Camelina-based jet fuel reduces carbon emissions from jets by about 80 percent The first transatlantic flight powered by biofuel landed Saturday at Paris-Le Bourget Airport after a seven hour flight from New Jersey. One-quarter of the fuel used to carry the Gulfstream G450 jet across the Atlantic Ocean was biofuel derived from camelina. A 50/50 [...]
Archive for the ‘Articles & Essays’ Category
Nature Can Cure Some of the Excesses of Technology
Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged alternative energy, planes on February 8, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
The Problems That Come from Shrinking Crime
Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged crime on February 1, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Netherlands to close prisons for lack of criminals The Dutch justice ministry has announced it will close eight prisons and cut 1,200 jobs in the prison system. A decline in crime has left many cells empty. During the 1990s the Netherlands faced a shortage of prison cells, but a decline in crime has since led [...]
Kindness of Strangers on a Roll
Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged generosity, kindness on January 25, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Paying it forward It all started two years ago at Corner Perk, a small, locally owned coffee shop, when a customer paid her bill and left $100 extra, saying she wanted to pay for everyone who ordered after her. The staff fulfilled her request, and the woman has returned to leave other large donations every [...]
People Are Working Hard to Relieve Suffering
Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged 3rd world, clean water, toilets on January 18, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Trying to Get Safe Water and a Toilet for the 2.5 Billion People Who Lack Them With the support of the Pepsico Foundation, we have reached more than 250,000 people with loans that allow them to pay connection fees for house taps and to construct toilets. This was done at an average philanthropic cost of [...]
The Impossible Will Take a Little While
Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged howard zinn, optimism on January 18, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
“The Optimism of Uncertainty” by Howard Zinn We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world . . . An optimist isn’t necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be [...]
Yes, You Can Cultivate Happiness
Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged brain, happiness on January 4, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Brain scans of happy people help explain their ‘rose-tinted’ outlook The brains of happy people are tuned to notice and enjoy the positives in life that may pass others by. Their happy dispositions and set them up for a ‘cycle of positivity.’ The positive outlook on life was not a reflection of naivety or ignorance [...]
Not All Pronoia Is Occuring in the Wealthy West
Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged millennium village project, poverty on January 4, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Challenges at the Cutting Edge of Fighting Global Poverty Halfway through the ten-year Millennium Village Project in rural Africa, the results are exciting: agriculture production is up significantly, free basic health care is in place, malaria is coming under control, many more children are in school, and farmers are organizing cooperatives to diversify their crops [...]
Outbreaks of Pronoia in Nature
Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged kindness, rats on December 28, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Rats are actually pretty compassionate In a simple experiment, researchers at the University of Chicago sought to find out whether a rat would release a fellow rat from an unpleasantly restrictive cage if it could. The answer was yes. The free rat, often hearing distress calls from its compatriot, learned to open the cage and [...]
More Evidence of the Conspiracy to Commit Kindness
Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged generosity, health care, kindness on December 28, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Random strangers helping people pay their medical bills Launched in 2008, IndieGoGo.com enables its users to share their causes and solicit donations from complete strangers. The more than 40,000 campaigns its helped launch have ranged in scope, but the health stories typically center on the same theme. The patients face crippling conditions and can’t afford [...]
People You Don’t Know and Have Never Heard of Are Working to Fix Things
Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged innovation, progress on December 21, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Top 11 Social Innovators Saving The World In 2011 McKinsey & Company’s Social Innovation Video Contest highlights innovators who are confronting the world’s greatest challenges and gives participants the chance to publicize their organization and encourage involvement. After receiving nearly 150 videos from 30 different countries, the contest has narrowed down its top entries to [...]
The Conspiracy to Make Things Better Just Keeps Growing
Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged solutions on December 21, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
The Top Ten Solutions to the World’s Biggest Problems Eight leading economists, including five Nobelists, were asked to prioritize 30 different proposed solutions to ten of the world’s biggest problems. The proposed solutions were developed by more than 50 specialist scholars over the past two years and were presented as reports to the panel over [...]
It’s All Alive
Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged earth, schumann resonance, space on December 21, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
The Earth has a heartbeat we can see from space The Earth pulses with a special kind of resonant wave. The Schumann Resonance has long been dubbed ‘the Earth’s heartbeat,’ and it has only been spotted from below. Recently, though, satellites have found signs of this electromagnetic heartbeat leaking up into space.
Millions of Heroes
Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged heroes on December 14, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Some of 2011′s Many Heroes When it comes to the tragedies that defined this year — from Jared Loughner’s shooting rampage to the tornadoes that ravaged Joplin — the stories of ordinary citizens who decidedly risked their own lives for others were often just as compelling as the news itself. Beyond such life-risking tales, there [...]
Practical Miracles Are Quite Possible
Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged germany, renewable energy on December 14, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
German Village Produces 321% More Energy Than It Needs! Ok, those Germans are just showing off now. Not only has the nation announced plans to shut down all of its nuclear power plants and started the construction of 2,800 miles of transmission lines for its new renewable energy initiative, but now the village of Wildpoldsried [...]
Unknown Helpers Are Plotting in Our Behalf
Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged health, medicine, science on December 7, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Recent Discoveries That Could Revolutionize Medicine In recent years, a handful of recent discoveries have provided glimmers of hope for both effective and affordable health care. Here, a list of seven recent discoveries that could revolutionize medicine.
More Proof the Good News Is Hidden Away from Us
Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged peace, violence on November 30, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
The world is becoming steadily less violent. Statistics reveal dramatic reductions in war deaths, family violence, racism, rape, murder and all sorts of mayhem. In his book, [Harvard psychologist Steven] Pinker writes: “The decline of violence may be the most significant and least appreciated development in the history of our species.” And it runs counter [...]
You Have No Idea How Vast the Conspiracy Is
Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged dna, meteorites on November 30, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Evidence that the Universe is Fine-Tuned for Life? NASA-funded researchers found evidence this past summer that some building blocks of DNA, the molecule that carries the genetic instructions for life, found in meteorites were likely created in space. The research gives support to the theory that a “kit” of ready-made parts created in space and [...]
Brazilian Poverty Shrinking
Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged brazil, poverty on November 23, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Focus: Brazil Over the last two decades, thanks largely to government policy, the poverty rate in Brazil has halved. With this, income inequality has also fallen sharply, declining on average by 1.2% a year.
Crime Shrinking
Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged cocaine, crime on November 23, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
How the Plummeting Price of Cocaine Fueled the Nationwide Drop in Violent Crime Starting in the mid-1990s, major American cities began a radical transformation. Years of high violent crime rates, thefts, robberies, and inner-city decay suddenly started to turn around. Crime rates didn’t just hold steady, they began falling faster than they went up. This [...]
Cost of Solar Energy Is Shrinking
Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged alternative energy, solar on November 23, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
We’re just a few years from the point at which electricity from solar panels becomes cheaper than electricity generated by burning coal. The progress in solar panels has been dramatic and sustained. Solar Is Getting Cheaper, but How Far Can It Go? Here Comes the Sun California Solar Industry Booming: Report Finds State’s Solar Capacity [...]
