More than two years ago, the first Girl Effect video swept the web, making a powerful case for the importance of girls’ education in solving global poverty. This week, The Girl Effect is back with an even more powerful sequel, which premiered at the Clinton Global Initiative summit in New York City. Watch, internalize and pass along — it’s important.
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Activism meets comedy, or what Texas has to do with Velcro.
In 1977, at the height of the 70’s environmental movement, an unlikely invention took hold: The first plastic bag (no, not that plastic bag) was introduced as an alternative to paper bags. Today, according to the EPA, it accounts for 4 out of every 5 bags handed out in grocery stores and, scarier yet, only about 1% of the 500 billion to one trillion plastic bags consumed annually around the world are ever recycled. The rest end up in landfills and, most tragically, in the world’s oceans, where they wreak devastating havoc on marine life — from entangling seabirds and marine animals to ending up in their guts upon being eaten by mistake, with gruesome consequences. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch near Hawaii, a Texas-sized gyre of marine litter, would take a week to cross by boat, and plastic bags account for much of its composition.
Long story short, while most of us know plastic bags are dreadful, we don’t necessarily realize how dreadful. And while dry stats have their place, they’re no way to move people to change behavior. Enter The Bag Monster — the ingenious creation of activist and entrepreneur Andy Keller. Keller, who masterminded the popular reusable ChicoBag, had been going around farmers markets for years, carrying around 500-700 plastic bags to tangibly raise awareness about the number of plastic bags the average American uses yearly. Then, one day, he decided to attach the bags to a jumpsuit with Velcro and wear them. The Bag Monster was born.
This summer, to support the California Bill, AB 1998 for the ban of all plastic bags in California, The Bag Monster went on a monthlong tour across the US, starting in San Francisco and ending in Fairfield, Connecticut.
What makes The Bag Monster work is that it takes a serious environmental problem but doesn’t make it grave, bends it through a prism of satire, and delivers palpable awareness in an organic, non-preachy way.
So what can you do? It’s simple, really. Pledge to eliminate plastic bags and — why stop there? — other single-use items from your life. A good place to start may be our roundup of 7 ways to have more by owning less, as well as this recent HuffPo piece on kicking the plastic habit.
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10,000 buzzing pixels, the real source of your breakfast, and what electron microscopes have to do with art.
Albert Einstein once remarked that if bees were to disappear, mankind would perish in just a few years. And yet honeybees are disappearing — at alarming rates, and for reasons scientists don’t fully understand. From climate change to cell phone towers, a range of manmade and environmental factors are contributing to the extinction of a brilliant, intelligent civilization responsible for everything from one of the world’s most ancient medicinal products to the foundation of swarm theory to the creation of other-worldly petal nests.
Today, we look at three different homages to bees, their socio-environmental significance, and the plight for their conservation.
BEE BILLBOARD
To promote Britain’s Plan Bee campaign, UK winery Banrock Station created the world’s first bee-powered billboard, composed of 10,000 live bees.
Plan Bee aims to campaign against the use of bee-killing pesticides and to inspire people to help bees in their own gardens.
DENNIS VANENGELSDORP: A PLEA FOR BEES
Apiarist Dennis vanEngelsdorp studies colony collapse disorder — the disturbing worldwide epidemic wiping out worker bees and Western honeybees, resulting in the demise of entire colonies of the gentle, fascinating creature. But this is no tragedy we can observe from a bystander perspective — bees and their work are surprisingly integral to our entire food system, from the breakfast you ate this morning to large-scale agricultural economy.
One in three bites of food we eat is directly or indirectly pollinated by honeybees.” ~ Dennis vanEngelsdorp
There are more species of bees than mammals and birds combined.” ~ Dennis vanEngelsdorp
For more on colony collapse disorder, check out the fascinating documentary Vanishing of the Bees, which follows two commercial beekeepers as they struggle to keep their bees healthy and alive, then offers ways for you to make your own living space, be it urban or countryside, more bee-friendly.
