Memorial Day in the Netherlands

A good read for the day.

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL!

This has got to be the best goal yet in this tournament. Take a look at some glorious still photos here, but I can't stop watching the animated gif:

UPDATE:  "The perfect sports photo."  Plus ridiculous video.

Quote of the Day: A Dutch General on War and Peace

I'm not even going to try to pick one line from General Peter van Uhm's talk.  Just watch this.  

 

Mark Steyn Considers Geert Wilders and the Dutch

Steyn is always fascinating.  As for Wilders, whatever else he is, he's also a lightning rod. Death threats are not okay, no matter what sort of person he might be.  As for Steyn's piece, this is how it begins:

When I was asked to write a foreword to Geert Wilders’ new book, my first reaction, to be honest, was to pass. Mr. Wilders lives under 24/7 armed guard because significant numbers of motivated people wish to kill him, and it seemed to me, as someone who’s attracted more than enough homicidal attention over the years, that sharing space in these pages was likely to lead to an uptick in my own death threats. Who needs it? Why not just plead too crowded a schedule and suggest the author try elsewhere? I would imagine Geert Wilders gets quite a lot of this. 

And then I took a stroll in the woods, and felt vaguely ashamed at the ease with which I was willing to hand a small victory to his enemies. 

A Brief History of Santa

Dutch and Swiss Governments: the Anti-SOPA

The Dutch and Swiss governments' approach: downloading movies and music will stay legal.  Internet policy?  You're doing it right.

Great Moments in Research: the Nano-Car

Dutch scientists at the University of Groningen have created a tiny car that's measured by atoms.

Nerd News: Huge Social Psych Research Fraud

BUSTED.

Friday Fun Video: Sheeped Away

Sheeped Away from Junaid Chundrigar on Vimeo.

Friday Fun Video: Winter in the Netherlands

Via Presurfer comes this charming video filmed on ice skates:

Dutch Winter from Kasper Bak on Vimeo.

A Tree Grows in Montreal

It's no ordinary tree.  It's a sapling from the famous chestnut tree that Anne Frank often mentioned in her diary.

2 Book Recommendations: Brussels and Narnia

The common thread?  Both are places filled with utter, unapologetic fantasy and bizarre residents who could never live in the real world.  

The delightful Daniel Hannan reviews and recommends the political analysis The Tower of Babel: Inspiration for the European Parliament by Derk Jan Eppink and also Planet Narnia, a work of imaginative literary criticism by Michael Ward.

World Cup Obsession: The Netherlands Vs. Spain -- It's the Final!

Need I say more?  GO NETHERLANDS!


UPDATE:  Alas, no Dutch Treat this year!  But congrats to Spain.

World Cup Obsession: Germany vs. Spain in Semifinals

It's going to be EPIC.  It better be EPIC.  My beautiful Germans have been on a roll, and I am ludicrously excited about the semifinal match later today.   After the Netherlands knocked off Uruguay yesterday (what a match that was!), I am over the moon.  Those Dutchmen!  The very same who sent Brazil home.  I'm beginning to love these guys.  Can't wait to see them in finals!

As for today's semifinal match.  My buddies are all backing Spain.  Oh, sure, Spain is good, but I have faith in my Germans.  I remember how folks thought they couldn't win against Argentina, and look how that turned out.  I'm a little concerned, though, that Mueller's not playing this match.  Never mind.  Get Klose on the pitch and turn him loose.  On the other side, I expect great things from Villa.

Ooooh, and read this little writeup that says what everybody's thinking: Germany-Spain sounds like a World Cup FINAL.  It describes the Germans with this delicious phrasing: "playing with discipline and a seamless chemistry that makes their plays unfold like a symphony."  OH YES.  They're beautiful and terrifying all at the same time.  I love it!

I'll leave you with this awesome graphic of World Cup champions from Geeks Are Sexy.  Is this the year for German glory?  They came so close in 2006.

UPDATE 1: As Hamlet said, "I defy augury!"  We previously met Paul the soccer-predicting octopus here.


(Note: I am also obsessing, as I do every summer, about the Tour de France -- now in Stage 4!  But there will be Tour blogging later. Oh, and my now-standard caveat remains in effect.)


UPDATE 2:  Thanks to the German side for a thrilling ride in this World Cup!  MM still loves her Germans even as she congratulates the Spaniards on their 1-0 victory.  Spain to the World Cup finals for the first time!  That Spain-vs. Netherlands final is going to be AWESOME.


UPDATE 3: I guess Paul the Octopus was right after all.  Well, dang it.

Wasn't Dubya Supposed to Be Evil For "Going It Alone" and Being All Unilateral?

Hey, I'm just SAYIN'.   So, yeah, some 2 months after other nations began offering to help clean up the BP oil mess, the federal government springs into action to accept some of their kind offers of assistance.  TWO FREAKING MONTHS.  Really?  


MM would, in all seriousness, like to thank everyone who has offered to help, beginning with the Dutch, who were among the first to offer a hand.

Quirky Euro Files: Dutch Council Program to Help Jobless Women Find ...

Jobs? Did you think I was going to say "jobs"?

Nope! Some geniuses in the Netherlands have decided to give unemployed women makeovers and advice so they can get a ... man!

Unemployed Dutch women are being offered a €1,400 (£1,150) fashion and beauty makeover and free membership of a dating agency to get them off the dole by finding a solvent husband. Single jobseekers will be given a new hairstyle and outfit, and tips from a life coach on how to attract a new partner or a job.

