digital green and india's agricultural problem

Digital Green is a remarkable research project that was started by a good friend of mine, Rikin Gandhi, along with a number of co-workers from when he was working at Oracle in Seattle. They attempt to use scalable technology to help farmers in India that are essentially entrenched in a feudal system in which they owe a constant fee to the landowners and are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet as the water levels precipitously drop. Directly from their website:

Digital Green (DG) is a research project that seeks to disseminate targeted agricultural information to small and marginal farmers in India through digital video. The Digital Green system sustains relevancy in a community by developing a framework for participatory learning. The system includes a digital video database, which is produced by farmers and experts. The content within this repository is of various types, and sequencing enables farmers to progressively become better farmers. Content is produced and distributed over a hub and spokes-based architecture in which farmers are motivated and trained by the recorded experiences of local peers and extension staff. In contrast to traditional extension systems, we follow two important principles: (1) cost realism, essential if we are to scale the system up to a significant number of villages and farmers; and (2) building systems that solve end-to-end agricultural issues with interactivity that develops relationships between people and content.

They are a particularly relevant group at this time in wake of one of the more horrifying stories I have seen in a long time: a mass suicide of 1,500 farmers in India. These people committed suicide in the wake of facing an unpayable debt on this year's crop:

Bharatendu Prakash, from the Organic Farming Association of India, told the Press Association: "Farmers' suicides are increasing due to a vicious circle created by money lenders. They lure farmers to take money but when the crops fail, they are left with no option other than death."

1,500 is a death toll equivalent to the number of lives lost in Katrina in a situation where the government has been just as negligent in looking after their constituents. Yet, will anyone raise a red flag?

a variety of topics

Today's nonpolitical entry!

1. Kanye
I like Love Lockdown, the new single from Kanye West, but I'm not sure exactly how much. This was the natural next step for Kanye, who was probably always a little closer to Gnarls Barkley and Andre 3000 than he was to Jay-Z. Love Lockdown features a great hook supported by a phenomenal beat that sounds like its being played by the Blue Man Group or something. The only problem is its repetitiveness; I felt the same thing about Andre's The Love Below (which I felt ultimately was inferior to Big Boi's Speakerboxxx). I kind of feel like people coming from a hip-hop background are much more creative lyrically than singer-songwriters but are lacking melodically and so their songs end up pretty monotonous. Still, I don't think he was going to write a better album than Graduation, so I'm glad to see that he's looking for new challenges.

2. ER Visits
Slate (yes Alex, Slate) has a very interesting article that questions the uninsured as the sole culprits for ER overcrowding. Among the most interesting points: 1) everyone is using the ER more (not just the uninsured), and this can be explained mostly by looking at how the incentives align (aka, economics!). The value of having immediate, reliable treatment is worth the additional cost, not just to those who can't pay, but to those who can. Intriguing.

3. The Value of Blogs in Africa
On the Takeaway today there was a nice story on the Kenyan blogosphere and the emergence of independent reporting in the presence of mainstream media shutdown. I found a nice article on this phenomenon, and on Ushahidi, a site that allows public reconstruction and recording of, for example, post-election violence:

We as Kenyans are guilty of having short-term memories. Yesterday’s villains are today’s heroes. We sweep bad news and difficult decision under the carpet... and get shocked when the country erupts as it did two months ago. Ushahidi gives everybody, anybody, the opportunity to get his or her experience recorded. Through SMS, through email, through the Internet, through meeting an NGO worker who will write down what happened and share it with us. Ushahidi is a project that has to be owned by those who use it; they have to believe in it.

This is something to both admire and to note, as in Zimbabwe some political reconciliation is being attempted. Independent coverage of violent outbreaks will be critical here, especially given Mugabe's history of strongarm tactics.

4. Freakonomics
Finally, as a lead in to tonight's heavily political blog entry, I'll leave you with a tip of the hat to the amazing Freakonomics blog. I'm a huge Freakonomics homer, mostly because I appreciate how they are able to solve problems by constructing questions and experiments in unique ways (rather than using cutting-edge technology or previously unknown methods). A quick perusal of recent freakonomics entries yielded the following interesting questions and answers:

1. Part of what makes people vote? Extrinsic incentives (aka, you don't want your friends to know that you didn't vote)
2. But that's OK, because voting may make you happier. And finally,
3. Rather than asking all the standard questions about Sarah Palin, Steven Levitt asked the most fascinating questions I've seen so far: Why would Sarah Palin get an amniocentesis (threatening the life of her baby) if she planned on having the baby regardless of any medical anomalies?

