Yes Sports Happen

Putting aside my huge distaste for Portugal’s hosting of the Euro2004 Cup Tournament, due to the huge amounts of money poured into new stadiums instead of actual important things like REAL hospitals and SERIOUS public transport. (Portugal lags bigtime in that dept.) So leaving all that aside, I’ve been watching the matches closely, and for the most part – enjoying. It has been super exciting. Last night’s Portugal victory was super-sweet and very nerve-racking. They will go on to the next round. Hopefull the photo that appears here will be Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal … 19 year old.. plays for Manchester U.. the boy is pure poetry. He makes me, a non-football fanatic, a believer. He flies! He leaps! He’s pure magic!

On a sadder note the Dutch lost last night, but it was one of the most exciting matches I have ever seen. The Czech team are insane… like a bunch of superheros.. the XMEN of football. (soccer.. I always mean soccer!)

Enough with the sportstalk. Relations between Pakistan and India continue to improve politically. This is good news. I dislike nuclear weapons, and these two nations are up to their proverbial necks in ’em. Slowly they’re taking steps to stop developing their nuc programs and ensure neither of them ever uses them. If only we could get rid of everybody’s.. especially the US and Russian ones. Oh yeah, this news led me to discover the Pakistani Perspective… a good blog on Pak news.

Browsing the latest from Tony Pierce, I decided to become a frequent reader of his co-worker Danielle. Its a very non-political blog as far as I can tell. But I appreciate the writing style, not mention that she hates wearing underwear. Who can blame her?

Today’s Music: Jobim-Morrelenbaum/Sakamoto – Casa

Not a place to work

Ever since my move, besides being very sleepy, my social calander has really filled up. I guess it’s just a summer thing, summers in Amsterdam are always choc full of celebrations and cultural events, as they should be. Last night I was at Concertgebouw listening to the UvA Orchestra play Mahler. Quite nice.

But lets get to beheadings and bullshit. First off, I find the exagerated coverage of the beheading of American workers in Iraq, over the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq, rediculous. It’s as if human life is now valued according to how someone dies, not if they die. If you get shot in Iraq you make the third page of the newspaper, if you get kidnapped and beheaded, you make the front page and you get all sorts of special reports about you. Wonderful isn’t it? Even the blogosphere is into it. Though far more diverse than traditional news sources I would hope.

Why are these Americans working in Iraq? Most of them are there because they can’t get good jobs in the US, so they join the war-profiteers Halliburton, who on their own website offer a service for sending messages of “support” for American employees. Welcome to the new private army, working and dying for the sake of profit. I am not shocked that they are beheaded or whatnot… people are angry.. their country is under the control of a foreign government and they are desperate. Rather than go for the classic “they are barbarians” talk, I would rather say the other awful force in this equation are the corporations who insist on persuing big-money contracts in Iraq, and then hiring Americans to work there. There are no statistics available since there’s barely a government in place, but we all know there are an enormous percentage of Iraqis without jobs. Ironically, the ones doing the kidnapping were probably once the engineers and technicians of the country. I think it’s far too easy to just sit around calling them evil and barbarians… the situation is far more complex.

Add to that, in this day and age… all of those videos and websites could easily be forged… and they are somehow conveniently revealed every two months or so. Perhaps whenever support for the “war” dips, someone makes up another beheading story/video/site. (yeah yeah, I know.. its a conspiracy theory.. they have families.. but it is not impossible)

Here’s the part where I remind everyone I’m a pacifist and I don’t support war or violence as a means to accomplish any sort of advances in this word. On other hand, I love them video games!

Today’s Music: Noir Desir – acoustic Live on TV5

High on Wireless

If you are my new neighbor on Eerste Helmerstraat, thank you so much for the Wi-Fi! If I ever figure out which window/apartment is yours, I’ll bring dutch apple-pie, flowers,and a bottle of wine. Don’t think of this as mooching… because not only is mooching not a word, but this is not what I’m doing. I’m sharing… using my own Wireless technology, I’m sharing in the joy of your internet connection. I hope you can understand it from my point of view… not like it’s any loss to you. You are my hero/heroine..!?

What happened with that whole Venus in transit event last week? Somehow I missed it, I should start looking up in the name of space exploration instead of at the pavement to make sure I don’t blow a tire. But nevermind Venus, I can’t find enough news on the “minicars on Mars” missions… yes they’re still going! New Scientist reports on some great new breakthroughs on Mars… time to read up.

Weblogg-ed made mention of blog projects in public schools, sometimes involving students, teachers, and parents. While I agree that blogs can be dynamic and effective in terms of creativity and understanding of each other, I worry that the minute you tell kids at a certain age that it’s a project “involving parents, teachers, and students” it will be instantly stigmatized. Students won’t want to honestly and fully participate. Remember how cool it was to work on projects with parents? riiiiight. Don’t get wrong.. now I would gladly do any project involving my parents… but then again, I’ve attained inner-coolness… I mean.. I do live in Amsterdam… isn’t that teenage mecca? Or wait.. that might be the mall.

Shout out to the surge in Finnish visitors to my blog! Welcome back to Helsinki friends, hope the Amsterdam experience (and the Heineken) proved fun and interesting.

