“All [we] need is love” won by virtue of having the most nominations.  Well Done, Eli.

She will receive a $25 credit to Kiva.org, the microlending site we read about.  Hopefully, when she selects who to give it to, she will have her loan count towards the lending team “Bucknell Folk” which your class has inspired me to launch.

I’ll invite all of you all to Kiva and the Bucknell Folk.  Consider it a belated way to give thanks and a cool way to do 60 seconds of work to help your fellow travelers here on starship Earth.

Other awards the Blog Council (Kelly C, Mackenzie, Evan, Katie, JC) decided on.  The most important criteria were effectiveness, creativity, clarity and conciseness of pitch, and after that we just started showing the love (and a little good-natured ribbing) to the rest.

Easiest to Implement Good Idea:Increased Transparency  by Alex H

Highly Creative (and aerobic):    Fix Childhood Obesity, A GROWING Problem by Kelly C

Particularly Practical: A Tie!   Simply Give by Megan M  AND Get off Your High Horse and Help Someone by Odeke

Simple and Unexpected   Drop out of the Electoral College by  Carl

Fastest (and effective) Elevator Pitch:Just a Dollar by Katie

Tough Love Trophy: Throw out Bad Apples!   by Kelly R

Improving Communication Good Ideas Awards: Communication can Change the World by Justin AND Think Before you Speak by Mike

Inverse Relationship Record for Best Idea Relative to Lamest Title (it really is worth a read).  My Solution   by Alex L

Synchronicity Silver Medal for Most In Sync with the Wired World: A Tie!  Opening Up the World’s Data by  Rick AND Decentralize and Conquer by Jason

Chalk it Up for Chock Full of Health Facts: Ethics of Consumption    by Alyssa

Mouth- Watering Title: Clean, Clean Water…Yum    by Mackenzie

Perhaps Missed the Point But Valiant Effort to Link Product to World Betterment: Weather-a-Wear   by Slade

Nice Idea but Good Luck With That: Stop World Hunger by Nate and Enough is Enough by Bryce

ROFLMAO: More Chemical Spills to Increase Chance of Superheroes  by  Tom

Coda:  Some of you, well one maybe, asked me about my other ideas I did not present.  here they are:

• Create an always-open table for single diners in cafeterias, restaurants so people talk to each other more over lunch (start here).
• Add the cost of our military budget spent on protecting oil supplies to the price of gas and petroleum projects
• Pay regulators the same amount as the lawyers in regulated industries so at least it is a fair fight.
• Have a “clean-up” fund for abandoned big box retailers so those spaces can be repurposed for business or community or the combination- libraries, skate parks, second-hand markets, business incubators, senior centers, local history chapters and so on.
• Understand that the problem with drinking and teen-agers is a transportation problem more than a consumption one.
• Allow entering freshman to delay for 1-3 years entrance to college, but locking in their tuition at those rates, to encourage them to get other life experiences before entering college.
• Build user-owned social network sites.
• Create a global minimum wage adjusting for local cost of living differences and tied to inflation so that countries no longer have an incentive to race to the bottom for cheaper labor.

Stay in touch.  Share the ideas.  Do well and do good.

Health security, and retirement security, that depend on your employment status were never great ideas and are now liabilities.  They are the weight of dead ideas made heavy by the amount of structural and historical inertia they have.

A rich and vibrant ecology of health insurance companies, co-ops, and government programs can replace employee-based systems.  The same model can be applied to retirement security.  Life is full of risks to health, and the “risk” of living a full and lovely life beyond one’s working years.  As a society, we can find ways to protect against those life risks and in doing so liberate employees and employers.

Not being greedy is my simple solution that could have such a profound impact on the generations of our world today.  When you actually sit back and think about it, how many major problems have occurred as a result of greed.  Slavery was a result of greedy slave owners trying to increase their wealth.  The Financial Crisis was a direct cause of greed.  So many people tried to make quick bucks by buying and selling subpar mortgages.  Now that I think about it, our very nation was founded on greed.  Every person that came on an expedition to this land were in search of either gaining more wealth by trading, or expanding their territory into new areas.

Our Premise

Apps/Widgets - The general premise can be converted to an iPhone/iPod/iPad/Android/Blackberry app or widget. The user could have their settings saved on their device and, using the device’s location information, give clothing suggestions. We most likely can’t do this since we have very limited experience developing apps.

Social Networking - We could introduce a social networking aspect to the general premise. Users have profiles where they discuss their style in more depth. The site can use that data and give more specific recommendations to users. We don’t have the technical experience to really do this (see a theme here?)

Backgrounds - We can make computer/phone backgrounds that update without the user having to do anything (you can guess why we can’t do this)

As a part of my job this year I had to volunteer at the Covenant House in New York City. I thought great I can hang out with all the other interns and not have to work that day. Well I was pretty selfish in thinking that because volunteering there showed me that I and most people I know have it real good. We take simple things for granted. These teenagers who I encountered at Covenant House were often runaways, abonded, some women were prostituting others were pregnant and Covenant House took them in. They allow for these teens to maintain a home, get a job, an education while still understanding the responsibility of paying for rent and taking care of your things.

