Smart Microscope

Most of the popular digital and DSLR cameras are perfectly equipped for macro photos. Taking a great photo by zooming to the scene no farther than 20-30 centimeters is a little effort and requires only clicking the shutter button and leaving all the technicalities to the camera's automated software. Even the cheap lenses can do that without a problem. A while ago I collected some of those photos and wrote a little about macro photography and how to record all the close objects not very distant from our nose.

But can we do closer than that? Can we take a photo of an object like the top of a pencil as close as a couple of millimeters away from the lens, for example, like the one in this photo:

Dot-sized larvae of cricket or grasshopper invading our balcony flowerpot

Well, not with a consumer camera, not without specialized optics. However, "augmenting" our smartphones to do the magic is just a little effort. And yes, I took the above photo with only my smartphone, an additional plastic lens I taped to its camera, and... lots of patience.

To be completely honest, taking a photo of an insect, small in size, like a hair louse that is erratically running and jumping in your small zooming window, is not little effort per se, but it can make your day and everything else is just a piece of cake. All you have to do is strip one of those laser pointers and rip out its lens. Perhaps the better results you can get are with a laser pointer equipped with a lens made with greater optical quality, but for starters, anyone can do it. So, like in the left image, or if you click on the bottom reference link, when you take out the lens, all you have to do is tape it to your camera lens on the back of your smartphone, and the rest is your imagination. If you follow the image story, the goal can be even bigger—the end result can be one of those microscopes you can find in toy stores with quality lenses, capable of taking a photo or even a video clip of a microworld with up to the cellular level. Complete instructions on building such a device you can find within the Turn Your Smartphone Into a Digital Microscope! YouTube page.

Of course, taking microphotos means you have to get close to the scene, and your smartphone will block most of the useful light, so you have to think like an ordinary microscope. You bring the light with you and position it just below or next to the "set". I recommend one of those LED flashlights that are very small in size that allows you to carry them along with your phone. I used one of those book reader LED lights with a flexible handle with just one LED source on the top. That way you can fit both in your hand—the light and the phone. The other hand will be responsible just for zooming and the button. A picture is worth a thousand words, so here is how it looks in action.

I didn't play too much time with this, but I am sure the following summer will bring lots of more microphotos when all of that microbiological life emerges, but it is amazing what exactly you can stumble upon in your front yard or balcony in just a couple of hours. In the image below to the right, when I pointed the lens toward the rose's stem, I thought I would get only some sort of reddish plant spores, but instead my memory card was filled with tiny and not too adorable rose lice. In other words, if you make this, prepare to be surprised at what exactly you might find in there.

Therefore, I advise practicing first with non-live objects in your own household, like in the above example of pencil tops, and believe me, exercising is what you really need to do, simply because zooming out of focus is just one tiny move of your finger or even a significant breath or hesitation. Anyway, I will be adding more images to this gallery in the future, and besides the embedded images in this post, there are more in the web gallery.

In today's update, the story goes further into the microworld, and this time with a cheap 'consumer' digital microscope. I bought one for Viktor's 11th birthday earlier this year, and during this entire spring we played with it a lot. In quality and zooming, it was more or less in the realm of the DIY smart microscope I made and described in the post. However, it brought to the scene its own powerful LED lights, and with its pencil-like shape, it was more controllable and applicable. The downside was that it was far beyond smartphone camera quality, and the number of pixels was not too high to capture quality videos, but still, its educational value was out of the question.

This new addition to the post imagery was actually a video from Viktor's YouTube channel, zViktor22, where he tested the microscope with various plants, food, money, fabrics, insects, and more from our country village, household, his 5th grade herbarium, and our front yard. I also included our old smart microscope photos and the caterpillar video from the initial post to complete the story about what it's possible to do with little effort and cheap technology.

Original post: May 2014, Update: June 2018.

Smart Microscope:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/TNng7utQTw1zb3GK8

Stone Age of Iron Gates

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

"Lepenski Vir" by Giovanni Caselli

Yes, the invention is, of course, agriculture along with domesticating wild animals. In this part of the world it happened around the year 5300 BC, and along with the Vinča culture, it was invented by one of the oldest civilizations that occupied Iron Gates, the great gorge of the mighty Danube, at the spot called Lepenski Vir (Lepen Whirlpool) near the Koršo hills at the right bank of the river. The gorge had everything for the rise of one medium-sized settlement for our Mesolithic predecessors. Large river with lots of fish; hills and valleys very near the bank with lots of small animals, deer, and especially easily hunted herds of aurochs (now extinct species of wild cows); and lots of water birds.

Many things happened in human minds with the agricultural way of life. If you ask me, it was the point when humans abandoned the 'natural' way of life, or, to better say it, it was the time when natural equilibrium with humans being just a part of the biodiversity microcosm of the inhabited area changed inevitably. We became the ultimate and the only player. Growing our own food and enslaving wild animals had raised us toward the godlike creatures, and we left our prehistorical ways for good. Just like with nuclear power, we made one great step in human evolution. And just like with the nuclear bomb, we invented all the side effects we are suffering to this day.

With agriculture we didn't just invent unlimited food supplies. We got ourselves envy and jealousy toward our own neighbor and cousin for simple things, like him having more food or land. We started to hunt for pleasure and not just for food. We started to steal and hate. We invented divine beings and prayers for them to spare our crops from natural hazards between planting and harvesting seasons. Let me just not repeat myself too much on the topic.

