this & that

• Microlending might not work after all. That might be because it's about making extremely poor people slightly less poor rather than addressing the system-level factors that make people poor in the first place. Maybe.
• Chris Blattman has some nice updates from Growth Week.
  
• Sigh. "Random probability kills 3 in the DRC."
  
• Kenya's politicians aren't taking reform seriously, and the U.S. is about to get serious with its threats: no more New York shopping trips if they don't shape up.
• I had no idea there was so much love for the Biyas among Cameroonians living in the U.S.
• I'm speaking at this conference on the resource curse in Africa at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville next week. Which should be interesting given that I don't really buy into the whole resource curse thesis. (Why isn't the UAE - or the United States, for that matter - wracked by civil conflict over abundant resources? Because they have institutions. And governance.) If you're in the greater Knoxville metropolitan area, come on out and say hello.
  
• The Security Council passes a resolution on nuclear weapons, and Obama will work to get U.S. ratification of the CTBT.
  
• Obama's policy-based approach.
  
• "Faith-based aid is unconstitutional, period."
• This is just appalling. Whatever happened, I hope it clues Glenn Beck in to the fact that repeating crazy falsehoods on national television is not okay. There are too many unstable people out there.
  
• Rising tuition costs have a much greater impact on low-income students than others.
  
• Saving a small Texas town with football, tourism, and a hedge fund.
  
• My friend's office at CUNY-John Jay was closed today due to a bedbug "condition," not to be confused with a bedbug "infestation." Does he get to count it as a mention in the NYT if they referenced his exam being canceled?