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A Wise Man

Posted on 3:48 PM by 4 8 15 16 23 42 and filed under

Let's start…

He invented a musical instrument called glass armonica. Mozart wrote two pieces for the armonica, including "Adagio and Rondo 617," and in 1815, Beethoven wrote a short melodrama where a narrator told a story while accompanied by armonica.




He also invented an efficient stove providing more heat and less smoke than an ordinary open fireplace. His stove was described by his contemporaries as giving off twice the amount of heat as a normal fireplace for a third of the wood consumed.



Along many many discoveries in electricity, he who invented lightning rod and saved millions of houses from thunder. Thanks to him, thunders were no longer disastrous.



The same guy was also the first one to observe Gulfstream currents.




These were only a couple of his inventions.

Who was it? Maybe this image would help.



It was Benjamin Franklin.

Benjamin Franklin (1703-1790) was born in Boston, as the youngest of 17 brothers. His father had a candle-shop, and his mother probably spent all her life with house work as a mother of 17 children.

His family was not wealthy or intellectual thus his family has never been a major factor of his success. Though, as I understand, they supported learning and to some extent Franklin's life choices.

He is sent to Latin school to learn theology at the age of eight. But he was not interested in it. His father Josiah, observes Benjamin's lack of motivation and takes him out of school. They afterwards search for a suitable job for 10 year old Ben.

As a child, he has a hunger for information of all kind and his father's library helps him a lot He spent many hours reading books from various kinds. He reads from Socrates to John Locke, at a very young age and continues reading all through his life.

Primarily, Ben works for a relative who repairs knife. He dislikes the job so with his father they search a more suitable job for him. Printing seems interesting for him, as it involves getting involved with books, so finally he starts as an apprentice in a printing shop. (He continues in this profession until he retires on age 42, in addition between many other professions he was given, he identifies himself as a printer on his will.)

After disagreements with the owner of the printing shop, he goes to New York in the hopes of a new job. Not finding in New York a printing shop to give him a job, he hears about some opportunities in Philadelphia. Therefore, he moves to Philadelphia for work.

In Philadelphia, he starts to write columns with fake names. Poor Richard's Almanac gains extensive popularity.

While spending many hours at work, he never neglects reading and more importantly thinking about everything. He forms a small discussion group, named Junto, where every Friday they discuss various topics. The topics may differ from public problems to scientific inventions, about everything that is helpful to discuss. Ben's Junto becomes so popular that other discussion groups are formed within the city.

Basically, as he continues to work in Printing( after a while as an owner of a printing house) he constantly thinks about the world around him, and this constant thinking and learning, helps him develop from very creative solutions to major public problems, to inventions in very challenging scientific areas.

He thinks, he researches, and he observes. Not on some major area, but basically in all areas.

He formed:

  • the First Fire Department in Philadelphia
  • City Cleaning System
  • An Academy for poor children (Now became University of Pennsylvania)
  • First Hospital in Philadelphia.

Namely a few.

He found a way to pass American Indian language to writing. Also he was the one who first used caricatures and question-answer technique in journalism.

He invented Glass Harmonica, a musical instrument composed of various sized glass cups.

He was the first to observe Gulfstream currents in the ocean, and thus proposed a better trajectory to pass the Atlantic.

Condenser, conductor, charge, discharge, battery, electrical choke, positive and negative electricity, plus – minus charges. These notions were introduced by him.

He discovered the difference between electricity and thunder. This discovery led to the invention of lightning rod. Thanks to him, millions of houses worldwide were protected from thunders.

I didn't even start to write about his role in politics and diplomatic achievements!!

  • He was the first to propose the idea of union of states and a centralized government in 1751 (Albany Plan) His plan was not approved in the first time but after 20 years, his model gets acceptance.
  • He represented colony in London for years
  • He opposed to the Stamp act which was meant to burden excessive taxes upon colony
  • He served as a delegate in Continental Congress and took place in the committee that prepared the draft of Deceleration of Independence.
  • He seeks economic and military aid in France for America. With his efforts France assured critical military assistance to America. He also played a crucial role in bringing about the final peace treaty with Britain in 1783.
  • After United States of America was founded, in 1785 at the age of 82, he gets elected as the President of the state of Pennsylvania.

He dies in 1790 at the age of 87.

I'm sure I forgot to mention some of his critical roles and contributions thus my intention was to give a brief resume of Benjamin Franklin.

I really can't understand how he could do all this, but he really did. I ask myself how it can be possible to succeed in so many different areas. Still, I guess the case of Benjamin Franklin motivates all to pass boundaries.

Think, Discuss, Observe. Maybe that was the key to his success. Never give up. Always learn other thinges.

Well, he was a great man, that's for sure!
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Above The Clouds – Cloud Computing

Posted on 2:52 PM by 4 8 15 16 23 42 and filed under

Hopefully, this post is not a book review. It's about Cloud Computing.

Microsoft's Ceo, Steve Ballmer said that the company plans to spend 9.5 billion dollars in 2010, to cloud computing. The company will launch, Microsoft Azure, a cloud computing system.

Google has recently announced its Cloud-Based Operating System, Chrome OS and according to Google, the future is in Browsers and in the Cloud.

