Shout out to Project Remix

I first heard about Project Remix last year–or at least the collection of nascent ideas that would eventually become Remix–from one of the creators, who is also a good friend of mine. I was immediately sold on the idea, which was to create a site that provided resources and information to Desi (South-Asian) youth. A site created by the Indian youth for the Indian youth.

The official site launched recently, though it had already started generating buzz among our peers when it had made its first foray into the collective consciousness. Currently there are sections for cuts, cultural media, and articles. The cuts feature mixes used by various student groups and collegiate dance teams (bhangra, raas, Indian fusion, etc.) from across the country. Cultural media highlights video performances from various collegiate groups. The articles on Project Remix have been broken down into smaller categories and initiatives, devoted to everything from the arts to sports (currently I’m contributing to Team Innovate’s Neurobio series so be sure to check that out!). Examples of articles currently up on the website include my neurobio piece (an overview of neuroscience), a two-part series on biofuels, a review of Slumdog Millionaire, and a piece recounting a trip to Chennai to volunteer.

Project Remix is seeking new, fresh voices that can contribute to the site in any capacity. If you are a writer or blogger who is interested in appearing on the website, you can email projectremixny at gmail dot com. For any other questions, you can also send an email to the aforementioned address. The website is http://www.projectremix.org.

In addition, you can follow Project Remix on Twitter @ProjectRemix for updates.

Forgive me, classes have been crazy

This semester has been a little more intense than I had originally anticipated. I promise there will be many more new posts after May 7, when my finals are over. There are a couple that I have in mind, but if you have any you’d like to see covered, comment here and I’ll do the best I can!

To all of my readers, I hope that all is well, and that spring has found you wherever you are (or I guess for those of you south of the equator…that weather is still pleasant!).

Shout-out to Alphainventions.com

This is really a long-overdue thank you.

If you are a blogger looking for more traffic, this is probably the best site I have come across:

http://alphainventions.com

For me, it’s to get more readers to my blog in the hopes that they find something that piques their interest, and maybe grace my blog with their point of view. So far, it has helped tremendously in that end.

Here is a link to my most recent post: http://sospokesaroj.wordpress.com/2009/03/01/what-is-beauty/

The Recession: A Multi-part Series

So basically I’ll be putting together a whole host of guest posts from several bloggers and other friends, giving their side of the recession story. It’ll be more observational and subjective, rather than objective analyses. It will cover topics from the economical to the social and everything in between. I’m trying to compile a group of bloggers from around the world, at different points in their lives and perhaps in different professions (or lack thereof) to give a global perspective of how the recession is affecting people everywhere.

My own post will be up soon. Stay tuned!

S.A.D. Blogathon Announcement

This is from another blogger, a very clever idea! My own Valentine’s Day/S.A.D. post will be up February 9th.

http://luscioussealedlips.blogspot.com/2009/01/single-awareness-day-blogathon-week.html

The Emerging Facebook Culture

I’ve wanted to write this one for a while, considering how I’m the self-proclaimed Facebook addict.

I started using Facebook back when Facebook was open only to the Ivy League universities, and maybe a few more outside of that (this was maybe around May 2004). I wasn’t really into the whole MySpace scene, and this seemed like a clean-cut version of MySpace. It also was a more organized version of Cornell’s attempt at uniting our incoming class of 2008. Back then, Facebook was relatively simple. You had a profile, a friend’s list, inbox, and the poking feature. Beyond that, there wasn’t really a whole lot.

Oh how times have changed.

Now Facebook is no longer restricted to university students, or even just to students. Everyone is on Facebook. Yes your little brother, your neighbor from down the road, perhaps even your parents–they all have profiles. Facebook has grown and morphed into this social-networking juggernaut that keeps changing to meet the demands of the public. There are very few people nowadays who don’t know what Facebook is.

