Gaddafi's decision is winning the White House a rare measure of editorial approval ... Others find the new demonstration of American influence worrisome.

Pundits in Pakistan worry that the south Asian country will be next.

"Baghdad has become symbolical of the pyramid of skulls that were raised by conquerors in the past to terrify nations into submission. Few nations will be willing to defy Washington's edicts and will obsequiously fulfill even the most demeaning tasks."

Pakistan's military president agreed Wednesday to step down as head of the armed forces by the end of 2004.

Last Sunday night, a powerful bomb here came within seconds of killing the military ruler of Pakistan, an impoverished, nuclear-armed country that sits near the epicenter of the American-led campaign against terrorism. Who would have succeeded the president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, and taken control of the country's dozens of nuclear bombs is unclear.

Analysts contend the use of C-4, along with the sophistication of the attack, suggests involvement by Al Qaeda.

"[The army is] the most powerful political force. It has really overwhelmed the state and society."

Based on interviews with eighteen prominent scientists and public policymakers from around the globe, A Parliament of Science provides a rich overview of the challenges, promises, and perils of science and technology in the twenty-first century.

What can we hope for?

What must we fear?

How can scientists, civil society, and politicians work together to harness science and technology into a power for the good of all humanity?

Those interviewed speak candidly of their passions, hopes, and concerns as they explore the scientific and policy implications of the major issues of our time, including sustainability, politics, cloning, ethics, global climate change, the digital divide, and mass extinction of biological species.

Radiant Cool may be the first novel of ideas that actually breaks new theoretical ground, as Dan Lloyd uses a neo-noir (neuro-noir?), hard-boiled framework to propose a new theory of consciousness.

Radiant Cool is a real metaphysical thriller--based in current philosophy of mind -- and a genuine scientific detective story -- revealing a new interpretation of functional brain imagining.

In Understanding Me, Stephanie McLuhan and David Staines have brought together nineteen previously unpublished lectures and interviews either by or with Marshall McLuhan. They have in common the informality and accessibility of the spoken word. In every case, the text has been transcribed from the original audio, film, or videotape of McLuhan's actual appearances.

This is not what McLuhan wrote but what he said -- the spoken words of a surprisingly accessible public man. He comes across as outrageous, funny, perplexing, stimulating, and provocative.

Under the teeming metropolis that is present-day New York City lie the buried remains of long-lost worlds.

The remnants of nineteenth-century New York reveal much about its inhabitants and neighborhoods, from fashionable Washington Square to the notorious Five Points. Underneath there are traces of the Dutch and English colonists who arrived in the area in the seventeenth century, as well as of the Africans they enslaved. And beneath all these layers is the land that Native Americans occupied for hundreds of generations from their first arrival eleven thousand years ago.

"In this engaging book, social critic Laura Gurak looks past the boxes and wires of the Internet to explore the human side of the digital revolution."

Interweaving anecdotes from his own life and research with imagined dialogues between historical figures -- including Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein, Francis Crick, and Steven Pinker -- Aleksander leads readers toward an understanding of consciousness.

He shows not only how the latest work with artificial neural systems suggests that an artificial form of consciousness is possible but also that its design would clarify many of the puzzles surrounding the murky concept of consciousness itself.

Our hero is Turing, an interactive tutoring program and namesake (or virtual emanation?) of Alan Turing, World War II code breaker and father of computer science.

In this unusual novel, Turing's idiosyncratic version of intellectual history from a computational point of view unfolds in tandem with the story of a love affair involving Ethel, a successful computer executive, Alexandros, a melancholy archaeologist, and Ian, a charismatic hacker.