Asking the East Coast: WDYDWYD? (Why Do You Do What You Do?) [TNW Media]

In this month?s issue of Wired Magazine, writer Ted Greenwald described the trending Silicon Valley meme, ?WDYDWYD or Why Do You Do What You Do?? calling it the ?hottest team-building meme since Outward Bound.?

The meme originated in 2004 at Burning Man by artist Tony Deifell who posted photos of strangers answering the questions on the Ning social network. The inspiration behind the meme originated with a call he received late one night from a young student working on a school project. She blurted out, ?Why do you do what you do?? Deifell was quite taken a back, and like many people faced with the question, he embarked upon an existential meditation.

I couldn?t get the words out in a clear way. I tried to refigure how to make my answer more essential. I realized I needed to be more deliberate in my choices in the world. It haunted me.

Deifell has since carried WDYDWYD from the festival to the Silicon Valley boardrooms of the National Holistic Institute, Google and Twitter. The site, which he describes as an open-sourced art project, is still growing steadily on Ning.

Student Joe Moloughney founded the WDYDWYD Facebook group, calling it a worldwide community art project with 1,500 members. Their Twitter page has over 1,000 followers. Artists like photographer Bill Kennedy, author/cartoonist Hugh MacLeod and French performance artist Séverine Carminati have all got involved.

But this meme is still primarily just on the West Coast. So, what would the East Coast answer? I asked a few prominent East Coasters, ?Why do you do what you do??

Here are their answers:

?To someday be able to answer this question.?

- Ashley Casselman, Senior Associate at the World Economic Forum.

?I am an insecure short girl from Florida. I never considered myself enough.?

-Laurel Touby, Founder and SVP, mediabistro.com

?I do what I do because of the thrill of discovery. And becuase the world is changing at an incredibly rapid rate, and somebody needs to be there to chronicle it.?

- Seth Porges, an Editor at Popular Mechanics

?I love the Internet, sure, but I mostly do what I do because of the people in my industry.  It?s a world of movers, shakers, api-makers.  Everyone is smart, and on the cutting-edge of what?s next.  It?s simply the most exciting industry to work in, and also the most fun.?

-Soraya Darabi, Co-Founder of Foodspotting.

?Because I can?t stop?and I?m not sure I want to.?

- Julia Kaganskiy, Editor of The Creators Project and Founder of the ArtsTech Meetup.

?Because making the world suck less is SO MUCH FUN.?

- Alexis Ohanian, Co-Founder of Reddit and Head of Marketing for Hipmunk

?I do what I do because I?m a huge nerd.  At RJMetrics, we use technology to solve complex, interesting problems for some of the fastest-growing companies in the world.  This makes for nerd paradise, and I wouldn?t trade it for any other job.?

-Robert J. Moore, CEO of RJMetrics.

?In my case, the answer comes down to ?enlightened self interest?.  I am truly focused on the long-term goal of leaving the world a better place than I found it (the wonderful concept of ?tikun olam?). As a pragmatic capitalist, I believe that can best be done by harnessing the powers of free market forces, and as a believer in democracy, I believe that society then needs to work collectively to tweak the margins to guide humanity in the right direction. As a result, I have created a unique and strange personal world surrounding me?like a high tech PeeWee?s Playhouse. I am an entrepreneur, angel investor, teacher, mentor, speaker, father, futurist and political activist, all of which taken together occupy me 16 hours a day, seven days a week, with an insane work and travel schedule. But I truly believe that I am having more pure fun in life than almost anyone else I know, and this combination of pleasure and purpose is Why I Do What I Do.?

- David S. Rose, Managing Principal of Rose Tech Ventures and founder and Chairman of New York Angels.

What makes our New York answers resemblant of our city? A touch of irony perhaps? A grittier sense of responsibility? A necessity to be edgier?

After asking so many of my peers, I gave it a think. I do what I do because every writer requires inspiration. So my fellow East Coasters, WDYDWYD?

