John Robb: Trust-based Advertising.

Scott Johnson: Marketing 101: The Sign.

NYT International: Anger at U.S. Said to Be at New High.

Today's the perfect occasion to take the time to read The War On What?, Nicholas Lemann's contribution to this week's New Yorker.

This piece presents a welcome and serious counterpoint to the hawkish rhetorics of the current Administration, which unfortunately seems to pervade every corner of the Media these days.

Traditional wars are fought by military means and have definite endings. Metaphoric wars don't. Terror, like poverty and inflation and drugs, will never sit at a desk and sign an unconditional surrender in front of television cameras.

This sums up the point of view of what Lemann calls the Realists, as opposed to the Hawks. Do read the article to learn about their perspective on 9/11 and its consequences.

Realists do not sport a lot of ties to the current Administration (who would have guessed :-) Lemann mentions Joseph Nye (dean of Harvard's Kennedy School), John Mearsheimer (University of Chicago), Stephen Van Evera and Barry Posen (MIT), and Stephen Walt (Harvard).

Following the above links will provide hours of very interesting reading.

Yet, if you can spare the time (and you should), the best piece in this week's New Yorker is Lawrence Wright's profile of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian physician turned terrorist, one of Al Qaeda's most dangerous operational minds according to the FBI.

This article is not available online, but it's reason enough to rush buy a paper copy. In depth pieces like this are actually reason enough to subscribe.