1991. On a train through Yugoslavia two young Americans faced one another across a table. Karine had a braid that wove its way down her spine, and that she played hypnotically around her shoulders as she talked. Kathleen was a petite, voluptuous chainsmoker with an acerbic wit and a laugh that started from deep within her notable body. Kendal, my Brazilian schoolmate, and I were supposed to be hitchhiking to Turkey, but a blizzard on the Austrian autobahn had intervened: the BMW that had given us a lift had pinballed off the guardrails on a slick, sweeping curve, and we had left the driver dumbstruck beside his crumpled vehicle and hitched a ride to the nearest village while the wet spring snows cloaked the valley. The next day the roads into Yugoslavia were closed, so we took the train. We met Karine and Kathleen soon after it left Belgrade. They were strippers from Seattle, journeying across Europe. To two young men in the midst of an adventure, they were catnip. Their next stop: Mount Olympus. We changed our plans.

The four of us disembarked late at night and made our way via taxi to the nearest beach. I put up my tent by headlamp while Karine and Kendal laid out their sleeping bags on the sand. When I unzipped the door, Kathleen threw her bag inside. By morning, we were a couple.

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Rizwan Manji is a self-described "dark-skinned, so Indian" actor - one who, even if he chose a stage name like Chris, would still be "the Indian guy." But when his new show, Outsourced, premieres on September 23, he will be in the company of many other Indian actors on a comedy set in the Southeast Asian nation. NBC has enough faith in the show to give it the coveted 9:30 Thursday night slot, following hit shows 30 Rock and The Office and forming a triumvirate of workplace-based programs. Manji is enthusiastic about the new show, on which he has a leading role, saying, "We're telling real stories of real people, and it's very funny."

He rejects fears expressed by some critics that the show is racist. "NBC has screened Outsourced for many people in the Indian community, and the response has been surprisingly positive," says Rizwan Manji. "Indian people are okay with laughing at ourselves." The new show is based on the 2006 film of the same name, and follows an American novelty sales manager played by Ben Rappaport who is sent to India when his entire department is outsourced. Rizwan is the ambitious and manipulative Rajiv Gidwani, assistant manager of the Mid America Novelties call center in India, who aspires to take over the top job.

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As a former intelligence officer who has worked in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Gulf States, I've been watching the controversy over the Ground Zero Mosque with growing alarm. Al Qaeda's goal for the 9/11 attacks was not only to destroy the American economy, but also to polarize Muslims and non-Muslims. Bin Laden understood that if Americans could be made to fear and despise Arabs, a wave of Muslim-bashing would ensue in this country which would ultimately reinforce Muslims' belief that the "Zionist-Crusader" coalition was accelerating its long-held goal of destroying Islam. This belief would make Muslims set aside what Bin Laden's 1998 Fatwa called "minor differences" among themselves and unite in a holy war against US-Israeli aggression.

My many conversations with Muslims in the Middle East have convinced me that Al Qaeda's 9/11 strategy is working. Even non-violent Muslims, who constitute the vast majority of adherents to the faith, suspect that, at its core, America hates Islam as much as it hates Al Qaeda. The moderate Muslims I know believe that equating Al Qaeda to Islam makes no more sense than equating the Ku Klux Klan with Christianity; yet the majority of Americans persist in lumping the two together. Widespread opposition in America to the Ground Zero mosque simply reinforces the suspicion in the Islamic world that America 's anger at 9/11 extends far beyond the Muslims who carried out the act to Muslims everywhere.

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Steve Hermann's mid-century, Trousdale Estate masterpiece has hit the Beverly Hills housing market with a listing price of $10.9 million. A self-taught designer turned developer to the stars, Hermann has worked on houses that sold to Christina Aguilera, Courtney Cox and David Arquette, Byron Allen, and Frankie Muniz. Real estate agents still talk about the record breaking $12.6 million sale of Hermann's Nightingale Drive property to Oracle heiress Megan Ellison.

610 Cole Place has undergone an extensive three-year rebuild under Hermann's direction. The property is private and located in a desirable Trousdale cul-de-sac near Mulholland Drive. It features four bedrooms, four bathrooms, a sunken living room, a twelve-foot clearstory ceiling, Terrazzo floors, and a thirty-seat home theater. The home has been upgraded with Boffi, Poliform, Vantage, and BTicino brands throughout. The most defining element of this home is that the structure is built predominately out of glass to frame the expansive city views and natural light.

