photographs by Iwan Baan.

Forbidden Cities

Isabella Rossellini, well known as a supermodel and movie star, is now making short films for mobile devices that illustrate the sex lives of dragonflies, earthworms and other creatures. But they are not like standard nature shows. In these films, which she researched with the help of Wildlife Conservation Society experts, she not only details unusual aspects of the critters’ biology but also dresses up as them and mimics sex with paper cutouts. We asked Rossellini what she hopes to accomplish with the films on invertebrate love, dubbed Green Porno, which premiered May 5 on the Sundance Channel’s Web site.

Green Porno: SciAm Talks Insect Sex with Isabella Rossellini: Scientific American