The dutch vote

So tommorow the dutch hold their first even EU-related referendum. All the pros and cons have been illuminated in such an overwhelming fashion on Television, Radio, Blog-o-sphere, Forums and in real life, that there is no more room for doubt and uncertainty.
Sure, the French said No, but this is about the dutch wanting to say something, based on solid argumentations, and not 'because the French voted No', as BBC Wolrd Service mentioned this morning.
I am going to vote "Ja", and then I am going to forget about the EU and the constitution, as will almost 15 million other dutch people.



But for now, here are some major pros of this new constitution:
.having a constitution gives a parlement more power.
.having a constitution / wanting to have one sells Europe better to Asian markets, of which we have been dependent for most of history.
.having a constitution centralises power.
.having no constitution is waste of energy

Furthermore, most arguments against are pretty leftist is their hope of an honest and fair world economy, I hope this newfound dutchness will influence the next elections

good luck with voting,

Jorge Cortell and P2P

Please read the following story:

A Professor in Valencia that was not allowed to explain Peer-to-peer technology.

Basically about P2P becoming scary for the establishment.

About Blog-advertising

I just found this wonderful story, plus some links ans data about the history of advertising in relation to weblogs. A good read.

Link.

Retelling stories

Ideas spread, whether you like it or not. Ideas spread and multiply as they do. This happens through Media, such as Trade routes, Blogs, Telepathy and just talking.
These media are based on individual human thoughts, ideas and concepts. They can be very shallow or very sofisticated. Are there ways to judge thoughts? Can ideas be censored?

This is a very vague issue that has to do with morality and an individuals world-view. It is certain that in today's modern world authorities exist that control ideas within the media. This is no conspiracy, but rather human evolution. This makes very interesting cases in the study of history, especially the relatively new approaches to mentality-history.

How do Blogs add to this senseless, but spirited world of the social sharing of thoughts together with some obvious censors, such as child-pornography, racist and fanatic entries etc.

Do blogs flood the internet with brainless thoughts or to they contribute to the positive spread of information, ideas and feelings?

Can blog be seen as art?

A New Blog

My name is Jonathan Even-Zohar. Even-Zohar is to be linked with the European Finkelstein, but also with the arabic Ibn Zuhr, or the lating Avenzoar.
Trying to express my thoughts on this blog here, i seek to express feelings on this blog over there:



By the way. Ahava is the hebrew word for love.

About Love:

However, there is doubt in the world. So lets see if we can trace a bit of it's beginnings in the world.
Rav Dessler, in Michtav MiEliyahu explains that giving to someone creates love. We normally think that since we already love someone, we give to them. But, Rav Dessler explains that the truth is, the more you give to them, the more you will love them. However, in order to truly give, one must have the free choice to give or not. If I am coerced into giving you something, then that will not create love, because that is not true giving. If there is no choice involved, then the relationship can only be one of fear - Yeera, which is the relationship that the Angels have with G-d. They perceive Hashem so clearly that in effect they have no free choice. That is why whenever we speak about their relationship with G-d, it is always with the word Yeera, and never the word Ahava (In Nusach Sefard, in the Brachos before Shema, when we say. "Venosnim BeAhava Reshus Ze LaZeh," the word Ahava is referring to their relationship to each other - Achdus, not their relationship to Hashem). Adam HaRishon had a very low level of free choice. He only had one Mitzvah. He distinguished between truth and falsehood, objective concepts. However, Adam was not satisfied with this situation. He wanted to have a closer relationship with G-d; he wanted a relationship of Ahava. So, he increased his level of free choice. That was the sin (this is what the Ari Z"L meant when he said that the sin was a Cheit Lishma). The "tree of knowledge" that Adam and Chava were forbidden to eat from, is called the Eitz HaDaas Tov VeRa. We know that Daas doesn't only mean "knowledge," but, intimate knowledge; knowledge that connects with you. The word Daas means a connection to someone, or something else in the deepest sense ("VeHaAdam Yada Es Chava Eeshto." Bereishis 4:1). What eating from the tree did, was "connect" Tov VeRa - it mixed up good and bad. Before they ate from the tree, the world was pretty clear. There was Emes and Sheker. However, eating from the tree mixed up the two, and brought a subjective reality into the world. Emes and Sheker are objective concepts, but good and bad are subjective. Something can only be said to be "good" in relation to it's intended goal. Instead of distinguishing between Emes and Sheker, Adam increased his level of free choice. Now the world was cloudy, good and bad was mixed up; doubt had entered the world.

(link)

Gender text recogniser

http://www.bookblog.net/gender/genie.html

Enter any text and find out the authors gender. A nice web-application by some crazy israeli.

