Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Matters of the heart

The past four months have been the stage for several tragic and untimely losses in sports. And I'm not talking about George Best, we saw that one coming...

However for these guys death came quick, sudden and far too soon:
- Thomas Herrion, player for NFL's San Francisco 49ers, collapsed after a pre-season game in August; The cause of death was later determined to be Ischaemic heart disease.
- Jason Collier, basketball player for the Atlanta Hawks in the NBA, died in October; he suffered from a sudden heart rhythm disturbance caused by an abnormally enlarged heart.
- Eddie Guerrero, superstar in the WWE, died early November in his hotel room; his autopsy showed he had signs of heart disease.
- and earlier this week David Di Tomasso, footballer for FC Utrecht died in his sleep. It is widely assumed he suffered from cardiac arrest.

Also one NHL player came awfully close as well...

See the connection? All of them had some kind of heart condition that ultimately led to their passing. What's going on?

I'm not about to launch into a diatribe about the dark side of professional sports, or that we have to seize the day, because we don't know when it's over, or the failings and virtues of our health care. That requires a journalistic mindset, and I don't master that. But I do want to point out the following: in a short timespan a number of relatively high-profile athletes have suddenly died due to heart issues. There's no reason behind this, at least none that I can discern with my philosophical or religious ideas. With the help of modern media outlets, the news of this arrives quick, fast, and short. These guys get a headline, a tribute page, a tribute match, maybe even a commemorating wristband, and after that the surviving family members are left to deal with their memories, just like any other person who has lost loved ones in similar (or not) fashion.

Media lets us feel as if there's a sudden outbreak of heart-related deaths to seemingly super-healthy people. A call for closer cardiac monitoring with athletes is perfectly understandable. But it seems the end truly comes to all of us, whether you're in sports or not.

Sunday, November 27, 2005

My Appartment 2

Apparently I've got a floor now. It's the one in the middle.
 Posted by Picasa

Saturday, November 26, 2005

The Ice Age Cometh ...or is it?

So far this year we've had earthquakes (Pakistan), hurricanes in combination with floods (US, Caribbean), snowstorms (Europe). Every media outlet is talking about how the climate is changing and that by the time my generation gets into retirement the Western Europe will be under the sea, Africa will see snow and South-East Asia will turn into desert or something like that. And as far as I hear from our local weather services we've not had extreme weather conditions like they have occurred this year. flash thunderstorms and like yesterday freak snow storms as well.

Unfortunately my memory doesn't serve me well these days, so I don't remember how things were when I was a kid and running around on a icy pond. But wasn't the weather cold then as well? I appreciate the time of year and the weather type to be a bit mixed up, and let me be the first to admit that I don't have some centuries' worth of climatological data in my back pocket. But still I can't help but think it's been this way forever. To me, the weather I - we - just have to deal with. No climatological convention, no kind of media coverage can stop what are aeons of planetary aging.

Kind of makes talking about the weather to strangers more significant...

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

How to attack anyone without breaking your nails

In continuation of argumentation gone awry, here's some sure fire ways to attack any person's arguments, expending only a minimum of effort.

For readers with attention disorder, this is not a good thing.


Turn someone’s generality into an absolute. For example, if someone makes a general statement that Americans celebrate Christmas, point out that some people are Jewish and so anyone who thinks that ALL Americans celebrate Christmas is stupid. (Bonus points for accusing the person of being anti-Semitic.)

Turn someone’s factual statements into implied preferences. For example, if someone mentions that not all Catholic priests are pedophiles, accuse the person who said it of siding with pedophiles.

Omit key words. For example, if someone says that people can’t eat rocks, accuse the person of being stupid for suggesting that people can’t eat. Bonus points for arguing that some people CAN eat pebbles if they try hard enough.

Assume the dumbest interpretation. For example, if someone says that he can run a mile in 12 minutes, assume he means it happens underwater and argue that no one can hold his breath that long.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Argumentation gone awry

Two recent discussions I follow perfectly point out key faults in today's society's thinking. Hopefully by pointing these out we are made aware, and we can do something about it...

1. First: Intelligent Design vs. Darwinism, as viewed by Scott Adams, the guy who does the Dilbert comics. Hilarious blog by the way. We are not getting into the details of this discussion, because it's the characteristics of argumentation that I want to point out rather than the content. Besides I'm not knowledgeable about the subject matter.

Adams says the following: "Neither side understands the other side’s argument. Better yet, no one seems to understand their own side’s argument. But that doesn’t stop anyone from having a passionate opinion." Now he makes this statement in context of the I.D. vs Darwin discussion, but I happen to think this works out quite well for other discussions as well. Religious discussions for example, or political ones, even those about football teams.

Adams goes on: "What you have instead is each side misrepresenting the other’s position and then making a good argument for why the misrepresentation is wrong."
And also: "To make things more complicated, both sides have good and bad arguments lumped into them. If you make a good argument on your side, I respond by attacking your bad argument instead. If it were a debate contest, both sides would lose."

I happen to think this is the lazy way of doing discussions. You just shoot at what you can hit, rather than hit what actually hurts. All you're doing is just irritating the shit out of each other.

2. The other discussion I follow is the Sony Digital Rights Management issue. In short, Sony BMG is sued on the grounds that they - without you knowing or agreeing - put copy protection software, the so-called rootkits, on your computer, should you play one of their (recent, copy-protected) music CDs in your home computer. Again, we're not going into details, because it's the argumentation I want to point out, rather than the contents.

