Historical Fiction of the World War Two

The start of the second world war in the Balkans was known as the "April War", which lasted no more than 10 days in the operation called "Führer Directive No. 25". The swift conflict ended on April 14th in an armistice based on the unconditional surrender of Yugoslav military forces. My grandfather was a 22-year-old corporal in the former Yugoslav army when he was transferred to a war camp in Germany in mid-April 1941, along with 30,000 other surrendered soldiers. He spent the next four years in a Nazi military camp, leaving behind his young wife and 2-year-old son.

I am sure it was not easy for him to cope with the entire time of imprisonment and captivity, especially in the beginning, but considering all the horrors of the most cruel encampments of Nazi Germany, the unconditional surrender of the entire Yugoslav Army came with negotiated terms and an agreement of fair treatment of all the prisoners during captivity in various labor camps in the following years. Perhaps the main trauma for all the former soldiers came in the second part of 1945, after the fall of Hitler's Third Reich, when all of them, along with more than 7 million displaced people, ended up for several months in the chaos of the immediate postwar traumatic experience of trying to find their way home. After his return to Serbia under a completely new regime, life treated him pretty well, and the post-war time is perhaps best described with his own words: "Although I was not a member of the communist party, I think I was respected in society; I became a councilor of the municipality of Nis and a member of the council of the electronic industry. Above all, I was proud of my family and 50 years of marriage."

Doing hard labor in the fields and machine workshop helped him to pass through the war relatively undisturbed, and, if we exclude the short April war in the beginning, I am sure the bullet holes in the car he used to maintain were his only reminder of all the horrors of the war. He was pretty quiet about all that happened to him for years, until one of our family gatherings about thirty years ago when he opened his soul and told us most of what happened in those four years, and especially a couple of those last months in 1945 when he headed back home on foot. 

I only found two of his photos that appear to be from his imprisonment, and I was genuinely surprised that there were any at all. The one with the notebook is the most interesting, and knowing him is also not surprising. Who knows, maybe out there somewhere is still waiting to be found that very notebook, which possibly contains one extraordinary journal along with a couple of potentially untold stories he may have taken with him to the grave and not told to anyone.

Anyhow, what reminded me of my grandfather and inspired me to write all this was the latest Mark Sullivan novel, "The Last Green Valley", a historical fiction following a remarkable story of one displaced family and their unfortunate and, at the same time, amazing adventure from the last year of the Second World War. It really was one great novel with an astonishing feeling composing after each page turned. It simply left me speechless after the last one. 

While we are at historical fiction, I warmly recommend two more titles in the genre: Mark Sullivan's "Beneath a Scarlet Sky", with a similar heartbreaking story from the same period in northern Italy, and Ken Follett's "Hornet Flight", with war adventures based on real events in occupied Denmark.

In the Footsteps of Pino Lella:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UJfEaFiMK4

Scientific Copenhagen

Do you have that strange feeling when you are about to visit a new city abroad and are a little afraid of what you will stumble upon when it comes to simple things? Like how to use the metro line or how to buy a bus ticket or how to identify your next destination? Or how to book your flight back to your home? Or how to handle a simple dilemma: should you exchange the money to the local currency, or is it wise to put your card in every ATM or any other 'slot' machine on your way?

Hello™ at Microsoft Campus Days, 2014

Ericsson, a Swedish multinational provider of communications technology and services, has the answer for you. And me too. Last week, I took my entire family on the trip to Copenhagen for both business and pleasure hours in the Danish capital. During my previous visits I didn't have much time for tourism or any off-work activity for that matter. So I did a little research this time, and Ericsson's "Networked Society City Index" helped a lot. With the well-developed ICT infrastructure, economy, and social development, as well as environmental progress, Copenhagen is located in the top five within the NSC index, among 31 well-developed worldwide cities. After our visit we left Denmark with a feeling that everything, or most of it, went perfectly smoothly and the applied IT was extremely helpful, simple, and useful. Unified communications (UC), integrated into people's business life from within smart gadgets and laptop computers, were also a big part of it, and I can proudly say that, in a way, I took part in the active development of Rackpeople's* Hello™ for Microsoft® Lync®—UC software that integrates with Microsoft's Lync and Exchange and presents video conferencing within a single click on a wide variety of screens and devices. The business part of last week's Copenhagen trip was to visit Microsoft Campus Days, where Hello™ had a big feature presentation and successfully presented what it can do in the current edition. From the developer's point of view, I have a good feeling that this project will have a long life with plenty of room for more versions in the future, especially if Skype and Lync integrate and create space for non-business users as well.

