Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action.

Press Enterprise/Jimmy May
Press Enterprise/Jimmy May

 

  • The $2.7 billion Army lost blimp floating over an Amish buggy in Pennsylvania just 19 hours after Rathyon posted an ad for a temp blimp watcher, was only the runner-up craziest military story of the week. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reports on an episode in 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis, when two U.S. Air Force officers refused orders to launch 32 nuclear missiles. (Summary here).
  • Tanzania election results are in, primer here.
  • An account of some disturbing responses to the observations of all male panels at international development conferences. (h/t Lee Crawfurd)
  • The University of California system and White House are boosting support for open access publication of research.
  • Duncan Green finds low take up of blogging & tweeting by academics despite demonstrated evidence of the benefits. More research is needed to understand this failure.
  • Rasul & Rogger in American Economic Review: Papers & Proceedings (PDF here) find a correlation between ethnic diversity in Nigeria's civil service and quality of service (measured in project completion rates).

 

And, if you were following the craziness that broke out when the WHO classified processed meats as a carcinogen, there was at least one piece of good news.