As far as the stereotype about urban gay men approaching their forties goes, Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren do not deceive while adding a pinch of seriousness to their worldly concerns by means of glasses with thick black frames.

I have never been a fashionista myself, and will probably not become one. The thought of spending any significant amount of my time hunting new designs and attending the mass leaves me totally unphased. Yet, a one hour excursion on the third floor of the Barbican Arts Centre in London proved to be both a refreshing and enlightening experience.

A friend, dear among the dearest, brought me to a fashion exhibition in the City of London. He intended this experiment both as an initiation and as a test for my taste — I would hear “I wonder if you will like it” at least thrice before we eventually squeezed the last hours of our trip together in the Barbican Centre.

The key works of Dutch fashion designers Viktor and Rolf were on display in a two-floor exhibition hall. Visitors are there invited to follow a sequence of rooms around a central doll house, where each of the hall's rooms would match a room in the doll house and contain a couple models and a projection screen.

Describing the collection and its qualities would far exceed my vocabulary skills, so I will not dwelve into details here. However, the purpose of this note today is to stay as a reminder of how touched I was by the amount of creative work and creative diversity that was concentrated in these fifty-something models. Unexpected in a fashion exhibit, I felt more respect and admiration for these tailors than I have for many painters in art musea.

Add this to the brutal style of the estate of which the Barbican Centre is part, its stained grey ragged concrete walls and columns contrasting with the lush and lively yet constrained small lake that it contains, and you get a picture of a foreign urban world of sorts — obscurely pure and devoid of irregularities, where nature is enclosed, and where the only form of art is worn somptuously as unique and breathtaking clothes.

I discovered a world of dreams, made for and by them. London is a city of many surprises.

Today a friend pointed me to the documentary Earthlings which seems to be already known of everyone but me. A half-enlightening experience: while I was already aware of the issues, and I already knew some facts, the images made my understanding more vivid; an unpleasant but refreshing enhancement.

But still, something in this documentary was bothering me all the way. Now I can see it: the title.

“ Earthlings ”

And the documentary goes over animals, about how humans relate to (and use) other animals. Did they not forget something?

What about the other earthlings?

Turning vegetarian after watching such a documentary completely misses the point. All in all, any human has to learn to deal with fellow living beings. That always involves killing to survive, often in nasty ways for convenience. We should just choose how to minimize the amount of inconvenience for our community of earthlings as a whole.

Topic for this week's discussions: if you were to get a mental picture (or a perception) of each living thing that is used or killed to sustain your own life, where each being would be expressing their opinion by speaking in their own distinct voice (possibly a little squeaky), how would you deal with the situation? Imagine, for example, the opinion of that branch of parsley on the cutting board if it was expressing human-like feelings and consciousness about its fate…

Life is tough.

One day, we will wake up in the morning and see a world devoid of plants. Like the dolphins, they will have left us to our own device.

In America, people buy stuff in “stores.” Over here, they buy stuff in “shops.”

In America, people find the word “shop” old fashioned. They expect it to designate a small and cramped place where goods are not on display in large quantities.

Now, if we look at three hundred years ago, when people in America had just settled and were still essentially speaking the same language as in England:

• “storehouses” were places where goods were placed to keep for a long time, before they were sold.
• when they were to be sold, they were moved to “shops” and put on display for customers.

And then, gradually, cultural changes made it more convenient for customers in America to go and buy their stuff directly from the shelves of the storehouse — there there was no aesthetic in the display, but goods were available in large quantities.

This has not happened over here, so there we are linguistically.

Leaving for a land so close and yet so remote is an exciting prospect.

The idea came a few days ago from a pair of friends, who intend to visit several cities as part of a small scale version of Flickr's Jumping Project; besides the pictures, they intend to have fun and party and that was enough for me to join them.

And now that accommodation and travel are all set, comes the question of what to do there. Having fun is an excellent plan; however, I would feel foolish if I was coming back afterwards without any insight on Warsaw. And there I am today, researching facts and hints about the city, its culture, people and history.

I realize I know next to nothing about Poland.

The name “złoty” sounds fun, but I have no idea of what is its value. Besides Chopin, I know no one originating from Poland. There are 20 theaters in Warsaw, but I do not know the name of any of them, nor what shows are produced there. I knew that Poland was a republic, but it wouldn't have crossed my mind that there was a President of Warsaw. So much to learn!

