Mater Dei team gets 2,843 miles to the gallon
2008-04-13, WFIE TV (NBC affiliate in Evansville, IN)
http://www.14wfie.com/Global/story.asp?S=8159222&nav=3w6o
Mater Dei High School finished first and third out of 33 high school and college student teams from North and South America, shattering the miles per gallon record set last year by Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Mater Dei's "6th Gen" car won the traditional fuel combustion category in the Shell Eco-Marathon Americas with [a] run of 2,843.4 miles per gallon. Mater Dei's other car in competition, "5th Gen" finished third with a Friday run of 2,383.8 miles per gallon. Mater Dei wins $10,000 for first prize, along with an additional $2,400 for internal combustion engine awards. The Eco-Marathon Americas, which began in 2007, is a gathering of college and high school student teams trying to drive the farthest distance using the least amount of fuel.
Collectively, it's an effort to change the way the world uses energy. Each team uses a hand-built, high-mileage prototype vehicle at the California Speedway from vehicle design to management to financing, the student teams managed their vehicles from start to finish. In addition to being eco-friendly, the competition is also about giving the students an opportunity to gain practical experience in science, math, business and design.
Note: Why wasn't this remarkable news covered by any major media other than this NBC affiliate? For another astonishing, yet little-known engine invention by high school students, click here. For more on the repression of new energy inventions, click here.
Life In a Jar?
2007-03-07, MSNBC
http://allday.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/03/07/82430.aspx
Ninety-seven-year-old Irena Sendler, just four foot eleven, saved twenty-five hundred children from Nazi death camps. Few knew. Mrs. Sendler seldom spoke of what she did. Considering all the remarkable stories from the Holocaust that have surfaced over the years, it's hard to believe this one lay mostly unnoticed for sixty years, until four high school girls from Uniontown, Kansas, uncovered it. Thanks to those teenagers, Mrs. Sendler has just been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. That tiny Catholic nurse not only saved all those children, she managed to sneak a Jewish man out of the Warsaw Ghetto. Right past the Nazi guards. She later married him and had two children of her own. Television is at its best when it shows the incredible things of which we are capable. People who see things that need to be done and do them without regrets or apologies; without sending out a press release. I like to reflect on such unassuming people like ... Irena Sendler. Perhaps they are put in a reporter's path to remind us never to get so caught up in the "Big Stories" that we overlook everyday people working in the woods. Their lives mattered and did make a difference.
Note: For an MSN video clip depicting the inspiring story of this woman and the teenagers who rediscovered her, click here. For the wonderful website dedicated to her, click here.
Iceman on Everest: 'It Was Easy'
2008-03-07, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=4393377
Wim Hof [is] known as 'The Ice Man." Scientists can't really explain it, but the 48-year-old Dutchman is able to withstand, and even thrive, in temperatures that could be fatal to the average person. It's an ability he discovered in himself as a young man 20 years ago. "I had a stroll like this in the park with somebody and I saw the ice and I thought, what would happen if I go in there. I was really attracted to it. I went in, got rid of my clothes. Thirty seconds I was in," Hof said. "Tremendous good feeling when I came out and since then, I repeated it every day." It was the moment that Hof knew that his body was different somehow: He was able to withstand fatally freezing temperatures. Hof began a lifelong quest to see just how far his abilities would take him. In January of 1999 he traveled 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle to run a half-marathon in his bare feet. Three years later, dressed only in a swimsuit, he dove under the ice at the North Pole and earned a Guinness World Record for the longest amount of time swimming under the ice: 80 meters, almost twice the length of an Olympic-sized pool. When he didn't experience frostbite or hypothermia, the body's usual reactions to extreme cold, his extraordinary ability started to get the attention of doctors who specialize in extreme medicine.
Dr. Ken Kamler, author of Surviving the Extremes, has treated dozens of people who tried to climb Mount Everest, and instead nearly died from the frigid temperatures. He couldn't believe it when he got word of a Dutchman making the ascent with no protection other than a pair of shorts. "People are always looking for new firsts on Everest. It's been climbed so many times now, people climb it without oxygen, they climb it with all different kinds of handicaps. But no one has come close to climbing Everest in those kinds of conditions," Dr. Kamler said. "It's almost inconceivable."
