Kiva is probably the most succesful thing in existence to allow ordinary folks to lend money to other ordinary folks. I've been a member since early 2008, and I think it's a really good idea, which is not to say that Kiva is a particularly good implementation. In fact, we've had our differences. But I keep "reinvesting". I suspect in part because it is, or was, the only game in town. That and inertia. But maybe the time has come to overcome my inertia.

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Dear Mrs My Dog Is Not Aggressive,

That's what you said the first time she attacked my dog.

This is the end result of the second time.

I hope you're satisfied.

Jeremy

p.s. Dr Andrea Lanza and his crew more than make up for your selfishishness.

“I remember my Yorkshire grandmother, when as a small child I asked her if she used herbs, went very tight-lipped and said well there was pennyroyal … She had had a hard life, a brutal husband and too many mouths to feed.”

Pennyroyal is Mentha pulegium, a mint whose Latin name indicates that it was once used to deter fleas and other insect pests. For Gillian Riley’s grandmother, and women since at least the time of Aristophanes, it was probably more useful as an abortifacient. Which was why I saw red when a respected food blogger in Rome referred parenthetically to “mentuccia (pennyroyal)”. But I need to backtrack.

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Confetti, in Italian, are the sugared almonds given to guests, traditionally at a wedding, when the sugar coating is white, and now extended to pink or blue at a baptism and red at a university graduation. "A quando i confetti" is apparently a cute way of asking when one is going to get married....

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I’m not sure I really know, but ...

TED is the Urban Outfitters of the idea world

Urban Outfitters, in case you didn’t know, is a mostly hip place that sells kinda-sorta retro chic stuff that people who like that sort of thing like. Possibly that’s what Nathan Jurgenson had in mind when h...

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