Taarini Chopra

In Review: Great Ants

7 December, 2010 | Taarini Chopra

Anthill, E.O. Wilson, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 378 pages, 2010.

Reviewed by Taarini Chopra.

To successfully meld science with storytelling is a difficult task for any author – let alone a scientist. Yet with his latest title, Anthill, E.O. Wilson has done it gracefully and convincingly.

At 81, Wilson, a renowned ecologist, evolutionary biologist and entomologist with 24 highly influential books to his name, has carved his first novel out of his vast expertise and experience. Set in Wilson’s home state of Alabama, the story follows young Rafael Semmes Cody, or “Raff,” as he falls in love with the pristine Nokobee reserve near his home.

Published in: Water 37.1

Bank with a Conscience

17 February, 2010 | Taarini Chopra

The more you have, the more you get. This widely accepted, if often unspoken, principle is arguably the credo of most financial institutions today. But then, the Grameen Bank is not your average financial institution.

Flipping conventional, profit-oriented banking on its head, the Grameen Bank (which stems from the Bangla word gram or village) operates on the principle that poverty is not created by the poor, but by the institutions and policies that surround them. It aims to break the vicious cycle of poverty by giving those who need it most – rural people, most often women – access to small-scale loans for business, housing or education. …

Editorial: Education for the Planet (34.5)

3 June, 2009 | Tegan Renner and Taarini Chopra

School spirit is flying high this frosh week at the University of Waterloo. Cries of “E-S! E-S!” (Environmental Studies!) resound as orange-T-shirt-clad, first-year students wander by Alternatives’ office. Below the boisterous merriment that characterizes students’ first days at university, however, there is a quieter movement brewing. It is one that brings environmentally conscious individuals together to initiate community gardens and local-food cafés, organize cross-country bicycle trips to support alternative energy, plan green buildings, and set up innovative organizations.

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