Anyway, yesterday I took my family to the Lepenski Vir and its wonderful museum to learn more of these great people and how and why, on Earth, they managed to survive several millenniums in tent-based settlements and lasted for maybe the longest period of time in human history. As for why, unfortunately I can't explain with words. You would have to visit Iron Gates and see it for yourself. In short, it is a beautiful site. The river is magnificent, and the gorge is one of a kind. The forests are still there, and the feeling is, well, if I were one of the Mesolithic explorers on foot, finding this place would be the same as finding heaven. Migrating it out would be, from one hunter and fisherman group's point of view, well, stupid.

Perhaps the only thing this place doesn't have is lots of room for large agriculture fields, and eventually these people left it as soon as they became too dependent on the Neolithic Revolution, and from that point in time in the fifth millennium before Christ, we have no idea where they went and spread. Probably upstream on the Danube in search of large plains for their crops is currently the most valuable scientific explanation. Maybe something more happened in addition to agricultural reasons to force them to leave, but we don't know. Today, one of the largest dams in the world, named 'Iron Gates I', created significant landscape change in the form of a long river lake and flooded the entire gorge and all the ancient settlements, preventing further exploration in search for more clues.

Perhaps, for me, these guys in pre-agricultural times were extremely interesting for many reasons. Anthropologically speaking, they were large compared to other humans in Europe at the time and lived longer and healthier lives. Thanks to their diet with most of the fish dishes on their stone tables, some of the prominent members of the society lived more than 60 years, and some of them were tall enough to play in the NBA with ease. Well, of course, most lived to about 40-50 years old, but with their average height of 165 for women and 172 for men, they might have origins in the old Cro-Magnon species from the Paleolithic. A fascinating story about all the skeletons in tombs was that no traces of violent deaths were found. Apparently, they were extremely peaceful people, and also, the interesting fact that all excavated skeletons (more than 150 in total) are missing only two teeth gives a clue that their amazing diet with almost 70% fish and the rest meat and berries was a fact that they literally lived in some sort of Mesolithic paradise.

At the end, all the main exploration and excavations of this site were made by Professor Dragoslav Srejović of the University of Belgrade. 136 buildings, settlements, and altars were found in the initial excavations in 1965-1970. I read somewhere that Dragoslav Srejović was a giant in a Newtonian way of definition, and I couldn't agree more. This short film above is the same one they played for us in the museum. I am sorry I couldn't find the one with English subtitles, but it was a great learning experience and an amazing documentary considering it was filmed in the same time lapse as the exploration. And as my wife noticed, it has even a romantic tale in the background that gives a special touch and feel of one typical archaeological life in the mid-sixties.

Refs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lepenski_Vir
http://www.donsmaps.com/lepenski.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs

Thassos Island Today and Before

The age of this blog is both old, in the sense of the fast maturing of the internet and IT technology in general, but also very young if we are counting human age in the old-fashioned way. When we first visited Thassos Island a dozen years before, the internet and social sharing technology were about to enter their unstable teenage years, so to speak. It was the time when I bought my first digital camera, the HP PhotoSmart C850, with its state-of-the-art optics and digital technology from the time. Pictures from Thassos back then in the summer of 2003 were probably my first attempt to take more artistic landscapes from our Greece vacations, and today is perhaps the time to compare both what changed in photography gadgets and also Thassos itself after a full 12 years.

Let's start with images first. After 12 years in time distance, I decided to choose the same number of images for this post—half of them shown above, all taken with the HP Photosmart C850 with a 4-megapixel CCD sensor, and half below, taken from this summer vacation with the Nikon D5200 and CMOS sensor with approximately 20 megapixels more than in the old HP. It is insufficient to say that 12 years of maturing of technology in optics, hardware, and software is easily noticeable.

As for Thassos Island, very little changed over the years. Local people are still the same, very hospitable and friendly; beaches are the same as they probably were hundreds of thousands of years before; the Aegean Sea is still crystal clear, just like in the time of Zeus; the company and the sun are the same hot, like in all Julys in previous millenniums and eons.

What is a little different are the people who are visiting Thasos—this year there were more tourists from Eastern European countries, like Romania, Bulgaria, Moldavia, Ukraine, and Russia, and fewer from Western Europe, which is probably the result of the anti-Greece media campaign due to the political conflict between the Greek government and the EU and the financial crisis in Greece these years. I have to say that at least during our stay on Thassos I couldn't notice any crisis or any problems whatsoever. Man-made crises are always like that; they always have profusely enhanced exposure in media, and the truth is never on either side in conflict and never in media. I know it is a cliche, but you have probably heard the phrase "trust no one", and if you ask me, it is always the ultimate truth when it comes to raw propaganda and news in media, especially if it is related to some political affairs like the current one in Greece vs. the EU (and by EU you can freely read Germany).

http://www.thassos-island.com/

The Sixth Great Dying

Just like a single ant who's lost in the large expanse of Brazilian Casino Beach (Praia do Cassino, 250 km in length, considered to be the largest beach on Earth) and feels as small as possible in the surrounding space, we humans are experiencing a similar sensation when it comes to space and especially time. But, contrary to ants, we have the ultimate tool, called science, that is allowing us to see beyond the horizon. If we could place ourselves in an ant's shoes, we would find clues and evidence all around us, and, metaphorically speaking, no matter the large quantities of sand grains, we would know that we were on the beach.

