Kindle Edition, 2013 © Time Inc.

Loss Leaders
The fever never broke. Cooler heads have not prevailed. And the next self-inflicted crisis may be worse than the last

Photograph by Brooks Kraft for TIME

Stuck in the middle House Speaker John Boehner was caught between worrisome polls and Tea Party passions

Michael Scherer, Alex Altman | 3313 words

In the 11th hour of any crisis, let alone one that shuts down the world's most powerful government, things are bound to get a little weird. So it was no surprise when members of Congress began showing up for votes in late September reeking of booze. Mickey Hart, a former drummer for the Grateful Dead, appeared mysteriously in a first-floor hallway of the Capitol, uttering a psychedelic koan: "It's the rhythm, stupid." Representative Devin Nunes, a California Republican, compared members of his own party to "lemmings with suicide vests," since jumping off a cliff is no longer enough in Washington. "It's very hard from a distance to figure out who has lost their minds," observed Senator Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat.

Or what else has been lost. For a generation, at the expense of billions of dollars and armies of brilliant minds, America's political parties have cunningly divided most of the country into ideological preserves. It serves their purposes: after multiple rounds of ornate gerrymandering, of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives, fewer than 1 in 5 is truly competitive on Election Day. Republicans speak to Republicans, Democrats to Democrats, the hard right and hard left comfortably cushioned from any obligation to reach out to anyone--leaving the rest of the country with no one to speak to them, or for them.

So when the embattled Speaker of the House John Boehner took to the floor with the clock ticking toward zero and pitched a doomed offer to delay the government shutdown by a few more weeks, his simple mantra drilled to the heart of the problem. "Let's listen to our constituents," Boehner thundered, as though a great chorus of voters had demanded that Obamacare be blocked, no matter the cost to the country.

Let's listen to our constituents. Those words could be etched in the Capitol marble, but perhaps never before in the nation's history have they contained so much complexity. Polls have been clear for weeks that the majority of Americans have no interest in flirting with financial disaster. Depending on how the question was asked, 60% to 70% have opposed shutting down government operations in a vague attempt to dismantle the machinery of Obamacare. Even among Republicans, support for the tactic has hovered around 50%.

But Boehner wasn't speaking for the popular will, at least not in a broad sense. He spoke the battle cry of an angry minority, still steaming from the bank bailouts and still appalled by the massive new health care entitlement about to take effect. Though he might be a pragmatic pol at heart, as party leader Boehner serves 231 other Republican members of Congress, who won a majority of House seats in 2012 despite winning 1.3 million fewer votes than their Democratic peers. Overwhelmingly, these Republicans live in districts drawn to exclude the voices of liberals and independents in favor of the Republican base.

Of Boehner's 231 allies, 205--that's 89%--are no more likely to see a serious Democratic challenge next year than see their paychecks disappear in a government shutdown. They exist in a one-party world. Their greatest fear is a primary campaign challenge from a candidate to the right. Sidling further and further toward the far flank, they eventually stake their flag on zealotry. As New Mexico Republican Congressman Steve Pearce told the New York Times near zero hour, "At times, you must act on principle and not ask what cost, what are the chances of success." He may just not care that President Obama won New Mexico by 10 percentage points; in Pearce's district, Obama lost by a landslide.

With constituencies so divided and incentives so misaligned, the country has been set up, quite literally, to fail. And the President--who is elected by the entire country--seemed content to be a bystander to the game. At the White House, Obama's aides studied the polls and saw in Boehner's brinkmanship an exercise in self-harm. The GOP quest to reverse Obamacare was front and center in 2012 and failed. If the opposition wanted to die again in the same trench, Obama was content to let it. Hours after the Washington zoo locked its gates and national parks closed across the country, Obama's top opinion tracker, David Simas, gleefully tweeted out the latest results. "Two new polls. Same findings. Independents sour on GOP," he crowed.

For some Republican strategists, this was the nightmare foreshadowed by the exit polls of 2012: a party marching resolutely away from the center of public opinion. "The alarm bells are starting to go off for me," says Ari Fleischer, George W. Bush's former press secretary, who recently co-authored a report for the Republican National Committee recommending a swift turn to the middle. "If you want to appeal to the base in 2014"--a midterm election when turnout will probably be light--"I get it," he says. "But if you want to appeal to the base in a presidential year," the hard-line position "is going to lead to doom and failure going into 2016."

Even as the shutdown begins to take its toll, the next battle is looming. By Oct. 17, Congress must pass a bill to lift the federal debt limit or risk economic calamity. Failure to do so would put the government on the brink of default, an event long considered so unthinkable that economists say they can't predict the consequences. One optimistic scenario is that Boehner's decision to hold the line on a shutdown will release the pent-up frustrations among members of his fractious conference, paving the way for a big compromise. But it could also embolden them. Some figures in the Republican Party are making a case that not raising the debt ceiling would not be catastrophic. Both parties are bracing for an even higher-stakes brawl at a time when it is not clear anyone has the ability to lead the country. "It's like the car crashed," one GOP lobbyist said as the weirdness unfolded, "but no one knew it until they went to use the car."

The Republican Rebellion

Maybe the only surprise was how ill prepared the Republican leadership was for this safe-seat insurrection. For a few fleeting moments after Obama's re-election, there were signs that the GOP might turn to the center, as Obama had predicted during the 2012 campaign. A decisive re-election would break the feverish stalemate in Washington, he said. Two days after Obama's victory, Boehner was asked whether Republicans would continue to pursue a repeal of health care reform. "I think the election changes that," he said. "Obamacare is the law of the land." He flatly rejected the idea of tying funding for the bill to the larger fiscal battle. "Trying to put Obamacare on [a budget resolution] risks shutting down the government," Boehner warned in March, the last time the government faced a funding decision.

A blue-ribbon panel of Republican elites urged the party to change along with the evolving electorate by becoming more pro-immigration and gay-friendly. Jeb Bush, the most bona fide conservative member of his family's Republican dynasty, floated a long-anticipated trial balloon as a 2016 candidate. Burnishing his proven appeal among Hispanic voters, the former Florida governor tried to seize the moment by publishing a manifesto to solve the problem of illegal immigration. But the appetite for change was an illusion; the moment had already passed. Bush's ideas were snuffed by a grassroots reaction that refused to acknowledge defeat. And while immigration reform would clear the Senate, it was already dead on arrival in the House.

The GOP base wanted candidates who would resist, not compromise. That same week, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul fluttered their hearts with his 13-hour filibuster to protest the Obama Administration's drone policy. The issue, troubling and arcane, united antigovernment conservatives with liberals who fear a surveillance state. Foreign policy fissures in both parties made drone politics complicated, but Paul's defiance of the President set the tone for the months that followed.

Meanwhile, the budget process was still a mess. For the first time since 2009, both Senate and House managed to pass budget bills--but hard-liners sabotaged a committee to reconcile the two spending plans. Few noticed at the time, because higher tax rates and a slightly stronger economy boosted tax revenue and masked the emergency. But by May, the impasse was obvious and an autumn crisis loomed like the third-reel showdown in a spaghetti western.

That's when the GOP's nervous bankers drew down the shades on their establishments. During Mitt Romney's 2012 run for President, a few dozen superrich donors dispensed huge sums, while party bigwigs like strategist Karl Rove and Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus spread the cash around as needed. When Romney lost and the strategy proved an expensive bust, the checkbooks closed and the party's power structure shifted.

Now more doctrinaire groups began raising money with the explicit goal of pushing Republican policy to the right. Conservative outfits like the Club for Growth, FreedomWorks and Heritage Action for America weren't interested in cutting deals to soothe financial markets. They wanted to energize the despondent core of true believers. Working out of drab, fluorescent-lit offices a few blocks and a world away from the gilded suites of the Capitol, Heritage stoked the primal fear of primary challenges in most members of Congress. It pushed hot-button issues, published rankings to praise the orthodox, and used their clout to punish signs of squishiness. Ideology, not party strategy, was their passion. "We're not good Republicans," Heritage Foundation executive Phillip Truluck boasts. "We're conservatives."

Heritage Action and the others paved the way for the ambitious junior Senator from Texas, Ted Cruz, a slick and silver-tongued rookie who appears to have noticed that Obama once had those same credentials. In late July, Heritage began promoting a plan backed by Cruz to turn the approaching budget crisis into a roadblock for Obamacare. Party elites scoffed, then grew worried--for they could see that what was good politics for Cruz might be bad for the greater GOP. "Every smart Republican," recalls a House Republican leadership aide, "saw there was no good end to this."

But the machinery was engaged, and it seemed to have no reverse gear. At home during the August recess, though the headlines screamed Syria, conservative House Republicans heard little from their constituents except opposition to Obamacare. When they returned to Washington, the GOP lawmakers convened a closed-door meeting in the bowels of the Capitol. One by one, members of the rank-and-file took the microphone to report that their voters were demanding a fight against what Representative John Fleming of Louisiana has called "the most dangerous piece of legislation ever passed."

They scoffed at warnings that this was a bad idea. "When your approval rating is at 9% as an institution, we don't have much further to go down," says Tim Huelskamp, a second-term House Republican from Kansas. When a reporter noted that Obama won re-election while boasting of his health care reforms, South Carolina Representative Jeff Duncan, a sophomore Tea Partyer, shot back, "I was re-elected in 2012 too."

Speaker Boehner and his top lieutenant, Eric Cantor of Virginia, preferred to sidestep a shutdown, fearful that it would boomerang on the GOP. They believed that a better chance at confrontation would come along later in the year, when Obama would be forced to seek authority to add more federal debt. But within a few days of reconvening, Boehner's vote-counting whips revealed that the membership did not want to wait. "It wasn't his thing," admits Congressman Pat Tiberi, an ally from Boehner's home state of Ohio. "Leadership clearly would have preferred to have this fight over the debt ceiling."

The insistent backbenchers dragged the Speaker into battle, setting in motion a fight that culminated the night of Sept. 30. By then, Boehner had settled on a strategy of forcing Democratic Senators to take a sequence of tough votes, with no real attempt to avert a shutdown. The House passed a series of budget resolutions, each one aimed at sapping Obamacare, knowing that the Senate would swiftly volley them back.

Boehner had enough votes from moderate Republicans to keep the government open, if he was willing to concede defeat and join those votes with House Democrats'. But "there would be a major revolt. He's trying to avoid that," says New York Republican Peter King, the would-be leader of the moderate insurrection. In effect, Boehner allowed the hardcores to shoot the party in the foot rather than provoking them into setting it on fire. "The question is, When does enough become enough?" King muses. "When does he decide to basically pull the nuclear trigger and start a civil war within the Republican Party?"

Doom and Gloom

The sad news is that the shutdown may be just another marker on the road from bad to worse, where the power of minority rule, refined by the politics of safe seats, paralyzes the body politic indefinitely. If the past few years have shown anything, it's that Congress can always find a way to fall further before it reaches its nadir. "No one I have talked to on either side of the aisle knows what the endgame is," explains Representative Dan Lipinski, a Democrat from Illinois. There are always more hostages to take, more ways to threaten broader harm if specific ideological goals are not embraced.

The tactic is gaining favor because it works in the narrowest sense. The 2011 standoff over the debt ceiling--which rattled markets, shaved economic growth and directly cost taxpayers billions in higher interest costs--birthed the so-called sequester, a 5% forced reduction in most discretionary spending. In January, Obama made it clear that he was willing to let all middle-class tax rates rise if Republicans did not agree to a targeted tax increase on the wealthiest Americans. More recently, Senate majority leader Harry Reid threatened to blow up Senate rules if Republicans did not allow the confirmation of a gaggle of presidential appointees. The Republicans blinked.

Even the rosiest proposed scenario for a solution to the current impasse would fund the government only through mid-November, setting the stage for another Götterdämmerung, with the prospect of yet another crisis when the government will face shutdown or the debt ceiling must inevitably be raised again. In the absence of a functional appropriations process--let alone a framework for compromise over long-term fiscal reforms--funding the government a few weeks or months at a time may become "the new normal," warns Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona.

Party leaders on both sides, from the President to the Speaker, have come to terms over the past few years with the limits of their powers. Boehner has agreed to do the bidding of his most conservative members for now. The specter of a 2014 primary fight has sidelined Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, one of Washington's most seasoned dealmakers. His Democratic counterpart, Reid has egged on the GOP infighting and eschewed any negotiations. And Obama, the leader of the free world, has been wary of inserting himself too deeply in the whole sordid spectacle, though he shows up occasionally to lecture the legislators about responsibility.

In the meantime, each faction busies itself with the daily messaging war, an unending skirmish of e-mail blasts, tweets, viral videos and cable-news sound bites, making the eternal case that someone else is to blame. The nation has been carved up into echo chambers; increasingly, we hear only the sound of our own passions and fears reverberating. While Obama clearly had the initial advantage from the shutdown, according to polls, he is unlikely to escape all harm. The public has given up on waiting for the era of good feeling that he promised in his first campaign, and Obama's approval rating is now mired in the low 40s.

Voters will have to wait another year to decide at the voting booth who wins this unseemly and destructive combat. Republican pollster Whit Ayres is not alone in his fear that the stiff-necked purity of the safe-seat conservatives will cost the party its House majority. "It's frustrating not being able to have much effect on Obamacare," he warns. "It would be even more frustrating to watch Nancy Pelosi wield the Speaker's gavel again."

Which she could certainly do in 2015 should her health and ambition hold up, because her own re-election is a foregone conclusion. She has a safe seat in San Francisco, where she frequently wins 80% of the vote no matter what befalls the rest of the country.

--With reporting by Zeke Miller/Washington And Alex Rogers/Washington

10 Questions.
She's eaten, prayed and loved. So now Elizabeth Gilbert is writing about the history of botany, of course

GILBERT: ERIK TANNER FOR TIME

Belinda Luscombe | 679 words

Your book The Signature of All Things is a novel. Why fiction?

