Bright Lights Spotlight

Uplifting News From Around the World

 

The girl who silenced the world for 5 minutes

I continually find myself inspired and invigorated when I experience people who are focused beyond themselves in a dynamic way, unwilling to stand back from engaging in life. Every day we read about upheaval, terror, governments ending and natural disasters. Here we have a young girl who will not remain quiet and challenges the status quo in a way that made me want to stand up and cheer. This happened several years ago, but the video was shared with me the other day. I share it with you here. ~ Laurie

 

 

Remembering 9/11: A warrior’s unexpected gift to America

 

Editor’s Note: Tom Goldstone is the Executive Producer of Fareed Zakaria GPS.

By Tom Goldstone, CNN

As America looked inward in the days, weeks and months after September 11, 2001, others around the world made extraordinary gestures toward the United States. 
We were all so focused on ourselves – understandably so – that many probably missed the fact that Iran’s President Mohammad Khatami condemned the attacks, that Ireland and Israel held full national days of mourning, that the Afghan Taliban told “American children [that] Afghanistan feels your pain”.

You are even less likely to have heard what could be one of the most touching reactions of all.  This is the story of how a destitute Kenyan boy turned Stanford student rallied his Masai tribe to offer its most precious gift to America in its time of need.

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The Civil Conversations Project: Krista Tippett–FROM: Being.PublicRadio.org

We’ve seen so dramatically these past weeks how our political ways of speaking to each other, and about each other, have broken down. Krista has pulled together “six of their most important civil conversations from the past year, voices of wisdom, poetry, and practicality. They offer ideas and tools for healing our fractured civic spaces — beginning now, in our families and communities.”   Consider how you can change conversations you’ve been having in your own lives to allow new light to enter the picture.  Where do you see positive conversations happening? How do you see that you can be a facilitator of interacting in new ways? Add your comments, reflections and questions!  (Also see Bright Lights: “Words that Shimmer”, another in this series.)

As far back as the election of 2010, the Evangelical thinker and educator Richard Mouw put a fine point on what became an animating question for this series. I’d offer this as a fine question for our public life moving forward: Can we find new ways to treat each other, to live together, even while holding passionate disagreement? The hard truth is, we are not going to reach agreement on many of the issues before us any time soon. 

Read the article

 

 

Nelson Mandela International Day: Make Your 67 Minutes Pay

From: TakePart.com

If you are a person who feels that Nelson Mandela International Day is asking an awful lot by requesting that you donate 67 minutes of your time (on or before July 18) to serve someone other than yourself, then, brother or sister, you are not alone. No longer just a badge of honor wielded by workaholics, social climbers and moms, a harried schedule is now the accepted state of affairs among, pretty much, every American who is simply trying to make ends meet.

Click here to read on: TakePart.com

 

 

 

 

12 Things to Love About America

From: Money Can’t Buy Happiness: Individualism a Stronger Predictor of Well-Being Than Wealth, Says New Study

From: ScienceDaily.com June 14th, 2011

Freedom and personal autonomy are more important to people’s well-being than money, according to a meta-analysis of data from 63 countries published by the American Psychological Association. While a great deal of research has been devoted to the predictors of happiness and life satisfaction around the world, researchers at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand wanted to know one thing: What is more important for well-being, providing people with money or providing them with choices and autonomy?

“Our findings provide new insights into well-being at the societal level,” they wrote in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, published by APA. “Providing individuals with more autonomy appears to be important for reducing negative psychological symptoms, relatively independent of wealth.”

Psychologists Ronald Fischer, PhD, and Diana Boer, PhD, looked at studies involving three different psychological tests — the General Health Questionnaire, which measures four symptoms of distress (somatic symptoms, anxiety and insomnia, social dysfunction and severe depression); the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, which tests how respondents feel at a particular moment; and the Maslach Burnout Inventory, which tests for emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and lack of personal accomplishment. Altogether, they examined a sample of 420,599 people from 63 countries spanning nearly 40 years.

Read the entire article

 

Yoga: Meditation in Action

From: Being.PublicRadio.org

The 5,000-year-old spiritual technology of yoga is converging with 21st-century medical science and with many religious and philosophical perspectives. Seane Corn, renowned yoga teacher takes us inside the practicalities and power of yoga — even as a source of social healing.

