Category: Body & Mind

Less Sweat in Shops

Sweatshops are wretched things, and that is why many organizations don’t like them. Some groups like United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), UNITE!, and as previously mentioned, UNICEF. Alternet has a great article on the state of the anti-sweatshop movement in universities and colleges in the United States. In the past decade, over 200 universities have adopted antisweatshop codes of conduct in response to student protest.

“In collaboration with human rights groups, unions and faculty experts on the apparel industry, campus activists developed the DSP to give universities a mechanism to enforce their antisweatshop codes. With the help of the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), an independent monitoring organization with 152 member colleges and universities, USAS has identified a number of factories around the world — particularly in Asia, Mexico, Central America and the United States — that could qualify under these more stringent worker-friendly standards. Alternatively, major brands like Nike could identify one of their major suppliers to specialize in producing clothing for the university market under the terms of the DSP.”

Buy Your Thoughts

The Flow Market is a store where you buy what you believe in. Some highlights from the 2006 collection include:

-identity finders $5
-exploitation free produce $12
-100% GMO $8

So what is the Flow, well it’s “a brand and template that meets the rising demand for sustainable innovation.
Throughout the 20th century the pursuit for technological and economic progress has given the industrialized world great new possibilities but has also resulted in a wide range of imbalances and challenges.”

There are currently three locations of this consumption art in Copenhagen, Zurich, and New York.

The Cycling Cog

The Cycling Cog is a website for cyclists, obviously, but the neat thing about this site is that it is web 2.0! It’s a social networking site for cyclists where they can find cycling tips and ride buddies. Features of the site include the ability for cyclists can create their own cycling groups, they can post their own events and blogs, plus post information that is important for the places they live in.

One thing I find particularly interesting is that people can post their stolen and recovered bikes.

WHO Paves Way for Medicines for the Poor

The World Health Organization is actually going to try to make drugs more affordable for the majority of the world.

“The resolution approved by the Assembly, the supreme decision-making body of the World Health Organisation (WHO), urges the 192 member states to make the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals a strategic sector, thus committing themselves to making R&D of medicines consistent with public interest needs a priority.

This was the response of health ministers at last week’s meeting in Geneva to the concerns of developing countries and humanitarian non-governmental organisations, which criticised the tendency of transnational pharmaceutical companies to concentrate their R&D efforts on diseases prevalent in affluent countries. “

Smoking Cannabis Does Not Increase Lung Cancer Risk

Cannabis LeafAccording to an article on Fox News, cannabis does not increase the risk of lung cancer in smokers. Even frequent users who have smoked tens of thousands of joints over their lifetime are at no greater risk than infrequent users or non-users.

The researchers are not sure exactly why this is, but think it may have something to do with the active ingredient in cannabis, THC.