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We’ve shown videos of the Big Cat Rescue group before, but one thing left out of their usual videos are all the tiny cats and the non-cat species living on the organization’s property.
DC Comics has been making some ambitious moves lately, from a logo re-design to a 52 title relaunch, but their newest move should prove to be most heroic-a charity called We Can Be Heroes which will raise money to benefit humanitarian efforts in Africa. Here’s the dollars and cents of it all:
Donations of any amount made at the We Can Be Heroes site will reportedly be matched by DC Entertainment 100 percent, with 50 percent of branded “We Can Be Heroes” online merchandise sales being donated to the fund (unless you buy in Maine, Massachusetts and Alabama). Between these and other efforts, DC says that its three WCBH partners will receive a combined total of at least $2 million over the next two years.
Caped superfolks in print are fine, but stepping up to the plate and making a difference in the real world is truly noble indeed!
Link –via ComicsAlliance
What do you get for the person who has needs nothing? Instead of something that will collect dust, you can show your love and appreciation by helping those who do need something -in the name of your loved one. Help a third-world family start a business. Contribute to the building of new homes. Do your bit for disaster relief. Bring clean water to a community. Protect an endangered species. You can even give a gift card that can be used at a variety of charities. Web Ecoist has a list of 14 organizations that will channel your gift money to those who need it most, and notify your gift recipient about what you’ve done. Link
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Hard rapper 50 Cent softens at the idea of world hunger. He’s released a series of promo videos expressing his desire to feed a billion people by donating a portion of profits made from his new energy drink, Street King, to the UN’s World Food Programme.
This World Wildlife Fund poster features a ton of hidden animals in the bushes.I know it’s hard to see at this size, but if you click on the link, you can enlarge the picture and try to see them all. How many can you find?
Photo Credit: David Schlaich
Cancer, depression, or any sort of ailment can make you feel terribly isolated. As part of a series called Shining Light on Cancer, health photographer David Schlaich captures light paintings to illustrate the feelings of cancer patients. The series is for a book of light art images to help raise money for cancer charities.
“It can feel isolating to feel like no one knows how you feel. But when you go to a cancer support group and some groups you may find fit you better than others, you can find a community of people that can relate and a friend who knows how you feel. Of course this can apply to all kinds of problems, depression, addiction there’s lots of people out there who know how you feel. You don’t have to be alone if you find them”.
Link via Ian Brooks
Don Schoendorfer makes wheelchairs out of lawn chairs and bicycle wheels. His hobby was inspired by a woman in India who crawled across the dirt because she had no wheelchair. After building 100 of the inexpensive chairs, Schoendorfer founded the organization Free Wheelchair Mission in order to get the chairs shipped to those who need them worldwide.
It costs less than $60 to have each chair made, shipped and delivered to “some of the most remote corners of the globe,” according to Schoendorfer’s website, freewheelchairmission.org.
Better yet, the recipients don’t have to pay a dime for their new mobility.
Schoendorfer says he hopes to distribute 20-million wheelchairs in total.
Link -via Breakfast Links
(Image credit: KTLA-TV)
In
a continent far far away, a young adventurer named Jacob French is walking
solo across the vast land of Australia.
It's an epic journey with a noble cause, but what made it truly Neatorama-worthy is that Jacob is doing so while wearing a Stormtrooper outfit:
Mr French, 20, started his ''Troopertrek'' on Monday and aims to arrive in Sydney by December. To achieve this, he will need to walk 35 to 40 kilometres a day, five days a week, while pushing his 50 -kilogram trolley of supplies and wearing his 10-kilogram suit, which he bought online.
''It does get very hot,'' he said. ''The helmet is not very well ventilated. It's like wearing a bucket on your head. It's not very flexible either, so I'm moving pretty slowly. I had to have it specially trimmed to make it less restrictive.
