Is Ushahidi the new paradigm in humanitarian work? The small Kenyan-born organization is, in the words of The New York Times, "Africa's Gift to Silicon Valley." Ushahidi, which means testimony in Swahili, started in the wake of Kenya's disputed election in 2007. It uses common mapping software usually used for social purposes for targeted humanitarian work. From The Times:

A prominent Kenyan lawyer and blogger, Ory Okolloh, who was based in South Africa but had gone back to Kenya to vote and observe the election, received threats about her work and returned to South Africa. She posted online the idea of an Internet mapping tool to allow people anonymously to report violence and other misdeeds. Technology whizzes saw her post and built the Ushahidi Web platform over a long weekend.

The site collected user-generated cellphone reports of riots, stranded refugees, rapes and deaths and plotted them on a map, using the locations given by informants. It collected more testimony -- which is what Ushahidi means in Swahili -- with greater rapidity than any reporter or election monitor.

Since then, Ushahidi's mandate has expanded dramatically. What started as a wiki tool allowing people to anonymously report election irregularities is now used as a crisis map in natural disasters, track votes in the Indian elections, and following medicine shortages. Because cellphone penetration is heavy even in the third world, the rapidly evolving Ushahidi's dev community has developed a mobile strategy. Ushahidi has become a humanitarian force -- albeit digitally -- in both the Haitian and Chilean earthquakes, where victims text messages to better organize relief. In the new paradigm, according to the Times, "victims supply on-the-ground data; a self-organizing mob of global volunteers translates text messages and helps to orchestrate relief; journalists and aid workers use the data to target the response."

Ushahidi, which had no venture-capital backing and uses open-source software, is tailor-made for re-engineering to each particular crisis in the developing world. The question that inevitably arises is: How many more *Ushahidi's* are possible should young people in the developing world received a better tech education? Can technology -- and, more important, a technology education -- lessen the gap between the Haves in the West and Asia and the Have Nots in the developing world? What do you think?

My third, last and happiest update on the women of the WASPs...They finally got their gold:

Can you pass a tissue? Look at that photo...those hands. Delicate as my late grandmother's, yet you know the history behind them. Those hands are representative of "1,100 young women, all civilian volunteers, [who] flew almost every type of military aircraft -- including the B-26 and B-29 bombers -- as part of the WASP program." Some women were too short for the program but somehow slipped through by standing tip-toe.

Yet because the women were civilian volunteers working to support the government, the government did little to support the 38 who died in the line of duty:

[26-year-old Mabel Rawlinson from Kalamazoo, Mich. ] was coming back from a night training exercise with her male instructor when the plane crashed...the military was not required to pay for her funeral or pay for her remains to be sent home. So -- and this is a common story -- her fellow pilots pitched in.

"They collected enough money to ship her remains home by train," says Pohly. "And a couple of her fellow WASPs accompanied her casket."

And, because Rawlinson wasn't considered military, the American flag could not be draped over her coffin. Her family did it anyway.

Now we know where the women got all their moxie from, eh?

But whether or not they lived to receive their Congressional Gold Medals, scores of us who learned all about how the Greatest Generation was composed of sacrificing baseball players and Rosie the Riveters, now know that there were also a group of Fly Girls who did things like tow "targets to give ground and air gunners training shooting -- with live ammunition."

And to have the awarding of their medals happen in March, Women's History Month, whose theme this year is "Writing Women Back into History," well, it's a little too much for this writer to comprehend without another box of tissues.

[Image: Columbia Missourian]

If you're reading this, you're online. Whether you're using a desktop, laptop, iPhone, or some other gizmo I've yet to hear about -- there are many -- you are fulfilling the daily prophesy of those who deem the Internet one of the most valuable tools of all time.

But is it a tool for peace? Yes, say some of the men and women who have the privilege of making nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize each year. The scientists, academics, former winners, and other select members of the intelligentsia had been fielding requests from groups lobbying for the Internet's nomination for months, but only last Tuesday did the committee officially do so.

Nearly 50 years ago, Marshall McCluhan described technology and the "mass media" -- a term he coined -- as "extensions of man," which enable our whims and ambitions. He could never have imagined the Internet of today, making his prescience all the more uncanny. The Internet is doubtless the most far-reaching, powerful "extension of man" created to date.

