jra's thoughts

Month: October 2008

  • HQ folks: Don’t Do This

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    Hopping on the meme-wagon for a second here… if you care enough, read these three posts about paper pushing in the NGO world: This Job Is Not Always Fun De-escalating the paperwork in development Kill Your Reports In the last one, Paul considers what happens after the reports make it to HQ, from the point…

  • Economic Meltdown in Iceland

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    Read this thread on a local geek social group in Leeds. That’s the voice of one scared girl, and perhaps the reality is not so bad. But just the fact that there is one Icelander who’s feeling that freaked out makes my heart go out to her. I’ve suggested to her that one problem is…

  • More ideas on how to innovate to serve poor communities

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    Another reference I don’t want to lose: Innovation in Africa Tips. Also, why is it “in Africa”? What happened that Africa got so far behind, or is getting so much of the attention? Why don’t we advise people how to make a new clean water technology stick in SE Asia, or in South America anymore?…

  • In Search of Deviants

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    Positive Deviance is a somewhat unnecessarily complicated name for something deeply humane and useful: In every village, there is at least one woman (usually a few) whose children are healthier than the rest. For whatever reason, that woman is better at navigating the complexities of village life and child nutrition. That woman has knowledge and…

  • Why doesn’t this already exist?

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    Yesterday, I was walking in town and there was a nice guy playing a clarinet in front of North Face. I intentionally fumbled with my coins for a while so as to enjoy his music a bit. Then I paid him a tip and walked along, enjoying the clarinet as it faded behind me. Why…

  • With all due respect Mr Holmes…

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    You can kiss my ass. Talking about the risks faced by humanitarian workers, you said: People in this business have always accepted the risks, there have always been losses, there have always been horrific incidents There is NO SUCH THING as acceptable losses for humanitarian aid. Period. PS: I noticed that, according to your bio,…

  • MoveOn: Wrong on the environment, wrong for America

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    MoveOn suggests that the best way to further your liberal agenda of reduced carbon emissions is to… (wait for it, wait for it…) Driving Change: Carpool to a swing state If you don’t live in a swing state, how can you volunteer in one? Drive! You can’t make this stuff up… This is like Daily…

  • Too Much Travel is Bad for the Soul

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    There’s an interesting little nugget of reality near the end of the first page of Ask the Pilot this week: If I have grown more cynical in recent years, it is travel, I think, that has pushed me in this direction. Exploring other parts of the world is beneficial in all the ways it is…

  • Don’t Bet Against Ethernet

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    From Slashdot: Corporate Data Centers As Ethernet’s Next Frontier Metcalfe’s (apophrycal) Second Law: Never Bet Against Ethernet ‘Nuff said.

  • Ethan Zuckerman’s Rules for Innovation

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    Ethan just posted some rules for innovation which are interesting. The one that speaks most to me right now is #7, which states, “problems are not always obvious from afar”. That’s a big problem with the kind of “innovation” that happens with first-world government-funded NGO IT for Development work. It is easy for a programmer…