” Als u in eerste instantie in het linker grijze vlak slechts zes of zeven gekleurde cirkels waarneemt, bent u heel erg kleurenblind. U bent dan namelijk niet in staat om een kleurverschil van 25 Delta-E-eenheden te zien. Een meer verfijnde meting wordt uitgevoerd in het rechter grijze vlak. Het verschil tussen de vier gekleurde cirkels en de achtergrond bedraaght daar slechts zeven Delta-E-eenheden.

” De meeste kleurenblinde mensen zullen de groene cirkels pas na lang turen vinden (deuteranomalia) of zelfs in het geheel niet zien (deuteranopia). Voor deze mensen zal de rode cirkel in vergelijking met de overige cirkels minder duidelijk zichtbaar zijn. Het is namelijk een kenmerk van rood/groen-kleurenblindheid dat de gele en blauwe kleuren aanmerkelijk helder worden waargenomen dan bij niet- kleurenblinde mensen.

” Overigens beweren veel mensen dat ze in het midden van de grijze vlakken een andere cirkel zien staan. Geloof het of niet, maar daar staat beslist geen cirkel. “

Kleurzien. Miriam van der Have

Shockwave spelletje. Verslavend.

Prins Laurent geflitst aan 137 per uur
BRUGGE — Aan boord van zijn Mercedes heeft de lokale Brugse politie prins Laurent geflitst toen hij tegen 137 per uur over de Chartreuseweg stoof op een plaats waar de maximumsnelheid 70 per uur bedraagt. Omdat deze verkeersinbreuk ernstig genoeg is om onmiddellijk het rijbewijs in te trekken, werd het voertuig tot stoppen gedwongen. De politie nam dus contact op met het parket. De prins beriep zich op zijn onschendbaarheid. Het parket van Brugge heeft de zaak daarom doorgestuurd naar het parket-generaal in Brussel. (FV)

Het Volk Vandaag

Uhm, dus de politie reed mee?

Hoofd van de Amerikaanse Justitie, Attorney General John Ashcroft beëindigde een lezing in Charlotte, North Carolina met een zelfgeschreven lied dat hij noemde: ‘Let The Eagles Soar’
Vooral de subtiele muzikale ondersteuning is fraai.

Alexander Graham Bell dacht met de telefoon een ideaal instrument te hebben uitgevonden om muziek ook op afstand te kunnen beluisteren. Thomas Alpha Edison meende met zijn phonograph het perfecte middel te hebben uitgedacht om geschreven post voor altijd overbodig te maken.

Bleken de gebruikers van deze nieuwe technologieën ongehoorzaam.

‘ ALL the characters in this book, like Godfrey, retain their distinctive peculiarities. None are dead but Eleanor; and nearly all, when they think of her, think themselves better than Eleanor; and better than others who have different faults or misfortunes.

‘ Duly does Godfrey go twice to church on Sundays: devout is his conviction that he is a good man: entire and unbroken is the respect for him which his neighbours entertain, and the love for him which his timid wife preserves. All the children accompany their father to church; down to the last little one that can read. Severely does he punish any little curly head that looks up, or yawns, during the long incomprehensible service. Awful, in his family, is the idea of “offending papa;” more dreadful than the fact of doing wrong; which puzzles simple Emma - for she feels, much as she reveres Godfrey, that the fear of Heaven should somehow predominate in the children’s hearts. ‘
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The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse–that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it.

H.L. Mencken, Quotes [1927].

The Secrets of Jujitsu, A Complete Course in Self Defense [1920]

Net nei de video-stream op dyn kompjûter sjen, yn pleats fan net nei it programma op ‘e tillefyzje sjen.

I sometimes think as here I sit
Of things I have done,
Which seemed in doing not unfit
To face the sun:
Yet never a soul has paused a whit
On such - not one.

There was that eager strenuous press
To sow good seed;
There was that saving from distress
In the nick of need;
There were those words in the wilderness:
Who cared to heed?

Yet can this be full true, or no?
For one did care,
And, spiriting into my house, to, fro,
Like wind on the stair,
Cares still, heeds all, and will, even though
I may despair.

Thomas Hardy, Late Lyrics

(To JS/07 M 378

This Marble Monument
Is Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn’t a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in a hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

W.H. Auden

Na alle gezeur over de snelheidswinst door de nieuwe schaatspakken voorafgaand aan de Olympische Spelen, viel tijdens de WK toch op dat alleen de Amerikanen en een verdwaalde Pool nog die geavanceerde kleding aan hadden.

Esquire heeft een hele verzameling korte verhalen van David Sedaris on-line staan. Ik kan niet anders zeggen dan, leest:

The Fatty Suit
For my sister Amy, there’s nothing more beautiful than a good old-fashioned skin disease, a set of false teeth, and a really big butt.

of:
Jesus Shaves
“He nice, the Jesus. He make the good things, and on the Easter we be sad because somebody makes him dead today.”

Of welk ander verhaal dan ook.

Volgens Intermediair deze week.

‘ Political ideals must be based upon ideals for the individual life. The aim of politics should be to make the lives of individuals as good as possible. There is nothing for the politician to consider outside or above the various men, women, and children who compose the world. The problem of politics is to adjust the relations of human beings in such a way that each severally may have as much of good in his
existence as possible. And this problem requires that we should first consider what it is that we think good in the individual life.

‘ To begin with, we do not want all men to be alike. We do not want to lay down a pattern or type to which men of all sorts are to be made by some means or another to approximate. This is the ideal of the impatient administrator. A bad teacher will aim at imposing his opinion, and turning out a set of pupils all of whom will give the same definite answer on a doubtful point. Mr. Bernard Shaw is said to hold that Troilus and Cressida is the best of Shakespeare’s plays. Although I disagree with this opinion, I should welcome it in a pupil as a sign of individuality; but most teachers would not tolerate such a heterodox view. Not only teachers, but all commonplace persons in authority, desire in their subordinates that kind of uniformity which makes their actions easily predictable and never inconvenient. The result is that they crush initiative and individuality when they can, and when they cannot, they quarrel with it. ‘

Bertrand Russell, Political Ideals

‘ In our own time, thrillers and bestsellers are usually more revealing than ‘literary fiction’ about the way we live now. Ian Fleming, who’s enjoying a modest revival courtesy of Penguin, is, from many points of view, the most significant English writer of the 1950s. ‘

Robert McCrum, The Observer