Life is a second

Every life is like a second in the history of Earth. What are you doing with your second?

I want to spend my second in discovering or inventing something, anything that shall have an hour worth of impact on the history of the universe. Knowledge lives forever. Ask Ibné Masoodi or Copernicus.

Benazir Bhutto is NOT DEAD

I woke up this morning to find out that Benazir Bhutto was assassinated by someone. I immediately called my mother, father and sisters. My sisters cannot stop crying, neither my very brave, very strong father. I have only seen him cry once before on his father's death. After I hung up I began to cry and cannot stop crying even as I write this post (I did not cry when my own beloved grandmother died, I did not cry when my father was politically victimised and I did not cry when the Army barricaded my house when I was 9 and 15 after the Army ousted the democratically elected Benazir both times). My father has been in the PPP (Benazir's party) for over 20 years. He was serving as the VP of the Chief Executive Committee of which she was the Chairperson. He also was the chief of intelligence and cured Karachi of the terrorists that infected it in the 1990s. I wish she had listened to my father in his open letter to her (and the press) where he asked her to stop listening to the people around her who were pushing her to contest in these elections when the judiciary was in jail.

In 1996 I spent the Summer with BB along with my sisters in London. I cannot forget those days as I write this article, I remember her shriek from a scary scene at the movies. She was a normal every day person in private who ate with her hands at a fancy restaurant. But she was a strong Muslim woman with a strong faith in Justice and Freedom. She was the strongest and bravest woman I know from History, both recent and ancient. There never again will be a woman like her and there never was a woman like her.

SHE IS NOT DEAD BUT LIVES ON IN THE RESOLVE OF THE PEOPLE OF PAKISTAN. SHE IS FOR SURE ALIVE IN MY RESOLVE TO DEFEAT ALL INJUSTICE AND CRUELTY. JUST LIKE THE RESOLVE OF THE PAKISTANI PEOPLE THAT HELPED THEM GET THROUGH THE ASSASSINATION OF HER FATHER BY THE EXTREME ZIA UL HAQ.

Decadence

$3,000 martini

What kind of society spends three thousand US dollars on a Martini? On a damned Martini.
It is this lavish behavior that makes me want to divorce society and just sit on a farm somewhere and grow my own food. But I know that this is not going to solve any problems for the others but only my own. When are we going to realise that life is short, it can end any time. I know some of us will live to be 70 and even 100, but what I mean is that from this moment on, who can say that they will be alive for such and such number of days. There is no evidence of re-incarnation and even if re-incarnation was possible there is no evidence of bringing with you belongings from a past life. So then why do we gather all these meaningless pieces of furniture, why do we gather the latest cell phones and why do we drink three thousand dollar martinis?
Whatever your faith, you will be rewarded according to your good deeds; be it through Karma, Heaven, Janat or any other way. I am yet to come across some faith that says you will be rewarded for drinking a three thousand dollar martini. What I mean is that this money can be better spent "Ending Poverty" or putting students through college and higher education. Why can't we get the simple fact through our heads that we must help each other to make the world a better place.

Thing is funny

I found the following to be a very deep statement from George Bernard Shaw:

When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.

Stephen Colbert truly has brass cojones!!!

Stephen Colbert seems to be the only one with balls at the White House Correspondents Association dinner. Read his speech here or watch it here. What's appalling is how the press has painted his comments but that can be understood because he took a jab at them too.

Stephen Colbert, I now hold you up there with Jon Stewart. Isn't it ironic that my favorite news anchors are on Comedy Central. What a world we live in. I am ashamed to be a member of this generation. What a batch of ignorant and therefore cruel fools we have become.

There has been much criticism of Stephen Colbert, that he misused the hospitality and came off as plain rude. I would agree with that on many levels but I have to make this case an exception.

Google Calendar: The wait is over!!!

Google calendar is finally here and it's awesome to use. I can't wait till google takes over BMW and starts making cars.

Salman Khan

Men who think the ducks were God, almost kill a famous actor but their truck did not start: http://ww1.mid-day.com/news/city/2006/april/134977.htm

Google and Decentralised Computing

Google recently bought Writley and according to sabotaged documents Google has plans to launch an online drive with unlimited space for storage called GDrive. They launched Google Desktop earlier which will help you keep your local files organised and synchronise them with GDrive automatically. This means you never have to upload files. They teamed up with Sun to give us a better Open Office. So when you are at your computer, you use Open Office and Writley when you are on the move and all the files are kept in sync using Desktop. Awesome!!!

Google changed the way we email with the launch of Gmail. Remember those days of deleting emails to make room in your inbox for fresh emails. Now they are changing the way we compute. Devices with no hard drives and WiFi can be used around WiFi enabled cities like Philadelphia and San Francisco. Companies like Fon, sponsored by Google too, are popping up to get us more WiFi hotspots.

