Amat victoria curam!

Same nose, same chin, same madness...

As the curtain closes on the world stage for Muammar - Vanity Fair has a nice slideshow on how he was influenced by Lacroix, Liberace, Phil  Spector (for hair), Snoopy, and Idi Amin...

Here is a book you must read - even if you only read ONE book this year: Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. This story actually has two sides:
First it is meticulous, soaring and beautifully written by a young woman fighting chronic fatigue syndrome - which makes her virtually unable to leave her house. We all know her from the tremendious succesfull book "Seabiscuit: An American Legend,"

Secondly this is about THE ultimate survivor - Louis Zamperini. He was a sort of juvenile thug who start running - was selected for the 1936 Berlin Olympics, joined the AAF in WWII, survived an airplane crash and 46 days in the Shark infested pacific ocean with no supplies. After that he was captured by the Japanese and had to endure horrific torture while being a POW. After the war he visited many of the guards from his POW days to let them know that he had forgiven them - talk about forgiveness... He even ran a leg in the Olympic Torch relay for the Winter Olympics in Nagano in 1998.

When Laura was doing research for Seabiscuit she came across the story of Louis Zamperini and decided to write about him. She and Zamperini have never met face to face - which is unbelievable if you read the story.

Thx to Karen for pointing me to this book. She met Lou and persuaded him to speak in Lafayette Library and Learning Center April 16 - isn't that awesome?!

Thx to funda.nl (they made this pic for their 10 year celebration)

Wow - yet an other giant died: George Shearing - one of the greatest jazz pianists ever. I first heard him on "An evening at Charlie's" live with Mel Tormé. This is absolutely one of the best Mel Tormé albums ever - an so one of the best albums in the music recording history of course :-))

Mel en George went on making several (Grammy award winning) albums like "An evening with" , "Doing WWII" , "Top Drawer" or "Vintage Year". But other albums of George are superb ass well - think of "The lady and the beat" with Peggy Lee (Live) and "The Swingin's mutual" with Nancy Wilson.
I will absolutely miss George - but luckily we can still enjoy his recordings!

There's been a lot of talk about an Egyptian twitter or facebook revolution - but actually it was Aljazeera who changed things in Egypt I think. A very personal and up close manner of reporting with an unrivaled up to date coverage made the difference. It was not through CNN - not the new media - but Aljazeera that the Egyptian people (and the world) could see history in the making.

New motor jacket :-)

Danny Saucedo som tävlar i Melodifestivalens första deltävling i Luleå

Amazon is adding real page numbers that correspond directly to a book’s print edition next to the confusing location numbers. I hope you get a little more feel of where you are in book through these page numbers. I find the location numbers very confusing and a percentage not ideal.

Just a little reminder that Steve was a great motor rider...

It's really really hard to choose just ONE book as your all time favorite, but that was the question for me in this week Financieel Dagblad Weekend. (which has a very nice -free- iPad app). It is a sort of question like: If you go to an uninhibited island and you would only be allowed 1 book - which one would you take? Which is in this age of Kindle and iPad a bit of silly...
But of the thousands of books I have - I had to choose one. Maybe I decided on The Temple because of the cover picture by Herbert List? LOL :-)

Det är en nya holländska frimarken webbsida: postzegelsontwerpen. Här kan man tittar på allt holländska frimarken från första (av 1851) till nyaste. Webbsidan är mycket användarvänlig: varje frimarken kan man förstora och också ser man original designer. Jag tycker om frimarken och har en lite insamling so det här är mycket intressant för mig.

(from THE DAILY)

What ever happened with Digg? I just to be a huge fan - spending hours and hours dugging stories - but now I haven't been there for months... Is it the new website last March or is it the fact that reeder - read it later and the iPad just catched up with the whole Digg concept? Fact is that digg = dead. Kevin Rose probably should have sold it back in 2007 for a cool $300 million...

Sure I use the dictafon app on my iphone - the problem is (was) that you have to use your phone to listen to the reminders you leave yourself. Not anymore: with Dropvox your messages are uploaded to your dropbox and so you can listen to them from any device (including the iPad e.g.)

A nice conversation with Joris about... uh... me (in Dutch)

Poor Christoph Waltz: playing a Nazi in Inglorious Basterds gained him an Oscar - but now he is waisting his talents in The Green Hornet. This movie is one of the worst of the 21st century.
The story is not excisting nor funny, the Greenhornet himself (played by writer Seth Rogen) ridiculous, there is a lot of shouting and the fights impossible to follow. The movie is shot in 2D and then converted to 3D - which didn't help: the 3D aspect of this movie is zero zilch.
To bad because the car Kato made is rather cool...

Things are shaky in Cairo right now - but there are signs of hope as well!

Den 25-30 januari samlade ledande politiker och företrädare för näringslivet för det årliga World Economic Forum i Davos och stort intresse riktade mot hur de nordiska länderna klarat finanskrisen och skapade hållbar ekonomisk tillväxt. Nordiska Ministerrådet och Föreningen Norden tagit fram skriften ”The Nordic Way” som ett inspel till diskussionerna.

Efter "Snabba Cash" och "Aldrig fucka upp" kommer den tredje titeln i serien om Stockholms undre värld: "Livet deluxe" från Jens Lapidus. Tyvärr det har en lite för svårt läser av svenska för mig. Jag måste vänta på engelska eller nederländska versionen...

Since I am running more and more outside and since the weather is still terrible (wind, rain, light snow) it was time for a new windbreaker: the Adidas Nova in fluorescent green... It great! light, goretex and absolutely everybody sees you running by: what more do you want?

This is a great (non-profit) initiative: a website to promote awareness about what you can do yourself to discover diseases in a very early stage. We all have to check regularly if our body is showing symptoms of something being wrong. How to do that? check out selfchec.org...

Tom Ford and Richard Buckley have been together 24 years - reason enough for the cover of OUT, The love issue. Something people are amazed: they don’t think of gay men being together that long... :-)

The preconception that being gay is possibly more sex-based than emotionally based, is surprising and shocking in today’s world - luckily Tom & Richard prove otherwise.

During the launch of auto.nl I had several pres interviews. Most of the newspapers made more standard pictures to illustrate the article. The one in Het Financieel Dagdlad however stood out I thought.

(economist - 13 januari 2011)

The amazing story of Ted is a true example for everyone - you"ll aways have a second chance! Take it.

We stopped in Aschaffenburg to see our first Castle. It is a nice little town on the border of the river Main and our first Bavarian stop. Next to the castle (in which we found a lot of old Dutch Masters) there is the Pompejanum - a rebuild of a classic villa from Pompeii, quite nicely done so.

Den 25 januari invigs utställningen ”Män i baddräkt” på Nordiska museet: 40- och 50-talens hetaste badplagg: Tarzanbadbrallan med resår i sidorna och på senare tiders mode med stora surfshorts (ofta med kalsonger under).

This could be something for Dutch Rail (which is in trouble as usual for the winter delays nowadays): ask the conductor and his assistant to give a fashion show - complete with local carnival clowns!
It was hilarious - but the fun was short lived, because minutes after the show ended we ran over a person on the track and he was seriously wounded. We had a delay of 1 1/2 hours, but that didn't matter so much of course - as long as the victim was taken care of. Peru Rail really showed its good side and swiftly took action and at the first possible place (couple of hours later) an ambulance stood by to take him to a hospital. Quite an adventurous journey!