The big trip

I call it like that because it went for about 8 days. In fact the longest trip of my life. During these 8 days we (me and my girlfriend) visited 2 of the most interesting cities in our country, Medias and Sibiu. Medias is a medieval city dated for the first time around 1267 and now it looks like it was build around a fortified church "The Evangelical Church St. Margareta". Sibiu is another medieval city that was first dated in 1191 in an ecclesiastical document from Vatican, under the name of Cibinium.

We spent only 1 day in Medias because most of the tourist attractions were closed to the public and because it's a rather small city. We wanted to stay more in Sibiu, so on the 2nd day we went to Sibiu. Our main interest in Sibiu was the medieval festival that was scheduled for the end of that week (26th - 29th of August).

The oldest Library in Medias.

I liked this Eagle

One of the towers from Medias.

The interior of a Catholic Church

Here we were at a Cafe and saw a Sparrow stealing from a plate

^_^

I really have no idea on how to describe this journey so i'll write everything as it comes to mind.

(Sibiu) We visited almost all of the towers from the old defensive line that was enclosing the medieval city, we saw one of the main gates (the only one standing too), we saw 2 bastions (one was transformed during the 18th - 19th Century in the local Philarmonica house so you could only see only a portion of the outer wall, and the other one is closed to the public). I would have liked to see them in detail, but chance wasn't on our side ^_^. 

The Thick Tower, now transformed in the local philharmonic house

The Evangelical Church seen in the sunset

The Potter's Tower

View from The Small Square with clock tower

We visited the History Museum, the Museum of Pharmacy (one of the first ever built in Europe), The Franz Binder Museum of Universal Ethnography and the Brukenthal Museum. The rest of the museums we visited on another occasion. We were very impressed with the Museum of History and the Brukenthal Museum. We spent about 7-8 hours visiting only these 2 museums. I thought that i saw a lot of very interesting things ranging from visual representations of how the early man lived to pictures from very known painters.

We visited all of the old churches that we could find (all except one, we left that for the next time :P ), and we saw some very nice examples of Gothic architecture and interior design.

Interior and main Altar from The Roman-Catholic Church

One of the Altars from the Roman-Catholic Church

Stained Glass from the Roman-Catholic Church

My girlfriend handmade a very nice medieval dress and wore during the festival and was admired by a lot of people.

My Lady on the Bridge of Lies

After we finished visiting everything on our agenda, we participated at the medieval festival for which we went in the first place. We saw sword fights, plays, we listened to concerts with medieval music, we saw groups that played with fire and did all sorts of tricks with it, and we saw an interesting 5 minutes long fireworks show which marked the end of the Festival.

Creation

And I am back. I know that it has been some time since my last monthly or so post, but that was because of my dissertation. And now it is gone, i have passed the final exam with "brio" and i have now some time to write some more new stupid things. I hope that my only 2 readers will be glad to read this (one of them being myself :P).

Today i will talk a little about religion and about how i see some things regarding the Bible.
First of all, i wouldn't take the Bible "ad literam", but more as a set of guiding rules. As in "it's better to do that" and "it's better not to do that". But to say that the bible is anything else than a collection of stories is wrong in my opinion.
Let's start with how Adam and Eva (Eve) began to populate this Earth. First they had Cain and Abel. After that they lost both (one died, one was exiled). Then they had Set (Seth. Set had Enos, Enos had Cainan, Cainan had Mahalaleel, Mahalaleel had Iared (or Jared in English), Iared had Enoh (Enoch), Enoh had Metusala (Methuselah), Metusala had Lameh (Lamech), Lameh had Noe (Noah) and Noe had Sem, Ham and Iafet (Shem, Ham, and Japheth).
This is where the first problem appears. How did Set had his son when the only people on the Earth at that time should have been only Adam, Eva, Set and Cain? The only conclusion a lot of people had is that there was an act of incest between Eve and Set.
The second problem is regarding Cain. After he was banished from the land, God placed a mark on him so that no one will ever kill him. But how could that be possible when the only people on the Earth should have been Adam, Eva, Set and Cain?

