10 Open Hardware Projects To Save The Earth, by Tristan Copley Smith
the coattails of the rise of intellectual property and economic monopolies, the Open Source movement is thriving, expanding public access to knowledge, culture and tools. Advocates have opened up everything from software to science, media to politics...and of course, data. Now we even have an emerging model in which to implement and develop this openness, as Michel Bauwens describes in the following video. As Alastair Parvin of WikiHouse put it: “This increased access to knowledge is hugely important...it acts as the foundational infrastructure on which we can start to build a whole new economy.” 'Open' stands as a definitive yet diverse move... posted on Jun 10 2014 (17,951 reads)

Transforming Trauma Into Creative Energy, by Ted Comet
of giving in, the deepest thing we can do with trauma is to transmute pain into actions that heal ourselves and help other people. A powerful meditation on love, loss, recovery and resistance.   In 1998 my wife Shoshana was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. An accomplished artist and psychotherapist who worked with Holocaust survivors (of whom she was one), the woman who once spoke eight languages could barely speak at all. Did Shoshana know who I was? There were good days and bad. During the bad days I would say that the ‘light was definitely out.’ On the good days, I would come to her and embrace her. I w... posted on Jun 15 2014 (23,646 reads)

The 6 Essential Conditions of Creativity, by Maria Popova
like discriminating taste, grows on its use. You more likely act yourself into feeling than feel yourself into action.” One of the greatest preoccupations not only of our culture but of our civilization is the question of what creativity is, dating back to the dawn of recorded thought. But it wasn’t until the advent of modern psychology in the early twentieth century that our answers to the question began to take the shape of something more structured and systematic than metaphysical hunches — there’s Graham Wallace’s model of the four stages of the creative process from 1926, a five-step “technique for producing ideas” from 1939, ... posted on Jul 31 2014 (21,408 reads)

The Hidden Joy of Waiting In Line, by Carolyn Gregoire
spend an estimated 37 billion hours waiting in line each year, much to our individual and collective distaste. Few things inspire as much universal frustration and ire as long queues and lengthy wait times -- many of us even struggle to wait for a sluggish web browser to load. In fact, according to computer scientist Ramesh Sitaraman, Internet users may be a particularly impatient bunch. His research has found that we're willing to be patient, on average, for two seconds while waiting for an online video to load. “After five seconds, the abandonment rate is 25 percent," Sitaraman told the Boston Globe. "When you get to 10 seconds, half are gone.”... posted on May 31 2023 (26,136 reads)

Life and Leadership, by Fritjof Capra
is not an individual property, but is a property of an entire web of relationships. It is a community practice. This is the profound lesson we need to learn from nature. The way to sustain life is to build and nurture community. A sustainable human community interacts with other communities — human and nonhuman — in ways that enable them to live and develop according to their natures. Sustainability does not mean that things do not change. It is a dynamic process of coevolution rather than a static state. Because of the close connection between sustainability and community, basic principles of ecology can also be understood as principles of community. In part... posted on Jun 17 2014 (18,680 reads)

Humor As A Tool In Conflict Resolution, by Michael Nagler & Karen Ridd
is a time-honored strategy in the repertoire of nonviolence, but we must learn to use it properly. Poke fun at the problem not the person. Credit: http://breakingstories.wordpress.com. All rights reserved. Five or six men stood over me yelling as I sat in a chair at the Ministry of the Interior in San Salvador in 1989. I was there to renew my visa as a member of Peace Brigades International (PBI), an NGO that provides 'protective accompaniment' for teachers, trade unionists, students, indigenous leaders, church workers and other activists when faced by threats of violence. I was on the verge of tears, with horror stories fresh in my mind about people who had b... posted on Jul 8 2014 (36,340 reads)

The Power of Hobbies, by Carolyn Gregoire
naturally love to play and explore and use their imaginations -- but as adults, we often get so sucked into work and the demands of daily life that hobbies and creative outlets completely fall by the wayside. When you ask the average working adult what their hobbies are, there's a good chance they'll say "none." But in forgoing hobbies and personal creative projects, we may be doing ourselves a major disservice. "Finding time for ourselves is key to our own sanity," Joyce E. A. Russell writes in a "Career Coach" article in the Washington Post. "It can actually improve all the other aspects of our lives. Having a hobby may be even m... posted on Aug 19 2014 (28,113 reads)

