João Mota: September 2008

Friday, September 26, 2008

Kiva

I've been lending to Kiva for almost two years now, and the second loan I made has just been repaid: I helped Ndella Taye from Senegal to buy supplies to feed her cattle, which she sold to not only repay her loan, but to start a savings account with her husband.

This is her 12th microfinanced loan, and her ambitions to diversify her business are high. The total amount lent this time was $1,050.00. I contributed a measly $25, which I got back in exactly the timeframe promised (6 months).
In all truth, I can't say I did much, I didn't even spend any money, and yet it feels nice. Feels even nicer to see that I'm having a hard time reloaning the $25 to someone else, 'cause all loans requested on kiva.org are fully funded at this point! A big step up since the site got started...

Oh look, three new loans just popped up! Here's twenty-five bucks headed Mrs. Rojas' way!
Good luck in your business...!

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

guns don't kill people

"...stupid motherfuckers with guns kill people"

according to the Small Arms Survey 2007 by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies, there's one gun for every seven people worldwide. given that even the crappiest handgun packs at least six bullets, the math makes sense. what doesn't is that I'm one of the six getting shot :P
so what do you think, should I get a gun? should we all get a gun and finally have peace, in a coldwar-madman-tactics kind of logic? or should we take the gun from that other guy? I'm not sure I want to be the first in line for that one though...

and what is the connection between guns and highschool shootings in the connection-less world? Mr. Moore argues that the US right wing is the child-killer for allowing guns to spread among citizens. but he set out to prove that from the start, due to his own personal political bias - and you can prove anything you want if you set your mind to it from the beginning: blame it on God, the Devil, Allah or Canada. or the butterfly flapping its wings 30000km away. or the planets. so today in finland there was another shooting. and finland isn't the US, this is a civilized european country here. with low pollution and high income. with good jobs and salaries, and a high cultural level. so what are your conclusions now? (mr. moore's are probably something along the lines of 'bowling for helsinky' and how much revenue that'll generate - kudos for finding such a profitable niche) agreed, finland is the 3rd most heavily armed country in the world, just behind the US - but that's pretty obvious: no gun, no shooting. but is it so irrelevant to understand why this urge to kill emerges? seems to me we're having a really hard time adjusting to modern western life... and it's been a while!