Gheorghe Curelet-Balan Blog

Friday, March 23, 2007

Funny green ideas.

Solar dryer + Hybrid Cars with solar power and windturbine on the roof + more. When it comes to save the planet, people imagination has no limit. Check them up here.

Link:
Al Gore's The Earth Has a Fever message.

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Thursday, March 22, 2007

Green for a weekend.

It is said that everyone is Irish on St. Patrick Day. Since this year celebration was on a Saturday I was Irish not only for a day but for the entire weekend. It is also said that everyone should do something green during the celebration.

My green action was gathering nature testimonies of spring's early beginnings along a hiking trail in the pleasant community of St. Jacobs near Waterloo. Stay tuned for details.

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Confidence vs. Arrogance.

Speaking of assumptions… One aspect of their danger is using them when it comes to label people. I heard once a great Man talking about the need to make the difference between Confidence and Arrogance. Even though at first look anybody could think that the difference is evident sometime you need someone to remind you.

I put some thought into it. We could have 3 situations:
1. Confidence assumed as Arrogance
2. Arrogance assumed as Confidence.
3. Have both.

The only thing to do is to dispel the assumptions.

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Assumptions…

Post inspired by the 200 years anniversary of the abolition of slave trade.

Assumptions could be a source of strength but also of weakness. As everything in life the harder you get it the more valuable it is. In consequence the assumptions that require some effort of imagination (like the Martians theory or the Think Different scenarios) are the most rewarding.

On the other hand no effort assumptions are most often the sources of weakness. For instance all discriminations (race, sex, religion, nationality, etc.) are based on “evident” assumptions that since the other one is different it means that he/she is inferior. They are so dangerous that sometimes could cause wars. The sad part is that some people never learn.

I have composed below a chain of assumptions for those that need convincing that assumptions have to be checked before jumping into conclusions:

I assume that
Your assumption about
Her/His assumption about
Our assumption about
Their assumption about
My assumption
Is TRUE.
‘naff assumed…

Links:
Buxton National Historic Site and Museum
Why Black History Month
Black history in Ontario

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Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Are we Martians?

An intriguing question indeed that Jill Tarter touched in her PI public lecture. And it could be that a positive answer is not just the result of some assumptions. After the short introduction with astronomers answer to the where did we come from question, she made the point of why it makes sense to search extraterrestrials in the cosmic haystack.

Recent observations on microbes make us to change what we know about life resiliency. Microbes are finally getting respect as Tarter stated. Extremophiles prove that there is life in the most hostile environments. Living microbes were found in high acidity lakes at the bottom of deep oceans, in rocks or in the cooling water of nuclear reactors.

Considering these it is not out of question that some microbes could live under Mars surface. Now if an asteroid hit Mars in the past it might be possible that a dislocated rock escaped Mars' weaker gravitation and was caught by the Earth. It is a hard to believe scenario of Earth's life being "imported" from Mars. This assumption needs to be proven false before concluding on the second genesis that happened on Mars.

Links:
Tarter's lecture online
Last year PI lecture Mission to Mars: Still Roving on the Red Planet.
Posted by Picasa

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Thursday, March 15, 2007

Where are we coming from?

We are the result of the odyssey of generations of stars. In our blood it is written the story of life and death of generation of stars. As Jill Tarter nicely said it in her PI lecture, the hemoglobin's iron was "cooked up" in a massive star. Then after accumulating too many heavy elements the star spectacularly spreads them into the Universe so that other stars be able to recycle them. After few of these cycles followed by other adventures, here we are... able to understand our far away past.

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Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Just 7 beauties!

Only 7 of these wind beauties are enough to illuminate an entire community.

Wind turbines are not only strong and beautiful but also misterious and impressive. It took me some time last summer to "chase" them near Goderich. Finally I was rewarded with a nice near by video shot.

Link:
Wind energy demystified.

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Monday, March 12, 2007

She is after them.

Jill Tarter, a strong, influential and inspirational women wants to meet them. By them I mean extraterrestrials. Her perseverance at SETI Institute is motivated by refusing the idea that we are alone in the Universe. She told her story, in a dynamic multimedia way, last week on March the 7th during the Perimeter Institute's public lecture "Life, the Universe, and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)".

YOU and everything else, are made of stardust, this was Tarter's take home message suggested to the audience. I found though that her presentation had more than one interesting message to take home. Here there are few of them:

1. life is more resilient than we expect, proving that it can exist in some of the most hostile environments.
2. this creates the scary possibility that WE ARE the first extraterrestrials since it is possible that we all are Martians.
3. the galaxies are green recycling machines.
4. at last I hear someone saying that number 2 is very important, since finding the second planet with technological traces, besides ours will prove that some form of alien life is possible.
5. telescopes can dance :)
6. SETI job could be compared with the archeological search of the needle in the cosmic haystack of the future, since our future is "written" in the stars.
7. if we never search, the chance of success is zero.

More to come...

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Friday, March 09, 2007

To all the women in our life.

Happy Women's Day! On March the 8th, the world celebrates the moment when it started to double. To double its potential, its ideas, its achievements.

Thinking different has always been difficult. It took some time for the society to realize that women have equal rights (in society, at work or at home) with men. If not for this important achievement (that some are taking it for granted) it is worth celebrating this day for what the women in our life bring special.

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Cubicle, cubicle my sweet home...

A "think different" cute tale about the space where most of us spend around one third of our active life. Watch it here.

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