Tag Archives: ideas

7 Alternatives to Holiday Gift Exchanges

by kvzvseason Posted on December 7, 2015

If the holiday season can feel a bit too materialistic for your liking, rest assured that youre not alone. Dont feel pressured to head to the nearest mall just because other people expect you to. There are many other meaningful ways you can share with others that dont involve directly exchanging material gifts.

1. Volunteer

This is great to do in groups. Spending quality time together can be a precious opportunity, especially in the busyness of the holiday season.

Try volunteering for a few hours with your family or friends at a favorite local charity. You can prepare meals at a soup kitchen, help out at an animal shelter or teach a fun class at a school or retirement home.

Another option is to create your own project. Check if anyone you know needs a shed built, some painting done or help organizing their basement. Set up a time and invite your loved ones over to take part.

And dont forget your workplace. Volunteering as a group can also make a great holiday office party. Try checking out VolunteerMatch.org for options available near you.

2. Donate

Many organizations that are working to improve our world need our support. Giving money to charities can make a much greater difference in the world compared to buying another short-lived stocking stuffer.

You can donate to an organization that you know a person on your list would support, then give them a card to let them know you were thinking of them.

Check if any charities where you live have adopt a family programs where you can sponsor a family in need for the holidays. A local Salvation Army will typically have programs like this.

3. Reduce, Reuse and Recycle

Suggest to family and friends that you all agree to give away items you no longer want rather than acquiring more this year.

It can also be helpful to organize a group swap in order to do something with all that extra stuff. Ask each person to bring a number of items they no longer want to the swap. Lay out all the items in the middle of a room and invite everyone to take something new home with them. If theres anything left at the end, simply box it up and take it to a local charity.

4. Travel

A group trip with family and/or friends can be a great way to enjoy each others company for the holidays without the material burden.

You can all decide to go on a long, international trip together if thats the consensus. But a small-scale trip, such as a day out to a neighboring town, can be just as fun.

And if youd prefer not to travel at all, you can always host a potluck at your place. Ask people not to bring any gifts, just their favorite dish and their wonderful company.

5. Host a Cookie Swap

Try hosting an old-fashioned cookie exchange, where each person brings a few dozen of their best cookies or other holiday baking.

It can be stepped up a notch by making it a packing party. Everyone can bring tins, plastic boxes or other containers, as well as packing materials. Once youve all swapped goodies, you can pack them up to send to out-of-town family and friends.

6. Book Exchange

Let friends and family know youd like to trade books this year. Ask them to share a book they really enjoyed with you and youll do the same.

You can also get together and start a Little Free Library project. This is an organization that helps people around the world to build their own little libraries, which are usually small wooden structures near peoples homes filled with books. Their slogan is take a book, leave a book, and everyone in the community is welcome to participate. Their website has lots of details on getting started.

7. Share Yourself

Instead of a material gift, you can share something personal. Sing your family a song at the dinner table, write a poem for a friend or offer to give a relaxing massage.

If you have a particular skill youd like to share, consider offering a lesson or a class for the people in your life.

Do you and your loved ones have any alternative traditions for holiday giving? Feel free to post any of your ideas in the comments!

Related
5 Eco-Friendly Holiday Gift Wrap Ideas
16 DIY Holiday Gifts for Everyone on Your List
7 Ways to Fend Off Holiday Stress (& Stay Grateful!)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Taken from – 

7 Alternatives to Holiday Gift Exchanges

Posted in alo, Citizen, eco-friendly, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 7 Alternatives to Holiday Gift Exchanges

Our Kids Are Fat, But They Don’t Know It

by DexterLenk Posted on July 17, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

More kids are overweight today than in the past, but fewer of them realize it:

A team of researchers at Georgia Southern University found an alarming rise in the lack of self awareness among children and teenagers in the United States. Specifically, way more overweight adolescents are oblivious today to the fact that they ought to lose weight than were in decades past—and it’s a big problem.

….Adolescents, for instance, are 29 percent less likely to correctly perceive themselves as being overweight than they were almost twenty years ago, according to the study’s findings. And the drop-off is the most pronounced among younger children—overweight 12-year-olds are almost 40 percent less likely to understand that they are overweight today.

….Solving the problem isn’t as simple as telling people that they’re overweight. There’s too fine a line between promoting health and facilitating body image issues for that to be the case….”We must be very careful when we, as parents, teachers, or health care professionals, make an effort to correct the misperception among teens,” said Zhang. “It has to be a pro-health, not anti-obesity, campaign.”