Serving, making food and doing random upkeep work around the vicinity made me appreciate things and respect these individuals who have turned their life around. I met a girl who had been left by her mother three years ago and now she is applying to medical school. I really was just amazed by the people I encountered that day and the way Covenant House provides a new life for those involved. Since then I still give back to Covenant House by donating food, clothes etc and I plan to stay connected with this organization for as long as I can.

So although my story is not something earth shattering and I believe there are people out there who are more devoted to service and giving back then I ever could be, I do believe that if people even just take a day to volunteer at a soup kitchen or donate to Kiva to help raise awareness of micro-finance it’s doing the world a favor.

Covenant House

I believe if there were more focus on literacy in our world, our world would improve tremendously. In America alone 40 million adults are illiterate. Literacy is essential to living in any society. In order to fully develop a sense of well being and citizenship in any country you must be literate. Children who are solid readers perform better in school, have a healthy self-image, and become life long learners, adding to their viability in a competitive world. There are many causes of illiteracy that can be improved by our government and societies these causes consist of class and wealth, the poverty cycle, our school systems, the lack of resources, motivation, and upbringing. The causes are very intertwined; if you are stuck in a poverty cycle your class is going to be lower leading to an unpleasant school system with lack of resources deterring motivation in students.

If there is not a major change in the literacy rates in the world and America today, our world is going to continue to be stuck in a vicious limited cycle. Illiteracy not only hurts oneself but also hurts ones family and future generations. The consequences of illiteracy are so large they are the bases of many other problems in our world today, such as communication, employment, and many other issues.

If someone hits their "help" button, help them out!

One idea to improve the world….try to help one person a day.

I know we have all heard this but if we actually did this then we could actually see huge improvements in our world.

Now this can come through giving that poor guy a sandwich to delivering blankets to an orphanage, if we could all (within our capacities) help someone different everyday better themselves then I think the world would see a slight improvement in everything from our morals to a decrease in poverty.

This is not telling you to go out of the way to give grandiose gifts to the poor, but if someone in your class is struggling, help them out and let them study with you instead of turning them away for fear they might just slow you down. Now this idea is absurd because in the world today helping someone out means you loosing something valuable to you (ie. Time, money, reputation…) But it’s only absurd because things that tend to make the most change in the world tend to be that way.

A key to make this work is that it needs to be someone different everyday and it needs to be not monetary. For example, buy a homeless person a week’s worth of non-perishable food instead of money. Helping by giving money tends to be temporary solution because people get tied to money and nothing added comes out of it. With food, or a book, or other physical tools that can physically or mentally better the individual. Money tends to corrupt and good intentions turn into wasteful spending and that’s why purchasing it yourself is better because it negates any personal misdirected spending.

Another point is not to help the same person constantly because when you do that you create dependence which, in many cases, actually ends up hurting the person more in the long-run.

Let’s help one person a day in some way or manor and we can change the world.

The electoral college was implemented back when it was not feasible to necessarily have a full popular vote.  In today’s modern information society, this is obviously possible.  We do not need states to “elect” a president to represent them, the people do.

I know electoral college proponents claim that people living outside the major metropolitan areas will be ignored by the candidates.  As the graphic below shows that happens currently.  As a resident of Ohio and student in Pennsylvania, I’ve thankfully had a chance to have a meaningful vote in my one presidential election, but what about a Democrat in the Sunbelt?  Or a Republican in California?

States get plenty of chances to influence national politics through the Senate and House, they do not need a seemingly symbolic influence on the presidential race.  Also, electoral rules and enforcement for voters and the EC vary from state to state.  Two states, Nebraska and Maine, split up their electoral vote!  Unlike any other state.

As a closing thought, the logistics are possible today (and we would avoid the fiascoes from Florida and Ohio in the ’00 and ’04 elections).  Put the power of the most powerful office in the world in the people, not the states.   Oh and as the links below show, it’s what Americans want.

Related articles

• The Mathematical Case Against The Electoral College (pinkbananaworld.com)
• Sixty-Two Percent support swapping Electoral College with National Popular Vote. (thewesternexperience.com)
• Most Americans want popular presidential vote (cbsnews.com)

There are currently 193.3 million employees in the United States. Most people get paid every two weeks, which is roughly a total of 26 pay periods per year. If one dollar is deducted from each paycheck and donated to education, it would make a huge impact. The impact on one’s finances would be negligible, and would only be losing $26.00 annually. But this small amount annually would total to be more than $3.5 billion annually. The money should be earmarked for education, and should be split up in each state based on how many employees participate in this program in each state. By doing this small, simple thing, we could raise $3.5 billion dollars in 60 seconds. It would also create even more opportunities in creating extra jobs to help carry out this plan.