There are many periods in one person's life. To me, they all seem distinct from each other. Referring to those farthest in the past, in my mind, it was almost like they didn't really happen to me. Some of the choices I made before, from this perspective, looked like some other person made them on my behalf. Especially in the first couple of decades. But that's the point of growing up and all the changes that happen from early youth to adulthood. Later, we are left with tons of memories that we look back on most of the times with a smile on our faces, sometimes with a little sadness or shame and once in a while with a confused look as if it happened at all. But, one thing is certain, everything that happened, exactly how it happened, defines us as we are today. Viktor, testing the drums before 'Some like it hot', theatrical play Of them all, no single period in life compares to the one called teenage years. I remember those years. Vividly. If I could choose just
There are many periods in one person's life. To me, they all seem distinct from each other. Referring to those farthest in the past, in my mind, it was almost like they didn't really happen to me. Some of the choices I made before, from this perspective, looked like some other person made them on my behalf. Especially in the first couple of decades. But that's the point of growing up and all the changes that happen from early youth to adulthood. Later, we are left with tons of memories that we look back on most of the times with a smile on our faces, sometimes with a little sadness or shame and once in a while with a confused look as if it happened at all. But, one thing is certain, everything that happened, exactly how it happened, defines us as we are today.
Viktor, testing the drums before 'Some like it hot', theatrical play
Of them all, no single period in life compares to the one called teenage years. I remember those years. Vividly. If I could choose just one phrase to describe all what's happening during those seven years, it would definitely be 'trial and errors'. It was just like tasting the life that was thrown at me for the first time. Understanding it. Embracing it. Maybe little changing it on the way.
But enough about me, the rest of this post is about my son Viktor and continuation of the 'Interview' series, started with him being seven and ten years old in 'Interview With an Expert' and 'Interview With an X'. Anyway, these are 15 questions for his 15 years I selected to ask him today. I'm really proud of all his answers and his way of thinking.
Describe yourself in 5 words or less. Determent, ambitious, loyal, generous and honest. What's the best part of your day at school? Why? P.E. and all of the breaks in-between subjects. Because I get to talk to my friends normally and rest a little bit.
If you could invite three people, living or dead, to your birthday party, who would you choose? What would you talk about? Einstein, Jesus and my father. We would question Jesus.
Imagine you’re the president and you need to have 3 people to assist you. Who would you pick and why? I'm not really into politics so I don't know who to pick.
What have you learned in life that you feel will be the most useful? Motivation isn't real, but discipline is. Try to be as optimistic but as realistic as possible. Never give up.
If you could change anything in the world and made it idealistic, what 3 things would it be and why? I would get rid of all the governments, no more countries and everyone would speak the same language.
How would you explain Earth to aliens? I think there is a lot of diversity to this question but lets say in the case that we come to them. I would most likely try in some way to use physics, math and chemistry to explain Earth. Do you think it's better to have one great skill you're an A+ at, or many skills you’re a B at and why? This question is very easy because if you had only one skill that you are A+ in then the rest skills would not be so great... So that is horrible... I would rather have many skills that I'm a B at. I could easily improve in skills that I like. And also have a lot of options if I ever change my mind.
Imagine you're the teacher tomorrow at school. What are 3 things you'd teach that you think would help make school better? Self defense, how to be a better person and show the kids the real world.
How would you explain the word 'love' to someone without using the word 'love'? Umm... Make this with my hands 🫶
What is the most important thing you learned in school NOT taught by a teacher? The world isn't black or white. It's gray.
If you could travel back in time 3 years, what advice would you give yourself? Make me proud.
If you could grow up to be famous, what would you be famous for? I would be famous for motivating other people to become the best version of themselves and show how to really be successful.
If you had enough money that you never had to work, what would you do with your time? There is no money in this world that would make me not work.
What do you think your life would look like 10 years from now? I hope I will be successful in the future and be more capable.
So there you go. When selecting the questions, I knew they should not be too detailed or too serious. Nevertheless they supposed to be appropriate for the age and to make it sure, I performed a small research first to find the right ones which I thought was the most suitable. Sometimes, even the shortest answer to an apparently entertaining question shows a lot.
I wonder, if I had a chance, how would I answer them back then. Hopefully not too different.
It's amazing how different people react to the same thing. Consider the famous question "Is the glass half empty or half full?". What do you see inside such glass when you spot it on the table? The water or the air? This is of course not a school-grade-sort of a question. Actually, there is no right or wrong answer here. There's no definite reason to consider anyone thinking that the glass is half full to be overly optimistic or those who see the emptiness of the glass to be unreasonably realistic. It is just a point of view and nothing more. But, it tells a bit about your character or how Carl Jung, a well known Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst defined it - your personality type. The point of inquiries like this one is simply in the fact that if we ask ourselves enough questions they would have potential to unveil our personality type fully, or to the high degree of accuracy. However, we would need to be careful in both, selecting the questions and defining all r
It's amazing how different people react to the same thing. Consider the famous question "Is the glass half empty or half full?". What do you see inside such glass when you spot it on the table? The water or the air? This is of course not a school-grade-sort of a question. Actually, there is no right or wrong answer here. There's no definite reason to consider anyone thinking that the glass is half full to be overly optimistic or those who see the emptiness of the glass to be unreasonably realistic. It is just a point of view and nothing more. But, it tells a bit about your character or how Carl Jung, a well known Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst defined it - your personality type.
The point of inquiries like this one is simply in the fact that if we ask ourselves enough questions they would have potential to unveil our personality type fully, or to the high degree of accuracy. However, we would need to be careful in both, selecting the questions and defining all resulting personality types. There are numerous personality tests within psychology and of those based to Carl Jung's study, the most comprehensive is a Myers–Briggs Type Indicator, which assigns you a value from four categories: introversion or extraversion, sensing or intuition, thinking or feeling, and judging or perceiving. One letter from each category is producing a four-letter test result. For example if your test is resulting in a dominance of introversion combined with intuition while you are basically a thinking person with perceiving feat, you would be assigned a "INTP" personality type.
Perhaps, the most of the psychology, in relation to personality types are based on Jung's "Analytical Psychology", the phrase he coined in 1912 when he published "Psychology of the Unconscious", his breakthrough study, that firstly associates to his split up with Sigmund Freud after six years of collaborating in the field. In this book, he established for the first time, his new theory focused on the collective unconscious instead of Freud's conception of libido and the importance of sexual development. When he first read it, Freud muttered the word "heresy" and felt that Jung had "lost his way" from that point on. Perhaps, just like with the 'glass half filled or half empty' this dispute between the two extraordinary men from the history of Psychology, has no definite winner or looser. They might be both right depending on the point of view. After all, the human mind is driven by a still mysterious engine we are keep trying to fully understand.
