Natural Childbirth Practices & A review of The Business of Being Born

The Business of Being Born. This documentary explains why Natural childbirth practices should be preferred.

Less than a month ago, my sister gave birth to her first child. It's a boy. He is the first child in our family of the next generation, a child after 18 years. It's a moment of happiness. The delivery took place at B.P. Koirala Institute of Health Sciences in Nepal, arguably one of the best hospitals in the country. All of us wanted her to have a normal delivery, if possible. We were all very hopeful since she went to the best hospital in the country. But the doctors performed a Cesarean section, popularly known as C-section. Because contractions did not start, the doctors injected her with a chemical to trigger contractions. Despite this, there were no contractions. 

Then the doctor told her that since contractions did not begin within six hours, she had no choice but to have a surgery to get the baby out safely. As experts, the doctor told my sister and her husband that if they were to wait any longer, the chemical might enter the child's body and inflict serious damage. When I heard all of this, it really infuriated me. It also made me very sad that doctors did not give complete information before injecting the contraction inducing drug. Whatever the motivations/incentives the medical professionals might have had, it was unethical and inappropriate. Furthermore, due to inadequacy of facilities, two childbirths were being performed on one bed. That is just unimaginable, even for a developing country like Nepal.

A review of the documentary: The Business of Being Born

I wanted to find out more about childbirth practices elsewhere for comparisons. I came across a documentary on childbirth titled, " The Business of Being Born" which chronicles around this same issue that I wanted to learn and know more about. It compares the natural childbirth practices performed in assistance with midwives against childbirths carried out in hospitals by surgeons. For anyone who is interested in knowing more about childbirth practices in the US and elsewhere, this is a good documentary to watch, readily available on Netflix. I'm not going to embarrass you by describing the details but will quote some statistics that will surprise you. 

In America, midwives attend less than 8% of all births and less than 1% of those occur outside a hospital. At the same time, the US has the second worst newborn death rate in the developed world.

Another interesting statistics, 

In 1900, 95% of all births took place in the home. In 1938, half the births took place at home, and the trend continued to spiral downward.

Today, less than 1% of childbirth takes place at home in the US. That is surprisingly low. From an economic perspective, childbirths performed at home under supervision of trained mid-wives is several times cheaper. At hospitals, on average it costs around $13,000 but with mid-wives, an average of $4000. These numbers are quoted in the documentary. Experts unanimously agree that childbirths are safer and better when performed at homes under mid-wives yet, why are more women choosing to go to hospitals? Is it mere fear espoused by popular media or is there something more? It turns out more than 70% of European women have childbirths at home. Yet maternity deaths are lower. Other countries spend less and have better results than the U.S. Isn't that a double whammy?

What about the aftereffects? The documentary doesn't describe what happens after a surgery is performed, how long it takes for the wound to heal or how does it affect the strength of the individual later. 

The bottom line is: if a pregnant woman goes to a hospital, hospital staff will wait for a few hours, if contractions don't start, pitocin is injected. Then, depending on the course of action, more drugs are injected to either ease the pain or control contractions. Epidural is injected to ease pain. Eventually, an incision is made, a C-section, to perform the surgery. Despite the technology getting better, the number of incisions being made during childbirth is rising and is at an all-time high. Many fear if someone does not intervene, it is on its way to hitting a 100% mark. If you go to a hospital, they don't want to wait. They just want to perform the operation and want you out of there so that they can accommodate someone else. However sad you think this practice is, it is THE truth.

A Temporary Technological Sabbath

Summer has been very interesting for me. Interesting for several reasons, primarily because my lifestyle has been very different than during the hectic college semesters. I wasn't planning on blogging as part of my temporary/partial technological Sabbath. Oh yes, I need to tell you about this. I have stopped using a cellphone since about a month after I got it wet and rendered it dysfunctional. No immediate plans to own a cellular device either. It is not the WHO report, linking cell-phones usage to a heightened probability of developing cancer from its radiation, that drove this change. It is primarily because I wanted to reassess the pervasiveness and impact of technology on cohesion/interaction among human beings.

The pace of digitization of appliances from analog has changed our lives pretty dramatically. We no longer produce analog acoustic waves for communication between us. Digital communication signals coded in 0 and 1 is what emanates from our devices varying from smart-phones to laptops. Communication has moved from being analog to mostly digital. Google is proud to service few billion search requests daily and happily lets tens of thousands of new users connect using its Android OS on smart-phones. Facebook too is adding millions of new members every month and Mark Zuckerberg (I don't care if I spelled his last name incorrectly) has vowed to eliminate privacy from our experience. Apparently, he believes there shouldn't be anything such as privacy. Amid this battle for digital attention, there are groups of secretive hackers expressing dissent by taking down websites of corporations and the government. What a world we live in, utterly confusing and digitized.

