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Inspirational News Articles
Excerpts of key news articles on


Below are highly engaging excerpts of key inspirational news articles reported in the mainstream media. Links are provided to the full, original news articles. If any link fails to function, read this webpage. These inspirational articles are listed by order of importance. You can also explore the news articles listed by order of the date of the article or by the date posted. Enjoy the rich inspiration!

Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on dozens of engaging topics. And read excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.


How the Mind Can Heal the Heart
2013-06-19, Greater Good
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_heal_heart_mind

Tara Bennett-Goleman and her husband Daniel Goleman form a kind of intellectual dream team—one almost exclusively preoccupied with emotions. In best-selling books like Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence, Daniel Goleman has laid out the cognitive science and theories behind our emotions and social interactions. In her work as a psychotherapist and in her best-selling book Emotional Alchemy, Bennett-Goleman has applied those theories to overcoming self-defeating habits of mind and improving our relationships. Now Bennett-Goleman has a new book called Mind Whispering: A New Map to Freedom from Self-Defeating Emotional Habits. In it, she builds on the theory described in Emotional Alchemy to apply mindfulness to overcoming the ingrained emotional habits that can hurt our relationships. I spoke with Bennett-Goleman and Goleman recently. Jill Suttie: What is mind whispering exactly? Tara Bennett-Goleman: Mind whispering is an integration of Eastern and Western psychologies, the neuroscience of habit change, and principles from horse whispering, creating a new map of the emotional mind. It draws on mindfulness, cognitive therapy, and Buddhist psychology to re-pattern self-defeating habits. Daniel Goleman: Mind whispering helps us to identify our modes of being, particularly the ones that are built around self-defeating habits. Unfortunately, many of us get stuck in those. The modes are on a spectrum—there’s a self-defeating range, but then there’s a positive, healthy range. The alternative to being either anxious or avoidant is to be secure, and the research shows that if we’re in the secure base we’re more open, empathic, generous, and compassionate. The secure mode helps us connect with others.

Note: For a treasure trove of great news articles which will inspire you to make a difference, click here.


What is the state of the world in 2013?
2013-04-03, Positive News
http://positivenews.org.uk/2013/peace_democracy/11731/state-world-2013/

If we look back over the past quarter century since the end of the Cold War in 1989, we can see how quickly confidence about the future can bloom and wither. A short-lived sense of a peace died in the Gulf, the western Balkans and Rwanda. Waves of prosperity came and went with the dotcom boom and bust, and the bursting of our western credit-based bubble of prosperity in 2008. The five big challenges we face as a global community [are] wealth and poverty, war and peace, rights and respect, and the health of people and the planet. The indices of inequality keep worsening and while there are many excellent initiatives on curbing waste, meaningful reductions in carbon output still seem out of political reach. But a look at the other three big issues shows that it need not be thus. This is not a peaceful world and yet it is more peaceful today than at any time since before the first world war and, some argue, ever. Military spending remains high and armed conflict remains a major cause of death, yet by comparison with earlier times, there are markedly fewer wars and they are less lethal. There has been an avalanche of peace agreements in the two decades since the end of the Cold War and a major sustained, if quiet, effort not only to make peace, but then to lay the foundations for long term peace in conflict-affected countries. It would be wrong to look at the issues of war and peace and declare ‘job done’. If the United Nations and the peace-funding governments can stay focused, there is every reason to expect a reasonably successful record of building peace to continue.

Note: For a treasure trove of great news articles which will inspire you to make a difference, click here.


