A 4 year old boy ships a toy overseas to his friend and gets to see his reaction when he receives it!

Imagine a little kid who wants to send a toy to his friend overseas.  He ships it to his friend. The person who delivers it also takes video footage of the little boy who is so excited to receive the gift.  The video footage is then sent back to the kid who mailed the package.  You may be wondering which company is this that provides this level of service to its customers!  Although, this is a real example, rest assured, there is no traditional shipping company that can provide such revolutionary results. 

However, there is a new revolution that is happening in the shipping industry.  No, it does not involve teleporting, hovercrafts or star trek's holodeck.  This new revolution is called social shipping.  It involves harnessing the power of our social network and applying it to a very simple concept in our life - moving things from one place to another.  In the process, they will result in such revolutionary levels of service that is unparalleled in any public shipping company today.

From times immemorial, humanity has always had the need to ship goods from one place to another.  We have evolved from horseback riding messengers to fedex planes.  There is a new wave in the industry today called social shipping. Apparently, this evolution hasn't stopped yet.  At the very core, social shipping involves using your social network to send goods from one place to another. It could be as simple as sending a highly valuable document such as a passport or sending a bicycle in the trunk of your car through a friend who just happens to be headed in that direction.  For that service delivered by your friend, you are glad to compensate them.

One of the very first companies in this area is manyship.com. The above example of a boy shipping a toy was a real transaction that happened on manyship.com.  Manyship.com enables their visitors to post their trips online and others can search to see who is going to a particular destination and if they have anything they can send; they can initiate a conversation and make it happen.

It might sound a little scary that you are sending goods through people you may not know, but if you really look at it, every friend began as a stranger. Social shipping websites are now competing to see who can figure out the best way to connect people with shipping needs and at the same time establish a high level of trust among their users.  We have already seen that websites that arrange car pools, enable renting your couch etc. who deal with the same issue of trust have faced no problem. Today, there are millions of users at these kinds of websites actively participating and exchanging goods and services. So, it seems reasonable to say that it is only a matter of time that social shipping becomes a common phenomenon and sites like manyship.com may thrive.

High protein diet can cause osteoporosis

Recently, I was reading a book on gourmet vegetarian cooking and a Karma-Free diet when I came across this startling fact that high protein diet has been shown to cause osteoporosis in several studies.

A lot of us eat meat to ensure that we get enough protein in our diet.  However, there are a lot of unintended effects on our body, of which osteoporosis is one of them. The author of this book deals with the subject of vegetarianism and how it makes tremendous sense to become a vegetarian both for our physical well being and spiritual well being.  Here is an excerpt from the book, The Higher Taste, based on the teachings of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada:

Nutrition Without Meat

Announcing that one is a vegetarian almost always elicits a predictable question: "What about protein?" To this, a vegetarian might well reply, "What about the elephant? The bull? The rhinoceros?" The ideas that meat has a monopoly on protein and even that large amounts of protein are required for energy and strength are myths.

During digestion, most protein breaks down into its constituent amino acids, which are then used by the body for growth and tissue replacement. Of the twenty-two amino acids, the body can synthesize all but eight. These eight "essential" amino acids exist in abundance in nonflesh foods. Dairy products, grains, beans, and nuts are all concentrated sources of protein. Cheese, peanuts, and lentils, for instance, contain more protein per ounce than hamburger, pork, or porterhouse steak. A study by Dr. Fred Stare of Harvard and Dr. Mervyn Hoarding of Loma Linda University made extensive comparisons between the protein intake of vegetarians and that of flesh-eaters. They concluded that "each group exceeded twice its requirement for every essential amino acid and surpassed this amount by large margins for most of them.

For many Americans and Europeans, protein makes up more than 20 percent of their diet, nearly twice the quantity recommended by the World Health Organization. Although inadequate amounts of protein will cause loss of strength, the body cannot use excess protein; rather, it is converted into nitrogenous wastes that burden the kidneys and is eventually passed from the body, taking calcium with it. A number of studies have now linked the overeating of protein to the rise in osteoporosis. Although scientists have long known that osteoporosis results from reduced calcium in the bones, they are now coming to understand that one of the main causes of this deficiency is too much protein in the diet.

Maggie Doyne - Amazing courage at 18!

How old are you? If you are over 18 and feel like you haven't achieved much or if you feel that you have achieved a lot, just take a look at what Maggie did when she was only 18! Would you have this courage?