Charlie Brown Pathetic Tree

If you remember the charlie brown cartoons and comics then you’ll recognise his pathetic Christmas tree… now you can buy one, just in time for Christmas. You can but it online at

UrbanOutfitters.com

Make boring books interesting…

Peter is starting to learn how to surf… the net that is. So like most sons with newbie parents I’m getting my fair share of tech support questions. So amidst all the pop-up, adware removal questions, Dad tells me about this great site that makes book covers that you wrap around some of your old hard covers and just leave lying around.

So you can leave your copy of ‘How to Overcome Nymphomania’ in your toilet with a bookmark in it and become a hero to your friends when they come to visit.

Remember we’re talking covers here, not books and I thought with Christmas coming up, you never know who might enjoy a copy of ‘How to Make Your Grandmother a Pornstar’.
Flapart

We win the tourism awards so maybe NOW we can get a sign

You read it here first, that is if you’re reading this at 11.25pm on Friday night, we have won the Queensland tourism awards for best tourism restaurant. I’m not saying that to blow our own horn but simply to point out how ridiculous it has been trying to get a bloody sign on the road pointing to the Spirit House, let me explain:

Local council have threatened, cajoled and bullied us for years about signage and it doesn’t matter how many shows like ‘Getaway’, ‘The Great Outdoors’,'The Great South East’, or any other TV shows that feature us, council won’t let us have a sign because they say we’re not a tourist attraction – But Queensland Tourism now says we are.

The first thing we do on Monday is ask council to put one of those groovy brown and white signs up… which is going to save hundreds of guests wandering into hillbilly country never to be heard from again… except for the wafting sounds of banjo music, cries of Yeeehaaaaw, and ‘Boy, you sure do got a pretty mouth’.

Great history of chocolate

The national association of manufacturers have great videos on how stuff is made. Their video on chocolate making is fascinating… from beans to bars… lots of history as well: In Aztec days. how many coco beans was a rabbit worth? 10… there’s one for your trivial pursuit nights.
This whole website is worth visiting and browsing for its many interesting videos.
via make blog

microlending causes a stir

I received quite a few comments about my previous post regarding microlending and today I see that the founder of Ebay has just given $100 million to Tuft university on the condition that the school invests in organisations that make small loans to poor people in developing countries.

Pierre ( the ebay founder) realised that nearly 700,000 ebay users support themselves part time or full time selling through ebay and sees that this economic empowerment can flow to developing countries if it has a chance.

Kiva certainly isn’t the first bank to offer these loans. Grameen was probably the first bank to make microlending successfull and now boasts 3.7million borrowers in 46,000 villages doing loans as small as $40.

Read more about ebay’s gift to Tufst

Microlending… you can lend a poor african farmer money… and get paid back

Seth Godin just blogged this great site called Kiva which allows you to lend an African farmer $25 to buy seed or start a small store selling soap or other necessary commodities and you get paid back. It’s these small amounts that make a real difference.

We have experienced this first hand as we have helped friends and relatives in Indonesia and Thailand get ahead with seemingly trivial amounts of money. The problem for these people is they just can’t access spare cash and the money they need is too small for a bank to touch… we have set up water delivery businesses, sewing businesses, export businesses with loans/donations ranging from $100 to a few thousand. This is why we love Kiva so much… we know that some flour, sugar, eggs is enough for a village lady to make some small cakes that she can sell in a market and the profit allows her to not only pay back the loan but support her family.

The best part about Kiva is that your money goes direct to the person needing the money. So unlike many other charities out there, your money is not wasted on admin expenses or expensive houses for the aid workers overseas.

So if you want to help out, visit Kiva to learn more.

Corruption leads to poverty

The map above shows the corruption index of countries around the world… red is bad, white is good and Australia is a faint pink. Notice how all the countries in red are the poorest?

Here I was blaming factors like natural resources, climate, lack of education etc as factors that kept countries in poverty… but it seems that the more corrupt a country is, the poorer the people. I’d like to say more but I have a march to attend, dreadlocks to grow and a flag to burn so in the meantime you can learn more about how to fight corruption here.

small scale food scenes

It’s amazing what some time on your hands and a macro lens can create. Found this neat blot about architecture which also has some amazing photos of miniature figurines doing things to food… quite fascinating.
BLDGBLOG: Foodscaping

Cooking for engineers

When designing a cookbook or a recipe for the cooking school we want the ingredients and method to be as easy to understand as possible… and that takes time and page space. I should have known that an engineer could turn ingredients and instructions into something incredibly elegant… in fact the guy behind Cooking For Engineers has a patent pending on his innovative way of formatting recipes.

While the recipes on his site aren’t exactly 5 star, there’s some neat stuff in there. Check out his recipes at: Cooking For Engineers

Soya sauce super hero fights foreign condiments

This is just so cool. Kikkomaso make soya sauce and have created this dumb animation and song showing their super hero/masocot fighting foreign condiments. I just love it and shows that advertising doesn’t have to be slick and glossy… and can contain some bad language- you’ve been warned.
Fight ! Kikkoman