Hasta La Gadget!

Sitting in my New York cubicle 15 years ago trying not to listen to Bill O’Reilly yell at his staff yet again, I was on my way to a promising career in network news. I’d worked at Court TV, CNN and Fox. I had visions of changing the world, one press conference at a time. And then I saw something that made me rethink news, and my career: citizen footage of the Seattle World Trade Organization protests in 1999. These were not 30-second sound bytes, or glossy packages oversimplifying the situation. These were powerful testimonials by protesters about why they were there, and what was driving them to risk their lives to stay. Those protests were among the first to be covered by citizen journalists; it was in part a reaction to the fact that the mainstream media at that point had focused only on the violence of the protests rather than the message behind them.

This is something totally new, I remember thinking. Imagine if we in the mainstream could work collaboratively with people on the ground, thousands of them, telling stories together? If those who lived a story reported it, would it not make for a more complete narrative, a truly democratic news media? To me it seemed like the start of a media revolution and I quit my cubicle to be part of it.

A journey of change brought me to India where I started an organization called Video Volunteers that trains people from India’s most marginalized communities to tell their own stories rather than wait for others to report them. We’ve built a rural reporting network that has reached 1.2 million people. We’ve created livelihood opportunities for 200 people who live below the poverty line. And we’ve worked with leading media outlets like Bloomberg, CNN-IBN and Al Jazeera, winning some of the best awards for innovation in the fields of media and social entrepreneurship. But far more can be done to bring marginalised voices to the mainstream.

There is a need for a rural network of journalists, because only about 2% of news on any given day was about rural issues. In a country where 70% of the people live in rural areas the lack of diversity in the voices that get represented on TV, on radio, and online continues to be alarming.

If in the U.S. it’s white men who dominate the profession, in India few, if at all any, from marginalized communities like Dalits, tribals, and other-rights minorities enter the field.

This situation is made worse by the fact that many news houses are forced to cut down on the number of correspondents in order to keep costs low. In this case what news are you and I getting? Are we hearing what is happening in the lives of a majority of the citizens of India? Are we hearing at all, the stories from the most marginalized communities of the world?

In the decade and a half since the WTO protests, Internet, smartphones, flipcams, and other fabulous technologies have enabled countless citizen journalists across the world to cover wars, natural disasters as well as the daily trials of their lives. Projects being run by organizations like RADAR, CGnet Swara, GramVaani and WITNESS among others are excellent examples of the power of citizen journalism. In fact these models don’t limit themselves to just reportage but believe that journalism can and must bring change.

In many ways it has eroded the sacrosanct position that journalists once had. The one most significant contribution of citizen journalism has been its ability to give space to events and opinions that may have previously been lost in the quick turnover of news cycles. Citizen journalists were the only people informing the world about the war in Syria and the Green Movement protests in Iran. They are also the first eyewitness accounts in emergency situations, and networks are quick to pick up these reports.

I thought these developments would drastically change how mainstream news media functions, mostly in terms of diversity of voices and stories carried. But citizen reportage operates in a limited sphere and despite a growing acceptance for it, it feels like mainstream media relegates citizen journalism to a realm of ‘fluff pieces’ to be treated with extreme caution. The key accusations leveled against this new form of journalism revolve around verification and the thin line it often treads between activism and journalism.

Granted that a situation where anyone and everyone can ‘create news’ may lead to a deafening cacophony. And admittedly many ‘citizen reports’ may be inaccurate themselves. My point however is that in all their messiness, big media houses need to engage with this mass of content in a more serious way, because in this collective media are the new narratives — the new story lines, the new ideas — of the future.

Large media organizations could play a vital role in training those who work with such organizations. They could help escalate issues; they could bring in factors like objectivity and veracity to citizen reports.

Journalism is changing. No longer can we afford to see the world through one network’s lens. I would argue that we are better experiencing the world in three dimensions, and from a variety of points of view. And so, I want to encourage my erstwhile colleagues in their New York cubicles to stop changing things one press conference at a time, but rather one person at a time. I’ve seen over and over, one empowered citizen journalist can truly change their world, and in an increasingly intertwined globe, everyone else’s. Who makes the news is as important as what the news is.