And yet at the same time I know that the country is ruled (or has been, until recently) by two very conservative parties and their friends, and I fear in advance the feeling of staying in a world of roman catholics, albeit for a short time.

We shall see.

And as discussed today on IRC, this context is often a function of the interest shown by other people.

Mixed feelings and confused thoughts - I found it easier drawn than explained, in the style of Indexed.

(Not entirely satisfying though: not sure whether tolerance really increases in the stereotypical USA group as interest increases...)

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 humans. There, do as you will, for nobody cares.
• in North America, especially the USA, freedom is more a matter of national pride. It's protected, and relationships between people are taken very seriously. Conflicts and inequality are routinely accepted as a necessary evil without which freedom would be put at risk.

The apparent cultural difference is arguable, but many seem to recognize the underlying concepts when traveling on both sides of the ocean.

And then, nobody cares on this side of the ocean anyway. They do as they will, we don't care.

Of toch?

I remember one of the great achievements worldwide during the past few hundred years. I believe it's called “human rights.” If I recall correctly, a consensus has built historically that regardless of any superficial disagreements, care should be taken to respect this common civilization framework - that “people are born equal in dignity and rights,” rights including “liberty, security, protection of the law,” etc, etc. Nothing new here, most countries agreed a while ago.

Well, it seems that some cultures have troubles grasping these simple concepts.

I learn today that black people can be lynched in the land of freedom without any form of justice. I was nauseous when I read that, but hardly surprised.

And regardless of this specific point-time event, poor people still don't deserve to be healthy. Afterall, if they don't earn money what are they worth?

French people like to say that they know better. That this would not happen in their country. Well, for sure, locking up black and poor people in overcrowded prisons where they eventually die forgotten is an easy workaround. Hiding the dust under the mat is just as shameful as throwing it right in the eyes of human rights.

Oh well, now I'm feeling depressed.

This short presentation is meant to be funny; and there's a degree of truth to what makes it funny.

Last wednesday evening, during my Dutch class, I nearly got lynched by the 5 girls who compose the rest of my group.

My biggest mistake was to start describing my pet peeve without starting with the obvious. The obvious being:

• yes, there is a terrifyingly large number of women who are routinely and impunely abused, killed, used, exploited or otherwise mishandled by men worldwide;
• yes, many men and society as a whole psychologically pressure women and give them little freedom over their life, and male/female inequalities are far from resolution everywhere;
• yes, it is a fact that worldwide many men abandon the mother of their children, leaving them with a bleak future;

that said, I want to express my targeted disgust against a very specific category of women: the narrow-minded selfish mother-to-be hunting for male money and sperm.

This species came to my attention a few years ago when I witnessed a very sad happening. The story is as follows: an acquaintance of mine, fellow student with handsome features and a clever mind, was planning a bright future involving a period of self-discovery and enjoyment of life and opportunities, possibly followed a few years later by establishing himself at a place of his choosing and the founding of a family. Being young, clever and handsome, he was (expectedly) seeing someone — a girl met earlier than my knowing him. He would spend a weekend with her every now in a while, and his standing on high moral grounds would make him very involved in his relationship. During the end of his studies, as he was planning to move on with his career and possibly travel abroad, “it happened” that his significant other became pregnant. According to them, she one day “accidentally forgot her pill” and decided that now as well as later was a good time to start a family. His moral grounds standing, as well as a significant family pressure, supported a decision to accept this situation and make the best out of it. They were both under 25 of age when this happened. They are now living in a small city, not far from the grandparents' place, and he wouldn't find any work within 2 hours commute per day.

As I see it now, they both are very happy with their situation and are making the best out of it. That is undeniable in good faith.

However, as I see it, the girl used him to achieve her plans and he had little choice into the matter. She was not so successful with her studies, not so ambitious, and the work opportunities around her would not allow her to climb the social scale. On his side, he was planning to exercise his freedom, possibly moving and living abroad. For her, it was a very serious opportunity to try and secure her own future and create a high standing and highly recognized moral legitimacy for her existence as a woman by securing both serious revenue generation abilities (preferably from the IT industry) and a father for her children. Whether it was accidental or adequately prepared, getting pregnant at that time was rationnally an excellent outcome to her life concerns as well as a very good lifetime investment.

Now, I will not outline too precisely my opinion on this specific case in writing, but suffice to say that I was very sad to hear from her that “then was a good time to have children” and from him that “later would have been nicer, but then was ok as well.”

