MPJ

Up there, within our own Solar system (and beyond) everything is in motion. There is no space object that is standing still. Ever since the big bang. Even the black holes that are capturing things into singularity point are moving across the universe along with their own neighborhood. The same is with Earth and its first neighbor Mars. They are both orbiting the Sun in their own time schedule - Earth needs full year to complete the cycle, while Mars in its own distant orbit needs 322 more days to do it. While both, Earth and Mars travel around the Sun, sometimes they got closer to each other by the approximate 55 million kilometers (while the farthest distance between the two is about 400 million kilometers).

I have no sailor material in me. At all. I don't mean qualified skills that are fascinating and easily acquired through study and experience. I mean literally and physically, my body is simply not built for the navy. I realized that when I entered those 4D/5D theaters for the first (and the last) time, about dozens of years ago. I remember anxiously waiting for that sophisticated motion ride system built into movie theater seats to come to my city, and when it finally arrived, I was among the first in the tickets line... And I was first to get out of the small theater with a terrible motion sickness thundering throughout my entire body. I should have guessed what was going to happen after seeing the title of the short film had the word "rollercoaster" in it. I fully recovered more than 24 hours later. After that, I never stepped into any movie theater with more than 3D label on its front gate. Sometimes even in those I check if the chair is fixed solid. To be honest, I kn...

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...

The start of the second world war in the Balkans was known as the "April War" that lasted no more than 10 days in the operation called "Führer Directive No. 25". The swift conflict ended on April 14th in armistice based on unconditional surrender of Yugoslav military forces. My grandfather was a 22 years old corporal in the former Yugoslav army when he was transferred to a war camp in Germany in mid-April 1941, along with other 30,000 surrendered soldiers. He spent next four years in Nazi military camp leaving behind his young wife and 2-year-old son. I am sure it was not easy for him to cope the entire time of imprisonment and captivity, especially in the beginning, but considering all the horrors of the most cruel encampments of Nazi Germany, unconditional surrender of the entire Yugoslav Army came with negotiated terms and agreement of fair treatment of all the prisoners during captivity in various labor camps in the following years. Perhaps the main trauma for a...

In pre-Christian mythologies of the western and northern tribes and their pagan beliefs, female deities were not uncommon. Take for instance old Gaul's Matres or Valkyries of the old Norse mythology and of course all the goddesses from the history of all polytheistic religions around the globe. But perhaps the most interesting of them all are, you guessed, the fairies. They are not actually deities per se and rather belong to the spirit realm of the afterlife and dead, but still you can find them, in one form or another, in almost all religious legends and myths. The city where I was born, the valley it resides and the river that splits it in half are no different. The history of this area is, metaphorically speaking, very colorful and full of wonders, all the way to the beginning of the Neolithic era, and over the centuries this valley literally saw lots of different cultures and deities. One of them, originates way back to the Celtic Gauls and their tribe named Scordisci who live...

Thrillers. Books perfect for the summertime. Even though they were not exclusively tied to the beach, in my case, of all occasions, somehow sand and Kindle went along hand by hand the best. Every time. As with default definition, thriller stories and novels engage all your senses and trigger right level of entertainment and all kind of emotions during those couple of days of intense reading. Also, they alway successfully keep away your thoughts from your job, your daily issues and raw reality from your mind. In previous couple of years (mostly summers), my stock of thrillers piled up significantly, so I decided to create a recommendation and small glimpse into stories of five different styles of writing and with that many main characters stored in the similar background of political or fictitious conspiracies. And all that in familiar form of classic 'villains vs heroes' storytelling with the hero winning the girl every time. Cliché, I know, but I love it and enjoy it all the s...

Some years are more memorable than others and there's no doubt that this is one of those subjective feelings if we are looking to the past solar cycle from individual point of view. Some are forgettable and disappointing by using the same perspective. If I had to judge about 2016, I would say its one of those forgettable ones. Perhaps not really because of what happened badly or poorly during past twelve months but rather of what didn't happen again. Perhaps it was me, who once again made a mistake and had higher expectation from the humanity and ended in sort of letdown once more. Obama & Medvedev at Ray's Hell Burger in 2010 Actually if we want to get into disappointment fast, it's easy, the only thing we need to do is to have a glimpse or two to the worldwide politics and worldwide affairs. But it wasn't always like that. Every now and again we got ourselves into illusion that things can be perfect, or better to say the least. Ever since Barack Obama...

I don't think anybody can be characterized with just one word. Not until you actually meet somebody to the core and connect with true friendship. Maybe not even then. People change over time. Slightly, but they do. For instance, when you spot a big bald guy with large tattoo on his neck, wearing a blackish uniform, heavily armed, working as a guard or something with a face on a first glance telling you that you should avoid any conflict with him at any hour, don't judge him just yet. He might be thinking how he hates his job and can't wait to get home and continue reading some poem about early Buddhism or good bestseller novel about love and adventure. For that matter, don't make any assumption about a nice and well dressed guy with great manners and perfect vocabulary. He could be a psychopath perfectly capable of fooling any lie detector driven by his emotionless life. It's simple, you can do what I do, never believe your eyes or first impression. In order to ful...

There is a mountain just couple of kilometers south of our weekend house that is actively blocking our view toward unknown and beyond. It is not too big, just about one kilometer high, rounded in shape, overgrown in surrounding forests with large plains on the top. In the past, from the years of my early childhood till today I had different feelings about that mountain. First, it was the real edge of the world when I thought there was nothing behind. Then I grew into my teen ages when I unsuccessfully wanted to conquer it and plant a flag on the biggest rock of the highest peek possible. When that was over I dreamed about living there in a forest shack in sort of utopian kind of equilibrium with nature itself. There was a time when I just hated it for blocking my nightly sky from the southern constellations and galactic center lying somewhere in the direction of Sagittarius and Scorpius. Now, I only want to pay her a visit someday and see how mountain was looking at me all those years...

Do you have that strange feeling when you are about to visit new city abroad and little afraid of what you would stumble to when it come to simple things? Like how to use metro line or how to buy a bus ticket or how to identify your next destination? Or how to book your flight back to your home? Or how to handle a simple dilemma of should you exchange the money to the local currency or is it wise to put your card in every ATM or any other 'slot' machine on your way? Hello™ at Microsoft Campus Days, 2014 Ericsson, a Swedish multinational provider of communications technology and services, has the answer for you. And me too. Last week, I took my entire family to the trip to Copenhagen for both, business and pleasure hours in the Danish capital. During my previous visits I didn't have much time for tourism and any off work activity for that matter. So I took a little research this time and Ericsson's " Networked Society City Index " helped a lot. Within t...