Actress Drew Barrymore said today on The Oprah Winfrey Show that she is donating $1 million USD to the United Nations (UN) World Food Program to help fight hunger worldwide. The World Food Program delivers millions of tons of food aid to over 70 million people in 80 countries.

It’s nice to see an actress (or actor) using their personal fortune for something other than the latest Prada bag or BMW. These people often have boatloads of money — more than they could likely spend in a lifetime — yet never put it to any good use. I applaud Barrymore for parting with such a massive chunk of money in order to help others.

If only more people in Hollywood shared Barrymore’s compassion and sense of human decency, the world could be a much better place…

According to a study published in the Daily Mail, millions of humans are facing a significant risk of meltdown due to the tremendous rate at which we speed through life. Psychologists fear that unless we make some drastic changes we face serious damage not only to our relationships but also to our health as well.

The study cites examples such as people hurrying through their evening meals in less than ten minutes, and some individuals rushing through sex in two minutes. The psychologists claim that society has reached a point where humans are living at a crazy pace and demand instant gratification.

“There is a real danger people are heading for meltdown unless we slow down and realise that there are only so many hours in the day in which to get everything done.”

I couldn’t agree more with this quote, however I don’t necessarily think you can blame the everyday people slaving through daily life. We have been conditioned to act like thoughtless androids whose purpose is solely to accomplish a task. Our fundamental values, innate human values, have been twisted around by those controlling our societies. Rather than putting emphasis on the importance of personal relationships and taking the time to enjoy our lives on this beautiful planet , we’re taught that being monetarily successful is all we need to achieve happiness.

I encourage you to take a moment and reflect on what you can do to garner more enjoyment out of your stressful life. Cancel something last minute and take the free time to relax and reflect on life, you just might find yourself valuing something you lost long ago.

Denmark-based Saxo Bank is predicting nothing short of economic chaos spanning the entire globe in 2008. The bank claims that the price of oil will surge to $175 per barrel, leading to economic collapses of 25% and 40% by the United States and China, respectively. Furthermore, they anticipate grain prices to double and one-third of large U.S. building companies to go bankrupt. All of this traced to the mortgage crisis in the US that has already slowed down the economy significantly.

Not all is lost, however, as the bank predicts Texas Republican Ron Paul to take the White House in 2008. Also, if the US economy were to slow down as predicted, oil consumption would decrease thus driving down price as well. But, if the Neo-Cons were to launch an attack against Iran — God forbid — the price of oil could catapult up to $250 per barrel.

I know what you’re thinking, as it was probably the first thing I was thinking when I read this article. However, before you dismiss all of this as non-sensical rubbish, know that most of Saxo Bank’s predictions for 2007 came true, so clearly they know what they’re doing and this isn’t some hogwash list put together by some Europeans hungover from too much Christmas Eggnog.

In a report entitled “Recession Coming” released today, Morgan Stanley has issued a full recession alert for the US economy. The report warns of a sharp slowdown in business investment and a “perfect storm” for consumers as the housing slump spreads. Additionally, the Morgan Stanley US team said that the credit crunch was starting to inflict serious damage on many US companies.

I can’t say I’m surprised at all by this report. If this takes you by surprise, then you my friend have either been living under a rock or in serious denial for the past six months or so. The value of the US dollar has plummeted, several countries have moved away from the dollar standard and even Jay-Z is storing his earnings in Euros now instead of the dollar.

And you KNOW it’s bad when rappers — who love flaunting around the benjamins — leave Franklin out in the cold.

Let’s hope the recession comes and goes quickly and doesn’t do too much damage to the economy, as my job kind of depends on business investment and spending.

Internet mammoth Google, perhaps one of the Web’s most trusted companies, has voluntarily given an Israeli court the IP address of an anonymous blogger. The prosecutor of the case, which centers on allegations that were posted on Blogger about three members of the Shaarei Tikva council, asked the court to demand that Google hand over the IP address of the anonymous blogger, but the court did not order Google to do so. Rather, Google handed over the anonymous blogger’s IP address to the court and plaintiffs without any legal requirement!

