For the past four years, the World Economic Forum has studied the gender gap - that is, the amount of resources dedicated to boys and girls and women's opportunities to fully participate in society - in over 100 countries, then ranked them. (In 2009, the Index included data from 134 nations. At least 12 of 14 indicators used for the Index must be available in order for a country to be included.) The goal, according to the 2009 Global Gender Gap Report, is:

On Tuesday, Samoa, American Samoa, and Tonga, were hit by a tsunami. There's currently a travel warning suggesting that those intrepid types who are Pacific island bound stay away while the island populations grapple with the aftermath of the big waves. Those warnings don't always work -- plus, those who had planned to do aid work are going anyways. Here's a post from a soon to be Peace Corps volunteer:

In the current discussion and debate about health care reform proposals the methods of paying for, administering and delivering universal basic health care benefits in other countries are often raised as models of either what we should emulate or what we should fear adopting.

Photo by Beth Kanter I'm here in Brisbane, Australia where I will deliver a keynote presentation at the ConnectingUp Conference which begins tommorrow.  The conference is the premiere event in Australia for nonprofit technology professionals.  

[Updated to add Mad Momma's wonderful post on ways to curb wastage].

Arab Women's Network Laurel Papworth, an Australian who blogs at Laurel Papworth - Social Networks is an online community strategist. She teaches social media at the Univerity of Sydney and is a social networks trainer. It's her role as a social networks trainer that landed her a job in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, teaching blogging tools and techniques to Arab women.

I wasn't going to write about the game of cricket, a) because it's being written to death in India and Australia, and b) not many of my readers follow the game in America; but the intensity with which a disastrous tour by the Indian team down under is being blogged about, I can't but talk about it.

Sometimes I suspect news stories must be generated by anti-feminist forces to further foment resentment against feminist causes and arguments, because who on earth would otherwise be so ridiculous? A prime example of one of these suspicious events took place last week in Sydney, Australia. According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), prospective Santa Clauses have been warned not to say, "Ho ho ho," as some women may deem it offensive:

Barbara from the New Zealand food blog Winos & Foodies has transferred the technique that swept the world for No Knead Bread to chicken.

Food blogs are everywhere, literally! I continue to be surprised how many there are, how good they are, how passionate they are -- and how much they reflect the 'fruit salad of our era', a mix-it-up world with people leaving their home countries for opportunity, love and work (both, yes, opportunities?) to live elsewhere, for awhile or for all time. So to mark Blog Day 2007, let me introduce you to some amazing 'fruit salad'.

Bindi really didn’t need to be appointed to a position like that at the age of 8 years old. People claim she is overworked and shouldn’t be doing such a heavy press tour of America so soon after her father’s death (even though she had planned to take this trip with her father), but she has been in front of the cameras from the minute she was born, and that’s where she is most comfortable.

Australian sheep farmers are trying to survive a millenium's worst drought any way they can. Among those struggling to keep their farm and animals alive are the Kielys, who have taken the public step of creating a blog and asking the world to Adopt A Sheep.