T-shirt Travels
T-shirt Travels is a PBS documentary about the secondhand clothes market in Africa. It’s viewable on Hulu right now, so I thought I’d give it a quick write-up. This film[…]
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Washing machines and maternal mortality
Hans Rosling, the Swedish public health stats guru behind the ever-so-brilliant Gapminder, has a new TEDtalk on washing machines! When we were living in Ghana, I honestly didn’t pine for[…]
More (mostly posts from my blog)
Rx For Survival
This is the companion book to a Brad-Pitt-narrated PBS series by the same name. I haven’t had time to write a formal review of the book yet, but the PBS[…]
An Iran primer
A friend of mine sent me this. At the time I originally posted it, I said “I am wary of posting any video about Iran and saying it is “good,”[…]
Tim Wise at PLU
Tim Wise’s latest book (Colorblind) addresses the move toward colorblindness in our society, and how this is “one of the chief impediments to addressing institutional racism.” Julian Bond, he points[…]
Inequality · Read · Watch
Why isn’t Wall Street in jail?
Matt Taibbi has a comprehensive article entitled “Why isn’t Wall Street in jail?” that was published in Rolling Stone a few days ago. I’ll let the sub-heading from the article’s[…]
Battle for Haiti
PBS Frontline has published another episode on Haiti, ostensibly timed to commemorate the progress (or lack thereof) one year after the devastating earthquake of January 12, 2010. The episode opens[…]
Trouble with Play Pumps
In 2006 a new kind of borehole pump emerged on the stage of African aid. Called Play Pumps, these were designed to be operated by children playing on a ‘merry-go-round’[…]
Changing Education Paradigms
The RSA has posted a nice animated talk from Ken Robinson. The thrust of the talk is that education is highly standardized, and while this may be efficient for moving[…]