Earlier this week i had the ‘pleasure’ of travelling down to brussels using the new so called ‘Fyra‘ service by NS Hispeed for the first time (the service is operational since 9 december 2012). While the Fyra is making news mainly for the unreliability of the service (said to be somewhere between 55% and 75% [...]

almost 6 year ago (on the first of january 2007) i started taking an interest in the use of Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFLs) as exterior lightening. I first noticed this use of this type op lightbulbs on a new years day stroll to the recently bombed out southern suburbs of Beirut. A large number shops [...]

recently a friend mentioned that his kids (who have the daycare mother as y) observed that at fatima’s (the daycare mother) they would get ‘vis met oogjes’ (‘fish with eyes’) as opposed to the vis(sticks) without eyes that they were served at home. for some reason i really love this observation/expression which is perfectly captured [...]

earlier this week i found myself in the bathtub reading through this list of voting recommendations by the ‘Audiovisual Coalition/EP CULT Committee‘ on the ‘Proposal for an orphan works directive’. The voting list makes voting recommendations with regards to amendments (proposals to change the text of the proposed directive) suggested by various Members of the [...]

‘Towards the west, the border is sharp because of natural conditions…’ [Brussels - a manifesto, p.27] i have mentioned before that Bruxelles is one of my favorite cities in the world and certainly in Europe. This is in spite of (or rather because) the city is a mess: European institutions reside in buildings that most [...]

speaking about required reading: head over to sleepycity.net for wonderful (and long) write-up by a guy who has spend the last years exploring (at night on foot) the Paris Métro system. The article is illustrated with a bunch of terrific photos. Reading this makes me jealous. Personally i have never come any further than maybe [...]

two days ago i finished reading ‘De Schijn-élite van de Valse Munters‘ the much-hyped book by Martin Bosma who is credited with being the strategic brain behind the rise of the populist/islamophobic PVV that is enabling the current right wing minority government in the Netherlands. I am not exactly sure why i started reading this [...]

not sure why this is happening, but it appears that commons sense is slowly starting to make a comeback in the discussion about copyright. Yesterday we had the British Prime Minster announce that his government is undertaking a review of the parts of the intellectual property laws in order to enable more flexible use of [...]

if you want to understand this you simply have to listen to the below excerpt from a planet money interview with Mark Zandi the chief economist of Moody’s Analytics and contrast that with the petit bourgeois, xenophobic attitude towards immigration that is prevailing in Europe: and again, fundamentally we are fine. we can’t loose the [...]

In the light of yesterday’s rather confusing and unconstructive discussion about ‘risks and rewards’ at the Europeana ‘open culture 2010‘ conference, i thought that it might be useful to clarify a number of things. If you take a step back from form your favourite grief about copyright/public funding and look at the larger picture the [...]