Zombies supporters have their own organization now! Join PETZ (People for the Ethical Treatment of Zombies) and you can adopt a zombie, lobby for zombie rights, and network with other zombie supporters. Among their offerings is this checklist for a “cruelty-free lifestyle”:
Proper zombie care
Keep your zombie well-refrigerated
Reattach any limbs that have fallen off immediately
Brush your zombie’s remaining teeth regularly
Companies that test on zombies
KFC
Sephora
Men’s Wearhouse
Recipes for zombies
Brain stew
Soy-flesh
Ladyfingers (for zombies with a sweet tooth)
The site was launched in support of the production Zombie! the Musical. Link -via @johncfarrier
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You wanted to get rid of some old clothes, but Goodwill is not yet open. There's a clothes donation box in the next parking lot, so why not put it there? After all, donating is donating, right? Not so fast:
Monica Eng of The Chicago Tribune has the in-depth story: LinkSome of the more controversial new boxes are placed by recyclers who consider collecting used clothes to be a charitable environmental program or who create and run their own charity to which they donate funds.
One of the biggest players, Gaia, falls in the first category. Over the last several years it has been criticized for characterizing itself as an environmental charity with projects around the world, when most of its environmental work remains collecting clothes for sale. Along with the related organizations Planet Aid and USAgain, Gaia has expanded in the last decade despite its connection to the controversial Danish organization Tvind, whose leader was acquitted of charges of money laundering and embezzlement in 2006.
University of Dundee student Tim Pryde built a robot for his fourth year Product Design project. He named it DON-8r because its purpose is to ask for contributions to the Dundee Science Centre. This video shows a test run.
Forgot to mention, there’s no hard feelings towards the girl who breaks DON-8r at the end of the video. It was user testing after all and clearly the head was not secure enough! DON-8r has since been repaired and recapitated
Read all about the project at his blog. Link -via b3ta
If you keep up with Neatorama, then you probably recall Miss C’s post about the Urine-Free Charity Auction. Essentially, D.H. Morgan posted a used wetsuit on eBay and to emphasize that it had never been peed in, he included this brilliant image. The picture went viral and Morgan volunteered to give 90% of the proceeds to the Red Cross’s work in Japan. Soon, the auction started getting a lot more bids and sponsors started throwing in free surfboards, concert tickets, shoes, a brand new wetsuit and more.
In the end, the auction ended up pulling in over $15,000 in bids…unfortunately, the winning bidder refused to pay up and the second place winner wouldn’t take the Second Chance Offer. That left Morgan with tons of free stuff that wasn’t really his to keep and left the Red Cross out of a huge donation.
In order to correct the problem, he has opted to host a massive charity raffle for the prizes. Tickets are only £2.50 and the prizes total more than $1000. The only down side is that this time he’s only giving 70%, apparently because the raffles cost more to run and he needs money to fix the exhaust on his car.
Even so, it’s still a good chance to donate money to a good cause and possibly win a boatload of free stuff. Plus, included in the raffle prize is the opportunity to hang out with Morgan and a bear (presumably someone in a bear suit, not an actual bear).
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Here’s a tale of an eBay sale that grew and grew. British diver D.H. Morgan posted a wetsuit for sale. In his colorful description, he emphasized that the suit had never been peed in -and posted a picture of a bear at a urinal to somehow drive that point home. The bear picture made the auction go viral, so he changed it to a charity auction (language warning).
This listing for my urine-free wetsuit is getting a lot of unexpected attention which is nice but I’m feeling I should do something positive with all the ‘f*cking energy man’, so I’ve decided to give 90% of the money it makes to the Red Cross to aid their efforts in Japan. That sounds all ‘oh look at me I’m so nice I’m giving to charity’ doesn’t it… yeah well p*ss off.
But what! There’s more!
Just got off the phone to XCEL wetsuits in Hawaii, who are very kindly donating a BRAND NEW 2011 Drylock wetsuit to the auction, it will remain a 3/2 (summer) but will be available in a range of sizes to suit the winning bidder. So now, in addition to the original p*ss free suit, you’ll also get a brand spanker, but still no bears or doors, just TWO wetsuits free of urine, one old and knackered (m) and one lovely and new (any size).
After that, the auction snowballed. Different companies have added a lot more merchandise, like a watch, boots, surfboard, books, and concert tickets. Morgan created a separate website called bears don’t wear wetsuits to handle questions and correspondence about the auction. As of this writing, the bidding stands at £9,300.00, which is $15K US. Link -via Metafilter
Comments Off BBC Comedy regular Misery Bear tries to cheer himself up by participating in Red Nose Day, an annual event to benefit Comic Relief. Along the way, he meets Kate Moss and we see Misery live up to his name. -via The Daily What
Phil Johnson, a homeowner in New Zealand, has put a rock up for sale. The rock found its way to his home during the recent earthquake in the Christchurch area.
