Today I Learnt

Since the sources for Current Affairs and other diverse topics in GS is very wide, let’s collate and collaborate to share the topics we learn in a day. 

We can share anything, be it titbits or thoughts or just the title of an article or editorial.

Great initiative!

Carbon taxin a country leads banks to reduce lending to coal, oil and gas companies domestically. As a consequence they lend more in foreign countries, lacking a carbon tax. The best solution would be worldwide adoption of carbon tax.

Seasteading: a concept of creating permanent dwellings at sea, in international waters, outside the territory claimed by any government. 

• Officials in Busan (South Korea) planned to offer space for a floating neighbourhood that may be built near its shore. The project is endorsed by UN- Habitat. 
• The idea is to demonstrate a tool cities might use to adapt to rising sea levels. The goals right now is more technical: to find out if floating districts can be comfortable, affordable and scalable. It is said to be more sustainable than land reclamation, which requires masses of sand.

71% by market value of global tech industry controlled by America. 3 different categories of business have emerged:

1.  global platforms: like Alphabet, Google, Meta etc dominate in areas of search, social media and cloud computing.
2.  Protected National companies: for instance, Chinese and Russian tech companies.
3.  Local digital and regional companies: operate in markets where local factors are dominant. eg, Reliance and Tata providing super-apps in India.

COINFLIPS: to generate random numbers. Why generation of random numbers is important? To transform random phenomena in nature into computer bits. Possible future applications in Cryptography, weather prediction, AI systems etc. 

• An example: to interpret the results of collisions in particle accelerators, COINFLIPS can be incorporated into the sensor. The results from the collision will be randomly distributed, which will then be compared with artificial random distributions to see if they match. To be able to do this in real time will be useful, because it allows an immediate decision to be made about whether or not to store a particular result.

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/modern-history-of-india-and-social-movements-7664855/

Unfortunately, the focus nowadays is on professional courses to the total neglect of equally important subjects such as humanities and natural sciences. In an anxiety to secure highly remunerative and profitable job opportunities, children are sent to exile in privately-run residential schools and coaching centres. The formative years of budding talents are spent in a suffocating atmosphere that unfortunately resembles prisons. The harsh reality is that even after the students enter professional universities, the focus is on classroom learning, and not on the world beyond the classroom.

Students are an integral part of society. They cannot live in isolation. Students are guardians of freedom, justice, equality, ethics, and social equilibrium. All this can be achieved only when their energies are properly streamlined. When the youth become socially and politically conscious, the basic issues of education, food, clothing, healthcare, shelter, etc. would come into focus in the national discourse.

there was this article in the Indian Express which talked about gender equality

The Humanity has two wings- one man and second woman. Not until both the wings developed, can the bird fly? Not until the world of women becomes equal to the world of men in acquisition of virtues and perfection, Can success and prosperity be attained as they ought to be? - Abdul'baha

In gender equality, we should probably use something that talks about equality of all genders not just the two sexes.

I agree with your viewpoint. How would you want to take the discussion ahead? On a separate thread or over some post here

If others agree, we can do it here itself. Rather than posting long paras, we can post key idea or fact in 3-4 lines. Others should then comment on it. Its relevance, whether they agree or disagree, any other key related key idea or fact etc.

"What Orwell failed to predict was that we'd buy the cameras ourselves, and that our biggest fear would be that nobody was watching" ~ Keith Jensen

This quote can be used to counter the most commonly held view that government can do surveillance on us, without our consent. We ourselves trade our privacy for convenient. And the isolation plus mental health issues associated with social media etc.

CJI Ramanna, quoting from Orwell's book "If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself"

Justice Chandrachud: "with the advent of the internet, the platform is no longer an issue, but rather it is about grabbing someone's attention. While someone's speech may not be removed from the internet, it can be effectively drowned down by flooding the internet with massive amounts of information to the contrary. This will ensure that many people do not even read the original speech or will be unconvinced of its truth. Hence it is easy to see why Mills' marketplace of ideas approach to speech in order to uncover the truth may no longer be a valid option. The internet and social media corporations are not the only one to share the blame for the scenario"

World inequality report 2022 says - Female labour income is 18% of the total income while male labour incomes constitutes 82% of the income - this tells about the inequality in income in India. 

This is lower than the asia's 27%. Countries like SL outperform us on the front. 

It depends on two factors - their labour force participation compared with men on the one hand, and the gender earnings ratio on the other hand. 

Labour force participation rate of women during covid 19 times has fallen to 16% which is lower than around 26% in 2005. 

This actually should ignite our thinking about the position of women in our society? Where we are heading and are we doing enough? 

Weather we are respecting women, or are they drowned under this double burden of work, are we creating enough jobs for women matching their calibre .

We have to see the consequences of such actions over the family and society and world at large. 

Some more things about the women question that struck me this week - 

1. Acc to parliamentary commitee report , we spend 80% of the funds of beti bachao beti padhao for media campaign? Will media campaign resolve the issue faced by women and our girl child? Couldn't the money better be spend on creating durable assests, infrastructure , health and sanitary benefits etc? Is everything a PR strategy to just get the name?

https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/narinder-singh-kapany-how-a-job-in-jawaharlal-nehrus-team-eluded-father-of-optics-2647753

Bureaucracy deprived us of the service of Father of fiber optics , imagine what he could have done/or not done as a Scientific adviser for defence ministry.

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