Something very wrong is going on on South Africa, and the world is missing it: “It is better for us to be here than go for reintegration. The South Africans want to kill us and the government is trying to…
Here’s a story that’s, unfortunately, not a surprise: KINNE: And over the course of my time, as we slowly began to identify phone numbers and who belonged to what, one thing that gave me grave concern was that as we…
The dirty secret of aid work… it always comes down to this… the navel-gazing, “why am I here”, “why is it so ineffective” conversation. Usually it happens around the campfire, over a bottle of locally made beer, or perhaps for…
Clarity on what’s wrong with our economy and our society, and advice on how to correct it, all in just 3 lines, and 21 words: You buy things and you don’t need. With money that you don’t have. To impress…
gPXE and dnsmasq do not get along, beware. gPXE wants to find the boot filename in the dedicated slot in the reply packet. dnsmasq does something clever/stupid (I’m not sure which) and puts it someplace else. You have to use…
Headline from a Scientific American blog posting: Measles is back, and it’s because your kids aren’t vaccinated There was a measles epidemic in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland this year. MSF was thinking about intervening and setting up a…
I found a great post on Google’s Africa blog today announcing Map Maker, a wiki-like way of increasing Google Map’s coverage of places where there’s very little data available for them to start with. As with everything Google, the launch…
I was poking around on Kunnafoni to see what they are up to. Check out la Source (“the spring”) a kiosk that makes software and media available for installation onto USB keys. My readers are English speaking, so I will…
With apologies to Dave for the title… This morning I see that Jon over at AidWorkerDaily.com has added his ideas to my article there, and asked me to comment. I did, go read it. While I was researching stuff for…
My major job in Ethiopia this summer was crowd control. As a log, I am responsible for setting up the facilities where we work — a little bit of pioneering merit badge, architecture, and a whole lot of crowd control.…