Things are easier said than done, or so the old adage goes, and we couldn't agree more. That's why we do The GOOD 30-Day Challenge (#30DaysofGOOD), a monthly attempt to live better. Our challenge for May? Sleep better.

If you use apps to measure things like your exercise and eating habits, you know how self-quantifying can help inform your daily decisions and contribute to better quality of life. Consider adding one of these sleep-tracking apps to your regimen. They examine your sleep patterns, offer visualizations of your sleep data, and even offer personalized suggestions for getting a better night's rest.

The late artist Mike Kelley spent most of his career working in Los Angeles, but his origins lie in Westland, Michigan, a working-class town 16 miles outside Detroit. One of his final works before his suicide in January reconnects with those roots using a replica of the classic ranch-style home he grew up in in the 1950s. The public art piece, called "Mobile Homestead," toured through Detroit and surrounding towns on a flatbed truck to demonstrate a symbolic reversal of the "white flight" from a struggling city to its suburbs.

The project began in 2005 when Artangel, a British organization that produces site-specific art, asked Kelley to create its first project in the United States. Kelley responded with the idea of transporting a model of his childhood home from downtown Detroit to his real-life home in the suburbs, then back again. A trilogy of films about the journey emphasize the extreme inequality between communities within the city and outside it, interviewing everyone from strippers to church officials to Ford employees along the route.

The house made stops at locations relevant to Detroit's history as well as Kelley's childhood: Corktown, the city's historically Irish neighborhood; Dearborn, where Ford was founded; Wayne, where Kelley went to school; and finally Westland, where he grew up.

Now the project is about to find its final resting place. Beginning next month "Mobile Homestead" will be installed on a parcel of land behind the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, to be completed next year. The ground floor of the house will serve as a functional community space with free classes and a barbershop, while a basement designed by Kelley will provide studio space for artists and room "for more covert activities—what he called 'private rites of an aesthetic nature,'" according to Artangel. (Sounds fun either way.) The film trilogy premieres today at the Whitney Biennale in New York City.

Some of this warm weather can be traced to a weather pattern called La Niña. And most climate scientists are still reluctant to blame climate change for causing any particular weather event. But consider the context: This is the 326th month in a row that temperatures across the nation have been above average. The last time a month's temperatures fell below global averages was February 1985.

Averages are tricky, of course. They don’t reflect our day-to-day experiences of basking in the sun, shivering in the wind, or staring at the window at freak snow storms. And these experiences—our decisions about how many layers to wear and whether to bike or take the bus to work—have a strong influence on our beliefs about climate change. It probably won’t be quite as warm over the next 12 months as it was in the last 12, although the temperatures from January through April are the highest on record again. And if the coming summer happens to be mild, if snow falls in massive quantities next winter, some of the people who are starting to worry about climate change will breath a sigh of relief and stop worrying quite so much.

But variation from day to day or even year to year masks the longer trend: the planet is steadily getting warmer. Climate scientist James Hansen, who began calling attention to the dangers of climate change before anyone even knew to think about it, is confident that there’s a connection between some of the heat waves we’re seeing now and global climate change. As he and a couple of colleagues wrote in a recent paper, “There is no need to equivocate about the summer heat waves in Texas in 2011 and Moscow in 2010... it is nearly certain that they would not have occurred in the absence of global warming.” And that means that hottest year ever won't be the hottest ever for very long.

Photo via (cc) Flickr user black18shirts

Yet the study found that half of those employers haven't hired any interns in the past six months, revealing a fundamental disconnect between internship theory and practice. A couple decades ago, interns may have expected to at least get hired by the same company for whom they gave up their summers. But today, some companies apparently only want interns in the abstract.

The study's methods aren't exactly air-tight; the companies who answered the survey are the only ones of the 100,000-plus companies in Millennial Branding's database that chose to respond to the survey. And not all employers—nor all internships—are created equal. It would be helpful to parse out the industries or companies most likely to hire interns, or the ones who offer a stipend rather than demand students to work for free. (There have been efforts, like this 2010 CollegeGrad.com survey, to spotlight companies who routinely offer full-time jobs to interns.) There has been very little research done on interns, save Ross Perlin's 2011 book, Intern Nation and a few sketchy surveys like this one. But college career centers, especially the ones requiring their students to complete internships for credit, should be actively tracking the companies who reward their interns for their time.

Image courtesy of Millennial Branding.

At last week's Electric Vehicle Symposium in Los Angeles, a consortium of automakers from the United States and Europe unveiled a speedy new standardized charger for electric vehicles.