This is the place where I always start to get a little uncertain about the whole fat shaming thing. I take it for granted that overweight people should be treated with normal amounts of respect and shouldn’t be harassed about their weight. At the same time, obesity really is bad for you: it’s associated with diabetes, joint deterioration, and depression. As a society, we should try to promote healthy weight, but as individuals we should cool it with the fat jokes. This is a difficult combination to pull off.

And it’s even more important with kids, since childhood obesity is strongly associated with adult obesity. Unfortunately, it’s also harder with kids, since they have less knowledge, less self-control, and less concern with problems in the far future. How do you get them to take healthy weight seriously, but in a way that no one can complain is akin to fat shaming?

Obviously parents have to take a big role in this: if they don’t take healthy eating seriously, neither will their kids. Beyond that, I’m not sure. Ideas?

UPDATE: Aaron Carroll coincidentally reminds us today that not all obesity is created equal. Being mildly overweight has very few health implications. It’s only being seriously overweight that’s truly a problem:

Costs are NOT equally spread over obese individuals. People with class 1 obesity, or those whose BMI is greater than 30 but less than 35, pretty much have no elevated health care costs….The paper further reports that a person who has a starting BMI of 40, and can lose 5% of their weight, might expect to see reductions in health care costs of $2137. But only about 6% of adults have a BMI that high. Losing 5% of weight if you have a starting BMI of 35 would save you $528. Losing that weight if you’re starting with a BMI of 30 would save you $69.

Obviously, being moderately overweight can eventually lead to serious obesity, so it’s not something we should just ignore. Still, it’s true that the vast majority of those we call obese are only modestly overweight and don’t really have any serious health issues because of it. The real goal here is preventing mild overweight from turning into serious obesity.

View post: 

Our Kids Are Fat, But They Don’t Know It

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Our Kids Are Fat, But They Don’t Know It

Marco Rubio Is Running for President. Read These 7 Stories About Him Now.

by KianWatling9965 Posted on April 13, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

That makes three: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has told donors that he will mount a presidential bid. He is scheduled to officially announce his candidacy Monday evening in Miami with a speech on the steps of the Freedom Tower, the historic landmark where the US government processed Cuban refugees in the 1960s.

The first-term Florida senator was considered one of his party’s brightest rising stars until a doomed immigration reform push in 2013 eroded his support among conservatives. Rubio has since worked his way back to prominence, casting himself as a leading foreign policy hawk. His candidacy is not a surprise at this point, but it does set up a political soap opera, given that Rubio will be challenging another establishment-minded Florida Republican—Jeb Bush—who was once seen as Rubio’s mentor. Bush’s expected (official) entry into the race will likely diminish Rubio’s chances.

Here are some of the best Mother Jones stories on Rubio.

Meet the billionaire car dealer who could be Rubio’s Sheldon Adelson.
His presidential bid could revive interest in a number of past scandals—some of which have not been resolved.
Rubio was once his party’s leading advocate of immigration reform. Then he retreated.
He used to believe in climate science. What happened?
His ideas on how to beat ISIS are a little odd.
Will Rubio be the candidate of Silicon Valley?
Our original Rubio cheat sheet from 2012, when he was considered a potential Romney running mate.

Source article: 

Marco Rubio Is Running for President. Read These 7 Stories About Him Now.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, Landmark, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Marco Rubio Is Running for President. Read These 7 Stories About Him Now.

Scott Walker Is Making Shit Up, Just Like His Hero Ronald Reagan

by AlejandMacfarla Posted on February 28, 2015

Mother Jones

This morning, once again trying to show that fighting against Wisconsin labor unions is pretty much the same as fighting ISIS or communism, Scott Walker repeated his contention that Ronald Reagan’s early move to fire striking air traffic controllers was more than just an attack on organized labor. It was also a critical foreign policy decision. Here’s what he originally said last month on Morning Joe:

One of the most powerful foreign policy decisions that I think was made in our lifetime was one that Ronald Reagan made early in his presidency when he fired the air traffic controllers….What it did, it showed our allies around the world that we were serious and more importantly that this man to our adversaries was serious.

Years later, documents released from the Soviet Union showed that that exactly was the case. The Soviet Union started treating Reagan more seriously once he did something like that. Ideas have to have consequences. And I think President Barack Obama has failed mainly because he’s made threats and hasn’t followed through on them.