I am not against digitization of our world. In fact, as an aspiring and soon-to-be degree holding electrical engineer, I relish designing and thinking about novel designs for electrical and electronics products. If you have not noticed, my blog is titled "The DIGITAL Subway" and url also has the word digital. So, what is all this whining for? Well, I'm sure you know why. The ground has been shifting right before our feet. The very "laborsaving devices" that we built to free up leisure time are keeping us more occupied and busy. Staying busy has become the norm of hard-working and “intelligent” city-dwellers. The devices that we built to better communicate with our fellow acquaintances have overwhelmed us and captured all our attention. A typical workplace has become a 100 square feet of dreaded space with a computer. Seminars have transformed into webinars, meetings into conference calls, face-to-face talk into phone calls and small talks during lunch breaks into thumb swipes on touchscreens of smartphones for texting or browsing the web.

If you want to read more about how technology has changed us, I would recommend the book called, “Better off: flipping the switch on technology” by Eric Brende. Eric is a MIT graduate who took a break from his graduate education to live among a group of Mennonites to experience the life devoid of any motor-operated device which includes cars, cell-phones or any machine you can think of.

Note: More on this topic to come in subsequent posts. I actually decided to write something after a long time because I need some practice for my GRE essay; my GRE is in less than a week now.

3-Day Start-up @ Rackspace in San Antonio

This is what our board looked like today while developing ideas. Photo by: Digital Subway

Organized by Trinity University and hosted by Rackspace, 3 Day Startup event has been so intense yet interesting. Ideas about startups were pitched and among them six ideas were chosen to develop further. A basic working principle with marketing results, business model and expansion has to be developed for each of these ideas.

Sample of another board. These cool models were drawn by Dustin. Photo by: Digital Subway

I am working with the group that is trying to develop a "Collaborative Inventory Management" for local farmers in order to sell their produce efficiently. It is a really cool idea with an expanding market. This model is already working in Georgia state in the U.S. according to the research of Dustin Larimer. Since this is an idea for a tech startup, this is all I can tell you without diving into the details. I can't spill the beans. 

It's a lot of fun and a 3 day event, hence the name 3DS (3 Day Start-up). I am really glad to be participating in it. Let's see how tomorrow goes while pitching final ideas to the investors.

More pictures of 3DS. Photo by: Digital Subway

Libyan Situation Creates Unrest

I write this with a troubled heart. Thousands of miles away in North African land, unarmed protestors are being gunned down from land and air simultaneously and this scenario has induced uneasiness inside me. You might ask what connection do I have with Libyans? Hundreds of Africans (thousands maybe) die every day of hunger, malnutrition, malaria, AIDS, civil war and other cultural and natural malaises so why does it matter suddenly when 300 Libyans have died in a matter of two weeks? This is a valid question.

To know my answer about why I as a Nepalese citizen living in the U.S. feel connected about Libyans, read “Nepal's Stalled Revolution” by Manjushree Thapa. He, a fellow Nepalese outlines what a Nepalese in general, thinks of Arabian revolutions going on around the world.

My trouble stems from the fact that I have been actively following reports of killings of protestors by mercenaries and armed men loyal to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Twitter is flooded with such reports despite the internet and telecommunication blockade in Libya. Follow Andy Carvin on Twitter if you want to stay updated on situation in Libya. I feel powerless to witness violence on Al-Jazeera live yet not be able to act or even attempt to prevent it. Tolerating injustice is as heinous of a crime as committing one, don’t you agree?

How can we go about our daily routine pretending to be oblivious of the fact that freedom seeking fellow Homo Sapiens are being mercilessly terminated? You could call me a hypocrite too for not I haven’t attempted to launch a protest at my university let alone local town or resident country. I still go about studying in the library and completing assignments for this hectic Midterm week and stop to catch Al-Jazeera and Twitter updates only when convenient. In addition, sleep deprivation that I have subjected myself to in the last two weeks is not because of the alarming situation in the Middle East or Northern Africa but only because I have been trying to keep with my college work and do well on tests. I have been a passive participant in these revolutions.

You can again ask what good does a passive participant do than who chooses not to participate at all? My response is: review Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.  In crude terms, it states that mere presence of observer affects the state of the object/subject being observed. In other words, a device attempting to measure velocity of a moving body alters its motion by bombarding it with photons, even though the change may be very small. You can never measure both the displacement and velocity of an object accurately without compromising the other. This is because the presence of measuring device makes a DIFFERENCE. My mere presence in this world and thinking about a situation makes a difference. Review Chaos theory where flutter of butterfly wings could cause a cyclone in the Atlantic. Metaphorically speaking, writing this post and putting my thoughts out there is my flutter of butterfly wings.