Well i think that the reason is very simple. Adam and Eve, weren't the first people on the Earth, but they were the first Christians on the Earth. I believe that at that time, the land was filled with tribes of humans, but from all of them only one was Christian, and because of that, from the point of view of the religion they were the first people on the Earth.
If we think about this as true, then we can imagine how Set had a lot of sons and daughters without breaking some modern moral rules. He could have chosen a wife from a foreign tribe (hence why her name is not written - for not being a Christian), and reproduced.
This would let us know from who was Cain afraid after his banishment.

To be continued...

Visions of life?

Life … what is life ? I can ask myself 1000 times and come to a different answer almost every time. I see life as an odd manifestation of this universe. Where stillness is the “natural” state of everything, life comes as a abnormality, an out of the picture thing that starts to move, to pulsate, to vibrate, to reverberate into it’s proximal space and across eons. When coldness is how the universe is, life brings warmth and heat and joyfulness to everything that it surrounds and is engulfed by. How can life exist when chaos is what it drives it? Life needs chaos to appear and then it needs precision to exist. Life takes chaos and gives it a purpose, it moulds it into something that will leave marks into this lifeless huge waste of matter.

I see life like a strain, a stress, like a force that actively fights against everything that should make it not exist. It’s easier to give or to take energy instead of creating it, of transforming it into building blocks. It’s improbably difficult that organization should exist in an existence that is there only to destroy. Think about all those cells in your body, working like a clockwork, counting down the seconds they all have till they are no more. Think about how each cell works individually and together with other cells to make this complex abnormality of the universe. Each day your body is bombarded with information from both outside it and from inside it. Each second your body adapts to every little changes that happen everywhere within it’s boundaries or in the environment that it can’t control. Life is permanently in motion and ever-changing in such a way that not even it can keep up with itself.

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But even though life is a wonder in this universe, we (humans) still pass through it without even looking at it. We take it for granted and then we ask ourselves what happened with it, when our clocks are about to get still. As humans we had to create society in order to survive and well nowadays a lot of people want to get away from it because it doesn't run the way it should be. When i first heard about the endosymbiosis theory i thought "we pay for protection with our freedom". Life in all it's complexity is in fact really fragile in individuals.
Take for example Mile Carpenisan. Most of your probably don't know about him as i don't know about the rest of 7 Milliard people that this planet holds. He was a war-time journalist who worked everywhere there was a crisis, everywhere someone was in trouble and the world needed to know about them. He went in all major war theaters of the last decades and came back without a scratch. Then a disease sent him on his final road. Before he had to go to the hospital, he held a charity event for a cancer patient. He sold the helmet he used in all those wars he had been and that saved his life countless times. Over the time, while he was on the hospital bed the person who bought that helmet came to him and returned Mile the helmet to protect him once again. Unfortunately this didn't happen and Mile closed his eyes one last time.
A few days ago the plane that carried on board the president of Poland crushed and 96 people died. A fatal trip sent a whole country into grief and sorrow.
And on 13th of April an earthquake in China killed more than 600 people.

Life is so fragile in individuals but very very strong as a whole. It almost went extinct at least 5 times during our Earth's life and life always managed to survive, to prosper and flourish again like nothing happened.

till next time: Live well and prosper and enjoy everything you have, even if it's close to nothing.

Spring

1st of March is the day that marks the revival of everything that went asleep once that winter came: animals, plants, feelings and of life in general. Starting today all of the universe is beginning to bloom and energy is filling up everything it's surrounding.

In Romania and some of the neighbouring countries celebrate today "the Trinket day" (we call it Martisor (Marț + suf. -ișor.) and i couldn't find an exact translation). During this day boys give to girls a little piece of jewelry or hand made symbolic thing tied up to a white-and-red string and a bouquet of spring flowers.
The origins of this traditions are lost in time. Archeologists found relics similar to present day "trinkets" in sites dating 8000 years ago, representing a white-and-red pebble that was worn around the neck. But the present day tradition is related to the Roman Empire, when on the 1st day of March (the moon of Mars) they were celebrating the New Year. Mars was not only the God of War but also the God of Fertility and Vegetation and from this duality we have the white-and-red string (white = peace, red = war).
Later on the "trinket" was made up from a silver or gold coin tied to a white-and-red string and was given to adolescent girls which would wore it around their neck during the first 12 days or March. After this perioud they would tie the "trinket" in their hair till the arrival of the first Cranes and the blossoming of the trees. At that time they would remove the "trinket" from their hair and would tie the string from a branch and the coin would use to buy "caş" (a local type of cheese). All this ritual would bring a plentiful year.