Ending Poverty

Jeffrey D. Sachs, the author of The End of Poverty was on The Colbert Report last night, also featured in TIME magazine in March 2005 and a strong supporter of the UN Millenium Project to end poverty. He made some very interesting, thought-provoking observations about us all;

• The US has devoted the same amount of money for the cure of Malaria for the next five years as one day of the military budget spending. The rest of the world is dedicating small amounts too. Just 15 cents for every $100 of national income is all that is required to end poverty but we are too greedy and selfish to do that. However, we spend 32 times more on defence spending to protect us against dangers that arise because of this overwhelming poverty.
• More than 1 million and as many as 3 million children die from Malaria in Africa alone. If we buy a cheaper iPod or a smaller car, we can help because a bed netting can save these lives and the cost of one is less than $3.
• More than 8 million people die each year because they are too poor to survive; that's 21 thousand people per day and 456 people every half hour. Imagine 456 diseased dead bodies in your room by the time you are done reading this article, some of them children not even a year old.
• More than 1.1 billion people, thats 1,100,000,000 people, live in extreme poverty wordwide, one-sixth of the world population, one in six human beings. Asia has the most but Africa has a higher percentage. Extreme poverty means living on less than a dollar a day, $27 a month and $324 a year. They are chronically hungry, unable to get health care, lack safe drinking water and sanitation, cannot afford education for their children and perhaps lack rudimentary shelter(a roof to keep rain out of the hut) and basic articles of clothing, like shoes.
• Widespread corruption is not the cause of this poverty because well-governed countries like Senegal, Ghana, Malawi and Mali failed to prosper while corrupt countries like Indonesia, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan continue to see rapid economic growth. Every case of poverty is as unique as snow flakes, and must be diagnosed and treated accordingly.

The end of poverty will require a global network of cooperation among people who have never met and who do not necessarily trust one another. We are talking about you and me. Is it possible, that we join forces and help people live and step back from our self-involved lives? This week work overtime but not to buy something new, but to send that money to the UN Millenium Project or the other charities (see links on the main page). The aim of the project is to cut world poverty in half by 2015 using very little money from the rest of us.

No matter what your religion, or what you call your God, at some point you will be asked by your God, what did you do to help these dying people, your fellow human beings? Even animals help each other, how are we better? Just remember that the next time you spend on something you do not need, you are killing a human being because that money is not going to help the dying but it could have.

Society is like a ship with two levels, the upper and the lower deck. If those in the upper deck stop providing water to those in the lower deck, then the occupants of the lower deck will need to drill a hole to get their water said Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him). Stop and think about that for a moment! Don't let your action be inaction, react to this ongoing catastrophe and help improve their lives.

Population Today

There are people suffering; famine in the horn of Africa, drought in Argentina, tsunami and earthquake in Asia, hurricanes Katrina and Rita in North America, landslides in South America. These are only the natural disasters from the last quarter of 2005. Human-caused disasters are much more severe and ongoing; orphans from wars, infanticide, disease from lack of medicine, AIDS and more.

The question is what can we do to help. I know we need four more planets like earth to sustain our lifestyles if we all live in my nearly modest lifestyle according to Eco Footprints. So the issue lies in there being too many of us and too little resources. Also, the poor and helpless tend to produce more children and as a result double or triple their problems. How can we sustain ourselves without moving from Earth? Obviously, the answer lies in helping each other and reducing the population and not one or the other but both.

Limiting couples to one child has led to leaps and bounds of increase in female infanticide. Also, this has shifted demographic balance of male to female ratios. So, we know this rule is not a great idea. Also, it seems unfair that people in the present and future bear the brunt of carelessness of people from the past. Not being able to enjoy the pleasure of being surrounded by many grandchildren and children is a very high price to pay for being conscientious.

How about we use our biological features and combine forces to beat the odds and be happy? Lets all have one child only to replace us when we die. This solution will maintain the world population at the current number. But we already know from Eco Footprints above that we are seeing terrible deaths because of our overuse and lack of sharing the planet, which we need at least four of to survive. So this is only a short term solution. Lets rethink our policy then.

Men don't seem to be pyched about children as much as women. So lets change the rule so that one woman can have one child only. This is the same as the rule in China and we already know this doesn't work. But we cannot deprive the women of their motherhood, that would be inhumane; Let's make more changes.

What if we pair together one man and two women. That would be a huge sacrifice on the woman's part but when you weigh it against solving the world's problems, it might seems miniscule. This means that the man can experience fathering two children, one with each woman. And the women can both experience motherhood. Guess what the most beautiful thing is that upon death of all three the world will be one person less, since two beings will replace three. If one billion people do that, the world population will decrease by 333 million or 0.3 billion in one generation. If everyone decides to do that, it will still work because there are demographically more women than men in the world anyway, but some men will have to have more wives than two. I don't think men will complain about being with more than one woman. As for the woman, she makes this sacrifice of sharing a man in exchange for not letting other women see their children die from hunger and disease. Not only that, when there are lesser people and the same resources, everyone can drive an SUV, live in a townhouse and eat foods not grown locally.

The above description fits the word polygamy from the dictionary, don't let the word fool you, look at the concept and the changes the word can bring. Polygamy has been part of the social scene since the beginning of time in every religion and region. During the last 50 years it has become a thing of the past.

UPDATE 02/28/06: A comment was posted by Zack on this post about there being more men than women in todays world by 0.02 according to the CIA World Factbook. According to United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), "At least 60 million girls who would otherwise be expected to be alive are "missing" from various populations, mostly in Asia, as a result of sex-selective abortions, infanticide or neglect." Lets recalculate the ratio with these "at least" 60 million "missing" women;

Before 60 Million -> male 2,117,230,183 / female 2,066,864,970 = 1.02
After 60 Million -> male 2,117,230,183 / female 2,126,864,970 = 0.99

Voila! there are more women than men, whats mind boggling is that this "at least" 60 million estimate is from 2000 and the above population figures are from 2005. Add to this mix the fact that these 60 million women would have been producing more children too. Furthermore, add the fact that women are less vulnerable to fatal disease, live longer and survive their husbands more often.

I also looked for research to see if the X and Y chromosomes are in equal ratio in a man's sperm, but there is no research to this effect. It would be interesting to see if the X is more, less or equal; this would mathematically tilt the scales of probability.