For sale 1 owner 25 – 30 tonne landscape feature (answers to the name Rocky) …
He is in pristine condition (just a little bit of concrete dust). Suitable for garden feature, or as in our case a magnificent addition to your living area.
Rocky will enhance your “indoor outdoor” flow considerably, especially if you load him in through the garage roof like we did.
The other pictures at the auction site are just as interesting. The Q&A section is priceless! Humor aside, the proceeds from this particular auction go to the Christchurch Earthquake Relief Fund. The current bid is $8,000. Link -Thanks, Phil Fahey!
An anonymous benefactor in Canton, Ohio placed a newspaper ad near Christmas in 1933 and asked for people in need to contact him. At the height of the Great Depression, many were in dire straits and responded by mail. The mysterious “B. Virdot” sent $5 (a generous sum at the time) to 150 families. Virdot never revealed his identity. Then in 2008, Ted Gup unearthed those letters and found out that his grandfather was the man who handed out the money.
His real name was Sam Stone. “B. Virdot” was a combination of his daughters’ names—Barbara, Virginia (my mother) and Dorothy. My grandmother had mentioned something about his largesse to my mother when she was a young adult, but it had remained a family secret. Now, 30 years after her father’s death, she was comfortable letting the secret out.
Collectively, the letters offer a wrenching vision of the Great Depression and of the struggle within the souls of individuals, many too proud to speak of their anguish even to their loved ones. Some sought B. Virdot’s generosity not for themselves, but for their neighbors, friends or relatives. Stirred by their words, I set out to find what became of them, tracking down their descendants, wondering if the $5 gifts had made any difference. From each family, I received permission to use the letter.
Read some of the stories of those families at Smithsonian magazine. Link
I think everyone should be generous and help one another as much as possible. To that extent, I’ve always been a big supporter of blood donation. Unfortunately, I’ve found out the hard way that I am one of the handful of people that has adverse reactions to donations and I almost pass out afterward and I find myself weakened for the next few days. Since I can’t donate, I figure I can help motivate the rest of you to help out your fellow man by giving you all the information you’ve ever wanted to know about blood donation.
Image via cbmd [Flickr]
Human blood is made of four main components, plasma, platelets, red blood cells and white blood cells. The 55% of blood is just plasma, which is mostly water, but also contains proteins, immunoglobulins, vitamins and other substances. Blood makes up 7% of your body weight.
All animals have varying numbers of blood types. Cows have a whopping 800 types of blood. Humans have four blood types, A, B, AB, and O and these can be further identified by their RH positive or negative status. Over 70% of Americans are either type O+ or A+.
While you probably already know that type O is the universal donor for red blood cells, most people are unaware that plasma transfusions are the exact opposite and people with type AB blood are universal plasma donors.
Image via Spike55151 [Flickr]
When you donate blood, you generally give around one pint of whole blood per donation, which makes up anywhere from a tenth to a twelfth of your body’s total blood. This is why some people (myself included) feel weak after donation, but most people are fine after blood withdrawal. Most people feel fine within a few hours, but it still takes your body up to three days to replace the donated plasma and up to 59 days for you to recover your red blood cells. That’s why you can only donate every few months.
While most people donate whole blood, there is another option called Apheresis. When you donate just plasma and platelets, this method is used for withdrawal. Basically, your blood is removed from your arm and then passed through a machine that separates out the contents of your blood. The parts of your blood that are being donated are kept separate and the rest of your blood is returned into your body. In most cases, the red blood cells are returned since these take the longest to regenerate. That’s why platelet and plasma donors can donate every three days. While it takes up to ten units of whole blood to make up one whole dose of platelets for a patient, this method can collect at least one whole dose of platelets with each donation.
While blood can be directly transfused from the donor into the patient, this method was largely phased out after WWII and blood donations are usually stored these days. Red blood cells can be stored for up to 42 days and plasma can be stored for a full year. Unfortunately, platelets can only be kept for about a week.
