In “Why?” (Princeton; $24.95), the Columbia University scholar Charles Tilly sets out to make sense of our reasons for giving reasons. In the tradition of the legendary sociologist Erving Goffman, Tilly seeks to decode the structure of everyday social interaction, and the result is a book that forces readers to reëxamine everything from the way they talk to their children to the way they argue about politics.

HERE’S WHY, by MALCOLM GLADWELL | The New Yorker

There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be “wiped off the map.” Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. “That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?’ ”

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was “absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb” if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.”

Hersh on Iran | New Yorker

Biology was his field, but in his mid-twenties he became a research assistant at what he described as a "kind of clearinghouse for scientific literature" in many disciplines coming into Poland from around the world. Meanwhile, he was reading widely in literature and philosophy, and he embarked on a career as a writer of science fiction.

Stanislaw Lem 1921-2006

"What we're witnessing now in Europe—I would point to the riots in France, the [French] "no" vote of the [European] constitution, the efforts of countries to protect their national industries from takeover by companies from other EU nations—is a quite worrisome nationalization of political and economic life in Europe," says Kupchan, senior fellow and director for European Studies. "And it's taking place in a way that I think is presenting Europe with its greatest political crisis, probably since the end of World War II."

French Demonstrations Symptoms of ‘Greatest Political Crisis’ in Europe Since World War II

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Tools to protect your privacy on the Internet go just so far, and the businesses that dominate it have no incentive to let them go any farther

Tinfoil Underwear

Without the pretense of objectivity, the fundamental journalist's obligation of factual accuracy would remain. Opinion journalism brings new ethical obligations as well. These can be summarized in two words: intellectual honesty. Are you writing or saying what you really think? Have you tested it against the available counterarguments? Will you stand by an expressed principle in different situations, when it leads to an unpleasing conclusion? Are you open to new evidence or an argument that might change your mind? Do you retain at least a tiny, healthy sliver of a doubt about the argument you choose to make?

Much of today's opinion journalism, especially on TV, is not a great advertisement for the notion that American journalism could be improved by more opinion and less effort at objectivity. But that's because the conditions under which much opinion journalism is practiced today make honesty harder, and doubt practically impossible.

The Twilight Of Objectivity

Now, more than ever, the lines of technology, freedom, and privacy are colliding. Governments continue their surveillance of citizens in the name of security, huge databases of information on every aspect of individuals’ lives are created, and debates are underway about controlling content. Yet, while technology is at the epicenter of these profound developments, technology also has the potential to advance the civil society.

With the US Capitol as a backdrop, CFP2006 in Washington,DC will explore our collective future as technology collides with LIFE, LIBERTY, & DIGITAL RIGHTS. CFP2006 will explore issues that impact us all, wherever we are, around the world.

CFP 2006 Welcome

From Publishers Weekly

The flip side of America's worship of novelty is its addiction to waste, a linkage illuminated in this fascinating historical study. Historian Slade surveys the development of disposability as a consumer convenience, design feature, economic stimulus and social problem, from General Motors' 1923 introduction of annual model changes that prodded consumers to trade in perfectly good cars for more stylish updates, to the modern cell-phone industry, where fashion-driven "psychological obsolescence" compounds warp-speed technological obsolescence to dramatically reduce product life-cycles. He also explores the debate over "planned obsolescence"-decried by social critics as an unethical affront to values of thrift and craftsmanship, but defended as a Darwinian spur to innovation by business intellectuals who further argued that "wearing things out does not produce prosperity, but buying things does." Slade's even-handed analysis acknowledges both manufacturers' manipulative marketing ploys and consumers' ingrained love of the new as motors of obsolescence, which he considers an inescapable feature of a society so focused on progress and change. His episodic treatment sometimes meanders into too-obscure byways, and his alarm at the prospect of thrown-away electronic gadgets overflowing landfills and poisoning the water supply seems overblown. But Slade's lively, insightful look at a pervasive aspect of America's economy and culture make this book a keeper.

Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America