Inspirational Banking: Grameen Foundation

Today is Blog Action Day 2008, where thousands of bloggers are banding together to write about the issue of poverty. Well, count me in.

Last year, I read a book that threw me for such a loop that one year later, I still think about it. Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of the Grameen Foundation, wrote a book about his work called Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty. You cannot read it and emerge thinking the same way about the poor. It’s just impossible.

In 1983, economist Yunus established Grameen, against the advice of bankers, government officials, and pretty much everyone. His vision was that if credit were given to the poor, then they would be able to establish businesses that would allow them to escape poverty, maintain a living wage, and best of all, pay back the loan. Grameen Bank now provides over 2.5 million dollars of micro-loans to over two million families in Bangladesh. Ninety-four percent of the clients are women, and repayment rates are near 100 percent.

The book is amazing, pure and simple. It is written in such common sense terms that it becomes hard to argue against the logic of instituting such programs everywhere, and Yunus provides advice on doing exactly that. And with success rates like Grameen’s, perhaps bankers everywhere should be looking to them for guidance.

Is this the cure for global poverty? Probably not. But boy, it sure seems like a running leap toward the cure.

The Best Medicine: Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog

Since, y’know, I’m always right on the pulse of this whole Internet thingy, I actually DID hear about Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog, an Internet-only musical film, before the film went live, as it were. After all, it’s a creation of Joss Whedon, genius behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly. Of course, the date the first episode was released, I had something going on – don’t even remember what – and (shamed head-hanging here), I missed it.

I was prepared to take my lumps and wait for the eventual DVD release, since I don’t have a video iPod, when like angels singing from heaven, a friend told me I could watch the three episodes (or one 42-minute video) on hulu.com for FREE! I gotta say, this project made me happier than anything I’ve seen in a long time. The film is written by Joss Whedon and his brothers Zack and Jed Whedon, and Maurissa Tancharoen, and features the same kind of quirky, enhanced-everyday speak that the residents of Buffy’s Sunnydale spoke so well.

This time, the protagonist is Dr. Horrible (Neil Patrick Harris), who, true to the title, blogs about his trials and tribulations and breaks into song every once in a while. But while he is an evil genius, he has dreams just like the rest of us: to have his application accepted by the Evil League of Evil, and to work up the courage to talk to the girl of his dreams, Penny (Felicia Day). If only his nemesis – because there must always be a nemesis – Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion) wouldn’t keep interfering.

Did I mention the dialogue? It’s a hoot (and the songwriting is top-notch as well):

Dr. Horrible: A lot of guys ignore the laugh, and that’s about standards. I mean, if you’re gonna get into the Evil League of Evil, you have to have a memorable laugh. What, do you think Bad Horse didn’t work on his whinny? His terrible death-whinny?

or

Captain Hammer: Stand back everyone, nothing here to see. Just imminent danger and in the middle of it me. Yes, Captain Hammer’s here, hair blowing in the breeze. The day needs my saving expertise. Man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. Seems destiny ends with me saving you. The only doom that’s looming is in loving me to death. I’ll give you a second to catch your breath.

Great writing, great acting, great songs. This one’s just what the doctor ordered.

Interview Update: Justin Roberts Hits the Big Leagues

Just a quick note for the Justin Roberts fans in the crowd: He was the subject of a story for the Major League Baseball website, MLB.com! Written by Doug Miller, the article profiles Roberts and the origins of the title song off his new CD, Pop Fly. While this is justifiably cool for Justin Roberts, I feel compelled to remind you all, we got the scoop before MLB did. Heh heh heh.

Putting a Face to Catastrophe: NPR’s China Earthquake Coverage

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about writing about tragedy, whether as a reporter or as someone who is part of the story. How difficult it must be on so many levels to be witness to suffering on such a mammoth scale. How hard it must be to balance the urges to flee to the comfort of home and family, to stay and help however you can, and/or to report dispassionately on the scenes unfolding before you without inserting yourself into the story.