And with time, when it comes to the history of life, all the clues lie in fossil records of coral reefs. The main study, performed by J.E.N. Veron in his publication "A Reef in Time", identified five periods in Earth's history with major extinction of corals that built reefs. In all five periods, fossil records of the reefs show that it took millions of years for reef systems to recover fully, and these five periods in time are now called "reef gaps". In simple words, five major events attacked life on Earth in the previous 500 million years, and corals successfully recorded them all. We now recognize these time periods as "The Five Mass Extinction Events" that successfully wiped out 99.9% of all species that ever evolved and lived on Earth. That includes all marine life, plants, and animal species crawling on the surface. We and everything that moves and considers itself alive today are just descendants of those 0.01% that survived five great cataclysms. Here's a short glimpse of all five events and their cruel aftermath.

1. 430+ million years ago, the first great mass extinction event took place at the end of the Ordovician, with 60% of both terrestrial and marine life being exterminated. 2. 360+ million years ago in the Late Devonian period, the second armageddon was probably the sum of several extinctions over a short period rather than just one massive one. 70 percent of marine species died, but due to the long-lasting nature of the multiple events, terrestrial plants and animals were largely unaffected. 3. The third extinction happened 250+ million years ago, and it was the most devastating one so far. It is nicknamed "The Great Dying", as up to 96% of all species went extinct. Reefs didn't reappear for about 10 million years, and everything that exists today is a remnant of those 4% who survived it. 4. The end The Triassic mass extinction, which happened 200+ million years ago, was the Pangea splitting event due to a large amount of volcanic eruptions and lava floods. Around 80% of all land quadrupeds also went extinct in the process of forming the Atlantic Ocean. 5. The end of the Cretaceous mass extinction, 65 million years ago, is the most famous dinosaur killer event. Virtually no large land animals survived. 16 percent of marine families, 47 percent of marine genera, and 18 percent of land vertebrate families, including the dinosaurs, died.

In addition to reef records, a couple of other studies help and give us a clearer picture of what really happened and how exactly all those armageddons came to take place at all. The major one is the astronomical study of Earth's complex motion over time. The theory is known as Milankovitch Cycles I wrote about before in the post "Ice Age vs. Global Warming". In short, it summarized several planetary motions that lead to periodical dramatic changes of the climate. The main period is identified as a 100,000-year cycle that forces our planet to go into glacial periods, or what we are familiar with as "The Ice Ages". As it seems, reef gaps don't correspond to this cycle at all. They don't even match the recognized 400,000-year cycle we today know as carbon dioxide variations in oceans, but the first thing we notice in the below chart is the period of more or less 100 million years between two extinctions. Does there really exist some kind of cycle, or was it just a cosmic coincidence? We don't know, but it seems that planetary cycles are not enough to trigger such a big event. I am guessing that several conditions should be met in order to make it happen. In addition to the regular cycle, the smoking gun could also be a massive supervolcanic event or an extraterrestrial collision with a large comet or mountain-sized rock from space.

Recently, and what triggers me to write this post, I read a couple of articles that are claiming we are dangerously close to or even living in the sixth extinction event that will have the power to get rid of us entirely. I am not really convinced at this point. Of course, there's the fact that many species have already vanished due to human activities (like some bird species due to deforestation or the Japanese sea lion that was harvested to the last one by fishermen). The energy needed to sustain all life on Earth is definitely limited, but nobody knows exactly where the red line is. According to Dr. Hans Rosling and his research, nature has already started to reduce the human population, and its peak is supposed to be within next decades from now, considering observed fertility rates so far. After that, the human population might start degrading in numbers and be more or less regulated by nature. The same goes with other species that could be following natural equilibrium as well. However, these are just speculations and scientific guesses, and it remains to be proven in the near future. On the other hand, industrialization and pollution are two completely different issues. Something we need to take more seriously. They are ultimately dangerous.

Perhaps centuries ago, just like the ant from the beginning of the story, humans were also small in numbers, but today we have grown enormously and become, considerably and astronomically speaking, the most dangerous player for our own home. We saw that the smoking gun in a couple of previous mass extinctions was large and massive volcano eruptions and/or solar system collisions, but in the potential upcoming sixth event, as it seems, we would not need any inner or extraterrestrial excuses. CO₂ and other greenhouse gases we keep producing and letting out in the air could be enough. Atmospheric CO₂ concentrations that I checked two years ago are slightly bigger today, and the curve has been going up ever since measurement started. In May 2015 it was 403.70 ppmv (parts per million volume), and it was 150+ ppmv higher than normal. Sixty years ago the number was 320 ppmv.

Global warming, which is a direct consequence of the risen gases in the atmosphere, is the least of our worries. A further problem with CO₂ is that all the water in planetary oceans is acting as one giant CO₂ eater. It was calculated that ppmv of greenhouse gases should not be over 240±5 ppmv in order for normal glacial-interglacial cycles to function. The substantial increase in CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere, over a short amount of time, that we are facing right now is dramatically reducing the pH of the oceans, and it is happening right now. Even if we stop emitting CO₂ completely, the process might continue to the point of fatal acidification effects in the face of dramatically reduced oxygen in water.

And we will have dead corals again. All over the place. Life will try to adapt, but whether or not it will be successful, we will definitely bring ourselves a worldwide catastrophe, if not another and this time mortal event with the "civilization killer" nickname written all over it.

Refs:
https://www.co2.earth/co2-ice-core-data
https://hiddencause.wordpress.com/the-fate-of-corals/

Science of Life in Solar System

There will come one day in the future. Relatively and astronomically speaking, it might come sooner than we think. It could happen way before we realize that there is no turning back. The day when Mother Earth will simply say, Sorry guys, I have no more energy to sustain this kind of life anymore, and when most of the biodiversity cocoons on Earth will reach the ultimate hazard and start imploding back into themselves. Air and water pollution will help a lot, and not even the planet's regular motions will be able to take us into another interglacial cycle. It is as much inevitable as what we are going to do next. We will take a long look toward the stars and say, "Well, we have to do this sooner or later. It's time to leave the Earth. Time to jump into Christopher Columbus's shoes again. And find the new home."