But there are some Myths regarding the "martişor" also. One of them speaks about a day when the Sun came down to Earth looking like the most beautiful girl in the world. But a zmeu (the closest translation i could find was "dragon"; the Zmeu was our legendary "bad guy" who was stealing fair ladies and was attacking kingdoms and such but was more like a man than like a serpent) stole the sun and at that time the birds stopped from singing, children forgot how to play and have fun, and all the world fell in grief. Seeing what is happening without the Sun, a brave man went to rescue it from the "dragon's" dungeon. He searched for the Sun for one whole year and when he almost lost his hope he found the "dragon's" castle. Our hero challenged the "zmeu" and after a fierce battle he finally won and released the Sun which went to it's rightful place in the sky and "lit" the world again. Spring came again and people got their happiness back, but our hero died from the great wounds the "dragon" inflicted upon him during the fight. His warm blood covered the white pure snow and where that happened snowdrops arose (the symbol of spring). It is said that following this, people would honor his memory by tying white-and-red strings to a branch.

Now this is the story behind it. But what do i think about this tradition? Well i like it. Why ? Because it's one out of the very few traditions in which we praise the woman. And she should be more than she is right now, more than she ever was. During our history we treated our women with the full brutality and power that we were capable of. Why ? because she was/is weaker (physically) and because she was/is gentler in general. So we took advantage of that because we usually don't think about anything else besides of our own need. Throughout history all women were beaten, made into slaves, subdued and forced to do anything that men wanted. And even now in this era of so called equality of sexes, women as still seen as nothing more than a tool for mans personal pleasure.
So during this day we can show our women just how much they mean to us and treat them like they deserve too. At some points women are the closest things to God, as being able to give birth and "create" a new life. But we men should think of women as the better half of our own self. To think that we are one body divided into time and space and do anything and everything in our power to become whole and show them that our life is just empty till the reunion.
But why do men need special days like this ? Because most of them need a lot more reasons to do that. They are still infants and greedy, and need a push to make the right thing. Too bad that these kind of days are not that often.

Unfortunately 1st of March is not a day for happiness all over the world. This year in Chile there is a lot of grief. On 27th of February there was an earthquake with the magnitude 8.8 on the Richter scale. A devastating tremor that ripped their world followed by at least 90 aftershocks. And after that tsunami's flooded the land. So the first day of March found them still searching for survivors and trying to clear the rubble. Many started to search for God again, after He was lost when everything fell to the ground or went under the water.
At least 58 people died after "Xynthia" mopped the countries of Western Europe with more than 47 deaths only in France. The combination of hurricane-force winds (at times spiking to 200 km/h)and high tide battered the countries of the "old" continent with brute force leaving only destruction behind.

We all need to get better people and help our world evolve towards something good, not towards extinction.

"Continuum"

Sorry for my absence but exams have taken their tole more than i would have wanted to. In this post i'll add a few things about the cloning "mater" and about "life" in general.

I have fought about the real use of human cloning in our society and i couldn't really find one. The In Vitro Fertilization is far more effective and cheap than cloning. Dolly was the only one success in a few hundreds tries. And even after the procedure was completed, creating a clone still requires a very high numbers of trials and errors. I can only see a use for human clones in colonizing the outer space. And even for that we could use robots. So why would we need a human clone ? I think that because it's something that we can't really do, and humans are like that. If there is something that is out of their reach, they'll do anything and everything to get it.
By the way, there are those that think that cloning a human would be outside of God's will. Or even better we would try to "play God".
I don't remember from the "Ten Commandments" that we are forbidden to "create life" or not even to "copy" it. So how is it against God's will to do anything that will not harm anyone (considering that cloning is a safe procedure that will not harm anyone). If truth should be told i don't think that God "gave" us intelligence so it may be wasted and not used because some thing that the man upstairs didn't want us to use it ... If we are bound by our ancestral sin then a clone would be released by it because he/she would come to life not from the "love" between man and woman and so the chain would be broken.
Oh and about the cliche "we are playing God", i want to ask you when have we stopped playing God? Think about this... we decide who dies or lives, we have mastered the destructive force that lays in the stars and we're trying to bring back to life beings that are long dead (the dinosaurs etc). Isn't killing something playing God ? Isn't creating Antibiotics to heal ourselves from diseases playing God ? Isn't judging equivalent to playing God ? Didn't Jesus Christ said "Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again" ???
But no, they say that humans are "playing God" only when we're talking about creating life, or trying to copy it and learn the mysteries of it.
We are trying to solve new problems with old solutions. We think of ourselves as a society that keeps evolving. Well i think that reality is not quite like that. Technological progress without mental one will never lead to evolution. It's like when we're replacing old computers with new ones but using the same obsolete operating system. We need to sharpen our mind too.
And how about human instrumentalization (using the human being as a tool). Well until every thing in this world will be automatized then the human will never stop from being a tool (either for himself or for someone else). And anyone that thinks otherwise is lying to himself. If using a human as a tool is a bad thing, then everyone should stop working, especially policemen, firefighters, soldiers, doctors, lawyers.

