Occassional Dimes

RFID enabled credit cards are easy to hack: I met Pablos at ETech earlier this year, he gave a fantastic talk on credit card (in)security and other topics.

Alternative Energy: Boom or Bust?

James Speth: The co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council in an hour-long interview on KQED's Forum.

Pico Iyer on the Dalai Lama: One of my favorite travel writers has a new book on Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, I'm really looking forward to reading it. In the meantime, enjoy this recent Fresh Air interview.

Weak Dollar Hurts Poor in the Philippines: Asian economies may be less dependent on the U.S., but in many countries, dollar remittances are an important source of income for the poorer segments of their populations.

Phillip Moffitt: Former editor/publisher of Esquire, emerges as a dharma teacher.

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Occassional Dimes

Robert Parker: Charlie Rose devotes a full hour to the world's most influential wine critic.

Unrest in Tibet (plus elections in Taiwan): Recent hour-long discussion on KQED's Forum.

The remaining entries are on health care related topics.

Treating the Numbers: Treating the numbers refers to the tendency of some Doctors "... to get a patient's test results to a certain target, which they assume will treat — or prevent — disease. But earlier this year, a study on a widely used cholesterol drug challenged that assumption."

Publicly-funded clinical trials of prescription drugs: Researchers highlight the many benefits of junking the current system, which relies heavily on Big Pharma.

Outsourcing the Patients: U.S. insurance companies are realizing that it is cheaper to have medical procedures performed overseas -- even after the cost of travel for patients and their families are included. Let's see if this revives supersonic travel!

Medical Tourism and Thailand: Not only are more Americans checking into Bumrungrad Hospital in Bangkok, the hospital has announced an alliance with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of South Carolina. Bumrungrad is one of the top hospitals in Thailand.

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Occassional Dimes

Remote Area Medical: CBS profiles this amazing organization founded to provide medical care to people in the developing world. What Americans may not be aware of is that 60% of their operation serves uninsured/underinsured people in rural and urban America.

Arguments mount for a National Healthcare system: I'm in favor of a national system, as long as its not a monopoly.

LA Times on Chuck Feeney: I blogged on Chuck Feeney late last year and I truly believe he is a role model not just for the super rich, but for a lot of upper middle class people.

Battery Technology: The Economist gives an overview of the history and current state of research in car batteries. Great reading for proponents of plug-in hybrids or electric vehicles.

Bug Labs: Hardware hacking just got easier. Open source hardware mashups for the rest of us.

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Occassional Dimes

From Geeks to Greens: The Economist on Silicon Valley's fascination with green technologies.

A World of Bananas: An expert weighs in on the best tasting banana in the world. His choice? The lakatan from the Philippines.

Made In Italy: Italy's leading brands are increasingly relying on Chinese workers toiling in sweatshop conditions. What happened to the famed EU labor laws?

Hydroelectric Power Without Dams: Freestanding underwater turbines are starting to get deployed in the U.S. and Canada.

Was it a good idea to move to lead-free solder joints?: Robert Cringley raises some interesting points.

Biofuel Stations in California: The lack of fueling stations gets Sacramento's attention. Why don't they promote recharging stations for electric vehicles instead.

The EU and the ASEAN: The EU is closely following the ASEAN's attempts at integration.

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Occassional Dimes

Drop.io: Needing to (anonymously) share files or communicate with your friends or the world? Check out this new site that is popular among "democracy movement" types overseas.

Tufte on the iPhone: Visualization guru weighs in on what's cool and what needs work. The QuickTime file is large and may require a few minutes to download.

Dow Jones Meets Dharma: Socially-responsible investing gains a small foothold in India.

Homeless Shelters In San Francisco: Reporters from the SF Bay Guardian go undercover and give an inside peek into how shelters in the city operate. Having worked as an overnight volunteer manager for a homeless shelter in the past, I am glad to say that not all shelters in California are as badly run as the ones covered in the article.

Health Care and U.S. Presidential Politics: Listen to this excellent overview from UNC political scientist Jonathan Oberlander. Of the remaining candidates, only Hillary Clinton's plan provides universal coverage.

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Occassional Dimes

David Rieff: Susan Sontag's son discusses her last days with Teri Gross.

Designs for the Real World: Dot Earth comes to MIT.

The Most Energy-Efficient Airline: One big catch, the plane never actually takes off!

