of gold, copper, and palladium from the discarded devices. Sometimes, this involves concocting a noxious stew of cyanide and nitric acid, then burning the remaining plastic in crude firepits. Throughout the process, workers are exposed to lead, mercury, and cadmium, among other toxic substances. One place our waste ends up is Guiyu, China, a port city of 150,000 on the South China Sea. As documented by the Basel Action Network, Guiyu is home to more than 5,000 small, mostly family-run businesses that trade in e-waste. A study published in the Journal of Environmental Health Perspectives found that children living in Guiyu had significantly higher levels of lead in their blood than ... posted on Feb 17 2014 (13,511 reads)

this is what our brains were wired for: reaching out to and interacting with others,” writes Lieberman. “These social adaptations are central to making us the most successful species on earth.” Lieberman thinks we should accept this about ourselves and use the information to change our social institutions for the better. For example, he points to studies that show how social capital in an organization is tied to its economic success. If this is true, it makes sense for business leaders to develop social skills to better understand the needs and motivations of their workers in order to gain a more productive workforce. Schools need to encourage better social clima... posted on Feb 24 2014 (20,733 reads)

on: 1. Labor rights The Harry Potter Alliance took off when Slack and his friend Seth Soulstein, from their traveling comedy group, the Late Night Players, joined with the group Walmart Watch and created "Harry Potter and the Dark Lord Waldemart" YouTube videos. The featured main character is a cloaked figure with a Walmart smiley face for a head, the evil Waldemart. The videos describe Walmart's unjust labor practices and how their low prices force local shops out of business. Just as Lord Voldemort treats his servants poorly (for example, SPOILER ALERT!, he chops off Wormtail's hand and murders Professor Snape), Walmart, the world's largest private emp... posted on Feb 25 2014 (30,361 reads)

him open and close the door, because he does it so completely. For him, the door is it. He is there. All his life comes down to that one point, when he's closing and opening that door. He is just closing and opening that door. That is it. He has that detachment with outcome which lets him fully experience the present. But then everyone can ask all sorts of cynical questions about it, right? Well, if you don't care for the outcomes, how can you really get anywhere? What if you had a business and you did all this? How are you going to get anywhere? You're not going to do anything. And that's a legitimate response. But I've experienced quite to the contrary with Service... posted on Mar 7 2014 (46,005 reads)

the package?” confirms the woman dispersing my spice-scented-daydream.      “Yes,” says the man. A stamp is applied to the troublesome package. And it is tossed out of sight.      But three days later it still lingers in my mind. I relate this story to my husband, wondering why I feel so invested in this stranger and his unopened package, so implicated in their fate. “Odd to feel like this when technically it’s none of my business,” I muse.      “Only technically?” smiles my husband.      “Yes, only technically,” I reply, “because the truth i... posted on Mar 26 2014 (26,964 reads)

I’ll send the rest.” It’s a training, it’s a process, layer by layer—that is how the body and the psyche work. Six: Set your intention. There is a whole complex and profound teaching in Buddhist psychology about the power of both short-term and long-term intention. When you set your intention, it sets the compass of your heart and your psyche. By having that intention, you make obstacles become surmountable because you know where you are going. whether it is in business, a relationship, a love affair, a creative activity, or in the work of the heart. Setting your intention is really important and powerful. Seven: Learn the inner and outer forms of forgive... posted on Mar 15 2014 (62,784 reads)

no to Rwanda, I would be saying no to my own spiritual growth. Rwanda changed my life. Crossing the line at the Nevada Test Site changed my life. The Gulf changed my life. I'm still in contact with some of the people I met there who I interviewed, Becky Duet among them, who runs a convenience store in Galliano, Louisiana. She now is riddled with an autoimmune disease that they cannot diagnose. She has been on chemotherapy for the last two years. She can barely walk. She has lost her business. She called me and said, "Terry, can I tell you what we're seeing in the bayou now? One-eyed shrimp." She told me how night after night as members of her Cajun community were si... posted on Mar 22 2014 (12,571 reads)

makes some people more successful in work and life than others? IQ and work ethic are important, but they don't tell the whole story. Our emotional intelligence -- the way we manage emotions, both our own and those of others -- can play a critical role in determining our happiness and success. Plato said that all learning has some emotional basis, and he may be right. The way we interact with and regulate our emotions has repercussions in nearly every aspect of our lives. To put it in colloquial terms, emotional intelligence (EQ) is like "street smarts," as opposed to "book smarts," and it's what accounts for a great deal of one's ability to navigate l... posted on May 1 2014 (114,819 reads)

lives through books and films is one of the best ways of doing it. As the novelist Ian McEwan put it, "Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality."Why all this interest in the Empathy Library? One major reason is that empathy is a more popular concept today than at any time in human history. Everybody's talking about it, from the Dalai Lama to agony aunts, from business gurus to happiness experts. And it's not surprising, since in the last decade neuroscientists have discovered that 98 percent of us have empathy wired into our brains. The old story that ... posted on Apr 17 2014 (25,208 reads)

and variety of produce at the Chesterhill auction impressed Rapposelli enough that he started buying it for Ohio University. And because he was able to communicate his needs to farmers face-to-face, they started growing more of the types of produce he wanted most in the following year. "They were really responsive," Rapposelli said. Today, he supplies his two private restaurants with food from Chesterhill. But buying from a produce auction isn't exactly easy for a busy business owner. "It's the least convenient thing you could possibly do," Rapposelli said, laughing. A typical restaurant owner could source ingredients more quickly through a few Inte... posted on Apr 26 2014 (8,506 reads)