When a geek with an interest in international affairs (like me) tries to understand or interpret the situation, use of scientific theories to understand and model the problem should be expected. My request to all of you reading this is: Do what you can. Tweet about your thoughts, update your Facebook status about Libyan situation or send your thoughts to media. Train to be an assassin to kill Gaddafi, if you have to. But don’t be indifferent. (Actually I was kidding about assassin training. Do that in your free time.) Flutter your wings because we are all connected with invisible strings (my version of string theory) floating in this matrix with solid space to step on that we call Mother Earth. Your little flutter will create force strong enough to cause a dramatic impact in a place thousands of miles away across the Atlantic. Act now.

P.S. 300 deaths have already been confirmed and Italy fears the actual number could be around 1000. Crude oil prices have peaked since recession due to situation in Libya. We can't just ignore it and go about our daily routine anymore.

On Fareed Zakaria’s GPS

Media can use its power to manipulate peoples’ thoughts and perceptions about something/someone. I used to enjoy watching Fareed Zakaria’s Global Public Square (GPS) on CNN Network since he seemed to offer an outsider’s perspective on worldly affairs. He spoke with an accent and that gave me some comfort, a departure from rest of political pundits and analysts who all speak the same language and sing glories of the United States of America. But after listening closely to his shows, his biasness towards America is manifest. In all of his shows, he talks about how and what should be done for the US can maintain its economic and political superiority in the world.

If you look at his recent ten or more episodes of GPS, he is either talking about how to fix American economy or how the US can tackle China’s growing power and influence in the world. He talks about the need for innovation and how an innovation in the US can be universally good for rest of the world. Yet he is threatened by innovation in manufacturing in China and elsewhere. He invites guest speakers to analyse China’s growing economy and always forces the impression that a stronger China is feared and disliked not only by America but even Asia. Any guest speaker who dares to differ suffers fierce rebuttal from Fareed and his team of other guest speakers. Fareed criticizes China’s policy to keep its currency devalued but never talks about impact of huge subsidies to US farmers on farmers of developing countries. Among all, US farmers would be the last ones to need subsidies.

I was shellshocked at Fareed’s behaviour towards one of his guest speakers who was also a Zihadi. Many of guest speakers offer opinions different than Fareed’s, however none have suffered as much humiliation as this Zihadi guy from London. His utter lack of respect for his guest speaker was unprofessional. I have read one of Fareed’s books and he has written very candidly what he thinks of US foreign policy. Yet when he talks on CNN, his views take a U-turn and he is always singing glories of the US and criticizes anyone who does not subscribe to this. I don’t understand why a guy of his stature would have to do boot-licking to remain at CNN. He could easily speak his mind candidly and still get a more than decent job. Fareed’s GPS show has become very shallow and disappointing; he should rename his show from Global Public Square to American Public Square. (I hope he reads this. If not, somebody please direct his attention to this.)

Through my lens at Commonwealth Games

Lots of media coverage has been devoted to Commonwealth games being hosted in Delhi 2010 this year, mostly negative publicity. After reading so much, I could not take it anymore and decided to write a couple words about it. First of all, India has come under intense criticism from participating countries about inadequate sanitation in residence quarters provided to top global athletes. Everyone has just stepped in to add more criticism. But I see this as insensitive and in a way racist too.

To expect same sanitation in India as some other developed countries such as New Zealand, the UK or the US is unjustified and unreasonable. Do you expect a nation to change its system in a couple of months for hosting a single game? India suffers from inadequate infrastructure (relative to most developed countries) but it can not build wider roads or sturdier bridges just like that ahead of Commonwealth games. If it did, that would be magic. To criticize its standards so vehemently is insensitive. Foreign delegates and athletes probably have never experienced poverty or lived in conditions as most Indians do. Rising income of middle class in India is a myth since they are mostly limited in urban areas. Now that they are suddenly exposed to it, instead of acknowledging that conditions people inhabit in India are surprising and pitiable, they have chosen to show anger.

Athletes and delegates from participating countries are angry at organizers of Commonwealth games for providing them residence facilities characteristic of a common Indian instead of providing them five star like luxurious suites. Intense paranoia involved around inadequate sanitation facilities is also expected as westerners are freaks when it comes to sanitation. If a few cases of flu are seen in a region hundreds of miles away, suddenly hand sanitizers start appearing everywhere, in schools, universities, workplaces, restaurants and even public transport. Media has exaggerated the details about lack of sanitation anyway. 

Anytime a developing country organizes a big sporting event, westerns always have a problem with it. It was not long ago that South Africa organized FIFA world cup football 2010 which was complained for its excessive noise produced by vuvuzelas. Expect more vuvuzelas for next world cup football to be organized in Brazil in 2014. And maybe more problems too since it is also a developing country.

Now there is another problem with Commonweath games in Delhi- low turnout of spectators. Empty seats during games are starting to worry everyone. It is expected though. Why would Indians go watch games that has tainted image of their nation so badly? Cricket matches that are being played simulataneously are keeping them pretty well entertained. And prices for commonwealth games seats wouldn't be cheap by indian standards anyway.

