Urban jungle

The fascinating urban 'jungle' of Amsterdam. This is a view from the Prins Hendrikkade. I will post more pictures when I am home and have the ability to alter the colours a bit as the weather was a bit grey..

A creationist takes a place in the world of fossils - International Herald Tribune

A creationist takes a place in the world of fossils goes right against what I wrote about here. The dissertation by Marcus Ross is standard and about a certain class of marine lizards called mosasaurs. These animals lived more than 100 million years ago in the Cretaceous period and went extinct about 65 million years ago. The thesis is written within a conventional scientific framework.

The thing is this Ross-guy is hardly a conventional paleontologist. No this does not mean that he is some kind of Indiana Jones, doing his work under questionable circumstances. No, he is a "young-Earth creationist." Those people believe that the bible (the thing used by christians) is literally true about the creation of the universe and that Earth and all species were created in a 6 day week and at most 10,000 years old...

As he has his degree now, he can 'show off' with having his title. And, as what we are warned for by Richard Dawkins, we are even talking about it, writing about it and giving a minority in the scientific world a loud voice! Even I am part of the people who are shocked now and 'shouting' it out loud from their blogs.

I can only hope that a person who uses his scientific degree as a statue to gain even more power within the fundamentalistic christian world will be dethroned by taking away his "Dr." title.

Someone who is capable of using words in a much stronger way with views I totally agree with, is Larry Moran, a Professor at the University of Toronto. You can find the article I refer to here.

Biotex, Bio-Tex

However you spell it, Biotex is a Dutch detergent brand. In the mid sixties they produced a series of short child stories on 7" double-sided vinyl records.
The two posted below are both hilarious (if you can understand them ;) ).
One is called 'Bio-tex and the holiday box (carton: the box the detergent comes in)' and the other one 'Bio-tex and the box which could cry'.
The first one is a story about Bio-tex going on holiday with his favorite housewives... (by the 'lovely' names of Loeki, Rieki and Wieki... if those are still Dutch names, please tell me).
They go by car and a caravan. When they are on the campsite, they hear about an escaped lion (duh...) and clever Bio-tex captures the lion in the caravan...
The second one is about a child thief... a bad bad man who steals children! (hahaha, oh, it is SO funny in the light of today! well.. it is nearly 40 years old this record... back then child-thieves did do nothing else but steal children...)
Here they are:




Compared to the other records posted before, those Bio-tex ones were very popular. There is even a Wikipedia entry about it... (Dutch only).

Coffee, Espresso, Etcetera

Coffee has been an important drink in my life ever since I am fourteen or something like that. What happened back then? I believe we went canoeing somewhere in the polder of Noord-Holland. My parents brought food and drinks of course, that's what parents do. On the way back home in the car I was rather thirsty and my mother poured me a drink in a baby-cup (looks like a lidded coffee cup for a takeaway coffee, but back in the late eighties or early nineties those things were not common in the Netherlands yet...)
Nevertheless, I received the closed cup and did not see or smell what I got to drink. I may have thought something like tea or hot chocolate. I took a sip and did like it! It was coffee with milk and sugar. Before that moment I always said I hated coffee.
During the years I first got rid of the milk and eventually lost the sugar as well. The losing the sugar I remember quite well, it was back in 1996 when I lived in Spain and where I lived first the sugar was finished and later on the artificial sweetener which was still somewhere in the house got finished as well. As no one ever thought of buying sugar we all quit using it ;)

But traveling around the (western) world, you start to get to know your coffees. A certain taste is developed and you become more and more critical:.

Me: 'Hey, you brewed this coffee with old coffee!'
Someone: 'Eh, well, it may be two months old, I don't taste anything odd?!'
Me: 'Ordinary coffee should never be older then at most two weeks...'
Someone: 'Errr...'

Me: 'Hey, you should decalcify your coffee machine.'
Someone: 'Errrr its only 10 years old...'

Anyway. Even I sometimes long for a solvable Nescafe as it reminds me of good old times (it's not that bad for when you are traveling light). It is often even better than those coffee-padmachines (Senseo Drama, not talking about espresso systems with pad, those are often pretty fine, depending on the brand of the pads).

