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).

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 ...

Couple of days ago, on a very last September's day, a very unusual and bright sunshine beamed through the open window directly toward our bed and my still not completely awakened face. It was incredibly beautiful Sunday morning and with half-opened right eye I tried to glimpse our small digital clock and like usual I needed to turn on my extra-powered vision in order to see the time. After couple of seconds of adjusting, grimacing and winking, the very last morning dream finally faded away and I saw that I overslept again, like in almost established tradition for couple of dozens of Sundays in the past. It was perfectly fine, my wife and son, who again moved to our bed at some point of the night, were still sleeping under the amber-colored sunlight enjoying their night adventures in their morning dreams. I got up out of bed and during my morning routine performed in slow motion, including checking for new messages and emails, I saw weather prognosis for the day of 35 degrees (95F)...

Well, it is inevitable and I mean both the real doomsday and me writing about it and the time is just right - we entered deeply the year of 2012, the one and only with major doomsday prophecy, maybe the biggest and the most talked about than any 'end of the world' fairytales in the history. But first I need to create a big firewall around my thoughts about this topic - I simply want to say that I am 100% positive that there will be no end of the world on December 21st and yet my mission is not to do any debunking of the internet hysteria about Mayan prophecy, it is just another humble opinion based on the scientific facts and my skeptical point of view to the world that surrounds me. That said I only need to add here that prophecies simply belong to the pseudo-science and effective sociological tools for spreading delusional stories typically created in order for someone to gain something, like money and fortune. Mayan calendar But what is it really all about? Let...

The most memorable part of my life is of course the childhood, especially the part from the point when I learned to read until the middle teen years - for me it was the period of life when empty bucket in my head rapidly started to fill itself with every information it stumbled everywhere possible. When I look to that period from today's point of view what comes to mind first is that it was technology free time. The state of the art technology of the time was color TV set with only two programs with broadcasting ending around 9pm. Radio stations were at the peak of their popularity with small handheld AM receivers and only few owned a FM receiver with crystal clear sound - that is if you don't move quickly to avoid noise. Communication device of the time was heavy pulse telephone set that required a hard table with special place in the house. But I don't connect my childhood with technology gadgets of the time. Not at all, what it pops to my mind now is a big cherry ...

Back in 2008, Google organized conceptual contest named "Project 10^100". The primary goal of the project was to select ideas that are capable to change the World on a global scale. The period of the change had to be 2 years, so the idea needed to be radical and yet plausible. I was thinking that inventing something completely new could be waste of time as nothing new unless it is truly breakthrough is capable of achieving anything in such short period of time, so the only way was to radically change something already in works on a global scale. So, I thought of democracy. Why not? It's the old system with long rusty roots almost unchanged in past millennium and more and I finally submitted the idea that would eventually get rid of politicians by using a voting system that would replace parliaments with the technology and politicians with ordinary people. Anyway, here is the RDS idea of mine exactly the same as submitted back in 2008.  I am sure this way or another it w...