Word: could
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...wrote a novel about it called The Taqwacores. (The title combines the words taqwa, Arabic for "higher consciousness," and core, from hardcore.) He then received an e-mail from a 16-year-old Texan Muslim, Kourosh Poursalehi, who was in a band called Vote Hezbollah, asking how he could get in touch with the mohawked Sufis, skater punks, burqa-wearing riot grrrls and skinhead Shi'ites in the book. When Knight told him it was fiction, Poursalehi responded, "Well, then I'll make it real." With Knight's help, he began contacting like-minded Muslim musicians on the Internet. Soon...
...balance of fame seems to be moving from attention controllers to attention seekers. So it makes sense that we're seeing crossovers. Sarah Palin was governor of Alaska until - bummed out by ethics investigations and the press - she could no longer manage as an attention controller (albeit one who used her family life to political advantage when possible). So she resigned and became a full-time attention seeker, a media entity whose posts, tweets and TV appearances are not extensions of her work but the work itself. (Rate the candidates for TIME's Person of the Year...
Attention seekers like the Salahis, and before them the Heenes, suffer the opposite delusion: believing that their success in the world of pseudocelebrity insulates them from real-world consequences. In a state of media-induced temporary insanity, you might forget that people could get annoyed at you for faking your kid's balloon accident or that the feds would not laugh off a breach of the President's security as a hoot for a reality show. You close your eyes and hear the crowd cheering for an encore when they're actually gathering torches and pitchforks...
...literacy levels are abysmally low. It matters little how many aid dollars are spent on school buildings when the teachers inside operate at a reading level only slightly higher than that of their students. A fraction of the money spent on expensive foreign development consultants or military assets could be invested in nationwide literacy programs with far greater returns. For those who complain that education programs take at least a generation to mature, imagine what Afghanistan would be like today if there had been widespread investment in literacy and education eight years ago. There would be not only fewer complaints...
...Relations between Pakistan and the Obama Administration could be sharply strained if Washington decides to expand its covert air strikes on Pakistani soil. In recent years, Pakistani officials have publicly protested but privately acquiesced when CIA-operated drone strikes have targeted al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in the mountainous tribal areas - a program that has eliminated more than a dozen senior al-Qaeda operatives and even Baitullah Mehsud, the founding leader of the Pakistani Taliban. But the perceived violation of sovereignty has also enraged the Pakistani public. If the U.S. decides to expand the target range of such strikes beyond...