Column

Wekelijkse notities in de kantlijn van waar de wereld over praat. En waarover ik vind dat de wereld moet praten.

De maandagcolumn is een institutie in niemandsland.

Revolutionary Rant
Buckminster Fuller. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Contrary to my habits (but what are habits worth), I republish a piece of raw text originally meant as a small comment on a social network. It was about a quote of Buckminster Fuller, saying that we keep inventing new jobs to control each other, while the real work ...
There Is Not Enough For Everybody
[365 Toy Project: 050/365] The Humans Are Dead (Photo credit: nhussein)
Another cherished myth of our time is that there is enough for everybody, if only we would make the system just. This is a dangerous belief in the omnipotence of technology. Just because there are flaws in its implementation, there must be a way ...
Mad Max World
Cover of Mad Max (Special Edition) We have been taught to accept whatever choices people make, as long as they are lawful. Within an essentially unquestioned framework called "The Law", we believe, people (I mean citizens) can live out their valuable freedom, and choose anything they want and cannot do in-justice.

Of course, "The ...
The Lightness of Being

"Recently I had contact with a scale. Not an old squeaking household scale, but an industrial-grade scale with metal footholds and a very precise digital display boasting accuracy in the hundredths. I was naked, and the scale was thus threatening to tell me the only truth. I waited for a short moment, then gathered ...
Traveler, Where Do You Pay Your Taxes?
Having been on the road for a while, and able to sustain (more than sustain) myself, I want to ask my fellow itinerant brothers and sisters how they deal with this one little thing that, as the saying goes, is as inevitable as death: taxes. I always pay my taxes promptly upon request, just in ...
Life near the Tempelhof Airfield

This huge airfield in the middle of the booming city has always been an oddity, and during the time of the Berlin Wall (1961-1989) even a symbol of the divided world. Thanks to the Airbridge, life wasn't that miserable in the enclave of West Berlin. After reunification, Tempelhof allowed politicians to move swiftly between ...
raw and uncouth

It has been a while that the author of these writings did something rough and raw here. I've posted half polished articles and short essays, but not much of the absurd stuff I used to write. For the sake of these new times, that lie behind us, I will do that today is a ...
The three Ps of Motivation

Let's categorize motives of people roughly in "doing it for the money" and "doing it for the fun" and we miss something essential. The third category of motivation, one that needs to remain vague and adventurous. Indeed: that other type of motivation has something to do with adventure. Not with just any treasure hunting ...
Touchdown and first days in Nairobi
March 19, 2012. Nairobi, Kenya.We are in Nairobi now for almost a week and found the place more or less unchanged since we left two years ago. This time, we didn't plan much in advance so we are now looking for places where we can help. We will go back to the Rainbow Center in ...