serendipityoucity

That is the message i got from the SMD School in Nepal! Ya gotta luv a school that sends a message like that!

J, M and I sponsored a little girl to go to boarding school in Nepal and Info from her just arrived!

Hello, Tashi Delek!

My name is Dolma Tsering and I am from Dzum, which lies in the western region of Nepal, high in the Himalayas. It takes eight days to reach my village from my school. My village is very much less developed than the city. In my village there are no health, education, transportation or other facilities. In my family there are six members, including my mother and father. I am eleven years old.

I feel myself lucky enough to get all these facilities at SMD School. It is all due to your kindness towards me. I like to play games especially badminton during my leisure time. My friends are very kind and helpful. My best friend is Dawa.

B512 Dolma 11 years    Class Sp’B’

I talked about doing this in an earlier post and i am thrilled to receive information about her.  My son J will be going there to volunteer next summer!

For 805$ CAD, Dolma will receive one full year of education at the boarding school.

Female mathematician - Ramdorai Sujatha - from India has been presented with the Ramanujan Prize, which honours young maths researchers from developing countries!

Niiiice!

BBC
Science and Development News 

Mtl3p suggested i read the following article some time ago:

Mother Earth Mother Board
The hacker tourist ventures forth across the wide and wondrous meatspace of three continents, chronicling the laying of the longest wire on Earth.
By Neal Stephenson

I was dumbfounded! So much fiber wrapped around the planet.  Deep sea glass filled lines connect islands and continents, row upon row of deep trenches dug in the deepest lurkium jungles, deserts, cities and everything in between, along roads, rail and strung along sewer pipes. I had Philippina and Chinese girlfriends busing to suburban Ottawa plants to work on the shop floor to feed these cables. Somehow this got done and i was completely oblivious to its implications, policies and physical realities.  All these deals got struck, land negotiated and rights of passage given. The world, in the last couple of decades got wrapped up like a ball of wool with glass strands and few of us had any input. Unbelievable how citizens have so little say in the infrastructures that get built and yet pay for them!

And now, an Earthquake disrupts Asia’s communications. 2 deep sea cables used by several countries to route calls and Internet traffic got cut by an earthquake that hit Taiwan on Dec. 26th and millions of people are left without a communication system. Only 2 cables!

Crews fixing the cables would have to pull them up and transfer them to a ship for repair, the company said.

The damage to the two lines, located in the south, cut off 50 percent to 60 percent of Chunghwa’s overall telephone capacity, the company said. Most severely affected were connections to China, Japan and Southeast Asian countries, it said.

The company also lost 60 percent of its telephone service to the U.S.Chunghwa said 98 percent of Taiwan’s communications capacity with Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Hong Kong was disrupted.

Hong Kong telephone company PCCW Ltd., which also provides Internet service, said the quake cut its data capacity in half. Many Internet users were unable to access Web sites in parts of America, Taiwan and South Korea. Calls to Taiwan were not going through.
In China, Internet access was cut or had become extremely slow, said an official from China Netcom, the country’s No. 2 phone company.

CCTV, the state-run television network, said China Telecom Corp., China’s biggest phone company, was contacting counterparts in the U.S. and Europe about using satellites to make up for the shortfall.
KDDI Corp., Japan’s major carrier for international calls, said Thursday that its fixed-line telephone service was affected.

KDDI spokesman Haruhiko Maeda said customers were having trouble making calls to India and the Middle East, which are usually routed through cables near Taiwan. Maeda said the company was rerouting calls to go through the U.S. and Europe; the company did not know how long it will take to repair the cables.

Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said that international roaming service provided by Japan’s major three telecommunications companies — NTT DoCoMO, KDDI, and Softbank, has been affected. Ministry official Akira Yamanaka said that some customers were unable to make calls using their cell phones in countries including Taiwan.

South Korea’s largest telecom company, KT, said that lines it uses were damaged, affecting dozens of companies and institutions, including South Korea’s Foreign Ministry.

People’s Daily- Broken Undersea Cable Snaps Internet Access in China

Intriguing how countries that normally do not cooperate with each other agree to route their communication traffic in a few shared cables. A Channel News Asia aticle explains

Due to the high cost of such submarine cables, most countries co-invest in a common communications infrastructure, and this multi-billion-dollar information superhighway has now been damaged.

"The extent of damage to the cable is extensive. We are clearly taking this on two fronts - we want to restore service on the damaged cable as soon as possible and at the same time, we are working round the clock with our consortium partners to do the traffic diversions. We think there’s a good chance we can restore service as soon as possible," says Choo Pee Yin, director of Network Operations at SingTel.

