I got that argument from an El Al security officer too once. He said "but we are the safest airline on the planet". This was in Schiphol Airport. I politely pointed out to him that El Al was the *only* air-line to lay waste to a residential area by crashing a cargo Boeing into an apartment building in Amsterdam, so his comment was mildly inappropriate. I lived across the road when it happened, 500 denizens of Amsterdam got killed, it was not terrorism.
Now I'm white as a lily, an EU citizen, Dutch to boot. I had a million credentials on me to prove that I was a tax paying Israeli denizen, and on top of that I have never heard of Dutch terrorists since the Dutch Revolt. Which ended in 1648, mind you. And we won, so we were called freedom fighters. As far as "doing your job" is concerned, I don't mind being asked who I am and being asked to produce documentation to prove it. I also don't mind answering questions about my purpose or circumstances. But when ham-handed attempts are made to infringe on my privacy, the intellectual property of my employer or when the people in question are just being rude and racist, I do start objecting.
When behaviour then isn't improved, I might start swearing at them. And yes, swearing at an Israeli while waving your arms wildly will get you results when polite discourse fails. It is wired into them, you can observe this on any street corner.
Now I moved to Israel in the middle of the second Lebanon war, and I moved out during the Gaza invasions at the end of 2008, and I've seen blood on the streets. I lived in Haifa during the shelling. Still, I would rather run the risk of being blown up myself than being responsible for the aggregation of a complete population in Townships under the heel of an army boot. If I have to choose between xenophobic paranoia or non-existence, I choose non-existence.
As a matter of fact, we have a racism problem in Holland right now. Our right wing politicians are Islamophobic, and personal friends of Lieberman and Co. They all seem to think the best way to end the Palestinian Problem is deportation of all of Gaza and the West Bank to Jordan. They also think the best way to deal with European Muslims is by deporting them or interning them into camps. And I am telling you that on the day that Geert Wilders becomes the PM of the Netherlands, I will burn my passport and become a Swede or Canadian.
My mother has seen racism. She was born in 1937. She's been through WWII as a kid, and she knows the face of Apartheid, if you will. A terrorist threat does not merit such an attitude. The Israelis of all people ought to know the dangers of racism.
So if you want to make this discussion political, fair enough. Let's start with two questions:
1) Why doesn't Israel have a constitution? 2) How does it feel to live in a theocratic Apartheids-regime?
I actually went to an elementary school that made me study the world map and learn countries and capitals by heart. Still, time is a screwy thing.
A few years ago I made a similar comment to an American friend and he quizzed me on Africa, Asia and South America. I decided to brush up on Africa, is all I'm saying.;):)
Granted. Absolutely. There are astoundingly ignorant jackasses in most corners of the world, including Holland.
All you need to do is go to a camping site in the South of France or Spain, and you'll witness plenty of Holland's finest. Including the potatoes they seem to insist on lugging around to foreign countries.
Ah, you're one of these folks who are saying that:
1) The US had nothing to do with the creation of the socio-economic circumstances of post-WWI Germany, thus leading to WWII 2) The UK, Norway, Australia, Canada and the resistance movements all across Europe had nothing to do with the demise of the third Reich.
Well, the history of English is such that local tribesmen got their arses invaded by Romans, Scandinavians and Germanic folk, so English is actually a cross breed of the Roman, Germanic and Nordic languages with some Gaelic thrown in for good measure.
Sort of.
Not that Dutch is "pure" because there's plenty of Roman/Hellenistic influences, as well as Arabic. Our hard "G" sound comes from the Spanish (think José). The Spanish got that "G" from the Moors who ruled the peninsula for close to 700 years. So the Dutch G is ultimately Arabic. Then there's influences from Yiddish and god knows what else.
I guess there's no such thing as a "pure" language.;)
Sweden would be something like "shwaedia" while Switzerland is "Schweitz"-like in pronunciation. Probably because of Yiddish speakers, this adoption of the word.
Well, I happen to speak Swedish, German, Dutch, English, Norwegian and a bit of French. You are right in that anyone with a Nordic/Germanic background has a relatively easy time picking up the rest of 'm, and French being a Roman language has always posed me with a bigger challenge.
