Chimpanzee is my Auntie

Photograph copyright Karen Huntt

In 2003, study by a group of scientists revealed that we are genetically quite similar to chimpanzees. ‘That explains everything,’ my wife said, looking at me thoughtfully. I was surprised by the fact that humans are 99% genetically identical to the chimpanzees. The scientist who produced the evidence claims that the chimps (Pan troglodytes) should be reclassified as Homo troglodytes. This lead to a huge debate among the scientific community since this was clearly violating the historical classification schemes. In 2006, to make matters worse scientists suggested that earliest known ancestors of modern humans might have reproduced with early chimpanzees to create a hybrid species which eventually evolved in to modern humans (that explains 99%). Then in 2007 a study revealed that chimps may have evolved more than humans in the 6 or 7 million years since both diverged from a common ancestor. This is startling news, does that means chimpanzees are the evolutionary choice over humans? Are we just a mistake of evolution? , An aberration in the system? , A kind of a virus? Looking at the rate of destruction we are causing to our own world, I think we are a mistake of evolution. By the way it is believed that hybrids species doesn't last long in the evolutionary process. Chimps might be counting fingers in the jungles,eating bananas,waiting to take over the world.Next time you see a chimp at the zoo, look for similarities, it could be your aunt or uncle.[ please click on the links for more details................ ]

Harry Potter Book For Free

I’m a big Harry Potter fan, I was craving to read the latest book, but unfortunately I couldn’t find a book at the only book store in town, sold out I guess. Reviews and all those media hype was making me crazy, decided to take a drastic measure, downloading an e-book, a pirated copy. I did some extensive search of my own, bingo; I manage to download the book for FREE. This is not the right thing to do, I felt guilty, J. K Rowling needs to be paid for her amazingly creative work, and she definitely deserves it. But at the same time I should find a way to stop me from going crazy also, so I made promise to my self, read the pirated copy now (just to prevent me from going crazy, you know) and buy the book later.

Genetically Modified

This picture is disturbing isn’t it? Is it possible to do some thing like this. An interbreed of humans and animals, I bet it would be done in the near future. Recently scientists created a genetically modified fish that glow in the dark. It’s called GloFish, patented and for sale at 5$ dollar per fish. Some people are against genetic engineering saying it’s unethical or against gods will. After successfully mapping the human gnome, we entered in to a new era of genetics. American companies are busy patenting our genes, more than 1/5 of our genes are already owned by some one else (more than 4,000 genes, or 20 percent of the almost 24,000 human genes, have been claimed in U.S. patents).

You may not understand impact of this on our life, let’s say you want to invent a drug to cure some illness and that drug affects a gene which was patented by another company, you won’t be able to experiment that drug without paying royalty to the company which patented that gene. Can’t believe it isn’t it, but it already happened in America. Read this article written by a well known author about patenting genes. In the future some one could loose his job just because he had genes which could trigger an illness in the future or some one granted innocent of a crime that he committed because he had a violent gene.

Meanwhile scientists like Stephen Hawking say genetic modification is the only way of survival of man kind in the future. Once in an interview with guardian news paper,’ because technology is advancing so quickly, Hawking said, 'computers double their performance every month'. Humans, in contrast, are developing much more slowly, and so must change their DNA make-up or be left behind. 'The danger is real,' he said, 'that this [computer] intelligence will develop and take over the world'. I think he has a point in his argument, he believes that this is another phase in evolution.

But I can’t agree on American companies patenting our genes, how can some one own stuff in our bodies. I hope we will not be forced to pay royalty for using their genes in the future. Imagine one day receiving a bill saying that you have to pay a fee to a company for having blue eyes.

Google Sky -200 million galaxies on your desktop

Google announced their new add on to Google earth ,Google Sky, which give a user a chance to brows through distant stars in three dimension. It includes 100 million stars and 200 million galaxies , impressive, specially for star gazers. To use this feature you need to install Google earth, once its installed you can easyly become a digital astronomer. More than 1 million images from NASA Hubble telescope is used to bring out this feature,lets give it a try, astronomy has never been easy. Here is a screen shot.