 

Read the entire article

 

 

 

Words That Shimmer 

Video:  Krista Tippett,

FROM Being.PublicRadio.org

Poetry is something many of us seem to be hungry for these days. We’re hungry for fresh ways to tell hard truths and redemptive stories, for language that would elevate and embolden rather than demean and alienate. Elizabeth Alexander shares her sense of what poetry works in us — and in our children — and why it may become more relevant, not less so, in hard and complicated times

 

A historic moment in the Arab world: Wadah Khanfar on TED.com

 

 

As a democratic revolution led by tech-empowered young people sweeps the Arab world, Wadah Khanfar, the head of Al Jazeera, shares a profoundly optimistic view of what’s happening in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and beyond — at this powerful moment when people realized they could step out of their houses and ask for change. (Recorded at TED2011, March 2011, in Long Beach, California. Duration: 17:12)

Read more and watch the video

 

Regimens: Noise Canceling, Without Headphones

From: NYtimes.com by RONI CARYN RABIN May 2 2011

 

Harvard researchers randomly assigned 12 healthy adults to an eight-week course of training in meditation-based stress reduction or to a control group whose participants did not meditate.

At regular intervals, researchers used an imaging technique called magnetoencephalography to measure electrical currents in an area of the brain that processes signals from the left hand. During the tests, each participant was asked to direct his attention to his or her left hand or left foot.

After eight weeks, the brain scans showed that alpha rhythms changed more quickly and in a more pronounced way in participants who had been meditating.

Read the entire article

 

What the world needs now: The TEDActive music video

When the John Lennon bus drove up to TEDActive, attendees got the chance to collaborate on a music video to share their ideas for what the world needs now.

Jill Sobule, John Doe, Sara Watkins, Stuart Johnson, Don Was, Dave Way, Krish Sharma and the amazing team on the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus came together to write, perform and produce an original song, on-site during the conference. Aaron Koblin directed the video, and the TEDActive community turned their ideas into illustrations, with a little help from artist Jansen Yee.

Read more and watch the Ted video

 

 

London 2012 Cultural Olympiad: Young Londoners Volunteer for City Museums

Hundreds of young Londoners have given more than 3,000 hours of volunteering to their local museums.

Their efforts are part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad programme, Stories of the World – part of the biggest youth engagement project ever undertaken by UK museums.

Over the past 18 months, hundreds of young people, aged 14 to 24, have taken part. From across 17 boroughs and a wide range of backgrounds, they have been helping 23 museums develop and deliver exhibitions, events and over 140 films. All have been enjoyed by more than 20,000 people. Read more

Pencils of Promise

 

The Right to Write: How One Pencil Started a Revolution: A child in India and grandparents who survived the Holocaust propelled Adam Braun to start Pencils of Promise, an organization that builds schools in some of the world’s poorest countries—Laos, Nicaragua and Guatemala.

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Eric Clapton guitar sale at Bonhams New York raises £1.3m for drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre

Collectors, fans and musicians have helped raise more than £1.3m for a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre founded by Eric Clapton, through the auction of his personal collection of 75 guitars and 55 amps…

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GreenSpaceNYC: Website aims to transform New York eyesores and promote art

An ambitious website is encouraging New Yorkers to transform the city’s blighted buildings and vacant lots from eyesores into projects to improve their communities and promote the arts.

www.GreenSpaceNYC.org hopes to bring people from different levels of society together to solve common inner-city problems.

Read more

Supporters Worldwide Buy Pizza for the Wisconsin Protestors

Wednesday, Feb 23 2011: The owner of Ian’s Pizza in Madison said he’s received hundreds of telephone calls from people as far away as Egypt who want to purchase pizza for the protesters demonstrating a block away at the Wisconsin Capitol. In the last few days, they’ve sold thousands of dollars of pizza to out-of-state supporters in 14 countries, and every state.

On Saturday alone, Ian’s gave away 1,057 free slices in their store and delivered more than 300 pizzas to the Capitol itself.

Shared Paradoxes

Click here for video: Shared Paradoxes

Does quantum physics have anything significant to tell us about religion? Physicist Russell Stannard turns the question on its head. Russell Stannard, Professor Emeritus of Physics at the Open University, reverses the question, “Does quantum physics have anything significant to tell us about religion?”