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Device Helps Paralyzed Rats Walk Again

Until recently, severe spinal cord injuries came with a fairly definite diagnosis of paralysis, whether partial or complete. But new developments in both stem-cell therapy and electronic stimulation have begun to provide hope, however distant, that paralysis may not be a life sentence. Complicated muscle stimulation devices can enable limited standing and walking, and the first embryonic stem-cell trials began last year. Other techniques, however, may provide an even simpler solution.

In his lab at the University of California, Los Angeles, V. Reggie Edgerton is developing an electronic neural bridge, one that helps impulses jump from one side of a severed spinal cord to the other to take advantage of neural "circuitry" that remains intact even after it's been cut off from the brain. In research presented two weeks ago at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego, Edgerton and graduate student Parag Gad used this approach, combined with electromyography (EMG), to help rats with severed spinal cords and completely paralyzed hind legs to run on all fours again. When their front legs began to run, the movement triggered a small current that prompted their rear legs to keep up.

Edgerton has been working on a system that employs preëxisting abilities of the spinal cord: neural pathways that, after an injury, may be blocked but don't disappear. Although the brain may control the impulse that initiates walking, the sequential muscle-by-muscle movement is not under our conscious command. "The signal coming down from the brain isn't to activate this muscle and then this muscle and then this muscle," Edgerton says. "It's to activate a program that's built into the circuitry. A message comes down from the brain that says step. The spinal cord knows what stepping is; it just has to be told to do that."

Rather than connecting electrodes to neurons or muscles, Edgerton attaches his neural bridge to electrodes on the outside membrane of the severed spinal cord. Slow pulses of electricity fire up the spinal circuitry associated with stepping, and, once the legs start to bear weight, the spinal cord recognizes the resulting sensory information and generates stepping motions on its own?no brain connection required.

With the flick of a switch, Edgerton and his colleagues made the rat's paralyzed hind limbs break into a trot. The result?an even, rhythmic gait controlled by the researchers?is something that stimulation of individual muscles can't yet replicate.

Gad took this system one step further, creating a technique that monitors movement of the animal's front legs and uses this information to generate electrical pulses that prompt the rear legs to move. First, he developed an algorithm that can distinguish walking activity?constant, alternating movement in both forelegs. Then, he implanted EMG wires into the front and rear legs, to detect the activity of skeletal muscles. The EMG wires connect to a small backpack containing a microcontroller that, upon detecting walking in the forelimbs, sends out a constant pulse to the spinal cord, triggering the hind limbs to join in.

"They're demonstrating, in a practical sense, many of the concepts that have been tossed around for some time," says Vivian Mushahwar, a biomedical engineer at the University of Alberta. "It is really refreshing." Mushahwar and physiologist Richard Stein, also at the University of Alberta, have been working on another system that takes advantage of the spinal cord's innate circuitry.

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Device Helps Paralyzed Rats Walk Again

Until recently, severe spinal cord injuries came with a fairly definite diagnosis of paralysis, whether partial or complete. But new developments in both stem-cell therapy and electronic stimulation have begun to provide hope, however distant, that paralysis may not be a life sentence. Complicated muscle stimulation devices can enable limited standing and walking, and the first embryonic stem-cell trials began last year. Other techniques, however, may provide an even simpler solution.

In his lab at the University of California, Los Angeles, V. Reggie Edgerton is developing an electronic neural bridge, one that helps impulses jump from one side of a severed spinal cord to the other to take advantage of neural "circuitry" that remains intact even after it's been cut off from the brain. In research presented two weeks ago at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego, Edgerton and graduate student Parag Gad used this approach, combined with electromyography (EMG), to help rats with severed spinal cords and completely paralyzed hind legs to run on all fours again. When their front legs began to run, the movement triggered a small current that prompted their rear legs to keep up.