Amazon offers Cloud Based Storage, and according to their web site : "Amazon S3 provides a simple web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web."

Quite impressive huh? Given all that, I decided to search over what is this Cloud Computing? What is Software as a Service? Why is this important?

The first helpful document that I came across on the web, was UC Berkeley's 25 page report about Cloud Computing which summarizes what is cloud computing, its obstacles and how can these obstacles could be exceeded.

In simple words, Cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet. As the report suggests 3 aspects are new in cloud computing:

1. Infinite computing resources available on demand: thereby eliminating the need for Cloud Computing users to plan far ahead for provisioning.

Simply you have resources, and demands of using these resources. That means you can meet demands under resource capacity, but you cannot satisfy them if demand exceeds capacity.

Let's say, you have a website, and users login to the website. You run couple of servers in order to process the login information from users. Assuming, your servers can only process 1000 user login requests that means if more than 1000 users want to connect to site, you turn many down. (You wouldn't want that). On the other side, when user login requests are less than 1000, and you run servers that can meet up to 1000 users, that means you are running some servers unnecessarily (You wouldn't want that either).

Or, let's say the demand of users wanting to use the site varies a lot. Some days there are 1500 user demands, whereas the next days you have less than 1000. So you decide to rent/buy extra servers, that means you take a risk, if extra servers are not used that means you spent money unnecessarily.

So here comes the cloud solution, instead of owning servers/data centers, you deal with a (yours*100000...) sized Data center, and pay them for the resources you are using. As these big data centers( Cloud Providers) are well sufficient to meet any change in demand, there comes Infinite computing resources available on demand.
That gives you elasticity and lets you transfer that risk.


2. The elimination of an up-front commitment by Cloud users, thereby allowing companies to start small and increase hardware resources only when there is an increase in their needs.

This aspect of Cloud Computing would motivate business ventures, as the initial costs of the startup would decrease.


3. The ability to pay for use of computing resources on a short-term basis as needed (e.g., processors by the hour and storage by the day) and release them as needed, thereby rewarding conservation by letting machines and storage go when they are no longer useful.

For a business, if running servers on its own is more costly than paying per resource used on the cloud provider, then Cloud Computing is very useful.

According to Berkeley report, there are 10 major obstacles,

1. Availability of service
2. Data lock-in
3. Data confidentiality and auditability
4. Data transfer bottlenecks
5. Performance unpredictability
6. Scalable storage
7. Bugs in large distributed systems
8. Scaling quickly
9. Reputation fate sharing
10. Software licensing

Berkeley researchers, list possible approaches in overcoming these obstacles. And they say that:

"we believe that over the long run providers will successfully navigate these challenges and set an example for others to follow, perhaps by successfully exploiting the opportunities that correspond to those obstacles."

Also Mike Clein, president of Online Tech, states that

"For many, online data storage is less expensive, faster, more secure, and more reliable than the tape backup systems used over the past several decades. "

So, the future of Cloud Computing seems very bright. Go Cloud!
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(Inner) Travels

Posted on 1:34 PM by 4 8 15 16 23 42 and filed under

Einstein states in 1938, that:

“Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth. What humanity owes to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus ranks for me higher than all the achievements of the enquiring and constructive mind.”

Pretty strong, huh? I didn’t know that Einstein found religion more valuable than science. Apparently, Einstein has many statements supporting religion, but I thought that he would be kind of anti-religion as a very great scientist. This topic is very intriguing yet it is not the topic of this post. This post is about how I came across the quote above.

If you look at the (XX) posts published in this blog, you can easily realize that %90 of this blog is about Michael Crichton. I admit that I am a great fan of his work, but this time my adoration for him, multiplied. In Travels, only autobiographic book of Crichton, he tells the reader the milestones of his life, his challenging travels and what he gained from them.

When I came across this book at the university library, (I have previously tried to find it in bookstores but they don’t have it here) I got very excited. I realized that I haven’t really read an autobiographical or biographical book hence it was very different.

Why? I can explain this way, although I like reading classical thriller stuff, John Grisham, Dan Brown and of course Michael Crichton, as the characters are fictitious I get the idea that “these stuff wouldn’t happen in reality”. They are fun to read, but characters looked similar to me in every book.

One hero-type, one beautiful and smart woman, they get over the challenges together etc. After a while, I thought I had enough of these books for a while. So I read serious stuff like Guns & Germs and Steel, Fountainhead etc. Anyways, the idea of getting to know better such a creative mind, Travels seemed very exciting.



Travels starts by the medical studies of Crichton, why he studied medicine and why he didn’t practice the medicine. It is not common for one to get in to Harvard Medical School, struggle all along studies economically and mentally than after finishing the school never wanting to work as a doctor. He then continues with aspects of his life in Los Angeles, writing novels, and directing films. He progresses chronologically the important experiences of his life, thus his travels. He goes to roughly all the adventurous places in the world from Africa to New Zealand yet he shares what conclusions he reached after them.

