It’s Raining Moths - What’s Causing The Great Delhi Insect Menace

The Svetambara is one of the two main sects of Jainism, followers of which in believe total non-violence. They always clad themselves in white clothes and some even cover their mouths with a white cloth to practise ahimsa even when they talk. By doing so they minimize the possibility of inhaling small organisms.

So unless you’re a monk who practices Svetambara it is quite certain that you must have inhaled or eaten quite a few insects that have suddenly bombarded the night skies of Delhi in the past few weeks. It has become a common sight over the past few weeks to see thousands of insects swarm around even the smallest sources of light, much to the amazement of delhites who are wondering about the reasons of this moth onslaught. So the basic questions that arise are: What are these insects ? Where are they coming from ? Why are they coming here and When does this menace stop ?

These insects are an immigrant pest called the Brown Plant Hopper(also known as leafhoppers with local names like phudka or bhusaddi) and they are coming from the rice fields of neighbouring Haryana. G.T. Gujar, head of the Division of Entomology at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, says the population of this pest has increased “300 to 400 times this year“. A single rice plant could have more than a thousand of these insects hidden inside, he says. “It used to be an agricultural menace in the 1990s but was controlled by pesticides“, says TP Rajendran, Assistant Director General for Plant Protection at the Indian Council of Agricultural Research.

This year, untimely rains began a chain reaction that led the Hopper population to explode. The rains caused an increase in the population of crop pests, which made farmers use increasing amounts of insecticides like carbaryl, which ended up killing off all the natural predators of the Hopper like spiders and frogs. The Hopper, meanwhile, turned mutant and developed immunity to the available pesticides. It then went forth and multiplied. Normally, the insects would be drawn towards the moonlight and they would fly in huge swarms for mating. In the city, however, they get drawn to electric lights and usually die due to the intense heat. “There is no way to keep them out of homes. They are extremely small and can fly in through the smallest of cracks. Since they don’t cause any harm, nobody really bothers. But this time, due to their unusually large number, people are facing problems,” says Dr Mohammad Faisal, an entomologist.

The female insect lays eggs in the mud. Then, the eggs can lie dormant for good 6-8 months and hatch when humidity increases. When the temperature ranges between 35 and 22 degrees Celsius and relative humidity is about 85%, the eggs can hatch even in four days. One female leafhopper can lay up to 681 eggs during its lifetime. The leafhoppers we see are adults, with a life span of 23-39 days.

The Menace is expected to end most likely after Diwali once it starts to get a little cold.

Gmail’s Social Initiative - Don’t Drink And Mail

“It’s Saturday night and I am sitting alone at home, surfing aimlessly on the World Wide Web. This week hasn’t been so good. My girlfriend broke up with me, cause she didn’t trust me anymore. All thanks to a couple of pictures that I sent to her by mistake after a wild night at Havana and Pure. How much I wish there was a way I could take that e-mail back. I wonder if someone can develop a technology, that wouldn’t allow a drunk guy to send e-mail”.

If you’re the kind of person who types tipsy and regrets it in the morning, Google’s “Mail Goggles,” a new test-phase feature in the free Gmail service, might save you some angst, regret and potential break-ups. As Gmail engineer and Mail Goggle’s creator John Perlow writes, “Sometimes I send messages I shouldn’t send. Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together. Gmail can’t always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today we’re launching a new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles which may help.”

The Goggles can kick in late at night on weekends. The feature requires you to solve a few easy math problems in short order before hitting “send.” If your logical thinking skills are intact, Google is betting you’re sober enough to work out the repercussions of sending that screed you just drafted. And if you can’t multiply two times five, you’ll probably thank Google in the morning. To activate Goggles, Gmail users should click the “Settings” link at the top of a Gmail page, then go to the “Labs” section.

While the concept does appears to be interesting and useful it seems to have been implemented as more of a gag, as pointed out by Brennon Slattery on his pcworld blog, read here. Anyways, the nice thing about Google is that it keeps innovating and at times even implements features suggested by it’s users (a look at the Labs feature in Gmail shows the number of cool Gmail apps that are available ), maybe that’s one of the reasons why no google product ever comes out of beta.

Cheap Beer In Times Of Recession

These are tough times in the world’s financial markets and just like the employees of Lehman, Merill Lynch and AIG have found out things can change drastically in a very short time. In such times it’s interesting to see the reaction and response of people all over the world especially those who work in unrelated industries.