Note: Wim Hof's charity foundation, Happy People of the World, is based in the Netherlands. Visit the Web site by clicking here.
Oprah effect brings microlending to Main Street
2008-01-07, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=4096536
The credit crisis may be fouling up billion-dollar takeover deals, but if you're a poor African seamstress who needs a loan for a new sewing machine, you could not ask for a better borrowing market to expand your business. Anyone with $25 to spare and an Internet connection can now become an international microfinancier through Kiva, an organization that matches individual lenders with impoverished entrepreneurs in the developing world. Steve Thomas, 50, a property tax consultant in Chicago, got started by lending $50 to a man in Togo who makes a living refurbishing used sneakers for resale. The loan was repaid in full and Thomas has gone on to fund 83 other ventures ranging from a cyber cafe in Ecuador to a mushroom-growing enterprise in Moldova. Microlending has been in use for decades. Muhammad Yunus shared the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize with Grameen Bank, the lender he founded in the early 1980s to help empower Bangladesh's rural poor. Several other institutions have developed since then, but Kiva is the first to open direct microlending opportunities to the general public with an online platform. Kiva hit the publicity jackpot in September when Oprah Winfrey featured the organization on her daytime television program, attracting a tidal wave of interest from Middle America. Demand was so high the day the episode aired, every loan on the site was fulfilled. Since then, Kiva has limited lenders to a $25-portion of each loan, the average of which is about $600. Even with the $25 cap, Kiva's lenders manage to fully fund each loan in 0.97 days, on average. The recent holiday season brought a fresh crop of lenders -- Kiva sold $2.2 million in gift certificates, which the givers were able to print out from their own computers.
Note: For a treasure trove of stories about the amazing successes of microlending in raising some of the poorest out of destitution, click here.
Radical banking: You shop locally -- why not bank locally too?
2007-09-04, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/a/2007/09/04/moneytales.DTL
Jessica ... lives what some might consider the perfect alternative lifestyle. She makes enough money to pay for rent and food (from the farmer's market) by teaching classes at the Solar Living Institute and selling her self-published zine about alternative fuel. She grows much of her own food and raises chickens and bees in her backyard. As a child, her family life centered around growing food and cooking meals together. Her parents never emphasized money. She hasn't strayed far from her upbringing. When asked about her views on money, she said: "It's better to be happy than to worry about your credit card bill or working a lot." One of the key points of being happy, for Jessica, is to bank at Cooperative Center Federal Credit Union. Jessica's made it a point to convert her friends to using credit unions, which are nonprofit banks. "I say to people: So you shop at a farmer's market. You use alternative fuel or bike or take public transportation. But you still bank at Bank of America?" She laughed at the paradox of the small-is-beautiful crowd supporting a global corporation. "With banks, it's a business and all your money goes to make someone you don't know rich -- but with credit unions, all the money goes back into the community," Jessica explained. "It's people banding together to share the abundance." Credit unions -- also called cooperative banks or people's banks -- have origins in Europe. They were first started by German farmers in the 1860s who felt private banks were charging unfair fees. These rural people pooled money together in order to make loans within their tight-knit community. In North America, the idea of credit unions was first embraced by Canadians. These days in the United States, there are over 8,000 credit unions; 536 of them are in California.
Note: To locate a credit union near you (in the United States), click here.
Water into fuel?
2007-05-22, WKYC (NBC affiliate in Cleveland, Ohio)
http://www.wkyc.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=68227
Retired TV station owner and broadcast engineer, John Kanzius, wasn't looking for an answer to the energy crisis. He was looking for a cure for cancer. Four years ago, inspiration struck in the middle of the night. Kanzius decided to try using radio waves to kill the cancer cells. His wife Marianne heard the noise and found her husband inventing a radio frequency generator with her pie pans. "I got up immediately, and thought he had lost it." Here are the basics of John's idea: Radio-waves will heat certain metals. Tiny bits of certain metal are injected into a cancer patient. Those nano-particals are attracted to the abnormalities of the cancer cells and ignore the healthy cells. The patient is then exposed to radio waves and only the bad cells heat up and die. But John also came across yet another extrordinary breakthrough. His machine could actually make saltwater burn. John Kanzius discovered that his radio frequency generator could release the oxygen and hydrogen from saltwater and create an incredibly intense flame. "If that was in a car cylinder you could see the amount of fire that would be in the cylinder." The APV Company Laboratory in Akron has checked out John's ... invention. They were amazed. "That could be a steam engine, a steam turbine. That could be a car engine if you wanted it to be." Imagine the possibilities. Saltwater as the ultimate clean fuel. A happy byproduct of one man searching for the cure for cancer.