The most interesting part, I think, is that the book is mostly about “inner travel”, the journey of one to his inner self. There are no such statements as “ Oh, dear Champs Elysées is really great, although I wanted escargot but the waitress got me wrong, Oh French people!” J I hope this is example I tried to give wasn’t cheesy, but I really want to emphasize the profoundness of this book.

Anyways, over time he is intrigued about psychic phenomenas like channeling, astral spaces, auras, energies etc. He experiences some of them, some of them not and he explains the details of his experiences. He experiences seeing auras and energies of people, talking to his dead father, and mediumship on some level. He is scientifically trained therefore his views on these matters are highly important. He is not someone who would accept anything without interrogating, but his experiences cited, represent something that cannot be explained, yet real. So should we accept them?

It’s a thought provoking question, of which I’ve never focused previously. I guess I always thought that some people had certain abilities (that KGB had focused on developing) but all this psychic stuff, kind of blah blah. Now I don’t know whether to believe or not. Before agreeing I need to see on my own. Thus I don’t deny them now.

Scientists generally find these unexplained events not true, fraud. One of the main reasons is that some of them are really frauds. Some practionners say that they are talking to dead, but they aren’t. Some say that they see your future, but they don’t see anything, etc. But that doesn’t mean that these phenomonas does not exist, according to Cricton. The same happens for science as well, he explains, Mendel fudged his data, Lazzarini faked an experiment to determine the value of Pi and so on. That does not mean that Science is fake.

After all, science does only answer “How Nature Works?” and not “Why nature works that way?” Humans have always searched for the meaning of their life, why do they exist. Science does not correspond to that answer and that’s why people are interested in psyche.

Probably that’s why Einstein said:

“Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth. What humanity owes to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus ranks for me higher than all the achievements of the enquiring and constructive mind.”

Crichton at the end of the book, summarizes his thoughts on this phenomenas, some of them he believes in, in some of them he does not, are to be taken seriously. He advises the reader not to take his word on this stuff, and go out for ourselves. If something does not work, try another. Be cautious of anyone seems interested in your money. Be cautious of someone who implies that he has the answer; the real answer is in you.

Whether his conclusions are right or wrong about this subject, the way he organizes his thoughts and his accomplishments seem amazing to me. He has lived a very different life and I am really sorry he has passed away.



Admiration, is the only emotion I feel towards him right now.

Thanks Michael Crichton.

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The Next 100 Years

Posted on 2:29 PM by 4 8 15 16 23 42 and filed under ,
Although, I kept on blogging about the books I've read previously, I think it helps to organize the information in my head, and it’s pretty informative. This post is about the most recent book I've read.
Couple of years ago, reading in English was not very easy for me, that's why I was reading easy-reading thrillers. That strategy worked very well for me, I started reading mostly thrillers. These science-fiction, thrillers are generally entertaining, makes your English a lot better, though they are only slightly informative. That's why, nowadays I am more oriented to serious books , difficult to read comparing to thrillers, needs a lot of attention but in the end you end up with very valuable real information.
The title of the George Friedman’s most recent book is interesting, huh? What if we could make assumptions about the future? And what if we were right in our assumptions?
The Next 100 years, deal with this question, only on politics though. The basic assumption of the author is that although future may seem really complex and chaotic thinking all the possibilities, it actually is not. In a simple example, say 2 players are playing chess. Although it seems like player move in many different moves, he cannot, they have fewer moves to play if they think rationally. Similarly, from a political aspect, it may seem like nations or states may go to many directions in the next hundred years, they cannot, they only can move in several directions (if they want their own survival as a nation)
So author states that he can make a prediction, an approximation on how the future will be, and analyzing possible moves of nations, like in a chess game. He adds that it is only a prediction, he doesn’t expect to be right %100 right on them, though if his grandchild’s sees that he was right in some major breakpoints, he would be very glad.
The logic seems reasonable to me. Plus interesting!
The major events that 21.century will observe are:
A crisis in 2020 caused by Russia: Russia vs. Europe &US.
Every war in history happens because of political and economical uncomfortabile situation. World War 1 happened, because Germany and its allies were excluded by the new economic order created by Atlantic Powers. They wanted a bigger share of the economical profits. And they caused a war.
WW2 happened because German nation needed a redefinition. Economically and politically uncomfortable, they caused a war.
In the same context, according to Freidman, Russia who was a world force before the collapse of USRR, wants to regain its power. Eastern Europe and Caucasia are the most important regions for the Russian strategy.
Friedman thinks, Russia will need a redefinition of the region, so a war in 2020s will happen. US will support Poland and Turkey as counterforces to Russia, because they are in great strategic importance and have been US allies for a long time. The war will result by the defeat of Russia and USA will be stronger than ever.
American Crisis: 2030s
He states that there are cycles of Economic depressions in American history. A crisis, a failed presidency and new system has always been part of the last centuries for us, and it will be similar for the next ones. So around 2030s he expects a great economic crisis for Usa, so for the world ( He doesn’t think that this actual crisis, is a major one!)



