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SubscriptionsSites I Read
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| not sure if anyone ever looks at this anymore, but....
a great excuse to do a great thing....
http://www.giftoflifemichigan.org/goblue/
3135 people in michigan need an organ transplant of some kind. 491 people so far this year have received what they need to continue living. pass it on.
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| "The invalid assumption that correlation implies cause is probably
among the two or three most serious and common errors of human
reasoning."
- Stephen Jay Gould
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| soooo... i went to the wayne county medical examiner's office today and
watched autopsies. my community health instructor had us go
instead of going to normal clinical. it was.... a pretty intense
experience. i won't go into it too much, because i'm not sure you
can get more gruesome, but i think i learned way more about anatomy
then in my entire anatomy class. and i also learned that
hollywood is actually really good at imitating life in that way - or
should i say lack of life? (sorry, kind of an old man joke)
like, i feel like i just met people from CSI - take your pick from it's
many permutations. and it takes a really special person with at
least a slightly morbid sense of humor to work there. i don't
think i could do it. the actual dissection isn't too bad, it's
more the stories. young victim of a gunshot wound after child
from child abuse after victim of domestic violence after tragic car
crash. it's one of those places like the prison - the atmosphere
is different, it has something in it that is hard to describe.
it's almost like the evil that causes someone to kill lingers around
tangibly. and i left feeling really heavy. places like that
pretty much leave me no doubt as to the inherent good vs. total
depravity debate.
anything else i could say seems trite, if i haven't been already.
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| so today we did three presentations for three different classes at a
middle school about body image. the innocence of youth? not
so much. we talked about how the pictures of celebrities in the
media are so distorted, and how our ideas of what is 'normal' have
gotten so far off track. we had a spread of nicole ritchie
pictures, from her weight at 125 to 85 lbs. We showed the 85 lb.
picture first, and the first thing one of the girls said was, 'she used
to be fat.' referring to the period of time when she was 125
pounds (at 5'4'' maybe? i forget her height) we passed
around the dove campaign for real beauty (http://www.dove.com/real_beauty/default.asp). the first words
out of their mouths? 'they're fat.' 'she's fat.' one
girl made a disgusted face and wouldn't even look at it. one girl
raised her hand (very very thin) and said she used to be in a dance
class when she was 'younger'. considering these are 7th graders,
i assume she meant in grade school. she said she had a pot belly
and always felt bad about it, because none of the other girls had
one. we asked her if anyone in the class ever told her she was
fat, and she said no. so an elementary schooler is picking up on
cues that she shouldn't have a potbelly. these are middle
schoolers trying to have adult bodies, which is impossible. they
need their fat, in order to grow. so these girls get it in their
head at 10, 11, 12 that they are fat. and then they feel like
that the rest of their lives. and we wonder why it's trendy to be
anorexic?
and then there is the other side. obesity is rocketing
unbelievably. we are a sedentary and fast-food eating nation. i'm
convinced that part of it is because people look at these people in the
media and say, 'well, i'll never be that, so why try?' granted,
that is totally without any basis. but.... i've definitely felt
that way before. so it's almost like 'normal' and 'healthy' have
lost all relevance. normal compared to what? models?
obese people? and all these indicators we have -BMI, ideal
weight, etc - aren't very trustworthy. you can have a
'normal' bmi and be underweight according to your ideal weight.
you can be 'overweight' because of your high muscle density. so
trying to talk to these kids - i don't know. (and i'm talking
about the girls most because i have a higher understanding of the
issues) i just wanted to take all these girls, hug them, and tell them
to believe us. believe us that all you have to do is eat pretty
healthy and get some activity. honestly. these things you
tune out just because you've heard them so many times are the
secret. not dieting, not excessive exercising, not binging, not
fixating on a certain weight. and that when you're doing those
things, you're going to be healthy. no matter if you weigh a
little more then you like or aren't the size you want, it's so so so
much better to be healthy - to have energy, to be happier then when
you're starving all the time, worried all the time, feeling so bad
about yourself all the time.
i don't know, it's all a huge rant i have because it makes me mad that
these girls (and guys too), for so many reasons, learn to dislike their
bodies and even worse, get taught to treat it in an unhealthy
manner. and not in a 'everyone should just love themselves' kind
of way. being overweight is a health risk. being
underweight is a health risk. but it's gotten to the point where we've
lost the ability to know what a good weight is. ok, yes, we have
all heard what we're supposed to do - but for the one time a day we
see/hear that, how many hundreds of times are we told/shown that we
should be like a impossible, digitally altered picture of someone who
has a body type that only .05 of the population can achieve?
i know this has been talked about millions of times, but i was
just reminded so starkly of how much our culture influences our
perceptions. to the point that 11 and 12 year olds think of
themselves as fat and needing to diet. and to the point that 11
and 12 year olds are morbidly obese. and we call ourselves a
developed, advanced civilization?
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| so i just spent a fair amount of time attempting to make a skin.
i was fairly proud of myself, for what i remembered about html from
freshman year, and it looked fairly sweet (much better then this blah
gray scale one). and then i try to save it.... and they say i
have to have premium. they are quite good at getting me at every
turn with that - 'well, if you want to do anything remotely worth it,
you have to pay us money.' come on. it does not change one
thing if i enter my code in or you do. stupid xanga. though
i was the one who skipped the directions out of impatience, in which
i'm sure they told me i needed premium. i will thwart them yet.
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