...your Mom is a cultural construct

japace89:

I agree with this on so many levels.

jayparkinsonmd:

This looks great and it’s one of the most important health issues in our country. Glad to see there is more attention being given to why our cities and economy were designed to make health so hard.

A provocative new 4-hour series soon to air on public television, Designing Healthy Communities, examines the impact of our built environment on key public health indices, including obesity, diabetes, heart disease, asthma, cancer and depression. The series documents the connection between bad community design and burgeoning health consequences, and discusses the remedies available to fix what has become an urgent crisis.

Retrofitting Suburbia (by MPC)

via

unconsumption:

In just a few weeks, Ikea will enact a massive design change that will be largely invisible to consumers: They’re ditching wooden shipping pallets in favor of cardboard ones. The furniture giant has designed a way to fold corrugated cardboard into a structure that is far thinner than a traditional wooden pallet, yet can still support the 1,650 pounds necessary to transport their goods.

(via Ikea’s Cardboard Pallets Intrigue - Core77)

Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction, 1984 (via fuckyeahanthrotheory)

Tina Fey as “Liz Lemon” on the universality of the human experience.

unconsumption:

UK TV station Channel 4 Education has launched a new project developed by game company Inensu. Closet Swap is an online fashion community site and app that encourages users to think ethically about their wardrobe and to share their clothes with friends instead of buying lots of new items.

To use the app, simply sign in with your Facebook account and upload photos of clothes you’d like to swap to your virtual closet. Then invite your friends to do the same and you can start borrowing and lending items to boost your wardrobe without spending any money.

More: Community Website And Smartphone App Encourages Friends To Swap Clothes @PSFK

doctorswithoutborders:

The United States has helped to save millions of lives through the support of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria.

But right now, Congress is holding meetings on cuts to the White House’s 2012 budget request for global health funding. Their decisions could jeopardize the lives of millions of people who need access to treatment for HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis.

Please join our call to save millions of lives by asking Congress to fully fund PEPFAR and the Global Fund by sending a letter to your members of Congress today.

Photo: Kenya 2005 © Brendan Bannon

Halloween + Critical Thinking about International Aid + Awesome Bands= “Do they Know It’s Halloween?”

This song, produced by a long list of awesome bands was produced to benefit UNICEF and make fun of the pathetically patronizing 1984 song, “Do They Know it’s Christmas?” They are criticizing the Western-centric view of Christmas as the dominant force of December. They use the absurdity of Halloween to show how holidays and celebrations are only given meaning by local tradition and context. Halloween seems like a good time to examine your worldview, so give this song a listen!

What is your take on how Black women are portrayed in the media, from http://fromuthproductions.com/watchyomouth/

Packaging free grocery store!

unconsumption:

Texas to get the first packaging-free grocery store in the U.S.

In.gredients, which is slated to open this fall in Austin, will sell loose and bulk items, including “local, organic meats, dairy, baking goods, cooking oils, spices, grains, seasonal produce — the whole spectrum.” Customers will need to bring reusable containers from home (or use the store’s compostable containers), and weigh them before filling with the products they want. 

In.gredients’ package-free, zero-waste retail concept, similar to that of Unpackaged in London, is a great business model. The benefits of precycling — avoiding wasteful packaging — and buying only the amounts you need of locally sourced products, creating less landfill and saving money in the process, are many. 

If you have friends in Austin, encourage them to support in.gredients. And let’s hope in.gredients will expand to other markets. [Hi, Houston next, please.]

No matter where you live, check it out: You can follow the company’s progress here (blog and Web site), here (Facebook), and here (Twitter).

jayparkinsonmd:

I just finished reading Bonk by Mary Roach. 

The study of sexual physiology—what happens, and why, and how to make it happen better—has been going on for centuries, behind the closed doors of laboratories, brothels, Alfred Kinsey’s attic, and, more recently, MRI centers, pig farms, and sex-toy R&D labs.  I spent two years wheedling  and conniving my way behind those doors to bring you the answers to the questions Dr. Ruth never asked.  Is your penis three inches longer than you think? Is vaginal orgasm a myth?  Can a dead man get an erection? Why doesn’t Viagra help women—or, for that matter, pandas?

I spent 4 years in medical school and 5 years in residency. I went to Penn State for medical school and St. Vincents in the West Village for Pediatrics and Hopkins for Preventive Medicine. I never once received lectures on sex and sexuality. It’s sad to think that doctors must teach themselves something so important to us all. Speaking of that, here are the other topics that were either skipped over entirely or given a blurb in a lecture throughout my nine years of medical training:

• Behavior change
• Diet and nutrition
• Exercise
• Death and dying
• Communication skills
• The business of healthcare in America (aka, how to run a practice)

These are just off the top of my head. What are the others?