Fascinating article on the components of free will. Has anyone else wondered where the line is drawn in court in insanity pleas?
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I like this article because it encourages an evolutionary perspective on the understanding of health and disease. This is also important when considering human nutritional requirements.
WSJ:Obesity? Big Feet? Blame Darwin
For more on nutrition click here
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I did a fun piece for Advocacy Online to help them get the word out about their launch in the US. Enjoy!
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It would be hard to find a group that has been hit harder by the recession than the latino community. Already vulnerable, their jobs in the construction and service industry have been the first to go. Language barriers and immigration status put many safety net services out of reach. Many families live in a continuous survival mode.
Most of the latinos here in the DC Metro area are from El Salvador. Salvadorans began coming here in large numbers in the early eighties when their brutal civil war was ravaging the countryside. Most of the immigrants that came were the rural poor and came only with the clothes on their back.
Upon arriving in DC they were not prepared for the different, far more complicated social setting and DC was not equipped to help these people who came escaping unspeakable horrors. Because of the U.S.’s involvement in El Salvador under Reagan, it was not allowed to provide them refugee status–much like the situation with the millions of Iraqi refugees today.
This piece highlights the work of three organizations that support the Latino community in the DC area. Their work goes largely unnoticed, yet they provide enormous support–sometimes life-saving support to the Latino community.
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Hans Rosling does a fantastic job of telling a story–of revealing the truth–using visualization of data. His moving bubbles show large trends on the scale of the human species itself. His visualization on world poverty is a must see. But this latest short on the Swine Flu is excellent:
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This is another great post from Mark Weisbrot about getting real with South America:
US strategy in Latin America was wrong | Mark Weisbrot | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.
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I’m wrapping up a story on bike commuting, and as is often the case with this type of thing, I’ve found that my bike usage has gone up dramatically since I started working on it. (Hmm, maybe I should only cover things that represent what I want to model my life after… world travelers, health gurus, super-smart-enlighted people etc).
Anyway, I’m getting ready to travel to the Bay Area, and I was getting apprised of the latest bike theft issues in San Francisco, and besides being bummed out that this hasn’t changed much since I last lived there, it got me thinking about SmartBike, the bike sharing service that was launched with great success in DC, and will be rolled out nationally soon.
Are ubiquitous bikes the answer to all our transportation woes (with the requisite health and environmental benefits)? What about theft? Will these programs impact the level of bike theft?
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I was reading this post about being aware while you are eating, and it occurred to me that this is not just an issue that applies me directly, but also has implications for human consumption overall.
I have felt for many years that my eating habits are unhealthy. I go into some other zone when I am eating, and as a result often eat more than I should. In short, eating is an automatic process, and it appears to formed by certain events and patterns in childhood. Consequently, my eating does not correspond to what my body needs.
If I were able to inject awareness into the process or preparing and eating food, I would 1) have a much richer experience, and 2) be able to monitor and react to the signals my body sends about what it really needs.
But what about the rest of my consumption (buying stuff, using energy etc) and, what about our society’s consumption? Isn’t it true that we have a consumption problem here in the U.S.? We consume 25% of the world’s energy, and it seems we are realizing that the spending binge we’ve all been on has not led us to a happy place, nor a stable one.
Do we need to become more conscious of our consumption across the board?
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