This blog post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post and Video Volunteers, in conjunction with the launch of HuffPost India (December 8, 2014). Video Volunteers equips women and men from India’s most marginalized communities with skills in video journalism and advocacy, enabling them to expose under-reported stories from their communities and take action to right the wrongs of poverty, injustice and inequality. For more information about Video Volunteers, visit here.

Although it took almost a year to get there, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has put in place the third critical piece of the city’s sustainability leadership. Last week, he appointed Nilda Mesa, an experienced sustainability professional, as the first director of a new Office of Sustainability. Nilda ran sustainability operations at Columbia University for six years and had extensive environmental experience in Washington prior to that. She joins Emily Lloyd, another superb environmental professional, who is serving as the city’s Commissioner of Environmental Protection, and Dan Zarrilli, a talented and dedicated public servant, who is director of New York’s Office of Recovery and Resiliency.

The sustainability goals and policy designs of the de Blasio administration are well known and now in place. They include an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the implementation of a path-breaking green buildings plan, and a range of specific objectives in PlaNYC2030, New York City’s sustainability plan. Improved air quality and the maintenance of the city’s world class water system remain priorities, as does the implementation of the $20 billion shore line resiliency plan developed after Hurricane Sandy. The “80-by-50” goal is ambitious and difficult to achieve, but could be transformative. The key question is: can we get beyond words and actually make this happen?

All the policy pronouncements, appointments, and press releases are now in place. Next comes the real work of mobilizing the city’s people, institutions and resources to make these policies real. One of the problems with long-term goals is they tend to get crowded out by short-term emergencies. This happened for good reason twice in the past decade and a half: first, after 9/11, when we struggled to recover from the physical, economic, and emotional impact of the worst terror attack in American history, and second, when we struggled to recover from the physical, economic and emotional impact of “superstorm” Sandy. Despite these profound natural and human made disasters, New York City perseveres.

But some short-term emergencies are not profound disasters, and instead media scandals or self-imposed crises. Even these lesser emergencies can cause long-term aspirations to be placed on the back burner, like energy efficiency, the Third Water Tunnel and the Second Avenue Subway. The Bloomberg team was quite good at dealing with the emergency of the moment, while keeping their eye on the long-term prize. That may be more difficult to achieve in the highly-charged political environment of the de Blasio City Hall. The challenge is to actively resist what I sometimes call “herd management”. Herd management is the tendency of key staffers and managers to move herd-like with the mayor (or CEO) from one high-priority emergency to the next. Being part of the center of action provides an adrenalin rush for some, and at a minimum convinces other participants that you are an insider and a “force to be reckoned with.”

Unfortunately, while attention is provided to the emergency of the moment, the more mundane and prosaic details of day-to-day administration are left unattended. Let me provide an example. Suppose you were setting up a national health insurance program. You worked hard to forge the policy compromises that got the bill enacted, but you left the details of implementation to others. You never imagined that a poorly-managed web presence could interfere with enrollment and threaten to crash the entire program–but that is exactly what happened to the Affordable Care Act. For the herd, for the important players in the White House, once health care was enacted it was time to move on. The president was focused on other issues and so it was time to leave health care behind and declare mission accomplished.

There is a deep connection between policy design and operations management, although many people prefer the glamour and creativity of policy design to the detailed behind-the-scenes work of routine operations. This is not just a problem in Washington or City Hall, we see it everywhere; for some folks, access to the boss is the only organizational value that matters. The private sector can also fall victim to herd management.

Many of the programs designed to address issues of environmental protection and sustainability management require a sharp focus on the details of administration. Energy efficiency targets in buildings provide a good example of a program that requires extensive operational attention. Columbia, along with other New York City universities, has agreed to energy efficiency measures to help the city reach its greenhouse gas reduction targets. In the winter, our buildings are set at 68 degrees. Unfortunately, many of the older buildings on campus do not have modern climate control systems that can be set precisely. The result is that some workspaces get very cold. In response, staff use electric heaters when it’s cold, eliminating any energy savings gained by lowering the setting of the central heating system. The oil bill may go down, but the electric bill goes up.

