Personal: February 2006 Archives
.. is the books I've collected over the last years, especially at RSM. Now if you're a bookworm like me, you'd also probably nestle down among the debris and start browsing these books. Kotler, Brealey & Myers, Reilly & Brown.. the list is long. (Did I really read that much before..?) Strangely, I feel different about moving home now! I have moved before - if you call leaving a hotel after staying there for 6 months moving :-), but this time it's different. Don't know what it is.. Need to drink some tea to figure it out. Great.. I'll put off packing until tomorrow or the day after. It shouldn't take that much time right? :-D (Posted on Feb 17) (Continued on Feb 21) Finished a great deal of moving - half my stuff is moved. Now need to hire a van to move the rest.. Woohoo.. I love it when a plan comes together.
Posted on a blog
Sometimes, I just have to sit back, smile, and be happy there's a (bell) curve.and other riffs on Dick Cheney shooting a lawyer in Texas..
Cheney's got a gun (sung to the tune of the Aerosmith song) What if it wasn't Dick?
i have long believed that economic freedom is a precursor to personal freedom. People with money want to be free to enjoy their lives - ergo personal freedom and dare we say it - democracy? Dean Kamen has invented 2 new machines - One's an efficient stirling engine that generates a kilowatt of energy per day no matter what you burn in it. The other is a water purifier which takes any kind of water - including raw sewage, vapourises the water and thus generates clean water - your basic water still. He's licencing this to Emergence energy, a company based in Cambridge Massachusetts owned by Iqbal Qadir, the founder of Grameen Bank and Grameen Phone and their business model is pretty unique. Villagers will get microloans to purchase the units, and sell the energy and clean water to the other villagers. This in turn creates entrepreneurs (2 or 3) per unit and employment in the form of facility management services in the village. They expect to produce the units for $1000 - $2000 in Bangladesh. CNN Money has an extensive article on this. I urge you to read it..! India has a huge energy problem, especially in villages, where state governments give away the power for free or at a hugely subsidised rate. This creates energy waste and shortages in other areas leading to daily loadshedding. Imagine the economic impact something like this will have! Use this to provide energy to villages, and leave the state electricity boards to provide electricity to cities. Now how do I contribute to this?
As an Indian, I feel incredibly ashamed of this. Justice delayed is justice denied. But having lived in the state (province) of Uttar Pradesh, where this incident occured, I can understand how something so horribly wrong could have happened. People just turn a blind eye to obvious violations of rights - especially by authority in that state. A guy was held without trial for 38 years (yup that number is right) without trial. Here's a link to the story.. Indian man freed after 38 years
