De rabiate weerzin in delen van het politieke spectrum tegen het verschijnsel van de meervoudige nationaliteit heeft een gevolg dat pas laat aan het licht kwam – dezelfde beperkingen aan het behouden van de oorspronkelijke nationaliteit die aan buitenlandse aspirant-Nederlanders worden opgelegd, gelden voor Nederlanders die een buitenlandse nationaliteit willen aannemen. Een petitie met meer dan vijftienduizend handtekeningen van mensen in het buitenland keert zich tegen deze collateral damage.

…

In het nationaliteitsrecht is het nuttig om politics of identity te onderscheiden van politics of interests. De laatste jaren wordt het Nederlandse nationaliteitsrecht gedomineerd door de vurige wens om aan buitenlanders die Nederlander willen worden eerst de eis te stellen dat ze ideaaltypische Nederlanders zijn geworden. Ze zijn ingeburgerd, spreken de taal, participeren in de samenleving, verdienen behoorlijk, hebben hun startkwalificatie op zak, hebben geen strafblad en zo meer – alsof Nederlandse losers niet bestaan. Deze Nederlandse identiteit mag niet worden bezoedeld door vreemde smetten, zoals een buitenlandse nationaliteit. De identiteit van de would-be-Nederlander moet exclusief Nederlands zijn.

…

Het wetsontwerp houdt geen rekening met burgers. De argumenten van expats zijn verstandig en invoelbaar. Mensen willen settelen in den vreemde zonder hun Nederlanderschap te verloochenen. Om praktische, zakelijke overwegingen nemen ze een vreemde nationaliteit aan, zonder dat ze erover piekeren hun Nederlandse identiteit weg te snijden. Het zijn dezelfde overwegingen die buitenlanders ertoe brengen om Nederlander te willen worden.

Quick, messy, summarizing translation: the dislike in some parts of the political spectrum against multiple nationalities has an unexpected result: the same limitations that apply to aspiring Dutch apply to Dutch people who wish to assume another nationality.

In recent years Dutch politics has been dominated by demanding that foreigners become idealized Dutch people, part of which is being exclusively Dutch.

The law design doesn’t take citizens into account. The arguments made by expatriates are reasonable and can be empathized with. People want to settle in a foreign country without renouncing their Dutch nationality. For practical reasons they assume a foreign nationality without considering cutting off their Dutch identify. These are the same considerations that make foreigners want to assume the Dutch nationality.

She remembered the day a furniture van from Portland had shown up with a two-thousand-dollar sectional sofa. Scott had been in his study, writing with the music cranked to its usual deafening levels — she could faintly hear Steve Earle singing “Guitar Town” in the house even with the soundproofing — and interrupting him was apt to do another two thousand dollars’ worth of damage to her ears, in Lisey’s opinion. The furniture guys said “the mister” told them she’d let them know where to put the new piece of furniture. Lisey had briskly directed them to carry the current sofa — the perfectly good current sofa — out to the barn, and place the new sectional where it had been. The color was at least a fair match for the room, and that was a relief. She knew she and Scott had never discussed a new sofa, sectional or otherwise, just as she knew Scott would declare — oh yes, most vehemently — that they had. She was sure he’d discussed it with her in his head; he just sometimes forgot to vocalize those discussions. Forgetting was a skill he had honed (emphasis mine).

From Lisey’s Story by Stephen King (p.148 of the 2006 Scribner hardcover).

My wife alleges I do just that.

Given your phrasing, it’s highly improbable that you’re actually talking about critical thinking. One does not think critically against anything. You think critically, period, about everything. Perhaps most important, this includes yourself and your own notions. If you only think critically about (let alone against) others, you’re not thinking critically at all. If you think critically against someone or something, rather than about, you’re just out to find flaws so you can justify your own preconceived notions.

Having just moved, we had to decide whether or not to buy a washing machine. Washing machines start at about €400 — they can be obtained used for much less, but last time I picked up a used washing machine for €40 it broke within about a year and it’s just so much trouble trying to fix it or getting yet another used replacement — while laundromats cost about €3-4 per load (+20 cents for detergent). Admittedly the load sizes are slightly larger at the laundromat, but I don’t see that as a good thing: it just makes it harder to carry and dry the laundry.

We usually wash on 30 degrees and have an otherwise energy and water efficient washing machine, but I’ll just run with the price for a single wash without depreciation value. I’m not interested in depreciation of the value of the washing machine, since the point is how many times you have to wash to break even compared to the laundromat. Of course a depreciation value could be used for this so that ax = bx should yield a useful conclusion, but that’d be a bit of a roundabout way.

