A recent video of a victim turning against his bully has made the news and is being discussed on MeFi. A specific comment is worth reading twice:

You know, something just struck me.

People relentlessly bullied as children never forget that bullying. They remember faces, names, places, and the precise …

In his essay Mind the Gap, Paul Graham (a well known LISP supporter and brilliant programmer) defends that wealth is not something you steal away, that it is something you can create.

As an example he cites the wealth creation performed by Apple, driven by Steve Jobs, where the accrued …

The US military has warned that surplus oil production capacity could disappear within two years and there could be serious shortages by 2015 with a significant economic and political impact.

Reminds me of a comment from another time:

Imagine for a moment, then, that we’re discussing an experiment involving …

Liu Xiaobo is on trial. The verdict is due on Dec 25th, 2009, when western media is on holiday so as to reduce international attention on the case.

Liu Xiaobo is a human rights activist and signatory of Charter 08, a groundbreaking manifesto requesting the modernization of the Chinese state …

Recently: http://www.gilestro.tk/2009/lots-of-smoke-hardly-any-gun-do-climatologists-falsify-data/.

Simultaneously, found on the Independer:

Climate models, which is what the “scientists” use cannot produce evidence. They give a large number of “what if” scenarios. Picking one of these because it fits with the political message is snake-oil selling; not science.

Go check …

The recent months have kept me more busy than usual with work, but meanwhile my position in a University has altogether increased my consumption of news items, both on paper and in bit arrangements. One would assume that the flurry of world events would call for a steady stream of …

Looking at the world since 2001, according to WHO & other reports:

• >2,500,000,000 humans living with less than $2 per day (decreasing);
• 50,000,000-70,000,000 deaths per year, of which:
  • >7,000,000 deaths per year due to cancer (increasing)
  • >2,500,000 deaths per year …

Today’s conversation added to the list of concerns evolving around my mind at the moment:

• will China invade Siberia when oil becomes scarce? or Iran?
• what will be the form of the next conflict between Japan and China?
• who will end up controlling North Korea?
• why doesn’t the …

Evidence shows clearly that we will not be able to eat fish in the future unless strong global policing action is taken now. We know already that future generations will never enjoy cod as a popular and usual dish. Still, even so-called “developed” countries make irrational political moves about fishing …

In a blog entry a professional photographer from Colorado wonders how same-sex weddings impact his business. The author crams his foot in his mouth very effectively:

Put aside for a moment your own values. Would it hurt or help your business to photograph same-sex commitment ceremonies or weddings?

Regardless of …

In 1793, as it just overtook power in France, the new government decided to open the tombs of the French kings in Saint-Denis and throw a thousand years of history into a pit as a celebration of their victory.

In 2001, the Taliban destroyed the two gigantic Buddhas of Bamyan …

Today the read box from irrepressible.info was quoting a paragraph from the Iranian Gay & Lesbian Healthcare Providers Association; this prompted me to discover more about this group, and I read some of their articles.

In one of them the following sentence rung a bell:

My family, like most Iranian …

Yesterday evening I had a lively discussion with two colleague from work, about the cultural differences between the Netherlands and North America. It boils down to two ideas:

• the perceived freedom in the Netherlands is merely a superficial by-product of the blissful indifference of the average Dutch citizen towards other …