The biggest problem I see is with this concept of Commonwealth games itself. A game between nations that were colonized by Great Britain. Really? You want to bring up those memories of being colonized and preserve the legacy? Why bring it up again then, through a sporting event? There are Olympics and continental games such as Asian games and European competitions. Anyway, foreign media may criticize all they want but that will only show their insensitivity, intolerance and innate racism.

The Most Gay Friendly Nation on the Earth

Which is the most gay friendly nation on the Earth? The same one that has the second happiest people among nations. Still clueless? Alright, the same country where Buddha was born. Not India, stupid. Buddha was born in Nepal despite the publicity stunt by Indian government to promote India as the birthplace of Buddha. Siddartha Gautam (original name of Lord Buddha) was born in Nepal but he achieved Enlightenment while meditating under a tree that is present in modern day India so rhetorically speaking, you could say although Siddartha Gautam was born in modern day Nepal, Buddha (Enlightened being) was actually born in the place that lies in modern day India. Oh and also, pronounce it as Buddha, not "Buda" as Americans say it. 'Buda' means old man while "Buddha" means knowledge. Anyway, what a tangential offshoot to begin with.

Back to discussion of Nepal being the most gay friendly nation on the Earth. You ask why? Here are my reasons:

• It gives away national identity cards that have "third gender" category. Soon, we'll have third gender bathrooms. We don't even have sufficient public bathrooms.
• It is openly promoted in international media as a lucrative, welcoming and safe destination for LGBTs in order to boost tourism from LGBTs. Even ordinary people don't feel safe.
• It has an openly proclaimed LGBT representative in constituent assembly.
• And now, Nepal becomes the first nation on the Earth to host a foreign gay marriage. , Even the United States of America, allegedly the most democratic nation on the Earth that values personal freedom and values is still grappling to allow gay marriage the same status as heterosexual ones.

And who performed the first foreign gay marriage? A Hindu priest. What are we seeing here? Globalization? Does Hinduism permit same sex marriage? I don't even know so I choose not to comment about it. But one piece of advice to the priest, "Well done, purohit baje. Must have received a handsome payment in return." Make Hay while the Sun shines. Our politicians are so engrossed in their own never-ending tussle of power. It was the fifth round of voting for new Prime Minister that failed, wasn't it? I would like to see it go up to at least a dozen, wouldn't you? At least Sunil Babu Pant is making a name for himself and is staying true to his cause by promoting what he believes in. The only politician who seems to be efficient at this time. Remarkable.

What if we are not seeing any perceivable economic development, this event signifies quite significant gender development in Nepal. To add it, Blue Diamond Society (society of LGBTs) awarded a cash prize of US $200 to the married couple. Wow! Last time the government only awarded a couple thousand rupees(<US $50) to promote an inter-caste marriage.

The Facebook Experiment

This post is a break from my usual crisp style travel log entries. This one is an occasional rant that I had stopped for quite a while. Seems like I need to take up this again. This one is about Facebook, the second most used website in the world, first being Google, of course.

If you are a Facebook user, you must have seen ads on the right hand-side of your browser. You tell me how appropriate they are. It's always about "Meet Hot Singles in your area" or "Come Meet Me" with a scantily dressed pretty girl's image. You know what I am talking about. We have all seen it and despised it. I devised an excellent plan to get rid of these spam style ads that are customized for every user based on the information they have entered in their profile or contents of posts/status messages. All it took was one single variation in my profile information page and I have never seen those inappropriate ads again.

Well, what did I do, you must be wondering. Simply unchecked the box "Single" in relationship status page. The profile page did not display anything about my status and so this "benefit of doubt" worked out in my favor. Facebook ad program assumed I was not single anymore and stopped displaying ads with pretty ladies. Now I get ads about "Fly Cheaply to China" or "Rent Textbooks Cheaply". Much less annoying.

After the success of "get-rid-of-undesirable ads" mission, I decided to experiment with Birthday wishes posts on Facebook. I wanted to see how many Facebook users actually remembered their friends' birthday. On your birthday, your Facebook Wall is flooded by seemingly alike scores of single liner birthday wishes, yet that brings joy to your life because you are under the impression that there are so many friends out there who care for you. The fact that more than half of them may have simply written that because they saw birthday message post(s) on their homepage or saw the birthday notification does not even cross your mind. You want to think like an optimist. That's fine.

I devised an experiment to isolate the effect of birthday information on Facebook profile page. Two weeks before my birthday, I removed birthday information from my page which meant that my friends could not see any birthday notification on their home page. I wanted to see how many people would actually remember my birthday. In the past, I had received birthday wishes exceeding fifties on Facebook. Guess how many I received after removing birth date from my profile page? None. Nil. Right.