the imagery and their elegance and composition. RW: Did your dad discuss things with you from the newspaper? PVS: Yes. He was always plugged in. He worked for the McClatchy newspaper chain, which owned The Sacramento Bee, a very high quality newspaper. He was in charge of marketing for all of the McClatchy newspapers. RW: And you lived in Sacramento? PVS: Yeah. I remember as a kid going to the office with him. He would walk me around. My father loved the newspaper business and I think he kind of wished he’d entered the journalism side of it. He had great reverence for what they did. RW: What was it he revered do you think? PVS: He respected ... posted on Apr 18 2014 (9,125 reads)

presidents to hip-hop producers to poets, the last page of every issue of Harvard Business Review is always an interview with someone who has succeeded outside the traditional corporate world. Here, some of our favorite lessons from the class of 2013: Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on having long-term colleagues: “Treat people well. Don’t mislead them. Don’t be prickly. Don’t say things that are aggravating. Try to be as agreeable as you can be. Try to be helpful rather than harmful. Try to cooperate.” Cartoonist Scott Adams on using his MBA: “When the comic strip first came out, it showed Dilbert in a variety of settings&... posted on Apr 23 2014 (25,547 reads)

evangelist for the power of consumer engagement and education. He is also a believer in our shared impact using social media – including its built-in metrics – to change public perception and stir public action. All of these beliefs led him to create Litterati. (Click the sound file to hear how Jeff started Litterati.) In Silicon Valley and the entire Bay Area, we are used to hearing about simple ideas that can change the world – mostly in the field of consumer and business technology. But what if a simple idea could help change an entire planet’s perspective on trash and packaging for consumer goods? That’s the good that Jeff Kirschner sought to cre... posted on Apr 27 2014 (9,170 reads)

Treasurer is one of my favorite business authors - not just because his books are good - but because he reminds me of the Wizard of Oz - his work always offers three important elements: brains, heart, and courage. His newest book, "Leaders Open Doors" is no exception. I've been eager to talk to Bill about it and he graciously made time for an interview. BJ: I love the story behind your new book, "Leaders Open Doors." Would you share it with me again, for the benefit of my readers? Bill: For over two decades I've been a senior ranking member of the Legion of Leadership Complexifiers (LLC). We're the folks who make our living out of plumbing, parsing,... posted on Jun 21 2014 (20,095 reads)

where to start, so instead, I tipped my head slightly as to nod. She smiled, deposited $5 into our money box and left. I’ve been thinking about what she said ever since. I do what I do and there is no amount of money that anyone could give me to make me feel that it is an adequate match to what I have to offer. Not $5, not $5000. Because what I have to offer is not quantifiable. What I have to offer is myself and it not only reflects in my practice of Chinese Medicine but how I run my business. It is what has evolved over my 16 years of thinking about medicine and health and how I would like to affect and be affected by the world I live in. It is a reflection of my understanding of... posted on May 28 2014 (23,760 reads)

anxiety. Photo by Asife/ Shutterstock. Do you consider yourself creative? If the answer is "no," you are not alone. We have been working as creativity facilitators for close to two decades, and whenever we ask people this question, shockingly few hands go up. It turns out that you don't have to be a great artist to be creative. Creativity is simply our ability to dream things up and make them happen. Cooking breakfast, planting a garden, even developing a business plan are all creative acts. But here is where the arts do come in. Participating in the arts—even as amateurs—unlocks our creativity and empowers us in our everyday lives. A re... posted on Jun 5 2014 (1,860 reads)

and asks ‘When disaster occurs, how will we bounce back?’ This seems a realistic position to hold. We are facing an uncertain future as a result of climate change; disasters do seem to be happening all too often. But does our emerging notion of resilience, as a result, become an alternate way of thinking about disaster management rather than a longer term means to consider how to make our cities more robust and flexible in the face of uncertainty? Resilience is now big business. And, as a result, the term can suffer from the allure of ‘solution-ism’ -- the desire that, by doing something, all shall be well. These solutions often take two forms: design in... posted on May 27 2014 (11,092 reads)

are we’ve all experienced a bout of shyness in our lives, whether it’s when we've walked into a party full of strangers or tried to shine in a job interview. And if you identify as a shy person, you’re definitely not the only one -- approximately 40 percent of American adults feel the same way. And yes, shyness has been associated with negative outcomes -- characteristics like difficulty maintaining eye contact, feelings of humiliation and sometimes even detachment are all known to be part of a shy person's M.O. It's these traits that tend to affect some shy individuals' ability to connect, says C. Barr Taylor, a professor of psychology at Sta... posted on May 22 2014 (24,161 reads)

essentially and the faster we ticked all these things off the list, the faster we could get back to what our lives had been like before. What it took us a long time to realize is that we were never going to go back to our lives as they were before in the practical sense until she died. MS. TIPPETT: Then life would not be like it was … MS. GROSS: It wasn't like we could solve these problem, you know, fix her, put the wheels back on the broken bicycle and then go back about our business. And the not knowing how long it's going to last and what's going to happen next, I think, you know, the more of a control freak you are to start out with, the more disorienting that ... posted on Jul 2 2014 (28,264 reads)

she your grandmother?” “Great aunt. Ninety-one. Had a good life,” he said, and proceeded towards the dumpster, our conversation apparently over. He placed the neatly folded sheets and blankets down carefully, as if this were now the room in which they would be kept. I’d seen dumpsters full of discards of all kinds, but never one like this, packed like a trunk for an ocean voyage. I stood fixed to the spot, bewildered by the odd juxtaposition of sudden death and business-like calm. The nephew soon appeared with the next batch, which he stacked on top of the previous one in the same perfunctory manner. Considering his lack of feeling, I figured I could peer in... posted on May 27 2023 (24,981 reads)