Under the old system, a full charge would take two to three hours; with the new system, put together by Big Three American automakers Ford, GM and Chrysler and their German counterparts—Audi, BMW, Daimler, Porsche and Volkswagen—a vehicle could charge in as little as 15 or 20 minutes, while you’re in the grocery store or the doctor’s office.

The initiative represents a step toward an electrified automotive future, akin to agreeing on standard-sized railroad tracks to extend rail networks across the country. But there’s still a major obstacle standing in the way of mass adoption of electric cars: battery technology, and the price that comes with it.

Ford, which plans to have 10 to 20 percent of its products “electrified”—either completely electric or hybrid—by 2020, is rolling out its first all-electric vehicle, the Ford Focus EV, this spring, in conjunction with the charger announcement. 

The standard Focus, a sporty little hatchback, is being marketed to young people and retails new at $18,300. The electric Focus costs $39,950 before a $7,500 federal tax rebate and, in California, a $2,500 tax credit. Even after the tax incentives and the gas savings, that's’s still a big difference in price for fairly standard car, and that’s reflected in the company’s modest sales expectations—they hope to see about 2,000 roll off the lots this year in California, New Jersey, and New York.

With a 76-mile range on one charge, the Focus EV goes further than its main competitor, the Nissan Leaf. It's fun to drive and comes with a bevvy of unique features, including a heads-up display that turns efficient driving into a game and a mobile app that lets you analyze your driving habits and control your car from afar. But it’s still hard to imagine many people purchasing it at that price.

Mike Tinskey, Ford’s director of global vehicle electrification, says the rollout is something of an experiment for Ford—a chance to figure out what the market wants. Tinskey expects that EV buyers will be regular commuters who seek out the car to save money on gas in the long term, adopt the next wave of auto technology, or just do right by the environment. “Not one technology will fit all customers,” Tinskey says. “We should have everything from a battery electric vehicle to a plug-in hybrid to a hybrid to an advanced gasoline engine, and offer that across all of our products.”

Still, he admits that the price point might prevent people, especially young people, from buying the car. He notes that Ford’s standard offerings include a lot of in-car entertainment technology the company believes will resonate with young buyers, but that demographic also is interested in environmental ethics and populated with early tech adopters. “We really need to focus on getting the cost down, and we almost have a myopic view of continuing to do that,” he says.

While Ford is focused on doing that across a range of fronts, from manufacturing innovation to partnerships with electric utilities, the biggest obstacle Tinskey sees for Ford and other automakers is battery cost. Car battery technology has developed quickly in recent years, but balancing longer-lasting, faster-charging, lighter batteries with price is a tricky process. While part of the problem is technological, Tinskey points to economics as the central challenge. “In my opinion, it’s scale—how do you prime the pump?” he says. “You really need to get scale at these battery plant manufacturing facilities.”

That’s part of the logic behind standardizing public charging infrastructure—priming the pump to get more people on the road in EVs, which in turn will spur further innovation and cost-savings in the industry. “We could have a breakthrough, but we’re not planning for a breakthrough, we’re just assuming that we’re going to continue to be able to get costs out, and the next generation will be more affordable than this generation,” Tinskey says.

There are 1,000 engineers at Ford working on the problem, he says. With many thousands more at other companies and labs around the world, we may get a truly competitive green car yet.

Photo courtesy of Ford

The PSA—which features a little girl getting the run-around from politicians when she demands to know who is responsible for fixing the education system—was created by Greg Bartlett and Brent Jones, both dads of Los Angeles public school students and Educate Our State members. Like many parents across the country, Jones and Bartlett are frustrated with the struggling education system and the political infighting that has hindered any attempts to fix things.

California’s dire budget situation made national headlines this week after Governor Jerry Brown announced that the state’s deficit had ballooned to $16 billion. Deficits are nothing new in California, and schools have long borne the brunt of cuts. Since the 2008-2009 school year, the Golden State has cut $18 billion from education and now ranks 47th in the nation in per-pupil spending. There's nothing left to cut—California already ranks last in the nation in student-to-teacher ratio and student-to-librarian ratio.

"Children shouldn't have to rely on luck for an education," says Jones, who served as the creator and director of the video. "What are we supposed to say to future generations, 'Sorry, we couldn't figure it out?'"

Brown is counting on California voters to pass a tax initiative in November that would bail out schools. "This makes all the numbers in the budget dependent on an election that has not happened yet," Los Angeles Unified School District superintendent John Deasy, whose district has weathered $2.7 billion in cuts over the past few years and is facing a $390 million deficit for the coming school year, said in a statement. "If voters do not pass the initiative, the results are so catastrophic it is simply untenable."

