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Why blogging about jury duty may be a bad idea…

This Slate article worries me – could tv really be bad for us after all? Apparently, exposing your babies to tv is bad; but too much may be even worse?

Pancake recipe – without resorting to a mix?! Cool!

And, just when we all have gotten back from our travels, the NY Times on Affordable SF hotels. Geez Louise!

And, last but not least: are the Mets incredibly lucky or what?    Rain in St. Louis gives Tom Glavine another day to rest.  Let’s Go Mets!

I love this story on the Nobel Peace Prize – the idea of a professor of economics doing more than being in the Ivory Tower – but finding a basic way of using basic capitalism to help those who need it most:

The 2006 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded today to the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh and its founder, Muhammad Yunus, for pioneering microcredit — using loans of tiny amounts to transform destitute women into entrepreneurs.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised Dr. Yunus and Grameen for their “efforts to create economic and social development from below.”

Though it is not the first time the committee has chosen to honor economic development as a contribution to world peace, rather than the more usual diplomacy, rights advocacy or philanthropy, it is the first time the prize has been awarded to a profit-making business.

The selection seemed to embody two connected ideas that are gaining ground among development experts: that attacking poverty is essential to peace, and that private enterprise is essential to attacking poverty.

Dr. Yunus founded the bank in his native Bangladesh to lend small amounts of cash — often as little as $20 — to local people, almost always women, who could use it to found or sustain a small business by, say, buying a cow to sell milk or a simple sewing machine to make clothing.

Traditional banks considered such people too risky to lend to, and the amounts they needed too small to bother with. Dr. Yunus’s simple but revolutionary idea was that the poor could be as creditworthy as the rich, if the rules of lending were tailored to their circumstances and were founded on principles of trust rather than financial capacity. He found that they could achieve lasting improvements to their living standards with a little bit of capital.

Since its creation in 1983, Grameen has made a total of $5.72 billion in such small loans, and has turned a profit in all but three years, including $15 million in 2005.

“Across cultures and civilizations, Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development,” the Nobel citation said.[….]

James D. Wolfensohn, the former president of the World Bank president, said by telephone Friday that the award testified to “the power of entrepreneurialism.”

“What it has to do with peace,” he added, “is that it gives dignity to families and hope to families. And it’s the lack of hope that is the greatest cause of bloodshed and intolerance.”

Dr. Yunus reacted joyously to the news of the prize, The Associated Press reported. “I am so, so happy,” he said in a telephone interview from Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, shortly after the prize was announced. “It’s really great news for the whole nation.”

The son of a prosperous goldsmith, Dr. Yunus has said that his mother’s generosity to the poor instilled in him from a young age a sense of duty to the poor. [….]

Dr. Yunus, then a professor of rural economics at Chittagong University, gave the woman and several of her neighbors loans totalling $27 from his own pocket. To his surprise, the borrowers paid him back in full and on time. So he started traveling from village to village, offering more tiny loans and cutting out the middlemen. Dr. Yunus was determined to prove that lending to the poor was not an “impossible proposition,” as he put it.

When he later formalized the loan-making arrangement as the Grameen Bank in 1983, the bank adopted its signature innovation: making borrowers take out loans in groups of five, with each borrower guaranteeing the others’ debts. Thus, in place of the hold banks have on wealthier borrowers who do not pay their debts — foreclosure and a low credit rating — Grameen depends on an incentive at least as powerful for poor villagers, the threat of being shamed before neighbors and relatives.

The bank’s 6.6 million borrowers so far have paid back 98.5 percent of their loans.

“We have no guarantee, no references, no legal instrument, and still it works — it defies all the conventional wisdom,” Dr. Yunus told Fortune magazine in a recent interview.

By contrast, acccording to Mustafizur Rahman, the research director at the nonpartisan Center for Policy Dialogue in Dhaka, traditional banks in Bangladesh, which lend mainly to businesses and affluent families with collateral, have recovery rates of just 45 to 50 percent, and most of them survive only because they are owned by the government and receive large subsidies.

The Grameen Bank has also transformed attitudes toward women in Bangladesh, a heavily Muslim country, Mr. Rahman said.

The Nobel citation described microcredit as a “liberating force in societies where women in particular have to struggle against repressive social and economic conditions.”From the start, profit-making was central to Dr. Yunus’s philosophy.

“Grameen believes that charity is not an answer to poverty,” he wrote in an introduction to microcredit posted on the organization’s Web site in August. “It only helps poverty to continue. It creates dependency and takes away individual’s initiative to break through the wall of poverty. Unleashing of energy and creativity in each human being is the answer to poverty.” [….]