Note: Though this exciting breakthrough was reported in dozens of local media, not one major news outlet found it worthy of mention. To verify this yourself, click here.
Can Rumi save us now?
2007-04-01, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/04/01/...
The Persian poet Rumi was surrounded by news of terrorism. Mass murders from war -- what today would be called genocide and ethnic cleansing -- were a routine part of Rumi's 13th-century world. So, where's the bloodshed in Rumi's writing? Rumi, a man so advanced in Islamic training that he could issue fatwas, divorced himself from talk of revenge, retribution and eye-for-an-eye killings. Like Jesus, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., Rumi insisted violence was an unsatisfying way of resolving issues. Sentiments like that have turned Rumi into one of America's best-selling poets -- someone whose thoughts on love and other matters are revered by hundreds of thousands of readers. Interest in the mystic from Persia (now Iran) -- in his all-inclusive message that the faithful of all religions have a common humanity -- has mushroomed in the past six years. Go to Borders, Barnes & Noble or any neighborhood bookstore, and you're likely to find many more Rumi titles than books by Robert Frost or Walt Whitman. So, who is Rumi? He was a mystic and a scholar. He was an adherent of religious Islam ... who, in the later part of his life, famously said, "I am not a Jew nor a Christian, not a Zoroastrian nor a Moslem." The love and longing that Rumi felt was everywhere, including his soul. "Keep in mind that the holy Quran states there is no force in religion," says Naini, a Rumi expert who has lectured on the poet at the United Nations. "Rumi wants to remind us that we are all children and the creation of God, regardless of religion, race, color, nationality, etc." In the current climate of war and warmongering ... Rumi's biggest gift to readers today may be his emphasis on the power of love and tolerance.
He gave up the fast track that led to jail and now helps youths
2007-03-12, San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/12/DDGLAOI6HD1.DTL
When other kids were doing homework and navigating the jangly uptake of adolescent hormones, [Derrick] Bedford was dealing pot in East Oakland.. It was the early '90s, when Oakland's crack entrepreneurs became folk heroes to kids on the street. For the next decade he was in and out of juvenile hall. He never went beyond seventh grade. He spent five and a half months in Santa Rita Jail in Dublin. "From 12 to 23, it seemed like I was just a magnet to the police." Today, Bedford is a role model -- an exemplar of reinvention and a life transformed. Arrest-free for 11 years, he's a husband, a father of two and owns his own home. He loves his career. Bedford is on the opposite side of the law today. A juvenile institutional officer, ... he works with kids under house arrest. "No matter what these kids are going through," he says, "I have some experience and some testimony to help them through their situation." Bedford fell naturally into the work: He spoke the same language, knew the scams and could recognize the lies because he'd told them all. He brought credibility, and found that he loved the work and thrived on it. He won the Spirit of Youth Award, given by the Coalition for Juvenile Justice in Washington, D.C. "When I look back at my life," Bedford says, "there is definitely a lot of bad that I have done ... but I think it was all priming me to deal with the war we have going on with young African American men." Some days, he says, when he's walking through juvenile hall, "I'm just daydreaming. To grow up and be employed by the same county where I once was an offender ... is just unreal."
The Bonobo In All of Us
2007-02-13, PBS Nova Program
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bonobos/dewaal.html
We can learn as much about human evolution and behavior by studying the sensitive, peace-loving bonobo as by studying the more violent chimpanzee—both of which share more than 98 percent of our DNA. "Bonobos help us to see ourselves more in the round," says Frans de Waal, a primatologist at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta. In this interview, de Waal explains [why] it's vital to protect this highly endangered close relative of ours. De Waal: I first saw them in 1978. At the time, I knew a lot about chimps, because I had been studying them. The sense you get looking [bonobos] in the eyes is that they're more sensitive, more sensual. There's a high emotional awareness. At the time, I was interested in reconciliation after fights, and I wanted to know how bonobos did it compared to chimpanzees. Very soon I discovered that they were much more sexual in everything they did, and that interested me—not so much for the sex part ... but much more how they have such a peaceful society, because they are much less violent than chimpanzees. Bonobos tell us about the possibility of having peaceful relationships. When the Japanese scientists ... came along with the story that bonobo groups [meeting for the first time not only] mingle, but they have sex together, the kids play with each other, they groom each other afterwards ... all this was absolutely shocking and didn't fit the image that we had of where we came from. And it was totally ignored. It's very interesting: when something doesn't fit your thinking, the best way to deal with it is to shove it out the window and ignore it, and that's what the scientific community did for about 20 years.
