During winter snow is cleared from the roads and put into massive piles to melt when warmer weather returns. This might seem simple enough, but it’s a big challenge dealing with the snow because of the sheer volume in colder climates like Canada. Researchers in British Columbia are proposing that
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Things Are Good: Conscientiousness Can Lead to Corporate Success
The corporate working world is a tough place and ti’s often assumed that the heartless will have the most success.The myth that that one needs to be like a character from Wall St. in order to advance on the corporate ladder is too common. Instead, you should be conscious of
Continue readingThings Are Good: Philosophy Will Help You Be (Happy)
Happiness can be a fleeting feeling, or it can be an ongoing emotion. It all comes down to how you approach the world and react to what you experience. In this video the idea of happiness is explored via the views of philosopher Bertrand Russell. Give the video a watch
Continue readingThings Are Good: Clean, Renewable Energy Continues Amazing Drop in Costs
The cost of installing solar energy systems of every type has seen double digit decreases in cost since 2008. This reduction is astonishing because it means that solar becomes competitive with coal (which we’ve already seen) and that arguments against using solar get less powerful every year. There’s also a
Continue readingThings Are Good: Using Seawater to Farm in the Desert
The future of farming in much of the world could look like something out of science fiction. Sundrop farms in Australia has a farm up and running that produces food using seawater pumped into a desert location where they use the power of the sun to power the entire process.
Continue readingThings Are Good: China is Getting Serious about Climate Change
China rightfully gets a lot of flak for its environmental policies; they are listening and acting on received criticism. Previously we noted that China started to close coal plants and that there is increased concern about climate change in the country. Over at Grist magazine they have catalogued seven ways
Continue readingThings Are Good: Complaints About Police Drop 93% Thanks to Body Cameras
Policing has become a hot issue in recent years thanks to the efforts of groups like Black Lives Matter bringing discriminatory actions by the police to light. In many jurisdictions police forces are already using (or considering) body cameras that record what officers are seeing and doing. It turns out
Continue readingThings Are Good: Environment Destroying CEOs Held Accountable by Shareholders
ShareAction is an organization that is tired of letting CEOs and companies harm the world and are doing something about it. The organization campaigns on behalf of shareholders to represent environmental, health, labour, and other concerns. They leverage their combined representation of shareholders to ensure that the companies return a
Continue readingThings Are Good: A Happy Partner Means a Healthy Self
Being in a relationship can have benefits of feeling good as long as it’s a healthy one. There’s now a bonus to couples that are happy: they are making their partners healthier. It turns out that having a happy partner can improve one’s health. “This finding significantly broadens assumptions about
Continue readingThings Are Good: Portugal Joins Other Countries by Running Only on Renewable Energy
Portugal reached a very significant milestone on its path to being fully powered by renewables by consuming energy only from sustainable resources for four days. Other countries are on similar paths. In 2012 Germany got 50% of it’s power from renewable sources, Scotland powered itself exclusively on renewables for a
Continue readingThings Are Good: Simulations Help Predict How People Panic
Sadly there are still incidents of death that are a result of people panicking while evacuating spaces. For decades engineers have looked into ways to make buildings easy to evacuate and have made a lot of headway, unfortunately there are still times when their efforts are for not. Today the
Continue readingThings Are Good: Cities Improve Parking by Removing Parking Spaces
Car culture greatly damaged urban centres the world over and now cities are trying to undo the damage. Smart cities are banning cars from certain areas, installing bike lanes, more sidewalks, and now are removing parking. Cities built too many parking spaces for cars and now they are reclaiming that
Continue readingThings Are Good: Toronto’s Green Roofs Keep Growing
Back in 2006 we first looked at how green roofs were becoming a development issue in Toronto, in 2009 Toronto implemented that green roof bylaw. Then in 2014 we took a look at how North America’s green roof industry is growing. This year, Toronto has become the hub for green roofs! Torontist took a look […]
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Continue readingThings Are Good: Why Watching Game of Thrones is Good for Your Relationship
Binge watching TV shows is common for a lot of couples, and that’s good. There are debates around the merit of binge watching and whether or not consuming media that ferociously is fine or not. For a good relationship binging doesn’t make a big difference – it’s following the drama of the characters that makes […]
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Continue readingThings Are Good: UK Bans Fising in a Million Square Kilometres
The UK will be banning commercial fishing in approximately one million kilometres of their ocean waters. The country is expanding their marine protection areas in the Atlantic and Pacific around the British Overseas Territories. This is good news as overfishing is contributing part to the global mass extinction of marine wildlife, anything countries can do […]
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Continue readingThings Are Good: Atmospheric Acidity Levels Return to Preindustrial Levels
Repairing the damage humans have done to the environment is a slow process but it can be done! Thanks to policies put in place by leading economies (the article sites the American Clean Air Act from the 1970s) the acidity levels in the atmosphere has returned to a balanced level. This proves that we can […]
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Continue readingThings Are Good: 3 Day Weekends Can Future Proof Work
A more efficient work week comes from rest, relaxation, and working less. We’ve looked at the idea that a more relaxed approach to work makes things better for everybody before (maybe to the point where I sound anti-work). Now there are more arguments for a shorter work week that are worth looking at. For one, […]
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Continue readingThings Are Good: An Ad Campaign That Sells More Than a Product
It can be hard navigating the world as a person with a disability, be it mental or physical, and it can be even harder to make friends. Unfortunately there is a lot of social stigma around people who look different, fortunately in the UK a company launched an ad campaign to sell chocolate and social […]
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Continue readingThings Are Good: A Playground Where Kids Play With Tools
Kids need places to play, and those playgrounds need to encourage community, exploration, and more. Designing a good playground can be harder than it sounds, it’s not as easy as putting a slide in a park and hoping that’s enough. A good playground has risk and challenges the players. In New York City there is […]
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Continue readingThings Are Good: Trams Win For Moving People
Traffic is a problem in every city, and more and more people are concerned with the most efficient way of getting people from A to B. It turns out we already know the answer: mass transit. The issue in traffic planing is slowly changing from how much space should cars get to how much space […]
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