President Bok, former President Rudenstine, incoming President Faust,
members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of
the faculty, parents, and especially, the graduates:

I’ve been waiting more than 30 years to say this: “Dad, I always told you
I’d come back and get my degree.”

I want to thank Harvard for this timely honor. I’ll be changing my job next
year  and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume.

I applaud the graduates today for taking a much more  direct route to your
degrees. For my part, I’m just happy that the Crimson has called me
“Harvard’s most successful dropout.” I guess that  makes me valedictorian
of my own special class – I did the best of everyone who  failed.

But I also want to be recognized as the guy who got Steve Ballmer to drop
out of business school. I’m a bad influence. That’s  why I was invited to
speak at your graduation. If I had spoken at your  orientation, fewer of
you might be here today.

Harvard was just a phenomenal experience for me.  Academic life was
fascinating. I used to sit in on lots of classes I  hadn’t even signed up
for. And dorm life was terrific. I lived up at  Radcliffe, in Currier
House. There were always lots of people in my dorm room late at night
discussing  things, because everyone knew I didn’t worry about  getting up
in the morning. That’s how I came to be the leader of the  anti-social
group. We clung to each other as a way of validating our rejection of all
those social people.

Radcliffe was a great place to live. There were more  women up there, and
most of the guys were science-math types. That  combination offered me the
best odds, if you know what I mean. This is where I learned the sad lesson
that improving your odds doesn’t guarantee success.

One of my biggest memories of Harvard came in January  1975, when I made a
call from Currier House to a company in Albuquerque that had begun making
the world’s first personal computers. I offered to  sell them software.

I worried that they would realize I was just a student  in a dorm and hang
up on me. Instead they said: “We’re not quite ready, come see us in a
month,” which was a good thing, because we hadn’t  written the software
yet. From that moment, I worked day and night on this  little extra credit
project that marked the end of my college education
and the beginning of a  remarkable journey with Microsoft.

What I remember above all about Harvard was being in the midst of so much
energy and intelligence. It could be exhilarating, intimidating, sometimes
even discouraging, but always challenging. It was an  amazing privilege -
and though I left early, I was transformed by my years at Harvard, the
friendships I made, and the ideas I worked on.

But taking a serious look back  I do have one big regret.

I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world
the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunity that
condemn millions of people to lives of despair.  I learned a lot here at
Harvard about new ideas in  economics and politics. I got great exposure to
the advances being made in the  sciences.  But humanity’s greatest advances
are not in its discoveries  but in how those discoveries are applied to
reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education,
quality health
care, or broad economic  opportunity  reducing inequity is the highest
human achievement.

I left campus knowing little about the millions of  young people cheated
out of educational opportunities here in this country. And  I knew nothing
about  the millions of people living in unspeakable poverty and disease in
developing countries.

It took me decades to find out.

You graduates came to Harvard at a different time. You  know more about the
world’s inequities than the classes that came before. In your years here, I
hope you’ve had a chance to think about how  in this  age of accelerating
technology  we can finally take on these inequities,  and we can solve
them.

Imagine, just for the sake of discussion, that you had a few hours a week
and a few dollars a month to donate to a cause  and  you wanted to spend
that time and money where it would have the greatest  impact in saving and
improving lives. Where would you spend it?

For Melinda and for me, the challenge is the same: how can we do the most
good for the greatest number with the resources we have.

During our discussions on this question, Melinda and I read an article
about the millions of children who were dying every year in poor countries
from diseases that we had long ago made harmless in this country. Measles,
malaria, pneumonia, hepatitis B, yellow fever. One disease I had never even
heard of, rotavirus, was killing half a million kids
each year  none of them in the United States.

We were shocked. We had just assumed that if millions  of children were
dying and they could be saved, the world would make it a priority to
discover and deliver the medicines to save them. But  it did not. For under
a dollar, there were interventions that could save  lives that just weren’t
being delivered.

If you believe that every life has equal value, it’s revolting to learn
that some lives are seen as worth saving and others are not. We said to
ourselves: “This can’t be true. But if it is true, it  deserves to be the
priority of our giving.”

