Make this your last slave-chocolate Valentine’s Day [Social Justice]

Cross-posted from Oxfam America at Virginia Tech.

Valentine’s Day is a major holiday for the chocolate industry. Sunday night, VT Oxfam members raised funds by selling fair-trade chocolate goods across campus. Unfortunately, most of the chocolate sold for the holiday will help sustain one of the most universally supported systems of human rights abuse in the modern age.

Approximately 40% of the world’s cocoa supply comes from farms in West Africa supported by child slavery with most in Cote d’Ivoirie (the Ivory Coast). The U.S. Department of State estimates that 109,000 children are working in an abusive labor environment with as many as 10,000 suffering as victims of human trafficking or enslavement. Tragically, these are conservative estimates. In 2005 the International Labor Organization estimated that as many as 200,000 children work in West Africa cocoa farms.

[Guestblog] Losing weight and getting healthy – Riker’s Tips

One of the purposes of the guestblogs, besides taking the pressure off of me to actually produce content, is to share information with the readership that I may not have myself. While I’m clearly a master scholar on multimedia literature, international political theory, and being generally awesome, I am admittedly sorely lacking when it comes to fitness.

So today, I’m bringing on my good friend Riker, a man who went through a stunning transformation in college, so that he may school us all in becoming sexy machines of raw attraction. Take it away.

I’ve been overweight for the majority of my life.

I remember very clearly several periods of intensely unhealthy weight gain throughout my life.  I managed once or twice to get back into a normal weight range but it never stuck.  Partially due to this, I was depressed on and off through high school and I always fixated on my weight.  My humor and off-the-cuff remarks through those years were self-deprecating to the extreme and always varied around me being a “fat piece of shit” or some variant thereof.  The sad thing was that when I made a lot of these remarks I didn’t actually think about changing my diet or starting to exercise.

During my senior year of high school I ballooned due to having a car, a job, and a debit card all together for the first time.  Having the ability to buy snacks whenever I could make it to the local WaWa (especially before school) didn’t make life pretty.  I experienced a legendary level of sloth that year which covered my academics and my personal life.  As a result, I was about as big as I’ve been when I entered college.

I don’t really remember much about my weight gain or loss during the first three years of college, in large part because I mostly neglected to take advantage of the gym which was next door to where I lived.  I remember going swimming with some friends at the end of my freshman year and finally weighing myself for the first time in a long time.

265

I thought I’d be able to make it right that summer.  In hindsight, my naïveté was astounding.

I went to the gym a few times, and then because I really had no hard and fast schedule to follow, I stopped.  The next summer I kept to a regular schedule for longer, but ultimately fizzled out.  I came into the summer after that off another spring weight gain where I’d get double portions of macaroni and cheese for lunch and dinner some days.  It was actually a little bit worse beginning the summer of 2009, though, as I had just turned 21 and was still maturing as a drinker.  As before, I made a vow to myself regarding physical fitness.  Unlike before though, I only promised myself that I would go to the gym on weekdays and Saturdays when I didn’t have work.  The first day I went in and though I don’t remember the specific number, I weighed about…

280

The summer workouts were long and arduous, but starting in July the pounds started to fall off.  When I weighed myself on the first week of school, I was 262.5 lbs.

I had ambitious goals for that semester.  I wanted to keep a normal gym schedule in the mornings and change my eating habits.

As it turned out, my love for sleep meant I only went to the gym once that fall.  But, on the bright side, I did manage to reform my eating habits.  Double portions of mac-and-cheese became single portions with a vegetable side.  Late night trips to DX (The Holy City of Junk Food – Open ‘Till 2 AM Daily) disappeared.  Even better, I was living on a college campus, which meant that I walked everywhere.

I didn’t weigh myself until Thanksgiving break, but I had suspicions that I was definitely losing weight.  Certain areas of my body didn’t seem as robust and clothes started to get looser.  When I got home for the week break, I weighed myself.

240

This was really the moment that the floodgates opened and I became focused on the goal of finally getting healthy.  I had lost 20 lbs. by reforming my eating habits and walking everywhere, I could only imagine what was achievable if I put in a little more effort. And put in more effort I did.

When I got back from the break I stopped taking the elevator to work and instead took the four flights of stairs every time I went in.  I paid a little more attention to what I ate and even went to the gym a couple of times.  The result: five more pounds gone over three weeks.

