Category: Body & Mind

Happiest Place on Earth is Costa Rica

The New Economics Foundation has declared Costa Rica as the happiest place on earth.

The New Economics Foundation looked at 143 countries that are home to 99 percent of the world’s population and devised an equation that weighed life expectancy and people’s happiness against their environmental impact.

By that formula, Costa Rica is the happiest, greenest country in the world, just ahead of the Dominican Republic.

Latin American countries did well in the survey, occupying nine of the top 10 spots.

Australia scored third place, but other major Western nations did poorly, with Britain coming in at 74th place and the United States at 114th.

The New Economics Foundation’s measurements found Costa Ricans have a life expectancy of 78.5 years, and 85 percent of the country’s residents say they are happy and satisfied with their lives.

Malawi Handing Out Free Drugs

The African country of Malawi is expanding a successful program that gave out free drugs to fight AIDs. The country is founding a new company to make the drugs for their people and to export drugs to their neighbours.

“Some 250,000 Malawians are receiving ARVs. We are doing well because many of these could have died by now,” Mutharika said at an AIDS candlelight memorial on the outskirts of the commercial capital Blantyre.

Describing the drugs roll-out as a “success story”, Mutharika said Malawi would establish a local company to “produce ARVs locally and export extra drugs to neighbouring countries”.

Printable Guide to Help You Have a Good Work/Life Balance

The Day Grid Balancer is a printable guide to help people who work too much bring back some living into their life. The author is open about the fact that it won’t work for everyone so he encourages you to download the source files and edit the document to reflect your thinking, luckily he posted it under a creative commons license.

Now could be a good time to review your life/work balance so you can make sure that everyday is a good day.

For my initial pass, I created a single sheet of paper to act as the focus of your day throughout the entire week. It’s really just a glorified to-do list, designed around the idea of noting when you’re doing the kind of things that you’d like to be doing every day. By the end of the week, you should get an idea of whether or not you were successful. Since it’s a single sheet, you can keep it on a handy clip-board and carry it around with you.

Tiny Home for a Big Planet

Tiny House Design is a blog about living in a physically small place in a healthy and awesome way. I urge you to take a look at the blog because there’s only so much room for homes on this planet and we should make the most of our space.

In a nutshell, tiny houses give you back freedom in the form of time, money, and peace of mind. Why? How? Simply because they cost less to own, clean, heat, cool, etc. The less money you spend on your home the less you have to earn or the more you keep in the bank. The less time you spend cleaning and maintaining your house the more time you have to for the things you like to do.
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This blog is simply going to focus on making the mental transition to living lighter and smaller. I’ll also post ideas I have for house design, hence the name. I’m not an architect but I am a designer and who knows, maybe someday, when I have enough time, I’ll go back and get a Master’s in Architecture… just for fun of course. But for now I’ll draw tiny pictures of tiny houses and post them online.

Thanks, Trevor!

Device Helps Paralyzed Regain Hand Control

People who have been paralyzed (from a stroke or spinal injury) now have a new tool to help them regain control over their hands and arms thanks to a Canadian researcher. A wand that stimulates muscles using electricity combined with a video game has produced impressive results.

“We can now offer people with spinal cord injury and stroke continued therapy for many weeks in their homes,” said the device’s designer, Arthur Prochazka.

Physiotherapist Su Ling Chong works with patients for an hour each day. Using a videoconferencing link, she sees and talks to them and is able to gauge their progress accurately.

“We get the user to go through the range [of movement], and it actually records how strong their grip is, how much their range is, and then from there we can modify the games to challenge them even more.”

People with serious injuries, like paralysis, should speak with Neinstein and Associates, the best personal injury lawyers in Toronto.