Valuing forests
This is a brilliant example of using logic and business sense to preserve our forests. I wish more NGOs adopted this approach.
A MOST unusual document landed on your correspondent’s desk recently: a financial report from a rainforest. Iwokrama, a 370,000-hectare rainforest in central Guyana, announced that it was in profit. It added, more intriguingly, that rainforests had entered the “global economyâ€.
Iwokrama is part of the largest expanse of undisturbed rainforest in the world, which overlies the Guiana Shield. It has a unique history. In 1989 the president of Guyana had the foresight to give the forest as a gift to the Commonwealth for research into global warming. Today it is administered by an international board of trustees, who have devolved the day-to-day management to the Iwokrama International Centre. It is this centre that has been working to exploit the forest sustainably.
Edward Glover, one of Iwokrama’s board of trustees, says that it became clear more than a decade ago that the forest could not rely on donor funding to survive, so it had to look elsewhere for finance. The centre’s first job was to identify the forest’s assets and to exploit them. It seems to have perfected its art. Today the centre makes money in areas such as ecotourism, timber-extraction, forest-products such as honey and oils, bio-prospecting and forestry research. Its results for 2008 reveal that it made a surplus for the first time that year, with revenues of $2.4m and a profit of $800,000. The previous year it had lost $200,000. Revenues from timber were up by 44%, ecotourism by 26% and training by 22%.
When forests vanish, people suffer. That is why many believe that there is an urgent need to bring forests onto the global financial balance sheet. Last year Pavan Sukhdev, an economist at Deutsche Bank, reported that the world was losing natural capital worth between $2 trillion and $5 trillion every year as a result of deforestation alone. If money could be made by selling these ecosystem services, then the financial equation for forests would change.
Rainforests | Growing on trees | The Economist.
The carcinogen-free store
In the past couple of weeks I’ve had several people say to me “Is it me or am I hearing the term cancer more and more?” Knowing a clutch of people who have or are dealing with the big C, I’ve had the same thought in my head for the past several months.
What’s going on – is it our lifestyles – what we eat, how much we sleep, how much we drink? Is it environmental – the chemicals in the everything, the air we breathe? Is it that diagnostics are getting better – technology is catching tumors that might have gone undetected in the past? Is it that I’ve reached an age where my friends are just entering the zone of risk and the parents are firmly in the risk zone?
It is probably a combination of everything.
But as I think about what I can control, I would love to be able to consume “safer” products. Of course every product is made of chemicals and not all chemicals are bad, but we know there are some which are or could be carcinogenic. I’d like to avoid those.
The only way for me to do that right now is to read a ton, educate myself on which chemicals are dangerous and then read every single label to ensure it doesn’t contain any chemical on that list.
But there has to be a better way – couldn’t there be a store that did this research and only carried the products that fell within the bounds? Since I’d want these safe products in every category, it would have to be a really broad selection – cooking utensils, clothing, accessories, etc.
Think of Amazon, but with a layer on top of it “carcinogen free (CF)”. This entity would do the research and identify the products in several categories that are safer. It then sets up it’s CF Store. All the items are on Amazon, this is just the CF Store’s selected short list. When a user shops at this store, the transaction is completed on Amazon and the CF Store gets a cut. There are no guarantees with this stuff, so the CF Store would do a to-the-best-of-our-abilities thing. But that’s a heck of a lot better than what I can do right now.
The CF store doesn’t just have to be the CF Store alone. It could also be the CF and Green Store that also picks environmentally friendly products. That would just be another slice of what’s available on Amazon.
Or what if on Amazon itself, there were filters- CF, Green etc., in addition to the Brand, Material and Color filters that already exist. I do a search and check the filters that are important to me. As I check more filters, the number of products reduce, but hey, I’m willing to deal with less choice for being more picky.
Does something like this exist? If it does, let me know and sign me up.
Here’s to the crazies
The crazy people will change the world for the better. The people who hear they are insane, it can’t be done, it’s silly to do it *now* and still go ahead and pursue their dreams – these are the folks that will have a positive impact on large groups of people.
The crazy people are special in many ways – most importantly, they are super-smart, very capable, confident, and almost universally acknowledged for their capabilities (unless you are an emerging crazy, in which case you have yet to be universally acknowledged)1
The people who rely on the status quo, have never earned a job or title on their own, and skate along trying to fool people might be fine now, but average is all they’ll ever be. These people look down on the crazies. They may secretly want to be one of the crazies, but only for the glory that will eventually await the crazies – they don’t want to do the hard, grinding work that it will take for the crazies to succeed. And therein lies the core reason they’ll always just aspire to mediocrity.
