Another reason to buy organic and something that the movie Fresh predicted.

Among their findings:
-The organic strawberries had significantly higher antioxidant activity and concentrations of ascorbic acid and phenolic compounds.
-The organic strawberries had longer shelf life.
-The organic strawberries had more dry matter, or, “more strawberry in the strawberry.”
-Anonymous testers, working at times under red light so the fruit color would not bias them, found one variety of organic strawberries was sweeter, had better flavor, and once a white light was turned on, appearance. The testers judged the other two varieties to be similar.
-The researchers also found the organic soils excelled in a variety of key chemical and biological properties, including carbon sequestration, nitrogen, microbial biomass, enzyme activities, and micronutrients.

Read more at Science Daily.

Now, a friend of Things Are Good is combining a scavenger hunt with beer. It’s to promote small breweries and encourage people to explore the streets of Toronto. Readers of this site will probably remember that we think beer is good. Just don’t drink too much in one sitting.

“This is an opportunity for people to show off their knowledge of both beer and Toronto in a fun and competitive way,” said Mirella Amato, Owner of Beerology. “While the focus of the event is on beer, it is also about discovering Toronto in a new light, making it a fun addition to Toronto Beer Week.”

“Urban adventures test skill as much as determination, and this is an event that will appeal to adults with a broad range of ages, knowledge, and interests, so there is something for everyone,” adds Rachel Young, Co-founder of Camaraderie. “Team work and collaboration are definitely encouraged.”

Here’s their facebook page.

The good thing about Fresh is that it establishes what’s wrong with farming quickly and succinctly then spends the rest of the film celebrating good farming that’s happening. It’s an inspiring film that will make you love fresh food, crop rotation, and help you see that we can escape the control of industrial farming operations.

The finding comes from what researchers in Montreal believe to be the first outpatient clinical trial of smoked cannabis, involving 21 people with chronic neuropathic pain.

The results, which included improvements in mood and sleep, were published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
…

“Even with this kind of fixed dosing and limited exposure, we were able to show in a blinded fashion that the patients did obtain some analgesia, improvements in sleep quality and on one of the subscales of the quality-of-life measure, we found that the anxiety was mildly improved as well,” Ware said.

“This may help in developing policy, or improving policy, or improving doctors’ willingness to consider this as an approach when all else has failed.”

Side-effects — the euphoria associated with smoking pot — were “very, very rare,” Ware said.

“I think because the doses we used were very low,” he explained.

The Star has more

The Vienna Declaration, which slams the criminalization of illicit drugs as a major factor fuelling HIV infection rates, came to the fore during this year’s AIDS conference. Its authors called on policy-makers around the world to refocus their approaches to illegal drugs and HIV-AIDS prevention – especially in light of new statistics that show HIV infection rates have climbed back to 1982 levels, largely thanks to infection in injection-drug users.

The declaration has thousands of prominent signatories – including doctors, epidemiologists and former heads of state, but few of the governments at whom it’s targeted. On Thursday, council passed a motion to endorse the declaration by a wide margin, 33 votes to 7.

Read more about it here.

If you’re in Toronto please vote for a mayoral candidate that supports caring about people so you can keep reading good things about your city.

“Who wants to learn yoga?” “I’ve got Indian cooking over here!” “Can you teach my kid how to play drums?” People ring out with their requests at this “Skills Drive” organized by social enterprise and MaRS client, Well of Change.

Well of Change is devoted to raising money not by tapping into people’s wallets, but by exploiting their skills and hobbies. At the beginning of the evening, participants network and brainstorm all the skills they have, whether borne of professional training or basement tinkering.

They then put a dollar value on their skills and participants bid on them: $40 for pilates lessons, $90 for a good carpet cleaning. The lesson takes place and the money goes straight to a charity of your choice. As a buyer, you’re paying for a service and as a skills provider you’re donating with your time instead of your money.

Read the rest of the article here.

Made from a mixture of clay, compost, and seeds, “seedbombs” are becoming an increasingly popular means combating the many forgotten grey spaces we encounter everyday-from sidewalk cracks to vacant lots and parking medians. They can be thrown anonymously into these derelict urban sites to temporarily reclaim and transform them into places worth looking at and caring for. The Greenaid dispensary simply makes these guerilla gardening efforts more accessible to all by appropriating the existing distribution system of the quarter operated candy machine. Using just the loose coins in your pocket, you can make a small but meaningful contribution to the beautification of your city!

Find out even more at the Greenaid Seed Bombs website.

Common Studios: Green Aid from ISHOTHIM on Vimeo.

While no longer breaking news, the endeavours of students and staff at two different Australian schools still merits attention. One school went bottled water free, whilst another became what they believe is the world’s first Carbon Neutral School.

In the first instance, a student-led initiative at Monte Santʼ Angelo Mercy College, in North Sydney will see the school install six water fountains and bottle refill stations to provide the 1,100 students with filtered tap water, so the canteen need apparently no longer supply bottled water, with all its attendant environmental woes.

The other school Oakhill College,, also in Sydney at Castle Hill spent six months completing an environment audit of its 42 hectares of facilities. The school will buy carbon offsets, while it uses the next five years to continue along it’s existing path of energy and water efficiency programs to the point it no longer requires the offsets.

Read more at Treehugger.