Twinkle twinkle little star, How I wonder where you are???

-

I lived a bucolic life thanks to my papa's job in forest department. I lived in a fairy world for today's generation watching stars and running behind helicopter damselfly. I wanted my kid to experience these but they are lost in today's concrete jungle and materialistic life. They only live in books, stories and rhymes. Why?

I thought pollution, specifically air pollution, led to this problem cutting us from the universe. But no, it is a different kind of pollution that I was not aware of till yesterday - Light pollution. As we light our nights with bright lights, we lose our stars from our sights. 


Lamps that throw light upward gets reflected from cloud & air making the sky brighter and so we cannot see stars. We need to use better lamps.  


Light also has adverse effect on insects. Insects lose track of time (day and night). There was a study comparing caterpillars in two different areas: one lighted with street lamps and one not lighted. It was found that in the earlier case, number of caterpillars were less as they did not breed and they were heavy as they continued feeding since they could not know when to stop. The effect was less where halogen lights were used. 

I consider invention of light bulb as one of the major milestone in human evolution (possibly more than electricity) because it allowed human to work more.  Today we say we have 24 hours to complete a task...if we had not invented light bulb we would have said we have 10 hours to complete a task. Just imagine the effect of this invention. We stretched the time. Light won over the darkness. And we became caterpillars mentioned in earlier paragraph. 

Light and darkness need to co-exist like in ying-yang. Remembering my childhood, I was a fan of "Shaktiman" but now I realize the importance of "Kilvish". Andhera Kayam Rahe... 


Sorry kiddo, I lived a bucolic life, lived in a fairy world watching stars and running behind helicopter damselfly. I may not be able to take you to that life or time but will tell you the stories for sure. 


Note: Found the images related to light pollution from Quora and could not find the actual owner of images. But whoever created the images, I thank you.  

 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Field force tracking app - free app made using Google services in weekend !

-
Image
There are many SMEs who may want to track their field force but such application development is not so pocket friendly. One such company reached out to me and I took it as a hobby project. To my surprise, it came out so nicely that kept me thinking how powerful Goggle services are.  Customer required  Configurability in drafting information the company will like to capture during field activities Geo tagging field activities  Dashboard and analytics Solution: Google form was at the center in creating the solution. Google form integrated with Google Script was able to Geocode and reverse geocode. This link was then opened from native Android App using webview. Pre-filled form gave convenience to ground users of not filling redundant info every time e.g. employee details. Google form was then integrated with Sheet and then Map to create complete GIS based dashboard. Google Sheet charts, maps were then integrated with Google site to create a dashboard for manager.  Google search ensured t
Read more

Higher purpose in product design that takes it from Zero to Hundred

-
Image
Have you ever wondered what makes a product truly great? What is the secret behind the products that touch our hearts and souls? How can we design products that make a positive difference in the world? The answer is simple: design with higher purpose. Designing with higher purpose means creating products that serve a user's needs, goals, and aspirations. It means putting the user at the center of everything we do, not the technology, the platform, or the leadership team. Here is a story: Akbar, the Indian emperor who loved music, praised Tansen, his court musician "You are possibly the best singer with mesmerizing voice in the world. " Tansen with all humbleness and humility said "He will be pale in comparison to his Guru Swami Haridas". So, Akbar desired to hear him sing and went with Tansen in disguise. They found Swami Haridas meditating under a tree in Vrindavan. Swami Haridas sang a hymn in praise of God. His music was divine and enchanting. Akbar felt a wa
Read more

Dystopian world beyond the point of singularity!

-
Image
What if I told you that artificial intelligence (AI) is smarter, faster and more powerful than you? And that it can read and write anything on the internet better than you? And that it can solve any problem that you can’t? Don’t worry, this is not a sci-fi movie plot. This is the point of singularity, a hypothetical situation where AI becomes self-aware, self-improving and unstoppable. Some nerds say that it will happen by the middle of this century, but others say that it is already happening with the rise of natural language processing (NLP) and large language models (LLMs) such as Chat GPT. These models are like super-readers and super-writers. They can devour billions of words from books, articles, social media posts, etc. and spit out texts that are coherent and fluent on any topic. They can also answer questions, summarize information, and create original content such as poems, stories, code, etc. Anyone can access these models for a cheap price thanks to the cloud computing ser
Read more