Employees First
2012-09-01, The Intelligent Optimist (formerly Ode Magazine)
http://theoptimist.com/employees-first/

In 2006, after a less than illustrious career in the restaurant business, 31-year-old Ben Zempel got a job with wholesaler Costco. That wouldn’t be remarkable in itself, but Zempel has Down syndrome. Since he got the job, he’s happier than ever, according to his mom, Jane. It’s not just employees with a disability—all 163,000 people on Costco’s payroll around the world can count on extraordinary amounts of attention. They’re better paid than competitors’ staff, management solicits their input on store strategy, and full- and part-time workers alike enjoy complete health insurance coverage. It all adds up to low turnover: Just 6 percent of employees decide to leave the company after more than a year. In fact, after 20 Costco staff from Melville, New York, won a $200 million lottery prize last year, only one of them quit—not because of the unexpected fortune but because at 73, he figured it was time to retire. More and more businesses are beginning to realize, as Costco has, that it pays to invest in people. Strikingly, it’s companies that put staff at the top of the list that seem to be doing best. Costco ended 2010 and 2011—tough years for most companies—with hefty profits.

Note: For deeply inspiring reports from reliable sources, click here.


Finding healing for the healers
2012-07-17, Boston Globe
http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/2012/07/15/one-patient-c...

Seventeen years ago today, in the Boston Globe Magazine, a dying man issued a plea for greater compassion in medicine. He worried that medical professionals faced increasing work demands that prioritized efficiency over empathy. Kenneth Schwartz died of lung cancer two months later, but not before founding an organization that would bring increased attention to the importance of human interactions in medicine. Research suggests that without intervention, physicians may risk becoming less empathetic over time. A recent survey of 18 studies found that medical students and residents tended to report declining feelings of empathy over the course of their training. Another study found that self-perceived empathy dropped sharply after the third year of medical school, when students start working with patients in the hospital. The Schwartz Center for Compassionate Healthcare’s flagship program, which started at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1997, encourages doctors, nurses, and other health professionals to share the complex and often distressing feelings that arise from patient care. In recent years, the Schwartz Center Rounds have expanded rapidly, spreading to more than 260 institutions in the country and 14 hospitals in the United Kingdom. The program’s growth reflects an increasing recognition that traditional ideals of the stoic, superhuman medical professional may not be healthy — for either the patient or the caregiver. Schwartz Center Rounds highlight feelings — guilt, fear, anger, or sadness — that might lead caregivers to withdraw emotionally from their work.


Helping 'Kliptown' kids take control of their future
2012-07-12, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/12/world/africa/cnnheroes-madondo-kliptown/index.html

Brian Munyai has spent nearly all of his 22 years living in a small metal shack that has never had electricity or running water. Conditions like this are typical for the nearly 40,000 people who live in the slums of Kliptown, a district in the largely black township of Soweto, South Africa. In high school, he heard about the Kliptown Youth Program. The after-school program, commonly known as KYP, provided him with intensive tutoring that helped him pass his senior exams and find funding to attend the University of Johannesburg. Stories like this motivate Thulani Madondo, the director and co-founder of KYP. A lifelong Kliptown resident, he has a goal of helping people like Munyai change their lives and their community through education. Right now, Madondo's group provides academic support, meals and after-school activities to 400 children. Every Monday through Thursday at 4 p.m. sharp, students hit the books in the tutoring program. Primary school students are tutored by the program's staff twice a week; on alternate days, professional teachers work with the high school students to prepare them for the matriculation exams required at the end of 12th grade. Books can be borrowed from the program's library -- the only one in the community -- and there are nearly 300 Internet-accessible laptops that were donated through the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child. So far, 21 members, including Munyai, have gone on to a university. [KYP provides] some financial assistance and helps members find ways to finance the rest.

Note: Check out the Kliptown Youth Program website at www.kliptownyouthprogram.org.za and see how to help. For a treasure trove of great news articles which will inspire you to make a difference, click here.


An Early Eco-City Faces the Future
2012-02-16, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/garden/an-early-eco-city-faces-the-future.h...

