Esty makers heart hearts, and we love these glass anatomical heart pendants from vendor Nanopod in Toronto. The plasma one at center, is really gorgeous, and we love the milky white one, too.
Archive for September, 2009
Hearts Content
Posted: Thursday, September 24th, 2009I Want A Mini-Zoo
Posted: Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009Do you think health insurance companies are getting a bad rap? Well, check out this protect health insurance PSA by Moveon.org. The video features Will Ferrell along with Olivia Wilde from “House MD” and Donald Faison from “Scrubs.” Because insurance executives need their private planes and mini zoos.
Is Your Doctor Slow?
Posted: Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009
You’ve heard of the slow food movement — well how about the slow medicine movement? Here’s the story of a doctor who has chosen to slow down the pace of medical care enough to enjoy a cup of tea with her patients. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? Dr. Daphne Miller has been able to do this with a health insurance bypass — her patients pay her directly on a sliding scale instead of going through insurance. “I found that every minute spent with my patients translated into fewer prescriptions and less testing,” writes Dr. Miller in the Washington Post, “And, as a result, fewer side effects and unnecessary procedures.” So why aren’t more doctors doing this? Two reasons: not enough primary care doctors, or even skilled nurses, to spend all this extra time with patients. Also, paying your doctor directly sounds great on paper, but what happens in the event of a medical emergency? I’m just sayin’.
Edible Lungs
Posted: Monday, September 14th, 2009
German prop stylist and art director Sarah Illenberger artfully arranged guts out of plants, leaves and berries for German magazine SZ. I don’t speak German, but it looks like the illustrations are showcasing natural remedies for various innard ailments — her bladder is made from cranberries, for example, and her brain is fashioned from ginko leaves. I’m not sure what the lungs are made from, but they look great, don’t they? If you haven’t seen Illenberger’s incredible knit organs — delicate brains, hearts and intestines, all rendered in soft wool, then you gotta check those out too. We love that she’s guts obsessed! {Thanks, Dom!}
Gorgeous Guts
Posted: Friday, September 11th, 2009
Lock your heart up inside a silver ribcage with Julie Parker Black’s collection of silver organ pendants. The group of glamorous guts include a heart, liver, brain, vertebrae and ribcage. We hope someday they’ll add a stomach of steel, too. {via Cool Hunting — thanks Julie and Ina!}
Gutsy Gift Guide
Posted: Friday, September 11th, 2009
I finally reconstructed the I Heart Guts Gift Guide for anyone looking to buy gifts for the cardiopulmonologist with a heart of gold, a great hepatologist, or the esthetician who has it all (but does she have a sebaceous gland pin, we ask you?). Also in the wonderful world of guts shopping (sorry to be so crassly commercial, but alas, that is the life of the gut-monger), we now have the ability to shop by gut or gland, so you can look at all, say, the gallbladder stuff we have on offer. Of course you can always type “parathyroid” into the search box with the same results, but it’s a fun new feature I thought you gut-lovers might enjoy.
I Heart Lawsuits
Posted: Thursday, September 10th, 2009
When life hands you a cease and desist, make t-shirts! Many moons ago we designed a parody shirt of the I Heart NY logo, replacing their heart with ours and NY with GUTS. Not long after I put it up, we got served with a cease and desist notice from New York City Development Corporation asking us to remove the shirt from our site and destroy the remaining stock. Needless to say, this really sucked, especially since we are not the only ones who have aped this design over the years (I know this continuing copying dilutes the copyright, it’s unoriginal, etc., believe me, I get it and I feel bad). Not liking to waste t-shirts, however — organic tees at that — we asked if it would be okay to alter the shirts so that the logo was no longer visible. They said fine. So I got crazy with the RIT dye and Chuva got crazy with the metallic thread stitching and here is the first in our series of limited-edition cease and desist tees, we only made 8! We will be making a few different special designs over the next few months, so if you miss these (or don’t like them) there will be more.
Guts on Vacation
Posted: Thursday, September 10th, 2009
If you were planning on taking your guts on vacation for a little organ tourism, think again. Organ tourism is a lot like sex tourism, though rather than picking up a prostitute or STDs you pick up a nice liver or kidney instead. Last week China formally announced it was ending its policy of harvesting organs from executed prisoners and starting a volunteer organ donation program nationwide, thus likely bringing an end to China’s thriving black market for organs. Personally, organ tourism brings to mind visions of livers and kidneys sitting on the beach sipping daiquiris. But we know it’s not quite like that.
Heart Topics
Posted: Thursday, September 10th, 2009
A few guts spruced up the tables at the Transplant Ethics Community Education Event, hosted by California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. The event included a lecture on topics vital to people in the transplant community — who gets an organ and when? How will these organs be obtained? All good stuff, we hope the guts were good listeners. {All photos by Benjamin Robert}
My Darling Liver
Posted: Wednesday, September 9th, 2009
I’ve always loved silly French terms of endearment like mon petit choup (“my little cabbage”) and ma petit crotte (“my little poop”). So imagine my joy when my friend Tarannum told me the affectionate phrase mera kaleja — used by folks of South Asian descent — means “my darling” but literally translates as “my liver”! Why bother giving someone your heart and soul when really the liver does so much of the body’s dirty chemical work? So cute, and so much more fun than sweetheart, honey or baby. Love that liver.