If this were just another shady Internet company then fine, what else is to be expected, but this is Google! The Google! The same Google who at the onset of this case said that “disclosing the blogger’s identity violated rulings on the balance between freedom of expression and a person’s right to his reputation.” Hypocrites!

The reason this upsets me so much, and why you as well should be outraged, is consider how much private information Google has collected about you. Do you use Google Adsense, Analytics, Calendar, Docs, Gmail, Groups, iGoogle, Maps, Picasa, Reader, Talk, Web History, or Webmaster Tools like I do? Or perhaps, Google Desktop, Earth, Finance, Notebook, Orkut, Toolbar or Blogger? If you can answer yes to using any of those then sorry to be the bearer of bad news folks but Google has private information about you on file.

I’m extremely disappointed in Google’s behavior on this one. They are one of the few Internet behemoths able to (I think) live up to the high standards placed upon it by the Internet populace. Let’s hope this isn’t a sign of things to come for everyone’s favorite search engine.

Today I stumbled across a wonderful Web site which I think everyone should visit and donate at least 5 to 10 minutes of their time. The site is called FreeRice, and in a nutshell it donates grains of rice for every vocabulary word you get right.

Rice is earned 10 grains at a time, for each word that you guess right. The rice is then given to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), who in turn distributes it to over 1,000 organizations in 75 countries. Rice is paid for by various site advertisers, such as American Express, Office Depot, Liz Claiborne and many more.

The site launched a little over a month ago on October 7th (best day of the year ) and has at the time of this writing raised 1,072,025,720 grains of rice for the hungry.

I strongly encourage everyone to head over to freerice.com and play for a few minutes. In addition to allowing some people to fill their stomachs, you might just learn something.

Democrats have their reasons for wanting to bring the troops home. Republicans have their own reasons for wanting to keep the troops there. You may have your own reasons for why you want the troops to come home or stay put. The bottom line: nobody’s opinion matters. Democrats, Republicans, you, me, everyone else, all of our opinions mean absolutely nothing. There is one single reason to bring the troops home that supersedes all other arguments: simple human morals and decency.

Yesterday President Bush visited the Center for the Intrepid at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, which yielded a number of photo ops with the president for injured Army soldiers. The photos are incredibly gut-wrenching and make you want to burst into tears.

It’s very easy to lose track of what is happening on the other side of the globe during the hustle and bustle of everyday life here in America, and I think every American needs to see these photos and be reminded of just what is happening over there.

To let me further drill home the point, these photos are just of American soldiers. Let us not forget the hundreds of thousands of civilians that have died and millions injured just like in these photographs. Every human life shares an equal value. American, Iraqi, Afghani, we are all equal.

I cannot comprehend how a president can continue to subject human beings to such brutal conditions, let alone go and visit some of the ones he is responsible for maiming. This war needs to end, and it doesn’t matter who stops it or who’s right or wrong we can figure that out later. Just stop the killing and injuring of human beings just like you and me. End the war, now!

A confidential transcript of a meeting between President Bush and then-Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar has been published in the El Pais Daily, a left wing newspaper. In the transcript, dated February 22, 2003, Bush tells Aznar that nations like Mexico, Angola, Chile and Cameroon have to understand that the security of the United State is at stake. Specifically, Bush said that Angola would lose financial aid and Chile’s free-trade agreement with the U.S. would never make it out of the Senate.

Further, in the wake of an unsuccessful UN Security Council lobby by Bush to bolster support for a war with Iraq, coupled with millions of Spanish protesting in the streets of Madrid, Aznar called on Bush to help him boost Spanish public opinion of the war and said he was worried by Bush’s optimism. Bush’s response — and this is what most disturbs me — was:

“I am optimistic because I believe I am right. I am at peace with myself.”