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During my travels I have had conversations with many people around the country. Often they are conversations about wealthy people and people with limited financial resources. I share my opinion on how people become wealthy: most of the wealthy people in this country sacrificed spending to take advantage of moneymaking opportunities. It is unlikely that you can increase your wealth in our generally capitalistic system without limiting spending. It is true that spending satisfies your immediate desires, but it does not necessarily enhance your wealth (depending on what you buy). The "work and spend" syndrome (commonly called "living from payday to payday") must be overcome. This is the first step toward increasing wealth.

Some time ago, someone said that if all the money that wealthy people had was given to poor people, eventually the wealthy people would get all the money back. This is perhaps true today. The statement assumes that poor people, knowing their tendency to consume or spend all their money, would in fact spend the money on something that the formerly wealthy people would have discovered to sell to them. We as individuals, especially those who are poor, must defy this scenario. We must learn to keep a portion of what we earn. We must save. Any portion of earnings or income not committed to the purchase of necessities (food, shelter, transportation, insurance and utilities) is available for saving.

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Last week, I wrote a letter to Cindy Mann, who leads state services for Medicare and Medicaid, calling for a comment period and a public hearing before Gov. Jan Brewer cuts almost 300,000 people from our state Medicaid program. Brewer has been talking about doing this for months, and unfortunately the Department of Health and Human Services isn't stopping her. I consider this nothing less than a war on Arizona's working families. Before we throw low income neighbors out of their hospital beds, I thought we should at least have a chance to hear why this is happening. Read my letter and decide for yourself.

Ms. Mann has said she's considering my suggestion, and the people of Arizona hope to hear some good news in the near future. In the meantime, I've continued to speak up against these cuts -- which are being made to cover state Republicans' passage of a $538 billion tax cut package that favors their corporate friends -- and work on other issues of importance to Arizona. I was content to wait for Ms. Mann's decision.

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In the life of a reader--and by a reader I mean someone who has always read for pleasure--it is doubtful that any books have as much impact, in the end, as the ones we read as children. Though my memories of their plots and characters are foggy, the stunningly illustrated hardcover books by E. Nesbit that graced the shelves in my neighborhood library in Queens--The Enchanted Castle, The Bastables--contributed in some essential way to the person I was to become; and to this day I am heartbroken that soon after my family moved, the library sold these exquisite books for $2 each in their annual booksale in order to make room for more DVDs and books by R.L. Stine. ("No one reads E. Nesbit anymore," a friend said to me in defense of the library, and that is probably true--how can anyone read E. Nesbit if she has vanished from the libraries?)

The dreamlike memories I have of those foundational, mythically important books resurfaced when I first began A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book. The first 50 or so pages of the book were almost like therapy, transporting me back to the magic I thought had been irretrievably lost with childhood, and to the feelings associated with it--but this time, from an adult perspective, and with an awareness of the dark currents tugging just beneath the surface.

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Olive Kitteridge is a big woman: she is described thus many times throughout the short story collection/novel hybrid that is "Olive Kitteridge," which won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Olive lives in the tiny waterfront town of Crosby, Maine, with a population so small that everyone knows everyone else and their business; where people tend to do what is expected of them--raise a family, settle down with steady jobs, and limit their aspirations to the boundaries of the town.

In her inability to feel content with her life, with the "blackness" that accompanies her through her household tasks and is often expressed through anger and even cruelty, Olive seems, in a way, to be too big for the town that has always been her home. It seems clear that her marriage, like most of the marriages in Crosby, was determined by the limited number of choices available in the town, when she was too young to understand the consequences. Yet such is the narrowness of her experience that Olive seems utterly unaware of her own rage--or at least of its source--and it is this tension between the character and her surroundings, as well as within herself, that is at least a part of what makes "Olive Kitteridge" so compelling--nearly impossible to put down. Yet I did succeed in putting the book down, on many occasions, because I wanted it to last.

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Jefferson's Monticello garden was a Revolutionary American garden. One wonders if anyone else had ever before assembled such a collection of vegetable novelties, culled from virtually every western culture known at the time, then disseminated by Jefferson with the persistence of a religious reformer, a seedy evangelist. Here grew the earth's melting pot of immigrant vegetables: an Ellis Island of introductions, the whole world of hardy economic plants: 330 varieties of eighty-nine species of vegetables and herbs, 170 varieties of the finest fruit varieties known at the time. The Jefferson legacy supporting small farmers, vegetable cuisine, and sustainable agriculture is poignantly topical today.