Educate Our State hopes the PSA will inspire people to write their legislators to demand that they pass a budget that fully funds education. Given that California's economy is the ninth-largest in the world, our nation's long-term economic recovery depends on how well the state's kids are educated. Let's hope the campaign works.

There’s nothing like curling up in bed with a good book before you go to sleep, but far too many low-income kids don’t know what that’s like. Two-thirds of poor children have no age-appropriate books at home, and the nation's 1.6 million homeless children have even fewer options.

Fifteen-year-old Florida resident Lilli Leight wanted to help provide homeless kids in her community with access to books, so she created a "giving library" at a Miami homeless shelter. To staff the library, she formed a teen book club to encourage her classmates to volunteer. Her effort won her the National Book Foundation's Innovations in Reading prize, which recognizes individuals and institutions for developing ways of instilling a lifelong love of reading.

Leight began volunteering three years ago at the nonprofit Chapman Partnership shelter, and she quickly noticed that after students there finished their homework, they'd turn on the shelter's television instead of cracking a book like she did at home. The kids didn’t even think to ask for a book, she found, because they were so used to not having any around.

A lack of access to books has long-term effects on kids, research shows—several studies indicate that availability of reading materials is a stronger predictor of future academic achievement than socioeconomic status. In Leight's home state, less than 25 percent of homeless children graduate from high school.

To build the library, Leight began collecting donated new and used books from friends, schools, community organizations, and local bookstores. The effort was so successful that the shelter’s library now has multiple books for every child. And when families are back on their feet and able to leave the shelter, they're invited take as many books with them as they want. Leight's book club, called iRead, provides a place for teens from area high schools to get together to discuss books, meet authors, and volunteer at Chapman as homework helpers.

Leight told the National Book Foundation that her project has made her "feel empowered to help change the world―even if it is just one child at a time." Thanks to her, more kids in tough economic situations have the opportunity to fall in love with a book.

Photo via (cc) Flickr user Hermionish

But social media and internet platforms have made it easier for young people around the world to access information, overcome cultural barriers, and engage in discussions that often sell condoms more as a lifestyle accoutrement than a prophylactic device. This was driven home to me one day when I sat down at a restaurant in Jakarta and was amazed to see a teenage girl sitting with her parents and wearing a DKT “Fiesta” condom foil strung on a necklace. 

I’ve been selling condoms overseas since 1996 with DKT International, a nonprofit that uses commercial techniques to deliver health products—primarily for family planning and HIV prevention. During my early days working in Ethiopia, a country that had and has a serious HIV problem, we struggled to reach young people.

Ethiopia is a conservative society with strong religious cultures, but also is home to a young population that was increasingly exposed to outside influences. TV and radio were popular among youth but also watched by adults, who invariably squirmed (and complained) when colorful condom ads were aired. Because we needed to accommodate the concerns of these older media consumers, the ads ended up focusing generally on HIV protection, safe sex, and condom quality.

Today, such promotion is easier. Ethiopian university students can sign up online to learn about contraceptives, chat with each other about sensitive subjects, and access educational information. Messaging can be more hard-hitting and edgy because social media typically targets a younger audience. Through YouTube, DKT runs condom ads for ‘Sensation’ condoms, showing young people posing with condoms while celebrating Ethiopia’s diverse cultures. 

Similarly, in Indonesia, a predominantly Muslim country of 230 million, the DKT ‘Fiesta’ condom brand now has pages on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube that talk about safe sex and condom use in a ways that might make some Americans blush. Young Indonesians, like their counterparts globally, are spending more and more time on the internet and less time on traditional media. Condom education and outreach have adjusted to these new media use patterns accordingly.

The explosion in social media use for condom promotion is global. From Facebook pages in Mozambique to Twitter accounts in Brazil, young people are finding important new ways to get the information they need and voice their concerns and ideas. 

This is partly because of existing synergies between the internet and condoms. Sexual material is plentiful on the internet; people are already looking for sexual stimulation through digital platforms, so reaching them when they are in that state of mind is a natural link. Additionally, the internet is generally anonymous, which is important for young people asking potentially embarrassing questions.

Is social media a cost-effective investment for condom promotion? I think so. Last year, DKT sold more than 650 million condoms globally, somewhere between 5 and 7 percent of the world's total sales. While it’s difficult to attribute those sales directly to the role of social media, there is no question that it has helped to expand markets, draw in new users, and strengthen brand positioning. Investment costs have been fairly low because many of these platforms are essentially free, and expanding the user base has been relatively fast and organic, drawing on a large pool of interested young people who naturally thirst for more information on these issues.

