RESPECT

Last week I was in Budapest and I was amazed that the protestors are still there! I was on my way to a business dinner and I asked the taxi to drop me @ Parliament square (the HQ for the protestors). It wasn't a big crowd, 40 at max, but I respected the fact that they were peacefully fighting the system for a cause they believed is just. I hope they get the attention they deserve and most importantly an answer to their demands. I hope the protests don’t turn violent as they started, this I believe is a more effective way.

RESPECT.

The MOTHERLAND

All my life is believed home-sickness is crap, but now after relocating and living away from home for only 6 months, I must say: Home sickness is defiantly crap :D (you didn't see this coming didn't you? you were thinking I'll go for the cliché dude who had a change of heart ..han? Got you! ...but okay.. maybe a little home-sickness, keep it to yourself though!)

Well, you need to consider that all my life, my concept of a vacation was to go as far away from El-Cairo as possible. It's not that I hated El-Cairo, but I am person who LOVES change and I've been here most of my life, born, been to school, university and started working here. It's a bit too much :) Also living this long in one place tends to make you overlook the small things that make your life more fun. Be it as nice as being able to spend a little bit of time with your friends & loved ones or as simple as being able to read street names :D (My Polish SUCKS!).

I must run to indulge some more in El-Cairo, my advice to you is to plan your next vacation back to wherever that is home for you, after all, It's the best place to be.

The ONE second before the end of the world...

Why does Hollywood always try to deceive me? Unlike most ppl, I like to get my facts from my movies, its more fun that way. Now, we’ve all seen the "asteroid-hitting-the-earth" movies right? If you haven’t here’s my 1-minute summary:
1. A big-@$$ asteroid is discovered on a collision course with the Earth.
2. Governments get together and agree on a plan to nuke the asteroid in space.
3. The plan works, or not.
4. The earth is saved, or not.

So I was doing some reading and I came across the scientifically more correct version of the story, here goes:
1. Our chances of spotting the asteroid early on (1 year before impact) is less than 0.001%
2. IF we are that lucky, then nuking it won’t help much. Why? It is argued that even if successfully nuked all what will happen is that instead of one BIG asteroid heading our way, 5-7 medium ones will be. Not only this, we get them sprayed with radioactive sauce too, for FREE! yaaay!
3. IF we spot the asteroid 6 months or less before impact. We would be too late to act.
4. REALISTICALLY, in 99.999% of the cases, we will discover it only ONE second before impact.

Now, pause and reflect on that for a second…

Scientists tell us that because asteroids that are capable of destroying life on earth are relatively small (compared to other heavenly bodies: stars, planets …etc) they don’t reflect much light to be visible. The fact is they enter the Earth's atmosphere ONE second before impact and only then do they light up. Let me repeat this, you will only see the asteroid that is going to end life on earth with your naked eye only one second before it happens….. in 99.999% of the time.

See how Hollywood deceived me?! No ground shaking! No bright rock hurling in the sky! Nothing! It’s like being hit by a bullet in the head. You hear a BANG and then you’re gone. I understand why Hollywood added all those scenes, for a movie it’s defiantly more exciting, but realistically if the world is going to end; I like it quick and painless.

But hey that's me, What about you?

The MtoEtor (pronounced em-2-ee-tor)

Disclaimer: If you suffer from overconfidence in your scientific knowledge, then this post might cause you to commit suicide, it's a stupid post. If you however are not a science fan, you will love this post, you'll consider me an Alchemist. If you are my parents, pls send me money as I am broke. If you are a potential girlfriend, baby I am rich.

So I am reading in my new favorite book "A Short History of Nearly Everything" and I come to this very interesting fact: Mass can be converted into Energy, just like that!

*The scientifically overconfident reader dies.

Okkay Okkay I am stating the obvious right? I mean for years we had nuclear plants that are producing vast amounts of energy from small amounts of material So I am not THAT stupid, the thing is, someone screwed up somewhere in my education and kind of convinced me that this principle applies ONLY to like those very rare radioactive elements (e.g. Plutonium , Uranium ..etc). So I went ahead to cruise through life unaware that we are actually swimming in a sea of energy! I mean you know Einstein’s famous E=mc2 and c is HUGE! so if you square that number and just multiply it by just one gram it would be huge! So the revelation I got is the fact that no matter if the element is very rare (like Plutonium) or very abundant .. say Copper or Iron .. the same principle holds! This automatically means that basically we are sitting ontop of a huge amount of energy beyond our wildest dreams!

*The scientifically-challenged reader is dazzeled by my revelation.

*The scientifically overconfident reader lost hope in anything interesting in this post.

