Mark Bittman, whose “Minimalist” column ran in the Dining section of the New York Times for more than 13 years, is an Opinion columnist as well as the lead food writer for The Magazine.Bittman has been urging Americans to change the way we eat for 30 years.

Our attention is focused on the election November 6th, whether there will be a change in government and, if so, what changes that would mean. Two days later the Chinese Communist Party Congress will meet for its once in a decade change of leadership. Factional infighting is marking this political transition. What changes are made in Beijing are also very important for us.

Chaos reigns. Confusion abounds. Information overload how can I cope? It isn’t the theme of a new Woody Allen movie. It is the real life world in which we all have to make choices about what we buy, how we dress and what information we really need to know. It is also the specialty of our next Forum speaker and author of The Art of Choosing.

Rich Wilson was one of 30 competitors who entered the 2008-2009 Vendee Globe, solo, non-stop, round the world sailing race. After 121 days of hurricane force winds, crushing fatigue and broken gear he was one of only 11 starters to complete the grueling 28,790 mile race. At 58 he was the oldest skipper in the race. He was also the only American and the only asthmatic. Along the way he endured broken ribs, a facial gash and compressed vertebrae. At one point he had to climb the 90 foot mast on his 60′ monohull Great American III to keep going.

Paul M. Kennedy, J. Richardson Dilworth professor of British history at Yale University. Author of 19 books including The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, The Parliament of Man, and soon to be released The Engineers of Victory.

‘Human Terrain’ is an expose of the U.S. effort to enlist America’s best and the brightest in a global struggle for the hearts and minds of its enemies. After winning the short battle of ’shock and awe’ in Iraq, but losing the long war to bring democracy and peace to the Middle East, the U.S. military began a controversial program to ‘operationalize’ culture as an instrument of irregular warfare. With the ‘Revolution in Military Affairs’ that produced hi-tech, low-casualty victories in Panama, Bosnia, and Kosovo tarnished by long and costly counter-insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army and Marine Corps enlist anthropologists, political scientists, historians, and other academics in ‘Human Terrain Systems’ for the global war on terror.