Commitment strategy

This probably isn't very useful, since you all have no plausible enforcement mechanism at the moment. Nonetheless, I'm going to tell you all the things I am thinking about writing, both in the hope that it will encourage me to actually do it, and that you may express some opinion on what you're actually interested in reading about.

Apologies if the tendency toward more abstract or political posts is less interesting than travel stories. I've been finding it useful to write down the things that have been knocking around in my head for the last ten years, because I tend to forget my opinions otherwise. No, really.

Philippines:

• Cultural beauty standards, or according to Mrs. Lim, why white men have terrible taste in Filipinas.
  
• Things I wish someone had told me before I traveled in developing countries
  
• Filipino racism and whitening facials soaps.
  
• Pictures from my walk to work in the morning (I'm trying to get brave enough to take these picture, so I'm hoping that if I promise it I'll have to actually do it). Because you all really, really need to see the three kittens that play in the carpentry shop I walk past every morning.

Development:

• More dissing Nigeria! Why we should do development in South Africa and Botswana, and relief work in the Congo and Somalia, and stop thinking that Nigeria (okay, and a bunch of other countries) represents the ideal middle ground.
  
• Top-down policies don't work, but neither do bottom-up ones. Why the Millennium Villages are sort of lame. Is leadership the bridge over this gap, and if so, how do we find/build/encourage it?
• Why the World Bank is not actually the devil, although the IMF may be.
• Technical vs. moral authority. Hint: we need more of both.
• The case for and against randomized trials, aka, am I wasting my time?

Recent ballot measures/other stuff:

• Gay marriage: 1) Why there IS judicial precedent for a Supreme Court case; 2) Why I don't necessarily agree with the judicial precedent; 3) The social/cultural case for gay marriage even if I don't agree with the judicial one. Teaser: Roe v. Wade sucks! But I'm cool with polygamy and marrying your cousin! Awesome!
  
• Affirmative action: Why the case for anti-affirmative action ballot measure is lame *cough*
• School vouchers: Why the US should go to a completely voucher-based system. With many, many caveats.
  
• Teachers unions and merit pay: Why I, like many otherwise perfectly left-y pro-union public school kids, can't stand the only union I've ever actually come into contact with. And why I'm torn about what we should do about it.
• Abortion: Why most arguments made on both sides about abortion are really lame, as are the current legislative and judicial approaches. Also why this is probably inevitable and I have no idea what to do about it, if anything.
• Gender norms: Why I am probably a closet misogynist, but would probably go for femme-girls if I were gay. Does this mean I care about gender more or less than other people?

And yes, this is why I didn't get to sleep until 4am last night.