Weekend Videos - Spies, Secrets of FB, & the Sun

Check out these videos to rev up your learning this weekend.

• Why our lives will keep revolving around the Sun (BBC Ideas, under 5 minutes)

• Inside Facebook: Secrets of the Social Network (Al Jazeera, under 47 minutes)

• How British spies made a cyber immune system (CNN, under 4 minutes)

Can Technology Save Us from Global Warming?

Via Jones Oil.

Sunday Reads

Sunday Anecdote: In 1898, young Albert Einstein applied for admission to the Munich Technical Institute and was turned down. The young man, the Institute declared, "showed no promise" as a student. By 1905, he had formulated his special theory of relativity.

• Is China really scared of horror films? (BBC)

• How Islamic State takes its terror to the Web. (Der Spiegel)

• AAP denying Delhi the Janlokpal bill they deserve. (ET)

• An ecological disaster. (Telegraph India)

Sunday Reads - Confident Idiots + MBA Education

• Trilokpuri: Once upon a riot. (Indian Express) Also read Ajmer Rode's haunting poem on Trilokpuri riots of 1984. (Outlook)
• When island nations drown, who owns their seas? (Boston Globe)
• We are all confident idiots. (Pacific Standard)
• MBA education and the Pareto of management theories. (Business World)

Saturday Infographic - Monsoon plays catch-up

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Monsoon is the lifeline of the Indian economy. A good Monsoon brings in bountiful rainfall, which in turn can push up aggregate demand, generate employment and higher incomes, all of which will raise overall economic growth.

This year, pre-Monsoon predictions were not encouraging because of the El Nino factor. However, things seem to have worked well of late, especially after a flop show in July. Here's an infographic detailing the total area sown and water levels in reservoirs across regions, compared with last year's data. 

Infographic sourced from Financial Express.

Sunday Reads - Death at 30K ft & Page's Comeback

• The Story of how Larry Page got forced from the top of Google and came back a decade later. (Business Insider)
• Climate Catastrophe: A Superstorm for Global Warming Research (Spiegel Online)
• The Blue Screen of Death at 30,000 ft. (FP)
• Where should the judiciary draw the line? (Hindu)

McIntosh Apple & Slaves of Nazis

The BBC Magazine is one of my favourite reads. Here are two really interesting pieces from the latest issue.

The Apple Mac has risen spectacularly since its launch 30 years ago. But the apple variety it's named after has gone in the opposite direction. What happened to the McIntosh Apple? 

Click here to know about the Brazilian ranch where the Nazis kept slaves. 

I suggest you explore the complete issue.

From the archive: The Explainer: Cash Reserve Ratio

Sunday Reads - Dark side of the polar world & Who knows what

• A rape shatters a family. (NYT) Please read this article to gain a perspective no Indian journal will explore.

• Google now: behind the predictive future of search. (The Verge) 

• The dark side of the while, polar world. (BBC)

• Who knows what: For decades the sciences and the humanities have fought for knowledge supremacy. Both sides are wrong-headed. (Aeon)

The 27 members of the European Union (EU27) are going through a harrowing debt crisis. Here is a Reuters graphic on the debt to GDP ratio of EU27.

Sunday Reads - The Best of Politics, Economics, & Ideas

The Best of Reads Series is restarting after a six week break.

• Mizoram's Wild Flower. (Open Magazine)

• Why one Indian mother gave away her daughters. (BBC)

• Elephants Dying in Epic Frenzy as Ivory Fuels Wars and Profits. (NYT)

• I often have to cut into the brain. (Granta)
  
  
  
  

Sunday Reads - The Best of Politics, Economics, & Ideas

Five, not the usual four, reads for your Sunday!

• Alexander the not so Great: History through Persian eyes. (BBC)

• Indian scientists try to predict the Monsoon, the country's real finance minister. (AlJazeera)

• The truth about human nature. (The New Atlantis)

• We are all climate change idiots. (NYT Sunday Review)

• Engineering students form massive chunk of IIM Ahmedabad Class of 2014. (ET)

The global economic turmoil is taking its toll on the emerging economies. The Economist has an interesting graph on the GDP growth rates of the BRIC economies.

After a dream decade, something is amiss. China is struggling to grow as fast as 8% (its GDP expanded by 7.6% in the year to the second quarter). India, a country that once aspired to double-digit growth, can now only dream of ridding itself of double-digit inflation. None of the biggest emerging economies stand on the edge of a dramatic precipice, but their economic prospects have nonetheless started to head downhill. [...] But it is not simply a demand-side phenomenon; the underlying rate of sustainable growth may also be less impressive than previously thought. As the IMF pointed out this week, the last decade or so may have “generated overly optimistic expectations about potential growth”.

