The GOODEST: Our Favorite Things to Learn and Do This Past Week
- Alessandra Rizzotti wrote in News, Do and Goodest
You can learn about so many things on the internet, but how much more powerful would it be if you could also DO after you learned stuff? From a lesson about The Emancipation Proclamation to joining Obama’s Day of Service and applying to be a Mars colonist, we have things for you to learn and do from this week. Oh, and since we’re always learning from the GOOD community, we’re starting to share member profiles that are starting great discussions and activating the online platform.
Let’s Learn
Let’s Do:
Illustration by Jessica de Jesus
Original Image via (cc) flickr user Markle1
The GOODEST: Our Favorite Things To Learn and Do This Past Week
- Alessandra Rizzotti wrote in News, Do and Goodest
You can learn about so many things on the internet, but how much more powerful would it be if you could also DO after you learned stuff? From living walls and folding cars to printing houses and building time machines, we have things for you to learn and do from this past week.
Let’s Learn First:
- A Quick Look into the Science of Time
- The Year of the (Green) Dragon: China’s Burgeoning Environmental Movement
- The Easiest New Year’s Resolution Everyone Should Do
- A Tiny, Fold-up Electric Car Will Hit Streets This Year
- Intermission: Fireworks in Reverse
- What Do You Want to Learn in 2013? Google’s Resolution Map Could Help You Figure it Out
- New Living Walls Use ‘Biological Concrete’ to Reduce CO2
- This Theater Has Seats for Tweeters—So Should These Businesses
- ‘Print Your House’ Coming Soon? Architecture and Fabrication
- In Search of Ed Tech Ideas that Reimagine Learning
- People Are Awesome: Man Moves in With Parents So a Homeless Family Can Live in His House
- This Massive Land Art Portrait Fights for Human Rights in Central America
- Is the Crowd a Feasible Design Partner?
- Intermission: Those Crafty Dutch To Unveil Ultra Green Route 66 of the Future
Now, let’s DO the DOs:
Continue reading on good.is
- Make a Promise To Yourself and Others: Order Promise Cards From “Because I Said I Would”
- Rich Block, Poor Block: Find the Range of Income in Your Neighborhood
- Share This Film with Someone Who Cares About the Future of Public Schools
- Send a Postcard on National Opt Out Day, January 7th
- When Ordering Delivery Food, Avoid Places Using Styrofoam
- Help Get Car Horns on Bicycles to Prevent Accidents
- Start a Campaign To Ban Plastic Bottles in Your City
- Make a New Year’s UnResolution
Illustration by Jessica De Jesus. Image from How to Build Plans.
The GOODEST: Our Favorite Things To Learn and Do This Past Week
- Alessandra Rizzotti wrote in Goodest, News and Do
You can learn about so many things on the internet, but how much more powerful would it be if you could also DO after you learned stuff? From innovative modular designs and David Lynch’s thoughts on meditation, to a crowd-sourced photo essay that we want you to submit to, here are things for you to learn and DO from this past week.
- Using The Noun Project’s Iconic Design Tools for Social Change
- A City Education: Learning What Idealism Looks Like in Action
- Nonprofit or For-Profit? Here’s How I Decided to Go For-Profit
- Why Kids Make the Best Fundraisers, and Where Adults Can Take a Cue
- Stronger Together: A Photo Essay of Communities United
- Innovative Product Placement Makes This Music Video a Vehicle for Good
- ‘Django Unchained’: Quentin Tarantino’s Misappropriation of the N-Word
- Intermission: Anti-Islamic Pastor Quieted by a Beatles-Singing Crowd
- The Best in Photography: 25 Amazing Things That Happened in Photo This Year
- Best of 2012: The Top Ten Sustainable Modular Products
- Digging Deeper: Creativity and My First Meditation
- GOOD Video: Outward Bound Takes Learning into the Wild
- Please, Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood: Architecture and Communication
- The End of the World Is Real
- Saving the World in the Present Tense
- Re-Imagine the Gift: Give Your Time
- Send Words of Support to Sandy Hook Families
- Bring Back Word Up Community Bookshop
- Come Together to Help Build a Slow Design Knowledge Platform
- Everyone Should Make a Painting
- DIY: Make an Ornament out of Recycled Goods
- Sign a Pact With Your Community and Local Representatives To Improve Your Town
Illustration by Jessica De Jesus
The GOODEST: Our Favorite Things to Learn and Do This Past Week
- Alessandra Rizzotti wrote in Goodest, News and Do
You can learn about so many things on the internet, but how much more powerful would it be if you could also DO after you learned stuff? From inventions inspired by woodpeckers and beetles, to hosting a Secret Sandy and making a wish for the future, we have things for you to learn and DO from this past week.
Illustration by Jessica De Jesus
The GOODEST: Our Favorite Things to Learn and Do This Past Week
- Alessandra Rizzotti wrote in Culture, News, and Do
From freestyle rapping to starting your own compost, we have things for you to learn and do from this past week.
