Monday, February 6, 2012
Playing God -- BBC Horizon
If you are curious about BioBricks following are some resources,
1. the BioBricks Assembly Manual...
2. MIT BioBrick Manual
3. IGEM
Is Bangladesh offering some lessons?
The Grameen Bank of Nobel Laureate, Dr Muhammad Yonus from Bangladesh was a paradigm shift in how to do field of Philanthropy and entrepreneurship. Despite facing shortage of land, overpopulation and natural disasters, Bangladesh is proving to be very creative in terms of human development. In terms of literacy, it is just second to Sri Lanka and doing much better than India, Pakistan and other South Asian Countries. What makes Bangladesh unique is her success in reducing gender disparity in education sector. In secondary schools, 53% are female students and 47% are male students...
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Does Gen Y needs a smart democracy?
Last year, we witnessed a global rebellion. Young generation, with their smart networking devices were at the core of these rebellions. London Riots, Arab Spring and then Occupy Wall Street Movements that are now moving to other parts of world were the demonstrations of a generation that feel things are not going "right" for them and they had no other means but to go to streets to voice for it… If Arab youths ask for democracy that is quite understandable (Because of dictatorships) but what about youths in UK and USA that are the forefront of two different models of democracy (If there are institutions that represent people then what these people are doing on the streets?)?
One of the biggest problems in democracy is the participation of citizen. It is the participation of people in the democratic processes that give a government legitimacy. What makes me wonder by reading the charts of voter turnouts is the lowest turnouts in US presidential elections... In last US presidential election (2008), despite of a new popular face (That created a global buzz), the voter turnout was only 53.37%. That means 46.63% population didn’t care about voting or was not interested about the results of election. Following is a chart from Wikipedia about US election turnouts,
As you see from chart only 10 past presidential elections had more than 75% turnouts while 37 elections had less than 75% turnouts. In past 18 presidential elections in US, the median turnout of voters was 48%. That is really a Big Question Mark about the rule of people on the people by people. That is rather the rule of politically active people over passive people. Don't believe it? Let's have a look on the following chart from Wikipedia which shows a declining trend in voter turnouts in Americas (South and North America) and Western Europe... It seems passive people are slowly becoming majority. This is the beginning of fall in traditional democracy... This under-representation of people ask for some serious changes in the democratic processes...
Why there is a general trend of decreasing participation of people in democratic processes, despite of so much advertisement and the buzz that popular media create?
The large minority of people don't go to vote because they don't think that their vote has any impact or change anything. Things will go as influential people want to be. That is a great trust deficiency in part of elected representatives and democratic governments...
OK, what will happen, if there are great trust deficiencies? Well, that is really obvious... As we have witnessed, the trust deficiency cause Arab Spring, London Riots and Occupy Wall Street Movements... When people do not go to vote, they go to streets...
As we have seen from above statistics, it seems that "The rule of people over people by people" leave a large part of populations without any representations in the government...
In a time, when people love smart devices and governments love smart power, smart policies and smart sanctions then why not there should be a "Smart Democracy" that both people and government benefit from it...
This knol will become lengthy if I go to talk about other generations ( I have posted the following video, if you like to have an introduction about other generations....Although, it is about different generations in US but I think by slight changes, it fits most countries... At least each generation has its own characters in all countries and here is one documented example from US) but I am confident that Gen Y would definitely participate in greater numbers if a large part of democratic processes go hybrid, meaning allow people who want to express their opinions online besides traditional methods (There are people who prefer traditional methods)...
But I don't think, that a democracy becomes smart only by inclusion of smart networking that Gen Y prefers. It needs to allow the participation of neglected and underprivileged segments of society who by no means can compete openly (even if they are politically active) to get enough votes to have a voice in policy makings... Rule of "Politically Active People" may become more problematic in future when people become more active on social media and less active in democratic process. That will bring Chaos...
We are already witnessing the process of develop or die and let's see if systems choose dying over labor of developments....
