Author Archives: Vanessa King

About Vanessa King

Vanessa is a co-founder and the in-house artist of ThingsAreGood.com. She is a fundraising administrator working on behalf of various charities and dreams of being the sole person who, through synchronistic and somewhat accidental circumstance, ends up saving the World. After her 13 year stint as a professional actress in film and television, Vanessa is now pursuing her musical ambitions as a singer as she also hopes to save the World through music.

Bush Protects Environment???

With all the stories lately about the U.S. president avoiding important environmental issues, this recent news is a truely refreshing change. President George W Bush has recently established the largest protected marine area in the World, in Hawaii. The Northwestern Hawaiian Island Marine National Monument stretches 2,600 kilometers across the central Pacific Ocean and is home to a variety of species that are not found anywhere else on the planet. It is also the largest and healthiest coral-reef system in the United States.

Protection of the area will ensure that unauthorized passage of ships will be prohibited, as well as unauthorized recreational or commercial activity, removal of coral wildlife minerals and other resources or waste dumping.

Multi-Billionnaire Buffet Gives Away 85% of Net Worth.

Super-rich American investor Warren Buffet will be giving away 85% of his $44 billion estate to charities, most of it going to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This will be the largest single gift in history!

Warren Buffet is the owner of Birkshire Hathaway. He made his fortune through astute investing. Despite his astounding wealth, he lives a relatively modest life. He takes an annual salary of $100 000 and lives in the same house he has since 1958.

LegalTorrents.com – Free Culture

LegalTorrents is a collection of Creative Commons-licensed, legally downloadable, freely distributable creator-approved files, from electronic/indie music to movies and books, which have been made available via BitTorrent.

The legaltorrents.com site is also hosting a ‘guaranteed’ high speed seed for them. Everyone that grabs the BitTorrent client and downloads helps contribute more bandwidth, because BitTorrent utilizes your unused upload bandwidth. All of the current torrents are made available under a Creative Commons license with the full permission of the rights holder.

They also have an RSS feed.

For Some Women, Giving Birth is Orgasmic

In an article in the Times Online, Midwife Katrina Caslake reports on her experience achieving orgasm during childbirth. She says that the keys to achieving pain-free, even orgasmic births is for the woman to relax and allow herself to feel sexy. She has science to back up her claims, too: The same hormones that are involved in love and sex are also involved in childbirth.

The practise of midwifery lost popularity in the 18th and 19th centuries, when male doctors were too embarrassed to allow women to feel sexy during childbirth. Since the middle of the last century, midwifery has grown in popularity.

Kyoto Still Supported by Canadian Municipalities

Although the new Conservative Federal government in Canada is shying away from the Kyoto Protocol, that isn’t stopping Canada’s mayors and some provinces from taking action anyway! Two weeks ago an annual meeting was held by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, representing 1,400 municipal leaders across Canada. At that meeting a policy statement was adopted that supports Canada’s ratification of Kyoto.

“Municipal governments commit themselves…to implementing policies and operational changes that will achieve a global reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 30 per cent by 2020 and 80 per cent by 2050, based on 1990 levels,” the statement reads.

Municipal governments realize that they have the power to make a difference in Canada’s greenhouse gas emmisions, since they have a say in things such as transit and landfill regulations.
“In Canada, close to 55 per cent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions can be influenced by decisions made by municipal governments,” the statement says.

Combine this with the latest news of, Quebec’s Provincial Government aiming to become the first province to levy a “carbon tax” in the fight against global warming, and it’s hard not to wonder…….who really needs the Feds anyway???