Laura and John Arnold

Yesterday, we asked, on our Facebook wall, how much money you would donate to charity if you were to win the Powerball (As of yesterday it was at 600 million USD).

Our group, overall, was extremely generous, but the percentages had a pretty wide range.

Tonight, I happened to catch this article from the Wall Street Journal website that told the story of the changing idea of philanthropy.

John Arnold was a natural-gas trader at Enron who founded his own hedge-fund with monumental returns.

He and his wife Laura founded the Laura and John Arnold Foundation.

“The Laura and John Arnold Foundation strives to produce substantial, widespread and lasting changes to society that will maximize opportunity and minimize injustice.” -LJAF

John and his wife reportedly made around $4 billion dollars and were plan on giving the majority away and to devote their time to philanthropic endeavors.

The article discussed the Arnold’s plan to address is the obesity crisis in our country. According to the Wall Street Journal,  John contacted Gary Taubes, a food writer, in an inconspicuous and short email about obesity, and after a Google search the writer soon realized with whom he was dealing.

Gary Taubes ended up meeting with John Arnold and his staff and an obesity study was being set in motion, which is a big deal – the study is costing around $26 million dollars to fund.

Another problem the Arnold’s are attempting to tackle is our criminal justice system.

In an interview, Laura Arnold revealed some really interesting information about their view of philanthropy in an interview with Brad Reagan :

‘”We don’t have a bunch of smiling kids and graduation pictures. That’s not what we’re about,” she says.
 But she and her husband decided early on that the foundation would not pick what she called “the low-hanging fruit” of philanthropy. As she explained it, they don’t question the worthiness of writing checks to established groups that directly benefit needy individuals. In fact, they continue to do so privately. But they wanted to focus on public-policy problems that led to what Laura calls “moral inefficiencies,” where their considerable resources could help generate solutions. Using the vernacular of a trader, John calls them “high-leverage opportunities.”’ -Source

I find their view of philanthropy important and very timely. We need people to start realizing the importance of “high-leverage” charity work, in addition to the other ways of supporting our global and local communities.

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Beach Day! We took the boys to the beach yesterday, and spent the entire afternoon playing in the sand and ocean with them.

It reminded us of our own childhood memories and why those memories are so important to us as adults.

“To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me.”
                                                       -Isaac Newton

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The Mursi tribe of Ethiopia’s Omo Valley is one of the oldest and most easily identifiable tribal cultures of Africa.

Most Mursi children nurse past toddler-hood, and clothing for women commonly leaves breasts exposed.

The breast area for the Mursi tribe is viewed as nourishment for children and signals to men peak nubility of the woman, based on shape and texture.

The Mursi people are at risk for displacement.

From Mursi Online:

Since the 1960s, the extension of government control over the Lower Omo Valley has been marked by  the ‘enclosure’ of large areas of communally held  land. In the 1960s and 1970s two national parks were set up which, it was hoped, would in due course make the lower Omo into one of Africa’s most popular tourist destinations. These hopes proved largely illusory, despite efforts to develop the parks with the help of EU funds in the 1990s and, more recently, through a public-private partnership agreement with a South African based conservation organisation. Today, spurred on by its ambitious aim to achieve middle-income country status within the next ten to fifteen years, the government’s plans for the lower Omo have shifted to large-scale commercial irrigation development, including a huge project now being implemented by the state-owned Ethiopian Sugar Corporation.  If these plans are realised, not only will the lower Omo become by far the largest irrigation complex in Ethiopia, but the resident population of agro-pastoralists is expected to be transformed into wage labourers and sedentary cultivators. This will involve a resettlement programme which, although described as ‘voluntary’, will  be forced, in the sense that those affected will have no reasonable alternative but to comply.

There is overwhelming evidence, from Africa and around the world, that a scheme of this kind, however well intentioned, will not benefit the affected population unless it is accompanied by a comprehensive programme of compensation, benefit sharing and livelihood reconstruction. If such a programme is not put in place for the people of the lower Omo, the future looks grim for the Mursi and  their neighbours.

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Our first book club book discussion is underway!

If you haven’t already, head over to the forum and join the conversation.

We are on to our second book!

We have chosen Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter by Adeline Yen Mah

Born in 1937 in a port city a thousand miles north of Shanghai, Adeline Yen Mah was the youngest child of an affluent Chinese family who enjoyed rare privileges during a time of political and cultural upheaval. But wealth and position could not shield Adeline from a childhood of appalling emotional abuse at the hands of a cruel and manipulative Eurasian stepmother. Determined to survive through her enduring faith in family unity, Adeline struggled for independence as she moved from Hong Kong to England and eventually to the United States to become a physician and writer.

A compelling, painful, and ultimately triumphant story of a girl’s journey into adulthood, Adeline’s story is a testament to the most basic of human needs: acceptance, love, and understanding. With a powerful voice that speaks of the harsh realities of growing up female in a family and society that kept girls in emotional chains, Falling Leaves is a work of heartfelt intimacy and a rare authentic portrait of twentieth-century China.

If this sounds interesting to you, pick up the book and join the discussion June 15!

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Have you heard about The Geography of Hate project created by Humboldt State University undergraduate students?

They sifted through a year of geocoded conversations from twitter to find hate words used in a negative context (which is important to note, since many people now use these words in a positive or neutral manner). The words were then applied to a color gradient map.

The map shows certain areas I was surprised to find concentrated with hate speech. (Especially in the San Francisco area.)

On a positive note: it looks like Utah really does have nice people living there…or maybe they are like me and aren’t big tweeters? Either way, they seem to have the lowest amount of “hate word” tweets.

What do you think about this? Were you already aware of social media being used as a outlet for hate speech, or is this map shocking to you?

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