Edgerton has been working on a system that employs preëxisting abilities of the spinal cord: neural pathways that, after an injury, may be blocked but don't disappear. Although the brain may control the impulse that initiates walking, the sequential muscle-by-muscle movement is not under our conscious command. "The signal coming down from the brain isn't to activate this muscle and then this muscle and then this muscle," Edgerton says. "It's to activate a program that's built into the circuitry. A message comes down from the brain that says step. The spinal cord knows what stepping is; it just has to be told to do that."

Rather than connecting electrodes to neurons or muscles, Edgerton attaches his neural bridge to electrodes on the outside membrane of the severed spinal cord. Slow pulses of electricity fire up the spinal circuitry associated with stepping, and, once the legs start to bear weight, the spinal cord recognizes the resulting sensory information and generates stepping motions on its own?no brain connection required.

With the flick of a switch, Edgerton and his colleagues made the rat's paralyzed hind limbs break into a trot. The result?an even, rhythmic gait controlled by the researchers?is something that stimulation of individual muscles can't yet replicate.

Gad took this system one step further, creating a technique that monitors movement of the animal's front legs and uses this information to generate electrical pulses that prompt the rear legs to move. First, he developed an algorithm that can distinguish walking activity?constant, alternating movement in both forelegs. Then, he implanted EMG wires into the front and rear legs, to detect the activity of skeletal muscles. The EMG wires connect to a small backpack containing a microcontroller that, upon detecting walking in the forelimbs, sends out a constant pulse to the spinal cord, triggering the hind limbs to join in.

"They're demonstrating, in a practical sense, many of the concepts that have been tossed around for some time," says Vivian Mushahwar, a biomedical engineer at the University of Alberta. "It is really refreshing." Mushahwar and physiologist Richard Stein, also at the University of Alberta, have been working on another system that takes advantage of the spinal cord's innate circuitry.

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Intentional or not, Groupon?s flirtation with Google has made it a super-anticipated IPO [TNW Industry]

First off, this is my last post on the Google ? Groupon rumors: enough is enough. However, there is one last thing I?d like to point out: the end of Groupon?s flirtation has turned a somewhat-under-the-radar company (to the general public at least) into what is arguably now the second most anticipated IPO in tech behind Facebook.

Of course, Groupon wasn?t a nobody before all of this hoopla, but when Google gets involved, well, everyone follows every move, and Groupon got mentioned every time. Oh, and so did those continually skyrocketing rumored sales prices: $2 billion, $3 billion, $5 billion, $6 billion. Everyone watching those numbers go up, up, up had only one thought in mind: ?I wish I owned a piece of Groupon??

Well, sometime in 2011 or 2012 perhaps you should probably get your chance when Groupon makes an initial public offering. Unless Google is planning on coming back with a counteroffer that Groupon really can?t refuse (whatever that number would be), it is unlikely that anyone else will try to outbid Google, which means that Groupon has only one viable big-time exit strategy, an IPO.

The cynic in us wonders if this was the plan from the beginning at Groupon HQ, or whether the decision to no sell was a torturous as it would be for many. We?ll probably never know.

I was watching a Twitter search for ?Groupon? last night in the rapid-fire that is Tweetdeck User Streams, and it was pretty interesting to see the wide range of reactions, from ?insane!? to ?great!? to ?Yelp all over again?? Frankly, for Google I think (and so does Niall) that this was for the best ? Google still has the very viable option of just cloning Groupon. For Groupon, well, obviously it?s a big risk (but if its revenue is $2 billion a year ? or even half of that ? maybe not so much), but one that I think it can mitigate pretty well if it moves reasonably quickly towards an IPO.

Frankly, I think that unlike Facebook which may have used the same strategy as Groupon may have used here, the switching cost for leaving Groupon is minimal, so if another company comes along that offers better deals, people will go there (which is, not to be too repetitive, Google should just clone Groupon). So for my two cents, Groupon should capitalize on all of this free media coverage/foaming at the mouth and give the common man and woman a chance to own a piece of what $6 billion of Google?s piggy bank couldn?t buy.

