In it what is in it

One man's tê is another man's cha

How different are the names for tea around the world? Not very, I was surprised to find. It turns out that just two Chinese pronunciations form the roots from which almost all the world has learned to name tea. From the Hokkien dialect came tê.  The Afrikaans, Estonian and Finnish tee, the Hebrew, Norwegian and Icelandic te, the French thé, the Hungarian and British tea and the Malay teh are just a few of the 40 or so languages that borrowed from the Hokkien original. From the Cantonese and northern Mandarin dialect came cha. This has formed the basis for tea in almost 60 languages. There is the Japanese, Korean and Bangla cha, the Urdu, Hindi, Persian, Pashto, Ukranian, Bulgarian and Swahili chai and variations such as the Punjabi chah, the Assamese saah, the Nepali chiah, as a few examples.  All this you will find nicely tabulated at "tea etymology and cognates in other languages", part of the Wikipedia write-up on tea.

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Using shame for social change

hat shame is a powerful force for creating good behavior is known to every parent. All those "I am sorry"s accompanying returning the other kid's toys or not pulling the cat's tail come from a genuine desire to distance oneself from the bad (when they don't just come from a fear of punishment). Can this same emotion be harnessed to nudge adults into doing 'the right thing'? I recently came across three stories suggesting just how powerful this appeal to the better you can be -- via shame. 

The first story is the more profound one. This is from the Boston Globe, "Bribe Fighter", by Jeremy Kahn. It is about fighting corruption in India in a unique way that harnesses shame.

5 must-see videos about architects

I have always been fascinated by architecture. At its best, this is art with high stakes and mathematical boundary conditions, a true creative optimization that can leave you breathless with astonishment. My knowledge of architects has been considerably less than of their works. Correcting this flaw has led me to 5 documentaries that I would force you to see, if I could.

"Maya Lin, A Strong Clear Vision", is an Oscar winning documentary about the then 21 year old from Yale who gave us the Vietnam War Memorial. The film focuses on the controversy and drama surrounding Maya Lin's winning submission for a design.  But it goes on through interviews and footage to give a very complete and satisfying picture of the architect. Several of her later works are also covered, like her Civil Rights Memorial in Alabama and a fountain-table at Yale that commemorates the women's movement. This is a surprisingly moving film.

Salman Khan teaches the world

Here is one person making a difference. I learned of Salman Khan's work when someone forwarded me a link to an audio interview of him by John Udell on IT Conversations, YouTube Teaching as Guerrilla Public Service. Impressive credentials -- Harvard MBA, MS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, BS in Mathematics from MIT, recently a fund portfolio manager, with a past that includes Technical Architect at Scient and Senior Product Manager at Oracle.  But what is even more impressive is Salman Khan's idea of creating videos on YouTube to teach mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and finance. The non-profit Khan Academy now is the gateway to 1000+ teaching videos! Take mathematics: the topics range from elementary algebra to differential equations, probability and statistics, matrices, trigonometry, linear algebra, calculus and more. The mission is simple, "providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere". Admirable!

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Games for change

What a great concept! These are on-line games for children from ages 3 to 18 and over, "that engage contemporary social issues in meaningful ways to foster a more just, equitable and/or tolerant society". The games criss-cross the globe, grouped under themes like Poverty, Public Health, Environment, Human Rights, Global Conflict. I found myself playing "3rd World Farmer" making choices on a virtual farm about crop types, livestock, trying to add a shed to the farm, worrying about disease -- and thinking, boy, this is a tough game to win.  And then it struck me: this is not a game, this is reality for many millions!  Games for Change has many others. "Against All Odds", designed by UNHCR, The UN Refugee Agency, makes you experience what it is like to be a refugee fleeing for your life. "Climate Challenge", played on the BBC's home page, is a fact based game where you make decisions to save the earth from catastrophe.  For kids through teenagers and the other caring adults you know, Games for Change is a site to recommend.

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Action Philosophers!

If you like your philosophers in small wacky chunks look no further than Action Philosophers! This is the newly published compilation of the award winning comic book series by the same name. Fred Van Lente is the artist and Ryan Dunlavey is the writer -- and they are having fun. From the pre-Socratics and Lao Tzu through Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida you get a chronological look at the lives and thoughts of all the Great Ones. I was surprised to find Rumi, Freud and Thomas Jefferson included -- but no complaints. The tales are told with humor, rendering the esoteric harmless and accessible to mere mortals. For the few whose works I knew, I was surprised as to how clear and 'faithful' the comic stories were, though brief and told in a slightly mad way.  It has now been a few weeks that Action Philosophers! has been my last-read at bed time.  I sleep smiling and feeling smarter.