2040-2060 World War between Turkey, Poland , Japan and USA
In the Russia against others war, Usa will try to fight the Russians by creating or supporting regional powers. Poland, and Turkey will benefit that, he explains why specifically these countries with historical and geopolitical facts and seems reasonable from a point of view.
On the other hand, he thinks that China will collapse, seen as a potential major power China is actually so dependent to other economies mostly to USA, that it will never have the resources to independent economical aspects. Plus, he emphasizes the cycles of the Chinese history. More clearly, China has always had time periods when the government encourages foreign capital, and after a while another government abandons this strategy and dictatorships rules. I’m not sure if I could explain sufficiently, though the main point according to Friedman is that China will divide and so will not be a world force.
On the other hand, the division of China will strengthen Japan, which is the second largest economy of the world. Despite the fact that Japan is a economically strong country, it is trapped in its boundaries, in a geographical dilemma. It will try to expand his influence and become a stronger force.
/*
The parts about Turkey interest me a lot, since I am a Turk. Though there are many arguments that I don’t agree.
Author emphasizes that Turkey, the successor of the Ottoman Empire, is the most likely candidate to influence the Islamic world and become a regional power. Turkey has a geographical position highly important and can expand to many directions. All these arguments seem reasonable, but the author( who is an American who interprets the news) assumes that Turkey will be on a moderate-Islamic axis. This is the hottest issue, some see this Islamic orientation as a threat to actual modern and secular system, and some see it as a fact that we shouldn’t be worried about. What Friedman suggests seem to me, like Turkey will be an Islamic state in order to increase its influence in the region.
What about Ataturk?
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was the leader and founder of the Turkish republic. He offered a view oriented towards the west, denying some Islamic hierarchical foundations and built a modern state.
And as I mentioned previously, the current conflict is generated from the possibility of ignoring last century’s work ( i.e. Secular state) and heading towards an Islam oriented state.
I hope it does not happen.
Analyzing current Turkish foreign strategy, Friedman may be right in his conclusions. But I don’t think he takes account the recent history of Turkey and principles of Ataturk’s revolutions. I don’t think Turkey can sacrifice these, in order to influence the Islamic world even Middle and South East Asia.
/*
ANYWAYS, Turkey and Japan will be allies and Poland supported by Usa and Europe will be the enemies. This wear will occur in 2040-2060s and as the technology advances, the war will not be ground-based but mostly-space based. Consequently this war will not result as many deaths as WW2.
Throughout this war, world will face to many technological advances, but space based solar energy will be the one that shapes the future.
War will result by the defeat of Japan and Turkey and this time the real Golden Age of America will begin. Usa which has the power to control the oceans, will this time have the power to control the space.
2080’s Mexico rises again
Today many states in Usa have Hispanic population. In Border States to Usa, like California and Texas the Mexican-American population is already abundant comparing to other ethnical identities. As the demand for labor increases in the next century, Mexican population will continue to augment in the Usa, especially in border states. Texas and California were once Mexican states and Friedman accentuates that fact a lot.
The increase in population will result to increasing Mexican influence in the area and therefore the increase in Mexican identity. The Mexican origin population will reach to a point where the Border States will try to gain independence and/or reunite with Mexico. These attempts may be supported by terror acts, but in the end, the power will shift from Usa to Mexico.
Conclusion
His argument is that Europe has ruled the world for the next 5 centuries and North America will rule for the next 5 centuries. With the increase of Mexican population in Usa, North America will still continue to rule the world, but the force balance will slide from Usa to Mexico.
Whether his assumptions are right or wrong, Friedman puts out a valuable view of future. His arguments about the future, reminded me all the history classes that I took since primary school. We all learn in history class, “why this happened?” and if our assumptions are right in analyzing the past, our predictions about the future would be appropriate, right?
Although, I don’t agree completely with the Turkey part, since I am a Turk, I think he may be right in his predictions. Anyways it is very entertaining to think about the future.

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Harald Blatand

Posted on 3:11 PM by 4 8 15 16 23 42 and filed under ,

Have you ever wondered, where does the word “Bluetooth” come from? Honestly, I haven’t until a few days ago. Though, in an art class at college, I learnt why they named this wireless connectivity technology, Bluetooth, and I think it’s pretty interesting.
Harald Blåtand or Harold the Bluetooth (935-986), was the king of Denmark from around 958, and he is best known for his unification of Denmark and Norway.
Ericsson, a Scandinavian company, was the first to develop the bluetooth specification. Also Nokia has been researching on this technology also.Along with other 3 major companies In Feb 1998, Ericsson, Nokia, IBM, Toshiba and Intel formed a Special Interest Group (SIG). As the role of Scandinavian technology was higher on the developpement of such technology, came up with this name because this technology was ment to unite the world, as in a sense did Harold Blåtand for Scandinavia. So this name fit wery well to Sweden based Ericsson and Finland based Nokia.
Had Harold I of Denmark a bluetooth?
No, the name "Blåtand" was probably taken from two old Danish words, 'blå' meaning dark skinned and 'tan' meaning great man. But in english it means bluetooth. So the king had nothing to do with a blue tooth.
Why I studied this in an art class? Harold the Bluetooth, who also christianized the country, raised Jelling Stones which present the process of christianization. The stone has a figure of Christ on one side and on another side a serpent wrapped around a lion. Apparently, this stone is one of earliest marks of christian symbology. It is important as the early symbology had only 2 dimensions and afterwords it gained perspective and detailed descriptive narrations.

