It has been another great month for organizing news.  Highlights from this month’s news stories:

Recession Eating Trends

A recent MarketWatch story indicates that the recession is taking its toll on our waistlines.  As  we are driven to economize, we are buying heat-and-eat meals from the grocery store that are significantly less healthy for us than the restaurant meals we previously consumed.   The article provides some suggestions to eat healthy at home.

Clean Spouses Versus Messy Spouses

This great article from the Wall Street Journal provides a hilarious but disturbing look at the tensions that arise in a marriage when one spouse is tidy and the other is messy.  You will not believe the antics when the messy spouses rebel! 

More Twitter Angst

Following up on last month’s news summary about organizing your communications on social networking sites, Therese Poletti at MarketWatch discusses the sad state of affairs when your real-life friends are not also your social networking friends:

After one month, I have five followers. My friends don’t even follow me. But some of them want me to follow them, of course, and sent me e-mails that they were looking for me on Twitter. So I followed them, and got nothing back. The publisher of my book isn’t even following me.

Is this bumming me out? Um, yes, a little bit.

–Therese Poletti, “What if Your Friends Won’t Follow You on Twitter,” MarketWatch, November 12, 2009

Brain Capacity

If you have ever felt that your brain is so full of information that you need to forget some information in order to fit more in, it turns out that your instinct is right.  U.S. News and World Report reports on New scientific research from the University of Toyama in Japan that shows that it is possible to fill up your short-term memory.  When your short-term memory is at capacity, the brain has to transfer the information to other parts of the brain and erase it from short-term memory in order to fit in more new information.  The research also shows that exercise might help to increase your brain capacity.

Dustology

NPR profiled a story about research on dust that might motivate us all to vacuum and dust regularly.   

One thing that’s remarkable about dust is that it sticks around. Without vacuuming, [Andrea Ferro of Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y.] says, it can stick around for a long time. . . “We’re finding things like [the pesticide] DDT in many floor dust samples,” says Ferro. “We banned that decades ago, but it’s still there.”

Type to you on Wednesday!  For my American readers, I hope you enjoy a short workweek this week and safe travels to your Thanksgiving destinations.