Over the monthlong winter break, I no longer had a gym membership and so I walked…lots.  I paid even more attention to what I was eating and took full advantage of a fairly physical job.  When I got back to school for the spring semester I weighed…

225

This time, I was finally able to keep to a normal gym schedule of five days a week.  I checked the school’s dining hall nutrition website at least once a day, often multiple times.

I dropped the mac-and-cheese altogether.

At the gym I started slow, on stationary bikes.  After a little while I shifted to the elliptical machines and then slowly-but-surely moved on to the treadmill.  When I got home for spring break I was down to…

210

Phil the Pill’s note: We couldn’t track down a picture during this time period, but Redbeard tagged him in this picture, so it’s a cool placeholder.

By this time, compliments were starting to roll in about my new look. It didn’t hurt that I bought over $100 of new clothes so people could actually tell what I had accomplished.

As much as I enjoyed the new attention, and as rightfully proud as I was of what I had accomplished, I had a little trouble dealing with the compliments.  I appreciated them for what they were, but I realized that all I had done was get myself to about average.  I knew that to achieve my real goals I would have to stay motivated, and part of doing that is keeping accomplishments in perspective while still using them as fuel.

Since the middle of March, I’ve lost about 10 more pounds and am currently about…

198

Phil the Pill’s note: Spot the product placement.

I’ve managed to avoid a backslide, and in everything I do I feel and look healthier.  So, now is as good a time as any to spill my “secrets” for weight loss success.

THE Secret:

3,500

There are 3,500 calories in one pound of fat.  This means that you must burn that many more calories than you take in to be one pound lighter.  This may sound like a lot, but don’t be afraid.  The more you weigh right now, the more calories you burn doing everything.  And, if you look at it this way, you only have to burn 500 more calories than you consume every day for a week, and you’ll hit that number.

What follows is a nearly exhaustive list of every piece of advice I can think of.  None of it is complex, and most of the following tips boil down to “be more active and eat healthier.”  That was all I did in order to lose over 80 pounds.  I’m not going to pretend that it was always easy but I can assure you that it was never complicated.

Part 1: The Little Things

1. Weigh Thyself

If possible, weigh yourself once a day.  Try to always weigh yourself at the same time every day and do it while wearing roughly the same weight clothing (if you have a bathroom scale, weigh yourself before you shower).  What you want from this is a modicum of accuracy.  The purpose of daily weigh-ins is to be able to identify and correct trends, not to penalize yourself for minor weight fluctuations.

2. Make time for yourself

When you start an exercise program try to actually make it a part of your schedule.  If you assign a concrete block of time only to going for a walk, going for a run, or going to the gym you’ll eventually feel out-of-sorts if you miss your exercise time.  Besides, losing weight is really about developing healthy habits for the rest of your life, and regular exercise is one of the healthiest habits you can have.

3. Improvise

As great as having a schedule is, don’t close yourself off to the possibility of being active or doing exercise when you don’t have it scheduled.  If a friend offers to go for a walk, take the offer.  The same goes for any activity that sees you up and doing something.  You need to find a state of mind that tells you that more activity is always a good thing.

4. Start slow

In both diet and exercise, trying to start from zero and go immediately to drastic changes will always end in failure.  A year ago, I started small, only committing to going to the gym a few times a week.  As time went on I started to make adjustments in my diet.  Those started small too.  I didn’t immediately cut out all of my guilty pleasure foods.  Instead I got used to having less of them, and then I cut a lot of them out altogether.

5. Keep improving

This is the other side of the “start slow” coin.  If all you can physically do at the gym right now is 15 minutes on a stationary bike, that’s fine.  But once you can do more, you have to change.  Make small increases in time, speed, elevation, resistance, weight, or whatever else the exercises you do allow you to change.

6. Get vertical at the gym

Bikes are fine, but if you’re looking to burn serious calories doing cardio, you need to look elsewhere.  Basically: Treadmill > Elliptical > Upright Bike > Recumbent Bike.

7. Make your life “harder”

Living in the most developed and richest nation on earth, we are constantly being presented with technological improvements that make our lives “easier” and us fatter.  My advice is to willfully ignore some of them.  Take the stairs instead of the elevator.  Wash dish by hand instead of using the dishwasher.  Park further from the grocery store.  Don’t drive when you can walk.  See all of these things as an opportunity rather than an inconvenience and I can pretty much guarantee you’ll feel healthier.

