Periscope

I'm a 200-pound guy, not real girly, but I sometimes compare myself to the classic "woman who has it all." Great spouse, kids, job. No time. Work-life balance issues. The line's gotten a laugh. But it has crossed my mind: how much difference is there between my life's résumé and theirs? Then in come the vivid profiles in this week's Women & Leadership special. Oops. One biting piece comes from an astrophysicist whom we had to coax to write about how sick she is of even talking about being a woman in science. And the stories these women tell: of how to use the power of being the only woman in the room, of an African refugee camp where the men refuse to even look at a woman in charge, of finding success only to lose a spouse who can't handle it. Woman or man, I suspect these stories will open your eyes and inspire you, too.

--Tony Emerson, Managing Editor

No part of iraq needs fixing more desperately than insurgency-ravaged Anbar province and its capital, Ramadi. And U.S. forces are increasingly sure it can't be fixed without help from tribes who have always been more loyal to their sheiks than to a government of a region some consider crucial to the stability of Iraq.

Americans now think they've got a plan. After one well-known tribal leader was assassinated this summer, a group of 15 Ramadi sheiks banded together for survival's sake. They called themselves Sawa--Arabic for "together"--and negotiated a deal with the Americans: in exchange for protection against Al Qaeda, they would bring local police ranks up to strength. They've lived up to that end of the bargain at least. Monthly police enlistments there have soared from the low double digits before the deal to the full Coalition quota of 400 a month. Elders of the Abu Soda tribe recently helped U.S. forces find IEDs that had been planted by their own tribesmen, and they have identified kidnappers and other local bad guys for the Americans to arrest.

Their effectiveness against Al Qaeda, however, is another question: while the Americans say attacks by local resistance fighters in Anbar have dropped by 40 percent, U.S. deaths there have continued at a rate of more than two dozen a month. Still, Sawa's membership has risen to some 60 tribal leaders. Its founder, Sheik Abdel Sittar, does TV spots to encourage more police recruits. "All the honest people follow me," he says. "The good people. Even some tribes that were with the insurgency follow us." The sheik is now building a marble-lined council meeting hall (funded by Sawa) inside his compound.

Some lawmakers in Baghdad fear that Sawa could become one more sectarian militia, but U.S. forces liaison Lt. Col. Jim Lechner scoffs at such worries. "We would turn that off in a heartbeat," he says. All it would take is a threat to withdraw police protection from the offending sheik's neighborhood. Can Sawa restore law and order in Anbar? The Americans can only hope so. No one seems to have a better plan.

--Sarah Childress

One way to define "sustainable" development, the oddly hip jargon that now rolls off the tongues of Hollywood celebs, is simple. It means "for profit." How else does an enterprise sustain itself? Though many chicly resist the profit label (so ... corporate), the emerging market of social entrepreneurs embraces it, and they are now honored by the World Challenge Winner awards, sponsored by the BBC and Shell (NEWSWEEK is a panelist). This year's winner is Thusitha Ranasinghe of Sri Lanka. In 1997, he founded a company called Maximus, which recycles elephant waste to make paper. One result: locals now see the elephants as a profit center, not a threat, and have stopped killing the endangered beasts. Winning the award--and the $20,000 grant--"means the world," says Ranasinghe. "We've been recognized."

Maximus is already reaping the rewards. Ranasinghe has received inquiries from potential customers as far away as South Africa. The runner-up, British expat Chris Page, founded Cards From Africa with Rwandan artist Gabriel Dusabe in 2004. They employ Rwandans to make greeting cards, and have seen sales triple to more than 500,000 cards annually. Third place went to Swapon Kumar Das, whose Bangladesh-based NGO Dalit neutralizes arsenic from water supplies. Given how hip this movement is getting, their next visitor could be Angelina Jolie.

What does it mean to be wealthy? A new United Nations study provides a sketch of what "rich" actually means--globally speaking.

500

Thousands of dollars required to rank among the wealthiest 1 percent of the world's people.

37

Millions of people who have this level of wealth around the world.

88.3

Percentage of the world's wealth held by the citizens of the 24 richest countries.

14.8

Percentage of the world's population this represents.

