Ever wondered what a scanned slice of pizza looks like?
Well I have and for years I was left flailing around in limbo hoping that one day I would be rescued by a flatbad scanner I’d be allowed to abuse (hmm, somehow that makes my problem sound kind of disgusting, but nevermind about that). And a year ago I thought I was finally going to enjoy it when I got my parents’ old scanner, however, since my laptop runs vista I couldn’t use it so my dastardly plans were once again foiled by that Gates fellow. A few weeks ago though I found the scanner again while cleaning my room and decided to give it a try on linux, and lo and behold: it worked. So after making the very important decision of what kind of pizza to scan (a tuna one) I flipped the virtual switch and enjoyed the result: http://error32.is-a-geek.com/picdump/dc3273c00d95a6a1c87e5432a7e78056.jpg (the file is quite big so it may take a while to load).
Looks tasty, right? Like one massive dollop of palatable orgasmic bliss compressed into a blurry triangle of unrivaled deific beauty.
Retarded kids. This sounds like a cruel thing to say to anyone but in the purest sense of its meaning it is a phenomenon which is actually rather common, even in western countries. I mean, of course, children who are lagging behind in education, en retard, so to say. In the Netherlands the government is now trying solve this problem by giving more money to education so these children can attend school a little longer each day than the other, ‘normal’, kids. I think this is just a waste of money that could be better spent. Because the problem at hand here is essentially one where an average is set by the majority of children who do not lag behind and the laggers then have to conform to this average. But why not let the kids who are ahead of everyone else go home early? That way they will dumb down, lower the average, and suddenly the retards won’t seem so stupid any more.
This is a story I wrote for Tabula Rasa, the student newspapery thing of the Roosevelt Academy. Strangely though they decided that they didn’t want to publish it…
The Sewage Treatment Plant
I asked a few people what the first thing was that came to mind when they thought about a sewage treatment plant. Many answers were somewhere on the line of “gross!” or “it smells”, accompanied by expressions normally only seen after someone has stepped into a dog’s business. However I found out that this was largely untrue. Of course, when the sewage enters the sewage treatment plant it reeks of yesterday’s food and other such unpleasantness. But by the time it leaves the cleaning system it is relatively clean and does not really smell of anything.
Sewage treatment plants do our community a wealth of good and shouldn’t be shunned as much. I call for a round of applause for the diligent workers of these sewage treatment plants, drink in their name and maybe dress up as an STP for Halloween (only drink coke and have a little tap in your trousers attached to a bottle of crystal-clear water?).
I am not being entirely serious here but my point still stands. Without the STP Middelburg would be a pretty foul place to live in. Just imagine what the canals would smell like, especially in summer, if our waste was just dumped in there. Middelburg would lose its charm and the tourists would no longer come here. Even if the sewage was pumped away from the city and dumped in the sea there would still be enormous problems. Algae would undergo a rampant growth keeping sightseers away from our shores. The famous ‘zeeuwsche’ mussels would not survive this either, effectively killing a large part of the local fish and shellfish industry (mind you, this is already happening due to circumstances other than sewage waste).
Also imagine the amount of cholera infections that would arise as a result of directly dumping our waste. Extra medical personnel and funding would be required to deal with the extra patients. Medical insurance would become more expensive. And as a result of treating the infections the rate at which the cholera bacteria acquire resistances to antibiotics is also dramatically increased.
There are many more ways in which filtering and cleaning our own sewage waste benefits our community, think about it and I am sure you can come up with a dozen other reasons.
The sewage treatment plant in Ritthem helps our community by making it a bright, pleasantly smelling paradise where students can thrive in for less than €40 per taxpaying citizen each year. The plant in Ritthem turns out to be quite self sufficient. They supply 80% of their own electricity need by utilising the methane which is released during the fermentation process of the sludge; so on top of all that it’s green energy as well.
Next time you flush the toilet, think about all this because it’s an undervalued (crappy) industry. So pay your sewage taxes and be content about it; you are paying for your own good health and a beautiful environment. Now we just need to get rid of the noise pollution.
I know I haven’t made a post in a long, long time however I had a good reason for that (or at least, it was a good enough reason for myself): I wanted to post a bit more often during the summer break but I ended up writing something completely different and I’ve put quite a lot of energy into that so at the end of the day I didn’t really feel like writing a new post. This time it’s different though since I’ve gotten myself so worked up about the topic that I have to do this first before I can relax.
Very well then, let’s crack on with: Georgia.
This is another one of those classic East-West conflicts. You’d have thought they would have died out with the collapse of the Soviet Union, sadly though that is not the case. The official reason Russia gave for invading Georgian lands was that they were protecting their own people in South Ossetia. I can see some validity in this argument but not much. First of all: there are Russians in that province and there have been some violent conflicts but it ends there. You see, ever since Georgia became independent, South Ossetia has wanted its own independence from Georgia and with the rise of nationalism in the former Soviet Union this could only be expected. But this does not mean that Russia should invade the province to ‘protect’ their own. If South Ossetia really wants independence then they don’t want to be part of Russia either so why would Russia bother?
