Fun

Help Santa Keep His Home This Christmas

- Adam Clare

ice melt
The David Suzuki Foundation has launched a campaign to raise awareness of the lack of ice coverage at the North Pole. Where Will Santa Live? is a fun spin on a serious issue and looks like a good way to talk about ice coverage while keeping the conversation entertaining.

“We’re asking Canadians to do something novel and give a gift to Santa this holiday season,” says David Suzuki. “We have to help Santa, the elves and the reindeer evacuate the North Pole and find a suitable temporary workshop in Canada.”

Why give?

We hope you'll forgive us for having some fun with a beloved holiday figure. But climate change is no laughing matter.

Global warming is a serious problem, and poses a very real risk to all the winter traditions and experiences we as Canadians hold dear.

By supporting our “Where Will Santa Live?” campaign, you will be helping us develop a clean, renewable energy plan for Canada, affect climate policy decisions at a national and provincial level, and provide more resources to Canadians on how to go carbon neutral at home and at work, among many other initiatives.

Learn more about our work to turn back climate change and how you can take action to be part of the solution.

Gamers Solve AIDS Enzyme Puzzle

- Adam Clare

If you thought playing games was just for fun, well Foldit is a game that has people solve problems for science. That itself is pretty neat, but what pushes this one over the edge is that Foldit has brought some great results and fast!

Developed in 2008 by the University of Washington, it is a fun-for-purpose video game in which gamers, divided into competing groups, compete to unfold chains of amino acids — the building blocks of proteins — using a set of online tools.
To the astonishment of the scientists, the gamers produced an accurate model of the enzyme in just three weeks.
Cracking the enzyme “provides new insights for the design of antiretroviral drugs,” says the study, referring to the lifeline medication against the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
It is believed to be the first time that gamers have resolved a long-standing scientific problem.
“We wanted to see if human intuition could succeed where automated methods had failed,” Firas Khatib of the university’s biochemistry lab said in a press release.

Read the rest of the article.

Thanks Kathryn!

A Game That Protects Nature

- Adam Clare

A new Facebook game has been launched that allows you to help the planet while you play. It’s called MyConservationPark and it’s made by Good World Games.

MyConservationPark is a socially conscious Facebook game that places you in charge of building and managing a protected wildlife reserve. Create and sustain a livable habitat for your endangered heroes while defending your park from human and environmental threats. Purchase species and hire helpers to improve your animal’s habitat; the healthier your animal’s habitat, the more Conservation Cash and Good World Gold you earn. Your gameplay supports real life conservation efforts: MyConservationPark donates a percentage of all in-game purchase revenue directly to one of our non-profit partners’ conservation programs.

Play MyConservationPark
Good World Games

Good Bikes on the Streets of Toronto

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

The Good Bike project is bringing colour to the streets of Toronto. Bright neon bicycles are celebrating aspects of Toronto, they really are eye-catching.

Over the past few weeks, more than 30 brightly painted bicycles, a few featuring baskets of potted plants, have popped up all over the city—orange at Queen and Dovercourt, blue at Dundas and Sackville, and pastel pink at College and Robert, among many others. On their own, the bikes may seem like isolated or even arbitrary acts of street art, but in reality, they’re part of a citywide network of bikes, their colours and locations carefully and specifically chosen to commemorate a piece of history, an urban hot spot, or a personal memory.

As with any infestation, even the nice ones, it started small—Vanessa Nicholas and Caroline Macfarlane, two OCAD U Student Gallery employees, found a creative way to deal with their distaste for a rusty, derelict bike abandoned on the street outside their place of work by painting it bright orange and planting flowers in its basket. They were met with enthusiasm from passersby but also with a big, angry ticket from the City of Toronto calling for its removal. With support from fans and friends interested in protecting public works of art, accelerated by media reaction and councilors Gary Crawford (Ward 36, Scarborough Southwest) and Adam Vaughan (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina) City Hall eventually changed its mind and even Rob Ford hopped on the idea to turn the now-famous Orange Bike into a citywide project, in partnership with Macfarlane and Nicholas, known as the Good Bike Project.

Read the full article at Torontoist.

A Really Good Ad Campaign

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

People For Good wants to remind you to do good things everyday. Throughout Canada mysterious ads have appeared promoting People For Good and it turns out it’s a few marketers who wanted to take a break from selling things and wanted to sell good ideas.

People For Good’s website is filled with small very easy to do actions that apply to almost everyone. Check it out and do some good!

“The genesis of this was about wanting to do something positive and socially responsible and taking stock of what we do for a living. And what we do for a living is changing attitudes and behaviours.”

The campaign, in which the messages started to appear on billboards in late June, is under way in Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Montreal and Halifax, and is slated to run until Aug. 21.

…

“The reaction we’ve had has been outstanding,” says Sherman, who won’t reveal how many millions of ad space was donated.

“I hope that aside from encouraging every Canadian to do a good deed or something nice, I hope we can also inspire other people in other industries, in other companies, to take stock of what their collective can do and try and use some of the energy… to do something socially responsible,” said Sherman.

Read the rest of the article here.
Go to the People For Good website.

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