Or, it could wait too long, let all the buzz fizzle away, and possibly watch as Google or Facebook or another future competitor eats its deal-of-the-day-lunch.

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Obama in Unannounced Afghan Visit

Mr. Obama arrived at Bagram Air Base after a secret overnight flight. Bad weather and high winds forced the White House to drop plans for Mr. Obama to fly by helicopter into Kabul to meet with Mr. Karzai, who has complained vocally about American military tactics in recent weeks. Technical difficulties then kept the two leaders from speaking by videoconference, officials said, but they later spoke by phone.

Mr. Obama also consulted with his commanding general and visited American troops who are heading into another holiday season far from home.

?As we begin this holiday season, there is no place I?d rather be than here with you,? Mr. Obama said, speaking to thousands of troops in a hangar at Bagram after awarding Purple Hearts to five injured service members. Many of those in the audience at the hangar were from the 101st Airborne Division ? now on its fourth combat deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001.

?Thanks to your service, we are making important progress,? he said.

Administration officials told reporters during the flight that Mr. Obama was not carrying any particular message for Mr. Karzai, with whom he met several weeks ago during a summit meeting in Lisbon.

Wrapped in a tight security cocoon, Mr. Obama was scheduled to be on the ground for only a few hours, in his second trip in nine months to a country ravaged by war. But his arrival came at critical juncture, as he and other NATO allies put in place a transition plan meant to hand over control of the battlefield to Afghan forces. The intention is to formally end foreign combat operations in Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

Mr. Obama?s administration is also in the midst of its own review of the counterinsurgency strategy he approved a year ago, when he ordered the latest increase in troop strength. That step brought American forces in the country to about 100,000, or roughly triple the number there when he took office 22 months ago.

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of American and NATO forces, has highlighted signs of progress, but others have expressed skepticism. General Petraeus and the United States ambassador in Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, met Mr. Obama when he stepped off Air Force One on Friday after the 13-hour flight. Those two as well as Mr. Obama?s national security adviser, Thomas Donilon, and Douglas Lute, a national security aide, met with the president for 40 minutes during the visit.

The president?s visit came at a time of renewed tension between American and Afghan allies. Mr. Karzai has spoken out lately against special-operations raids that American officers believe have proved especially effective in rooting out insurgents. Mr. Karzai?s government is also embroiled in a conflict over fraud in recent parliamentary elections that Western diplomats had hoped would show improvement in a flawed democracy.

Mr. Obama?s plane touched down even as State Department cables obtained by the group WikiLeaks and made available to a number of news organizations laid out a devastating portrait of a society awash in corruption and graft that has been fostered by Mr. Karzai?s own government. The cables questioned whether Mr. Karzai will ever be ?a responsible partner? and depicted him as ?erratic? and ?indecisive and unprepared.?

But unlike his March trip, when Mr. Obama pressed Mr. Karzai over corruption, the president arrived this time intent on working around the frictions between the two governments. The White House shifted its approach to Mr. Karzai after that March trip, concluding that public differences were doing more harm than good.

Mr. Obama began talking with Mr. Karzai by videoconference every six weeks or so. And even after Mr. Karzai lashed out at the American military last month, Mr. Obama played down the dispute when they met shortly afterward at the NATO summit meeting in Lisbon.

?We have to make sure that we understand our objectives are aligned; the endpoint that we want to reach is the same,? Mr. Obama said in Lisbon. Of Mr. Karzai?s concerns, the president said ?we should be sensitive to them and we will be listening to him.? But he added, ?At the same time, he?s got to be sensitive to our concerns.?

As has become customary under both Mr. Obama and President George W. Bush, the trip to Afghanistan was carried out in clandestine fashion. Mr. Obama slipped out of the White House on Thursday night after presiding over a Hanukkah celebration, and boarded Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base for the flight.