The digital world plays an increasingly important role in how young people learn, interact, and take up new behaviors; those of us who grew up during a different communications paradigm would be wise to ascertain how best to capitalize on these technologies to ensure we are not left behind.

Image courtesy of DKT

Such fears are common in every city, but especially sprawling ones like Los Angeles, where riders must walk further distances to our stops, and often through less populated environments. For women who have a choice about whether to drive or take the subway, the thought of a crowded platform or dark sidewalk is enough to keep them in their cozy cars. So how can a city like Los Angeles make its streets and transit more comfortable for women—and for everyone? 

Last year, after a fatal stabbing at a Red Line station (the only fatality since the system opened in 1993), Metro released comprehensive crime statistics that showed 1,216 "part one crimes" reported on Metro buses and trains in 2010. Most were thefts, but that category also includes rape or attempted rape, assault, robbery, and burglary. That adds up to about 2.77 crimes for every million passengers, which is more than Boston (2.63) but far less than DC (6.68) or Dallas (11.03).

A British study showed that men and women have different fears about riding public transit.

But vague statistics do very little to assuage one's concerns while standing at a dark and deserted bus stop, waiting nervously for a bus that's already 20 minutes late. An unwelcoming physical environment and unpredictable schedules are the greatest fears for female transit riders, according to Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, an urban planning professor at UCLA's School of Public Affairs. In 2009, she co-authored a study on how to improve transit safety, but since then, she's been disappointed at the lack of response from U.S. transit agencies. "I have not seen much in terms of outcomes, as far as agencies acting differently," she says.

While budgetary shortfalls might be to blame for the lack of safety innovations, Loukaitou-Sideris says there are low-cost solutions. Sometimes it's as simple as relocating the bus stop. "You can put the stop half a block away, but by a business that's open late and that has pedestrian traffic," Loukaitou-Sideris, she suggests, adding that many women reported walking farther to a different stop that was better lit or had more people around.

Training transit personnel to help make women feel at ease is another key to creating a positive transit experience, she says. This could include teaching drivers to be more accommodating to strollers (which are most often carried by women), as well as policy changes like allowing bus drivers to stop anywhere along their route late at night.

"The issue that came up again and again is that it's about feeling alone and intimidated," Loukaitou-Sideris says. Asking transit authorities to audit station design and employee policies and report on the changes they're making will not only encourage more women to try transit, it will improve the experiences of what she calls "captive riders"—the mostly lower-income women who don't have a choice.

An example of an improved streetscape and bus stop from the My Figueroa project

Transit safety also requires improving the path to stations, says Jessica Meaney, an organizer for Safe Routes to School who works to identify and solve the problems keeping students and families from walking and biking to school. "In some communities it's hostile traffic conditions," she says, "but in others it's issues of personal safety—[including] gang presence, loitering, intimidating unleashed dogs, and other factors which can be scary and overwhelming." 

Something as simple as overflowing trash cans can make transit riders feel uneasy, Meaney says. "What I'd like to see more are places to wait that are enjoyable, and that provide shade and dignity." Steps like beefing up crosswalks, reducing speed limits, and adding more shade can make a big difference, she says. And such measures not only improve the experience for riders, but also for walkers and drivers that who want safe streets too.

What do you think makes the best car-free day in L.A.? Vote for your favorite submission and help it win $500 to make it happen at the LA/2B GOOD Maker Challenge. Voting is open until May 31 at midnight PST.

This post is the second in a series exploring transportation issues in Los Angeles sponsored by LA/2B, an ongoing collaboration between the Los Angeles Department of City Planning, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LA DOT) and GOOD/Corps, an affiliate of GOOD, that provides an opportunity for people in Los Angeles to discuss the future of our streets and transportation.

Photo via (cc) Flickr user ciocci

Ever since R. Buckminster Fuller popularized the design in the mid-20th century, there's been something captivating about the geodesic dome. While the structure typically makes architecture lovers salivate, now it's conquering the heart of another type of urbanist: the city farmer. A new dome-based prototype promises an affordable method of rooftop aquaculture for apartment and commercial buildings—as the website calls it, getting "fish from the sky." 

The Globe / Hedron bamboo dome would house an aquaponics system—a mini-ecosystem in which plants clean the water where fish swim and fish waste fertilizes the plants—capable of feeding 16 people year-round. The unique structure of the dome, designed by Conceptual Devices, would support the weight of the fish tank, enabling installation on flat roofs without adapting the structure of the building. The design firm is partnering with Zurich-based group UrbanFarmers, which developed the aqauponic technology, and they're currently fundraising on indiegogo to get the project off the ground.