The energy efficiency and emission reduction goals of the de Blasio administration are to be met by a combination of $1 billion in capital improvements in city buildings along with a yet-to-be-defined set of incentives for private builders and owners. The aspirations are impressive, but the results will need to be closely monitored and carefully measured. Moreover, the efforts to reduce greenhouse gases through renewable energy and energy efficiency will require a deep and dogged commitment to a long-term change in our city’s culture and the organizational routines that deliver the goods and services central to our daily lives.

We don’t actually know how to reduce 80 percent of our greenhouse gases by 2050. Some of the technology we will need to do this is still being invented. Even as this technology becomes available it must still be purchased, deployed and maintained. New York City has a great deal of old infrastructure and some old buildings that will require major retrofits to achieve these goals.

Policy pronouncements, negotiated agreements, and even capital investment will not be enough. Just as we must remember to change the batteries in our smoke detectors whenever we re-set our clocks, we will need equivalent steps in order to maintain our energy systems at peak efficiency.

Unlike the rest of America, most of New York City’s energy use and greenhouse gas emissions come from our buildings and not from our vehicles. While most of the land in New York City sits beneath single-family homes, most of the people in New York live in multi-family dwellings. As Paul Simon once sang, around here, “one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor”. Interdependence is a fact of New York City life. If one apartment refuses to participate in a building-wide energy initiative, it can compromise the ability of the building to contribute to the city’s goals. Our ability to meet the 80-by-50 goal will be a test of our ability to act as a community.

Mayor de Blasio deserves praise for his ambitious sustainability goals and the excellent leadership team he has put in place to continue New York’s path-breaking effort to build a sustainable city. But new appointments, reorganized offices and policy pronouncements should never be confused with concrete outcomes and real performance. Let’s not make the mistake made by the Obamacare website managers, and take our eye off the ball. Let’s put substantial resources and our best and brightest people to work on turning these policy goals into real, operating actions.

BEIJING — Last weekend, Chinese authorities announced the arrest of the former head of the country’s internal security services, Zhou Yongkang, who became the highest-ranking Chinese official ever arrested on corruption charges.

That move marked the crowning achievement in President Xi Jinping’s ongoing anti-corruption campaign, but experts say it also fits into another pattern: using corruption charges to knock off political rivals. In the interactive timeline below, we walk you through China’s biggest political takedowns of the past 40 years, looking at how cracking down on graft has also reshaped political power at crucial junctures.

By: Rachael Rettner
Published: 12/07/2014 10:00 AM EST on LiveScience

In most cases of Lou Gehrig’s disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), it’s not known what caused the condition, but a new study finds genes may play a larger role than previously thought.

Only about 5 to 10 percent of people with ALS have family members with the disease, meaning the cases have a known genetic component. The other 90 to 95 percent of ALS cases are “sporadic”; that is, they do not appear to run in families, and the cause of the disease is often a mystery.

But the new study, which analyzed DNA from nearly 400 people with ALS, found that more than a quarter of sporadic cases were linked to new or rare genetic mutations, which could potentially cause the disease.

“These findings shed new light on the genetic origins of ALS, especially in patients who had no prior family history of the disease,” said study researcher Dr. Robert Baloh, director of the ALS Program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. [Top 10 Mysterious Diseases]

ALS is a progressive neurological diseases that eventually leads to loss of function of the muscles used in voluntary movements, like walking, speaking and eating. Life expectancy for people with the condition is usually 3 to 5 years. The findings suggest that more than a third of all ALS cases (both inherited and sporadic) could be genetic in origin, the researchers said.

The study does not prove that these new or rare genetic mutations cause ALS, but the mutations are likely suspects, Baloh said.

The study also found that the disease appeared 10 years earlier in people with mutations in two or more of the genes linked with ALS compared to people with defects in only one gene.

More research is needed to identify other genes that could influence the risk of ALS, said study researcher Dr. Matthew B. Harms, an assistant professor of neurology at Washington University in St. Louis.

The study was published online Nov. 27 in the journal Annals of Neurology.