Having said that, Danish is just too weird. In writing it looks just like Norwegian, but when these people open their mouths the sounds that emanate from them are just indescribably odd and at odds with the written form.
In Holland you can get a second "clean" passport. All I needed to obtain one is a statement from my employer that I need to visit "conflicting countries" professionally.
That way, you can have all the Israeli stamps (and US, whatnot) in one passport, while you have a second passport that needs replacing every two years for the Arabic nations, Russia and all of those.
That shaves a lot off of the interrogations, so if you are eligible for a similar thing in the United Kingdom I would wholeheartedly recommend you get one.
Oh, you want to apologize for incidents at Israel's borders? In that case you can keep 'm coming, buddy!
I lived in Israel for three years. And as a very frequent traveler for both business and for the purpose of visiting my family in the Netherlands, I have to say it was a good lesson in racism. I have never had to deal with a more rude and racist set of security people in my life. I have found the border people more courteous in any country I've been to, including Bahrain, Dubai, South Africa, the US and pretty much any country on the European continent.
As for the incident I spoke of... It was an El Al security person in Brussels. Firstly, orthodox Jews with millions of hand-luggage pieces were whizzing by me at a breakneck speed with all manner of nationalities, no questions asked. Me, a lone business traveler with one check in luggage and a laptop case for carry one, they asked what the purpose of my trip to Israel was, and my reply "I just live there, so I'm going home" seems to have triggered curiosity.
After asking me about my Swiss-made (Stockholm...) passport, and me explaining I used to live in Sweden, but then I moved to Israel, they continued to ask me about my trip to Brussels. When I told them I had done a three day business meeting with my colleagues at HP, they *ACTUALLY* asked me to open my laptop and *SHOW* them what the meeting had been about.
By this time I was swearing at them full force, all the while explaining how they'd get to see company confidential data over my dead body. I also asked them where the hell they get the chutzpah to harass an EU citizen on EU soil. After this, they basically insisted on actually *TELEPHONING* my Israeli girlfriend in Haifa, otherwise I would not be allowed on the plane. Mind you, at that point in time I was a tax paying denizen of Israel with all the visas, permits and what have you in his pocket. Including an Israeli teudat zehut which listed my address.
But this is not an isolated incident. I can go on and on about Israeli security checks inside and outside of Israel. But if you don't take my word for it, 9 out of 10 Dutchmen that I speak to that have been to Israel will have had similar experiences. I've seen a Russian businesswoman at Ben Gurion swear at the security staff and proclaim that she'd never do business with Israelis anymore on account of their rudeness and paranoia.
Furthermore, I have observed that while I was always in the "middle" queue at the airport, meaning non-Israeli, non-Jewish, the "middle" queue was still treated vastly better than the "Subhuman" queue where any Arabic-looking person would end up. At the end of the day, the full Israeli educational system seems geared towards creating somewhat uninformed, racist bigots. I know this, because my son is currently in the Israeli school system, and I can't begin to tell you the kind of BS his head gets filled with from birth onward.
You picked the wrong guy to give me the "incident should be grounds for dismissal" line, because I know exactly how Israel does its business. The whole country ought to be dismissed if you put it like you do. Trust me, my wife is ex IDF military police. I'm not making this up, and I'm not saying this because I am a closet anti-semite.
Not all Israelis are like that. I have splendid friends there, my wife is Israeli and generally speaking I didn't have a bad time in the country. But don't give me the "as opposed to the US, we're aware of it" line. I am not so sure the collective Israelis are aware of what their behaviour looks like. I can even cite half of Amsterdam's proprietors of cafes and restaurants. Most of them really rather see the Israelis going than coming because the buck earned isn't worth the rude manner in which these people carry themselves.
My experience with Americans is that while they sometimes really aren't too informed about other cultures, they do tend to behave in a cordial if not courteous manner while sober. So I'd really rather not you place yourself above the Americans with regards to behaving yourselves.
I don't harbour any animosity towards NATO. I was just indicating that citing NATO codes while everyone I know in the civilized world uses the ISO standard or the Vehicle codes.
