Three reasons why taxed driving vs owning might not work

First, chasing everybody off the highway is a bit exaggerated. Why not make driving in peak hours more expensive, and thus motivating everyone to go for flexible working hours? Small remark: in the Netherlands, outside peak hours, traffic is still very congested (see point two) at about 95 percent of its capacity. It’s the choice between 3 hours a day of living hell, and an all day misery. So making highway driving more expensive alltogether might not be such a bad idea… However! The new driving tax does not take into account the difference between a pumped up Porsche Cayenne Turbo and our own super economic Peugeot 206 HDi now does it? So the claim of doing all this for Mother Nature does not really add up. Unless I am mistaken. For there is a whole variety of taxes laid upon cars, and one of them must somehow be based on the useless part of available horse power, Cx values, rest value, CO2 emissions and production costs. Third reason? Thanks to emmm, what’s her name? The TON girl? Anyway. Thanks to her the dutch highway grid is now undergoing mayor upgrades along the A2. The project, costing billions, includes a noodlebox bridge, overpass and clover crossroads galore around Eindhoven, and a 3 to 4 lane upgrade all the way along Ten Bosch and Utrecht to Amsterdam. If they wanted this upgrade so badly, why then decide to suddenly demotivate highway usage? Minister Bos has a point about the loss of tax income (56% of the drivers will pay less), especially since the the money will go to maintenace of the roads, instead of the support of public traffic. sure, Holland government has money, thanks to the gas bubble up North, acountable for about 13 billion and counting. Contrary to Belgian government, giving their reaction of yeah! Great idea, but here? Yes, uhmmm, maybe if we get support of all the three districts, and first it must be tested, on trucks, and then, uhmmmm…. If we get our heads around Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde, and then settle the case about the Antwerpse Ring completion and crown prince Phillip’s beard, maybe we start thinking about something like paid driving. Untill then: keep on rockin’ in the free world!

A sight for sore ears

In between seasons, when the Discovery Channel filmcrew had left the Enterprise and returned to Earth, Captain Kirk and his flock fell back into the mundane rhythm when travelling through empty outer space. With the Bahamas out of teleporting reach and no aliens left to zapp, life could be quite boring aboard the spaceship. Of course, they could always have a office chair race round the main bridge, play pong on the big screen or shoot some meteorites, but that was it and for the rest, they had to rely on the many electronic gizmos the Federation had installed on the ship. (Rumour has it Scotty once walked a total of 973 times through the sliding doors to see they would eventually fail. They didn’t.) Mr. Spock, always a bit of a geek due to his difficult childhood, used to retract to his private quarters to ponder on how to fill the next season of the Star Trek Reality Show, or listen to the new Aphex Twin sound. To do this, he used a device that was on display on a side table, but otherwise totally blended in with the interior decorations of his cabin. Sleek, sharp an intuitive, it was an apparatus that, if cameras would have been allowed there, the more design-savvy part of the audience would immediately have recognised. It looked like someone had chopped off the nose of a Lamborghini Countach, and chizzled it down to resemble the latest MacBook Pro…

Pouch on side

Now that I have a bit more time on my hands than I have scratches on my MB Pro, I thought it was about time to go and seek for one cool sleeve. The one I bought is fairly simple, partly because in this product range, if you want something original, basically you have to pimp it yourself. Which is exactly what I will do! In the mean time I thought I’d share my shortlist, the ones that could have been:

First, the AXIO Hardsleeve. From the same brand that makes übercool motorcycle backpacks for Valentino Rossi. But it was a bit too shiny, which made it probably look better on someone who keeps a jar of Vaseline next to his toothpaste…

Next: the Belkin neoprene sleeve. Nice, simple, clean and cheap, with an assymetric zipper ànd cool colors to choose from. But I wanted the dark grey with ruby red, which wasn’t available, so there is goes….

This one shows why self pimping is oh so cool. Monsieur Krink did a special edition for Incase. Both in- and outside are darn good looking, I might say! If this one however is a bit over your shelf, you can also go for the Incase Macbook latex Skin Suit in the color of your liking.

And in my opinion, the one that fits best the beauty of the MB Pro.

If fashion is more your thing, and you want something a bit off, then you could set aside some 190 euros and go for the RedMaloo foldable sleeve. However, it doesn’t do that good a job in protection and ease-of-use… But if that doesn’t bother you, they also have an assorti bag for your power brick and mighty mouse to travel along.

So in the end, I went for the simple and cheap Milan designed Tucano Second Skin Folder, in plain grey neoprene, and started thinking about ways to pimp it, hoping I would eventually end up with something as cool as the Krink…

It’s the beer!

As a southern foreigner I sometimes get the question why the Flemish dislike the Dutchies. Because Flemish folks are quite popular over here in Holland. Some people warned me for this diplomatic boobytrap, because my answer was inadequate. Some people think it’s because southern Holland only has Antwerp as nearby metropolis. which is in my point of view, the same way as folks from Schuivers -Kapelle  see Tielt as the gateway to the outer world. And once a month, in great number as they always do, Dutchie stroll down the Meir, shouting their way through the crowd. The regular Antwerpian, looking upon itself as the pinnacle of civilisation, sees this as a humiliation. Modesty is a virtue, they mumble. Don’t say or shout it, be it. Wear it, think it, act it. Don’t scream it. If a Flemishman fon the North imitates a Dutchie, he simply quadruples the volume of his voice. Maybe act as everything belong to them, to look the part.