World Equity Markets: The Wall Street Journal has a nice graphic that captures recent turmoil in stock markets across the world.

fMRI and Wine Tasting: "If a person is told they are tasting two different wines and that one costs $5 and the other $45 when they actually are the same wine, the part of the brain that experiences pleasure will become more active when the drinker thinks they are enjoying the more expensive vintage."

Are Cholesterol Drugs Any Good?: According to recent research, probably not.

Now do some simple math. The numbers in that sentence mean that for every 100 people in the trial, which lasted 3 1/3 years, three people on placebos and two people on Lipitor had heart attacks. The difference credited to the drug? One fewer heart attack per 100 people. So to spare one person a heart attack, 100 people had to take Lipitor for more than three years. The other 99 got no measurable benefit. Or to put it in terms of a little-known but useful statistic, the number needed to treat (or NNT) for one person to benefit is 100.

Compare that with, say, today's standard antibiotic therapy to eradicate ulcer-causing H. pylori stomach bacteria. The NNT is 1.1. Give the drugs to 11 people, and 10 will be cured.

A low NNT is the sort of effective response many patients expect from the drugs they take. When Wright and others explain to patients without prior heart disease that only 1 in 100 is likely to benefit from taking statins for years, most are astonished. Many, like Winn, choose to opt out.

Plus, there are reasons to believe the overall benefit for many patients is even less than what the NNT score of 100 suggests. That NNT was determined in an industry-sponsored trial using carefully selected patients with multiple risk factors, which include high blood pressure or smoking. In contrast, the only large clinical trial funded by the government, rather than companies, found no statistically significant benefit at all. And because clinical trials themselves suffer from potential biases, results claiming small benefits are always uncertain, says Dr. Nortin M. Hadler, professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a longtime drug industry critic. "Anything over an NNT of 50 is worse than a lottery ticket; there may be no winners," he argues. Several recent scientific papers peg the NNT for statins at 250 and up for lower-risk patients, even if they take it for five years or more. "What if you put 250 people in a room and told them they would each pay $1,000 a year for a drug they would have to take every day, that many would get diarrhea and muscle pain, and that 249 would have no benefit? And that they could do just as well by exercising? How many would take that?" asks drug industry critic Dr. Jerome R. Hoffman, professor of clinical medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles.

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Occassional Dimes

In Defense of Food: Michael Pollan talks about his new book on Science Friday.

Monsanto and the Future Seed: Very quietly GMO seeds are being adopted across the world. From the U.S., where they originated, through Asia, Africa, and even Western Europe. Monsanto and other agriculture conglomerates are targeting the large food producers rather than consumers. So while your chips and snacks probably contains GMO's, you may not find GMO's in the produce section of your grocery. I have yet to come across any large-scale study showing that GMO's pose health risks to humans. My objection to GMO's is that they make farmers even more dependent on the large agricultural conglomerates. Even farmers who refuse to use GMO seeds could be sued, if their own seeds and fields inadvertently start getting invaded by the GMO seeds.

Sick (The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis): Anyone interested in the U.S, Health Care system needs to read this book. Each chapter covers an aspect of the health care system through the story of an individual family, with families spanning several states across the country. The author also does a great job of providing the history of health care in the U.S. Exceptionally well-written book on an ever important subject. I recommend it highly!

The Auto Loans Crisis: While the crisis in housing loans has been covered extensively in the media, there is a serious disaster looming in the car loans industry.

Researching Charities: GiveWell provides research on charities similar to what equity analysts do for stocks. If you are trying to decide which charities to support, check out their useful site.

Malaysia and the Philippines: Interesting article on the prospects of these Southeast Asian neighbors in the battle to capture market share in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) market. According to this ZDNet article the top four markets in 2007 (with their market share) were: India (11.5%), China (4.4%), the Philippines (1.4%), and Malaysia (1.2%).

Previous Dimes can be found here.

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Occassional Dimes

The Story of Stuff: One of the BEST online videos I have watched. An incredibly well-produced video addressing consumerism, industrial design, sustainability, and social justice. Its about 15 minutes long, but I highly recommend you watch it in its entirety.

Toxic Chemicals (The E.U. and the U.S.): As the child of Chemistry professors, I have always been aware of the role of chemicals in everyday products. In this episode of Fresh Air, author Mark Schapiro highlights the difference in regulatory philosophy between the EU and the US.