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Piet Hein's Grooks

ARS BREVIS: There is/one art,/no more,/no less:/to do/all things/with art-/lessness

Piet Hein died in 1996 at the ripe age of 91. A Danish scientist and mathematician who "played mental ping-pong with Neils Bohr" (!) he is better known as the brilliant inventor of "grooks". These are pithy, insightful and brief poems that Piet invented to get around the censors in World War II. They went on to become Denmark's much-beloved contribution to the world of letters. Twenty volumes of grooks were published, but were out of print until a 2-volume 'collected works' was published in Denmark in 2002. I paid $1.50 for the copy I show on the left. (Yes, it was a long time ago :)). It is listed at $93.43 'new' on Amazon, showing that Piet Hein has aged well.

Visit Terry Stewart's website page Grooks by Piet Hein to get a great sampling of his work. Here are a few that I like:

The Photographer

Afghanistan is the wound that never heals. A reminder of the past comes in the form of a riveting book, “The Photographer: Into War-torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders”. This is the story of young Didier Lefevre, a photographer, hired by Médecins sans Frontières (MSF; Doctors Without Borders) to document their journey to northern Afghanistan in 1986 to set up medical services. This is when the Russian invasion was in full swing with the MSF mission illegal and dangerous. (Matters became worse: in August 2004 MSF left Afghanistan, closing down all operations, after 5 MSF staff members were shot and killed.  After an absence of 5 years, in 2009 MSF started to engage again in Afghanistan because of the desperation there).

The book is unique. One always wonders upon seeing evocative photographs what happened before and after.  Here, Lefevre’s black and white photographs are interspersed between graphics panels in a seamless and compelling first-person narrative. This is a perfect blending of a graphical novel format with photo-journalism.  The art, in color, is by Emmanuel Guibert and is in complete balance with the story line.  But the storyline is not war, which is always distant if ever-present.  This is about the arduous travel, the work of healing, the impact of war and above all the Afghan temperament.

2010: women exceed 50% of the American workforce

I must admit that I was taken by surprise. The usual conversations about women in the American workforce have to do with the injustice of unequal pay at all levels, the low representation in leadership positions because of a glass ceiling, the uneven burden of work on working mothers, the impact of children on women's career choices, and so on. So reading about the quiet revolution that is about to occur in the first few months of 2010, where women become the majority in the US workforce, was an awakening, bringing with it a horde of questions. What does this mean? What will this change? Does just the awareness of this fact trigger a change in how women are treated in the US? Does this empower women to be bolder in business? Does this accelerate improvements in the status of women worldwide? Read the December 30th, 2009, Economist article, "We did it!", to start your own pondering.  By the way, I thought it interesting that the image that the Economist chose to run with this article, reproduced here, is one that emphasizes a woman suppressing her identity to compete in a man's world: the bicep challenge, in a collar shirt, with the hair tied down and out of the way.

Play, learn and feed the world

FreeRice is a unique site engaging people of all ages to do good.  Select a subject to play: English Vocabulary, Math, Chemistry, French, etc., and you are asked questions.  You can select a suitable skill level -- children can have fun, as can adults.  For each correct answer 10 grains of rice are donated through the UN World Food Program.  The bowl you see on the right fills up as you progress -- very satisfying!  72 billion grains of rice have been donated so far, since 2007.

It's a lot of fun -- try it.  And for those you know headed for SAT exams, this is great preparation to improve their vocabulary.

 

Making a dent in CO2 emissions

Now that carbon dioxide has been shown to be evil (energy consumption! climate change!) how can you, the individual, save the planet? Enter carbonrally with its challenges: simple individual acts that you commit to doing. Others join in and you can see the cumulative impact, as tons of CO2 emission reduced.

This is easy stuff: use only cold water to wash your laundry this month, don't eat meat for two days, donate an item you rarely wear, knock two minutes off your daily shower, and so on.  As an example, 7529 people had accepted that last 'power shower' challenge, reducing CO2 emissions by 56.2 tons.  That equals turning off electricity to 68 houses for a month!

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