You know you're joining the Core when Ö

■"M.B. A. Students Bypassing Wall Street for a Summer in India," by Saritha Rai, New York Times, 10 August 2005, p. C1.

■"He Created a Mirror For Black America," by Felicia R. Lee, New York Times, 10 August 2005, p. B1.

In "Blueprint for Action," I write in Chapter Four ("Shrinking the Gap by Ending Disconnectedness") a section ("Tipping Points in the Journey from the Gap to the Core") that describes, more illustratively than data-driven, how I think we need to think about a Gap country's evolution toward Core-status.

Geez, that sentence was so Gap-Core'y that I almost sounded like Friedman going on and on about "flatness."

Anyway.

One of the signs I cite in the section is when Old Core students and young people start coming to your country for practical career experience. Why? It signals that your society is becoming a big part of the global economy's future-something not to be missed by ambitious young people looking to get ahead in a competitive environment.

There have already been stories about young Americans outsourcing themselves to China (and elder Americans as well), and I endnote a couple in BFA. The first cite above is just another good example WRT India.

It's such a huge step forward when a country achieves this sort of human connectivity (the "flow of people" is becoming more and more, at least in my mind, the most interesting and perhaps the most important of the "four flows" I described in PNM). It's huge because it says the world-or at least it's most ambitious youth-look up to you. Today Gwen Stefani sings about Japanese fashion in her new album (which, other than the swears, is the best work I've heard in many a moon), but in a few years, the Gwen-after-next will sing about India and China as well-perhaps seeing her career take off after starring in a few Bollywood musicals or lush Chinese romances.

Those sorts of role models are one of the best antidotes for alienated Muslim youth, whether they live in the Core or the Gap but especially the transplants in the Core. Ricky Martin recently volunteered to serve as a role model for Muslim youth by proxy, but frankly, you need those success stories to be more direct.

And to get those stories told, you need Muslim media moguls who want to tell those stories in the way they need to be told, like John H. Johnson did for so many years in his many black-oriented magazines and shows.

Show me the Russell Simmons who's rising up right now in European Muslim circles and I'll show you a solution that will do more to prevent terrorism than any "strategic communication" the U.S. Government could put together.

Searching for these "Heroes Yet Discovered" is a big theme in BFA, and the title of my character-driven conclusion to the book.