Thomas Jefferson liked to eat vegetables, which "constitute my principal diet," and his role in linking the garden with the kitchen into a cuisine defined as "half French, half Virginian" was a pioneering concept in the history of American food. The Monticello kitchen, as well as the table at the President's House in Washington, expressed a seething broil of new, culinary traditions based on these recent garden introductions: French fries, peanuts, Johnny-cakes, gumbo, mashed potatoes, sweet potato pudding, sesame seed oil, fried eggplant, perhaps such American icons as potato chips, tomato catsup, and pumpkin pie. The western traditions of gardening - in England, France, Spain, the Mediterranean - were blended into a dynamic and unique Monticello cookery through the influence of emerging colonial European, native American, slave, Creole and southwestern vegetables.

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"To beef, or not to beef - that is the question..." Okay, so Shakespeare is twitching a little in his grave right now; but punning aside, this is a valid and hotly-debated question in food and nutrition circles, and invites discourse in the environmental arena as well. I could produce reams of prose with all the pros and cons and ramifications and caveats and arguments about the eating of red meat, and still not begin to encompass the scope of the topic; so let's just concern ourselves with a quick review of the undisputed nutritional aspects, and learn why small amounts of lean organic beef can very rightly be part of a healthy and beneficial diet. Of course organic is the only way to go here, as it will ensure that you are getting no residue of hormones, pesticides and antibiotics in your meat.

First of all, let us address portion size. A nice big one-pound porterhouse steak may dazzle you, but it's a big no-no - unless you're sharing it with a couple of other people! Four ounces is the recommended amount to be consumed in any given meal - that's about the size of a pack of playing cards. And that amount will still furnish you with 64% of your daily protein requirement, along with other nutrients necessary to enhance cardiovascular health and to aid in the prevention of certain cancers.

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One of the most underreported stories of the recent global financial meltdown was the role played in the crisis by housing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and their subsequent and continued government bailout. To date, the federal government has purchased nearly $143 billion in stock in these two companies, with pending requests from Fannie Mae to Treasury to purchase an additional $1.5 billion and from Freddie Mac for $1.8 billion. This is fast approaching the combined government and Federal Reserve bailout of AIG. Once these transactions are completed, the American taxpayers will hold $150.2 billion in stock from these two companies. And, this is not expected to be the sum total of these efforts, as the Obama Administration stated in December of 2009 that it will extend an unlimited line of credit to these "too big to fail" behemoths for three more years.

So what do the American people get for investing $86 billion and owning an 80 percent share in Fannie Mae? Have many millions of homeowners who are delinquent on their Fannie mortgages been helped? Has Fannie devised a method or a path to prevent the estimated 13 million foreclosures that will occur over the next five years?

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Finally, the family film we've been waiting for this summer. Okay, that's an obvious joke, sorry. Animal Kingdom is about a family, but one that, if you're lucky, you'll never have as next door neighbors. Set in crime-ridden Melbourne, Australia, the film focuses on the Cody clan, a criminal unit that's fallen on hard times.

Animal Kingdom is presented mostly through the eyes of Joshua -- aka "J" (James Frecheville)- a teenager who's just lost his mother to drugs and who's now fallen into the loving, poisonous arms of his grandmother "Smurf" (Jacki Weaver), and her extended family, including kin, Darren (Luke Ford), Craig (Sullivan Stapleton) and "Pope" (Ben Mendelsohn), and partner-in-crime -- and the most level-headed soul in the lot -- "Baz" (Joel Edgerton -- whom we met earlier this year as a similarly level-headed arsonist in The Square). And while the film follows J as he deals with the moral quandaries of living in the midst of thieves and murderers, the show really belongs to Weaver and Mendelsohn, she bringing a candied malignancy to Grandma Smurf, he limning a chilling portrayal of the kind of sociopath who, just by instinct, most sane people know to cut a wide swath around.

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As a little kid I always thought that church was cool. I liked the choir at my hometown Episcopal church, and going up to get wafers and juice. But the Scripture reading, prayers and sermons always seemed really boring. As I got older, I began to not feel God in church. Then I was forced to go to confirmation classes once a week as a teenager, for an entire year. The weird priest made those classes excruciatingly boring and tedious -- so bad that the day after my confirmation, I announced I was an atheist, and I never went to church again. I unconfirmed myself immediately, and lost my Christianity in a big way. I just thought being a Christian was irrelevant.