The reaction that said "superfluous punctuation" is a display of being a besserwisser. I felt it necessary to argue against a besserwisser. It's what I do. I takes one to know one, you see.;)
I am deeply sorry, but I have to agree with TheNAM666 here. This does look like a typical American write-up. Just like that time a security lady at an airport in the US was questioning me about why my Dutch passport was made in Switzerland. It got made at the consulate in Stockholm. Or that time when the Israeli border check said the same damn thing.
I have found that both Americans and Israelis have displayed the most spectacular levels of ignorance about the world outside of their own country. More so than other travelers and people I've met in my life. That's not to say all Americans and Israelis are stupid, far from it. It's just that the ratio of numbnuts to decent conversationalists is significantly higher.
Coolest example ever was when Dutch customs at Schiphol airport were looking for something because they were asking every passenger that passed through a certain spot where they just arrived from. They put the question in Dutch first. An American lady in front of me looked at the customs officer and in reply to his "Pardon Mevrouw, waar komt uw vlucht vandaan?" she barked an irritated "I don't speak German".
He smiled, inclined his head and replied "That's alright, madam. Neither do I."
Re:And it's killed smalltalk with friends.
on
The Facebook Obsession
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Tell ya what happened to me. I had some colleagues at work. People I had known for 13 years at the time of this happening, and always gotten along with. Until some day one of them divorces his Russian wife, gets a wee alcohol problem and a midlife crisis to boot. Now these guys were a couple of flavours of Scandinavian, FYI. So this jackass starts insulting Russians on Facebook, and I comment on that. My wife is Israeli, but from Ukranian descent. So I tell 'm to chill out with his statements about eastern European and Russian "whores" (to mention one of the more palatable things the guy wrote, picture a drunken Mel Gibson if you will) because he's getting on my nerve. Some other guy pitches in and before you know it I've gained 3 people I won't speak to again in this life time.
On top of that FaceBook is a ridiculous place that fuels pettiness, jealousy and generally doesn't really contribute to my life in any tangible way. So, my wife and I removed our accounts and never looked back. For those that want to find me, there's a professional profile on LinkedIn. This is enough. I don't want to see what my boss did with the neighbour's dog at the Christmas party in 2008, I don't want to see my old shag buddies and my wife's old shag buddies mingle in all kinds of lists, I am uninterested in my teenage nephews' dumb friends and their void messages and I certainly don't want to get reunited with anyone from high school.
So yes. When I speak to my friends, we have something to talk about beyond the colour of their toilet paper this morning, and it's all good. My friends will be my friends long after Facebook has croaked.
I'd have to be hard-pressed to marry someone bi-polar. Nothing against these people, it's just that I don't need to complicate my life. Then on top of that, I married a woman and before that I lived together with three other women (no, not at the same time) for a total of 12 years, and I can honestly say that people don't change overnight when you move in. They just don't. There was one psycho amongst them, and she was damaged goods way before she and I shacked up, which was visible to all but me because.... I was being a dumb-ass.
So there you have it. I agree with the original poster. Unfortunately, somethings in life we can't be told. Some things in life we need to experience in order to learn them. And I guess, in all honesty, this is what the dude with the psycho ex can chalk this up to.
Having said that, there is the question "why?". We have no clue why this woman turned psycho. There may be good reasons for it. Usually things happen for a reason.
That's an insult to the guy who made slacker rock a household genre!
Arena rock. Good lord. Pfff. Get off my lawn.
But the original poster of the question is right. WTF, F? Glenn Beck? That guy has got to be the biggest, most bigoted douchebag I've seen on TV in the States.
Rand was, in my view, damaged by the communist revolution. She was, after all, from a well to do family in Russia and them leaving might have had something to do with the circumstances at the time. Then world war two happened, and it's easy to see how those two things might drive Ms Rosenbaum to believe collectivism isn't such a good idea.
Any idea loses its merit when taken to the limits of the absurd.
The current debate in the US, where something like collective health care is described as a Stalinist conspiracy by some induhviduals, is a nice example of individualism taken to the absurd. I don't have to shudder to think. All I need to do is watch some Fox News, and I see the effects of the ideas put forth in the Fountainhead at work.
