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Field of Light Installation is Like the Super Bloom on Steroids

The Field of Light Installation by artist Bruce Munro is an immersive art piece comprising 50,000 shimmering lights. The sight of these lights is set against the backdrop of Uluru in the Australian Outback and spread over a vast desert landscape.

This pilgrimage-worthy sight is neither easy nor affordable to get to, so the news that the artist opened an exhibit in Paso Robles, California is exciting for all those passionate about his art designed to illuminate and accent natural beauty.

This newest installation is Munro’s largest one yet, covering a 15-acre hillside in California’s wine country, around four hours north of Los Angeles. The art project, entitled Field of Light at Sensorio, has taken several years to finish, but it is meant only to complement the landscape’s natural beauty, not to add to or take away from it.

“We want visitors to be completely immersed in the environment, inclusive of the stars above,” Munro said to Travel + Leisure. “Everything we’ve created here at Sensorio dips below an elevation of 830 feet, so visitors will feel like they’re being cradled in the valley.”

Field of fiber-optics

Munro designed the 58,800 stemmed spheres lit by fiber-optics and LED’s to glow in varying rainbow-colored hues, giving the effect of the super blooms that covered areas of California this past spring by day. At night, however, is when the sight is most stunning. The ground transforms into a galaxy of stars, unlike anything you’ve seen or imagined.

“The amount of light emitted is surprisingly minimal — about the same as what a couple of houses would give off if they were spread over a 12-acre valley,” Munro explained, “so there’s a balance between the stars on the ground and those in the sky.”

Munro’s hope is that his work creates perspective as well as community. He designed it so that visitors could walk meditatively through the valley, considering the play of the nights on the natural wonders surrounding it.

“I work in light, but it’s not about the light, it’s about emotions,” he said. “I feel that we’re in a moment of history when we have to start questioning our values and getting back to basics. I hope that, in a small way, my installation helps guide you toward the clear sky, literally and otherwise.”

interesting • Lifestyle

Why Do My Canned and Bottled Soda Taste So Different?

Harry Anson

Do you ever buy a can of Coke, for example, and wonder why the canned stuff tastes so different to the stuff in the big, plastic bottles?

You aren’t alone. Most of us struggle with this from time to time, and it can be quite annoying when you cannot work out why the taste is so different. In a bid to help you out with that issue, we recommend that you take a look at why this unique difference in taste even exists. Most of the time, you would probably never guess why it exists!

The recipe is, according to the manufacturers and the ingredient lists on the back, identical. So, what is there such a clear and obvious difference in the taste? It’s hard to deny.

One of the main reasons why is that a can of soda often tastes milder and less ‘juicy’ – which some people prefer – due to the polymers in aluminum soaking it up. However, by the same token, if that makes you think that sounds dodgy, it’s believed that the acetaldehyde in the plastic can adjust the flavor of your juice, too.

How should I drink my soda, then?

Glass bottles, then, are where to go if you want something that is as close to the ‘real’ taste as is possible. However, one thing to note is that if you think canned soda tastes quite metallic, you are likely to be more sensitive to metals than the average person.

Therefore, it’s not so much that the soda tastes of metal, but that you’ve noted a heightened sensitivity to the taste of metal as soon as your lips touch the can.

So, keep this in mind the next time you buy a soda. The best way to get something close to the real thing is to buy it from a glass bottle. Then, find the best way to store it. Putting it in the fridge makes it extremely cold, but the coolness can actually limit how much the taste manages to come out from the drink: something near freezing cold will just taste fizzy and cold!

Always be sure to take the time to look at what kind of soda you prefer. We all have our own choice when it comes to the kind of bottle/can we like to drink from. Find yours, and enjoy it!

Do you ever buy a can of Coke, for example, and wonder why the canned stuff tastes so different to the stuff in the big, plastic bottles?

You aren’t alone. Most of us struggle with this from time to time, and it can be quite annoying when you...

Cool Stories • Humans Are Awesome

Put Your Name on Mars 2020 Rover!

