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Be Honest

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386,170 Unhelpful Things
COMMENT
missdelite: I find it interesting that most of you feel I'm "judging" an overweight person if I see them indulging in an unhealthy food. That's not the case because I don't know that person and have no basis for judging them as people, but can the action itself be judged? Yes, I believe it can.

If you hear a heroin addict complain one moment about how they're tired of being addicted, and then see them shoot up the next, aren't you allowed to judge their action as being unhealthy and contradictory to their stated intentions? At what point are you allowed to say "Look, I know it's hard but you're hurting yourself and I can't be a part of it anymore"?

Also, in terms of what's causing people to be overweight in unprecedented numbers, I've heard the following reasons: slow metabolism, muscle weighs more than fat, heights increasing over the decades, glandular problems and genetic predisposition.

Ok, fine. For some people, but what about the rest? Let's get down to brass tacks and talk about food and our complicated relationship to it. Personally, I live downtown above a mall where every junk food imaginable is available within walking distance. If I didn't have a gluten allergy, I'd be scarfing Quiznos, Chinese take out and BBQ potato chips at every possible moment. It wouldn't take long for me to pack on the pounds and I'd find it near impossible to stop because it tastes so damn good. When will I hear an overweight person admit that their physical state is about how they relate to food and the fact that they're dealing with an addiction that Jenny Craig can't solve? This forum is anonymous and more likely to empathize with personal weakness than anywhere else. There's a real potential for a support group atmosphere, but not if people aren't honest with themselves and each other.

I have to say, I'm impressed when I see an overweight person on a bike or jogging on our streets, cause I know it takes a lot of courage to be out there in front of everyone doing their thing. To be honest, I'd rather join the "Health Acceptance" fan club because it makes more sense to me. I've a predispositon to do so and stand by my choice. Please don't judge me for it.
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A Billion Miles

Sometimes, the only way to avoid a toxic relationship is to switch time zones...
...by car...

...train...

...or plane...

...and even in the rain.

We Hope You'll Make it on Your Own, Kids. But We Doubt it.
COMMENTS
Can't pay for your kids college? Just do what my parents did. Don't save a dime for your kids education, and when a great aunt takes pity on your kid and sets up a trust fund to fund his education, make sure you get appointed as the trustee so you can steal the money to set up a new business. When your kid finds out about the theft, promise him that the new business will pay for his college and grad school. Then all you have to do is forge your kid's signature and have him unknowingly take on a huge pile of student loans to finance his college education while you get rich off your new business. Make sure to laugh when he brings up your promise to pay for grad school. He will only discover the loans after he gets into law school and makes his own financial aide application, and by that time the statute of limitations will have expired for your fraud and breach of trustee responsibilities. And be sure to act shocked and confused when your firstborn no longer speaks to you.

missdelite: Whoa, there's a special place in the Evil Parents Hall of Fame for those two. People will try to guilt-trip you into forgiving them cause they're your "parents", but shared DNA doesn't give anyone the right to fuck you over. Here's hoping you move on with your dignity intact and a billion miles between you and them. Physical distance doesn't erase past pain but it sure as hell helps you to face a future without their meddling ways. Works for me, anyway.
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Today's Tip

Sunflower sprouts

Eat your greens.

Admit it. You don't like to eat greens, do you? Most of us don't. Did you really think the lettuce in the double-decker cheeseburger you had last night counts? It doesn't. I, myself, used to subsist on a lot of take out and frozen dinners. I used to joke about how salt, fat and sugar were the three most important food groups. Believe me, I ate enough of that stuff to kill a horse (ok, maybe a small dog). Then, I got hit with a godawful food allergy (gluten) and now I have to watch what I eat. I know that for most people, fresh greens are an acquired taste if they aren't slathered in cheese, salty/sweet sauces or accompanied by something that used to have a heartbeat. I used to feel the same way. I won't lie, greens are bland/bitter as hell and it takes a while to grow accustomed to eating them relatively unadorned. Also, most of us - including high end restauranteurs - don't know how to prepare them in an interesting manner while retaining their nutritional value. Biggest mistake we make is oversalting or - *gasp* - overcooking them. There's nothing worse than a plate of limp, grey broccoli or asparagus. If you grew up on that shit, it's hard to get past it as an adult.

