Tjeerd's slowblog

As a great admirer of Charles Darwin (for his incredibly powerful insights, the beauty and simplicity of his “theory” and tremendously impactful ‘dangerous idea’ to quote the great Daniel Dennett) the yearly Darwin Awards are of course something to look forward to. And although I know it is perhaps somewhat morbid and unethical (making fun of other people’s unfortunate demise is quickly not as attractive if you imagine it concerning your friends, family, kids or self, even IF the cause was ones own massive lapse of judgment or fatal error), they are great reading as long as you like dark humor. If only to remind yourself of how strangely people’s lives can end.

Anyway, the 2007 results are out and can be checked out on: http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2007.html

There is even a Dutch entry this time; a lethal accident with fireworks last year's New Year. Sad. New Year in the Netherlands involves massive fireworks shot skyward by pretty much everyone. I loved this when I was a kid as well and somehow got lucky.  But it continues to cause horrible accidents every year. This one is a good example of how things are always more complex than they may seem. It appears to be just a stupid mistake but when you look a bit into the events it turns out the fuse of a generous length of 1 meter, was schietlont (something like visco or quick match) unbeknownst to the unfortunate victim. This stuff burns at a speed of a few meters per second. Who would know. Well at least it's another warning to stay away from massive (and illegal) pyrotechnics if you're an amateur. 
I think I like the mole hunter best. I like moles.

If you don’t know what the Darwin Award are about, they aim to commemorate those people who “significantly improve the gene pool by eliminating themselves from the human race in an obviously stupid way”. The site has an excellent explanation of the rules here.

Wow, i guess people actually read these blogs. Or get notified somehow.  What a surprise.  So rather than whine about another petty annoyance, I'll just post a link to a funny article from a while ago listing a Top 10 of Creation Myths, to illustrate the 'one god further' idea mentioned on this page. A top 10 of many thousands of lovely stories no doubt.  The only line I at first didn't agree with in this article of LiveScience was this one: "Scientific research has come a long way since Charles Darwin first posited the concept of "natural selection", an idea as controversial now as it was back in 1859 when it was first published". This is not correct, there really IS no controversy in scientific circles.  A more pervasively and solidly confirmed and understood 'theory' from all sides of science is hard to imagine.  And yet, somehow, in many places in especially parts of American society this is apparently in doubt and up for discussion.  Too bad they don't mention mars-circling teapots, though i guess that's not a creation myth.  Well, I am off worshipping the behemoth cow, Auðumbla, She who emerged from the thaw and licked the god Bor and his wife into being.  Yup. This one is going to do some great stuff for me, I can feel it!  (and yes I know of the beauty and symbolism in these age-old stories, but then let's admire them all, and not just one - well, two actually that appear to be conflicting.  And let's certainly not 'believe' them.)

Ah great, they still didn't fix one of the most irritating things i ran into using this for 30 seconds when they first started Spaces: the images one inserts in a post become an 'album'.  Not only that, that album is visible and shows itself to all, and on top of that, it gets put at the top of the list of photo albums showing by default below.  Right.  That seems like something a user really intends to have happen.  There's my personal photo albums to share, and of course equal to those there is the 'album' of little images i inserted in a blog entry.  Just in case you wanted those as a slideshow. 

i also couldn't get a PNG with transparency to draw correctly btw, when inserted in the post.  GIF also failed.  Maybe incompatible with Photoshop.  Or PNG image support with transparency is less important than various lame 'Effects' on an image. Like the good old 'emboss'.  Or 'sepia'.  You too can be an 'artist'!  Well, I'm happy to see there are tons of other options and features i don't need, that i am sure will be well-liked by the hardcore bloggers who clearly want nothing but migrate their daily blogging to Windows Live Spaces.  Just the credibility you get from hosting your blog here alone is worth it.   Right.

After a looooong period of not using this blog site on Live Spaces, I am planning to restart it.  Let's see if the new tools and features of Windows Live will make blogging possible for me to keep up with now and then.  The Live Writer app appears to be quite strong making blogging itself convenient, and photo album publishing directly from the 'Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta' - very spiffy product naming as always from Microsoft - will make it an actually useful place to share out downloadable photo sets at full fidelity.  The latter feature alone would be worth reviving this weblog as a location to visit for me and friends one would think. We'll see.