Before my return to graduate school (to Union Theological Seminary in New York) a decade ago, I went 30-something years attending various eastern meditation groups. I'd do my yoga, chant mantras and ruminate on the nothingness of existence. The deeper I got, the closer to myself I became, the emptier I felt. Yet I loved God, although the God-concept didn't fit with my yogic practices. The Jesus Christ concept really didn't fit, and I spent decades thinking the "Jesus freaks" were real losers, or even brain-washed. I couldn't stand the proselytizing and guilt-tripping that Christianity seemed to offer. I told people, "I don't need a mediator between me and God."

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Few of us are surprised when the young and famous -- à la Reese Witherspoon, Justin Timberlake and Renee Zellwegger -- break up. But when celebrated marriages weather decades of ups and downs and then dissolve? Well, those still have the ability to stun, and can even lead to second looks at our own relationships.

It seems like eons ago when Al and Tipper Gore announced the dissolution of their 40-year marriage. At that time, the blogosphere was filled with raw emotions, ranging from alarm ("this was the last marriage we thought was in trouble") to cynicism ("can any relationship last that long?"). Now, less than a year later, the Internet is buzzing with the news of another iconic marriage on the brink of falling apart. Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife of 25 years, Maria Shriver, announced their separation last week, and once again reports suggest that few (at least among those who do not know them) saw it coming. One writer on The Huffington Post said, "Unlike so many political marriages which have been marred by scandal as of late, the union of Schwarzenegger, 63, and Shriver, 55, seemed rock solid."

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Last week, the House of Representatives passed the latest in a series of extreme, but effectively symbolic, anti-choice measures. Last week's contribution, HR 3, nicknamed "Stupak on Steroids," a bill that if signed into law would eliminate abortion coverage for millions of women paying for insurance out of their own pockets, passed with the support of all House Republicans and sixteen Democrats. HR 3 piggy-backed on another symbolic vote to defund Planned Parenthood and eliminate all Title X family planning funding.

What happened to the Republicans' laser focus on the economy? Why is the House's GOP majority putting in this big effort to show how much they dislike women having reproductive choice -- rather than say, spending their time creating jobs or finding meaningful solutions to the budget deficit? The first reason is clearly to pander to a far-right base at the expense of American women. But the second reason is that sometimes failed efforts to implement extremism on the federal level spawn often successful copycat legislation in the states. And that is exactly what is happening with these bills to strip away women's rights.

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"Why did you get married at this stage of your life?" asked recently divorced Sue of recently married Marilyn. Marilyn went on to explain that she's a very traditional woman and felt it was a more moral way to live. To which Sue again pressed "but you trade off a sense of your feeling of morality for potential financial problems. You mentioned that you both have children from former marriages and both have assets". "Oh, I'm not worried about that as we have a verbal agreement between us" exclaimed Marilyn. And so it went on until Sue realized that it was a fruitless conversation as Marilyn could not and would not entertain the thought that there could be/would be any problems in her new and exciting married life. For her, this was not so much about money but her values and sense of morality. They'd work out the finances.

Now Sue knew better, she thought, as she just recently experienced a brutal divorce with her second husband whom she thought adored her and would always have her best interest at heart. Ah, but life has its unexpected twists and turns and that was before Sue decided she'd like to become more active in her community and share her talents with the non-profit world. She could never have anticipated that this decision would have had such a significantly negative impact on her marriage.

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Ever since the midterm congressional election last year, Republicans have been repeating the phrase "The American People" as often as they can, as a sort of mantra. This isn't all that unusual, since politicians claiming a popular mandate is par for the course in the political game. But Republicans are exhibiting a rather large amount of overreach when it comes to claiming what "The American People" really want the government to do (and not to do). This is going to be on full display in the coming weeks, as the budget fights heat up (finishing this year's budget, raising the debt ceiling, and tackling next year's budget). Most Republicans, especially those of the Tea Party persuasion, are firmly convinced they've got a sweeping mandate to slash federal spending in all sorts of areas. But they may be surprised by what the public really thinks about these issues, and what they do and do not support. Helpfully, a new poll put out by the Wall Street Journal and NBC shows a clear list of priorities for what the people really want to see cut, and what they don't.