.... but there's a catch, obviously it's way much easier for us to release energy from those heavy/unstable elements than it is to do that from more common/stable elements. But then again, I was surprised to learn that we are about 1% efficient in releasing Nuclear energy now from those heavy elements! So by a simple (and I am almost sure inaccurate) deduction I got my second revelation: What if in the future we find a way to release energy from more stable elements (again assume Iron) in a little bit more efficient way? So the drop in the total amount of energy that can be released is evened out by the more efficiency. And voila you’ve got yourself:

The MtoEtor

Note: Do you know that an average human being has around 7x10(18) joules of energy? So if I were to feed you to my MtoEtor you will generate an energy equivalent to 30 Uranium bombs in an instant... and you thought those suicide bombers with a belt of TNT explosives wrapped around them were dangerous? Think again!

"I'd love to live in.."

Did that ever happen to you? You land in a country, spend a couple of days and as you're leaving it you're thinking to yourself "Man... I must come back & live in this country!". Well, so far I've been to almost 40 countries and out of all of those only a handful (I really mean it .. Less than 5) of those intrigued me that much. The last one of those so far was Turkey, when I first arrived in Istanbul back in 2005 I knew I'd be back again to that amazing city. I was lucky enough to go back to my mystic city in less than one year. As I munched my way through sojok (oriental sausages), baklava (oriental deserts) and Turkish coffee (Turkish coffee :D) I tried to understand why am I so hooked on Turkey..... I couldn't figure out .. so I decided to take it to the next level .. so yet again I took my WiFi enabled laptop to the "porcelain throne" and their I had my *ding* moment.

I guess the first thing that drew me to Turkey is the cultural overlap, The Ottoman empire occupied Egypt for hundreds of years and therefore not only is Turkish and Arabic very similar as languages, cuisine is similar, the look and feel of the streets, shops and basically all the aspects are the same. Even tawola (backgammon) is the way to pass time on a cafe! The second thing that I really like is that unlike almost all other Arab/Muslim countries religion (Islam) is not involved into every single aspect of life. In general I am against mixing religion and state either it's Christian or Muslim, becuase I feel it's unfair to minorities (having been part of the Christian minority in Egypt). Third, I believe that's a common attribute to "Mediterranean" countries, people are more warm .. I don't know how to explain this, but being from the same region, I felt it .. ppl are outgoing, they eat late, stay out late, get quickly to know each other and become friends and buddies ... It's amazing.

Finally, the heritage ... I wont lie to you and tell you I'm into artsy fartsy stuff, but I love to be in a place that has a smell of different centuries and Turkey offers this starting from the Biblical civilizations that lived in east Turkey .. where you have Mt. Ararat (arguably where Noah's ark landed) all thru Greek, Roman ... till Ottoman.

I have no doubt I'll go back to Turkey soon, because now it's on the list ;)

For now I'll enjoy the Turkish coffee

The Largest Contiguous Empire in Human History

Editorial note: Hey guess what I am writing this post from my WC! Yes I am a proud WiFi owner woho! .....but I guess Munqy was right in his post Survival of the Shittest Humanity's best moments were linked to the "Porcelain thrown" in a way or another. So prepare for the ultimate post, the post that makes all other posts nothing, it is simply the post. (Okay seriously don't have your hopes up, the fact that I am THAT bored that I have my laptop with me in the WC kinda gives an indication of what terrible post this is).

Okay so I am reading in my new favorite book "What If", it's a book about fictional scenarios like: what if Alexander The Great was killed in battle when he was 20 years old before he conquered most of the known world and earned "the Great" title? How would our world be now. It's very interesting book if you are into History, because it aint a fiction it's more of Historical contra factual essays written by Historians.

So I come upon a piece of very disturbing info, do you know that the Mongol Empire which strived in 13th/14th century and considered one of the most barbaric and devastating empires to be formed was THE LARGEST CONTIGUOUS EMPIRE IN HUMAN HISTORY?! You can't imagine my shock really. I read the article and I was in shock they annihilated cities, they didn't sack them, The Greeks or the Romans sacked cities, which means they conquered the city, looted it and put a governor and a tax. But Mongols had a natural hatred towards metropolitan cities because of them being nomads and they initially destroyed cities and leveled them. Not only this they killed most of the population, I read some numbers that are scary, some cities lost 1.7 million people!

Can you imagine this? Arguably one of the most barbaric empires the world has witnessed and it lives and prospers to become the world biggest.

Tells you something about us Humans right? Think about it.

Arbeit Macht Frei

Last weekend, on Saturday I visited the notorious Auschwitz. For those of you who haven't heard of it it's the most preserved Nazi concentration camp in the world. The "final solution" for around 1.5 million Jews was performed on those very same grounds. If you happen to be in Poland I would recommend the visit, it's total experience, starting with entering the camp from the main gates that bear the infamous words "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work makes you Free) all the way to the monument in Auschwitz II dedicated to the memory of all of those who were mercilessly slaughtered there.

I wouldn't bore you with the horrible things there, I would actually pick on a very unusual side of the camp, German Discipline. German Discipline is clear in every inch of the camp, our guide explained that the barracks of the prisoners were actually stables for the horses, so when those stables arrived from Germany, they were constructed according to procedures. And according to procedures in each of the 52 horse-cabins there was a metallic ring to which the horse was to be tight too. After more than 60 years and thousands of prisoners who manned those barracks, the horse rings are still there ... never used though.

