With ever-increasing evidence of the links between the environment and our health, this project is timely as well as awesome.

Warning Signs is a visualization of the pollution that exists invisibly all around us. When the wearable senses carbon monoxide, the piece subtly changes color and pattern to indicate higher levels of carbon monoxide in the atmosphere to the wearer and those around him or her. This piece was designed and created by Nien Lam and Sue Ngo.

Check out the color change in action here. Via.

Another hot tip from Megan this week alerted us to this post about French Elle's First "Curvy" Issue. I quote:

Plus-size model Tara Lynn nabbed the cover and more than 20 editorial pages in the April issue of Elle France. Is this proof that fashion might set its parameters for acceptable female beauty a little wider, or just a fad?

This is an interesting moment, to me, because, no doubt, the introduction of a different body type into the world of fashion is not motivated purely by the editors' interest in the problems caused by unrealistic body image in fashion marketing. Rather, it seems to me more likely that people are just getting sick of looking of a certain body type. And not sick of it like they're sick of the evening news' fear-mongering (i.e. where it causes them a kind of moral revulsion). Sick of it like they get sick of a certain color scheme (i.e. it's not that there is anything wrong with some color scheme per se, people just get overexposed to it).

It's interesting to imagine that the voracious consumer appetite for newness could overturn unethical design and marketing practices, not because they are unethical, but just because they are yesterday's news.