For most of us the day
starts with Computer and Internet… and today, we were confronted with a very
interesting doodle … a nice gif image which led us to details of a Norwegian, who
died in 2002 aged 87 - celebrated his 100th
birthday today (6th of October). He sailed 8,000km across the Pacific Ocean in
a hand-built raft from South America to the Tuamotu Islands ~ and what
interested more was the description of that doodle – ‘to
commemorate the birthday of the late Norwegian ethongrapher and adventurer Thor
Heyerdahl’
Ethnographer …… honestly, I have not heard of this word earlier – nor about
the place connected to his voyage … the Tuamotu islands, a chain of islands and atolls in French
Polynesia. The island were originally
called by the Tahitians of Tahiti as the Paumotus, which means the
"Subservient Islands", until a delegation from the island convinced
the French authorities to change it to Tuamotus, which means the "Distant
Islands". It is composed of 118
geographically dispersed islands and atolls stretching over an expanse of more
than 2000 kilometres (1245 miles) in the South Pacific Ocean, yet its total land area is only 4167 square
kilometres (1609 square miles).
Thor Heyerdahl (1914 -2 002) was a Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer
with a background in biology, zoology, botany, and geography. He became notable
for his Kon-Tiki expedition in 1947, in which he sailed 8,000 km (5,000 mi)
across the Pacific Ocean in a hand-built raft from South America to the Tuamotu
Islands. The expedition was designed to demonstrate that ancient people could
have made long sea voyages, creating contacts between separate cultures. Heyerdahl
subsequently made other voyages designed to demonstrate the possibility of
contact between widely separated ancient peoples. He was appointed a government
scholar in 1984. In May 2011, the Thor Heyerdahl Archives were added to
UNESCO's "Memory of the World" Register. The Heyerdahl Archives span the years 1937 to
2002 and include his photographic collection, diaries, private letters,
expedition plans, articles, newspaper clippings, original book, and article
manuscripts.
Kon tiki the raft..
Google, has created one of its iconic illustrations to
pay tribute to the man who recreated a Peruvian raft, made of balsa wood and
other native materials, and sailed it thousands of miles across the Pacific to
prove it was possible for a primitive craft to make the journey. The raft
proved to be highly maneuverable, and fish congregated between the nine balsa
logs in such numbers that ancient sailors could have possibly relied on fish
for hydration in the absence of other sources of fresh water. Inspired by the
Kon Tiki, other rafts have repeated the voyage.
A documentary film of the
expedition won an Academy Award in 1951 and a dramatised version made in 2012
was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe.
Ethnography is the systematic study of people and
cultures. It is designed to explore cultural phenomena where the researcher
observes society from the point of view of the subject of the study. An
ethnography is a means to represent graphically and in writing the culture of a
group. Ethnography records all observed behavior and describes all
symbol-meaning relations, using concepts that avoid casual explanations.
Tamil heroes have been Kings, Police Officers,
Underworld dons, Auto drivers ….and more ….. the 1992 Mani Rathnam directed
Roja with Arvind Swamy in the lead was different. It started with story happening in
Sundarapandipuram, a small village in
Southern Tamil Nadu, moving to Kashmiri terrorism. The hero was a ‘Cryptologist’ …which raised
eye-brows when first heard – who ? Cryptography
is the practice and study of techniques
for secure communication in the presence of third parties (called adversaries).
Modern cryptography intersects the disciplines of mathematics, computer
science, and electrical engineering. Applications of cryptography include ATM
cards, computer passwords, and electronic commerce.
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar.
6th Oct 2o14
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