The answers, however, may come as a complete surprise to the inside-the-Beltway set -- both politicians and the mainstream media. Because it is not what we've been told, by both Republicans and their media enablers, in recent months.

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Is the Arab world headed for chaos or democracy? The U.S. has been wrong so many times, it's hard to know who to trust in these matters. But some trends are clear, at least. Usually societies that enjoy economic growth also show increased happiness. In the U.S. we've seen that equation hold true, especially in reverse. Economic woes reflect personal discontent. But by this measure, the uprising in Egypt is something of a paradox. In Egypt the GDP has been rising in recent years, yet the population has become discontented, and the rate of their discontent has been sharp. Only the top 20 percent of Egyptians think that their lives are increasing in well-being.

This is according to the Gallup organization, one of the few sources of reliable, objective information in the Arab region. Gallup classifies respondents worldwide as "thriving," "suffering," or "struggling" based on how they rate their current and future lives. Since 2005, the number of Egyptians who describe themselves as "thriving" has declined by 18 percent; in Tunisia a similar sharp decline occurred, down 10 percent in the last three years. The picture is of a society where the top elites grab most of the prosperity -- along with the sense of well-being that goes with it -- while the vast bulk of the population feels shut out and deprived.

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It's wonderful that Members of the House of Representatives are preparing to hear a reading of the Constitution of the United States. I would enthusiastically echo the hopes of Dahlia Lithwick and Garrett Epps that close attention to such a performance might prompt at least some of our constitutional fundamentalists to appreciate that the document they revere is both imperfect and complex. Things they hope to find there will be missing. Things they wish were not there are explicit. Readers of Dahlia's and Garrett's essays will find numerous examples to mull over.

I thought, therefore, that I would limit my post today to a single question: After the reading of the Constitution, will all members of Congress who are military reserve officers or who hold appointments as retired military officer resign their posts? I ask because, Section 6, Paragraph 2, of Article I states that "no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office." It's called the Incompatability Clause. To hold a commission in the armed forces reserves or an appointment as retired military officer is to hold "Office under the United States." So, while in Congress, don't Reserve officers and retired military officers have to resign their executive branch positions?

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At this critical juncture in geopolitics, Uganda has made great strides to fulfill both its domestic and regional commitments. The Museveni administration continues to use the resources at its disposal to make the best of what is a rather debilitating situation in rural Uganda; the government maintains pressure on the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) to secure a ceasefire while combating lawlessness and extremism in Somalia. As Uganda assumes the rotating Presidency of the United Nations Security Council, the world looks to Kampala as a friend in fighting disease, poverty and extremism and meeting the goals it has promised to meet.

For many years I have taken the lead and have been an integral part of efforts to combat said extremism and restore peace to northern Uganda after over 20 years of LRA war. During my time as Minister of State for Pacification of North Uganda, I advocated a peaceful resolution to the conflict. I have continued to do so in all subsequent local and indeed international positions. With a relative easing of hostilities in the northern region, I aspire to continue my efforts to create an increasingly developed and sustainable society in the Acholi sub region, focusing closely specifically on the Amuru district. I believe I possess a strong desire to serve my people and facilitate the transition to a better future; one of complete economic, social and political stability that sets an example.

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Actor Edward Norton is unhappy. He is miffed because although he had starred as The Hulk in an earlier movie, he was not cast as the great green hero in a follow-up film. Cheer up, Ed! You've landed an even greener role: United Nations' Biodiversity Ambassador. As the former botanist for New York City, I know first-hand the importance of biodiversity. In fact, I'll be hosting international diplomats on a tour of New York's nature this fall for the UN's Biodiversity Summit. Since we're going to be colleagues, I'd like to help you prepare for your new role. Here are some things you should know.

Urban nature exists. Most people embrace Kurt Vonnegut's description of the Big Apple as a "Skyscraper National Park". While accurate at 51st Street and 7th Avenue, it obscures the fact that there is bona fide nature in the five boroughs, even in Manhattan. New York City has more open space than Los Angeles and Chicago combined. These 53,000 acres include towering forests, vibrant marshes and grassland meadows. The world looks increasingly like New York, with more people now living in urban settings than rural areas. The city's 8 million residents are drafting a blueprint for biodiversity from which global lessons can be learned.

