Carbon Credits

With global warming due to greenhouse emissions becoming probably the most serious threat for the planet and human-kind today, a series of steps have been taken globally to cut down on emissions. The rationale behind Carbon Credits is to put a cost to greenhouse emissions in terms of real money, and create an incentive for industries and corporations for keeping their emissions low.

The Carbon Credits system, put into place through the Kyoto protocol in the Earth Summit in 1992, defines upper limits on the amount of greenhouse emissions allowed for developing and developed nations. The nations then take their limits, and accordingly define limits for local industries and corporations, called 'operators'. Effectively, each operator is allowed a certain volume of emissions, measured in credits. If any operator can manage to keep their emissions under the limit, they can 'trade' the difference. Similarly, any operator which emits more than its credits, must buy those credits by paying money.

With the above system in place, any operator, say A, whose emissions exceed their
allocated credits by a certain amount might do either of the following:
- Pay an operator B who has some surplus credits to buy credits equal to the amount, or
- Pay money to an operator C which C can use to invest in technology to reduce its emissions by that amount.

The above mechanisms which allow credits to be traded allow operators to find out the most cost effective way of cutting its greenhouse emissions, by choosing to invest in technology that can reduce its emissions, or by buying credits from another operator who has excess credits.

The above mechanism also extends to countries. Developed countries with a very high cost of reducing greenhouse emissions can sponsor a low emission project in a developing country. The developed country effectively gets credits to meet its emission reduction targets, while the developing country can get capital investment or clean technology. This system very effectively puts a price on emissions, and in turn, the emissions show up on their balance sheets as liabilities, in case of operators that exceed their credits, and assets, in case of operators who keep their emissions less than their credits. With emissions directly affecting the profitability of a company and the economy of a country, the managements and governments are driven to invest in technology that cuts emissions and if possible, accumulate extra credits.

Hybrid Cars

Any vehicle that can combine two or more methods which can create power to propel it is called a hybrid vehicle. Hybrid cars, which can use both a fossil fuel like diesel or petrol and electricity to power them have recently seen a rise in usage and production due to the increase in fuel prices and the rising awareness about the harmful effects of greenhouse emissions.

Hybrid cars combine small fossil fuel and electric engines which are operated both independently and in tandem to create power to move the vehicle. Electric engines turn off when the car is idling at a red light, thereby saving energy. Electric engines are also very good for use at lower speeds, and in general, inside a city. Fossil fuel engines become useful when the car is being driven at higher speeds. By using both the engines according to the driving conditions, hybrid cars minimise fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse emissions. It has been proven that hybrid cars emit lesser than 50% of greenhouse and other harmful gases compared to traditional cars that use only fossil fuel engines.

While hybrid cars remain expensive compared to traditional cars as they use recently developed technology which is still not used very extensively, they have been able to develop a lot of interest because of their environment friendly, smart and responsible label. Across the United States, many states have recognized the need to incentivize the use of hybrid cars, and have offered free parking to hybrid vehicles. United states has also provided tax incentives on buyers of the first 60,000 hybrid cards yearly by each manufacturer. Many businesses, too, have started giving incentives to people who own or plan to buy hybrid vehicles. For example, Google offers each employee an incentive of $5000 towards buying a hybrid.

It has been argued that buying a smaller car or using a car pool are better ways of cutting emissions or saving fuel. For those who are not quite ready to make the 'compromise', and still wanting to be good to the planet, hybrid cars probably are a good bet.

Street food @ Delhi - The great leveller

Geek and I are fond of eating out. Along with the restaurants we have a great respect for street food. Street food at Kolkata is one of our shared 'love interests'. We go berserk there... trying to taste everything in that small period when we visit the city. I had always felt that street food in Delhi has a long way to go before matching that of Kolkata, but now I can confidently declare that Delhi is no less in the street food department. This city is full of hidden gems. And apart from the regular gol-gappas and aloo tikki, this city has a lot of variety to offer.

I am listing down my favourite spots in the city, and if you know of anymore then please let me know. 

