Give Back During the Holiday Season

Holiday’s are great for many who have money, a secure job, and good health. But for the majority of the world it means a completely different season. This is a time when depression is at an all time high, when many people are working jobs that they know will end after the Christmas shopping is over, and for others, the debt waiting for them to hit when they open their credit card bills in January, a time when the credit card companies are very happy.

We know there are lots in need during the Thanksgiving and Christmas season and we know how to get involved but many times we overlook the ones who will never make it onto our radar because their stories are so obscure. Right now there are thousands of people begging on street corners hoping someone will give them some change so they can get something to eat, that is what most people are hoping they will do with the money. The stigma behind beggars is that they just want the money to spend on alcohol and cigarettes. The beggars who are in need of real help get overlooked because of the ones just needing a fix mess it up for everyone else.

In this one video below there was an experiment done to find out what a homeless guy would do if he was given a hundred dollars. You can see that it has over a million hits and many people have voiced their opinion about the matter; those on the side that it is right to give back and those on the other side that people, where they live, just use the money for bad things and then there are those who complain that filming the homeless guy was wrong. I will show you that even homeless people, later on, have something to offer and what you can do to help if you are unsure about giving money out on the corners. Watch the video before continuing.

The Time for Giving
I wrote recently about how layaway angels are going into stores and paying off people’s bills so that people have more money for the holidays’. Many families live paycheck to paycheck and that can be very hard in the long run so when someone comes along and pays off your bills it can often feel like your wishes were heard.

Giving does not have to always mean giving away money, it can come in the form of helping someone who needs it. The man with the golden voice was once a homeless man begging on the streets. He had a drug and drinking problem but someone saw the gift he had and posted it online and now he lives well-off having gone through rehab, landing many jobs, and now lives in a nice house working as a voice-over actor. This season he helped to raise awareness for homeless people by getting people to donate socks, something homeless people need, including gloves, or the popular hand warmers.

In the video that made him famous you can see how people would be surprised to find a man like him begging for money.

When you watch videos like that it makes you wonder just how many talented people there really are that the world ignores. Luckily for Ted Williams, who got discovered, then fell into addiction again, then went to rehab and finally came around realized that his addiction will always be there he just has to be careful about it. So when you watch a video of a man who is so educated that he can’t find a job and is homeless you begin to wonder why he didn’t get the same success as Ted Williams if he is so smart.

Again the comments in the video show many different view points about what is wrong with this situation. Success is not based off of education as the books “Don’t Go Back to School,” “Hacking Your Education,” and “The Education of Millionaires.” have proven. Success in this world is about how driven and determined you are to get what you want.

There is a great YouTube channel called, “GiveBackFilms,” you see film makers giving away all kinds of stuff to people to see what kind reaction they will have but also to learn what somebody would do if they were given something. These are social experiments in altruism. In the video below you see how homeless people reaction if they were given a hundred dollars.

These are the kinds of YouTube channels that are making a difference. They aim to show people how a little helping hand and generosity can go a long way and with the amount of followers they have you can see they are probably using the money they earn from their channel to create the content we see. I applaud their efforts in showing people what kindness looks like and how a little help can go a long way for some people.

There is another video that has circulated because their YouTube channel, SoFloPranks, is all about pranks as social experiments. In one video they offer a hundred dollars to the winner of an arm wrestling competition between two homeless people. The reaction in the end of the video was something the filmmakers were not expecting. Check it out.

So if you are concerned about giving money to people on the streets this season then you can do something to make sure that your donation is for a worthy cause by going to GoFundme, Trevolta, Kiva, FundAnything, GiveForward, Payawaythelayaway, YouCaring, Rockethub, Crowdrise, Indiegogo, Rally, Fundly, DonorChoose, AdoptaClassroom, Gradible. The last few are to help teachers raise money for classroom supplies and students to go to school. To learn more about this crowdfunding movement for education read this article.

Successful Homeless People
There are many stories of people who were once homeless ending up in places like Harvard. The Liz Murray story is probably the most popular one. If you have never seen the movie or read her book, it is an amazing story of what perseverance looks like in the face of adversity. In the video below Liz talks about what it was like to go from being in a bad place to ending up at a place like Harvard.

You can also watch Liz talk about the love of possibility in her TED talk on her YouTube channel.

If you would like to watch her famous movie you can view it below thanks to it being on youtube.

Liz Murrary is not the only person to come out of being homeless and into Harvard, a girl by the name of Dawn Loggins worked hard to get to where she is at. Infact she even took a job at her high school as a janitor to help support herself, while also a student there.

When you want something bad enough and have to work for it, you begin to appreciate things more.

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There are many ways to help others right now during this time of year. A simple act of holding the door open, saying Merry Christmas, or showing a smile to another person can do wonders for others. A popular action is dropping off a gift basket at a children’s hospital, orphanage, or homeless shelter.

Other than that a little giving is good for the heart in many ways. Merry Christmas!