Jude Abraham

NASA is giving people of every age and nationality the opportunity to have their names etched into its upcoming Mars 2020 rover which is set to launch on its expedition to the red planet next year.

All you have to do to be one of the lucky names heading to Mars is fill out the online form on NASA’s website before September 30. Once every name is submitted, NASA will have the scientists at the Microdevices Laboratory at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California use a beam of electrons to etch every one of them into a silicon chip.

The lines of text will be smaller than one-thousandth the width of a human hair, allowing over one million names to be carved into one single chip the size of a penny.

Most likely, NASA will end up having to use more than one chip, considering the 2.4 million people who submitted their names to be written on Mars’s InSight lander last November. This chip (or chips) will be fitted onto the rover underneath a glass cover.

Get a boarding pass to Mars

Those who submit their names will also receive “frequent flyer” points along with a souvenir “boarding pass to Mars” as part of NASA’s public engagement campaign to highlight missions related to the space agency’s exploration plans for the moon and Mars.

Every time you participate in a flight, you will be awarded miles, and as they accumulate, you can use these miles to download mission patches. For instance, those who had their names etched on the InSight lander earned about 300 million frequent flyer miles as that is the distance it traveled to get to Mars.

“This opportunity provides an incredible way for every person, in every nation around the world, to be part of this experience and to see their own names written among the stars,” Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, told Newsweek.

This newest mission is meant to gather data on Mars’s climate and geology, search for signs of past microbial life and collect samples to bring back to earth. The 2,300-pound rover is scheduled to launch as soon as June in 2020 with the projected landing date being around February 2021.

“It’s an exciting time for NASA, as we embark on this voyage to answer profound questions about our neighboring planet and even the origins of life itself,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, from NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, in a statement. “As we get ready to launch this historic Mars mission, we want everyone to share in this journey of exploration.”

NASA’s long-term mission is to return humans to the moon in 2024 and to have them on the red planet in the 2030s. This 2020 mission is just one step towards the feats they are hoping to accomplish in the future.

NASA is giving people of every age and nationality the opportunity to have their names etched into its upcoming Mars 2020 rover which is set to launch on its expedition to the red planet next year.

All you have to do to be one of the lucky names...

Earth • Inspiring Stories

‘World’s Smallest McDonald’s’ Restaurant for Bees Is Now Open

guy Haikov

It’s always a joy to travel the world, see different sights, and explore foreign cultures. One of the reasons we travel is to see things that are different from what’s familiar to us. However, some things are all over the world, and one of those is the famous fast-food chain McDonald’s.

Now the restaurant has just done something most marvelous – it’s opened up a new restaurant!

“Now, wait a minute,” you may be thinking. “What’s so novel about that?” Well, this isn’t just any McDonald’s. This one is ‘the world’s smallest’ McDonald’s, and was created just for bees.

Though it’s obviously not serving food since it was created to be a beehive, the detail is amazing. McDonald’s cut no corners with their smallest of restaurants, providing it with signage, seating, drive-thru bays, and the famous golden arches.

This tiny restaurant in Sweden is the first of what the company hopes to be many, many – thousands, even – beehive McDonald’s. This first is a tribute to all of the Swedish McDonald’s, many of which have beehives on their roofs as an effort to assuage the effects of global warming.

Earth can’t live without bees

Bees play an absolutely crucial role in our planet’s ecosystem. They pollinate three quarters of our planet, but the bee population has experienced a serious decline as a result of pesticides and climate change. And no bees means no food.

McDonald’s currently has over 37,000 restaurants open all over the world, and if every one of those hosts a beehive, the positive impact could potentially be astronomical. The company hopes, therefore, that the initiative is taken up not just by Sweden but by every McDonald’s restaurant.

Christoffer Rönnblad, marketing director of McDonald’s Sweden, described it as a ‘great idea’.

According to Adweek, he said: “We have a lot of really devoted franchisees who contribute to our sustainability work, and it feels good that we can use our size to amplify such a great idea as beehives on the rooftops.”