Occupying the middle of nowhere must have appealed to the students, architects and seekers of the 1970s who founded Arcosanti, an “urban laboratory” in the desert 70 miles north of Phoenix. Above all, they were able to join an ongoing colloquy with the city’s visionary designer, Paolo Soleri. In a cosmic language of his own invention..., Mr. Soleri proselytized for a carless society in harmony with the natural world. Over the course of 40 years, some 7,000 souls would come and go. For the most part, though, they left. And last fall, Mr. Soleri joined this group himself, retiring at age 92 as the president of the parent Cosanti Foundation. The foundation’s new president, Jeff Stein, 60, [was] formerly dean of the Boston Architectural College. But if Mr. Stein can’t miraculously transform Arcosanti into a dense eco-city for 5,000 residents — and that was always Mr. Soleri’s plan — what should it become instead? Whatever Mr. Stein may wish to do, for now it will have to be accomplished with an operating budget of less than $1 million. His first job, perhaps, is to become an ambassador: to remind the world that Arcosanti exists as a going concern. Some 25,000 [visitors] stop here each year. 56 inspired souls ... continue to live and work and dream in the Arcosanti that exists today.

Note: For a beautiful slide show of this most unusual place, click here. For a treasure trove of great news articles which will inspire you to make a difference, click here.


I Am University Presents a Shift of A Lifetime: 11/11/11
2011-10-28, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/10/28/prweb8909399.DTL

Millions are expected to participate in a global event on 11-11-11 to uplift and unite humanity through conscious intention, according to I AM Group University, an Illinois-based university that "Illuminates Human Consciousness Expansion and Growth." As described in a promo for "The Science of Miracles: Quantum Language of Healing, Peace, Feeling and Belief" (DVD) by Gregg Bradeb, "In the first years of the 21st Century, scientists confirmed the existence of a field of energy that connects all people with everything in the world. Given names that range from the 'Quantum Hologram' and 'The Field' to 'The Divine Matrix' and the 'Mind of God', research has shown that through the conduit of this energy, the feelings, beliefs and prayers within people have the power to change the world." Let's connect on 11-11-11 for the "shift of a lifetime" engaging millions of people across the globe. Whoever you are, wherever you are, join as we all open our hearts to one another, to mother earth, to everything that lives on this planet, and the universal energy that supports all as we become one. Lets all meditate for a global cause, join with us on 11-11-11. Gather with friends to pray, contemplate, dance or sing to honor the amazing changes taking place in our lifetime, and at the same time we will all usher in an era of abundance, joy, peace, unity and pure love.

Note: For an abundance of information on exciting 11-11-11 events around the globe and how you can form your own gathering, click here.


World's oldest man dies in Montana at 114
2011-04-14, MSNBC/Associated Press
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/42599413/ns/us_news-life

Walter Breuning's earliest memories stretched back 111 years, before home entertainment came with a twist of the radio dial. They were of his grandfather's tales of killing Southerners in the Civil War. Breuning was 3 and horrified: "I thought that was a hell of a thing to say." But the stories stuck, becoming the first building blocks into what would develop into a deceptively simple philosophy that Breuning, the world's oldest man at 114 before he died Thursday, credited to his longevity. Here's the world's oldest man's secret to a long life: — Embrace change, even when the change slaps you in the face. ("Every change is good.") — Eat two meals a day ("That's all you need.") — Work as long as you can ("That money's going to come in handy.") — Help others ("The more you do for others, the better shape you're in.") Then there's the hardest part. It's a lesson Breuning said he learned from his grandfather: Accept death. "We're going to die. Some people are scared of dying. Never be afraid to die. Because you're born to die," he said. Breuning died of natural causes in a Great Falls hospital. He was the oldest man in the world and the second-oldest person, according to the Los Angeles-based Gerontology Research Group. Besse Cooper of Monroe, Ga. — born 26 days earlier — is the world's oldest person.


