Ethical Traveler has created a list of 13 tips that focus on travelers creating a positive impact by “by being open, informed, and willing to immerse themselves in other cultures”. A couple of them that I really like (the entire list is available here) :
Take the time to learn basic courtesy phrases : learn how to say “please” & “thank you” in the local language Remember the economic realities of your new currency : A US Dollar is worth 40 times an Indian rupee and a Euro is worth 70.
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1 minute read | 203 words
From Ahmadabad to Baghdad, from Bosnia to Calcutta, from Darfur to…. there is far too much warfare, crime, hatred and genocide than I would like. Steven Pinker, however has another take on this.
“ In a preview of his next book, Steven Pinker takes on violence… Pinker charts a history of violence from Biblical times through the present, and says modern society has a little less to feel guilty about.
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1 minute read | 81 words
Research suggests that most clear hard plastic (your baby’s bottle, the bottles in the refrigerator, the sippers, the food jars on the kitchen shelf) contain a chemical called bisphenol A (BPA), which is at the minimum toxic, but perhaps even carcinogenic (can cause some forms of cancer).
The Telegraph of UK explains what BPA is:
BPA is a synthetic version of oestrogen, the female sex hormone, and experts have suggested for more than a decade that chemicals in the environment and in consumer products may be contributing to male and female diseases, such as prostate and breast cancer.
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2 minute read | 260 words
The list of the worlds worst polluted place, compiled by the Blacksmith Institute is called the Dirty Thirty. The top ten ‘dishonors’ are shared by India (2), China (2), Russia (2), Azerbaijan(1), Peru (1), Ukraine (1), Zambia (1).
Click on the name below to read a profile of the place at the Blacksmith Institute website.
Sumgayit, Azerbaijan Linfen, China Tianying, China Sukinda, India Vapi, India La Oroya, Peru Dzerzhinsk, Russia Norilsk, Russia Chernobyl, Ukraine Kabwe, Zambia See all these places on the map
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1 minute read | 98 words
Talking of networks and ‘network effects’, Duncan J. Watts professor of sociology at Columbia University and the author of “Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age”, has written a very interesting piece in New York Times on why the business of ‘cultural’ is so unpredictable. He shows how the power of social influence is not just limited to ‘cultural’ products like music (visit his MusicLab project), but also to technologies, consumer products… perhaps anything where people have a choice and where these people are part of a society.
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1 minute read | 199 words
I just noticed (accidentally) that I am ‘connected to’ Barack Obama, US Senator and Presidential Candidate through three different people. Talk of six-degrees of separation! In the world networked through LinkedIn, Plaxo and others, my guess is that it may not be six any more.
BTW: If you haven’t been to Plaxo recently you should check out their new interface and tools.
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1 minute read | 62 words
I came very close to participating in a scam executed by an India ‘social networking’ site. Unwittingly, of course! It started when I received a mail from a site called yaari.com:
‘xyd wants you to join Yaari!… Is xyz your friend?… Please respond or xyz might think you said no’
Normally I completely ignore such messages, but this time I did not. Why? Firstly, I was curious (media has been giving some play to this site), and the curiosity was heightened by the fact that the company is named as Yaari LLC, and provides an Atlanta address on the invite.
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3 minute read | 489 words
The Picture Archive Council of America (PACA), has created a powerpoint presentation that dispels many a myth and sheds light on what copyright protects and for how long, what is fair use, what is an infringement and what is not.
Some of the _ popular copyright myths _ it highlights include:
If an image is on the internet/Google it is in the public domain. If there is no copyright notice on the image, I don’t need permission.
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1 minute read | 210 words
The class seven students of The Shri Ram School, DLF Phase 3, made a trip to the Yamuna to experience first hand the state of the river just before it enters Delhi from neighbouring state of Haryana, and the quantum of untreated sewage and waste matter that is released into the river once it enters Delhi. From a frolicsome dip in the monsoon-fed Yamuna to the sombre sight of the black stink coming out of the Najafgarh Drain that enters the river, the children had a lot to process on the trip.
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Yossi Vardi commenting on Social Software suggests that ‘there are 3-4 major forces on the Internet:
• self expression
• communication
• sharing
• collaboration
You’d notice that money is not one of them. It is interesting when you consider that ‘that Google Answers, which paid people to answer other people’s questions, is out of business, but Yahoo Answers, which pays only in non-monetary points, had millions of users…’ Read the article here
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1 minute read | 73 words
“There’s a chance to invest right now in China, India, Russia and Brazil, which will pay off big over the next five years… These economies are going to boom, and ads there are going to go directly to mobile and directly to the Internet.” Says David W. Kenny, the chairman and chief executive of Digitas.
He also believes that “It is only a matter of time until nearly all advertisements around the world are digital.
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2 minute read | 297 words
Interesting times these! While the New York Times is poised to stop charging online users, Google is going to start charging.
New York Times started charging for access in 2005 and has in 2007 decided to abandon the approach. Google started offering free email, albeit restricted to 1 gigabyte (GB) storage, in 2004 and has in 2007 decided to start charging for storage over 2.8 gigabytes (GB) .
New York Post Story:
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2 minute read | 226 words
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