Digital Archive....

Roger Thurow - Outrage and Inspire - Forward Ever Global Food for Thought FORWARD EVER Kimilili, Kenya The young man from the farm was looking smart in an olive green suit, salmon tie and cufflinks.  His black shoes were a bit scuffed, but his English was polished.  "We are moving forward," he said.  "Forward ever, backward never." When last I saw Gideon Wanyama, at Christmastime 2011, his high school education was wavering in the balance.  He had just finished his third year, but it had been a mighty struggle.  All year long, his family had sacrificed to scrape up enough money for his school fees.  His mother, Leonida, a smallholder farmer, sold their maize harvest, prolonging the family's hunger season.  Still, that wasn't enough; several times, the principal of the high school sent Gideon home to bring back more money to complete the tuition payment.  Leonida, prizing the education of her children above...

Another Perspective on Bad Software The Baseline Scenario By James Kwak Last summer, Lawrence Baxter wrote these two posts about the toxic combination of bad software—actually, software in general, since no software system is perfect—and too-big-to-fail banks. Baxter knows whereof he speaks, as he was previously a technology executive at a very large bank. Here's what he has to say about it: I don't care what a CIO or even a CEO might say:  if they claim that they can eliminate the real risk of such missteps, they just don't know what they are talking about no matter how good they are.  And if such missteps are inevitable, then we simply cannot avoid the question whether the dangers posed by large, complex financial institutions and systems could outweigh their benefits. Think about that the next time you hear some CEO talking about his company's state-of-the-art technology. Sent with Reeder