Ushahidi, as you may remember, is a crowd sourcing crisis application developed in Kenya. For more information, Read This If You Don’t Know What Ushahidi Is. Here’s a discussion of the use of Ushahidi in Kyrgyzstan. Liberia: building trust in tools. On how to build Ushahidi into a trustworthy source that can be used to [...]
The proposed Kenyan constitution was published on May 6, and will be voted on August 4, assuming the current court case to stop the referendum fails. So I’m overdue to say a few words about the referendum. The current Kenyan constitution, last revised in 2001, has been widely considered to be flawed (an earlier proposal [...]
My sister passed on to me an announcement about the publication of a new book on torture, which looks interesting. The focus of the book is the effect of torture on the US troops who carried it out. (I’m reminded of something my generally ultra-conservative grandmother said to me several times, about the one reason [...]
Like a lot of people in college, I came to my first Quaker meeting for the peace and social action. I can remember that first visit, and how J’than, my best friend and closest activist collaborator at the time, showed up at the next week’s Quaker meeting, when for some reason I couldn’t go, and [...]
House hold jua kali gadgets: AfricaGadget tours people’s homes and shows us “some lovely ideas to save money while recycling.” bankelele on Money Transfer across Africa, and on Agency Banking and Micro-Savings. Nollywood – Part of a Maker Ethos. Going Green: Nokia Unveils ‘Bicycle’ Phone Charger Kit for Rural Africa. Ethiopia: Musician receives honorary degree. [...]
In Predominantly African-American Communities, People of All Races Miss out on Kidney Care. That’s Governor “Raghead” to You, Buddy. Promise Seen for Detection of Alzheimers. In Brief: Seven cholera deaths in Kenya in a week. I’m not surprised that Fareed Zakaria likes Obama’s choice of Petraeus to succeed McChrystal, but I found this part interesting: [...]
Lots of bloggers are talking about the New York Times op ed by Kelly Blanchard, the president of Ibis Reproductive Health, suggesting that the Pill be made available over the counter. The pill meets F.D.A. criteria for over-the-counter medications. Women don’t need a doctor to tell them whether they need the pill — they know [...]
Back in 1992, when former Yugoslavia was collapsing into war, my old Quaker meeting sent my husband, Joel, over there for the summer to work with peace groups. I joined him for the last three weeks of that. At the time, of the countries that had once formed Yugoslavia, only Slovenia had escaped unscathed. Croatia [...]
The Economist: Stalin’s harvest. The latest outbreak of violence in the ethnic boiling-pot of Central Asia will take generations to heal. The International Crisis Group: Joint Letter to the UN Security Council Regarding the Ongoing Crisis in Kyrgyzstan. And in April they had, Kyrgyzstan: A Hollow Regime Collapses. Some interesting background on the Central Asia [...]
It’s been a while since I’ve given you a Darfur/Chad/Central African Republic update. Before I get into the recent news, here’s a brief summary of the interlocking conflicts. Darfur: Conflict there has been ongoing since 2003. Southern Sudan: The civil war between northern and southern Sudan was settled in 2005 with a Comprehensive Peace Agreement. [...]
Articles about teenagers having sex are often laments by adults about how all teens now are hooking up right and left (which then inspires debunking like this piece by Matt Yglesias). When people do get down to actual statistics, they usually talk about the average age at which teenagers have intercourse for the first time. [...]
The aftermath of the Gaza flotilla is still front page news in Turkish papers, but it shares headlines with other stories, such as Turkey’s decision to remove its nationals from Kyrgyzstan in the wake of ethnic violence there, and the EU’s decision to issue an anti-terrorism package against the PKK, drying up the organization’s money. [...]
Sex was invented in 1963 (Between the end of the “Chatterley” ban / And the Beatles’ first LP) Philip Larkin Back when I was in college, I once tried to convince my grandmother that people had always had premarital sex. People did it back in your day, too, I told her. Grandmother would have none [...]
I’ll start with my own local Orange County, California races, and what I get from the results. It’s good to be the incumbent. In every single one of my races with an incumbent, the incumbent won. This includes the incumbent about whom a scathing grand jury report had been written (not criminal offenses, though, to [...]
Joel’s usual approach to new cell phones is enthusiasm: a chance to get new features. Mine is worry: how much money will they manage to get out of us, and how do I get the cheapest phone possible. Each time we’ve gotten the regular “upgrade your phone and we’ll pull you into a new two [...]
A couple of months ago, Anthony Manousos wrote a post on Howard Brinton as a Theologian and Apologist for “Real Quakerism” that’s worth a read. For those of my readers who aren’t Quakers, Howard Brinton is, among other things, the author of Friends for 300 Years, which, besides our Yearly Meeting’s Faith and Practice, is [...]
While Turkish news for the past week has been focused on the aftermath of the Gaza flotilla raid (with the latest including a division within the ruling party as to how strongly to react), and Euro crisis news currently more preoccupied with Spain and Hungary than Greece, Greek news covered the fate of the flotilla [...]
I’m listening now to the musical Parade, which Joel pulled out when looking for songs to add to his new Droid. It’s the story of Leo Frank, a Jewish factory owner in Georgia who was falsely convicted, and then lynched, for raping and murdering a young girl; the anti-Semitism surrounding the trial and lynching led [...]
This may be my last round up on this incident, though I don’t guarantee it if something else interesting comes up. As the Israeli navy boarded the Rachel Corrie without incident, thousands gathered in Tel Aviv to demonstrate against the blockade. Sabah writes about autopsy results showing that those killed on the Mavi Marmara were [...]
As I’ve been reading this week’s coverage, in various countries’ papers, of the Freedom Flotilla incident, I’ve been haunted by the memory of Kent State. Why? Well, M.S., one of the now no longer totally anonymous bloggers at the Economist’s Democracy in America blog, cynically suggested that “Violent protest is actually more effective“, and wrote
I hope the Facebook links will be public, since they’re from fan pages rather than personal feeds. UN OCHA situation reports from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, and Somalia. Sand dams and gardens supported by the Mennonite Central Committee in Mozambique. One Difference, a group that’s building a play pump in Malawi. Doctors Without [...]