• About Vinay Gupta

    Vinay Gupta is a consultant on disaster relief and risk management.

    http://hexayurt.com/plan

    Microfinance at the tipping point?

    by  • April 6, 2008 • The Global Picture • 0 Comments

    “Microfinance started in the 1970s with a focus on using this breakthrough to help end poverty,” said Sam Daley-Harris, director of the Microcredit Summit Campaign, a nonprofit endeavor that promotes microfinance for families earning less than $1 a day. “Now it is in great danger of being how well the investors and the microfinance institutions [...]

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    Theistic evolution…. pass the crack pipe

    by  • April 6, 2008 • Personal, Science • 0 Comments

    Among Collins’s most controversial beliefs is that of “theistic evolution”, which claims natural selection is the tool that God chose to create man. In his version of the theory, he argues that man will not evolve further. “I see God’s hand at work through the mechanism of evolution. If God chose to create human beings [...]

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    Death by blogging?

    by  • April 6, 2008 • Trivia and Media • 0 Comments

    To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths. But friends and family of the deceased, and fellow information workers, say those deaths [...]

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    more on gender stereotypes in animals

    by  • April 5, 2008 • The Global Picture • 0 Comments

    It’s thought of as a sexual stereotype: boys tend to play with toy cars and diggers, while girls like dolls. But male monkeys, suggests research, are no different. This could mean that males, whether human or monkey, have a biological predisposition to certain toys, says Kim Wallen, a psychologist at Yerkes National Primate Research Center [...]

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    Late april fools? Sex, drugs, and singing mice.

    by  • April 5, 2008 • Science • 0 Comments

    A team of researchers led by brain scientist John Yeomans at the University of Toronto in Canada used special microphones to eavesdrop on mice during sex. When they let a male mouse into a female’s cage, he approached her with a series of whistle calls and then, during intercourse, sang more complex chirp songs until [...]

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    Breakfast of the Gods

    by  • April 5, 2008 • Trivia and Media • 0 Comments

    http://www.webcomicsnation.com/poyorick/botg/series.php?view=archive&chapter=10960 A cereal comic in which all the brand characters from US breakfast cereals (tony the tiger, etc.) live together in a wonderland, menaced by Count Chocula. It’s kind of astonishingly well done. Two books online, more coming, total labor of love.

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    The UN Fatwa on Freedom of Speech?

    by  • April 1, 2008 • The Global Picture • 3 Comments

    The Islamic Conference (OIC) has allegedly punched a hole in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by inserting the following text into some UN docs. To report on instances where the abuse of the right of freedom of expression constitutes an act of racial or religious discrimination taking into account Articles 19(3) and 20 of [...]

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