2011 3
Sal Khan of Khan Academy presents at #TED
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
Image via Wikipedia
First Sal Khan’s bio according to Wikipedia. Then his product, the Khan Academy. The Khan Academy is a collection of 2100 videos that Sal Khan started while in his spare time when he was working for a hedge fund. Sal comes across as a very intelligent, well educated, funny educator. The ultimate educator, the teacher we all want to have. And over a million do. Because over a million watch his academy on Youtube. And so should you.
Related articles
- Yes, The Khan Academy IS the Future of Education (video) (singularityhub.com)
- How Bill Gates’ Favorite Teacher Wants to Disrupt Education (fastcompany.com)
- 10 Excellent Ideas for Using Khan Academy in Schools (freetech4teachers.com)
2011 3
Bruce Aylward Global erradication of Polio #ted
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
At first he shows a picture of polio patients in iron lungs. Speaks about the polio vaccine. The last polio case was in 1980 in USA. Polio still exists in some parts of Africa, India, Pakistan and Afganistan. And in 2 countries that had not had polio for a long time polio came back. In Russia they got polio again. But epidemics is being controlled. We need to completely erradicate polio. Polio can only survive in people so we have to make people polio free. We are doing a global partnership to erradicate polio. Disease erradication os the venture capital of public health, great risks but great rewards. Smallpox erradication was an incredibly successful investment, it pays off every 26 days again and again. Same would be true with polio. But the polio vaccine is very fragile and deteriorates in warm climate. And as opposed to smallpox that is so easy to see because of the rash, polio does not show itself when it first strikes, you can’t see the enemy.
To erradicate polio we have to create a 20 million people social movement. They are vaccinating half a billion children every year. It is oral and easy to administer but the problem is to reach all children of the world in the worst places and conditions. They have to operate in war conditions. This is foreign aid at its most heroic. Rotary international is doing this, with over i million volunteers. Results are good.
Polyo Type 2 has been totally eradicated. There’s been 99% reduction 1000 kids in the whole world now, a lot but nothing compared to 20 years ago. But even with 1000 now if we don’t eradicate the disease in 2030 we will have 300K kids again with polio again. A new polio vaccine was developed, old one was 50 years old. New vaccine is much better. Northern India is the perfect storm when it comes to polio. Sanitation is terrible. But with the new vaccine not a single got polio.
Image via Wikipedia
Nigeria has 150 million people, 70 million are poor. 20% of all Africans are Nigerians. There are the milenium development goals. MDG, 8 goals. First erradicate poverty, 2 universal primary educations, 3 gener equality, reduce child mortality, improving maternal health, combat hiv, aids, malaria, sustainable environment, lastly a global partnership for development.
in 2000 20% of children died in Nigeria before reaching 5 mostly of malaria. schoold had 100 kids in a class, half of Nigerians had no access to clean water, on top of this huge government corruption. In all this President Obasanjo got debt relief. Saved $1bn per year and used it for MDG. Amina Az Zubair was put in charge. She used that money to build results based partnership. Great auditing job as there is tremendous corruption but she argues they succeeded mostly. That most help went to those who needed it.
Amina gives a great deal of statistics that show how infant mortality has fallen and goes MDG one by one and how they are addressing them in Nigeria, she paints an optimistic vision of what is going on in Nigeria but she recognizes that there are still a lot of goals not achieved.
She argues that corruption is on the decline, that democracy is strengthened and that Nigeria is on track to achieve MDG by 2015.
2011 3
David Christian Big History project presented at #TED
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
Bill Gates is guest curating at #TED. He sees this as an opportunity to pick four people who inspired him. He is in a way doing the same job as Chris Anderson, it’s a coup to get him I guess. First one is professor David Christian.