The project's creators promise a harvest of 400 kilograms (about 880 pounds) worth of vegetables and 100 kilograms (about 220 pounds) of fish each year, including everything from tomatoes to spinach to trout. Panels on the dome's exterior would provide both shade and insulation, allowing the the structure to adapt to local environments, while the compact size and easy assembly would enable it to be shipped around the world. 

Steele started making Barves jokes on Twitter, and others quickly joined in. So he and his wife, who jointly run a social media marketing firm, began printing t-shirts featuring the joke team name and selling them on the internet. Being a fan and a community-minded guy, he decided to donate all proceeds to the Atlanta Braves Foundation, which supports nonprofits around the Atlanta metro area.

Seems harmless enough, right? Beneficial, even, to have a superfan turn a joke into financial support for good causes? Not to Major League Baseball, it doesn't. Within a few days of the first local media stories about the Barves products, the Steeles received a cease-and-desist letter from the league for infringing on the trademark it holds over a script team name (no matter the spelling) above a tomahawk. 

The MLB holds the trademarks to every baseball team's name and logo, so Bud Selig and company are well within their rights to shut down every fan-generated meme on the planet. But just because it's their legal right doesn't make it a good business decision. (It's worth noting that similar challenges have occurred in other pro sports leagues, but not with nearly the frequency; earlier this year the NFL dropped a lawsuit against a New Orleans company making "Who's 'dat?" merchandise to support the Saints.)

The Steeles have plenty of company as victims of the MLB's overeager legal department. In 2008, the league forcibly ended production of a series of t-shirts spelling out then-candidate Obama's name in different teams' fonts. In 2009, a Yankees blog called The Yankees Universe was shut down after the MLB decided it "falsely [implied] some endorsement or sponsorship by the Yankees." Years after many Latino fans began referring to the Dodgers as "Los Doyers" and printing t-shirts with the nickname, the league trademarked the phrase and began selling merchandise (at a terrific markup, natch) in the team's stadium. And in an egregious crime against comedy, a cease-and-desist letter killed off the best t-shirt baseball has ever produced—which contained a stylized image of Rangers manager Ron Washington and the Wash-ism that became an anthem, "That's the way baseball go." The league, not Washington, trademarked the phrase to guarantee no one would ever make a cent off of it.

There are plenty of these sad stories with some key details in common: None of the products were bringing in more than a few hundred dollars for their creators. None of them represented a real challenge to baseball's business model. All of them were created by diehard fans, the core of the MLB's audience and the people league officials should take the greatest pains not to alienate.

Asked about his reaction to the letter he received, Everett Steele waxed philosophical: "Instead of ... capitalizing on the opportunity to sort of catalyze their fan base, they've instead attacked the people who are passionate and love their brand," he told Atlanta television station WXIA.

You don't have to think "Barves" is funny to agree with that perspective. We love sports in large part for the community they create, for the opportunity to drink beer and crack jokes about the action on the field. Major League Baseball isn't going to create a funny meme about one of its own teams or players or managers. That's the fans' domain. And when the powers that be take that away, they tell us our enjoyment doesn't really matter even though its our dollars that keep their product is afloat. Being a humorless league commissioner is a forgivable sin; denying other people the right to have their own fun crosses the line.

We're working with Slava Menn and Brad Geswein, the founders Gotham Bicycle Defense Industries, to create a new piece of urban biking gear. Unlike most products, this one is being developed from beginning to end by the people who will use it. Our network of urban cyclists are helping us decide everything, from design to name. We're calling this experiment Product of the People.

Last week we asked you to vote on where our new theft-resistant rear bike light should be mounted, and the people have spoken. Fifty percent of readers voted for the seat post. Thank you, GOOD readers. Your wish is our command.

This quantitative data is priceless for the process of creating our next product. Equally valuable is the qualitative data. Many of you chimed in through comments and direct emails with brilliant feedback and ideas. Some ideas included mounting the bike light to the bottom of the saddle, integrating the light with the seat post, or making a light that extends and collapses so your bike rack or pannier do not cover it up. These are rad ideas for future projects.

The most common question was about making a light that could be attached anywhere—on the seat post, a seat stay, or on a rack. To be honest, we're pretty skeptical of the one-size-fits-all light. All too often, "one-size-fits-all" means "one-size-fits-none." Think hospital gowns, free giveaway t-shirts, and bike lights that slip off your handlebars. This is especially true if we’re designing a sleek light that locks to your bicycle securely. We may indeed design multiple bike lights with multiple mounts for different locations, but for now we're focusing on the a seat post-mounted light.

