Sunday, January 16, 2011 A Home Like No Other  Dai Haifei lives in an egg on the sidewalk. Though he might sound like a character in a new movie- he's actually an architect from Beijing. Taking small living spaces to a new level, Haifei built a mobile egg-shaped house made of bamboo strips, wood chippings, sack bags, the six-foot tall structure that is powered by the sun. He even planted a covering of grass to sprout in the spring! Read More >>
back to top  Saturday, January 15, 2011 Compassion Caught on a Late-Night Train  One act of kindness that befell British writer Bernard Hare in 1982 changed him profoundly. Then a student living just north of London, he spins the story of himself during a young, troubled, and disrupted time in life. "... my mother was in hospital and not expected to survive the night. "Get home, son," my dad said. I got to the railway station to find I'd missed the last train. A train was going as far as Peterborough, but I would miss the connecting Leeds train by twenty minutes. I bought a ticket and got on anyway. I was so desperate that I planned to nick a car in Peterborough, hitchhike, steal some money, something, anything. I just knew from my dad's tone of voice that my mother was going to die that night..." Read More >>
back to top Friday, January 14, 2011 Virtual Doctors Reach the Rural Poor  These days, it's not uncommon to skype a friend overseas, or videochat with family over the holidays. But how about using videoconferencing to provide health care to rural villages? That's what E Health Point Services is up to. By opening clinics up in rural India, the program allows patients to video chat with a doctor, and then run necessary tests and get the appropriate medicine from the clinic's pharmacy. They also gives out clean drinking water to help reduce sickness. Read More >>
back to top Thursday, January 13, 2011 Man Mails $5 to Strangers to Spread Good Will  Daniel Simonton has been sending $5 bills to strangers in the mail. And in return, he wants nothing. The idea came while he was walking down Broadway Avenue in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. He "distinctly noticed how a lot of people seemed really cranky." "I started to wonder when the last time it was someone did anything nice for these people," Simonton said. And so the experiment began... Read More >>
back to top Wednesday, January 12, 2011 Beauty in Subtlety  A Reakirt's blue butterfly egg (Hemiargus isola) nestles on a powderpuff bud (Mimosa strigillosa) in this six times magnified image taken by David Millard, recognized in Nikon's 2010 Small World competition. Read More >>
back to top Tuesday, January 11, 2011 Habits May Be Good for You  For years, Dr. Val Curtis has been persuading people in the developing world to wash their hands habitually with soap. Meanwhile, researchers at Duke and Cornell universities were examining how often smokers quit while vacationing and how much people eat when their plates are deceptively large or small. Those and other studies revealed that as much as 45 percent of what we do every day is habitual- that is, performed almost without thinking in the same location or at the same time each day, usually because of subtle cues. Today, public health campaigns are being revamped to employ habit-formation characteristics, according to people involved in those efforts. Read More >>
back to top Monday, January 10, 2011 Mass Killer Atones For His Sins  Shyam Narayan Sharma is a bedraggled man noticeable for his garland of old shoes and for wearing sandals and clothes made out of torn jute bags. He has served time in jail after turning himself in for capital crimes. While in jail, Sharma had a personal transformation and "made 600 inmates literate." Upon his release on bail, Dayasagar sold his double-story home to set up a tin shed private school for the poor called Nai Subah (New Morning) where some 60 children of the neighborhood now come for free education. Read More >>
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Time was running out, and Mark Dickinson wasn't sure whether he'd get to see his dying 2-year-old grandson one last time. A long line in security had kept him from getting to his gate on time. In a desperate last attempt, Dickinson's wife called the airline to ask them to hold the plane for him. That's when the pilot stepped up and held the flight at the gate until Dickinson arrived, running in socks, so rushed that he just grabbed his shoes at security and ran through the terminal. While most airlines punish any staff member who holds up a flight, this remarkable display of empathy and discernment had this one celebrating. [ 
"I placed Ted's ashes in the ocean and watched as they made a rainbow before dissolving into the sea." So begins the story of an unlikely friendship between Jimpa, a monk, and Ted, a hobo in his 80s who lives in freedom and dignity in a homeless camp. The friendship started when Ted saw Jimpa and said: "I'm hungry can you feed me?" It was to become a sweet refrain from a dear friend. Jimpa fed Ted, and listened to him tell stories of his life. When Ted died, Jimpa's name and phone number were on a piece of paper in his pocket. The last chapter was to become as simple and meaningful as the first. [ 
Cherri Farrell teaches Consumer and Family Science, a subject that used to be called Home Economics. Talking with Farrell, it's as if a window opens into the hidden worlds that exist in between the requirements of standard curricula, and to how important these hidden realms really are. These insights come out in her stories, "One time I had a child from Afghanistan whose parents were killed. He came to America and lived with his extended family. I found a student for him to talk with, too. I'd bring him to my computer and we would look up holy spots, mosques. He showed me all these beautiful places in his country and we'd just talk. And I had another child who came from Mongolia. We would talk about Mongolia and what it was like. He came from a very prominent Tibetan Buddhist family. In the summer he lived in the old way- in yurts in the middle of the Steppe. He rode horseback and used a bow and arrow just like Genghis Khan! Today, he's in a pre-med program." [ 
Terje Isungset is a composer and percussionist who crafts stunning pieces of music from ice. "It is very inspiring to be able to make music out of the world's most important resource: water. Pure, clean water from a lake or river. I seek for new sounds in music, new colors; I try to find a new flower somehow - and to me the ice opens up a new landscape. A landscape of beauty and silence," he remarks. Among his inventions are instruments like the ice horn and iceophone! [ 
An unusual dance class takes place in Kirkland: one taught by professional dancers and offered free of charge for people with Parkinson's disease and their caregivers. It's one of a small but growing number of such classes worldwide. At this dance class, the students walk in slowly, some rigidly or with a bit of a tremor. They take their places, not at a ballet barre or on the dance floor, but sitting in chairs. As the live music starts, they flutter their fingers like hummingbird wings, point their toes along the ground. Limbs loosen and start to flow. And perhaps something even more important happens: Smiles emerge and laughter erupts. [ 
In 1973, Charles Garfield discovered a lost civilization in San Francisco: the occupants of cancer wards in hospitals, hordes of anxious people facing a limited life span, whose social and psychological needs were going unmet by their well-meaning, but largely ignorant caregivers. Turning to volunteers, Garfield trained over 15,000 to provide sophisticated emotional support to the seriously and terminally ill. [ 
