... they have all experienced tensions in their personal lives, or were faced with deep and sustained crises of identity ...

... [they] frequently experience a tension between traditional [culture] ... and ... [contemporary] society. Extremism gives them an identity that allows them to rebel against both.

The op-ed author is right when he says, "None of this will be of much help ..."

Jihad is the new punk

Publishers Weekly Starred Review:

In this compelling and sober portrayal, Chebab, an intrepid Palestinian journalist (who was nearly blown up in 2002), explains how the highly organized and notoriously militant Islamic group Hamas was elected to head the Palestinian government in January 2006, to the surprise of much of the world. Having tracked Palestinian resistance for decades, Chebab gained extraordinary access to key players in Hamas, like Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the group's spiritual leader until his 2004 assassination, and political leader Dr. Abdul Aziz Al Rantisi, also assassinated that year. Along the way, he details the group's history, from the dawn of the first intifada in 1987 to the present day, and looks to the political and economic dilemmas that hang over the group's future. Most fascinating are hidden figures Chebab brings to light: like Yehia Ayyash, "the Engineer," who introduced the suicide bomb into Hamas's deadly repertoire; suicide-bomb hopefuls who claim that "martyrdom is like a dream"; and proud mothers like Umm Nidal, who has three (of six) sons who have died as suicide bombers. The book is likely to be recognized as among the most definitive and important accounts of this divisive organization, whose goal remains to "reclaim the whole of Palestine as it had been before 1948... and to dismantle the [Israeli] settlements."

Inside Hamas: The Untold Story of the Militant Islamic Movement

Nice to see they listened.

An article last Sunday on the potential impact of a world cyberwar misstated the main method of recent cyberattacks in Estonia. The method is known as distributed denial of service, not digital denial of service.

When Computers Attack

It's not that I don't have things to say, because on any day of the week, I usually have plenty to say about everything, it's just that do I have anything to say that all of you want to hear?

While we love Angelina and her classic Hollywood style any day of the week, we didn’t quite get the tan almond-toe pumps.

What's more, you only have to read the papers any day of the week to see that infidelity is a subject which preoccupies Britain.

It's not that the polygamy angle completely lost its allure, but ...

I don't care that the polygamy angle is supposed to provide us another example of the ways HBO pushes storytelling boundaries.

Seinfeld, promoting his new film Bee Movie, said of bees, "They have no crime, they have no drugs, they have no rape. A little rape, but it's not that bad."

"After the TV series, I didn't really want to do anything -- and I still don't," Seinfeld said Tuesday.

When Katzenberg asked Seinfeld, "Why bees?" the comic replied that he has long been impressed by their "organizational society."

Although the negative repercussions of an organizational society leap quickly to mind, the systemic consequences are not all negative.

In this way, the Artemis archetype represents a capacity for resisting the fall into 'Organization Man' (Whyte 1956) or the 'Organizational Society' (Presthus 1978), which uses patterns of rewards, sanctions and other inducements to achieve social conformity. Symbolic management (Berg 1986; Alvesson 1990) again represents an important ideological tool in the desire to inculcate images for social compliance and the internalization of corporate values and goals. The Artemis archetype, therefore, is important in the contemporary era for preserving individual integrity and difference.

It's not that prosecutors didn't know where Rico's body was -- it's in a landfill.

Roxanne Smith of the federal Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, D.C., said ... [ Read More (1.2k in body) ]

Google's magnetic pull on top Silicon Valley talent is showing signs of weakening.

By way of explanation, WSJ speaks of "a new generation of Internet start-ups" and stock options vesting. Among the recently departed are Bret Taylor and Jim Norris, both creators of Google Maps and Google Founders' Award recipients.

Google is on track to receive more than two million resumes in 2007.

You know you've reached big blue status when ...

Google has begun experimenting with the creation of offsite "skunkworks" operations ...

Start-Ups Make Inroads With Google's Work Force

"A lot of people have preconceptions about talking to the security guy. When you're talking to a Paranoid, it has a different feel."

At Yahoo, it pays to be paranoid

Sherry Turkle has a new book!

In Evocative Objects, Turkle collects writings by scientists, humanists, artists, and designers that trace the power of everyday things. These essays reveal objects as emotional and intellectual companions that anchor memory, sustain relationships, and provoke new ideas.

This volume's special contribution is its focus on everyday riches: the simplest of objects--an apple, a datebook, a laptop computer--are shown to bring philosophy down to earth. The poet contends, "No ideas but in things." The notion of evocative objects goes further: objects carry both ideas and passions. In our relations to things, thought and feeling are inseparable.

Whether it's a student's beloved 1964 Ford Falcon (left behind for a station wagon and motherhood), or a cello that inspires a meditation on fatherhood, the intimate objects in this collection are used to reflect on larger themes--the role of objects in design and play, discipline and desire, history and exchange, mourning and memory, transition and passage, meditation and new vision.

In the interest of enriching these connections, Turkle pairs each autobiographical essay with a text from philosophy, history, literature, or theory, creating juxtapositions at once playful and profound. So we have Howard Gardner's keyboards and Lev Vygotsky's hobbyhorses; William Mitchell's Melbourne train and Roland Barthes' pleasures of text; Joseph Cevetello's glucometer and Donna Haraway's cyborgs. Each essay is framed by images that are themselves evocative. Essays by Turkle begin and end the collection, inviting us to look more closely at the everyday objects of our lives, the familiar objects that drive our routines, hold our affections, and open out our world in unexpected ways.

Evocative Objects: Things We Think With

Let's hear it for Paterson!

Paterson police say they plan to publish the names of the alleged hookers and johns in upcoming editions of The Record and The Herald News.

"We want to send a message that if you come to Paterson looking for sex or drugs, you are going to get arrested. And when you get arrested, we are going to publish your name."

Tom Friedman says, We're all public figures now.

Paterson puts brakes on drive-thru trade

I want to see a debate between Tom Friedman and Freeman Dyson.

Climate change is not a hoax. The hoax is that we are really doing something about it.

Tom Friedman: climate change is real!

"It's not that you get turned on by it. It's just interesting."

Debbie Newell used her 24-hour hobby to such helpful ends. For her, the chatter between dispatchers and officers is like a well-timed symphony.

But that drama turned real a few months ago when she and her husband were driving near the city's marina, where they passed a woman using a phone booth.

It struck her as strange -- no one uses phone booths anymore, she thought to herself.

"Calling all officers to the scene of a phone call in progress at the corner of 6th and Main ..."

Police crackle lures avid listeners