Is there hope? It is up to you

Actor Miki Manojlovic gave an interview to Sarajevo-x media portal in relation to the new performance "Europe Today", directed by Haris Pasovic. An interesting passage is below (try online translation but beware - my first try on Google Translate gave completely wrong message by ignoring the word "no" in a sentence :)

Šta nas može probuditi iz tog polusna?

Čovek mora da shvati da ne postoji taj bog, ta sila ili spoljni svet ili bilo šta iz spoljnog sveta što će promeniti bilo šta. Čovek je taj u kome je sve, pojedinac. Dok se on ne osvesti, dok nema želju da u svojoj sredini, svojoj zgradi, svojoj ulici, gradu, državi uradi nešto dobro i da to čini na način koji nije lopovski nego je iskren i pravi. To ne spada u red budalastog i naivnog ponašanja. Drugi bi rekli "vidi budale šta radi, daj da se nešto mazne". Takvih, kvalitetnih ljudi ima, ali ih treba biti puno više. Mislim da je to suština koju ja mogu da domašim.

link to the interview 

How much Sun for vitamin D?

A question that bothered me for a while. Since I read (and posted) the link to Prevent Sickness, Increase Immunity, where the conclusion was that vitamin D, naturally produced in the body under the influence of sunlight, is the main pillar of the immune system, I kept wondering how much exposure to the sunlight is actually needed in order for the skin to start producing the vitamin D. And how much of it is needed in order to keep the immune system effective.
Well, today I was looking for the answer and found a few good ones. Here is the list:

• About.com (link)
• Cancer Council of South Australia (link)
• My Family Doctor magazine (link)

A general conclusion is that food does not contain enough vitamin D and the only way to get it is to be exposed to the Sun and let the body produce it - this we know from before. As for the time - the fact is that vitamin D gets produced by the body after a few minutes exposure (in Summer) of face, arms, and hands. The total time is about 1-2 hours a week, meaning the exposure periods range from a few minutes at a time to half an hour, spread out over several periods during the week.
A good tip from About.com:

In fact, if you live north of the 42-degrees latitude, you will have a difficult time getting enough vitamin D from the sun from November through February.

Also check an article about vitamin D helping prevent tooth decay / caries (link). 

One more news source, and "Arab Scenario" for Balkans

One more source in my collection of conspiracy-theory organizations. There are videos with interesting titles on the site.

Srpska Analitika (http://www.srpskaanalitika.com/) is an internet magazine about topics such as globalization, new world order, and so on.

Videos here: http://vimeo.com/srpskaanalitika

An awesome news article is available here (http://www.srpskaanalitika.com/2011/04/02/dzulijan-asanz-balkan-da-se-spremi-za-%E2%80%9Earapski-scenario%E2%80%9C/) and talks about the "Arab Scenario" for the Balkans countries. Bosnia above all. Apparently from the WikiLeaks founder, fellow Australian, Julian Assange.

Do things ever change? - 1870

Funny search on Google taught me that there is a nice graphical timeline of the search results. Funnily enough, one search displayed results from 1870!

Looking into the text from 1870, I found it mentions Bosnia (although the original search had nothing to do with it in the first place) and, guess what, war horrors. I have no idea which wars are described in the text but it got me skimming through. Have a look at

http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&d=TT18770425.2.28

Reading some parts really made me wonder whether the history continually repeats itself. The horrors of wars in 1870 are no different to horrors of war of 1993. Or any other year, for that matter.

Quite an educational piece. Found by pure accident.

One of Those Days

This is one of those days... "Those"? Well, this is one of those days I wish to pack my suitcases and book a ticket to go home. Resign at work, close accounts, ship stuff and get excited about the time to see friends and family again, and do an awesome job I really like, spend weekends mountain biking and hiking, motorcycling to the seaside, or skiing in the mountains. Most of these things are nearly there. A few bits and pieces missing but coming into place. Or so I certainly hope. And I also hope it does not get too late before they materialize. But that's just experience teaching me not to be too optimistic.

Today is the day when I sent birthday greetings to a few friends. Got back in touch, see where they are, what they are doing. Some contacted me on their own after a while. One message is clear - not much is changing and it is not worth spending time waiting for something. Well, for some weird reason (call me lazy or indecisive), I'm still waiting for something that would be cool and different enough to be interesting and attractive. So, maybe I give it a couple more months and see if it materializes. 

Another striking fact is that it seems that there is more software development work going on in Bosnia than in Australia. Comparing the size of population and the markets even more, the difference is significant. I guess the outsourcing has really taken off in Eastern Europe and the standard of living in Bosnia on one hand, and the standard of education on another, makes it an attractive destination for outsourcing software development. The required skills in the job advertisements are all the latest trends and technologies which is a stark contrast to Australia. Here it is mostly old-school project management, and not too many new technologies as there are lots of old systems around that require modifications and maintenance.

This is probably the most important aspect of "coming home" story. The job ads have been steady in Bosnia for a number of years now. They persisted through the largest economic crisis in the past 30 years. This should be a good sign for the future. A light in the distance. Not too far away, I guess...

Wilhelm Reich

Following through some texts about conspiracy theories (as fun as always), many extremely interesting facts and controversies emerge. While reason is of utmost importance when reading such materials, sometimes reason *is* the very thing that makes no sense.

The text on the New World Order pointed me to the book The Biggest Secret, which starts with a quote from Wilhelm Reich who died in American jail in 1957. This last bit, seemingly irrelevant, looked really interesting to me. This lead to reading about Wilhelm Reich on Wikipedia, uncovering a really interesting story about his life and research. Today his ideas seem quite ordinary but I am quite sure that in 30's, 40's, and later they were not very much so. Also, burning books by the FDA reminds me of some other cases in history when similar events occured, which does not paint a pretty picture of the FDA or any other federal agency, for that matter. Really interesting read.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich

The New World Order

"The New World Order, an Overview" is the text that summarizes the root-cause situation related to all modern-day conspiracy theories. Great read for anyone looking for the background information and pointers to further research.

http://www.educate-yourself.org/nwo/