Here’s a fun TED Talk on happiness and how we can better achieve at as individuals and as a society.
Category: Body & Mind
Vancouver Reduces Sexual Assaults by 10% Using Male-Targeted Ads
It’s unfortunate that we still need ad campaigns to remind women to be safe from sexual assault, it’s even more unfortunate that we target these campaigns at women when men cause the vast majority of assaults.
In Vancouver they launched a campaign targeted at men called ‘Don’t Be That Guy’. After running the campaign, which told men not to take advantage of women, the sexual assault rate dropped 10%!
The poster is one of three that went up at bars and around the city last summer as part of a campaign to chip away at the increasing rate of sexual assaults in recent years in Vancouver.
Six months later, Deputy Chief Doug LePard says the Don’t Be That Guy campaign has contributed to a turnaround in statistics on sexual offences in Vancouver.
The rate dropped in 2011 by about 10 per cent, the first time in several years it had gone down.
Hopefully we’ll see more public safety campaigns targeted at people who commit the crimes rather than those that are victims.
Function Better in Your Old Age by Playing Music
Admit it: you’ve always wanted to play guitar, or perhaps, you’ve been meaning to pick it up again. Either way, you should!
New research has found that people with musical training on any instrument were able to certain task better in their old age when compared to non-musicians. So pick up your neglected jaw harp and get going on bringing those tunes in your head to life!
“The older musicians not only outperformed their older non-musician counterparts, they encoded the sound stimuli as quickly and accurately as the younger non-musicians,†said Northwestern neuroscientist Nina Kraus. “This reinforces the idea that how we actively experience sound over the course of our lives has a profound effect on how our nervous system functions.â€
Kraus, professor of communication sciences in the School of Communication and professor of neurobiology and physiology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, is co-author of “Musical experience offsets age-related delays in neural timing†published online in the journal “Neurobiology of Aging.â€
“These are very interesting and important findings,†said Don Caspary, a nationally known researcher on age-related hearing loss at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. “They support the idea that the brain can be trained to overcome, in part, some age-related hearing loss.â€
Female Politicians Inspire Young Women
A new study from MIT has concluded that female politicians boosts aspirations, educational achievement of young women. There have been a few international initiatives that look to improve the world by empowering women and now we know that getting more women into politics actually does make the world better!
Based on a survey of roughly 8,000 Indian adolescents and parents, the research paper, appearing this week in Science, notes that having women serve as the leader, or pradhan, of a village council erases the prevailing “gender gap†that tends to work in favor of young men, provided that female politicians remain visible in local government for an extended period of time.
“We think this is due to a role-model effect: Seeing women in charge persuaded parents and teens that women can run things, and increased their ambitions,†says Duflo, who is a co-founder of MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). She adds: “Changing perceptions and giving hope can have an impact on reality.â€
Why We Went Down Yesterday
Yesterday you probably noticed that most of your favourite websites were down yesterday or had a notice up warning you about two bills in front of the American government. Those bills are SOPA and PIPA and essentially if these bills pass the internet would be all but dead to American citizens and beyond!
Here’s a video by the Kahn Academy explaining the bills:
So why is this on a website dedicated to good news? Here’s why:
- Yesterdays coordinated action shows that disparate companies can join together to oppose harmful legislation.
- Thanks to Google 4.5 million people signed a petition against SOPA/PIPA
- Two million more people signed petitions at Avaaz.org and at Fight for the Future
- The protest worked and got legislators to end their support for SOPA/PIPA
Never forget that when people work together stupid policies and backwards thinking from old corporate powers (who are being replace by new and better technical solutions) can be stopped! Just look at how people also stopped the Keystone XL pipeline!