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Another money making scam project: New 7 wonders of NATURE ?

Arun Prabhudesai — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 18:35:17 +0000

New 7 wonders of the NATURE ? give me a break !

This is stretching things a bit too much. With no affiliations from either UN or any other accredited organization Mr. Weber and his FOR-PROFIT Swiss organization – now called as NewOpenWorld Foundation – consider themselves “The One” for deciding all kinds of 7 wonders. Are you not satisfied with money you have already made by making a fool of millions of people and thereby filling your own pockets ?

During 7 wonders of the world voting, even though I wrote about the scam, I my self voted, just because it seemed that the voting got some kind of acceptance and would help Taj from Tourism perspective. However, now they are taking things too far by announcing the new 7 wonders of Nature. You are going to see a lot of negative forces from this blog in coming months.

After new 7 wonders of the world, they are requesting nominations for New 7 wonders of NATURE which will run till 08.08.08 . I dont understand why they did not go with new 8 wonders of nature as the culimation of this is going to happen on 08.08.08. Then after that maybe something like “New 9 wonders to make money” with results announcing on 09.09.09.

Here is what they have put on their website for New 7 wonders of NATURE:

The nominations will continue through 08.08.08. Then a panel of experts will create a list of 21candidatesÂ from which voters worldwide will electÂ the 7 wonders of nature. (Who are these panel of experts ?)

Criteria:Â
Nominations must be for a clearly defined natural site or natural monument that was NOT created or significantly altered by humans. Physical or natural phenomena like the northern lights, the gulf stream or shooting stars are not eligible.
The nominees MUST be one of the following:

natural site

natural monument

landscape

Categories:
Overview of the categories that help us to sort and evaluate your proposals:

Animal Reserve

Canyon, Fjord

Cave, Grotto

Coastline, Cliff

Forest, Wood

Geological site

Glacier

Mountain, Volcano, Rocks

Nature Conservancy Park

Oasis , Deserts

Prehistoric natural site

Underwater World, Reef

Water, Sea, Lake, River

Waterfall

other

Examples:

Valid examples are:

Aletsch Glacier,Â Switzerland

Baikal Sea, Russia

Dinosaur Provincial Park, Canada

Galapagos Island,Â Ecuador

Geirangerfjord, Norway

Grand Canyon, USA

Great Barrier Reef,Â Australia

IguaÃ§u Waterfalls, Argentina/Brazil

Ha Long Bay, Vietnam

Kilimanjaro,Â Tanzania

Redwood National Park, USA

Sagramatha Park, Nepal

Serengeti Park,Tanzania

The following examples are NOT valid:

Bird Migration

Gulf Stream

Monsoon Rain

North or South Po

Northern Lights

Milky Way

Make your nominations:

I have already covered quite a bit on the New 7 wonders of the world scam. Please see related posts to readÂ more on it.

I would be interested in hearing the comments of readers on what they think ?

Comeback by Taj Mahal at New Seven Wonders Voting

Arun Prabhudesai — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 20:14:39 +0000

I have been covering the flawed voting process for New seven wonders of the world quite frequently on this blog. I still feel it is a big money making activity. Earlier Taj Mahal was not in top seven, but according to the latest standings, Taj Mahal has climbed quite a few places to reach the top 7 spots.
The organization behind the “New seven wonders of the world ” campaign in their latest report mentioned that Aisans voted most in the last round of voting- thereby ensuring that Taj Mahal came into the top 7. In my earlier post I had doubts of Taj Mahal coming in top 7, but I guess Indians took this voting seriously in the last round. I am happy ! (even though I completely disagree with the way “N7W voting“ was carried out.)

Indian bloggers across the globe have covered this event in past few months and I guess that helped a bit.

photo suggested by webcure

Americans and Europeans have not been too enthusiastic about voting earlier, but they too are joining the badwagon. With last day of voting being 6th of July (only 15 days left), any thing can happen to the standings. There is still a high chance that Taj could be voted out.

I do not want to take any guesses, now that I have already been proved wrong once.

Currently in the top 10 are Great wall of China, Greece’s Acropolis, Mexico’s Chichen Itza pyramid, the Eiffel Tower, Easter Island, Brazil’s Statue of Christ Redeemer, the Taj Mahal and Jordan’s Petra.

Update: you may see this post multiple times in your feed reader. Please ignore them- I had some problems while posting. Things happen..

Yoga patents being granted by U.S Patents and Trademarks office: Does it mean anything ?

Arun Prabhudesai — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 05:05:51 +0000

By now most of you must have read or heard about the Yoga Patenting issue. Media has widely reported the strong views expressed by various Indian organizations against the granting of copyrights and patents to yoga postures by the U.S. Patents and Trademarks Office (USPTO).

