Hasta La Gadget!

According to Chris Harrison, it’s up to the television audiences to decide if there will ever be a gay “Bachelor.”

“That’s really who dictates where shows go on television — where we go socially [in] television, entertainment, everywhere,” the host of “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette” told HuffPost Live in an interview this week. “They will dictate when it’s time, if we’re ready for that, if it would be successful, if it would be a good business move — the audience always dictates where we go in reality television.”

Viewers, he added, were at the heart of all entertainment-related business ventures: “Believe me, when you stop watching a show … it’s off the air, or it will change.”

Harrison, who supports same-sex marriage, previously said he wasn’t sure if a gay “Bachelor” would be a good fit for the ABC reality series.

“Look, if you’ve been making pizzas for 12 years and you’ve made millions of dollars and everybody loves your pizzas and someone comes and says, ‘Hey, you should make hamburgers.’ Why? I have a great business model,” he told the New York Times Magazine last year. “I don’t know if hamburgers are going to sell.”

He added, “Is our job to break barriers, or is it a business? That’s not for me to answer.”

Watch more from Chris Harrison’s conversation with HuffPost Live here.

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I took a plunge into the modern world this weekend by using my Uber app for the first time in Boston to navigate my daughter’s university graduation schedule of events. Without the glass barrier normally found in NYC cabbies, I had a chance to talk with the drivers and the conversation turned to the amount of time spent sitting on the job. Fortunately, most of these drivers were doing it part time between other jobs and school schedules but it prompted me to pause and consider the masses of persons who do sit all day in order to make a living. Does their health suffer?

Over 50 years ago data was published that is relevant to our hyper-connected society in front of computer screens. The rates of heart attacks were compared in the London Bus Study between the drivers who sat all day and the conductors who went up and down the bus to collect tickets. The researchers observed a rate of coronary heart disease (angina pectoris, heart attack, or sudden death) that was 50 percent higher in the drivers versus the more active conductors. Since then, monotonous sitting has been identified as a stress factor linked to increased heart disease risk and other databases have linked sitting occupations to all-cause and cancer deaths as well. What can be done to improve the health risk of those engaged in sitting jobs like the Uber drivers?

Data suggest that it may not take that much activity to reduce the potential harm from long periods of sitting. Even just one bout a week of moderate to vigorous physical activity, presumably after hours from the job, was shown to reduce cardiac deaths in a large sample of individuals at risk for heart disease. In a brand new study, an analysis of 3, 200 individuals found that light activity performed for just two minutes an hour reduced the risk of premature death by a third.

Some jobs, such as office desk work, may permit realistic options for increased movement and better health outcomes. Treadmill desks, adjustable desks that convert form a sitting to a standing position, walking meetings, and even online free programs that lead workers through a brief workout at their desks are all important responses to our new understanding of sitting as the “new smoking.” Websites have been created for those driving truck encouraging and guiding them to a healthier lifestyle and habits. Hospital programs featuring the use of pedometers to encourage walking have been designed for cab drivers and websites encouraging seated yoga movements for cab drivers exist. Some of these options might be translated to airline pilots who have also voiced concerns over their risk of cancer and other disease from long periods of required sitting.

Although our understanding of the health perils of long periods of sitting go back at least six decades to the London Bus Study, only recently has so much attention been focused on improving work environments to encourage regular movement and standing. It would be wise for those with jobs that have few options for movement to develop scheduled programs of walking and more vigorous exercise during slow periods, before and after shifts, and on any days off. Emphasizing healthy diets that are rich in colorful fruits and vegetables and low in hyper-processed Western options found along the road is critical to maintaining vitality. Abstinence from smoking, scheduling seven good hours of sleep, avoiding added sugars in sodas and energy drinks and learning stress management skills like breathing and meditation are all strongly advised. Although I would flip the advice of fitness guru Jack Lalanne who said that fitness was the king and nutrition was the queen of health, it would be wise for those with sitting occupations to take an uber jump in their health by building both practices into their busy lives.

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This piece originally appeared on Bright, Medium’s publication about education innovation. To see more stories like this, head over to Bright and hit the “Follow” button – or share your own story.

In late April, Indiana state legislators voted to increase spending in wealthy suburban schools, while reducing funding for some poorer urban ones. For years, Indiana has spent more per student in its poorest school districts (i.e., those with the highest percentage of students living below the poverty level) than on those in its wealthiest. Supporters of the measure say that wealthier schools have long “suffered” from disparate funding, and that the new budget will be more balanced.

Many people are, understandably, angered by this decision. Poor students in the United States already have it tough. They tend to lag in most measures of academic achievement. They score lower on standardized tests than their wealthier peers. They are more likely to drop out of school, and less likely to go to college. Indiana’s decision may only exacerbate these disparities.

