Ace number cruncher Max Roser has redrawn the map of the world so that country size is proportional to its population. So large countries with a small population shrink in size – talking about you Canada, Mongolia, Australia, and Russia, and vice versa for heavily populated places like the Netherlands or Japan. Cool eh? And kind of obvious – has no-one done this before?
Compare and contrast: the Guardian’s Afua Hirsch on Theresa May’s visit to Africa. Hannah Ryder on last week’s China Africa summit – Deborah Brautigam combs through the aid numbers agreed there.
Cash Transfers for wonks: Techie but fascinating discussion of new paper by Chris Blattman and friends on the long term (9 yrs) effects of a group-based cash grant program for unemployed youth to start individual enterprises in skilled trades in Northern Uganda. And USAID has started a series of cash benchmarking evaluations that compare the per-dollar impact of USAID programs with that of a comparably sized cash transfer given directly to individuals or households.
The collapse of Lehman brothers 10 years ago had a silver lining for Kaori Shigiya, according to a piece in the FT
Our future is disappearing. Smart and moving ice statue protest – anyone know the location? While we’re on climate change, check out this amazing example of weather reporting-cum-CGI (it all kicks off about 30 seconds in)
Economic man v bunch of puppets rap battle, by Kate Raworth and friends