PolitiFact decided to check up on this:

Five experts told us they had never heard of such documents. Several were incredulous at the notion.

Joseph McCartin….”I am not aware of any such documents. If they did exist, I would love to see them.”….Svetlana Savranskaya….”There is absolutely no evidence of this.”….James Graham Wilson….Not aware of any Soviet documents showing Moscow’s internal response to the controller firings….Reagan’s own ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Matlock, told us: “It’s utter nonsense. There is no evidence of that whatever.”

PolitiFact’s conclusion: “For a statement that is false and ridiculous, our rating is Pants on Fire.” But Walker shouldn’t feel too bad. After all, Reagan was also famous for making up facts and evidence that didn’t exist, so Walker is just taking after his hero. What’s more, Reagan’s fantasies never hurt him much. Maybe they won’t hurt Walker either.

Follow this link: 

Scott Walker Is Making Shit Up, Just Like His Hero Ronald Reagan

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Scott Walker Is Making Shit Up, Just Like His Hero Ronald Reagan

Book Bleg Followup

by Myron83Nao Posted on February 7, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

A few days ago I asked for reading recommendations that wouldn’t tax my brain too much since my chemotherapy regimen has left me more fatigued than usual. Light, multi-part fiction was my primary request. There were loads of ideas, and I figured some readers might appreciate a quick summary. Here are the five that got the most positive comments:

Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series
Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series
Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series
James Corey’s Expanse series
Alan Furst’s Night Soldiers series

I probably made this thread harder than it needed to be by not mentioning stuff I’ve read or genres I don’t like that much. Pure genre mystery stories, for example (Christie, Hillerman, Leonard, etc.), have never done much for me. On the flip side, I’ve read lots of 20th century science fiction (Asimov, Heinlein, Willis, etc. etc.), so there’s not a lot new to recommend there. Among specific recommendations that popped up several times:

I’ve read James Clavell’s Asia series and loved it. Maybe I should reread it!
I’ve read Red/Green/Blue Mars. Meh.
I made it halfway through Wolf Hall and finally gave up. That doesn’t happen often.
I’ve read everything by Neal Stephenson. Big fan.
I’ve read lots of John Scalzi, and all of the Old Man’s War series.
I’ve read Roger Zelazny’s Amber series about, oh, a dozen or two times. It begins with maybe the best first chapter ever written. Obviously I’m a big fan.
I’ve tried a couple of Iain Banks’ Culture novels and I’ve just never been able to get into them.
I’ve read most everything by John LeCarre. But it’s not a bad suggestion. I’m sure there are a few I’ve missed.
I’ve read Charlie Stross’s Merchant Princes series but didn’t care for it much. Ditto for the one Laundry book I read. It’s too bad since I like most of his other stuff.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions, and I hope everyone enjoyed it. I also got some good nonfiction recommendations, including several by email that didn’t end up on the comment thread. Much appreciated.

Link – 

Book Bleg Followup

Posted in Everyone, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Book Bleg Followup

Support These Places: 28 Stores Thankfully CLOSED on Thanksgiving

by JessikaSegura Posted on November 18, 2014

Continue reading here: 

Support These Places: 28 Stores Thankfully CLOSED on Thanksgiving

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Support These Places: 28 Stores Thankfully CLOSED on Thanksgiving

Stop Dreaming. Republicans Are Not Going for a Carbon Tax.

by MoniqueFournier Posted on August 30, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

This story originally appeared in Grist and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Republicans, as everyone knows, hate taxes and don’t accept, much less care about, climate change. But wonks on both sides of the aisle fantasize that a carbon tax could win bipartisan support as part of a broader tax-reform package. A carbon tax could be revenue neutral, the dreamers point out, and if revenue from the tax is used to cut other taxes, it shouldn’t offend Republicans—in theory.

And so people who want to bring Republicans into the climate movement like to argue that the GOP could come to embrace a carbon tax. We’ve heard it from former Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.), who lost his seat to a Tea Party primary challenger in 2010 after he proposed a revenue-neutral plan to create a carbon tax and cut payroll taxes. We’ve heard it from energy industry bigwigs like Roger Sant, who recently argued the case at the Aspen Ideas Festival. We’ve heard it from GOP think tankers like Eli Lehrer.

It’s the epitome of centrist wishful thinking. It will not happen.

