Tuesday night offered a plethora of late-night jokes. Jokes ranged from Bill Richardson and the economy to Roland Burris and Angelina Jolie, here are some of the best jokes from Leno, Letterman, Kimmel, Jon Stewart

Leno on Bill Richardson:
"He voluntarily pulled out, which is ironic because John Edwards won't be in the Obama cabinet because he didn't pull out."

WATCH:

IN 2009 four new senators will slip into office -- all in violation of the Constitution, which requires a special election to fill a Senate vacancy. Colorado, Delaware, hapless Illinois and star-struck New York will have senators "elected" by a single voter, the governors who appoint them.

One New Year's Day, on the brink of my fiftieth year, I took stock of my life--and the tally was grim. I was alone after a long marriage, seemingly doomed to perpetual house rental, and separated from the spiritual community that had once sustained me. Though skeptical of "create your own reality" thinking, I launched a year-long experiment in wishing--to see if there was, indeed, any power in "putting it out there," as so many people proclaim. It wasn't easy, but I forced myself to suspend my doubts and go for it all: a new love, a healed soul, and the sweet stucco house of my dreams.

Over the course of the year, I was amazed to discover that all three of my wishes really did come true--in ways that met, subverted, and overflowed my expectations. Based on the experiences recounted in my new book "The Wishing Year," here's how to launch your own year of wishing.

The policymaking guard is changing in Washington, but the newcomers are anything but new. Unfortunately, that will encourage policy continuity. One area which desperately needs genuine change, however, is Washington's strategy toward Cuba.

At recent public celebrations Havana's leaders sounded defiant, but nervous. Fifty years ago, they made a revolution, but merely replaced one dictatorship with another, turning their island into an impoverished prison. As in most communist states, the nomenklatura has prospered--the hard currency stores are filled with the sort of goods Americans take for granted--but opportunity is denied anyone lacking connections. When I visited Cuba (legally), Westerners were swarmed by Cubans desperate for dollars. "Are you looking for a nice restaurant?" "Where are you from?" And the ubiquitous: "My friend, would you like some cigars?" Even the most innocuous conversation ended with a Cuban pleading for cash to buy food for his family or milk for his children.

If you want to see the action in Gaza, the good news is you don't have to be a foreign correspondent. Actually, Israel has nixed reporters from entering the country for now because they don't want them getting in the way or information getting out. Or for journalists to get the wrong message.

Something like that.

As Daniel Seaman, director of Israel's government press office told the New York Times, "Any journalist who enters Gaza becomes a fig leaf and front for the Hamas terror organization, and I see no reason why we should help that." (At least they're open about this, I guess.) So even if you were Christiane Amanpour or Richard Engel you'd be camping out on the border in khakis.

In the meantime, in lieu of actual reporting, the Israeli government has come up with a really cool viral substitute to show everyone the war. As the New York Times reported, all you have to do is log on to the Israel Defense Forces' YouTube Channel and you can see images of Israel pummeling Gaza, read grim-faced soldiers' blogs, and sit in on "the first ever" Twitter press conference with a government official.

It's just like being there, right? Nothing like reducing the hostilities to a tweet.

Still I'd like to suggest a few tweets, I mean tweaks. Although the images of artillery shells hitting Hamas targets were neat, they were a bit vague. For the life of me I couldn't figure out what I was watching. A tunnel being bombed? A truckload of rocket-firing militants? A school? Sure, there were descriptions ("Israeli Air Force Strikes rockets in transit") with arrows pointing helpfully to the designated target. But, really, I could have been watching World War II footage of the Allies in Africa, or any other war footage of explosions and grainy black and white images. I could have been watching anything, but was it true? It would help to have an authoritative narrator, someone along the lines of the late Peter Jennings, explaining things.

But here's the real P.R. problem. I don't think the website helps you understand the war better. Or Israel's perspective. After all, Hamas fired their rockets into southern Israel first and with little international outcry. Maybe it would be good to emphasize that message? Or that the militant group doesn't believe in Israel's right to exist? That seems important.

Despite the novelty of being able to see real live soldiers in camouflage, I felt like I was viewing that creepy scene from "Silence of the Lambs" where Jodi Foster is tip-toeing through the serial killer's home while he watches her through the icky green glare of a night scope. Every time the Israelis launched a missile against Hamas, I didn't jump out of my seat and cheer. I winced.