Still, you have to try. No other type of food quite matches greens in terms of the benefits they afford, and they act as a natural buffer between disease and health. Think of them as the world's cheapest pharmaceuticals. Yes, I know they're a pain in the ass to prepare, especially if you're busy, lazy or suffer from a deficit of culinary skills. How come grocers don't get that not everyone needs 5 lbs of kale in one shot? Even if you like the occasional salad, most of us have lettuce wilting in the fridge right now. This is why the true purpose of this post is to introduce you to the wonderful world of sprouts.

Don't give me that face. Sprouts are awesome. They're nutrient dense like dark, leafy greens (kale, mustard, collard etc.) but they're not as bitter and don't require cooking which means they retain all of the beneficial enzymes that aid in digestion. If you buy them fresh, they'll keep up to two weeks in the fridge and you can grab a handful of them whenever you want. If you're really dedicated to eating well, you can take a bunch to work in a Ziploc bag and toss them into a pre-made soup, salad or sandwich (lunch spots usually only carry brownish alfalfa that's way past its prime). I haven't tried them all, but my faves so far are garlic, onion, pea and sunflower. Sunflower sprouts are mild with a hint of sunflower seed flavour, aren't prone to mold like some of the other, more densely-packed varieties aaand are 300 times more nutritous than spinach. How about that? One day - when my inner Martha finally wakes up - I'll grow my own, but for now I buy mine at Whole Foods. Some guy named "Uncle George" grows them, clips them and packages them for me; I trust he knows what he's doing.

In conclusion, eat the damned sprouts. They play well with others, so that even though you may think they don't taste as good as a burger, they taste great in a burger. See how that works? Now let's talk about organic beef and ethical animal rearing practices...

+Types of Sprouts
+How to Grow Sunflower Sprouts
+Secret Super Foods
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Paul Walker
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Today's Tip

20 Minute Workout

Get good workout music.

It's important as a motivation tool and you can't underestimate the power of great music to get your ass in gear. My weapon of choice is Hed Kandi: A Taste of Kandi (Summer 2006). What I love about it is that it starts off at a moderate pace and then builds up to a rousing tempo in the end (45 minutes later), after which I then restart it for a 10 minute cooling down period and some ab crunches (I hate doing them but they're a "necessary evil" to avoid back pain). My entire workout lasts about an hour which suits me just fine. Each track is edited down to 3 minute segments of pure aural pleasure and I've included a few samples below to give you a taste. One thing's for sure: without my Kandi I'd be a lot more sedentary, a miserable mass of aches and pains and feeling like a stranger in my own body. These days, I can climb a flight of stairs without losing my breath like an asthmatic 80-year-old and my heart thanks me for it. If this keeps up, I'm going to enter a marath-...*snort!* Yeah, right.


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NEW POST
Anna Netrebko

Today's Tip

The RoboKing

VACUUM YOUR HOUSE.

At least once per week. I did mine today, after putting it off for *cough* awhile. What can I say? I hate vacuuming. Three quarters of my place is wall-to-wall carpeting (I rent and can't tear it up), and my vac is designed to tackle the square footage of a dorm room; it takes forever to get it done. But I did it today. Why? Well, because I read this. And if you think it's just Toronto, think again. New York, Ohio...I get itchy just thinking about it. I'm trying not to panic, but goddamnit, it's hard. Is it not enough that I have to deal with a convulsing economy, Swine Flu and the onset of winter? What the fuck's next? Do I really want to know?

I've decided that from now on, I'm going to be diligent about my house cleaning, keep an eye on my purse when I go out and perhaps consider sleeping in the tub. This way, if they ever come to get me, I won't go down without a fight.

More info here and here.

Bright Ideas

Vending Machine Sells Ideas

SPRINGWISE
Helping readers take blogs offline, Zinepal lets any user convert their favourite online content into ebooks and printable, magazine-style PDFs. [via]

Mix-ins have been a staple in many ice cream shops for years already, allowing customers near infinite possibilities in designing their own creamy confection. Now bringing comparable potential to the world of cookies is Toronto's Sweet Flour Bake Shop, which lets patrons design their own baked treats and eat them fresh from the oven just two minutes later. [via]

Premium ice-cream is a highly sophisticated food category that doesn't shy away from unusual flavours. But none of these stray quite as far from plain vanilla as an x-rated gelato by The Icecreamists that's touted to have the same charge as a dose of Viagra. [via]

It used to be that hiring sites focused primarily on objective information about the jobs they listed. Then the transparency movement set in, and sites like CareerTours, MedRecruit, Glassdoor and KODA increasingly began including more subjective considerations. Now continuing in that vein comes GetaGreatBoss, a South African site that aims to help workers find great bosses. [via]

