Here are this week’s post of articles that you may have missed – one is about the future, three are related to politics, and the last returns to the issue of how we do/don’t die.

Please feel free to agree, disagree, or comment on any of them.

1. Rejoice! A New Day Is Here: 32 Inventions That Will Change Your Tomorrow, The NYTimes Magazine, June 3, 2012.

In their “Innovation Issue”, the Magazine editors of the Times cite 32 innovations that within the next two to four years will be part of our lives. Electric clothes (fabrics that double as spare outlets), The Congestion Killer (adaptive cruise control systems that will reduce traffic jams), A World Without Hangovers (a new kind of alcoholic that eliminates headaches and hangovers), Better Looking-Movies, Teeth That Think (sensors that alert you and your dentist to dental problems), A Blood Test for Depression, Michelin-Star TV Dinners are a few of the things to come that we may (or may not) be happy to see.

2. The Yankee Comandante: The Story of Love, Revolution, and Betrayal by David Grann, The New Yorker, May 28, 2012

The story of the American William Alexander Morgan and his role in the Cuban Revolution. What he did, why he did it, and what happened to him.

3. Sugar Daddies: The Old, White, Rich Men Who Are Buying this Election, Frank Rich, NY Magazine, April 22, 2012.

You probably know the names David and Charles Koch and Sheldon Adelson, but according to Rich, there are others that are not so familiar, Harold Simmons, Irving Moskowitz, Robert Mercer, at least 25 of them who are called “sugar daddies.” They know what they want from Romney and why Obama arouses such violent emotions in most of them.

4. The Vietnam Solution: How a Former Enemy Became a Crucial US Ally in Balancing China’s Rise, Robert D. Kaplan, The Atlantic, June 2012

Now Vietnam is trying to stay out of the clutches of China, and the US is their new ally, according to Robert Kaplan.

5. A Life Worth Ending, A Son’s Plea to Let His Mother Go, Michael Wolff, NY Magazine, May 20, 2012

Previously, I’ve focused on this issue of aging and how we die, or don’t die, and the emotional costs to all involved (and of course the financial costs too). Here, NY Magazine writer Michael Wolff confronts these issues in a very personal way and writes about what has become a new phase of aging, one he says is “as far from living as it is from dying.”