Inbox clean out...

I use Google Alerts to help me find the stories I post, and I can usually come up with a theme within a day or two, so I save the emails. But lately I've had a few orphans in my inbox, stories I thought were cool, but I couldn't come up with anything related to them. So I've decided to just put them all in this post. :)

Yahoo! News posted a story a little while ago that notes the stigmas attached with shopping at Goodwill or consignment and even using layaway are disappearing. Being budget-minded has apparently even caught on with the rich, Yahoo! noted, who are buying nearly a third more fast food than last year. People seem to finally have cottoned on to the idea that it's okay to say "I can't afford it."

Yahoo! also posted a story on what appears to be the oldest photo in existence of people. Granted it was taken in 1848, so that's not THAT long ago in the grand scheme of things but still pretty cool. The daguerreotype appears to show two men standing on a river's edge in Cincinnati. One man seems to have a foot resting on a wooden beam while the other is standing on the beam.

The last story is from CNN. While it dates from this past summer, it has only been sitting in the inbox for five weeks. :-P I promise. Four former Harvard students have found a way to harness the energy released from your foot when you kick a soccer ball. Their "Soccket" retains that energy and a plug in the ball allows you to power electronic devices like cell phones and lamps. The inventors believe it will do the most good in places like the Alexandria (South Africa) township where it was road-tested during the World Cup.

(Photo courtesy of Yahoo!)

A salute to the military and veterans...

Veterans' Day is not necessarily a happy holiday but finding heartwarming and good stories was a lot easier than I thought it would be. I didn't even have to leave Yahoo! to find three of today's links.

Lt. Col. Chester E. Bear (ret.) is the subject of the first of two Yahoo! profiles in today's post. A veteran of three wars, Bear parachuted behind enemy lines in the Korean, Vietnam and Desert Storm conflicts. A gift from a little girl to her father's Air Force Reserves unit, the stuffed animal became a mascot, flying first on a humanitarian mission before moving on to combat, where he received many medals. Bear (above right and left) was even declared MIA for three weeks when the US Infantry found him after a jump and wouldn't give him back.

The second profile I read centered on a rifle squad composed of decorated veterans from two generations and three wars who attend the funerals of fallen vets to provide one last salute.  Grown from the original patchwork six members, today's squad features 128 former soldiers spanning 30 years and all branches of the military who are believed to be the nation's only all-volunteer rifle squad.

My Yahoo! email contained a message from First Lady Michelle Obama's office marking Veterans' Day with a message and a link to Serve.org. It's a website full of ways to help military families across the country. One of my six rules to life is the absolute truism that one of the most sure-fire ways to feel better in your own life when you feel low is to help someone who is worse off than yourself. Military families often struggle to get by because of their nomadic lifestyles regardless of whether all members are stateside. Serve.org is a great way to see how you can make your own and someone else's lives richer, often spending nothing but your time.

ESPN alerted me to this last story. The universities of Maryland, Texas Tech and Utah have teamed up with Under Armour to raise money for the Wounded Warriors Project. All three teams wore or will wear custom camouflage uniforms in games last weekend and this which feature camouflage numbers and details. The players' last names are replaced with one of the core values of the armed services - duty, honor, freedom, courage, commitment, integrity, country and service. The jerseys will be auctioned off after the games in which they're worn, and 100 percent of the proceeds go to the Wounded Warrior Project.

Better late than never?...

Okay, so first of all, my apologies. This week got a little crazy for me, and I didn't managed to post on Thursday. I started this blog when I had little to do at work, and now, oddly, that I'm less employed and a part-time grad student, I actually have far more to do in life than I did when I had a full-time job.

I composed this post mainly of four stories that are pretty cool. The first is a YouTube video which my friend Katie sent me. It's billed as someone who actually walked across the United States, but regardless of whether that's actually true, the music and editing on this video makes the few minutes you waste on it totally worth it.

Yahoo! Sports' Rivals blog had a story highlighting the fact sometimes you can have two winners at the end of a game (even when you're not playing soccer). Jarod Claybourn, head coach of Sterling (N.J.) High School's football team, managed to break a two-year long losing streak. He did it against Mike Karp and Gateway High School. But in the process, Gateway's own losing streak extended to 17 games - the length that Sterling had reached before snapping the skid. So what did Claybourn do with his longed-for winning game ball? He gave it to Karp and Gateway High...

The last two stories are related in topic and come from MSNBC.com. In both cases, the articles tell of thieves who had a change of heart. In the first, a homeless man who was held up in front of his shelter received his belongings back. In the second, someone burglarized an art gallery but decided to give the items back, leaving them with a note at a local church.

Reunion crazy...