However, Copenhagen, besides the business side of the medal, has plenty more to offer. History, arts, sport and music events, amusement parks, museums, royal and naval sites, shopping streets and malls, restaurants, walks along the canals, sightseeing from the sea, and many more, but this time we chose to glimpse the city's unique scientific side. With a seven-year-old boy in our small family, along with me being a big fan of science and skeptical of society, our stay was really special. If you add last week's Black Friday hysteria, which brought an enormous smile on my wife's face all day long, I can safely say that we spent one of those memorable times you never forget.

The Rundetårn, a 17th-century astronomical observatory**

The very first day we went to see Rundetårn, an almost 400-year-old observatory built by King Christian IV after the first major success of naked-eye astronomical observation of planetary motion, performed by famous astronomer Tycho Brahe. His incredibly accurate measurement of 6 planets motion at the time was used by Johannes Kepler after Tycho's death in 1601, and for the first time in astronomy, three laws of planetary motion were established, including the one that all planets in the solar system move in elliptical orbits with the Sun at a focus. Even though there are still suspicious thoughts about honest relations between Brahe and Kepler and even uncleared circumstances related to Tycho's death (traces of mercury in hairs from his beard were found in the 1901 autopsy), these two colorful characters of the early 17th century made crucial contributions to our understanding of the universe, including the discovery of Newton's law of gravity, which was a direct outcome of Kepler's laws.

Anyway, the Round Tower in the heart of Copenhagen is still active and one of the oldest functioning astronomy observatories. The dome is 6.75 meters high and 6 meters in diameter and contains a refracting telescope with 80–450x magnification with an equatorial mount. Without an elevator or stairs, walking up and down its unique 209-meter-long spiral ramp that spins 7.5 times is something special I never saw before. Not to mention we had the opportunity to look through the 'scope with two very friendly astronomers who warmly welcomed us and patiently answered all the questions we had.

Apollo 17's moon rock

The next stop in our astronomy tour was the Tycho Brahe Planetarium. It is located not too far away from the observatory and hosts 'The Space Theater' with a 1000-square-meter dome-shaped screen, and seeing a giant 3D Earth rotating in front of you or 30+ meter high mammoths in "Titans of the Ice Age" is the experience you don't want to miss. They also hosted an "A Journey through Space" program and permanent exhibition with meteor specimens and one of the largest moon rocks from the Apollo 17 mission (in the above image).

Science is not science if you don't experiment in the lab, and to have at least a feeling of what scientists do on a daily basis, you have to visit Experimentarium City. The main exhibition last week was "The Brain", with tons of posts waiting to be explored and played with. Needless to say, my favorite was the game with the cool name "Mindball"—in which you have to push the ball only by using brain wave sensors. The more you are relaxed and focused, the more it will get into your control and move in the desired direction.

Mindball—moving the ball with brain activity

If you like to have your brain scanned and to see which part is activated when you move fingers, or if you want to see really cool optical illusions, or to learn more about scientific facts and how stuff works, or to play memory games, or... simply to experience a great family time, visiting Experimentarium City is mandatory.

Finally, no trip to Copenhagen would be allowed to have the adjective 'scientific' in the title without visiting the national aquarium and the zoo. Opened last year, Den Blå Planet, National Aquarium Denmark, located near Copenhagen's airport in Kastrup, is something you would need to see to believe. Especially if you came from a continental country like Serbia. Equally interesting was the zoo, which went viral earlier this year when they decided to euthanize Marius, the young giraffe, because of a duty to avoid inbreeding, approved by the European Breeding Programme for Giraffes. Right or wrong, it is not mine to say, but we humans are responsible for the health of the animal life, and at least it is a good thing that there are scientific organizations that are taking the breeding of animal species seriously. Anyway, perhaps the best impression in both the wild animal and fish exhibitions, to me, was their climate-controlled environments—in the zoo their "Tropical section" with jungle climate conditions, and in the case of the aquarium, it's the "Amazonian region" with tropical plant life, strange-looking fish, and lots of piranhas.

The Little Mermaid

Finally, I want to thank all my coworkers at Rackpeople for having a good time on and off the office, especially Lasse, who invited us for a visit and gave me the opportunity to spend my yearly bonus in Copenhagen. Trips like this are also a great opportunity to learn more about the country and region you are visiting, and I mean not just about the sites, history, monuments, and other attractions, but also about people, hospitality, and friendship. Sometimes, the result is more than you hope for... sometimes less. Perhaps the best advice when you are visiting abroad, no matter if you are doing it as a pure tourist or within a business agenda, or both, is to leave high expectations at home. Nevertheless, Copenhagen is one great corner of the world, more than worthwhile to visit, and this scientific side I wanted to show in this post is something not many cities in the world can offer.

