New Clothes, Old Notes

Dashain is most arguably the prominent festival of Nepal celebrated with unparalleled pomp and joy. Even though different people in Nepal celebrate Dashain differently, it brings happiness and sense of unity among family members. Generally speaking, people in Terai perceive Dashain as more of a religious celebration, engaging in an intensive 10 day long worshipping and at often fasting for entire 10 days, surviving entirely on fruits and milk; while, people in Hills and elsewhere focus more on the cultural aspect of Dashain and celebrate it as a festival that unites family members and brings joy.

Dashain is marked with children playing around in open fields in bright and colorful new clothes. 'Pings' are a common sight. People tend to develop a strange affinity not only for new clothes, but new stuffs in general. Sale of new shoes goes up while the old sandals and flippers fill up the trash cans (which of course do not exist).

Nepalese have developed an affinity for new and crisp bills too during Dashain. The Nepal Rastra Bank caters to this aesthetic and rather luxurious demand by dispensing lots of new stacks of crisp bills (Nepalese currency notes). However, it seems Nepalese will get to wear new clothes, (in fact lots of them since China, beloved neighbor manufactures them so cheaply) but will have to do without new currency notes (bills) this year. Nepal Rastra Bank has admitted of a currency shortage during Dashain, the major festival of Nepal. Surely, this will be a big disappoinment to the Nepalese. Old habits die hard.

I fear Nepalese people might launch a revolution or call up a general strike demanding new and crisp Nepalese bills.

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.

Alleviating Poverty Through Microcredit

Microcredit is a concept first experimented with in Brazil by Accion International. Contrary to popular belief and expectations, it turned out that poor people with little or no financial security paid back all of their loans at a rate better than the conventional rate of most commercial banks.

It was then given a new dimension after a young professor at Chittagong University, Muhammad Yunus started Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his extra-ordinary success with microcredit in poverty alleviation in Bangladesh and many other countries. Grameen Bank today is a part of the great Grameen Foundation which serves various sectors in Bangladeshi society. Grameen has also partnered with other multinational companies(such as Danone, the French Yogurt Company) to serve poor people better.

Microcredit has turned to be a miracle compared to the inefficacy of hundreds of billions of aid and charities poured out to poor nations in the past centuries.

The following video featuring Muhammad Yunus will help you understand the concept of Microcredit better.

Frequent Mozilla Firefox Crashes on University Computers

          I don't know if you have noticed or not, but the university computers take painfully longer time, feels like almost ever to load when you log in. I asked some of my techie friends and they said it is because of Vista. But, come on, Trinity had Vista before we went for summer too. The load time has lengthened after we came back from summer. One of my techie friends suggested it is because all of the Vista programs are being loaded at once. This was not the case before we left for summer. And, think of the Java window that pops up everytime asking for your permission to continue. Try logging in with your username to permit it so that it stops coming and the error message is returned, asking for an administrator password.

          As if this were not enough, Mozilla Firefox crashes almost every time I use it. And, more so when I try to close the browser. At first, I thought this was just happening with me and was purely a coincidence. But it started happening everytime and that is when I started smelling a rat. So, I checked online and this seems to be a problem with other users too. This is actually a problem of the new version of Mozilla 3 that they have launched without adequate testing. Certainly, everyone likes newer versions of free software but when it is full of bugs then, it gets very irritating. It seems I will have to live with this problem before Mozilla can actually correct this bug.