India Caste-Closed system

Below is an article about a caste system in India known as Gujjar.

Click on the link and read what has happened in their village and why?

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/05/24/asia/AS-GEN-India-Caste-Riot.php

Too Different!

Killing a daughter would be honoring a father. Read the story about a man and a woman in the same village, getting married, not related to each other, but a practice that is taboo.

Read link below:

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSDEL29449420080516

What could happen if there is a glasnost at Myanmar and China?

Michael Gorbachev and the Russian word glasnost http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasnost seem to be identical with each other. This was the period of Russia wherein transparency and openness became an expected behavior from government bureaucracy. This period was felt from the late 1980's to 2000.

Circa 2008, China experienced a devastating earthquake and Myanmar with cyclone Nargis.

Follow the link below.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/19/europe/soviet.php

Desiderata

Desiderata is a one page write up that I have encountered sometime in the decade of the 70's. It is a one page literature which was passed on from a Church in America.

Read and reflect on it.

http://www.geocities.com/everwild7/desiderata.html

Xenophobia

One of the causes that wrecks havoc in a particular society is xenophobia, a feeling of fear or hatred towards things foreign.

In South Africa, circa May 2008, Zimbabweans are being attacked by South Africans and blame them for social problems.

If we do a scientific analysis on this, this issue is about the situation in Zimbabwe and the limited resources that is existing at the moment in South Africa. Sociology is a study on how people are organized and how they sustain their society.

As students of society how can one avoid xenophobia? What are the sources of xenophobic feelings? How can one build trust on a perpetual theme of being different, or ethnically different.

If we turn the pages of human history, we have a replete of stories about xenophobia that stretches thousands of years.

America is a classic example of a country that thrives of different cultural background. How do they manage to live together?

Please follow the link below:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7407914.stm

$100 laptop for every child

A computer on your lap brings power to you. The information that you will be possessing will help you further work on your goals.

In 2002 Professor Nicholas Negroponte on the One Laptop for every Child Project, OLPC, (www.laptop.org), proposed that this idea can be a reality.

But such idea stretched back in the 1960's when computers were the size of dinosaurs. (Search for other links).

The link below will open to you the vast array of possibilities in the computing world and perhaps in helping humans evolve.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7082701.stm