Biodiesel in SF: The City of San Francisco launches a program to collect cooking oil from participating restaurants. The goal is to make the converted biodiesel available to residents and eventually to power city-owned vehicles.

Fresh Pain For The Uninsured: In the past U.S. hospitals worked with uninsured patients and together both parties would agree on a reasonable payment plan. Recently, hospitals (including non-profit hospitals) have been selling patients debts' to "debt collection specialists", making healthcare debt subject to the same aggressive tactics found in the credit card, mortgage, and auto industries. Truly depressing article!

Five Easy Ways to go Organic: From the Dr. Alan Greene.

Fashion and Security: Combine the Japanese known security/crime phobia, their inventiveness, and the Japanese media hyping criminal incidents, and you get hilarious camouflage fashion!

Google Chart API: Really simple to use, I expect this to get some traction.

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Quote of the Day

From Dave Barry:

We Americans live in a nation where the medical-care system is second to none in the world, unless you count maybe 25 or 30 little scuzzball countries like Scotland that we could vaporize in seconds if we felt like it.

Previous quotes can be found here.

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Leadership, Home Sizes, and Buy Nothing Day

We live in an age of excess, and nothing better captures this point than the average size of new homes. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average new home went from 1,100 square feet in the 1950's to 2,340 square feet in 2002. In the 1950's new homes averaged 290 square feet per family member, by 2003, new homes constructed averaged 893 square feet per family member! I'm proud to report that at about 450 square feet per family member, my 2-person household is way below the national average.

A large house, no matter how green and energy efficient, is hard to justify in a world plagued with homelessness and crushing poverty. I tend to see this less as an environmental and more as a social justice issue. In the SF Bay Area, one frequently encounters well-meaning Liberals with strong environmental credentials, who are ensconced in large homes in trendy hillsides and neighborhoods. While the green movement is slowly going mainstream, social justice and simplicity have yet to be embraced by most Liberals.

Home contractor friends have told me that 2500 square foot homes are way too big for most families. I suspect that a family of 4 can live comfortably in a 1500 square foot residence. So why do environmentally-conscious and well-meaning Liberals continue to live in large residences, located in affluent neighborhoods?

One clue is to look at the primary residences of the leading candidates for the Democratic nomination for President. Edwards, Gore, Clinton and Obama, frequently champion anti-poverty and environmental issues, certainly more than their Republican counterparts. I'm not claiming that anyone who passionately fights for anti-poverty programs should take the vow of poverty, but these home sizes are incredible:


(To enlarge an image, click on it.) To put the home sizes in perspective, I included the square footage of a regulation-size basketball court. Anyone who has walked around a basketball court knows that even a "half court" takes quite a bit of space. These home sizes are for their primary residences: Clinton, Gore, and Edwards own multiple homes. The Clintons have another 5000+ square foot residence in Georgetown, and the Gores have a luxury apartment in SF, and at least one other house in Tennessee. Obama's home sits on a 7500 square foot lot, and since I was unable to track down the size of his home, I used aerial photos to give a conservative estimate. The Clintons applied to have their home expanded, the above estimate takes into account the proposed thousand square foot expansion.

People claim they need larger homes for when they have parties or events. My response is that they should rent out a ballroom on the rare occasions that they need to accommodate a large number of guests.

Friends in the SF Bay Area constantly talk of the "strong field" of candidates, and I definitely sense a lot of excitement among Liberal professionals. I too will end up voting for the Democratic nominee, but based on the lifestyles they maintain, I am not hopeful that they can truly push through meaningful anti-poverty agendas. John Edwards' talk of the "two Americas" rings hollow -- does he really need such a mega house!

Ironically President Bush, regarded as being pro Big Oil and pro rich, has a smaller residence than most of the leading Democrats. Clearly, home size is not a strong indicator for enlightened leadership! But shouldn't Democrats expects more (in this case less, is desirable) out of their leaders? Seriously, I look forward to the day when we elect leaders who not only promote social justice and simplicity, but have lives consistent with those values. (And no, I'm not voting for Kucinich.)

As we celebrate Buy Nothing Day this Friday, my hope is that we take its message and try to practice it as best we can, throughout the year. With an economy heavily dependent on consumption and consumer spending, no politician will advocate and, based on the chart above, maintain a simple lifestyle. Change will have to come from American consumers.