This isn't to say the Internet will win the peace prize -- there were a record 237 nominations this year -- but its nomination says a lot. While the Internet has facilitated innumerable good things, and indeed it has been used as a tool for peace, hasn't it also been used for the opposite? Each time a hate crime is committed, authorities mine the hard drives and online activities of the crime's perpetrator. For every positive the Internet facilitates, it seems to facilitate a negative.

Just this week, I logged on to Facebook to see that an old classmate from graduate school had posted a link to an article about a right-wing e-zine he just launched, Alternative Right. The article, titled "The 'New' Racist Right," posted on FrumForum.com, made a strong argument against Alternative Right for being a racist rant against anything that isn't lily white with a pronounced set of XY chromosomes.

From the comments posted, it was clear that AltRight has a number of passionate devotees. And of course, they use the Internet to rant against immigration, multiculturalism, feminism, interracial relationships, and pretty much everything else they view as a threat to their ethos of "radical traditionalism."

And that's pretty small fry, compared with other hate groups that rely on the Internet for their communication and recruitment efforts.

Yes, the Internet has done wonders for societies worldwide, improved people's lives, and been generally used in the name of progress. But isn't it also merely a tool for the wills of those who use it? A building can be used to shelter the homeless, or to build bombs. Likewise, the Internet is neither good nor evil -- it is merely an extension of mankind.

[Image: IICD from Wikimedia Commons]

If you saw The Cove, which won this year's Academy Award for best documentary, you're probably glad you're not at student at a Japanese grammar school. In certain parts of that country, dolphin meat is served to children, falsely identified as whale meat. Adults, too, are often served dolphin when they order whale, a staple especially in fishing communities in Coastal Japan.

Now, the filmmakers have set their sights on sushi restaurants in the U.S., namely one in California that was rumored to be serving whale meat, which is illegal here. With stiff fines up to $20,000 and as much as one year in prison, most Japanese restaurants stick with the standards: California rolls, spicy tuna, eel, etc.

But at The Hump in Los Angeles, patrons who ordered "omakase" -- or "chef's choice" -- were being served a helping of whale along with their sashimi, edamame, and fish roe.

The sting operation actually began last October, but took time to execute. The State of California has promised swift action, but has not disclosed exactly what the punishment will be. "This isn't just about saving the whales," says the film's director, Louie Psihoyos. "It's about saving the planet."

[Image: NYTimes.com]

Radio shock jock Howard Stern once again put his foot in it this week. Full disclosure: I have been a fan of the locker room conversational tone of the show and its often brutal honesty for over 20 years. (Though it is not inconceivable that my enduring loyalty of the show has more to do with the fact that I got into the habit of listening daily as a hormonal teenager.) This recent frisson is yet another instance where Howard Stern and I don't agree on an issue. The morning after Academy Award nominee Gabourey Sidibe lost her bid for Best Actress, the Stern show laid it on savagely. From CNN:

During Howard Stern's Sirius satellite show on Monday morning, co-host Robin Quivers commented that Sidibe should have looked around at the Oscars and noticed that none of the other working actresses looked like her.

"What movie could she play in?" Stern questioned on his live broadcast. "You feel bad because everyone pretends that she's part of show business, and she's never going to be in another movie."

Worse, in a beyond-the-pale provocative manner, Stern called the Oscar nominated actress a "fat black chick." Disgusting. Unpardonable, even. And misinformed, since Sidibe has two movie roles and a television role in the works. Still, the question arises: Can talent outweigh size in Hollywood? Could someone as talented and pure of heart but unconventionally attractive as Sibide is build a career in a town so comically shallow?

The effects of Howard Stern's comments have, you can imagine, alighted the blogosphere something ferocious. Hollywood-Elsewhere, for example, calls the comments "needlessly cruel" (they were), adding, "Stern isn't wrong in saying that her prospects are limited." The question as to whether or not an actress of Gabourey Sidibe's size could find work in Hollywood briefly came up when Vanity Fair very publicly -- and controversially -- passed her over for their cover of "Young Hollywood." Stern, for his part, has sort of backtracked -- saying that he made those comments out of concern for Sidibe's weight. What do you think?