David Christian teaches Big History at TED
David Christian first shows scrambled eggs in reverse to illustrate 2nd law of thermodynamics, entropy. Yet what we see around us is staggering complexity. So how is it possible to create complexity? He calls paradigm shifts threashold moments in history. Thresholds increase complexity. He shows timeline with the whole history of the universe. 13.7bn years ago universe starts. Big Bang. From blur to distinct things. 380,000 years after the Big Bang, H and He appear. Gravity starts compacting clouds of H and He. Then 10 million degree temperature cross and then stars are formed. From 200 million years after the BB we get stars. Stars create all elements when they extinguish themselves. Our solar system starts around 5bn yrs ago. Rocky planets are born. More diverse environments. The next big thing is living organisms. Chemistry needs energy but not too much nor too little, not the center of a star, not intergalactic space. Life needs liquids. Life can’t grow in solid or gas. Our early earth was mostly water and heat coming from the oceanic vents. So first we have the right chemicals and then we have DNA to stabilize the chemistry of life. DNA is most of the time perfect and occasionally errors. Errors lead to evolution. Erros that suceed, very few of them. 800 million yrs ago multicellulars. 65 million yrs ago meteorite in Yucatan dinosaurs wiped out but mammals flourish. Humans is another threshold. What makes human different is that we are the only species that passes on learning to offspring and collective memory. Rats learn to, but can’t teach other rats what they learn, they don’t build a civilization. Humans are unique in that we have collective learning. We colonize the whole planet while learning how to cope with it.
10K years ago human learns to farm. 500 years ago humans began to link up globally. Now we are like a single global brain of 7bn. We discovered fossil fuels and those help complexity. He argues that it is not clear that humans are in charge of collective learning. We have nuclear weapons, we are using up fossil fuels. He is building an online syllabus in Big History.
Image via Wikipedia
You probably remember the uproar that was caused by the publication of Danish cartoons that some Muslims found offensive. Demonstrations around the world were massive. According to Wikipedia there were over 100 deaths. Now let’s leave aside the controversy over how offensive those cartoons were. To me the point is that when Muslims want to organize and protest over something that is dear to them, they do.
Presently there are 16 million Muslims in the European Union who are watching their brothers getting massacred in countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Bahrain and now Libya. Demonstrators who die for the liberation of their country from cleptodictators who have been violating human rights and stealing for themselves and their own families for decades. So why not massively demonstrate against them? Muslims are a political force in Europe. If Muslims organzed and obtained the support of the rest of society they could very well influence foreign policy in Europe towards democratization of North Africa and the Middle East. Myself for example, I am a secular Jew, and I gladly would join a demonstration against Muammar Gaddafi. A demonstration for democracy in Libya. A demonstration for the end of violence and free elections throughout the region. But so far demonstrations are very timid. In London for example yesterday, as their people were getting murdered only 200 went to a demonstration for Libyan liberation.
As the Danish cartoons show it is not lack of organization that is preventing Muslims for demonstrating because that time they were very well organized and even extremely violent. A violence that goes on even 5 years after the publication. So what explains this lack of support for Muslim brotherhood? Could it be that Imams themselves are concerned that these demonstrations in the Arab world are mostly political, secular and in favor of democracy and modernization which they oppose? I know Muslim friends of mine in Europe are glued to Aljazzera and Twitter as I am on the issue of the Arab revolts. Why don’t they organize and influence EU foreign policy?
Related articles
- Why Are the Muhammad Cartoons Still Inciting Violence? (nybooks.com)
- Massacres in Libya As Protests Grow (littlegreenfootballs.com)
- 5 arrested over Danish cartoon daily terror plot (windsorstar.com)
2011 21
Why doesn’t NATO help the Libyans get rid of Gadaffi?
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Middle East with No Comments
First I recommend that you read the life of Muammar al Gaddafi on Wikipedia. After you are done, you may wonder how such a disgusting human being can still be the ruler of Libya. Now that the people of Libya are being massacred by Gaddafi, and clearly want to see him to go, should not NATO send a few fighters over Libya and turn the tide? I am not saying that an immediate attack makes sense; that may lead to nationalism and even more innocent civilian casualties. But the US and the EU could send a clear message that said: stop killing your people, democratize, give freedom to the press, or we will act. the USA almost killed Gaddafi in 1986, so he would probably get the message. The difference between Gadaffi and other dictators is that he has been a sponsor of international terrorism as in the case of the tragic flight over Lockerbie where 270 people died. In any case Gadaffi may fall out of the pure will of its own people but should he continued killing as he has been doing I think EU and USA should seriously consider a military option. The threat of use of force this time could accomplish more than the actual use of force has accomplished in Afghanistan and Iraq.
