Just in case you haven’t taken action against the Dutch government’s plans to ban mushrooms yet.
Click the picture to go to RedDePaddo.nl (picture courtesy of: paddoverbodnee.nl).
Category: thoughts
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Saving the Shroom
So it appears that they set up a way to protest the Dutch government’s decision to ban ‘magic mushrooms’. On RedDePaddo.nl there is an email you can sign which is automatically sent to the parliament and ministers. Apparently Monday afternoon, 10,000 people had signed it already… Tuesday morning, this was 20,000!
They’re taking more initiatives than just that, so be sure to check out their website. At least SEND AN EMAIL! They also give a bunch of great reasons why these mushrooms should not be banned:
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Bulgaria and the ‘euro’
After a big row about the spelling of ‘euro’ in Bulgarian, finally a compromise has been found. Bulgaria, which does not yet use the euro, will spell it as ‘eur’ even though their request to spell it as evro. It’s simply ridiculous that this was turned down. In Cyrillic spelling, the Western ‘u’ is spelled as a v. ‘Auto’ is spelled as ‘avto’, Europe as Evropa and there are a lot more examples. If I understand the language well enough, ‘eur’ would be pronounced as separate vowels instead of the ‘eu’ sound that we know.
Not allowing Bulgaria to use their own spelling is really quite foolish. Bureaucrats.
More:
Rel over euro opgelost (nu.nl – The Netherlands) -
Wedentistday
Doesn’t really work. Well, to make things clear: today, Wednesday, I went to the dentist. For the first time in a really, really long time (take how long you thing and multiply it by two or three). Because I wanted to? Hell no. Eastern Europe would be the last place where I’d choose to go to a dentist, but I had to. I won’t get into the specifics, thank me later.So I called the Dutch embassy yesterday to find out what a good dentist would be. Then I asked around some more for English-speaking dentists, since I’m skeptical of diplomats. I was referred to the same dentist with great enthusiasm for about 3 times, so I decided it was the right choice. As I knew the treatment was likely to involve removing a molar or at least involving some cutting and slashing, you can understand that I was a bit nervous when I got in. I really had to concentrate to put what looked like a signature on some form (my trademark when it comes to signatures is the uniqueness that every one of them has; no two signatures are alike!).
So then I got into ‘the chair’. Here it began. Honestly though… I don’t know why people bitch so bad about dentists. What was going to take half an hour took one and a half hour (yes it was that bad), but wow was I able to calm down. The only thing on my mind was dentistry and my breathing. I had to calm myself down and I did. At some moments I was really enjoying the marvels of this bright light, 2 sets of blue eyes looking into me, a metal staff which made a noise and had a golden glow because of the light above me… and some tube somewhere near my head that made a noise like someone was really being over-enthusiastic with the last bit of their milkshake (took me a while to figure out what it was… and that it was in my mouth).
I have to say, I’m very happy with what the guy did. I’m planning on visiting him more often (some more stuff to fix, might as well get it done with), but I don’t hope on making it a habit if you know what I mean ;-).
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Taking Action Against Climate Change, the best choice
In the whole climate change debate (it’s ridiculous it has to be a debate), I decided that the possible cost of NOT taking action, would FAR outweigh the cost of taking action NOW. Actually, what would be so bad about preventing climate change? Living in a cleaner, healthier world? The cities wouldn’t be so filled with smog, there would be less polution, no more oil wars… Sounds a lot better.
Anyway, the following video argues the same thing, but in a way that’s a bit more digestible than my elaborate theories.
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=zORv8wwiadQ]
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Two Web 2.0 Tips!
RSS2Twitter
Just found a really nice tool for shameless self-promotion. A simple tip to increase your SEO ratings.
Go to www.rss2twitter.com right now! If you don’t have a Twitter account yet, open up one. Basically, you can let RSS2Twitter export any RSS link straight to your Twitter (the Picasa one doesn’t seem to be working though). Easily increasing links back to your website. Encourage other people to do the same and who knows how fast you might rise in the indexes.
Here’s the next cool thing.
Selecting del.icio.us tags for your site
If you’ll have a look at the bottom of the menu on the right on this page please, you’ll see that I have links to some of my bookmarks there. If you click through to my del.icio.us account (add me!) however, you’ll see that I’m bookmarking a lot more. Have a look here: http://del.icio.us/Spartz/baslife. These are the links that are exported to my site by adding an RSS feed widget to my blog. This specific site (everything tagged ‘baslife’ by ‘Spartz’ (me)) is automatically aggregated to this page. Ain’t that sweet? -
Tag drafting
Just came across a very interesting notion called “tag drafting”. Most of us are familiar with sites like del.icio.us, stumbleupon and Technorati (if not, join the revolution today) and are developing our own ways for using these sites effectively.
Here’s another philosophy to increase your efficiency and effectiveness in finding interesting sites. Drafting is a phrase also used in racing, where it means that cars get behind each other (especially at high speeds) to decrease air resistance. Tag drafting is essentially the same thing, using the momentum of tags to find information in an efficient way. You basically keep an eye on a particular topic, let’s say “internet”, but it’s more effective to filter out what you want (eg. “internet + law + blogs”) so that you get a rather specific feed of what you want… because, the great thing about all these web 2.0 sites is they have RSS feeds, so you can easily keep an eye on these self-created channels.
You could also start tagging a lot and after a while some sites will recommend similar users to check out (StumbleUpon does this). Keep an eye on these users… because soon you won’t have to do any searching for yourself anymore and these users (who all have their RSS feeds) will provide everything for you.
Quite a simple way to do things, I was already doing it, but the phrase tag drafting is just great for it, because it describes exactly what it is.
For more, check out another post from the same blog where Sean goes into the Visualization of Tag Drafting:
http://communitygrouptherapy.com/2007/05/29/visualization-of-tag-drafting/ -
Bunnies again…
Another funny thing you can let the bunnies do…
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For the people in Burma.
May all beings everywhere
plagued with sufferings of body and mind
quickly be freed from their illnesses.
May those frightened cease to be afraid,
and may those bound be free.
May the powerless find power,
and may people think of befriending one another.
May those who find themselves in trackless, fearful wilderness ~
the children, the age, the unprotected ~
be guarded by beneficial celestials,
and may they swiftly attain Buddhahood
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Take Action Now! (Update)
And it gets worse by the day…
Junta’s crackdown in Burma intensifies
Internet access ‘cut off’ in attempt to silence BurmaSo basically the monks have dissapeared and nobody really seems to know what happened to them… Maybe we should stop threatening them with sanctions (the junta has lived with sanctions for decades anyway) and start threatening them with something more serious. These sanctions will hurt the people more than it will hurt the government.
Original post
Words, words, words, words… Maybe for the first time in a very long time, we have a good reason to intervene and step in. Why are we only sending ONE guy there to ‘monitor’? Isn’t what we’ve seen and heard in the media enough? It’s unacceptable to stand by and let soldiers kill monks… Peaceful monks and also civilians. The UN has to act before it’s too late. NOW.If you haven’t, please sign the petition. It takes one minute, so don’t postpone it, do it NOW.
And then have a look here.
Developments:
Myanmar troops threaten gunshot (Reuters)
10,000 protesters face down Myanmar forces in Yangon (Forbes)
Burma’s Saffron Revolution (a big explanation)
Shots fired at Burmese protests in Rangoon (BBC)
Myanmar troops open fire on protesters, 9 dead (Reuters)They’re murdering people! Wake up!