My opinion? It’s the beer. Frenchie drink wine which makes you fart en français. Wladimir drink wodka. We drink beer. Lots of it. All kinds of beer. Home grown, refermented, red and acid, holy or white beer. And some dude from Amsterdam gives a twist to the three E’s in the logo of a piss poor beer, and starts serving the planet. Literally. Like we have Spa as the synonym of health and purity (and which I would hate to see it go to the Froggies), the outer world knows Heinek~blurp as the synonym for beer. You gotta hate them for that. And our reaction to that was simple: buy up every single brewer in the whole wide world. Show them who is reall the King of Beer. From Rio via Leuven to the Mississippi, you all belong to us now. We don’t have one brand, we have them all. Have a Bud, it’s on me! And then we tried to do the same with their banks… But that’s another unfinished story

One You lock the Target

Sundaymorning 9am, sunrise and bit of mist, I pull over on the E19 to have a breather, on our way to the airport. Studio Brussel just introduces the Front 242 evergreen Headhunter, so naturally there’s this thought in my mind that very soon I will have to choose between listening to the song, or enjoy some fresh air. Of course, you don’t want to stand outside with the door open and the radio way up, looking like some overaged snob in desperate need of attention.

So I pull over, and spot the Hummer on the parking. Which isn’t a hard thing to do, especially when there’s a flock of youngsters in technodisco outfit jumping around it trying to get the last remains of amphetamin out of their system. They must be having the same music as I on, said my optimistic teenager mind. No way, said the other part. You’re way over thirty. And aren’t these kids way too young for this type of car, which was apparently their belonging? Not my business… So I step outside to find out. No Headhunter. Not even close. As to be expected, it was some lame cover of second grade Reggi Pinxten ripofff. The kids looked at me as if I was an overaged alien, with my own type of classical techno crap.

Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.

Small thoughts on big topics

That large hadron thingy there in Szitzerland, you know? Isn’t that, like, just another execution of ye olde E=mc square equasion? I mean, it basically says that energy and matter are exchangeable. Yes, you can sort of go to the bank and say: “I have some spare energy. Can I have some matter in exchange?” and they’ll give it to you. But it’s not like you can buy in some energy because this week prices are low, to sell it for a profitable price some other time. Noooo, because there’s this constant in play. So there’s no speculations. And it’s a huge number. Which makes that you can get like enormous amounts of energy from a small amount of matter. Or, in order to bring a particle that weighs about (and now I’m just juggling with numbers) 0,0000000000000000000000000001 grams up to 99,9999999% of that constant, you need a machine that costs about 8.000.000.000 euros, and enough energy to raise the Earth’s temperature with 0,001 degrees Centigrade. And that’s a lot!

I’ll have a Whopper please. And make it large.

“Beamlamb?”

- No not beamlamb, you dork! BEAMLAB! Which is another one of those “jump on stage if you’re interesting” events. After Interesting (original title, not?) where I did something on cyberpunk (I’ll upload the prez if I ever find it back) like a shaking leaf, What’s Up?, which I missed, the Cannes Lions Night, on which I ruined my bike’s front right brake disc (and I still don’t get the drumming gorilla), and Beamlab, which was yesterday. I expected an big-screen epileptic attack of visual and musical extravaganza, guys litteraly raping the 9 beamers and 7 8MM projectors, scorching our retina to leave us pondering at the sky for the next coming days… Instead, it was some guys talking in microphones about stuff they did. With beamers. Like a talkshow. Yawn.
However, there was one interesting fella: Xelor (aka Roel Wouters),
who directed the zZz ‘Grip’ video, and showed some other nice work for the occasion, like the Jubilator.
Next up is The Next Web Salon, next Friday.
The blog title already promises something tasty !

Cyber Cumulu Nimbus

Nice cloud application for your blog from Wordle!
Not to be confused with the Clowd

Turbo boost anyone?

It’s old school, it’s black, it’s a car, and it has something to do with the Hoff… Yes yes, the Knight Rider is back on Dutch TV! I remember asking begging my daddy back then why oh why he wouldn’t buy a Trans Am, or at least install such a cool steering joystick in his Citroën. Since when is “I assure you, you’ll be the coolest dad in the whole multiverse!” (although I didn’t know that word back then) not a good argument?

Global

Insiders know I’m a sucker for Google Earth. So when the workload is low and time is on my side, I tend to do a little “Let’s see how far it will stretch”, which basically comes down to raping my machine. One of the results you can see here:

Featured layers are:
-the 2012 transit of Venus
-Night Lights of the World
-World Polulation animation
-World Oil consumption
-Tectonic Plate boundaries
-Great Green buildings