But Will It Make You Happy?
2010-08-08, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/business/08consume.html

A two-bedroom apartment. Two cars. Enough wedding china to serve two dozen people. Yet Tammy Strobel wasn’t happy. Working as a project manager with an investment management firm in Davis, Calif., and making about $40,000 a year, she was, as she put it, caught in the “work-spend treadmill.” So one day she stepped off. Inspired by books and blog entries about living simply, Ms. Strobel and her husband, Logan Smith, both 31, began donating some of their belongings to charity. Emboldened by a Web site that challenges consumers to live with just 100 personal items, Ms. Strobel winnowed down her wardrobe and toiletries to precisely that number. Today, three years after Ms. Strobel and Mr. Smith began downsizing, they live in Portland, Ore., in a spare, 400-square-foot studio with a nice-sized kitchen. She owns four plates, three pairs of shoes and two pots. With Mr. Smith in his final weeks of school, Ms. Strobel’s income of about $24,000 a year covers their bills. “The idea that you need to go bigger to be happy is false,” she says. “I really believe that the acquisition of material goods doesn’t bring about happiness. Give away some of your stuff,” she advises. “See how it feels.”


Computers to translate world's 'lost' languages after program deciphers ancient text
2010-07-27, The Daily Mail (One of the UK's largest-circulation newspapers)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1296214/Computer-program-trans...

Scientists have used a computer program to decipher a written language that is more than three thousand years old. The program automatically translated the ancient written language of Ugaritic within just a few hours. Ugaritic was last used around 1200 B.C. in western Syria and consists of dots on clay tablets. It was first discovered in 1920 but was not deciphered until 1932. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology told the program that the language was related to ... Hebrew. Through repeated analysis, the program linked letters and words to map nearly all Ugaritic symbols to their Hebrew equivalents in a matter of hours. The system looks for commonly used symbols in the two languages and gradually refines its mapping of the alphabet until it can go no further. The Ugaritic alphabet has 30 letters, and the system correctly mapped 29 of them to their Hebrew counterparts. Of the words that the two languages shared the program was able to correctly identify 60 per cent of them. Science professor Regina Barzilay, who was leading the research, said: ‘Traditionally, decipherment has been viewed as a sort of scholarly detective game, and computers weren't thought to be of much use. Our aim is to bring to bear the full power of modern machine learning and statistics to this problem.’ Scientists hope the breakthrough could help them decipher the few ancient languages that they have been unable to translate so far.


Green funerals make for eco-exits
2008-04-20, Associated Press
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D905FE700&show_article=1

It's no longer enough to live a greener life—now people are being encouraged to be environmentally friendly when they leave the Earth too. Cardboard coffins, clothes sewn from natural fibers, a burial plot in a natural setting. Green funerals attempt to be eco-friendly at every stage. "People are trying to think about what's the best way to live and with that, what's the best way to die," said Roslyn Cassidy, a funeral director for Green Endings, which provides eco-friendly funerals. Britain has been a world leader in eco-friendly funerals for years and a source of green burial products and ideas for countries like the United States, where the trend is just starting to catch on. Over the weekend in London, those in the business showcased their products and services at the Natural Death Center's Green Funeral Exhibition. The Natural Death Center provides a handbook that suggests environmental targets for cemeteries. "You can take any funeral and make it greener," said Michael Jarvis, the center's director. In a green funeral, bodies are not embalmed and are dressed in pure fiber clothes. Green campaigners say refrigeration or dry ice is a good alternative to formaldehyde, which can seep into the water system. Biodegradable coffins also differ from the traditional mahogany. Cardboard coffins—which are as thick as their wooden counterparts—can be decorated by family and biodegrade within three months. Small details are important for green funerals, such as using smaller cars instead of limousines in funeral processions. "What people are wanting is to know that they're doing the best they can both for their loved ones and for the environment," Cassidy said.

Note: For many more inspirational reports from major media sources, click here.


Eggheads: How bird brains are shaking up science
2007-09-16, Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/09/16/eggheads/