One of the biggest problems in democracy is the participation of citizen. It is the participation of people in the democratic processes that give a government legitimacy. What makes me wonder by reading the charts of voter turnouts is the lowest turnouts in US presidential elections... In last US presidential election (2008), despite of a new popular face (That created a global buzz), the voter turnout was only 53.37%. That means 46.63% population didn’t care about voting or was not interested about the results of election. Following is a chart from Wikipedia about US election turnouts,
As you see from chart only 10 past presidential elections had more than 75% turnouts while 37 elections had less than 75% turnouts. In past 18 presidential elections in US, the median turnout of voters was 48%. That is really a Big Question Mark about the rule of people on the people by people. That is rather the rule of politically active people over passive people. Don't believe it? Let's have a look on the following chart from Wikipedia which shows a declining trend in voter turnouts in Americas (South and North America) and Western Europe... It seems passive people are slowly becoming majority. This is the beginning of fall in traditional democracy... This under-representation of people ask for some serious changes in the democratic processes...
Why there is a general trend of decreasing participation of people in democratic processes, despite of so much advertisement and the buzz that popular media create?
The large minority of people don't go to vote because they don't think that their vote has any impact or change anything. Things will go as influential people want to be. That is a great trust deficiency in part of elected representatives and democratic governments...
OK, what will happen, if there are great trust deficiencies? Well, that is really obvious... As we have witnessed, the trust deficiency cause Arab Spring, London Riots and Occupy Wall Street Movements... When people do not go to vote, they go to streets...
As we have seen from above statistics, it seems that "The rule of people over people by people" leave a large part of populations without any representations in the government...
In a time, when people love smart devices and governments love smart power, smart policies and smart sanctions then why not there should be a "Smart Democracy" that both people and government benefit from it...
This knol will become lengthy if I go to talk about other generations ( I have posted the following video, if you like to have an introduction about other generations....Although, it is about different generations in US but I think by slight changes, it fits most countries... At least each generation has its own characters in all countries and here is one documented example from US) but I am confident that Gen Y would definitely participate in greater numbers if a large part of democratic processes go hybrid, meaning allow people who want to express their opinions online besides traditional methods (There are people who prefer traditional methods)...
But I don't think, that a democracy becomes smart only by inclusion of smart networking that Gen Y prefers. It needs to allow the participation of neglected and underprivileged segments of society who by no means can compete openly (even if they are politically active) to get enough votes to have a voice in policy makings... Rule of "Politically Active People" may become more problematic in future when people become more active on social media and less active in democratic process. That will bring Chaos...
We are already witnessing the process of develop or die and let's see if systems choose dying over labor of developments....
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Finding ways that don't work
"I have not failed. I have just found ten thousand ways that won’t work.", Thomas Edison...
May be the Professor who had designed our B.Sc, Geology course, had heard this quote and it is why he had included many hypotheses about origin of Earth that didn't work. It was really annoying as we had to cover a lot of materials in an introductory course to a subject that was new for us and studying "hypotheses that didn't work" were not really making sense...
Usually the proverb, "A picture is better than thousand words" is used for urging on importance of illustrations however, it has another meaning also and that is, " A picture could be interpreted or speculated about in thousand ways"... Pictures are not alone on this as evidences are also usually get the same kind of treatment. While a piece of evidence may be just a ruin of an ancient building, a fossil or an artifact, there could be thousand of interpretations and speculation about them.
We usually tend to speculate about past (even if it comes out of very carefully and systematically documented observations still by coming from very small and scattered samples, there are more chances of speculations) and as past is passed and speculations are not going to harm (except when it is taken very seriously). We tend to speculate because there are chances that some speculation might come close to fact and get support from other evidences. So what matters mostly is the intentions. If intention is to unravel facts one gets results as either a way worked or way that didn't work or not sure... Just like gambling there are many possibilities but unlike gambling it is an honorable practice. In short, neutrality matters in investigations (Facts are neutral) and the rest depends mostly on luck... A set of good evidences may lead to good luck and a set of scattered evidences may just end up to voids..
One area that is based on wild speculations are Astrobiology. Technological advances, increasing population rapidly depleting resources make it really desirable to have other neighbors but since there haven't been any big breakthrough on our side so some started looking to our supposed neighbors. May be we have neighbors that are much advanced than us and had already visited us. So archaeological sites are becoming the focal areas of speculations for these groups... It is interesting to watch how they link these very small and scattered archaeological relics for their "wild" hypotheses ...