Sunday Reads - The Best of Politics, Economics, & Ideas

This is easily one of the best collection of reads I could gather for your Sunday.

• China falsifies data to mask slowdown. (NYT)

• Forget Edison: This is how history's greatest inventions really happened. (The Atlantic)

• No country for armed men: Pakistan is in such bad shape, even the generals do not want to run it. (Foreign Policy)

• Audio-Visual Slideshow: How India plans to tackle its growing water crisis. (BBC)

Eurostat estimates that 24.7 million people in the EU27 (27 members of the European Union) were unemployed in April. The Reuters graphic below breaks those numbers out on a country-by-country basis.

3 Thursday Readings - The Best of Politics, Economics, & Ideas

Every week at least twice I publish lists of interesting reads under the title, The Best of Politics, Economics, & Ideas.  

Today, I am sharing just three articles; I am sure they will make for some really interesting readings.

At CIA, a convert to Islam leads the terrorism hunt

Colleagues describe Roger as a collection of contradictions. A chain-smoker who spends countless hours on a treadmill. Notoriously surly yet able to win over enough support from subordinates and bosses to hold on to his job. He presides over a campaign that has killed thousands of Islamist militants and angered millions of Muslims, but he is himself a convert to Islam. Read the complete article on the Washington Post Web site. 

Global warming close to becoming irreversible

The world is close to reaching tipping points that will make it irreversibly hotter, making this decade critical in efforts to contain global warming, scientists warned... As emissions grow, scientists say the world is close to reaching thresholds beyond which the effects on the global climate will be irreversible, such as the melting of polar ice sheets and loss of rainforests. Read the complete article on the Scientific American Web site.

Want to know your history of activity on Google products?

Google has announced an interesting feature called Account Activity recently. It sums up what you have been doing with Google products each month, including whom you have mailed most or which places you have visited etc. Check out how to find out your Google activity on the NDTV Gadget site.

Deve Gowda is in news, for all the wrong reasons, like always. When I was in college (yes, I did go to college!), I once participated in a 'Sell This To' contest. I was asked to sell 'sleeping pills to Deve Gowda'. How tough it is? Well, selling a refrigerator to an Eskimo is easier. Check out this twitpic which I found here. 

Go Green: Eat Insects!

Any discussion on climate change throws up a lot of terms like global warming, acid rain, greenhouse gases, chlorofluorocarbon, and carbon trading. 

I am not going to any of these; instead I will share an interesting infographic on how our consumption patterns influence emission levels. I found it here. 

This one says that eating insects, rather than red meat and other types of meat, can reduce emission levels. There are a lot of communities around the world that eat insects; take for example, the folks in Thailand and China and a lot of tribes in the Agency area in Andhra Pradesh (north coastal Andhra Pradesh).

However, some of you will find the idea of eating insects revolting; whatever I found this seriously share-worthy!

I wanted to title this post, 'What's your favourite insect?'. But then I settled for a little less sensational title!

Infographic: Renewable Sources of Energy

Over the last decade, environmental issues, like climate change and global warming, have been a favourite of the GDPI panelists at India's top B-Schools; loads of essay and GD topics on these issues have been administered.

Global Warming and climate change have dominated media space for several years now. We are constantly reminded of the impeding doom that is waiting to visit us unless we stop pumping carbon dioxide and other poisonous fumes into the atmosphere.

Some say climate change is natural, i.e. part of the Earth's climate cycle. However, leading climatologists blame the rapidly changing global climate patterns on anthropogenic global warming, i.e. they attribute the rise in the earth's surface temperature to man's ruinous and exploitative activities. The chief culprit, among other reasons, is the use of fossil fuels, like oil and gas.

Let us not get into this never-ending debate; deniers and conformists have entrenched positions on this controversial issue.

However, there is one thing that environmentalists, climatologists, (most) governments, businesses (though reluctantly, of course) and the society at large agree on - use of alternate sources of energy, i.e. renewable sources of energy. 

There are a lot of renewable sources of energy, like solar, hydro, ocean, and geothermal. It is generally agreed that these so-called clean technologies are expensive and have notoriously large gestation plan (i.e. return on investment period) to yield tangible benefits for the users in the short run.

Find below an infographic that details the importance and benefits of the different types of renewable sources of energy. I found this here.

While most of the data here relate to the United States, I suggest that you look at the larger picture and extract valuable understanding of the issue under focus.

If you wish to copy this infographic, please acknowledge this blog!

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