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Who wants a Nobel?

Posted on 8:37 AM by 4 8 15 16 23 42 and filed under
Recent news about the Nobel Peace Prize that Barrack Obama received, makes me wonder what about the other candidates.

Nobel Prize Medal
So, Who were other candidates?

Appereantly there were more than 200 candidates, though a few of them were considered very strong. These are:

Denis Mukwege: A doctor who has devoted his life to helping Congolese victims of sexual violence.

Sima Samar: A Afghan women’s rights activist who kept her schools―the only high schools in the whole country girls were able to attend―open under the Taliban regime.

Ghazi bin Muhammad: Prince of Jordan who brought prominent Islamic scholars together to work out a "theological counter-attack" against terrorism.

But, they didn't get one. Obama did.

Why did he get it?

Official Press Release of Nobel says:
“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population.”


Pretty impressive I think. Obama really gives hope to many people around the world but giving him a Nobel for that? Unusual.

Nobel academy, obviously has many motivations in givinhg Obama this honor. Though, it's a great risk for the prestige of this award. Isn't this award based on prestige, for 100 years?

If Obama really succeeds in solving some of the major political conflicts, then ok, nobel commitee would have lost anything. But what if Obama does't manage to fullfill his committements to Americans and to the World, and fails? Wouldn't it damage Nobel?

Peace category is different from scientific and literary categories, though it is very important in drawing th world's attention. The recipients are more popular, therefore arguable. 1994 prize given to Yasser Arafat; Peres and Rabin also had raised questions like the Obama prize, and there were ciritics that although nothing concrete has accomplished, they were awarded a Nobel.

After going through the list of Nobel laureates, for the peace award, i guess, for the real popular ones they're saying : “It would be good if you have accomplished something, if not don't worry, if you try you will get one!”

I've read articles proposing a Re-Evaluation of the prize, because it has lost its meaning. All I know, if I were a Nobel price winner with my achievements, I would very upset:)




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Why history happened that way?

Posted on 11:58 AM by 4 8 15 16 23 42 and filed under


Think of the discovery of America. After the discovery of Marco Polo, Spaniards have decided to come to South America with their forces. One key event on the colonization of America was the collision between the commander Pizarro who served Spanish empire and Atthuallpa, the Inca emperor believed to be son of God by the Incas.

After couple of interactions between White European and Native Americans, emperor Attahuallpa agrees a visit by commander Pizarro in the capital of Inca Empire, Cajamarca, on November 16,1532.

The commander Pizarro had almost 160 men along with a bishop and couple of close commanders. On the other hand, emperor Atthaualpa, had 80000 soldiers who knew the land, along with him.

Think of the contrast between two forces, Spaniards were fewer than 1/500 th of Incas, they were on a different continent, different climate, and in deep fear because of their insecure position. Incas had obviously more infantry, they were anxious possibly because of the men in front of them looked different than them, but given the imbalance between forces , the Incas were not in panic.

When Spaniards arrived at Cajamarca, they were already waited by Attahualpa. Pizarro and the Spaniard bishop, came near Attahuallpa to communicate. Bishop, gave Attahuallpa a Bible, to which he said, Attahuallpa and his people should obey from now on. Attahuallpa after looking at it for a couple of seconds, throws it to the ground, and refuses to obey it. Bishop, shocked by the gesture of Attahuallpa, tells Pizarro to attack them and by any means convert them to the Christian Path. Pizarro gives a signal of attack to his forces, 100 men with limited horses and guns.

What would be the outcome of this war? Incas would have killed Pizarro and his forces, maybe left some of them alive, let them turn back to Spain and tell the Spanish never to send forces again. That would be the most logical case maybe.

But, what happened instead? Forces of Pizarro, on top of horses, have killed that afternoon almost 7000 Incas, while they didn’t lose much people( if night hadn. Pizarro, kidnapped Emperor Attahuallpa and took gold worth a fortune.

How come that happened?


There were couple of reasons of the success of Pizarro,
First of all, Incas never saw any horses on their entire life. Horse would be the biggest mammal that those Incas saw that day. That is a huge advantage, because fighting over a horse gives Spaniards protection, on the other hand it was easy for them to attack Incas when they were desperately running from them.

The second major advantage of Pizarro is that he brought a group of bando with him. When he gave his signal of attack, the band started to create sounds forceful as they can, and attracted their attention while horseman infantry attacked from the other direction. Incas never were exposed to such a high decibel of volume, so they got panicked when they heard such a noise.

At the end of the battle, Incas were defeated in their own territory, lost almost 8000 forces, lost treasures, humiliated, panicked and lost their emperor.
Pizarro then bargained Incas for their emperor in exchange of information and gold, obtained all he wanted but killed Attahuallpa instead of releasing him. In Incas, hierarchical order was gathered at one man Attahuallpa, and also religious order. When he was murdered, the hierarchical order of Incas collapsed. How could, the Son of God could, would be murdered by white man with giant animals and tools they have never seen before?

So why didn’t Incas have horses to fight back anyway? Why didn’t they stop Spaniard invasions with their naval power?

