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When the dot-coms went bust, Silicon Valley's unemployment rate sky rocketed. But so did applications to Peace Corps, which went up by 12%. Dot-commers out of a job are making most of their time off and enaging in social change. "Upgrade your memories, download the world":... posted on Sep 18, 2184 reads

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"My hair was standing straight up when she played," said someone from the audience. "I could not breathe when she finished," said another. Debra Sayer's brilliant piano performance ended to explosive applause and teary eyes. Debra is blind.... posted on Jul 2, 433 reads

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Leonardo Diaz had given up hope. The novice climber was lost in a snowstorm, and didn't have any more prepaid minutes on his cell phone to call for help... then the phone rang... a telemarketer!... posted on Jul 13, 1450 reads

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The owners of the car wash were baffled. Thousands of dollars were disappearing from the change machines, but how? Accusations were "flying" all over the place and nerves were on edge... until they caught the thieves on camera... birds!... posted on Jul 11, 926 reads

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In the developing world, fertility rates vary in inverse proportion with literacy rates. For example, Afghanistan, with a female literacy rate of only eight percent has a fertility rate of 6.9 per 1,000 population. Thailand, in contrast, has a literacy rate of 88% and a fertility rate of 2.6/1,000. Source: United Nations... posted on Jul 16, 1247 reads

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Contrary to the stereotype, nearly eight in ten Silicon Valley residents say they gave money or property to charity (78%) and 49% volunteered in the community. ... posted on Aug 5, 1303 reads

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Journalists are often exposed to many compelling situations. Leslie Griffith, news-anchor on San Francisco's top-rated newscast, ran into 9-year old Mitchell on an assignment in Oakland and then ended up adopting him.... posted on Jul 19, 2092 reads

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The Business Plan Archive collects Internet boom time business plans. It's a great example of learning from our past and our mistakes.... posted on Jul 20, 1272 reads

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Two teenagers find 4000 dollars in cash. They were tempted to keep the money but then did the "right thing" and turned it in. They each received a reward for their honesty.... posted on Jul 27, 1026 reads

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Kindness of strangers. When are people more likely to help someone in a chance encounter on a city street? Researcher Rober Levine finds that small cities are the big winners! Squeezing too many people into too small a space leads, paradoxically enough, to alienation, anonymity and social isolation.... posted on Apr 30, 1227 reads

Something To Sing About
When Charice was just 4 years old, her mom discovered her talent for the first time. "She thought the radio [was] playing. In the small Filipino village where Charice lived as a child, there wasn't much to sing about. When Charice was 3 years old, she says she remembers seeing her father fly into a fit of rage and take out his anger on her mother. But after being on Oprah in May, now at the age of... posted on Oct 25, 3690 reads

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Horrified by the extreme poverty he witnessed on a trip to India, artist Mark Henson created a painting to depict the vulgar contrast he saw between material excesses and destitution. See his painting, Sharing the Wealth.... posted on Aug 16, 1467 reads

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At the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, the international community adopted Agenda 21, an unprecedented global plan of action for sustainable development. But the best strategies are only as good as their implementation. Ten years later, the Johannesburg Summit now offers an exciting opportunity for today's leaders to adopt concrete steps and identify quantifiable targets for better implementing Agenda 2... posted on Sep 3, 806 reads

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Having been bullied as a sensitive child in the segregrated South, nine year old Vernon Kitabu Turner vowed "to become the protector of the weak," giving himself to the art of self-defense "with no less devotion than the samurai of Japan." With 'a mind like water,' he is now able to defeat the greatest of opponents -- with a single finger -- leaving them unharmed and himself with a heart full of ... posted on Sep 5, 1217 reads

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A study conducted at the University of Michigan Research Center and published in the March 1998 Issue of American Health found that volunteering, more than any other activity, dramatically increases life expectancy.... posted on Sep 13, 944 reads

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An Austrian farmer's life was saved by his clever dog, "Tschibsi", who ran 2 km, found help and returned with a rescue helicopter!... posted on Nov 6, 1005 reads

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At age 9, Melissa Poe wrote a letter to then President Bush which, through her own efforts, was reproduced on over 250 donated billboards across the country. The response to her plea for help was so overwhelming that Poe established Kids For A Cleaner Environment (Kids F.A.C.E.) in 1989. There are now 300,000 members of Kids FACE worldwide and is the world's largest youth environmental organizatio... posted on Aug 30, 645 reads