The earthquake was so massive that even SingTel’s backup alternative cables were knocked out.

Companies lease cables and when they go down it affects international toll-free calling, VOIP, Internet access, banking, trading.  The 2 damaged cables are the

SeaMeWe 3 (South East Asia Middle East Western Europe 3) and APCN2 (Asia Pacific Cable Network 2) underseas cables. Both are major telecommunications arteries in East Asia and their temporary loss is what’s led to the problems being observed on Wednesday.

These were major telecom routes and traffic has been re-routed to other lines that are of course getting congested.  This can also affect your tek support calls to India!

In India, back offices and call centers experienced some difficulty, but industry officials said the full extent of the problem would not be known until later in the day when data and voice traffic peaked during European and U.S. business hours.

Pretty fragile infrastructures indeed! Some analysts state that

most international telecommunications are now carried by submarine cable, forming a multi-billion dollar network that spans the globe.

Booming demand for increasingly sophisticated services is met by continually adding capacity but as countless users found out on Wednesday, they have become ever more dependent on a system which can be vulnerable at certain key points.

Independent telecommications analyst Paul Budde said in a report earlier this year that the first undersea cables were laid about 150 years ago to transmit telegrams and they have evolved to reflect changing technology.

The Australia-based analyst said it cost up to US$500 000 a kilometre to lay modern cables and recently, there had been an increase in development of submarine infrastructure as demand for broadband internet and cheap telephone services increased.

"Changes in undersea systems have taken place on a giant scale - not since the initial building of these networks 150 years ago have we seen such activity, mainly driven by the increase in data traffic.

"Systems that were built as late as 1998 proved to be inadequate for the demand in capacity required a mere 18 months later.

"Within a period of a few short years, there were … at least 1 000 long-distance carriers and 10 000 ISP (Internet service providers) requiring global connectivity," he said.

Such dependency on 2 cables, an infrastructure that runs through the Ring of Fire!  Dam! Do people know how fragile the systems they depend are! Calamaty often surfaces submerged knowledge!

This was a lovely movie! I went to see it on my way to a party, not knowing what it was about then skipped the party!  I was somewhat disoriented seeing this cast in a typical small town cheezy Canadiana setting with the Broken Social Scene in the background!

A film about acceptance, understanding and learning that to someone with autism neuro-typical people can be seen "as people who waste a lot of time with all this social rubbish"

Unfortunately, this neuro-typical grumpy person can’t get away with growling, scowling, not wanting to greet people, watching tv all night and staring at my belly button for long periods of time! Dang it! I am enjoying this!

:)

really! how complicated can it be! 

On my way into school, i ran into Terry a lovely man who speaks with the soul and groundedness of a craftsman.  I don’t often get to hear this voice these days as i mostly spend time with engineers and academics, and it was really refreshing. The Lauriault men in my family were hunters, outdoorsman and woodworkers and i grew up with the smell of wood, the sound of tools, sawdust and a shop in the yard, so it is nice to get a reminder of this heritage from time to time. Today my brother Denis and brother in law Arturo continue the woodworking tradition and talking with Terry brought me home somehow. Terry and I discussed numerous topics that seamlessly wove into each other, in particular, Maori woodworking tradition, manliness, Buddhism, sport and places in society permissive of aggressive play and providing outlets for it.  Things i ponder from time to time and was really glad to have shared those few moments outside the ID shop with him.

I went to library to seek some fine holiday reading.  I managed to do some weight training with a tall pile of books on ethnicity, identity, race, roots, nationalism, boundaries, territories and communities in cyberspace.  Mostly fine cultural theory and a nice selection at that.  As i was going through indexes, TOCs and marking chapters to photocopy, i overheard a marvelous conversation about pornography and the sex industry in Eastern Europe, gypsies, religion and history.  Well, needless to say i had to join in and met two wonderful professors in their early sixties of art and religion.  We discussed media, pederasty, Afghanistanis in tents in the mountains with only boyz, the homoerotic behaviour i observed between men in northern India, the red light district in Amsterdam, pornographic metadata, how the shoes of Greek prostitute women had follow me inscribed on them, an analytical study of Greek vases given as gifts to lovers that were predominantly painted with images of spanking, erotica and pornography, and if one is engaged in this industry it can eat at your soul, exemplified in a friend of hers who was a pornographic film maker who eventually became an orthodox monk!  Turns out one of the professors speaks to art and representation in cartography! Small world, and looks like i might be able to work with her on my favorite topic of the politics, history and culture of hair removal!