However, what's interesting in regards to the Freud-Jung dispute, it's what Jung said some years after the split up. According to Jung, the main difference between him and Freud was their personality types being introvert and extravert respectively. Their attitude types were pretty much opposite as the first type persuaded by the voice of their inner self while the second finds their interest inexorably drawn to external things. In his book 'Psychological Types', published in 1921, he said that "since we all swerve rather more towards one side or the other, we naturally tend to understand everything in terms of our own type".
But, if we get back to the personality test, the most obvious questions is what would it's application be? Other than in medical/psychiatric practice, I mean. Of course, we all know ourselves well, so there's no point of some test telling us what we really are. We already know that. If you are a friend with somebody for a long time, surely, there is no need for any test to tell you the obvious about what you already learned about your friend from the experience. Clearly, and maybe the only use of such test would be to learn about personality of someone who you don't really know well. However, the test by it's nature is extremely personal and it naturally raises a wave of privacy issues which are in most countries protected by the law especially after previous decades of the expansion of the internet.
Keeping in mind everything we know so far, what's left and where one such test could be more than useful is, no doubt, all kind of business environments. The offices are by definition filled with lots of colleagues and the adventage of knowing everyone's personality type would benefit the communication between people and enhance productivity significantly. Providing, of course, that employers and employees are fine with sharing their personality test results with each other.
Finally, at the end, we come to the titled personality test that was created exclusively as a business application. Based on Dr. Yolanda Jacobi's interpretation of Carl Jung's theory of psychological type, along with other theories from the Psychology, 'Insights Discovery' is a simple and accessible four color model designed to better understand ourselves and others. If you check the above picture, the basic colors are divided between introversion/extraversion (vertically) and thinking/feeling (horizontally). The test itself is a 25-frame questionnaire of 100 word pairs, which when completed produces the Insights Discovery Personal Profile. Of course, no person is entirely described by one of the colors alone. After all, we are all a mix of different traits that we display differently based on different occasion, environment, mood, etc. Hence, Insight Discovery offers a total of eight personality types, which are shown in center circle with a four more types which represent a blend of two colors.
Please find more details in the references below as I won't go deeper into the science behind 'Insights Discovery' than this. However, if you decide to take the test you will get a result printed in details explaining your personality type on more than 20 pages where you can find your key strengths but also potential weaknesses along with healthy tips for communication between types for both you and the others. What you also will get is a nice little colored Lego-like bricks which represents your colors. If assembled right, it shows your exact place on the Insights Discovery wheel, and it can do it for the both of your conscious and less conscious position.
It is hard to pinpoint the exact period in human history when religiosity we are all familiar today emerged and started to form itself with all of the colorful myths, supernatural stories, vivid deities and numerous super powered entities. It happened probably at some point around 10.000 BC in the same period of time when humans slowly progressed from being pure hunters and gatherers into next stage of civilization and started to build modern settlements with domesticated animals and cultivated plants. No doubt, religiosity, superstition and spiritualism existed all the way from the beginning in the history when our ancestors started to paint cave walls but only Neolithic revolution and invention of agriculture gave us enough free time to start daydreaming and to think outside pure survival. If we compare all previous beliefs with vignettes, we can safely say that the evolution of religiosity after Neolithic revolution began to fill volumes of graphic novels. According to the theor
It is hard to pinpoint the exact period in human history when religiosity we are all familiar today emerged and started to form itself with all of the colorful myths, supernatural stories, vivid deities and numerous super powered entities. It happened probably at some point around 10.000 BC in the same period of time when humans slowly progressed from being pure hunters and gatherers into next stage of civilization and started to build modern settlements with domesticated animals and cultivated plants. No doubt, religiosity, superstition and spiritualism existed all the way from the beginning in the history when our ancestors started to paint cave walls but only Neolithic revolution and invention of agriculture gave us enough free time to start daydreaming and to think outside pure survival. If we compare all previous beliefs with vignettes, we can safely say that the evolution of religiosity after Neolithic revolution began to fill volumes of graphic novels.
According to the theory, slowly after the beginning of the Holocene period, the first large prehistoric population of Eurasia that spoke Proto-Indo-European languages was formed. They were the ancestor of Indo-European languages and the source of Proto-Indo-European mythology from which all pagan religions arose in different areas of Europe and Asia. This is why we can easily compare different deities and see all the similarities they inherited from the proto times. Take for example gods of lightning, thunder and weather in general. The deity of these properties emerged in all different mythologies and Norse Thor, Greek Zeus, Roman Jupiter, Slavic Perun, Hindu Indra, Hurrian Tar and Hittite Tarḫunna and many others were no doubt based on Proto-Indo-European deity called Perkwunos.
The similarities do not end with the deities but also with other colorful characters from old myths. Last week I stumbled to one amazing piece of art in Churchill Park at Kastellet citadel in Copenhagen. It was 114 years old sculpture of Valkyrie by famous Norwegian artist Stephan Sinding. It was probably the best 3d/live action street art I have ever seen before. It reflects everything about what Valkyrie really is in old Norse mythology. The word literally means "chooser of the slain" and it is portraying a female figure guiding the souls of deceased Nordic soldiers either to Fólkvangr, Freyja's afterlife, or to Valhalla, Odin's immortality hall. Old Norse literature describes valkyries either as purely supernatural or human maidens with certain supernatural powers. Both types of beings were associated with honesty, splendor and gold, but also with bloodshed and brutality in battle.
In South Slavic mythology, a similar being vila represents a female supernatural being who is sympathetic to people, but she could also be vengeful and brutal. She is depicted as an extremely beautiful girl with golden hair, dressed in long, flowing robes and armed usually with bow and arrows. She exists on a luminal plane between nature and culture, between gods and humans constantly travelling between one realm and the other to interact with the heroes and villains of the epics. Even though both valkyries and vilas developed in different religious environments it is hard not to spot various similarities between the two. The whiteness and glowing quality of the vilas is mirrored in the description of the valkyries and both figures are to be found in the sky in most of their depictions with connection to lightning and thunder.*
The warrior aspects of the valkyrie are unquestionable, they are "vowed to war" and their role is primarily on the battlefield. The mythical vile are similarly portrayed and often described as wearing armor, with bows and arrows and envisioned as powerful, supernatural warriors. There are convincing resemblance in regards to the connection between vile and valkyries and heroes in the epics. Most often this relationship is a warrior bond, but this relationship can become both sexual and malicious. Just as a vila can manipulate heroes or villains to murder those of her choosing, so too the valkyries are reputed to play deadly games with the heroes with whom they associate.*
Although the nature of the valkyries' flight is portrayed as a magical ride on horseback whereas the vile most often fly unmounted with the use of bird wings, it is not uncommon for the vile to ride horses or deer. Both, viles and valkyries are often described to gather in groups within the epics and refer to each other as sisters. It is fair to suggest that the valkyrie and the vila are rooted in the same figure, their differences lies only within cultural difference between the Slavs and the Germanic peoples. Perhaps the most likely attestable age of the two figures lies back to the 6th century CE when the south Slavic tribes were still located in the North of Europe.*
From there, we could push the date back even further to the time of Proto-Indo-European times, especially if we extend this comparison to apsarā, beings with similar traits from Indian religion and mythology. Тhe various trios of birth-fate-death-associated women in Greek and Roman folklore also appear to origin from the same source. The direct ancestor of valkyries are most likely Proto-Germanic walakuzjǭ which stands for walaz (battle wound) + kuzą (choice, decision).