These thoughts have filtered through my mind this week in the aftermath of massive earthquake in China on May 12 that has left more than 50,000 dead or presumed dead. NPR‘s Melissa Block and Robert Siegel happened to be in Chengdu, approximately 60 miles from the quake’s epicenter, recording stories for a series on Chengdu for All Things Considered. Both have reported extensively in the days following the quake of the scale of the disaster. For me, Melissa Block’s stories in particular have haunted me for days following hearing them. In a story that aired May 14, she followed a couple for an entire day as they searched for their parents and 2-year old son in the rubble of their apartment building. Then today, perhaps knowing that her audience needed some evidence of anything positive to emerge from these events, she reported on some of the miraculous survival stories emerging from the chaos.

In the first story, “Couple Frantic to Find Loved Ones,” the story follows Block in real time as she accompanies Wang Wei and Fu Guanyu to their family’s apartment building:

On Monday, Fu Guanyu dropped off her young son, Wang Zhilu, at his grandparents’ house so she could go to work. Minutes later, the earthquake hit.

She rushed back home and saw their apartment building in ruins. She says soldiers came right away to help, but they had no equipment.

Two days later, the heavy machinery is on the way. As an excavator clears a path, Fu and her husband Wei Wang search the debris, calling for their son.

At the story’s start, the final outcome is unknown, so we find ourselves as listeners hoping against hope that this story will end happily in reunion. Devastatingly, it does not.

In today’s story, “Small Miracles Rise from Earthquake’s Rubble,” Block allows herself to comment on her own reactions of the week, in as much as she admits that she hasn’t begun to process the scale of the disaster. She describes a story going around about a photo of a baby rescued from under the body of his mother, who died kneeling over him in protection:

And, according to Xinhua, in a story that just defies belief, but that you hope is true, the rescue workers also found a cell phone. The mother had tucked it into her baby’s blanket. She had typed a text message on the screen. The message said, “My dear, if you can survive, please remember I love you.”

I cannot pretend to know the emotions and conflicting thoughts that Block, Siegel, or any other reporter over there has felt this week. I do know that both these stories left me in tears, and that according to the comments I read on the NPR site after the May 14 story, many drivers were observed pulling off the road to cry. So by putting a human face to a tragedy so massive that it would be easy to dissociate ourselves from it, NPR, Block, and Siegel should be commended. It’s not only great reporting, but it’s necessary reporting.

Hungry for Great Food Writing: Orangette to the Rescue

With Mother’s Day behind me, it’s been back to the grind. The weather’s been warmer out here in the Northwest, but not exactly what I would call inspiring, and there’s been bad news round the globe this week. It’s enough to make a girl feel a little down. Certainly enough to make me run for some comfort food. But wait! I’m trying to eat more healthily and lose some weight. What I really need is some food writing that makes me feel the same way that comfort food does.

I’m happy to say, I’ve found my food writing fix. I’d read an article in the June 2008 issue of Bon Appetit on making homemade jam simply by Molly Wizenberg, also known to foodies as the genius behind the much-loved food blog Orangette. The jam article made me immediately mark my calendar for the U-Pick berry months and fantasize about fresh, warm, homemade strawberry jam oozing off a steaming buttermilk biscuit. My next move was to check out the Orangette blog. Her archives go on forever, so points taken from me for picking up on this so late. But better late than never.

Here’s what’s fantastic about Ms. Wizenberg’s blog. She sounds normal. She doesn’t sound like some prissy know-it-all who’s going to make me feel incompetent for not never having heard of green garlic. Instead, she sounds like an otherwise relatively well-adjusted human who happens to really dig cooking and food, and who can also write really really well about it. Check out a little bit from her post on soup (from 4/21/08):

It’s hard to know what to say about soup. I mean, it’s soup. It’s a liquid, sort of, but it’s eaten with a spoon. It’s not a steak, or chocolate, or fancy cheese, or an ice cream sundae. It’s what people eat when they’re sick or miserable or old, wearing dentures that clack like sad, weary castanets. Soup is a hard sell. But if I could, I would eat it every day. Sometimes, actually, I do. I never get tired of soup.