The experiment was far from complete yet. I still needed to verify that people solely depended on Facebook information for birthday wishes. So, a few days before April 1, I changed my birthday to April 1. Some people may have realized I was just trying to fool them but still I received more than 50 birthday wishes. I'm not kidding. This experiment that I carried out appears so silly that anyone would be highly reluctant to give it any credibility yet, it speaks volumes about behavior and reliance of Facebook users on the information displayed on Facebook page.

So, what's the moral of this story? You tell me.

Middle East Imperialism

I know you don't need me to tell you about Israel's raid on flotillas in Gaza. But really what the Hell do Israelis think they are doing? First they attack humanitarian aid workers and now they refuse to apologize. And they refuse to let an international team conduct a fair probation of events that transpired and innocent lives were lost. Israel claims it is fully capable of such a probation. Are others not? How can a perpetrator defending his case be the Chief Justice at the same time?

In the name of preventing Hamas extremists from arming themselves and strengthening their bunkers, it has imposed sanctions on even food items like jam and solantro. Really? I have no words to describe this  Israeli Imperialism on Palestinians. The attack Israel carried out last year killed hundred times or maybe even more civilians than did rockets fired from Palestine allegedly by Hamas extremists. How can anyone justify that?

And now that Turkey's citizens have been killed, Israel is suddenly starting to come under heat and its illegitimate sanctions in international water is coming under scrutiny. The world is crying out to stop this. How long will the United States government keep supporting Netanyahu's government? Only few months ago, Joe Biden suffered humiliation during his visit to Israel when Israeli authorities announced new plans for building more settlement areas. Israelis have money so they can buy lands from impoverished Palestinian civilians living on the border who want to sell their land and escape anyway from intolerable suffering and violence from both sides.

Is there any solution to this problem that has been deepening since UN's controversial proclamation of Jewish state of Israel. It seems to be polarizing more and more countries. Iran and several Middle East countries were already on Palestinian support and now Turkey, an influential country in the region seems to be joining the camp. We keep hearing about two state solutions from several actors like the US and the UK who are mediating talks between these two nations. But does it really mean anything without Israel showing some respect and halting controversial settlement plans till a peace deal is struck?

Trinity Engineers and Goodwill Industries Partner up for Good

When I decided to join Trinity Engineering, I never expected it to be easy. I knew it was one of the toughest majors at Trinity and many students have to devote an extra semester or more to graduate. Yet, it was this ambition of designing devices and equipments to make others' lives better that attracted me to Engineering in the first place. 

Our first experience of designing a device that would have an impact on people in real life came in Sophomore year through a course named Engineering Design III & IV. Engineering Department partnered up with Goodwill Industries to come up with projects appropriate for sophomore engineers at Trinity. The projects under the guidance of Dr. Jack Leifer involved improving an existing device or designing a new one altogether that would make work easier for people with some form of disabilities. Goodwill Industries employs a lot of people who would normally have a difficult time finding a job.

Sophomore engineers set on their year long projects so that those people could work by using a friendly device. Some examples of our projects were:

i) Designing a filler that could be operated with a single hand. (Previously, it required use of both hands)

ii) Designing a device to transport large boxes (2 ft X 2 ft X 2 ft.) along stairs

iii) Designing a remote controlled device to stop a string trimmer and signal the worker (if he has some form of hearing disabilities)

iv) Designing a head lamp that would light up automatically in a dark room

v) Designing a retractable hook to remove A.C. filters

On May 11, 2010 we traveled to Goodwill Industries to give a presentation of our project and demonstrate how well our prototype works. Everyone was very impressed with the final design. There was so much media  present and they were impressed too with all our work. They interviewed a lot of students regarding their projects and some of that was reflected in San Antonio Express News the next day. Also, a minute long clip was premiered on Channel 12 (KSAT) on the same day 2 hours later. It was good to see how well the collaboration between young engineers, a university department and an industry had worked out perfectly.

You could watch the video clip here KSAT video. 

Also, you could read news articles that appeared in newspapers here.

Channel 12- KSAT

San Antonio Express News

Distinguished Lecturers Enlighten Trinity Community

In these past two weeks, Trinity students and staffs have heard from two distinguished personalities: Former State Secretary Condolezza Rice and a Middle East Historian Rashid Khalidi. I liked both of them and even though Khalidi is less popular compared to star-studded Rice, he impressed me more.

They talked about a lot of good stuff. But there was one topic that both of them touched upon and coincidentally, it is a hot political issue (a hot potato) these days for discussion, namely Iran Nuclear Enrichment Program. It was interesting to see both of them taking on same issue from two entirely different perspectives. Condolezza Rice came from a US centered perspective and saw Iran as an evil, a threat to US security and thus its nuclear program had to be contained/abandoned at the earliest possible through trade sanctions, international pressure and whatever is available.

