Rashid's Blog: A Place for Inquisitive Souls

Tarun Sharma reports from New Delhi about safe walking  and quality of life in cities, with the help of two concepts of hierarchies. One is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and the other is the food chain. He looks at these two concepts not so much on scientific as  intuitive grounds. And he offers it not to solve a policy problem, but to state the obvious in an obvious way. His focus is on one of the aspects of city living, namely mobility.

Byzantine Mosaic Unearthed In Southern Israel

” An exquisite 1,500-year-old mosaic has come to light in an excavation in southern Israel, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced Sunday.

The mosaic appears to have been the floor of a public building in a thriving Byzantine-era village on the site, near the modern-day kibbutz of Beit Kama. The precise role of the building in the life of the community is unknown.”

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For the first time in human history, the concentration of climate-warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has passed the milestone level of 400 parts per million (ppm). The Guardian reports

The last time so much greenhouse gas was in the air was several million years ago, when the Arctic was ice-free, savannah spread across the Sahara desert and sea level was up to 40 metres higher than today.

These conditions are expected to return in time, with devastating consequences for civilisation, unless emissions of CO2 from the burning of coal, gas and oil are rapidly curtailed. But despite increasingly severe warnings from scientists and a major economic recession, global emissions have continued to soar unchecked.

“It is symbolic, a point to pause and think about where we have been and where we are going,” said Professor Ralph Keeling, who oversees the measurements on a Hawaian volcano, which were…