12 October 2009: Inspirational people
Unfortunately, I’ve been a wee bit swamped with 360-2020 to-do’s but it’s important to go, “Wow” about people who are achieving exceptional goals (or even simply working towards them) so the ‘Inspirational People’ post is the one I’m most committed to — over and above my musings on global economics and technology.
(1.) President Barack Obama
It was announced last week that President Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize which has started a ruckus amongst those of three categories:
(1.) people who believe he doesn’t deserve it
(2.) people who believe he doesn’t deserve it………yet
(3.) people who believe it makes a joke out of him and the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize Committee
Personally, I think he was gracious in his acceptance speech and was right to highlight that the award is actually not for himself personally but “an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations.”
The commentary on the traditional media sites as well as the blogosphere has been remarkable (over 32,000 comments on HuffPost and Twitter crashed):
· http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6868905.ece
·
· http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/09/obama-wins-nobel-peace-pr_n_314907.html
· http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/6282611/Twitter-crashes-after-Barack-Obama-awarded-Nobel-Peace-Prize.html
Well, I don’t belong to any of the three categories because it’s simply mean-spirited not to recognize that by his Administration’s commitment to reaching out to the rest of the world again, that in itself is the first sure step towards promoting improved understanding between nations.
If one country decides not to even bother engaging in dialogue with another country, then the suspicions and misunderstandings will simply escalate to the point where ego and pride take over and they end up being at war instead of at peace.
There is also some speculation that the award is some sort of incentive to the Obama Administration to get their policies in order for the Copenhagen meeting on climate change:
The Obama Administration is certainly ambitious in its program for change; some of those aims may work out, some may not. What matters, though, is a sense that in President Obama the Americans actually have someone who has a vision for the world which reaches out beyond their own borders and systems of the past which aren’t working for others.
(2.) William Kamkwamba — inventor extraordinaire
Whilst watching Jon Stewart’s ‘Daily Show’ I was amazed by the story of William Kamkwamba, the co-author of ‘The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind’.
* http://williamkamkwamba.typepad.com/
During the Jon Stewart interview what struck me was William Kamkwamba’s inventiveness — given the poverty and famine situation in his country, which had also resulted in his loss of education (his family couldn’t afford to send him to school). Yet he cheerfully went about sourcing scrap metals and other materials to build his own magnets, circuit breakers and a…..windmill in the front yard of his family home.
This from a 14-year-old boy who had no access to the Internet and any of its “how to build…” resources. He worked it all out from a book he managed to borrow from a US-funded local library.
The anecdote he gave at the end of the Jon Stewart interview was a complete gem. This was a boy, in a remote village, who had no concept of Google. On being introduced to the Internet for the first time and the Google search engine he exclaimed, “Where was Google?!” — the implication being that it would have made his windmill building a lot easier if he’d had access to all those “how to build windmills” resources.
A brilliant young man and, hopefully, he passes his SATs and gets into MIT or other, and can return to his home country to share that know how on.