We love getting customer input before we create a product because we know exactly what to build. And we can’t help but wonder: Why don’t large companies pay closer attention to what their customers want in new products?

Steve Jobs loved to quote Henry Ford, “If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, ‘A faster horse!’ People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” That works for Steve Jobs, but I can’t hold a candle to Steve Jobs. I prefer to follow Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Blank, the godfather of customer development, who famously said, “There are no facts inside the building, so get the hell outside!”

As we enter into the industrial design phase, here’s a sneak preview of what you’ll be voting for next week. Our talented designer penciled three concepts. 

Sketch 1

Sketch 2

Sketch 3

Let us know what you think of these designs in the comments. Next week we’ll have refined versions for you to vote on.

Reddit has been taking flack lately because some of its members have apparently used the site to encourage suicidal people to kill themselves. Stories like that make it easy to forget that anonymous crowds on the internet can often be used for good, too.

A month ago, Reddit user Sean O'Connor asked a favor of his fellow Redditors. O'Connor's uncle, Scott Widak, is 47 years old and afflicted with Down syndrome and terminal liver disease. Wanting to make his uncle's dwindling time as special as possible, O'Connor requested that the Reddit community do one simple thing: Send mail. "[My uncle] is currently bedridden and living out his last days at home with my 85-year-old grandmother," O'Connor wrote. "One of his favorite things to do is open mail… anyone feel like sending him a letter or card?"

Within a few hours, hundreds of people had commented on O'Connor's original post and were forwarding the P.O. Box address he'd included to their friends and colleagues. Soon after that, the mail started rolling in. Widak, who lives in Massachusetts, has received several hundred letters, gifts, and other pieces of encouragement (one person sent a Macho Man Randy Savage mask after O'Connor disclosed that his uncle loves the Macho Man). The mail has come from as far away as Sweden, Finland, Japan, and Australia, and more turns up daily. Even corporations have joined in the giving: Sony Music sent Widak 15 CDs and concert DVDs, most of which were by Widak's favorite artist, Johnny Cash.

"The mail that’s arrived has all been extremely positive and thoughtful," O'Connor told Mashable. "My family and I are amazed at how so many strangers could come together for a random act of kindness."

If you'd like to send some mail to Widak, address it to Scott Widak (C/O Sherry Widak), PO Box 551, Norton, MA, 02766. Besides the Macho Man and Johnny Cash, Widak also likes to make art, so art supplies are a recommended gift.

Photo via Sean O'Connor

The best educators already give their students informal surveys several times a year. Teachers often ask if students feel they can ask for help in class or if they feel like they’re part of a classroom community, then use the results to adjust their teaching practice and classroom environment. But high-stakes student surveys are on the rise; in Memphis, surveys represent 5 percent of teacher evaluations, and in Chicago, they'll soon be 10 percent.

Critics of the use of student surveys worry that teacher evaluation will be based on a popularity contest—or that students who have been disciplined by a teacher for talking out of turn or being late to class will use them to get revenge. Ryan Balch, a Vanderbilt University doctoral student who has developed and administered student surveys in small pilot programs throughout Georgia, is especially concerned about including students who can’t read and may not be developmentally mature enough to answer subjective questions.

"To be honest, I don’t think it's feasible in most situations with students in kindergarten through second grade,” Balch says. In kindergarten classes, an adult will read the survey to kids, asking questions like "My teacher knows a lot about what he or she teaches" and "My teacher gives me help when I need it" and instructing them to circle a smiley face, a neutral face, or a frowning face. How a 5-year-old is supposed to definitively know whether a teacher knows a lot about what she teaches is anybody's guess. 

While student input should be an integral part of every classroom, handing an adult responsibility to 5-year-olds isn't wise. But if the pilot is successful kindergarteners could be doing just that in Georgia as early as this fall.

Photo via (cc) Flickr user jshontz

So despite its drastic improvement, the Potomac tops this year's list of “America’s Most Endangered Rivers,” which was compiled by the nonprofit American Rivers with the help of grassroots river conservation groups around the country. The report does not rank rivers based on a complicated system of measurable metrics, but instead makes a subjective decision based on the significance of the river, the dangers that threaten it, and the possibility for people to alter its fate in the coming year. 

Rivers are vulnerable in many ways: They can become clogged with farm waste and storm water runoff, like the Potomac; stoppered by the development of dams, like the Chattahoochee; or threatened by natural gas operations, like the Hoback. In all 10 cases listed on the report, though, American Rivers believes people could mitigate some of the threats by speaking up for their rivers. “Being an advocate for your water and your river is really key,” says the group’s Stacey Detwiler. 

