Saint Nicholas

A few days ago I visited a talk on Saint Nicholas at Sis Josip in The Hague. Even though I already knew some of the background of our Dutch Saint Nicholas celebrations I came to know about the origins of the almond pastry roll, puting presents in once shoe and why we throw pepernoten. Saint

RobotChallenge Vienna 2008

Already more than a month ago, finally I've got the photo's of the RobotChallenge on my web site. The robotchallenge in Vienna is an international event where teams compete in different challenges. Chaekith Chandranna and I participated in the Parallel Slalom and Enhanced Parallalel Slalom challenges. The robotchallenge was a very nice experience. No prizes

The Double

De man in duplo coverAfter reading Blindness (De stad der Blinden) of José Saramago I definitely wanted to read more from this Nobel Prize winning author. I started in his book Het Schijnbestaan (Eng: The Cave, Orig: A Caverna) but haven't finished it yet. Blindness is one of my favourite books, however The Double seemed to be quite different.

Manchester

Some months ago we have been to Manchester. Visiting the stadium and the city centre. On the photo you see our guide in the stadium. Many Dutch players seem to play for the club (e.g. Van der Sar). The city centre was definitely not as good as Oxford or Stratford upon Avond. We met Chinsky

The Boondock Saints

"We must all fear evil man. But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most. And that is the indifference of good man." Two people actually put up this movie as one of their best movies, so I thought there was a need to wacht it. And, okay it was funny sometimes,

Guantánamo Bay

In The Guardian today: The former head of interrogations at Guantánamo Bay found that records of an al-Qaida suspect tortured at the prison camp were mysteriously lost by the US military, according to a new book by one of Britain's top human rights lawyers. Retired general Michael Dunlavey, who supervised Guantánamo for eight months in

Birmingham Central Mosque

Some months ago I went to the Mosque in Birmingham. The trip was organised by DSU and is part of the interfaith project. The mosque is one of the biggest in Europe. As a main place of worship I therefore expected it to be a wealthy place, however it turned out te be quite basic

Vitamins

Publications about vitamins, you see them over and over. However the conclusions are usually more or less the same. People with a healthy diet claim that we don't need supplements, people from the industry will claim we need them, the government will probably not say anything about them but they will try to stimulate a