On Monday morning, Rather sparked controversy when he said CBS executives have attempted over the past year to lure viewers to the "CBS Evening News" -- which has plummeted in the ratings -- by "dumbing it down and tarting it up."

According to Rather, CBS decided that to get younger viewers to watch the news, it has to be more fun, more upbeat, more entertaining. In other words: The news had to stop being the news.

The news had to start being the "Today" show. Or something very much like it.

Dan Rather Takes On Network News

I mention this book as a sort of follow-up on the Doctorow essay in Forbes (part of the Twenty-First Century Cities special feature), where he writes:

The real reason to wear the mask is to spare others the discomfort of seeing your facial expression ... To make it possible to see without seeing.

About this book:

In an unnamed city in an unnamed country, a man sitting in his car waiting for a traffic light to change is suddenly struck blind. But instead of being plunged into darkness, this man sees everything white, as if he "were caught in a mist or had fallen into a milky sea." A Good Samaritan offers to drive him home (and later steals his car); his wife takes him by taxi to a nearby eye clinic where they are ushered past other patients into the doctor's office. Within a day the man's wife, the taxi driver, the doctor and his patients, and the car thief have all succumbed to blindness. As the epidemic spreads, the government panics and begins quarantining victims in an abandoned mental asylum--guarded by soldiers with orders to shoot anyone who tries to escape. So begins Portuguese author Jose Saramago's gripping story of humanity under siege, written with a dearth of paragraphs, limited punctuation, and embedded dialogue minus either quotation marks or attribution. At first this may seem challenging, but the style actually contributes to the narrative's building tension, and to the reader's involvement.

Blindness is in many ways a horrific novel, detailing as it does the total breakdown in society that follows upon this most unnatural disaster. Saramago takes his characters to the very edge of humanity and then pushes them over the precipice. His people learn to live in inexpressible filth, they commit acts of both unspeakable violence and amazing generosity that would have been unimaginable to them before the tragedy. The very structure of society itself alters to suit the circumstances as once-civilized, urban dwellers become ragged nomads traveling by touch from building to building in search of food. The devil is in the details, and Saramago has imagined for us in all its devastation a hell where those who went blind in the streets can never find their homes again, where people are reduced to eating chickens raw and packs of dogs roam the excrement-covered sidewalks scavenging from corpses.

And yet in the midst of all this horror Saramago has written passages of unsurpassed beauty. Upon being told she is beautiful by three of her charges, women who have never seen her, "the doctor's wife is reduced to tears because of a personal pronoun, an adverb, a verb, an adjective, mere grammatical categories, mere labels, just like the two women, the others, indefinite pronouns, they too are crying, they embrace the woman of the whole sentence, three graces beneath the falling rain." In this one woman Saramago has created an enduring, fully developed character who serves both as the eyes and ears of the reader and as the conscience of the race. And in Blindness he has written a profound, ultimately transcendent meditation on what it means to be human.

See also "Seeing".

Blindness, by Jose Saramago

In terms of foreign policy, Teddy Roosevelt is often misunderstood. Some see him as a progressive idealist; others as a cold-eyed realist. After all, the same Teddy Roosevelt who sent the Marines to Cuba also won the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to end a war between Russia and Japan. The same Teddy Roosevelt who built the Panama Canal by any means necessary also used American power to eradicate yellow fever and support public health in the Philippines and in parts of the Americas. And the same Teddy Roosevelt who spoke softly to our enemies never hesitated to carry a big stick.

This was realism, to be sure, but it was something greater, something nobler, a disposition that perhaps we should call the uniquely American Realism. It is this idea that I'd like to spend a few minutes talking about tonight.

Condi Loves Teddy's Big Stick

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI on the relationship.

America's relationship with Russia is on a downward slide. President Vladimir Putin's recent threat to retarget Russian missiles at some of America's European allies is just the latest flash point.

How to Avoid a New Cold War | TIME

The following are excerpts from an interview with Nasser Al-Bahri, aka "Abu Jandal," former bodyguard of Osama bin Laden, which aired on Al-Arabiya TV on May 4, 2007.

Al-Bahri, who was born in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, was arrested in 2001 in Yemen on suspicion of involvement in the attack on the American destroyer USS Cole, and was released after receiving amnesty from Yemen President Ali Abdallah Saleh.

