Sunday, November 1, 2009

"Bara"

The three big monotheistic religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - share the same god (but with a different name), and of course also their basics. Most notably, they share the story about the creation of the world.

This story, although proven wrong by science, is still important to the people that believe in Genesis. Most people, with the exception of the creationists, won't take the story literally. However, its importance is in the fact that it shows that their respective god is all powerful. After all, creation of the world and the universe is not something anybody can do.

Of course, if this story would prove not to be true, there is a problem. First of all it means that god is not almighty. But perhaps even worse, it also means that there is some other mechanism that has created world. More specifically, it means that there may have been other gods that created everything.

When looking at Genesis, this is exactly what the Dutch professor Ellen van Welde has noticed. The details (in Dutch) can be found in her dissertation about Genesis. She proves that the sentence "bĕrēʾšît bārāʾ ĕlōhîm ʾet haššāmayim wĕʾet hāʾāres" should be translate not with "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth", but rather with "In the beginning when God separated the heavens and the earth...", the main difference being
in the word "Bara", which would not be "to create", but "to separate".

When this interpretation is proven correct, it means indeed that JHWH, God or Allah are not the almighty creators, but rather a winning god amongst others, and becoming the most important one. Interestingly, this seems indeed to be the case when you look into the history of Judaism (read the excellent book A History of God by Karen Armstrong). Genesis for example shows to be the mix of two creation stories, both from another god: one named JHWH (or Jahweh), and another Elohim. But later, in Exodus, it is not only suggested, but also proven that the start of the monotheistic religions is based on multiple gods. The first commandment is "You shall have no other Gods before me". This sounds like there may be, or even are, others, but JHWH wants to be the first one. In the original text of Exodus, it even says further "You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, (...)". Now can this be any more clear? (And yes, people will argue that it means you should not worship idols, but just read Armstrong's book for good arguments.)

As you may know, I have nothing against people that use religion for their own spiritual life. But this shows that the foundations may be a little bit (well, a lot) more shaky than thought before. It means that any form of fundamentalism, from any of the big monotheistic religions, not only is dangerous, but even ridiculous.

Labels: History

Monday, July 13, 2009

We always get our sin

Since I'm working in the IT, where English is the norm for communication, I had the advantage of having a lot of opportunities to learn English. For example, when working for IBM, my direct boss was British, and our manager there was American. A nice situation, where one gets to understand the subtleties between "American English" and "real English".

Unfortunately I had to experience that not everybody is so interested in Shakespeare's language, or perhaps just less gifted. This goes without any doubt for the French, but in equal degree for the Germans and Italians. Especially with the Germans I have some experience, as I've now been working with them for almost 10 years.

In Belgium it is impossible to imagine that you work for an international company, and that you engage somebody that doesn't speak a word of English. Yet, in "some" German companies - and I think this is not just the one I now but a more general issue - this regularly happens. What if this person needs to talk to colleagues in other places? Or, if his or her work needs to be shared by others? Unfortunately, this is reality.

You'd think that this is the worst that can happen. But no, it can still be worse. That is, when you have somebody thinking they speak good English, but instead it is Frenglish (English mutilated by ze French), Denlish (German English) or Dunglish (Dutch English). In all these kinds of English, there are some great examples to be found where people try to speak (or write) good English, but in fact say something completely different. Strangers say the darndest things, if you want to.

The Dutch indeed sometimes are such a people. They like to think they have such a good accent, and that they speak English so well. Well, they, they don't. If you want some great fun, check out the two books from Maarten H. Rijkens, called We always get our sin and We always get our sin too. The title of the book is such a great example of Denglish. "Sin" obviously means "sin", but some people my have it translated (incorrectly) from the dutch "zin", meaning "wat we want". So, the person saying "I always get my sin" thinks he's always getting what he wants, but says something completely stupid instead. Here are some examples from the (2nd) book. Note that you may only understand the original meaning when you speak Dutch.

A Dutch minister (1940-1945) after visiting the private quarters of King George VI at Buckingham Palace: May we thank your majesty for showing us your private parts?

How do you do and how do you do your wife?

I thank you from the bottom of my heart and also from my wife's bottom

A Dutch minister a few years ago after a very long meeting: We worked hardly

Recently, Guy Verhofstad to a German journalist (yes, Belgians can do this too): What for a question is that now?

It was a shot in the rose

Do these bottles have station money?

Do you have a bread rooster? I'd like some toast.

Where is the garden snake?

Thank you for your nice brief

After a nice dinner: May I see your cock please, I like to thank him for the lovely dinner

And finally for smokers: Can I do my ass in here?

There's much more of course, think of Balkestein talking about Europe and its golden showers, or somebody saying "I fock horses" (was it Dehaene?). But for the rest you'll have to check the books.

Check also Wikipedia for more examples, or here.

Labels: boeken

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Original spam

We all get spam from time to time. What I mean is the unsolicited mail of course, not the canned meat product. An annoying thing, responsible for a lot of lost hours for a lot of people, and also for 0,2% of the world wide CO2 emission, due to the power consumed when treating those mails.

Luckily there are some good tools to stop spam. In fact, the first one is the human factor. Spam exists only because some people, even if it's one out of ten thousand or less, actually buys a product advertised in a spam mail. If the senders of spam wouldn't get any money out of it, there would be no profit in sending it.

