Links I liked

1. If you've ever been unhappy at work and considering quitting, read this post. It also has the best resignation letter ever.

2. Being a geek myself (and sometimes described as "Vulcan", if you are a Trekkie), I'd highly recommend reading this bit on the top ten mistakes people make when managing geeks. In fact, its so popular (and sanctioned) that its been voluntarily translated into 10 different languages, including Persian and Danish

3. An award-winning toilet made from horse-dung. Would you use it?? I would! Truly amazing what good design mixed with decent engineering can do. Here's another example of good design, good idea, and good engineering.

4.  Love reading while taking a dump?? Here's an innovative new dual purpose toilet book...literally!

5. Do our things make us happy?? Happiness Objectified...a must read on a survey done. 

Great Quotes to Ponder

Some great quotes I came across this week:

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow-

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.

-George Bernard Shaw-

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers

-Lord Alfred Tennyson-

The Future of Farming: Will Allen, the Urban Farming Hero

(photo source: Growing Power)

Will Allen is a regular guy who is changing the way urban and rural societies will interact in the future. At the moment, urban societies rely heavily on rural societies for their agriculture. But with the world urbanizing at a rapid rate, and farmers' children leaving their homes in droves, one must wonder what the changing face of agriculture will be like.

Will Allen is the guy shining the torch and showing the way.

Allen is an urban farmer. He takes rooftops and urban patios and turns them into beautiful vegetable gardens and fish farms. His work recently won him a MacArthur Genius grant.

In a recent article profiling the brilliant Allen, it speaks about how a sharecropper's son turned basketball player, learned composting from Belgian farmers.

“I started hanging out with Belgian farmers,” Allen said. “I saw how they did natural farming,” much as his father had. Something clicked in his mind. He asked his team’s management, which provided housing for players, if he could have a place with a garden. Soon he had 25 chickens and was growing the familiar foods of his youth — peas, beans, peanuts — outside Antwerp. “I just had to do it,” he said. “It made me happy to touch the soil.” On holidays, he cooked feasts for his teammates. He gave away a lot of eggs.

After retiring from basketball in 1977, when he was 28, Allen settled with his wife and three children in Oak Creek, just south of Milwaukee, where Cyndy’s family owned some farmland. “No one was using that land, but I had the bug to grow food,” Allen said. As his father did, Allen insisted that his children contribute to the household income. “We went right to the field at the end of the school day and during summer breaks,” recalled his daughter, Erika Allen, who now runs Growing Power’s satellite office in Chicago. “And let’s be clear: This was farm labor, not chores.” [...]

Read more...

Emigration to Save a Life or a Country??

Illegal migrants are caught fleeing Pakistan (photo source: Islamization)

Sunday's Times paper also had a great article about how young Afghanis are leaving their country in droves, seeking asylum wherever they can.

I have actually found that emigration, particularly brain-drain, is the single biggest way of doing international development. India, China, and Vietnam's current growth, I believe, is a result of the massive emigration and brain-drain that both those countries experienced in the 60's and 70's. Frustrated by the lack of opportunities, the best and the brightest bailed in hordes, moving to the West and bringing with them their hopes and dreams.

In those days, the countries cursed their fleeing citizens. It left their economies debilitated.  But interestingly, it was the single best thing that could have happened for their long term growth.

These same generations are now older and retiring, and long for the idea of the homes they knew as children. Having fulfilled their dreams materially, many of my parents' generation are moving back home, taking their savings, their new values and their new ways of living back with them to invest in their own countries. They've known a better way of living, of thinking, of behaving, of dignity and treating people with decency and human rights. And slowly the situation is changing. 

Even years before as young men and women, many of these same people had pushed for open markets. And once this happened, many of my parents' generation rushed to take advantage of the cheap labor and the familiarity of the land and culture. They invested in businesses and had a large part to play in the export boom that has since revitalized many of these once dormant economies.

So, can this mass migration of Afghanis be the single best thing that we can do to help their countries grow in the long term?? I think so. Take the best, train them and then let them go back voluntarily. Just as this man has done...

Obama's Youthful Idealism Comes to Fruition

President Obama was ahead of his time (photo courtesy: NY Times)

Sunday's NY Times paper was chock full of really great articles. It is during this time that I physically miss having the newspaper in my hands with my morning glass of milk and OJ, under the warm sun. But I'm not complaining. 

(watching Ecotrip yesterday...the episode about what goes into making a paper napkin, I'm not going to cut down yet another tree to get my paper fix!)

Reading this article yesterday again confirmed for me that Obama started training for his critical leadership role as a kid. Obama was way ahead of his time in terms of his thinking (making him an idealist at that age...I wonder how lonely he was as a kid!). Coming of age in the greedy 80's, he formed ideas about nuclear issues that he had no business having even then.

