Tony is the new Raymond.

If you pity a show that débuts on HBO after an episode of “The Sopranos,” because of the inevitable comparisons (though things have worked out all right for “Deadwood” in that regard), you’ve got to weep for a show that débuts after the first episode of a new season of “The Sopranos,” especially when viewers have been waiting for that new season for almost two years and know that it marks the beginning of the end of the series. That’s the situation in which “Big Love,” a series about a polygamous marriage in present-day Utah, found itself a couple of Sundays ago; HBO thought either that “Big Love” was so strong that it wouldn’t suffer when juxtaposed with What May Be the Greatest Television Show Ever—or that it was so anemic that it would need “The Sopranos” to carry it. Whatever the case, it’s hard to imagine that anyone who watched the season première of “The Sopranos,” with its devastating, mind-blowing ending, was in any shape to watch anything afterward.

TRIPLE THREAT

Despite recent riots in Baghdad, Robert Kaplan, the author of "The Coming Normalcy?", credits one U.S. military brigade with restoring order to Iraq's second-largest city

Inside the House of Cards

Today's Paul Reveres of "peak oil" aren't waiting for Washington to save us from apocalypse. They're already planting gardens and drafting city plans for the days when oil is gone.

The oil is going, the oil is going!

"This has created a market opportunity that is unprecedented for Apple if they can execute."

Microsoft Delays Operating System Till 2007

Saddam Hussein's foreign minister was paid for information he supplied to the Central Intelligence Agency, through the French intelligence agency, that raised questions about the scale of Iraq's weapons programs, former intelligence officials said Tuesday.

Iraqi Official, Paid by CIA, Gave Account of Weapons

Though critics have made a number of telling points against the Bush administration’s conduct of the Iraq war, the most serious problems facing Iraq and its American occupiers—criminal anarchy and lawlessness, a raging insurgency and a society divided into rival and antagonistic groups—were virtually inevitable consequences that flowed from the act of war itself. Military and civilian planners were culpable in failing to plan for certain tasks, but the most serious problems had no good solution. Even so, there are lessons to be learned. These include the danger that the imperatives of “force protection” may sacrifice the broader political mission of U.S. forces and the need for skepticism over the capacity of outsiders to develop the skill and expertise required to reconstruct decapitated states.

What Went Wrong In Iraq

Informed by unparalleled access to still–secret documents, interviews with top field commanders, and a review of the military’s own internal after–action reports, Cobra II is the definitive chronicle of America’s invasion and occupation of Iraq—a conflict that could not be lost but one that the United States failed to win decisively. From the Pentagon to the White House to the American command centers in the field, the book reveals the inside story of how the war was actually planned and fought. Drawing on classified United States government intelligence, it also provides a unique account of how Saddam Hussein and his high command developed and prosecuted their war strategy.

Written by Michael R. Gordon, the chief military correspondent for The New York Times, who spent the war with the Allied land command, and Bernard E. Trainor, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general and former director of the National Security Program at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Cobra II traces the interactions among the generals, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and President George W. Bush. It dramatically reconstructs the principal battles from interviews with those who fought them, providing reliable accounts of the clashes waged by conventional and Special Operations forces. It documents with precision the failures of American intelligence and the mistakes in administering postwar Iraq.

Unimpeachably sourced, Cobra II describes how the American rush to Baghdad provided the opportunity for the virulent insurgency that followed. The brutal aftermath in Iraq was not inevitable and was a surprise to the generals on both sides; Cobra II provides the first authoritative account as to why. It is a book of enduring importance and incisive analysis—a comprehensive account of the most reported yet least understood war in American history.

Cobra II : The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In a book that's all but impossible to put down, science journalist Seife (Alpha & Omega) explains how the concepts of information theory have begun to unlock many of the mysteries of the universe, from quantum mechanics to black holes and the likely end of the universe. Seife presents a compelling case that information is the one constant that ties all of science, indeed all of the universe, together. His skill with language permits him to do what many have tried and few have accomplished—making complicated concepts of quantum mechanics accessible to the average reader. Seife demonstrates how quantum oddities so alien to classical physics actually are consistent with the same physical laws that govern the world we see. For example, the fact that entangled particles half a universe away can instantaneously communicate with one another (what Einstein called "spooky action" at a distance), apparently violating the law that nothing can exceed the speed of light, can be understood through information theory. Seife takes all of this to a most bizarre, but logical, conclusion reached by many cosmologists: the universe as we know it is but one of an infinite number of universes, all brought into being through information transfer.

From Booklist
Bit by bit, cutting-edge physicists are acclimatizing themselves to the notion that the universe is like a computer, its events akin to information processing. Seife treks through the thinking that implies humanity's final demotion from emanation of godhead to binary digits. An excellent popular science author (Alpha and Omega, 2003), Seife opens with the history of thermodynamics and the equation of entropy. This equation is the foundation of information theory, which was formalized in 1948 by Claude Shannon, who also coined the term bit. The author then delves into why the idea of the universe-as-information appeals to theorists, resting his presentation on the weirdness of wave-particle duality. Challenging but rewarding fare for attentive general science readers, who might also be interested in Programming the Universe (2006), by information theorist Seth Lloyd. Gilbert Taylor

Decoding the Universe: How the New Science of Information Is Explaining Everything in the Cosmos, from Our Brains to Black Holes

The New Argonauts extends Saxenian's pioneering research into the dynamics of competition in Silicon Valley. The book brings a fresh perspective to the way that technology entrepreneurs build regional advantage in order to compete in global markets. Scholars, policymakers, and business leaders will benefit from Saxenian's firsthand research into the investors and entrepreneurs who return home to start new companies while remaining tied to powerful economic and professional communities in the United States.

For Americans accustomed to unchallenged economic domination, the fast-growing capabilities of China and India may seem threatening. But as Saxenian convincingly displays in this pathbreaking book, the Argonauts have made America richer, not poorer.

The New Argonauts

Mother Jones
"...a forceful analysis."

TomDispatch.com
"Danner covers the British document in great and fascinating details."

The Secret Way to War : The Downing Street Memo and the Iraq War's Buried History