Historical origins of vilas include the various traditions especially Celtic, Slavic, Germanic, English, and French folklore. The word 'vilenski' was used as an adjective, meaning "enchanted", but also became a generic term for various enchanted creatures during the late Middle English period. Nevertheless, the proto origin is no doubt the same as the valkyrie's, and south Slavic version, especially in middle age Serbia survived even the Christianizing the old beliefs and ended in colorful epics and poems of 14th century and later. Although, to be perfectly fair and precise, the mythological vila from the oldest myths and tales and folklorized one in epics and poems are somewhat different in a way that folklore is centered to human affairs, heroes, battles and supernatural beings only serve as a side story, so to speak.
Always, when I am reading or writing about old myths and tales I can't help but wonder how would one comparison be of a typical religious person from the old times and today. It seems to me that old stories were much colorful and picturesque than the ones from the religious beliefs of a singular god. Even a small things like simple walk through the woods would be different for somebody in BC times for a simple fact that from all they knew, not only natural plants and animals could be found there. For many, the forest behind the house could also be a magical gateway to the supernatural world and even the smallest unexplained event of natural behavior (like methane leak or weird animal demeanor) could be immediately linked to the supernatural. But this sounds like a nice topic for another story.
It doesn't happen often that after reading a book you can compare most of the places and some of the portrayed characters with real sites and buildings along with real protagonists from the historical story. Actually, this never happened to me before and after I've reached the last cover of 'Beneath a Scarlet Sky', a novel written by Mark Sullivan, published in 2017 I saw the rare opportunity of visiting the city where it all happened and where all the sites still stand today. Not much later and after my entire family read the novel or at least got familiar with the story, we packed our backpacks and hit the road. In the aftermath, the result is this blog post along with embedded video story as a documentary of the half a day walking tour of Milan in Italy where everything happened more than 70 years ago. In the spirit of a fair warning I advise you to read the book first before watching the video since it might spoil the reading for you or to wait for upcoming series o
It doesn't happen often that after reading a book you can compare most of the places and some of the portrayed characters with real sites and buildings along with real protagonists from the historical story. Actually, this never happened to me before and after I've reached the last cover of 'Beneath a Scarlet Sky', a novel written by Mark Sullivan, published in 2017 I saw the rare opportunity of visiting the city where it all happened and where all the sites still stand today. Not much later and after my entire family read the novel or at least got familiar with the story, we packed our backpacks and hit the road. In the aftermath, the result is this blog post along with embedded video story as a documentary of the half a day walking tour of Milan in Italy where everything happened more than 70 years ago. In the spirit of a fair warning I advise you to read the book first before watching the video since it might spoil the reading for you or to wait for upcoming series or movie with Tom Holland in the lead role.
The novel is based on a true story of an Italian teenager Pino Lella, who lived in Milan during the second world war and within the last two years until the very end of the WW2, helped many Jewish people to escape to Switzerland over the Alps and in the final year to act as a spy for freedom fighters while being a personal driver for general Hans Leyers, Adolf Hitler’s left hand in northern Italy. Pino survived all the horrors of the war and the Nazi occupation and deeply fell in love with Anna, a girl he met on the streets of Milan on the day of the first bombing of the city. He constantly dreamed about the future they would one day share.
This book tour would not be possible at all without fantastic Valeria Andreoli from BellaMilano who guided us throughout Milan beautifully almost five full hours! It was amazing to mix the real streets, all the buildings, the castle and the cathedral, hotels, the train station and even the monumental cemetery with our vividly built images of all the places we already formed from the book and Mark Sullivan's amazing narrative.
Undoubtedly, spending three days in Milan for us provided lots of more opportunities for visiting the history back to the time all the way to Leonardo da Vinci. Around the year of 1482, he moved to Milan to work for the duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza as an engineer, sculptor, painter and architect. Until 1499 when Milan was invaded by the French he left behind the 'Last Supper', a famous mural painting of Jesus and twelve apostles, many paintings including 'The Virgin of the Rocks', Milan's Narvigly, the system of navigable canals to ferry people and merchandise in and out of the city, 'Leonardo`s horse', uncompleted equestrian sculpture and many more.
We were especially interested in Leonardo's engineering projects and his machines, models and sketches displayed in 'Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia - Leonardo da Vinci' and within new exhibition dedicated to this amazing man called 'Leonardo3' stationed in 'Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II', another Milan's landmark from 19th century. This second video log of Viktor's shows a glimpse of what we managed to visit and learn.
(Un)expectedly, at the end of our first visit to this great city, we have left with many more footage from what we initially planned to make with Pino Lella's and Leonardo's stories. All these are now packed in this third video embedded above and if you like to see more of Valeria and stories hidden behind Leonardo's paintings, especially the ones he did in the Sforza castle, if you want to learn what you need to do if you are in search for a good luck charm during your first visit to the legendary 19th century shopping mall or if you are eager to check out one great Italian restaurant along with couple of more places we managed to visit, this is the video definitely worth clicking to.
As for us, I am more than sure that Milan definitely didn't see us wandering its streets for the last time. The rest of Italy too.
Something was bothering her for days. She didn't actually know what it was. It was not the food. She knew that well and her belly was not itching her. Not a single bit. Mom was giving her delicious portions every day and she was feeling healthier and stronger every morning. It was not the air or water either. The forest and all three plains outside were.. Like the usual.. Beautiful and green with lots of life emerging from the trees and rocks. Even the ocean was calm and perfect the other day when she foolishly followed her older brother and his two peers to the cliff. They mocked her all the way down the stream and even took all her snacks she had and found on the way. No. What she started to experience just the other day after the trip to the cliffs was some sort of discomfort she never experienced before. Nobody could harm her in the forest. It was not that. Not even on the plains. She was always following her mother and brother during all their travels and never got into an
Something was bothering her for days.
She didn't actually know what it was. It was not the food. She knew that well and her belly was not itching her. Not a single bit. Mom was giving her delicious portions every day and she was feeling healthier and stronger every morning. It was not the air or water either. The forest and all three plains outside were.. Like the usual.. Beautiful and green with lots of life emerging from the trees and rocks. Even the ocean was calm and perfect the other day when she foolishly followed her older brother and his two peers to the cliff. They mocked her all the way down the stream and even took all her snacks she had and found on the way.
