Tata Nano is, without even a shadow of doubt, the most eagerly awaited car in India. The attention it drew in the recently concluded Auto Expo 2008, was tremendous by any standard. I reached Pragati Maidan last Saturday to catch a glimpse of the ‘talk of the town’, but seeing the mad rush at the venue, I headed over to Nehru place to see the 1 lac laptop, the MacBook Pro.

Tata Nano is the cheapest car ever built. But is this really the ‘People’s car’?

Interestingly the cost of production of Nano comes to 1.2 lacs which is 20,000 more than the ex-showroom price of lowest version of Nano. But to keep the promise of Ratan Tata, Tata Motors is planning to sell first 1000 Nanos at loss. The actual price might be somewhere between 1.3-1.5 lacs when the car finally settles down in the market. With this price tag, second hand Maruti 800 and Omni might give it a tough fight.

But the big question remains, would a scooter user shift to Nano?

My profession requires us to spend a lot of time in making theories and proving it wrong so as to justify our final conclusion. This question popped up in a discussion with my friend and we were eager to do some ‘brainstorming’. He was of the opinion that this car will be a huge success with Aam Aadmi because for him the safety of his family comes first. Nano is a car that runs on 4 wheels, something more than enough to guarantee more safety than a two wheeler. People who buy two wheelers for 30-40 k would love to invest a lac more to buy a safe mode of transportation. Petrol version might be costly but diesel version is coming soon. Safety is the key!

I had my own apprehensions:

1. Investing a lac more isn’t as easy as going to Taj for a dinner. EMI is a viable option which is definitely a plus for Nano.

2. Tata claims to have conducted the crash tests on Nano (Delhi’s blue line bus drivers might be eager to conduct their own tests once Nano hits road in August). The car has the spare tire in the front (the engine is at back) for better resistance to front collision. Safety seems to be acceptable as far as city limits are concerned but definitely not for highways. The height of tyres is a major concern even; this required the bumpers to be big for safety reasons.

3. What about petrol? A scooter gives a mileage of about 60 km per litre but Nano will give only 20. That means a threefold jump in the household expenditure on travel. So the car would not just increase the initial expenditure, the recurring too takes a leap. And I strongly believe that this would seriously undermine the success of Nano with lower middle class. The upper middle class can afford it but then they were already happy with Maruti 800s and Santros. Who is going to buy Nano? Definitely not a Aam Aadmi!

4. Status symbol is another attraction for buyers. But would a car made especially for Aam Aadmi, raise the status of the buyer to the ‘elite’ class? Even psychologically the car doesn’t seem to be a viable option.

I strongly believe that this car would still cater to the elite who previously had access to cars. They perhaps will add few more to their garage for city use by other family members. An Aam Aadmi who is really concerned about safety of his children/parents/wife might give it a go but long term usage might just be too costly for him.

This car is definitely a wonderful piece of engineering but just not perfect.

Chernobyl plant after the blast

The results were devastating as 1000s lost their lives after the blast. The USSR tried to play down this magnificent disaster but the Time magazine expose left them with no option. Its often considered the fuel to fire of rebellion that existed among small USSR states. There are few interesting facts about nuclear energy I wish to highlight-

1. Hitler had plans to build a nuclear bomb but a wrong information with one of this consultants help prevent it. Actually you need at least 14.5 Kgs of enriched U-235 to sustain a uncontrollable chain reaction. His advisor guessed it to be few tons which was not possible to accumulate in 5 years period so they abandoned the plan. Imagine the terror that would have been unleashed if his consultant had the correct figure.

2. The Three Mile Island accident in US was the first accident of peaceful use of nuclear energy. US was lucky that the plant didn’t explode because their engineers weren’t that adventurous. It was caused due to a faulty pump.

3. The Chernobyl disaster caused over a million death which is much lesser as compared to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The radiation reached as far as Sweden.

