Friends of African Village Libraries (I post regularly here)- Photos from Gowrie Kunkua community library during the night session, Ghana
- Sumbrungu Community Library nighttime reading
- Résumé du livre Une grande mère criminelle
- Organisation d’une séance de discussion autour d’un livre à la bibliothèque de Dimikuy
- Librarians of Tuy monthly meeting January 2026, Burkina Faso
- Impressions sur la production de livres CMH au Burkina Faso
- Compte rendu de la première rencontre des gérants de la zone du Tuy
- Science fiction books for libraries in Burkina Faso and Ghana
- Animation d’une séance de lecture à la bibliothèque de Dimikuy
- Nyariga Community Library in Ghana, photos January 2026
Author Archives: mkevane
“The Painted Drum” by Louise Erdrich
After panning her most recent novel I decided to give an author another chance, and boy did she ever! “The Painted Drum” by Louise Erdrich came out in 2005. The novel has two main parts, and then returns and integrates. … Continue reading
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Future Home Of The Living God by Louise Erdrich
I have always enjoyed reading Louise Erdrich and when I saw she had a dystopia quasi-scifi novel I thought that might be a good reading experience. So I checked it out from the library and started reading. After fifty pages … Continue reading
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There was something that indeed bothered many readers of Philip Roth
Dara Horn nails it! I was the kind of boy who enjoyed reading Roth and Bellow when I was 16, and my mother read him religiously (pun intended). But part of my brain always knew the novels were trashy, in … Continue reading
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Appoline Traoré, Naky Sy Savane et Amélie Mbaye : Leur film “Frontières” à Angoulême
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You really should be watching live stream of Hawai’i lava flow for at least ten minutes
Gradually you get an idea that the plumes of molten lava shooting into the air are maybe the size of a ten story building. So much for us “ugly sacks of mostly water.”
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Resilient Social Contracts and Sustaining Peace from the International Peace Institute
Participants at this event discussed how social contracts manifest themselves in and adapt to different contexts, transcending from what are often unsustainable, ephemeral elite bargains into more inclusive ones with durable arrangements for sustaining peace. The findings of the research … Continue reading
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Libertarians need to think more about this tendency of humans to band together and discriminate
The argument that “the market” will erode or make less profitable discriminatory behavior has no theoretical support. It could, but it also could not. Lots of economics theory has been written about this. In the hallways of a rural Oregon … Continue reading
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Air-conditioning vicious circle
From the NYTimes. We were just talking about this vicious circle in class yesterday: The number of air-conditioners worldwide is predicted to soar from 1.6 billion units today to 5.6 billion units by midcentury, according to a report issued Tuesday … Continue reading
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The Bones of J.R. Jones – St. James’ bed
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Smoke & Mirrors (2016 film) on Netflix now… a good watch
From Wikipedia Smoke & Mirrors (Spanish: El hombre de las mil caras) is a 2016 Spanish thriller film directed by Alberto Rodríguez based on the non-fiction book Paesa, el espía de las mil caras by Manuel Cerdán. The film stars … Continue reading
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Steve Reich Four Organs because why not over and over again
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Burkina Faso’s music scene finally (maybe) hits to big time, with Hawa Boussim
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Looks like Claire Denis finally made a film worthy of her talent: ‘Let the Sunshine In’ with Juliette Binoche
I still think Chocolat (not the one with Juliette Binoche) is her best film though it is quite flawed. That seems to be a recurring theme with Denis, amazing parts of films, mixed in with occasional cringy scenes or acting. … Continue reading
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Rovane, from Burkina Faso
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TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, was launched into orbit today
“TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, was launched into orbit around the Earth. TESS will spend at least two years scrutinizing the entire sky for exoplanets — planets around other stars — within about 300 light years from here.” The … Continue reading
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What students learning R in Econ 41-42 can aspire to…
The ideal job for every Econ major! You can follow Levin on Twitter here. Matt Levin is the data dude for CALmatters. His work entails distilling complex policy topics into easily digestible charts and graphs, finding and writing original stories … Continue reading
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Understatement of the year of housing in California
You can debate how dramatically the character of a city would change by building a five-story apartment building next to a single family home. I don’t think the debate is a debate about an abstract notion of the “character of … Continue reading
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Housing bill SB 287 defeated in committee in California
SB 287 defeated in committee, so that is it for 2018. I was very nervous about this bill. I think a lot of the optimistic analyses did not consider the many potential unforeseen consequences, especially the distributional consequences. I lived … Continue reading
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Ha Jin’s War Trash upends everything economists thought they knew about war and conflict
Well, possibly it does not, but Ha Jin’s War Trash is one very good war novel. Apparently based on the experiences of his father in the Korean War (and it is fascinating to search for the real historical events described … Continue reading
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Make America great? Let’s have more of “El Colás” in our restaurants!
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Michael Kevane 