Wednesday, July 23, 2008

RRR!

Its getting more and more critical everyday that we check out acts and start doing what would save our future!!!
For, you might not have realized, but it's no longer an option! Its the emergent need of the day, of the hour, of the moment - to encourage and be eco-friendly.

Here is something I found really good:
The Internet Consumer Recycling Guide http://www.obviously.com/recycle/

Guys in the US, check this out:
http://www.obviously.com/junkmail/

Junk mail on the email Inbox is a menace, but junk mail in the postboxes is an even bigger menace and is a major waste of paper/plastics. STOP IT!

This website details Recycling ways to stay Earth-easy:
http://www.eartheasy.com/live_recycling.htm



Its easy and less expensive to go green and stay green.
You don't need to be obsessed with being eco-friendly - just need to be AWARE of your options!

Rock on!

Monday, April 21, 2008

Earth Day!!!!!

[Courtesy Wikipedia]
Earth Day is a name used for two different observances, both held annually during spring in the northern hemisphere, and autumn in the southern hemisphere. These are intended to inspire awareness of and appreciation for the Earth's environment. The United Nations celebrates Earth Day, which was founded by John McConnell in 1969, each year on the March equinox, while a global observance originated by Gaylord Nelson as an environmental teach-in, and since January 1970 also called Earth Day, is celebrated in many countries each year on April 22, including the U.S.

http://ww2.earthday.net/

http://www.epa.gov/

[More]
The 3 Rs of recycling:
http://dnr.missouri.gov/env/swmp/pubs-reports/threers.htm
http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0775891.html
http://www.epa.gov/msw/reduce.htm

All you ever wanted to know about recycling!
http://www.earthodyssey.com/symbols.html

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Great Funny Irish Quote... On Life...

Here's to a long life and a merry one
A quick death and an easy one
A pretty girl and an honest one
A cold beer and another one!
Irish Saying

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

NicePoem- My Sordid Life

move quickly from man to man,
Often going from hand to hand.
Some men hide me from their wives,
They say I tend to upset their lives.

They love taking me to fancy restaurants,
While in there I'm often in their pants.
Men take me to dances, you know,
One even played with me in a casino.

I was once taken on a Caribbean Cruise,
While there, I suffered some abuse.
I hated the way I was taken for granted,
Some very serious issues were being planted.

This man traded me for some drugs,
Then I was fought over by some thugs.
I must admit, it made me feel wanted,
Knowing that I have them all taunted

I seldom see the inside of a church,
No matter how far and wide I search.
In spite of all this, I enjoy it still,
I love being me...a hundred dollar bill!!

:>)

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

I Am

I am Strange and Strong
I wonder What the world is all about
I hear Someone calling
I see Some bright place
I want All the fun in the world
I am Strange and Strong

I pretend That I am funny and happy
I feel I am lying
I touch My heart every day
I worry I lose it to this hectic life!
I cry that I cant help myself
I am Strange and Strong

I understand Life is short
I say Live life the way you like it
I dream of a day when everyone knows me
I try to know me first
I hope I will succeed
I am Strange and Strong

Saturday, February 02, 2008

60 acres lost a minute - Rain forests fall at 'alarming' rate

ABO EBAM, Nigeria - In the gloomy shade deep in Africa's rain forest, the noontime silence was pierced by the whine of a far-off chain saw. It was the sound of destruction, echoed from wood to wood, continent to continent, in the tropical belt that circles the globe.
ADVERTISEMENT

From Brazil to central Africa to once-lush islands in Asia's archipelagos, human encroachment is shrinking the world's rain forests.

The alarm was sounded decades ago by environmentalists — and was little heeded. The picture, meanwhile, has changed: Africa is now a leader in destructiveness. The numbers have changed: U.N. specialists estimate 60 acres of tropical forest are felled worldwide every minute, up from 50 a generation back. And the fears have changed.

Experts still warn of extinction of animal and plant life, of the loss of forest peoples' livelihoods, of soil erosion and other damage. But scientists today worry urgently about something else: the fateful feedback link of trees and climate.

Global warming is expected to dry up and kill off vast tracts of rain forest, and dying forests will feed global warming.

"If we lose forests, we lose the fight against climate change," declared more than 300 scientists, conservation groups, religious leaders and others in an appeal for action at December's climate conference in Bali, Indonesia.

The burning or rotting of trees that comes with deforestation — at the hands of ranchers, farmers, timbermen — sends more heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than all the world's planes, trains, trucks and automobiles. Forest destruction accounts for about 20 percent of manmade emissions, second only to burning of fossil fuels for electricity and heat. Conversely, healthy forests absorb carbon dioxide and store carbon.