But we will not get far. There will be no warp drives, "phasers on stun", robots, AIs, or artificial gravity like in sci-fi blockbusters, and there will be no scientific breakthroughs that will bring Moon or Mars gravity to the comfortable number of 1. No, we will be completely helpless in all our efforts to terraform other planets and gas giants' moons. Not at first. Or fast. Or to make large asteroids rotate. Or to initiate Mars' core to fire its lost magnet. Or to make Venus act a little less than hell.

Artificial biodomes of Eden in Cornwall, England^*

Interview With an Expert

Have you ever thought about the most common software application installed on your computerized devices in your home? Is it some super tuned operating system you can't live without? Or is it some sort of office application you use to write, make presentations, and connect with your friends and business acquaintances? Maybe it is your favorite browser you are using on a daily basis to connect to your social network? Or some photo gallery application with tons of your digital photos and video clips? Perhaps it is some Skype-like communication device that is always within reach? Whatever it is, and depending on who you ask, I am more than positive that there are no unique answers.

Microsoft's HoloLens

I am sure everybody knows (?) why they are so fused to computer screens these days, but in our case there is no doubt. In total sum of our digital home appliances that can be found on various desktops or fit nicely in our backpacks or pockets, the most dominant cross-computer application is Minecraft. That includes a couple of Androids and Windows Phones, various personal computers, and one Xbox console. Not only that, we tried the most of Minecraft installations, maps, and mods, but we are also hosting a small server with our own growing world. Well, by 'we', I surely include myself with a teeny-tiny share in the plural meaning of the world, but the majority of the 'we' belongs to Viktor, who is our in-house expert for Minecraft affairs.

But before giving some thoughts on the Minecraft game, I asked our expert couple of questions in hope of understanding why one not-so-graphically demanding application and one not-so-typical game that requires not-so-much-of-real-gamer skills when it comes to quick interaction between the characters and other players is so popular and truly became a worldwide phenomenon and won so many awards over the years.

In-house expert for Minecraft affairs in action

Following is a short interview with me asking questions and Viktor answering them. To be honest, I am not really that familiar with all the Minecraft world; let's face it, over the years it grew into a full internet movement with MineCon and everything, so I hope my prepared questions are not off-the-topic or old, rusty, and non-interesting.

Anyhow, I will be taking that risk, and here's the full interview between father and son and more than 30 years of generation gap in between:

When did you learn about Minecraft, and how did you feel playing it for the first time?
At first I didn't like it that much, but later, after I watched "The Asian Guy Gamer" and their Minecraft videos on YouTube, I bought a Minecraft disk for Xbox 360 and started making my own worlds. I am playing it almost every day ever since.

Why do you like Minecraft so much and how is it different from other games?
Because I can build things and make my own worlds. Also, there are so many worlds out there, and every game can be different, and I can do whatever I want.

What do you like the most in the game?
To search and mine diamonds and make armor, swords, tools, etc. To build large houses and castles and to play within online servers.

How would you rank Minecraft installations and why?
1. PC 2. Xbox 3.WP 4. Android. PC version is the best, simply because I can play in multiplayer mode with my friends online. It also allows typing commands and cheats. And I have a server of my own with my IP.

Who are your favorite characters and skins in Minecraft?
Hulk and Foxy for skins and Ender Dragon for characters. Horses in Xbox are also great.

What is the most complicated structure that you ever built?
Roller-coaster in PC and large, eight-story house in Android game.

Who are the best Minecraft gamers you are following online?
Definitely Pat and Jen, Channels: PopularMMOs & GamingWithJen. Also Think's Noodles, The DiamondMinecart, and Stampy.

If you could, what would you do to improve Minecraft in the future?
I would like to see portals between servers somehow. So I can make a portal on my server that ends on some different server. Also more interesting machines.

Which one do you prefer: Creative or Survival mode?
Survival.

Is Herobrine real?
Only in some mods.

Well, there you go. I can't be completely sure, of course, but it is pretty certain that if you asked any other seven-year-old Minecraft gamer, you would get the same answers. More or less. However, this game attracts players of any age. I was no different. I remember when I turned it on for the first time, and after spending half an hour in the tutorial, my first reaction was "What's this?" followed by "What should I do now?". And then I realized. This is not the ordinary game. Like most of the other games, where you clearly know what to do and what your goal is. No, here, there are no goals and there are no levels. There is no ultimate ending you are reaching toward. The only thing Minecraft is giving you is the environment. The rest is all yours.

Creeperized Wallpaper for true Minecraft gamers

As soon as I figured that out, it was pretty obvious that in order to turn the game on, you have to deal with two switches. One is to click on the icon to start the game, and the other is in your head. The one that says "Imagination Power On". So I clicked on that one too, and everything started to make sense. The next thing I knew was that hours passed in the real world while I experienced a truly great and short entertainment inside. In a nutshell, Minecraft doesn't require some expensive VR gadget to render the world for you. It does all that with elementary graphics and ordinary three-dimensional programming. What it is extremely successful with is the interaction with that other switch in your head that makes everything possible. Very few games are capable of such things, and this is the main reason Minecraft has been so successful for so long. For that matter, I have fears for the direction of future Minecraft and the vision in Microsoft in order to use it inside of their version of Google Glass, called HoloLens. I surely understand the need for next-gen gadgets and that VR is always trying to get into gamer's worlds effectively, but in this particular case, it could destroy the very essence of Minecraft imagination. I am sure that HoloLens, when it comes or in one of it's future versions, will effectively merge the real world with the imaginary one and, in this case, perfectly render the Minecraft world into your living room. Imagine that.

