slamboard

JacarandaStyle is an online source for beautiful handmade jewelry and household decor items. They are all made in South Africa.

I remember an incident when I was a young child during the days of Apartheid and I was asking my parents to avoid buying South African goods. At that time there was some boycotting going on, but it was not broad or strict enough to put real pressure on the oppressive regime of the day. It is great to be in a position now where I am encouraging people to buy items that are made in South Africa.

JacarandaStyle donates part of the proceeds from each item sold to the Ethembeni School in South Africa which helps hundreds of physically disabled and visually impaired children. The items really are beautiful.

My personal favorite are these interlocking salt and pepper shakers. I prefer images of guinea fowl to the real thing. They are very noisy birds. My neighbor used to have a small flock of these birds.

The founder of JacarandaStyle lives in New York but she was born in South Africa. Finding a way to help a community in her motherland that makes use of her education and experience in art and design is a dream come true.

I heard about a benefit concert that is happening next month in support of Unicef’s battle against AIDS. I felt old and cranky when I saw that Avril was headlining and Sarah McLachlan was being billed second. I guess that is about popularity.

I have been trying to reconcile my dislike and lack of respect for Avril Lavigne with the fact that she is more productive and functional than many A-list celebrities and that she has consistently done some very effective campaigning for worthy causes.

I am starting to think that it is a generational thing and that I am not supposed to like her. That makes me feel manipulated. I think I might start liking her out of spite.

Brazil, Libya, Thailand and Uruguay are countries that are interested in obtaining units from One Laptop Per Child.

Cost overruns have been a recurring theme with this project, the ideal of $100 is now a longterm goal. The initial production units will cost buyers $176. I think Shakira should buy units for every child attending the schools that she helped to build in Colombia. I think there should be an option with the iPhone rebates to help fund this project as well.

The one hundred dollar credit is available to people who bought an iPhone before August 22nd.

If you are a subversive type that activated your phone through some alternative method as opposed to the inconvenient, expensive AT&T way…you don’t get the credit.

You can’t use the credit to get iTunes gift cards. I think there should be a streamlined option involving a $100 donation to charity.

Read my Kimkins.com series here and see all the Kimkins-related Slamboard posts here.

Thanks to Kimkins Dangers, we may have some new insight into the truth about Kimmer aka Heidi Diaz. One of their readers found this PlentyOfFish.com profile of “Kimmer2″. PlentyOfFish is a popular free dating site started around 2003. This profile lists Kimmer’s son’s age as 16, which would date it about two years ago.

Could this profile be a hoax? At first, I seriously considered the possibility that the profile was faked. But here’s why I don’t think that’s the case: the uncropped photos on this profile, which appear to be of Heidi and her son Brandon (who is now about 18 years old) have not to my knowledge been seen anywhere else online.

Take a look at the picture with the marina in the background. Heidi send this exact uncropped picture to Catherine to crop and use as her before picture for Kimkins.com. Catherine has never released the uncropped photo to anyone else. Neither of us had seen the uncropped seated photo until now.

If Heidi did indeed create this dating profile herself, it seems quite likely that she is now an older, perhaps heavier version of the woman in the blue sweater. After all, why not post the red dress photo if that is what she looks like now?

Also, the profile says Kimmer is a former foster mom. If Heidi did not really have foster children when she accepted money fundraised in their name (summer of 2006) then she could perhaps find herself facing criminal liability for fraud.

Things are only going to get more interesting.

“If you are coming to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you are coming because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
–Australian aboriginal woman

This quote has been republished in many different places. I thought it was a pretty interesting viewpoint. I discovered a business model yesterday that captured my imagination. It was a niche travel services company that served the unique needs of missionaries. It was specifically for Christian missionaries. I can imagine that other companies exist that work primarily with secular charities and possibly missionaries from other religions.

I guess the primary difference in focus with these travel agencies is that they take people into regions of the World with no functional tourism industry. There are lots of areas with an overlap, in that a thriving tourist and hospitality trade can exist in shockingly close proximity to poverty.