Emory announces this morning that the creator of the “microloan” Muhammad Yunus, will speak at the University next month.  The lecture is currently “sold-out”, but apparently you can still get on a waiting list.

Muhammad Yunus, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his work to reduce poverty through microloans, will present the 2010 Goodrich C. White Lecture on Wednesday, March 3, at 7:30 p.m. in Glenn Memorial Auditorium.

The lecture, titled “The University and Creating a World Without Poverty,” is free and open to the public, but tickets are required. 
 
Currently, the event is sold-out, but names may be added to a waiting list.

Renowned as “banker to the poor,” Yunus was an economics professor in his native Bangladesh when he began making small personal loans to destitute basket weavers more than 30 years ago. From this humble beginning, he developed Grameen Bank into the advance guard of a world movement to eradicate poverty through microlending.

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Wheatley pushes me to another one of his glibly hilarious posts that makes me chuckle and furrow my brow at the same time.  (Trust me, its not a pretty sight!)  Hahaha…hmmm…you get the idea….

In its latest poorly researched ranking of cities, Forbes Magazine named “Candler-McAfee” as the 2nd fastest dying CITY in the county, behind Bensenville, Ill.  What the heck is “Candler-McAfee?”  Well, the map shows it as South DeKalb…but there ain’t nothing down there with that name except for a MARTA line (as pointed out by DriftGrift over on FL).

So the silly county government model confuses another outside organization looking for cities to rank, resulting in the mag using a MARTA line to designate this “city”.

At least they didn’t call it “Decatur”.

So what about this made me furrow my brow?  How about this quote? “In 2000, 13.6% of residents [of Candler-McAfee] were living below the poverty line, about the national average. By 2007 the poverty rate had exploded to 27.5%, one of the highest rates in the country.

Regardless of what name we give this area (South DeKalb/Candler-McAfee/Decatur zip code), that’s a enormous poverty rate directly to our south.

UPDATE: OK, its not just a MARTA line.  Its a Census-Designated Place.  If I had read the Fresh Loaf post a little closer, perhaps I would have realized this.    See the good folks that showed me the light in the comments section.