Early Man in Motion Picture

There is a period of time we are familiar with the acronym "BC". It stands, of course, for "Before Christ", the period before the famous tale about the origin of the Christian religion. But this time goes far behind Jesus. Far beyond the origin of all monotheistic religions. It goes even before the eons when our ancestors knew gods in the plural and to the ages when modern humans started their everlasting and ongoing endeavors. The time in prehistory was occupied with the endless wonders of surrounding nature without firm beliefs but surely filled with many invisible divine spirits and mysterious stars.

Due to the illiteracy of the period, there's almost nothing tangible we could use to gain full knowledge of what early society really looked like, and even though we know a great deal about those times only by analyzing cave walls, fossil records, and DNA samples, in order to describe one early settlement, we still must use lots of imagination and scientific guesses.

Personally and definitely caused by the mystery of the ancient times, I do enjoy reading and, in this case, watching fictitious stories about early people, events, and how everything was in the beginning. Hence, if we stay in the realm of motion pictures, I want to share four movie recommendations from the rather small pile of films covering prehistory free of wild imagination that might be anthropologically correct. So, let's start in, appropriately, in chronological and descending order, starting with the latest film about the earliest period of prehistory in all four movies. The story is about the first joint adventures of man and man's best friends. The wolves. Well, you know... the dogs.

Portraying Europe at the end of the Pleistocene epoch some 20,000 years ago, Alpha is telling an adventurous story of Keda, a teenage boy on his first hunting trip, and Alpha, the first domesticated wolf. They struggle to survive the harsh environment of the last ice age and, along the way, learn to enjoy new special friendships among two species. Something we are taking for granted in our very contemporary age. Three things about this movie are fascinating: for one, there are no human villains in the film, and this is amazing for nowadays movies, and yet the story works just as perfectly. Secondly, I learned something I didn't know: Alpha was played by a real Czechoslovakian Wolfdog, a mix between a German shepherd and real Carpathian wolves created for military purposes. I always admired German shepherds, but I have to say that this relatively new breed is really magnificent in every way. Finally, the language they used is a fictional one, fully developed for the movie by Christine Schreyer, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of British Columbia who used three ancestral languages in the process, and this effort alone gave the movie a genuine and really extraordinary feeling.

The next two movies went even further in the past. The set was still the Eurasian continent, and the time could be estimated at some 30-40K BC, when one of the kind events in the history of two dominant species happened. It was the time when our ancestors started to populate the area that was already taken by Neanderthals. Barely compatible, this caused the death of the weakest and most unprepared party in conflict. It is still a mystery what exactly was happening in those shared periods that probably lasted hundreds or more likely thousands of years, but in the aftermath, just like proposed in one of the movies, Neanderthals suffered and died out from both major issues: their bodies were totally unprepared for new diseases humans unknowingly delivered, and equally important, their minds couldn't stand or understand the violent behavior of newcomers.

Ao, le dernier Néandertal and The Clan of the Cave Bear are both dealing with the collision of two dominant humanoid species of the time only from different angles. At first, Ao was a desperate Neanderthal man whose family was brutally murdered by modern humans, and he was forced to seek his life elsewhere and find happiness with a homo sapiens woman. The movie offers outstanding performances by Aruna Shields and especially Simon Paul Sutton, who portrayed the story with one word—perfectly. The same goes for Jean Auel's first book of the "Earth's Children" series and the movie with the same name. Here, the script is the opposite and follows young girl Ayla, who finds shelter within the Neanderthal clan. It's hard to say which film is more appealing, historically accurate, better performed, and better made, but if you choose to watch them, entertainment filled with drama, adventure, and even romance is guaranteed.