I’m not buying their role as saviours of the Russian people in border provinces since they don’t even spare a glance for the poor dying in the streets of their own cities. A more likely reason would be to remind Georgia that the West cannot help them. In the past few years, Georgia has been working hard to become part of the Western world, they haven’t completely succeeded yet but are getting close. This is obviously something Russia would rather not see so they invaded with their hand on the oil and gas pumps to remind the UN what they can do to them should they be thwarted. And I use the word thwarted here because Putin has turned his country into an analogy of a comical bond villain as I will show in this dramatic reconstruction of international relations between Russia and the West:
Russia: Yes Mister Bond, soon the entire world will bow before me.
The West: You will never get away with this, people won’t just stand by and let you invade Georgia!
Russia: On the contrary Mister Bond, I will just slowly turn this tap here and your gas supplies will be in trouble and millions will die! I have calculated it and you have precisely 3 days after I turn this tap before your civilisation falls apart. HAHAHAHAHA (manic laughing trails off)
The West: What? You expect me to do complicated calculations concerning our gas supplies in my head while strapped to this Father of All Bombs?
Russia: No Mister Bond, I expect you to die.
Okay, it might not quite have gone like that but you get the general idea: Georgia has been looking at the West for help but so far they’ve been fairly dissapointed.
Time for some balance now, because I’m beginning to make it sound like our comrades from the East are the only ones to blame when that’s not exactly the case. Georgia itself has to take some credit for starting the war. You’d think that when a province is shouting at you that they want to be independent from the moment that your country is formed that you’d at least try to give them some autonomy. Did Georgia honestly think South Ossetia would just give up if the demonstrations were culled?
And now I shall explain the title of this post. It’s a reaction to George Bush’s speech in which he said (and I’m paraphrasing since I read the speech in Dutch and don’t know the exact words he used): invading a country to bring down its government is not how it should be done in the 21st century.
Now correct me if I’m wrong but I think there was this guy once who was president of the United States of America and he invaded Iraq and then left it to bleed a bit more after he had declared the war to be over. He left the government intact. A few years later his son also became president of the United States of America and in 2003 he invaded Iraq as well, I was beginning to see a pattern in the family traditions when something odd happened: the Iraqi government was brought down by the armed forces of our dear and beloved George Bush.
So please Bush, if you want to make a statement about the current affairs. Be sure to keep it as light as possible since there is every likelihood that you will have done something that is, if not the same, at least similar to what you are speaking against. Take China for example, Bush made a speech just before the Olympics about the human rights in China. Of course the situation is not the same in the States but there are some similarities. If it had been up to Bush then in his war on terrorism he’d have taken away so many civil liberties that it would have become a prison state.
I’m sorry for appearing inactive but I haven’t posted in a while because of the exact opposite. I’ve been so busy these past few weeks that I simply haven’t found time to write a new post, so here’s a brand new one about gendered language:
The following site was brought to my attention, The Gender Genie. At first I did not really think much of it but when I read some of the background to it I saw how it made sense. The site uses a pretty basic algorithm to determine whether the author of a text is male or female. Essentially what it does is make a distinction between the type of words that are used and how often. For example the following words are seen as feminine: if, your, hers, me, myself, should.
And these are masculine: what, these, the, a, it, to.
Can you see the pattern yet? According to the linguists women use far more words that describe a relation to an object, such as my bike,while men use more impersonal words. This is of course not a fool-proof way of finding out what the author’s gender is since I might write a text about the relationships people have with me which would then become a very feminine text. Actually, half my posts have apparently been written by a lady persona. I also decided to check a few short stories I have written over the years and found out that ones I am most proud of are also the most masculine.
The odd thing was that if this is a good way of finding out the nature of a text and not its author then it was my most balanced text that has seen the most success. Namely my entry for a writing competition earlier this semester which won first prize.
Call it what you may but don’t use it as an extremely serious way of determining if an author is male or female (or maybe a closeted homosexual) because in my opinion it can only determine the nature of a text. Maybe I’ll use it someday when I describe a passage (It has a distinctly feminine style, using possessive pronouns such as ‘her’ and ‘my’ to hint at the femininity of the first person), but for now I’ll just stick to using it as a fun time waster.
This year I wanted to do something different with the hard-boiled eggs. Usually we just colour the eggs in a single shade but I decided to add something and make them a little more personal and at the same time add an educational element. I got out my paintbrush and wrote formulas on the eggs. These equations were of course relevant to the person who was supposed to eat them.
Here’s the list with a few links in case you’re not familiar with the equation: P=F/A
You might have guessed already that some of these equations refer to human behaviour so for next easter why not think of science principles that describe your family and give them a science egg of their own. And you too could have an interesting discussion during breakfast! (or just ignore the discussion like everyone at our breakfast table did).