I wonder what congresswoman Gifford would say about the individual right to carry guns right now, to mention an example of individualism enshrined to ridiculous proportions. Or that 10 year old boy who shot his mom with a hunting rifle that was hung in his room. Maybe some collectivist rules aren't too bad sometimes anyhow, right?
I think I've logged 1500 hours of GTA: San Andreas. Then I think I've played the original CoD (PC) for 300+ hours, and I think I've logged 1000+ hours of Day of Defeat (Half-life and Half-life2 engines) out there. I love those games. Frankly, this is also why I tend to play The Godfather: Blackhand edition on the Wii over and over again. They're simply fun, even if they are predictable. Star Craft was excellent. I think I wasted 200 hours on that sucker too, but counter strike is just irritating compared to Day of Defeat. I don't like waiting if I get killed.
Anyway, it's a good point. 5-7 hours? 40 hours? Where are the games that will cause an addiction that will simply keep you coming back over a period of years? To illustrate that, I've recently been thinking about re-invigorating some PC's in the basement so I can have yet another round of GTA San Andreas. I miss that world.
I'm still wondering who or what Muzzi is. Is it a misspelling of the Jewish nickname "Mutti"? Is it an eccentric Italian ice-cream maker? Is it short for Motoguzzi?
Well, the "one nation under God" was added in the fifties by Americans. So apparently the current population of US citizens seems to have a severely different grasp of what a "better life" is than the renaissance men who founded the country in the first place.
I look at my own constitution and the state of my nation, and we're facing a very similar issue with Moroccan and Turkish immigrants who are Islamic. Some people want to put caps on immigration, some people want to outlaw Islam because they're clueless and scared.
In the mean time The Netherlands have, since the Unie van Utrecht was drafted and signed in 1579, a ~450 year old tradition of guaranteeing Freedom of Religion and Freedom of a man's Faculty which was continued in our constitutions until this day.
Culture is what you make of it. There's no such thing as a culture that is still alive *and* unchanging at the same time. In the mean time it is important we stay true to the Constitutional values that are the cornerstone of our respective nations.
While the people mentioned in the article were surely of Indian descent, they *are* indeed U.S. Locals just like the Li Pings, Pedro Gonzales', Jacob Weinblatts, Umfufus, Herman Meyers, Jean Grosjeans and Patrick O'Donnells of the United States. And for what it's worth they seem to have adapted well to the view most of the world has about New Jersey. Not because of the Sopranos, but because of stories of rings of dirty Rabbis getting arrested, the general reputation of New Jersey and some of the jokes Jon Stewart makes.
Having said that, I do mind the
That might be how people do business in other places,
statement. Quite frankly, I think this is much more how you do business in the US than, say, Holland, Sweden, France or many other countries in Europe. So when you talk about leaving that shit at the door, the shoe fits but not on my foot, if you know what I'm saying.
That guy's head is so far up his own ass that I dare say he hasn't seen the light of day since 1492. Perhaps the intelligence of his statements explains why Verizon is doing so *ahem* swell *cough* in the civilized world.
Europe and Asia are indeed ahead of the US in certain regards, this is measurable and also something I have simply noticed traveling in Europe, the US and the Middle East.
Lastly he seems to be a clean cut Republican / Tea Party demagogue. Calling such idiots "colourful" is not the adjective I'd pick.
Good lord. If I start pointing out the difference in our software and infrastructure between 1998 and now, this post will be as long as War & Peace. All of the innovations, improvements, eye candy and design changes of everything we see on a daily basis do *cost* something.
Let's put it this way... The difference between Pong, Wolfenstein and Call of Duty 4 should tell you quite clearly why this "trick" argument of yours is as thick as pig shit.
Slashdot Mirror
By the way, KLM just does the regular security checks, and somehow they've managed to not get any of their planes blown up ever.
I think a different attitude towards the world does more to curb terrorism than all the profilers in the world.
I got that argument from an El Al security officer too once. He said "but we are the safest airline on the planet". This was in Schiphol Airport. I politely pointed out to him that El Al was the *only* air-line to lay waste to a residential area by crashing a cargo Boeing into an apartment building in Amsterdam, so his comment was mildly inappropriate. I lived across the road when it happened, 500 denizens of Amsterdam got killed, it was not terrorism.
