Mindful:
Last year the Cochin International Airport in Southern India became the world’s first fully solar-powered airport. When a woman contacted online retailer Zulily to return a winter coat, they refunded her money and told her to donate the coat instead of returning it. Ever heard of a “solidarity fridge?” No? That’s because the town of Galdakao, Spain, is the first to install one. To minimize food waste, citizens bring leftovers to an outdoor fridge and anyone can take from it. We know Twitter can be distracting and mindless, but Tweeters also detect earthquakes more quickly than the US Geological Survey, which is why it teamed up with the social media site to more efficiently and effectively monitor earthquakes. At the Human Library, the books are people! The global project, with outposts around the world, is like a regular library, only you check out human volunteers who make their experiences with painful or taboo issues like alcoholism, PTSD, and polyamory, open and available to “readers.”
Mindless:
A concerned neighbor called 911 about “screaming from a house about someone having a gun.” The police showed up to find an overexcited family watching The Walking Dead. Lebanese authorities arrested a vulture on suspicion that it was in fact an Israeli spy. They thought a location transmitter attached to the bird by a nature reserve was an indication of spy activity. Researchers discovered that today’s leading Disney princesses speak significantly fewer overall lines than they did in the ‘30s and ’50s, dropping from between 50% and 70% to as low as 23% (in Mulan). Tangled and Brave were exceptions. Because nothing should get in the way of reckless texters, a one-ton, 20-foot sculpture outside Salisbury Cathedral had to be moved after too many people walked into it while staring at their phones.
We’d love to hear your mindful/mindless stories:
Please send any interesting mindful/mindless leads to us at: [email protected]. We look forward to hearing your tales of text walkers, vulture spies, and zombie hordes. This article appeared in the June 2016 issue of Mindful magazine.