From there i went to visit my academic advisor who is ever so patient.  We had a great talk about questions of defining what a community is within a nation state,  does the model of a state as we know them to be now the only model, and whether or not we as humans will ever be able to transcend ethnic, cultural, linguistic territorialization and if not does it mean that we continue to perpetuate inclusion and exclusionary zones! We also discussed what the boundaries of development are, and in fact, some places, India for example, while infrastructurally a mess to say the least, is in many respects existentially on a spiritual level way ahead. Hmmm! Does that mean the notions we have of the physical word of meeting material need to be just a transitionary phase that is so very short term in of the metaphysical time line?

On my way to the lab i ran into karen, whom i worked with eeeeons ago on East Timor in Ottawa.  Karen is 55 and back at school studying human rights and law.  dang! This woman was one of the top equity reps for the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) for years and is a shrewd arbitrator.  She explained the importance of discussing issues in very basic, real and tangible ways, only the fundamentals she said will educate all of the people at the table and eventually bring them to a point where they cannot but change their views.  She hopes to do this kind of work with NPO groups in Canada, and we need her fast!  We also discussed the differences between ideologically believing the issues and actually being able to live by them, implement them on a day to day level and how hard it is for people to risk calling something that relates to class, race, homophobia etc. We also talked about our organizing experiences, where we were at psychologically at the time, our observations of the intensity of the relationships we developed as a group at that time and where we are going.  She is soo great and i can’t wait to see what she does when she grows up.  Was also fun to discuss her stepdaughters who are now 30!  Eek! When i knew them they were teenagers!

Then I went to judo and came home with a fat lip and sore upper rib cage as a 250Lbs man felt it necessary to assert his dominance! Shesh! You’d think he could relax and play a little with that incredible advantage! Was sorta like wrestling with a friggin’ grizzly bear fearful of loosing his life!

Overall a really great day, one that made me happy about what i am doing in a place where i am just really starting to get my feet wet!

Tonight was the first V-Day night!

Yikes! I can’t remember ever in my life being in a room with 55 womyn!  Let alone talkin’ about vaginas that much.  The round table was fascinating, so many reasons for women to be there: to overcome fears; because they luv their vaginas; some are actresses; to market stuff; to participate in community theater; new in town and want to meet new people; others had a past experience that makes them want to be there; to empower womyn or to raise money for a worthy cause.

We just basically did round table introductions, met the director & crew and learned about how the whole thing works.

Really nice to meet people who do not do geek work, actually not one of them does! hmmm! I felt kinda geekish for the first time in my life! Anyway, at the bus stop i met a womyn who coordinates volunteers to read newspapers for the visually impaired, the womyn who coordinates the Sierra Club Sustainable Campus Project, an executive secretary to a health policy director, and a womyn who is a medical professional accreditation officer.  In the room there were sex toy store  clercks,  broadcasters, actors, womyn who work for CIDA, social workers, retired women, mothers, volunteer coordinators for a variety of organizations, womyn who work in sexual assault centres, sex health educators and womyn who work with breast cancer survivors.

Dang! This is going to be really educational!

Also, we are looking for men to run the bake sale? I am going to hit seb up for his cream puffs, peter for his cookies, michael for his almond chocolate chip cookies, glenn for…

So please put 20$s aside and Saturday March 3rd, cuz there is gonna be a show in town that i am in!

I met Madan in India when I was there in November.  He is a totally great character who is truly committed to documenting people’s stories in India and to empowering his students to do the same.  He gave me a copy of the film below which i watched with my son.  Let me say, that it ain’t pretty, but i belive they needed to show and tell the story as it is. 

Let me know if you want to see it or show it.

PAPPU PARK - A FILM ON INTRAVENOUS DRUG ABUSE AND HIV

Background
On the banks of the river Yamuna that flows beside Delhi is a locality called Yamuna Bazaar. Each day about 100 or more addicts congregate at a park here known as Pappu Park. All of them are Intravenous drug addicts who inject themselves with a mixture of Avil, Norphine and Diazepam. Due to their poor economic condition they share needles and syringes quite often and therefore constitute a, ‘high risk’ group with regard to the spread of HIV. Three years ago an NGO called Sahara intervened and began outreach operations which later spanned out into an out patient care centre on location, a crisis centre for detoxification, a rehabilitation centre offering long term in house treatment and care and finally a midway home that sets up reformed addicts with jobs. In these three years the intervention has had a significant impact and today nobody shares needles at Pappu Park anymore. Counseling has also helped many turn around their lives.