Newsweek and angry arabs...

An interesting articel on Worldnetdaily.com

Well, Fuck George W. Bush

"Pictures don't inspire murders. Murders are inspired by an ideology, that is so barbaric, that the people of the West cannot cannot understand"...

GWBush

When will the interventionalist american foreign policy reap what it has sown?

"Kill George Bush"
"Nuke Washington"
Not exatly the stuff you want to hear, and it takes an easy lesson in sociology and psychology to be able to understand these murderous ideologists.

...meanwhile in Europe:
-a serious grow in interest in the Islam. Balancing on the edge of "respect fot the other" and scepsis on their societies base values.
-heavy debating about the constitution. apparently, peace stabalises but also make people talk, and talk, and talk....thinking has taken a totally new identity in popular politics and repetetive and unjournalistic media.

So Fuck George Bush...
...long live the arab revolt!
...long live the European Union
...long live Soufism
...long live the internet and all the strange people...

Everything is nowhere to be found.

I've just finished redecorating the blog, added some links, and then I found this weblog about Ayaan Hischi Ali, Geert Wilders, Theo van Gogh and all the other dutch heroes.

I hear that she is becoming a famous person in 'the west' and that she wants to move to New York and continue her Crusade for a better position of women in the islamic world. I believe this is a good cause. I don't believe it's a battle that should be fought in Holland, or the United States. I believe that 9/11 produces too much attention and signaled too many problems, thereby actually making it even more difficult to fight terrorism.

On the other hand, exhausting debates sharpens people minds. And the Dutch have always been a sharp thinking people. Think about it.

While she's away...

Nike, my soulmate-girlfriend-angel is digging for prehistoric animals and humanoids in Tautavel, near Perpignan. Anyway, I miss her. Esspecially since we just moved. Luckily I'm going to pick her up there in less than five weeks.

