It might be the end of American hegemony in the global political and economic order, but unemployed and underpaid Americans can at least take heart at today's news. Social networking site Badoo.com conducted a poll of 30,000 people in 15 countries to name the coolest nationality. Despite a sinking economy, pathetic politics, and increasingly suspect pop culture exports -- Americans are still number 1.

A website to teach schoolchildren in Britain about the events of 9/11 and "demolish conspiracy theories" surrounding the attacks has been launched by the mayor of London, Boris Johnson. He said the website would help to "provide a controlled demolition" of the conspiracy theories surrounding the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that took place a decade ago on Sunday.

Cowboys and Aliens was the biggest, shiniest fruit yet to fall off the tree planted in July 2009 by Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks and India's Reliance Entertainment. What Reliance are attempting – to perform locally within India as a Bollywood production house, and step up to the international stage, too – is extremely difficult.

Jesus Daily, a page that has 8.4 million “Likes” and belongs to a North Carolina-based diet doctor...features a picture of Jesus dressed as a shepherd and is updated daily with biblical quotes, prayers and reflections on the man who Christians call the savior. The New York Times notes that Jesus Daily is hardly the only wildly popular religious page and that the page speaks to a trend of people connecting with their faith outside of traditional religious institutions.

Rather than focusing on meaningful strategy, Washington's policy elites appear to have spent the past decade obsessed with finding a winning narrative. Grand strategy should be about connecting ends and means on a global scale that transcends administrations and their peculiar obsessions and preoccupations, whether it be Iraq, Afghanistan, or China...In all cases, it still lacks a coherent vision grounded in a realistic grand strategy.

A particularly frustrating feature of the U.S. narrative, for Muslims, is that it divides Muslim society into a progressive liberal and secular sector on one hand and on the other a regressive Islamist sector that seeks to impose backward Islamic traditions. America then seeks to promote the liberal forces and to undermine the Islamist forces.

It is in this context of winning Muslim hearts and minds that, 10 years after 9/11, Obama now has such a precious political window of opportunity to relaunch the campaign against terrorism. Seizing the moment would require the US giving higher priority, as it did during the Cold War, to public diplomacy, broadcasting, development assistance and exchange programs.