Bodies & Buildings Class 2: February 4
Systems Thinking and The Obesity Epidemic
All links in this presentation are located here at Annotary.com.
Bodies and buildings nyu itp 2 4 13 from Jen van der Meer
Optional:
Deeper Reading:
Original Study by Christakis and Fowler: The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years. NEJM. July 26, 2007.
Critique of this study: Lyons.
The Spread of Evidence-Poor Medicine via Flawed Social-Network Analysis. Statistics, Politics, and Policy: (2011) Vol. 2 : Iss. 1, Article 2. Last revised 5 May 2011
Watch: Catherine Kerr on Cortical Measures in Mindfulness Meditation at Quantified Self.
Personal account of Weight Watchers by Laura Beck at Jezebel.
Assignment:
When developing ideas and concepts for our student projects, and future projects, business ideas, and save-the-world ideas, we often start by designing for ourselves.
For this assignment, research a part of the world at a local level (city, state, province, county) that has a problem with obesity. The only requirement: pick somewhere that you have never been.
In a one page essay, describe the social, cultural, technological, economic, and other conditions of this region that may be contributing to a growth in the prevalence of obesity. You may choose to write a non-fiction account or take this as a creative writing assignment – imagining a first person day-in-the-life account of what it feels like to live here.
You will be asked to present your work, so practice rehearsing your in class presentation at least two times.