It also doesn't help when you hit innocent civilians who can't seem to escape the real gunfire and shells. That happened yesterday when some 40 people were killed trying to hide in a United Nations school in northern Gaza. Some of those killed were children. The Israelis say that Hamas was using the facility to fire mortars at them.

Let's hope for a truce. But let's also send in some real reporters.

In 1854, John Snow, a British physician, turned his attention to an outbreak of cholera along Broad Street in London. Investigating the area where the outbreak was taking place, he noticed that the afflicted homes were clustered around a particular well. Although it was commonly believed that cholera was the result of poisonous gases in the air, Snow came to the conclusion that the well was both contaminated and the source of the outbreak. Such was the birth of modern epidemiology.

Epidemiology--the piecing together of evidence to understand how disease and wellness move through a population--is a critical element of public health. It also sheds important light on how we act as tribal beings, how we travel and congregate, and how behaviors spread. Social capital--the mixture of alliances, trust, and reputation that fuel our interactions--also moves though a population in a distinct way, whether for good or ill. The Bernard Madoff scandal represents an extraordinary moment in what might be called the epidemiology of social capital--shedding light on the extent to which friendships, philanthropic involvement, and other social ties influence presumably "rational" decisions, like where and how money is invested.

Like most Ponzi schemes, Madoff used the trust of closed groups such as private clubs and philanthropies to extend his reach. The real question, however, is how he moved from group to group and person to person over time. Certain people are emerging as highly effective carriers of the Madoff virus. For example, Ezra Merkin, the money manager and chairman of GMAC, played a key role in introducing Madoff to elite circles and to steering philanthropies on whose boards he sat to invest with Madoff. This was sometimes done under the cloak of Merkin's investment firm, so that groups that thought they were investing in Merkin were actually investing in Madoff.

Merkin was a key carrier but he was hardly alone. Other philanthropies report that they were introduced to Madoff through their donors. Indeed, on an individual level, becoming a Madoff client often required a personal referral. This underscores another theme in the process. At a certain point in his trajectory, Madoff's reputation became such that people began to flock to him. Having Madoff invest your money was considered a great favor--so much so that it eroded the skepticism of otherwise sophisticated people. Tracking this flow of referrals and favors and how they moved across a rarified stratum of society will tell us a great deal about how social networks determine access and influence decision making.

For more than forty years, academics have made valiant attempts at recreating social networks in the lab, beginning with Stanley Milgram's famous "six degrees of separation" study, in which participants in the Midwest were asked to forward a packet to a friend who would forward it to a friend and so on until it reached a stranger in Boston. More valuable, however, is real-world data that captures actual social networks in all their complexity.

Small steps to lay the foundation for this type of data gathering have begun. Last month, the SEC finalized the requirements for public companies and mutual funds to file their financial information in XBRL, an interactive data format that puts financial information into a uniform structure. This will help counter the practice of companies "burying reality in mounds of narrative" (in the words of Philip Moyer, who heads the SEC's online data arm), obfuscating their finances in the same way that cell phone plans are intentionally made complicated so that consumers cannot easily comparison shop. Mark Cuban (the Dallas Mavericks owner who is in the middle of his own skirmish with the SEC) has pointed out that the SEC needs to go further, expanding XBRL reporting requirements to cover everything from the bank bailout to investment advisers like Madoff. But more importantly for understanding the epidemiology of fraud, Cuban suggests that the government as well as watchdog organizations begin to analyze the data in real time, in order to spot the red flags that signal possible malfeasance early on.

The Madoff case presents an invaluable opportunity to go even further. Financial transactions are just one element of the story; many of these financial transactions came about only because of the social interactions that preceded them. In their case against Madoff, federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission will be collecting reams of information to tally up the damage of who was cheated of how much, and when. They should also piece together the details of how Madoff became Madoff--who introduced him to whom, which donations opened which doors, and so on.

Analyzing the social networks of Madoff and his clients will give us a better understanding of how trust, exclusivity, and connections accelerated the spread of the Madoff virus. This information will not only show how social networks fuel decisions with far-reaching consequences, but could also shed further light on the differences between the networks of enterprises that are legitimate and those that are not.

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama says coming together with all the U.S. presidents is an "extraordinary gathering." Obama stood in the Oval Office on Wednesday with President George W. Bush and three former presidents: Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter. The president-elect said all of them understand the pressures of the job and he looks forward to sharing time with them.

Bush was hosting a rare lunch for the leaders at the White House. He told Obama that all the presidents want him to succeed.

