Untitled
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

Untitled
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

Untitled
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

Untitled
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

Untitled
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

Untitled
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

Untitled
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

Untitled
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

Untitled
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

Untitled
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

Untitled
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

Untitled
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

Untitled
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

Untitled
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

Untitled
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

Untitled
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

Untitled
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

Untitled
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

Untitled
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

Untitled
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

Untitled
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

Untitled
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

Untitled
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

Untitled
USC economic historian Richard Easterlin issued an amazing principle in 1974, later known as the "Easterlin paradox": because people judge themselves in relation to others, any real jump in income makes little difference in how they feel about themselves. Having more isn't enough -- unless someone else has less. Even gains in relative income make little difference: We just compare ourselves to a h... posted on Mar 6, 1209 reads

Untitled
The number of chronically hungry people in the world is set to fall from 776 million now to 440 million in 2030, says the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. But instead of halving by 2015 - the goal adopted by the 1996 World Food Summit - the number of the undernourished will fall only by 11 per cent by that time.... posted on Mar 14, 1178 reads

Untitled
Spend one day volunteering in the community with Red Lion hotels program, and they'll give you a free night's stay at their hotel!... posted on Mar 19, 846 reads

Untitled
He was ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1962 with a charge to continue his service with children and families through television. His show "Mister Roger's Neighbordhood" is the longest running show (30 years) in history of public TV; in its peak, it was watched by 8% of the U.S. households! On February 26, at the age of 74, Mr. Rogers passed away but left behind a culture that will remembe... posted on Mar 11, 1279 reads

Untitled
British biologist Rupert Sheldrake has documented on videotape how some dogs appear to anticipate the arrival of their owner. Regardless of the time of day that the owner begins their journey home, some of these dogs appear to sense their human companion coming without receiving any known physical signals, and wait for them next to the door or window.... posted on Jun 5, 1055 reads

Untitled
He signed his name with an "X" for almost a century, as a grandson of a slave. Then, at the age of 98, George Dawson started learning to read and write! So much so that he published a celebrated book -- 'Life Is So Good' -- when he was 101 years old.... posted on Mar 15, 1884 reads

Untitled
More than half the world lives on less than two dollars a day. Ever wonder if you could take those 5 bucks for coffee and buy something from a rural artisan in a developing country? How 'bout if you knew that there were no middle-man costs? Welcome to yet another fully volunteer-run project of CharityFocus that is getting rave reviews -- Community Shops!... posted on Aug 5, 1378 reads

Untitled
While the developed nations agonise over their GNP (gross national product) and we fret about the GST, "60 Minutes" reports of a place, perhaps the only place in the world, where the official government policy is GNH - gross national happiness. It's the tiny kingdom of Bhutan, where the government not only legislates for happiness, it also tries to protect its people from encroaching globalisation... posted on Mar 27, 1365 reads

Untitled
Halfway around the world, American Sufi Muslims join in. Fundamentalist Christians add their prayers, as do Orthodox Jews at Jersualem's Western Wall. "Jimmy P," a heart patient at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina, is part of a global scientific experiment trying to find out: Does prayer heal? Yes, is the answer of more and more experiment in this arena.... posted on Apr 5, 1111 reads

Untitled
What do Australian Aboriginal Grandmothers and Coalminer’s Daughter in West Virginia have in common? They just won the coveted Goldman prize -- often referred to as the Nobel Prize for Environmentalism -- for their grassroots activism.... posted on Apr 25, 1060 reads

Untitled
Michael Moore put 1,000 dollars in a long-term account at North Country Bank in Michigan, they did the background check, and, within an hour, he walked out with his complimentary gift -- a gun! Michael Moore opened his Oscar winning documentary with live scene from this encounter.... posted on Apr 12, 1069 reads

Untitled
More than 50 years ago, a little book called 'The Power of Positive Thinking' took the world by storm. Written by a minister, Dr. Normal Vincent Peale, the book was a mix of natural psychological insight and faith-based principles applied to everyday problems of living. The publishers are re-releasing the book now.... posted on May 2, 1096 reads

Untitled
500 tons of good intention. That's right. For five years, they've been planting a row for the hungry and donating the produce. Couple months back, volunteers at Village Harvest hit their million pound mark!... posted on Oct 3, 495 reads

A Garden of Giving
Rudy Viereckl worked on experimental flowers all day, tended a home garden at night, but still, felt the need for more. What he wanted was a garden designed to benefit others, not himself. So he planted a row for the hungry, rallied his friends and ended up collecting 41,652 pounds of produce!... posted on May 16, 1185 reads

Untitled
Do you have an idea that will change your community for the good? Are you between 18 and 29? If so, 'Ideas Happen' is willing grant 12 inspired ideas with 25,000 bucks.... posted on Apr 24, 776 reads

Untitled
Meditation is fast appearing in unexpected places throughout modern culture. Secretaries do it as part of their daily noon yoga classes. Preadolescent teenagers dropped off at the YMCA by their mothers on a Saturday morning are learning it as part of their karate training. Truck drivers and housewives in the Stress Reduction Programs use it to control hypertension. Prisoners engage in 10 days o... posted on Apr 26, 2593 reads

Untitled
Often when animal lovers travel, they see animal abuse that disturbs them. Compassionate Traveler's website gives them a place to learn more about a tourist destination before they travel, and it also gives them an opportunity to do something about animal welfare issues they might observe.... posted on May 3, 1019 reads

Peace through 'Guru Currency'
If you're ever in the Netherlands, you can officially use 'guru currency'. The group founded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, famous for being a spritual teacher to Beatles, has issued a currency named after an Indian diety -- "raam" -- that they hope will alleviate poverty and create world peace.... posted on May 15, 1850 reads

Untitled
Each year water-related diseases kill more people than AIDS and cancer combined. Just today, more than 25,000 people will die because of unsafe drinking water.... posted on May 10, 1024 reads

Untitled
Research by Paul Ekman, at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, suggests that meditation and mindfulness can tame the amygdala, an area of the brain which is the hub of fear memory.... posted on May 30, 1166 reads