Whether it's a consumer product or a piece of music, there's much to be said for allowing fans to have a say in how it's designed and marketed. Just as Dutch media entrepreneur John de Mol turned to the crowds last year for help creating the next reality-show hit, so brand-new site Genero.tv is relying on music fans to create the next winning videos for a variety of participating bands. [via]

Long gone are the days of boring mugs and faded postcards, as museums and other cultural institutions have become increasingly savvy retailers. Aiming to build on that strength, CultureLabel showcases products from over 60 galleries, museums and other cultural entities, 'exploring the space where culture and consumer culture meets'. [via]

Street Sign Table

Real-time price search has arrived, and with it some unexpected bonus features for consumers. German site Apnoti claims to have the first search engine to index prices for the German, American and French markets in real time. Currently in beta launch, the engine crawls over 65 million items in more than 10,000 affiliated stores for each and every search request, presenting users with a comparison of products' price trends over the past four weeks and current prices, accurate (in theory) to the past few seconds. Apnoti differentiates itself from other price comparison services which usually rely on daily updates by their operators, claiming that these services cannot cope with the price fluctuations that often occur throughout the day. [via]

A new crowdsourced initiative invites fans to remake Star Wars. People can sign up on Star Wars: Uncut to recreate up to three of the 1,313 fifteen-second clips that make up the epic space film. They then have 30 days to film and upload their segment before the slot is offered to someone else. The 337 contributions submitted so far range from live action and animation to stop motion and cardboard shadow-puppetry. Submissions can be viewed on Star Wars: Uncut, side-by-side with the original. Eventually, the site's administrator—Casey Pugh, a Vimeo staff member—will stitch all of the pieces together, letting the project reach its ultimate goal of recreating the entire movie. [via]



The internet may have given music fans unprecedented access to the world's music, but finding it in any kind of organized way can be a challenge. Now providing a location-based approach comes CitySounds.fm, a music browser that streams the latest music of the world, city by city. [via]

Just a few weeks ago we wrote about My Fashion Plate, a wardrobe management community for clothes hounds. While a variety of features are available on that site—including even personal shopping services—Looklet is a new contender that focuses exclusively on the design end with a virtual studio through which users can mix and match real designer clothes. [via]

Air quality is a matter of urgent concern to residents of most large cities, and Paris is no exception. There are currently only 10 public sensors monitoring that important variable in the City of Lights, however, so a new initiative now aims to equip everyday citizens with a special device that can measure and report air-quality data regularly for collective use.
The Green Watch, or La Montre Verte, is a specially equipped device worn on the wrist that includes not just a time piece but also a GPS chip, a Bluetooth chip, and ozone and noise sensors. At scheduled times—or on request of the wearer—the watch measures and saves air-quality and noise data, describing them in qualitative terms such as "good" or "bad." [via]

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NYC Metro Cuff
Ideas Culture
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Indie Screenings
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ThinnerView
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LCAFE
Warm Cookie Radar
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André Balazs
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Food for Thought

My Visit to Fat Central
Confession time. I am a fattist. I find obese people unappealing in almost every regard. They are physically unattractive, they lead unhealthy lives, they take up too much space on public transport, and (most of all) they are a strain not only on their clothing but on NHS (National Health Service) resources.

The secret of their size? Their outsized appetites are matched by a lack of self-control and even less self-respect.

There, I've said it. Just as I have said it many times in my column for this paper. And each time I do so, it's greeted by the same howls of outrage.

COMMENTS
Why is it that these people who purport to be so concerned about the "health" of overweight people feel like they need to attack overweight people themselves for their assumed lack of will power instead of, oh, say, the consumer goods companies shoving saturated fat and sugar and preservatives into everything on the supermarket shelves? Or maybe the FDA whose regulations are so lax as to allow this shit because they're led and staffed by the former leaders of the food producers? The giant corporations that create monopolies over the farmers, making sure they're fattening up their livestock with as much hormone as possible? Aren't these the bad guys?
It'd be a lovely world indeed where we could all pluck fresh produce from trees and plants in our backyard, but it ain't the world we live in lady. So shut your damn pie hole and quit trying to mask your simple aesthetic disgust with some sort of global concern for health.

Fat shaming does not work. If these people really cared about obesity, they would take a different track.

