A Thanksgiving Quilt
What are you thankful for? Every Thanksgiving, that's the question Pete McGinn asks of his 3000 United Health Services employees. And then he weaves the best responses together as a "thanksgiving quilt". Read Pete's quilt for this year.... posted on Nov 26, 1615 reads

Human Follies and Human Wisdom
... posted on Dec 13, 1586 reads

Sowing a Cell Phone
Bury your cell phone and watch it come up as a flower. Yup, that's the latest from researchers at University of Warwick. Realizing that mobile telephones are quickly becoming one of the most commonly discarded electronic items, these researchers have designed stylish yet biodegrable cell phones!... posted on Dec 14, 1222 reads

78 Cents
With just 78 cents in his savings account and 44,000 owed to creditors, parking attendant Juan Rodriguez plunked down $1 on a lottery ticket. Good thing he wasn’t pinching pennies: He won the $88.5 million jackpot.... posted on Dec 11, 1184 reads

Burning Incense
Going to church may be good for the soul, but some Dutch researchers say it may not be so healthy for the lungs. The candles and incense regularly burned during religious services emit high levels of particulate matter, tiny airborne flecks that are considered one of the most harmful forms of air pollution, according to a new study by scientists at Maastricht University in the Netherlands.... posted on Jan 7, 1317 reads

Blind Person's Tongue
A blind person can see through his tongue? Indeed! NY Times recently reported on a fascinating new device, BrainPort, that can translate visual information from a camera to pulses that reach a blind patient's brain via his/her tongue. Interestingly enough, that blind patient was able to find doorways, see her wife in the park and play a game of rock, paper, scissors with his daughter! While t... posted on Dec 7, 1398 reads

The Power of Women
The new issue of Yogi Times is "a tribute to the power of female energy, to the amazing grace that emanates from every mother, every girl, every wife, every woman. Through their faith, their softness, their strength, their creativity and their dedication, women can change the world one person at the time."... posted on Dec 8, 1272 reads

Ideas of 2004
The New York Times Magazine takes stock of the passing year by creating a mini-encyclopedia of the most noteworthy ideas of the previous 12 months. Out of 71 ideas that made their cut, one of them was: You Don't Need Superstars to Win. New England Patriots won the Super Bowl without any big superstar, the Greek national soccer team won the European Championship with a bunch of no-namer and minor... posted on Dec 16, 799 reads

Peace Bombs
Around 50 Thai Air Force planes "bombed" the largely Muslim south with paper birds as a symbol of peace for the restive region where nearly 500 people have been killed since January. Villagers stared into the sky awaiting the deluge of an estimated 100 million paper birds, one of which was signed by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and carried the promise of a scholarship or a job for the finder.... posted on Dec 18, 1448 reads

A Santa Act
Residents of Samaritan House didn't know what to expect when the bearded, middle-aged man parked his sport utility vehicle in front of the downtown homeless shelter Christmas Eve. The man walked into the building, pulled out a thick roll of $100 bills and began passing them out to each of the approximately 300 residents. When he was finished, he had given out $35,000.... posted on Dec 28, 1232 reads

Word of the Year
Merriam-Webster's just published the top ten words of 2004. Top on the list? Blog. They define it as -- a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer.... posted on Jan 12, 950 reads

Harvard's Fun Czar
Harvard University students: overachieving, bookish bores or repressed party animals? A little of both, it seems. Following complaints that it does little to promote campus social life, the Ivy League school has hired its first "fun czar" -- Zac Corker, a recent Harvard graduate whose job is to build community spirit and help stressed-out students unwind. ... posted on Jan 18, 1043 reads

Orange Peel Plastic
Scientists have discovered a way to make plastics from orange peel, using the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Cornell University researchers created a novel polymer using CO2, an oil present in orange peel and a catalyst that speeds the reaction along. The team hopes CO2 could one day be collected for making plastics instead of being pumped into the atmosphere. ... posted on Apr 8, 1302 reads

Salt March
On April 5th 1930, after a 241-mile walk that drew thousands of followers, Mahatma Gandhi picked up a small lump of salt from the beach in Dandi, thereby breaking the British salt tax law and symbolically liberating India from the injustices of colonial rule. In March 2005, Tushar Ghandi, Mahatma's great grandson, is planning to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Salt March by reenacting the... posted on Feb 19, 1277 reads