And most of all, why weren’t the Incas, themselves instead, were the ones who discovered Europe, killed thousands of Spanish and kidnapped the Spanish Emperor?

This was indeed the main starting point of the book I recently read, Guns&Germs&Steel. It is not as easy to read as Harry Potter but it was not hard for me to read at all. The author, Jared Diamond gives this Pizarro – Attahuallpa battle in order to attire reader’s attention. It sure does!

While I was reading the book, I discovered that I have never thought about the subject before. I’m sure %99 percent of my friends haven’t also. The great thing about the book, you learn why the history happened that way, instead of what happened. He uses known examples of New Guinea and Australian tribes in explaining and his arguments and he thereby proves his examples.

I would really recommend you to read the book, though reading a book like this need concentration and time. Now I’m going to try to resume his major arguments on why some continents were more advanced than the others.

His major point of all, is that there is no racial cause such as Europeans were more intelligent than Native Americans, but instead all the levels of civilization of continents individually, depend on geographical differences. So if 40000 years ago, if some magical force replaced Native Australians with Europeans, it would still be the Europeans who discovered and conquered Australia, not vice-versa.

1)Availability of Domesticable Plants and Domesticable Animals

We all know that throughout the history, settled-farmer communities were the ones who reached to a much higher civilization level, not the hunter-gatherers. But hunter-gatherers were not hunter-gatherers by their choices, they were obliged to , in order to survive in their geological constraints. The change for societies from Hunter-Gatherers to Settled Farmers, do not occur on one day, they pass through a long transition period. And they only decide to change their lifestyles(hunter-gatherer/settled farmers) when they have adequate sources.
Sources in this case, are usable (eatable) plants and also protein-rich animals. A concept “Domesticability” is very important here. For the plants, it means that the plant is becoming more productive over generations and gives product useful to humans.
On the other hand, a Domesticable animal means an animal which adapts over generations to be kept under human control, abandons its wildness, from birth to death. Cows, dogs, cattle, horses are examples of domesticated animals. Cheetahs, zebras, elephants are not.
One remark about Domesticable animals, that there are animals that are not domesticated but tamed; such as elephants in India. They were kept in cages and used in wars etc. but they never adapted themselves to human control and therefore never domesticated.

Some animals and plants can be domesticated, while some cannot. This was a major difference in continents individually. Fertile Crescent, in south west Asia was home to many Domesticable plant and animal species, by 8000 B.C. This was a huge advantage of the region. Consequently, the population of the region changed their lifestyles from hunter gathering to farming and agriculture. So they could reach more easily to the State (Nomads- Tribes- Chiefdom- State) comparing to the other populations in the other continents.
Sumerians, Egyptians, Hittites are examples of such great civilizations.

2)Discovery of Writing

Discovery of writing is an interesting topic. According to Diamond, simple writing forms have occurred individually in 5 different regions of the world: Mesoamerica, like India, Mesopotamia, China, and Egypt . As it is very useful to accumulate and pass information, the discovery of writing bring populations enormous advantages.
What’s really interesting is, on the continent of America, simple writing forms were found only in MesoAmerica and those forms never reached the stage to pass information. Instead, writing was used only for only simple purposes; the lack of interactions between American civilizations, was one of the reasons of this lag.
Diamond explains the different stages of evolution of languages and writing form, though the lack of writing in America, is one of the main reasons of the lack of technology in the continent.

3)Axes of Continents: North South – East West Axis

If we look at the map of the world, we see that continent of America and Africa is oriented from north to south, that means the length of these distances is superior than the length of its east –west axis. Whereas Eurasia is oriented on east-west axis.

So what’s the importance?

Well, a lot. First of all, in the same latitude levels, the climate is similar. What does that give us?
Traveling is easy (Think of the Silk Road which is a path that exist for at least 3000 years). That brings commercial technological exchange between cultures, so what is invented in China can be brought to France, vice-versa. Information is shared and isolation of societies is not possible.
Plus on similar latitude levels, one is to be able to plant same crops. That boosts the agricultural growth. The crops that are found to be initially in Atlantic Europe could be brought to India for plantation. The same is also true for exchange of Domesticable animals.
In history, that gave the continent Eurasia, a major advantage over the other continents. Australia was isolated with few useful crops and animals; Sahara desert separated the North Africa from south and South Africa was almost isolated from Eurasia; whereas in America the Mexican deserts and extreme changes formed an unsuitable environment for travel and exchange of different crops.


4)Natural Barriers of Continents

It's easy to travel from east to west and from west to east. Whereas when in the north-south direction there are many natural barriers. In Africa there are Sahara Deserts, in America there are Mexican Deserts, in Australia, there are mountains and a very variable climate which isolates the populations within the same continents. These natural barriers prevented human populations to exchange information and to interact.
Very interestingly, 2 of he main American civilizations Incas and Aztecs were not aware of each other.

5)Germs

When 2 different human populations involve in a battle against each other, germs are a major factor on the outcome of the battle. In other words, the diseases that populations have been exposed during centuries, by natural selection, make populations resistant to these microbes, and therefore in the next generations they don't get affected by them. So when 2 populations isolated from each other, physically interact suddenly, they get exposed to different microbes.