The film
Pappu Park, strives to outline this success story through the eyes of an ex addict, Satish who today works with Sahara and helps suffering addicts. It demonstrates the link between IDU and HIV and shows how Sahara first assessed the situation and then moved in to the area to provide a bouquet of services for these addicts. The film is presented from the viewpoint of this once suffering but now reformed addict who is now fully engaged in helping his brothers’ reform themselves. Issues like harm reduction, high risk behavior and HIV are some of the issues the film deals with. It is also an attempt to showcase the immense success that Sahara has had in being able to make a difference and the strategy adopted by them in realizing this objective.

Rather than focus on hard statistics and numbers, Pappu Park seeks to address this issue from the grassroots level and the addicts themselves endorse the immense help they have received from the organization. In addition it also reveals how the local community living in the area has come to acknowledge the stellar contribution made by Sahara in addressing this serious problem.    

BIO - Madan S. Rajan

Has been a filmmaker working in the video industry in Delhi for the past two decades. He was part of the first batch of Mass Communication students from the Jamia Millia Islamia University in 1985 and has been working in various capacities since then. Though he began as an editor for the first seven years he has now gone on to venturing into other areas of filmmaking like scripting, cinematography and direction. He has also been teaching visual communication as a visiting faculty in institutes in Delhi and is currently teaching at Amity University NOIDA and the Institute of Home Economics in Hauz Khas. In addition to making his own films, he has also been involved in a number of student projects as in an advisory capacity.

Small things like

dressing up in a black number with the girls

teasing your girlfriend about her manly man husband, telling her to takim’ out on a date then watching him blush

seeing your son growing up surrounded by really nice friends and happy that he knows how to pull together a really great party!

preparing orange soup with seb on a friday afternoon and staying up way past everyone’s bedtime in a montreal cafe drinking rough brandy with michael.

I have been reading the comments in a blog entry on women in science. The post questions the potential bias of the Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering produced by the National Academy of Science (NAS) in the US. The comments do not discuss the content of the report, the findings, nor the data but the meritoriousness of the study as the committee who submitted the study comprised only women.

The arguments are typical, stupid, mean and some clever!

There were a couple of gem articles in the comments section which taught me some useful socio psychological concepts:

Stereotype Threat (Claude Steele)

premise is that a person’s “social identity”—defined as group membership in categories such as age, gender, religion, and ethnicity—has significance when “rooted in concrete situations.”  

the threat of being viewed through the lens of a negative stereotype or the fear of doing something that would inadvertently confirm that stereotype (ref)

identity contingencies

settings in which a person is treated according to a specific social identity.

Steele suggests that stereotype threat is a far more pervasive barrier to a truly integrated society than is overt racism or sexism.

when a person’s social identity is attached to a negative stereotype, that person will tend to underperform in a manner consistent with the stereotype. He attributes the underperformance to a person’s anxiety that he or she will conform to the negative stereotype.

Individuals will begin to believe they have to outperform because they are from that stereotypical group.  Several studies have shown

that stereotype threat influences women’s performance on math tests, and thus is likely responsible for at least part of the observed gender differences in math ability (ref).

This concept explains alot about how some groups in society rank higher on so many variables but underperform in other areas.  Personal and collective beliefs and all their feedback and mirroring can be so damaging. I have been thinking about culturalism, racism, caste, ethnic nationalism, identity politics and chauvinism and what happens in and to a society when the power imbalance and stereotypes have been reinforced and enacted for centuries.  What does it take to overcome these.

The following article, takes a different turn and provides a unique perspective on the topic of women in science. 

Male Scientist Writes of Life as Female Scientist
Biologist Who Underwent Sex Change Describes Biases Against Women
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 13, 2006; Page A10

Neurobiologist Ben Barres has a unique perspective on former Harvard president Lawrence Summers’s assertion that innate differences between the sexes might explain why many fewer women than men reach the highest echelons of science.

Barres said he has realized from personal experience that many men are unconscious of the privileges that come with being male, which leaves them unable to countenance talk of glass ceilings and discrimination.

Below are some great lines! 

"Does anyone doubt if you study harder you will do better on a test?" Barres asked. "The mere existence of an IQ difference does not say it is innate. . . . Why do Asian girls do better on math tests than American boys? No one thinks they are innately better."

innate differences as explanations for disparities become absurd if applied to previous eras. "You won’t see a Chinese face or an Indian face in 19th-century science," she said. "It would have been tempting to apply this same pattern of statistical reasoning and say, there must be something about European genes that give rise to greater mathematical talent than Asian genes."

"I think we want to step back and ask, why is it that almost all Nobel Prize winners are men today?" she concluded. "The answer to that question may be the same reason why all the great scientists in Florence were Christian."