There's more at work here than socio-economics. There's also attitude, both hers and of the obese. Hers is unhelpful at best but some of the obese take pride in their size and eating habits I'm sorry to say.
I've gotten flamed for dressing down some Mom online for feeding her 9 month old chocolate formula. Then there was the Mom that bragged about her 10 month old being able to scarf (her word, not mine) down an entire slice of pepperoni pizza. We're not talking the economically depressed here, we're taking about soccer Mom's that have full access to fruits/veggies.
Look don't get me wrong my kids get french fries etc. But not all the time and not at the expense of real food.
I hate the authors attitude here. I agree w/pp that Jamie Oliver does a muuuch better job.

Jamie Oliver's response to the fat epidemic was to go to a provincial city in England and use it as the start of an incentive to get people in non-posh areas more aware of eating healthy. THAT'S how you do it, miss.

You don't need to shop at Whole Foods to get healthy food. I shop at Fry's because I'm a poor college student, and I'm able to find a pretty good selection of produce. Not the best, admittedly, but adequate. Also, frozen fruits and veggies are both cheaper and more convenient. For me the temptation to buy junk and ready made food comes more from convenience than price because the cost difference in making a good, healthy home-cooked meal and buying something from McDonald's is small. One just takes a lot more planning and effort.

There's a lot of misdirected anger and hatred in her article... Makes me wonder why this is so personal to her. Perhaps she or some close family members have dealt with weight issues. (Or maybe she's just an asshole.)

Yeah, because every person who isn't a fatty must be a super health-nut, right? I work with models and actresses that are so skinny and most of the time they fall into two categories:
a) genetically blessed mutants who can (and do) eat anything and everything and rarely exercise.
b) adhering to incredibly unhealthy "activities" to maintain their size- drugs, extreme dieting, eating disorders.
It really frosts my cupcake that thin people get a free-pass when it comes to prejudice. It is also completely insensitive to the people who have a medical condition (because, you know, those things do exist) or those of us (myself included) who are trying to change our habits and maintain a healthier lifestyle.
It upsets me to no end the amount of insecurity that is placed on the shoulders of those of us that are trying to get healthier. Everybody likes to watch and make fun of the "fatties" no matter what. Human beings have this interesting paradox of wanting to be accepted and to exclude simultaneously.
I've heard stories of women running and exercising in graveyards or at odd hours of the day- because they don't want to get hassled. You can't imagine the looks I get, when I go out to eat with my best-friend (one of those previously mentioned genetic mutants).
In the grand scheme of sizes, I'm not even that big (I'm a 14) compared to the national average.
Note to Platell- you catch more flies with honey, than you do with vinegar. Don't complain about a problem that doesn't concern or affect you, unless you've actually come up with a plan of action that is supportive, comprehensive and not based solely on the "otherness" of people who don't look like you.

Amanda Plattell is concerned with nothing more than the greater enrichment of Amanda Plattell.
She's an Australian hack for hire who will write anything for a buck and who has no real strong opinions on anything.
In contrast to MeMe Roth she almost certainly doesn't believe any of this but considers it 'good copy' in much the same way that she considers repeatedly attacking female celebrities in print 'good copy'.
Whether her complete amorality makes this piece worse I leave up to everyone else to decide.

Honestly, it's days like this that make me silently, painfully want to stop existing. If I could be smaller, I would. I generally like the way I look, with a curvy bum and wide hips and yes, even bits that jiggle. I'm a big woman, but not, I hope, a repulsive one. But the visceral loathing that comes pouring off this woman and her intellectual comrades really jab sharply at my sense of self-worth. It makes me quietly relieved that it's actually rather difficult to commit suicide, for I would have done it many, many times over if only to escape such vituperative loathing. Today is one of the tough days.
I hear you. I used to be small; now I'm not.
Even though I'm mobile, active, strong, work out with a trainer three times a week, take care of my own house, have a job I'm good at, animals that love me...the only thing people like her (and most other people, frankly) see is that I'm fat. Most of the time, I'm either ignored or pitied; once in a while, though, I run into this sort of loathing.
And it surprises me *every time.* I guess it shouldn't; God knows it's out there in plain sight for us to be bugged by. But it does.
I ran a mile today in ten minutes, then lifted weights for an hour. I felt great about myself until I read this article. Now I wonder if I ought to just give in, be less mobile, be less active, and just sit the hell down and become invisible. It's hard to keep getting out and doing in the face of people like her.

