MPJ

More and more I found myself troubled by following worldwide news on daily basis. It's not that I have lack of free time to filter them all out. More, it is that recently I started feeling certain reluctance reading the headlines filled with conflicts, wars and civil fights, religious and cultural animosities, political and all the other disgusting affairs, political elections full of poorly casted actors, stories that you have to use superb power to read them between the lines, worldwide armed conflicts and warfare in foreign countries that I have not the slightest clue what initiated them all and why, mediocre journalism and sensationalism in the worst meaning of the word, etc... The list is endless and believe me I'm not even referring to all those black chronicle stories with unappropriated articles where i.e. somebody killed his parents with an ax or mass murder of cinema crowd by a lunatic in batman suit or worse. Or in today's case and what inspired me to revive this...

There are numerous ways of how our civilization might end. I said plenty in the past about real threats, either from heavens or from within the Earth or ourselves. It was the main theme in the second half of 2012, around the Mayan's doomsday date and I contributed with several posts related to this, including Doomsday , Biodiversity and The Apocalypse Aftermath and in all those stories I was mainly focusing on the mother nature and catastrophes we can do little or nothing about. It was either some wrath from the distant universe in form of deadly gamma rays and supernovae implosions or some judgment day originated from our own Sun or asteroid impacts or even the ultimate rage from our planet by some super volcanic or tectonic disaster. But I only timidly mentioned all those man made events I referred as 'other human stupidities', including nuclear holocaust and biological hazards. So perhaps now is the time to continue the thread and glimpse into two great stories behind ...

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

Do you remember United Nations? The worldwide organisation created just after the sunset of World War Two with mainly one goal - to prevent global warfare in the future and to deal with our planet outside the boundaries of it's members? United Nations Security Council* Yes, it still exists, somewhere on the island of Manhattan, with its powerless debates and Security Council decisions without much responsibilities for those who signed them as well as for those affected in any way. Sadly, the power of global government never actually made to UN, despite all the good efforts throughout the years and it always staid with those in individual countries, or groups of them, either politically or geographically or ideologically divided. The truth is that there was no big decision in the history of the mankind, either good or bad, that is made by some mutual organisation of any kind. Those are all made by either one man alone in some sort of dictatorship, or by a small group of li...

What do you think is THE fastest thing on Earth and beyond? I am sure if you first thought of a heavy rocket capable of taking astronauts to the orbit in less than 2 minutes or the fastest spacecraft we ever built with its speed of almost 90000 miles per hour, the answer would easily be NO. Comparing to what I am referring to right now, all those great man made machines are traveling only little faster than snails. Not even the motion of a planet or a star is even close to the speed of .... one little thing traveling as fast as human thought ... and simply called ... TIME. The time is the only thing that travels so fast that sometimes it seems that some memorable event engraved in our memory banks years ago, looks so vivid in the present like it happened only yesterday. If we look our children and how rapidly they grow, or ourselves, for that matter, caught on some picture in the past we simply can't get rid of the feeling and obvious question of how on Earth, time passed that ...

I have an old friend who couple of years ago made a decision to radically change his way of life. What he did is almost unreal for the rest of us. He simply stopped eating food we are all familiar with and instead he eats only fruits, vegetables and various grains and nuts. All that in its raw and natural form without any cooking, baking or frying. Of course as a practical man (he is a math teacher in my wife's school) he didn't do this over night and instead used methodical approach so his switch from "ordinary" food to this final stage of the most strict vegetarian diet possible lasted couple of years in order to adapt his organism better and to avoid potential dangers on the way. Contrary to other vegetarians I know he didn't do this because of some illness or because his organism is not capable of digesting meat and thermally processed food. Instead this was an act of free will and strong belief that he is doing a good thing. I strongly admire him for this and...

Couple of months ago, in the middle of December last year, just before "Mayan doomsday" on 21st, my favorite text editor asked me to approve its regular update. I clicked the link to see what's in new package and it immediately redirected me to the page describing new features and fixes. My fellow, software developer of great Notepad++, Don Ho*, conveniently named the update "New release (v6.2.3) - End of the World Edition". It brought series of chuckles to my face that simultaneously morphed into big smile when I read description below the title. Referring to Mayans prophecy, he wrote exactly this "Even though I don't believe this bullshit, I'm not against to reset our shitty world". Well, I don't know what exactly he meant with the word "reset", but certainly there are days when I can completely agree with him and describe our world exactly the same way. Viktor and his 6th Earth Day Anyway, today is another edition of ...

I am surely not one of those doomsday preppers you could encounter on some documentary broadcast networks and I am definitely not digging a large basement underneath my house or buying cans of food and devices to purify water waiting for some apocalypse to arrive. It's not that I didn't give a thought or two on the topic. I even wrote a little about doomsday and apocalypse aftermath back in 2012 when it was all in media with that Mayan date event. However, one thing is for sure and probably the most cruel fact you might conclude from this research. We definitely don't have any influence in order to stop many of potential doomsday scenarios - like hostile alien attack or deadly collision with large asteroid or long nuclear winter. But with some we can deal with. Post-apocalyptic environment caused by bio-hazards are those we might prevent. But only if we start on time. Yesterday would be nice, but tomorrow is still ok. But, before we jump into the term itself and ...