2nd weekend of Apr'13

This  weekend,  I  have  been  heavily  influenced by Anil Ananthswamy, the
science  journal  writer  who  is  the  author of “The Edge of Physics”. He
covers  extensively  the  trails  of  extra-ordinary men and women who have
dedicated  their  lives  to  discovering  the  various facets of science in
general  and  astro  physics  in  particular.  In  the book he captures the
difficulties under which experiments are held and the hazards in conducting
them  be  it  in  underground  mines,  frozen  sheet  of  Lake  Baikal, the
Antarctica, the deserts of Chile or that of Tibet. Interested souls can see
his  video  on  inktalks.com and also try browsing through his book or more
lazily google him out.


Inspired by his talk, I did some googling on 2 things i.e. Mcmardo station
in Antartica and Discovery Hut. This weekend I attach a small peek into
these two entities. Hope you like it.

Mcmardo
The  station  owes  its  designation  to  nearby McMurdo Sound, named after
Lieutenant Archibald McMurdo of H.M.S. Terror, which first charted the area
in 1841 under the command of British explorer James Clark Ross.
McMurdo  Station  is  Antarctica's  largest  community  and  a  functional,
modern-day  science  station, which includes a harbor, three airfields (two
seasonal),  a heliport and more than 100 buildings, including the Albert P.
Crary  Science  and  Engineering  Center.  The  station is also home to the
continent's  only  ATM,  provided by Wells Fargo Bank. The primary focus of
the  work  done  at  McMurdo  Station is science, but most of the residents
(approximately  1,000  in  the summer and fewer than 200 in the winter) are
not  scientists, but station personnel who are there to provide support for
operations,    logistics,   information   technology,   construction,   and
maintenance.


Whats so unique is the temperature. A climatic peek is also attached fo
guesstimating the temperature and what actually is meant by really cold
weather.
|-------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------|
|Climate  data|       |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |
|for   McMurdo|       |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |
|Station      |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |
|-------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------|
|Month        |Jan    |Feb    |Mar    |Apr    |May    |Jun    |Jul    |Aug    |Sep    |Oct    |Nov    |Dec    |Year   |
|-------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------|
|Average  high|?0.2   |?6.3   |?14    |?17.4  |?19.0  |?19.1  |?21.7  |?22.8  |?20.8  |?15.5  |?6.7   |?0.8   |?13.69 |
|°C (°F)      |(31.6) |(20.7) |(7)    |(0.7)  |(?2.2) |(?2.4) |(?7.1) |(?9)   |(?5.4) |(4.1)  |(19.9) |(30.6) |(7.38) |
|-------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------|
|Daily mean °C|?2.9   |?9.5   |?18.2  |?20.7  |?21.7  |?23.0  |?25.7  |?26.1  |?24.6  |?18.9  |?9.7   |?3.4   |?17.03 |
|(°F)         |(26.8) |(14.9) |(?0.8) |(?5.3) |(?7.1) |(?9.4) |(?14.3)|(?15)  |(?12.3)|(?2)   |(14.5) |(25.9) |(1.33) |
|-------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------|
|Average low °|?5.5   |?11.6  |?21.1  |?24.9  |?27.1  |?27.3  |?30.1  |?31.8  |?29.4  |?23.4  |?12.7  |?6.0   |?20.91 |
|C (°F)       |(22.1) |(11.1) |(?6)   |(?12.8)|(?16.8)|(?17.1)|(?22.2)|(?25.2)|(?20.9)|(?10.1)|(9.1)  |(21.2) |(?5.63)|
|-------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------|
|Precipitation|15.0   |21.2   |24.1   |18.4   |23.7   |24.9   |15.6   |11.3   |11.8   |9.7    |9.5    |15.7   |202.5  |
|mm (inches)  |(0.591)|(0.835)|(0.949)|(0.724)|(0.933)|(0.98) |(0.614)|(0.445)|(0.465)|(0.382)|(0.374)|(0.618)|(7.972)|
|-------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------|

Discovery Hut


British explorer Robert Falcon Scott first established a base close to this
spot in 1902 and built Discovery Hut. This is still standing intact. Whats
unique is that it still has some of the food leftovers of the inhabitants
intact because of the freezing temperature.


