Theo van Gogh murdered
Theo van Gogh, A Dutch
movie director, actor, writer, producer
and editor has been murdered this morning. Theo van Gogh is also known as columnist
with strong opinions especially with respect to believers, both Christian and Muslim.
There are rumours that he was found with a note in Arabic script stuck to his chest
with a knife.
(follow-up)
Going to the Go club
Tonight Annabel and I went to the Go
club. I played a game (SGF, PS)
against Jan-Willem. He is a 2 Kyu player and started with a nine stone handicap.
For a long time the game remained rather equal, until I made a certain move,
which turned out to be rather nasty. I thought it was only forcing him to beat
a lost stone of mine, but it was actually a snap back, where I could beat a lot
of his stones. We both had not seen it. This made me win the game with about
twenty points. I also made some stupid moves with respect to a "big ape" move
and I put myself in a 'Ko'-fight, which did not turn out too bad for me,
because I had more 'Ko'-threats than my opponent.
Annabel played against three different people, including Jan-Willem and
Ton. Ton remarked that he now start having trouble winning from her on
a 13x13 board with a seven stone handicap. She is getting stronger, but
not ready for the 19x19 board yet.
Fragment of a rainbow
This morning, when I was biking to my office, I noticed a fragment of a
rainbow just before I was entering the tunnel go under
high way A35. When I came out of the tunnel it was gone.
A cold day
This morning, it was 1.5 degrees Celsius outside according to our thermometer,
and there was even some frost on the roof. Today, Theo van Gogh, who was murdered
last last Tuesday,
will be cremated. Yesterday evening, 500 of his
friends had a party to remember him in the manner he wanted himself. (Just recently
he had written down some remarks with respect to his death as preparation of a trip
he was going to make to New York.) It was a rather bizarre party, I understand, with
people trying to create a jolly atmosphere while is coffin was standing in the middle
of the round hall.
It seems that our country is being shaken by extremists. Its becoming more and more
clear that the murder of Theo van Gogh (some people call it a religious slaughter)
should be considered as a terrorist act, and that terrorism in Europe has taken a
new turn by targeting public figures. In the past days several attacks on Muslim
building have occurred. The largest of these was
the bombing of a Islamic elementary school in Eindhoven. The Tarieq Ibnu Zyad
Islamic school, said to have links with a mosque that has allegedly been a gathering
place for radicals, also suffered a minor attack a year ago.
This morning, I messages from the Islamic Tawhid Brigades was posted on a web site
stating threats for reprisals if more mosques are attacked.
There was also a report of an attempt to put a church on fire in Utrecht. It is
unknown who are behind this attack, and whether it is related. It seems taht the
rise of ethnic tension is reason for many Dutch to consider emigration to other
countries.
(follow-up)
A rainy day
Today the temperature has gone up again. Last night a Islamic school in Udden was
destroyed by fire. On the windows the text "R.I.P. Theo" and the "white power"
symbol, as used by racists world wide, was painted. Last night a small fire was
made in the entrance of a church in Boxmeer. A total of five churches in four
different places have been suffered arson attacks. In all cases the fire has been
stopped before it could cause much damage. I an certain sense, I do not understand
why churches are being attacked, and not public building or racist organizations.
In case these arson attacks are from people with a Muslim back ground,
on could conclude that the Muslims see the Christians as their biggest enemies or
at least view our country as a Christian country. They seem to forget that Theo
van Gogh also attacked Christians and that Christians have been ridiculed many
times before, even long before large numbers of Muslims settled in our country.
As usual, I went to the Go club this evening. Last week I already
had told Ton that I wanted to play a game against him.
This evening, I waited for him to arrive. We decided that he would start
with a eight stone handicap. At first I played rather strong, but then I
made some mistakes, and lost a whole group. And then a little later, I
lost another group not realizing until it was much too late. At the end he
won with 77 points (SGF, PS).
It seems that everyone is surprised about why I manage to win from others but
that Ton beats me over and over again. The only conclusion we can draw is that
Ton grew stronger, and that he takes just enough risk to make me start making
stupid moves.
At the end of the evening it turned out that I was the only one traveling
by car. All the others were by bike. So, I ended up bring all the Go boards
and Go stones home with me, and I will have to bring them
next week.
Pim Fortuyn "officially" won election
Yesterday, the Greatest Dutch election was held.
And what many people feared happened, Pim Fortuyn
was selected to the greatest Dutch person that ever lived.
Only his supporters were happy with this election. For some reason it are always
the politicians that win in these kind of elections, not the scientists or the
artists.
This afternoon, the KRO
reported
that Willem van Oranje should have won, if all votes would have been counted.
According to the official counting (when the winner was announced) Pim Fortuyn
got 115,000 votes and Willem van Oranje 111,000. However, the counting computers
were slow because they needed to verify that no more than six votes were cast
per telephone number. In the final count Willem van Oranje received 161,000 votes
and Pim Fortuyn 130,000 votes.
The KRO has decided not to change the "official" winner. In another poll where
people were asked who should not become the Greatest Dutch, 57% responded with
Pim Fortuyn. To me it seems that in the last half hour many people started to
voted against Pim Fortuyn by voting on Willem van Oranje.