2011 12
Assange is not the point, Wikileaks is
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Middle East with No Comments
It is becoming common for people to say they don’t like Wikileaks because they can’t stand Assange. This is misleading. Few sympathize with Assange as a character. Most of us, myself included, have never met with him. But the issue here is not Assange, his hair or whether he does, or does not have, the ability to have sex with women while they are asleep. What is crucial instead, is the wealth of information that we have learned thanks to Wikileaks. Here’s a good summary from The Guardian. And yes, it is a lot of information. And there is much more. No matter how many experts out there say that “they already knew it all”. Because regardless of whether some experts really “knew it all”, the average Mohammed, Rui or Juana did not. And they are angry. It’s not suprising then that Foreign Policy calls the Tunisian revolt “the first Wikileaks revolution”. Wikileaks has been a catalyst for change in Egypt, Tunisia and in lesser degrees in many other countries. Wikileaks revelations will likely continue to outrage demonstrators and activists around the world for quite a while. And all that change we owe to the diplomatic service of the United States which turned out to be a group of remarkable journalists, the courage of one soldier, and the entrepreneurial spirit of everyone who worked at Wikileaks, including Julian Assange.
Egyptians fought bravely, ousted Mubarak and gave power to the military. But it turns out that USA effectively controls the Egyptian Army. It financed it, trained it and should it go into conflict with it, it can easily defeat it. So Egyptian people, whether they are aware of this or not, gave considerable power to USA. In Latin America and other parts of the world, giving power to US backed military would have been seen as a huge step back in time. So this situation must change quickly and in favor of the Egyptian people. It could also change in favor of US and EU foreign policy in the region.
Egyptians deserve speedy and easy visibility on how democracy will be instituted. Also USA has to be very careful not to be associated with the Egyptian military, but instead with the democratic forces which hopefully will take power. It also needs to prevent the brewing of another Mubarak from inside the military, a military who like Hugo Chavez, after trying to take power as a military leader changed clothes and took power through elections but behaves as a military dictator. The Egyptian people, USA, Obama and Clinton in particular, can emerge as winners in this revolution but there are many obstacles ahead.
After failing promoting democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq, USA has a chance to do in Egypt with $50bn what it could not do wasting $1 trillion. It can fund the stabilization of Egypt and prevent the rise of terrorism and Hamas type forces to arise out of discontent. Egypt can become what Iraq never became but it is still one of the poorest nations on earth on a per capita basis and it quickly needs a stabilization fund. Right now what the new government has to prevent is food shortages and provide basic necessities for all. That needs short term EU and US Aid. In short, President Obama can do with Egypt what the Neocons wanted and failed to do with Iraq. Helping Egypt at this moment would be greatly appreciated around the world.
Lastly as soon as things calm down, we can all do our fair share and consider Egypt for our next holiday destination. This will help re start the economy.
—
2011 10
Nina is pregnant :)
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Paternity with No Comments
We have known that Nina, my wife is pregnant since December but we waited until the 12 week sonogram to announce it. In this video you see the sonogram. It is crucial because you can discard a number of common diseases from the morphology of the baby. Interestingly a big nose and a well shaped back neck (nucha) are indications of a non Down syndrome child. Other results come in the blood tests.
As you can see we are very happy! Nina is radiant.
Baby 12 weeks from Martin Varsavsky on Vimeo
2011 31
Baeza and Ubeda or why I build global start ups out of Spain
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Spain with No Comments
We just spent a long weekend in Baeza and Ubeda in Andalusia.
I moved to Spain in 1995 and I thought that by now I knew this country very well. But then there is always something new to see. In this case these two beautiful towns in Northern Andalusia. Other than my family and friends here, what I love about my life in Spain is that I get to build global start ups, out of Spain. That I get to build Fon in Spain. That when I leave work, I am in Spain. I am not saying that California is not attractive, and it also has great weather. But to me, there’s something missing in California, or New York, or Florida. I love visiting USA but after spending 18 years of my life there I still feel better in Spain. And I feel better in Spain than in UK or Germany. Italy and France could be a contenders as they are beautiful countries as well. But the environment for start ups in those two countries is horrendous.
In any case here are two minor, further proofs as to why Spain is better.
Baeza
Ubeda