(Embedded image moved to file: pic26924.jpg) View of the Discovery Hut
(imagine it dates back to 1902 and the pic is if 2011)


Some pics of the remnants inside the tent

(Embedded image moved to file: pic19072.jpg)(Embedded image moved to file:
pic06270.jpg)
(Embedded image moved to file: pic05829.jpg)
And as I always say, bouquets and brickbats welcome

-Sukhi

2nd weekend of Jan'13

Innovations are being developed at a rapid pace across different areas.
This weekend I am enclosing a newspaper article on a new such product
innovation i.e. Gravitylight which basically uses gravity to provide
lighting. It is cheap, easy to handle and has the prowess to solve the
lighting problems across most of the developing world. Interested souls can
do googling to find out more on the same.

The  problem  of bringing light to remote parts of the developing world has
been  tackled  in  the  past  with  everything  from solar-powered lamps to
wind-up   devices  and  rechargeable  batteries  –  all  of  which  require
relatively expensive kit or physical effort by the user.
But  two  London-based  designers  have  now  developed a light source that
operates  on the stuff that surrounds you – earth, rocks or sand – with the
helping hand of gravity.
Developed  by Martin Riddiford and Jim Reeves over the last four years, the
GravityLight  is  simply charged by a bag that is filled with around 9kg of
material  and  hung  from  a  cord  below the light. As the bag descends, a
series  of  gears  inside  the  device  translates this weight into energy,
providing  30  minutes  of  light. The light strength can be adjusted, from
strong  task lighting to a longer-lasting low-level glow, and two terminals
on  the  front  allow it to be used as a generator so it can recharge other
devices including radios and batteries.
The project originally emerged from a brief by charity Solar Aid to come up
with  a  low-cost light source as an alternative to the ubiquitous kerosene
lamps  that  provide the main source of light across the developing world –
but which come with their own set of health problems.
The  World  Bank  estimates  that 780 million women and children around the
world  inhale  a  volume  of  smoke  equivalent  to  smoking two packets of
cigarettes  a day – leading to the statistic that 60% of female lung-cancer
victims  in  developing  nations  are non-smokers. The fumes also cause eye
infections  and  cataracts, while 2.5 million people per year suffer severe
burns  from  kerosene  lamps  in  India  alone.  It  also comes with a huge
financial  burden:  the cost of kerosene for lighting alone can account for
20% of household income.



(Embedded image moved to file: pic31107.jpg)



(Embedded image moved to file: pic30191.jpg)

As I always say, brickbats and bouquets welcome

-Sukhi

2nd weekend of Nov'12

We must have come across many books, lectures, lecturers on being happy and
content. This weekend lets spend some time on a person who has been
un-officially rated as the happiest man on earth. A brief about him is
attached below. What a time to talk of happiness; the festivities of light
just round the corner. Interested souls can do goggling to know more about
him; whatever you may rate this write-up, but the person is interesting for
sure.



Matthieu  Ricard  (born  15  February  1946)  is a French Buddhist monk who
resides   at   Shechen  Tennyi  Dargyeling  Monastery  in  Nepal.  Born  in
Aix-les-Bains,  Savoie,  France,  he  is  the son of the late Jean-François
Revel  (born Jean-François Ricard), a renowned French philosopher, and grew
up  among  the  personalities  and ideas of French intellectual circles. He
first  travelled to India in 1967. His mother is the lyrical abstractionist
painter Yahne Le Toumelin, who has been a Buddhist nun since 1968.