Many White House officials were kept in the dark about the journey, as was the Afghan government. The president?s published schedule for Friday listed him meeting with advisers in the Oval Office and then making a public statement on the latest jobs report, with the schedule reporting that ?the location of the statement is T.B.D.,? or to be determined.

He left Washington at an exceptionally busy moment, as he struggles with Congress over a host of issues like tax cuts, arms control, gays in the military and immigration during an abbreviated lame-duck session. A bipartisan advisory commission he appointed was scheduled to vote on a plan to curb the deficit on Friday.

Mr. Obama?s trip was his third outside the United States in the month since the mid-term elections, when his party lost control of the House and saw its majority trimmed in the Senate. No foreign policy challenge is as risky or central to his presidency as the war in Afghanistan.

While he has escalated forces in Afghanistan, Mr. Obama has sought a way to end the American war effort there. When he ordered the latest 30,000 troops to the war zone last December, he vowed to begin withdrawing forces in July 2011, a deadline intended to force Afghan authorities to step up while reassuring Americans that the war was not endless. Mr. Obama reasoned that if the modified counterinsurgency strategy was not working by then, it would be time to change course anyway.

The deadline, though, roiled the region. Many players interpreted it as a sign that the Americans were on the way out, and began looking to cut deals for what would come next. To emphasize that the beginning of a withdrawal did not mean that Americans would leave all at once, Mr. Obama and other NATO leaders in Lisbon laid out a four-year transition plan.

Starting in the new year, NATO troops will begin thinning out its forces in specific regions, and gradually handing them over to Afghan security forces. NATO troops may still operate in a supporting role in those regions, and will keep control much longer in the most turbulent areas, like Kandahar. If circumstances allow, the Afghans will take the lead throughout the country by the end of 2014.

But if the troop buildup was supposed to do the Taliban enough damage to push the enemy to the bargaining table for a political reconciliation, the effort suffered a setback recently when Afghan and foreign officials discovered that a supposed high-ranking Taliban figure engaged in secret talks was actually an imposter.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 3, 2010

A picture caption with an earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of Gen. David H. Petraeus as Petreaus.

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Android to pass iOS before iOS catches up to BlackBerry

60.7 million people in the US owned smartphones during the last quarter, up 14 percent from the preceding three month period. The number of smartphone owners who use Google's Android OS is about to pass the number of users on Apple's iOS, but the number of Americans on RIM's BlackBerry OS is still ahead of both. Based on the data provided by tracking firm comScore, Android saw a huge sales jump while iOS gained a little and BlackBerry dropped quite a bit.

In the three months ending in October, RIM dropped from 39.3 percent to 35.8 percent. Apple's share rose less than a single percentage point, going from 23.8 percent to 24.6 percent. Meanwhile, the share of Google users rose sharply from 17.0 percent to 23.5 percent.

If iOS and Android were neck and neck a month ago, it looks like the latter will pass the former in the current quarter, especially given that it includes the 2010 holiday season. BlackBerry should remain in first this year, but that lead won't last for long.

Microsoft's share dropped from 11.8 percent to 9.7 percent of smartphone subscribers. Palm's numbers fell from 4.9 percent to 3.9 percent. Despite losing share to Android, most smartphone platforms are still gaining users because the smartphone market overall continues to grow.

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Electricity and Light in One Chip

Today's computer chips are chunks of silicon that use electrical pulses to crunch data. But IBM researchers are now making chips for tomorrow: chunks of silicon that also contain pathways for light pulses.

These optical circuits can exchange information with the conventional, electronic circuits in the same chip. This could transport data inside a computer significantly faster, because light signals can transport larger quantities of data at higher speeds than conventional copper electrical wiring can. A chip could use its optical?photonic?circuits for high-speed input and output.

"We need faster ways to shuttle information around," says Solomon Assefa, a member of the research team at IBM's Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. "Our main motivation is to build, in five years or so, exascale systems that will be 1,000 times faster than what we have now."