Blogs in space

Were There Blog Enough and Time
by Ralph E. Luker

As the 20th century faded into the 21st, the Internet gave birth to a new form of communication, the weblog or "blog." A blog is a commonplace journal maintained on the Internet, where it is accessible to other readers. At the beginning of 1999, there were about two-dozen blogs known to exist. This was an intimate world, in which every blogger could be known to all other bloggers, but during that year the first free create-your-own-weblog tools became available and the numbers of bloggers grew into the hundreds.1
Blogs take a variety of forms, from daily personal journals to occasional essays. Some blogs are exclusively individual efforts; others are collective ventures or group blogs. Some are done anonymously or pseudonymously; other people blog in their own names. Some enable readers' comments in response to what they've read; others do not. Blogs by academics are a very small part of the blog world—or "blogosphere"—which by now according to various estimates includes over 5 million blogs, though the numbers change constantly and no one really knows for sure because the attrition rate is also high. By now, however, academic blogs include some high profile public intellectuals, such as Penn State's Michael Berube (http://www.michaelberube.com) and Chicago's Richard Posner (http://www.becker-posner-blog.com).
In mid-November 1999, 25-year-old Kevin C. Murphy was probably the first (future) historian to begin blogging. He was then an aide to James Carville, President Clinton's former senior political advisor, and is now a graduate student in 20th-century American political history at Columbia University. Despite his youth, the early launch of his Ghost in the Machine (http://www.ghostinthemachine.net) earns Murphy the honor of being the elder statesman of history bloggers. In the history blogosphere, November 1999 is ancient history. Indeed, Swarthmore's Timothy Burke archives all of his blog, Easily Distracted (http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/tburke1), prior to December 2003 as "ancient blog." It isn't that blogging historians are overwhelmed by "presentism," but that the form itself is so new and in flux.
Two years ago, when I first became a blogging historian, history bloggers were vaguely aware of each other. A few of us, like historian/journalists Eric Alterman (http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870) and Josh Marshall (http://talkingpointsmemo.com), had a substantial audience. As our numbers grew and we slowly found each other, the virtual seminar of mutual teaching and learning built a sense of community. In September 2004, the group blog at the History News Network called Cliopatria (http://hnn.us/blogs/2.html)—the blog to which I belong—created a list or "blogroll" of all known history blogs. So far, we have found about 145 of them, including one each in Dutch, Finnish, French, and Portuguese.
Since 2003 is "ancient history," anonymity is a possibility, and attrition so high among bloggers, history blogging already has its legendary figures. Foremost among them is Invisible Adjunct (http://www.invisibleadjunct.com). This very smart, young historian, who noticed the ways in which she was marginalized as an adjunct professor of history, hosted engaging conversations about many subjects between February 2003 and August 2004. With astonishing rapidity, she found a large audience among academics, especially perhaps among women, but also men who were thinking about academic careers or who had already experienced the tough job market. It was a sad day in August for all of us who admired her work, when the Invisible Adjunct waved goodbye to history's marketplace, hung up her keyboard, and prepared to enter law school.2 History departments missed an opportunity to make an appointment of rare quality, but we anticipate a second coming of IA at next year's AHA annual meeting, where she will appear on a panel discussion about history blogging.
Female history bloggers may be more likely to post anonymously or pseudonymously than males, but not all of them do. My colleagues at Cliopatria, Hala Fattah and Sharon Howard, are good examples. Born in Baghdad, Fattah did her graduate work and taught Near Eastern studies in the United States before returning to the Middle East, where she posts with us from Amman, Jordan. Before joining us, Fattah briefly posted her beautiful essays at Askari Street (http://hnn.us/blogs/24.html), named for the street in Baghdad on which she grew up. Sharon Howard, a specialist in early modern British history, is currently on a postdoc at the University of Wales. Like many history bloggers, her work on the net began with a web site, in her case Early Modern Resources (http://www.earlymodernweb.org.uk), to which her own blog, Early Modern Notes (http://www.earlymodernweb.org.uk/emn), was subsequently associated. Both the web site and her blog are marked by an extraordinary resourcefulness and generosity of shared expertise.
Historians of very substantial accomplishment and a wide variety of interests are now blogging. The University of Michigan's Juan Cole does prize-winning Informed Comment (http://www.juancole.com) on Middle Eastern affairs. The University of Alabama's David Beito leads a libertarian group blog called Liberty & Power (http://hnn.us/blogs/4.html). Jon Wiener (http://www.jonwiener.com) the blog of the historian at the University of California at Irvine, flogs his radio programming schedule; and Emory's Deborah Lipstadt promotes her recent book at History on Trial (http://lipstadt.blogspot.com). Like Sharon Howard, Ohio State's prize-winning military historian Mark Grimsley blogs in conjunction with a sophisticated web site, War Historian.org (http://warhistorian.org/home.php). His blog's title, Blog Them Out of the Stone Age, announces his intention to transform traditional military history. Grimsley claims our attention by juxtaposing photographs of Che Guevara and Robert E. Lee at the top of his site and holds it with fascinating posts that envision a postcolonial military history, explore the Civil War counter-factually, and frankly discuss the professional struggle upward. His blogging is also infectious, as one of his advanced undergraduate students has launched Classical Archaeologist (http://classicalarchaeology.blogspot.com).