Washington is buzzing about a potential battle of the heavyweights. Sources inside the Hillary Clinton camp who insist on anonymity for fear of being frozen out say it is "99 percent certain" she will get into the presidential race early next year. Barack Obama partisans, less afraid of retribution but no less anonymous, say their man is "about 80 percent likely" to run. He won't make a final decision until the holidays.

Clinton partisans aren't attacking Obama publicly yet, but they've begun speaking in code about how important it is to have a president who is experienced, well traveled and battle-tested. Sharper jabs are likely on the way. "You may hear some Hillary people saying things like, 'Just a little while ago he was in Springfield worrying about license-tag fees'," says a Hillary person saying just that, though not willing to do so publicly.

But Obama will be sure to find new backers. "After seven years of the 'we kick a--, go it alone' foreign policy, the American voter will be ready to try a leader who projects better on the world stage," says Jeh Johnson, a corporate attorney and former general counsel of the Air Force under Clinton. "Barack's multicultural heritage will represent that change."

--Jonathan Alter

Michael crichton's latest book, "Next," tells the story of a man who's half chimpanzee. It has an initial print run of 2 million-- particularly impressive for a novel about biotechnology. But that's Crichton's trick: he addresses complex contemporary issues--genetics in Jurassic Park, sexual harassment in "Disclosure" for instance--into thrilling reads. Any half chimp can type out a novel about a complex subject. Making it readable is best left to Crichton.

from Slate.com

Conventional Wisdom holds that you should stick with a winning formula. But look around: the troubles of George Bush, General Motors and many others suggest the limits of staying the course.

Consider, in a smaller way, director Darren Aronofsky. His latest effort, "The Fountain," follows the path of the films that propelled him to stardom. Sean Gullette's paranoid mathematician in "Pi" and Ellen Burstyn's speed-addled housewife in "Requiem for a Dream" tried to transcend human limits, to attain the unattainable. And in "The Fountain," the hero (Hugh Jackman) battles 16th-century Mayan warriors and all manner of evils to save his lady (Rachel Weisz) from death.

Unfortunately, pushing the formula too far can lead to failure. The reason: what sets this hero apart from the protagonists of Aronofsky's earlier films is that he actually succeeds. Beating the unbeatable is worse than bad metaphysics--it's bad filmmaking.

from Slate.com

It's been dubbed the new "Rolling Stone," wielding the power to seal the fate of a new band at the click of a mouse. Pitchfork Media, the indie-music site of record reviews and features, posts album and song reviews earlier and faster than other publications. Pitchfork's reviews are extremely provocative, generating massive responses from bloggers and bands. (These create Internet buzz for both the bands and the site.) For example, after bassist Bill Baird's band Sound Team received a bad review, he put a sticker with his band's name on a dummy, then stabbed the dummy with a pitchfork and threw it off of a cliff. He then posted a video of the whole episode on YouTube. The combination of blogs and stunts like this allows the online community to pass judgments on bands within no time. Pitchfork's prose isn't pretty, but it's personal, intimate and very good for bands. After all, any publicity is good publicity, right?

from Slate.com

A month ago, 8-year-old Connor Schultz could read 45 words a minute. Today he's up to 93. The reason? A 4-year-old longhaired dachshund named Ruby who, once a week, visits Connor's school in Schenectady, New York, and sits with him while he reads aloud. She doesn't judge or correct him, and Connor has an audience he feels comfortable reading to.

Ruby is one of 16,000 certified therapy dogs participating in reading-assistance programs at schools and libraries across America, as educators have begun tapping into the calming effect dogs have on us. "As word spreads and test scores improve, requests for visits from therapy dogs have been pouring in. "We get calls every day," says Ursula Kemp, president of New Jersey's Therapy Dogs International. And Utah-based Intermountain Therapy Animals has close to 1,300 dogs registered in its reading-assistance program.

--Matthew Phillips

Do the potential benefits of precautionary CT scans outweigh the risks? Consider mammograms: roughly 10 percent of annual tests are considered abnormal; 20 percent of women without breast cancer will have a biopsy after a decade of screening; and almost 33 percent will have additional testing because of a false-positive result. Which isn't healthy at all.

from Slate.com