4. India conducted its first nuclear test in 1974 at Pokhran. It was code named ‘The smiling Buddha’. Mr. Raja Ramanna, who was one of the 3 persons who knew about the test beforehand, had a hotline to Mrs. Indra Gandhi, PM of India. But the hotline failed after the blast so he came to the nearest village to call her, “Madam, the Buddha has finally smiled”

Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi at the Indian nuclear test site in (Pokhran)

First underground nuclear explosion at Pokhran in Rajasthan on May 18, 1974. Photo shows a view of the crater formed after the explosion.[source]

5. There is something known as the China Syndrome. Its a movie that released 13 days before the Three Mile Island accident and incidentally it showed a nuclear plant accident caused because of a faulty pump! The syndrome goes like this- in case of a nuclear explosion in US a huge crater will be created and the underground water will become radioactive. This theory assumes that the crater will be so big that it will stretch till the other end of earth to China. Well obviously this theory is just a farce as the maximum depth can be 10 kms.

6. I am a CIA agent.

Regarding Mr. Raja Ramanna I mention in the first paragraph, well I kind of agree with him. My father is a senior engineer with government of India so I am aware of the realities in power plants. There is one incident I still remember; an engineer called my father late in the night because he was not sure which grease to put on the transformer and because of that the whole district had power cut. It was really weird for the engineer to call my dad as he is not directly responsible for maintenance of power plants as he has risen to the higher level in the hierarchy. The engineer later told him that he didn’t want to take the risk by his own guess or my consulting his immediate seniors because he was not that confident. I hope the engineers at Chernobyl were as dumb as out Indian counterparts.

BTW point no. 6 is a joke, if you haven’t guessed by now. This has been shamelessly borrowed from an email by my Professor Arunn Narasimhan

1) It is a CLOSED BOOK/NOTES Exam
2) Mixed Convection (what Dr. Balaji taught) is NOT included
3) Rest of what I covered will be included (from start until the beginnings of Natural Convection)
4) Calculators are allowed but may not be of much use.
Only one computer is allowed and it is already there.

I know there are some missing points above and will be filled to my advantage, when required.
BTW, point 8 is a joke, so smile before you close this email
Cheers,
Arunn

Its the biggest gathering of Muslims after Hajj. Nearly 2 million Muslims from all over the world flock to hear the Ulemas, scholars of Islam, speak.

Tablighi Jamaat has kept itself away from the glamours of politics and media. Tablighi Jamaat is by far the largest Islamic movement in the world. Members of the Tabligh movement are always an easy suspect after every terrorist activity. Its because of their strict adherence to the Sunnah of Prophet (Peace be Upon Him) which is conspicuously reflected by their clothing. They move in groups, travel places and sojourn in the local mosques. According to their doctrine, leaving their homes and going to far off places is prerequisite to attain high levels of Imaan (belief in Allah).

Even though they have been criticized of committing a bidah, bringing innovation into Islam, by asking people to leave homes and travel places, it still has achieved phenomenal success.

History of its inception can be found here

More about the Biswa Ijtema here.

[tags]tabligh, biswa ijtema[/tags]

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which 60 years ago began keeping tabs on humanity’s temporal distance from self-annihilation with the concept of a “Doomsday Clock,� apparently found things sufficiently dire to nudge the minute hand forward two clicks, indicating that we are now “five minutes to midnight� — or Doomsday. [Source]

Is that a surprise? The reasons-

We stand at the brink of a second nuclear age. Not since the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has the world faced such perilous choices. North Korea’s recent test of a nuclear weapon, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, a renewed U.S. emphasis on the military utility of nuclear weapons, the failure to adequately secure nuclear materials, and the continued presence of some 26,000 nuclear weapons in the United States and Russia are symptomatic of a larger failure to solve the problems posed by the most destructive technology on Earth.

As in past deliberations, we have examined other human-made threats to civilization. We have concluded that the dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons. The effects may be less dramatic in the short term than the destruction that could be wrought by nuclear explosions, but over the next three to four decades climate change could cause drastic harm to the habitats upon which human societies depend for survival. [thebulletin]

Nuclear threat is something easily perceived but when it comes to global warming, people take it lightly. Its because the effects of global warming isn’t apparent on a short time scale. Climatic change that has taken place all over the world, be it the there was a snow fall in Dubai or the draught in cheerapunji which was once the place of highest rainfall in the world or even the deadly rains here in Chennai. All these are related to global warming.