No. What she started to experience just the other day after the trip to the cliffs was some sort of discomfort she never experienced before. Nobody could harm her in the forest. It was not that. Not even on the plains. She was always following her mother and brother during all their travels and never got into any trouble. It was something in mom's eyes ever since the northern plain got into flames after those fireballs fell from the sky. They were almost like thunder only slower and different in noise they made. And they came from clear sky. It was nothing serious really and even looked beautiful when one ball hit the ground and the other exploded above the forest into thousands of chunks and fire showers in the same time.
Everything calmed now. They made little damage and all the fires were now gone but still ever since then everything started to seem different. Fireworks from the skies didn't stop really but there were no explosions like the other day. It looked like all the fireballs couldn't reach the ground and instead made red and orange patterns high above the forest. It was beautiful. And spooky in the same time. She started to feel it as well. She couldn't hear all those loud noises from birds and small animals for two days. Even the waterfall just next to their playground sounded quiet and eerie. And the most of all unusual things happened was her father. He returned last night. She saw him only twice last season and all the timidness she emotioned last couple of days, ever since the sky fire, with him around, started to grow into real fear.
The very next day they moved out. Just before the dawn, she and her brother started following their parents. They never ran that fast. They never ran in the group at all before. Even others joined. The other species and relatives. Some, she recognized from.. well.. mom's breakfast portions. But she wasn't hungry that morning at all and only tried to keep fast pace with her family toward the hills. It seemed that their father were taking them to the high ground and all those peaks she dreamed to visit someday.
And then it started. She heard something so loud she thought there was no such thing in existence. And she knew the bolts and thunders well. The ground started to move. In all directions. The rocks and boulders started to fall from the peaks. And in that very moment she did something she thought she would never do. The fear was gone in an instant and only pure curiosity emerged her tick skin. She took tree long jumps and climbed the sharp edge toward the only place on the cliff with clear view toward the ocean. She even used her tiny arms to balance her inproportional body.
On the horizon there was a stream of rocks coming from the sky. Just like the one that, the other day, exploded above the northern plain and lighted a forest fire. Only bigger. Much bigger. They were hitting the ocean one after another and making water to glow. All the sudden it stopped being beautiful and colorful. Only frightening and terrorful. And then she saw their father. Enormous rock. No. Gigantic boulder. No. The mountain. Yes. Just like the one they were climbing at right now.
At the end of the trail.
When it hit the water, all the fire and all the glow, all the thunder and roar, everything what she just saw and heard for the first time in her life faded out into one pure and ultimate silence. All the sentiment and fear accumulating last week disappeared instantly and merged into one single emotion.
Something new and pure. Something behind the nature. Something raw.
It's Sunday afternoon, outside is freaking cold, deep bellow zero, Viktor is playing 'Angry Birds' trying to find out how to collect the ultimate egg he's missing in the collection and my wife is watching live tennis match between Serbia and Sweden taking place in our city this weekend. Since I have no better ideas (and available home gadgets I can play with) I thought to open the old laptop and write something 'smart' about international sport and its worldwide importance. Well, on second thought, maybe better idea would be to start reading a book as I am not really a sports kind of a guy and this is not going to be really smart post of mine, but what a hack, at least this way it will stay written for some future reference. So, I wonder how to start this? Let me think... I know, I'd start with the NHL game I was watching couple of days ago. I have no idea who was playing, I am sure some important teams in the top of the competition but in the end thi
It's Sunday afternoon, outside is freaking cold, deep bellow zero, Viktor is playing 'Angry Birds' trying to find out how to collect the ultimate egg he's missing in the collection and my wife is watching live tennis match between Serbia and Sweden taking place in our city this weekend. Since I have no better ideas (and available home gadgets I can play with) I thought to open the old laptop and write something 'smart' about international sport and its worldwide importance. Well, on second thought, maybe better idea would be to start reading a book as I am not really a sports kind of a guy and this is not going to be really smart post of mine, but what a hack, at least this way it will stay written for some future reference. So, I wonder how to start this? Let me think...
I know, I'd start with the NHL game I was watching couple of days ago. I have no idea who was playing, I am sure some important teams in the top of the competition but in the end this is not valuable for the story. It was nice watching it in the beginning - the game was smooth, the ice hall was amazingly beautiful filled with lots of people and I witnessed two or three goals performed in great multi-player performances. Like many times before as soon as I started feeling nice about the game (I even opened a beer can) and started comparing modern ice hockey with jazz, two players took off their helmets, got rid of their sticks and started fist fight. I was not confused with the fight, let's face it, sport players are not really rocket scientists, but what was intriguing was all other players and referees didn't interfere at all. Along with amused crowd they watched the fight until one of them started bleeding and falling down on the ice. Only then one referee jumped between them and in a moment I was convinced he did this to save the ice from the blood and not to save the poor man from further suffering. After a while game resumed like nothing happened.
This was a high end sport competition and after couple of centuries of its own evolution it ended into pure business. There is no sport honor driving the sport people - it's the worldwide phenomenon everywhere around the globe. I am from Europe so I will divert the story into European football (or soccer if you will) where if you are a fan and watching its best, state of the art competition, the European Football Championship League you will unlikely fail to notice that every year the same teams are playing it - and to participate the league you have to win the national competition or to be one of first three or four teams. All those teams by some unwritten rule have amazingly and extremely expensive stadiums and their bank accounts are probably items of envy for many many others.
If you are a football fan and live in Milan, Italy or Munich, Germany or Valencia, Spain or Manchester, England you are lucky, every visit to their local football stadiums will provide you a great show with international top players coming from countries worldwide. In order to pronounce all their names properly you would have to perform serious research - they are really coming from all over the world and their paychecks are specially printed in order to have enough room for many zeros. Even though football, being the most popular sport in Europe, is more or less above the highest other team or individual sport, considering money involvement and popularity the similar impression is with basketball, the other football across the Atlantic, tennis, F1 racing, skiing and handful of other popular competitions that attracts lots of supporters.
On the other end of European sport entertainment, if you live in countries like Serbia with no real money involved in national leagues or local sport teams, people experience sport throughout national teams and continental or world competitions, like Olympic games, or perhaps like the tennis match between Serbia and Sweden broadcasting on the TV in our living room right now. The local, recently renewed, sport hall is full to the last chair cheering loudly with lots of enthusiasm and feelings for national players, and I guess this is ok, people here don't have lots of opportunities to watch sport events on this level.
Nobody can steal this moment from the people after the winning point, even those who say they don't follow the sport and don't like it much, secretly enjoy events like this. It's not even the problem if the city capable of organizing the Davis Cup match doesn't have a working movie theater or zoo park or planetarium or valuable science institute, sport is no. 1 and it will always be there. In Serbia this national euphoria in tennis goes one step further - Novak Djoković, currently the best player in the world receives almost unreal credits and popularity even for his non-tennis activities. But this is sport, it gives you extreme popularity and even though your only skill is to hit the ball better than everybody else, metaphorically speaking, you will be greatly remembered while the guys who's the top-notch in many other fields will stay anonymous.
