Cogs can think.

Scientific research like this interests me beyond imagination. I find it fascinating how researchers find pieces of real-world evidence that actually support many myths and legends found in cultures all over the world. Fire raining from the sky, as in Sodom and Gomorra, is not something exclusive to the bible/torah - similar myths and legends can be found all over the world. The same thing goes for the story of Noah, and the big flood God caused to whipe the slate clean. Stories of such epic floods can be found in cultures as diverse as the Mayans, Egyptians, and our Christian/Muslim/Judaic cultures (let’s face it, those last three are more or less the same).

To me, this indicates that various global disasters are somehow engraved in mankind’s collective consciousness. It is not hard to imagine that the end of some ice age, which obviously would lead to a dramatic rise in sea level and loss of habitable land all over the world, has somehow made its way to various folk tales and myths, passed on from generation to generation, until someone decided to pen them down - like the writers of the Old Testament did.

Personally, I think cellular memory can account for more of these kinds of cases. Take the dragon, for instance. Dragons appear in cultures all over the world, in one form or another. In any case, lizard-like creatures that may or may not breath fire. Now, how can you explain that cultures that have never had any contact with one another, share the concept of the ‘dragon’?

To me, cellular memory is something that may explain this. Even though this is utterly speculative, with no roots in any proper scientific studies that I know of, I think it would be feasible that our early ancestors - small rodent mammals - who lived during the ages of the dinosaurs, somehow engraved “memories” of these gigantic creatures into their cells, over long periods of time.

Evolution took its course, eventually leading to us - a species with a very well developed brains, most likely the first ever brain capable of ‘wording’, of ‘communicating’, bits and pieces of this cellular memory, leading to the fact that the ‘dragon concept’ manifested itself all over the world.

Despite there being no scientific base for these claims, it seems reasonable to me, it makes sense to me. It can explain many startling similarities between vastly differing cultures, cultures that may not have even existed alongside one another during the same timespan.

Think about this one for a while. It’s interesting material, and I’ve always been saddened by the fact that studies into this matter are far, far beyond my capabilities.

As long as they don’t start squealing, toddlers can actually be kind of fun and cute. At work today, a customer comes in with his little son, probably about 2 years old. He was wearing this miniature version of a blue worker’s overall, with baby wellingtons on his feet, and it just looked SO DARN CUTE.

I’m so going to make my future son wear one of those overalls at all times, including the wellingtons. Even at night.

And then, when he gets older, he’ll buy a pick up truck, and he’ll shoot at birds with bb guns. And I’m going to be SO PROUD.

The Groningen weekend has already settled itself firmly into my long-term memory. Synapses have been firing for so long now, that permanent paths have been created between them, and have been strengthened. It has found its place next to Antwerp and La Roche.

Gemma has put her photos of Groningen online. This is a selection (the entire album itself is locked for you outsiders, you see).

Gemma wins a round of Yahtzee. Somehow, this photo turns a big smile on my face.

Sarieke and Nadia. These are what I call manipulation-smiles. When you, as a girl, want something done from me, just smile like this. I’ll do anything.

Sarieke, me, and Nadia, walking towards the Thom Martini Tower. Yes, I’m balding badly, and no, I don’t give a rat’s ass.

Nadia, Marco, and Martin, atop the Martini Tower. I was downstairs, ready to puke my brains out. This was during ‘the morning after’, you see.

This is Lot, crawling through the narrow access into the living quarters of the boat. It’s a miracle no one got hurt.

To quote The Goo Goo Dolls, god it’s good to be alive.

My bestest best friend had to transcribe three interviews from a voice recorder to plain paper. She hadn’t a clue as to how the thing worked, so whenever she wanted to turn it off, she just yanked the battery out of the poor thing. She didn’t use any of the buttons since she was afraid she’d erase something.

But despite this crude but effective safety measure the universe still found a way to fcuk with her. It let her accidentally press the dedicated ‘erase’ button, resulting in the loss of a 30 minute interview.

