MPJ

Lately I was watching current stream of war related news and Syrian migrant crisis and I thought of what would I say on the blog about actual, continuous and devastating warfare in Europe, Africa and Middle East and stupidity of literally inexplicable background of who is fighting whom in all those conflicts and what cause would justify the aftermaths in form of devastated cities and long refugee-columns... Or even what words should I use to describe foolishness of the new cold war between nuclear powered "super countries" and what that will mean for our children and theirs in the future... Then I realized that reacting to meaningless affairs and worldwide political absurdity in a world so divided by racial, structural, governmental and religious diversity is also meaningless. I also realized that I said enough in the past. There is nothing new to be added or said. There will always be people who will think that rifle is not a rifle if it never fires a bullet. And to use a

Let's assume you are in possession of a time travel device or some fringe wormhole portal with possibility to take you way backwards in time and back. If I had one, I would probably turn myself into some sort of time paparazzi and returned with tons of high quality digital photographs of history events, places and people. Well, never mind that, time travel always opens lots of questions, but in light of today's 'what-if' thought experiment, let me ask you one question. So, what would you do, if you, during your time travels, stumbled into some sort of natural disaster in the middle of some tribal settlement of late stone age, around, say 7000 years ago and realized there was just one survivor - a small boy, around 2 years old, endlessly crying in the bottom of his destroyed tent? After little hesitation, you realized you are his only hope so you took the boy and went through the portal with him back into our time. What do you think will happen with the boy? Would he l

While the short tale about famous actor is itself a small historical record especially for him and one little Serbian village half an hour away from my current location, I have to say that this post is a little bit mistitled even though De Niro's story has several connected points with what I want to write today. Instead, it will be about my grandfather and his war stories I listened yesterday for the first time. Actually, my mother told me all this before, but yesterday, during our annual dinner, he was in a great mood to tell them himself and this is my attempt to write them down while they are still fresh in my memory. But, for a moment, let's get back to the title story. Not too long ago, I read in a newspaper article* about Robert De Niro and his European travels he did about 40 years ago, more or less in the time where I was about to be born. Back then, these kind of tourist destinations were extremely popular among young Americans - if you were young and adventurou

Have you ever been in situation to answer somebody's question with 'Yes and No'? Well, it is definitely one of those answers they are teaching politicians to answer every time they need to use some evasive maneuvers in order to avoid discussions they don't want to get into. But in this case, the answer to the question from the title, or expanded a little with: "Are you really behind the wheel of your body?" is really 'Yes and No'. And nothing could be closer to the truth. The keyword is of course Parasitology, a very complex scientific research that is trying to understand properly all the macro and micro organisms who can't live without other living beings and usually do that without their consent and rather use them to live their entire or partial life which in most cases leads to host's malfunction, to use raw mechanical word. They only leave hosts in case of their death or if the host's environment is exploited to the level of uselessne

There were lots of breakthroughs in human history until this date. Some were instant and recognisable events or technological inventions and some were slow evolutionary processes in history of our species. Whatever they were, the outcome was always reshaped course of mankind entirely. In our own time one of those is no doubt learning how to split the atom and very invention of nuclear bomb. We are still living in the post-turbulence time of that latest breakthrough that has potential to rise us from the Earth toward the stars. Some would say that it is still unknown whether this one is more of a civilization killer event or true entrance into another phase of humanity. We will wait and see. Either way, it is breakthrough, nevertheless. In early human history there was one similar invention that had the same uncertainty. It was called "Neolithic Revolution" and it happened in the middle of the Stone Age. And yes, even though we are still here, consequences of this invention ar

Did you know that if you were standing on the near side of the Moon, and for your mass of 80kg and weight of 785N on Earth, due to Moon's lower gravity, you would not feel being heavier than 13kg (130N)? You knew? Ok, did you know that Earth's and Moon's gravities combined gave you different weight on near and far side of the Moon? Slightly yes, but true. Earth and Moon are relatively small celestial bodies but this difference goes even higher if you move from the Moon to the Io or Europe for example as they are also tidally locked by Jupiter just like our Moon is locked by Earth. This would most definitely not help mountains on Avatar's Pandora to float but still, within right conditions and with presence of large mass(es) nearby, considering appropriate composition of the ground I am sure there are solar systems out there with strange conditions to live with, to say the least. "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” - Isaac Ne

Once, long, loong, loooooong ago in the days of Late Jurassic period in the world of Pterodactylus, famous flying dinosaur, mother Earth was pretty busy with the works of creating continents, large mountains, seas and oceans like we know today. At the time the place we know as Europe was mostly covered by large sea by the name of Paratethys. About hundred millions of years later, dramatic tectonic changes started producing large mountain formations today well known as Alps and Carpathians, which made Paratethys to loose connection with Mediterranean to the south and to form separate large inland sea in today's central Europe. Millions of years later, there are two remnant seas that still exist with names of Black and Caspian Seas. But there was one more in nowadays Pannonain basin, that lasted almost 9 millions years and finally disappeared in the middle of the Pleistocene Epoch, about 600,000 years ago with remnant lakes here and there especially in Hungary today. During its long