I know because I asked the man most responsible for setting Republican tax policy: Grover Norquist. As head of Americans for Tax Reform, Norquist has gotten 218 House Republicans and 39 Senate Republicans to sign his “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” never to raise taxes. His group has marshaled the Republican base’s zealous anti-tax activists and successfully primaried politicians who violate the pledge, making Norquist a much-feared and much-obeyed player in D.C. The Boston Globe Magazine went so far as to call him “the most powerful man in America“—at least of the unelected variety.

First off, Norquist has no interest in a carbon tax because, he told me, there has been no global warming for the last 15 years. That right-wing shibboleth is false, but the point is that if you don’t accept climate science, as Norquist and the Republicans don’t, you’ve got no reason to back a carbon tax.

Although Norquist conceded that you could theoretically construct a revenue-neutral carbon tax that does not violate his pledge, he would still oppose it, and he said Republicans generally would too. “I would urge people not to vote for a carbon tax, because the tax burden is a function of how many taxes you have,” Norquist said, noting that higher-tax jurisdictions tend to have more sources of tax revenue. “With one tax, people can see how big it is. Divide it and no one knows.”

“I don’t see the path to getting a lot of Republican votes,” he concluded. Neither do I.

It’s useful to look at how Republicans react to other tax-reform ideas: Eliminate the carried-interest loophole that taxes hedge-fund managers at a lower rate than their secretaries? No way! Eliminate deductions for oil and gas companies? Nothing doing.

The arguments Republicans make about this one tax being unfair or that one stifling economic growth are all just arguments of convenience. Republicans are for taxing the things they don’t care about (poor people’s meager earnings) and against taxing the things they do care about (rich people’s unearned income). So Republicans oppose taxing inheritances and capital gains, but seem not to mind flat taxes on income or sales. That’s why the big tax-reform proposals that insurgent Republican candidates have ridden to prominence—Mike Huckabee’s “Fair Tax,” Herman Cain’s “9-9-9” plan—involve shifting much of the tax burden to a national sales tax: because sales taxes fall disproportionately on poor people. (Poor people have to spend a bigger portion of their income than rich people do just to get by, so sales taxes are regressive.)

And that’s why offering to cut payroll taxes in exchange for creating a carbon tax won’t win a bunch of Republican votes. First of all, Republicans don’t care about the tax burden on poor people, so the payroll tax deduction is not going to entice them. (In fact, they opposed an extension of President Obama’s payroll-tax holiday.) Meanwhile, they don’t share the premise that fuel consumption and carbon pollution are bad, because they don’t accept climate science. And they don’t want to shift the tax burden to fossil fuel companies, which are huge GOP contributors.

It’s worth remembering how a carbon tax became the ostensible bipartisan solution to climate change. Back in 2008, both parties’ presidential candidates backed cap-and-trade plans. Obama won and advanced his plan, so Republicans all opposed it. By default, whatever Obama proposes becomes “partisan” and the alternative becomes supposedly the reasonable, non-ideological idea Republicans would have supported. It’s always a lie.

There are two possible paths to either cap-and-trade or a carbon tax: One, Democrats gain control of both houses of Congress and the White House, and feel more pressure to address climate change than they did in 2010, when they let the opportunity slip away. Or, two, Republicans come to accept climate science and decide they want to save the world from burning. But until Republicans come around to acknowledge the reality of climate change, they’re not going to agree to a carbon tax.

More: 

Stop Dreaming. Republicans Are Not Going for a Carbon Tax.

Posted in alo, Anchor, Anker, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Stop Dreaming. Republicans Are Not Going for a Carbon Tax.

App Smart: For Ideas on How to Live Greener, Think Mobile

by Myrna Posted on June 18, 2014

Environmentally aware apps can help a user with tasks like recycling, making a home more energy-efficient and purchasing everyday items. Read the article:  App Smart: For Ideas on How to Live Greener, Think Mobile ; ;Related ArticlesDespite Protests, Canada Approves Northern Gateway Oil PipelineDot Earth: Indian Point’s Tritium Problem and the N.R.C.’s Regulatory ProblemArizona Cities Could Face Cutbacks in Water From Colorado River, Officials Say ;

Link:

App Smart: For Ideas on How to Live Greener, Think Mobile

Posted in aquaponics, ATTRA, Citadel, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, Monterey, ONA, PUR, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on App Smart: For Ideas on How to Live Greener, Think Mobile