Dipsea Demon
The Dipsea Race is a 7.1 mile race from Mill Valley to Stinson Beach that weaves through giant redwoods, wires up a 50-story stairway, and crosses over two mountains. The United States’ second-oldest footrace is grueling, requiring tremendous tenacity for anyone to tackle once, let alone 68 consecutive times. Meet Jack “Dipsea Demon” Kirk, the 96-year-old legend that is showing the world tha... posted on Jan 27, 1622 reads

Combating the Digital Divide
Rodrigo Baggio has taught computer and Internet skills to almost one million at-risk children. His project, the Committee to Democratize Information Technology (CDI), initially created a network of more than 200 self-managed computer schools in the urban slums of 17 Brazilian states. Helping students who might otherwise have turned to drug trafficking or violence, Rodrigo is bridging the digital d... posted on Feb 8, 1050 reads

Growing Happy
Could it be that age is the secret to happiness? Some psychologists believe that aging may help increase a person’s sense of wellbeing. Older people have a heightened awareness to the brevity of life since their time is running out, and therefore are more attuned to the present moment. By contrast, the heads of younger folks are often filled with concerns relating to the future, such as career ... posted on Feb 12, 3072 reads

Freedom Song
A self-taught guitarist, Vusi Mahlasela built his first guitars from cooking-oil cans, with fishing-wire for strings. In the 1980s, he was a voice of the revolution in South Africa. His music gave expression to the political ideals of the anti-apartheid movement. Today he sings for audiences all over the world, with his deeply moving ballads on liberation and reconciliation. Take a listen....... posted on Feb 15, 1124 reads

From the Heart
On February 14th, hundreds of San Francisco bus operators reacted with surprise and delight as dozens of bicyclists personally delivered 250 handmade Valentine's cards. What was the bicyclists’ motivation? Simply to acknowledge the vital service that bus operators provide.

... posted on Feb 24, 1432 reads

Wave of Aid
Inspired by the fundraising power of the neon yellow "LIVESTRONG" wristbands sold by the Lance Armstrong Foundaton, two Monta Vista High School students figured they could raise $5,000 selling wristbands -- bright blue ones inscribed with "WAVE OF AID" at $2 each -- to help a relief organization build a home in India for children orphaned by the Asian tsunami. Just a week after nearly selling out ... posted on Mar 12, 932 reads

Kyoto's Birth
With Russia's ratification in 2004, The Kyoto Protocal came into effect on February 16th 2005. Now international law, the protocal's intention is for industrialized countries to cut their greenhouse gas emmissions to 5% below 1990 levels by the year 2012. How much is our economic behaviour changing the face of the earth? The images that photographer Gary Braasch has been recording and assembling s... posted on Mar 1, 1522 reads

Playtime
Ph.D. Fred Donaldson plays with children, cancer patients, lions, gang members, and CEO's for a living. Not the win-lose "contest" behavior our culture thinks of as play, but a kind of physical, rolling-around-on-the-floor, connecting-heart-to-heart play. He considers this form of non-competitive play, which he calls "original play", to be the universal energy that connects all living beings.... posted on Mar 3, 1438 reads

Green Guitar
Gibson Guitar Corp., the iconic guitar maker, has worked since the late 1980s to make its wood supply environmentally sustainable. Yet unlike Starbucks, The Body Shop, and other businesses that eagerly brandish their green bona fides, Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz doesn't much care to flaunt his environmental cred (the guy drives a Hummer, after all). What matters to him is ensuring that Gibson ha... posted on Mar 18, 1421 reads

Project Homeless Connect
Amme Hill had never talked to a homeless person before, never helped out at a soup kitchen. Even though her heart went out to desperate people she saw on the street, she never found an opportunity to turn her compassion into action. That was until she attended Project Homeless Connect, a monthly gathering where hundreds of San Francisco citizen volunteers gather for a day to help city counselors, ... posted on Mar 24, 1004 reads

Pride
In 1966, a group of parents who had children with development disabilities got together in the basement of St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Auburn, Calif., to try to figure out a way to help their kids find employment and full integration into their communities. From that humble beginning sprang PRIDE Industries, the nation's largest employer of people with disabilities, with 4,300 workers in 11 sta... posted on Mar 26, 992 reads