So we began our work in the same way anyone here would  begin it. We asked:
“How could the world let these children die?”

The answer is simple, and harsh. The market did not  reward saving the
lives of these children, and governments did not subsidize  it. So the
children  died because their mothers and their fathers had no power in the
market and no voice in the system.

But you and I have both.

We can make market forces work better for the poor if  we can develop a
more  creative capitalism,  if we can stretch the reach of market forces so
that more people can make a profit, or at least make a  living, serving
people who are suffering from the worst inequities. We also  can press
governments  around the world to spend taxpayer money in ways that better
reflect the values of the people who pay the taxes.

If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that
generate profits for business and votes for politicians, we will have found
a sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world. This task is open-ended.
It can never be finished. But a conscious effort to answer this challenge
will change the world.

I am optimistic that we can do this, but I talk to skeptics who claim there
is no hope. They say: “Inequity has been with us since the beginning, and
will be with us till the end  because people just  don’t  care.” I
completely disagree.

I believe we have more caring than we know what to do  with.

All of us here in this Yard, at one time or another,  have seen human
tragedies that broke our hearts, and yet we did nothing – not because we
didn’t care, but because we didn’t know what to do. If  we had known how to
help, we would have acted.

The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity.

To turn caring into action, we need to see a problem, see a solution, and
see the impact. But complexity blocks all three steps.

Even with the advent of the Internet and 24-hour news, it is still a
complex enterprise to get people to truly see the problems. When an
airplane crashes, officials immediately call a press  conference. They
promise to investigate, determine the cause, and prevent similar crashes in
the future.

But if the officials were brutally honest, they would say: “Of all the
people in the world who died today from preventable  causes, one half of
one  percent of them were on this plane. We’re determined to do everything
possible to solve the problem that took the lives of the one half of one
percent.”

The bigger problem is not the plane crash, but the  millions of preventable
deaths.

We don’t read much about these deaths. The media covers what’s new – and
millions of people dying is nothing new. So it stays in the background,
where it’s easier to ignore. But even when we do see  it or read about it,
it’s difficult to keep our eyes on the problem. It’s hard to look at
suffering if the situation is so complex that we don’t know how to help.
And so we look away.

If we can really see a problem, which is the first step, we come to the
second step: cutting through the complexity to find a solution.

Finding solutions is essential if we want to make the most of our caring.
If we have clear and proven answers anytime an organization or individual
asks “How can I help?,” then we can get action – and we can make sure that
none of the caring in the world is wasted. But  complexity makes it hard to
mark a path of action for everyone who cares – and that makes it hard for
their caring to matter.

Cutting through complexity to find a solution runs through four predictable
stages: determine a goal, find the highest-leverage approach, discover the
ideal technology for that approach, and in the meantime, make the smartest
application of the technology that you already have – whether it’s
something sophisticated, like a drug, or something simpler, like a bednet.

The AIDS epidemic offers an example. The broad goal, of course, is to end
the disease. The highest-leverage approach is  prevention. The ideal
technology would be a vaccine that gives lifetime immunity with a single
dose. So governments, drug companies, and foundations fund vaccine
research. But their work is likely to take more than a
decade, so in the meantime, we have to work with what we have in hand – and
the best prevention approach we have now is getting people to avoid risky
behavior.

Pursuing that goal starts the four-step cycle again.  This is the pattern.
The crucial thing is to never stop thinking and working – and never do what
we did with malaria and tuberculosis in the 20th century – which is to
surrender to complexity and quit.

The final step – after seeing the problem and finding an approach – is to
measure the impact of your work and share your successes and failures so
that others learn from your efforts.

You have to have the statistics, of course. You have  to be able to show
that a program is vaccinating millions more children. You have to be able
to show a decline in the number of children dying from these diseases. This
is essential not just to improve the program, but also  to help draw more
investment from business and government.