They will also be given instruction in social and presentation skills and a place on the exclusive matchmaking service Mens & Relatie (People and Relationships), boosted by a professional photograph of their new image. Mens & Relatie claims a 75 per cent success rate in finding long-term partners for its clients.

The thinking behind the scheme, organised by three councils in Friesland, in the north of the Netherlands, is that finding love helps to get the unemployed off state benefits by improving confidence, ambition and motivation. Some local politicians, however, have criticised it as unethical and a waste of taxpayers’ money.

Are we sure this isn't some news prank by the Onion?

RELATED POST: All the Single Ladies: In Love With Big Government?

Nerd News: Student Astronomer Makes Discovery

Awesome!

In pictures, the object discovered by Marianne Heida, looks like nothing more than a speck of light on the edge of a swirling cloud.

But the unassuming shape is thought to be a giant black hole, more than a billion times the mass of the sun, flying at 670,000 miles per hour through space.

Miss Heida, a student at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, made the discovery as part of a final-year project.

Working with experts at the Dutch space research institute SRON, she was cataloguing thousands of sources of X-rays in space when she noticed one bright spot which appeared to be radically out of place – on the edge of a galaxy rather than the centre.

The object, more than half a billion light years away, was so intense such that scientists believe it is likely to be a black hole.

Her project, published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, is thought to be the first time that the phenomenon has been captured.

Well done!

Schadenfreude Alert: the Netherlands Versus IPCC

For the IPCC, it's all gone horribly pear-shaped as the Dutch call them out:

The Netherlands has asked the UN climate change panel to explain an inaccurate claim in a landmark 2007 report that more than half the country was below sea level, the Dutch government said Friday.

According to the Dutch authorities, only 26 percent of the country is below sea level, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be asked to account for its figures, environment ministry spokesman Trimo Vallaart told AFP.

. . . The Dutch environment ministry will order a review of the report to see if it contains any more errors, Vallaart said.

Mwahahahaha!

SERIOUSLY, if these people can't get their numbers right on something that can be verified, do they really expect me to trust their fantasy numbers spun out of thin air, computer models, and ever-increasingly discredited pseudo-research?

Public Service Announcement: Janet Napolitano Is An Idiot

So Napolitano went on TV trumpeting how the failed Detroit Pantybomber incident was proof that "the system" worked. This is a patent untruth -- and, worse, is a blatant attempt to whitewash what actually happened. The system DID NOT work. We were lucky (the Pantybomber device failed), and we were self-reliant: passengers and crew took down Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab themselves. Before that moment, everyone from intelligence agencies to the TSA failed miserably. The guy managed to (a) get on the plane at all, and (b) get on the plane with explosives.

Read this and then this, which has the following piquant statement:

Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, told CNN yesterday that "one thing I'd like to point out is that the system worked." Yet the terrorist screening system seems to have failed in at least two crucial ways: first, in failing to revoke a visa to the U.S. that Mr. Abdulmutallab had obtained last June despite a later warning to U.S. consular officials from his own father that he was becoming radicalized and might have terror network ties; and second, in not adding him to a no-fly list from a lower-level watch list.
The episode is a reminder that the fight against terrorism requires even more interagency cooperation, and Congress should investigate whether such communication was lacking in this case. No one should leap to conclusions about who is responsible for any mistakes, but Ms. Napolitano isn't reassuring when she utters happy talk that it all "went very smoothly." The day was saved not because of the antiterror "system" but because the explosive failed to ignite and because a Dutch passenger and flight attendants acted heroically to subdue the man, put out the fire and detach the explosive.
The lesson here is the same as Flight 93 on 9/11 and shoe-bomber Richard Reid, which is that civilians willing to act in their own self-defense are a crucial part of "homeland security." The willingness of passengers and crew to identify potential threats seems more useful than more onerous airport screening, which only gives terrorists the satisfaction of knowing they have made air travel even more unbearable. The new rule to keep passengers in their seats in the final hour of some flights seems all too typical of arbitrary rules that inconvenience innocents but not terrorists.

Well, DUH. I suppose this doesn't need SAYING, but I'll say it anyway: self-defense is SELF-defense, not waiting and hoping for some faceless, clunky, slow, outpaced government bureaucracy to save you when push comes to shove, you're in a tough situation, and you have an opportunity to do something for yourself. Note new tag "rugged individualism." Anyhoo, as Steyn did just say,

And remember, whatever new rules they pass about not using the bathroom in the last three hours of the flight, when you're sitting in seat 7B and the guy in 7C starts doing something goofy, the Federal Government won't be up there with you.

If Napolitano really thinks that the "system works" when clearly so many balls were dropped, then she should be fired. More here. By the way, Ace of Spades, incandescent with rage, sarcastically gives the system the same grade that Obama gave himself: a B+.

Let's end with a shout-out to the heroic Dutch passenger who tackled the Pantybomber. I can't find his name yet, so I'll just call him "The Flying Dutchman" for now and raise a toast to him.

UPDATE 1: Great comment: "Once again, airline passengers 1, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) 0. And the response of the TSA? To further punish the passengers, of course. . . . What next? In addition to deshoeing ourselves, will we have to drop trou in security?"

UPDATE 2: Napolitano concedes to reality. Heh.

Great Moments in Research: a New Study is Full of Gender Cliché Fun

Check out the results of a new study done by some psychologists at Radboud University in the Netherlands. *giggle*