sleepcamel.net : brad weikel

One of the reasons that Kiva seems to be wildly popular is that, in some way, it restores social capital (or the illusion of social capital) to the development industry. Disillusioned by the inefficiencies and ineffectiveness of monolithic organizations, ranging from the World Bank to UNICEF, middle class American philanthropists seem thrilled by Kiva's application of social networking to micro-lending.

Last night, a ghost bike was dedicated to Alice Swanson, the cyclist who was struck and killed by a garbage truck in DC earlier this week.

I'm no environmental economist, but something doesn't seem quite right about this quote:

"[Sugar] is a vital ingredient in the nation's food supply and you do not want to turn that over, in a great portion, to foreign suppliers... then you [will] end up being dependent, as we are on foreign oil."

-- Luther Markwart, American Sugar Alliance
(transcribed from this NPR segment)

Part 2 of 6 in a series discussing the 6 broad "topics" that I've incorporated into the latest design of my site. This post gives an overview of my current views on "Sustainability, Environmentalism & Green Politics," and how these relate to my daily life.

I've been meaning to get back into the whole "personal blog" thing, but I've had a pretty brutal semester. But I guess there's no time like the present: 4am on a Thursday morning, after spending 9 hours in the library doing economics.

If occured to me this afternoon that open source software is better for the environment than closed source software. I did some googling and couldn't find any articles about this concept, so I decided to write my own.

Unfortunately, because it's finals week, this will be brief. So, here are the top three reasons that open source software helps the environment.

1. Open source software saves packaging. That's less plastic and less paper being wasted.