I already did the hardest homework assignment of my life: I wrote the book that came after Eat, Pray, Love. I'd never felt more free as a writer once Committed was finished. It was time to write a novel and to go big with it.

The book's name refers to a theory that there's a divine imprint on everything. Do you have sympathy for that view?

I have a great deal of sympathy for any cockamamie theory that tries to find meaning in randomness. It was an interesting exercise for me to write from the point of view of somebody who can only believe what is proven, because I am susceptible to everything.

So where do you fall on the evolutionary debate?

I have trouble with orthodoxy in any form. I feel, having studied the 19th century evolutionary debate, a newfound sympathy for the pain that this discovery brought to people who, prior to Darwin, would have happily called themselves men of science and men of God. We now have a world full of scientists who have no faith and the faithful who have no reason, and that's a great loss for all of us.

There's a disdain in the book for people who make money selling medicine. Does this reflect your view ?

I think the country in general is overmedicated. I don't want to name names of medications, but I will say that I look for a more holistic idea of health rather than an immediately pharmaceutical one. That said, if I have a stroke, I'm going to the hospital.

Your characters give all these reasons for not being more engaged in abolition. Do you see modern parallels?

There is absolutely no ethical argument in defense of eating animals, and I eat them because I like to, you know? I know it's wrong, but I like a hamburger because I like it. Also, sainthood can be extremely irritating.

Now that you're a wife, have you become a fan of marriage?

I like my marriage, but my marriage is very unusual. I'm not married to somebody who wants me to be a mother. History has shown again and again that marriage is a fantastic deal for men and not always a particularly good deal for women. That said, there are literally thousands of legal advantages to being a married person. With all of those benefits probably comes a certain emotional relaxation.

Do you get asked most about eating, praying or loving?

Loving. I was late [to this interview] because my hairdresser wanted to tell me about what was going on with her boyfriend. When it's fans, it's even more intimate. The praying is the last thing anybody wants to talk about.

I'm guessing you got a lot of suggestions for an Eat, Pray, Love sequel.

I got a lot of people wanting me to ghostwrite memoirs of their divorces. I had to very gently try to explain I couldn't, while backing slowly out of the room.

Is your return to fiction a way to keep exploring spiritual ideas?

I think I'll be exploring those ideas forever. I've spent my entire life chasing wonder, and to me that word is synonymous with spirituality. I don't know what else there is to talk about.

What form does your personal spiritual practice take at the moment?

Um, I do things. I hesitate to talk about it, because it makes me sound like a loon. But I will say that probably the most rubber-to-the-road part is a daily struggle to try to figure out how to be a compassionate person.

You recently took on Philip Roth. Why?

I read an article written by a young writer who had shown Philip Roth his book, and Roth had said, Congratulations and now quit because it's a horrible profession, and all you do is suffer. And my feeling was, there is only one proper answer, which is to extend your hand and say welcome and wish them all the luck in the world.

--Belinda Luscombe

FOR VIDEO OF GILBERT'S CHAT, GO TO time.com/10questions

The Home Front
Authorities struggle to stop a terrorist "pipeline"

SOMALIS: ERIC MILLER--REUTERS

Jay Newton-Small/Minneapolis | 377 words

On the surface, the cedar-riverside neighborhood near downtown Minneapolis seems like any other Midwestern community. But in recent weeks it has been the site of heightened activity by the FBI, local law enforcement and local leaders struggling to counter terrorist recruitment.

Minneapolis is home to the largest Somali population in the U.S., and in the past six years it has lost an estimated 25 to 40 young men to al-Shabab, the al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group that claimed responsibility for the Sept. 21 Westgate Mall attack in Nairobi. In the wake of that attack, Kenyan officials said intelligence suggested that two or three of the terrorists responsible came from Minnesota. Though the FBI officially says it has no information to suggest a link, it has sent a team to Kenya to investigate, and the bureau and community leaders in Cedar-Riverside believe that someone is still drawing local Somali Americans into the terrorist fight. They just don't know who or how.

The probe has had mixed success. In May, Mahamud Said Omar, a former janitor at Minneapolis' Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for recruiting young men and sending them to Somalia for al-Shabab. But as recently as July, two young locals disappeared to join the group, according to community leaders.

Most of the Minnesota recruits who fought for al-Shabab are dead, killed in Somalia. Some are in prison in the U.S., and a few are still fighting. Their families--like that of Cabdulaahi Ahmed Faarax, 35, who left Minneapolis in 2009 and is wanted on 14 counts of terrorism-related activities in the U.S.--know very little. Faarax's close family members say the best-case scenario is that their relative is caught and sent to prison. "Then he can kill no more, taint our names no more," one tells TIME.

Since the Kenya attack, local mosques have condemned the killings in their sermons, saying al-Shabab violates Muslim principles. Schools and youth programs are on the alert for disenfranchised kids, who are at the highest risk of recruitment. "This can happen again," says Mohamed Farah, executive director of Ka Joog, a youth group that works with more than 10,000 Somali kids in Minnesota. Says Kyle Loven, an FBI spokesman in Minneapolis: "We're going to continue our efforts to make sure this pipeline stops."

Marcella Hazan
Grande dame of Italian food

HAZAN: CHRIS O'MEARA--AP

April Bloomfield | 211 words

Every so often in life we get to meet people who make a difference. Marcella was one of them. I was first introduced to her at her apartment in Florida. I remember bending slightly to kiss her cheek, and in that instant, as I greeted her, I caught the most amazing smell of white truffles. I just couldn't believe that I was meeting Marcella Hazan and that she smelled of truffles!

We sat together, enjoyed some wine and ate carta di musica with bottarga, a dish I would later put on my menu at the John Dory Oyster Bar in New York City. I was shocked I had never eaten it before, it was so gloriously tasty.

Marcella, who passed away Sept. 29 at 89, changed the way Americans and Britons (including me) view Italian food. Through her precise and informative cookbooks, she made learning fun. Spending time with her was a humbling experience, and I feel lucky to have had the opportunity. Once when I was cooking a veal shank, I asked her how she thought it tasted. In a strong Italian accent, she said it needed more salt. She was right; she was always right.

Bloomfield is chef at two Michelin-starred restaurants in New York City, the Breslin and the Spotted Pig

Briefing

OBAMA, NETANYAHU: BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES (2)

239 words

THE WEEK

THE U.S. GOVERNMENT SHUT DOWN

'They've shut down the government over an ideological crusade.'

BARACK OBAMA, criticizing Republicans for refusing to pass a budget that doesn't delay the Affordable Care Act

19

Elements that were assigned new atomic weights as a result of more accurate measurement technology

'I WILL TELL THE TRUTH IN THE FACE OF THE SWEET TALK AND THE ONSLAUGHT OF SMILES.'

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, Israeli Prime Minister, alleging that Iran's newfound willingness to negotiate its nuclear policy may be insincere

1,200

Racing pigeons from Belgium impounded by customs officials in China after a dispute over import fees

'Why doesn't ... the state of Congo deal with the issues themselves?'

PAUL KAGAME, Rwandan President, arguing--amid reports that his country backs Congolese rebels--that it's not Rwanda's responsibility to end decades of conflict in neighboring the Democratic Republic of Congo

SpaceX

The company launched its Falcon 9 test rocket

GOOD WEEK

BAD WEEK

NASA

Temporarily shut down on its 55th birthday

'I love Madonna to death, but she's never going to give me that damn baton.'

KATY PERRY, on the future of her pop-music career; she added that she'll "probably turn into more of a Joni Mitchell"

$250,000

Cost of a 30-second ad during the Breaking Bad finale, up from about $75,000 for the rest of this season

'This is not about Republicans here in Congress. It's about fairness for the American people.'

JOHN BOEHNER, Republican Speaker of the House, insisting that GOP opposition to the Affordable Care Act--led by Senator Ted Cruz--is altruistic, not political

Sources: Reuters (2); Billboard; Bloomberg; NBC

Six-Second Stars
Vine is thriving--and creating new Web celebrities
Laura Stampler | 278 words

Meagan Cignoli's eye peers through a veil of cotton balls. In stop-motion bursts, her face emerges. The vignette lasts mere moments, but on Vine, the social network that lets users upload six-second clips, this is how a star is born.

Cignoli, 32, is in the vanguard of so-called Viners using the eight-month-old service to build a lucrative following. When Facebook's Instagram launched a similar video feature three months ago, some thought Vine, which is owned by rival Twitter, was toast. So far that hasn't been the case. Just as YouTube has launched Saturday Night Live careers, Vine is increasingly minting its own kind of celebrity.

Five days after Cignoli perfected her style, for example, she was contacted by ad agency BBDO to make Vines for Lowe's. The home-improvement chain tapped her to create videos showing how to remove rust from kitchen knives and organize household cleaners. Since then, she's worked on Vines for 38 other major brands.

She's not the only one. "I was working at Subway four months ago," says Brandon Calvillo, 19, a top Viner known for his acerbic humor. "Today I might get a TV offer." Calvillo, who has 1.3 million followers, Vines for the likes of General Electric. Nicholas Megalis, 24, has accumulated nearly 2.9 million followers with his snack-themed raps; he now makes videos for Trident and Virgin Mobile. While the medium is in its infancy, advertisers have been paying creators anywhere from $1,000 per video to $20,000 for an ongoing series of Vines.

What's fueling the app's popularity? Vine's restrictions, say power users. Its time limit leads to experimentation, as in early television. Says Megalis: "I have a horrendous attention span, so six seconds was perfect."

World

GREECE: ANGELOS TZORTZINIS--AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Golden Dawn leader Nikos Michaloliakos is escorted to the prosecutor's office in Athens on Sept. 28

Cleo Brock-Abraham, Andrew Katz, David Stout, Ishaan Tharoor | 787 words

Sunset for Greece's Golden Dawn Party?

BY ISHAAN THAROOR

It was a death that woke a nation. On Sept. 18, Pavlos Fyssas, a popular left-wing musician, was cornered in an Athens suburb by a gang of thugs and fatally stabbed. Once it emerged that the alleged killer was an active member of Golden Dawn, a far-right nationalist group that has recently become a major player in Greek politics, the backlash was swift.

Leading Golden Dawn members, including some parliamentarians, were arrested and charged with running a criminal organization. Prime Minister Antonis Samaras vowed to "eradicate" any trace of fascism in Greek society--a direct nod to Golden Dawn's roots as a fringe neo-Nazi group.

That's quite a change from a year ago, when the party--buoyed by popular anger over the E.U.-mandated austerity measures burdening debt-ridden Greece--won its first seats in parliament, promising an alternative to the status quo in Athens. Recent polls even suggested it was the third most popular party in Greece. All the while, reports piled up of Golden Dawn supporters participating in violent attacks on dark-skinned foreigners.

It took the murder of a Greek citizen to shake Samaras' government--which leftist opponents say turned a blind eye to Golden Dawn's misdeeds--into action. But the party won't go down without a fight: Golden Dawn spokesmen have dismissed the criminal charges as a political ploy.

MEXICO

'Women are more trustworthy ... They don't ask for or take bribes.'

Carlos Ortega Carpinteyro, police chief of Ecatepec, a suburb of Mexico City, explaining the governor's mandate to thwart corruption by replacing male traffic cops with female ones; Carpinteyro has hired 60 women so far, but it's too early to tell whether the switch is helping

DATA

CASH ISN'T ALWAYS KING

A MasterCard report analyzed $63 trillion worth of payments in 33 countries to see how many were made electronically.

Belgium 93%

France 92%

Canada 90%

Saudi Arabia 19%

Nigeria 10%

Egypt 7%

Three Essential Facts About Nigeria's Terrorist Group Boko Haram

The recent shooting at an agricultural college in Yobe--which left more than 40 dead--is just the latest carnage tied to the al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist organization.

IT'S RELATIVELY NEW

The band of Sunni Muslim radicals was founded about a decade ago by Mohammed Yusuf, a young cleric disdainful of government corruption and Western values. After Yusuf's death in police custody in 2009, new leader Abubakar Shekau prioritized attacks on federal institutions, police stations and Christian villages.

IT THREATENS STUDENTS

Beyond the fact that Boko Haram roughly translates as "Western civilization is forbidden," it frequently targets public schools because it believes students are brainwashed by Western curriculums. Fearing violence, some parents have taken their children out of those schools, causing some to close.

IT'S A MAJOR TARGET

Nigeria has long sought to quash the group, and the U.S. government has put a $7 million bounty on Shekau's head--$2 million more than the bounty on Mullah Omar, the leader of Afghanistan's Taliban. Though Boko Haram is not large enough to stage a coup, it could link up with other insurgents to bring further bloodshed.

Pop-Up Island

PAKISTAN

The 7.7-magnitude earthquake that struck Balochistan--killing at least 515 people--shifted enough mud and rock to create a new island in the Arabian Sea, off the port city of Gwadar. The land mass, seen here in a photo shot by the Pléiades satellite, is reportedly about 250 ft. (76 m) long and roughly 60 ft. (18 m) high. Like others before it, it's expected to disappear over time.

Roundup

China's Criminal Takedowns

Now that President Xi Jinping is cracking down on widespread corruption among the elite, some Chinese Web users have started doing the same. Here's a look at several busts enabled by online vigilantes who gave each offender a nickname:

House Sister (a.k.a. Gong Aiai)

The banker got three years in prison after a whistle-blower posted about Gong's use of fake documents to purchase homes worth $65 million.

Uncle House (a.k.a. Cai Bin)

The police officer got 11½ years in prison after it was revealed that he had illegally accumulated more than 20 houses.

Brother Watch (a.k.a. Yang Dacai)

The government official got 14 years in prison after being exposed for using bribes to buy luxury watches.

Grandpa House (a.k.a. Zhao Haibin)

The ex--police chief was expelled from the Communist Party after netizens alleged he'd used a fake ID card to buy almost 200 real estate properties.

