Depression seemed to be talked about more last year than in previous years thanks to celebrities revealing their troubles with the affliction. There’s also been more research into depression. With more people thinking about and looking into depression we get new perspectives on the issue. Now, some researchers are arguing
Continue readingAuthor: Adam Clare
Things Are Good: A Veggie Diet Could Prolong Your Life
There are tons of benefits from having a vegetarian diet from improved individual health to having less of an impact on the environment. Now there’s one more reason to have a vegetarian diet, or at least something close to one, it’ll help you live longer. Scientists have long believed that
Continue readingThings Are Good: Will Iceland be the “Switzerland of Data”?
Iceland is the de facto home of Wikileaks and is also a country concerned with privacy issues. The country is now considering leveraging their experience and reputation of being digital-data friendly to the next level. Presently, the country is considering branding itself as the “Switzerland of Data.” If Iceland does
Continue readingThings Are Good: Painting Neighbourhoods
Artists Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn create community art by painting entire neighborhoods, and involving those who live there — from the favelas of Rio to the streets of North Philadelphia. What’s made their projects succeed? In this funny and inspiring talk, the artists explain their art-first approach — and
Continue readingThings Are Good: Harvest Energy From Everyday Activities
Some gyms are capturing the energy created by users to power the TVs in the buildings. But what if we capture energy from our movements throughout the day? That’s what one designer asked and she set out to examine what the future of wearable energy capture would look like. Of
Continue readingThings Are Good: This Classroom Makes More Energy Than it Consumes
Anderson Anderson Architecture has built a classroom in Hawaii that generates more energy than it consumes, making what they call a “energy positive” building. The term “energy positive” is being encouraged to replace “net zero” as the benchmark for environmental consciousness in architecture. The classroom does use roof solar panels
Continue readingThings Are Good: No Need to Deforest the Planet for More Food
One of the leading causes of deforestation right now is food production. As population levels grow we need more land to feed more people and this as resulted in the cutting down of forests for arable land. We’ve already seen that a simple diet change can protect forests and save
Continue readingThings Are Good: Austrialian Team Gets Solar Efficiency Over 40%
It’s been said that once solar power efficiency gets to 40% it’ll be a tipping point for the mass use of solar panels. Now we can see if that is true as a team of researchers partnered with industry has developed technology to make it so solar energy conversion can
Continue readingThings Are Good: A Look Into the Ig Nobel Awards
The Ig Nobel Prize is dedicated to science that makes you laugh then makes you think. It’s a fun and great way to get people engaged in science while exploring questions that sound rather bizarre. As founder of the Ig Nobel awards, Marc Abrahams explores the world’s most improbable research.
Continue readingMore People are Employed in Green Energy Than in the Tar Sands
Despite the fact that the tar sands get more subsidies than green energy solutions in Canada, the green energy providers employ more people. Clean Energy Canada released a report today that examines the state of green energy in Canada and they have some remarkable findings. “Clean energy has moved from
Continue readingThings Are Good: Rob Ford No Longer Mayor of Toronto
Rob Ford has been the worst mayor of Toronto and as of today he’s officially no longer mayor. I say officially because he was stripped of his real power over a year ago. Why is this good news though? Ford divided the city in a way no other politician was
Continue readingThings Are Good: Growing the Green Roof Industry in North America
Green roofs are great! They help alleviate a lot of issues that arise in urban living while making cities more beautiful. There is growing interest in making sure that urban green roofs take off and it looks like it is working. While other countries like Germany have been using green
Continue readingThings Are Good: New York City’s Simple, and Green, Flood Prevention
New York, like other large cities, has a lot of impermeable services which means that when it rains there is little to contain the water. By using green infrastructure of soil, broken stone, shrubs, trees, etc. the bioswales can capture a lot of water. This green infrastructure is good for
Continue readingThings Are Good: Keep Your Brain Healthy by Living in Walkable Neighbourhoods
Just when you think there couldn’t be more reasons to live in and build walkable communities another one pops up. We already know that walkable communities are safer, more environmentally healthy, and better for everyone’s health. We can now add to that list that walkable places are good for keeping
Continue readingThings Are Good: LHC Data Freely Accessible from CERN
The Large Hadron Collider run by CERN is making huge insights into the fundamental workings of the universe. Already it has found evidence the Higgs-Boson and other groovy particles in physics. Now CERN is setting all that data that’s been collected free to use! Now you can use research generated
Continue readingThings Are Good: Electric Vehicles Gaining Traction in Canada
WWF-Canada wants to get car drivers off their addiction to oil by getting consumers to buy electric cars instead of gas-powered ones. To encourage this switch in car-depender living they have former Toronto mayor David Miller going on ‘dates’ with people in EV cars to discuss what they are doing
Continue readingThings Are Good: So Many Blogs About Sustainability!
Site like Things Are Good which cover good news about the environment, people, and politics aren’t that rare. When we started this site nearly 10 years ago there were few options to find places that cover good news. That has since changed. Recently the folks over at AHAALiving did a
Continue readingThings Are Good: China and US Agree to Cut Emissions
The world’s largest polluters have agreed that they have a problem and they need to stop it. The USA and China have come to terms with the fact that they are the worst polluters and have both decided to take action using various policy tools and joint cooperation. This is
Continue readingThings Are Good: Surfing Oceanic Data
The ocean is massive and it’s experiencing massive change thanks to climate change and humans depleting its resources. We know this, but we don’t know the extent of the harm done to the oceans nor many other aspects of life in the seas. A surfer and engineer, Benjamin Thompson, decided
Continue readingThings Are Good: Visualizing Energy Generated from Wind
Renewable energy debates can suffer obfuscation through abstraction and disingenuous allegations like renewable is limited in it’s generation times. For example, wind power is often argued to be useless because we cannot control the wind. We can’t control it, but we can predict it. To demonstrate the effectiveness of wind
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