The danger of pesticides to bees

Just last year, a ban on pesticides was put into effect by the EU just after the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) reported that neonicotinoids were a serious threat to bees, no matter where or how they were used.

Vytenis Andriukaitis, the EU commissioner for Health and Food Safety, said: “The Commission had proposed these measures months ago, on the basis of the scientific advice from the European Food Safety Authority.

“Bee health remains of paramount importance for me since it concerns biodiversity, food production and the environment.”

Cool Stories • Nature & Tech

Massive Avalanche In Aspen Captured On Camera

Assaf Aricha

Originally founded as a mining camp during the Silver Boom in Colorado in the mid-1800s, Aspen is now the most elite winter resort and the most popular tourist attraction in the United States.

The four ski areas around the town of Aspen get an average of 176 inches of snow per year. It used to be visited by musicians and writers but nowadays they are joined by corporate executives.

Named after the abundance of aspen trees in the surrounding woods, it is situated in an area in the Sawatch Range of the Rocky Mountains and the Elk Mountains, along the Roaring Fork River at an elevation just below 8,000 feet (2,400 m) above sea level on the Western Slope, 11 miles (18 km) west of the Continental Divide.

In order to control the amount of snowfall on the ski terrains, as well as to reduce the risk of naturally-occurring avalanches, the authorities use strategically placed fuel-air explosives that generate an air blast strong enough to initiate a slide in a controlled environment.

It is usually done in the early hours of the morning if possible, to avoid stray skiers that neglect the warnings. These controlled blasts have been able to save many ski seasons and keep the safety on the slopes to a maximum.

Footage of Human Triggered Avalanche

This footage was shot by a tourist in Aspen during one of those detonations, showing the amazing way the powder falls and settles, minimizing the risk of a naturally occurring avalanche.

In the middle of February 2018 the Colorado Avalanche Information Center issued an avalanche warning for the Aspen-area backcountry.”Human-triggered avalanches are very likely at all elevations,” the warning said, with “natural avalanches that could run to the valley floors are likely.

Travel in avalanche terrain is not recommended.”The reason behind this occurrence is this winter’s snowfall, where one-third of the cumulative snowfall fell in just two weeks.

Avalanche control activities such as this one minimize the risks avalanches pose to the life, activities, and properties of humankind. These activities begin with a risk assessment by surveying for potential avalanche terrain.

The geographic features, such as vegetation patterns, drainages, and seasonal snow distribution that are indicative of avalanches, need to be identified.

From there, the hazard is assessed by identifying human geographic features such as roads, ski hills, and buildings that are potentially under threat. These programs address the avalanche risks by drawing up prevention and alleviation plans, which are executed during the winter season.

The prevention and alleviation plans combine extensive snowpack observation with three major groups of interventions: active, passive, and social. Those are sometimes more narrowly defined as “explosive”, “structural”, and “awareness”, according to the most common technique used in each.

These avalanche control techniques either intervene directly in the evolution of the snowpack, or minimize the effect of an avalanche once it has occurred. Should the need of human involvement occur, avalanche control organizations develop and train thorough response and recovery plans.

Have you ever seen an avalanche? What was it like?

Originally founded as a mining camp during the Silver Boom in Colorado in the mid-1800s, Aspen is now the most elite winter resort and the most popular tourist attraction in the United States.

The four ski areas around the town of Aspen get an...

Earth • Science

Did Water on Earth Come From the Moon?

Nir Keinan

The origination of water on the earth has long been a quandary for scientists, but a new research published in the journal Natural Astronomy poses a new theory.

Scientists from the University of Münster in Germany are suggesting from their study that the debris of a Mars-sized body called Theia which has been thought to form the moon also brought water to our planet. The Theia theory is called the “giant impact hypothesis.”

Since our planet is thought to have formed in a dry inner solar system which lacked substance, scientists have long been unable to figure out where the source of water originated.

“The formation of the moon and the origin of Earth’s water are two of the fundamental open questions in cosmo-chemistry,” Gerrit Budde, the study’s lead author, told Newsweek. “Unraveling these processes is essential to understand the early evolution of the solar system, the formation of planets and the development of life.”