I devised the following simple formula: ax = bx + c, where a is the cost of one load at the laundromat, b is the cost of one load in a self-owned washing machine, and c is the price of a washing machine. x is the break even point of the number of washes required to make it worth your while to buy a washing machine as opposed to utilizing a laundromat.

3.20x = .42x+480 (-.42x)
2.78x = 480
x=480/2.78=173

I haven’t counted the number of times we’ve washed, but if we haven’t surpassed it yet, I bet we’re quite close. We’ve had it for nearly two years and we wash slightly more than once a week on average.

Lost now to family, buddies, girlfriend, rabbit hound, society, and himself, this poor young sailor had fallen—not very many miles from Jerusalem—understanding virtually nothing of the situation in the Middle East. He probably believed it involved a struggle between right and wrong, good and evil, freedom and oppression. That was his second mistake. His third mistake was in trusting that even if he didn’t understand the situation, his leaders did. His first—and worst—mistake was blindly doing what he was told to do. Without questioning their methods or their motives, he allowed politicians to make the decisions that led to his early demise.

What is politics, after all, but the compulsion to preside over property and make other people’s decisions for them? Liberty, the very opposite of ownership and control, cannot, then, result from political action, either at the polls or the barricades, but rather evolves out of attitude. If it results from anything, it may be levity.

From Skinny Legs And All by Tom Robbins (p.118 of the May 2003 Bantam trade paperback reissue).

On the night of February 8, 2009, an anonymous edit on German Wikipedia, in the article about the German politician Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, sparked the beginning of a controversy. Guttenberg gained an extra name: Wilhelm (Anonymous, par. 4). His full name is so extraordinarily long that the addition initially escaped the attention of Wikipedia’s editors, but they caught on quickly (Anonymous, par. 6). In theory, every fact on Wikipedia requires a source. However, that is what caused the problem. Since Guttenberg was to become the new Minister of Economics on February 9, the media all ran articles about him the day after the notorious edit, and, ironically, many used Wikipedia as a resource. While the additional name was considered suspect by Wikipedia’s editors, various newspapers were publishing it as fact (Anonymous, par. 7). Three days later, all the media had rectified their mistakes, and the article on Wikipedia was back to normal (“Wilhelm,” par. 5). Events like this keep casting a bad light on Wikipedia’s credibility. Even so, the number of factual errors in Wikipedia’s science articles is comparable to that of Encyclopædia Britannica. Furthermore, Wikipedia has no practical limit on the number and size of articles. Additionally, Wikipedia is a useful source of information. Finally, Wikipedia has a great deal of information that has no place in traditional encyclopedias. Wikipedia can be a reliable, comprehensive source of information.

Wikipedia is not significantly less accurate than Encyclopædia Britannica. According to Giles, Wikipedia and Encyclopædia Britannica each had four serious errors when forty two articles were reviewed by experts; they were not aware from which encyclopedia the articles originated (par. 13). However, the quality and readability of Wikipedia’s writing often leave something to be desired (Giles, par. 15). For instance, in Wikipedia, scientific theories that are still the subject of controversy are given a nearly equal amount of attention as established theories, whereas Encyclopædia Britannica gives them little or no attention (Giles, par. 15). Wikipedia users not familiar with the subject might infer that the theories are equal, when they are not. An additional advantage of Wikipedia is that articles can be updated very quickly when new information is published. Therefore, it can potentially reflect recent insights and developments within hours, while changes and corrections to the information in paper versions can take years to update.

Wikipedia does not have the limitations of a paper encyclopedia. Consequently, in Wikipedia neither the number of potential articles, nor the length of articles, are bound by the physical constraints that limit paper volumes (“Wiki Is Not Paper,” par. 1). Articles on long subjects are frequently made into summaries of the most important points; there are links to in-depth articles in the relevant subsections (“Wiki Is Not Paper,” par. 6). One of the most intriguing implications is the fact that there can be a separate, detailed Wikipedia article for each character in a book, TV show, movie, etc. (“Wiki Is Not Paper,” par. 5). Furthermore, other media, such as images, can be implemented without additional costs, which typically restricts the usage of (colored) images in traditional encyclopedias (“Wiki Is Not Paper,” par. 16). Moreover, audio or animations can be added for further clarification and enhancement, which is impossible in print (“Wiki Is Not Paper,” par. 17). There are several other advantages to the electronic format of Wikipedia; for instance, words can be made into hyper links, which allows the user to immediately open articles for further clarification, or simply out of interest. Furthermore, the age of a person is always automatically calculated from date of birth (“Wiki Is Not Paper,” par. 18). There are quite a few other minor enhancements like that, but none of these advantages are as influential on the overall user experience. This does not, however, mean that Wikipedia does not apply traditional encyclopedic principles. It should be noted that there are also many things that are not possible in Wikipedia, like opinions and pure dictionary definitions, just as they are not in traditional encyclopedias.

