Kimberley Motley is a lawyer. She is the first foreign attorney to set up a practice in Afghanistan. She left the United States in 2008, intending just to work there for a year, but when she saw the atrocious conditions in an Afghan prison she decided to offer her legal services to foreigners imprisoned in the country and, later, to Afghans. […]
What do you get when you pair a prison inmate with a dog set to be euthanized? A program that benefits both inmates and dogs. Over two dozen jail-dog programs exist in the USA. What’s a jail-dog program? A prison inmate gets a dog to take care of and train, so it can be adopted. […]
What’s the best way to convince armed combatants to stop fighting and return home? Remind them of the joys of Christmas, of being with their families and children, of carols and fireworks during the festive season. Campaigns to make the fighters feel nostalgic and want to demobilize did just that in Colombia. Operation Christmas (2010), Operation […]
Many, many people have heard about Habitat for Humanity. But what they do is worth repeating. In its own words, “Habitat for Humanity International builds, rehabilitates and repairs simple, decent houses with the help of homeowner families, volunteer labor, and donations of money and materials.” It is an international, non-governmental, and non-profit organization. Habitat uses volunteer […]
Placebos are getting a fair amount of press lately. Yes, those “fake” remedies called “inert medications” that seem to be real treatments but aren’t are being talked about quite a bit. Recently, among others, health economist Austin Frakt wrote about them in “The Upshot” (“a New York Times website with analysis and data visualizations about politics, policy […]
Now everyone can have access to bits of history, through images. A project spearheaded by Kalev Leetaru of Georgetown University is making pictures from old books available to anyone who wants to view or use them. Here’s one example. The photo is from a book entitled “Prag” dated 1912, written by Josef Neuwirth. The subject […]