The truly bold ones – the ones who may fail big, the ones jump off the treadmill of safety – are the most likely to win big too.
This wonderful piece talks about how young crazies from Yale are pursuing their dreams.
it’s refreshing to know that the world keeps minting idealistic young people who are not waiting for governments to act, but are starting their own projects and driving innovation.
I know of a couple of others who had the courage and capabilities to walk away from secure, stable jobs to venture out on their own. To those crazies, whether you are in Madras, London or New York, my most sincere good wishes. May you soar. May your hard work and your idealism be rewarded. I’m rooting for you – you’re inspirational.
- My “crazies” are different from Hugh’s Crazy Deranged Fools in some ways. CDFs seem to be creative or artistic, my crazies can be pure business folks although successful business folks have to be creative too. And my crazies may not pay the bills for a while – they will live without if they have to, they will adjust their lifestyle downwards. CDFs could work alone but my crazies want to start companies/ventures/projects. I am not quite a crazy, but I am a CDF. [↩]
Decoding Cancer Genes
I don’t think I’ve ever talked about medical stuff on my blog, but the complexity of the human body has always fascinated and confounded me. I never wanted to be a doctor, but my two cousins are brilliant doctor-researchers and they explain complex medical issues incredibly well and through them I have a sliver of a window into the world of medical academics.
The news that “researchers have decoded all the genes of a person with cancer and found a set of mutations that may have caused the disease or aided its progression” seems like an incredible leap forward in the understanding of cancer.
The new research, by looking at the entire genome — all the DNA — and aiming to find all the mutations involved in a particular cancer, differs markedly from earlier studies, which have searched fewer genes for individual mutations. The project, which took months and cost $1 million, was made possible by recent advances in technology that have made it easier and cheaper to analyze 100 million DNA snippets than it used to be to analyze 100.
The study was done at Washington University in St. Louis and is being published Thursday in the journal Nature. It is the first report of a “cancer genome,†and researchers say many more are to come.
Having the full genome decoded expands the pool of suspects dramatically… and that could change the way that cancers are treated.
Indeed, 8 of the 10 mutations his group found in the leukemia patient had never been linked to the disease before and would not have been found with the more traditional, “usual suspects†approach.
Despite all the years of research, I find it amazing that there is still so much that is not known about cancer. Forget cancer, but about the human body! It is completely understandable and completely frustrating at the same time. In fact the article talks about how they studied others with the same disease and none of them had the eight mutations of the first patient. So it seems like it will take a lot more effort and research to find the commonality that causes all the patients to start at different points but end up with the same disease.
Still, it seems to be a wonderful first step.
Dr. Wilson said he hoped that in 5 to 20 years, decoding a patient’s cancer genome would consist of dropping a spot of blood onto a chip that slides into a desktop computer and getting back a report that suggests which drugs will work best.
I hope that number is closer to the 5 year mark – for the sake of all those who suffer through cancer and for the families that love them.
Blog redesign – better than a spa day!
I’ve had the same basic Wordpress K2 theme since I started this blog. It always felt basic, but I was fine with that. In contrast, Tatvam, designed by uber-designer George, was beautiful and elegant.
For the past few months though I started wanting a new, fresh look. I looked at the Wordpress themes that were out there, but none of them really grabbed me. Then one day I saw a really unique illustration done by someone called MayG (Mahjabeen Umar). I dug a little deeper and found that MayG designs websites and has just started styling blogs.
MayG and I got to work. She asked me a whole bunch of questions to figure out who I was, what mattered to me and what kind of design aesthetic I wanted. She then cranked away and about four days later sprung what I consider an incredible illustration on me. It’s the multi-handed image that you see on the top left of the new blog design and it was love at first sight. The concept was cool and she did such a great job on the execution (in the process making my online avatar look better than reality!) And it really felt like even if I had a most basic theme, this illustration would set it apart.
But she was just getting started. Far from producing a basic theme, she designed something elegant and unique with style elements that are uncommon in blogs. At the same time she stuck to my requests for classy, elegant, clean and non-cutesy.
And voila! We have here Shripriya’s Post-It theme. It’s a theme that can change with me and morph as my life does. It makes me smile.
As MayG promised me early in the process – a blog redesign, when done right, can be better than a spa day. The past few weeks have been incredibly rough on the personal front and I need not just a spa day, but a full spa month! In fact, I actively sought distractions to help me get through things. Well this little redesign was definitely a step in the right direction.