"The stakes are so dire that if we don't start turning this around in the next 10 years, the extinction crisis and the climate crisis will begin to spiral out of control," said Roman Paul Czebiniak, a forest expert with Greenpeace International. "It's a very big deal."

The December U.N. session in Bali may have been a turning point, endorsing negotiations in which nations may fashion the first global financial plan for compensating developing countries for preserving their forests.

The latest data from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) helped spur delegates to action.

"Deforestation continues at an alarming rate of about 13 million hectares (32 million acres) a year," the U.N. body said in its latest "State of the World's Forests" report.

Because northern forests remain essentially stable, that means 50,000 square miles of tropical forest are being cleared every 12 months — equivalent to one Mississippi or more than half a Britain. The lumber and fuelwood removed in the tropics alone would fill more than 1,000 Empire State Buildings, FAO figures show.

Although South America loses slightly more acreage than Africa, the rate of loss is higher here — almost 1 percent of African forests gone each year. In 2000-2005, the continent lost 10 million acres a year, including big chunks of forest in Sudan, Zambia and Tanzania, up from 9 million a decade earlier, the FAO reports.

Across the tropics the causes can be starkly different.

The Amazon and other South American forests are usually burned for cattle grazing or industrial-scale soybean farming. In Indonesia and elsewhere in southeast Asia, island forests are being cut or burned to make way for giant plantations of palm, whose oil is used in food processing, cosmetics and other products.

In Africa, by contrast, it's individuals hacking out plots for small-scale farming.

Here in Nigeria's southeastern Cross Rivers State, home to one of the largest remaining tropical forests in Africa, people from surrounding villages of huts and cement-block homes go to the forest each day to work their pineapple and cocoa farms. They see no other way of earning money to feed their families.

"The developed countries want us to keep the forests, since the air we breathe is for all of us, rich countries and poor countries," said Ogar Assam Effa, 54, a tree plantation director and member of the state conservation board.

"But we breathe the air, and our bellies are empty. Can air give you protein? Can air give you carbohydrates?" he asked. "It would be easy to convince people to stop clearing the forest if there was an alternative."

The state, which long ago banned industrial logging, is trying to offer alternatives.

Working with communities like Abo Ebam, near Nigeria's border with Cameroon, the Cross Rivers government seeks to help would-be farmers learn other trades, such as beekeeping or raising fist-sized land snails, a regional delicacy.

The state also has imposed a new licensing system. Anyone who wants to cut down one of the forest's massive, valuable mahogany trees or other hardwoods must obtain a license and negotiate which tree to fell with the nearby community, which shares in the income. The logs can't be taken away whole, but must be cut into planks in the forest, by people like David Anfor.

He's a 35-year-old father of one who earns the equivalent of 75 U.S. cents per board he cuts with a whizzing chain saw. "The forest is our natural resource. We're trying to conserve," he said. "But I'm also working for my daily eating."

A community benefiting from such small-scale forestry is likely to keep out those engaged in illegal, uncontrolled logging. But enforcement is difficult in a state with about 3,500 square miles of pristine rain forest — and few forest rangers.

On one recent day deep in the forest, where the luxuriant green canopy allows only rare shards of sunlight to reach the floor, the trilling of a hornbill bird and the distant chain saw were the only sounds heard. As forestry officials rushed to investigate, the saw operator fled deeper into the forest, sign of an illegal operation.

Environmentalists say such a conservation approach may work for rural, agrarian people in Nigeria, which lost an estimated 15 million acres between 1990 and 2005, or about one-third of its entire forest area, and has one of the world's highest deforestation rates — more than 3 percent per year.

But lessons learned in one place aren't necessarily applicable elsewhere, they say. A global strategy is needed, mobilizing all rain-forest governments.

That's the goal of the post-Bali talks, looking for ways to integrate forest preservation into the world's emerging "carbon trading" system. A government earning carbon credits for "avoided deforestation" could then sell them to a European power plant, for example, to meet its emission-reduction quota.

"These forests are the greatest global public utility," Britain's conservationist Prince Charles said in the lead-up to Bali. "As a matter of urgency we have to find ways to make them more valuable alive than dead."

Observed the World Wildlife Fund's Duncan Pollard, "Suddenly you have the whole world looking at deforestation."

But in many ways rain forests are still a world of unknowns, a place with more scientific questions than answers.

How much carbon dioxide are forests absorbing? How much carbon is stored there? How might the death of the Amazon forest affect the climate in, say, the American Midwest? Hundreds of researchers are putting in thousands of hours of work to try to answer such questions before it is too late.

