Tango, photography and whatever's bleeding edge
I found some data on the first names parents gave their children in 2004 (data from statbel.fgov.be). It should come as no surprise that passe-partout names (used in both Dutch and French) dominate the first names hitparade.
Here are the top 10 per province for the girls:
Continue reading ‘Emma, Marie and Julie’
If your (Belgian) parents or grand-parents want to buy a cheap PC to get started on the Web, tell them to hold back for a couple more days. The Federal Government – through FEDICT – has set up a program to sponsor a complete package of PC + software + broadband + training for a sharp price. The title of the project: IVI or “Internet voor Iedereen” – the launch is planned for next week, April 18th.
Continue reading ‘IVI: Internet voor Iedereen’
I’ve written a post on the BMI (Body Mass Index) of the candidates for Germany’s next Top Model and I have been mentally bugged ever since. Not by images of thin girls, but by the formula of BMI: weight(kg) / length(m) ^ 2. Why the square of the length?
If it were weight/length you can attach a mental image to that: if you took horizontal slices of the body, how much would a 1m high slice weigh? For weight/length³ you can have an image too: kg/m³ or density of the body. But BMI is kg/m² or something like ‘pressure’ (multiply it with gravity 9.81 m/s² and you get the unit of pressure: Newton/m² or ‘Pascal’).
Continue reading ‘BMI is not perfect’
A number of influential international writers, journalists and intellectuals have just released a manifesto: “Together facing the new totalitarianism”, stating that we need to protect the universal rights (freedom of expression, equality of man and woman, …) from attacks by militant muslims.
After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.
(…)
We reject «cultural relativism», which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of “Islamophobia”, an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.
Jyllands Posten via michellemalkin.com
The authors are the following 12 people: Ayaan Hirsi Ali (NL), Chahla Chafiq (FR), Caroline Fourest (FR), Bernard-Henri Lévy (FR), Irshad Manji (CA), Mehdi Mozaffari (DK), Maryam Namazie (US), Taslima Nasreen (SE/US), Salman Rushdie (UK), Antoine Sfeir (FR), Philippe Val (FR), Ibn Warraq (US).
Continue reading ‘Together facing the new totalitarianism’
Just received a sweet little email from self-proclaimed “professional communicator” Jody Robb, about a free RGB-2-CMYK converter tool of mine:
From: Jody Robb [mailto:jr@***]
Subject: Poxy programI wasted ten minutes on your poxy program. If you�re gonna put stuff up on the net, make sure it works, arsehole.
People like you who waste other people�s time and resources to show off are the slime in the gutter of the internet.
Jody Robb
Digital Media Producer/Consultant
(…) Australia
followed by an email 5 minutes later: “It does work but you’re still a fuckwit”.
You make us non-professional communicators blush, Jody!
Technorati: australia – communication – professional
Thus a drug called melanotan (…), which was developed as an analogue of this hormone to promote a natural tan as protection against skin cancer, was found to have the side effect of dramatically increasing libido in men and women during clinical trials. Female rats increased their rate of copulation by 300% after a dose of melanotan, and 80% men suffering from impotence reported getting normal erections after taking this drug. Melanotan also inhibits appetite by suppressing the action of the hunger center of the hypothalamus. So it makes you tanned, thin and horny – which is why it is sometimes called the “Ken and Barbie drug.”
from www.hss.bond.edu.au
Now let’s see how long it takes before I get my first “Herbal Melanotan” spam mail.
Also covered in: dissectleft.blogspot.com – www.adamsmith.org – news.bbc.co.uk
Technorati: health
Anyone knows what a “Love Pain Congress” is? Neither did I, so I yesterday I went to LovePangs in Ghent.
When you get in, you are screened by the “Pain Commission” to see in what stage of the process you are: Pain, Rage, Resent or Over. I got the black ‘OVER’ badge, because actually, yes, I’m over it. You also get 20 Pain Euro that you can use later in the event. The most important part of the Congress are the one-on-one conversations you can have with ‘pain experts’. These are an mix of 25 well-known (Jos Geysels, Pascale Platel) and lesser known people that you can have a 30-minutes conversation with on some aspect of love, pain, regret, guilt, … you name it. These experts also belong to one of the 4 groups mentioned above, and you can only book a time slot with a person of your colour. If you want to, you can however use your pain euros to sell your badge and buy one of another colour at the “Pain Stockmarket” (in some cases, you get paid for this, in other cases you need to pay: supply and demand and all that jazz). There was also some karaoke theatre going on, but I never got to that.
So how did it go for me: I got in and booked a ‘black’ date with Mieke Debruyne, journalist (on “missed opportunities” – how prophetic this would be) and another ‘black’ one with Mieke Deley – dancer (on “guilt” – no picture, sorry). At 21h30 I got asked to fill in a vacant spot, but that turned out to be double booked. At 22h00 I was supposed to have my conversation with Mieke Deley, but since our table was double booked, we waited for 15 minutes and then just started talking while sitting on the ground in a corner. The conversation was great fun, we lost track of time and since no one told us our time slot was over, I only got to Mieke Debruyne 20 minutes late, at which point she was already talking to some one else. The organisation was rather clueless (yes, using Excel sheets can be something of a black art). When I asked to maybe book Ms Debruyne at a later time, the lady in question seemed to have disappeared. But since talking to Mieke-the-dancer was so much fun anyway, we told every one of the Love Pain hostesses who interrupted us – and there were quite some – that we just started our session, which gave us a load of free drinks, half a dozen of different locations and about 2 hours of off-and-on sparkling and very open conversation.
End conclusion: there’s still some work in the details, but the idea is brilliant. The general mood amongst visitors is something between openheartedness, amusement and genuine interest in what’s going on in the minds and hearts of the other person. That goes for most of the conversations I had that night, not only the 1 ‘pain expertise’ that I managed to arrange.
If there is a new edition in 2006, I’ll be there! Oh, and if Mieke Debruyne would be so kind to drop me a line so we can finally have that session, I’d be so grateful.
Things you learn in bars: the list of things girls look for in a guy (or, in this case, as cited by Nathalie and An).
I use the following scale: 1 = nice to have … 3 = definite bonus … 5 = really important, and 6 = conditio sine qua non (if you don’t qualify, forget it). I averaged the weights of both authors. In all cases, the desired answer is ‘yes’.
Which is fairly optimistic compared to What Women Want at ages 22, 32, 42, 52, 62 and 72
What Women Want in a Man, Revised List (age 52)
1. Keeps hair in nose and ears trimmed
2. Doesn’t belch or scratch in public
3. Doesn’t borrow money too often
4. Doesn’t nod off to sleep when I’m venting
5. Doesn’t re-tell the same joke too many times
6. Is in good enough shape to get off couch on weekends
7. Usually wears matching socks and fresh underwear
8. Appreciates a good TV dinner
9. Remembers your name on occasion
10. Shaves some weekends
Technorati: girls
Recent Comments