Basically Sony BMG is completely adamant that it has done nothing wrong, merely protecting their copyrights. Mark Russinovich summarizes that Sony "denies that the rootkit poses a security or reliability threat despite the obvious risks of both"; and that Sony "claims that users don’t care about rootkits because they don’t know what a rootkit is."

Here's one side basically making statements that are already dismissed by evidence to the contrary. And it does so in name of incompetence, malice, arrogance or even outright denial. This tells me that there is no end to the degree in which we will protect our interests. As Stewart Baker, assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security puts towards Sony: "It's very important to remember that it's your intellectual property -- it's not your computer."

My point? I feel we are heading in a wrong direction as a society, because the way we want to convince our peers, our audience, our sponsors is not based on strength of argumentation. We want to win people over without spending a lot of effort into the justification of our own ideas, or the flaws of the counter-arguments. We are looking for the shortcut to the quick-fix. We gradually stoop to more immoral ways of forcing people to see our way, like treachery, violence, terrorism even.

I take it that it takes far longer in the current social setting to get to grips with the world, because new information comes toward us thick and fast, and in ever increasing amounts. There's more of the world to understand, but we are not getting a proportionate additional amount of time (and skill? and intellect? and patience?) to make sense of it all.

The pessimist in me says we are not going to turn this around. The optimist even says we have a very long way to go. Our motives and our moral base need to be completely recalibrated, if we are to rise above ourselves and out of this mess. Only then will we have progress. Only then will we have proper arguments.

Sunday, November 13, 2005

Eddie Guerrero 1967-2005

Such a waste... So much still to show... So many fans still to entertain... Eddie Guerrero R.I.P.

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

This Week in Sports

This week's Mohr Sports comes with a few pointed statements about NFL uniforms.

"The Browns make my short list of ugliest NFL uniforms. Brown and orange are not colors for a football player. They are colors for a person who works at Burger King. When the Browns wear their home jerseys, the offensive linemen look like a collection of UPS trucks. Except UPS is faster.

The AFC North is home to two of the ugliest unis in the game. The Bengals' uniforms look like my son's pajamas. If a group of Bengals players came to my door step I would expect them to all yell, "Trick or treat!" Again, orange is not the best color for football. It is downright sad when a fan paints his face on game day. But painting your face bright orange with stripes should put you in either a mental hospital or a preschool."

Also, as if you didn't realize, cheerleaders, sex and violence sells!
Some of the comments on this report are hilarious:

"I will proudly support the Carolina Panthers Cheerleaders in their quest for equal rights to have sex in any bathroom they please. In an effort to support this, I will be holding a fundraiser at my meager apartment where the two will make out with plenty of heavy petting for support of the cause. Any nay sayers will obviously get punched in the face."

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Why having a car in Amsterdam is silly

Parking in Amsterdam is hideously expensive. I can rent a place in the city for the amount of money I spend each month. And I wouldn't have to go through traffic every day.

I also can't make heads or tails of the city's roadmap. One minute I'm driving along a nice, wide two-lane high street; the next I have to squeeze my car inbetween the buildings and the waterways. The S1xx indicators make absolutely no sense to an outsider, and they seem to change into one another at random. Finally, street names actually disappear.

Sunday, November 06, 2005

My appartment building

This is my appartment building, as it's being constructed over the course of the coming year. Check back here to see how construction goes!


My downstairs neighbours! Posted by Picasa


The walls are already up! Posted by Picasa

Saturday, November 05, 2005

Goodbye mails from hell

Of course my working experience so far spans just two consultancies, but I gather the following works similarly in other consultancy firms: In my line of work apparently it's customary to send your colleagues a goodbye mail when you leave. Something to the tune of:

"Hi, I'm John Doe and after 5 years with the firm I've decided to leave to start my sheep farming business in Australia. Thank you all for all the hard work on projects Hard, Tough and Nasty. Farewell..."

Now, there's couple of things I don't understand in this matter:

1. We do have a global mailing list, and apparently it's for goodbye mails. So I may get greetings from people I've never met, will not meet (because they're leaving), and may or may not care about anyway. Why does everybody need to know you're leaving? I didn't need you before, I'm not going to ask for you now, am I?
(Don't get me wrong; I would like to be kept in the loop about people I worked with before. Just that this doesn't include everyone.)

2. Most people who leave find it noteworthy to state how many years they've been with the company. Why is that? Am I going to care more because you've been here for one year or for eight?

3. All these mails start to look like one another. It's greatly disturbing that people have absolutely no sense of creativity in this matter. Or does a template exist that people fill in when they hand-in their company car? Something like:

- fill in your tenure in years (half years allowed)
- list the companies you've been assigned to (maximum of 10)
- state reason for leaving (max. 200 words)
- leave a forwarding address
- enter a statement with some pleasantries for your ex-colleagues (no profanities please)

4. oh yes, the forwarding address. I don't know about the people who write them, but I would make sure the people who need to know my forwarding address, get it. Everyone else, not so much.
If anything, it is a bit cheeky to assume anyone you don't know would like to contact you after you've left the company. There's only a couple of reasons that this might be useful for: stalking or recruiting.

Oh well, when it's time to leave your position, let someone else write your departure mail. Nothing says more that you've arrived, than when your manager writes your departure mail for you.

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Electronic equipment on airplanes?

I always wondered about this: what is actually stopping anyone from using a cell phone on a plane, other than a healthy fear of death?