Archive for the ‘Charity’ Category

Apple’s Spending $4 Million To Renovate This Chicago Subway Station [Apple]

We’ve heard of Apple spending money on minor restorations and renovations of the areas surrounding their stores, but $4 million to refurbish an adjacent subway station seems a bit excessive. Especially since they’re barely getting anything out of it.

The pictured subway station is located on Halsted Street in Chicago, next to a future Apple store location. While Apple’s stipulation that the subway station renovations be completed by September 30, 2010 gives us a bit of a hunch as to when the store might open, it still remains a mystery exactly why the company is pouring so much money into prettying up a corner of Chicago. According to the agreement they’re not getting very much out of it:

[I]n exchange for the improvements the CTA will lease the bus turnaround to Apple at no cost for 10 years, with options on four, five-year extensions. The CTA will also give Apple “first rights of refusal” for naming the station and placing advertising within the station, if the CTA later decides to offer those rights.

Alright, and Apple intends on making that bus turnaround into a “landscaped public park,” so there’s no profit to be found there and the “first rights of refusal” are worthless if the CTA never actually decides to offer any of those advertising options and rights. It almost seems as if Apple’s doing this for the warm fuzzy feeling that comes out of doing something incredibly wonderful for a city’s development. I’m proud of you, Apple, but I still think Bill Gates is cooler for trying to cure malaria with candy. [ifoAppleStore via Mac Rumors]

Bill Gates Seeks To Cure Malaria With Candy [Charity]

Bill Gates is on another charitable streak through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with a $100,000 investment to find a way to fight childhood malaria with chocolate and gum.

The gum would be used to test, painlessly, for malaria in children while the chocolate would serve as a way of getting some of the disease-feeding fat out of a patient’s body. There’s already some promise in these methods and the Gates contribution should certainly keep research going. [Telegraph]

So My Fork Makes Me Feel Guilty

Statistics in books make me just totally fall asleep. What this projects aims to do is to add another page to the three dimensional world of awareness. “What if this kind of information crawled off the page and seeped into the products that surround us?” That’s what Nadeem Haidary aims to explore. The first image you’ll see is of a fork whose prongs each represent the calories each capita consumes. Frightening?

As you can guess, the capita with the most calories has the prong most likely to pierce the food. The same is true with the plates that go with the forks in this set: the surface area of the plate relating directly to, again, the amount of calories per capita.

This project is called “Caloric Consumption” and if someone tries to make me eat with it when I’m chomping down on some amazing crab legs, I’m totally just not gonna look at the fork and pretend the plate doesn’t have a starving country on it. After the meal I will contribute money to a charitable fund.

Next time on Haidary’s extensive “In-Formed” project: Waste Production and Water Usage!

Joy!

Designer: Nadeem Haidary

UNICEF’s Toy Soldiers To Help Real Kids [Unicef]

UNICEF’s direct mail campaign has put a teary smile on my face. They’re sending out baggies of what appear to be lil’ plastic toy soldiers, but are actually playing children, reminders of young’ns forced into battle in Africa.

This direct mail campaign is incredibly effective in how it brings forth childhood memories for many while emphasizing the reality of those who may never have one: Child soldiers in places such as Africa. The campaign may be aiming to find corporate sponsorships, but they’ve earned a check from me, too. [Direct Daily]