Solar Christmas lights let homeowners save electrical power and brighten the holiday season while going green.
If you decorate with outdoor lights, you might be interested in the wide variety of solar-powered decorative lights available online. Some are rather pricey, and solar-powered lights may not shine as brightly as the ones you’re used to, but they save electricity (and fossil fuels that are burned to make that electricity) and lower your power bill.
(Continue reading in the CS Monitor)
An unknown couple started a chain reaction at Aramingo Diner in Port Richmond, PA by paying for their own meal and for the tab including tip, of another table of diners at the restaurant. For the next five hours, dozens of patrons got into that same holiday spirit paying the favor forward — generously picking up the tab for strangers, in gratitude for the meal that had been paid for them.
READ the story from NBC Philadelphia, or watch the video below…
As world leaders in Copenhagen try to thrash out a deal on tackling climate change, a small village in northern Italy is providing inspiration to other small communities in Europe with its own initiatives to protect the environment. In recent years, Varese Ligure has used solar and wind power to drastically cut its carbon emissions, and provide dozens of jobs to residents.
Watch the AFP video below, or at Clip Syndicate.
Toyota has announced it will offer a plug-in Prius to the masses in 2011 and it will be an “affordable” car. For starters, it will be the first Toyota with lithium-ion batteries. It will allow the corded car to travel 14.5 miles on electricity alone. Not much, but it’s a start. More impressive is the fuel economy offered — 134 miles per gallon.
Read more at Wired.com
The warm-hearted knitters behind a Minnesota project to sew hats and mittens for as many people as need them, give their time to a charitable cause, while a fabric maker donates all the material. During this day, the husbands watched the babies and children while the women all sewed together in one room.
Watch the Making a Difference video below, or at MSNBC.
In Banda Aceh, Indonesia, students who survived the tsunami were able to resume their lessons quickly, thanks to the overwhelming international response that allowed UNICEF and its partners to get children back into class – first in temporary schools, and now into 346 earthquake resistant, permanent buildings.
Common to all the schools has been the introduction of improved teaching methods, as well as better physical structures.
Watch the UNICEF video…
An Ohio family is living with a Deer in the house. They rescued it after its mother abandoned the fawn, then, blind and sickly. Now, Dillie, the growing deer, eats almost everything in sight around the happy home and even sleeps on the bed.
Watch the video below…
A team of doctors in the nation’s capital just performed a 13-way kidney swap — the largest kidney exchange ever recorded. Twenty-six operations gave healthy kidneys to 13 desperately ill people, with family members donating to strangers who were better matches than loved ones.
Watch the video below, or at Clip Syndicate…
On Thursday, a Roto-Rooter crew used their drain equipment to help find a dog trapped in a foxhole in Upstate New York. After locating the dog with a tiny camera, they eventually helped a group of firemen dig out the 8-year-old jack russell terrier called Bella.
Watch the video below, or at Clip Syndicate.
Troubled teens in the nation’s capital stay out of trouble as they learn how to build handcrafted boats along the Potomac River. The youth learn carpentry and job skills that will serve throughout their lives.
The program’s founder says it costs just $15,000 to subsidize a teen’s training for one year, compared to $100,000 for incarceration.
Watch the Making a Difference video below, or at MSNBC…
The recession decimated some of the country’s largest University endowments, but student investors managing an $11 million fund at the University of Dayton have outperformed the pros — for ten years in a row.
Watch the CNBC report below, or at MSNBC…
The Ugandan parliament unanimously passed a bill banning female genital mutilation, a traditional, but barbaric, rite performed on young girls that has sparked an international outcry.
Convicted offenders face 10 years in prison, but if the girl dies during the act, those involved will get a life sentence, according to officials in the east African country, one of several to still allow the practice in Africa and Asia.
(Continue reading at CNN.com)
Photo courtesy of Sun Star
In another victory for equal rights, Houston became the largest U.S. city to elect an openly gay mayor, with voters handing a solid victory to City Controller Annise Parker after a hotly contested runoff.
Parker defeated former city attorney Gene Locke with 53.6 percent of the vote Saturday in a race that had a turnout of only 16.5 percent.
(Continue reading the AP story at NPR)
We live in a world that’s subjected to ever more stringent child safety regulations. No more dodgeball; suffocation warnings on every piece of plastic; warnings on coffee cups to tell us that the contents may be hot.