Wikipedia is a worthwhile information resource: not just for random trivia, but also for scientific research. Its articles have greatly benefited from the introduction of the <ref> element in 2005, which is used for referencing sources. In April 2007, 30,368 references had already been made to external sources (Nielsen 4). Consequently, heavily referenced articles gain trustworthiness. Many references are to scientific journals: as Nielsen states, “the individual journals with the largest number of inbound citations from Wikipedia [are] Nature (787), Science (669) and New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) (446) … (number of citations in parenthesis)” (3). Wikipedia’s function is thus not only to provide a valuable summary of the information on a specific topic, but also provides ample opportunity for further research (Nielsen 4).

Wikipedia is more complete than Encyclopædia Britannica on subjects that are of moderate interest to a more traditional encyclopedia. For example, Encyclopædia Britannica’s article on Star Trek: The Original Series is 343 words long, vs. roughly six thousand words in the Wikipedia article. The article does not contain all of Wikipedia’s information about Star Trek: much more information is available on independent related articles. Wikipedia has, among other things, a list of all episodes, with a summary and other trivia for each episode, and an extensive article about the Star Trek theme tune. This demonstrates very well that Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia; nevertheless, it is unlikely that all of this information would be present in a traditional encyclopedia, even if paper constraints were not a concern. Wikipedia contains information regarding television series, movies, books, music and much more, which makes Wikipedia very useful to find information about a fictional character that might only be mentioned by name, if at all, in a traditional encyclopedia.

To conclude, Encyclopædia Britannica is not much more free of error than Wikipedia. Furthermore, the restrictions associated with paper do not apply to Wikipedia. In addition, Wikipedia is a decent research tool, and, finally, Wikipedia contains a good deal of information that cannot be found as easily and as comprehensively elsewhere. Therefore, Wikipedia is a good source of information for subjects that have a large, interested fan base and for science articles that have many references to respectable sources. If there is one thing that can be learned from Wikipedia’s occasional embarrassing mistakes, it is that any source should be examined with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Works Cited

Anonymous. “Wie ich Freiherr von Guttenberg zu Wilhelm machte.” BILDblog. 10 Feb. 2009. 10 Mar. 2009 <http://www.bildblog.de/5704/wie-ich-freiherr-von-guttenberg-zu-wilhelm-machte/>.

Giles, Jim. “Internet Encyclopaedias Go Head to Head.” Nature 438.7070 (15 Dec. 2005): 900-901. Academic Search Elite. EBSCO. Utrecht University, Utrecht, NL. 13 Mar. 2009 <http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=afh&AN=19171583&site=ehost-live>.

Nielsen, Aarub. “Scientific Citations in Wikipedia.” 1 Feb. 2008. 17 Mar. 2009. <http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.2106>.

“Star Trek.” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 14 Mar. 2009 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/563557/Star-Trek>.

“Star Trek: The Original Series.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 14 March 2009, 13:02 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 15 Mar. 2009. <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series&oldid=277174592>.

“What Wikipedia Is Not.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 18 March 2009, 22:30 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 19 Mar. 2009. <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not&oldid=278220991>.

“Wiki Is Not Paper.” Wikimedia, Meta-Wiki. 19 February 2009, 00:00 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 15 Mar. 2009. <http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wiki_is_not_paper&oldid=1398243>.

“Wikipedia: Size Comparisons.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 31 January 2009, 02:50 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 15 Mar. 2009. <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Size_comparisons&oldid=267536315>.

“Wilhelm II.” BILDblog. 12 Feb. 2009. 10 Mar. 2009 <http://www.bildblog.de/5731/wilhelm-ii/>.

To a nice observer, it would have been worth while to remark the difference in tone and manner between the Resident and Havelaar on this occasion. Both had often attended such a solemnity [the reading of the decree of the Governor-General, whereby Mr. Max Havelaar was appointed Assistant Resident]; the difference which I refer to was not, therefore, occasioned by their being more or less affected by a novel and unwonted spectacle, but was only a consequence of the very different characters of the two persons. The Resident, it is true, spoke a little quicker than he was used to do, because he only had to read the decree and oaths, which saved him the trouble of seeking for the last words of what he had to say; but still all went on with a gravity and a seriousness which must have inspired the superficial spectator with a very high idea of the importance which he attached to this matter.

