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Friday, July 8, 2005
Off to Dublin (Baile atha Cliath) - watch my cat! |
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For a few days of well-deserved R&R, if I do say so myself. If any readers know of good gigs there Saturday or Sunday night, me and a mate will be staying at the Westbury in Grafton Street, registered under the name of 'Dasselaar'. (Yes, it's a posh hotel but I got a free coupon...)
Feel free to drop us a line. Or text me at +31 6 45190498. Any excuse for a pint is welcome (not that we'll be needing one).
Anyone feeling the need to look after my cat: click here (and please text me if you see anything out of the ordinary - a mate of mine is checking the cam too and has keys to my appartment.
(Would-be burglars can be consoled that the cat cam takes images of the front door of my house as well (as you can see at the right hand side of the images in the gallery), and sends them to an FTP server at a safe distance from my house, to someone who will call 112 (the Dutch 911) instantly. Smile! Besides, as you can judge by the quality of the carpet, it's not exactly the Hamptons in my house. There's not even a computer, only a laptop, which is coming with me... The webcam is hooked up to a 500 MHz AMD (no, that's not enough to deserve to be named a computer...))
(Oh, and a note to overly cautious readers: the neighbour will be checking on the cat on Sunday and Monday - so if the door on the right side opens, don't worry. However, if you see the door at the BOTTOM side of the screen open, please do worry. This is the door that the cat cam is mounted on - so if the perspective changes radically, there might be something going on as well, and you'd be quite welcome to text me.)
(And yes, I am always this perfectionist.)
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18:16 |
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About a cat and a vet |
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Tomorrow morning I'll be off for a brief (two night) holiday, but I figured it might be a good idea to put Ender, my cat, in an animal hotel because he's never been alone for more than a night before.
Dierenpension Amsterdam-Noord seemed like a good idea when I visited their website - after all, it is owned by a vet.
A week or so ago I went there to take a look. The parents of the owner were there and they were a delight. I got an extensive tour and got shown some rather large as well as quite small cages for cats to stay in. Ender does not relate well to other cats, so I asked whether it would be possible for him to stay alone in one of the large cages. They said yes, and I made a reservation.
Today I met the vet herself, and it was not a pleasure.
Despite being five minutes earlier than I had agreed with her parents, I immediately got reprimanded for being late.
Things went downhill from there. I asked whether I could put Ender in his cage myself, but she denied that request. She said she would put Ender in his 'hokje' (a Dutch diminitive meaning little cage) herself. Needless to say, this got me worried further. When she refused to explain why she wouldn't let me put him in his cage myself, I'd had enough. I went home, taking Ender with me.
As Jeff Jarvis might say: caveat venditor.
I won't be going there again.
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17:54 |
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Hold the line |
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Coincidence or not, just last week I started reading Victor David Hanson's excellent book Carnage and Culture. The book doesn't paint a pretty picture. Hanson is unequivocal in his praise for Western values - but one. The downside (for our enemies) of freedom is that it also makes us the most efficient killers the world has ever seen. We've got something to fight for: ourselves. And though we can be scared, we aren't nearly as easily scared as the enemy:
'In Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian War, nearly 2,500 years ago the Spartan general Brasidas dismissed the military prowess of the tribes of Illyria and Macedonia, who confronted his Spartan hoplites. These men, Brasidas says of his savage opponents, have no discipline and so cannot endure shock battle. "As all mobs do," they changed their fearsome demeanor to cries of fright when they faced the cold iron of disciplined men in rank. Why so? Because, as Brasidas goes on to tell his soldiers, such tribes are the product of cultures "in which the many do not rule the few, but rather the few the many" (Thucydides 4.126).
In contrast to these enormous armies of screaming "barbarians" without consensual governments and written constitutions--"formidable in outward bulk, with unbearable loud yelling and the frightful appearance of weapons brandished in the air"--"citizens of states like yours," Brasidas assures his men, "stand their ground." Notice that Brasidas says nothing about skin color, race, or religion. Instead, he simplistically connects military discipline, fighting in rank, and the preference for shock battle with the existence of popular and consensual government, which gave the average infantryman in the phalanx a sense of equality and a superior spirit to his enemies. Whether or not we wish to dismiss Brasidas's self-serving portrait of frenzied tribesmen as a chauvinistic Western "construct" or "fiction," or debate whether his own Spartan oligarchy was a broad-based government, or carp that European infantrymen were often ambushed and bushwhacked by more nimble guerrillas, it is indisputable that there was a tradition of disciplined heavy infantrymen among the constitutionally governed Greek city-states, and not such a thing among tribal peoples to the north.'
I see no difference between the Greek phalanxes, and the brave Londoners that are holding the line by continuing to use the Tube.
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12:45 |
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