Category Archives: Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso: Salif Diallo comes roaring back…

« Attendez qu’on crée notre parti et on va vous donner les grandes lignes de notre action. Que ce soit le président Comparoé ou les autres camarades qui sont restés là-bas, on était sur une plateforme politique, idéologique. J’estime qu’ils … Continue reading

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Grosses démissions au CDP

This is pretty amazing news.  of course the pundits and ordinary population are already asking whether it isn’t some kind of complex ploy.  One way for President Compaoré to “enable” modification of the constitution is if the “opposition” agrees to … Continue reading

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Wow things might get better…

The Senate confirmed Janet L. Yellen as the chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, marking the first time that a woman has led the country’s central bank in its 100-year history.  As a Fed official, Ms. Yellen, 67, has been an … Continue reading

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So everything in my macro class about secular stagnation was… wrong?

The United States economy grew at a surprisingly robust 4.1 percent annual pace in the third quarter, the Commerce Department said Friday. That is the strongest growth in nearly two years and only the third time the economy has expanded … Continue reading

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Note to self: Useful for Microsoft Office Word how to put hat on a letter

Type this EQ \o(ˆ,p) Select what you just typed, press Ctrl+F9 to make a field out of it, and press Alt+F9 to switch between display of field codes and field results. You make the ˆ by pressing Alt+0136 (that is, … Continue reading

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More music from Congo…

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No best intentions go unpunished: South Sudan falls apart?

The security situation in Juba is very tense. There is open fighting throughout the entire city, with occasional heavy fighting flaring up in certain areas. The house of the sacked ex-VP, Riek Machar, was assaulted with heavy artillery for several … Continue reading

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Lionel Shriver “Kilifi Creek” in The New Yorker

I frankly had no idea who Lionel Shriver is, so I read the story completely cold. I quite enjoyed it. The theme, of the way we become aware of our adult selves emerging, and awareness of our life-projects emerging, is … Continue reading

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ICC Prosecutor Criticizes UN Over Sudan Inaction

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is accusing the U.N. Security Council of prolonging the conflict in Darfur by failing to take action to arrest Sudan\’s President Omar al-Bashir and others accused of war crimes.Fatou Bensouda said the council\’s … Continue reading

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Continuing irony versus sarcasm exploration

Irony: Famously, when opening his club, The Establishment, in Soho in 1961, Cook remarked that he was modelling it on ‘those wonderful Berlin cabarets which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the outbreak of the … Continue reading

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Peer evaluation in small group work in a flipped classroom

When an instructor uses class time for student work, rather than lectures, very often the active learning is structured around activities that can be done in small groups (from 2-5 persons).  There are a number of good reasons to do … Continue reading

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Flipping the classroom

All the rage these days is the idea of “flipping” the classroom.  The idea is simple.  Technology has made it very easy to record and distribute (through Youtube etc.) anything that a teacher might do in a lecture.  A lecture … Continue reading

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Blaise Compaoré very articulate on RFI…

He’s articulate in an unassuming way… in this extract the reporters unfortunately do not ask the right questions.  For example, for a semi-authoritarian democracy, you have to ask the question: “Is the lack of alternance not likely to lead to … Continue reading

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Deep decline in trust in EU as an institution in Europe’s big countries

Figures from Eurobarometer, the EU’s polling organisation, analysed by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), a thinktank, show a vertiginous decline in trust in the EU in countries such as Spain, Germany and Italy that are historically very pro-European. … Continue reading

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What does stagnation look like?

From FRED, a graph of four big, rich countries.  Notice how Japan and Italy utterly stagnated starting in the early 1990s.  By 2012 GDP was only about 10% higher after twenty years!  By contrast, GDP per capita in the U.S. … Continue reading

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Eboulement d’une mine d’or à Bagassi au Burkina Faso

Quatorze morts et quatorze blessés dont un dans un état traumatique, tel est le bilan de l’éboulement d’un site minier survenu dans la nuit du samedi 30 novembre au dimanche 1er décembre 2013, aux environs de 1 heure du matin, … Continue reading

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Putting it bluntly: Catholic universities and health care

I don’t follow the issue that closely, but this “open letter” to the president of Notre Dame University seems to me to be very provocative, in a “critical thinking” way… Two highly respected and influential Catholic women, Catherine Kaveny and … Continue reading

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Tabu Ley

Le roi de la rumba congolaise s’est éteint ce week-end à Bruxelles. Le musicien Tabu Ley Rochereau, né à Bandundu en République démocratique du Congo s’était fait connaître en introduisant la batterie dans la rumba. Le chanteur et compositeur n’a … Continue reading

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Atanga Matilda, a young reader in Gowrie-Kunkua library in Ghana, supported by FAVL

Here is what she said about the after-school reading program, supported by Chen Yet-Sen Foundation from Hong Kong. My name is Atanga Matilda I am 12 years. I come from Kunkua, I am in class 6. I want to be … Continue reading

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Low productivity growth: China’s Shenzhen airport Terminal Three, Italy’s slowdown

In macroeconomics we talk a lot about total factor productivity.  Tyler Cowen in Marginal Revolution points today to two good productivity related articles.  The first is on a pretty expensive infrastructure project whose depreciation may make the NPV negative.  Shenzhen’s  … Continue reading

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