And now, God is on twitter, how cool is that? Click here and join half the religious (cricketing) world in following him.

for his vision and leadership in bringing professionalism to the NGO movement in India, by effectively combining ‘head’ and ‘heart’ in the transformative development of rural communities.

I think recognizing Deep’s efforts and more importantly, the exceptional approach adopted by PRADAN to “development” is simply wonderful. I have had the privilege of working with Deep when I was working for the IWMI-Tata Water Policy Program (ITP) in India and I have always admired him not just for his intellectual and professional qualities but also for his humility and approachability.

My first association with Deep was in 2003 via the Central India Initiative (CInI) – a collaborative action-research program – the seeds for which were sown by a concept note penned by Deep. CInI was one of the highlights of my work at ITP and the research results were published in the form of a book titled “Mainstreaming the Margins: Water-Centric Livelihood Strategies for Revitalizing Tribal Agriculture in Central India”. (Click here to read more about the book).

The research initiative ended in 2005 but it became the cornerstone of Sir Ratan Tata Trust’s ‘Rural Livelihoods and Communities’ portfolio. ITP hosted and incubated a dedicated CInI Cell, which is now working as an independent nodal agency for CInI projects in the tribal belt of central India.

In 2005, Deep was a member of the three-member team – along with Jacob Burke (FAO) and Ravi Chopra (People’s Science Institute) – that reviewed the work of the IWMI-Tata Water Policy Program. During an informal interaction with some of us, Deep and Ravi went down the memory lane and talked about their days as young students at MIT. I never imagined “evaluations” could be so much fun! Click here for the full evaluation report; and here’s an excerpt from the summary on CInI.

The research studies and reviews fashioned as Central India Initiative (CInI) have extended research into the water-livelihoods nexus (and more generally, the management of natural resources-livelihoods nexus) as it affects the tribal communities, largely ignored by policies
and action. This presents an opportunity for breaking new ground in both conceptual and policy terms, affecting some of the poorest and socially most vulnerable people in the country and a large geographic region.

Anyway, a well deserved award for Deep and for PRADAN, and an excellent choice made by the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation. Here’s the complete citation for Deep and the list of awardees.

Image Courtesy: http://ksjtracker.mit.edu/?p=2997

It’s funny, the speaker keeps claiming to talk about “Risk Management” but all he is really saying is that the worst CC scenario is NOT a risk we can afford to take – it’s just so huge. So even though he uses a novel style to put his point across, its precisely people like these who put me off all the CC mumbo-jumbo. Don’t say the world will end if you don’t act because that does NOT help me understand the real issues any better… and will NOT make me act! Explain to me the science, I consider myself to be intelligent and educated enough to understand it myself, so I don’t have to rely solely on the NSA or AAAS to make up my mind.

Although this blog comes from CricInfo – a website about cricket, the post has got nothing to do with cricket. The author is a cricket journalist, currently in South Africa covering a popular cricket tournament. He is disturbed by the fact that he is greeted by "strangers" everywhere and is having a tough time reconciling with this custom. I absolutely enjoyed reading it and I hope you will too.

Read the full article here: Enough with the Friendliness

the total set of GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions caused directly and indirectly by an individual, organization, event or product

Image Courtesy: British Recycled Products

You can calculate your own Carbon Footprint here. It requires some guesswork about your consumption habits but it will give you a general idea about where you stand vis-à-vis the rest of the planet.

Carbon is not the only metaphorical footprint that has become popular in recent years. In fact, its not even the first. I think the metamorphic footprints started in a big way with the Ecological Footprint  – a measure of human demand on the Earth’s ecosystems. Then there’s the Water Footprint  – the total volume of freshwater that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by the individual or community or produced by the business. You can also find references to Social Footprint, usually in the context of Corporate Social Responsibility.

Anyway, coming back to the Carbon Footprint. I recent read about a new washing machine that claims to have a Carbon Footprint 40% lower than the most efficient alternative. How so? Well, it uses 90% less water and (therefore) significantly less electricity for drying the laundry. This “green gadget” from Xerox uses thousands of tiny nylon beads that have the characteristic of attracting and retaining dirt particles (now you know why nylon clothes get dirty very easily!) in conjunction with detergent and a little water. Read more here.

Google for Non-Profits is a bundle of Google products and services that non-profit organizations around the world can use to enhance their “business” of development. The bundle includes: Google Grants (a non-profit version of Google Ad Words); Google Checkout (to collect online donations); Google Analytics (to understand how users interact with your website); Google Maps & Earth; YouTube; and Google Apps (GMail, Docs, Sites and Calendar). Click on the image links below for tutorials for non-profits.

Here’s a small video that provides a testimonial from a small non-profit organization about the impact of deploying the Google for Non-Profits bundle of products and services.

Unfortunately, some of these services are only available in the US but hopefully, Google is working towards extending these services to every corner of the world.

The Telegraph recently reported about Gerrit Blank, 14, who was struck by a meteorite on his way to school. A red hot, pea-sized piece of rock hit his hand before bouncing off and causing a foot wide crater in the ground. Gerrit survived the strike – the chances of which are just 1 in a million – but with a 3-inch scar on his hand.

