It's earlier than I thought!

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Organism Designer for Kids v5.31b :
"Hello, do you want another limb for your Sup3R h4xor imba creature? Or to you want a pair of wings to make fly?"

"Organism design confirmed, generating genome, this will take a few minutes."

"Your Sup3R h4xor imba creature's genome is generated, inserting genome into cell. Please proceed to the collection unit to collect your Sup3R h4xor imba creature's embryo."

"Please read the attached instructions on how to provide a suitable medium to cultivate and raise your Sup3R h4xor imba creature. Thank you for using Organism Designer for Kids v5.31b."


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OMG OMG OMG! This is some serious shit that is happening! I had to write this post first because this really overtook the urgency of any other of the materials in my to-blog list.

If you read one of my recent post "Where to, Generation Y?", you'd see that I made a few predictions on what would happen in the future. Of course, that were meant to be casual predictions, not backed up by facts. But it turns out one of them, the Genetic Revolution, seems to be happening, and happening NOW!



Yesterday, Dr. Craig Venter (picture above), founder of the J. Craig Venter Institute, a genomics research organization, had announced that their team of scientist had successfully created the world's first synthetic life! O_O"

They wrote a whole new genome (the genetic informations within a lifeform) in a computer, synthesized the DNA from scratch in the lab by carefully putting together the nucleotides (the basic "letters" of DNA) according to the genomic blueprint they wrote, got a bacteria species to replace their genome with the newly synthesized genome, "booted up" the new genome, and the bacteria species turned into a totally new species with different metabolic life functions.

Now if that sounds like a whole load of jargons to you, take this analogy as an example. Imagine a team of programmers (the scientists) coming together to design a new operating system for computers (writing the new genome). They started by writing and programming the operating software (putting together the DNA). Then they took an existing Microsoft Windows computer (the bacteria species), removed the Windows operating system (removing the existing genome), installed the new operating system (inserting the new synthetic genome), and then booted it up to see if it works (stimulating the genome so that it starts working).

The synthetic bacteria cell had a genome of approximately 1 million base pairs. Apparently given the complexity of the process, the whole research took Dr. Craig Venter and his team 40 million dollars and 15 years to complete. :O

Now I just realized that he gave a talk at TED talks a couple of years back on this research. You can try checking it out below.



Now that this is proven to be successful, he said that the J. Craig Venter Institution would focus on synthesizing lifeforms with practical applications next, probably available by next year. And he highlighted that they will try to tackle the ongoing carbon emission issue by creating bacterias that can capture sunlight and carbon dioxide to produce octane (a hydrocarbon fuel), thus solving the carbon emission and fuel shortage problem in one go. 

The announcement of this feat even got President Obama to take it seriously. He immediately sought advice from his advisors and called for a meeting to be held next week to discuss the implications of this new technology in science. 




Wow, just a mind-blowing WOW is all I can manage. Can you imagine the whole new world that this team of scientists had created? Can you? I can't. But one thing is for sure, they just changed the course of human history. Think about it.

Damn I'm excited. Excited! I'm just so glad that I'm born in this century. 

But I'm feeling sad too, for the fact that people remain ignorant towards the world of science. Remember when Micheal Jackson died, how fast the news spread? Within a single day, the whole world knew about it, and it's not even their business to know, it doesn't affect their life. 

But for this? Nobody knew about it, nobody cared. Did you? 

"Who cares? It's just a bacteria. I'm more concerned about who Justin Bieber or (enter artiste name here) dates."

Yea sadly, that's what majority of the world youth thinks, even though this breakthrough is going to have a major impact on everyone's life in the near future. Yes, I said everyone.

And could you imagine these are the people, your peers, that will be running the world in a decade or two's time? When they don't know what are they going to face?




Okay okay, I think I should stop here. I think I'm still stunned by the news, and I had too little sleep because I was stunned because I saw this news late last night. Okay, stop, zip. Period. Wee~



Till next time, cheers~

Odyssey No.25: Mega Earth Day (We meant business!)

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w00ts!

Exam is over! Holiday is here! And I finally had some time to blog!


Was quite busy these few days, busy watching movie, busy writing essays for application, busy playing golf, busy getting scorched under the crazy heat of Malaysian sun. to summarize everything, I was busy being busy la. XD



To get to the point. Two weeks ago we attended Mega Earth Day at Kota Damansara Community Forest. Thanks to C.P. we managed to get two booth for the event to do sales, one for 6SOS and one for Taylor's Environmental Club.

So what did we do there?

We made 9 cakes, 50+ muffins, got some drinks, some finger foods, all to be sold over the course of two days. Oh, and I think i have to thank and apologize to my mom, because she took a day off just to bake the cheese cakes, reluctantly, and we didn't manage to sell all of the cheese cake. :X

To be honest, what we did was quite a bit of failure la. But still, at least we learn from experience.


Anyway, there were a lot of interesting stuffs over there. We had a row of booths selling a variety of things, some random, some themed, some messy, some tidy, some nothing at all.

This was us, preparing the booth.

Us deciding what to do with the cakes.


And Taylor's with their booth.

Some how, I still think that they've stolen our idea of selling chocolate fondue XD. Haha just kidding.

They did great, better than I've expected in fact. They were a sporting bunch, was able to make fun of themselves and get people laughing, so that they'll buy their stuffs. Minyi you have a great team there, must really make full use of their talent!

So I didn't really help with the counter, because I "had to study for Chemistry". Study my foot la, can't even concentrate for 10 minutes =.=". So I walked around, took some photos, and watched some parts of the night concert.

So I'll just show you some pictures while a narrate on them, hope you won't mind : )


This were the booths, in preparation stage.

The banner.

Raleigh was there!!! They were going to have night trekking at night, and camping in the forest, and kayaking. Too bad I missed them all. :(

Country Farm Organics selling (yes you've guessed it) organic products :D

Some Malay hawkers selling colorful drinks.

Plastic Man and his trusty sidekick Sandwich Man.

The warm-up performance, Brazilian martial arts.

Anplas Bag was there, selling bags of course.

The beautiful setting sky.



And here be teh lamp post.

Sin Yin and Wah Lung taking a time off.

And so this was the stage where they performed. Sorry but my old camera cannot work properly at night so you'll just have to bear with it : /

Diplomat of Drums gave us an awesome show to start off the night. They had the crowd shaking their booty, literally.

And then we had the choir. Their songs were angelic, almost heavenly :) 

And we had "Malaysia's John Mayer". Okay sorry but I forgot his name =.= . His songs were also nice though, he even composed a song just for this occasion! :O

The multi-purpose pianist for the night, brilliant player! (I think he studied music in Berkeley!)

And a ragtag combination of other great singers. Dayum the woman on the right really can hit high notes LOL! 

AND FINALLY! We had our own legend, Zainal Abidin, who sang the hit song "Hijau" way back in 1991. Check it out if you haven't already heard the song!

And so Zainal came out with style, and led the whole team of performers to sing the song Hijau. It was truly mesmerizing, but I'm kinda disappointed that there were only one pianist who accompanied the tune, I expected a whole band but oh well : /  . Still, thumbs up for the whole night concert!



As for the second day, I was at home, studying Chemistry. The exam was on the next day so I had no choice. Hopefully I aced the paper :(

But I think the second day was much more fun, THEY WENT KAYAKING! Gaahh... Me and my final exams =.="



Still, we did earn quite a bit of money to fund our next events. Not sure what it's gonna be, but I'm sure it'll be pretty awesome!

Next post, Eco Warriors seedling collection trip. Till then, cheers~