Image references:
Scientific Copenhagen, 2014

References:
* http://www.rackpeople.com/
http://www.ericsson.com/res/docs/2013/ns-city-index-report-2013.pdf
** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rundetårn
http://www.rundetaarn.dk/en/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tycho_Brahe
http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/11/17/was-tycho-brahe-poisoned

Schrödinger's Cat and Intelligent Movies

In short it goes like this: "There's a cat in a box... That has, like, a 50/50 chance of living because there's a vial of poison that's also in the box. Regular physics would say that it's one or the other. That the cat is either alive or dead, but quantum physics says that both realities exist simultaneously. It's only when you open the box that they collapse into one single event." This quote is me paraphrasing James Ward Byrkit, writer and director of the movie "Coherence", which I've just watched. Although Erwin Schrödinger, back in 1935, when he first wrote his famous thought experiment, invented a pretty complex radioactive trap for the poor cat inside the box, I think that "vial of poison" and James' full description in the script is one of the best interpretations of the quantum paradox there is. The quantum weirdness is one of the most intriguing areas in science that has been buzzing our minds for about a century now. I wrote about it a little last year in the post Quantum Weirdness, and when it comes to science, it was one of the posts I enjoyed writing the most in the past.

About 90 years ago, Niels Bohr, the greatest Danish physicist of all time, described quantum mechanics with perhaps the best explanation ever since. He said something like this: "A quantum particle doesn't exist in one state or another but in all of its possible states at once. It's only when we observe its state that a quantum particle is essentially forced to choose one probability, and that's the state that we observe. Since it may be forced into a different observable state each time, this explains why a quantum particle behaves erratically."* Well, describing the quantum behavior has been a challenge ever since, and because of Bohr, who managed to do it first, all other explanations combined we call today "The Copenhagen Interpretation". Schrödinger's cat is just Erwin's metaphorical attempt to put it closely into our world of big, which we should understand better. But we will get back to the 'cat' later.

And relax, this is not going to be a scientific post or some nerdy brainstorming and (usually) utopistic ideas of mine. Instead it will be about movies. Yep. Just a short glimpse of one of my favorite directions within the sci-fi genre of movies. The one where, just like with reading books, you don't need any big productions, fancy and state-of-the-art visual effects, expensive sets and VFX, or famous actors to create great entertainment. This is a genre I like to call sci-fi for the brains. Like in the movie "Coherence", the plot is placed down to the real people, or to be precise, into familiar settings. There are no spaceships or vividly animated aliens or any villains for that matter. All you need is your imagination and a little background knowledge, and that's all.

I will show you now three movies. I recommend them warmly and without spoiling the films too much for all of you who still didn't have the chance to watch them. A couple of days before "Coherence", I saw the blockbuster "Edge of Tomorrow". I liked it a lot, of course, but still, even with a great cast and effects, the story is nothing exclusive or new. It also provides expected closure and leaves no room for too much thinking or brainstorming over the story. On the other side, "Coherence", with its relatively anonymous cast and script that can easily fit within the set in some small theater or school gym, tried to exploit the very cat of Mr. Schrödinger's and provide one more Copenhagen interpretation, only this time with people in main roles and our own personalities instead of "a vial of poison". It all started with a simple dinner party and with ordinary people who eventually realized what might happen when you open the box. Is the cat alive or dead, or, to be precise, what is really happening when different possibilities emerge out of the box at the same time? Try to find out at the end of the movie. It's not what you might expect and what we got used to in regular movies, but not every story has a happy ending. I guess in this one, the ending is like in quantum mechanics and like the cat from the century before, "Coherence" has both a happy ending and ... not. You have to see it to understand. That's all I will say.

