Category: Choices

The Nobel Laureate economist Robert Solow famously proclaimed that “you can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” Along the same lines, one may say that the information age is present everywhere except in the political discourse of our time. There is no debate that productivity matters. Countries, regions within countries and […]

Jul 11, 2005 (LBO) – Water is free in Sri Lanka.  Anyone who says different will be pilloried.  I say different.  I say that we will pay in lives and devastation if we do not start charging the real costs of water. The lifetime of modern dams that use cement is between 50 to 100 years, […]

Ridding Year 1 school admissions of corruption and influence 1.0 Introduction Getting a child into Year 1 of school, government or private, has become a traumatic and unpleasant event. Principals are being arrested for taking bribes, court cases are being launched, parents stand in line through the night, and children are being coached to lie […]

April 20, 2005 (LBO) – Policy analysis must begin from a realistic assessment of where we are and what we are. We are a small island nation located within the region with the world’s largest concentration of poor people, South Asia. We are about the size of greater Mumbai, one city in India, in population and […]

One of the more interesting exchanges of the video news conference on a national all-hazards warning system for Sri Lanka held on the 10th of February was off the subject: a journalist asked the international participants (video linked from Hilo, Hawai’i and Vancouver, Canada) whether there were uniform 100 or 200 meter no-building zones in […]

A Visit to the Former “Tsunami Capital” The sign below an exhibit at the Pacific Tsunami Museum in Hilo, Hawai’i, claims that Hilo is “the tsunami capital of the world.”  Dr George D. Curtis, the scientific advisor to the museum, covered that sign with his hand and said quietly, “now, we’ll have to change that.”  […]