Cogs can think.

I’m in a dilemma.

Dutch politics is in a weird position right now. As you know, there were elections a few weeks ago. Right during the election, the sitting secretaries send in their resignations to the Queen; the Queen then withholds these resignations, asking the secretaries to take care of running business. They are not allowed to make policy changes, to make new policy, or whatever. When the formation period is over and a new cabinet has been created, the Queen accepts the resignations, ending the government’s service. The whole point is that the Lower House is also not supposed to force policy changes or make new policy. And yet, this is exactly what they did the past few days.

You see, in The Netherlands there has been a lot of discussion concerning a general pardon for 26000 asylum seekers who still fall under our old (pre-2001) asylum policies. These people have been living in this country for years, and many of them have gotten children born here, and not in the country where they originally came from. These 26000 people are now supposed to be thrown out of the country.

Now, before the elections, there was no majority for this general pardon. After the elections, there was, and the left wing has used this sudden majority to press this general pardon through.

I am a proponent of this general pardon, but I am against the way they pressed this through. The general pardon is an important point in the ongoing formation process, and hence it should have never been pressed through like this. It is not unconstitutional or anything, but it is simply wrong. They are throwing out 170 years of parliamentary customs, just like that. Political games– for a good cause, but with the wrong means and at the wrong time.

During the debate, the lower house also accepted what is called a “motie van wantrouwen” against the Secretary of Integration (Verdonk, responsible for asylum policies), which basically means that the Lower House withdraws confidence in her, meaning she has to either resign, or change the policies until the Lower House finds it acceptable. But– how can she resign when her resignation is already withheld by the Queen, because of the elections?

The prime minister has jumped through a major set of hoops; the throwing out of the 26000 group is being put on hold for a subset of this group until the formation process is over, and Verdonk has transferred the responsibility for asylum policies to the Secretary of Justice.

Stuff like this pisses me off. The cabinet should’ve just put the throwing out of the 26000 group on hold until the formation process was over and a decision had been made on the general pardon. On the other end of the power spectrum, the lower house should have never abused its power like this. It is appalling, and damages the face of politics even more.

Bought some cool stuff the past few days. I bought LED lighting for in my house, season 2 and 3 of Coupling, and an USB 2.0 PCI card for my desktop (it didn’t have USB 2.0 yet). I also got a 30GB Creative Zen Extra MP3 player from a friend, since he already has a new one for a long time now. Great piece of machinery.

For the rest, all quiet on the Warmenhuizen front (lame joke, I know).

You know what I hate the most about this world? The people living in it.

Seriously.

All nine Christmas trees have been removed from Sea-Tac International Airport instead of adding a giant Jewish menorah to the holiday display as a rabbi had requested. Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky, who made his request weeks ago, said he was appalled by the decision. He had hired a lawyer and threatened to sue if the Port of Seattle didn’t add the menorah next to the trees, which had been festooned with red ribbons and bows.

Stuff like this piss me off. Minorities living in the west, get fcuking over the fact that we are a Christian culture. Our entire way of living is built upon the bible; even today, in our secular societies, Christian values are what shapes our way of living. Things like respect, freedom of speech, love thy neighbour, and more of that mushy stuff; it are all Jesus Christ’s teachings. If you want Jewish symbols during Christmas time, go to your local Synagogue, or book a flight to Israel. If you want Muslim symbols, go to your local Mosque or to your Islam country of choice.

I don’t see westerners demanding Christmas trees in Istanbul or Tel Aviv now do I?

Fcuking disgusting.

Other than reminding me of myself, this song reminds me of someone else… Maybe the best lyrics Nina Persson ever put on paper. It’s called “3:45 AM: No Sleep”.

It’s way too late to think of
Someone I would call now
The neon signs got tired
Red eye flights help the stars out
I’m safe in a corner
Just hours before me

I’m waking with the roaches
The world has surrendered
I’m dating ancient ghosts
The ones I made friends with
The comfort of fireflies
Long gone before daylight

And if I had one wish fulfilled tonight
I’d ask for the sun to never rise
If God lent his voice to me to speak
I’d say, go to bed, world

I’ve always been too lame
To see what’s before me
And I know nothing sweeter than
Champagne from last new year’s
Sweet music in my ears
And a night full of no fear

But if I had one wish fulfilled tonight
I’d ask for the sun to never rise
If God passed the mic to me to speak
I’d say, stay in bed, world

Sleep in peace

It’s a drowsy Monday here in The Netherlands. Wind, rain, classic autumn– over one month too late. Sure, there’s no climate change.

