Archive Page 2 of 34



Moon landing

I was three and a half years old in July 1969. I remember my dad taking me outside at night time, holding me, and pointing to the moon. He was so excited and talking about how “There’s a man up there!” My three-year-old concrete brain didn’t get it, of course, but I think it made an impression on me because of how excited my dad was. I knew it was something big!

Nichol

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Short memory

After taking simvastatin for a year, I developed short term memory loss, to the extent of being unable to complete my sentences because

grogan 

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Zodiac killer code: mapping the way to Sirius

 I have an avid interest in cyphers and codes stretching back to my childhood. I guess it started when a teacher in our school read us, 8 year old second graders, a story about how Lenin tricked intelligence agents from “okhranka” (tsarist secret service).  Yep, this was a story from Russian language textbooks for the 2 grade. I know it sounds insane and weird, but we had many stories in our books about Great patriotic war, communist revolution and Lenin: how he liked kids, or made a friend with illiterate bricklayer, who didn’t know whom he spoke to, etc. It was in the beginning of 80’s in the Soviet Union, and school education was a part of global brainwashing program, I believe. I have no regrets though, as we had great time at school, education was free and very good and that stories in the textbooks were interesting.Back to the cyphers. That story about Lenin and okhranka agents contained some references to the simple way of coding, by book, and the way to do so. Apparently if you use milk instead of ink for writing, nobody can see what there’s something written.  To see the message you should hold the page above heat for a while, and transparent lines will become visible. So while in prison Lenin could communicate in this way: he’d shape some bread as ink-pot, pour milk in there and write with it; after he’d finish he’d eat his “inkpot” (milkpot?) and “ink” left; having a nice meal of milk and bread. Secret agents never could catch him; moreover, in such a manner he wrote a couple of books in between lines of some French novels he was allowed to read.I loved this story. Soon I started to research and develop cyphers and ways of communication with my friends, our neighbours kids myself. To omit details, I even took a course on structural linguistics/cracking cyphers at university later. It was very exciting indeed, and I was happy to learn from one of the students of prof. Yuri Knorozov, who amongst other things decyphered Mayan script and later on his life “located” mythical place of origin of Meso-American people, known as Chichomoztoc, which is slightly out of scope of this post, though a very fascinating subject. So I’ll put a picture here, but won’t tell you why at this point:

ToltecaChichimeca_Chicomostoc

 The seven caves of Chicomoztoc, from Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca.

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Meeting my father

The most important day of my life was December 5, 1995, when I met my father for the first time. I was informed about his arrival and I was supposed to go and meet him at the local law court. I could not sleep the whole night and I was so nervous that I almost decided not to go, but, after a long conversation, my best friend Sivlija managed to convince me to change my mind. She went with me to the courthouse where we sat near the front door in order to see everybody entering. Suddenly Silvija showed me a grey man who was talking to the lawyer in the nearby corridor and she said: “For sure he is your father”. I did not believe her and I continued looking for a person from my dreams and from my grandmother’s stories: “He is a tall and strong man with black hair”, I was often told.
A minute later Silvija’s mother, who is employed there too, came and gave me a sign that he was the man I had been looking for - for 16 years. Then Silvija went to school and I stayed there alone. I knew that he was sitting behind the pillar, but I could not move. I stood there rooted, looking in his direction. I wanted to run away after I realised how many nights I has spend crying because of him, how many nights I had been dreaming about him, how much sorrow there still was in my heart because of him. I was so confused. All these memories threatened to destroy me. Finally I stood up and made the first step of the seven steps I will never forget.

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