At first I just saw a large ball of light, and then I suddenly felt a pain in my hand. Then a split second after that there was an enormous bang like a crash of thunder. The noise that came after the flash of light was so loud that my ears were ringing for hours afterwards. When it hit me it knocked me flying and then was still going fast enough to bury itself into the road.

Scientists have confirmed through chemical tests that the pea-sized rock is indeed a meteorite which crashed to Earth in Essen, Germany. According to Ansgar Kortem, director of Germany’s Walter Hohmann Observatory, the meteorite is a rare collectors item since most meteorites evaporate in the atmosphere and 6 out of 7 that manage to get through land in water.

So here’s to Gerrit’s luck – a rare meteorite found his hand at 30,000 mph and he survived without any significant damage. Makes you wonder…about luck and the role it plays in our life, everyday!

Over the years, several people have tried to explain LUCK in their own way. A Rationalist might say, “Luck is probability taken personally” (quote: Chip Denman, Stats Lab, University of Maryland). Spiritual or religious leaders believe in the will of a supreme being or Divine Providence as affecting “luck” to different degrees. Western “New Age” reinterpretations of Karma cast it as luck associated with virtue. Hindu philosophy refers to Lakshmi as the original “Lady Luck”! Others like Freud have argued that a belief in luck is a way of escaping the responsibility of our actions.

Personally, I feel closest to the rationalist viewpoint but I’m not going into philosophical discussions here. But while we’re at it, here’s an excellent compilation on lucky streaks from YouTube. Enjoy…

Image Courtesy: ICF/McAfee

According to the estimates of a recent report (PDF: 2.33 MB) by ICF International (commissioned by McAfee Inc.), approximately 62 trillion spam emails were sent out in 2008. The report estimates the global carbon footprint of these spam emails as well as the estimated savings by the use of spam filters.

Here are some key findings:

• Annual energy use on Spam – 33 Terawatt Hours (TWh) or 33 Billion KWh – equivalent to the energy consumption of 2.4 Million US homes.
• If this energy is assumed to be produced from coal-based power plants, the Green House Gases (GHG) emitted would equal the GHG emission of 3.1 Million passenger cars using 2 Billion US gallons of gasoline.
• The same gasoline could be used to drive around the planet 1.6 Million times.
• Spam filters annually save the planet 135 TWh of electricity – the impact equivalent to taking 13 million cars off the roads.
• For a typical medium-sized business (presumably, in the US), the annual energy consumption on emails is roughly 50,000 KWh – 20 percent of which can be attributed to Spam.

The Economist ran an article on the report (link requires subscription) and some of the reader comments are really interesting.

• What incentives do spammers have to send messages that can be easily filtered? One of the readers points out that even if 1 in 12.5 million messages leads to a real sale (of pills, for example), sending spam is worth the effort. Spammers not only make money from selling the pill but often much more by getting access to your financial information (credit card number) and its misuse. The fact that the marginal cost of generating and delivering spam to every additional person is so low (economies of scale?) makes it worthwhile.
• Another reader is very apologetic about his own comment when he quips, “I apologise for the CO₂ produced in my typing, and hence readers reading, this comment.”

Now, coming from McAfee Inc., these results are not very surprising. That Spam Filters save GHG emissions equivalent to removing more than 3 million cars is excellent news indeed – but to what effect? Spam is a “created paper tiger” that McAfee et al. shoot down and in the process make huge profits. Obviously, they are not doing this to “save the planet”. But then again, as Michael Douglas says in Wall Street, “Anything worth doing, is worth doing for money”.

I like to keep informed about how Google is going to (pleasantly) surprise me next and this new service is no exception. I haven’t tried it, yet… but the concept seems brilliant. Incidentally, Google sent me an invite to sign up the beta for Google Voice but since I am not in the U.S., I was unable to do so. 

I can’t wait to have my own Google Number… and you?

Did you know that Google’s servers process 1 Petabyte of data every 72 minutes?

The latest issue of WIRED magazine carries a series of articles on how the Petabyte Age is changing the world. While all of them make a good read, one in particular seems rather bold, to say the least…and has created a controversy of some sort…

 The End of Theory: All models are wrong, science is obsolete!

Click here to read the full article and judge for yourself!

The author suggests that today we have so much data and data processing (computing) power at our disposal that we don’t need models (simplistic representations of reality) and theories (generalizations that broadly explain the logic behind the data and the models). Rather far-fetched, I would think.

Every scientist, researcher and statistician understands that mere correlation between data means nothing for explaining causation. Petabytes of data on how many times this article was read, by whom, from where and for how long will say nothing about the quality of the article or agreement / disagreement among the readers. Sure, it might provide some hints, but data is JUST data…and will always remain that.

Interpreting data and converting it into information requires wisdom, which comes from knowledge, which comes from all the theories and science that constantly keep evolving. Garbage In, Garbage Out… and the more garbage you put in, the more of it will come out UNLESS it is processed scientifically.