Birthday jackfruit via Jill York. She notes that "it's a disney world jackfruit, grown in epcot's 'living with the land.'"I closed out 2006 with a list of predictions for 2007, including the death of Museveni from gout (still waiting) and the discovery of Salim Saleh's closet shrine to Jay-Z (less probable, though not entirely impossible). Those were strange times.I blogged less this year than in 2006 or 2007 (though I did provide you with some truly awe-inspiring Artocarpus heterophyllus), an unfortunate casualty of leaving Kampala for Kansas and, now, New York. I'm looking forward to landing at Entebbe Airport in five days, picking up a copy of the Daily Monitor and seeing what new venture the Aga Khan has planned in my absence.Until then, I'm hesitant to predict anything. Instead,...
mr. and the jackfruit from meaduva on FlickrFor more jackfruit pictures, check out all the Jackfruit of the Week posts.For those of us who have spent long hours in front of blank computer screens, watching the empty status bar at the bottom of our browser windows, hoping to see a tiny increment of movement that would indicate our desired site was finally loading: wait no more.A fellow GV-er has just sent out a list of three simples sites that will tell you whether it's worth your time to keep anxiously biting your knuckles and hitting refresh:Down for everyone or just me? will tell you whether everyone is having trouble accessing a site, or whether it's just you. Blunt? Yes. Helpful? Absolutely.Notify me when it's up! and Ding It's Up! both allow you to enter a URL and be notified...
Authentic Ugandan jackfruit via TumwiIn all the election excitement and liveblogging frenzy, I missed a week. I'm making it up to you with a trip to Uganda.That's right, blogren. I'm coming back for two weeks in January, and if there's not already a Uganda Bloggers' Happy Hour planned (I'm looking at you and you and you), I'll throw one.In other news: elephants.Elephants are cool in my book: big, adorable, seemingly genial. Except they're not so friendly when they're stomping over your crops, exacting revenge. Revenge! Who knew elephants were vengeful? (Even worse: drunken vengeful elephants.)Apparently Ethan Zuckerman, who wrote last week about the perils of coming face-to-face with a vindictive pachyderm:It’s a good idea to know whether elephants are enroute to your farm as one...
"Too close to a jackfruit for comfort" from the LOCAL on Flickr. My sentiments exactly.In six days, Americans will be rid of George Bush. I'm pausing to let that sink in. It Sounds. So. Good.Elections haven't always been a big thing for me. Eight years ago I failed the AP U.S. History test because my teacher spent an entire semester discussing hanging chads instead of Eisenhower and the Space Race. Four years ago I jumped on the Dean bandwagon, supported Kerry and almost stopped talking to my boyfriend, who voted for Bush. Unlike some more liberal friends of mine, though, I didn't care enough to show up to class on November 5, 2004 wearing this shirt:We've managed (albeit barely) to survive the past four years, and this time around, I'm paying attention. And it's not just me...
Jackfruit Ganesha via RuchiiSome research I'm doing on crowdsourcing in crisis is starting to take (nebulous, uncertain) shape via my Delicious account. Some highlights:The "crisis mapping" section of iRevolution, the blog of Fletcher School PhD candidate Patrick Meier, is a glorious treasure trove of histories, plans and possibilities for digital mapping based on crowdsourced information in conflict early warning and prevention systems. Meier is writing his dissertation about the effects of the information revolution on social resistance movements in authoritarian societies. In other words, I would very much like to buy him dinner.FrontlineSMS isn't exactly new (I first heard about it in 2007, when it was being used to help monitor the Nigerian elections), but the more I read about...
Artocarpus heterophyllus via Russian in Brazil on FlickrMidterms are kicking in this week, and I'm trying to juggle six classes, SIPA's blog, Bayit life (including a three-hour dinner in our sukkah yesterday), research responsibilities and some other stuff I've probably forgotten. Among the fifteen tips my econ professor gave us for taking the midterm:What to do if you freeze. I hope it does not happen, but rarely it happens. Let me know (I will be around). Leave the classroom for 5 minutes instead of staring aimlessly at the exam paper for 30 minutes. The bright side of freezing is that it happens only once. I have never had a student who froze twice.Good to know there's a bright side of freezing during a three-hour test. In other, less panic-attack inducing news, today is Blog Action...
Jackfruit closeup courtesy of aldenhg on FlickrI ran into a friend of mine last Thursday. "I woke up this morning feeling like today was a holiday," she said, with obvious glee at the prospect of watching Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin humiliate herself yet again on national television.I was going to make this the Palin Edition of Jackfruit of the Week, commenting snarkily on pieces like this: The problem with Ms. Palin’s candidacy is that John McCain might actually win this election, and then if something terrible happened, the country could be left with little more than an exclamation point as president.(from Palin's Alternate Universe)And this:Yet surely, more than most of us, politicians need to be able to think on their feet, to have a brain that works quickly...
These gigantic jackfruits are... gigantic. Hat tip: Jillian York.I've been reading a lot about ethnic conflict this week to prepare for two presentations I'm giving next month, but rather than quote something, I'd like to point you to two related links that came my way today:Never Again in Sri Lanka is a set of video clips in English, Sinhala and Tamil that commemorate the 25th anniversary of the 1983 anti-Tamil riots in Sri Lanka. The videos were originally broadcast on Sri Lankan television and have been collected and preserved online as part of the effort to document the Sri Lankan civil war, one of the longest-running ethnic conflicts in the world. (Original link from GV: Sri Lanka: Anti-Tamil riot videos.)Resolve Uganda is hosting a petition to President Bush, thanking him for...
Baby jackfruit via Don FulanoThis week I was offered a spot on the editorial staff The Morningside Post, Columbia University's international affairs blog. I'll be working a lot with outreach and video, as well as helping to roll out a shiny new design that will better showcase the variety of our content. I'll also be blogging about media, technology and development (and maybe a celebrity or two). Meanwhile, I urge you to check out the wealth of archived posts on everything from climate change to Cambodia.Jon Gosier wonders why Barcamp Uganda focused on selling, rather than discussing, new technology: "Barcamp Kampala was organized by myself (an American), a Dutch person, a Brit and a New Zealander with help from three Ugandan students. Thus it definitely had tons of Western...
Over the past two years I've experimented with a feature on this blog called "Jackfruit of the week," most recently last November. It's usually a picture of (what else?) a jackfruit accompanied by some of the most intriguing things I've read or seen that week, similar to Chris Blattman's Links I liked posts.For the next two years, I'm going to try to make JOTW a regular occurrence by basing it on things I'm reading or watching for class. My degree is in Economic and Political Development with a focus in (new) media, so most of the things I share here will be vaguely related to things like Internet and political development, but there might be the occasional piece of statistics humor. Without further ado:This week's jackfruit comes from my friend and colleague Jillian York. It was...