Addendum to 7

Seriously, walk more than you already do.  And do your best to increase that amount.  I mean it.  If you find walking dull and boring, then either find a friend who will walk with you or grab your mp3 player and use the time to listen to your favorite tunes, burn through some audio books, or catch up on some podcasts.  When I walk, my ear-fuel of choice in Kevin Smith’s SModcast, which is admittedly too blue and profane for a lot of people.  But the great thing about podcasts is that there’s something on every topic, and there’s a lot of high-quality stuff out there.  Best of all, the overwhelming majority of them are free.  It’s one less excuse to keep from getting outside and moving.

8. Don’t be sedentary

Going out and taking a big walk or going to the gym for an hour are great things, but they’re not the whole story.  If you go to the gym for an hour in the morning and then sit and play video games for the rest of the day, I assure you that you’re doing yourself no favors.  I read about some research recently that said that people who are more active more of the time are on the whole both healthier and thinner.

9a. It’s about what you eat.

To put it succinctly: eat less processed food, eat less sugar (which will hid out where you least expect it, like condiments), eat more vegetables (iceberg lettuce and corn don’t count), eat more whole grains, eat lean meat.  Simply put, eat more things that are fresh from the earth.

9b. It’s about how you eat.

Take a good look at how you cook your food, or in some cases, how it is cooked for you.  Boil, steam, and bake more.  Fry less.

9c. It’s about when you eat.

Waiting too long between meals only hurts you in the long run.  If you wait eight hours from lunch until dinner it will be harder to control the urge to overeat.  Worse still, if you’re body doesn’t get food on a good schedule it starts to shift to storing fat rather than burning it.  If you start to get faint from not having food and you think you can just “suffer through it” or something similar, you are an idiot.  Find a rhythm that works and stick to it to the best of your ability.

10. Read the WHOLE LABEL

While I advocate roughly keeping track of your caloric intake, I must also say that reading the whole nutritional information label is important.  I can think of several completely unhealthy ways to eat less than 2,000 calories.  Pay attention to fat, carbs, and protein.  All of these are NECESSARY for a healthy diet but in overly large quantities they can only hurt.

11. Learn what your body needs

This is a combination of research and experimentation.  When you’re changing your diet, you should know as much as you can about what you’re eating.  Do independent research or ask a medical professional.  But also rely on how you feel.  A diet that gives you no energy or a feeling of lethargy is not a healthy diet.  Being educated and well-read on nutrition allows you to truly find the best things to eat.

12. Never do gimmick or “quick fix” diets

 

 

These things irritate me to no end.  Plain and simple, they work in the short term because they make you cheat, and therefore they cannot work in the long term.  If your only “food” during the day is a mix of water, maple syrup, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice you’ll lose weight because your body is being deprived of calories to such an extreme degree that it has no choice but to burn fat.  In the meantime, you will be doing damage to your metabolism and who knows what else inside your body.  And when you go off this diet your body will have no idea what to do with actual human food.  The same goes for stuff that makes you only eat one food or forbids items that can be a part of a healthy diet.

13. Know your weaknesses

If you’ve gotten to the point where you’re taking my advice, you know what foods make you weak.  For me it was macaroni and cheese, chex mix, and anything with cheddar cheese.  Try eliminating your weaknesses from your diet and your surroundings slowly and keep them only as a treat.  If they’re just too tempting get rid of them from your home completely and try to avoid them when you’re out.  I know all too well how hard this can be but I also know how destructive those cravings can be.  Food cravings can be an addiction, and any former addict will tell you that having temptations around will lead to a relapse.

Addendum to 13:

It’s okay to eat your favorite junk food once-in-a-while, just remember that having it around will tempt you in your weakest moments.  On the other hand, never allowing yourself to have ice cream can lead to a breaking point.  Find a balance between the two.  Allow yourself to cheat, but don’t keep things around all the time.

Part 2: The Big Stuff

 

The biggest and most critical keys I have found to losing weight are not physical, they’re mental.  I’m not the first person (and I certainly won’t be the last) to emphasize how much your mental state can impact your body.  So, fittingly, my three biggest keys are all focused on what you do with your mind.  Those keys are:

1. Patience

2. Persistence

3. Hunger for knowledge

Patience means being prepared to take a long time to reach your goals.  Weight loss can sometimes go at a blistering pace and sometimes it will move at a crawl.  Throughout the entire process of dieting and exercise your mindset needs to be one of constant and consistent determination.  Don’t make the mistake I did before of expecting instant change.  Focus on the here and now and accomplishing short-term goals.  Your patience will pay off when all those small bits of weight you lose turn into one big number.