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Via Realtor.com: The Studio City home that Neil Patrick Harris shared with partner David Burtka is now on the market for $1.59 million. The couple bought the home in 2007 for $1.5 million from actor Jack McGee (most recently in The Fighter 2010). In October 2010, the couple welcomed their twins Gideon Scott and Harper Grace into their home, making their family complete. Shelterpop reports on the renovations that Harris and Burtka put into the ranch-style home:

The pair did some much needed updating while living in the home. Harris remodeled the kitchen with rustic cabinetry and stainless steel appliances, and painted the ceiling beams in the living room black. Several rooms have been freshened up with white and neutral furniture and walls.

Neil Patrick Harris stars in CBS's How I Met Your Mother as Barney, a "confirmed bachelor" and playboy. The show has been running for six years and has just been renewed for another two seasons. His most recent films include Beastly, and he's set to star as himself in the upcoming sequel A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas.

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The news coming out of Afghanistan is endlessly fascinating! Grimly fascinating, some of it, like watching the proverbial slo-mo train wreck, but there are also the stories that make us shake our heads, roll our eyes and cry, "WTF??" and "OMFG!!" and "What were they thinking?"

Agence France Presse (AFP) reports that some leaked diplomatic cables reveal that American diplomats suggested trucking in Bollywood movie stars to Afghanistan to "bring attention to social issues there." The thinking - if it can be called that - was that the Afghans are bonkers for Bollywood films, and appearances by India's voluptuous leading ladies and their smoldering on-screen loverboys would somehow, ah...would somehow...(here's where the concept gets fuzzy)...lead to peace in Afghanistan? Of course if the Bollywood beauties did come to Afghanistan and perform in a sort of USO show, a la Ann-Margret and Bob Hope in Vietnam (that sure helped!), they would be unrecognizable under the burqas which they would no doubt be forced to don, since it would be impossible to pixillate their cleavages and bare bellies as is done on TV. Then the punch line: the diplomats touted this scheme as part of India's "soft power" assistance in Afghanistan. "Soft" seems the wrong adjective for the hordes of sex-starved young Afghan men who watch Bollywood films.

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Feckless is not a term normally used to describe a strategy that involves wars spanning decades that cost trillions of dollars accompanied by the creation of a worldwide network of bases and outposts. Yet it is appropriately applied to the mindless exercise in stealth empire building that the United States is pursuing. Careless, irresponsible, lacking in clear purpose, no logical links between supposed ends and actual means. That fits what we are doing to a tee. The "we" refers to the nation at large, the Obama administration and its Bush predecessor in particular, and the community of foreign policy thinkers that orbit it. It embraces our follow-the-leader European allies as well.

The events in and around last week's NATO summit in Lisbon are emblematic of the backhanded way that America's historic project habitually is treated. We learn of a firm commitment to be militarily engaged in Afghanistan at least through 2014 via a public announcement by Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Washington's latest man in Brussels. Suddenly the touted pledges about a 2011 drawdown are eclipsed. The explanation, such as it is, is conveyed to the American people, and the world, via a short Obama op ed in the International Herald Tribune. It goes unremarked -- as doubtless the White House intended. For the basic questions of what we are doing there and elsewhere in the region never have been addressed -- or even publicly recognized.

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Where in the world would you find Karen Armstrong in a room with 2,000 opinionated Muslims... all enjoying a lively discussion about tolerance, compassion, and religion? At the Karachi Literature Festival. Yes, Karachi. As in Karachi, Pakistan... the city where this week's headlines include "Tribal elder's house blown up," "Schoolteachers block road in protest," and "Relatives thrash doctors after 10 year-old girl dies." Is there any space for intellectual discussion in this city?

The answer is a resounding "Yes!" Over 5,000 readers, writers, and book-lovers thronged to the Carlton Hotel on the coast of the Arabian Sea to mingle with Pakistan's leading authors. Noted religious historian and interfaith spokesperson Karen Armstrong lent her voice to the general message of the festival -- that intolerance thrives amidst ignorance. "We really know so little about one another. Diversity within oneself and among others should be appreciated, and we should be open to change," she said. And what better way to learn than through a book? Works of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, in both English and Urdu, were displayed on tables at the outdoor pavilion, while concurrent sessions with authors and journalists took place in the conference rooms throughout the hotel.

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Jared Lee Loughner's motives are obscure, but it's hard to disentangle the shooting of a Congresswoman, and the killing of a federal judge, a 9-year-old girl, and four other people from the political culture that it occurred in, an environment of exaggerated divisions, the demonization of opponents as socialists or traitors, and a lot of gun rhetoric, gun imagery, and ... guns. Almost certainly, history will tie the two together no matter what we learn about Loughner in the coming weeks. Political madness is a recurring strain American history in which, on some level, we all take part: "I shouted out/Who killed the Kennedys?/When after all/It was you and me."