Rashid Khalidi on the other hand, seemed to exude a deeper and clearer understanding of the situation. He pointed out the need for Iran to start this nuclear program after feeling insecure from two of its nuke possessing neighbors- Israel and Pakistan. He said that United States turns a blind eye to the fact that Israel and Pakistan possess nuclear weapons and did virtually nothing to prevent them from acquiring nuclear weapons. Iran, discernibly has some tensions with Israel, a Jewish state and Pakistan, a predominantly Sunni Muslim nation. These facts cannot be ignored while trying to find a solution.

After hearing about these two different perspectives, I gained a better understanding of this issue. In addition, my political science professor is from Iran and she opened another discussion in class today on this topic. The discussion provided yet another dimension to my understanding of Iran's nuclear program. After coming to a liberal arts institution you realize that reading what's on popular news media is simply not enough. They never tell you the inside story. You have to learn it from several other sources. And institutions like Trinity with diverse population are perfect places for that.


Note: I wrote this blog as part of Trinity's Official Student Blogger Program.

Help Haiti

It feels great to see such unity among people of all nationalities to help Haiti. People from all over are texting, facebooking and tweeting each other to garner more donations for Haiti. And, with technological advances, making an impact in Haiti through little donations is just a few clicks away or you could simply text a number and a certain amount is donated automatically. US has already donated $ 100 million and Obama has pledged his support. Amazing.

Even at Trinity, solidarity among students is very impressive. Students have organized Haiti Relief Concert to be held at Coates Esplanade of Trinity University  on Jan 17 from 4 to 5:30 pm to raise money. Students are constantly updating their statuses with messages about how one could help Haiti. For instance, one of my friends Tim wrote this,

***** is cutting a check to Haiti. Considering the hundreds of thousands feared dead from yesterday's earthquake, I urge you to do the same if possible.

And take a look at this, 

 Text "HAITI" to "90999" and a $10 donation will be sent to the Red Cross to help with relief efforts, charged to your cell phone bill.

Technology has made it easier to spread words but it could be equally misleading. For instance, a rumor has been widely spread both on Facebook and Twitter that UPS is shipping 50 lbs of material to Haiti for free. It is not true. In this time of crisis, UPS is facing difficulty delivering its own commercial shipments. Here is the rumor:

UPS is shipping anything under 50lbs for free to Haiti. You can send food clothes or shoes...and American Airlines is taking doctors and nurses to Haiti for free

Even one of the famous celebrities in Bollywood, Priyanka Chopra tweeted this until I told her it was a scam:

If you can, pls let every1 know that UPS is shipping parcels under 50lbs to #HAITI for free tdy! Pls donate! :)

Read about UPS Scam about 50 lbs here.

Avatar, the Greatest Movie of this Year

Avatar, the most expensive movie ever made and directed by James Cameron (who also directed Titanic and Terminator 2) has lived up to expectations injected prior to movie release. It is poised to winning several Oscars, for its superior animation and fantastic graphics. It has wowed its audience and people who have watched simply loved it, passing on positive feedback to their circle of friends through updates on Facebook, Twitter and likes.

When I went to watch Avatar, I did not expect a real good story because I had been warned by film critics about absence of a credible, real life story but I did expect to be entertained. Not only were my expectations surpassed, Avatar had a real good story too. I don't know how film critics missed it. That's the downside of being a critic; you have to be critical and criticize every work you judge.

For anyone who is considering watching this movie, it is an absolute "optical candy" as it is claimed. You can expect to see graphical illustrations that will amaze and transport you to the land of Pandora, where everything is exotic, more exotic than the Himalayas, Machu Pichu or Pyramids of Egypt. There are numerous Orientalist  philosophies embedded in the film, especially relating to the life ten foot tall blue creatures living on Pandora live. These blue creatures have a very close knit society and consider every life form, an integral part of Nature and of the infinite. Every living creature is connected to each other, every trees' roots are connected with others' forming an underground dense network that helps create a deep bond.

The fact that this was my first movie with a 3-D experience made it even more special. I considered it worth my bucks and would recommend to anyone who likes going to theatres to watch movies.

Invent, Baby Invent

Thomas Friedman talks about what will be the next big thing. He has made it clear that the world is flat. But the world is becoming 'hot, flat and crowded'.

The next big thing will be the Green Revolution. It's change or die. According to Friedman, the fuel that we were using we thought were 'cheap, non-exhaustive and benign' but in reality fuels were 'expensive, exhaustive and toxic-toxic to air we breathe and toxic to geo-politics'.

Friedman criticizes the stance of John McCain who was for 'Drill Baby, Drill.' He also counters the argument by China and India that since the US has been polluting the environment till now, it's now their turn.

Embedded below is an excellent video interview of Thomas Friedman with Fareed Zakaria.

Privacy Issue with Web Browsing

What would it feel like being stalked, everywhere you go and whatever you do, being watched by the eyes of the 'Big Brother' not unlike that in George Orwell's famous dystopian novel, '1984'? Horrible and scary, wouldn't it?