Ten years ago I would have laughed at the idea of an addiction to food. Now I'm not so sure. There are many people out there (including my own parents) who are highly educated, have access to good food, live in areas where they can safely exercise, know what they should eat, know that if they keep eating crap and remain sedentary it will kill them, and yet they cannot stop. They cannot change the way they are eating or the way they are living. And these are not people with a death wish or generally self-destructive people.

I'm an ignorant-assholist. Everywhere I go, there are these obnoxious, ignorant assholes. I can't escape them. Women and men, spouting diarrhea of the mouth and brain, trying to pass it off as concerned journalism.
I went to a therapist about my level of disgust with these offensive people, but she advised that I continue my current theraputic regime of mockery and alcohol.

The Daily Mail has one use: identifying the bigots before I have to find out in the course of conversation.

Do I think to myself "hmmm, 5 people could sit there instead of 2" sometimes on the subway when I have nowhere to sit with my heavy laptop bag? Yes. I don't think that makes me a bad person. I don't think it's fair, personally. And I know it's going to get me in trouble. But just like I don't think it's fair for someone to put a bunch of bags on the seat next to them so no one can sit...it's kinda unfair for someone to take up more than their share of room on a subway seat with their body. But I would never be mean to someone about their weight. My sister is obese and I would freak out if someone was mean to her about it.
Do you feel the same way about tall people, too? Because they often take up more than one seat just from sheer size. Or bigger boned people. Or conjoined twins- one set of legs, one seat, I say.
Seriously, though, seats are based on biometrics that make assumptions about "average" size. These averages are based on one particular archetypal shape, which is generally slender and white and perfectly proportioned and of a very specific height, all things which many people are not. It's simply...weird to resent someone for not fitting this particular and ever changing type.

The thing that drives me crazy is this recent trend where it's like, as long as you admit that you discriminate against people, then it's ok. Imagine if instead of "I am a fattist" she wrote "I am a racist" or "I hate Jews," "I hate gays," or any other ridiculous discriminatory sentiment. She would lose her job. Why is this OK? Discriminating against people for any reason, in such a public forum, should not be applauded in this "oh, you just tell the truth!" sort of way, the way it has been recently.

Disgust is inextricably linked to moral taboos. Her morality is such that she sees the very existence of fat as fundamentally wrong. An example: some people oppose gay marriage because it disgusts them, so they just KNOW it must be wrong. The same arguments were made in support of sodomy laws. Also, disgust is tied to the idea of pollution. It is clear from her remark about people wanting to be fat to fit in that she thinks obesity is a pollution, a plague on society. It's not just about seeing other fat people, it's seeing fat as actually taking over.
The thing about morality is that it's taught--in ancient Greece, people were disgusted by eating in public and now that is one of the most common activities I can think of. So many restaurants! Our culture has taught her that this kind of disgust is appropriate and that the accompanying hatred is equally okay.

Speaking as a former impoverished student who lived in London for several months on a food budget of about 10 pounds a week, I can tell you that it's MUCH much cheaper to buy packets of crisps and knock of Jaffa Cakes than it is to buy proper food. On the weeks where I nannied and had extra spending money, I could afford to buy fruits, vegetables, Innocent smoothies and meat. But to get the most caloric bang for my buck, it was sadly all about sweets. Oddly enough, I didn't gain any weight during those months (I had no Oyster Card so I had to walk everywhere), but if I drove/bussed it, I'm sure I would've packed on a few pounds.

I'm tall, I'm a drinker, and I'm a smoker. I take up space, and am a strain on health care. But I guess because I'm slim I'm not a problem. Good to know.
That's funny. As a smoker, you contribute second- and third- hand smoke, which actually DOES affect the health of those around you.
Last I checked, you can't catch fat on the subway.

And on the other hand, you have people who will die out of their efforts to be thin. It's all about a happy medium, and I hate to say this, but doesn't it seem that she has major issues about her own body, if she has to hate on others?
Why do you hate to say it? You don't enjoy being right?

Amanda knows which side her bread is buttered. Nothing pays the big London mortgage better than a bit of bitchery in the Daily Mail.

[jezebel.com]

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Trainer Struggles to Lose Weight
It's actually a lot more expensive to be overweight than it is to be in shape.
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LINK
The Worst Book-to-Film Adaptations
The year 2000 saw Ron Howard get his big hacky hands on the Grinch, turning a simple, iconic children’s story into a bloated, awful, cruel, and just downright idiotic feature-length live-action film starring Jim Carrey, whose rubber-faced antics were old by the end of 1994.