GERMANY

2:03:23

Time it took Kenya's Wilson Kipsang, 31, to run the Berlin Marathon, beating the world record--by 15 seconds--set there by his countryman Patrick Makau in 2011

+

Trending In

RELIGION

Pope Francis said he will canonize his predecessors John Paul II and John XXIII on April 27, 2014

ACCOLADES

U.S.-born Megan Young, 23, competed as Miss Philippines and won the 2013 Miss World pageant in Bali

FOOD

Gay-rights activists boycotted pastamaker Barilla after its chairman said ads would show only "traditional" families; he later apologized

AIRLINES

A new survey found that 56% of British commercial pilots have fallen asleep in the cockpit; 29% awoke to see their co-pilot sleeping

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Texas Tea Party.
Experience is an asset for a booming oil region

GETTY IMAGES

Texas is the U.S.'s top oil producer

Bryan Walsh/Midland | 329 words

Oil and natural gas are old energy--as old as it gets. But increasingly, the technology used to extract them is cutting-edge. "Over the last 20 or 30 years, there's been more technological leaps out of the oil and gas industry than there's been out of Silicon Valley," says Dale Nijoka, Ernst & Young's global oil and gas leader.

Nowhere is that more obvious than in West Texas, where energy companies are using hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling on the hydrocarbon-rich shale rocks found in the surrounding Permian Basin. For all the attention paid to the Bakken in North Dakota and the rising Eagle Ford in South Texas, it's the reliable Permian--which has already produced 29 billion barrels of oil--that has the most room to grow. "There's more drilling activity going on in the Permian Basin today than ever before," says Mitch Mamoulides, Midland-Delaware basin manager for Chevron North America.

Environmental concerns about fracking and water use could slow the pace of development, but analysts believe the technology could help the Permian Basin produce more than 2 million barrels of oil a day in the next four years, which would be a historic high. Some of that is geology: the bulk of the Permian's hydrocarbons are oil, as opposed to less valued natural gas. But expertise and infrastructure play a role too. There have been commercial oil wells in the Permian since 1921, and Midland, Texas, may have more expert drillers per capita than any other city on earth. All of which means that this is a boom that could last.

FOR MORE ON NEW ENERGY, GO TO time.com/newenergy

Flooded Out

FLOODED: WAYNE PARRY--AP

Coastal homes may need to be raised to defend against sea-level rise

Bryan Walsh | 212 words

Thousands of homeowners in flood-prone parts of the U.S. saw the cost of their subsidized insurance skyrocket on Oct. 1, as long-awaited reforms to the National Flood Insurance Program kicked in. The federal government has offered below-market insurance since 1968, but the costs of megastorms like Katrina and Sandy have left the plan nearly $30 billion in the red. The changes aim to bring costs closer in line with the actual financial risks posed by frequent floods, but they will also make the federal flood insurance that much more expensive for many people.

Predictably, property owners and politicians from the coast of New Jersey to the Gulf beaches of Louisiana are outraged, but there's no avoiding the problem. The population of shoreline counties has increased 40% since 1970, putting more people and property at risk when a storm hits. Worse, scientists predict that climate change could cause sea levels to rise as much as 3 ft. over the next century. That, in turn, could put densely populated coasts in even greater danger. It won't be easy or cheap to insure against that threat.

--Bryan Walsh

Tom Clancy
Master of the military thriller

CLANCY: JOE MCNALLY--GETTY IMAGES

Colin L. Powell | 359 words

Tom and I met in 1988 in Nashville when we both were inducted into an honor society called the American Academy of Achievement. He had become famous just a couple of years earlier when The Hunt for Red October came out. At the time, I was National Security Adviser to President Reagan. So I, being a soldier, and he, being deeply involved in military matters, hit it off right away. I was fascinated that an insurance agent, in his first shot at writing a book, had come up with The Hunt for Red October. He and I and our spouses spent the whole weekend talking. We became fast friends and stayed in touch over the next 25 years.

Tom, who was 66 when he died on Oct. 1, was quite an interesting guy. He didn't suffer fools gladly. He spoke his mind clearly and sometimes was quite outspoken. And he was always learning.

His books were all great, but I have a slight preference for Clear and Present Danger because I helped give him the idea for it; at least that's what he says in the book's acknowledgments. We were talking about the work the U.S. military was doing in South America to cut the flow of drugs, and he said that gave him the idea. What made his books so popular throughout the world, especially among the military, was how he immersed himself in the things he wrote about. He studied and talked to so many people. He wasn't sneaking into classified facilities. He was able to gain this extraordinary knowledge by reading, studying and talking to folks.

Tom's books were incredibly accurate. He didn't invent impossible schemes. He invented things that could happen. Some things that actually have happened over the years bear some resemblance to scenarios that he put together. Tom could sense things and see things in a way that others couldn't. He was a friend whom I treasured. He was somebody who really loved his country, and through his books, he demonstrated that love.

Powell was formerly head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Security Adviser to Ronald Reagan and Secretary of State for George W. Bush

LightBox

Photograph by Kim Do-hun--Yonhap/Reuters

38 words

Spectator Sport

Scores of office workers gather to watch South Korean troops and newly unveiled missiles during a Seoul military parade in honor of the nation's Armed Forces Day on Oct. 1.

FOR PICTURES OF THE WEEK, GO TO lightbox.time.com

Statecraft and Stagecraft
A deal with Iran will be difficult--but at least we know what it would contain

MAO: UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

Fareed Zakaria | 833 words

Watching the diplomatic dance between Iran and the U.S. leading up to the unprecedented phone call from President Obama to President Hassan Rouhani, one had to ask, Are we seeing a replay of 1972? That was the year when after decades of estrangement, China and the U.S. began a reconciliation that changed the world. Are Washington and Tehran, locked in their own decades-old state of antagonism, on the verge of a similar change of heart?

In a word, no. The U.S. and China were pushed toward each other by the most powerful force in international relations--a common enemy. By the late 1960s, China had begun to view the Soviet Union as its principal national-security problem, and the U.S. saw an opportunity to make common cause with Beijing. There is no such common enemy driving Washington and Tehran together.

There is, however, one similarity. China in the early '70s was at its lowest point economically. Iran's economy has been devastated by tough U.S.-backed sanctions, as well as the burden of providing arms and treasure to the unpopular, embattled regime in Syria. In addition, the mullahs in Tehran are aware that the deep discontent that bubbled to the surface in the shape of the pro-reform Green movement only four years ago still lurks within their society.

We now know that the change in U.S.-China relations in 1972 led inexorably to China's becoming the economic power it is today--rich, market-based and open to the world. But that path was not at all visible 40 years ago, least of all to the Chinese. Even after 1972, the regime under Mao Zedong was thoroughly communist and largely hostile to the West. After Mao's death came years of internal struggle and chaos and then, unpredictably, the rise to power of China's real modernizer, Deng Xiaoping, who set his country on its great transformation. To make the parallel, Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, is Mao, not Deng. And whatever Rouhani's views, he cannot change the nature of the regime.

In fact, the better analogy to consider for U.S.-Iran relations is that of another 1972 meeting, between Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow. It was the first time an American President had paid a state visit to the U.S.S.R., and it resulted in the beginning of détente--a series of steps that de-escalated the Cold War and allowed for better contact. For now, that might be the most one can expect for relations between the U.S. and Iran.

And yet détente with Iran is possible and worth pursuing. Its outlines would look like this: Iran would agree to cap its enrichments of uranium at 5%; at that level, it would be difficult and time-consuming for it to move its nuclear program from a civilian to a military stage. Iran has already enriched some quantities of uranium up to 20%, making them easily and quickly convertible into weapons-grade fuel. This stockpile would have to be shipped out of the country. Iran has recently rejected this suggestion, but in 2010 it accepted a similar deal. It might do so again, if it is allowed to keep the uranium it wants for medical purposes.

Also, there are two nuclear facilities--one near Qom and the other in Arak--that worry experts. The former is underground and could withstand an air strike. The latter is a heavy-water reactor that when completed will generate plutonium, another pathway to a nuclear bomb. Israel would like to see both reactors shut down. That's a nonstarter for Iran, which claims they are both for civilian purposes. The solution might be to have an intrusive inspection process.

This is not foolproof. We have to recognize that any country with a proper scientific establishment--and Iran has that--can convert a peaceful nuclear program into a military one. Iran knows this, which is why it is creating broad and deep technical expertise in this field. It's impossible to reverse this now, if it ever was possible. The international community's goal should be to prevent Iran's program from such a breakout. Careful monitoring could help ensure that any suspicious shifts would be detected. The hope has to be that Iran is smart enough to seek the influence and insurance policy that such a deal would provide rather than pursue nuclear weapons, which would turn it into a pariah like North Korea and possibly trigger military action against it.

The nuclear deal aside, Iran is a great civilization and a great nation. It is a tragedy that it sits isolated outside the global system. This is largely the product of its own actions. But Washington should take every opportunity and make every effort to see whether the nuclear talks can create new openings. There is the small possibility that 2013 could one day be seen as the year Iran came in from the cold.

TO READ MORE BY FAREED, GO TO time.com/zakaria

Congress Is Bad for the Economy
Instead of leadership, we get showdowns. No wonder consumers remain wary about growth

Rana Foroohar | 856 words

The relationship between wall Street and Washington is like a bad marriage. They fight, promise to change, try to believe each other and go back to their old ways. The government shutdown is only the latest of these tiffs. Stocks were down before the shutdown, up after, and they are likely to be volatile if politicians continue to duke it out over spending limits and the debt ceiling. None of it has been surprising. After all, we've seen this movie several times over the past three years. Congress squabbles, markets fall; Congress makes up, stocks rise. Even if this particular remake ends happily, one thing is for sure--the endless cycle of Beltway shenanigans is damaging our economy.

You can see it in the divide between the S&P 500 and Gallup's consumer-confidence numbers. As behavioral economist Peter Atwater recently pointed out to me, these two numbers have historically almost always moved in step with each other. But while markets are higher today than they were in their precrisis peak in 2007, confidence, which reflects perceptions about the strength of the real economy, is lower.

No wonder both consumer and business spending are down. Government could be doing so many things to help the economy, from properly reregulating the banking sector to revamping education to funding the R&D that fuels job creation. But instead of leading the way to growth, some politicians remain obsessed with defunding Obamacare. While they complain that the law has created punishing uncertainty for businesses, their brinkmanship creates far worse uncertainty about bigger things--like whether we'll have jobs. With or without shutdowns that shave 0.2 percentage points off GDP growth per week, we'll be lucky to maintain 2% growth, let alone achieve the 3% we need for true economic health.

The divide between stocks and the real economy tells us some important things. For starters, the foundations of our recovery are weak. Equities have remained relatively strong because the Federal Reserve is artificially propping them up with $85 billion a month of asset buying. The tactic is understandable--the Fed has kept the money spigots open, risking market bubbles, in part because of "fiscal headwinds"--that is, growth-destroying partisan politics. Ben Bernanke can't make Congress agree to fund the government or raise the debt ceiling, but he figures he can at least shore up stock and home prices.

The problem is that this monetary cycle is breaking down. People simply aren't buying into the sugar high of this kind of policy anymore. For proof, look at how the Fed's decision a couple of weeks ago not to taper off its massive spending spree boosted stocks for only a day. Each new round of quantitative easing does less to goose the market than the round before. "It all shows what a weak and narrow recovery we are in," says Atwater.

It also shows the dangerously schizophrenic nature of our economy. As long as Congress remains too dysfunctional to keep parks open, let alone craft a real growth strategy for the country, the Fed has to play the role of economic stimulator of last resort, and banks, hedge funds and money managers have to play along. As Atwater points out, they are now using record levels of debt and leverage to buy up stocks, since the Fed's money dump keeps interest rates so low. (I'm reminded of former Citigroup CEO Chuck Prince's infamous line that "as long as the music is playing, you've got to get up and dance.") A recovery seen mainly in the financial markets and built on the shaky foundations of debt rather than income growth is not what the U.S. needs.

We may not be able to keep even that kind of recovery going much longer. Whether any federal workers are around or not to produce the next jobs report doesn't matter, because it's not the unemployment number we need to look at. It's the workforce-participation number, which is as low as it's been since women started entering the labor force en masse in the 1980s. Only 63% of the population are working--about the same as in the beleaguered euro zone. It's impossible to stage a robust recovery in an economy that depends heavily on consumer spending when so few people are getting paychecks.

And therein lies the real debt conundrum. The battles over spending limits and debt ceilings have nothing to do with the state of our public finances. They've actually improved in the past year, thanks to the sequester cuts that resulted from the last round of partisan budget battles. But ironically, those cuts, along with the continued political squabbling, have created a situation in which we have a weaker dollar, slower growth and a recovery that isn't creating enough jobs to hold the percentage of working Americans steady. Too bad Congress isn't eligible for furloughs.

What You Said About ...

597 words

The future of higher education Jon Meacham's Oct. 7 cover story on how and what colleges should be teaching drew strong opinions. Although Georgetown's Innovation Initiative, among others, promoted it on Twitter, TIME.com reader RoyStone said it underplayed the responsibility of secondary schools for gaps in U.S. college students' knowledge. "The elementary facts/questions presented in the opening of this article should have been taught in high school." Added John Fox of Nashville: "Every university must assume a basic level of civic knowledge in every student it admits; they haven't the time or resources to teach high school civics to new students." Meanwhile, Jim Haas, emeritus history professor at Southern Illinois University, suggested that smaller colleges throughout the country needed to crack the whip when evaluating potential students. The "low expectations of many nonselective universities," he wrote, "are often rationalized by the familiar cop-out 'This isn't Harvard.'"

