Blog Posts by Jessica Ashley, Senior Editor

Of course, we've all heard of someone's sister-in-law who saved her newborn's placenta in the freezer for years, finally bringing it out to sautee it up for a celebratory sweet sixteen meal. Or have poured many a glass of wine with other moms debating whether burying the afterbirth next to a tree or turning it into a lasagna ingredient is more time-consuming.

Oh...that was just my crazy playgroup?

Consuming placenta is not anything new or local or WOW! Many women from many cultures, even today, even right in your very own neighborhood, are downing their placentas in an effort to allay post-partum depression, aid milk production, and to give other moms lots to talk about.

Ingesting placenta is not my cup of tea (but I have heard it is lovely with a dash of ginger and some honey). But I was both entranced and entertained to hear three men over at Huffington Post discuss how one placenta encapsulation specialist turns her clients' placentas into supplements. In the video, Lisa Fortin,

It's a thousand degrees and your energy bill will likely be a thousand bucks this month. How can you cut back on the heat stroke and your budget? Maybe you should slip out of that tank top and button up an air-conditioned shirt.

This real product invented by a former Sony technician invented. Ltd doesn't have the power of central air, but each shirt does have two built-in 10-centimeter fans. The fans sit at the waist, and pull in air that zaps the sweat and cools down the wearer's body temp. The shirt is USB-powered and can also run on AA batteries or by being plugged into a car cigarette lighter. While it might seem counter-intuitive to hook yourself up to a hot laptop or overheating car engine, apparently it has already kept a lot of workers in Japan cool during post-tsunami power cutbacks.

Saving electricity and honing in on personal comfort seems like a fine idea despite the goofy look. You might assume the weight of fans, battery pack, and USB cord would be cumbersome. One

I have this worry that I then worry will place me in the category of Frantic Mommy -- will there be guns at the houses where my son has play dates?

We've read the warnings in every single parenting book and site we've visited about keeping fire arms locked up and discussing the issue with moms and dads who host parties and play time. But when it comes down to it, it feels like an awkward subject to bring up. This, in itself, is ridiculous, I know. As my colleague Charlene Prince Birkeland pointed out, we have easy, fluid conversations about other things that could pose a risk to our kids -- like whether there are cats or dogs in the house. So why is the subject of guns so scary and still so hard to tackle?

Perhaps it is easier if you know someone in the household is a hunter, where guns are presumably stored, or if a parent has been vocal about having being a gun owner for any other reason. So what if you live in a city where people are less likely to hunt or what if your circle of

If you're one of the lucky ones, your children have finally stopped nasally belting out "Friday! Friday!" every single week. If not, don't worry. Rebecca Black's new song, "My Moment" premiered last night online and there's a chance its lyrics could replace those old, droning words.

Set up with her own YouTube channel, the teen viral sensation has followed up "Friday" with a song that speaks to all the "haters" who clearly helped boost her status. Her first hit (and let's all agree that term is used loosely here) had 167 million clicks, not counting the parody videos that added roughly a gazillion more views to the overall tally.

Black told the "Early Show" that she's not letting negativity get to her but that she did feel pressure to have a follow-up that wowed.

"'Friday' was such a hit. And so, to get something, you have to find the perfect song that kind of tells off the haters a little bit, but still shows that you're a serious artist," she told the morning show. "...[L]uckily,

How much water do we really need? You may think six to eight glasses per day because you have probably read many articles and had discussions with your doctor to support that. But a Scottish physician has blasted that standard in a British Medical Journal article, stirring the debate about how much water we should drink and how much is too much and bad for our health.

Dr. Margaret McCartney argues there is no quality scientific evidence to support the recommendation, which she says can lead to over-hydration problems for some people.

Here's what you need to know to sort hydration hype from good health advice.

Don't skimp
The eight-glass formula doesn't fit for everyone. It depends on your gender, size, and level of activity, other studies note. The Institute of Medicine calls for adult men to drink 13 cups of fluid daily (which totals three liters, or a little more than four tall reusable water bottles) and women to have nine cups (2.2 liters, or about the amount found in three

It's 100 degrees (not counting the humidity). Your knees ache (again). Your bored on the treadmill (even though you're watching "The View," flipping through an Us Weekly, and blasting Rihanna through your ear buds). The gym is packed (on a Tuesday? at noon?).

Any (or all) of these could very well keep you from lacing up your running shoes. And maybe they should. Perhaps the answer to all these pains is taking your jog to the pool.

Aqua jogging gives you the benefits of walking or running, but with less impact and more resistance. Keep it simple by moving just as you would while running on land, or alter the difficulty by using water weights, doing intervals, adding high-knees or butt-kicks, or running backward. If you stay in the shallow end, somewhere between knee- and chest-depth, you will have more impact (as your feet hit the bottom) but less resistance in the water. Moving to deeper end may slow your speed but make your workout lower impact and more challenging.

While aqua

When an investigation proved early this year that research linking autism and vaccines was fraudulent, it seemed the debate over when or whether to immunize children might quiet down. But new voices have piped up in the vaccine controversy, and this time, they belong to pediatricians.

While most parents do choose to vaccinate their children on schedule with their doctors' recommendations, the trend of delaying or opting out of scheduled shots worries many pediatricians. And some pediatric practices are responding by requiring patients to get immunized on schedule or to find another doctor -- no shots, no service.

Why would a pediatric practice show anti-vaccine families to the door? Dr. Scott J. Goldstein of the Northwestern Children's Practice in Chicago, where a vaccine policy was implemented June 1, said they do it to protect children and to provide better care for all the patients he and the seven other staff pediatricians see.

Pointing to a strong scientific record supporting