Month: August 2013

The recent announcement by the billionaire businessman – Elon Musk on design plans for the ‘Hyperloop’ transport system could well be one of the prototypes in the future of high speed travel. Elon Musk, who is best known as the founder of PayPal, Space X and more recently for bringing out the all electric car – Tesla X, set the media buzz when he claimed a few months back that he had plans for building the super-fast ‘pneumatic’ tube transport system which could cover the distance of 615 Km between Los Angels (LA) to San Francisco (SF) just under 30 min at speeds of over 1000 Km/hr and even higher for longer distances. read more

Threat of new economic, political and social crises

Until recently, the ’emerging’ economies of the BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – were still growing at a steady rate. China, in particular, appeared to be defying the economic laws of gravity or those of boom and slump in capitalist economies. There were many who argued that these countries could help keep the world economy afloat as deepening crises afflicted Southern Europe and the US. The dramatic slump in Brazil’s growth rate (from 7.5% in 2010 to 0.9% in 2012), and the massive revolt of the youth and workers in July of this year, have put an end to that illusion. read more