Mediation isn’t just for family or business disputes. It can also be applied to tribal or international conflicts, and the organization called Mediators Beyond Borders was created to do just that.

One challenge frequently encountered in mediation, explains Camelia Patino, is a need to “level the playing field” among the participants

There’s a lot more to a successful invention than just a good idea.

Steve Schneider, (left) the coordinator and sole staff of the Sawyer Center in Santa Rosa has had a hand in a growing list of success stories with clients there. Currently, he's enthusiastic about an idea concieved by a pair of local nurses.

As you might expect, the Sawyer Center itself was the creation of an individual inventor. Steve Schneider recounts its history.

Just over the past 10 years, according to their website, the Sawyer Center has helped over 2,300 clients by providing in excess of 8,900 hours of individual, one-on-one, free counseling. In addition, over 2,570 business owners have attended 108 workshops for close to 13,100 hours of training. This counseling and training has resulted in:

• 114 patents received
• 151 trademarks filed
• 113 copyright applications

Racism will remain an ugly subtext in American culture, says writer Tim Wise (below), until we can collectively bring the subject out of the shadows and talk about it honestly.

Before America, as a society, can fully acknowledge and embrace the racial differences within, Wise contends we will need to recognize the ways in which white privilege has been empowered by the government. The backlash against the welfare programs of the past 40 years, he says, are a sad indicator of how far away such acceptance still lies.

One of the curious aspects of racist behavior, in Wise’s analysis, is how bigotry can lead people to act against the own best interests, out of fear those actions would also benefit the people they disparage.

Economics has been called the “dismal science,” but Yoram Bauman is working to counter that image. He calls himself “the world’s first Stand-up Economist.”

Bauman joked about fiscal policy and talked about his book, The Cartoon Introduction to Economics, at the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa this past Saturday. It was an atypical presentation for that venue, as Yoram freely acknowledges that he dealt far more with the words than the pictures in that publication.

He enjoyed the collaboration, Bauman says, but it involved a great deal of back and forth between the two creative partners.

The two are now at work on a sequel that will focus on Macro-economics. In the meantime, here's a video clip of Bauman performing at a conference of economists.