In the spirit of post-partisanship, here is a video of what very well might be Africa’s only McCain supporter. If I remember correctly, I think his name is “George Kennedy”. How amazing is that? He is a business reporter at the Daily Observer.

She had the silent solemnity of those who are either insistently spoiled or have suffered greatly. I felt badly for having taken her seat - I was sure, but wrong, that the Accra to Monrovia leg of the flight would be less crowded. But she waved me back down with more annoyance than graciousness and [...]

Some friends of mine find it strange that I haven’t been writing or saying much of anything about what most of them see as the most important opportunity of our generation: the potential election of Barack Obama as president of the United States.
So concerned are they by my lack of punditry that a few have [...]

How do you rebuild a country from scratch? First you need a government. Liberia, so far, has that under the leadership of President Ellen “Irony Lady” Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa’s first elected female head of state.
Second, especially in the case of a country that has been at civil war for over a decade, you need security. Without [...]

My hope was that I wouldn’t be blogging much about Liberia. Rather, I had hoped to train as many Liberians how to blog as possible and then simply point to what they have to say. Unfortunately, because of lack of infrastructure outside of our cushy hotel, it looks like I won’t have much of an [...]

I am going to make two controversial claims that will probably upset the sensibilities of both genders:
1.) Behind every successful man is a woman. (Groucho Marx’s version was: “Behind every successful man is a woman, behind her is a wife.”)
2.) Men are better at giving powerpoint presentations than women.

Right now I have my feet in [...]

Thinking back on it, I’m not sure I really learned anything new - not in terms of ideas nor anecdotes - from Here Comes Everybody. And yet I’ll probably end up buying copies for both sets of my grandparents and anyone else I care about who wants to know why it is that I do [...]

And you thought I was just throwing out complements when I said the kids at Kwa Mashu are amazing. Check it:

It is always so hard for me to say goodbye to any of the Rising Voices groups, but it was especially hard to say goodbye at Kwa Mashu. They are so creative and were so [...]

In 2000 sociologist Robert Putnam published Bowling Alone. No, I haven’t read it yet, but the title sums up his central observation: across the United States league bowling is on the decline. Putnam is concerned by this because it is representative of the general decline in group activities by Americans. And group activities like league [...]

I am reading two excellent (and related) books by two talented authors: Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture and Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody. They both belong to a relatively recent genre of writing which attempts to explain the impact of the Internet on society. Other recent examples include David Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous, Jonathan Zittrain’s The [...]