But if you want to inspire people to participate, you have to show more
than numbers; you have to convey the human impact of the work – so people
can feel what saving a life means to the families affected.

I remember going to Davos some years back and sitting on a global health
panel that was discussing ways to save millions of lives. Millions! Think
of the thrill of saving just one person’s life – then multiply that by
millions.- Yet this was the most boring panel I’ve ever been on – ever. So
boring even I couldn’t bear it.

What made that experience especially striking was that I had just come from
an event where we were introducing version 13 of some piece of software,
and we had people jumping and shouting with excitement. I love getting
people excited about software – but why can’t we  generate even more
excitement for saving lives?

You can’t get people excited unless you can help them see and feel the
impact. And how you do that – is a complex question.

Still, I’m optimistic. Yes, inequity has been with us  forever, but the new
tools we have to cut through complexity have not been with us forever. They
are new – they can help us make the most of our caring ? and that’s why the
future can be different from the past.

The defining and ongoing innovations of this age – biotechnology, the
computer, the Internet – give us a chance we’ve never had before to end
extreme poverty and end death from preventable disease.

Sixty years ago, George Marshall came to this commencement and announced a
plan to assist the nations of post-war Europe. He said: “I think one
difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous  complexity that the
very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make it
exceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear
appraisement of the situation. It is virtually  impossible at this distance
to grasp at all the real significance of the situation.”

Thirty years after Marshall made his address, as my class graduated without
me, technology was emerging that would make the world  smaller, more open,
more visible, less distant.

The emergence of low-cost personal computers gave rise to a powerful
network that has transformed opportunities for learning and communicating.

The magical thing about this network is not just that it collapses distance
and makes everyone your neighbor. It also dramatically increases the number
of brilliant minds we can have working together on the same problem – and
that scales up the rate of innovation to a staggering degree.

At the same time, for every person in the world who has access to this
technology, five people don’t. That means many  creative minds are left out
of this discussion — smart people with practical intelligence and relevant
experience who don’t have the technology to hone their talents or
contribute their ideas to the world.

We need as many people as possible to have access to this technology,
because these advances are triggering a revolution in what human beings can
do for one another. They are making it possible not just for national
governments, but for universities, corporations, smaller organizations, and
even individuals to see problems, see approaches, and measure the impact of
their efforts to address the hunger, poverty, and  desperation George
Marshall spoke of 60 years ago.

Members of the Harvard Family: Here in the Yard is one of the great
collections of intellectual talent in the world.

What for?

There is no question that the faculty, the alumni, the  students, and the
benefactors of Harvard have used their power to improve the lives of people
here and around the world. But can we do more? Can Harvard dedicate its
intellect to improving the lives of people who will  never even hear its
name?

Let me make a request of the deans and the professors  the intellectual
leaders here at Harvard: As you hire new faculty, award tenure, review
curriculum, and determine degree requirements, please  ask yourselves:

Should our best minds be dedicated to solving our biggest problems?

Should Harvard encourage its faculty to take on the world’s worst
inequities? Should Harvard students learn about the  depth of global
poverty  ? the prevalence of world hunger ? the scarcity of clean water
?the girls kept out of school ? the children who die from diseases we can
cure?

Should the world’s most privileged people learn about  the lives of the
world’s least privileged?

These are not rhetorical questions  you will answer with your policies.

My mother, who was filled with pride the day I was admitted here – never
stopped pressing me to do more for others. A few days before my wedding,
she hosted a bridal event, at which she read aloud a letter about marriage
that she had written to Melinda. My mother was very ill with cancer at the
time, but she saw one more opportunity to deliver her
message, and at the  close of the letter she said: “From those to whom much
is given, much is expected.”

When you consider what those of us here in this Yard  have been given – in
talent, privilege, and opportunity – there is almost no limit to what the
world has a right to expect from us.

In line with the promise of this age, I want to exhort each of the
graduates here to take on an issue – a complex problem, a deep inequity,
and become a specialist on it. If you make it the focus of your career,
that would be phenomenal. But you don’t have to do that to make an impact.
For a few hours every week, you can use the growing power of the Internet
to get informed, find others with the same interests, see the barriers, and
find ways to cut through them.