The New Caledonian crow is surprisingly smart about its food. Its favorite insects live in tiny crevices that are too narrow for its beak. So the crow takes a barbed leaf and, using its beak and claws, fashions a primitive hook. It then lowers the hook down into the cracks, almost like a man fishing, and draws up a rich meal. Some scientists even suggest that crows are more sophisticated tool builders than chimps, since they can transmit their knowledge on to successive generations and improve the tools over time. These birds have a culture. The world lost its most famous bird brain this month: Alex, an African gray parrot who lived in a Brandeis laboratory and possessed a vocabulary of nearly 150 words. Yet as remarkable as Alex was - he could identify colors and shapes - he was not alone. The songs of starlings display a sophisticated grammar once thought the sole domain of human thinking. A nutcracker can remember the precise location of hundreds of different food storage spots. And crows in Japan have learned how to get people to crack walnuts for them: They drop them near busy intersections, then retrieve the smashed nuts when the traffic light turns red. These feats are part of a growing recognition of the genius of birds. Scientists are now studying various birds to explore everything from spatial memory to the grammatical structure of human language. This research is helping to reveal the secrets of the human brain. But it is also overturning the conventional evolutionary story of intelligence, in which all paths lead to the creation of the human cortex. The tree of life, scientists are discovering, has numerous branches of brilliance. "It used to be that people would only talk about intelligence in terms of primates," says Nicola Clayton, a professor of comparative psychology at the University of Cambridge. "But now I think that birds have achieved a sort of honorary ape status, just with a few feathers attached."


Don't Underestimate the Power of a Good Red Wine
2007-07-13, ABC News
http://www.abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3376791

When a gunman crashed a garden party at [a] private Capitol Hill home ... around midnight on June 16, guests were just finishing up a summer meal ... when a man with a hood over his head entered through the back patio and put a gun to the head of a fourteen-year-old girl. "Everybody give me your money. I am being very serious," the gunman said, according to witnesses. None of the guests had any cash. Guest Michael Rabdau, 51, whose daughter was being held at gunpoint, even put his hands in his pockets and pulled them out to prove he had nothing. But another guest, Cristina Rowan, 41, had something different for the young man: a lecture. Striking a parental tone, she asked him what his mother would think if she saw him doing this. The gunman replied, "I don't have a mother." At this point, there was dramatic shift in the group dynamic. Rowan told the young man to calm down and have a glass of wine. "Damn, that's really good wine!," the gunman exclaimed. After a few sips, the man relaxed and slowly put his weapon away. "He took a piece of cheese and we filled his glass and he said, 'you know, I think I came to the wrong house,'" Rabdau recalled. Before leaving, the man asked if he could have a group hug. The group was perplexed. Just moments before, the man was threatening their lives. Nevertheless, they agreed to the unusual request. The gunman had one more sip of wine, then quietly apologized and left the same way he came in. After the police arrived, a lone crystal wine glass was found, carefully placed to the side in the alley near the home.


Extraordinary Kiwis: Saving the World
2007-06-23, TVNZ.co.nz (New Zealand's leading TV station)
http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/413551/1181085

A garage in an Auckland suburb is an unlikely laboratory for a 57-year-old millionaire with a passion to change the world. But Ray Avery is anything but typical. A charismatic Kiwi ... he's taken a horrific childhood, combined it with a passion and prodigious aptitude for science and turned it into a motivation to change the world. Ray now runs Medicine Mondiale, a non-profit aid organisation dedicated to doing things differently. Medicine Mondiale is based from his home ... and his garage has been converted into high tech lab. Here Ray works designing and developing simple and sustainable medical solutions for the many health problems in the developing world. He enlists the help of other scientists and experts to work on specific projects with him. Ray dragged himself up by the bootstraps, from a childhood in orphanages and on the streets of London, to become a scientist, businessman and self-made millionaire. After coming to New Zealand, a chance meeting with Fred Hollows (world renowned eye surgeon) set him on a path to Eritrea and Nepal to build lens factories for the Fred Hollows Foundation. Exposure to the raw and real shortcomings of heath care in these regions made him determined to use his knowledge of pharmaceuticals, science, project management, design and development to tackle the issues at a very practical level.


In the Classroom, a New Focus on Quieting the Mind
2007-06-16, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/16/us/16mindful.html?ex=1339646400&en=d90283bf...

