Tag: Direct Action

Spare a few computing cycles?

ThingsAreGood is proud to announce a new team on the World Community Grid!

The world community grid helps you make use of your computer’s unused processing time. Let your computer crunch numbers for social good when you’re not surfing the web, playing games, or hard at work.

From the www.worldcommunitygrid.com website:

World Community Grid’s mission is to create the largest public computing grid benefiting humanity. Our work is built on the belief that technological innovation combined with visionary scientific research and large-scale volunteerism can change our world for the better. Our success depends on individuals – like you – collectively contributing their unused computer time to this not-for-profit endeavor.

To join the ThingsAreGood team, simply create an account at www.worldcommunitygrid.com.

Continue reading “Spare a few computing cycles?”

OneWebDay Celebrates Online Life

onewebdayThe internet is changing the way we socialize and we don’t know yet how this will impact society at large. OneWebDay wants to celebrate all the great changes that the internet has brought us. For example, ThingsAreGood.com wouldn’t exist if the web went away.

“OneWebDay is one day a year when we all – everyone around the physical globe – can celebrate the Web and what it means to us as individuals, organizations, and communities.
As with Earth Day – an inspiration and model for OneWebDay – it’s up to the celebrants to decide how to celebrate. We encourage all celebrations! Collaboration, connection, creativity, freedom.
By the end of the day, the Web should be just a little bit better than it was before, and we’ll be able to see our connection to it more clearly.”

Also OneWebDay is going on a tour of Canada!

Flushing Rainwater

Clean, drinkable water is a precious resource, so why are we flushing it down the toilet? I ask this question almost daily (no joke). Well, LifeHacker has a great comment thread going on this very question.

The thread is part of a post about how one man actually uses rainwater to fill his water toilet basin. This is a great way to do to less harm to the environment, but some municipalities in Canada don’t like people doing this though. Other parts of the world, buildings are built incorporating rainwater collection.

“Domestic potable water collection requires effort, energy, and chemicals for purification and transport. Toilets use 20 to 25% of water consumed in a residential house. Why are we flushing drinkable water down the toilet? In some other countries of the world, rainwater harvesting on a residential level is a mandatory part of building codes.”

South Africa to Speak Truth About HIV/AIDS

This August we have spoken a lot about HIV and AIDS, which means that some good news is happening. Here’s some more goodness: South Africa is going to actually suggest real solutions to preventing the spread of HIV and AIDS.

South Africa has been criticized for suggesting bizarre “natural” cures for HIV, which are clearly not cures at all. Well, activists have demanded change and it looks like change will come.

Judge Rejects Bush

In a lawsuit filed last year, the Sierra Club and other conservation group sued the U.S. Forest Service over its plans for managing the 328,000-acre Giant Sequoia National Monument preserve, home to two-thirds of the world’s largest trees. U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer sided with the state attorney general to halt further logging in the national monument created by President Clinton in 2000.

The plan would have allowed up to 7.5 million board feet of timber — enough to fill 1,500 logging trucks — to be removed each year from the preserve, the plaintiffs said. The Forest Service was disappointed with Breyer’s ruling and may appeal, said spokesman Matt Mathes. The Forest Service’s wonky science approved the removal of small diameter trees (not the 100+ year old trees) to “save” the older trees from fire. Green (young) trees are usually better at repelling fire since they are young and relatively water logged and most fires start from old underbrush. Removing the underbrush would prevent dangerous fires, but not worth a profitable venture.