Image via Nemo’s Great Uncle [Flickr]
Blood banks are always looking to get more supply, and there are a number of reasons for this. First, a lot of people need blood. In fact, it is estimated that someone in the U.S. needs a transfusion every two seconds and that one in four Americans will need a transfusion at some point in their life. Secondly, because the majority of blood components have short shelf lives, even if there are enough donations to cover immediate needs, banks ideally want to have enough around in case of a national or local emergency. Lastly, restrictions on blood donors mean that only 38% of all Americans can donate blood at any given time, but only 10% of the population donates blood every year.
Image via ec-jpr [Flickr]
There are a lot of factors to determine someone’s eligibility to donate blood, including age, health, weight, visits to foreign countries, drug use, sexual history and recent body modifications. Donors may pass the pr-escreening tests and still be found ineligible when their blood is tested prior to transfusion. Some people who are deferred are only asked to wait a while before they attempt to donate, while others are told they can never donate. Most people who are deferred can return after a while and the number one reason for deferments is anemia.
The fact that men who have ever had sex with another man are banned from donating for life is a touchy subject in the blood donation world and there are valid arguments on each side of the discussion. Critics of the ban say the decision is based on outdated science and homophobia. They say that because each sample is tested for HIV, the risk is minimal. In 2006, the AABB, the Red Cross and America’s Blood Centers all pushed for a change in the policy, citing a study that suggested that allowing men who have had sex with another man to donate would only result in an additional case of HIV transmission once ever 33 years. They argue that because blood banks are in such desperate need of donations, this risk is worth it. The FDA rejected their proposal, saying the risk was not justified.
Those in favor of the ban point out that a study performed in the UK showed that allowing these men to donate would increase the risk of HIV entering the blood stockpiles by 500% and they argue that even if the ban is modeled to only prevent men who have engaged in homosexual activities in the last twelve months, the number would still increase 60%.
Critics argue that a gay man in a monogamous relationship carries a much lower risk of HIV than an intravenous drug user who has been clean for a year or a promiscuous straight man, both of who would be eligible to donate. The debate seems likely to continue for years, even if the ban is changed.
Image via acroamatic [Flickr]
If you’ve ever donated blood, you’ll notice that one of the inquiries involves lengthy stays in certain third world countries and the UK. If you ever wondered why the UK would be included in the list, it has to do with an untreatable degenerative brain disease known as Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. It can be passed by blood and the UK has had such a problem with it that they ban recipients of their own country’s blood donations from donating blood.
Unfortunately, while verbal tests are performed prior to blood donations in all countries, many third-world countries can’t afford to actually test the blood for diseases such as HIV, syphilis and other dangerous illnesses after it is donated. That is why anyone who has received transplants in these countries cannot donate in the U.S. and many other countries.
Image via Christiana Care [Flickr]
If you’re one of those people that always wants to know how something will benefit them, there are a few reasons you should donate blood other than the fact that each donation can save up to three lives. First off, some businesses, including all companies in Italy, give you a paid day off for blood donation. Next, the blood centers will often guarantee you transfusion priorities if you are ever in need of blood. If you need something physical to motivate you though, keep in mind that many blood drives include prize drawings for really cool stuff (the Comic Con blood draw contest is awesome) and blood centers often give away free goodies and food.
If you know you can pass the screening test and that you have clean blood, please donate blood and help save lives.
Sources: Wikipedia #1, #2, WHO, New York Times, Web MD, Rue the Day
The first Monday in October (October 4th this year) is designated by the UN as World Habitat Day, a day to raise awareness of housing needs globally and in our communities. Habitat for Humanity is participating, as they do every year, with a variety of events.
Habitat for Humanity’s 27th annual Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project is a World Habitat Day event this year. It will be held Oct. 4 – 8 in six cities in the United States. Held in a different location each year, Habitat’s Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project is an annual, internationally-recognized week of building that brings attention to the need for simple, decent and affordable housing. This year, the Carters will work alongside volunteers in Washington, D.C.; Baltimore and Annapolis, Md.; Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn.; and Birmingham, Ala. to build, rehabilitate and improve 86 homes.
Habitat for Humanity has a schedule of events, and suggestions for ways you can become involved with providing housing to those who need it in your community and around the world. Link -Thanks, Liza!
Artist Mike Lahue worked with a medium we relate to when he created a bust of actor Kevin Bacon made out of …bacon! A Seattle company that makes bacon products, J & D Foods, commissioned the sculpture.