In a world where a 30-year-old graduate student is the elder statesman, a beginning law student who left the history job market is legendary, and an advanced undergraduate woman does classical archaeology, the population is fairly young. When I join them in the morning, I sometimes feel a little old and dull. But, there, the banquet feast is spread; and, then, the seminar begins. My young teachers are often graduate students or postdocs: Manan Ahmed, a native of Pakistan and graduate student at the University of Chicago, who blogs as Sepoy at Chapati Mystery (http://www.chapatimystery.com), teaches me about south Asian history and culture; at Roblog (http://www.robmacdougall.org), Rob MacDougall, a Canadian on a postdoc at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge, posts his remarkable essays on the history of American business and technology and shares his love of robots; and Caleb McDaniel, a young Texan at Johns Hopkins, blogs at Mode for Caleb (http://modeforcaleb.blogspot.com), where he shares his love of jazz and remarkable understanding of trans-Atlantic abolitionism. I learn about current graduate student life at Harvard and religion and race in 17th-century Chesapeake Bay from Rebecca Goetz at (a)musings of a grad student (http://rebecca-goetz.blogspot.com); and Esther MacCallum-Stewart, a postgraduate at England's University of Sussex, who blogs at Break of Day in the Trenches (http://www.whatalovelywar.co.uk/war), teaches me about the cultural impact of World War I. MacCallum-Stewart, Paula Petrik (http://www.archiva.net) of George Mason University, and Kelly Woestman of Pittsburgh State University, who blogs at Kelly in Kansas (http://kellyinkansas.blogspot.com), are pioneering in the use of blogs as a tool for teaching history to their students.3
Why do they do it, you ask. My colleague at Cliopatria, Tim Burke (who also posts thoughtful essays at his own blog, Easily Distracted), recently offered five reasons:
Because I want to introduce some unexpected influences and ideas into my intellectual and academic work. I want to unsettle the overly domesticated, often hermetic thinking that comes with academic specialization. I want to introduce a "mutational vector" into my scholarly and intellectual work.
Because I want a place to publish small writings, odd writings, leftover writings, lazy speculations, half-formed hypotheses. I want a place to publish all the things that I think have some value but not enough to constitute legitimate scholarship. I want a chance to branch into new areas of specialization at a reduced level of intensity and seriousness.
Because I want to find out how much of my scholarly work is usefully translatable into a wider public conversation. A lot of my writings on Iraq, for example, are really a public working-out of more scholarly writing I'm doing in my current monograph, a translation of my academic engagement with the historiography of imperialism.
Because I want to model for myself and others how we should all behave within an idealized democratic public sphere. I want to figure out how to behave responsibly but also generatively, how to rise to the better angels of my communicative nature.
Because I'm a compulsive loudmouth.4
Burke's fifth point must have amused his colleagues at Swarthmore as much as it did his virtual colleagues in cyberspace, because he models for himself and others "how we should all behave within an idealized democratic public sphere" so very well.
But Burke's fifth point does raise one of the questions one hears about blogging: is it quite respectable? Perhaps it is not; but as a Methodist, I'm reminded of John Wesley's explanation of why he went out to the mines and fields of England to preach the gospel. "I resolved to be more vulgar," he said. Like Wesley, bloggers are occasionally dismissed as "enthusiasts." But think back to a time when you were young and discovered your passionate love of history. Think back to a time when your idealism told you that, if you could afford to do it, teaching and learning was what you would do, even if you were not paid to do it. I was not being paid when I found that Cliopatria had its first reader from Nepal, but money could not have bought the thrill of it. There I am, sitting on a blog in Atlanta, and my student on the other end of that blog is somewhere in the high reaches of Nepal. Amazing.
—Ralph Luker is the founder of and "blogmeister" at Cliopatria, http://hnn.us/blogs/2.html.
Notes
* With apologies to Andrew Marvel and "To His Coy Mistress."
1.# Rebecca Blood, "Weblogs: A History and Perspective," Rebecca's Pocket (http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html), September 7, 2000; January 7, 2005.
2. Scott Smallwood, "Disappearing Act: The Invisible Adjunct Shuts Down Her Popular Weblog and Says Goodbye to Academe," Chronicle of Higher Education, April 30, 2004, A10–11.
3. Austin Lingerfelt, "The Classroom Blog: A Moment for Literacy, A Moment for Giving Pause," Essence Renewed (http://infestation.typepad.com/essence/2004/12/the_classroom_b.html), December 12, 2004; and Shola Adenekan, "Academics Give Lessons on Blogs," BBC News, January 23, 2005 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/4194669.stm). With mixed results, Northwestern University's Eszter Hargittai, Steven D. Krause of Eastern Michigan University, and Georgia State University's Charles Tryon have had their students of communications, sociology, and literature respectively, maintain blogs as a part of their course work. See: Hargittai's Internet & Society Course Blog (http://www.therockblog.com/); Krause, "When Blogging Goes Bad" Kairos, 9.1 (http://english.ttu.edu/kairos/9.1/binder.html?praxis/krause/index.html); and Tryon's Writing to the Moment (http://tryon1101.blogspot.com/) and Rhetoric and Democracy (http://democracymatters.blogspot.com/).
4. Timothy Burke, "Burke's Home for Imaginary Friends," Easily Distracted (http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/tburke1/perma12605.html), January 26, 2005.
Copyright © American Historical Association.