So, this is a collective problem. Pinning blame won't really work, because we end up back in the workings of Loughner's mind, which we don't understand right now, and may never. We're probably not going to find some triggering phrase in all the millions of nasty political words spoken in the past couple of years, either. See Ken Silber's reasoned take on rhetoric. Clearly, for instance, Sarah Palin was not inciting violence with her "rifle sights" (or "surveyor's symbol") graphic, crass and obnoxious as it was. Sharron Angle, with her "Second Amendment remedies" quote, came right up to that line, however. But it's doubtful Loughner was paying much attention to a Nevada Senate race.

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I've received a number of questions and comments lately regarding the unique company culture at HubSpot, mainly because of our recent recognition by the Boston Business Journal as the number one best place to work (just ahead of Google!) and by the Boston Globe as the number four top workplace. The recognition resulting from these awards has tended to emphasize HubSpot's perks like free beer and no vacation policy, but that's only a snapshot.

At HubSpot, we are trying to create something I like to call a "post-modern culture," and believe it or not, this post-modern culture was inspired by the TV show Mad Men. The show is set in an advertising company 50 years ago, and it pokes fun at corporate culture in that era. While watching Mad Men, I couldn't help but wonder what a show might look like 50 years from today that poked fun at current working conditions and company culture. That led me to think a bit about what didn't make sense anymore given the realities of the Gen Y worker, broadband internet at home, constant connectivity via mobile devices, the modern market for hiring exceptional people, etc.

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After just doing a bang-up job on a little west coast swing built around LA's Fuck Yeah Fest and ending with the successfully packed Buddyhead + FYF presented show at the legendary Spaceland, AA Bondy is heading back out on the road this week. Starting next Tuesday, October 5th, Mr. Bondy will be touring down the east coast (most dates find him opening for his Fat Possum label-mates The Walkmen) before calling it a year, packing up and moving from Woodstock, New York to the capitol of the world (aka Los Angeles, California) and recording his third full length album! Which judging from the five or six new songs I heard him play live at those left-coast shows, it's promising to be his best effort yet. And I can honest say Mr. Bondy is not only one of the best lyricists of our time but he's also one of the most literate men in rock n' roll. A title which Noel Gallagher claims is held by none other than Morrissey, and I'm never one to argue with Noel.

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Perhaps the most nerve-wracking part of starting any new venture is the cold-calling. All the time invested in developing slides and talking points can either pay off or fall flat in a matter of minutes. I've never gotten as comfortable as I'd like to be with this process. Every time I find myself trying to generate new leads, my mind wanders back to a trip to India I made almost fifteen years earlier. I often think of an artisan who I never met in person, but who created a piece of art I still remember vividly. When we visited the home of a family friend, I complimented her on the mural outside her front entrance. It depicted a wonderful village scene, yet the colors were much more subdued and modern than similar works I had seen in my travels.

Our hostess proceeded to tell us about how she had met the artist at a local handicrafts show. He was from one of India's poorest states and did not speak the local language. Yet she was impressed with his work - enough to ask him if he would come to her home and create the mural. He reluctantly agreed, but shrugged when asked how much he would charge. When he arrived, he asked her for ideas or a picture of what he should paint. She wanted to respect his work and told him to surprise her.

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The "gun rights" absolutists are continuing their campaign to ensure that guns are carried into every corner of American society, with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal signing legislation to allows guns in places of worship, Arizona allowing the carrying of concealed weapons without a permit, and Utah giving out concealed carry licenses like candy to folks who have never set foot in the state. The madness is driven by the "more guns=less crime" malarkey that has become the mantra of the gun lobby.

The "more guns" argument goes like this. The world is neatly divided into good guys and bad guys. The bad guys will always have guns and will attack the good guys who are unarmed, but not the good guys who may be able to shoot back. "Criminals still prefer to prey on the weak," says former NRA President Sandy Froman, "and they don't like armed victims." According to this argument, the bad guys will be deterred from committing criminal acts by the fear that the good guys are carrying guns. In the fantasy world constructed by the "gun rights" crowd, this idea is taken as presumed truth. In the world we actually live in, it doesn't work so well.

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