Havelaar, on the contrary, had something in expression of countenance, voice, and mien, when with uplifted finger he repeated the oath, as if he would say, “Of course, without ‘any oath,’ I should do that.” Any one having a knowledge of men would have had more confidence in his freedom from constraint than in the sedateness of the Resident. Is it not ridiculous indeed to think that the man whose vocation it is to do justice, the man into whose hands is given the weal or woe of thousands, should think himself bound by a few uttered sounds, if his heart does not feel itself obliged even without those sounds to do so (emphasis mine)?

We believe of Havelaar, that he would have protected the poor and oppressed wheresoever he might meet them, even if he had promised by “God Almighty” the reverse (emphasis mine).

From Max Havelaar by Multatuli.

The release of Ubuntu 10.10 coincided with this change for wintry weather; however, while I’m sure it’s swell, you won’t see me upgrading just yet. Perhaps I’ll have to look a little harder into acquiring a netbook so I can use it with the Ubuntu Netbook Edition.

Of more interest is the announcement that Opera 11 will have extensions. Or, more particularly, that I was the first to guess this in a contest.

Opera Mini and this kind of calendar synchronization enable me to use my now over three years old Sony Ericsson s500i much like it were a modern smartphone. I realize the phone is as ubiquitous these days as the Nokia 3310 was in the early 2000s, but I take comfort in being a pioneer: I got the phone about one to two months after it came out.

But none of that is really relevant. If you use Google Calendar and a phone that supports SyncML, syncme.se might just be what you were looking for.

To clarify what a tab is, I looked for a random picture of a tab and added a circle around the tab.

If those tabs aren’t there in some kind of metaphorical pixel-form, there are no tabs. Or to put it another way, a tab-based user interface consists of multiple internal windows with a sort of task bar.

In round numbers, the cylinder is 40 mm ID and the cap is 20 mm tall. Volume of a cylinder is πr²h, so you’re looking at 25×10³ mm³ of waste ink.

Seeing as how 1 mm³ = 0.001 ml, the tank currently holds about 25 ml of ink!

The printer has six cartridges. Assuming head cleanings drain an equal amount from each cartridge, that’s 4 ml apiece. Given that the large OEM ink cartridges come with 11 ml of ink, you can do the math: a third of a cartridge of each color just for head cleanings so far.

Assuming that the cartridges are at or around 11mL in my older Epson Stylus Photo R220 model as well, the amount of waste is likely very similar for my printer. I can’t find any indication of measurements, whether cubic or otherwise, on my cartridges: presumably because you’d realize just how little there is in those cartridges if it were indicated properly.

Combined with idiotic default settings that make you waste ink and paper, and ludicrous region restrictions that may make you waste ink, owning printers sure amounts to an awful lot of fun.

It’s amazing how often I see the same information posted on both the feminist and atheist blogs I follow. Religion is not good to women.

On a very related note, I would highly recommend anyone to read Infidel, the autobiography of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. These issues all come down to treating people equally and fairly regardless of sexuality, gender, race, religion or any other reason, but religion is often in direct opposition with those values. For illustration I’ll quote the devil of whom I just spoke:

Feminists need to be wary of the celebration of “cultural diversity” unless they want to inadvertently celebrate polygamy, child-marriage, marital rape, honor killings, wife beating, selective abortion of female fetuses and other traditions that are now legitimized in the name of culture.

To end this quick post I’ll link to some of my favorite atheist blogs.

• Pharyngula, no doubt well-known to many. The amount of time he spends debunking quacks is to be admired – or to be pitied. Regardless, his blog is intelligent and provocative and an excellent source of rationality.
• Friendly Atheist isn’t as entertaining as Pharyngula, but heck, not everything can be.
• Heaving Dead Cats also hails from the US and telltales of living in a society that sounds like the 1950s to my Dutch ears.

I’ll end this post with Bill & Ted’s idiom, aka the Golden Rule: be excellent to each other.

