James Surowiecki is now reviewing books in Foreign Affairs.

The fact that every country's experience is different does not mean that there are not deeper truths to be uncovered by looking at the experience of the world as a whole. But the truths thus far uncovered are relatively few in number and often limited in impact. So, yes, free trade is a good thing, subsidies to agriculture and official corruption are bad things, and so on. And policymakers should be aggressive in implementing those practices and policies that there is a good reason to think will work. But they also need to be cautious about taking theoretical pronouncements for reality, and they should be pragmatists rather than evangelists. After decades of misplaced certainty, it may be time to recognize the limits of our own knowledge -- at least if we want the state of the world to continue improving.

The Myth of Inevitable Progress

Seoul is among the most relentlessly modern cities of Asia, with high-speed Internet and plasma TV sets. But an estimated 300 shamanistic temples nestle in hills less than an hour from the city center, and the clamorous ceremony known as gut (pronounced "goot") is a daily routine. The shamans offer a pig to placate the gods. They dance with toy guns to comfort the spirit of a dead child. They intimidate evil spirits by walking barefoot on knife blades.

In an election year, like this one, the most famous shamans are fully booked.

Many younger shamans maintain blogs on the Internet.

In the age of the Internet, Korean shamans regain popularity

For this trend, the "casualization of America", Ms. London blames not only women's laziness, but also the fashion industry. She cites a Marc Jacobs collection that came out in 1992 while she was working at Vogue. "Grunge became a revolutionary fashion statement: Everything was a little sloppy, a little homeless."

The Clothing of the American Mind

It is my pleasure to welcome you to our new website, www.charlierose.com. I hope you enjoy this unique experience in the merging of television and the internet.

What we now bring you is a collection of 8,000 segments, over 6,000 guests and 3,600 program hours that currently date back to the 1994-1995 season of the show. This is the single largest enterprise of its kind currently available.

The New Charlie Rose.com

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

We're all public figures now.

But this creates opportunities.

Today "what" you make is quickly copied and sold by everyone. But "how" you engage your customers, "how" you keep your promises, and "how" you collaborate with partners – that's not so easy to copy, and that is where companies can now really differentiate themselves.

"When it comes to human conduct there is tremendous variation, and where a broad spectrum of variation exists, opportunity exists," writes Mr. Seidman. "The tapestry of human behavior is so varied, so rich and so global that it presents a rare opportunity, the opportunity to outbehave the competition."

Friedman is plugging a book, "How"; see also the author's web site. Seidman and Friedman chatted recently.

The whole world is watching | Tom Friedman

Publishers Weekly Starred Review:

If a virulent virus —— or even the Rapture —— depopulated Earth overnight, how long before all trace of humankind vanished?

That's the provocative, and occasionally puckish, question posed by Weisman (An Echo in My Blood) in this imaginative hybrid of solid science reporting and morbid speculation. Days after our disappearance, pumps keeping Manhattan's subways dry would fail, tunnels would flood, soil under streets would sluice away and the foundations of towering skyscrapers built to last for centuries would start to crumble. At the other end of the chronological spectrum, anything made of bronze might survive in recognizable form for millions of years—along with one billion pounds of degraded but almost indestructible plastics manufactured since the mid-20th century. Meanwhile, land freed from mankind's environmentally poisonous footprint would quickly reconstitute itself, as in Chernobyl, where animal life has returned after 1986's deadly radiation leak, and in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, a refuge since 1953 for the almost-extinct goral mountain goat and Amur leopard. From a patch of primeval forest in Poland to monumental underground villages in Turkey, Weisman's enthralling tour of the world of tomorrow explores what little will remain of ancient times while anticipating, often poetically, what a planet without us would be like.

Booklist Starred Review:

Given the burgeoning human population and the phenomenal reach of our technologies, humankind has literally become a force of nature. We are inadvertently changing the climate; altering, polluting, and eradicating ecosystems; and driving evolution as other organisms struggle to adapt to a new human-made world.

So what would happen if humankind suddenly vanished?

Journalist Weisman, author of Echo in My Blood (1999), traveled the world to consult with experts and visit key sites, and his findings are arresting to say the least. He learned that without constant vigilance, New York's subways would immediately flood, and Houston's complex "petroscape" would spectacularly self-destruct. Weisman visits an abandoned resort on the coast of Cyprus and marvels over nature's ready reclamation. Marine biologists share sobering information about the staggering amount of plastic particles in ocean waters as well as vast floating islands of trash.

Weisman is a thoroughly engaging and clarion writer fueled by curiosity and determined to cast light rather than spread despair. His superbly well researched and skillfully crafted stop-you-in-your-tracks report stresses the underappreciated fact that humankind's actions create a ripple effect across the web of life.

The World Without Us

Gradually, a compelling idea emerges: Now that the Communist Party has embraced crony capitalism, Gifford explains, it has become just the latest dynastic iteration in the great cycle of Chinese history, every bit as autocratic, venal and corrupt as the Qing, Tang and Qin emperors and empresses. And when do Chinese dynasties fall? Not when the urban intelligentsia is restless, as was the case in the 1980s before the massacre at Tiananmen Square, but when the rural peasant class finally rises up, he concludes.

'China Road' by Rob Gifford

It's interesting to see how little this kind of analysis seems to factor into the debate about immigration reform in the US.

Robert Putnam’s sobering new diversity research scares its author.

Putnam’s study reveals that immigration and diversity not only reduce social capital between ethnic groups, but also within the groups themselves. Trust, even for members of one’s own race, is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friendships fewer. The problem isn’t ethnic conflict or troubled racial relations, but withdrawal and isolation. Putnam writes: “In colloquial language, people living in ethnically diverse settings appear to ‘hunker down’—that is, to pull in like a turtle.”

If he’s right, heavy immigration will inflict social deterioration for decades to come, harming immigrants as well as the native-born. Putnam is hopeful that eventually America will forge a new solidarity based on a “new, broader sense of we.” The problem is how to do that in an era of multiculturalism and disdain for assimilation.

Bowling With Our Own

Drug-free, kid-friendly goats for hire! Want some? Get in line.

Craig Madsen's rentable herd of 270 Boer and Spanish goats has never been more in demand.

They're cheaper than manual laborers, chemical-free and popular with parents and children.

"It's common as sin," said Frank Pinkerton.

Madsen's goats are now booked months in advance.

Neat Factoid: A goat's pupils are rectangular.

Rent a goat lately?