Damn-Dutch

Compulsary contraception. It seems Rotterdam is discussing this for “unsuitable” mothers.

I am a little torn on the matter. On one hand it seems terrible to see a child brought into the world by infit parents. Simply my opinion on that matter, no particular facts back this up. I’m sure there are plenty of cases that can be brought forward.

On the other hand, is freedom not the freedom to do stupid things? Sort of like being a mother when you’re unsuitable for it? I wonder who sets the standard and if it might be applied beforehand or after the first (neglected?) child. I wonder if this doesn’t go against religious freedom also. Strictly speaking there is the usual bunch of Religious folk who will oppose to any kind of contraception… including this one?

An interesting debate to have, but I doubt it will ever come to any real legislation. It seems a restriction on life. It seems more viable to me if a less intrusive contraception method is used and not forced but recommended and made available.

I give you some proof of people losing it collectively.

It roughly started here. In short, deer farmed for commerce taken from their “farm” and to the island of Terschelling. Where they don’t belong, aren’t native and are a threat to the local wildlife, no doubt mostly the plantlife.

A few days later… this.
I know it’s in Dutch, let me explain the basics. Two dozen or so people, including several from the animal party, went on to the location where the first deer got shot and laid down a funeral wreath to show they don’t agree.

I hope they realise that they were raised for commercial purposes anyway and that they were endangering the local wildlife, which should be worth a lot more to anyone reading about this, since it’s an island ecology that’s very easily destabilised… anyone who thinks themselves good advocates for animals should know the delicate balance of island ecologies, even if they aren’t pristine.

What an excellent archive to keep. Bet someone took it home with them. Wonder if there are collectors basing collection on location…

Just a quick chuckle about this.

First off, a cat using a zebra crossing, excellent.
And secondly, like this is any different from entirely too many people who are too busy taking a fucking shower behind the wheel or whatever it is they’re doing while they’re rushing to work and don’t care to take any notice of traffic lights. Too many hours have I spent in the morning waiting for a bus and seeing people not noticing the light has changed. The ticket seems a bit silly.

Edit:
Well would you look at that, no ticket after all. Took a while but still good to hear that.

While I don’t particularly want to post about mr Wilders, I suppose it would be a bad thing if I didn’t. But let it be known that I don’t particularly care about him. The near-childish view of “I’m free to do anything I want, but they had better not be done to me or I’ll kick up a stink” is not worth more time than this single post unless it’s very noteworthy.

So he got banned from Britain. I laughed. Wondered on what grounds and at first half-heartedly agreed with his freedom of speech and his freedom to travel. Now that I’ve thought about it a little bit more and read up a little, the UK found a legitimate ground to pwnt him, and as a citizen of .nl and .eu he should abide to that or fight it through the proper channels. Of course doing that wouldn’t get him the media attention he wants… so I don’t believe he ever would have fought it the right way anyway. Now he can play the victim, which he so loves as he goes on spouting BS like no tomorrow.

The beauty of freedom is that I also have the freedom to not listen to his ranting and raving, which is exactly what I choose to do. Which is why you won’t find a lot of bitching about him here. I just don’t care.

I laughed when I read this.

They’re the ones choosing to live differently and they’re welcome to. However to me it seems a smart move to think of ways to be able to live that way, rather than bitch and moan if someone just happens to – be it intentionally or not – make that way of life harder to achieve.

Assuming they have to be reachable in case all hell (obviously the proverbial hell) breaks loose, a simple solution would’ve been using or screening calls through ye olde answering machine, voicemail etc. I’m sure there are other ways as well like “unless the country is about to be destroyed by mutant hamsters, mail me on sundays at…”.

Ah well at least I laughed ^.^

Two hundred years ago on february 12th, Charles Darwin came into this world. And a good god damn long time later he worked out an idea. An idea he later adjusted wrongly (read: “corrected” with Lamarck-ian ideas) for lack of genetic perspective, which of course didn’t come to light until the 1950s. But all in all the theory of evolution was created. Yep, theories are created. And once they’re created they can be tested, usually based on predictions the theory makes, which proves or disproves them. As time goes by this process repeats itself, the theories evolve. It’s basically as simple as that.

Now then, a conglomerate of about 30 religious movements on this sodden northern-european piece of marshland have figured that they should really do something to celebrate the 200th birthday of C.D. by distributing a pamphlet, or at least saying they will. They are fighting the fight for Creationism, no doubt in a variety of its forms such as Intelligent Design.

Another group of people, of various backgrounds, figured they should do something against this by distributing letterbox stickers that resemble the Dutch letterbox sticker to stop people from putting junkmail and/or local papers in your letterbox.

