local produce

Sometimes I am reminded that the internet is a magical thing.

For example, I want to know what local fruits and vegetables are currently in season as I kickstart my month of vegetarianism - da da da DAAAAAA! There it is, exACTLY what I need.

Plastic isn't just bad for our landfills.

With constant media fear-mongering about global warming, the reality of humanity's precarious existence on this planet begins to hit home. The current trend seems to be the movement away from plastic grocery bags. People are very concerned about the plastic accumulating in our landfills...but what about the plastic accumulating in our bodies? Read this.

"World Change Starts with Educated Children"

"In 1998, John was an overworked Microsoft executive looking for the quiet solitude of a trekking vacation. While backpacking in the Himalayas, John met a middle-aged Nepalese man who invited him to visit a school in a neighboring village. Hoping for a chance to see the real Nepal, rather than his tourist's trek, John agreed. Little did he know this short detour would change his life forever." (Read the rest of the story here.)

Let's help John change the world by donating today. "Every dollar donated equals one book donated and an opportunity to change the lives of some of the 770 million illiterate people in the world."

Honesty is the Best Policy

Why Praise Can Be Bad For Kids is totally counterintuitive and totally necessary for all parents, teachers and coaches to read.

If you're like most parents, you offer praise to your children believing it is the key to their success — those flattering words can boost a child's self-esteem and performance. But according to a new study, praise may do more harm than good.

For the study, researchers divided 128 fifth-graders into groups and gave them a simple IQ test. One group was told it did really well and must be very smart. The other group was told it did really well and must have worked hard. One group was praised for intelligence, the other for effort.

Asked if they wanted to take a slightly harder test, the kids praised for their intelligence were reluctant. Of those praised for their effort, however, 90 percent were eager for a more challenging task. And on a final test the effort group performed significantly better than the group praised for its intelligence.

Many of the kids who had been labeled "smart" performed worst of all. The "hard workers" got the message that they could improve their scores by trying harder, but the "smart" kids believed they should do well without any effort.

Much Music Media Literacy Campaign

I love this commercial!




























Check it out.

obssessed?

a bit ... but it's INSANE!!!
check this out: girlpower - retouch

airbrushing on crack

why REAL women will never measure up. see portfolio > before/after.
(my armpits will NEVER look that good!)

why don't i feel gorgeous?

dove offers women an important perspective.

healing rwanda

this documentary will be available until the latest National is loaded Wednesday, September 20th at 11:30pm ET. Click "Watch the National Online" and skip forward to 28:26.

What of the survivors of the 1994 genocide of Rwandan Tutsis?














Nicole Pageau moved to Kimironko, Rwanda to help the women and children left behind: "The Tutsis are proud people. Those women are proud women. But their pride was...all gone because of what they had suffered. And I wanted them to be proud again. To be again, what they are."

Known as "Maman Nicole" by the widows of the village, Pageau and Ubuntu Edmonton have established a food bank, a sewing/knitting/embroidery cooperative, a community centre, and more, for the community of women and children. Pageau has "sparked faith and opened hearts once closed by fear and pain."

I am inspired by the work of this selfless and compassionate woman.

Dear "lycra clad street warrior",

You may be doing yourself a disservice by conscientiously capping your noodle with streamlined styrofoam.














"...This study suggests wearing a helmet might make a collision more likely in the first place..." Dr. Ian Walker, a traffic psychologist from Bath University, conducted a study that found motorists are twice as likely to drive closer to a cyclist (an average of 8.5 cm away) when they are wearing a helmet.

Walker suggests that "most adult cyclists know what it is like to drive a car, but relatively few motorists ride bicycles in traffic, and so don't know the issues cyclists face".

Though no one is recommending I stop protecting my skull when I take to the street, I will definitely reconsider the belief that my fancy red helmet provides me with the powers of invincibility.

merci beaucoup to my favourite procrastinator for finding this BBC NEWS article. *smooch*

water: the fantastic stupendous splendiferous magnificent miracle cure!

Yes. She is flawless.
No. It isn't because she drinks 8 eight-ounce glasses of water a day.





















I have continually found Snopes.com to be a trustworthy source of myth-busting. When concerned loved ones emailed pleas to postpone my trip to Thailand, after seeing "unbelievable" photos of the 2004 tsunami hitting the coast, I was able to dispel their worries with Snopes. When fear-mongering email forwards frightened my friends with "inconceivable" stories of car thieves rendering their victims unconscious with ether-filled perfume bottles in grocery store parking lots, it was Snopes that helped me to set their minds at ease. Snopes has continually come through for me as a source for critical analysis of rumors. From them I will even consider an argument I don't necessarily want to hear:

The best general advice (keeping in mind that there are always exceptions) is to rely upon your normal senses. If you feel thirsty, drink; if you don't feel thirsty, don't drink unless you want to. The exhortation that we all need to satisfy an arbitrarily rigid rule about how much water we must drink every day was aptly skewered in a letter by a Los Angeles Times reader:

Although not trained in medicine or nutrition, I intuitively knew that the advice to drink eight glasses of water per day was nonsense. The advice fully meets three important criteria for being an American health urban legend: excess, public virtue, and the search for a cheap "magic bullet."

Darn. Not since the Thighmaster; not since the Atkins' Diet; not since Kirstie Alley lost 200 lbs by dancing all day to Sir-Mix-a-Lot had I truly believed in the one-stop beauty shop. My faith had been restored when I jumped on the water bandwagon! Drink 64 ounces of water each day and your skin will glow, your body will tighten and people will like you a whole lot more? "Heck! I can do that", I said. That transparent liquid was flowing through my body like the Fraser River. Now this.

Ah well. Somewhere inside I probably knew it was too good to be true. Though, I'm not going to stop drinking water altogether. I do find that if I'm feeling tired, a glass of water energizes me just as well as a cup of coffee (perhaps even better, because it isn't followed by that agitated twitching thing I get when brimming with caffeine). I suppose I don't have much use for all the extra sugar that I imbibe in the average fruit juice or soft drink. Water costs quite a bit less than most other beverages, and I enjoy saving money. And, when I get a headache, a glass of water generally subdues the pain (particularly when the headache is induced by beverages of the more costly variety). Also, a few glasses of water taste really good after an intensive hike or a hard bicycle ride. I guess from now on, I just won't bother lining up my 64 shot glasses each morning.

sweet sustainable style

from the Georgia Straight