This is the only signature I had which really liked. [I guess I must really, really like it, for I still use it.] It looks like a quote from someone famous at first sight [(of course famous by no means implies not stupid)], or just a good old expression (you know, like “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”), but it is entirely a product of my brain. [Whoopee.] I don’t find that so very surprising all by itself; in what may be a form of narcissism, I say things I consider quotable quite often. [Saying quotable things sure is narcissistic. What's that? You meant I consider things I say quotable quite often, did you? Very well then, carry on. On a very related matter, I'm not so sure if stupid jokes like You've got the first pickle (when offering a few pickles) as a play on first pick is all that quotable, though.] But still, this particular “quote of my mind” has a sort of uniqueness over it. [Oh boy. If that means it's the magnum opus of my brain, I'm fucked.]

You should also know something about my browsing behavior to understand a bit about what happened when the quote came to me. I seldom browse with less than four pages open. [Even at the time that was a lie and you know it. I bet you rarely managed to browse with less than 10.] I basically just open what I find interesting and then read what I have opened one by one, or close it quickly if I see it is not what I expected it to be. [Most people, on the other hand, close pages they don't want to see as slowly as possible.] I also start writing a reply to something, to interrupt it by going to some other page, after which I will continue writing the reply. [You were also doing that while writing this post, weren't you?]

The situation where the general idea came into my mind was like this. I was filling in profile information on some site (I don’t remember which one, but it doesn’t matter) and I came to the signature part. I could use the quote which I made up with my Chicken avatar (“The chicken and the egg came at the same time”), but I wanted something new. [I'm sure that everybody knows what your Chicken avatar looks like.] Something catchy. So I decided to go to another site. Meanwhile, I could think about my signature.

It was quite a strange site I visited. A UFO related site, where they argued that UFOs actually were some kind of new technology from the Third Reich, whose descendants still resided on Antarctica. Utter nonsense and therefore enjoyable. [The perfect way to judge whether something is enjoyable.] But then suddenly this thought came into my mind, because of the combination between World War II and UFOs. [Suddenly, I wanted to kill myself.] Why haven’t aliens contacted us? If they’ve observed us they must have noticed the bloodbaths of Alexander, the expansion and fall of the Roman empire, the Conquistadors, Napoleon, and most important, World War II. So yes, obviously alien life is intelligent; if they weren’t, they would have contacted us. Intelligent alien life does exist, otherwise they would have contacted us. [Amazing!]

And there it was. The perfect signature. I had exactly the kind of bad quote I wanted my signature to be. I still like it. [I guess I can live with it for a while longer. Perhaps I should update it. Space dinosaurs do exist, otherwise they would not be extinct on earth.]

A couple of days ago, ppk published his party profile of the PVV. One commenter remarked, “On immigration, the CDA/ VVD ideas a couple of Cabinets ago were novel and more creative compared to the rest of Western Europe.” If you’re interested in Dutch politics or simply wish to learn more about it, I can strongly recommend ppk’s political site. This pushed my buttons and I replied that I prefer to call it “illegal fascist xenophobic nonsense.” I don’t think fascist was the right adjective, but other than that I stand by my statement. However, especially the xenophobic part of my opinion regarding Dutch immigration policies embodies much more than merely language and cultural tests, and the income requirement. This post will list what I consider most important regarding Dutch immigration policy, how I think the implementation is horrible even if you do agree with the basic principle behind all of the rules, and to a lesser extent how I also think the principle behind some of the rules is improper.

How Hard Is It to Live With a Foreign Partner in the Netherlands?

The following list has examples ranging from easiest to hardest.

1. EU citizens with a foreign spouse (nationality spouse is irrelevant). Example: a Romanian with a Mexican spouse.
2. Highly-educated workers with a foreign spouse (nationality spouse is irrelevant). Example: an Indian ICT specialist with a Nigerian spouse.
3. Turks with a foreign spouse (nationality spouse is irrelevant). Example: a Turkish citizen with a Turkish spouse.
4. Non-EU citizens with a permit to live in the Netherlands with their foreign spouse. Example: a Moroccan living in the Netherlands with their Moroccan spouse.
5. Dutch people with a foreign Western spouse. Example: a Dutch citizen with an American spouse.
6. Dutch people with a foreign non-Western spouse. Example: a Dutch citizen with a Mexican spouse.

This list and the examples were taken almost directly from the Stichting Buitenlandse Partner (Foreign Partner Foundation) forums, but I didn’t feel right about the gender bias in the original (each example was a man wishing to live together with a woman), so I reworded it a little in my translation.

Conclusions Based On This List

Dutch people have less rights in their own country than EU citizens from any other country. I see no reason why things should be any different for Dutch citizens than for EU citizens.

