Link love for January 5th

The United States spends more on medical care per person than any country, yet life expectancy is shorter than in most other developed nations and many developing ones (above).

Robert Henke, aka Monolake shares his custom Max for Live devices.

How to dispose of old electronics in a responsible way.

Top 7 Best Green iPhone Apps.

Ira Glass on Storytelling (YouTube): part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.

Design and Meaning: an interview with Nathan Shedroff.

Self-Destructing Bacteria Could Be the Key to Better Biofuels.

Incredible ‘Garbage City’ Rises Outside of Cairo.

How to protect your ideas in the digital age: Don’t. Build a reputation as someone who creates great ideas, sometimes on demand. Or as someone who can manipulate or build on your ideas better than a copycat can.

The practice of hanging out is consistently demonized by educationally-minded folks as a waste of time. Yet, it is in that space where youth learn to navigate social situations, make sense of impression management, and develop the social skills necessary to be productive adults.

Everyone's gone green

I think it’s great that ‘green’ issues have gone mainstream and are growing in popularity. It seems like every day there’s some new article or ad about green’s growing momentum.

Despite some of the obvious green-washing, environmentally-friendly practices can make great business sense and social policy, drive innovation on many fronts and help solve some of the mounting problems we’re facing. At the least, it’s something to believe in amongst the political, social and economic unease that circles us.

One of the larger purposes of recycling, in addition to decreasing the amount of waste that goes into landfills (or worse), is to change peoples’ perception of trash. When a person goes to throw something away, they have a choice where to put it. It seems to me the point of adopting green practices is for them to become second nature—not thinking about it, in a good way. Cheers, Earth Day.