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Years ago, Brad Wolgamott met a man who changed his life. Now a retired, but still young, multimillionaire, Wolgamott is trying to have the same kind of impact on children from his community. A baseball diamond, rock-climbing wall, rope bridge and trout pond are part of the environment he's created to help kids reach their own dreams.
... posted on Oct 8, 908 reads

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Researchers have shown how emotions, such as fear, travel along separate paths through the brain and are more likely to interfere with a person's efforts to focus than simple distractions.
... posted on Sep 7, 756 reads

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Do all rappers spend their time writing lurid and obscene lyrics? Far from it - these two are publishing kids books with a positive message: ... posted on Sep 27, 968 reads

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The Bollmann household is in a state of organized chaos. No shower can last longer than three minutes, two washing machines are running at all times, and every family member's activity - from chores to band practice - is arranged on a complex, gridded schedule.... posted on Oct 10, 809 reads

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What would you do with a million dollars? Twenty leading scientists will receive a million bucks over the next four years to bring the creativity they have shown in the lab to the undergraduate classroom. "Research is advancing at a breathtaking pace, but many university students are still learning science the same old way, by listening to lectures, memorizing facts and doing cookbook lab experi... posted on Sep 20, 5630 reads

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While U.S. incomes have gone up in the past thirty years, the percentage of people reporting that they are “very happy” has remained unchanged. Meanwhile, divorce rates have doubled, and teen-suicide rates have tripled. (Source: The Sun, August 2002)... posted on Sep 24, 722 reads

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The Japanese have phrase called "wabi-sabi" -- a feeling of appreciation for things whose wear and aging reveal life’s impermanence. For example, if you have had a cup, table, or chair in your family for several generations, each chip or scratch is not an imperfection, but a memory, inviting you to reflect on all the others before you who held that cup or touched that table.... posted on Oct 3, 2126 reads

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In what advertising industry watchers said is a first, a Portland pizza-by-the-slice company has hired homeless people off downtown sidewalks to take part in a guerrilla marketing campaign. They are paid in pizza, soda and a few dollars. A slice of hot, fresh pizza dripping with cheese in return for 40 minutes of holding a sign.... posted on Jun 20, 1028 reads

Time for Tea
Watch out green. Here comes the white tea. The pale minimally processed Chinese tea is being pitched as the next great thing for drinking and as a cosmetics ingredient. Researchers show that white tea has more disease-fighting antioxidants than green tea. The white elixir has joined green tea as a possible preventative for many troubles, from stopping certain cancers to fighting wrinkles.... posted on Jul 2, 1427 reads

Four Tips To Prevent Burnout
"I believe burning out as an isolated martyr is old school. I was thinking about that when I was driving my son to school. He loves to watch the engine battery diagram on the screen of our Prius to see when we're burning petroleum and when we're recharging the energy supply without a drain on the fuel. I realized recharging constantly like a hybrid vehicle is a way to avoid burnout. Here are a few... posted on Sep 3, 6500 reads

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Youngsters who scored the lowest on fearfulness scales between the ages of 5 and 11 were much more likely to play individual or team sports at a high level in adulthood.... posted on Sep 25, 1239 reads

The House That Care Built
Sonya Barclay, a mother of four, has terminal cancer ... and a dying wish. She wanted a home for her family. When a popular TV program turned down her plea, her neighbors stepped in... posted on Aug 31, 3385 reads

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We've all heard the importance of 'building bridges'. This group takes it literally. Bridges to Prosperity is a program that combines western ingenuity and indigenous manpower to build bridges that allow people in isolated villages access to markets for their goods.... posted on Oct 19, 1396 reads

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Victor, a skateboarding ace, Starbucks employee, and good friend of ours, was presented with the challenge of how to reduce the amount of garbage that his store produced. He offered a simple yet perfect solution: allow customers to take used coffee grounds for their gardens. Starbucks has adopted his suggestion in stores nationwide.... posted on Oct 17, 676 reads

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College students from around the country came to build solar powered buildings on the Mall in Washington – and many of these dwellings aren’t what you would expect.
... posted on Nov 7, 2013 reads

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Bummed out that no veggie dogs were being offered on SF streets, for the sake of what she felt passionate about, Brenda Carey decided to take matters into her own hands. By giving the vendor a free trial supply of veggie dogs which she purchased with her own money, she convinced him to give them a try. Amazingly, as she was putting up the sign, a woman came and bought one!... posted on Nov 2, 592 reads