Hurdles

Income

If you want to live together with a foreign partner you will have to make approximately €1,700 a month through a permanent employment contract (which I believe has to be for at least a year but don’t take my word for it). There are several issues with this:

• This income requirement is rather high to say the least. Assuming that this is meant to cover monthly expenses, let me run down our monthly expenses on a monthly basis:
  • Rent (including water): €550/month
  • Gas (as in heating and cooking, not gasoline), electricity, Internet & public transport: €100/month
  • Food: €250/month
  • Insurance: roughly €1,800/year altogether, so €150/month
  • Money required for potential unexpected things, such as the washing machine breaking down: €100 (perhaps a little higher than necessary, but I would definitely not like to be short on money if something comes up)
  • Total: €1,150/month

This is a little lower than minimum wage, but not too much. Also note that we have a relatively low rent (at least for the amount of space we have available), and that this is for two people, so per person we have to come up with €600/month to be able to get around. For some foreigners (especially non-Western) this might not be very easy, placing the burden of coming up with sufficient money solely on the Dutch citizen. Roughly speaking the equivalent of minimum wage should be sufficient for this, however.

I emphasized equivalent because all of this only applies with a steady employment contract and lowering the income requirement would not fix this. A freelancer making equivalent or more money will not qualify. Someone with a fair amount of money in a savings account will not qualify regardless of whether they have the equivalent of the income requirement/month for a year or more on their savings account. To me it seems a safer bet to allow someone with €30,000 savings to live together with a foreign partner than someone who’s making €1,700/month but barely has any savings.

The main problem with this situation, regardless of whether you think €1,700/month is a fair minimum income requirement or not, is that it is only possible to qualify if you’re employed in a certain way. Your savings don’t count, your freelance income doesn’t count, nor can anybody vouch responsibility for your expenses if you’re not able to make ends meet. Especially the fact that savings hold no value whatsoever seems wrong to me on so many levels. Additionally, I think the partner’s savings should also be taken into account. If the Dutch citizen’s savings were taken into account without doing the same for the foreign partner’s savings, I imagine a workaround would be for the foreign partner to transfer the money to the Dutch partner’s account, but exchange courses and the like might make that a very costly endeavor if that were a necessity.

Cultural test

Potentially an interesting idea. As I said on ppk’s blog, “The message that we think gays and nudity are awesome and that you should perhaps reconsider [whether you want to live in the Netherlands] if you don’t like such things is perhaps a good one, but as far as I understand it, [the cultural test is] mostly a waste of time and money.” To expand on that, there are many questions in there that would be, broadly speaking, answered differently by people from different parts of the country and among different age groups. There is such a thing as Dutch culture, but it’s certainly not uniform enough to say that in situation X, you should always do Y. Worse, the “correct” answers to questions regarding the House of Orange-Nassau and Dutch colonialism have to be answered positively. Why are these in there at all? I couldn’t find the example test at the moment, but I looked at it a few years ago in NRC Handelsblad and on a site they linked to and I thought they were old-fashioned to say the least. Eric Krebbers describes my thoughts on the matter quite well. If you throw it in Google Translate you’ll get a reasonable idea of the kind of questions asked. Apparently one of the questions even assumes that immigrants will be appalled if they see gays kissing openly. I don’t recall seeing that question, but it’s certainly in line with what I do remember. One last thing: taking this test costs €350.

Residency Permit Request

If the foreigner passes the test, the residency permit can be requested. This costs €800. For this money, they’ll easily take much longer than half a year and then they might still reject you. This isn’t necessarily a hurdle, but it seems almost a complete waste of money on the part of the requester. How can they do this in other European countries for not even a tenth of this amount?

Driver’s License

Virtually no non-EU driver’s licenses are accepted in the Netherlands. An international driver’s license is accepted, of course, but after a year or so you’ll have to get a Dutch driver’s license. Now I can imagine that a non-Western license could be rejected on the basis that it’s not worth much, but I’d like to hear the reasoning regarding Western nations for sure. Anyway, rather than just getting a license (which is €50) you’ll thus have to take the required tests. That’s €25 for theory and €250 for the exam. Since you’ll have to know just what they’re looking for during the exam I imagine you’d have to take at least a few lessons, at about €40/hour. €400-500 would thus be my lowest estimate for this.

Total Costs

A simple addition of €350 and €800 totals at €1,150. Adding the costs of a driver’s license ups that to €1,500. In most or all other EU countries the same can be achieved for €100 or less. This is more than 10 times as costly and the IND (immigration and naturalization service) is also slower than most of its counterparts across the EU.

