It would be hard to imagine a pair of books about vegetarianism that are quite so different as Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals (which we brought you earlier this month on the podcast) and ALICIA SILVERSTONE's The Kind Diet: A Simple Guide to Feeling Great, Losing Weight, and Saving the Planet

Someday soon, political strategists will look back on the 2008 presidential campaign the way NASA scientists sigh at the Apollo moon landing -- as an example of a way that fighting a big, idealistic fight demanded a period of intense and disruptive innovation. At least, that's the way DAVID PLOUFFE sees it.

Foot Ballz Talk is a live internet broadcast in which “two guys talk about football during a Monday night and play records.” It is produced by Mac and TD (familiar to fans of the musical endeavors Big Digits and Bodega Girls), and has been described by us (not by them) as “Mystery Pigskin Theater 3000

We love our families, that's why we go visit them every holiday, but there's only so much family-time you can take before you feel compelled to hurl gravy-soaked mashed potatoes at their crazy faces. In order to not cause a scene this year, we've found some perfectly awesome things for you to do this festive weekend to escape your family and feel a moment of total elation and relaxation.

In my cover article for this week’s Phoenix, I explore the world’s imperiled oceans. It was a sobering story to report — learning that 100 million sharks are killed every year, or the that the seafloor is stripped of pounds of aquatic life, thrown back as waste, all in the interest of harvesting barely two thirds of a shrimp cocktail.

The most entertaining theater in this grand health care showdown has been that in which physicians play the victim. Look at homeboy right here; don't you just feel awful about the potential impact of "Obamacare"? Make you want to donate five cents a day so Dr. Dickstain can move from the bay side to the ocean?

Fletcher from the Sandbox on WFNX passes along this bit of news: Kelly's Roast Beef is opening in Allston.

The 58-year-old restaurant chain that takes credit for inventing the roast beef sandwich plans to revamp the former Marty’s Liquor store in Allston into its first Hub location. The 140-seat eatery will be the sixth for the Saugus chain that’s been named the 2009 Restaurant of the Year by the Retailers Association of Massachusetts.

We're proud to say that former Phoenix intern Sam MacLaughlin (bro to former Web Managing Editor and scribe Nina) is featured in this Daily Show clip about the mad rush slow crawl to buy Sarah Palin's new book ("So you've come in character as everything that's wrong with America!"). He's the bookish lad around the 2:45 mark: "One more than seven!"

It's hard to believe it was only a year ago that unfortunate riders on the Green Line had nothing to look forward to but a cramped, jerky evening commute. Now we have a new mascot to make our day just that much brighter: a chubby, bushy-tailed furball by the name of Kenmore Kat. Take that, Red Liners!

For awhile, it seemed like the tale of the domestic cat living in Kenmore station was purely apocryphal, and Kenmore Kat was the type of legend only occasionally spotted by your friend's boyfriend's cousin's barista.

Cory Doctorow opens his mouth, and nerdgasms fall out: at any given moment, he's liable to be spouting off about feral robot dogs, space domes over Disney World, or building a haunted hotel modeled after a Quake level ("I'll open-source this idea," says he). And we'd expect nothing less -- after all, he's one of the superclocking brains behind BoingBoing, that exalted bestiary of sweet-ass geekdom.

Though I missed the real show -- which was this morning between 3:30 and 5:30 am (but in reality even if I had known there's no way in HELLZ I would be awake that early) -- it is still possible to catch the spectacular Leonid meteor shower tonight/early tomorrow morning.

The Leonid meteor shower, called so because it happens around and near the constellation Leo, is leftovers from the comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle that scattered space dust around the year 1533.

This shit just got real.

We were forwarded an e-mail this morning from the folks at Lorem Ipsum Books in Inman Square, Cambridge. In short, the e-mail says that Lorem Ipsum, one of the best book stores in the general Boston area, needs to move, and they need some money to do so, so they're holding a book drive.

Immigrant girls and women will no longer be required to get the HPV vaccine before filing for their green cards, read an article from the Associated Press today. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention requires a host of vaccines be given to immigrants applying for green card status, however, starting December 14, HPV will no longer be on that list.

A University of Rochester pilot-study reveals exposure of two common phthalates (chemicals found in plastics) while in the womb can be linked to boys playing with more girly toys in preschool, read a press release today. The study only looked at 145 preschool children, but the press release reads that "when the concentrations of two common phthalates in mothers’ prenatal urine are elevated their sons are less likely to play with male-typical toys and games, such as trucks and play fighting."