But is this really necessary?

Maybe.

Perhaps not. Playing imaginative games like this one is just like reading books. You don't need extra help to render the virtual world. You have the ultimate gadget already. For free.

The little gray cells.

Solar Eclipse

The moon travels around the Earth in an elliptical orbit, and logically there are two points in its path where it is closest and farthest from us. Today it was in "perigee-syzygy" of the Earth-Moon-Sun system, or simply called "supermoon". Coincidentally, it happens that today it has the power to fully block the sunlight in northern Europe and make the biggest shadow one can make on Earth. In Serbia it only made a partial eclipse covering somewhat less than 50% of the solar disk. These are 12 photos I took in intervals of approximately 10 minutes from the eclipse start at 9:40 until it went away around 11:58. The biggest shade was at 10:48. We were pretty lucky today since nature gave us a clear sky with just one stubborn cloud that covered the sun-moon kiss around 11AM.

The above image is the composition of those 12 photos, which I took through our Sky-Watcher telescope with a solar filter. I still don't have a proper camera or adapter for taking astronomical photos, so I used our DSLR and manually took images. Therefore, photos are not ideal and perfect, so I used a little photoshopping to make them as clear as possible.

More about today's event in our neighborhood I found at timeanddate.com and tons of websites, as the media literally went viral this morning. No wonder, as the next partial eclipse in Europe will be in 5 years, and the next total one is not expected before 2026. Unfortunately, a total eclipse in Serbia will not be visible any time soon.

It sure is spectacular when our moon eclipses the sun, but in the celestial sky above, there are more events in the same fashion. I mean, situations when three solar system bodies become aligned, so to speak. In this update of the blog story about the classic eclipse, one of those I took with our scope on May 9, 2016. It was the transit of Mercury across the Sun, and the photo ended very well. I managed to catch one of those giant sunspots as well.

Do You Live to Work, Or Work to Live?

Do you ever wonder why we work like we work? Why does working time last those eight hours, and why does it take the best part of the day? Who made it this way? And why? It all started with the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century, which culminated into a real nightmare for most of the workers, especially in large factories, where long working hours were mandatory and kept people outside their homes all day long. The working day was 10 to 16 hours, six days a week, and not only for adults. Use of children was cheap and preferable. Deaths and illnesses from exhaustion were common, and it was cruel and inhuman. Eventually, the nightmare spread from workers toward capitalists as well, in form of rise of social movement with Robert Owen's famous slogan, "Eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest".

Well, today, almost two centuries later, we now live, more or less, in Owen's vision, working around eight hours per day and enjoying our lives during or after work. Or both. Nobody today dies from the job. Well, not due to poor working conditions, anyways. Perhaps some of us are in danger ofdeath by boredom on some rainy days in the office, but, and again more or less, today we are in control of our professional careers. On the other end, if you ask me, even these eight hours are sometimes too long. Many times. They say that with age comes wisdom, but also comes a certain dosage of laziness, especially in the second part of the working hours. After 20 years of continuous work in my professional career, eight hours now seems too long. I passed that period in my life with idealistic thoughts and glimpses of the world as it is, waiting for me to make the difference. If you are in your forties, there are other variables that must be included in private and professional life. Middle-age crisis, for example. Not enough challenges like before. Too much routine in both lives. Too competitive an environment, to say the least, wherever you look. Generation gaps. Following faster ways of living. And you don't have to be in your forties anymore to feel the difference or experience injustice.

Perhaps it is time again for another Robert Owen to appear and try to shorten this eight hours to six or less. Or to try and modify the working habits and move everything possible to freelancing and outsourcing. To ban offices in those businesses that still insist on using them in old-fashioned ways, although the entire job can be done today from a kitchen table and home wifi. Before, when I was a teenager and later when I was trying to take the first step in my professional career, they used to say that major changes will come in the 21st century. The new millennium will change everything. Well, the 14th year now in the new spectacular century is about to expire in a few months, and I can't notice anything majorly different. More or less. But still, the major question from the old times is still there. Do you live to work, or do you work to live?

It would be unfair if I continued with this story without answering it first. And to be honest, from the beginning and my first employment, I always worked to live. For me, family and home was, is, and will always be number one. No exceptions. No matter how important the project I was involved in was. But to be completely honest, if I used a scale from minus ten to ten, where -10 means full commitment to the job, while +10 is the finest family time, I would not score the biggest number too often. I don't think I score it easily even today. It is impossible. Sometimes, if it comes into my life challenged and pure, the job can suck me in for days. Months, even. But always let me go. So my number is within a wide scale from -5 to the very high of 9, with more positive than negative values. Ten only sometimes. And I want to keep it that way. If I looked to all my half-a-dozen companies I was working with in my former professional life, the cruel truth is, with a couple of exceptions, that I didn't stay in touch with my former co-workers. We all moved along. Simply put, while our intelligence and education define us completely, our curriculum vitae is nothing more than a document only worthwhile during searching for a new job. Nobody cares what is written inside while you are having a steady job. Only in between two of them.