This is the case for Australia-European or America-European collisions. Continents had different conditions and therefor their populations had different resistances. But in each case, Europeans had a major advantage. Why?

Diseases generally pass humans from animals. So in order to have the disease, humans and animals should live very closely, and be populous. That means Domestification. Animal domestification was common in Eurasia, whereas America and Australia lacked such animals( or had very little amounts of them). So the more involved European farmers with animals, the more they got diseases, which turned out to be Epidemics. Because of epidemics like Black Death, Europe's population has decreased to its %40. In Egypt, the Black Death killed about 40% of the population. Survivors though, were resistant to these epidemics.

On the other side, in Australia and in America, these epidemics never occurred before the Europeans. They had fewer domesticable plants and animals, therefore have not suffered from epidemics like Eurasians did. So when Europeans come to conquer these continents, they unconsciously brought their germs, which killed more Native Americans or Australians than they did with their guns. Europeans were exposed to local diseases and suffered from them, but recovered quickly.
Before reading this book, I had no idea about the role of germs on the colonization of continents, pretty interesting, huh?


6) Competitively – Innovation

Until the last chapter, Diamond's arguments are mainly on the advantages of Eurasia to others, or the disadvantages of other continents. Well he doesn't very much focus on the interactions between the Eurasia continent itself, only in the last chapter and in the afterword.
Though, in the last chapter, he poses the question “ Why Europe, not China?”
China has a few geographical barriers not preventing, a major empire to dominate the region. China has completed its unification almost 2000 years ago and generally stayed unified since then. Not having a close empire to compete, China lost the technological leadership to Europe. When innovative ideas were discouraged from the leaders of the nations, entrepreneurs had no way to give up. They didn't have any other choice. Though in Europe, the situation was different. When an idea, like sailing ships to India across the ocean, if not funded by Spanish ambassador, could well be funded by Portuguese in order to gain advantage of its European rivals.

Europe contains many geographical barriers, not isolating one society from another, though makes it hard for total control. In other words, human populations in Europe was close enough to interact and pass information, but incapable of dominate of all continent. Accordingly, in Europe many different cultures have evolved and managed to survive. That brought competitivity, innovation and technology.


Finally, I am glad, I read this book who required concentration and time, but gives very interesting and valuable information. Also I am glad that I could finally finish this post which I hope, will be the longest post ever in the blogging history:) Book is very easy to read, and Diamond by repeating same arguments in different chapters makes you really understand it. Though, I was expecting more about “why Atlantic Europe not China” part, though it was just a couple of pages. Maybe I'd read about a book specifically on that question.
After this post, I feel like I've been given some kind of award( because its so long!) Therefore I wanna thank my parents and my friends for supporting me. Also I wanna thank my producer and blah blah:)


P.S: Sorry about my poor writing skills, I may have made many grammatical mistakes, maybe couldn't explain the arguments sufficiently. Well at least the topic is interesting:)
0

Long Time No See...

Posted on 10:20 AM by 4 8 15 16 23 42 and filed under ,


Well, after months of silence, I decided to continue writing and motivate myself more into it. In these previous mounths, I've been most of the time busy with final projects, graduation stuff, graduation itself, applications, interviews and deciding between possible choices.

Finally, I decided to continue my studies for a masters degree, and on industrial engineering. For me, the main question was not what to study, instead where to study it. I was in between staying in Turkey or to go in France. In the end, I decided to stay in Turkey for at least 2 years.

About writing, I know that keeping a blog updated would be something that I would be proud of myself. The main advantage would be orginazing my thoughts. It's been always good for me to summarize the information that I got from various sources into simple words and it helps me a lot for memorizing.

I was going to restart blogging many moths ago( why did I stop in the first place!) but there was always something that prevented me from doing it./this is another way to say I'm lazy/
I realised that there will always be something that occupies my mind but time is something you make.


And I also decided not to push myself into writing for a while, and write only if I have something to write.

I finish this post by a quote of Al Hirschfeld:
"Everybody is creative, and everybody is talented. I just don't think everybody is disciplined."

I'll need discipline for this blog. Hope I will manage to maintain it. Cheers to non-stop blogging!

0

Video Editing

Posted on 9:01 AM by 4 8 15 16 23 42 and filed under
In this very late post( I thought I had a one post per week rule!) I'm gonna share a short-movie that I've made recently. 

It is my first attempt as video making and I only mixed videos that I took during the day (even the rooster!!), most of them on public transports, ferry etc. 
The great thing about Istanbul is ofcourse the bosphorus and it's always fun to take pictures, videos amazingly you never can stop admiring the view. 

A couple of words on video editing, I searched all the available softwares. Basically I wanted
  • some cool effects
  • video stabilizer
  • something that works quick
  • text adding.... cool effects:)

When I searched down the internet, I saw that there are a lot of blogs that recommend Windows program, Windows Movie Maker. I think it's a cool program but 
  1. slow 
  2. somehow if you give many commands it doesnt respond Error!!!
  3. very limited effects 


Sooo, I decided on Cyberlink PowerDirector. There is a comparison of possible softwares. Here!) For this movie I didn't use many effects but it looks pretty easy. As I said before it's a very very very simple movie, so don't blame me for its stupidness!:) 



 


Anyway it's fun, enjoy!!
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Transgenic Animals

Posted on 5:35 AM by 4 8 15 16 23 42 and filed under ,


After the post about Transgenic Plants I couldn’t help but wonder how scientists (or transgenic "artists") can create such species. I took my last biology lesson 4 years ago in high school and I don't remember much about genes etc. So I did a little research about the subject.