Persistence goes hand-in-hand with patience.  I’ve experienced my share of disappointing weigh-ins, and I know how downtrodden they can make you feel.  You cannot use those as an excuse not to care and try as hard.  Know that you’re doing right by your body by feeding it better food and making it more active.  Eventually, the weight you lose will show this.  Until then, soldier on no matter what the scale tells you.  Even once you achieve your goals, you can’t just revert back to your old ways.  You have to persist in caring about your body because the changes you make now are changes you should be making for life.

The most important (at least to me) key to losing weight is constantly seeking out and reading more information about food, nutrition, and exercise.  New research is being done all the time and many websites will carry the latest news about what they’re finding.  More knowledge can never hurt in allowing you to make better and more informed choices.  That said, don’t jump on trends.  If you read about some new plant from the far reaches of the globe that is guaranteed to make you thin, don’t go out and buy a dozen bottles of the extract.  Remember, be patient.

“Trust me. I have a college degree.”

Some websites that I’ve found helpful:

• Lifehacker –  among numerous tech and DIY articles, this Gawker-owned blog also includes true life-hacks about food, nutrition, and exercise.  The articles you’ll find useful aren’t regular features, so simply type in terms like “diet” or “exercise” into the search box to have a look at their archives on those topics.
• Eat This, Not That – also a popular series of books focused on empowering consumers by telling the exactly how good or bad the things they’re eating are.  They’ve evaluated many popular grocery store foods but their true usefulness to me was in evaluating restaurant foods.  They act as a sort-of watchdog, exposing nutrition facts that restaurants might not want out in the open and automatically failing any chain that refuses to divulge information.
• Individual Restaurant Websites – for many popular chain places, all you have to do is search the restaurant name with “nutrition” tacked on the end and you’ll find either an official site or something independently operated which will give you all the info you could ever possibly want.  My advice is to visit one of these sites if you know where you’ll be eating in the near future.  You don’t have to make one decision then and there, but have a list of healthy options in mind for when you do actually go.

With that last point made, I encourage those of you reading this who really want to lose weight to keep on reading, because this is far from the definitive guide to how to eat healthier and exercise more.  I also encourage you to talk to a doctor or nutritionist if you’re feeling confused.  Also, remember that if you read this and go out and hurt yourself dieting or exercising that neither Phil nor I is responsible or liable [Phil’s emphasis].

If you have any further questions or want clarification on anything I’ve had to say, post a comment on the article.  You can also email me at tims329[at]yahoo[dot]com and I’ll do my best to respond to you in a timely manner.

Riker is a graduate of Virginia Tech with a bachelor of arts in History, magna cum laude. He enjoys quality drinks, engaging television, and yelling at opposing sports teams. If you want to download more of his wisdom into your brain, you can visit his blog, which is currently in its infancy.

Taro Aso’s Bowout + Girls with Bellies

Happy Sunday, everybody.

How do you like the new redesign? (And by redesign, I mean I went to the Themes page and picked a thumbnail). I didn’t realize just how drab and hard to read the old theme was. This feels…nice. Bright. Expansive. I can definitely learn to live with this.

Today we’ve got:
Political news from Japan that has nothing to do with anime
Good news for perfectly normal women tired of feeling fat
A solar power infographic that will make you angry at our lack of initative

Don’t Cry for Me, Nippon

The Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, essentially in control of the country for 54 years, has lost its hold on the government after this weekend’s elections.

The left-of-center Democratic Party of Japan was set to win 300 or more of the 480 seats in the lower house of parliament, ousting the Liberal Democrats, who have governed Japan for all but 11 months since 1955, according to exit polls by all major Japanese TV networks…

…[Japanese Prime Minister Taro] Aso said he would have to accept responsibility for the results, suggesting that he would resign as party president. Other LDP leaders also said they would step down, though official results were not to be released until early Monday morning.

The loss by the Liberal Democrats — traditionally a pro-business, conservative party — would open the way for the Democratic Party, headed by Yukio Hatoyama, to replace Aso and establish a new Cabinet, possibly within the next few weeks.

The vote was seen as a barometer of frustrations over Japan’s worst economic slump since World War II and a loss of confidence in the ruling Liberal Democrats’ ability to tackle tough problems such as the rising national debt and rapidly aging population.

