Reuters has started a site devoted exclusively to Africa. Each country has its own page. And there at the top left of each page is a feed of the most recent posts from Global Voices. Reuters is a funder of GV, and this is a very cool integration of the mainstream media and our global voices.

It makes me inordinately happy. [Tags: global Voices africa news media msm reuters everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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From an article about DonorsChoose.org by Jonathan Alter in Slate:

So for example, this week a teacher in Richton, Mo., posted a request for a $392 camcorder for her kids to act out stories they’re reading; a teacher in New York City asked for a rug on which to read stories to kindergarteners ($474); and a teacher in a 100 percent low-income school in Los Angeles wants a $414 telescope to teach astronomy to her students. Donors scroll through the hundreds of proposals (searchable by region, subject, level of school poverty, etc.) and fund them in whole or in part with a couple of clicks. If there’s no market for the proposal, it doesn’t get funded, though most eventually do. DonorsChoose handles all of the discounted purchasing from vendors, so no money goes directly to the teacher.

[Tags: charity web2.0 everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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My wife and I are in DC as tourists for a few days. Some notes…

If you’re going to visit the WWII memorial and the Vietnam memorial, do them in chronological order. The WWII is a big, open space with nothing to hang feelings or memories on. The Vietnam memorial — which, amazingly, I’d never been to before — is heart-breaking. No matter what we thought of that war, we all feel the full stop of those young lives.

The Hirshhorn is a truly enjoyable art museum. I usually conk out aesthetically after 45 minutes, but we did this museum from its opening hirsh to its final horn.

Because I am a mature individual, I refrained from yelling profanities at the White House.
I’ve never liked its palatial air.

We had a delicious Indian dinner at Nivana at 1810 K Street, NW. It’s completely vegetarian, and much of it is vegan. The owners are very friendly and will tell you anything you want to know about Jainism.

Disturbing fact: Some of the wines they serve are marked vegan because, the owners say, most wines are “filtered through fish.”

“Only Human” is a Spanish movie about a Jew who brings home a Palestinian fiance. We went because the Washington Post claimed it was laugh-out-loud funny. Eh. It had a couple of chuckles, but otherwise was just predictably silly. “My Big, Neurotic Jewish-Palestinian Engagement.”

[Tags: washington_dc dc vegetarian travel]

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In the comfortless elbow of the Vietnam Memorial in DC, I asked the veteran stationed there how the names were arranged. He explained that starting from the middle, where we were standing, the names are listed in the order in which they fell, stretching to the right, and then picking up again at the entry way to the wall.

But, I said, stretches are alphabetized, some so long that initially I thought the entire wall was arranged A-Z.

They’re listed alphabetically, replied the vet, when there were multiple deaths on one day.

[Tags: vietnam war alphabetization taxnomy washington_dc iraq everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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Much as I love Wikipedia — and I love it so much that I’m giving it candy hearts on Valentine’s Day — its policy of neutrality sometimes forces resolution when we’d rather have debate. Yes, competing sides get represented in the articles, and the discussion pages let us hear people arguing their points, but the arguments themselves are treated as stations on the way to neutral agreement.

So, there’s room for additional approaches that take the arguments themselves as their topics. That’s what Debatepedia.org does, and it looks like it’s on its way to being really useful.

Like Wikipedia, anyone can edit existing content. Unlike Wikipedia, its topics are all up for debate. Each topic presents both sides, structured into sub-questions, with a strong ethos of citation, factuality, and lack of flaming; the first of its Guiding Principles is “No personal opinion.” Rather, it attempts to present the best case and best evidence for each side.

Debatepedia limits itself to topics with yes-no alternatives and with clear pro and con cases. To start a debate, a user has to propose it and the editors (who seem to be the people who founded it…I couldn’t find info about them on the site) have to accept it. This keeps people from proposing stupid topics and boosts the likelihood that if you visit a listed debate, you’ll find content there. It also limits discussion to topics that have two and only two sides, which may turn out to be a serious limitation. But, we’ll see. And it can adapt as required.

