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Define barbarians. According to the ancient Greeks anyone not speaking Greek was a barbarian.

Carl Sagan was the best we had in promoting and explaining science in simple terms.

Most roads in the Greek countryside...

There are so many great movies out there, and there are so many more still coming Roberto Benigni's Life is beautiful was a wonderful movie. I also enjoyed Cameron Crow's Almost Famous. It brought back some good memories from my youth when I was an "aspiring" musician playing for a band. I love comedies too, and School of Rock and Natcho Libre were fun to watch. Jack Black is hilarious. I've seen so many great movies over the years. It's hard to only mention a few

Πολυ νωρις για να πει κανεις εαν ειναι πραγματι οικονομικο προβλημα ή απλα η αγορα δεν σηκωνει αλλα τετοιου ειδους μαγαζια. Ειναι για γελια η κατασταση στην Ελλαδα. Σε καθε γωνια υπαρχει πλεον κι ενα τετοιου ειδους μαγαζι που σερβιρει καφε κυριως για εξω (αν και το Μικελ ειναι πιο κυριλε κι εχει κι ωραια διακοσμηση και τραπεζακια για να κατσει καποιος). Ποσα τετοια μαγαζια μπορει να σηκωσει και να συντηρησει η καθε γειτονια?

The ones I mention above are Bond villain characters. Not actor names

You realize that this battle happened in 9 AD and the Roman Empire lasted (undivided) until around 300 AD. with the western Roman empire going on for another 200 years until around 500 AD. So you're basically saying that the Roman army was destroyed after this great victory of Arminius in 9 AD yet the Roman Empire lasted - unrivaled - for another 500 years. And another tidbit of information from Wikipedia: Just saying...

Talking about Bond movies, there were a few villains over the years with Greek names/connections. Alex Dimitrios in Casino Royale is obviously Greek. Then we also have Aristotle Kristatos in "For your eyes only". Also one of the major Bond villains, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the mastermind of SPECTRE, seems to be of Greek background too. Telly Savalas also played the role in one of Bond's films. Also this villain clearly inspired the Dr. Evil persona in the Austin Powers movies. There may be more which I'm missing/don't remember.

One word: lamb on the spit (ok, not just one word, but you get the point ).

Uh oh. This is not good...

Ehm, not quite. There's no pure "race" anywhere in the world, especially in Europe, the way you dream of it.

Have you ever heard of a certain Attila the Hun? Google it. You'll find interesting what he and his hoards did to the Germanic people (yes, you guessed it. They did the raping, mixing etc. I mentioned earlier). And yes, they were Asian...

The modern ethnic Germans, as most modern Europeans, are a mix of several different cultures/races who raped, fucked and mixed with each other for centuries. No point trying to pinpoint a single point of origin. If you'd like to go that far back, why stop at the Indo-European migrations and not go even further back to the migrations from Africa to the middle east?

Very accurate description of most Greek men I think that my older son starts showing signs of the Hulk gene. No Greek can escape from it...

We're Greeks. The simplest discussion eventually turns into a philosophical exploration