Since that time, I have come to meet other similar couples. A pattern became clear: the female is usually between 18 and 27, feels insecure with regard to her social situation, does not consider a career path, speaks fondly of having children, and engages only in commited relationships with men older than she is, with good revenue generation potential. The guy is usually young as well (albeit older than the female), is planning a career path but is currently considering his options, entertains a high morale valuing respect and commitment, and has a limited social circle to support him. What happens is that the female and the male engage into a relationship; the relationship becomes exclusive; the woman pressures the man to have children and “becomes” pregnant as soon as the man shows signs that he would be responsible and not abandon her immediately; then she tries to make the situation look better and he gradually accepts his new life path (decided by her), although he did not really expect children… that early.

So, I presented my conclusions to my language class. They (all females) charged me with anger and despise. They would accuse me of ignoring all those cases where the opposite situation holds (man using the woman), which are much more common — not even realizing that (some) men abusing (some) women is no rational justification for (some) women to abuse (some) men. They would not acknowledge that the indivudal freedom of the father-to-be as a single and childless man is extremely valuable and deserves as much respect as the urge to pin him down and steal his fatherhood. A serious case of denial at hand — I felt relatively powerless and I eventually dropped the conversation.

What I did not explain to them is that a female friend of mine and I have been talking extensively over the subject. She is now about 30 and she recalls an earlier period of her life when she was ready to do exactly that : find the “right” man and use him to provide her with a social situation — as a mother, accomplished woman through having children. She knows several other females in a similar situation, and she supports the idea that the female body is in its 20s subject to a large quantity of hormones which are subtly telling to the brain that now and not later is the right time to carry offprings. As time passes, the urge recedes and an intuitive respect for the man as an individual — rather than sperm carrier and revenue generator — starts to reappear. Relationships built after this period, as they say, are much more mature, honest and fulfilling — in other words, way more “loving.”

That said, in my opinion, the idea that the responsibility of the woman in the destruction of the originally-planned future of the man is somewhat lowered by the impulse of her hormones only provides a very superficial excuse to her behavior. This sort of woman deserves to be kept cloistered safely from 14 until their age of reason, at least later than 35.

Having a meaning related to well-being, the swastika is widely-used sacred symbol in Dharmic religions. As such, it gained adoption by the Unicode standard and has several computer-recognized Unicode encodings: the Han characters 卍 (code 0x534D) and 卐 (code 0x5350), and the Tibetan character ࿌ (code 0xFCC).

On the Windows platform, a font called “Bookshelf Symbol 7” gathers a number of symbols that can be found in printed works although they rarely are used to write occidental languages. Until recently, this font included two variants of the Han character in positions 0x7E and 0x86:

Last Friday, I was working on a Windows system and the following dialog opened:

The message “The font has been found to contain unacceptable symbols” was suspicious, and I knew what to expect when I applied the upgrade and restarted the system:

Et voilà, no more swastika. Corporate censorship at work, in the name of political correctness. Damn their stupidity.

The following is a quote from a semi-official Usenet newsgroup for the French institution EPITECH where current and soon-to-be students can meet and discuss their past and future education in computer science:

moi chui pa un intelektuel mer g ete pri fo just avoir la motiv couz. moi jveu savoir c ki kisera dan ma class et si ya moy kon se voi avan la rentrer. au fet jven un psp ki li ler jeu graver.

A translation of this text in “traditional” French would read as follows: « moi, je ne suis pas un intellectuel mais j'ai été pris; il faut juste avoir de la motivation, cousin. Moi, je veux savoir qui sera dans ma classe et s'il y a moyen qu'on se voie avant la rentrée. Au fait, je vends une PSP qui lit les jeux gravés. »

Regardless of the content, which is of little value outside of the specific milieu where this quote belongs, I find it striking how the new French differs from the language of the “litterature.”

There are two interesting facts to be observed here:

• to my knowledge, most youngsters below 20 of age nowadays use this new form of the language when they type on keyboards;
• as time passes, without major cultural transformations we will see more and more language corpus generated with keyboards.

Combining these facts, I would expect that in little more than 10 years we will see French being gradually replaced and/or transformed for many uses, including business, services, education, information, correspondence and all places where the corpus is not intended to be archived. This will result in a cultural shift where two languages will be in use : classical French for literature, law, treaties and such other items of historical interest, and colloquial French for all the rest, radically different and more closely matching the spoken language.