Note: To see how bonobos use language symbols to communicate with researchers, click here. To access a wonderful series of articles, slide shows, and presentations on the bonobos from the PBS website, click here.
Marching in Gandhi's footsteps
2002-03-23, Bangkok Post
http://web.archive.org/web/20030125174150/http://search.bangkokpost.co.th/bkk...
David Hartsough is quietly building an army. Hartsough is traveling the globe to rally a force that will march into the danger zones of the world armed with only a commitment to peace...In 1960, all across the southern states of the US, people began protesting [racial] segregation. Every Saturday, Hartsough and his black friends would leave DC, which had already been desegregated, and cross into Maryland. They would sit at a lunch counter there until they were arrested. When months passed and no one challenged the racist law [in Virginia], he and his friends mustered their courage. "Twelve of us went in and sat down at this lunch counter. Within minutes there were cars and sirens coming from all directions. They didn't arrest us, but neither were they going to serve us any food. We stayed there for two days, and it was the most difficult two days of my life." Hartsough and his friends endured vicious name-calling, lit cigarettes being dropped down their shirts, punches so hard they were knocked off their stools...and members of the American Nazi Party sporting swastikas and brandishing photos of apes. At the end of the second day, as Hartsough sat in meditation...a man approached him from behind. "He said to me, 'you nigger-lover', and he had this horrible look of hatred on his face; `if you don't get out of this store in two seconds, I'm going to stab this through your heart'." In the man's hand was a switchblade. "I had two seconds to decide if I really believed in nonviolence. I looked this man right in the eye, and I said, `Friend, do what you believe is right, and I'll still try and love you.’ It was quite amazing, because his jaw began to fall and his hand began to drop and then he left the store.'"
Dolphin rescues stranded whales
2008-03-12, CNN/Associated Press
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/03/12/nz.whales.ap/
A dolphin swam up to two distressed whales that appeared headed for death in a beach stranding in New Zealand and guided them to safety, witnesses said. The actions of the bottlenose dolphin -- named Moko by residents who said it spends much of its time swimming playfully with humans at the beach -- amazed would-be rescuers and an expert who said they were evidence of the species' friendly nature. The two pygmy sperm whales, a mother and her calf, were found stranded on Mahia Beach, about 500 kilometers (300 miles) northeast of the capital of Wellington, said Conservation Department worker Malcolm Smith. Rescuers worked for more than one hour to get the whales back into the water, only to see them strand themselves four times on a sandbar slightly out to sea. It looked likely the whales would have to be euthanized to prevent them suffering a prolonged death, Smith said. "They kept getting disorientated and stranding again," said Smith, who was among the rescuers. "They obviously couldn't find their way back past (the sandbar) to the sea." Along came Moko, who approached the whales and led them 200 meters (yards) along the beach and through a channel out to the open sea. "Moko just came flying through the water and pushed in between us and the whales," Juanita Symes, another rescuer, told The Associated Press. "She got them to head toward the hill, where the channel is. It was an amazing experience. The best day of my life." Smith speculated that Moko responded after hearing the whales' distress calls. "They had arched their backs and were calling to one another, but as soon as the dolphin turned up they submerged into the water and followed her."
Note: To watch a video featuring Moko's rescue of the whales, click here.
