Tag Archive

Some Frank Talk About Haiti

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By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
On my blog, a woman named Mona pointed to Haitian corruption and declared: “I won’t send money because I know what will happen to it.” Another reader attributed Haiti’s poverty to “the low I.Q. of the 9 million people there,” and added: “It is all very sad and cannot be [...]

Confusion on Where Money Lent via Kiva Goes

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Last month, David Roodman, a research fellow at the Center for Global Development, pressed a button on his laptop as his bus left the Lincoln Tunnel in Manhattan and started a debate that has people re-examining the country’s latest celebrated charity, Kiva.org.
Oprah Winfrey extolled Kiva on her TV show. Nicholas D. Kristof, a [...]

Another Cost of War . . .

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If an educated and literate population is the best way to keep our standard of living and help others achieve a better and more stable one . . . whatever are we thinking?
More Schools, Not Troops – NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Dispatching more troops to Afghanistan would be a monumental bet and probably a bad [...]

Food for the Soul

On a summer visit back to the farm here where I grew up, I think I figured out the central problem with modern industrial agriculture.

When Our Brains Short-Circuit

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NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Our political system sometimes produces such skewed results that it’s difficult not to blame bloviating politicians. But maybe the deeper problem lies in our brains.
Evidence is accumulating that the human brain systematically misjudges certain kinds of risks. In effect, evolution has programmed us to be alert for snakes and enemies with [...]