The solar system split in half

Scientists have previously surmised from the little they know about the world’s origin that the solar system was split in half for the first million years – that is, if their timeline is correct. When Jupiter formed, it was like a barrier against the exchange of materials between the inner and outer regions. Most of what they know about these matters is speculation, however.

The outer solar system was populated by meteorites containing water-rich “carbonaceous” material. Meanwhile, the inner solar system was filled mostly with non-carbonaceous meteorites that lacked water.

One of the more popular explanations for where the Earth first got water is that the “carbonaceous” bodies from the outer solar system brought large amounts of carbonaceous material to the earth. This explanation is still yet to be proven, however, and scientists haven’t been able to figure out when it could have happened or what the quantities involved may have been.

Scientists have attempted to get to the bottom of this issue by analyzing data on variants of a silvery-white metal called molybdenum which they obtained from a meteorite as well as terrestrial rock samples.

Fortunately, isotopes, which are variants of a chemical element that differ in the number of neutrons, allowing the scientists to clearly distinguish between carbonaceous and non-carbonaceous materials, which has given them slight leeway in discovering the truth.

“By comparing the molybdenum isotope composition of Earth and meteorites, for the first time we were able to constrain the timing and amount of the addition [of] outer solar system material to the Earth, as well as the origin of the moon-forming impactor and Earth’s water,” Budde said.

“In short, Earth’s water was delivered by water-rich carbonaceous material that derived from the cold outer solar system, probably beyond the orbit of Jupiter,” he said. “This happened relatively late at the end of Earth’s main growth history, and this material was delivered most likely by the giant impactor—Theia—that also caused the formation of the moon.

In turn, this means that the impactor itself originated from the outer solar system—it is generally assumed that Theia originated in the inner solar system near the Earth.”

All in all, it’s clear that there is much more to this issue than meets the eye. With so many things unclear about how our planet came to be, it makes one speculate about the theory of one Designer who planned it all.

The origination of water on the earth has long been a quandary for scientists, but a new research published in the journal Natural Astronomy poses a new theory.

Scientists from the University of Münster in Germany are suggesting from their study...

Animals • Vacation

How to Do Wildlife Tourism Right

Assaf Aricha

Nearly all travelers love the thrill of getting up close and personal with animals – and the wilder they are, the better. However, what they often don’t consider is how these animals are treated in order to make animal encounters, such as elephant rides and photo ops with tigers, a reality.

The ethics of wildlife experiences is one of the many controversial issues covered in National Geographic magazine’s feature story “Suffering unseen: The dark truth behind wildlife tourism.”

It’s not easy to figure out how to humanely observe animals, but one way you can assess the way a facility treats its animals is by referring to the standards recognized internationally in the “five freedoms” which were inspired by the U.K. in 1965. Here are some tips for how to go about viewing wildlife on your next venture.

Do your research

Research ahead of time to discover what facilities seem to care for their animals ethically. Just because a zoo has a high rating on TripAdvisor doesn’t mean that it’s humane. Read reviews to see if the animals have been well-fed and have access to clean water at all times.

Scan the space

When you’re at the facility, keep your eyes open and look around you to see what the space provides. Do the animals seem comfortable and happy? Are their environments appropriate? Do they have ample space, somewhere to get away from the crowds, and a comfortable resting area?

Watch out for buzzwords like “sanctuary” and “rescue,” especially if a facility is making these sorts of claims while also offering extensive interaction to large volumes of people. Most likely, it’s not true!

Look for red flags

Some things will be hard not to notice, like visibly injured animals or ones that have been cajoled into participating in entertaining activities that could be potentially harmful. Any time an animal that is meant to be wild is giving rides to the tourist is chained, or anything else unnatural to it, it’s just not right. Also, simply observe whether or not their enclosures are kept up and cleaned.

Tread lightly

Do your part in treating the animals with dignity. Large crowds and unnatural noises cause them distress, so be cautious and considerate while you are around them, especially those ones that have experienced some sort of trauma.

