Miscellaneous
Rainforests are best protected by local communities
All the bad things that have ever happened to a forest—wildfires, slashing and burning, deforestation, etc. have come from humans. Yet a new study—Securing Rights, Combating Climate Change—from the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the Resources and Rights Initiative (RRI) learned that the Read More...
Monks start brewing beer to support aging elders
Monks have been brewing beer for centuries, and a monastery in central Massachusetts is the not just the newest to take on this centuries old practice, but the only monastery outside of Europe that brews certified Trappist Ale. The clergy at St. Joseph's Abbey is growing old, the average age is 70, Read More...
Tech entrepreneurs pioneer urban farming
Farming is not exactly seen as a frontier of innovation. As more and more people around the world move away from the rural areas to live in cities, it’s mainly older people who stay behind at the farms. That’s a worrisome development as a growing world population needs more food every day. But Read More...
Sensors allow plants to talk
Do plants talk to us? The 1973 book by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, The Secret Life of Plants, described many controversial experiments that seemed to proof plant sentience. A new initiative has found that plants communicate indeed. PLants Employed As SEnsing Devices (PLEASED) comprised of Read More...
A trend toward patient-driven health care
Ezekiel Emanuel, a medical doctor and former chief health policy advisor to President Obama, has a pretty good idea of what we can expect to see in health care over the next decade – things like the end of insurance companies as we know them, an increased focus on treating the chronically and Read More...
India creates 300,000 new jobs with planting 2 billion trees
Most governments embark on public infrastructure projects during a recession to create jobs. India is now taking that approach to a new inspirational level. Indian youth unemployment is above 10% and deforestation is a major challenge in the country with the world’s second largest population, the Read More...
Apartment design that encourages relationship building
One day I encountered my upstairs neighbor in the hallway of my apartment building. We both had been living there already for a couple of years, but never met her before. It turned out we had a lot in common and we became good friends, and we always wondered why we didn’t meet earlier, living Read More...
Unexplained symptoms? It could be past trauma
Most people relate trauma to soldiers who have fought in war zones or to victims of abuse. Trauma is also thought to be a permanent condition without a real solution. Enter psychologist Peter Levine who developed a breakthrough treatment for trauma called Somatic Experiencing. Levine has found that Read More...
Churches go green
Churches are hardly known as leaders of change, but even that perspective may become outdated. The World Council of Churches (WCC)—the governing body that represents 345 member churches in over 100 countries—added fossil fuels to the list of morally objectionable industries it no longer Read More...
‘Doing nothing can mean a lot’
Gerhard Hormann thinks we should spend more time doing nothing. In The New Doing Nothing (Het Nieuwe Nietsdoen) available only in Dutch for now, the journalist writes of a growing need for more free time. His ideal life consists of a simple house, on a lake, with a record player and a vegetable Read More...