Jimmy Carter Is History’s Greatest Monster

by Bernadine Posted on December 16, 2013

Mother Jones

I know there are more important things going on in the world, but I really had to stifle a giggle at the latest attempt to blame Jimmy Carter for every conceivable ill of the pre-Reagan world. Here is Gordon Crovitz in the Wall Street Journal today:

Jimmy Carter’s Costly Patent Mistake

Today’s patent mess can be traced to a miscalculation by Jimmy Carter, who thought granting more patents would help overcome economic stagnation. In 1979, his Domestic Policy Review on Industrial Innovation proposed a new Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, which Congress created in 1982. Its first judge explained: “The court was formed for one need, to recover the value of the patent system as an incentive to industry.” The country got more patents—at what has turned out to be a huge cost. The number of patents has quadrupled, to more than 275,000 a year.

Jeebus. Legal scholars spent the entire decade of the 70s arguing about this. Under the old system, different appellate circuit issued different rulings on patents, and it was the business community that was mostly unhappy about this. Several commissions recommended plans for a more uniform and efficient system, including one drafted by Carter’s Department of Justice. It never went anywhere, but business leaders kept pressing, and Congress reintroduced court reform legislation in 1981, which was signed by Ronald Reagan a year later. It’s absurd to give Carter more than a footnote in this history.

However, Crovitz gets this part right:

The new Federal Circuit approved patents for software, which now account for most of the patents granted in the U.S.—and for most of the litigation….Until the court changed the rules, there hadn’t been patents for algorithms and software. Ideas alone aren’t supposed to be patentable. In a case last year involving medical tests, the U.S. Supreme Court observed that neither Archimedes nor Einstein could have patented their theories.

Actually, to give them their due, the new court held out against software patents for quite a while. Eventually, though, contradictions kept piling up, and in the mid-90s they essentially threw in the towel and approved the granting of pure software patents. This is hardly the whole story, though. The Supreme Court could have overruled them. The patent office could have fought back. The president could have offered new legislation. Congress could have acted.

None of them did. The software industry wanted software patents, and they got them. Big business won the day, as they usually do. But I guess that’s not a headline the Journal editorial page is interested in.

Hidden in this story, however, is the key fact that demolishes the argument in favor of software patents: “the mid-90s.” Before that, software patents were rare or nonexistent. And guess what: The era from 1950 through 1995 featured one of the most innovative and fruitful tech explosions in history. Billions of lines of software were produced, the world was transformed, and it was all done without patent protection.

So why do we need them now?

See the article here: 

Jimmy Carter Is History’s Greatest Monster

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Jimmy Carter Is History’s Greatest Monster

Patent Reform Takes a Hit From the Tech Industry

by KaraBloomer Posted on November 20, 2013

Mother Jones

Tim Lee reports that a key provision in Rep. Bob Goodlatte’s patent reform bill has been axed:

One provision would have expanded what’s known as the “covered business method” (CBM) program, which provides an expedited process for the Patent Office to get rid of low-quality software patents….The CBM program provides a quick and cost-effective way for a defendant to challenge the validity of a plaintiff’s patent. Under the program, litigation over the patent is put on hold while the Patent Office considers a patent’s validity. That’s important because the high cost of patent litigation is a big source of leverage for patent trolls.

The original CBM program, which was created by the 2011 America Invents Act, was limited to a relatively narrow class of financial patents. The Goodlatte bill would have codified a recent decision opening the program up to more types of patents….But large software companies had other ideas. A September letter signed by IBM, Microsoft and several dozen other firms made the case against expanding the program. The proposal, they wrote, “could harm U.S. innovators by unnecessarily undermining the rights of patent holders. Subjecting data processing patents to the CBM program would create uncertainty and risk that discourage investment in any number of fields where we should be trying to spur continued innovation.”

It would be hard to overstate just how self-serving and absurd the IBM-Microsoft position is. The notion that an expedited process for evaluating business process patents would discourage investment is laughable. This is the purest example of special pleading since Rob Ford tried to justify his crack use by explaining that he was hammered at the time.

Which wasn’t that long ago, was it? This just goes to show how common special pleading is—and also goes to show just how seriously we should take it. The good news here is that apparently the CBM provision is still alive in the Senate, so there’s still a chance it could make it into the final bill. We can hope.

More:

Patent Reform Takes a Hit From the Tech Industry

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Patent Reform Takes a Hit From the Tech Industry