Peters' elephant nose fish

This fish is not a result of a genetic research gone wrong or something, its called Peters' elephant nose fish (Gnathonemus petersii). The long nose can generate weak electric current ( covered in electroreceptors ), uses it for detecting food,navigation, communication and defense. Same principal used in metal detectors, to search for bombs and stuff, seems to be a good pet too, can live up to 6-10 years. One more thing, they have the largest brain of any other fish their size. Their brain size to body weight ratio is higher than a humans, so show some respect if you happen to have them in your aquarium (they are very sensitive to poor water quality ).

Dangerously Balanced

Dangerously Balanced, originally uploaded by poojitha.

This picture is amazing, see how this rock stay balanced over another rock,i kind of felt like not leaning over that rock. This picture was taken by a friend of mine while hiking on Trois Freres [ read top of Seychelles post for more pictures]. And the next picture shows the tip of the mountain we climbed (red arrow), the tip of the mountain is covered by thick clouds most of the time. I have seen hundreds of these kinds of leaning boulders , i have 2 theories, island may have gradually raised up from the sea bed slowly raising these rocks to thousands of feet's, or the rocks may have decayed form wind and rain for eons to leave these remnants. What do you think?

Trois Freres, originally uploaded by poojitha.

TOP OF SEYCHELLES

I climbed one of the highest mountains in Seychelles today and this is how it all got started. The day I landed in Seychelles (2005), I saw a giant, standing magnificently over the small town of Victoria, Trois Freres a second highest mountain in Mahe, which reaches a height of 2293 ft. /699 m, the highest point is Morne Seychellois, 2993 ft. It took my breath away. Since then, when ever I go to town, I would look at her and hoped that if I could ever climb up to the top, because climbing mountain is one of my favorite hobbies. I did climb many mountains in Seychelles, even in other islands, but this one always stood there, avoiding many close encounters of me invading her territory. But I was always determined to conquer her and enjoy the breathtaking scenery and of course sharing it with you.

I woke up early today, remembering the hike that we have planed. I was bit uneasy about it, the government had informed the public not to climb the path leading to the Trois Frères Cross (The cross at the top of morne Seychelles), saying it’s precarious, since many deaths were reported. I like taking risks, many times I did and I’m still alive, but I was worried about others, if they refused to climb and I would loose my last chance of going there. Danilo and I reached the town before others, there were 11 of us, Zahid, Nishan, Abeyakumara, Mangala, Kamil, Sanjaya & his sister, & another guy (his name slipped my mind).

Inside the jungle, originally uploaded by poojitha.

We took the bus and got down at the starting point of the path, actually the path has two parts, there is a kiosk (small hut) after climbing up to about 300m, you can rest there and come back or you can climb to the top. We entered in to the jungles, the light was low, and the trees were dark green with thick under growth, huge boulders were scattered all over the place, some trees grow on them with falling creepers giving a feeling of a hanging garden. Suddenly, we heard a huge roar coming towards us, it was the sound of rain, soon it caught us, and we started getting soaked up really fast. Some tried to take cover under big trees, failed miserably; eventually they all started to accept the truth, its time to get wet. So we started to climb up again, cloths heavy, shoes full of water. It was not that bad, after some time I started liking the rain, actually its fun getting wet, its nature after all, all the animals in this earth get caught in rain and get wet, and they don’t mind that, except human, how foolish.

Raining cats and Dogs, originally uploaded by poojitha.

There were numerous streams crossing the path, we walked wiping eye from the pouring rain, squinting our eyes to see ahead, we were approaching the first stage when thick mist encapsulated us reducing the visibility to about 20 meters. My heart sank, thick mist and rain is not very good for steep climbs, we moved on .I observed some pitcher plants on the way, its a carnivorous plant which traps insects in its pitcher like apparatus, good way of surviving in rocky environments. I took my camera and captured my self in this soaked up situation, others were afraid to take theirs fearing water may ruin their cameras. I value these situations than the camera; I can buy a camera but not this type of experience.

very steep, originally uploaded by poojitha.

