Appetite for Risk: Bridging Poetry and Business
When John Barr speaks about risk, it's natural to assume he's talking about finance. He's actually not. It's true that Barr has been active in investment banking for more than 30 years -– mostly at Morgan Stanley. But recently, Barr, who has written poems that have been published in six collections, was named president of the Modern Poetry Association, which recently received a $100 million gift... posted on Jul 7, 1709 reads

Writing Emails with your Mind
While no spoons were bent, this was definitely mind over matter. Sitting stone-still under a skullcap fitted with electrodes, American scientist Peter Brunner stares at a computer. Without so much as moving a nostril hair, he suddenly begins to compose a message -- letter by letter -- on a giant screen overhead. Brunner and colleagues from the Wadsworth Center in New York were demonstrating a "bra... posted on Aug 15, 3004 reads

The Power of One
It might just be the most moving 1-minute video you have ever seen: Made by OneEarth.org, The Power of One combines evocative visuals with a moving original score by Academy Award winner Hans Zimmer, featuring historical and contemporary exemplars who have impacted the world and illustrated that when working toward greater good, the power of one becomes the power of many. Check out this deeply ins... posted on Jul 8, 4059 reads

Optimal Brain Performance? Try Solitude.
Ask UC Davis Neurobiologist Leo Chalupa what is needed to attain optimal brain performance, and his answer will likely shock you. He knows that there are programs offered now to make virtually any region of your neocortex a more efficient processor. Parents are urged to begin such regimes in preschool children and adults are told to take advantage of their brain's plastic properties for profession... posted on Jul 9, 2576 reads

Humble Grocer Donates Millions
Waldemar Kaminski spent a lifetime running his family's small East side grocery store. He never stopped working there -- not even after quietly making millions in the stock market. During his long life, Kaminski donated millions of dollars to relatives and friends in need, as well as making generous contributions to a cancer organization. His one condition? No one was to know of his generosity unt... posted on Jul 11, 3072 reads

From Child Slave to Film Director
At the age of four, he worked nine hours, seven days a week; he was "paid" a bowl of stale rice a day, which he shared with his widowed mother in a bamboo hut on the roadside. Few odd jobs later, he ended up at Muktaneer -- a shelter for homeless children -- where the seven year old not only got food but also time to play! His favorite toy was the "camera". And three year later, Sahiful Mondal'... posted on Jul 18, 2108 reads

Taking a Class in Happiness
Some 2,000 pupils at English state schools are to have special classes in happiness under a pilot scheme aimed at cutting depression, self-harm and anti-social behaviour. "The move comes as experts warn that record numbers of young people are on the verge of mental breakdown as a result of family break-up, exam pressures and growing inability to cope with the pressures of modern life," the report... posted on Jul 28, 2422 reads

The Boy Who Sees with Sound
Ben Underwood doesn't seem to know he's blind. There's Ben zooming around on his skateboard outside his home in Sacramento; there he is playing kickball with his buddies. To see him speed down hallways and make sharp turns around corners is to observe a typical teen –- except, that is, for the clicking. Completely blind since the age of 3, after retinal cancer claimed both his eyes, Ben has lear... posted on Aug 2, 2869 reads

Learning from the Bees
When it comes to bees making decisions, the question is whether the bee or the hive is the individual. Here's how the honeybees do it: when hives of honeybees get too big, they split up; the old queen flies off with a swarm of 10,000 bees or so and over the course of several days, scout bees search for real estate and come back to do waggle dances to promote their finds. So, then, how do the bees... posted on Jul 26, 2426 reads

Solar Powered Trash Cans
It's boxy and green but it's one of 50 solar-powered trash cans installed on the sidewalks of Boston. Equipped with trash compactors, the new receptacles can now hold a lot more trash and are much easier to manage. "Developed by a Jamaica Plain inventor, they are powered by photoelectric panels, which supply power to motor-driven compactors inside. Workers extract neat, 40-pound trash bricks ins... posted on Jul 31, 1435 reads

