Mankind is No Island
"Mankind is No Island" is a cleverly crafted visual and musical narrative -- with a production budget of a whopping $57. Jason van Genderen shot this entire movie on a cell phone using emotive images found on street signage in Sydney and New York. Winner of the TropFest NY 2008 award, the world's largest short film festival, it is a three and half minute meditation on hope and hunger, on community... posted on Sep 05 2011, 5,021 reads

Ten Things Everyone Should Know About Time
"'Time' is the most used noun in the English language, yet it remains a mystery. We've just completed an amazingly intense and rewarding multidisciplinary conference on the nature of time, and my brain is swimming with ideas and new questions. Rather than trying a summary (the talks will be online soon), here's my stab at a top ten list partly inspired by our discussions: the things everyone shoul... posted on Sep 03 2011, 25,984 reads

The Doctor Who Would Not Give Up
Dr. Richard Olney is racing to finish what is almost certain to be his last research paper. The 63-year-old neurologist is considered one of the country's top clinical specialists for ALS, popularly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. ALS is also the reason Olney is in a hurry to finish his paper: He was diagnosed with it in 2004 and now has almost no muscle function left. But Olney's most enduring con... posted on Aug 31 2011, 4,500 reads

What Makes Extreme Do-Gooders Tick?
"From protecting our natural environment to improving our children's education to combating global poverty and disease, we've come to rely on extreme do-gooders to tackle the world's toughest problems. Few of them will make as much as they could in the private sector. They may lose a relationship with a loved one to their work, or miss their kids' big moments. All of which raises the obvious: Why?... posted on Aug 18 2011, 4,841 reads

Her Heart Was Bigger Than This Room
It is a tragic story, but one that touches and inspires. For her 9th birthday, instead of getting presents for her, Rachel Beckwith asked loved ones to donate to charity:water, a nonprofit bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. Her goal was $300, enough to give 15 children access to clean water, but she only got to $220. A month later, tragedy struck, when her fami... posted on Aug 17 2011, 10,904 reads

Sacred Giving and Receiving
Giving has long been a central part of American Indian cultures. It may be a means of giving thanks, of bringing the people together, of gaining honor, of distributing material goods so that all may survive, or of teaching. Giving away things informally is also common in American Indian communities in times of good fortune. And yet, in much of the twentieth century, American Indian giveaway practi... posted on Aug 16 2011, 36,618 reads

The Horse Whisperer
"Your horse is a mirror to your soul, and sometimes you may not like what you see," says Buck Brannaman, a cowboy who travels around the U.S. helping horses with "people problems." The documentary film, Buck, follows Brannaman from an abused childhood to an incredibly successful relationship with horses. In the film, the animal-human relationship becomes a metaphor for facing the daily challenges ... posted on Aug 15 2011, 5,894 reads

7 Ways to Have More by Owning Less
Stuff. We invariably accumulate it and often times develop a certain emotional attachment to it. To some extent, it's the effect of increased marketing, but it is also our own conditioning. Fortunately, new digital platforms and cloud-based tools are making it increasingly easy to have many of the things we want without actually owning them. Because, as Wired founder and notable futurist Kevin Kel... posted on Aug 11 2011, 92,179 reads

The 3 Stages of Generosity
How do you think about generosity? In this recent TEDx Talk, Nipun Mehta shares his experiences with generosity, broken down into three stages: Give, Receive, and Dance! When you give, you find that the compassion felt around you is contagious and it, in turn, creates a community. When you receive, you discover abundance, you realize generosity exists in so many different ways. And finally, when y... posted on Aug 09 2011, 5,215 reads

Going Beyond Profit
The simple for-profit model that has guided business practice in the past appears to be shifting towards a new paradigm. Profitability is important, but only when it serves the more fundamental goal of creating value for others through our gifts. And when a company's strategy loses touch with this key principle, the potential for true value-creation is also lost. In this article, Decision Analyst ... posted on Aug 08 2011, 14,708 reads