http://www.historians.org/Perspectives/Issues/2005/0505/0505tec1.cfm
on May 17, 2005

A quick read.

A quick read from a lebanese newspaper, half an hour ago...

Israel releases Jewish extremists who plotted Al-Aqsa attack
Government proceeds with plans to extend West Bank barrier


Compiled by Daily Star staff
Tuesday, May 17, 2005

A group of at least three Jewish extremists planned to fire a missile into Islam's third holiest shrine in hopes of unleashing mayhem across the Middle East and halting Israel's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank this summer, police said Monday.

The Cabinet and Parliament have repeatedly approved the pullout plan, driving opponents to desperate measures to stop it. Many are driven by messianic religious beliefs, rejecting the right of a temporal government to overturn their view of the West Bank and Gaza as land promised to the Jews by God.

According to a police statement, the suspects said they planned to commit suicide after firing an anti-tank missile at the holy site and throwing grenades at police who would try to arrest them.

Extremist Jews are organizing to stop the pullout at all cost, security officials warn.

The holy site in the Old City of Jerusalem, known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount, is hotly disputed.

Muslims revere the site as the place were Mohammad ascended to heaven. To Jews, it's the location of the biblical Temples, destroyed 20 centuries ago.

Adnan Husseini, director of the Islamic Trust, which administers the mosque compound, warned that any harm to the site would shake the Middle East.

"The only one who will bear responsibility for such an explosion is the Israeli government and the Israeli police," he said.

The plot apparently didn't progress past the stage of discussion and authorities did not have enough evidence against the group to go beyond ordering house arrest for a short time before releasing them.

Israel's Justice Ministry said the suspects would not be indicted because there was no evidence they carried out any part of the plot.

But the Palestinian mufti of Jerusalem, Ekremah Sabri, was outraged.

"Their release is a tell-tale sign of a kind of complicity. How can they be released when they are planning to attack the Al-Aqsa Mosque? There, there is complicity and a lack of seriousness," Sabri said.

In parallel, other opponents of the Gaza pullout showed Monday that even small numbers can tie down police,

blocking main highways with burning tires and their own bodies throughout Israel. More than 235 people were detained, police said.

Also Monday, Israeli officials said construction would begin this month on a section of the separation barrier that would effectively annex the largest West Bank settlement to Jewish Jerusalem and cut off the Arab section.

The new segment of the separation barrier would put the Maaleh Adumim settlement, with more than 30,000 residents, on the "Israeli" side. Israel says the barrier is necessary to keep suicide bombers out. Palestinians call it a land grab.

Israel is already building sections of the barrier elsewhere on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Once the barrier rings the entire city, it would cut off eastern Jerusalem, which the Palestinians claim as their future capital, from its West Bank hinterland.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei denounced the plan, calling it "a time bomb in the way of the peace process."

Meanwhile, Japan pledged $100 million in aid to support the Palestinians after Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, saying it wanted a greater role in the Middle East peace process.

The promise came as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas made his first Asian tour since succeeding the late Yasser Arafat. Abbas is preparing for July parliamentary elections in which the hard-line movement Hamas could fare well.

Abbas told Japan he wants to engage Hamas and bring the militants into the mainstream for the sake of stability ahead of Israel's pullout.

"Considering the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, I announce assistance totaling $100 million for now," Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told a joint news conference after talks with Abbas.

Koizumi did not specify the form of the aid or whether it would still come if Israel changes its mind on withdrawing from the Gaza Strip - a possibility some in the Jewish state have brought up in the event of a Hamas victory.

"Hamas is not a threat to us," Abbas said of the election.

"I hope the Palestinian issue will be resolved politically as soon as possible, which will lead to the stability of the Middle East," he said.

- Agencies

A quick read from Ha'aretz (Israeli) Newspaper, half an hour ago

Four Israelis hurt in Gaza rocket attack; IDF wounds two Palestinians

By Amos Harel and Gideon Alon, Haaretz Correspondents and News Agencies

Four Israelis were slightly injured by an anti-tank rocket near Rafah in the Gaza Strip on Sunday. In violence late Sunday, Israel Defense Forces soldiers shot and wounded two Palestinians near Ramallah. The military said they were throwing firebombs at an Israeli vehicle. The four Israelis, employees of a company contracted by the Defense Ministry, were working on fencing along the Philadelphi Route when the rocket hit. They were taken to Soroka Medical Center in Be'er Sheva suffering from bruising and ringing in their ears.

Advertisement Two mortars were also fired at the Gaza settlement bloc of Gush Katif on Sunday. There were no injuries. In the West Bank, IDF troops arrested a 17-year-old Palestinian armed with a Molotov cocktail near Bethlehem. The army will Monday transfer responsibility for part of the area around Jenin, in the northern West Bank, from the Judea and Samaria Division to Division 162, which is in charge of evacuating the four northern West Bank settlements slated for removal under the disengagement plan. Two of the four settlements, Ganim and Kadim, are in the area for which responsibility is being transferred.

Just a small, late evening tune-up i enjoy sometimes.

Housewarming Party

Here you can see some pictures from my housewarming party yesterdaynight. These pictures are not complete. There are no pictures of the crazy, friendly and hyperactive people from Brielle; there are no pictures of 15 people in a crowded hall, but anyway....i hade a pretty good time with all of my very nice friends. thankyou!
Ik heb trouwens geen idee waarom deze hele weblog in het engels is, maar ja...dat levert wel aparte bezoekers op.
















People are fun. Don't believe Slipknot ;)

Bush

Georgia is a beacon of Freedom. Liberty is the future...


And some nice quotes to follow
Bushism

And still, this great, warm southern man (who is actually from the north) is the president of the world's biggest weapons-traders, environment-destroyers, moviemakers, fastfood-dealers and cocaine-addicts.

strange...