Dolphins save surfer from becoming shark’s bait
2007-11-08, MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21689083
Surfer Todd Endris needed a miracle. The shark ... had hit him three times, peeling the skin off his back and mauling his right leg to the bone. That’s when a pod of bottlenose dolphins intervened, forming a protective ring around Endris, allowing him to get to shore, where quick first aid provided by a friend saved his life. The attack occurred ... at Marina State Park off Monterey, Calif. “Truly a miracle,” Endris [said]. “[It] came out of nowhere. Maybe I saw him a quarter second before it hit me. But no warning. It was just a giant shark.” The shark, estimated at 12 to 15 feet long, hit him first as Endris was sitting on his surfboard, but couldn’t get its monster jaws around both surfer and surfboard. “The second time, he came down and clamped on my torso — sandwiched my board and my torso in his mouth,” Endris said. That attack shredded his back, literally peeling the skin back, he said, “like a banana peel.” But because Endris’ stomach was pressed to the surfboard, his intestines and internal organs were protected. The third time, the shark tried to swallow Endris’ right leg, and he said that was actually a good thing, because the shark’s grip anchored him while he kicked the beast in the head and snout with his left leg until it let go. The dolphins, which had been cavorting in the surf all along, showed up then. They circled him, keeping the shark at bay, and enabled Endris to get back on his board and catch a wave to the shore. No one knows why dolphins protect humans, but stories of the marine mammals rescuing humans go back to ancient Greece, according to the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society. The shark went on its way, protected inside the waters of the park, which is a marine wildlife refuge. Endris wouldn’t want it any other way. “I wouldn’t want to go after the shark anyway,” he said. “We’re in his realm, not the other way around.”
Note: For dozens of other inspiring news stories, see our engaging collection available here.
Savings program helps India's street kids bank on change
2007-08-19, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/19/MNPLRGM5R.DTL
Kanaiya Kumar handed his day's wages of 20 rupees, or about 50 cents, to the stone-faced bank teller, who scribbled the transaction into a ledger before raising his head to attend the next fidgety customer. It could have been any weekday evening at any Indian bank, except for a few exceptions. Every customer and employee was under age 18. And they were all street kids, hustling to earn a buck shining shoes, picking rags and selling tea along the mobbed streets of Delhi's crumbling old city. They are among a growing number of children flocking to the Children's Development Bank, a unique program started by a children's advocacy group six years ago that has become a crucial resource for many of Delhi's estimated 45,000 street kids. Begun from a bright yellow booth in the corner of a boys' night shelter in Old Delhi, the bank now has 14 branches throughout the city, giving the children a safe place to stash their money, earn interest and even borrow to start a business. "When I used to work in the tea stall, there was no place to sleep, there was no security, people would steal my money," said Mohammad Azad, a spindly 14-year-old boy with luminous brown eyes. "Now, no one will steal my money. It's safe and I can use it in the future." The bank gives this underground workforce - nearly all boys whose average daily wage is 60 cents - more than a place to manage money. In India, where more than three-quarters of the population lives on less than 50 cents a day according to a recent government report, the bank could be [a] way out of the grinding poverty that has defined their lives. Most bank members are runaways from impoverished villages throughout North India, whose parents have taken them out of school to help the family economically.
Note: For inspiring related stories on microlending and microcredit which are powerfully pulling the poor out of poverty around the world, click here.
The Air Car
2007-05-19, BusinessWeek
http://www.businessweek.com/autos/content/mar2007/bw20070319_949435.htm
Many respected engineers have been trying for years to bring a compressed air car to market, believing strongly that compressed air can power a viable "zero pollution" car. Now the first commercial compressed air car is on the verge of production and beginning to attract a lot of attention, and with a recently signed partnership with Tata, India's largest automotive manufacturer, the prospects of very cost-effective mass production are now a distinct possibility. The MiniC.A.T is a simple, light urban car. How does it work? 90m3 of compressed air is stored in fibre tanks. The expansion of this air pushes the pistons and creates movement. It is incredibly cost-efficient to run – according to the designers, it costs less than one Euro per 100Km (about a tenth that of a petrol car). Its mileage is about double that of the most advanced electric car (200 to 300 km or 10 hours of driving), a factor which makes a perfect choice in cities where the 80% of motorists drive at less than 60Km. The car has a top speed of 68 mph. Refilling the car will ... take place at adapted petrol stations to administer compressed air. In two or three minutes, and at a cost of approximately [US$2] the car will be ready to go another 200-300 kilometres. As a viable alternative, the car carries a small compressor which can ... refill the tank in 3-4 hours. At the moment, four models have been made: a car, a taxi (5 passengers), a Pick-Up truck and a van. The final selling price will be approximately [US$11,000]. "Moteur Development International" (MDI) ... has researched and developed the Air Car over 10 years.
