Google Alert - inspiration thoughts
Monday, April 12, 2010
Google Blogs Alert for: inspiration thoughts
| [ m u s i n g s ] By Villa Design MUSINGS OF AN ARTIST THOUGHTS AND INSPIRATION. ... skip to main | skip to sidebar. musings ~ thoughts and design inspiration. Monday, April 12, 2010. Nature in Macro. On Friday, me and some friends enjoyed a gorgeous spring day by going ... musings ~ thoughts and design... - http://villa-design.blogspot.com/ |
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What do Paul McCartney, the Baltimore Unified School District, and the city of San Francisco all have in common? They have all stopped eating meat on Mondays. In efforts to curb climate change, cities around the world are promoting citizens to eat less meat, since livestock is a large source of greenhouse emissions. From meatless Monday school lunches in Baltimore to "Veg Days" in San Francisco and Ghent, Belgium, cities across the world are experimenting with the cause. Paul McCartney even wrote a song about it! [ 
Cloaked in simplicity, Sister Christiana and Mother Therese sleep no more than three and a half hours at a time, on straw mats in six-by-eight foot cells. They rise to prayer bells at five a.m., and pray again at six, noon, six, and half past midnight. In a world splattered with high-powered jobs fueled by prestige and assertiveness, humility is often cast aside a sign of weakness. But the conviction in the sisters' low, sincere voices is undeniably captivating. "It's about knowing the truth," says Mother Therese. "How other people see you is not who you are." Instead of keeping up with the Joneses, the two nuns live poverty as a privilege. And they are radiant. 
Google serves up approximately 10 million search results every hour. How much does a web search cost? You don't pay up front, but there are non-monetary costs nevertheless. IT research firm Gartner estimates Google's data centres contain nearly a million servers, each drawing about 1 kilowatt of electricity. So every hour Google's engine burns through 1 million kilowatt-hours. Hence, it turns out that one search has the same energy cost as turning on a 100-watt light bulb for an hour. 
As a volunteer, Charlie Starbuck has helped to plant trees by the thousands on the streets of San Francisco, a city long on charm but short on leafy green trees. He has volunteered for a citywide tree-planting program since 1981, nearly without interruption. That's almost 30 years of weekly plantings, without pay, come rain or shine. "He's done it in such a modest way. Week after week. He's the Lou Gehrig of tree planting." 
The best place to see the Golden Rule in action is... at the grocery store? That's what science columnist John Tierney says. In a recent study, WalMart shoppers of Hamilton, Missouri scored higher in a test of fairness toward strangers than clan-based communities around the world. Researchers explain that developing "market norms" promotes general levels of "trust, fairness and cooperation" with strangers. "Markets don't work very efficiently if everyone acts selfishly and believes everyone else will do the same," says Dr. Joseph Henrich, the study's leading researcher. "If you develop norms to be fair and trusting with people beyond your social sphere, that provides enormous economic advantages and allows a society to grow." 
When the clock struck midnight on April 1, Newark reached a milestone: its first homicide-free calendar month in 44 years. Compared to the first quarter of 2009, the city has reduced crime by 13 percent! "We have made major strides in reducing crime in Newark and providing our residents with a safer, stronger, and prouder community," says Mayor Cory Booker. "This has been the result of new alliances, 21st-century technology, innovative approaches to protecting our city, the support of our residents, and the courage manifested by Newark's police officers." 
Born into wealth, Marion Rockefeller Weber has been a philanthropist since age 21, deciding which worthy causes to support among the many that would come her way. "The table would be like this," she says lifting both hands shoulder high to indicate the stacks of proposals piled high on her living room table. It wasn't a pleasant process for her, so she took a one-year sabbatical, a time of self-reflection, and created her own flavor of giving: flow funding. It is a philanthropy rooted in trust where she trusts other visionaries to give away her money in small ways. 
Narayanan Krishnan's day begins at 4 a.m. He and his team cover nearly 125 miles in a donated van, working in temperatures topping 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Once a five-star chef on his way to an elite job in Switzerland, the 29-year-old now spends his day personally preparing and delivering meals to nearly 400 homeless individuals everyday. "I saw a very old man eating his own human waste for food," Krishnan said. "It really hurt me so much. I was literally shocked for a second. After that, I started feeding that man and decided this is what I should do the rest of my lifetime." 
