Ripples In A Teacup

I read this headline on CNN and my heart stopped for a moment. Various factors cause Earth’s rotation to slow down. The friction of the tides on the ocean floor is one such factor. The melting of polar ice (driven by humans burning planet-heating fossil fuels) causing meltwater to move from the poles toward the equator, further slows the speed of the Earth’s rotation. Our planet’s liquid core spins independently of its solidouter shell. If the core slows down, the solid shell speeds up to maintainmomentum. So, despite polar ice melt exerting a slowing influence, overall theEarth’s rotation is speeding up. As a result, we will soon need to subtract a second for the first time. Though a second doesn’t sound like much, it is significant since computing systems are set up for activities such as stock exchange transactions and need to be accurate to a thousandth of a second. Apparently, manycomputer systems have software enabling them to add a second, but few have thecapability to s...

Yesterday night, I returned to Mumbai after a week in Switzerland. We had spent four snow-full days in Zermatt before we went to Geneva to spend the rest of our holiday. I love snow and can’t have enough of it. Two years ago, we had gone to Kashmir and I still remember that holiday with nostalgia. Switzerland was even better, mainly because of its better infrastructure. Why did we choose Zermatt? Mainly because it gets more snow than most other places in Switzerland and towards the end of winter, we didn’t want to go to Switzerland and not find any snow. This CNN article on an Italian mountain resort facing a snow crunch drives home the problem. There are so many people in this world, especially in Europe, who are dependant on snow for their livelihood. There are so many animals, especially polar bears, which need snow to thrive. As climate change and global warming reduce the amount of snow that we get every year and as winters turn milder and milder, this problem will become mor...

  Electric vehicles have grown in popularity over the years. As the planet gasps for ways to end pollution, electric vehicles seem to be a partial answer to this problem. Or is it really? In the 1800s when automobiles started to replace horse-drawn carriages, inventors experimented with different fuels. Initially, steam-powered vehicles came to the forefront, but soon gasoline powered vehicles started to dominate. Now, advancements in technology and concern about fossil fuels have put electric vehicles on the map. The global electric vehicle (EV) sector is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.9% between 2023 and 2035, according to new report from data and analytics company GlobalData,  Power Technology ’s parent company. Broken down by vehicle type, the  report  finds that the passenger EV market is expected to register a CAGR of 26.1% during this period, while the commercial EV sector is predicted to grow 15% during the same time f...

  I visited Kashmir in 2021, just after Christmas. We went to Srinagar first and then to Sonamarg. There were many things that I loved about Kashmir, but the best was the snow. There was some snow in Srinagar and a lot of it in Sonamarg. My brother and I made snowmen and threw snowballs at each other. Sonamarg was a snowy wonderland and I was so sad when it was time for us to leave. This winter, I read the news that the Kashmir valley got no snow until late January . The Himalayas had turned brown! The temperature in Kashmir valley was higher than in Delhi! Not just Kashmir, all the Himalayan regions in India faced a similar sitation. In Himachal Pradesh, the Kangra valley is experiencing drought after 17 years. Snow is missing from the Dhauladhar mountain range and in Shimla. In Uttarakhand, Mussoorie and Auli didn’t have any snow. Experts say the lack of snowfall is due to   the prevalence of El Niño and other meteorological conditions . According to a study titled ‘Wes...

Lots of promises are being made with regard to AI Chatbots , setting up sky-high expectations. Last November, when Sam Altman was asked what surprises the field would bring in 2024, he said that online chatbots like OpenAI’s  ChatGPT  will take “a leap forward that no one expected.” It is expected that A.I.-powered image generators  like DALL-E  and Midjourney will soon be able to instantly deliver videos as well as still images. These players will gradually merge with chatbots like ChatGPT. Chatbots will expand well beyond digital text by handling photos, videos, diagrams, charts and other media. They will exhibit behavior that looks more like human reasoning, tackling increasingly complex tasks in fields like math and science. As the AI technology moves into robots, chatbots will also help to solve problems beyond the digital world. AI is being advanced very quickly by tech companies like OpenAI, Google since AI technology relies on  neural networks , ma...

We have three air conditioners in our flat. We don’t use them very often. No, let me clarify further. We use ACs a lot less than my friends and our neighbours do. However, as global warming gets worse, ACs are an easy solution which actually worsens the problem in the long run. By 2050, India will be among the first places where temperatures will cross survivability limits, according to climate experts. And within that time frame, the demand for air conditioners (AC) in the country is also expected to rise nine-fold, outpacing all other appliances, according to a recent report by the International Energy Agency (IEA). Apparently, Singapore’s founding father thought air conditioning was the secret to his country’s success. My parents tell me that when they were young, in the 1970s and 1980s, air conditioning was a rarity in India, especially among the middle-classes, mainly because it was unaffordable. Now the prices of AC units are a lot more affordable and in India, middle-class ...

 Kwanzaa starts tomorrow, December 26 th and goes on until January 1 st , culminating in a communal feast called Karamu. Kwanzaa is an annual celebration of African-American culture that was invented and promoted by Maulana Karenga, a Black American leader. Karenga was active in the Black Power movement of the 1960s. He was a part of the Congress of Racial Equality and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In 1965, Karenga and Hakim Jamal co-founded the black nationalist group US Organization, which became involved in violent clashes with the Black Panther Party by 1969. In 1971, he was convicted of felony assault, torture, and false imprisonment of women. Karenga denied involvement and claimed the prosecution was political in nature. Karenga was imprisoned in California Men's Colony until he received parole in 1975. Karenga created Kwanzaa in 1966 to be a non-Christian, specifically African-American, holiday, that would be an alternative for black people to Christmas. Ka...