I can’t say enough good things about working with MayG. She has the right balance of her own creativity and giving the client what she wants. She is incredibly talented and very responsive. She’s up on all the latest design trends and has informed opinions on what works and what doesn’t. And she hits the timelines she promises.
If you are thinking of redesigning your blog or just want a new avatar, MayG is your gal. I could not recommend her more highly.
In addition to having a new blog, I also have a new friend. What could be better?
The Gates Foundation
Say what you want about Bill Gates in his Microsoft avatar, but he is the most impressive philanthropist. By far.
The Gates Foundation is not futzing around handing nickles and dimes to every worthy cause out there. They are focused on the big picture – solving real issues (health) that affect millions if not billions of people.
In our lifetime, they will be responsible for eradication a major disease. That is just… mindblowing. It is humbling and empowering and gives me so much hope that money, used effectively, can have an incredible impact in the philanthropic realm.
Thank you Bill Gates.
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Microsoft founder Bill Gates gave $168.7 million to develop vaccines for malaria, part of $3 billion in funding announced on Thursday to tackle Africa’s biggest killer disease.
Gates said the funding for the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, in conjunction with GlaxoSmithKline Plc, will support “next-generation” vaccines research to find longer-lasting protection against the mosquito-borne disease.
Gates gives $168 mln for malaria vaccines research – Yahoo! News
Michael Phelps – #7 in pictures
For a whole bunch of reasons, I couldn’t be near a TV when Michael Phelps was swimming the 100M Butterfly for his seventh gold of the Olympics. But I really wanted him to win and, eager to know what happened, I called someone who gave me the play-by-play as it happened.
Once I got near a TV/computer, I watched the fantastic race and continued to stay amazed that the guy won.
It all comes down to the fact that Cavic took a long final stroke and “coasted” to the wall while Phelps took an extra stroke to hit the wall first. But if you want to be totally convinced, these pictures (from Sports Illustrated, where there are more images) will quench your thirst.
Phelps is on the left, bare chested; Cavic is on the right in the suit
As an aside, I find that being an American citizen for the first time during an Olympics has a marked bearing on my rooting for American atheletes.
Another “Born Free” – Christian, the lion
I loved the movie Born Free when I was a kid and so this video is very “aww…” inducing.
More info here.
Women at b-school
The March 2008 edition of the HBS Bulletin had a little piece about the first women MBA students.
“A ‘Daring Exper-iment’: Harvard and Busi-ness Education for Women, 1937–1970,†tells the story of how coeducation at HBS evolved from an eleven-month certificate program in “personnel administration†at Radcliffe College (1937–1945), to the Management Training Program (1946–1955), to the Harvard-Radcliffe Program in Business Administration (1956–1963) — the last step before complete integration took place with the admission of eight women into the MBA Class of 1965.
But what’s even more interesting is a letter to the editor that showed up in the current issue (June 2008) -
Your March article “A History of Women at HBS†omitted an important category — women in the early sixties who were not admitted to the firstyear at HBS. Instead, their only option was to attend a separate and unequal first-year class at the Harvard-Radcliffe Program in Business Administration, a nondegree program. The women were then allowed to apply for the second year at HBS, and fewer than ten were accepted. In the second-year program, they were given no housing or section designation, and a professor could deny entrance to his course.
When job interviews started on campus, women’s names were scratched from the interview list. Recruiters refused to interview them because it was a “waste of time.†I know, because this happened to me. I was part of this forgotten class.
Joan Oxman Rothberg
(HRPBA 1962, MBA ’63)
Summit, NJ
Wow – scratched off the interview list! Incredible how far we’ve come. And that’s an excellent thing.
Great Urban Race
Then came a crucial moment: the second scavenger-hunt clue was to either 1) get a $500 bill from Monopoly, or 2) get a picture of ten people within arms-reach of an ad for Grand Theft Auto IV. Chris knew of a toy store about a half-block off our path; I rushed in and was able to buy a pack of Monopoly money. (The GTA IV ads were all over the place, but we judged that getting 10 people to pose simultaneously would prove hard – the $500 bill ended up taking about 3 minutes and costing $4.32.)
This “The Game” stuff sounds like fun. Kind of like King’s Quest (a Role Playing Adventure computer game), but in real life. I wonder why I had no inkling this stuff existed when I was in the Bay Area… Probably because I am not geeky enough 
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