Posted in Videos | Tagged bees, flowers, pollination | Leave a Comment »
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.
Posted in Articles & Essays | Tagged brazil, poverty | 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 trend appeared in practically every post-industrial American city, simultaneously.
Posted in Articles & Essays | Tagged cocaine, crime | 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?
The usual take on solar power is that it’s a niche energy source, too pricey and erratic to meet more than a sliver of our electricity needs. Bill Gates has mocked solar as “cute.” But, as Paul Krugman reminds us today, that’s changing far more quickly than people realize. “In fact,” Krugman writes, “progress in solar panels has been so dramatic and sustained that, as a blog post at Scientific American put it, ‘there’s now frequent talk of a Moore’s law in solar energy,’ with prices adjusted for inflation falling around 7 percent a year.”
Posted in Articles & Essays | Tagged alternative energy, solar | Leave a Comment »
Women now get more than half of all the doctorates awarded in American universities, but they’re still catching up in the fields of chemistry, engineering, and math.
Already, statistics from the Council of Graduate Schools show that women, overall, earned slightly more than half of the doctorates handed out in all disciplines in the United States in 2009 and 2010. When it comes to the STEM fields, women have been most successful in medicine and biology – and least successful in engineering, math and computer science.
But experts hope that, too, will change. A recent report from the American Association of University Women notes that, 30 years ago, the ratio of seventh- and eighth-grade boys who scored more than 700 on the SAT math exam, compared with girls, was 13 to 1. Now it’s 3 to 1.
Posted in Articles & Essays | Tagged equality, technology, women | Leave a Comment »
Technological breakthroughs happen so often and we adapt to them so quickly, they make miracles seem commonplace.
Once technology jumps over a hurdle thought impassable before, it makes that supposed miracle utterly commonplace and boring. 40 years ago, the idea of a mobile smart phone was utter magic. Now, nobody even bats an eye at it even as the ripples of this change affect us all in surprising ways. That’s what technology does — it makes miracles so easy, it’s boring.
Posted in Articles & Essays | Tagged miracles, technology | Leave a Comment »
A video of people doing amazing things. (You might want to turn down the music, though.)
Posted in Videos | Tagged fun, human achievement | Leave a Comment »
A world war is underway. It’s unlike any war in history. People around the world are not identifying themselves along national or religious lines, but as a global consciousness: demanding peace, democracy, sustainability, & economic justice. Their enemy is the corporatocracy that has bought governments, created its own armed enforcers, engaged in economic fraud, & plundered treasuries & ecosystems.
Posted in Articles & Essays | Tagged occupy wall street | 1 Comment »
Posted in Images | Tagged occupy wall street | 1 Comment »
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world”
-Mahatma Gandhi
Real change that is sustainable is an inside job.
Still, real change that is sustainable is also an inside job. We are each a hologram and microcosm of the collective, and the inequities of the world will only be fully resolved when we heal the inequities of our own projections. Even if you don’t fully subscribe to this point of view, just imagine what kinds of transformation could be possible in your own life by applying some metaphors of the Occupy movement to your personal development.
Posted in Articles & Essays | Tagged occupy wall street | Leave a Comment »
The spirit of Abbie Hoffman blesses this action. Put more pranks in your protests, everyone! Time for a Yippie Revival!
Posted in Videos | Tagged occupy wall street | 1 Comment »
Posted in Images | Tagged occupy wall street | Leave a Comment »
Posted in Music | Tagged occupy wall street | 1 Comment »
Don’t believe the evening news: Violent crime and murder have been declining steadily for two decades in this country. Last year was statistically the safest year in almost four decades for Americans, and everyone’s got a theory as to why.
Here’s one possibility: The diminishing of the lead poisoning caused by leaded gasoline.
Posted in Articles & Essays | Tagged crime, lead poisoning | Leave a Comment »
Like the U.S. homicide rate, Canada’s rate just keeps falling and falling.
The homicide rate in Canada has fallen to its lowest annual level in 44 years, thanks to significant drops in British Columbia, Alberta and Manitoba, Statistics Canada revealed Tuesday morning as it gave detailed numbers for 2010.
The national homicide rate is now 1.62 for every 100,000 population. It has been declining since it reached a peak in the mid-1970s.
Posted in Articles & Essays | Tagged canada, crime, homicide | Leave a Comment »
Posted in Videos | Tagged gratitude | 1 Comment »
Hundreds of radical cultural and political heroes are celebrated here, along with the animating idea that guides this project — the pleasure of overthrowing the Planetary Work Machine.
Posted in Books | Tagged heroes, saints | Leave a Comment »
Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition by Charles Eisenstein
The book presents a vision about our money system that is original yet commonsense, radical yet gentle, and increasingly relevant as the crises of our civilization deepen. How can you live according to your ideals in a world seemingly ruled by money?
Posted in Books | Tagged finances, money | 1 Comment »
Hallelujah! The Nobel Prize Committee Blesses Feisty, Spiritual Women
Hallelujah to the Nobel Peace Committee! By honoring three brave, determined women – Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee, and Tawakul Karman, they shine light on true heroines of our time. This prize of prizes points to two realities that politicians, academics, and media have long downplayed. Women and those they care for suffer disproportionately in war and conflict. But they are also at the forefront of work for peace. Women tend to be shoved to the sidelines when it comes to negotiations and treaties,barely visible in photos of the peace tables across the world. But where it really matters you find women at work. The Nobel trio honors hundreds of thousands of unsung heroines in far flung, often dark corners of the world.
Posted in Articles & Essays | Tagged nobel prize, women | Leave a Comment »
The researchers, led by Marc Ostermeier, a Johns Hopkins chemical and biomolecular engineering professor in the Whiting School of Engineering, showed that these switches, working from inside the cells, can activate a powerful cell-killing drug when the device detects a marker linked to cancer. The goal, the scientists said, is to deploy a new type of weapon that causes cancer cells to self-destruct while sparing healthy tissue.
Posted in Articles & Essays | Tagged cancer, healing, research | Leave a Comment »
