MPJ

I had once a parrot pet called Cheda. He was incredible. Long ago, during my university days, Cheda was my only friend throughout countless sleepless nights when I was preparing for exams. He came very young, and we spent lots of quality time together in my room. I never closed the cage gate so he was as free as possible and used the entire flat to spread his wings. He belonged to an Australian cockatiel parrot breed, or nymphicus hollandicus, what was his real scientific name. Nymphs are very popular for their ability to mimic human speech and, of course for their talent to sing beautifully. Alex the African Grey Parrot* Cheda was no different, and over time he learned a decent amount of words, but what he performed the best was a tune from the movie "The Bridge on the River Kwai" . It was not a simple melody for a parrot, and you had to see his frustration in all those moments when he missed the note - on a numerous occasions I had to pet him and tell him to take it...

It's simple really. Nothing is wrong with it. Society, like anything else created by our social behavior, is following human evolution ever since we started living together within small and functionally organized communities. In the beginning there was a simple need for this - it was impossible for just one man to hunt down one, for example, mammoth or to defend a family from the herd of prehistoric saber-tooth tigers and the only solution was to get together and organize a little for the mutual benefit. Not to mention everlasting need for prolonging the species which also required, sort of, well, socializing with a member of opposite gender. Mammoth hunt and prehistoric society* We can only wish that things are as simple as it was millenniums before. If we disregard the fact that socializing in order to save the species didn't change much from the times where humans shared the habitat with mammoths, all other aspects of one human society, due to the thousands of years...

Until recently I had a toy-model of Russian space station Mir hanged in our living room settled nicely between two more common house decorations. It was small in size, no bigger than five cubic inches with two teeny tiny Soyuz spacecrafts docked at their designated locks and numerous solar panels all over the place. The plastic toy is long gone now but still from time to time it raises some nice memories, especially those moments when couple of our guests after close inspection from all directions asked questions like "What the heck is this?" or "Is this art?". Not many of them recognized the most challenging technological endeavor of the last two decades of previous century at first glance. On March 23, 2001, all the biggest Mir's fragments after surviving hellish re-entry through the atmosphere hit the Pacific ocean and ended 15 years of various scientific experiments performed by 28 long duration multinational crews with total of 104 people from 12 ...

The year was 1975 when I was browsing small dusty workshop located next to the garage within our house backyard. It was perfect combination, I was about to turn 7 years old, eager to explore the darkest corner of my childhood realm and the dark workshop was the most mysterious chamber in our entire family estate, no bigger than four cubic meters occupied with heavy and old greenish oak cabinet with couple of drawers and compartments filled with tons of different tools, mechanical devices and various interesting stuff I didn't know their origin and purpose. It was, more or less, the year when I started to break things in order to find out what was inside or to find how something works, foolishly believing that I would be perfectly able to put things together back. Well, from this point of view in time, I can't remember if there was at least one mechanical device I "inspected" in such manner that I successfully restored after unscrewing all the bolts and junctures...

There is no doubt that this comparison or question if you will is as old as humanity itself. Perhaps the basic idea of invisible forces driving human beings and everything around started to occupy human mind ever since it evolved beyond simple survival or in those prehistorical times when our ancestors started thinking about things not always related to eating, sleeping and populating the planet. It definitely originated way back in the time when people started to paint the cave walls. In the time when human mind started to use the most powerful feature other species still waiting to emerge. The power of imagination. The birth of superstition and religion didn't wait much longer after humans started daydreaming. What did I do?* I am always getting back and reading lots of articles out there trying to find the best explanation of what is the main difference between superstition and religion. There are lots of philosopher's, religious or even scientific thoughts trying to...

I am not sure where to start this post or to better say, which point in history of time I'd choose when something extraordinary happened for the first time and started the domination of humans over all other species competing on Earth. Was it the discovery of fire and learning how to start it? Maybe it was rather the discovery of tools to make everyday life easier and made us the ultimate predator? Even though these two can definitively be classified as breakthrough discoveries, if you ask me, what was more important back in that period of prehistoric era was the point in evolution of human brain when we started to dream. The time when brain cells evolved to the point when we started to use imagination and to think outside the boundaries of simple survival. That point in history of mankind is maybe the most important of them all. It was the time when first images appeared on the cave walls, first simple houses and camps started to exist. We started to bury and mourn the dead and t...