So I had an entirely different theme planned for today and then three separate reunion stories popped up on my Google alerts. It depends on your entertainment proclivities, but I imagine these stories probably qualify as good news to some people. They do to me, at least. :)

Recently a book came past me at the library called "Totally Tubular '80s Toys". It is hot pink and highlights all the greatest '80s toys by year. It was a fantastic trip down memory lane. So when I saw this story from London's Daily Mail, it immediately caught my eye and was like a little detour off that lane. Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, better known as Bill and Ted, were spotted out at the movies together and there is talk of a third installment of excellent adventures...

The cast of one of my favorite '80s flicks also reunited earlier this week. Christopher Lloyd, Michael J. Fox, and Lea Thompson - better known as Doc Brown, Marty McFly and Lorraine McFly - recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of the fabulous movie "Back to the Future". It grossed $380 million dollars and was the biggest hit of 1985, according to CBS. To commemorate the anniversary, BTTF is coming out on Blu-Ray with never-before-seen-footage. Those are four of my favorite words in entertainment... :)

The Daily Mail seems to be all over the reunion stories. This afternoon, 45 years after "The Sound of Music" debuted, the movie version of the Von Trapp family - including Dame Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer - joined Oprah on her show. The movie won five Oscars in 1965 and the enduring hatred of Plummer for its saccharin-y sweetness. But he seems to have softened in his old age, speaking (positively) about the movie for the first time in decades. The end of the article does little bios on what all the actors have been up to for the last almost-half century.

(Photo courtesy of The Daily Mail)

Think pink...

Every October, the landscape is blanketed not only with leaves but with everything pink. Celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2010, the effort to remind everyone about the dangers of breast cancer and women in particular about the importance of early detection shows up in anything from pink ribbons to men's athletic gear.

National Breast Cancer Awareness Month began as a collaboration between the American Association of Family Physicians and other sponsors to promote the importance of self- and physician examinations in the hope that fewer women will be caught off guard and fall victim to the cancer. As the years have passed the awareness activities have grown, and the treatment techniques have advanced. London's Daily Mirror posted an article highlighting some of those advances in techniques and treatments for diagnosing and treating breast cancer.

The idea of wearing ribbons for awareness is believed to have started when people wore yellow ribbons during the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. It is then somewhat interesting (and really good for women there) that the pink ribbons and wearing of pink has spread to the Middle East.

My friend Matt publishes a blog called the Middle East Alliance, and in his last email, there was a post from a Saudi Arabian female hospital worker talking about breast cancer awareness in her country. The post comes complete with a photo of her custom pink ribbon-edged abaya and pink Coach purse.

Today's last story is from the Rockford, Ill. Register Star. It profiled a local small business owner, Terri Johnston, who uses her successful battle against breast cancer as inspiration in her efforts to help other women deal with the effects of treatment. The pain and nausea from chemotherapy can be dealt with, but Johnston helps women work through the maybe harder issue of losing self-identity with the hair loss.

Sometimes they just write themselves...

Trapped since August 5, all 33 Chilean miners and six rescuers have emerged from nearly 2000 feet below the earth's surface. The rescue was originally thought to take place near Christmas, but serious international cooperation brought the miners back to their families two months sooner than expected.

As the Christian Science Monitor notes, the rescue took advantage of drills and workers from Canada, NASA experts who helped build the rescue capsule Phoenix II, a huge drilling tool from the US and a drilling expert from Australia who had until recently been in Afghanistan, drilling wells there.

The Phoenix II capsule carried the miners up to safety and fresh air, but those who went down the hole aren't receiving perhaps the attention they deserve. The Sydney Morning Herald did a piece on Manuel Gonzalez, the brave rescuer who served as guinea pig, descending first into the pit housing the miners. Coincidentally, the Phoenix II reunited two long-lost soccer rivals. Rescuer Gonzalez had played professional soccer against miner Franklin Lobos Ramirez 25 years ago, and the pair hadn't met since, according to the Mirror.

Irish Central summed up the feeling evoked from the nearly miraculous and totally successful rescue fairly well in this opinion piece. It focuses on how the world doesn't so much have stories like this to rally around that often. Many media watch outlets have already noted how intensely the world watched on TV and online as Chile hauled up its miners one by one. Some of the viewers weren't the average nightly news' demographic; they were children. CNN had a story on touching reactions by children around the world.

(Photo courtesy of Reuters)

(Un-) Earthly delights...

Today's post is a short one, featuring stories from both above and below Planet Earth. (Those DVDs, by the way, are phenomenal. Definitely worth a watch.)

MSNBC posted a story today saying the 33 trapped Chilean miners could be freed by Saturday. It seems they will finish drilling by this weekend and are contemplating putting in a steel sleeve through the hole before pulling up the miners. Originally estimated to be freed around Christmas, this is absolutely good news for the poor men stuck below ground and their anxious families above. 

The second story isn't so much strictly good news as pretty cool. My friend Stef posted this on Twitter (different article though) - scientists have found a planet not that far from Earth which could sustain life. Called a Goldilocks planet (get it?), Gilese 581g orbits a red dwarf and is one of six planets in its little system about 120 trillion miles away.

(Photo courtesy of USA Today)