Since owners Justin Esch and Dave Lefkow live by the motto “everything is better with bacon,” the duo — in partnership with bacon-crafting website What Do Bacon Do? — decided to commission an artist to make a life-size bust of Kevin Bacon entirely out of bacon.
Why, you ask?
Well, they ask, “Why not?”
Actually, there is a good reason. The bust is going up for sale on eBay this afternoon to benefit Ashley’s Team, a group that helps children with cancer and their families. Link -via Fark
(Image credit: J & D Foods)
Emmylou Cakehead and the band The Futureheads collaborated on a tasty art installation unveiled at the charity exhibit Cake Britain (“The world’s first entirely edible art exhibition“) last weekend in London. The piece consists of the lyrics to The Futureheads song “The Chaos” spelled out in vanilla cookies! Cakehead, the cookie bakers, and the band spent a total of 200 hours on the artwork, which was consumed by patrons in a quite a bit less time. Their efforts raised thousands of dollars for St. Oswald’s house, a hospice in the band’s hometown of Newcastle. See more pictures of the cookies and the consumption at Cakehead Loves Evil. Link
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Sexy
Hot Tan Sunscreen and Sunstroke
Sunscreen - $11.95 ea.
Those of you who played the Tokyoflash Treasure Hunt would've seen this already, but for the rest of you, here's Will Ferrell's new line of sunscreen over at the NeatoShop. The sunscreens are made in collaboration with Cancer for College charity, which provides college scholarships to cancer survivors.
Now, who could resist Will in Will Ferrell's Sexy Hot Tan Sunscreen striking the classic Coppertone Girl pose? Or perhaps you prefer him macho in Will Ferrell's Sunstroke Sunscreen?
The week-long Quiz Play Day promotion is half over, and Neatorama is currently in first place! That may change, however, as more people play. If you haven’t tried Bazinga! there’s still time to play and help Neatorama win the friendly competition between blogs. Go to this link and play a game of Bazinga!, make a donation to to your favorite charity, and then send in an email with your score and donation details. Remember, you don’t have to score highly or make a bigger donation than the next person to win fabulous prizes -you just have to play! Get all the details in the game post.
Prizes:
An Apple iPad from Neatorama for a randomly-drawn player.
Ten Wii games from the Game Show Network for randomly-drawn players.
A shopping spree from Breadppig/xkcd for a player coming from the winning blog.
Bragging rights for the blog that raises the most money for charity!
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So here’s an unusual post. For the first time in the history of the blogosphere, several major sites, including Treehugger, Boing Boing and Neatorama, are coming together for a good cause. And by cause we mean charity, of course. Which charity? YOUR charity! And by YOUR charity, we mean any charity you wish to support at any giving level.
How Do I Play?
Starting today, Monday May 17th, we’ll be playing for charities. Much like golfers have an annual Playday, so now there’s one for the blogosphere. But unlike those golfers’ playdays, you can choose to support ANY 501c3 that you believe in.
So have some fun playing the Bazinga! game below, and then make any size donation to any charity you presently support, or would like to support. (Minimum gift suggestion $1). The basic idea here is simply to take a moment of an ordinary day, when it’s not Christmas or some expected holiday, and do your part to help repair the world.
What Do I Win?
When you’re done, send us an e-mail at Play@QuizPlayDay.org and tell us how much you donated and to what cause. Also send us your quiz score. By doing so, you’ll be automatically entered into a sweepstakes drawing where you could win one of 10 sets of Wii games and a chance to go on national TV and talk about why you picked the charity and what the whole quiz play day experience was like for you! Prizing courtesy of our sponsors over at the Game Show Network. The randomly selected grand-prize winner will also take home a brand new Apple iPad, courtesy of Neatorama.com!!
So what are you waiting for? Take the quiz, play for your charity by making a donation, and finally, don’t forget to e-mail us at Play@QuizPlayDay.org and tell us how you scored and who you donated to (and how much). It’s all on the honor system here, so don’t let us down! We’ll be keeping track of how much each blog raises each day of the week. You can follow the money over here. At the end of the week, the blog (or “team”) that raises the most will get serious bragging rights and a BIG shopping spree in the xkcd/breadpig store to give to one random winner who played for their “team.” So don’t forget to say you’re playing for Team Neatorama!