See the full Learn/Do list on good.is
Illustration by Jessica De Jesus
The GOODEST: Our Favorite Things to Learn and Do This Past Week (11/12-11/16)
Illustration by Jessica De Jesus
Original Image via (cc) flickr user kevin dooley
Infographic: Climate Change and Human Responsibility
It can’t be denied any longer: Sea levels are rising, major droughts are continuing, and record hot summers are being experienced al around the world. A recent study conducted by Yale University and George Mason University finds that for the first time since the research began in 2008, the majority of Americans believe that global warming is mostly a man-made phenomenon. And as sobering images of catastrophes make headlines, people are recognizing that the effects of their actions are not just an increasing danger to the world but a direct threat to themselves and their families.
A collaboration between GOOD and Column Five
The GOODEST: Our Favorite Things to Learn and Do This Past Week - by Meg Neal
Illustration by Jessica De Jesus
Back to School: Study a Current Event #30DaysofGOOD
Choose a single important issue or world event that’s happening right now, and focus for an hour on getting a better, deeper understanding of it.
Across the country, long-term unemployment insurance is drying up. Some 200,000 unemployed Americans lost access to government benefits earlier this month, most in California. All told, at least 500,000 people will fall off the rolls this year.
This is going to be a problem.
When workers who are eligible for unemployment insurance lose their jobs, the government pays them an average of $300 a week for 26 weeks or until they get jobs. When economic times are tough, federal and state governments often extend unemployment insurance; keep in mind that the average length of unemployment in the United States today is 39 weeks.
During this recession, the federal government has extended unemployment benefits for 99 weeks, but that comes to an end this year as Republicans push for spending cuts and Democrats lose the will to keep fighting for extensions—after all, we’re starting to see more hiring, right?
Could You Live on $300 a Week? How About $0? The 99ers Lose Their Insurance - Read more on GOOD.is→
Despite inflation decreasing their value, bank robberies are on the rise in the United States. According to the FBI, in the third quarter of 2010, banks reported 1,325 bank robberies, burglaries, or other larcenies, an increase of more than 200 crimes from the same quarter in 2009. America isn’t the easiest place to succeed financially these days, a predicament that’s finding more and more people doing desperate things to obtain money. Robbing banks is nothing new, of course; it’s been a popular crime for anyone looking to get quick cash practically since America began. But the face and nature of robbers is changing. These days, the once glamorous sheen of bank robberies is wearing away, exposing a far sadder and ugly reality: Today’s bank robbers are just trying to keep their heads above water.
Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson—time was that bank robbers had cool names and widespread celebrity. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Jesse James, and John Dillinger were even the subjects of big, fawning Hollywood films glorifying their thievery. But times have changed.
The Depressing Rise of People Robbing Banks to Pay the Bills - Read more on GOOD.is
Visit the website for TED, the conference for creative techies and do-gooding hipsters that vaulted the 18-minute lecture into an art form, and you’ll find speakers discussing everything from “Sculpting Waves in Wood and Time” to “Building U.S.-China relations … by Banjo.”
What you won’t find is a recent TED talk by Michael Hanauer, a wealthy venture capitalist, that argues income inequality is a problem that threatens the economy, and that higher taxes on the wealthy are part of the solution.
In Focus: Mexico’s Drug War: 50,000 Dead in 6 Years
Warning: All images in this entry are shown in full. There are many dead bodies; the photographs are graphic and stark. This is the reality of the situation in Mexico right now.
Top: A masked Mexican soldier patrols the streets of Veracruz, on October 10, 2011. Soldiers of the Army, Navy and members of Federal Police patrol the streets of the city as part of “Veracruz Safe Operation” after a rising tide of violence plaguing this tourist city.
Bottom: A forensic technician points his flashlight at the shoes of a man at a crime scene in Mazatlan, on February 13, 2012. The man was shot dead by gunmen while he was walking on the street, according to local media.
See more. [Images: AFP/Getty, Reuters]
These are incredible photographs.
Perhaps it’s a sign you and your friends have “made it” when no one quibbles about who owes what when the check arrives after dinner out. But in this economic climate, who can blame diners on a budget for picking apart the check drink by drink to pay exactly what they owe? The problem is doing the math speedily and accurately, without killing the mood. While a variety of check splitting apps already exist, none may work quite as well—or look quite as nice—as Billr, a new app created by a team of founders with extensive experience living on a budget: college students.
If you’ve been on the internet in the last two days, you may be aware that many people aren’t too happy about North Carolina voters’ decision to approve a constitutional amendment that strengthens the state’s existing ban on gay marriage. And true to internet form, that sentiment resulted in plenty of memes, quotes, tweets, and GIFs.
Above is one form of expression we see all too often: the old image comparison, juxtaposing how it was then to how it is now and dismissing all the time in between as irrelevant. Then. Now. Bad. Still bad.
These particular photos compare a decades-old protest against interracial marriages at the North Carolina state capitol with a days-old demonstration (I assume, anyway; one problem with these image mashups is that you lose the information about each photo) against same-sex ones in the same spot. But the general theme is not new: Every time a case of social injustice bubbles up in the internet age, we find ourselves making these comparisons. Comb the archives of news sites, then attach that archived image to the contemporary one. The message is one of two things: Either things are wildly different—worse, that is—than they used to be, or they are just as terrible as they were. In either situation, the underlying point is the same: We really fucked up, and it’s simple to see how and why.