Note: Why aren't U.S. automakers interested in this breakthrough technology? For abundance of reliable information on the exciting new developments in auto design for super-efficient mileage, click here.
A new way to do well by doing good
2006-01-05, Wall Street Journal/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06005/633114.stm
Making tiny loans to poor entrepreneurs in developing countries has long been a popular charitable cause, but it is now gaining traction as an investment. Microfinance, as these loans are known, is aimed at lifting some of the world's most destitute people out of poverty by providing seed money for small businesses. Funding for the loans traditionally has come from charities and government-aid organizations. Now, an increasing number of private funds are steering capital to microfinance. Many of the new investment instruments have been launched by nonprofit organizations long involved in the industry, including Grameen Foundation USA, the Foundation for International Community Assistance, both in Washington. Microfinance investing got a boost this fall when eBay Inc. founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife, Pamela, gave $100 million to Tufts University to create a fund that invests in microfinance vehicles. Microfinance investment funds...lend money for small-scale businesses, such as vending fruit, weaving shawls or operating small farms in poor countries around the world. Calvert Foundation offers Community Investment Notes, which require a minimum $1,000 investment, and can be earmarked to invest in developing countries or other initiatives, including post-Katrina recovery on the Gulf Coast.
Note: Microfinance is one of the most empowering movements in the world. When we let go of our fears around finances and put our money where our heart is, we invite major transformation into both our personal lives and our world. For how to get involved, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/051023microcredit
Psychedelic Study Shows Positive Results
2008-07-01, CBS News/Associated Press
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/01/tech/main4221948.shtml
In 2002, at a Johns Hopkins University laboratory, a business consultant named Dede Osborn took a psychedelic drug as part of a research project. She felt like she was taking off. She saw colors. Then it felt like her heart was ripping open. But she called the experience joyful as well as painful, and says that it has helped her to this day. "I feel more centered in who I am and what I'm doing," said Osborn, now 66, of Providence, R.I. "I don't seem to have those self-doubts like I used to have. I feel much more grounded (and feel that) we are all connected." Scientists reported ... that when they surveyed volunteers 14 months after they took the drug, most said they were still feeling and behaving better because of the experience. Two-thirds of them also said the drug had produced one of the five most spiritually significant experiences they'd ever had. The drug, psilocybin, is found in so-called "magic mushrooms." It's illegal, but it has been used in religious ceremonies for centuries. The project made headlines in 2006 when researchers published their report on how the volunteers felt just two months after taking the drug. The new study followed them up [to] a year after that. Fourteen months after taking the drug, 64 percent of the volunteers said they still felt at least a moderate increase in well-being or life satisfaction, in terms of things like feeling more creative, self-confident, flexible and optimistic. The questionnaire answers indicated lasting gains in traits like being more sensitive, tolerant, loving and compassionate.
Note: For lots of exciting reports on new health research, click here.
Berkeley going solar - city pays up front, recoups over 20 years
2007-10-26, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/10/26/MNAIT0DQO.DTL
Berkeley [Cal.] is set to become the first city in the nation to help thousands of its residents generate solar power without having to put money up front - attempting to surmount one of the biggest hurdles for people who don't have enough cash to go green. The City Council will vote Nov. 6 on a plan for the city to finance the cost of solar panels for property owners who agree to pay it back with a 20-year assessment on their property. Over two decades, the taxes would be the same or less than what property owners would save on their electric bills, officials say. "This plan could be our most important contribution to fighting global warming," Mayor Tom Bates said. "We've already seen interest from all over the U.S. People really think this plan can go." The idea is sparking interest from city and state leaders who are mindful of California's goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020. Officials in San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Santa Monica and several state agencies have contacted Berkeley about the details of its plan. "If this works, we'd want to look at this for other cities statewide," said Ken Alex, California deputy attorney general. "We think it's a very creative way to eliminate the barriers to getting solar panels, and it's fantastic that Berkeley's going ahead with this." This is how Berkeley's program would work: A property owner would hire a city-approved solar installer, who would determine the best solar system for the property, depending on energy use. Most residential solar panel systems in the city cost from $15,000 to $20,000. The city would pay the contractor for the system and its installation ... and would add an assessment to the property owner's tax bill to pay for the system. The property owner would save money on monthly Pacific Gas & Electric bill because electricity generated by the solar panels would partly replace electricity delivered by the utility.