He  worked  for  a  Ph.D.  degree  in  molecular  genetics  at  the Pasteur
Institute.  After completing his doctoral thesis in 1972, Ricard decided to
forsake  his  scientific  career and concentrate on the practice of Tibetan
Buddhism.


He lived in the Himalayas studying with the Kangyur Rinpoche and some other
great  masters of that tradition and became the close student and attendant
of  Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche until his death in 1991. Since then, Dr. Ricard
has dedicated his activities to fulfilling Khyentse Rinpoche’s vision.


Ricard’s  photographs  of  the  spiritual  masters,  the landscape, and the
people  of  the  Himalayas  have  appeared in numerous books and magazines.
Henri  Cartier-Bresson has said of his work, "Matthieu’s spiritual life and
his camera are one, from which springs these images, fleeting and eternal."
He  is  the  author  and  photographer  of Tibet, An Inner Journey and Monk
Dancers  of Tibet and, in collaboration, the photobooks Buddhist Himalayas,
Journey  to Enlightenment and recently Motionless Journey: From a Hermitage
in  the  Himalayas.  He  is  the  translator  of  numerous  Buddhist texts,
including The Life of Shabkar.


The  dialogue  with  his  father,  Jean-Francois  Revel,  The  Monk and the
Philosopher,  was  a  best  seller  in  Europe  and  was translated into 21
languages, and The Quantum and the Lotus (coauthored with Trinh Xuan Thuan)
reflects  his long-standing interest in science and Buddhism. His 2003 book
Plaidoyer  pour  le  bonheur  (published in English in 2006 as Happiness: A
Guide  to  Developing Life's Most Important Skill) explores the meaning and
fulfillment of happiness and was a major best-seller in France.


He  has  been  dubbed  the "happiest person in the world" by popular media.
Matthieu  Ricard  was  a  volunteer  subject  in  a  study performed at the
University  of  Wisconsin–Madison's  on  happiness,  scoring  significantly
beyond the average obtained after testing hundreds of other volunteers.


A board member of the Mind and Life Institute, which is devoted to meetings
and  collaborative  research  between  scientists and Buddhist scholars and
meditators, his contributions have appeared in Destructive Emotions (edited
by  Daniel Goleman) and other books of essays. He is engaged in research on
the  effect  of mind training on the brain, at Madison-Wisconsin, Princeton
and Berkeley.


He received the French National Order of Merit for his humanitarian work in
the  East.  For the last few years, Dr. Ricard has dedicated his effort and
the  royalties  of  his  books to various charitable projects in Asia, that
include  building  and  maintaining  clinics, schools and orphanages in the
region.  Since  1989,  he has acted as the French interpreter for the Dalai
Lama.


 As I always say, brickbats and bouquets welcome



-Sukhi

3rd weekend of Dec '12

This week saw the sad demise of Shri Ravi Shankar. I am not a soul dipped
in music and aware of the nuances. He had been positioned as a great son of
the soil; thats why I went through many of the obituaries of him on the
internet and the print media. As a follower of Amitabh Bacchan on twitter,
I came across an article on him by Sr. Bacchan on Dec 5.. I had shared the
same with few like minded souls; little did I know that it would be one of
the last written by a great man about another. This weekend I present this
article to all of you. I hope you like it. Such exceptional talent...all in
one blood stream, the senior Bacchan comments!!
One thing comes out clearly, all great people are primarily humble and
carry huge respect for others.

T 952 - My BLOG for the DAY .. interesting inside ...

srbachchan
DAY 1693
Just about in the Isles Dec 5, 2012 Wed 11:05 PM gmt



Strangely, and for the first time, I had a call from the house of the great
sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar. His wife Sukanya ji wanted to talk to me
to get me to talk to Ravi Shankar ji, because he had expressed a desire to
speak with me. He has been unwell she informed me and was going in for a
surgery on Thursday.They are in California, USA.

