MPJ

In our part of the world summer vacation is the most important one for most people. There are several reasons for this and probably the major one is that during July and August in this part of western Balkans, where we live, temperatures can go as high as 45C (113F) degrees and the obvious solution is to pack your bags, jump into the car and go to one of four nearby seas for couple of weeks to cool and enjoy (and also to change the everyday scenery and recharge your inner batteries which are always seriously depleted when summers come). Due to the shortest distance and good roads Greece is probably the best destination for a car trip to the seaside that takes less than 10 hours of drive. Unfortunately this is one of few routes for all those " gastarbeiter " people who mainly work in Germany and other western countries and during summers form very long river of vehicles toward their home destinations in Turkey and other countries. When they hit borders along the way thi...

Long ago I started to experience that one extremely memorable dream. One of those that doesn't fade out with the first morning sunshine. Instead, it was regularly popping to the surface of my mind, making me wonder if these vivid images, haunting me every now and again, were just a product of my imagination or perhaps there was something more hidden beneath. In the dream I wander the narrow streets of an unknown city, one after another, and after a while I stumble to the big square with large monumental buildings decorated with dark reddish bricks with no signs or any familiar markings I can recognize. I was always wondering where all these colorful images originated from and somehow always had that feeling that I am probably missing an important link to fully understand the whole picture. Recently this final link suddenly appeared, and during our vacation last week I accidentally found my dream site, and all missing pieces finally placed together, forming a memory almost 40 yea...

Before I start writing about this amazing sea, first of all, I have to say that this story is equally about Greece, the oldest European country and the first known civilization in Europe. Surrounded by three seas, Greece is probably the most interesting place in the Mediterranean basin ever since it was formed and filled with water many millenniums ago. The Aegean Sea keeps the most important part in the history of mankind, being a natural barrier between civilizations independently developed over the west, east, and south. Once in those past times, today known as B.C., this was the center of the world. It was also the place where many amazing things were born that we know today as science, democracy, philosophy, mathematics, culture, and sport, along with all those "other inventions" like modern armies and wars, dictatorships, religion, divine beings... Aegean Sea Today, after two millenniums, looking at this part of the world from my point of view and my own relati...

Back in 2008, Google organized a conceptual contest named "Project 10^100". The primary goal of the project was to select ideas that are capable of changing the world on a global scale. The period of the change had to be 2 years, so the idea needed to be radical and yet plausible. I was thinking that inventing something completely new could be a waste of time, as nothing new unless it is a true breakthrough is capable of achieving anything in such a short period of time, so the only way was to radically change something already in works on a global scale. So, I thought of democracy. Why not? It's the old system with long, rusty roots, almost unchanged in past millennium and more and I finally submitted the idea that would eventually get rid of politicians by using a voting system that would replace parliaments with the technology and politicians with ordinary people.⁣ Anyway, here is the RDS idea of mine exactly the same as submitted back in 2008.   I am sure, one way o...