I actually had a laugh when I read those reports last week. It is ridiculous for someone to go and file the patents on Yoga Postures, let alone granting them. If you ask any one who knows Yoga across the globe about who invented it, there is going to be unanimous answer. Yoga was taught and practised by Indian Rishis (sages) thousands of years ago. Patanjali Yoga Shastra was written nearly 5000 years ago in India. Most of the yogas performed today in India and West are mentioned in Patanjali Yoga Shastra. Infact, Yoga in its current form is not even 25% of what it was during that time.

However, all the information currently available is purely based on Newspaper reports. Indian government is in touch with the US Patent Trademarks office (USPTO) to get authenticity and clarification on this Yoga Patent issue. As per the newspaper reports, USPTO has already issued150 yoga-related copyrights, 134 patents on yoga accessories, and 2,315 yoga trademarks.

These patents were mostly filed by people on Indian origin living in United States. The postures or kriyas, as mentioned in ancient texts, have been known for thousands of years and Indian government can challenge the granting of copyrights on a premise that the product or the postures in this case are already known.

There was a similar patents case sometime back for Ayurvedic medicine based on Turmeric and Neem which India won. To overcome this problem India has overtaken a big project on digitizing the formulations on traditional and alternative forms of Ayurveda.

I guess we need to do something on similar lines for Yoga related postures and kriyas.

New 7 Wonders of the World: Scam to make millions of profit !

Arun Prabhudesai — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 04:22:05 +0000

The voting for new seven wonders of the world is one of the most talked about subject in blogosphere currently. I had resisted urge to post about it till now, but with it becoming increasingly visible that Tajmahal is not going feature in this Elite list, I had no option but to voice my reservation.

Okay, Can you tell me Why Taj does not feature in Top 7, it is the same why Sanjaya stayed for so long on American Idol. The public voting process is flawed.
The outcome is in the hands of millions of people, most of them who do not have either knowledge or are too knowledgeable about the voting process to actually manipulate the whole thing to tilt the result in the way they want. The 7 Wonders voting actually goes a step further. The organization behind this voting process is actually urging people to buy votes, thereby filling in their pockets. So more rich you are the more votes you can buy for your favorite wonders. Isn’t that cheap for a place in History ?

Here is the excerpt from Wikipedia about New 7 Wonders of the world

The New Seven Wonders of the World is a proposed revision of the Seven Wonders of the World, organized by a Swiss-based, for-profit corporation called New Open World Corporation (NOWC). The selection is being made by free and paid votes, through telephone or online. The first vote is free to registered members and additional votes may be purchased through a payment to NOWC. In addition to the sale of votes, NOWC relies on private donations, the sale of merchandise such as shirts and cups, and revenue from selling broadcasting rights.

So, this Swiss based firm is a “FOR PROFIT CORPORATION”, and where profits are involved, how can one have a fair and impartial voting ?

Even with all this background, I had not doubt that Taj Mahal would be in Top 5 if not top 3, purely based on the population we have. But I guess, I was wrong. If you think deeper, you will realize that although we have a huge population, more than 60% of the voting has happened through Internet, and Internet penetration in India is next to zilch as of now. Not only that, more than 97% of Indian population do not even know that something like this exists.

The number of Internet users in western world are atleast 20 times more and most of them are totally unaware of what Taj Mahal is. There are few other factors too, but the reasons I mentioned above are enough for Taj Mahal to get voted out.

Okay, even after all this I have voted and urge all of my readers to vote too. You never know :)

Register and cast your vote here, Don’t forget to spread the word on your blog. You can just copy the whole text verbatim if you want from here…

There are only 31 days remaining as of writing this post. The results will be announced on 7-7-7. Go ahead and cast your votes.

The history and geography of India.

Arun Prabhudesai — Sat, 19 May 2007 03:41:00 +0000

This is the 1st post in the 30 part series that I am doing on Key success factors for doing business in India – A 30 part series !, that I plan to do over next month.

The history and geography of India

For anyone who visits India, whether on business purpose or not it is very important that they understand the history of India. India is a diverse and cultural society. Most of the people still follow the the traditions laid down centuries ago. These traditions have their roots in Indias history. When I started writing this post, I was planning for a decent write-up on India’s history and geography, however, when I browsed the web for references, there was such a lot of information available, I thought it would not be too wise of me to repeat a lot of things and hence a short post with links to the best references available.

This post is also more of reference than my impressions of India’s history

Here are the list of resources on the web that the reader will find useful in understanding the history and geography of India.

Update: I have added Indian Historical Chronology and Significant Events pages. Makes an interesting reading.

Wikipedia: Pretty much everything about Indian History since Pre-historical Ages
Welcome to India: Another place where you will find tons of information on India’s history. They have some Information based on findings which dates back to 400,000 BC
A Timeline of India: A clickable wall of events
Kamat’s history of India: Good information on timelines, India’s freedom struggle, Religions, Art history, kings, queens, rulers etc….

The map in this post actually looks so old school, especially if you compare them with Google and MSN 3d maps ;)

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