Seeing No Limits
Tim Cordes has mastered much in his 28 years: Jujitsu. Biochemistry. Water-skiing. Musical composition. And most recently: Medical Doctor. Any one of these accomplishments would be impressive, but what makes them really extraordinary is that Tim Cordes is blind.... posted on Apr 5, 1548 reads

A River Reborn
Fifty years ago London's River Thames was so polluted that it was declared biologically dead. Now the river that flows through the heart of Europe's largest city is awash with bottlenose dolphins, sea horses, and birds. Thanks to the success of pollution controls, today the river ranks among the cleanest metropolitan tideways in the world.... posted on Apr 26, 1489 reads

Mind Reader
Scientists say they can read a person's unconscious thoughts using a simple brain scan. A team at University College London found that with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan results they could tell what a person was thinking deep down even when the individual was unaware themselves. The technique has some psychological healing potential for people in revealing repressed memories, h... posted on Apr 27, 1695 reads

Planetwalker
After a massive oil spill polluted San Francisco Bay in 1971, Francis gave up all motorized transportation. For 22 years, he walked everywhere he went --Soon after, he gave up speaking. For 17 years, he communicated only through improvised sign language, notes, and his ever-present banjo.... posted on May 21, 1064 reads

Music for the People
Rita Simo left an impoverished upbringing in the Dominican Republic for the Juilliard School, became a concert pianist, and then a nun. In 1976, acting on her belief that classical music instruction should be available to everyone regardless of economic class, she opened the People's Music School in 1976. The school, in Chicago's gritty Uptown neighborhood, provides tuition-free music instructio... posted on May 3, 1203 reads

Hole In the Wall
Looking beyond the perimeter fence from inside his IT compound in New Delhi India, Sugata Mitra could literally see the digital divide; young techno-savvy professionals inside, dispossessed children outside. Taking it upon himself to bridge this divide, he cut a hole in the fence and hooked up a computer to give the children a chance to see what one was. What happened next amazed him. They taught... posted on May 7, 2638 reads

Chocolate
While chocolate is sweet for us, it is heartbreaking for cocoa producers and their families. In 2001, The US State Department reported child slavery on Ivory Coast cocoa farms, the origin of 43 percent of the world's cocoa. Global Exchange has been demanding that the US chocolate industry solve this crisis by selling Fair Trade chocolates. Fair Trade is a brand that verifies cocoa farmers are bein... posted on May 12, 1313 reads

Wikipedia
Launched in 2001, Wikipedia is an open source, free-content, and entirely volunteer-written encyclopedia with more than 1/2 million articles on nearly every topic imaginable. Although its status as a reference work is contestable, it receives some 60 million hits a day. ... posted on Jun 9, 2767 reads

The Trust Molecule
What creates trust? Scientist have found that the hormone oxytocin, which acts on regions of the brain that regulate emotions and social behaviors, are key to determining whether we will trust lovers, friends or business contacts.... posted on Jun 11, 1647 reads

Song Bird
Researchers have discovered one of the most sophisticated signaling systems among animals for warning of danger — alarm calls that can describe the kind of predator and even its size. The black-capped chickadees warn birds of the same feather with information-packed calls. ... posted on Jun 30, 1218 reads

Carbonless Economy
Portland Oregon has reduced carbon emissions below the levels of 1990, the benchmark for the Kyoto accord, while booming economically. The campaign to cut carbon emissions has brought the city huge benefits: less money spent on energy, more convenient transportation, and expertise in energy efficiency that is helping local businesses win contracts worldwide. ... posted on Jul 8, 1381 reads

Rwandan Renewal
Eleven years after a horrific genocide in which 800,000 Rwandans died, this small African country is hoping to lead Africa into a new hi-tech age. This largely agricultural based economy is sowing seeds of a different variety: fibre optic cable is being laid across the country in hopes it will be able to harvest foreign investment and high paying IT jobs in the years to come.
... posted on Jul 12, 779 reads

Elves
From city planning to landscaping decisions, residents of Iceland are wary of building near elvish homes. The majority of Icelanders either believe or won't rule out the existence of these fiesty, humanlike, rock-dwelling creatures. At the very least, elves give Icelanders reason for a deep healthy respect for the environment and the powerful forces in nature. ... posted on Jul 16, 1785 reads