Ted Cruz Alex Altman's story on the Texas Senator's 21-hour diatribe on the Senate floor brought out the anti-Cruz contingent. "Ted Cruz is nothing more than the latest heavy-lidded clone of Joseph McCarthy who thinks he can ride a wave of demagoguery into power in Washington," wrote Ronald Waters of Santa Rosa Beach, Fla. Margaret Sharp of Phoenix wrote, "I was surprised the writer didn't mention Cruz was from Canada until way into the article--ask him about the universal health care that likely benefited his parents."

Explaining the shutdown to your kids Many grownups bewildered by Washington thanked Katy Steinmetz for her Swampland post that laid out the facts in terms understandable to the tween set. It was widely shared on Twitter, where one reader wrote, "Okay now I understand. This is on my level."

NOW ON TIME.COM

Our list of 30 must-see Tumblrs to follow this year spans the serious (science, news, art) and the cheeky (humor and entertainment)--all available at time.com/tumblrs. A sampling:

C-SPAN CHARTS

Highlights the best charts and props used by members of Congress

REALITY-TV GIFS

Features choice animated moments from The Real Housewives of New Jersey and others

RANDWICH

Showcases a variety of sandwiches, like the Dessert Dawg, which touts grilled mango

NOW ON LIGHTBOX

R. Crumb, the comic artist and countercultural icon who turned 70 this August, is famous for drawing stark urban settings. Many were inspired by real-life photos he took. (See them at lightbox.time.com.) These never-before-seen snapshots of traffic lights, power lines and other infrastructure capture what Crumb calls the "bleak background reality of urban life" realized in ink across the pages of The Weirdo Years, a new anthology compiling some of his greatest work.

TIME'S (STUFFED) PANDA CAM

After the government shut down the National Zoo's panda cam, we took to the Internet with one of our own. CNN and PBS featured the bear. Said @danielle_ivory: "My scientific assessment is that TIME's panda is way more energetic than a real panda."

Please recycle this magazine and remove inserts or samples before recycling

Speed Trap
Aging red-state fans. Cars that have gotten too boring. To get back into top gear, a struggling NASCAR is trying to reinvent racing for a new generation--at 200 m.p.h.

Photograph by Christopher Morris for TIME

Bill Saporito/Pocono Speedway | 2559 words

Espn is a repository for all kinds of sports--baseball, football and basketball, not to mention billiards, X Games, cheerleading, Frisbee, even soccer. But as of 2015, it will no longer carry NASCAR, perhaps the most God-and-country of all American sports. It wasn't that ESPN lost a bidding war with NBC, which bought the rights earlier this year for $4.4 billion to populate its new sports network. ESPN declined to bid at all, as did Atlanta-based Turner Broadcasting, a 30-year NASCAR partner. What was one of the hottest properties in U.S. sports a decade ago has become a loser for these networks as ratings fade and sponsors flee.

While other sports that took a beating during the recession have mostly rebounded, NASCAR is struggling to get back in gear. Persistent unemployment, a slow wage recovery and high gas prices have thinned raceway crowds like the hair on a 47-year-old--the average age of a stock-car-racing fan. Efforts to prevent horrific crashes that sometimes spray shredded metal into the stands have resulted in safer cars. But that has led to criticism that NASCAR races, which send 900-horsepower machines careening around tracks at 200 m.p.h., are growing monotonous.

As a result, ticket revenues are in their sixth straight year of decline. At the racetracks owned by Charlotte, N.C.--based Speedway Motorsports Inc., which hosts 13 Sprint Cup races, ticket revenue fell from $188 million in 2008 to $116 million last year. The FORTUNE 500 sponsors that once splashed their brands across race cars and tracks, meanwhile, have grown pickier, leaving drivers scrambling for sponsorship money. "We used to fight over dollars," explains top driver Tony Stewart, who became a co-owner of Stewart-Haas Racing in the middle of the downturn. "Now we fight over pennies."

NASCAR is hardly the only iconic American institution left reeling by the lingering economic downturn and demographic shifts. The decline of traditional households, a growing Hispanic population and tightfisted consumers have challenged companies from Walmart to Best Buy. Media and entertainment firms are grappling with millennials, whose buying habits are changing the way everything from condensed soup to romantic comedies get marketed.

In many ways NASCAR finds itself becoming a sports analogue of the Republican Party: solidly popular in red states but with a declining base that skews old, white, Southern--and in NASCAR's case down-market. The question now is whether it's too late to attract the younger, more diverse audience NASCAR needs to grow. "Our business model, which was cruising in a great place, overnight got a real rattle," admits Brian France, the company's chairman and CEO and the grandson of NASCAR co-founder Bill France. "We were trying to figure out what things we should have been doing in the first place."

NASCAR is neither a traditional company nor a sports league. The France Family Group owns the NASCAR circuit, which runs a 36-race season from February to November. (Bill France took the races from the beach at Daytona in the 1950s to organized mayhem at the tracks.) France's sister, Lesa France Kennedy, runs the family-controlled International Speedway Corp., which owns 13 tracks. Independent companies like Speedway--controlled by France-family rival Bruton Smith--operate the others.

There are powerful team owners like Rick Hendrick, a billionaire auto dealer; star drivers like Dale Earnhardt Jr.; TV-rights holders Fox and NBC; sponsors including 3M and Mars Inc., as well as General Motors, Ford and Toyota. (Chrysler pulled its Dodge cars last year; it isn't planning a return.) "It looks like we still have a very stable business model," says France, alluding to NASCAR's $820 million in estimated annual revenue--much of which is secured through television deals.

And yet France has put the entire business under review. New cars this year, dubbed Gen-6, are intended to restore the paint-trading, side-by-side racing that marked NASCAR's peak and at the same time more closely resemble cars in the showroom. Racetracks like Daytona are being downsized and retrofitted with plusher accommodations. Most important, under the so-called NASCAR Drive for Diversity program, the sport is nurturing a multicultural group of charismatic drivers like Darrell Wallace Jr., who it hopes can become its Tiger Woods or Jeremy Lin.

To woo Latinos, NASCAR co-produced the telenovela Arranque De Pasión, featuring stock-car drivers, with Univision in April. (The show, which chronicles the rise of an iron-willed female driver, Ela, features plenty of longing looks across the raceway.) "It's important for us to meet [Hispanic viewers] where they are," says NASCAR marketing boss Steve Phelps. "To create programs that will make them feel welcome."

But retooling NASCAR is not going to be easy. Consider the 10-race Chase for the Cup championship series, now under way, which was marred when crew chiefs for Michael Waltrip Racing (MWR) were caught ordering two drivers to tank a race to help a third. NASCAR fined MWR heavily, and driver Martin Truex got tossed. NAPA Auto Parts also withdrew its $15 million sponsorship of the team. For a sport determined to make its races more exciting and competitive, having guys being told to take a dive doesn't help.

Then there's the difficulty of recalibrating NASCAR's image. Last spring, Smith's Speedway sold the naming rights for the Texas 500 to the national gun lobby, and the race was rebranded as the NRA 500. In the aftermath of the Dec. 14, 2012, mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., it looked to some as if NASCAR was choosing sides, even though earlier in the year it sponsored a car that honored the tragedy's victims. In the controversy's aftermath, France said NASCAR might bar such politically charged sponsorships in the future. But overnight, the sport was dragged into a polarizing political fight at a time when it was trying to reach out to a broader fan base.

Driving Diversity

There were no African-American drivers in the Daytona 500, NASCAR's biggest race. Nor are there any in the top-tier Sprint Cup series of 36 races. Meanwhile, the best known Latino driver, Juan Pablo Montoya, is leaving the sport and returning to Indy car racing next year. (Indy racing is NASCAR's high-tech, open-cockpit rival.) When NASCAR invited rapper 50 Cent to the Daytona 500 in February, he looked around the track and tweeted, "Damn I don't see no black people here lol." He later deleted the message.

To see an African American at the wheel, 50 Cent would have to go to NASCAR's minor league, the Camping World Truck Series, where Wallace is the best hope of NASCAR's diversity program. (There are no women in the program, though it does claim several Latinos, including Daniel Suárez and Sergio Pena.) "We have not had a breakout," says France of NASCAR's inability to produce a star who is not Caucasian. "But we are really close with the most talented African-American driver I have seen in a long time."

Wallace, who grew up in North Carolina and is known as Bubba, is barely 20 years old but carries the load without too much apparent stress. "It means a lot and it's a lot of weight, so I try to do the best I can," he says. "But I have to put it behind me and focus on racing." Last year, his father told the Orlando Sentinel that fans and event promoters had used racial epithets around him in the past, but Wallace seems to shrug these incidents off. He was invited to the 2012 BET Awards and walked the red carpet. "Nobody knew who I was," he laughs.

The biggest obstacle to a more diverse sport isn't necessarily race or gender; it's money. NASCAR's creation myth is built around the trials of hardscrabble moonshiners driving souped-up cars to evade the tax man. In reality, stock-car racing may be the most elite sport in America. To get into the game, all a teenager needs is about $100,000. "When you start at 15, you either have to be really good [and get sponsored] or have a lot of money," explains Wallace. (His parents were wealthy enough to stake him in the lower rungs until he got signed by Joe Gibbs Racing.) The financial meltdown only amplified the problem. When race teams had to make budget cuts, funding for development--NASCAR's best hope for attracting a more diverse group of drivers--took a hit.

Too bad, given that Danica Patrick turned this year's Daytona 500 into the Danica 500 when she won the pole position, driving her slime green GoDaddy.com Chevy around the track's 31-degree banked oval faster than all the boys. Patrick is a NASCAR diversity dream, a charismatic 99-lb. woman who can absolutely boss a 3,400-lb. stock car. She finished eighth in the race but caused a television-ratings spike. "You are going to see more and more girls getting into the sport," says Bill Racer, business manager for driver Greg Biffle. "Unfortunately, if 100,000 kids are qualified and ready to race, they just don't have the money to bring to the table."

NASCAR's diversity ambitions are genuine--who wouldn't want to appeal to more customers?--but its cultural totems still trail its broader aspirations. At Daytona, two flags fluttered in the wind. One was the Stars and Stripes, the other the Confederacy's Stainless Banner, plus a sign that read, in part, Obama can kiss my ass. Most nonwhites at the race were track employees. This is a sport that, despite its best efforts, may still be whiter than ice hockey.

Playing It Out

"I've never had a boring race," says Tony Stewart, the star driver nicknamed Smoke for his skill behind the wheel. We're standing inside his No. 14 car hauler at Pocono Raceway two days before the GoBowling.com 400. Stewart's perspective is a little different from most NASCAR fans in that he spends Sundays going about 200 m.p.h., making the occasional left turn. He has driven everything from Indy cars to dirt-track karts (he broke his leg driving one a few days after he spoke to TIME, ending his season) and has won NASCAR's championship twice. "It's not boring if you are sitting in the seat," he says.

Stewart, 42, is also NASCAR's resident iconoclast, almost gleefully challenging accepted wisdom, which in this case is that NASCAR's races aren't attracting younger audiences because they've lost their edge. And if you stand along the pit road and watch race cars flash by in a rush of noise and color, you'd have to agree with him. It's a thrilling experience--at first. Watching lap after lap after lap, with very little happening between the competitors, you come to understand the issue.

The complaint is that the dangerous, bad-boy style of hotfooting that marked NASCAR's ascendency and made great story lines out of drivers like Stewart, Carl Edwards and Brad Keselowski has devolved into corporate-billboard racing. Indeed, a few dominant teams win the vast majority of the races. Three teams have won 70% of those held this year, for example. There are 43 drivers who start each race, but half of them don't have a prayer. They can't match the money that a billionaire team owner like Hendrick can spend on technology, testing and personnel. At a late September Chase race in Dover, Del., Hendrick's cars finished 1-2-3. The race was won by the No. 48 car driven by Jimmie Johnson, who has claimed five championships in seven years for Hendrick Motorsports.

For years, NASCAR has tried to create a car that is both safe to run and exciting to watch while facing the paradox that some fans like the crashes that come with tight racing. After the death of Dale Earnhardt in 2001, the sport poured money into safety, finally producing what it called the Car of Tomorrow (COT) in 2007. The COT was undeniably safer. But as a race car, the bigger, boxier vehicle created a lot of turbulence in its wake. It might as well have been dubbed a DOG--it was like turning a Corvette into a minivan, or so the fans' lament went.

The new Gen-6 car is even safer, but to some extent, the technology has overtaken the drivers. The aerodynamics of the three models available to teams are so similar--and so sensitive--that maneuvering them is difficult. "As the technology gets more involved, it's tighter and tighter. It's hard to get an advantage," Stewart explains. After her Daytona run, Patrick bemoaned her inability to pass: "I was thinking in the car: how am I going to do this? I didn't know what to do exactly." The results were apparent at a recent race in Indianapolis, which was harshly criticized as a single-file parade.

Television is dealing with the same problems by trying to adjust the picture. "The presentation needs to be cool," says Fox Sports co-president Eric Shanks. "We're trying hard to present NASCAR, to make it look more like a video game." High-definition television, oddly enough, can make a race appear slower, says Shanks. So Fox has been experimenting with slowing shutter speeds, which creates a blurring effect to convey the velocity better. "We're actually, probably, trying to go back a generation: to make it look faster, more dangerous," he says.

NASCAR also took back control of its digital rights, including its website, from Turner Sports and redeveloped its social-media platform to keep younger fans engaged. Meanwhile at the track, some races have been shortened. "We've got to look at, What does the fan want?" says Roger Penske, founder of Penske Racing and head of the $19 billion--plus Penske Corp. "If you've driven 200 miles to come to the race, you might want it to go on all day. If you're watching on TV, shorter might be better. There is some conflict that has to be resolved."

The drivers, who can easily earn more than $10 million annually, have adapted to the new environment. "Yes the economy obviously held us down," says Carl Edwards, who drives the No. 99 car. His main sponsors are UPS and industrial supplier Fastenal. "But the other thing is that people are using technology to be entertained differently, to gather information differently. The attention span of the viewer is lower, so we give more value to everyone involved." That means more autograph sessions for fans, more glad-handing for sponsors--and lower appearance fees.