Don't get me wrong here, I do enjoy watching a great game, especially within competitions such as NBA, NFL, EuroLeague and even in Championship League but what I don't get is the entire euphoria outside stadiums. In Serbia in recent years it goes to the unbelievable, inappropriate and preposterous levels with welcoming parties and street celebrations for every little success of national teams. It's a definitely one of a kind phenomenon and I am guessing, more or less, in one way or another, it is the same everywhere else.
However, I need to give sports a great amount of credits - I really think that international competitions are responsible for less amount of wars today. Think about it, if you compare middle age, up to the middle of last century, with modern era today, it seems that people sometimes back in dark ages organized wars in a fashion of a today's sport events. If they had sports back then to compete with their 'enemies', they would probably use baseball bats instead of spears, large swords or cannons. I think this is one of big reasons I admire Olympic games. They are more than sport. I am truly hoping, money and business-fying everything with value will not spoil the core of it.
Original post date: February 2012, Update: November 2015, Update: January 2019
I was very young when I visited Olympus for the first time. It happened during our early vacation in the region back then in eighties of the previous century. I vividly remember there was a dangerous dirt road with not much room for two vehicles to pass by, ending near to the one of the mounting homes with embedded small tavern which can really print on its portfolio that was built on the top of gods' heavenly entrances. For some fairly strange reasons, Coca Cola and Souvlaki on the tavern's terrace felt really tasty, just as the pure and clean water from the water stream just next to it. Unfortunately and despite of all of my efforts, I couldn't see or find anything divine or out of worldly items or even a glowing shiny rock. There were no gods whatsoever. Or naked muses. Or beasts with snakes instead of hair. Or horses with wings. Or mighty heroes. Nothing. Well, I was only 10 years old. What did I know.. Maybe that pair of hawks we saw flying around the highest rock acro
I was very young when I visited Olympus for the first time. It happened during our early vacation in the region back then in eighties of the previous century. I vividly remember there was a dangerous dirt road with not much room for two vehicles to pass by, ending near to the one of the mounting homes with embedded small tavern which can really print on its portfolio that was built on the top of gods' heavenly entrances. For some fairly strange reasons, Coca Cola and Souvlaki on the tavern's terrace felt really tasty, just as the pure and clean water from the water stream just next to it. Unfortunately and despite of all of my efforts, I couldn't see or find anything divine or out of worldly items or even a glowing shiny rock. There were no gods whatsoever. Or naked muses. Or beasts with snakes instead of hair. Or horses with wings. Or mighty heroes. Nothing. Well, I was only 10 years old. What did I know.. Maybe that pair of hawks we saw flying around the highest rock across the tavern and screeching in high tones were actually Apollo and Artemis arguing about something.
On the other end, it might be that I visited Olympus during gods' withdrawal. Way too early...
But, before I continue with the actual glimpse to the modern Olympus fiction and short reviews of one hilarious book and one extraordinary comic, I think I need to write a word of two about the photo I embedded above, which might be interesting to read. This is in fact the mount of Olympus (just like the highest peak shown from the air in the post header). The most famous mountain in the entire world. The mighty one. It is not the highest of them all - just slightly lower than 3K meters and not even the highest in the entire Balkans, but it was the one chosen by gods to built their own abode during the ancient times. Sitting just next to Aegean Sea, it is the first sight you see when you travel from Thessaloniki to Athens in nowadays Greece. I took this image in 2010, from the beach in the sea resort of Leptokarya, described by Wikipedia as "the former seat of East Olympos municipality, which is part of the municipality of Dio-Olympos". During my countless visits of northern Greece in past several decades, and all of them during summer holidays, believe it or not, all of my Olympus photographs ended with similar heavy stream of clouds above mountain peaks. It is like Olympus is always hidden in clouds by some weird meteorological reasons. Well, that was not entirely true as I have seen Olympus naked in the occasion or two, but still it was not often. It's like Olympus is attracting the clouds and capturing them to stay and hide it's peaks.
This summer, almost forty years after my first excursion to the famous maintain, we took the perfect opportunity to board a tourist bus and venture their Olympian route following new paved roads carrying people to the multiple resorts within mounting base and visiting Olympus' main attractions. At least to the point where road limits heavy buses to proceed. The tour included town of Litochoro, famous Bath of Zeus, Agios Dionysios Monastery and Old Panteleimon, picturesque mountainous village on the slopes of the mountain. Surely seeing the sites with your own eyes has no alternative and the next best thing is to check couple of those travel guides and stories you can stumble online, but as far as this post is concerned, I will leave it to my son Viktor to tell you all about it in his channel's video log we both filmed this August. If you find it pleasing, you know the YouTuber's drill - please like and subscribe... ;-)
The mountain definitely contain a beautiful charm of its own, but we all know that Olympus is best known for its part in Greek mythology and with all its ancient fiction it inspires writers all over the world ever since. With some of them, the thin line between fiction and nonfiction is not really visible at once but in the case of Michael G. Munz's amazing novel called 'Zeus Is Dead: A Monstrously Inconvenient Adventure' one would say it is all about fiction and laugh out loud (LOL) moments. The gods in this comedy returned from their withdrawal after more than two thousand years with all of their entourage and got back to the active and mutual life with mortals. And they returned with a twist.
What is the most interesting about old Greek gods, compared to all of the modern religions of today is that their godhood was not that estranged from their creation like it is now the case with all of those Jerusalem monotheistic beliefs. Greek gods loved to mingle with mortals. And by mingle, you know what I mean, which is especially true with Zeus (probably Dionysis too). In fact, within the opening chapters of the novel, Apollo defined it best when he said that "Gods are just like mortals, only ... better." And that means with everything that we can use to describe ordinary people, including conspiracies, hatred, intelligence, stupidity, love, sex, affairs, ... It's like the Greek gods possess everything good and bad we mortals experience on daily bases, only theirs is enhanced and powered off the charts. And of course, they could change appearances into hawks.. and to do other magical stuff. So, by establishing that we can safely say that all the gods in the "Zeus Is Dead: A Monstrously Inconvenient Adventure" are more than just divine creatures. They are active characters in the story and along with amazing Michael's narrative, that is playing with the reader on numerous occasions are something that gives this book, at least for me, the originality I have never experienced before. The humor is everywhere, especially in the narrative, that on many points require fair amount of reader's geekery and knowledge of ancient mythology. I'll stop here with no further spoiler and only my warm recommendation.