Don’t let complexity stop you. Be activists. Take on  the big inequities.
It will be one of the great experiences of your lives.

You graduates are coming of age in an amazing time. As you leave Harvard,
you have technology that members of my class never had. You have awareness
of global inequity, which we did not have. And with that awareness, you
likely also have an informed conscience that will torment you if you
abandon these people whose lives you could change with  very little effort.
You have more than we had; you must start sooner, and carry on longer.

Knowing what you know, how could you not?

And I hope you will come back here to Harvard 30 years from now and reflect
on what you have done with your talent and your energy. I hope you will
judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also
on how well you have addressed the world’s deepest inequities – on how well
you treated people a world away who have nothing in common with you but
their humanity.

Good luck.

______________________________________________________

Bill Gates, Capitalist turned Humanist _,_._,___

 

Things That Make Life Easier… Or Not

CUP & COOKIES

Are you fed up with bringing bananas to work or school only to find them bruised and squashed? Banana Guard allows you to safely transport and storage individual bananas letting you enjoy perfect bananas anytime, anywhere.


LOCK-CUP

Lock Cup – Anti-Theft Coffee Cup. Are you tired of others stealing your coffee cup? Well now there’s a solution. The Lock – Cup has a hole which prevents most people from using it. Only the owner of the cup can use his/hers shaped key to close the hole.


PENGUIN TEA TIMER

Making tea, though easy to do, is also time consuming. Once you pour the hot water into the cup, you must patiently hover over it, waiting for the tea to steep. Well, the Penguin Tea Timer happily does the waiting for you.
Place your tea cup under the beak and set it to the desired time. As you turn the timer dial, the beak lowers the tea into the hot water. When time is up, a bell sounds and the penguin automatically lifts his beak, removing the tea bag from the water.


TRANSPARENT TOASTER

You love toast, but you always burn it? Then this invention us for you.
This transparent toaster allows you to see the bread while it is toasting so you just have to take it out when the colour is right. This idea is based on a transparent heating glass technology.


BUTTER CUTTER

One Click Butter Cutter controls your portion as an important part of staying healthy. This ingenious butter cutter delivers one standard pat with each click of the handle.


GIANT REMOTE

Never lose your remote again!
With giant buttons, this extra-large remote is easy to use and impossible to lose. It’s a 6-in-1 remote so you can use it to control your TV, VCR, DVD player, satellite, cable and auxiliary A/V device. It even features glow-in-the-dark buttons, so you can easily find the remote in the dark.


DAYCLOCK

What day is today? You don’t know? Then you need a DayClock. It’s uniquely designed to keep track of weekly events like your golf day, card night, movie night, and so much more. It’s ideal for vacations and cruises when it’s easy to lose track of the day.


LASER SCISSORS

Cutting a straight line has never been easier. Just aim the pin-point laser and follow the line. The scissor blades are stainless steel and cut very clean with a micro serrated edge.


ILUMINATING CAR SLIPPERS

Do you get up at night to drink water, go to the toilet…Do you wish you could see in the dark? Remarkably bright LED lights are triggered by your footsteps and light up the floor 30 feet in front of you; ultra-soft plush style are extra comfortable and cozy warm.


“THE THING” – INFANT PILLOW

The Zaky is an ergonomic infant pillow designed by a mom to mimic the size, weight, touch, and feel of her hand and forearm to help her baby with comfort, support, protection, and development. The Zaky can help calm your baby and help your baby sleep better through the night.


TRAVELER’S PHRASE BOOK T-SHIRT

If you are traveling a lot and don’t always know the language of the country you are visiting, then this T-shirt is for you. It has a phrase book printed on it so just point a finger at the pictogram you need and then point it twice at the question mark, which means, “Where is it?” and in no time you have found what you were looking for… or not.


MODERN LADDER

Realy cool modern ladder.