Some of the sport's harsher critics say that NASCAR's leadership still doesn't get it. To conclude, well into the 21st century, that you need to get younger and more diverse isn't the mark of an innovative multibillion-dollar company that anticipates changing consumer tastes. Even with a diminishing fan base, though, networks still need NASCAR's programming. That's why NBC ponied up billions to win the television rights for the next 10 years.

Stewart, who takes no prisoners on the track, is willing to play it out. Earlier this year, he got NASCAR to run its second-tier Nationwide series on the small dirt track that he owns in Indiana rather than on a huge raceway. "NASCAR was really trying to think out of the NASCAR box," says Stewart. "This sport was ruled with an iron fist for a long time. The equation worked for a long time." Now France says NASCAR is serious about transforming itself. "We are gearing up to be a much more innovative sport," he promises. It may have taken a while for NASCAR to embrace new technology and reach out to wider audiences, but this is, after all, a sport that became wildly successful in the first place by going around in circles.

Return of the Samurai
Japan's popular, assertive Prime Minister wants to change the country's security stance, and Tokyo is baring its muscles

Photograph by Hajime Kimura for TIME

Top gun These days, Japanese pilot Kohta "Vader" Araki, who flies F-15s, is always on alert

Hannah Beech/Naha Air Base | 3382 words

Riceman was on high alert. So was Vader (as in Darth), a Japanese fighter pilot whose sinister call sign belies his smiling countenance. At Naha Air Base, perched on the subtropical tail of the Japanese archipelago, F-15 pilots from the 204th tactical fighter squadron know what the sudden, hushed message broadcast over the loudspeakers one rainy afternoon in September means: another emergency fighter-jet mission for a nation that technically doesn't even possess a conventional military. Territorial tensions between Japan and China have intensified over a scattering of islands in the East China Sea, which Japan administers but to which China lays historic claim. As a result, the squall-prone skies over Naha have darkened with the shadow of scrambled jets overhead. "The stress level has increased," says Atsushi "Riceman" Takahashi, a veteran fighter pilot who now instructs younger charges. "The scramblings show our pride in securing our domain."

From April to June, 69 Japanese jets were deployed because of perceived threats from China, compared with just 15 during the same period last year. September was just as busy, with Japan's Self-Defense Force (SDF) responding to the first confirmed flight of a Chinese drone over Japan, the first reported flight of Chinese bombers on a course not far from Naha and a flotilla of Chinese coast-guard vessels sailing through waters near the disputed islands--called Senkaku by the Japanese and Diaoyu by the Chinese. "Going up [in an F-15] makes me feel like I'm really playing a part in national defense," says Kohta "Vader" Araki. "The responsibility is very heavy."

Naha Air Base borders Okinawa prefecture's main civilian airport, thronged with sunburned holiday seekers in flowered shirts. Commercial planes with colorful logos touch down just as gray camouflage F-15s roar into the sky. It is an incongruous scene in a nation that is divided over its martial past and future. After World War II, Japan's DNA was shaped into a pacifist helix, reinforced by a constitution that renounces war altogether. The charter was imposed by the victorious Americans, who wanted to ensure that Japan would not repeat its imperialist rampage across Asia. In exchange, the U.S. charged itself with maintaining Japan's national security. Japan was free to achieve its postwar economic miracle.

Now, under hawkish Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan is expanding its military footprint and speaking out more forcefully against nations it sees as threatening its sovereignty, most notably China. For Abe and other conservatives in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Japan's samurai spirit is just as integral to the national makeup as any paeans to peace. A rewrite of the constitution, which has been interpreted as forbidding anything but defensive military maneuvers, is difficult--any change requires a two-thirds majority in both houses of the legislature, then a public referendum.

But this summer, Abe said pursuing such an amendment was his "historic mission." And a real debate is emerging about whether Japan can finally evolve into a normal country with normal armed forces. "The constitution says Japan doesn't possess an army, navy or air force," Shigeru Ishiba, secretary general of the LDP, tells TIME. "Is that true? Japan does have an army, a navy, an air force. We have lots of warplanes and tanks. Let's stop telling a lie. The constitution and the reality of Japan are different. I think it is now necessary to make our constitution reflect the reality of Japan."

New Cop on the Beat

Japan's sterner posture--no more deferential bows--comes at a time of shifting geopolitics in Asia. China has already claimed economic superiority over Japan, replacing it as the world's second largest economy three years ago. Now, with confident leadership in place, Beijing is flexing its muscle over everything from trade to territory. Meanwhile, the U.S.--the historically pre-eminent, if geographically remote, regional policeman--is distracted by the Middle East and may be unwilling to endure further overseas adventures. "When we think 10 years, 20 years or 30 years from now, the power of the U.S. will decline," says Ishiba, noting the cuts in American military spending.

Enter Japan. Buoyed by a rare electoral mandate in two consecutive elections, Abe and his LDP envision a world in which Japan can not only stand firm against rivals like China but also share with an ascendant continent its national values: Democracy! Peace! Love for cute stuff!

Yet while the U.S. has enjoyed relative goodwill in the region, Japan's relations with some of its neighbors are still poisoned by the decidedly unpeaceful, undemocratic way in which it tried to fashion a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere more than seven decades ago. Animosity lingers because, unlike Germans, Japanese politicians can be equivocal about their nation's wartime guilt. Also, leaders in China and South Korea, countries especially brutalized by Japan, profit politically from stoking anti-Japanese public sentiment. "The phantom of militarism is rising once more in Japan," warned an August editorial in the People's Daily, a Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece.

Elsewhere in the region, Abe's combative stance has won him some surprising allies. He has strengthened economic ties with nations like India and Burma that are keen to hedge against China Inc. Southeast Asian nations are looking to Japan to counter China's growing military might, even if they once suffered under the boot of the imperial Japanese army. A Pew survey released this summer found that about 80% of Filipinos, Indonesians and Malaysians regard Japan positively.

In July, Abe received a warm welcome in the Philippines, where Japanese soldiers had presided over the murderous 1942 Bataan death march. Manila is embroiled in its own territorial conflict with Beijing over disputed isles and shoals in the South China Sea, a vast waterway that China claims as nearly all its own. Abe came to town with promises of 10 cutters to upgrade the Philippine coast guard. In September, Japanese warships docked in Philippine ports, followed by U.S. armed forces who conducted joint war games with their Philippine counterparts. (In the early 1990s, U.S. military bases in the Philippines were closed because of local opposition, but the current government has indicated interest in a renewed American military presence.) "Japan has every right to enhance its military capability due to China's provocation," says Clarita Carlos, a former president of the National Defense College of the Philippines. "The Chinese are always playing the we-were-colonized-by-the-Japanese card. All of us have been there. We do remember, but we also know how to forgive."

Security Fixation

Besides forgiveness, Japan needs revival. The country has been wounded by more than two decades of economic stagnation and was hit hard by the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis that claimed nearly 20,000 lives. Abe, who during his first stint as Prime Minister in 2006 became the nation's youngest postwar leader, has projected himself as a bold changemaker. Since taking office again in December, he has launched a reform program, dubbed Abenomics, that aims to use monetary expansion and fiscal stimulus to goose Japan's long-deflated economy. In September, the national mood was buoyed when Tokyo was awarded the 2020 Olympics, despite international concerns over radioactive water leaking from a tsunami-damaged nuclear power plant. "I want to make the Olympics a trigger," Abe said, "for sweeping away 15 years of deflation and economic decline." In a February speech in Washington, he proclaimed, "Japan is back."

The LDP's slogan is "Restore Japan," and Abe has explicitly linked any economic recovery to Japan's ability to protect its sovereignty. "Japan's beautiful seas and its territory are under threat, and young people are having trouble finding hope in the future amid an economic slump," he said in September 2012, as the Senkaku-Diaoyu row with China heated up. "I promise to protect Japan's land and sea, and the lives of the Japanese people, no matter what." This year, Japan's defense budget increased for the first time in 11 years--by a paltry 0.8%, yes, but a clear signal from the Abe administration of the importance it places on national security. In August, the Defense Ministry requested a 3% rise in next year's spending, which would be the biggest jump in more than two decades.

Despite the SDF's constitutional limitations on any offensive use of force, Japan already boasts the world's fifth highest defense spending. This summer, the Defense Ministry unveiled the Izumo, Japan's biggest warship of the postwar era, which resembles an aircraft carrier; plans are afoot to form a new amphibious corps of soldiers and a fleet of surveillance drones. Abe is also pushing for the formation of a Japanese national-security council. On Sept. 17, he made a plea for the rhetorically tortured concept of "active pacifism," or collective self-defense, in which Japan can come to the aid of its military allies should they come under attack. The liberal newspaper Asahi Shimbun editorialized, "[Collective self-defense] would represent a radical departure from the basic security policy principle of postwar Japan and a gross deviation from its pacifist creed."

The LDP has pitched Abe's security fixation as self-preservation. "We would be happy if everyone in the world is good, and therefore we have no military force," says party secretary general Ishiba. "However, our world doesn't work that way." Certainly, Japan lives in a nervous neighborhood that includes a nuclear North Korea and a China that is rapidly expanding its own military while fueling anti-Japanese fervor. In January, a Chinese frigate locked weapons-targeting radar on a Japanese destroyer in the Senkaku-Diaoyu area, often a precursor to a strike. (The Chinese vessel eventually stood down.) "The Northeast Asia security environment has dramatically changed," says Satoshi Morimoto, a former Japanese Defense Minister. "I don't think Abe is a rightist. He is a reasonable political leader trying to protect our territory."

Tokyo blames China for ratcheting up tensions over the disputed isles--which are located in waters rich in oil and natural gas. "Japan has never changed our attitude toward issues of our territorial waters and land," Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera tells TIME. "It is China today that is trying to change this." But the latest spike in tensions came after the Japanese government nationalized three of the contested islands a year ago. The purchase was aimed, says the government, at preventing the islands from falling into the hands of Tokyo's nationalist governor, who was threatening to buy the outcroppings from their private Japanese owners. (The tiny islands are also claimed by Taiwan.) Beijing took exception to the nationalization, and forays by Chinese planes and vessels have increased markedly since then. Abe's administration is now considering stationing personnel on the isles, which have been uninhabited since before World War II: this would further anger the Chinese. "We can't avert our eyes from the reality: a flurry of provocations against our country's sovereignty," Abe said in mid-September, referring to Japan's territorial spat with China. "I'm pushing for the regeneration of our country's security by looking squarely at reality."

Man With a Past

With his soft face and panda-set eyes, Abe, 59, is known as an obotchan, which roughly translates to "little boy," referring to his privileged lineage as the son of a Foreign Minister and the grandson of a Prime Minister. Nepotism flourishes in Tokyo's halls of power, but Abe seems especially weighted with a sense of his conservative family's mission, particularly his grandfather Nobusuke Kishi's desire to amend Article 9 of the constitution, which is read as banning Japan from possessing an offensive military force. "From a young age, Abe had it in his mind that he would be the one who would bring the postwar regime to an end," says Hitoshi Tanaka, a former Deputy Foreign Minister.

Abe's sense of history and destiny for Japan backfired for him during his first stint as PM. "Abe misread the public mood about nationalism," says Koichi Nakano, a politics professor at Sophia University in Tokyo. "People were more concerned about the economy, and he focused on the wrong thing." Abe's popularity plunged, even as he pursued a patriotic agenda and supported a textbook that played down Japanese wartime atrocities. A year after taking office, amid financial scandals involving his Cabinet members, Abe resigned in tears. He later blamed a rare intestinal ailment for his retreat.

In his 2.0 version, he continues to sound the nationalist bell. In 2012, he visited the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, where Japan's war dead, including top war criminals, are memorialized--although he has so far declined to worship there while serving as Prime Minister. (Abe's grandfather Kishi was arrested as a suspected war criminal by Allied occupation forces but never charged.) During last year's political campaign, Abe suggested the need to revise two official Japanese apologies for the nation's cruel wartime record, including one for the imperial Japanese army's systematic sexual enslavement of Asian "comfort women."

This time, however, Abe's popularity is high. About 7 in 10 Japanese have a favorable opinion of him, according to a July Pew poll--unusually robust in a nation that serially dumps its leaders after brief periods in office. In May, a self-assured Abe was even moved to clamber into the cockpit of a Japanese military jet and flash a thumbs-up sign. The resulting image wasn't quite Michael Dukakis in a tank. But the notion of Abe as proud commander in chief felt forced--and it didn't help neighborly relations that the jet trainer chosen for the photo op was numbered 731, the same digits as a notorious Japanese military unit that unleashed germ warfare on Manchuria.

Anti-Chinese sentiment is soaring in Japan. Nevertheless, a significant percentage of Japanese remain allergic to any military buildup, particularly those who personally experienced the ravages of war. Only a minority of Japanese support constitutional revision. There is also a grudging understanding that Japan--especially an aging, depopulating Japan--needs China economically far more than the other way around. "Our biggest national interest is reviving our economy, and Japan is not in a position to be isolated by this question of [wartime] history," says former Deputy Foreign Minister Tanaka. "I am very concerned about these careless right-wing statements by people inside government."

It's true that Abe's party triumphed in recent polls. But the LDP won the past two ballots with fewer votes than when it was trounced in 2009 by the former ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). The LDP's most recent electoral victories owed more to voters' disgust with the DPJ than an endorsement of Abe's worldview. "The last two elections were about the economy, the economy, the economy," says Taro Kono, an LDP legislator. Still, the Abe administration has articulated a consistent theme: Japan's economic and military futures are inextricably tied. "Abe is very up-front about his personal philosophy, which is that he's interested in a strong state that can defend its people and compete internationally," says Tobias Harris, a Washington-based Japan analyst with Teneo Intelligence. Harris notes the historical precedent of 19th century Japanese modernizers who reformed a once closed nation under the motto "Rich nation, strong military." "[Those reformers] believed that if they didn't modernize, they would be gobbled up by the imperial powers; Abe brings that thinking to the 21st century. That's very dangerous."