“We seem to think that any item sharper than a golf ball is too sharp for children under the age of 10,” says Gever Tulley.
So, Tulley, founder of something called the Tinkering School, a place where kids build things with power tools, wrote a book with his wife Julie Spiegler called, 50 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Children Do.
Number 46 is “Super Glue Your Fingers Together – Experience life without a thumb!”
“When we round every corner and eliminate every sharp object, every pokey bit in the world, then the first time that kids come in contact with anything sharp or not made out of round plastic, they’ll hurt themselves with it,” he writes.
“So, as the boundaries of what we determine as the safety zone grow ever smaller, we cut off our children from valuable opportunities to learn how to interact with the world around them.”
Tulley, a computer scientist by trade, gave a Ted Talk to name the top six ‘hazards’—and explain why kids should be encouraged to dive in.
1. Play with fire
2. Own a pocket knife
3. Throw a spear
4. Deconstruct appliances
5. Break the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
6. Drive a car
READ the full article by Tulley here—or watch his TED Talk video below…
SHARE the Words if You Think They’re Wisdom…
We live in a world that’s subjected to ever more stringent child safety regulations. No more dodgeball; suffocation warnings on every piece of plastic; warnings on coffee cups to tell us that the contents may be hot.
“We seem to think that any item sharper than a golf ball is too sharp for children under the age of 10,” says Gever Tulley,
So, Tulley, founder of something called the Tinkering School, a place where kids build things with power tools, has written a new book called, 50 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Children Do. (Number 46 is “Super Glue Your Fingers Together – Experience life without a thumb!)
When we round every corner and eliminate every sharp object, every pokey bit in the world, then the first time that kids come in contact with anything sharp or not made out of round plastic, they’ll hurt themselves with it. So, as the boundaries of what we determine as the safety zone grow ever smaller, we cut off our children from valuable opportunities to learn how to interact with the world around them.
Tulley, a computer scientist by trade, wrote a blog post giving us the top five or six hazards, and why kids should be encouraged to dive in. They are:
1. Play with fire
2. Own a pocket knife
3. Throw a spear
4. Deconstruct appliances
5. Break the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
6. Drive a car
Read the full article by Tulley here, or watch his TED Talk video below…
The Robin Hood foundation, founded by a group of Wall Street investors to maximize every dollar given to the poor, has helped more than a half million New Yorkers in need to get food and education.
Because the group’s board members pay all administrative costs, every cent donated goes directly for food and programs — over a billion dollars since 1988.
Watch the Making a Difference video below, or at MSNBC…
A down-and-out musician who was living in a Rescue Mission shelter with his sickly 6-year-old son, has won a talent competition, after a fellow resident who heard radio ads promoting the contest urged him to enter.
The contest paid off in dollars, but it also had a ripple effect, helping connect Rob Paper and his son Taj, who has a form of cerebral palsy, to an ever-larger community of friends and allies.
Read the full story in the Idaho Statesman
Photo courtesy of Sun Star
Hospitalized children in Canada who can’t go home for the holidays have a new online way of keeping in touch with their friends and family.
“Upopolis” is a closed and secure social networking site designed for children in hospital that offers personal profiles, personal blogs, instant chats and child-friendly games.
The site lets patients talk online to friends and family so they don’t have to fear being an outsider with friends back home, beyond the sometimes lonely walls of the hospital. The site also links young patients with those in other hospitals across the country.
Toni Crowell of the Hospital for Sick Children said, “We know it takes more than medicine and treatments to help kids to get better. This gives us a great therapeutic tool to reach a population of our kids.”
(READ the full story at CBC)
Photo: JDurham, morguefile.com
Waste plastic from “throwaway” carrier bags can be readily converted into carbon nanotubes, cylindrical carbon molecules that have novel properties to make them potentially useful in nanotechnology, electronics, optics and other fields.
The chemist who developed the technique says this is one of the cheapest and most environmentally friendly ways to grow nanotubes, and has even used the nanotubes to make lithium-ion batteries.
(READ more in NewScientist.com)
Instead of yet another awards show featuing celebrities, TeenNick Chairman Nick Cannon is hosting the Halo Awards, where stars like Justin Timberlake, LeBron James, and Alicia Keys pay tribute to amazing teens doing amazing things. Watch as teen award winners are surprised by famous stars who honor them for their service.
Watch the video below, or at ClipSyndicate…