___ courtesy Yahoo! News:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080202/ap_on_re_af/60_acres_a_minute_i

Thursday, January 31, 2008

How to Stay Online, Even in Your Sleep

Jan. 31, 2008 -- The next thing in your life to go wired could be your bedroom.

Meet the Starry Night Bed: It has sensors, temperature controls, Internet connectivity, and a home theater option.

"No one in the bedding industry has ever put so much technology into a bed or sleep system. It's a first for us, and a first for the industry," said Mark Quinn, group executive vice president of sales and marketing at Leggett and Platt in Carthage, Mo.

Vibration sensors in the mattress are designed to pick up a number of things, including snoring, tossing and turning, and breathing patterns. If it catches you snoring, the bed will automatically elevate your head seven degrees to open airwaves. When the snoring stops, the bed returns to its original position.

For the first 30 days, the bed tracks a sleeper's habits, learning the sleep pattern. If it senses unusual restlessness on a given night, it will flag the event and in the morning, offer recommendations for a better night's sleep. For example, it may suggest using the bed's massage unit to get the body in a more relaxed state before sleep.

Water circulating through small channels in the mattress can also be warmed or cooled to a sleeper's preference.

The bed's computer, Internet connection, and sound system can be used for Web surfing, music, or downloading and watching movies (a projector displays them on the wall).

The electronics can also be programmed with individual preferences. For example, if a person typically goes to bed at 11 p.m. and reads for 30 or 40 minutes, the mattress can be programmed to rise to the desired angle for reading.

"I think it's a phenomenal step forward combing the best technology with some in-depth psychological principals," said Rubin Naiman, author and sleep specialist as well as a clinical assistant professor of medicine at the University of Arizona's program in integrative medicine.

"As the technology becomes more refined and economical, it can set a new standard for bringing sleep monitoring into the home," he said.

But too much technology can be a bad thing, too.

"One concern is that people would overdo the entertainment piece," said Naiman. Watching news or over stimulating action or horror films right before bed can disrupt the sleep, as can the light emanating from television or computer displays.

"It's the blue end of the spectrum that suppresses melatonin," said Naiman, referring to a natural hormone closely associated with sleep patterns.

Cost may also be a problem, initially hindering the bed from making its way into the average home. The company hopes to bring the bed to market by 2009 and plans to sell it for between $20,000 and $50,000.


Courtesy: Discovery News (http://dsc.discovery.com)

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Have to post something... My blog isnt an orphan!!

While I know I hhave to post something to my blog, and I am not sure of what to... I figure it is best if I write what I am thinking of right now :)



Funnily, I am playing a telugu song in my jukebox...

NO! It is not a software or a hardware... its the jukebox in my Mindware :D... the invisible jukebox or junktray in everyone's minds that keeps telling you (who?) something and relaying sounds, getting memories back and all that...



I really miss those days of my college... when I learnt so much about life...

All those days of Fun and Tragedy... :-)

Of Advancement and degradation...

Of Knowing new stuff and also realizing what I knew or Believed was wrong! :)



It was when I made so many friends...

That was when I actually knew how to Make Friends, not just to Be A Friend :-)



I had all types of friends... Good Friends, Best Friends, College Friends, Local Friends... Friends who arent friends but try to be friends :-), the Book Pals specially...

And then the friends of the other gender... and the Just Friends!! :-) (this is the best part as we called in Telugu Friendini)



What times...? If I could get those times back, I would do a lot of things different from what I did then... But... I dont repent having done what I did... coz its all part of life... it was all part of learning... that made me what I am today... now... and now... (I will post a separate blog on what I think about the nouns defining the time-axis like Now, Just Now, these days, etc.)



But, now that I cant get those times back, but this Juke Box keeps playing stuff from different times (not sure if it plays stuff from the Future, as some people claim)... I pen down what is playing now(and this is different from what was playing when I started typing this post and has changed since I started this paragraph!! )...



Ananaganaga Voka Roju:

Aemma Kopama...?

Letayyindana...?


Naa Friendu Chellelni Kondaredipinchaaru...

Veedelli Vallatoti Godava Pettukocchadu...

Aa Villain Gangu Vocchi Maa Vaaanni Kotta bote... Chesaanu Pedda Fightu Kaabatte Inta Laetu...



Ohh Cheli Khaminchamannanuga...

(F) Neekidi Eevaala kotta kaadu gaa...?



Ayya Baaboi Enta Vedi?

Aem Chasete chellarutundidi?



(F) Po povoi... Chaalugaani!

(F) Overaction Taggiste Manchidi...



Sare le... Tomorrow Ila... Lateu Cheyyanante Vottu...



:-)



Must be a few mistakes here and there, as the Jukebox doesnt play copyrighted material... but anyway... and it sure doesnt play the whole song...



So this is what I have!!