a country of commuters

The longest average commute in America lasts 39.6 minutes in New Jersey. Carpooling and walking is down, driving alone is up. I had hopes that America might improve its public transportation and biking culture, perhaps gaining 1% to 2% of what Benelux has up on it. I step out of the country and look what happens. *shakes head*

elvis lives in belgium!

Is this relative or rival, Elvo? :)

I should really stop complaining about the cloudy skies when "East" Flanders (I don't know how Ghent is considered eastern) is experiencing flooding enough to be considered a "natural disaster".

But I need to vent anyway: Every morning I wake up eager to don my summer clothes, the ones I've been waiting all year to wear, only to realize I need the same old purely functional clothes that keep me warm and dry. I've had a good summer, but somehow I can't help but feel that's it's a waste of one's twenty-third year to spend two summer months without a generous helping of sun. You're only energetic, stylin', and 23 once.

hanging the bell

No more 24-hour marriage services in Las Vegas! Why don't you just stop the fun without stopping a single idiot (couple) from tying an inopportune knot.

In other discouraging news, Apple hasn't been doing too well. Paying off Creative, recalling laptops with Sony batteries that have a tendency to explode into flames, having its hacker-immune image scorched (albeit only during use of a third-party driver), and admitting to "excessive" work hours in Chinese factories... get a hold on, guys.

"Google understands English, doesn't it?" Alice asked me today. A couple months ago, Wendy's boyfriend was sure that nobody in the US would know about this great Dutch-language search engine called Google. A company so pervasive and yet culturally without frills that everybody thinks it belongs to their own culture. Impressive and slightly frightening.

playing by number

When it comes to the U.S. News and World Report, it's all about manipulating a game of numbers. And Princeton still doesn't matter. Not to mention that the cover article of Newsweek appearing worldwide at the same time is by Yale president Richard Levin. ;)

Speaking of games, I wonder why wine-and-dine isn't a more common tactic for loosening the tongues of criminals. Villains have been around for centuries, so this idea isn't new. Why torture prisoners in Iraq yet suddenly break the royal treatment out on the self-(pro)claimed murderer of child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey?

And then for the seemingly unquantifiable... there is finally convincing proof of the existence of that wonderful thing called dark matter that probably comprises 25% of our universe. How much of the universe is made of matter that we've been able to detect until now? Probably 5%.

Every time I marvel at a new discovery or invention that brings us further into the modern and the technological, I wonder at the same time what kind of dark age I'm inhabiting in which we don't understand either the frontiers of space or the workings of the human mind. One day humankind will understand vast amounts more about the universe than we do now--if we avoid self-destruction. And the year 2006, with its proof of the existence of dark matter etc., will be laughable in its ignorance.

Water beats out beer!!!

Every year, the consumption of beer decreases in Belgium. This year, water beat beer as the country's most popular drink. Water! That thin, weak, tasteless, un-artisanal, ordinary drink. And people pay for it, as restaurants do not serve tap water. They serve mineral water in little bottles that only half quench my thirst. Maybe they're large enough to quench European thirst, and I, at 5 feet and 52 kilograms, require at least twice that amount to feel as if I'd had a real drink.

On the other hand, beer comes in far more generous quantities. I can drink only a quarter of the beer that's served to me as my alcohol tolerance is so low. Somehow my hydration needs are the inverse of the norm here. Then again, how can I be speaking of hydration. A tiny bottle of mineral water probably hydrates the body twice as well as a monstrous glass of Duvel.

development hell

It's a real term, though not as colorful as Duivelskermis, which the Belgians use to describe the not infrequent sunshine rain that accosted me throughout the streets of Antwerpen yesterday. And development hell is where the movie based on Orson Scott Card's riveting (if awkwardly prosed) Ender's Game has been since I first started anticipating it in high school.

I wish I could be bothered to write down the tasks and goals that pass through my head when I'm practicing the carillon or organ. It's only at non-computer keyboards that I remember all the things I'm supposed to do (particularly at the computer) but haven't written down, because at those times, my mind is clearest/least cluttered and there's room for memory. At the computer, I forget things and am unable to write creatively because I expect the machine to think for me.

Just look at this blog entry. It took me five years to remind myself to check out the release date of a movie based on one of my favorite sci-fi novels.

belated friendsterization

After I finished my exams, interesting people in Mechelen starting contacting me via MySpace, eight months after I gave up on trying to meet Mechelaars through the damn site. And by then I had no time to even meet these people. No amount of Googling told me what social networking site was popular in Belgium when I wanted to find it. And finally, I find a link in the newspaper for it: Hyves.net. Two weeks before my departure, probably never to live in Belgium again.

minority report

Remember those beautiful white glass screens that John Anderton manipulated in Minority Report? The Museum Boijmans van Beuningen has similar computers to guide you through a selection of its spectacular collection, but I didn't expect the technology to appear next at Polo Ralph Lauren, of all places. 24/7 window shopping... maybe the only good thing Polo has going.

doe-het-zelf paradise

The weirdest man-made island to date?