Today's supercomputers are dubbed "petascale" because their power is measured in petaflops, or quadrillions of floating-point operations per second. The U.S. Department of Energy has urged the development of machines capable of exaflops?quintillions of operations per second?to enable more powerful simulation-based research into climate change and renewable and nuclear energy.

Over the past seven years, IBM's researchers have developed a chain of individual silicon components that together can convert a chip's electrical signals into light signals and back again. Now they've found a way to build all of those components on the same chip without inhibiting the transistors' performance, using the standard complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) techniques used to build processors and other chips today.

Now that this goal has been achieved in the lab, says Assefa, "the next step is to transfer this to a commercial fab, like those making chips today." Although the technology is not expected to be market-ready for around five years, IBM is keen to test its techniques on the production equipment for which they are designed.

This is a significant advance, says Bahram Jalali, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, who helped kick-start silicon photonics when he developed the first silicon laser in 2004. "Integration with CMOS is a very difficult thing that has been a vision of many in the field for some time," he says.

Other companies have been developing silicon photonics as well. Earlier this year, Intel unveiled a collection of dedicated photonic chips that can be used to carry data between conventional electronic chips. Caltech spinoff Luxtera puts photonic components on a silicon wafer after the electronic silicon components have been completed.

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Obama in Unannounced Afghan Visit

Mr. Obama arrived at Bagram Air Base after a secret overnight flight. Bad weather and high winds forced the White House to drop plans for Mr. Obama to fly by helicopter into Kabul to meet with Mr. Karzai, who has complained vocally about American military tactics in recent weeks. Technical difficulties then kept the two leaders from speaking by videoconference, officials said, but they later spoke by phone.

Mr. Obama also consulted with his commanding general and visited American troops who are heading into another holiday season far from home.

?As we begin this holiday season, there is no place I?d rather be than here with you,? Mr. Obama said, speaking to thousands of troops in a hangar at Bagram after awarding Purple Hearts to five injured service members. Many of those in the audience at the hangar were from the 101st Airborne Division ? now on its fourth combat deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001.

?Thanks to your service, we are making important progress,? he said.

Administration officials told reporters during the flight that Mr. Obama was not carrying any particular message for Mr. Karzai, with whom he met several weeks ago during a summit meeting in Lisbon.

Wrapped in a tight security cocoon, Mr. Obama was scheduled to be on the ground for only a few hours, in his second trip in nine months to a country ravaged by war. But his arrival came at critical juncture, as he and other NATO allies put in place a transition plan meant to hand over control of the battlefield to Afghan forces. The intention is to formally end foreign combat operations in Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

Mr. Obama?s administration is also in the midst of its own review of the counterinsurgency strategy he approved a year ago, when he ordered the latest increase in troop strength. That step brought American forces in the country to about 100,000, or roughly triple the number there when he took office 22 months ago.

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of American and NATO forces, has highlighted signs of progress, but others have expressed skepticism. General Petraeus and the United States ambassador in Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, met Mr. Obama when he stepped off Air Force One on Friday after the 13-hour flight. Those two as well as Mr. Obama?s national security adviser, Thomas Donilon, and Douglas Lute, a national security aide, met with the president for 40 minutes during the visit.

The president?s visit came at a time of renewed tension between American and Afghan allies. Mr. Karzai has spoken out lately against special-operations raids that American officers believe have proved especially effective in rooting out insurgents. Mr. Karzai?s government is also embroiled in a conflict over fraud in recent parliamentary elections that Western diplomats had hoped would show improvement in a flawed democracy.

Mr. Obama?s plane touched down even as State Department cables obtained by the group WikiLeaks and made available to a number of news organizations laid out a devastating portrait of a society awash in corruption and graft that has been fostered by Mr. Karzai?s own government. The cables questioned whether Mr. Karzai will ever be ?a responsible partner? and depicted him as ?erratic? and ?indecisive and unprepared.?