Now I'm white as a lily, an EU citizen, Dutch to boot. I had a million credentials on me to prove that I was a tax paying Israeli denizen, and on top of that I have never heard of Dutch terrorists since the Dutch Revolt. Which ended in 1648, mind you. And we won, so we were called freedom fighters. As far as "doing your job" is concerned, I don't mind being asked who I am and being asked to produce documentation to prove it. I also don't mind answering questions about my purpose or circumstances. But when ham-handed attempts are made to infringe on my privacy, the intellectual property of my employer or when the people in question are just being rude and racist, I do start objecting.
When behaviour then isn't improved, I might start swearing at them. And yes, swearing at an Israeli while waving your arms wildly will get you results when polite discourse fails. It is wired into them, you can observe this on any street corner.
Now I moved to Israel in the middle of the second Lebanon war, and I moved out during the Gaza invasions at the end of 2008, and I've seen blood on the streets. I lived in Haifa during the shelling. Still, I would rather run the risk of being blown up myself than being responsible for the aggregation of a complete population in Townships under the heel of an army boot. If I have to choose between xenophobic paranoia or non-existence, I choose non-existence.
As a matter of fact, we have a racism problem in Holland right now. Our right wing politicians are Islamophobic, and personal friends of Lieberman and Co. They all seem to think the best way to end the Palestinian Problem is deportation of all of Gaza and the West Bank to Jordan. They also think the best way to deal with European Muslims is by deporting them or interning them into camps. And I am telling you that on the day that Geert Wilders becomes the PM of the Netherlands, I will burn my passport and become a Swede or Canadian.
My mother has seen racism. She was born in 1937. She's been through WWII as a kid, and she knows the face of Apartheid, if you will. A terrorist threat does not merit such an attitude. The Israelis of all people ought to know the dangers of racism.
So if you want to make this discussion political, fair enough. Let's start with two questions:
1) Why doesn't Israel have a constitution?
2) How does it feel to live in a theocratic Apartheids-regime?
I actually went to an elementary school that made me study the world map and learn countries and capitals by heart. Still, time is a screwy thing.
A few years ago I made a similar comment to an American friend and he quizzed me on Africa, Asia and South America. I decided to brush up on Africa, is all I'm saying. ;) :)
Granted. Absolutely. There are astoundingly ignorant jackasses in most corners of the world, including Holland.
All you need to do is go to a camping site in the South of France or Spain, and you'll witness plenty of Holland's finest. Including the potatoes they seem to insist on lugging around to foreign countries.
Ah, you're one of these folks who are saying that:
1) The US had nothing to do with the creation of the socio-economic circumstances of post-WWI Germany, thus leading to WWII
2) The UK, Norway, Australia, Canada and the resistance movements all across Europe had nothing to do with the demise of the third Reich.
Nice. Very nice.
Although it would have been a funny comeback. ;)
Well, the history of English is such that local tribesmen got their arses invaded by Romans, Scandinavians and Germanic folk, so English is actually a cross breed of the Roman, Germanic and Nordic languages with some Gaelic thrown in for good measure.
Sort of.
Not that Dutch is "pure" because there's plenty of Roman/Hellenistic influences, as well as Arabic. Our hard "G" sound comes from the Spanish (think José). The Spanish got that "G" from the Moors who ruled the peninsula for close to 700 years. So the Dutch G is ultimately Arabic. Then there's influences from Yiddish and god knows what else.
I guess there's no such thing as a "pure" language. ;)
Mein Darwin im Himmel, you make me wish I had MOD points. +Funny.
Sweden would be something like "shwaedia" while Switzerland is "Schweitz"-like in pronunciation. Probably because of Yiddish speakers, this adoption of the word.
Well, I happen to speak Swedish, German, Dutch, English, Norwegian and a bit of French. You are right in that anyone with a Nordic/Germanic background has a relatively easy time picking up the rest of 'm, and French being a Roman language has always posed me with a bigger challenge.
Having said that, Danish is just too weird. In writing it looks just like Norwegian, but when these people open their mouths the sounds that emanate from them are just indescribably odd and at odds with the written form.
