A friend asked me a question that reminded me of some great resources I want to mention here (in case I ever need to find them again…) They are: How to Accelerate Your Internet Wireless Networking in the Developing World Wireless U In my response to my friend, I also touched on something interesting I learned from Cricket, and from years as a consultant. Here’s the big lesson:Â Infrastructure projects don’t sell themselves. ...
Vinay Gupta published something called the flu code. Here it is in French: La promesse grippe 0.1Beta, version français – Une service dans l’intérêt publique de L’institute pour efrondnomiques Si j’ai des signes d’une grippe éventuel, je vais rester chez moi. Je vais rester à distance des foules quand c’est possible, et je vais toujours porter une masque dans les lieux publiques. Je vais laver les mains a la porte chaque fois je arrive a ma destination. Je vais me engager de enseigner ces règles aux autres de protéger tous.
Wow. Here’s an incredible inside view of the piracy business. What’s incredible is that NPR’s Channa Jaffe Walt managed to get a CEO of a shipping company on the phone and hear the inside story of the negotiations. Here’s what’s really interesting. The first thing the CEO says is, “I never thought for a moment that I wouldn’t have to pay anything. The only question was how much, and when.” Channa asks him why and he says, “Look, there’s no one to turn to, we’re on our own out there and that’s all there is to it. You pay.” ...
This is an interesting story by a BBC correspondent, which pulls no punches. Easy to see why he was left feeling bitter. There are two sides to every story of course, and I’m sure the military folks would tell you about security rules, zero tolerance for violation of force protection imperatives, risk asessments, etc, etc, etc. But that’s all missing the point. When you are doing counterinsurgency work, you have to be close to the people. You have to earn their respect by finding out what earns respect in their culture and then finding a way to do it inside of your own culture. They, in turn, will come to know you and, if you deserve it, you’ll earn their respect in return. ...
Yay for old friends, economics, and technology! All at once! kc wrote a blog posting with her humble ideas on how to use IP address space tax. Wait… there’s a tax on address space? Yes, because it has become a scare quantity, because people are too lazy to move to IPv6, IPv4 address space is running out. The best of all bad ideas about what to do about this is to make an open market for address space, as though network addresses were some kind of useful piece of property with any kind of useful value. (BTW: When the present econolypse is over, and the next bubble starts, it will be an IPv4 address space bubble. Mark my words…) Address space is bits. We can make more bits… Look! I just made some! But because the value of a network exists in everyone who is using it, not just your implementation of the network, you can’t just add bits in your IP stack and get any benefit. So, while bits are free, and address space could conceiveably be free, because we have a network with limited space, we have a scarce asset. And, of course, what do humans do with scarce assets? We make bubbles! Yay for bubbles! ...
There is a really excellent article on aid work in The New Yorker. Though this is pretty much a write-only blog at this point, and I don’t really know if anyone cares, here are my reactions to the article: It is remarkably candid, but… it is too hopeless… because it focuses too much on the UN and not enough on independent actors. Of course, any reader of mine know my biases: I am a cynical humanist capitalist from Silicon Valley (engaged to be married to a practical humanist socialist from Switzerland), who chose to work with MSF due to it’s independence. Because this article speaks to the core of my identity, of course my biases are going to be the key to my understanding of it. ...
A friend sent me this question: Speaking of healthy, when you’re in Africa, do you take malaria medication the whole time you’re there? Is 45 days too long to take it? First, taking it 45 days is no big deal. It’s taking it for months on end (9, 18, 60) that is not recommended – not because of actual risks, but because of not enough study. Second, here’s Jeff’s “cut-through-the-crap” guide to malaria meds: ...
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 of view of field people: …it seems there is no such impact. Country offices receive little or no feedback on their reports, and individual staff receive none. It’s also hard to identify any link between the reports that are generated in-country and any strategic decision-making, although it’s clear that there is some benefit there. ...
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 skills which can be taught. You find her, you learn from her, you support her to teach her peers. That is positive deviance. ...
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, you’ve never even worked in the field. So please do not count my life and the lives of my colleages as “acceptable losses”. Thanks. ...