But now... I thought I knew a bit about making coffee (hey, I'm not a Barista!).

Personally I never really thought about those machines with levers to pull... Until I got to pull one myself. Timing is everything. I am talking about the Mirage Idrocompresso by Kees van der Westen:

Well, see for yourself. Apart from the wonderful taste you can produce with it, it even looks impressive.
I tried to find out how much such a machine would cost. Nowhere to find. I would say two times half the price ;)

From what I read about it in reviews, it is one of the top-models you can get these days. Although I am pretty curious what will happen when fully automated machines can do the same...

C.T.I. Vliegreizen

This paper promotional record for a Dutch (?) airline/charter from the sixties (?). I have not been able to retrieve any information about this former airline company, but it served fully accommodated trips in Europe and Northern Africa.
To capture this record I had to adjust the weight on the needle to 3 grams, otherwise it would jump of the record as it is far from flat.

Corry Brokken en de Hi-Five introduceren de BP Super Mix Song

This is a song about a new fuel: the BP Super Mix. BP introduces three 'new' types of fuel. Those fuels are mixed from the two types of 'ordinary' fuel in the sixties: Normal and Super (nowadays in Western Europe you hardly can find any Super anymore, as it was leaded fuel, Normal I haven't seen in ages).

The record itself was pressed the same way the Senton-record which I posted before: by use of the 'Procédé Sonopresse'.

Funny thing on the front-cover: in small letters it tells you that Corry Brokken only sings on PHILIPS records.

Anyway, enjoy:

Bayer Kinderaspirin

Well, this is the second 'record' I captured from an advertisement disc. It is a paper record with a plastic layer on top of it which contains the grooves. The disc may be from the fifties or sixties. Unfortunately no one added dates anywhere, so it is just a guess.
The front cover shows a boy who doesn't want to take his medicine. The promotional record tells us about the new aspirin for children with a fruity taste.
The back cover has the complete song printed out, so children could even sing along.
On the back of the record there is information on the medicine and the front shows a smiling child.

Well, listen and look for yourself:

Senton - You must go on, you can go on

Well, this is mainly for the dutchies only, as what you are about to see below is a Dutch 'song'.
It was captured from a promotional disc (as in record) to promote some anti-depressive medicine.
Organon was the manufacturer of the product Senton (I have not been able to retrieve any information on the product so far).

On the back of the cover it sais:

Het geriatrische preparaat om oud te worden zonder oud te zijn
(The geriatric preparation to become old without being old)

Well, listen to the song and enjoy :)


The so called 'flexi-disks' which were often used for those promotional records were often made by a Rotterdam based company: Sonopresse Rotterdam. They produced over 100 million of those thin, flexible records between 1961 and 1984.

Socks...

Almost everybody knows about the hassle of doing laundry. Maybe not putting it in the machine itself, not even the hanging the stuff to dry, no: the folding afterwards is the worst part.
But ok, you start doing it and then the smallest pieces remain, mostly socks.
Socks are the most difficult thing to pair. Shoes - if you would wash them - are usually quite distinct and trousers come mainly in one piece. But socks, no.
Often it is hard to tell if one black sock should be combined with thát one or thát one. But, the oddest thing about socks is that you always seem to end up with a few leftovers of which the counterparts are never to be found again. But if you throw them away, you can be sure to end up with other single socks.

The solution is: bind them together, put them in the bottom drawer and maybe after a few years, some of the single socks will end up as a pair again! The rest: throw them away!

The God Delusion

Many people already know by the title of this post what I am talking about: the book written by Richard Dawkins on the subject of the improbability of an existing god(like) figure and how useless religion is in general (in Dutch the title is 'God als misvatting').

Well, I do fully agree with what I have read so far. The regret I have is that the book might only be read by those who are already (converted) atheists.

It is not a science textbook and the views are not all unbiased, but it at least has the courage to question out loud what millions of people do not or cannot.

In times where even the Dutch government went back to a heavily Christian winged reign to possibly turn back lots of recently earned freedoms (from the past thirty years) we - as atheists or possibly agnostics (although the book has something to tell you if you are agnostic) - should show our teeth as well...