Magere Hein

Not a name I recognise. Hey, he's got a Wikipedia article.The titles there mean nothing to me, mind. ETA: this reminds me of a remark Hugo Brandt Corstius (disguised as Piet Grijs) made about Norwegian playwright Ibsen: "Wrote plays in Norwegian. That didn't help; they got translated."

Ah, the leather boy...

The other D means Derby, as prominently displayed on the website.

Are you sure it was the real McCoy?

That's a euphemism, innit?

Very interesting question. As I recently posted on the Astronauts thread, the youngest moonwalkers are now 80 and the oldest is 86. So, barring any of them living to the ripe old age of 100, they'll all be dead before 2036. So the question is will any human set foot on the moon before 2036? Right now, I'd say it's unlikely, but at the same time, it's such a long time that surely someone's got to get there sooner or later. Not sure it will be another American though. Chinese maybe, Russians. Someone random like the Indians. Maybe it's a possibility that before the last moonwalker dies we may see the first interplanetary walker if we get to Mars. They keep saying it's relatively feasible, so 20 years is a pretty sizeable length of time. Gosh maryport, you've really got me thinking now.... If a large nation is prepared to put the effort and treasure in it, it can be done in decade, so why not? Mars is quite a bit farther. To get people there is not technically feasable now. On the other hand the Moon: been there, done that. I've always thought the Moon will be a first target for something like permanent habitation, but I may be proved wrong. PS: Schmitt, cause he's daft.

Different glasses, though.

They have got smaller. I'll have to find the article that was done a few years ago where some of the leading food and grocery items have been reduced in size or weight, but the prices remained the same or increased. For one type of sweet, the Hershey bar, this has been the subject of scientific research: Philetic Size Decrease in Hershey Bars by Stephen Jay Gould.

Today in 1958:

Of course there's a UFO community. It's a well known fact that UFOs are actually live aliens, who live in the hole inside the Earth and fly out at night on genetically modified squid.

Dunno, it's a nice bit of resurrection, though.

Demjanjuk gambit, anyone?

And a rude noise.

I´m not aware of adherents of such irredentism, but such sentiments lived well into the 20th century. Belgian territorial claims after 1918 caused some anti-Belgian sentiment in the Netherlands, but that died PDQ. There are people on both sides of the border who subscribe to the idea of a Greater Netherlands. Ever since WWII this idea has become strongly associated with the far-right, in Belgium as well as in the Netherlands. The Dutch government position on the matter was expressed well by former Dutch PM Balkenende: "the fate of Belgium is not for us to decide".

At least the twat didn't call him Maigret I wouldn't mind that. (damn, wrong hat) So that's why you stole that smilie Of course. I read several Maigret novels in Dutch translation, my dad had a bookshelf full of 'm. BTW, Maigret's author, Georges Simenon, had an interesting sex life, if we´re to believe him.

Who were the Belgians rebelling against? This is an area of history I know nothing of. The Dutch. In 1815 what are now The Netherlands and Belgium were united in one Kingdom of the Netherlands. The Belgians rebelled against the Kingdom in 1830 in what´s known to English speakers as the Belgian Revolution. On 7 February 1831, the Belgian Constitution was proclaimed and the separation from the Dutch was a fact. The war continued on and off until in 1839 the separation was settled in the Treaty of London.

At least the twat didn't call him Maigret I wouldn't mind that. (damn, wrong hat)

I've just removed that "Dear Dr. Zorders" topic. It served no reasonable purpose that this one doesn't.

Great video; watched it all. So did I, it's strangely moving. It was made in the time that the future was very bright indeed.

Today in 1831 Dutch naval lieutenant Jan van Speijk, aged 29, blew up his gunboat rather than surrender it to Belgian rebels, when it was blown into Antwerp by a gale. Dan liever de lucht in!

Books I read for my exam in English language and literature: Kiss Kiss - Roald Dahl Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway The Third Man - Graham Greene Brave New World - Aldous Huxley Moby Dick - Herman Melville Animal Farm - George Orwell The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand The Merchant of Venice - William Shakespeare Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck The Lord of the Rings trilogy - JRR Tolkien Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert M. Pirsig and two books I can't remember, presumably thin ones.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (Yes) 1984 - George Orwell (Yes) The Lord of the Rings trilogy - JRR Tolkien (Yes) War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (No) Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (No) The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle (Some of them, not all) To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (No) David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (Started reading a Dutch translation, but abandoned the read after some 100 pages) Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (No) Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (No) Bleak House - Charles Dickens (No) Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (I read most of them. They get worse as they get thicker. I gave up after the Half-Blood Prince) Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (No) The Diary of Anne Frank - Anne Frank (Yes, in Dutch) Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (No) Fifty Shades trilogy - EL James (No) And Then There were None - Agatha Christie (Yes) The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (No) Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (Yes) The Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (No, but all Salinger's other books) Oh well. No French? Or German?

Is Trump from Florida?

I am since a few weeks the embarrassed owner of a smartphone (I think a jellyfish is smarter, but let's not go there). Embarrassed, 'cause even a basic function like answering a call gives me trouble. I missed several ones because the bloody thing wouldn't pick it up. Me previous dumbphone was smart enough to have a clearly labeled push button for that. Anyway, what most annoys me is the lack of keyboard and mouse.