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...

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...

Among all religious beliefs, the Greek pantheon of colorful gods is perhaps the best described in the history of all human religiosity. There is literally no piece of Greek land or portion of the sea or the tiniest island that has no origin in radiant old mythology. The island of Corfu is no exception as well. Apparently in the mythological history, it was one of those unnamed islands in the region of Scheria where the mighty Poseidon spent a portion of his eternity with fresh water nymph Korkyra. Their descendants, the Phaeacians as described by Homer in Odysseus' adventures inherited the island and named it to the Poseidon's lover. The final shape of the island owns the appearance to Poseidon as well when he separated Paxos from Corfu with his trident in order to create a love nest for him and his wife Amphitrite (sea nymph this time). I don't blame him, both Korkyra and Paxos are beautiful and colorful islands and he obviously knew his craft well. I understand his affect...

I've always wondered what genre exactly "Star Wars" belongs to? I guess it is safe to say that the entire franchise is one giant space fantasy or space opera if you will, genuinely influenced by human history and religiosity wrapped into a futuristic world of (science) fiction. I sincerely admire George Lucas when he began the story fifty years ago, especially how he imagined a spiritual background without the need for the existence of religion we are all familiar with and without presence of actual deities. The main premise simply described as the Force gives to those sensitive to this spiritual energy extraordinary abilities, such as telekinesis, access to the minds of the living beings, potentiality of healing and what is especially interesting to me, the power of seeing things before they happen. Even though the visions and predicting the future seem to be the most fantastic feature of the Force, it is perhaps the only fiction understandable by the real science. T...

It was a foggy day on April 6, back in the year 1725, when angry villagers of the rural hamlet of Kisiljevo, Serbia, opened the grave of their neighbor Petar Blagojević, who died eight days before. His death was followed by a spate of nine other sudden deaths and numerous claims by the victims being throttled by Petar at night. When they cracked the casket open, features associated with vampires, just like they anticipated, were indeed present: the body was undecomposed, the hair and beard were grown, there was a mixture of new skin and nails along with old ones peeled away, and there was blood flowing out of his mouth. The villagers were accompanied by an official of the Austrian administration (the Austrian Empire governed the area in the early 18th century) and a local priest. The entire case was documented and reported to the officials and covered by Die Wiener Zeitung, a Viennese newspaper, on July 21st. At the time, the vampirism was fully embedded into Serbian folklore with nume...

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...

I was very young when I visited Olympus for the first time. It happened during our early vacation in the region back then in the 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 one of the mounting homes with an 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 all of my efforts, I couldn't see or find anything divine, 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...

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...

Let me ask you a hypothetical question. What would you first type into time machine if you had one? Would it be some date in the past or in distant future? Would you go to meet neanderthals or perhaps to take a photo of a T-Rex family from the distance? Or perhaps you'd go to see some historically relevant times to meet famous people from the past? Well, there is no doubt for me - one of my first time travels would definitely be 33AD, April 1st. The time of Christ and his last days, the time of the last supper, his death and resurrection. I have no idea how would I be able to hide my Nikon and smartphone but I am sure I would find a way. Every tourist trip requires a camera, doesn't it? However there would be other challenges, and in this case, even if I would try to dress accordingly and mingled into crowd, understanding old Aramaic which was spoken by most of Jesus followers or old Hebrew, Latin or Greek used officially among Jewish people or within Roman administration and a...

Let me start this story with remarkable opening of the Michael D. Gordin's book named "The Pseudoscience Wars". The full quote is this: "No one in the history of the world has ever self-identified as a pseudoscientist. There is no person who wakes up in the morning and thinks to himself - I’ll just head into my pseudolaboratory and perform some pseudoexperiments to try to confirm my pseudotheories with pseudofacts". And this is the ultimate truth - there is no pseudoscience. It's not the real thing. You can, with more or less enthusiasm, add adjective "pseudo" to anything you like and get yourself the bad or opposite meaning of the original word. But in the world we are currently living in and with, for example, TV shows like " Ancient Aliens " being vastly popular than attending lectures or reading published scientific papers by professional archaeologists and historians, pseudo combined with science are now recognized word in almost ...

Have you ever been in situation to answer somebody's question with 'Yes and No'? Well, it is definitely one of those answers they are teaching politicians to answer every time they need to use some evasive maneuvers in order to avoid discussions they don't want to get into. But in this case, the answer to the question from the title, or expanded a little with: "Are you really behind the wheel of your body?" is really 'Yes and No'. And nothing could be closer to the truth. The keyword is of course Parasitology, a very complex scientific research that is trying to understand properly all the macro and micro organisms who can't live without other living beings and usually do that without their consent and rather use them to live their entire or partial life which in most cases leads to host's malfunction, to use raw mechanical word. They only leave hosts in case of their death or if the host's environment is exploited to the level of uselessne...