It’s obvious that 3D printing isn’t inherently evil and that it can really shake up a lot of existing industries. Just think about printing your own replace parts for objects in your home or even printing food. Last year I put up a short primer on 3D printing on my game design blog.

The contest is being run by Michigan Tech and this is what the contest is looking for:

• low-cost medical devices
• tools to help pull people out of poverty
• designs that can reduce racial conflict
• objects to improve energy efficiency or renewable energy sources to reduce wars over oil
• tools that would reduce military conflict and spending while making us all safer and more secure
• things that boost sustainable economic development (e.g. designs for appropriate technology in the developing world to reduce scarcity)

Find out more at Michigan Tech.

Triple bottom line companies give equally weighting to environmental goals and economic goals which can make the company more profitable, but some companies may take a competitive hit. For those companies, a group in the USA is fighting for a new type of corporation known as a “benefit corporation”.

Proponents of this new corporate form say it essentially bakes a triple bottom line into a company’s DNA that frees companies from the fear of shareholder lawsuits if their decisions fail to maximize shareholder value because of some competing interest of other stakeholders, such as workers. Under current corporate case law in the United States, for example, corporate directors are generally assumed to be liable in such suits. Incorporation as a benefit corporation is intended to establish the directors’ fiduciary responsibility to consider the interests of all stakeholders. Formalizing a company’s social and environmental purposes under a legal framework also makes it more likely that its good intentions will survive the departure of its founders or any major spurts of growth and that its directors will have the legal backbone to fend off buyout offers from conventional corporations that do not have the same commitments.

Most benefit corporations to date are either small or medium-sized businesses. But they include a few larger companies that are privately held, such as the outdoor apparel and accessory firm Patagonia Inc., which reportedly had annual sales of about $540 million for the year ending April 2012, and King Arthur Flour, an employee-owned, 223-year-old company with reported sales of about $84 million in 2010.

Read more at Worldwatch.

Shuffle My Life is a cute website that encourages you to bring some randomness into your life by giving fun and easy tasks. It’s a play on all those to-do lists people have which tend to be filled with boring activities.

To bring a sense of adventure into your life you should check out the nifty tasks they suggest. You can track what you’ve done on their website too.

Band of the Month by Greg O’Toole