“My” Ugandan chicken farmer has repaid 8% of the loan she got from [Kiva]http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=33024.¹ That’s not at all bad, given that the loan was disbursed less than a month ago. Of course, it would be nice to know a bit more about how Sylvia and the res...

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There is rice and there are hungry People. Why do we have to navigate through the "economic minefields" in order to get feed? My family just went to the food bank where they gave us free rice, but no one in our family eats it. I told my son, "Take all that government rice down to the pawn shop and...

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Blog carnivals are a good way of finding interesting items and blogs worth revisiting. The flip side of that is that they can be a good way of attracting new readers. Too often I forget about the first point while focussed on the first. So here’s a tribute to Berry-go-round, which I hope brought u...

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“Like it or not, addicts say, they have fewer and fewer choices in buying drugs.”

That’s a throwaway line in a recent Vanity Fair feature, one that has had a fair amount of play in the blogosphere.

I lied. That’s not actually the true quote. The truth is:

“Like it or not, farmers say,...

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I've been reading Grant McCracken’s blog for a while now, and enjoying his posts without quite feeling the need to point anyone else at them. But this is a beaut, and not just because I feel it strongly myself.

Paul Allen, the Microsoft cofounder, has a yacht that is 416 feet long. It cost some...

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