The Democrats have embraced a more populist platform, promising handouts for families with children and farmers, a higher minimum wage, and to rebuild the economy.

Apparently, Aso's sumo wrestler outreach program wasn't as popular as he hoped it would be.

Americans might question what the big deal is, since we switch parties in power all the time (or so you think), but given the LDP’s dominance in politics, this would be like us voting in a Third Party candidate for President. The Japanese have apparently looked at their system and decided it sucks and then they used the democratic tools at their disposal to do something about it.

Huh. Imagine that.

I’m also unsympathetic to the LDP which appears to have more in common with the Republican Party than any other serious party in Japan.

But the lesson to take away from this is: just because something has been a certain way for a long period of time doesn’t mean it has to be that way forever. I’ll remember that next election cycle.

Also, I was lying about the lack of anime part.

Glamour to women: Belly is beautiful

To the ladies, how many times have you picked up a fashion magazine and leafed through only to find yourself feeling inadequate or frustrated at the unrealistic portrayal of the flat-stomached, Photoshopped models?

As a dude, I get my fair share of pressure to work out and look like a rippling mass of muscle or at least become less round. But I have to say, it seems like it sucks more to be a girl. I have plenty of fat-man role models to make me feel like I’ve got some sort of romantic and career-related future ahead. Who do women have? Roseanne? So the lesson is, be fat, land a John Goodman sized husband and be generally disgusting.

Beyond that, there’s really no woman in the media who is somewhere between impossibly thin and balloon-shaped. No girls on MTV with a pouch belly or heavier thighs. You’re either Paris Hilton or Behemoth, Destroyer of Boners.

Well, a picture nestled in the pages of the September issue of Glamour is causing a small commotion:

Okay, guys, legitimate opinions here. Do you agree that this woman is actually really hot? She’s gorgeous. So why do women feel like they have to punish themselves to look like anything other than what they are? Sure, I’ll support your desire to work out to be healthier, fitter and minimize as much fat as is healthy, but as the above model, Lizzi Miller, points out: some people just aren’t meant to be supermodel skinny.

“When I was young I really struggled with my body and how it looked because I didn’t understand why my friends were so effortlessly skinny,” Lizzi told [Glamour editor-in-chief Cindi Levie]. “As I got older I realized that everyone’s body is different and not everyone is skinny naturally–me included. I learned to love my body for how it is, every curve of it. I used to be so self-conscious in a bikini because my stomach wasn’t perfectly defined. But everyone has different body shapes. And it’s not all about the physical. If you walk on the beach in your bikini with confidence and you feel sexy, people will see you that way too.”

Note: I removed several exclamation points, because they made her sound dumb.

My gender-roles worldview tells me that if women were less focused on making themselves into one of the Girls Next Door, then they could spend more time challenging institutional misogyny, learning things that make them legitimately interesting, and finding ways to not be bitches (it’s okay, I’m a feminist).

But a healthy dose of Pill skepticism here, does this mean that Glamour is going to revolutionize the image of the perfect-looking woman and start dominating their pages with realistic-proportioned models? Well, let’s check out the cover.

Uh...maybe they usually have 25 fat belly secrets?

Yeah, I’m going to go out on a limb and say no.

So, ladies, you can lose this huge burden of trying to achieve an anorexic figure without the stigma of an eating disorder. The first thing you can do in your new life of self-appreciation?

Stop picking up Glamour. (Cosmo should go without saying).

Humanity is Dumb, Example 340,000,000

Bigger size.

Yeah, but if we did that, then what would happen to our precious coal and nuclear plants? We don’t like change. You keep your extremely efficient and non-toxic form of alternative energy.

That’s all I have today. The week will be busy, but I’ll update as often as I can.

Foto Friday: Checkin’ out the G8 Assets

Today’s Foto Friday is being updated from Suburbia, as I take a weekend up north to visit friends and family.

Some good news for a change: the G8 have pledged $20 billion to farmers in poor countries. Obama is also pushing for more countries to join the decision-making group like China, India, and Brazil.

Tackling global challenges “in the absence of major powers like China, India and Brazil seems to be wrongheaded,” Obama said, adding that he looked forward to “fewer summit meetings.”

Begun in 1975 with six members, the G8 now groups the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Russia and Canada. The Italians made it a “G14” with emerging powers on the second day, then added 15 more on the third.