Singing To The Dying
After singing to a friend who laid in a coma with AIDS in 1990, Kate Munger realized that it would be her life's work. A few years passed and in August of 1997 driving back home from Montana, she committed herself to sing for any animals she encountered who have been killed on the road. Based on the inspiration of those two events, Kate Munger started the Threshold Choir -- small, volunteer-run ... posted on Aug 1, 2492 reads

The Ten Faces Of Innovation
What is innovation all about? It is about the roles people can play, the hats they can put on, the personas they can adopt. Tom Kelley, CEO of Ideo -- the top-notch firm that has designed things as diverse as the palm pilot and stand-up toothpaste -- talks about the ten personality types it takes to keep creativity thriving. (Interestingly he believes our tendency to play Devil's Advocate is one o... posted on Aug 10, 3274 reads

A Mountain Climber's Gratitude
In 1993, Greg Mortenson became very ill when climbing Mt. K2, the world's second tallest mountain, in the Himalayas. As he recovered for seven weeks in the small Pakistani village of Korphe, he was so touched by the kindness he received that he vowed to return to build their first school. True to his word, he founded the Central Asia Institute, which has built 55 schools across rural Pakistan and ... posted on Aug 22, 2415 reads

The Man Who Transformed Dacoits
It almost sounds like a page out of a storybook. He walks into the deep ravines of India's Chambal Valley to greet notorious gangsters with some sweets and an unflinching presence of compassion. Then one fine day, 654 bandits lay down their weapons in front of a small Gandhi statue and volunteer to go to jail: all in return for a scripture of their choice. Practically everyone would classify thi... posted on Aug 24, 2291 reads

Small-Mart Revolution
Wal-mart: those who love the retailer say that it provides 1.8 million jobs and makes life's necessities affordable to its 176 million weekly customers with limited incomes; those who hate the $312-billion-a-year behemoth refer to the "externalities" of those low prices -- the environmental degradation caused by sourcing cheap goods, the public services required by low-paid employees unable to mak... posted on Aug 30, 2358 reads

Twins Reunite Via the Internet
A pair of 3-year-old twins from China who were adopted separately by American families have found their way into each others' arms. The girls' mothers -- Holly Funk, of suburban Chicago, and Diana Ramirez, of suburban Miami -- met on a Web site for parents who had gone through international adoptions. After a flurry of e-mails comparing photographs and biographical details, DNA testing proved th... posted on Aug 27, 2543 reads

2 Million Alcohol Cars of Brazil
Brazil's new generation of cars and trucks adapted to run on alcohol has just hit the two-million mark, motor industry figures show. "Flex-fuel" vehicles, which run on any combination of ethanol and petrol, now make up 77% of the Brazilian market. Brazil has pioneered the use of ethanol derived from sugar-cane as motor fuel; it began its Pro-Alcohol programme more than 20 years ago to promote the ... posted on Aug 26, 1597 reads

Basketball Star Sports Fifteen Dollar Shoes
In shopping malls across the United States a revolution is brewing --inspired by a celebrity basketball player who is taking on the global might of companies such as Nike and Reebok. Star NBA player Stephon Marbury has embarked on a "change-the-world" mission that could transform the economics of the sportswear and sponsorship market. Teaming up with a leading US retailer Marbury is endorsing an ... posted on Sep 1, 3436 reads

Swirling Cash on Highway 5
A sales representative on the way to a business call made an unscheduled stop in the middle of the highway after noticing the cash swirling around his car. Ted Neitzke got out of his car and began collecting the bills while dodging the traffic, a total of a dozen $20 bills and two $1 bills, $242 in all. Then he called the Kenosha County Sheriff's Department to turn in the money. "I was just hop... posted on Sep 11, 2108 reads

Balancing Homework
Latest research shows that for high school students, there is no academic benefit studying beyond two hours a night; for middle-schoolers, 1.5 hours. In short, balance is key. Duke University professor Harris Cooper, the nation's best-known researcher on homework, also found that elementary school students get no academic benefit from homework -- except reading and some basic skills practice. But ... posted on Sep 13, 1903 reads