Legality

In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). Article 16 of the UDHR reads:

(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family (emphasis mine). They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State (emphasis mine).

Probably more important to us EU citizens, the text of the UDHR is also implemented in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. Specifically, article 9.

Article 9. Right to marry and right to found a family

The right to marry and the right to found a family shall be guaranteed in accordance with the national laws governing the exercise of these rights.

I am not a lawyer, but while Dutch immigration policy might potentially not be inconsistent with the letter of the law (one might argue that these rights are not obstructed because we can live together in any other EU country and America – I don’t know how valid such reasoning would be legally), it most certainly is not in accordance with the spirit of the law.

Conclusion

The current Dutch immigration policy is not implemented in a way that suits a modern, free-thinking democracy. Dutch citizens’ human rights are infringed and the financial burden related to merely requesting a residence permit for those wishing to live together in the Netherlands is over 10 times more than in other European country. Changes are necessary indeed, but not in the direction Wilders suggests.

The History of Philosophy

• The history of Western philosophy starts in Greece—Miletus, more precisely, situated in modern-day western Turkey—, around the beginning of the sixth century BCE. According to Aristotle, Thales of Miletos was the first to develop a way of thinking that deserves the name philosophy, around 585 BCE.
• The first philosophers were possibly aware of the novelty of their enterprise; at any rate, they made up a new term for it, historia, which means as much as “research.”
• The verb philosophein is not found until the second half of the fifth century BCE. This verb and the substantive philosophia do not become commonplace until the first half of the fourth century BCE. Literally, it means “love/desire to/strive to” (phileô) “knowledge” (sophia).
• Philosophia did originally not only specify a specific way thinking: originally philosophizing as an intellectual activity was intrinsically connected to a certain way of life. Something of this ancient concept is still present in our modern language: someone who sees things “philosophically” might possess the spiritual calmness the philosophers of Antiquity had in mind.

This intrinsic connection no longer exists, but some particular terms have maintained this connotation to the present day. Kantian, Heideggerian, phenomenologist or structuralist, on the other hand, only refer to certain points of view. The only qualities the philosopher needs to have are the same that every other scientist should have. Consequently, practicing philosophy does not mean that someone is or tries to be a better human being. It should be noted that this isn’t a modern development. During the Middle Ages, philosophy was little but a tool to support theology, and that is where the modern meaning of philosophy as academic and purely theoretical originated.

The Four Philosophical Questions According To Kant

1. What can I know?
2. What should I do?
3. What may I hope?
4. => What is a human being?

To know what philosophy is, it does not suffice to know the history. You need to know which questions philosophy wants to answer. According to Immanuel Kant (1724—1804) philosophy tries to answer three main questions, which come together in one big question.

[…] the thing that most annoys me about [combine always, hide labels] is the fact that it removes the ability to simply click the taskbar icon to minimize/maximize. […] This is the case only, when taskbar buttons are not set to the default ‘combine always, hide labels’. Then it needs CTRL-click to directly switch to the last visible window of a ‘grouped’ application. This is standard Win7 behaviour also with IE8. So, if you disklike the current behaviour disable grouping of taskbar buttons for now. Perhaps there might be an option within Opera later on…

I don’t care for the “combine always, hide labels” setting in Windows 7. I think it’s a failed copy of Apple’s crappy dock, where looking pretty is the only thing that counts while losing out on usability.

Oh wow, look how clean this looks, with all the pretty icons. No text. Whoopie. Now try to identify your windows when there’s 10 different ones. What’s that, thumbnails? Oh how useful, now I can really spot the difference between my 10 directories filled with files, my 10 web pages on the same forum, my 10 text documents in my word processing application, and so on and so forth. There’s a reason I give my directories names, you know. The same applies to just about any other application. The icon only identifies the application, the text-based title identifies what the heck it actually is. Thumbnails would only work the way Microsoft seems to think they should work in Windows 7 if all I ever opened was pictures.

It’s easy enough to combine a text-based title with thumbnails (for those who like thumbnails) and flashy effects (OK, I admit that as long as they’re shorter than a second I don’t completely dislike effects like burning or fading windows, things that light up, etc), but writing your own Compiz plugin is near-impossible without completely reverse-engineering the code (documentation? comments? what’s that?), and for Windows that situation isn’t very different, at least for me.