Stay tuned for political rants, later!

the glory of radio lab, the missteps in pakistan

Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich give scientists everywhere hope. You know, hope that its possible that as a scientist, your friends won't, someday, exhaust every possible other conversation thread before, haltingly, delivering a "and how's work going for you?" with a heavy undertone of "don't you dare slip in some sort of name for a protein that's made out of numbers and capital letters." which eventually leads to the thousand yard stare, leading you to summarize with a "you know, ups and downs," and leaving your poor conversation-mate to breathe an (often audible!) sigh of relief and return to more human conversation.

don't think we can escape blame for this, scientists. we invariably respond to this snub by describing our jobs as solving the hidden secrets of the universe, one (incomprehensibly named) molecule at a time. this allows us to compartmentalize the rest of the world into people who are either a) too dumb to understand what we're saying, or b) too self-absorbed to care. (note: we also generally feel that group b) is too dumb to understand what we are saying). get real. we do some pipetting, drag and drop some stuff into analysis software, make an excel table, and get back to crafting the perfect Facebook status update (what's just snarky enough to say that my life is way too busy for Facebook?)

it's ok. Jad and Robert are here to show us the way. Robert alluded to this in a speech he gave at Caltech's commencement, entitled, Tell Me a Story. In it he implores scientists to find a way to make our work relatable. Tell a story, he says, and make people care. But why do we shoulder this burden? Simply put, the Sarah Palins of the world see scientific progress as antithetical to the religious beliefs that govern their value system. Learning about synaptic transmission takes away the wonder of God's work, apparently.

What these cats need is their own scientific experience. Anyone in science can tell you that new discoveries usually serve to show us the immense complexities and interplay within all living (and frankly, nonliving) things. The myriads of landmark discoveries haven't brought us much closer to *solving* the human experience, but they have helped us appreciate it. And within those complexities there is space for believers and nonbelievers. Whether the whole kit and caboodle is God's work or Darwin's work, solving a few mysteries isn't going to hurt anyone.

But Intelligent Design will. Teaching something like creationism in schools encourages kids to smother the curiosity that creates great scientists. Meanwhile, precipitous cuts to NIH funding stifle the perseverant scholars that keep the scientific dream alive. Opposing stem cell research is just another way of telling us that there's a limit to how high we can climb.

The point here, that Robert and Jad outright tell us (eloquently in this week's Radio Lab, "Making the Hippo Dance"), but also demonstrate with their weekly program, is that we have an opportunity to stem the tide. So. Don't hesitate. Talk about actin treadmilling over beers. You may get a few converts.

Random Aside: The amazing McSweeneys did a retelling of Hamlet with Facebook status updates. Ha.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand the war in Pakistan. Does anyone doubt that the Bush Administration is going to screw the pooch on this one? The New York Times Magazine, as I mentioned before, delivered a stunning piece on the growth of Taliban influence in the Pashtun dominated northwest region. Now, reports have revealed that the National Intelligence Council warned Bush sometime ago that sending troops into Pakistan would be counterproductive. To quote:

The intelligence community believes U.S. military incursions into Pakistan will benefit the political-military organizations allied with the Taliban that are seeking to destabilize the national government in Islamabad.

Patrick Lang, former defense intelligence officer for the Middle East at the Defense Intelligence Agency, told IPS he understands the intelligence community issued a "pretty clear warning" against the commando raid. "They said, in effect, if you want to see the Pakistani government collapse, go right ahead," Lang said.

Another dead end military scenario. I think we get the next one free!

this week's top 5!

1. michelle obama - EVERYONE read this fascinating profile of michelle obama. this woman is (hopefully) going to be a badass first lady. i think this is interesting because middle-aged white women tend to dominate the swing vote. they are very much at stake in this election, even more so because of hilary clinton. and it is being said that the potential first ladies could play a role in how they vote. now, nothing against cindy mccain, but michelle brings quite a bit more to the table.

2. conan o'brien - for some reason i feel like revisiting this article from some time ago, which came out shortly after conan was officially announced as leno's successor. its a phenomenal profile of one of the top 5 people with whom id love to hang out. (off the top of my head, my 5 person rat pack would be: myself, conan, dave chapelle, tina fey, and either charles barkley or brian williams.) i like that he takes his craft seriously and is more intense than he lets on. but not too seriously, as evidenced by his hilarious fake strike diary. i think that he went to an entirely new level of transcendence during the writer's strike. how many people watched these episodes? without writers, he was really free to pursue his totally scatterbrained humor instincts, and they were AMAZING. from having modern dancers punctuate each one of his punch lines to fitting his desk to a zamboni to his awesome wedding ring spin challenge, i loved every second. i would totally buy a dvd of his strike episodes. and if you havent seen the conan-colbert-stewart brawl...now's your chance.