For my part, I will be practicing the new style for the coming years. I intend to be able to mold into the new generation and not be left behind.

Quote from ArticlesBase :

Bucket-wheel excavators are heavy equipment used in surface mining and civil engineering. The excavation component itself is a large rotating wheel mounted on an arm or boom. On the outer edge of the wheel is a series of scoops or buckets. As the wheel turns, the buckets remove soil or rock from the target area and carry it around to the backside of the wheel, where it falls onto a conveyor, which carries it up the arm toward the main body of the excavator. Additional conveyors then may carry it further; in some cases, several long conveyors are placed end-to-end, each supported by a large vehicular base.
Especially large bucket-wheel excavators, over 200 meters long and up to 100 meters in height, are used in German strip-mining operations, and are the largest earth-movers in the world. These tremendous machines can cost over $100 million, take 5 years to assemble, require 5 people to operate, weigh more than 13,000 tons, and have a theoretical capacity of more than 12,000m³/h. Specifically, the RB293 bucket wheel excavator manufactured by MAN Takraf is recognized by Guinness World Records as the largest land vehicle.

The Bagger 288 is built by another manufacturer (Krupp) and is nearly as large as the RB293. About the Bagger 288:

Over three weeks it made a 22 kilometer (14 mile) trip to the Garzweiler mine, traveling across Autobahn 61, the Erft, a railroad line, and several roads. The move cost nearly 15 million German marks and required a team of seventy workers. Rivers were crossed by placing large steel pipes for the water to flow through and providing a smooth surface over the pipes with rocks and gravel. Moving Bagger 288 in one piece was more economic than disassembling the excavator and moving it piece by piece.

See for yourself:

Look at the tiny dashes at the bottom right of the picture. These are people. The thing is huge!

There are plenty of them:

I had a bucket wheel excavator in my head since I was 10 or so. I discovered the name of the thing only today. What a relief!

Theory: command officers on a war ship often operate from their desk with no visibility on the outside of the ship.

I believe this theory is true. Otherwise I could not explain this:

Theory: people without education are perfect material for dictatorship.

Proof:

It is taking more than fifteen hours to my ears to recover from the trauma they experienced yesterday evening. That is already eight hours more than usual, although I stayed there for only three hours. I spent the whole morning brooding over whether I should attend Trance Energy next month or not, given my increased hearing sensitivity — depending on how I feel tonight, I may also consider taking an appointment with my doctor.

I guess that's what it takes to grow older.

Now, despite my hearing disability, I indulged myself in listening to a nearby conversation from my cubicle a few hours ago. The conversation involved my manager, some colleagues and someone I did not know who paid our office a visit together with his wife and baby. Although it strikes me that the only colleagues actually moving from their cubicle to join the group were those with newly born children (herd behavior?), I will not comment that part and rather focus on the part of the conversation where one participant warns the parents of the future they are facing.

In short, he was describing how his teenage girl (early teens) already asked him if she could sleep over at her boyfriend's; a request that he denied, of course.

The absence of additional comments from his part or any questions from the group left me wondering what was so obvious and commonly agreed that could justify denying the request. Many explanations started to grow in my fertile imagination, and unfortunately they were prematurely aborted. Here are samples:

• he fears that the she would become pregnant. That would be only if he think she's stupid, and if he didn't already take care of explaining to her how to use pills. Quite unlikely.
• he fears that she would have sex. I'm quite sure he's not naive. That couldn't be it.
• he fears that she would lose her virginity. The culture does not match.

That made me wonder what would happen if she asked him if she could sleep over at her girlfriend's instead. Or with clothes on.

The most likely reasons I could find were that:

• he thinks that letting her would be socially unacceptable.
• he wants to control her life.
• he does not like her boyfriend.

I am not sure I like the impression these possible explanations give me of the beliefs and value sytems of the people attending that conversation. I hope I'm wrong and I'm missing something.

As usually, a long time elapsed between the moment I discovered the tune of Feel and the day I learned that Robbie Williams was singing it. In between, I also discovered Angels and Supreme, and not until this day did I know the relationship between those three.

The non-obvious relationship, that is. The obvious link was already clear: I love all three songs. I just did not know that they were sung by this beautiful person, from whom I did not know anything else until I acquired a “Greatest hits” album tonight on my way back from the train station.

Yeah, I know, I'm on easy listening. Those three hits have already grown old, and I'm simply lagging behind. But hey! “Better late than never.”

