A Blond Scientist in India

Sunday, May 4, 2008

no sugar for me turkish, i'm sweet enough

In an email from S on me: Sometimes i think, "aw, he's sweet sometimes," but invariably i think, "wait, is he?" and then, invariably, "no."

I thought I might leave it up to my readers but then decided against it.

a Tibetan joke

One of my best friends here, Tenzin the nurse told me a Tibetan joke.

A Tibetan came to Delhi for the first time and he got attacked by mosquitoes that night. There's no mosquitoes in Tibet so he was quite confused. He hid under the bed that night to escape them. The next day, he tells his friend about these strange creatures who bite and make such a buzzing noise. His friend told him they were mosquitoes. He went back to his room that night and he hid under his bed again. While the mosquitoes continued their attack, a firefly came under the bed during the night, flashing it's light on and off. He went to his friend and complained about these damn mosquitoes. "They're smart. Last night, they came to find me and they brought flashlights."

Friday, May 2, 2008

Tenpa: the oldest man on the march

In 1959, after years of food shortages and misrule by the Chinese, the first great Tibetan uprising occurred. Tenpa, the son of semi-nomadic farmers from Kham Dege, Tibet, fearing for the Dalai Lama's safety, left his home in the dead of night for the capitol of Lhasa. He never saw his mother again and twenty-five years passed before he reunited with his father in Karnataka, India. He rode two nights and one day on horseback to Lhasa. “I went to defend His Holiness and all the Tibetans there.”

Upon reaching the city, he joined the Chushi Gangdruk, freedom fighters camped outside the Norbulingka, the Dalai Lama's summer palace. After a week of siege, the situation had become explosive. A few days after Tenpa's arrival, the Dalai Lama secretly fled into exile. In the days that followed, Tenpa witnessed the People's Liberation Army (PLA) attacking Tibetan demonstrators with machine gun fire and tank shelling from the two mountains overlooking the city. According to Chinese sources, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) killed 86,000 Tibetans. Tenpa witnessed many Tibetans drowning in the river or mud trying to escape. He fled to a resistance camp being formed on the outskirts of the city. About one thousand Tibetans from all walks of life met there: soldiers, old men, monks and teenagers. With limited resources, they were determined to fight.

Within a few days of the massacre at Norbulingka, the PLA attacked their camp from across the Kyichu river with machine guns and dropped bombs out of helicopters. Ammunition soon exhausted, Tenpa and his fellow resistance fighters had to flee, leaving 600 dead comrades behind. The fighters split into smaller groups to evade the helicopters and they decided to escape into Nepal via Mount Kailash. During their month long journey, nomads sometimes gave them food but mostly they ate the roots of wild grasses. Despite the danger, they lost none of their thirty comrades.

Upon reaching northeast India, they met Andruk Gompo Tashi, leader of the Chushi Gangdruk. He told told them they must work to survive. Tenpa joined a road making crew in Manali, Himachal Pradesh, India making 1.25Rs a day. In 1962, the government in exile asked Tibetans to move to Karnataka where the Indian government had granted farm land to the Tibetan exiles. Tenpa took the free train ride south and started working an acre of land to grow vegetables with his new wife. Although the land was not as fertile as the Tibetan soil, he prospered and bought cattle to milk. He eventually had six sons and five daughters and still works on the farm at the age of 74.

He already participated in a 1995 peace march from Dharamsala to Delhi that was supposed to go onto Tibet. When he heard about the 2008 March to Tibet from the regional Tibetan Youth Congress, he didn’t ask his wife or children. He decided he was going and nobody could change his mind or tell him he was too old. Once arrested at Dehra in the Kangra Valley, he said, “I felt that now I am going to Tibet because now the issue has spread. I was excited to see Tibet under the spotlight.” After his release, he joined the second wave of marchers and now, aside from asthma flare-ups and occasional knee problems, he feels great continuing the march to his homeland.

His message to his people: “We have no freedom and we are living under the Chinese rule. It is the duty of every Tibetan to fight for Tibet’s freedom and not give up hope.”

The Billy Letters

In the 90s, Bill Geerhart, posing as a 10 year old boy named Billy, wrote to some of America's most famous serial killers, polticians and pop culture figures. He got some great responses.

Link

damn damn! one more thing I want to see but can't

I can't hear the sound from this video but it must be good: ballerinas dancing to the Pixie's "Where is My Mind?" (the song during the ending credits of Fight Club).

A little boy went to the ballet for the first time with his parents. During the performance, he leaned over and whispered to his father. "Dad, why don't they just get taller girls?"

the power of a prize

The story of a scientist who won a million dollar prize for cheap removal of arsenic from groundwater to help save the people of Bangladesh. The kicker he donated almost all of the money to distribute his invention for free.

from Islamica Magazine via Wired Science

Their introduction:
It has been called the greatest mass poisoning in human history, bigger than the 1984 chemical spill in Bhopal, India, and bigger than Chernobyl. In an effort to prevent the crippling cholera and typhoid outbreaks of the 1940s and 50s, the Bangladeshi government, financed by UNICEF and the World Bank, began digging tube wells - deep incisions into the Earth's surface - to bypass contaminated surface water and pump up cleaner water from below. Since the 1970s million of such wells have been dug and, although initially unpopular, through massive awareness campaigns were made the primary source of Bangladeshi drinking water. What wasn't known at the time, or as some allege, was not adequately tested, was that the groundwater in the wells contained high levels of arsenic, in some cases as much as four hundred times the amount deemed safe. The World Health Organization (WHO) now estimates that between 35 and 77 million Bangladeshis are being slowly poisoned, and the Dhaka Department of Dermatology and Venereology estimates that as many as 200,000 people may die each year as a result.

Since the scale of the disaster has become known, numerous proposals have been put forward to ameliorate the catastrophe. One is to deepen the existing wells and thereby bypass the tainted water. With millions of wells to deepen, however, the cost could be astronomical with no guarantee of success. Another is to build elaborate rainwater collection systems, but UNICEF has cautioned that there is not enough rainfall in the country to do this. A third and final solution is to develop effective filters for the existing well water. But, as of 2001, the World Bank stated that there is "no proven affordable arsenic removal technology available yet."

Enter the Grainger Foundation of Lake Forest, Illinois. In 2005, the non-profit foundation announced the Grainger Challenge Prize for Sustainability, a million-dollar award for the most effective, inexpensive, reliable, and environmentally friendly solution to the arsenic problem facing Bangladesh and similar countries with tube-well-related problems. The United States' National Academy of Engineering was designated its arbitrator and in a little less than a year it received more than 70 entries. In February 2007, after exhaustive tests conducted by United States Environmental Protection Agency, the NAE finally announced the winner: Dr. Abul Hussam, a chemistry professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

His filter, a marvel of effectiveness and simplicity, costs only $35 to produce and can remove arsenic, iron, manganese, and many other toxic substances. Each unit can filter nearly 500 liters per day, enough water for sixty people. Perhaps most important of all, it is simple to operate and can work without interruption for at least five years.