That’s the information done, time for the opinion. Gawd this post is clearly too long for its own good. The evolutionary forces of blogging will no doubt make sure it won’t survive for long.

So one group is using its freedom to distribute a pamphlet supposedly containing Creationism and probably some mudslinging towards Evolution. Even though this may be very annoying to some, as far as I know they’re in their right to do so. The other group is trying to stop them, or at least raise awareness for the Evolution side of things by distributing letterbox stickers.

There are several sides of this story I’d like to comment about. First off the campaign itself. The stickers have to be ordered by people, rather than the “everyone who wants to receive junkmail will get a pamphlet” approach. To top it off the sticker is basically useless and crossing paths with the existing Yes/No and No/No junkmail stickers. The proper stickers are freely available at any townhall and various other locations. Everyone can pick them up for free and they stop, in their tamest form, junkmail. This form of junkmail is exactly what the Christians are planning to distribute! On top of that the people who will order these stickers are likely people who already won’t buy into the pamphlet, so what’s the point of stopping it at these locations? And to add to that, the people who use these creation/darwin stickers will throw their local newspaper, junkmail and maildelivery people off because it’s by far easier to check for “Sticker – yes or no” rather than “Darwin sticker, regular sticker, wtf? Fuck it” when you’re walking up to a letterbox.

Next stop, creationism, darwin, the great debate? If you’ve seen a great debate about this, please find it for me? All I’ve seen is jackasses and failed actors with poor photochops of retarded animals, banana-arguments (I know these are very much selected samples – they never cease to crack me up) and people refusing to partake in scientific debates about the subject. After all, the proof has come from above… I want to know what kind of Divine WiFi that is.

And as far as the Dutch education system and Evolution or Creationism goes, I hope it stays the way it is now which is basically that the Theory of Evolution is part of biology as it should be, since biology is a science. There’s often notes in books about people having other beliefs on the matter, there was in my highschool biology book anyway. And that’s fine with me. Make a note of it, then dish out the science. By all means teach creationism in (preferably optional) classes about religion or alternative lifestyles or whatever. You’re free to do what you want, but as long as there’s no scientific proof, Creationism, no matter what you call it, isn’t science and should stay the hell away from science textbooks in any and all forms of education. The emphasis here is on science in case you missed it.

So yeah, Creationists not proving much and/or ignoring perfectly valid scientific proof in favour of Evolution. And then bitching that it’s not getting much attention in classes revolving about science. Where’s the debate?

All in all, the Creationists have money and want to spend it in their favour, but Evolution supporters have science on their side. Hum, well they’re all free to say what they want and the people who do or don’t receive these pamphlets are free to think about it however they please. That’s one thing neither side can do a damn thing about.

Apparently the Dutch worry about non-Dutch companies holding a majority stake in some of our energy producers.

Seems to me it’s too late to worry about it. We import the oil part of our economy runs on and we throw hissy fits when Russia (or any country the pipes cross) fucks about with the EU gas supply – which apparently never involves burning those gas contracts on the last fumes coming through said pipe. If it had been an ISP or mobile provider we’d have switched long ago -.-

Apparently someone got the bright idea register the ethnic background of criminals. Of course the Dutch politicians are devided on the subject, as they are a merry mish mash of all sorts of opinionated people.
And our prime minster agrees. He’s entitled to his opinion, that’s fine with me.

To me this seems a weird idea at best. I don’t really care where a criminal’s from and I can’t see how anyone could care about it at all. Does it make a robbery, act of agression, murder or whatever any different? Maybe we should ask the victims if they’d rather have been say, shot by a Dutch or French criminal as opposed to an Antillean or Moroccan.

The topic of drugs was unavoidable for anything Dutch </stereotype> so here goes.

These last few years the politicians have been trying to get rid of and/or make life more difficult for all sorts of people. I’ll admit it’s the government’s job to do all sorts of things including bad things. But based on mostly their personal views, they decided that it might be a good idea to have another look at the way the Dutch tolerate certain drugs. Some have been taken out like certain mushrooms but here’s a spark of good news concerning our old friend Cannabis.

I know, I know. It’s about medicinal cannabis. Last I heard about this was an actual cannabis distributing apothecary which was able to distribute to anyone with a prescription and some other checks, but all legit and all right with everybody. Now homegrowing cannabis has been OKed to some extent by the courts. Now the debate, which was pushed to the back mostly by panic mongering xenophobes, has now been given a boost. Win!

Personally I don’t really care who or what or why you do to your body as long as you don’t bother anyone else with it, unless they want you to I suppose. The same goes for my stance on drugs for the most part. Even so, the freedom to do these things to yourself without clogging up the police etc is something I really like.