On a recent trip back from NYC I picked up a few of my favorite in-flight reading materials: the Economist and Vogue, the perfect balance of politics and fashion. Flipping through the Vogue I came across the article "Stream of Conscience", an article about Ali Hewson, Bono and Rogan Gregory's newest collaboration named EDUN.

I read it twice and could not wait to show it to Erin. It's everything that we have been talking about and working towards since our early days at Milarepa Fund and the Check Your Tags! campaign. In those days we were working with the likes of Anna Sui, Todd Oldham, 555 Soul and Marc Jacobs - they wanted to get on the Free Tibet/Beastie Boys bandwagon and do what they could. The campaign was based on our belief that shopping is politics. We wondered, "What if an educated consumer and designer worked together to better understand the true cost of fashion?” "Could designers and consumers continue to produce and/or buy products once they knew the story behind the clothes?” We felt like it wouldn't hurt to try.

The campaign had its run and everything I learned has influenced my shopping to date and hopefully opened a lot of other people's eyes to the labels and brands they are buying. Unfortunately many of the designers moved on to bigger production runs and many of them went into China - a really difficult manufacturing country to monitor.

Anyways - long story short - Erin and I have always appreciated good design and fashion but have little patience for over-priced goods that are made with questionable labor and materials. This is what drove us to try our hand at clothing design Vitamin C3 and see what it really takes to make something that not only looks good but feels good - for everyone involved in the process. It's exciting to see Ali Hewson, Bono and Rogan doing what they are doing: making gorgeous clothing with some integrity.

A poll released by Reboot Foundation yesterday reveils a participatory and episodic approach to religion by Generation X & Y that is similar to the trends we are seeing in other areas of American culture. Perhaps the title of the piece describes it best: "OMG! How Generation Y is Redefining Faith in the iPod Era".

Disclosure: I am the chair of the board of Reboot...so I may be biased, but this is still an amazing piece of research.

Al Gore's long talked about television channel is beginning to take more form. Looks like the underlining philosophy of the thing is that much of the content is produced by the viewers. Check out their website , since they don't go on the air until the end of the year. We love the blurring of lines between creator and consumer. Can't wait to see what this might become.