I remember being in a Clean Energy meeting at Google a few months back, and Googlers were emphasizing that by embracing renewable and efficient energy sources, "sacrifice" or the lowering of lifestyles, was not only unnecessary it was undesirable. I suppose if your main source of revenue is advertising, consumer spending/consumption is a natural consequence.

Buy. Less. Stuff.

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Palawan

The SF Chronicle's travel section has a nice feature on Palawan:

... The wildlife, the terrain and the remoteness all suggested to me that this corner of The Philippines may be the latest frontier in the world of eco-tourism.

... My adventure began when I flew southwest from Manila to Palawan, the "last frontier" of the Philippines. If any place in the Philippines could become a famous eco-tourism destination, it is Palawan: While the island is 270 miles long by only 25 miles wide, its damp and tangled interior is literally a blank spot on current topographical maps.

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Quote of the Day

From Amma:

Compassion is the language the blind can see and the deaf can hear.

Previous quotes can be found here.

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Quote of the Day

From Andrew Carnegie:

This, then, is held the duty of the man of wealth: first, to set an example of modest, unostentatious living, shunning display or extravagance; to provide moderately for the legitimate wants of those dependent upon him; and after doing so to consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds which he is called upon to administer ... to produce the most beneficial results for the community.

Previous quotes can be found here.

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Quote of the Day

From St. Francis de Sales:

"Do not wish to be anything but what you are,
and try to be that perfectly."


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Occassional Dimes

Tom Brokaw interviews Yvon Chouinard: The founder of Patagonia at the recent Google Zeitgeist! His fingers have never touched a keyboard, and he has never owned a cell phone. Personally I held off buying a cell phone until 2004 -- even then I did so only because I needed a work/office phone. I advise all you techno-geeks out there to watch this interview. Money quote: "We are no longer citizens of the world, we are consumers."

Leaving Microsoft to change the World: John Wood left a successful life as an expatriate manager for Microsoft to start the highly-regarded education non-profit Room To Read. The book traces Wood's journey from successful technologist to the current state of his successful non-profit. Non-profit employees and managers will benefit from the numerous tips and good practices that the author refashioned from his experience in the private sector.

City Bike Share: SF looks to implement a bike sharing system, similar to those found in European cities.

Dumpster Divers Go Mainstream In Thrifty Germany: Unfortunately available only to WSJ.com subscribers.

In many other countries, dumpster divers like Mr. Brylla would be written off as eccentrics. In Germany, he's just a normal 36-year-old graphic printer brought up to look down on wasting money on new things when sturdy old stand-bys are there for the taking.

"Consumption is nothing good," says Mr. Brylla. "It brings evil into the world."

Germans like Mr. Brylla are the retail trade's worst nightmare. They make enough money to buy the latest wares but choose to live in a free-of-charge economy. People who don't want stuff put it on the sidewalk. People who like it take it home.

"It's the culture here in Germany," says Dora Fecske, a Frankfurt businesswoman. "Why trash something if it's still good?" She recently found a large wooden dining table in the street and carried it several blocks to her home with help from friends.

... The trend is stubborn, with deep roots in history. Germans save their money partly because war and economic disasters during the last century make them think the future will bring more rainy days.

Today, even though the German economy is growing solidly and unemployment is falling, consumer spending is in the doldrums.

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Occassional Dimes

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture: Beloved Computer Science professor at Carnegie-Mellon, a pioneer in the field of computer graphics and animation -- he has advanced stage pancreatic cancer. What a moving video! Randy also maintains a chronicle of his battle with cancer.

Canada's Highway To Hell: This insightful feature article will surprise a lot of Americans -- it did me. Our neighbors up in Alberta are extracting large amounts of oil and destroying vast landscapes in the process. Oil in the tar sands is extremely difficult and energy-intensive to extract. The demand is fueled mostly by the US , but the question remains, why are the other Canadian provinces tolerating such destruction? If we, in the lower 48 states, can stop oil drilling in the Arctic National Refuge in Alaska, why are environmentalists up north so powerless? Perhaps its Canada's over dependence on mining and commodities ("... the GDP of energy-rich Alberta expanded by 6.8% last year, compared with Ontario's 1.9% and Quebec's 1.7%"). I definitely need to learn more about the Canadian environmental movement. We consumers need to be aware of where are oil comes from: 16% of oil imports are from Canada, already the largest source, and with expanded exploration of the tar sands, slated to get even larger.

