Is Plastic Making Us Fat?

The linked article provides an evocative perspective on obesity. Certainly, lack of exercise and eating habits play huge roles in how we're super-sizing ourselves, but I found this article interesting because it describes some preliminary studies about how endocrine disrupters affect fat cells.

I'd certainly like to get back down to my "fighting weight" (140 lbs.) through better eating habits and more exercise than I'm currently doing, but I found this article fascinating in that plastic goods may play a role, especially for young children

As the one character in The Graduate said, "Plastics, plastics, plastics."

What do you all think?

"Is Plastic Making Us Fat?" link: http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/29366

A Green Economy vs. China's Industrialization

As reported by ENN yesterday, green businesses and sustainability measures are developing rapidly because they make ecological sense and they make or save money.

"Adam Smith, Meet Mother Earth" link: http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/29016

In contrast, China, as the long article in Mother Jones relates, is an economic powerhouse, but the externalities that the market doesn't account for are reducing or destroying the economic boom that the country is under.

"The Last Empire: China's Pollution Problem Goes Global" link: http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/01/the-last-empire.html

Somehow, China and India and other developing countries need to be shown how to do it right. And America and other countries can show them the way.

The GreenMobile Has Arrived!

This linked article from ENN (Link: http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/28939) initially made me smirk when I saw that a researcher at Mississippi State has created an environmentally-friendly trailer. MS State, renowned for undergraduates with cow crap on their boots, and Mississippi, renowned for single-wides and double-wides, creates all kinds of fun images, even though I enjoyed the South when I lived in the great state of Alabama. Any comedian worth his or her salt will jump on this story, I'm sure.

Regardless, the project is an interesting idea to me: affordable, energy-efficient housing.

I think J.J. Grey is probably talking more about Oxford, Ole Miss, and "the Grove" (a magical place that Kenny has experienced) than Starkville (the home of MS State), but nonetheless...

"Mississippi" by J.J. Grey & Mofro

Well I dearly love my home but
She never looked so good to me
Blue skies and dragonflies
Muddy creek Lord set me free

Good things are going on
there in Mississippi
She made me feel good
there in Mississippi

Folks smiling and saying hey
In my car as I'm passing by
And I can smell those barbeque grills
firing on the fourth of July

Good things are going on
there in Mississippi
She made me feel good
there in Mississippi

Good things are going on
there in Mississippi
She made me feel good
there in Mississippi

Everybody moving everybody grooving
everybody letting it all get loose
there in Mississippi