Today’s Music: Wes Montgomery – South of the Border

Radio Silence

Blogging from now on will be at random times, as I am now without net at the new place I will be calling home as of late this afternoon. I was unable to rent a bakfiets, which would be the bikes with the huge front loading capacity. I made a few phonecalls, called in a few favors, and I found a good friend with a car to drive me and my boxes across town… mental note: do even more favors than normal for people.

Washington Post is sporting a special interactive feature on Bush, his campaign donors, and key positions in his administration.(reg. required) It is cute. I would also qualify it as a bit too little too late. Apparently it has taken them four years to decide to do some investigative journalism. Careful now WP, don’t get all journalistic on us!

There’s much to say about European Elections. As you may have heard, something like 48% turned out, which I’m proud to say, I’m with the 52% non voters! That’s right! I’m fairly intellegent, very informed, and I excercise my right not to vote! Why? Because none of these candidates represent me, and I don’t much care for this type of western democracy. Well, on a more logistical note, I’m not registered to vote in the Netherlands yet. Next time I might get involved, but this year was my year of protest thru non-voting. Here’s an audio report on the elections results, for those who prefer their ears to their eyes.

Today’s Music: Jorge Palma – Ao Vivo (Portuguese.. good.)

Hello Wifi

Part of Amsterdam life, especially extremely modest income Amsterdam life, means moving from apartment to apartment. This offers a chance to experience the various neighborhoods and different quality apartments. It also acts as a great way to not be a pack-rat. Everything must be thrown out. I once had the finest archive of the French – Courrier International EVER. But I had to move, so it went to recycling. I’ve learned to cram everything into digital format and copy on CD’s that fit in either slim-cases or envelopes. You must be impressed by now. I digress, tuesday I move from Oude Schans to 1ste Helmerstraat… back to the Oud West, where I was once the quickest draw. Whatever happens, I shall miss my current apartment a great deal.. the garden.. the canal view.. the busy-busy kitchen and my roomates. Alas – this is Amsterdam life, for now.

Thinking about what I brought up in my last post, the importance and possibilities of RSS, Doc Searls points out a very nerdy but worth-reading theorizing about email and rss. He breaks email into three sections: spam/marketing, commercial, and private. He puts them into layers and shows how marketing is supposed to be the outside layer, and it invades the other two layers using awful spam. Anyway you’re better off reading it than listening to me. The bigger point was that RSS offers something that fixes the spam problem, you request the specific updates from a clearly-identified source. Such as this blog 🙂 So he wonders, as I now do, if RSS might not be an answer to the horror that is spam in email.

I also recently spoke about the East Timor oil situation. But as the Independent (UK) recently reported on, there are still huge amounts of refugees that have been unable or unwilling to return to their country. Talk about a UN/international community unfinished mission. Now they will start a mission in Sudan and the DR-Congo mission appears to need re-enforcement. OH and let’s not forget Haiti which is getting some fresh peacekeepers ASAP. All this with some of the most modest funding imaginable, GULP.

OH.. more news on this as it develops, I’m going Wi-Fi as of this week. Combination ADSL trouble and wanting to catch the Wi-Fi fever. I’ll be sitting in front of rich people’s houses and hip cool caf?s using their wireless network. Yeeehaw. I just hope I don’t spill hot choco on my laptop.

Today’s Music: Blink 182 – Miss you (stuck on it for some reason)

Speak Finnish

Lots of dark clouds hangin over me these days, at yet at the same time, what I most pleasant day. After a slow-start thanks to a bizarro night when it all got wierd after I found myself singing Fado on the street with some Dutch flamenco-dancing students. We stood out there for hours going through every fado song I could do. They were big Christina Branco fans while I’m more of a Amalia and Mariza fan.

Moving on to other typical Amsterdam randomness, this morning I found myself the guest speaker for a group of visiting Finnish journalism (masters) students from the U of Helsinki. I led a discussion which began with my thesis results on Alternative Journalists in America, eventually leading to a discussion about weblogs as alternative press, which inspired me this morning to seek an nice Finnish weblog in english. It was such a pleasure to talk about blogging, especially with such a hip group. Impressive that, as far as I could tell, none fell asleep, and occasionally my crap jokes worked out. I highly recommended using bloglines to them, as I would to anyone reading this. I’m worried that beyond people knowing very little about blogs, RSS feeds are still a widely unfamiliar topic. Which is disappointing, because they’re my favorite part of my morning, after the special K, soymilk, and banana. (- the anatomy of my breakfast) Oh and thanks again to the student who lent me lunch money, what a lame impression to leave, give a intelligent discussion and then bum money for lunch.

Stepping out of my little world and into the bigger world, I’ve been struggling to follow this story about East Timor and Australia’s fight over who gets the oil. I guess, as always, its about oil. ETAN, who I used to march around NYC with, provide lots of news stories related. Surprise – the US is involved, and I wouldn’t put it past the bloodsuckers at Portuguese GALP to be involved. While I’m on the subject, here’s the only East Timor related blog I could find.

One last point, I’m now convinced that TPB is the king of NJ related blogging. I know he does much more than that, but for me, his latest adventure is just classic.

Today’s Music: Franz Ferdinand