We reached the flat plain and reached the stage one, the kiosk, it was raining more heavily now, cold wind and mist swept past us. We started eating the stuff we brought, I was too windy and cold, I was shivering, one disadvantage of being skinny, I need some fat. Dr Zahid, Mangala and others kept our spirit high by making us laugh; it kept us away from thinking about rain and stuff. Eventually others started getting cold, some were not sure if they could climb to the top. Zahid, Danilo & I decided to check if the path ahead is still good to climb, I secretly prayed it to be. The path was not that over grown, one by one everybody agreed to continue. This time it was tougher, the path was dangerously steep and muddy, slight loose of concentration could make your head bang on a tree branch or make you slip. The tree canopy was thicker making the sky barely visible, it was dark and damp, lichens were hanging on tree trunks, and I felt like going through a tunnel that never ends. The steepness of the mountain was always 60-70 degrees; I could always see people climbing directly above or below me. I took out my camera to take a picture, sad, the lens was covered with vapor, not from out side but from inside, hoped it would be ok after some time.

i didn't lift it up, originally uploaded by poojitha.

Suddenly we stepped on a flat land; we were closer to the top, the path turned right and suddenly we were climbing huge granite rocks. This time it got bit trickier, it was hard to maneuver around rocks specially when there is a huge drop; fear makes you dangerously clumsy when it comes to rock climbing. After some time we manage to bring ourselves to the top of those huge boulders, scenery around us was amazing. Picture your self standing on top of a mountain which rise up to 2000fts and on both sides you can see the sea. That was what we saw, the scenery was breathtaking. All of us felt proud of being there, looking at ships skimming the blue sea like tiny insects, houses resembling miniature toys. Suddenly the whole scenery vanished as thick mist surrounded us, I felt like soaring in the sky sitting on a tiny island.

Balancing Rocks, originally uploaded by poojitha.

Without warning the mist cleared to give us an opportunity capture the breath taking view on our cameras, one guy(don’t ask the name) approached me and started pinpointing his house giving various references, I pretended that I exactly follow his instructions by vigorously shaking my head while saying “yes, yes”, then he said “Ok now take a picture of me with my house at the back ground”, I was like “WHAT?”, thought of explaining that the viewfinder of the camera is too small to identify his house but gave up, no point of disappointing the kid, I took the picture anyway, hope I got it right .

They were holding me, originally uploaded by poojitha.

Some of the rocks at the top were unbelievably balanced on top of each other; Seychelles is famous for not having any earthquakes for thousands of years, now I believe that, even a small earthquake could have topple a huge amount of rocks the size of a building. I was bit afraid to lean against some rocks (I know its stupid) fearing it could fall. We drifted in to our own worlds, some passing jokes, some dozing off, some trying to identify the islands far away. After some time the things started to get bit cold and windy, we decided to head back home . All of us who reached the top learned about their courage, endurance, fears & team work, and above all how much you can enjoy if you could take some time to explore nature. Next, Morne Seychellois, here we come!

top of Trois Freres, originally uploaded by poojitha.

Paratrooper

I never thought of writing a short story that day,even though an idea was forming in my head (i manage to put it down this time before i forgot), a guy from UK came to do a work shop and i started writing this story during some boring discussions. Its a very short story and your comments are greatly appreciated.

Paratrooper prepared for his last jump to finish his training, one last jump to see his daughter. He smelt the air, filled his lungs with its freshness and let go. The pilot was passing by “Good day ha”. ”yeah, it’s my daughters birthday” paratrooper said, “She was sleeping when I left, got to go home quickly". Pilot smiled, and gave him thumbs up sign. “One last jump, for people, for freedom” he murmured. He remember how exited his daughter was about her upcoming birthday, “Daddy will I have so many presents? Barbie dolls too?” ”Yes”, and she would start doing her victory dance, how cute, he thought.

