Sean’s Blog

Book Review - A Peace to End All Peace

I tend to read alot. Some of it’s good, some of it’s not so good. Recently I’ve been reading a lot of history books. I recently finished A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East by David Fromkin. It’s a pretty weighty tome - 636 pages of small print, but it illuminated a period of history and a region I am only now starting to get familiar with.

The book really deals with the crucial period between the Young Turks coming to power in the Ottoman Empire through the end of World War One. We’re introduced to a cast of historical figures I’ve known from different contexts or just heard of - A young Winston Churchill, Mustapha Kemal (Ataturk), T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), Ibn Saud, and others.

The world was on the brink of post-colonialism, and the actions of the major players still show the colonial mindset. The Middle East was being divided between France, Great Britain and Russia during 1914 at the outset of the war.

The actions and repercussions of this pivotal time are still with us, from the Armenian Genocide, to the beginnings of an Jewish state in Israel and the makeup of modern Iraq.

One of the interesting points Fromkin makes at the end of the book is that it took Western Europe almost 1500 years to arrive at the modern democratic state after living under the Roman Empire. This gives me a little deeper appreciation for the challenges facing a region that has been free from the Ottoman Empire for less then a hundred years.

This is a great book for anyone interested in history, the Middle East, or looking for a deeper understanding of some of the current issues of today. I’d highly recommend this book.

Moon pictures through a telescope (take 2)

Earlier this year, I took a bunch of pictures of the moon through my fiance’s telescope. All I did was to hold the my digital camera up to the eyepiece and snap away. A little while ago I did it again. I learned a couple things from that experiences.

First off, the light coming through the telescope on a clear night is BRIGHT! I had to dial back the exposure some and I didn’t didn’t need to set the ISO high at all. A tripod was impractical as well, as the lens had to almost be pressed against the telescope’s eyepiece.

All that said, I think the pictures came out pretty well. The ones that are up have not been processed at all and I think they look pretty good.

Here’s the link to the gallery

Blog Action Day

Today is blog action day. For if you would like to know more about it, the details are here. The gist of it is to get people thinking about the environment. In that spirit, I’d like to share some of the actions I’ll be taking to help lessen my footprint on the environment.

As many of you know, well be moving next month and there a couple of things that we can do right off the bat. The crazy thing is, these things are not only better for the environment, then save money in the long run as well.

What I’ll be doing in the new house:

• Change all incandescent lightbulbs to compact fluorescent.
• Wrap the hot water heater and line in insulation - Apparently a huge amount of energy is expended in keeping the water in the tank warm.
• Replace the thermostat with a programmable type - this will allow us to set the temperature much lower during the night and times we are not home.
• All new appliances will have a good EnergyStar rating - We need to replace several appliances anyways, so we will use efficient ones when possible.

Will something like Blog action Day actually help? I don’t know. Raising awareness is always a good thing, but if that translates int action is something completely different. It does seem that we’ve come a long way in regards to the environment and the way we think about it, but there is still a long way to go. Hopefully actions like this can move us a little closer to the tipping point where we are able to actually make some of the hard decisions that will be needed to be made in the future.

In case you missed it

The sunrise.  Not bad for a 2mp camera phone (Blackberry Curve).