The Haversian Canal

$1 of private investment is worth $20 of aid. —— Ashraf Ghani, first post-Taliban finance minister of Afghanistan.

C4I: Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence

Four variables of project management: Time, Money, Quantity, Quality

Types of capital: financial (not useful in most developing countries, where money is just "cash"), physical capital, institutional capital, human capital, security, and information.

Public health: Infant mortality, HIV, TB, malaria, infrastructure (hospitals and clinics)

Economics: Organize markets, $1 private investment beats $20 aid, reduce bureaucracy

Ashraf Ghani's ten essential functions of the state
* Legitmate monopoly over the means of violence
* Administrative control
* Management of public finances through wealth creation and involvement of the citizenry in taxation and redistribution
* Investment in human capital
* Provision of citizenship rights through national social policies
* Provision of infrastructure
* Management of the tangible and intangible assets of the state through regulation
* Creation of the market (see Clinton's TED talk)
* International agreements, including public borrowing
* Provision of the rule of law, including the subjection of the state to the rule of law

In the developing world space is expanding. It takes six years to add infrastructure (each project, minimum), but in the developing (devolving?) world, the infrastructure projects aren't keeping up with the rate of decay.

Training of local populations can not follow the Western standard.

Bill Clinton's TED wish
Paul Farmer
Medicin Sans Frontiers
others?

I first posted this question on Edward Tufte's forum.

Not a question about map programs, but about paper maps. This seems like the best thread.

Can anyone recommend a good source for continent, country, provincial and city maps suitable for planning in the developing world? I have not been able to find a map store in New Orleans. I'm looking for both topographic and political maps and aeronautical and nautical charts that take pencil and are durable enough to take many erasures, foldings, tape, and pins. English language would be preferable, but not necessary. USGS is a good standard, and in the military I would literally just go to the base NIMA office and buy USGS quality maps of, say, Manta, Ecuador, for, I think it was $3 apiece. Where can I get similar international maps as a civilian? Where would I get a street-level wall map or topo map of Lagos, Bangkok, or Lima, or lesser known places like N'Djamena or Douala?

Where do the NGOs get their maps? Is there a collection of stores that, collectively, cover most of the planet?

I highly recommend Stanford's. Their selection surpasses anything I've seen outside NIMA, and their user interface is remarkable: as flat or hierarchical as you like, and a full-text search of their catalog occupy the most prominent part of their homepage. My only caution is to not believe that what you see on the front page is the extent of their collection. Far from it. The entry of each map frankly remarks on the features and shortcomings of the map and provides sample detail images. Each continent, country, region, city, product type and product has a fixed URL.

The Map Store has systematic coverage of every country, though I suppose this could be had with an atlas.

The travel sections of maps.com and National Geographic have some cities.

Chasing down individual publishers yields additional results, but still slowgoing.

Other suggestions have included OpenMap and Manifold, but I really need paper maps. Google Maps is no good because it lacks the street-level detail of far away cities, and Google Earth has the same problem.