“I personally came of age,” Mr. Obama wrote in “The Audacity of Hope,” his second memoir, “during the Reagan presidency.”

It was a time when President Ronald Reagan began a trillion-dollar arms buildup, called the Soviet Union “an evil empire” and ordered scores of atomic detonations under the Nevada desert. Some Reagan aides talked of fighting and winning a nuclear war.

The popular response was the nuclear freeze movement. Dozens of books warned that Mr. Reagan’s policies threatened to end civilization and most life on Earth. In June 1982, a million protesters gathered in Central Park, their placards reading “Bread Not Bombs” and “Freeze or Burn.” The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops issued a pastoral letter denouncing nuclear war.

Many Columbia students campaigned for the freeze movement, which sought a halt to additional nuclear arms deployments. Mr. Obama explored going further.

At that point the President, then a 21 y/o senior at Columbia University, wrote about disarming our nuclear stockpiles. Not only did he write about it in his report for his class (which got an "A"), but he also went on to pen a lengthy article on the same in the school newspaper. Twenty plus years later, just as he was being elected into the highest political office, the article surfaced again and blew people away. He was way ahead of his time. (see the Conservatives' take on this article) 

Recently the President said this, which forms the crux of his thesis:

“It’s naïve for us to think,” he said, “that we can grow our nuclear stockpiles, the Russians continue to grow their nuclear stockpiles, and our allies grow their nuclear stockpiles, and that in that environment we’re going to be able to pressure countries like Iran and North Korea not to pursue nuclear weapons themselves.”

Thank you Mr President!!

The power of blue eyes.

Is one woman really any more beautiful than the other?? (photo source: http://www.redbubble.net, the meanest Indian)

Its funny how at any given time, you might perceive yourself a certain way that is completely different from the way other people think. People who are fairer and more caucasian-looking have far more power than a native does in their own countries, particularly in the developing world. I wish caucasians would understand this, and respect and use this power more responsibly, particularly when they visit the developing world. 

I have been in multiple situations (I am darker skinned and have dark eyes), where a blue-eyed blonde-haired person has walked into a situation  advocating the same thing I have and they are much more likely to get a response than I am.  I don't angry about it, but I do get frustrated when caucasians behave irresponsibly (which happens a lot).

On a personal level, I'm often struck by how beauty is so differently perceived by the women I'm around while in the field. Many of the women I've come across in the developing world are strikingly beautiful; partially because they just are physically beautiful, but more so because the hard work and years have built character, wisdom, and strength into their forms such that it really can overwhelm you. When I tell them this, they scoff. Often they have ideas like..." I wish I had blue eyes" or 'white skin" or "fewer lines on my face" or some such thing.

Recently, I saw this video of Toni Morrison reflecting on her outstanding book The Bluest Eye, that largely centers around the life of a negro child growing up in the middle of the US who desperately wants blue eyes. Somehow, this video captured the essence of what I feel everytime I speak to a beautiful poor woman in the developing world.

Skoll Foundation Awards for Social Entrepreneurship

The Skoll Foundation folks sent me the following. Looks like a great program, so please consider applying, and pass on the information to others who may be interested. More information is listed below:

The Skoll Foundation is accepting applications for the Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship, our flagship program that invests in leading social entrepreneurs worldwide. Our experience has been that the best candidates are referred to us through the growing global network of social entrepreneurs and the organizations and individuals that support their efforts. Since you are part of that network, we encourage you to refer strong candidates to our online application. Attached is a one-page fact sheet on the program that you can forward to potential applicants.

 

The Foundation seeks social entrepreneurs whose work has the potential for large-scale positive change in the areas of tolerance and human rights, health, environmental sustainability, peace and security, institutional responsibility, and economic and social equity. Within these issues, we are particularly interested in applications from social entrepreneurs working in five critical subissue areas that threaten the survival of humanity—climate change, nuclear proliferation, global pandemics, conflict in the Middle East and water scarcity.

  

While we accept applications at any time, we have deadlines—centered around Skoll’s three board meetings—to assist us in managing the internal review process.

The next deadline for applications is: Wednesday, August 12, 2009

There is no competitive advantage in applying by a specific deadline. Following their selection, awardees are celebrated at the annual Skoll World Forum, held in March or April in Oxford, England.

 

For further information on our guidelines and application process, please go to www.skollfoundation.org/skollawards/index.asp. We encourage you to review the guidelines, Eligibility Quiz, application questions and frequently asked questions and then consider applicants whom you think may be qualified for an Award. We expect that the selection process will continue to be highly competitive, with 6 to 10 Awards in each 12 month cycle.