3. mukesh ambani - this is a very nice profile of an interesting sort-of indian bill gates whose influence is sure to rise. while i think that referring to his ambitions as "gandhi-esque" is ridiculous because he owns a large for-profit corporation, his interests in small-scale rural production (thus empowering lower SES areas of india) echo those sentiments. on the other hand, i never like these sort of insular, ultra-nationalistic personalities.

4. pfizer/lipitor - as someone in science, this is a big conundrum for me. well not this particular situation, in which pfizer is lollygagging so that they can squeeze some more money out of Lipitor, but in general, patents help new drugs happen, and money in the hands of pharma often does lead to new and productive discoveries. to be honest, alot of the best research there is in drug development comes out of drug companies. so how do we facilitate consistent r&d while at the same time preventing price gouging of the consumer?

5. Lil Wayne, The Clipse, and The Roots - ... maybe i'll post about this later.

slate agrees with me!!

about the united nations, at least. good god. show a little spine, UN. to quote egregiously from the article:

"In fact, the root of Burma's humanitarian crisis is a political crisis. The root of Zimbabwe's humanitarian crisis is a political crisis, too. But because the United Nations was never set up to deal with political crises, it can't really address either humanitarian crisis. Officially, the United Nations has to respect the decision of the Burmese government not to feed its people. Officially, the United Nations feels it has to invite Mugabe to Rome, despite the E.U. ban. Indeed, one U.N. official justified his presence on the grounds that the United Nations is "about inclusiveness, not exclusivity."

Sure. I mean, how could we not invite an iron-fisted despot who reserves food aid for his supporters and who has condemned his constituency to living on less than a dollar per day to a conference on the international food crisis?

Hey, help keep This American Life alive!

Yeah, but where did the lighter fluid come from?

EDIT: Mugabe has banned CARE from acting in Zimbabwe. Lets just let the article speak for itself:

“Funds are being channeled through nongovernmental organizations to opposition political parties, which are a creation of the West,” Mr. Mugabe said. “These Western-funded NGOs also use food as a political weapon with which to campaign against government, especially in the rural areas.”

Clearly, giving food to starving people in rural areas: assholes. If you happen to disagree, go to www.care.org to donate or help this cause.

monkey mind control!!

First things first. Cheers to Andrew Schwartz at the University of Pittsburgh. You engineered mind control in monkeys. New York Times article here, actual Nature paper (which if you can successfully read, you're pretty awesome) here. I agree with those who showed me this article (thanks Annie) that the possibilities for prosthetics now explode and amplify by infinity, give or take.

I'll give credit where credit is due, this makes Hilary seem awfully badass. Maker's Mark, impressive.

David Patterson, you also rock. I think my med school classmates should be pretty amped that he gave the commencement speech.

A recent Radio Lab made me think about Schrodinger's Cat, quantum mechanics, Heisenberg, and the Copenhagen interpretation. (Not think deeply, just think). You guys may have heard of the "wiggle experiment" that tells us that there is no free will (if not, here.) To me, this is kind of a dumb experiment because its asking you to be reactive to an unconscious cue. Better to measure some sort of response that is truly self-generated (so, not really a 'response' at all). But doesn't the setup itself (aka, an experiment, unless the subjects don't know they are the subjects) create responsiveness? I mean, you can't just put people in a room and watch them until they do something. I think they'd notice. Plus, sadly (actually not sadly) they wouldn't all do the same thing, which would make this data kind of difficult to plot. So to do this experiment on free will, we need to be able to monitor subjects (oh, and their brains activity with PET scans!) without soliciting any behavior from them. And the measured behavior needs to be consistent across all of the subjects. So, Jeff Morrow, figure this out.

Slate really killed it this week. Here are some of their awesome links.
1. Is the Wii Fit any good? (Rich, this one is for you). The verdict? Good for the morbidly obese, but not good if you have a resting heart rate under 100.
2. The normalization of oral sex. People preparing to have kids, have your panic attacks in advance.
3. Why Ken Griffey, Jr.'s rookie baseball card is so popular. Just an interesting read.