1. Chicken shawarma at Al-Bake, NFC. 

We discovered this place a few weeks ago. The place looks run down and decrepit, devoid of all color. But it is burstling with people, even at the dead of wintry nights. This place is known for chicken shawarma. It is better than I have ever eaten anywhere. They serve the shawarma with thick mayonnaise and sell two pieces for 25 bucks. Beware, there are a lot of fake 'Al-Bake's in the area, so take your time to locate the authentic one, and you'll be amply rewarded. It is easily recognisable, for it is the most crowded. 

2. Momo at M Block Market, GK-1

There is a momo wala who stands near the gate of M Block Market at GK-1. I am a momo freak and have tried it at a number of places, and I will readily hand 'the best momo in Delhi' certificate to him. He serves momo with 2 types of chutney, green and red. Even the chutney is worth licking. I never leave GK without visiting him and he always doles out an extra momo for my loyalty. There is a good momo wala who stands in front of Baskin & Robins, at NFC. His is also good but not as good as the GK one.

3. Chicken/mutton roll at Khan Chacha

Khan Chacha is an important landmark in Delhi. Almost all of non vegetarian Delhi loves Khan Chacha. People wait in long queues for food and silently eye each other. What else will you do if it takes 20 mins for your mutton kathi roll to arrive? The mutton rolls are awesome and the chicken ones simply melt in the mouth. They also sell  paneer kathi rolls, which it seems has its takers too.

4. Chacha ke chole bhature

Anybody who has studied at North Campus will know what I am talking about. Those were the carefree days when there was no such thing labeled 'fattening food'. Lectures made me sleepy, angry and hungry and back then Pizza Hut was a luxury. Chacha held court in a tiny gali in knags( Kamala Nagar). The place served hot, big, yellow bhaturas and black chola along with acchar. It was tasty, oily and very easy on the pocket. 

More to follow.....

Ghajini - A review

Okay, I confess, I couldn't resist knowing how Amir Khan got that scar on his bald head, so just had to see the movie. Ghajini is a revenge saga - kind hearted girlfriend is murdered defending the girl children and deep pocketed hero seeks revenge. 

We'll start with the name. I have given it some real deep thought, to conclude that it has been named Ghajini because the word sounds good. It also happens to be the name of the villain in the movie, but it might as well have been the name of the police inspector or the pani puri seller whose stall Amir Khan eats at. As for villain, the director seems to think a huge man with red eyes who speaks in an Haryanvi accent  can be fearsome. Sorry, we think that's irritating. I mean, any hindi movie director has this massive pool of great baddies like Mogambo and Gabbar to draw inspiration from. Then why this lame duck masquerading as the bette noire of the mighty Sanjay Singhania.

Amir Khan, as Sanjay Singhania, was great as always. He covered the frame, flashed his abs, gnashed his teeth, snorted like a lion. He hardly spoke in the movie and let his expressions do all the talking. It was difficult to look away when he was on the screen. 

Fresh faced Asin was great as Kalpana, and held herself quite well opposite Amir Khan. It was a good respite to see the curvaceous Asin after the waif like actresses. She emoted fear, happiness all very nicely and her character was very nicely sketched. Jiah khan should seriously consider learning Hindi. It was a pain every time she spoke any dialogue.

The movie tries to build on Sanjay Sanghania's inability to remember anything beyond 15 minutes - which we all will agree can throw up many interesting possibilities. But the director hardly gets under the skin of the business, his mental condition is used more as a pretext than as a background or a setting. The director has taken care to use the right nomenclature for the ailment, and even shows a human brain while the credits roll, but I don't think he makes as much use of the fact as was possible and promised to create interesting situations in the movie. Nothing was told as to how Sanjay got the clues, all we saw was Sanjay bashing up the baddies. 

But the movie was enjoyable and the music is excellent. The background score is also nice specially the score when baddie Ghajini comes on the screen.