LATEST DESIGN WAITER/WAITRESS TRAYS

Anatomic tray, for waiters. No more dropping trays.



WHEEL-MOVING BENCH

Whether you want to sit in the sun or in the shade, near the river or under the tree… now you have your movable bench, to sit wherever you like.

“Life is too short and friends are too few.”

I know people who work 12 hours a day, six days a week, or more.
Some people do so because of a work emergency where the long hours are only temporary. Other people I know have put in these hours for years.  I don’t know if they are working all these hours, but I do know  they are in the office this long. Others put in long office hours.  Because they are addicted to the workplace. Whatever the reason   for putting in overtime, working long hours over the long term is harmful to the person and to the organization.

There are things managers can do to change this for everyone’s  benefit. Being in the office long hours, over long periods of time, makes way for potential errors. My colleagues who are in the office  long  hours frequently make mistakes caused by fatigue. Correcting these mistakes requires their time as well as the time  and energy of others. I have seen people work Tuesday through  Friday to correct mistakes made after 5 PM on Monday. Another problem is that people who are in the office for long   hours are not pleasant company. They often complain about other  people (who aren’t working as hard); they are irritable, or  cranky, or even angry. Other people avoid them. Such behaviour   poses problems, where work goes much better when people work together instead of avoiding one another.  As Managers, there are things we can do to help people leave the  office.

First and foremost is to set the example and go home ourselves. I   work with a manager who chides people for working long hours. His  words quickly lose their meaning when he sends these chiding  group
e-mails with a time-stamp of 2 AM, Sunday. Second is to encourage people to put some balance in their lives. For instance, here is a guideline I find helpful:

 

1) Wake up, eat a good breakfast, and go to work.

2) Work hard and smart for eight or nine hours.

3) Go home.

4) Read the comics, watch a funny movie, dig in the dirt, play  with your kids, etc.

5) Eat well and sleep well.  This is called recreating. Doing steps 1, 3, 4, and 5 enable step  2.

Working regular hours and recreating daily are simple concepts.  They are hard for some of us because that requires personal

change. They are possible since we all have the power to choose to do them.  In considering the issue of overtime, I am reminded of my eldest son. When he was a toddler, If people were visiting the apartment, he would not fall asleep no matter how long the  visit, and no matter  what time of day it was.! He would fight off sleep until the visitors left.. It was as if  he was afraid that he would miss  something. Once our visitors’ left, he would go to sleep. By this  time,  however, he was over tired and would scream through half  the night with nightmares. He, my wife, and I, all  paid the price for his fear of missing out.
Perhaps some people put in such long hours because they don’t  want to miss anything when they leave the office.  The trouble with this is that events will never stop happening. That is life! Things happen 24 hours a day.

Allowing for little rest is not ultimately practical. So, take a nap. Things will happen while you’re asleep,  but you will have the  energy to catch up when you wake.

Hence “LOVE YOUR JOB BUT NEVER FALL IN LOVE WITH YOUR COMPANY

(Because you never know when it stops loving you)”

 Narayana Murthy

 

 

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Article sourced from: Lasting Legacies (Tata Review- Special Commemorative Issue 2004), brought out by the house of Tatas to commemorate the 100th birth anniversary of JRD Tata on July 29, 2004.

As all of you know, I have Primary Peritoneal Cancer.  This cancer has only recently been identified as its OWN type of cancer, but it is essentially Ovarian Cancer.  Both types of cancer are diagnosed in the same way, with the “tumour marker” CA-125 BLOOD TEST , and they are treated in the same way – surgery to remove the primary tumour and then chemotherapy with Taxol and Carboplatin.

Having gone through this ordeal, I want to save others from the same fate.   That is why I am sending this message to you and hope you will print it and give it or send it via E-mail to everybody you know.

One thing I have learned is that each of us must take TOTAL responsibility for our own health care.  I thought I had done that because I always had an annual physical and PAP smear, did a monthly Self-Breast Exam, went to the dentist at least twice a year, etc.  I even insisted on a sigmoidoscopy and a bone density test last year.  When I had a total hysterectomy in 1993, I thought that I did not have to worry about getting any of the female reproductive organ cancers.

