New study Amsterdam, April 7th 2021– It must have been something like: the more you study, the more you know. The more you know the more you forget. Or was it: the less you know the less you forget? For all we hear of neuroscience’s great advances, the field has generated more questions than answers. …
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In Photographs Amsterdam, March 12 2021– Lusi, or Lumpur Sidoarjo Indonesian word for hot mud. It now is a household word in Indonesia, the result of an erupting mud volcano in the subdistrict of Porong, Sidoarjo in East Java, Indonesia since May 2006. We visited not long after, for the BBC’s Outlook. Some suggest it happened…
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Beatriz and Bernard Amsterdam, March 12, 2021 – First thing the Vice Minister of Health in Bujumbura, the then Capital of Burundi says when I am entering his impressive office and on a story invited by a Dutch NGO, to report on the construction of a water system in Muyinga, is: ‘ Be welcome and…
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Lessons for Life Amsterdam, 25 Feb. 2021– When I once, long ago, privately met with the fabulous Miles Davis in Berlin after a concert arranged by Hans-Georg Brunner Schwer, he, among many other things said,: “It takes a long time to sound like yourself.” That remark surely took its time to ripen and grow as I went on with life…
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Making the beast with the two Backs Amsterdam, Feb. 25 2021– Long ago, really long ago, when growing up from a child to a young man, I became fascinated by a comment with a, for me then and at that time, strongly sexual connotation. A comment triggered as a lifelong and equally beautiful experience. One…
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Amsterdam, 24 Feb. 2021 — My good and faithful friend, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) is, according to many, not only a philosopher of the first order and category, but also a poet and one who thinks in prose. In his philosophical novel Also Sprach Zarathustra, published in parts now almost some 140 years ago, through the…
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The architecture of happiness For Frances Amsterdam- 24 Feb. 2021– Marvel about love, for example. Or else go travel, roam the world and search for the unveiling of these questions in your quest for love and happiness. My hero Alain de Botton makes that possible. First amazes us about space, about the fact that a beautiful…
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The story how the cock from the cathedral’s spire finally could be saved.
Measuring Today with Yesterdays Tools Amsterdam, 19 feb. 2021– The Alhambra in Granada, central Spain, is one of the many pinnacles of Islamic architecture. Toured by the art historian José Miguel Puerta Vílchez, it is a revelation and satisfies a lot of curiosity about the influence of Islam in Europe. He has written extensively about…
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Back into the Future Amsterdam, Feb 19th, 2021– Phrenology sounds like it belongs in a history book, filed somewhere between bloodletting and velocipedes. Not something in these days and age of modern times. We’d like to think that judging people’s worth based on the size and shape of their skull is a practice that’s well behind us. …
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