The lesson began with the striking of a Tibetan singing bowl to induce mindful awareness. With the sound of their new school bell, the fifth graders at Piedmont Avenue Elementary School here closed their eyes and focused on their breathing, as they tried to imagine “loving kindness” on the playground. “I was losing at baseball and I was about to throw a bat,” Alex Menton, 11, reported to his classmates the next day. “The mindfulness really helped.” Students at dozens of schools across the country are trying hard to be in the present moment. This is what is known as mindfulness training, in which stress-reducing techniques ... are wedged between reading and spelling tests. Mindfulness, while common in hospitals, corporations, professional sports and even prisons, is relatively new in the education of squirming children. But a small but growing number of schools in places like Oakland and Lancaster, Pa., are slowly embracing the concept ... and institutions, like the psychology department at Stanford University and the Mindfulness Awareness Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, are trying to measure the effects. During a five-week pilot program at Piedmont Avenue Elementary, Miss Megan, the “mindful” coach, visited every classroom twice a week, leading 15 minute sessions on how to have “gentle breaths and still bodies.”


Millions for Millions
2006-10-20, The New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/061030fa_fact1

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner and some high-tech entrepreneurs are competing to provide credit to the world’s poor. In November, 2004, [eBay founder Pierre Omidyar,] Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the co-founders of Google, and other leaders of the high-tech community gathered at the San Francisco home of the venture capitalist John Doerr for a weekend session with Muhammad Yunus, who is considered the godfather of microcredit. Yunus...is a highly gifted interlocutor between the extremely poor in the developing world and the West. This December, he will go to Oslo to receive [the Nobel Peace Prize]. During the famine of 1974 in Bangladesh...Yunus, an economics professor at Chittagong University, found the theories he was teaching maddeningly irrelevant; so he went into a neighboring village and began talking to the poor. He lent twenty-seven dollars to a group of forty-two villagers. Before long he became convinced that he had a remedy for their condition: providing very small individual loans to the impoverished to start activities ranging from making bamboo stools to buying a dairy cow. In 1976, after local banks refused his entreaties to make the loans...he founded the Grameen Bank. In early May, representatives from eight microfinance institutions around the world were invited to a three-day event at the Gates Foundation’s headquarters, in Seattle. At one point, the group met with Melinda and Bill Gates, and with Warren Buffett, too.

Note: If you want to be inspired by the amazing microfinance movement, which is transforming the face of poverty in our world, read this highly engaging, informative article. To be a part of this exciting global transformation, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/051023microcredit


Placebo's power goes beyond the mind
2006-08-21, MSNBC News
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14309026/

For years, scientists have looked at the placebo effect as just a figment of overactive patient imaginations. Sure, dummy medications seemed to curb epileptic seizures, lower blood pressure, soothe migraines and smooth out jerky movements in Parkinson's -- but these people weren't really better. Now, using PET scanners and MRIs ... researchers have discovered that the placebo effect is not "all in patients' heads" but rather, in their brains. New research shows that belief in a dummy treatment leads to changes in brain chemistry. Says Dr. Michael Selzer, professor of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, "After pooh-poohing this for years, here are studies that show that our thoughts may actually interact with the brain in a physical way." New insights into how placebos work may even help scientists figure out how to harness the effect and teach people to train their own brains to help with healing. Studies in depressed patients ... have found that almost as many are helped by placebo treatments as by actual medications. Researchers are just starting to appreciate the power that the mind can have over the body. Part of what goes into the brain's interpretation is expectation. By changing the expectancy and bumping up the placebo response we might be able to ultimately find a way to provide sustained therapy for chronic pain.