LITTLE DID I KNOW.  I don’t have ovaries (and they were HEALTHY when they were removed), but I have what is essentially ovarian cancer.  Strange, isn’t it?

These are just SOME of the things our Doctors never tell us: ONE out of every 55 women will get OVARIAN or PRIMARY PERITONEAL CANCER.

The “CLASSIC” symptoms are an ABDOMEN that rather SUDDENLY ENLARGES and CONSTIPATION and/or DIARRHEA. I had these classic symptoms and went to the doctor.  Because these symptoms seemed to be “abdominal”, I went to a gastroenterologist.  He ran tests that were designed to determine whether there was a bacteria infection; these tests were negative, and I was diagnosed with “Irritable Bowel Syndrome”.  I guess I would have accepted this diagnosis had it not been for my enlarged abdomen.  I swear to you, it looked like I was 4-5 months pregnant!  I therefore insisted on more tests.

They took an X-ray of my abdomen; it was negative.  I was again assured that I had Irritable Bowel Syndrome and was encouraged to go on my scheduled month-long trip to Europe.  I couldn’t wear any of my slacks or shorts because I couldn’t get them buttoned, and I KNEW something was radically wrong.  I INSISTED on more tests, and they reluctantly scheduled me for a CT-Scan (just to shut me up, I think).  This is what I mean by “taking charge of our own health care.”

The CT-Scan showed a lot of fluid in my abdomen (NOT normal).  Needless to say, I had to cancel my trip and have FIVE POUNDS of fluid drawn off at the hospital (not a pleasant experience I assure you), but NOTHING compared to what was ahead of me. Tests revealed cancer cells in the fluid.  Finally, finally, finally, the doctor ran a CA-125 blood test, and I was properly diagnosed.

I HAD THE CLASSIC SYMPTOMS FOR OVARIAN CANCER, AND YET THIS SIMPLE CA-125 BLOOD TEST HAD NEVER BEEN RUN ON ME, not as part of my annual physical exam and not when I was symptomatic.  This is an inexpensive and simple blood test!

PLEASE, PLEASE TELL ALL YOUR FEMALE FRIENDS AND RELATIVES TO INSIST ON A CA-125 BLOOD TEST EVERY YEAR AS PART OF THEIR ANNUAL PHYSICAL EXAMS.

Be forewarned that their doctors might try to talk them out of it, saying, “IT ISN’T NECESSARY.”  Believe me, had I known then what I know now, we would have caught my cancer much earlier (before it was a stage 3 cancer).  Insist on the CA-125 BLOOD TEST; DO NOT take “NO” for an answer!

The normal range for a CA-125 BLOOD TEST is between zero and 35.  MINE WAS 754.  (That’s right, 754!).  If the number is slightly above 35, you can have another done in three or six months and keep a close eye on it, just as women do when they have fibroid tumours or when men have a slightly elevated PSA test (Prostatic Specific Antigens) that helps diagnose prostate cancer.

Having the CA-125 test done annually can alert you early, and that’s the goal in diagnosing any type of cancer – catching it early. Do you know 55 women?  If so, at least one of them will have this VERY AGGRESSIVE cancer.  Please, go to your doctor and insist on a CA-125 test and have one EVERY YEAR for the rest of your life.  And forward this message to every woman you know, and tell all of your female family members and friends.  Though the median age for this cancer is 56, (and, guess what, I’m exactly 56), women as young as 22 have it.   Age is no factor.
 
Gene Wilder and Pierce Brosnan (his wife had it, too) are lobbying for women’s health issues, saying that this test should be required in our physicals, just like the PAP and the mammogram.  PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT TO SEND THIS OUT TO ALL THOSE YOU CAN..  BE IT MALE OR FEMALE, IT SHOULD NOT MATTER, AS THEY CAN FORWARD IT ALSO TO THOSE LOVED ONES THEY KNOW.