The real problem with feeding the world properly is the production of meat. Meat is a very destructive product because it is a huge polluter and uses land inefficiently. Denis van Waerebeke made this instructive short film about world hunger.

This is a nice kid. She’s Olivia Bouler and she’s an artist with a great love for birds. She is offering her art for sale to help the birds in the BP Gulf Oil Disaster. The money goes to organizations that can help out like the National Audubon Society.

Here’s a Facebook page that Olivia’s parents set up for the project.

Watch the film below, then watch the idea I presented on May 27th below that. The two ideas are very close and share a heavy top weight concept connecting to an extending narrow pipe. The surgeons have added the concept of tapering the extending pipe. Fascinating. I think that the real solution to plugging the oil gusher will be something very close to these ideas.

The idea from the surgeons:

My idea:

This is a good demonstration of an idea for helping in the Gulf BP disaster. I don’t know if the blowout preventer could withstand the downward force exerted upon it by the plug however. But there are certainly adaptations of this idea that might work if the blowout preventer were removed from the equation. The main point though is that kids are engaging in logical thinking about the problem. At this very moment, I would be willing to bet that the complete solution to the BP oil disaster is already available. It has been thought of and put somewhere. For sure. It simply needs to be found now.

Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times / January 16, 2010 Emilie Mateu, left, Robert Hernandez and Layne Kaplan put their heads together at USC.

Computer programmers and other technical people are building valuable tools for helping the people of Haiti after the devastating earthquake on January 12. Crisis Camps have been set up for volunteers to develop applications that help with damage assessment, mapping, locating of survivors, locating first aid stations, translation, radio communications, food and water deliveries, free phone services, and many more.  At the root of the effort is the basic understanding that good data must be given to and easily shared between all of the aid organizations, both public and private, helping with aid and rescue in Haiti. Some of the earliest volunteers for Crisis Camp came from Google, NASA, the United Nations, the American Red Cross and the Los Angeles City Fire Department.

Google developed an online tool to help people locate missing persons in Haiti.  The technical effort has a Wiki page at Crisis Commons Wiki, that gathers resources, updates on projects, and calls for volunteers in specific areas.

The Crisis Camp volunteer approach is building something very powerful that will have a huge impact on disaster response in the future.  This is the internet and tech world at its very best.

Update (1-17-2010): News organizations that have set up sites to help locate people are apparently opening their systems and sharing their data with the Google people-finder application.  The MIT Center for Future Civic Media is calling on all people-finder data collectors to pool their data in one place.  This is very smart and will drastically increase the effectiveness of the Google people-finder app.  Here’s more about the call for shared data.

Artist and animator Theodore Ushev created this poster for the purpose of spreading the word about helping victims of the Haiti earthquake. They need enormous help very quickly to prevent even more deaths than have already been suffered. He told me there was no need to ask permission to use the picture. It was created to be used. Thank you to an artist using his magnificent talents to assist in an emergency.

Here are some ways to give assistance:

The Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders and the United Nations Food Program are putting medical supplies, doctors, nurses, food and water on the ground in Haiti to try to prevent the worsening catastrophe and enormous loss of life.

If you have one of these cell carriers:

Alltel
AT&T
Sprint-Nextel
T-Mobile
U.S. Cellular
Verizon Wireless

You can donate $5 to the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund simply by texting the keyword “GIVE” to “2HELP” (24357).

Here’s CNN footage of survivors trying to help people trapped in collapsed buildings. Medical help is not significantly present in Haiti at the moment. It is a shame that in the western hemisphere, so close to the richest nation on earth, it takes days to get a little medical assistance into a crisis zone. We think more about war and terrorists than we do about real threats that kill hundreds of thousands of people. Shameful.

YouTube‘s CitizenTube Channel is maintaining an updating playlist of videos taken on the ground in Haiti just after the earthquake and during rescue attempts.

You can donate to the Red Cross International Response Fund.  Also, giving blood is always one of the very best things you can do because it fills the blood banks and can be used almost anywhere.

You can also donate to Doctors Without Borders, which is putting medical personnel on the ground in Haiti to assist in saving lives.

More footage from Associated Press:

Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince looks to be destroyed. The people need more doctors. I’ve heard about one major hospital that was destroyed, so it must be very bad.

Doctors Without Borders is in Haiti to set up clinics for treating the injured. You can donate now for that.

Most of the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince, has been destroyed by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake that hit yesterday. Bodies are lying in the streets. The death toll is expected to be enormous and the survivors need immediate help. The Red Cross is taking donations and sending teams to Haiti. You can donate to the Red Cross International Response Fund.  Also, giving blood is always one of the very best things you can do because it fills the blood banks and can be used almost anywhere.

You can also donate to Doctors Without Borders, which is putting medical personnel on the ground in Haiti to assist in saving lives.

Ever wondered just what you’d do if you found someone on the ground unconscious? Here’s what you’d do. CPR. But there’s a new, simpler way to do it that works better than the old way. The video shows you how to do it.

A 5-year-old girl named Phoebe decided she wanted to collect cans in order to raise money from the 5-cent per can deposits.  With the help of her day care center in San Francisco, she raised $3,736.30 from cans and cash donations.  That translated into 17,800 people being fed via local food banks.  If a 5-year-old can do that, imagine what wealthy Americans and corporations could do.

To all who believe in freedom and democracy
Please sign this petition to the United Nations to stop the violence,
arrests and torture in Iran.
The situation is really really bad.

Please forward it to whoever you know
Best and lots of love
Marjane Satrapi

This is sad story, but it’s a great thing Pixar did and it was a wonderful wish for a little girl to have.  Very nice.  I’m sure this simple act by a few people at a big company made a sick little girl very happy in her last hours.  Well done, Pixar.