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In June 2002 the UN predicted that AIDS will kill 70 million people in the next 20 years, mostly in poor countries, unless more is done to fight the disease. About 40 million people are now infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and 20 million have died of it since it was discovered in 1981. ... posted on Nov 13, 519 reads

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Hans Christian Andersen, Cher, Tom Cruise, Albert Einstein, Whoopie Goldberg, Greg Louganis, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Gen. George S. Patton, are/were all dyslexics.... posted on Nov 15, 853 reads

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Think you're too old to attain that dream? Think again, and read how Ron Fitch, at age 92, became the world's oldest person to earn a doctoral degree. The ABC News Story:... posted on Nov 16, 1048 reads

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If each commuting car carried just one more person, we'd save more than 18 million gallons of gasoline and keep more than 360 million pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere... every day. Source: DHEC Office of Solid Waste Reduction & Recycling... posted on Dec 3, 964 reads

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American trash haulers estimate that they dispose of 1.6 million tons of food every year between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day. (Source: Youthnoise)... posted on Dec 15, 1999 reads

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Daniel Mason graduated from Harvard and is a med student at UCSF. But in this spare time, he's become a best selling author of 'Piano Tuner' at the age of 26.... posted on Dec 13, 879 reads

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Po Bronson spent two years interviewing 900 people who decided to follow their hearts -- an investment banker who became a catfish farmer, an entertainment lawyer who was a truck driver, a researcher who turned into a chef, a Harvard MBA who became a police officer. In his book, "What should I do with my life?" he notes that money doesn't fund dreams, smarts don't answer the question and attitud... posted on Dec 26, 800 reads

Speeding Up Mt. Everest
When Lhakpa Gelu Sherpa set out this past spring to set an Everest speed ascent record, little did anyone know he would not only break the late Babu Chirri Sherpa’s Everest speed ascent record of 16 hrs 56, but shatter it altogether with a time of 10 hrs 56 min and 46 sec – 6 hours faster than Babu’s seemingly unbeatable record.... posted on Jun 7, 764 reads

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It's hard to believe -- someone walking from Gandhi's grave in India to Kennedy's grave in U.S. But that's Satish! He was Jain monk at 9, left at 18, eventually did the unimaginable walk for peace, founded the Schumacher College, received numerous international accolades, and now, is the editor of Resurgence. Meet Satish Kumar:... posted on Jan 29, 1230 reads

Anonymous Giving
She held up 50 white envelopes at her church. Each one had a 50 dollar bill and anyone could take it, no strings attached. Many pondered weeks on how to spend it. Many were transformed. But one thing was sure, the giving became contagious!... posted on Jul 22, 1142 reads

Here and Now
... posted on Jul 26, 628 reads

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Richmond High student Gustava Bennett-Burrus doesn't do the latest teen dance, the "shakey," and she doesn't carry a backpack with speakers blaring Eminem like the cool kids, but give her a break -- she's 97. It's been nearly nine decades since she dropped out of the fourth grade in a one-room school house in Boley, Okla., to pick cotton on her family's sharecrop farm. She's wished for a high sch... posted on Jun 11, 603 reads

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Countries generally have a 'Department of War' but why not a 'Department of Peace'? Democratic US Congressman Dennis Kucinich gave a major speech questioning the war on terrorism; following that, he is lobbying for a bill that will create a 'Department of Peace'. He says: if you think peace, you'll create peace. And forty-three fellow Congressmen already agree with him.... posted on Jan 8, 1192 reads

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A vast, but previously unknown structure has been discovered around the edges of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Astronomers believe it could hold clues as to how the Milky Way and other galaxies evolved.... posted on Jan 16, 1002 reads

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The Hunger site provides an opportunity for everyone to help feed the impoverished all over the world just by the click of a button. You click on the country and one of the several sponsors buys food on your behalf. Each click is worth 1.1 cups of food. ... posted on Feb 28, 1058 reads

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When two people are in close proximity, one's electrocardiogram (ECG) signal is registered in the other's electroencephalogram (EEG). In other words, one person's heartbeat signal is registered in the other person's brainwaves, and vice versa ... even without any physical contact! ... posted on Feb 18, 1038 reads

A Lioness Adopts Her Prey
A lioness in Kenya is doing the unthinkable -- adopting her prey! That's right, this lioness has just adopted her third calf (oryx) in three months and is said to be "fiercly protective" when any humans come near.... posted on Mar 5, 1467 reads