How can any leader, including Bush, be at peace with themselves during the build-up to a war? War is one of the most horrifying atrocities human beings engage in, as the end result is always the same thing: death. It takes a truly evil and soulless man to be at peace with himself before and during wartime. Even if Bush didn’t care about all of the Iraqi lives (which he most certainly did not), how could he be at peace with sending thousands of Americans to die overseas?

This article should be a wake up call to U.S. citizens. If our President doesn’t have the moral capacity to cherish and value the lives of Americans and humans in general, then how will he know when the war and death and killing has gone too far and it’s time to end it and bring the troops home? He won’t.

Persistent mobile phone use may lead to a slowing of brain activity and unbalanced behavior, according to a study published in the International Journal of Neuroscience this month. The study, which was limited to 300 people in Australia, England and the Netherlands, occurred over the course of 2.4 years. Researchers intend on expanding the study to 17,000 participants for a longer period of time.

Although the study showed that frequent mobile phone users exhibited slower brain activity, the slowed brain activity was still considered to be within the realm of normal brain functioning. The longer planned study would look into whether the slowed brain activity over an extended period of time could results in an adverse health effect.

On a brighter note, the study revealed the habitual mobile users actually showed an improvement in their ability to focus, which was declared to be a learning effect due to making phone calls in loud areas where background noise and other distractions needed to be filtered out.

The study was carried out with participation from Brainclinics Diagnostics, Radbound University in Nijmegen, the Institute of Psychiatry in London, and The Brain Resource Co. Ltd. in Sydney.

This is a pretty shocking discovery. Here’s a little food for thought, what kind of effect would it have on the global mobile phone market if long-term adverse health effects were proven to be a result of prolonged cell phone use?

On “The Word” segment of his September 19, 2007 “The Colbert Report,” host Stephen Colbert criticized the youth generation of today for doing nothing about the problems in society. It all started with the University of Florida student who was tasered during a John Kerry speech. The inaction of the student’s peers caused Colbert to make the following remarks:

“Look at these guys in the back,” Colbert said, pointing out one frame from the video of the event. “You don’t need a Fox body language expert to tell you that kid in orange is bored. He’s probably thinking something like, ‘I wish they’d stop tasering this guy so I could go home and watch this guy getting tasered on YouTube.’”

“One thing you can’t argue is that his cause was joined by hordes of no one. … Students used to be a rebellious bunch. … Today’s kids are so different.”

“The kids in that auditorium who sat idly by as their fellow student was seized, thrown to the ground, and tasered didn’t lack the courage to help,” Colbert added. “They’re just so used to watching videos like ‘Crazy guys thrown out of lecture hall’ that they didn’t know how to help other than to link to it. I’m sure that guy in the orange is going to spring into action as soon as he gets home and fires up his blog.”

“And that’s what’s so great about this new kind of activism,” Colbert remarked. “It’s convenient. Just like masturbation. It’s better than sex because it’s on your own time. So … make me proud, young people. Continue waging your protests from the polite distance of your home computers. Make ‘the Man’ wish he’d never visited your site. And if a fellow-student is denied the right to speak, remember, the best way to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him is by sitting alone in your seat.”

Here is the video in its entirety:

It’s sad to say but Colbert is absolutely 100% on point with these statements. Sure it’s an entirely different generation with an entirely different lifestyle, but the fact remains that the general public does not gather collectively to demand a particular action of the government. How many people complain online about the expanding of Bush’s spy program, or about the unending Iraq war? Thousands if not millions. But how many of them march on Washington to show their opposition? None. If millions of people were to converge on Washington demanding an end to the Iraq war and would not leave you can bet the troops would start coming home by Christmas.

While it is good that at least people are speaking out in some sort of fashion, writing about problems doesn’t go far enough. Your support and time needs to be given to those causes that you hold dear to your heart. So if you haven’t done anything to support something you believe in lately, I encourage you to go out and make a small gesture. Acting alone behind our computers won’t do anything except consume bandwidth, but acting together we have the ability to change the world.

Remember, as Abraham Lincoln pointed out, that our government is “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”