Schoolgirl to Experience Zero Gravity
Nigerian schoolgirl Stella Felix rises at 5 a.m. to do chores and then walks nearly an hour to get to school. When she gets back home, homework is done by candlelight. This Saturday, Felix soared above all that, becoming the first Nigerian to experience what it is like to fly in space. Thanks to a U.S. group that aims to give more people access to the wonders of space, Felix was the first of many ... posted on Sep 25, 1988 reads

Greatness: Nature or Nurture?
"What makes Tiger Woods great? What made Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett the world's premier investor? We think we know: Each was a natural who came into the world with a gift for doing exactly what he ended up doing. As Buffett told Fortune not long ago, he was "wired at birth to allocate capital." It's a one-in-a-million thing. You've got it - or you don't. Well, folks, it's not so si... posted on Nov 13, 5401 reads

100$ Ripples of Goodness
Pastor Gary Marzolf had a plan, an idea he got from the book "The Kingdom Assignment." On a Sunday last fall, he asked for 50 volunteers from his church in Iowa, to come up to the altar. "They were shocked that I was handing out $100 bills," Marzolf said, "because this is not something the church normally does, to give away money." Members were told to use the money to do something good, then they... posted on Sep 29, 1777 reads

Musical Training Fosters Brain Power
The latest research shows that young children who take music lessons show more advanced brain development and improved memory than those who do not. The Canadian scientists also claim to have found the first evidence of musical training being linked to greater attention skills. After a year, musically trained children performed better in a memory test that is correlated with general intelligence s... posted on Oct 3, 1815 reads

Harvard's Crowded Course On Happiness
The most popular course at Harvard University this semester teaches happiness. Positive Psychology, a class whose content resembles that of many a self-help book but is grounded in serious psychological research, has enrolled 855 students, beating out all other classes. 35-year-old Tal D. Ben-Shahar, the lecturer who teaches the course, describes how students might increase the likelihood of trans... posted on Oct 10, 5109 reads

Writing A Novel in 30 Days
Ever feel like there's a book inside you waiting to be written? Chris Baty and 21 of his friends did. In 1999 they started National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in San Francisco. Meeting every night for one month, they held themselves to a 2000-words-a-day requirement. No coffee refills or bathroom breaks if you didn't make the count. Something about the process worked: people who'd never imagi... posted on Oct 17, 2244 reads

Need A Lightbulb? Change the World.
Sitting humbly on shelves in stores everywhere is a product, priced at less than $3, that will change the world. Soon. It is an ordinary item that cuts to the heart of some of our world's most profound and urgent problems: Energy consumption. Global warming. Dependence on oil. The product is the compact fluorescent light bulb, a quirky-looking twist of frosted glass called a "CFL," or an "energy s... posted on Oct 22, 2084 reads

Modest School Teacher Wills Millions To Charity
Roberta Langtry spent most of her career in Toronto working as a speech therapist specializing in helping children with autism. When she died, at the age of 89, she willed a stunning $4.3 million to the Nature Conservancy of Canada, a charity that buys environmentally sensitive land and turns it into nature reserves. Her gift turned out to be the largest donation ever received by an environmental ... posted on Oct 24, 2622 reads

The Effect of Food on the Brain
Recent studies at the National Institute of Health (USA) are yielding astounding results about the effects of Omega-3 fatty acid supplements on the brain. Another study at Aylesbury Jail (UK) showed that when young men were fed multivitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids, the number of violent offences they committed in the prison fell by 37%. Although no one is suggesting that poor diet alo... posted on Oct 26, 2393 reads

Clinton's Global Initiative
The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) was created by Bill Clinton to develop a new model for philanthropy in the 21st century. For three days last September, CGI brought together some of the world's best minds and problem solvers. The organization functions like a marketplace for global change, where those with the passion to make a difference -- and others with the means to finance them -- come tog... posted on Nov 17, 3310 reads