Right Is Might

One of the unlikely showcases of Japan's military prowess is a radar facility that looms like a giant golf ball, atop a hill overlooking sugarcane fields and picture-postcard beaches. The SDF base, on Okinawa's Miyako Island, is a frontline one, and its 160 personnel have been particularly busy since the Senkaku-Diaoyu tiff escalated last year. Living full time on the typhoon-battered base isn't easy.

But the soldiers' hardship posting is at least more appreciated now by the Japanese public. Approval for the SDF has skyrocketed in recent years, particularly after soldiers aided the 2011 natural-disaster-relief effort. A popular TV drama this year followed the fictional love lives of a female TV director and an SDF officer. In a nation obsessed with all things cute, the SDF promotes itself through cartoon mascots named Pickles and Parsley. (Pickles and parsley are strong but ultimately pleasing tastes, just like the SDF, apparently.) "People used to call us 'tax robbers' before," says Air Self-Defense Force Major Yasuhisa Furuta. "Now the situation is totally different." SDF enlistment is up, and its veterans even serve in parliament--the likes of Masahisa Sato, a mustachioed retired colonel who commanded Japanese peacekeepers in Iraq. Unsurprisingly, Sato supports a constitutional revision. "When I entered the SDF 30 years ago, I never imagined that we could be discussing constitutional reform so openly," he says. "Japan is becoming an ordinary country, and the SDF an ordinary military."

That spooks many Okinawans, who inhabit what was once a kingdom called Ryukyu that paid tribute to imperial China. By the late 19th century, though, Okinawa had been absorbed into Japan. (Chinese academics and military officers have postulated that China has territorial rights not just to the Senkaku-Diaoyu Islands but to all of Okinawa.) At the end of World War II, in the horrific Battle of Okinawa, the Japanese military forced tens of thousands of Okinawans into combat, some even compelled to commit suicide in the face of the Allied assault. Local animosity toward Japanese troops, even under the guise of the SDF, lingers--not to mention discomfort with the 25,000 Americans on U.S. military bases on Okinawan soil. "Japan is a very scary country, a warrior culture," says former Okinawa governor Masahide Ota. "The most important lesson from the Battle of Okinawa is that the Japanese military will never protect the local people."

On the island of Ishigaki, which has administrative jurisdiction over what Japan calls the Senkaku, Mayor Yoshitaka Nakayama appears open to building an SDF base to better protect the disputed islets. "I am concerned that China is trying to expand its territorial interests," he says. "Since such a country exists in our neighborhood, we have to enhance our defense." Kameichi Uehara, head of the local fishermen's union, doesn't see the threat. "I've never heard of any Chinese boats giving any trouble to us." Local historian Shizuo Ota concurs. "I don't think China has provoked the Senkaku issue," he says. "It's rightist groups from Japan that are causing most of the problems."

Japan's vocal rightists, who like to tool around Tokyo in vans that broadcast historical whitewashing, don't help with Japan's international image. "Ask anyone," says Nariaki Nakayama, a conservative lawmaker, "and they will say that the Japanese are a peace-loving people who want to avoid war." But Nakayama also denies that the Rape of Nanjing happened and believes that "comfort women" are a myth. One controversial Abe supporter is Toshio Tamogami, a retired SDF general who had to resign as head of the Air Self-Defense Force in 2008 after denying that Japan was an aggressor in World War II. He now helps lead an ultra-right-wing group called Ganbare Nippon, or "Go for It, Japan," which has staged illegal landings on the Senkaku-Diaoyu Islands. "Abe is completely different from his predecessors," says Ganbare Nippon president Satoru Mizushima, who swam from a boat to the disputed islets last year. "He may be thinking, Please, put your hands on the Senkaku. It will open the door to protecting our country by ourselves."

In July, Abe visited Miyako while on the campaign trail for the upper-house election. Base commander Lieut. Colonel Yasumasa Hayashi can't remember too much of what the Prime Minister said when he praised the troops for being a "cornerstone of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance" for the region. "I was too nervous to be meeting my commander in chief," Hayashi admits. "But I feel great pride to be serving on the front lines of Japan." Standing on a helicopter-landing pad at his tiny military outpost, Hayashi gazes out at the East China Sea. Just 125 miles away are the disputed islands that have caused such friction between Japan and China. The seas are calm--for now.

--With reporting by Chie Kobayashi/Naha Air Base

Covered Not
The affordable care act was supposed to bring health coverage to the uninsured. As the law takes effect, the reality looks far different from the promise.

JUSTIN CLEMONS FOR TIME

LEFT OUT An uninsured single mother of two, Nicolette Cooksey is one of nearly 2 million Texans who would have been covered under the Affordable Care Act if the state had opted to expand Medicaid

Kate Pickert | 2311 words

As soon as 10-year-old raven anthony comes home from school, she takes off her shoes, has a drink of water and eats a bowl of cereal while watching sesame street. the same routine takes place every weekday. School, home, shoes, drink, cereal, Sesame Street. Raven is severely autistic. She does not speak and did not walk until she was 3. She is prone to asthma attacks and becomes emotionally unstable if she is away from school or home for more than a few hours. Raven's strict after-school regimen is vital to keeping her stable and calm.

Raven's life requires constant hands-on management by her mother Nicolette Cooksey, who is single and has another daughter, a 5-year-old named Nariyah. Like 6.1 million other Texans, Cooksey doesn't have health insurance. She works part time at a Houston day-care center, but her weekly hours are capped at 19.5--just under her employer's 20-hour threshold for benefits. She already owes about $13,000 in medical bills and has no chance of paying them off at her current salary of $8.10 an hour. "I don't know my exact credit score, but I'm sure it's terrible," Cooksey, 30, says. "If I want anything in life, I have to pay my medical bills first."

The Affordable Care Act (ACA)--or Obamacare--was designed to provide coverage for two-thirds of the nearly 48 million U.S. residents like Cooksey without health insurance. But as the centerpiece of the law takes effect--the marketplaces where people can buy health insurance, called exchanges, launched on Oct. 1--the reality looks far different, and not only because of the congressional drama over efforts to kill the law altogether. Twenty-seven states declined to set up exchanges or cooperate with the federal government to run them. And many are finding other ways to prevent the law from working as planned. The day before a federally operated exchange launched in Missouri, the state's lieutenant governor urged residents not to sign up. In Florida, a directive from Governor Rick Scott blocks navigators--consumer-assistance workers paid through the ACA--from working with county health departments. And Georgia's insurance commissioner has said his department will do "everything in our power to be an obstructionist." Such efforts guarantee that a federal law may look very different depending on what part of the country you're in.

Obamacare suffers from other startup snafus. Confusion is widespread: a recent survey by the Commonwealth Fund found that those most likely to benefit from the new insurance exchanges and subsidies to purchase coverage know the least about them. Meanwhile, parts of the law have been delayed--a requirement that employers with at least 50 workers offer health insurance was postponed until 2015 after pressure from business groups. And then there are the glitches: on the first day of enrollment, most exchange websites had technical problems caused by overwhelming demand and computer-system malfunctions that rendered them unusable.

The cumulative effect of political opposition, public confusion and the sheer complexity of launching the largest new entitlement in almost 50 years means many Americans who stand to benefit from Obamacare don't realize it, while millions of others who are uninsured will get no relief at all. And it may be years before anyone can measure success or failure.

First Hurdles

When the ACA was written, a cornerstone of the measure was a massive expansion of Medicaid, the government-run insurance program for the poor. But the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that states aren't required to play along, and 26 have declined to do so, rejecting federal money to expand their Medicaid rolls. As a result, some 7 million people in those states will be denied coverage. Cooksey is one of the 1.7 million of them who live in Texas, which has the highest rate of uninsured residents in the nation. Says Genevieve Kenney, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute: "If these states--especially large ones like Texas, Florida, Georgia and North Carolina--don't expand Medicaid to more adults, it will leave a significant hole in the national insured picture."

Meanwhile, the success of the exchanges depends on the raw numbers: The White House has said all year long that it hopes 7 million to 8 million Americans will sign up for new health insurance by the end of 2014, a number big enough to enable Obama's aides to point to higher insured rates, healthier outcomes and greater financial security for Americans who now face the possibility of bankruptcy if hit by unexpected injuries or illnesses.

But as the Administration hustles to boost enrollment, not just any enrollees will do. Obamacare cannot work without young, healthy adults--lots of them. The exchanges are basic marketplaces: premiums will be affordable for everyone only if enough young, healthy people sign up for coverage. The premiums paid by those who are basically well help offset the cost of insuring older and sicker enrollees. Without younger people to dilute the risk, costs could eventually spiral out of control.

The White House has said young people must constitute about one-third of those enrolled through the exchanges to prevent this spiral. That may not seem like a lot, but it is. Many young people, burdened by college debt and confident about their invulnerability, may be less inclined to sign up for coverage. "The first people to show up are not going to be young, healthy people," says Timothy Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University and an expert on the ACA. "They will be older people and people with health problems." And those are the most expensive to insure.

"A Criminal Act"

It is not a coincidence that the marathon speech meant to defund the Affordable Care Act was delivered by a Texas Republican. Senator Ted Cruz's 21-hour sermon on the danger of Obamacare was just the latest broadside against the law from Lone Star State lawmakers. Under Governor Rick Perry and the Republican-controlled state legislature, Texas has opted out of nearly every aspect of the law it is legally allowed to.

In addition to not expanding Medicaid, the state has declined to set up its own insurance exchange, ceding the task to the federal government. The Texas department of insurance says it will not enforce ACA regulations, like those requiring insurers to cover pre-existing conditions. In September, Perry called for a law limiting the role of navigators, and the day enrollment began, he called the ACA "a criminal act." Unlike the robust public-service campaigns in some states that support the law, in Texas, ACA information is not even available on the state's official website.

That absence of information has contributed to a misunderstanding of the law. Terry Thrash, an uninsured waiter who works in downtown Houston, was planning to pay a federal penalty for not having health insurance in 2014 rather than purchase coverage through Obamacare. Thrash is precisely the sort of person the White House hopes to draw in: young, relatively healthy and uninsured. When he learned that his income level would exempt him from the mandate to have insurance and allow him to qualify for a subsidized, midlevel insurance plan costing about $80 per month through Obamacare, he was shocked. "Now that it's getting closer, I feel a sense of panic among those around me because we're so uninformed," Thrash says. Suezen Hoza Salinas, an uninsured single mother of two living in Houston, says she has been trying to research ACA insurance options online. "I feel like I know some of the basics," she said recently, "but who's going to help me navigate this?"

The Math on Medicaid

In texas, opposition to the ACA is both philosophical and financial. The law is seen as an unwelcome federal intrusion into the affairs of a state that doesn't want any part of a massive new entitlement program. Perry also points out that expanding Medicaid would add costs to a program that already consumes one-quarter of the state's budget. About half of all children in Texas are covered by existing government programs. Medicaid alone pays for more than half of all births in the state. The law is "a recipe for disaster ... an asteroid about to enter the atmosphere," says Representative John Culberson, a Republican who represents southwest Houston in Congress.

But the terms of the Medicaid expansion might seem to cast doubt on such economic reasoning. The federal government would pay 100% of the cost of covering those newly eligible for the program until 2017, phasing down to 90% after 2020. (Current federal contributions to Medicaid are from 50% to 75%, depending on the state.) A recent report by Texas' former deputy comptroller found that while a Medicaid expansion would increase the cost of the program, much of the extra spending would be offset by savings in other state-funded programs that pay for health care for the poor. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Texas will leave $79 billion in federal funds on the table over the next 10 years by not expanding Medicaid.

That math is the main reason the Greater Houston Partnership, one of the state's leading business organizations, endorsed a Texas Medicaid expansion earlier this year. "The economics are such that it just doesn't make sense [not to expand] from any perspective other than posturing and politics," says Dr. Paul Klotman, head of the College of Medicine at Baylor University and chairman of the partnership's health committee.

Filling the Gap

When nicolette cooksey needs health care, she goes to a local clinic that lacks an emergency room or specialists to treat serious ailments. But it does receive federal funds; it is one of about 9,000 such facilities across the country that will get $11 billion through the ACA to meet health care needs for the poor and those who remain uninsured despite the law. Even with Texas' fervent opposition to Obamacare, the amount of public money spent on health care in the state appears likely to grow under the law.

The clinic Cooksey uses is in a gleaming new 40,000-sq.-ft. facility owned by Legacy Community Health Services, which has nine sites across the city. Its 2013 budget is $50 million, up from $39 million in 2012, and the organization is planning to expand in the next several years by building two new clinics and purchasing private physicians' practices. Legacy's clinics are part of a vast network of taxpayer-funded health providers in Houston.

Harris Health, the county health care system, logs about 1.7 million outpatient visits per year and pays for that care largely with local property-tax revenue. Some 400,000 annual visits would be covered by Medicaid if the state expanded its program, according to CEO David Lopez. Like Legacy, Harris Health is growing. It plans to open nine new clinics to accommodate 300,000 more primary-care visits per year. Even with its new facilities, Lopez says, the system won't be able to meet the health care needs of Houston's uninsured. "The numbers get kind of scary," he says. "Honestly, we can double our volume today, and it will still not be doing enough."

Gauging just what is enough won't be easy. The burden of paying for the uninsured is already shared. Beyond taxpayer-funded health care, about $1,000 is built in to annual insurance premiums paid by American families just to offset the cost of caring for those without insurance. The broad expansion of coverage envisioned by President Obama was meant to recalibrate that burden, covering millions of the uninsured and lowering out-of-pocket costs for everyone else. Whether it ever works that way across the country will depend less on Obama than on Republican governors like Perry--and especially people like Terry Thrash.

