State of the World’s Mothers

In commemoration of Mother’s Day, Save the Children is publishing its seventh annual State of the World’s Mothers report.

By focusing on the 60 million mothers in the developing world who give birth every year with no professional help and the 4 million newborns who die in the first month of life, this report helps to bring attention to the urgent need to reduce infant mortality around the world.

The report also identifies countries that are succeeding in improving the health and saving the lives of mothers and babies, and shows that effective solutions to this challenge are affordable – even in the world’s poorest countries.

Read on ...

Did I really complain about no flowers and chocolates? What a spoilt woman I am! Am I complaining about being tired because I spent 4 hours last night helping with homework? Instead I am grateful that I have healthy, well-fed boys who do not live in fear, and whose births were surrounded by all the reassuring facilities and staff.



Tags: mothers, education

Ocean Wave Electricity may break drought

"A WA millionaire has developed a way to generate electricity using the power of the ocean.

Businessman Alan Burns believes it may be the answer to the state's water problems. The process also produces clean water.

Mr Burns claimed that within 10 years, the technique could meet up to one-third of Perth's daily peak energy and water needs, producing about three times more fresh water than the planned Kwinana desalination plant." Read on ...

How long before someone discovers an endangered marine organism to stop him?

environment

Television 2.0

from the Who has time for this? blog

On everyone's mind this year: it was only a matter of time before the internet changed TV in a way more profound than color or cable. That kind of disruption calls for a VC road map...

The entertainment industry managed to ignore the net for a decade. Only 250 miles apart, Hollywood and Silicon Valley might as well have been on different planets. Happy with their structural oligopoly, TV networks resisted change, and (just as buyers and sellers keep each other coming back to eBay) the talent and the audiences stayed loyal to the networks.

I also read a piece recently about how a child did not discriminate between the screens in his life - the television, the computer, the screen in the player in the back seat of his parent's car, and his game player. I look forward to seeing who manages to integrate the lot into one device and what that device will look like and how it will operate. At the moment I sit at a desk to compute and lounge to watch TV (though rarely - partly because I cannot stand watching someone else flipping throug the channels. If TV becomes more interactive, will it become increaingly a solitary activity? I doubt it somehow. I watch my children sharing games and television, and they seem to be able to work it out. )

I guess it is similar to the juggling between books and the internet. Location , portability and interactivity are all aspects that need to be ironed out.

technology,

library

'Amazon Stonehenge' found in Brazil

Archaeologists discovered a pre-colonial astrological observatory possibly 2,000 years old in the Amazon basin near French Guiana, said a report. Read on ...

I find this fascinating.

We seem to have a thirst to understand everything - as a species. Are we the only one? We love a mystery. It would be a shame if we found and understand everything. I think we would die and wither away. I often wonder if it is a sort of arrogance that we want to know all. But perhaps it is simply our natures - maybe an eternal quest to return to being like g(G)od ...?

archaeology,knowledge

Net users to be given anti-porn software - blessing?

From the newsroom ...

Australia's 6 million internet subscribers will be given software to filter out pornography for free under a federal government plan to toughen controls on internet content. Read on ...

I will be interested to see how it works. As a mother, I can only applaud the initiative. Anything that protects us and our children is welcome. Just as long as the positives outweigh the negatives. I just hope we don't lost our image search!!

internet safety

The Library community

I love being part of the library community.

Maybe because I'm a librarian at heart.

Maybe it's because, on the whole, they are all trying to be the best they can at what they do, at a time of great change.

Could that be said for all professions? Probably - especially those who choose to share experiences.

Anyway the blogosphere is a great place to be a librarian and it is also a pleasure to provide pages where a librarian might trip over an idea that will work for them as they try to be the best they can at what they do.

Tag: library

Yankee's revenge

On 7th May, I posted about a video showing people's lack of geographical knowledge, and becaue it was American, I had to have a dig at Americans. Well, I discovered this little test on the internet and failed geography miserably. Yankee's revenge indeed! Here is what it said ...

You Failed 8th Grade Geography
Sorry, you only got 3/10 correct!


Could You Pass 8th Grade Geography?

Tags:
geography, tolerance

Who wants to be a millionaire?

I do think this is such a shame ...

Gates doesn't want to be world's richest man

Most people probably dream of being the world's richest person - except, perhaps, the man himself.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates told an online advertising conference Wednesday that he'd prefer not to be the richest person in the world."I wish I wasn't," he said in a session in which he was being interviewed by Donny Deutsch, the host of an interview show on CNBC television.

Read on ...

I used to think the old sayings were boring .. "The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence." "Count your blessings." And yet the grass is always greener because no matter how much we change our physical circumstances, the emotions remain. But if we can find happiness in what we have, then those physical circumstances don't have such a hold.

Tag: success

The Road never closes

From Tom Peters ..."In our age of 24 hour connectivity, the road really never closes."

He uses a quotation which is lovely to read.

I don't know about Los Angeles, so I may be missing something, but referring to life in general and connectivity in specifics, then I guess it is up to us to close it or get off it and go inside and tell stories, read books and connect with real life, or is it soul?

Ahhh. Now that is beautiful

"Loose connections and majestic rotational movement define this strange computational organism named Sea Thing."

Thanks Orange Yeti

Global geographic awareness?

From the Pime Forest collective

It’s so much easier for our government to bomb foreign countries when our population hasn’t a clue where the target countries are located. Here’s some video proof of the study

….Is it just another myth that Americans are insular?

While this post is scary, I think that it applies to all of us and our inability to feel the pain of people on the other side of the world . It hits home when we see it on our own streets though, doesn’t it?

Tag: America, global, geography

More money for universities

Budget to boost unis, research: report

Next week's federal budget is expected to contain millions of dollars in extra funding for universities to build facilities and bolster research.More than $100 million will be pumped into an Australian National University refurbishment while health and medical research will receive the single biggest injection of public funds since 1999.

After all much of our economy depends on innovation and research.

Let's hope they also put money into training more doctors!

Tags:

universities

Does prosperity have to mean unhealthy?

Study Shows Americans Sicker Than English
By CARLA K. JOHNSON and MIKE STOBBE,

CHICAGO - Middle-aged, white Americans are much sicker than their counterparts in England, startling new research shows, despite U.S. health care spending per person that's more than double what England spends.

To my father and his generation, anyone who was larger was admired. "Fine figure of a woman" they would say. Because to them poverty meant being thin - not enough to eat - an outward sign of lack of success. Bad association - fat was prosperity. Fat was good. There was too much physical work back then for anyone to be obese unless there was something wrong.

Then there was the idea of the English upper class having the money to be thin. I suspect that's where the Americans found the concept for their high society of "never too rich, or too thin".

Yet somehow in this world where wealth and sloth seem to be synonymous for a huge majority and the ideal for so many no matter what "class", we seem to have lost that old connection. Hence this trend in our American based (?) society towards prosperity, complacency and obesity.

Will we turn it around?

Tag:

society
health

Organisation Management

I have just uploaded the updates to my organisation pages.

Articles include:

Organisation Management
Middle Management Excellence

Meetings:
Icebreakers

Leadership: Leadership: Its Time Has Gone

Fundraising:
NFP Communications Research & Toolkit Offer

Also posted the third part of the Series on Report writing to the Grow your Organisation blog

Tags: Organistions

Thngs that make you go hmmm...!

Visit the pivotal news bytes blog - for things that make you go hmmmm!