Inspiring News Articles
Excerpts of Highly Inspiring News Articles in Major Media
Below are one-paragraph excerpts of highly inspiring news articles from the major media. Links are provided to the original inspiring news articles on their media websites. If any link fails, read this webpage. The most inspiring news articles are listed first. You can also explore the news articles listed by order of the date posted. For an abundance of other highly inspiring material, see our Inspiring Resources page. May these inspiring news articles inspire us to find ever more ways to love and support each other and all around us to be the very best we can be.
It's no longer enough to live a greener life—now people are being encouraged to be environmentally friendly when they leave the Earth too. Cardboard coffins, clothes sewn from natural fibers, a burial plot in a natural setting. Green funerals attempt to be eco-friendly at every stage. "People are trying to think about what's the best way to live and with that, what's the best way to die," said Roslyn Cassidy, a funeral director for Green Endings, which provides eco-friendly funerals. Britain has been a world leader in eco-friendly funerals for years and a source of green burial products and ideas for countries like the United States, where the trend is just starting to catch on. Over the weekend in London, those in the business showcased their products and services at the Natural Death Center's Green Funeral Exhibition. The Natural Death Center provides a handbook that suggests environmental targets for cemeteries. "You can take any funeral and make it greener," said Michael Jarvis, the center's director. In a green funeral, bodies are not embalmed and are dressed in pure fiber clothes. Green campaigners say refrigeration or dry ice is a good alternative to formaldehyde, which can seep into the water system. Biodegradable coffins also differ from the traditional mahogany. Cardboard coffins—which are as thick as their wooden counterparts—can be decorated by family and biodegrade within three months. Small details are important for green funerals, such as using smaller cars instead of limousines in funeral processions. "What people are wanting is to know that they're doing the best they can both for their loved ones and for the environment," Cassidy said.
Note: For many more inspirational reports from major media sources, click here.
The New Caledonian crow is surprisingly smart about its food. Its favorite insects live in tiny crevices that are too narrow for its beak. So the crow takes a barbed leaf and, using its beak and claws, fashions a primitive hook. It then lowers the hook down into the cracks, almost like a man fishing, and draws up a rich meal. Some scientists even suggest that crows are more sophisticated tool builders than chimps, since they can transmit their knowledge on to successive generations and improve the tools over time. These birds have a culture. The world lost its most famous bird brain this month: Alex, an African gray parrot who lived in a Brandeis laboratory and possessed a vocabulary of nearly 150 words. Yet as remarkable as Alex was - he could identify colors and shapes - he was not alone. The songs of starlings display a sophisticated grammar once thought the sole domain of human thinking. A nutcracker can remember the precise location of hundreds of different food storage spots. And crows in Japan have learned how to get people to crack walnuts for them: They drop them near busy intersections, then retrieve the smashed nuts when the traffic light turns red. These feats are part of a growing recognition of the genius of birds. Scientists are now studying various birds to explore everything from spatial memory to the grammatical structure of human language. This research is helping to reveal the secrets of the human brain. But it is also overturning the conventional evolutionary story of intelligence, in which all paths lead to the creation of the human cortex. The tree of life, scientists are discovering, has numerous branches of brilliance. "It used to be that people would only talk about intelligence in terms of primates," says Nicola Clayton, a professor of comparative psychology at the University of Cambridge. "But now I think that birds have achieved a sort of honorary ape status, just with a few feathers attached."
