Life in a Northern Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. B.M.A.T.C., and Etruscan typewriter erasers. Blogged by David Gorsline.
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The genuinely creepy Jazz Age cartoon "Swing, You Sinners" is available in QuickTime MPEG-4 format. This 1930 gem from Max Fleischer, the hot jazz/surrealist harrowing of a cat (or is it supposed to be a fox?) caught raiding the henhouse, is posted in order to promote The International Animated Film Society: ASIFA-Hollywood.
ASIFA-Hollywood, in association with the UCLA Film & Television Archives, sponsors the "Adopt-A-Cartoon" program to fully restore cartoons in danger of being lost forever to film deterioration. Under the supervision of Gere Gulden, the Director of the ASIFA-Hollywood Film Preservation Program, we have rescued dozens of important films, including significant titles by Walter Lantz, George Pal and the Fleischer Brothers.
(Thanks to Boing Boing.) posted: 10:35:47 PM |
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The introductory article of The Economist's survey of microfinance for the poor of the developing world is freely available, though follow-on articles are available only to subscribers. Microfinance encompasses microlending (small-amount credit), no-minimum balance savings accounts, property insurance, and other aspects of the financial system that we take for granted in the First World. Not everyone supports microfinance:
To drug lords in Afghanistan, the availability of credit is unwelcome
because it gives a choice to farmers who were previously forced to grow
poppies for want of other ways to finance their crops. For the elites in
closed markets running inefficient monopolies, credit raises the prospect of
future challenges from entrepreneurs. For radical Muslims, it means that
women (who in many countries make up the bulk of microfinance borrowers) are
able to run viable businesses and become independent. And for everyone in
poor countries, credit can mean social upheaval as merit and enterprise
replace inheritance, family ties and position.
posted: 5:00:33 PM |
 D. Gorsline, Proprietor
   
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