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Environment
12:57 pm
Thu December 29, 2011

U.S. Military Tests Out Green Tech In Afghanistan

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Credit Gunnery Sgt. William Price Small / AP
In this photo released by the U.S. Marines and taken in December 2010, Lance Cpl. Dakota Hicks, from Laharpe, Ill., connects a radio battery to a portable solar panel communication system in Sangin District, in Afghanistan.The U.S. military is trying to wean itself off reliance on fossil fuels by employing solar energy and biofuels, among other measures.
Credit Shah Marai / AFP/Getty Images
Afghan policemen and locals watch a burned-out fuel truck, supplying a U.S.-run base, after being targeted by a bomb near Bagram Air Field near Kabul on Oct. 26. Attacks on convoys carrying supplies to U.S. troops are costly — both in monetary terms and in human life.
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Originally published on Thu December 29, 2011 5:19 pm

The heavy, mine-resistant vehicles that almost all U.S. military personnel use to move about Afghanistan are gas guzzlers. And even though the U.S. military buys that fuel at a reasonable price, the energy it takes to fly it and truck it to remote parts of Afghanistan drives the price into the stratosphere.

There's also a much greater cost, says Ray Mabus, secretary of the U.S. Navy.

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National Security
12:56 pm
Thu December 29, 2011

Terrorists Struggle To Gain Recruits On The Web

Credit Twitter.com
The Twitter page for al-Shabab, the radical Islamic group in Somalia that has been branded a terrorist organization by the U.S. Such groups are active in social media, but have not attracted many recruits.
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Terrorist groups seemed to be all over the Web in 2011. There were al-Qaida videos on YouTube, Facebook pages by Islamic militants in Somalia, and webzines – like Inspire magazine – produced by al-Qaida affiliates in Yemen.

If there were an award for the best known terrorist music recording in the past couple of years, it would probably go to the Somali militia group al-Shabab for a YouTube video that extolled the virtues of jihad, or holy war.

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Music Reviews
12:08 pm
Thu December 29, 2011

This One's For Guy Clark, Americana's Craftsman

Credit Senor McGuire
Guy Clark is a storyteller who carves songs out of quiet moments and marginal characters.
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Originally published on Thu December 29, 2011 2:21 pm

Singer-songwriter Guy Clark is a key figure in alternative country music. In the 1970s, his Nashville home was an axis of creativity, a hangout where musicians assembled to trade songs and stories, and where Clark mentored young songwriters at the time, like Steve Earle and Rodney Crowell.

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The Two-Way
11:58 am
Thu December 29, 2011

Are You Being Paid $600,000 To Party?

Credit David Livingston / Getty Images
She'll be paid well to party: Kim Kardashian.
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Headlines claiming that celebrity-whose-famous-for-being-famous Kim Kardashian will be paid $600,000 to host a New Year's Eve party at the Tao nightclub in Las Vegas' Venetian hotel and casino and then return to the Tao a few more times in 2012 to make "special appearances," certainly catch your eye.

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Movie Reviews
11:54 am
Thu December 29, 2011

'A Separation': In Tehran, Houses And Hearts Divided

Credit Habib Madjidi / Sony Pictures Classics
The Great Divides: Simin (Leila Hatami) and Nader (Peyman Moadi) are at odds first about whether to leave Iran for life abroad — and then about more urgent issues yet.
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The opening moments of A Separation lay out the story you'd expect to see in a film about a wife who is leaving her husband: Simin (Leila Hatami) and her bank-clerk spouse, Nader (Peyman Moadi), are explaining heatedly to a judge why they want a separation. Or actually, why they don't want it.

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