But if you look through the data, you’ll find that – contrary to conventional wisdom – more money doesn’t necessarily mean better education. Money may be a good start, but doesn’t on its own guarantee great educational outcomes.

Let’s compare Indiana and Pennsylvania. The poorest school districts in Pennsylvania receive 33 percent less funding per student than the state’s richest school districts, according to the latest data from the Department of Education. Since students from poor families generally need more support than students who don’t, that’s unconscionable.

In stark contrast, Indiana (at least until very recently) spends 17 percent more per student in its poorest districts than it does on those in its richest. This might lead you to conclude that poorer students do better there than in Pennsylvania. But that’s not altogether true – at least not in terms of the socioeconomic “achievement gap,” or how well poor students perform academically relative to their wealthier peers.

There are different ways to evaluate this achievement gap, but the most common – and perhaps controversial – is how students perform on standardized tests. According to the latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, students who qualified for the national school lunch program (a common measure of poverty) in Indiana scored 20 points less on average than wealthier students in math and 22 points less in reading. In Pennsylvania, those numbers were 23 and 27 points, respectively.

The achievement gap is smaller in Indiana, but not by much. It’s certainly not what you’d expect given the spending differential. Indiana may be a role model in terms of its “pro-social” spending – but if the Hoosier State wants to improve student outcomes, it will have to do more than throw money at poorer students.

Minnesota and Missouri are another example of the hazy relationship between spending and achievement equality. Despite spending 15 percent more per student in its poorest districts than in its wealthiest, Minnesota had the seventh largest disparity in math scores in the country. Its disparity in reading was only slightly better than the national average. In contrast, Missouri spent 17 percent less per student in its poorest districts than it did in its wealthiest, but had a smaller than average disparity in both reading and math.

When you include federal money, the spending gap closes in almost every state; but the overall picture remains the same. Some of the country’s worst achievement gaps are in states that spend substantially more in their poorest districts than in their wealthiest ones.

That’s because, when it comes to equity in education, spending is just one piece of a much larger, more complex puzzle. There is a whole slew of other factors that help determine how well poor students do in school – like teaching quality, curricular rigor, parents’ level of education, class size, school safety, access to healthcare, parent involvement, and even birthweight.

“I am a firm believer that multiple [types of] data should be used in looking at achievement,” said Dr. Nicole Poncheri, the principal of Cole Manor Elementary School in Norristown, Pennsylvania. “One measure cannot fully tell the story of why we see certain gaps in some areas.”

Poncheri’s students have done exceptionally well on standardized tests. In 2013, low-income students at Cole Manor – who constitute 80 percent of the school’s population – outperformed low-income students in the rest of Pennsylvania, in terms of statewide reading and math test scores. There was less than a 10 percent gap between low-income Cole Manor students and their wealthier counterparts. That’s compared to a gap of almost 30 percent in the rest of Pennsylvania (and in Indiana, for that matter).

What did they do differently? Poncheri emphasized that equitable spending is key to equity in achievement. Without Title I funds –that is, supplemental federal funding for schools with a high percentage of low-income students – she said that some key positions in her school, including “instructional support teachers” that help classroom teachers identify and support struggling students, would be vacant.

But she believes that the non-financial aspects of her school’s approach, like the school culture and strong communication and collaboration among staff, matter more.

“[Classroom teachers] plan together, discuss student needs on a daily basis, analyze data, and work integrally with our instructional coaches, special education teachers, and ELL [English Language Learner] faculty,” said Poncheri. “We do not have staff meetings for the sake of meeting or data reviews simply to comply. When we do these things, we always take time to reflect upon how it is making the school more effective – and how it ‘trickles down to the classroom level.’”

To many education experts, the intense focus on school spending may obscure other crucial factors to student achievement – thereby reducing a multifaceted issue to a dollar figure. “Anyone who believes that money alone will make the difference isn’t paying attention,” said Jonathan Cetel, Executive Director of PennCAN, a Pennsylvania-based research and advocacy group. “Additional funding must be paired with meaningful reforms to ensure those resources are optimized. Camden [New Jersey] spends $27,500 per-pupil, yet only three high school students out of the 882 who took the SATs in 2012 were ‘college-ready.’ Not three percent. Three students!”

One could argue that, since dollar figures are easier to measure than, say, school culture, it is easier and more realistic to focus on school spending.

Admittedly, the achievement gap may not be the best measure to look at differential student outcomes. If a state “closes its achievement gap,” it could mean two very different things: that poor students are doing better or that wealthier ones are doing worse. The former is desirable; the latter is not. Nevada, for example, has one of the smallest achievement gaps in math. But that’s because non-poor students there underperform relative to non-poor students in the rest of the country.