This has been a most unusual occurrence. We all know Pt Ravi Shankar, who
doesn’t, but I must admit that even though we have met on a few occasions,
his association with my Father, our association with his elder brother the
great dance exponent Uday Shankar, my own association with his son and
daughter in law, and with Uday Shankar ji’s actress daughter … this has
been the first time ever, when such a request was made to me.

Many years ago, Ravi Shankar ji and his wife Sukanya ji were house guests
at my brother’s house in London. There have been several occasions when we
have attended his recitals, where he has performed with the great sarod
maestro Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and the tabla guru Allah Rakha - a trio of
incomparable genius. Those occasions had through time and age covered an
entire era of my life and career ; their performances at one of the most
important classical Indian music soirees in Kolkata, then Calcutta, at the
Ballygunj Music Festival, are legendary. Legendary too are the escapades of
some of my music loving colleagues and I, when I was working as an
executive in Kolkata, keeping awake all night to listen to some of the
greatest artists of Indian Classical music perform at this festival. We
were never of any substancial means to buy the exorbitant tickets to enter
the open air events. But we waited behind closed barriers, listening to the
sound coming out of those old fashioned loud speakers, and then as time
passed by, quietly sneaking in, begging the authorities and seeking the
ticket stubs of those that were leaving the venue, posing as genuine ticket
holders that had gone ‘to spend a penny’, and gradually moving up in the
stands to get as close as possible to the stage, waiting for the performers
to strike the right raga, the early morning one, before dispersing.
Invariably it used to be Vilayat Hussain Saheb, another genius on the
sitar, that came on at that hour !!

Aahh !!! Those were the days !! ‘Those were the days’ … the famous Beatles
number. And then meeting the Beatle member, George Harrison at a common
friend’s place in London for lunch, and reminiscing those days of
psychedelia, Ravi Shankar, India and their Guru’s and the sitar, which if
there are any Beatles lovers among you, will remember the famous “Norwegian
Wood” and the strains of the sitar played by George Harrison.

Ravi Shankar ji’s elder brother, the renowned contemporary dance exponent,
Uday Shankar and his troupe that performed to world wide audiences in the
late 20’s, 30’s and 40’s, in London for King George, Paris, Europe and the
USA and his legendary pairing with Simki, his female counterpart, of great
renown, are now iconic references of his multifaceted genius in music and
dance.

What great times we have lived through ! Uday Shankar ji’s son, Ananda
Shankar, a friend, himself a great sitar exponent designed his own dance
and music troupe with his wife Tanushree, a member of the group. Many of
those performances I had the privilege to be invited to, and recently to
have given a voice over to a dance drama that has been choreographed by
Tanushree, after the sudden passing away of Ananda. Mamata Shankar,
Ananda’s sister and daughter of Uday Shankar ji, was in films as an
accomplished actress, doing mostly films in Bengali. I had last met Uday
Shankar ji at a literary friend of my Father’s in Kolkata. He had aged, his
glamour seen the vagaries of time, but his presence still invoking those
early years of his exquisite face and body, renowned for its masculine
virility that it propounded on the dance stage.

Pt Ravi Shankar and his sarod counterpart in the ‘jugal bandi’, Ustad Ali
Akbar Khan were pupils of the grand master Ustad Allauddin Khan, (Ustad Ali
Akbar Khan was Allauddin Khan’s son), known to be one of the greatest
musicians of the country. Ravi Shankar ji married his daughter, and long
after, a separation, he married Sukanya ji, his present wife. They have a
daughter, the famous sitar player Anushka Shankar. Ravi Shankar ji also had
a daughter through another liaison, who is the famous pop singer that won
several Grammy Awards a few years back, Norah Jones.

Such exceptional talent … all in one blood stream !!

But tonight to get a call from this great master, this legend and icon of
Indian music, must go down as one of my most privileged moments. He just
wished to speak to me. He is unwell and shall be undergoing a surgery on
Thursday. He said he and his wife loved my work … whew !! … and then he
blessed me !

