GOD BLESS TIM BURTON If director Tim Burton were to write a book on fatherhood, America would be a happier place.

Preparing to leave the studio, Burton said: ''We'll see if I can become more infantile. I think I'm prepared for fatherhood. I'm used to not sleeping, and I'm good with different personalities.''

''Different?'' Elfman said. ''Do you expect your baby to be . . . different?''

Burton shrugged. ''I just hope he's not popular,'' he said. ''At my 10-year high-school reunion, all the popular people, the good students, turned out to be unappealing. The so-called misfits all turned out to be attractive. So if you have a child, you should almost hope they're not popular in high school. You were beaten up today? Well, that's not such a bad idea. You don't like talking to anybody? You like sitting in your room alone? Well, we have nothing but hope for you.''

Elfman smiled. ''Where would we be without our painful childhoods?'' he asked.

''We wouldn't be here,'' Burton said. ''None of this would exist.''

WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET Director Tim Burton has vision. And his vision comes from the images that transform themselves as they move from the world into his head and then back out onto paper. The NYTimes Magazine gives texture to the image of Burton as a movie director with a golden eye, and a tin ear.

''I think best when I'm drawing,'' Burton said as he folded himself into a large red velvet sofa. ''I always loved drawing, but that's true of all kids. When children draw, they all draw the same. There's a certain kind of passion that all kids share. And then it gets beaten out of them. At that point, most people stop drawing. I almost succumbed to the idea that I couldn't draw. I wasn't that good at life drawing, and I almost gave up. But I thought, I don't care if I can't draw in this traditional way. To punch through, that was what saved me. It was a catharsis. I realized that a kind of dark, dramatic, depressed, sad, moody thing was kind of healthy.''

For most of his career, Burton, 45, has communicated through his artwork. His explanations or descriptions came in the form of sketches. ''Tim showed me several drawings of his Edward,'' said Johnny Depp, who starred in ''Edward Scissorhands.'' ''I'd read the script, of course, but Tim's drawings said everything. I instantly fell for the character -- he made his way into my body. I was traumatized by Tim's drawings. They haunted me.''

Since none of his past movies -- from ''Pee-Wee's Big Adventure'' to ''Batman'' to ''Planet of the Apes'' -- have been realistic or particularly plot-driven, Burton's visual brilliance has dominated. For years, he told his collaborators that he wasn't really comfortable with dialogue. Burton preferred the immediacy -- the emotion, in a sense -- of a drawing come to life. Edward Scissorhands, with his pinprick eyes, kabuki face and shears for fingers, barely speaks, yet is extraordinarily expressive. ''He approaches filmmaking from a really artistic place,'' said Denise Di Novi, who produced five of Burton's movies. ''He could do one drawing, and you knew what the whole movie was. Tim comes from a deeply emotional place, and the drawings combine with that emotion to create something poetic, whether it's the Bat Cave or the topiary in 'Edward Scissorhands.' It's a coherent vision.''

SOUTHERN PRIDE, ARAB STYLE Tom Friedman's domino theories aside, he continues to have valid insight into the state of the Arab world. Or the parts of it he continues to revisit -- Iraq and Palestine, specifically. Friedman says humiliation is a huge issue in the Middle East today, and that if the United States wants to make any headway in democratizing the region, it will try to find ways to restore a sense of pride and dignity to the people there. Currently, Islam (and terrorism) provides the only solace to the disenfranchised. Think of the economic and cultural forces that gave rise to the Ku Klux Klan -- whose very real reign of terror in the early 1900s throughout the South is all but forgotten -- and you might have a better idea as to why so many young Palestinians, Iraqis, Saudis and Yeminis seem more willing to pick up a gun than a computer mouse.

A FRESH, NEW MILITARY If new is the new old, then today's U.S. military certainly has a fresh, new approach to war fighting. As Fred Kaplan reports in Slate, military planners -- either in their rush to impress their boss, or in a reactive dismissal of anything learned under the Clinton administration -- forgot the number one rule of modern military activity: It's the post-war, stupid. Kaplan focuses on the lack of post-war planning by the Pentagon, and to add insult to injury (or stack stupidity atop idiocy) the Pentagon not only ignored a comprehensive post-war plan by the State Department (that predicted much of the chaos that followed the rout of the Iraqi army) but it directly forbade Coalition authorities from using the document or its planners as resources. You've got to love it when people work together.

DOLLARS FOR DELAWARE Slate's Daniel Gross points observers of the economy (and interested bystanders) to the quiet Delaware Division of Corporations for hints of economic comebacks. Delaware -- with its loosy-goosy approach to incorporating businesses -- is the on-paper home to the vast majority of American companies, and the DDC regularly tracks new incorporations. The trendline, Gross reports, is pretty close to being on-the-money if you review the last four or five years. And the trendline, at least for smaller corporations and partnerships, is pointing up -- toward a possible turnaround. However, large corporations remain on the fence, and that could still prove ill for the millions of Americans looking for work in 2004.

GORE STRIKES BACK In his third speech this year, former Presidential contender Al Gore came out swinging. Gore, sounding more vital than he's ever managed in the past, might be a good textbook case for politicians taking an extended vacation/reality check every so often. And if Gore's facts in some cases are skweded (they are) and if he sounds a bit partisan (he is, and that's his job), he raises some critically important questions about civil liberties and the Bush administration. He also shows that the Democrats might be able to give Bush a battle for the White House, if they can move past the war in Iraq.

I want to challenge the Bush Administration’s implicit assumption that we have to give up many of our traditional freedoms in order to be safe from terrorists.
 
Because it is simply not true. 
 
In fact, in my opinion, it makes no more sense to launch an assault on our civil liberties as the best way to get at terrorists than it did to launch an invasion of Iraq as the best way to get at Osama Bin Laden.
 
In both cases, the Administration has attacked the wrong target.
 
In both cases they have recklessly put our country in grave and unnecessary danger, while avoiding and neglecting obvious and much more important challenges that would actually help to protect the country.
 
In both cases, the administration has fostered false impressions and misled the nation with superficial, emotional and manipulative presentations that are not worthy of American Democracy.
 
In both cases they have exploited public fears for partisan political gain and postured themselves as bold defenders of our country while actually weakening not strengthening America.
 
In both cases, they have used unprecedented secrecy and deception in order to avoid accountability to the Congress, the Courts, the press and the people.

Indeed, this Administration has turned the fundamental presumption of our democracy on its head.  A government of and for the people is supposed to be generally open to public scrutiny by the people -- while the private information of the people themselves should be routinely protected from government intrusion. 

But instead, this Administration is seeking to conduct its work in secret even as it demands broad unfettered access to personal information about American citizens.  Under the rubric of protecting national security, they have obtained new powers to gather information from citizens and to keep it secret.  Yet at the same time they themselves refuse to disclose information that is highly relevant to the war against terrorism.