The second sci-fi jewel in the same subgenre is "The Man from Earth", written by Jerome Bixby and directed by Richard Schenkman back in 2007. The science behind this one is biology and how, in its most divergent (and also on the edge of impossible) path, it might affect the very history of mankind. Or to be precise, explained it. The story focuses on John Oldman, the man who, due to some biological anomaly, hasn't aged ever since he was born in Cro-Magnon tribal society 14000 years ago. Like any other science fiction, the movie doesn't try too much to explain the reasons for his presence and instead portrays his struggle to fit, ability to learn throughout time and adapt to different parts of the world, and his everlasting craving to tell somebody his story. And this film is exactly what it is about—finally, the "old man", Oldman, currently a university professor who's about to leave and start another loop, decides to share everything with a group of his peer colleagues. Well, he will learn that impossible stories like his one are not possible to be accepted that easily or at all. But the audience behind the screen will get great entertainment and possible solutions for some parts of our own history, and especially religiosity and its main figures during the eons. Including Buddha and Christ. Oh yes, and don't expect the sword fights, mad scientists, or any action at all, like it was in "Highlander" and its almost stupid plot with cutting heads off for the "prize". The set of this movie is only one small living room. The only thing you have to do is sharpen your brain cells before clicking the "Play" button.

Finally, the last one is "Primer", an extraordinary film written, directed, and produced by Shane Carruth. Shane was also playing the main character in the movie, and the entire project finished with only $7,000. It's hard to say what science is behind this one. Probably the best bet is to use the word "fringe" for this, as the main theme and background technology is "time travel". The script is based on one of the oldest time travel paradigms. The one that doesn't include parallel universes, and instead the time traveler is ending up in his very own universe where the danger of the "butterfly effect" can ripple the time stream and change everything. This is the most intelligent script and movie I have seen so far, and before I watched, I read some reviews and remember this one: "Anybody who claims they fully understand what’s going on in ‘Primer’ after seeing it just once is either a savant or a liar". Well, I am not either, and to be completely honest, I didn't manage to follow the entire story and understand it after the first (and last) watching, but more or less I got almost the whole picture from that only session.

The key point in understanding the science (fiction) behind "Primer" is to comprehend what is happening with the guy who enters the time machine and, when he does in the first place, why his major concern is to make sure that his parallel copy enters the box no matter what. The problem with this is well speculated in the article from Discover Magazine I read once, and in short, if time travel into the past is possible, nature must have some mechanism in order to prevent inconsistent events like in this case, the non-entering of the box by the time traveler after the loop is initiated. Confused? Maybe to better understand this paradox, take a look at this image***:

The hazard is obvious: if the "original" in its own blue timeline didn't enter the box at 6PM, the green parallel timeline would not exist in the first place. In other words, if "double" meets "original" and stops him from entering the box, the paradox is obvious, and we can only imagine what happens if that "butterfly" occurs. That's why "the science fiction behind time travel" in recent years actively rejects this approach and involves another universe being the destination for time travelers instead of the origin universe, which would explain the consistency of traveling into the past. Of course, we might ask what would happen if ALL "originals" from ALL universes decided to time travel? Whatever universe they arrive in, the copy of them will be needed to enter the box in the destination universe, and we have the same problem again; let's call it the "Multiverse Butterfly Effect"... Anyway, if you didn't see "Primer" or want to watch it again, try to comprehend this image first. It will help a lot.

These three movies, even though from the same genre and subgenre, differ in the background science used, and I can't truly compare them with each other. So I can't favorite one of them, but these are the movies I like to give thoughts to again and again... They are not really made for just entertainment and, for me, are more memorable than regular sci-fis.

Images and article refs:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schroedingers_cat_film.svg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger's_cat
* http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/.../quantum-suicide4.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-copenhagen/
http://coherencethemovie.com/
** http://www.amazon.com/Wanted-Schrodingers-Magnet
http://manfromearth.com/
http://www.primermovie.com/
***http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primer_(film)
http://www.myvisionmyway.com/the-man-from-earth-minimalist-poster.html

The Little Mermaid

I am wondering if is it possible to combine, in just one blog post, a short story about one country, one modern IT business, several great friendships, air flights, professional challenges, and friendly people everywhere you look. I know the answer is probably no, but I will try anyway. Let's start with an easy puzzle: if you thought of The Little Mermaid and Hans Christian Andersen, quantum mechanics and Niels Bohr, the famous Hamlet's "To be or not to be" in Shakespeare's old play, and amazing cuisine with cookies, pretzels, Carlsberg beer, and Legos? The answer, for a very few of you who didn't guess, is, of course, Denmark. One of the top developed countries of the European Union. According to the United Nation's first-ever World Happiness Report from this year, Denmark has taken the top spot, followed by Finland, Norway, and the Netherlands. When I first read about this, I was skeptical since happiness is a relative thing and I am sure all people in the world are equally happy and unhappy from time to time depending on daily moodiness and events that drive us.