Learn more about the new Spending Bill for 2015

You often wonder just how much of what people learn in college stays with them after they get a job and start working. You would think that when you hire an engineer that they remember everything they read and learned in college, right? That is not the case and really far from it. When you look over what some of the provisions that have been included in the new spending bill carries, you should wonder how such things even get brought up.

Science research and food nutrition have shown over and over again that salt contributes to a large number of health problems when eating too much. Food already has sodium in it so you don’t need to add any more. It is cases like this that show the lack of understanding about food science that is most embarrassing, especially with an organization that is supposed to “help” kids learn about proper nutrition. The School Nutrition Association congratulated the new language that allows them to continue doing what their doing instead of providing lower sodium levels in school lunches. Their answer to that was they need more research in order to prevent a costly overhaul. This issue right there goes back to what I said about the case with Obama giving money over so cops can wear body-cameras. We don’t need more research on these issues. they just waste time and money and prolong the issue so that they don’t have to make any wide-spread changes.

More research is not the answer for everything and yet so many associations use that as a crutch to keep from having to spend money to enforce new rules.

Then you have agencies that are already profitable still requesting money from the government to cover costs that they should be covering on their own. This is the case with medical insurance companies like Blue Shield and Blue Cross.

When you look at the case with farmers they don’t want any interference from the government if it means having to do more work on their part and that is the case with monitoring greenhouse gas emissions. Farms are shown to be the biggest contributors of greenhouse gas because of the cows but now science can not progress because they are not required to take measurements of samples. This is how science gets hindered because of political actions.

Oh and Las Vegas apparently is asking the government for money to help gain more tourists. Think that even makes sense to pass as a bill? Nope, but then again it doesn’t look like your required to remember much from your college days after you graduate.

Read through the article and see what issues people have thrown in with the bill. In case you haven’t learned already, bills get attached at the very last minute in order to get automatically approved, even for cases that have been deemed by the courts as legal, because remember politicians only work for those that give them the most votes and money.

Read the comments for how people view congress and politics.

The Daily Show also did a great piece of what exactly the new spending bill was made up of, which it is being called, “The Christmas Tree Bill” watch how Jon Stewart makes fun of them for tacking on stupid things.

The Daily Show Dec 16th

News Article

In Final Spending Bill, Salty Foods and Belching Cows

Have you Learned anything new today? No? Then listen to these people

It’s no surprise that there are people who like learning and there are those that don’t. Infact, science has shown now that it requires a lot of mental energy in order to learn something new. It takes true concentration in order to listen, I mean really know how to listen, and be able to comprehend, digest the content, and be able to retain it. You can see why some people believe that getting up and going about their day doing their own thing is enough for them instead of the need to find time to have to sit down and learn something new.

For those that view learning as a pleasurable activity and crave it, there is a place you can go to listen to some of the greatest minds speak their mind and it all happens within the magical space of 18 minutes. If you want to know why only 18 minutes I encourage you to perform a search on it and see what you find. I didn’t include a link this time because it’s important to know how to find information on your own.

You always want to see what other great minds are doing, this helps you to see what trends, research, and businesses are being created by other entrepreneurs. You might have an idea to start a program that provides support to recent college grads, but after watching one of the TED videos you might learn that someone else is already doing that. You can either offer to join their team or compete against their by creating your own business model. The idea is you should always be curious to learn what other people are doing and how they went about making it come true.

The links below are all connected to one place with one purpose, to share an idea.

Find out why Bill Gates Unleashed Mosquitoes on his audience

Think Schools are Killing Creativity, this person will tell you why

Three Secrets to What make YouTube Videos Viral

What does your posture say about you in any moment?

What have you learned in 6 months that will help you?

If your not masturbating enough, you don’t care about your sexual health

This Neuroanatomist was able to study her own stroke as it was happening

10 Things you didn’t know about orgasm

How many liars do you let into your life?

Need to bone up on your world history in 18 minutes?

His Statistics will reshape how you view the world

Making Ghettos Green

No limit was placed on his childhood and look what he gave the world for it

This is a partial list of some of the best TED talks ever given. Try to include at least one TED talk into your daily life and you will be all the better for it because it means that the knowledge you take away from their talk is put forth in the work you do in this world. You might not be an educator, like I am, but after listening to Sir Ken Robinson you’ve learned that schools kill creativity and that there is a need to balance the shortfall of schools. If you take away something from these videos it will only be to better the world and yourself.

Never Stop Learning

Need to learn a new skill? Try picking up this one

Everyday your goal should be to learn a new skill in someway, be it how to fix an iphone screen or how to install a dimmer switch in your home. But what about the bigger skills that can take you farther? Most of these places offer a free fly up to get an idea of what it’s like to fly a place.

Above and Beyond Aviation
Austin Academy of Aviation
Genesis Flying Academy
Longhorn University Flying Club

Need to fix something but don’t know how? This place has the answer

Yahoo Answers is a popular place for finding out the answers to your questions but there are also popular places now that help you fix whatever you need. Aside from watching YouTube videos you can use a website dedicated to solving people’s problems. Who knows, you might be able to solve someone else’s problem.

Fixya