In the case of the Potomac, the group is particularly worried about the disintegration of protection measures the Clean Water Act put into place. “We've seen a number of different comprehensive and fairly broad attacks to roll back the Clean Water Act,” Detwiler says. The small streams and wetlands that feed into larger rivers are at risk, and the group is worried about an onslaught of bills that would further weaken protections for the water system. If Congress weakens the Clean Water Act, the Potomac isn’t the only river that will suffer. But for American Rivers it serves as a stand-in for all the bodies of water that could start reverting back to their former, nasty states without proper federal protections.

But writing or calling political representatives isn’t the only way to help protect rivers like the Potomac. One of the growing sources of pollution for the river is stormwater run-off: rain water that gathers dirt, chemicals, and trash as it flows through urban streets and dumps into the river. Green infrastructure like green roofs and rainwater cisterns can help make better use of that water and keep pollution out of the river. And Detwiler says participating in river cleanup projects makes a difference, too. “It makes it so obvious when you see trash flowing into the river,” she says. “When you drop it on the street, it ends up in the Potomac.”

America's 10 Most Endangered Rivers
1. Potomac River
2. Green River
3. Chattahoochee River
4. Missouri River
5. Hoback River.
6. Grand River
7. Skykomish River
8. Crystal River
9. Coal River
10. Kansas River

Photo via (cc) Flickr user Daquella manera

Forget the lowly dandelion. There’s a bigger menace threatening the American landscape: “superweeds,” agricultural intruders that are all-but-impossible to kill because they’ve evolved a resistance to traditional chemical herbicides. These virulent growers are choking out the country’s corn, cotton, and soybeans, costing farmers millions of dollars in lost crops. Superweeds have spread their roots to more than 12 million acres of American crop fields so far, and they show no signs of being uprooted.

The superweed problem now runs so deep that it’s captured national political attention. A summit of weed experts convened in Washington, D.C. last week to discuss how to manage the growing issue of out-of-control superweeds. Countless media outlets covered the saga. A scary nickname like “superweeds”—the “pink slime” of agricultural policy—doesn’t hurt. Farming woes have rarely been so sexy.

Shining the national spotlight on superweeds will hopefully bring us closer to a fix for the rogue plants that are destroying our food supply. But there’s another benefit to the superweed hype—it helps build public awareness around genetically engineered crops. Superweeds could be the final nudge needed to prompt an about-face on America’s acceptance of GE foods.

Superweeds have spread thanks to the industry-wide adoption of GE plants on American farms—namely, Monsanto’s Roundup Ready crops. The industrial ag firm engineered a suite of corn, cotton, soybean, and other plants resistant to its own herbicide, Roundup, which it’s been selling to farms since 1980. Monsanto promised that if farmers doused their fields with Roundup, valuable crops would thrive while weeds died. Big ag billed its Roundup Ready crops as a way to save farmers money while decreasing the use of chemical herbicides, as a targeted application of Roundup could do the work of a suite of products. It worked: Today, superweeds’ roots in American agriculture run deep. About 85 percent of America’s corn, 88 percent of its cotton, and 91 percent of its soybeans are now genetically modified.

But nature proved to be too smart for Monsanto’s scientists. Roundup Ready crops worked well for several years, but weeds soon became accustomed to routine Roundup sprayings. The same weeds that once fell victim to Roundup’s noxious chemicals are beginning to withstand the dousing and build up a resistance to it. Farmers are forced to spray on even more herbicide to save their crops, a practice that costs cash-strapped growers more money and results in greater chemical exposure for wildlife and the surrounding environment.

Superweeds are a blight on America’s agricultural fields. But the publicity surrounding superweeds has been a boon to anti-GE activists, who have labored to convince consumers of just why they should be wary of genetically-modified foods on their plates. Take “Just Label It!,” an ambitious advocacy campaign that’s urging the Food and Drug Administration to mandate that all GE foods come with labels. Food safety and environmental groups have been pushing the FDA to do this for years, but only recently has the support behind such a proposal accelerated. Just Label It’s organizers and its 500 partners recently delivered a petition to the FDA with more than 1.1 million consumer signatures, more than the agency has received on this issue than ever before.   

Now, opposition is growing to the latest GE crop poised for approval: Dow’s “Enlist” suite of GE corn, cotton, and soy crops, designed to be resistant to 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, also known as the active ingredient in Agent Orange. Environmentalists and consumers, now familiar with Roundup Ready’s disastrous environmental impacts, are fighting this GE crop like never before. Protestors are urging the U.S. Department of Agriculture to reject the approval of Enlist crops, and they have been so vocal that the USDA even extended the public comment period on the first Enlist crop up for approval, GE corn.