But enough with work; let's see the other side of the medal. The story I wanted to tell in the first place, and maybe unconsciously, I started with too long an introduction. What actually inspired me for today's story is Tony Parsons—British journalist and novel author. About a month ago, after I read three of Harlan Coben's thrillers in a row and two of James Patterson's Alex Cross series during the summer, I felt that I needed a break from tension and crime stories. But I can't really swallow those light readings with love stories in the foreground, so I went in search of something different—hoping to find a story based on ordinary life, family affairs, or one of those with "true story" written on the main cover. Tony Parsons, with his "Man and Boy" trilogy, gave me exactly what I wanted. And more.

If you didn't read it already, I recommend it warmly. It is about a typical family of the early 21st century, filled with both pain and love, surrounded by a tough life in one large city in which work and mortgage can destroy your life in a split second. Harry Silver, in the main role, shows us everything that might strike one modern family in one fast-forward world and where, no matter how he tries to maintain normal family life, this proves to be not entirely possible with all the mistakes and distractions from the job. It is also about conflicts between generations and what connects them. About the shallowness of business life. Friendships. This is the story that will force your eyes to let go of a tear or two too often, but also it will put a smile on your face every now and again as well.

I stumbled upon "Man and Boy" within Serbian Laguna, my favorite online bookshop, in their editor selection called "Laguna gems" or something like that, and after I reached the second cover, I felt hunger for more stories like this one. So I browsed the bookshop's online store again, secretly hoping for a sequel, and searched the author's page. To my surprise I found two more novels in the trilogy and also short news about the author visiting our town on the tour to promote his latest book. To cut the story short, I ordered the remaining novels, read them in record time, and yesterday Viktor and I grabbed the first book and went to the signing event to meet Tony in person. I knew that a person who was able to write Harry's adventures couldn't be much different than his main character, especially after I read somewhere that his personal life story has many connecting points with the novel itself. As it turned out, Tony Parsons was one great guy with nothing but the smile on his face despite the endless line of people waiting for the autographs. He was especially nice with Viktor and shared the fact that his middle name is also Victor, named after his father, so I can't resist not sharing the photo of two Viktors below. After the event, my son and I went to McDonald's for a Happy Meal to sort out our impressions, and later, the first thing he said to his mother when we came home was, "It was the best day!" I couldn't agree more.

Tony Victor Parsons & Viktor

Anyway, to resume the main story and in conclusion, my life outside work, in its current stage, is one huge place and full of wonders and challenges. No matter if I just read a book, watch a movie, do dishes, participate in a social occasion, play a game, travel, or enjoy precious family time, it is always far ahead of the most enjoyable project at work for which I, in the end, receive a paycheck. This always makes me feel that "work has this strange effect of zooming things larger than they really are".** Money is one great thing we can't live without, but sometimes, if not always, it manages to spoil the very essence of the work it is paid for. In the latest years, when I ask myself why I worked so hard on a project that gave me pleasurable time while it lasted, I always answer with "Oh yes, for the money'. And it wasn't my first thought when I asked myself the same question twenty years ago...

Image refs:
http://www.crosswalk.com/blogs/5-things-every-son-needs-to-hear-from-his-dad.html
https://vomitingdiamonds.wordpress.com/2013/02/24/boredom-at-the-office/

Refs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution
* http://connections.msn.com/articles/detail/256476535
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/05/typical-work-day-length/
** http://www.thehighcalling.org/work/work-life-balance
http://financecareers.about.com/od/careermanagement/a/LiveToWork.htm

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 Funniest Book

Have you ever felt sick (medically or ... some other way) and tried to find all the symptoms online? Desperately searching to find what's wrong with you and to catch the disease by its name and to seek for the ultimate cure on the net? If you did, don't worry, you are not alone. The Internet is the smartest thing ever invented, so it's only logical to check your smartphone every time you need it, and everything will be fine.

Or it seems... Well...

Sometimes what you find online is too vague or written with too scholarly words... Other times it looks like you have symptoms of multiple diseases. Sometimes the cure you found online can only be bought on the other side of the planet. And in most cases not in regular or even legal pharmacies... What to do? Well, don't worry, there is a way out. Do what you did before the internet. Make the appointment with your doctor, and if he or she is your good friend, you will get out with the ultimate cure for every single disease out there.

The three men in a boat preview*

Yep, there is one. Here is the recipe:

"1lb beefsteak, with 1 pt bitter beer every 6 hours. 1 ten-mile walk every morning. 1 bed at 11 sharp every night. And don't stuff your head with things you don't understand."

And try to laugh on as many occasions as possible. Laughter is the best medication of all time. The other day after I read one of the thriller books with a great adventurous plot and good characters behind a very well-written script, I thought I needed to get a break from "serious" stuff, and the time came for something lighter and funnier. Therefore, I decided to stop by the nearest bookshop to search their comedy section. Imagine my disappointment after I found out there is no such shelf, even though this was one of the biggest bookstores in the town.... I didn't know what to do... If only I could remember to whom I gave that book about those men in a boat I had and read a decade or so ago. It was the last comedy book I read, and believe me, I'm not exaggerating when I say that I never had more laughter tears on my face with reading any book before. On a couple of occasions it went that far away, so I needed to stop reading in order to go and wash my red face made out of loud laughter! Well, as it happens, and almost immediately after I gave up searching for funny novels online and went to our small library downstairs to get another thriller, I saw it hiding between two James Paterson's Alex Cross books. It never left the shelf in the first place! You can only imagine my happiness. I grabbed it the same moment, cleaned the dust away, and started reading for the second time, and judging by the acquired date inscribed inside, there were more than 12 years between the first encounter of the 19th-century classic, written by Jerome K. Jerome, and the more than promising title "Three Men in a Boat. To say nothing about the dog".

