Be very aware and alert of negative emotions.
Let them come, but don’t identify with them. Don’t participate.
They deplete your energy, they keep you asleep.
They are harmful and heavy.
They make your life complicated.

- Swami Sukhabodhananda in the Speaking Tree, a daily column seen in the Times of India.

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• A pair of spectacles can cheer you up. [+]
  

  A study of old aged residents in the US found that in many cases depression is linked to poor vision - and eyeglasses dramatically improved the quality of lives of users.

• Whales swallow enough soup to fill a school bus
  

  Scientists have discovered that while lunging twards krill and fish with an open mouth, a single fin whale can engulf up to 2,900 cubic feet of the ocean “soup”, which is almost equal to a large school bus.

*to be continued

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Finally todays Sunday Times has something to write about;

• Will males get redundant ?

It seems so, probably in another 1,25,000 years as Dr. Bryan Sykes (Dr. DNA) postulates it to be. Due to the deterioration of the Y chromosome (the male chromosome) and researchers and scientists able to successfully create the male sperm, the need for a male will only be subjected to ‘personalized toys’.
This means that the ancient Indian art of Kamasutra will only be ‘affordable’ for a privileged few.
And also that the society will comprise of only three kinds of people: In the minorities we have the ‘personalized toys’ and ‘women who were men’ and in the majority, Women (Wo-Man : the new super hero).

But fear not oh brave men, the way by which we are degrading the environment this world won’t last even one-thousandth of the years that Dr. Dna has predicted and to solve this “little” problem of ours… read on !

• It Pays to Go Green

We all have heard of Global Warming and are well aware of the problems that we are facing in our day to day lives due to the impact of this man-made creation. But what about the solutions to counter the growing and disturbing circumstances that we have to live in.

One such solution is bringing down the emissions.
Emissions can be brought down by two means. One can either tweak existing technology to make it more energy efficient or else completely replace the existing technology with a cleaner one. But undertaking such conversions on a large scale demand a lot of capital investment. Hence, the world community came up with a novel market-based plan called the Clean Development Mechanism or CDM also known as Carbon Trading.

An industry in the developed world, which has a target to reduce emissions from its production process, would fund the conversion of an industry in the developing world (at a cheaper rate of course) and take credit for the carbon dioxide saved. A win-win, as the industry often mentions. The developing world would get cleaner technologies, the rich countries would meet their targets and the world would be a colder place.

The measure of improvement would be the tonnes of carbon dioxide not released. And for each tonne of carbon dioxide that any developing world industry saves by changing or tweaking its production, the UN body on climate change gives a certificate called Certified Emissions Reductions (CER). The company can then sell this certificate to any entity from the developed world which has targets to meet at a mutually agreeable price. The developed world entity gets to offset its targets against the certificate. To be pithy, a market to trade in carbon is what CDM is.
Indian enterprises have already committed investment to generate more than 379 million CERs. Worldwide investments have been made that will generate 1.9 billion CERs by 2012. These investments would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 1.9 billion tonnes. Indian CERs are selling in the international markets right now at a range of 5-10 dollars each which are priced lower than some other countries.

So, oh humble human beings, I call upon thee to take the initiative to transform the world into a cleaner and a greener place because it’s not everyday that the world pays you, and pays you well, to come clean.

source : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1935746.cms

To download a step by step guide to how you can be a part of the energy [r]evolution, click here

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A boy was watching his grandmother write a letter. At one point he asked:

‘Are you writing a story about what we’ve done? Is it a story about me?’

His grandmother stopped writing her letter and said to her grandson:
‘I am writing about you, actually, but more important than the words is the pencil I’m using. I hope you will be like this pencil when you grow up.’

Intrigued, the boy looked at the pencil. It didn’t seem very special.

‘But it’s just like any other pencil I’ve ever seen!’

‘That depends on how you look at things. It has five qualities which, if you manage to hang on them, will make you a person who is always at peace with the world.’

‘First quality: you are capable of great things, but you must never forget that there is a hand guiding your steps. We call that hand God, and He always guides us according to His will.’

‘Second quality: now and then, I have to stop writing and use a sharpner. That makes the pencil suffer a little, but afterwards, he’s much sharper. So you, too, must learn to bear certain pains and sorrows, because they will make you a better person.

‘Third quality: the pencil always allows us to use an eraser to rub out any mistakes. This means that correcting something we did is not necessarily a bad thing; it helps to keep us on the road to justice.’

‘Fourth quality: what really matters in a pencil is not its wooden exterior, but the graphite inside. So always pay attention to what is happening inside you.’

‘Finally, the pencil’s fifth quality: it always leaves a mark. in just the same way, you should know that everything you do in life will leave a mark, so try to be conscious of that in your every action’

Source: Like the Flowing River by Paulo Coelho

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