In Koike's case, the scrutiny seems to be well rewarded. Like our wannabe V.P., Koike had an early stint as a television anchor. But instead of calling hockey shots, Koike, who covered current affairs and then business, followed battles in the Persian Gulf and on the trading floor of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. In her 16 years in politics, Koike served as minister of the environment under Junichiro Koizumi, and last year, she earned became Japan's first female minister of defense. In addition to Japanese, she speaks fluent English and Arabic. As part of her bid for prime minister, Koike has pledged to focus on the economy and the environment.

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Chambers first sensed the tremors of revolution when she visited Japan on a media fellowship in 2000; her interest piqued, she set out to find enterprising Japanese women who were bucking the corporate system and creating financial and personal success on their own terms. The task turned out to be harder than she expected -- not because the women didn't exist (to the contrary) but because they didn't think their stories were worth sharing with each other -- or with nosy journalists.

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So, in fall of 2002, when she was 52, Small enrolled at NAU, moved into a dorm, signed up for a meal plan, handed over her faculty parking pass, and told family and friends that she wanted to be as lonely and homesick as the typical freshman, and thus wouldn't be able to hang out much during the school year. Assuming that students and professors would treat her differently if they knew about her study, Small constructed a persona for herself: Hoping that people wouldn't push her for more specific information, she became a writer with an undeclared major, "born and bred in New York," who was at school to "see what college was like." With few exceptions, she didn't disclose that she was an anthropology professor at that very university.

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Stabiner was suspicious -- but frightened nonetheless. So she decided to turn her reporter's eye on her daughter and document her entry into adolescence. Stabiner, the author of four nonfiction books, spent three years observing Sarah and her friends, taking daily notes on everything from the tone of voice they used with their parents to the way the girls interacted at birthday parties. She interviewed other mothers (most of whom she knew personally), delved into research on adolescent girls and spoke with experts in adolescent psychology, all in an effort to uncover what really happens to girls when they hit their teens.

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Currie's conclusions are based on in-depth interviews with over four dozen white, middle-class young people who are, as he puts it, "suffering through a desperate period of their adolescence, or looking back at that period from the vantage point of a few months or a few years later." Many came from a separate study of teens in treatment for substance abuse that Currie conducted on behalf of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and others were students or former students of his. Currie feels that too much of our knowledge of adolescents come from adults, so in this book, he includes long, unedited passages in the teens' own words.

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Cecil Rhodes, the infamous British imperialist and business magnate who founded the De Beers Mining Co., exploited tribal relationships in order to gain control of the South Africa diamond deposits in the late 19th century; he later became a key figure in the establishment of apartheid South Africa. Battles have been fought over the gemstones; during the 1990s, diamonds fueled the civil war in Angola, and further diamond-related conflicts have raged in Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Most recently, the London human rights organization Global Witness described how the terrorist network al-Qaida infiltrated the diamond trade to raise funds for al-Qaida operatives and to launder significant sums of money. (To the diamond industry's relief, the 9/11 Commission Report played down this claim.) Since the 1970s, India has been cutting and polishing very small diamonds for export, but suspicions have arisen that Indian children have been doing more than their fair share of the work, and for little pay.

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"Open House" is organized into metaphorical "rooms" in which Williams moves gracefully from personal anecdotes to discussions of social issues. In "The Outhouse," she uses the story of her great-aunt Mary to discuss racial "passing." The daughter of a light-skinned black mother and the descendant of a wealthy white landowner, Mary spent her childhood as a servant to distant white relatives in St. Louis, then moved home to her family's house in Tennessee. As an adolescent, she desperately wanted to be educated. Inspired by an advertisement on the toilet sheets in her family's outhouse, Mary hatched a plan to pass as a Native American in order to receive a scholarship to an elite Boston finishing school.

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However, according to three physicists at the University of Michigan, the standard maps being used by the media tell only part of the election story, and their tales are misleading. "People were complaining that the electoral map you see on TV is much more red than blue, but almost the same number of people voted each way," says physics professor Mark Newman. In reality, many sprawling red states are inhabited by relatively small numbers of people, while some of the tiny blue states are very densely populated. "Looking at normal vote maps, you'd see more red than blue, but that's just the area on the ground -- it's not [the candidate] who got more votes," Newman says. And since an election is determined by the number of people who vote, not the number of acres they own, it's one time when size really doesn't matter.

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But the design technology behind the Hard Rock lighting is easy not just on the eyes but also on the wallet and conscience. While the original decade-old exterior lighting system racked up maintenance costs, this new lighting system is lit with light-emitting diode technology that will save the resort $41,000 per year in operational costs; an ecologist's delight, the cost of electricity for the LED system is approximately one-eighth the cost of the older system.

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In truth, if there hadn't been "The Daily Show" every night to depend upon, there would have been very little fun for any of us this year. Which is not to say that "the most trusted name in fake news" hasn't also acted as a truth-teller, revealing the darkest side of the Bush administration.

But that's what great comedy does: It alleviates and disturbs at the same time; it distances you from the heart of despair while bringing you closer to the truth of what it lampoons. By this standard, "The Daily Show" has been nothing short of a godsend.

