Have a happy weekend.

Here's some interesting reads for your weekend!

In yoga:

Yogadork.com shares how John Friend (formerly of Anusara, Inc.) is staging his comeback. I truly loved the practice of Anusara, and was disheartened to hear about JF's behavior (sleeping with married students, hiding questionable financial practices, sending goafers for his pot and abusing his power to intimidate anyone who tried to step outside the circle).  I was lucky enough to enjoy the benefits of the practice while I was stationed far, far outside of the JF circle - much like my relationship to Bikram.  

I laughed out loud at this slideshow from mindbodygreen.com but then couldn't figure out if it is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek or if it's serious!! Um, yes, I will always warm up before attempting to take pictures of myself in forearm-stand-scorpion. Thanks.

In feminism:

The Guttmacher Institute put out this summary of their review of laws affecting reproductive health and rights. More state abortion restrictions were enacted in 2011-2013 than in the entire previous decade. Worth the read and very frightening to think how few people notice and care about these shifts - how quietly a lot of this legislation was passed. This reminds me of Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale, a dystopian future where women's bodies are controlled by the state - except this is really happening. Shudder.

I definitely agree with this Flavorwire article from Michelle Dean about Lena Dunham's nudity in the HBO show Girls. Despite all my own reservations about the show, it is nice to have an in-your-face reminder of the beauty standards that we hold so near and dear, no matter how advanced our understanding of those standards may be.

In food:
Found this great site this week, where you can track what farm your food comes from in real time in your area. Not really a read, but a great tool.

NPR.org points us to Nathanael Johnson's summary of his question-everything series on GMOs, compiled over 6 months in 2013. Disclosure: I read the NPR article, but haven't been through Johnson's series yet. It's clear that the studies are conflicting about whether GMOs are harmful as food - but it is hard to ignore the other elements that are important in decision making about GMOs beyond food safety. Whether they actually make any difference in feeding the hungry. The problem of patents and big-ag corporations and the affects on farmers. Although the safety issues are where the priority may lie in studies, it's important for us to remember that the issue of GMOs goes well beyond our bodies - it goes into our soil quality, our world, and the sustainability of the farming methods that they require. Can you even grow GMOs organically? I'm not too sure about that and I'll probably be spending some time this weekend reading through this entire series to learn more.

Here's a fascinating article from Salon.com about when farming meets big data. The article targets Monsanto specifically, probably for name recognition of big-ag alone, but discusses an interesting trend where companies are developing and banking on analysis and data-driven mechanization of farming. The manipulation of farmers is no new news, and this article paints yet another frightening picture of the possibilities for large-scale control of the food industry.