She goes on to describe a spinach and green garlic soup that she recreated from a bowl she’d had in San Francisco. Now, we could at this point head into “I’m so much more accomplished than you” territory, at which point, I’d have looked elsewhere. But she admitted to (a) having never bought green garlic before, (b) being cheap enough to wait to buy said garlic at Whole Foods until the price went down, and (c) not being all that great at recreating dishes. Then she goes on to give the recipe of this soup, which I will be trying one of these days.

So, if you’re looking for comfort food without the calories, give Orangette a read.

Jumpin’ On the Bandwagon: Loving the Mom Song

As the second part of my Mother’s Day bonanza of posts, I recall getting forwarded the link to the following video by comedienne Anita Renfroe. Called “The Mom Song,” and sung to the William Tell Overture, it’s fairly likely that you may be among the seven million people who’ve seen it on YouTube. Just in case you haven’t, however, or even if you have but need a refresher of what you’ll likely say as a mom or hear from a mom in the next 24 hours, enjoy the following clip:

Project Virgle and Other Cheeky April Fools’ Jokes

Those people at Google are naughty, naughty, naughty. They are cheeky little monkeys, and if I did not derive so much pleasure from their April Fools’ collaborations, I should have to take them to task indeed.

For those who need another sensory element added to their book reading, try Google’s new scratch and sniff technology over at Google Books. Ever wanted to smell the Color Atlas of Dental Medicine: Periodentology? Now you can. [Hint: Keep hitting the Refresh button to continue to find wondrous new scratch and sniff offerings. And follow up, clicking the book and the scratch and sniff links]

For all of us time-challenged email addicts, fortunately, now we have Gmail Custom Time, an application that ensures we’ll never be late again:

Finally, the piece de resistance, Google has teamed up with British entrepreneur Richard Branson of Virgin to create the first human colony on Mars with Project Virgle. You can even apply to be a Virgle pioneer. The application includes pertinent multiple choice questions such as:

# 6. If I was unexpectedly confronted with the emergence of a bewilderingly alien and frighteningly advanced Martian life form which appeared bent on killing me if I failed to quickly and effectively communicate my peaceful intentions and potential value to its civilization, I would:

• Die

• Whip out my handy universal transcorder and start schmoozing my ass off.

• Well, given that there’s no such thing as a transcorder that works for a Martian language that we haven’t even heard yet, I guess I’d just do my best to seem non-threatening while communicating my peaceful intentions with subtly universal hand gestures.

• Run straight toward the Martian while screaming wildly and brandishing whatever weapon happens to be handy.

and:

# 9. A multi-stage heavy lift rocket built using established solid and liquid propellant technology with solid boosters doubled for increased payload capability could start a burn for insertion into a lunar trajectory and then back toward Earth for final insertion into a modified Hohmann Transfer Orbit, increasing its final Earth-to-Mars transfer velocity through a periapsis delta-v burn performed at the closest lunar and subsequent Earth approach, with the additional delta v gained on account of the potential energy from the mass of expended propellant,

• Actually, I would think fairly quickly and easily

• Only with significant time and fuel expenditure

• My SAT tutor said to always guess C if you aren’t sure

• goo goo ga ga hee hee ha ha

So there you have it. Help save humanity with Virgle.

Now, Google, get back to work! You have next April 1 to start planning for.

The Evolution of Wii Fit

In a fit of snowbound-crazed delirium, I recently bought a Nintendo Wii, which I must confess that I love. I love that Wii Sports makes me a pretty good bowler, and that I can almost beat my husband at tennis (as opposed to reality, where it’s fruitless even to try). So how happy have I been to know that Nintendo will in May release Wii Fit, the answer to all my exercising prayers?