That enabled Obama, traveling to Ghana on his first trip to sub-Saharan Africa as president, to use the summit to push for a shift toward agricultural investment from food aid. Washington will make $3.5 billion available to the 3-year program.

“There is no reason Africa should not be self-sufficient when it comes to food,” said Obama, recalling that his relatives in Kenya live “in villages where hunger is real,” though they themselves are not going hungry.

Some would look at this rhetoric and balk at the specter of globalization. Personally, I’m all about a world community with common interests, so I’ve been impressed with Obama’s time abroad this month.

Beginning the photo spam with a G8 picture:

My favorite part is Sarkozy in both pictures, particularly him seemingly chuckling at Obama on the right.

Of course, Obama was actually turning to help someone down the steps, but if he were checking her out, can you blame the man?

Sarkozy, on the other hand, is totally a perv.

Want (click for info):

Serious moment, pictures from the ethnic riots in Urumqi, China in which both Uighur and Han Chinese suffered violent attacks. From The Big Picture.

Top 3 Pixadus pictures (I’m not sure if they’ll allow the linking this time, but let’s see):

Finally, being overrun by nuclear monsters would be worth it as long as they actually did this:

Happy Cow Appreciation Day!

Foto Friday: The Day After the King of Pop’s Demise

So, yesterday was the day for me to be sentimental about Michael Jackson’s death.

Today the media has completely desensitized me to it.

Which is why we move on to [fanfare] reasons you should support (and maybe fund) Phil the Pill’s efforts to launch his own News Network [fanfare].

On PtPTV, there would not be more than 10% news coverage to a celebrity death or scandal. Imagine if instead of devoting time to wondering if Michael Jackson’s doctor had something do with his heart attack, we devoted time to the decisions being made about healthcare, world economy, the wars in Afghanistian and Iraq, and humanitarian crises in Africa and the third world. Imagine if our media actually put its mind to the Big Problems that are supposedly Unsolvable.

Michael Jackson was a tremendous human being. But, unless I’m mistaken, he wanted people to help each other. I don’t think turning our news into the MJ Biography Channel would accomplish the goals he would have liked to see the world achieve.

That said, PtPTV would use Michael Jackson music as segment transitions on the day after his death.
—–
Foto Friday

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, released by Disney and a sequel to the classic animated film, is scheduled for release in 2010.

Closer still to Sarychev Peak Volcano, pyroclastic flows can be seen tumbling down its slope (lighter clouds, bottom). Also visible are breaking waves on the shoreline and a closer view of the condensation cloud or "pileus", formed by the rapidly rising plume. (NASA/JSC)

“Oh, Phil, you’re such a hypocrite, telling the media not to focus on trivialities while you avoid serious topics every Friday by posting pictures of cute things and animals. Shame on you, you lousy bum.”

Hey, pal, I’m not a 24-hour news network. I run a blog that is heavily dependent on alliteration. And I try to bring up important topics at least four days out of the week while maintaining a job and going to class, so I don’t really consider it my responsibility to fulfill my civic duty by giving up my life to correct the mass media’s mistakes. If it were my paid job to provide the public with information necessary to help them make their day-to-day decisions, I would certainly run things fairly differently, and distinctly separate the trivial from the important, but as of now, this is a peripheral operation with many goals and severe resource restrictions preventing it from going full time.

So shut your hypothetical mouth.

Quote of the Day

“’Lies run sprints, but the truth runs marathons.” – Michael Jackson

Magnanimous Monday – Self.org

As promised, Phil the Pill will shout-out a good cause, service program, or charity organization every Monday. This falls under the mission of Project Veritas, which is to get a large social network of people changing the world for the better. If you get behind a few world-changing activities in addition to the service many of you are already involved in, you will create a lobby and a culture of activity that will get the politicians and corporations noticing.

Today’s organization is the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF).

I got a message from their communications director through Idealist and she directed me to their website, which is more than simply alternative energy.

The Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF) is fighting climate change and global poverty with solar power. With your help families can lift themselves out of poverty by having clean, safe water to drink; food to eat; vaccinations to prevent disease; light to study and work by; computers at school to help them learn; and power to increase their income. Change a village … Change the world.

SELF is an NPO that believes that “energy is a human right” and I agree. They have facilitated solar electricity projects in over 15 countries. This is really exciting, because energy and resource consumption is a huge problem, especially in developing countries that can’t afford to curb energy-consuming behavior.

You can help SELF by partnering with them if you have a business, going carbon neutral, or donating.

