Happy holidays ... from Monica Zetterlund and Bill Evans.

Here's what USA Today has to say about sending even more troops to Iraq. It's encouraging to hear this from a mainstream, national newspaper.

For the past few weeks I've been doing a little freelance work at Time. It's fun to see how the magazine Briton Hadden created has grown up ... and remained the same. When you cut a line from a story at Time, you say it has been "greened." That's because way back in the 1920s Hadden instructed his researchers to make their cuts in green pencil.

Despite all the perks, including a keycard and my own cubicle, I was not privy to the Person of the Year discussions. So I was pleasantly surprised by the selection announced today. Time's Person of the Year is YOU. It's a brilliant choice, I think, and one that breathes new life into the revolutionary notion upon which Time was based.

Briton Hadden believed that by covering the people who make news--describing them physically, nicknaming them, depicting the way they speak and move--he could interest all of us in important national and world events that would otherwise seem dull and flavorless. Nothing epitomized Hadden's approach to news better than the Man of the Year issue, which captured the essence of an entire year in a single individual.

By the late 60's the "great man" approach seemed simplistic, elitist and (worst of all) dated. Not all stories could be told through the eyes of the powerful. And so Time, like the national media it had deeply influenced, began to broaden its scope. It began to cover the whole world rather than the merely influential or famous. It began to cover "issues" as much as news. Some years, instead of a Man of the Year, we got The Computer (1982) or Endangered Earth (1988).

The problem with this approach is that people like to read about other people. The profile, though it may seem simplistic to an editor, remains an effective way of convincing readers to learn about news they otherwise would skim over. As Time expanded its scope, it began to lose its newsiness and pop. Somewhere along the line it became the kind of magazine people of my generation rarely saw, except perhaps on an elderly neighbor's coffee table, next to the dusty bowl of candy.

That was too bad, because Time should appeal to the young. Today, as in the 20s, young people are immersed in new media. It's YouTube and myspace that attract us instead of the movies and radio, but the dynamic is much the same as during Hadden's times. We are so bombarded with words and images from all sides that at times it seems like we're drowning in a sea of ceaseless chatter. And that's why we need a news digest--more now than ever. It grounds us, once a week, to catch up on the things we missed and place what we've already heard in context.

The YOU issue recharges TIME by tackling a current topic: the growing importance of net-based social networks. It's a topic that would have grabbed Hadden, no doubt; Time had regular columns on cinema and radio. Just as important, Time chose to cover this news through the fascinating men and women who make it. These are not "great men" in the typical sense--they hold neither power nor position--but they and thousands like them are changing our times.

Pop-culture blogger Ray Tomczak, who posts dozens of times a day at wordfromonhigh.blogspot.com, points out a fascinating parallel between the forgotten founders of Time and AOL.

The U.S. census Bureau claims Americans spend more than a third of the year immmersed in the media... nearly five months -- including 1,555 hours watching TV. Here's the story in the Post.

It's time for a massive war protest. The Democrats won the election, but how has that victory affected the actions of President Bush, the lives of Iraqis, or of U.S. Soldiers? Not at all, if current headlines are to be believed. Bush is considering a plan to ignore Jim Baker's bipartisan commission and increase the number of troops in Iraq by as much as 40,000--supposedly a last-ditch attempt to break the forces of Muqtada al-Sadr. This is madness ... a public relations ploy conducted in cold blood. Heightened fighting in Iraq will only worsen the situation, further fracturing the country and driving it deeper into its bloody tailspin. Lives will be lost and families destroyed. The action Bush is contemplating is particularly unconscionable because it flies in the face of American democracy. The people have spoken and it is time for the President to listen. If he can't hear, millions of people in the streets would help

I've never been to Salzburg but I plan on checking it out this summer after my old college roommate's wedding in Prague. How could I not after checking out this travel video on YouTube?

On the nightlife beat, Marquee turns three tomorrow. Here's Gawker's take...

Douglas Copeland--Gen X author, screenwriter, sculptor, media critiquer slash bearded creative--loves his Blackberry. I mean he lurves his Blackberry ... and Blackberry lurves him. Here are a few gems from his recent commercial for the Blackberry Pearl:

"I mean here we are, it's like 2006, and for the first time in my entire life the future kind of feels like the future."

"Just the fact that I can get e-mail in a parking lot is sexy--I mean it's just very thrilling."

But enough about my libido. Why don't we stop checking our email and see if we can mosey into some dime-store philosophy...

"The only thing that makes human beings different from anything else in the universe is that we have the perception of time and we have the gift of free will. And it's how you exercise your time and your free will that is the measure of your humanity. So I look at this thing--it's not just a device, it's a transformer, it's a lens, it allows you to exercise your free will and your sense of time more creatively, and somehow humanize you and make you more humane. That's a lot of things for a little guy to do, but I think that is the case."

Ah, the money shot.

Coming up with so many bullshit pseudo-ideas is a lot of things for a little guy to do ... but it's sexy! It's human! It's an exercise of free will! Kind of like checking your e-mail in a parking lot.

Who will be Time's next "Person of the Year"? It has been a year of crowds more than individuals: the protestors in Beirut, the nameless masked killers in Iraq, the packed squares of Mexico and Bolivia and Venezuela. Often events seemed to master people--and in the last election the schemes of at least one "great man" were dashed. A few have risen from obscurity or near-obscurity to claim our attention this year, but almost all seem unsavory--perhaps most of all Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who somehow lost all of his ties, every damn one of them, but managed to hold onto a few ill-fitting, off-the-rack suits. And those we've been hoping might hold it together have seemed hopelessly ineffectual (the Prime Minister of Iraq comes to mind). Which leads to my current selection...

I just got back from Cleveland, where I gave a talk at the Cuyahoga County library and also at the Yale Club. The history there is fascinating and the architecture downtown stunning. What I didn't know--and how could I miss it?--was there's also great surfing. I guess I was distracted by the whiteout that I apparently outraced on the way to the airport at 6am... but no sooner had I returned then I saw this hilarious front-page article by the NYT's Christopher Maag about the diehard surfers of Cleveland.