Parambikulam is a scenic place situated in between the majestic Anamalai Ranges of Tamil Nadu and the Nelliyampathy Ranges of Kerala. The moment I..

Previously, I’ve written a couple of articles on going green, and how the environmentalists and industrialists worldwide are going crazy about inventing new techniques to contain global warming.

Now, it looks like going Green has been catching up with night clubs all over the world, where they can generate quite a lot of power from those electrifying teenage/middle-aged dancers thumping their feet, consciously or unconsciously, on the dance floor. This is what I call cool technology! The technology behind this may sound very simple, yet it appears to be powerful enough to generate about 60% (not sure if it is theoretical or practical) of the night club’s electricity.

It is a universal truth that burning of coal is one of the major causes of global warming, acid rain and other toxins in the air. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, about 3,700,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) is released into the atmosphere - by a typical coal plant in an year. It may sound oxymoronic if one talks about using coal and going green. Well, why not? Carbon Capture and Storage, or CCS in short, seems to be the technological answer to this oxymoron!? The US 2008 elections are red hot right now, and many who’ve voted for Obama or McCain are keeping their fingers crossed.

No sooner I entered this place than I felt eternal bliss - relieving me from the heat, dust and noise pollution of Chennai. The Azhiyar reservoir is serenely calm, beautiful, well-maintained and very clean. I was amazed to see people suddenly becoming conscious about ‘not to litter’ around the dam, even in the absence of a ‘No Littering’ sign board. Wow! this place really has the capability to transform normal care-free humans in to civic-conscious citizens. In the picture, you can see a big house at the far end of the reservoir. Wish I had a house like that..far from the madding crowd. Just me and nature, and..

I’m a shutterbug !!

Starting today, I will be posting a picture from one of the photo-sharing websites, and write a few words about why I like in the picture. I will try to associate the pic to the following themes:

* Society - the people, city, culture, etc
* Technology - ranging from the oldest to the newest, disruptive, gawky, funny, disruptive, etc.
You can also suggest/send in your pics, and a few words about the picture.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguisable from magic” - Arthur C. Clarke. True, isn’t it? I’ve always marvelled at technologies such as the television (TV), computers, cellular phones, portable music gadgets, CD, DVD, Blue-ray, and so on, the list is endless. But never have I wondered about what happens to them, or where they go, when they become kaputt and obsolete. I came across a scientific journal on e-waste where it was mentioned that more than 45 million tonnes of electronic gadgets are discarded worldwide, well, eventually piling…

The best way to start car pooling is among your colleagues. You’ll obviously know who’s coming from the same area as yours, and if you don’t try communicating using the internal messaging medium like corporate instant messenger or mailing groups. This is basically the trust factor, and it works most of the time; a colleague would be more comfortable traveling with you (or vice versa) than traveling with a stranger interested in car pooling. This principle applies very much to women who will not take the risk of commuting with a stranger who had advertised for car pooling.

In India, especially southern India, we’ve more than 320 days of bright sunlight, and most of the solar-driven appliances do not need direct sunlight…

I used to discuss with my dad and also with my friends that Tata would really deserve such praise from the international community if he had striven hard to bring us a cheap car that runs on alternate fuel, which sadly is not the fact. Well, I would say, Nano received just too much praise and exposure that it deserves.

I was just reading an interesting (and funny) article (NDTV.com) about TATA’s Nano and what it means to our billion plus population. The tile of the article is Nano: Firing a billion dreams, and I believe it is pointing to our country’s population. Firstly, more than 25% of the 1 billion are categorized under ‘below poverty line’ and another 25% as ‘middle class’. TATA’s Nano does fire a few million dreams (about 250 million if you consider just the middle class population which is by any terms HUGE!), and according …