LATG Book Club

Friday, July 3, 2009

Thursday, July 2, 2009

What did you do for work today? I sat in front of a computer. For about two and a half hours, on and off, I surfed the internet. For about four hours, I transcribed polling data from the 2006 Brazilian presidential elections. Typing, that is. I will be paid about $65 for my trouble. I feel good--no soreness.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Low-Hanging Fruit

Become a statistic! In case you like writing letters to elected officials to have them tabulated by interns to be summarized in reports which may or may not influence the mind of said official: the Congo Conflict Minerals Act would require electronics companies to disclose how much tantalum, tin, and tungsten they get from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Write your senator. Different rebel groups in the DRC control access to these mines, taxing miners to fuel their militias. Sound familiar? Also, in a topic more related to our previous reading, the Obama administration is considering granting Temporary Protected Status to Haitians living in the United States. TPS would effectively legalize undocumented Haitians. Write the White House and tell them that allowing Haitians to stay in the United States and earn money is the least our country could do in these hard times after centuries of bigoted and oppressive policies toward Haiti that contributed to the present flow of migrants.

Monday, June 1, 2009

We Struggle So Hard For Each Breath That We Take

So, I recently read Elizabeth Pisani's excellent book The Wisdom of Whores, in which she spends a good deal of time talking about how she and her colleagues did a bang-up job of snookering donor countries into adequately funding AIDS programs, and then, despite their good intentions, failed to spend that money on programs that actually lowered the incidence of HIV/AIDS. So, when I was browsing through a site I've linked to before, GiveWell, this page stood out to me. They give their top rating to exactly four out of 136 charities they've rated:

We believe charities that are truly and reliably changing lives are the exception, not the rule.

Some of the heavy-hitters they list as "Not Recommended" include UNICEF, World Vision, and the Grameen Foundation. To be clear, I don't think this means that those organizations do no good work. But it does mean 1) there's a good chance the work they're doing is having no effect 2) there's a good chance that some of their work is having a negative effect 3) there's a very good chance no one knows if certain programs work 4) should we be in a position to provide help or money to someone near or far, we should not be surprised if we make a hash of it, and should simply try to learn from our mistakes.