Till Mold Do Us Part
Why a new study discrediting food sell-by dates is going to save my marriage

ILLUSTRATION BY TOMASZ WALENTA FOR TIME; GETTY IMAGES (3)

Joel Stein | 852 words

You make a lot of compromises in a marriage, such as being married. We permit behavior from our spouses that we wouldn't tolerate from anyone else, such as throwing out our food. Doing this just one time to a co-worker causes a barrage of Post-it notes more vitriolic than anything Tupac would have stuck inside Biggie's fridge. Like "To the thief who ate half of my tuna sandwich: I have mouth herpes. Now you do too. I'm anonymously e-mailing your wife to warn her about your mouth herpes. And your tuna breath."

But when my lovely wife Cassandra dumps all the food that's past its expiration date, I just take it. I use the balsamic vinegar I keep in the back of the pantry quickly and stealthily, before she sees the use-by date on it, which is 2010. I feel certain, though, that vinegar can't go bad, since vinegar is something else that's already gone bad. The worst thing that could happen to vinegar is that it would be more vinegary.

I've been emboldened, however, by a new National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Harvard Law School study that recommends eliminating sell-by dates on food because they're so misleading. The dates were created by local and state organizations in the 1970s merely to help people know when the products are freshest--not safest--and even that is basically a guess. In fact, they never say expiration, instead using words such as use by, best before, sell by, enjoy by and, in the case of kale and quinoa, won't be trendy after. This confusion is one of the reasons the average American family of four tosses $1,560 of edible food annually. It's also part of why we waste 10 times as much food as Southeast Asians. And that's despite the fact that they mostly eat with chopsticks while we mostly eat with our hands.

Dana Gunders, a staff scientist at the NRDC who worked on the study, told me that 15% to 25% of the food we buy isn't consumed, which means that by tweaking our behavior slightly, Americans could be 15% to 25% more obese. Alternatively, we could save a lot of water and energy. Food poisoning, she said, comes from contamination, not spoilage. Sure, in the 1970s people may have needed some help figuring out if food turned, but we use a lot less drugs now.

Gunders suggested I try to win over Cassandra slowly, first by keeping yogurt for an extra couple of days and then by explaining that eggs are good a month after their date and tortilla chips (which can be refreshed in the oven) for years. I asked Gunders what the last item she tossed was, and she said it was a jar of pasta sauce that she scraped the mold off of only to find a thicker layer of mold underneath it. This was the kind of talk I would pay a woman $1.75 a minute for.

For advice on talking to Cassandra, I called my dad to find out how he failed to persuade two wives, my sister and every guest he's ever had to eat food in his house without multiple-party inspection. I have reconstructed--one aluminum-foil-wrapped slice at a time--multiple complete pizzas from my dad's refrigerator, along with half my sister's bat mitzvah cake when she was already in college.

Before I could find out his methods of nonpersuasion, my dad got excited that this new study might finally uncover the corruption of both the food and pharmaceutical industries. He said he's never gotten sick from food in his own home and that during the Vietnam War, the Army gave him perfectly effective aspirin that was left over from the Korean War. He suggested I call cereal companies and ask them their scientific process for arriving at their dates, which he doubted existed. Then he changed his mind. "You're touching the third rail, pal," he said. "You've got to be careful about how strong you make this argument." Never before did I realize just how little real journalism I do.

Kellogg's did not return my e-mail, and General Mills, afraid of giving away "competitive information," would say only that its "better if used by" dates are "based on sensory evaluations" by "product developers and expert tasters," which, admittedly, would seem a lot less suspicious without all those quotation marks. Still, I think I've got a good chance of winning some kind of journalism award.

Finally, I told Cassandra about the study, and to my great disappointment, she agreed. "O.K.," she said, "Now that I know eggs are good a month after, I'll keep them." I felt an emptiness you get when a boxing match has been canceled and you also don't get to go on and on to your wife about your superior logic, ability to set economic priorities and love of our planet.

Then, a few days later, Cassandra said she wanted me to smell something to see if it had gone bad, since those sell-by dates were not to be trusted. It was buttermilk, a food that always smells bad. I kissed her and thanked her. She cared enough to fight after all.

Red-State Resort
The lap of luxury in the Ozarks? You bet your bass

BIG CEDAR LODGE

At Table Rock Lake, nestled in the Ozark Mountains, the fishing is good and hunting opportunities abound

David Von Drehle | 1081 words

When you swipe your key card at Big Cedar Lodge and push open the door, you might feel as if you've walked into that scene in Snow White where the heroine--having fled the murderous huntsman into the deep forest--finds herself surrounded by woodland creatures. In our one-bedroom cabin, we were greeted by not only a trophy buck gazing down from over the fireplace but also a stuffed raccoon, a family of red foxes, a posed squirrel, a duck, a pheasant and five largemouth bass. More than 50 species of formerly living fauna keep guests company in the resort's restaurants, at the marina and even in the fitness center. This temple of taxidermy may be the only four-star getaway in the U.S. where "resort casual" attire includes camo.

In other words, Big Cedar is an unlikely venue for a PETA convention, but that's O.K., because this is a luxury resort and spa for red America. Not that there's anything political about an Ozarks paradise where waterfalls tumble through 800 acres of wooded hollow toward the watery playground of Table Rock Lake in southwestern Missouri. It's a cultural thing. No matter where you live or how you vote, if you feel (as I do) that the ideal Sunday brunch menu includes panfried chicken livers like Grandma made, Big Cedar is for you.

We began hearing about Big Cedar not long after we relocated from the East Coast to the Kansas City area in 2007 and soon realized that the place occupies a particular niche for vacationers in Middle America. It's a first-rate resort within a half-day's drive of prosperous neighborhoods in Memphis; St. Louis; Kansas City; Wichita, Kans.; Tulsa, Okla.; and Little Rock and Bentonville, Ark., to name a few of the midsize cities surrounding the Ozarks. Driving to Big Cedar is a welcome alternative to airport security lines and delayed flights.

This past summer, we finally hit the road to see what the fuss was about and passed a lazy weekend reading and dozing to the soothing thrum of powerboats on the lake. It's a favorite summer pastime in the heartland--burning gas in outboard engines--and there's something very peaceful about losing yourself in a 110-decibel cocoon.

The vibe is a bit different in autumn, when the leafy hollow is a riot of color and the bass and shad rise from the lake's deep reaches to feed in shallower water. Hunters staying at Big Cedar can rise before dawn to go after white-tailed deer or wild turkey in nearby Mark Twain National Forest and be warm and dry for supper at sunset. Winter at Big Cedar is something else again--hot tubs, wagon rides and bonfires--while springtime is a haze of dogwood blossoms, with lilac scenting the air.

Indeed, the hollow is so picturesque that it attracted wealthy businessmen long before the resort was built. Railroad executive Harry Worman and entrepreneur Jude Simmons commissioned large vacation homes in the 1920s overlooking a deep spring known as Devil's Pool and, in the distance, the winding White River. After World War II, the river was dammed to create Table Rock Lake, which eventually became one of the best bass-fishing reservoirs in the country.

Enter Johnny Morris, Midas of the great outdoors, a Missouri-bred billionaire who turned a trailer full of fishing tackle into an empire of megastores known as Bass Pro Shops. The original Bass Pro--in nearby Springfield, Mo.--is a mecca for the hunting and fishing set (even more so with the recent opening of the NRA National Sporting Arms Museum at the Springfield store). When his wife happened across a real estate listing offering the hollow for sale in the local newspaper, it occurred to Morris that he could turn the place into a satellite facility where Bass Pro customers could test their new boats and gear. He acquired the property in 1987, but as he was honing his plans, something remarkable happened about 10 miles north. Branson, Mo., became a major tourist magnet, a sort of Bible Belt Vegas, attracting millions of visitors each year. Morris was never a man to miss an opportunity, and his ambitions grew along with the crowds.

Big Cedar Lodge now offers 246 guest rooms in a collection of Adirondack-style lodges, cottages and cabins. There is a high-tech conference center for group meetings and a little white church for weddings. The original 1920s homes have been converted into restaurants. The Worman House serves an upscale menu with a locavore's touch. Devil's Pool Restaurant is more countrified--that's where I found the chicken livers. There's a quaint little coffee shop, a well-equipped fitness center, a saloon with live music, a sandy beach and a bustling marina outfitted with all manner of watercraft.

And, of course, there are fish to catch. I'm no fisherman, but like a lot of English majors, I've had half a mind to take up fly-fishing ever since I read A River Runs Through It. Big Cedar Lodge can set you up with lessons and guided expeditions at nearby Dogwood Canyon Nature Park, where the fly-fishing gurus of Orvis maintain a certified academy. Set on 10,000 acres that straddle the Missouri-Arkansas state line, Dogwood Canyon is another Johnny Morris brainchild, a slice of God's country but just a little bit better. The streams are engineered, the gin-clear pools are stocked with trophy trout by the thousands, and shaded paths are gently graded for pleasurable hiking and biking. It's what the world might look like if the good Lord had taken eight or nine days instead of just seven.

Where blue chip meets red America, the result has been more green for Morris, whose privately held company doesn't release earnings reports. Even in a lackluster economy, business has been strong enough at Big Cedar to sustain a three-night minimum stay for holidays and summer weekends. Glowing reviews attract more visitors, especially now that Branson has opened the nation's first privately developed, privately owned commercial airport. They arrive in the footsteps of such heartland celebrities as the late country-music legend Waylon Jennings, NASCAR driver Martin Truex Jr., actor Kevin Costner and former President George H.W. Bush--all of whom have cabins dedicated in their name.

Yes, preppy Yale man George Herbert Walker Bush of Kennebunkport, Maine. Red America is a state of mind, not a fixed address. Any President who owns a cigarette boat is going to fit right in.

Pop Chart

WILLIAMS: TOMMASO BODDI--GETTY IMAGES

Nick Carbone, Kelly Conniff, Nate Rawlings, Courtney Subramanian, Lily Rothman | 814 words

'80S SITCOM STARS

GOOD WEEK/BAD WEEK

Robin Williams

His CBS comedy, The Crazy Ones, debuted to 15.6 million viewers

Michael J. Fox

His NBC comedy, The Michael J. Fox Show--airing opposite The Crazy Ones--debuted to 7.2 million viewers

HALLOWEEN

Costume Drama

This "Naughty Leopard" costume was banned from Walmart shelves--but not because it looked too scandalous. Instead, some parents took issue with the adjective naughty, claiming it was too sexual for a frock being marketed to toddlers.

GOOD ENOUGH TO EAT

Can food be art? You bet--so long as it's captured by photographers like Nathan Myhrvold, whose new book, The Photography of Modernist Cuisine, uses state-of-the-art microscopy to showcase deconstructed hamburgers, cascading salad greens and more (like Yolks in White, below) in stunning detail. The 312-page collection is available Oct. 22 for $120.

VERBATIM

'Taylor Swift is so flawless and so unattainable, and I don't think it's breeding anything good in young girls.'

LORDE, 16-year-old singer-songwriter, to New Zealand magazine Metro; the indie star's first album, Pure Heroine, was released in late September

BREWHAHA

$2,000

Price fetched at auction for a single bottle of Dave from Hair of the Dog Brewing Co., a rare American craft beer. (Proceeds went to charity.) The barley wine is 29% alcohol by volume and was brewed in 1994.

TWEET BEAT

Which TV Sidekick Deserves a Spin-Off?

Now that Breaking Bad's slippery lawyer Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) and Modern Family's abrasive real estate agent Gil Thorpe (Rob Riggle) may get their own TV shows, we asked @TIME's Twitter followers who deserves to follow suit.

ERIC NORTHMAN (True Blood)

"HE HAS A COMPLEX PAST, KICK ASS ATTITUDE ... AND HE AIN'T 2 BAD ON THE EYES."

--@Watch MeGeaux

VARYS AND OLENNA TYRELL (Game of Thrones)

"They could ... drink tea and talk about all the gossip in Westeros."

--@colormelauren

APU (The Simpsons)

"Details of his life in India & with Manjula and the 17 kids, pls."

--@Helene Bonne

SHOSHANNA (Girls)

"WHO ELSE ACCIDENTALLY SMOKES CRACK?"

--@SimiLichtman

PLUSH DIGS

The late artist Mike Kelley was known to criticize contradictions in American culture, depicting a lifestyle defined by excess, luxury and an emphasis on trivial consumption--as seen in Deodorized Central Mass With Satellites, above, a multilayered sculpture made entirely of stuffed animals on wood and wire frames. It's one of more than 200 works featured in "Mike Kelley," which will occupy all of the Museum of Modern Art's PS1 space in New York City from Oct. 13 through Feb. 2.

QUICK TALK

Adam Scott

Leave it to the Parks and Recreation star to bring humor to ... the minefield of a broken marriage? Yep: in A.C.O.D. (Oct. 4), Scott, 40, plays the titular adult child of divorce, still wrestling--hilariously, of course--with the fallout from his parents' decades-old split. Here, he talks to TIME.

--LILY ROTHMAN

There's a very famous golfer who's also named Adam Scott. Do you guys ever hang out?

Constantly. Uh, no. I've never met him. But he seems like he's an excellent golfer.

So there's no Adam Scott club?

There should be. Maybe this is where it starts, this interview. You can even be in the club if you'd like.

I'll write the anniversary article in 10 years.

A whole issue of Time magazine about the Adam Scott club!

Your A.C.O.D. character is the peacemaker of his family. Can you relate?

Yeah, I'm terrified of confrontation. But maybe that's not a peacemaker. Maybe that's someone who runs away from the inevitable.

Does that usually work?

No. My backup is pretending that everything's fine, that there was no problem to begin with. Which in a way is really passive-aggressive. It's a very Waspy way of doing things.

I take it you'd never be a conflict mediator.

I would be disastrous. I would not be able to work with Israel and Palestine.