Vision
What will the cities of the future look like? Sustainable architect William McDonough has a vision of cities as a place to love all species for all time. Dubbed the Next City, they will be designed from the molecule up to be ecologically intelligent and socially just. It's not just an unreachable eco-topia, China has commissioned him to design seven entirely new cities.... posted on Jul 21, 1224 reads

Grand Challenges
Who would ask experts to list the top 14 challenges that, if solved, would advance the prevention and treatment of diseases that affect the 2 billion poorest people on earth, then ask the world’s best scientists to develop solutions to those challenges, then fund 43 of those solutions with half a billion dollars? The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations’ Grand Challenges in Global Health. ... posted on Jul 23, 2372 reads

Urban Reinspiration
J.L. Hooymayers and his neighbors worried that their Rotterdam inner city neighborhood was going to the dogs. Everyone complained most about how the litter wasn’t being picked up, blaming the city government. Hooymayers, however, had a different approach to fixing the problems: he started to clean up the mess himself.... posted on Jul 30, 1258 reads

Mosaic Music
Rick Sperling started the Mosaic Youth Theatre in 1992 to offer young people 12 to 18 years-old free training in theatre, vocal music and stage craft. The theatre delivers opportunity, with less than half of Detroit's high school students finishing school, more than 95 percent of the kids who perform with the Mosaic Youth Theatre end up in college.... posted on Aug 4, 1230 reads

Organic Farming
Organic farms are better for wildlife than those run conventionally, according to a study covering 180 farms in England. The organic farms were found to contain 85% more plant species, 33% more bats, 17% more spiders and 5% more birds. ... posted on Aug 6, 1582 reads

Fairy Godmother
Shannon Engelbrecht, a.k.a the fairy godmother of real estate, is in the business of helping families purchase homes in San Francisco's high-priced market. After cashing in her stock options at the technology company she worked for, she decided to invest her small fortune in a way that was socially conciouss. By purchasing the buildings herself, and then providing her tenants with a lease-to-own ... posted on Aug 9, 1754 reads

Human Touch
Turns out that hugging is good for the heart in more ways than one. Researchers from the University of North Carolina found that hugs increased levels of oxytocin, a "bonding" hormone, and reduced blood pressure - which cuts the risk of heart disease. ... posted on Aug 11, 1750 reads

Warped Perception
For the last 300 years, the whole basis of science has relied on our observational senses; but our senses are the least reliable test of what we call reality. Your senses tell you that the ground you are sitting on is stationary and yet we know it is spinning at a dizzying speed, hurtling through space at thousands of miles an hour. Your senses also tell you that, from where your are standing, the... posted on Aug 12, 1584 reads

Neighbor
The BBC series Tales from the Green Valley follows historians and archaeologists for a year as they recreate Welsh farm life from the 17th Century. One of the most lessons learned from the experiment that is applicable to modern life was, know your neighbor. The more your willing to help others the more they would be prepared to help you in times of need. ... posted on Aug 23, 1288 reads

Alchemy
Having spent his childhood losing friend after friend to guns in a tough Los Angeles neighborhood, John Ricker has organized a series of events called Gun Bakes. Usually taken place at the site of a gun related death, the community gathers to participate in the melting of donated assault rifles and handguns that are transformed into pieces of public art. ... posted on Aug 24, 1406 reads

Recording Africa
Michael Fay, the man who slogged 2,000 miles on foot documenting the central African forests on his 2001 "Megatransect", has just finished another African project, the “Megaflyover”. In a small Cessna plane flying only a few hundred feet about the ground, he shot more than 100,000 images over 60,000 miles from South Africa to Morocco. His conclusion? “Overall, I was more impressed than depre... posted on Aug 25, 1543 reads

Holistic Health
Can a pulled hamstring be caused by a skewed jaw? Can gum disease increase the risk of a heart attack? Absolutely, according to a new crop of dentists that are breaking away from the traditional view that the health of the teeth is somehow separate from the health of the body. Holistic dentistry, one of the fastest-growing health-care fields, treats the mouth in relation person's physical and psyc... posted on Aug 27, 1256 reads