Obama and Bush held a private meeting before they were joined by the three former presidents.

Women are not special. So if you are expecting another article about what the Obama-Biden administration should do for the constituency I claim to speak for (women), read no further. Women are not and should not have to be a special interest group. Policies that consistently ignore the needs of women are bad for men too.

To be sure, there is value in identifying policy areas in which women's needs and rights have been particularly neglected or scaled back during the past 8 years. Several individuals and groups have already called for action from the next administration, and the diligence with which the Obama transition team has been publishing these [link to http://change.gov/open_government/yourseatatthetable] bodes well at least for their transparency and accountability. Most groups have identified maternal health, violence, and economic opportunities as priority issues for women.

These are not simply women's issues, though. They are issues of broad public concern. The question should not be whether "women" deserve more attention than "national security," "economic recovery," or any of a long list of other competing demands. The question is whether Americans can put food on the table and be safe as long as they treat concerns such as women's health, freedom from violence, and financial stability as separate side issues.

I say no. While generally billed as special interest concerns, women's rights must be addressed urgently if the new administration is to make inroads on other fronts. Allow me to illustrate.

Health. Using government data, the National Women's Law Center (a nongovernmental organization) publishes a report card [http://hrc.nwlc.org/Reports/National-Report-Card.aspx] on women's health. According to data from 2007, 18 percent of women between the ages of 18 and 64 have no health insurance, showing no change from 2004. Native American and Hispanic women are more than twice as likely to be without health insurance as white women.

The point has often been made that women are more likely to need regular health care because of their reproductive functions, and that health insurance for women therefore is a matter of prevention as much as of cure. And that is everyone's concern. Even though women carry out the physical function of giving birth, the whole family benefits. More generally, of working married women, 48 percent provide half or more of the household income.

Violence. A new US government report [http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/cv07.htm] shows huge increases in reported cases of rape and sexual assault (25 percent ) and of violence by intimate partners against women (42 percent) between 2005 and 2007. Except for simple assault, which increased by 3 percent, the incidence of every other crime surveyed actually decreased. The country has long been enjoying a decline in violent crime, yet these new figures show a different, and very disturbing, story that should worry everyone.

Whether these figures represent an increase in actual crime or improved methodology, as the report's authors argue, they are alarming. Every American may have a family member or friend affected by these violent crimes. Children who witness domestic violence, even if they are not physically affected by it, may conclude that force is an acceptable way to solve conflicts. And while it is in everyone's interest to ensure that the law enforcement and justice systems respond adequately to violent crime, it should be noted that sexual violence is a category of violent crime that is seldom punished.

Economic opportunities. In the current economic climate, job security is a major concern for many Americans, men and women. But longstanding patterns of discrimination in the workplace exacerbate this situation for women. Despite significant progress, pay equity has still not been achieved -- women earn only 78 cents for every dollar earned by men. And basic labor protections exclude some professions that are dominated by women, such as domestic work or homecare. Keeping in mind the major contributions women make to family income, these inequities affect us all.

There are also important arguments to be made about the unrecognized value of female-dominated professions and the need for equal pay and equal rights for equal work. The failure to promote and protect women's economic opportunities affects what might rightfully be called "an average American family:" about a third of American families are single-parent households, and 89 percent of them are headed by women.

So in the new year, I am not going to advocate that the Obama-Biden administration prioritize women's needs and rights over other concerns. I am going to advocate for policies and programs that promote human rights for all: health, freedom from violence, and economic opportunities. And I will know that as women benefit and women's rights advance, we will all be better off.

Marianne Mollmann is the advocacy director of the women's rights division of Human Rights Watch.

Public demands for a radical new direction in the country's food and agriculture policy are beginning to gain some rather serious volume. It's a new year, a new administration is assembling, and the unrequited expectations of the last eight years are being vocalized: in key newspapers, on the blogosphere, in community meetings, and dining tables around the country. We are experiencing a shift in the global gestalt, not only around the possibility and need for change, but in the places where such reforms have to start.

People want our unhealthy food and agriculture system made healthy. And it doesn't look like we'll be giving up any time soon.

At the Slow Food Nation in San Francisco in 2008, the Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture was unveiled, a powerful call for a 21st century approach to food and farm policy. Thousands of people signed on immediately, and the document is gaining steam as it makes its way around the country.

