MPJ

It happened long ago, in the dark ages of CRT monitors, when I first received a short forum message with :-) at the end. I stared at the message for a long minute(s) before giving up on decoding its meaning. It came from a well-respected friend of mine so I responded with short reply: "What!?" "You have to turn your screen 90 degrees clockwise." Answer came promptly. My CRT was large and heavy, and it looked way too dangerous to tilt it that way, so after a little brainstorming the problem, I concluded there's a better way of achieving the same goal. I tilted my head 90 degrees anticlockwise. "Aaaaaah!!!" I said promptly, and after realising the picture, the big smile on my face slowly morphed into loud laughter. So I typed back: "Wow!" I didn't have to wait long for the next message: "LOL!" "What!?" I quickly copy/pasted my earlier message but realised I was too not informed about new internet fashio...

Last night I had a vividly strange science fiction dream. Like with most of my dreams, and dreams in general I guess, it was hard to recall all the details in the morning and this one was no exception, but in the nutshell the scene started with me in some science lab, describing the idea of how to effectively make a tiny hole in the universe. It was pretty simple - I was using four Tesla coils, perfectly positioned in the corners of the large square with edges of about couple of meters long and with a small, battery sized, two metal plates positioned in its center of the square. The experiment was that at the precise moment, Tesla coils fired four filaments of thunder, reaching the center point exactly between two metal plates in the same time, initiating a process that in the end created a tiny breach in the universe that I was describing in the dream as a brane between dimensions and within the void between multiverses. Anyway, in the process, one plate goes from metallic through dar...

First names. They are of the most importance. Not the middle ones. Not even the last ones, even though with some people family name comes with higher significance, especially if they are part of some important heritage or well-known royalty. Even so, the first names comes, ... well, first. And not by accident. This is how you are remembered for your entire life. This is the word you turn to when you hear somebody is calling around the corner. This is you. With me is the same and while ago I decided to start a thread with first names in titles. First names that are telling connected tales, historically or with any other linked stories. So far there are two in the row: Jules, Isaac, Arthur and Carl and Giordano, Isaac, Albert and Stephen . Behind those names are, according to me, people who gave the biggest push in the worldwide literature of science fiction and science itself. These are people who fit my own interests and fascination and they will be remembered for eternity for their w...

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...

I have a small challenge for you in a form of a quick quiz question: You must use just one word in order to describe following paragraph: "You sleep in small rooms with other people usually on bank-beds and everyday you must get up and be out of bed exactly at 5 hundred hours and go outside to do physical exercises where you are usually forced to sing songs with no significant meanings. Three times a day you wait in line in order to eat or you don't get any food. You have to wear the same clothing like all others, take weekly showers in large mutual bathrooms and in other parts of the day you have to work on assigned jobs or learn how to survive fight with other people similar to you." I don't know but I've been told So what is it? I am sure there are several words with different meanings that easily fits the description but in relation to what I am going to write in this post the chosen word is: The Army. In this particular case, there is no room for a...

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...