I’ve never liked the name of the FT’s lifestyle section, “How To Spend It“. But with financial markets as they are now, it seems particularly ludicrous. How to spend what, exactly?
Sitting in the airport lounge in Washington DC today, I was a bit surprised to find a “bonus issue” of How To Spend It in [...]
Alanna Shaikh complains about the use and abuse of “sustainability” in development:
I also hate this word because it so many things to so many different people.
I am also uncomfortable about the notion of sustainability, but for slightly different reasons.
There seems to be a consensus that development assistance is only politically defensible if we assert that [...]
I know this is all very immature, but I thought this was a funny idea (via):
when you make a donation to Planned Parenthood in her name, they’ll send her a card telling her that the donation has been made in her honor. Here’s the link to the Planned Parenthood website:
https://secure.ga0.org/02/pp10000_inhonor
You’ll need to fill in the [...]
The PSD Blog, citing Chris Blattman, wonders if randomized evaluation is too expensive:
In some circumstances, simple monitoring and evaluation without randomization might be enough, even if it leaves us with less certainty about the outcomes. Perhaps it’s time to develop more formal cost-benefit guidelines for randomized evaluations?
Our problem is that we are investing too [...]
Yesterday was New Year’s Day here in Ethiopia - it was the first day of 2001 on the Ethiopian Calendar. Grethe and I celebrated by going for a run in the hills overlooking the city.
I know that it isn’t nice to laugh at the misfortune of others, but you’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at this.
First the religious right were asked to pray for rain during the Denver Democratic National Convention:
Stuart Shepard of Focus on the Family, one of America’s leading evangelical groups, was [...]
Reich on Palin:
while Ms. Palin is perfectly entitled to believe that evolution is a myth, that women should be barred from choosing to have abortions, and that global warming has yet to be proven, these views all run counter to the views of mainstream America.
This is the entrance to a tiny 13th Century Rock Church in Tigray, called Abuna Yemata Guh. And yes, that’s a narrow ledge you have to walk along, with a 200 metre vertical drop to your left, at the end of a terrifying ascent up the side of a cliff to get there.
The dangerous [...]
Last weekend, we stayed in Gheralta Lodge, about 2 hours drive from Mekele in Tigray, Ethiopia, as our base for seeing some of the countryside and visiting the local rock churches. (See also here and here.)
Gheralta is near Hawzien (or Hawzen), a small market town which is the site of an infamous massacre by the [...]
We went recently to the village of Amber, about 6 hours north of Addis Ababa, to spend some time listening to people telling us about their attitudes to children, marriage, divorce, sex, abortion and contraceptions. (This is part of G’s work; I went along to listen and learn.)
The most surprising thing to me [...]