But unlike his March trip, when Mr. Obama pressed Mr. Karzai over corruption, the president arrived this time intent on working around the frictions between the two governments. The White House shifted its approach to Mr. Karzai after that March trip, concluding that public differences were doing more harm than good.

Mr. Obama began talking with Mr. Karzai by videoconference every six weeks or so. And even after Mr. Karzai lashed out at the American military last month, Mr. Obama played down the dispute when they met shortly afterward at the NATO summit meeting in Lisbon.

?We have to make sure that we understand our objectives are aligned; the endpoint that we want to reach is the same,? Mr. Obama said in Lisbon. Of Mr. Karzai?s concerns, the president said ?we should be sensitive to them and we will be listening to him.? But he added, ?At the same time, he?s got to be sensitive to our concerns.?

As has become customary under both Mr. Obama and President George W. Bush, the trip to Afghanistan was carried out in clandestine fashion. Mr. Obama slipped out of the White House on Thursday night after presiding over a Hanukkah celebration, and boarded Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base for the flight.

Many White House officials were kept in the dark about the journey, as was the Afghan government. The president?s published schedule for Friday listed him meeting with advisers in the Oval Office and then making a public statement on the latest jobs report, with the schedule reporting that ?the location of the statement is T.B.D.,? or to be determined.

He left Washington at an exceptionally busy moment, as he struggles with Congress over a host of issues like tax cuts, arms control, gays in the military and immigration during an abbreviated lame-duck session. A bipartisan advisory commission he appointed was scheduled to vote on a plan to curb the deficit on Friday.

Mr. Obama?s trip was his third outside the United States in the month since the mid-term elections, when his party lost control of the House and saw its majority trimmed in the Senate. No foreign policy challenge is as risky or central to his presidency as the war in Afghanistan.

While he has escalated forces in Afghanistan, Mr. Obama has sought a way to end the American war effort there. When he ordered the latest 30,000 troops to the war zone last December, he vowed to begin withdrawing forces in July 2011, a deadline intended to force Afghan authorities to step up while reassuring Americans that the war was not endless. Mr. Obama reasoned that if the modified counterinsurgency strategy was not working by then, it would be time to change course anyway.

The deadline, though, roiled the region. Many players interpreted it as a sign that the Americans were on the way out, and began looking to cut deals for what would come next. To emphasize that the beginning of a withdrawal did not mean that Americans would leave all at once, Mr. Obama and other NATO leaders in Lisbon laid out a four-year transition plan.

Starting in the new year, NATO troops will begin thinning out its forces in specific regions, and gradually handing them over to Afghan security forces. NATO troops may still operate in a supporting role in those regions, and will keep control much longer in the most turbulent areas, like Kandahar. If circumstances allow, the Afghans will take the lead throughout the country by the end of 2014.

But if the troop buildup was supposed to do the Taliban enough damage to push the enemy to the bargaining table for a political reconciliation, the effort suffered a setback recently when Afghan and foreign officials discovered that a supposed high-ranking Taliban figure engaged in secret talks was actually an imposter.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 3, 2010

A picture caption with an earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of Gen. David H. Petraeus as Petreaus.

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Backing for Fiscal Panel?s Plan Grows

The commission did not formally vote because while 11 of 18 members backed the plan, that was short of the 14-vote supermajority required to send the plan to Congress for action under the terms of Mr. Obama?s executive order last February establishing the commission. Even so, panel members of both parties, and opponents of the plan as well as supporters, said as they expressed their views that the package should serve as ?a template? for future action, in the words of Representative Xavier Becerra, a Democratic opponent from California.

?This plan deserves a vote and this president needs to make sure that by the State of the Union he also has his own plan and his own leadership because this is the issue of our time that must be solved,? said one of those who voted against the package, Andy Stern, the former president of the Service Employees International Union who was a major supporter of Mr. Obama in the 2008 presidential campaign.

