Thoughts: Sustainable Education

Two of my friends are involved in projects in Malaysia (Anis) and Thailand (Mitch).  The projects are very different in context and nature, but the essence is the same: there are people who have virtually no income and education and need to generate revenue and be offered an opportunity to build up their lives.  What follows is my understanding how education and generation of revenue may be done in a sustainable, scalable manner.  Disclaimer: it is incredibly naive, and I am aware of that.

PatientsLikeMe or Why We Suck?

TED Presentation from PatientsLikeMe.com: http://www.ted.com/talks/jamie_heywood_the_big_idea_my_brother_inspired.html

Perhaps I am wrong, but, at this point, I feel angry.  Angry at all the people who claim that science and rigor are the only way to go dismissing application of simple ideas like crowdsourcing accepting status quo based on “Oh, it’s never gonna work” giving a tip-of-the-hat to the young and naive.  Yet, how the f*ck is it that, a paper is published in PNAS that suggested a treatment for ALS and it takes some small site to invalidate this information fairly quickly while it takes millions of dollars and years to get the same answer?  Of course there are plenty explanations and many will be reasonable.  But I feel like the PatientsLikeMe approach should be embraced and promoted by everyone from foundations to the private sector to government.  Yet, instead, I can’t get my medical data to flow between various entities due to regulations.

I wonder if preventing consumers from effectively sharing their data is something that could be overturned using legal action…

Boston Propriety

Today I’ve witnessed the Bostonian version of the old Russian phone conversation joke, which goes something like this

“Алё, это прачечная?”
“Hello, is this the laundromat?”

“Прачечная – хуячечная.  Это министерство культуры!”
”Laundromat – fuckdromat.  This ministry of culture!”

So you ask what would be the Boston version?  Well, the following happened on the subway:

“Excuse me.  Put that cigarette out please.  I am allergic to smoke.”

“Uhm…  I am almost done.” – dude keeps on smoking

…  several progressively more aggressive requests culminating in:

“Have some fucking respect for fucking people around you.  Put that fucking cigarette out.  I’ll have no fucking problem putting my fucking foot in your fucking face.”

Oh, Boston righteous intellectuals. How I heart thee…

Video Snippet: Browsing in Hong Kong

Curious whether this was intentional…  brilliant marketing if so…