A New Model of School Reform, by Vicki Zakrzewski
Unified is transforming its schools by embedding social-emotional learning into the district culture—one adult at a time. Last week, The New Yorker reported that Mark Zuckerberg’s 2010 gift of $100 million to the Newark School District hadn’t really improved the schools—with most of the money having been spent on labor contracts and consulting fees. CASEL Meanwhile, on the opposite coast, Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), an urban district with demographics and challenges similar to Newark’s, has taken a very different tack to school reform—and it’s not costing $100 million: The district... posted on Aug 16 2014 (23,857 reads)

Jim Hunter on Servant Leadership, by Tami Simon
Simon: You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today my guest is Jim Hunter. Jim is the author of two internationally bestselling books: The Servant: A Simple Story About the True Essence of Leadership, and The World’s Most Powerful Leadership Principle: How to Become a Servant Leader.Jim’s books are used in many MBA and other higher education courses, have been translated into two dozen languages, and have sold well over 4 million copies worldwide. With Sounds True, Jim has created an audio program called The Servant Leadership Training Course: Achieving Success Through Character, Bravery, and Influence, where he gives listeners the keys to leading with integrity... posted on Aug 7 2014 (30,243 reads)

Empty Hands, Full Heart: Music For The Soul, by Audrey Lin
the pinnacle of a dizzying career, Indian-American rapper Nimesh “Nimo” Patel was haunted by an unshakeable sense of emptiness. In his mid-twenties, he abandoned the limelight and found himself meditating in the foothills of the Himalayas. There, an inner voice nudged him to radically simplify his life and find his purpose in service to others. He moved to the Gandhi Ashram in India and dedicated himself to the children in the surrounding slums. Fast-forward to April 2012: Nimo and a dance troupe of sixteen of "his kids" toured the world with "Ekatva" – a performance whose ultimate message was Oneness. A year later, in the summer of 2013, seven... posted on Jun 16 2014 (48,552 reads)

A Light in India, by David Bornstein
we hear the word innovation, we often think of new technologies or silver bullet solutions — like hydrogen fuel cells or a cure for cancer. To be sure, breakthroughs are vital: antibiotics and vaccines, for example, transformed global health. But as we’ve argued in Fixes, some of the greatest advances come from taking old ideas or technologies and making them accessible to millions of people who are underserved. One area where this is desperately needed is access to electricity. In the age of the iPad, it’s easy to forget that roughly a quarter of the world’s population — about a billion and a half people (pdf) — still lack electricity. This is... posted on Nov 8 2014 (14,735 reads)

College for All: Sebastian Thrun, Udacity, by Andre Dua
Andre Dua Something big is up in higher education thanks to the advent of “massive open online courses” (MOOCs), which can reach millions around the world. What most people—including university leaders—don’t yet realize is that this new way of teaching and learning, together with employers’ growing frustration with the skills of graduates, is poised to usher in a new credentialing system that may compete with college degrees within a decade. This emerging delivery regime is more than just a distribution mechanism; done right, it promises students faster, more consistent engagement with high-quality content, as well as measurable results. This i... posted on Nov 26 2014 (13,322 reads)

Reading, Writing, Empathy: The Rise of Social Emotional Learning, by Courtney Martin
Brackett never liked school. “I was always bored,” he says, “and I never felt like any of my teachers really cared. I can’t think of anybody that made me feel inspired.” It’s a surprising complaint coming from a 42-year-old Yale research scientist with a 27-page CV and nearly $4 million in career funding. But Brackett knows that many kids feel the way he does about school, and he wants to do a complete emotional makeover of the nation’s schools. At a time of contentious debate over how to reform schools to make teachers more effective and students more successful, “social emotional learning” may be a key part of the solutio... posted on Oct 4 2014 (23,778 reads)

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, or Repair: The Pop Up Repair Shop in NYC, by Oscar Abello
away broken stuff has never been an easier choice. For some items, prices have never been lower; for others, instant obsolescence means you always have an excuse to upgrade, as if you needed an excuse. Can the possibility of repair begin to change consumer habits? New York City’s Pop Up Repair Shop was a one-month experiment this June “aimed at breaking the cycle of use-and-discard goods.” It was the first step of a larger exploration of the issue, led by Sandra Goldmark, a set and costume designer and theater professor at Barnard College. Sandra and her husband Michael Banta, a theater production manager at Barnard, launched the shop using funds from an Ind... posted on Oct 6 2014 (14,449 reads)

