Sunday Morning Reading: October 16, 2011

2011-October-16

tags: articles, great reading, magazine articles, reading list, recommended reading, Sunday morning reading

By Martie Hevia | Blue Beach Song™

One of my great pleasures is waking up early on a Sunday morning, sitting in my favorite big comfy chair, with a hot cup of café-con-leche (a.k.a., café-au-lait, latté, or plain old coffee with cream and sugar), and reading an eclectic collection of articles from all kinds of magazines and newspapers. (And if you can throw in some soft skies on a drizzly cool day, with a warm fire in the fireplace, I am in heaven.) Whatever your rituals may be, here is my Sunday morning’s reading list. I hope you find these articles informative, interesting or entertaining. Enjoy! -Martie

Sunday Morning Reading: October 16, 2011

(Click on the Article’s Title)

“Inside Obama’s War Room” by Michael Hastings, Rolling Stone Magazine, October 16, 2011 | How he decided to intervene in Libya – and what it says about his evolution as commander in chief.
“Charles Darwin, Economist” by Robert Frank, The American Interest, November-December 2011 | One century hence, if a roster of professional economists is asked to identify the intellectual father of their discipline, a majority will name Charles Darwin.
“How Doctors Could Rescue Health Care” by Arnold Relman, The New York Review of Books, October 27, 2011 | The US is facing a major crisis in the cost of health care. Corrected for inflation, health expenditures in the public sector are nearly doubling each decade, and those in the private sector are increasing even more rapidly. Still… there is a chance that new developments in the way physicians are organizing themselves to deliver care might improve the currently dismal prospects for action on major reform and cost control.
“Beyond the PC” by Babbage Blog, The Economist, October 8, 2011 | Mobile digital gadgets are overshadowing the personal computer, says Martin Giles. Their impact will be far-reaching.
“What You Don’t Know Can Kill You” by Jason Daley, Discover Magazine, October 3, 2011 | Humans have a perplexing  tendency to fear rare threats such as shark attacks while blithely  ignoring far greater risks like  unsafe sex and an unhealthy diet. Those illusions are not just  silly—they make the world a more dangerous place. 
“The Shame of College Sports” by Taylor Branch, The Atlantic, October 2011 | For all the outrage, the real scandal is not that students are getting illegally paid or recruited, it’s that two of the noble principles on which the NCAA justifies its existence—“amateurism” and the “student-athlete”—are cynical hoaxes, legalistic confections propagated by the universities so they can exploit the skills and fame of young athletes.
“The Woman Who Knew Too Much” by Suzanna Andrews, Vanity Fair, November 2011 | Millions of Americans hoped President Obama would nominate Elizabeth Warren to head the consumer financial watchdog agency she had created. Instead, she was pushed aside. As Warren kicks off her run for Scott Brown’s Senate seat in Massachusetts, Suzanna Andrews charts the Harvard professor’s emergence as a champion of the beleaguered middle class, and her fight against a powerful alliance of bankers, lobbyists, and politicians.
“A Brief History of the Brain” by David Robson, New Scientist, September 26, 2011 | New Scientist tracks the evolution of our brain from its origin in ancient seas to its dramatic expansion in one ape – and asks why it is now shrinking.
“Buying Tomorrow” by Jennifer Szalai, Lapham’s Quarterly, October 16, 2011 | Finance makes a commodity out of expectation, something to be bought (preferably low) and sold (preferably high). In the case of the worried farmer or the worried breadwinner, the future can also be viewed with suspicion, but finance enables the anxious to trade one possibility for another: both the speculator and the hedger are seeking the best future that money can buy.
“The Man Who Sailed His House” by Michael Paterniti, GQ, October 2011 | Two days after the Japanese tsunami, after the waves had left their destruction, as rescue workers searched the ruins, news came of an almost surreal survival: Miles out at sea, a man was found, alone, riding on nothing but the roof of his house. Michael Paterniti tells his astonishing tale.
“Occupy Wall Street Protesters Pack Times Square” by Allison Kilkenny, The Nation, October 16, 2011 | Thousands of Occupy Wall Street protesters flooded Times Square Saturday to oppose an economic system the activists say isn’t providing for the “99 percent” of American citizens who aren’t hedge fund managers.
“Chris Martin of Coldplay Asks: What Would Bruce Do?” by Ben Sisario, New York Times, October 13, 2011 | Chris Martin, the lead singer of Coldplay, is one of the world’s biggest rock stars, a species for whom tardiness is all but a right. Yet he was full of apologies when he popped through the door of a Midtown Manhattan restaurant, no entourage in sight, for a recent interview.
“A Farewell to Macho” by Maureen Dowd, New York Times, October 15, 2011 | If you perused Hemingway in college in the first flush of feminism, he seemed like a relic. As F. Scott Fitzgerald noted, Hemingway needed a new wife for every big book. And even when he was cheating on a wife with her friend, he painted himself as a victim of predatory and trusting women.
“Book Claims Hitler ‘Died In Argentina’” by –, Sky News, October 16, 2011 | Nazi leader Adolf Hitler did not kill himself in Berlin in 1945 but ended his days in Argentina, a new book has claimed.
“D.C. Marchers Rally for Jobs and Justice” by Susan Svrluga and Bill Turque, The Washington Post, October 16, 2011 | Green-Thomas was one of several thousand who rallied and marched Saturday as a prelude to Sunday’s belated dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial. The message of the “Jobs and Justice” event, organized by the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network along with labor and civil rights groups, was that today’s poor, unemployed and homeless embody King’s unfinished business.
“Why do men and women talk differently?” by Thomas Rogers, Salon, October 16, 2011 | A new book argues that guys argue and girls overshare for a reason: Evolution. The author explains.
“Behind King Memorial, One Fraternity’s Long Battle” by Corey Dade, NPR, August 23, 2011 | The thousands of visitors at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington this week will reflect on the controversial likeness of the man, his legacy and the significance of the first nonpresident — and first African-American — immortalized on the National Mall.
“Still waiting for relief” by Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times, October 16, 2011 | More than a year after thousands lined up at the Los Angeles Sport Arena for a free medical clinic, many remain without healthcare — trying to outrun, or just ignore, illness.