The Norwegians seem to agree to my assessment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk
In Holland you can get a second "clean" passport. All I needed to obtain one is a statement from my employer that I need to visit "conflicting countries" professionally.
That way, you can have all the Israeli stamps (and US, whatnot) in one passport, while you have a second passport that needs replacing every two years for the Arabic nations, Russia and all of those.
That shaves a lot off of the interrogations, so if you are eligible for a similar thing in the United Kingdom I would wholeheartedly recommend you get one.
Oh, you want to apologize for incidents at Israel's borders? In that case you can keep 'm coming, buddy!
I lived in Israel for three years. And as a very frequent traveler for both business and for the purpose of visiting my family in the Netherlands, I have to say it was a good lesson in racism. I have never had to deal with a more rude and racist set of security people in my life. I have found the border people more courteous in any country I've been to, including Bahrain, Dubai, South Africa, the US and pretty much any country on the European continent.
As for the incident I spoke of... It was an El Al security person in Brussels. Firstly, orthodox Jews with millions of hand-luggage pieces were whizzing by me at a breakneck speed with all manner of nationalities, no questions asked. Me, a lone business traveler with one check in luggage and a laptop case for carry one, they asked what the purpose of my trip to Israel was, and my reply "I just live there, so I'm going home" seems to have triggered curiosity.
After asking me about my Swiss-made (Stockholm...) passport, and me explaining I used to live in Sweden, but then I moved to Israel, they continued to ask me about my trip to Brussels. When I told them I had done a three day business meeting with my colleagues at HP, they *ACTUALLY* asked me to open my laptop and *SHOW* them what the meeting had been about.
By this time I was swearing at them full force, all the while explaining how they'd get to see company confidential data over my dead body. I also asked them where the hell they get the chutzpah to harass an EU citizen on EU soil. After this, they basically insisted on actually *TELEPHONING* my Israeli girlfriend in Haifa, otherwise I would not be allowed on the plane. Mind you, at that point in time I was a tax paying denizen of Israel with all the visas, permits and what have you in his pocket. Including an Israeli teudat zehut which listed my address.
But this is not an isolated incident. I can go on and on about Israeli security checks inside and outside of Israel. But if you don't take my word for it, 9 out of 10 Dutchmen that I speak to that have been to Israel will have had similar experiences. I've seen a Russian businesswoman at Ben Gurion swear at the security staff and proclaim that she'd never do business with Israelis anymore on account of their rudeness and paranoia.
Furthermore, I have observed that while I was always in the "middle" queue at the airport, meaning non-Israeli, non-Jewish, the "middle" queue was still treated vastly better than the "Subhuman" queue where any Arabic-looking person would end up. At the end of the day, the full Israeli educational system seems geared towards creating somewhat uninformed, racist bigots. I know this, because my son is currently in the Israeli school system, and I can't begin to tell you the kind of BS his head gets filled with from birth onward.
You picked the wrong guy to give me the "incident should be grounds for dismissal" line, because I know exactly how Israel does its business. The whole country ought to be dismissed if you put it like you do. Trust me, my wife is ex IDF military police. I'm not making this up, and I'm not saying this because I am a closet anti-semite.
Not all Israelis are like that. I have splendid friends there, my wife is Israeli and generally speaking I didn't have a bad time in the country. But don't give me the "as opposed to the US, we're aware of it" line. I am not so sure the collective Israelis are aware of what their behaviour looks like. I can even cite half of Amsterdam's proprietors of cafes and restaurants. Most of them really rather see the Israelis going than coming because the buck earned isn't worth the rude manner in which these people carry themselves.
My experience with Americans is that while they sometimes really aren't too informed about other cultures, they do tend to behave in a cordial if not courteous manner while sober. So I'd really rather not you place yourself above the Americans with regards to behaving yourselves.
I don't harbour any animosity towards NATO. I was just indicating that citing NATO codes while everyone I know in the civilized world uses the ISO standard or the Vehicle codes.
The reaction that said "superfluous punctuation" is a display of being a besserwisser. I felt it necessary to argue against a besserwisser. It's what I do. I takes one to know one, you see. ;)
By the way, its because Switzerland is a confederacy of Helvetians (Confoederatio Helvetica) that they're CH.
