New Core Strength Machine – What next!

Sep 27th, 2006

For about $500 you too can own one of the weirdest pieces of exercise equipment out there.  You can’t tell it from the picture here, but the video is so “hooters” that you’re sure the ad is a spoof.  But if you click the buy now button, you’ll see that it’s real. 

If you’re into weird exercise equipment, this may be just the thing for you.  If it will get you to exercise…then hey, it’s worth it.  Funny thing, it does look like you’d get a decent workout!

Fat Factors – New Wave of Research

Sep 15th, 2006

Fat Factors – By ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG, New York Times, Published: August 13, 2006

It’s clear that diet and genes contribute to how fat you are. But a new wave of scientific research suggests that, for some people, there might be a third factor – microorganisms.

Get the article here (click the tiny link in the upper right corner to skip the ad and go straight to the article)

Activism: Changing the World

Sep 11th, 2006

Here’s another interesting video I checked out from the Solidarity Library.  It features two presentations at a Bioneers Conference 2001.  The description that follows each title is from the back of the video.  Each segment is about 30 minutes.  These three women are truly passionate and gifted.

Frances and Anna Lappe:  Hope’s Edge:  The New Diet for a Small Planet

Why do we as societies often create that which we as individuals abhor?  Thirty years after her groundbreaking book Diet for a Small Planet shattered the myth of scarcity, Frances Moore Lappe and her daughter Anna ask this most central question and seek answers in stories they gathered for their new book.

Diane Wilson:  Why I Tried to Sink My Shrimp Boat on Toxic Polluters

Diane Wilson, mother of five and a fourth-generation fisherman on the Texas Gulf Coast, for more than a decade has used civil disobedience to fight such chemical giants as Union Carbide and Dupont.  In 1995, she won zero discharge agreements from Formosa Plastics, one of the largest producers of PVC in the world, and Alcoa Aluminum, among the nations’s largest polluters.  She is currently involved in health research to test Vietnamese and Hispanic fishermen for endocrine disrupters, heavy metals, and PCB’s and is doing "her darndest" to launch zero discharge as a movement within the United States and abroad.

 

Store Wars – When Wal-Mart Comes to Town

Sep 11th, 2006

There’s a cool little place in downtown Lawrence called Solidarity Library.  You can find all kinds of counter culture there from the staff to the books to the videos and to the groups that meet there.  I found these two videos and watched them with pleasure:

Store Wars . . . When Wal-Mart Comes to Town.  This movie is about a small town, a mega store, a divided community grapling with the age of globalization.  Here’s the description from the back:

In the US, Wal-Mart opens a new mega-store every two business days.  This is the story of the imapct of discount chain stores on American society and its values.  It is also an examination of local democracy in action – of how one community reaches a difficult decision.  Store Wars follows events in Ashland, VA, over a one-year period, from the first stormy public hearing that galvanizes residents’ opposition till the Town council takes a final vote on the proposed Wal-Mart store.  Arguments for the store and against it are articulated and hotly debated.  The cast of characters includes the major and Town Council members who will eventually make the decision, Wal-Mart representatives, and the citizens who organize to block the store.

Store Wars does not single out Wal-Mart.  Rather it offers a critical view of the Big Box industry as a whole, while presenting fairly all viewpoints on this controversial issue.  Study resources at:  http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/store.html