And while I'm at the easy thing, I also think there's a dark side to the hero. Maybe he has yet to come come to terms with his sexuality (dubious), or he's just haunted by ghosts and demons that he tries to escape by pushing forward. It seems to me that he's suffering and searching for something, and that's where his talent comes from.

And I must just be cruel on this one: his torments must stay, for they cast the shadow of his feelings onto the world.

Hopefully I did not expect to have a great time. I didn't.

Usually, receiving friends at home and synchronizing our lives during a midnight conversation is the kind of stuff that makes me shine. I love it.

Especially when it happens earlier than 2am, not after a week full of work, and not after finishing the most frightening and depressing novel I've read for a long time (La ligne noire - Grangé).

Let's say it wasn't the most brightening Friday evening for a little while.

Taking breakfast in bed with friends on a saturday morning always seems to me like a fun way to start the weekend. Actually,it is fun to see how newcomers to my city discover what lies “out there” and need to decide what they want to visit for the day. And it is a pleasure to see that they are able to take care of themselves and actually agree to help me in household duties.

Unfortunately, it becomes somewhat less fun when they start reading erotic magazines and start arguing and bitching about how difficult it is to find a girlfriend, how men should assert their manlihood to attract beautiful women, or how difficult it is to find an interesting country to live in besides the USA.

Then there was the party organized by my company yesterday. The free admission to the Blue man group show in Amsterdam (wonderful light effects, surprising drums), the large room in the Mövenpick Hotel and the after-party were planned to make the day unique in our memories.

I was quite curious about the whole event. The idea of gathering colleagues into a common activity is full of good intention and I appreciate that. Besides, it was the occasion to see people I work with everyday in an uncommon outfit (the dress code was “black tie”) and with a mindset detached from the work environment. That was nice, as well.

And still, I managed to be late and delay the departure to the event. Having left in a hurry, I could not relax during the whole dinner and show, and the stress kept me closed to whatever nice feelings the blue men were trying to shove into their audience. The hotel room was a sterilized palace that kept me thinking about the insane amount of money that was spent, like everything else for this evening, for no purpose other than luxury and social pretense. And the DJ during the after-party was absolutely terrible, preventing me from melting with the music and forgetting about how utterly alone everyone was.

And that is all I remember about this week-end: we just don't connect together.

The unfinishing and unfinished rant of the single heterosexual middle-class males; the morals and priority system of parents; the life projects and value systems of corporate co-workers: I hate them. Having received a good education, I smile and keep up the conversation in a civilized manner; however my forced smile is the upper level of a thick fog of the utter boredom, and I hate them for that feeling too.

And yet, there is hope; for this morning I could feel glowing inside me a burning desire to tear their social exoskeleton apart, blow the dust out of their dormant brains, and shake them until whatever flame of humanity left in their core starts to shine again. And before I opened the curtains and left the grey sky above Amsterdam successfully dim this glow and put me back on the tracks of a featureless normal winter day, I convinced myself that one day, I will try. Somehow.

Take for example this summary of a study in the Netherlands:

Holland counts 4 million registered MSN users out of an internet population of 11 million. With 26 million MSN users for Europe all together this puts Holland far ahead of other countries.
55% of the dutch MSN population is younger than 25 years, with a fast growing group between 15-19. With an average of 49 buddies it is not uncommon for dutch youngsters to reach the maximum of 150 peers on their list.

The worst part of it is when I hear people actually tell me “why use anything else when there is MSN?” or just blink a clueless stare when I tell them that I simply do not use MSN because I do not need to.

Today I just dumped some thoughts to fight the monoculture. Here come some guidelines about messaging.

Of course, the title is a misread of a series of recent articles that can be summarized as follows: “researchers already started allowing parents to choose (not) to have children depending on their genes. Like the third movie X-Men, a new study on sheep sheds light on the biological roots of homosexuality. Expectedly, this is also a new open door for discrimination and possibly eugenic selection that already irates some famous people .”

What I see there:

• “X-Men and superpowers in comics heroes can be seen as cryptogay” (... although that's hardly news)
• “new research attempts to raise productivity of rams” (... and decrease biological diversity)
• “parents should have rights to choose their children” (... and make fashion-oriented or phobia-oriented choices)
• “old tennis stars become so desperate of fame after they stop playing that they start having opinions about fashionable cultural issues.”

What a world.