These are my previous loans:
Teina Teuila

I've made another loan via Kiva. I like this idea because it gives people with a bit of get up and go a chance to make their lives better. This is the 5th loan I've made. A small amount of the money has been repaid.



So, because this is a commercial loan, I've developed a few rules for my lending:
. the lender is allowed to take some interest as long as they are substantially below the local lenders. The local lenders are often little better than loan sharks.
. the loan has to be for sustainable practices. For example: I avoided a loan for agricultural chemicals as I believe that farmers should keep more traditional agricultural practices and permaculture principles. Introducing chemical fertilisers and pesticides will cause dependency. I want to fund independence.
. the lender has to have a nil delinquency rate. This indicates that they select borrowers carefully. I want to encourage fiscally astute people, not give a gift.

I prefer to lend to women with children because:
. if a woman with children borrows money to grow their business they will use all of that money for that purpose.
. if, on the other hand, you lend to a single man he will celebrate first and use the remainder for the business.
. women are often discriminated against fiscally. I want to level the playing field a little. I can only save my little bit of the world.
. in countries where women do not enjoy equallity, children suffer greatly if the father is gone and the mother is unable to earn a good living.

Our motorhome. We've done about 10,000 kms since Sept 06. It is fantastic! :D

Jail Paris Hilton. Yaaaaaay! She claims that she wasn't aware of her loss of licence. This doesn't explain why she was driving at 70mph, 45mph over the limit without headlights in the dark. I agree with petitions (here, here) calling for Ms Hilton to serve the sentence. Her fame is dependant on hoards of impressionable people. Enforcing this sentence might be the very best impression they could get. I look forward to abuse from Paris Addicts.

Bird lungs are amazing. I had an idea that they didn't work like human lungs but I had no idea! It's similar to the circular breathing required for didgeridoo with the air flowing constantly though one area while other areas fill and empty... obviously completely different but I saw the similarity. Remember, I only have to please myself.

From a speech said to have been given by Bill Gates at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

If you can read this - Thank a teacher!

Honda has re-worked the passenger car diesel engine and come up with some major improvements. One startling outcome is the ad. :)

Oh yeah!

Discipline is being able to recognize that even though the setups
are skewed toward moving in a given direction more times than not,
there are times when they are not going to move.

Don Miller

No, it appears that this is just blogger's way of spamming users... oh well, I suppose they have to get satisfaction out of the free blogs they offer so they are seeking the dubious satisfaction of annoying people with spam. :P

In an exciting new twist for my blog, someone appears to have read it! Jordon's comments here...

I've got a Yahoo! mailbox. Until this day I didn't know that they were data mining. Fortunately, Yahoo! allows you to opt out of this data mining. So, head on over to Yahoo! Privacy and remove the cookie if you don't want Yahoo! to know where you surf. :)

The good folks at Angry Alien have just release a tribute to It's a Wonderful Life.
Don't forget to chip in a few bucks for bandwidth.

Did Hot Black Dessiatu's ship (that was so black) have a name?

Who am I quoting?
"To coldly place the pursuit of profit above all other considerations is to be indifferent to all notions of humanity."
My mother wrote this on a piece of paper and stuck it to the wall near the kitchen 20 years ago and I still remember it. Was it a quote or did she come up with it? :)

JFK Reloaded:
What I really like about this game is that it has really upset plenty of Americans. With many of the top 50 scores being from Americans the public obviously is not nearly as offended as their representatives.

An excellent sculpture.

Because everyone has time to kill, have a go at being God.

This is my first picture post using Bloggerbot. 

Puppy Curling.