Facebook has become its own cultural phenomenon. It comes with its own set of social norms. You don’t believe me? There is a whole set of connotations that can be associated with, say, a poke. If a girl pokes a guy, or a guy pokes a girl, it can be viewed as flirtatious. If friends poke each other, it’s more a sign that they’re both silly and very bored. A person you don’t know who pokes you is viewed as creepy. I can probably create a hundred other scenarios that center on a poke. The same goes for messages, wall posts, and other modes of communicating that Facebook provides.

You can probably categorize people into a host of loose categories based on their Facebook habits. There are those who friend everyone, accept all friend requests, join every group, and add every application. They are probably better off on MySpace. Then there are those who do…nothing. They are probably better off not creating a profile to begin with. Then there are those who fall somewhere along that spectrum. There are those who probably have lives and occasionally update their Facebook profile, and don’t necessarily seek out new friendships, but keep the ones they have alive through Facebook. Then there are those (like me) who tend to go on Facebook often more to utilize it for a specific purpose (like plugging my blog and keeping in touch with friends). The possibilities are endless.

Facebook has even begun to serve as a method for finding potential dates, and that too, comes with its own set of unspoken rules. It’s no surprise that it is being used that way. One’s profile has (usually) all the information a person needs to learn about another person enough to decide whether or not it’s worth getting to know them better. Yet sometimes, actually opening the channel of communication through Facebook whether through a message, poke, friend request, or other method can be viewed very differently between different people. I tend to overextend my definition of creepy to cover a whole set of possible actions on Facebook, but that’s also because I’m very cautious by nature. These include the compliments about photos, pokes, and random friend requests. I have only now begun to realize that sometimes, it’s not so much that people are creepy, and it could be explained by the fact that they are perhaps shy. Sometimes you have to give people the benefit of the doubt, but in the context of the Internet, sometimes it is better to exercise caution. Many do actually turn out to be very creepy.

Now that Facebook is open to everyone, there are legitimate concerns about privacy. Parents are using this as a means of keeping tabs on their children, while employers and graduate schools are using it as a means of investigating their applicants’ private lives (with special attention to partying, drinking, and drug use). Facebook has become the new Big Brother, in that regard. It’s legitimate that it would be used in that sense, it is a useful tool that way. Obviously the first thing to do is either a) stop drinking to the point of stupidity b) stop underage drinking and c) stop drug use, but really that’s just wishful thinking. So I guess the best thing to do is don’t put up pictures that portray you in an unfavorable light. While sure, you may have had fun at that frat party, house party, or bar, you don’t necessarily want that to ruin your chances at a great future or ruin your parents’ trust. I can understand employers using Facebook to assess applicants, but seriously, parents shouldn’t be so eager to make a profile to spy on their children. For the most part, we know what we’re doing, and sometimes we may stumble…but we can pick ourselves up. Just have a little faith.

Facebook has become a tool for reporters, celebrities, and musicians to gain fans and keep them up to date on various happenings. I can be informed when Nicholas Kristof writes a new column or blog post, or when the date for the start of a new season of Monk, Heroes, or House is announced. I think its fair to say that Facebook is slowly supplanting MySpace as the social networking site of choice, for both regular Joes and celebrities alike.

It seems that Facebook is probably here to stay, much like AIM, as a novel method of communication and networking. I’m curious to see how it will evolve to meet changing times and changing generations. Hopefully it will all be for the best.

I’m going to leave you with two videos relating to Facebook. The first is Penn Masala’s homage to Facebook, and is a parody of Enrique Iglesias’ “Hero.”

The second is a brilliant video that takes Facebook actions and looks at what would happen if we did those things in real life.

How One Word Makes a Statement Racist

http://jezekiah.wordpress.com/2008/12/14/the-most-racist-site-youll-see-today/

I definitely did a double take when I read that the word “white” was originally “Jew” in the context of the original site. Even more shocking was the variety of responses.