Our time on this earth is getting shorter and shorter as days go by. You can't buy more time. Our time is limited and you cannot replenish the time you lose. What you're saying is that you can allow yourself some "free time" by paying someone else to do the job you're usually doing for you. This is not buying time though. In essence, if you were not doing the job you're currently doing all this time would be your to spend somewhere else. (so you wouldn't have to work harder/more time so that you can pay someone else to do your job so that you'll have some free time to enjoy yourself. Do you see the irony here? ). People are strange this way. Sometimes when I go to Greece for vacation to relax and I see the fishermen and all other people in some small villages living those simple lives I wonder if it's me who's doing things wrong. I have to work 11 months/year to take one month off, spend a ton of money to fly my family to Greece and spend a relaxing month there, when those villagers live a simpler life 12 months out of a year, with little worries (and very little to their name of course...). Do they really need big houses, expensive cars and nice clothes to be happy? Absolutely not. I too grew up without having any of these and I lived a very happy childhood. I think that our priorities are screwed up and there's no one to blame but ourselves. A month ago I decided to quit a pretty good job (in terms of pay, status etc.) because it wouldn't give me the time and flexibility to be around for my kids (as they're playing sports after school and I wanted to be involved to coach them, watch them etc.). When I spoke to the president of the company about this, while I was giving him my resignation, he said "what you're doing is admirable, not very many people would have the balls to put their careers on hold for their kids". So my simple question back to him was "ok, but if you think what I'm doing is the right thing, and you feel the same way - you feel you need to spend more time with your loved ones - why don't you quit too, take a pay cut, work less and spend more time doing things you enjoy doing?". His answer was typical of what most of us would say when we're cornered like this: "oh you know, I have responsibilities. I can't just drop everything. I'm also used to be living a lifestyle which requires me to work long stressful hours and make a lot of money". I have no further advise for people like him...I guess each one of us sees happiness and self-fulfillment in a different way. At the end of the day, and going back to what I said at the beginning of this post, your time on this earth is limited. No matter how much money you make you can't buy time. We'll all live to our 70s-80s-90s (if we're lucky! - some illness may take us tomorrow for that matter) and as we grow older our quality of life will keep getting worst and worst, no matter how much money we have. You won't be able to eat what you want, you won't be able to walk as much as you used to when you were younger, you won't be able to do many things you took for granted when you were young. You only have one life and one opportunity to enjoy it and share it with the people you care about. We don't realize all this when we're young as at that time the end seems too far away to worry about. As we grow older though and the end becomes a reality which is getting closer and closer we start re-evaluating our lives. Some of us start tweaking things and making changes while others continue wasting their lives as if they're going to live forever.

Is this any different for any other nationality? I don't think so...

Talking about swastikas, I remember as a kid - still in elementary if I remember correctly - I had visited a museum in Greece showcasing some ancient vases from the 6th-7th centuries BC. As we were looking around I noticed that there was a swastika painted on one of the vases. I thought that I had probably seen wrong, so I went closer and noticed that the vase next to it also had a few swastikas painted on it, and then I saw more and more vases with swastikas on them. I remember that the teacher had a hard time explaining where these swastikas came from

http://www.vice.com/read/the-nightmarish-purgatorial-lives-of-migrants-after-they-finally-get-to-germany-111 http://bigstory.ap.org/article/c33a0f30f8c54dc19ddd0e358694a67a/6-syrian-refugees-injured-attacks-across-germany

Yes they have. When they believe in a "different flavour" of Christianity that is, as is the case with ISIS and the rest of the muslims around them. Don't read your history selectively. In fact, if you go further back Greeks have been killing each other for centuries even though they all believed in the same gods. Athenians, Spartans, Thebans, Macedonians, Corinthians and so on. They've all been killing each other on and off for centuries. Same religion...different priorities. If you can't see on your own that these people fleeing their homes are victims then I can't possibly make you change your mind whatever I say. At the end of the day it doesn't really matter whether I'm right or you're right with our views. There's a reality we have to deal with. And this reality says that thousands (or millions by now) have been displaced and cannot go back to their homes because they're in danger. Want it or not, that's the reality of the situation. These people need help, and they need to be integrated to the societies they're fleeing to. It's not a rosey situation, and I absolutely agree with you that the muslim/arab societies more than anyone else should be doing the best to their ability to help out their own. Saying this, we simply can't let these people down. Europeans and Americans (some more than others) are directly or indirectly at fault for the situation in the middle east today. They should assume responsibility for their fuckups and help those people out.

Ah this all alludes to the "aryan" race, which brings back great memories...

Yup. Those folks today are facing the same fate as our grandparents did. Slaughter, rape, displacement. Our grandparents were people like the ones arriving in droves to the Greek islands today. Sure, these people have no connection to anything Greek, like our ancestors did, but this doesn't make them any less worthy of receiving our help.

Ha ha, never noticed. I had read a few of her books when I was much younger.

If you think that they're facing no danger I'd encourage you to spend a few fun filled weeks in Syria in your next holiday.

Well said. This is something most political leaders have forgotten these days. The scary thought is that today's situation is ripe for the rise of "social" movements like the one instigated by Hitler's Nazi party. It's not really surprising that "national socialism" is on the rise all over Europe these days. There's a Greek "saying" which describes the situation in Europe these days. In Greek we say "smells like gunpowder", meaning that the situation is pretty explosive. And that's exactly what it is. It may just take a spark - some possibly insignificant event - to get the explosions started.