Finally, if we go even further into the past, more or less 80000 years ago, in the time of tribal societies where the fire was a luxury and hard to find, the last film recommendation was the oldest movie of them all. Quest for Fire was filmed back in 1981, and it was the first movie I watched from this genre. I remember I was fascinated with scenes with mammoths who were played by circus elephants in full wardrobe and trained lions in the role of saber-toothed tigers. In short, three cavemen are sent on the quest to find the fire, for which they still don't have the knowledge of how to start it. The quest turned into a real adventure, and what they learned and returned to their cave was priceless. And I am not talking just about fire. Enough said.

Refs:
https://www.milanzivic.com/2015/10/neanderthals-humans-and-shared-caves.html
https://www.livescience.com/40311-pleistocene-epoch.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechoslovakian_Wolfdog
https://www.thestar.com/vancouver/2018/08/23/bc-professor-creates-language-for-alpha
https://www.cbc.ca/arts/the-wild-story-behind-quest-for-fire

Super 8

The history of motion pictures dates back to the second part of the 19th century with photographers like Étienne-Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge, who, among others, were the first to take several images per second in one effort—all for scientific purposes back then—to study the locomotion of birds, animals, and humans. For example, Muybridge was the first to take a series of photographs of a galloping horse in order to prove that in one single instant of time all four horse legs are not touching the ground. More or less at the same time on another continent, Marey created a shotgun-shaped camera capable with one trigger pull of capturing 12 images in a row within one single second and storing them all on the single 90 mm film. He used his gun to study various motions of animals, fish, and insects within his so-called 'animated zoo', including dropping cats from different heights and filming them always landing on their feet.

ELMO Super 106, 8mm movie camera

It was not long after initial chronophotography efforts and enthusiasm in the 19th century that the 'evolution' of motion pictures diverted heavily into entertainment and cinematography. The history of films and fun started almost with the start of the 20th century, but in the spirit of today's title, 'domesticating' films within ordinary people and human homes waited another 65 years for the invention of Super 8, or, to be precise, the improvement of Kodak's standard 8mm film from 1932 into a more efficient surface with a bigger width for the frame itself and significantly smaller perforation on the film's right edge. After they introduced it at the 1964-65 World's Fair, Super 8 instantly became the very first home video format with light cameras capable of filming 18 frames per second and more than 3 minutes of the movie per small film cartridge.

To say that my father was a film enthusiast in the second part of the sixties and the entire seventies would be an understatement. It was natural for him to go the step further and, in addition to the several analog SLR cameras and darkroom equipment for developing photos, to invest in home movies. Spending time in the darkroom and hanging photos on the wire were some of the most thrilling experiences of my childhood, but when Super 8 came, another world opened. I was too young to operate the camera, but on the occasion or two I remember, I did hold it and press the red button, especially during our vacations in Greece. Well, aside from those rare moments, most of the time my job, with being a kid and all, was to be in front of the camera and not behind it.

Tondo Super 8 Projector and LG Nexus 5 in action

But to cut the story short, this month I did something I was delaying for a long time. During the last two weeks, every night I was descending into my own customized darkroom equipped with a tiny Super 8 projector and digitalizing our family films. Twenty of those survived over time, and with a speed of two per day, I projected them on the wall and filmed them all with my smartphone. It was far from being an ideal setting, but this was the best I could do. I tried different approaches, filming from different distances, using different settings, and using my DSLR Nikon in the beginning. I even tried to project the film directly into the DSLR, but all my efforts failed due to not having proper lenses and objectives, and in the end, the smartphone was the chosen solution, and it did a better job in the dark than the Nikon.

With more expensive equipment, I am sure the results would be much better, and probably the weakest link was the cute and old Italian Tondo projector, which was my father's portable cinematic projector. I did try with a bigger 'player' first, but despite all my efforts, I couldn't manage to repair the old and superb Crown Optical Co. Ltd. Auto-P, a silent Standard and Super 8 film projector, our primary projector capable of displaying big and crisp screens on the large walls and with much better quality. To be honest, it's more than half a century old and built with nowadays rare parts, especially the missing lamp that is hard to find these days, but I didn't give up, and perhaps in the future, if I stumble on some solution (read it: an eBay sort of solution), I will repeat the effort, at least for those videos filmed indoors.