I present you the new band "Belle and the Buttons" with their hit "Get Waisted". Enjoy!
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by axelk.
People often wear colored ribbons on their lapel or stick a magnet on their cars to raise awareness of a certain cause. There are a lot of ribbon colors to keep up with! In this Lunchtime Quiz from mental_floss, we’ll see how well you know your charity ribbons by the color. I managed to score 80% even though I was only certain about a couple of them. See if you can beat that! Link
Plenty of people talk about helping Africa, but never actually do anything about it. But not our very own Neatoramanaut Zavatone!
When he wasn’t busy correcting my tpyos and grammatical errors, Zavatone and his friends actually "bought" a school and donated laptops to school kids in Namibia:
In Namibia, up by Angola, next to the Okavongo river, is a high school full of 600 Namibian kids and 1/3 to 1/2 of them are orphans. I drove up to the Leevi-Hakusembe Secondary School (High School) in Rundu, Namibia at the request of the Ambassador and Minister of Foreign Affairs to speak and to donate some computers that I bought for them. It was an amazing and heartwarming opportunity, I wish I had more time to spend at the school. The trip is about a 3 day trip up and back from the capitol (Windhoek) and about 900 miles since you can’t drive at night.
He also took some amazing photos of the countryside along the way: Link
We’re proud of you, Zavatone! Keep up the good work!
Karl Rabeder grew up poor and thought that life would be wonderful if he had money. But when he got rich, Karl discovered that he was unhappy … so he decided to give away every penny of his £3 million fortune:
"My idea is to have nothing left. Absolutely nothing," he told The Daily Telegraph. "Money is counterproductive – it prevents happiness to come."
Instead, he will move out of his luxury Alpine retreat into a small wooden hut in the mountains or a simple bedsit in Innsbruck.
His entire proceeds are going to charities he set up in Central and Latin America, but he will not even take a salary from these.
"For a long time I believed that more wealth and luxury automatically meant more happiness," he said. "I come from a very poor family where the rules were to work more to achieve more material things, and I applied this for many years," said Mr Rabeder.
But over time, he had another, conflicting feeling.
"More and more I heard the words: ‘Stop what you are doing now – all this luxury and consumerism – and start your real life’," he said. "I had the feeling I was working as a slave for things that I did not wish for or need. I have the feeling that there are lot of people doing the same thing."
Charles Hedgecoth Sr. and Diane Smith of Locust Grove, Georgia run a charity called Noah’s Ark. Nine years ago, they took in a baby lion, tiger and bear, and the three are inseparable now. Smith says, “They love each other.” Video at the HuffPo, more photos at The Chive.
Update 1/14/09 – by Alex: Story at Telegraph, stolen images at The Chive is delinked.
Perhaps it has something to do with their field of choice, economics AKA the dismal science, but many of the world’s most famous economists share one extraordinary trait: they’re cheapskates!
Some economists may be cheap, at least by the standards of other people, because of their training or a fascination with money and choices that drives them to the field.
In recent research, University of Washington economists Yoram Bauman and Elaina Rose found that economics majors were less likely to donate money to charity than students who majored in other fields. After majors in other fields took an introductory economics course, their propensity to give also fell.
"The economics students seem to be born guilty, and the other students seem to lose their innocence when they take an economics class," says Mr. Bauman, who has a stand-up comedy act he’ll be doing at the economists’ Atlanta conference Sunday night. Among his one-liners: "You might be an economist if you refuse to sell your children because they might be worth more later."
Economists long have studied "free riders," the sort of people who take more than their fair share of something when circumstances permit. Think of the person who orders the most expensive entr[eacute]e at a restaurant, knowing that the check will be shared equally among companions.
University of Wisconsin sociologists Gerald Marwell and Ruth Ames, in a 1981 paper, found that in experiments, economics students showed a much higher propensity to free ride than other students. In questioning after the experiment, the sociologists found that for many of the economics students, the concept of investing fairly "was somewhat alien."
These cool sculptures are made during an annual event called Canstruction. Teams of engineers, architects and students get together to make their inspired creations using canned food. After the public exposition of the artworks, the food is donated to local food banks and shelters.
Link Image Via Canstruction