An even more surprising example is the Gestapo barracks. The whole camp was under the supervision of the SS. However, one of barracks inside it belonged to the Gestapo and according to procedures: all Gestapo buildings' windows should be enforced by steel bars. It is worth mentioning that the Gestapo barracks is actually INSIDE one of the biggest concentration camps and is basically surrounded by thousands of soldiers, tanks, electric fences and mine fields. Yet, the steel bars were transported from Germany and are still seen today on Barracks 11.

That’s how I found myself drifting during the tour into my own thoughts and mixed feelings about the Nazi’s brutality from one side and their discipline to adhere to procedures word by word, even if they were losing the battle to the Allies already.

Microsft just Google-Earthed your pics!

I stumbled yesterday on this new tool Microsoft is building called: Photosynth. This is really amazing .. I guess this is the next bog thing after Google Earth really. This tool basically crunches all your digital pictures and puts in place three dimensional models of it. The basic idea is the same as in Google Earth, you take satellite pictures and plaster them onto a 3D "Earth" .. it's the same concept.
However, when you think of it, the implications of this one is far more interesting. With millions of digital pictures being taken currently and uploaded somewhere on the internet. If this tool really worked, it would be crawling the web -just like Google does for it's normal search- to add more pictures to it's 3D models. One exciting possibility that is shared on the tools website (the URL is below) is basically in the future having the capability to point your camera-enabled phone and snapping a picture of something. Then sending this picture to Photosynth web service and get a reply for what this actually is... amazing?!
I can't wait to put my hands on this tool, for some weird reason I was SURPRISED that this tool came from Microsoft?! For the last like 5 years those kool ideas came either from Google or from a small start-up while Microsoft was busy catching up on Windows, Hotmail, IE, Media player, Office and Search set backs? Is that signaling somehow a change in MS execs strategy? they are done with fighting in well established domains and they are putting their "Google" hat on?Whether that's happening or not .. in the time being I AM DYING to get my hands onto this Photosynth tool to make it crunch my 9GB photo library!

Check Photosynth's website!

Pluto has been DWARFED!

Have you seen this? Yes it's official .. Pluto is planet no more..

* crowd bursts into a sympathetic aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh

No really .. this is SO kool .. I think it's one of those points in the history of science when one popular theory is torn down and another one put in place .... maybe it's not like the time when the world gave up the idea that the sun is orbiting us and FINALLY adopted the theory that we orbit the sun, for sure that was huge. This I believe is not as big, but equally interesting, check the full article .. it's so kool! Here's the link

Petrol will NOT run out!

We have been taught this at school & university, we also see it everyday in the news. The whole world surrendered to the fact that we are such a stupid species that we are going to deplete the key source of our modern civilization.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that we as humans have a good record when it comes to protecting our environment and thus our existence, it's enough to look at how many different species we hunted till extinction, the amount of pollution we pumped into our atmosphere and many, many more examples. So I'll admit that we are selfish by nature YET we are not stupid. And for me, the simple statement that Petrol will run out at someday is equivalent to us saying, yes we humans are dumbest species on Earth as we'll sit there and do nothing while our key source of Energy runs dry.

So, yes, I believe the only dignified way for us to come out of this is simply if Petrol never runs out. Let's look at historically what used to happen we'd over-use one fuel, some other alternatives would come out and then we slowly shift to the new fuels, while keeping the original fuel. We still have coal don't we? and I think Petrol is no exception, on several fronts Nuclear Energy has already replaced Petrol, however our everyday life still heavily depend on Petrol, cars, planes, factories ..etc all still run mainly on Petrol. But there is also hope there, Hybrid cars are become more and more common, with fighter planes and space shuttles already running on Liquid fuels for some time (basically Hydrogen, Oxygen, maybe Nitrogen.. not a rocket scientist! :D)


So you see my point? I refuse to acknowledge the fact that Petrol will run out, because we as humans aren't stupid. When it comes to securing our livelihood we’ve been so far successful, and I'd like to think we'll continue to be so. And for that to happen, Petrol MUST NOT run out.

The Da Vinci Code of Global Warming

I must say that Crichton’s latest novel “State of Fear” is an amazing read, that is after you get over Crichton’s trademark information overload : ) At the core of the novel is what every conspiracy theorist likes, the claim that Global Warming which has been established as a fact of life in the recent years is a politically fabricated conspiracy theory. The way Crichton weaves his plot depending of facts, scientific papers and fiction is so gripping it automatically gave me a Da Vinci Code Déjà vu.

I liked how all through the novel Crichton is emphasizing the hidden agendas of different groups be it individuals, governments or environmental groups. Crichton finishes his novel with one of my favorite catch-22 statements of all time:
Everybody has an agenda. Except me

Read the novel!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0061015733