American Generosity, Surveyed
A Harris Interactive online survey conducted in April 2006 had over 2500 Americans responding to a series of questions about Americans’ understanding of the sources and importance of generosity. The results? The home is the best teacher of generosity, with a helpful boost from the tax code. Most respondents thought that the family was the most important source of generosity, while nearly three o... posted on Oct 29, 1634 reads

A Photo Gallery Inspiring Adoption
Photographer Jackie Mathey came up with the unique idea of using her skills to try and capture the spirit of foster children in a way that would inspire people towards adoption. Her work led to the formation of Heart Gallery, an organization dedicated to raising awareness about children in need of families. More than 150 of the country's most prestigious photographers volunteered to take portrait... posted on Oct 31, 1222 reads

The Power of Nice
In the ruthlessly competitive world of corporate advertising, two women, Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval have taken their company to the top by following a simple but revolutionary principle: It Pays To Be Nice. Share the credit for an idea. Treat the messenger, the secretary and even strangers with respect. Don't squabble over who gets the biggest piece of pie, bake a bigger one. Find ways to... posted on Nov 1, 2275 reads

A List Of 43 Life Goals
Buy new socks. Get a haircut. Learn to speak Tamil. Become an astronaut. These are four of nearly 600,000 life goals posted on 43things.com, a digital library of the world's ink-smeared to-do lists. The "structured blog" invites users to list as many as 43 goals and chart their progress with brief entries. Participants can browse each others' goals, leaving encouragement and getting ideas about th... posted on Nov 8, 2675 reads

Putting Our World In Perspective
The magnititude of the world can be overwhelming. How massive is the number of impoverished people? What percentage of the overall population lives in urban areas? How vast is the threat of AIDS? It's hard to put things in perspective when the numbers are so large. The Miniature Earth gives a clear vista by reducing the global population to only 100, while keeping statistics the same. The effect e... posted on Nov 3, 2710 reads

Cloud Appreciation Society
As a child, Gavin Pretor-Pinney loved to watch the clouds -- a fascination that lasted well into adulthood. Two years ago, Gavin founded the unexpectedly popular Cloud Appreciation Society, an online community which now has 5,000 members from 39 countries. At one point, it was receiving more than 7 million hits a month! The site houses photographs of beautiful cloud formations from all over the wo... posted on Nov 4, 1953 reads

The Woman Behind The Pink Ribbon
Today, many recognize the pink ribbon as a symbol of the fight against breast cancer. Many will also recognize the last name of the woman behind this symbol. For more than a decade now, Evelyn Lauder (daughter-in-law of cosmetic giant, Estee Lauder) has been dedicated to helping find a cure for breast cancer and raising awareness of the disease. As an executive of the Estee Lauder Companies -- one... posted on Nov 12, 2861 reads

What our Youth Believe
Taking a page from NPR’s “This I Believe” essays, The Global Youth Fund (GYF) -- a youth-driven initiative to create the world's first democratic fund -- is compiling the collective wisdom of youth (ages 15-25). Focused on personal philosophies, core values and beliefs that serve as a day-to-day guide, these essays reflect what young people have to say about our world's most critical challen... posted on Nov 15, 2104 reads

The Green 50
High oil prices, global warming, the sense that chemicals cause real harm and that the earth's resources are indeed finite -- these are not so much charitable causes to embrace as they are problems that entrepreneurs can solve. Wall Street and Silicon Valley certainly understand this: Venture capital firms invested $958 million in renewable energy companies in the first half of 2006 alone. Today'... posted on Nov 21, 1745 reads

Scientific Foray into Consciousness
It wasn't that long ago that the study of consciousness was considered to be too abstract, too subjective or too difficult to study scientifically. But in recent years, it has emerged as one of the hottest new fields in biology, similar to string theory in physics or the search for extraterrestrial life in astronomy. No longer the sole purview of philosophers and mystics, consciousness is now attr... posted on Nov 26, 1757 reads

