The quest for safe drinking water August 29, 2008
Posted by Anurag Gaggar in Life, World.Tags: blue planet run, books, Life, safe drinking water, water
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Blue Planet Run is a non profit organization focusing on raising global awareness about the lack of safe drinking water and funding working solutions for the billion people (yes! 1.1 billion) living without ready access to safe drinking water.
Check out this amazing and eye-opening book released by them. The e-book is available as a free download from here.
“Blue Planet Run provides readers with an extraordinary look at the water problems facing humanity and some of the hopeful solutions being pursued by large and small companies, by entrepreneurs and activists,
and by nongovernmental organizations and foundations.
Blue Planet Run is two books in one: First, it is about an extraordinary 15,000-mile relay race — the longest relay race in human history — in which 20 athletes spent 95 days running around the globe to spread awareness of the world’s water crisis. Secondly, it is a showcase of powerful, inspiring, disturbing and hopeful images captured by leading photojournalists around the world who documented the human face of the crisis and its possible solutions.”
And here’s a very nice presentation titled “Thirst” which also talks about the scarcity of safe drinking water.
Which way to go for Charity? August 23, 2008
Posted by Anurag Gaggar in India, Life.Tags: charity, each one teach one, education, illiteracy, society
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‘Each One Teach One’ was one of the popular social campaigns on Indian television some years back. It highlighted the difference we could make to the society if we all contribute our little bit. I’ve been wondering since some time if this is the best way to go about it.
Let’s say you want to work towards removing illiteracy from the world, you have a few hours to spare every week and you know a couple of children you’d want to be educated. Now let’s compare two scenarios:
1. You teach the kids yourself.
2. You work on something that you are better at and would be paid for, and use the money you get to hire a teacher for the kids.
Which is the better way to go about it?
- If you enjoy teaching and are good at it, you could very well go with the first option. But, what if you don’t enjoy it as much and are not sure if you can teach well, yet the cause that is closest to your heart and the one you want to work towards is removing illiteracy.
- Is the principle of ‘Each One Teach One’ efficient? Would it not be better if a few people who are good at teaching teach more people and the others work on something else to help buy teaching aids or books?
Wikipedia vs. Knol August 22, 2008
Posted by Anurag Gaggar in Internet, technology.Tags: encyclopedia, google, Internet, knol, wikipedia
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Google recently opened Knol for everyone. As per Google:
“Knols are authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects.
The key principle behind Knol is authorship. Every knol will have an author (or group of authors) who put their name behind their content. It’s their knol, their voice, their opinion.”
One key question that immediately comes up is whether Knol will be able to trounce Wikipedia. It certainly scores over Wikipedia on some aspects:
- Knol identifies and highlights its authors unlike Wikipedia where the authors are hidden. This adds more credibility to the articles as someone’s name (and reputation) is attached to it. Sure, there would be articles with obscure author names/pics, companies and affiliates would try to market using Knol; but, in the long run the best articles, written with an independent point of view, should become more popular.
- Collaboration on Knol is moderated. With this feature, any reader can make suggested edits to a knol which the author may then choose to accept, reject, or modify before these contributions become visible to the public. Content on Knol would not have to bear the brunt of online vandalism.
- Authors can choose to include ads on their content and get a share of the revenue. This is another incentive for people to contribute on Knol.
- It is a Google product! Capital and infrastructure is never going to be an issue and Google might find new ways to integrate it with its other services.
Wikipedia too has some things going for it:
- It has a BIG head start over Knol in terms of the content that already exists on it.
- Since the content of the article is not with a single individual, updates on a popular article need not wait for the author. Wikipedia could thus have consolidated and updated articles on topics where updates are more frequently required.