Magnanimous Monday – Kiva.org

As promised, Phil the Pill will try to shout-out a good cause, service program, or charity organization every Monday. This falls under the mission of Project Veritas, which is to get a large social network of people changing the world for the better. If you get behind a few world-changing activities in addition to the service many of you are already involved in, you will create a lobby and a culture of activity that will get the politicians and corporations noticing. The next step would be going after them.

To initiate Magnanimous Monday, I started an idealist.org account. It’s a social network for people trying to do good things in various fields, including civil rights, poverty, hunger, personal finance, arts, media…you name it. I looked at their blog and remembered a few conversations I had with Marathon about micro loans, so I looked into Kiva.

From Wikipedia:

A kiva is a room used by modern Puebloans for religious rituals, many of them associated with the kachina belief system. Among the modern Hopi and most other Pueblo peoples, kivas are square-walled and underground, and are used for spiritual ceremonies.

Uh…wrong Kiva. Here we go:

Kiva Microfunds is an organization that allows people to lend money via the Internet to microfinance institutions in developing countries which in turn lend the money to small businesses.^[1] It is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization headquartered in San Francisco, supported by donations from its users and through partnerships with businesses and other institutions.^[2]

As of May 6, 2009, Kiva has distributed $71,224,760 in loans from 486,857 lenders. A total of 102,007 loans have been funded. The average loan size is $419.91. Its current repayment rate is 98.18%.^[19] According to Alexa, Kiva’s website typically ranks well into the top 25,000 websites on the Internet.^[20]

The total costs of running Kiva in 2008 totaled $4.7M. During 2008, the user base released about $37M to low-income entrepreneurs listed on the Kiva website. So, for every dollar spent on operations, Kiva lenders sent about $8 for loans. Kiva have 35 staff members.^[21]

Sample loans

Fisherman seeks refrigerator

• 51 year old fisherman with three children in Azerbaijan
• 12 years of experience
• Seeks 12 month loan for $725 USD in order to purchase a refrigerator
• Has already successfully repaid two prior microloans

Loan to expand restaurant business

• 27 year old seeks financial independence
• Desires $475 USD loan to improve existing restaurant
• Has already successfully repaid one previous loan

It looks like the way to make the most impact is to be part of teams (amusingly, it looks like there’s an Atheist team and a Christian team trying to outdo each other on how much good they can do). I know Marathon is planning to start a Kiva effort here at Tech, so be on the lookout for that. I’ll blog and tweet about it as soon as it gets underway. If you’re not in Blacksburg or if you can’t wait, grab a few entrepeneurial friends, church communities, or just plain rich people and start up with Kiva. They’re not handouts. They’re capital for opportunity. Certainly Adam Smith would be proud.

That’s your Magnanimous Monday for the week. Standard blog post(s) coming up after this.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Remember to tell your mom thank you for bringing you into this world of corruption, violence, and moral depravity.

“Working” on my last final, so you’ll content yourselves with the best items I found on “What’s Hot on Google” today.

WTF...does the fact that I find this slightly racist make me a PC lamer? I also want to eat one. The package says "Obamitas: Bring happiness to your day."

Funniest thing in a long time:

To finally put the Swine Flu hysteria to rest, here’s a picture of the only pig in Afghanistan that got quarantined. Hey, at least they didn’t decide to slaughter it.

RIP Swine Flu hysteria.

For a fistful of rocks

At the CT Office, “gearing up” for the debate tonight.

A note about my continuous Swine Flu coverage. I know it looks hypocritical after saying that Swine Flu doesn’t seem like a big deal. To be perfectly honest, I’m still not sure if it’s going to end up being anything other than a hyped scare. But the news does get more alarming by the day and this is something that people are thinking and talking about whether we like it or not…And in case I have to eat my own words and this become a serious pandemic, I’d like to keep myself and that One Guy who didn’t read this before stumbling upon this informed.

So, with that in mind, your Swine Flu update:

Nearly a week after the threat first emerged in Mexico, Spain reported the first case in Europe of swine flu in a person who had not been to Mexico, underscoring the threat of person-to-person transmission.

“It is clear that the virus is spreading and we don’t see evidence of it slowing down at this point,” Dr. Keiji Fukuda, WHO acting assistant director-general, told a news briefing…

…U.S. officials said that a 22-month-old boy had died in Texas — the first confirmed U.S. swine flu death — but they added that he was on a family visit from Mexico, where up to 159 flu fatalities have been recorded.