Follow Rachael Rettner @RachaelRettner. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

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The embrace of Eastern philosophy and mysticism in the West has a long history, from the writings of “the first American yogi” Henry David Thoreau, to the Beatles’ famous 1968 pilgrimage to India, to the current scientific interest in ancient contemplative practices like meditation and yoga.

The dissemination of Indian ideas and practices has shaped the way we view spirituality in the West. But ancient Indian ideas have also influenced a more unlikely domain — modern science, medicine and psychotherapy.

As scientific interest in the inner experience of the individual has grown, we seem to be witnessing a meeting of the minds between Western science and Eastern spirituality. Scientific American featured meditation on its November cover, while the Dalai Lama is working with neuroscientists to study the dimensions of consciousness.

In many ways, modern science is just catching up with the wisdom of early Indian teachings, rooted in ancient Vedic texts and still pervasive in the culture of the Indian subcontinent. Today, many concepts in early Vedic philosophy have been backed up with empirical evidence. As the French Nobel laureate Romain Rolland put it, “Religious faith in the case of the Hindus has never been allowed to run counter to scientific laws.”

A close cooperation between Western scientists and Eastern contemplative traditions like Buddhism (which also stems from the Vedas) can “truly contribute toward expanding the human understanding of the complex world of inner subjective experience that we call the mind,” the Dalai Lama said in 2005.

In honor of the launch of HuffPost India, here are five pieces of ancient Indian wisdom now backed by modern science.

Yoga can heal the mind and body.

Yoga, the ancient Indian mind-body practice, has become a $27 billion dollar industry in the U.S. While Western yoga bears only a partial resemblance to the traditional Indian meditative practice and school of philosophy, yoga is arguably the most widespread and influential Eastern spiritual practice to spread outside the Indian subcontinent. In the West, we tend to use the term yoga to refer solely to the physical postures, or asana, while traditionally, the physical aspect of yoga is just one small part of the practice that was meant to prepare the body for long periods of meditation.

Created for the purpose of stilling the mind and achieving eventual oneness with the divine, yoga (which means “unity” in Sanskrit) has long been believed to bring health to the mind, body and spirit.

“Health is a state of complete harmony of the body, mind and spirit,” said B.K.S. Iyengar, the famous Indian yoga master. “When one is free from physical disabilities and mental distractions, the gates of the soul open.”

While evidence of the positive spiritual benefits of yoga remains mostly anecdotal, a growing body of research has linked an asana-based yoga practice with a slew of positive physical and mental health impacts. Yoga has been found to lessen symptoms of depression and anxiety, ease chronic back pain, lower stress levels, boost brain function and improve heart health.

Scientists now know why. Almost immediately upon starting a practice, yoga’s positive impact extends all the way down to the cellular level, affecting gene expression in immune cells, according to a 2013 Norwegian study. The beneficial changes may lead to boosts in immunity and reduced inflammation.

“There are rapid (within two hours of start of practice) and significant gene expression changes… during a comprehensive yoga program,” the research team wrote in the study. “These data suggest that previously reported effects of yoga practices have an integral physiological component at the molecular level which is initiated immediately during practice and may form the basis for the long-term stable effects.”

Breathing affects our health and well-being.

According to the 15th century yoga manual Hatha Yoga Pradipika, one must learn to control the breath in order to achieve good health, longevity and peace of mind. The yogic practice of breath work known as pranayama — which is Sanskrit for “extension of the life-force” — has been used for centuries as a means of healing the mind and body.

“When the breath wanders the mind also is unsteady,” the Pradipika reads. “But when the breath is calmed the mind too will be still, and the yogi achieves long life.”

The way we breathe can have a significant impact on our well-being and stress levels, and can even create physical changes in the body, including lowering blood pressure levels. Practicing controlled breathing during meditation can increase the size of the brain, boosting cortical thickness, according to a 2005 Harvard study. Among musicians, 30 minutes of deep breathing can reduce performance anxiety, while third-grade students who practice deep breathing before an exam experience less anxiety and self-doubt, as well as heightened concentration. Practicing deep breathing can also lower blood pressure, according to Dr. David Anderson of the National Institutes of Health.