Osama Bodyguard: I Love Him More Than I Love My Own Father

Has anyone played this?

What’s extraordinary about Forza 2 is how realistically these cars feel to drive—and as a result, how intimidating it is to try to control something like an Enzo Ferrari, which screams down the track like it wants to leave you behind. Fortunately, the game's 300-plus cars are also novice-friendly, with an optional “driving line” that shows where your car should be, when you should brake, and when you should floor it.

But the most distinct difference between Forza and the competition is that your car can get damaged. This isn’t merely cosmetic: Screwing up your alignment or engine is a quick ticket to last place (and expensive repairs). This will prompt some players to turn the damage feature off, but reconsider: It adds a heart-stopping level of tension when six cars are jockeying for position in a narrow turn, knowing one false move will leave you sitting by the side of the road, looking for your AAA card.

Forza 2 also boasts the richest, most fully-featured online experience ever seen in a car sim. This goes far beyond racing online: Let’s say you notice an especially pretty view while driving your Porsche Carrera down the Nürburgring. Snap a photo with the in-game camera and it appears online for all to see. Forza 2 even has its own auction house, where players can buy or sell cars. Buy a VW Bug, paint a purple Yoda and boobs on the side of it, and start the bidding at a million (virtual) dollars—hey, nobody else is catering to the Star Wars/pervert crowd.

Bonus: Heikki Kovalainen on F1

The Spanish Grand Prix was the best race of my short Formula One career - and Renault's most competitive this season.

So this is a good time to give you an insight into what a driver goes through during a race.

Forza 2, the Greatest Car Sim Ever

Adobe Photoshop was, for a time, the killer app for the Macintosh. During the mid-nineties, publishing and graphic design had supplanted consumers as the most important market to target, at least in the eyes of former Apple CEOs Gil Amelio and Michael Spindler. Consumer Macs languished as Apple poured resources into multi-processor Macs and ill-conceived operating system replacements for the Mac OS. Even after Apple emerged from its crisis of the mid '90s, Photoshop is still immensely popular and has even been adopted as a verb for retouching or modifying images much to the consternation of Adobe.

How Adobe's Photoshop Was Born

INCOME inequality is a hot topic in politics and economics. The rising economic tide is lifting a bunch of yachts, but leaving those in simple boats just bobbing along.

Two professors — Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics and Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley — have found that the share of gross personal income of the top 1 percent of American earners rose to 17.4 percent in 2005 from 8.2 percent in 1980.

See also, CEOs' compensation can significantly impact shareholder value:

Anger among investors has intensified in recent years as executive pay has escalated. One reason for the growing fury, according to corporate governance advocates: Compensation increasingly is taking a noticeable slice out of corporate profits.

Last year, among the state's top 100 companies, the typical CEO's pay amounted to 2% of net income, The Times found in its annual report on executive compensation in California.

Income Inequality, Writ Larger

I’ve seen that image weeks ago, not quite sure where I saw only when I visit archidose did I realize that I am missing the bigger picture, apparently this tower is more than a tower, according to source this 60-storey house is for just one family, well, technically speaking it is because India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani is going to fund this project with his own personal company’s money.

Okay, here are the facts that I gathered:

- 27 floors with an equevilent of 60 storeyed residence at 173.12 meters.
- 6 floors for parking, Mukesh’s family has 168 imported cars.
- Facilities for athletics and a swimming pool, and a health club.
- Helipad at rooftop

A 60-story house for India's richest man

Earlier this week, the Justice Department announced a major bust. After a six-month undercover sting investigation, it charged nine people with violating the Neutrality Act, which bars Americans from plotting to topple foreign governments recognized by the US. The men, members of the Southeast Asian Hmong minority, allegedly envisioned a massive military operation, laying plans to ship surface-to-air missiles, rockets, mines, and guns to Laos to equip rebels there.

The alleged mastermind? Vang Pao, a 77-year-old refugee from Laos who for decades has been flamboyantly raising money to fund Hmong rebels -- and winning the admiration of American conservatives.

But in the post 9/11 era, Washington finds it can no longer tolerate guerrillas in America's midst.

Guerrillas in our midst