With the terrifying new strain of "indestructible" tuberculosis discovered in India this week, it's a good time to revisit the music made about the deadly disease in the past. Like lots of terrifying things, tuberculosis has inspired some truly great music. The "T.B. Blues" that Texas blues singer Victoria Spivey sings above, for example. Like she says, it's no joke. But she also says that she wrote it, in 1927. According to Smithsonian Folkways, it was written by Lead Belly, and he recorded it in 1944. Hmm!

"We're basically back to where we were before drugs." -In case the return of bedbugs isn't exciting enough for you, let's give a big "welcome back" to tuberculosis!

Tired of swine flu? Good news! "A patient who saw a doctor in Aichi Prefecture, central Japan, is suspected of having contracted a new strain of influenza, Nagoya city officials said Friday." Before everyone runs off half-cocked in all directions, can we just agree right now that we're going to call this one "Aichi Breaky Heart"?

Anxious about the possibility of a Fukushima-style nuclear calamity in the event of another earthquake here on the East Coast? You should be! But save some shelf space in your cabinet of concerns for our deteriorating dams:

In 2009 the American Society of Civil Engineers released a survey of the state of infrastructure in the U.S. The group found that dams are, on average, in terrible disrepair. Of the more than 85,000 dams, more than 4,000 are unsafe or deficient, and nearly 1,800 of those are located where a breach would cause severe damage to life or property. With so many dams, it is hard to [...]

The death toll in the northwestern China town experiencing an outbreak of pneumonic plague now stands at three. Even more ominously: Residents are reporting that villagers are trying to flee.

Your youth was even more poisonous than you remember:

Following the recall of nearly 12 million Shrek glasses over the summer because of toxic levels of brain-damaging, cancer-causing lead and cadmium, the Associated Press has discovered that pretty much every decorative drinking glass ever made carries the same risk, dating back to nearly 50 years ago. A specially commissioned laboratory test of 35 separate drinking glasses made between the late 1960s and this year—including those with enamel designs of Superman, Batman, and characters from The Wizard Of Oz—found that all of them exceeded federal limits on lead in children’s products by up to 1,000 times, many of these [...]

Today in things that might kill you: "Thousands of people have been placed under quarantine in a town in northwest China after a man died of pneumonic plague and 11 others were confirmed infected with the deadly lung infection, health authorities said." Pneumonic plague, the story continues, can kill its victims "within 24 hours of infection."