An Icebox, A Live Heart and the Man Who Drove and Drove, by Rohini Mohan
hospital to hospital, a 45-minute ride completed in 13 crazy minutes. A few weeks ago, Chennai traffic came to a standstill to allow a donor heart to reach a dying young woman for an urgent transplant. As families, doctors and cops waited with bated breath, this is what went down inside that wailing ambulance. In some ways, it was surprising that any good could ever come of a cadaver, a heart failure and a vehicle with a live heart in its trunk tearing through a crowded city. That it did on June 16, 2014 in Chennai, and that more than 50 people coordinated the whole thing with surreal precision to save a life, could tempt one to use words like ‘miracle’ or ‘... posted on Aug 11 2014 (16,142 reads)

The Crucial Role of Empathy, by Brittany Koteles
conversation with Molly Melching, founder and executive director of Tostan and the protagonist of Aimee Molloy’s However Long the Night.  Molly Melching was 24-years-old when she first arrived to Senegal as a University of Illinois exchange student in Dakar. She quickly fell into the rhythm of Senegalese life – in some ways, she says, feeling more at home than she ever did. School ended, but Melching stayed, teaching English at three different cultural centers to cover the rent of her $40 room. “It was enough to keep me there,” she remembers with a laugh. 40 years later, Melching’s story continues in Dakar. She is the founder and executive dir... posted on Oct 5 2014 (28,715 reads)

The Relationship Between Self-Compassion & Procrastination, by Linda Graham
something off can trigger a downward negative spiral. But a recent study suggests that being kind to yourself can help you achieve your goals. Why do we procrastinate? Often because we fear failing at the task and dread all the negative self-evaluations that might result from that failure. Unconsciously, feeling okay about one’s self becomes more important than achieving the goal. But the procrastination, of course, triggers other negative feelings about ourselves—recriminations and ruminations for “failing” to take action. In 20 years of providing psychotherapy, I’ve witnessed so many times how paralysis in the face ... posted on Oct 9 2014 (60,253 reads)

Margaret Wheatley: On Working With Human Goodness, by Margaret Wheatley
Wheatley, author of Leadership and the New Science, on self protection, good intentions, and what it means to greet one another as fully human. We need to remember the fact of human goodness. Of course, human goodness seems like an outrageous “fact,” since every day we are confronted by evidence of the great harm we so easily do to one another. We are numbed by the genocide, ethnic hatred and individual violence committed daily. Of the 240 or so nations in the world, nearly a quarter are currently at war. In our daily life we encounter people who are angry and deceitful, intent only on satisfying their own needs. There is so much anger, distrust, greed a... posted on Sep 20 2014 (30,226 reads)

A Humanitarian's 4 Decades Long Adventure In Africa, by Brittany Koteles
Crucial Role of Empathy: Molly Melching A conversation with Molly Melching, founder and executive director of Tostan and the protagonist of Aimee Molloy’s However Long the Night.Molly Melching was 24-years-old when she first arrived to Senegal as a University of Illinois exchange student in Dakar. She quickly fell into the rhythm of Senegalese life – in some ways, she says, feeling more at home than she ever did. School ended, but Melching stayed, teaching English at three different cultural centers to cover the rent of her $40 room. “It was enough to keep me there,” she remembers with a laugh. 40 years later, Melching’s story continues in Dakar. S... posted on Oct 5 2014 (3,983 reads)

35 Images of Kindness Found Within Conflict, by Posted on February 13, 2014 by Kindness Blog
times of conflict and political or religious civil unrest, the power of the human spirit’s capacity for non-violent protest and kindness still shines through. Alberto Casillas, instantly became a national celebrity in Spain when he protected a group of youths who were protesting against the government’s austerity measures. The police were beating and attacking protestors who then ran into Casillas’s cafe for protection. When the police demanded he let them enter, he stood against them, with absolutely no weapons or way to defend himself and said, ”On my Life, you will not enter! It will be a massacre.” Ukrainian girl giving sandwiches to pro... posted on Sep 17 2014 (99,044 reads)