News

Yesterday I sent a letter to the national newspaper Metro Nieuws. It appeared that today they published that letter as “Letter of the Day“ (in Dutch: Brief van de Dag). Nice to have my minute of national fame.

The letter was about the new worldchampions sailing. I asked my co-workers after the new worldchampions yesterday and noone seemed to understand what I was talking about. This is odd and annoyed me, because the Dutch national soccer team were met with honors, had a canal tour and a huge party on the main square of Amsterdam. They actually were runner up… they didn’t make it to world champion. I am sure you get the picture.

The published letter has been shortened a lot, so for those interested, you’ll find the full text that I intended to have published under the cut. For those not understanding Dutch: sorry, guys!

A few hours ago a plane crash happened close to Smolensk in Russia. In dense fog the plane in which the Polish president, his wife and other important Polish people were transported to Smolensk crashed 1.5 mile from the airport. The news is all over the internet, so use Google to find the articles. I have a few Polish trainees in my Monday class. I plan to discuss this accident in class coming Monday. My condoleances to the Polish community.

Today I was baffled by this article. Unfortunately it’s in Dutch. You’ll find a (bad!) Google translation here.

The bottom line is that Dutch women in their late thirties may lie over not using anti conception. They are deliberately looking for pregnancy, either from a onenightstand or a relationship coming to an end. These cases end up in court and because of a law from 1998 the women succeed in enforcing paternity on the guys involved.

I am fully aware that it takes two to make a baby. Guys are stupid not using a condom in the first place. Yet, thinking that some women obviously are like that makes me sick as heck! This is the sick world that we live in! They have a word for sick women like this and it ain’t pretty. Among many other thoughts and ideas that a lot of Dutch women have, this is a straight example why I married a woman from outside The Netherlands.

/end rant!

Today I found out that through facebook and Twitter a huge snowball fight has been organized in Washington, DC. Movies are to be found on YouTube. I selected one movie for you to watch.

In other news the Middletown, CT explosion made it to the Dutch headlines (link to online newspaper and full article in Dutch). CNN opened a developing story on their website. I am worried.

In article a Dutch national newspaper reports black Friday in the US. It has pictures for those that don’t understand Dutch as much .

In this article (in Dutch), Burger King says that it wants to expand business in The Netherlands. In five year’s time it wants to double their number of locations.

We have a location in the city that we live in. I don’t like it, though. It’s not the ‘real deal’. Their location is in the railway station building, which is an old historic building. Nothing like a Burger King. So, expanding is fine… but please do it the American way!

I just came across this article. The article claims that the CEO of Goldman Sachs beliefs that banks serve a social purpose and are doing “God’s work.”. I wonder if he has been misquoted. If not I hope that someone will catch this man and put him behind bars. He scares me.

Your thoughts?

I just read this article in the Tennessean. The title reads: “Obama’s peace prize carries message: U.S. leadership is restored”.

Reading that title in an American newspaper makes me unhappy. I hoped that the US finally left the self-proclaimed “We Are God!!” time behind them. Obviously some people in that country still have a very long way to go.

While reading The Tennessean, I came across this article. In the article economists go into the near future of the US in the current economic situation. One of the people interviewed for this article is Robert Manning. I find him an interesting person. He featured in the movie “In Debt We Trust”. Leann wrote a very large entry in this weblog about this movie.

The bottom line of the article in the Tennessean is that many Americans will (have to) change their lifestyle. It says that it will never go back to the way it used to be. The main reason: the US economy thrives on US consumers. With credit not being as wide available any longer, this will probably change. I tend to agree to that. Nevertheless it will slow down economic recovery for the US, or so I think.

I am seeking for input, especially Americans. What do you think? Any insight on the article?

Today marks another special day; it’s September 9, 2009 (09/09/09). I have looked around in the media and it appears that in The Netherlands this date is not experienced as very special. You would expect a run on weddings and other activities on this remarkable date. Really there isn’t.

What I have planned on this special day? I have a meeting with someone from my network, I have to make an haircut appointment and I hope to talk to someone about my future. I do hope that it won’t be a really busy day. I need to catch my breath.

Last week Tuesday a terrible accident happened close to where we live. A police officer on a motorcycle tried to clear traffic for an ambulance. In that he was hit by a car. Someone managed to actually record that on video. NOTICE: the video is SHOCKING.

EDIT: The video has been removed from YouTube due to violation of terms of use (obviously it was too shocking). This link will take you to the video, as well.

I am disheartened by this accident. I believe two things went wrong:

1) The cars behind the truck were driving too close to one another and too close behind the truck
2) The officer should have realized that driving behind a truck narrows the visibility for cars

The officer survived this bad accident and got injured badly. This morning he was awakened from the coma that he was sustained in. For me this was another rough reminder to keep your head out there while driving.

Not long ago a Dutch judge ruled that the Pirate Bay, the torrent site Pirate Bay had to implement technical solutions to prevent downloading people in The Netherlands from downloading content that would infringe copyrighted material such as music and (especially) movies. The lawsuit was filed by the Dutch “BREIN Foundation” (the equivalent of the American MPAA). The Pirate Bay is an important source of material that infringes copyrights. Today a Dutch judge has ruled something similar against the Dutch website Mininova. They have to make sure to filter out any material (read: torrent) that violates copyrights. I am very impressed, because the industry starts to manage to bring illegal download sites to court and win these lawsuits against them.

On a different note, though: it seems that the industry starts to battle even harder against piracy than ever before. I really wonder what’s behind all this. Are they finally, really fed up with piracy or is something else behind it. It has become very easy to download content that has copyrights on it, such as movies. It does not really take a whole lot and with current internet speed it doesn’t take a lot of time, either. Before we had download sites, such as LimeWire and Kazaa, but the market changed to “torrents”. I have read that 27%-55% of all internet bandwidth is being spend on downloading illegal content. That gives to think.

I hope that with the industry winning more and more lawsuits, they will consider the reasons behind downloading illegal content. The ‘real’ problem is that prices that the industry is asking for their (copyrighted) products are very high. I hope they really start to think about the prices they are asking for their products.

It’s been a very warm day today. That will change soon, or rather… it already did. Right now we are under a weather alarm. Tonight we’ll have stormy weather with a lot of thunderstorms. The latest weather reports really don’t look good. Below you’ll find the latest weather reports:

The yellow icons you see are thunderstorms. I guess we better duck.

“Financial crisis” has become a real media hype the past few months. A few months ago it was total ‘war’ on the stock exchanges and millions of people lost their jobs. The media is talking about recession and depression. Yet… let’s look at the stock exchange today. The DJIA (Dow Jones Index) closed 9,370 last, which is about 2,500 points up from its low a few months ago. The AEX (Amsterdam EXchanges) closed 290 last Friday, which is 100 points up from its low a few months ago. Just taking these two closes, disregarding the past, one could claim it was an ordinary business day. It’s just the past few months that were hard.

So, considering these two closes of last Friday: when would the media (and others) stop talking about “crisis and recession”? Is it really this bad and has it been that bad at all? Haven’t “we” been overreacting? I am very hopeful that soon we’ll be out of the woods, if we aren’t already. This thought depends on how media and others try to influence the rest of the world.

My last entry got a zillion comments most of them wondering what the article is all about. For those not speaking Dutch, I have translated the article in English to the best of my abilities. The original idea for my article came from this article in the Tennessean (Nashville, TN Newspaper). You’ll find the translation of the article under the cut.