Keep it wild

Do your best to encourage and participate in experiences that take place in an animal’s natural environment.

It takes each of us to change the industry of global wildlife tourism. Every one of us that makes a conscious decision to only support facilities that treat their animals ethically helps to transform the industry for the better.

City Life • Science

Women Think Better in Warmer Rooms, Study Suggests

Manuel Moreno

While the study hasn’t been completely conclusive, recent findings have suggested that women think better in warmer rooms while men work better in lower temperatures ones.

Such findings may cause workplaces to think more deeply about their room temperatures and the effect it has on employees’ productivity.

The study occurred in Berlin where 542 students were recruited by researchers to take math, cognition, and verbal tests. Forty percent of the participants were female. First, the tests were taken in a room kept at 61.14 F, but then they were taken in another room at 90.63 F.

Overall, the women performed better on math and verbal tests in the warmer room while the men did better on those tests in the colder room. However, the cognitive tests were unaffected by temperature.

Warmer is better for everyone

“Our findings suggest that gender-mixed workplaces may be able to increase productivity by setting the thermostat higher than current standards,” the authors wrote.

Study co-author Agne Kajackaite, head of the Ethics and Behavioral Economics research group at WZB Berlin Social Science Center, told Newsweek: “There have been many studies showing that women prefer higher indoor temperatures than men. However, nobody looked at the effect of these differences in comfort on performance.

“We show that the battle for the thermostat is not just about comfort. It is much more—in our experiment, women’s cognitive functioning is the best at high temperatures, whereas men’s [is] at low temperatures. Importantly, the positive effect of increased temperatures on women’s performance is much stronger than the negative effect on men.”

Kajackaite continued: “This is just the first study looking at the effects of temperature on cognitive performance by gender. We ran the experiment with a homogeneous sample at a German university. More research looking at different groups—age, educational background, country—and different cognitive tasks is needed.”

Wouter Van Marken Lichtenbelt, a professor of ecological energetics and health at Maastricht University who has also published research on body temperature, told Newsweek that the study was written as if men had an opposite response to that of women, but “there is not one statistically significant effect observed in the data of the men.”

Wei Luo, a Ph.D. student at Maastricht University working with van Marken Lichtenbelt, confessed that the methods used were not wholly sufficient as the order of the different tests was fixed and the participants could have simply been tired. “This makes comparison between tests difficult,” said LuoHe.

The paper also lacked any information concerning participants’ clothes or the length of the tests, said van Marken Lichtenbelt, and this information could have had a significant impact on the results.

However, the results still strongly suggest that offices would be more productive if they slightly increased their room temperatures, agreed Van Marken Lichtenbelt, who also did a study in 2015 that found that exposures to temperatures outside our comfort zone could affect things like diabetes and obesity.

While the study hasn’t been completely conclusive, recent findings have suggested that women think better in warmer rooms while men work better in lower temperatures ones.

Such findings may cause workplaces to think more deeply about their room...

Health • Inspiring Stories • Lifestyle

3 Ways to Avoid Burnout When You’re Trying To ‘Do It All’

Brett Loewe

There are certain times in life that call for us to be constantly busy, struggling to balance all the things on our plate all at once. While it cannot be avoided, burnout can! It’s the times that you feel you haven’t a minute to spare to take care of yourself that it’s more important than ever that you do.

Maybe you’re running your kids around while simultaneously juggling everything at home in addition to working a part-time job. The only rest is when your head hits the pillow for those few sweet hours late at night before you’re back at it early the next morning. Your kids and loved ones need you, so what can you do?

Phases like these are what I like to call “soldiering.” Let me be clear, however, that soldiering is not a negative thing. It shows strength and momentum, self-discipline to get done what needs to be done and love for those you do it for. Sometimes, it’s sacrificing what you want for the sake of others, putting yourself second. All this is okay.

Soldiering isn’t a phase that’s meant to last forever. You can only press on with such energy for so long, so know that an end is in sight and that you can carry on until then. And at the end, you can pause to look back at all your hard work has accomplished.

