GHB, which severely depresses the nervous system, has sent more people to emergency rooms than a more highly publicized club drug, Ecstasy--about 12,900 at last count--and has been blamed for 71 GHB-related deaths since 1990, according to federal statistics.

"This is the most addictive drug I've ever seen," says Dr. Stephen W. Smith, an emergency room doctor at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis who has treated about 50 patients for GHB addiction problems since 1998. "People are desperate to get off of it because it's destroying their lives," he says, yet only about one in 10 of his patients has successfully kicked the habit.

No one knows exactly how many Americans are addicted to GHB, or gamma hydroxy butyrate, because the federal government did not begin monitoring GHB abuse until after the drug was declared illegal in March 2000. No statistics have yet been released. GHB use is also difficult to track because the chemical is excreted from the body within 12 hours, and most emergency rooms don't test for the presence of the drug. Consequently, GHB use often goes undetected.

Iranian filmmaker Tahmineh Milani calls the threat that she might be executed a mere "misunderstanding."

...Ms. Milani's latest battle with her country's censors comes across over her just-released film "The Hidden Half," which traces political and feminist struggles after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. It has won film festival awards and played to overflow audiences in Tehran, Iran. But after Milani criticized the state-run television network for not advertising it and commented on one of its main themes - the thousands killed and jailed after the 1979 revolution - she was arrested twice and the picture taken off Iranian screens.

Moviemakers from around the world - including such Hollywood figures as Sean Penn, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Spike Lee - are among the more than 1,500 who have petitioned Iran to drop the charges.

In an increasingly affluent post-World War II society, a college education - and eventually one geared toward technology - became the most-expected route for middle-class American youths.

Trade school became, more or less, a fallback plan. Many youths drawn to work that dirtied their hands felt that life as a carpenter, as my father-in-law laments, was some sort of second-rate career.

Times change. A decade of wealth - now getting its hard reality check - ramped up the demand for perfect stone walls and mantels.

One effect: A growing call for skilled workers in the building trades that has dovetailed with a broadening quest for "work with meaning." A range of workers, from entry-level to mid-career, may now answer the call. Look for a new wave of heroes - with trowels.

Six years ago, the University of California won nationwide praise and censure when it outlawed affirmative action in admissions decisions. Last week, it took another bold step.

Beginning this autumn, University of California campuses will for the first time be able to look beyond test scores and grade-point averages when evaluating every applicant. Other factors - from overcoming hardship to musical talent - will now always be given consideration.

To some, the rules seem like a thinly veiled attempt to skirt the affirmative-action ban. But many experts say this is simply the latest gambit to ensure fairness in a rapidly changing collegiate world. As record numbers of students apply to college, more are being rejected, forcing admissions officers into ever-more-creative ways to gauge would-be freshmen - and subjecting the process to unprecedented scrutiny.

...putting me strongly in mind of a young woman I used to know who had the Worst Experience of Her Life at least once a year. Our national version of that is to declare we've Lost Our Innocence every time some unpleasant event creates a major psychic upheaval. Yesterday I got three pieces of e-mail in a row that referred to the WTC bombing as our National Loss of Innocence...We love her, but let's face it: America is a chronic drama queen. To quote Dan Victor,

Loss of Innocence is the theme of every major American event, including assassinations. It's an American staple. The Vietnam War: The end of our Innocence! The Kennedy Assassination: The end of our Innocence! Watergate: The end of our Innocence! The Clinton Impeachment: The end of our Innocence! Now, the Columbine killings, the Innocence of the American High School lost! As a society we love to entertain this view of ourselves.

...Perhaps it's time to stop protesting our innocence, and behave ourselves like grownups instead. To know next to nothing about the world -- and as a nation, that's been our preferred state of affairs -- is the innocence of a small child. But we're not small children; and in an adult that same lack of knowledge is willful ignorance. To have power, to act in the world without knowing the consequences, is dangerous negligence. Even our friends and allies find us maddening that way.

Yes, we mean well. They do give us points for that. But it's not enough to mean well.

The "Marshall Plan" will be longer, more complex and more challenging than the original, for several reasons, not least of which is the greater technological gap between the US and Europe and the Arab peoples, and the centuries-old enmity based on what are essentially differences rooted in spiritual belief systems which have the same root and thus compete with the special viciousness of siblings (as we see most graphically between the Jews and the Muslims). Ancient yearnings for tribal hegemony--the most memorable recent example surfaced in 1930s Germany--have survived mostly through the persistent affiliation and identification of spiritual feeling with dominant monotheistic religions (and Hinduism) in their fundamentalist, exclusionary extremes.

I'll stop now. This issue brings up so many things, I could go on forever.