Finally, an awesome article from the Freakonomics blog on why fears about globalization are vastly overstated from a perspective of language homogeneity. Pretty cool huh? Franklin Foer would agree, though I guess he would be more pessimistic.

Oops, almost forgot about quick music reviews!!

Okkervil River - I think I'm following in my former roommate Joe Shin's footsteps and getting more into bands that aren't all 3-piece stomp. I enjoy Okkervil River's instrumental diversity. Download "Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe"

Raconteurs - Ironically, this is currently my favorite album of the bunch, and it is basically 4-piece stomp, except that its got a more bluesy rock feel mostly because of Jack White's personal style. I think if I could play guitar like anyone (alive) it would be him. Check out "Consolers of the Lonely"

Silversun Pickups - a little late on this one. For some reason I didn't listen to them even though I heard "Well Thought Out Twinkles" on KEXP's podcast. Well, this album is great and diverse, and full of urgency. They're a little into that fuzzy guitar sound, but it makes things sound full, so what the heck. Check out "Future Foe Scenarios"

Tokyo Police Club - Well, this album basically sounds like their last album. But that's not so bad. They're good musicians and their stuff is pretty engaging. Kind of a half-hearted review I know, but there's not really that much to say. The album is good. Listen to "Sixties Remake"

listen to sharpton!

that's you, mrs. clinton. swan song time.

many things to talk about, just no time to do it now. but quickly:
1. if you go to great adventure, ride kingda ka and el toro. theyre awesome.
2. gop's "can we ask?" trying to co-opt obama's "yes we can" refrain is awesome. check it out at the times or something. i wish i were in on the marketing meeting that ended up with "can we ask?"
3. myanmar situation is just one more indictment of the UN's best-intentioned shortcomings.
4. turns out the patriots have been cheating for years. somewhere, donovan mcnabb is almost choking on his campbell's chunky soup.
5. slate's political gabfest: good podcast.
6. one of the reasons i love baseball is how fun (i guess this is subjective) it is to quantify player abilities.

internet singles, food crisis

First: internet singles!

I love NIN. I thought I would outgrow it, but I never did. I think deep down I'm kind of a goth kid who wants to party (but still feel deep). One of the great things about NIN is as Trent Reznor has gotten older, he's shifted away from the doom and gloom industrial stomp and really embraced his Depeche Mode/New Order love. Which is great, because I've kind of gone in that direction, too. So, the new single, Discipline, is (in my opinion) alot of fun. Just a simple synth line with an unpretentious melody, and even a little cheekiness (intentional or not). Their other song, Echoplex, was released via a Facebook application (weird.) Initially I was pretty down on it, but since im a giant NIN fanboy, eventually its hypnotic beat + deliberately strange harmonies won me over. Kind of.

Now, Coldplay. I so want to hate them, but honestly, I don't. I liked Parachutes and A Sudden Rush... but didn't like their latest album. My biggest beef was probably how forgettable alot of their music sounds, (see: previous gripes about my hatred of 'background' music) and I wanted a little more urgency. They started getting into it a little with X&Y (which I inherently didnt like because that is the dumbest title for an album, ever. If I were you, Chris, I wouldn't showcase my inability to understand basic algebra.) They really only accomplished it with the fantastic "White Shadows" especially with that booming bridge-into-chorus and the whole "everything you've ever wanted, in a permanent state" awesomeness. But the rest of the album was their usual soppy foot dragging pityfest. Barf.

Violet Hill, their new single, is great. It's great. I love that he starts with a little piano and then throws down an extra fuzzy guitar stomp that takes you awesomely by surprise. I think the lyrics are genius (When the future's architectured/By a carnival of idiots on show/You'd better lie low) and I like that they seem to have a little snarl to them. It's about time.

Food Crisis Time! This is definitely an article worth reading. It's always depressing to see severe crises like these that resonate very little with us (or our presidential candidates!) because of the gap in how seriously we are affected versus how seriously Ukranians and Argentinians are affected. But if nothing else, it should motivate everyone to dismiss this stupid biofuel stuff as inefficient voter-pandering garbage until we can feed everyone. (Maybe that's laying it on thick, but whatever). It's really well written. Thoughts on this?

empty promises

holler,

so, in my tradition of doing things 5 years after they are cool (example: i just started listening to yoshimi battles the pink robots), im starting a blog. its basically going to be links to topics that intrigue me along with solicitations for more information on things that interest me.

first link: a nytimes article that reveals the truth about our ability embrace diversity

thoughts?