“We take our breath for granted the way we take our heart beat for granted,” Carla Ardito, a breathing expert at the Integral Yoga Institute, told The Huffington Post last year. “The difference is we can work on our breathing.”

Turmeric really is a miracle cure.

Much of the delicious, spicy scent of traditional Indian cooking and vibrant yellow color comes from turmeric, a flavorful spice and powerful anti-inflammatory agent. The use of turmeric in the Vedic tradition dates back at least 4,000 years. Historically, turmeric was used not only as a seasoning element, but also played a role in religious ceremonies and was used medicinally within the ayurveda (“science of life”) holistic health tradition.

Modern nutritional science has confirmed that turmeric does have powerful healing properties. Clinical trials have found turmeric to ward off indigestion and heartburn, lower risk of heart attack, repair stem cells in the brain, and possibly even fight off cancer cells.

It may be particularly beneficial for an aging population. According to recent research, adding just a gram of turmeric to breakfast can help to improve the memory of those at risk for cognitive impairment.

Meditation does lead to a sort of enlightenment.

According to ancient yogic texts, years (or lifetimes) of practicing meditation can lead to eventual enlightenment, or union with the divine. When the fluctuations of the mind are completely stilled, one is free to experience the true Self — the divine soul.

Whether or not meditation is a path to the direct realization of God is, of course, difficult to prove. But modern science has shown that regular meditation can enlighten the mind in a number of ways.

Stilling the mind through a meditation practice leads to actual changes in the brain — mindfulness training has been found to boost neuroplasticity, and even to physically rebuild the brain’s gray matter. An eight-week course of meditation shrinks the amygdala — the brain’s fight or flight center — and thickens the prefrontal cortex, an area associated with awareness, concentration and decision-making.

This can have a powerful physical and psychological effect. Mindfulness decreases stress by lowering levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the body. Meditation is also a powerful way to combat mental health issues: A group meditation training was recently found to be just as effective as a traditional course of individual Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in lessening symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Among highly experienced meditators, incredible feats of mind have been documented. One study found that years of meditation can create changes in the brain neural networks that break down the perceptual and psychological barrier of self/other, causing the meditator to experience a sense of total harmony between themselves and the world around them. Normally, the brain switches between the extrinsic network (used when we focus on things outside of ourselves) and the intrinsic network, which involves self-reflection, emotion and self-referential thought. Rarely do these networks act together. But brain scanning studies revealed that some monks and experienced meditators are able to keep both networks active at the same time during meditation, allowing them to feel a literal sense of oneness.

“Meditation is not just blissing out under a mango tree,” French Buddhist monk Mattheiu Ricard, “but it completely changes your brain and therefore changes what you are.”

Everything really may be interconnected.

We might think of physics and spirituality as being completely antithetic to one another, but recently, some research in theoretical and quantum physics has lent scientific support to the basic tenets of Eastern mysticism. Austrian physicist and bestselling author Fritjof Capra writes, “physics leads us today to a world view which is essentially mystical.”

Here’s the short story: According to Eastern metaphysics, everything in the universe is interconnected, and consciousness pervades all matter, while the view most commonly held in Western science suggests that consciousness only occurs in humans as a byproduct of physical changes in the brain. But some research in quantum physics now supports the Eastern view that perhaps mental states do not rely exclusively on material states, and therefore consciousness may exist separately from any sort of changes occurring in the physical brain. In other words, there can be non-local connections between physical and mental phenomena — even matter that appears to be separate may, in some way, be connected.

“Quantum theory… reveals a basic oneness of the universe,” Capra writes in The Tao of Physics. “It shows that we cannot decompose the world into independently existing smallest units. As we penetrate into matter, nature does not show us any isolated ‘building blocks,’ but rather appears as a complicated web of relations between the various parts of the whole. These relations always include the observer in an essential way. The human observer constitutes the final link in the chain of observational processes, and the properties of any atomic object can be understood only in terms of the object’s interaction with the observer.”

Noted theoretical physicist David Bohm, too, came to the conclusion that there is an underlying unity to the elements that, to our limited perception, appear to be separate.

“Mind and matter are not separate substances,” Bohm wrote in The Undivided Universe. “Rather, they are different aspects of our whole and unbroken movement.”