As for the other media dealing with Olympian myths, there are numerous movies and among them "Clash of the Titans" and "Wrath of the Titans" with Perseus played by Sam Worthington and Liam Neeson as Zeus. They were not that bad movies at all, despite all my reservations and best of all the script of the second movie offers the answer to the ultimate question of how and why gods from Olympus ended their presence on Earth. Of course Henry Cavill as Theseus in "Immortals" was also one of the visually great movies with heavy usage of old Greek myths and Olympian gods in main roles.
On the other hand, the world of graphic novels never disappoints and Rick Riordan's novels with Percy Jackson adventures recently, after debuts with two motion pictures, transferred into extraordinary enjoyable comics. The world of demigods in so far two graphic books looks very nice and, I have to admit, much appealing than in movies. Perhaps because reading comics was my first love from the early childhood and/or maybe because these two books were my first comics reading with Kindle way of presenting graphic novels but nevertheless if you are into Olympian myths and love great fiction emerged from old tales my recommendation for Riordan's "Heroes of Olympus" series with "The Lost Hero" and "The Son of Neptune" goes without saying.
My great-great-grandfather was born in 1845 and he spent his entire life through the turmoil of the second half of the 19th century. Little is known about his life - after all life in rural Serbian villages in past times wasn't really documented well and literacy among majority of people wasn't something our ancestors could be proud of. However, what was a major disadvantage for most people turned to be a great opportunity for my great-great-grandfather. Beside being literate and educated, he was gifted with a human property only few others possess. He owned a strong and melodic voice that would probably guaranty him at least a radio-host job if he was born a century later. Anyhow, one of his tasks was to read newspapers, various dispatches and communiques while standing in the center of village square surrounded with neighbors and people from nearby settlements. Soon enough he earned valuable prominence in his family and his children decided to devote our family name to him. E
My great-great-grandfather was born in 1845 and he spent his entire life through the turmoil of the second half of the 19th century. Little is known about his life - after all life in rural Serbian villages in past times wasn't really documented well and literacy among majority of people wasn't something our ancestors could be proud of. However, what was a major disadvantage for most people turned to be a great opportunity for my great-great-grandfather. Beside being literate and educated, he was gifted with a human property only few others possess. He owned a strong and melodic voice that would probably guaranty him at least a radio-host job if he was born a century later. Anyhow, one of his tasks was to read newspapers, various dispatches and communiques while standing in the center of village square surrounded with neighbors and people from nearby settlements. Soon enough he earned valuable prominence in his family and his children decided to devote our family name to him. Ever since then and after, more or less, 100 years our last name is carrying my great-great-grandfather's. Zhiva.
Artistic presentation of Goddess Zhiva
But his name goes even further in past. Millennium or two before my great-great-grandfather, this name belonged first to someone else entirely. Zhiva (Živa) was the name of the old Slavic goddess of life, fertility and marriage, one of numerous terrestrial goddesses. It literally means "living, being, existing" and compared to other religions of the past Zhiva was the goddess similar to Hera, Demeter and Aphrodite of ancient Olympians and very much alike goddess Sif from the old Norse mythology. Thanks to the modern pop culture, especially comics and in recent years movie blockbusters, we are pretty familiar with old beliefs of our ancestors in Greece, Rome and Scandinavia, but tremendous and equally colorful stories are hiding in old Slavic mythology as well. Like with our family name, in one way or another, old stories of ancient mythology survived all these years. And not just stories - the customs, celebrations and rituals are very much alive even today despite all the efforts from the new Christian religion that tried or still trying to eliminate old paganism from people's minds.
Contrary to the old Greeks, Romans or Scandinavians who more or less occupied smaller territories, Slavs spread to vast areas of nowadays Asia and Eastern Europe. Numerous cultures and nations emerged from several migrations and gave birth to slightly different mythology of the same deities and in different Slavic languages and history Zhiva is known with different names and the most prominent ones were Zhibog (life god), Živa, Жива, Siwa, Šiwa etc. Along with variety of names comes the variety of descriptions and searching for definite and most accurate ancient text is the mission impossible or one of those Sisyphean task, if we want to stay in the realm of old legends and stories. However, I did find one mutual description of her that pretty much covers all sources and it explains the goddess as: "Zhiva is the main female goddess in the world of the Slavs. Like the god Svarog, she covers the whole world with his light and closely following the basic laws of the Kind. Goddess Zhiva gives tenderness, care, kindness, heart and care of all pregnant women and lactating mothers." Zhiva existed as a supreme goddess and she was the offspring of main Slavic deities (Rod as a main supreme god, creator of everything, Svarog, god of heaven and three great goddesses), a sibling goddess to other female deities (Vesna, Morana, Lada, terrestrial goddesses related to Earth seasons), sister of god of thunder and lightning Perun and wife of Dabog (Dazhbog), god of sun, justice and well-being.
Artistic presentation of Slavic temple
I can imagine that is very hard to enumerate all Slavic gods, their relations and all their pantheons due to vast diversity of Slavic people but if we consider only South Slavs who migrated to the Balkans at some point in 6th century one thing is for sure. They immediately collided with upcoming and already established Christianity that took heavy roots in Roman and Byzantine empires. Almost immediately missionaries are sent to start conversion and kill old beliefs for good. It turned out it was another wave of Sisyphean tasks that required centuries to process. Serbs accepted new religion only later in 9th century but not entirely. While god in plural ended with its existence almost fully with start of second millennium, many customs staid until today. For example Serbian people still celebrate family religious day called slava - which was dedicated to the god family had chosen to be their protector in the old days. Christianity never succeeded to eliminated this custom and only converted it into worshiping Christian saints instead. What was once a day dedicated to Perun, god of thunder, now is replaced with Saint Elijah (Sveti Ilija) which is also connected with thunders and lightnings in Christian tales. Old Serbs believed that gods could take shape of ordinary people who were visiting family homes at random times and one of the related custom was warm hospitality toward strangers who knocked to their doors. The oak was the holy tree and all the temples are built out of it instead of using heavy and everlasting stones. In the aftermath, no Slavic holy sights and temples persisted today. In temples dedicated to goddess Zhiva, high priests wore ritual hats or helmets with horns which were symbols of fertility among Slavic people and other religious folklore throughout Europe in the old times.
Aside of Slavic deities, Serbs believed in other godly creatures who had influence over nature like ghosts, fairies, demons, dragons, forest mothers and also human like creatures that originated from people like vampires, witches, werewolves... The list is endless. To better live with all those beasts and scary underworld monsters many rituals are invented and practiced all over. One in particular is still alive in Eastern Serbia in the event called Rusalje, where women falls into trans after ritually caroling and dancing and virtually connects to the ghosts and afterlife world in order to predict future events and understand upcoming dangers. Interesting facts is that many women refused to exert 'the healing procedure' in local monasteries performed by Christian priests and willingly perform the ritual every year. Of course, these were the extreme but there were other more benevolent rituals that were practiced in the past and I would not be surprised if they are still alive today. For example, if we are talking about Zhiva, human worshipers were ceremonially providing bouquets of flowers, fruits and wheat on numerous occasions but also there were a ritual of sacrificing a rooster before the time when wheat is sown and/or after the harvest is over.