Dr. Richard Besser, acting head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the country now had 91 confirmed cases in 10 states from New York to California.

“We’re going to find more cases. We’re going to find more severe cases and I expect that we’ll continue to see additional deaths,” Besser said.

That’s…uplifting.

Multiple countries are now considering travel bans to Mexico and affected areas. Unfortunately, experts and computer models say that won’t work.

In a 2007 paper, Vespignani’s team modelled the spread of influenza pandemics of varying severities in 3100 urban centres in 220 countries. They also looked at the effectiveness of countermeasures including vaccination, administration of antiviral drugs such as Tamiflu, and travel restrictions.

A Draconian 10-fold reduction in airline travel would delay a pandemic by only a few weeks and have no effect on its overall health impact, Vespignani’s team concluded. Other measures – particularly widespread administration of antiviral drugs – proved far more effective at limiting the spread of hypothetical pandemics.

Hmm…I believe the models when they say that imposing air travel bans won’t slow the pandemic. But forgive me if I won’t be going to Mexico anytime soon. Or if I wash my hands very thoroughly after hanging out with someone who’s been to Mexico recently. At some point, you can’t help but act according to your own common sense, no matter how flawed science may say that it is.

I still have hopes that this will plateau sooner rather than later. I feel bad for the family of that toddler though. Still, if you want to see overreactions:

Egypt is killing 300,000 pigs out of fear of Swine Flu. Even though there are no cases of swine flu reported in Egypt.

…Okay, you know me. I’m not a member of PETA. I like eating pigs. But I also can’t help but feel that this is somewhat inhumane, in addition to being really stupid. By this logic, they might as well slaughter every person coming into Egypt from the Americas…just to be safe.

I'm not sure if this guy is taking the pig to the slaughter or bravely trying to save it.

You know, Swine Flu is giving pigs a bad name. Maybe we should all get together and remind ourselves what we thought of pigs before this outbreak.

To your sheep, your fleece, your clan be true.

—–

Military industrial complex watch. Confusing military situation in Pakistan.

Pakistan takes a cue from Egypt and ups the ante against Pigs.

In other news, more signs of the apocalypse…People are getting owned by Rocks.

1) Florida kid gets Nintendo DS box…box is full of rocks.

2) Guy thinks he’s buying Macbook Pro…gets $2165 paving stone instead.

The kid got a happy ending….after both Wal-Mart and Nintendo refused to help, the mother complained to higher ups until Wal-Mart gave her a refund and a $20 gift card. The paving stone guy…not much luck from either Best Buy or Apple.

Still more useful than a PC?...Eh, Apple fanboyism falls flat.

That’s pretty despicable, guys.
—-

More topics today. Last semester as part of a Videogame Colloquium, I watched King of Kong, the story of Steve Wiebe’s attempts to take the Donkey Kong high score from reigning champ (and general douchebag) Billy Mitchell. Well, Steve Wiebe is still at it, recently achieving a score of 1,139,800 for Donkey Kong Jr.

This guy has world records, a wife, and children. And he plays video games all day. How's your life shaping up?

Is Steve Wiebe becoming the Establishment?

No segue.

CT news reporter Gordon Block made a cool stop-motion video. I like the music myself.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

And as long as we’re on the topic of cute things that take our mind off global pandemics, major retailers boning us, and unrest in the Middle East.

Pandas and Puppies.

—-

That was a lot of crap I just threw at you, but one more thing. Shameless plug:

Creigh Deeds, Terry McAuliffe, and Brian Moran, Democratic candidates for Virginia governor will be debating tonight, April 29, at the Lyric theater in Blacksburg. The Collegiate Times website will be broadcasting the debate live starting at 6:30 p.m.. So if you have any sort of vested interest in the outcome of the Democratic nomination for VA governor, I encourage you to check it out and listen to the candidates.

I will be filming at the location, but if I can embed the live video onto this blog at 6:30, I will, so stay posted.

Phil the Pill out.

Wherever I May Bo

Not much on the agenda for today. I just feel like having some laughs.

From Digg. Man listens to Metallica 7 times an hour, 24 hours a day, for a year.

Behold. The New Face of Socialism.

And he's gay too!

UPDATE: FOUND COOLEST THING EVER on Reddit!

http://lab.andre-michelle.com/swf/fl10/ToneMatrix.swf