ROSE-LYNN FISHER: BEE
From photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher comes BEE — an incredibly artful, thoughtful exploration of the beautiful complexity of bees and the larger natural patterns it bespeaks. Fisher blends the immaculate scientific precision of electron microscope imaging with the aesthetic sensibility of art photography to produce 128 pages of breathtaking revelation that expands the boundaries of how we think about these remarkable creatures and nature at large.
The first time I looked at a bee’s eye magnified I was amazed to see a field of hexagons, just like honeycomb. I wondered, is this a coincidence or a clue? Is it simply that hexagons are ubiquitous in nature, or is there a deeper correspondence between the structure of the bee’s vision and the structure she builds – in other words, similar frequencies being expressed in similar form? This got me pondering on the connection between vision and action at a more abstract, metaphoric level. Is there a parallel kind of encoding relevant to humanity? At a refined level of our own nature, does our deeper capacity to see and to do correspond with an intrinsic structuring?” ~ Rose-Lynn Fisher
BEE came out in 2010 and is without a doubt one of the most visually stunning, conceptually ambitious photography books in recent years.
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Participatory peace, or how cover chains are unshackling an imprisoned community.
A few months ago, we helped nonprofit Invisible Children fight the child soldier epidemic in Uganda — a country plagued by a tragic number of social ills fueled by a decade-long war — through music. Now, another music-driven effort is aiming to empower another one of the country’s severely victimized populations — the many women who live as widows, rape survivors and former abductees.
The Voice Project is an effort to support these brave women, who have come together in groups around the country, singing songs of hope and regeneration. The lyrics of these songs let their sons, former child soldiers, know that they have been forgiven and can now come home. Circulated via radio and word of mouth, these songs are actually working, bringing young men back home and giving a war-torn country a chance at peace for the first time in 24 years.
Inspired by these women’s songs, The Voice Project is bringing well-known artists together into “cover chains,” each covering the music of another. The videos are posted online and all proceeds from donations and sponsorships go towards peace programs and rebuilding efforts in Uganda.
Part Invisible Children, part Record Club, part Levi’s Pioneer Sessions, The Voice Project is a music-lover’s mecca. From indie dreams-come-true like Brett Dennen covering Citizen Cope to iconic intersections like Peter Gabriel covering Tom Waits to unlikely yet priceless pairings like The Submarines covering The Beatles, the effort uses the universal power of music to amplify a critical humanitarian message, allowing artists — and, in turn, their fans — to become a part of a cause best fought for by relinquishing the notion of “the other” and harnessing the power of community, a global community, in reconstructing the broken identity of a nation.
For a taste of The Voice Project‘s brilliance, grab a free download of Home by one of our favorite bands, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, featuring the Gulu Women’s Choir.
Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s an example. Like? Sign up.
Brain Pickings has a free weekly interestingness digest. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week's best articles. Here's an example. Like? Sign up.
donating = loving
Brain Pickings remains free (and ad-free) and takes me hundreds of hours a month to research and write, and thousands of dollars to sustain. If you find any joy and value in what I do, please consider becoming a Member and supporting with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner:
You can also become a one-time patron with a single donation in any amount:
We’ve got a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s an example. Like? Sign up.
In 1977, at the height of the 70’s environmental movement, an unlikely invention took hold: The first plastic bag (no, not 
Albert Einstein once remarked that if bees were to disappear, mankind would perish in just a few years. And yet honeybees are disappearing — at alarming rates, and for reasons scientists don’t fully understand. From climate change to cell phone towers, a range of manmade and environmental factors are contributing to the extinction of a brilliant, intelligent civilization responsible for everything from one of the world’s most ancient medicinal products to the foundation of 
BEE BILLBOARD
DENNIS VANENGELSDORP: A PLEA FOR BEES
ROSE-LYNN FISHER: BEE
