Ripples In A Teacup

I’ve heard the words “cryptocurrency” and “bitcoin” for many years now and had a very vague idea of what these meant. I mean, I “knew” what a cryptocurrency is and that a bitcoin is a type of cryptocurrency, but didn’t really “know”, “know” what these meant, if you “know” what I mean. A week ago, I started writing a short story which has as one of its characters a man who trades in bitcoins and suddenly there was a reason for me to really “know” what these words meant. So, I turned to Wikipedia and other internet sources to tell me what cryptocurrencies are and found that cryptocurrencies are digital or virtual currencies that are not issued by governments or banks. They are decentralized and operate independently of any authority. Bitcoin is the first and most well-known cryptocurrency, but there are hundreds or possibly thousands of other cryptos, such as Ethereum, Ripple, and Litecoin. Transactions with cryptocurrencies are recorded on a public ledger called a blockchain. Which beg...

  I think I was around ten years old when I heard that Aryabhatta invented the zero. I had vision of this clever mathematician sitting on the banks of a river and conjuring up the zero. However, I soon became skeptical. How could someone invent the zero? I mean, if before the invention of zero, someone had two mangoes, she eats both of them, her friend asks her how many mangoes do you have left, what would she say? Would she be at a total loss for words because the zero hadn’t been invented until then? When I asked this question to my mother (a software engineer), she told me that what Aryabhatta invented was actually the concept of zero. At that point in time, I did not question her any further, though I did not fully comprehend what she told me. I hear about the “invention of zero” time and again and these days I want to scream, what was invented wasn’t zero, but the modern notation and symbol for zero. The concept of zero as a placeholder in positional numeral systems was in...

Climate change and global warming are very high up on my ‘worry list’ and I found this CNN report about European ski resorts closing because there's no snow, highly distressing. It looks like climate change on account of global warming is on an irreversible course. This year, Europe is having a very mild winter and ski resorts closing down is just one of its impacts. To make things worse, a new study says that up to half of the world’s glaciers could disappear even if ambitious climate targets are hit. We know that we are running out of time and so, what can we do to fight this looming catastrophe? Individual personal sacrifices like using public transport or not using plastic bags will help, but I feel the need of the hour is for big policy changes like: switching to nuclear energy en masse – yes, I feel the cleanliness of nuclear fuel outweighs the risk posed by a leak; banning the manufacture of single use plastic bags and other plastic products – yes, ban the manufacture...