As for Dr. Yunus, the prestige of the Nobel and the $1.4 million prize money, divided equally between him personally and his bank, may propel him closer to a distant goal: “One day,” he has often said, “our grandchildren will go to museums to see what poverty was like.”

It’s so inspiring; the idea that people having hope may lead to peace – well, isn’t that what Nobel, the man who invented explosives and felt bad about that, meant to bring to us with his award?

Let’s go Mets! Let’s go Mets!

The sad plane crash in NYC – and the even more sad fact that the deceased pilot/plane owner was Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle. He liked flying, apparently, and “speaking his mind” – as recent as Monday, he called in on WFAN’s Mike and the Mad Dog radio show and engaged in an odd conversation with them on whether the Yanks were prepared to beat Detroit and whether he was misinterpreted in the press by saying “Yes.” I had listened to that interview and thought it was odd – and then this plane crash? Sad – life really is fragile.

Almost caught up on “Grey’s Anatomy” episodes. Fun show. Cast is getting a bit big for my taste – 12 people?  (I feel big casts tends to lose focus of what the show’s about – you got to be a good writer to pull it off), but still fun.

“Smallville” moves forward with the Superman/Clark Kent mythos, with the arrival of Oliver Queen aka Green Arrow, who’s almost a Batman-like guy (well, with cool archery stuff and less mental health issues, so far as I can tell; I’m not that up on the Justice League). Apparently, according toTV Guide and – I think Entertainment Weekly too – the guys behind “Smallville” are trying to create a proto-Justice League, by bringing in Green Arrow, Aquaman, Flash, and Cyborg – all to remind Clark of his destiny, just when he’s doubtful of the costumed superhero gig. Can’t say that I blame him – protecting your secret identity and your real identity can be mind-numbing – but, really, Clark – your destiny! “Smallville” also continues Lois Lane’s fixation with superheroes. I must say, the show got more fun once they brought in Lois and more of the Superman/Clark mythos!

Then again, Thursday nights are tough – way too much good tv on!

Oh – and Entertainment Weekly – special photo issue was much fun!  Actor Wentworth Miller was most drool-worthy; hot, hot, hot!  And, George Clooney – mmm.  He graced the latest cover of Vanity Fair, and the article was good; but got to love that photo in Entertainment Weekly.
Back to baseball – talkin’ ‘about … baseball… sing it, everybody! Let’s Go Mets!

Baseball… talkin’ ’bout baseball… Yeah, Mets! NLCS, here we come. And, too bad for the Yankees. My sympathies to Yankee fans.
Missed the Pollack documentary on Frank Gehry on PBS, but this was an interesting link…

And, news on the Star Trek auction. Missed viewing the stuff, but really – if they’re selling the stuff, does that mean making new Trek just ain’t happening anytime soon and if they do make new Trek, they won’t be reusing the props anymore like they used to? I mean, good grief, they’re selling Captain Kirk’s chair from the Enterprise, not to mention Captain Picard’s and probably Captain Sisko’s baseball or Captain Janeway’s stuff.

And, then there’s this: an article on the actors who played minor Trek characters and how they too are loved. Wow – who would have thought that the actor who played Lt. Kevin Riley, the one who most memorably, on an episode of original Trek, burst out into singing an Irish tune when a virus affected the Enterprise crew, is now a professor in a Minnesota university? Cool.

Coliseum Books may close permanently. Man, that’s not fair. People – there are bookstores in this city to enjoy; please go!

The infamous Gray’s Papaya will have an increase in price.  Aww.

Let’s Go Mets!!! Game 3 tomorrow; you gotta believe…

The passing of R.W. Apple of the NY Times – the news stunned me, because I had only recently read one of his articles on travel and food. His writing was great stuff to read and vivid. You could tell that he really enjoyed going places and eating good stuff. A nice article in Newsweek by Julia Reed, with her memories of her colleague “Johnny” Apple.

Bill Moyers on The Christian Conservatives and their relationship with the environmentalist movement – that maybe these aren’t contradictions. Nice move, Moyers!

Slate’s slide show on John Constable’s art – and how it may have influenced those abroad and Impressionism. I liked it.

And the little Mars rovers that could…

And, last but not least: the passing of Buck O’Neil, the Negro League great whose legacy is in passing on his knowledge to us and the future.  Like others, my introduction to him was through Ken Burns’ Baseball documentary, where Buck O’Neil was truly something.  Cooperstown should have him there already.

Hawaii’s Don Ho on the mend.

Spumoni – saving New Orleans.

Profile on the woman behind “Grey’s Anatomy.” She knows her tv stuff. Cool.

Having a coop in your co-op.

What’s with them Yankees?  Joe Torre just took out Wang from the pitcher’s mound and now Detroit can almost tie the game!

And, what’s with the Mets?  The state of the pitchers is scaring me!