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy**

And yes, the all-diseases-cure recipe I mentioned above is one of the quotes from this very book, and along with all the funny moments inside, I recommend it for the same purpose. This book will trigger the cure for any troubles you possibly have, and believe me, if you are really a fan of true English humor like I am, you will be surprised that you can laugh that hard. Not to mention all the chuckles that are coming out from almost all sentences. Yesterday, while reading a chapter with Uncle Podger hanging a picture frame on the wall, I wasn't aware of all the sounds I emitted in the air, and in one moment, Viktor, my son, sneaked behind me, glimpsed the book on my lap, then looked at me with his most sympathetic expression and said, "What is wrong with you?"

It is really one extraordinary book and one of those that will last forever and be enjoyed by all generations. Whether or not this is really the funniest book ever written depends on your hedonistic inner being, and it is, of course, a highly subjective matter, but nevertheless, over the period of one century by now, it is indeed located highly on numerous top lists of the genre. Well, whatever book it's on the very top being the funniest one ever written, I know for sure which one would score second place. No doubt this place is reserved for the legendary "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams and the equally legendary quote about the number 42, which was calculated by an enormous supercomputer over a period of 7.5 million years to be "The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything". To me, there is no better science fiction parody ever written, and following Marvin, the Paranoid Android, for the first time sometimes approaches a dangerous level of continuous laughter that can't be stopped easily. Don't panic. Nobody died from laughter ... well ... except for that one guy who died laughing by watching a donkey eating figs. True story. Google it.

Cyrillic vs Latin***

Finally, and almost completely unrelated to the topic, I think it is a good place to share some thoughts about the relation of Cyrillic vs. Latin alphabets that are widely in use in nowadays Western civilization. Contrary to most other nations, Serbians have this privilege of using both letters. Indeed, in the very first grade of the primary school, we learn to read and write in Cyrillic, and in the second one, in the Latin alphabet. It's hard to tell which one is used most often. Officially, the number one alphabet is Cyrillic, but Latin is catching up, especially in recent decades withworldwide globalization and technical education with more usage of modern technologies, especially the internet.

Keeping that in mind, and especially when it comes to paper printing books, magazines, and newspapers, Cyrillic is losing the battle rapidly. Thanks to non-proportional Latin letters, such as "i, l or j" which need little space on the paper, the same text occupies less paper space than if printed in Cyrillic. Therefore, it is hard to find books in Cyrillic today even though, directly inherited from the Greek alphabet, Cyrillic letters are fully proportional and don't require fancy fonts in order for any publication to be eye-catching, and even the reading, from my subjective point of view, is more pleasurable than reading the same text in Latin. That was why, when the other day I opened "Three Men in a Boat" and saw it was printed in Cyrillic, I was twice excited to read it again. Check the difference in the above image with the small Latin snippet in English from Jerome's book and its Cyrillic translation.

I know reading a book has a special magic, but English humor is almost as good in motion pictures as well. If you liked "Only Fools and Horses" and "Monty Python's Flying Circus" before, I am sure you will feel the same with "Three Men in a Boat".

* Three Men in a Boat Comic Book
http://pt.slideshare.net/campfiregn/the-three-men-in-a-boat-preview
http://bearalley.blogspot.com/2013/06/three-men-in-boat-part-1.html

**The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy
http://www.northernsoul.me.uk/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy/

***Cyrillic vs Latin Alphabet
http://www.belgradian.com/useful-information/cyrillic-vs.-latin-alphabet/

Mammoths of Moesia Superior

Once, long, loong, loooooong ago in the days of the Late Jurassic period in the world of Pterodactylus, the famous flying dinosaur, Mother Earth was pretty busy with the work 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 a large sea by the name of Paratethys. About a hundred million years later, dramatic tectonic changes started producing large mountain formations today well known as the Alps and the Carpathians, which made Paratethys lose connection with the Mediterranean to the south and form a separate large inland sea in today's central Europe. Millions of years later, there are two remnant seas that still exist with the names of the Black and Caspian Seas. But there was one more in the nowadays Pannonian Basin that lasted almost 9 million 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 life, the Pannonian Sea followed Earth's tectonic events and once covered almost the entire territory of present-day Serbia. Even the place where I am located right now was once pretty watery and wet. When I was a kid, I played a lot with digging in our front yard and from time to time got lucky with a couple of snail shells that sometimes forced me to think about their origin. They were small and white, and even though I doubt they were that old, they were very much familiar to the ones you can find in nowadays salty seas. Nothing like you can see today in our neighborhood.

Viminacium's Vika

Anyway, in the time of the Pannonian Sea and its old age, more or less around a million years ago, humans were a pretty timid species. That was the time of Homo heidelbergensis, an extinct species who was most likely the ancestor of both modern humans and Neanderthals and lived more or less in the time when the last drop of the Pannonian Sea evaporated or was moved away by the mighty Danube, leaving large plains in modern Central Europe. But the real boss of the time was not the man at all, and instead, after the last dinosaur disappeared for good, it was the large mammoth who adapted very well to the colder climate compared to their southern origins and, evolutionarily speaking, started to grow fur for protection. I am pretty sure that all Homo heidelbergensis and his grand-grand-grandfathers were terrified each time when a herd of mammoths was passing by their habitat, and they were probably hiding every time for as long as the last sound of their giant feet faded away for good. Mammoths were more than 5 meters long, 4 meters high, and about 10 tons in weight, and you can only imagine how, i.e., a set of 50 or more members of the big herd would look and sound when passing by near to your home. Well... a cave, to be exact, which was the most secure home of the time, but still, it must have been very interesting, to say the least.

