Asterisk Magazine has a great interview with Rob Rosenbaum, on Project Resource Optimization and trying to rescue the most cost-effective parts of USAID
The Center for Scientific Integrity is launching a new program on medical evidence.
Obviously recommend Rob Rogers and Jason Wendle on SROI of mobility programs
Jacob Trefethan has a roundup of scientific writing from the last two years that stuck with him. (I am not unbiased on the quality of this roundup; my piece on education in the developing world for Asterisk is included.)
Notable in this list is the number of Asimov pieces (4), Asterisk pieces (2), and Works in Progress pieces (2). The small magazine world is really producing very high quality stuff.
In 11 years, 250 million people were lifted out of extreme poverty in India. Economic growth: it really is that good.
The US is proposing to tax remittances. This will be very bad for the Northern Triangle.
bookbear express has a lovely post on friendship. As someone with a… less than successful romantic history, my friends have been my primary support for most of my life; they have, in Ava’s words, “slowly and gently changed me, like water gradually shaping a shoreline”. They’ve kept me going through the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune; they are also responsible for at least half my personality.1
YMMV if this is a good thing.