today's quicklinks

from find what works, what i think is the first really constructive discussion of celebrity advocacy in development and humanitarian aid. this smart, even-handed post actually breaks down the reasons behind the endless outpouring of snark from the development and aid blogging community over the like of bono and george clooney's satellite sentinel project. i particularly like that he admits that celebs are unlikely to get out of the advocacy game any time soon, and that the challenge is to channel their efforts productively. i agree with his major recommendation:

Maybe one principle would be that celebrities should only advocate for coalitions, rather than for specific projects or organizations. Celebrity endorsement can spark donations and political action from the general public, but I’d like to see that energy directed by a group of issue experts who have to come to some kind of consensus, rather than by whomever George Clooney happens to know. On a similar note, another principle might be to have celebrities advocate together for general issues, rather than carving up issues and competing for the public’s attention. Another principle would be to always encourage further education, in addition to action.

~

this story is not good, no matter how you slice it, but i thought it was interesting to see how different news sources from different countries write their headlines about the same incident. i always have (sometimes frothing at the mouth style) fun analyzing western foreign press coverage of stuff in this region.

~

and unrelated to development OR south asia, imma let my geek flag fly and also pimp out a friend who's an aspiring writer in LA. on his new blog, he takes a semi-randomly generated collection of eight images off the internet and uses them as the basis for short exercises in gritty, often futuristic genre fiction, reminiscent of neil gaiman and, to a lesser degree, books like david mitchell's cloud atlas (both personal favorites of mine). show him some love and check it out.