Silicon Valley Takes On Detroit
2006-07-22, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/07/22/eveningnews/main1826843.shtml

At a glittering Los Angeles party, an ambitious new car maker declared the electric car alive and well. The Tesla Roadster, which can go from 0 to 60 mph in 4 seconds doesn't come from Detroit, but from high tech Silicon Valley aiming to do what Detroit couldn't -- make a commercially successful car that doesn't burn gas. "Electric cars don't have to be little, pathetic commuter cars," says Martin Eberhard, CEO of Tesla Motors. "They can be quick and they can be desirable." Eberhard made millions in the computer industry, then convinced other high tech investors like Elon Musk, the founder of PayPal, to put in big money. Musk expects huge rewards if Silicon Valley can break Detroit's grip on the U.S. auto industry. "It's batteries, it's drive electronics, it's electric motors," says Musk. "Those are skills that are present in Silicon Valley and not present in Detroit." There's a quick charger for the Tesla's lithium batteries but the car can be plugged in anywhere. It'll go 250 miles on a single charge -- at a cost the company says, of just 1 cent a mile. Tesla expects to quickly sell its first 100 cars for $100,000 each. But, don't give up. The company also has plans for a car for the rest of us. Tesla promises a less expensive four-door family car within three years. For now, however, it's the rich and famous who are getting a charge out of this electric car, such as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who tried out the car and had two words to say: "Very Nice."

Note: Don't be surprised if this technology inexplicably disappears as so many others have, like the once heralded 100 MPG Toyota Eco Spirit back in 2002. For lots more reliable information on the suppression of new energy inventions, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/newenergyinformation.


A Teen Who Sees With Sounds
2006-09-06, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/06/eveningnews/main1977730.shtml

At Sheldon High in Sacramento, Calif., 14-year-old Ben Underwood is a freshman like all the rest -- well not exactly like all the rest. In his first week at school, a lot of people at the school haven't guessed that Ben has a secret. You probably couldn't figure it out watching him in combat at karate class -- or hitting his mark in a pillow fight -- or zipping down the street on his roller blades. But in class, you'll notice that Ben takes his notes in Braille. He is totally blind. His piercing brown eyes are made of plastic. He says he lost his [sight] two weeks before his third birthday. Ben had cancer in both eyes. But he discovered a way to beat his blindness. When he was about 6, he started "clicking," and quickly realized that the sound he made with his tongue bounced off things around him, giving him an idea what was there. Ben has much the same talent as the dolphins he visited at Sea World: the ability to use echolocation -- returning sound waves -- to sense his surroundings. His mother, Aquanetta Gordan, insists he should have every opportunity -- but no pity. "To society he's blind, but that doesn't make him handicapped. He just can't see." Aquanetta has always told Ben he can do anything. "Once he said to be, 'Mom, I wish I could see.' And I said, 'But Ben, look at what you can do' I said, 'If we had a blackout right now, everybody would have to follow you.'" The more Ben manages to be ordinary, the more it's clear that he's extraordinary.

Note: See the amazing three-minute video on this story at the link above (after required commercial).


Federal prison population drops for 1st time in decades
2014-09-23, San Francisco Chronicle/Associated Press
http://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/Federal-prison-population-drops-for-1st-...

The federal prison population has dropped in the last year by roughly 4,800, the first time in several decades that the inmate count has gone down. In a speech Tuesday in New York City, Attorney General Eric Holder said the Justice Department expects to end the current budget year next week with a prison population of roughly 215,000 inmates. It would be the first time since 1980 that the federal prison population has declined during the course of a fiscal year. The crime rate has dropped along with the prison population, Holder said, proving that “longer-than-necessary prison terms” don’t improve public safety. “In fact, the opposite is often true,” he said. The Bureau of Prisons accounts for roughly one-third of the Justice Department budget, and the prison population has exploded in the last three decades as a result of “well-intentioned policies designed to be 'tough’ on criminals,” Holder said. In August 2013, for instance, he announced a major shift in sentencing policy, instructing federal prosecutors to stop charging many nonviolent drug defendants with offenses that carry mandatory minimum sentences. More recently, the Justice Department has encouraged a broader swath of the prison population to apply for clemency, and has supported reductions in sentencing guideline ranges for drug criminals that could apply to tens of thousands of inmates. “We know that over-incarceration crushes opportunity. We know it prevents people, and entire communities, from getting on the right track,” Holder said. Holder also said that there should be new ways for the government to measure success of its criminal justice policies beyond how many people are prosecuted and sent to prison.

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