Humanosphere

its always a bit suspicious when reporters get paid by someone other than their employer, innit? https://www.humanosphere.org/basics/2013/02/a-personal-view-behind-the… https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/bill-melinda-gates-foundat…

The list of countries that the UK hasn't invaded at some point is surprisingly short: https://www.humanosphere.org/basics/2013/08/map-of-the-day-where-the-b…

https://www.humanosphere.org/social-business/2014/09/toms-shoes-harm-l… There is one article talking about the effect on local industry. The gist of it is that you help people out by giving them free stuff, but you kill the local food/clothing/shoe industry and therefore trap the very communities you intend to help into a cycle where they can never start businesses and raise their standard of living because nobody will buy their stuff because they get it for free through aid. Also, the term "third world" is not offensive and most people are tired of playing this game where some group declares some term offensive and we are all expected to stop using it. You don't get to dictate the language people use to talk and think about the world around them.

There's a plant (Justicia gendarussa) in Indonesia that seems to work: http://www.humanosphere.org/science/2013/04/male-birth-control-made-in…

[0] is the first source that popped up on a quick googling; the US alone spent 18 billion dollars between 2002 and 2014 on food aid (to hungry children and such). [0] http://www.humanosphere.org/world-politics/2014/10/united-states-waste…

"the foundation of fear, especially such that motivates policy, should be based on odds." That is a fair point and a rational reason. However, it's convenient to say "We've always had guns, the chance of randomly getting shot in the street is low, therefore we should keep them." What is the chance of randomly getting shot if guns were never legal in the first place (e.g. an American in which no 2nd amendment was present)? What will the chance be of randomly getting shot if guns are made illegal tomorrow? Lower? Higher? Maybe we could look at other countries and see how they compare. If your logic is policy should be related to odds, I think you may have just argued that guns should in fact be illegal based on homicide rates in other developed countries, for example - http://www.humanosphere.org/science/2016/06/visualizing-gun-deaths-com…

Also, they are part of the few edible maritime species whose populations are increasing (http://www.humanosphere.org/environment/2016/05/rapidly-changing-ocean…

There is an FDA approval for testing Oxitec's GM mosquitos in a small scale trial in Florida. There are also small scale tests in Brazil and the Caymans. http://www.humanosphere.org/science/2016/08/fda-approves-genetically-m…

> Do you have the numbers to back that up? Seriously? Do you mean car .vs. gun, or gun harm/death differentials between countries with (broadly) different attitudes towards gun ownership and use? The latter is pretty easy to find numbers. Wikipedia [1] (sort by last column) for countries by fire-arm death, or [2] estimated number of guns (ownership) per capita. Comparing gun deaths around the world, humanosphere[3] has some nice stats (from 2016-06) dispelling the 'other countries without so many guns just use knives' argument. Actually, that article has some hugely sobering comparisons with some highly risky parts of the planet. CBS posted an article in 2016-02 [4] comparing gun deaths in the USA with other countries - quoting a study published in the AMA earlier in the year. If you mean the former - that's a trickier thing to evaluate. Less people have access to a gun than a car, for starters, and most people use a car much more often than they use a gun. Cars are designed to transport people and goods - guns are designed to cause damage - so defining 'accidental use' of both is an interesting question. A bit of quick googling comes up with some numbers, suggesting guns are now - in absolute terms - the cause of death for more USA citizens than cars ... but naturally there's some dispute about how those numbers are determined, and some strong interest in not comparing those stats to other countries. On the other hand, if you think gun ownership should be…

Looks like you are driven by "coolness of legally owning a firearm". Let me show you what's not cool about owning a firearm: http://www.humanosphere.org/science/2016/06/visualizing-gun-deaths-com… For every person you encourage to get firarm, there is a fixed likelyhood that firearm would be used to kill someone innocent. It might be interesting to estimate how many innocent people have to die so you can consider yourself "cool" again. If you are data oriented person and make data based decision, you should be fairly happy with your country's choice. I'm not saying there should be blanket ban. There are certainly situations like you are getting death threats and things like that where you should be allowed to own a firearm however if you adopt US like model, too many innocent lives would be at stack to justify it in any possible way. Civilian firearms used to be mildly effective to fight wars in 1940s. In modern ware fare they are useless.

A couple comments; first, you have clearly never tried to manage a third-world work force/team. A single example came to mind quickly for me; a hotel I frequented in Mozambique had a serious problem with feral cats. Like 50 of them. They would come right up to your table, jump on it while you were elsewhere, and lick the butter of your plate. I like cats as much as the next guy, but seriously. It took a couple of months to get an exterminator in willing to deal with them; cats = black magic = no employees (relatively well educated and very well paid for the town) were willing to deal with them. The fact that you're writing this post in English significantly bolsters the point the author made about acculturation. You live in a world in which the English essentially won the culture war, and imposed their culture on a vast swath of the globe. (Check out this fine map of places England has not invaded for some perspective: http://www.humanosphere.org/basics/2013/08/map-of-the-day-where-the-br… While it might be controversial to say that English culture generates on average more wealth than some other cultures, I think it would be reasonably easy to demonstrate that something about the English acculturation of colonies left them better off financially than other European and Asian colonizers. And, by better off, I mean vastly better off. Compare Nigeria (British, $3k+ per person GDP) to CAR (French, $350 per person GDP). I'm not cherry picking, either.…

It's very disappointing to see such a smart community bicker about a topic they clearly know little about and have done even less research to back up their comments. Let's cut the crap about Bitcoin, building esoteric Facebook apps to broadcast message, and A/B testing funding effectiveness to prove a point. An article from Humanosphere (full disclosure, I work with this organization) http://www.humanosphere.org/2013/04/unicef-sweden-wants-your-money-not… actually digs a little deeper into the topic. Regardless of what you think of The Atlantic's article, the UNICEF campaign is fully integrated with press ads, tv spots, radio commercials, digital material, and PR. An integrated campaign on this scale is (unfortunately) relatively unheard of in the development community due to funding issues and uproar whenever any non-profit's seen to be spending excessively on initiatives that don't directly go to the task at hand. I personally think the campaign is effective; UNICEF is going against the grain by calling out the shortcomings of social media when most other non-profits (I've had experience working with a couple) are all using likes, retweets, and pins as KPIs (but clearly don't have a perfect correlation with the bottom line)