Category Archives: Politics

HT: Bill Sundstrom who first pointed me in their direction…

The film is set in 1938 I think.  And of course this being the Internet, you can see the clip on Youtube.

I will be presenting at this IFLA Satellite meeting in Paris in August 2014.  Please consider registering for the meeting/workshop/mini-conference! sponsored by the IFLA Libraries for Children and Young Adults Section & School Libraries Section More information to register is … Continue reading →

Went with some of my colleagues in the Economics Department.  They have been doing Half Dome, but this year did not get the lottery, so they chose Cloud’s Rest.  I was happy to be along, even if I sort of … Continue reading →

Horrible to contemplate the actions of the girls in Wisconsin, but popular culture has always had a kidnapping bogeyman.

He managed to get the other main opposition group, the MPP, to participate, apparently. That is huge.  If the two groups can work together on a common platform, and not divide the opposition vote, and not get co-opted into alliance … Continue reading →

Apparently very little information circulating about who might have murdered him… so lots of “read between the lines” type communications in the press. Les premières constatations de l’enquête révèlent que la victime porte une blessure béante à la nuque et … Continue reading →

Ambassador Mushingi is doing an amazing job of putting a human (and likable) face to American diplomacy in Burkina.  I don’t think I’ve seen articles about the Russian or Chinese ambassadors… or even the French… that are so frequent and … Continue reading →

You can still see some of her work on her website, including some series from Kordofan and South Sudan. Conflicts on the African continent claimed another journalist last week. Camille Lepage, a 26-year-old French photojournalist, is the latest reporter to … Continue reading →

Looks like inflation rate is actually coming down to around 15%, but past several years it has been above 20%.  In 2007 the cedi was redenominated and reissued, basically at 1 cedi per dollar.  The cedi now is at about … Continue reading →

Caroline Tuina, according to press accounts, presented a report on a meeting of the union of media workers (SYNATIC) in her evening news program.  The editor at RTB asked her five minutes before the news program to not run it. … Continue reading →

And it is not just their obsessive listening to Pharell Williams! In short, “it’s remarkable” how just the presence of children seems to protect against declining happiness, Ifcher said.Herbst and Ifcher offer three theories why parents are becoming happier—and what … Continue reading →

Girls are bombarded with messages about how they should look.  The male gaze is always upon them. Most boys, and men, barely look in the mirror.  Dandruff?  Really?  Oh, I’ll brush it off.  Comb-over is not in style?  Oh, but … Continue reading →

The author, Coral Davenport, needs to go to an LRA meeting (Lazy Reporters Anonymous)…. “Hi my name is Coral and writing that the Sahara was expanding through Mali could have been wrong so I added “slow” and that way nobody … Continue reading →

“Tribes are killing each other over water today,” Mr. Kerry said. “Think of what happens if you have massive dislocation, or the drying up of the waters of the Nile, of the major rivers in China and India. The intelligence … Continue reading →

One of my undergraduate student’s wants to use the World Bank’s Gender database for a class project.  Turns out that the data is in “long” format.  Each variable and country is a row, and the years are columns.  Most statistical … Continue reading →

Why four? Why not.  Hell isn’t empty. What if the oil billions had been distributed evenly to private citizens of South Sudan (as some people including yours truly advocated).  The statist “gimmie the consulting job” elite (both national and international) … Continue reading →

It’s the sweet smell of reasonableness… After overcoming years of fiscal dysfunction that stemmed in part from an antitax ballot referendum, Gov. Jerry Brown is trying to call California voters to the ballot again — this time to approve a … Continue reading →