Day: November 12, 2011

Most of these great items come from my Twitter feed or Facebook news feed. Follow me on Twitter and on Facebook for more fascinating videos, articles, essays and criticism. Read past recommendations from this series here.

1. Why Green ‘Lifestyle Choices’ Will Never Save Us
By Sami Grover | Treehugger | Nov. 10
“Lights get left on when they shouldn’t. I drive places I probably don’t need to. And I confess that my wife and I still get a little lazy when it comes to line drying our clothes. All this lead to a conversation the other day about whether there is any hope.”

2. Is Money Wasted Preparing for a Major Midwest Quake?
By Richard Monastersky and Nature | Scientific American | Nov. 10
“The government says that a huge earthquake risk lurks in the heart of the country, where a series of large shocks hit 200 years ago. Seth Stein says that kind of warning is dead wrong”

3. Cain was known for casual style with staff at association
By Krissah Thompson and Aaron C. Davis | The Washington Post | Nov. 10
“As a boss, Herman Cain made it a habit to stop by and talk to his employees, even the lowest-ranking. Often, he suggested that staffers, men and women, continue the conversation over drinks or dinner — one of many ways he blurred lines between the social and professional.”

4. Russian Mars probe stuck in Earth’s orbit after engines fail to fire
Reuters | Nov. 9
“Spacecraft was to visit Martian moon of Phobos and bring back soil sample but looks like joining list of failed red planet missions”

5. Are cookbooks obsolete?
By Julia Moskin | The New York Times | Nov. 8
“Many early cooking apps were unsatisfying: slow, limited, less than intuitive and confined to tiny phone screens. Even avid cooks showed little interest in actually cooking from them. But with the boom in tablet technology, recipes have begun to travel with their users from home to the office to the market and, most important, into the kitchen.”

6. Obama improves on foreign affairs, struggles on fiscal matters
By Lydia Saad | Gallup.com | Nov. 9
“Approval on the economy, creating jobs, and the federal budget deficit is stuck near record lows”

7. Scan on a mission
By Jane Dornbusch | The Boston Globe | Nov. 9
“Stop & Shop’s new smartphone app works as a super-fast self-checkout”

8. Is ‘camioneta’ really more correct than ‘troca’?
NewsTaco | Nov. 7
“Isn’t language a means to communicate our reality? And if our reality is that ‘troca’ is a more recognizable term than ‘camioneta,’ it would seem to follow that this word should be in the dictionary. But it’s not, and that’s kind of sad.”

9. Clinton Aims for ‘AIDS-Free Generation’
By Donald G. McNeil Jr. | The New York Times | Nov. 8
“The interventions she endorsed, based on successes in clinical trials in the last two years, include circumcision for men, multidrug cocktails for pregnant women, and getting drugs to patients as soon as they are first infected rather than years later when they fall sick.”

10. The Reckoning Begins
By Michael Moran | The Reckoning :: Slate | Nov. 7
“Thanks to a catastrophic series of decisions by presidents of both parties that radically deregulated our financial system and arrogantly dismissed the “lessons of Vietnam” as dusty, irrelevant history, the United States has shortened the period during which it will remain the dominant power in the 21st century.”

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TUNES

Tonight I’m spending some time with the blues, specifically with the Texas Blues Café. Check out the line-up and then listen here.

1. Mike Zito — 39 Days
2. Chris Rea — Lone Star Boogie
3. The Terry Quiett Band — Long Saturday Night
4. Lady Antebellum — Lookin’ for a Good Time
5. The Insomniacs — Angry Surfer
6. Anna Popovic — Get Back Home to You
7. Stevie Ray Vaughan — The Sky is Crying
8. Douglas Acres — Grand Theft Mojo
9. Tommy Crain & The Cross Town All Stars — For the Music
10. Grace Potter & The Nocturnals — Some Kind of Ride
11. Los Lonely Boys — Texican Style
12. Beau Hall — Hell & Ecstasy
13. Preacher Stone — Mother To Bed