I am very intrigued by design, and think I recognize good one when I see it (although I cannot for the life of me create it myself), and so I thought it was interesting when I came across a blog that does nothing but post frontpages of newspapers and discuss their design. I originally came [...]

I had the good fortune to listen to Sachs speak at the biannual CIDA conference in Ottawa last year. Although I had read things about him before the meeting describing him as some sort of “economic hitman”, I was impressed by his presentation. Now I just finished reading his book End of Poverty, Economic Possibilities [...]

Two of Canada’s three leading national newspapers had the following news on their front page: SUV sales down because of high gas prices. That made me very happy. I remember discussing high gas prices with a friend I was staying over with in Arkansas (this was before Hurricane Katrina, but gas prices were still high [...]

Just doing research for a short paper on brain drain. The statistics I am coming over are quite incredible. For example, there are more Ethiopian doctors in Chicago alone, than in all of Ethiopia! And of the 700 doctors that were educated in Zambia after independence, only about 60 are left. 80% of all the [...]

This was on my reading list for a long time, finally picked it up at the Denver Public Library and read it in one sitting. Here are my as usual cryptic notes. First example: put 750 marbles in a glass and have a group guess independently. The average will be very close to the truth. [...]

I have been very fascinated by the spread of peaceful revolutions around the world during the last two years – starting with the velvet revolution in Georgia a bit over two years ago, the Orange revolution in Ukraine about half a year ago, the Cedar revolution in Lebanon some months ago and the Pink revolution [...]

Ever since I arrived in Toronto, I’ve been fascinated by the multi-culturality and the way different cultures integrate or do not integrate with each other. I’ve wanted to understand more about the process, and I was happy to come across Calculated Kindness : Global Restructuring, Immigration and Settlement in Canada published by OISE and edited [...]

A Survey of Chinese Peasants is a book that was released while I was in China, and created a huge stir. Originally it was meant to be banned, but somehow the book, which is hugely critical of the communist party – but mostly the power-abusive local cadres in rural villages – made it out in [...]

The elections are over in Kazakhstan, in fact they were about two weeks ago, but never too late to write a few words. Politics in Central Asia is, though usually very interesting and sometimes quite incestous, rarely reported in big headlines. The four countries that I’ve been to and know a bit about, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, [...]

By way of The Longbow Papers, a very good article that explains why the US is so much more conservative than similar countries in Europe. Extracts: “At the start of the 20th century, the U.S. looked progressive compared with Europe’s empires. The big difference between the U.S. and Europe is that the U.S. kept its [...]