In December, the Iowa-based group Food Democracy Now drafted a letter to the Obama Transition Team, recommending potential candidates for the vacant Secretary of Agriculture position. Within a week, that letter gained over 60,000 signatures. A core group of sustainable food advocates talked with the Obama Transition Team in an attempt to express the severity and urgency of a potential food system meltdown, but it remains to be seen if that testimony will actually be taken seriously. In the mean time, the New York Times ran a full-page article about the Food Democracy Now effort, which is well worth the read. Will the Obama's till up a few acres of the White House's precious lawn to plant a vegetable garden? It doesn't seem that much to ask.

Journalist Christopher Cook -- in a recent piece for the Christian Science Monitor -- put forward a "nine-point platform for food reform." He calls for the new administration to include food and agriculture projects in the forthcoming stimulus package, asking for "change we can eat."

Just this week, Wes Jackson of the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, and our sustainability laureate, Wendell Berry, published an opinion piece in the New York Times calling for a Fifty-year Farm Bill. The United States, Jackson and Berry argue, must quickly move from an emphasis on highly erosive and toxic monocultures of corn and soybean that blanket the country, back to a perennial landscape. That is, farming systems that maximize soil protection and healthy lands by providing as much permanent ground cover as possible. Jackson and Berry call for a two-pronged approach: transitioning back to hay, pasture, and grazing rotations that allow the "farm to fit the land"; and a revolution in the creation of perennial grains that reduce the need for plowing, toxic pesticides, and heavy doses of fertilizers.

Because the Farm Bill is renewed every five to seven years, and because its billions of dollars in farm owner incentives actually set the rules of our modern food system, federal policy can become a road map for that long term goal. In fact, using a fifty year Farm Bill Road map, we could begin to plot out a century of sustainable food policy. Instead of "Getting Big or Getting Out," -- the cold war-era blueprint for the past fifty years of agribusiness domination -- we could "Get Perennial by the Next Centennial."

My hope is that this surge in popular understanding of the importance of our food system to the very survivability of our society is not merely swept up in the winds of change blowing across Washington at this very moment. Rather, I hope it is only the seeds of something much larger, a movement that will grow to millions of everyday concerned citizens. Millions of citizens who may be willing to make small contributions to an organization dedicated to demonstrating the power of a new movement -- civic agriculture. And maybe, just maybe, the needs of the people and the land and the future will take precedence over the greed and corruption of corporate agribusinesses now standing in the way of healthy food and agriculture.

Now is the time.

Winter's here, and you're probably cranking the heat. But hold your thermostatic enthusiasm: high temps in your home lead to high utility bills -- not to mention a high price paid by the earth. In today's episode, Umbra offers tips for staying warm without planetary or pecuniary peril.

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What I want from my new administration this year: a program to address climate change that is stunning in its breadth and scope.

The weird thing is: I might get it.

* The new administration will quickly pass an economic stimulus plan approaching something like a trillion dollars.

* At the same time, the administration will be handed effective control of the American automobile industry.

* All this at a time when the siren songs of free markets and small government that have dominated American politics for decades have suddenly gone silent. In their place, we have a nation, indeed much of the entire world, eagerly looking to the black man in the white house for that "change we can believe in" we have heard so much about.

A couple of years ago, if you had asked a climate change expert what it would take to begin to address climate change in a meaningful way, one likely answer would have been, "Well, you would need about a trillion dollars to spend on infrastructure, and you would need real political leadership. Oh, and you would probably need control of the automobile industry. But fat chance."

Ahem.

Think of what might be possible! Dormant factories in Michigan could be retooled to build light rail trains and wind turbines. Or high tech double-paned windows. Or or or... so many things! This country's blue collar workers could be put back to work. In the process of rebuilding our roads and bridges, we can re-tool them to accommodate the new cars, trains, and bikes that we will be building.

Specifics are beyond my expertise, but I know the big picture. The plan should:

1. Be stunningly audacious. It should take everyone's breath away in its scope. I am not talking about encouraging everyone to recycle, buy hybrid cars, and inflate their tires.

2. It should move fast. The present alignment of political opportunities will not last long.

3. It should have a significant component of public mobilization. First, because the scale of change we will need to address climate change will be absolutely impossible without massive public participation. Second, because this is what Obama is so good at. Third, because this will be the key to keeping the program alive once the political winds shift, as they inevitably will.

This is now a bipartisan issue, Obama's favorite kind. He can enlist John McCain. He can enlist Rick Warren, Obama's controversial pick to lead the prayer at the inauguration, who has been the loudest voice among the new generation of evangelical leaders addressing climate change.