11 Item You Don't Have To Buy Organic: Dr. Andrew Weil has a list of fruits and vegetables that you can buy, conventionally-grown, if you are on a budget. Hat Tip to zaddik2004.

Alms and the Monks: An informative perspective on the situation in Burma, from the Southeast Asian Press Alliance.

The Bay Area and the Microcredit Movement: The SF Chronicle highlights several Bay Area companies, including a few based in Davis, at the forefront of the microcredit movement.

China Bloggers Stew About Olympic Pigs: In China some people would rather eat like Olympic pigs.

In recent weeks, news that hogs are being specially raised to feed the athletes at the next year's Beijing Olympics has spurred an outcry on the Internet. The pigs are reportedly being fed an organic diet and getting daily exercise, treatment that has China's bloggers variously mocking, lamenting and raging online.

"I would rather be a pig for the Olympics than a human in a coal mine!" wrote a blogger who calls himself Shiniankanchai, referring to the reported deaths of thousands of workers in China's mines so far this year.

Shiniankanchai's sentiments soon spread to other blogs and to Tianya, the biggest Chinese-language Web forum. They reflect a growing frustration among ordinary Chinese with tainted food, dangerous or inhumane work environments and corrupt officials -- a frustration that is being expressed with increasing frequency.

It's "just ridiculous!" said Jane Xun, a 24-year-old employee of a Shenzhen logistics company, in an interview after she posted her own online objections to the pig-rearing program for the Olympics. "It actually shows how serious the food-safety problem is. What am I going to eat?"

... But a program to raise pigs specifically to feed the Olympic athletes, both the Chinese and those from other countries, is seen by many citizens as a sign of mad excess and pandering to foreigners.

Pigs are such an important commodity in China that the nation has a strategic pork reserve, a little like the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, to stabilize prices. China's pork reserve releases frozen meat and live hogs in a supply emergency. A recent jump in the price of pork after an outbreak of blue-ear disease among pigs played a part in pushing up China's inflation rate to 6.5% in August -- a serious concern for a government worried about an overheating economy, asset bubbles and a disgruntled rural populace.

Coming in the wake of reports of tainted Chinese food and toys, news of the Olympic-pig project are adding fat to the fire for some citizens. The special pigs "show how serious our food safety issue is," Shiniankanchai commented in an Internet posting. "While the government is devoted to solving the athletes' pork-eating problem, common people are asking: How about the food safety problem for people living in this country?"

The Olympics pork supplier, Qianxihe Food Group, or Lucky Crane, as the company brands itself in English, held a press conference in Beijing in August to announce the project. According to reports in the Chinese press, which widely covered the press conference, the company said its aim is to provide athletes with the purest of meat, free of any substances that could cause them to fail doping tests.

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The Monks of Burma

A moving photo of a recent rally:


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The State of the Housing Market

Things are getting worse:

Today's Census Bureau report on the number of new homes sold in August provides our first clear data for the impact on the housing market of the financial turmoil that began August 9. It is not a pretty sight.

In a typical year, most new home sales occur between March and August. In each of those months we usually might expect 35% more homes to be sold than at the seasonal low in December. This August, home sales were actually less than in December, the first time that's happened in the 44 years these numbers are available.

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Voluntary Simplicity and a Billionaire

Rumored to own only a single pair of shoes, Chuck Feeney was the founder of the highly successful retail chain, the Duty Free stores. Using the fortune he generated in the private sector Chuck Feeney should be a multi-billionaire. His co-founder, Robert Miller, enjoys the trappings of wealth, and lives the life of a billionaire, with the requisite socialite daughters ("The Miller Sisters").

Its really interesting to contrast the lifestyles of these former business partners. Chuck Feeney gave almost all his money away to his charitable foundation, save for a few million he set aside for himself, his wife and kids. The amount he set aside was on the order of $2M to $5M, enough to live comfortably and with financial security, but nowhere near the fortune Feeney amassed in the private sector. Here are some excerpts from a recent review of Conor O'Clery's new book on Feeney:

... Until he was outed 10 years ago, New Jersey-born Chuck Feeney was the world's most profligate secret Samaritan. He remains, at 76, the most unusual. Eschewing all traces of luxe, the man who compiled what would today be worth $4 billion buys his suits off the rack, uses a plastic bag for a briefcase, sports drugstore spectacles, wears a $15 plastic watch, and flies coach. He owns no house and no car. He wonders aloud about the need for more than one pair of shoes. When he's in New York, he likes to dine on chicken pot pies at grubby midtown dives. "It has always been hard for me to rationalize a 32,000-square-foot house or someone driving me around in a six-door Cadillac," the publicity-phobic Feeney told Business Week in a rare interview in 2003. "The seats are the same in a cab. And you may live longer if you walk." As New York Times columnist Jim Dwyer once said, this is a man whose life is like Donald Trump's, only backwards.

