Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Year: 2009

  • An Instruction Manual for Life

    A short animation about cupboards and drawers…
     
     

  • The Testament of Lasantha Wickrematunga

    Extraordinary, humbling and deeply moving. Go and read it.

  • Flying Blue Unspeak

    I’m a member of KLM’s frequent flyer group: Flying Blue. My membership dates from the time when I worked for Shell, and clocked up a fair amount of flying points (and over forty of the Royal Delft houses) visiting various Shell companies around the world over a period of twenty four years. I accumulated so many points, that my frequent flyer card is, so KLM currently state, at "Platinum" level for life.
     
    Since taking retirement, I’ve hardly travelled at all. Still, I thought, the flight miles that I had accumulated would remain "in the bank", as it were, ready for when I wanted/needed to redeem them. KLM’s Frequent Flyer programme has always had a point of saying that the award miles were "valid for life". Silly me; today I received an email from Flying Blue telling me that, as from the 1st April 2009:
    "Your Award Miles are valid for life, the only condition is that you take a flight with a paid ticket allowing Miles accumulation at least once every 20 months with AIR FRANCE, KLM, Air Europa, Kenya Airways or Aircalin, or one of the SkyTeam partner airlines".  
    "The only condition"? Excuse me, you’ve just totally redefined the meaning of "valid for life". Flying Blue have the gall to say in their email:
    "Flying Blue is committed to rewarding its active customers". 
    This is clearly Unspeak for "Flying Blue is committed to screw its non-active customers". Well, thanks a bunch, you bastards.

  • A Spot of Bother with the ASA

    Now this is priceless. Tim Clague created this video of a Reverend having a spot of bother with the Advertising Standards Authority two weeks before Stephen Green made an ass of himself yet again.
     

  • Time Flies Like An Arrow…

    I’m one week away from turning 60. In a way, it’s crept up on me. I still feel and think the same way as I always did (don’t I?), although clearly, the body isn’t as responsive as it once was. But I have to admit that this particular sparrow is increasingly aware that he’s getting ever closer to the open window leading to the darkness beyond the castle’s hall. Still, I was cheered by this particular photograph of an elderly couple. Where there’s life, there’s hope.

  • Struck Speechless

    So, I’m reading a blog entry over at Counterknowledge.com written by Matthew Hartfield. He’s looking at the correlation between the rising outbreaks of measles and the anti-vaccination scare caused by baseless fears that the MMR vaccine was linked to autism. Not unexpectedly, the UK has seen large outbreaks of measles as a result.
     
    But he also looks at the situation in other European countries that have seen outbreaks of measles, notably Switzerland and Austria. And here, he finds an interesting connection with Anthroposophy, developed by "mystic and social philosopher" Rudolf Steiner. His ideas live on in Waldorf/Steiner schools. Some of those ideas might be beneficial to child development, but some are clearly dangerous woo. For example:
    Waldorf’s official position on immunization is that there is no official Waldorf position on immunization. Instead, Waldorf says that immunization should be informed by medical professionals, and ultimately parents should decide whether or not to immunize their own children.
     
    Typically Waldorf schools do not encourage parents to immunize their children against the following diseases: Hepatitis B; Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis; Haemophilus influenzae Type b; Inactivated Polio; Measles, Mumps, Rubella; Varicella and Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine (PCV).
    So what if your child falls ill, or even dies as a result of a preventable disease?
    Don’t be alarmed if your child dies from a preventable disease because he/she is not immunized, it was probably their destiny. It clearly wasn’t their destiny to be immunized.
    Hartfield writes: "I’m genuinely speechless". So am I. It’s appalling.

  • Pulling the Plug

    I see that the Dutch minister for Education, Culture and Science has stopped a subsidy made by the government to a Christian Group based in Arnhem. Apparently, the group, Onze Weg (Our Way), was using the money to run courses that, while not brazenly offering to "cure" homosexuals, certainly aimed at "reducing homosexual tendencies" in their unfortunate participants.
     
    I’m pleased to learn that Minister Plasterk has stopped this group from getting any of my money. I don’t pay my taxes in order to be neutered by the likes of them, thank you very much. 

  • You Probably Couldn’t Make It Up…

    … but of course, that would mean expecting sensible behaviour from Stephen Green. On past performance, that is somewhat akin to expecting Hell to freeze over. Yes, we’re talking about his, and other people’s, reaction to the Atheist Bus Campaign.
     
    Apparently, at least 88 people have complained to the Advertising Standards Authority about the slogan: "There’s probably no God. Now Stop Worrying and enjoy your life". What really boggles my mind is that most of them complained on the grounds that they found the adverts "offensive" and broke guidelines of "taste and decency". I honestly don’t understand how such people can think that way. Perhaps I need to go on a course of believing six impossible things before breakfast each day, but I don’t think that it would help.

  • Take Off Your Glasses, Corey

    That’s the title of an excellent essay by Simon Sellars that examines the connections between J. G. Ballard‘s fiction and society today. He makes a strong case that Ballard was disturbingly right in his dystopian predictions.

  • Winter Is Here

    We seem at last to be having a Winter worthy of the name. The Dutch are even daring to hope that the Elfstedentocht might be held again this year. Meanwhile, it’s a photo opportunity out there.

  • Interviewing Van Der Veer

    Here’s a video (with an accompanying article) of George Monbiot interviewing Jeroen van der Veer, CEO of Shell. It’s worth watching, and the article is thoughtful as well. The key point, it seems to me, is that, as Monbiot says:
    Saving the biosphere, in other words, cannot be left to goodwill and greenwash: the humanity of pleasant men like Van der Veer will always be swept aside by the imperative to maximise returns. Good people in these circumstances do terrible things. 

  • TED Sits on the Whoopee Cushion

    Over the past few years, I’ve often linked to the TED web site, because they often have interesting talks from interesting people. The TED people have just run into a spot of bother with their video hosting supplier, which means that they have had to change over to a new host service. And while they have tried to minimise the impact, the string and sealing wax that characterises the worldwide web in general has snapped beyond repair as far as I’m concerned. All of the video embedded links that I have made in past blog entries are now broken. You can’t get to the videos that I posted about.
     
    Sorry about that. Blame them, not me.
     
    As has been said before, the web is like sitting on a whoopee cushion.

  • What Will Change Everything?

    Edge has posted its big question for 2009: "What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?" and has asked a wide variety of scientists, academics and philosophers for their answers.
     
    I don’t expect to live to see it, but I think the biggest game-changing development would be cheap energy from workable nuclear fusion. It would utterly change the whole energy landscape.

  • Photos of the Year

    Here are the photos that I am most pleased with of all those that I took in 2008. I know that they’re not very good from a professional’s point of view, but I like them…