The radio crackled, “Good morning gentlemen, we are prepared to take off, please fasten your seat belts, over”. The plane quickly climbed to 30000 feet’s, paratrooper took a deep breath, he shivered, “Bit cold up here in 30000 buddy” he said, he looked at the radio hoping that the pilot would answer, he must have thought that he was talking to some one else, he thought. Muffled voice of the pilot came through the radio “Prepare for the jump, door opens in 30 seconds”. He stood up and walked up to the door, he smile at himself remembering how he crawled up to his daughters bed at nigh to hide her present, sudden gust of wind startled him back to reality, the door has opened, I’m the team leader, lets show some leadership, he thought. ”Ok, guys, we jump on three” he yelled. ” One, two, three………..go, go, go” he closed his eyes and drifted in to the void.

Pilot’s radio crackled “Team leader here, I have something to say. Over”. “What is it? Over”, “Tell my daughter her doll is under her bed. Over”,” Can’t you do it after landing? Over”, ”no! Over”, “why? Over”,”I’ll explain later! Over”,” tell her she means life to me! Over”,”Ok, Over”,” Tell her some things in life can’t change! Over”,”why? Over, “My parachute didn’t open. Over”.

poojitha indrakeerthi Jayasinghe (All rights reserved)

Prevent Blog plagiarism (what to do when some one copy your blog)

Blogger are prone to creativity thefts more than any other medium, because it’s just a work of copy paste. How to prevent plagiarism? How do we respond if we find some one copy our stuff? There are many ways that you can prevent plagiarism.

Steps you can take to prevent plagiarism

1. Place a plagiarism banner on your website. You can use creative commons license to license your work, you’ll have the flexibility of creating your own license based on your choices,like on my side bar. (http://creativecommons.org/license/)

2. Include copyright notices on each of your pages ( © in HTML).
   

3. But first you need to find out if some one copies your stuff. The easiest way to find out if your blog is being copied is to use copyscape (http://www.copyscape.com/), or you can search sentences in your article on Google to find out culprits.
   

Steps you can take after finding the site which does the plagiarism

1. Ok lets be polite first, send a polite e-mail to the owner of the blog asking to remove the stuff.
2. If there is no contact details available use Whois web site to find the contact details of the webmaster (Tel,Address…etc). (http://www.whois.sc/)
3. Shame the Bastard, expose him.(with help from other bloggers)
   

Still No response? Let’s be ruthless.

4. Inform the web hosting service about the plagiarism and request suspension(use the same Whois to find web host)
5. Notify Google and others to remove the website from its lists (http://www.google.com/dmca.html)
6. Contact advertisers and try to prevent add revenues.
   
7. To prove infringement, you can use the Internet Archive to show that the content is copied from your site at an earlier date than it appeared on the offender.[http://web.archive.org/]

8. Take legal action (Well if you want to go extreme)
   

Ok that’s about it, if you find this article useful or if you have more information on this subject a comment is appreciated.

Michael Crichton's 'NEXT'

A Harvard Graduate, Michael Crichton is a writer and filmmaker; he is the author of most controversial books among scientific community. His famous books are Kongo, Jurassic Park, Lost world ,Great Train Robbery, ER, Twister, Sphere and Terminal Man which later became blockbuster Hollywood movies. Some of these movies were directed by Steven Spielberg, one of the best movie directors in the world. Crichton is one of the leading professionals who oppose patenting human genes.( We live in a time when one fifth of all our genes are owned by someone else ,i second him)

I have never seen an author who does this amount of in-depth research before writing a book. His books will keep you on the edge while teaching you some cutting edge technologies. Most of the information’s in his books are accurate scientific facts or realistic assumptions based on them (like Jurassic park), believe me his books are better than the movies. His latest thriller is NEXT, which explores genetic research and its future. I was longing to read this book for some time, today quite by accident I glanced through the window of a book store to find several copies of NEXT lying there smiling at me. Within a second I was inside the books store(or could be less than a second), exploring my purse to find necessary funds, I didn’t find enough (Money is like that, you don’t have it when you need it). I had to run to the bank to withdraw some money, I didn’t want to risk coming tomorrow and finding it has been sold out.

For those unlucky guys who couldn’t get their hands on this book yet (HA, HA, HA) visit these two sites to learn some interesting facts about the book and genetic research.

