Chasing the Rising Moon

I was driving east along University Parkway today, and noticed the moon slowly setting behind the eastern mountains. "What the heck?" thought I. I am no great scholar of celestial bodies, but I'm pretty sure that the moon sets in the west. Then I hit a red light ... and the moon stopped setting, and gradually started to rise. By the time the light turned green, a fairly big sliver was visible. I then drove two blocks, and it set again, going all the way behind the mountains.

It was kind of an interesting race--the moon gently rising, and me driving toward the occluding mountains. The moon stately ascending, and my eastward journey forcing it back down again. Of course, the moon wins eventually--but for a little while, I could outrace the moon.

On an unrelated note, how many of my readers are aware of Kiva? It's a web-site (www.kiva.org) where you can make loans to people in the developing world to help them start a business. You always give a $25.00 share, so it's not too hard to afford. The web-site aggregates these $25.00 loans and gives them to individuals, usually by means of a local micro-credit bank. Micro-credit is one of the great discoveries of the last century--it lets you provide the means to help someone out of poverty, but since they repay the loan, it also preserves their dignity. When they're done repaying the loan, you can either withdraw your $25.00, or you can reloan it to someone else (I do the latter).

Anyway, I mention it partly because they've now got something called "Kiva teams." It's kind of amusing--the second-biggest team in terms of loans is the Atheist team, only surpassed by the quasi-official Kiva Friends team. There is a Mormon team, but it's far, far smaller. So what are you waiting for? Get over there and help people, and make our team look good! I'm only mostly joking.