ryancbriggs.net: Archive

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The most recent episode of This American Life is about reconstruction in Haiti. It features excellent stories which touch on nearly all of the major problems with foreign aid and development work. Being This American Life, it does this with good humour and clear language. This should be required reading for undergrad development classes. You can listen here. (click through the donation request...

May 26th

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African Growth Rates, 1996-2005

From Roving Bandit, who found it on Global Dashboard, who got it from the World Bank (.pdf).

Mar 17th

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Mar 1st

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ISA Presentations

I’m giving two talks tomorrow at ISA. One is a paper evaluating the concept of institutions as it is used in the literature on foreign aid and development. The panel will be held at 1:45 in the Starboard room of the Hilton (Riverside Building). The second paper is on using Processing to produce graphics for slides. The paper will be presented at 3:45 in the Norwich room of the Hilton. The...

Feb 18th

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Feb 1st

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Jan 15th

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Happy Holidays

I’m heading home for the holidays, and because my home is in a tiny town in rural Ontario (and therefore doesn’t have access to high speed internet) I probably won’t be blogging much until January. I hope everyone enjoys a much needed break and a peaceful and happy new year. I’ll see you in 2010.

Dec 18th

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Dec 17th

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Jessica Cohen and Bill Easterly have a new edited book coming out called What Works in Development? Thinking Big and Thinking Small. The volume examines the role of randomized evaluations in development research and the contributors are a who’s who of top development economists. You can find Bill’s summary of the book here. Apparently there are some problems getting the book out the...

Dec 16th

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Dec 14th

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Dec 12th

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Dec 10th

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Dec 9th

3 notes

1 tag

Dec 8th

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The most recent episode of the pop science podcast...

Nov 20th

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Nov 19th

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“The key to success in academia is coming up with a big idea—a paradigm shift—and...”

– Anne-Marie Slaughter, answering a question on what her work in government has taught her about the differences between government and academia.

Nov 17th

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World Bank data in Google

Today Google started including 17 World Bank world development indicators in its standard search results. Relevant search queries, like one above, not only present the World Bank data, but also present graphs of the data. This seems to simply be the result of the World Bank making their data available through a public API, and Google being smart enough to take advantage of it. You can read a...

Nov 12th

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The Zedillo Report

Two days ago I attended the Washington, DC launch of the World Bank’s report on internal governance, headed by former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo. You can download the report here. The executive summary does a good job overviewing the report and is quite readable, so I’ll only briefly mention a few of the key recommendations: The World Bank Group’s Board should shrink...

Nov 9th

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Best Flag Ever

That’s the flag of the Benin Empire, a pre-colonial African state situated in modern Nigeria that lasted from 1440 until 1897. (via kottke & andre)

Oct 6th

7 notes

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DC Dev

DC Dev was calendar that Maya Berinzon and I made to aggregate development-related events in DC. This required far too much upkeep and has been discontinued. You can still access my list of places and organizations that regularly host development-related events in DC.

Sep 28th

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Sep 20th

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Sep 11th

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Sep 11th

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Listening to Development

Fall classes have started again so my time on the DC metro has increased greatly. The commuting has meant that I’ve been blowing through podcasts at an alarming rate, and I’ve come across a few that are worth sharing. These links are to the webpages of the podcasts, but all of them can be found in iTunes as well. Podcasts that are consistently good: Development Drums, a podcast by...

Sep 5th

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Aug 15th

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Theory Talks

If you are interested in the theoretical or methodological side of international relations then you should check out the interviews at Theory Talks. Run by Peer Schouten, the site currently hosts 32 interviews with top scholars in IR (broadly defined), including Alexander Wendt, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, and Robert Bates. Thanks to Matto to pointing this site out to me.

Aug 10th

RSS feeds for International Development Journals

Today Chris Albon posted a list top IR journals on his website War and Health. The list can be easily imported into a RSS feed reader. I can’t believe this didn’t occur to me before. Thank you again Chris. I subscribed to his list, and then went about compiling a list of journals that would be of interest to most development academics. My list does not overlap with Chris’ list....

Jul 27th

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Randomized Controlled Trials

Bill Easterly has a good post questioning the utility and ethics behind using randomized controlled testing to evaluate foreign aid interventions. His whole post is worth reading, but I want to elaborate on his second question, “Can you really generalize from one small experiment to conclude that something ‘works’?” When it comes to aid the answer is pretty easy: no. There...

Jul 16th

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“Yet a man who uses an imaginary map, thinking that it is a true one, is likely...”

– E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful.

Jul 15th

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The internet is like a big phone, right?

About a week and a half ago the new Conservative party introduced a bill to modernize police power and internet interception rules in Canada (see more here). The bill is based on the assumption that the internet is analogous the phone system. On the program Search Engine Minister of Public Safety Peter Van Loan said, “What we did is we […] tried to find a way of modernizing and...

Jul 1st

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The NY Times Code

Today I am releasing the Processing code that I used for this map and these graphs, and the code that I used to get the data from the NY Times. To run the programs, (download Processing, then) unzip the programs and place them in your sketchbook folder. The code used to gather data from the Times’ API can be found here. Jer has a great introduction to working with the Times’ API in...

Jun 19th

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The (delayed) NY Times Code

A few people have asked me where they can find the processing code that I used in my recent visualizations. Right now it is messy and incomplete and sitting on my desktop. It will stay there until I can clean it up. I’m aiming to have the code ready for public consumption before I travel to Chicago on June 18th. Also, I am flattered by the positive response that the visualizations received....

Jun 10th

Archive of Accepted Proposals

I am thinking about writing up and publishing some short pieces that I have kicking around in my head, but most of my ideas are not rigorous (or long) enough for academic articles. I might be able to pitch these ideas to quality newspapers or magazines, but I have never pitched an article before and I don’t know where to start. Anyone else in this situation should really check out Dan...

Jun 9th

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May 30th

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May 28th

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May 13th

5 notes

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May 12th

Mar 6th

Reading on the internet

I am a person who reads from a screen. Excluding books, I never read off of paper. All I need is a Kindle, and I’ll never read off of paper again (which would be sad, because I do like books). This post is aimed at other people like me. I want to share two bookmarklets that are central to how I read online. First, we have instapaper by Marco Arment. Instapaper allows you to save an article...

Mar 4th

Watch

Elizabeth Gilbert gives a brilliant TED talk on the burdens of creativity.

Feb 12th

Watch

I was just listening to BBC’s Africa Today podcast and the Eritrean ambassador to the UN, Araya Desta, was speaking about the border conflict between Eritrea and Djibouti. When he was explaining that Eritrean troops were only stationed on Eritrean land he referenced the above map: “I would like to underline that we are in our sovereign territories. The border has been demarcated by...

Jan 19th