The Golden 80s

 Writing a post after a long time.  The following books were too boring and were queued for exchange: 1. The Wall by John Lanchester 2. Warlight by Michael Ondaatje 3. The Thursday Murder Club - Richard Osman

It is now or never’ if world is to stave off climate disaster, says The Guardian report on the latest reports from the IPCC.  What exactly are these reports? The  IPCC website says, " The IPCC prepares comprehensive Assessment Reports (AR) about knowledge on climate change, its causes, potential impacts and response options . It adds that " The IPCC also produces Special Reports, which are an assessment on a specific issue and Methodology Reports, which provide practical guidelines ." The latest reports called AR 6 reports are on the following: AR6 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2022 AR6 Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change AR6 Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability The IPCC Working Group II (WGII) assesses the impacts of climate change, from a world-wide to a regional view. This is what I understood after reading a slew of news reports: Substantial reduction of greenhouse gas emissions beyond what governments committed. Emissions gap...

In an interesting news story on the plight of the people affected by coastal erosion , I noticed how the word ' sea erosion ' has been used throughout the story.  In this Mongabay India story about the east coast of India, 'sea erosion' appears 16 times in the story! The story is basically an anthropocentric one about the plight of the villagers and fisher folks affected by coastal erosion.  Back to early 1990s. In the university library, there were thick hardcover textbooks of Geology that I used to refer to during my MSc studies. Of all the textbooks, Alan Strahler's Physical Geography was the best for me. His textbooks were beautifully illustrated and excellently written. One will fall in love with the subject of Geology just because of his textbooks.  Thirty years later I bought a copy of Strahler's textbook. It is top class as always with vivid descriptions of additional topics and meticulous organization.  The book does not mention 'sea erosion' at...

New Scorpions Song : The first single that I heard from hard rockers Scorpions was Still loving You followed by the smashing Sails of Sharon . Meanwhile, the new single Rock Believer turned out to be disappointing. Setback to AI Hype : IBM's decision to sell off parts of its Watson Health business has come as a setback to AI nerds. In a tweet, Gary Marcus termed the decision as a "staggering collapse of its ambitious artificial intelligence effort". Another War : The Ukraine-Russian tangle dominated the week's headlines indicating the probable beginning of another cold war. Indian Cricket in Trouble : India lost the ODI cricket series against South Africa after a promising first test win in one of the final frontiers. The loss triggered the speculation that all is not well in the team. The series saw some poor batting, especially the middle order, and some pointless bowling. Neil Young Rocks Spotify : Alleging that Spotify is spreading fake information about vacc...

From this year, I have decided to post weekly updates about things that I have noticed more than others.  Joe Satriani's New Single Virtuoso guitarist Joe Satriani is back with a new single and new album. I and my friend watched the song, Sahara's, premiere on YouTube. The new single was an OK one similar to the songs in the Strange Beautiful Music album with the typical Satch flourishes, but it fell short of some strange expectations. The new album is titled  The Elephants of Mars . Covid-19: Kerala Imposes Sunday Lockdown My home state of Kerala went to a complete lockdown on two Sundays starting today after the Covid-19 positive infections spiked dramatically in many districts. The state capital and Ernakulam fared the worst, as there were reports and group messages of entire families getting infected. Meanwhile, Karnataka lifted the weekend curfew from Jan 22, but decided to continue with the night curfew.  Jacinda Postpones Marriage  New Zealand Prime Ministe...