Famous Magnates Cartoon

I looked at the past six months worth of Toothpaste for Dinner comics on the day that I made this, so a hat tip for Drew (who makes TFD) and another for Hugh MacLeod, the awesomeness of whose cartoons regularly makes me want to make cartoons.

How are Bricks Made?

How many bricks is that?

Bricks in Nepal start out as mud in a valley floor which is dug out by a man, woman or child using a hand tool. The use of use of child labor, poor working conditions and low wages in Nepal's brick making industry are being challenged by the Brick Clean Network.

 The mud gets packed into a wooden mold with a brand name in it, and then slapped out as a brick and dried in the sun in a row or stack. One person can mold around 1,000 bricks per day. If he/she's paid 50 paisa (half a rupee) per brick, he/she makes 500 rupees per day, or about seven US dollars.

After the bricks get cooked in those kilns with the big smokestacks featured in some of the above photos, they're trucked all over the country, and then carried in woven basket backpacks to their final destinations, where masons build houses and courtyard walls out of them.

...and some bricks just languish in piles until they return to the dust whence they came.

Click here to read a news story I wrote about bricks and other building materials being recycled by a building demolition company in Indiana.

World of Warcraft Grunt Labor is Humanitarian Gold...maybe?

This buddha really has nothing to do with the
whole Warcraft thing. Except he's made of GOLD!
Well, its just gold paint, actually.
But seriously you guys...
...some people are trying to meditate.

Some countries promote microfinance and small businesses to help lift people out of poverty.

Some countries sell piles of videogame gold.
 
It is common practice in the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft to buy "gold" that has been "farmed" by workers in China. Now, one report is suggesting that NGOs should help poor folks get jobs manufacturing virtual money for the virtual market.

Jon Stokes wrote for Ars Technica that, according to a new study, "the market for virtual goods and services represents a growth opportunity for developing countries, and that NGOs should consider getting involved in connecting poorer, mostly rural residents with opportunities to help meet the demand for farmed gold, high-level player characters, crafted in-game items, and the like."

It is reprehensible that some people can afford to pay real money for play money, when others can't afford to eat. But virtual products sell. If we'll buy "fair trade" coffee and chocolate, and decorate our houses with international gew-gaws, why not furnish our videogame lairs with virtual "gold" made by paid workers in China?

Would you support an NGO whose goal was to get poor people jobs where they produce virtual money for which wealthier people will then pay actual money?

Transparency

Some politicians have more important things
 to deal with than crushing leakers.

The Obama administration is laying the smackdown on whistleblowers in the most X-treme manner seen in 40 years. 

New York Times executive editor Bill Keller is patiently suggesting that the government do a better job of keeping its secrets so the NYT can stop bumming the gov't out by reporting on them. 

USAID suspended a giant international development contract, causing a multinational NGO to implode, with almost no explanation of why.

Is transparency a pipe dream?

Positively speaking, though, with the amount of TV I'm watching to distract myself from the above stated horrors, my brain should be devoid of nutrition in a matter of weeks, leaving me invulnerable to 2012's impending zombie apocalypse.

;-)