Money, money, money

Posted on September 14, 2003 by Arthur

For no particular reason, I was looking around for scans of banknotes, probably driven by a link over at Metafilter (‘Ever seen a $100,000 bill?‘).

I ended up looking for the Dutch 25 and 100 guilders bills. The first one was released in 1989 and I fondly recall having one of the first 25 bills in my hand when I was attending a computer fair. A couple of Belgiums (Belgians?) were eager to accept those new bills because they thought it was just another great Dutch invention (I said this cynically: you have to know the history of Belgium and The Netherlands. In short: Belgium was once part of The Netherlands).

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Gansevoort

Posted on September 13, 2003 by Arthur

A picture over at the Gothamist, of the NYC’s Gansevoort market, reminds me of a city in the east of The Netherlands, that is Deventer. For some kind of reason I thought I recognized ‘De Waag ‘ (The Scale) on ‘De Brink’.

I couldn’t find a similar shot as made in Deventer, but ended up over at this page with plenty of other images of places I recognized. My favourite shot is the one overseeing ‘De Brink’: for obvious reasons. Spot my bike in this picture! Or see this image of the most famous store in The Netherlands (that’s where we also bought our first computer), pretty much comparable with our local Margolians. Or any department store.

As for Gansevoort, it’s a Dutch word consisting of two parts: Gans (‘Goose) and voort (basically an undeep spot in a river, where people normally cross).

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MORE …of the same…

Posted on September 13, 2003 by Arthur

Earlier this morning, at Political Cartoons (which resolves to Slate’s, so you may just as well click the latter link) I found this cartoon of Mike Lane, illustrating the burning of money in Iraq, with Bush (I presume) yelling ‘More Money’.

Although I didn’t think that cartoon was particularly funny, for some kind of reason, I thought it was surreal because it looked so familiar.

Just a little while ago, they played that Spam (Hormel’s) commercial on TV. You know, that one where one of the leading characters is yelling ‘More Spam’ because they ran out of that meat. It’s a ridiculous commercial, but the use of colours (think Dick Tracy) in that one makes it obnoxious and surreal.

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Atlantic Film Festival 2003

Posted on September 12, 2003 by Arthur

The 23rd Atlantic Film Festival has started. Last year I noted that they had problems with their website, but this year it looks all fine to me.

Well. Except for the use of that blinking text. And it shows in their stylesheet (look for the anchor-entity). And the extensive use of frames.

But if you’re around, it’s apparently an event you don’t want to miss (program). That is, if you like cold weather, because it’s getting colder here. A bit too early in the season, methinks.

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Little mermaid

Posted on September 12, 2003 by Arthur

Some vandals knocked the most famous mermaid off her perch. We’re naturally talking about Copenhagen’s 90 year old bronze Little Mermaid, the one that oversees the city’s harbour.

The Mermaid has been subject to a couple of repeated vandalism: she has been beheaded, lost an arm and have been painted over many times. However this time the vandals used explosives to get her off her socket.

A while back, I visited Copenhagen with a friend (after the Roskilde fest ’96) and I remember checking out the Mermaid. If I recall correctly, my friend was able to jump up on the perch yelling at me to shoot a picture. Which I did. And many other tourists. I have no idea if it was allowed those days, to jump on that rock. I’m pretty sure it won’t be after this incident.

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Volcano thing

Posted on September 12, 2003 by Arthur

Report over at the Online Journal (via MetaFilter): apparantly there’s something brewing underneath the Yellowstone park: geologists suspect that a masssive supervolcano is lurking and possibly about to erupt. The vulcano is long overdue too: its regular eruption cycle is 600,000 years. It has already been 640,000 years since the last erruption.

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English English (revisited)

Posted on September 12, 2003 by Arthur

Earlier I was talking about the perfect English as spoken by Alfons. Over at kottke there’s a thread about bilangual conversations in which I mention the near-perfect institutionalized English of the Dutch people.

It reminds me of a phone call from a relative a couple years ago. I remember handing the phone over to my twin who afterwards handed it back to me. The relative noticed that we were obviously twins (we sounded alike) but unconsiously complimented me when he said that he recognized me by voice just because of the way we used to talk. ‘You’ve gotten used to speaking English’.

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Distributed weather stuff

Posted on September 12, 2003 by Arthur

Bored with your SETI online screensaver? Try a climate model!

Via the BBC, a collaboration between the universities of Oxford and Reading, the Met Office, the Open University, the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, and Tessella Support Services, resulted in a new ‘distributed’ project. Users over the world are asked to download a program which runs in the background, simulating future weather patterns. Results of each single download are sent back to the organisers.

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Bridging the divide

Posted on September 11, 2003 by Arthur

The BBC opened up some space for an interesting series called ‘Bridging the divide’, to discuss, explore and (hopefully) bridge the differences between the West and the Islam.

Yesterday they had a quite candid and open interview with president Musharraf in their Talking Point series. The next interviewee is the prime minister of Malaysia, who is due to retire this year and has been a vocal critic of both the Afghanistan and Iraq war.

Add your comment on the question ‘Does the West understand Islam?’. Apparently, reading the comments of other users, there is a lot to learn.

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Listen to the movies

Posted on September 11, 2003 by Arthur

I don’t know if this is legal, but it’s hilarious for sure: someone decided to rip off the complete audio of a bunch of movies, export them to Flash and make them available for everyone to hear and to enjoy.

   “Please dont ask for the audio files or your own copy of these files. Somehow I don’t feel bad about displaying the movies I own. Turning people onto my favorite movies just seems natural. But since I’m not the owner of this material we may have to take this down sooner than later.”

Legal or not?

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What went wrong?

Posted on September 11, 2003 by Arthur

The Iranian conjoined twin wanted to have a separate life. The doctors wanted to be added to the history book. And it went wrong.

Wired reports how a piece of software led surgeons to oversee a critical vein:

   “At that point, I felt like a person heading into a dark jungle to hunt a hungry tiger with no gun”

Fascinating story how the misuse of technology and the doctors overconfidence ended in the death of a conjoined twin.

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Two years ago

Posted on September 11, 2003 by Arthur

Two years ago, when we lived in the other part of Truro, I tried to log-on to the regular news sources and noticed that they were either jammed or clogged up. There was a notice that something had happened in NY so I switched on the TV to watch ABC’s Good Morning America (we didn’t have CNN then). I witnessed the (later known) second plane crash in the WTC and was shocked, like so many others. Like so many other people around the world.

I carefully noted that, after taking the dog out, there was quite some air traffic in the air. It was cloudy but the planes were there, which I penned down in my LiveJournal. Around 11, my wife confirmed that a lot of planes were apparently redirected to Halifax airport, which she heard from an insurance adjustor. What was going on, she asked. Something you’ll never believe, I answered. And I believe I tried to explain her what had exactly happened.

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A-Solo-for-Foreigners-from-the-moon

Posted on September 10, 2003 by Arthur

The International Air Transport Association says that passengers are discriminated in Canada: a recent report notices that flyers to and from Canada pay $24 extra for a return flight, while the domestic ones only pay 14 dollars.

The international organization says that the fees are classical examples of security costs gone wrong, while the federal government maintains that these fees are necessary to pay for the higher costs of airport security:

   “Enhanced air travel security benefits directly and principally the air travellers who use the system,” Scandiffio said in an interview. So therefore a user charge is fair and fiscally responsible.”

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