Because I am so breathlessly anticipating the release of this product, I’ve read anything that falls across my way on the topic. One such offering was an interview with the makers of Wii Fit by Satoru Iwata, the president of Nintendo Co., Ltd. I originally envisioned skimming my way through the interview, only to emerge shaking my head in wonderment half an hour later. For anyone who is interested in vicariously experiencing the evolution of a product, from inception to completion, this set of interviews is a must-read. The idea arose as a fun way to weigh yourself — as if such a thing exists. From that kernel of an idea for a glorified scale came the contributions of many, many people –designers, programmers, executives, and more — and from that evolved a product that looks like a heck of a lot of fun.

See what you think.

Finger Flicking and Humming: The Language of Autism

There is an absolutely amazing article in this month’s issue of Wired magazine by David Wolman, entitled “Yeah, I’m Autistic: You got a problem with that? Online, the article is called “The Truth About Autism: Scientists Reconsider What They Think They Know.” Now, it gets hard to find a topic more polarizing than autism in the first place. What kind of therapy is best? Is it caused by vaccines? Will an anti-gluten diet reduce or eliminate symptoms? Is there any magic bullet that will cure it? So I admit, it was a little jarring to come across an article describing a school of thought that autism is a difference, not a disability — much like the argument utilized by many in the deaf community that being deaf is merely a trait, no more a disability than having freckles or being nearsighted.

The article is well-written, thought-provoking and thorough. It cites research that concludes that using an IQ test called “Raven’s Progressive Matrices,” children with autism can score up to 30 points higher on the Raven than on the more language-dependent Wechsler Intelligence Scale. The article also touches on the probable reaction of many families of children with autism: that regardless of an IQ score, the ability to function in day-to-day activities, like dressing yourself or planning your meals, is also important – in fact, so important that an individual’s inability to perform them bespeaks of a disability, not a simple difference.

But the jaw-dropping aspect of the article is the YouTube video it references by an autism activist for the “difference model,” who has autism herself and is non-verbal. Her name is Amanda Baggs, and in the first several minutes of her video, she catalogs some of her own behaviors stereotypic of autism: hand flapping, humming, paper flicking. She then goes on to interpret some of these behaviors, using an augmentative communication device that speaks what she types. She describes these behaviors as being in a constant conversation with every aspect of her environment. Boy, can this woman write. She states:

Ironically, the way that I move when responding to everything around me is described as “being in a world of my own.”

This video is an absolute must-see for anyone who knows someone affected by autism. Whether or not you subscribe to the “difference” model or believe autism to be a disability, it’s eye-opening to see the complexity of thought that may be running around but not communicated via traditional verbal models.

Please, send me your comments about this article and video.

Political Writing: Maureen Dowd Bedazzles

Every once in a while, I read an op-ed column that is so entertaining, it could stand alone as a piece of great writing, even outside the context of the current events spurring it. Maureen Dowd‘s Op-Ed column today in The New York Times, “Begrudging His Bedazzling,” is one of those columns. Regardless of one’s politics, you have to appreciate the sheer fun evidenced in the wordplay of this column, which addresses the difficult time Hillary has had countering the Obama charisma (or “Obamisma,” as I like to call it). First, Dowd runs off a string of opposites in attributes, starting with “Sunny beats gloomy.” And to her credit, I think, these attributes are utterly free of gender connotations. But where she really starts to have fun with this piece is in her characterizations of the many voices of Hillary:

After saying she found her “voice” in New Hampshire, she has turned into Sybil. We’ve had Experienced Hillary, Soft Hillary, Hard Hillary, Misty Hillary, Sarcastic Hillary, Joined-at-the-Hip-to-Bill Hillary, Her-Own-Person -Who-Just-Happens-to-Be-Married-to-a-Former-President Hillary, It’s-My-Turn Hillary, Cuddly Hillary, Let’s-Get-Down-in-the-Dirt-and-Fight-Like-Dogs Hillary.

That passage made me chortle with glee.

Now clearly, Ms. Dowd is no hack. She’s been an op-ed columnist for The New York Times since 1995 and won a Pulitzer for Distinguished Commentary in 1999. But I think she had some real fun writing this column, so for me, I’ll take her “bedazzled” and raise her a “bewitched.”