Aranyer Din Ratri, Days and Nights in the forest

Aranyer Din Ratri, another cinematic gem by Satyajit Ray is about four young men from kolkata who go to a jungle for a vacation, and after a series of misadventures and interactions with the local people and a family, from their part of the world, discover a fresh perspective. On the surface this movie looks very simple but on rumination this movie reveal a lot of hidden undercurrents. Though the movie is still very relevant today but it should be kept in mind that this movie was made 40 ago. It is a coming of age movie of that time. The conflicts which are so natural today were quite revolutionary at that time. Though admittedly a mistake, but the movie made me think about 'dil chahta hai' of recent times.

In the first few minutes of the film, even before the credits roll, the four young men are introduced by means of a friendly banter. Ashim, played by Soumitra, is the overconfident leader of the group, Sanjoy, played by Subhendu Chatterjee is a shy but confidant labour executive. Hari, played by Samit Bhanja, is a handsome cricketer who is recuperating from a heartbreak. Sekhar, played by Robi Ghosh is the adorable roly poly who creates laughter in the movie.

In the jungle they meet the cool and confidant Aparna, who intrigues Ashim to no end. From the beginning I abhorred Ashim's snobbish character. I was delighted, when, on a number of instances his confidence takes a severe beating from Aparna. She overwhelms him, sometimes by her sensitivity, sometimes by her presence of mind. 

Simi Garewal plays Duli, the fine boned enchanting santhal. Her introductory scene when she is shown gorging on  the local liquor is fascinating. Hari falls for her charms and chases her into the forest. Kaberi Bose plays the regular happy boudi, who reveals her loneliness in a weak moment when she tries to seduce Sanjoy. The scene has been done in great style wherein she adorns herself with santhali jewellery. 

The movie has its light moments when the foursome keep falling in embarrassing situation. On an occasion the headlights of Aparna's car catch them doing a twist dance in a totally inebriated state in the jungle.Or when they are caught bathing by the well. My favourite is when Sekhar replies 'we are humans' when asked who they were by Aparna's nephew.

The memory game forms a central part of the movie wherein  each of them name a personality which gives away their mental makeup. Liked it when Aparna named Cleopatra with a cute shake of her head. Aparna looked like a clear winner but gives up so that Ashim can win so as to satisfy Ashim's ego. Later when Ashim confronts Aparna she accepts that she had pretended to lose so that Ashim can win. I could not identify with it and I am sure many women will not be able to. 

Aparna's character is treated with great sensitivity. She is shown to have excellent tastes, have great presence of mind and is presented as an enigma. One feels like knowing more about her.

The fact that Ashim hasn't bothered to find out about the sick wife of the chowkidar of the bungalow is pointed out by the Aparna which makes Ashim quite uncomfortable. 

The movie leaves a lot of questions unanswered. To sum up or declaring that trying to sum things up for this movie is a futile attempt. 

Interesting sites - Delicious, Reddit and Tinyurl

Delicious - Web Bookmark Management

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http://delicious.com/

Why Delicious

Whenever I google, I frequently come across very interesting articles which I add to my browser bookmarks. But recently my browser bookmark count has become so huge that it has become unmanagable. A friend introduced me to Delicious and I realised what I have been missing. I have been using it ever since.

Getting started

Del.icio.us is a very good site for managing your favourite web bookmarks. You will have to create a login password on the site after which you will have to add 2 buttons to the browser bookmark('Bookmark on delicious' and 'My delicious'), all explained in a nice step by step manner. 

Using Delicious

Whenever you visit a web page you like, on clicking on 'bookmark on delicious', it gets added to your delicious bookmark. You can choose some tags for the page and can also add some notes for your reference. You can also choose to make the bookmark public or can keep it only for your personal use. On pressing 'My Delicious', you can see the saved bookmarks. 

Sharing with friends

If you come across a nice url which you want to share with your friends then you can send it to your friend and you can also receive bookmarks sent by other people in your inbox. You can also add other users of delicious and form your own network on delicious. You will be able to see their favourite bookmarks.