While searching over internet, I figured that most of the pages were a little hard to understand for readers with non-biological backgrounds. Yet I found a document prepared by "European Initiative for Biology Education" (EIBE) and it was the simplest to understand. You can check it out by clicking here.

1) First scientists identify what is the gene of interest ( for example GFP gene found in the jellyfish that fluoresces green when exposed to blue light).  

2) They form Recombinant DNA's. A recombinant DNA is, according to Wikipedia, a form of synthetic DNA thereby combining DNA sequences that would not normally occur together. So basically after identifying a gene that is responsible of a certain characteristic, they match the molecules of the chosen Gene with the normal DNA, so that the "Recombinant DNA" carries this foreign gene. 

3) This is the step where they insert the transgene. According to EIBE, there are 3 methods that are used in this step; Microinjection, Use of Retroviral Factors and Embryonic Stem Cell Transfer. 
Microinjection is maybe the simplest to understand. With this method the scientists inject the transgenes with a fine needle, inside of a fertilized cell while a microtube holding the fertilized cell.
The logic is the same as Mendel's discovery with peas (remember it from high school). In every method I suppose, they first inject the transgenic material and try to produce heterozygotes which are the result of a matching of one normal and one modified animal. If they manage to do so, then they match again two heterozygote animals to produce fully transgenic animals. 

Here is a pic, when scientists implemented the growth gene to mice. 

Although genetic experiments are realized mostly on mice, Taiwanese scientists created glowing pigs like the glowing rabbit Alba in 2006 according to BBC. There is even a video of the pigs on the site.


While I was searching all this stuff, a thought crossed to my mind. Think about transgenic humans. Today the genetic engineering has come to a point where a cactus with human hair or glowing rabbits could be easily achieved. So will genetic technology be used to create “better” human beings? Maybe one day secretly, modified humans with different abilities will exist (glowing in the dark wouldn’t be cool thoughJ ). And maybe we will be talking about a new genetically superior generation. Maybe there will be disputes within generations (Mutants vs. Normal People). I never thought these movies could refer to possible scenarios.
But with all these achievements in science, nothing really seems impossible, even Xman.    

1

Next – Michael Crichton

Posted on 2:47 AM by 4 8 15 16 23 42 and filed under ,


Ok, so in this second( or first) post I want to write about the novel “Next” written by Michael Chrichton.



A few words about the author, he is/was one of the best (for me the best) science fiction writers in the world. He is very well know of the great books he has written such as Sphere, Jurassic Park, Lost World, Disclosure, Rising Sun etc. All of them are masterpieces he also directed well-known TV series“ER”.




The most amazing part of his writing style that he tells you real facts, real scientific events, real discussions and he also presents all this information in a such thrilling story line. His most recent books are “State of Fear” about global warming (I’m starting it tonight) and “Next” about usages of genetic engineering and biotech.

 

After I’ve read Next, I understood I knew almost nothing about the subject and this book taught me a lot. I mean A LOTT!!

Don’t worry, my intention is not telling you the end of the story I just want to share some real facts from which the author itself got inspired too. 


Transgenic Art

 This is a concept I’ve never heard before. Transgenic Art is defined, according to contemporary artist Eduardo Kac, as

"Transgenic art, I propose, is a new art form based on the use of genetic engineering techniques to transfer synthetic genes to an organism or to transfer natural genetic material from one species into another, to create unique living beings “

 

So transgenic artists transfer genes from some species to other species and create SHOCKING results. Here are a couple of examples:

  •       Glowing Rabbit Alba (2000)  : Alba is one of the most famous transgenic art  examples of Eduardo Kac. It’s a genetically modified rabbit that “glows” in the dark. Artist took GFP gene that fluorescences green found in jelly fish etc., implemented it on rabbit cells and created “Alba”. 


  •       Cactus that grows human hair(2002) : This example of transgenic art performed by artist Laura Cinti, is a cactus that grows real human hair. She obtained this result by implementing keratin genes in our hair to the cactus genome.



Animals with developed communication skills 



Koko: Koko is gorilla with extensive language capabilities. He can understand more than 2000 English words and 1000 signs based on sign language.

 



 N’kisi: N’kisi is an African grey parrot with a vocabulary of approximately 950  words. There's an  audio of N'Kisi in conversation with his owner Aimee.    


Apparently Grey Parrots are animals with really special communication capabilities( I wish I  had oneJ ). 

I personally think all this stuff are pretty amazing, and shocking. It’s true that in this era we are faced with different usages of genetic engineering, and biotechnology is one the most important topics of 21st century.


 So actually there are a  lot more in the book, but I don’t wanna cover all the topics. I highly recommend you to read the book and enjoy.