Author Archives: mkevane

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About mkevane

Economist at Santa Clara University and Director of Friends of African Village Libraries.

New photos books for Burkina Faso libraries published in fastpencil

I am so proud of our team in Burkina Faso, especially Sanou Dounko, Guy Roland Hema and Alidou Boué, who have been creating photo books for printing and distribution to the Burkina Faso libraries.  Interns Beth Borowsky and Maria Haddad … Continue reading →

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Body language of DCE sacked over galamsey and death Cpt Mahama

The District Chief Executive for Upper Denkyira West District in the Central, Daniel Appianing was sacked last week (by President Nana Akufo-Addo directly, apparently!) for suggesting that Captain Mahama- found murdered in a brutal way was responsible for protecting Chinese … Continue reading →

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Michael Nyman – Water Dances – II. Stroking

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Trash talking by COFINA bond coalition, in Puerto Rico debt restructuring

The COFINA Seniors Coalition, which collectively holds approximately 32% of the senior bonds issued by the Puerto Rico Sales Tax Financing Corporation (“COFINA”), provides the below comments concerning the implications of the decision to grant Bank of New York Mellon’s … Continue reading →

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A few more sci-fi short stories and novellas – Reed, Egan, Le Guin, Chiang, MacLeod

I checked out Gardner Dozois “The Year’s Best Science Fiction” (16th annual, including stories published in 1998).  A smattering of really good reads, but this was one of the first volumes in this series where I was disappointed.  Among the … Continue reading →

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Nowhere to Run: Nigeria’s Climate and Environmental Crisis

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U.S. judge freezes Puerto Rico debt payments

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the trustee for Puerto Ricos COFINA bonds not to make a $16 million payment due on June 1, allowing creditors to litigate competing claims to the money that could be central to how the … Continue reading →

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Ghana’s ‘galamsey soldiers’ scandal?

The Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Mr John Peter Amewu, had challenged the leadership of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) to come clean on the activities of some soldiers who have been providing security at illegal mining sites. The … Continue reading →

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All about the human condition: Recent stories in The New Yorker

Deborah Treisman (the fiction editor at The New Yorker) basically only seems to want to publish stories about the small, emotion-laden, identity crises of people whose choices involve their feelings.  Should I feel good about that person, or bad about … Continue reading →

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Russ Roberts realizes he didn’t make the cut for “Team Development”

I found this exchange between Lant Pritchett and Russ Roberts priceless.  I was on a long run, and nearly keeled over laughing.  I checked my jersey, to see what my number was on Team Development.  Yup, 4657.  But then I … Continue reading →

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Reading in PDF files into R to do text analysis

Turns out Clay Ford at the University of Virginia wrote a nice tutorial for this, and a package does the trick very nicely.  I tested the “update” at the bottom of the post which shows how to use the pdftools … Continue reading →

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For people who teach de Mel, McKenzie and Woodruff (returns to women micro-entrepreneurs =0!)… a possible important new complication

In a 2009 paper, David McKenzie and coauthors Chris Woodruff and Suresh de Mel find that giving cash grants to male entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka has a positive and significant return, while giving the same to women did not. David … Continue reading →

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Ira Kukin passed away

Ira Kukin was a chemist, and was the benefactor of Henry Rosovsky’s dream, the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies.  The couple times I met him as an Academy Scholar, he was engaged and curious. Yeshiva University mourns the … Continue reading →

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Recent leisure reading

Windup Girl Tana French

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Scrabble in Nigeria

HT: Bill Sundstrom

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Apparently U.S. does not want to release H-1B gender breakdown

Computerworld filed a FOIA request for H-1B gender data last year and was told that providing such information would be “unreasonably burdensome.” “In order to determine the gender of H-1B applicants, USCIS staff would have to manually search each applicant’s … Continue reading →

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How much was spent on public services for the homeless in Santa Clara County in 2015? $520 million a year

But now, for the first time, a staggering fiscal cost has been calculated: $520 million annually. A new study, described as the most comprehensive look ever at the expense of homelessness on a community, has determined that more than $3 … Continue reading →

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Sending books to Burkina Faso

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Gender in China in 2017

An Junxi’s father really wanted a son. “But I was born a girl, so my dad just thought, ‘Well, she’s young, so we’ll just dress her up like a boy,’” Ms. An said, straddling a lounge chair — full manspread … Continue reading →

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Kendrick Lamar – Duckworth

Heard this on NPR All Songs Considered.  Worth a listen.

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