The Fifty/50 Restaurant in Chicago for instance is hoping to give the employees of these companies a break. Apparently the bar is offering a half-off bar and restaurant tab for anyone who can prove they work or worked for AIG or Lehman Brothers. “Everybody is freaking out. We wanted to do something to make their day a little better,” said Scott Weiner, co-owner of The Fifty/50 restaurant. Lehman’s parent company filed for bankruptcy this week and AIG was bailed out by the U.S. government. In addition to job losses, the former’s stock traded for pennies while the latter was below $5 a share.

The offer is good Sunday through Thursday until October at the restaurant west of downtown Chicago. Weiner said 20 or 30 people, many of whom he had gotten to know while managing another restaurant frequented by employees of the financial companies, had already accepted the half-price discount (Source).

Well, it surely helps to unwind with a couple of beers while job hunting and such things can really help to overcome the depressed mood of an unstable economy.

Mispronunciation, A Taxi Ride And A Cruise

Imagine if you had 3,870 euros(USD $5,720 or Rs 2,47,883) to spare and spend, what would you do with it ? Take a vacation to Antarctica, invest the money, pay off your bills, learn something new, start a small business etc etc. There’s a lot of stuff that one can do with $5,000 (Cnn Money lists some responses from people on what they would do with $5k here) and it would take sometime to figure out as to what to do with it.

But no matter how well you may plan something, there is always a chance of something going wrong, like it happened for a Spanish couple going around Norway.

A Spanish couple’s language difficulties cost them several thousand dollars after they mispronounced their destination giving instructions to a Norwegian taxi driver. The couple, who were touring Norway’s fjords, wanted to travel to Olden on the country’s west coast. Instead their taxi took them to Halden, hundreds of kilometres away, a trip that cost them 3870 euro.

The pair in their 50s were on a cruise of the fjords when they had to spend a short time in hospital while on a stopover in Stavanger, the Verdens Gang (VG) newspaper reported. Once out of hospital the two decided to rejoin the ship in Olden. But their taxi driver misunderstood and took them to Halden, 560 kilometres east of Stavanger. Oblivious to the mistake, the happy holidaymakers paid the 1875 euro fare ($3205) and added a generous tip to boot. But after spending the night in a hotel, they discovered there was no cruiseship in the Halden port. So the couple had to take another taxi to Olden which was 610 kilometers away and they ended up paying another 15,300 kroner in the process (Source).

So while the couple probably had more than USD $5,000 to spare they just spent the money in two taxi rides. Talk about planning what to do with your money.

Tags: taxi, norway, holiday, spanish, couple, cruise, costly, money, olden

Realize Your Power: Reach Out And Make A Difference

True Happiness Comes From Giving, is a mantra that we at DelhiPlanet truly believe in. Every person on this planet has the power and ability to bring about change given the opportunity and the right medium.

A few months back we too began looking for the right medium. We started to search for a professional and trustworthy charitable organization that would effectively use our donation to make a change in someone’s life. Our search ended at GiveIndia and we’re happy to have found it and made use of it (you can read all about GiveIndia in our article here).

A week back we received a report on how our contribution (sponsoring child’s rehabilitation and education for 1 month) of a few thousand rupees to the Ananya Trust was utilized. We felt really touched when we discovered that our contribution had been used to bring back some color in the life of 7 year old Rajesh from Banaswadi, Bangalore. How, read on to find out.

Rajesh’s mother is a housemaid and earns up to Rs.3000 per month and father has abandoned the family. His elder sister and brother both study in Ananya. As the mother found it difficult to take care of Rajesh who was very young, she admitted him in a boy’s hostel at Nandi Hills. She was not allowed to visit or bring him home. She approached Ananya. At first we felt he was too young to stay away from his mother. We realized that it would be better for him to stay with his elder siblings at Ananya, so that he could visit his mother over the weekends. We admitted him in Ananya in October 2006.

Being independent of nature, we decided that Rajesh’s learning should arise from the exploration of his environment. He was allowed to wander about in the campus and all his various findings were taken very seriously. Since he enjoys drawing he was encouraged to draw the creepy crawlies he found. Books were used to enhance his understanding of the subject under investigation. The freedom allowed him to ask questions and try out new things. Slowly he became interested in what the other children were doing and voluntarily sat with them in the group activity.