While the above video is about speculations on past visits of ancient aliens still there are others who speculate on alternatives to currently well developed scientific theories (motivations?;I am not sure)... Whatever, what I found interested in following video is the hypothesis of Charles Hutchins Hapgood about sudden shift of earth's crust. It reminded me of those annoying hypotheses that didn't work but we had to study..heheheh.. Frankly, it is first time that I have heard the name of Hapgood so I thought it might be interesting to include his hypothesis to my list of hypotheses in Geology that didn't work. The reason for my interest is because his hypothesis came at the time that continental drift(ancestor of plate tectonics) was evolving to become Plate Tectonics. Thanks to works of many geologists that it is now very easy for us to quickly point out that even it is happen that this wild speculation (...that earth crust shift in very small amount of time...) true , it would be unimaginably catastrophic with widespread earth quakes, tsunamis and super volcanisms. The main reason is the deeps roots of mountain chains (also their brittle nature especially above ground part), subduction zones and unequal density of crust layers that make it quite unlikely for large shifts in short amount of time. To me, most part of this video was not convincing but still I enjoyed its wild speculations...
May be the Professor who had designed our B.Sc, Geology course, had heard this quote and it is why he had included many hypotheses about origin of Earth that didn't work. It was really annoying as we had to cover a lot of materials in an introductory course to a subject that was new for us and studying "hypotheses that didn't work" were not really making sense...
Usually the proverb, "A picture is better than thousand words" is used for urging on importance of illustrations however, it has another meaning also and that is, " A picture could be interpreted or speculated about in thousand ways"... Pictures are not alone on this as evidences are also usually get the same kind of treatment. While a piece of evidence may be just a ruin of an ancient building, a fossil or an artifact, there could be thousand of interpretations and speculation about them.
We usually tend to speculate about past (even if it comes out of very carefully and systematically documented observations still by coming from very small and scattered samples, there are more chances of speculations) and as past is passed and speculations are not going to harm (except when it is taken very seriously). We tend to speculate because there are chances that some speculation might come close to fact and get support from other evidences. So what matters mostly is the intentions. If intention is to unravel facts one gets results as either a way worked or way that didn't work or not sure... Just like gambling there are many possibilities but unlike gambling it is an honorable practice. In short, neutrality matters in investigations (Facts are neutral) and the rest depends mostly on luck... A set of good evidences may lead to good luck and a set of scattered evidences may just end up to voids..
One area that is based on wild speculations are Astrobiology. Technological advances, increasing population rapidly depleting resources make it really desirable to have other neighbors but since there haven't been any big breakthrough on our side so some started looking to our supposed neighbors. May be we have neighbors that are much advanced than us and had already visited us. So archaeological sites are becoming the focal areas of speculations for these groups... It is interesting to watch how they link these very small and scattered archaeological relics for their "wild" hypotheses ...
While the above video is about speculations on past visits of ancient aliens still there are others who speculate on alternatives to currently well developed scientific theories (motivations?;I am not sure)... Whatever, what I found interested in following video is the hypothesis of Charles Hutchins Hapgood about sudden shift of earth's crust. It reminded me of those annoying hypotheses that didn't work but we had to study..heheheh.. Frankly, it is first time that I have heard the name of Hapgood so I thought it might be interesting to include his hypothesis to my list of hypotheses in Geology that didn't work. The reason for my interest is because his hypothesis came at the time that continental drift(ancestor of plate tectonics) was evolving to become Plate Tectonics. Thanks to works of many geologists that it is now very easy for us to quickly point out that even it is happen that this wild speculation (...that earth crust shift in very small amount of time...) true , it would be unimaginably catastrophic with widespread earth quakes, tsunamis and super volcanisms. The main reason is the deeps roots of mountain chains (also their brittle nature especially above ground part), subduction zones and unequal density of crust layers that make it quite unlikely for large shifts in short amount of time. To me, most part of this video was not convincing but still I enjoyed its wild speculations...
Saturday, January 28, 2012
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