Mom, but what about Hillary Clinton?

How does Hillary and Obama's run for the presidency transcend race, gender and power ... and why is it more than just Politics? I have tried to answer this in many different ways but one particular incident made me a believer.

Yesterday over dinner our conversation circled around politics, gas prices and the like; later during that evening the discussion steered to Time Magazine list of 100 Most influential people for 2008. At this point something profound happened - my 6 year old niece, who was until then busy pushing her food around the plate, decided to join the conversation to ask her Mom if Hillary was on the list we were talking about. We were quick to laugh it off as childhood inquisitiveness - but later that night the more I thought about it, the more I was struck by how important what had taken place was.

To a 6 year old - the world is relatively simple. They are trying to comprehend the world around them and look for commonalities. My niece probably saw a lady like her Mom, her teacher or herself whom everyone was so eagerly talking about and picked up on that topic. A young African American boy would see Barack in the same light - and whether he or she would ever realize it, a lifetime of prejudices and glass ceilings have been irreversibly diminished by this historic Presidential bid.

It also fortified my belief that the next generation is eager to absorb ideas and are most influenced by dialogue and conversation around the dinner table rather than by big speeches, protests and rallies.

Regardless of whether Barack or Hillary wins, I would like to believe that my niece will never question how much women or minorities can achieve; she will never set her goals low because of her gender or race; and she will never know a time when people would question her abilities because of whom she is.

Vote Wise. Your vote matters. This I believe.

On Rebirth, Immortality and the debris that we are

Buddhist Wheel of Life (Bhavachakra). Here Yama, the Lord of Death is holding the symbolic Wheel of Life

This week I am in a pensive mood. The last few months have been rough and so it helps to step back and re-investigate some of the bigger life questions - You know the usual - what's the deal with reincarnation, rebirth and Karma is? Are we truly born and born again, if so what is the point of life? What determines if I am born again as a cow, an ape or even a born-again christian? (the last is my attempt at faith based humor) ... and what is all this Karma stuff?

It all became clear to me one night in a seedy neighbourhood in San Francisco where a friend and I were discussing a book called "God's Debris". The discussion moved from one abstract theory to another for most of the night - As we were winding down, the topic changed to his two sons as he tried to explain to me the experience of being a father. Being a committed single man on the prowl, honestly my interest started to wane off - that was until he described the day of his son's birth.

A birth of a child, as he described it, was rebirth - at the very moment his child was born, he felt an energy transfer to his son & felt that life had given him a second chance. Nothing else mattered at that moment as he says he knew he would live on. What a wonderful concept, I thought to myself - but, as with other concepts traversed that night it vaporised with the first light of dawn.

To be honest, it did not truly sink in until I picked up my parents at the airport this week. As with any teenager I was a rebel - I identified with the wrong crowds, tried to break away from my parents shadow as I tried to reassert my own identity; but this week as my Dad and Mom step into my car it suddenly dawned upon me that as I grew older I was claiming a lot of their traits. The physical similarities at first glance are obvious - but if you look at it deeper, although we may have different experiences shape us, we have common aspirations for the future, we share many values and to a greater degree even approach challenges in a similar vein.

Perhaps that is rebirth - Our hopes dreams and values are passed on from generation to generation and when I am no longer around, that will be personified in my offspring. In a way that makes us all immortal - AND that my friends, is a wonderful feeling.

Malaria Day

The World Health Organization says nearly 500 million people get infected with malaria each year, and nearly three million, mostly children, die. Areas around the world facing the greatest risk, shown reddish brown, harbor some of the world's poorest people. Map: Berkeley National Lab

One low-technology method to prevent malaria deaths is to deliver malaria nets. Grassroots campaigns like Nothing but Nets help to save lives by preventing malaria. Keep on sending nets and saving lives.

Earth Hour 2008: Spread the word, dine in candlelight tonight

It’s Lights out for Sydney’s famous skyline on On March 29, 2008 at 8 p.m. for Earth Hour.

On 4/29/2008 millions of people in some of the world’s biggest cities will unite to switch off their lights for one hour - Earth Hour - all in an effort to send a powerful global message on the need to collectively take action on global warming. The shutdown began Saturday in Sydney, where the Opera House and Harbour Bridge went dark along with hundreds of homes and businesses.

The Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay Bridge, Coit Tower, the Ghirardelli Square sign and office towers throughout San Francisco will go dark for an hour - some restaurants also plan to turn off exterior lights and offer candlelight dinners.

Do your part, join the cause, spread the word ...

Engineering the end of hunger with Jock Brandis

Jock Brandis is the inventor of the Sustainable Peanut Sheller. Jock was on a trip to Mali to fix a small village's water treatment system where he witnessed the women's bleeding hands from shelling peanuts all day. He made a mental note and set out to search for a sustainable peanut sheller that would not only mechanize this process but improve the efficiency of the women.

Coffee and peanuts out of the husk are 6 times more valuable than in the husk making a significant difference in the revenues the farmers can earn. Brandis' simple machine can be build by local craftsmen for $28 of locally available material. Brandis refuses to patent the machine and calls it his gift to the world.

"It makes their work less tedious and increases productivity up to 50 times," says Brandis. "One machine will work for an entire village, so when we're talking about 100 machines, we're not talking about 100 families -- we're talking about 100 villages."

CNN did a great portrait on Jock and is available here @ CNN Heroes: Peanut farmers get a big hand from simple device

An innovative use of Salesforce.com to track disaster restoration

The biggest challenge after any calamity, esp. the magnitude of Hurricane Katrina is how to track, manage and report on what resources are needed and where. Generally all the resources pool at the very begining but due to poor management and miss-allocation the volunteers dwindle away.

Broadmoor a town in Parish county, Louisiana was was one such working community devastated by Hurricane Katrnia. For months the residents waited for federal help on reconstruction - the final straw came when the city decided to pass a legislation to bulldoze the remaining houses to build a park. This was a wake up call for the residents who decided to rebuild their community on their own terms.

The tipping point in their grassroot efforts came when they decided to experiment with Salesforce, an enterprise level customer-relationship-management software. With this tool, the Broadmoor Development Corp was able to better coordinate volunteer activities, funds, and bring a high level of visibility to the process. An interview on NPR notes:

Salesforce was built for salespeople, but Roark and his army of college interns have repurposed it so he can catalog the needs of Broadmoor's 2,400 homes and the 7,000 residents who lived here before Katrina.

With this database, Roark can explain to donors what they're getting for their money. Donors appreciate that. And, Roark says, it also helps him satisfy the human needs of volunteers, who want to do more than paint a stranger's house.

Software allows us to build for efficiency, communicate better, and strengthen existing communities. This is an excellent example of where an innovative community leveraged an existing tool to meet their needs.

You can hear more about this on NPR at Database Key in Restoring New Orleans

Google East African Gadget Competition

Title: ‘Compete to build a Gadget’

Registration Date: Registration opens February 25th; the deadline is March 17th.

Who is it open to: This competition is open to university students across Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda,Rwanda, Burundi, and Ethiopia.

Rules:

Participating students will have approximately four months to design and build functioning Google Gadgets either solo or in teams of two.

The competition will provide an opportunity for students to apply theoretical knowledge in a practical, hands-on way, and that a number of the resulting Gadgets will feature regionally-useful content.

Further Details at: http://www.google.com/eagadgetcompetition