Today is the international Water Day. Change.org has asked, to as many blogger as possible, to write, on the same day, a post about water: here I am.

Funny enough I am writing about something that I feel there should be many solutions available and often struggle to understand why there aren’t.

Water is the most abundant element on Earth: 3/4 of its surface is covered by water and yet providing clean and drinking water is one of the main issues to be addressed by developing countries.  Yes of course most of the water available is sea water therefore salty water that cannot be drunk directly but, hey, it’s just about removing salt from it right?

Removing salt from water requires desalination that is well known to require specialised equipment and infrastructure and to be an energy intense process.  Energy is required in terms of heat that is used to boil the water, produce steam and, more or less, distil it to separate it from the salts diluted in it.  A very simple observation I am making is that most developing country are hot countries, places where the sun is visible and very hot for most of the year.

The question I am asking with this post is:

can the energy required for desalination be derived by sun and build eco sustainable plants that run next to the sea, in very sunny areas and produce huge amounts of fresh water by using just the sun light and heat?

I wish some scientist could see this and consider whether my question is too simplistic or, perhaps, it just requires people to take action…

Posted under blogging, rambling

First post for the year can just reflect how I feel this morning: a happy new year starts, a nice and quiet celebration last night and a profound transformation in the way I felt New Years Wishes are sent from person to person.  Social networks are very much shaping the way many of us interact with a broad audience both for business and leisure but never before I noticed this until these festive days.

Just 15 years ago post cards were sent before Xmas and New Year and then we would exchange wishes in person with people we were spending our NYE party.  About 10 years ago the popularity of mobile phones made possible connecting (if and when lines were free) with people that were not necessarily close to us.  Personally, until last year, this was the way I exchanged messages with friends and relatives.

Of course Emails was there along the way but they require being in front of the computer when you are partying, that is not necessarily very practical: various PDAs and more recently the iPhone made this a lot more accessible.

Somehow for me all this has changed quite dramatically this year: I have used Skype to have online toasts with relatives in both Italy and Hungary (as it worked well on Xmas eve and Xmas day) and, again, most wishes I received and sent, were via various social networking sites, like Facebook and Twitter.

I am curious to see how this will influence this new decade that just started:  Happy New Year 2010 to everyone!

Posted under Social Networks, blogging

Three years into blogging and about two in writing blogs and I finally decided to start my own blog: one that spans all topics.  One that can finally carry my random ramblings.

I hope who will read this will find it interesting and subscribe to it!

Have a nice reading!

Posted under blogging