Christian church on the Isle of Bled
If we are considering the Eastern Europe Slavic history, perhaps the strongest sites where Zhiva was worshiped were throughout lands of nowadays Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, and eastern Germany but perhaps the most interesting site where the temple of Zhiva once existed was famous lake Bled in Slovenia. More precisely, the foundation of the temple, that provided the support for a square wooden house in the 8th century were excavated under the Christian church on the Isle of Bled. Attached to the foundation was square building with apse from 9th century that clearly indicates the transition from pagan temple to early Christian church. Christian missionaries dedicated of shutting down old Slavic sites and temples at the time almost always transferred the sites of worshiping of Slavic goddesses into the worship of Mother of God to ease the transition and the nowadays church on the Lake Bled is consecrated to the Ascension of Mary. The temple of Zhiva on the Isle of Bled and the waterfall on the nearby Savica river were commemorated and celebrated in the epic poem 'Baptism on Savica' by the 19th Slovenian poet France Prešeren.
Well, temples dedicated to Zhiva definitely no longer exist but it is documented that many places, at least in Serbia, with names that survived the last millennium and have words 'deva' or 'baba' in their roots (which means goddess mother) suggest sites of worshiping the female deity, most likely locations of Zhiva's temples. Couple of those places and nearby mountains have such words near the village where my great-great-grandfather lived and where our summer house still stands. Also lots of people names and surnames have word 'Živa' in root and they all originate in old Slavic beliefs. Years ago during my education within high school and faculty Živa was my nickname and I always turned around if I heard somebody called it.
Game of Life is an old news, yes, but last Friday I stumbled to something special that forced me to relive the film once more. It was an extraordinary comic book creator called "Comic Life", made by plasq development company which gave me genuine pleasure last entire weekend. I was looking for a comic book related application before and even tried couple of them but they were all way below Comic Life and all the features it offers. I was immediately hooked by its nativity and simplicity and instantly thought about our short film. After very little hesitation I decided to give it a try and the result is sort of "Game of Life" made by "Comic (of) Life". After all, I had everything, the script, the video file and the free time last weekend and to create a comic book out of it was pretty straightforward. What I did was to open Game of Life in VLC player and to take couple of screenshots in order to import them into "Comic Life" and the rest is in
Game of Life is an old news, yes, but last Friday I stumbled to something special that forced me to relive the film once more. It was an extraordinary comic book creator called "Comic Life", made by plasq development company which gave me genuine pleasure last entire weekend. I was looking for a comic book related application before and even tried couple of them but they were all way below Comic Life and all the features it offers. I was immediately hooked by its nativity and simplicity and instantly thought about our short film. After very little hesitation I decided to give it a try and the result is sort of "Game of Life" made by "Comic (of) Life".
After all, I had everything, the script, the video file and the free time last weekend and to create a comic book out of it was pretty straightforward. What I did was to open Game of Life in VLC player and to take couple of screenshots in order to import them into "Comic Life" and the rest is in this post. Well, soon after, couple of screenshots turned into dozens and dozens into exactly 195 images but it all was worth the effort. Actually it wasn't without little post processing but I enjoyed it all the way. Last night we went to laser print the first copy and here it is below in Viktor's hands and in following preview (it needs some time to load).
If you have seen the film and liked it, and if you are a comic book fan like me, I am sure you will find it entertaining and visually, well I wouldn't say perfect, or even good, but for a first-timer effort pretty well. You can click on the preview to open a Game of Life PDF file in another tab and see it full screen or if you a perfectionist, below is a full resolution file with images in 300dpi you can download.
I am surely still thrilled of how good it went out and especially for entire entertainment I had during making it, so for a moment I thought it was even better then the video itself. But today, like they say, the breakfast is always smarter then last day dinner, I am not so sure. They are two different media and not comparable per se. While the motion pictures contain that magical aspect of living the story and especially in this case hearing the glitch and effects, it lacks the narrative which is the main feature of one graphic novel. Nevertheless, following is the embedded film as well so if you have some comments, feedback or anything to say I would love to hear it. Or better to read it.
The film script and now graphic novel(la), tells a story about a young boy who's following a glitch in the system, presented in real life as a firefly, through numerous portals to the place where he meets a man with the final orb, the artifact that seems to be a way in for full understanding of the life itself, its origin and the rules it is built on.
Game of Life is only a first episode in the series and I called it "Flares and Fireflies" and perhaps just an introduction in the larger plot, which we hope we will continue making in the future. Finally, if you missed the story of how we made it, the script and all the funny moments, they are all in post Game of Life and Cyclops of Peloponnese and of course what inspired me to make the story is in simple question: Is Life a Zero-Player Game? and John Conway's original zero player game.
Most of the popular digital and DSLR cameras are perfectly equipped for macro photos. Taking a great photo by zooming to the scene not 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. 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 top of the pencil, as close as 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 above photo with only my smartphone, addi
Most of the popular digital and DSLR cameras are perfectly equipped for macro photos. Taking a great photo by zooming to the scene not 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. 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 top of the pencil, as close as 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 above photo with only my smartphone, additional plastic lens I taped on it's camera and... lots of patience.
To be completely honest, taking a photo of an insect, small in size, like 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 to strip one of those laser pointers and rip out its lens. Perhaps the better results you can get with laser point equipped with the lens made with greater optical quality, but for starters, anyone can do. So, like in left image, or if you click on bottom reference link, when you take out the lens, all you have to do is to 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 and with quality lens, capable to take a photo or even a video clip of a micro world with up to the cellular level. Complete instruction of building such device you can find within the Turn Your Smartphone Into a Digital Microscope! YouTube page.
Of course, taking micro photos 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 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 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. 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 following summer will bring lots of more micro photos when all of those microbiological life emerge out but it is amazing what exactly you can stumble to your front-yard or balcony in just a couple of hours. The image bellow to the right, when I pointed the lens toward the rose's stem I thought I will get only some sort of reddish plant spores but instead my memory card was filled with tiny and not to adorable rose lice. In other words, if you make this, prepare to be surprised what exactly you might find in there.
Therefore, I advice practicing first with non-live objects in your own household, like in 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 you finger or even a significant breath or hesitation. Anyway, I will be adding more images into this gallery in the future and besides embedded images to this post, there are more at web gallery.
In today's update the story goes further into micro world 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 it's own powerful LED lights and with its pencil like shape it was more controllable and applicable. The downsize was that its far beyond smartphone camera quality and numbers 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 grader herbarium and our frontward. 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.
