Wednesday Links, Including African Cliches

Apologies for the rather touch-and-go posting over the past few days - in the process of moving to San Francisco, which in turn means trying to find an apartment in San Francisco, which is sort of the rental equivalent of waterboarding. Who knew so little could cost so much?

Anyhows, a few links on a rather hectic Wednesday afternoon:

- Thanks to wronging rights for pointing out Rachel Strohm's blog Development Daily, and in particular her brilliant post on a comparative taxonomy of African cliches.

- My genocide co-blogger Michelle's piece on Facebook and Holocaust denial has generated quite an ongoing discussion, as did Chris Blattman's post on whether development agencies should fly business class.

- Blattman's post on worst practices is also worth a read.

- Harry Rud has a great post on tricks of the trade, about how even the best-meaning policies (against nepotism, or corruption) often utterly fail on the ground.

- Alex de Waal has an interesting post looking at the connection between media scrutiny and mortality rates - he mentions the "inverse correlation" between violence and media coverage (i.e. "as killings decline, coverage increased"), but then goes deeper:

"But another perspective on this is to focus on what media coverage does. There is good circumstantial evidence that it is responsible (in part) for driving down the violence and helping reduce famine mortality. So, even if the media are somehow distorting our picture of the crises, are they not performing an even more useful function in saving lives?"

- Finally, for the hell of it - Star Trek: A Military Analysis.  (Geek-chic, it's all about geek-chic.)

[I know, I know, I just used a ball of yarn as an illustration (from www.berroco.com) - let's just say it's difficult to find anything that expresses "cliche".  Any suggestions much appreciated.]