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I predicted I would pop back into The Big Word Project when I was bored. (I’m not really bored, I just had a couple of minutes to kill till lunch was ready.)

I clicked on a couple of words and the results weren’t too inspiring. Then I clicked on philanthropy and found another great micro-financing site called BringLight. This site seems to allow a wider variety of projects to seek funding than Kiva, which focuses more on developing countries or poverty-stricken populations. For example, on BringLight, you can donate to Project Treat, which supplies treats for shelter dogs that are getting obedience training at the Silicon Valley Humane Society. You can also donate to human rights and environmental projects, though.

Clicked around a bit more and got a hippie weaver at loom. Clicked hula and got to a retail site selling kitschy Hawaiiana. I love that stuff. Lived there as a teenager. Some loser assigned Barack Obama’s site to charlatan.

That’s the problem with these mass Internet projects. And the world. You can’t filter out the ugliness. But knowing there are people who spend their energy creating sites like BringLight and Kiva helps keep it at bay, at least.