Xeroxing life

In the next lines i will talk about cloning, clones and the statute of the clone.

What do you know about cloning?
In fact cloning is a word with a lot of meanings in biology, and it has been observed at a wide range of living beings starting with the most simple organisms and ending with humans. I will not explain all of the following terms because it will take me a very long time to do it. So we have: -Vegetative reproduction: at flower plants, fungi and lichens, different types of worms, sponges, coelenterates.
-Parthenogenesis: in various kinds of insects, arthropods, reptiles and fishes (some, not all of them).
-Monozygotic twins.
-Immune system- clonal selection mechanism

But humans introduced new meanings to this word and here are some types of artificial cloning:
-Callus - in plants
-Immortalization- cellular lines
-Induced Parthenogenesis- animals
-Recombinant DAN technology- cloned molecules
-Adult cell cloning- plants, animals...

What is in fact a clone?
A clone should be any organism whose genetic information is identical to that of a "mother organism" from which it was created (this is how wiki says it)...
But will a clone really be identical to his "mother organism"? Well in artificial cloning this is very wrong, as the "mother" can only be the carrier organism. You can clone the father or any other living relative (or not- as in not a relative).
So what is a clone? Then it should be an identical genetic copy of an organism. But nothing living can be 100% identical to anything else, because the environment (either internal or external) induces mutations in different places of the genetic make-up. But a clone is the closest thing possible to the 100% identity.
Humans want to use the artificial cloning to bring back to life extinct animals (like the Tasmanian tiger, or the Mammoth or even the Dinosaurs), or to clone human beings. I must say that the later seems more easy than the first.

Why do i say this ? Well because working with any material from a dead organism is very very hard. At death a lot of complex reactions start to degrade the cells and nucleic acids. Even if the body has been conserved very close to it's death (like freezing for the mammoth or ethanol for the "tiger") the DNA is still broken. In 2008 scientists reported that they managed to restore functionality of a gene Col2A1 enhancer obtained from 100 year-old ethanol-fixed thylacine tissues from museum collections (http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0002240 or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thylacine). But this is only one gene and the specimen is 100 years old, not a few thousands as in the Mammoths case or millions of years as in the Dinosaurs case.
But there is yet another problem. As seen in the case of Dolly and other cloned mice, the new organism will have at it's birth the same age as the donor had. What this means is that the clone will ages faster than it will grow. So if the extinct animal was close to it's natural death, the clone will die even before we'll have the opportunity to see it through it's adult life.And if not, well we'll just be able to see it for a relative short time. And besides that, at our current level of technology, cloning has a very small chance of success. A lot of trials and errors are needed in order to do it once right, and even if you'll succeed once, you'll have to try countless times again for doing it once more.

Even if i said that human cloning seems easier than the cloning of extinct animals, it has a few of more barriers than the first has and most of them are raised by none other than us humans. Most people see a threat in human cloning and because of this research is going very slow. It's an interesting thing to have a fight for a thing that it's not even possible yet. Cloning in general it is, but human cloning has never been proved as possible. For the cloning of each organism are needed particular techniques and protocols that will not work on anything else (the same method used to clone Dolly will not work on mice or humans for example).