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No one has capitalized on these technological leaps better than Robert Greenwald, whose Fox News-skewering "Outfoxed" and anti-Bush "Un-" troika ("Unprecedented," "Uncovered" and the just-released "Unconstitutional") have found a huge audience with quick turnarounds and totally unconventional distribution deals (DVD to theater and then television).

"Digital technology [provides] this kind of freedom to do more," Greenwald says. "You can work quicker and faster and try more things. And just the pure amount of footage [it allows] ... these would be two- to three-year projects on film" because of the difficulty in editing film. Instead, he was able to produce most of these films in months. "Outfoxed" was begun in January and launched in June.

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Of the controversial video -- which includes an image of George W. Bush in camouflage, holding a combat weapon -- three small elements from the original video (downloadable here) were changed: MTV bleeps the first part of the "Fuck Bush!" lyric, blurs the raised middle finger of an angry black youth, and speeds past a photo of Bush that hangs in the house of a character in the video, a veteran angry about being sent back to Iraq. The picture is pinned to the wall with what looks like a utility knife.

A spokesperson for MTV explains that the network doesn't allow the "F"-word on air, but insists that the video for "Mosh" that has been playing on TV shows the Bush photograph. Technically, this is true: the photo hasn't been rubbed out. But the sequence is sped up and blurred so much that the photo (and its content) is barely noticeable.

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NEWater is the product of Singapore's new water-treatment system, and it is wastewater that has been purified through advanced synthetic membranes called ZeeWeed. That's right: The crystal-clear NEWater that gushes through the country's faucets isn't gurgling from a mountain spring. Most recently, it was flushed from a toilet.

The water is first treated in a traditional water plant before going through a three-stage purification that uses high-quality ZeeWeed membranes, which filter out even the most microscopic bacteria. By the time it's processed, NEWater meets all the drinking-water standards specified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the World Health Organization.

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In her breezy new book, "Mathematics and Sex," Dr. Cresswell attempts to show that this dreaded discipline is more scintillating -- and more relevant -- than most of us ever dreamed. The book presents current mathematical research that can be used to answer questions like: How will we know when we've found "the one"? How much should individual partners compromise in a relationship? Who has better orgasms, men or women? Cresswell also uses mathematical equations to show how dating services work and why most people will end up happier if they actively proposition as many desirable partners as possible.

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Juliet B. Schor, a professor of sociology at Boston College and recognized expert on consumerism, economics and family studies, says yes. According to a study Schor conducted from 2001 to 2003, consumer involvement affects psychological outcomes -- often in negative ways. Schor spent over four years studying the impact of marketing on children. She trailed marketers and researchers who focus specifically on kids, shadowing them at conventions, paging through their client presentations, and talking to them about the ethics of their profession. The results make up her chilling new book, "Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture." "Psychologically healthy children will be made worse off if they become more enmeshed in the culture of getting and spending," she writes. "Children with emotional problems will be helped if they disengage from the worlds that corporations are constructing for them."

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Since then, Bernal seems to have decided to hover close to home, appearing in mostly Spanish-language films like the upcoming "Motorcycle Diaries" and Pedro Almodóvar's "Bad Education." Luna, on the other hand, has been sampling every cinematic morsel he can get his hands on. In the past three years, Luna not only appeared in a number of Mexican films (including the dark and smoky "Nicotina") but also dressed up (and stripped down) with Salma Hayek in the costume drama "Frida"; galloped across the Old West in Kevin Costner's "Open Range"; and gyrated his way into the American canon (of sequels, at least) with "Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights." Earlier this summer, Luna landed in multiplexes as part of the ensemble cast in Tom Hanks' Hollywood blockbuster, "The Terminal."

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Ooh. Death. Dreary weather. Remorse. Suspense. Just what we need during the last, hottest days of summer. Fortunately, "Strange But True" delivers on the promise of this tried and true trope, and from the moment Philip Chase (Ronnie's brother) picks up the phone, I felt powerless to put this book down.

We quickly learn that Ronnie Chase was a popular high school quarterback who was killed in a limo accident on the night of his senior prom. Ronnie's family -- his stubborn mom, Charlene, his supportive doctor dad and a lost-yet-searching older brother -- promptly yet completely unraveled at the news of their golden boy's untimely death. Yet none were as devastated as sweet Melissa Moody, Ronnie's girlfriend, who was riding in the limo with him when it crashed. Melissa survived, but barely, and her face, body and spirit were left permanently scarred.

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Fulton Ferry Landing offers such a magnificent close-up of downtown Manhattan that it almost feels that one could reach out and touch the buildings -- or poke a finger through the empty spaces where buildings used to stand. In fact, the clearly visible gap in the skyline left by the Twin Towers is what made this spot popular with mourning Brooklynites in the weeks after 9/11.

But the group gathered at the landing on Wednesday was not there to solemnly reflect upon the cityscape; they had come to the borough to eat, drink, socialize and, in the words of Governor Mike Huckabee from Arkansas, "prove that Republicans can rock!" Huckabee plays bass guitar for the band Capitol Offense, which headlined the party.

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