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Women right's advocates have made some strides in recent decades. But most of the world's poorest are female, fewer girls than boys attend school and women are still vastly underrepresented in leadership positions. Former Ireland President Mary Robinson, the World Bank's Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and columnist Nicholas Kristof explain the challenges of improving women's lives worldwide.

Equality Still Elusive For World's Women : NPR

As much as we'd like to, it can be tough for designers to do work for the causes we care about. There is always a lack of time and money available to put toward working on projects "that matter" and have to be done pro-bono. One unique grant program, Sappi Fine Paper's Ideas that Matter, is in its 11th year of helping make this problem a little easier, having given over $10 million to designers and their favorite causes thus far. Today Sappi announced the 27 recipients for its 2010 Ideas that Matter grants, a terrific and unique funding program that simultaneously supports both great design work and meaningful nonprofit causes.

Each year, designers get to submit proposals for funding of their ultimate pie-in-the-sky charitable project. This year, Casey Caplowe of GOOD, Jessica Helfand of Winterhouse, Doug Powell of Schwartz Powell, Matt Rollins of Iconologic, and Armin Vit of UnderConsideration made up the panel of judges determining the winners, selected based on creativity, potential impact and implementation plan.

We don't have much on the 2010 winning proposals yet, but a few highlights that show the wide range of projects include: Bryant Ross and Continuum's proposal for a book of original student writing with 826 Boston (a prior collaboration is shown above), Natalie Destandau and Tomorrow Partners' "Do-it-Yourself Tool Builder for Global Women's Health Education" for the Business for Social Responsibility, and Esther Chak and Imaginary Office with "Relief, Restoration, & Reform: A Print and Digital Toolkit" for the Ocean Conservancy, Gulf of Mexico Regional Office.

The recipients will complete their projects by March 31, 2011, and in the meantime, Sappi will update their site as projects progress. Past winners' work can be seen on the site, and the 2011 call for entries for the next round will be announced in the spring.

-via Core77

BMW kvadrat: the dwelling lab.

Home and Housewares Show 2010: Bodum's bringin' Memphis back – Core77.

The house we'll be moving into soon has a giant yard. And while we'd
love to xeriscape it and be all green and such, the reality of the
situation is that takes money and time, things we won't have much of
while we make a mad dash to re-do the living spaces of the home. Plus baby needs some grass to roll around on. I'd love to get one
of these. Funny looking but goes by itself, electric, and no emissions.
The Roomba of lawnmowers.

Automower
Colour Collection by Husqvarna.

I love this article by Craig Mod about Formless vs. Definite Content in the age of the digital book. He succinctly talks about guiding "throwaway" content toward digital production (this could include all books you only read once, such as textbooks and NYT best-sellers) and keeping printed production for texts and forms that require it, such as design books, artists books, etc.

Books in the Age of the iPad — Craig Mod.