Mr. Obama issued a statement supportive of the committee?s report without embracing any of its specific recommendations for spending cuts or tax increases. While he said his immediate goal is creating more jobs ? a nod to the rise in the unemployment rate announced Friday morning and the political pressure that sustained high levels of joblessness has put on him - he hinted that he might use some components of the plan as the basis for his own proposals to address the nation?s long-term fiscal imbalances.

?The commission?s majority report includes a number of specific proposals that I ? along with my economic team ? will study closely in the coming weeks as we develop our budget and our priorities for the coming year,? Mr. Obama said in a statement distributed by the White House as the president met with troops in Afghanistan.

?I don?t doubt our ability to meet this challenge, but our success depends on our willingness to engage in the kind of honest conversation and cooperation that hasn?t always happened in Washington,? Mr. Obama said. ?We cannot afford to fall back on old ideologies, and we will all have to budge on long-held positions. So I ask members of both parties to maintain an open mind and a commitment to progress as we work to lift this burden from the shoulders of future generations.?

The committee?s deliberations and the reactions to its proposals highlighted deep splits in Washington and the nation over how urgent the fiscal problem is, how it should be balanced against the economy?s more immediate needs and how it should be addressed.

The plan written by Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson ? representing the view that chronic deficits and the mounting debt must be dealt with aggressively ? would make deep cuts, mostly starting in 2012 given the economy?s fragility, in both domestic and military spending. It would overhaul the tax code, eliminating or reducing the $1 trillion a year in popular tax breaks for individuals and corporations and using the revenues mostly to slash income tax rates but also to reduce deficits. And to make Social Security solvent for 75 years, it would raise payroll taxes for the affluent and reduce future benefits, including by slowly raising the retirement age for full benefits to 69 from 67 by 2075.

Administration at work on Mr. Obama?s State of the Union address and annual budget release in January said there is interest in borrowing the commission?s calls for overhauling the tax code and fixing Social Security?s long-term finances.

Several Republicans also expressed a desire to see the plan serve as the basis for debate soon, especially on overhauling taxes. Senator Michael D. Crapo, a Republican of Idaho, called for ?immediate and aggressive action.?

Mr. Stern, the former labor leader, was the only one of the six private citizens whom Mr. Obama named to the panel to vote against the plan, citing its failure to invest in such areas as education and infrastructure even as it cut spending elsewhere. As the week began, people close to the commission privately predicted that few of the 12 elected officials on the panel would vote yes, reflecting the hesitance among lawmakers who must face the voters to compromise ? Republicans on taxes in particular and Democrats on domestic spending.

But in the end, after days of private one-on-one conversations by the chairmen ? Erskine B. Bowles, the president of the North Carolina University system and a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, and Alan K. Simpson, a former Republican Senate leader of Wyoming ? and revisions to the package?s mix of spending cuts and revenue increases, six of the 12 elected officials on the commission supported the chairmen?s recommendations. Two senior lawmakers on Congress?s budget committees are retiring, however, taking them out of the mix for any future legislative action.

Representative John M. Spratt Jr. of South Carolina, the chairman of the House Budget Committee who lost his reelection bid in November, joked that as he struggled to decide to vote yes, ?I thought frequently, thank God I?m not running again.?

Turning serious, Mr. Spratt said it was ?an irony? that the commission was proposing such far-reaching and painful remedies for the coming decade when the White House and Congressional leaders simultaneously on Friday were negotiating how long to extend the soon-to-expire Bush-era tax cuts. As Mr. Spratt noted, an extension for the rates for all income levels would cost more than $4 trillion over the coming decade ? slightly more than the amount that the commission plan would cut from the deficits projected in that time.

The 11 supporters were split between the parties, with five Democrats and five Republicans, along with a political independent, Ann M. Fudge, the former chief executive of Young & Rubicam.

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