Earlier this week I gave my DVD copy of Fucking Åmål to Felicia, since she hasn’t yet seen the best film ever made. I wanted to refresh my memory by watching it again before giving it to Feliesje, but I didn’t have the time.

So, I watched the final two scenes on YouTube; especially the last scene, known as the chocolate milk scene, is the best piece of film ever made. You have to watch the whole film to understand how much is said when Agnes laughs at the seemingly irrelevant story Elin is telling about how she usually puts too much powder in the glass when making the chocolate milk so that she needs to pour it into a bigger glas or into two glasses when there’s no big glass… It’s just all so… Disarming.

If you have not yet seen this film, you simply lack a piece of personal development. This film should be part of your education.

Traffic jams are a major problem in The Netherlands. For about 5-6 hours a day, our entire country is stuck in one big gridlock, and this is of course extremely damaging to not only the economy, but also the environment. Countless solutions have been proposed and tried, but nothing has so far worked.

As far as I am concerned, there is only one solution. Right now, cars are all individual tiny metal boxes, they are not connected to other cars on the road, they live on islands, completely unaware of what the cars around them are doing. What leads to traffic jams are people having trouble with merging lanes, on and off ramps, and unnecessary braking. If all cars on the highway did 120 kph standard, there would be no traffic jams.

So, the obvious solution is to automate everything. Design a system where cars are no longer at the whim of the drivers (and trust me, 90% of the people cannot drive), but in fact rely on computers and satnav systems to guide them to their destinations. If every car has a computer designed to let cars run at the maximum allowed speed, traffic jams would still be there, but they’d be moving at 120 kph, and hence it will look like a traffic jam on a still photo, but in fact all the cars are automagically kept at a safe distance while moving at the maximum speed.

There, another problem solved.

In The Netherlands, there was little coverage of it, but apparently, a CNet editor and his family got lost in Oregon in the snow. The pas two week rescue parties tried to find them; they found the wife and two daughters, but the editor himself was found dead. The sad conclusion of the story did get coverage here, though.

Anyway, I didn’t know the guy, but in some way he was a colleague, since we both work(ed) for a technology news site; and CNet isn’t a bad site (the design sucks, but that’s just me).

My condolences and all that.

Golden oldie by Winston Churchill:

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

As many of you know, I ain’t no fan of democracy. It’s the least bad form of government, but my god, does it suck. I’d much rather have a benevolent ‘dictatorship’, where a government remains in power until the people decide they want change (no idea how that would work in practice but you get my point), eliminating the nuisance of elections as much as possible. I’d love for the Royal Family to get more power.

But oh well. It’ll do for now.

If anyone has an old PowerMac G4 (at least 512MB of RAM) to spare and who wants to get rid of it with a minimal amount of fuss, please contact me at slakje@@@quicknet.nl.

Hey, it’s worth a try.

Yesterday, as a sort of personal birthday present, I bought myself another album by The Cardigans: Long Gone Before Daylight, released in 2003. Critically, this album was not as well received as their other albums, so I did not really know what to expect. Obviously critics are full of shit 99.9% of the time, so I went out to buy it anyway at my local independent record store, Pop-Eye in Big City Alkmaar.

And while listening to the album at the store, it hit me; I knew why critics did not like this album.

Obviously, it had absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the music I was listening to. You see, Long Gone Before Daylight was their first studio album after their big international hit album Gran Turismo in 1998. But instead of doing what fairly mediocre and uninspiring bands do after a big hit album (Coldplay and Keane come to mind) they did not continue down the same path; they did not create Gran Turismo II. Long Gone Before Daylight is darker, less accessible than the sometimes frivolous sound of Gran Turismo.

And “critics” do not like this. They want you to change, but not too much; they want you to stay the same, but not too much. I see a few men nodding; exactly, critics are like women. Gran Turismo was a massive success, and it takes guts to stray from a successful path in the music industry. Especially to come out better than before, and not to come running back to your old and tried style after you “critics” hit you.

Because their last album, Super Extra Gravity, my favourite, is different all over again, but nothing like anything they ever made. And this is what makes a band great: the will to experiment– but not forgetting what you’re good at.