Office Workers Raise 5 Day Old Kitten
"He was all soaking wet. The house had been power washed earlier but no one knew there was a baby kitty over in the bushes or that he had gotten wet. I cleaned him off with paper towels in case he had offensive tasting soap on him and put him back down and went back inside so the mama could get her baby. After much sitting there watching him cry, she walked away and didn't come back. I ran over... posted on Mar 12 2012, 19,313 reads

How Language Enabled Innovation and Evolution
"How did 'culture' develop, exactly? Language, says evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel, was instrumental in enabling social learning -- our ability to acquire evolutionarily beneficial new behaviors by watching and imitating others, which in turn accelerated our species on a trajectory of what anthropologists call 'cumulative cultural evolution,' a bustling of ideas successively building and improv... posted on Mar 11 2012, 33,990 reads

9 Essential Skills Kids Should Learn
"Unfortunately, I was educated in a school system that believed the world in which it existed would remain essentially the same, with minor changes in fashion. We had no idea what the world had in store for us. And here's the thing: we still don't. We never do. We have never been good at predicting the future, and so raising and educating our kids as if we have any idea what the future will hold i... posted on Mar 10 2012, 186,862 reads

The Suitcase That's Saving Lives
What if your carry-on suitcase could save a woman's life? In the fight against maternal mortality in the developing world, a rugged, portable "Solar Suitcase" is providing reliable electricity to clinics in 17 countries where healthcare workers previously struggled to provide emergency obstetric care by the light of candles, flashlights and mobile phones. The Solar Suitcase powers medical LED ligh... posted on Mar 09 2012, 5,394 reads

The Kindness Boomerang
What goes around comes around. This charming short film depicts the ripple-effect of kind acts -- the way in which receiving an unexpected moment of generosity from a stranger can cause us to become more aware of the needs of those around us and to take action to become a vector of goodness.... posted on Mar 08 2012, 6,379 reads

A Heart Touched By Music
"The way she was singing comforted me a bit. I stood there watching her play for about fifteen minutes, thinking that it must take courage to perform on your own in the middle of a crowded New York ferry terminal. So I stood there listening. She must have felt my presence because she would occasionally look in my direction. By now I was telling myself that if she could perform in front of hundreds... posted on Mar 07 2012, 5,707 reads

The Power of Introverts
"Do you enjoy having time to yourself, but always feel a little guilty about it? Then Susan Cain's "Quiet: The Power of Introverts" is for you. It's part book, part manifesto. We live in an era that values its extroverts -- the outgoing, the lovers of crowds -- but not the quiet types who change the world. In this engaging interview Cain discusses what it really means to be an introvert, the valu... posted on Mar 06 2012, 21,833 reads

Five Tips For Making Travel Meaningful
Few know more about the art of travel than acclaimed writers Paul Theroux and Pico Iyer, who have a combined six decades of experience chronicling their adventures around the world. These two world wanderers shared a list of the things they do to make travel meaningful and how they go about being a traveler rather than a tourist. Their first piece of advice? "Pick a destination that raises more qu... posted on Mar 05 2012, 11,365 reads

The Power of Metaphors
"When Pablo Picasso, the Spanish artist, was a schoolboy, he was terrible at math because whenever the teacher had him write a number on the chalkboard, he saw something different. The number four looked like a nose to him and he kept doodling until he filled in the rest of the face. The number 1 looked like a tree, 9 looked like a person walking against the wind, and 8 resembled an angel. Everyon... posted on Mar 04 2012, 48,367 reads

Competing with Love
"I had a hard time with most of my subjects, especially math. One day, after looking at my grades, my father had a heart-to-heart chat with me. He said, 'The way to crack your subjects is to fall in love with them. When you start loving what you are learning, it will no longer look like work. Everything will fall in place after that. Just fall in love.' I was in sixth grade around then, and decide... posted on Mar 03 2012, 19,334 reads