■"A Race to the Top: The 35-hour work week vs. the 35-hour day," op-ed by Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, 3 June 2005, p. A27.

■"Pomp and Circumspect: 'Do what you love' is now practical career advice," op-ed by Daniel H. Pink, New York Times, 4 June 2005, p. A29.

Friedman's off the Grenocon shtick, or whatever that bit was about throwing loads of investment at non-oil alternatives to transportation, and now he's singularly pushing his book's main theme, which I -- as a blogger -- respect . . . in other bloggers, but really, he might use his NYT op-ed column with a bit more reach. I mean, there's no way Esquire would let me go "Core-Gap, Core-Gap" in every piece I wrote for them.

Still, it's a neat club, and Friedman wields it well, beating the French and their 35-hour-work-week mentality.

But his upshot misses the target, in many ways, just like his geo-green stuff. We won't go hydrogen on our own, but because Asia will forge the pathway out of sheer desperation for both its skyrocketing oil dependency and its nasty air pollution. Left to our own devices, we'd be fine on oil for quite a few decades. We'll change because we'll not want to be left behind technologically, and Asia's rising giants will pave that path.

On the "World is Flat" storyline, Friedman's selling a serious self-critique of the U.S. educational system, and while it's true that we aren't producing the same great generations of engineers and scientists that we once were, Friedman never seems to ask the question of whether or not that's the automatic bad thing he assumes it is. If America of the 20th century was so very different in its dominant skill sets from that of 19th century America, then why should 21st century America not similarly "move on"?

This is why I find Daniel Pink's notions of shifting from a left-brain (the number-crunching side) to a right-brain (the imaginative, storytelling side) so interesting. It's not just the follow-your-bliss notion that attracts, but something that speaks very directly to my own life: so long as I tried to be like every other military analyst and do the operations research-sort of thing, I never stood out. When I moved into the serious storytelling of grand strategy, I attained a global reach I never thought possible.

And that's not just a story of the Michael Jordan-phenomenon sort. Storytelling and personal care and designing and styling are about product differentiation in a world where the standard things can be automated and mass produced elsewhere at far lower costs. Do we race China and India down that path, or do we move beyond?

My kids are all inveterate storytellers, acting out each movie we watch (often, quite annoyingly in the theater like Jerry waving his light saber yesterday at Star Wars), singing songs like every meal is their personal caberet, and writing down their stories and mangas and comics and books and plays and every thought that pops into their heads like there's no tomorrow. My eldest Emily is designing elaborate manga-style comics with hugely intricate drawings and wonderfully fast-paced action. Her latest project is a full-blown parody of the movie "Moulin Rouge" using characters from her favorite Japanese vampire-hunter manga series. And yes, if you know the characters as I do after listening to her rambling on about them for hours at a time, it's awfully good.

Meanwhile, my wife worries incessantly about their science and math skills, which are just fine, but not at the tippy top of the class like their verbal/music/singing/storytelling/all-around-showboating skills, and it bugs her to no end. Me, I'm convinced none of these kids will ever go hungry, or without a lot of career opportunities. Vonne wants to have them read science and tech magazines, whereas I favor Variety and comic books.

We shall see which view holds more promise in the end, but I'm betting on Pink's optimism over Friedman's fretting.