The data also don’t tell us anything about long-term effects of school spending. Increased funding may not lead to better performance in the short term, but it could have profound effects later in life. A study published last year found that for poor students, a 20 percent increase in annual per-pupil spending had several desirable outcomes. These students completed nearly an additional year of school, earned 25 percent more in job wages, and were 20 percent less likely to be poor. Interestingly, there was no effect on students who weren’t from poor families.

It is unacceptable that some states exacerbate differences in achievement by spending less on the kids who need the most help. If education is supposed to be the great equalizer in the United States, we should spend at least as much money on poorer students as we do on wealthier ones. But let’s make sure policymakers don’t stop there, and that children from disadvantaged backgrounds get the kind of holistic support they need to succeed in school.

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The Youths was inspired by my will to create teenage characters that fall outside of a teenage setting. It seems as though every time I turn on the TV, there is always the same young girl, wearing the same outfit, saying the same things, and that girl doesn’t ever seem to be representative of how most young ladies actually look and feel. With The Youths, I aimed to follow two kids most people might not have known existed if they had only been exposed to mainstream media. Albert and Ida are serious individuals who have spent their lives unaffected by school and their peers. It isn’t until their paths cross that they even begin to believe another person of the same age might have something important to say.

As someone who has always felt too old, too early, creating characters that showcased that perspective was extremely important. Albert and Ida have skipped years in so many ways — in their intelligence, in their style, their mannerisms — but not in their experiences. They are what most would consider to be behind for their age: They’ve never been in love, never had sex and never even been kissed.

Up until the shooting of the film, I myself had been in the same position as my character Ida. I went through everything she went through at the same time she did, I lived it. It was surprising and exhilarating to make something scripted that was so undeniably real. At the same time, it was so unbelievably anxiety-inducing to put myself in a position where my first sexual experience would appear on film. The entire situation made me terrified to the point that I became physically ill.

The day before we were supposed to shoot our “romantic” scene, I woke up in the middle of the night shaking and sick. I ran to the bathroom to unleash my anxieties, and, boy, was I successful. The next morning I texted the crew and told them we’d have to postpone; I had the flu. Everyone was very sweet about my “illness,” but about half of them were unable to reschedule. So a chair would have to take their place.

We shot a few more days, but never had time to get to the “the big scene” (as the other actor and I referred to it). The more time that passed without getting it done, the more it built up in my mind. When the day finally came, he arrived at my house, unaffected yet rushed. I was thinner than I had been at the beginning of shooting, and so nervous I was unable to converse. We sat at the table waiting for the guy with the camera to show; when he did, we didn’t get up. We sat, hoping the scene would shoot itself… It didn’t.

I threw up before the scene, but then I felt good. Like a boxer before a fight, I was ready. For the first many takes we were unable to touch, just like we had been before. We were in the room for about five hours; each hour grew hotter than the next, from the lights. In between takes he’d tell me he absolutely had to leave because his mother had made him chicken and he was hungry. You expect that you may be compared to other girls, but never to chicken. After tons and tons of takes, we forced ourselves on each other, for the sake of the film. When it was over, we both felt like we had given a pint of blood. We hadn’t, but we had given some firsts.

Albert and Ida remain the sole members of the entirety of my sexual experiences. I’m still unsure of where they stop and I begin. Had Ida been in my position I think she would have been more zen, but then again she is on Paxil, and she isn’t real. She’s just a girl on TV.

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The Good Day Project wants to make the everyday lives of breast cancer patients just a little bit better.

Warriors In Pink, the Ford Foundation organization dedicated to fundraising and spreading awareness about breast cancer, is partnering with Meal Train and Lyft to create The Good Day Project.

Through the partnership with Meal Train, users will be able to access a premium service in order to co-ordinate meal deliveries, childcare services and other daily errands for loved ones undergoing breast cancer treatment. And, starting in June, breast cancer patients will be able to use a free ride-sharing service provided by Lyft to help them travel to and from treatment centers in 17 different cities.

“Reliable transportation to and from treatment is a common challenge for patients,” Kira Wampler, the chief marketing officer of Lyft, said in a press release. “We are honored to be partnering with Ford Warriors in Pink to bring a dependable option to the many women seeking treatment this year.”

People interested in helping will be able to donate rides, offer meals and laundry to people in need, and learn about other ways to support breast cancer patients through the Good Day Project website.

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“Warriors in Pink is about driving awareness, and about motivating people to help in the battle against breast cancer,” Tracy Magee, brand manager for Warriors In Pink, said in a press release. “With The Good Day Project, we hope to empower people to take real action and help provide more good days to those living with the disease.”

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