16-Year-Old Helps Build 60k Playground

By MAD21

CNN.com reports: "Boy Scout Turns 'Mud Pit' Into 60k Playground." Here is a great story of an adopted 16 year old boy who wanted to give back to the hospital that saved his life.

"It kept you alive," a tearful Dwight Griffith told his adopted son as the two looked at an infant incubator during a tour of the Russian hospital where he was born.

More than a decade after L.S. Berzon City Clinical Hospital No. 20 cared for him, 16-year-old Alex Griffith wanted to show his gratitude.

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Website: Kids Are Heroes

By MAD21

I stumbled across the website Kids Are Heros awhile back, and it's just plain awesome. If you know of any kids who are Making A Difference with their lives by reaching out to others--or WANT to, you should let them know. This is what they say:

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Gov't: Fight Obesity? Add Sales Tax to Soda Tab

By MAD21

I'll just start this post with... OH, COMMON! Seriously??? This is where my tax dollars are going? To decide to fight obesity by taxing soda??

Yesterday, Boston.com reported: "ATLANTA—In a bid to ramp up the public health battle against obesity, a group of nutrition and economics experts are pushing for a tax of 1 cent on every of ounce of sodas and other sweetened beverages....A soda tax would generate tax revenue while discouraging people from consuming extra calories, the authors contend. They cited a series of studies that showed higher rates of obesity and diabetes among women who drank more sugar-sweetened beverages. They argue that a steeper soda tax would borrow the same strategy that helped drive down cigarette smoking while bolstering government revenues."

Really? Is this necessary? If the government is considering fighting obesity, it would be nice if they spent their time a little wiser, possibly come up with a REAL plan/program. This seems to me to be yet another step in the government trying to control something that we should be accountable for as an individual.

Good news is that it doesn't look like it's going to go far.

The Human Brain and Social Networking: Programming Musically

By Alan

Sometimes we have interesting things going on in our heads that we don’t understand, but have ways to tap into that unknown quality.

Take for instance this demonstration by Bobby McFerrin at the World Science Festival. He demonstrates that the brains in all humans (regardless of the cultural history or musical training), all have some built-in choral ability to recognize the Pentatonic Scale.

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One (Of Many) Spiritual Lessons I Learned From Renovating My Home

by Kevin (Shooting the Breeze)

This summer, my wife and I (with the help of many others) renovated our downstairs (you can see some of our pictures here ).  It was a HUGE job – a job that I don’t plan on doing again for a LONG time!  As with any renovation, there were different problems along the way that we had to deal with.  The one that I want to share in this post is the last problem that we had to overcome - wiring our hood van above the stove. 

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