Will Debatepedia take off? Who the hell knows. But it’s a welcome addition to the range of experiments in pulling ourselves together. [Tags: politics wikis wikipedia debatepedia everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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WikiLeaks is a Wikipedia-style wiki for people to place leaked documents, untraceably. According to the FAQ, “It combines the protection and anonymity of cutting-edge cryptographic technologies with the transparency and simplicity of a wiki interface.” “Wikileaks opens leaked documents up to a much more exacting scrutiny than any media organization or intelligence agency could provide: the scrutiny of a worldwide community of informed wiki editors.”

It’s ambitious. The FAQ says:

Wikileaks may become the most powerful “intelligence agency” on earth — an intelligence agency of the people. It will be an open source, democratic intelligence agency. But it will be far more principled, and far less parochial than any governmental intelligence agency; consequently, it will be more accurate, and more relevant. It will have no commercial or national interests at heart; its only interests will be truth and freedom of information. Unlike the covert activities of state intelligence agencies, Wikileaks will rely upon the power of overt fact to inform citizens about the truths of their world.

It’s got a million leaked docs already and expects to surpass Wikipedia in number of entries. But it’s hard to see how it becomes anything like an intelligence agency if it only consists of leaks; if a citizen wants information about a topic, seeing only the leaked material is going to give quite a skewed and incomplete view. On the other hand, if you’re researching a topic, I can see the value of checking in with Wikileaks to see if there’s anything you’re not supposed to know about it.

Here’s another bit from the FAQ:

Couldn’t leaking involve invasions of privacy? Couldn’t mass leaking of documents be irresponsible? Aren’t some leaks deliberately false and misleading?

Providing a forum for freely posting information involves the potential for abuse, but measures can be taken to minimize any potential harm. The simplest and most effective countermeasure is a worldwide community of informed users and editors who can scrutinize and discuss leaked documents.

It’ll be fascinating to see how this works out in the edge cases. Does posting the names of covert agents count as a leak? [Tags: wikileaks wikis wikipedia intelligence politics media everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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Global Voices begins a post this way:

We didn’t want to have to write this article. As Global Voices‘ Latin America editor/Spanish translator/Digest dude David Sasaki wrote on one of our mailing lists yesterday, “I have low tolerance for the amount of internet bandwidth dedicated to the latest and greatest Apple product. . . .” Searching his Latin America RSS feeds, however, David could find “little else other than excited talk about the Apple iPhone,” and several of our other authors and editors reported on similar oohing and aahing coming from their respective blogospheres.

And why wouldn’t GV want to cover this? Only because there are some other issues that also matter, including “Freedom of the press and Saddam Hussein in the Moroccan blogosphere,” freedom of press under attack in the Philippines, freedom to blog under attack in Iran, the St. Petersburg flood, , the holidays and politics in Bangladesh, how Somalia is roiling Kenya, the life of a ten year old girl in Cambodia who peddles bracelets to tourists …

All that and more in 24 hours on the site. Global Voices continues to astound. [Tags: globalVoices gv iphone morocco philippines russia iran bangladesh somalia kenya cambodia media ]

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I just had the good fortune to be able to ask Ethan Zuckerman about the Somalia air strikes and got an amazing 15-minute controlled rant. Wish I’d taken notes. Anyway, despite the way it’s being reported, this is not a simple in-and-out revenge strike on bad guys. It is a move in a complex political struggle over the future of that area of the world. (Yes, I am naive enough to have thought otherwise.) For more, begin by searching on Ethan’s site for the category “africa,” and see this article and this one. [Tags: africa ethiopia somalia terrorism ethan_zuckerman]

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Oxfam America’s “Unwrapped” program lets you buy gifts online for those who really really need your help. As is Oxfam’s wont, the gifts help a poor family sustain itself: For $20, you can irrigate a farmer’s land for two months, for $30 you can plant 50 trees, and for $120 you can start a village savings group. [Tags: oxfam charity]

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