Viktor and Vika

In central Serbia, just next to the old Roman city of Viminacium, in the prehistoric mouth of the river Morava, which was ending its flow into the Pannonian Sea, mammoths seemed to find a good place to die. Just like elephants do today, they had their graveyards, and one of them seemed to be right there, and archaeologists found numerous skeletons and fossils of mammoths from different periods in history. Among them, the almost fully preserved mammoth "Vika" was displayed in the Viminacium we visited last weekend. Even millions of years after her death, she still leaves a deep impression on all her human visitors.

Well, the ultimate fatal doomsday, similar to the dinosaurs', didn't avoid this species either. Eventually they got extinct due to many reasons. Humans helped a lot by hunting them out and using their meat, skin, ivory, and fur. The Pannonian Sea also vanished and is now perhaps waiting for some severe climate change to get back, and until then, it stays in legends and Djordje Balasević song. Without natural borders and animal bosses, the latest half a million years gave further evolution of humans, and they lived more or less peacefully in prehistoric Serbian land in their tribal societies. More migrations happened in the meantime, and the latest one brought another wave of humans from Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago, which are now considered to be the origin of all populations of humans on the planet. Modern civilization in this neighborhood came only two thousand years ago with the Roman Empire during the reign of the first emperor, Augustus, who conquered this area and established a Roman province called Moesia after the Thraco-Dacian peoples who lived there before. It happened around the year 6 AD, and eight decades later it was divided into two provinces, giving birth to Moesia Superior, the western part of the original province where Romans built several cities and army camps in places significant for cultural and economic exchange and also where tactical deployment of their legions was the most effective for defense of Roman borders and also for further conquest campaigns. Numerous famous emperors and political figures of Roman history were born in Moesia Superior, including Constantine the Great, who was probably one of the most important men in the Roman Empire after the old republic in BC. I tried to describe his life from the point of view of my (and his) birthplace in the post Constantine & Naissus last year during the celebration of Milan's Edict.

Mausoleum

While Naissus was one of the most important cities and army installations for the southern Moesia Superior (Roman Dardania), the most important one on the north was the city of Viminacium. Located near the Danube, it was a natural point for the deployment of one of the most effective legions, 'Legio Septima Claudia Pia Fidelis', which was situated here during the reign of Hadrian in AD 125. Viminacium grew into a large city of the time with more than 40,000 inhabitants and with all the benefits of one large Roman city and the infrastructure of water aqueducts, modern industry, and entertainment with a wooden amphitheater big enough to host more than 10,000 people. In the most flourished period of the time, in the third century AD, Viminacium earned the status of a Roman colony and the right to coin its own money. The most important family of rulers born in this Roman land and living in Viminacium was Emperor Trajan Decius, who was previously governor of the entire Moesia. During the battle of Abritus, he died along with his son Herennius, with whom he co-ruled in the reign. After their death the throne briefly went to his second son, Hostilian, but sadly the family misfortune ended here, this time with a deadly plague that killed both Hostilian and his mother.

The end of the city started with Attila the Hun and his raid in the fifth century, and even though it was rebuilt by Justinian I, it was finally destroyed by Avars in the late sixth century. After that, it started to fade, and after decades and centuries, it eventually got buried under the dirt and sand near the nowadays city of Kostolac and the villages of Old Kostolac and Drmno. However, even after so many years from the golden Roman era and contrary to almost all other ancient archaeological sites that lie deep under modern cities, Viminacium is today an open plain, and simply because of this fact, the only obstacle for further excavation is financial background. Other sites are not that lucky; for example, excavation of old Naissus is almost impossible, as all post-Roman settlements in the previous two millenniums were built on the same ground. Nevertheless, and even with modest funding, Viminacium is today one of the most explored Roman cities outside Italy. If you add all the mammoth bones found in the same area, this is today one great tourist and educational site.

Atrium at Domus scientiarum Viminacium

Archaeological excavation and scientific research started with more than modest funding—Mihailo Valtrović, one of the Serbian scientists, the first professor of archaeology, and the custodian of the National Museum in Belgrade, started digging Viminacium walls in the late nineteenth century with the help of 12 prisoners assigned by the Serbian government due to a lack of qualified workers and with a low amount of money reserved for archaeology. During the twentieth century, excavation was continued on several occasions, and finally, in the dawn of the 21st, Viminacium received the proper scientific and archaeological attention from the Serbian government and dedicated scientists.

The crown jewel of the site is no doubt 'Domus scientiarum Viminacium', a research and tourist center built as a Roman villa with several atriums, rooms, and laboratories for scientists; a hostel for visitors; and a beautiful museum dedicated to Viminacium, Moesia Superior, and, of course,recently, mammoths and their prehistoric life.

Itinerarium Romanum Serbiae

Especially interesting is the museum's exhibition of 'Itinerarium Romanum Serbiae', dedicated to 17 Roman emperors who were born within the current borders of Serbia, the second country after Italy itself. In recent years, especially after last year's celebration of 1700 years after Milan's Edict, it has been recognized as one of the national brands of Serbia and was founded by the Serbian government and the Ministry of Culture.

References and wikis:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moesia
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130207114602.htm
http://viminacium.org.rs/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viminacium
http://viminacium.org.rs/projekti/itinerarium-romanum-serbiae/