Just a quick one, and unfortunately I don’t have an English link (yet), but according to an article in the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet, American NGOs have been combining missionary work and aid distribution in the areas hit by the tsunami in South-East Asia. According to a report made by the Swedish and English Save the [...]

I just finished reading “The World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman. He makes many arguments in the book, many of which I agree to, although I think he is quite a little bit too optimistic about technodeterminism and the whole world becoming equal and happy. One of his starting thoughts, which I quite liked, is [...]

During this year, I took an amazing class in International Health Policy with Professor Anne Emanuelle-Birn. The reading package, which was longer than a bad year (as we say in Norwegian) gave me new insights each week (as Wojciech would notice, me coming down to his room, eager to share), and I choose to go [...]

The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh is an amazing book, and highly recommended. I picked it up on the airport, since I knew Ghosh from his In an Antique Land, which we read in anthropology. I liked that book, although I was somewhat sceptical to it’s value as an ethnography (which was why we read [...]

I became interested in BRAC after listening to a presentation at the Dean’s Graduate Conference at OISE (an otherwise very interesting conference), and decided to read up on it. This thesis was in the OISE library, and I couldn’t check it out, so I had to return three times to finish reading it. Quite enjoyable [...]

I picked up Taiwan: A Political History by Denny Roy while I was browsing idly in the Munk Center library - looking for something to read over an impending Chinese lunch. In fact, I’ve wanted to know more about Taiwan’s history for quite a while, and this was a good opportunity. Good book - told [...]

Have you ever wanted to start an internet cafe (or internet bar, wangba, as they call it)? Were you put off by all the red-tape — in Chinese? Fear not, here is the complete regulations concerning starting and operating internet cafes in China, translated (and heavily abridged) by me. (I actually did this as part [...]

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 [...]

So, the much heralded elections are underway - with problems galore. Apart from the obvious logistical problems of organization in a country with no infrastructure and mostly illiterate voters, and the fact that Taliban has threatened “global jihad” there seems to have been widespread and blatant fraud, leading to all of the other fifteen candidates [...]

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, [...]