Aid Data

Also, the data from the project I worked on for like 3 years at BYU finally went public this week. For anyone interested in how much money the African Development Bank gave to Nigeria for AIDS prevention in 1998 or in how much Germany gave to Vietnam to build power plants or in how much the World Bank gave Costa Rica to improve their rule of law click here. But don't you dare take this lightly. This is the product of my getting paid for endless hours sitting at a computer typing (usually incorrect) CRS codes into a database while watching such programs as 24, House, and Arrested Development and movies like Capote, No Country for Old Men, and Changeling and listening to podcasts of NPR shows. I made huge sacrifices to make this data go live, including taking one for the team and letting my employers fly me to England and pay me to live in a beautiful flat in rural Somerset for 4 months, going on daily walks around the countryside, travelling to London on weekends for shows, wandering Spain, Ireland, and France whenever I got bored with my work, taking impulsive trips to Dublin to see Radiohead play live at a castle, and putting up with those sarcastic Brits. It's a hard life I was forced to live, and now you can reap the benefits by finding out exactly how those billions of aid dollars are being spent every year.

Honestly, I never expected this project to become a reality. I guess I'm glad something useful to the world came out of all those years of coding rather than just me getting to travel around the world, learn a lot about the economics of foreign aid and international development, and get into a great graduate program so I can spend the rest of my life continuing doing both of those things.

Way to go PLAID. You did what we all thought was impossible, or at least highly improbable.