Plants in your home and workplace can reduce stress and make the air you breath cleaner. If I had my way then every wall would be a bio wall. Since that’s not possible I’m happy to advocate for some plants that are easy to care for. Even if you don’t
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Things Are Good: Bringing Colour to Traffic
Sitting in traffic is no fun and neither is being hit by a car. To solve both of these problems cities around the world are changing their intersections using colourful and bright paints. The idea is to help traffic flow better while providing safer spaces for pedestrian. The spin-off benefit
Continue readingThings Are Good: This Jumpsuit is the Only Piece of Clothing you Need
The Rational Dress Society’s recent project called JUMPSUIT aims to make it so you never need to think about your clothing again. They propose that all you need is a single jumpsuit that you can wear everyday. It’s a revolutionary approach to the modern fast-fashion industry (which is horrible for
Continue readingThings Are Good: How to Start Bird Watching
Spending time outside in nature is good for your physical and mental health, so why not do something while you’re out there? Bird watching could be the thing for you! Take your phone with you to catalog nature and help discover birds, that way you’re improving science while also improving
Continue readingTHE CAREGIVERS' LIVING ROOM A Blog by Donna Thomson: A New Year’s Resolution That’s Actually Fun!
I am so pleased to host this guest post by writer, Karen Weeks. Karen perfectly captures why the arts are so important to us all – at any age! I’ve witnessed the healing power of music in my own life and in the lives of everyone I love. So why
Continue readingThings Are Good: Making the Most of Urban Laneways
Many western cities have laneways that originally were used for deliveries via horses and cart; today those laneways are under utilized. These laneways cannot always be used for housing or other normal city needs due to their limited size. They can, however, be converted to enjoyable public space. Today there’s
Continue readingPostArctica: NDG Gothic
Trying some new ideas, let me know what you think. NDG is a neighborhood in Montreal.
Continue readingThings Are Good: Use Happiness Research to Maximize Vacations
Regular readers already know that going on vacation is good for one’s happiness and there are ways to travel while keeping a small carbon footprint. It can be hard to find time to travel and expensive too, so how should one go about thinking about vacations? Vacations aren’t things that
Continue readingThings Are Good: Coal Museum Powered by Solar Panels
If the end of coal wasn’t obviously upon us, it is now. The Kentucky Coal Museum has switched to solar power for energy and cost savings. Yes, in what might be a wonderful display of irony, the museum centred on celebrating the region’s coal culture has switched to a green
Continue readingThings Are Good: Covert Strategies for Supporting Urbanism
One of the biggest challenges facing cities in the 21st century is how to make them more people friendly. Parts of many cities have been left to rot, or have been neglected, thanks to decades of car-dominated thinking. This car-focussed, and individualistic, urban design has made discourse around making cities
Continue readingThings Are Good: Your Next Job Should be Fun
As humans we tend to prefer short term rewards over long term gains and this is true even in a job search. We don’t think about the day to day of life when we think about the dream job – or just the next job. When you are looking for
Continue readingThings Are Good: Montreal’s Streets Continue to be Focused on People
Walking the streets of Montreal already provides a pleasant experience – and it’s about to get better. The city has dedicated an additional $1.7 million to what it already spends on making selected streets car free. The pedestrian areas promote local artists and encourage people to visit neighbourhoods throughout the
Continue readingThings Are Good: How Early Video Games Expressed Environmentalism
It can be fun to tune out and just play some games, and that’s a good thing. There are games that are obviously educational like Math Blaster and there are games like Carmen Sandiego that celebrate fun over learning while still teaching. Indeed, there are many games being played that
Continue readingThings Are Good: Reusing Renewable Power Pieces
Despite being more efficient and better than other forms of generating electricity renewable power generation does cause waste. The waste isn’t in the form of smog or tailing ponds or even radioactive barrels. When it comes to wind power the waste generated is broken blades, and there are a lot
Continue readingThings Are Good: Spent Grains From Beer Used to Grow Mushrooms
An enterprising student went on a brewery tour and discovered a lot of food waste. Grain is used when making beer in a similar way that tea is steeped, after the grain has been soaking in the water it is discarded. In some areas that grain gets turned into compost,
Continue readingThings Are Good: Why North American Cities are Different Than European
We often look at urban design on Things Are Good so it’s worth thinking about how we got here. The decisions made centuries ago impact how our cities operate and how we as people integrate ourselves into the built environment. This video explores how and why cities in Europe look
Continue readingThings Are Good: You Can Now Eat Climate Data
Ice cream is delicious and now you can eat a brand new flavour of it made of climate data. Well, it’s more like existing flavours put together to symbolize data about our climate and how it’s changing. Jonathon Keats is the brain behind the project and he’s mixing the ice
Continue readingThings Are Good: Don’t be Trendy, Buy Clothes for Time and Style
Fast fashion has grown in popularity this century thanks to fast computer aided design and a global trade system that favours sweatshops over adequately paid labour. This consumer driven world of fashion is really bad for workers and bad for the environment as it consumes more resources than clothes built to last. When it comes […]
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Continue readingThings Are Good: Good Storytellers Tend to be Happier
Everybody likes a good story, but not everybody can tell a story well. If you are one of those people who are a good storyteller you might just be happier than other people. It turns out that good storytellers are happier and that male storytellers who can spin a good yarn are more attractive to […]
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Continue readingThings Are Good: Craft Beer is Advancing Science
We all know that craft beers are delicious thanks to all their fun flavours and now we also know that by drinking craft beer we are helping the world of science. The search for hop plants, which are integral to craft beer, has pushed science to go further into examining the plant and it’s neighbours […]
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