There's a pretty epic ruined-birthday scene in the movie. Ever happened to you?

I've always had pretty positive experiences. But this year I turned 40, and I didn't want to acknowledge it.

Why not?

I just wasn't really ready--40 is tough for guys. But I think I'll have a party for 41.

Your Twitter bio says you're a dancer and a poet. Are you really?

I'm an excellent poet and an even better dancer.

What's your favorite form of poetry?

Sort of ... free-form haiku.

Isn't that an oxymoron?

You're right. That's how this joke falls apart immediately, because I don't know what the hell I'm talking about.

BUZZING

Cola Cologne

Get a whiff of this: in an effort to make sure you smell soda--not plastic or aluminum--when you pop a Pepsi, the beverage titan has patented an "Aroma Delivery System" for its cans and bottles. The small, Pepsi-scent-filled pods would line a bottle cap or aluminum tab and rupture upon opening. Your move, Coke.

3 THINGS YOU DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THIS WEEK

1. Justin Bieber overexerting himself on rough terrain.

Photos surfaced of the singer's bodyguards carrying him up the Great Wall of China.

2. Bill Nye sustaining another dancing injury.

The Science Guy was the second celeb booted off Dancing With the Stars.

3. Relying on Apple Maps.

A new glitch routes some drivers across an active runway at an Alaska airport.

FOR RICHARD CORLISS'S REVIEW OF GRAVITY AND TIME'S COMPLETE FILM COVERAGE, VISIT time.com/movies

Net Loss.
Dave Eggers' scathing novel of social media and the way we live online

EGGERS: SPENCER MURPHY--CONTOUR/GETTY IMAGES

Lev Grossman | 649 words

You can't really write a 1984 for our times, because 1984 is still the 1984 of our times. But one could think of Dave Eggers' blisteringly didactic new novel, The Circle, as a timely and potent appendix to it. The crux of The Circle is that Big Brother is still haunting us, but in an incarnation that's both more genial and more insidious. We have met Big Brother, and he is us.

The Ministry of Truth in this scenario is a fictional corporation called the Circle that bears a strong and, as far as I can tell, entirely intentional resemblance to Google, if Google had eaten and devoured Facebook and Twitter. A young woman named Mae arrives for her first day of work there. She's excited. The money is good, the setting is utopian (free clothes, food, health care), and the cause is righteous: the Circlers are on a mission to make the world a better place through greater informational transparency. "My God," Mae thinks--it's the novel's first line--"It's heaven." It's certainly not Airstrip One, or not on the outside anyway.

But the Circle is more than a job; it's a community, one in which Mae is expected to participate socially. She is reprimanded if she doesn't post or comment or tweet (in Circlese, zing) enough: "If you care about your fellow human beings," the party line goes, "you share what you know with them." Before long, Mae is addicted to the buzz of social media. She spends her nights plowing through drifts of e-mails and posts and zings, and her days sleepwalking through her real-life interactions with one eye always on her phone. It's a palpable hit.

Meanwhile, the Circle is expanding, drawing more and more information into its circumference: it sprinkles the globe with cheap high-def cameras that constantly stream video to the Net. Mae starts wearing a bracelet that tracks and broadcasts her vital signs and a headset through which she ceaselessly responds to marketing queries for the benefit of the Circle's clients. The more informationally transparent she gets, the more insubstantial she becomes as a person.

Mae's hapless ex-boyfriend Mercer is the ranty voice of the world's off-line conscience. "The tools you guys create actually manufacture unnaturally extreme social needs," he says. "No one needs the level of contact you're purveying." The truth isn't setting Mae free; if anything, too much truth is turning her life into a public performance, fully monetizable and totally meaningless. There's a saying online: If you're not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold.

In The Circle, Eggers has set his style and pace to technothriller: the writing is brisk and spare and efficient, with occasional gratuitous sexy bits, and his characters have a calculated shallowness that's almost Grishamesque. It works. One doesn't get the sense that he's making a bid to be more commercial; it's more like he's got something urgent to say and no time for literary foofery.

It will be interesting to see how much traction a novel that critiques the Net can get. "My problem with paper," one Circler says, "is that all communication dies with it. It holds no possibility of continuity ... it ends with you." This is no less true for being annoying. It says something that when I finished The Circle, I felt a heightened awareness of social media and the way it's remaking our world into a living hell of constant and universal mutual observation. Then I picked up my phone and tweeted about it.

Diva of the Downbeat.

ANDREW HINDERAKER FOR TIME

Douglas Wolk | 719 words

Neko case's voice can do a lot of things. It glides, it twangs, it slashes. But what it does best is ache. Her deepest singing is the sound of resilience: suffering transformed into something stranger and richer. Case was a punk-rock drummer in her youth, and she's been playing increasingly iconoclastic roots rock over the past 15 years. Yet she first made a name for herself in the alt-country scene, and what she's held on to from the Louvin Brothers and Loretta Lynn songs she used to sing is the lonesome, smoldering tone that makes every line throb.

That serves her well on her new album, The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You. ("I couldn't think of another way to say it," Case says of the title. "I did try.") It's an emotionally devastating set of songs, created in a dark period. After Case made 2009's Top 5 album Middle Cyclone, her grandmother, whom she loved, and both parents, about whom she has expressed varying degrees of anger and indifference, died, and she fell into an extended depression. Those experiences--loss, mourning and emotional numbness--as well as the touring musician's physical isolation can too often throttle the ability to make art. But they're the raw materials of Case's art.

"The record happened despite the depression, not because of the depression," she says. "There's a lot of change on it, but it makes fun of itself for possibly feeling sorry for itself." The new songs are indeed blackly funny at times. "If I puked up some sonnets, would you call me a miracle?" she deadpans in "Night Still Comes," a Tennessee waltz with mortality. "Where Did I Leave That Fire" is a shivering evocation of anhedonia and exhaustion that ends with the singer imagining a phone call: "I do believe we have your fire, lady/ You can pick it up if you come down with ID."

Case's songwriting sensibility owes a lot to the poets and fiction writers she loves; her face lights up when she mentions novelists Tomek Tryzna and Angela Carter. Her lyrics are often oblique and imagistic, hinting at a story rather than spelling it out. "The listener can fill in the blanks," she says. Sometimes Case has to fill them in too. By the time she recorded some of the songs on The Worse Things Get, she hardly recognized them: "When I started to come out of feeling sad--it's a lot of work mourning the dead, especially if there's a lot of them--I thought, Who is the guy who wrote that?"

That "guy" is a conversational habit of Case's. She also notes of the album's collaborative production that "since I have the veto power, I'm the man." The song that's been getting the loudest cheers on her current tour is "Man," a scalding declaration of power that begins "I'm a man/ That's what you raised me to be" and ends with a cocksure flourish: "You didn't know what a man was until I showed you." It's a clever conceit, underscored by the clash between the impulses that drive her music: the punk's demand not to be pigeonholed and the country singer's longing for authenticity.

These days, Case's home is a farmhouse in Vermont where, as she puts it, "dirt is awesome, there's war and tragedy every day, and you can have your life turned upside down by the color of a leaf." She doesn't get to spend much time there, though, and the particular ache at the core of The Worse Things Get is that of exile. One song is called "I'm From Nowhere." In another, she realizes "I'd been sailing so long I'd become the shore." And the tenderest song on the record, "Calling Cards," is addressed to absent bandmates in both her band and the New Pornographers, the Canadian power-pop group with which she's sung for more than a dozen years.

"I chose this life--I don't have a husband or a family or anything," she says. "So they mean a lot to me. They're my family."

Space Race
How a crew of wily filmmakers overcame the laws of Gravity

WARNER BROS.

Face time As an astronaut adrift, Bullock navigated a tricky blend of technology and terror

Jessica Winter | 1398 words

A small crew of intrepid explorers undertake a journey into outer space that becomes infinitely more harrowing than they had anticipated--enough to make them laugh, cry and curse their fates. This is the story of Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock as a medical engineer and George Clooney as a veteran astronaut who, during a routine mission, become untethered from their shuttle, lose contact with earth and must rely on MacGyver-in-space improv skills for a chance of reaching home--or even a safe vessel--before their oxygen runs out.

But this is also the story of the filmmakers behind Gravity, director Alfonso Cuarón, cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and visual-effects supervisor Tim Webber, who resolved to achieve the impossible: an immersive, visually stunning masterpiece that is the first film predominantly set in zero gravity. The movie is astonishing, vacuum-packed with technological marvels and ethereal wonder, with not a single frame of evidence of the blood, sweat and tears poured into it during a 4½-year gestation.

"The making of this film, in many ways, mirrored the characters' experiences," says Cuarón, who spoke with Time at the Warner Bros. offices in midtown Manhattan (like Time, Warner Bros. is owned by Time Warner). "It was a journey of adversities." The watchword on the set, Cuarón explains, was debris: a reference to the fragments of destroyed satellites and other massive shards of space junk that periodically hurtle toward Gravity's astronauts. "We were constantly saying to each other, 'O.K., we have debris again! Debris is attacking us again!'" recalls Cuarón, who co-wrote the script with his son Jonás. "The problems we faced reached absurd levels, so ridiculous that you had to laugh."

Director of Y Tu Mamá También (2001), Children of Men (2006) and one of the most critically acclaimed of the Harry Potter movies, Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), Cuarón has been a space cadet since childhood. "I was 7 when I saw Neil Armstrong on TV, stepping on the moon," he says. "I had my photos of Yuri Gagarin and the Apollo crew in my room. I wanted to be either an astronaut or a movie director." When, decades later, the director made a movie about astronauts, he named it after its biggest physical and technical hurdle. "Trying to make a movie that takes place in microgravity when you're shooting on earth--it's hard," he says with knowing understatement.

Making a Cuarón movie in zero gravity is even harder, because he is committed to long, unbroken, often extraordinarily complicated one-take shots. "With Y Tu Mamá También, we started doing all these long shots, and we took that to a new extreme with Children of Men," says Lubezki, who has known Cuarón since they were teenagers growing up in Mexico City. ("I'd go see a Fellini movie or a Japanese movie," Lubezki recalls, "and afterward Alfonso would always be outside the theater, with a beautiful girl and a bunch of friends, explaining to everyone what the director was trying to do.") "With a long shot, it's immersive. It helps the audience to enter into the film in a much deeper way than when you're cutting," Lubezki says. "I knew immediately with Gravity that Alfonso would want that same immersive experience."

The filmmaking team first considered the "vomit comet" technique, in which a crew shoots inside a plane making steep climb-and-plummet patterns, allowing about 15 seconds of weightlessness inside the cabin. "You can get away with it for a few minutes of screen time with quick, five-second shots," Webber says, "but you can't get away with it when zero gravity is the main substance of your movie, and you certainly can't get away with it in the long shots that Alfonso loves." For a few scenes, Bullock was suspended from wires using a complex, remote-controlled pulley system--"we literally had puppeteers controlling her," Webber says--but wire work puts a visible strain on even the most heroic actor. "I couldn't stand being in the rig for more than 30 seconds, and she would be up there for hours," Lubezki says. "Sandra is an athlete, an acrobat, a ballerina and a total Buddhist."

For the most part in Gravity, if you're seeing flesh, it's real; everything else is computer generated. The big breakthrough--or in Cuarón's words, "the big, big, big, big breakthrough"--was Lubezki and Webber's design of the "light box," where Bullock spent the bulk of her time. "If Sandra was supposed to be floating and turning 360 degrees in space, we knew she would have to be as still as possible, and what had to move around was the set and the lighting and the camera, which all had to be synchronized," Lubezki says. The light box was a cube whose interior walls were made up of panels fitted with millions of LEDs. "They're creating projections of what the character would be seeing, but the projections are also lighting her," Cuarón says. Robot-controlled cameras and rigs sped up, slowed down and rotated in a computer-controlled choreography that created the illusion of movement.

It was an ingenious way to conjure zero gravity. Still, the "debris" came fast and furious. If the custom-built equipment broke down, there was no rental house to call for repairs. On one day--slated to be Bullock's first in the light box--the crew discovered that the floor delivered electric shocks. On another, Clooney had been positioned so uncomfortably that in Lubezki's words, "he didn't look like he was floating in zero gravity--he looked like he was under three times normal gravity." The camera rigging and lighting scheme had to be scrapped and redone. "Those were the moments when we would get into a Shackleton kind of area," Lubezki says, "when we all knew we were stuck in the ice and weren't sure if we would escape." (Lubezki kept what he calls a "horrible diary" of the shoot: "I picked it up recently, and it was so sad and scary that I had to stop reading.")

"There were times when it felt as though everything and everyone was conspiring against the process," Cuarón says. "But the thing about adversities is that they force you out of your comfort zone. The bad outcome is that you might drift into the void, but the other outcome is that you might gain amazing tools for growth and knowledge." Again, Cuarón is describing not just the production of Gravity but also Bullock's heroine. "Physically and metaphorically, this character is drifting into the void, getting further and further away from communication and human experience," he says, "living in her own bubble, victim of her own inertia, and she is forced to learn how to break through that inertia."

Gravity derives much of its strength from what it lacks. It's an action-adventure, but one with no bombs or chases or guns. Russian and Chinese spacecraft figure in the narrative, but geopolitical tensions do not. There's no enemy but space itself, in all its beauty and terror. There's not even much in the way of dialogue, and we get a good look at only two characters.

But there's a third character in Gravity, according to Cuarón, though she may be invisible at first. "The camera is neither an objective observer nor Sandra's subjective POV--the camera is a third astronaut, and that astronaut is the audience," Cuarón says. "The audience is floating in space, following these characters who are bonded by the loss of physics in zero gravity, floating and rolling and spinning. The idea is to immerse the audience so that your emotional experience is projected onto the screen in a primal way." That may be Cuarón's greatest trick: to wow viewers with a spectacle that seems to have sprung from their own imagination.