A few weeks ago, I decided to tally my PET bottle consumption, day by day. That state of alertness has led me to postpone my thirst in a coffee shop or restaurant for the sake of avoiding another PET waste. Tonight, I was sitting in a Gloria Jeans coffee in Istanbul with my mom, running a couple of hours-long chat when I realized that I was quite thirsty and couldn’t postpone the drink this time. Yet, instead of putting another PET mark on my score board, I tried my luck demanding a glass of water without opening a bottle. It was an unexpectedly easy win for me as the waiter grasped the environmental intent at once and brought a glass filled with water allocated for coffee use. That moment, it struck me with the idea. Who needs the bottled water in a going-out occasion? If we demand non-bottled water, then owners would eventually switch to carboy water. It would even be more profitable for them if they price it the same vs. bottled water.

How about that?

P.S: Do you think it can be done in Starbucks too?

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Today, I came back from a village visit in my hometown, having acquired more knowledge than many books and many lectures taught me in my university years. I will keep most of those to myself, but share an intruguing piece of news in the field of infectous diseases to illustrate why it is an abruptly bad idea to temper the cycles of nature, just like Planktos have tried before and will try again.

Here is the story that helped me experience a paradigm shift about tempering the cycles of nature.

Back in January 2006, the world got crazy about avian flu, a contagious disease that has reincarnated from its grave in every ten year for the last 50 years. Turkey was one of the hotspots for the disease. Although the death toll was at the same magnitude of people dying after accidentally falling over their balconies, the fear factor erased the minor conscious portion of the decision makers and soon, a mass slaughter of poultry was in place. In a few weeks, hundreds of millions of chicken and roosters were burnt in farms and villages. No chicken, no avian flu. Risk-free solution.

One of the most interesting facts is that, some poultry animals (let’s call them chickens from now on to avoid sounding like a farming lab blog) are naturally immune to some of the most poisonous fluids found in scorpions, snakes and, yes, ticks. As per their natural immunity, chickens were able to eat these small animals without getting poisoned from their venom. In a typical meal of a chicken, a combination of ticks almost always found their role.

Fast-forward to late-2007 and these ticks, with no chickens to feed, was left alone to expand and populate. With them, came Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), That illness took more lives in Turkey than Avian Flu did in the whole world in the last 18 months.

The very interesting point in this story was that, the folks in the village I visited seemed to know this natural relationship and feedback loop all along the way. Apparently, the science and public management community didn’t know that much.

Building on that, I have a word or two for the company named Planktos, which is trying to reincarnate in these days. They call their efforts under the "ecorestoration" and they hope to fill massive areas of oceans with planktons, in an effort to have them process way much more carbondioxide and reduce the current levels. A good intention coupled with a very risky execution. With no villagers living under the ocean, it will be even harder to learn from experience what effects such a bold move can ignite.

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Wedding Table Planner

In a week from now, I will attend the wedding of a friend of mine. A few days ago, I RSVPed online and right at that moment I got curious about whether this wedding RSVP service provided some wedding table planner tools. It simply couldn’t, because RSVP form did not have any questions or fields regarding my close friends or colleagues. At that very moment, I understood that Facebook would be the killer platform for building a wedding table optimization app.

I am still not married and don’t know how much effort is needed for the wedding table optimization (best friends go to same table without leaving anybody at the same table with people they don’t know). Coming from an industrial engineering background, I can at least sense how big of an optimization problem should it be for the bride and groom. So why not outsource the RSVP process through Facebook, in which an internal engine could set up an initial table setting based on guests’ own friends that are invited to the event. It can even score the closeness of a friend pair based on either number of mutual friends, number of mutual wall posts or etc. Then the bride and groom can fine tune the details, add out-of-facebook guests to some empty points and voila, every guest is optimized happy! The Friend Wheel application has already completed much of the groundwork on that front!

Economics? Ok, barely an app is making money from Facebook but come on, isn’t the wedding one of those rare economic phenomenas that have a nearly complete price inelasticity?

Turkish Fantasy Football (Soccer)

Up to facebook’s rise and shine in Asia Minor, I could only list a few addictions that could be related to the whole population. One of them would be soccer. Right at these days every year, the life stops to speculate, watch and fight about the opening games of Turkish football league. Then came Facebook, as another general population addiction (Turks being #4 in overall population and #1 in non-English speaking population in Facebook rankings). Yet, I am disappointed that nobody came with a fantasy football app on Facebook that combined these two socioeconomical addictions in the perfect platform! I am pretty much inclined to take equity in such a venture, but be quick! The opening match is today!

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Regardless of your nationality and current hometown, you are probably aware of the strange situation going on in Turkey for some time. For the ones that doesn’t know, here is a brief heads-up:

Some international websites (the most popular being YouTube.com, followed by others such as Slide.com and Alibaba.com) with heavy user generated content are being sued in Turkish courts for permitting such content that insults Turkish people and heritage. In case these websites do not comply with the content removal request, Turkish courts request access restriction from Turkish Internet Authority, and the ban gets put into action in a few days. Currently, a handful of websites are inaccesible through Turkish ISPs.

This is no breaking news for most regular readers, but another set of developments lately arose with a so-called "social movement" coming from some Turkish webmasters, publishers and authors. It is a no-miss event playing only till August 20 evening, so I suggest you take a look through Turkish websites such as Webrazzi.com and AnaFikir.com.

In its core, these 200+ of "social-moving" websites put a landing page (script) on their domain to meet first-time entrants with the following message "Access to this website is restricted as decided by its owner" in an effort to get a sarcastic reference that YouTube receives "Access to this website is restricted as requested by Turkish courts".

It is a completely different discussion whether the move is right, wrong or the most effective one. Instead, I will put light on one subject that easily passed through each of these 200+ website managers’ minds. As Turkish citizens by nature (I suppose), I would expect these next-gen website authors to care at least a fraction of how much they care about Turkish internet freedom as they care for upholding Turkish values and heritage. Burning with passion to freed Turkish internet, I was sad to see that these people didn’t put similar emphasis in protesting these major international websites and requesting the removal of such insulting content. Instead, as I would expect for most superficially activist-minded people, they are burning with the desire to "be a part of the shiny, PRry social movement of Turkey and gain some brand recognition and Resume bullet" instead of the duty to "do the right things in the right order for the sake of social awareness".

Please find, read and elaborate on the following content on this subject:

Turkey’s TechCrunch clone style blog on the subject (Turkish).

Original TechCrunch play on the subject. (English). Woohoo, Turks are in TechCrunch! Sad that not with a killer startup though.

A Turkish VC General Partner’s standpoint on the subject. (English)

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We may remember Energy Recovery Inc. as the starting point for Clean Tech era in stock markets. Although not many are in line for the near future IPO window, strong commitments of VCs (here and here) would be reasonable indicators for a productive IPO market 5-10 years ahead.

Let’s mark the Energy Recovery Inc. IPO details here and track the progress to see whether this water desalination company with ever-efficient energy usage beats the market in the long run.

Ticker: ERII

Market: NASDAQ

IPO Price: 8.50 US$

Money Raised: 119 million US$

MCap: 471 million US$ (based on yesterday’s closing price of 9.83 US$)

Financials: In 2007, Energy Recovery’s earnings rose to $5.8 million from $2.4 million in 2006. The company’s revenue grew to $35.4 million from $20.1 million.

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