Next gene Code
Patenting Life

Good day , got to read the book………………

Extinct

I was astonished to read that researchers found Yangtze river dolphins were extinct, I mean EXTINCT!, no more to be seen, those fresh water dolphins were unique and beautiful, how could humans ignored them like this, last year they were there, now they are not there. This is a big failure for us as the protectors of this planet, we could have at least kept few of this intelligent mammals in captivity, some frozen flesh to clone them or something. Last year Zoologists have developed a plan to save the Yangtze River dolphin,seems to be that they were bit late.If we could spend 0.0000001% of the money spent on killing each other to save this beautiful creature, it could have been alive today. I think the only way of saving this planet is to make our selves extinct!

How to backup your blogger blog

If you want to keep a back up of your blog in your computer, there is cool software to do it [only for blogger and still Beta]. Backing up your data is one of the most important things in this digital age, don’t regret later for not spending few minute in doing that. Don’t think your blog is safe with your host, they can change their policies anytime they want, they usually do, remember what happened to yahoo photos. There are other possibilities, you may accidentally delete your blog, some one could steal your password or you may want to host it somewhere else, this is the answer.

First you need DOT Net framework in you computer for this software to work. So download and install .net framework,(.NET Framework Version 2.0 Redistributable Package) then go to codeplex blogger back up page to download the backup software, it has a very user friendly interface,quite easy to use(http://www.codeplex.com/bloggerbackup), it took only 5 minute to backup my data, do it today, no regrets tomorrow.

4000 euros per night Hotel?

I was sent to evaluate students who were on industrial placements in various hotels in Seychelles, most of them were situated in beautiful locations and I manage to take some pictures. Evaluation process is not that hard; just listen to the managers who reveal all the mischief students were up to and enjoy the refreshment, that’s all. One guy was totally pissed off with them, started ranting about students for like half an hour in Creole, their native language which I didn’t understand anything, I kept shaking my head up and down as if I understood, trying hard not to fall a sleep. He was talking about a student who broke 8 plates , no wonder, I almost felt like breaking the plate in front of me. Once they took us to show one of their 5 star villas, I asked how much they charge per night, they said 4000 euros, I was shocked, there are people to spend 4000 euros (5465$) per night when 2.7 billion people (40%) in this world lived on less than $2 a day ,what a world, enjoy the pictures anyway.

view, originally uploaded by poojitha.

View from hotel, originally uploaded by poojitha.

Hotel villas, originally uploaded by poojitha.

Over the sea, originally uploaded by poojitha.

My Short Story ended too short

One day I got this idea of writing a short story , the idea came in a flash ,I was able to compose a beautiful and genuine plot(I thought) , it was a science fiction, well I always wanted to write one, so I decided to write it down. I sat in front of my computer and completed the first paragraph, felt tired and thought of completing it next day or so. After some days ,I remembered about my incomplete story and started to pour my thought on the keyboard, after some time I was lost, I didn’t know what I should do with the character, the only thing I remembered was that it was a good story about a man who got lost on a faraway planet, a cosmic Robinson Crusoe. I stared at the computer screen for half an hour hoping that it would come, nothing came to my mind, can’t write without a plot in the mind, it was like walking without knowing where to go. I gave up, it was laying there (I mean saved in the computer) for more than 1 year, I read it last week, still the same. One day I may finish the story; it could win the award for longest time spent on a short story. The story goes like this.

“The horizon looked strangely reddish, stray clouds all over the sky. Fetsu the second moon of the planet was rising; its huge rims were emerging from the opposite side where the sun Trio was setting, Soon the second moon Demui will appear after his big brother moved across the zenith. It was always a fascinating to see two moons above you, keeping their distance spilling warm radiance over the planet. He could see the whole island from the place where he was sitting, the sea was calm, and he could see tiny waves sweep smoothly over the beach where they end their journey.

He wondered why he decided to land on this island, the planet contained millions of similar islands.”

That’s all, thank you for reading, really appreciate it, by the way don’t even think of copying this and completing the story, I’ll definitely sue you.