Five Letters of Fatherly Advice
In honor of Father's Day, celebrated blogger Maria Popova takes, "a moment to pay heed to some of the wisest, most heart-warming advice from history's famous dads. Gathered here are five timeless favorites, further perpetuating my well-documented love of the art of letter-writing."... posted on Jun 17 2012, 19,904 reads

How to Speak More Wisely
"It had been three weeks since my throat started to feel sore, and it wasn't getting better. The pain was most acute when I spoke. So I decided to spend a few days speaking as little as possible. Every time I had the urge to say something, I paused for a moment to question whether it was worth irritating my throat. This made me acutely aware of when and how I use my voice. Which led me to a surpri... posted on Jun 16 2012, 51,712 reads

Infinite Family
Amy Stokes uses the internet to connect South African teens affected by HIV/AIDS and poverty with volunteer mentors from around the world. She is the founder of Infinite Family an effort in South Africa -- where nearly two million children have been orphaned by AIDS. A diverse and growing team of Infinite Family's mentors have stepped forward "to fill the void of adults -- to teach, discuss, encou... posted on Jun 15 2012, 2,554 reads

Rickshaw Puller Starts Clinic for the Poor
Joynal Abedin still remembers the rainy and windy night when he saw his father die because there was no medical treatment. His village in a northern district of Bangladesh did not have any medical facility at the time, and the nearest hospital was about 12 miles away. The death of his father, about 30 years ago, changed the life of Abedin, a rickshaw puller. He vowed to establish a basic medical c... posted on Jun 14 2012, 5,669 reads

How Gift-Giving Creates Community
"Wherever I go and ask people what is missing from their lives, the most common answer (if they are not impoverished or seriously ill) is "community." What happened to community, and why don't we have it any more? There are many reasons -- the layout of suburbia, the disappearance of public space, the automobile and the television -- and, if you trace the "why's" a few levels down, they all implic... posted on Jun 13 2012, 26,649 reads

On Missions and Metrics
"There is an old Zen story about a man riding a horse, galloping frantically down a path. His friend, who is sitting by the side of the road, calls out 'Where are you going?' The man replies: 'I don't know. Ask the horse!' When we build our tools, we often depend on metrics to guide our development. We keep graphs of unique visitors and pageviews and watch them closely. This keeps us honest. It's ... posted on Jun 12 2012, 13,698 reads

Mr. Rogers at the Emmy Awards
For 33 years, Fred Rogers -- known to one-and-all as Mister Rogers -- invited children into his television "neighborhood" to teach them curiosity, ethics, and self-belief. When honored with an Emmy Award for lifetime achievement, Mister Rogers delivered a thank-you speech very much in keeping with his role as educator and role model -- using ten very special seconds of silence.... posted on Jun 11 2012, 10,229 reads

The Radical Linguist Noam Chomsky
For centuries experts held that every language is unique. Then one day in 1956, a young linguistics professor gave a legendary presentation at MIT. He argued that every intelligible sentence conforms not only to the rules of its particular language but to a universal grammar that encompasses all languages. And rather than absorbing language from the environment and learning to communicate by imita... posted on Jun 10 2012, 6,965 reads

When Life is Ugly Make it Beautiful
"The Josephine beauty parlor in northern Paris is celebrating its first birthday Thursday. Some 1,200 disadvantaged women -- abuse victims, former convicts or addicts, disabled women, single unemployed mothers -- have come here for a professional haircut and makeup, or to borrow clothes for a job interview, since it opened on International Women's Day a year ago. Thanks to volunteer workers and pr... posted on Jun 09 2012, 7,700 reads

America's First Public Food Forest
Imagine a 7 acre plot of land in a large American city, with hundreds of different kinds of edibles: walnut and chestnut trees; blueberry and raspberry bushes; fruit trees, including apples and pears; exotics like pineapple, yuzu citrus, guava, persimmons, honeyberries, and lingonberries; herbs; and more. The best part? All will be available for public plucking to anyone who wanders into Seattle's... posted on Jun 08 2012, 35,005 reads