Do you realize that whatever you search for or browse on the internet is recorded? When you are running a Google Search, and if you are signed into Gmail, your browsing history is recorded. The claim of the Google founders, Sergey and Larry is that the search information is used to make the search better and that the information is not stored against their individual names but rather decoded with some random letters and numbers. But did you know that you could actually sign up for an option with Google Search that would let you see your browsing history since the date you signed up for. There would be a log of all websites you visited through the Search. How potential could that information be for corporations and agencies that are always looking for that kind of data to break into peoples' niche and sell their stuff.

Also, whenever you browse with the Internet Explorer, your browsing history is automatic stored and sent to the main server. It does not provide you an option to not store your browsing history unless you browse in another browser with 'InPrivate Browsing'. And if you open a new browser, the default setting is to store your browsing history meaning you would have to browse in another browser with 'InPrivate Browsing' everytime you wanted privacy. Internet Explorer does not provide any tool to permanently set your preference not to record your browsing history. Is it intentional on part of the Microsoft? Hell, yeah.

Google, on the other hand does provide you with an option to set your preference permanently if you want safe browsing without sending any browsing data. These browsers thrive on the fact that most ordinary people who use the internet do not realize this fact. And some, who do are too indifferent to care about this stuff. But this is an infringement of privacy. The ramifications of storing one's browsing data is immense. What one searches on the internet can tell a hell lot about the person's interests and personality. Potentially a very valuable source of information for their sponsors and advertisment agencies. There have been cases where browsing history has been used to pinpoint individuals, which in some cases can be very humiliating if the content of the searches are not very pleasant. Is there any public agency that is concerned about loss of peoples' privacy in this digital matrix?

Quantum Search seems to be coming up with a solution. Scientific American ran an article on the future of being able to browse without being followed and watched under the watchful eyes of Big Brothers like Microsoft, Google and Yahoo.

Google Scholarships

Google Scholarships

It feels great to see that Google actually gives away several annual scholarships to students to encourage them to do better. I was excited and had a look at the scholarships awarded to students and checked to see if I had a chance.

Unfortunately, I realized I did not qualify for any of those. It seemed that in order to be eligible for any of them, I had to be a minority of some sort, either a female pursuing computer related degree or belong to a less common ethnic group such as Native American. I am an Asian and a male. Sorry, no scholarships for you. How ridiculous! I am not against positive discrimination but at least others too should have a chance.

Saying Bye Bye to New and Expensive Books!

(Image taken from New York Times.)

According to one study, the average student will pay almost $1,000 for books during a single year. An undergraduate student may end up paying up to $4,000 on books before he or she receives a degree. - Jamie Littlefield from about.com

The internet has changed it all. A digital revolution that unfolded with the influx of mass internet users has changed the way business is done today. And, textbooks sale is no exception.

Big textbook publishing houses such as McGraw Hill and big retailers such as Barnes and Nobles have started revamping the traditional way they did business. McGraw Hill has recently partnered with book rental businesses such as Chegg and is encouraging others to try out book rental programs and share revenues. Barnes and Nobles too has started pilot programs at many universities to allow students to rent textbooks. And, they have also started focusing on online sales. At Trinity University too, Barnes and Nobles encouraged students to order books online with ease of few simple clicks. Textbook rental Businesses have started flourishing along with other online textbook sellers such as half.com.

As revenues for publishing houses have decreased over the years since online businesses started biting into their pies, they have become even more innovative and have resorted to bringing out newer editions more frequently. More often than not, these new editions do not have that much of varying material except for same content on different page numbers or newer problem sets, also differently numbered. While this does compel students to buy new textbooks every year instead of purchasing used ones at a cheap price, some college professors have started to adopt policies that would frustrate these 'innovative publishing houses'. For instance, my mathematics professor for 'Differential Equations and Linear Algebra' course assigned second edition of the textbook instead of the third one so that we could borrow the textbooks cheap.

Not unlike students and publishers, college professors too must have started to realize that newer editions not necessarily have different or 'edited/updated' material. Also, for my 'Media Intepretation and Criticism' course, my college professor asked us to return back the textbooks if we had already purchased since she would make the texts available online in pdfs. This is what real digital revolution is, in my view- Saving a lot of resources.

If college professors can be okay with older editions and also make the necessary readings available online then, textbook publishing business could be in real trouble. But, that's good for consumers. Those publishing houses would probably get better at innovation and actually come up with newer and updated stuff in newer editions. That way, it would be a fair trade, I would say.

One of the best resources when you are buying textbooks would be to read this article on about.com from one of the experts.

The Best Brown Bread in New York

I was not really a big fan of breads before I arrived in the United States. Back home, bread was for breakfast. Here in the US, bread is their staple food; they eat anytime, anywhere. I actually spent few hours googling about where is the place to find the best brown bread in New York. Currently, I am staying in New York but I do not intend to buy any brown bread. I was interested because I recently watched an Indian film named 'New York' where this phrase has been used.