I ♥ Geeks

TOMS Shoes Founder Blake Mycoskie Plans to Give Away 300,000 Pairs in 2009
LAist - Apr.15/09

What happens when you travel to Argentina to learn how to play Polo? You start a sustainable and socially conscious shoe company. Of course.

Well, that is exactly what happened to Blake Mycoskie, founder of TOMS shoes. After visitng the country in 2006 and witnessing the mass amounts of children without shoes and its detrimental effects, he returned to the US determined to eradicate this problem. And for the last 3 years, he has been doing just that.

For those unfamiliar with the company, the concept is simple: for each pair of shoes they sell, the Santa Monica-based company will give a pair to a child in need. Shortly after starting the company, Blake and friends returned to Argentina with 10,000 pairs of shoes for the children and ever since then, thanks to the company's success, they have been able to increase the breadth and scope of the project; 140,000 pairs have been given away in Argentina, Ethiopia and parts of the Southern US. He plans to give away an additional 300,000 in 2009 alone.

Tommorrow, TOMS will launch their "One Day Without Shoes" campaign, in order to raise awareness about the impact a pair of shoes can have on a childs life.

In today's world, it is all about what you can do to give back and give more, and we hope to see the emergence and success of companies like TOMS, with a focus on increasing awareness and driving social change.

LAist is a big fan of TOMS, so we were pleased to have the chance to talk to Blake about his unique business model, empowering young people, their current projects in Ethiopia and meeting with the Obama administration.

TOMS core and initial vision and goal was to provide children in need shoes. How has this evolved and grown?
Well now we've started focusing specifically on Southern Ethiopia where there is a horrible foot disease called Podoconiosis that is completely preventable with shoes. Were really focused on that area. It’s almost like an elephantitus of the foot and it’s really grotesque. Specifically, now we have a factory in Ethiopia helping create special leather boots for kids so they don’t get this disease.

So, as we’ve grown our giving has become more focused on specifically preventing diseases for kids in certain areas of the world but we’re still focused on coming up with new great shoes that people will continue to buy so that people will continue to support us season after season so we can continue our giving.

You touched on a great point in your speech at the Clinton School of Public Service that when "you are doing something good, people want to help you". Especially now, how crucial or pivotal has that been to the success of TOMS?
It’s been very critical…it’s really just about telling the story and getting it out there. And when we do that, more and more people will buy the shoes and want to be part of it and want to help. That’s really been a critical part of the mission; it is not just being like “we’re a brand and we’re doing it ourselves” but rather getting people to write about it, email about it, share the videos, write on the blog…it’s really a very inclusive company so that we can get more people participating.

And you guys don’t do any advertising, right?
No. It’s really all just through media, viral videos, blogs and facebooking. We’re launching a new website that we’ve been working on for 6 months. There will be a lot more community pages, ways to interact and get more involved with TOMS. I’m really excited about this because I think it will take the kind of “people being part of the brand” to a whole other level.

We’re trying to integrate more web 2.0 and let people know what they can do if they want to get more involved; if you want to have a style your sole design party, it will tell you other people in the area who are doing so. We want to integrate our community and our fans so it’s not just “I’m buying a pair of shoes” but rather hosting an event, screening, or eventually even helping us design the line, so its really just a community of people, and not like a company.

What has been the biggest challenge with this whole project?
The biggest challenge was the fact that we had no experience making shoes when we started, so learning production, quality control, inventory and all the other business parts of being a shoe and fashion company. No one on our team really had any experience, but we’ve been learning that on an ongoing basis, but it has been the biggest challenge so far.

So have you brought anyone new on?
We brought in a guy from Asics and Nike.

What has been the greatest and most unexpected lesson?
When you really give young people a lot of authority and opportunity, they can do amazing things. Because of our giving level and because we’re a start up, we haven’t really had a lot of money to hire a lot of “super-experienced” people, so we’ve hired people right out of college, or even out of high school and given them a tremendous amount of responsibility and authority for the lack of experience they have and for the most part I’ve been really impressed with how many of them have really risen up and become really important assets to TOMS, do their jobs and get things done in a way that people with maybe ten years of experience wouldn’t do.

Also, with our intern program it’s a way to see how much great ideas and efforts come out of that program. It’s really about empowering people, and making people believe that they really can make a difference, and contribution no matter what their age or experience is, and when given the tools and abilities to do so, amazing things happen.

