Development Blogs.com

While the house of cards that global finance built over the past decade continues to whither and fall, there are also communities around the world who recently saw their actual houses crumble to the ground. The May 12 Sichuan earthquake wasn’t meant to be a foreshadow for the global economy, but maybe it could be - and in so doing provides some light at the end of the tunnel, based on this May 21st story from NPR’s All Things Considered: A month before the massive temblor, one woman and her family who live in the countryside a couple hours southwest of Chengdu in the region of Ya’an were hard at work building a new house. Yao Suhui, 33, and her husband are peasant farmers. The new house is a symbol of upward mobility in the Chinese countryside…. “What bad...

And the girl behind the counter has a tattooed tearOne for every year he's away she saidSuch a crumbling beauty, Ach there's nothing wrong with her That a hundred dollars won't fixThose are lyrics from Tom Waits' song '9th and Hennepin'. They slipped involuntarily into my consciousness when I read about a World Bank study that is being planned in Tanzania. According to the report in the Financial Times, the study involves 'incentivizing' sexual behavior change by means of cold hard cash. Participants, if they do not pick up sexually transmitted infections during the study period, are told that they will receive $45 for their efforts. The study also will have a comparative control arm in which participants will also be tested for STIs, but will not receive any money. One of the researchers...