Note: For many other innovative ideas to develop cheap, renewable energy sources, click here.
Money really can't buy happiness, study finds
2007-04-17, Chicago Tribune
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-0704160387apr17,0,6484345.story
Highly-paid professionals like doctors and lawyers didn't make the cut when researchers set out to find the most satisfied workers. Clergy ranked tops in both job satisfaction and general happiness, according to the National Opinion Research Center [NORC] at the University of Chicago. Physical therapists and firefighters were second- and third-ranked in job satisfaction, with more than three-quarters reporting being "very satisfied." Other occupations in which more than 60 percent said they were very satisfied included teachers, painters and sculptors, psychologists and authors. "The most satisfying jobs are mostly professions, especially those involving caring for, teaching and protecting others and creative pursuits," said Tom W. Smith, director of NORC's General Social Survey. Intrinsic rewards are key, the study suggests. "They're doing work they're very proud of, helping people," Smith said. Clergy ranked by far the most satisfied and the most generally happy of 198 occupations. Eighty-seven percent of clergy said they were "very satisfied" with their work, compared with an average 47 percent for all workers. Others in helping professions describe their work as a calling. "I believe I was probably put on this earth to make someone's life a little easier," said Gina Kolk, [a] physical therapist. "I get rewarded every day by what I do." Occupations with the least satisfied and happy workers tended to be low-skill manual and service jobs. Roofers, waiters and laborers ranked at the bottom ... with as few as one in five reporting they were very satisfied. Bartenders, known for listening to other people's troubles, apparently need sympathetic ears: Only 26 percent said they were very satisfied.
3-year-old drops from fourth-floor window, is caught by man walking past
2007-01-04, MSNBC News
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16476396
A 3-year-old boy was caught by a passerby after falling from the fourth-floor window of an apartment in New York City Thursday, police said. The boy was caught by a 39-year-old man passing under the window. The boy was taken to hospital with just minor cuts and abrasions to his head and face. Brothers Julio Gonzalez and Pedro Navarez described to New York television news ... how they caught the child after spotting it hanging from a fire escape. "He was coming down pretty hard, so hard that when he landed in my arms my sneaker just flew right off and I fell down to the ground," Navarez told CBS 2 News. The brothers said the baby then bounced off Navarez's chest and into the arms of Gonzalez, who then also fell down. "We caught him and the boy's all right, thank God," Gonzalez said. "When I (initially) saw that baby I just ran. I wasn't thinking about anything, I was just thinking about catching that baby." When reporters asked New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly about the incident he said: "This is the week of heroes in New York." On Tuesday, New York construction worker Wesley Autrey jumped onto subway tracks to pin down a stricken stranger just in time to allow an oncoming train to pass over them.
Hero saves teen who fell on NYC subway tracks
2007-01-03, MSNBC News/Associated Press
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16444249
Wesley Autrey faced a harrowing choice as he tried to rescue a teenager who fell off a platform onto a subway track in front of an approaching train: Struggle to hoist him back up to the platform in time, or take a chance on finding safety under the train. At first, he tried to pull the young man up, but he was afraid he wouldn’t make it in time and they would both be killed. “So I just chose to dive on top of him and pin him down,” he said. Autrey and the teen landed in the drainage trough between the rails Tuesday as a southbound No. 1 train entered the 137th Street/City College station. Two cars passed over the men — with about 2 inches to spare, Autrey said. The troughs are typically about 12 inches deep but can be as shallow as 8 or as deep as 24, New York City Transit officials said. Relatives identified the teen as Cameron Hollopeter of Littleton, Mass., a student at the New York Film Academy. Autrey had been waiting for a train with his two young daughters. After the train stopped, he heard bystanders scream and yelled out: “We’re OK down here, but I’ve got two daughters up there. Let them know their father’s OK,” The New York Times reported. While spectators cheered Autrey, hugged him and hailed him as a hero, he didn’t see it that way. “I don’t feel like I did something spectacular; I just saw someone who needed help,” he told the Times. “I did what I felt was right.”
Note: Don't miss the inspiring two-minute video clip of this incident at the link above. And for lots more highly inspiring stories and resources, click here.