I’ll have a more in-depth post about racism being relative, but since I have two finals tomorrow, I’ll leave that for another day in the not-too-distant future.

Welcome and Hello…Again!

Dear Readers,

I figure after 3500+ views in a little over a month, I should probably welcome all of you who read my blog. Welcome, bienvenidos, bienvenue, welkom, swaagat, swaagatham, and (insert welcome of choice here).

I’m so glad to see this blog has started to blossom and attract numerous viewers. I hope you are finding the posts informative and maybe even entertaining. I will try to keep the topics varied and interesting, so that everyone can find something to read and enjoy on this site.

Thank you so much for your support, kind words, and even criticisms. Here’s to hoping this blog continues to thrive!

Love,

Saroj

So I Don’t Come Across As a Whining, Rabid, Med-School Reject

Here is some stuff to justify that last post.

I am doing my MPH as well as my MS.  My MPH has given me a lot of insight as to what is wrong with the system, which is a lot.  Public health gives people a birds eye view of health dynamics in a population, and for me, I’m doing my MPH at a school that is set in an ethnically-diverse, low SES community.  You want to talk about how the healthcare system is failing?  Just look there.  Everyone’s on Medicaid, but Medicaid does not equal good treatment by doctors.  Compare the facilities of a public hospital to a private hospital and you’ll see what I mean.  Doctors need to stop worrying about how much they are going to be paid, and the system shouldn’t shortchange hospitals accepting Medicaid patients to begin with.  The insurance system is a mess, but that’s for another post.

In an article by Forbes, it says “within the next 15 years, the United States will experience a shortage [of physicians] of between 90,000 to 200,000 physicians,” owing mostly to the problems that the system has now, like health insurance, the ridiculously long training period, and other things like malpractice insurance and the astronomical medical school debt.  The shortage probably wouldn’t affect urban areas, given the concentration of doctors per square mile, however given that rural areas are already hard pressed for enough doctors, this will devastate them.  I already touched on how long the training period is in the last post.  Malpractice insurance is more a function of the fact that doctors have become easy targets for suits, more than anything, though could also be related to the fact that the pressures that they face increase the number of mistakes that they make.  Yet why do medical students have to pay through their (insert orefice here) to become doctors?

This relates back to my “why does education cost so much” post.  While I could rant myself about how the costs of medical school, like undergraduate institutions, are rapidly outpacing inflation, I found a blog that does a better job at explaining it than I ever could.  The point is made that given the insane cost of medical school, and subsequent debt, specialization seems all the more lucrative, not because it is inherently interesting but because one can pay their loans off faster.  Thus we are left with a dearth of primary care physicians, and specialists who are not totally vested in what they do.  Now, primary care physicians are themselves leaving the profession in droves.  So what does that leave us?  It leaves us with a huge problem.   Yes, they are increasing class sizes at medical schools, yes they are even creating new medical schools, but is it too little too late?  Other things need to be addressed, the cost of studying, the time period allotted for medical education, etc.

This is not about me whining about not being in medical school yet, I’m applying soon enough, and I’ll deal with it as it comes.  This is not about sour grapes, I haven’t lost anything yet, and even if I have, I’m not going to whine about the fact that other people got there before me.  They deserve it, wholeheartedly deserve it.  Yet if I can’t be opinionated, if medical students can’t be opinionated, and if doctors can’t be opinionated, we have a problem.  This is not about me blowing steam without solid facts.  The facts are there.  We’re losing doctors, and we’re not replenishing them in areas where they need to be replenished.  Above all, though, our healthcare is not equal across region or society.  Not remotely.

So getting back to my previous thesis, something’s got to change.

And So Another Election Ends…And Ends Well!

But this blog will still be alive. I’ll be covering a host of topics, of course, but now instead of election views…it will be views on the Obama administration and the actions it takes. I love how that sounds…Obama administration.

I hope you will join me as I keep dissecting the issues as they affect me and they affect you, and make your views heard as well.