Nevertheless, all twenty rolls now come with twenty MP4s, and for this occasion I decided to create two movie collages with six movies each. They are all filmed in the late sixties, during the seventies, and in the early eighties with an ELMO Super 106 camera from the first image. The first one, embedded above, contains six films from our early vacations in Greece, and in chronological order, they are filmed in the Acropolis of Athens, Zeitenlik, the World War I memorial park in Thessaloniki, vacation resorts in Kamena Vourla, Asprovalta, Katerini Paralia, and two vacations in the vicinity of the port city of Volos.

The second collage is from our home and village in Niš and Guševac in Serbia. Mostly it focuses on my sister's and my babyhood and early childhood, birthday parties, family gatherings, and excursions. Also our old house that is now gone and the old shape of our country village front yard. This video also contains one of the rare black-and-white films from our collection that probably originated from different cameras and settings.

This entire effort triggered lots of memories and emotions from almost forty years ago, and seeing people live, especially those that are not alive today, is something extraordinary that regular photography cannot induce. Perhaps we today, with all of our pocket gadgets, are taking video clips and home photography for granted, but before, in the Super 8 era, this was a completely different experience. What we today do with just two taps on the screen, before you had to do in a more complex manner, including purchasing film cartridges, carefully planning (directing) filming sequences for a 3-minute film, sending it to development, organizing cinematic sessions...

One thing is for sure: Super 8 was the origin of what we have now in our homes. It was eventually replaced with VHS tapes in the 80s, but at the dawn of the 21st century, the analog period came to an end, and old-fashioned home gadgets were replaced with home digital camcorders first and, in the very last decade, with smartphones. To tell you the truth, it is nice to have a camera in your back pocket, it is, but somehow, with me, as I witnessed the origin of the entire process in my early childhood, the nostalgia for the analog days gave me another layer of the entire experience. Something special and extraordinary for sure.

'Super 8,' a sci-fi movie by J.J. Abrams

Perhaps for the best conclusion for this post, it would not be fair not to mention one of J.J. Abrams' greatest movies from 2011. Simply named 'Super 8', it tells a main sci-fi story about an alien encounter, but everything is perfectly wrapped within a background story of school kids trying to film a short movie for a Super 8 festival. It was really a great movie, and if you liked E.T. before, this is definitely a decent sequel and one of my favorites.

Refs:
http://www.kodak.com/id/en/consumer/products/super8/default.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_film_formats
http://www.retrothing.com/2009/09/tondo-super-8-projector
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/super-8-jj-abrams-says-194908

Friendly IoT or Daemon of WarGames

Is the Internet dangerous? Well, yes, we know all the hazards of spending all the work hours behind monitor screens, browsing the web at home, doing social networking, playing online games, watching YouTube, staring at smartphone little displays, or for whatever reasons we sit above our keyboards most of the time every day. That's indeed what we first think of—all the negative aspects of the mighty global network—but today I am not referring to all the potential medical issues inherited from sitting too long on the chair or looking every day into the LCD screen. I also don't mean the obvious social and/or physiological outcomes from letting the virtual world take over the real one for more and more people every day. No, I mean the real danger. Did the Internet overcome the pure network system and become a tool for mass destruction or a background tool for criminal activities? Can someone use the internet to hurt somebody or to perform a murder? Either directly or indirectly? Can some organization, country, or corporation use it to start a war? I mean, wars in the past began by more trivial things than by one global network. There was one war in the year 1969 between El Salvador and Honduras, initiated by a football game. True story. Google it.