I was curious as to whether really a place like this exists and so started running a Google search. It reminded me of how the search on the term 'Illuminati' rose staggeringly after Dan Brown mentioned the word in his famous novel, 'The DaVinci Code' and 'Angels and Demons'. Sadly, I did not find any specific place that proclaimed that it provided the best brown bread in New York. If there were any place such as this, US Intelligence would have probably conducted a covert operation immediately after the film was screened. It would have been a terrific promotion campaign though and probably the film crew would have asked for trouble if such place existed because it portrays the place in a negative way (a place that breeds/fosters terrorism.)

The movie was pretty nice and is sure to spark rage and more hatred towards Americans as it depicts innocent South Asians being racially profiled and detained after 9/11 attacks. In fact, Shahrukh Khan is also soon featuring in a movie named, 'My Name is Khan' that shows sorry state of Muslims who were racially profiled after 9/11 attacks. As if it were a publicity stunt, which it clearly was not, Shahrukh Khan was illegally detained at Newark Airport after his name returned 'Alert' message in US Immigration database.

Indian Celebrities on Twitter

I have been using Twitter for quite sometime now. I do not use it profusely and neither do I have a big fan following. I guess, I have a little more than 85 followers, many of which I don't know personally, of course. But I like the concept of Twitter and am convinced that Facebook did use some ideas of Twitter when it introduced a new version of Facebook where not only friends' statuses but also other posts, such as photo posts, video posts and notes appeared on Home Screen. This concept was introduced by Twitter and after it became popular, was copied by Facebook.

Facebook has copied ideas from here and there, but that is not my point. I was fascinated to see quite a few Indian celebrities using Twitter to communicate with their fans. It was the unfortunate incident of Shahrukh Khan's detention at Newark Airport that brought to my notice the presence of hot and gorgeous Priyanka Chopra, an Indian actress on Twitter. She apparently tweeted about this incident and spit her wrath at the US Immigration Officials. Guess what; now, I follow her. She posts periodically about what is going on with her life. Knowing about what goes on in a celebrity's life interests everyone including me. Priyanka also takes time to reply to her fans' tweet replies. Apparently, she has never replied to any of my 3 tweet replies that I sent to her.

There are also other Indian celebrities like Dino Morea, Uday Chopra and Karah Johar (I hope they count as celebrities. Never mind).

Here are their twitter usernames:

• Priyanka Chopra : priyankachopra
• Dino Morea: DinoMorea9
• Karan Johar: kjohar25
• Uday Chopra: udaychopra

I will keep my fingers crossed that Priyanka will one day reply to my tweets :D

Apparently, there is rumor that even Shahrukh tweets but others deny it based on the mechanical nature of his tweets. Shahid Kapoor, Ram Gopal Varma, MS Dhoni (the star cricketer), Shreya Ghosal and few others too are on twitter. Good going Indian celebrities.

Facebook Wants to become the next Google, not MySpace

• Facebook has 250 million active users among which 120 million login at least once daily

• More than 30 million users update their Facebook status once a day, some do so more frequently than their underwear :D
  

I read a piece of article with the same heading that incited amusement and disappointment inside me. And the timing for the claim could not have been better, since Facebook recently bought FriendFeed, another social networking tool. Facebook is trying to stay ahead of the game and knows that it can leave behind Google in this race if it can make right decisions and cater to the needs of the future. And, Google founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page very well know this. Facebook can do to Google what Google did to Microsoft.

The official website of Facebook boasts a healthy 250 million active users and it also claims that at least 120 million users log into their Facebook account everyday. Wow!! Whopping numbers. Are Google duos losing the battle? Opinions vary. History is evident that socializing websites bloom and fade like seasonal flowers. MySpace, Linkedn and others are few of them. But, the case is not very different for search engines either, except for Google, of course. AltaVista, the once prominent search engine has become an endangered species after Google came into the ring. And, the same can be said true for web browsers too. Who uses Netscape these days? It was the only and the most prominent browser just a decade ago, wasn't it?

So, I do have my doubts over whether Facebook can really become the next Google. In fact, I have started to see Facebook users getting genuinely concerned over the potential misuse of the information and other private details. Media has been doing a pretty reasonable role in educating general people about the security loopholes while allowing Applications to pull out your profile information. Also, it is not uncommon to see people getting in trouble at work. Also, it has started to be believed that some company recruiters pull out workers' information from Facebook and also use it to base their decisions. A clean Facebook profile has started to become the popular slogan among wise Facebook users. If more and more users start getting responsible, careful and discretionary in uploading and posting images, videos or texts then, it should hurt viral expansion of Facebook users.

Facebook Statistics are very interesting to skim through if you are an active Facebook user. For instance, every user has on average 120 friends and 2/3 of its users are users outside of college even though it was originally created for students.

Check out the complete Official Facebook Statistics .