In all ancient cultures sea occupies the special place. Set of the gods and supernatural beings is born there. According to the legends of continental Kelts, wizard Marlin and fairy Morgana appeared in the sea, and Dilan Ail Tone (Dilan, son of waves), Valley god; in Greece there was a goddess of love Afrodita appeared from sea foam, and her brother, solar god Apollon was born on Delos island, where sea monsters find a shelter.

In Mesopotamian myths one can find Oanness – the huge fish with human head which has left ocean to bring civilization to people. Kings-dragons are sometimes kind, sometimes angry. In the legends of the Indians of Mexico it was told about great feather dragon Cesalecoatle which has left the sea and has revived mankind destroyed by a flood. He has taught people everything necessary for life and after that has left on east on the raft made of bound snakes. All these myths and legends show the influence of sea on people. Read more

Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
W. H. Auden.

Ye nymphs that reign o’er sewers and sinks,
The river Rhine, it is well known,
Doth wash your city of Cologne.
But tell me nymphs, what power divine
Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?
Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Probably you have decided from the above that I am a member of the Flat Earth Society and a nonbeliever in the microworld. Not so. In fact, I read with open-mouthed wonder of the doings of positrons, quarks, and neutrinos and I stand amazed at the diversity of creation. Under every gnat’s armpit there remain a billion universes to be discovered. There’s nothing new about this. An 18th century poet stated it eloquently:

On every flea, there’s a flea to bite him,
So on and on, ad infinitum.

Appreciation for the rich microworld teeming with life does not require, however, that one profess faith in the gospel preached by today’s pseudo-science establishment any more than belief in God requires belief in Jimmy Swaggart. In other Gazette articles I have frequently confessed that I do not worship at Robert Gallo’s altar. Read more

In technology of processing of water the essential role is played not only by the total amount of the weighed substances, contained in it, but also their dispersity, structure, structure and properties.

The optimum technological circuit of processing of water and charge of reagents on their removal depends on the physico-chemical characteristics of insoluble impurities. Read more

Among vast set of substances water occupies a completely special place. And it should be understood literally. Almost all physico-chemical properties of water are exceptions in nature: it is really the most surprising substance in the world.

Surprising not only because of variety of the isotope forms of a molecule and not only because of hopes, which are connected to it as with a source of energy of the future. It is surprising by its most usual properties.

Let’s not doubt in a law. Water is the rarest, and, maybe, unique exception to the rules. Perhaps, there is no substance more surprising and mysterious, than ordinary water. But it is not possible yet to explain the reason of it up to the end of, though it is clear, that the secrets of water are hidden in a structure of its molecule and intermolecular structure. Read more

Life always leaves itself free space for maneuvering;
it never submits to exact calculation.
Theodor Schwenk.

History shows that superstitions are not manufactured by the plain man.
They are invented by neurotic intellectuals with too little to do.
Lancelot Hogben.

Every age has invented outrageous metaphors to explain its mysteries. We dwellers of “the kingdom of dead laws” are no exception. Though the gods, the stars, and crystal balls are out of fashion, our age has given life to a vast microworld inhabited by shadowy demons known only to a handful of high-tech wizards who explain them for us the way priests of old explained the will of the gods. Our oracles are consulted via the microscope and its high-tech variants. Mysticism, as Hogben says, has taken refuge in the atom.

Here is a fact that few have caught on to: Science is the religion of our time. To varying degrees, we are all believers. And our child-like acceptance of the pronouncements of the microscope gazers diminishes us and obscures our view. Read more