You can relax. The Internet is still far from being a player. Or a rifle. It is getting sophisticated by the day, but currently it is still lacking two things to become something more than just a network. Two things are in development as we speak. And yes. You can stop relaxing now. The Internet IS going to be potentially capable and very dangerous when these two things become reality in the future. Very near future, if you ask me. And one of those two doesn't even have to be perfect. Like any other internet thingies, they have cool acronyms. AI and IoT. The first one will provide internet to be self-aware... or... in simple words, to start thinking. It means 'Artificial Intelligence', of course, and even though current development is far away from creating a real replacement for a human mind, some sort of NAI (near AI) will be sufficient to act independently on many occasions. NAI is not real AI. It is rather a complex logic that emulates thinking behavior in some spatial scenarios with predefined and predicted all or most of all directions and events. For example, the current two operational robotic rovers on Mars, Curiosity and Opportunity, are capable of driving on their own with their operating software. Or here on Earth, many metro systems in large cities are operated by complex control and are fully automated, without humans behind train controls. Something like in this embedded video was unthinkable only a couple of decades ago.

To be honest, true AI is not really a real threat. Even if science and technology build an AI entity tomorrow with certain doses of emotions and reason, it will be just another child in the neighborhood. True danger in the background of the global worldwide web is only the programmer's anticipation and powerful IF-THEN-ELSE command. And we have both today. AI being a mad mastermind of the future is not needed. The only thing preventing the Internet from being dangerous today is the still-early phase of IoT. "Internet of Things". Think of it like this: if you have brains and no body or senses, you are as good as a conductor without an orchestra. This is the inevitable part of the future Internet. It will get a body and a wide variety of sensing abilities. Basically, until now, IP addresses were reserved for devices with brains, or CPU units if you will. Home computers, business servers, phones, tablets, smart TVs, and microcontrollers are happy units today with internet access and proud owners of IP addresses. The trend is for tomorrow that all technology-based devices get online too. Remote controllers, motion sensors and any type of sensing converters, home and kitchen appliances, cars and any type of vehicle, industry tools, medical sensors, 3D printers, clothing items, and literally anything at all will be able to get a 'smart patch' and be allowed to be monitored or controlled over the internet. Think of this futuristic network from today's Google and Android smartphone perspective.

If you are a user of Google networks and devices (like I am, and this is just an example; the same goes for other providers and internet giants), from their databases (and I am not saying that they are doing it), it's possible to know what you are browsing to the simplest detail by your usage data in searching the net and the history of your browser, who you are following on social networks by which timeline or wall pages you are opening the most, what you like and dislike, what your watching habits are by your YouTube statistics, how your life looks in writing by your usage of Blogger, and all your whereabouts of your Android smartphone by Google Timeline. Not to mention that they have access to all of your online photos, videos, and files through your usage of all of their services and cloud storage. Oh, yes, and they have all your passwords you typed on various websites. Google is not even on the top of potential 'smart' providers with access to your, well, everything. If you are a user of, for example, Microsoft or Apple and their operating systems, then they are able (and again, I am not saying they are doing it) to know and have access to your localized data that is not clouded online. The story continues into the business environment further. If you are the proud owner of a rack of servers in some cool data storage building and you didn't write all the software and used so-called 'third party' code, the simple fact is that you are not the only one with potential access to all of your racks. And you are not the only one capable of monitoring all the network traffic. Those who manufactured network cards can do it too. Again, I am not saying that big internet corporations are doing all those spying and sniffing of people and other entities online, just that if they wanted to, it would be technologically possible.

Anyhow, all the worries of today's digital world end with privacy concerns. If you are a villainous criminal or a mad hacker, all you can do is steal somebody's identity data and log into other people's accounts for whatever malicious reasons you would do that, but you can't physically and directly harm somebody. In the past I have had these encounters with online thieves, and one of them cracked my password, logged into my dial-up account, and used free internet for a while until I went physically to the internet provider and overrode him for good. After that experience, I am creating complex passwords, and on a couple of occasions, they are so complex that even I forget them after a few weeks. I guess now is as good a time as any to thank all those "Forgot your password?" links standing timidly next to login forms.

