Placebos are getting a fair amount of press lately. Yes, those “fake” remedies called “inert medications” that seem to be real treatments but aren’t are being talked about quite a bit. Recently, among others, health economist  Austin Frakt wrote about them in “The Upshot” (“a New York Times website with analysis and data visualizations about politics, policy […]

Now here’s an accomplishment: it’s the story of a blind “adventurer” named Erik Weihenmayer, who has done amazing things including reaching the top of Mount Everest and the world’s other highest mountains. When you log on to Erik’s website, you read the following, which practically says it all: “Turning Adversity To Advantage “Erik Weihenmayer (born September 23, […]

Now everyone can have access to bits of history, through images. A project spearheaded by Kalev Leetaru of Georgetown University is making pictures from old books available to anyone who wants to view or use them. Here’s one example. The photo is from a book entitled “Prag” dated 1912, written by Josef Neuwirth. The subject […]

Mylene Paquette is an ordinary woman. Or at least that’s how she appears. Having worked with seriously ill children whom she says demonstrate great courage and persistence on a daily basis, she decided to get up her own courage to undertake an adventure she had been thinking about embarking upon, one that would test her own […]

Want to invest in people? It all started in 1968, when the “idea of an ethical investment channel for churches and related organizations was put forward, with the intention that investments would provide credit to enterprises that support the disadvantaged.” In 1975, the goal to promote social justice by providing this credit to economically deprived people became reality. […]

2nd Chance does reconstructive surgery in emerging countries. Their catchy motto is: “Reconstruction Surgery for Life Reconstruction”. It’s a non-profit organization based in Switzerland. Meanwhile, over in the USA, a guy named Gregory Grobon is biking across the country. He is doing that to support 2nd Chance. He’s riding from Los Angeles to New York, travelling 5,770 km (over […]

Meet BasicNeeds: “BasicNeeds is the only UK based international non-profit organisation, and one of the few in the world, specifically working to make change on the issue of mental illness and epilepsy in developing countries. … We implement a community based and people-oriented model which emphasises the importance of enabling people with mental illness and epilepsy […]

“There is surprising – even shocking – good news: Our ability to convert sunshine into usable energy has become much cheaper far more rapidly than anyone had predicted. The cost of electricity from photovoltaic, or PV, solar cells is now equal to or less than the cost of electricity from other sources powering electric grids […]

Deviating from our usual practice, here’s an op-ed from our editor-in-chief.  I recently came across this statement on LinkedIn: “Being positive in a negative situation is not naïve. It’s LEADERSHIP”. In a nutshell, that’s what The Good Times is all about. Finding the positive in life, and even in negative situations. As is often heard […]

As Bill Clinton said, “It’s quite extraordinary, really; you kick a ball and turn on a light.” This is all about a ball of energy, a soccer ball of energy. The two entrepreneurial American women, Julia Silverman and Jessica Matthews, who had the idea, thought to “put a mechanism inside the ball that harnesses the kinetic energy […]