Until recently, Monsanto and other purveyors of GE crops have had little incentive to change their business models. Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide and the crops the company engineered to survive it still make up half of the company’s annual profits, which total in the billions. Public pressure over superweeds could be the issue that breaks GE food’s reign—if superweeds don’t destroy those crops first.

Photo via (cc) Flickr user Jo Naylor.

Without a hint of a wrinkle around her bright smile, Aria Finger, 29, is nonetheless an official old person.

“At DoSomething, you turn old the moment you hit age 26,” she concedes. “It's very official. It's a very tough birthday at the DoSomething office. Tears.”

Finger is the Chief Operating Officer of DoSomething.org, a teen-focused nonprofit that runs campaigns to get young people active in helping others.

After seven years tracking what makes teens volunteer and donate, or generally step up and do something in any way, Finger is an expert in tapping teens for good. Her tactics can inform any campaign targeting young people, from political campaigns and schools to parents and fellow teens.

Here are a few tips she shared with GOOD:

First, believe teens can actually have an impact. Take the example of recent campaign Finger managed: Teens for Jeans, which asked young people to donate an old pair of jeans for a homeless fellow teen. “We saw homelessness as one of the top five issues that teens care about,” Finger says. “They can understand it. It's right in their town. It's right in their back yard.” Over four weeks this January, DoSomething.org collected more than 1 million pairs of jeans, almost double their expectations. With about 1.7 million homeless youth in the United States, that’s enough to give a pair to two-thirds of them. That’s serious mobilization of an age group known for apathy and selfishness.

Harness their passion, good or bad. “You don't ask them ‘what do you care about,’” she says. “You ask them what pisses them off… and it's gonna be something close to home. ‘I'm pissed off that my teachers suck,’ or ‘the school lunch is gross’ or that ‘that empty lot on the side of my street could be a ball field.’” Then you have to channel that energy into something productive: point them to tools to organize a community clean up of the lot, for example.  

Use peer pressure. “There's nothing better than peer pressure,” Finger says. “An emotional connection is great, but even better… is the peer pressure." Finger uses an example from a hotel bathroom. “When you're at a hotel, and they say, ‘Save the environment. Please pick up these towels and don't leave them on the floor,’ it's good. But the most effective possible messaging is when you say, ‘70 percent of the people who've stayed in this room helped clean up by putting [towels] on a rack.’ That sort of subliminal peer pressure gets anyone, any age, teenagers or not, to do something.”

Text is better than email.  Hate teens' obsession with texting all you like, but it's the hands-down winner for reaching them. “The typical email, if it's answered at all, which it's not, is answered within 48 hours… The average text message is answered within four minutes,” Finger says. “The average teenager sends over 3,000 text messages a month—I think it's 3,339—and if they're a girl, they send over 4,000 every month.” Those figures are especially shocking because most teenagers don’t have smartphones—which also means don't bother sending web links. But the open rate for text messages is just about 100 percent, so your message will get through. For email, organizations are lucky if 25 percent of their mailing list reads a message. 

Listen. DoSomething spends a lot of time and mailing list resources asking teens for information, which shows the organization cares what teens think. It also opens doors. The group asked teens to rate their schools on bullying, which can start a conversation that points to ways to help strengthen their schools’ anti-bullying efforts, or simply encourage them to go see the film Bully. When DoSomething texted out a multiple-choice question about whether college was worth it, it saw 25,000 people respond within two hours. “Mobile creates this unbelievable, simultaneous, instantaneous focus group, where you can get this real-time information,” Finger says.

Be ready to respond—personally. What happens after a young person replies to a message is as important as what they say, especially for other activists trying to mobilize youth. At DoSomething, responses go to a real person. “You then have to respond to young people within four minutes,” Finger warns. For instance, after the college survey, if someone writes back and says, ‘I want information about how to get a college scholarship,’ they will expect a response within nine minutes, Finger says.   

The first two answers to a text survey might be an automated decision tree, but by the third—when texters are likely to start asking personalized questions—a 21st-century SMS operator will be scanning the responses and writing back.

“We have people all the time asking, ‘are you a robot?’ … or they'll curse, and you'll write back, ‘Oh hey, you talk to your mother with that mouth?’ Finger recounts. “They'll be like 'OHMYGOD I'm so sorry! I love DoSomething! I just thought you were a robot.'”  

Image courtesy of DoSomething.org