Yeah, and we all live by NATO codes here on the continent. Right?
I would sooner point to the ISO3166 standard for country codes. There, Switzerland is still CH.
Having said that, ISO3166 doesn't quite match the vehicle codes used on the road.
I tend to look at the license plates on cars, where CH is Switzerland, but France would be F and Belgium would be B.
Here is a list of both the vehicle codes and the ISO3166 codes:
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landcodes_voor_voertuigen
Oh, and by the way: Swaziland is SD respectively SZ. The NATO can kiss my ass.
I am deeply sorry, but I have to agree with TheNAM666 here. This does look like a typical American write-up. Just like that time a security lady at an airport in the US was questioning me about why my Dutch passport was made in Switzerland. It got made at the consulate in Stockholm. Or that time when the Israeli border check said the same damn thing.
I have found that both Americans and Israelis have displayed the most spectacular levels of ignorance about the world outside of their own country. More so than other travelers and people I've met in my life. That's not to say all Americans and Israelis are stupid, far from it. It's just that the ratio of numbnuts to decent conversationalists is significantly higher.
Coolest example ever was when Dutch customs at Schiphol airport were looking for something because they were asking every passenger that passed through a certain spot where they just arrived from. They put the question in Dutch first. An American lady in front of me looked at the customs officer and in reply to his "Pardon Mevrouw, waar komt uw vlucht vandaan?" she barked an irritated "I don't speak German".
He smiled, inclined his head and replied "That's alright, madam. Neither do I."
Tell ya what happened to me. I had some colleagues at work. People I had known for 13 years at the time of this happening, and always gotten along with. Until some day one of them divorces his Russian wife, gets a wee alcohol problem and a midlife crisis to boot. Now these guys were a couple of flavours of Scandinavian, FYI. So this jackass starts insulting Russians on Facebook, and I comment on that. My wife is Israeli, but from Ukranian descent. So I tell 'm to chill out with his statements about eastern European and Russian "whores" (to mention one of the more palatable things the guy wrote, picture a drunken Mel Gibson if you will) because he's getting on my nerve. Some other guy pitches in and before you know it I've gained 3 people I won't speak to again in this life time.
On top of that FaceBook is a ridiculous place that fuels pettiness, jealousy and generally doesn't really contribute to my life in any tangible way. So, my wife and I removed our accounts and never looked back. For those that want to find me, there's a professional profile on LinkedIn. This is enough. I don't want to see what my boss did with the neighbour's dog at the Christmas party in 2008, I don't want to see my old shag buddies and my wife's old shag buddies mingle in all kinds of lists, I am uninterested in my teenage nephews' dumb friends and their void messages and I certainly don't want to get reunited with anyone from high school.
So yes. When I speak to my friends, we have something to talk about beyond the colour of their toilet paper this morning, and it's all good. My friends will be my friends long after Facebook has croaked.
I'd have to be hard-pressed to marry someone bi-polar. Nothing against these people, it's just that I don't need to complicate my life. Then on top of that, I married a woman and before that I lived together with three other women (no, not at the same time) for a total of 12 years, and I can honestly say that people don't change overnight when you move in. They just don't. There was one psycho amongst them, and she was damaged goods way before she and I shacked up, which was visible to all but me because.... I was being a dumb-ass.
So there you have it. I agree with the original poster. Unfortunately, somethings in life we can't be told. Some things in life we need to experience in order to learn them. And I guess, in all honesty, this is what the dude with the psycho ex can chalk this up to.
Having said that, there is the question "why?". We have no clue why this woman turned psycho. There may be good reasons for it. Usually things happen for a reason.
That's an insult to the guy who made slacker rock a household genre!
Arena rock. Good lord. Pfff. Get off my lawn.
But the original poster of the question is right. WTF, F? Glenn Beck? That guy has got to be the biggest, most bigoted douchebag I've seen on TV in the States.
Well put!
Rand was, in my view, damaged by the communist revolution. She was, after all, from a well to do family in Russia and them leaving might have had something to do with the circumstances at the time. Then world war two happened, and it's easy to see how those two things might drive Ms Rosenbaum to believe collectivism isn't such a good idea.