Now, Rajesh proudly shows his drawings of his version of millipedes and centipedes and birds that he has seen. He has learnt the names of quite a few trees and flowers that grow around the campus. After lunch we see him sitting and playing in the sand pit and when asked what he is making he tells us it’s an Igloo! Rajesh is especially good at arithmetic. He also enjoys cutting out and sorting pictures starting with a particular alphabet. He enjoys school; his mother says he looks forward to Mondays when he comes back to school after the weekend at home.

Now doesn’t that warm your heart and give you a sense of being powerful, it surely does. So what are you waiting for, “Reach Out And Make A Difference to someone’s life today“.

Tags: giveindia, charity, change, power, donation, rajesh, medium, opportunity

What Are You Lookin At MR

Imagine that you are sitting in a train going back home after a rather bad day at work. You are in a really bad mood and the only thing on your mind is to get back home and doze off for the day. A few minutes later however, an attractive woman steps into the train and sits on the seat opposite to you. What would your reaction be …

Well, as hard as you may try not to stare at her you would end up looking at her very frequently. Now imagine being fined for looking at the pretty lady so often or even worse being imprisoned for the same. Seems too harsh to be true, doesn’t it.

In an absurd judgment in Italy on Friday, an Italian man was given a suspended jail sentence for staring too intensely at a woman sitting in front of him on a train. A judge sentenced the man in his 30s, whose name was not revealed, to 10 days in prison and a 40 euro ($63) fine after a 55-year old woman filed a complaint for sexual harassment. The two met on two separate occasions in 2005 on a commuter train going from Lecco, a town in northern Italy, to Milan. The first time, the man sat next to the woman but she felt he had moved too close for comfort. The next day, the man sat in front of the same woman and according to her complaint, stared at her for the whole journey. The two however never spoke to each other.(Source)

Now whoever once said that it a man’s world would surely be eating his words after reading this.

Tags: woman, attractive, beauty, man, fined, imprisoned, stare

Weather Poetry

In the Morning, the Sun Shone
And the Chill Went Away.
We Sat By the Shore
And Enjoyed the Sunny Day.

Around Noon, It Started To Rain,
Then the sleet came in
And we ran towards the shade.

In the night it started to snow,
And as we walked together,
I noticed her face glow.

“ThankYou For This Lovely Day,
I really love you“.
Is what I thought she meant to say.

As I Lay In Bed,
And Saw Her Sleep Away.
I closed my eyes and prayed,
“O Lord, Please Let Her Live Another Day“.

Well, what you see above is a By-Product of a day when one of our team members experienced not 1, not 2, not 3 but 4 different kinds of weather phenomena in a span of a single day. If you thought that the weather was uncertain in India then you were seriously mistaken. Our friend who is currently in the United States Of America would tell you that the weather their changes as frequently as Paris Hilton’s boyfriends (Check here for the list). So if it is sunny in the morning, it could be raining in the afternoon and snowing in the night. No wonder then that the US has 24 hour dedicated weather channels and people follow weather patterns a lot here.

Unlike India where no one really cares about the weather predictions as they rarely prove to be right they are taken very seriously in the US. So if weather.com says that there would be a major winter storm at 2 pm on a wednesday, it would result in people leaving their offices early so that they don’t get caught up in the storm. Understandably so, given the fact that the Government spends millions of dollars on weather research which makes the weather predictions very accurate.

Take for instance the USWRP(US Weather Research Program), which is a partnership among several governmental agencies like the NOAA, NASA, DOE, DOT, USDA, the American Meteorological Society, the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the U.S. Navy—and the academic and commercial communities (Check here for more). The existence of such an organization illustrates the importance that the US government places on weather research.

Now what we don’t understand is the reason for such climate variations. Is it because of global warming or is it just because of the location of the US.

Tags: weather, climate, warming, snow, rain, sun, poems, NASA

We are eager to know your thoughts on the poem, do drop in a few comments on what you think about it. It basically deals with the thoughts of a man who is about to lose his beloved very soon, on a day when they experience all kinds of weather.

First Impressions Of An Indian In The US of A

What is it about the United States Of America, better known as the US of A that all Indians are always eager to experience life as it happens there. Well, the reasons really vary from one person to another and even though the US is a multi-cultural and diverse country not everyone who goes there would like it too much.