My first encounter with Intelligence Quotient, aka IQ, was 25 years ago during my preliminary exam for the mandatory military service. In those years Serbia was part of a former socialist federation of Yugoslavia along with couple of more countries and avoiding army service was impossible. Everybody had to go to serve the "time" for one whole year and they used those preliminary tests to better fit you into suitable unit and doing a form of an IQ test was part of it. They didn't give us the result, but I probably did it pretty well since they put me to be main operator of a ground-to-ground missile unit. At least my little bit higher intelligence than average "soldier" spared me from the mud, dirt, long marches, carrying heavy weaponry and other meaningless activities of the service. So I spent most of the time in a classroom surrounded with state of the art simulators, playing video games made specially for practicing real time guidance of the missile in simula
My first encounter with Intelligence Quotient, aka IQ, was 25 years ago during my preliminary exam for the mandatory military service. In those years Serbia was part of a former socialist federation of Yugoslavia along with couple of more countries and avoiding army service was impossible. Everybody had to go to serve the "time" for one whole year and they used those preliminary tests to better fit you into suitable unit and doing a form of an IQ test was part of it. They didn't give us the result, but I probably did it pretty well since they put me to be main operator of a ground-to-ground missile unit. At least my little bit higher intelligence than average "soldier" spared me from the mud, dirt, long marches, carrying heavy weaponry and other meaningless activities of the service. So I spent most of the time in a classroom surrounded with state of the art simulators, playing video games made specially for practicing real time guidance of the missile in simulated environments. The little rocket itself was too expensive so we never fired the real one, so more or less, even-though I would never participate the military if I was asked, my "time" passed smoothly and surprisingly enjoyable as I made couple of good friendships there.
When I started writing the blog one of my first post was the famous short story by Isaac Asimov called "What Is Intelligence, Anyway?". When I first read it, I remember my initial reaction was that it's exactly how I feel about the topic and not just the intelligence itself, it's more about Asimov's writing style. Don't tell anybody, but this was my first inspiration for my blog. It was a short story initiated with his life and yet embedded with a strong message and also informative and funny. Great man Isaac. One of my role models and surely one of greatest writers of all times. Please read it after reading this post as it will be the conclusion of the main IQ story. However, like Asimov, I have my reservations regarding measuring IQ, simply because I am not sure how accurate these tests are. There are lots of them on the net, the ones on Mensa sites and those improved by more textual questions and tasks so I selected several tests online and scored every time different result - with approximate number in the realm of still undiscovered element (Uqb'). The score variation could be caused by part of the day I took the exams, amount of concentration and distraction I had, etc.
I remember one of the famous quotation of sir Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, from the original series played by Jeremy Brett - he said that his mind operates the best in the morning whit empty stomach in a dark silent room (sometimes enhanced with some sort of certain chemicals). But in a nutshell it is individual routine, some people, and I know couple of them, operate the best if a radio is playing in the background, some are more stressed than the others if the test is performed in the class room filled with other participants. Some, like me, operate better without time limitations or deadlines. So I have a feeling, if it is possible, that intelligence must be measured differently, like how person reacts in different real situations that require intelligent thinking, in other words the test must be defined to be a bit more than just answering a questions on a piece of paper. However and nevertheless, the actual IQ measurement is able to provide pretty accurate picture of person's intellect. On the other end or better say from the DNA point of view intelligence is comparable to any other human genetic feature. Some people are tall some short, some are blond, others are brunette, some are strong and muscular, some are thin and skinny, people also can be born hetero or homo sexual, some can't eat meat without vomiting, others can't live without pork or lamb on a weekly menu. The same is with little gray cells and while we are perfectly able to use measuring meter in order to find out how tall we are, the only valuable instrument to measure how smart we are is the IQ test. Co-founder of the DNA molecule, James D. Watson once said that we should think of the human intelligence as a feature if it's high or a disease if it is low. I am paraphrasing his words now but he said this while watching a post-graduates receiving their degrees referring to those with low IQs: "It may not be their fault that they aren't clever, their genetic code may limit their capacity to dazzle - think of it as a genetic disease and one day we will find cure for that."
Leonardo is estimated with the highest IQ of 220**
Keeping in mind that IQ is just a measurement of our intelligence, even if there is a public criticism among scientific circles, the question is - are we able to maintain it? Can it be improved by exercises or special diets? Many say yes and I agree fully. However, it's not completely clear or defined what intelligence really is, whether it is just a way how our brain operates with internal memory or there is something alternative to modern CPUs in our heads that with different people comes with different performance. Either way, it is possible to at least maintain the IQ by solving puzzles from time to time, keeping your brain busy by daily watching, reading and thinking about various topics and adjust your diet according to your organism and its expectations keeping it satisfied by digesting the food and drinks it is comfortable with. I know it is vague, but this is simple true, nobody knows your body better than you, so try to listen its needs more than your friend's advice. Nutritional advice by professional could also come handy and helpful as well as reading and exploring the scientific articles and experiences.
One particular study comes to my mind - I recently stumbled on Science Daily article reporting a study performed by Prof. Mark Weiser of Tel Aviv University's Department of Psychiatry. In the study, conducted with 20,000 Israeli Army recruits and veterans, the average IQ for a non-smoker was about 101, while the smokers' average was more than seven IQ points lower at about 94, and the IQs of young men who smoked more than a pack a day were lower still, at about 90. So there you go, numbers don't lie. I am sure armies all over the world will never ban smoking in their facilities. It would be wrong for the moral and it could make soldiers to start thinking. Scary. Literally. Satirically.
Mean IQ and World IQ level prediction
Criticism aside, IQ tests are today standardized and carried by organizations like Mensa International providing good monitoring of IQ trends among countries, social groups, races, genders, etc. It also gives us data about IQ trend worldwide. What would you think where it is going? Are we going to be smarter or dumber in the future? According to Fourmilab Switzerland and their article named Global IQ: 1950-2050, the mean population IQ is completely opposite to the population growing chart. The mean population IQ dropped for 5 points from the year of 1950 to predicted IQ in the year of 2050. It seams that we are getting down with our social IQ year after year. No wonder why reality TV shows like "Big Brother" are more popular than adventure movies or scientific documentaries.
If I would like to show you the funny side of the dropping IQ trends I would only advise you to watch first couple of minutes of the movie "Idiocracy". Famous narrated introduction of the movie goes like this: "Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most and left the intelligent to become an endangered species." Here is the first part of the intro I found on FoxConnect channel, it's hilarious:
How this 'competition' ended watch in the next part of FoxConnect YouTube channel here: http://youtu.be/vfHCuFqdl3Q. It also reminded me to the TV Shows "Cheers" aired decades ago. In one of the episodes there is a funny explanation of evolution called Cliff Clavin's Theory of Beer. It goes like this: "A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. When the herd is hunted, the slow and weak at the back are killed first. The speed and health of the herd keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members. In the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as its slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. Naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers."
Original post date: April 2012, Updates: June 2016, May 2018
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