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Food Prices. Aurora Borealis. Fasting and Prayer. Here's a little round up of links from around the web you may have missed this week:
- Food and gas prices are rising again and anti-hunger activists are calling for financial reform.
- Artist Theo Jansen has created skeletal creatures out of plastic pipes that are able to walk on wind and subsist on their own. Watch the footage. (It's incredible!)
- Don't have time to watch the aurora borealis in Russia for a week? Yeah, me neither.
- Would you dare eat pie in the sky?
- A brief history of movie title design. (How many of these have you seen?)
- Join Jim Wallis and others as we fast and pray for the national budget. (Join here.)
- Lastly, we want to hear from you. What are some issues that are tugging at your heart these days?
Last summer's financial reform bill included something the world has long needed: a requirement that electronics manufacturers disclose whether their products include conflict minerals from Congo. Money from conflict minerals helps fund militias' reign of terror and rape in the country's eastern region. (See activist site Raise Hope for Congo's listing of how 21 leading electronics companies are doing at voluntary disclosure -- no one gets a gold star, but some are worse than others. Yeah, we're talkin' to you, Nintendo.)
On May 2, 1963, African-American kids all over Birmingham, Alabama heard a D.J. from WENN announce, "Kids, there's going to be a party at the park. Bring your toothbrushes because lunch will be served." This was a coded call for a mass demonstration. Eight hundred kids, some as young as six, skipped school.
Watch the video below of CNN's coverage of Jim Wallis and other faith leaders as they tour the Gulf Coast on a trip sponsored by the Sierra Club. (For live updates, follow @jimwallis on Twitter.)