Cogs can think.

Why don’t fonts on Linux look as good as this by default? Why do I have to manually fiddle for hours to get them to look this good?

Who said complaining and showing disapproval about the behaviour of the United States did not work?

In a report written by a research institute of the American Congress, it is said that The Netherlands has complained most loudly of all internationally, and that because of our disapproval of the way the US treats its prisoners (you know, because of the torture), Dutch troops in Afghanistan are now refusing to cooperate with the US military to capture terrorist suspects.

The Dutch military wants to minimise cooperation with US armed forces in actiosn that will likely result in arrests

Since this made it to Congress, it means the US does seem to worry about these matters. Let’s hope we can turn the thumbscrews tighter bit by bit, until the US stops disregarding eons of civilization by torturing people.

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On the other hand, if The Netherlands has had the most critique on the US… Europe is one coward continent.

Two left-wing parties have directly attacked the consitutional monarchy of The Netherlands.

In The Netherlands, it is the Queen who designates, after elections, the ‘formateur’ (’he who forms’). The formateur is usually someone from the biggest party, who gets to assemble the new government; secretaries, vice-secretaries, you name it. Often, but not always, the formateur becomes Prime-Minister. As you can see, the Royal Family therefore has quite an amount of power; much more, in any case, than in any of the other European monarchies; however, this power is mostly theoretical, since deviation from the electoral results would inevitably lead to a constitutional crisis, bringing the Monarchy to its end. The left-wing parties want to abolish this ‘power’, and instead of the Queen, let the newly-elected lower-house choose the formateur.

Why am I so furiously against this? Would it not make our country more democratic?

I believe in “if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it”. The way our government works, including its electory system, and the power of the Queen, has served us extremely well; it has made us disgustingly wealthy, powerful, and happy (we’re on of the happiest people on earth). We are an economic powerhouse (esp. taking our small size into account), we do fairly well in the sports area, everybody likes us (being Dutch really opens doors abroad), and so forth.

Of course there are enough things wrong over here as well; for instance, our schoolig system has seen too many detrimental changes over the past decade, bringing it to the brink of collapse (and I can know, I’m part of the first generation to have been taught in the new system), and many more things. However, will those things be solved by changing an old and proven system, which has never given anybody any problems?

In other words, where is the problem to this ’solution’? I want my government and elected officials to solve the problems of this country; I do not want them to make pointless laws and changes that seem to originate in weird ideological leftist crap, that do not serve any purpose other than getting the party names all over the news (easy media exposure).

Luckily, this proposal won’t make it through, since a majority of the lower house has already proclaimed not to support it. However, with this populist, pointless proposal, the left-wing parties have lost even the slightest chance of getting my vote. In fact, this unargumented longing to attack the Monarchy, displayed by left-wing parties for decades now, is what forces me to always be on the right side of the political spectrum. So, even though I strongly believe our country currently needs a left-wing government, they will not get my vote as long as they keep attacking the Monarchy.

Don’t fcuk with the Constition and the Monarchy.

My weekend.

Friday evening, Levi and Annemarie celebrated their birthdays together in Het Pleidooi, in Amsterdam.

Parked my car at Levi’s, in Amsterdam.

Met Levi’s girlfriend for the first time. An open and enthusiastic person, perfect fit for Levi.

I’ve drunk just about any alcoholic beverage in my life, but somehow I never got to trying out Tequila; this changed tonight. I don’t know what the hubbub is about. It’s fcuking tasteless.

Since I needed to drive back home from Amsterdam (55km) early the next morning, I kind of veto’d staying later than 3am. I still feel kind of guilty, we had the pub to ourselves and it was a really good atmosphere.

Back at Levi’s, I found out Levi can snore like fcuk. Marco fell into a coma, and slept right through it. I did not. Smacked Levi around with a pillow, bumped his bed, literally pulled his leg. Nothing worked. In the end I got so pissed off I took my sleeping bag with me to Levi’s roomate’s room, who wasn’ t home, and slept on the floor. Like a baby.

I was thinking of what I’d say if that roomate would come home, despite Levi saying he would not. I forgot what I’d come up with.

Ninety minutes later, my phone signalled the start of a new day, at 6:30. Fifteen minutes later, I drove off.

Nothing is as soothing as listening to good music, with the cobwebs of last night in your head, while driving down a deserted eight-lane A8.

The rest of the Saturday, I was in click-off mode at work, only to overcome my body’s booting problems at 20hrs (ninety minutes is not enough sleep to be productive). At which point I hopped back into my car, en route to Levi again.

Apparantly, Ali G In Da House is a whole lot more fun when you’re drinking.

This does not apply to Kill Bill II, which is a scaringly good film no matter the mental state of the audience.

rEsPeCt to Frederik.

“You have ten seconds left to finish this voicemail message.”

I went to the roomate’ s room straight away in order to not be victim of the same snoreterror.

I had a great weekend.

Interesting, Wikipedia has an article on Dutch etiquette and proper manners.

A very interesting read, as it was obviously written by an outsider. For the most part, the author is right. However, one thing is kind of odd:

If one does get invited for dinner then please note that the men are expected to wait until all women are seated before they themselves sit down.

This is weird, I never knew this. I’m not sure if this is part of the higher etiquette; in any case, I have never seen it before. It might also be that what the author is referring to is the fact that when on a dinner with a lady, the man is supposed to seat the lady first before he himself sits down.

