AFRO-NETS> Supercourse Newsletter, July 24 2003

[Ron LaPorte <super1+@pitt.edu>]

Supercourse Newsletter, July 24 2003
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http://www.pitt.edu/~super1
 
 
Dear Friends,
 
Denish Moorthy from the All India Medical Science Center, wrote a 
beautiful essay about the Supercourse. It should make all 10,000 of 
us on the faculty to feel good. Denish, thanks so much.
 
The Future of Supercourse is in the People
 
What lies still is easy to grasp;
What lies far off is easy to anticipate;
What is brittle is easy to shatter;
What is small is easy to disperse.
 
Yet a tree broader than a man can embrace is born of a tiny shoot;
A dam greater than a river can overflow starts with a clod of earth;
A journey of a thousand miles begins at the spot under one's feet.
 
Lao Tzu
Author of Tao Te Ching (Path of the Way)
Translated by Peter A. Merel
 
"The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step." This is 
a quote, erroneously credited to Confucius, was in fact was from Lao-
Tzu?s work Tao Te Ching (Path of the Way). To depict the powerful ef-
fect of the Supercourse, a famous person in India once paraphrased it 
as "A thousand people in thousand different locations are taking a 
thousand steps". Be it one or be it thousand steps, the journey of a 
thousand miles will still have to be undertaken. Mathematically, if a 
thousand people have to make a journey of a thousand miles, then a 
million miles will have to be travelled. The proportion remains the 
same, but what changes is the perception of the journey. With thou-
sand companions the thousand miles seem like one mile. That is the 
power of the Supercourse.
 
Globalization is reaching into every corner of the world. With the 
boom in technology, finance and information, the only way to stop 
globalization would be by taking action detrimental to a nation?s in-
terest. Each nation is developing its own cushion to absorb the ef-
fect of globalization. One major change that is taking place in the 
remotest of countries is the spread of information. The traditional 
networks of information are combining with the modern Net driven re-
sources to bring about a sea change in the way the world is per-
ceived. A small effort to utilize this network would reap huge divi-
dends. No one heard of ARPAnet till Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn developed 
the cross networking protocols. People in Benin will not hear about 
how India is combating iodine deficiency unless it is brought to 
their notice; and what better way to bring it to them than with the 
Supercourse. The global impact of the Supercourse is enormous. Most 
of the concepts in qualitative research are not by the use of measur-
able indicators. This does not mean that it is not science.
 
This Wednesday we had a chance to meet with key people from Magee-
Womens Hospital and Chatham College of Pittsburgh, PA. Both of these 
facilities are the leading institutions in the area of women?s health 
and we had a wonderful opportunity to discuss the future development 
of the women?s health Supercourse. We would like to thank Irma Go-
ertzen, Kathleen Waleko, Mary Zubrow, Debbi Linhart, Jeanne Cooper, 
Yvonne Bukstein, and Brenda Biearman for their valuable input. If you 
have any ideas about the development of women?s health Supercourse, 
please e-mail us.
 
We are a thousand strong, and our journey has just begun; we are a 
tiny shoot, we are a clod of earth; with the power of the Internet, 
we will grow into the big tree and the big dam! Archimedes once said, 
"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and 
I shall move the world." The lever is the Internet, the fulcrum is 
the Supercourse and the goal is "Telepreventive Medicine for all".
 
Best regards from Pittsburgh,
 
Denish, Ron, Faina, Mita, Chandra, Akira, Eugene, Beatriz, Eun Ry-
oung, Soni, Abed, Rania, Arin, Tomoko, Tom, Deb
mailto:super1+@pitt.edu
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