If this is a stage you’ve found yourself in before or are in right now, here are three things to keep in mind to keep from burning out.

Acknowledge that you are soldiering.

Soldiering becomes much more manageable when you acknowledge that’s the state you are in. When you have life on autopilot, you miss out on what goes on day-to-day; you’re not fully present to those around you. But when you’re able to acknowledge to yourself and those around you that you are doing what needs to be done, clarity comes, and you’re able to think through the outcome – the reason you’re in this phase of soldiering to begin with.

Practice self-awareness.

We often avoid self-awareness more than we practice it; sometimes, taking a close look at yourself is just plain scary – we’d rather go on, blissful and ignorant to what is really going on within us. So, self-awareness rarely comes naturally.

But when you habitually make yourself do it, you notice more your behaviours, your reactions, why you feel the way you do. You have insight to see why your environment or your hectic schedule affects you the way it does, both physically and emotionally.

As you look within and understand yourself better, you can make more informed and conscious decisions and impact the quality of your life and relationships positively – both during your soldiering phase as well as when your pace slows.

Take time for self-care.

Yes, it’s appropriate to put others first, to be selfless, but if we don’t take time to care for ourselves, we end up having little to give others. We often feel guilty doing things for ourselves or feel that it shouldn’t be a priority during busy times, but self-care is crucial.

During times like these, you become so energy-depleted and so emotionally drained. There’s no way to continue on if you don’t intentionally replenish and restore these! Take time to grab your favorite meal, read a novel, take a nature walk, or whatever it is that allows your mind and body to rest and recuperate. Just a few moments doing something restorative gives you the energy to tackle each new day afresh!

This season of soldiering won’t last forever, but while it does, utilize these tips to give you strength and help you cope!

Nature & Tech • Tech News

‘Squishy’ Robots Can Jump From Huge Heights – and Survive

Nir Keinan

Every year, we seem to find more and more stories that show us both the horrifying power of AI, and the incredible potential that it holds. However, for years, these stories are becoming more and more impressive; further examples of just how much society as a whole is changing.

One of the most recent findings was that a host of new robots that are capable of jumping from a helicopter – and landing safely – are here.

These ‘squishy robots’ have quickly become a very impressive example of where robotic science could go. Indeed, these ball-shaped robots were made by staff at UC Berkeley and Squishy Robotics. They managed to create robots that can fall as high as 600ft and not take any kind of fall damage whatsoever.

Seemingly, they are also able to move and shift into different shapes so that they can get out of unique and tough spots. It’s quite the story and could make them perfect for use in high-risk areas, such as disaster zones.

Their ability to analyze ground conditions, and to be dropped into tough areas from high heights without damage, is incredible. As is their ability to help shift and move into different forms to help fit into even the tightest of spots.

Help in Disaster Zones

UC Berkeley mechanical engineering professor, Alice Agogino, was very impressed. She stated: “Our rapidly deployable mobile sensor robots are designed to save lives, reduce costs and risks and increase the effectiveness of the emergency response,

“They can survive a high drop into a disaster zone and provide life-saving information to first responders. They can also work as co-robots with their human partners on the ground when they arrive on the scene.”

These robots could be used for all manner of solutions, and could eventually be used to help make disaster zones a little safer. However, they also have some very interesting uses that could be put to practice in day-to-day life, as Agogino noted:

“We are still working with NASA on a space probe, but as excited as I am about space robots, I was motivated to apply this technology to Earthly applications when I saw a report by the Red Cross and Red Crescent that 400 first responders lost their lives to save others in the last 20 years. Many of these lives could have been saved with better situational awareness before entering disaster zones,

“Our robots get information that first responders need in order to stay safe and respond faster and more effectively.”

This is all very impressive and shows the rapid and impressive growth of robotics equipment. With uses in both emergencies and disasters, these tools could be used to help make sure that more lives are saved, and fewer lives are lost. It’s set to be a major hit when it eventually becomes something that could be genuinely used on the field.