For the rest, the article is pretty much dead-on. A must-read if you plan to go to The Netherlands. The last paragraph felt almost personal:

In the Netherlands, commitments are taken seriously and are honoured. Do not promise anything or make an offer you are not planning to deliver on. When making a verbal agreement with someone and others are present it has about the same worth as a signed contract (even from a legal viewpoint), so avoid making loose promises at all costs.

So true, so true.

Language is an ever-changing entity. Language morphs, changes. New words are formed, old words assume new meanings. Old sayings die out, new ones arise.

For this sole reason, complaining about language deterioration is like complaining about water being wet. English is one of the most heavily influenced languages in the world, and has been so for centuries. Due to Viking conquests, French occupation, and heavy Latin influences, about 67% of the English vocabulary is derived from languages other than (old-)English. In fact, about 1% of the English vocabulary stems from… Dutch, due to the Golden Age (1600-1700), when we basically ruled the world.

So, complaining about the purity of English, or the fact that expressions are used in the wrong contexts, is utterly pointless, and kind of hypocritical, at best. If you are so concerned over the purity of English, you better drop 67% of the words you use today.

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As some of you may know, I now do a language study at university. English, with some social/communication sciences attached.

An Israeli officer has admitted that the Israeli army has thrown 1.2 million clusterbombs; other sources from within the military say they used phosphorusbombs on people too. The officer literally said:

We covered entire villages with clusterbombs. The way we waged war was monstrous and crazy.

I don’t give a rat’s ass if Israel is a democracy or not. They are an agressor, and ought to be dealt with accordingly. I stand by my solution not to recognise either Palestine or Israel as sovereign states, freezing all material and financial aid, until both parties have achieved sustainable peace, with Jerusalem being a seperate state, similar to the Vatican.

We have been nice for long enough now. If they won’t go the easy way, we’ll have to make them.

Apple just updated its whole iPod+iTunes line. Still a bunch of crap, if you ask me, and I will stick with HiMD (but ignore me, us 3.5 MD fans are weirdos stuck in the ’90s).

The interesting bit, however, is the code-name iTV. It’s a settop box to which you can stream content via iTunes. Really cool, love the idea, looks great, and I’m not kidding, I want one (despite the USD 299 pricetag, which I find ridicoulous for a glorified receiver).

However, industry standards, anyone? HiFi components… Aren’t they all supposed to be 43cm wide? Why does Apple, as always, feel the need to disregard decades of industry standards, making a device that looks really good, but won’t actually fit into any HiFi component set-up? And I’m not even talking about the the industry standard colours (black and silver) they refuse to use! I’ve got hundreds of Euros worth of equipment here– the iTV won’t fit, however.

You’d think they’d learn. Now, I won’t buy one, since I can’t put it anyhwere.

Just bougt “J. J.Cale, Collected”, that’s 3 discs with 60 J. J. Cale songs.

I knew his individual hits (”Cocaine”, “After Midnight”, etc.) but I never knew they al were from one and the same man. What a great album.

I want to talk to you about a scientific principle from the 14th century. This principle is called Ockham’s Razor, and it explains that if you have two different theories capable of explainging the same event or phenomenon, the simplest one is usually the correct one. Most people (including myself, actually) got to know this principle via the film ‘Contact’.

Yesterday was 9/11. There are two theories concerning this event. One says the attacks were staged by the United States government, meaning the US gov. has been working for years, with thousands of people, companies, airlines, explosives experts, controlled demolition experts, politicians, the military, etc. without any of them ever leaking any kind of information to the outside world. The US gov. would be willing to kill thousands of innocent people in order to justify going to war with Iraque.

The second theory says that a bunch of brilliant idiots came up with the relatively simple plan of hijacking a few planes and fly them into important buidings, causing mass hysteria and terror.

Back to Ockham’s Razor. You get my point?

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Of course I’m not even going into the fact that almost all claims made by our black helicopter-loving friends have been refuted [.wmv] using scientific research, in particular research by Dutch controlled demolition experts, aeronautic engineers, and scientists from the Technical University in Delft.

A random set of exmaples: the black helicopter people say that the turn the plane that crashed into the Pentagon made was impossible, the plain would fall apart. Nonsense; aeronautic engineers in The Netherlands put inexperienced pilots in Boeing 757 simulators, and made them do the turn; they all succeeded. Scientists from the TU Delft calculated that the maximum amount of G forces experienced during this maneouvre did not surpass 1.5G. You experience more in your car.

Secondly, the claim that controlled demolition was used to destroy the WTC: the controlled demolition experts explained that the building started coming down EXACTLY where the planes hit; it did not look like controlled demolition AT ALL. The fact that the tower who got hit later came down first was because that plane hit lower, meaning more weight of the tower pressed upon the sore spot of the tower, making it come down earlier. The scientists from the TU Delft calculated that the amount of energy of the planes and the crashes were enough to bring down the towers.

And so every argument was torn apart by people who actually know what they are talking about.

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People who believe in these 9/11 conspiracies, as with all other conspiracies, are moronic idiots. “omg wtf lolololol theres a movie on t3h 1nt3rnet, it must be true roxx0rs!”

Look boys and girls, I detest the current US gov. as much as the next guy, but they will not kill innocent Americans like this. To even think that, is completely moronic, and if you believe in nonsense like this, you are ripe for the men in white coats.