I couldn’t help but laugh when she told me over the phone a few days ago. Usually I’m the one who performs brilliant actions like this. Or so I thought.

I also remembered how about a year ago, I let a customer walk away without having payed for the 800 EUROS WORTH OF WOOD MY COLLEAGUE WAS LOADING IN HIS TRUCK ‘ROUND BACK.

The moral? I can counter every act of stupidity with something stupider. You get used to it.

Speaking of Wilders, here’s another gem.

Ultimately many fundamental problems in the Netherlands are directly related to migrants, like infrastructure, traffic jams, housing problems, the welfare state.

Traffic jams are caused by immigrants? And there I was, thinking they were caused by badly laid-out highways with too little capacity.

This weekend, Geert Wilders was publicly exposed for the xenophobic idiot that he is.

As the world knows by now, the guy has made an anti-Islam film - well, he says he has, but no one has ever seen it, for the simple reason that he has no venue for publication. Dutch broadcasting companies are not willing to broadcast the film, YouTube doesn’t want it either, and the announcement website has been taken down by Network Solutions.

Wilders always said that if a broadcasting company knocked on his door, they could broadcast the film the same day.

And that’s where the Dutch Muslim Broadcaster comes into play. This extremely small organisation, who gets a few moments of airtime on Sunday mornings, officially offered to broadcast the film. This organisation is not extremist at all - they have a history of allowing criticasters of Islam to have their say on their shows. Theo van Gogh, Ayaan Hirsi-Ali, they’ve all been there.

There were two conditions. One, they get to see the film prior to broadcasting, just to prevent any legal issues if it contains content against the law (racism, for instance). A perfectly acceptable condition, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find any broadcaster or network in the world who will broadcast anything without screening it first. The second condition is the more important one. They said, ok, we’ll air the film, but we do want you, Geert Wilders, to go into a televised discussion afterwards, with other people.

And this is the reason Wilders declined. Wilders has never gone into discussion with anyone; he never comes on debate shows on TV, he never accepts any invitations to public debates, he even always refuses to go into discussion with any other politician. This is the big point of criticism on Wilders, and it’s a very, very valid one.

The job of an elected representative of the people is to go into discussion with them. Not doing so just proves your arguments are weak.

And of course, they are weak. He claims that the Islam culture is inferior to ‘Western culture’, and that it is lightyears behind in development. According to him, it’s a retarded culture. This is the funny thing. If our culture really is so much better, so much more divine, so much more developed - then why is he so afraid all the time? If our culture is so strong, shouldn’t we consequently be able to withstand any influences quite easily?

Islam poses no real threat to our way of life. Sure, there are difficulties, but we’ll work them out. Our way of life survived two world wars, social change during the ’60s, and the cold war - I think we’ll survive a few religious nutjobs. I mean, let’s face it, we can handle the religious nutjobs in the Christian and Jewish worlds too.

What poses the real threat are those people willing to give up unconditional equality simply because they are insecure about their own culture. Unconditional equality is undebatable, and cannot be forfeit. It is the very building block of our society. Without it, we are no better than those Muslim extremists.

The last few times we decided to take away the rights of people based on race or religion (what people like Wilders want), we ended up in worlds of shit. Never forget that.

It’s weird, almost intriguing, how the death of a loved one can make people transcend their normal abilities, cross their own borders. It makes some people rise far above themselves. You see this in the weirdest of places.

8 Simple Rules. A fairly mediocre, but at times quite entertaining comedy series. I watch the syndications every day, but more as a matter of ‘roomfiller’ than anything else. It has a few fairly clever jokes each episode.

Until I watched today’s episode, where the main character of the show actually died. The show transcended its normal abilities, and the actors delivered an outstanding performance. In fact, it was moving. Their pain felt extremely sincere, honest. The arguments, the frustration, the emotions - it felt as if I was being sucked into my television. I stopped doing my dishes right there, and sat down on my coffee table. I’d never seen an episode this good - it stood out like an American in Paris. I went onto Wikipedia to investigate this anomaly of an episode a bit more closely.