(Pic 1 - 5 days old Human normal Blastocyst obtained by IVF http://www.advancedfertility.com/blastocystimages.htm)

(Pics 2-3 - Human Blastocysts in the same stage, but obtained by cloning - French and co., Development of Human Cloned Blastocysts Following Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer with Adult Fibroblasts, Stem Cells, 2008; 26:485– 493)

As you can see there are clear morphological differences between pictures 1 and 2+3. These differences will not lead to the creation of a normal embryo.

Human cloning may be divided into two categories: reproductive cloning and therapeutic cloning. In many countries of the world reproductive cloning is banned and therapeutic cloning is also looked in for the same reason.

(http://www.ncsl.org/issuesresearch/health/humancloninglaws/tabid/14284/default.aspx
https://www.policyarchive.org/bitstream/handle/10207/3734/RS21517_20030514.pdf)

Why is reproductive cloning banned ? Well mostly because it's not safe yet for both the mother and the future offspring and because of a lot of moral problems. If everyone would have the right to clone humans for reproductive purposes then couples that are unable to make children or have lost their child due to accident or disease, they could have a child this way. But you could ask why don't have a child by In Vitro Fertilization. That would be a very good question as at this point IVF is more exact and has a lot more chances of success than cloning has. But by cloning you could give birth to a sound child (by cloning the healthy parent).
Unfortunately humans are potentially evil creatures and could use human cloning just for organs (this is something a lot of you out there fear off), and a child born for this purpose would have no real life, or they could use human cloning for Eugenics (something that Hitler wanted to do with his Aryans).
Another moral problem regarding the human clone is about it's identity. What will the clone be in relation to the cloned person? If a woman gives birth to her own clone, will she be her sister or her mother? I for one, don't see any problem in here. The child will be that woman's daughter. And you'll say: But she will look just like her mother? Really? And how do you know that? Or better yet when will she look just like her mother ? If that woman would be, let's say 24 years old when she gave birth to her clone, then her daughter will look "just like her" after 18 years ? hmmm then 18 + 24 = 42 in my book ... and an 18 years old girl will never look the same as a 42 years old woman. They will resemble but they will not be identical. Then you'll say that she is identical from a genetic point of view to her mother. Yes that would be true, but what if they are? Will this mater if you know her personally ? Or if you see either one of them on the street (or even both of them at the same time). Think that it will not mater because by cloning you're not able to clone memories, feelings, habits thought processes, or anything related to the brain. Neuronal connections form with each experience, each moment of life. And noone in this world will pass through the same exact experiences in the same order during their life. And neuronal architecture is no embedded in the genetic code. Else monozygotic twins will think the same and from personal experience i can tell you that it doesn't happen like that.
Another problem that will appear with cloning will be that of human instrumentalization (making the human being an instrument).

To be continued ...

1st of December 1918 - 2009

On 1st of December 1918, Romania succeeded in doing something that wanted to do for more than 2000 years. 6 months after the "Armistice Day", Romania was signing it's Great Union. A dream started by the dacians, continued by Mihai Viteazul, was finally sealed with the words spoken by Vasile Goldis: „Adunarea naţională a tuturor românilor din Transilvania, Banat şi Ţara Ungurească, adunaţi prin reprezentanţii lor îndreptăţiţi la Alba Iulia în ziua de 18 noiembrie / 1 decembrie 1918, decretează unirea acelor români şi a tuturor teritoriilor locuite de dânşii cu România. Adunarea proclamă îndeosebi dreptul inalienabil al naţiunii române la întreg Banatul, cuprins între Mureş, Tisa şi Dunăre.”
100000 people listened to these words and cried with happiness because brothers long gone were finally reunited.

Now, 91 years later, many of our countries teens don't even know what happened on that date. It's like they never heard of such an accomplishment and they probably don't care. The same thing happens regarding an event that happened "only" 20 years ago, and re-gave the Romanian people their rights and freedom.

This years parade had a new element, a group of soldiers that entertained us with their mastery in weapon handling and dexterity. But besides this, the event was rather boring with a fade parade of regiments and weaponry. Even so I was impressed with "Mihai Viteazul" Guard Regiment ... the soldiers walked proudly and honor knowing that they are most known regiment in our army.