It is a technocratic issue, another specialty of Obama's. The politics of it seem to have almost miraculously quieted, and what is now needed is political vision, sound science, good government, inspirational leadership, and social mobilization. Any of that sound familiar?

And it is an issue on which the United States could, umm, "reclaim its leadership in the world" (sic). This is Obama's game all the way.

There are many crucial matters on which Obama's administration will be hemmed in with precious little room for maneuver. I will not be surprised if Obama is hugely disappointing on Iraq. Remember, he ran on the fact that he opposed the war before it started. When he finally gets to the White House he will be confronting an entrenched debacle with no good options. Likewise in Afghanistan, where Obama is preparing a major escalation of the war, a move I very much oppose and which I am afraid will have catastrophic consequences. His most immediate foreign crisis will be in Gaza, and there is not a single thing he has said, either during the campaign or in recent weeks, that give me even a glimmer of hope that his administration will be an improvement over other recent administrations in the handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Another immediate mess he will find himself entangled in is the fate of the prisoners in Guantánamo, and here again I am almost expecting to be profoundly disappointed. (Remember his total collapse on the FISA bill last summer?)

In the days leading up to last summer's Democratic convention, I wrote a blog pleading with Obama to stop talking so exclusively about compromise and tell us the one or two core issues on which he was willing to stand and fight. To the degree that he has answered that question, he has suggested that climate change and energy policy were at the top of his list.

Obama spent the last year telling me about the audacity of hope. I listened. Now, at least on climate change, I am hoping for audacity.

His teachers said he was "too stupid to learn anything." and was fired from his first two jobs for being "non-productive."
Thomas Edison's 1000 inventions came during the Panic of 1873 -- 6 years -- and the Long Depression -- 23 years.

He did not speak until he was four years-old and did not read until he was seven. His parents thought he was "sub-normal," and a teacher described him as "mentally slow, unsociable, and adrift forever in foolish dreams."
Albert Einstein survived one Long Depression, three panics and Post WWI Recession.

He failed sixth grade and was subsequently defeated in every election for public office until he (Winston Churchill) became Prime Minister at the age of 62.

Only a mediocre pupil in undergraduate studies and ranked 15th out of 22 students in chemistry.
Louis Pasteur was ranked 15th out of 22 chemistry students.

It is said this farmer boy could not read nor write, failed and went broke five times. His company has survived 8 Recessions, 1 Oil Crisis and 1 Great Depression.
Hopefully Ford Motors will make it through this.

He was not allowed to wait on customers when he worked in a dry goods store because, his boss said, "he didn't have enough sense."
FW Woolworths was founded during the Long Depression that lasted 23 years with a loan of $300 and in 2001 changed its name to Footlocker.

Fired by his newspaper editor who said, "he lacked imagination and had no good ideas." He went bankrupt several times before he built the largest entertainment company in the world. Walt Disney's creations have since survived 1 Great Depression and 7 Recessions.

After his first screen test, the memo from the testing director of MGM, dated 1933, read, "can't act, can't sing, slightly bald, can dance a little."
Fred Astaire's career lasted 76 years and was launched during the Great Depression.

School dropout and child runaway, this individual used $105 from his first social security check at the age of 65 and sold his franchise after 9 years of attempts and during two recessions.
The world knows him as "Colonel" Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Trained ambulance driver and later a milkshake machine salesman, this guy took over a small scale franchise and built the company into largest fast food restaurant in the world.
Ray Kroc bought McDonalds during Recession of 1953.

The first time he walked on-stage as a professional comic, he looked out at the audience, froze, forgot the English language and was jeered offstage.
The Seinfeld show will pay Jerry over $250 million.

Decca Records and Columbia Records turned down a recording contract with this group suggesting, "Groups of guitars are on the way out."
The Beatles delivered 292 performances in one year at a seedy little club in Liverpool before they were discovered!

He handled the violin awkwardly and preferred playing his own compositions instead of improving his technique. His teacher called him "hopeless as a composer."
Beethoven wrote five of his greatest symphonies while completely deaf.

He sold only one painting during his life and this, to the sister of one of
his friends, for 400 francs (approximately $50).
Van Gogh completed 800 paintings.

Is there a message here?
1) Never Quit
2) Everyone has problems!
3) Recessions don't kill anyone!
4) Do something spectacular and unless you are Van Gogh you will be rewarded.

