Unguided Blog

Have I told you that Unguided is hosted in New Orleans? Visitors of the last 24 hours only saw a message saying “Error in establishing a database connection” and possibly never guessed why. Now you know the reason. Although the main site including mail and ftp servers were up and running, the database went haywire. The staff at the hosting company, well, they all evacuated the city. They were kind enough to say at their site they would continue to give support remotely by e-mail, but I decided to wait instead. After all, the Earth would not stop turning if Unguided blog did not function a day and it would be selfish, if nothing else, to annoy them in the middle of all things they were going through, or so I thought.

Today, I am glad to see my problem solved with no intervention on my part. My best wishes go to the people of New Orleans or Louisiana I should say, and I sincerely hope they are safe and sound after Gustav’s unwanted visit.

63 years ago, yesterday.

I thought of translating the poem about the pledge of a seven year old girl who died in Hiroshima, but it would be gross injustice to Nazim Hikmet, the poet. If you can find a copy in your language, do read it, please.

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On September 10, the EU will be voting on a vital law against illegal logging. ForestLove is a controversial campaign run by Greenpeace to push the EU’s vote in the right direction. Adoption of the legislation will ensure all timber products placed on the European market are from legal sources and well-managed forests. As the world’s biggest wood importer, Europe has a unique responsibility to help stop deforestation, illegal logging and its impacts on climate, biodiversity and forest communities.

Not only you can watch the video and help Greenpeace get this video to the top of the video viral charts, but you can actively take photos or videos to be submitted to Greenpeace. Greenpeace will edit materials submitted until the deadline of August 31 into a collaborative video that will show the EU commissioners just how much everyone loves the forests…

Watch the video and help promote it.

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I do not have kids, not that I know of, anyway. Yet, it is not so hard to imagine having one with a birth defect and unable to correct it because, well, because you do not have the finances required for the operation(s).

I was born in a mid-sized industrial town, years ago. Giving birth was like a lottery in those days, no ultrasound, no MR, no nothing. I think it was even before that Dr. Spock??? (was it Spock?) published his book or it was not translated to Turkish. The country was underdeveloped, it still is in many ways, the hospitals were not among your favorite places and check-ups were usually unheard of. When a new-born had a problem, not necessarily a defect, parents had to wake before dawn to take a place in hospital queue, waited for hours to get a chance that a doctor could take a look.

But I still remember those parents, though accepting the defect in good faith possibly due to their religious affiliations, their agony, their grief, the sadness on their faces: They had to go the hospital again, to a hospital, staffed with a bunch of idealists, yet under-equipped, under-financed. And I still remember them talking, talking about a doctor, a hospital, a clinic, a whatever, in a country far away. If only they could take the infant there…

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A small victory for all lovers of nature and environmentalists. Yesterday, Izmir 1st Court canceled a government regulation which would allow construction of 14 golf courses and hotels in Cesme-Alacati-Pasalimani region. It would really break my heart to see the region in my blacklist.

The Department of Culture and Tourism run by our assholystic[1] government desperately in need of money to buy strips of land in the heavens were about to wipe out the remaining forests of gum trees (you can find them only here in Turkey) and the endemic huile de cade (lat. juniperus macrocarpa).

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