I have always been a bit sceptic about some kind of universal balance. The only balance I have some faith in is the second law of thermodynamics (wikipedia.org). This week something has happened to me that has made me doubt my beliefs and I am not referring to the second law here. I will start from the beginning…
It all started somewhere in the beginning of November when, in my room, a fuse blew. I decided to get the caretaker to check it out since I couldn’t simply reset the fuse. I was informed that it would take a while to fix since a blown fuse couldn’t be replaced without the contractor’s permission (my room was still new and shiny, well make that new). During these dark times my sole comfort was that only half my room was blacked out and my fridge still worked. I got a few extra cables so I could hook up my TV and laptop from the kitchen socket. One of the main problems, however, was that during the evening I only had light from a few desktop lamps since the lamp hanging from the ceiling had no power. Come to think of it I don’t think the smoke detector had a power source either, its green light changed to a very sad blue wink that was only seen every now and then.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, about three months later the electricity in my room was finally fixed. The point that was slightly odd was the fact that in that same week my brother told me he’d just had a power blackout and one area of the city I live in also had a blackout one morning. It almost seemed like the balance had to be restored. I had only limited access to electricity for three months so some other people also had to do without power for a while. And if enough people don’t have it then the blackouts can be very short as per the following formula t1(no power in hours)*n1(nr. Of people)=t2*n2 so that would be 2400*1=1*n2 =>n2=2400. And if I approximate the number of people who had a blackout using just common sense rather than this silly formula then it is indeed about 2400.
So there you have it, sometimes chance can be a strange thing (of course I’m not going to say that there is something like a universal balance, that would just be silly!)
What I don’t get sometimes is how black is always synonymous with evil. Black dragons are always evil and in novels people dressed in black often signify that they are not the nicest people ever. To break this strange and arcane code I decided to make a tiny story about a black dragon who cared about dogs:
The black dragon.
There once was a huge dragon all black,
Who wanted revenge on an insolent quack.
He had given him medicine for his back ache,
But instead was tenderising the black dragon steak
The dragon butcher was scared and ran away,
Too scared of the dragon to get in a fray.
Our dark hero searched far and wide,
Ready to tan the hated butcher’s hide.
In a town on the edge of the world was he found,
The vile butcher’s only guardian an age-old hound.
The dragon attacked and smote the killer,
The dog he retrained and gave to a miller.
The miller’s dog now seems most like a cat,
and will guard the grain and pounce on a rat.
He’s forgotten his past and seems to last,
For the dragon gave back his slavery past.
Most fairy tales are misleading and inappropriate. They are meant to teach kids about morals and values but instead quite often teach them the wrong response for a situation. Take Jake and the giant beanstalk for example. I actually have a theory for this story that it was invented by con artists who wanted to prepare children so that they could be conned in their later lives. Jake is rewarded for believing that something that can’t possibly be true is true. I mean, if a guy on the corner of the street would say to you: “I have a fantastic offer. If you give me 200 squids then I have this amazing scheme where you get triple that in return after just two days.”. Would you then
a) give him the 200 squids and agree to return to the same street corner after two days
b) tell him to stick his offer in an area that might just be above the arctic circle in winter
c) go to a secluded alley and beat the bishop because the ’salesman’ looked great.
or d) write a lengthy essay detailing why you think you made the right choice when you became a hobo who doesn’t even have the 200 squids not caring that you can’t actually write.
If you chose answer b then you deserve to have your 200 squids and don’t need to read on. If the other answers were more to your liking then I suggest you continue to read this post since a grave error was made in your childhood.
I think it is time to correct the fairy tale so that we can actually learn something from it. Only the first part should be changed but it is one of the most significant parts of the entire story. Here we go:
Jake and his family had chanced upon hard times. They didn’t mean to but they had just bumped into them when they were shopping and decided to take a shortcut through an alley. The hard times had taken their money and other possessions of any worth and buggered off. They were getting desperate and had decided to sell their cow. She had stopped giving milk a few months ago but if Jake lied about that then she might still fetch a reasonable price at the market. When Jake reached the town a well dressed gentleman addressed him, “Well that is a splendid cow. Would you care to trade her for these magic beans?”
Jake was eager to believe that they were real magic beans but he wasn’t sure so he decided to sell the cow at the market because that was the safest option. When Jake was on his way home from the market he bumped into the man again. “Young boy, I admire your distrust of our society and as a reward for your good decision I will give you these magical beans for free.”
Jake hurried back home where he was greeted by his family with delight since the cow had fetched a good price. Later that evening Jake threw the beans into the cesspit in the back of the garden. If they were going to grow into a magical plant then they could do it there just as well as in any part of the garden.
The next morning a giant bean stalk dominated the garden, it reached past the clouds…
Been a long time since my last post, did you all miss me? I think you did. I would have posted more but I’ve been thinking about what to post about and I’ve found it difficult to find something, which is back to my point of a while ago, if you want me to rate anythig in particular than my e-mail inbox will whore itself out to any demands you may have: seweragentx@googlemail.com. I did ask a few people but some of the funny ideas I got were a little too extreme to do, one was the comparison between Lord Of The Rings and Star Wars but I thought critiscing them on the internet would be suicude. I could almost hear the nerds running to their PCs and writing a virus so horrible every hospital would crash and every site would be torn down, just to make sure this blog site was over loaded, because a few lives might be lost, but hey they stopped their movies being trashed.
I will attempt to make a proper post soon but I’ve got exams very near so give me a little time and until then I can leave you with this.