Fashion • Inspiring Stories

High School Junior Makes Dream Prom Dress for Date

Ronit Shor

When it comes to our High School prom, we all know how big and important it makes us feel. For a lot of kids, it’s one of those nights that they look back on with lifelong affection. Sadly, like most events we go to as teens and kids, our proms are often places where a lot of judgments about people are made.

How expensive your suit/dress is becoming a major part of the argument for a lot of people. Sadly, we live in a society where we rate how ‘cool’ someone is based on how much their parents can afford to spend on a dress.

However, Parker Smith wasn’t one for putting up with such nonsense. This kid, who must go down as one of the most awesome kids in his generation, decided that he wanted to do something special.

Despite having no sewing skills whatsoever, he learned the art and created the dream prom dress for his prom date. She and her family couldn’t afford to buy her the dream gown she wanted, and so Mr. Smith stepped up to the plate – and then some.

His partner for the evening, Addi Rust, couldn’t afford the dream gown that she wanted. So when she asked Parker to make the dress for her – mostly as a joke – he decided to set about doing so. Judging by the photos, he has done an absolutely amazing job on the sewing job.

He would make parts of the dress more than once in a bid to perfect the style and shape of the design. Of course, Mr. Smith didn’t do this all on his own: like any smart boy, he got help from his beloved grandmother to help him make sure it was just right!

A prom dream come true

A beautiful blue ball gown came into being, then, and Addi was able to head off to prom looking absolutely fantastic – while being at prom date with one of the best up-and-coming young sewers in the community, from the looks of things!

He kept adding more and more to it, eventually creating an endearing and creative dress that perfectly achieved the aim: making Addi very happy on her big evening. Addi knew what it was going to look like throughout the process, as Parker kept her up-to-date on the entire process.

She even praised him on social media for his amazing attention to detail, and for creating a wonderful prom dress that, clearly, made her very happy indeed. Remember girls, if you’re going to get a prom date, make sure it’s a guy who has the skills and the self-belief to create an outfit for you!

Playing right up to his role as Prince Charing, he even played the role of slipping on a white heel onto her fool – a proper Cinderella story that we can all enjoy!

Inspiring Stories

Billionaire Pays Off Student Loans in Act of Kindness

Sabrina Gonzalez

In a world that is as rampantly unequal as the world we live in, it’s easy to feel disdain for the haves and the have-nots. It’s a world that can feel really unfair at times, as we watch people earning millions of pounds per year take control of every industry.

We sit back and watch the become increasingly unequal, and it creates a natural and understandable bitterness towards the ‘billionaire class’ – but, from time to time, we get some solid proof that not all billionaires are the loveless, empathy-free caricatures they are often made out to be.

Take the story of Robert F. Smith, a popular billionaire. He went down to Morehouse College to see the graduating class of 2019 and congratulate them for their success. More importantly, he gave them a wonderful parting gift: he paid of all of their student loans.

During his commencement speech, the billionaire started and said: “Men of Morehouse, you are surrounded by a community of people who have helped you arrive at this sacred place on this sacred day,

“On behalf of the eight generations of my family who have been in this country, we’re gonna put a little fuel in your bus. This is my class, 2019. And my family is making a grant to eliminate their student loans.”

Lifting the Burden

Now, for those who think that might be a small gesture, estimates reckon this covers as many as 400 graduates – and could be as much as $40m in total to cover the costs. That’s a truly incredible sum of money to donate to people who he has never met before in his life.

We’re often told we should be thankful because some super-rich individual has donated a relatively small portion of money to a good cause. To spend $40m of your own money lifting one of the biggest burdens on the next generation of successful students, though, is nothing short of incredible.

Robert F. Smith is a graduate of Cornell University and Columbia Business School. He made his money as a smart investor when he was CEO at Vista Equity Partners. He managed to become the wealthiest African American, with a net worth of over $4bn. While that’s an eye-watering sum of money, it’s nice to see such an act of kindness carried out with that money, helping those who really need the support.

When asked to comment on the act of generosity, President of Morehouse College David Thomas remarked: “Robert Smith has set an example that others will follow, not just for Morehouse but for other historically black colleges and universities.”