Well now the question is what is global warming and how it caused? Global warming is basically the increase in earth’s average temperature. The atmosphere has this unique property to let the lower wavelength sun rays to pass through and also the higher wavelength reflected rays back from the earth. But certain emissions, which are called greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide and water vapour absorb this emitted shorter wavelength rays and thus raise earth’s temperature.

CFCs (Chloro fluro carbons), which were used in refrigeration before, were banned because of this very reason. CFC concentration has drastically increased lately and a ban was a must. Now refrigeration is being designed to use HCFCs (Hydro Chloro Fluro Carbons). The best thing about HCFCs is that their retention time in the atmosphere is 12 years, much lesser as compared to 100 years of that of CFCs. HCFCs are to be banned my 2020.

Carbon dioxide, whose retention time is 200-450 years!, contributes the second most to global warming. This is why the rush is towards use of cleaner technologies . Carbon trading is going to be the next big thing as far as international dealings are concerned. A limit is going to be set on the maximum amount of carbon a country can produce and if it exceeds then it has to either buy that extra amount from a country producing less or pay the money to the governing body. It has happened once that US was asked by the Canada to pay for its loss of plantation due to the carbon from US industries. Some Chinese carbon has been detected in US so we will have our fingers crossed

Well it is going to be a big surprise to many of you that water vapour contributes the most to global warming. But the good thing is that its retention time is only for few days. So even clean technologies like Fuel Cells contribute to global warming. So next time you boil water, think about its future consequences on the coming generation

Here is a graph showing how global temperature has changed in the last 150 years

Even this small 0.6 degrees rise in temperature can cause glaciers to melt thus flooding river banks.

This is how political events have affected the doomsday clock

Picture of the day! [Source]

Lets analyse the evolution of human civilization and try to correlate this concept that science is the most basic. Fire and wheel are the first 2 scientific inventions which didn’t emerge out of research but they were accidentally discovered. Science was yet to be born. But language as means of communication evolved, both spoken and written. People used symbols to display their feelings in written form and these symbols evolved out of facial expressions or bodily gestures. Language was detrimental in propagation of knowledge from one generations to another.

Science was yet to be discovered. (I mean the concept and not in physical sense because any progress in development were accidental rather than brainchild of a researcher and as you know exceptions prove the rule ). Progress was slow initially because of lack of scientific knowledge. Language alone cannot bring drastic changes in a civilization.

The period of Industrial revolution in Europe finally managed to change the this picture. Progress was fast because science as a concept evolved. People were contemplating on the basics of life. The apple that fell on Newton wasn’t the first time that such incident happened on the face of planet and it is highly probable that people before him could have visualized a force exerted by earth but due to absence of science as a concept, they didn’t come out with a law. Newton was intelligent and lucky! Same could have been the case with Galileo and Archimedes. Science has made huge strides after the industrial revolution. Research formed the basis of this. Human have made far greater progress in the last 500 years than they made during the past 5000 years, all because of science.

I don’t deny this fact that other areas of study like language, history and music also contributed to the development. But then all of these areas were linked to science in some way or the other. Musical instruments were developed on scientific concepts of wave propagation and resonance. Historians were able to dig out past because of technology bestowed on them by engineers. Literature has printing technology as a savior. Journalists today are equipped with technologies like satellite communications. Similarly every non-scientific profession is some way or the other related to science and this proves my point that science is the most basic.

But I wouldn’t justice to others if I don’t analyse the situation the other way round. Would science have evolved without language? How would researchers document their work? They are inter-related and science owes a lot to the evolution of means of communication. I cannot even imagine the scientific world without coherence in language of communication. But still I believe that science is the most basic of all!

I also believe that a man of science has the intellectual power to excel in any field, except social .

And this is precisely the reason I support Kalam for another term as president.

New Delhi: An opinion poll conducted by a leading news magazine has found that an overwhelming majority of three out of four wants APJ Abdul Kalam for another term in presidency.

The survey conducted by ‘The Week-C Voter Opinion Poll’ found that 74.8 per cent of 1,240 respondents favoured incumbent Kalam as the next President. 12.4 per cent of those surveyed said ‘no’ to his candidature while almost an equal number could not say anything on the issue.

To a question if he was the best President ever, 61.3 per cent nodded in the affirmative, while 22.7 per cent did not think so.

Source