Leading A Happier Life
As a motivational speaker and executive coach, Caroline Adams Miller knows a few things about using mental exercises to achieve goals. But last year, one exercise she was asked to try took her by surprise. Every night, she was to think of three good things that happened that day and analyze why they occurred. That was supposed to increase her overall happiness. "I thought it was too simple to be e... posted on May 5, 8798 reads

The Vibrancy of Generation Next
The BBC's Generation Next season on World Service radio is a week of special programming dedicated to understanding and exploring the world of the under 18s -- the next generation. From an Antarctican's concerns for the seventh continent, to a Lebanese teenager's campaign to clean up an oil-slicked beach, from Indian pupils' initiative to green the country's most polluted city, to a poll on how un... posted on Dec 10, 1398 reads

Dancing Classrooms
It seeks to use the power of dance to do more than just bring elementary school students together. Dancing Classrooms was started in New York City in 1984 under the direction of ballroom dancer Pierre Dulaine. In Dulaine's words, "The children learn ballroom dancing, yes; but the real thing they are learning are the transferable skills of decorum, etiquette, being polite with each other, respect, ... posted on Dec 24, 2424 reads

A Graduate at Age 100
In 1925, Marvin L. "Hub" Northen, with $100 in his pocket, hopped on a train that brought him from his hometown of Holland, Texas, to Baylor University. Eighty-one years later, at age 100, Northen officially became a Baylor graduate, the oldest in the school’s history. When the Great Depression hit in the late 1920s, Northen was forced to leave school because he had to work to help his family ge... posted on Jan 3, 2265 reads

Mountaineer Brings Attention To Depression
Step by step. That's how people defeat depression and it's also how Joe Lawson climbs mountains. Lawson's father committed suicide in 1986 when he was 16. Today, at 36, Joe is funneling his passion for mountaineering into Expedition Hope, a quest to scale the seven summits -- the tallest mountain on each continent -- to focus awareness on depression. Lawson sees strong parallels between depress... posted on Jan 5, 2587 reads

Push for a Low Carbon Diet
Last June, when David Gershon saw Al Gore's global warming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," he knew that the time was ripe. In 2000, Gershon had created a step-by-step program, a la Weight Watchers, designed to reduce a person's carbon footprint. The idea received positive reviews, but it eventually fell by the wayside for lack of interest. In the last five years, however, attitudes toward gl... posted on Jan 6, 2302 reads

What Are You Optimistic About?
Each year the Edge Foundation poses one thought-provoking question to over one hundred of the world's leading minds. This year's question: "What are you optimistic about?" Edge publisher John Brockman points out that while conventional wisdom warns us that things are sliding from bad to worse, many of our top scientists have a brighter outlook on our future. This stimulating compilation of answers... posted on Jan 12, 3044 reads

Turning Everest's Trash Into Treasure
Thousands of adventurers have been drawn to Mount Everest by the challenge of climbing to the top of the world. Jeff Clapp was drawn by the trash they leave behind. Inspired by a documentary about Everest's rubbish, Clapp traveled to Nepal and brought a load of discarded oxygen bottles back in 2004. He has created a business of transforming those banged-up, aluminum containers into gleaming bells,... posted on Jan 18, 2425 reads

Vital Friends
In the recently published book "Vital Friends", author Tom Rath says people with a best friend at work are seven times more likely to be engaged in their job! His findings are based on a worldwide poll of eight million people by the Gallup Organization as well as information from the market researcher's employment engagement database. Rath says those with close friends at work are more likely to d... posted on Jan 23, 2752 reads

Diversity Makes A Difference
Arguments for equal opportunity are often based on moral reasons; Sociologist Cedric Herring recently decided to take things one step further. Given that discussions about morality are often divisive, he decided to take a more scientific approach. In other words, beyond the question of whether diversity is a good thing, is there evidence that it makes a difference? Herring found that companies tha... posted on Jan 28, 2135 reads