Damn-Dutch

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 -.-

Being a semi-regular browser in the bigger Rotterdam bookstores, I recently stumbled across this little 2007 number by Charles Stross called Halting State (the first few chapters). And I can’t say much more other than I haven’t read a book cover to cover like that this year, or last year for that matter.

A great near-future novel with (MMO)RPGs, swanky personal HUDs, a good helping of dialect and technobable. And as what seems to be an hommage to the RPG genre, it’s written in the first person of three characters, which made the read all the more interesting. The only thing it was missing was a bit of a glossary at the end, but maybe that’s because I’m not a native English speaker. Sometimes the acronyms had me scratching my head for a bit.

Winter is lifting its heels again, not that this had anything to do with the lack of posts. I was in a mental state of hibernation… or lazy… or something. Anyway.

Why do people keep an ice scraper and lock defrosting spray in the car’s glove compartment?

Nick changed for the hell of it. This was a random thought on IRC back on July 29th or so.

[22:17] <*> it’s 1:16 already, where does the time go X(
[22:17] <Chris> not sure, but wherever it is, it’s huge!
[22:17] <Chris> sounds like time passes from one universe to the next
[22:18] <Chris> that’s why it never stops!
[22:18] <Chris> the vacuum needs to be filled!
[22:18] <*>:o
[22:18] <Chris> so then.. maybe we’re recycling time
[22:18] <Chris> that would account for a feeling of deja vu
[22:18] <Chris> ok now that will be stuck in my head for days to come
[22:18] <*> alright, no more scifi for you
[22:18] <Chris>

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.

In case you don’t know about the PVV, this kind of says enough about hum, how to put it. Well let’s put it the way Marten Toonder put it in his Bommel works. Let’s say “een klein denkraam” [a small 'window of thought' ie narrowminded].
Anyway, apparently teaching kids a variety of things is a bad thing. Maybe it will broaden their horizons, which will probably lead to some kind of freedom of thought that the PVV may not want, I don’t know. I really don’t know what the hell the idea is here, but make up your own mind and read this little article.

Sure, teaching kids to read and write is important. Teaching kids a lot of things is important. For a lot of reasons. I’m not an expert, I rarely ever am. But I went to school because a) I had to and b) because there were some classes I really enjoyed. In my case that was biology back in the day. Broaden the minds of the kids, don’t make them as narrow as your own is the only thing that comes to my mind.

The word indoctrinated in that little article made me laugh more. Isn’t the idea of indoctrination to make them think the way you want them to think. Mostly the same way as you think. I’ll let you put 2 and 2 together… provided your eduction involved basic maths, which I’m sure it did.

This little news factoid caught my eye. It’s nothing shocking, it’s just that for some reason I can’t wrap my head around anyone not wanting a women’s footballteam wearing skirts? They prefer it, so they say and I’m sure the spectator’s don’t give a rat’s ass about it. It doesn’t get in the way of the game, right? Sure, the rules might have to be brent or changed, but how on Earth could that be a problem? Isn’t that part of what these people are for anyway? And here I thought it was all in good fun and sportsmanship.

Over the summer I ordered in some books and CDs. This on its own isn’t out of the ordinary, but one of the objects was a bit quirky as far as I’m concerned and it deserves a little mention.

Through some friends I once ended up listening to the first three series of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy radio plays. I loved them. In the end I ended up buying pretty much every Douglas Adams book out there. From HHG to Dirk Gently to Last chance to see. Even those silly Meaning and Deeper meaning of Liff books. They were all enjoyable in their own right.

Now that’s all well and good, but I always pooh pooh translations a bit. I find that often jokes and nuances don’t translate well. And then one of those formentioned friends told me there was a Dutch radioplay, of the first series that is. A German one too by the way, which I’m sure I might get one day too. So after some digging around I order in a copy of the Dutch HHG radioplay. Turns out it was done back in 1980, well before this Damn Dutch even existed as two gametes. I ended up listening to the whole thing in two days. I won’t say it’s as good as the original, but it’s a damn good alternative if you don’t get along with the English language much. Some names have been changed, and some places too. So now the story has a Dutch rather than a British background. A lot of jokes work out really well in Dutch and its equivalent to Slartibartfast even adds a bit to his fashionable fjord dialogue, specifically about the Netherlands.

I suppose I should also add that no I have not read the Dutch translations of the book, so I can’t compare it to that, but as far as the English and the Dutch audio- or radioplays go, yeah, I really liked it and it wasn’t at all what I expected.