On bedtime stories for mass murderers

I'm not going to join into the William Blum condemnation choir, because others have voiced their criticism of Mr. Blum much more eloquently than I ever could. Instead, I'm wondering why hardly anyone in the blogosphere seems to have recognized the importance of Osama Bin Laden referring to an American author to back up his hatred of the United States.

Some may find this disturbing. I think it's comforting. The West, for all its flaws, is still its own worst critic. For all our internal differences, perhaps we can agree that our openness to intellectual self-flagellation is something to cherish. The very fact that we have a word for 'hubris', and that it got its current meaning, hopefully will prevent us succumbing to it.

(But I've been accused of being a delusional optimist before.)

11:55

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Numbers

I'm not trying to sound like a bad episode of Lost here, but the number 13 has been rather instrumental to my life. Literally. I was born on Friday the 13th, 1975. According to family lore, the superstitious nurse wanted to change my date of birth into Thursday the 12th, since I was born only fifteen (or is that thirteen?) minutes after midnight. My protestant father wanted none of it. One day I'll release a book full of jokes about Friday the 13th. Lord knows I've heard enough of them. Thanks, dad.

Anyway, the number keeps on popping up. Now I've registered to buy a house in Amsterdam (it's this one, in case you're interested). As is often the case with new houses in Amsterdam, they are distributed through a lottery system. I got my ticket number in the mail yesterday. No prizes for guessing what it is.

11:36

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