Grant Cardone, Author Sell to Survive

There will be more than a few articles proclaiming 2008 the greatest "sports year" in decades, if not ever. If the definition of sports is confined to professional sports played by men, then this hyperbolic statement could have a ring of truth. Tiger Woods won the US Open with a torn-up knee. The New York Giants shocked the unbeaten Patriots in a crackling Super Bowl. At the Beijng Olympics, swimmer Michael Phelps and sprinter Usain Bolt redefined what's physically possible. There was the reunion of the Boston Celtics and Lakers in the NBA Finals, the Phillies breaking the city of Philadelphia's near three-decade streak without a championship and that barely scratches the surface.

Of course, for women athletes the terrain was far less forgiving. The female athlete with the most publicity was Indy racer Danica Patrick, who parlayed her trailblazing success into more money for Maxim, Stuff and whatever yuppie-airport-porn magazines she posed for. The Olympics also failed to bring attention to women athletes. The stories were there. We witnessed brilliance of hoops star Candace Parker, 41-year-old swimmer Dara Torres and the upset of all upsets, the Japanese softball players who beat the US women for the gold, in an event the US had never lost. But this all received far less attention than the controversy over whether the Chinese women gymnasts were still in elementary school and the NBC-adoring world of beach volleyball.

But the free-flowing adrenaline of the last year shouldn't blind us to the real story: the wall between sports and politics, which we are told is as immutable as Gibraltar, was not only challenged, it was thoroughly breached. The Beijing Olympics throughout the year raised questions about the role of politics in sports. International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge attempted to stifle this discussion, which proved somewhat difficult when George W. Bush, Henry Kissinger and Vladimir Putin were the honored guests at the opening ceremonies. He also said nothing when Team Darfur leader and 2006 Speed Skating gold medalist Joey Cheek had his travel papers revoked the night before he was to end.

The political campaign of Barack Obama also pulled an unprecedented number of high-profile athletes into politics. Players were loud and proud about what it meant to them to see an African-American president in a nation built upon slavery. Even Michael Jordan, who famously once said that "Republicans buy sneakers too", made a small donation to the campaign. Athletes didn't sit this presidential election out, and for that they deserve some serious cheers. They did it for the same reasons millions of Americans waited in lines to vote. As recently retired NBA star Alonzo Mourning said, "Our world right now is in turmoil, and it starts with our leadership. You got over 1.2 million Americans this year who've lost jobs; thousands and thousands of people who've lost their homes, education is in total disarray, as well as our healthcare system. So, I knew there needed to be some type of change for the better."

But the year 2008 started with a political moment that feels all too relevant. Israel's embargo of the densely populated strip known as Gaza was creating a humanitarian crisis. Egyptian star midfielder Mohamed Aboutreika felt compelled to do something. After scoring in the Egyptian national side's 3-0 victory over Sudan in the African Nations Cup, the player known as the Smiling Assassin lifted his jersey to reveal a T-shirt that read, "Sympathize with Gaza." Aboutreika was facing suspension and fines for his actions, but after e-mails and letters flooded the soccer governing board FIFA, he was given a pass. Now that the war on Gaza has become something altogether more frightening, we may be seeing a return of the shirts in the year to come.

These small acts of solidarity may seem negligible. But they matter. Whether we like it or not, whether we agree with it or not, athletes are role models. We can disagree and say athletes shouldn't be cast in that role, but as the saying goes, you can disagree with gravity. It won't help you if you're falling out of an airplane. Since athletes are role models, and since a microscopic fraction of young people will actually become pro players, it's worth asking the question: what are they modeling? If they're modeling that life is about making money, driving tricked-out car and getting on MTV cribs, that's a problem. If they're modeling the idea that life is a game and you keep score by the size of your bank account, that's destruction. If they're modeling that what you have to say is as important as what you can do on the court, and caring about the greater world is actually heroic, then that can make a real difference. It's an old expression: It doesn't matter who's sitting in the White House, it's who's sitting in. When athletes break down the wall and speak, it becomes a living expression that we have entered an age where we will be reclaiming power from those who have abused the collective trust.

Iran's economic and political weaknesses could provide the catalyst for a breakthrough in the nuclear dispute, says a new Chatham House report compiled by the former UK ambassador to Iran, Sir Richard Dalton.

Iran's domestic politics, its energy industry and its regional power may not be strong enough for the Iranian leadership to resist international demands for a serious negotiation over its nuclear programme. Despite the triumphalist rhetoric, the economy remains Iran's Achilles' heel.