Tag Archives: Good Fact

On Sharing and Trusting and Couchsurfing…

I was mentioning to a friend yesterday the website couchsurfing.com. My friend is a professor of intercultural counselling so she’s pretty cool. But being American her response was wow you’d really have to trust someone to do that. She sounded very reticent. I’m Canadian. My reply was, “Yes, imagine a world in which people can trust and share.” I sounded like a bit cheeky.

Check out the site’s FAQ to learn about it’s history.

Black Google

Fun Fact: TV’s and computer’s use more energy to project light colors (i.e. white) than dark colors, especially black. If large companies such as Google turned their background from white to black a ton of energy could be saved.

Beer Money for Babies!

May sound a bit strange, but the Labatt family has recently donated the largest philanthropic gift ever made for children’s cardiac medicine and research in North America! Arthur Labatt and his wife Sonia (owners of the Labatt Brewery in Canada) have donated $30 million dollars to Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, known for it’s acceptional cardiac department. The plan is to build the Labatt Family Heart Centre as well as provide additional funding to the Labatt Brain Tumour Research Centre, originally created and funded by the beer family in 1997. Having been treated at the hospital himself Arthur Labatt wants to ensure “that we don’t lose the [medical] talent we’ve got here.”

Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children is one of the largest and best centers for childrens medicine in the World. Through their research last year they have been able to reverse type 1 diabetes in mice! Human trials begin this year, and with donations such as this, more important funding can go toward research in their 8 other departments!

Ancient Solution, Modern Problem

Alexander Moseson wrote:

A scientist is resurrecting 4500 year old technology from the pyramids to create a sustainable, environmentally friendly concrete. It produces 90% less CO2 than the standard Portland Cement, which is the second largest producer of CO2 behind fossil fuels. This could have huge applications in modern society, but even better, they hope to use it to provide cheap or free housing to developing communities all over the world.

(Alex is a graduate student working on the project.) Thanks for sharing Alex!