... Feeney's early days in business were an exercise in frugality. He held meetings in coffee shops and had an entertainment budget of zero. With his business partner, Robert Miller, he built Duty Free Shoppers into an international behemoth. That part was known throughout the 1970s and '80s. What wasn't known until 1997 was that 15 years before, Feeney had decided to systematically give it all away. He had grown tortured about the state of the world and his having so much. In 1982 he secretly transferred his share of Duty Free to an offshore Bermuda foundation he'd set up named Atlantic Philanthropies. It was one of the biggest and most unusual philanthropic feats in history.

Feeney was obsessed with concealing his identity and even keeping the endowment a secret from Miller, who revels in a life of ostentation and whose socialite daughters went on to marry a prince, a Getty, and a von Furstenberg. Any grant from Atlantic came with hyper-lawyered nondisclosure agreements and vows of secrecy. He agreed to this book only because the story was already leaking out, and he wanted to make sure the details were correct.

... As the father of the "giving while living" school of philanthropy, Feeney has had a great deal of impact in philanthropic circles. This carpe diem approach has influenced other super-philanthropists, including Bill Gates and Michael Dell, to donate their fortunes during their lifetimes as opposed to bequeathing riches posthumously. The philosophy goes against the grain of most American philanthropy, where charities limit annual giving to 5% of their endowments. In 2003, Feeney's Atlantic made a stunning announcement: It planned to spend itself out of business over the next 12 to 15 years, giving away $350 million annually to four causes: disadvantaged children, the care and treatment of the elderly, global health problems, and human rights.

Feeney's spend-it-now philanthropy has also influenced others to better prepare their children for lives of privilege minus the psychological hex wealth can sometimes be. In keeping with his ideas that life should not be an acquisition spree and that work and a sense of purpose ultimately bring a richer existence, Feeney long ago bestowed modest sums on each of his five children. He did the same for himself. The worth of his stake today? $1.5 million. Feeney isn't just influencing current philanthropic practice. He's also picking up where Andrew Carnegie left off: As the legendary steelman said: "The man who dies rich dies disgraced."

While the guy doesn't own a house, his foundation has modest apartments it rents for him in cities (including SF) Chuck likes to visit. Feeney has a great saying which I love to quote: "A man can only wear one pair of shoes at a time." I like the fact that after he set aside enough money to provide financial security for himself and his family, he decided to devote the rest of his life to helping others. His foundation has pledged to give away its assets over the next decade: which according to the estimates above translates to $3.5B. Feeney is a great role model for those who have enough disposable income to buy a much larger (or even a second) home. A simpler life devoted to service is ultimately more meaningful than a life spent in luxury. Owners of large homes should ask themselves, how many empty rooms does one really need? To borrow from Feeney: "A man can only be in one room at a time."

I wonder about the entrepreneurs in the Bay Area, who start company after company, while amassing millions in the process. While its great they create jobs along the way, wouldn't it be amazing to have them eschew the for-profit rat race, and dedicate their time and energy to helping the less fortunate? Role models like Feeney may be what inspire some of these younger millionaires to choose service-oriented paths. While I admire Bill Gates and other high-tech philanthropists, I do think their life of luxury sends the wrong message to the next-generation entrepreneurs.

Feeney's foundation, has collected recent articles about its founder. Read on, and be inspired.

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Occassional Dimes

Running the Numbers: Chris Jordan's amazing photos help us visualize a variety of social statistics (e.g. American children with no health insurance coverage in 2007).

Freegans: LATimes article on Freegans -- "the word combining "vegan" and "free" -- a growing subculture of people who have reduced their spending habits and live off consumer waste."

Supercapitalism: Fresh Air's Terry Gross interviews former Dept. of Labor Secretary, Robert Reich.

Energyville: Interesting online simulation from The Economist and Chevron. You get to be a city planner in charge of your city's energy portfolio. Nicely done.

Previous Dimes can be found here.


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