Who’s Responsible For The Obesity Epidemic? – Massimo Pigliucci, Rationally Speaking
To set the stage here, I’m going to quote directly from Massimo’s article:
The current situation in the United States is hard to believe: one third of
adults are clinically obese, and so is one fifth of all children; a whopping 24
million Americans are affected by type II diabetes, usually the result of a poor
diet. And the numbers are getting worse in much of the rest of the developed
world as well. This is going to cost a lot in terms of lives, pain and
suffering, and of course financially, to the nation as a whole. It’s a good
question to ask ourselves who bears responsibility for all this, and the answer
is not at all obvious or simple.
Health care is, in my opinion, the single most important policy issue as more and more boomers enter retirement. It is my generation’s make-or-break issue. And this is a great skeptical examination of how we should be addressing the most visible scourge in health care – the obesity academic. Read More
A Device That Could Save Lives– Without Ever Doing What It’s Meant to Do – hipstomp, Core77
Functional design fascinates me. Whether it’s smart textiles, green buildings, or engineering based on microbial microecosystems, it’s super fascinating stuff. How is our design of things informed by the knowledge we have of how it interacts with the world around us? Now, here’s an interesting twist. This tiny knife may in fact never be used for its intended purpose, and yet may in fact save lives. It’s design for dysfunction, and it’s brilliant. Read More
Redesigning the Save Icon – PJ Onori and others, Branch
Something that’s bugged me for ages is the save icon we’ve all come to know and love. You know, that 3.5″ floppy disk that keeps cropping up in apps in spite of the fact that we are living in the future? My students don’t know what a floppy disk is, so the visual metaphor falls apart. And when we operate primarily in the cloud, we’re not locking up information on a local disk, so the metaphor falls apart. How do we redesign that symbol, so iconic and so much a part of the visual lexicon, and yet have the replacement be immediately understandable? Join the conversation on Branch and see how a handful of designers and tech enthusiasts took a stab at it. The image above is just one of many from the thread. Read More
Thanks for reading, folks! As always, if you have suggestions for Sunday Reading, let us know! Reach us by email us at sunday@spillway.ca, on Facebook, or tweet us @spillwayca!
Paddle your own canoe,
Trevor