Resigning against Martijn
This evening, Annabel and I went to the
Go club.
When we arrived only Martijn was there. Because I had all the boards with
me (from last week), we could immediately start playing.
He was given a eight stone handicap. The game did not go very well for
me (SGF, PS), and
finally, I resigned. We did some analyses. Annabel played three games,
one against Edsge and two against Arne. She lost all of them. Not so
suprisingly, because her opponents were strong players and they did not
get much handicap stones.
First wet snow
Around 11:00 it started to snow wet snow. Some
weeks ago they already had ten centimeters of snow in the South of the
Netherlands around a hundred kilometer from here. A colleague reported
some snow around Apeldoorn in the center of the country today.
More wet snow
When we woke up this morning, there was a thin layer of
snow on the car and the grass.
During the morning, it snowed again a number of times,
but the snow did not stay on the ground because temperatures
are still too high.
In the afternoon, I went to the city. There were some people
making music in the Broekhuis bookshop.
Of course, I went inside. In the middle of the shop there was
a large stack of green books. It appeared that these were the
collected works of Willem Wilmink, a poet en song writer who
lived his whole life in Enschede and died last year. The collected
works consist of two volumes with a total of 1300 pages of songs
and poems. It costs € 49,95. The five people making
music, were singing some of the songs written by Willem Wilmink.
When I was listening, it appeared that I was standing besides the
his brother, Andre Wilmink.
Around five o'clock I walked across the market where most of
the people were busy breaking down their stall. Some were making
offers that I could not refuse. I bought about three kilo of
grapes, two small califlowers, half a kilo of bean sprouts, and
half a kilo of mushrooms for just 4 Euro.
No 10
This morning it was 1.4 degrees Celsius when I went outside.
I listen to Symphony No 10 from
Shostakovich on the SupportPlus MP3 player. In some way the cold becomes
much bearable if you have something to listen to. It has been
a long time ago since I listen to "No 10".
(follow-up)
I was a little late when I arrived at the Go
Club. Everybody already was playing and there was nobody left.
I watched Martijn and Ton playing against each other. But when
Araldo and Edze finished their game, I played a game
(SGF, PS)
against Edze. He is 2 Kyu and got a nine stone handicap. At the
end of the game he resigned when I made a move that would cost
him about ten points.
Treble - No Trouble
Last summer, Annabel brought an
illegal copy of the CD "No Trouble" by Treble home. Since then we often listened to it. I like
the song "True Friend" for some reason. Because we listened to it
so often, I decided to buy the CD. Last week I ordered it from
BOL.com. Besides the normal
edition they also had a "special" edition with a Bonus DVD. I decided
to order the "special" edition because it was only 1 Euro more.
Yesterday, it arrived, but after we opened it, there was no Bonus
DVD inside. Today, I checked the web site again, and I discovered
that I indeed had ordered the "normal" edition, and that was the
"normal" edition (without the Bonus DVD) that was 1 Euro more than
the "special" edition (with Bonus DVD). Very strange indeed. I have
never seen this before that a special edition with more items costs
less than the normal edition. I felt a little disappointed.
(follow-up)
Dies Natalis
In the past days there had been people walking around the building
with blowers cleaning away all the leaves. Only today we found out
why. In a near by building the Diet Natalis of the University of Twente is held, and because the current
rector magnificus Frans van Vught is about to resign, many special
guest have been invited to be present at the celebration of his
leave. The Dies Natalis is held in the Matrix, on of the oldest
buildings on the Campus, which has been mostly empty in the past
years (except when used for art exhibitions). At the moment several
heat and electricity generators are placed outside the building to
create a pleasant atmosphere inside.
Integer Heronian triangles
Integer Heronian triangles are triangles who sides are whole number and
that have a whole area. I started thinking about this, after
seeing the simple formulea for the
area of a triangle based on the lengths of the sides. (Also
known as Heron's Formula). From
this formulea it is clear that the area of a triangle with
whole sides is the root of a whole number if the sum of the
sides is even. It is clear that it is possible that the square
root of a whole number is a whole number as well. I wrote a
small
program to find such triangles. The smallest example that I found
(earlier already) is the famouse 3-4-5 triangle with an area of 6.
Later I discovered that each triangle with a
pythagorean
triplets has a whole area. This is because at least one of the shorter
sides is even. But there are also many Heronian triangles that are not
pythagorean triplets, such as the triangle 5-5-6 with an area of 12.
Because 12 is dividable by 6, it is clear that if the longest side
is seen as the basis of the triangle, the height is 4. From this
it is clear that it is made of two pythagorean triplets.
But then I discovered that there are also triangles that do not
fall in this category. The smallest example is 5-29-30 with
an area of 72. 72 is not dividable by any of the sides. Then I
discovered that this triangle can be drawn inside a rectangle
of 20 by 24 with the corner on the sides 29 and 30 in the
corner of this rectangle. But then there were still triangles
left that did not fit this solution. The smallest example
being the triangle 17-65-80. Today, I discovered that this
triangle can be drawn on the points (0,0), (-8,-15), and (56,33).
And it appears that this is the case for all triangles with a
whole area.
This months interesting links
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