And that’s when I realised why this episode was so good.

That main character, the actor portraying him. He had in fact died. He really died right before shooting that episode, and the makers decided to incorporate his death into the show. And they did a marvelous job.

I’ll be watching the show with more attention now.

I’d like to make a plea, emanating from deep within my heart.

There is no web 2.0. There is no web 3.0. These imply there has been a web 1.0, and that 2.0 is incompatible with 1.0. This is nonsensical. Proponents of the meaningless term say that ‘web 2.0′ is all about user supplied content, which in itself shows a complete lack of understanding of what the web actually is. The web has always been about user supplied content.

You know, a printing press for everyone, and more of that dreamy nonsense.

The web, as it is today, is no different from the web ten years ago. The users of the web supply it with content, and the content suppliers of the web also use it. That has been the damn essence of the web from day one - even The Man himself agrees with me. Blogs, wikis, those things supposedly web 2.0 are just new means to the same old web’s end: publish information. They make it easier. They do not change it, nor do they add any new elements. They just allowed people without experience with html/etc. to publish on the web. That’s all.

Teh internets is still the same. They just use more gradients now.

Another difficult musical decision I just made. What’s the best album by The Cardigans?

A few things you need to know about The Cardigans. Basically, the band’s career can be divided in two. Their first three albums (”Emmerdale” [1994], “Life” [1995], and “First Band On The Moon” [1996]) are not my thing. There’s nothing wrong with them technically, it’s just that the ’60s inspired sound is not for me. This period of The Cardigans, which I refer to as the ‘old Cardigans’, did produce one gem: “Lovefool”, probably known by just about anyone. A great song, with much more depth to it than you’d say upon hearing it for the first time.

No, my Cardigans are the ‘new Cardigans’, which started with 1998’s “Gran Turismo”, which had a completely different sound to it than their previous material: it was dark and electronic, and very, very well produced. From beginning to end, the album is one entity, songs logically flow into one another, and despite sporting just ten tracks, it’s enough. There’s only one way to describe this album: it’s done. These albums were followed by the country-inspired “Long Gone Before Daylight” in 2003, and the much darker and more raw “Super Extra Gravity” in 2005.

At first, I thought it would come down to either “Gran Turismo” or “Super Extra Gravity”, but surprisingly, after some intense listening sessions of the three ‘new Cardigans’ albums, I had to scrap “Super Extra Gravity” from the list. Despite the album sporting nothing but very, very good songs, it’s also a very inconsistent album. It goes from left to right, as if it doesn’t know what it wants to be. So, despite absolute gems like the pounding “Losing A Friend”, the manic “I Need Some Fine Wine And You, You Need To Be Nicer”, and the haunthing and chilling “And Then You Kissed Me, II”, the album lacks coherence.

Which leaves me with the other two. After some more listening, it became apparent to me that “Long Gone Before Daylight” just lacks something. I can’t really put my finger on it, but it seems as if the album lacks power. The percussion is fairly subdued, and the guitar play is light - not bad, but light. This creates a lack of power, a power that certainly is present on the other two.

By the way, the album’s closener, “3.45: No Sleep”, is a song you just have to have.

This means that the dark and electronic symphony “Gran Turismo” is my best album by The Cardigans. It’s an exercise in technical excellence, and it’s the best showcase for Nina’s dreamy, bedroom-y voice. I can’t help but fall in love with her every time I listen to the album.

All three albums are top-quality material, but “Gran Turismo” just stands out.

Today, I have encountered what could very well be the Dutch patient zero. I saw an emo. In Alkmaar. An emo in The Netherlands.

You know what this means right?

It has found a way to cross the Atlantic. It has found a way beyond the border of the United States, into Europe. No longer is the emo issue a domestic American problem - oh no. This is now an international problem.

Where is the Threshold plan when you need it? I want Molly!