Irrespective of where you come from in India your first visit to the US would surely make you observe new things about the way people go about there lives there. Let’s take a look at a few of these

• The Customer Is King: Good Customer Service is a very essential in America. Customer service standards are very high as there are big penalties associated with poor customer service. So if you visit a restaurant and don’t like the food that is served, you can speak to the manager and you can rest assure that he would do something about it. India is also moving towards this trend gradually but it’s still a long way away from the US.
• The Weather Is A Big Deal: If you thought that the weather in India is unpredictable then you were seriously mistaken. In the United States, it could be warm and cosy on one day and cold and rainy on another. The climate variations here quite extreme as a result of which most people constantly update themselves with the weather forecasts for the day and the week. Another thing that is different in the US is that the weather predictions turn out to be true most of the times, unlike India.
• The Day Starts Early: The working day starts really early in the US. People generally reach office by 8:30 am and finish their lunch by 1 pm. People usually leave by 5:30 pm and have their dinner by 7 pm. In India the days starts off a little late and also ends late as a result of which the meal timings are usually about 2 hours ahead of the American meal timings.
• You Need A Car For Everything: In most of the American Cities, people are crazy about cars and everyone wants to own a Nice Car. One of the main reasons for this is that it isn’t easy to move around on foot or public transport. The means of public transport are very limited and it’s really not convenient to walk to any place. One of the reasons why people rent cars a lot in the US.
• The Options Will Confuse You: The US of A is a paradise for the food freak. There are just so many options available for food and drink and you would most certainly be confused.

Well, if you have any more thoughts on this then do share it with us and if you’re traveling to the US for the first time then you might want to start preparing yourself for the new way life that you’ll experience there from now on, especially the jet lag.

The Car That Was Allergic To Vanilla Ice Cream

The “Customer Is King“, so goes the famous adage. This mantra is the premise that any product’s design, production, distribution and marketing should have, after all it is always the end user who can make or break the success story of a product. Following this mantra is however, a slightly complicated task and it is certainly a case of “easier said than done“. The following real life incident highlights this fact:

Once a complaint was received by the Pontiac Division of General Motors:

“This is the second time I have written to you, and I don’t blame you for not answering me, because I sounded crazy, but it is a fact that we have a tradition in our family of Ice-Cream for dessert after dinner each night, but the kind of ice cream varies so, every night, after we’ve eaten, the whole family votes on which kind of ice cream we should have and I drive down to the store to get it. It’s also a fact that I recently purchased a new Pontiac and since then my trips to the store have created a problem.. ”

“You see, every time I buy a vanilla ice-cream, when I start back from the store my car won’t start. If I get any other kind of ice cream, the car starts just fine. I want you to know I’m serious about this question, no matter how silly it sounds. What is there about a Pontiac that makes it not start when I get vanilla ice cream, and easy to start whenever I get any other kind?”. The Pontiac President was understandably skeptical about the letter, but sent an Engineer to check it out anyway.

The latter was surprised to be greeted by a successful, obviously well educated man in a fine neighborhood. He had arranged to meet the man just after dinner time, so the two hopped into the car and drove to the ice cream store. It was vanilla ice cream that night and, sure enough, after they came back to the car, it wouldn’t start.

The Engineer returned for three more nights. The first night, they got chocolate. The car started. The second night, he got strawberry. The car started. The third night he ordered vanilla. The car failed to start. Now the engineer, being a logical man, refused to believe that this man’s car was allergic to vanilla ice cream. He arranged, therefore, to continue his visits for as long as it took to solve the problem. And toward this end he began to take notes: He jotted down all sorts of data: time of day, type of gas uses, time to drive back and forth etc.

In a short time, he had a clue: the man took less time to buy vanilla than any other flavor. Why? The answer was in the layout of the store. Vanilla, being the most popular flavor, was in a separate case at the front of the store for quick pickup. All the other flavors were kept in the back of the store at a different counter where it took considerably longer to check out the flavor.

Now, the question for the Engineer was why the car wouldn’t start when it took less time. Eureka - Time was now the problem - not the vanilla ice cream!! . The engineer quickly came up with the answer : “vapor lock“. It was happening every night; but the extra time taken to get the other flavors allowed the engine to cool down sufficiently to start. When the man got vanilla, the engine was still too hot for the vapor lock to dissipate.

The above story shows that in the service business: “Attitude Is Everything“. The story shows how much the Pontiac President cared for the customer and how committed the engineer was towards his work. It was his intellect and patience that enabled him to solve such a fine issue.

Well, we couldn’t find any official confirmation of this incident from General Motors but even if it’s just a story it still has a great moral.

Tags: moral, pontiac, ice, cream , family, car, vanilla, chocolate, attitude

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