I pray that all goes well with him and his treatment. Would it be asking
too much for all our Ef to pray for his good health ? Thank you …

Amitabh Bachchan

As I always say, brickbats and bouquets welcome

-Sukhi

1st weekend of Oct'12

Water as all know is going to be a scarce commodity. Over the years
research is on to find out ways and means of saving water and making the
best from the vailable resources of water, be it permanent sources like
water bodies or the temporal one like rain. This weekend, please find
attached a small write-up on Water Footprint. It is a measure of usage of
water for surving of a community or that required for preparing something.
Though teh concept is not new but not very common. We can do our bit by
choosing items which require lesser water to prepare over others. For the
interested souls, one may refer www.waterfootprint.org.
Concept

The  water  footprint of an individual, community or business is defined as
the  total  volume  of  freshwater  used  to produce the goods and services
consumed  by the individual or community or produced by the business. Water
use  is  measured in water volume consumed (evaporated) and/or polluted per
unit  of  time.  A  water  footprint can be calculated for any well-defined
group  of  consumers (e.g., an individual, family, village, city, province,
state  or  nation)  or  producers  (e.g.,  a  public  organization, private
enterprise  or  economic  sector).  The water footprint is a geographically
explicit  indicator,  not  only showing volumes of water use and pollution,
but  also  the  locations.  However,  the  water footprint does not provide
information  on  how  the  embedded  water negatively or positively affects
local water resources, ecosystems and livelihoods.
Components


A  water footprint consists of three components: blue, green, and grey. The
blue  water  footprint is the volume of freshwater that evaporated from the
global blue water resources (surface water and ground water) to produce the
goods and services consumed by the individual or community. The green water
footprint  is  the  volume  of water evaporated from the global green water
resources  (rainwater  stored in the soil as soil moisture). The grey water
footprint  is  the  volume  of  polluted  water  that  associates  with the
production  of  all goods and services for the individual or community. The
latter  can  be estimated as the volume of water that is required to dilute
pollutants  to  such  an extent that the quality of the water remains at or
above agreed water quality standards.
Some facts and figures
a.  The  production  of one kilogram of beef requires 15 thousand litres of
water  (93%  green,  4%  blue,  3%  grey  water footprint). There is a huge
variation  around  this global average. The precise footprint of a piece of
beef  depends  on  factors  such  as  the type of production system and the
composition and origin of the feed of the cow.
b. The water footprint of a 150-gram soy burger produced in the Netherlands
is  about  160 litres. A beef burger from the same country costs about 1000
litres.
c. The water footprint of Chinese consumption is about 1070 cubic meter per
year  per  capita.  About  10% of the Chinese water footprint falls outside
China. In comparison to that, the figure reads 980 cubic meter.
d.  Japan  with  a  footprint  of 1380 cubic meter per year per capita, has
about 77% of its total water footprint outside the borders of the country.
e.  The  water  footprint  of  US citizens is 2840 cubic meter per year per
capita. About 20% of this water footprint is external. The largest external
water footprint of US consumption lies in the Yangtze river basin, China.
f.  The global water footprint in the period 1996-2005 was 9087 Gm3/yr (74%
green, 11% blue, 15% grey). Agricultural production contributes 92% to this
total footprint.
g.  Water  scarcity  affects over 2.7 billion people for at least one month
each year.
Why bothering about your water footprint?


Freshwater  is  a  scarce  resource; its annual availability is limited and
demand is growing. The water footprint of humanity has exceeded sustainable
levels  at  several places and is unequally distributed among people. There
are  many  spots  in  the  world where serious water depletion or pollution
takes  place:  rivers running dry, dropping lake and groundwater levels and
endangered  species  because  of  contaminated  water.  The water footprint
refers  to the volumes of water consumption and pollution that are ‘behind’
your daily consumption.


As I always say, brickbats and bouquets welcome

-Sukhi