Gives me a whole new perspective on Ingrid's former hometown of Dubai. It makes sense that they called in Dutch engineers to solve problems in building the island, as the better part of the Netherlands just rose up out of the water in the last century.

The Poles are coming!

Each month, a thousand Polish workers take temporary positions in Belgium thanks to the recent simplification of European Union rules for recruiting workers from the new Central and Eastern member states. I'm obviously out of touch with the population working in agriculture, as all the Poles I know I've either encountered at Yale, Amersfoort, or Poland.

My visit to Poland has left me not only with a five-word Polish vocabulary, but also the ability to tell Poles apart from other Europeans--probably akin to being able to tell the Chinese and Japanese apart. And I can kind of distinguish their language from other Slavic tongues...with a 51% success rate.

fear of the dark

After the theft of my front wheel and vandalism of my brake cables, my view of Belgium changed slightly... it was no longer the unbelievably safe place it seemed and that some claim it to be. It became darker, less relaxed. But Ben took the cake when he confided in me on our way to KBC's Boerentoren that the young woman working at a Brussels cafe he used to frequent had been taken into the woods and clubbed to death by a "friend"/married man a week or two ago. Incidentally, what news should arise but that murder has increased by 35% over the past five years, symbolized recently by the senseless mp3 killing in Brussel Centraal. I doubt that any of the explanations presented in the article--vigilantism, materialism, lack of social cohesion--can really explain this dude going stark raving mad, but it's not difficult to imagine some prevailing force at work.

spirograph

For the past few years, I've returned to wanting more advanced Spirographs than the one I had as a child. There was one model based partially on randomness, with a pen perched over a moving tray.

Now artificially-grown mouse neurons can create artwork that looks eerily similar to the results of said Spirograph. I'm creeped out.

an LA thing

Where can you find an information wanted sign posted by the homocide department of the police bearing 54 photos of aspiring models? Most certainly in Los Angeles. And it's working.

jailbreak

So Will finally writes back. And he's been up to the best kind of no good! A bit reminiscent of the red paper clip.

A potential antidote to iTunes comes, of all possibilities, from National Geographic World Music.

icky

No wonder an American girl conducted a study showing that toilet seats generally host fewer bacteria than ice cream. Even the soft ice in Belgium is dirty.

lies, all lies!

People can't tell the truth about lying. Surprise, surprise.

tolerance?

The Flemish Interest is avidly opposing anti-racism concerts, taking the events as a personal insult. No further comment necessary.

Since when was Mechelen a noisy place at night? Take me to your party!

earth-shaking

"The U.S. Geological Survey estimates there are 500,000 detectable earthquakes in the world each year, 100,000 of which can be felt and 100 of which cause damage." You'd think Californians would be working hardest on preparing for the big one, but it's a Buffalo-based company in upstate New York that's developed a "silicon-fluid-filled damper...about 20 inches long and as thick as a pop can, [that] can dissipate 15,000 pounds of force, the equivalent of 20 car shock absorbers." It's already used in the Bay Bridge and Triborough Bridge. It's amazing that such a small thing can absorb so much force.

The earth is always threatening to turn on us. Remember all those forest fires that plague California and the four corners? They're already increasing in frequency rapidly because of global warming. When I'm finally done with my education, will I have a Cali to come back to?!

scofflaw diplomats in new york

Parking in Manhattan can easily cost $20 per hour. So being a diplomat must be sweet: "Between November 1997 and the end of 2002, diplomats accumulated more than 150,000 unpaid parking tickets in New York, racking up $18 million in unpaid fines.

Based on statistics supplied by the city, the report said the worst offenders during that period were Kuwait, which averaged 246.2 unpaid tickets per diplomat per year, followed by Egypt, with 139.6; Chad, with 124.3; and Sudan, with 119.1.

Twenty-two countries averaged zero unpaid tickets per year, according to the study, including Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates."

much ado about nothing

Anyone who thinks that America can operate in its current state without its illegal immigrants is an utter fool. So why not let the status quo continue and save the nation some money to educate immigrant children, etc.? Oh, yes, because people want to be re-elected by a nation of fools.

We could also save some money for the people who nearly died for us in wars not all of us supported. A good half to three-quarters of the homeless in San Francisco are veterans of the Vietnam War, if I recall the figures I was told at a shelter correctly. And now the young people who served as recently as in the Iraq war have no place to go. How can we send them off to a war of questionable motivation and then drop them back in the US with nothing but nightmares of the horrors they went through?

Also of interest: "In the United States, a full 42 percent identify themselves first as Christians and second as Americans." From an article about how Muslims are actually doing better than before in Europe.