I’d say a typical erf does have sidewalks. Its distinguishing features are that cars have to drive really slowly (no precise speed is specified, but in practice it definitely doesn’t mean anything over about 10 kmph) because everybody except cars can utilize the street however they like, and that traffic can’t pass through: it’s a cul-de-sac after all. Most important it means a place where it’s safe for kids to play on the entire street and where everybody can utilize the street however they like. By no means does it mean that there aren’t supposed to be any sidewalks, and to claim that it does is a misunderstanding at best. Sadly some misguided people have managed to introduce erven without sidewalks in some places where there is enough space for them, but I’m glad to say that this is far from the norm.

Another typical situation is the 30 km zone, though you might see lower speeds like 20 km at times. This kind of zone will typically have a number of speed bumps in place to keep people at this speed and it is usually a through-going road, though seldom the preferred one. This zone will always have sidewalks and may or may not have separate cycling lanes, the latter being almost universally present on roads where the speed limit is 50 or above.

In conclusion, the Toronto Star must have projected its own vision of “better” street conditions on what is actually going on in countries such as the Netherlands and Belgium. An erf does not mean a lack of sidewalks, its application is only in carefully selected areas, and it is always meant to be a cul-de-sac. If you want to copy erven, at least do it right. Don’t claim they’re things they’re not.

microblog-purple offers convenient integration into Pidgin, which I already use for chatting. It’s easy to install on Ubuntu using sudo apt-get install pidgin-mbpurple, but you may want to consider using PPA for both Pidgin and microblog-purple. Note that the microblog-purple from PPA is named pidgin-microblog, so if you already installed pidgin-mbpurple you’ll have to remove that first. That’s what it is, after all: a chat service with a 140-character limit — most chat services offer at least 500 characters or so. At least it has better offline and history support than most. You also need to enable the plugin named Twitgin so you get a character count on the window where you communicate with Twitter.

Since, like I said, almost everybody uses it, I figured it might also be a good idea to announce new blog posts on Twitter automatically. I searched around a bit in the forest of Twitter plugins and WP to Twitter sounds like it best meets my needs. This post is a test of the plugin, and it announces my partial submission to the crowd — not submission in the sense of Islam, but submission in the sense of realism.

• America
  • Chicago
  • West Bloomfield (+Detroit)
  • Holland: where they tried to explain the flags of the Dutch provinces and Wilhelmina peppermint to me.
  • Palatine
  • Saugatuck
• Belgium
  • Antwerpen
  • Brugge
  • Brussel
  • Gent
• France
  • Lille: on the way back the conductor told us we’d better be glad he’s Flemish, ’cause the French would give us a huge fine for not validating our dated return ticket prior to boarding the train (had already been checked on the way there, as well…), and that this was apparently written “clearly in 4 languages at the station.” Maybe on the validating machines themselves, but certainly nowhere else. Other than that it was quite nice.
• Germany
  • Nürnberg: old looking city, but actually quite new due to WW2. Nice museums and metro system. Each church was apparently built by killing all the Jews who lived where the church is now located. A Nazi past, so to speak. The hotel had rooms based around local fairy tales, and was a total dream: both for the price we paid, and compared to our accommodations in Italy.
• Italy
  • Atrani, Amalfi, Amalfi Coast: wonderful scenery, a horrible road that makes a 20–30 minute drive into one that’s more like two hours, lots of touristy shops, and the most laid back people anywhere, ever.
  • Capri: didn’t spend quite as much time here as we’d liked; blue grotto is nice but overpriced.
  • Florence: northern Italy is so refreshing after the south, recommended.
  • Torre Annunziata: Naples suburb that is near the Pompeii and Oplonti archeological excavations; also has a convenient train connection to Naples. Very impressive Roman ruins, and nice landscape, but the modern-day suburbs, city, and nearby villages are not very inviting. The atmosphere is a lot better in the villages than around the city, but the natives peer at you like you were some creature from outer space, which is rather uncomfortable.
  • Rome: definitely need to go back sometime; we barely scratched the surface despite being there for a while. Scariest and oldest elevator I’ve ever used. Who says elevators aren’t supposed to go down like 10cm when you step into them?
  • Sorrento: lots of stairs, just like anywhere else along that coast.
  • Venice: involved quite a bit of dragging with suitcases. Very special place.
• The Netherlands
  • Amsterdam
  • Den Haag: they didn’t have a sand sculpture. Lame.
  • Den Helder
  • Middelburg
  • Rotterdam
  • Scheveningen
  • Texel
  • Utrecht: I lived here, after all.
• Sweden
  • Stockholm
  • Tippen, Saltsjöbaden: where we spent the night and enjoyed the hospitality and company of a good friend.