However, the Internet of Things will have the power to end all of those 'benignities' of today's online world. Smartphones will not be the only systems with a 'smart' prefix. I am imagining all the varieties of SmartHomes, SmartCars, SmartShips, SmartRoads, SmartOffices, SmartFields, SmartTraffic, SmartEnergy, SmartPolitics... Ok, let's not push it. Some things will never happen. Nevertheless, and seriously speaking, even though this post looks like I am against the future breakthrough in the Internet size and means, many of the IoT-based gadgets will be extremely helpful. Think of the future SmartForest with many embedded fire sensors and intelligent surveillance cameras or SmartHealth gadgets actively monitoring your health signs and alarming anything potentially hazardous, either from within your body or by sensing bad food or air or any type of toxin in your near proximity. Surely every bright medal has the opposite side, and with the possibility of accessing all the gadgets online and controlling them from a distance, I am more than positive that we will be facing SmartViruses as well, and still, just people's passwords to access their mailboxes or bank accounts will be completely dwarfed by the online crime of entering somebody's house system and starting to leak gas while everybody is sleeping.

I am not quite sure that the Internet of Things will exactly be "The Fourth Industrial Revolution", but in one way or another, after a decade or so of transition years, it will be our everyday reality, and the next generations will embrace it and take it for granted just like we do with our current technological surroundings. Or our fathers and grandfathers and their lives within old-fashioned telegraphs, radios, and CRT television sets. Or their fathers and grandfathers with newspapers and books.

Anyways, we will be dealing with IoT when it happens, and I am sure I will be writing about it in general or in specifics on this blog or elsewhere in the future, but today I only want to end this story with a recommendation of one great related novel. About thirty years ago, I was watching WarGames on one of my first VCRs, and it instantly became one of my favorite films. I was more or less the same age as Matthew Broderick back then, in the middle 80s, when he played the lead role in the movie, and needless to say, I spent numerous hours watching it again and again and even read David Bischoff's book based on the original screenplay and enjoyed it all the same. At least for me, it was definitely an influential book of the decade. Every now and again in the previous thirty years, after WarGames, I was wondering why no decent book or movie was made to represent the real successor of the original story only in the realm of nowadays' Internet instead of WarGames' military background. And after three decades, finally, last week, on a friend's recommendation, I purchased Daniel Suarez's "Daemon". In the 'book' thread of the blog, I reviewed many titles without much of a spoiler, and to continue in the same fashion, all I can say is that it's one of those books you hate to leave, and as I am very close to the end, I don't see what would happen to force me to not give it a full five stars. "Daemon" is exactly what I was expecting after WarGames. I read that Walter F. Parkes, co-writer of the original WarGames screenplay and producer of the Man in Black movies, was interested in producing the movie "Daemon" and its sequel, "Freedom" (or "Darknet" in some editions), but this is still in "the clouds", probably due to the extremely technical plot and twists. Perhaps "Daemon" is more suitable for a mini-series or sci-fi TV show... Time will tell.

As for me, my time in the near future is locked and reserved for "Freedom", eagerly waiting in my Kindle's memory. With the same enthusiasm, I am embracing a not-so-near future full of "Internet Things" and what they will bring to our technocracy.

Image refs:
http://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/iot-brings-potential-security-threats
http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/WarGames-Blu-ray/47282/
http://www.amazon.com/War-Games-David-Bischoff/dp/0440193877
http://www.amazon.ca/Freedom-TM-Daemon-Daniel-Suarez-ebook/dp/B002VUFKDY
https://3dprint.com/113502/iot-2015-person-of-the-year/

Refs:
https://re-work.co/blog/embrace-the-iot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_subway_systems
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobmorgan/2014/05/13/IoT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_Things
http://www.amazon.com/War-Games-David-Bischoff/dp/0440193877
http://www.amazon.ca/Daemon-Daniel-Suarez-ebook/dp/B003QP4NPE/

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/