1. I loved this map: Dialect Map Of U.S. Shows How Americans Speak By Region

2. What's Driving the Rise in Suicide Among Middle-Aged Men?

... The suicide stats from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that middle-aged men (35 to 64) living in the American West are more likely to commit suicide than men living elsewhere in the United States, and that suicide has risen fastest over the last decade in a Western state, Wyoming, as Richard Florida pointed out here last week. ...

... And over the last two decades, it's men without college degrees who have ended up most disconnected from the core institutions of work, marriage, and civil society. Guess who is most likely to kill themselves? Men without college degrees. In fact, according to recent research by sociologist Julie Phillips and her colleagues, suicide has surged in recent years (this research covers the period up to 2005) among precisely this group of less-educated middle-aged men, even as suicide remained essentially stable among middle-aged men with college degrees over this period. ...

3. America's New Manufacturing Boomtowns

Conventional wisdom for a generation has been that manufacturing in America is dying. Yet over the past five years, the country has experienced something of an industrial renaissance. We may be far from replacing the 3 million industrial jobs lost in the recession, but the economy has added over 330,000 industrial jobs since 2010, with output growing at the fastest pace since the 1990s. ...

4. I had some personal identifcation with this article: Michael’s Still the Top Name for New York Babies, and There Are Reasons

... But about this Michael thing. Were it not for 1964, when John briefly ascended in the wake of the Kennedy assassination, Michael would have been the New York chart-topper every year since 1956, when it upended Robert.

You might think that with that kind of stranglehold on the local name rankings, Michael would dominate the top spot nationwide. During the last half of the 20th century, you would have been right. But in 1999, Jacob wrestled the title from Michael and has held it ever since. Michael has now fallen to eighth in the national baby-name rankings.

That statistic, though, does not get at how deeply disparate the results are. In a large handful of states, Michael barely cracked the top 40. In Nebraska it was No. 37, right behind Bentley. The name was 36th in Iowa, 35th in Vermont and 31st in North Dakota, well behind the very New Yorkish pairing of Henry (No. 23) and Hudson (No. 24). In Utah, where Samuel and Jackson placed 6th and 7th, Michael was 28th.

Aside from New York, only New Jersey and Delaware have maintained their enthusiasm for Michael. ...

5. A fascinating map of the world’s most and least racially tolerant countries

6. WHO data shows narrowing health gap

...The number of under-fives dying fell from 12 million in 1990 to less than seven million in 2011, the data shows.

But that will not be enough to reach the 2015 Millennium Development Goal. ...

7. NPR on Stay-At-Home Dads, Breadwinner Moms And Making It All Work

... The Census Bureau finds that about , though that's doubled in a decade. But Stephanie Coontz of the Council on Contemporary Families calls the figure vastly underreported. It doesn't include who do some work yet are their children's primary caregivers, a trend that cuts across class and income. ...

8. AT&T Predicted The Future In These 1993 Ads

In 1993, AT&T released a series of commercials grouped by the theme "you will."

They were all about things people would be doing in the future.

Unlike most futuristic concepts, these turned out to be surprisingly accurate. True, there are no far-out ideas like flying cars, but there is plenty of great stuff that was mind-blowing in 1993.

Today, most of this stuff is commonplace.

Revisiting these predictions is a good reminder of how far we've come in a very short period of time. ...

... "Have you ever borrowed a book from thousands of miles away?"

"Cross the country without stopping for directions,"

"Sent someone a fax from the beach?" ...

9. Sign me up! This Flying Car Concept Takes Off And Lands Like A Helicopter

10. Is Organic Food All It's Cracked Up To Be?

Bottom line: From a scientific perspective, there doesn't seem to be a clear answer on whether organic or traditionally-grown foods are "better."

Healthwise, the studies don't support the idea that in general organics contain fewer pesticides, are healthier or taste better, but this varies from crop to crop.

There are certain nasty environmental effects of factory farming — like dead zones — that could be less likely with organic and smaller-scale farming, but those farming techniques mean less productivity — and less food to feed the world.

If you have a large food budget and worry about the environmental impacts of factory farms, organic may be the way to go. But, if you have a limited budget and were just trying to ingest fewer pesticides, it might not be worth the money to go organic.

It largely comes down to an individual's values, budget, and taste buds.

11. Forbes says It's About Time Walmart Waged An Ad Campaign Like This One. I  think they are right.