Can you tell me more about the intern program?
There are two parts to it. We have the interns who spend the summer here in LA and we have the Vagabonds. Vagabonds are interns who travel around the country hosting screenings and parties and spread the word about TOMS to high school and colleges around the country. And that’s become a big part of my thinking and a big part of the culture; you don’t necessarily need the most experienced people, you just need people who are passionate, smart and hardworking.

What's your advice for people, young especially, who want to take the social entrepreneurship route to give back in their communities and want to make this giving a full-time venture?
I think two things. For better or for worse, a lot of people have been laid off and a lot of companies aren’t hiring, but there are social ventures like TOMS out there and often the best way to get involved is to volunteer some time, and even if you are 40 years old and are not going to do an internship, the truth is, if you have, lets say, graphic design skills, and you’ve been laid off, maybe donate your skills to a not-for-profit or a social venture like TOMS that you’re really passionate about, and often times through that process, especially as an organization is growing, sometimes it can become an opportunity for actual employment.

And I think a lot of people have seen that by getting involved in a socially focused venture that they are not only fulfilling a financial needs but their spiritual and mental needs as well. I think that’s why people love working at TOMS and I think were going to see a lot of other organizations like TOMS popping up because it’s just kind of that right thing to do.

Has TOMS been able to stay profitable and sustainable?
Yes, it’s TOMS third full year. We’re definitely on a path to sustainability. We haven’t had to let anyone go. If anything we’ve had to hire more people in the last two months. We’re right on plan and we’re going to give away 300,000 shoes in 2009.

How do you pick retailers?
We look at retailers in a non-traditional way and we really pick them based on how passionate they are about our story because we don’t think there is a certain type of person who likes TOMS…so we feel our demographic is very wide so we should sell to a very wide variety of stores, so we pick stores that our willing to tell our story in a very powerful way and get behind it.

I saw the new Vegan TOMS. How focused are you on using the most sustainable materials? What is your commitment to environmental/sustainable practices?
The new line of shoes is made from 70% recycled plastic bottles and 30% hemp, so the fabric is more sustainable than even an organic cotton. So we’re very much focused in that direction and moving as fast as we can.

The pop-up store on Abbott Kinney was so successful you ended up staying longer than planned. Any future plans for more pop-up stores?
No plans yet, but were thinking about San Francisco.

I heard you recently met with the Obama administration in the White House...
Yes, I was invited to go the White House and meet with the administration and specifically talk about the Department of New Media. It’s cool because it’s the first time the White House has ever had a Department of New Media and they invited myself and a few other entrepreneurs involved with technology just to talk about what we're doing and how we can bring more transparency to government.

What's next for TOMS?
We’re just trying to get our community more involved in our mission, besides just buying a pair of shoes. So there are a lot of ways we’re working with the new website and the social media properties so people can host design parties, screening of the documentary film…really just trying to get our community together offline as well as online so we can really create platforms for social change, not with just shoes but with other big ideas out there.

TOMS AT&T Ad

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I ♥ Geeks

Mike Adams aka The Health Ranger

Oh Mike, what a large Brumby Pump you have...

One third of Mike's head is better than none

Bio
Mike Adams is no stranger to traditional Western medicine. The son of a Pfizer contractor and a clinical trial tester for some of America's biggest pharmaceutical companies, Mike grew up using prescribed pharmaceuticals, trusting doctors and believing what the FDA reported was safe and in the best interests of the country. All that would change when Mike was faced with his own personal health emergency, and the pillars of medicine he once trusted came crumbling down before him.

Mike began his mission as the Health Ranger as a response to his own failing health. At the age of 30, he was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, a disease brought on by poor diet and severe lack of exercise. As a high-powered software executive, extreme levels of stress and cholesterol, depression and chronic back pain were common features of Mike's past.

Searching for answers to his health woes, Mike dove into research; he devoured thousands of books on nutrition, pharmaceutical drugs, wellness programs, the politics of food - anything he could find.

Mike has now made it his life mission to share the most remarkable discovery he made on his quest: the vast majority of all diseases can be easily prevented and even cured without drugs or surgery.

And that’s exactly what Mike did. He cured himself of diabetes in a matter of months and transformed himself into the picture of perfect health in mind, body and spirit.

Mike Adams is the founder of:
Natural News
Truth Publishing

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