Not only Delicious, but uselful too

On the right hand side of the delicious homepage there are a list of popular tags eg. music, web design etc. On clicking on any of the the tags you will get the most popular bookmarks for those tags.  You can also create a subscription on multiple tags, such that whenever someone will add a new bookmark under that tag it will be visible to you.

Reddit - Social News Website

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http://www.reddit.com/

Why Reddit

There are so many news sites that it becomes difficult to follow all of them. Also there are so many articles that searching for the relevant article on the news site is a time consuming task. A subscription to Reddit is the perfect solution for it.

On the home front

Reddit is a social news website, wherein users can post news articles and other users can comment upon it. Users can also vote for or against the article posted. The articles with the maximum votes is displayed at the top of the page. On the homepage the articles are divided into 4 categories, 'hot', 'new','controversial' and 'top', -the labels are self explanatory.

Consumer is the creator

It is very easy to create a login on Reddit, and on its creation, a toolbar will appear on the web page with tags such as 'politics', 'worldnews' etc, on clicking on any of the tags, the most popular articles under the tag, will be visible. The users can submit articles under different tags and depending on how popular a users' articles are on reddit, the user will gain 'karma' points. There is a feeling of community on this site too as you can add any user as your friend and see all the articles posted by her and also send her messages.

TinyUrl - Shortening long Url(s)

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http://tinyurl.com/

Why Tinyurl?

Whenever we have to post a url on twitter, usually almost all of the 140 character limit of twitter is used up. Many times posting long urls on discussion groups becomes very cumbersome. A click on the Tinyurl site and all these problems vanish.

Using Tinyurl

The home page has a text box where the long url can be entered and it returns a short alias to the long web page name. If the url already has a short alias, created by someone previously then that alias is returned instead of creating a new entry. There is also an option of customizing the short alias name by something of the users choice.

Preview feature

Tinyurl is sometimes misused, someone can create a url for some inappropriate site which may contain objectionable or harmful contents and forward it to someone. As the url is not visible, the user can innocently click on the tinyurl. To combat this menace they have come up with a preview feature. Through this feature the tinyurl link will open in the tinyurl site and the user can decide whether she wants to view the actual site or not.

An evening at Rodeo.

This Christmas we headed for Connaught Place. After a failed attempt to enter the Sacred Heart Church we went to Wengers only to find all the goodies(which we wanted) sold out by 6. Unable to breathe in the crowd any longer we climbed the stairs of Rodeo for some relief.

Rodeo held a special place in our hearts. Geek and I had frequented this place a couple of times in the early days of our dating. We had not been there for years. The menu is primarily Mexican and the place has a cowboy-wild west theme. The ambience at that place is the same as it was then. The waiters are dressed in cowboy hats and boots and carry empty pistol holsters. The bar is attractive and the bar stools look like horse saddles. The seating is cramped but pardonable. For lighting they have bulbs fitted in lanterns which looks good but can be found in umpteen number of places. The draught beer which we ordered was satisfactory and all the drinks were accompanied by nachos and salsa. They had some kind of margarita festival going on and we saw that they were serving banana margarita... whoever came up with this must be a genius or a nincompoop. You have taste it to know which one, and we decided we were not that eager to know.

All was well till we decided to order food which turned out as the biggest mistake of the evening. The mex menu is decently big with enchiladas, chimichangas and fajitas. We ordered chicken tomato enchilada and a plate of blackened fish with tequila, avocado, cream etc. 

The enchilada was in one word - horrible. It seemed as if they had just boiled chicken with tomato and stuffed it in the enchilada and I haven't tasted worse fish during the last two fish eating decades of my life. The chef's skills might get the benefit of doubt for the blackened fish because we had never eaten it before, but the management won't : It shouldn't have been on the menu at all. It was criminal. We noticed that hardly anybody was ordering any food.

This place should be chosen only if anyone wants to have beer sitting on a saddle, never for the food. We were very very miffed by the place and decided starvation is any day a better option than eating at Rodeo.