The Little Mermaid

However, now after my second visit to Denmark, I tend to change all the skepticism and maybe better understand the global happiness or social happiness, if you will. According to the study, one of the conclusions could be this (and I am paraphrasing the report): "While basic living standards are essential for happiness, and after the baseline has been met by the majority of people, social happiness varies more with the quality of human relationships than with income." Simple truth with no simple explanation, but if you ask me, I think that the history of any society is deeply embedded into everybody's DNA, and as long as it is not filled with lots of conflicts, wars, animosities, and hard times, the better human relationships become.

Several years ago, around the time of the birth of my son, I started outsourcing for a Danish consulting company within a team of developers providing coding in the Microsoft .NET environment for various purposes. A very big number of Danish companies are using Windows servers and other client-server solutions for their businesses based on the Microsoft environment, and according to my humble opinion, I fit in nicely due to my expertise and experience in the field in general.

The Rackpeople Team

Actually, contrary to most other jobs, being involved in IT development, more than having various degrees and initial knowledge, requires the ability to change and learn the new stuff. The technology is changing rapidly, and after more than five years of telecommuting, when it all started with simple web applications, we are currently involved in more sophisticated technologies like Lync and SharePoint development, connecting them with the mobile world and providing the right information at the right time. All those activities are followed by financial subsystems centered around Microsoft Dynamics C5, equally challenging from one developer's point of view. I remember the days back in the 80s and 90s when developing business software was completely different compared to the present day. This is no one-man show anymore. The complexity of the IT support, consulting, and development reached a higher level of understanding, and I mean for both sides, developers and customers. Even though I am outsourcing about 1600 kilometers away from the office, this would not be possible without internet, daily communications, reporting, solving puzzles, audio and video conferencing, brainstorming, and live meetings. The dynamic IT world is also affecting consulting companies, and five years is a very large period of time for all of us as well, so recently, as a result of last year's merger, the old/new company continued joined efforts within new surroundings and teamed up for future challenges.

Not so long ago I visited my friends at Rackpeople for a couple of meetings and some other on-and-off work activities in regard to future projects and also for simple socializing with the guys and some brainstorming sessions in a local brewery house (where else do brilliant ideas come from?).

Baltic Sea between Poland and Denmark

Of course, like any business trip, the best part came after work hours, where the office environment was replaced by the "Custom House" restaurant and an "ice cream" walk along with the brewery house in the 17th-century Nyhavn district at the end of my visit. This is part of Copenhagen you don't want to miss. I still can't choose what was the best: American classic steak, delicious ice cream in domesticated cones, or perfect draft beer. Regarding the whole event from a sightseeing point of view, what maybe impressed me the most was the sun still standing very much above the horizon while the local clock tower was showing 22 hours and a change. It was the cost of living on a round Earth so much north away from the equator. I enjoyed very much the sightseeing while driving through Copenhagen, visiting the famous Little Mermaid, and most of all our talks about lots of different topics. With this blog post I would like to thank Jesper, Claus, and Mark for an amazing evening.

I am not a frequent flyer, but every now and again I am using air traffic, and maybe now is my chance to write about my experience flying in a south-north straight line between Belgrade and Copenhagen. This last flight was pretty much smooth without much turbulence, probably because the weather was more or less the same during the whole 1600km long trip. However, two years ago I was taking the same flight during the hot summer, and the weather wasn't the same in the beginning of the flight compared to the last half hour and the descent itself. The moment the plane entered the Baltic Sea from continental Poland, the weather changed dramatically for the worse. I remember I was having a wing seat and saw the jet engine start seriously vibrating up and down. It was pretty scary, but the crew did not pay much attention, so I reckoned it was pretty much normal. The other travelers weren't so calm, especially one older lady that had to use the oxygen mask after landing, which was also a little disturbing, as the plane needed to take a couple of sharp turns at very low altitude in order to align with the runway. One more thing also attracted my attention, and this is how clean and spacious the Danish capital, suburbia, and small towns in the countryside are. Due to lots of rain over the year, everything is green and very compelling.

The Complete Guide To: The best of Denmark
http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/europe/the-complete-guide-to-the-best-of-denmark-1730450.html

The official website of Denmark
http://denmark.dk/en/

World Happiness Report 2012: Scandinavian Countries Are Happiest On Earth
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/06/world-happiness-report-2012_n_1408787.html

Rackpeople Hosting and Consulting
http://www.rackpeople.com/

The Little Mermaid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Mermaid_(statue)

Nyhavn/New Harbour
http://www.nyhavn.com/

Custom House
http://www.customhouse.dk/en/cosmopolitan-cooking-close-to-the-sea.html