When Minnesota governor Mark Dayton took office in January of 2011 he inherited quite the difficult situation to turn around. The midwestern state was drowning in a $6.2 billion budget deficit and had a troubling 7% unemployment rate.

Coming in on the heels of Tim Pawlenty, a leader who failed to generate any substantial new revenue and created only 6,200 new jobs, the pressure was on for Dayton to do better. As the billionaire heir to the Target fortune, many didn’t expect Dayton to be capable of much of anything, but now, over 5 years in office, he has effected real change for the North Star State.

To do this, Governor Dayton implemented two key factors that to many may seem commonsensical: he implemented higher taxes on the rich and increased minimum wage.

Mae Chan, Prevent Disease
Waking Times

“You are what your parent’s eat,” is becoming more relevant by the day. According to a study published in journal “Science,” just one junk food eating generation can pass on the metabolic disorders it gains from an unhealthy diet to the next.

Less than two years ago, scientists officially linked processed foods to autoimmune disease and the consequences may ripple to future generations.

Medical researchers have before shown a link between a father’s weight and diet at the time of conception and an increased risk of diabetes in his offspring.

In research conducted on mice, a team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences found that unhealthy eating behaviours were recorded in a tiny molecule that could then be transmitted through sperm to the embryo.

by Christopher Tan, Collective Evolution

When I was first compelled to make this video, I was inspired by a quote which naturally ended up being the title for the film: “WE ALL SMILE IN THE SAME LANGUAGE.” I saw intimate, up-close headshots of a span of colourful faces displaying the beauty and diversity of our species. The mission was simple: to epitomize the message to the viewer that despite our differences, we all are fundamentally the same and we should unite in this fact and embrace it. I elaborated and deepened the importance of that belief by writing and recording a poem, riffing on humanity’s potential (as well as the possible consequences of not uniting as a universal species and moving forward, together).

God said:

Your dreams may be on the outskirts waiting to be fulfilled. Embrace your dreams. All your dreams do not have to come true right before your eyes. Having your dreams is a special kind of fulfillment. Dreaming the possibilities of dreams, big and little, is a desire fulfilling itself. Having a dream is its own kind of fulfillment. It’s like this:

Of course, you may receive the whole pie of your dream, yet you don’t have to have the whole pie. You don’t have to have the whole pie nor do you have to have half a pie. You don’t even have to eat one slice of pie. Looking forward to pie is its own joy. You can relish the pie before it is in front of you to eat. You can look at a pie in the window of a bakery and enjoy it. You can enjoy a painting of a pie and your mouth can water. You can enjoy beforehand. You are leading yourself to the prize of the pie you dream of.

It can be that you desire blueberry pie. Perhaps it is apple pie that comes to you right now. Enjoy the apple pie. You are getting closer to the blueberry pie. The apple pie is a forerunner.

The more accepting you are in life, the more the Universe will offer you of what you would love to accept. Refuse the Universe, and you may turn off your supply. Your ideal may be yet to come. Don’t refuse out of hand the beginnings of fulfillment of your dreams.

Yes, let your mouth water for the full pie of your desires. Of course, it is folly to deny yourself before the fact. Never say: “This will never happen. It is only a dream.”