Any idea loses its merit when taken to the limits of the absurd.
The current debate in the US, where something like collective health care is described as a Stalinist conspiracy by some induhviduals, is a nice example of individualism taken to the absurd. I don't have to shudder to think. All I need to do is watch some Fox News, and I see the effects of the ideas put forth in the Fountainhead at work.
I wonder what congresswoman Gifford would say about the individual right to carry guns right now, to mention an example of individualism enshrined to ridiculous proportions. Or that 10 year old boy who shot his mom with a hunting rifle that was hung in his room. Maybe some collectivist rules aren't too bad sometimes anyhow, right?
I think I've logged 1500 hours of GTA: San Andreas. Then I think I've played the original CoD (PC) for 300+ hours, and I think I've logged 1000+ hours of Day of Defeat (Half-life and Half-life2 engines) out there. I love those games. Frankly, this is also why I tend to play The Godfather: Blackhand edition on the Wii over and over again. They're simply fun, even if they are predictable. Star Craft was excellent. I think I wasted 200 hours on that sucker too, but counter strike is just irritating compared to Day of Defeat. I don't like waiting if I get killed.
Anyway, it's a good point. 5-7 hours? 40 hours? Where are the games that will cause an addiction that will simply keep you coming back over a period of years? To illustrate that, I've recently been thinking about re-invigorating some PC's in the basement so I can have yet another round of GTA San Andreas. I miss that world.
I'm still wondering who or what Muzzi is. Is it a misspelling of the Jewish nickname "Mutti"? Is it an eccentric Italian ice-cream maker? Is it short for Motoguzzi?
Well, the "one nation under God" was added in the fifties by Americans. So apparently the current population of US citizens seems to have a severely different grasp of what a "better life" is than the renaissance men who founded the country in the first place.
I look at my own constitution and the state of my nation, and we're facing a very similar issue with Moroccan and Turkish immigrants who are Islamic. Some people want to put caps on immigration, some people want to outlaw Islam because they're clueless and scared.
In the mean time The Netherlands have, since the Unie van Utrecht was drafted and signed in 1579, a ~450 year old tradition of guaranteeing Freedom of Religion and Freedom of a man's Faculty which was continued in our constitutions until this day.
Culture is what you make of it. There's no such thing as a culture that is still alive *and* unchanging at the same time. In the mean time it is important we stay true to the Constitutional values that are the cornerstone of our respective nations.
While the people mentioned in the article were surely of Indian descent, they *are* indeed U.S. Locals just like the Li Pings, Pedro Gonzales', Jacob Weinblatts, Umfufus, Herman Meyers, Jean Grosjeans and Patrick O'Donnells of the United States. And for what it's worth they seem to have adapted well to the view most of the world has about New Jersey. Not because of the Sopranos, but because of stories of rings of dirty Rabbis getting arrested, the general reputation of New Jersey and some of the jokes Jon Stewart makes.
Having said that, I do mind the
That might be how people do business in other places,
statement. Quite frankly, I think this is much more how you do business in the US than, say, Holland, Sweden, France or many other countries in Europe. So when you talk about leaving that shit at the door, the shoe fits but not on my foot, if you know what I'm saying.
That guy's head is so far up his own ass that I dare say he hasn't seen the light of day since 1492. Perhaps the intelligence of his statements explains why Verizon is doing so *ahem* swell *cough* in the civilized world.
Europe and Asia are indeed ahead of the US in certain regards, this is measurable and also something I have simply noticed traveling in Europe, the US and the Middle East.
Lastly he seems to be a clean cut Republican / Tea Party demagogue. Calling such idiots "colourful" is not the adjective I'd pick.
Eh? New Software?
Good lord. If I start pointing out the difference in our software and infrastructure between 1998 and now, this post will be as long as War & Peace. All of the innovations, improvements, eye candy and design changes of everything we see on a daily basis do *cost* something.
Let's put it this way... The difference between Pong, Wolfenstein and Call of Duty 4 should tell you quite clearly why this "trick" argument of yours is as thick as pig shit.