We all knew it was bad. This is the confirmation. CNN-IBN investigation of water in India’s metro cities: New Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai. How is it in the rural areas if its bad in the metros? Not that bad actually.
Read the full story here.
Author: Pradeep
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Seeing Experiment
Before reading the whole post, look at the theme header image and tell me what your first instantaneous reaction was. Done? Now read on.
Shirin started this off. She wrote a post about seeing and believing and that got me thinking of doing a seeing experiment myself. The two are not connected. I asked two people to look at the theme of this blog and for their immediate reactions. Both said along the lines of:
“peaceful…beautiful…snow”
Three guys and three girls, just for balancing out gender probabilities. Just 1 because I don’t have the cash to carry out a world wide survey. I compared what they said with what was my first reaction to this theme.
I don’t know if they brooded over it and looked properly. But, I looked at it for about 5 seconds and this what I thought:
“Battle field…Deserted battlefield”
Why? Because I didn’t have time to take a look at it properly, I thought the clouds was smoke. The snow suggested winter. Winter is generally associated with death. That’s all I thought and what I said was: “Battlefield…Deserted battlefield”.
I meant a just abandoned battlefield. Somewhere, where a battle has just taken place. Odd.
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Typhoon in the Philippines
Preetam Rai of Global Voices reports:
Cathy Bythesea is asking her readers to help her collect a thousand bears for Bicol. Bicol region was badly hit by the typhoon Reming. “Stuffed toys have been known to be effective comfort givers in times of extreme stress and fear. To children, stuffed animals are more than toys, they’re imaginary friends who are always ready to give comfort or play. They provide a certain amount of security in a sometimes scary world. Though it may be a small act, my heart’s desire is to bring as many stuffed toys – ideally friendly looking teddy bears to the children in the Bicol region. I am hoping to raise at least a thousand bears that I can send to the Albay province in time for Christmas
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Lotsa work
Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://pradx.wordpress.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on December 3, 2006 as per the permalink. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.
I dunno if you’ve experienced this yourself but you tend to finish a lot more when you’re having your exams as compared to when you’re not having one. I did the SEDS India website, reset my blog, deleted my rolls, contributed to the mailing lists, removed myself from Orkut and Facebook (darned things took a lot of my time – they’re time eaters) and read through 23 blogs (not blog posts everyday, which might be a greater no. ~50-60 posts everyday). All this besides studying..
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songs…
Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://pradx.wordpress.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on December 3, 2006 as per the permalink. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.
Some songs have an uncanny resemblance to either your life or your personality. I was listening to The Corrs (again??) and found that this song had this for me. I’ll search the net to see if I can find the song and put it up a later.
But here are the lyrics in question:
“Do you feel you’re someone else inside,
And no one understands (who) you are..”Trust me. No one in the world, not even me understands me completely and I always feel that I’m someone else inside.
“Then you stumble on tomorrow,
And trip over today”Well, not exactly..but this makes more sense:
“You’re racing for tomorrow,
Not finished with today”Jumping from one thing to another between my interests. When I’m studying, I’m thinking of project ideas…When I should be thinking project ideas..”Darn! Haven’t finished that chapter”.
“Would the sun shine brighter,
If you played a bigger part”I wonder..
“So you promise that tomorrow
[will] be different than today..”Always.
The song? ‘Would you be happier?’ – The Corrs. That’s a double whammy on the occassion tof 4 down 2 to go..
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India Together: SSA Review
Since the introduction of the central government’s Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) programme, enrolment numbers in schools have gone up. But how reliable and meaningful are the enrolment figures? Deepa A uncovers major indications of things having gone wrong in SSA’s quest for targets.
India Together: New indicators needed to track SSA -
Problems in India?
India may be doing well economically. But, what’s happening to the social structure?
Where are we headed?
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Welcome to the all-new Parallel Spirals
I deleted all the previous posts since they’re basically not the best of my writing. I will remain offline till 2nd December, 2006. But, you will see on the timestamp that the date is: 25-11-2006. This is thanks to WordPress.com’s timestamp edit feature.
I plan to limit myself seriously in this all-new blog. This is an attempt to make blogging a more productive experience. Feedback and comments are always welcome.
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November/December issue of The Planetary Report out
The November/December issue of The Planetary Report, magazine from The Planetary Society is out. While we’re at the Planetary Society’s blog, Emily Lakdawalla, has a wonderful set of images of the posters that Doug Ellison put together for the Mars Exploration Rover team at Cornell and NASA-JPL.
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SEDS-USA National Conference
Tim of “Where in the universe are Tim and Jen?” has written couple of posts on his experience of the SEDS-USA National Conference at the University of Central Florida. Hope you guys had a rocking time.
If anyone of you have blogged about this, send me your urls. Has anyone blogged about the SEDS-UK National Conference. More on that later.
Parallel Spirals 