But other methods involve blacklisting, white listing, and more recently, greylisting. Blacklisting is not very efficient; it involves putting "bad" addresses on a list, and not accepting mail from those.

Up to white-listing then. It's good technique, where you only accept mail from people you know. The disadvantage is that you need to add users as soon as you want to receive mail from them, and you not always know their address.

What I am currently using is greylisting. With this method, the white-list is made automatically, so it is very efficient. However, you still need to check the spam folder to see if there are no false positives. Luckily, it is very simple to recognise spam. Just read the subject line, and you know it. Here's a list with recent spam subjects:

Female Odrgasm

Making a Female Orgasm is Essential Fpor a Healthy sexual Relationship

Makeing Txhe First Move - 1 Line That Works Every Time

Guide To Better oLve Making

Note the spelling errors, made in the hopes that spam filters that use filters with words do not notice them.

But his line really made me laugh, and you'll have to admit this usually is not something a spam aims at:

We do not have time to change subjects every day, please buy our productss

This really is what spam is about: sending e-mail with subject lines that might tempt people to open the mail and then click the link, so that in the end, they buy whatever product (Viagra, fake Rolex, ...) is actually advertised.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Happy 2761th Birthday!

On 21 April, 753 BC, so goes the legend, Rome was founded. And this is celebrated every year in Rome. Today at 12 AM sharp, the bells from the city hall tower on the Capitol rang during 10 minutes to celebrate this event.

Of course it is more than likely that the story about the founding fathers, Romulus and Remulus, is only a myth. Still, no remainders older than from the middle of the 8th century BC have been found, so at least the date seems to be rather accurate.

And in case you wondered: 2009 + 753 is 2762, so why did I put 2761? Because the year "0" does not exist, of course.

Labels: rome

Thursday, April 9, 2009

New pictures!

Well, new is not the right word. It took me very long time to publish some new pictures, but meanwhile they're already 3 months old. And because of their subject, they might not fit in this new season. But hey, I've been busy doing a lot of things, although I must confess that most of that was work (and of course also a little bit renovation).

There are two new albums in my photo section, while one has disappeared, or rather, absorbed in one of those albums.

The first album contains pictures of Mie and the kids enjoying the snow in the forest in our little village.

The second album contains the older black and white pictures I already posted before, but also some others which have not been published before. These are taken in the same forest on the same day as the other album.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Looking for your little corner

Don't we all want our own little corner, where we can relax and do what we want? Away from busy life and interaction with other people? As adults, that may become a bit difficult sometimes, but children have this property to easily find such spot.

Zoë likes a lot to read. When she has a book that can grasp and hold her attention, it is almost impossible to drag her out of this world. This weekend she went for a sleepover with a friend, and today she came back with a book she hasn't read yet. It's one of her favourite series: Harry Potter. She started reading them some years ago, age 7.

The fact that she didn't even notice me taking this picture, considering it took a flash to get enough light, shows how much she's living in Hogwarts now!

Labels: Family

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Seven years of renovation

About seven years ago we initiated a project that has taken all too long now. The concept of our house was what we call a bel-etage. In our case it meant the ground floor was just a garage and storage, while the living part was on the first floor. That contained the kitchen, living rooms and bedrooms.

That's all fine when it's just the two of you. But when the children came, we thought it would be nice to have access to the garden - at that time only concrete. So we looked around to see what we could do. Alternatives were to buy a new house, or to rebuild the one we were living in.

Finally we made the decision to have professionals redo the house, to get a living area with kitchen downstairs, and bedrooms on the first floor. An architect drafted the plans, and a renovation company started the work. Later stages included the terrace and the façades.

But one thing was done very badly. The floor on which we wanted to have the parquet done, was of very poor quality, as is evident from the picture.

It seemed the wrong materials were used. Unfortunately, the contractor did not want to continue and fix this, so we had to sue him, so at least we had financial compensation for that.

For some reasons, the other projects like the terrace and façade took priority. Probabaly also because it was easier to live with this floor than with a muddy space behind the back door. Another reason was that it is actually not easy to find somebody with the necessary skills. You don't need somebody that does floors only, nor do you need somebody that does parquet only. He has to do both.

But in November, we finally found somebody, and we had hopes the project would be finished by the end of last year. Unfortunately, the contractor got sick, so we had to wait. Then, when things finally were back on again, we went into some other trouble. The director of my bank seems to have the intelligent capabilities of an oyster. Whatever you ask him to do, even when it's written in plain Dutch, without using three-syllable words, he manages to screw up.

Now I'm not saying that it is symptomatic for that bank - although now I come to think of it, there must be a reason for their share being worth close to nothing - but I do seriously consider changing banks. At least I'm going to another branch, but it is a good time to change everything. We'll see.

Anyway, because of his latest screw-up, it means we have another week of delay. And that one week is rather crucial, since it means we can't use the holidays (Krokusvakantie) to clean up. To be honest, it is not only the bank who screwed up, our new contractors did too. But at least they were fair enough to recognise their mistake, and now we can finally start.

On Monday - if all goes well - the first stage kicks off. Then they'll be removing the sandy underground. After that, a new soil must be poured. And once that's dry, and according to schedule that should be next Monday, when the holiday starts, they can start putting the parquet.

Let's keep our fingers crossed! And of course, I'll keep you posted.

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