Here you can find everything related to the design, economics, science, technology, philosophy, and politics behind the movement towards the creation of a more sustainable, equitable and prosperous world. The motto here is ”Invent. Invest. Implement.” Why? Because I believe that solving seemingly intractable problems requires that we put our minds (Invent), our money (Invest) and hands (Implement) to work in the direction of our goals.
Life
Written on 01/24 at 03:42 PM by Andy Posner
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Dizziness, exhaustion, balance.
Snow on fire, liquid leaves.
Blue gauze, blue blood.
A day poured from a samovar.
Mahogany dreams, forest nightmare.
Culinary whirlwind, fetid famine.
Distant sound, pressing silence.
Quest, rest, revision.
Take one, take two, the end.
I Am
Written on 11/29 at 01:46 PM by Andy Posner
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I am the moon that refused to rise,
The placid reflection of lunar eyes
Whose lurid stare, like rising tides,
Tickles the Earth and then subsides.
I am the leafless winter tree:
My leaves I shed reluctantly;
An autumnal gale just set me free
To shiver and long for eternity.
I am the damp crepuscular cloud
That hovers, dark, heavy and proud,
That dares to defy the solar shroud
In whose fabric all life is endowed.
I am the lone and lonely light
That, shining, gives sight,
Yet remains, for all its might,
Blind to the eyelid’s plight.
I trace the border of sea and shore
To keep at bay that endless war;
Yet the battle’s ceaseless roar
Says I am all this, and nothing more.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011 8:20 AM
Written on a train to New York City
If You Stay
Written on 08/15 at 08:06 PM by Andy Posner
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To you, the sudden hope outlined in lips,
I ask the question that fear had ne’er touched:
What myth does explain life’s dance upon a crypt,
The unreal made real, the lost firmly clutched?
Give me a vulgar sunset of pious
Red and blue. Free me of meter and rhyme,
The constraint of great laws, Himalayan
In their looming grace; great, if not sublime.
Yet if you must go, leave your charred embrace
To singe the sinews of my tortured soul
And paint the twilight on my sullen face;
I alone wear a ring of tears grown old.
O, but if you stay, warn the heaven’s Might:
A lover’s heart cares not for heaven’s plight!
Monday, August 15, 2011
Vicissitudes: A Sonnet
Written on 07/28 at 02:16 PM by Andy Posner
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Why this Romance woven in silent sighs,
This dark electric dream that tears in two
A love, once whole, now lost in shuttered eyes?
Science, mistress of mystery, undo
The sorrow tangled in my own delight!
For oft when the perfume of starlight hovers
Above my inner world, I drown in a night
That strains the hopes of my hopeful lovers--
Strange souls that approach like death in defeat,
Souls that carry crystal promise, fragile
As a vase that contains but one conceit:
To live as God in a manmade castle.
O God, am I to destroy this despair
That destroys as if only to repair?
Wednesday, July 27, 2011 11:30 PM
Thought of the Day
Written on 07/15 at 05:48 PM by Andy Posner
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“Today, 85 percent of the $400 billion that the government spends to encourage things like home ownership, college attendance, investment and small business ends up in the pockets of the top 20 percent of earners (and half goes to the top 5 percent). Very little ends up helping the working poor. On the other hand, many social benefits cut off when a family’s income rises roughly 30 percent above the poverty line — which is still a far cry from being out of poverty.” (From an NYTimes article titled Out of Poverty, Family-Style)
Think about that. The government spends money to incentivize the better-off to do what they would be able to do without the subsidy, while they penalize the poor when their income increases. That is an eye-opening fact, one that puts into stark contrast the policies affected rich and poor in the wealthiest country in the world, and one that should force us to re-think traditional notions of why people are poor. The truth is that the deck is stacked in favor of those with power.
An Antediluvian Sadness
Written on 06/23 at 03:15 AM by Andy Posner
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It is raining out, a beautiful, insistent, driving sort of rain, the kind filmmakers recreate with machines, the kind that cuts through the minutia and inertia of the day so as to call our attention to our surroundings. Each heavy drop of water lands like a thimble upon the rooftops and the treetops of the city, stitching together the distracted minds of its inhabitants into a single web of humanity, stretched tautly over the chasm of injustice. That most are never aware of this web says more about humanity than it does about the rain, whose job is done as precisely and passionately as any employee of any company.
Today on the radio I hear talk of President Obama’s coming speech regarding Afghanistan, of protests in Syria, elections in the Bhutan and unemployment in the US. Sound waves laden with wrongs not yet righted, carrying the words of those that have been slighted, berate my ears with their incessant cry of “wake up!” I reply, meekly at first, then with all the strength I can muster, that everything from my blood vessels to my synapses have arisen, have thrown off the sheets and showered, and still I pause at the door, uncertain, peering out at a landscape transmogrified by precipitation.
I feel feeble in the presence of so much hunger, poverty, corruption and pollution. The injustice hems me in, a kind of negative New York skyline laced with vertigo. In every direction I turn there is work to be done--more work, to be sure, than can fit in my two hands, but even worse, more than my mind, that wonder of physics, can lift with the pulley of ingenuity or the fulcrum of planning. Everything tells me that the rational thing to do is to focus on one thing, conquer that, and move on, but each injustice cajoles me as fervently as the rain forces life to bloom. On my hands and knees in the midst of a deluge of atmosphere and emotion, I cannot choose between reason and passion. The ancient sorrow trapped in my heart like an insect in amethyst can neither be dismissed nor dislodged, and for all my awareness of the intelligent course of action, sorrow has a way of reaching out to sorrow, and love to love, so that I am forever compelled to be that worst of individuals: concerned for all, unfocused, and doomed to defy logic and obey the dictates of a sadness that predates me, my ideas and the injustice against which I fight.
- Meet My New Folding Bike! (Poetry & Musings)
- Green Microfinance: Advancing Social Equality and Environmental Sustainability in the United States (Ideas)
- Executive Summary of the Capital Good Fund Business Plan (Ideas)
- A Solution to the Limited Success of Micro-Credit in the United States? (Ideas)
- Photos of Some Upgrades to My Bikes! (Poetry & Musings)
Green Microfinance: Advancing Social Equality and Environmental Sustainability in the United States
Click here to download a PDF of my complete thesis. Questions and comments are much appreciated!
My masters thesis in Environmental Studies at Brown University looks at how microfinance--the provision of small…
A Solution to the Limited Success of Micro-Credit in the United States?
Micro-credit has undoubtedly been a runaway success in developing countries as a tool of both poverty alleviation and economic development. To date, some 100 million people have been reached by micro-loans, and Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank…
Tonight, the Oneness of Things
It is late and my mind should be drifting through the colorful abyss of deep sleep, yet instead i find that tonight sleep will not come. I am like a hungry flower who dreams of bees so ardently that all…